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==The Best New Books==
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{{Frontpage
|author=Erling KaggePaul B Preciado|title=Walking: One Step At A TimeDysphoria Mundi|rating=4.5|genre= LifestylePolitics and Society|summary= Those who have read my reviews before will know that how much I loved a book ''It is evidenced by the number of pages with corners turned, so let me start this one with an apology never too late to embrace the Norfolk Library Service: sorry! I forgot it was your book not mine. In my defence, I will say that as a reader revolutionary optimism of this type of book there is something connective about noting where prior readers were inspired (provided it is subtle – Ichildhood''ll allow creased corners, but not scribbles – for the latter we must buy our own copy – which I am about to do as soon as I have finished telling you why).
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{{Frontpage
|author=Ian Mark and Louis GhibaultSamantha Harvey|title=Monster Hunting For BeginnersOrbital
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersGeneral Fiction|summary=Meet Jack. Now Jack knows very little about being fearless and nimble and quickIn 2024, Samantha Harvey won the Booker Prize for he's 'Orbital'', a compact yet profound work that unfolds over a slight boy, and although he wants for danger and peril and interesting things his dad refuses to let him out single day in the lives of a group of his sightastronauts aboard the International Space Station. That's because JackThrough a narrative lens that mirrors the astronauts's mother knew all about monstersorbital perspective, and look what happened Harvey invites readers to her – she diedsee our planet in a wholly new light. Luckily or unluckily then, depending on your point of view, |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 giant ogre will threaten train journey with his aunt when Jackcompanion Django. Where they's father also goes AWOLre going and what the purpose of this journey is, Jack will fluke is uncertain. Django found the ogretickets 's death, a dwarfish wizard-type will make him an apprentice monster hunter, and he'll be given a book that tells him all he needs to know about on the perils he always wanted closer contact with. The book's name? ''Monster Hunting for Beginnersfloor somewhere''and has persuaded our narrator to accompany him.Why not? Not much else is clear either - but we are probably in the past as the pair travel to the station by coach and the train is a steam locomotive..|isbn=0755501942
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Keith Gray0008551324|title=The ClimbersDevil You Know (D S Max Craigie)|author=Neil Lancaster|rating=4.5|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=Sully is It's unusual for anyone from the best tree climber in Hardie family to approach the villagepolice. He Neither side likes or has what's known amongst any respect for the kids as 'reach'other. But what happens when a new kid shows up Davie Hardie is struggling in town? A new kid, called Nottingham, who clambers up some prison and he's prepared to tell the police where the body of the hardest trees with ease? Suddenly Sully a missing person is worried that his status is being threatened, buried and not only thatwho was responsible for her death. This person, that his chance to name the finalhe promises, unnamed is someone big tree in and it will be worth the park by being the first police doing what he wants. And what he wants is to conquer it, might be snatched from transferred to an open prison to serve the remainder of his handssentence and to get an early parole date. How can Sully stop Nottingham Not much to ask, is it? And will it cost him his best friend, or maybe The new Deputy Police Constable doesn't think so and she's even all of his friends, prepared to do so?|isbn=1781129991the other thing that Hardie demanded - make certain that DS Max Craigie and anyone who works with him is kept well away from what's happening.
