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<metadesc>Expert , full book reviews & recommendations from most walks of literary life; fiction, biography, crimenon-fiction, cookery & children's books & self-published books plus author interviews & top tens.</metadesc>

Hello from The Bookbag, a site featuring books reviews and recommendations Reviews by readers from all the many walks of literary life - [[:Category:Fiction|fiction]], [[:Category:Biography|biography]], [[:Category:Crime|crime]], [[:Category:Cookery|cookery]] and anything else that takes our fancy. At Bookbag Towers the bookbag sits at the side of the desk. It's the bag we take to the libraryWith author interviews, the charity shop features and the bookshoptop tens. Sometimes it holds the latest releases, but at other times thereYou'll be old favourites, books for the children, books for the home. They're sometimes our own books or books from the local library. They're often books sent sure to us by publishers and we promise to tell find something you exactly what we think about them. You might not want to read through a full review, so we'll give you a quick review which summarises what we felt about the book and tells you whether or not we think you should buy or borrow it. There are also lots of [[:Category:Interviews|author interviews]], and all sorts of [[:Category:Lists|top tens]] - all of which you can find on our [[features]] page. If you're stuck for something want to read, check out the [[Book Recommendations|recommendations]] pagehere.Dig in!

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==Reviews of the The Best New Books==

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|isbn=14736824010008551375|title=The Turning Tide When Shadows Fall (Dandy GilverD S Max Craigie)|author=Catriona McPhersonNeil Lancaster|rating=4.5|genre=Crime (Historical)|summary=Those who were with us Leanne Wilson's body was found at the end bottom of [[A Step So Grave (Dandy Gilver) by Catriona McPherson|A Step So Grave]] will remember that Donald was engaged to Mallory Dunnocha Scottish mountain, seemingly the result of a tragic accident. TheyShe're now married and Mallory is having twinsd looked so happy, too, when she posted her intentions on Facebook. When they arrive no one can doubt the charms Her friends were relieved as she was just out of Lavinia Dahlia Cherry and an unpleasant relationship, but it looked like she was living her brother, Edward Hugh Lachlan Gilverbest life now. Then it emerged that five other women had died in similar circumstances in the last year. There are two drawbacks: All were experienced climbers, properly equipped for what they're noisy were doing and they're staying with Dandy and Hughsensible people. Dandy and her detective partner, Alec Osborne, had not taken up None of the chance 'what a stupid thing to look into do' explanations applied. They were all alone when they died: DS Max Craigie is certain there's a problem at the Cramond ferry when it was offered to them twice before, but suddenly killer on the possibility of being out of the house at Gilverton seems irresistibleloose.

|isbnauthor=B07WWSCGVSPaul B Preciado|title=The Lies You Told|author=Harriet TyceDysphoria Mundi|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersPolitics and Society|summary=Year six student Robin Spence isn't happy about having 'It is never too late to start embrace the revolutionary optimism of childhood''  Through this hybrid text, consisting of arias, letters, essays and autofiction, Preciado expresses his own hybrid self, and brings forth a new schoolsensorium as an offering to the new generation, a new feeling mechanism in which detachment is not considered a sign of political apathy. SheRather, it is the proportional, valid response to ''s left the school she loved in New York epistemological and now she's going to Ashams in North London. It's very upmarket; places political crack we are rare as hens' teeth living through, and as the pupils have all been there tension between emancipatory forces and conservative resistances that characterize our present''which Preciado calls 'forever'dysphoria mundi', they have their established groups. Robin's going to be an outsider. And why The whole text is framed against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic as that which has catalysed this happening? Wellrevolution, over when dysphoria began to emerge on a matter of a few days her parentsglobal scale, or as ''pangea covidica'' marriage fell apart. Andrew Spence is staying in New York - he works for Rather than taking this extreme dysphoria as a securities firm - and her mothersign of weakness, Sadie Roperor mistaking detachment or withdrawal for political paralysis, has come back Preciado urges his readers to London to pick up her practice ''use dysphoria as a criminal barrister. Thatyour revolutionary platform's easier said than done when you've been out of the market place - and the country - for more than ten years.|isbn=1804271454

|isbnauthor=1408712415Samantha Harvey|title=Cry Baby|author=Mark BillinghamOrbital

