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'''Read [[:Category:Features|the latest features]].'''{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Joe Gores1035043092|title=Spade and ArcherThe Killing Stones (Jimmy Perez)|author=Ann Cleeves|rating=45
|genre=Crime
|summary=Sam Spade decides, bravelyI 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 set up his one-man detective agencystart a new life on Orkney. It's the 1920s in San Francisco so been seven years since we have the prohibition era heard from him, but he's now living with Willow Reeves and all that that entails. Many localstheir young son, of courseJames, choose to disobey the law, stick two fingers up, so to speak and as a result there's lots of bootleg liquor. Straight awaywell as Cassie, it's evident that Sam is a man of few words. He has the mannerisms daughter of a cat - stealthy, quick on his feetformer partner. HeWillow's also a compulsive chain-smoker, but then again, most people were. In that erahis boss, holding a cigarette was an elegant, almost essential accessory. How times have changed.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>140911323X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Michael Morpurgo and Emma Chichester Clark|title=The Best of Times|rating=4.5|genre=Confident Readers|summary=Most children enjoy a good traditional tale and this lovely book by Michael Morpurgo seems to have all the right ingredients – a handsome prince and a beautiful princess who fall in love, get married and live happily ever after. Or do they? Sadly, not long after Prince Frederico marries the lovely Princess Serafina, she becomes very sad. Nobody knows what has caused such great sadness''should'' be on maternity leave, but poor Prince Frederico is desperate to find a cure for his wife's misery. He tries everything in his power and eventually decides to offer his kingdom to anyone who can make her happy again before she dies of a broken heart. Lots when the body of people come to the palace to try and help but in the end the solution is a simple one provided by some very kind travellers.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1405232552</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Shirley Jackson|title=We Have Always Lived In The Castle|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Mary Katherine Blackwoodpopular islander, also known as MerricatArchie Stout, is eighteenfound, and lives with her older sister Constance in the family home where 'Blackwoods had always lived'. Merricat quickly draws the reader into her world by a series of matter aftermath of fact but bizarre statements – her likes include her sister and death cap mushrooms, and everyone else in her family is dead. The wealthy Blackwood family has always kept the house 'steady against the world', shutting out other people, and they live near a village. Merricat believes that 'The people of the village have always hated us'storm, and tells us that she hates them too.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141191457</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Simon Weston|title=Nelson to the Rescue|rating=4|genre=Confident Readers|summary=Nelson used to pull Mike the Milkcan's milk float, but he has now retiredt resist getting involved. He lives in the stable at 'd been battered about the back of the dairy along head with a couple Neolithic stone - one of tricky rats, Rhodri and Rhys, a pigeon who has no sense of direction, a frog who thinks he's a secret agent spy and an old racehorse who spends most of his time sleeping. Rhodri and Rhys find a mysterious message on Mike's fridge and the animals believe that Mike has pair - which had been invited to Buckingham Palace to receive an MBE. Somehow our hero, Nelson, finds himself travelling down to London, pulling stolen from a ceremonial coach for Prince Charles as well as giving a TV interview about his experiencemuseum.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848510454</amazonuk>}}{{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>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Katherine MayPolly Barton|title=Burning OutWhat Am I, A Deer?
