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<metadesc>Book review siteExpert, with books full book reviews from the many most walks of literary life - ; fiction, biography, crime, cookery and anything else that takes our fancy. There are also lots of author interviews and top tens.</metadesc>Hello from The Bookbag, a book review site, featuring books from all the many walks of literary life 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, & self-published books for the home. They're sometimes our own books or books from the local library. They're often 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 [[:Category:Interviews|plus author interviews]], and all sorts of [[:Category:Lists|& top tens]] - all of which you can find on our [[features]] page. If you're stuck for something to read, check out the [[Book Recommendations|recommendations]] page.</metadesc>
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Michael Palin0008517061|title=Diaries 1969-1979: The Python YearsDeath in a Lonely Place|author=Stig Abell
|rating=4
|genre=AutobiographyCrime|summary=''Never meet your heroesFormer Metropolitan Police detective,'' goes the old adageJake Johnson, has settled into his rustic life at Little Sky. ''Never read their diaries'' might be equally sage advice. That's probably why I didn't tackle Michael Palin's collected daily journals until now. Along with There’s perhaps a little uncertainty about the rest future of the Monty Python teamhis life with his vet girlfriend, Livia and her daughter Diana, he was without doubt as moving in together would mean a hero lot of my teenage yearscompromise: does Jake give up his off-grid and relaxing life to move in with Livia or does Livia move to Little Sky despite her reservations about whether or not this is the future she wants for herself and her daughter? For the moment they’re enjoying life in the present and putting the future on the back burner.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>075382177X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Robert Crumb1786482126|title=Robert Crumb's Book of Genesis: All 50 ChaptersThe Janus Stone (Dr Ruth Galloway)|author=Elly Griffiths
|rating=4.5
|genre=Graphic NovelsCrime|summary=In Builders were demolishing an old house in Norwich - the beginning site was going to hold seventy-five 'luxury' apartments - when they discovered the picturebones of a child beneath a doorway. There was no skull. Just think of all the countless religious images, both inside and outside religious establishmentsWas this a ritual killing or murder? Inevitably, designed to convey the message to those who could not readDr Ruth Galloway finds herself working with DCI Harry Nelson. Art and religion have always been linkedIt's difficult as Ruth knows, but Nelson doesn't, which that she is probably one pregnant with his child as a result of the main reasons I stayed an atheist - I hated art at school, and drawing a man on a donkeyone night they spent together some three months ago. Her condition will be obvious before long, something way beyond my skills, was not a task I appreciated, hence my dislike least because Ruth is prone to sudden bouts of both subjectssickness.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224078097</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Keith Laidler0008551324|title=AnimalsThe Devil You Know (D S Max Craigie)|author=Neil Lancaster
|rating=4.5
|genre=Popular ScienceCrime|summary=It's unusual for anyone from the Hardie family to approach the police. Neither side likes or has any respect for the other. But Davie Hardie is struggling in prison and he'Animals'' is described as a visual guide s prepared to tell the police where the animal kingdom, but please don't think body of it as a picture book as missing person is buried and who was responsible for her death. This person, he promises, is someone big and it's far more than thatwill be worth the police doing what he wants. And what he wants is to be transferred to an open prison to serve the remainder of his sentence and to get an early parole date. DonNot much to ask, is it? The new Deputy Police Constable doesn't think of it as a coffee table book either – despite so and she's even prepared to do the fact other thing that its size – midway between A2 Hardie demanded - make certain that DS Max Craigie and A3 – might tempt you to think that way. Itanyone who works with him is kept well away from what's a journey through the complex diversity of the animal kingdom based on sound scientific principleshappening.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184916004X</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Michael Rosen0008405026|title=A To Z - The Best Children's Poetry From Agard To ZephaniahStranger in the Family (Maeve Kerrigan 11)|author=Jane Casey
