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<metadesc>Book review siteExpert, with books full book reviews from most walks of literary life; fiction, biographynon-fiction, crime, cookery and children's books & self-published books plus author interviews and & top tens.</metadesc><h1 id="mf-title">The Bookbag</h1>Hello from The Bookbag, a site featuring books from all the many walks of literary life - [[: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. It's the bag we take to the library, the charity shop and the bookshop. Sometimes it holds the latest releases, but at other times there'll be old favourites, books for the children, books for the home. They're sometimes our own books or books from the local library. They're often 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|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.
Reviews by readers from all the many walks of literary life. With author interviews, features and top tens. You'll be sure to find something you'll want to read here. Dig in! Find us on [[File:facebook.gif|link=https://www.facebook.com/TheBookbagCoUk|alt=Facebook]] [https://www.facebook.com/TheBookbagCoUk '''Facebook'''], [[File:twitter.gif|link=http://twitter.com/TheBookbag|alt=Follow us on Twitter]] [http://twitter.com/TheBookbag '''Twitter'''], [[File:instagram_classic_logo.png|link=https://www.instagram.com/thebookbag.co.uk/|alt=Follow us on Instagram]] [https://www.instagram.com/thebookbag.co.uk/ '''Instagram'''] and [[File:LinkedIn.png|link=https://www.linkedin.com/in/the-bookbag-1b12a264/|alt=LinkedIn]] There are currently '''{{PAGESINCATEGORY: Reviews}}''' [[:Category:Reviews|reviews ]] at TheBookbag.
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==Reviews of the The Best New Books==
'''Read [[:Category:New Reviews|new reviews by category]]. '''<br>
'''Read [[:Category:Features|the latest features]].''' <!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->
'''Read [[Forthcoming Publications|reviews of books about to be published]].
{{Frontpage
|author=Sylvie Cathrall|title=A Letter to the Luminous Deep|rating=5|genre=Science Fiction|summary= There are few greater joys than a book which lives up to a compelling premise. And this is one of them.|isbn= 0356522776}}{{Frontpage|isbn=B083Z3ZZ610008517061|title=Broken Silence (DS Nikki Parekh 2)Death in a Lonely Place|author=Liz MistryStig Abell
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=When we first meet him Stefan Marcovici Former Metropolitan Police detective, Jake Johnson, has been in settled into his rustic life at Little Sky. There’s perhaps a little uncertainty about the UK future of his life with his vet girlfriend, Livia and her daughter Maria for a while. He came expecting to work Diana, as moving in together would mean a gardener lot of compromise: does Jake give up his off-grid and Maria was relaxing life to be a nanny. 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? Stefan ends up doing slave labour For the moment they’re enjoying life in a chicken factory: you can imagine what happens to an eighteen-year-old girlthe present and putting the future on the back burner.
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Justine Avery and Daria Yudina1786482126|title=This Book Is Alive! The Janus Stone (Living BookDr Ruth Galloway)|rating=4|genre=For Sharing|summary= Books ''want'' you to read them! They're not intimidating or standoffish or particular about readers. Books ''want'' to be read. This is the key message in Justine Avery's latest offering, ''This Book Is Alive!''. By anthropomorphising the relationship between book and young reader, she's sending an invitation to all - pick me up, read me, be my friend, we can go on a journey together. It's a great message, don't you think?|isbn= 1948124416}} {{Frontpage|isbn=0241984653|title=I Made a Mistake|author=Jane CorryElly Griffiths
|rating=4.5
|genre=ThrillersCrime|summary=We know from Builders were demolishing an old house in Norwich - the very beginning that theresite was going to hold seventy-five 'luxury's apartments - when they discovered the bones of a child beneath a tragedy about to happendoorway. There was no skull. On Was this a January evening on ritual killing or murder? Inevitably, Dr Ruth Galloway finds herself working with DCI Harry Nelson. It's difficult as Ruth knows, but Nelson doesn't, that she is pregnant with his child as a very crowded platform 3 result of Waterloo Underground station a man falls under an oncoming trainthe one night they spent together some three months ago. That man Her condition will be obvious before long, not least because Ruth is Matthew Gordon. Much later we see Poppy Page in the witness box prone to sudden bouts of a crown court, getting a very rough ride from the prosecuting barristersickness.
