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'''Read [[Forthcoming Publications|reviews of books about to be published]].
{{Frontpage
|isbn=00084544930241636604|title=All the Dangerous ThingsThe Trading Game: A Confession|author=Stacy WillinghamGary Stevenson
|rating=4.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=If you were to bring up an image of a city banker in your mind, you're unlikely to think of someone like Gary Stevenson. A hoodie and jeans replaces the pin-stripe suit and his background is the East End, where he was familiar with violence, poverty and injustice. There was no posh public school on his CV - but he had been to the London School of Economics. Stevenson is bright - extremely bright - and he has a facility with numbers which most of us can only envy. He also realised that most rich people expect poor people to be stupid. It was his ability at what was, essentially, a card game which got him an internship with Citibank. Eventually, this turned into permanent employment as a trader.
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=1035021803
|title=The Antique Hunter's Guide to Murder
|author=C L Miller
|rating=3.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=Isabelle Drake hasnIt't really slept for a year - well, apart from s twenty years since Freya Lockwood has been back to the odd occasion when English country village where she lost track of time or drifted off for a momentgrew up. ItShe's back now because of a year since request for help from her sonbeloved aunt, MasonCarole. Freya's former mentor and Carole's close friend, Arthur Crockleford, was stolen from his bed in the middle of the night and Izzy is consumed with guilt that she heard nothing dead and particularly about her relief in the morning when she thought he was sleeping incircumstances seem suspicious, to say the least. In that year she's done everything she could Arthur was the reason why Freya had not been back to raise awareness about the casevillage: Arthur, she feels, let her down badly. She does interviews and when we meet herEven though they were in business together as antique hunters, she's just been has not felt able to TrueCrimeCon where be near the man or pursue the profession she gave a keynote presentationloved. On After the plane backsplit, she's approached by worked in a podcastercafe, Waylon Spencermet and married James (on the rebound from the love of her life, who points out that she could do a podcast was murdered) and Freya and get to so many more people than she could by giving speeches to a few hundred people at conferencesJames have now divorced.
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Jeremy Dronfield and David Ziggy GreeneAllTomorrowsFutureCover|title=Fritz All Tomorrow's Futures: Fictions that Disrupt|author=Benjamin Greenaway and KurtStephen Oram (Editors)|rating=45|genre=Confident ReadersScience Fiction|summary=We start with ''Opening up new ways of thinking about the pair shape of brothers Fritz and Kurt, and their muckers, doing things any Jewish lad in 1930s Vienna would want to do – kicking things around the empty market place, helping the neighbours, being dutiful when come.'' I've heard it comes to the synagogue choir and at a vocational school. Kurt has to make sure the lamps are turned on at their very Orthodox neighbourssaid that 'technology' is what happens after you' each Friday night – the Sabbath preventing them for using anything nearly as mechanical and workmanlike as a light switchre eighteen. But this is the time just before the Austrian leader is going to cave to Hitler's willWell, and instead I must confess that there have been more than a few decades of having a national vote to keep the Nazis out, invite them technology in with open armsmy lifetime. I've kept up reasonably well with what'Kristallnachts advantageous to me but I'm left with the feeling that it' happened in Vienna just as much as in Germany, as did s all the roundgetting away from me. Some of it is - frankly -ups of Jewsquite frightening. These in their turn leave Of course, I could research the younger Kurt at home with his mother possibilities and sisters anxious to hear word of an evacuation to Britain or the US, while Fritz and his father are, unknown initially to each other, packed off on the same train to Buchenwald probabilities and end up down rabbit holes without really understanding whether I'm reading someone who knows what they're talking about or the stone quarry therelatest conspiracy theorist. And us wondering how the titular event for the adult variant of all this I needed people I knew I could trust and who could deliver information in a way I could come about…|isbn=024156574Xunderstand.
