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'''Read [[Forthcoming Publications|reviews of books about to be published]].
{{Frontpage
|author=Peter Owen JonesSylvie Cathrall|title=Conversations with NatureA Letter to the Luminous Deep
|rating=5
|genre=Spirituality and ReligionScience Fiction|summary= One of the comments made when I was offered this beautiful There are few greater joys than a book for review was that it's not very long. Having read the book twice over, I'm brought back inescapably which lives up to the Spanish proverb that Life may be short, but it is broada compelling premise. In And this case I'm brought to the idea that the length is one of life is not the point; the point is its depth. Peter Owen Jones dives deepthem.|isbn=19129924180356522776
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|isbn=19164599430008517061|title=Squeakily BabyDeath in a Lonely Place|author=Beth WebbStig Abell
|rating=4
|genre=For SharingCrime|summary=Much as mothers love their babiesFormer Metropolitan Police detective, there's something they all dread - a squeakily baby. He's so tired but he can't - or won't - go to sleep: insteadJake Johnson, he just lies on has settled into his blanket and ''wails''rustic life at Little Sky. The sea offers to help. It rocks Baby gently There’s perhaps a little uncertainty about the future of his life with his vet girlfriend, Livia and the waves sing ''hushher daughter Diana, hush''. Think as moving in together would mean a lot of gentle wavelets falling onto a sandy beach compromise: does Jake give up his off-grid and you have relaxing life to move in with Livia or does Livia move to Little Sky despite her reservations about whether or not this is the sound perfectly. future she wants for herself and her daughter? The mermaids join For the moment they’re enjoying life in - ''la lou, la lay...'' And for a moment it seems to have worked as Baby closes his eyes. Then a seagull '''shouts''' the present and we know exactly what's going to happen nextputting the future on the back burner.
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Robin Stevens1786482126|title=The Ministry of Unladylike ActivityJanus Stone (Dr Ruth Galloway)|author=Elly Griffiths
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=May Wong is Builders were demolishing an old house in Norwich - the site was going to hold seventy-five 'luxury' apartments - when they discovered the bones of a child beneath a long way from her family in Hong Kongdoorway. She’s stuck in her school, Deepdean, and desperate to get away, and do something useful to help end the war and to get homeThere was no skull. She just knows that she would make the perfect spy! Was this a ritual killing or murder? And when she Inevitably, Dr Ruth Galloway finds herself turned away by the Ministryworking with DCI Harry Nelson. It's difficult as Ruth knows, but Nelson doesn't, that she takes matters into her own hands, along is pregnant with his child as a boy she meets outside result of the Ministry, Ericone night they spent together some three months ago. They both go undercover in a large country house, pretending to Her condition will be evacueesobvious before long, in an attempt to prove that someone there not least because Ruth is passing secrets prone to the Nazis. But there is a lot more going on in Elysium Hall than either them have imagined, and suddenly they find themselves in the middle sudden bouts of a murder scene, with even more to try to unravel and solvesickness.|isbn=0241429862
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|isbn=19196350170008551324|title=A Thief to Catch a KillerThe Devil You Know (D S Max Craigie)|author=Kitt TownsendNeil Lancaster|rating=4.5|genre=TeensCrime|summary= Solomon Klyne isnIt't s unusual for anyone from the Hardie family to approach the police. Neither side likes or has any respect for the other. But Davie Hardie is struggling in prison and he's prepared to tell the police where the body of a bad ladmissing person is buried and who was responsible for her death. This person, he promises, so why is someone big and it will be worth the police doing what he running around London committing a series of robberies? wants. And how did what he learn wants is to be transferred to crack safes? You'll have an open prison to wait serve the remainder of his sentence and to get an answer early parole date. Not much to ask, is it? The new Deputy Police Constable doesn't think so and she's even prepared to do the second question because I avoid spoilers. But Iother thing that Hardie demanded - make certain that DS Max Craigie and anyone who works with him is kept well away from what'll answer the first one: for his grandmother..s happening.