|genre=CrimeGeneral Fiction|summary=ItIn 2024, Samantha Harvey won the Booker Prize for ''s June 1996 and footballOrbital's European Championships are about to start in London. DS Tom Thorne is having a nightmare and it's one he has regularly. It relates to , a case from ten years earlier when he ''knew'' compact yet profound work that unfolds over a man was guilty, but didn't take any action until single day in the man's wife and three children had been murdered and lives of a group of astronauts aboard the man had killed himselfInternational Space Station. Cat Coyne and Maria Ashton are with their sons Kieron and Josh. It's Through a happy combination in narrative lens that mirrors the boys are devoted astronauts' orbital perspective, Harvey invites readers to each other and - despite differences see our planet in the where and how they live - the women are best friends. The boys are seven-year-old and they play on the swings in the park and then dash off to play hide and seek in Highgate Wood. Josh was the one doing the hiding - but he returned tearfully to the women: Kieron never came to find him and now he can't find Kierona wholly new light.|isbn=1529922933

|isbn=B08CHJLNBS295967572X|title=Capturing EmiliaPale Pieces|author=Brooke AdamsG M Stevens|rating=35|genre=Women's Literary Fiction|summary=He's Charles Devereaux, thirty-eight and Our unnamed narrator is about to begin a partner at Wickham Jones, the Mayfair letting agentstrain journey with his companion Django. SheWhere they's Emilia, twenty-nine, librarian re going and archivist in what the heritage library next door. Emilia has read [[The Secret by Rhonda Byrne|The Secret]] but she's moved on from new age books like thatpurpose of this journey is, which leave you dependent on someone else's philosophies, to something a little deeperis uncertain. Charles is more of a [[Personal by Lee Child|Jack Reacher]] man himself, but, above all, heDjango found the tickets 's shocked that Emilia reads ''The Guardianon the floor somewhere''and has persuaded our narrator to accompany him. They're obviously Why not at all compatible, so why can Charles not get this woman out of his mind? She's not his usual type at all: it's obvious Not much else is clear either - but we are probably in the past as the pair travel to his friends. And given that Emilia regularly feels repulsed the station by Charles's superficiality, why does she feel drawn to him? The relationship's obviously coach and the train is a non-starter, isn't it?steam locomotive.

|isbn=15043213830008551324|title=Single, Again, and Again, and Again …: What Do The Devil You Do When Life Doesn't Go to Plan?Know (D S Max Craigie)|author=Louisa PatemanNeil Lancaster

|genre=AutobiographyCrime|summary=It''You can't be happy and fulfilled on your own. You are not complete until you find a man''. This was what Louisa Pateman was brought up s unusual for anyone from the Hardie family to believeapproach the police. It wasn't unkind: it was simply Neither side likes or has any respect for the adults other. But Davie Hardie is struggling in her life advising her as prison and he's prepared to what they thought would be best tell the police where the body of a missing person is buried and who was responsible for herdeath. It was reinforced by all those fairy tales where the girl (she's usually fairly young) This person, he promises, is rescued by someone big and it will be worth the handsome prince who then marries her so that they can live happily ever afterpolice doing what he wants. Few girls are lucky enough And what he wants is to be brought up ''without'' transferred to an open prison to serve the expectation that they will marry remainder of his sentence and have childrento get an early parole date. It was a belief and Not much to ask, is it would be many years before Louisa would conclude that ? The new Deputy Police Constable doesn't think so and she'a belief s even prepared to do the other thing that Hardie demanded - make certain that DS Max Craigie and anyone who works with him is a choice'kept well away from what's happening.

|isbnauthor=1787301435Jon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |title=Dark Waters|author=G R HallidayVaim

|genre=CrimeLiterary Fiction|summary=Twenty-two-year-old Annabelle Whittaker made her second mistake when she opted to drive down the private road in Glen Turrit''All was strange''... It was a long road through some breath-taking scenery and she could push This haunting phrase encapsulates the car to its limits without fear pervading sense of being caught speeding. When the blond child stepped out otherworldliness which permeates this story set in front of her she instinctively jerked the steering wheel and hit a tree. When she came round after the accident she couldn't work out where she wasVaim, but it obviously wasn't a conventional hospital. She'd made her first mistake some time agofictional fishing village in Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for Jatgeir and Eline, although two of the realisation wouldn't be obvious to her for a long time. She'd made it when she chose to have her father buy her a pale blue BMW M4protagonists caught in its melancholic current.|isbn=1804271829

