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==The Best New Books==
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=17841652631787333175|title=Invite Me InYou Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here|author=Emma CurtisBenji Waterhouse|rating=4.5|genre=CrimePopular Science|summary=Martin CurranI was tempted to read ''You Don's wife, Eliza knew that she had t Have to be home Mad to make his lunch for one oWork Here'' after enjoying Adam Kay'clock on the dots first book {{amazonurl|isbn=1509858636|title=This is Going to Hurt}}, despite a glorious mixture of insight into the fact that she was actually painting one workings of their properties prior to it being letthe NHS, humour and autobiography. If she didn't get home, there would be trouble. There was some excuse: Martin was a paraplegic and confined to a wheelchair, but don'You Don't be too quick Have to be understandingMad... He was also a very unpleasant person: he once told Eliza ''you're good at being promised the same elements but moved from physical problems to mental illness and the work of a disappointment''psychiatrist. All this I did wonder whether it was acceptable to be looking for humour in Eliza's mind when she first met Dan Jones who arrived, unannounced, this setting but the laughter is directed at the flat just as Eliza was about to leave: he wanted the lease of flat 2, 42 Linden Road a situation rather than a person and he was desperate to get in before it was advertised as being availableis always delivered with empathy and understanding.
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1784742775|title=A Change of Circumstance Maria Stepanova and Sasha Dugdale (Simon SerraillerTranslator)|authortitle=Susan HillThe Disappearing Act|rating=54|genre=CrimeLiterary Fiction|summary=Drugs hadnDespite her anonymisation of place names and people, Stepanova't really been that much s message in this short work of a problem in Lafferton and Detective Superintendent Simon Serrailler had thought autofiction is unmistakable. A novelist named M travels from B (ostensibly Berlin) to the town of drugs ops as F for a bit of literary festival she is to be a waste of timeguest speaker at. They still wereDetoured by erratic train schedules and nudged by forces beyond her control, to her journey slowly bends toward a great extenttraveling circus. Swept up in this series of events, but Serrailler knew that something had M eventually offers to be donestep in for a circus performer who has unexpectedly left the show. Children The train functions as young as nine were being recruited to transport the drugs a motif of transience and impermanence, while the operation running the county lines was tight. A mule might know the name (although it probably wouldn't be circus embodies the correct one) reshaping of identity and a retreat into fantasy, an impulse that lies at the person who was running him but he certainly wouldn't know anything about those higher up in the organisation. The police might catch a few very heart of the runners but they'd never get anywhere near those higher upnovel form itself.|isbn=1804272329
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=B09FS89KX9B0GFQ81YQK|title=Fall On MeHow the Sky and the Earth Made People: From the Oral Stories of Malagasy Elders|author=Penelope PottsStephanie Zabriskie|rating=34.5|genre=WomenChildren's Non-Fiction|summary=Life should have been good for Hollie: She Before people came and joined the animals, there was just going into only the final year of her veterinary degree sky and - three years later - the earth. Everything was still working at BB's dinerquiet until the earth and the sky began to tal to each other. Bob - First, the owner - regarded her fondly: he was a good bossearth created bodies. Hollie had moved in with her boyfriendAnd then, Marcus: her mother thought he was great the sky breathed life into them. These were the first humans and they belonged to both earth and he was doing well in his careersky. Hollie wasn't quite And so certain though: Marcus wanted people lived between sky and soil and they planted and learned and remembered, especially how they came to be. When they grew old and died, their bodies returned to control her the earth and most of all he wanted her their life returned to leave her job at the dinersky. Then there was And that is why the earth and the fact sky are both revered. Only together can they create human beings. And that he would be violentis why people must pay attention to, and care for, both to her and to other people.