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn= Maryse Condé0008551324|title= The Wondrous and Tragic Life of Ivan and IvanaDevil You Know (D S Max Craigie)|author=Neil Lancaster|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary FictionCrime|summary= We live in a post-world: post-colonialism, post-modernism, post-truthIt's unusual for anyone from the Hardie family to approach the police. The list goes on Neither side likes or has any respect for the other. There are numerous works that utilise the prefix post- But Davie Hardie is struggling in their categorisation, but perhaps none more so than Maryse Condé. In her new novel, ''The Wondrous and Tragic Life of Ivan prison and Ivanahe'', Condé writes with fervour about s prepared to tell the scars left by colonialism on police where the countries to which it latched itself. Ivan and Ivana are twins born in Guadeloupe, body of a French overseas department. They grow up with intense missing person is buried and passionate feelings who was responsible for each otherher death. As they grow up This person, he promises, is someone big and move overseas, it will be worth the ravages of a post-colonial society drive them apart with tragic consequencespolice doing what he wants.|isbn=1642860697}}{{Frontpage|author= Abi Elphinstone|title= Jungle Drop (The Unmapped Chronicles)|rating= 4|genre= Confident Readers|summary= Abi Elphinstone has said that she connects with her world-building through her characters. In And what he wants is to be transferred to an interview with [Books For Keeps], she described visualising her characters "wearing head torches which gradually reveal open prison to serve the world they are seeing to her remainder of his sentence and to the readerget an early parole date." Just as the darkness of a mine Not much to ask, is cut through by a spear of light it? The new Deputy Police Constable doesn't think so too and she's even prepared to do quarrelsome Fox and Fibber get their first glimpse of the phantasmagorical glowother thing that Hardie demanded -in-the-dark realm of Jungle Drop when they emerge through the mouth of a Dragon on the Here make certain that DS Max Craigie and There Express. Running anyone who works with him is kept well away from the opprobrium of their demanding and selfish parents, they must address what is in their hearts to find what they seek's happening.|isbn= 1471173682
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B084VNRRD60008405026|title=Killing Mind A Stranger in the Family (D I Kim StoneMaeve Kerrigan 11)|author=Angela MarsonsJane Casey
|rating=5
|genre=Crime
|summary=It looked very like a suicide, and to begin with, that 's sixteen years since nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her bed one summer night. She was how both DI Kim Stone never found and Keats, the pathologist called itinvestigation ground to a halt. It was only later that Stone Now, her mother, Helena, and her team realised that when Samantha Brown cut her throat, hers was not the only hand holding the knifefather are dead in their bed. It was Initially, it looks like a straightforward murder. Sammy/suicide but there's parents. Myles something about the positioning of the bodies that makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and Kate were a little bit reluctant to say what their daughter had been doing recentlyher boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. The property where she was found was less homely than most hotel rooms: her mother What looked as though it was about going to accuse her husband of saying that Sammy was ready..be an open-and-shut case is now a complex double murder. But what was Sammy ready Kerrigan is convinced that the explanation lies in Rosalie's disappearance: others (such as Derwent'for'' and where was their other daughters boss, Sophie?Una Burt) are less convinced.
