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{{Frontpage
|author=Max BoucheratPolly Barton|title=The Last Life of Lori MillsWhat Am I, A Deer?|rating=4.5|genre=Confident ReadersLiterary Fiction|summary=We meet Lori on the first evening shePolly Barton's got the house to herself – no neighbour to pop in, babysitter poorly, mother at debut novel is an intellectually playful yet emotionally exposed work, just an avidly rule-breaking eleven year old, on her lonesomethat uses translation as both subject and governing metaphor. What could possibly go wrong? Snuggled in a blanket fort, she has one main intentionThe narrator, and that is to log on newly relocated from London to VoxminerBerlin, works translating video games into Japanese through the world-buildingprocess of localisation, critter-collecting game that is rewriting language until it feels comfortably familiar to a hit in Lori's worldnew audience. But first Lori has Barton treats this as a tiny inkling that this stormy night doesn't find herself entirely on her ownparadoxical act: arguably, in striving for universality, language is endlessly repackaged, and then she finds something even more spooky. For the server she and her bestie and nobody else should be able to enter shows signs its originality at risk of tamperingdisappearing altogether. When malevolent eyes spark up on her phone screenFrom this, and her safe place in the game has been doctored – wellnovel opens out into a wider, where is a girl resonant question: to what extent do we translate ourselves in order to turnbe understood, accepted, or loved?|isbn=00086664821804272175
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|authorisbn=Fyodor DostoyevskyZabriskie1|title=White NightsA Village Where Many Ways Meet: A Story of Belonging and Community, Rooted in Indigenous Wisdom|author=Stephanie Zabriskie
|rating=5
|genre=Short StoriesChildren's Non-Fiction|summary=As always ''Across many African and Indigenous systems, differences in Dostoyevskyhow children learn, sense , or process the character work world were not treated as disorders to be corrected. They were understood as natural variations of human intelligence and awareness, each holding value within the community.'' This lovely story is sublimea synthesis of that tradition, which was carried down through generations by oral retellings. One It shows that a community or society is never left wondering what not made up from interchangeable building blocks of human beings but by a character is thinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions range of people with different skills and different personalities, all contributing to a whole that combines them all and temperaments with remarkable clarityto the benefit of them all.|isbn=0241619785
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|isbn=00083850681787333175|title=The Midnight FeastYou Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here|author=Lucy FoleyBenji Waterhouse|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersPopular Science|summary=ItI was tempted to read ''You Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here'' after enjoying Adam Kay's midsummer on first book {{amazonurl|isbn=1509858636|title=This is Going to Hurt}}, a glorious mixture of insight into the Dorset coast workings of the NHS, humour and guests gather at The Manorautobiography. It's their opening weekend and splendid celebrations are promised'You Don't Have to be Mad... It's all headed up by Francesca Meadows. The Manor was her ancestral home and she's converted it into an impressive retreat for promised the wealthy same elements but moved from physical problems to mental illness and famous. Her husband, Owen, was the architect and work is still ongoing on parts of the sitea psychiatrist. The heat is oppressive and amongst the guests are enemies as well as friends. Old scores are going I did wonder whether it was acceptable to be settled looking for humour in this setting but the laughter is directed at a situation rather than a person and it won't be long before a body is foundalways delivered with empathy and understanding.