|rating=5
|genre=Children's Rhymes and VerseCrime|summary=Michael Rosen has picked the best modern childrenIt's poetry, sixteen years since nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from John Agard through her bed one summer night. She was never found and the investigation ground to Benjamin Zephaniaha halt. It stemmed from Rosen performing Now, her mother, Helena, and her father are dead in schools and libraries with many their bed. Initially, it looks like a straightforward murder/suicide but there's something about the positioning of the poets, bodies that makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and her boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. What looked as childrenthough it was going to be an open-and-shut case is now a complex double murder. Kerrigan is convinced that the explanation lies in Rosalie's poetry anthologies go, itdisappearance: others (such as Derwent's amongst the very bestboss, Una Burt) are less convinced.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141324503</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John Van der Kiste0571379877|title=The Man on the MoorKellerby Code|author=Jonny Sweet|rating=43.5|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=In the summer of 1913 relations Edward Jevons is a working-class young man, obsessed with Germany were deteriorating steadilyhis upper-class friends, but there didnRobert and Stanza. Robert't seem to be any connection with the international situation when s a London clerktheatre director. He's also self-obsessed, George Stephensdemanding, was found dead in a country lane on the edge of Dartmoorhandsome and entitled and uses Edward to run errands for him. The moor had Edward has been his passion in love with Stanza since their university days - and he'd always been keen to escape London and return s drunkenly confided how he feels to DevonRobert. It was an odd death but Most men in all probability it would have been put down as an accident if GeorgeRobert's mother had not announced position would stay away from Stanza or tell Edward that George was the son of the Kaiser. Despite her fondness for gin the story she told was oddly compelling and when it was linked up with the fact that two German officers a relationship had been staying at a nearby farm Georgebegun between them but he's death seemed less and less not like an accident.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904744230</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Ursula K Le Guin|title=The Left Hand of Darkness|rating=5|genre=Science Fiction|summary=It's hard most men: Edward is left to believe that ''The Left Hand stumble upon the two of Darkness'' dates back to 1969: forty years on, it reads as well, or even better, then when it was originally written, and - deservedly - enjoys them kissing in a classic status in the science-fiction canon, as well as being perhaps the best known sci-fi novel by Ursula LeGuindark passageway.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1841496065</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Michael LewisJo Callaghan|title=The Blind SideLeave No Trace
|rating=4
|genre=SportCrime|summary=I think my husband was When a little taken aback to see me curled up man is found crucified on the sofa engrossed top of a hill in a book about American FootballNuneaton, DCS Kat Frank finds herself assigned to the case alongside her sidekick, the AI detective Lock. I suppose I should admit that I didnIt't actually know it was going to be about American Footballs their first live case together, having previously been very successful with several cold cases. WellBut when there is a second body found crucified a few days later, I knew it was about Kat is suddenly struggling with a potential serial killer and a boy who ''played'' American Football, but I'd thought very high profile case that was just going draws a lot of unwanted attention to their AI Future Policing project. Will they be able to solve the background storycase in time, you know, like in ''Jerry Maguire''. So or will Kat find herself taken off the first chapter seemed to go on case and on forever, and I thought my head might pop from reading about quarterbacks and blind sides and plays and offence and defence and running statistics...but then somehow I stumbled to the real heart of the story; the story of Michael Oherpotentially, a young African-American from the slums out of Memphis whose father was never around, and whose mother was a drug addict and lost him to social services at a young age.career?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>039333838X</amazonuk>139851120X