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn= Hana Tooke0571379877|title= The UnadoptablesKellerby Code|author=Jonny Sweet|rating= 3.5|genre= Confident ReadersCrime|summary= In the winter of 1880Edward Jevons is a working-class young man, five babies are abandoned at the Little Tulip orphanage in Amsterdamobsessed with his upper-class friends, much to the annoyance of matron GasbeekRobert and Stanza. Robert's a theatre director. Twelve years later He's also self-obsessed, Miloudemanding, the last of the five babies handsome and entitled and uses Edward to be abandoned back run errands for him. Edward has been in that winter, struggles to work out the identity of her parents from the clues she was abandoned with: a small coffin love with clawStanza since their university days -marks on the outside, a cat doll made by someone called Bram Poppenmaker and a velvet blanket. She, along with the other four, patiently wait for Milouhe's parents drunkenly confided how he feels to come back and take her homeRobert. However, when the five children are sold to the dodgy merchant Meneer Rotman, they know they have Most men in Robert's position would stay away from Stanza or tell Edward that a relationship had begun between them but he's not like most men: Edward is left to escape. And so begins stumble upon the adventure two of them kissing in a lifetime as the Unadoptables join forces to reunite Milou with her parents, all the time being pursued by the Kinderbureau and Rotman…|isbn=0241417465dark passageway.
}}
{{Frontpage
|author= Alison WeirJo Callaghan|title= Six Tudor Queens: Katheryn Howard The Tainted QueenLeave No Trace|rating= 4|genre= Historical FictionCrime|summary= ''Katheryn was seven when When a man is found crucified on the top of a hill in Nuneaton, DCS Kat Frank finds herself assigned to the case alongside her mother died''sidekick, thus we are thrust into this tumultuous time in young Katherynthe AI detective Lock. It's lifetheir first live case together, trying to find a home, both figuratively and literally, where she can grow and grievehaving previously been very successful with several cold cases. Unfortunately, Katheryn But when there is followed by bad luck and she learns an important lessona second body found crucified a few days later, she Kat is too young, too poor suddenly struggling with a potential serial killer and too unimportant a very high profile case that draws a lot of unwanted attention to their AI Future Policing project. Will they be of any value able to anyonesolve the case in time, but she is beautiful or will Kat find herself taken off the case and surely, that will count for something in the endpotentially, won't itout of a career?|isbn=1472227778139851120X
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=14059461721399613073|title=The Glass HouseMoral Injuries|author=Eve ChaseChristie Watson
|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical FictionThrillers|summary=Rita lost both her parents in Olivia, Laura and Anjali met on the first day of medical school and their friendship would keep them inseparable for a car crash when she was just six years old: since then she's always craved quarter of a familycentury. She'd lived with her grandmother in Torquay until she got Olivia is ruthlessly ambitious, which is a job as bonus when you aim to be a nanny with the Harrington family in Londoncardiothoracic surgeon. Soon her engagement to Fred, Laura is a Torquay butcher, fell through perfectionist and a trauma doctor. Anjali is the free spirit of the Harringtons became her familygroup and she becomes a GP. In 1971, after When we first meet them they're at a fire at the London house, Jeannie Harrington, her children, 13-yeardrug and alcohol-old Hera fuelled party and 6-year-old Teddy, along with Rita went to the familyit's house going to end in the Forest of Deantragedy. It wasnWe don't ''quite'' dilapidatedknow who suffered the tragedy or the consequences. Twenty-five years later there will be an eerily similar event that will impact the three friends. This time, but it certainly wasn't the same standard as the London house had been before the fires their teenage children who are involved.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=00083861370241636604|title=Just My LuckThe Trading Game: A Confession|author=Adele ParksGary Stevenson
|rating=4.5
|genre=ThrillersAutobiography|summary=Elaine Winterdale took 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 fall for pin-stripe suit and his background is the landlordEast End, where he was familiar with violence, poverty and injustice. Aged 37, she got a suspended sentence because a faulty gas boiler There was no posh public school on his CV - but he had caused been to the deaths London School of 29Economics. Stevenson is bright -yearextremely bright -old Reveka Albu and her 2-year-old son Benkehe 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. Toma Albu It was his ability at what was, essentially, husband and fathera card game which got him an internship with Citibank. Eventually, had found them when he returned homethis turned into permanent employment as a trader.
