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Hello from The Bookbag<metadesc>Expert, a full book review site, featuring books reviews from all the many most walks of literary life ; fiction, non- [[:Category:Fiction|fiction]], [[:Category:Biography|biography]], [[:Category:Crime|crime]], [[:Category:Cookery|cookery]] and anything else that takes our fancy. At Bookbag Towers the bookbag sits at the side of the desk. Itchildren's the bag we take to the library and the bookshop. Sometimes it holds the latest releases, but at other times there'll be old favourites, books for the children, books for the home. They're sometimes our own books or books from the local library. They're often & self-published books sent to us by publishers and we promise to tell you exactly what we think about them. You might not want to read through a full review, so we'll give you a quick review which summarises what we felt about the book and tells you whether or not we think you should buy or borrow it. There are also lots of plus author [[:Category:Interviews|interviews]], and all sorts of [[:Category:Lists|& top tens]] - all of which you can find on our [[Features]] page.</metadesc>
There are currently '''{{PAGESINCATEGORY:Reviews}}'by readers from all the many walks of literary life. With author interviews, features and top tens. You'll be sure to find something you' reviews on the sitell want to read here.Dig in!
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==New There are currently '''{{PAGESINCATEGORY: Reviews==}}'''For new reviews by genre [[:Category:New Reviews|click herereviews]]at TheBookbag.'''
'''For new features Want to learn more [[FeaturesAbout Us|click hereabout us]].'''? __NOTOC__{{newreview|author=Elizabeth Baines|title=Too Many Magpies|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Becoming a mother brings a whole new world of fear into your life. Suddenly you see the danger in every situation, and fear and trepidation can be become your constant companions. In this novella, we meet a young mother who is married to a logical scientist. They attempt to control their children's futures on a scientific basis, growing their own fruit and vegetables, giving their children nothing sugary, eating no eggs for a whole year until any adverse affects from them were disproved. But after meeting with an enigmatic stranger our young mother begins to struggle as he introduces ideas of freedom into her world. She begins an affair with him, begins to let things slip at home and with the children, yet finds she is still continuously haunted by the sense of an ever-present danger.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844717216</amazonuk>}}
{{newreview|author=Katherine May|title=Burning Out|ratingThe Best New Books=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Violet has it all – a well-paid job, and a luxurious apartment all to herself. Everything is catered for; her meals, her clothes, and her health are all how she would like them to be. But the life she is leading is beginning to take its toll. On the verge of snapping, a drained and somewhat out-of-sorts Violet, withdraws back to her home town. There, she meets someone familiar, a ghost reminding her of how she used to be ten years earlier – a young carefree girl, full of life. Only this isn't a ghost, but a girl living the life Violet once lived – exactly the same. Haunted by the past Violet realizes history is repeating itself and is convinced events will happen again. Events that will in turn haunt the girl.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906727392</amazonuk>}}
{{newreview|author=Amanda Downum|title=The Drowning City|rating=3.5|genre=Fantasy|summary=In a nutshell, you're reading this because you're wondering whether The Drowning City is good, bad or mediocre'Read [[:Category:New Reviews|new reviews by category]]. You've probably glanced at the rating and guessed the latter. I'm afraid it's not quite that simple. This is a debut that provokes decidedly mixed feelings. I started off convinced that I was going to love this book. The cover art is effortlessly cool, the premise intriguing, the characters laden with potential for greatness and the backdrop is certainly evocative.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1841498149</amazonukbr>}}
'''Read [[:Category:Features|the latest features]].'''{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tove Jansson1035043092|title=The True DeceiverKilling Stones (Jimmy Perez)|author=Ann Cleeves
|rating=5
|genre=Crime
|summary=I can't have been the only person who was sad when Inspector Jimmy Perez [[Wild Fire (Shetland, Book 8) by Ann Cleeves|left Shetland]] to start a new life on Orkney. It's been seven years since we heard from him, but he's now living with Willow Reeves and their young son, James, as well as Cassie, the daughter of his former partner. Willow's also his boss, and she ''should'' be on maternity leave, but when the body of a popular islander, Archie Stout, is found, in the aftermath of a storm, she can't resist getting involved. He'd been battered about the head with a Neolithic stone - one of a pair - which had been stolen from a museum.
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Polly Barton
|title=What Am I, A Deer?
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Most people of my age will have come across JanssonPolly Barton's debut novel is an intellectually playful yet emotionally exposed work unwittinglythat uses translation as both subject and governing metaphor. The narrator, via newly relocated from London to Berlin, works translating video games into Japanese through the televised renditions process of the Moomin taleslocalisation, rewriting language until it feels comfortably familiar to a new audience. The readers amongst us would then have been entranced Barton treats this as a few years ago to discover that paradoxical act: arguably, in striving for universality, language is endlessly repackaged, its originality at last Thomas Teal had set about risk of disappearing altogether. From this, the translation novel opens out into Englisha wider, resonant question: to what extent do we translate ourselves in order to be understood, accepted, first of The Summer Book and then of a collection of short stories which were published as 'A Winter Book'. or loved?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0954899571</amazonuk>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-Fiction
|summary=''Across many African and Indigenous systems, differences in how children learn, sense , or process the 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.''