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Violet has it all – a well-paid job, Polly Barton's debut novel is an intellectually playful yet emotionally exposed work that uses translation as both subject and a luxurious apartment all to herselfgoverning metaphor. Everything is catered for; her mealsThe narrator, her clothesnewly relocated from London to Berlin, and her health are all how she would like them to be. But works translating video games into Japanese through the life she is leading is beginning to take its toll. On the verge process of snappinglocalisation, rewriting language until it feels comfortably familiar to a drained and somewhat out-of-sorts Violet, withdraws back to her home townnew audience. ThereBarton treats this as a paradoxical act: arguably, she meets someone familiarin striving for universality, a ghost reminding her of how she used to be ten years earlier – a young carefree girllanguage is endlessly repackaged, full its originality at risk of lifedisappearing altogether. Only From this isn't , the novel opens out into a ghostwider, 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 resonant question: to what extent do we translate ourselves in turn haunt the girl.order to be understood, accepted, or loved?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1906727392</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.''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tove Jansson1787333175|title=The True DeceiverYou 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=Maria Stepanova and Sasha Dugdale (Translator)
|title=The Disappearing Act
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Most Despite her anonymisation of place names and people of my age will have come across Jansson, Stepanova's message in this short work unwittingly, via of autofiction is unmistakable. A novelist named M travels from B (ostensibly Berlin) to the televised renditions town of the Moomin tales. The readers amongst us would then have been entranced F for a few years ago literary festival she is to discover that be a guest speaker at last Thomas Teal had set about the translation into English. Detoured by erratic train schedules and nudged by forces beyond her control, first her journey slowly bends toward a traveling circus. Swept up in this series of events, M eventually offers to step in for a circus performer who has unexpectedly left the show. The Summer Book train functions as a motif of transience and then impermanence, while the circus embodies the reshaping of identity and a collection retreat into fantasy, an impulse that lies at the very heart of short stories which were published as 'A Winter Book'the novel form itself. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0954899571</amazonuk>1804272329
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Daniel Kehlmann B0GFQ81YQK|title=Me How the Sky and Kaminskithe Earth Made People: From the Oral Stories of Malagasy Elders|author=Stephanie Zabriskie
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Children's Non-Fiction|summary=After reviewing several long booksBefore people came and joined the animals, it's been refreshing there was only the sky and the earth. Everything was quiet until the earth and the sky began to tal to read such a fluent yet pared down story as 'Kaminski and Me'each other. In itFirst, Sebastian Zollnerthe earth created bodies. And then, the obnoxious main charactersky breathed life into them. These were the first humans and they belonged to both earth and sky. And so people lived between sky and soil and they planted and learned and remembered, shoves himself forward in a desperate attempt especially how they came to research a best seller which will re-ignite his career as an art criticbe. KaminskiWhen they grew old and died, their bodies returned to the proposed subject, was a fashionable painter long ago, but now, ancient earth and chronically ill, has virtually slid into obliviontheir life returned to the sky. So And that is why the earth and the second-rate writer sky are both revered. Only together can they create human beings. And that is on a loser unless he can dig up some juicy details why people must pay attention to hook the art world , and general publiccare for, both.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847249892</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Louis BarfeB0GHPMNF6P|title=Turned Out Nice AgainThe Zookeeper's Dragon: The Story of British Light EntertainmentA Magical Modern Fantasy Tale for Grown-Ups|author=Carolyn Mathews|rating=4.5|genre=EntertainmentFantasy|summary=Light entertainment is often looked down uponWhen Phil's father unexpectedly dies, as if ithe quits his Canary Wharf finance job to take over the running of the family's farm zoo. He's not expecting much excitement, until he receives an unidentified egg that his new-age stoner uncle Edgar found in a bit naffcave in New Zealand, tepid and ignorable. What's often forgotten suddenly life is that no longer quite what it's hugely popularseems. Then the egg hatches into neither a reptile nor a bird, but a dragon! Now he, Edgar, his mother Abi, enjoyable and much of it is of the highest quality. Louis Barfezoo's Turned Out Nice Again tells the complete story part-time café waitress Pearl have to raise this little bundle of British light entertainmentscales and joy, despite having no idea how to actually raise dragons and not being able to tell anyone about it.