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Justine Avery and Ema Tepic 1035021803|title=I Dreamed YouThe Antique Hunter's Guide to Murder|author=C L Miller|rating=43.5|genre=For SharingCrime|summary=It is always a pleasure 's twenty years since Freya Lockwood has been back to review the English country village where she grew up. She's back now because of a new book by Justine Avery request for help from her beloved aunt, Carole. Freya's former mentor and Carole''I Dreamed You'' carries on s close friend, Arthur Crockleford, is dead and the circumstances seem suspicious, to say the tradition beautifullyleast. This little book is Arthur was the reason why Freya had not been back to the perfect exemplar of our category namevillage: Arthur, she feels, let her down badly. Even though they were in business together as antique hunters, ''For Sharing''she has not felt able to be near the man or pursue the profession she loved. It is After the split, she worked in a mother's cafe, met and married James (on the rebound from the love letter to of her childlife, told in rhyme formwho was murdered) and Freya and James have now divorced.|isbn=1948124505}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Sharon BlackieAllTomorrowsFutureCover|title=If Women Rose RootedAll Tomorrow's Futures: Fictions that Disrupt|author=Benjamin Greenaway and Stephen Oram (Editors)
|rating=5
|genre= BiographyScience Fiction|summary= ''Opening up new ways of thinking about the shape of things to come.'' I normally say 've heard it said that 'technology' is what happens after you can tell how much a book means to me by how many pages have corners turned down're eighteen. Perhaps an even greater measure Well, I must confess that there have been more than a few decades of impact is setting out to buy technology in my own copy before lifetime. I've finished reading kept up reasonably well with what's advantageous to me but I'm left with the one Ifeeling that it've borroweds 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 want to avoid clichés like 'powerfulm reading someone who knows what they' 'inspiring' 'life-changing' – although it 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.}}{{Frontpage|author=Sunny Singh|title=Hotel Arcadia|rating=3.5|genre=Thrillers |summary=The Hotel Arcadia is definitely a luxury hotel in an unnamed city that has suddenly been violently taken over by a terrorist group. Hiding from the first two terrorists who are rampaging through, killing everyone on site, there is Sam, a wartime photographer and only time will tell about Abhi, the third – but clichés exist hotel manager. As Abhi continues to try to care remotely for the residents who are still alive in the hotel, he forms a reason bond with Sam who refuses to be cowed by events, and Ikeeps on venturing out of her room to try to capture what'm not sure I can succinctly put it any betters happened through her photography. Although they only ever talk over the phone, their friendship grows as Abhi tries to help her keep safe and they both wait to see if they will be rescued before they are discovered by the terrorists.|isbn=1912836017086154742X
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Patrick Ness1529153298|title=BurnThe List of Suspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey
|rating=5
|genre=TeensGeneral Fiction|summary=It's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. (A woman? I mean, honestly...) She'On a cold Sunday evening in early 1957 - the very days not what's worrying Miv's family, though. Women have been disappearing. Well, in factthey've been murdered, but to have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. Miv's upset because she's overheard that Dwight David Eisenhower took the oath of office for the second time as President of the United States of America - Sarah Dewhurst waited with her father in the parking lot of the Chevron gas station for the dragon he'd hired wants to help on move the farm.family 'Down South' It. When you's 1950s America but not as we know it. In this alternate USre from Yorkshire, there Down South is still a Cold War with the Russiansfrightening, foreign place, still a concomitant arms racebest avoided. And For Miv, the stain of racism is just as crushing - something mixed-race Sarah and move would mean leaving her Japanese American best friend Jason are only too well aware of. As is the deeply unpleasant town deputy, Kelby. But one thing is ''very'' different. In this alternate worldSharon, there are dragons. The dragons live in an uneasy peace with humans and communication is minimal. But a few of these winged creatures she'll do hire out their labour anything to human in return for gold prevent that. She's not worried about the dangers or that her Mum's stopped talking - they are dragons, after allto anyone.Poor Frankie! |isbn= 1406375500
