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==The Best New Books==
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0241425425Paul B Preciado|title=The Man Who Died Twice|author=Richard OsmanDysphoria Mundi
|rating=4.5
|genre=CrimePolitics and Society|summary=Elizabeth Best was ''It is never too late to embrace the 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 little surprised when she received new sensorium as an offering to the letternew generation, a new feeling mechanism in which detachment is not considered a sign of political apathy. It came from a man whose body she had helped Rather, it is the proportional, valid response to pull from ''the Thames epistemological and political crack we are living through, and who had never existed but then this is the sort of conundrum tension between emancipatory forces and conservative resistances that characterize our present'' which retired spies have to deal with on a regular basisPreciado calls ''dysphoria mundi''. When she visits The whole text is framed against the sender backdrop of the letter (he's moved into the Cooper's Chase Retirement Village) it comes Covid-19 pandemic as no surprise that it's someone with whom she which has a long professional history - and who used to be her husband. He's made a bad mistake - something catalysed this revolution, when dysphoria began to do with a mask being removed within the range of a CCTV camera emerge on a raidglobal scale, a missing twenty-million pounds in diamonds and a few death threatsor as ''pangea covidica''. He's now in hiding with Rather than taking this extreme dysphoria as a young woman called Pollysign of weakness, or mistaking detachment or withdrawal for political paralysis, whoPreciado urges his readers to 's his MI5 handler 'use dysphoria as well as being an incompetent waitressyour revolutionary platform''.|isbn=1804271454
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{{Frontpage
|author=Andrew SharpSamantha Harvey|title=The Chef, the Bird and the BlessingOrbital|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary= Chef Mlantushi - Mozzy to his employer - isIn 2024, Samantha Harvey won the Booker Prize for ''Orbital'', a compact yet profound work that unfolds over a single day in his mind, the head chef lives of a safari business catering to VIP guests in an unnamed African country. Mozzy is earnest and dedicated to his task and he puts all group of himself into creating fine cuisine dishes for the guests at BOD-W safaris but his dream is to become astronauts aboard the head chef of a restaurant in London or a big American cityInternational Space Station. Even to win Through a Michelin star. He is thwarted in this ambition by his bossnarrative lens that mirrors the astronauts' orbital perspective, Mr Bin (Ben Harvey invites readers to you and me) who incurs Mozzy's disapproval for his scruffy ways, his uninterest see our planet in his guests and - shock, horror - his allowing of bush animals into the housea wholly new light.|isbn=B09926MK8H1529922933
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Alex Foulkes295967572X|title=Rules for VampiresPale Pieces|author=G M Stevens|rating=4.5|genre=Confident ReadersLiterary Fiction|summary= Eleonore Von Motteberg (or 'Leo' for short) Our unnamed narrator is about to begin a Vampiretrain journey with his companion Django. She drinks blood, she sleeps during the day, Where they're going and she can Grimwalk (turning into a flock of bats to travel around, although not all of them remember to come back). Pretty cool stuff. Now, on what the night purpose of her hundredth birthnightthis journey is, she has to go out and hunt her first humanis uncertain. However, instead she ends up killing two humans by accident and burning down an orphanage. Oops! And to make things worse, Django found the ghosts of one of tickets ''on the orphans floor somewhere'' and the evil master of the orphanage come back has persuaded our narrator to haunt heraccompany him. So, Why not only does Leo have to team up with ? Not much else is clear either - but we are probably in the past as the friendly ghost Minna pair travel to stop the ghost of station by coach and the Orphanmaster before he becomes unstoppably powerful, she has to do it all while hiding it from her familytrain is a steam locomotive. Did I mention vampires and ghosts hate each other? Yeah, there's a reason why there are rules for vampires…|isbn=147119955X
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Tori Bovalino0008551324|title=The Devil Makes ThreeYou Know (D S Max Craigie)|author=Neil Lancaster
|rating=4.5
