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==The Best New Books==
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Joan Didion1035043092|title=The Year of Magical ThinkingKilling Stones (Jimmy Perez)|author=Ann Cleeves|rating=4.5|genre=AutobiographyCrime|summary=This book is Joan DidionI 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 heartbreaking autobiographical account also his boss, and she ''should'' be on maternity leave, but when the body of a popular islander, Archie Stout, is found, in the grief aftermath of a storm, she endured following her husbandcan'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 sudden death. Books debut novel is an intellectually playful yet emotionally exposed work that shed light on taboo topics like death are such a beautiful uses translation as both subject and necessary resource 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 help people feel less alonea 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. Didion unpicks unpleasant feelings surrounding death like selfFrom 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=Children's Non-pityFiction|summary=''Across many African and Indigenous systems, differences in how children learn, sense , denial or process the world were not treated as disorders to be corrected. They were understood as natural variations of human intelligence and delusion awareness, each holding value within the community.'' This lovely story is a synthesis of that tradition, which was carried down through generations by oral retellings. It shows that a community or society is not made up from interchangeable building blocks of human beings but by a range of people with different skills and makes them utterly normaldifferent personalities, lends all contributing to a whole that combines them a human face all and to wearthe benefit of them all.|isbn=0007216858
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=00085513241787333175|title=The Devil You Know (D S Max Craigie)Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here|author=Neil LancasterBenji Waterhouse|rating=4.5|genre=CrimePopular Science|summary=ItI was tempted to read ''You Don's unusual for anyone from the Hardie family t Have to be Mad to approach the police. Neither side likes or has any respect for the other. But Davie Hardie is struggling in prison and heWork Here'' after enjoying Adam Kay's prepared first book {{amazonurl|isbn=1509858636|title=This is Going to tell Hurt}}, a glorious mixture of insight into the police where workings of the body of a missing person is buried and who was responsible for her death. This person, he promisesNHS, is someone big humour and it will be worth the police doing what he wantsautobiography. And what he wants is ''You Don't Have to be transferred Mad...'' promised the same elements but moved from physical problems to an open prison to serve mental illness and the remainder work of his sentence and to get an early parole datea psychiatrist. Not much to ask, is I did wonder whether it? The new Deputy Police Constable doesn't think so and she's even prepared was acceptable to do be looking for humour in this setting but the other thing that Hardie demanded - make certain that DS Max Craigie laughter is directed at a situation rather than a person and anyone who works it is always delivered with him is kept well away from what's happeningempathy and understanding.
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0241678412Maria Stepanova and Sasha Dugdale (Translator)|title=The Proof of My Innocence|author=Jonathan CoeDisappearing Act
|rating=4
|genre=ThrillersLiterary Fiction|summary=Life after university hasnDespite her anonymisation of place names and people, Stepanova't worked out quite s message in this short work of autofiction is unmistakable. A novelist named M travels from B (ostensibly Berlin) to the way that Phyl anticipatedtown of F for a literary festival she is to be a guest speaker at. She's back homeDetoured by erratic train schedules and nudged by forces beyond her control, living with her parents and on journey slowly bends toward a zero-hours contract serving sushi to tourists at terminal 5 of Heathrow Airporttraveling circus. All those ideas Swept up in this series of becoming events, M eventually offers to step in for a writer seem to have come to nothingcircus performer who has unexpectedly left the show. The situation improves when 'Uncle' Chris comes to stay train functions as a motif of transience and introduces Phyl to his adopted daughterimpermanence, Rashida. Christopher Swann (described by some as while the circus embodies the reshaping of identity and a lefty blogger) is investigating a think tank which originated retreat into fantasy, an impulse that lies at Cambridge University in the 1980s. It plans to push very heart of the government in a more extreme direction and is ready to actnovel form itself.|isbn=1804272329
