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'''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=17841652630008517061|title=Invite Me InDeath in a Lonely Place|author=Emma CurtisStig Abell|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=Martin Curran's wifeFormer Metropolitan Police detective, Eliza knew that she had to be home to make Jake Johnson, has settled into his lunch for one o'clock on rustic life at Little Sky. There’s perhaps a little uncertainty about the dotfuture of his life with his vet girlfriend, despite the fact that she was actually painting one of their properties prior to it being let. If she didn't get homeLivia and her daughter Diana, there as moving in together would be trouble. There was some excusemean a lot of compromise: Martin was a paraplegic does Jake give up his off-grid and confined relaxing life to a wheelchair, but don't be too quick move in with Livia or does Livia move to be understanding. He was also a very unpleasant person: he once told Eliza ''you're good at being a disappointment''. All Little Sky despite her reservations about whether or not this was in Eliza's mind when is the future she first met Dan Jones who arrived, unannounced, at wants for herself and her daughter? For the flat just as Eliza was about to leave: he wanted moment they’re enjoying life in the lease of flat 2, 42 Linden Road present and he was desperate to get in before it was advertised as being availableputting the future on the back burner.
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|isbn=17847427751786482126|title=A Change of Circumstance The Janus Stone (Simon SerraillerDr Ruth Galloway)|author=Susan HillElly Griffiths|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=Drugs hadnBuilders were demolishing an old house in Norwich - the site was going to hold seventy-five 'luxury't really been that much apartments - when they discovered the bones of a problem in Lafferton and Detective Superintendent Simon Serrailler had thought of drugs ops as child beneath a bit of a waste of timedoorway. There was no skull. They still were, to Was this a great extentritual killing or murder? Inevitably, but Serrailler knew that something had to be doneDr Ruth Galloway finds herself working with DCI Harry Nelson. Children It's difficult as young as nine were being recruited to transport the drugs and the operation running the county lines was tight. A mule might know the name (although it probably wouldn't be the correct one) of the person who was running him Ruth knows, but he certainly wouldnNelson doesn't know anything about those higher up in the organisation. The police might catch , that she is pregnant with his child as a few result of the runners but one night they'd never get anywhere near those higher upspent together some three months ago. Her condition will be obvious before long, not least because Ruth is prone to sudden bouts of sickness.
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=B09FS89KX90008551324|title=Fall On MeThe Devil You Know (D S Max Craigie)|author=Penelope PottsNeil Lancaster|rating=34.5|genre=Women's FictionCrime|summary=Life should have been good It's unusual for Hollie: anyone from the Hardie family to approach the police. She was just going into Neither side likes or has any respect for the final year of her veterinary degree other. But Davie Hardie is struggling in prison and - three years later - was still working at BBhe's diner. Bob - prepared to tell the police where the owner - regarded body of a missing person is buried and who was responsible for her fondly: he was a good bossdeath. Hollie had moved in with her boyfriendThis person, Marcus: her mother thought he was great promises, is someone big and it will be worth the police doing what he wants. And what he was doing well in wants is to be transferred to an open prison to serve the remainder of his careersentence and to get an early parole date. Hollie wasnNot much to ask, is it? The new Deputy Police Constable doesn't quite think so certain though: Marcus wanted to control her and most of all he wanted her she's even prepared to leave her job at do the diner. Then there was the fact other thing that Hardie demanded - make certain that he would be violent, both to her DS Max Craigie and to other peopleanyone who works with him is kept well away from what's happening.
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=John Gwynne0008405026|title=The Shadow Of The GodsA Stranger in the Family (Maeve Kerrigan 11)|author=Jane Casey
|rating=5
|genre=Crime
|summary=It's some sixteen years since we last caught up with Andy Flood, formerly a DCI in nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her bed one summer night. She was never found and the Met but now investigation ground to a well-respected private investigatorhalt. He's married to LauraNow, her mother, Helena, formerly his DS and her father are dead in the Murder Squad but now working in a forensics laboratorytheir bed. FloodInitially, it looks like a straightforward murder/suicide but there's daughters, Gemma and Pippa, have flown something about the nest, Pippa to Australia, from where she has very little contact with positioning of the family, bodies that makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and Gemma to married lifeher boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. She's had mental problems since she What looked as though it was abducted many years ago but Andy going to be an open-and Laura hope that married life will provide the support she needs-shut case is now a complex double murder. Flood's business Kerrigan is going well and convinced that was why he felt able to turn down the case of Lisa Blackexplanation lies in Rosalie's disappearance: others (such as Derwent's boss, Una Burt) are less convinced.