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|author=James BaldwinMaria Stepanova and Sasha Dugdale (Translator)|title=Giovanni's RoomThe Disappearing Act|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction |summary=''GiovanniDespite her anonymisation of place names and people, Stepanova's Room'' follows message in this short work of autofiction is unmistakable. A novelist named M travels from B (ostensibly Berlin) to the narrator David, an American man living in Paris, as he navigates his torturous affair with Giovanni, an Italian bartender he meets in town of F for a gay bar. While David literary festival she is engaged to Hellabe a guest speaker at. Detoured by erratic train schedules and nudged by forces beyond her control, who is travelling her journey slowly bends toward a traveling circus. Swept up in Spainthis series of events, the real tension M eventually offers to step in for a circus performer who has unexpectedly left the novel arises not from his infidelity but from the deeper conflict within himselfshow. It is David's crippling shame The train functions as a motif of transience and denial impermanence, while the circus embodies the reshaping of his sexuality identity and a retreat into fantasy, an impulse that ultimately dooms his relationship with Giovannilies at the very heart of the novel form itself.|isbn=01411863561804272329
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|authorisbn=Ashley Hickson-LovenceB0GFQ81YQK|title=Wild EastHow the Sky and the Earth Made People: From the Oral Stories of Malagasy Elders|author=Stephanie Zabriskie
|rating=4.5
|genre=TeensChildren's Non-Fiction|summary=Written in verseBefore people came and joined the animals, this is Ronny's story, a young black fourteen year old boy from Hackney who suddenly has to move to Norwich there was only the sky and start at a mostly white schoolthe earth. The move is initiated by Ronny's mum who is worried for Ronny's safety after a tragic event, Everything was quiet until the earth and so Ronny finds himself trying the sky began to tal to settle in a new towneach other. First, a new schoolthe earth created bodies. And then, the sky breathed life into them. These were the first humans and keep himself out of trouble. He listens they belonged to music constantly, both earth and has always dreamed of being a rappersky. But now, in this new schoolAnd so people lived between sky and soil and they planted and learned and remembered, his teacher encourages him especially how they came to be part of a poetry writing workshop group . When they grew old anddied, slowly, Ronny begins their bodies returned to see the connections between rap earth and poetry, their life returned to the sky. And that is why the earth and the power of creativity sky are both revered. Only together can they create human beings. And that is why people must pay attention to, and crafting your wordscare for, both.|isbn=0241645441
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|isbn=1635866847B0GHPMNF6P|title=The Lavender CompanionZookeeper's Dragon: A Magical Modern Fantasy Tale for Grown-Ups|author=Jessica Dunham and Terry Barlin VesciCarolyn Mathews
|rating=4.5
|genre=LifestyleFantasy|summary=ItWhen Phil's strangefather unexpectedly dies, he quits his Canary Wharf finance job to take over the things that make you ''immediately'' feel that this is running of the book for you. Before I started reading ''The Lavender Companion'', I visited the authorfamily's [https://wwwfarm zoo.pinelavenderfarm.com/ website] and thereHe's not expecting much excitement, until he receives an unidentified egg that his new-age stoner uncle Edgar found in a picture of a slice of chocolate cake on the homepage. I don't eat cakes cave in New Zealand, and desserts - but I wanted that cake viscerallysuddenly life is no longer quite what it seems. (There's Then the egg hatches into neither a reptile nor a recipe in the bookbird, which I'm avoiding with some difficultybut a dragon!!) Then I started reading Now he, Edgar, his mother Abi, and the book and I was told zoo's part-time café waitress Pearl have to make a mess raise this little bundle of it. Notes in the margins are sanctioned. You get scales and joy, despite having no idea how to fold down the corners of pages. You suspect that smears of butter would actually raise dragons and not be a problembeing able to tell anyone about it. I ''loved'' But this book already.tiny little dragon may show them love and connection in ways they had never before imagined…
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|author=Han KangStephanie Zabriskie|title=The VegetarianHow Maasai Women Spoke to Cows: From the Oral Stories of Maasai Elders|rating=4.5|genre=General Children's Non-Fiction|summary=This novel, winner ''How Maasai Women Spoke to Cows is a children’s nonfiction book drawn from the oral traditions of the International Booker Prize Maasai elders in 2016 Ngorongoro, Tanzania.'' The Maasai are a cattle-herding people and penned by an author who received the Nobel Prize for Literature this year, is as close story writes down its oral tradition explaining how they came to unputdownable as it getsbe so. It more than lives up to Cattle are status and wealth in Maasai culture but this doesn't tell the whole story of the intimate and symbiotic connection its people, and especially its women, have with their cows and for the acclaimnatural world. The story introduces uncanny characters oral tradition retelling the many conversations Maasai women have had with fragile, vividly tangible bodies yet unknowabletheir cows, elusive soulsdoes.|isbn=1803510056B0G9WTGY6J
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|author=Jenny ValentineLivi Michael|title=Us in the Before Elizabeth and AfterRuth|rating=3.5|genre=TeensHistorical Fiction|summary=Elk ''Elizabeth and Mab are Ruth'' is a work of historical fiction wrought from the life of the Victorian author Elizabeth Gaskell, best friendsknown for her first novel Mary Barton (1848), or more than that even, their friendship is a once radical critique of the treatment of the working class published under a pseudonym. The ''Ruth'' from Livi Michael's title appears in her novel as Pasley, a lifetime connection. They meet young Irish prostitute who was abandoned as children one day on a trip out but unfortunately they don't get each otherchild and finds herself in Manchester's contact details New Bailey Prison after a difficult and unjust hand at the timelife. But then chance brings them back together, Set in Manchester between 1839 and they are inseparable. Something has happened though1842, something terrible the novel examines the harsh conditions endured by the Victorian working poor and tragic, and now they must work through their grief, and their friendship, togetherinterrogates the extent to which the wealthy (including Gaskell herself) were responsible for addressing these injustices.|isbn=14711965851784633682
