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==The Best New Books==
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{{Frontpage
|isbn= 1806344777|title=Arthur and the Land of Nimbostratus: Arthur's Able Adventures|author=Tom PercivalRob Keeley|rating=4.5|genre=For Sharing|summary= Arthur dreams of adventures. He looks out of his window each day and thinks of all the escapades he could have, the places he could go and the things he could see. His favourite day is Saturday because that's the day his friend Maxine - she of the booming laugh and silver bangles - comes to visit. Maxine is a great believer in the power of imagination.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1035043092|title=The Wrong ShoesKilling Stones (Jimmy Perez)|author=Ann Cleeves|rating=5|genre=Crime|summary=I can't have been the only person who was sad when Inspector Jimmy Perez [[Wild Fire (Shetland, Book 8) by Ann Cleeves|left Shetland]] to start a new life on Orkney. It's been seven years since we heard from him, but he's now living with Willow Reeves and their young son, James, as well as Cassie, the daughter of his former partner. Willow's also his boss, and she ''should'' be on maternity leave, but when the body of a popular islander, Archie Stout, is found, in the aftermath of a storm, she can't resist getting involved. He'd been battered about the head with a Neolithic stone - one of a pair - which had been stolen from a museum.}}{{Frontpage|author=Polly Barton|title=What Am I, A Deer?|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Polly Barton's debut novel is an intellectually playful yet emotionally exposed work that uses translation as both subject and governing metaphor. The narrator, newly relocated from London to Berlin, works translating video games into Japanese through the process of localisation, rewriting language until it feels comfortably familiar to a new audience. Barton treats this as a paradoxical act: arguably, in striving for universality, language is endlessly repackaged, its originality at risk of disappearing altogether. From this, the novel opens out into a wider, resonant question: to what extent do we translate ourselves in order to be understood, accepted, or loved?|isbn=1804272175}}{{Frontpage|isbn= Zabriskie1|title=A Village Where Many Ways Meet: A Story of Belonging and Community, Rooted in Indigenous Wisdom|author=Stephanie Zabriskie
|rating=5
|genre=Confident ReadersChildren's Non-Fiction|summary=Will's life is difficult'Across many African and Indigenous systems, differences in a multitude how children learn, sense , or process the world were not treated as disorders to be corrected. They were understood as natural variations of ways. He is bullied because he has 'the wrong shoes'human intelligence and awareness, he has each holding value within the wrong shoes because his dad cancommunity.'t work and doesn't have enough money for even the most basic This lovely story is a synthesis of things like food, and his dad can't work because he lost his job at the collegethat tradition, which was working carried down through generations by oral retellings. It shows that a cash-in-hand job on community or society is not made up from interchangeable building blocks of human beings but by a building site range of people with different skills and had an accident. Throw into that mix the fact that his mum and dad are separateddifferent personalities, and Will's life seems bleak in every direction. And yet, he still has all contributing to a tiny amount of hope. He is good at art, whole that combines them all and clings to the moments benefit of joy when he is drawing, that feel like a light at the end of a long, dark tunnelthem all.|isbn=1398527122
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Sylvie Cathrall1787333175|title=A Letter You Don't Have to the Luminous Deepbe Mad to Work Here|author=Benji Waterhouse
|rating=5
|genre=Popular Science Fiction|summary= There are few greater joys than 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 Going to Hurt}}, a book which lives up glorious mixture of insight into the workings of the NHS, humour and autobiography. ''You Don't Have to be Mad...'' promised the same elements but moved from physical problems to mental illness and the work of a compelling premisepsychiatrist. And I did wonder whether it was acceptable to be looking for humour in this setting but the laughter is one of themdirected at a situation rather than a person and it is always delivered with empathy and understanding.|isbn= 0356522776
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0008517061Maria Stepanova and Sasha Dugdale (Translator)|title=Death in a Lonely Place|author=Stig AbellThe Disappearing Act
|rating=4