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{{Frontpage
|author=Emma CarrollJon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |title=The Week at World's EndVaim
|rating=4
|genre=Confident ReadersLiterary Fiction|summary=First, the title. We'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 over the roadAll was strange''.. But we could also be at World's End, because something taking a great chunk of the fun away is the fact that the Cuban Missile Crisis is kicking off. The Soviet boats are getting blockaded as America tries to reduce This haunting phrase encapsulates the risk pervading sense of nuclear missiles offshore, and not much else is able to make the news. That said, Vie has news of her own – Anna, a secretive young woman hiding in their coal shed. Anna has, otherworldliness which permeates this story set in no short timeVaim, taken a strong interest fictional fishing village in the American airforce base behind the Close, said she'd locate something she wanted Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for Jatgeir and leaveEline, failed to leave, and implied her life was at risk. But surely this bit two of intrigue has got nothing to do with what the Cold War is doing miles away?protagonists caught in its melancholic current.|isbn=05713644381804271829
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Kiran Millwood Hargrave and Tom de Freston1035043092|title=Julia and the SharkThe Killing Stones (Jimmy Perez)|author=Ann Cleeves|rating=45|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=JuliaI can't have been the only person who was sad when Inspector Jimmy Perez [[Wild Fire (Shetland, our pre-teen heroineBook 8) by Ann Cleeves|left Shetland]] to start a new life on Orkney. It's been seven years since we heard from him, has been packed off but he's now living with her parents Willow Reeves and their cat from the family home in SW England to be lighthousekeepers for a summeryoung son, James, as well as Cassie, in the far NE daughter of the Scottish islandshis former partner. Here Willow's also his boss, and she ''should'' be Vikingson maternity leave, that kind but when the body of Scottish island. Dad is going to be automating the lanterna popular islander, Archie Stout, which is his specialist thingfound, while mum will be leaving her career in algae behind to hunt the elusive Greenland shark. And Julia, wellaftermath of a storm, she will be homesick and alone – until she suddenly finds company can't resist getting involved. He'd been battered about the head with a Neolithic stone - one nightof a pair - which had been stolen from a museum.|isbn=1510107789
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{{Frontpage
|author=Freya SampsonThea Lenarduzzi|title=The Last LibraryTower|rating=45|genre=General Literary 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 ''How unctuous are the thought fats of the incoming cardigan-wearinganother's life, hair how dizzying their sugars in a bunour bloodstream''. In this compelling novel, cat-owningThea Lenarduzzi assumes the identity of T, glasses on a chain stereotypes! In the protagonist of this tale. Just as T's storyis being told, the main character, June, does put her hair in story of a bun, and she does own a cat (called Alan Bennett)second protagonist is unveiled: Annie, and she has barely any friends and spends her evenings eating the same Chinese takeaway meal once daughter of a week whilst reading books alone! But I didn't immediately throw the book out of the window, because I found I was interested wealthy family in June, and why she lived as she did. Her mum used to be a librarian at the village library19th century, but when she got sick, June gave up on going to University and stayed at home to take care who died of her mum, as well as taking on tuberculosis after being locked in a job as library assistant at the local library. And even though her mum sadly died some years agotower, she is still working there, still eating her mumcaptures T's favourite takeaway meal, and still reading her mumimagination. Annie's old booksfate is, above all, an enticing story to T. June It is stucka story which she consumes avariciously, but little does she knowboth in a quest for truth and knowledge, everything and in her life is about the changeservice of myth, fable and fantasy. |isbn=183877369X1804271799
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0008370982Claire-Louise Bennett|title=Rock Paper Scissors|author=Alice FeeneyBig Kiss, Bye-Bye
|rating=4.5
|genre=ThrillersLiterary Fiction|summary=Amelia Wright Everything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, is forty-two steeped in anguish and it was the staff raffle at Battersea Dogs Home that gave her distortion. Even a weekend away in kiss, usually a converted chapel in Scotlandsymbol of intimacy and closeness, becomes evidence of love lost. Her husbandWhen the narrator cries out internally, Adam, isn't so keen on the idea. Like Amelia'come over here and kiss me, he knows that their marriage has been under strain: he's a screenwriter and he's never shy of making it clear to Amelia that he'd prefer to spend time with the novels he's hoping is less an invitation than a desperate attempt to adapt than with confirm heremotional numbness. Amelia's annoyed that he never enquires about how her day has been - and working with the dogs, many The imagined recipient of whom have been abused, this plea is never easy. Still - she's won the weekend awayXavier, even if it does mean driving for eight hours in her 1978 Morris Minor Traveller with Adam beside her in the passenger seat ex- and then doing the same thing partner, a ghost she conjures to come back a couple of days latertest her detachment.|isbn=1804271934
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Doug Johnstone0008405026|title=The Great SilenceA Stranger in the Family (Maeve Kerrigan 11)|author=Jane Casey|rating=45
