Crystal King
Goodreads Author
Born
in The United States
Website
Twitter
Genre
Influences
Member Since
May 2007
URL
https://www.goodreads.com/crystallyn
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Crystal King
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Popular Answered Questions
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Feast of Sorrow
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published
2017
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14 editions
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In the Garden of Monsters
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published
2024
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7 editions
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The Chef's Secret
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published
2019
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9 editions
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The Happiness Collector
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published
2025
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3 editions
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The Chef's Secret: A Novel
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Atlantis: Between Tides and Time
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Atlantis: Between Tides and Time
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Crystal’s Recent Updates
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Crystal King
wrote a new blog post
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Crystal King
rated a book it was amazing
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| Robert Jackson Bennett has climbed to the upper rankings of authors whose books I will always read. He proved the worthiness of that designation with yet again another fantastic Ana and Din Mystery. Bennett is a master world-builder, bringing the rea ...more | |
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Crystal King
rated a book it was amazing
The Obstacle is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph
by Ryan Holiday (Goodreads Author) |
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Crystal King
rated a book it was amazing
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| I love Julie Carrick Dalton's books. Partly because she writes climate fiction without lapsing into the cardinal sin of the genre: making the book feel like a lecture wrapped up in a story. But also because she is the master of sinking character root ...more | |
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Crystal King
rated a book it was amazing
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| SO good. The best kind of mystery book. Anneke Van Helsing comes home one night to find her father, the famous and impossible Abraham, murdered, with a beautiful woman standing over the body who vanishes without a trace. The official ruling is suicid ...more | |
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Crystal King
rated a book it was amazing
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| Rainy March is a third-generation Book Witch whose job is jumping in and out of novels to fix tampered plots and rescue kidnapped characters, with her cat Koshka as her familiar and a magical umbrella as her preferred mode of transport. The rules are ...more | |
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Crystal King
rated a book it was amazing
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| The premise of this book alone hooked me. Diana Morgan, a forty-something widow outside Boston, opens a family time capsule with her two children eighteen months after her husband's sudden death and finds a letter from him confessing to a crime he co ...more | |
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Crystal King
rated a book it was amazing
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| Susan Donovan Bernhard's debut, Winter Loon (which I also loved), won the Julia Ward Howe Prize, and Westerly is the rare second novel that delivers on all that early promise. Three generations of women, the story moves from postwar Germany to a smal ...more | |
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Crystal King
rated a book it was amazing
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| Another Heather Webb stunner. I will always read anything she writes and this one did not disappoint! What hooked me in The Hope Keeper wasn't the cursed diamond mystery, though that's, of course, fun. It was watching Elisabeth Beaumont try to claw h ...more | |
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Crystal King
rated a book it was amazing
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| Bear has been quietly building one of the most interesting bodies of work in mythological retellings, and Aphrodite in Pieces might be her best yet. The frame is simple and brilliant: 200 years before the common era, Aphrodite walks into the workshop ...more | |
“While Apicius is full of ancient delicacies such as roasted peacock, boiled sow vulva, testicles, and other foods we would not commonly eat today, there are many others that are still popular, including tapenade, absinthe, flatbreads, and meatballs. There is even a recipe for Roman milk and egg bread that is identical to what we call French toast. And, contrary to popular belief, foie gras was not originally a French delicacy. The dish dates back twenty-five hundred years, and Pliny credits Apicius with developing a version using pigs instead of geese by feeding hogs dried figs and giving them an overdose of mulsum (honey wine) before slaughtering them.”
― Feast of Sorrow
― Feast of Sorrow
“He let his fingers tease her until she uttered soft cries. Stella spread her legs further and wider as his hand explored, touched, and pleasured every part of her womanhood.
She untied her outer bodice and lifted her breasts so they spilled from her corset. Her hands rubbed and played with her nipples. She knew what excited Bartolomeo. He continued to pleasure her while she touched herself, and he stroked his erection until he was near to bursting. Finally, he pulled her forward and slid into her, and her exclamation was louder than either of them expected. She clamped a hand over her mouth, wide-eyed.
He did not release her. Instead, he slowed his motion, and once he felt sure no one could have heard them, he began to rock against her, deeper and harder. The bed began to creak, but he was lost in the depths of his desire.
When she reached her climax, her cries more urgent and sustained, he lost control and spilled into her, his hips bucking a few more times. His legs threatened to give way with pleasure and exhaustion.”
― The Chef's Secret
She untied her outer bodice and lifted her breasts so they spilled from her corset. Her hands rubbed and played with her nipples. She knew what excited Bartolomeo. He continued to pleasure her while she touched herself, and he stroked his erection until he was near to bursting. Finally, he pulled her forward and slid into her, and her exclamation was louder than either of them expected. She clamped a hand over her mouth, wide-eyed.
He did not release her. Instead, he slowed his motion, and once he felt sure no one could have heard them, he began to rock against her, deeper and harder. The bed began to creak, but he was lost in the depths of his desire.
When she reached her climax, her cries more urgent and sustained, he lost control and spilled into her, his hips bucking a few more times. His legs threatened to give way with pleasure and exhaustion.”
― The Chef's Secret
“Today I saw the most beautiful girl in the world...
