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==The Best New Books==
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn= 1806344777|title=Bjorn Natthiko Lindeblad, Caroline Bankeler, Navid Modiiri Arthur and Agnes Bromme (Translator)the Land of Nimbostratus: Arthur's Able Adventures|titleauthor=I May Be WrongRob Keeley|rating=4.5|genre= AutobiographyFor Sharing|summary= When the Dalai Lama adds Arthur dreams of adventures. He looks out of his words to your frontispiece, I'm inclined to think it doesn't really matter how the rest window each day and thinks of all the world responds to your book. I knowescapades he could have, having read the book in question, that Lindeblad would disagree with that thoughtplaces he could go and the things he could see. He knows (and at core so do I) His favourite day is Saturday because that it matters very much how 's the rest day his friend Maxine - she of the world responds booming laugh and silver bangles - comes to this book, because it tells the truth as it visit. Maxine is, a great believer in the early 21st centurypower of imagination.|isbn=1526644827
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=B0949Q1DC11035043092|title=The Patient Killing Stones (A DS Cross thrillerJimmy Perez)|author=Tim SullivanAnn Cleeves
|rating=5
|genre=Crime
|summary=DS George Cross has an autistic spectrum disorderI can't have been the only person who was sad when Inspector Jimmy Perez [[Wild Fire (Shetland, quite probably AspergerBook 8) by Ann Cleeves|left Shetland]] to start a new life on Orkney. It's Syndrome. He can be rudebeen seven years since we heard from him, difficult but he's now living with Willow Reeves and awkward with peopletheir young son, James, as well as Cassie, although it's never intentionalthe daughter of his former partner. ItWillow's just that he thinks differently also his boss, and social niceties simply donshe ''should't occur to him. There's be on maternity leave, but when the body of a reason why he's popular islander, Archie Stout, is found, in Bristolthe aftermath of a storm, she can's Major Crime Unit and itt resist getting involved. He's that he has d been battered about the best conviction rate head with casesa Neolithic stone - one of a pair - which had been stolen from a museum.}}{{Frontpage|author=Polly Barton|title=What Am I, ever. His partner A Deer?|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Polly Barton's debut novel is DS Josie Ottey: she regards Cross with affection (not an emotion he would recogniseintellectually playful yet emotionally exposed work that uses translation as both subject and governing metaphor. The narrator, or welcome being attached newly relocated from London to himself) and even attempts Berlin, works translating video games into Japanese through the process of localisation, rewriting language until it feels comfortably familiar to instil some a new audience. Barton treats this as a paradoxical act: arguably, in striving for universality, language is endlessly repackaged, its originality at risk of those missing social niceties disappearing altogether. From this, the novel opens out into Cross's behaviour.a wider, resonant question: to what extent do we translate ourselves in order to be understood, accepted, or loved?|isbn=1804272175
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=1529151600Zabriskie1|title=Give Unto OthersA Village Where Many Ways Meet: A Story of Belonging and Community, Rooted in Indigenous Wisdom|author=Donna LeonStephanie Zabriskie
|rating=5
|genre=CrimeChildren's Non-Fiction|summary=Commissario Guido Brunetti senses that Venice has changed. The ''pandemia'' stripped Across many African and Indigenous systems, differences in how children learn, sense , or process the city world were not treated as disorders to be corrected. They were understood as natural variations of its tourists for nearly two years human intelligence and awareness, each holding value within the community.'' This lovely story is a lot synthesis of businesses have closedthat tradition, most never to reopenwhich was carried down through generations by oral retellings. There's now It shows that a cascade community or society is not made up from interchangeable building blocks of money as life begins again human beings but even 125by a range of people with different skills and different personalities,000 deaths have not put an end all contributing to greed. The Mafias have liquidity problems: how on earth are they going a whole that combines them all and to launder the benefit of them all the money which is coming their way? Whilst he's thinking about this, Brunetti encounters someone he's seen only occasionally since they were neighbours when he was a child. Elisabetta Foscarini has a problem and she'd like Brunetti's advice.