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Peter Papathanasiou0571379877|title=The StoningKellerby Code|author=Jonny Sweet
|rating=3.5
|genre=ThrillersCrime|summary=In Edward Jevons is a town sleazy enough to make sh*tholes elsewhere look glamorous in comparisonworking-class young man, a teacher has been transported across town at night in a shopping trolleyobsessed with his upper-class friends, Robert and sheStanza. Robert's been taped to a tree and shetheatre director. He's had rocks bowled at her as if she were the worldalso self-obsessed, demanding, handsome and entitled and uses Edward to run errands for him. Edward has been in love with Stanza since their university days - and he's tallest cricket stumpsdrunkenly confided how he feels to Robert. When she Most men in Robert's discovered by the town gossip everyone, including the local cops, are quite confident the culprit has come position would stay away from the immigrant detention centre the place is reluctantly home to. An arson attack on Stanza or tell Edward that shows the feeling – and ita relationship had begun between them but he's only fair, not like most men: Edward is left to stumble upon the general opinion, for the occupants are often setting their own fires two of them kissing in protest at their conditions. Cue the arrival of George Manolis, a higher rank from the city, to sort everything outdark passageway. Because such an aggrieved, insular community is really going to welcome a Greek-heritaged city boy laying down the law...|isbn=1529416973
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=B08Z8BMZ7HJo Callaghan|title=The Mystery of Healing|author=A P McGrathLeave No Trace
|rating=4
|genre=Crime (Historical)|summary=We meet Solon in Pergamon in the second century of the common era and he's the physician When a man is found crucified on duty at the munus - the games put on for the amusement top of a hill in Nuneaton, DCS Kat Frank finds herself assigned to the populace. The remuneration isn't high but case alongside her sidekick, the work gives the doctor a feeling of virtue and hones his skills: Solon ''wants'' the warriors to liveAI detective Lock. It's quite a spectacle: the magistri are the charge hands and when we their first see themlive case together, they're sprinkling gold dust onto the lions' manes to make them look more impressivehaving previously been very successful with several cold cases. The sagitarii are the archers But when there is a second body found crucified a few days later, Kat is suddenly struggling with a potential serial killer and the beastiarii are the condemned criminals who are going a very high profile case that draws a lot of unwanted attention to fight for their lives with the wild animalsAI Future Policing project. TodayWill they be able to solve the case in time, it's or will Kat find herself taken off the crocodiles.case and, potentially, out of a career?|isbn=139851120X
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{{Frontpage
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersThrillers|summary=Lily is, or was, or has been, very illOlivia, Laura and Anjali met on the first day of medical school and to give her parents relief she's been told to stay with her grandma their friendship would keep them inseparable for a few daysquarter of a century. The parents need the relief as Lily's baby sibling Olivia is ruthlessly ambitious, which is just about a bonus when you aim to be born – a child Lily swears she hates already cardiothoracic surgeon. Laura is a perfectionist and wants nothing to do witha trauma doctor. But on tracking back home for word Anjali is the free spirit of her parents (the group and her plush toy so she can sleep) she finds stonybecomes a GP. When we first meet them they're at a drug and alcohol-eyed simulacra of her parents, fuelled party and it's going to end in tragedy. We don't know who suffered the babe-intragedy or the consequences. Twenty-arms, already installed. These devilish interlopers need to five years later there will be ousted to get an eerily similar event that will impact the family back intactthree friends. This time, even if it's not the family Lily wants – and all she has to help her in the task their teenage children who are some talking animals – Crow, Mole, Mouse and Snakeinvolved.|isbn=1471194833
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Greg James and Chris Smith0241636604|title=The Great Dream Robbery|rating=5|genre=Confident Readers|summary=Maya's father is a professor who invented an amazing dream machine. But something went wrong, and now he can't wake up. Or at least, that's what Maya has been told. In a rather strange dream one night Maya makes a new friend, and discovers that the only way to save her dad may be by being asleep. Cue one madcap action adventure story where dreams and reality collide...really...and there's everything from llamas and bananas, dream machines made from hairdresser cast-offs, to a talking cat called Bin Bag!|isbn=024147051X}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1800464495|title= 100 Ways in 100 Days to Teach Your Baby MathsTrading Game: Support All Areas of Your Baby’s Development by Nurturing a Love of MathsA Confession|author=Emma SmithGary Stevenson