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1529421241Sunny Singh|title=Stay Buried|author=Kate WebbHotel Arcadia|rating=3.5|genre=CrimeThrillers |summary=DI Matt Lockyer The Hotel Arcadia is a luxury hotel in an unnamed city that has suddenly been violently taken over by a terrorist group. Hiding from the terrorists who are rampaging through, killing everyone on Major Crime Review which sounds quite grand until you realise that it's actually site, there is Sam, a cold case unit wartime photographer and there are just two of them doing Abhi, the jobhotel manager. Lockyer's not unduly worriedAs Abhi continues to try to care remotely for the residents who are still alive in the hotel, though although heforms a bond with Sam who refuses to be cowed by events, and keeps on venturing out of her room to try to capture what's not quite so sure about DC Gemma Broad: she's probably capable of something betterhappened through her photography. It was a bit of a shock when he got Although they only ever talk over the phone call from Hedy Lambert: she's in H M Prison Eastwood Park for murder - and it was Lockyer who put her there, fourteen years ago. She's keen their friendship grows as Abhi tries to see him help her keep safe and they both wait to tell him that see if they will be rescued before they are discovered by the man everyone thought she'd murdered - but the body turned out to be someone else - has returned home after being away for decadesterrorists.|isbn=086154742X
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=B0BQXSYYTF1529153298|title=Just LookingThe List of Suspicious Things|author=Matthew TreeJennie Godfrey|rating=4.5|genre=Dystopian General Fiction|summary=It was the summer of 2035 's 1979 and on a cruise ship in MarseillesMargaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. (A woman? I mean, Jim was celebrating his new-found wealth and the end of his marriage - not two celebrations generally found in the same sentence by a man! honestly...) HeShe's watching the tornado - theynot what're more common in Europe these days - thats worrying Miv's keeping the cruise ship in port and falls into conversation with Jean-Pierrefamily, a French journalist in his thirtiesthough. Women have been disappearing. He writes for a relatively new paperWell, they've been murdered, the right-wing but to have 'disappeared'La Tribune Gauloisedoesn't sound quite so frightening. Miv' and hes upset because she's interesting if a little wordy on subjects such as overheard that her father wants to move the difference between family 'FranceDown South' and . When you're from Yorkshire, Down South is a frightening, foreign place, best avoided. For Miv, the Frenchmove would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, and she'll do anything to prevent that. His partner, Helen, whoShe's not worried about the dangers or that her Mum's English and Jewish, keeps him in check stopped talking - to some extentanyone.
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=057137493X1398524085|title=The Other HalfHas Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter?|author=Charlotte VassellNicci French
|rating=5
|genre=Crime
|summary=''The room Charlotte Salter was full of the sort of people expected at her husband''Tatler'' thinks you should know.'' ''The Other Half'' is the story of two men, both with what looks like the same surname. Rupert Beauchamp is the heir to a baronetcy and his thirtieth s fiftieth birthday party is a catered-with-butler event at McDonalds in Camden Townbut never turned up. Think Bollinger Her children, sons Niall, Paul and cocaineOllie and her daughter, Etty. His surname is pronounced 'Beecham'. Caius Beauchamp is a detective inspector with the Metropolitan police and is biare all worried but - strangely -racial. His surname her husband, Alec, is pronounced as you see itnot. The two encounter each other when CaiusShortly afterwards, out for a runEtty and Greg, stumbles across find the body of Clemmie OGreg'Haras father, Duncan Ackerley, Rupert's girlfriendin the river. Rupert thought that she It was being deliberately late an easy assumption for his partythe police to make that Duncan had murdered Charlie and then committed suicide when he couldn't stand the guilt. She was dead under a bushThe Salter children are not convinced but there's little else they can do but get on with their lives and wonder about what really happened.