|genre=Crime
|summary=For those whoIt's sixteen years since nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her bed one summer night. She was never found and the investigation ground to a halt. Now, like meher mother, Helena, haven't come across the Skelfs beforeand her father are dead in their bed. Initially, I'll risk it looks like a quick synopsis of whostraightforward murder/suicide but there's who – although Johnstone does a good job something about the positioning of bringing the backstory in without being heavy handed about itbodies that makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and her boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. Skelf isn't some fantastic creature, though it sounds What looked as though it ought was going to be, it an open-and-shut case is merely the surname of now a family of undertakerscomplex double murder. Undertakers and private investigators. Dorothy Kerrigan is convinced that the matriarch – Californian by birth and instinct, she married a scot and ended up helping to run the Edinburgh undertaking firm that had been explanation lies in the family for generations. Recently widowed and now involved with a black Swedish police officer. Swedish by nationality. Scottish police. Daughter JennyRosalie's disappearance: others (such as Derwent's boss, 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 the academic staff next termUna Burt) are less convinced.|isbn=1913193837
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1901514978Annie Ernaux and Alison L. Strayer (translator)|title=There's a Problem With Dad|author=Carlos AlbaThe Other Girl|rating=4.5|genre=General FictionAutobiography|summary=Life is different for George Lovelace and he can't 'We were born from the same body. I've never really understand whywanted to think about this. He'' Ernaux's work is always done everything he ought to: steady workervery candid and her tone transparent, husband and father - and a father who was always there for school plays and sports daysbut this raw epistolary text must be one of the most intimate accounts I've read. So why is he never quite Ernaux writes in tune with those around him? Why does he upset people? Why is someone with such a ''good'' mind unable direct address to progress at work or to relate to his colleagues? her sister, however, this letter will never reach her. Why does he make so many breath-taking gaffes? ItBecause Annie Ernaux's almost become a cliche these days to suggest that someone who is sister died of diphtheria at 6 years old, a little different is 'on few months before the spectrum'vaccine was made compulsory in France, but George Lovelace has all and 2 years before the author was even born. The large and instant void created by the symptoms jarring concept of Aspergerwriting to an imaginary recipient emphasises Ernaux's Syndrome: high-functioning autismprocess of reckoning with this giant absence in her life, an absence that she has always felt but often denied.|isbn=1804271845
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{{Frontpage
|author=Louise CandlishMaxim Gorky and Bryan Karetnyk (translator)|title=The HeightsReminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev|rating=43.5|genre=ThrillersBiography|summary=Ellen doesn't expect to see Kieran Biographies are often seen as the form of life-writing which offers less colour; it can be seen as more objective and less personal. I think that day. She's on siteGorky completely rejects this perspective, visiting and offers a client for a lighting consultation when she spies him in a building across vibrant, subjective yet informed portrait of three of his literary contemporaries. In the way. There are lots first section of thingsthis book, lots Tolstoy complains to his friend Gorky that: ''you write not of peoplereal life as it is, but of what you might yourself imagine it to be. Whom would it help to know how I see when you look out across Londonthis tower, but this isn't one Ellen expected that day sea, or in fact any other daythat Tartar - why should it interest anyone? Of what use is it?''. Why? Because Kieran has been dead for over two yearsWell, and Ellen knows this for Maxim Gorky shows exactly what can be gained from a factsubjective account, because she had a hand giving us access to how he saw Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev in his murdersuch privileged detail that one almost feels unworthy of it.|isbn=14711834831804271977
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=00084217141529077745|title=Mrs MarchThe Dark Wives (D I Vera Stanhope)|author=Virginia FeitoAnn Cleeves
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary FictionCrime|summary=The problem began just after A man walking his dog in the early morning discovered the publication body of George March's most successful novel to datea man in the park near Rosebank, a care home for troubled teens. Everyone but Mrs March (we know her first name only on The dead man was Josh - one of the last page) seemed care workers who was due to either be reading it or work a shift the night before but who had already done sonever turned up. Every day Mrs March went D I Vera Stanhope is called in to investigate the local patisserie to buy olive bread murder - but on her only clue is the disappearance of one of the residents, fourteen-year-old Chloe Spencer. Some people believe that particular morning, Patricia asked, as she Chloe was wrapping responsible for the bread, ''death but isn't Vera thinks this is unlikely as the first time hegirl's based a character on you?'' She mentioned diary makes it clear that Johanna, the principal character had 'her mannerisms''she adored Josh. Perhaps this would not have mattered, except for the fact She knows that Johanna is the whore of Nantes - ''a weak, plain, detestable, pathetic, unloved, unloveable wretchshe has to find Chloe to discover what happened to Josh.''