She is the most beautiful girl in the world, Bartolomeo Scappi thought. Never have I seen a woman so perfect, so angelic, so impossible for me to attain.
"Bella," he breathed when air filled his lungs once again.
Even Ippolito d'Este's presence at the dining table could not mar his giddiness. The girl was so beautiful she glowed like a painting of the Madonna, making everyone around her seem colorless in comparison. She was clearly a principessa of a grand house, sitting between Ippolito's father, the Duke of Ferrara, on one side, and a woman most likely to be her mother on the right.
Bartolomeo sought to memorize every feature of this goddess with golden hair that shone with glints of red in the last rays of the day's sunlight. Her eyes were dark chestnut, rich and deep, while her lips were pink, like the inside of a seashell. Her hair was braided, but much of it flowed loose over shoulders, teasing her pale skin. She wore a dress of red, with sleeves billowing white. Rubies and pearls spilled across her delicate collarbone toward her beautiful breasts. Scappi painted her picture in his mind and stored it deep within the frame of his heart.
That evening, while staring at the sky, his thoughts lost in the memory of the signorina, a shooting star passed across his vision. "Stella," he said under his breath. I will call her Stella. My shining star.”
― The Chef's Secret
She is the most beautiful girl in the world, Bartolomeo Scappi thought. Never have I seen a woman so perfect, so angelic, so impossible for me to attain.
"Bella," he breathed when air filled his lungs once again.
Even Ippolito d'Este's presence at the dining table could not mar his giddiness. The girl was so beautiful she glowed like a painting of the Madonna, making everyone around her seem colorless in comparison. She was clearly a principessa of a grand house, sitting between Ippolito's father, the Duke of Ferrara, on one side, and a woman most likely to be her mother on the right.
Bartolomeo sought to memorize every feature of this goddess with golden hair that shone with glints of red in the last rays of the day's sunlight. Her eyes were dark chestnut, rich and deep, while her lips were pink, like the inside of a seashell. Her hair was braided, but much of it flowed loose over shoulders, teasing her pale skin. She wore a dress of red, with sleeves billowing white. Rubies and pearls spilled across her delicate collarbone toward her beautiful breasts. Scappi painted her picture in his mind and stored it deep within the frame of his heart.
That evening, while staring at the sky, his thoughts lost in the memory of the signorina, a shooting star passed across his vision. "Stella," he said under his breath. I will call her Stella. My shining star.”
― The Chef's Secret
Topics Mentioning This Author
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aussie Readers: Your end of year top 5 - 10 INTERNATIONAL titles of 2017 | 16 | 64 | Jan 01, 2018 01:25AM | |
| Ancient & Medieva...: JUNE 2017 Feast of Sorrow by Crystal King | 93 | 116 | Jan 24, 2018 11:29AM | |
The History Book ...:
VICKI'S 50 BOOKS READ IN 2018
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84 | 134 | Jan 19, 2019 07:49AM | |
Historical Fictio...:
January 2020 Group Read Nominations
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77 | 280 | Nov 16, 2019 03:49PM | |
| Around the Year i...: Monica's ATY Challenge | 1 | 19 | Dec 01, 2019 11:05AM | |
| Around the Year i...: 47. A book related to food (i.e. title, cover, plot, etc.) | 62 | 550 | Dec 04, 2019 01:48PM | |
| The Reading For P...: Deb's Digs 2019 | 32 | 36 | Dec 05, 2019 07:26PM |
“Our lips just trespassed on those inner labyrinths hidden deep within our ears, filled them with the private music of wicked words, hers in many languages, mine in the off color of my own tongue, until as our tones shifted, and our consonants spun and squealed, rattled faster, hesitated, raced harder, syllables soon melting with groans, or moans finding purchase in new words, or old words, or made-up words, until we gathered up our heat and refused to release it, enjoying too much the dark language we had suddenly stumbled upon, craved to, carved to, not a communication really but a channeling of our rumored desires, hers for all I know gone to Black Forests and wolves, mine banging back to a familiar form, that great revenant mystery I still could only hear the shape of, which in spite of our separate lusts and individual cries still continued to drive us deeper into stranger tones, our mutual desire to keep gripping the burn fueled by sound, hers screeching, mine – I didn’t hear mine – only hears, probably counter-pointing mine, a high-pitched cry, then a whisper dropping unexpectedly to practically a bark, a grunt, whatever, no sense any more, and suddenly no more curves either, just the straight away, some line crossed, where every fractured sound already spoken finally compacts into one long agonizing word, easily exceeding a hundred letters, even thunder, anticipating the inevitable letting go, when the heat is ultimately too much to bear, threatening to burn, scar, tear it all apart, yet tempting enough to hold onto for even one second more, to extend it all, if we can, as if by getting that much closer to the heat, that much more enveloped, would prove … - which when we did clutch, hold, postpone, did in fact prove too much after all, seconds too much, and impossible to refuse, so blowing all of everything apart, shivers and shakes and deep in her throat a thousand letters crashing in a long unmodulated fall, resonating deep within my cochlea and down the cochlear nerve, a last fit of fury describing in lasting detail the shape of things already come.
Too bad dark languages rarely survive.”
― House of Leaves
Too bad dark languages rarely survive.”
― House of Leaves
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