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|isbnauthor=1787333175Makenna Goodman|title=You Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here|author=Benji WaterhouseHelen of Nowhere|rating=4.5|genre=Popular ScienceLiterary Fiction|summary=I was tempted to read ''You Don't Have to It could be Mad to Work Here'' after enjoying Adam Kay's first argued that the pervading theme of this book {{amazonurl|isbn=1509858636|title=This is Going malaise - a hard-to Hurt}}-place feeling that something in your life is not quite right. The protagonist, a glorious mixture disgraced professor on the brink of insight into losing both his career and his relationship, embodies this feeling. However, Goodman counteracts his discomfort with a force which is seductive, radical and unnerving: Helen. The connection between Helen and the protagonist is indirect yet intimate. As the workings former owner of the NHScountryside house he's considering, Helen represents a volta in his life, her past tied to his potential fresh start. The realtor who shows the protagonist around the house shares stories about Helen, humour and autobiography. describes her as ''You Don't Have to be Mad...an entity that is pure consciousness, beyond form'' promised the same elements but moved from physical problems to mental illness and the work of a psychiatrist. I did wonder whether it was acceptable to be looking for humour Although she lives in this setting but an assisted living facility now, Helen has powers beyond comprehension which the reader gets the laughter is directed at a situation rather than a person and it is always delivered with empathy and understandingsense are not altogether innocuous. |isbn=1804272205
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|authorisbn=Mariana EnriquezB0GCB1MQ7D|title=A Sunny Place for Shady PeopleWhy My Mother Went Away|author=Alan Kennedy
|rating=5
|genre=Short StoriesAutobiography|summary=Mariana Enriquez writes horror 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 find a book that is disturbingly real, achieving this uncanny familiarity by basing her paranormal plots on gritty realities: her settings include an abandoned field gives the full of disused refrigerators due to an urban planning mishapbackstory, an overcrowded homeless shelter and rarely do you discover a crime-ridden neighbourhood memoir where safety meetings are routine - all within Argentinathe telling is so perfect that you'll go back and reread paragraphs and sentences, just for the pleasure the words give. The circumstances ''Why My Mother Went Away'' is one of those rare exceptions. It's the story of how a boy from the Midlands, born at the beginning of her characters are so plausible that the supernatural or otherworldly horror which seeps into these spaces adopts Second World War, would become a similarly tangible textureProfessor of Psychology at Dundee University. In fact, he was one of the founders of the department. |isbn=1803511230
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|author=Onyi NwabineliJeremy Cooper|title=Allow Me to Introduce MyselfDiscord|rating=43.5|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Anuri spent her childhood on display to Discord: a lack of agreement or harmony (as between persons, things, or ideas) The principal example of discord within the worldnovel, thanks to her step-mother Ophelia's increasingly popular presence on social mediaas with most instances of discord, where she posted every step is easily located. The two protagonists of Anuri's childhood for sponsorships and influencer deals the novel, Rebekah Rosen andEvie Bennet, basically, monetary gainare as different as they come. Now Anuri Rebekah is in her twenties and she is slowly trying to regain her confidence an uptight, traditional and no-nonsense composer close to get her life backretirement, suing her step-mother to take down the content about her. Anuri while Evie is battling alcoholisma force of nature, failing to start her PhDbounding onto the musical scene as a precocious saxophonist, undergoing therapy oozing with talent and secretly abusing people online and receiving money from them for doing socharm. Most importantlyThe two, she is desperately worried about her little sisterpredictably, who is the new focus of Opheliadon's online empire. Can she save her sistert always see eye to eye, their approaches different and perhaps herself and her relationship Evie's progressive views at odds with her father at the same time?|isbn=0861546873}}{{Frontpage|author=David Chadwick|title=Headload of Napalm|rating=4.5|genre=Thrillers|summary= ItRebekah's September 1973 in Hicksconservative leaning. However, California. Hicks is something connects them beyond just their musical project: a Mojave desert town sort of a few thousand people with its nearest neighbours of LA and Las Vegas both a significant drive away. Not much happens in Hicks. A silver mine and a defence contractor are fragile alliance formed within the main local employers but otherwise, there's not much of note other than dive bars and Joshua trees. Life is quiet, until...clamour.|isbn= B0D321VJ761804272264
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|summary=Will's life is difficult, in a multitude of ways. He is bullied because he has 'the wrong shoes', he has the wrong shoes because his dad can't 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 working a cash-in-hand job on a building site and had an accident. Throw into that mix the fact that his mum and dad are separated, and Will's life seems bleak in every direction. And yet, he still has a tiny amount of hope. He is good at art, and clings to the moments of joy when he is drawing, that feel like a light at the end of a long, dark tunnel.