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=B0GFQ81YQK|title=MonstersHow the Sky and the Earth Made People: What Do We Do with Great Art by Bad People?From the Oral Stories of Malagasy Elders|author=Claire DedererStephanie Zabriskie|rating=34.5|genre=Politics and SocietyChildren's Non-Fiction|summary=Dederer sets out to unveil what she calls a ''biography of Before people came and joined the audience'' in a deconstructedanimals, thoroughly nitpicked, exploration of there was only the old aphorism of separating sky and the art from earth. Everything was quiet until the artist in earth and the context of contemporary ''cancel culture''sky began to tal to each other. Dederer's work is original and expressiveFirst, the earth created bodies. The reader gets And then, the impression that sky breathed life into them. These were the thoughts simply sprang first humans and they belonged to both earth and sky. And so people lived between sky and soil and they planted and leapt from her brilliant mind learned and onto the pageremembered, especially how they came to be. In particularWhen they grew old and died, their bodies returned to the prologue packs a punch: she simultaneously condemns earth and exalts their life returned to the director Roman Polanski, an artist she personally admires for his art, and yet despises for his actionssky. This model of ''monstrous men'' as she calls them, And that is consistent for why the first few chapters, interrogating earth and the likes of Woody Allen, Michael Jackson and Pablo Picassosky are both revered. Only together can they create human beings. Her critical voice And that is acutely present throughoutwhy people must pay attention to, never slipping into anonymity and maintaining her own subjectivity, as she holds it so dearly, and a personalcare for, rather than collective voiceboth.|isbn=1399715070
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=1739526910B0GHPMNF6P|title=Where IThe Zookeeper've Not Been Losts Dragon: A Magical Modern Fantasy Tale for Grown-Ups|author=Glen SibleyCarolyn 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'One year after a suicide attempt blows apart musician Brian O’Malleys farm zoo. He's lifenot expecting much excitement, until he arrives in an unfamiliar Devon town to recover. Living with receives an unexpected housemate at unidentified egg that his former manager’s holiday homenew-age stoner uncle Edgar found in a cave in New Zealand, he dreams of reconnecting with everything he has lostand suddenly life is no longer quite what it seems. But as those tentative plans falterThen the egg hatches into neither a reptile nor a bird, but a dragon! Now he becomes swept up in a local world , Edgar, his mother Abi, and the zoo's part-time café waitress Pearl have to raise this little bundle of unlikely friendshipsscales and joy, mobile discos despite having no idea how to actually raise dragons and surprising romantic possibilitiesnot 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=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
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1529077745Livi Michael|title=The Dark Wives (D I Vera Stanhope)|author=Ann CleevesElizabeth and Ruth|rating=43.5|genre=CrimeHistorical Fiction|summary=A man walking his dog in ''Elizabeth and Ruth'' is a work of historical fiction wrought from the early morning discovered the body life of a man in the park near RosebankVictorian author Elizabeth Gaskell, best known for her first novel Mary Barton (1848), a care home for troubled teens. The dead man was Josh - one radical critique of the treatment of the care workers who was due to work working class published under a shift the night before but who had never turned uppseudonym. D I Vera Stanhope is called The ''Ruth'' from Livi Michael's title appears in to investigate the murder - but her only clue is the disappearance of one of the residentsnovel as Pasley, fourteen-year-old Chloe Spencer. Some people believe that Chloe a young Irish prostitute who was responsible for the death but Vera thinks this is unlikely abandoned as the girla child and finds herself in Manchester's diary makes it clear that she adored JoshNew Bailey Prison after a difficult and unjust hand at life. She knows that she has Set in Manchester between 1839 and 1842, the novel examines the harsh conditions endured by the Victorian working poor and interrogates the extent to find Chloe to discover what happened to Joshwhich the wealthy (including Gaskell herself) were responsible for addressing these injustices.|isbn=1784633682
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1399613073Makenna Goodman|title=Moral Injuries|author=Christie WatsonHelen of Nowhere
|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
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{{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.
