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==The Best New Books==
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{{Frontpage
|author=Paul B Preciado
|title=Dysphoria Mundi
|rating=4.5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=''It is never too late to embrace the revolutionary optimism of childhood''
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{{Frontpage
|author=Emma CarrollSamantha Harvey|title=The Week at World's EndOrbital|rating=4.5|genre=Confident ReadersGeneral Fiction|summary=FirstIn 2024, Samantha Harvey won the title. WeBooker Prize for ''Orbital're in World's End Close, a mediocre set of houses, where Stevie (Vie to her friends) finds fun only with the family dog and with the boy compact yet profound work that unfolds over a single day in the road. But we could also be at World's End, because something taking lives of a great chunk group of astronauts aboard the fun away is the fact International Space Station. Through a narrative lens that mirrors the Cuban Missile Crisis is kicking off. The Soviet boats are getting blockaded as America tries to reduce the risk of nuclear missiles offshoreastronauts' orbital perspective, and not much else is able Harvey invites readers to make the news. That said, Vie has news of her own – Anna, a secretive young woman hiding in their coal shed. Anna has, see our planet in no short time, taken a strong interest in the American airforce base behind the Close, said she'd locate something she wanted and leave, failed to leave, and implied her life was at riskwholly new light. But surely this bit of intrigue has got nothing to do with what the Cold War is doing miles away?|isbn=05713644381529922933
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Kiran Millwood Hargrave and Tom de Freston295967572X|title=Julia and the SharkPale Pieces|author=G M Stevens|rating=45|genre=Confident ReadersLiterary Fiction|summary=Julia, our pre-teen heroine, has been packed off Our unnamed narrator is about to begin a train journey with her parents his companion Django. Where they're going and their cat from what the family home in SW England to be lighthousekeepers for a summerpurpose of this journey is, in is uncertain. Django found the far NE of tickets ''on the Scottish islands. Here be Vikings, that kind of Scottish islandfloor somewhere'' and has persuaded our narrator to accompany him. Dad Why not? Not much else is going to be automating clear either - but we are probably in the past as the lantern, which is his specialist thing, while mum will be leaving her career in algae behind pair travel to hunt the elusive Greenland shark. And Julia, well, she will be homesick station by coach and alone – until she suddenly finds company one nightthe train is a steam locomotive.|isbn=1510107789
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Freya Sampson0008551324|title=The Last Library|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=I am always a little nervous to start a story about a library, since I am a librarian. I always grit my teeth slightly at the thought of the incoming cardigan-wearing, hair in a bun, cat-owning, glasses on a chain stereotypes! In this story, the main character, June, does put her hair in a bun, and she does own a cat Devil You Know (called Alan BennettD S Max Craigie), and she has barely any friends and spends her evenings eating the same Chinese takeaway meal once a week whilst reading books alone! But I didn't immediately throw the book out of the window, because I found I was interested in June, and why she lived as she did. Her mum used to be a librarian at the village library, but when she got sick, June gave up on going to University and stayed at home to take care of her mum, as well as taking on a job as library assistant at the local library. And even though her mum sadly died some years ago, she is still working there, still eating her mum's favourite takeaway meal, and still reading her mum's old books. June is stuck, but little does she know, everything in her life is about the change.|isbn=183877369X}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0008370982|title=Rock Paper Scissors|author=Alice FeeneyNeil Lancaster
|rating=4.5
|genre=ThrillersCrime|summary=Amelia Wright is forty-two and it was It's unusual for anyone from the Hardie family to approach the staff raffle at Battersea Dogs Home that gave her a weekend away in a converted chapel in Scotlandpolice. Her husband, Adam, isn't so keen on Neither side likes or has any respect for the ideaother. Like Amelia, he knows that their marriage has been under strain: But Davie Hardie is struggling in prison and he's prepared to tell the police where the body of a screenwriter missing person is buried and who was responsible for her death. This person, he's never shy of making promises, is someone big and it clear to Amelia that he'd prefer to spend time with will be worth the novels police doing what he's hoping to adapt than with herwants. Amelia's annoyed that And what he never enquires about how her day has been - and working with wants is to be transferred to an open prison to serve the dogs, many remainder of whom have been abusedhis sentence and to get an early parole date. Not much to ask, is never easy. it? Still - The new Deputy Police Constable doesn't think so and she's won the weekend away, even if it does mean driving for eight hours in her 1978 Morris Minor Traveller with Adam beside her in prepared to do the passenger seat other thing that Hardie demanded - make certain that DS Max Craigie and then doing the same thing to come back a couple of days lateranyone who works with him is kept well away from what's happening.
