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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!
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{{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=18003211040356522776}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0008517061|title=The Body Death in a Lonely Place|author=Stig Abell|rating=4|genre=Crime|summary= Former Metropolitan Police detective, Jake Johnson, has settled into his rustic life at Little Sky. There’s perhaps a little uncertainty about the future of his life with his vet girlfriend, Livia and her daughter Diana, as moving in together would mean a lot of compromise: 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 Islandback burner.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1786482126|title=The Janus Stone (Dr Ruth Galloway)|author=Nick LouthElly Griffiths
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=A prison transport left HMP Wakefield, heading for HMP Spring Hill. Steve and Aaron Builders were accompanying Neil Wright who demolishing an old house in Norwich - the site was 67 years old and had served six years for going to hold seventy-five 'luxury' apartments - when they discovered the manslaughter bones of his wifea child beneath a doorway. Only that wasn't who he There wasno skull. Sixty-three-years-old Neville Rollaston had served thirty years for the Was this a ritual killing or murder of five boys between the ages of ten and seventeen? Inevitably, Dr Ruth Galloway finds herself working with DCI Harry Nelson. He was being ghosted out of Wakefield and into a new identity set up in It's difficult as Ruth knows, but Nelson doesn't, that she is pregnant with his child as a deal whereby he divulged the whereabouts result of the body of one of his victimsnight they spent together some three months ago. The Bogeyman was going to Her condition will be set free on 2 July 2019. He appeared obvious before long, not least because Ruth is prone to be a reformed character but he had a list sudden bouts of people upon whom he wished to exact revengesickness.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=14736924070008551324|title=The Book of Two WaysDevil You Know (D S Max Craigie)|author=Jodi PicoultNeil Lancaster|rating=4.5|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=Dawn Edelstein is a death doula: thatIt's someone who is there unusual for anyone from the Hardie family to approach the police. Neither side likes or has any respect for the person who other. But Davie Hardie is dying, to make their passage to whatever they believe struggling in as easy as possible prison and to support their carers. Ithe's prepared to tell the police where the body of a rewarding, caring occupation missing person is buried and Dawn puts who was responsible for her heart death. This person, he promises, is someone big and soul into it but this wasn't always her lifewill be worth the police doing what he wants. Some fifteen years ago she was a graduate student at Yale working towards her doctorate: as And what he wants is to be transferred to an open prison to serve the remainder of his sentence and to get an Egyptologistearly parole date. Not much to ask, is it? The new Deputy Police Constable doesn't think so and she was working with her supervisor, Professor Ian Dumphries, on 's even prepared to do the Djehutyakht tombs at Deir elother thing that Hardie demanded -Bersha on the Nile in Middle Egypt. Then she was Dawn McDowell: make certain that was her maiden name, the name she published underDS Max Craigie and anyone who works with him is kept well away from what's happening.
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Delia Owens0008405026|title=Where The Crawdads SingA Stranger in the Family (Maeve Kerrigan 11)|author=Jane Casey
|rating=5
|genre=General FictionCrime|summary= In 1952, KyaIt's mother disappeared up the dirt track to town, wearing her alligator heels, and never came home. Then one by one her siblings left, ran from the shack on the North Carolina marsh that served as home and the life that would lead to nothing but suffering, leaving 7sixteen years since nine-year-old Kya with Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her drunken fatherbed one summer night. Years pass and Kya - now nicknamed 'Marsh-Girl' – still yearns for a mother that would She was never return found and grew up far too fast for the investigation ground to a girl who can neither read nor writehalt. Finally Now, her mother, Helena, one night and her father never came home leaving Kya completely alone to survive on the marshare dead in their bed. Eventually Initially, as it looks like a straightforward murder/suicide but there's something about the years drift painfully by, positioning of the time comes when Kya, now an emotional bodies that makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and vastly intelligent young woman, yearns for company besides the gulls and the land, yearning her boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. What looked as though it was going to be loved an open-and to be held. So, when 2 boys from the town of Barkley Cove find their way to her, she finds -shut case is now a new way of lifecomplex double murder. But in 1969, the body of former star quarterback and new husband Chase Andrews Kerrigan is found lying in the mud of convinced that the marsh, and everyone explanation lies in town immediately suspects the mysteriousRosalie's disappearance: others (such as Derwent's boss, run-down Marsh-GirlUna Burt) are less convinced. Who is Kya now, after years of isolation and a broken, hardened heart? Is she really capable of murder?|isbn=1472154665