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Philippa Pearce and Helen Craig1399613073|title=A Finder's MagicMoral Injuries|author=Christie Watson
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersThrillers|summary=Till (that's short Olivia, Laura and Anjali met on the first day of medical school and their friendship would keep them inseparable for Tillawn) has lost his dog Bess and he has no idea how he's going to find her until a mysterious stranger appearsquarter of a century. Mr Finder interviews various witnessesOlivia is ruthlessly ambitious, including which is a cat, bonus when you aim to be a mole, cardiothoracic surgeon. Laura is a heron perfectionist and Miss Mouseya trauma doctor. It's not what Miss Mousey says that gives Mr Finder Anjali is the vital clue as to what has happened to Bess, but free spirit of the sketch group and she made of the riverbank at the time that Bess went missingbecomes a GP. ThereWhen we first meet them they're at a drug and alcohol-fuelled party and it's a lot of magic going to end in tragedy. We don't know who suffered the quest to find Besstragedy or the consequences. Twenty-five years later there will be an eerily similar event that will impact the three friends. This time, but it's all very confusing for Till and at one point he even doubts the motives of Mr Findertheir teenage children who are involved.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1406319821</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Rachel Isadora and Clement Clarke Moore0241636604|title=The Night Before ChristmasTrading Game: A Confession|author=Gary Stevenson|rating=4.5|genre=For SharingAutobiography|summary=Everyone knows and loves Clement Clarke Moore's poem '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 Visit From St Nicholas''. Even if you don't go the whole hog, gathering the family round by hoodie and jeans replaces the log fire, pin-stripe suit and reading it together, its opening line of '''Twas the night before Christmas, when all through his background is the houseEast End, not a creature where he was stirringfamiliar with violence, not even a mousepoverty and injustice. There was no posh public school on his CV - but he had been to the London School of Economics..'' fills you Stevenson is bright - extremely bright - and he has a facility with a warm glownumbers which most of us can only envy. You can practically smell the mulled wine and hear the snores of Auntie Gertrude during the Queen's Speech He also realised that most rich people expect poor people to be stupid. It's was his ability at what was, essentially, a card game which got him an absolute classicinternship with Citibank. Eventually, this turned into permanent employment as a trader.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0399254080</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jack Ludlow1035021803|title=WarriorsThe Antique Hunter's Guide to Murder|author=C L Miller
|rating=3.5
|genre=Historical FictionCrime|summary=Arduin It's twenty years since Freya Lockwood has been back to the English country village where she grew up. She's back now because of Fassano is paid by Michael Doukeianos, a young Byzantine generalrequest for help from her beloved aunt, to keep the peace in ApuliaCarole. Arduin is a LombardFreya's former mentor and Carole's close friend, howeverArthur Crockleford, is dead and secretly plans the circumstances seem suspicious, to revolt and take Apulia for himself, hiring a group of Norman mercenaries say the least. Arthur was the reason why Freya had not been back to help him do the jobvillage: Arthur, she feels, let her down badly. These Normans are William de Hauteville and his brothersEven though they were in business together as antique hunters, famed warriors with their own conflicts and a desire she has not felt able to gain titles and wealth for their sonsbe near the man or pursue the profession she loved. Even if Arduin and After the Normans could take Apuliasplit, there are no guarantees that they could hold it she worked in a land full cafe, met and married James (on the rebound from the love of treachery her life, who was murdered) and Freya and bribesJames have now divorced.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0749007559</amazonuk>
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=AllTomorrowsFutureCover
|title=All Tomorrow's Futures: Fictions that Disrupt
|author=Benjamin Greenaway and Stephen Oram (Editors)
|rating=5
|genre=Science Fiction
|summary=''Opening up new ways of thinking about the shape of things to come.''
