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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=18389510670008551375|title=The Nothing ManWhen Shadows Fall (D S Max Craigie)|author=Catherine Ryan HowardNeil Lancaster|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersCrime|summary=When we first meet Jim Doyle, heLeanne Wilson's about to get a shock. He's security body was found at the bottom of a supermarket and he's watching Scottish mountain, seemingly the result of a woman who is acting suspiciouslytragic accident. She has a book tucked under 'd looked so happy, too, when she posted her arm and he wonders if intentions on Facebook. Her friends were relieved as she's planning to pay for was just out of an unpleasant relationship, but itlooked like she was living her best life now. Suddenly Then it drops to emerged that five other women had died in similar circumstances in the floor with last year. All were experienced climbers, properly equipped for what they were doing and sensible people. None of the spine splayed upwards'what a stupid thing to do' explanations applied. They were all alone when they died: DS Max Craigie is certain there's a killer on the loose.}}{{Frontpage|author=Paul B Preciado|title=Dysphoria Mundi|rating=4.5|genre=Politics and Society|summary=''Nothing ManIt is never too late to embrace the revolutionary optimism of childhood'' by Eve Black Through this hybrid text, consisting of arias, letters, essays and autofiction, Preciado expresses his own hybrid self, and brings forth a new sensorium as an offering to the new generation, a new feeling mechanism in which detachment is the titlenot considered a sign of political apathy. Why Rather, it is Jim shocked? Wellthe proportional, Jim was - ''isvalid response to '' - the Nothing Man whoepistemological and political crack we are living through, until eighteen years ago raped and killedthe tension between emancipatory forces and conservative resistances that characterize our present'' which Preciado calls ''dysphoria mundi''. The author whole text is framed against the backdrop of the book was twelve years old Covid-19 pandemic as that which has catalysed this revolution, when Jim raped her motherdysphoria began to emerge on a global scale, and then killed heror as ''pangea covidica''. Rather than taking this extreme dysphoria as a sign of weakness, her father and her seven-year-old sisteror mistaking detachment or withdrawal for political paralysis, AnnaPreciado urges his readers to ''use dysphoria as your revolutionary platform''.|isbn=1804271454

|author=Christina Hammonds ReedSamantha Harvey|title=The Black KidsOrbital

|genre=Teens General Fiction|summary=Christina Hammonds ReedIn 2024, Samantha Harvey won the Booker Prize for ''s debut novel is set against Orbital'', a compact yet profound work that unfolds over a single day in the backdrop lives of a group of astronauts aboard the 1992 Los Angeles riotsInternational Space Station. Through a narrative lens that mirrors the astronauts' orbital perspective, Harvey invites readers to see our planet in a reaction wholly new light.|isbn=1529922933}}{{Frontpage|isbn=295967572X|title=Pale Pieces|author=G M Stevens|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= Our unnamed narrator is about to begin a train journey with his companion Django. Where they're going and what the absolution purpose of four police officers for beating a black manthis journey is, Rodney King, nearly is uncertain. Django found the tickets ''on the floor somewhere'' and has persuaded our narrator to deathaccompany him. Told from Why not? Not much else is clear either - but we are probably in the perspective of Ashley Bennett, past as the novel follows her evolution from a silent bystander when confronted with matters of race, pair travel to the station by coach and the train is a woman finding her voice and embracing her heritagesteam locomotive.|isbn=1471188191

|isbn=07515674260008551324|title=The Wicked SisterDevil You Know (D S Max Craigie)|author=Karen DionneNeil Lancaster