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=John GwynneB0GHPMNF6P|title=The Shadow Of The GodsZookeeper's Dragon: A Magical Modern Fantasy Tale for Grown-Ups|author=Carolyn Mathews|rating=4.5
|genre=Fantasy
|summary=The Shadow Of The Gods is When Phil's father unexpectedly dies, he quits his Canary Wharf finance job to take over the first installment running of the Bloodsworn Sagafamily's farm zoo. He's not expecting much excitement, set until he receives an unidentified egg that his new-age stoner uncle Edgar found in the era of the Vikings a cave in the shadow of RagnarokNew Zealand, when the Gods have battled and their bones lie scattered for all to seesuddenly life is no longer quite what it seems. This story is Then the ultimate in High Fantasyegg hatches into neither a reptile nor a bird, but a dragon! Now he, Edgar, his mother Abi, and John Gwynne certainly does justice the zoo's part-time café waitress Pearl have to the genre, with mythical creatures, archaic language raise this little bundle of scales and battles galore. This is a thick bookjoy, with an intricate plot despite having no idea how to actually raise dragons and fascinating characters that are woven together not being able to create a wonderfully realistic tell anyone about it. But this tiny little dragon may show them love and gritty world connection in which our heroes must do battle.|isbn=0356514218ways they had never before imagined…
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=B09HTWX47XStephanie Zabriskie|title=Endless Obsession|author=Dai HenleyHow Maasai Women Spoke to Cows: From the Oral Stories of Maasai Elders|rating=45|genre=CrimeChildren's Non-Fiction|summary=It's some years since we last caught up with Andy Flood, formerly 'How Maasai Women Spoke to Cows is a DCI children’s nonfiction book drawn from the oral traditions of Maasai elders in the Met but now Ngorongoro, Tanzania.'' The Maasai are a wellcattle-respected private investigatorherding people and this story writes down its oral tradition explaining how they came to be so. He's married to Laura, formerly his DS Cattle are status and wealth in the Murder Squad Maasai culture but now working in a forensics laboratory. Floodthis doesn's daughterst tell the whole story of the intimate and symbiotic connection its people, Gemma and Pippaespecially its women, have flown the nest, Pippa to Australia, from where she has very little contact with the family, and Gemma to married life. She's had mental problems since she was abducted many years ago but Andy their cows and Laura hope that married life will provide for the support she needsnatural world. Flood's business is going well and that was why he felt able to turn down The oral tradition retelling the case of Lisa Blackmany conversations Maasai women have had with their cows, does.|isbn=B0G9WTGY6J
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{{Frontpage
|author=Peter PapathanasiouLivi Michael|title=The StoningElizabeth and Ruth
|rating=3.5
|genre=ThrillersHistorical Fiction|summary=In ''Elizabeth and Ruth'' is a work of historical fiction wrought from the life of the Victorian author Elizabeth Gaskell, best known for her first novel Mary Barton (1848), a town sleazy enough to make sh*tholes elsewhere look glamorous radical critique of the treatment of the working class published under a pseudonym. The ''Ruth'' from Livi Michael's title appears in comparisonher novel as Pasley, a teacher has been transported across town at night in young Irish prostitute who was abandoned as a shopping trolley, child and shefinds herself in Manchester's been taped to New Bailey Prison after a tree difficult and she's had rocks bowled unjust hand at her as if she were the world's tallest cricket stumpslife. When she's discovered by the town gossip everyone, including the local cops, are quite confident the culprit has come from the immigrant detention centre the place is reluctantly home to. An arson attack on that shows the feeling – Set in Manchester between 1839 and it's only fair1842, is the general opinion, for novel examines the occupants are often setting their own fires in protest at their harsh conditions. Cue endured by the arrival of George Manolis, a higher rank from Victorian working poor and interrogates the city, to sort everything out. Because such an aggrieved, insular community is really going extent to welcome a Greek-heritaged city boy laying down which the law..wealthy (including Gaskell herself) were responsible for addressing these injustices.|isbn=15294169731784633682