I've heard it said that 'technology' is what happens after you're eighteen. Well, I must confess that there have been more than a few decades of technology in my lifetime. I've kept up reasonably well with what's advantageous to me but I'm left with the feeling that it's all getting away from me. Some of it is - frankly - quite frightening. Of course, I could research the possibilities and the probabilities and end up down rabbit holes without really understanding whether I'm reading someone who knows what they're talking about or the latest conspiracy theorist. I needed people I knew I could trust and who could deliver information in a way I could understand.}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jo BerrySunny Singh|title=The Ultimate DVD Easter Egg Guide: How to Access the Hidden Extras on Your DVDHotel Arcadia|rating=43.5|genre=EntertainmentThrillers |summary=Consider the Easter Egg - at least The Hotel Arcadia is a luxury hotel in the way DVD collectors meanan unnamed city that has suddenly been violently taken over by a terrorist group. Sometimes a pointless hidden add-Hiding from the terrorists who are rampaging through, killing everyone onsite, that there is there for no reason. Sometimes they can be Sam, a priceless bonuswartime photographer and Abhi, seemingly gifted by the disc producers hotel manager. As Abhi continues to those in try to care remotely for the know, costing - at least in the case of some animated instances - many thousands of pounds. Some oik on set with a camcorder, they residents who are not. I've been guilty several times of clicking away still alive in directions the menus don't seem to encourage on the off-chance I find something (orhotel, on he forms a PCbond with Sam who refuses to be cowed by events, just sweeping the PC mouse over any and every title card in case it highlights something previously invisible)keeps on venturing out of her room to try to capture what's happened through her photography. Forcing several titles Although they only ever talk over the phone, their friendship grows as Abhi tries to help her keep safe and chapters by going straight they both wait to them in case see if they will be rescued before they're something secret is not a hobby I like to admit toare discovered by the terrorists.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0752875205</amazonuk>086154742X
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Frances Day1529153298|title=Dead Cat With FirelighterThe List of Suspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey|rating=35
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=WeIt're in the world of modern arts 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. (A couple who met at art college are on the verge of breaking upwoman? I mean, honestly...) She's not what's worrying Miv's family, though. Women have been disappearing. Well, they've been murdered, as but to have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. Miv's upset because she's overheard that her success at fine arts is only bettered by his sudden rise father wants to fame in move the world of his conceptual, pompous bits of (almost literally) rubbish and nothingfamily 'Down South'. WeWhen you're also in the world of the wannabe stars and starletsfrom Yorkshire, Down South is a frightening, foreign place, trying to make the jump from well-thought of provincial comedy theatre to Hollywoodbest avoided. And in For Miv, the background in both instancesmove would mean leaving her best friend, are guru-type Svengalis, pulling stringsSharon, and aiming to she'll do as much as is morally justifiable - and a lot more - anything to get their charges to fameprevent that. And a bit of contract killing and murder on She's not worried about the sidedangers or that her Mum's stopped talking - to anyone.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0954337751</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Frances Fyfield1398524085|title=Cold to the TouchHas Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter?|author=Nicci French|rating=45
|genre=Crime
|summary=ThereCharlotte Salter was expected at her husband's something obsessive about Jessica Hurlyfiftieth birthday party but never turned up. When Sarah Fortune encounters her on a coldHer children, dark London morningsons Niall, she's distraught because the man who fills all her thoughts has rejected her Paul and Ollie and it seems that her mother wants nothing to do with daughter, Etty. are all worried but - strangely - herhusband, Alec, is not. Jess is a talented chef but sheShortly afterwards, Etty and Greg, find the body of Greg's short of work – father, Duncan Ackerley, in the river. It was an easy assumption for the occasion police to make that Duncan had murdered Charlie and then committed suicide when she emptied a tureen of soup over he couldn't stand the host at a dinner party did not enhance her reputation even if all the other guests were secretly delightedguilt. Sarah senses her vulnerability, The Salter children are not convinced but itthere's Jess who organises the let of one of her mother's cottages in the sea-side town where she grew up so that Sarah little else they can have a long break from the flat where she still smells a recent firedo but get on with their lives and wonder about what really happened.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847441092</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Shirley Williams1035906708|title=Climbing the Bookshelves: The Autobiography of Shirley WilliamsDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin
|rating=4.5