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=13985153880008405026|title=The Boy and A Stranger in the DogFamily (Maeve Kerrigan 11)|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)Jane Casey|rating=4.5|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=First of all, it It's sixteen years since nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her bed one summer night. She was never found and the earthquakeinvestigation ground to a halt. Now, deep in the ocean floorher mother, Helena, which created the tsunami and this, her father are dead in turn, caused the nuclear meltdowntheir bed. The result was complete and utter devastation. The deaths were uncountableInitially, and it looks like a straightforward murder/suicide but there's something about the loss positioning of livelihoods was widespreadthe bodies that makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and her boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but What looked as though it was going to be an open- six months after the tsunami and- Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered shut case is now a dog outside a convenience storecomplex double murder. He wasnKerrigan is convinced that the explanation lies in Rosalie't a dog person but the convenience store owners disappearance: others (such as Derwent's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the dog jumped inboss, Una Burt) are less convinced.
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=15291530500571379877|title=Britain's Best Political Cartoons 2022The Kellerby Code|author=Tim BensonJonny Sweet|rating=43.5|genre=HumourCrime|summary=Seeking some light relief from the current political turmoil which Edward Jevons is coming to seem more a working-class young man, obsessed with his upper-class friends, Robert and more like an adrenaline sport, I was nudged towards Stanza. Robert's a theatre director. He'Britains also 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 Best Political Cartoons of 2022''drunkenly confided how he feels to Robert. Sharp eyes will have noted Most men in Robert's position would stay away from Stanza or tell Edward that wea relationship had begun between them but he're s not yet through the yearlike most men: Edward is left to stumble upon the cartoons run from 4 September 2021 to 31 August 2022two of them kissing in a dark passageway. Who can imagine what there will be to come in the 2023 edition?
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{{Frontpage
|author=Lisa GrayJo Callaghan|title=The Dark RoomLeave No Trace
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=What if you knew someone was dead, because you'd watched them die several years ago, but then you come across When a man is found crucified on the top of a photograph that seemed to show their murder happened hill in a different place and time? This is what happens Nuneaton, DCS Kat Frank finds herself assigned to Leonard in this storythe case alongside her sidekick, the AI detective Lock. He is an ex-crime reporter for a newspaper, and since leaving journalism heIt's found himself an unusual hobby where he finds oldtheir first live case together, undeveloped rolls of film and develops them in his own dark room at homehaving previously been very successful with several cold cases. One of these photographs turns out to show the murder scene of But when there is a second body found crucified a young woman he met some years agofew days later, Kat is suddenly struggling with a potential serial killer and who he ''thought'' he had watched die in front a very high profile case that draws a lot of him one night in a hotelunwanted attention to their AI Future Policing project. He'd felt guilty ever since that nightWill they be able to solve the case in time, or will Kat find herself taken off the case and lost everything because , potentially, out of it - his fiancee and his a career - but now finds himself wondering if she hadn't really died the night she was with him, what on earth actually happened?|isbn=154203535X139851120X
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=1399613073|title=Moral Injuries|author=Natasha Hastings Christie Watson|rating=4.5|genre=Thrillers|summary=Olivia, Laura and Anjali met on the first day of medical school and their friendship would keep them inseparable for a quarter of a century. Olivia is ruthlessly ambitious, which is a bonus when you aim to be a cardiothoracic surgeon. Laura is a perfectionist and a trauma doctor. Anjali is the free spirit of the group and she becomes a GP. When we first meet them they're at a drug and alcohol-fuelled party and Alex T Smithit's going to end in tragedy. We don't know 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, it's their teenage children who are involved.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0241636604|title=The Miraculous SweetmakersTrading Game: A Confession|author=Gary Stevenson|rating=4.5|genre=Autobiography|summary=If you were to bring up an image of a city banker in your mind, you're unlikely to think of someone like Gary Stevenson. A hoodie and jeans replaces the pin-stripe suit and his background is the East End, where he was familiar with violence, poverty and injustice. There was no posh public school on his CV - but he had been to the London School of Economics. Stevenson is bright - extremely bright - and he has a facility with numbers which most of us can only envy. He also realised that most rich people expect poor people to be stupid. It was his ability at what was, essentially, a card game which got him an internship with Citibank. Eventually, this turned into permanent employment as a trader.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1035021803|title=The Frost FairAntique Hunter's Guide to Murder|author=C L Miller