|authorisbn=Suzanne Collins1035043092|title=The Ballad of Songbirds and SnakesKilling Stones (Jimmy Perez)|author=Ann Cleeves|rating=4.5|genre=TeensCrime|summary= Coriolanus Snow is refined, charming, and one of I can't have been the only surviving members of the affluent Snow family. But their world person who was destroyed sad when Inspector Jimmy Perez [[Wild Fire (Shetland, Book 8) by the warAnn Cleeves|left Shetland]] to start a new life on Orkney. Their riches gone It's been seven years since we heard from him, his parents dead - but he's now living with Willow Reeves and yet the facade must be maintained. As the 10th Hunger Games beginstheir young son, James, as well as Cassie, Coriolanus and other students of the Academy become the first Mentors daughter of the tributes in the gameshis former partner. This is Willow's also his chance to prove himself to the world boss, and secure his place in she ''should'' be on maternity leave, but when the Capitol for good. But when he is assigned a tribute with no hope - a girl from District 12 - he thinks all chances body of winning (both for her and for him) are gone. But Lucy Gray Baird proves herself to be a spark in his worldpopular islander, in a way he could never have imagined. As the Games commenceArchie Stout, Lucy Gray fights for her life in the arena - but behind the scenesis found, in the sly, complex and strangely dangerous world aftermath of the Capitola storm, Coriolanus is fighting for his life tooshe can't resist getting involved. Will she survive He'd been battered about the Games? Will he? And what happens then?|isbn=0702300179head with a Neolithic stone - one of a pair - which had been stolen from a museum.

|author=Sakinu AhronglongThea Lenarduzzi|title=Hunter SchoolThe Tower|rating=4.5|genre=AutobiographyLiterary Fiction|summary= The flyleaf to ''How unctuous are the fats of another's life, how dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream''. In this little collection tells us that it is a work compelling novel, Thea Lenarduzzi assumes the identity of T, the protagonist of fictionthis tale. ThatJust as T's possibly misleading. I am not sure whether it story is being told, the story of a second protagonist is "fiction" unveiled: Annie, the daughter of a wealthy family in the sense that Ahronglong made it all up19th century, or whether it is as the blurb goes on to say ''recollectionswho died of tuberculosis after being locked in a tower, folklore and autobiographical storiescaptures T's imagination. Annie'. It feels like the latter. It feels like the stories he tells about his experiences as a childs fate is, as an adolescentabove all, as an adult are real and trueenticing story to T. But memory It is a fickle thingstory which she consumes avariciously, both in a quest for truth and maybe poetic licence has taken over here knowledge, and there and maybe calling it fiction means that its safer in service of myth, fable and therefore more people will read itfantasy. More people should.|isbn=19997912821804271799

|author=Kat EllisClaire-Louise Bennett|title=Harrow LakeBig Kiss, Bye-Bye

|genre=TeensLiterary Fiction|summary=When we first meet 17-year-old LolaEverything in this book, daughter to legendary horror movie director Nolan Noxhowever sweet or seemingly innocent, she is saying goodbye to New York City - by sneaking out steeped in anguish and stealing from its residentsdistortion. But when she is found by her father's assistant and forced to come home, she arrives to find an unlocked doorEven a kiss, usually a trail symbol of bloodintimacy and closeness, and her father dying in his studybecomes evidence of love lost. And soWhen the narrator cries out internally, while he recovers''come over here and kiss me, she '' it is sent off less an invitation than a desperate attempt to live with her grandmother in Harrow Lake, the small 1920s town in Indiana that served as the location for the film that made confirm her parents famousemotional numbness. But something about The imagined recipient of this place isn't right. There's a darkness inside the people here. Secrets about plea is Xavier, her mother and dark tales of the town's cannibal monster 'Mister Jitters' fill every cornerex-partner, and disturbing happenings plague Lola. But with every passing hour, secrets long buried come painfully to light and a ghost she begins conjures to think that these stories may not be stories at all, and something very real and sinister lurks in Harrow Laketest her detachment.|isbn=02413970491804271934