|genre=AutobiographyGeneral Fiction|summary=Who could resist a title like that? And is this some lesser-known Shirley Williams, recalling a life spent in libraries? The answer We tend to the latter is no. Shirley Catlinthink of Maria Callas as Greek, as but she was bornto Greek parents in Manhattan, New York, tells us in the early pages of this memoir that during her childhood December 1923 and only moved to Athens when she was thirteen. Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father encouraged her changed it to 'Callas' to climb the bookshelves make it more manageable in their Chelsea house, right up to the ceilingStates. It When she was back in Athens - supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for her voice - she was raised under the Nazi occupation by a mother who mercilessly exploited her and made no secret between the two of them, as her mother, Testament of Youth Author Vera Brittainpreference for her elder sister, would have immediately anticipated cracked skulls and broken armsJackie.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844084760</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Vyvyen BrendonChristopher Edge|title=Prep School Children: A Class Apart Over Two CenturiesBlack Hole Cinema Club
|rating=4
|genre=Home and FamilyConfident Readers|summary=''Prep School Children'' is Vyvyen Brendon's second collection (''Children Lucas and his friends are all booked in for a movie marathon at their local cinema, a place that has the nickname of the Raj'The Black Hole' was the first). It explores the pupil experience All big movie fans, using primary sources like weekly letters homethey're looking forward to lots of exciting films, memoirs and interviewsmany, many snacks! However, and less immediate material such as fictionthe movie starts, they very quickly realise that something about this new film format is very different, school magazines and headmastersthey are swept up into an adventure they couldn' biographiest even imagine. I came But as they lurch from one film genre to the book with some questions: next, can they figure out what was it like to be a boarder at a prep school? What difference did a prep school education make to life as an adulton earth is going on? Why parents might send their children Will they ever get back to such schools when the horrors were well-knowncinema, many of the dads presumably having survived the experience themselves.and to their real lives?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847062873</amazonuk>1839942738
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Bill ButterworthRachel Greenlaw|title=Reversing Global Warming For Profit Compass and Blade
|rating=3.5
|genre=Politics and SocietyTeens|summary=There aren't many climate change deniers left, are there? We all know it's there. We all know, too, that I can hear the world's population growth is on a collision course with song of the dwindling of its resourcessea. The world's going to get hottercall of the deep, its weather more extremethe answering beat in my heart. Fossil fuels are going to run out. More and more people will compete for fewer and fewer of civilisation's luxuries. We're all worried. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904312810</amazonuk>}}
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Helen FitzgeraldJames Sherwood Metts|title=Bloody WomenPlanet Storyland
|rating=4.5
|genre=CrimeConfident Readers|summary=Before reading ''Bloody Women''Things have been a bit sticky for the Earthlings. AI and automation have been proceeding apace, I hadnoften replacing jobs they't heard of the author Helen Fitzgerald re paid to do and by the title other tasks that took time to accomplish. Just as they were beginning to get used to all this technological change and blurbstarting to think of other, I expected a standard crime-thriller novel. But early onnew ways to spend time, I realised this wasn't the casealong came an awful pandemic. The novel Life was a kind of black comedy pretty much shut down and written , along with wit and humourit, despite all the theme of murder and violencemany daily social interactions on which they depend so heavily.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846971330</amazonuk>1736128426
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Patrick Casey and Richard I HaleMatthew Tree|title=For College, Club & Country - A History of Clifton Rugby Football ClubWe'll Never Know|rating=4.5|genre=HistoryLiterary Fiction|summary=Clifton Rugby Football Club can proudly trace its history back to the very emergence of the sport of rugby union. Founded in September 1872, the same year that William Webb Ellis, who is reputed Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to have been the rebellious Rugby schoolboy who first ran with the ballbe different from his father, died. In reality, it is highly likely that the Webb Ellis story is something of a spin job on behalf drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of Rugby School, although it did mean that Rugby School was able to impose its rules on the game being exceptional at a time when most public schools any of his artistic passions all failed miserably and who had their own rules for playing versions endless crises of the gameself confidence. So Tim applied himself to his studies, cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and set himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1904312756</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8
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{{Frontpage
|author=A G Slatter
|title=The Briar Book of the Dead
|rating=5
|genre=Fantasy