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1843543818</amazonuk>But this tiny little dragon may show them love and connection in 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.''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Joseph Delaney Livi Michael|title=The Spook's Stories: WitchesElizabeth and Ruth|rating=43.5|genre=TeensHistorical Fiction|summary='Warning: Not to be read after dark,' are Elizabeth and Ruth'' is a work of historical fiction wrought from the only words on life of the Victorian author Elizabeth Gaskell, best known for her first novel Mary Barton (1848), a radical critique of the back treatment of ''the working class published under a pseudonym. The Spook's Stories'Ruth', and on the inside flap, 'The Timesfrom Livi Michael' warns us that this book is 'seriously scary'... The whole thing kicks-off relatively tamelys title appears in her novel as Pasley, though, with a story about a young Spook (Irish prostitute who was abandoned as a sort of monster-hunter) who falls child and finds herself in love with Manchester's New Bailey Prison after a witch difficult and unjust hand at life. Set in Manchester between 1839 and is forced to bear 1842, the novel examines the consequences when harsh conditions endured by the witch's sister comes Victorian working poor and interrogates the extent to stay and exhibits a taste which the wealthy (including Gaskell herself) were responsible for the neighbor-childrenaddressing these injustices.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0370329961</amazonuk>1784633682
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Lisa UngerMakenna Goodman|title=Die For YouHelen of Nowhere|rating=34.5|genre=CrimeLiterary Fiction|summary=BestIt could be argued that the pervading theme of this book is malaise - a hard-selling novelist Isabel Connelly is married to successful video game designer Marcus Raine. Or so she thinks. But when her husband fails to return from work, she realises -place feeling that something in your life is wrongnot quite right. Going to The protagonist, a disgraced professor on the brink of losing both his office to try to find out what happens to him, she gets attacked career and ends up in hospitalhis relationship, while his co-workers are killedembodies this feeling. Things get worse for herHowever, however, when investigating detective Grady Crowe reveals that Marcus Raine has been dead for several yearsGoodman counteracts his discomfort with a force which is seductive, radical and unnerving: Helen. The connection between Helen and the man she married was using a false identityprotagonist is indirect yet intimate. Infuriated by As the betrayal, and former owner of the realisation that shecountryside house he's been living considering, Helen represents a lie for the past five yearsvolta in his life, Izzy takes matters into her own hands and sets out past tied to find her husband his potential fresh start. The realtor who shows the protagonist around the house shares stories about Helen, and work out why he lied to describes her for so longas ''an entity that is pure consciousness, beyond form''. Ignoring police warnings, Although she delves deeper and deeper into a nasty underworldlives in an assisted living facility now, and finds a tale Helen has powers beyond comprehension which has its roots in Prague and rivals anything she could have plotted in one of her novelsthe reader gets the sense are not altogether innocuous.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099522179</amazonuk>1804272205
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Lisa McMannB0GCB1MQ7D|title=WakeWhy My Mother Went Away|author=Alan Kennedy|rating=45|genre=TeensAutobiography|summary=Janie is seventeen and studying hard for collegeI have often wondered how prominent people came to hold their positions. She With 'celebrities', there's also working lots of hours at frequently a local nursing home to earn money for college as it's unlikely her alcoholic mother is going to provide much in book they might or might not have written, which might or might not tell the way of resourcestrue story. College is JanieIt's only chance at not often that you find a life better than book that gives the one she's lived so far full backstory, and rarely do you discover a memoir where the telling is so perfect that you can't blame her ll go back and reread paragraphs and sentences, just for being so single-minded in the pursuit of her goalpleasure the words give. Only ''Why My Mother Went Away'' is one thing stands in her wayof those rare exceptions. It's the story of how a boy from the Midlands, born at the beginning of the Second World War, would become a Professor of Psychology at Dundee University.In fact, he was one of the founders of the department.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847385036</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)