|isbn=1398527122
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|author=Edward W Said
|title=Representations of the Intellectual
|rating=4.5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=Edward Said's ''Representations of the Intellectual'' is less a strict theory of what intellectuals are and more a passionate argument for what they should be. Said clearly rejects the comfortable image of the intellectual as a detached expert speaking only to other specialists. Instead, he insists on the intellectual as a public figure, often awkward, abrasive, and unpopular, who speaks truth to power even when it is inconvenient or risky.
|isbn=1804272248
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|isbn=0008551375|title=When Shadows Fall (D S Max Craigie)|author=Joan DidionNeil Lancaster|rating=4.5|genre=Crime|summary=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 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=The Year of Magical ThinkingDysphoria Mundi
|rating=4.5
|genre=AutobiographyPolitics and Society|summary=This book ''It is Joan Didionnever too late to embrace the revolutionary optimism of childhood's heartbreaking autobiographical account ' Through this hybrid text, consisting of arias, letters, essays and autofiction, Preciado expresses his own hybrid self, and brings forth a new sensorium as an offering to the grief she endured following her husbandnew generation, a new feeling mechanism in which detachment is not considered a sign of political apathy. Rather, it is the proportional, valid response to ''the epistemological and political crack we are living through, and the tension between emancipatory forces and conservative resistances that characterize our present'' which Preciado calls ''dysphoria mundi''s sudden death. Books The whole text is framed against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic as that shed light which has catalysed this revolution, when dysphoria began to emerge on taboo topics like death are such a beautiful and necessary resource global scale, or as ''pangea covidica''. Rather than taking this extreme dysphoria as a sign of weakness, or mistaking detachment or withdrawal for political paralysis, Preciado urges his readers to help people feel less alone''use dysphoria as your revolutionary platform''. Didion unpicks unpleasant feelings surrounding death like self-pity|isbn=1804271454}}{{Frontpage|author=Samantha Harvey|title=Orbital|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=In 2024, denial and delusion and makes them utterly normalSamantha Harvey won the Booker Prize for ''Orbital'', lends them a human face compact yet profound work that unfolds over a single day in the lives of a group of astronauts aboard the International Space Station. Through a narrative lens that mirrors the astronauts' orbital perspective, Harvey invites readers to wearsee our planet in a wholly new light.|isbn=00072168581529922933}}{{Frontpage|isbn=295967572X|title=Pale Pieces|author=G M Stevens|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= Our unnamed narrator is about to begin a train journey with his companion Django. Where they'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 clear either - but we are probably in the past as the pair travel to the station by coach and the train is a steam locomotive.
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|isbn=02416784121035043092|title=The Proof of My InnocenceKilling Stones (Jimmy Perez)|author=Jonathan CoeAnn Cleeves|rating=45|genre=ThrillersCrime|summary=Life after university hasnI can't worked out quite have been the way that Phyl anticipatedonly 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. SheIt's back homebeen seven years since we heard from him, but he's now living with her parents Willow Reeves and on a zero-hours contract serving sushi to tourists at terminal 5 their young son, James, as well as Cassie, the daughter of Heathrow Airporthis former partner. All those ideas of becoming a writer seem to have come to nothing. The situation improves when Willow's also his boss, and she ''should'Uncle' Chris comes to stay and introduces Phyl to his adopted daughterbe on maternity leave, Rashida. Christopher Swann (described by some as but when the body of a lefty blogger) popular islander, Archie Stout, is investigating a think tank which originated at Cambridge University found, in the 1980saftermath of a storm, she can't resist getting involved. It plans to push He'd been battered about the government in head with a Neolithic stone - one of a pair - which had been stolen from a more extreme direction and is ready to actmuseum.
