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{{Frontpage
|isbn=0957181167Zabriskie1|title=Blue Skies and Boat TripsA Village Where Many Ways Meet: The Norfolk A Story of Brian LewisBelonging and Community, Rooted in Indigenous Wisdom|author=Alan MarshallStephanie Zabriskie
|rating=5
|genre=ArtChildren's Non-Fiction|summary=There are few positive things which can be said about a substandard apartment when you’re on holiday but this time''Across many African and Indigenous systems, differences in trying how children learn, sense , or process the world were not treated as disorders to avoid looking at a problem I found myself looking more closely at a couple be corrected. They were understood as natural variations of pictures on the walls - human intelligence and was completely taken by awareness, each holding value within the work of Brian Lewiscommunity. I searched online and could only find ‘used’ versions '' This lovely story is a synthesis of this book and the print I wanted that tradition, which was ‘not available’carried down through generations by oral retellings. Oh, dear - then It shows that a few doors down community or society is not made up from the apartment, I found interchangeable building blocks of human beings but by a gift shop range of people with different skills and different personalities, all contributing to a stack of brand new books - whole that combines them all and a framed print to the benefit of the picture I wantedthem all.
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Simon Fox1787333175|title=DeadlockYou Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here|author=Benji Waterhouse|rating=4.5|genre=Confident ReadersPopular Science|summary=Late one night Graham Blake I 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 late back from his shift on the force, and then suddenly rings ArchieGoing to Hurt}}, demanding he fetch something from a secret placeglorious mixture of insight into the workings of the NHS, humour and join him on the runautobiography. They get together, ''You Don't Have to be Mad...'' promised the same elements but barely begin moved from physical problems to smell mental illness and the whiff work of Southern trains when the father is arrested, leaving Archie on the late express to Brighton, toting a tin his father psychiatrist. I did wonder whether it was determined acceptable to keep away from his colleagues, and be looking for humour in this setting but the bearer of laughter is directed at a situation rather than a whole heap of questionsperson and it is always delivered with empathy and understanding.|isbn=1839944420
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{{Frontpage
|author=Shalini BolandMaria Stepanova and Sasha Dugdale (Translator)|title=The Silent BrideDisappearing Act|rating=34|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary= Alice Despite her anonymisation of place names and Seth are a match made people, Stepanova's message in heaventhis short work of autofiction is unmistakable. He A novelist named M travels from B (ostensibly Berlin) to the town of F for a literary festival she is everything she has been searching for; handsometo be a guest speaker at. Detoured by erratic train schedules and nudged by forces beyond her control, accomplishedher journey slowly bends toward a traveling circus. Swept up in this series of events, clever, funny; total and utter husband-material. She is all he could possibly want M eventually offers to step in for a wife; beautiful, successful, confident… and so circus performer who has unexpectedly left the inevitable proposal is eagerly accepted by Alice show. The train functions as a motif of transience and the wedding is planned and set. When the much-anticipated day arrivesimpermanence, Alice is walked down while the aisle by her father, beaming with pride and excitement as she surveys circus embodies the congregation – their friends assembled to celebrate this joyful day reshaping of identity and when Seth turns to face his approaching bridea retreat into fantasy, Alice's world implodes because she has absolutely no idea who an impulse that lies at the man at very heart of the altar is, who is waiting for her to become his wifenovel form itself.|isbn=16625070891804272329
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Mark EdwardsB0GFQ81YQK|title=Keep Her SecretHow the Sky and the Earth Made People: From the Oral Stories of Malagasy Elders|author=Stephanie Zabriskie
|rating=4.5