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=John BoyneB0FK5LHKD9|title=The Echo ChamberColour of Memory|author=Christopher Bowden|rating=54
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Meet George Cleverley. He is self-defined as "one of the few television personalities over the age of fifty without a criminal record". He starts this book a bit worried when his mistress tells him sheIt's carrying his child, but then his author wife is getting her kicks with the Ukrainian partner "Strictly Come Dancing" paired her with. They have been three children, who are years since we last reviewed a sad-sack with absolutely no social skills whatsoeverbook by favourite regular Christopher Bowden, so we were very glad to see a girl who hangs around with a virtue-signallingnew novel arrive here at Bookbag Towers. Like all Bowden's stories, keyboard warrior "wokester" who wants to save the worldthere's homeless with out-of-date food, and a fit young lad doing mystery at the gay hustle thingheart of ''The Colour of Money''. Add We like this running theme in an author's work - take a few other characters – therapists, lawyers, random transgender types – that all have two very mystery but give it different connections to his life, flavour and you have something that suggests an almost farcical approach to the modern world. What suggests the farcical approach even more, however, is the fact this is bloody funnyatmosphere each time.|isbn=0857526219
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{{Frontpage
|author=Olga Tokarczuk|title=House of Day, House of Night|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''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 Night'', somewhat 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.|isbn=02419890941804271918}}{{Frontpage|isbn=henleyA|title=The Perfect LifeUltimate Obsession|author=Nuala EllwoodDai Henley
|rating=4
|genre=ThrillersCrime|summary=In August 2018 we meet Ex-DCI Andy Flood has been a young woman called Imogen Private Investigator for some time now, and shehe should be doing quite well financially. Unfortunately, his daughter's viewing defence against a house in Goring-on-Thames and telling the estate agent about her three childrenmurder charge drained his savings. His wife, LavenderLaura, Freddie and Barclay. The boys are a bit of a handful which is why shehas been trying to persuade him to retire - ''s making this trip maybe go travelling or go on her owncruises. The house would be perfect for them. ItThat's the same month but now wewhat 'ordinary people do're in Wimbledon and we encounter the same young woman, only this time she's job hunting and living in her sister, Georgie's, spare room, where she He's not been since she broke entirely up with her boyfriendfront about the state of their savings. When Jack Durban tries to persuade him to take his case, Connorit's the 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=Darren Shan1836284683|title=Archibald Lox and the Slides of Bon Repell: Archibald Lox series, Volume 2, book 2 of 3The Big Happy|author=David Chadwick
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersDystopian Fiction|summary=So. Having done the impossible and unpicked the lock Well! This is a murder mystery unlike any other! I do love it when I open a book, it's nothing like I expected it to the Forgotten Cryptbe, from which the Departed communicate and it takes me on a wild ride. And that is just what happened with the Merge, Archie now has ''gropThe Big Happy'' to think about. But before that, soirees. Soirees! Archie, much to Inez's amusement, doesnI don't even know what one want to ruin a similar experience for any of those is. But he manages you reading but I'll have to come through at least set the fancy party unscathedscene. Once that's done, even after an uncomfortable encounter with Kurtis, whose fledgling romance with Inez was crushed in the first volume of I think you should simply experience this serieswonderfully original story for yourself. |isbn=B093J9TF73
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=B07GZ81J7CSally Rooney|title=When Fred the Snake Got Squished and Mended|author=Peter CottonIntermezzo
|rating=4.5
|genre=For SharingGeneral Fiction |summary=Meet Fred. Well, actually, you're going to be meeting Fred-Fred for reasons which will become all too obvious very quickly. But I'm getting ahead Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard of life and is something of myself: I'd better tell you a bit more about Fredgrandmaster at putting it into words. Fred Her dialogue is a snake gripping and even those of us who have a phobia about snakes are going to warm to himso brilliantly frustrating, as her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. He arrived as a present in a box with holes so that he could breathe and immediately became part of Among the familymany relationships woven into this story, the central one for readers to unravel is the extent that they would take Fred out fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. Ivan, a socially awkward chess prodigy, contrasts sharply with them when they went out for his older brother Peter, a walksuccessful lawyer living in Dublin. And that was where Following their father's passing after a long battle with cancer, the problem started. Fred didnbrothers't have any road sense. Or brakesalready strained relationship faces new trials.|isbn=0571365469
