134,729
edits
Changes
From TheBookbag
Jump to navigationJump to searchBook Reviews From The Bookbag (view source)
Revision as of 11:56, 17 December 2025
, Wednesday at 11:56no edit summary
'''Read [[:Category:Features|the latest features]].'''
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Ashley Hickson-Lovence1786482126|title=Wild EastThe Janus Stone (Dr Ruth Galloway)|author=Elly Griffiths
|rating=4.5
|genre=TeensCrime|summary=Written Builders were demolishing an old house in verse, this is RonnyNorwich - the site was going to hold seventy-five 'luxury's story, apartments - when they discovered the bones of a young black fourteen year old boy from Hackney who suddenly has to move to Norwich and start at child beneath a mostly white schooldoorway. There was no skull. The move is initiated by Ronny's mum who is worried for Ronny's safety after Was this a tragic eventritual killing or murder? Inevitably, and so Ronny Dr Ruth Galloway finds himself trying to settle in a new town, a new school, and keep himself out of troubleherself working with DCI Harry Nelson. He listens to music constantlyIt's difficult as Ruth knows, but Nelson doesn't, and has always dreamed that she is pregnant with his child as a result of being a rapperthe one night they spent together some three months ago. But now, in this new school, his teacher encourages him to Her condition will be part of a poetry writing workshop group andobvious before long, slowly, Ronny begins not least because Ruth is prone to see the connections between rap and poetry, and the power sudden bouts of creativity and crafting your wordssickness.|isbn=0241645441
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=16358668470008551375|title=The Lavender Companion|author=Jessica Dunham and Terry Barlin Vesci|rating=4.5|genre=Lifestyle|summary=It's strange, the things that make you ''immediately'' feel that this is the book for you. Before I started reading ''The Lavender Companion'', I visited the author's [https://www.pinelavenderfarm.com/ website] and there's a picture of a slice of chocolate cake on the homepage. I don't eat cakes and desserts - but I wanted that cake viscerally. (There's a recipe in the book, which I'm avoiding with some difficulty!!) Then I started reading the book and I was told to make a mess of it. Notes in the margins are sanctioned. You get to fold down the corners of pages. You suspect that smears of butter would not be a problem. I ''loved'' this book already.}}{{Frontpage|author=Jacqueline Feldman|title=Precarious Lease|rating=3.5|genre=Biography|summary=The title of this novel refers to a French legal term (''bail précaire'') associated with squatters in France, affording them temporary suspension from eviction charges and processes, but few scant property rights. Among mentions of other squats dotted around Paris like Le Carrosse and La Miroiterie, Feldman takes particular interest in one squat of massive proportions which adopted an almost mythical status for its inhabitants, admirers and detractors alike: Le Bloc. Something like a haven for artists and marginal members of society (as one character, Le Général, repeats throughout, ''I live on the margins of the margins of the margins''), Le Bloc was subject to the continual threat of eviction and the pressures from above which oppressed its inhabitants' lives. We follow Le Bloc from its opening in 2012 until its eventual dissolution, framed as a tragedy in this book. |isbn=1804271403}}{{Frontpage|author=Jenny Valentine|title=Us in the Before and After|rating=5|genre=Teens|summary=Elk and 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 time. But then chance brings them back together, and they are inseparable. Something has happened though, something terrible and tragic, and now they must work through their grief, and their friendship, together.|isbn=1471196585}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1529425905|title=A Voice in the Night When Shadows Fall (A D I Wilkins MysteryS Max Craigie)|author=Simon MasonNeil Lancaster
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=ThereLeanne Wilson's body was found at the bottom of a new Superintendent in Thames Valley — DCS Wainwright—and she's youngScottish mountain, ambitious, and ruthlessseemingly the result of a tragic accident. She talks a good talk about work/life balance and family values'd looked so happy, but as far as she's concernedtoo, when she has two main problems, and they're both called DI Wilkinsposted her intentions on Facebook. Ray Wilkins is Her friends were relieved as she was just out of Nigerian descentan unpleasant relationship, Baliol educated and always immaculately dressedbut 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. He's married to Diane All were experienced climbers, properly equipped for what they were doing and has twin sonssensible people. Management's opinion None of him is that he thinks too highly of himself and his last boss felt that he needed more experience at what he called 'the wet end'. Ryan Wilkins comes from what a trailer park - in fact, it could be said that hestupid thing to do's never really left itexplanations applied. He lives in shell suits and tracksuits, always in vivid colours. Previous management was adamant that he should They were all alone when they died: DS Max Craigie is certain there''never'' be given responsibility. Wainwright feels that she would be best shut of both of thems a killer on the loose.