|genre=CrimeLiterary Fiction|summary= Former Metropolitan Police detectiveDespite her anonymisation of place names and people, Jake Johnson, has settled into his rustic life at Little SkyStepanova's message in this short work of autofiction is unmistakable. There’s perhaps a little uncertainty about A novelist named M travels from B (ostensibly Berlin) to the future town of his life with his vet girlfriend, Livia F for a literary festival she is to be a guest speaker at. Detoured by erratic train schedules and nudged by forces beyond her daughter Dianacontrol, as moving her journey slowly bends toward a traveling circus. Swept up in together would mean a lot this series of compromise: does Jake give up his off-grid and relaxing life events, M eventually offers to move step in with Livia or does Livia move to Little Sky despite her reservations about whether or not this is for a circus performer who has unexpectedly left the future she wants for herself show. The train functions as a motif of transience and her daughter? For impermanence, while the moment they’re enjoying life in circus embodies the present reshaping of identity and putting a retreat into fantasy, an impulse that lies at the future on very heart of the back burnernovel form itself.|isbn=1804272329
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1786482126B0GFQ81YQK|title=The Janus Stone (Dr Ruth Galloway)How the Sky and the Earth Made People: From the Oral Stories of Malagasy Elders|author=Elly GriffithsStephanie Zabriskie
|rating=4.5
|genre=CrimeChildren's Non-Fiction|summary=Builders were demolishing an old house in Norwich - Before people came and joined the site animals, there was going to hold seventy-five 'luxury' apartments - when they discovered only the sky and the bones of a child beneath a doorwayearth. There Everything was no skullquiet until the earth and the sky began to tal to each other. Was this a ritual killing or murder? InevitablyFirst, Dr Ruth Galloway finds herself working with DCI Harry Nelsonthe earth created bodies. It's difficult as Ruth knowsAnd 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, but Nelson doesn'tespecially 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 she is pregnant with his child as a result of why the earth and the one night sky are both revered. Only together can they spent together some three months agocreate human beings. Her condition will be obvious before long, not least because Ruth And that is prone why people must pay attention to sudden bouts of sickness, and care for, both.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=0008551324B0GHPMNF6P|title=The Devil You Know (D S Max Craigie)Zookeeper's Dragon: A Magical Modern Fantasy Tale for Grown-Ups|author=Neil LancasterCarolyn Mathews
|rating=4.5
|genre=CrimeFantasy|summary=ItWhen Phil's unusual for anyone from the Hardie family father unexpectedly dies, he quits his Canary Wharf finance job to approach take over the police. Neither side likes or has any respect for running of the otherfamily's farm zoo. But Davie Hardie is struggling in prison and heHe's prepared to tell the police where the body of not expecting much excitement, until he receives an unidentified egg that his new-age stoner uncle Edgar found in a missing person cave in New Zealand, and suddenly life is buried and who was responsible for her deathno longer quite what it seems. This personThen the egg hatches into neither a reptile nor a bird, but a dragon! Now he promises, is someone big Edgar, his mother Abi, and it will be worth the police doing what he wants. And what he wants is zoo's part-time café waitress Pearl have to be transferred to an open prison to serve the remainder raise this little bundle of his sentence scales and joy, despite having no idea how to get an early parole date. Not much to ask, is it? The new Deputy Police Constable doesn't think so actually raise dragons and she's even prepared not being able to do the other thing that Hardie demanded - make certain that DS Max Craigie and tell anyone who works with him is kept well away from what's happeningabout 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=0008405026Stephanie Zabriskie|title=A Stranger in How Maasai Women Spoke to Cows: From the Family (Maeve Kerrigan 11)|author=Jane CaseyOral Stories of Maasai Elders
|rating=5
|genre=CrimeChildren's Non-Fiction|summary=It's sixteen years since nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall disappeared 'How Maasai Women Spoke to Cows is a children’s nonfiction book drawn from her bed one summer nightthe oral traditions of Maasai elders in Ngorongoro, Tanzania. She was never found '' The Maasai are a cattle-herding people and the investigation ground this story writes down its oral tradition explaining how they came to a haltbe so. Now, her mother, Helena, Cattle are status and her father are dead wealth in their bed. Initially, it looks like a straightforward murder/suicide Maasai culture but therethis doesn's something about t tell the positioning whole story of the bodies that makes DS Maeve Kerrigan intimate and symbiotic connection its people, and her boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. What looked as though it was going to be an open-especially its women, have with their cows and-shut case is now a complex double murderfor the natural world. Kerrigan is convinced that The oral tradition retelling the explanation lies in Rosalie's disappearance: others (such as Derwent's bossmany conversations Maasai women have had with their cows, Una Burt) are less convinceddoes.|isbn=B0G9WTGY6J
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0571379877Livi Michael|title=The Kellerby Code|author=Jonny SweetElizabeth and Ruth
|rating=3.5