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn= Angela Woolfe1398524085|title= Roxy and Jones: The Great Fairytale Cover-UpHas Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter?|author=Nicci French|rating= 4.5|genre= Confident ReadersCrime|summary= After Charlotte Salter was expected at her father gets married for the umpteenth timehusband's fiftieth birthday party but never turned up. Her children, sons Niall, Roxy Humperdinck is sent to live with Paul and Ollie and her half-sister Gretel in Rexopolisdaughter, the capital city of the Kingdom of IllustriaEtty. Gretel works as a toilet cleaner for the Ministry of Soup. Why does a country like Illustria need an entire ministry dedicated to soupare all worried but - strangely - her husband, you ask? WellAlec, after Roxy finds a secret passage in her bathroom and meets a snarky young woman known only as Jones, she soon finds out whyis not. Turns out Shortly afterwards, fairy tales are realEtty and Greg, and find the Ministry’s official job is to safeguard all knowledge body of them and monitor Greg's father, Duncan Ackerley, in the living fairy talesriver. And, when It was an evil queen breaks out of a maximum-security prison and threatens easy assumption for the police to reinstate her reign of terror, Roxy make that Duncan had murdered Charlie and Jones hold then committed suicide when he couldn't stand the fate of the world in guilt. The Salter children are not convinced but there's little else they can do but get on with their young hands…so, no pressure then!|isbn=1406391379lives and wonder about what really happened.
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Kat Dunn1035906708|title=Dangerous RemedyDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=We tend to think of Maria Callas as Greek, but she was born to Greek parents in Manhattan, New York, in December 1923 and only moved to Athens when she was thirteen. Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to 'Callas' to make it more manageable in the States. 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 of her preference for her elder sister, Jackie.
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Christopher Edge
|title=Black Hole Cinema Club
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Lucas and his friends are all booked in for a movie marathon at their local cinema, a place that has the nickname of 'The Black Hole'. All big movie fans, they're looking forward to lots of exciting films, and many, many snacks! However, as the movie starts, they very quickly realise that something about this new film format is very different, and they are swept up into an adventure they couldn't even imagine. But as they lurch from one film genre to the next, can they figure out what on earth is going on? Will they ever get back to the cinema, and to their real lives?
|isbn=1839942738
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Rachel Greenlaw
|title=Compass and Blade
|rating=3.5
|genre=Teens
|summary= It's Paris, 1794. The Revolution is five years old and 'I can hear the country in the midst song of violent political turmoil between the Revolutionaries, trying to maintain their control by whatever means necessary, and the Royalists, still loyal to monarchy intentsea. Caught in a no man's land between the two warring factions is the Battalion The call of the Dead. Led by a disillusioned revolutionary's daughterdeep, the band of outcasts have made a name for themselves rescuing innocent citizens from the violent fallout. But they may have gotten answering beat in over their heads with their latest rescue, Olympe, a girl with a disturbing history and powers that might just make her the spark that blows up the powder-keg of revolutionary Parismy heart. |isbn=1789543649}}''
}}
{{Frontpage
|author= Maggie Tokuda-HallJames Sherwood Metts|title= The Mermaid, the Witch and the SeaPlanet Storyland|rating= 4.5|genre= TeensConfident Readers|summary= On Things have been a bit sticky for the pirate ship DoveEarthlings. AI and automation have been proceeding apace, Flora the girl has assumed the identity of Florian the man in an attempt often replacing jobs they're paid to do and other tasks that took time to fit in with the crewaccomplish. Life is hard Just as a pirate, trust they were beginning to get used to all this technological change and empathy are the first things starting to be discardedthink of other, but anything has new ways to be better than starving on the streetsspend time, along came an awful pandemic. MeanwhileLife was pretty much shut down and, along with it, all the young Lady Evelyn Hasegawa boards the Dove, headed off to be married to a military man she's never met many daily social interactions on some far-flung colony of the Nipran Empirewhich they depend so heavily. Neither of them expects to be thrown together by fate, never mind fall in love…|isbn=15362043151736128426
