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==The Best New Books==
'''Read [[:Category:Features|the latest features]].'''
{{Frontpage
|isbn=15290473151806344777|title=Arthur and the Land of Nimbostratus: Arthur's Able Adventures|author=Rob Keeley|rating=4.5|genre=For Sharing|summary= Arthur dreams of adventures. He looks out of his window each day and thinks of all the escapades he could have, the places he could go and the things he could see. His favourite day is Saturday because that's the day his friend Maxine - she of the booming laugh and silver bangles - comes to visit. Maxine is a great believer in the power of imagination.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1035043092|title=The Killing Stones (Jimmy Perez)|author=Ann Cleeves|rating=5|genre=Crime|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's now living with Willow Reeves and their young son, James, as well as Cassie, the daughter of his former partner. Willow's also his boss, and she ''should'' be on maternity leave, but when the body of a popular islander, Archie Stout, is found, 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=Polly Barton|title=What Am I, A Deer?|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Polly Barton's debut novel is an intellectually playful yet emotionally exposed work that uses translation as both subject and governing metaphor. The Lamplightersnarrator, newly relocated from London to Berlin, works translating video games into Japanese through the process of localisation, rewriting language until it feels comfortably familiar to a new audience. Barton treats this as a paradoxical act: arguably, in striving for universality, language is endlessly repackaged, its originality at risk of disappearing altogether. From this, the novel opens out into a wider, resonant question: to what extent do we translate ourselves in order to be understood, accepted, or loved?|isbn=1804272175}}{{Frontpage|isbn= Zabriskie1|title=A Village Where Many Ways Meet: A Story of Belonging and Community, Rooted in Indigenous Wisdom|author=Emma StonexStephanie Zabriskie
|rating=5
|genre=ThrillersChildren's Non-Fiction|summary=''A fisherman told him once about the sea having two faces. You have to take them bothAcross many African and Indigenous systems, differences in how children learn, he saidsense , or process the good world were not treated as disorders to be corrected. They were understood as natural variations of human intelligence and awareness, each holding value within the bad, and never turn your back on either one of themcommunity.''
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Mary H K Choi1787333175|title=YolkYou Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here|author=Benji Waterhouse
|rating=5
|genre=TeensPopular Science|summary= Jayne Baek is a fashion student thatI was tempted to read ''You Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here's barely getting by. She drinks. She smokes. She makes bad decisions about the men she sleeps with. She's an all-round messy character; and thatafter enjoying Adam Kay's her charm. Junefirst book {{amazonurl|isbn=1509858636|title=This is Going to Hurt}}, on a glorious mixture of insight into the other handworkings of the NHS, is a complete contrast humour and autobiography. ''You Don't Have to Jaynebe Mad... She's a typical older sister: she's smart, thinks she knows it all, promised the same elements but moved from physical problems to mental illness and has the work of a successful jobpsychiatrist. She constantly criticises Jayne I did wonder whether it was acceptable to be looking for her life choices, and the two have barely kept humour in contact despite living in the same city for this setting but the past two years. This laughter is until June finds out she's sick, directed at a situation rather than a person and Jayne it is the only person she can turn to. The two sisters have to come together always delivered with empathy and decide how far they'll go to save each other's lives – even if it means swapping identitiesunderstanding.|isbn= 0349003696
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{{Frontpage
|author=Saima MirMaria Stepanova and Sasha Dugdale (Translator)|title=The KhanDisappearing Act|rating=54|genre=CrimeLiterary Fiction|summary=Jia Khan has alway lived by the motto be twice as good as men and four times as good as white men. This has served Despite her well in her rise through the criminal justice system anonymisation of place names and by the time she is called home for her sisterpeople, Stepanova's wedding after fifteen years message in self-imposed exile, this short work of autofiction is unmistakable. A novelist named M travels from B (ostensibly Berlin) to the town of F for a literary festival she is to be a guest speaker at the top of . Detoured by erratic train schedules and nudged by forces beyond her control, her gamejourney slowly bends toward a traveling circus. Returning Swept up in this series of events, M eventually offers to step in for a circus performer who has unexpectedly left the city show. The train functions as a motif of her birthtransience and impermanence, to old scars while the circus embodies the reshaping of identity and fresh woundsa retreat into fantasy, Jia must confront her past and reconcile her visions for an impulse that lies at the future with her sense very heart of honour and dutythe novel form itself.|isbn=17860790971804272329
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=0008336830B0GFQ81YQK|title=Two WrongsHow the Sky and the Earth Made People: From the Oral Stories of Malagasy Elders|author=Mel McGrathStephanie Zabriskie
|rating=4.5
|genre=ThrillersChildren's Non-Fiction|summary=Sondra Before people came and joined the animals, there was on her way home after work when she saw a young woman looking as though she only the sky and the earth. Everything was going quiet until the earth and the sky began to tal to jump from each other. First, the Clifton suspension bridgeearth created bodies. She talks to herAnd then, the sky breathed life into them. These were the first humans and Sondra finally persuades Satnam they belonged to call her best friend both earth and flatmatesky. And so people lived between sky and soil and they planted and learned and remembered, Nevis Smithespecially how they came to be. Nevis is unworldly When they grew old and rather reserved - died, their bodies returned to the earth and she can't understand their life returned to the sky. And that is why Satnam hasn't shared her problems with herthe earth and the sky are both revered. She thought Only together can they shared everythingcreate human beings. Satnam And that is taken why people must pay attention to hospital , and Nevis calls her mother, Honor. They've not been on good terms since a discovery Nevis made the previous summer but right nowcare for, Nevis needs her motherboth.