|genre=CrimeHistorical Fiction|summary=Edward Jevons ''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 radical critique of the treatment of the working-class young man, obsessed with his upper-class friends, Robert and Stanzapublished under a pseudonym. RobertThe ''Ruth''s a theatre director. Hefrom Livi Michael's also self-obsessedtitle appears in her novel as Pasley, demanding, handsome a young Irish prostitute who was abandoned as a child and entitled and uses Edward to run errands for him. Edward has been finds herself in love with Stanza since their university days - and heManchester's drunkenly confided how he feels to RobertNew Bailey Prison after a difficult and unjust hand at life. Most men Set in Robert's position would stay away from Stanza or tell Edward that a relationship had begun Manchester between them but he's not like most men: Edward is left 1839 and 1842, the novel examines the harsh conditions endured by the Victorian working poor and interrogates the extent to stumble upon which the two of them kissing in a dark passagewaywealthy (including Gaskell herself) were responsible for addressing these injustices.|isbn=1784633682
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Jo CallaghanMakenna Goodman|title=Leave No Trace|rating=4|genre=Crime|summary=When a man is found crucified on the top of a hill in Nuneaton, DCS Kat Frank finds herself assigned to the case alongside her sidekick, the AI detective Lock. It's their first live case together, having previously been very successful with several cold cases. But when there is a second body found crucified a few days later, Kat is suddenly struggling with a potential serial killer and a very high profile case that draws a lot of unwanted attention to their AI Future Policing project. Will they be able to solve the case in time, or will Kat find herself taken off the case and, potentially, out Helen of a career?|isbn=139851120X}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1399613073|title=Moral Injuries|author=Christie WatsonNowhere
|rating=4.5
|genre=ThrillersLiterary Fiction|summary=OliviaIt could be argued that the pervading theme of this book is malaise - a hard-to-place feeling that something in your life is not quite right. The protagonist, Laura and Anjali met a disgraced professor on the first day brink of medical school losing both his career and their friendship would keep them inseparable for a quarter of a centuryhis relationship, embodies this feeling. Olivia is ruthlessly ambitiousHowever, Goodman counteracts his discomfort with a force which is a bonus when you aim to be a cardiothoracic surgeonseductive, radical and unnerving: Helen. Laura The connection between Helen and the protagonist is a perfectionist and a trauma doctorindirect yet intimate. Anjali is As the free spirit former owner of the group and she becomes a GP. When we first meet them theycountryside house he're at s considering, Helen represents a drug and alcohol-fuelled party and it's going volta in his life, her past tied to end in tragedyhis potential fresh start. We don't know The realtor who suffered shows the tragedy or protagonist around the consequences. Twenty-five years later there will be house shares stories about Helen, and describes her as ''an eerily similar event entity that will impact the three friendsis pure consciousness, beyond form''. This timeAlthough she lives in an assisted living facility now, it's their teenage children who Helen has powers beyond comprehension which the reader gets the sense are involvednot altogether innocuous.|isbn=1804272205
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=0241636604B0GCB1MQ7D|title=The Trading Game: A ConfessionWhy My Mother Went Away|author=Gary StevensonAlan Kennedy|rating=4.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=If I have often wondered how prominent people came to hold their positions. 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 were to bring up an image of find a city banker in your mindbook that gives the full backstory, and rarely do you discover a memoir where the telling is so perfect that you're unlikely to think of someone like Gary Stevenson. A hoodie ll go back and jeans replaces the pin-stripe suit reread paragraphs and his background is sentences, just for the East End, where he was familiar with violence, poverty and injustice. There was no posh public school on his CV - but he had been to pleasure the London School of Economicswords give. Stevenson ''Why My Mother Went Away'' is bright - extremely bright - and he has a facility with numbers which most one of us can only envy. He also realised that most rich people expect poor people to be stupidthose rare exceptions. It was his ability 's the story of how a boy from the Midlands, born at what was, essentiallythe beginning of the Second World War, would become a card game which got him an internship with CitibankProfessor of Psychology at Dundee University. EventuallyIn fact, this turned into permanent employment as a traderhe was one of the founders of the department.