|genre=ThrillersCrime|summary=When we first meet Rachel Cunningham sheIt's an inpatient at unusual for anyone from the Hardie family to approach the Newberry Regional Mental Health Center in Michigan's Upper Peninsulapolice. SheNeither side likes or has any respect for the other. But Davie Hardie is struggling in prison and he's twenty-six prepared to tell the police where the body of a missing person is buried and has been there who was responsible for fifteen years, convinced that she accidentally killed her mother when she was eleven-years-old and that her father then took the gun and killed himselfdeath. Her sisterThis person, Dianahe promises, just twenty-years-old, was left at is someone big and it will be worth the family home, a lodge in police doing what he wants. And what he wants is to be transferred to an open prison to serve the Upper Peninsula wildernessremainder of his sentence and to get an early parole date. RachelNot much to ask, is it? The new Deputy Police Constable doesn's very bright t think so and although she's a voluntary patient at even prepared to do the Mental Health Center she remains there, feeling other thing that Hardie demanded - make certain that this DS Max Craigie and anyone who works with him is kept well away from what she deserves. Perhaps, though, the circumstances are not as she remembers's happening.

|isbnauthor=1506909442Jon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |title=The Worst Dogs: A Progressive Murder-Mystery|author=Matthew de Lacey DavidsonVaim

|summary=I can't have been the only person who was sad when Inspector Jimmy Perez [[Wild Fire (Shetland, Book 8) by Ann Cleeves|left Shetland]] to start a new life on Orkney. It's been seven years since we heard from him, but he'The greatest hatreds now living with Willow Reeves and their young son, James, as well as Cassie, like the greatest virtue daughter of his former partner. Willow's also his boss, and she ''should'' be on maternity leave, but when the worst dogsbody of a popular islander, Archie Stout, is silentfound, in the aftermath of a storm, she can't resist getting involved. He'd been battered about the head with a Neolithic stone - one of a pair - which had been stolen from a museum.}}{{Frontpage|author=Thea Lenarduzzi|title=The Tower|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= ''How unctuous are the fats of another's life, how dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream''.

The title In this compelling novel, Thea Lenarduzzi assumes the identity of T, the protagonist of this enjoyable crime proceduraltale. Just as T's story is being told, the story of a second protagonist is from German romantic writer Jean Paul. But unveiled: Annie, the daughter of a wealthy family in the 19th century, who are the worst dogs died of tuberculosis after being locked in de Lacey Davidsona tower, captures T's imagination. Annie's latest novel fate is, above all, an enticing story to T. It is a story which she consumes avariciously, both in a quest for truth and knowledge, and in service of myth, fable and fantasy. |isbn=1804271799}}{{Frontpage|author=Claire-Louise Bennett|title=Big Kiss, Bye-Bye |rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Everything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, is steeped in anguish and distortion. Even a kiss, usually a symbol of intimacy and closeness, becomes evidence of love lost. When the narrator cries out internally, ''come over here and for whom kiss me,'' it is less an invitation than a desperate attempt to confirm her emotional numbness. The imagined recipient of this plea is Xavier, her ex-partner, a ghost she conjures to test her detachment.|isbn=1804271934}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0008405026|title=A Stranger in the hatred? This mystery will last all Family (Maeve Kerrigan 11)|author=Jane Casey|rating=5|genre=Crime|summary=It's sixteen years since nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her bed one summer night. She was never found and the way investigation ground to the very last a halt. Now, her mother, Helena, and carefully plotted pages her father are dead in their bed. Initially, it looks like a straightforward murder/suicide but you will be thinking there's something about unwarranted hatred all the way throughpositioning of the bodies that makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and her boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. It sounds uncomfortable What looked as though it was going to be an open-and- but it isnshut case is now a complex double murder. Kerrigan is convinced that the explanation lies in Rosalie'ts disappearance: itothers (such as Derwent's honestboss, Una Burt) are less convinced.

|author=Rob BakerAnnie Ernaux and Alison L. Strayer (translator)|title=Toubab Tales: The Joys and Trials of Expat Life in AfricaOther Girl

|genre=TravelAutobiography|summary=''"Go to Mali," they saidWe were born from the same body. "The music is amazing," they said. "And you get ten hours of sunshine every day." So I did've never really wanted to think about this.''