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{{Frontpage
|author=Doug JohnstoneJon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |title=The Great SilenceVaim
|rating=4
|genre=CrimeLiterary Fiction|summary=For those who, like me, haven't come across the Skelfs before, I'll risk a quick synopsis of whoAll was strange''s who – although Johnstone does a good job of bringing the backstory in without being heavy handed about it. Skelf isn't some fantastic creature, though it sounds as though it ought to be, it is merely the surname of a family of undertakers. Undertakers and private investigators. Dorothy is This haunting phrase encapsulates the matriarch – Californian by birth and instinctpervading sense of otherworldliness which permeates this story set in Vaim, she married a scot and ended up helping to run the Edinburgh undertaking firm that had been fictional fishing village in the family Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for generations. Recently widowed Jatgeir and now involved with a black Swedish police officer. Swedish by nationality. Scottish police. Daughter JennyEline, 46, is haunted by her still-living husband – a violent escaped prisoner. And grand-daughter is about to graduate with a first-class physics degree and join two of the academic staff next termprotagonists caught in its melancholic current.|isbn=19131938371804271829
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=19015149781035043092|title=There's a Problem With DadThe Killing Stones (Jimmy Perez)|author=Carlos AlbaAnn Cleeves|rating=4.5|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=Life is different for George Lovelace and he I can't really understand whyhave 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. HeIt's always done everything been seven years since we heard from him, but he ought to: steady worker's now living with Willow Reeves and their young son, James, as well as Cassie, husband and father - and a father who was always there for school plays and sports daysthe daughter of his former partner. So why is he never quite in tune with those around him? Why does he upset people? Why is someone with such a Willow's also his boss, and she 'good'should' mind unable to progress at work or to relate to his colleagues? Why does he make so many breath-taking gaffes? It's almost become be on maternity leave, but when the body of a cliche these days to suggest that someone who popular islander, Archie Stout, is found, in the aftermath of a little different is storm, she can'on the spectrumt resist getting involved. He', but George Lovelace has all d been battered about the symptoms head with a Neolithic stone - one of Asperger's Syndrome: higha pair -functioning autismwhich had been stolen from a museum.
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{{Frontpage
|author=Louise CandlishThea Lenarduzzi|title=The HeightsTower|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersLiterary Fiction|summary=Ellen doesn't expect to see Kieran that day'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. SheJust as T's on sitestory is being told, visiting the story of a client for second protagonist is unveiled: Annie, the daughter of a lighting consultation when she spies him wealthy family in a building across the way. There are lots of things19th century, lots who died of people, you might see when you look out across Londontuberculosis after being locked in a tower, but this isncaptures T't one Ellen expected that day or in fact any other days imagination. Why? Because Kieran has been dead for over two yearsAnnie's fate is, above all, and Ellen knows this for an enticing story to T. It is a factstory which she consumes avariciously, because she had both in a hand quest for truth and knowledge, and in his murderservice of myth, fable and fantasy. |isbn=14711834831804271799
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0008421714Claire-Louise Bennett|title=Mrs March|author=Virginia FeitoBig Kiss, Bye-Bye
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The problem began just after the publication of George March's most successful novel to date. Everyone but Mrs March (we know her first name only on the last page) seemed to either be reading it Everything in this book, however sweet or had already done soseemingly innocent, is steeped in anguish and distortion. Every day Mrs March went to the local patisserie to buy olive bread but on that particular morningEven a kiss, Patricia askedusually a symbol of intimacy and closeness, as she was wrapping becomes evidence of love lost. When the breadnarrator cries out internally, ''but isncome over here and kiss me,'t this the first time he's based it is less an invitation than a character on you?'' She mentioned that Johanna, the principal character had 'desperate attempt to confirm her mannerisms''emotional numbness. Perhaps The imagined recipient of this would not have matteredplea is Xavier, except for the fact that Johanna is the whore of Nantes her ex- ''partner, a weak, plain, detestable, pathetic, unloved, unloveable wretchghost she conjures to test her detachment.''|isbn=1804271934
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=John Boyne0008405026|title=The Echo ChamberA Stranger in the Family (Maeve Kerrigan 11)|author=Jane Casey
