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{{Frontpage
|rating=5
|genre=TeensShort Stories|summary=Elk and Mab are best friends, or more than Mariana Enriquez writes horror that evenis disturbingly real, their friendship is a once in a lifetime connection. They meet as children one day achieving this uncanny familiarity by basing her paranormal plots on a trip out but unfortunately they don't get each other's contact details at the time. But then chance brings them back togethergritty realities: her settings include an abandoned field full of disused refrigerators due to an urban planning mishap, an overcrowded homeless shelter and they a crime-ridden neighbourhood where safety meetings are inseparableroutine - all within Argentina. Something has happened though, something terrible and tragic, and now they must work through their grief, and their friendship, togetherThe circumstances of her characters are so plausible that the supernatural or otherworldly horror which seeps into these spaces adopts a similarly tangible texture.|isbn=14711965851803511230
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|isbn=15294259051529934753|title=A Voice in the Night (A D I Wilkins Mystery)The Protest|author=Simon MasonRob Rinder
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=There's For a new Superintendent in Thames Valley — DCS Wainwright—and shelittle while, it looked as though Sir Max Bruce, the country's youngmost famous living artist, ambitious, and ruthlesswas not going to show up for the opening of his retrospective at the Royal Academy. She talks a good talk about work/life balance and family valuesStill, but as far as she's concernedhe arrived in the nick of time, she has complete with his two main problemswives and six children, and they're both called DI Wilkinsone of whom filmed what happened. Ray Wilkins is of Nigerian descentBeing an influencer, Baliol educated and always immaculately dressed. He's married you tend to Diane and has twin sons. Management's opinion of him is do things like that, but it was fortunate that he thinks too highly there was a record of himself and his last boss felt that he needed more experience at what he called 'the wet end'protest. Ryan Wilkins comes Lexi Williams, an intern at the RA, grabbed a spray can of blue paint from under a trailer park - chair and proceeded to spray Bruce in factthe face, it could be said that hewhilst shouting 's never really left it. He lives in shell suits and tracksuits, always in vivid colours. Previous management was adamant that he should 'Stop the War'never'' be given responsibility. Wainwright feels that she would It seemed to be best shut part of both an ongoing series of them'blue-face' attacks, but this was different. The can had been laced with cyanide, and Sir Max Bruce was dead.
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1787333175Ariel Saramandi|title=You Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here|author=Benji WaterhousePortrait of an Island on Fire|rating=4.5|genre=Popular SciencePolitics and Society|summary=I was tempted In this powerful collection of essays, Saramandi seeks 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}}intradermally dissect the sociopolitical fabric of Mauritius, a glorious mixture of insight tunneling deep into the workings of the NHS, humour wounds left by colonialism and autobiographyslavery to expose how these legacies still shape modern life. Saramandi describes the country at one stage as ''You Donrotting't Have to be Mad...'' promised , a blunt yet apt metaphor for the same elements but moved from physical problems to mental illness and systemic decay brought about by the work malignant forces of a psychiatristracism, patriarchy, environmental degradation and governmental dysfunction. I did wonder whether it was acceptable to be looking for humour Each essay in this setting but collection serves as a kind of diagnostic, charting the various diseases afflicting the laughter is directed at a situation rather than a person and it is always delivered with empathy and understandingisland state. |isbn=1804271616
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|author=Mariana EnriquezPekka Harju-Autti|title=A Sunny Place for Shady PeopleLoveVortex and the Drakor's Curse|rating=54|genre=Short StoriesFantasy|summary=Mariana Enriquez writes horror that It's the eighteenth century, a time of discovery and Britain is disturbingly realexpanding its foreign trade. Captain Julius Hawthorne, achieving this uncanny familiarity by basing her paranormal plots on gritty realities: her settings include an abandoned field full of disused refrigerators due experienced Scottish sea captain, is sent to an urban planning mishapthe Andaman Islands in his endeavour. Along with his son, Peter, an overcrowded homeless shelter and their cat, Michi, they set off on a crime-ridden neighbourhood where safety meetings are routine - all within Argentinaperilous voyage to these faraway lands. The circumstances of her characters islands are so plausible that beautiful and stunning in their scenery and the supernatural or otherworldly horror which seeps into these spaces adopts a similarly tangible textureislanders' leader, Aarav, is keen to establish good relations. |isbn=1803511230B0DS1VGHH3
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|author=Onyi NwabineliHelene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)|title=Allow Me to Introduce MyselfLili is Crying
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Anuri spent her childhood on display to First published in 1953 in French, this novel is a timeless text which wrenches the world, thanks to her step-mother Ophelia's increasingly popular presence on social media, where she posted every step hearts of Anuri's childhood for sponsorships its readers just as Bessette wrenches words and influencer deals and, basically, monetary gain. Now Anuri is in her twenties and she is slowly trying to regain her confidence and to get her life back, suing her step-mother to take down sentences from their proper position on the content about her. Anuri is battling alcoholism, failing to start her PhD, undergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online page and receiving money from positions them for doing so. Most importantlyelsewhere, she is desperately worried about her little sisterdisjointed, who is truncated. Like the new focus lives of Ophelia's online empire. Can she save her sistercharacters, and perhaps herself and her relationship with her father at the same time?they are often left tragically incomplete.|isbn=08615468731804271675