Rob Baker Ernaux's work is an ethnomusicologistalways 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. ''A whatWhy?Because Annie Ernaux'' I hear you cry. Wells sister died of diphtheria at 6 years old, an ethnomusicologist studies music a few months before the vaccine was made compulsory in relation to cultureFrance, so rather like a folklorist studies and 2 years before the oral author was even born. The large and written story traditions relating instant void created by the jarring concept of writing to a culturean imaginary recipient emphasises Ernaux's process of reckoning with this giant absence in her life, an absence that she has always felt but often denied. |isbn=B089CSNFT71804271845

|author=James PattersonMaxim Gorky and Bryan Karetnyk (translator)|title=Hawk: A Maximum Ride NovelReminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev|rating=43.5|genre=TeensBiography|summary=Hawk has been waiting on Biographies are often seen as the same street cornerform 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, every dayand offers a vibrant, for yearssubjective yet informed portrait of three of his literary contemporaries. She In the first section of this book, Tolstoy complains to his friend Gorky that: ''you write not of real life as it is waiting for her parents , but of what you yourself imagine it to come and get herbe. They left her there when she was just tinyWhom would it help to know how I see this tower, and although she's almost certain that they are never coming back for hersea, she continues to head back there each day, just in case. Hawk isnor that Tartar - why should it interest anyone? Of what use is it?''t your ordinary street urchin though...she has wingsWell, and Maxim Gorky shows exactly what can fly! Since she was abandoned she's been living with be gained from a group of other childrensubjective account, all with interesting characteristics of their own and together they've made their own family. But now the city is seemingly even more troubled than usual, there's a mysterious child-killer who has been brought to the prison next door giving us access to where the children livehow he saw Tolstoy, Chekhov and then Andreyev in such privileged detail that one day Hawk comes home to find her family has been taken awayalmost feels unworthy of it. Where have they been taken, and can Hawk rescue them before it's too late?|isbn=15291200041804271977

|isbn=17857656981529077745|title=Shed No TearsThe Dark Wives (D I Vera Stanhope)|author=Caz FrearAnn Cleeves

|summary=In November 2012 Christopher Masters, A man walking his dog in the early morning discovered the body of a man who would become known as 'in the roommate killer'park near Rosebank, strangled three women in a fortnightcare home for troubled teens. When he The dead man was Josh - one of the care workers who was arrested he admitted due to work a shift the killingsnight before but who had never turned up. A fourth death was attributed D I Vera Stanhope is called in to him investigate the murder - that but her only clue is the disappearance of one of Holly Kemp - and on occasions, Masters admitted to the killingresidents, then he denied it fourteen-year- then admitted it, then denied itold Chloe Spencer. He played with the police, but there Some people believe that Chloe was sufficient evidence on the first three killings to put him away responsible for a long time and the CPS were not convinced about death but Vera thinks this is unlikely as the Holly Kemp casegirl's diary makes it clear that she adored Josh. There was no body and once Masters was murdered in prison, no hope of progressing the case furtherShe knows that she has to find Chloe to discover what happened to Josh.

|isbn=1473682401B0FK5LHKD9|title=The Turning Tide (Dandy Gilver)Colour of Memory|author=Catriona McPhersonChristopher Bowden

|genre=Crime (Historical)General Fiction|summary=Those who It's been three years since we last reviewed a book by favourite regular Christopher Bowden, so we were with us very glad to see a new novel arrive here at Bookbag Towers. Like all Bowden's stories, there's a mystery at the end heart of [[A Step So Grave (Dandy Gilver) by Catriona McPherson|A Step So Grave]] will remember that Donald was engaged to Mallory Dunnoch. They're now married and Mallory is having twins. When they arrive no one can doubt the charms 'The Colour of Lavinia Dahlia Cherry and her brother, Edward Hugh Lachlan Gilver. There are two drawbacks: theyMoney're noisy and they're staying with Dandy and Hugh. Dandy and her detective partner, Alec Osborne, had not taken up the chance to look into We like this running theme in an author's work - take a problem at the Cramond ferry when mystery but give it was offered to them twice before, but suddenly the possibility of being out of the house at Gilverton seems irresistibledifferent flavour and atmosphere each time.