|rating=5
|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=Meet George Cleverley. He is selfIt's sixteen years since nine-year-defined as "old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her bed one of summer night. She was never found and the few television personalities over the age of fifty without investigation ground to a criminal record"halt. He starts this book a bit worried when his mistress tells him she's carrying his child Now, but then his author wife is getting her kicks with the Ukrainian partner "Strictly Come Dancing" paired mother, Helena, and her withfather are dead in their bed. They have three children, who are a sad-sack with absolutely no social skills whatsoever Initially, it looks like a girl who hangs around with a virtue-signalling, keyboard warrior "wokester" who wants to save the worldstraightforward murder/suicide but there's homeless with out-something about the positioning ofthe bodies that makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and her boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. What looked as though it was going to be an open-date food, and -shut case is now a fit young lad doing the gay hustle thingcomplex double murder. Add in a few other characters – therapists, lawyers, random transgender types – Kerrigan is convinced that all have two very different connections to his life, and you have something that suggests an almost farcical approach to the modern world. What suggests the farcical approach even moreexplanation lies in Rosalie's disappearance: others (such as Derwent's boss, however, is the fact this is bloody funnyUna Burt) are less convinced.|isbn=0857526219
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0241989094Annie Ernaux and Alison L. Strayer (translator)|title=The Perfect Life|author=Nuala EllwoodOther Girl
|rating=4
|genre=ThrillersAutobiography|summary=In August 2018 we meet a young woman called Imogen and she's viewing a house in Goring-on-Thames and telling 'We were born from the estate agent about her three children, Lavender, Freddie and Barclaysame body. The boys are a bit of a handful which is why sheI's making ve never really wanted to think about this trip on her own. The house would be perfect for them.''
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{{Frontpage
|author=Darren ShanMaxim Gorky and Bryan Karetnyk (translator)|title=Archibald Lox and the Slides Reminiscences of Bon Repell: Archibald Lox seriesTolstoy, Volume 2, book 2 of 3Chekhov and Andreyev|rating=43.5|genre=Confident ReadersBiography|summary=SoBiographies are often seen as the form of life-writing which offers less colour; it can be seen as more objective and less personal. Having done the impossible I think that Gorky completely rejects this perspective, and unpicked the lock to the Forgotten Cryptoffers a vibrant, from which subjective yet informed portrait of three of his literary contemporaries. In the Departed communicate with the Mergefirst section of this book, Archie now has ''gropTolstoy complains to his friend Gorky that: '' you write not of real life as it is, but of what you yourself imagine it to think aboutbe. But before Whom would it help to know how I see this tower, thatsea, soireesor that Tartar - why should it interest anyone? Of what use is it?''. Soirees! ArchieWell, Maxim Gorky shows exactly what can be gained from a subjective account, much giving us access to Inez's amusement, doesn't even know what one of those is. But how he manages to come through the fancy party unscathedsaw Tolstoy, even after an uncomfortable encounter with Kurtis, whose fledgling romance with Inez was crushed Chekhov and Andreyev in the first volume such privileged detail that one almost feels unworthy of this seriesit. |isbn=B093J9TF731804271977
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=B07GZ81J7C1529077745|title=When Fred the Snake Got Squished and MendedThe Dark Wives (D I Vera Stanhope)|author=Peter CottonAnn Cleeves
|rating=4.5
|genre=For SharingCrime|summary=Meet Fred. WellA man walking his dog in the early morning discovered the body of a man in the park near Rosebank, actually, you're going to be meeting Fred-Fred a care home for reasons which will become all too obvious very quicklytroubled teens. But I'm getting ahead The dead man was Josh - one of myself: I'd better tell you the care workers who was due to work a bit more about Fredshift the night before but who had never turned up. Fred D I Vera Stanhope is called in to investigate the murder - but her only clue is a snake and even those the disappearance of us who have a phobia about snakes are going to warm to him. He arrived as a present in a box with holes so that he could breathe and immediately became part one of the familyresidents, to the extent that they would take Fred out with them when they went out for a walkfourteen-year-old Chloe Spencer. And Some people believe that Chloe was where responsible for the death but Vera thinks this is unlikely as the problem started. Fred didngirl't have any road senses diary makes it clear that she adored Josh. Or brakesShe knows that she has to find Chloe to discover what happened to Josh.