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Marcus Sedgwick1787333175|title=WrathYou Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here|author=Benji Waterhouse|rating=4.5|genre=TeensPopular Science|summary=Meet FitzI was tempted to read ''You Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here'' after enjoying Adam Kay's first book {{amazonurl|isbn=1509858636|title=This is Going to Hurt}}, a young Scottish lad full glorious mixture of insight into the workings of frustration at himself. Lockdown is only just overthe NHS, humour and he should autobiography. ''You Don't Have to be free to do what he wants, to go where he wants and with whom he wants, Mad...'' promised the same elements but he cannot stop himself moved from putting his foot in it when he talks physical problems to his best friend, Cassie. They were half mental illness and the work of a desultory school band, but Cassie psychiatrist. I did wonder whether it was also one hundred per cent the enigmatic – saying she could hear a subhuman hum coming from the earth. Is acceptable to be looking for humour in this connected with one of her eco-warrior parents saying setting but the end of the world laughter is already directed at a done deal? Is situation rather than a person and it some spooky new kind of music she's dreaming of? Is she just bonkers? And can Fitz find out the truth? Well, not when Cassie has gone missing he can't.is always delivered with empathy and understanding..|isbn=1800900899
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1635864070Maria Stepanova and Sasha Dugdale (Translator)|title=Knit 2 Socks in 1|author=Safiyyah TalleyThe Disappearing Act
|rating=4
|genre=CraftsLiterary Fiction|summary=If you've ever started knitting a pair Despite her anonymisation of socks, finished the first one place names and either got bored by the idea of doing the same thing all over again, or started on the second sock and lost the first before you finished itpeople, Stepanova's message in this short work of autofiction is unmistakable. A novelist named M travels from B (ostensibly Berlin) to the book town of F for you. Where a literary festival she is it that single socks go to hide? Safiyyah Talley has developed be a guest speaker at. Detoured by erratic train schedules and nudged by forces beyond her control, her journey slowly bends toward a system that allows you traveling circus. Swept up in this series of events, M eventually offers to knit two socks step in onefor a circus performer who has unexpectedly left the show. The train functions as a motif of transience and impermanence, divide them up while the circus embodies the reshaping of identity and have a perfectly finished pair retreat into fantasy, an impulse that lies at the very heart of socks. Sounds good? It's clever and well-thought-outthe novel form itself.|isbn=1804272329
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=B0GFQ81YQK|title=How the Sky and the Earth Made People: From the Oral Stories of Malagasy Elders|author=Olivie BlakeStephanie Zabriskie|rating=4.5|genre=Children's Non-Fiction|summary= Before people came and joined the animals, there was only the sky and the earth. Everything was quiet until the earth and the sky began to tal to each other. First, the earth created bodies. And then, the sky breathed life into them. These were the first humans and they belonged to both earth and sky. And so 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 the earth and their life returned to the sky. And that is why the earth and the sky are both revered. Only together can they create human beings. And that is why people must pay attention to, and care for, both.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=B0GHPMNF6P|title=The Atlas SixZookeeper's Dragon: A Magical Modern Fantasy Tale for Grown-Ups|author=Carolyn Mathews|rating=4.5
|genre=Fantasy
|summary= DarkWhen Phil's father unexpectedly dies, he quits his Canary Wharf finance job to take over the running of the family's farm zoo. He's not expecting much excitement, sharpuntil he receives an unidentified egg that his new-age stoner uncle Edgar found in a cave in New Zealand, and highly inquisitivesuddenly life is no longer quite what it seems. Then the egg hatches into neither a reptile nor a bird, but a dragon! Now he, Edgar, his mother Abi, and the zoo''The Atlas Six'' makes its publishing debut after becoming a Tiks part-Tok sensationtime café waitress Pearl have to raise this little bundle of scales and joy, despite having no idea how to actually raise dragons and not being able to tell anyone about it.|isbn=1529095239But this tiny little dragon may show them love and connection in ways they had never before imagined…
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0008384983Stephanie Zabriskie|title=The Paris Apartment|author=Lucy FoleyHow Maasai Women Spoke to Cows: From the Oral Stories of Maasai Elders|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersChildren's Non-Fiction|summary=''Things are not what they seemHow Maasai Women Spoke to Cows is a children’s nonfiction book drawn from the oral traditions of Maasai elders in Ngorongoro, Tanzania.''.