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{{Frontpage
|author=Leanne EganJeremy Cooper|title=Lover BirdsDiscord|rating=43.5|genre=TeensLiterary Fiction|summary=When new girlDiscord: a lack of agreement or harmony (as between persons, things, or ideas) The principal example of discord within the novel, as with most instances of discord, is easily located. The two protagonists of the novel, Rebekah Rosen and Evie Bennet, Isabelare as different as they come. Rebekah is an uptight, moves traditional and no-nonsense composer close to Louretirement, while Evie is a force of nature, bounding onto the musical scene as a precocious saxophonist, oozing with talent and charm. The two, predictably, don't always see eye to eye, their approaches different and Evie's hometown of Liverpool from London Lou immediately feels Isabelprogressive views at odds with Rebekah's disdain for everything around herconservative leaning. A misunderstanding between However, something connects them leaves them hating each other, but Lou feels her pulse racing every time she looks at Isabel or speaks with her, and thatbeyond just their musical project: a sort of fragile alliance formed within the clamour.|isbn=1804272264}}{{Frontpage|author=Tom Percival|title=The Wrong Shoes|rating=5|genre=Confident Readers|summary=Will's definitely life is difficult, in a multitude of ways. He is bullied because Isabel makes her feel so crosshe has 'the wrong shoes', isnhe has the wrong shoes because his dad can't it? Because Lou is straightwork and doesn't have enough money for even the most basic of things like food, isnand his dad can't she? work because he lost his job at the college, was working a cash-in-hand job on a building site and had an accident. Even though none of her relationships with boys have gone very well so farThrow into that mix the fact that his mum and dad are separated, and sheWill's never had life seems bleak in every direction. And yet, he still has a good kiss with any tiny amount of them? hope. So she just finds herself watching IsabelHe is good at art, and wanting clings to hang out with her because fighting with her the moments of joy when he is fundrawing, and she definitely just hates Isabelthat feel like a light at the end of a long, doesn't she?dark tunnel.|isbn=000862657X1398527122
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{{Frontpage
|author=Sally RooneyEdward W Said|title=IntermezzoRepresentations of the Intellectual
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction Politics and Society|summary=Sally Rooney has studied Edward Said's ''Representations of the chessboard Intellectual'' is less a strict theory of life what intellectuals are and is something of more a grandmaster at putting it into words. Her dialogue is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, as her characters never quite say exactly passionate argument for what they feelshould be. Among Said clearly rejects the many relationships woven into this story, comfortable image of the central one for readers intellectual as a detached expert speaking only to unravel is the fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubekother specialists. IvanInstead, he insists on the intellectual as a socially public figure, often awkward chess prodigy, contrasts sharply with his older brother Peterabrasive, a successful lawyer living in Dublin. Following their father's passing after a long battle with cancerand unpopular, the brothers' already strained relationship faces new trialswho speaks truth to power even when it is inconvenient or risky.|isbn=05713654691804272248
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1009473085Sylvie Cathrall|title=The Conservative Effect 2010 - 2024|author=Anthony Seldon and Tom Egerton (Editors)A Letter to the Luminous Deep
|rating=5
|genre=Politics and SocietyScience Fiction|summary=Sometimes it's simpler to explain There are few greater joys than a book by describing what it ''isn't'' and that applies which lives up to ''The Conservative Effect: 2010-2024 - 14 Wasted Years?''a compelling premise. If you're looking for an easy read which will deliver the inside story about what ''really'' happened on certain occasions, then And this isn't the book for youis one of them. 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's a compelling read and should be compulsory for anyone who thinks Johnson should return to politics. ''The Conservative Effect'' is 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 most important. This book follows the well-established format: a series of experts from various fields review the state of the nation when the coalition took over in 2010, the changes that occurred and the situation in 2024.0356522776
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Max Boucherat1786482126|title=The Last Life of Lori MillsJanus Stone (Dr Ruth Galloway)|author=Elly Griffiths
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=We meet Lori on Builders were demolishing an old house in Norwich - the first evening shesite was going to hold seventy-five 'luxury's got apartments - when they discovered the house to herself – bones of a child beneath a doorway. There was no neighbour to pop in, babysitter poorly, mother at work, just an avidly rule-breaking eleven year old, on her lonesomeskull. What could possibly go wrongWas this a ritual killing or murder? Snuggled in a blanket fortInevitably, she has one main intention, and that is to log on to Voxminer, the world-building, critter-collecting game that is a hit in LoriDr Ruth Galloway finds herself working with DCI Harry Nelson. It's world. But first Lori has a tiny inkling that this stormy night difficult as Ruth knows, but Nelson doesn't find herself entirely on her own, and then that she finds something even more spookyis pregnant with his child as a result of the one night they spent together some three months ago. For the server she and her bestie and nobody else should Her condition will be able obvious before long, not least because Ruth is prone to enter shows signs sudden bouts of tamperingsickness. When malevolent eyes spark up on her phone screen, and her safe place in the game has been doctored – well, where is a girl to turn?|isbn=0008666482