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn= Justine Avery and Naday MeldovaB0FK5LHKD9|title= Everybody Pees! (Everybody Potties!)The Colour of Memory|author=Christopher Bowden
|rating=4
|genre=For SharingGeneral Fiction|summary= Can potty training ever be joyous? It often isn't, as any parent will tell you. But reallys been three years since we last reviewed a book by favourite regular Christopher Bowden, why shouldn't it be? We all have to learn about our bodily functions just as so we have were very glad to learn about everything else when we are smallsee a new novel arrive here at Bookbag Towers. Why shouldnLike all Bowden't potty training be as much fun ass stories, say, learning about why there's a mystery at the sun heart of ''The Colour of Money''. We like this running theme in an author's work - take a mystery but give it different flavour and the moon take turns in the sky? |isbn= B098BJZYHHatmosphere each time.
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1787634493Olga Tokarczuk|title=All Her Fault|author=Andrea MaraHouse of Day, House of Night|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersLiterary Fiction|summary=It had seemed ''What's the good of a world that keeps changing like that? How can one go on calmly living in it?'' The title of this spellbinding work, ''House of Day, House of those serendipitous events Night'', somewhat reflects this notion of shifting realities - the small, subtle changes which sometimes happengovern our lives, like the shift from day to night, however quotidian, causing chaos. Marissa Irvine had been hoping But, the constant in that image is the house, stoic against the opportunity would arise ancient 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 her sonsome time now, Milo, to go on a play date. She was concerned that and he didn't have any friends at his new schoolshould be doing quite well financially. Milo would go home from Kerryglen National School in an affluent Dublin suburb with Unfortunately, his classmate Jacob - and Marissa would pick him up from 14 Tudor Grove daughter's defence against a little latermurder charge drained his savings. What could be better? OnlyHis wife, when Marissa arrived at the houseLaura, expecting has been trying to meet Jacobpersuade him to retire - ''maybe go travelling or go on cruises. That's motherwhat 'ordinary people do', Jenny, the door was answered by Esther, who didn't know Jenny or Jacob. ' The phone number sheHe'd s not been given for Jenny was not recognisedentirely up front about the state of their savings. Milo had disappeared. And so had JennyWhen Jack Durban tries to persuade him to take his case, it's nannythe thought of the money he could make that convinces him that this is a miscarriage of justice that he really should put right.
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Claire North1836284683|title=Notes from the Burning AgeThe Big Happy|author=David Chadwick|rating=4.5|genre=Science Dystopian Fiction|summary=At its core ''Notes From the Burning Age'' by Claire North Well! This is a spy thrillermurder mystery unlike any other! I do love it when I open a book, with as many double crossesit's nothing like I expected it to be, interrogations and night time escapes as Le Carre or Flemingit takes me on a wild ride. However, as And that is just what happened with the best novels, it wears many masks and its most affecting one is that of a new and timely genre, cli-fi, or climate change fiction''The Big Happy''. NorthI don's novel tells t want to ruin a similar experience for any of a world devastated by climate change where humans you reading but I'll have been forced to start anew and live alongside nature without any of at least set the modern and corrupting "luxuries" (read: fossil fuelsscene. Once that's done, weapons of mass destruction, intensive farming). There is a growing unhappiness with I think you should simply experience this limiting world, and one group, the Brotherhood, aims to master these processes no matter the cost to the Earthwonderfully original story for yourself.|isbn=0356514757
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{{Frontpage
|author=Eva Bjorg Aegisdottir and Victoria Cribb (translator)Sally Rooney|title=Girls Who LieIntermezzo|rating=34.5|genre=ThrillersGeneral Fiction |summary=You might be forgiven for thinking that all Sally Rooney has studied the dark corners chessboard of Iceland have featured in their noirish thrillers life and crime books before nowis something of a grandmaster at putting it into words. You thinkHer dialogue is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, seeing on as her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Among the map that we're set in Akranesmany relationships woven into this story, and finding it's only twenty kilometres from the capital city, that this author central one for readers to unravel is clutching at the few final straws leftfraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. However just because the book aims for the usual small-town feelIvan, it's not just in Akranes that our interests lie. Six months ago a woman failed to turn up for her date eveningsocially awkward chess prodigy, and was never seen again. This left a teenaged girl not at all disappointed that she could now live permanently contrasts sharply with the couple who had given her foster care before her mother had asked for the girl backhis older brother Peter, and a couple of delighted adopterssuccessful lawyer living in Dublin. But it left our three detectives at a quandary – mobile phone use was at a high level until it stopped all of a sudden, in one place, the womanFollowing their father's car was found miles away in a second place, and now, passing after six months, the body has been discovered, in a third, even more remote place. Meanwhile, this narrative is interrupted by a confessional monologue from a mother who found herself long battle with heavy post-natal depressioncancer, and very little maternal feeling in her bodythe brothers' already strained relationship faces new trials. Is the assumption that is so easy for the reader to make the right one?|isbn=191319373X0571365469