|genre=ThrillersChildren's Non-Fiction|summary= Matthew Before people came and Helena are in Icelandjoined the animals, rekindling their university romance some twenty-odd years after they first metthere was only the sky and the earth. The alien-landscape of Everything was quiet until the lava fields and black beaches is breath-taking earth and Helena seems intent on getting the perfect photograph sky began to tal to encapsulate each other. First, the joy she is feeling in this momentearth created bodies. And then, even if it kills her… which it nearly does when the edge of a ravine gives way sky breathed life into them. These were the first humans and Helena finds herself clinging they belonged to the rockface with just the snagged strap of her rucksack both earth and sky. And so people lived between her sky and soil and they planted and learned and a 500 foot drop remembered, especially how they came to certain death belowbe. Convinced she is going When they grew old and died, their bodies returned to die, Helena must purge herself of the shocking secret she has been keeping earth and makes a panicked, cryptic declaration their life returned to Matthewthe sky. And that is why the earth and the sky are both revered. Only together can they create human beings. Just moments later their heroicAnd that is why people must pay attention to, and frankly very well preparedcare for, Icelandic tour guide swoops in and hauls Helena to safety and Matthew is left wondering what he just learned about Helenaboth.|isbn=166250893X
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=B0BYF82CXTB0GHPMNF6P|title=SemiThe Zookeeper's Dragon: A Magical Modern Fantasy Tale for Grown-DetachedUps|author=Deborah StoneCarolyn Mathews|rating=4.5|genre=General FictionFantasy|summary=When Phil's father unexpectedly dies, he quits his Canary Wharf finance job to take over the running of the family's farm zoo. He'Bill and Amanda are living in a semis not expecting much excitement, until he receives an unidentified egg that his new-detached house, stuck age stoner uncle Edgar found in a depressing rut of boredom and disappointment, when Terry and Fiona – glamorous, successful and very much cave in love – move in next door. Despite their different outlooks on lifeNew Zealand, the couples befriend each other and suddenly life appears to improve for both pairs. But all is not 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's part-time café waitress Pearl have to raise this little bundle of scales and joy, despite having no idea how to actually raise dragons and their increasingly interconnected relationships are fated for tragedynot being able to tell anyone about it.''But this tiny little dragon may show them love and connection in ways they had never before imagined…
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1787636003Stephanie Zabriskie|title=The Girls How Maasai Women Spoke to Cows: From the Oral Stories of Summer|author=Katie BishopMaasai Elders
|rating=5
|genre=General Children's Non-Fiction|summary=It was ''How Maasai Women Spoke to Cows is a children’s nonfiction book drawn from the summer when Rachel Evans turned eighteen that she and Caroline went backpacking around Greece and arrived on the islandoral traditions of Maasai elders in Ngorongoro, Tanzania. Rachel wasn't exactly innocent but she was, perhaps, naive, so when thirty' The Maasai are a cattle-four-year-old Alistair Wright started herding people and this story writes down its oral tradition explaining how they came to take an interest be so. Cattle are status and wealth in herMaasai culture but this doesn't tell the whole story of the intimate and symbiotic connection its people, she was flattered rather than wary. It was quite a while before he made any sort of physical approach to her and by that time she was obsessed by him. Alistair worked for Henry Taylorespecially its women, looking after his interests on the island have with their cows and in particular in for the bar where all natural world. The oral tradition retelling the girls either worked or partiedmany conversations Maasai women have had with their cows, does.|isbn=B0G9WTGY6J