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=David C Mason0571379877|title=Pandora's GardenerThe Kellerby Code|author=Jonny Sweet|rating=3.5
|genre=Crime
|summary= John Cranston Edward Jevons is a gardenerworking-class young man, although what he did before he became obsessed with his upper-class friends, Robert and Stanza. Robert's a gardenertheatre director. He's also self-obsessed, he claimsdemanding, is classifiedhandsome and entitled and uses Edward to run errands for him. That is just as well because Edward has been in love with Stanza since their university days - and he's drunkenly confided how he is about feels to be caught up Robert. Most men in Robert's position would stay away from Stanza or tell Edward that a criminal / spy / terrorist plot, where only relationship had begun between them but he can save 's not like most men: Edward is left to stumble upon the daytwo of them kissing in a dark passageway. |isbn=0956180523
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=0356512479|author= Alix E HarrowJo Callaghan|title= The Once and Future WitchesLeave No Trace|rating= 54|genre= FantasyCrime|summary=''ThereWhen a man is found crucified on the top of a hill in Nuneaton, DCS Kat Frank finds herself assigned to the case alongside her sidekick, the AI detective Lock. It's no such thing as witchestheir first live case together, but having previously been very successful with several cold cases. But when there used to be.'' In 1893is a second body found crucified a few days later, after the purges Kat is suddenly struggling with a potential serial killer and the burnings, witching has been reduced a very high profile case that draws a lot of unwanted attention to little more than weak charms and simple spellstheir AI Future Policing project. If women want Will they be able to hold power solve the case in their handstime, or will Kat find herself taken off the case and, to have their voices heardpotentially, it is now through women's suffrage.out of a career?|isbn=139851120X
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Onjali Q Rauf1399613073|title=The Night Bus HeroMoral Injuries|author=Christie Watson
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersThrillers|summary=Hector is a bully. Egged on by his two 'friends', he takes other children's sweetsOlivia, harasses Laura and threatens, plays pranks at Anjali met on the first day of medical school, and gets into trouble at every turntheir friendship would keep them inseparable for a quarter of a century. Yet he finds himself frustrated Olivia is ruthlessly ambitious, which is a bonus when something actually isn't his fault, but then he isn't believed as everyone expects him you aim to be telling liesa cardiothoracic surgeon. Nothing seems fairLaura is a perfectionist and a trauma doctor. His parents are barely home, Anjali is the free spirit of the group and seem to only care about his perfect sister she becomes a GP. When we first meet them they're at a drug and his annoying little brother when they are, alcohol-fuelled party and his teachers have abandoned him as a lost causeit's going to end in tragedy. So what happens when, in trying to tell We don't know who suffered the tragedy or the truth & fight to consequences. Twenty-five years later there will be believed, Hector finds himself embroiled with an eerily similar event that will impact the police; first trying to accusethree friends. This time, and then trying to save a homeless man from his local park?|isbn=1510106774it's their teenage children who are involved.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=18497673430241636604|title=Count on MeThe Trading Game: A Confession|author=Miguel TancoGary Stevenson
|rating=4.5
|genre=Children's Non-FictionAutobiography|summary=The title and format If you were to bring up an image of this book might lead a city banker in your mind, you 're unlikely to think that it's either about responsibility of someone like Gary Stevenson. A hoodie and jeans replaces the pin- or it's a basic 1stripe 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 -2-3 book for those just starting out on but he had been to the numbers journeyLondon School of Economics. It isn't: it's Stevenson is bright - extremely bright - and he has a hymn facility with numbers which most of praise us can only envy. He also realised that most rich people expect poor people to mathsbe stupid. It's about why maths is so wonderful and how you meet it in everyday lifewas 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=18497669201035021803|title=Everything is MINEThe Antique Hunter's Guide to Murder|author=Andrea D'AquinoC L Miller|rating=43.5|genre=For SharingCrime|summary=Marcello Von Cauliflower Bonaparte Jackson is a schnauzer: what else could you be with a name like that? He knows that you'll realise that heIt's kind, clever and loyal. You'll also need twenty years since Freya Lockwood has been back to know that everything is '''MINE'''. And he means ''everything''. It