134,727
edits
Changes
no edit summary
There are currently '''{{PAGESINCATEGORY: Reviews}}''' [[:Category:Reviews|reviews]] at TheBookbag.
Want to find out learn more [[About Us|about us]]? __NOTOC__
==The Best New Books==
'''Read [[:Category:Features|the latest features]].'''
{{Frontpage
|author=Tori BovalinoPaul B Preciado|title=The Devil Makes ThreeDysphoria Mundi
|rating=4.5
|genre=TeensPolitics and Society|summary= Working all summer in her boarding school's library 'It is never too late to embrace the last thing Tess Matheson wants revolutionary optimism of childhood'' Through this hybrid text, consisting of arias, letters, essays and autofiction, Preciado expresses his own hybrid self, and brings forth a new sensorium as an offering to do — especially when she gets the new generation, a request for over new feeling mechanism in which detachment is not considered a hundred books that she has to deliver herselfsign of political apathy. What makes Rather, it worse is the man who requested proportional, valid response to ''the books: Mr Birch. The boarding school's headmasterepistemological and political crack we are living through, and a man Tess hatesthe tension between emancipatory forces and conservative resistances that characterize our present'' which Preciado calls ''dysphoria mundi''. As a petty act The whole text is framed against the backdrop of revenge for making her find and deliver such a large requestthe Covid-19 pandemic as that which has catalysed this revolution, Tess sticks post-it notes when dysphoria began to emerge on each of the booksa global scale, scribbled with the ugliest insults she can think of. Theyor as ''pangea covidica''re never meant to reach him, of course. Her plan is to get her anger out like Rather than taking thisextreme dysphoria as a sign of weakness, and then take them all off before delivering them. No harm done… Or it would beor mistaking detachment or withdrawal for political paralysis, if someone hadnPreciado urges his readers to ''use dysphoria as your revolutionary platform''t delivered them for her.|isbn=17890981301804271454
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor= B09BG8V3Q6Samantha Harvey|title= Who Needs Nappies? Not Me! (Everybody Potties!)|author= Justine Avery and Seema AmjadOrbital
|rating=4.5
|genre=For SharingGeneral Fiction|summary= In 2024, Samantha Harvey won the Booker Prize for ''Who Needs Nappies? Not Me!Orbital'' is the latest release , a compact yet profound work that unfolds over a single day in the ''Everybody Potties!'' series from Justine Avery. This series lives of a group of fun picture books aims to take astronauts aboard the pain out of potty training children and replace it with some funInternational Space Station. ItThrough a narrative lens that mirrors the astronauts's orbital perspective, Harvey invites readers to see our planet in a worthy aim, as any frustrated parent will tell you. wholly new light.|isbn=1529922933
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B098FFFBH9295967572X|title=SnowcubPale Pieces|author=Graham FulbrightG M Stevens|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Fourteen-year-old Rachel Our unnamed narrator is her schoolabout to begin a train journey with his companion Django. Where they's animal rights project leader re going and she what the purpose of this journey is, is uncertain. Django found the tickets ''on the floor somewhere'' and her friend has persuaded our narrator to accompany him. Why not? Not much else is clear either - but we are producing a competition entry probably in the past as the pair travel to highlight the way in which human beings exploit the animal world. She gets a great deal of support from her family: father Pip Harrison, a lecturer at Imperial College, London, mother Kate station by coach and her twin, Nick. Kate runs the family business, train is a toy shop called Cornucopia in Putney, which is where we'll meet Rachel's main (if unsuspected) source of information: five soft toyssteam locomotive.