|isbnauthor=B07WWSCGVSOlga Tokarczuk|title=The Lies You Told|author=Harriet TyceHouse of Day, House of Night

|genre=ThrillersLiterary Fiction|summary=Year six student Robin Spence isn't happy about having to start a new school. She'What's left the school she loved good of a world that keeps changing like that? How can one go on calmly living in New York and now sheit?'s going to Ashams in North London. It's very upmarket; places are rare as hens The title of this spellbinding work, ' teeth and as the pupils have all been there ''foreverHouse of Day, House of Night'', they have their established groupssomewhat reflects this notion of shifting realities - the small, subtle changes which govern our lives, like the shift from day to night, however quotidian, causing chaos. But, the constant in that image is the house, stoic against the ancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it is perceived. Robin's going to |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 an outsiderdoing quite well financially. And why is this happening? WellUnfortunately, over a matter of his daughter's defence against a few days her parents' marriage fell apartmurder charge drained his savings. Andrew Spence is staying in New York - he works for a securities firm - and her motherHis wife, Sadie RoperLaura, has come back been trying to London persuade him to pick up her practice as a criminal barristerretire - ''maybe go travelling or go on cruises. That's easier said than done when youwhat 'ordinary people do','ve ' He's not been out entirely up front about the state of their savings. When Jack Durban tries to persuade him to take his case, it's the market place - and thought of the country - for more than ten yearsmoney he could make that convinces him that this is a miscarriage of justice that he really should put right.

|isbn=14087124151836284683|title=Cry BabyThe Big Happy|author=Mark BillinghamDavid Chadwick

|genre=CrimeDystopian Fiction|summary=It's June 1996 and football's European Championships are about to start in London. DS Tom Thorne Well! This is having a nightmare and it's one he has regularly. It relates to a case from ten years earlier when he ''knew'' that a man was guilty, but didn't take murder mystery unlike any action until the man's wife and three children had been murdered and the man had killed himself.other!

Cat Coyne and Maria Ashton are with their sons Kieron and Josh. ItI do love it when I open a book, it's a happy combination in that the boys are devoted nothing like I expected it to each other be, and - despite differences in the where and how they live - the women are best friendsit takes me on a wild ride. And that is just what happened with ''The boys are seven-year-old and they play on the swings in the park and then dash off Big Happy''. I don't want to play hide and seek in Highgate Wood. Josh was the one doing the hiding - ruin a similar experience for any of you reading but he returned tearfully I'll have to at least set the women: Kieron never came to find him and now he canscene. Once that't find Kierons done, I think you should simply experience this wonderfully original story for yourself.

|isbn=B08CHJLNBS|title=Capturing Emilia|author=Brooke Adams|rating=3|genre=Women's Fiction|summary=He's Charles Devereaux, thirty-eight and a partner at Wickham Jones, the Mayfair letting agents. She's Emilia, twenty-nine, librarian and archivist in 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 that, which leave you dependent on someone else's philosophies, to something a little deeper. Charles is more of a [[Personal by Lee Child|Jack Reacher]] man himself, but, above all, he's shocked that Emilia reads ''The Guardian''. They're obviously 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 to his friends. And given that Emilia regularly feels repulsed by Charles's superficiality, why does she feel drawn to him? The relationship's obviously a non-starter, isn't it?}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1504321383Sally Rooney|title=Single, Again, and Again, and Again|author=Louisa PatemanIntermezzo