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn= Justine Avery and Naday Meldova1036916375|title= Everybody Pees! (Everybody Potties!)Just a Liverpool Lad|author=Peter McArdle
|rating=4
|genre=For SharingAutobiography|summary= Can potty training ever be joyous? It often isn't'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 any parent will tell youthe family history of a sea-going family, with the docks dominating lives. Other stories blend seamlessly into the what-might-have-been. But really, why shouldn It't it be? We all have s a book to settle into and allow your mind to learn about our bodily functions just as we have roam across your childhood memories, to learn about everything else think of simpler times when we are smalllife seemed less constrained, despite the blitz that was a constant factor in McArdle's early years. Why shouldn I't potty training be as much fun as, say, learning about why the sun d never heard of parachute mines before - but they were almost soundless and could appear after the moon take turns in the sky? |isbn= B098BJZYHHall-clear was sounded.
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=17876344931836285493|title=All Her FaultThe Double Life of a Wheelchair User|author=Andrea MaraRob Keeley|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersConfident Readers|summary=It had seemed like one Will is a keen player of those serendipitous events which sometimes happen. Marissa Irvine had been hoping that the opportunity would arise for her sonvideo games, Miloa conscientious student, to go on a play dateslightly annoying brother and a supportive friend. She was concerned that But most of all, he didn't have any friends is an aspiring writer. English is his favourite lesson at his new school, Marlowe Park, and one at which he excels. Milo would go home from Kerryglen National School in an affluent Dublin suburb with This hasn't gone unnoticed by his classmate Jacob - headteacher, Mrs Howarth, and she has suggested to Will and Marissa would pick him up from 14 Tudor Grove his mum that he spends a couple of afternoons a little later. What could be better? Only, when Marissa arrived week at the house, expecting to meet Jacob's mothera different school, JennyStation Road, the door was answered by Esther, who didn't know Jenny or Jacob. The phone number she'd been given for Jenny was not recognised. Milo had disappeared. And so had Jenny's nannywhere his ability might be better extended.
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Claire North1009473085|title=Notes from the Burning AgeThe Conservative Effect 2010 - 2024|author=Anthony Seldon and Tom Egerton (Editors)|rating=45|genre=Science FictionPolitics and Society|summary=At its core Sometimes it's simpler to explain a book by describing what it ''isn'Notes From the Burning Aget'' by Claire North is a spy thriller, with as many double crosses, interrogations and night time escapes as Le Carre or Flemingthat applies to ''The Conservative Effect: 2010-2024 - 14 Wasted Years?''. However If you're looking for an easy read which will deliver the inside story about what ''really'' happened on certain occasions, as with then this isn't the best novelsbook for you. If that's what you're looking for, it wears many masks and its most affecting one is that of a new and timely genreI don't think Anthony Seldon's book, cli-fi{{amazonurl|isbn=B0BH7SKG2S|title=Johnson at 10}}, or climate change fictioncan be bettered for those tumultuous years. North It's novel tells of a world devastated by climate change where humans have been forced compelling read and should be compulsory for anyone who thinks Johnson should return to start anew politics. ''The Conservative Effect'' is an entirely different beast. It's the seventh book in a series which looks at the impact a government has made and live alongside nature without any co-editor Sir Anthony Seldon regards this as the most important. This book follows the well-established format: a series of experts from various fields review the modern and corrupting "luxuries" (read: fossil fuels, weapons state of mass destruction, intensive farming). There is a growing unhappiness with this limiting world, and one group, the Brotherhoodnation when the coalition took over in 2010, aims to master these processes no matter the cost to changes that occurred and the Earthsituation in 2024.|isbn=0356514757