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Fyodor Dostoyevsky0008551375|title=White NightsWhen Shadows Fall (D S Max Craigie)|author=Neil Lancaster|rating=4.5|genre=Short StoriesCrime|summary=As always Leanne Wilson's body was 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 intentions on Facebook. Her friends were relieved as she was just out of an unpleasant relationship, but it looked like she was living her best life now. Then it emerged that five other women had died in Dostoyevskysimilar circumstances in the last year. All were experienced climbers, properly equipped for what they were doing and sensible people. None of the character work is sublime'what a stupid thing to do' explanations applied. One They were all alone when they died: DS Max Craigie is never left wondering what certain there's a character is thinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and temperaments with remarkable claritykiller on the loose.|isbn=0241619785
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0008385068Paul B Preciado|title=The Midnight Feast|author=Lucy FoleyDysphoria Mundi
|rating=4.5
|genre=ThrillersPolitics and Society|summary=''Itis never too late to embrace the revolutionary optimism of childhood's midsummer on the Dorset coast and guests gather at The Manor. It's their opening weekend Through this hybrid text, consisting of arias, letters, essays and splendid celebrations are promised. It's all headed up by Francesca Meadows. The Manor was her ancestral home autofiction, Preciado expresses his own hybrid self, and she's converted it into brings forth a new sensorium as an impressive retreat for offering to the wealthy and famousnew generation, a new feeling mechanism in which detachment is not considered a sign of political apathy. Her husbandRather, Owenit is the proportional, was valid response to ''the architect epistemological and political crack we are living through, and work is still ongoing on parts of the sitetension between emancipatory forces and conservative resistances that characterize our present'' which Preciado calls ''dysphoria mundi''. The heat whole text is oppressive and amongst framed against the backdrop of the guests are enemies Covid-19 pandemic as well that which has catalysed this revolution, when dysphoria began to emerge on a global scale, or as friends''pangea covidica''. Old scores are going Rather than taking this extreme dysphoria as a sign of weakness, or mistaking detachment or withdrawal for political paralysis, Preciado urges his readers to be settled and it won't be long before a body is found'use dysphoria as your revolutionary platform''.|isbn=1804271454
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{{Frontpage
|author=James BaldwinSamantha Harvey|title=Giovanni's RoomOrbital
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary General Fiction |summary=In 2024, Samantha Harvey won the Booker Prize for ''Giovanni's RoomOrbital'' follows the narrator David, an American man living in Paris, as he navigates his torturous affair with Giovanni, an Italian bartender he meets in a gay bar. While David is engaged to Hella, who is travelling in Spain, the real tension compact yet profound work that unfolds over a single day in the novel arises not from his infidelity but from lives of a group of astronauts aboard the deeper conflict within himselfInternational Space Station. It is DavidThrough a narrative lens that mirrors the astronauts's crippling shame and denial of his sexuality that ultimately dooms his relationship with Giovanniorbital perspective, Harvey invites readers to see our planet in a wholly new light.|isbn=01411863561529922933
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Ashley Hickson-Lovence295967572X|title=Wild EastPale Pieces|author=G M Stevens|rating=4.5|genre=TeensLiterary Fiction|summary=Written in verse, this Our unnamed narrator is Ronny's story, a young black fourteen year old boy from Hackney who suddenly has about to move to Norwich and start at begin a mostly white schooltrain journey with his companion Django. The move is initiated by RonnyWhere they's mum who re going and what the purpose of this journey is worried for Ronny's safety after a tragic event, and so Ronny finds himself trying to settle in a new town, a new school, and keep himself out of troubleis uncertain. He listens to music constantly, Django found the tickets ''on the floor somewhere'' and has always dreamed of being a rapperpersuaded our narrator to accompany him. But now, Why not? Not much else is clear either - but we are probably in this new school, his teacher encourages him the past as the pair travel to be part of a poetry writing workshop group and, slowly, Ronny begins to see the connections between rap and poetry, station by coach and the power of creativity and crafting your wordstrain is a steam locomotive.|isbn=0241645441
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=16358668470008551324|title=The Lavender CompanionDevil You Know (D S Max Craigie)|author=Jessica Dunham and Terry Barlin VesciNeil Lancaster
|rating=4.5
|genre=LifestyleCrime|summary=It's strange, unusual for anyone from the things that make you ''immediately'' feel that this is Hardie family to approach the book for youpolice. Before I started reading ''The Lavender Companion'', I visited Neither side likes or has any respect for the author's [https://wwwother.pinelavenderfarm.com/ website] But Davie Hardie is struggling in prison and therehe's a picture prepared to tell the police where the body of a slice of chocolate cake on the homepage. I don't eat cakes missing person is buried and desserts - but I wanted that cake viscerallywho was responsible for her death. (There's a recipe in the bookThis person, he promises, which I'm avoiding with some difficulty!!) Then I started reading the book is someone big and I was told to make a mess of it. Notes in will be worth the margins are sanctionedpolice doing what he wants. You get And what he wants is to be transferred to an open prison to fold down serve the corners remainder of pageshis sentence and to get an early parole date. You suspect that smears of butter would not be a problem. Not much to ask, is it? I The new Deputy Police Constable doesn't think so and she'loveds 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'' this book alreadys happening.