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Andrea Bajani and Elizabeth Harris (translator)B0GHPMNF6P|title=If You Kept a Record of SinsThe Zookeeper's Dragon: A Magical Modern Fantasy Tale for Grown-Ups|author=Carolyn Mathews
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary FictionFantasy|summary=This was an incredibly readable novellaWhen Phil's father unexpectedly dies, but one that left me a little conflicted. We start as our hero arrives at Bucharest airport, and before we even know he quits his gender or Canary Wharf finance job to take over the nature running of the person hefamily's farm zoo. He's addressing not expecting much excitement, until he receives an unidentified egg that his new-age stoner uncle Edgar found in a cave in his second person monologue of New Zealand, and suddenly life is no longer quite what it seems. Then the egg hatches into neither a reptile nor a bird, but a narrationdragon! Now he, Edgar, we see him picked up by his motherAbi, and the zoo's chauffeurpart-time café waitress Pearl have to raise this little bundle of scales and joy, despite having no idea how to actually raise dragons and carted off not being able to do all tell anyone about it. But this tiny little dragon may show them love and connection in ways they had never before imagined…}}{{Frontpage|author=Stephanie Zabriskie|title=How Maasai Women Spoke to Cows: From the necessary introductions before said mother Oral Stories of Maasai Elders|rating=5|genre=Children's Non-Fiction|summary=''How Maasai Women Spoke to Cows is buried a children’s nonfiction book drawn from the following dayoral traditions of Maasai elders in Ngorongoro, Tanzania. '' The mother was Maasai are a businesswoman, who clearly left northern Italy and settled in Romania with her (nightcattle-time and business) partner, herding people and feelings of abandonment are still strong. And so we flit from current (well, this story writes down its oral tradition explaining how they came out to be so. Cattle are status and wealth in Maasai culture but this doesn't tell the original Italian in 2007whole story of the intimate and symbiotic connection its people, so moderately current) Bucharestand especially its women, to have with their cows and for the natural world. The oral tradition retelling the lad's childhoodmany conversations Maasai women have had with their cows, and see just what he has to tell her as a private farewell addressdoes.|isbn=1939810965B0G9WTGY6J
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{{Frontpage
|author=Jane LightbourneLivi Michael|title= My Cat Called RedElizabeth and Ruth|rating= 43.5|genre=Emerging ReadersHistorical Fiction|summary= Robin has red hair. He hates it''Elizabeth and Ruth'' is a work of historical fiction wrought from the life of the Victorian author Elizabeth Gaskell, best known for her first novel Mary Barton (1848), and a radical critique of the freckles that go along with it. He's been bullied and mocked at school because treatment of itthe working class published under a pseudonym. The ''Ginger Minger! Carrots!Ruth'' Kids are mean. But red hair is not Robinfrom Livi Michael's only misery title appears in life. Heher novel as Pasley, a young Irish prostitute who was abandoned as a child and finds herself in Manchester's already lost his dad to New Bailey Prison after a mountaineering accident when his mum gets ill difficult and is taken into hospitalunjust hand at life. She doesn't come home againSet in Manchester between 1839 and 1842, the novel examines the harsh conditions endured by the Victorian working poor and interrogates the extent to which the wealthy (including Gaskell herself) were responsible for addressing these injustices.|isbn= 18382168121784633682
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=B003L7TDMUMakenna Goodman|title=Phineas Finn|author=Anthony TrollopeHelen of Nowhere
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Phineas Finn It could be argued that the pervading theme of this book is malaise - a hard-to-place feeling that something in your life is not quite right. The protagonist, a disgraced professor on the son brink of Dr Malachi Finnlosing both his career and his relationship, embodies this feeling. However, Goodman counteracts his discomfort with a successful doctor force which is seductive, radical and unnerving: Helen. The connection between Helen and the protagonist is indirect yet intimate. As the former owner of the countryside house he's considering, Helen represents a volta in Killaloe his life, her past tied to his potential fresh start. The realtor who shows the protagonist around the house shares stories about Helen, and describes her as ''an entity that is pure consciousness, beyond form''. Although she lives in County Clarean assisted living facility now, who sent his son Helen has powers beyond comprehension which the reader gets the sense are not altogether innocuous.