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn= Angharad Walker0008551324|title= The Ash HouseDevil You Know (D S Max Craigie)|author=Neil Lancaster|rating= 4.5|genre= Confident ReadersCrime|summary= A new boy arrives at The Ash HouseIt's unusual for anyone from the Hardie family to approach the police. He doesn't know his name, Neither side likes or why he has any respect for the other. But Davie Hardie is there but struggling in prison and he is used 's prepared to tell the system, used to different places and different faces. He meets Dom who names him Sol and sets out to teach him police where the rules body of The Ash House. These rules centre on a variety of Nicenesses set out by the absent Headmastermissing person is buried and who was responsible for her death. All children must remember their Niceness This person, he promises, is someone big and complete their chores, working as a hive in it will be worth the smouldering shadows of The Ash Housepolice doing what he wants. But soon their easy peace And what he wants is shattered by to be transferred to an open prison to serve the arrival remainder of the Doctorhis sentence and to get an early parole date. By the end of the story Not much to ask, lives will be changed forever is it? The new Deputy Police Constable doesn't think so and The Ash House will never be she's even prepared to do the same againother thing that Hardie demanded - make certain that DS Max Craigie and anyone who works with him is kept well away from what's happening.|isbn=1912626977
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Yancey WilliamsJon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |title=Crosshairs of the DevilVaim|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Award-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is getting on in years and, despite his strenuous objections and thanks to his daughter, finds himself living - or imprisoned, from Eddie's point 'All was strange''... This haunting phrase encapsulates the pervading sense of view - otherworldliness which permeates this story set in room 315 of the Garden of Eden nursing homeVaim, with only a trusty nursing aide, Jenkins, for palatable company. Nothing is going to keep Eddie from his stock-fictional fishing village in-trade of writing though, so here, Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for his readersJatgeir and Eline, are his wanderings through his life's worktwo of the protagonists caught in its melancholic current.|isbn=09860316581804271829}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Philip Reeve1035043092|title=Utterly Dark and the Face of the DeepThe Killing Stones (Jimmy Perez)|author=Ann Cleeves
|rating=5
|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=In 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 word, richnew life on Orkney. There is certainly an abundance of riches in this story set on a peculiar island called Wildsea It's been seven years since we heard from him, British but way west, beyond the Scillies. There are troll people on it, and sea-witches, and legends of the Dark family that has to keep watch for magical islands he's now living with Willow Reeves and their monster approaching from even further westyoung son, where no ship dare sail. The current Darks are the WatcherJames, Andreweas well as Cassie, who has to keep notes the daughter of activity from the Hidden Lands, his brother Will who lives in London with too much science in former partner. Willow's also his head to worry about such local yokel superstitionsboss, and Andreweshe ''should's foundling daughter' be on maternity leave, who washed up out but when the body of a popular islander, Archie Stout, is found, in the sea one day eleven years agoaftermath of a storm, she can't resist getting involved. But when Andrewe Dark drowns himself, both his sullen brother and his curious ward are thrust into He'd been battered about the world head with a Neolithic stone - one of protecting their island, like it or nota pair - which had been stolen from a museum.|isbn=1788452372
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Erling KaggeThea Lenarduzzi|title=Walking: One Step At A TimeThe Tower
|rating=5
|genre= LifestyleLiterary Fiction|summary= Those who have read my reviews before will know that how much I loved a book is evidenced by the number of pages with corners turned, so let me start this one with an apology to ''How unctuous are the Norfolk Library Service: sorry! I forgot it was your book not mine. In my defence, I will say that as a reader fats of this type of book there is something connective about noting where prior readers were inspired (provided it is subtle – Ianother'll allow creased cornerss life, but not scribbles – for the latter we must buy how dizzying their sugars in our own copy – which I am about to do as soon as I have finished telling you why)bloodstream''.
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Ian Mark and Louis GhibaultClaire-Louise Bennett|title=Monster Hunting For BeginnersBig Kiss, Bye-Bye