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1529135389Livi Michael|title=The Fall|author=Gilly MacmillanElizabeth and Ruth|rating=43.5|genre=CrimeHistorical Fiction|summary=Nicole Booth had spent ''Elizabeth and Ruth'' is a work of historical fiction wrought from the morning at life of the county fair before she returned home. There was no sign Victorian author Elizabeth Gaskell, best known for her first novel Mary Barton (1848), a radical critique of her husband but opera was playing on the state-treatment of-the-art music system installed in working class published under a pseudonym. The Glass Barn. They'd not been 'Ruth'' from Livi Michael's title appears in the architect-designed house on Lancaut Peninsula for long her novel as Pasley, a young Irish prostitute who was abandoned as a child and were still getting used to all the high-tech systems Tom had insisted upon. Some of them fought with each other and didnfinds herself in Manchester't work as reliably as they should. It had all come about through s New Bailey Prison after a ten-million-pound lottery win difficult and they were still getting used to having that sort of money, toounjust hand at life. EventuallySet in Manchester between 1839 and 1842, Nicole found Tom dead in the swimming pool with a wound novel examines the harsh conditions endured by the Victorian working poor and interrogates the extent to his headwhich the wealthy (including Gaskell herself) were responsible for addressing these injustices.|isbn=1784633682
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{{Frontpage
|author=Alan ParksMakenna Goodman|title=To Die in JuneHelen of Nowhere|rating=4.5|genre=CrimeLiterary Fiction|summary=What first seems like It could be argued that the unfortunate, accidental death pervading theme of this book is malaise - a homeless man on the streets, suddenly starts hard-to feel like -place feeling that something more sinister as another body in your life is discovered, and then anothernot quite right. This is worrying enough for detective Harry McCoyThe protagonist, but all a disgraced professor on the more so because brink of losing both his own father is a down-career and-out alcoholichis relationship, embodies this feeling. However, Goodman counteracts his discomfort with no fixed abodea force which is seductive, radical and he has been for yearsunnerving: Helen. The connection between Helen and the protagonist is indirect yet intimate. At As the former owner of the same time as facing these possible murderscountryside house he's considering, Harry is also dealing with Helen represents a move volta in his life, her past tied to a different police stationhis potential fresh start. The realtor who shows the protagonist around the house shares stories about Helen, and the arrival there of a woman who claims describes her little boy has gone missingas ''an entity that is pure consciousness, only no record of the boy having existed can be foundbeyond form''. Something feels wrong - not just with Although she lives in an assisted living facility now, Helen has powers beyond comprehension which the woman’s story but also with reader gets the other officers where he has been stationed, but can Harry uncover just what is going on?sense are not altogether innocuous.|isbn=18053007841804272205
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Laura NoakesB0GCB1MQ7D|title=Cosima Unfortunate Steals a StarWhy My Mother Went Away|author=Alan Kennedy|rating=45|genre=Confident ReadersAutobiography|summary=Meet Number OneI have often wondered how prominent people came to hold their positions. Or ratherWith 'celebrities', there's frequently a book they might or might not have written, Cosima Unfortunatewhich might or might not tell the true story. Or ratherIt's not often that you find a book that gives the full backstory, just Cos to her friends. The practice in and rarely do you discover a memoir where the home she lives in telling is so perfect that you'll go back and reread paragraphs and sentences, just for the girls to just be named by pleasure the number they correspond to in the ledger, and theywords give. ''Why My Mother Went Away''re all Unfortunates – young people with disabilities, uncommon mentalities or suchlike that Victorian society frowns greatly uponis one of those rare exceptions. But Cosima bears It's the tag as story of how a surname because nothing else seems to be known about where she came boy from, as the first ever inmateMidlands, and unique in having no known family in born at the outside world. During a daring escapade to steal some posh cakes from beginning of the kitchen one afternoonSecond World War, she discovers would become a plan involving said outside world – a devilish Lord Fitzroy seems to want to adopt all the girls for his InstituteProfessor of Psychology at Dundee University. But whyIn fact, and what does that body entail? And could it possibly bring Cos closer to he was one of the founders of the past she has so little link with?|isbn=0008579059department.