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Joe Thomas1035906708|title=White RiotDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin
|rating=4.5
|genre=CrimeGeneral Fiction|summary= Whenever anyone writes fiction about politics there's always the danger We tend to think of making it too reactionary; too raw. Knee-jerk observations Maria Callas as Greek, but she was born to Greek parents in Manhattan, New York, in December 1923 and hot takes that don't age well or properly capture the spirit of the momentonly moved to Athens when she was thirteen. It takes a truly talented writer Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to be able 'Callas' to capture make it more manageable in the zeitgeist of a particular event or era of political historyStates. Austerity Britain, the student riots, Donald Trump, Brexit – When she was back in Athens - supposedly so much of what is, and has been, written in that she could get appropriate training for her voice - she was raised under the immediate aftermath of these phenomena has been proven Nazi occupation by time to be frothy a mother who mercilessly exploited her and insubstantial and ultimately not particularly powerful or incisive. Inevitably (and perhaps disappointingly made no secret of her preference for people who do enjoy fiction of this nature)her elder sister, the best writing about current political events is that which is written when the events in question are no longer current and when time and experience has afforded the writer the benefit of a more objective viewJackie.|isbn= 1529423376
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{{Frontpage
|author=Heather FawcettChristopher Edge|title=Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of FaeriesBlack Hole Cinema Club
|rating=4
|genre=General FictionConfident Readers|summary=Emily Wilde is an expert academic scholar on faerie loreLucas and his friends are all booked in for a movie marathon at their local cinema, and she a place that has travelled extensively, and researched meticulously, to write her life's work, the very first encyclopaedia nickname of faeries'The Black Hole'. Whilst she is brilliant at research All big movie fans, they're looking forward to lots of exciting films, and speaking to faeriesmany, she is not so good with people. many snacks! So when she finds herself far, far North in the small village of HrafvsnikHowever, having somehow offended as the village matriarchmovie starts, she they very quickly realise that something about this new film format is not sure what she has donevery different, nor how to redeem herself and put her final investigations for her book back on the right track. Enter Wendell Bambleby, her dashingly handsome and insufferable rival who arrives unexpectedly, all charm and delight, much to Emilythey are swept up into an adventure they couldn's frustrationt even imagine. But why is he here? What does he want? And as they lurch from one film genre to the next, can they figure out what exactly on earth is going on with ? Will they ever get back to the faerie folk around Hravsnikcinema, and to their real lives?|isbn=03565191201839942738
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1848458436Rachel Greenlaw|title=Just the Nicest Couple|author=Mary KubicaCompass and Blade|rating=43.5|genre=ThrillersTeens|summary=''I can hear the song of the sea. The whole thing has spiralled out call of controlthe deep, turning into someone I'm notthe answering beat in my heart.''
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1914585402James Sherwood Metts|title=Dashboard Elvis is Dead|author=David F RossPlanet Storyland
|rating=4.5
|genre=General FictionConfident Readers|summary=I reviewed David F Ross's book [[There's Only One Danny Garvey by David F Ross|There's Only One Danny Garvey]] Things have been a couple of years back bit sticky for the Earthlings. AI and remember being absolutely floored by how powerful automation have been proceeding apace, often replacing jobs they're paid to do and affecting it wasother tasks that took time to accomplish. It was a grippingJust as they were beginning to get used to all this technological change and starting to think of other, emotionally wounding readnew ways to spend time, along came an awful pandemic. Life was pretty much shut down and rereading my review of , along with it my main takeaway was that I might not have lavished enough praise , all the many daily social interactions on itwhich they depend so heavily.|isbn=1736128426
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=178563335XMatthew Tree|title=Sea Defences|author=Hilary TaylorWe'll Never Know|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=When we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicarTimothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, sitting in on a PCC meeting drunk and wondering why they're held when you need to pick the children up. Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of his artistic passions all failed miserably and her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishionerwho had endless crises of self confidence. Thelma's daughter-in-law won't let her see her grandson. Holthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, is a lovely place, but Rachel is struggling So Tim applied himself to develop a real bond with the parish - and she's in awe of the vicar, Gailhis studies, but then she's been doing the job for more cultivated his abilities rather than thirty years. Rachel his daydreams and Christopher hoped that a walk on the beach would do them some good - it was stormy set himself high but it was probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missingachievable ambitions.|isbn= B0CVFXPGP8