|rating=4.5
|genre=Children's Non-FictionAutobiography|summary=''Babies seem If you were to be born with bring up an amazing number sense: understanding shapes image of a city banker in the wombyour mind, being aware you're unlikely to think of quantities at seven hours oldsomeone like Gary Stevenson. A hoodie and jeans replaces the pin-stripe suit and his background is the East End, assessing probability at six months oldwhere he was familiar with violence, poverty and comprehending addition and subtraction at nine months oldinjustice.'' Did you know this? I didn't! How about: ''Maths ability There was no posh public school on entry his CV - but he had been to school the London School of Economics. Stevenson is bright - extremely bright - and he has a strong predictor facility with numbers which most of later achievement, double us can only envy. He also realised that of literacy skillsmost rich people expect poor people to be stupid.'' I didn't know this either! I think most parents are aware that giving your children a good start in literacy - reading stories It was his ability at what was, teaching pen gripsessentially, singing rhymes - gives children a solid foundation when they start schoolcard game which got him an internship with Citibank. But do we think the same way about maths Eventually, beyond counting? I don't think we do, in part because so many of us are afraid of maths. But why are we? Most of us use maths in daily life without realising and it follows that giving our children this turned into permanent employment as a similar pre-school grounding will be just as beneficialtrader.
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=15293793851035021803|title=The Madness of Crowds (Chief Inspector Gamache)Antique Hunter's Guide to Murder|author=Louise PennyC L Miller|rating=43.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=In the Canadian village of Three Pines, weIt're post-pandemic: the scars are still there but life is starting to get s twenty years since Freya Lockwood has been back to normalthe English country village where she grew up. The villagers are beginning to return to the Bistro and the AubergeShe's back now because of a request for help from her beloved aunt, Carole. TheyFreya're visiting each others former mentor and Carole's homes close friend, Arthur Crockleford, is dead and having friends and relatives the circumstances seem suspicious, to staysay the least. A young Sudanese woman who has Arthur was the reason why Freya had not been nominated for back to the Nobel Peace Prize is one such visitor and village: Arthur, she feels, let her down badly. Even though they were in business together as antique hunters, she soon proves that has not all saints are necessarily pleasant people felt able to be around - near the man or pursue the profession she loved. After the split, she worked in a bit like Vincent Gilbertcafe, known in met and married James (on the village as rebound from the Asshole Saintlove of her life, who was murdered) and Freya and James have now divorced.
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{{Frontpage
|isbn= B09F4CTKJRAllTomorrowsFutureCover|title= Flights for FreedomAll Tomorrow's Futures: Fictions that Disrupt|author= Steven BurgauerBenjamin Greenaway and Stephen Oram (Editors)|rating=4.5|genre=Historical Science Fiction|summary=It's 'Opening up new ways of thinking about the later stages shape of World War things to come.'' I and the United States has just entered the conflict've heard it said that 'technology' is what happens after you're eighteen. Petrol Petronus is Well, I must confess that there have been more than a young American who has signed few decades of technology in my lifetime. I've kept up and joined reasonably well with what's advantageous to me but I'm left with the 17 Aero Squadronfeeling that it's all getting away from me. This company was the first US Aero Squadron to be trained in CanadaSome of it is - frankly - quite frightening. Of course, I could research the first to be attached to possibilities and the RAF probabilities and end up down rabbit holes without really understanding whether I'm reading someone who knows what they're talking about or the first to be sent into the skies to fight the Germans latest conspiracy theorist. I needed people I knew I could trust and who could deliver information in active combat. But before that can happen, Petrol has to master flying the notoriously difficult but majestic Sopwith Camela way I could understand.