|genre=TeensCrime|summary= Working all summer in her boarding schoolIt's library is unusual for anyone from the last thing Tess Matheson wants Hardie family to do — especially when she gets a request approach the police. Neither side likes or has any respect for over a hundred books that she has to deliver herselfthe other. What makes it worse But Davie Hardie is struggling in prison and he's prepared to tell the man who requested police where the books: Mr Birch. The boarding school's headmaster, body of a missing person is buried and a man Tess hates. As a petty act of revenge who was responsible for making her find death. This person, he promises, is someone big and deliver such a large request, Tess sticks post-it notes on each of will be worth the books, scribbled with police doing what he wants. And what he wants is to be transferred to an open prison to serve the ugliest insults she can think remainder ofhis sentence and to get an early parole date. They're never meant Not much to reach himask, of course. Her plan is it? The new Deputy Police Constable doesn't think so and she's even prepared to get her anger out like this, do the other thing that Hardie demanded - make certain that DS Max Craigie and then take them all off before delivering them. No harm done… Or it would be, if someone hadnanyone who works with him is kept well away from what't delivered them for hers happening.|isbn=1789098130
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor= B09BG8V3Q6|title= Who Needs Nappies? Not Me! Jon Fosse and Damion Searls (Everybody Potties!translator)|authortitle= Justine Avery and Seema AmjadVaim|rating=4.5|genre=For SharingLiterary Fiction|summary= ''Who Needs Nappies? Not Me!All was strange'' is the latest release in the ''Everybody Potties!'' series from Justine Avery... This series of fun picture books aims to take haunting phrase encapsulates the pain out pervading sense of potty training children otherworldliness which permeates this story set in Vaim, a fictional fishing village in Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for Jatgeir and replace it with some fun. It's a worthy aimEline, as any frustrated parent will tell you. two of the protagonists caught in its melancholic current.|isbn=1804271829
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=B098FFFBH91035043092|title=SnowcubThe Killing Stones (Jimmy Perez)|author=Graham FulbrightAnn Cleeves|rating=4.5|genre=Literary FictionCrime|summary=Fourteen-year-old Rachel is her schoolI can's animal rights project leader and she and her friend are producing 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 competition entry to highlight the way in which human beings exploit the animal worldnew life on Orkney. She gets a great deal of support It's been seven years since we heard from her family: father Pip Harrisonhim, a lecturer at Imperial Collegebut he's now living with Willow Reeves and their young son, LondonJames, mother Kate and her twinas well as Cassie, Nickthe daughter of his former partner. Kate runs Willow's also his boss, and she ''should'' be on maternity leave, but when the family businessbody of a popular islander, Archie Stout, is found, in the aftermath of a toy shop called Cornucopia in Putneystorm, which is where weshe can'll meet Rachelt resist getting involved. He's main (if unsuspected) source d been battered about the head with a Neolithic stone - one of information: five soft toysa pair - which had been stolen from a museum.
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{{Frontpage
|author= Angharad WalkerThea Lenarduzzi|title= The Ash HouseTower|rating= 5|genre= Confident ReadersLiterary Fiction|summary= A new boy arrives at The Ash House''How unctuous are the fats of another's life, how dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream''. He doesn't know his name In this compelling novel, or why he is there but he is used to Thea Lenarduzzi assumes the systemidentity of T, used to different places and different facesthe protagonist of this tale. He meets Dom who names him Sol and sets out to teach him Just as T's story is being told, the rules story of The Ash House. These rules centre on a variety second protagonist is unveiled: Annie, the daughter of Nicenesses set out by the absent Headmaster. All children must remember their Niceness and complete their chores, working as a hive wealthy family in the smouldering shadows 19th century, who died of The Ash Housetuberculosis after being locked in a tower, captures T's imagination. But soon their easy peace Annie's fate is shattered by the arrival of the Doctor, above all, an enticing story to T. By the end It is a story which she consumes avariciously, both in a quest for truth and knowledge, and in service of the storymyth, lives will be changed forever fable and The Ash House will never be the same againfantasy. |isbn=19126269771804271799
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{{Frontpage
|author=Yancey WilliamsClaire-Louise Bennett|title=Crosshairs of the DevilBig Kiss, Bye-Bye