begins with the slipper: mum still has one. Why would English country village where she need more? You sense that Marcello feels that he's being generous in allowing thatgrew up. Then it was the pork chop. Well, did you see anyoneShe's name on it? ''And'' he left the carrots back now because of a request for Leohelp from her beloved aunt, Carole. ThatFreya's another example of Marcelloformer mentor and Carole's generosityclose friend, Arthur Crockleford, is dead and the circumstances seem suspicious, to say the least. There Arthur was the acorn which squirrel was gnawing atreason why Freya had not been back to the village: there was no documentation to prove ownershipArthur, she feels, let her down badly. And talking of ownership Even though they were in business together as antique hunters, she has not felt able to be near the tree would provide all man or pursue the sticks he could ever want to chewprofession she loved. There's nothing unreasonable After the split, she worked in any a cafe, met and married James (on the rebound from the love of thather life, is there?who was murdered) and Freya and James have now divorced.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1849767009AllTomorrowsFutureCover|title=It IsnAll Tomorrow't Rude to be Nudes Futures: Fictions that Disrupt|author=Rosie HaineBenjamin Greenaway and Stephen Oram (Editors)
|rating=5
|genre=For SharingScience Fiction|summary=This could have been one ''Opening up new ways of thinking about the shape of those books which things to come.'preaches to the choir': the only people who I'll buy ve heard it are the people who know said that nudity 'technology' is OK and the ones who 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'knowve kept up reasonably well with what's advantageous to me but I' m left with the feeling that it's shameful will avoid all getting away from me. Some of it like they avoid is - frankly - quite frightening. Of course, I could research the hot-possibilities and-bothered person in the supermarket probabilities and end up down rabbit holes without really understanding whether I'm reading someone who is coughing fit to bustknows what they're talking about or the latest conspiracy theorist. ButI 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.. Rosie Haines makes it into something so much more than 5|genre=Thrillers |summary=The Hotel Arcadia is a luxury hotel in an unnamed city that has suddenly been violently taken over by a book about not wearing clothesterrorist group. It's Hiding from the terrorists who are rampaging through, killing everyone on site, there is Sam, a celebration of bodies: bodies large wartime photographer and small and of every possible hueAbhi, the hotel manager. Bodies As Abhi continues to try to care remotely for the residents who are still alive in the hotel, he forms a bond with disabilities Sam who refuses to be cowed by events, and markings. Theykeeps on venturing out of her room to try to capture what're fines happened through her photography. In factAlthough they only ever talk over the phone, their friendship grows as Abhi tries to help her keep safe and they're wonderfulboth wait to see if they will be rescued before they are discovered by the terrorists.|isbn=086154742X
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=02412959551529153298|title=TrioThe List of Suspicious Things|author=William BoydJennie Godfrey
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=It was 1968: the year when Bobby Kennedy 's 1979 and Martin Luther King were assassinatedMargaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. It(A woman? I mean, honestly...) She's not what's worrying Miv's also the year when YSK Films are making a movie in Brightonfamily, though. Women have been disappearing. ItWell, they've been murdered, but to have 'disappeared's called doesn't sound quite so frightening. Miv'Emily Bracegirdles upset because she's Extremely Useful Ladder overheard that her father wants to move the Moonfamily 'Down South'. When you're from Yorkshire, Down South is a frightening, foreign place, best avoided. For Miv, the move would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, or and she'll do anything to prevent that. She'Ladder s not worried about the Moondangers or that her Mum'' as its stopped talking - to anyone.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1398524085|title=Has Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter?|author=Nicci French|rating=5|genre=Crime|summary=Charlotte Salter was expected at her husband's known on setfiftieth birthday party but never turned up. Anny Viklund is the female star in a production which Her children, sons Niall, Paul and Ollie and her daughter, Etty. are all worried but - strangely - her husband, Alec, is proving to be just a little bit racketynot. There are odd pressures on Shortly afterwards, Etty and Greg, find the producerbody of Greg's father, Talbot KyddDuncan Ackerley, to employ this old actor friend in the river. It was an easy assumption for a couple of days because he needs the money, allow a fading star police to use his catchphrase, or include a song from make that Duncan had murdered Charlie and then committed suicide when he couldn't stand the leading man, whose musical star is fadingguilt. The 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.