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{{Frontpage
|author=Thomas D LeeJeremy Cooper|title=Perilous TimesDiscord|rating=3.5|genre= FantasyLiterary Fiction|summary= ''Hate is the path Discord: a lack of least resistance''agreement or harmony (as between persons, things, or ideas)
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{{Frontpage
|author=Madelaine LucasTom Percival|title=Thirst for SaltThe Wrong Shoes
|rating=5
|genre=Literary FictionConfident Readers|summary= Will's life is difficult, in a multitude of ways. He is bullied because he has 'the wrong shoes'Love, Ihe has the wrong shoes because his dad can'd readt work and doesn't have enough money for even the most basic of things like food, and his dad can't work because he lost his job at the college, was supposed to be working a cash-in-hand job on a light building site and had an accident. Throw into that mix the fact that his mum and weightless feelingdad are separated, but I had always longed for gravityand Will'' Told from a retrospective views life seems bleak in every direction. And yet, he still has a young woman unravels the year-long relationship that once defined hertiny amount of hope. Overlaid with later wisdom He is good at art, and clings to the narrator relives the affair with moments of joy when he is drawing, that feel like a man twenty years her senior from its inception – light at the summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the summer after. Set against the backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the 24-year-old narrator's deepening relationship with her older lovera long, depicting its all-consuming nature, how it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocablydark tunnel.|isbn=08615464901398527122
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1529382823Edward W Said|title=The Last Passenger|author=Will DeanRepresentations of the Intellectual
|rating=4.5
|genre=ThrillersPolitics and Society|summary=Caroline Riley (she prefers Edward Said'Cazs ') is middle-aged and has found herself somewhat surprisingly in love with Pete. They're off on a cruise to New York on 'Representations of the Intellectual'Atlantica''. Caz's sister, Gemma, reckons that Pete is going to propose but Caz hasn't spotted less a ring-shaped bulge in his suit pocket strict theory of what intellectuals are and she doesn't know whether she's relieved or disappointed. They've not been more a couple passionate argument for that long and what they should be. Said clearly rejects the comfortable image of the trip will be an excellent opportunity to get intellectual as a detached expert speaking only to know him a bit betterother specialists. MeanwhileInstead, Gemma is looking after Caz's cafe he insists on the intellectual as well as their mother a public figure, often awkward, abrasive, and unpopular, who has dementia. It's going speaks truth to be good, isn't power even when it?is inconvenient or risky.|isbn=1804272248
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{{Frontpage
|author=Lex CroucherSylvie Cathrall|title=Gwen and Art Are Not in LoveA Letter to the Luminous Deep|rating=45|genre=TeensScience Fiction|summary=Who knew that what I really needed There are few greater joys than a book which lives up to read right now was a gay Arthurian RomCom? But honestly, it lifted my spirits in a most delightful waycompelling premise. In And this story, Gwen and Arthur have been betrothed since they were tiny, much to their mutual disgust! Gwen, you see, is in love with Bridget (the kingdom's only female knight) - something that Art discovers from her private diaries. And then when Gwen then catches Art kissing a boy they find themselves becoming reluctant allies, creating the subterfuge one of falling in love with each other, when really they are enabling their own other romantic attachmentsthem. But as their impending wedding draws ever closer, will they find a way in which they can both truly be themselves, or are they destined to live a lie their whole lives?|isbn=15266517930356522776
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Emily Critchley1786482126|title=One Puzzling AfternoonThe Janus Stone (Dr Ruth Galloway)|author=Elly Griffiths|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=84 year Builders were demolishing an old Edie has lived house in Norwich - the site was going to hold seventy-five 'luxury' apartments - when they discovered the same small town for almost her whole life, but now she is facing bones of a child beneath a move as her son wants to move to another house and bring Edie to live with his family, as Edie is starting to lose her memorydoorway. However, Edie is tormented by the memory of her childhood friend, Lucy, who went missing over 60 years ago, and the worry that there There was no skull. Was this a secret she was keeping for Lucy that somehow might be the thing that reveals the truth of what happened all that time agoritual killing or murder? Inevitably, Dr Ruth Galloway finds herself working with DCI Harry Nelson. After It'seeings difficult as Ruth knows, but Nelson doesn' Lucy in the high streett, just that she is pregnant with his child as she was a result of the last time she saw her, she starts to find pockets of memories coming back to herone night they spent together some three months ago. And yet as she remembers the pastHer condition will be obvious before long, she not least because Ruth is forgetting more and more in her day prone to day lifesudden bouts of sickness. Will she uncover the truth about Lucy's disappearance before her move, and before her memories are gone forever?|isbn=1804181250
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=0008551375|title=Jenny Lund Madsen and Megan E Turney When Shadows Fall (translatorD S Max Craigie)|titleauthor=Thirty Days of DarknessNeil Lancaster|rating=34.5|genre=Thrillers Crime|summary=Hannah presents as an unlikeableLeanne Wilson's body was found at the bottom of a Scottish mountain, bitter woman, an author seemingly the result of failing if well-regarded literary short novelsa tragic accident. Sorry to leave She'd looked so happy, too, when she posted her bottles intentions on Facebook. Her friends were relieved as she was just out of red wine behind her for an afternoon at a book fairunpleasant relationship, but it looked like she flukes was living her way into a public argument with the latest hot shot best life now. Then it emerged that five other women had died in similar circumstances in the world of crime fictionlast year. All were experienced climbers, saying he's populist trash properly equipped for what they were doing and only writing what anyone could writesensible people. Cue None of the bet that she cannot live up 'what a stupid thing to that accusationdo' explanations applied. Her publisher duly books her flights from Denmark to Iceland, where she They were all alone when they died: DS Max Craigie is put up for certain there's a wintry month away from it all. Just killer on the point of despairing – about her writing, about the people and the lack of stimulus for her plot, more or less about everything – word comes that the landlady's nephew has been found dead…|isbn=1914585615loose.