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{{Frontpage
|author=Hadeer ElsbaiA G Slatter|title=The Daughters Briar Book of Izdiharthe Dead|rating=45
|genre=Fantasy
|summary= Drawing inspiration from Egypt, ''The Daughters There's a part of Izdiharme that wants to keep this just to myself for however long I can. This secret magic of my own, all mine, at last. I just want to enjoy it for a while.'' explores Within a remote mountain pass, far away from the lives of two women who could not be more differentworld, yet find themselves fighting for lies Silverton; a town under the rights protection of women and weavers – those with magical abilities - in a society pitted against them. Nehal, born into the upper classBriar's, wishes to attend a family of witches who protect the Weaving Academy to learn to control her abilities town and then join the militarywider world from the Darklands. Though she has always wished for magic, but instead she Ellie Briar is forced into an arranged marriage with Nico. Giorgina on the other hand did not have a privileged upbringing like Nehal and feels great pressure first non-witch to provide be born into her family for generations and as such since she was young, her family training as a steward revolved around letters and administration rather than spells and maintain their reputationpotions. When her grandmother suddenly dies, Ellie's cousin Audra becomes the Briar Witch, whilst secretly attending meetings of the Daughters of Izdihar – a group campaigning for womentown's rightsleader, and Ellie takes her place beside her. Giorgina also happens As challenges come her way left, right and centre, Ellie uncovers the rare ability to be in love communicate with Nico. What follows is the dead, putting her at the heart of a story maelstrom of an unjust societychaos. Reeling from one family secret to another, filled with hypocrisy Ellie must decide who to trust and crueltydetermine what to do as the Briar witches' legacy, everything they have sacrificed to survive, from which blossoms a group of admirable women fighting for their rights and overcoming their personal obstaclesis under threat.|isbn=03565204711803364548
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Sarah Todd Taylor1529900360|title=Alice Eclair, Spy Extraordinaire! A Spoonful of SpyingThe Ghost Orchid|author=Jonathan Kellerman
|rating=4
|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=[[Alice Eclair, Spy Extraordinaire! A Recipe for Trouble by Sarah Todd Taylor|Last time around]], Alice Eclair It hadn't been Lt Milo Sturgis's fault that Alex Delaware had to prove herself as a spy been badly injured but he felt responsible and as a master at all things French and fancy and fondanteven after Alex recovered, as the only way Sturgis was reluctant to save the day involved being an expert baker and icer ask for his help on the French railwaysdifficult cases. Here, we start on a bateauHis assertions that there were only open-mouche in Paris, and even though the espionage isn-shut cases which didn't need the help of a psychologist only worked for a complete success it proves to Alice and her handlers that things are afootwhile. And there will never be more feet than at the WorldFinally, it was Robin, Delaware's Fairpartner, reviving who nudged Milo into asking for help again. She knew that the huge expo involvement was something that gave the city man she loved needed. The next case did look simple, though. Two lovers were murdered in the swimming pool of a remote property in Bel Air. He was the Eiffel Tower heir to an Italian shoe empire and this time showing all her interwar glories off she is married to an extremely rich man and it's not the worldItalian. Once again Alice will have But which of them was the primary target?}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1529395224|title=Letting the Cat Out of the Bag: The Secret Life of a Vet|author=Sion Rowlands|rating=3.5|genre=Animals and Wildlife|summary=Siôn Rowlands fell into veterinary science accidentally. His father was a GP and Rowlands didn't want to present follow in his footsteps, particularly when he considered the front to strain that being on-call put on his father's life. When he was seventeen he took the world opportunity of being doing work experience with a family friend who was a humble yet world-class cake decoratorvet and was convinced this was the job for him. Before long, while seeking out clueshe was at Liverpool University. At stake? It hadn't - as with so many students - been his dream since he was a child. Pioneering flight technology that the enemy just cannot If anything, he'd wanted to be allowed to smuggle out…|isbn=1839940972a professional footballer.