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Award-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski Everything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, is getting on steeped in years anguish anddistortion. Even a kiss, despite his strenuous objections usually a symbol of intimacy and thanks to his daughtercloseness, finds himself living - or imprisoned, from Eddie's point of view - in room 315 becomes evidence of love lost. When the Garden of Eden nursing homenarrator cries out internally, with only a trusty nursing aide''come over here and kiss me, Jenkins, for palatable company. Nothing '' it is going less an invitation than a desperate attempt to keep Eddie from his stock-in-trade confirm her emotional numbness. The imagined recipient of writing thoughthis plea is Xavier, so hereher ex-partner, for his readers, are his wanderings through his life's worka ghost she conjures to test her detachment.|isbn=09860316581804271934}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Philip Reeve0008405026|title=Utterly Dark and A Stranger in the Face of the DeepFamily (Maeve Kerrigan 11)|author=Jane Casey
|rating=5
|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=In 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 word, richhalt. There is certainly an abundance of riches in this story set on a peculiar island called Wildsea Now, British but way westher mother, beyond the Scillies. There are troll people on itHelena, and sea-witchesher father are dead in their bed. Initially, and legends it looks like a straightforward murder/suicide but there's something about the positioning of the Dark family bodies that has makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and her boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. What looked as though it was going to keep watch for magical islands be an open-and their monster approaching from even further west, where no ship dare sail-shut case is now a complex double murder. The current Darks are the Watcher, Andrewe, who has to keep notes of activity from Kerrigan is convinced that the Hidden Lands, his brother Will who lives explanation lies in London with too much science in his head to worry about Rosalie's disappearance: others (such local yokel superstitions, and Andreweas Derwent's foundling daughter, who washed up out of the sea one day eleven years ago. But when Andrewe Dark drowns himselfboss, both his sullen brother and his curious ward Una Burt) are thrust into the world of protecting their island, like it or notless convinced.|isbn=1788452372
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{{Frontpage
|author=Erling KaggeAnnie Ernaux and Alison L. Strayer (translator)|title=Walking: One Step At A TimeThe Other Girl|rating=54|genre= LifestyleAutobiography|summary= Those who have read my reviews before will know that how much I loved a book is evidenced by ''We were born from the number of pages with corners turned, so let me start this one with an apology to the Norfolk Library Service: sorry! I forgot it was your book not minesame body. In my defence, I will say that as a reader of this type of book there is something connective about noting where prior readers were inspired (provided it is subtle – I'll allow creased corners, but not scribbles – for the latter we must buy our own copy – which I am ve never really wanted to think about to do as soon as I have finished telling you why)this.''
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{{Frontpage
|author=Ian Mark Maxim Gorky and Louis GhibaultBryan Karetnyk (translator)|title=Monster Hunting For BeginnersReminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev|rating=43.5|genre=Confident ReadersBiography|summary=Meet JackBiographies are often seen as the form of life-writing which offers less colour; it can be seen as more objective and less personal. Now Jack knows very little about being fearless I think that Gorky completely rejects this perspective, and nimble and quick, for he's offers a slight boyvibrant, and although he wants for danger and peril and interesting things subjective yet informed portrait of three of his dad refuses literary contemporaries. In the first section of this book, Tolstoy complains to let him out of his sight. Thatfriend Gorky that: 's because Jack's mother knew all about monstersyou write not of real life as it is, and look but of what happened you yourself imagine it to her – she diedbe. Luckily or unluckily thenWhom would it help to know how I see this tower, depending on your point of viewthat sea, a giant ogre will threaten his aunt when Jackor that Tartar - why should it interest anyone? Of what use is it?'s father also goes AWOL, Jack will fluke the ogre's death. Well, Maxim Gorky shows exactly what can be gained from a dwarfish wizard-type will make him an apprentice monster huntersubjective account, giving us access to how he saw Tolstoy, Chekhov and he'll be given a book Andreyev in such privileged detail that tells him all he needs to know about the perils he always wanted closer contact with. The book's name? ''Monster Hunting for Beginners''..one almost feels unworthy of it.|isbn=07555019421804271977