}}
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B08B39QNRH1035906708|title=The Curious History of Writer's Cramp: Solving an age-old problemDiva|author=Michael PritchardDaisy Goodwin|rating=4.5|genre=Popular ScienceGeneral Fiction|summary=''Society is based on speech We tend to think of Maria Callas as Greek, but civilisation requires the written word''. I came she was born to Greek parents in Manhattan, New York, in December 1923 and only moved to Michael Pritchard's ''The Curious History of Writer's Cramp'' by a rather strange routeAthens when she was thirteen. I have problems with my hands which orthopaedic surgeons refer Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to as 'interestingCallas': I prefer the word 'painful' but I have an interest to make it more manageable in the way that hands workStates. An exploration of When she was back in Athens - supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for her voice - she was raised under the history of Nazi occupation by a problem which has defeated some mother who mercilessly exploited her and made no secret of the best medical minds her preference for some three-hundred-years seemed liked excellent background reading and so it provedher elder sister, with the book being as much about the doctors treating the sufferers and the changing medical attitudes as the problem itselfJackie.
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Blake Nuto and Charlotte AgerChristopher Edge|title=Child of GalaxiesBlack Hole Cinema Club|rating=54|genre=For SharingConfident Readers|summary=What does it mean to be alive? What Lucas and his friends are we made ofall booked in for a movie marathon at their local cinema, and where are we going? ''Child a place that has the nickname of Galaxies'The Black Hole' is a lovely children. All big movie fans, they's picture book that deals with all the big questions. re looking forward to lots of exciting films, and many, many snacks! Written However, as a poemthe movie starts, they very quickly realise that something about this new film format is very different, the lyrical words donand they are swept up into an adventure they couldn't shy away even imagine. But as they lurch from darknessone film genre to the next, nor talk down can they figure out what on earth is going on? Will they ever get back to the children you are reading tocinema, but rather than work beautifully together with the illustrations and to create a powerful, uplifting reading experience.their real lives?|isbn=19124974251839942738
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Lilja Sigurdardottir and Quentin Bates (translator)Rachel Greenlaw|title=BetrayalCompass and Blade|rating=3.5|genre=CrimeTeens|summary=Meet Ursula''I can hear the song of the sea. The call of the deep, the stand-answering beat in ministermy heart.'' Rosevear, a remote and partially forgotten island, drafted in from outside survives on luring ships into the leading party to cover rocks and plundering the post for a yearwrecks. You might get to meet Mira, like her mother before her hunky husband she can't believe she deserves, and is one of the children seven who are ignorant of just how she spent all her empathy for them on previous jobs in swim out to survey the foreign aid charity sectorruins – rescuing any survivors and any treasure that lies within. YouBut when the Council Watch lays a trap to end the wrecking, they capture the island'll meet her ministrys leader and Mira's cleanerfather. Desperate to save him from death, who bizarrely has fallen into the task of helping Mira makes a famous newsreader bargain with her Tinder profile. You'll certainly meet a homeless tramp, wreck survivor who has taken one look at a newspaper image of Ursula, is as charming as he is secretive and, knowing with only coordinates to guide her of old, decided she needs saving from sets off in search of a family secret that lies buried deep in the devil posing beside sea. With only nine days to unearth what might save her. You'll meet father, as her journey takes her from the ministerial bodyguard and driver the tramp almost immediately forces Ursula watched streets of foreign islands to accept. But as for the first ministerial case, heart of a woman demanding her daughterthe smuggler's rape get looked territory, Mira must be determined to stop at nothing to save the future of her home and pronto, nobody can say, for all records of Ursula's meeting with the woman have been wiped…ones she holds most dear.|isbn=19131934030008664730