|authorisbn= Helly Acton0008405026|title= The ShelfA Stranger in the Family (Maeve Kerrigan 11)|author=Jane Casey|rating= 45|genre= Women's FictionCrime|summary= When we meet Amy, sheIt's sixteen years since nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her bed one summer night. She was never found and the investigation ground to a halt. Now, her mother, Helena, and her father are dead in a relationship with Jamietheir bed. You can't really call Initially, it looks like a partnership, because things tend to get done on his terms, straightforward murder/suicide but shethere's sticking around because she hopes she can change him. Ah, yes. Haven't we all been there? Things are looking up when he tells something about the positioning of the bodies that makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and her to pack for a surprise tripboss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. Could this be What looked as though it? Is he ''finally'' was going to get down on one knee? Was be an open-and-shut case is now a complex double murder. Kerrigan is convinced that the work explanation lies in Rosalie's disappearance: others (and the waitsuch as Derwent's boss, Una Burt) worth it?|isbn=1838770879are less convinced.

|author= Justine Avery Annie Ernaux and Daria YudinaAlison L. Strayer (translator)|title= This Book Wants to Make You Laugh (Living Book)The Other Girl|rating= 4|genre= For SharingAutobiography|summary=This Living Book is on a mission. What's 'We were born from the mission? To make you laugh! same body. I can't ve never really wanted to think of many better missions than that, can you? Letabout this.''s see how it does...

Ernaux's work is always very candid and her tone transparent, but this raw epistolary text must be one of the most intimate accounts I've read.Ernaux writes in direct address to her sister, however, this letter will never reach her... wellWhy? Because Annie Ernaux's sister died of diphtheria at 6 years old, it opens up with a terrible joke. A groany jokefew months before the vaccine was made compulsory in France, an eye-roll jokeand 2 years before the author was even born. The joke isn't very funny but it is funny to see how enthusiastic large and how generously this book wants instant void created by the jarring concept of writing to make you laugh - an imaginary recipient emphasises Ernaux''Ohs process of reckoning with this giant absence in her life, I'm terrible at jokes. Some books are so good at them. I an absence that she has always wanted to help someone laughfelt but often denied.'' |isbn= 194812453X1804271845

|isbnauthor=1529402271|title=Murder on the Moorland Maxim Gorky and Bryan Karetnyk (Kitt Hartley Yorkshire Mysteriestranslator)|authortitle=Helen CoxReminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev

|genre=CrimeBiography|summary=DI Malcolm Halloran Biographies are often seen as the form of life-writing which offers less colour; it can be seen as more objective and less personal. I think that Gorky completely rejects this perspective, and Kitt Hartley's relationship is developing nicely: they're even into offers a spot vibrant, subjective yet informed portrait of three of bandage now, although the details are (mercifully) scanthis literary contemporaries. After a night of passion Halloran is called away in In the early hours first section of the morning. There's been a murder in Irendalethis book, where Halloran used Tolstoy complains to live and where his wifefriend Gorky that: ''you write not of real life as it is, Kamala, was strangled five years agobut of what you yourself imagine it to be. There are sufficient details of the current murder Whom would it help to make Halloran suspect know how I see this tower, that sea, or that the man who murdered his wife - and others Tartar - why should it interest anyone? Of what use is in some way involvedit?''. Well, Maxim Gorky shows exactly what can be gained from a subjective account, giving us access to how he saw Tolstoy, despite being Chekhov and Andreyev in prison. The DI heads off to speak to Jeremy Kerrsuch privileged detail that one almost feels unworthy of it.|isbn=1804271977

|authorisbn= Mark Dawson1529077745|title= The CleanerDark Wives (D I Vera Stanhope)|author=Ann Cleeves|rating= 4.5|genre= ThrillersCrime|summary= Ruthless and coldly competentA man walking his dog in the early morning discovered the body of a man in the park near Rosebank, John Milton a care home for troubled teens. The dead man was Josh - one of the care workers who was due to work a shift the night before but who had never turned up. D I Vera Stanhope is called in to investigate the murder - but her only clue is the disappearance of one of the British governmentresidents, fourteen-year-old Chloe Spencer. Some people believe that Chloe was responsible for the death but Vera thinks this is unlikely as the girl's best assets – a contract killer with lethal instinctsdiary makes it clear that she adored Josh. Now, after ten years, he wants outShe knows that she has to find Chloe to discover what happened to Josh. But his job isn't one you can just walk away from…|isbn=178739462X