|rating=3.5
|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=It''The River Thames had frozen s twenty years since Freya Lockwood has been back to death in its sleepthe English country village where she grew up. She's back now because of a request for help from her beloved aunt, Carole. Freya' And thus the Frost Fair could happen – people trading on the completely iced-over river, like our heroine Thomasinas former mentor and Carole's father with his gingerbread close friend, Arthur Crockleford, is dead and confectionery shop. Thomasina will be working the Fair too – but her twin brother won'tcircumstances seem suspicious, as he dies in Chapter Oneto say the least. It Arthur was a tragedy the reason why Freya had not been back to the village: Arthur, she feels no small guilt for, and which has made let her father a sullendown badly. Even though they were in business together as antique hunters, closed shop – and her bed-bound mother she has spoken not a word – not even opened her eyes, more felt able to be near the man or less – in pursue the four years since, eitherprofession she loved. But into After the darksplit, frosted London comes Inigo, with supreme magical powersshe worked in a cafe, met and a willingness to help Thomasina. Not only can he introduce her to married James (on the fantastical Other Frost Fair, using rebound from the river surface at night for no end love of mystical beasts her life, who was murdered) and characters Freya and their happenings, but he has a unique proposal for Thomasina, which will shake her world to its coreJames have now divorced.|isbn=0008496056
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Jane Goodall and Douglas Abrams AllTomorrowsFutureCover|title=The Book of Hope All Tomorrow's Futures: Fictions that Disrupt|author=Benjamin Greenaway and Stephen Oram (Editors)
|rating=5
|genre=Politics and Society Science Fiction|summary= The done thing is to read a book all ''Opening up new ways of thinking about the way through before you sit down shape of things to review come.'' I've heard itsaid that 'technology' is what happens after you're eighteen. I’m making an exception here Well, because I don’t want to lose any must confess that there have been more than a few decades of the experience of reading this amazing book, technology in my lifetime. I want 've kept up reasonably well with what's advantageous to capture me but I'm left with the feeling that it as it hits 's all getting away from me. And Some of it is hitting me- frankly - quite frightening. Of course, I could research the possibilities and the probabilities and end up down rabbit holes without really understanding whether I'm reading someone who knows what they're talking about or the latest conspiracy theorist. This beautiful book has me I needed people I knew I could trust and who could deliver information in tearsa way I could understand. |isbn=024147857X
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1529504767Sunny Singh|title=The Christmas Doll (The Repair Shop Stories)|author=Amy Sparkes and Katie HickeyHotel Arcadia|rating=3.5|genre=For SharingThrillers |summary=Susan was very young when she was evacuated The Hotel Arcadia is a luxury hotel in an unnamed city that has suddenly been violently taken over by a terrorist group. Hiding from London in 1939 the terrorists who are rampaging through, killing everyone on site, there is Sam, a wartime photographer and nervous about how she would be greeted when she got to her final destinationAbhi, the hotel manager. She needn't have worried though as she went As Abhi continues to try to care remotely for the home of Mr and Mrs Russellresidents who are still alive in the hotel, he forms a bond with Sam who couldn't have been kinder refuses to be cowed by events, and keeps on venturing out of her. She even had her own room - all to herself. Gradually she relaxed and began try to enjoy capture what's happened through her lifephotography. She'd Although they only ever talk over the phone, their friendship grows as Abhi tries to help Mrs Russell with the baking her keep safe and when it came they both wait to Christmas Eve Susan and Mr Russell put the decorations on see if they will be rescued before they are discovered by the Christmas tree. The best surprise happened the following morningterrorists.|isbn=086154742X