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=B08Z8BMZ7HMakenna Goodman|title=The Mystery Helen of Healing|author=A P McGrathNowhere|rating=4.5|genre=Crime (Historical)Literary Fiction|summary=We meet Solon in Pergamon in It could be argued that the second century pervading theme of the common era and he's the physician on duty at the munus this book is malaise - a hard-to- the games put place feeling that something in your life is not quite right. The protagonist, a disgraced professor on for the amusement brink of the populacelosing both his career and his relationship, embodies this feeling. However, Goodman counteracts his discomfort with a force which is seductive, radical and unnerving: Helen. The remuneration isn't high but connection between Helen and the work gives protagonist is indirect yet intimate. As the doctor a feeling former owner of virtue and hones his skills: Solon ''wants'' the warriors to live. Itcountryside house he's quite considering, Helen represents a spectacle: volta in his life, her past tied to his potential fresh start. The realtor who shows the magistri are protagonist around the charge hands house shares stories about Helen, and when we first see themdescribes her as ''an entity that is pure consciousness, theybeyond form're sprinkling gold dust onto the lions' manes to make them look more impressive. The sagitarii are the archers and Although she lives in an assisted living facility now, Helen has powers beyond comprehension which the beastiarii are reader gets the condemned criminals who sense are going to fight for their lives with the wild animals. Today, it's the crocodilesnot altogether innocuous.|isbn=1804272205
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Kate DiCamillo and Sophie BlackallB0GCB1MQ7D|title=The Beatryce ProphecyWhy My Mother Went Away|author=Alan Kennedy
|rating=5
|genre=Confident ReadersAutobiography|summary=''Stories I have joy and surprises in themoften wondered how prominent people came to hold their positions. With 'celebrities', we are told here. And none more so than in this wondrous storythere's frequently a book they might or might not have written, which feels an instant classic with might or might not tell the freshness and the agelessness it has in equal proportiontrue story. We start with It's not often that you find a group of monks, book that gives the Order of the Chronicles of Sorrowingfull backstory, and rarely do you discover a memoir where the demonic goat telling is so perfect that loves nothing more than upendingyou'll go back and reread paragraphs and sentences, trampling on and biting just for the pleasure the poor Brotherswords give. Things change drastically when ''Why My Mother Went Away'' is one of those rare exceptions. It's the beast takes story of how a totally maternal approach to a homeless girl, one who has survived some trauma that has blocked her past boy from her memory. Elsewhere sits a King in his castlethe Midlands, desperate to find born at the beginning of the girlSecond World War, for it is prophesied that would become a young child can unseat the throne and cause great changeProfessor of Psychology at Dundee University. Who foretold that revolution but In fact, he was one of the Order founders of the Chronicles of Sorrowing? But how can a simple, amnesiac lass ever prove a threat to anyone?|isbn=1529500893department.
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=B09FFJF8YSJeremy Cooper|title=You Can't Wear Panties! (No More Nappies!)|author=Justine Avery and Kate ZhoidikDiscord|rating=3.5|genre=For SharingLiterary Fiction|summary=''For the big, grownup girls out thereDiscord: a lack of agreement or harmony (as between persons, the potty masters in trainingthings, "You Can't Wear Panties!" is a cry (the big-girl kind!or ideas) of toilet triumph and persevering panty pride.''
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{{Frontpage
|author=Greg James and Chris SmithTom Percival|title=The Great Dream RobberyWrong Shoes
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=MayaWill's father life is difficult, in a professor who invented an amazing dream machinemultitude of ways. But something went He is bullied because he has 'the wrongshoes', he has the wrong shoes because his dad can't work and now he doesn't have enough money for even the most basic of things like food, and his dad can't wake up. Or work because he lost his job at leastthe college, that's what Maya has been told. In was working a rather strange dream one night Maya makes cash-in-hand job on a new friend, building site and discovers had an accident. Throw into that mix the only way to save her fact that his mum and dad may be by being asleep. Cue one madcap action adventure story where dreams and reality collide...really...are separated, and thereWill's everything from llamas and bananaslife seems bleak in every direction. And yet, dream machines made from hairdresser cast-offshe still has a tiny amount of hope. He is good at art, and clings to the moments of joy when he is drawing, that feel like a talking cat called Bin Bag!light at the end of a long, dark tunnel.|isbn=024147051X1398527122