}}
{{Frontpage
|rating=4.5
|genre=General FictionPolitics and Society|summary=Anuri spent her childhood on display to the world, thanks to her step-mother Ophelia's increasingly popular presence on social media, where she posted every step of Anuri's childhood for sponsorships and influencer deals and, basically, monetary gain. Now Anuri is in her twenties and she It is slowly trying never too late to regain her confidence and to get her life back, suing her step-mother to take down embrace the content about her. Anuri is battling alcoholism, failing to start her PhD, undergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online and receiving money from them for doing so. Most importantly, she is desperately worried about her little sister, who is the new focus revolutionary optimism of Ophelia's online empire. Can she save her sister, and perhaps herself and her relationship with her father at the same time?|isbn=0861546873}}{{Frontpage|author=David Chadwick|title=Headload of Napalm|rating=4.5|genre=Thrillers|summary= It's September 1973 in Hicks, California. Hicks is a Mojave desert town 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 the main local employers but otherwise, therechildhood's not much of note other than dive bars and Joshua trees. Life is quiet, until....|isbn= B0D321VJ76}}{{Frontpage|author=Tom Percival|title=The Wrong Shoes|rating=5|genre=Confident Readers|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}}
}}
{{Frontpage
|summary=In 2024, Samantha Harvey won the Booker Prize for ''Orbital'', a 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 see our planet in a wholly new light.
|isbn=1529922933
}}
{{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.
}}
{{Frontpage
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0241678412Jon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |title=The Proof of My Innocence|author=Jonathan CoeVaim
|rating=4
|genre=ThrillersLiterary Fiction|summary=Life after university hasn't worked out quite the way that Phyl anticipated. She's back home, living with her parents and on a zero-hours contract serving sushi to tourists at terminal 5 of Heathrow Airport. All those ideas of becoming a writer seem to have come to nothing. The situation improves when was strange'Uncle' Chris comes to stay and introduces Phyl to his adopted daughter, Rashida. Christopher Swann (described by some as a lefty blogger) is investigating a think tank which originated at Cambridge University in the 1980s. It plans to push . This haunting phrase encapsulates the government pervading sense of otherworldliness which permeates this story set in Vaim, a fictional fishing village in Norway which paradoxically could not feel more extreme direction real for Jatgeir and is ready to actEline, two of the protagonists caught in its melancholic current.|isbn=1804271829
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn= 18362820281035043092|title=The Fighting SpiritKilling Stones (Jimmy Perez)|author=Rob KeeleyAnn Cleeves|rating=45|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|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'Would you like to adopt 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 ghost?museum.}}{{Frontpage|author=Thea Lenarduzzi|title=The Tower|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= ''How unctuous are the fats of another's life, how dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream''.
}}
{{Frontpage
|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
}}
{{Frontpage
|genre=Crime
|summary=It's sixteen years since nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her bed one summer night. She was never found and the investigation ground to a halt. Now, her mother, Helena, and her father are dead in their bed. Initially, it looks like a straightforward murder/suicide but there's something about the positioning of the bodies that makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and her boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. What looked as though it was going to be an open-and-shut case is now a complex double murder. Kerrigan is convinced that the explanation lies in Rosalie's disappearance: others (such as Derwent's boss, Una Burt) are less convinced.
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Annie Ernaux and Alison L. Strayer (translator)
|title=The Other Girl
|rating=4
|genre=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
}}
{{Frontpage
|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
}}
{{Frontpage
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1399613073B0FK5LHKD9|title=Moral InjuriesThe Colour of Memory|author=Christie WatsonChristopher Bowden|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersGeneral Fiction|summary=Olivia, Laura and Anjali met on the first day of medical school and their friendship would keep them inseparable for a quarter of It's been three years since we last reviewed a century. Olivia is ruthlessly ambitiousbook by favourite regular Christopher Bowden, which is a bonus when you aim so we were very glad to be see a cardiothoracic surgeonnew novel arrive here at Bookbag Towers. Laura is Like all Bowden's stories, there's a perfectionist and a trauma doctor. Anjali is mystery at the free spirit heart of ''The Colour of the group and she becomes a GP. When we first meet them theyMoney're at a drug and alcohol-fuelled party and it's going to end in tragedy. We donlike this running theme in an author't know who suffered the tragedy or the consequences. Twentys work -five years later there will be an eerily similar event that will impact the three friends. This take a mystery but give it different flavour and atmosphere each time, it's their teenage children who are involved.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0241636604Olga Tokarczuk|title=The Trading Game: A Confession|author=Gary StevensonHouse of Day, House of Night|rating=4.5|genre=AutobiographyLiterary Fiction|summary=If you were to bring up an image ''What's the good of a city banker world that keeps changing like that? How can one go on calmly living in your mindit?'' The title of this spellbinding work, you're unlikely to think 'House of Day, House of Night'', somewhat reflects this notion of someone shifting realities - the small, subtle changes which govern our lives, like Gary Stevensonthe shift from day to night, however quotidian, causing chaos. A hoodie and jeans replaces But, the pin-stripe suit and his background constant in that image is the East Endhouse, where he was familiar with violencestoic against the ancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it is perceived.|isbn=1804271918}}{{Frontpage|isbn=henleyA|title=Ultimate Obsession|author=Dai Henley|rating=4|genre=Crime|summary=Ex-DCI Andy Flood has been a Private Investigator for some time now, poverty and injusticehe should be doing quite well financially. There was no posh public school on Unfortunately, his daughter's defence against a murder charge drained his CV - but he had savings. His wife, Laura, has been trying to the London School of Economicspersuade him to retire - ''maybe go travelling or go on cruises. Stevenson is bright - extremely bright - and he has a facility with numbers which most That's what 'ordinary people do','' He's not been entirely up front about the state of us can only envytheir savings. He also realised that most rich people expect poor people When Jack Durban tries to persuade him to be stupid. It was take his ability at what wascase, essentially, a card game which got it's the thought of the money he could make that convinces him an internship with Citibank. Eventually, that this turned into permanent employment as is a tradermiscarriage of justice that he really should put right.