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersLiterary Fiction|summary=Meet JackEverything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, is steeped in anguish and distortion. Now Jack knows very little about being fearless Even a kiss, usually a symbol of intimacy and nimble closeness, becomes evidence of love lost. When the narrator cries out internally, ''come over here and quickkiss me, for he's ' it is less an invitation than a slight boydesperate attempt to confirm her emotional numbness. The imagined recipient of this plea is Xavier, her ex-partner, and although he wants for danger and peril and interesting things his dad refuses a ghost she conjures to let him out of his sighttest her detachment. That's because Jack|isbn=1804271934}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0008405026|title=A Stranger in the Family (Maeve Kerrigan 11)|author=Jane Casey|rating=5|genre=Crime|summary=It's sixteen years since nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her bed one summer night. She was never found and the investigation ground to a halt. Now, her mother knew all about monsters, Helena, and look what happened to her – she diedfather are dead in their bed. Luckily or unluckily then, depending on your point of view Initially, it looks like a giant ogre will threaten his aunt when Jackstraightforward murder/suicide but there's father also goes AWOL, Jack will fluke something about the positioning of the ogre's death, a dwarfish wizardbodies that makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and her boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. What looked as though it was going to be an open-type will make him an apprentice monster hunter, and he'll be given -shut case is now a book complex double murder. Kerrigan is convinced that tells him all he needs to know about the perils he always wanted closer contact with. The bookexplanation lies in Rosalie's name? disappearance: others (such as Derwent''Monster Hunting for Beginners''..s boss, Una Burt) are less convinced.|isbn=0755501942
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Keith GrayAnnie Ernaux and Alison L. Strayer (translator)|title=The ClimbersOther Girl
|rating=4
|genre=Confident ReadersAutobiography|summary=Sully is ''We were born from the best tree climber in the villagesame body. I've never really wanted to think about this. He has what'' Ernaux's known amongst work is always very candid and her tone transparent, but this raw epistolary text must be one of the kids as 'reachmost intimate accounts I've read. But what happens when a new kid shows up Ernaux writes in town? A new kiddirect address to her sister, called Nottinghamhowever, who clambers up some this letter will never reach her. Why? Because Annie Ernaux's sister died of diphtheria at 6 years old, a few months before the hardest trees with ease? Suddenly Sully is worried that his status is being threatenedvaccine was made compulsory in France, and not only that, that his chance to name 2 years before the final, unnamed big tree in the park author was even born. The large and instant void created by being the first jarring concept of writing to conquer itan imaginary recipient emphasises Ernaux's process of reckoning with this giant absence in her life, might be snatched from his handsan absence that she has always felt but often denied. How can Sully stop Nottingham? And will it cost him his best friend, or maybe even all of his friends, to do so?|isbn=17811299911804271845
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Emma CarrollMaxim Gorky and Bryan Karetnyk (translator)|title=The Week at World's EndReminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev|rating=43.5|genre=Confident ReadersBiography|summary=First, Biographies are often seen as the title. We're in World's End Close, a mediocre set form of houses, where Stevie (Vie to her friends) finds fun only with the family dog life-writing which offers less colour; it can be seen as more objective and with the boy over the roadless personal. But we could also be at World's EndI think that Gorky completely rejects this perspective, because something taking and offers a great chunk vibrant, subjective yet informed portrait of the fun away is the fact that the Cuban Missile Crisis is kicking offthree of his literary contemporaries. The Soviet boats are getting blockaded as America tries to reduce In the risk first section of nuclear missiles offshorethis book, and Tolstoy complains to his friend Gorky that: ''you write not much else of real life as it is able , but of what you yourself imagine it to make the newsbe. That saidWhom would it help to know how I see this tower, Vie has news of her own – Annathat sea, a secretive young woman hiding in their coal shedor that Tartar - why should it interest anyone? Of what use is it?''. Anna hasWell, in no short time, taken Maxim Gorky shows exactly what can be gained from a strong interest in the American airforce base behind the Closesubjective account, said she'd locate something she wanted and leave, failed giving us access to leavehow he saw Tolstoy, Chekhov and implied her life was at riskAndreyev in such privileged detail that one almost feels unworthy of it. But surely this bit of intrigue has got nothing to do with what the Cold War is doing miles away?|isbn=05713644381804271977
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Kiran Millwood Hargrave and Tom de Freston1529077745|title=Julia and the SharkThe Dark Wives (D I Vera Stanhope)|author=Ann Cleeves|rating=4.5|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=Julia, our pre-teen heroine, has been packed off with her parents and their cat from A man walking his dog in the early morning discovered the family home in SW England to be lighthousekeepers for body of a summer, man in the far NE of the Scottish islandspark near Rosebank, a care home for troubled teens. Here be Vikings, that kind The dead man was Josh - one of Scottish islandthe care workers who was due to work a shift the night before but who had never turned up. Dad D I Vera Stanhope is going called in to be automating investigate the lantern, which murder - but her only clue is his specialist thingthe disappearance of one of the residents, while mum will be leaving her career in algae behind to hunt the elusive Greenland sharkfourteen-year-old Chloe Spencer. And Julia, well, 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 will be homesick and alone – until adored Josh. She knows that she suddenly finds company one nighthas to find Chloe to discover what happened to Josh.|isbn=1510107789