|isbn=1804272205}}{{Frontpage|isbn=B0GCB1MQ7D|title=Why My Mother Went Away|author=Alan Kennedy|rating=5|genre=Autobiography|summary=I have often wondered how prominent people came to London to train as a lawyerhold their positions. PhineasWith 'celebrities', there's interest is more in making influential friends than in becoming frequently a lawyer and one of thembook they might or might not have written, Barrington Erlewhich might or might not tell the true story. It's not often that you find a book that gives the full backstory, suggests and rarely do you discover a memoir where the telling is so perfect that he runs you'll go back and reread paragraphs and sentences, just for Parliament in the forthcoming electionpleasure the words give. His father ''Why My Mother Went Away'' is not entirely in favour one of this as members are not remunerated and it would be up to him to provide financial support for his son as well as funding his electionthose rare exceptions. One of the doctorIt's patients is Lord Tulla who controls the borough story of Loughshane and by this stroke how a boy from the Midlands, born at the beginning of luck Finn isthe Second World War, eventuallywould become a Professor of Psychology at Dundee University. In fact, elected by a small marginhe was one of the founders of the department.
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1838595031Jeremy Cooper|title=Crooked: Honest Criminality|author=Bronwen JohnDiscord|rating=43.5|genre=ThrillersLiterary Fiction|summary=Discord: a lack of agreement or harmony (as between persons, things, or ideas) The con had seemed like a good one: tricking people into buying artwork supposedly by principal example of discord within the new Banksy - and they should have made a decent profit from itnovel, as with most instances of discord, is easily located. The problem was they were too successful: one two protagonists of the marks had bought a few novel, Rebekah Rosen and then discovered that Evie Bennet, are as different as they were valuelesscome. Henry Martin Holmes had fallen for Rebekah is an uptight, traditional and no-nonsense composer close to retirement, while Evie is a simple con and his fatherforce of nature, celebrity criminal Harry Holmesbounding onto the musical scene as a precocious saxophonist, was determined that he oozing with talent and his family could not lose face like thatcharm. The grifters were going two, predictably, don't always see eye to pay. Ashia 'Ash' Cox eye, their approaches different and Max Evie'Colorados progressive views at odds with Rebekah' Ying needed to be got out s conservative leaning. However, something connects them beyond just their musical project: a sort of fragile alliance formed within the country. In the course of bringing this about, Luke Gaines, Ash's foster father, lost his lifeclamour.|isbn=1804272264
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{{Frontpage
|author=Hayley WebsterTom Percival|title=Luna Rae is Not AloneThe Wrong Shoes
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Luna Rae has just moved houseWill's life is difficult, in a multitude of ways. Moving house He is always trickybullied because he has 'the wrong shoes', but especially when youhe has the wrong shoes because his dad can're ten years old, t work and you miss your old homedoesn't have enough money for even the most basic of things like food, and you and your little sister have to start a new school but your mum seems to be out working all the time. Then there's your his dad, who doesncan't seem like work because he's coping so welllost his job at the college, was working a cash-in-hand job on a building site and so there's no one to take care of things but youhad an accident. Everything feels different Throw into that mix the fact that his mum and strangedad are separated, and mysteriousWill's life seems bleak in every direction. And yet, and so Luna finds he still has a way tiny amount of coping is by watchinghope. She turns detective He is good at art, and starts keeping an eye on her new neighbourhoodclings to the moments of joy when he is drawing, but it turns out she's not that feel like a light at the only one keeping watch!end of a long, dark tunnel.|isbn=17880060461398527122
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=B003A6W0FOEdward W Said|title=Can You Forgive Her?|author=Anthony TrollopeRepresentations of the Intellectual