|genre=AutobiographyGeneral Fiction |summary=''You can't be happy Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard of life and fulfilled on your own. You are not complete until you find is something of a man''grandmaster at putting it into words. This was what Louisa Pateman was brought up to believe. It wasn't unkind: it was simply the adults in Her dialogue is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, as her life advising her as to characters never quite say exactly what they thought would be best for herfeel. It was reinforced by all those fairy tales where Among the girl (she's usually fairly young) is rescued by many relationships woven into this story, the handsome prince who then marries her so that they can live happily ever after. Few girls are lucky enough central one for readers to be brought up ''without'' unravel is the expectation that they will marry fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and have childrenPeter Koubek. It was Ivan, a socially awkward chess prodigy, contrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, a belief and it would be many years before Louisa would conclude that 'successful lawyer living in Dublin. Following their father's passing after a belief is a choice'long battle with cancer, the brothers'already strained relationship faces new trials.|isbn=0571365469

|isbn=17873014351036916375|title=Dark WatersJust a Liverpool Lad|author=G R HallidayPeter McArdle

|genre=CrimeAutobiography|summary=Twenty-two-year-old Annabelle Whittaker made her second mistake when she opted to drive down ''Just a Liverpool Lad '' is a collection of memories and reflections from the private road years Peter McArdle spent growing up in Glen Turritand around Liverpool. It was Some are factual, such as the family history of a long road through some breathsea-taking scenery and she could push going family, with the car to its limits without fear of being caught speedingdocks dominating lives. When Other stories blend seamlessly into the blond child stepped out in front of her she instinctively jerked the steering wheel and hit a treewhat-might-have-been. When she came round after the accident she couldnIt't work out where she wass a book to settle into and allow your mind to roam across your childhood memories, but it obviously wasn't a conventional hospital. She'd made her first mistake some time agoto think of simpler times when life seemed less constrained, although despite the realisation wouldnblitz that was a constant factor in McArdle't be obvious to her for a long times early years. SheI'd made it when she chose to have her father buy her a pale blue BMW M4never heard of parachute mines before - but they were almost soundless and could appear after the all-clear was sounded.

|authorisbn=Suzanne Collins1836285493|title=The Ballad Double Life of Songbirds and Snakesa Wheelchair User|author=Rob Keeley|rating=4.5|genre=TeensConfident Readers|summary= Coriolanus Snow Will is refineda keen player of video games, charminga conscientious student, a slightly annoying brother and one of the only surviving members of the affluent Snow familya supportive friend. But their world was destroyed by the warmost of all, he is an aspiring writer. Their riches goneEnglish is his favourite lesson at his school, his parents dead - and yet the facade must be maintained. As the 10th Hunger Games beginsMarlowe Park, Coriolanus and other students of the Academy become the first Mentors of the tributes in the gamesone at which he excels. This is hasn't gone unnoticed by his chance headteacher, Mrs Howarth, and she has suggested to prove himself to the world Will and secure his place in the Capitol for good. But when mum that he is assigned spends a tribute with no hope - a girl from District 12 - he thinks all chances couple of winning (both for her and for him) are gone. But Lucy Gray Baird proves herself to be afternoons a spark in his world, in week at a way he could never have imagined. As the Games commence, Lucy Gray fights for her life in the arena - but behind the scenesdifferent school, in the slyStation Road, complex and strangely dangerous world of the Capitol, Coriolanus is fighting for where his life tooability might be better extended. Will she survive the Games? Will he? And what happens then?|isbn=0702300179