|summary='' There's a part of me 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.''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Zadie Smith1529900360|title=Changing My Mind: Occasional EssaysThe Ghost Orchid|author=Jonathan Kellerman
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=Private investigator Agatha Raisin is not a happy woman. She is concerned with the rate at which her body is ageing; It hadn't been Lt Milo Sturgis's fault that Alex Delaware had been badly injured but he felt responsible and even worseafter Alex recovered, her exSturgis was reluctant to ask for his help on difficult cases. His assertions that there were only open-husband, James, is getting married to a much younger woman and Agatha has been invited to -shut cases which didn't need the weddinghelp of a psychologist only worked for a while. She goes Finally, it was Robin, Delaware's partner, with plenty of friends in tow and looks forward to the whole thing being over as soon as possiblewho nudged Milo into asking for help again. She sees James just before knew that the wedding, when he makes it clear involvement was something that he has changed his mind and wants to pull out of the weddingman she loved needed. Then The next case did look simple, though. Two lovers were murdered in the bride is killed, by swimming pool of a bullet through remote property in Bel Air. He was the window, heir to an Italian shoe empire and James she is married to an extremely rich man and Agatha are it's not the primary suspectsItalian. Can they prove their innocence while finding out who But which of them was the real perpetrator isprimary target?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845299531</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Janice Galloway1529395224|title=Collected Stories|rating=5|genre=Short Stories|summary=In this collection, stories are taken from two previous volumes, Blood and Where You Find It. Letting the Cat Out of the Bag: The forty-two snap shots of life are mainly of women and young girls, struggling with emotions, sometimes realized and sometimes not. In all, there seems to be an underlying link Secret Life of isolation and truth. The settings are varied, from a visit to the dentist to the place known as home, to a walk in the evening. We have a peek into the deepest darkest corners of everyday relationships, with lovers, partners and most of all ourselves.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099540398</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewVet|author=Janice Galloway|title=Collected StoriesSion Rowlands|rating=3.5|genre=Short StoriesAnimals and Wildlife|summary=In this collection, stories are taken from two previous volumes, Blood and Where You Find ItSiôn Rowlands fell into veterinary science accidentally. The forty-two snap shots of life are mainly of women His father was a GP and young girls, struggling with emotions, sometimes realized and sometimes not. In all, there seems Rowlands didn't want to be an underlying link of isolation and truth. The settings are variedfollow in his footsteps, from a visit to particularly when he considered the dentist to the place known as home, to a walk in the eveningstrain that being on-call put on his father's life. We have a peek into When he was seventeen he took the deepest darkest corners opportunity of everyday relationships, doing work experience with lovers, partners a family friend who was a vet and most of all ourselves.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099540398</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Herta Muller|title=The Passport|rating=3|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Meet Windischwas convinced this was the job for him. A miller in a small villageBefore long, he trudges through there, and through his neighbours, and through his life, counting his days and hours, for reasons that are not initially clearwas at Liverpool University. But he does want something It hadn't - as with so many students - been his dream since he is waiting for was a passport so he can leave for other climeschild. The perks of his job are the bags of flour If anything, he leaves by the mayor's house with regularity, as an open bribe, but there might d wanted to be a bigger sacrifice to have to makeprofessional footballer.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1852421398</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Billy Hopkins0861541774|title=Tommy's WorldA Nye of Pheasants|author=Steve Burrows
|rating=4
|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=Tommy Hopkins was born DCI Domenic Jejeune's close friend and former colleague, Danny Maik, has taken a short holiday in October 1886 in CollyhurstSingapore to meet up with an old ally, one of the poorer, inner-city suburbs of ManchesterGuy Trueman. His father had quite Maik was involved in a good job and there wasn't street brawl - he would later maintain that he was facing a lot of money to spare but Tommy remembered the home as being filled man armed with love a knife - and laughterhe killed a Ghurka. He was an only child Initially, he faced a charge of manslaughter but thought evidence came to light that suggested that he was spoilt in terms of affection rather than in might have planned to murder the form of worldly goodsman. All that was to change when his father died of spinal meningitis and Now he and his mother had to move into cheaper lodgingscould be facing the death penalty. Even that tenuous security wasnDomenic Jejeune can do nothing to help as any interference from another police force could provoke a diplomatic incident and wouldn't to last for long – his mother died of a heart attack in her thirties, leaving Tommy an orphan before he was eight years oldhelp Danny at all.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755359585</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Michael GrantAlexander McCall Smith|title=HungerThe Perfect Passion Company