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{{Frontpage
|author=Eva Bjorg Aegisdottir and Victoria Cribb (translator)Jenny Valentine|title=Girls Who LieUs in the Before and After|rating=35|genre=ThrillersTeens|summary=You might be forgiven for thinking Elk and Mab are best friends, or more than that all the dark corners of Iceland have featured even, their friendship is a once in their noirish thrillers and crime books before nowa lifetime connection. You think, seeing They meet as children one day on the map that wea trip out but unfortunately they don're set in Akranes, and finding itt get each other's only twenty kilometres from the capital city, that this author is clutching contact details at the few final straws lefttime. However just because the book aims for the usual small-town feel, it's not just in Akranes that our interests lie. Six months ago a woman failed to turn up for her date eveningBut then chance brings them back together, and was never seen againthey are inseparable. This left a teenaged girl not at all disappointed that she could now live permanently with the couple who had given her foster care before her mother had asked for the girl back Something has happened though, something terrible and a couple of delighted adopters. 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 woman's car was found miles away in a second placetragic, and nowthey must work through their grief, after six monthsand their friendship, the body has been discovered, in a third, even more remote placetogether. Meanwhile, this narrative is interrupted by a confessional monologue from a mother who found herself with heavy post-natal depression, and very little maternal feeling in her body. Is the assumption that is so easy for the reader to make the right one?|isbn=191319373X1471196585
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=B0925KS87N1787333175|title=Dead ManYou Don's Grave (DS Max Craigie)t Have to be Mad to Work Here|author=Neil LancasterBenji Waterhouse|rating=45|genre=CrimePopular Science|summary=Tam Hardie had been determined I was tempted to find the grave - and it took some finding - in an overgrown old cemetery. It was a strange thing for Scotlandread ''You Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here'' after enjoying Adam Kay's premier criminal first book {{amazonurl|isbn=1509858636|title=This is Going to doHurt}}, but Tam was getting old a glorious mixture of insight into the workings of the NHS, humour and there were things he wanted to doautobiography. Only, his family didn''You Don't hear from him again after heHave to be Mad...'d said that he'd found promised the grave - same elements but moved from physical problems to mental illness and the one which said that it shouldn't be opened - and his three sons began to worrywork of a psychiatrist. Tam Junior, Frankie and Dave wouldn't normally go I did wonder whether it was acceptable to be looking for humour in this setting but the police but they weren't certain where their father had been laughter is directed at a situation rather than a person and it is always delivered with empathy and they were worriedunderstanding.
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{{Frontpage
|author=Emily CritchleyMariana Enriquez|title=The Tiny Gestures of Small FlowersA Sunny Place for Shady People|rating=35|genre=General FictionShort Stories|summary= The Tiny Gestures of Small Flowers had all the hallmarks of something good. I was intrigued Mariana Enriquez writes horror that is disturbingly real, achieving this uncanny familiarity by the plot, liked the design basing her paranormal plots on gritty realities: her settings include an abandoned field full of the bookdisused refrigerators due to an urban planning mishap, an overcrowded homeless shelter and thought the author's work sounded interestinga crime-ridden neighbourhood where safety meetings are routine - all within Argentina. From The circumstances of her characters are so plausible that the outset it all looked incredibly promisingsupernatural or otherworldly horror which seeps into these spaces adopts a similarly tangible texture. So what on earth went wrong here?|isbn= 19114270911803511230}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Sarah Langan1529934753|title=Good NeighboursThe Protest|author=Rob Rinder
|rating=4.5