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1035021803Jeremy Cooper|title=The Antique Hunter's Guide to Murder|author=C L MillerDiscord|rating=3.5|genre=CrimeLiterary Fiction|summary=It's twenty years since Freya Lockwood has been back to Discord: a lack of agreement or harmony (as between persons, things, or ideas) The principal example of discord within the English country village where she grew upnovel, as with most instances of discord, is easily located. She's back now because The two protagonists of a request for help from her beloved auntthe novel, Rebekah Rosen and Evie Bennet, Caroleare as different as they come. Freya's former mentor Rebekah is an uptight, traditional and Carole's no-nonsense composer close friendto retirement, Arthur Crocklefordwhile Evie is a force of nature, is dead and bounding onto the circumstances seem suspiciousmusical scene as a precocious saxophonist, to say the leastoozing with talent and charm. Arthur was the reason why Freya had not been back to the village: ArthurThe two, she feelspredictably, let her down badly. Even though they were in business together as antique huntersdon't always see eye to eye, she has not felt able to be near the man or pursue the profession she lovedtheir approaches different and Evie's progressive views at odds with Rebekah's conservative leaning. After the splitHowever, she worked in something connects them beyond just their musical project: a cafe, met and married James (on sort of fragile alliance formed within the rebound from the love of her life, who was murdered) and Freya and James have now divorcedclamour.|isbn=1804272264
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=AllTomorrowsFutureCoverTom Percival|title=All Tomorrow's Futures: Fictions that Disrupt|author=Benjamin Greenaway and Stephen Oram (Editors)The Wrong Shoes
|rating=5
|genre=Science FictionConfident Readers|summary=Will''Opening up new s life is difficult, in a multitude of ways of thinking about the shape of things to come. He is bullied because he has 'the wrong shoes' I, he has the wrong shoes because his dad can've heard it said that t work and doesn'technologyt have enough money for even the most basic of things like food, and his dad can' is what happens after you're eighteen. Wellt work because he lost his job at the college, I must confess that there have been more than was working a few decades of technology cash-in my lifetime-hand job on a building site and had an accident. I've kept up reasonably well with what's advantageous to me but I'm left with Throw into that mix the feeling fact that ithis mum and dad are separated, and Will's all getting away from melife seems bleak in every direction. Some And yet, he still has a tiny amount of it is - frankly - quite frighteninghope. Of courseHe is good at art, I could research and clings to the possibilities and moments of joy when he is drawing, that feel like a light at the probabilities and end up down rabbit holes without really understanding whether I'm reading someone who knows what they're talking about or the latest conspiracy theorist. I needed people I knew I could trust and who could deliver information in of a way I could understandlong, dark tunnel.|isbn=1398527122
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Sunny SinghEdward W Said|title=Hotel ArcadiaRepresentations of the Intellectual |rating=34.5|genre=Thrillers Politics and Society|summary=The Hotel Arcadia Edward Said's ''Representations of the Intellectual'' is less a luxury hotel in an unnamed city that has suddenly been violently taken over by a terrorist group. Hiding from the terrorists who strict theory of what intellectuals are rampaging through, killing everyone on site, there is Sam, and more a wartime photographer and Abhi, the hotel managerpassionate argument for what they should be. As Abhi continues to try to care remotely for Said clearly rejects the residents who are still alive in comfortable image of the hotel, he forms intellectual as a bond with Sam who refuses detached expert speaking only to be cowed by eventsother specialists. Instead, and keeps he insists on venturing out of her room to try to capture what's happened through her photography. Although they only ever talk over the phoneintellectual as a public figure, often awkward, abrasive, their friendship grows as Abhi tries to help her keep safe and they both wait unpopular, who speaks truth to see if they will be rescued before they are discovered by the terroristspower even when it is inconvenient or risky.|isbn=086154742X1804272248
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1529153298Sylvie Cathrall|title=The List of Suspicious Things|author=Jennie GodfreyA Letter to the Luminous Deep
|rating=5
|genre=General Science Fiction|summary=It's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher There are few greater joys than a book which lives up to a compelling premise. And this is Prime Ministerone of them. |isbn= 0356522776}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1786482126|title=The Janus Stone (A woman? I mean, honestlyDr Ruth Galloway)|author=Elly Griffiths|rating=4...) She5|genre=Crime|summary=Builders were demolishing an old house in Norwich - the site was going to hold seventy-five 's not whatluxury's worrying Miv's family, thoughapartments - when they discovered the bones of a child beneath a doorway. Women have been disappearingThere was no skull. WellWas this a ritual killing or murder? Inevitably, theyDr Ruth Galloway finds herself working with DCI Harry Nelson. It've been murdereds difficult as Ruth knows, but to have 'disappeared' Nelson doesn't sound quite so frightening. Miv's upset because , that she's overheard that her father wants to move the family 'Down South'. When you're from Yorkshire, Down South is pregnant with his child as a frightening, foreign place, best avoidedresult of the one night they spent together some three months ago. For Miv, the move would mean leaving her best friendHer condition will be obvious before long, Sharon, and she'll do anything to prevent that. She's not worried about the dangers or that her Mum's stopped talking - least because Ruth is prone to anyonesudden bouts of sickness.