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Keith Gray1529077745|title=The ClimbersDark Wives (D I Vera Stanhope)|author=Ann Cleeves|rating=4.5|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=Sully is A man walking his dog in the early morning discovered the best tree climber body of a man in the villagepark near Rosebank, a care home for troubled teens. He has what's known amongst The dead man was Josh - one of the kids as 'reach'. But what happens when care workers who was due to work a new kid shows shift the night before but who had never turned up . D I Vera Stanhope is called in town? A new kid, called Nottingham, who clambers up some to investigate the murder - but her only clue is the disappearance of one of the hardest trees with ease? Suddenly Sully is worried residents, fourteen-year-old Chloe Spencer. Some people believe that his status Chloe was responsible for the death but Vera thinks this is being threatened, and not only unlikely as the girl's diary makes it clear that, she adored Josh. She knows that his chance she has to find Chloe to name the final, unnamed big tree in the park by being the first discover what happened to conquer it, might be snatched from his handsJosh. How can Sully stop Nottingham? And will it cost him his best friend, or maybe even all of his friends, to do so?|isbn=1781129991
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Emma CarrollB0FK5LHKD9|title=The Week at World's EndColour of Memory|author=Christopher Bowden
|rating=4
|genre=Confident ReadersGeneral Fiction|summary=First, the title. We're in WorldIt's End Close, been three years since we last reviewed a mediocre set of housesbook by favourite regular Christopher Bowden, where Stevie (Vie so we were very glad to her friends) finds fun only with the family dog and with the boy over the roadsee a new novel arrive here at Bookbag Towers. But we could also be at WorldLike all Bowden's Endstories, because something taking there's a great chunk mystery at the heart 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 the risk Colour of nuclear missiles offshore, and not much else is able to make the newsMoney''. That said, Vie has news of her own – Anna, a secretive young woman hiding We like this running theme in their coal shed. Anna has, in no short time, taken an author's work - take a strong interest in the American airforce base behind the Close, said she'd locate something she wanted mystery but give it different flavour and leave, failed to leave, and implied her life was at riskatmosphere each time. But surely this bit of intrigue has got nothing to do with what the Cold War is doing miles away?|isbn=0571364438
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{{Frontpage
|author=Kiran Millwood Hargrave and Tom de FrestonOlga Tokarczuk|title=Julia and 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 Sharkconstant in that image is the house, stoic against the ancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it is perceived.|isbn=1804271918}}{{Frontpage|isbn=henleyA|title=Ultimate Obsession|author=Dai Henley
|rating=4
|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=Julia, our preEx-teen heroine, DCI Andy Flood has been packed off with her parents a Private Investigator for some time now, and their cat from the family home in SW England to he should be lighthousekeepers for a summer, in the far NE of the Scottish islandsdoing quite well financially. Here be VikingsUnfortunately, that kind of Scottish islandhis daughter's defence against a murder charge drained his savings. Dad is going to be automating the lanternHis wife, which is his specialist thingLaura, while mum will be leaving her career in algae behind has been trying to persuade him to hunt the elusive Greenland sharkretire - ''maybe go travelling or go on cruises. And JuliaThat's what 'ordinary people do', well'' He's not been entirely up front about the state of their savings. When Jack Durban tries to persuade him to take his case, she will be homesick and alone – until she suddenly finds company one nightit'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.|isbn=1510107789
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Freya Sampson1836284683|title=The Last LibraryBig Happy|author=David Chadwick|rating=4.5|genre=General Dystopian 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 stereotypesWell! In this story, the main character, June, does put her hair in a bun, and she does own This is a cat (called Alan Bennett), and she has barely murder mystery unlike any friends and spends her evenings eating the same Chinese takeaway meal once a week whilst reading books aloneother! But I didn't immediately throw the do love it when I open a book out of the window, because it's nothing like I found I was interested in June, and why she lived as she did. Her mum used expected it 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 it takes me on a job as library assistant at the local librarywild ride. And even though her mum sadly died some years ago, she that is still working there, still eating her mumjust what happened with ''The Big Happy''. I don's favourite takeaway meal, and still t want to ruin a similar experience for any of you reading her mumbut I'll have to at least set the scene. Once that's old books. June is stuckdone, but little does she know, everything in her life is about the changeI think you should simply experience this wonderfully original story for yourself.|isbn=183877369X