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Amanthi Harris0861541774|title=Beautiful PlaceA Nye of Pheasants|author=Steve Burrows|rating=54|genre=Literary FictionCrime|summary= PadmaDCI Domenic Jejeune's close friend and former colleague, a young Sri LankanDanny Maik, has returned taken a short holiday in Singapore to the Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of her home countrymeet up with an old ally, Guy Trueman. This is Maik was involved in a place she spent her formative yearsstreet brawl - he would later maintain that he was facing a man armed with a knife - and he killed a Ghurka. It is not Initially, he faced a place she was born into, charge of manslaughter but the one she thinks of as home. How she evidence came to be at the Villa, how it became her home, and the machinations light that suggested that he might have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide planned to murder the ''score'' for this gentle and yet subtly violent novelman. Now he could be facing the death penalty. Padma's present fails Domenic Jejeune can do nothing to escape her past help as any interference from another police force could provoke a diplomatic incident and much like the musical score of a film, that strand weaves its way through everything that happens wouldn't help Danny at the Villaall.|isbn=1784631930
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{{Frontpage
|author=Nigel BainesAlexander McCall Smith|title=A Tricky Kind of MagicThe Perfect Passion Company
|rating=4.5
|genre=Emerging ReadersGeneral Fiction|summary=Cooper loves The Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and operating as an alternative to perform magic tricksall the online apps in providing a more personal, tailored service. His father was a magician, Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and named Cooper look after the great Tommy Cooperbusiness, as Ness is planning to take a trip to Canada to get away for a while. But sadly Cooper's father died suddenlyKatie is coming out of a break up with a bad boyfriend, and now Cooper doesn't quite know who so jumps at the chance to be, or how come home to beEdinburgh. And when his dad's prop rabbit starts talking so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, thanks to 44 Scotland Street and the Isabel Dalhousie novels, but with some new characters who quickly begin to himcharm. Katie has no experience in running a business, he ''really'' doesn't know whator in match-making, but Ness has full confidence in her abilities, and there's going on anymore!always her very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, William, to lend a hand…|isbn=14449602611846976596
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=15420372390811771741|title=Death in HeelsInstaKnits for Baby|author=Kitty MurphyMelissa Leapman
|rating=4
|genre=CrimeCrafts|summary=Set against the backdrop of DublinMelissa Leapman's drag scene, ''Death in HeelsInstaKnits for Baby'' tells the story gives us a collection of Fi McKinnery and her best friend, Robyn, who is about knits from toys to debut as drag queen Mae Bblankets. What is meant to Some will be a night quick knits - others are of excitement soon takes a downward turn when fellow drag queenthe 'long, Eve, takes to cosy afternoons in front of the stage to mock Mae Bfire' variety. As if The projects are divided by the night could not get any worsetime they'll take to complete - less than five hours, five to ten hours, when Fi heads home she discovers Eve dead in a gutterten to twenty hours and more than twenty hours. Fi is adamant that Eve was murdered, yet All the drag communityprojects are attractive, modern and the Guards, accept it as an accidentuseable. Fi takes it upon herself to solve the mystery as she fears for her friends, I perhaps show my age when I wonder about 'social-media-worthy projects' but instead ruins relationships as she delves deeperthat's me being picky.
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1800465270Dean Koontz|title=The Lensky Connection|author=Conrad DelacroixBad Weather Friend
|rating=4.5
|genre=ThrillersParanormal|summary=When we first meet Major Valeri Grozky, it's June 1995 and he's at the Serafimov Cemetry in St PetersburgBenny is having a terrifically bad day. He's a pallbearer for loses his elder brotherjob, Timurhe loses his fiancee, whose death was drug-relatedand his house gets trashed. Valeri Oh, and Timur's fathersomeone has delivered a really weird, Ketodisturbing coffin-sized object to his home, is also a pallbearer and heit's disgusted by what possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the thing that has trashed his son had becomehouse! The thing is, Benny is the very last person to deserve all this bad luck. Valeri thinks differently: he's determined He is a nice person. A really nice person. So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the delivery to make his own stand against organised crime and avenge Timur's death. Within house is a matter of monthsnew friend, his obsession will have cost him his marriage to Marisha and created a dubious link with Natassja Petrovskayabad weather friend called Spike, who has been sent to help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a journalistgood person. She's determined Spike is going to expose any take care of Benny, and all corruption - and shewill certainly take care of Benny's less concerned than she ought to be about her own safety. To herenemies, if he's , Benny, and Harper (a good source. For him, itwaitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's a way to get information published, which wouldn't otherwise be possiblewild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are.|isbn=1662500491
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|isbnauthor=1399702289Adam Stower|title=A World of Curiosities (Chief Inspector Gamache)|author=Louise PennyMurray and Bun|rating=4.5|genre=CrimeConfident Readers |summary=After Murray is supposed to be a harsh winterhumble, the tiny Canadian village of Three Pines tidy and friendly cat, one who is enjoying the arrival of spring. But something is worrying Chief Inspector Armand Gamache able to sleep and eat and eat and sleep and Inspector Jean-Guy Beauvoir , well, whatever takes his fancy next of the Sûreté du Québectwo. Gamache had offered help to But he's a young woman after the murder of her mother: hebad magician'd s cat, so his favourite bun has been less certain about her charismatic brother. For Jean-Guyturned into a hyperactive sticky rabbit called Bun, it had always been and the other way around. Now catflap they're both in use can chuck them out, not into the village regular back garden, but into a world of frightening adventure and neither can fathom what's happeningwhiffs. Armand will soon find that theyThis time round it drops them into a Viking land, where a troll hunter is expected – well, one much bigger than Murray was, to be honest, but he're not just in Three Pines but in his home s turned up and in his life.he'll have to do…|isbn=0008561249
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=B0BHR8KWSKB0C47LV1PC|title=DukkhaFragility|author=Martin HydeMosby Woods
|rating=4
|genre=HorrorLiterary Fiction|summary=Sam wakes up chained in Can you make a basement. He rails against his captor and the injustice of his imprisonment? Why? ''Why?Yo birthing person''joke? And if you could, is the question should you make it? Or is the question if you did, would it land? The catch is that the answer for both could well be.... no.