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Lilja Sigurdardottir and Quentin Bates (translator)1529153298|title=Red as BloodThe List of Suspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey|rating=45|genre=ThrillersGeneral Fiction|summary=When Flosi’s wife goes missingIt's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. (A woman? I mean, honestly...) She's not what's worrying Miv's family, all the evidence seems to point towards her having though. Women have been kidnappeddisappearing. The ransom note tells him not Well, they've been murdered, but to have any contact with the police, 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so instead he enlists frightening. Miv's upset because she's overheard that her father wants to move the help of Arorafamily 'Down South'. When you're from Yorkshire, Down South is a financial investigatorfrightening, foreign place, best avoided. She manages to persuade Flosi that they will need For Miv, the help of the police, and she calls move would mean leaving her detective best friend, DanielSharon, whom and she met when he was investigating her sister’s disappearance'll do anything to prevent that. Together, they start to secretly investigate Gudrun’s disappearance, trying She's not worried about the dangers or that her Mum's stopped talking - to arouse the suspicion of anyone, since they have no idea who the kidnappers might be, yet the more they uncover, the more confusing things become.|isbn=1914585321
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=08615419951398524085|title=Wolf PackHas Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter?|author=Will DeanNicci French|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=The story began when Tuva Moodyson drove Charlotte Salter was expected at her Hilux pickup truck on the road north of Visberghusband's fiftieth birthday party but never turned up. She sees blood on the road and a creature on its side near the pine trees. It will turn out to be BroncoHer children, a Swedish Elkhoundsons Niall, who has been attacked by a wolf. Tuva takes Bronco Paul and Ollie and his ownerher daughter, Bengt Nyberg, to the vetEtty. Bronco didn't make it are all worried but on the way, Nyberg told Tuva that he was out looking for his niece, twenty-yearstrangely -old Elsa Nybergher husband, who had gone missingAlec, is not. She'd been working at Rose Farm Shortly afterwards, Etty and MoodysonGreg, find the body of Greg's journalist's instincts are soon brought to father, Duncan Ackerley, in the foreriver. Rose Farm is now home It was an easy assumption for the police to a group of survivalists but back in 1987 the then owner, Johan Svenson make that Duncan had murdered his wife, and his two eldest children Charlie and then killed himselfcommitted suicide when he couldn't stand the guilt. His newborn child, just four weeks old survivedThe 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. Does this have any connection to the disappearance of Elsa Nyberg?
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Alison Hughes1035906708|title=FlyDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersGeneral Fiction|summary=This is a very impressive readWe tend to think of Maria Callas as Greek, but she was born to Greek parents in Manhattan, New York, as it does a lot of what mainstream teen in December 1923 and tween fiction still struggles withonly moved to Athens when she was thirteen. Its focus is courtesy of Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to 'Callas' to make it more manageable in the first-person narration from Fly, a secondary school lad with cerebral palsy, a down-onStates. When she was back in Athens -supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for hervoice -luck single mom nearing retirement from being she was raised under the Nazi occupation by a cleaner, a carer while at school, mother who mercilessly exploited her and a bundle made no secret of assumptions people lay on him. First they assume that with a broken body comes a broken mind, then they decide he's a maths savant – they even believe they can get away with calling him Fly, which isn't his real nameher preference for her elder sister, but everybody just uses itJackie.|isbn=1525305832
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|isbnauthor=3791388398Christopher Edge|title=New European Baking: 99 Recipes for Breads, Brioches and Pastries|author=Laurel KratochvilaBlack Hole Cinema Club|rating=4.5|genre=CookeryConfident Readers|summary=This is probably one Lucas and his friends are all booked in for a movie marathon at their local cinema, a place that has the nickname of the most unusual baking books I've encounteredThe Black Hole'. ItAll big movie fans, they's built around 99 recipes for breadsre looking forward to lots of exciting films, brioches and pastries but many, many snacks! However, as the recipes movie starts, they very quickly realise that something about this new film format is very different, and they are interwoven with some thought-provoking writing on how bread - and baking - have changed in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuriesswept up into an adventure they couldn't even imagine. We start with But as they lurch from one film genre to the basics - the equipment you'll need (there's nothing extravagant or indulgent) and the ingredientsnext, where the author can they figure out what on earth is particular. going on? You might not have realised that different salts can change Will they ever get back to the flavour cinema, and sensation on the tongue of the finished product but, apparently, they do.to their real lives?|isbn=1839942738
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{{Frontpage
|author=Andrew GivlerRachel Greenlaw|title=Soul Fraud (The Debt Collection Book 1)Compass and Blade|rating=43.5|genre=FantasyTeens|summary=''Matt has a terrible lifeI can hear the song of the sea. Seriously—it's awful. It is so bad that Dan The call of the deep, the Demon is shocked when Matt turns down his infernal offer: 10 years of a blissful life answering beat in exchange for his soulmy heart.''