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0008370982Sally Rooney|title=Rock Paper Scissors|author=Alice FeeneyIntermezzo
|rating=4.5
|genre=ThrillersGeneral Fiction |summary=Amelia Wright Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard of life and is forty-two and something of a grandmaster at putting it was the staff raffle at Battersea Dogs Home that gave her a weekend away in a converted chapel in Scotlandinto words. Her husbanddialogue is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, Adamas her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Among the many relationships woven into this story, isn't so keen on the ideacentral one for readers to unravel is the fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. Like AmeliaIvan, 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 socially awkward chess prodigy, contrasts sharply with the novels he's hoping to adapt than with herhis older brother Peter, a successful lawyer living in Dublin. AmeliaFollowing their father's annoyed that he never enquires about how her day has been - and working passing after a long battle with cancer, the dogs, many of whom have been abused, is never easy. Still - shebrothers'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 the passenger seat - and then doing the same thing to come back a couple of days lateralready strained relationship faces new trials.|isbn=0571365469
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Doug Johnstone1036916375|title=The Great SilenceJust a Liverpool Lad|author=Peter McArdle
|rating=4
|genre=CrimeAutobiography|summary=For those who, like me, haven't come across the Skelfs before, I'll risk Just a quick synopsis of whoLiverpool Lad ''s who – although Johnstone does is a good job collection of bringing memories and reflections from the backstory years Peter McArdle spent growing up in without being heavy handed about itand around Liverpool. Skelf isn't some fantastic creature Some are factual, though it sounds such as though it ought to be, it is merely the surname family history of a sea-going family of undertakers, with the docks dominating lives. Undertakers and private investigatorsOther stories blend seamlessly into the what-might-have-been. Dorothy is the matriarch – Californian by birth It's a book to settle into and instinctallow your mind to roam across your childhood memories, she married a scot and ended up helping to run think of simpler times when life seemed less constrained, despite the Edinburgh undertaking firm blitz that had been was a constant factor in the family for generationsMcArdle's early years. Recently widowed and now involved with a black Swedish police officer. Swedish by nationality. Scottish police. Daughter Jenny, 46, is haunted by her still-living husband – a violent escaped prisoner. And grand I'd never heard of parachute mines before -daughter is about to graduate with a first-class physics degree but they were almost soundless and join could appear after the academic staff next termall-clear was sounded.|isbn=1913193837
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=19015149781836285493|title=There's The Double Life of a Problem With DadWheelchair User|author=Carlos AlbaRob Keeley|rating=4.5|genre=General FictionConfident Readers|summary=Life Will is different for George Lovelace and he can't really understand why. He's always done everything he ought to: steady workera keen player of video games, a conscientious student, husband and father - a slightly annoying brother and a father who was always there for school plays and sports dayssupportive friend. So why But most of all, he is he never quite in tune with those around him? Why does he upset people? Why an aspiring writer. English is someone with such a ''good'' mind unable to progress his favourite lesson at work or to relate to his colleagues? Why does school, Marlowe Park, and one at which he make so many breath-taking gaffes? Itexcels. This hasn's almost become a cliche these days t gone unnoticed by his headteacher, Mrs Howarth, and she has suggested to suggest Will and his mum that someone who is he spends a couple of afternoons a week at a little different is 'on the spectrum'school, Station Road, but George Lovelace has all the symptoms of Asperger's Syndrome: high-functioning autismwhere his ability might be better extended.