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Leanne Egan1836284683|title=Lover BirdsThe Big Happy|author=David Chadwick
|rating=4.5
|genre=TeensDystopian Fiction|summary=When new girlWell! This is a murder mystery unlike any other! I do love it when I open a book, Isabel, moves to Louit'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 hernothing like I expected it to be, and it takes me on a wild ride. And thatis just what happened with ''The 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.
}}
{{Frontpage
|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
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1036916375
|title=Just a Liverpool Lad
|author=Peter McArdle
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=''Just a Liverpool Lad '' is a collection of memories and reflections from the years Peter McArdle spent growing up in and around Liverpool. Some are factual, such as the family history of a sea-going family, with the docks dominating lives. Other stories blend seamlessly into the what-might-have-been. It's a book to settle into and allow your mind to roam across your childhood memories, to think of simpler times when life seemed less constrained, despite the blitz that was a constant factor in McArdle's early years. I'd never heard of parachute mines before - but they were almost soundless and could appear after the all-clear was sounded.
}}
{{Frontpage
|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.
}}
{{Frontpage
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Mark LinganeJenny Valentine|title=ChimeraUs in the Before and After|rating=5|genre=Teens|summary=Elk and 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 time. But then chance brings them back together, and they are inseparable. Something has happened though, something terrible and tragic, and now they must work through their grief, and their friendship, together.|isbn=1471196585}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1787333175|title=You Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here|author=Benji Waterhouse|rating=5|genre=Popular Science|summary=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 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 psychiatrist. I did wonder whether it was acceptable to be looking for humour in this setting but the laughter is directed at a situation rather than a person and it is always delivered with empathy and understanding. }}{{Frontpage|author=Mariana Enriquez|title=A Sunny Place for Shady People|rating=5|genre=Short Stories|summary=Mariana Enriquez writes horror that is disturbingly real, achieving this uncanny familiarity by basing her paranormal plots on gritty realities: her settings include an abandoned field full of disused refrigerators due to an urban planning mishap, an overcrowded homeless shelter and a crime-ridden neighbourhood where safety meetings are routine - all within Argentina. The circumstances of her characters are so plausible that the supernatural or otherworldly horror which seeps into these spaces adopts a similarly tangible texture. |isbn=1803511230}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1529934753|title=The Protest|author=Rob Rinder|rating=4.5|genre=Crime|summary=For a little while, it looked as though Sir Max Bruce, the country's most famous living artist, was not going to show up for the opening of his retrospective at the Royal Academy. Still, he arrived in the nick of time, complete with his two wives and six children, one of whom filmed what happened. Being an influencer, you tend to do things like that, but it was fortunate that there was a record of the protest. Lexi Williams, an intern at the RA, grabbed a spray can of blue paint from under a chair and proceeded to spray Bruce in the face, whilst shouting ''Stop the War''. It seemed to be part of an ongoing series of 'blue-face' attacks, but this was different. The can had been laced with cyanide, and Sir Max Bruce was dead.}}{{Frontpage|author=Ariel Saramandi|title=Portrait of an Island on Fire
|rating=4.5
|genre=Science FictionPolitics and Society|summary=''The survivor stumbles forwardIn this powerful collection of essays, Saramandi seeks to intradermally dissect the sociopolitical fabric of Mauritius, her steps echoing in tunneling deep into the oppressive silence. Her heart pounds like a jackhammer. She doesn’t know where she’s heading. All she remembers is running. Terror chasing. Everything lostwounds left by colonialism and slavery to expose how these legacies still shape modern life.Saramandi describes the country at one stage as '' rotting''Broken , a blunt yet apt metaphor for the systemic decay brought about by the malignant forces of racism, patriarchy, environmental degradation and fragmented recollections tumble around her head. Fear courses through her bodygovernmental dysfunction. Her breaths come Each essay in shallow, ragged gasps this collection serves as desperation claws at her throat. Dehydration consumes hera kind of diagnostic, and a raging thirst feels unquenchablecharting the various diseases afflicting the island state.''