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Tania UnsworthJames Sherwood Metts|title=The Time Traveller and the TigerPlanet Storyland
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Elsie is an ordinary sort of girlThings have been a bit sticky for the Earthlings. The sort of small girl who often gets overlooked, AI and forgotten. She is quietautomation have been proceeding apace, often replacing jobs they're paid to do and compliant, and makes the best of whatever happens other tasks that took time to heraccomplish. So when her parents forget that her school holidays have started before they are free to take care of her, Just as they have were beginning to arrange for her get used to go all this technological change and stay with her Great Uncle for a week. Poor Elsie, forgotten againstarting to think of other, just decides new ways to make the best of things. On investigating the house she finds that her Great Uncle had lived in India as a boyspend time, and he has along came an enormous tiger rug on the floor of one of the roomsawful pandemic. When Elsie asks him about the rug he seems unhappyLife was pretty much shut down and, and he says he has to keep along with it because he was the one who shot the tiger when he was 12 years old, and he says it was all the worst thing he ever did. So when Elsie suddenly finds herself magically transported back many, many years, to the time in India when her Great Uncle was 12 years old, she believes that she must try to stop him from killing the tiger, in order to put something right that happened a long time agodaily social interactions on which they depend so heavily.|isbn=17885417071736128426
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1472127013Matthew Tree|title=Agatha Raisin: Hot to Trot|author=M C Beaton and R W GreenWe'll Never Know
|rating=4.5
|genre=CrimeLiterary Fiction|summary=Raisin Investigations had quite Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, a bit drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of work on hand. The chairman being exceptional at any of Philpott Electronics was concerned about his managing director, Harold Cheeseman, artistic passions all failed miserably and who had apparently returned from Australia because endless crises of self confidence. So Tim applied himself to his wife did not like it there. This was unusualstudies, as cultivated his wife had died before Cheeseman went to Australia. Then there was the Chadwick divorce: Chadwick was convinced that abilities rather than his wife, Sheraton, was seeing another man. Mr Gutteridge wanted Raisin Investigations to instal listening devices in the staff canteen: he wanted to know what the staff were saying about him daydreams and his secretary, who was from Geneva. Apparently, the staff called her The Swiss Roll. Then there was the murderset himself high but achievable ambitions.|isbn= B0CVFXPGP8
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0008420386A G Slatter|title=Failosophy: A handbook for when things go wrong|author=Elizabeth Day|rating=4|genre=Lifestyle|summary=What do Malcolm Gladwell, Alain de Botton, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Lemn Sissay, Nigel Slater, Emeli Sandé, Meera Syal, Dame Kelly Holmes and Andrew Scott have in common? They've all failed and - more importantly - they've been willing to appear on Elizabeth Day's podcast to discuss their failures and how life worked out for them afterwards. You'll find The Briar Book of the results of these discussions in ''Failosophy''}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0571362672|title=Snow|author=John BanvilleDead
|rating=5
|genre=Crime (Historical)Fantasy|summary=''WellThere'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 least you're last. I just want to enjoy it for a Wexford manwhile.''