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Louise Candlish1009473085|title=The HeightsConservative Effect 2010 - 2024|author=Anthony Seldon and Tom Egerton (Editors)|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersPolitics and Society|summary=Ellen doesnSometimes it's simpler to explain a book by describing what it ''isn't expect '' and that applies to see Kieran ''The Conservative Effect: 2010-2024 - 14 Wasted Years?''. If you're looking for an easy read which will deliver the inside story about what ''really'' happened on certain occasions, then this isn't the book for you. If that day's what you're looking for, I don't think Anthony Seldon's book, {{amazonurl|isbn=B0BH7SKG2S|title=Johnson at 10}}, can be bettered for those tumultuous years. She It's on site, visiting a client compelling read and should be compulsory for a lighting consultation when she spies him anyone who thinks Johnson should return to politics. ''The Conservative Effect'' is an entirely different beast. It's the seventh book in a building across series which looks at the wayimpact a government has made and co-editor Sir Anthony Seldon regards this as the most important. There are lots This book follows the well-established format: a series of things, lots experts from various fields review the state of people, you might see the nation when you look out across Londonthe coalition took over in 2010, but this isn't one Ellen expected the changes that day or in fact any other day. Why? Because Kieran has been dead for over two years, occurred and Ellen knows this for a fact, because she had a hand the situation in his murder2024.|isbn=1471183483
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0008421714Jenny Valentine|title=Mrs March|author=Virginia FeitoUs in the Before and After|rating=4.5|genre=Literary FictionTeens|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 Elk and Mab are best friends, or had already done somore than that even, their friendship is a once in a lifetime connection. Every They meet as children one day Mrs March went to the local patisserie to buy olive bread but on that particular morning, Patricia asked, as she was wrapping the bread, ''a trip out but isnunfortunately they don't this the first time heget each other's based a character on you?'' She mentioned that Johanna, contact details at the principal character had 'her mannerisms''time. Perhaps this would not have matteredBut then chance brings them back together, except for the fact that Johanna is the whore of Nantes - ''a weakand they are inseparable. Something has happened though, plainsomething terrible and tragic, detestableand now they must work through their grief, patheticand their friendship, unloved, unloveable wretchtogether.''|isbn=1471196585
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=John Boyne1787333175|title=The Echo ChamberYou Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here|author=Benji Waterhouse
|rating=5
|genre=General FictionPopular Science|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 sheI was tempted to read ''You Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here'' after enjoying Adam Kay's carrying his child, but then his author wife first book {{amazonurl|isbn=1509858636|title=This is getting her kicks with the Ukrainian partner "Strictly Come Dancing" paired her with. They have three childrenGoing to Hurt}}, who are a sad-sack with absolutely no social skills whatsoever, a girl who hangs around with a virtue-signalling, keyboard warrior "wokester" who wants to save glorious mixture of insight into the world's homeless with out-workings of-date foodthe NHS, humour and a fit young lad doing autobiography. ''You Don't Have to be Mad...'' promised the gay hustle thing. Add in a few other characters – therapists, lawyers, random transgender types – that all have two very different connections same elements but moved from physical problems to his life, mental illness and you have something that suggests an almost farcical approach to the modern worldwork of a psychiatrist. What suggests I did wonder whether it was acceptable to be looking for humour in this setting but the farcical approach even more, however, laughter is the fact this directed at a situation rather than a person and it is bloody funnyalways delivered with empathy and understanding.|isbn=0857526219
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0241989094Mariana Enriquez|title=The Perfect Life|author=Nuala EllwoodA Sunny Place for Shady People|rating=45|genre=ThrillersShort Stories|summary=In August 2018 we meet a young woman called Imogen 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 an urban planning mishap, an overcrowded homeless shelter and she's viewing a house in Goringcrime-onridden neighbourhood where safety meetings are routine -Thames and telling the estate agent about her three children, Lavender, Freddie and Barclayall within Argentina. The boys circumstances of her characters are so plausible that the supernatural or otherworldly horror which seeps into these spaces adopts a bit of a handful which is why she's making this trip on her own. The house would be perfect for themsimilarly tangible texture. It's the same month but now we'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's been since she broke up with her boyfriend, Connor.|isbn=1803511230
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Darren Shan1529934753|title=Archibald Lox and the Slides of Bon Repell: Archibald Lox series, Volume 2, book 2 of 3The Protest|author=Rob Rinder