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=B09XWSXSKY1529431735|title=Maestro Orpheus and the World ClockThe Winter Visitor|author=Robert Penee and Joanne GrodzinskiJames Henry
|rating=4
|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=Frederick (or Fred, but never FreddyIt's February 1991 and Essex is bitingly cold, please) couldnwhich made Bruce Hopkins't sleepreturn all the more surprising. A tune, rather like He'd been exiled on the ticking of Costa del Sol as a wanted drug smuggler for a clock was playing over and over in his minddecade. It happened every time The return has come about because he came to visit 's had a letter from his grandfather. He hadn't really wanted to come; after allex-wife, hesaying that she's ten now ill and all those old clocks donhasn't appeal long to him anymore. ''Who needs old clocks anyway? All they do is tell the time. And time isn't good for anything...'' And that was why he was looking at the clock beside the bedlive. It was nearly twelve o'clock but at midnight s hard to feel any sympathy when Hopkins is abducted, stripped to his underwear and sent to a watery grave in the clock chimed only six timesboot of a stolen Ford Sierra. There was nothing for Is it but a warning from a Spanish gang or a problem closer to go and find grandad - but where was he? And why had all the clocks stopped at twelve o'clockhome?
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=3756228711Alex Bell and Tim McDonagh|title=CDC: The happy years with a spectacular IT 'Phenomena'|author=Hans BodmerGlorious Race of Magical Beasts
|rating=4
|genre=HistoryConfident Readers|summary=Eli is a busy lad – by day an apprentice in the wondrous library we start by visiting with him, and in the evening a helper at the dessert cafe his gran owns and runs. Eli lives with his lovely gran, too – for there is a generation missing in the family. A few short years ago, Eli''The history of s parents were both lost to the titular race, a globe-trotting adventure where all entrants have to navigate the world in the development company of IT could fill books of several hundred pages.'' Author Hans Bodmer is quite right about thata magical beast. He This has chosen made the race anathema to tell us about the short, pair – but explosive, history of when a bad incident at the Control Data Companyeatery leads to a confession from gran, CDC, for whom Eli knows his only hope is to dare to enter what he worked. It's a fascinating talemost hates, told in a mixture with the sole aim the prize of technological summary and wry anecdotemagic at the end – the only thing to possibly save his gran. |isbn=0571382231
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|isbn=1529356660178763681X|title=The SanctuaryKnife Skills for Beginners|author=Emma HaughtonOrlando Murrin|rating=3.54|genre=ThrillersCrime|summary=It was the quiet which woke Zoey up - or, rather, the absence of the noise which was Chef Paul Delamare took a teaching job at a constant residential cookery school in New YorkBelgravia. Here it was silent He didn't really want to but celebrity chef Christian Wagner had a way of getting both men and the heat was overwhelmingwomen to do what he wanted. When she looked out of Paul ''somehow'' got the window all she could see was impression that he'd be at the desertschool to assist Paul, who had a broken arm, but it didn't turn out that way. How did she get here? Zoey was houseThe teaching -sitting for Uncle Dan and the problems - are all his two Manx cats and she remembered that she'd been out with Franny and Rocco last nightown. She knew that she The one thing he hadn'd had quite a lot t expected was for someone to drink but how could she have got to the desert from New York? turn up dead. She had no memory of getting on a plane but as she thought backUnfortunately, a memory of sirens, flashing lights he was the person who discovered the body and of being pushed into a car snagged on everyone knows that the police consider that person to be the edge of her mindprime suspect.