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{{Frontpage
|author=Jenny ValentineThea Lenarduzzi|title=Us in the Before and AfterThe Tower
|rating=5
|genre=TeensLiterary Fiction|summary=Elk and Mab ''How unctuous are best friendsthe fats of another's life, how dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream''. In this compelling novel, or more than that evenThea Lenarduzzi assumes the identity of T, their friendship the protagonist of this tale. Just as T's story is being told, the story of a once second protagonist is unveiled: Annie, the daughter of a wealthy family in the 19th century, who died of tuberculosis after being locked in a lifetime connectiontower, captures T's imagination. They meet as children one day on a trip out but unfortunately they don't get each otherAnnie's contact details at the timefate is, above all, an enticing story to T. It is a story which she consumes avariciously, both in a quest for truth and knowledge, and in service of myth, fable and fantasy. But then chance brings them back together|isbn=1804271799}}{{Frontpage|author=Claire-Louise Bennett|title=Big Kiss, Bye-Bye |rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Everything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, is steeped in anguish and they are inseparabledistortion. Something has happened thoughEven a kiss, something terrible usually a symbol of intimacy and tragiccloseness, becomes evidence of love lost. When the narrator cries out internally, ''come over here and now they must work through their griefkiss me,'' it is less an invitation than a desperate attempt to confirm her emotional numbness. The imagined recipient of this plea is Xavier, and their friendshipher ex-partner, togethera ghost she conjures to test her detachment.|isbn=14711965851804271934
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=17873331750008405026|title=You Don't Have to be Mad to Work HereA Stranger in the Family (Maeve Kerrigan 11)|author=Benji WaterhouseJane Casey
|rating=5
|genre=Popular ScienceCrime|summary=I was tempted to read ''You Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here'' after enjoying Adam KayIt's first book {{amazonurl|isbn=1509858636|title=This is Going sixteen years since nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her bed one summer night. She was never found and the investigation ground to Hurt}}a halt. Now, her mother, a glorious mixture of insight into the workings of the NHSHelena, humour and autobiographyher father are dead in their bed. Initially, it looks like a straightforward murder/suicide but there''You Don't Have to be Mad...'' promised s something about the positioning of the same elements but moved from physical problems to mental illness bodies that makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and the work of a psychiatristher boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. I did wonder whether What looked as though it was acceptable going to be looking for humour in this setting but the laughter an open-and-shut case is directed at now a situation rather than a person and it complex double murder. Kerrigan is always delivered with empathy and understandingconvinced that the explanation lies in Rosalie's disappearance: others (such as Derwent's boss, Una Burt) are less convinced.