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1800464495Edward W Said|title= 100 Ways in 100 Days to Teach Your Baby Maths: Support All Areas Representations of Your Baby’s Development by Nurturing a Love of Maths|author=Emma Smiththe Intellectual
|rating=4.5
|genre=Children's Non-FictionPolitics and Society|summary=Edward Said's ''Representations of the Intellectual''Babies seem is less a strict theory of what intellectuals are and more a passionate argument for what they should be. Said clearly rejects the comfortable image of the intellectual as a detached expert speaking only to be born with an amazing number sense: understanding shapes in other specialists. Instead, he insists on the wombintellectual as a public figure, being aware of quantities at seven hours oldoften awkward, assessing probability at six months oldabrasive, and comprehending addition and subtraction at nine months oldunpopular, who speaks truth to power even when it is inconvenient or risky.''|isbn=1804272248}}Did you know this? I didn't! How about:{{Frontpage|author=Sylvie Cathrall''Maths ability on entry |title=A Letter to school is a strong predictor of later achievement, double that of literacy skills.''the Luminous Deep|rating=5|genre=Science FictionI didn't know this either! I think most parents |summary= There are aware that giving your children few greater joys than a good start in literacy - reading stories, teaching pen grips, singing rhymes - gives children book which lives up to a solid foundation when they start schoolcompelling premise. But do we think the same way about maths, beyond counting? I don't think we do, in part because so many And this is one of us are afraid of maths. But why are we? Most of us use maths in daily life without realising and it follows that giving our children a similar pre-school grounding will be just as beneficialthem.|isbn= 0356522776
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=15293793851786482126|title=The Madness of Crowds Janus Stone (Chief Inspector GamacheDr Ruth Galloway)|author=Louise PennyElly Griffiths
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=In Builders were demolishing an old house in Norwich - the Canadian village of Three Pines, wesite was going to hold seventy-five 'luxury're postapartments -pandemic: when they discovered the scars are still there but life is starting to get back to normalbones of a child beneath a doorway. There was no skull. The villagers are beginning to return to the Bistro and the AubergeWas this a ritual killing or murder? Inevitably, Dr Ruth Galloway finds herself working with DCI Harry Nelson. TheyIt're visiting each others difficult as Ruth knows, but Nelson doesn's homes and having friends and relatives to stayt, that she is pregnant with his child as a result of the one night they spent together some three months ago. A young Sudanese woman who has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize Her condition will be obvious before long, not least because Ruth is one such visitor and she soon proves that not all saints are necessarily pleasant people prone to be around - a bit like Vincent Gilbert, known in the village as the Asshole Saintsudden bouts of sickness.
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{{Frontpage
|isbn= B09F4CTKJR0008551375|title= Flights for FreedomWhen Shadows Fall (D S Max Craigie)|author= Steven BurgauerNeil Lancaster
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=Bobby Carter Leanne Wilson's body was found at the bottom of a lawyer and consigliere to one Scottish mountain, seemingly the result of the major crime families in nineteen seventies Glasgowa tragic accident. DC Jack Laidlaw is She'd looked so happy, too, when she posted her intentions on the CID team charged with the investigationFacebook. I say ''on the team'' Her friends were relieved as she was just out of an unpleasant relationship, but Laidlaw never really seems to be a part of itlooked like she was living her best life now. Then it emerged that five other women had died in similar circumstances in the last year. He does his own thingAll were experienced climbers, goes his own way properly equipped for what they were doing and sensible people. None of the 'what a stupid thing to do'The Dark Remainsexplanations applied. They were all alone when they died: DS Max Craigie is certain there'' uncovers s a killer on the truth of why Bobby Carter's body was found behind one of Glasgow's seedier pubsloose.