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary FictionPolitics and Society|summary=On the surface Edward Said's 'Can You Forgive Her?'Representations of the Intellectual' looks deceptively simple: it's the story is less a strict theory of one woman what intellectuals are and two men who are vying with each other more a passionate argument for her love. Alice Vavasor was originally engaged to her cousin, George Vavasor but she broke off that engagement and later became engaged to John Greywhat they should be. When we first meet Alice she's on an extended tour of Said clearly rejects the continent with George Vavasor and his sister Kate. It's obvious that there's still a great deal comfortable image of chemistry between John and Alice - and Kate is all for encouraging the relationship intellectual as it would tie Alice a detached expert speaking only to herother specialists. George wants Alice but it's a matter of ''amour propre'' rather than love: Instead, he has little consideration for anyone other than himself and insists on the original engagement had fallen through because of his infidelity and deceitfulness. This thread is the story of intellectual as a very complicated love affair public figure, often awkward, abrasive, and a woman unpopular, who lacks confidence in her own judgement. You might not like Alice speaks truth to start with but you will warm to herpower even when it is inconvenient or risky.|isbn=1804272248
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{{Frontpage
|author=Hannah GoldSylvie Cathrall|title=The Last BearA Letter to the Luminous Deep|rating=4.5|genre=Confident ReadersScience Fiction|summary=April's father, There are few greater joys than a scientist, has been given book which lives up to a job on a remote island called Bear Island, and he accepts the job deciding to take his daughter April with him. They live alone anyway, since April's mother died some time before, and he feels it will be educational for her to experience the island and all its natural beauty. April already has an affinity with nature, and she's excited to travel with her father, thinking of all the fun things they will be able to experience together on the islandcompelling premise. But when they get there, her father finds that his work monitoring and recording the temperatures just takes up too much of his time, and so April And this is left to explore by herself. Her father had reassured her that there were no longer any bears living on Bear Island, but one day April thinks she catches a glimpse of one, and so she sets out to find the Bear, and then when she sees he is injured, to befriend and help himthem.|isbn=000841128X0356522776
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=14722761401786482126|title=What Will Burn The Janus Stone (Inspector McLeanDr Ruth Galloway)|author=James OswaldElly Griffiths|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=When Cecily SlaterBuilders were demolishing an old house in Norwich - the site was going to hold seventy-five 's body was found, sheluxury'd already been dead for apartments - when they discovered the bones of a child beneath a week - in doorway. There was no skull. Was this a house fire in deserted woodland near Edinburghritual killing or murder? Inevitably, Dr Ruth Galloway finds herself working with DCI Harry Nelson. Heavy rain had washed away most of the evidenceIt's difficult as Ruth knows, but DI Tony McLeanNelson doesn't, demoted and just returned from suspension, is reluctant to accept that this she is nothing more than pregnant with his child as a careless accidentresult of the one night they spent together some three months ago. There were indications that Slater had been savagelyHer condition will be obvious before long, almost ritualistically beaten before the fire. But who would hate a ninety-year-old woman not least because Ruth is prone to the extent sudden bouts of doing something like that? She was a virtual recluse: who could she have upset to that extent?sickness.
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=000845552X0008551375|title=Where Ravens RoostWhen Shadows Fall (D S Max Craigie)|author=Karin NordinNeil Lancaster|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=Inspector Kjeld Nygaard had been estranged from his father, StenarLeanne Wilson's body was found at the bottom of a Scottish mountain, for more than a decade but when he got seemingly the rather muddled phone call from him saying that he'd seen result of a murder in the barn on his land he didn't hesitate to drop everything and go to Varsundtragic accident. ActuallyShe'd looked so happy, too, 'drop everything' rather overstates the situationwhen she posted her intentions on Facebook. Nygaard Her friends were relieved as she was on suspension following the shooting just out of a suspect an unpleasant relationship, but it looked like she was living her best life now. Then it emerged that five other women had died in similar circumstances in the Aubuchon murder enquirylast year. All were experienced climbers, properly equipped for what they were doing and sensible people. There had been None of the 'what a complication: the Kattegat Killer turned out stupid thing to be Nils Hedin, Nygaarddo's best friendexplanations applied. Still, They were all alone when they died: DS Max Craigie is certain there's a killer on the ten-hour drive from Gothenburg in the south of Sweden to Varsund in the far north shouldn't be underestimatedloose.