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{{Frontpage
|author=Greg James and Chris SmithSherwood Metts|title=Super GhostPlanet Storyland|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Paragon City has Things have been lucky to have a bit sticky for the great Doctor Extraordinary, their very own superhero taking care of themEarthlings. Whenever the evil Captain Chaos has come up with another cunning plan (usually involving a giant robot of some description) Doctor Extraordinary has AI and automation have been there proceeding apace, often replacing jobs they're paid to thwart her mischief do and save the dayother tasks that took time to accomplish. But one day the Doctor Just as they were beginning to get used to all this technological change and the Captain are trapped together inside a giant robot that then explodesstarting to think of other, new ways to spend time, along came an awful pandemic. Life was pretty much shut down and , along with it, all the hero and the villain are no moremany daily social interactions on which they depend so heavily. Or are they…?|isbn=02414705361736128426
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|isbnauthor=B0B7289HKQMatthew Tree|title=Conversations Across America: A Father and Son, AlzheimerWe's, and 300 Conversations Along the TransAmerica Bike Trail that Capture the Soul of America|author=Kari Loyall Never Know|rating=4.5|genre=TravelLiterary Fiction|summary=Kari (that rhymes with ‘sorry’, by the way) wanted Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to spend some time with be different from his father , a drunk and the period between two jobs seemed like a good time to do it. The decision was made to ride the Trans America Bike Trail from Yorktown, Virginia to Astoria, Oregon - chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of his artistic passions all 4250 miles failed miserably and who had endless crises of it - in 2015self confidence. They had 73 days So Tim applied himself to do it - slightly less his studies, cultivated his abilities rather than the recommended time - his daydreams and set himself high but there were factors which pointed this up as more of a challenge that it would be for most people who considered taking it on. Merv Loya was 75 years old and he was suffering from early-stage Alzheimer'sachievable ambitions.|isbn= B0CVFXPGP8
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{{Frontpage
|author=Christopher BowdenA G Slatter|title=Mr Magenta|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary= Christopher Bowden's latest novel is a patient untangling of a seemingly ordinary woman's life, carried out by her nephew after she has died. The aunt who always provided a safe harbour and a little bit Briar Book of indulgence to a young nephew had had a much more interesting life than that nephew Stephen had ever realised and it seems to him an obligation to find it all out. |isbn= B0B6Z9VJDW}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1739593901|title=22 Ideas About The Future|author=Benjamin Greenaway and Stephen Oram (Editors)the Dead
|rating=5
|genre=Science FictionFantasy|summary=''Our future will be more complex than we expectedThere's a part of me that wants to keep this just to myself for however long I can. Instead This secret magic of flying carsmy own, we got night-vision killer drones and automated elderly care with geolocation surveillance bracelets all mine, at last. I just want to track grandmaenjoy it for a while.''