|authorisbn=Angela MackB0FK5LHKD9|title=I Am UnworthyThe Colour of Memory|author=Christopher Bowden

|genre=TeensGeneral Fiction|summary= Isabel is determined It's been three years since we last reviewed a book by favourite regular Christopher Bowden, so we were very glad to start fresh. Start againsee a new novel arrive here at Bookbag Towers. Sixth form will be different. Her tormentor doesnLike all Bowden't go to Gilleford Secondary School anymore. She can escape the hurts stories, there's a mystery at the fear, and the person she becameheart of ''The Colour of Money''. Josh is determined to keep going, even through the rage, the pain, and using his fists to solve any problem or situation. But he has secrets that threaten to tear him and his brothers apart. When Josh and IsabelWe like this running theme in an author's worlds collide, can they make their relationship work? Can they both finally be happy? Or will Josh's - take a mystery but give it different flavour and atmosphere each time run out?|isbn=B089FL7H4H.

|author=Laura Imai MessinaOlga Tokarczuk|title=The Phone Box at the End House of the WorldDay, House of Night

|summary= In ''What's the northeast good of Japan, in Inwate Prefecture a man installed a telephone box world that keeps changing like that? How can one go on calmly living in his garden. it?'' The title of this spellbinding work, ''House of Day, House of Night''Inside there is an old black, telephonesomewhat reflects this notion of shifting realities - the small, subtle changes which govern our lives, like the shift from day to night, however quotidian, disconnectedcausing chaos. But, the constant in that carries voices into image is the house, stoic against the windancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it is perceived.|isbn=1804271918}}{{Frontpage|isbn=henleyA|title=Ultimate Obsession|author=Dai Henley|rating=4|genre=Crime|summary=Ex-DCI Andy Flood has been a Private Investigator for some time now, and he should be doing quite well financially. Unfortunately, his daughter'' It is s defence against a real placemurder charge drained his savings. His wife, a necessary placeLaura, and I am pleased has been trying to see the IMPORTANT NOTE that the author attaches persuade him to her storyretire - ''maybe go travelling or go on cruises. That's what 'ordinary people do', that '' He's not been entirely up front about the place is not a tourist destinationstate of their savings. When Jack Durban tries to persuade him to take his case, it 's the thought of the money he could make that convinces him that this is a sacred place, a place miscarriage of justice that must be left to those who he really need itshould put right.|isbn=178658039X

|isbn=B0859115X51836284683|title=Lies to Tell (DI Clare Mackay)The Big Happy|author=Marion ToddDavid Chadwick|rating=4.5|genre=CrimeDystopian Fiction|summary=When we meet up with DI Clare Mackay again sheWell! This is a murder mystery unlike any other! I do love it when I open a book, it's at Daisy Cottage nothing like I expected it to be, and it takes me on the outskirts of St Andrews with her English Bull Terrier, Benjy. She's just had a postcard from Geoffrey Dark and he's in Provincetown, Cape Codwild ride. He wishes And that she was there, but Clare's struggling to think of is just what he happened with ''actuallyThe Big Happy'' is to her now. Is he her boyfriend? Her ex-boyfriend? She can't work it out and thinks that Geoffrey probably canI don't either. Work's about want to get very busy and she can't work out why DCI Alastair Gibson has cancelled ruin a meeting shesimilar experience for any of you reading but I'd arranged without discussing it with her firstll have to at least set the scene. TheyOnce that're off somewhere top secrets done, I think you should simply experience this wonderfully original story for yourself.

|isbnauthor=1780899858Sally Rooney|title=To Tell You the Truth|author=Gilly MacmillanIntermezzo

|genre=CrimeGeneral Fiction |summary=When Lucy Bewley was nine-years-old she crept out Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard of the house on the night life and is something of the summer solstice to watch the pagan celebrations in Stoke Woodsa grandmaster at putting it into words. Her four-year-old brother, Teddydialogue is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, would have woken the house if she hadn't taken him with as hercharacters never quite say exactly what they feel. But in Among the many relationships woven into this story, the early hours of central one for readers to unravel is the morningfraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. Ivan, Lucy returned home without Teddya socially awkward chess prodigy, hoping that he would have got home before hercontrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, a successful lawyer living in Dublin. He hadn't and no one has seen him since. LucyFollowing their father's story was crucial to the police investigationpassing after a long battle with cancer, but it keeps subtly changing. Lucy is being advised by her imaginary friend, Eliza Grey and Eliza says that there are certain things which Lucy must not tell the policebrothers' already strained relationship faces new trials.|isbn=0571365469