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|author=David ChadwickGregor Hens and Jen Calleja (translator)|title=Headload of NapalmThe City and the World|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersPolitics and Society|summary= ItIn ''The City and the World''s September 1973 in Hicks, CaliforniaGregor Hens reveals how cities are as much imagined spaces as they are physical ones. Hicks is With a Mojave desert town of deep affection for the urban landscapes that have shaped his life, Hens reflects on places like Cologne, Berlin, and Goch on the Lower Rhine with a few thousand people with its nearest neighbours blend of LA personal memory and thoughtful observation. His writing, at times abstract, captures not just architectural features but the emotional and Las Vegas both mental geographies tied to each location, for example, his perspectives as a significant drive awaychild as opposed to as an adult. Not much happens in Hicks. A silver mine From Belgium and Germany to Berkeley and Columbus, Hens traces a defence contractor are the main local employers but otherwisemap of experiences, there's not much turning cities into reflections of note other than dive bars identity and Joshua trees. Life is quiet, until...belonging.|isbn= B0D321VJ761804271691
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|isbn=1398527122
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{{Frontpage|author=Saou Ichikawa and Polly Barton (translator)|title=Hunchback|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=I was in the middle of a self-imposed book-buying ban when I made an exception for this one. What first drew me in was the book's bold fuchsia cover, followed by its striking title: ''Hunchback''. This is a word I recognised to be loaded with historical and cultural baggage, often used to dehumanise or reduce. Curious, I leaned over the display table and turned to the back inside cover. There, I discovered the author: Saou Ichikawa, a woman diagnosed in childhood with congenital myopathy, a condition that causes severe muscular weakness and touches every aspect of her life. The title took on new complexity in light of her biography. I had to read it.|isbn=0241700787}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Sylvie Cathrall
|summary= There are few greater joys than a book which lives up to a compelling premise. And this is one of them.
|isbn= 0356522776
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{{Frontpage
|author=Ian Penman
|title=Erik Satie Three Piece Suite
|rating=3.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=This unconventional biography somewhat mirrors Satie's admittedly effusive personality: whimsical, experimental and creative. It is divided into three sections: the first, an essay, the second, an A-Z encyclopedia on Satie and the third, a 'Satie Diary', documenting Ian Penman's thoughts surrounding Satie, his muse.
|isbn=1804271535
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|author=Joan DidionGuadalupe Nettel and Rosalind Harvey (Translator)|title=The Year Accidentals|rating=4.5|genre=Short Stories|summary=This collection was truly enchanting in all senses of the word: spellbinding with its fantastical, magical elements and charming in its gentle portrayal of nature and human relationships. Guadalupe Nettel writes intelligently and precisely, her stories structured by a wisdom that appears to want to teach us something about the world.|isbn=1804271470}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0008551375|title=When Shadows Fall (D S Max Craigie)|author=Neil 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|isbn=0008643660|title=The Burial Place|author=Stig Abell|rating=4|genre=Crime|summary=A group of archaeologists are uncovering a Roman site close to Little Sky: it's idyllic and some of the excavations are being televised. There's even a hoard of Magical ThinkingRoman gold worth millions which will be split between the finders and the landowner. It's perfect until the group begin receiving threatening letters. Jake Jackson, a former police detective, is trying to lead a simpler life at Little Sky but he's inevitably drawn in to investigate. Reading the letters, it's difficult to avoid the conclusion that there will be violence and even the local police are keen that Jake should be involved.}}{{Frontpage|author=Paul B Preciado|title=Dysphoria 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 new generation, a new feeling mechanism in which detachment is not considered a sign of political apathy. Rather, it is the grief she endured following her husbandproportional, 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 to help people feel less aloneglobal scale, or as ''pangea covidica''. Didion unpicks unpleasant feelings surrounding death like self-pityRather than taking this extreme dysphoria as a sign of weakness, denial and delusion and makes them utterly normalor mistaking detachment or withdrawal for political paralysis, lends them a human face Preciado urges his readers to wear''use dysphoria as your revolutionary platform''.|isbn=00072168581804271454
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{{Frontpage
|genre=Crime
|summary=It's unusual for anyone from the Hardie family to approach the police. Neither side likes or has any respect for the other. But Davie Hardie is struggling in prison and he's prepared to tell the police where the body of a missing person is buried and who was responsible for her death. This person, he promises, is someone big and it will be worth the police doing what he wants. And what he wants is to be transferred to an open prison to serve the remainder of his sentence and to get an early parole date. Not much to ask, is it? The new Deputy Police Constable doesn't think so and she's 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's happening.
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{{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.