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|isbn=14059511841529900360|title=The Girls Who DisappearedGhost Orchid|author=Claire DouglasJonathan Kellerman
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=Back in November 1998It hadn't been Lt Milo Sturgis's fault that Alex Delaware had been badly injured but he felt responsible and even after Alex recovered, Olivia Rutherford Sturgis was driving her three friends home after a night outreluctant to ask for his help on difficult cases. As she passed through the darklyHis assertions that there were only open-and-wooded Devilshut cases which didn's Corridor, t need the help of a psychologist only worked for a figure appeared in the roadwhile. Olivia swerved to avoid him and the car smashed Finally, it was Robin, Delaware's partner, who nudged Milo into a tree, leaving her trappedasking for help again. When She knew that the involvement was something that the man she regained consciousness her three friends had disappearedloved needed. Ralph MiddletonThe next case did look simple, who lived in the woods helped her before the police and ambulance arrivedthough. But what had happened to Sally Thorne, Tamsin Cole and Hetty Riding? Their disappearance would be yet another mysterious happening Two lovers were murdered in the Stafferbury area swimming pool of Wiltshirea remote property in Bel Air. It He was thought of as Aveburythe heir to an Italian shoe empire and she is married to an extremely rich man and it's poor relationnot the Italian. But which of them was the primary target?
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|isbn=39496660791529395224|title=NoemaLetting the Cat Out of the Bag: The Secret Life of a Vet|author=Dael AkkermanSion Rowlands|rating=43.5|genre=General FictionAnimals and Wildlife|summary=Siôn Rowlands fell into veterinary science accidentally. His father was a GP and Rowlands didn''This is a story about some things that happened t want to me about twelve thousand years ago.'' Maya is a young girl living follow in a hunter-gatherer village during the Mesolithic era. Climate change is occurringhis footsteps, particularly when he considered the Sea of Grass encroaches further and further into Mayastrain that being on-call put on his father's forest home, and food is becoming more and more scarcelife. What to do? Can the law givers in When he was seventeen he took the federation opportunity of villages muster peaceful ways to cope? Can doing work experience with a family friend who was a vet and was convinced this was the Travellerjob for him. Before long, he was at Liverpool University. It hadn't - as with so many students - been his dream since he was a spiritual figure who interprets the wisdom of All Lifechild. If anything, provide solutions? he'd wanted to be a professional footballer.
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=194241028X0861541774|title=Azabu Getaway (Detective Hiroshi)A Nye of Pheasants|author=Michael PronkoSteve Burrows|rating=54
|genre=Crime
|summary=DCI Domenic Jejeune''You can't put 'good at golf' on your tombstones close friend and former colleague, can you?'' When we meet Patrick Walsh he's outside his family's home in the Azabu district of TokyoDanny Maik, hoping that his key will still work but prepared to break has taken a short holiday in if it doesn't. He's there Singapore to remove his daughters, Jenna and Kirimeet up with an old ally, and take them back to HonoluluGuy Trueman. It's Maik was involved in a street brawl - he would later maintain that he was facing a quick day trip, man armed with just one purpose in mind. Patrick's employed by Nine Dragons Wealth Management a knife - and for the past year, he's been working in Wyoming because the privacy laws there are conducive to the business he's inkilled a Ghurka. His wifeInitially, Miyuki, hasn't been in Wyoming with him and is in the process he faced a charge of divorcing him after photographs sent manslaughter but evidence came to her anonymously light that suggested that Patrick had not been faithful he might have planned to hermurder the man. Now he could be facing the death penalty. Patrick's plan didnDomenic Jejeune can do nothing to help as any interference from another police force could provoke a diplomatic incident and wouldn't work out and he finds himself on the run in Tokyo with the two girlshelp Danny at all.