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Freya SampsonB0FK5LHKD9|title=The Last LibraryColour of Memory|author=Christopher Bowden
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=I am always a little nervous to start a story about a library, It's been three years 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 (called Alan Bennett), and she has barely any friends and spends her evenings eating the same Chinese takeaway meal once we last reviewed a week whilst reading books alone! But I didn't immediately throw the book out of the windowby favourite regular Christopher Bowden, because I found I was interested in June, and why she lived as she did. Her mum used so we were very glad to be see a librarian new novel arrive here at the village libraryBookbag Towers. Like all Bowden's stories, 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 there's a job as library assistant mystery at the local libraryheart of ''The Colour of Money''. And even though her mum sadly died some years ago, she is still working there, still eating her mumWe like this running theme in an author's favourite takeaway meal, work - take a mystery but give it different flavour and still reading her mum's old books. June is stuck, but little does she know, everything in her life is about the changeatmosphere each time.|isbn=183877369X
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0008370982Olga Tokarczuk|title=Rock Paper Scissors|author=Alice FeeneyHouse of Day, House of Night|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersLiterary Fiction|summary=Amelia Wright is forty-two and it was ''What's the staff raffle at Battersea Dogs Home good of a world that gave her a weekend away keeps changing like that? How can one go on calmly living in a converted chapel in Scotland. Her husband, Adam, isnit?''t so keen on the idea. Like Amelia The title of this spellbinding work, he knows that their marriage has been under strain: he's a screenwriter and he's never shy House of Day, House of making it clear to Amelia that he'd prefer to spend time with the novels heNight's hoping to adapt than with her. Amelia's annoyed that he never enquires about how her day has been , somewhat reflects this notion of shifting realities - and working with the dogssmall, subtle changes which govern our lives, like the shift from day to night, many of whom have been abusedhowever quotidian, is never easycausing chaos. Still - she's won But, the weekend away, even if it does mean driving for eight hours in her 1978 Morris Minor Traveller with Adam beside her constant in that image is the passenger seat - and then doing house, stoic against the same thing to come back a couple of days laterancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it is perceived.|isbn=1804271918}}{{Frontpage|authorisbn=Doug JohnstonehenleyA|title=The Great SilenceUltimate Obsession|author=Dai Henley
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=For those whoEx-DCI Andy Flood has been a Private Investigator for some time now, and he should be doing quite well financially. Unfortunately, his daughter's defence against a murder charge drained his savings. His wife, like meLaura, havenhas been trying to persuade him to retire - ''maybe go travelling or go on cruises. That's what 'ordinary people do't come across the Skelfs before, I'll risk a quick synopsis of who' He's who – although Johnstone does a good job not been entirely up front about the state of bringing the backstory in without being heavy handed about ittheir savings. Skelf isn't some fantastic creature, though it sounds as though it ought When Jack Durban tries to persuade him to betake his case, it is merely 's the surname thought of a family of undertakers. Undertakers and private investigators. Dorothy is the matriarch – Californian by birth and instinct, she married a scot and ended up helping to run the Edinburgh undertaking firm money he could make that convinces him that had been in the family for generations. Recently widowed and now involved with a black Swedish police officer. Swedish by nationality. Scottish police. Daughter Jenny, 46, this 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 termmiscarriage of justice that he really should put right.|isbn=1913193837
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=19015149781836284683|title=There's a Problem With DadThe Big Happy|author=Carlos AlbaDavid Chadwick
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Dystopian Fiction|summary=Life Well! This is different for George Lovelace and he can't really understand why. Hea murder mystery unlike any other! I do love it when I open a book, it's always done everything he ought nothing like I expected it to: steady workerbe, husband and father - and it takes me on a father who was always there for school plays and sports dayswild ride. So why And that is he never quite in tune just what happened with those around him? Why does he upset people? Why is someone with such a ''goodThe Big Happy'' mind unable to progress at work or to relate to his colleagues? Why does he make so many breath-taking gaffes? It. I don's almost become a cliche these days t want to suggest that someone who is ruin a little different is similar experience for any of you reading but I'on ll have to at least set the spectrumscene. Once that's done, but George Lovelace has all the symptoms of Asperger's Syndrome: high-functioning autismI think you should simply experience this wonderfully original story for yourself.