|authorisbn=Sakinu Ahronglong1009473085|title=Hunter SchoolThe Conservative Effect 2010 - 2024|author=Anthony Seldon and Tom Egerton (Editors)|rating=4.5|genre=AutobiographyPolitics and Society|summary= The flyleaf Sometimes it's simpler to this little collection tells us explain a book by describing what it ''isn't'' and that it is a work of fictionapplies to ''The Conservative Effect: 2010-2024 - 14 Wasted Years?''. That If you're looking for an easy read which will deliver the inside story about what ''really'' happened on certain occasions, then this isn's possibly misleadingt the book for you. I am not sure whether it is "fiction" in the sense If that Ahronglong made it all up's what you're looking for, or whether it is as the blurb goes on to say I don't think Anthony Seldon'recollectionss book, {{amazonurl|isbn=B0BH7SKG2S|title=Johnson at 10}}, folklore can be bettered for those tumultuous years. It's a compelling read and autobiographical storiesshould be compulsory for anyone who thinks Johnson should return to politics. ''The Conservative Effect'' is an entirely different beast. It feels like 's the latter. It feels like seventh book in a series which looks at the stories he tells about his experiences as impact a child, government has made and co-editor Sir Anthony Seldon regards this as an adolescent, as an adult are real and truethe most important. But memory is This book follows the well-established format: a fickle thingseries of experts from various fields review the state of the nation when the coalition took over in 2010, and maybe poetic licence has taken over here and there and maybe calling it fiction means the changes that its safer occurred and therefore more people will read it. More people shouldthe situation in 2024.|isbn=1999791282

|author=Kat EllisJenny Valentine|title=Harrow LakeUs in the Before and After|rating=4.5

|summary=When we first meet 17-year-old LolaElk and Mab are best friends, daughter to legendary horror movie director Nolan Noxor more than that even, she their friendship is saying goodbye to New York City - by sneaking out and stealing from its residents. But when she is found by her father's assistant and forced to come home, she arrives to find an unlocked door, a trail of blood, and her father dying once in his studya lifetime connection. And so, while he recovers, she is sent off to live with her grandmother in Harrow Lake, the small 1920s town in Indiana that served They meet as the location for the film that made her parents famous. But something about this place isnchildren one day on a trip out but unfortunately they don't right. Thereget each other's a darkness inside contact details at the people heretime. Secrets about her mother and dark tales of the town's cannibal monster 'Mister Jitters' fill every corner But then chance brings them back together, and disturbing happenings plague Lolathey are inseparable. But with every passing hour Something has happened though, secrets long buried come painfully to light something terrible and she begins to think that these stories may not be stories at alltragic, and something very real now they must work through their grief, and sinister lurks in Harrow Laketheir friendship, together.|isbn=02413970491471196585

|authorisbn= Helly Acton1787333175|title= The ShelfYou Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here|author=Benji Waterhouse|rating= 45|genre= Women's FictionPopular Science|summary= When we meet Amy, sheI was tempted to read ''s in a relationship with Jamie. You canDon't really call it a partnership, because things tend Have to be Mad to get done on his terms, but sheWork Here'' after enjoying Adam Kay's sticking around because she hopes she can change him. Ahfirst book {{amazonurl|isbn=1509858636|title=This is Going to Hurt}}, a glorious mixture of insight into the workings of the NHS, yeshumour and autobiography. Haven ''You Don't we all been there? Things are looking up when he tells her Have to pack for a surprise tripbe Mad... Could this be it? Is he ''finally'' going promised the same elements but moved from physical problems to get down on one knee? Was mental illness and the work (of a psychiatrist. I did wonder whether it was acceptable to be looking for humour in this setting but the laughter is directed at a situation rather than a person and the wait) worth it?|isbn=1838770879is always delivered with empathy and understanding.

|author= Justine Avery and Daria YudinaMariana Enriquez|title= This Book Wants to Make You Laugh (Living Book)A Sunny Place for Shady People|rating= 45|genre= For SharingShort Stories|summary=This Living Book Mariana Enriquez writes horror that is disturbingly real, achieving this uncanny familiarity by basing her paranormal plots on a mission. What's the mission? To make you laugh! I can't think gritty realities: her settings include an abandoned field full of many better missions than thatdisused refrigerators due to an urban planning mishap, can you? Let's see how it does... .... well, it opens up with an overcrowded homeless shelter and a terrible joke. A groany joke, an eyecrime-ridden neighbourhood where safety meetings are routine -roll jokeall within Argentina. The joke isn't very funny but it is funny to see how enthusiastic and how generously this book wants to make you laugh - ''Oh, I'm terrible at jokes. Some books circumstances of her characters are so good at them. I always wanted to help someone laughplausible that the supernatural or otherworldly horror which seeps into these spaces adopts a similarly tangible texture.'' |isbn= 194812453X1803511230