{{newreview|author=Daniel Kehlmann |title=Me and Kaminski|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=After reviewing several long books, it's been refreshing to read such This lovely story is a fluent yet pared down story as 'Kaminski and Me'. In it, Sebastian Zollner, the obnoxious main charactersynthesis of that tradition, shoves himself forward in a desperate attempt to research a best seller which will re-ignite his career as an art criticwas carried down through generations by oral retellings. Kaminski, the proposed subject, was It shows that a fashionable painter long ago, community or society is not made up from interchangeable building blocks of human beings but now, ancient by a range of people with different skills and chronically illdifferent personalities, has virtually slid into oblivion. So the second-rate writer is on all contributing to a loser unless he can dig up some juicy details whole that combines them all and to hook the art world and general publicbenefit of them all.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847249892</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Louis Barfe1787333175|title=Turned Out Nice Again: The Story of British Light EntertainmentYou Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here|author=Benji Waterhouse|rating=45|genre=EntertainmentPopular Science|summary=Light entertainment 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 often looked down uponGoing to Hurt}}, as if it's a bit naffglorious mixture of insight into the workings of the NHS, tepid humour and ignorableautobiography. ''You Don't Have to be Mad... What's often forgotten is that it's hugely popular, enjoyable promised the same elements but moved from physical problems to mental illness and much 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 of the highest qualityalways delivered with empathy and understanding. Louis Barfe's Turned Out Nice Again tells the complete story of British light entertainment.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1843543818</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jim Helmore Maria Stepanova and Karen WallSasha Dugdale (Translator)|title=Oh No, Monster Tomato!The Disappearing Act
|rating=4
|genre=For SharingLiterary Fiction|summary=Marvin Despite her anonymisation of place names and people, Stepanova's message in this short work of autofiction is entering unmistakable. A novelist named M travels from B (ostensibly Berlin) to the Great Grislygust Grow-Offtown of F for a literary festival she is to be a guest speaker at. Detoured by erratic train schedules and nudged by forces beyond her control, but just like himher journey slowly bends toward a traveling circus. Swept up in this series of events, his tomatoes aren't growing very bigM eventually offers to step in for a circus performer who has unexpectedly left the show. He takes The train functions as a motif of transience and impermanence, while the circus embodies the only sensible course reshaping of action: he sings his tomatoes identity and a song. The results are spectacular. Victory is surely within his graspretreat into fantasy, an impulse that lies at the very heart of the novel form itself.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>140524741X</amazonuk>1804272329
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Joseph Delaney B0GFQ81YQK|title=The Spook's How the Sky and the Earth Made People: From the Oral Stories: Witchesof Malagasy Elders|author=Stephanie Zabriskie|rating=4.5|genre=TeensChildren's Non-Fiction|summary='Warning: Not to be read after darkBefore people came and joined the animals,' are there was only the sky and the only words on earth. Everything was quiet until the back of ''The Spook's Stories'', earth and on the inside flapsky began to tal to each other. First, 'The Times' warns us that this book is 'seriously scary'the earth created bodies.And then, the sky breathed life into them.These were the first humans and they belonged to both earth and sky.  The whole thing kicks-off relatively tamelyAnd so people lived between sky and soil and they planted and learned and remembered, thoughespecially how they came to be. When they grew old and died, with a story about a young Spook (a sort of monster-hunter) who falls in love with a witch their bodies returned to the earth and their life returned to the sky. And that is forced to bear why the consequences when earth and the witch's sister comes sky are both revered. Only together can they create human beings. And that is why people must pay attention to stay , and exhibits a taste care for the neighbor-children, both.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0370329961</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Lisa UngerB0GHPMNF6P|title=Die For YouThe Zookeeper's Dragon: A Magical Modern Fantasy Tale for Grown-Ups|author=Carolyn Mathews|rating=34.5|genre=CrimeFantasy|summary=Best-selling novelist Isabel Connelly is married When Phil's father unexpectedly dies, he quits his Canary Wharf finance job to successful video game designer Marcus Rainetake over the running of the family's farm zoo. Or so she thinks. But when her husband fails to return from workHe's not expecting much excitement, she realises something is wrong. Going to until he receives an unidentified egg that his office to try to find out what happens to himnew-age stoner uncle Edgar found in a cave in New Zealand, she gets attacked and ends up in hospital, while his co-workers are killedsuddenly life is no longer quite what it seems. Things get worse for herThen the egg hatches into neither a reptile nor a bird, howeverbut a dragon! Now he, when investigating detective Grady Crowe reveals that Marcus Raine has been dead for several yearsEdgar, and the man she married was using a false identity. Infuriated by the betrayalhis mother Abi, and the realisation that shezoo's been living a lie for the past five yearspart-time café waitress Pearl have to raise this little bundle of scales and joy, Izzy takes matters into her own hands and sets out despite having no idea how to find her husband actually raise dragons and work out why he lied not being able to her for so longtell anyone about it. Ignoring police warnings, she delves deeper and deeper into a nasty underworld, and finds a tale which has its roots in Prague But this tiny little dragon may show them love and rivals anything she could have plotted connection in one of her novels.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099522179</amazonuk>ways they had never before imagined…
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Stephanie Zabriskie
|title=How Maasai Women Spoke to Cows: From the Oral Stories of Maasai Elders
|rating=5
|genre=Children's Non-Fiction
|summary=''How Maasai Women Spoke to Cows is a children’s nonfiction book drawn from the oral traditions of Maasai elders in Ngorongoro, Tanzania.''