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1942410255Paul B Preciado|title=Tokyo Zangyo (Detective Hiroshi)|author=Michael PronkoDysphoria Mundi
|rating=4.5
|genre=CrimePolitics and Society|summary=''Zangyo: overtime work, often unpaidIt is never too late to embrace the revolutionary optimism of childhood''
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0241425425Samantha Harvey|title=The Man Who Died Twice|author=Richard OsmanOrbital
|rating=4.5
|genre=CrimeGeneral Fiction|summary=Elizabeth Best was a little surprised when she received the letter. It came from a man whose body she had helped to pull from the Thames and who had never existed but then this is the sort of conundrum which retired spies have to deal with on a regular basis. When she visits In 2024, Samantha Harvey won the sender of the letter (heBooker Prize for 's moved into the Cooper's Chase Retirement Village) it comes as no surprise that itOrbital's someone with whom she has a long professional history - and who used to be her husband. He's made , a bad mistake - something to do with compact yet profound work that unfolds over a mask being removed within single day in the range lives of a CCTV camera on group of astronauts aboard the International Space Station. Through a raidnarrative lens that mirrors the astronauts' orbital perspective, a missing twenty-million pounds Harvey invites readers to see our planet in diamonds and a few death threats. He's now in hiding with a young woman called Polly, who's his MI5 handler as well as being an incompetent waitresswholly new light.|isbn=1529922933
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Andrew Sharp295967572X|title=The Chef, the Bird and the BlessingPale Pieces|author=G M Stevens|rating=45|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary= Chef Mlantushi - Mozzy Our unnamed narrator is about to begin a train journey with his employer - companion Django. Where they're going and what the purpose of this journey is, in his mind, is uncertain. Django found the tickets ''on the head chef of a safari business catering floor somewhere'' and has persuaded our narrator to VIP guests in an unnamed African countryaccompany him. Mozzy Why not? Not much else is earnest and dedicated to his task and he puts all of himself into creating fine cuisine dishes for the guests at BODclear either -W safaris but his dream is we are probably in the past as the pair travel to become the head chef of a restaurant in London or a big American city. Even to win a Michelin star. He is thwarted in this ambition station by his boss, Mr Bin (Ben to you and me) who incurs Mozzy's disapproval for his scruffy ways, his uninterest in his guests coach and - shock, horror - his allowing of bush animals into the housetrain is a steam locomotive.|isbn=B09926MK8H
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Alex Foulkes0008551324|title=Rules for VampiresThe Devil You Know (D S Max Craigie)|author=Neil Lancaster
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary= Eleonore Von Motteberg (or 'LeoIt' s unusual for short) is a Vampireanyone from the Hardie family to approach the police. She drinks blood, she sleeps during Neither side likes or has any respect for the day, other. But Davie Hardie is struggling in prison and she can Grimwalk (turning into a flock of bats he's prepared to travel around, although not all of them remember to come back). Pretty cool stuff. Now, on tell the police where the night body of her hundredth birthnight, she has to go out a missing person is buried and hunt who was responsible for her first humandeath. However This person, he promises, instead she ends up killing two humans by accident is someone big and burning down an orphanageit will be worth the police doing what he wants. Oops! And what he wants is to make things worse, be transferred to an open prison to serve the ghosts remainder of one of the orphans his sentence and the evil master of the orphanage come back to haunt herget an early parole date. So, not only does Leo have Not much to team up with the friendly ghost Minna to stop the ghost of the Orphanmaster before he becomes unstoppably powerfulask, is it? The new Deputy Police Constable doesn't think so and she has 's even prepared to do it all while hiding it the other thing that Hardie demanded - make certain that DS Max Craigie and anyone who works with him is kept well away from her family. Did I mention vampires and ghosts hate each other? Yeah, therewhat's a reason why there are rules for vampires…|isbn=147119955Xhappening.
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Tori Bovalino1035043092|title=The Devil Makes ThreeKilling Stones (Jimmy Perez)|author=Ann Cleeves|rating=4.5|genre=TeensCrime|summary= Working all summer in her boarding schoolI can's library is t have been the last thing Tess Matheson wants only person who was sad when Inspector Jimmy Perez [[Wild Fire (Shetland, Book 8) by Ann Cleeves|left Shetland]] to do — especially when she gets start a request for over a hundred books that she has to deliver herself. What makes it worse is the man who requested the books: Mr Birchnew life on Orkney. The boarding school It's headmasterbeen seven years since we heard from him, but he's now living with Willow Reeves and a man Tess hates. As a petty act of revenge for making her find and deliver such a large requesttheir young son, James, Tess sticks post-it notes on each of the booksas well as Cassie, scribbled with the ugliest insults she can think daughter ofhis former partner. They Willow're never meant to reach hims also his boss, and she ''should'' be on maternity leave, but when the body of course. Her plan a popular islander, Archie Stout, is to get her anger out like thisfound, and then take them all off before delivering them. No harm done… Or it would bein the aftermath of a storm, if someone hadnshe can't delivered them for herresist getting involved. He'd been battered about the head with a Neolithic stone - one of a pair - which had been stolen from a museum.|isbn=1789098130