|isbn=15294022711529934753|title=Murder on the Moorland (Kitt Hartley Yorkshire Mysteries)The Protest|author=Helen CoxRob Rinder|rating=34.5

|summary=DI Malcolm Halloran and Kitt HartleyFor a little while, it looked as though Sir Max Bruce, the country's relationship is developing nicely: they're even into a spot most famous living artist, was not going to show up for the opening of bandage now, although his retrospective at the details are (mercifully) scantRoyal Academy. After a night of passion Halloran is called away Still, he arrived in the early hours nick of time, complete with his two wives and six children, one of the morningwhom filmed what happened. There's been a murder in IrendaleBeing an influencer, where Halloran used you tend to live and where his wife, Kamalado things like that, but it was fortunate that there was strangled five years agoa record of the protest. There are sufficient details Lexi Williams, an intern at the RA, grabbed a spray can of blue paint from under a chair and proceeded to spray Bruce in the current murder face, whilst shouting ''Stop the War''. It seemed to make Halloran suspect that the man who murdered his wife be part of an ongoing series of 'blue- and others - is in some way involvedface' attacks, despite being in prisonbut this was different. The DI heads off to speak to Jeremy Kerrcan had been laced with cyanide, and Sir Max Bruce was dead.

|author= Mark DawsonAriel Saramandi|title= The CleanerPortrait of an Island on Fire|rating= 4.5|genre= ThrillersPolitics and Society|summary= Ruthless and coldly competentIn this powerful collection of essays, John Milton is one Saramandi seeks to intradermally dissect the sociopolitical fabric of Mauritius, tunneling deep into the British governmentwounds left by colonialism and slavery to expose how these legacies still shape modern life. Saramandi describes the country at one stage as 's best assets – 'rotting'', a contract killer with lethal instinctsblunt yet apt metaphor for the systemic decay brought about by the malignant forces of racism, patriarchy, environmental degradation and governmental dysfunction. NowEach essay in this collection serves as a kind of diagnostic, after ten years, he wants outcharting the various diseases afflicting the island state. But his job isn't one you can just walk away from…|isbn=178739462X1804271616

|author=Angela MackPekka Harju-Autti|title=I Am UnworthyLoveVortex and the Drakor's Curse

|genre=TeensFantasy|summary= Isabel is determined to start fresh. Start again. Sixth form will be different. Her tormentor doesnIt't go to Gilleford Secondary School anymore. She can escape s the hurt, the feareighteenth century, a time of discovery and the person she becameBritain is expanding its foreign trade. Josh Captain Julius Hawthorne, an experienced Scottish sea captain, is determined sent to keep going, even through the rageAndaman Islands in his endeavour. Along with his son, the painPeter, and using his fists their cat, Michi, they set off on a perilous voyage to solve any problem or situationthese faraway lands. But he has secrets that threaten The islands are beautiful and stunning in their scenery and the islanders' leader, Aarav, is keen to tear him establish good relations.|isbn=B0DS1VGHH3}}{{Frontpage|author=Helene Bessette and his brothers apartKate Briggs (translator)|title=Lili is Crying|rating=4. When Josh 5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=First published in 1953 in French, this novel is a timeless text which wrenches the hearts of its readers just as Bessette wrenches words and sentences from their proper position on the page and Isabel's worlds collidepositions them elsewhere, disjointed, truncated. Like the lives of her characters, can they make their relationship work? Can they both finally be happy? Or will Josh's time run out?are often left tragically incomplete.|isbn=B089FL7H4H1804271675

|author=Laura Imai MessinaTom Percival|title=The Phone Box at the End of the WorldWrong Shoes