|isbn=00082147001036916375|title=Cut to the Bone (DI Meg Dalton)Just a Liverpool Lad|author=Roz WatkinsPeter McArdle

|genre=CrimeAutobiography|summary=DI Meg Dalton ''Just a Liverpool Lad '' is a collection of memories and Ds Jai Sanghera reflections from the years Peter McArdle spent growing up in and around Liverpool. Some are dealing factual, such as the family history of a sea-going family, with the case docks dominating lives. Other stories blend seamlessly into the what-might-have-been. It's a book to settle into and allow your mind to roam across your childhood memories, to think of simpler times when life seemed less constrained, despite the blitz that was a missing teenagerconstant factor in McArdle's early years. Violet Armstrong is wellI'd never heard of parachute mines before -known as a vlogger - championing but they were almost soundless and could appear after the cause of meatall-eatingclear was sounded. She barbeques meat wearing only }} {{Frontpage|isbn= 1836285493|title=The Double Life of a Wheelchair User|author=Rob Keeley|rating=5|genre=Confident Readers|summary= Will is a keen player of video games, a conscientious student, a slightly annoying brother and a bikini supportive friend. But most of all, he is an aspiring writer. English is his favourite lesson at his school, Marlowe Park, and one at which he excels. This hasn't gone unnoticed by his headteacher, Mrs Howarth, and she has attracted the attention suggested to Will and his mum that he spends a couple of animal rights activistsafternoons a week at a different school, Station Road, where his ability might be better extended. }}{{Frontpage|isbn=1009473085|title=The meatConservative Effect 2010 -eaters 2024|author=Anthony Seldon and Tom Egerton (they wear meat suitsEditors) are determined that Meg Dalton is corrupt |rating=5|genre=Politics and not running Society|summary=Sometimes it's simpler to explain a decent investigation (book by describing what it ''isn't''obviouslyand that applies to '' she only got the job because sheThe Conservative Effect: 2010-2024 - 14 Wasted Years?'s a woman) because she's a vegetarian. As if If you're looking for an easy read which will deliver the case wasninside story about what ''really'' happened on certain occasions, then this isn't enoughthe book for you. If that's what you're looking for, MegI don't think Anthony Seldon's father is coming to stay with her despite having had little to do with her book, {{amazonurl|isbn=B0BH7SKG2S|title=Johnson at 10}}, can be bettered for fifteen those tumultuous years . It's a compelling read and Jaishould be compulsory for anyone who thinks Johnson should return to politics. ''The Conservative Effect'' is an entirely different beast. It's convinced the seventh book in a series which looks at the impact a government has made and co-editor Sir Anthony Seldon regards this as the most important. This book follows the well-established format: a series of experts from various fields review the state of the nation when the coalition took over in 2010, the changes that his girlfriendoccurred and the situation in 2024.}}{{Frontpage|author=Jenny Valentine|title=Us in the Before and After|rating=5|genre=Teens|summary=Elk and Mab are best friends, Sukior more than that even, doesntheir friendship is a once in a lifetime connection. They meet as children one day on a trip out but unfortunately they don't like his children get each other's contact details at the time. But then chance brings them back together, and they are inseparable. Something has happened though, something terrible and tragic, and now they must work through their grief, and that she wants moretheir friendship, but he doesn'ttogether.|isbn=1471196585

|isbn=17843851661787333175|title=The Third Reich in 100 Objects: A Material History of Nazi GermanyYou Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here|author=Roger MoorhouseBenji Waterhouse

|genre=HistoryPopular Science|summary=What I was tempted to read ''You Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here'' after enjoying Adam Kay's first book {{amazonurl|isbn=1509858636|title=This is the first image that comes Going to mind when you think Hurt}}, a glorious mixture of insight into the Third Reich? Hitler? A swastika? The Nazi salute? The gate to a concentration camp? None of these are comfortable images but they are emblematic workings of the Third ReichNHS, humour and autobiography. 's fascist regime in all its iniquity'You Don't Have to be Mad... But some objects and images '' promised the same elements but moved from that time may be less familiar physical problems to youmental illness and the work of a psychiatrist. In I did wonder whether it was acceptable to be looking for humour in this short volume, Roger Moorhouse has attempted to illustrate setting but the period of the Third Reich through one hundred of its material artefactslaughter is directed at a situation rather than a person and it is always delivered with empathy and understanding. 