|isbn=1804271616}}{{Frontpage|author=Pekka Harju-Autti''There must be a way out. As she moves through |title=LoveVortex and the foreign area, memories begin to gel. Disaster had ploughed through her life—not just hers, everyone’s.'Drakor's Curse|rating=4|genre=FantasyAs our survivor struggles to orient herself, she|summary=It's guided by the eighteenth century, a robottime of discovery and Britain is expanding its foreign trade. Captain Julius Hawthorne, which looks human-madean experienced Scottish sea captain, but she can't be sure. It says it is. It says she must try not sent to injure herselfthe Andaman Islands in his endeavour. Guided to an interview Along with an eerie, terrifying group of alienshis son, she desperately tries to make sense of flashes of memory - environmental degradationPeter, deals done and then betrayedtheir cat, Michi, horrifying rituals covering desperate attempts they set off on a perilous voyage to survive - these faraway lands. The islands are beautiful and stunning in their scenery and the islanders' leader, Aarav, is keen to attempt to explain how she came to be here, apparently the last human being aliveestablish good relations.|isbn=B0DNVWMYP2B0DS1VGHH3
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Max BoucheratHelene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)|title=The Last Life of Lori MillsLili is Crying
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=First published in 1953 in French, this novel is a timeless text which wrenches the hearts of its readers just as Bessette wrenches words and sentences from their proper position on the page and positions them elsewhere, disjointed, truncated. Like the lives of her characters, they are often left tragically incomplete.
|isbn=1804271675
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Tom Percival
|title=The Wrong Shoes
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=We meet Lori on the first evening sheWill's got life is difficult, in a multitude of ways. He is bullied because he has 'the house to herself – no neighbour to pop inwrong shoes', babysitter poorlyhe 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, mother and his dad can't work because he lost his job at workthe college, just an avidly rulewas working a cash-in-breaking eleven year old, hand job on her lonesomea building site and had an accident. What could possibly go wrong? Snuggled in a blanket fort, she has one main intention, and Throw into that is to log on to Voxminer, mix the world-buildingfact that his mum and dad are separated, critter-collecting game that is a hit in Loriand Will's worldlife seems bleak in every direction. But first Lori And yet, he still has a tiny inkling that this stormy night doesn't find herself entirely on her own, and then she finds something even more spookyamount of hope. For the server she He is good at art, and her bestie and nobody else should be able clings to enter shows signs the moments of tampering. When malevolent eyes spark up on her phone screenjoy when he is drawing, and her safe place in that feel like a light at the game has been doctored – wellend of a long, where is a girl to turn?dark tunnel.|isbn=00086664821398527122
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0008385068Sylvie Cathrall|title=The Midnight Feast|author=Lucy FoleyA Letter to the Luminous Deep|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersScience Fiction|summary=It's midsummer on the Dorset coast and guests gather at The Manor. It's their opening weekend and splendid celebrations There are promised. It's all headed few greater joys than a book which lives up by Francesca Meadows. The Manor was her ancestral home and she's converted it into an impressive retreat for the wealthy and famousto a compelling premise. Her husband, Owen, was the architect and work And this is still ongoing on parts one of the site. The heat is oppressive and amongst the guests are enemies as well as friends. Old scores are going to be settled and it won't be long before a body is foundthem.|isbn= 0356522776
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=James BaldwinGuadalupe Nettel and Rosalind Harvey (Translator)|title=Giovanni's RoomThe Accidentals
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction Short Stories|summary=''Giovanni's Room'' follows This collection was truly enchanting in all senses of the narrator Davidword: spellbinding with its fantastical, an American man living magical elements and charming in Paris, as he navigates his torturous affair with Giovanniits gentle portrayal of nature and human relationships. Guadalupe Nettel writes intelligently and precisely, an Italian bartender he meets in her stories structured by a gay bar. While David is engaged wisdom that appears to want to Hella, who is travelling in Spain, the real tension in the novel arises not from his infidelity but from teach us something about the deeper conflict within himself. It is David's crippling shame and denial of his sexuality that ultimately dooms his relationship with Giovanniworld.|isbn=01411863561804271470
}}