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1471187179Paul B Preciado|title=A Beautiful Spy|author=Rachel HoreDysphoria Mundi|rating=4.5|genre=Historical FictionPolitics and Society|summary=Minnie ''It is an never too late to embrace the revolutionary optimism of childhood'ordinary' girl living 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 unexciting life offering to the new generation, a new feeling mechanism in which detachment is not considered a leafy provincial suburbsign of political apathy. The book Rather, it is set in the 1930s and Minnie is expected proportional, valid response to live up to her mother's expectations 'the epistemological and find a nice young man to marrypolitical crack we are living through, produce children and spend the rest of her days looking after her husband tension between emancipatory forces and their homeconservative resistances that characterize our present'' which Preciado calls ''dysphoria mundi''. UnfortunatelyThe whole text is framed against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic as that which has catalysed this revolution, this isn't what she wants when dysphoria began to do at all and neither does she want to continue working emerge on a global scale, or as a secretary''pangea covidica''. As Rather than taking this extreme dysphoria as a result sign of a chance meetingweakness, she finds herself drawn into espionageor mistaking detachment or withdrawal for political paralysis, working for the secret service and effectively living a double life - attempting Preciado urges his readers to infiltrate the Communist Party of Great Britain. Minnie finds herself torn between what she perceives ''use dysphoria as her duty and the friends she has made - and likes - whilst working for the Communist Partyyour revolutionary platform''.|isbn=1804271454
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{{Frontpage
|author= T L HuchuSamantha Harvey|title= The Library of the DeadOrbital|rating= 4.5|genre= TeensGeneral Fiction|summary= Ropa Moyo is a ghostalkerIn 2024, using Zimbabwean magic (and a bit of Scottish pragmatism) to take messages from Samantha Harvey won the dead of Edinburgh Booker Prize for their living relatives. Ever since she dropped out of school, she's been using it to support not only herself, but her younger sister and her aging grandmother. However, there's an evil stalking the ruined streets of Edinburgh, targeting the cityOrbital''s children. Soon, Ropa is pulled into a compact yet profound work that unfolds over a single day in the search for lives of a missing boy at group of astronauts aboard the request of his dead motherInternational Space Station. She will end up discovering an occult library and realise Through a narrative lens that mirrors the world of magic is far bigger and more dangerous than she ever couldastronauts've imaginedorbital perspective, Harvey invites readers to see our planet in a wholly new light. Will she find the missing children and bring an end to this evil, or will it claim her too?|isbn= 15290394521529922933
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Everina Maxwell295967572X|title=Winter's OrbitPale Pieces|author=G M Stevens
|rating=5
|genre=Science Literary Fiction|summary= Prince Kiem Our unnamed narrator is about to begin a famous political disappointmenttrain journey with his companion Django. HeWhere they's outgoing, carefree, re going and has gotten into many drunken scandals over what the past few years. So when an important political alliance purpose of this journey is to be arranged – one that , is supposed uncertain. Django found the tickets ''on the floor somewhere'' and has persuaded our narrator to prevent an interplanetary war – no one expects accompany him . Why not? Not much else is clear either - but we are probably in the past as the pair travel to be chosen for the role. Least of all himstation by coach and the train is a steam locomotive.|isbn=0356515885
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=18389520120008551324|title=The FavourDevil You Know (D S Max Craigie)|author=Laura VaughanNeil Lancaster
|rating=4.5
|genre=ThrillersCrime|summary=The rejection by Oxford came as a bit of a shock It's unusual for anyone from the Hardie family to Ada Howell: she was, after all, approach the daughter of police. Neither side likes or has any respect for the renowned author, Anthony Howell, whoother. But Davie Hardie is struggling in prison and he'd been s prepared to this collegetell the police where the body of a missing person is buried and who was responsible for her death. WellThis person, she wasn't ''actually'' Howell's daughter: he'd married her mother after her birth promises, is someone big and had then adopted her, so she was 'chosen' rather than just 'made', which was better reallyit will be worth the police doing what he wants. And whilst we're being honest, we might as well admit that 'renowned author' might what he wants is to be stretching transferred to an open prison to serve the truth a little: remainder of his books degenerated into self-published poetry which Ada couldn't understandsentence and to get an early parole date. StillNot much to ask, Ada had felt entitled is it? The new Deputy Police Constable doesn't think so and this was why her godmothershe's even prepared to do the other thing that Hardie demanded - make certain that DS Max Craigie and anyone who works with him is kept well away from what's offer had come at such a brilliant timehappening.