|genre=ThrillersCrime|summary= If you're of For a certain vintagelittle while, itlooked as though Sir Max Bruce, the country's hard most famous living artist, was not going to read show up for the words ''Good Neighbours'' without adding a sing-song ''that's when Good Neighbours…become…good friends''opening of his retrospective at the Royal Academy. Maple Street is no Ramsay StreetStill, thoughhe arrived in the nick of time, Arlo complete with his two wives and Gertie live a world apart from the Melbourne suburbs. They're six children, one of 18 households on the crescentwhom filmed what happened. Being an influencer, you tend to do things like that, quite new arrivals having moved in but it was fortunate that there was a year earlierrecord of the protest. They're not quite like all Lexi Williams, an intern at the other families (he's an ex rockerRA, she's grabbed a spray can of blue paint from under a former beauty queen) but they've made some friends chair and their kids have settled proceeded to spray Bruce inthe face, and itwhilst shouting 's all going ok. Until it isn't. One hot, clammy, sticky, sweaty summer, a sinkhole opens up in Stop the park across the wayWar''. Itseemed to be part of an ongoing series of 'blue-face's a revolting mess of dirt and chaosattacks, but for the residents of Maple Streetthis was different. The can had been laced with cyanide, the worst is yet to comeand Sir Max Bruce was dead.|isbn=1789098211
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{{Frontpage
|author=Lisa ThompsonAriel Saramandi|title=The Small ThingsPortrait of an Island on Fire|rating=5|genre=Confident Readers|summary=Although Anna has friends at school, she feels like she never really fits in4. Her family don't have enough money to let her do after school activities, and so she feels like her life at home is boring in comparison to theirs. When a new girl joins her class, Anna is asked to partner her, but things are complicated because the new girl, Ellie, 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 through a robot, and is she even interesting enough to be a good friend to Ellie?|isbn=1781129649}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0008350388|title=We Need to Talk About Money|author=Otegha Uwagba|rating=5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=''To be a dark-skinned Black woman is In this powerful collection of essays, Saramandi seeks to be seen as less desirableintradermally dissect the sociopolitical fabric of Mauritius, less hireable, less intelligent tunneling deep into the wounds left by colonialism and ultimately less valuable than my light-skinned counterparts..slavery to expose how these legacies still shape modern life.Saramandi describes the country at one stage as '' rotting''We Need to Talk About Money'' by Otegha Uwagba ''0.7% of English Literature GCSE students in England study , a book blunt yet apt metaphor for the systemic decay brought about by a writer the malignant forces of colour while only 7% study a book by a woman.'' ''The Bookseller'' 29 June 2021 Otegha Uwagba came to the UK from Kenya when she was five years old. Her sisters were seven and nine. It was her mother who came firstracism, with her father joining them later. The family was hard-workingpatriarchy, principled environmental degradation and determined that their children would have the best education possiblegovernmental dysfunction. There was always a painful awareness of money although Each essay in this did not translate into collection serves as a shortage kind of anything: it was simply carefully harvested. When Otegha was ten diagnostic, charting the various diseases afflicting the family acquired a car. For Otegha, education meant a scholarship to a private school in London and then a place at New College, Oxfordisland state.|isbn=1804271616
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1787631869Pekka Harju-Autti|title=The Rising Tide|author=Sam LloydLoveVortex and the Drakor's Curse
|rating=4
|genre=ThrillersFantasy|summary=Lucy LockeIt's early life hadn't been easy but she'd built the eighteenth century, a good time of discovery and decent life Britain is expanding its foreign trade. Captain Julius Hawthorne, an experienced Scottish sea captain, is sent to the Andaman Islands in the aftermathhis endeavour. She's now married to DanielAlong with his son, who co-owns Locke-Povey Marine on Penleith BeachPeter, and their cat, Michi, they live at Wild Ridge set off on Mortis Point with Billie, Lucy's daughter and Fin, the child she had with Daniela perilous voyage to these faraway lands. They have financial difficulties, some caused by Nick Povey, Daniel's partner The islands are beautiful and so-called best friend. Nick stunning in their scenery and Daniel have a history together from the time they both spent in a children's home but itislanders's difficult to think that Nick has Daniel's best interests at heartleader, particularly where Lucy, or moneyAarav, is concernedkeen to establish good relations.|isbn=B0DS1VGHH3
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{{Frontpage