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1804545600Paul B Preciado|title=The Monk|author=Tim SullivanDysphoria Mundi|rating=4.5|genre=CrimePolitics and Society|summary=The body in ''It is never too late to embrace the woods near Bristol was 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 nasty shock - a monk strapped new sensorium as an offering to the new generation, a chair and dumped new feeling mechanism in which detachment is not considered a ditchsign of political apathy. HeRather, it is the proportional, valid response to 'd been savagely beaten. It's a while before D S George Cross the epistemological and political crack we are living through, and the Major Crime Unit establish tension between emancipatory forces and conservative resistances that this is Father Dominic. Hecharacterize our present'' which Preciado calls ''dysphoria mundi'd been missing for a few days and certainly hadn't asked permission to leave his abbey. As The whole text is framed against the team gradually unpick backdrop of the monk's past it becomes clear that he'd been wellCovid-loved 19 pandemic as an investment bankerthat which has catalysed this revolution, brotherwhen dysphoria began to emerge on a global scale, neighbour and friendor as ''pangea covidica''. He'd also been very wealthy but had given it all up Rather than taking this extreme dysphoria as a sign of weakness, or mistaking detachment or withdrawal for political paralysis, Preciado urges his faithreaders to ''use dysphoria as your revolutionary platform''. Why would someone savagely murder him?|isbn=1804271454
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{{Frontpage
|author=Lauren BravoSamantha Harvey|title=PrelovedOrbital|rating=4.5|genre=Women's General Fiction|summary= Gwen is pressing her middle-aged bosom on In 2024, Samantha Harvey won the Booker Prize for ''Orbital'', a big number compact yet profound work that starts with unfolds over a four and ends with an oh-my-God-I'm-nearly-forty. Having been made unexpectedly redundant - any HR officer worth their salt would argue single day in the toss - Gwen finds herself having lives of a bit group of astronauts aboard the International Space Station. Through a mid-life crisis. Catharsis is key and Gwen has decided now is narrative lens that mirrors the time astronauts' orbital perspective, Harvey invites readers to take back her life'see our planet in a wholly new light.|isbn=13985106291529922933
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Cath Howe295967572X|title=My Life on FirePale Pieces|author=G M Stevens
|rating=5
|genre=Confident ReadersLiterary Fiction|summary=RenOur unnamed narrator is about to begin a train journey with his companion Django. Where they's family home re going and what the purpose of this journey is, is uncertain. Django found the tickets ''on the floor somewhere'' and has persuaded our narrator to accompany him. Why not? Not much else is destroyed clear either - but we are probably in the past as the pair travel to the station by coach and the train is a firesteam locomotive. She, her parents, and her little brother lose everything}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0008551324|title=The Devil You Know (D S Max Craigie)|author=Neil Lancaster|rating=4.5|genre=Crime|summary=It's unusual for anyone from the Hardie family to approach the police. She doesn't have any of her clothes, Neither side likes or has any of her special little knick-knacks from her cupboard, respect for the other. But Davie Hardie is struggling in prison and now she is living at her grandmotherhe's house prepared to tell the police where they can't touch anythingthe body of a missing person is buried and who was responsible for her death. This person, or do anythinghe promises, or even eat is someone big and it will be worth the foods they normally eatpolice doing what he wants. When she goes back And what he wants is to be transferred to an open prison to school she discovers that serve the class are doing a special art project, creating boxes remainder of their lives, his sentence and to display things that are important to them and show who they are as a personget an early parole date. But Ren has nothing Not much to put in a boxask, is it? The new Deputy Police Constable doesn't think so and so she finds herself starting 's even prepared to steal things. Small things, things do the other thing that Hardie demanded - make certain that people might not really miss, not when they have so much alreadyDS Max Craigie and anyone who works with him is kept well away from what's happening. But what will happen to her if someone finds out what she is doing?|isbn=1839942835