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{{Frontpage
|author=Mary McCarthy
|title=Memories of a Catholic Girlhood
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Mary McCarthy describes herself as an ''amateur architect'', obsessively digging into the past to piece together the broken mosaic of her life. She attributes her ''burning interest in the past'' to her orphanhood, as she lacked any second-hand memories from her parents, who died in the 1918 flu epidemic. This memoir chronicles her early years, beginning with her orphanhood in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she lived under the harsh guardianship of her late father's Irish Catholic parents and her abusive Uncle Myers and Aunt Margaret. Later, she moved to Seattle to live with her maternal grandparents—her grandmother being Jewish and her grandfather Presbyterian—who provided her with a different kind of upbringing.
|isbn=1804271659
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|author=Jonathan Buckley
|title=One Boat
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= ''One Boat'' is a deeply introspective novella that defies traditional narrative structure, drawing the reader into a contemplative realm of philosophical musings and fragmented memories flowing from our narrator and protagonist, Teresa. Set against the evocative backdrop of a small coastal Greek town, this work masterfully captures the magic of its setting and its power to provoke profound introspection. Teresa herself recognises these qualities as the reason she has visited it after the death of both her parents. Prompted by her mourning, her narrative voice is meditative and deeply self-aware, inviting the reader into her labyrinthine cogitations. It is a book that not only requires but inspires depth of thought, since its narrative structure is fragmentary and ironically relies on analepsis for its propulsion.
|isbn=1804271764
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{{Frontpage
|author=Jen Beagin
|title=Big Swiss
|rating=4.5
|genre=Humour
|summary=I found the premise of this book totally original and addictive. Greta possesses the power to know the population of Hudson, New York's darkest secrets, their intimate lives, their fetishes and fears. How? Her job is to transcribe their sex therapy sessions. Sure, there's a confidentiality agreement, as the sex coach who calls himself Om keeps reminding her, but that just makes it more exciting. Like we've all probably wished for at some point in life, Greta can exist passively, placidly, as a fly on the wall. That is, until Greta decides to unglue her fly-feet from the safety of the wall and buzz far too close to the sun. The sun in this analogy is the sex coach's newest patient, who Greta dubs 'Big Swiss', and who, like the sun, is bright, blonde and beautiful - and irresistible to Greta. Suddenly, the confidentiality agreement, the ethics of her professional position, her loyalties to Om, fly out of the window. She's in too deep.
|isbn=0571378579
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|author=Mark LinganeMax Boucherat|title=ChimeraThe Last Life of Lori Mills
|rating=4.5
|genre=Science FictionConfident Readers|summary=We meet Lori on the first evening she''The survivor stumbles forwards got the house to herself – no neighbour to pop in, babysitter poorly, mother at work, just an avidly rule-breaking eleven year old, on her steps echoing lonesome. What could possibly go wrong? Snuggled in a blanket fort, she has one main intention, and that is to log on to Voxminer, the oppressive silenceworld-building, critter-collecting game that is a hit in Lori's world. Her heart pounds like But first Lori has a jackhammertiny inkling that this stormy night doesn't find herself entirely on her own, and then she finds something even more spooky. She doesn’t know where she’s heading. All For the server she remembers is running. Terror chasing. Everything lost.'' ''Broken and fragmented recollections tumble around her headbestie and nobody else should be able to enter shows signs of tampering. Fear courses through When malevolent eyes spark up on her body. Her breaths come in shallowphone screen, ragged gasps as desperation claws at her throat. Dehydration consumes and hersafe place in the game has been doctored – well, where is a girl to turn?|isbn=0008666482}}{{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 raging thirst feels unquenchablelifetime connection. They meet as children one day on a trip out but unfortunately they don't get each other' ''There must be a way outs contact details at the time. As she moves through the foreign area But then chance brings them back together, memories begin to geland they are inseparable. Disaster had ploughed Something has happened though, something terrible and tragic, and now they must work through her life—not just herstheir grief, and their friendship, everyone’stogether.|isbn=1471196585}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1787333175|title=You Don''t Have to be Mad to Work Here|author=Benji Waterhouse|rating=5|genre=Popular ScienceAs our survivor struggles |summary=I was tempted to orient herself, sheread ''s guided by a robot, which looks human-made, but she canYou Don't Have to be sure. It says it Mad to Work Here'' after enjoying Adam Kay's first book {{amazonurl|isbn=1509858636|title=This is. It says she must try not to injure herself. Guided Going to an interview with an eerieHurt}}, terrifying group a glorious mixture of aliens, she desperately tries to make sense insight into the workings of flashes of memory - environmental degradationthe NHS, deals done humour and then betrayed, horrifying rituals covering desperate attempts autobiography. ''You Don't Have to be Mad...'' promised the same elements but moved from physical problems to survive - mental illness and to attempt to explain how she came the work of a psychiatrist. I did wonder whether it was acceptable to be here, apparently looking for humour in this setting but the last human being alivelaughter is directed at a situation rather than a person and it is always delivered with empathy and understanding.|isbn=B0DNVWMYP2
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