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=183885410XSunny Singh|title=The Dark Remains|author=William McIlvanney and Ian RankinHotel Arcadia
|rating=3.5
|genre=CrimeThrillers |summary=Bobby Carter was The Hotel Arcadia is a lawyer and consigliere to one of the major crime families luxury hotel in nineteen seventies Glasgowan unnamed city that has suddenly been violently taken over by a terrorist group. DC Jack Laidlaw Hiding from the terrorists who are rampaging through, killing everyone on site, there is on the CID team charged with Sam, a wartime photographer and Abhi, the investigationhotel manager. I say ''on As Abhi continues to try to care remotely for the residents who are still alive in the team'' but Laidlaw never really seems hotel, he forms a bond with Sam who refuses to be a part cowed by events, and keeps on venturing out of ither room to try to capture what's happened through her photography. He does his own thingAlthough they only ever talk over the phone, goes his own way their friendship grows as Abhi tries to help her keep safe and ''The Dark Remains'' uncovers they both wait to see if they will be rescued before they are discovered by the truth of why Bobby Carter's body was found behind one of Glasgow's seedier pubsterrorists.|isbn=086154742X
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=19424102551529153298|title=Tokyo Zangyo (Detective Hiroshi)The List of Suspicious Things|author=Michael PronkoJennie Godfrey|rating=4.5|genre=CrimeGeneral Fiction|summary=It''Zangyo: overtime works 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. (A woman? I mean, often unpaidhonestly...) She's not what' Its worrying Miv's the culturefamily, though. Women have been disappearing. Well, they've been murdered, isnbut to have 'disappeared' doesn't it? sound quite so frightening. The hours for which youMiv's upset because she're paid are really just a statement of s overheard that her father wants to move the minimum youfamily 'll be required to do: youDown South'll work more hours to get the job done and done to the satisfaction of bullies like Shigeru Onizuka. When he was found dead in front of Senden Centralyou's headquarters in Tokyo there was nothing in the way of regret or grief, even re from his familyYorkshire, but there was Down South is a mild curiosity as to whether he'd jumped from the roof of the building or been assisted in his descentfrightening, foreign place, best avoided. Gossip revolves around For Miv, the fact that he left the roof at the exact same spot that an employeemove would mean leaving her best friend, Mayu YamaseSharon, had committed suicide some three years earlierand she'll do anything to prevent that. She'd accused Onizuka of bullying her and forcing s not worried about the dangers or that her Mum's stopped talking - to work an unreasonable amount of overtimeanyone.
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=02414254251398524085|title=The Man Who Died TwiceHas Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter?|author=Richard OsmanNicci French|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=Elizabeth Best Charlotte Salter was a little surprised when she received the letterexpected at her husband's fiftieth birthday party but never turned up. It came from a man whose body she had helped to pull from the Thames Her children, sons Niall, Paul and Ollie and who had never existed her daughter, Etty. are all worried but then this - strangely - her husband, Alec, is the sort of conundrum which retired spies have to deal with on a regular basisnot. When she visits Shortly afterwards, Etty and Greg, find the sender body of the letter (heGreg's moved into father, Duncan Ackerley, in the Cooper's Chase Retirement Village) it comes as no surprise river. It was an easy assumption for the police to make that itDuncan had murdered Charlie and then committed suicide when he couldn's someone with whom she has a long professional history - and who used to be her husbandt stand the guilt. HeThe Salter children are not convinced but there's made a bad mistake - something to little else they can do but get on with a mask being removed within the range of a CCTV camera on a raid, a missing twenty-million pounds in diamonds their lives and a few death threats. He's now in hiding with a young woman called Polly, who's his MI5 handler as well as being an incompetent waitresswonder about what really happened.