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=F G CottamTom Percival|title=The Magdalena CurseWrong Shoes|rating=2.5|genre=HorrorConfident Readers|summary=Mark Hunter 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 sort most basic of father who would do anything for things like food, and his son. After losing dad can't work because he lost his wife and daughter job at the college, was working a cash-in -hand job on a tragic building site and had an accident. Throw into that mix the fact that his mum and dad are separated, his surviving son Adam has become his whole worldand Will's life seems bleak in every direction. And Adam is an exceptional child – beautifulyet, incredibly smart and mature beyond his ten years – only recently he's been channelling the voices still has a tiny amount of the deadhope. Plagued by horrific dreams He is good at art, able and clings to speak Russian in the hours after he wakes, drawing occult symbols moments of joy when he doodles, Hunter believes Adam to be possessed. Doctor Elizabeth Bancroft is scepticaldrawing, until she meets Adamthat feel like a light at the end of a long, and witnesses the horrors the poor boy endures for herselfdark tunnel.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0340980982</amazonuk>1398527122
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jon BerkeleyEdward W Said|title=The Lightning Key (Circus Trilogy)Representations of the Intellectual
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersPolitics and Society|summary=I shall start with a word Edward Said's ''Representations of advice. When youthe Intellectual''re being hounded by is less a circus master, strict theory of what intellectuals are and more a magician, passionate argument for what they should be. Said clearly rejects the soul comfortable image of a tiger that's contained in a tiger's egg that's contained in the brain of your teddy bear, and your best friend - intellectual as a fallen angel - is trying her best detached expert speaking only to make sure the other angels do not turn specialists. Instead, he insists on you in a big way - then you're probably living the third book in intellectual as a fantasy trilogy. Still - never mindpublic figure, often awkward, the angel's efforts will involve you entering a dream world of flight and cloud citiesabrasive, the chase after your enemies will take you across the world to desert oases and backunpopular, and friends new and old will be on board who speaks truth to helppower even when it is inconvenient or risky.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847384447</amazonuk>1804272248
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sue TownsendSylvie Cathrall|title=Adrian Mole: The Prostrate YearsA Letter to the Luminous Deep
|rating=5
|genre=General Science Fiction|summary=Adrian Mole is now 39¼ and living, quite literally, in There are few greater joys than a pigsty, sharing an all too thin party wall with his parents and working in book which lives up to a bookshop. 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 uniform, trying to reassure glamorous wife Daisy that life in the provinces is not as bad as she would like to believe, and desperately attempting to talk his mother out of her quest to appear on the vile ''Jeremy Kyle'' show, worrying over his increasingly frequent visits to the toilet is really the last thing he needscompelling premise. And yet, the worst this is still to come. Think a crumbling economy, redundancy, affairs, death, a family member challenging him in the novel writing stakes and a query over the big C – it's going to be a tough year for the Moles, and there's little that ol' Adrian can do except sit back and watch his life spin out one of control around himthem.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0718153707</amazonuk>0356522776
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Lauren Kate1786482126|title=FallenThe Janus Stone (Dr Ruth Galloway)|author=Elly Griffiths
|rating=4.5
|genre=TeensCrime|summary=A 17 year Builders were demolishing an old girl at house in Norwich - the site was going to hold seventy-five 'luxury' apartments - when they discovered the bones of a new school meets child beneath a doorway. There was no skull. Was this a mysterious and impossibly good-looking boyritual killing or murder? Inevitably, who sheDr Ruth Galloway finds herself working with DCI Harry Nelson. It's immediately drawn to. He seems determined to either ignore her or be outright rude to herdifficult as Ruth knows, until he saves her lifebut Nelson doesn't, and that she is pregnant with his child as a result of the two of them end up drawn one night they spent togethersome three months ago. This isn't Stephenie Meyer's ''Twilight'' Her condition will be obvious before long, but it certainly has striking similaritiesnot least because Ruth is prone to sudden bouts of sickness.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0385738935</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Gareth Hinds0008551375|title=King LearWhen Shadows Fall (D S Max Craigie)|author=Neil Lancaster|rating=34.5|genre=Graphic NovelsCrime|summary=Hound me out Leanne Wilson's body was found at the bottom of town in a most appropriate mannerScottish mountain, but I do not like King Learseemingly the result of a tragic accident. For meShe'd looked so happy, too, even when she posted her intentions on Facebook. Her friends were relieved as a trained actorshe 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 language is too dense last year. All were experienced climbers, properly equipped for what they were doing and rich, sensible people. None of the set-up too archly unfeasible 'what a stupid thing to create the great tragedy itdo's thought to beexplanations applied. To my mind the acclaim and esteem in which itThey were all alone when they died: DS Max Craigie is certain there's held is only mirrored by its own over-long, over-blown blusteringa killer on the loose.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0763643440</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Paul B Preciado