|isbnauthor=1409187438Mariana Enriquez|title=The First Lie|author=A J ParkSunny Place for Shady People|rating=3.5|genre=ThrillersShort Stories|summary=On the second Mariana Enriquez writes horror that is disturbingly real, achieving this uncanny familiarity by basing her paranormal plots on gritty realities: her settings include an abandoned field full of October 37-year-old barrister, Paul Reevedisused refrigerators due to an urban planning mishap, returned home at 9 pm to find his house in darkness an overcrowded homeless shelter and the front door open. His wife was in the bedroom in a state of shock and in the bathroom there was a dead man who had been stabbed repeatedly in the neck with Paul's papercrime-ridden neighbourhood where safety meetings are routine -knifeall within Argentina. In The circumstances of her characters are so plausible that moment Paul takes the supernatural or otherworldly horror which seeps into these spaces adopts a decision that will be irrevocable: he decides that he and Alice are not going to ring the police and tell the truth. They're going to bury the body in woodland and go on as though nothing has happenedsimilarly tangible texture.|isbn=1803511230

|isbn=15294018011529934753|title=Grave's End (DS Alexandra Cupidi)The Protest|author=William ShawRob Rinder

|summary=Gram HickmanFor a little while, who worked it looked as though Sir Max Bruce, the country's most famous living artist, was not going to show up for an estate agent, took the opening of his girlfriendretrospective at the Royal Academy. Still, Angela Boothhe arrived in the nick of time, to a house which complete with his firm was marketing. Guildeford Hall was an old Kentish oast house two wives and was on the market for millions six children, one of poundswhom filmed what happened. Gram Being an influencer, you tend to do things like that, but it was hoping fortunate that he could get Angela into bed and he'd brought there was a bottle record of prosecco alongthe protest. It was when searching for somewhere to chill Lexi Williams, an intern at the bottle that he found the body RA, grabbed a spray can of blue paint from under a man chair and proceeded to spray Bruce in the freezer in face, whilst shouting ''Stop the garageWar''. It seemed to be part of an ongoing series of 'blue-face' attacks, but this was different. DS Alexandra Cupidi The can had been laced with cyanide, and DC Jill Ferriter are on the caseSir Max Bruce was dead.

|author= Ukamaka OlisakweAriel Saramandi|title= Ogadinma Or, Everything Will Be All RightPortrait of an Island on Fire|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary FictionPolitics and Society|summary= The new novel In this powerful collection of essays, Saramandi seeks to intradermally dissect the sociopolitical fabric of Mauritius, tunneling deep into the wounds left by Ukamaka Olisakwe is a look at the trauma colonialism and heartache of being a woman in 1980s Nigeriaslavery to expose how these legacies still shape modern life. The title is Saramandi describes the country at one stage as ''Ogadinma Or, Everything Will Be All Rightrotting''. Ogadinma is , a blunt yet apt metaphor for the systemic decay brought about by the eponymous heroine malignant forces of the storyracism, patriarchy, environmental degradation and governmental dysfunction. We are with her in every scene and it is her narrative voice that leads the story, although Olisakwe writes Each essay in the third person. This provides this collection serves as a sense kind of detachment for diagnostic, charting the reader and highlights various diseases afflicting the isolation of Ogadinma. She is exiled from her father's home and sent to Lagos where she is married to an older man named Tobe. Their marriage descends into violence and indignities and Ogadinma must utilise her resourcefulness to escapeisland state.|isbn=19116481601804271616

|author=Lun ZhangPekka Harju-Autti|title=LoveVortex and the Drakor's Curse|rating=4|genre=Fantasy|summary=It's the eighteenth century, a time of discovery and Britain is expanding its foreign trade. Captain Julius Hawthorne, Adrien Gombeaudan experienced Scottish sea captain, Ameziane is sent to the Andaman Islands in his endeavour. Along with his son, Peter, and their cat, Michi, they set off on a perilous voyage to these faraway lands. The islands are beautiful and stunning in their scenery and the islanders' leader, Aarav, is keen to establish good relations.|isbn=B0DS1VGHH3}}{{Frontpage|author=Helene Bessette and Edward Gauvin Kate Briggs (translator)|title=Tiananmen 1989: Our Shattered HopesLili is Crying