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Andrew Sharp1035906708|title=The Chef, the Bird and the BlessingDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary= Chef Mlantushi - Mozzy We tend to his employer - isthink of Maria Callas as Greek, but she was born to Greek parents in his mindManhattan, New York, the head chef of a safari business catering to VIP guests in an unnamed African country. Mozzy is earnest December 1923 and dedicated only moved to his task and he puts all of himself into creating fine cuisine dishes for the guests at BOD-W safaris Athens when she was thirteen. Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but his dream is her father changed it to become 'Callas' to make it more manageable in the head chef of a restaurant in London or a big American city. Even to win a Michelin starStates. He is thwarted When she was back in this ambition Athens - supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for her voice - she was raised under the Nazi occupation by his boss, Mr Bin (Ben to you a mother who mercilessly exploited her and me) who incurs Mozzy's disapproval made no secret of her preference for his scruffy waysher elder sister, his uninterest in his guests and - shock, horror - his allowing of bush animals into the houseJackie.|isbn=B09926MK8H
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{{Frontpage
|author=Alex FoulkesChristopher Edge|title=Rules for VampiresBlack Hole Cinema Club|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary= Eleonore Von Motteberg (or 'Leo' Lucas and his friends are all booked in for short) is a Vampire. She drinks bloodmovie marathon at their local cinema, she sleeps during a place that has the day, and she can Grimwalk (turning into a flock nickname of bats to travel around'The Black Hole'. All big movie fans, although not all of them remember they're looking forward to come back). Pretty cool stuff. Now, on the night lots of her hundredth birthnightexciting films, she has to go out and hunt her first human. many, many snacks! However, instead she ends as the movie starts, they very quickly realise that something about this new film format is very different, and they are swept up killing two humans by accident and burning down into an orphanageadventure they couldn't even imagine. Oops! And But as they lurch from one film genre to make things worsethe next, the ghosts of one of the orphans and the evil master of the orphanage come can they figure out what on earth is going on? Will they ever get back to haunt her. So, not only does Leo have to team up with the friendly ghost Minna to stop the ghost of the Orphanmaster before he becomes unstoppably powerfulcinema, she has and to do it all while hiding it from her family. Did I mention vampires and ghosts hate each othertheir real lives? Yeah, there's a reason why there are rules for vampires…|isbn=147119955X1839942738
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{{Frontpage
|author=Tori BovalinoRachel Greenlaw|title=The Devil Makes ThreeCompass and Blade|rating=43.5
|genre=Teens
|summary= Working all summer in her boarding school's library is 'I can hear the song of the last thing Tess Matheson wants to do — especially when she gets a request for over a hundred books that she has to deliver herselfsea. What makes it worse is The call of the man who requested deep, the books: Mr Birchanswering beat in my heart. The boarding school's headmaster' Rosevear, a remote and partially forgotten island, survives on luring ships into the rocks and a man Tess hatesplundering the wrecks. As a petty act Mira, like her mother before her, is one of revenge for making her find the seven who swim out to survey the ruins – rescuing any survivors and deliver such any treasure that lies within. But when the Council Watch lays a large request, Tess sticks post-it notes on each of trap to end the bookswrecking, scribbled with they capture the ugliest insults she can think ofisland's leader and Mira's father. They're never meant Desperate to reach save himfrom death, of course. Her plan Mira makes a bargain with a wreck survivor who is as charming as he is secretive and with only coordinates to get guide her anger out like this, and then take them all she sets off before delivering themin search of a family secret that lies buried deep in the sea. No harm done… Or it would beWith only nine days to unearth what might save her father, if someone hadnas her journey takes her from the watched streets of foreign islands to the heart of the smuggler't delivered them for s territory, Mira must be determined to stop at nothing to save the future of herhome and the ones she holds most dear.|isbn=17890981300008664730
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor= B09BG8V3Q6James Sherwood Metts|title= Who Needs Nappies? Not Me! (Everybody Potties!)|author= Justine Avery and Seema AmjadPlanet Storyland
|rating=4.5
|genre=For SharingConfident Readers|summary= ''Who Needs Nappies? Not Me!'' is the latest release in Things have been a bit sticky for the Earthlings. AI and automation have been proceeding apace, often replacing jobs they''Everybody Potties!'' series from Justine Averyre paid to do and other tasks that took time to accomplish. This series Just as they were beginning to get used to all this technological change and starting to think of fun picture books aims other, new ways to take the pain out of potty training children spend time, along came an awful pandemic. Life was pretty much shut down and replace , along with it with some fun. It's a worthy aim, as any frustrated parent will tell you. all the many daily social interactions on which they depend so heavily.|isbn=1736128426