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{{Frontpage
|author=C A SachaThea Lenarduzzi|title=Legacy: A Political ThrillerThe Tower|rating=45|genre=ThrillersLiterary Fiction|summary= Corporate boss Gene Finnegan has ''How unctuous are the fats of another's life, how dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream''. In this compelling novel, Thea Lenarduzzi assumes the identity of T, the protagonist of this tale. Just as T's story is being told, the story of a plan to increase his already startling wealth and ensure his legacysecond protagonist is unveiled: to bring Annie, the daughter of a wealthy family in the world19th century, who died of tuberculosis after being locked in a tower, captures T's imagination. Annie's first emission-free car fate is, above all, an enticing story to market T. It is a story which she consumes avariciously, both in a quest for truth and knowledge, and in service of myth, fable and dominate productionfantasy. The secret development project to enable |isbn=1804271799}}{{Frontpage|author=Claire-Louise Bennett|title=Big Kiss, Bye-Bye |rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Everything in thisbook, Bucephalushowever sweet or seemingly innocent, is already underway steeped in anguish and Finnegan bankrolls US president Joseph Montgomery into distortion. Even a second term to help him carry it out. Montgomery is also looking for kiss, usually a legacy symbol of intimacy and one that does not involve his controlling mother closeness, becomes evidence of love lost. When the narrator cries out internally, ''come over here and her foundationkiss me, so grabs onto Finnegan's Feed Africa programme with both hands.' 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=18004619761804271934
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Martin Venning0008405026|title=The Primary ObjectiveA Stranger in the Family (Maeve Kerrigan 11)|author=Jane Casey|rating=25|genre=General FictionCrime|summary= Sometimes a book starts off slowly, but eventually draws you in to caring about It's sixteen years since nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her bed one summer night. She was never found and the characters or simply wanting investigation ground to know what happens nexta halt. Sometimes it doesn'tNow, her mother, Helena, and her father are dead in their bed. The basic premise is a good one – a clandestine organisationInitially, operating as it looks like a charity, straightforward murder/suicide but funded by various governments around the world and partially (maybe, Ithere'm not sure) under s something about the auspices positioning of the UN, with the primary objective of keeping the peace, by any means possiblebodies that makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and her boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. Diplomacy is always the first option and sometimes one that needs What looked as though it was going to be carried out by third parties, but for situations when that looks unlikely to yield results Peace International maintains a callan open-on list of field operatives, exand-military, medics, scientists or anyone else with shut case is now a taste for adventure and willing to risk their life for complex double murder. Kerrigan is convinced that the sake of itexplanation lies in Rosalie's disappearance: others (such as Derwent's boss, Una Burt) are less convinced.|isbn=1800461100
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{{Frontpage
|author=Francesca Simon Annie Ernaux and Steve MayAlison L. Strayer (translator)|title=Two Terrible VikingsThe Other Girl
|rating=4
|genre=Emerging ReadersAutobiography|summary=In a small Viking village there live two twins, Hack ''We were born from the same body. I've never really wanted to think about this.'' Ernaux's work is always very candid and Whackher tone transparent, who are eager to but this raw epistolary text must be one of the very worst Vikings ever! Nothing can stop their mad maraudingmost intimate accounts I've read. Ernaux writes in direct address to her sister, however, as they cause havoc this letter will never reach her. Why? Because Annie Ernaux's sister died of diphtheria at a birthday party6 years old, chaos whilst tracking a trollfew months before the vaccine was made compulsory in France, and undertake a grand journey to raid Bad Island with their friends! They get up 2 years before the author was even born. The large and instant void created by the jarring concept of writing to all kinds an imaginary recipient emphasises Ernaux's process of mischief and naughty behaviour, along reckoning with their wolf-cub Bitey-Biteythis giant absence in her life, and their crazy cast of friendsan absence that she has always felt but often denied.|isbn=05713494981804271845
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{{Frontpage