|author=Hannah PeckHelene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)|title=Kate on the CaseLili is Crying|rating=34.5|genre=Confident ReadersLiterary Fiction|summary=Meet Kate, although I got the impression she'd rather be a Catherine – and one specific Catherine at that. For Catherine Rodriguez is Kate's idol, and the author of our heroine's favourite possession, ''The Special Correspondent Manual''. Armed with a plucky father, that book, and her talking mouse called Rupert, she is all equipped to manage a train ride to the Arctic, to see her scientist mother for the first time First published in 1953 in yonks. HoweverFrench, this novel is a train ride with a difference, for on board is a greedy-seeming harridan timeless text which wrenches the hearts of its readers just as Bessette wrenches words and her cat, a thief – and two glowing eyes, shining sentences from their proper position on the darkness in a blink-page and-you'll-miss-positions them style. It's definitely a case for a new young investigative journalist.elsewhere, disjointed, truncated.Like the lives of her characters, they are often left tragically incomplete.|isbn=184812970X1804271675
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{{Frontpage
|author=Darren ShanTom Percival|title=Archibald Lox and the Forgotten Crypt: Archibald Lox series, Volume 2, book 1 of 3The Wrong Shoes|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=The second trilogy in ShanWill's life is difficult, in a multitude of ways. He is bullied because he has 'the wrong shoes'Merge, he has the wrong shoes because his dad can't work and doesn' saga opens with our hero, Archie, back in London in t have enough money for even the world most basic of the Born. It's not been easythings like food, explaining to and his foster parents where dad can't work because he's beenlost his job at the college, or slipping back was working a cash-in-hand job on a building site and had an accident. Throw into ordinary life that mix the fact that his mum and forgetting about Inez dad are separated, and his other friends Will's life seems bleak in the Mergeevery direction. And yet, but Archie he still has done his best...a tiny amount of hope. well He is good at art, except for visiting veteran locksmith Winston in Big Ben's clock tower and except for fiddling with clings to the moments of joy when he is drawing, that sneaky master lock in Seven Dials every time he can sneak awayfeel like a light at the end of a long, dark tunnel.|isbn=B093H8DPQZ1398527122
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0571365884Sylvie Cathrall|title=My Mess is a Bit of Life: Adventures in Anxiety|author=Georgia PritchettA Letter to the Luminous Deep|rating=45|genre=AutobiographyScience Fiction|summary=Georgia Pritchett has always been anxious, even as a child. She would worry about whether the monsters under the bed were comfortable: it was the sort of life where if she had nothing to worry about she would become anxious but such occasions were There are few and far between. On greater joys than a visit book which lives up to a therapist, as an adult, when she was completely unable to speak about what was wrong with her it was suggested that she should write it down and ''My Mess compelling premise. And this is a Bit one of a Life: Adventures in Anxiety'' is the result - or so we are given to believethem.|isbn= 0356522776
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Alex Cotter1786482126|title=The House on the Edge|rating=4|genre=Confident Readers|summary=Faith's family home is teetering on the edge of a cliff, literally. Is that crack in the garden getting bigger? Is the house starting to slope a little? And as the house seems to be falling apart, so is Faith's family. Her dad has disappeared, and her mum is struggling to cope, barely leaving her bed. So that leaves Faith in charge, taking care of her little brother Noah, taking care of her mum, feeding everyone, getting Noah to school, and avoiding awkward questions from interfering teachers. Is her little brother okay? Why is he obsessed with what he claims 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 to get funding for the house? She carries the weight of all these worries on her constantly, and she doesn't know how much longer the cliff will hold together, or how long she can keep on keeping on.|isbn=1788008626}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0008269041|title=Risk of HarmJanus 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 intentions on Facebook. Her friends were relieved as she was just out of an unpleasant relationship, but it looked like she was living her partnerbest life now. And Then it emerged that five other women had died in similar circumstances in the places he's going take him towards lieslast year. All were experienced climbers, deceit properly equipped for what they were doing and sensible people. None of the 'what a pretty young stupid thing in the form of his new co-starto do' explanations applied. It They were all alone when they died: DS Max Craigie is certain there's a good time for Mia to escape, and pilot season in LA provides just killer on the excuseloose.|isbn=1471189783
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