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=B098FFFBH9Matthew Tree|title=Snowcub|author=Graham FulbrightWe'll Never Know
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Fourteen-year-old Rachel is her school's animal rights project leader and she and her friend are producing a competition entry Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to highlight the way in which human beings exploit the animal world. She gets a great deal of support be different from her family: his father Pip Harrison, a lecturer drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at Imperial College, London, mother Kate any of his artistic passions all failed miserably and her twin, Nickwho had endless crises of self confidence. Kate runs the family businessSo Tim applied himself to his studies, a toy shop called Cornucopia in Putney, which is where we'll meet Rachel's main (if unsuspected) source of information: five soft toyscultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and set himself high but achievable ambitions.|isbn= B0CVFXPGP8
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{{Frontpage
|author= Angharad WalkerA G Slatter|title= The Ash HouseBriar Book of the Dead|rating= 5|genre= Confident ReadersFantasy|summary= A new boy arrives '' 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 The Ash Houselast. I just want to enjoy it for a while. He doesn't know his name' Within a remote mountain pass, or why he is there but he is used to far away from the systemworld, used to different places and different faces. He meets Dom who names him Sol and sets out to teach him lies Silverton; a town under the rules protection of The Ash House. These rules centre on the Briar's, a variety family of Nicenesses set out by witches who protect the absent Headmastertown and the wider world from the Darklands. All children must remember their Niceness Though she has always wished for magic, Ellie Briar is the first non-witch to be born into her family for generations and complete their choresas such since she was young, working her training as a hive in steward revolved around letters and administration rather than spells and potions. When her grandmother suddenly dies, Ellie's cousin Audra becomes the smouldering shadows of The Ash HouseBriar Witch, the town's leader, and Ellie takes her place beside her. But soon their easy peace is shattered by As challenges come her way left, right and centre, Ellie uncovers the arrival of rare ability to communicate with the Doctor. By dead, putting her at the end heart of the storya maelstrom of chaos. Reeling from one family secret to another, lives will be changed forever Ellie must decide who to trust and The Ash House will never be determine what to do as the same againBriar witches' legacy, everything they have sacrificed to survive, is under threat.|isbn=19126269771803364548
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Yancey Williams1529900360|title=Crosshairs of the DevilThe Ghost Orchid|author=Jonathan Kellerman|rating=4.5|genre=Literary FictionCrime|summary=Award-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is getting on in years It hadn't been Lt Milo Sturgis's fault that Alex Delaware had been badly injured but he felt responsible andeven after Alex recovered, despite Sturgis was reluctant to ask for his strenuous objections help on difficult cases. His assertions that there were only open-and thanks to his daughter, finds himself living - or imprisoned, from Eddieshut cases which didn's point of view - in room 315 of t need the Garden help of Eden nursing home, with a psychologist only worked for a trusty nursing aidewhile. Finally, it was Robin, JenkinsDelaware's partner, who nudged Milo into asking for palatable companyhelp again. She knew that the involvement was something that the man she loved needed. The next case did look simple, though. Nothing Two lovers were murdered in the swimming pool of a remote property in Bel Air. He was the heir to an Italian shoe empire and she is going married to keep Eddie from his stock-in-trade of writing though, so here, for his readers, are his wanderings through his lifean extremely rich man and it's worknot the Italian.|isbn=0986031658 But which of them was the primary target?}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Philip Reeve1529395224|title=Utterly Dark and Letting the Face Cat Out of the DeepBag: The Secret Life of a Vet|author=Sion Rowlands|rating=3.5|genre=Confident ReadersAnimals and Wildlife|summary=In Siôn Rowlands fell into veterinary science accidentally. His father was a word, rich. There is certainly an abundance of riches GP and Rowlands didn't want to follow in this story set on a peculiar island called Wildseahis footsteps, British but way west, beyond particularly when he considered the Scillies. There are troll people strain that being on it, and sea-witches, and legends of the Dark family that has to keep watch for magical islands and their monster approaching from even further west, where no ship dare sailcall put on his father's life. The current Darks are When he was seventeen he took the Watcher, Andrewe, who has to keep notes opportunity of activity from the Hidden Lands, his brother Will doing work experience with a family friend who lives in London with too much science in his head to worry about such local yokel superstitions, was a vet and Andrewe's foundling daughter, who washed up out of was convinced this was the sea one day eleven years agojob for him. But when Andrewe Dark drowns himself Before long, both he was at Liverpool University. It hadn't - as with so many students - been his sullen brother and his curious ward are thrust into the world of protecting their islanddream since he was a child. If anything, like it or nothe'd wanted to be a professional footballer.|isbn=1788452372