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Louise CandlishSally Rooney|title=The HeightsIntermezzo
|rating=4.5
|genre=ThrillersGeneral Fiction |summary=Ellen doesn't expect to see Kieran that daySally 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. She's on siteAmong the many relationships woven into this story, visiting a client the central one for a lighting consultation when she spies him in a building across readers to unravel is the wayfraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. There are lots of thingsIvan, lots of peoplea socially awkward chess prodigy, you might see when you look out across Londoncontrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, but this isn't one Ellen expected that day or a successful lawyer living in fact any other dayDublin. Why? Because Kieran has been dead for over two years, and Ellen knows this for Following their father's passing after a factlong battle with cancer, because she had a hand in his murderthe brothers' already strained relationship faces new trials.|isbn=14711834830571365469
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=00084217141036916375|title=Mrs MarchJust a Liverpool Lad|author=Virginia FeitoPeter McArdle|rating=4.5|genre=Literary FictionAutobiography|summary=The problem began just after the publication ''Just a Liverpool Lad '' is a collection of George March's most successful novel to date. Everyone but Mrs March (we know her first name only on memories and reflections from the last page) seemed to either be reading it or had already done soyears Peter McArdle spent growing up in and around Liverpool. Every day Mrs March went to the local patisserie to buy olive bread but on that particular morning, Patricia asked Some are factual, such as she was wrapping the breadfamily history of a sea-going family, ''but isn't this with the docks dominating lives. Other stories blend seamlessly into the first time hewhat-might-have-been. It's based a character on you?'' She mentioned that Johannabook to settle into and allow your mind to roam across your childhood memories, to think of simpler times when life seemed less constrained, despite the principal character had 'her mannerisms'blitz that was a constant factor in McArdle's early years. Perhaps this would not have mattered, except for I'd never heard of parachute mines before - but they were almost soundless and could appear after the fact that Johanna is the whore of Nantes all- ''a weak, plain, detestable, pathetic, unloved, unloveable wretchclear was sounded.''
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=John Boyne1836285493|title=The Echo ChamberDouble Life of a Wheelchair User|author=Rob Keeley
|rating=5
|genre=General FictionConfident Readers|summary=Meet George Cleverley. He Will is self-defined as "one a keen player of the few television personalities over the age of fifty without video games, a conscientious student, a slightly annoying brother and a criminal record"supportive friend. He starts this book a bit worried when his mistress tells him she's carrying his childBut most of all, but then his author wife he is getting her kicks with the Ukrainian partner "Strictly Come Dancing" paired her withan aspiring writer. They have three children, who are a sad-sack with absolutely no social skills whatsoeverEnglish is his favourite lesson at his school, a girl who hangs around with a virtue-signalling, keyboard warrior "wokester" who wants to save the world's homeless with out-of-date foodMarlowe Park, and a fit young lad doing the gay hustle thingone at which he excels. Add in a few other characters – therapistsThis hasn't gone unnoticed by his headteacher, lawyersMrs Howarth, random transgender types – that all have two very different connections and she has suggested to Will and his life, and you have something mum that suggests an almost farcical approach to the modern world. What suggests the farcical approach even morehe spends a couple of afternoons a week at a different school, howeverStation Road, is the fact this is bloody funnywhere his ability might be better extended.|isbn=0857526219
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=02419890941009473085|title=The Perfect LifeConservative Effect 2010 - 2024|author=Nuala EllwoodAnthony Seldon and Tom Egerton (Editors)|rating=45|genre=ThrillersPolitics and Society|summary=In August 2018 we meet Sometimes it's simpler to explain a young woman called Imogen book by describing what it ''isn't'' and shethat applies to 's viewing a house in Goring'The Conservative Effect: 2010-on2024 -Thames and telling 14 Wasted Years?''. If you're looking for an easy read which will deliver the estate agent inside story about her three childrenwhat ''really'' happened on certain occasions, Lavenderthen this isn't the book for you. If that's what you're looking for, Freddie and BarclayI don't think Anthony Seldon's book, {{amazonurl|isbn=B0BH7SKG2S|title=Johnson at 10}}, can be bettered for those tumultuous years. The boys are a bit of a handful which is why sheIt's making this trip on her owna compelling read and should be compulsory for anyone who thinks Johnson should return to politics. ''The house would be perfect for themConservative Effect'' is an entirely different beast. It's the same month but now we're seventh book in Wimbledon a series which looks at the impact a government has made and we encounter 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 same young womanstate of the nation when the coalition took over in 2010, only this time she's job hunting the changes that occurred and living the situation in her sister, Georgie's, spare room, where she's been since she broke up with her boyfriend, Connor2024.