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=00085170101035043092|title=Death Under a Little SkyThe Killing Stones (Jimmy Perez)|author=Stig AbellAnn Cleeves
|rating=5
|genre=Crime
|summary=The marriage had run its course. It might I can't have been different if the pregnancies hadn't ended in miscarriages but no one else only person who was involved - certainly not sad when Inspector Jimmy Perez [[Wild Fire (Shetland, Book 8) by Ann Cleeves|left Shetland]] to start a new life on JakeOrkney. It's side and been seven years since we heard from him, but he didn't think there was for Faye eithers now living with Willow Reeves and their young son, James, as well as Cassie, the daughter of his former partner. They were still polite to each other Willow's also his boss, and wished each other well - she ''should'' be on maternity leave, but didn't wish to remain married. The perfect solution arrived when the body of a popular islander, Archie Stout, is found, in the form aftermath of a legacy from Jakestorm, she can's Uncle Arthurt resist getting involved. He'd been left battered about the head with a secluded property in the hamlet Neolithic stone - one of Caelum Parvum a pair - Little Sky - and enough money to live there without the need to workwhich had been stolen from a museum.
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{{Frontpage
|author=Jennifer SaintThea Lenarduzzi|title=AtalantaThe Tower
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''I was as worthy as any one How unctuous are the fats of them. I would get on board that shipanother's life, I vowed. I would take my place, not just how dizzying their sugars in the name of the goddess. It was for the sake of my name, too. Atalantaour bloodstream''.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=152915118XClaire-Louise Bennett|title=Pineapple Street|author=Jenny JacksonBig Kiss, Bye-Bye
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=''Pineapple Street'' Everything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, is the story of three women: Sasha, Darley steeped in anguish and Georgianadistortion. Darley and George are sisters Even a kiss, usually a symbol of intimacy and Sasha is married to their brother Cord. They're Stocktonscloseness, only Sasha isn't a Stockton by birth so she isn't readily accepted into the tribebecomes evidence of love lost. The problem's exacerbated when When the clan matriarchnarrator cries out internally, Tilda, asks Cord and Sasha if they'd like to move into the Pineapple Street property. Tilda and Chip have renovated 'come over here and downsized to another propertykiss me, '' it is less an invitation than a street or so away, which they owndesperate attempt to confirm her emotional numbness. They won't need any The imagined recipient of the furniture from Pineapple Streetthis plea is Xavier, so Sasha and Cord can move straight in. Nominallyher ex-partner, they had a choice but that wasn't the reality. Darley and Georgiana start to call Sasha 'the gold digger'. She's living in ''their'' family home. They use it so often that they abbreviate it ghost she conjures to 'the GD'test her detachment.|isbn=1804271934
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=00085512780008405026|title=Blood Runs Cold A Stranger in the Family (D S Max CraigieMaeve Kerrigan 11)|author=Neil LancasterJane Casey|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=Affi Smith It's sixteen years since nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her bed one summer night. She was snatched from never found and the bottom of Fyrishinvestigation ground to a halt. Now, her mother, Helena, where she'd been doing and her trainingfather are dead in their bed. SheInitially, it looks like a straightforward murder/suicide but there'd been a bit s something about the positioning of a wayward teenager until she discovered athletics - the bodies that makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and it now looks her boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. What looked as though she could it was going to be heading for the national squadan open-and-shut case is now a complex double murder. ThatKerrigan is convinced that the explanation lies in Rosalie's quite an achievement for someone with her backgrounddisappearance: you seeothers (such as Derwent's boss, Affo came to Scotland Una Burt) are less convinced.