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor= B09BG8V3Q6Thea Lenarduzzi|title= Who Needs Nappies? Not Me! (Everybody Potties!)|author= Justine Avery and Seema AmjadThe Tower|rating=4.5|genre=For SharingLiterary Fiction|summary= ''Who Needs Nappies? Not Me!How unctuous are the fats of another's life, how dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream'' . In this compelling novel, Thea Lenarduzzi assumes the identity of T, the protagonist of this tale. Just as T's story is being told, the latest release story of a second protagonist is unveiled: Annie, the daughter of a wealthy family in the 19th century, who died of tuberculosis after being locked in a tower, captures T's imagination. Annie'Everybody Potties!'' series from Justine Avery. This series of fun picture books aims s fate is, above all, an enticing story to take the pain out of potty training children and replace it with some funT. It's is a worthy aimstory which she consumes avariciously, as any frustrated parent will tell youboth in a quest for truth and knowledge, and in service of myth, fable and fantasy. .|isbn=1804271799
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=B098FFFBH9Claire-Louise Bennett|title=Snowcub|author=Graham FulbrightBig Kiss, Bye-Bye
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Fourteen-year-old Rachel Everything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, is her school's animal rights project leader steeped in anguish and she and her friend are producing a competition entry to highlight the way in which human beings exploit the animal worlddistortion. She gets Even a great deal of support from her family: father Pip Harrisonkiss, usually a lecturer at Imperial College, London, mother Kate symbol of intimacy and her twincloseness, Nickbecomes evidence of love lost. Kate runs When the family businessnarrator cries out internally, a toy shop called Cornucopia in Putney''come over here and kiss me, which is where we'll meet Rachel's main (if unsuspected) source it is less an invitation than a desperate attempt to confirm her emotional numbness. The imagined recipient of information: five soft toysthis plea is Xavier, her ex-partner, a ghost she conjures to test her detachment.|isbn=1804271934
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn= Angharad Walker0008405026|title= The Ash HouseA Stranger in the Family (Maeve Kerrigan 11)|author=Jane Casey|rating= 5|genre= Confident ReadersCrime|summary= A new boy arrives at The Ash House. He doesnIt't know his name, or why he is there but he is used to the system, used to different places and different facess sixteen years since nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her bed one summer night. He meets Dom who names him Sol She was never found and sets out the investigation ground to teach him the rules of The Ash House. These rules centre on a variety of Nicenesses set out by the absent Headmasterhalt. All children must remember their Niceness Now, her mother, Helena, and complete her father are dead in their choresbed. Initially, working as it looks like a hive in straightforward murder/suicide but there's something about the smouldering shadows positioning of The Ash Housethe bodies that makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and her boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. But soon their easy peace What looked as though it was going to be an open-and-shut case is shattered by the arrival of the Doctornow a complex double murder. By Kerrigan is convinced that the end of the storyexplanation lies in Rosalie's disappearance: others (such as Derwent's boss, lives will be changed forever and The Ash House will never be the same againUna Burt) are less convinced.|isbn=1912626977
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{{Frontpage
|author=Yancey WilliamsAnnie Ernaux and Alison L. Strayer (translator)|title=Crosshairs The Other Girl|rating=4|genre=Autobiography|summary=''We were born from the same body. I've never really wanted to think about this.'' Ernaux's work is always very candid and her tone transparent, but this raw epistolary text must be one of the most intimate accounts I've read. Ernaux writes in direct address to her sister, however, this letter will never reach her. Why? Because Annie Ernaux's sister died of diphtheria at 6 years old, a few months before the vaccine was made compulsory in France, and 2 years before the author was even born. The large and instant void created by the jarring concept of writing to an imaginary recipient emphasises Ernaux's process of reckoning with this giant absence in her life, an absence that she has always felt but often denied.