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|author=Christopher GoldenSarah Marsh|title=Road A Sign of BonesHer Own
|rating=3.5
|genre=HorrorGeneral Fiction|summary=The Kolyma Highway… the 'Road After a bout of Bones'… the R504. Stretching for over scarlet fever as a thousand miles across Siberiachild, it's one of the world's most notorious routesEllen Lark loses her hearing. For months of the year it's a spread of sheet ice suspended above the permafrost surrounding it, while its 'spring' sees it turn Suddenly plunged into a huge blodge world of unremittingsilence, apocalyptic-level mud, which dries into rutted, puddly dust. I don't think google streetview updates it very often. Built because Stalin wanted so much uranium and other Siberian minerals, and because he wanted to give too many people a lesson, it legendarily cost a everything about her life every metre it coverschanges. You can easily find documentaries about it online, but that's Living in a bit rich, for one time when the use of our main characters, Felix 'Teig' Teiglandsign language was seen as something only savages do, Ellen is sent to a film-makerschool where she is taught to lip read, doing a recce with his cameraman buddybut physically restrained from signing. From here, John Prentiss – she ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who's mostly there to encourage has been teaching the project to fruition to claw back some of the funds he'd invested in the pair's prior TV projectsdeaf and using a system called Visible Speech. They pick up their oh-so-chatty local guideAt the same time, gain the company of a local beautyBell is working on other inventions and ideas, and fetch Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up at the guide's childhood villagein a complicated tangle of espionage. And that's where things start to go awry…|isbn=18033614761035401614
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=18387761841803816759|title=Her Majesty the Queen Investigates: Murder Most Royal|author=S J Bennett|rating=5|genre=Crime|summary=''The Queen, like the sunrise and the tides, was generally a reliable way of marking time.'' It seemed to begin as a cold. Hardly surprising, really, as Prince Philip had been suffering for a couple of days but seemed to be getting better. Hopefully, the Queen thought, her cold would go the same way. She'd probably caught it from one of the great-grandchildren. Unfortunately, it didn't get better and when the doctor called he diagnosed full-blown flu. She and the Duke were due to go to Sandringham by train that day but the doctor put his foot down. He'd have preferred that the queen have a few days' bed rest before venturing out but had to be satisfied with the thought that they'd go by helicopter the following day. It was annoying: people would be ready for her today and Her Majesty did not like to disappoint.}}{{Frontpage|author=Peter Owen Jones|title=Conversations with Nature|rating=5|genre=Spirituality and Religion|summary= One of the comments made when I was offered this beautiful book for review was that it's not very long. Having read the book twice over, I'm brought back inescapably to the Spanish proverb that Life may be short, but it is broad. In this case I'm brought to the idea that the length of life is not the point; the point is its depth. Peter Owen Jones dives deep.|isbn=1912992418}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1916459943|title=Squeakily BabyUnravelling|author=Beth WebbWill Gibson
|rating=4
|genre=For SharingScience Fiction|summary=Much as mothers love their babies, thereIt's something they all dread - 2038 and Joe is a squeakily babybored cop policing the wealthy and peaceful New York City. He's so tired but he can't - or won't - go Joe longs for a bit of adventure and to sleep: insteadget stuck into some really gritty crime detection. But then something goes horribly wrong with the AI system that now runs everything, making life easier for many, he just lies on his blanket and ''wails''riots start to spread. The sea offers Finally, Joe gets to helpdo some real policing. It rocks Baby gently In the aftermath of the rioting global pop star Suki is kidnapped and Joe is assigned to bring her home. Joe isn't the waves sing ''hushonly one trying to save Suki - Dylan, hush''. Think of gentle wavelets falling onto a sandy beach British superfan and you have tech nerd, is also on the sound perfectlycase. The mermaids join in - ''la lou, la lay...'' What went wrong? Did the system fail or was it hacked? And for a moment it seems to have worked as Baby closes his eyes. Then a seagull '''shouts''' and we know exactly whathow is Suki's going to happen next.kidnapping connected?