|genre=Graphic NovelsLiterary Fiction|summary=I never really followed the events of Tiananmen Square with much attention when it was playing out – someone First published in 1953 in the second half of their teens has other prioritiesFrench, you know. I certainly didn't know of this novel is a timeless text which wrenches the weeks hearts of protests its readers just as Bessette wrenches words and hunger strikes sentences from their proper position on the students before the massacre page and the birth of the Tank Man imagepositions them elsewhere, I didn't know how the area had long been a venue for political protestdisjointed, and I didn't know more than a spit about the people involved on either sidetruncated. This book is practically flawless in giving a general browser's context for Like the whole season lives of protests back in 1989her characters, they are often left tragically incomplete.|isbn=16840569931804271675

|author= Joan HeTom Percival|title= Descendant of the CraneThe Wrong Shoes

|genre= FantasyConfident Readers|summary=Will''Heroes cannot be forged without villains''Princess Hesina s life is difficult, in a multitude of the kingdom of Yan ways. He is bullied because he has never wanted 'the throne. Instead of craving powerwrong shoes', she he has always considered the crown her inescapable duty wrong shoes because his dad can't work and shrank away from doesn't have enough money for even the responsibilities most basic of being Queen. To herthings like food, it has always been a distant, faraway future. Until that is, it isnand his dad can't. When her beloved father suddenly dies, she is thrust into ruling. But contrary to work because he lost his job at the official report, Hesina knows all is not as it seemscollege, her father didn't die. He was murderedworking a cash-in-hand job on a building site and had an accident.Determined to seek Throw into that mix the truth fact that his mum and dad are separated, and discover her fatherWill's killerlife seems bleak in every direction. And yet, Princess Hesina will stop he still has a tiny amount of hope. He is good at nothing art, and clings to find justice, even committing treason. Under the cover moments of darknessjoy when he is drawing, her feet lead her to that feel like a soothsayer to learn what happened that day and who killed light at the Kingend of a long, dark tunnel.|isbn=17890940461398527122

|author=Pat GrantSylvie Cathrall|title=A Letter to the Luminous Deep|rating=5|genre=Science Fiction|summary= There are few greater joys than a book which lives up to a compelling premise. And this is one of them.|isbn= 0356522776}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1786482126|title=The Grot: The Story of the Swamp City GriftersJanus Stone (Dr Ruth Galloway)|author=Elly Griffiths|rating=4.5|genre=Graphic NovelsCrime|summary=Everything Builders were demolishing an old house in this world runs on pedalNorwich -power, and that includes the punk bands. There are three pedallers at site was going to hold seventy-five 'luxury' apartments - when they discovered the front bones of the Heath Robinson contraption taking our lead characters to the ferry across the swamp to Falter City, where a mother and her two sons aim to set up child beneath a yoghurt factorydoorway. You could say that yoghurt would be the only culture around, for There was no skull. Was this is a really rough-and-ready dump of a placeritual killing or murder? Inevitably, Dr Ruth Galloway finds herself working with DCI Harry Nelson. It's difficult as Ruth knows, but everyone Nelson doesn't, that she is interested in small things that growpregnant with his child as a result of the one night they spent together some three months ago. For the only money to Her condition will be had – the only fortunes obvious before long, not least because Ruth is prone to be found sudden bouts of sickness.}}{{Frontpage|author=Guadalupe Nettel and Rosalind Harvey (Translator)|title=The Accidentals|rating=4.5|genre=Short Stories|summary=This collection was truly enchanting in Falter City – come from algaeall senses of the word: spellbinding with its fantastical, gunk magical elements and other crud that – well, the use charming in its gentle portrayal of it is never really made clearnature and human relationships. Once thereGuadalupe Nettel writes intelligently and precisely, the two brothers set themselves each up with her stories structured by a guide – Lippy, wisdom that appears to want to teach us something about the more forward-thinking, industrious of the two, with a besuited gent, Penn with a ballsy young teenaged girl with bright red hairworld. But which of the two will come off the worse as they make their own way in this dystopian, semi-Apocalyptic hellhole?|isbn=16030946601804271470