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=13985240850008551375|title=Has Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter?When Shadows Fall (D S Max Craigie)|author=Nicci FrenchNeil Lancaster|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=Charlotte Salter Leanne Wilson's body was expected found at the bottom of a Scottish mountain, seemingly the result of a tragic accident. She'd looked so happy, too, when she posted her husband's fiftieth birthday party but never turned upintentions on Facebook. Her childrenfriends were relieved as she was just out of an unpleasant relationship, sons Niallbut it looked like she was living her best life now. Then it emerged that five other women had died in similar circumstances in the last year. All were experienced climbers, properly equipped for what they were doing and sensible people. None of the 'what a stupid thing to do' explanations applied. They were all alone when they died: DS Max Craigie is certain there's a killer on the loose.}}{{Frontpage|author=Paul B Preciado|title=Dysphoria Mundi|rating=4.5|genre=Politics and Ollie Society|summary=''It is never too late to embrace the revolutionary optimism of childhood'' Through this hybrid text, consisting of arias, letters, essays and her daughterautofiction, Etty. are all worried but - strangely - her husbandPreciado expresses his own hybrid self, Alecand brings forth a new sensorium as an offering to the new generation, a new feeling mechanism in which detachment is notconsidered a sign of political apathy. Shortly afterwardsRather, it is the proportional, Etty valid response to ''the epistemological and Gregpolitical crack we are living through, find and the body tension between emancipatory forces and conservative resistances that characterize our present'' which Preciado calls ''dysphoria mundi''. The whole text is framed against the backdrop of Greg's fatherthe Covid-19 pandemic as that which has catalysed this revolution, Duncan Ackerleywhen dysphoria began to emerge on a global scale, in the riveror as ''pangea covidica''. It was an easy assumption Rather than taking this extreme dysphoria as a sign of weakness, or mistaking detachment or withdrawal for the police political paralysis, Preciado urges his readers to make that Duncan had murdered Charlie and then committed suicide when he couldn't stand the guilt. The Salter children are not convinced but there's little else they can do but get on with their lives and wonder about what really happeneduse dysphoria as your revolutionary platform''.|isbn=1804271454
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1035906708Samantha Harvey|title=Diva|author=Daisy GoodwinOrbital
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=We tend to think of Maria Callas as GreekIn 2024, but she was born to Greek parents in Manhattan, New York, in December 1923 and only moved to Athens when she was thirteen. Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to Samantha Harvey won the Booker Prize for ''Orbital'Callas' to make it more manageable , a compact yet profound work that unfolds over a single day in the Stateslives of a group of astronauts aboard the International Space Station. When she was back in Athens - supposedly so Through a narrative lens that she could get appropriate training for her voice - she was raised under mirrors the Nazi occupation by astronauts' orbital perspective, Harvey invites readers to see our planet in a mother who mercilessly exploited her and made no secret of her preference for her elder sister, Jackiewholly new light.|isbn=1529922933
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Christopher Edge295967572X|title=Black Hole Cinema ClubPale Pieces|author=G M Stevens|rating=45|genre=Confident ReadersLiterary Fiction|summary=Lucas and Our unnamed narrator is about to begin a train journey with his friends are all booked in for a movie marathon at their local cinema, a place that has the nickname of 'The Black Hole'companion Django. All big movie fans, Where they're looking forward to lots of exciting films, going and many, many snacks! However, as what the movie starts, they very quickly realise that something about purpose of this new film format journey is very different, is uncertain. Django found the tickets ''on the floor somewhere'' and they has persuaded our narrator to accompany him. Why not? Not much else is clear either - but we are swept up into an adventure they couldn't even imagine. But probably in the past as they lurch from one film genre to the next, can they figure out what on earth is going on? Will they ever get back pair travel to the cinema, station by coach and to their real lives?|isbn=1839942738the train is a steam locomotive.