|author=Helen FisherMaxim Gorky and Bryan Karetnyk (translator)|title=Space HopperReminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev
|rating=3.5
|genre=General FictionBiography|summary=Faye lost her mum when she was very youngBiographies are often seen as the form of life-writing which offers less colour; it can be seen as more objective and less personal. She was raised by some elderly neighbours after her mum died from a cold I think that got worseGorky completely rejects this perspective, and although they were kind and very good to her she offers a vibrant, subjective yet informed portrait of three of course missed her mum enormouslyhis literary contemporaries. So whenIn the first section of this book, unexpectedly, she discovers a time travel conduit (via an old space hopper box in her attic) Tolstoy complains to his friend Gorky that takes her back to the 70: ''s and her mumyou write not of real life as it is, she revels in the chance but of what you yourself imagine it to create some memories and get be. Whom would it help to know the woman who meant so much to her. The time travellinghow I see this tower, howeverthat sea, or that Tartar - why should it interest anyone? Of what use is neither easy nor safeit?''. Well, and Faye fears that her husband won't believe Maxim Gorky shows exactly what's happening and so lies can be gained from a subjective account, giving us access to him instead. The lies grow more tangledhow he saw Tolstoy, Chekhov and Faye begins to wonder if Andreyev in such privileged detail that one almost feels unworthy of it's safe for her to return one last time to the past. Should she try to see her mum one last time before her mum's death, or will it change her own future forever to attempt it?|isbn=14711886631804271977
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=17874778001529077745|title=The Night Hawks Dark Wives (Dr Ruth GallowayD I Vera Stanhope)|author=Elly GriffithsAnn Cleeves
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=A man walking his dog in the early morning discovered the body of a man in the park near Rosebank, 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 hawks are metal detectorists and they're out on Blakeney Point where they suspect that there's treasure to be foundbefore but who had never turned up. Unfortunately, D I Vera Stanhope is called in to investigate the murder - but her only clue is the youngest disappearance of one of the groupresidents, twenty-onefourteen-year-old Troy EvansChloe Spencer. Some people believe that Chloe was responsible for the death but Vera thinks this is unlikely as the girl's diary makes it clear that she adored Josh. She knows that she has to find Chloe to discover what happened to Josh.}}{{Frontpage|author=Olga Tokarczuk|title=House of Day, finds House of Night|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''What's the body good of a man floating world that keeps changing like that? How can one go on the incoming tide. After pulling calmly living in it ashore?'' The title of this spellbinding work, they call the police. DCI Nelson thinks that it's probably the body 'House of Day, House of an asylum seeker but thereNight''s no evidence , somewhat reflects this notion of any activity shifting realities - the small, subtle changes which govern our lives, like the shift from day to be had from night, however quotidian, causing chaos. But, the constant in that image is the coastguard. The dead man turns out to be Jem Taylorhouse, a North Norfolk man recently released from prisonstoic against the ancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it is perceived.|isbn=1804271918
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=15293786481836284683|title=Slough House (Jackson Lamb 7)The Big Happy|author=Mick HerronDavid Chadwick
|rating=4.5
|genre=ThrillersDystopian Fiction|summary=Someone Well! This is killing secret service agentsa murder mystery unlike any other! I do love it when I open a book, past and present, from the Slough House team. Jackson Lamb canit't understand s nothing like I expected it. Wellto be, what he actually can't understand is why, having seen them, anyone would bother. But the deaths are mounting up and something needs to be doneit takes me on a wild ride. After all And that is just what happened with ''when things went awry on Spook Street, they generally went the full Chris Grayling.'The Big Happy' Over at Regent's Park, Diana Taverner is quietly jubilant about an operation which saw the perpetrator of a Novichok poisoning in the UK (three people seriously injured and one dead) dispatched. It isnI don't just the message that was sent: shewant to ruin a similar experience for any of you reading but I's also delighted that she managed ll have to fund at least set the operation off the booksscene. Some private money was brought in. She wonOnce that't always be so jubilant about s done, I think you should simply experience thiswonderfully original story for yourself.