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{{Frontpage
|author=Mariana EnriquezAnnie Ernaux and Alison L. Strayer (translator)|title=A Sunny Place for Shady PeopleThe Other Girl|rating=54|genre=Short StoriesAutobiography|summary=Mariana Enriquez writes horror that ''We were born from the same body. I've never really wanted to think about this.'' Ernaux's work is disturbingly realalways very candid and her tone transparent, achieving but this uncanny familiarity by basing raw epistolary text must be one of the most intimate accounts I've read. Ernaux writes in direct address to her paranormal plots on gritty realities: sister, however, this letter will never reach her settings include an abandoned field full . Why? Because Annie Ernaux's sister died of disused refrigerators due to an urban planning mishapdiphtheria at 6 years old, a few months before the vaccine was made compulsory in France, an overcrowded homeless shelter and a crime-ridden neighbourhood where safety meetings are routine - all within Argentina2 years before the author was even born. The circumstances large and instant void created by the jarring concept of writing to an imaginary recipient emphasises Ernaux's process of reckoning with this giant absence in her characters are so plausible life, an absence that the supernatural or otherworldly horror which seeps into these spaces adopts a similarly tangible textureshe has always felt but often denied. |isbn=18035112301804271845
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{{Frontpage
|author=Onyi NwabineliMaxim Gorky and Bryan Karetnyk (translator)|title=Allow Me to Introduce MyselfReminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev|rating=43.5|genre=General FictionBiography|summary=Anuri spent her childhood on display to Biographies are often seen as the world, thanks to her stepform of life-mother Ophelia's increasingly popular presence on social mediawriting which offers less colour; it can be seen as more objective and less personal. I think that Gorky completely rejects this perspective, where she posted every step of Anuri's childhood for sponsorships and influencer deals andoffers a vibrant, basicallysubjective yet informed portrait of three of his literary contemporaries. In the first section of this book, monetary gain. Now Anuri is in her twenties and she is slowly trying Tolstoy complains to regain her confidence and to get her his friend Gorky that: ''you write not of real life backas it is, suing her step-mother but of what you yourself imagine it to take down the content about herbe. Anuri is battling alcoholism, failing Whom would it help to start her PhDknow how I see this tower, undergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online and receiving money from them for doing so. Most importantlythat sea, she or that Tartar - why should it interest anyone? Of what use is desperately worried about her little sister, who is the new focus of Opheliait?''s online empire. Can she save her sisterWell, Maxim Gorky shows exactly what can be gained from a subjective account, giving us access to how he saw Tolstoy, Chekhov and perhaps herself and her relationship with her father at the same time?Andreyev in such privileged detail that one almost feels unworthy of it.|isbn=08615468731804271977
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|authorisbn=David Chadwick1529077745|title=Headload of NapalmThe Dark Wives (D I Vera Stanhope)|author=Ann Cleeves
|rating=4.5
|genre=ThrillersCrime|summary= It's September 1973 A man walking his dog in the early morning discovered the body of a man in Hicksthe park near Rosebank, Californiaa care home for troubled teens. Hicks is a Mojave desert town The dead man was Josh - one of the care workers who was due to work a few thousand people with its nearest neighbours of LA and Las Vegas both a significant drive awayshift the night before but who had never turned up. Not much happens D I Vera Stanhope is called in Hicksto investigate the murder - but her only clue is the disappearance of one of the residents, fourteen-year-old Chloe Spencer. A silver mine and a defence contractor are Some people believe that Chloe was responsible for the main local employers death but otherwise, thereVera thinks this is unlikely as the girl's not much of note other than dive bars and Joshua trees. Life is quiet, until.diary makes it clear that she adored Josh.She knows that she has to find Chloe to discover what happened to Josh..|isbn= B0D321VJ76
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|author=Tom PercivalOlga Tokarczuk|title=The Wrong ShoesHouse of Day, House of Night
|rating=5
|genre=Confident ReadersLiterary Fiction|summary=Will''What's life is difficult, the good of a world that keeps changing like that? How can one go on calmly living in a multitude of ways. He is bullied because he has it?'the wrong shoes' The title of this spellbinding work, he has the wrong shoes because his dad can't work and doesn't have enough money for even the most basic House of things like foodDay, and his dad canHouse of Night''t work because he lost his job at , somewhat reflects this notion of shifting realities - the collegesmall, was working a cash-in-hand job on a building site and had an accident. Throw into that mix subtle changes which govern our lives, like the fact that his mum and dad are separatedshift from day to night, and Will's life seems bleak in every direction. And yethowever quotidian, he still has a tiny amount of hopecausing chaos. He is good at artBut, and clings to the moments of joy when he constant in that image is drawingthe house, that feel like a light at stoic against the end of a long, dark tunnelancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it is perceived.|isbn=13985271221804271918