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|titleauthor=Monsters: What Do We Do with Great Art by Bad People?Thea Lenarduzzi|authortitle=Claire DedererThe Tower|rating=35|genre=Politics and SocietyLiterary Fiction|summary=Dederer sets out to unveil what she calls a ''biography How unctuous are the fats of the audienceanother's life, how dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream'' in a deconstructed. In this compelling novel, thoroughly nitpicked, exploration of Thea Lenarduzzi assumes the old aphorism identity of separating the art from the artist in T, the context protagonist of contemporary ''cancel culture''this tale. DedererJust as T's work story is original and expressive. The reader gets being told, the impression that the thoughts simply sprang and leapt from her brilliant mind and onto the page. In particularstory of a second protagonist is unveiled: Annie, the prologue packs daughter of a punch: she simultaneously condemns and exalts wealthy family in the director Roman Polanski19th century, an artist she personally admires for his artwho died of tuberculosis after being locked in a tower, and yet despises for his actionscaptures T's imagination. This model of Annie''monstrous men'' as she calls them, s fate is consistent for the first few chapters, interrogating the likes of Woody Allenabove all, Michael Jackson and Pablo Picassoan enticing story to T. Her critical voice It is acutely present throughouta story which she consumes avariciously, never slipping into anonymity both in a quest for truth and maintaining her own subjectivityknowledge, as she holds it so dearlyand in service of myth, fable and a personal, rather than collective voicefantasy. |isbn=13997150701804271799
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|isbnauthor=1739526910Claire-Louise Bennett|title=Where I've Not Been Lost|author=Glen SibleyBig Kiss, Bye-Bye
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=''One year after a suicide attempt blows apart musician Brian O’Malley's lifeEverything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, he arrives is steeped in an unfamiliar Devon town to recoveranguish and distortion. Living with an unexpected housemate at his former manager’s holiday homeEven a kiss, usually a symbol of intimacy and closeness, he dreams becomes evidence of reconnecting with everything he has love lost. But as those tentative plans falterWhen the narrator cries out internally, ''come over here and kiss me, he becomes swept up in '' it is less an invitation than a local world desperate attempt to confirm her emotional numbness. The imagined recipient of unlikely friendshipsthis plea is Xavier, mobile discos and surprising romantic possibilitiesher ex-partner, a ghost she conjures to test her detachment.''|isbn=1804271934
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|genre=Crime
|summary=It's sixteen years since nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her bed one summer night. She was never found and the investigation ground to a halt. Now, her mother, Helena, and her father are dead in their bed. Initially, it looks like a straightforward murder/suicide but there's something about the positioning of the bodies that makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and her boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. What looked as though it was going to be an open-and-shut case is now a complex double murder. Kerrigan is convinced that the explanation lies in Rosalie's disappearance: others (such as Derwent's boss, Una Burt) are less convinced.
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|author=Annie Ernaux and Alison L. Strayer (translator)
|title=The Other Girl
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=''We were born from the same body. I've never really wanted to think about this.''
Ernaux's work is always very candid and her tone transparent, but this raw epistolary text must be one of the most intimate accounts I've read. Ernaux writes in direct address to her sister, however, this letter will never reach her. Why? Because Annie Ernaux's sister died of diphtheria at 6 years old, a few months before the vaccine was made compulsory in France, and 2 years before the author was even born. The large and instant void created by the jarring concept of writing to an imaginary recipient emphasises Ernaux's process of reckoning with this giant absence in her life, an absence that she has always felt but often denied.