|isbn=1804271845}}{{Frontpage|author=Maxim Gorky and Bryan Karetnyk (translator)|title=Reminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev|rating=3.5|genre=Biography|summary=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 Gorky completely rejects this perspective, and offers a vibrant, subjective yet informed portrait of three of his literary contemporaries. In the Devilfirst section of this book, Tolstoy complains to his friend Gorky that: ''you write not of real life as it is, but of what you yourself imagine it to be. Whom would it help to know how I see this tower, that sea, or that Tartar - why should it interest anyone? Of what use is it?''. Well, Maxim Gorky shows exactly what can be gained from a subjective account, giving us access to how he saw Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev in such privileged detail that one almost feels unworthy of it.|isbn=1804271977}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1529077745|title=The Dark Wives (D I Vera Stanhope)|author=Ann Cleeves
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary FictionCrime|summary=Award-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is getting on A man walking his dog in years and, despite his strenuous objections and thanks to his daughter, finds himself living - or imprisoned, from Eddie's point the early morning discovered the body of view - a man in room 315 of the Garden of Eden nursing homepark near Rosebank, with only a trusty nursing aide, Jenkins, care home for palatable companytroubled teens. Nothing is going to keep Eddie from his stock The dead man was Josh -in-trade one of writing though, so here, for his readers, are his wanderings through his life's the care workers who was due to work.|isbn=0986031658}} {{Frontpage|author=Philip Reeve|title=Utterly Dark and a shift the Face of the Deep|rating=5|genre=Confident Readers|summary=In a word, richnight before but who had never turned up. There D I Vera Stanhope is certainly an abundance of riches called in this story set on a peculiar island called Wildsea, British to investigate the murder - but way westher only clue is the disappearance of one of the residents, beyond the Scilliesfourteen-year-old Chloe Spencer. There are troll Some people on it, and sea-witches, and legends of the Dark family believe that has to keep watch Chloe was responsible for magical islands and their monster approaching from even further west, where no ship dare sail. The current Darks are the Watcher, Andrewe, who has to keep notes of activity from death but Vera thinks this is unlikely as the Hidden Lands, his brother Will who lives in London with too much science in his head to worry about such local yokel superstitions, and Andrewegirl's foundling daughter, who washed up out of the sea one day eleven years agodiary makes it clear that she adored Josh. But when Andrewe Dark drowns himself, both his sullen brother and his curious ward are thrust into the world of protecting their island, like it or notShe knows that she has to find Chloe to discover what happened to Josh.|isbn=1788452372
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{{Frontpage
|author=Erling KaggeOlga Tokarczuk|title=Walking: One Step At A TimeHouse of Day, House of Night
|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 ''What's the number good of pages with corners turned, so let me start this a world that keeps changing like that? How can one with an apology to the Norfolk Library Service: sorry! I forgot go on calmly living in it was your book not mine. 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 about to do as soon as I have finished telling you why).
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Ian Mark and Louis Ghibault1836284683|title=Monster Hunting For BeginnersThe Big Happy|author=David Chadwick
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersDystopian Fiction|summary=Meet Jack. Now Jack knows very little about being fearless and nimble and quickWell! This is a murder mystery unlike any other! I do love it when I open a book, for heit's a slight boynothing like I expected it to be, and although he wants for danger and peril and interesting things his dad refuses to let him out of his sightit takes me on a wild ride. ThatAnd that is just what happened with ''The Big Happy's because Jack's mother knew all about monsters, and look what happened to her – she died. Luckily or unluckily then, depending on your point of view, a giant ogre will threaten his aunt when JackI don's father also goes AWOL, Jack will fluke the ogre's death, t want to ruin a dwarfish wizard-type will make him an apprentice monster hunter, and hesimilar experience for any of you reading but I'll be given a book that tells him all he needs have to know about at least set the perils he always wanted closer contact withscene. The bookOnce that's name? ''Monster Hunting done, I think you should simply experience this wonderfully original story for Beginners''..yourself.|isbn=0755501942