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=SoFor 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 his retrospective at the Royal Academy. Having done Still, he arrived in the impossible nick of time, complete with his two wives and unpicked six children, one of whom filmed what happened. Being an influencer, you tend to do things like that, but it was fortunate that there was a record of the lock to protest. Lexi Williams, an intern at the Forgotten CryptRA, grabbed a spray can of blue paint from which under a chair and proceeded to spray Bruce in the Departed communicate with the Mergeface, Archie now has whilst shouting ''gropStop the War'' to think about. But before that, soirees. Soirees! Archie, much It seemed to Inezbe part of an ongoing series of 's amusementblue-face' attacks, doesn't even know what one of those isbut this was different. But he manages to come through the fancy party unscathed, even after an uncomfortable encounter The can had been laced with Kurtiscyanide, whose fledgling romance with Inez and Sir Max Bruce was crushed in the first volume of this seriesdead. |isbn=B093J9TF73
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=B07GZ81J7CAriel Saramandi|title=When Fred the Snake Got Squished and Mended|author=Peter CottonPortrait of an Island on Fire
|rating=4.5
|genre=For SharingPolitics and Society|summary=Meet Fred. WellIn this powerful collection of essays, actuallySaramandi seeks to intradermally dissect the sociopolitical fabric of Mauritius, you're going tunneling deep into the wounds left by colonialism and slavery to be meeting Fred-Fred for reasons which will become all too obvious very quicklyexpose how these legacies still shape modern life. But ISaramandi describes the country at one stage as ''rotting'm getting ahead of myself: I'd better tell you , a bit more blunt yet apt metaphor for the systemic decay brought about Fred. Fred is a snake by the malignant forces of racism, patriarchy, environmental degradation and even those of us who have a phobia about snakes are going to warm to himgovernmental dysfunction. He arrived Each essay in this collection serves as a present in a box with holes so that he could breathe and immediately became part kind of the familydiagnostic, to charting the extent that they would take Fred out with them when they went out for a walk. And that was where various diseases afflicting the problem started. Fred didn't have any road sense. Or brakesisland state.|isbn=1804271616
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|author= Justine Avery and Naday MeldovaPekka Harju-Autti|title= Everybody Pees! (Everybody Potties!)LoveVortex and the Drakor's Curse
|rating=4
|genre=For SharingFantasy|summary= Can potty training ever be joyous? It often isn'ts the eighteenth century, as any parent will tell youa time of discovery and Britain is expanding its foreign trade. But reallyCaptain Julius Hawthorne, an experienced Scottish sea captain, why shouldn't it be? We all have is sent to learn about our bodily functions just as we have to learn about everything else when we are smallthe Andaman Islands in his endeavour. Why shouldn't potty training be as much fun asAlong with his son, Peter, and their cat, sayMichi, learning about why the sun they set off on a perilous voyage to these faraway lands. The islands are beautiful and the moon take turns stunning in their scenery and the sky? islanders' leader, Aarav, is keen to establish good relations.|isbn= B098BJZYHHB0DS1VGHH3
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|isbnauthor=1787634493Helene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)|title=All Her Fault|author=Andrea MaraLili is Crying
|rating=4.5
|genre=ThrillersLiterary Fiction|summary=It had seemed like one of those serendipitous events First published in 1953 in French, this novel is a timeless text which sometimes happen. Marissa Irvine had been hoping that wrenches the opportunity would arise for her son, Milo, to go on a play date. She was concerned 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 - hearts of its readers just as Bessette wrenches words and Marissa would pick him up sentences from 14 Tudor Grove a little later. What could be better? Only, when Marissa arrived at their proper position on the housepage and positions them elsewhere, expecting to meet Jacob's mother, Jennydisjointed, truncated. Like the door was answered by Estherlives of her characters, 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 nannythey are often left tragically incomplete.|isbn=1804271675
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|author=Claire NorthTom Percival|title=Notes from the Burning AgeThe Wrong Shoes|rating=45|genre=Science FictionConfident Readers|summary=At its core Will's life is difficult, in a multitude of ways. He is bullied because he has 'Notes From the Burning Agewrong shoes', he has the wrong shoes because his dad can' by Claire North is a spy thriller, with as many double crosses, interrogations t work and night time escapes as Le Carre or Fleming. However, as with doesn't have enough money for even the best novels, it wears many masks and its most affecting one is that basic of a new things like food, and timely genrehis dad can't work because he lost his job at the college, cliwas working a cash-fi, or climate change fiction. North's novel tells of in-hand job on a world devastated by climate change where humans have been forced to start anew building site and live alongside nature without any of had an accident. Throw into that mix the modern fact that his mum and dad are separated, and corrupting "luxuries" (read: fossil fuelsWill's life seems bleak in every direction. And yet, weapons he still has a tiny amount of mass destruction, intensive farming)hope. There He is a growing unhappiness with this limiting worldgood at art, and one groupclings to the moments of joy when he is drawing, that feel like a light at the Brotherhoodend of a long, aims to master these processes no matter the cost to the Earthdark tunnel.|isbn=03565147571398527122