|isbn=1804271845
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|author=Maxim Gorky and Bryan Karetnyk (translator)
|title=Reminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev
|rating=3.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Biographies are often seen as the form of life-writing which offers less colour; it can be seen as more objective and less personal. I think that Gorky completely rejects this perspective, and offers a vibrant, subjective yet informed portrait of three of his literary contemporaries. In the 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
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|isbnauthor=1399613073Olga Tokarczuk|title=Moral Injuries|author=Christie WatsonHouse of Day, House of Night|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersLiterary Fiction|summary=Olivia, Laura and Anjali met on ''What's the first day good of medical school and their friendship would keep them inseparable for a quarter world that keeps changing like that? How can one go on calmly living in it?'' The title of this spellbinding work, ''House of a century. Olivia is ruthlessly ambitiousDay, which is a bonus when you aim to be a cardiothoracic surgeon. Laura is a perfectionist and a trauma doctor. Anjali is the free spirit House of the group and she becomes a GP. When we first meet them theyNight''re at a drug and alcohol, somewhat reflects this notion of shifting realities -fuelled party and it's going the small, subtle changes which govern our lives, like the shift from day to end in tragedynight, however quotidian, causing chaos. We don't know who suffered But, the tragedy or the consequences. Twenty-five years later there will be an eerily similar event constant in that will impact image is the three friends. This timehouse, stoic against the ancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it's their teenage children who are involvedis perceived.|isbn=1804271918
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|isbn=02416366041836284683|title=The Trading Game: A ConfessionBig Happy|author=Gary StevensonDavid Chadwick
|rating=4.5
|genre=AutobiographyDystopian Fiction|summary=If you were to bring up an image of Well! This is a murder mystery unlike any other! I do love it when I open a city banker in your mindbook, youit're unlikely s nothing like I expected it to think of someone like Gary Stevenson. A hoodie and jeans replaces the pin-stripe suit and his background is the East Endbe, where he was familiar with violence, poverty and injustice. There was no posh public school it takes me on his CV - but he had been to the London School of Economics. Stevenson is bright - extremely bright - and he has a facility with numbers which most of us can only envywild ride. He also realised And that most rich people expect poor people to be stupid. It was his ability at is just what was, essentially, a card game which got him an internship happened with Citibank. Eventually, this turned into permanent employment as a trader.}}{{Frontpage|author=Leanne Egan|title=Lover Birds|rating=4.5|genre=Teens|summary=When new girl, Isabel, moves to Lou's hometown of Liverpool from London Lou immediately feels Isabel's disdain for everything around her. A misunderstanding between them leaves them hating each other, but Lou feels her pulse racing every time she looks at Isabel or speaks with her, and thatThe Big Happy's definitely because Isabel makes her feel so cross, isn't it? Because Lou is straight, isn. I don't she? Even though none want to ruin a similar experience for any of her relationships with boys you reading but I'll have gone very well so far, and sheto at least set the scene. Once that's never had a good kiss with any of them? So she just finds herself watching Isabeldone, and wanting to hang out with her because fighting with her is fun, and she definitely just hates Isabel, doesn't she?|isbn=000862657XI think you should simply experience this wonderfully original story for yourself.
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|summary=Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard of life and is something of a grandmaster at putting it into words. Her dialogue is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, as her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Among the many relationships woven into this story, the central one for readers to unravel is the fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. Ivan, a socially awkward chess prodigy, contrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, a successful lawyer living in Dublin. Following their father's passing after a long battle with cancer, the brothers' already strained relationship faces new trials.
|isbn=0571365469
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|isbn= 1836285493
|title=The Double Life of a Wheelchair User
|author=Rob Keeley
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary= Will is a keen player of video games, a conscientious student, a slightly annoying brother and a supportive friend. But most of all, he is an aspiring writer. English is his favourite lesson at his school, Marlowe Park, and one at which he excels. This hasn't gone unnoticed by his headteacher, Mrs Howarth, and she has suggested to Will and his mum that he spends a couple of afternoons a week at a different school, Station Road, where his ability might be better extended.
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|summary=Sometimes 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?''. 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}}, 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.
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|isbnauthor=B0DGDJRHYDJenny Valentine|title=Nowhere Man|author=Deborah StoneUs in the Before and After|rating=45|genre=General FictionTeens|summary=In a quiet suburban houseElk and Mab are best friends, or more than that even, Patrick their friendship is making his final plansa once in a lifetime connection. A meticulous man, he makes sure of every preparation, down to They meet as children one day on a trip out but unfortunately they don't get each other's contact details at the last detailtime. Some last reflections, and But then he says goodbye to his wife, the worldchance brings them back together, and his lifethey are inseparable. It's horribly sad. At work in her shop Something has happened though, his wife Diana is fending off yet another phone call about her ageing something terrible and ailing mothertragic, who needs extricating from yet another accident. It will be a while before Diana realises what Patrick has done.}}{{Frontpage|author=Virginie Despentes|title=King Kong Theory|rating=4|genre=Autobiography |summary=''King Kong Theory'' is a hard-hitting memoir and feminist manifesto, which can be seen as a call to arms for women in a phallocentric society broken at its core. Originally written in Frenchnow they must work through their grief, the book is a collection of essays in which Virginie Despentes explores her experiences as a woman through the complex prism of her varied life: from rape to sex work and pornography. Though these discussions are intertwined, their placement within the book can feel somewhat disjointedfriendship, a reflection of their original form as independent essaystogether.|isbn=191309734X1471196585
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