{{newreview|author=Lisa McMann|title=Wake|rating=4|genre=Teens|summary=Janie is seventeen The Maasai are a cattle-herding people and studying hard for collegethis story writes down its oral tradition explaining how they came to be so. SheCattle are status and wealth in Maasai culture but this doesn's also working lots of hours at a local nursing home to earn money for college as it's unlikely her alcoholic mother is going to provide much in t tell the way whole story of resources. College is Janie's only chance at a life better than the one she's lived so far intimate and symbiotic connection its people, and especially its women, have with their cows and so you can't blame her for being so single-minded in the pursuit of her goal. Only one thing stands in her way.natural world.The oral tradition retelling the many conversations Maasai women have had with their cows, does.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847385036</amazonuk>B0G9WTGY6J
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jaclyn Moriarty Livi Michael|title=The Spell Book of Listen TaylorElizabeth and Ruth
|rating=3.5
|genre=TeensHistorical Fiction|summary=Listen Taylor's father has just moved in with his girlfriend 'Elizabeth and they are adopted into Ruth'' is a work of historical fiction wrought from the Zing family, with all life of its delightful eccentricities and unusual behaviour – the Zings meet every Friday night Victorian author Elizabeth Gaskell, best known for dinner and then disappear into her first novel Mary Barton (1848), a radical critique of the garden shed to work on treatment of the working class published under a pseudonym. The ''Ruth''Zing Family Secretfrom Livi Michael'. Marbie Zing is terrified of doing something wrong and losing Nathaniel and Listen. Her sister Fancy is becoming increasingly disillusioned with s title appears in her home lifenovel as Pasley, a young Irish prostitute who was abandoned as a child and her daughterfinds herself in Manchester's year two teacher is coming to terms with New Bailey Prison after a break updifficult and unjust hand at life. The stories of these people come together to create a tale of life, loveSet in Manchester between 1839 and 1842, the novel examines the harsh conditions endured by the Victorian working poor and ultimately, what being part of a family meansinterrogates the extent to which the wealthy (including Gaskell herself) were responsible for addressing these injustices.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0330446363</amazonuk>1784633682
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=F G CottamMakenna Goodman|title=The Magdalena Curse|rating=2.5|genre=Horror|summary=Mark Hunter is the sort Helen of father who would do anything for his son. After losing his wife and daughter in a tragic accident, his surviving son Adam has become his whole world. And Adam is an exceptional child – beautiful, incredibly smart and mature beyond his ten years – only recently he's been channelling the voices of the dead. Plagued by horrific dreams, able to speak Russian in the hours after he wakes, drawing occult symbols when he doodles, Hunter believes Adam to be possessed. Doctor Elizabeth Bancroft is sceptical, until she meets Adam, and witnesses the horrors the poor boy endures for herself.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340980982</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Jon Berkeley|title=The Lightning Key (Circus Trilogy)Nowhere
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersLiterary Fiction|summary=I shall start with It 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, a word disgraced professor on the brink of advicelosing both his career and his relationship, embodies this feeling. When you're being hounded by However, Goodman counteracts his discomfort with a circus masterforce which is seductive, radical and unnerving: Helen. The connection between Helen and a magician, for the soul protagonist is indirect yet intimate. As the former owner of a tiger thatthe countryside house he's contained in considering, Helen represents a tiger's egg that's contained volta in his life, her past tied to his potential fresh start. The realtor who shows the protagonist around the brain of your teddy bearhouse shares stories about Helen, and your best friend - a fallen angel - is trying describes her best to make sure the other angels do not turn on you in a big way - then youas ''re probably living the third book in a fantasy trilogy. Still - never mindan entity that is pure consciousness, the angelbeyond form''s efforts will involve you entering a dream world of flight and cloud cities. Although she lives in an assisted living facility now, Helen has powers beyond comprehension which the chase after your enemies will take you across reader gets the world to desert oases and back, and friends new and old will be on board to helpsense are not altogether innocuous.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847384447</amazonuk>1804272205
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sue TownsendB0GCB1MQ7D|title=Adrian Mole: The Prostrate YearsWhy My Mother Went Away|author=Alan Kennedy
|rating=5
|genre=General FictionAutobiography|summary=Adrian Mole is now 39¼ and livingI have often wondered how prominent people came to hold their positions. With 'celebrities', quite literally, in there's frequently a pigstybook they might or might not have written, sharing an all too thin party wall with his parents and working in a bookshopwhich might or might not tell the true story. It's not quite how life was supposed to turn out. As he spends his days wrestling his strong willed 5 year old Gracie into her school uniformoften that you find a book that gives the full backstory, trying to reassure glamorous wife Daisy that life in and rarely do you discover a memoir where the provinces telling is not as bad as she would like to believeso perfect that you'll go back and reread paragraphs and sentences, and desperately attempting to talk his mother out of her quest to appear on just for the pleasure the vile words give. ''Jeremy KyleWhy My Mother Went Away'' show, worrying over his increasingly frequent visits to the toilet is really the last thing he needsone of those rare exceptions. And yet, It's the worst is still to come. Think story of how a crumbling economy, redundancy, affairsboy from the Midlands, death, a family member challenging him in born at the novel writing stakes and a query over beginning of the big C – it's going to be Second World War, would become a tough year for Professor of Psychology at Dundee University. In fact, he was one of the Moles, and there's little that ol' Adrian can do except sit back and watch his life spin out founders of control around himthe department.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0718153707</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Jeremy Cooper