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Erling Kagge0861541774|title=Walking: One Step At A TimeNye of Pheasants|author=Steve Burrows|rating=54|genre= LifestyleCrime|summary= Those who have read my reviews before will know that how much I loved DCI Domenic Jejeune's close friend and former colleague, Danny Maik, has taken a book is evidenced by the number of pages short holiday in Singapore to meet up with corners turnedan old ally, so let me start this one Guy Trueman. Maik was involved in a street brawl - he would later maintain that he was facing a man armed with an apology to the Norfolk Library Service: sorry! I forgot it was your book not minea knife - and he killed a Ghurka. In my defence Initially, I will say that as he faced a reader charge of this type of book there is something connective about noting where prior readers were inspired (provided it is subtle – I'll allow creased corners, manslaughter but not scribbles – for the latter we must buy our own copy – which I am about evidence came to do as soon as I light that suggested that he might have finished telling you why). Erligg Kagge is a Norwegian explorer who has walked planned to murder the South Pole, man. Now he could be facing the North Pole and the summit of Everestdeath penalty. He knows a thing or two about walking. However, this isn't a travelogue about Domenic Jejeune can do nothing to help as any of those epic journeys, it is instead a thoughtful exploration of what it means to walk. It is interference from another police force could provoke a plenitude of unnumbered essays about walking. There is no 'contents' page diplomatic incident and I havenwouldn't countedhelp Danny at all. In small format paperback, each essay is only a few pages long. Perhaps then, better thought of as a meditation rather than an essay.|isbn=0241357705
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{{Frontpage
|author=Ian Mark and Louis GhibaultAlexander McCall Smith|title=Monster Hunting For BeginnersThe Perfect Passion Company
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersGeneral Fiction|summary=Meet Jack. Now Jack knows very little about being fearless and nimble and quick, for he's The Perfect Passion Company is a slight boydating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and although he wants for danger and peril and interesting things his dad refuses operating as an alternative to let him out of his sight. That's because Jack's mother knew all about monstersthe online apps in providing a more personal, tailored service. Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and look what happened after the business, as Ness is planning to her – she diedtake a trip to Canada to get away for a while. Luckily or unluckily then, depending on your point Katie is coming out of view, a giant ogre will threaten his aunt when Jack's father also goes AWOLbreak up with a bad boyfriend, Jack will fluke and so jumps at the ogre's deathchance to come home to Edinburgh. And so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, a dwarfish wizard-type will make him bringing us to an apprentice monster hunterEdinburgh we already love, thanks to 44 Scotland Street and he'll be given a book that tells him all he needs to know about the perils he always wanted closer contact Isabel Dalhousie novels, but withsome new characters who quickly begin to charm. The book Katie has no experience in running a business, or in match-making, but Ness has full confidence in her abilities, and there's name? ''Monster Hunting for Beginners''...always her very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, William, to lend a hand…|isbn=07555019421846976596
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|authorisbn=Keith Gray0811771741|title=The ClimbersInstaKnits for Baby|author=Melissa Leapman
|rating=4
|genre=Confident ReadersCrafts|summary=Sully is Melissa Leapman's ''InstaKnits for Baby'' gives us a collection of knits from toys to blankets. Some will be quick knits - others are of the best tree climber 'long, cosy afternoons in front of the fire' variety. The projects are divided by the time they'll take to complete - less than five hours, five to ten hours, ten to twenty hours and more than twenty hours. All the villageprojects are attractive, modern and useable. I perhaps show my age when I wonder about 'social-media-worthy projects' but 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 whatdelivered a really weird, disturbing coffin-sized object to his home, and it's known amongst possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the thing that has trashed his house! The thing is, Benny is the kids as 'reach'very last person to deserve all this bad luck. But what happens when He is a new kid shows up in town? nice person. A really nice person. So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the delivery to his house is a new kidfriend, a bad weather friend called NottinghamSpike, who clambers up some has been sent to help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a good person. Spike is going to take care of Benny, and will certainly take care of the hardest trees with ease? Suddenly Sully 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.