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Frederic Beigbeder and Frank Wynne (translator)Matthew Tree|title=A Life Without EndWe'll Never Know|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=I looked at the calendar the other weekTimothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, a drunk and disappointedly realised I have a birthday this year – I know, yet another one. It won't be one chronic underachiever whose dreams of the major numbers, but the time when I have the same number as Heinz varieties looms on the horizon. And then a few being exceptional at any of the big 0-numbers, his artistic passions all failed miserably and if all goes well, I'll be an OBE. (Which who had endless crises of course stands for Over Bloody Eightyself confidence.) Now if that's the extent of my mid-life crisis, I guess I have So Tim applied himself to be happy. Our author here doesn't use that exact phrasehis studies, but he might be said to be living one. Determined to find out how to prolong life for as long as he wants – he would like to see 400 – he hops right into bed with the assistant to the first geneticist he interviews, and they end up with a child, which is at least a way of continuing the life of cultivated his abilities rather than his genes, daydreams and a motive to keep ongoingset himself high but achievable ambitions. But how can he get to not flick the 'final way out' switch, especially when foie gras tastes so nice?|isbn=1642860670B0CVFXPGP8
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Holly JacksonA G Slatter|title=Good Girl, Bad BloodThe Briar Book of the Dead
|rating=5
|genre=TeensFantasy|summary=A month on from the explosive conclusion '' There's a part of me that wants to keep this just to the Andie Bell mysterymyself for however long I can. This secret magic of my own, all mine, at last. I just want to enjoy it for a new normal has settled over Little Kiltonwhile. Max Hastings' assault trial thunders on' Within a remote mountain pass, far away from the world, Pippa's viral podcast detailing her journey lies Silverton; a town under the protection of discovering the truth about Andie and SalBriar's deaths has gained massive media attention, Cara a family of witches who protect the town and her sister Naomi are reeling the wider world from the realisation that their fatherDarklands. Though she has always wished for magic, Elliot WardEllie Briar is the first non-witch to be born into her family for generations and as such since she was young, had murdered Sal Singh her training as a steward revolved around letters and administration rather than spells and kidnapped a girl he thought was Andie after she stumbled out of his housepotions. When her grandmother suddenly dies, Ellie's cousin Audra becomes the Briar Witch, bleedingthe town's leader, and disappeared into the nightEllie takes her place beside her. As challenges come her way left, right and centre, Ellie uncovers the town tries rare ability to heal againcommunicate with the dead, six years on from putting her at the events heart of that night, tragedy strikes againa maelstrom of chaos. Jamie ReynoldsReeling from one family secret to another, older brother Ellie must decide who to trust and determine what to one of Pippado as the Briar witches's best friends has gone missing. And solegacy, alongside her difficult life as a semi-famous eighteen-year-oldeverything they have sacrificed to survive, she is once again taken down a dark, twisted path to discover the truthunder threat.|isbn=14052977511803364548
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B084H8F2CF1529900360|title=The Body Under the BridgeGhost Orchid|author=Nick LouthJonathan Kellerman|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=DCI Craig Gillard was annoyed to be pulled away from the funeral service for a serving police officer, particularly when he discovered It hadn't been Lt Milo Sturgis's fault that Alex Delaware had been badly injured but he felt responsible and even after Alex recovered, Sturgis was reluctant to take charge of the enquiry into a missing womanask for his help on difficult cases. Beatrice Ulbricht was twentyHis assertions that there were only open-five years old and a student of music at -shut cases which didn't need the Royal College help of Musica psychologist only worked for a while. Finally, it was Robin, Delaware's partner, who nudged Milo into asking for help again. She had been due to play with knew that the other members of involvement was something that the Lysander String Quartet at man she loved needed. The next case did look simple, though. Two lovers were murdered in the Church swimming pool of St Martin-a remote property in-the-Fields but hadn't turned upBel Air. Gillard didn't understand why his immediate involvement He was necessary until Chief Constable Alison Rigby explained that Beatricethe heir to an Italian shoe empire and she is married to an extremely rich man and it's father not the Italian. But which of them was Karl-Otto Ulbricht, Germany's Minister of Justice.the primary target?