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Rachel Greenlaw0008551324|title=Compass and BladeThe Devil You Know (D S Max Craigie)|author=Neil Lancaster|rating=34.5|genre=TeensCrime|summary=It''I can hear s unusual for anyone from the song of Hardie family to approach the seapolice. The call of Neither side likes or has any respect for the deep, the answering beat other. But Davie Hardie is struggling in my heart.prison and he'' Rosevear, s prepared to tell the police where the body of a remote missing person is buried and partially forgotten islandwho was responsible for her death. This person, he promises, survives on luring ships into the rocks is someone big and plundering it will be worth the wreckspolice doing what he wants. Mira, like her mother before her, And what he wants is one of the seven who swim out to survey be transferred to an open prison to serve the ruins – rescuing any survivors remainder of his sentence and any treasure that lies withinto get an early parole date. But when the Council Watch lays a trap Not much to end the wreckingask, they capture the islandis it? The new Deputy Police Constable doesn's leader t think so and Mirashe's father. Desperate even prepared to save do the other thing that Hardie demanded - make certain that DS Max Craigie and anyone who works with him is kept well away from death, Mira makes a bargain with a wreck survivor who is as charming as he is secretive and with only coordinates to guide her, she sets off in search of a family secret that lies buried deep in the sea. With only nine days to unearth what might save her father, as her journey takes her from the watched streets of foreign islands to the heart of the smuggler's territory, Mira must be determined to stop at nothing to save the future of her home and the ones she holds most dearhappening.|isbn=0008664730
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{{Frontpage
|author=James Sherwood MettsThea Lenarduzzi|title=Planet StorylandThe Tower|rating=4.5|genre=Confident ReadersLiterary Fiction|summary= Things have been a bit sticky for ''How unctuous are the Earthlingsfats of another's life, how dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream''. AI and automation have been proceeding apace In this compelling novel, Thea Lenarduzzi assumes the identity of T, often replacing jobs they're paid to do and other tasks that took time to accomplishthe protagonist of this tale. Just as they were beginning to get used to all this technological change and starting to think T's story is being told, the story of a second protagonist is unveiled: Annie, the daughter of a wealthy family in the 19th century, who died of othertuberculosis after being locked in a tower, captures T's imagination. Annie's fate is, new ways to spend timeabove all, along came an awful pandemicenticing story to T. Life was pretty much shut down It is a story which she consumes avariciously, both in a quest for truth andknowledge, along with itand in service of myth, all the many daily social interactions on which they depend so heavilyfable and fantasy. |isbn=17361284261804271799
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Matthew TreeClaire-Louise Bennett|title=We'll Never KnowBig Kiss, Bye-Bye
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his fatherEverything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, is steeped in anguish and distortion. Even a kiss, usually a drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams symbol of being exceptional at any of his artistic passions all failed miserably intimacy and who had endless crises closeness, becomes evidence of self confidencelove lost. So Tim applied himself When the narrator cries out internally, ''come over here and kiss me,'' it is less an invitation than a desperate attempt to his studiesconfirm her emotional numbness. The imagined recipient of this plea is Xavier, cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and set himself high but achievable ambitionsher ex-partner, a ghost she conjures to test her detachment.|isbn= B0CVFXPGP81804271934
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=A G Slatter0008405026|title=The Briar Book of A Stranger in the DeadFamily (Maeve Kerrigan 11)|author=Jane Casey
|rating=5
|genre=FantasyCrime|summary='' ThereIt'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 part of me that wants to keep this just to myself for however long I canhalt. This secret magic of my own Now, her mother, all mineHelena, at lastand her father are dead in their bed. I just want to enjoy Initially, it for looks like a while.straightforward murder/suicide but there'' Within a remote mountain pass, far away from the world, lies Silverton; a town under s something about the protection positioning of the Briar's, a family of witches who protect the town bodies that makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and the wider world from the Darklandsher boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. Though she has always wished for magic, Ellie Briar is the first non-witch What looked as though it was going to be born into her family for generations an open-and as such since she was young, her training as -shut case is now a steward revolved around letters and administration rather than spells and potionscomplex double murder. When her grandmother suddenly dies, Ellie's cousin Audra becomes Kerrigan is convinced that the Briar Witch, the townexplanation lies in Rosalie's leader, and Ellie takes her place beside her. As challenges come her way left, right and centre, Ellie uncovers the rare ability to communicate with the dead, putting her at the heart of a maelstrom of chaos. Reeling from one family secret to another, Ellie must decide who to trust and determine what to do disappearance: others (such as the Briar witchesDerwent' legacy, everything they have sacrificed to survives boss, is under threatUna Burt) are less convinced.|isbn=1803364548
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1529900360Annie Ernaux and Alison L. Strayer (translator)|title=The Ghost Orchid|author=Jonathan KellermanOther Girl
|rating=4