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0760373558Livi Michael|title=Nordic Knits|author=Sue FlandersElizabeth and Ruth|rating=43.5|genre=CraftsHistorical Fiction|summary=I was so delighted by Sue Flanders' [[Cozy Knits: 30 Hat, Mitten, Scarf 'Elizabeth and Sock Projects Ruth'' is a work of historical fiction wrought from Around the World by Sue Flanders|Cozy Knits]] that I didn't need any persuading at all to pick up life of the Victorian author Elizabeth Gaskell, best known for her first novel Mary Barton (1848), a radical critique of the treatment of the working class published under a pseudonym. The ''Nordic KnitsRuth''. This delivers forty-four patterns inspired by textiles and local traditions from NorwayLivi Michael's title appears in her novel as Pasley, Sweden a young Irish prostitute who was abandoned as a child and Iceland. There are finds herself in Manchester's New Bailey Prison after a few sweaters or jackets but the majority of patterns are for smaller items such as mittens, gloves, hats difficult and bagsunjust hand at life. All are bright Set in Manchester between 1839 and cheerful 1842, the novel examines the harsh conditions endured by the Victorian working poor and very cosyinterrogates the extent to which the wealthy (including Gaskell herself) were responsible for addressing these injustices.|isbn=1784633682
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1916072038Makenna Goodman|title=The House in the Hollow (The Talbot Saga)|author=Allie CresswellHelen of Nowhere
|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical Literary Fiction|summary=We meet part It could be argued that the pervading theme of the Talbot family in Yorkshire in November 1811. Twentythis book is malaise -sevena hard-yearto-old Jocelyn Talbot place feeling that something in your life is not quite right. The protagonist, a disgraced professor on the brink of losing both his career and her mother have travelled his relationship, embodies this feeling. However, Goodman counteracts his discomfort with a force which is seductive, radical and unnerving: Helen. The connection between Helen and the protagonist is indirect yet intimate. As the former owner of the countryside house he's considering, Helen represents a volta in some discomfort from their home at Ecklingtonhis life, her past tied to his potential fresh start. The realtor who shows the protagonist around the house shares stories about Helen, and describes her as ''an entity that is pure consciousness, beyond form''. Although she lives in an assisted living facility now, Helen has powers beyond comprehension which the hollowreader gets the sense are not altogether innocuous.|isbn=1804272205}}{{Frontpage|isbn=B0GCB1MQ7D|title=Why My Mother Went Away|author=Alan Kennedy|rating=5|genre=Autobiography|summary=I have often wondered how prominent people came to hold their positions. The two women are angry with each other With 'celebrities', there's frequently a book they might or might not have written, which might or might not tell the true story. It's not often that you find a book that gives the full backstory, and rarely do you discover a memoir where the telling is so perfect that you'll go back and reread paragraphs and Jocelyn sentences, just for the pleasure the words give. ''Why My Mother Went Away'' is well aware one of her motherthose rare exceptions. It's strengths and weaknessesthe story of how a boy from the Midlands, born at the beginning of the Second World War, would become a Professor of Psychology at Dundee University. In fact, he was one of the founders of the department.}}{{Frontpage|author=Jeremy Cooper|title=Discord|rating= 3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Discord:a lack of agreement or harmony (as between persons, things, or ideas)
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{{Frontpage
|author=Matthieu AikinsEdward W Said|title=The Naked Don't Fear Representations of the WaterIntellectual
|rating=4.5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=ItEdward Said's easy to forget at times that The Naked Don't Fear 'Representations of the Water isnIntellectual''t actually fiction, because it reads very much like a well-paced thriller at times. This is not by any means less a criticism, but rather strict theory of what intellectuals are and more a testament to how well Matthieu Aikins – passionate argument for what they should be. Said clearly rejects the comfortable image of the intellectual as a Canadian citizen who decided detached expert speaking only to accompany his friend other specialists. Instead, he insists on the intellectual as a refugee from Afghanistan through Europe – recounts a vast public figure, often awkward, abrasive, and at times painful journeyunpopular, who speaks truth to power even when it is inconvenient or risky. |isbn=1804272248}}{{Frontpage|author=Sylvie Cathrall|title=A Letter to the Luminous Deep|rating=5|genre=Science Fiction|summary= There are tense moments and gripping accounts of border crossings few greater joys than a book which had me on edge the whole way throughlives up to a compelling premise. But it's written with a haunting and almost lyrical quality that allows the reader to perfectly envisage the environments and people describedAnd this is one of them.|isbn= B09N9157T60356522776