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=B0925KS87N1036916375|title=Dead Man's Grave (DS Max Craigie)Just a Liverpool Lad|author=Neil LancasterPeter McArdle
|rating=4
|genre=CrimeAutobiography|summary=Tam Hardie had been determined to find ''Just a Liverpool Lad '' is a collection of memories and reflections from the years Peter McArdle spent growing up in and around Liverpool. Some are factual, such as the family history of a sea-going family, with the docks dominating lives. Other stories blend seamlessly into the grave what- and it took some finding might-have- in an overgrown old cemeterybeen. It was a strange thing for Scotland's premier criminal a book to dosettle into and allow your mind to roam across your childhood memories, but Tam was getting old and there were things he wanted to do. Onlythink of simpler times when life seemed less constrained, his family didn't hear from him again after he'd said that he'd found despite the grave - the one which said blitz that it shouldnwas a constant factor in McArdle't be opened - and his three sons began to worrys early years. Tam Junior, Frankie and Dave wouldnI't normally go to the police d never heard of parachute mines before - but they weren't certain where their father had been were almost soundless and they were worriedcould appear after the all-clear was sounded.
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Emily Critchley1836285493|title=The Tiny Gestures Double Life of Small Flowersa Wheelchair User|author=Rob Keeley|rating=35|genre=General FictionConfident Readers|summary= The Tiny Gestures Will is a keen player of video games, a conscientious student, a slightly annoying brother and a supportive friend. But most of Small Flowers had all the hallmarks of something good, he is an aspiring writer. English is his favourite lesson at his school, Marlowe Park, and one at which he excels. I was intrigued This hasn't gone unnoticed by the plothis headteacher, Mrs Howarth, liked the design and she has suggested to Will and his mum that he spends a couple of the bookafternoons a week at a different school, Station Road, and thought the author's work sounded interesting. From the outset it all looked incredibly promisingwhere his ability might be better extended. So what on earth went wrong here?|isbn= 1911427091}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Sarah Langan1009473085|title=Good NeighboursThe Conservative Effect 2010 - 2024|author=Anthony Seldon and Tom Egerton (Editors)|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersPolitics and Society|summary= If youSometimes it're of s simpler to explain a certain vintage, book by describing what it's hard 'isn't'' and that applies to read the words ''Good NeighboursThe Conservative Effect: 2010-2024 - 14 Wasted Years?'' without adding a sing-song . If you're looking for an easy read which will deliver the inside story about what 'that's when Good Neighbours…become…good friendsreally''. Maple Street is no Ramsay Streethappened on certain occasions, though, Arlo and Gertie live a world apart from then this isn't the Melbourne suburbsbook for you. They If that's what you're one of 18 households on the crescentlooking for, quite new arrivals having moved in a year earlier. TheyI don're not quite like all the other families (het think Anthony Seldon's an ex rockerbook, {{amazonurl|isbn=B0BH7SKG2S|title=Johnson at 10}}, shecan be bettered for those tumultuous years. It's a former beauty queen) but theycompelling read and should be compulsory for anyone who thinks Johnson should return to politics. ''The Conservative Effect've made some friends and their kids have settled in, and it's all going okis an entirely different beast. Until it isn It't. One hot, clammy, sticky, sweaty summer, s the seventh book in a sinkhole opens up in series which looks at the park across impact a government has made and co-editor Sir Anthony Seldon regards this as the waymost important. It's This book follows the well-established format: a revolting mess series of dirt and chaos, but for experts from various fields review the residents state of Maple Streetthe nation when the coalition took over in 2010, the worst is yet to comechanges that occurred and the situation in 2024.|isbn=1789098211
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{{Frontpage
|author=Lisa ThompsonJenny Valentine|title=The Small ThingsUs in the Before and After
|rating=5