|title=Discord
|rating= 3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Discord: a lack of agreement or harmony (as between persons, things, or ideas)
{{newreview|author=Lauren Kate|title=Fallen|rating=4The principal example of discord within the novel, as with most instances of discord, is easily located.5|genre=Teens|summary=A 17 year old girl at a new school meets a mysterious The two protagonists of the novel, Rebekah Rosen and impossibly good-looking boyEvie Bennet, who she's immediately drawn toare as different as they come. He seems determined to either ignore her or be outright rude Rebekah is an uptight, traditional and no-nonsense composer close to herretirement, until he saves her lifewhile Evie is a force of nature, bounding onto the musical scene as a precocious saxophonist, oozing with talent and the charm. The two of them end up drawn together. This isn, predictably, don't Stephenie Meyeralways see eye to eye, their approaches different and Evie's progressive views at odds with Rebekah''Twilight''s conservative leaning. However, but it certainly has striking similaritiessomething connects them beyond just their musical project: a sort of fragile alliance formed within the clamour.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0385738935</amazonuk>1804272264
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Gareth HindsTom Percival|title=King LearThe Wrong Shoes|rating=35|genre=Graphic NovelsConfident Readers|summary=Hound me out of town Will's life is difficult, in a most appropriate manner, but I do not like King Learmultitude of ways. For me, even as a trained actor, He is bullied because he has 'the language is too dense and richwrong shoes', he has the set-up too archly unfeasible to create the great tragedy itwrong shoes because his dad can's thought to be. To my mind the acclaim t work and esteem in which itdoesn's held is only mirrored by its own over-long, over-blown blustering.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0763643440</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Paul Theroux|title=A Dead Hand: A Crime in Calcutta|rating=3.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Set in India, familiar territory t have enough money for Therouxeven the most basic of things like food, and his dad can''A Dead Hand'' tells t work because he lost his job at the story of college, was working a travel writer suffering from writer's block (also known as 'dead cash-in-hand') until job on a chance letter from building site and had an American ex-pataccident. Throw into that mix the fact that his mum and dad are separated, the mysterious Mrs Ungerand Will's life seems bleak in every direction. And yet, relating he still has a story tiny amount of a mystery of a dead body in a hotel leads him to release his creativity in very unexpected wayshope. The story He is more about obsession good at art, and infatuation than it clings to the moments of joy when he is about drawing, that feel like a light at the mystery itself as the narrator falls under Mrs Unger's Tantric charmsend of a long, dark tunnel. But does she have more to hide than she's letting on?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0241144639</amazonuk>1398527122
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Toby LesterEdward W Said|title=The Fourth Part Representations of the World: The Epic Story of History's Greatest MapIntellectual
|rating=4.5
|genre=HistoryPolitics and Society|summary=In 2003 a map was bought for $10 million, Edward Said's ''Representations of the highest price ever paid publicly for Intellectual'' is less a historical document, by the Library strict theory of Congress, where it is now on permanent public display. No ordinary map, this is sometimes described as America's birth certificatewhat intellectuals are and more a passionate argument for what they should be. It is Said clearly rejects the sole survivor comfortable image of a thousand copies printed early in the 16th century, and was discovered by accident in some archives in intellectual as a German castle in 1901detached expert speaking only to other specialists. The sale and story behind it intrigued Toby Lester so much that Instead, he was inspired to discover moreinsists on the intellectual as a public figure, often awkward, abrasive, and this book unpopular, who speaks truth to power even when it is the resultinconvenient or risky.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1861978030</amazonuk>1804272248
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Steven Lowe and Alan McArthur Sylvie Cathrall|title=Is it Just Me or Has A Letter to the Shit Hit the Fan?: Your Hilarious New Guide to Unremitting Global MiseryLuminous Deep|rating=35|genre=HumourScience Fiction|summary=''The banks fell over like fat Labradors running over There are few greater joys than a book which lives up to a wet kitchen floorcompelling premise.'' Surely that And this is the wackiest, most inappropriate simile for the credit crunch and all it has done for the world. You won't get any such namby-pamby animal likenesses from these authors, instead with quite a potty mouth on one of them they will lambast the modern world, the entire banking system, all those who failed to see it coming, and those millions just seemingly waiting for us all to revert to high-interest, high-risk, high-lending capitalism, so they can get back on the expenses train, and back up the rich lists.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847443656</amazonuk>0356522776
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Andy Stanton1786482126|title=What's For Dinner, Mr Gum?The Janus Stone (Dr Ruth Galloway)|author=Elly Griffiths