So said Colonel Osborne when he welcomed DI St John (pronounced Within a remote mountain pass, far away from the world, lies Silverton; a town under the protection of the Briar'Sinjun') Strafford to Ballyglass House just before Christmas 1957. Osborne was master s, a family of witches who protect the Keelmore Hounds town and had done something memorable with the Inniskilling Dragoons at Dunkirkwider world from the Darklands. The niceties had Though she has always wished for magic, Ellie Briar is the first non-witch to be established even when there born into her family for generations and as such since she was young, her training as a Catholic priest dead on steward revolved around letters and administration rather than spells and potions. When her grandmother suddenly dies, Ellie's cousin Audra becomes the Briar Witch, the library floor with some precious bits of his anatomy missingtown's leader, and Ellie takes her place beside her. Strafford was from Roslea at Bunclody As challenges come her way left, right and thiscentre, along Ellie uncovers the rare ability to communicate with his good-but-shabby suitthe dead, marked him out as putting her at the heart of a maelstrom of Osborne's class and obviously Protestantchaos. The dead priest was Father Tom Lawless Reeling from Scallanstownone family secret to another, Ellie must decide who - despite to trust and determine what to do as the different religions - was in the habit of spending time at Ballyglass House. His horse was stabled thereBriar witches' legacy, everything they have sacrificed to survive, is under threat.|isbn=1803364548
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=17874776301529900360|title=The Postscript MurdersGhost Orchid|author=Elly GriffithsJonathan Kellerman
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=When a 90-year-old-woman with a heart condition dies peacefully in her armchair, it really shouldnIt hadn't be suspicious been Lt Milo Sturgis's fault that Alex Delaware had been badly injured but he felt responsible and that even after Alex recovered, Sturgis was the view taken by DS Harbinder Kaur until she spoke reluctant to Peggy Smith's carerask for his help on difficult cases. Natalka Kolisnyk was adamant His assertions that there were only open-and-shut cases which didn't need the help of a psychologist only worked for a while. Finally, it was more to PeggyRobin, Delaware's death than met the eye - particularly as she partner, who nudged Milo into asking for help again. She knew that there the involvement was no heart condition and that Peggy had worried something that the man she was being followedloved needed. The next case did look simple, though. Then there was Two lovers were murdered in the fact that Peggy was swimming pool of a 'murder consultant' who helped authors with knotty plot lines remote property in their books: Bel Air. He was the heir to an Italian shoe empire and she knew more about murder than any elderly woman should need is married to knowan extremely rich man and it's not the Italian. But which of them was the primary target?
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=00083301311529395224|title=Letting the Cat Out of the Bag: The Stolen SistersSecret Life of a Vet|author=Louise JensenSion Rowlands
|rating=3.5
|genre=ThrillersAnimals and Wildlife|summary=When we start ''The Stolen Sisters'' we know that twenty-years on from a dreadful event they are all healthy adultsSiôn Rowlands fell into veterinary science accidentally. Well, they're healthy in the physical sense, but Carly has trust issues, Leah has OCD His father was a GP and Marie drinks. TheyRowlands didn're the Sinclair sisters and one day they were all stolen. Carly was thirteen-years-old and she was t want to follow in charge of her sistershis footsteps, particularly when he considered the eightstrain that being on-year-old twinscall put on his father's life. Much as she loved them Carly When he was desperate to get seventeen he took the opportunity of doing work experience with a text from Dean Malden and her mobile phone held her attention. Leah and Marie were nattering about family friend who was a lost ball vet and a fleece which had been left outside. The gate wasn't shut properly and Bruno, their boxer dog, escaped. As was convinced this was the three girls went to chase after job for him they were snatched by two men.}}{{Frontpage|author=Stephen Fabes|title=Signs of Life|rating=5|genre=Travel|summary= I was brought up on maps and first-person narratives of tales of far away places. I was birth-righted wanderlust and curiosity. UnfortunatelyBefore long, I didn't inherit what Dr. Stephen Fabes clearly had which he was the guts to simply go out and do itat Liverpool University. I also didnIt hadn't inherit the kind of steady nerve, ability to talk to strangers and basic practicality that would have meant that I would have survived if I had - as with so many students - been gifted with the requisite 'bottle'his dream since he was a child. In order words IIf anything, he'm not the sort of person who will get on d wanted to be a bike outside a London hospital and not come home for six years. Fabes did precisely thatprofessional footballer.|isbn=1788161211
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Arvin Ahmadi0861541774|title=How It All Blew UpA Nye of Pheasants|author=Steve Burrows
|rating=4