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Jorn Lier Horst and Thomas Enger1786482126|title=Unhinged The Janus Stone (Volume 3) (Blix and RammDr Ruth Galloway)|author=Elly Griffiths
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=This is Builders were demolishing an old house in Norwich - the site was going to hold seventy-five 'luxury' apartments - when they discovered the third book in a series bones of stories featuring Alexander Blix, a police officer, and Emma Ramm, child beneath a crime journalistdoorway. In There was no skull. Was this book we find that when one of Blix's colleagues, Kovic, uncovers a connection between several Oslo casesritual killing or murder? Inevitably, she tries to contact her superior, BlixDr Ruth Galloway finds herself working with DCI Harry Nelson. Before she can reach himIt's difficult as Ruth knows, howeverbut Nelson doesn't, that she is murdered, and Blix's daughter Iselin who shares pregnant with his child as a result of the same apartment, narrowly escapes being murdered tooone night they spent together some three months ago. We then find ourselves a few days later with Blix and RammHer condition will be obvious before long, who are being interviewed by the National Criminal Investigation Service not least because Blix has shot and killed someone, and Ramm saw it all happenRuth is prone to sudden bouts of sickness. What had Kovic discovered? And what did Blix and Ramm uncover that led to Blix killing someone?|isbn=1914585003
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Daniel Abraham0008551375|title=Age of AshWhen Shadows Fall (D S Max Craigie)|author=Neil Lancaster
|rating=4.5
|genre=FantasyCrime|summary= We meet Alys under Leanne Wilson's body was found at the bottom of a Scottish mountain, seemingly the most northerly result of Oldgatea tragic accident. She's four bridgesd looked so happy, too, when she posted her intentions on Facebook. Her friends were relieved as she was just out of an unpleasant relationship, but it looked like she has a knife in was living her hand and a meeting best life now. Then it emerged that she dreadsfive other women had died in similar circumstances in the last year. Meanwhile All were experienced climbers, the City of Kithamar is at a point in the turning of years when the worlds are at their thinnest properly equipped for what they were doing and all things are possiblesensible people. It is None of the night between the funeral of 'what a Prince and the coronation of his successorstupid thing to do' explanations applied. For They were all alone when they died: DS Max Craigie is certain there's a night killer on the Kithamar is un-ruledloose.|isbn=0356515427
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1529095522Paul B Preciado|title=The Interview|author=C M EwanDysphoria Mundi|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersPolitics and Society|summary=Kate Harding ''It is going for an interview for her dream job at Edge Communications. It's never too late to embrace the last interview revolutionary optimism of the day at one childhood'' Through this hybrid text, consisting of London's newest office buildings arias, letters, essays and Edge have fitted out their part of the building to be something special. Maggieautofiction, Kate's recruitment agentPreciado expresses his own hybrid self, is keen and brings forth a new sensorium as an offering to see that Kate approaches the interview new generation, a new feeling mechanism in which detachment is not considered a good state sign of mind: Kate assumes political apathy. Rather, it is the proportional, valid response to ''the epistemological and political crack we are living through, and the tension between emancipatory forces and conservative resistances that this characterize our present'' which Preciado calls ''dysphoria mundi''. The whole text is because Maggie will get a decent bonus if Kate gets framed against the backdrop of the job Covid- and she 19 pandemic as that which has catalysed this revolution, when dysphoria began to admit that life has not been easy emerge on a global scale, or as ''pangea covidica''. Rather than taking this extreme dysphoria as a sign of weakness, or mistaking detachment or withdrawal for her recentlypolitical paralysis, Preciado urges his readers to ''use dysphoria as your revolutionary platform''.|isbn=1804271454