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=As soon as heroine Polly turns her back, and leaves Builders were demolishing an old house in Norwich - the site was going to hold seventy-five 'luxury' apartments - when they discovered the town bones of Lamonic Bibber for a day at the seasidechild beneath a doorway. There was no skull. Was this a ritual killing or murder? Inevitably, Mr Gum falls out Dr Ruth Galloway finds herself working with his best friend, causing carnivorous carnage all over the placeDCI Harry Nelson. Meat is getting thrown around like itIt's going out difficult as Ruth knows, but Nelson doesn't, that she is pregnant with his child as a result of fashion, and we have to doubt whether Polly and her companions can ever utilise the power of love and put things to rightsone night they spent together some three months ago. Especially as this book does Her condition will be obvious before long, not contain a magic unicorn called Elizabethleast because Ruth is prone to sudden bouts of sickness.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1405248246</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Loose Women0008551375|title=Here Come the GirlsWhen Shadows Fall (D S Max Craigie)|author=Neil Lancaster|rating=4.5|genre=Home and FamilyCrime|summary=This is Leanne Wilson's body was found at the second volume by bottom of a Scottish mountain, seemingly the panelists from that nice ITV seriesresult of a tragic accident. She'd looked so happy, too, ''Loose Women''when she posted her intentions on Facebook. Just Her friends were relieved as promised on the covershe was just out of an unpleasant relationship, this book is an entertaining night with 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 girlslast year. It turns out that All were experienced climbers, properly equipped for what they're just like uswere doing and sensible people. The faces are already familiar and even if you don None of the 't know them yet, with nine contributors, youwhat a stupid thing to do'll soon find a like-minded woman behind one of the celebrity facesexplanations applied. The women are universally warm-hearted and supportiveThey were all alone when they died: DS Max Craigie is certain there will be many 's a lonely woman who reads this book and feels as if she sat down with a group of friends for killer on the eveningloose.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444700154</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jean UrePaul B Preciado|title=Fortune CookieDysphoria Mundi
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersPolitics and Society|summary=Fudge Cassidy and the Cupcake kid are best friends. If the names remind you of a certain film then you'd be spot on as that's where Fudge's father got the idea from. They're actually chalk and cheese – Fudge It is loud mouthed and opinionated and Cupcake is quiet and thoughtful – but never too late to embrace the combination works. They've just started at secondary school and Cupcake has rather a lot on her plate. Her brother Joey has muscular dystrophy and his problems are becoming more obvious. Add to this that her father couldnrevolutionary optimism of childhood't cope with the problems and he now has another family. It's just Cupcake, Joey and her mother – and not a lot of money.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007224621</amazonuk>}}
{{newreview|author=Jenifer Roberts|title=The Madness Through this hybrid text, consisting of Queen Maria: The Remarkable Life of Maria I of Portugal|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=Born in 1734 in Lisbonarias, letters, at that time the richest essays and most opulent city in Europeautofiction, Preciado expresses his own hybrid self, Maria was destined and brings forth a new sensorium as an offering to become the first female monarch new generation, a new feeling mechanism in Portuguese history. Married to her uncle Infante Pedro, seventeen years her senior, she had six children (outliving all but one which detachment is not considered a sign of them), and became Queen in 1777political apathy. A conscientious womanRather, she had it is the misfortune proportional, valid response to be born in during the 'age of reason'the epistemological and political crack we are living through, when church and state were vying for supremacythe tension between emancipatory forces and conservative resistances that characterize our present'' which Preciado calls ''dysphoria mundi''. Instinctively a supporter The whole text is framed against the backdrop of the old religionCovid-19 pandemic as that which has catalysed this revolution, with when dysphoria began to emerge on a humanitarian approach to state affairsglobal scale, she was no Queen Elizabethor as ''pangea covidica''. Rather than taking this extreme dysphoria as a sign of weakness, no Catherine the Greator mistaking detachment or withdrawal for political paralysis, and wore her crown rather reluctantlyPreciado urges his readers to ''use dysphoria as your revolutionary platform''.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>095455891X</amazonuk>1804271454
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=David HughesSamantha Harvey|title=Thomas Wogan is DeadOrbital
|rating=4.5
|genre=Graphic Novels
|summary=Well, with a title like that, need I bother with a plot summary? A man has a day out in Morecambe, then the next thing he knows he's in the ultimate waiting room, with a strange array of animals (a bat, a toad, a sea urchin...), all waiting for... well, something. Yup, as you didn't need telling, he's dead.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>095580888X</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Dave Eggers
|title=The Wild Things
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Meet Max. When I say he sometimes gets In 2024, Samantha Harvey won the wrong end of the stick about adults, or dislikes his motherBooker Prize for ''Orbital''s new boyfriend, or gets a bit feisty when he feels compact yet profound work that unfolds over a single day in the need for revenge, I am certainly understating the facts. He is lives of a bit group of a rascal to say astronauts aboard the leastInternational Space Station. But all Through a narrative lens that might change when he finds himself travelling mirrors the astronauts' orbital perspective, Harvey invites readers to see our planet in a strange land of roisterous animals, and ends up installed as their kingwholly new light.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0241144221</amazonuk>1529922933
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jeremy Strong295967572X|title=Christmas Chaos for the Hundred-Mile-An-Hour Dog Pale Pieces|author=G M Stevens|rating=45|genre=Confident ReadersLiterary Fiction|summary=Trevor's troublesome dog, Streaker, has had three puppies. They were fathered, according Our unnamed narrator is about to local bully Charlie Smugg, by one of begin a train journey with his Alsatianscompanion Django. Trevor would ideally like to keep them, at least until Christmas, but his parents have other ideas Where they're going and put them up for sale. Charlie Smugg declares that he's entitled to half of the money from what the sale purpose of the puppiesthis journey is, but before they can be sold is uncertain. Django found the three puppies go missing in tickets ''on the park floor somewhere'' and it's up has persuaded our narrator to Trevor and his best friend Tina accompany him. Why not? Not much else is clear either - but we are probably in the past as the pair travel to try the station by coach and track them down before Charlie demands his cash!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141327243</amazonuk>the train is a steam locomotive.