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Darren ShanJenny Valentine|title=Archibald Lox Us in the Before and the Slides of Bon Repell: Archibald Lox series, Volume 2, book 2 of 3After|rating=4.5|genre=Confident ReadersTeens|summary=So. Having done the impossible Elk and unpicked the lock to the Forgotten CryptMab are best friends, from which the Departed communicate with the Mergeor more than that even, Archie now has their friendship is a once in a lifetime connection. They meet as children one day on a trip out but unfortunately they don't get each other'grop'' to think abouts contact details at the time. But before thatthen chance brings them back together, soireesand they are inseparable. Soirees! Archie Something has happened though, much to Inez's amusementsomething terrible and tragic, doesn't even know what one of those is. But he manages to come and now they must work through the fancy party unscathedtheir grief, even after an uncomfortable encounter with Kurtisand their friendship, whose fledgling romance with Inez was crushed in the first volume of this seriestogether. |isbn=B093J9TF731471196585
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B07GZ81J7C1787333175|title=When Fred the Snake Got Squished and MendedYou Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here|author=Peter CottonBenji Waterhouse|rating=4.5|genre=For SharingPopular Science|summary=Meet Fred. Well, actually, youI was tempted to read ''You Don're going t Have to be meeting Fred-Fred for reasons which will become all too obvious very quickly. But IMad to Work Here''m getting ahead of myself: Iafter enjoying Adam Kay'd better tell you s first book {{amazonurl|isbn=1509858636|title=This is Going to Hurt}}, a bit more about Fredglorious mixture of insight into the workings of the NHS, humour and autobiography. Fred is a snake and even those of us who have a phobia about snakes are going ''You Don't Have to warm to himbe Mad... He arrived as a present in a box with holes so that he could breathe and immediately became part of '' promised the family, same elements but moved from physical problems to mental illness and the extent that they would take Fred out with them when they went out for work of a walkpsychiatrist. And that I did wonder whether it was where acceptable to be looking for humour in this setting but the problem started. Fred didn't have any road sense. Or brakeslaughter is directed at a situation rather than a person and it is always delivered with empathy and understanding.
}}
{{Frontpage
|author= Justine Avery and Naday MeldovaMariana Enriquez|title= Everybody Pees! (Everybody Potties!)A Sunny Place for Shady People|rating=45|genre=For SharingShort Stories|summary= Can potty training ever be joyous? It often isn'tMariana Enriquez writes horror that is disturbingly real, as any parent will tell you. But reallyachieving this uncanny familiarity by basing her paranormal plots on gritty realities: her settings include an abandoned field full of disused refrigerators due to an urban planning mishap, why shouldn't it be? We an overcrowded homeless shelter and a crime-ridden neighbourhood where safety meetings are routine - all have to learn about our bodily functions just as we have to learn about everything else when we within Argentina. The circumstances of her characters are smallso plausible that the supernatural or otherworldly horror which seeps into these spaces adopts a similarly tangible texture. Why shouldn't potty training be as much fun as, say, learning about why the sun and the moon take turns in the sky? |isbn= B098BJZYHH1803511230
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=17876344931529934753|title=All Her FaultThe Protest|author=Andrea MaraRob Rinder
|rating=4.5
|genre=ThrillersCrime|summary=It had seemed like one For a little while, it looked as though Sir Max Bruce, the country's most famous living artist, was not going to show up for the opening of those serendipitous events which sometimes happenhis retrospective at the Royal Academy. Marissa Irvine had been hoping that Still, he arrived in the opportunity would arise for her sonnick of time, Milocomplete with his two wives and six children, to go on a play dateone of whom filmed what happened. She Being an influencer, you tend to do things like that, but it was concerned fortunate that he didn't have any friends at his new school. Milo would go home from Kerryglen National School in an affluent Dublin suburb with his classmate Jacob - and Marissa would pick him up from 14 Tudor Grove there was a little laterrecord of the protest. What could be better? OnlyLexi Williams, when Marissa arrived an intern at the houseRA, expecting grabbed a spray can of blue paint from under a chair and proceeded to meet Jacobspray Bruce in the face, whilst shouting 's mother, Jenny, 'Stop the door was answered by Esther, who didnWar''t know Jenny or Jacob. The phone number sheIt seemed to be part of an ongoing series of 'blue-face'd been given for Jenny attacks, but this was not recogniseddifferent. Milo The can had disappeared. And so had Jenny's nannybeen laced with cyanide, and Sir Max Bruce was dead.