|genre=Confident ReadersTeens|summary=Although Anna has Elk and Mab are best friends at school, she feels like she never really fits or more than that even, their friendship is a once ina lifetime connection. Her family They meet as children one day on a trip out but unfortunately they don't have enough money to let her do after school activities, and so she feels like her life get each other's contact details at home is boring in comparison to theirsthe time. When a new girl joins her class But then chance brings them back together, Anna is asked to partner her, but things and they are complicated because the new girlinseparable. Something has happened though, Elliesomething terrible and tragic, is unwell and so can't attend school in person. Instead, she joins in with the class by using a robot. Can Anna overcome the challenge of making friends with someone now they must work through a robottheir grief, and is she even interesting enough to be a good friend to Ellie?their friendship, together.|isbn=17811296491471196585
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=00083503881787333175|title=We Need You Don't Have to Talk About Moneybe Mad to Work Here|author=Otegha UwagbaBenji Waterhouse
|rating=5
|genre=Politics and SocietyPopular Science|summary=I was tempted to read ''To be a dark-skinned Black woman is You Don't Have to be seen as less desirable, less hireable, less intelligent and ultimately less valuable than my light-skinned counterparts...'' ''We Need Mad to Talk About MoneyWork Here'' by Otegha Uwagba after enjoying Adam Kay''0.7% of English Literature GCSE students in England study a s first book by {{amazonurl|isbn=1509858636|title=This is Going to Hurt}}, a writer glorious mixture of insight into the workings of colour while only 7% study a book by a womanthe NHS, humour and autobiography.'' ''The Bookseller'You Don' 29 June 2021 Otegha Uwagba came t Have to the UK from Kenya when she was five years oldbe Mad. Her sisters were seven and nine. It was her mother who came first, with her father joining them later. The family was hard-working, principled '' promised the same elements but moved from physical problems to mental illness and determined that their children would have the best education possiblework of a psychiatrist. There was always a painful awareness of money although this I did not translate into a shortage of anything: wonder whether it was simply carefully harvested. When Otegha was ten acceptable to be looking for humour in this setting but the family acquired laughter is directed at a car. For Otegha, education meant situation rather than a scholarship to a private school in London person and it is always delivered with empathy and then a place at New College, Oxfordunderstanding.
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1787631869Mariana Enriquez|title=The Rising Tide|author=Sam LloydA Sunny Place for Shady People|rating=45|genre=ThrillersShort Stories|summary=Lucy Locke's early life hadn't been easy but she'd built a good and decent life in the aftermath. She's now married 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 disused refrigerators due to Danielan urban planning mishap, who coan overcrowded homeless shelter and a crime-owns Lockeridden neighbourhood where safety meetings are routine -Povey Marine on Penleith Beach, and they live at Wild Ridge on Mortis Point with Billie, Lucy's daughter and Fin, the child she had with Danielall within Argentina. They have financial difficulties, some caused by Nick Povey, Daniel's partner and The circumstances of her characters are so-called best friend. Nick and Daniel have a history together from plausible that the time they both spent in supernatural or otherworldly horror which seeps into these spaces adopts a children's home but it's difficult to think that Nick has Daniel's best interests at heart, particularly where Lucy, or money, is concernedsimilarly tangible texture.|isbn=1803511230
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Hannah Peck1529934753|title=Kate on the CaseThe Protest|author=Rob Rinder|rating=34.5|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=Meet KateFor a little while, it looked as though Sir Max Bruce, although I got the impression shecountry'd rather be a Catherine – and one specific Catherine s most famous living artist, was not going to show up for the opening of his retrospective at thatthe Royal Academy. For Catherine Rodriguez is Kate's idolStill, and he arrived in the author nick of our heroine's favourite possessiontime, complete with his two wives and six children, ''The Special Correspondent Manual''one of whom filmed what happened. Armed with a plucky fatherBeing an influencer, you tend to do things like that book, and her talking mouse called Rupert, she is all equipped to manage but it was fortunate that there was a train ride to the Arctic, to see her scientist mother for record of the first time in yonksprotest. HoweverLexi Williams, this is a train ride with a differencean intern at the RA, for on board is grabbed a greedy-seeming harridan and her cat, spray can of blue paint from under a thief – chair and two glowing eyesproceeded to spray Bruce in the face, shining from whilst shouting ''Stop the darkness in a blink-and-youWar''ll-miss-them style. Itseemed to be part of an ongoing series of 'blue-face's definitely a case for a new young investigative journalistattacks, but this was different. The can had been laced with cyanide, and Sir Max Bruce was dead..|isbn=184812970X
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{{Frontpage
|author=Darren ShanAriel Saramandi|title=Archibald Lox and the Forgotten Crypt: Archibald Lox series, Volume 2, book 1 Portrait of 3an Island on Fire