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sarah Beth Durst0008551324|title=Ice|rating=3.5|genre=Teens|summary=Cassie lives on an Arctic research station in Alaska. She loves the ice and the wilderness of her remote home and she'd definitely prefer to spend her time on tracking polar bears and fending off frostbite rather than on mixing with her peers and enjoying college and home comforts back in Fairbanks. However, things aren't all rosy. Cassie's mother died when she was just a baby and she can't help feeling a huge hole in her heart. Her scientist father is remote and unloving and her grandmother left the station after an argument with him when Cassie was still very young. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847386571</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewThe Devil You Know (D S Max Craigie)|author=Iain Smyth and Michael Terry|title=The Wide-Mouthed FrogNeil Lancaster
|rating=4.5
|genre=For SharingCrime|summary=Do you know It's unusual for anyone from the joke about Hardie family to approach the wide-mouthed frog? You must have heard itpolice. It's a classic Neither side likes or has any respect for the other. ItBut Davie Hardie is struggling in prison and he's one that you really need prepared to tell in person, with your fingers pulling your mouth wide open, but to hopefully spark your memory, the wide-mouthed frog introduces himself to a number police where the body of animals until he finally comes across a crocodile missing person is buried and who eats wide-mouthed frogswas responsible for her death. This person, he promises, is someone big and it will be worth the frog does his best to disguise who police doing what he wants. And what he wants is whilst saying ''Ooh, you don't see many to be transferred to an open prison to serve the remainder of those round herehis sentence and to get an early parole date. Not much to ask, do youis it? The new Deputy Police Constable doesn'' I'm hardly doing it justice, but itt think so and she's very cheesy even prepared to do the other thing that Hardie demanded - make certain that DS Max Craigie and funny. Anyway, this anyone who works with him is a book of that jokekept well away from what's happening.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408804964</amazonuk>
}}
{{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''.
{{newreview|author=Dr Aaron Carroll and Dr Rachel Vreeman|title=Don't Swallow Your Gum|rating=5|genre=Lifestyle|summary='''BANG'''. That's In this compelling novel, Thea Lenarduzzi assumes the identity of T, the sound protagonist of copious urban myths being shot downthis tale. '''BANG'''. ThatJust as T's story is being told, the sound story of a second protagonist is unveiled: Annie, the old wives slamming daughter of a wealthy family in the door19th century, as their tales get revealed as baseless. '''CLICK''who died of tuberculosis after being locked in a tower, captures T's imagination. ThatAnnie's the noise lots fate 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 ill-informed websites make as they get closed downmyth, fable and fantasy. All noises come due to this brilliant book.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0141043369</amazonuk>1804271799
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Annie TaylorClaire-Louise Bennett|title=VioletBig Kiss, Bye-Bye
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Violet is a very special hippo. She is extremely small but that does not make her adoptive parents Albert and Mavis love her any the less. However, they are slightly worried that Violet has a very unusual habit of turning pink without warning and for no explicable reason.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906847371</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Hilary Dixon
|title=When Rooks Speak of Love
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Arthur Transcombe Everything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, is steeped in anguish and distortion. Even a middle-agedkiss, grey-hairedusually a symbol of intimacy and closeness, self-effacing poetbecomes evidence of love lost. Unremarkable really - on When the outside. He hasnarrator cries out internally, however''come over here and kiss me, managed '' it is less an invitation than a desperate attempt to achieve some success with his poemsconfirm her emotional numbness. (Being The imagined recipient of this plea is Xavier, her ex-partner, a guest speaker at the Cheltenham Literary Festival is no mean feat)ghost she conjures to test her detachment. He is also a babe magnet!|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1904529429</amazonuk>1804271934
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=A J Healy0008405026|title=Tommy Storm and A Stranger in the Galactic KnightsFamily (Maeve Kerrigan 11)|author=Jane Casey|rating=3.5|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=Meet Tommy Storm. HeIt's sixteen years since nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her bed one of five teenagers snapped up from around summer night. She was never found and the universe investigation ground to be a gang of heroic detectives charged with rescuing EVERYTHING from destructionhalt. Not just the planetNow, or the solar systemher mother, or even the galaxyHelena, but EVERYTHINGand her father are dead in their bed. Nobody seems to know whatInitially, 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 cause this destruction, or when, but he be an open-and his friends and their ship seem to be the only people proactively going about saving the day-shut case is now a complex double murder. So itKerrigan is convinced that the explanation lies in Rosalie's a pity that they start this book strung up by a nasty loony whodisappearance: others (such as Derwent's about to kill themboss, Una Burt) are less convinced.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847247555</amazonuk>
}}
{{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.''