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn= Linda Scott1529395224|title= Letting the Cat Out of the Bag: The Double X EconomySecret Life of a Vet|author=Sion Rowlands|rating=3.5|genre= Politics Animals and SocietyWildlife|summary=Siôn Rowlands fell into veterinary science accidentally. His father was a GP and Rowlands didn''Women are economically disadvantaged in every country t want to follow in his footsteps, particularly when he considered the world'strain that being on-call put on his father's life. It's When he was seventeen he took the opportunity of doing work experience with a family friend who was a bold statement vet and was convinced this was the job for an opening chapterhim. Before long, but ithe was at Liverpool University. It hadn's far from hyperbole t - as the following pages explainwith so many students - been his dream since he was a child. This book shines If anything, he'd wanted to be a light on what is happening in different places, and the impact on the local and world economyprofessional footballer. What can be learnt from the great strides in gender-equalising legislation in the west? What can be done about the selling of young women into marriage, and what can chimpanzees and bonobos teach us about mothering?|isbn=0571353606
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=J Paul Henderson0861541774|title=DaisyA Nye of Pheasants|author=Steve Burrows
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=DCI Domenic Jejeune's close friend and former colleague, Danny Maik, has taken a short holiday in Singapore to meet up with an old ally, Guy Trueman. Maik was involved in a street brawl - he would later maintain that he was facing a man armed with a knife - and he killed a Ghurka. Initially, he faced a charge of manslaughter but evidence came to light that suggested that he might have planned to murder the man. Now he could be facing the death penalty. Domenic Jejeune can do nothing to help as any interference from another police force could provoke a diplomatic incident and wouldn't help Danny at all.
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Alexander McCall Smith
|title=The Perfect Passion Company
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=This The Perfect Passion Company is the story of Herod S. Pinkney, a rather unusual (yet somehow charming) man who is dating agency in search of a woman called DaisyEdinburgh, whom he first sees in run by Ness and operating as an episode of Judge Judy on television and instantly falls alternative to all the online apps in love with providing a more personal, tailored service. Ness has asked her! Rod is writing younger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the novel of his questbusiness, guided by an embittered ex-literary agent who as Ness is now clearing glasses in planning to take a pub trip to Canada to get away for a livingwhile. Determined to find Katie is coming out of a break up with a bad boyfriend, and meet Daisy, so jumps at the book takes us through Rod's lifechance to come home to Edinburgh. And so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, introduces bringing us to his friendsan Edinburgh we already love, thanks to 44 Scotland Street and tells us of what happens the Isabel Dalhousie novels, but with some new characters who quickly begin to charm. Katie has no experience in running a business, or in match-making, but Ness has full confidence in his quest for love.her abilities, and there's always her very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, William, to lend a hand…|isbn=08573033091846976596
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=15446419230811771741|title=Ambassadors Do It After DinnerInstaKnits for Baby|author=Sandra AragonaMelissa Leapman
|rating=4
|genre=AutobiographyCrafts|summary=ItMelissa Leapman's tempting ''InstaKnits for Baby'' gives us a collection of knits from toys to think that blankets. Some will be quick knits - others are of the 'long, cosy afternoons in front of the fire' variety. The projects are divided by the diplomatic life is privileged time they'll take to complete - less than five hours, five to ten hours, ten to twenty hours and luxuriousmore than twenty hours. It might be privilegedAll the projects are attractive, modern and useable. I perhaps show my age when I wonder about 'social-media-worthy projects' but family connections tell that's me being picky.}}{{Frontpage|author=Dean Koontz|title=The Bad Weather Friend|rating=4.5|genre=Paranormal|summary=Benny is having a terrifically bad day. He loses his job, he loses his fiancee, and his house gets trashed. Oh, and someone has delivered a really weird, disturbing coffin-sized object to his home, and it's possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the thing that has trashed his house! The thing is, Benny is the very last person to deserve all this bad luck. He is a nice person. A really nice person. So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the delivery to his house is far a new friend, a bad weather friend called Spike, who has been sent to help him since Benny is clearly under attack from luxuriousnefarious forces for being a good person. Now you're not Spike is going to get many ambassadors telling you what ittake care of Benny, and will certainly take care of Benny's really like enemies, if he, Benny, and Harper (ita waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's not wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are.