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersPolitics and Society|summary=The second trilogy in Shan's ''Merge'' saga opens with our heroIn this powerful collection of essays, Archie, back in London in Saramandi seeks to intradermally dissect the world sociopolitical fabric of Mauritius, tunneling deep into the Bornwounds left by colonialism and slavery to expose how these legacies still shape modern life. ItSaramandi describes the country at one stage as ''rotting's not been easy, explaining to his foster parents where he's been, or slipping back into ordinary life and forgetting a blunt yet apt metaphor for the systemic decay brought about Inez and his other friends in by the Mergemalignant forces of racism, but Archie has done his best.... wellpatriarchy, except for visiting veteran locksmith Winston in Big Ben's clock tower environmental degradation and except for fiddling with that sneaky master lock governmental dysfunction. Each essay in Seven Dials every time he can sneak awaythis collection serves as a kind of diagnostic, charting the various diseases afflicting the island state.|isbn=B093H8DPQZ1804271616
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0571365884Pekka Harju-Autti|title=My Mess is a Bit of Life: Adventures in Anxiety|author=Georgia PritchettLoveVortex and the Drakor's Curse
|rating=4
|genre=AutobiographyFantasy|summary=Georgia Pritchett has always been anxiousIt's the eighteenth century, even as a child. She would worry about whether the monsters under the bed were comfortable: it was the sort time of life where if she had nothing to worry about she would become anxious but such occasions were few discovery and far betweenBritain is expanding its foreign trade. On a visit to a therapistCaptain Julius Hawthorne, as an adultexperienced Scottish sea captain, when she was completely unable is sent to speak about what was wrong the Andaman Islands in his endeavour. Along with her it was suggested that she should write it down 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''My Mess leader, Aarav, is keen to establish good relations.|isbn=B0DS1VGHH3}}{{Frontpage|author=Helene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)|title=Lili is Crying|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=First published in 1953 in French, this novel is a Bit timeless text which wrenches the hearts of a Life: Adventures in Anxiety'' is its readers just as Bessette wrenches words and sentences from their proper position on the page and positions them elsewhere, disjointed, truncated. Like the result - or so we lives of her characters, they are given to believeoften left tragically incomplete.|isbn=1804271675
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{{Frontpage
|author=Alex CotterTom Percival|title=The House on the EdgeWrong Shoes|rating=45
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=FaithWill's family home life is teetering on the edge difficult, in a multitude of a cliff, literallyways. Is that crack in He is bullied because he has 'the garden getting bigger? Is wrong shoes', he has the house starting to slope a little? And as wrong shoes because his dad can't work and doesn't have enough money for even the house seems to be falling apartmost basic of things like food, so is Faithand his dad can's family. Her dad has disappearedt work because he lost his job at the college, was working a cash-in-hand job on a building site and her mum is struggling to cope, barely leaving her bedhad an accident. So Throw into that leaves Faith in charge, taking care of her little brother Noah, taking care of her mix the fact that his mum, feeding everyone, getting Noah to schooland dad are separated, and avoiding awkward questions from interfering teachersWill's life seems bleak in every direction. Is her little brother okay? Why is And yet, he obsessed with what he claims still has a tiny amount of hope. He is a ghost in the cellar? What should she do about the house? Can she find a way to raise enough money to fix it? What's happened to her dad? Why did he disappear? Maybe he'll come back if she manages good at art, and clings to get funding for the house? She carries the weight moments of all these worries on her constantlyjoy when he is drawing, and she doesn't know how much longer that feel like a light at the cliff will hold togetherend of a long, or how long she can keep on keeping ondark tunnel.|isbn=17880086261398527122
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{{Frontpage
|author=Sylvie 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=00082690411786482126|title=Risk of HarmThe Janus Stone (Dr Ruth Galloway)|author=Lucie WhitehouseElly Griffiths
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=DCI Robin Lyons is back Builders were demolishing an old house in her native Birmingham after her lessNorwich - the site was going to hold seventy-thanfive 'luxury' apartments -comfortable departure from when they discovered the Metbones of a child beneath a doorway. There was no skull. She might have been reinstated but the whole episode left Was this a nasty taste in her mouth. ritual killing or murder? She was now Inevitably, Dr Ruth Galloway finds herself working for Detective Chief Superintendent Samir Jaffrey - then the man who had broken her heart nearly twenty years beforewith DCI Harry Nelson. She and her fifteen-year-old daughter have moved out of her parentIt's home into a rented house difficult as Ruth knows, but thereNelson doesn's still a difficult situation t, that she is pregnant with her brother Luke who has gone out of his way to make life difficult for Robin since she was child as a young childresult of the one night they spent together some three months ago. He's married Her condition will be obvious before long, not least because Ruth is prone to Natalie, now and has a young child but he's still got it in for Robinsudden bouts of sickness.