{{newreview|author=Graham McCann|title=Bounder!: The Biography of Terry-Thomas|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=When I was in my early teensErnaux's work is always very candid and her tone transparent, it sometimes seemed as if Terry-Thomas was but this raw epistolary text must be one of the stars of almost every other five-star British comedy film aroundmost intimate accounts I've read. He was certainly one of the most recognizable characters of all with his gap-toothed grinErnaux writes in direct address to her sister, cigarette holder and inimitable 'Hel-lo!'however, this letter will never reach her. Why? Because Annie Ernaux'Hard cheese!', and best s sister died of alldiphtheria at 6 years old, a few months before the angryvaccine 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'You're s process of reckoning with this giant absence in her life, an absolute shower!'absence that she has always felt but often denied.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1845134419</amazonuk>1804271845
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Richard Jay ParkerMaxim Gorky and Bryan Karetnyk (translator)|title=Stop MeReminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev
|rating=3.5
|genre=CrimeBiography|summary=Spam EBiographies are often seen as the form of life-Mails writing which offers less colour; it can be incredibly annoyingseen as more objective and less personal. I think that Gorky completely rejects this perspective, but most and offers a vibrant, subjective yet informed portrait of three of us will have had to deal with themhis literary contemporaries. Fortunately, we can hit In the delete button and forget about them as quickly as they came. I certainly prefer not to torture my friends by sending such rubbish onfirst section of this book, no matter how bad my luck is supposed Tolstoy complains to become if I donhis friend Gorky that: ''t. But I wonder how many of us would react if a spam E-Mail actually was a matter you write not of real life and deathas it is, rather than just claiming but of what you yourself imagine it to be?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0749007079</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Jeanette Winterson|title=The Battle of the Sun|rating=5|genre=Confident Readers|summary=London 1601. Elizabeth Whom would it help to know how I is getting on in years. Her capital city is a busysee this tower, that sea, bustling place. Boats fill the river and people fill the streets. Jack or that Tartar - why should it interest anyone? Of what use is happy because it?'s his birthday and his present is his heart's desire: an excitable black puppy named Max. Well, who's Maxim Gorky shows exactly what can be gained from a ''licking and a running and a leaping and a jumping subjective account, giving us access to how he saw Tolstoy, Chekhov and a tummy Andreyev in the air and a tail wagging and a barking, racing, braking, spinning energy dog such privileged detail that one almost feels unworthy of delight''it. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>140880042X</amazonuk>1804271977
}}
  {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jean Ure1529077745|title=Love and KissesThe Dark Wives (D I Vera Stanhope)|author=Ann Cleeves
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=Tamsin and Katie were just thirteen and worried that they were boringA man walking his dog in the early morning discovered the body of a man in the park near Rosebank, a care home for troubled teens. They'd been best friends since forever and were The dead man was Josh - one of the care workers who was due to work a shift the good girls. Neither missed school, skipped her homework nor night before but who had boyfriendsnever turned up. Well, that D I Vera Stanhope is called in to investigate the murder - but her only clue isthe disappearance of one of the residents, not so farfourteen-year-old Chloe Spencer. Up until then Tamsin had been Some people believe that Chloe was responsible for the death but Vera thinks this is unlikely as the boffin head – consistently strong academically and looking forward to going on to university. All girl's diary makes it clear that seemed to change when she met Alexadored Josh. Well, when I say 'met' I should perhaps clarify and say She knows that Alex pushed his wheelbarrow into her, from the building site where he workedshe has to find Chloe to discover what happened to Josh. Oh, and did I mention that he was seventeen, Polish and spoke very little English?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007281722</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Henry MintzbergOlga Tokarczuk|title=ManagingHouse of Day, House of Night
|rating=5
|genre=Business and FinanceLiterary Fiction|summary=''Study after study has shown that managers work at an unrelenting pace'' How true, though it always makes me wonder why, as a result, thereWhat's such the good of a market for bulky management and leadership and general business books world that keeps changing like this one. that? How does anyone who needs or wants to read can one ever find the time to do so? This title actually has an answer to this, by providing two books go on calmly living in one, and it is such a simple yet effective solution that I have to start there. You can read this book in one of two ways. Option one is to read every word, chapter by chapter, cover to cover. If you have the time I would recommend this approach because the book is very readable, not too repetitive, and quite thought-provoking.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0273709305</amazonuk>}}?''
{{newreview|author=Kathryn Fox|The title=Blood Born|rating=4|genre=Crime|summary=To give support to a vulnerable gangof this spellbinding work, ''House of Day, House of Night'', somewhat reflects this notion of shifting realities -rape victimthe small, subtle changes which govern our lives, forensic pathologist Anya Crichton offers to drive Giverny Hart to the courthouse on like the shift from day she is due to testify against the notorious Harbourn brothersnight, however quotidian, causing chaos. But when Anya arrives at , the constant in that image is the house she finds Giverny close to death and faces a battle , stoic against time to save her. In the panic, Anya fails to take note of an important clue ancient diurnal cycle which might help tell whether nonetheless controls how it really was suicide or a cleverly staged murder. Worse still, in trying to save the girl's life, Anya has interfered with a crime scene and the case falls apart. She blames herself for the Harbourn brothers being allowed to walk free and only hours later there is news of another attack. A pair of sisters have been stabbed and raped resulting in the death of one, while the other clings to lifeperceived.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0340933097</amazonuk>1804271918
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1836284683
|title=The Big Happy
|author=David Chadwick
|rating=4.5
|genre=Dystopian Fiction
|summary=Well! This is a murder mystery unlike any other!