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=B097XNMCRKSamantha Harvey|title=The Blood Tide (DS Max Craigie)|author=Neil LancasterOrbital|rating=4|genre=Crime|summary=Loch Torridon ''is'' the back of beyond: there's not even any light pollution which is why it was the perfect place to land illegal deliveries of drugs. Jimmy McLeish thought that he was onto a nice little earner, only to find that Macca, the man he thought he was working with, is dead. His remains would never be found. The delivery is hijacked by Davie and Callum. As the story progresses we'll get to know them quite well.}}{{Frontpage|isbn= B09NDJ77LM|title=Me and My Shadow|author=Deborah Stone|rating=45
|genre=General Fiction
|summary= In 2024, Samantha Harvey won the Booker Prize for ''What happens when someone is pushed too far and they begin to lose their grip on reality? How would you cope if you felt Orbital'', a compact yet profound work that no one loved you? And how far would you go to be happy? Accompany Rachel as she tries to shake off unfolds over a single day in the shadows lives of her past and attempts to repair decades worth a group of painastronauts aboard the International Space Station.Through a narrative lens that mirrors the astronauts'' Rachel is in a current conversation with her psychiatristorbital perspective, who pushes her Harvey invites readers to recall her life from very young childhood onwards. But Rachel is combative with Doctor Blake, sometimes even contemptuous of her. You can see that it's not an easy therapeutic relationship. Rachel's recall of her life is our planet in remarkable detail. She remembers each minor slight and each major betrayal in perfect detail with absolute and unforgiving claritya wholly new light.|isbn=1529922933
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=1529409659295967572X|title=The Locked Room (Dr Ruth Galloway)Pale Pieces|author=Elly GriffithsG M Stevens
|rating=5
|genre=CrimeLiterary Fiction|summary=It was some time since her father had remarried but Our unnamed narrator is about to begin a train journey with his wife was now keen to do some decorating companion Django. Where they're going and Dr Ruth Galloway volunteered to clear out her mother's belongings. She was intrigued by what the discovery of a picture purpose of her own house: it was an old photographthis journey is, taken in misty conditions and is uncertain. Django found the tickets ''on the back it said floor somewhere'dawn 1963', some years before Ruth was bornand has persuaded our narrator to accompany him. It was before her parents were married. When she returned to Norfolk she was determined to find out what was behind Why not? Not much else is clear either - but we are probably in the photograph but Covid intervened and past as the country was in lockdown. Ruth and Kate are restricted pair travel to the cottage with Ruth attempting to home school Kate station by coach and continue with her university teaching duties. The good thing was meeting Zoe, the new tenant from next door whom they got to know whilst clapping for carerstrain is a steam locomotive.
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=18479418340008551324|title=Atomic HabitsThe Devil You Know (D S Max Craigie)|author=James ClearNeil Lancaster
|rating=4.5
|genre=LifestyleCrime|summary=IIt've said this before but there are some books that you seek outs unusual for anyone from the Hardie family to approach the police. Neither side likes or has any respect for the other. But Davie Hardie is struggling in prison and he's prepared to tell the police where the body of a missing person is buried and who was responsible for her death. This person, he promises, some books that you stumble across is someone big and it will be worth the police doing what he wants. And what he wants is to be transferred to an open prison to serve the remainder of his sentence and some books that drop into your life because you really MUST read themto get an early parole date. Not much to ask, like, right now! is it? The new Deputy Police Constable doesn't think so and she'Atomic Habitss even prepared to do the other thing that Hardie demanded - make certain that DS Max Craigie and anyone who works with him is kept well away from what'' is in the last categorys happening.