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|author=Keith GraySally Rooney|title=The ClimbersIntermezzo|rating=4.5|genre=Confident ReadersGeneral Fiction |summary=Sully is the best tree climber in the village. He Sally Rooney has what's known amongst studied the kids as 'reach'. But what happens when a new kid shows up in town? A new kid, called Nottingham, who clambers up some chessboard of the hardest trees with ease? Suddenly Sully life and is worried that his status something of a grandmaster at putting it into words. Her dialogue is being threatened, gripping and not only thatso brilliantly frustrating, that his chance to name as her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Among the finalmany relationships woven into this story, unnamed big tree in the park by being central one for readers to unravel is the first to conquer itfraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. Ivan, a socially awkward chess prodigy, might be snatched from contrasts sharply with his handsolder brother Peter, a successful lawyer living in Dublin. How can Sully stop Nottingham? And will it cost him his best friendFollowing their father's passing after a long battle with cancer, or maybe even all of his friends, to do so?the brothers' already strained relationship faces new trials.|isbn=17811299910571365469
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|authorisbn=Emma Carroll1836285493|title=The Week at World's EndDouble Life of a Wheelchair User|author=Rob Keeley|rating=45
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=FirstWill is a keen player of video games, the title. We're in World's End Closea conscientious student, a mediocre set of houses, where Stevie (Vie to her friends) finds fun only with the family dog slightly annoying brother and with the boy over the roada supportive friend. But we could also be at World's Endmost of all, because something taking a great chunk of the fun away he is the fact that the Cuban Missile Crisis an aspiring writer. English is kicking off. The Soviet boats are getting blockaded as America tries to reduce the risk of nuclear missiles offshorehis favourite lesson at his school, Marlowe Park, and not much else is able to make the newsone at which he excels. That saidThis hasn't gone unnoticed by his headteacher, Vie Mrs Howarth, and she has news suggested to Will and his mum that he spends a couple of her own – Anna, afternoons a secretive young woman hiding in their coal shed. Anna has, in no short time, taken week at a strong interest in the American airforce base behind the Close, said she'd locate something she wanted and leavedifferent school, failed to leaveStation Road, and implied her life was at riskwhere his ability might be better extended. 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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|authorisbn=Kiran Millwood Hargrave and Tom de Freston1009473085|title=Julia The Conservative Effect 2010 - 2024|author=Anthony Seldon and the SharkTom Egerton (Editors)|rating=45|genre=Confident ReadersPolitics and Society|summary=Julia, our preSometimes it's simpler to explain a book by describing what it ''isn't'' and that applies to ''The Conservative Effect: 2010-2024 -teen heroine14 Wasted Years?''. If you're looking for an easy read which will deliver the inside story about what ''really'' happened on certain occasions, has been packed off with her parents and their cat from then this isn't the family home in SW England to book for you. If that's what you're looking for, I don't think Anthony Seldon's book, {{amazonurl|isbn=B0BH7SKG2S|title=Johnson at 10}}, can be lighthousekeepers bettered for a summer, in the far NE of the Scottish islandsthose tumultuous years. Here It's a compelling read and should be Vikings, that kind of Scottish islandcompulsory for anyone who thinks Johnson should return to politics. Dad ''The Conservative Effect'' is going to be automating an entirely different beast. It's the lantern, seventh book in a series which is his specialist thing, while mum will be leaving her career in algae behind to hunt looks at the impact a government has made and co-editor Sir Anthony Seldon regards this as the elusive Greenland sharkmost important. And Julia, This book follows the well-established format: a series of experts from various fields review the state of the nation when the coalition took over in 2010, she will be homesick the changes that occurred and alone – until she suddenly finds company one nightthe situation in 2024.|isbn=1510107789
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|author=Freya SampsonJenny Valentine|title=The Last LibraryUs in the Before and After|rating=45|genre=General FictionTeens|summary=I am always a little nervous to start a story about a libraryElk and Mab are best friends, or more than that even, since I am their friendship is a librarian. I always grit my teeth slightly at the thought of the incoming cardigan-wearing, hair once in a bun, cat-owning, glasses lifetime connection. They meet as children one day 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 a week whilst reading books alone! But I didntrip out but unfortunately they don't immediately throw the book out of get each other's contact details at the window, because I found I was interested in June, and why she lived as she didtime. Her mum used to be a librarian at the village library But then chance brings them back together, but when she got sick, June gave up on going to University and stayed at home to take care of her mum, as well as taking on a job as library assistant at the local librarythey are inseparable. And even Something has happened though her mum sadly died some years ago, she is still working theresomething terrible and tragic, still eating her mum's favourite takeaway mealand now they must work through their grief, and still reading her mum's old books. June is stuck, but little does she knowtheir friendship, everything in her life is about the changetogether.|isbn=183877369X1471196585
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