|genre=CrimeAutobiography|summary=It hadn't been Lt Milo Sturgis'We were born from the same body. I've never really wanted to think about this.'' Ernaux's fault that Alex Delaware had been badly injured but he felt responsible work is always very candid and even after Alex recoveredher tone transparent, Sturgis was reluctant to ask for his help on difficult cases. His assertions that there were only open-and-shut cases which didnbut this raw epistolary text must be one of the most intimate accounts I't need the help of a psychologist only worked for a whileve read. FinallyErnaux writes in direct address to her sister, it was Robinhowever, Delawarethis letter will never reach her. Why? Because Annie Ernaux's partnersister died of diphtheria at 6 years old, who nudged Milo into asking for help again. She knew that a few months before the involvement vaccine was something that made compulsory in France, and 2 years before the man she loved neededauthor was even born. The next case did look simple, though. Two lovers were murdered in large and instant void created by the swimming pool jarring concept of a remote property in Bel Air. He was the heir to an Italian shoe empire and she is married writing to an extremely rich man and itimaginary recipient emphasises Ernaux's not the Italianprocess of reckoning with this giant absence in her life, an absence that she has always felt but often denied. But which of them was the primary target?|isbn=1804271845
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|isbnauthor=1529395224Maxim Gorky and Bryan Karetnyk (translator)|title=Letting the Cat Out Reminiscences of the Bag: The Secret Life of a Vet|author=Sion RowlandsTolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev
|rating=3.5
|genre=Animals and WildlifeBiography|summary=Siôn Rowlands fell into veterinary science accidentallyBiographies are often seen as the form of life-writing which offers less colour; it can be seen as more objective and less personal. His father was I think that Gorky completely rejects this perspective, and offers a GP and Rowlands didn't want to follow in his footstepsvibrant, particularly when he considered the strain that being on-call put on subjective yet informed portrait of three of his father's lifeliterary contemporaries. When he was seventeen he took In the opportunity first section of doing work experience with a family friend who was a vet and was convinced this was the job for him. Before longbook, he was at Liverpool University. It hadnTolstoy complains to his friend Gorky that: ''t - you write not of real life as with so many students 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 - been his dream since he was a childwhy should it interest anyone? Of what use is it?''. If anythingWell, he'd wanted to Maxim Gorky shows exactly what can be gained from a professional footballersubjective 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=08615417741529077745|title=A Nye of PheasantsThe Dark Wives (D I Vera Stanhope)|author=Steve BurrowsAnn Cleeves|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=DCI Domenic Jejeune's close friend and former colleague, Danny Maik, has taken A man walking his dog in the early morning discovered the body of a short holiday man in Singapore to meet up with an old allythe park near Rosebank, Guy Truemana care home for troubled teens. Maik The dead man was involved in a street brawl Josh - he would later maintain that he one of the care workers who was facing due to work a man armed with a knife - and he killed a Ghurkashift the night before but who had never turned up. Initially, he faced a charge of manslaughter but evidence came to light that suggested that he might have planned D I Vera Stanhope is called in to investigate the murder - but her only clue is the disappearance of one of the manresidents, fourteen-year-old Chloe Spencer. Now he could be facing Some people believe that Chloe was responsible for the death penaltybut Vera thinks this is unlikely as the girl's diary makes it clear that she adored Josh. Domenic Jejeune can do nothing She knows that she has to find Chloe to discover what happened to help as any interference from another police force could provoke a diplomatic incident and wouldn't help Danny at allJosh.
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|author=Alexander McCall SmithOlga Tokarczuk|title=The Perfect Passion CompanyHouse of Day, House of Night|rating=4.5|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=The Perfect Passion Company is ''What's the good of a dating agency world that keeps changing like that? How can one go on calmly living in Edinburghit?'' The title of this spellbinding work, run by Ness and operating as an alternative to all the online apps in providing a more personal''House of Day, House of Night'', tailored service. Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and look after somewhat reflects this notion of shifting realities - the businesssmall, as Ness is planning to take a trip to Canada to get away for a while. Katie is coming out of a break up with a bad boyfriendsubtle changes which govern our lives, and so jumps at like the chance to come home to Edinburgh. And so begins this new story shift from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us day to an Edinburgh we already lovenight, thanks to 44 Scotland Street and the Isabel Dalhousie novelshowever quotidian, but with some new characters who quickly begin to charmcausing chaos. Katie has no experience in running a businessBut, or the constant in match-makingthat image is the house, but Ness has full confidence in her abilities, and there's always her very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, William, to lend a hand…stoic against the ancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it is perceived.|isbn=18469765961804271918
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|isbn=08117717411836284683|title=InstaKnits for BabyThe Big Happy|author=Melissa LeapmanDavid Chadwick|rating=4.5|genre=CraftsDystopian Fiction|summary=Melissa LeapmanWell! 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 wild ride. And that is just what happened with ''InstaKnits for BabyThe Big Happy'' gives us a collection of knits from toys to blankets. Some will be quick knits - others are of the I don'long, cosy afternoons in front t want to ruin a similar experience for any of the fire' variety. The projects are divided by the time theyyou reading but I'll take have to complete - less than five hours, five to ten hours, ten to twenty hours and more than twenty hours. All at least set the projects are attractive, modern and useablescene. I perhaps show my age when I wonder about 'social-media-worthy projects' but Once that's me being pickydone, I think you should simply experience this wonderfully original story for yourself.