|title=Dysphoria Mundi
|rating=4.5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=''It is never too late to embrace the revolutionary optimism of childhood''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Toby LesterSamantha Harvey|title=The Fourth Part of the World: The Epic Story of History's Greatest MapOrbital
|rating=4.5
|genre=HistoryGeneral Fiction|summary=In 2003 a map was bought for $10 million2024, Samantha Harvey won the highest price ever paid publicly Booker Prize for ''Orbital'', a compact yet profound work that unfolds over a historical document, by single day in the Library lives of a group of Congress, where it is now on permanent public displayastronauts aboard the International Space Station. No ordinary map, this is sometimes described as America's birth certificate. It is the sole survivor of Through a thousand copies printed early in narrative lens that mirrors the 16th centuryastronauts' orbital perspective, and was discovered by accident in some archives Harvey invites readers to see our planet in a German castle in 1901. The sale and story behind it intrigued Toby Lester so much that he was inspired to discover more, and this book is the resultwholly new light.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1861978030</amazonuk>1529922933
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Steven Lowe and Alan McArthur 295967572X|title=Is it Just Me or Has the Shit Hit the Fan?: Your Hilarious New Guide to Unremitting Global MiseryPale Pieces|author=G M Stevens|rating=35|genre=HumourLiterary Fiction|summary=''The banks fell over like fat Labradors running over Our unnamed narrator is about to begin a wet kitchen floortrain journey with his companion Django.Where they'' Surely that re going and what the purpose of this journey is, is uncertain. Django found the wackiest, most inappropriate simile for tickets ''on the credit crunch floor somewhere'' and all it has done for the worldpersuaded our narrator to accompany him. You won't get any such nambyWhy not? Not much else is clear either -pamby animal likenesses from these authors, instead with quite a potty mouth on them they will lambast but we are probably in the modern world, past as the entire banking system, all those who failed pair travel to see it coming, the station by coach 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 listsis a steam locomotive.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847443656</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Andy Stanton0008551324|title=What's For Dinner, Mr Gum?The Devil You Know (D S Max Craigie)|author=Neil Lancaster
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=As soon as heroine Polly turns her back, and leaves the town of Lamonic Bibber It's unusual for a day at anyone from the seaside, Mr Gum falls out with his best friend, causing carnivorous carnage all over Hardie family to approach the placepolice. Meat Neither side likes or has any respect for the other. But Davie Hardie is getting thrown around like itstruggling in prison and he's going out prepared to tell the police where the body of fashiona missing person is buried and who was responsible for her death. This person, he promises, is someone big and we have it will be worth the police doing what he wants. And what he wants is to be transferred to an open prison to doubt whether Polly and her companions can ever utilise serve the power remainder of love his sentence and put things to rightsget an early parole date. Especially as this book does not contain a magic unicorn called ElizabethNot 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.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1405248246</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''.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jean UreClaire-Louise Bennett|title=Fortune CookieBig Kiss, Bye-Bye
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersLiterary Fiction|summary=Fudge Cassidy Everything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, is steeped in anguish and distortion. Even a kiss, usually a symbol of intimacy and the Cupcake kid are best friendscloseness, becomes evidence of love lost. If When the names remind you of a certain film then younarrator cries out internally, 'd be spot on as that's where Fudgecome over here and kiss me,'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 the combination works. They've just started at secondary school and Cupcake has rather less an invitation than a lot on desperate attempt to confirm her plateemotional numbness. Her brother Joey has muscular dystrophy and his problems are becoming more obvious. Add to The imagined recipient of this that plea is Xavier, her father couldn't cope with the problems and he now has another family. It's just Cupcakeex-partner, Joey and a ghost she conjures to test her mother – and not a lot of moneydetachment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0007224621</amazonuk>1804271934