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=B09MSC981WThea Lenarduzzi|title=The Woke Iliad|author=George BoreasTower|rating=45|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Helen is a popular activist''How unctuous are the fats of another's life, how dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream''. Or should we call her a popular influencer? Or perhaps a popular franchise owner? Anyway In this compelling novel, Thea Lenarduzzi assumes the identity of T, Helen is so popular that the United States government has made her its Ambassador protagonist of Wokethis tale. Helen runs all sorts Just as T's story is being told, the story of initiatives on behalf a second protagonist is unveiled: Annie, the daughter of a wealthy family in the government19th century, including the Shaming Conference and the Permissible Entertainment Committee - who died of tuberculosis after being locked in a tower, captures T's imagination. Annie's fate is, above all, an enticing story to T. It is a story which she consumes avariciously, both in a quest for indoctrinating truth and legislating against summer fun for any who still knew how to have it''knowledge, and in service of myth, fable and fantasy. Ouch! |isbn=1804271799
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=B09D95TRKZClaire-Louise Bennett|title=The Wedding Murders|author=Sarah LinleyBig Kiss, Bye-Bye
|rating=4.5
|genre=ThrillersLiterary Fiction|summary=Libby Steele was hoping to get a permanent job with the newspaper and the case she was covering was her big chance. It was even more important to her than the celebrity wedding she was to attend the following day with her ex-rock star boyfriendEverything in this book, Matthew. She was leaving her seven-year-old son, Patrick with her sister, Emmahowever sweet or seemingly innocent, is steeped in anguish and heading off to distortion. Even a grand manor house hotel in the North Yorkshire countryside. Daniel Acroydkiss, television presenter usually a symbol of intimacy and former member closeness, becomes evidence of love lost. When the rock band was marrying Vicky and Libby suspected that the wedding wasnnarrator cries out internally, 't 'come over here and kiss me,'quite'' as highit is less an invitation than a desperate attempt to confirm her emotional numbness. The imagined recipient of this plea is Xavier, her ex-profile as had been suggested as there was no ban on photos or phonespartner, a ghost she conjures to test her detachment.|isbn=1804271934
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=18382268340008405026|title=Carried Away With A Stranger in the CarnivalFamily (Maeve Kerrigan 11)|author=Ed BoxallJane 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, Helena, and her father are dead in their bed. Initially, it looks like a straightforward murder/suicide but there's something about the positioning of the bodies that makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and her boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. What looked as though it was going to be an open-and-shut case is now a complex double murder. Kerrigan is convinced that the explanation lies in Rosalie's disappearance: others (such as Derwent's boss, Una Burt) are less convinced.}}{{Frontpage|author=Annie Ernaux and Alison L. Strayer (translator)|title=The Other Girl
|rating=4
|genre=For SharingAutobiography|summary=It was one of those memories we treasure ''We were born from our childhoods: an outing with our grandparentsthe same body. TheyI're there ve never really wanted to undo all the good that parents do, so the trips out were always so much funthink about this. A young boy was going to the carnival with his Grandad, who told him:''
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'Itve read. Ernaux writes in direct address to her sister, however, this letter will never reach her. Why? Because Annie Ernaux'll be brilliants sister died of diphtheria at 6 years old, just remembera few months before the vaccine was made compulsory in France, donand 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't let go s process of my handreckoning with this giant absence in her life, an absence that she has always felt but often denied.''|isbn=1804271845
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1529135362Maxim Gorky and Bryan Karetnyk (translator)|title=The Long Weekend|author=Gilly MacmillanReminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev|rating=43.5|genre=ThrillersBiography|summary=It was a long drive to Biographies are often seen as the weekend retreat in Northumbria, right up near the Scottish borders form of life-writing which offers less colour; it can be seen as more objective and to make it worse the three husbands had all - for one reason or another - had to delay making the trip until the Saturday morningless personal. Jane I think that Gorky completely rejects this perspective, and Ruth had known each other for offers a long time but Emily was a bit vibrant, subjective yet informed portrait of three of an outsiderhis literary contemporaries. She and Paul had married only relatively recently and she was ten years younger than In the other two women. The friendship first section of this book, Tolstoy complains to his friend Gorky that: ''you write not of real life as it is, but of the group went back what you yourself imagine it to school daysbe. Paul had coached rugby at the school where MarkWhom would it help to know how I see this tower, Toby and Rob were pupils. Mark had married Janethat sea, and Toby or that Tartar - why should it interest anyone? Of what use is Ruthit?''s husband. And Rob? Well, Rob's deadMaxim 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
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=gareth_steel1529077745|title=Never Work With AnimalsThe Dark Wives (D I Vera Stanhope)|author=Gareth SteelAnn Cleeves|rating=4.5|genre=Animals and WildlifeCrime|summary=I don't often begin my reviews with a warning but with ''Never Work With Animals'' it seems to be appropriate. Stories A man walking his dog in the early morning discovered the body of a vet's life have proved popular since ''All Creatures Great and Small'' but ''Never Work With Animals'' is definitely not man in the companion volume you've been looking park near Rosebank, a care home fortroubled teens. As The dead man was Josh - one of the care workers who was due to work a TV show shift the author would argue that ''All Creatures'' lacked realism, as do other similar programmesnight before but who had never turned up. Gareth Steel says that D I Vera Stanhope is called in to investigate the book murder - but her only clue is not suitable for younger readers and the disappearance of one of the residents, fourteen- after reading year- I agree with himold Chloe Spencer. He says Some people believe that heChloe was responsible for the death but Vera thinks this is unlikely as the girl's written diary makes it clear that she adored Josh. She knows that she has to inform and provoke thought, particularly amongst aspiring vets. It deals with some uncomfortable and distressing issues but it doesn't lack sensitivity, although there are occasions when you would be best choosing between reading and eatingfind Chloe to discover what happened to Josh.