}}{{Frontpage|author=Annie Ernaux and Alison L. Strayer (translator)|title=The Other Girl|rating=4|genre=Autobiography|summary=''We were born from Albania as Afrodita Dushku at the age of twelvesame body. She was rescued when she was carrying a kilo of drugs and three years later sheI's happy with her foster familyve never really wanted to think about this. There'' Ernaux's just work is always very candid and her tone transparent, but this raw epistolary text must be one cloud on of the most intimate accounts I've read. Ernaux writes in direct address to her horizon: sister, however, this letter will never reach her little . Why? Because Annie Ernaux's sisterdied of diphtheria at 6 years old, Melodi is a few months before the vaccine was made compulsory in a childrenFrance, 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 home process of reckoning with this giant absence in Tirana - and anyone could get to herlife, an absence that she has always felt but often denied.|isbn=1804271845
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Emily TeshMaxim Gorky and Bryan Karetnyk (translator)|title=Some Desperate GloryReminiscences 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 first 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=Science FictionCrime|summary=''While Earth's children live, A man walking his dog in the enemy shall fear us'' Following early morning discovered the destruction body of a man in the Earthpark near Rosebank, amongst a rare number care home for troubled teens. The dead man was Josh - one of survivors, Kyr has been raised on Gaea Station – the home of care workers who was due to work a shift the last scraps of humanity – and trained relentlessly night before but who had never turned up. D I Vera Stanhope is called in to avenge investigate the murder - but her only clue is the disappearance of one of the residents, fourteen-year-old Chloe Spencer. Some people and believe that Chloe was responsible for the death but Vera thinks this is unlikely as the world girl's diary makes it clear that should have been hersshe adored Josh. All her life, She knows that she has been conditioned to fall in line, find Chloe to discover what happened to fulfil her duty and ensure that humanity perseveresJosh.|isbn=0356521834
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0861544056Olga Tokarczuk|title=Twin Truths|author=Jacqueline SutherlandHouse of Day, House of Night
|rating=5
|genre=ThrillersLiterary Fiction|summary=Belle and David's twin daughters are just coming to the end of their first term at university. Kit's been at Bristol and Jess's in Exeter. ItWhat's not only the first time they've been away from their parents for any length good of time - but they've also been apart from each other. Belle can't wait to have them all to herself for a while. Then Kit rings up - world that keeps changing like that? How can she bring her boyfriend home with herone go on calmly living in it? Belle would prefer that he didn't come but doesn't want to upset Kit. Ivo The title of this spellbinding work, 's apparently 'olderHouse of Day, House of Night': he's twenty, somewhat reflects this notion of shifting realities -four the small, subtle changes which govern our lives, like the shift from day to Kit's eighteen but Belle figures that she can cope with night, however quotidian, causing chaos. But, the constant in thatimage is the house, stoic against the ancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it is perceived. And they'll be sharing a bedroom.|isbn=1804271918
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|isbn=17856334571836284683|title=Charging Around: Exploring the Edges of England by Electric CarThe Big Happy|author=Clive WilkinsonDavid Chadwick|rating=4.5|genre=TravelDystopian Fiction|summary=Clive Wilkinson has Well! This is a murder mystery unlike any other! I do love it when I open a book, it's nothing like I expected it to be, and it takes me on a history of travelling by unconventional means wild ride. And that is just what happened with ''The Big Happy''. I don't want to ruin a preference similar experience for slow travel. As he neared his eightieth birthday the idea any of exploring you reading but I'll have to at least set the edges of England in an electric car was not totally outrageousscene. In factOnce that's done, it I think you should be a pleasant holiday simply experience this wonderfully original story for Clive and his wife, Joan, shouldn't it?yourself.