|rating=4.5
|genre=TeensGeneral Fiction|summary=The kids of Perdido Beach are still within the FAYZPerfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, a barrier erected run by Little Pete - no-one knows how - when Ness and operating as an alternative to all the nuclear plant went into meltdownonline apps in providing a more personal, tailored service. An uneasy truce between Sam's tribe of Perdido Beach kids Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and Caine's Coates Academy kids look after the business, as Ness is beginning planning to take a trip to waverCanada to get away for a while. The food Katie is running coming out of a break up with a bad boyfriend, and so jumps at the Darkness has its claws in all those it's encounteredchance to come home to Edinburgh. Caine himself is reduced And so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, thanks to delirium by the voice of the Darkness in his head 44 Scotland Street and Lana the healer knows it's inevitable that she too will answer its call. Sam is struggling Isabel Dalhousie novels, but with some new characters who quickly begin to keep any form of ordercharm. As more and more kids begin to develop special powers Katie has no experience in running a business, or in match-making, but Ness has full confidence in her abilities, and the hunger bites deeper into everyonethere's belliesalways her very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, it's inevitable that conflict will break out. And it doesWilliam, in some very unpleasant ways. to lend a hand…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1405251522</amazonuk>1846976596
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Various0811771741|title=Hello Kitty Guide to LifeInstaKnits for Baby|author=Melissa Leapman
|rating=4
|genre=Children's Non-FictionCrafts|summary=Melissa Leapman's ''Hello KittyInstaKnits for Baby'' is gives us a huge worldwide phenomenon with a whole heap collection of knits from toys to blankets. Some will be quick knits - others are of related merchandise featuring the cute cartoon cat 'long, cosy afternoons in dresses and ribbonsfront of the fire' variety. It appeals The projects are divided by the time they'll take to girls complete - less than five hours, five to ten hours, ten to twenty hours and women of many agesmore than twenty hours. All the projects are attractive, but this new hardback book modern and useable. I perhaps show my age when I wonder about 'social-media-worthy projects'Hello Kitty – Guide to Life'' is aimed at the brandbut that's younger fans, probably around 6 to 14 year oldsme being picky.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>000732622X</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Claire TomalinDean Koontz|title=Thomas Hardy: The Time-Torn ManBad Weather Friend
|rating=4.5
|genre=BiographyParanormal|summary=I came to this biography Benny is having read three of Hardy's novelsa terrifically bad day. He loses his job, he loses his fiancee, and his house gets trashed. Oh, and someone has delivered a really weird, two quite recentlydisturbing coffin-sized object to his home, and some of it's possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the thing that has trashed his poetryhouse! The thing is, but knowing Benny is the very little about him as last person to deserve all this bad luck. He is a nice person. A really nice person. Claire Tomalin So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the delivery to his house is a new friend, a bad weather friend called Spike, who has brought been sent to help him admirably since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a good person. Spike is going to life in these pagestake care of Benny, and will certainly take care of Benny's enemies, if he, Benny, and Harper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0141017414</amazonuk>1662500491
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Liza PalmerAdam Stower|title=A Field Guide to Burying Your ParentsMurray and Bun
|rating=4.5
|genre=Women's FictionConfident Readers |summary=Grace is reluctantly participating in a 5k race when she receives the news: her estranged sister Murray is calling supposed to tell her their estranged father has had be a stroke. That's two lots of estrangement in just two generations of familyhumble, tidy and friendly cat, but a summons one who is a summonsable to sleep and eat and eat and sleep and, and Grace soon finds herself dragged back into the heart of the family she desertedwell, working with the others to discover the many hidden secrets whatever takes his fancy next of the father who deserted them alltwo. It But he's a tough jump from her happy life of bad magician's cat, so his favourite bun has been turned into a good jobhyperactive sticky rabbit called Bun, a new boyfriend and a home of her own to return to the family life she left behind a long time agocatflap they both use can chuck them out, and Grace has to decide whether she can ignore not into the pull regular back garden, but into a world of her biological siblings once more or whether the frightening adventure and whiffs. This time has come round it drops them into a Viking land, where a troll hunter is expected – well, one much bigger than Murray was, to let bygones be bygones. After all, while there are lots of four letter words she would associate with her familyhonest, but he's turned up and he'love'' is not one of them.ll have to do…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0340962151</amazonuk>0008561249