{{newreview|author=Leah Fleming|title=Remembrance Day|rating=4|genre=WomenI do love it when I open a book, it's Fiction|summary=In the year 2000 an old lady in nothing like I expected it to be, and it takes me on a wild ride. And that is just what happened with ''The Big Happy''. I don't want to ruin a wheelchair watches the unveiling similar experience for any of you reading but I'll have to at least set the new war memorial in the village squarescene. ThereOnce that's pride in what has been achieveddone, in the family who are gathered around her and there are memories too. Some are good but many are notI think you should simply experience this wonderfully original story for yourself.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847561039</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Neal LaytonSally Rooney|title=Surf's Up (Mammoth Academy)Intermezzo|rating=34.5|genre=Confident ReadersGeneral Fiction |summary=Having successfully seen off Sally Rooney has studied the rather unpleasant humans in earlier volumes, our favourite junior mammoths Oscar chessboard of life and Arabella have nothing much else to do apart from return to Mammoth Academy for lots more double periods is something of Difficult Sumsa grandmaster at putting it into words. They're supposed to be making presentations about Her dialogue is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, as her characters never quite say exactly what they did during feel. Among the holidays toomany relationships woven into this story, but Oscar hasn't done any preparation the central one for readers to unravel is the fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan andPeter Koubek. Ivan, franklya socially awkward chess prodigy, contrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, he cana successful lawyer living in Dublin. Following their father't really remember what he actually did do s passing after a long battle with all that free time other than no Difficult Sumscancer, the brothers' already strained relationship faces new trials. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>034098967X</amazonuk>0571365469
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ursula Jones and Sarah Gibb1836285493|title=The Princess Who Had No KingdomDouble Life of a Wheelchair User|author=Rob Keeley|rating=45
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=The princess who has no kingdom wanders around in Will is a cart pulled by her horse Pretty. She's very politekeen player of video games, friendlya conscientious student, a slightly annoying brother and kind-hearteda supportive friend. But most of all, but she feels like something he is an aspiring writer. English is lacking because she doesnhis favourite lesson at his school, Marlowe Park, and one at which he excels. This hasn't have gone unnoticed by his headteacher, Mrs Howarth, and she has suggested to Will and his mum that he spends a kingdom couple of her own. The other royals she meets treat her nicely enoughafternoons a week at a different school, Station Road, but there's always a feeling that she's not quite as good as them because she isn't the princess of anywherewhere his ability might be better extended.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846160421</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Mij Kelly and Louise Nisbet1009473085|title=The Happiest Man in the World or the Mouse Who Made ChristmasConservative Effect 2010 - 2024|author=Anthony Seldon and Tom Egerton (Editors)|rating=45|genre=For SharingPolitics and Society|summary=Mouse doesnSometimes it's simpler to explain a book by describing what it ''isn't like anyone '' and keeps herself that applies to herself''The Conservative Effect: 2010-2024 - 14 Wasted Years?''. Her things are her things and she is too selfish to share them with anyone else 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. One day, an old man moves in to Mouse If that's house. He used to be the happiest man in the worldwhat you're looking for, but now heI don't think Anthony Seldon's sadbook, {{amazonurl|isbn=B0BH7SKG2S|title=Johnson at 10}}, can be bettered for those tumultuous years. He It's fed up of having given, given, given all his life a compelling read and never got anything backshould be compulsory for anyone who thinks Johnson should return to politics. He just sits quietly ''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 mopesco-editor Sir Anthony Seldon regards this as the most important. This makes Mouse miserablebook 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, so one day she decides to cheer him up by giving him a clementine..the changes that occurred and the situation in 2024.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340931558</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Nick BlandJenny Valentine|title=The Very Cranky BearUs in the Before and After|rating=45|genre=For SharingTeens|summary=Moose, Lion, Zebra Elk and Sheep head into a cave to get out of the rainMab are best friends, but little do they know or more than that Bear even, their friendship is fast asleep a once in therea lifetime connection. When they wake him up, he roars at them, chasing them outside, so they decide to cheer him up somehow. Zebra paints stripes They meet as children one day on him, Moose fashions antlers for him and Lion sticks a mane of straw on him. Unsurprisingly, this makes Bear even crankier, so ittrip out but unfortunately they don't get each other's down to Sheep to save contact details at the day...|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340989424</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Kes Gray and Lee Wildish|title=Mum and Dad Glue|rating=4|genre=For Sharing|summary=A young boy's parents are splitting uptime. He's going through the usual emotions that children of divorce go through: worry, feeling unsure, blaming himself, anger, denial, and But then trying to get chance brings them to stay back together, and they are inseparable. His method for this isn't the usual response Something has happened though: he looks for glue to stick his mum , something terrible and dad together. Thankfullytragic, he finds some wise and kindly advice in the process.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340957107</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Clara Vulliamy|title=The Bear With Sticky Paws Won't Go To Bed|rating=4|genre=For Sharing|summary=It's Pearl's bedtimenow they must work through their grief, but she says she's really busy and isn't going to sleep. She just wants to play and play and play. When the bear with sticky paws rings the doorbelltheir friendship, he whisks her away on an amazing adventure - although as you might expect, the bear has a little more energy than Pearl and eventually she does get a little sleepytogether.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408300648</amazonuk>1471196585
}}

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