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Claire NorthAriel Saramandi|title=Notes from the Burning AgePortrait of an Island on Fire|rating=4.5|genre=Science FictionPolitics and Society|summary=At its core ''Notes From the Burning Age'' by Claire North is a spy thriller, with as many double crosses, interrogations and night time escapes as Le Carre or Fleming. However, as with the best novels, it wears many masks and its most affecting one is that In this powerful collection of a new and timely genreessays, cli-fi, or climate change fiction. North's novel tells of a world devastated by climate change where humans have been forced Saramandi seeks to start anew and live alongside nature without any of intradermally dissect the modern and corrupting "luxuries" (read: fossil fuels, weapons sociopolitical fabric of mass destruction, intensive farming). There is a growing unhappiness with this limiting worldMauritius, tunneling deep into the wounds left by colonialism and one group, the Brotherhood, aims slavery to master expose how these processes no matter the cost to the Earthlegacies still shape modern life.|isbn=0356514757}}{{Frontpage|author=Eva Bjorg Aegisdottir and Victoria Cribb (translator)|title=Girls Who Lie|rating=3|genre=Thrillers|summary=You might be forgiven for thinking that all Saramandi describes the dark corners of Iceland have featured in their noirish thrillers and crime books before now. You think, seeing on the map that wecountry at one stage as ''rotting're set in Akranes, and finding it's only twenty kilometres from the capital city, that this author is clutching at the few final straws left. 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 blunt yet apt metaphor for her date evening, and was never seen again. 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 systemic decay brought about by the girl back, 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 malignant forces of a suddenracism, in one place, the woman's car was found miles away in a second placepatriarchy, environmental degradation and now, after six months, the body has been discovered, governmental dysfunction. Each essay in a third, even more remote place. Meanwhile, this narrative is interrupted by collection serves as a confessional monologue from a mother who found herself with heavy post-natal depressionkind of diagnostic, and very little maternal feeling in her body. Is charting the assumption that is so easy for various diseases afflicting the reader to make the right one?island state.|isbn=191319373X1804271616
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=B0925KS87NPekka Harju-Autti|title=Dead ManLoveVortex and the Drakor's Grave (DS Max Craigie)|author=Neil LancasterCurse
|rating=4
|genre=CrimeFantasy|summary=Tam Hardie had been determined to find the grave - and it took some finding - in an overgrown old cemetery. It was a strange thing for Scotland's premier criminal to dothe eighteenth century, but Tam was getting old a time of discovery and there were things he wanted to doBritain is expanding its foreign trade. OnlyCaptain Julius Hawthorne, his family didn't hear from him again after he'd said that he'd found an experienced Scottish sea captain, is sent to the grave - the one which said that it shouldn't be opened - and Andaman Islands in his three sons began to worryendeavour. Tam JuniorAlong with his son, Peter, Frankie and Dave wouldn't normally go 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 police but they werenislanders't certain where their father had been and they were worriedleader, Aarav, is keen to establish good relations.|isbn=B0DS1VGHH3
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Emily Critchley|title=The Tiny Gestures of Small Flowers|rating=3|genre=General Fiction|summary= The Tiny Gestures of Small Flowers had all the hallmarks of something good. I was intrigued by the plot, liked the design of the book, Helene Bessette and thought the author's work sounded interesting. From the outset it all looked incredibly promising. So what on earth went wrong here?|isbn= 1911427091}} {{Frontpage|author=Sarah LanganKate Briggs (translator)|title=Good NeighboursLili is Crying
|rating=4.5
|genre=ThrillersLiterary Fiction|summary= If you're of First published in 1953 in French, this novel is a certain vintage, it's hard to read timeless text which wrenches the hearts of its readers just as Bessette wrenches words ''Good Neighbours'' without adding a sing-song ''that's when Good Neighbours…become…good friends''. Maple Street is no Ramsay Street, though, Arlo and Gertie live a world apart sentences from the Melbourne suburbs. They're one of 18 households their proper position on the crescent, quite new arrivals having moved in a year earlier. They're not quite like all the other families (he's an ex rocker, she's a former beauty queen) but they've made some friends page and their kids have settled in, and it's all going ok. Until it isn't. One hot, clammy, stickypositions them elsewhere, sweaty summerdisjointed, a sinkhole opens up in the park across the waytruncated. It's a revolting mess of dirt and chaos, but for Like the residents lives of Maple Streether characters, the worst is yet to comethey are often left tragically incomplete.|isbn=17890982111804271675
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Lisa ThompsonTom Percival|title=The Small ThingsWrong Shoes