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1787634884Olga Tokarczuk|title=The Herd|author=Emily EdwardsHouse of Day, House of Night
|rating=5
|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Our story opens ''What's the good of a world that keeps changing like that? How can one go on calmly living in December 2019it?'' The title of this spellbinding work, ''House of Day, before most House of us had even heard Night'', somewhat reflects this notion of Covid or realised that whether or not we should be vaccinated would come shifting realities - the small, subtle changes which govern our lives, like the shift from day to be a major issuenight, however quotidian, causing chaos. We're But, the constant in Farley County Court, where Elizabeth and Jack Chamberlain are facing Bryony and Ash Kohli. As they were best friends until just a few months ago we know that whatever has happened image is major and thatthe house, regardless of stoic against the outcome, this ancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it is not going to work out well for anyoneperceived.|isbn=1804271918
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Annabel Abbs1836284683|title=The Language of FoodBig Happy|author=David Chadwick|rating=4.5|genre=Historical Dystopian Fiction|summary=Eliza Acton Well! This is a poet who has never had the slightest inclination to boil an egg. When tasked with writing murder mystery unlike any other! I do love it when I open a cookery book, she recruits Ann Kirbyit's nothing like I expected it to be, and it takes me on a local woman wild ride. And that is just what happened with ''The Big Happy''. I don't want to ruin a troubled home lifesimilar experience for any of you reading but I'll have to at least set the scene. Together, they test, craftOnce that's done, refine and reshape the world of domestic cookery, reinventing the recipe book and changing the face of cookery writing foreverI think you should simply experience this wonderfully original story for yourself.|isbn=1398502227
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{{Frontpage
|author=Louie StowellSally Rooney|title=Loki: A Bad God's Guide to Being GoodIntermezzo
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersGeneral Fiction |summary=Meet Loki. The trickster god Sally Rooney has got into trouble again, so studied the other gods have decided there's only one thing for it – he must be banished. And transformed – for Loki chessboard of life and is spending a month both in exile and in the physical form something of a middle-school kid here on Earthgrandmaster at putting it into words. He's guarded by a giant Her dialogue is gripping and a god in disguise as his parentsso brilliantly frustrating, and Thor has come along as wellher characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Among the many relationships woven into this story, the central one for readers to be unravel is the more suave, more popular fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and more successful brother of the twoPeter Koubek. Loki has Ivan, a month to redeem his reputationsocially awkward chess prodigy, and get contrasts sharply with his moral compass pointing the right way againolder brother Peter, or else, and to prove it he has to write the text we read a successful lawyer living in Dublin. Following their father's passing after a sentient notebook, that is able to cry foul of his lieslong battle with cancer, and judge his progress. But Loki is the kind of god who insists he can do anything, so surviving a bit more virtuously for a month is going to be a walk in the park..brothers' already strained relationship faces new trials.right?|isbn=14063997520571365469
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|isbn=00084544421836285493|title=A Flicker in the Dark|author=Stacy Willingham|rating=4|genre=Thrillers|summary=It's May 2019 and Dr Chloe Davis, a medical psychologist, is completing a session with a new patient. Lacey is suffering mentally but Chloe has hopes The Double Life of getting her through the trauma. You see, Chloe knows what it's like to have a traumatic childhood. Her father is Richard Davis, the man who murdered six girls some twenty years ago. Their bodies have never been found but Chloe found some jewellery belonging to the girls - trophies taken from their bodies - tucked away in a cupboard at home and she and her mother handed it to the police. Dick Davis is in the Louisiana State Penitentiary and Chloie has had nothing to do with him for the last twenty years. Her mother is in a care home.}}{{FrontpageWheelchair User|author=Christopher Edge|title=Escape RoomRob Keeley|rating=35