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1838773428Sally Rooney|title=The Art of Death|author=David FennellIntermezzo
|rating=4.5
|genre=CrimeGeneral Fiction |summary=It was an art installation Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard of life and is something of a grandmaster at putting it into words. Her dialogue is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, as her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Among the type which does appear in Trafalgar Square: many relationships woven into this story, the central one for readers to unravel is the fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. Ivan, a socially awkward chess prodigy, contrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, a depiction of three homeless men successful lawyer living in glass cabinets surrounded by liquidDublin. Only this time itFollowing their father's not passing after a depiction: these are long battle with cancer, the bodies of Billy Perrin, Stan Buxton and 34-year-old Noel Tippingbrothers' already strained relationship faces new trials. |isbn=0571365469}}{{Frontpage|isbn= 1836285493|title=The installation Double Life of a Wheelchair User|author=Rob Keeley|rating=5|genre=Confident Readers|summary= Will is the work a keen player of @nonymousvideo games, a conscientious student, underground artist a slightly annoying brother and extreme version of Banksy. He's made a macabre promise: more will followsupportive friend. In factBut most of all, we've already met the artist although not by name: he's been in the Lumberyard Cafe with is an aspiring writer. English is his favourite lesson at his Moleskine notebookschool, Maki-e fountain penMarlowe Park, MacBook Air and iPhoneone at which he excels. Elaine Kelly is there with her sonThis hasn't gone unnoticed by his headteacher, JordanMrs Howarth, and she's explaining has suggested to her best friend, Jackie Morris about the state Will and his mum that he spends a couple of her marriage. Actually, it doesn't take afternoons a week at a lot of explaining: Frank's attentions are obvious on her face despite the foundation she's applied. Chau Ho is behind the counter. There's someone onlinedifferent school, CassandraHStation Road, that the artist has where his eye on, tooability might be better extended.
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=14711913031009473085|title=The InvisibleConservative Effect 2010 - 2024|author=Anthony Seldon and Tom PercivalEgerton (Editors)
|rating=5
|genre=For SharingPolitics and Society|summary=This is Sometimes it's simpler to explain a book by describing what it ''isn't'' and that applies to ''The Conservative Effect: 2010-2024 - 14 Wasted Years?''. If you're looking for an easy read which will deliver the inside story of Isobelabout what ''really'' happened on certain occasions, a little girl who made a big differencethen this isn't the book for you. Isobel lived with her parents in a house - a very cold houseIf that's what you're looking for, because her parents couldnI don't afford to put the heating on: think Anthony Seldon's book, {{amazonurl|isbn=B0BH7SKG2S|title=Johnson at 10}}, can be bettered for those tumultuous years. It'Ice curled across the inside of the window s a compelling read and crept up the corner of the bedpostshould be compulsory for anyone who thinks Johnson should return to politics. '' The family didnConservative Effect''t go to the cinema or on holidays but they had each other and they were happyis an entirely different beast. Then the day came when they couldnIt't afford s the rent for seventh book in a series which looks at the house impact a government has made and they had to move to co-editor Sir Anthony Seldon regards this as the most important. This book follows the far side well-established format: a series of experts from various fields review the city. This part state of the city was coldnation when the coalition took over in 2010, sad the changes that occurred and lonely and Isobel felt invisiblethe situation in 2024.
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=178089905XJenny Valentine|title=Serpentine|author=Jonathan KellermanUs in the Before and After
|rating=5
|genre=CrimeTeens|summary=It wasn't exactly the case Lt Milo Sturgis had been dreaming about: Elk and Mab are best friends, or more than that even, their friendship is a death from thirty-six years ago and the daughter of the woman who died wanted some answers. She had money and money translated into clout and so the problem was dropped onto Milo's toes. Dorothy Swoboda was twenty-four years old when she died once in a car which went off a cliff on Mulholland Drive and burst into flameslifetime connection. It turned They meet as children one day on a trip out that she wasnbut unfortunately they don't actually married to get each other's contact details at the man with whom she'd left her daughter but Dr Stanley R Barkertime. But then chance brings them back together, optometrist, was a good man and he took out adoption papers for Ellie - and she took his namethey are inseparable. Ellie was three when her mother left her with Dr Barker Something has happened though, something terrible and she has nothing of her but one photograph of her mother tragic, and father now they must work through their grief, and a necklace made of serpentinetheir friendship, together.|isbn=1471196585
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