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1786332388Guadalupe Nettel and Rosalind Harvey (Translator)|title=The First Day of Spring|author=Nancy TuckerAccidentals
|rating=4.5
|genre=ThrillersShort Stories|summary=Sometimes I wonder if I take my pleasures too sadly - This collection was truly enchanting in all senses of the word: spellbinding with its fantastical, magical elements and ''The First Day charming in its gentle portrayal of Spring'' was one such occasion. The writing is superb nature and completely compellinghuman relationships. The characterisation is excellent and the plot grips you Guadalupe Nettel writes intelligently and won't let go. So, what's the problem? Wellprecisely, the problem is Chrissie, the main character. When we first meet her she's just eight years old, small for her age and she readily tells stories structured by a wisdom that appears to want to teach us that she's just killed someone - a two-year-old boy. She's completely cold something about what she's done with her main memory being that whilst she was killing - suffocating - her hands seized upthe world. There's a clue that Chrissie isn't completely responsible for her actions a little later in the book: when will Steven come back, she wonders? Hasn't he been dead for long enough?|isbn=1804271470
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Catherine Steadman0008551375|title=The Disappearing ActWhen Shadows Fall (D S Max Craigie)|author=Neil Lancaster
|rating=4.5
|genre=ThrillersCrime|summary= British actress Mia Eliot is on Leanne Wilson's body was found at the cusp bottom of success. Great success. If a Scottish mountain, seemingly the rumours are true, award season is going to treat her well, acknowledging her for her latest, critically acclaimed productionresult of a tragic accident. She's going places but d looked sohappy, unfortunatelytoo, is when she posted her partnerintentions on Facebook. And the places he's going take him towards lies Her friends were relieved as she was just out of an unpleasant relationship, deceit and a pretty young thing in the form of his new co-starbut it looked like she was living her best life now. It's a good time for Mia to escape, and pilot season Then it emerged that five other women had died in LA provides just the excuse.|isbn=1471189783}}{{Frontpage|author= Christophe Medler|title=Madrigal: A Closely Guarded Secret|rating=4|genre=Historical Fiction|summary= Set against the backdrop of the English Civil War, a secret plan (code-named Madrigal) is discovered by Sir Robert Douse similar circumstances in the summer of 1642last year. As a loyal servant of the King All were experienced climbers, properly equipped for what they were doing and Head sensible people. None of the Secret Service, it is Robert's duty what a stupid thing to uncover the details of the plan and follow the clues to uncover one of the most guarded secrets in history—especially since the plot could affect the Kingdo' explanations applied.|isbn=B095HY8SXQ}}{{Frontpage|author=Tasha Suri|title=The Jasmine Throne|rating=4|genre=Fantasy|summary= On the night of her sacred burning, Princess Malini defies her brother and refuses to step on to the pyre. She is immediately sent to be imprisoned on the Hirana They were all alone when they died: an ancient temple that was once filled with a community of people who got powers from the mysterious deathless waters. But now the temple DS Max Craigie is nothing more than an overgrown, decaying ruin. One day, Malini witnesses certain there's a girl kill someone with magic. Instead of reporting her for such a gruesome crime, Malini claims that the girl saved her from an attacker and begs for killer on the girl to become her own personal maidservantloose.|isbn=0356515648
}}