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|isbnauthor=B09SGWCXQ8Alexander McCall Smith|title=The Night Watch (D S Max Craigie)|author=Neil LancasterPerfect Passion Company
|rating=4.5
|genre=CrimeGeneral Fiction|summary=Fergus Grigor went out for The Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, run. The lawyer was on his honeymoon but his body was found dashed by Ness and operating as an alternative to pieces below all the cliffs at Dunnett Headonline apps in providing a more personal, tailored service. Was it suicide Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the business, or did he - as Ness is planning to take a trip to Canada to get away for some reason - climb over a while. Katie is coming out of a break up with a bad boyfriend, and so jumps at the stone wall and fall chance to come home to his death? Or was he pushed? On balanceEdinburgh. And so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, it looked like bringing us to an accident but then his 'accident' was linked Edinburgh we already love, thanks to 44 Scotland Street and the deaths of others associated Isabel Dalhousie novels, but with himsome new characters who quickly begin to charm. Scott Paterson was released after Katie has no experience in running a 'notbusiness, or in match-proven' verdict meant that Scotlandmaking, but Ness has full confidence in her abilities, and there's most notorious criminal wasn't facing life imprisonment. Paterson was Grigor's last client.always her very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, William, to lend a hand…|isbn=1846976596
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|isbn=09897153370811771741|title=Papa on the MoonInstaKnits for Baby|author=Marco NorthMelissa Leapman
|rating=4
|genre=Literary FictionCrafts|summary=Melissa Leapman's 'Some frogs had gotten into the well.'InstaKnits for Baby' ''Walter stood waist-deep in the fragrant water, naked except for his beaten leather hat. Long strands gives us a collection of their eggs wove around him, sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside themknits from toys to blankets. Two Some will be quick knits - others are of the dogs leaned over the opening and barked down at the strange noise 'long, cosy afternoons in front of the buckets as he filled themfire' variety.'' How is that for an opening? The style of this novel in projects are divided by the form of interconnected short stories goes from succinct and laconic time they'll take to complete - less than five hours, five to ten hours, ten to wistful twenty hours and musing, turning on a sixpencemore than twenty hours. And author Marco North, who has All the most wonderful turn of phraseprojects are attractive, starts as he means to go onmodern and useable. I perhaps show my age when I wonder about 'social-media-worthy projects' but that's me being picky.
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|isbnauthor=140639131XDean Koontz|title=A Practical Present for Philippa Pheasant|author=Briony May SmithThe Bad Weather Friend
|rating=4.5
|genre=For SharingParanormal|summary=Philippa Pheasant was ''tired'' of nearly getting squished as she tried to cross the Old Oak RoadBenny is having a terrifically bad day. She wrote to the mayor about the problem but didn't even get a replyHe loses his job, he loses his fiancee, and his house gets trashed. Philippa wasn't Oh, and someone has delivered a bird really weird, disturbing coffin-sized object to sit back on her tail feathers when there his home, and it's possible that whoever or whatever was a problem which needed solving: she saw inside is the benefits of thing that has trashed his house! The thing is, Benny is the lollipop lady at the school crossing and decided that she would set up something similar herselfvery last person to deserve all this bad luck. He is a nice person. A really nice person. Her uniform and lollipop stick were both So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the delivery to his house is a new friend, a little amateur bad weather friend called Spike, who has been sent to start with but the benefits were obvioushelp him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a good person. All the animals used the crossing Spike is going to take care of Benny, and will certainly take care of Benny's enemies, if he, Benny, and Hedgehog was even trained up to provide Harper (a safe path overnightwaitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are.|isbn=1662500491