|isbn=1662500491}}{{Frontpage|author=Adam Stower|title=Murray and Bun|rating=4.5|genre=Confident Readers |summary=Murray is worried that his status supposed to be a humble, tidy and friendly cat, one who is being threatenedable to sleep and eat and eat and sleep and, and not only thatwell, that whatever takes his chance to name fancy next of the finaltwo. But he's a bad magician's cat, so his favourite bun has been turned into a hyperactive sticky rabbit called Bun, unnamed big tree in and the park by being catflap they both use can chuck them out, not into the first to conquer itregular back garden, might be snatched from his handsbut into a world of frightening adventure and whiffs. How can Sully stop Nottingham? And will This time round it cost him his best frienddrops them into a Viking land, where a troll hunter is expected – well, one much bigger than Murray was, or maybe even all of his friendsto be honest, but he's turned up and he'll have to do so?do…|isbn=17811299910008561249
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Emma CarrollB0C47LV1PC|title=The Week at World's EndFragility|author=Mosby Woods
|rating=4
|genre=Confident ReadersLiterary Fiction|summary=First, the title. WeCan you make a ''Yo birthing person're in World's End Close, a mediocre set of houses, where Stevie (Vie to her friends) finds fun only with the family dog and with the boy over the road. But we joke? And if you could also be at World's End, because something taking a great chunk of the fun away is the fact that the Cuban Missile Crisis question should you make it? Or is kicking off. The Soviet boats are getting blockaded as America tries to reduce the risk of nuclear missiles offshorequestion if you did, and not much else would it land? The catch is able to make that the newsanswer for both could well be... That said, Vie has news of her own – Anna, a secretive young woman hiding in their coal shed. Anna has, in no short time, taken a strong interest in . ''Fragility'' is set as the American airforce base behind the Closecity of Portland, said she'd locate something she wanted and leaveOregon, failed cautiously begins to leave, and implied her life was at risk. But surely this bit of intrigue has got nothing to do with what emerge from the restrictions imposed during the Cold War is doing miles away?|isbn=0571364438covid pandemic
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Kiran Millwood Hargrave and Tom de Freston1529431735|title=Julia and the SharkThe Winter Visitor|author=James Henry
|rating=4
|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=JuliaIt's February 1991 and Essex is bitingly cold, our pre-teen heroine, has which made Bruce Hopkins' return all the more surprising. He'd been packed off with her parents and their cat from exiled on the family home in SW England to be lighthousekeepers Costa del Sol as a wanted drug smuggler for a summer, in the far NE of the Scottish islandsdecade. Here be VikingsThe return has come about because he's had a letter from his ex-wife, saying that kind of Scottish islandshe's ill and hasn't long to live. Dad It's hard to feel any sympathy when Hopkins is going abducted, stripped to be automating the lantern, which is his specialist thing, while mum will be leaving her career underwear and sent to a watery grave in algae behind to hunt the elusive Greenland sharkboot of a stolen Ford Sierra. And Julia, well, she will be homesick and alone – until she suddenly finds company one night.|isbn=1510107789Is it a warning from a Spanish gang or a problem closer to home?
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{{Frontpage
|author=Freya SampsonAlex Bell and Tim McDonagh|title=The Last LibraryGlorious Race of Magical Beasts
|rating=4
|genre=General FictionConfident Readers|summary=I am always Eli is a little nervous to busy lad – by day an apprentice in the wondrous library we start a story about a libraryby visiting with him, since I am and in the evening a librarian. I always grit my teeth slightly helper at the thought of the incoming cardigan-wearingdessert cafe his gran owns and runs. Eli lives with his lovely gran, hair too – for there is a generation missing in a bunthe family. A few short years ago, cat-owningEli's parents were both lost to the titular race, glasses on a chain stereotypes! In this story, globe-trotting adventure where all entrants have to navigate the main character, June, does put her hair world in the company of a bun, and she does own a cat (called Alan Bennett), and she magical beast. This has barely any friends and spends her evenings eating made the race anathema to the same Chinese takeaway meal once pair – but when a week whilst reading books alone! But I didn't immediately throw the book out of bad incident at the window, because I found I was interested in June, and why she lived as she did. Her mum used eatery leads to be a librarian at the village libraryconfession from gran, but when she got sick, June gave up on going Eli knows his only hope is to University and stayed at home dare to take care enter what he most hates, with the sole aim the prize of her mum, as well as taking on a job as library assistant magic at the local library. And even though her mum sadly died some years ago, she is still working there, still eating her mum's favourite takeaway meal, and still reading her mum's old books. June is stuck, but little does she know, everything in her life is about end – the changeonly thing to possibly save his gran.|isbn=183877369X0571382231
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