|isbn=1662500491}}{{Frontpage|author=Adam Stower|title=Murray and Bun|rating=4.5|genre=Confident Readers |summary=Murray is supposed to be a humble, tidy and friendly cat, one who is able to sleep and eat and eat and sleep and, well, whatever takes his fancy next of the two. But he's a bad magician'diplomatic'' to do s cat, sohis favourite bun has been turned into a hyperactive sticky rabbit called Bun, you know)and the catflap they both use can chuck them out, but not into the diplomatic spouseregular back garden, the accompanying baggagebut into a world of frightening adventure and whiffs. This time round it drops them into a Viking land, where a troll hunter is expected – well, thatone much bigger than Murray was, to be honest, but he's an entirely different matter. She (turned up and he'll have to do…|isbn=0008561249}}{{Frontpage|isbn=B0C47LV1PC|title=Fragility|author=Mosby Woods|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= Can you make a ''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, is the question should you make it still usually ? Or is a the question if you did, would it land? The catch is that the answer for both could well be.... no. ''Fragility'she') can tell us exactly what goes on.is set as the city of Portland, Oregon, cautiously begins to emerge from the restrictions imposed during the covid pandemic
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=18388510111529431735|title=The SidemanWinter Visitor|author=Caro RamsayJames Henry
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=No one thought that it could happen It's February 1991 and canEssex is bitingly cold, which made Bruce Hopkins't ''quite'' believe that it has: Costello has resigned from Police Scotlandreturn all the more surprising. ItHe's all down to her pursuit of George Haggerty whom she believes to be responsible d been exiled on the Costa del Sol as a wanted drug smuggler for the murder of Abigail Haggerty (his wife) and Malcolm (her son)a decade. Haggerty The return has come about because he's had a waterletter from his ex-tight alibi (caught speeding by Police Scotlandwife, no less) and the powers saying that be have told Costello to lay off: she's decided ill and hasn't long to go her own way rather than be hampered by the badgelive. She didnIt't even bother telling her long-time partners hard to feel any sympathy when Hopkins is abducted, DCI Colin Anderson, that she was goingstripped to his underwear and sent to a watery grave in the boot of a stolen Ford Sierra. Since then there might have been the occasional text Is it a warning from her, but that's it.a Spanish gang or a problem closer to home?
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=B08774SJYNAlex Bell and Tim McDonagh|title=The Greenbecker Gambit|author=Ben GraffGlorious Race of Magical Beasts|rating=54|genre=General FictionConfident Readers|summary=''I suppose the odd fleeting sense of loneliness Eli is a price all truly successful people must pay for our gifts. I tell myself that I do so willingly.'' Tennessee Greenbecker. Isn't that a name to conjure busy lad – by day an apprentice in the wondrous library we start by visiting with? There are hints that it might not have been him, and in the name he was given evening a helper at birth, but many of us have moved on, so far as names go, from the one we were originally saddled dessert cafe his gran owns and runs. Eli lives with. Greenbecker's life his lovely gran, too – for there is one of constant reinventiona generation missing in the family. He tells us that he A few short years ago, Eli's parents were both lost to the foremost chess player never titular race, a globe-trotting adventure where all entrants have to have been navigate the world champion, and it does seem that he in the company of a magical beast. This has some considerable talent as far as chess goes. He's determined that he's going made the race anathema to the pair – but when a bad incident at the eatery leads to fulfil what he sees as a confession from gran, Eli knows his destiny. He just needs only hope is to do some study dare to be able to beat enter what he most hates, with the sole aim the current players ranked prize of magic at numbers one and two in the world. Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana will not stand in end – the only thing to possibly save his waygran.|isbn=0571382231
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