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|isbnauthor=000837936XAdam Stower|title=The Last Girl to Die|author=Helen FieldsMurray and Bun|rating=4.5|genre=CrimeConfident Readers |summary=Seventeen-year-old Adriana Clarke's family moved Murray is supposed to Tobermorybe a humble, tidy and friendly cat, on the Isle of Mullone who is able to sleep and eat and eat and sleep and, well, in search whatever takes his fancy next of a new lifethe two. It was But he's a bit of bad magician's cat, so his favourite bun has been turned into a change from Las Vegashyperactive sticky rabbit called Bun, and the catflap they both use can chuck them out, not into the regular back garden, but the family seemed determined into a world of frightening adventure and Adriana had shown signs of developing a social life - until she disappearedwhiffs. The local police demonstrated little interest in the case (could This time round it have been because Adriana's mother drops them into a Viking land, where a troll hunter is obviously Latino?) and Rob and Isabella Clarke called in Sadie Levesque from Banffexpected – well, who had successfully tracked down missing teenagers. Brandonone much bigger than Murray was, Adriana's twin, was upset and surly. Four-year-old Luna just knew that she missed her big sister. It took four daysto be honest, but Sadie found Adriana in Mackinnonhe's Cave. Sheturned up and he'd been murdered and it looked like a ritual killing.ll have to do…|isbn=0008561249
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|isbn=1509889612B0C47LV1PC|title=The Rising Tide (D I Vera Stanhope)Fragility|author=Ann CleevesMosby Woods|rating=54|genre=CrimeLiterary Fiction|summary=ItCan you make a ''Yo birthing person's fifty years since a group of teenagers went on a weekend retreat to Holy Island. Some of them found the Only Connect course transformative and they've been coming back for a reunion every five years since then. There was a tragedy at joke? And if you could, is the first reunion when Isobel Hall drove off question should you make it? Or is the island too close to high tide and her car was swept awayquestion if you did, but her younger sister, Louisa, has returned with would it land? The catch is that the group each year as her husband, Ken, was one of the original teenagersanswer for both could well be.... no. Ken now has Alzheimer ''s and heFragility's a shadow ' is set as the city of the man he used to be. Philip Robson now a priestPortland, Oregon, always gets there early as he likes cautiously begins to have some quiet time alone in the chapel. Annie Laidler lives locally and she provides much of emerge from the food: her deli is famous in restrictions imposed during the area.covid pandemic
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|isbn=14736808831529431735|title=The Skeleton KeyWinter Visitor|author=Erin KellyJames Henry|rating=54|genre=ThrillersCrime|summary=It's February 1991 and Essex is bitingly cold, which made Bruce Hopkins'The Golden Bones is going to follow me around for return all the rest of my lifemore surprising. How can I trust anyone? It all leads back to you!He'' Nell didn't want to go to d been exiled on the reunion to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of ''The Golden Bones''Costa del Sol as a wanted drug smuggler for a decade. SheThe return has come about because he'd s had no benefit a letter from it his ex- in factwife, it had made her life precarious saying that she's ill and unbelievably challenging. Ihasn'd better explaint long to live. It''The Golden Bones'' was s hard to feel any sympathy when Hopkins is abducted, stripped to his underwear and sent to a treasure quest book painted and written by Frank and Cora Churcher. The story revolved around murdered Elinore whose golden and bejewelled bones were hidden around the country. The clues - some of them quite tortuous - were disguised watery grave in the words and pictures boot of the book - and all the parts were discovered except for the pelvisa stolen Ford Sierra. As with such quests, some people were obsessive and the theories became more and more outlandish.Is it a warning from a Spanish gang or a problem closer to home?
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{{Frontpage
|author=Holly WebbAlex Bell and Tim McDonagh|title=The Story Glorious Race of GreenriverMagical Beasts|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Silken and Sedge, for all their differences, have Eli is a lot busy lad – by day an apprentice in common. Silken is a girl whose father is the Master Builder of what might be the finest beaver lodge on the Greenriver. Unfortunately she is also a kind of runt figurewondrous library we start by visiting with him, and as in the evening a result is patronised, and given helper at the most tokenistic tasks when it comes to fetching wood dessert cafe his gran owns and shoring the dam upruns. She also stands out Eli lives with his lovely gran, too – for there is a generation missing in the unique artistic ability to singfamily. Otters like Sedge singA few short years ago, but he tooEli's parents were both lost to the titular race, as a globe-trotting adventure where all entrants have to navigate the son of world in the lady company of a magical beast. This has made the holt, has pressure on him race anathema to be the pair – but when a bit less feckless and more attentive bad incident at the eatery leads to class. Hea confession from gran, after allEli knows his only hope is to dare to enter what he most hates, will eventually inherit with the sole aim the job prize of keeping magic at the otters safe from end – the wolf that both animal species fear the most, and from dreaded events like a Dark Springonly thing to possibly save his gran.|isbn=15101096250571382231
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