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|authorisbn=Sylvie Cathrall1836284683|title=A Letter to the Luminous DeepThe Big Happy|author=David Chadwick|rating=4.5|genre=Science Dystopian Fiction|summary= There are few greater joys than Well! This is a murder mystery unlike any other! I do love it when I open a book which lives up , it's nothing like I expected it to be, and it takes me on a compelling premisewild ride. And this that is one just what happened with ''The Big Happy''. I don't want to ruin a similar experience for any of themyou reading but I'll have to at least set the scene. Once that's done, I think you should simply experience this wonderfully original story for yourself.|isbn= 0356522776
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|isbnauthor=1786482126Sally Rooney|title=The Janus Stone (Dr Ruth Galloway)|author=Elly GriffithsIntermezzo
|rating=4.5
|genre=CrimeGeneral Fiction |summary=Builders were demolishing an old house in Norwich - Sally Rooney has studied the site was going to hold seventy-five 'luxury' apartments - when they discovered the bones chessboard of life and is something of a child beneath a doorwaygrandmaster at putting it into words. There was no skullHer dialogue is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, as her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Was Among the many relationships woven into this a ritual killing or murder? Inevitablystory, Dr Ruth Galloway finds herself working with DCI Harry Nelsonthe central one for readers to unravel is the fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. It's difficult as Ruth knowsIvan, but Nelson doesn'ta socially awkward chess prodigy, that she is pregnant contrasts sharply with his child as older brother Peter, a result of the one night they spent together some three months agosuccessful lawyer living in Dublin. Her condition will be obvious before Following their father's passing after a longbattle with cancer, not least because Ruth is prone to sudden bouts of sicknessthe brothers' already strained relationship faces new trials.|isbn=0571365469
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|isbn=B0DGDJRHYD1836285493|title=Nowhere ManThe Double Life of a Wheelchair User|author=Deborah StoneRob Keeley|rating=45|genre=General FictionConfident Readers|summary=In Will is a quiet suburban housekeen player of video games, Patrick is making his final plansa conscientious student, a slightly annoying brother and a supportive friend. A meticulous manBut most of all, he makes sure of every preparationis an aspiring writer. English is his favourite lesson at his school, down to the last detail. Some last reflectionsMarlowe Park, and then one at which he says goodbye to excels. This hasn't gone unnoticed by his wifeheadteacher, the worldMrs Howarth, and she has suggested to Will and his life. It's horribly sad. At work in her shopmum that he spends a couple of afternoons a week at a different school, Station Road, where his wife Diana is fending off yet another phone call about her ageing and ailing mother, who needs extricating from yet another accident. It will ability might be a while before Diana realises what Patrick has donebetter extended.
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|authorisbn=Virginie Despentes1009473085|title=King Kong TheoryThe Conservative Effect 2010 - 2024|author=Anthony Seldon and Tom Egerton (Editors)|rating=45|genre=Autobiography Politics and Society|summary=Sometimes it's simpler to explain a book by describing what it 'King Kong Theory'isn' is a hardt'' and that applies to ''The Conservative Effect: 2010-2024 -hitting memoir and feminist manifesto14 Wasted Years?''. If you're looking for an easy read which will deliver the inside story about what ''really'' happened on certain occasions, then this isn't the book for you. If that's what you're looking for, I don't think Anthony Seldon's book, {{amazonurl|isbn=B0BH7SKG2S|title=Johnson at 10}}, which can be seen as bettered for those tumultuous years. It's a call compelling read and should be compulsory for anyone who thinks Johnson should return to arms for women politics. ''The Conservative Effect'' is an entirely different beast. It's the seventh book in a phallocentric society broken series which looks at its corethe impact a government has made and co-editor Sir Anthony Seldon regards this as the most important. Originally written in French, This book follows the book is well-established format: a collection series of essays experts from various fields review the state of the nation when the coalition took over in which Virginie Despentes explores her experiences as a woman through 2010, the complex prism of her varied life: from rape to sex work changes that occurred and pornography. Though these discussions are intertwined, their placement within the book can feel somewhat disjointed, a reflection of their original form as independent essayssituation in 2024.|isbn=191309734X
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|author=Alba de Cespedes Jenny Valentine|title=Forbidden NotebookUs in the Before and After|rating=45|genre=Literary FictionTeens|summary=This Italian work of feminist fiction holds an air of suspense Elk and tension from Mab are best friends, or more than that even, their friendship is a once in a lifetime connection. They meet as children one day on a trip out but unfortunately they don't get each other's contact details at the moment our protagonisttime. But then chance brings them back together, Valeria Cossatiand they are inseparable. Something has happened though, purchases her forbidden notebooksomething terrible and tragic, and learns about herself in the most intimate now they must work through their grief, and revealing waystheir friendship, together.|isbn=17822782221471196585
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