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jenifer Roberts0008405026|title=The Madness of Queen Maria: The Remarkable Life of Maria I of PortugalA Stranger in the Family (Maeve Kerrigan 11)|author=Jane Casey|rating=4.5|genre=BiographyCrime|summary=Born in 1734 in Lisbon, at that time It's sixteen years since nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her bed one summer night. She was never found and the richest and most opulent city in Europe, Maria was destined investigation ground to become the first female monarch in Portuguese historya halt. Married to her uncle Infante PedroNow, seventeen years her seniormother, she had six children (outliving all but one of them)Helena, and became Queen her father are dead in 1777their bed. A conscientious womanInitially, she had it looks like a straightforward murder/suicide but there's something about the misfortune to be born in during positioning of the 'age of reason', when church bodies that makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and state were vying for supremacyher boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. Instinctively a supporter of the old religion, with a humanitarian approach What looked as though it was going to state affairs, she was no Queen Elizabeth, no Catherine the Great, be an open-and wore her crown rather reluctantly-shut case is now a complex double murder.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>095455891X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=David Hughes|title=Thomas Wogan Kerrigan is Dead|rating=4.5|genre=Graphic Novels|summary=Well, with a title like convinced that, need I bother with a plot summary? A man has a day out the explanation lies in Morecambe, then the next thing he knows heRosalie's in the ultimate waiting room, with a strange array of animals disappearance: others (a bat, a toad, a sea urchin...), all waiting for... well, something. Yup, such as you didnDerwent't need tellings boss, he's deadUna Burt) are less convinced.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>095580888X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Dave EggersAnnie Ernaux and Alison L. Strayer (translator)|title=The Wild ThingsOther Girl
|rating=4
|genre=General FictionAutobiography|summary=Meet Max''We were born from the same body. When I say he sometimes gets the wrong end of the stick about adults, or dislikes his mother's new boyfriend, or gets a bit feisty when he feels the need for revenge, I am certainly understating the facts. He is a bit of a rascal ve never really wanted to say the leastthink about this. But all that might change when he finds himself travelling to a strange land of roisterous animals, and ends up installed as their king.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241144221</amazonuk>}}''
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sarah Beth DurstMaxim Gorky and Bryan Karetnyk (translator)|title=IceReminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev
|rating=3.5
|genre=TeensBiography|summary=Cassie lives on an Arctic research station in AlaskaBiographies are often seen as the form of life-writing which offers less colour; it can be seen as more objective and less personal. She loves the ice I think that Gorky completely rejects this perspective, and offers a vibrant, subjective yet informed portrait of three of his literary contemporaries. In the wilderness first section of her remote home and shethis book, Tolstoy complains to his friend Gorky that: ''d definitely prefer you write not of real life as it is, but of what you yourself imagine it 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 Fairbanksbe. HoweverWhom would it help to know how I see this tower, that sea, things arenor that Tartar - why should it interest anyone? Of what use is it?''t all rosy. Cassie's mother died when she was just Well, Maxim Gorky shows exactly what can be gained from a baby subjective account, giving us access to how he saw Tolstoy, Chekhov and she can't help feeling a huge hole Andreyev 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 youngsuch privileged detail that one almost feels unworthy of it. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847386571</amazonuk>1804271977
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Iain Smyth and Michael Terry1529077745|title=The Wide-Mouthed FrogDark Wives (D I Vera Stanhope)|author=Ann Cleeves
|rating=4.5
|genre=For SharingCrime|summary=Do you know A man walking his dog in the joke about early morning discovered the body of a man in the wide-mouthed frog? You must have heard it. It's park near Rosebank, a classiccare home for troubled teens. It's The dead man was Josh - one that you really need of the care workers who was due to tell work a shift the night before but who had never turned up. D I Vera Stanhope is called in person, with your fingers pulling your mouth wide open, but to hopefully spark your memory, investigate the widemurder -mouthed frog introduces himself to a number but her only clue is the disappearance of one of animals until he finally comes across a crocodile who eats widethe residents, fourteen-year-mouthed frogs, and old Chloe Spencer. Some people believe that Chloe was responsible for the frog does his best to disguise who he death but Vera thinks this is whilst saying unlikely as the girl''Ooh, you don't see many of those round here, do you?'' I'm hardly doing s diary makes it justice, but it's very cheesy and funnyclear that she adored Josh. Anyway, this is a book of She knows that jokeshe has to find Chloe to discover what happened to Josh.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408804964</amazonuk>
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{{Frontpage
|author=Olga Tokarczuk
|title=House of Day, House of Night
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''What's the good of a world that keeps changing like that? How can one go on calmly living in it?''
}}
{{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!