|genre=TeensCrime| summary=18-year-DCI Domenic Jejeune's close friend and former colleague, Danny Maik, has taken a short holiday in Singapore to meet up with an old Amir is American Iranianally, Guy Trueman. Maik was involved in a street brawl - he would later maintain that he was facing a man armed with a Muslim, knife - and gayhe killed a Ghurka. He struggles with his identityInitially, unable he faced a charge of manslaughter but evidence came to face telling his parents who light that suggested that he really is, so when another student at his school starts blackmailing him, threatening might have planned to show his parents photographs of Amir kissing his boyfriend Amir panics and runs away.murder the man. Now he could be facing the death penalty. Domenic Jejeune can do nothing to Italy! So begins help as any interference from another police force could provoke a journey for Amir, diplomatic incident and his family, where they wouldn't help Danny at all discover more about him, and who he really is, and who he really wants to be.|isbn=1471409929
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Antoine LaurainAlexander McCall Smith|title=The Readers RoomPerfect Passion Company|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|rating=3.5|summary=Violaine's publishing house has had The Perfect Passion Company is a great successdating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and it was through the slush pile of unsolicited manuscripts. The three people who work in the Readers' Room operating as an alternative to sift through what is ninety-nine per cent dross – plus all the fourth advisor online apps in her rarefied mansion up the road – all agreed the book would be providing a huge smashmore personal, and so it has proventailored service. But there are several 'howevers' Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the business, as Ness is planning to take a trip to Canada to thatget away for a while. As in, however – Violaine herself Katie is not having life all her own way, for she has been involved in coming out of a break up with a near-fatal accidentbad boyfriend, and starts this book coming round from a comaso jumps at the chance to come home to Edinburgh. Andso begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, however – despite all urgingbringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, thanks to 44 Scotland Street and the author of the book Isabel Dalhousie novels, but with some new characters who quickly begin to charm. Katie has never once made themselves known to the publishers no experience in personrunning a business, and or in fact offered up a most peculiar statementmatch-come-threat making, but Ness has full confidence in their last email. What is going to befall Violaine, her memoryabilities, and there's always her staff – very helpful (and how much is any of it due rather handsome) neighbour, William, to the hit novel? And just where the heck did that come from?lend a hand…|isbn=19104779741846976596
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|isbn=19481245720811771741|title=Think Outside the BoxInstaKnits for Baby|author=Justine Avery and Liuba SyrotiukMelissa Leapman
|rating=4
|genre=For SharingCrafts|summary=Melissa Leapman's 'Whenever you find a problem <br>'InstaKnits for Baby'Wherever there's gives us a puzzle collection of knits from toys to solve <br>'blankets. Some will be quick knits - others are of the 'However you get stuck long, cosy afternoons in a sticky situation <br>front of the fire''Just think outside variety. The projects are divided by the boxtime they'' And so begins ll take to complete - less than five hours, five to ten hours, ten to twenty hours and more than twenty hours. All the latest picture book from Justine Avery projects are attractive, modern and Liuba Syrotiukuseable. It I perhaps show my age when I wonder about 'social-media-worthy projects' but that's a clarion call to children to use their imaginations and not logic alone when it comes to solving problemsme being picky.
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|author=Agnes Ravatn and Rosie Hedger (translator)Dean Koontz|title=The Seven DoorsBad Weather Friend|rating=4.5|genre=CrimeParanormal|summary=Come here for Benny is having a thriller that interestingly doesn't even try to suggest a genre of any kind until we're a full fifth of the way throughterrifically bad day. We start with our coupleHe loses his job, she a literature lecturerhe loses his fiancee, and his house gets trashed. Oh, he big in medical provision and decisions at the councilsomeone has delivered a really weird, being forced disturbing coffin-sized object to move out of their his home, a building that had existed throughout her life since childhood and which theyit'd occupied for over thirty years. s possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the thing that has trashed his house! The building he's inheritedthing is, meanwhile, and which they let 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 a single mothernew friend, is needed by their adult daughtera bad weather friend called Spike, who quite blatantly says has been sent to its occupant 'take help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a hike, I'm moving in and you're moving out'good person. Now, at this stage you may well, if you know this Spike is a genre readgoing to take care of Benny, think itand will certainly take care of Benny's going to be a throwback to those 'home invasion' thrillers Hollywood gave us in the 1980senemies, but no. We avoid genre completely, as I say – instead learning about Greek tragedyif he, in case that has any bearing on what happens hereBenny, and seeing how an older-middle aged couple live their lives. Until at that twenty per cent stage we find something that raises an eyebrow as any crime book should – until the point where the evicted tenant is found to have completely vanishedHarper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are.|isbn=19131933811662500491