|genre=Literary FictionConfident Readers|summary= In the northeast of JapanWill's life is difficult, in Inwate Prefecture a man installed a telephone box in his gardenmultitude of ways. He is bullied because he has 'the wrong shoes'Inside there is an old black, telephonehe has the wrong shoes because his dad can't work and doesn't have enough money for even the most basic of things like food, disconnectedand his dad can't work because he lost his job at the college, was working a cash-in-hand job on a building site and had an accident. Throw into that carries voices into mix the windfact that his mum and dad are separated, and Will's life seems bleak in every direction.'' It is a real place And yet, he still has a necessary placetiny amount of hope. He is good at art, and I am pleased clings to see the IMPORTANT NOTE that the author attaches to her storymoments of joy when he is drawing, that feel like a light at the place is not a tourist destination, it is end of a sacred placelong, a place that must be left to those who really need itdark tunnel.|isbn=178658039X1398527122

|isbnauthor=B0859115X5Sylvie Cathrall|title=Lies A Letter to Tell (DI Clare Mackay)|author=Marion Toddthe Luminous Deep|rating=45|genre=CrimeScience Fiction|summary=When we meet There are few greater joys than a book which lives up with DI Clare Mackay again she's at Daisy Cottage on the outskirts of St Andrews with her English Bull Terrier, Benjy. She's just had to a postcard from Geoffrey Dark and he's in Provincetown, Cape Codcompelling premise. He wishes that she was there, but Clare's struggling to think And this is one of what he ''actually'' is to her now. Is he her boyfriend? Her ex-boyfriend? She can't work it out and thinks that Geoffrey probably can't either. Work's about to get very busy and she can't work out why DCI Alastair Gibson has cancelled a meeting she'd arranged without discussing it with her first. They're off somewhere top secretthem.|isbn= 0356522776

|isbn=17808998581786482126|title=To Tell You the TruthThe Janus Stone (Dr Ruth Galloway)|author=Gilly MacmillanElly Griffiths

|summary=When Lucy Bewley was nine-years-Builders were demolishing an old she crept out of the house on in Norwich - the night of the summer solstice site was going to watch the pagan celebrations in Stoke Woods. Her fourhold seventy-yearfive 'luxury' apartments -old brother, Teddy, would have woken when they discovered the house if she hadn't taken him with herbones of a child beneath a doorway. But in the early hours of the morning, Lucy returned home without Teddy, hoping that he would have got home before herThere was no skull. He hadn't and no one has seen him sinceWas this a ritual killing or murder? Inevitably, Dr Ruth Galloway finds herself working with DCI Harry Nelson. LucyIt's story was crucial to the police investigationdifficult as Ruth knows, but it keeps subtly changingNelson doesn't, that she is pregnant with his child as a result of the one night they spent together some three months ago. Lucy is being advised by her imaginary friendHer condition will be obvious before long, Eliza Grey and Eliza says that there are certain things which Lucy must not tell the policeleast because Ruth is prone to sudden bouts of sickness.

|isbnauthor=0008214700|title=Cut to the Bone Guadalupe Nettel and Rosalind Harvey (DI Meg DaltonTranslator)|authortitle=Roz WatkinsThe Accidentals|rating=4.5|genre=CrimeShort Stories|summary=DI Meg Dalton and Ds Jai Sanghera are dealing with the case This collection was truly enchanting in all senses of a missing teenager. Violet Armstrong is well-known as a vlogger - championing the cause word: spellbinding with its fantastical, magical elements and charming in its gentle portrayal of meat-eating. She barbeques meat wearing only a bikini nature and has attracted the attention of animal rights activistshuman relationships. The meat-eaters (they wear meat suits) are determined that Meg Dalton is corrupt Guadalupe Nettel writes intelligently and not running precisely, her stories structured by a decent investigation (''obviously'' she only got the job because she's a woman) because she's a vegetarian. As if the case wasn't enough, Meg's father is coming wisdom that appears to stay with her despite having had little want to do with her for fifteen years and Jai's convinced that his girlfriend, Suki, doesn't like his children and that she wants more, but he doesn'tteach us something about the world.|isbn=1804271470