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|author=Dean KoontzSally Rooney|title=The Bad Weather FriendIntermezzo
|rating=4.5
|genre=ParanormalGeneral Fiction |summary=Benny Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard of life and is having something of a terrifically bad daygrandmaster at putting it into words. He loses his jobHer dialogue is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, he loses his fiancee, and his house gets trashedas her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Oh, and someone has delivered a really weird, disturbing coffin-sized object to his home, and it's possible that whoever or whatever was inside is Among the thing that has trashed his house! The thing ismany relationships woven into this story, Benny is the very last person central one for readers to deserve all this bad luck. He unravel is a nice personthe fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. A really nice person. So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the delivery to his house is Ivan, a new friendsocially awkward chess prodigy, a bad weather friend called Spikecontrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, who has been sent to help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a good personsuccessful lawyer living in Dublin. Spike is going to take care of Benny, and will certainly take care of BennyFollowing their father's enemiespassing after a long battle with cancer, if he, Benny, and Harper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Bennythe brothers's wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they arealready strained relationship faces new trials.|isbn=16625004910571365469
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|authorisbn=Adam Stower1836285493|title=Murray and BunThe Double Life of a Wheelchair User|author=Rob Keeley|rating=4.5|genre=Confident Readers |summary=Murray Will is supposed to be a humblekeen player of video games, tidy and friendly cata conscientious student, one who is able to sleep a slightly annoying brother and eat and eat and sleep and, well, whatever takes his fancy next of the twoa supportive friend. But most of all, he's a bad magician's cat, so is an aspiring writer. English is his favourite bun has been turned into a hyperactive sticky rabbit called Bunlesson at his school, Marlowe Park, and the catflap they both use can chuck them outone at which he excels. This hasn't gone unnoticed by his headteacher, not into the regular back gardenMrs Howarth, but into and she has suggested to Will and his mum that he spends a world couple of frightening adventure and whiffs. This time round it drops them into afternoons a Viking land, where week at a troll hunter is expected – welldifferent school, one much bigger than Murray wasStation Road, to where his ability might be honest, but he's turned up and he'll have to do…|isbn=0008561249better extended.
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|isbn=B0C47LV1PC1009473085|title=FragilityThe Conservative Effect 2010 - 2024|author=Mosby WoodsAnthony Seldon and Tom Egerton (Editors)|rating=45|genre=Literary FictionPolitics and Society|summary= Can you make Sometimes it's simpler to explain a book by describing what it ''Yo birthing personisn't'' and that applies to '' jokeThe Conservative Effect: 2010-2024 - 14 Wasted Years? And if ''. If you could're looking for an easy read which will deliver the inside story about what ''really'' happened on certain occasions, is then this isn't the question should book for you make it? Or is the question if . If that's what you did're looking for, I don't think Anthony Seldon's book, {{amazonurl|isbn=B0BH7SKG2S|title=Johnson at 10}}, would it land? The catch is that the answer can be bettered for both could well those tumultuous years. It's a compelling read and should becompulsory for anyone who thinks Johnson should return to politics.... no. ''FragilityThe Conservative Effect'' is set an entirely different beast. It's the seventh book in a series which looks at the impact a government has made and co-editor Sir Anthony Seldon regards this as the city most important. This book follows the well-established format: a series of Portland, Oregonexperts from various fields review the state of the nation when the coalition took over in 2010, cautiously begins to emerge from the restrictions imposed during changes that occurred and the covid pandemicsituation in 2024.
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|isbnauthor=1529431735Jenny Valentine|title=The Winter Visitor|author=James HenryUs in the Before and After|rating=45|genre=CrimeTeens|summary=It's February 1991 Elk and Essex is bitingly coldMab are best friends, which made Bruce Hopkins' return all the or more surprisingthan that even, their friendship is a once in a lifetime connection. HeThey meet as children one day on a trip out but unfortunately they don't get each other'd been exiled on s contact details at the Costa del Sol as a wanted drug smuggler for a decadetime. The return But then chance brings them back together, and they are inseparable. Something has come about because he's had a letter from his ex-wifehappened though, something terrible and tragic, saying that she's ill and hasn't long to live. It's hard to feel any sympathy when Hopkins is abductednow they must work through their grief, stripped to his underwear and sent to a watery grave in the boot of a stolen Ford Sierratheir friendship, together. Is it a warning from a Spanish gang or a problem closer to home?|isbn=1471196585}}