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|author=Michael J MaloneAdam Stower|title=A Song of IsolationMurray and Bun|rating=34.5|genre=CrimeConfident Readers |summary=Film star Amelie Hart throws up Murray is supposed to be a career that humble, tidy and friendly cat, one who is only beginning able to hit sleep and eat and eat and sleep and, well, whatever takes his fancy next of the two. But he's a bad magician's cat, so his favourite bun has been turned into a hyperactive sticky rabbit called Bun, and the heights to retire to catflap they both use can chuck them out, not into the highlands with an ordinary guy…an accountant regular back garden, but into a world of all things, though to his credit he would rather be working in forestryfrightening adventure and whiffs. They have found This time round it drops them into a hideaway on Viking land, where a small Scottish estatetroll hunter is expected – well, one much bigger than Murray was, to be honest, but things are starting he's turned up and he'll have to feel wrong between them. do…|isbn=19131933650008561249
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|authorisbn= Christopher PaoliniB0C47LV1PC|title= To Sleep in a Sea of StarsFragility|author=Mosby Woods|rating= 54|genre= Science Literary Fiction|summary= On the moon of Can you make a distant gas giant''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, Xenobiologist Kira Navárez is helping with the efforts to question should you make it? Or is the planet habitable to human life. Howeverquestion if you did, a discovery of an ancient alien bunker under would it land? The catch is that the moon's surface leaves her bonded with a strange alien entityanswer for both could well be... After the entity bonded to her loses control and kills half the staff of the research station, the United Military Command cruiser Extenuating Circumstances arrives in the system to take Kira in for examination. Things go from bad to worse when the Extenuating Circumstances is attacked and destroyed by an alien ship, and she has to flee to the 61 Cygnus star systemno. She  ''Fragility'' is revived aboard set as the freighter Wallfish, crewed by Captain Falconi and a rag-tag bunch city of misfitsPortland, and the news is grim. The same aliens that destroyed the Extenuating Circumstances are now wreaking havoc across all of human-occupied space, and only a mythical weapon known as the Staff of Blue can stop them. As the death toll climbs and more players are introduced into this warOregon, Kira slowly cautiously begins to realise that she may have had a greater hand in emerge from the restrictions imposed during the conflict than she could've possibly imagined…|isbn=1529046505covid pandemic
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|authorisbn=Carlie Sorosiak1529431735|title=My Life as a CatThe Winter Visitor|author=James Henry|rating=4.5|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=This It's February 1991 and Essex is bitingly cold, which made Bruce Hopkins' return all the story of an alien who has come down to spend some time more surprising. He'd been exiled on earth living the Costa del Sol as a humanwanted drug smuggler for a decade. It The return has come about because he's something had a letter from his ex-wife, saying that each member in the alien collective is allowed she's ill and hasn't long to do, for 1 month, once they reach a certain agelive. Leonard comes It's hard to earth but gets distracted en routefeel any sympathy when Hopkins is abducted, and so something goes wrong with stripped to his arrival underwear and he finds that instead of landing in Yellowstone Park, ready sent to work as a park ranger, he is instead watery grave in the body boot of a cat on the other side of the country! This is not what he had planned! stolen Ford Sierra. Not only is he in the wrong place and the wrong body, he is also in the middle of Is it a storm, stuck in warning from a tree! And so he meets Olive, the little girl who rows out in Spanish gang or a boat problem closer to rescue him, and who names him Leonard.|isbn=1788006089home?
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|author= Tahi SaihateAlex Bell and Tim McDonagh|title= Astral Season, Beastly SeasonThe Glorious Race of Magical Beasts|rating= 3.54|genre= Literary FictionConfident Readers|summary= We long for our past even though it Eli is a place to which busy lad – by day an apprentice in the wondrous library we can never returnstart by visiting with him, and in the evening a helper at the dessert cafe his gran owns and runs. Tahi Saihate Eli lives with his lovely gran, too – for there is a generation missing in her debut novel the family. A few short years ago, Eli''Astral Seasons parents were both lost to the titular race, Beastly Season'' illustrates how these rosea globe-tinted glasses often lietrotting adventure where all entrants have to navigate the world in the company of a magical beast. Her novel is This has made the race anathema to the pair – but when a meditation on youth and how bad incident at the things we do as eatery leads to a teenager can seem intensely important and often life-alteringconfession from gran, Eli knows his only hope is to 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.|isbn= 19162771010571382231
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