I do love it when I open a book, it's 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 similar experience for any of you reading but I'll have to at least set the scene. Once that's done, I think you should simply experience this wonderfully original story for yourself.}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Annie TaylorSally Rooney|title=VioletIntermezzo
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersGeneral Fiction |summary=Violet Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard of life and is something of a very special hippograndmaster at putting it into words. She Her dialogue is extremely small but that does not make her adoptive parents Albert gripping and Mavis love so brilliantly frustrating, as her any characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Among the many relationships woven into this story, the lesscentral one for readers to unravel is the fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. HoweverIvan, a socially awkward chess prodigy, they are slightly worried that Violet has contrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, a successful lawyer living in Dublin. Following their father's passing after a very unusual habit of turning pink without warning and for no explicable reasonlong battle with cancer, the brothers' already strained relationship faces new trials.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1906847371</amazonuk>0571365469
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Hilary Dixon1836285493|title=When Rooks Speak The Double Life of Love|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Arthur Transcombe is a middle-aged, grey-haired, self-effacing poet. Unremarkable really - on the outside. He has, however, managed to achieve some success with his poems. (Being a guest speaker at the Cheltenham Literary Festival is no mean feat). He is also a babe magnet!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904529429</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewWheelchair User|author=A J Healy|title=Tommy Storm and the Galactic KnightsRob Keeley|rating=3.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Meet Tommy Storm. He's one Will is a keen player of five teenagers snapped up from around the universe to be video games, a conscientious student, a slightly annoying brother and a gang supportive friend. But most of heroic detectives charged with rescuing EVERYTHING from destructionall, he is an aspiring writer. Not just the planetEnglish is his favourite lesson at his school, or the solar systemMarlowe Park, or even the galaxy, but EVERYTHINGand one at which he excels. Nobody seems to know whatThis hasn's going to cause this destructiont gone unnoticed by his headteacher, or whenMrs Howarth, but he and she has suggested to Will and his friends and their ship seem to be the only people proactively going about saving the day. So it's mum that he spends a couple of afternoons a pity that they start this book strung up by week at a nasty loony who's about to kill themdifferent school, Station Road, where his ability might be better extended.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847247555</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Graham McCann1009473085|title=Bounder!: The Biography of TerryConservative Effect 2010 -Thomas2024|author=Anthony Seldon and Tom Egerton (Editors)|rating=4.5|genre=BiographyPolitics and Society|summary=When I was in my early teens, Sometimes it's simpler to explain a book by describing what it sometimes seemed as if Terry''isn't'' and that applies to ''The Conservative Effect: 2010-Thomas was one of the stars of almost every other five2024 -star British comedy film around14 Wasted Years?''. He was certainly one of If you're looking for an easy read which will deliver the most recognizable characters of all with his gap-toothed grininside story about what ''really'' happened on certain occasions, cigarette holder and inimitable then this isn't the book for you. If that'Hel-lo!s what you're looking for, I don'Hard cheese!t think Anthony Seldon's book, {{amazonurl|isbn=B0BH7SKG2S|title=Johnson at 10}}, can be bettered for those tumultuous years. It's a compelling read and best of all, the angry, should be compulsory for anyone who thinks Johnson should return to politics. ''The Conservative Effect'You're is an absolute shower!entirely different beast. It'|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845134419</amazonuk>s the seventh book in a series which looks at the impact a government has made and co-editor Sir Anthony Seldon regards this as the most important. This book follows the well-established format: a series of experts from various fields review the state of the nation when the coalition took over in 2010, the changes that occurred and the situation in 2024.
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Richard Jay ParkerJenny Valentine|title=Stop Me|rating=3.5|genre=Crime|summary=Spam E-Mails can be incredibly annoying, but most of us will have had to deal with them. Fortunately, we can hit Us in the delete button Before and forget about them as quickly as they came. I certainly prefer not to torture my friends by sending such rubbish on, no matter how bad my luck is supposed to become if I don't. But I wonder how many of us would react if a spam E-Mail actually was a matter of life and death, rather than just claiming to be?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0749007079</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Jeanette Winterson|title=The Battle of the SunAfter
|rating=5
|genre=Confident ReadersTeens|summary=London 1601. Elizabeth I Elk and Mab are best friends, or more than that even, their friendship is getting on a once in yearsa lifetime connection. Her capital city is They meet as children one day on a busy, bustling place. Boats fill the river and people fill the streets. Jack is happy because ittrip out but unfortunately they don's his birthday and his present is his heartt get each other's desire: an excitable black puppy named Maxcontact details at the time. But then chance brings them back together, who's a ''licking and a running they are inseparable. Something has happened though, something terrible and a leaping tragic, and a jumping and a tummy in the air now they must work through their grief, and a tail wagging and a barkingtheir friendship, racing, braking, spinning energy dog of delight''together. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>140880042X</amazonuk>1471196585
}}