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Robin Stevens1529421284|title=The Ministry of Unladylike ActivityLaying Out the Bones|author=Kate Webb
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=May Wong is It was one of those flash downpours that the British weather often delivers in a long way from her family in Hong Kongheatwave. She’s stuck in her schoolIn a gully, Deepdean, and desperate a human skeleton came to get away, the surface and do something useful to help end forensic testing proved the war and body to get homebe Lee Geary, who had disappeared nine years earlier. She just knows that she would make the perfect spy! And when she finds herself turned away by the MinistryHe'd been a known drug user and had learning disabilities, she takes matters into her own hands, along with so it could have been a boy she meets outside the Ministry, Ericsimple case of misadventure but DI Matt Lockyer wasn't convinced. They both go undercover in Geary was a large country housetownie, pretending so what was he doing out on Salisbury Plain alone? There are connections to be evacuees, in an attempt to prove that someone there is passing secrets the suicide of Holly Gilbert and to two other deaths which were not considered suspicious at the Nazistime. But there is a lot more going on in Elysium Hall than either them have imagined, Lockyer and suddenly they find themselves in DC Gemma Broad of the middle of a murder scene, with even more to try Major Crimes Review Unit (that's cold cases to unravel you and solveme) investigate.|isbn=0241429862
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=19196350170571379559|title=A Thief to Catch a KillerThe House of Broken Bricks|author=Kitt TownsendFiona Williams|rating=45|genre=TeensLiterary Fiction|summary= Solomon Klyne isn't a bad lad'The House of Broken Bricks'' is the story of four people. Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in the house on the riverbank, so why is he running around London committing a series built of robberies? And how did he learn to crack safes? Youbroken bricks. Insubstantial as it might look, it'll have s stood the passage of time, storms and floods. Her husband, Richard, struggles to wait grow his vegetables, to get an answer complete the delivery rounds - and to bring in sufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, the second question because I avoid spoilersrainbow twins. But I Sonny'll answer the first one: for s colouring reflects his grandmothermother's Jamaican heritage.Max takes after his father. People don't believe that they're related, much less twins and there's an assumption when Max is out with his mother that she's his nanny.
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=13985153881529425867|title=The Boy Lost and the DogNever Found (A D I Wilkins Mystery)|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)Simon Mason
|rating=4.5
|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=First In Oxford, there are two D I Wilkins. Raymond Wilkins is of allNigerian descent, it was the earthquakeBalliol educated and always exquisitely dressed. D I Ryan Wilkins, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami son of Ryan and this, in turnfather of Ryan, caused the nuclear meltdownis not. The result was complete and utter devastationHe's not any of those things. The deaths were uncountableHe's white, originated from a trailer park, barely educated (reading's not ''really'' his thing) and the loss his wardrobe consists mainly of livelihoods was widespreadshell suits and trackies. They're usually in lime green or acid yellow. You might wonder if you're being introduced to a police procedural written for laughs. Well, you're not. The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list two men are just different sides of priorities but - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience storesame policing coin. He wasn't a dog person but Sometimes the convenience store ownercombination works brilliantly well. Sometimes it's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the dog jumped inproblematic.
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1529153050Mosby Woods|title=Britain's Best Political Cartoons 2022|author=Tim BensonA Whirly Man Loses His Turn
|rating=4
|genre=HumourLiterary Fiction|summary=Seeking some light relief from The West isn't the dominant force it once was. Nobody in the current political turmoil which West is coming quite sure how to seem more and more like an adrenaline sportmend this or even if mending it is the best course of action. Governments are flailing. A war here, a push for climate action there. A feeling that nobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, I there was nudged towards ''Britain's Best Political Cartoons of 2022''a man with precognition. Sharp eyes will have noted that we're not yet through Imagine the year: the cartoons run from 4 September 2021 to 31 August 2022. Who strategic advantage in this asset; a man who can imagine tell you what there will happen given any set of circumstances. That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the most valuable asset in history. Imagine then, that this man loses this ability. What would governments do to come in the 2023 editionget it back?|isbn=B0C9SNG8R1
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