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|author=Frederic SeagerSally Rooney|title= Jesus, the Man and the Myth: A Jewish Reading of the New TestamentIntermezzo
|rating=4.5
|genre= Spirituality and ReligionGeneral Fiction |summary= I was brought up in Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard of life and is something of a family where religion played little or no partgrandmaster at putting it into words. Culturally Irish Catholic on one side Her dialogue is gripping and Welsh Methodist on so brilliantly frustrating, as her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Among the othermany relationships woven into this story, nobody really discussed religion and the adults around me ranged from lapsed central one for readers to agnostic to atheistunravel is the fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. Other than the odd church wedding or baptism or the school nativity playIvan, a socially awkward chess prodigy, contrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, I didna successful lawyer living in Dublin. Following their father't think too much about faith or what people did or didns passing after a long battle with cancer, the brothers't believealready strained relationship faces new trials.|isbn=B092BWWG9Y0571365469
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|isbn=05713709771836285493|title=The Lock-UpDouble Life of a Wheelchair User|author=John BanvilleRob Keeley|rating=45|genre=Crime (Historical)Confident Readers|summary=It's six months since the dramatic events which we read about in [[April in Spain by John Banville|April in Spain]] and Dr Quirke Will is now back in Dublin a keen player of video games, a conscientious student, a slightly annoying brother and living (if somewhat uneasily) with his daughtera supportive friend. But most of all, Phoebehe is an aspiring writer. The worst of English is his favourite lesson at his grief is over but school, Marlowe Park, and one at which he irrationally blames DI St John Strafford for what happened and this has made the already strained relationship between them more difficultexcels. TheyThis hasn're brought together t gone unnoticed by Chief Inspector Hackett when the body his headteacher, Mrs Howarth, and she has suggested to Will and his mum that he spends a couple of afternoons a week at a youngdifferent school, Jewish scholarStation Road, Rosa Jacobs, is found in a lock-up. At first, it looked as though she'd gassed herself but Quirke is convinced that it was murder rather than suicidewhere his ability might be better extended.
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|authorisbn=Julia Bartz1009473085|title=The Writing RetreatConservative Effect 2010 - 2024|author=Anthony Seldon and Tom Egerton (Editors)|rating=45|genre=ThrillersPolitics and Society|summary= Roza ValloSometimes it's simpler to explain a book by describing what it ''isn't'' and that applies to ''The Conservative Effect: 2010-2024 - 14 Wasted Years?''. Anyone in If you're looking for an easy read which will deliver the world of publishing knows inside story about what ''really'' happened on certain occasions, then this isn't the namebook for you. Writers want to 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 her, agents want to represent herbettered for those tumultuous years. She It's something of a legend with compelling read and should be compulsory for anyone who thinks Johnson should return to politics. ''The Conservative Effect'' is an impressive, if compact, back catalogue of works that started with her breakthrough novel, published when she was barely out of childhoodentirely different beast. Alex, It's the seventh book in a series which looks at the impact a writergovernment has made and co-slasheditor Sir Anthony Seldon regards this as the most important. This book follows the well-editor, is more than a little obsessed with Roza, and is stunned when, following established format: a series of unexpected eventsexperts from various fields review the state of the nation when the coalition took over in 2010, she is invited to be part of her month-long writers' retreatthe changes that occurred and the situation in 2024.|isbn=0861544439
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|author=Patrick Ness and Tea BendixJenny Valentine|title=Different for BoysUs in the Before and After|rating=4.5|genre=Teens |summary=Ant is in Year Eleven at quite a standard schoolElk and Mab are best friends, and is surprised to find his geography class (within which it seems absolutely nothing about geography is ever learnt) has been restructuredor more than that even, so his desk their friendship is one of four with both his best buddy from the football team, and two other old muckers – a once in fact they all go back to primary school days togethera lifetime connection. As They meet as children one day on a trip out but unfortunately theydon't get each other're all fired up, straining s contact details at the leash only a single-sex school can form, the talk in class and out often turns to sextime. Which is confusing for AntBut then chance brings them back together, as he doesn't know what his score is, where his achievements in that regard lieand they are inseparable. He's had a casual relationship Something has happened though, a secret onesomething terrible and tragic, for several months and nowthey must work through their grief, and so has effectively progressed up the ladder headed by 'experienced'their friendship, but whether that's set in stone, he can't be sure. And that's mostly because of who he's been having the relationship and the sex withtogether.|isbn=15295094911471196585
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