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Although Anna has friends at schoolWill's life is difficult, she feels like she never really fits ina multitude of ways. Her family don He is bullied because he has 'the wrong shoes', he has the wrong shoes because his dad can't work and doesn't have enough money to let her do after school activitiesfor even the most basic of things like food, and so she feels like her life his dad can't work because he lost his job at home is boring the college, was working a cash-in comparison to theirs-hand job on a building site and had an accident. When a new girl joins her class, Anna is asked to partner her, but things Throw into that mix the fact that his mum and dad are complicated because the new girlseparated, Ellie, is unwell and so canWill't attend school s life seems bleak in personevery direction. Instead And yet, she joins in with he still has a tiny amount of hope. He is good at art, and clings to the class by using moments of joy when he is drawing, that feel like a robot. Can Anna overcome light at the challenge end of making friends with someone through a robotlong, and is she even interesting enough to be a good friend to Ellie?dark tunnel.|isbn=17811296491398527122
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0008350388Sylvie Cathrall|title=We Need A Letter to Talk About Money|author=Otegha Uwagbathe Luminous Deep
|rating=5
|genre=Politics and SocietyScience Fiction|summary=''To be There are few greater joys than a dark-skinned Black woman is book which lives up to be seen as less desirable, less hireable, less intelligent and ultimately less valuable than my light-skinned counterpartsa compelling premise.And this is one of them.|isbn= 0356522776}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1786482126|title=The Janus Stone (Dr Ruth Galloway)|author=Elly Griffiths|rating=4.'' ''We Need to Talk About Money'' by Otegha Uwagba5|genre=Crime|summary=Builders were demolishing an old house in Norwich - the site was going to hold seventy-five 'luxury'0.7% apartments - when they discovered the bones of English Literature GCSE students in England study a book by child beneath a writer of colour while only 7% study a book by a womandoorway.'' ''The Bookseller'' 29 June 2021 Otegha Uwagba came to the UK from Kenya when she There was five years oldno skull. Her sisters were seven and nine. Was this a ritual killing or murder? It was her mother who came firstInevitably, Dr Ruth Galloway finds herself working with her father joining them laterDCI Harry Nelson. The family was hard-workingIt's difficult as Ruth knows, but Nelson doesn't, principled and determined that their children would have the best education possible. There was always a painful awareness of money although this did not translate into she is pregnant with his child as a shortage result of anything: it was simply carefully harvested. When Otegha was ten the family acquired a carone night they spent together some three months ago. For OteghaHer condition will be obvious before long, education meant a scholarship not least because Ruth is prone to a private school in London and then a place at New College, Oxfordsudden bouts of sickness.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1787631869Guadalupe Nettel and Rosalind Harvey (Translator)|title=The Rising Tide|author=Sam LloydAccidentals|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersShort Stories|summary=Lucy Locke's early life hadn't been easy but she'd built a good and decent life This collection was truly enchanting in all senses of the aftermath. She's now married to Daniel, who co-owns Locke-Povey Marine on Penleith Beachword: spellbinding with its fantastical, magical elements and they live at Wild Ridge on Mortis Point with Billie, Lucy's daughter charming in its gentle portrayal of nature and Fin, the child she had with Danielhuman relationships. They have financial difficultiesGuadalupe Nettel writes intelligently and precisely, some caused her stories structured by Nick Povey, Daniel's partner and so-called best friend. Nick and Daniel have a history together from wisdom that appears to want to teach us something about the time they both spent in 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 concernedworld.|isbn=1804271470
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Hannah Peck0008551375|title=Kate on the CaseWhen Shadows Fall (D S Max Craigie)|author=Neil Lancaster|rating=34.5|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=Meet KateLeanne Wilson's body was found at the bottom of a Scottish mountain, although I got seemingly the impression she'd rather be result of a Catherine – and one specific Catherine at thattragic accident. For Catherine Rodriguez is KateShe's idold looked so happy, and the author of our heroine's favourite possessiontoo, ''The Special Correspondent Manual''when she posted her intentions on Facebook. Armed with a plucky father, that book, and her talking mouse called RupertHer friends were relieved as she was just out of an unpleasant relationship, but it looked like she is all equipped to manage a train ride to the Arctic, to see was living her scientist mother for best life now. Then it emerged that five other women had died in similar circumstances in the first time in yonkslast year. However, this is a train ride with a differenceAll were experienced climbers, properly equipped for on board is a greedy-seeming harridan what they were doing and her cat, a thief – and two glowing eyes, shining from sensible people. None of the darkness in 'what a blink-and-youstupid thing to do'll-miss-them styleexplanations applied. ItThey were all alone when they died: DS Max Craigie is certain there's definitely a case for a new young investigative journalistkiller on the loose...|isbn=184812970X
}}