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jennifer JohnstonB0C47LV1PC|title=Truth or FictionFragility|author=Mosby Woods
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Caroline Wallace is not Can you make a happy woman. She has waited ten years for her lover to propose to her, and now just as he finally does, she has to go to Dublin to interview faded literary star Desmond Fitzmaurice. Desmond promises his tale will be brimful of 'sex and violence'Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, but Caroline has no idea of is the question should you make it? Or is the mystery question if you did, would it land? The catch is that lies at the heart of his storyanswer for both could well be.... no.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755330544</amazonuk>}}
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Guy Delisle1529431735|title=Pyongyang: A Journey in North KoreaThe Winter Visitor|author=James Henry|rating=4.5|genre=Graphic NovelsCrime|summary=Meet GuyIt's February 1991 and Essex is bitingly cold, which made Bruce Hopkins' return all the more surprising. He'd been exiled on the Costa del Sol as a wanted drug smuggler for a decade. The return has come about because he's had a Frenchletter from his ex-Canadian animatorwife, leaving home for a short stay in the capital of one of the worldsaying that she's most intriguing, unknown ill and alien cultures - Pyongyang, North Korea - so he can work on a TV cartoon co-productionhasn't long to live. Forced It's hard to stay in one of the three official hotels designed for foreignersfeel any sympathy when Hopkins is abducted, so that the locals stripped to his underwear and people such as he do not have sent to mix, he see glimpses of a watery grave in the unique socialist dictatorship, stunning views boot of the buildings forced through the poverty, and thousands of unreadable facesa stolen Ford Sierra.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224079905</amazonuk> Is it a warning from a Spanish gang or a problem closer to home?
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sam OsmanAlex Bell and Tim McDonagh|title=QuicksilverThe Glorious Race of Magical Beasts|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=''Quicksilver'' Eli is a busy lad – by day an apprentice in the story of Wolfiewondrous library we start by visiting with him, Tala and Zi'ib, three ordinary children from three different continentsin the evening a helper at the dessert cafe his gran owns and runs. They have never met Eli lives with his lovely gran, until too – for there is a strange chain of events involving gun-toting gangs and eccentric old men means they all end up generation missing in Thornhamthe family. A few short years ago, Eli's parents were both lost to the titular race, a London suburb. They soon realise they are connected: they globe-trotting adventure where all entrants have green eyes with golden flecks and to navigate the world in the company of a missing parentmagical beast. But was it fate, chance or This has made the ley lines that encompass race anathema to the earth that brought them together? Before you know it they're solving clues and fulfilling pair – but when a one thousand year old prophecy. But all they want bad incident at the eatery leads to do a confession from gran, Eli knows his only hope is find their parentsto dare to enter what he most hates, with the sole aim the prize of magic at the end – the only thing to possibly save his gran.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1407105736</amazonuk>0571382231
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Diane Janes178763681X|title=Edwardian Murder: Ightham & the Morpeth Train RobberyKnife Skills for Beginners|author=Orlando Murrin|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=Two murders Chef Paul Delamare took place a teaching job at a residential cookery school in Edwardian England less than two years apart, one in the south-east and the other in the north-eastBelgravia. At first glance they seemed He didn't really want to have nothing but celebrity chef Christian Wagner had a way of getting both men and women to do with each other, but years later a link between them was hinted at though never proved beyond doubtwhat he wanted. The author has investigated Paul ''somehow'' got the impression that he'd be at the connection and come up with school to assist Paul, who had a riveting bookbroken arm, but it didn't turn out that way.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0752449451</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Peter Gay|title=Modernism: The Lure of Heresy teaching - From Baudelaire to Beckett and Beyond|rating=4|genre=History|summary=It is impossible not to be impressed by the sheer scope of cultural historian Peter Gayproblems - are all his own. The one thing he hadn's 2007 study of Modernismt expected was for someone to turn up dead. Unfortunately, newly released in this paperback edition. He notes in he was the person who discovered the introduction body and everyone knows that it is not a 'comprehensive history' but rather 'a study of its rise, triumphs, and decline'. What is remarkable though, is the attempt police consider that person to include be the whole gamut of artistic fields in this coherent studyprime suspect.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099441969</amazonuk>
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