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|author=Eva Bjorg Aegisdottir and Victoria Cribb (translator)Sylvie Cathrall|title=Girls Who LieA Letter to the Luminous Deep|rating=35|genre=ThrillersScience Fiction|summary=You might be forgiven for thinking that all the dark corners of Iceland have featured in their noirish thrillers and crime books before now. You think, seeing on the map that we're set in Akranes, and finding it's only twenty kilometres from the capital city, that this author is clutching at the There are few final straws left. However just because the greater joys than a book aims for the usual small-town feel, it's not just in Akranes that our interests lie. Six months ago a woman failed which lives up to turn up 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 the girl back, and a couple of delighted adopterscompelling premise. 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 place, and now, after six months, the body has been discovered, in a third, even more remote place. Meanwhile, And 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 bodyone of them. Is the assumption that is so easy for the reader to make the right one?|isbn=191319373X0356522776
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|isbn=B0925KS87N1786482126|title=Dead Man's Grave The Janus Stone (DS Max CraigieDr Ruth Galloway)|author=Neil LancasterElly Griffiths|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=Tam Hardie had been determined Builders were demolishing an old house in Norwich - the site was going to find the grave hold seventy- and it took some finding five 'luxury' apartments - in an overgrown old cemeterywhen they discovered the bones of a child beneath a doorway. It There was no skull. Was this a strange thing for Scotlandritual killing or murder? Inevitably, Dr Ruth Galloway finds herself working with DCI Harry Nelson. It's premier criminal to dodifficult as Ruth knows, but Tam was getting old and there were things he wanted to do. Only, his family didnNelson doesn't hear from him again after he'd said , that he'd found the grave - she is pregnant with his child as a result of the one which said that it shouldn't be opened - and his night they spent together some three sons began to worrymonths ago. Tam JuniorHer condition will be obvious before long, Frankie and Dave wouldn't normally go not least because Ruth is prone to the police but they weren't certain where their father had been and they were worriedsudden bouts of sickness.
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|author=Emily CritchleyGuadalupe Nettel and Rosalind Harvey (Translator)|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, 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 Langan|title=Good NeighboursAccidentals
|rating=4.5
|genre=ThrillersShort Stories|summary= If you're of a certain vintage, it's hard to read the 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 from the Melbourne suburbs. They're one of 18 households on the crescent, quite new arrivals having moved This collection was truly enchanting in a year earlier. They're not quite like all senses of the other families (he's an ex rockerword: spellbinding with its fantastical, she's a former beauty queen) but they've made some friends magical elements and their kids have settled charming in, its gentle portrayal of nature and it's all going okhuman relationships. Until it isn't. One hot, clammy, sticky, sweaty summerGuadalupe Nettel writes intelligently and precisely, her stories structured by a sinkhole opens up in wisdom that appears to want to teach us something about the park across the way. It's a revolting mess of dirt and chaos, but for the residents of Maple Street, the worst is yet to comeworld.|isbn=17890982111804271470
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|authorisbn=Lisa Thompson0008551375|title=The Small ThingsWhen Shadows Fall (D S Max Craigie)|author=Neil Lancaster|rating=4.5|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=Although Anna has friends Leanne Wilson's body was found at schoolthe bottom of a Scottish mountain, seemingly the result of a tragic accident. She'd looked so happy, too, when she feels like she never really fits inposted her intentions on Facebook. Her family don't have enough money to let her do after school activitiesfriends were relieved as she was just out of an unpleasant relationship, and so but it looked like she feels like was living her best life at home is boring now. Then it emerged that five other women had died in similar circumstances in comparison to theirsthe last year. When a new girl joins her class All were experienced climbers, Anna is asked to partner her, but things are complicated because the new girl, Ellie, is unwell properly equipped for what they were doing and so can't attend school in personsensible people. Instead, she joins in with None of the class by using 'what a robotstupid thing to do' explanations applied. Can Anna overcome the challenge of making friends with someone through a robot, and They were all alone when they died: DS Max Craigie is she even interesting enough to be certain there's a good friend to Ellie?|isbn=1781129649killer on the loose.
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