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=I've seen junior variants Will is a keen player of the 'Choose Your Own Adventure' format cover escape rooms – the process by which video games, a character or characters start by being trapped in conscientious student, a specific location, slightly annoying brother and have to solve problems in order to get their way outa supportive friend. What I've not done (alongside experience one for myself – for that would require actual friends) But most of all, he is seen a prose book describing people in such an adventureaspiring writer. English is his favourite lesson at his school, Marlowe Park, with the regular second person narrative replaced and one at which he excels. This hasn't gone unnoticed by the first. Herehis headteacher, Mrs Howarth, Ami and four other tweenagers, all new she has suggested to each other Will and booked into the game without any his mum that he spends a couple of their friends, are afternoons a team – starting out week at the game's main officesa different school, Station Road, where they're told they and their quest for The Answer are a world-changerhis ability might be better extended. But could watching people engage with such a pastime, despite the ramped-up threat levels, change much in the world of literature?|isbn=1788007964
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|isbn=17328987311009473085|title=The Boy Who Loved Boxes: A Children's Book for AdultsConservative Effect 2010 - 2024|author=Michael Albanese Anthony Seldon and Tom Egerton (Editors)|rating=4.5|genre=LifestylePolitics and Society|summary=There was Sometimes it's simpler to explain a Boy who loved boxesbook by describing what it ''isn't'' and that applies to ''The Conservative Effect: 2010-2024 - 14 Wasted Years?''. He had a box If you're looking for everything and he was meticulous an easy read which will deliver the inside story about storage: his parents probably couldnwhat ''really'' happened on certain occasions, then this isn't believe their luck! the 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 bettered for those tumultuous years. It began with art supplies, stuffed toys 's a compelling read and the like: all the things which most children have in abundanceshould be compulsory for anyone who thinks Johnson should return to politics. ''The BoyConservative Effect'' is an entirely different beast. It's delight was the seventh book in a series which looks at the sense of order in his room: it impact a government has made him feel happyand co-editor Sir Anthony Seldon regards this as the most important. As he grew up and became This book follows the well-established format: a Manseries of experts from various fields review the state of the nation when the coalition took over in 2010, his life became more complicated the changes that occurred and he dealt with this by getting bigger and better boxes. Look carefully at the pictures and you'll see that one of them has a padlock..situation in 2024.
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=B09MN1526WJenny Valentine|title=Blood Games (DS Nikki Parekh 4)|author=Liz MistryUs in the Before and After|rating=45|genre=CrimeTeens|summary=It's the third murder in the space of a few weeks Elk and they've all been because of machetes used on teenagers. DS Nikki Parekh and DC Sajid Malik Mab are amongst the first to arrive on the scene at Chellow Dene Reservoir on the outskirts of Bradford. Onlybest friends, this time, it's going to be different. The body appears to Nikki to be or more than that of her beloved nepheweven, Haqib, and she has their friendship is a once in a very public meltdownlifetime connection. It isnThey meet as children one day on a trip out but unfortunately they don't Haqib: there are similarities but get each other's contact details at the body is clad in designer clothes and comes from an obviously monied backgroundtime. What it does mean though is that Nikki is going to be on sick leave for some time with anxiety and depression.}}{{Frontpage|author=Ally Wilkes|title=All the White Spaces|rating=4|genre=Horror|summary=In post-WWI England, Jonathan Morgan stows away on an Arctic expedition led by the famous Australis Randall. For Jonathan, this adventure represents a But then chance for a fresh startbrings them back together, and the opportunity to live life as his authentic self and true gender, without the disapproval and constraints of his parentsthey are inseparable. However Something has happened though, Jonathan isn't the only one fleeing the confines of his past something terrible and the shadow of the war hangs like a funeral shroud over the expedition. Guilttragic, mistrust and now they must work through their grief stalk the party and, when disaster strikes and they are forced to overwinter on land, a menacing presence waits to prey on their darkness. If Jonathan is to make it out of the Arctic winter alive, he will have to face his demons once and for all, or risk making the barrenfriendship, icy landscape his tombtogether.|isbn=17890978351471196585
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