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<metadesc>Book review siteExpert, with books full book reviews from the many most walks of literary life - ; fiction, biography, crime, cookery and anything else that takes our fancy. There are also lots of author interviews and top tens.</metadesc>Hello from The Bookbag, a book review site, featuring books from all the many walks of literary life non- [[:Category:Fiction|fiction]], [[:Category:Biography|biography]], [[:Category:Crime|crime]], [[:Category:Cookery|cookery]] and anything else that takes our fancy. At Bookbag Towers the bookbag sits at the side of the desk. Itchildren's the bag we take to the library and the bookshop. Sometimes it holds the latest releases, but at other times there'll be old favourites, books for the children, & self-published books for the home. They're sometimes our own books or books from the local library. They're often books sent to us by publishers and we promise to tell you exactly what we think about them. You might not want to read through a full review, so we'll give you a quick review which summarises what we felt about the book and tells you whether or not we think you should buy or borrow it. There are also lots of [[:Category:Interviews|plus author interviews]], and all sorts of [[:Category:Lists|& top tens]] - all of which you can find on our [[features]] page. If you're stuck for something to read, check out the [[Book Recommendations|recommendations]] page.</metadesc>
'''Read [[Forthcoming Publications|reviews of books about to be published]].{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Kate LongSylvie Cathrall|title=A Mother's Guide Letter to Cheatingthe Luminous Deep|rating=3.5|genre=Women's Science Fiction|summary=When Jaz discovers There are few greater joys than a random text message on her husband Ian's phone, it does not take a genius book which lives up to work out the meaning of a message as personal as 'what did you dream last night?', followed by kisses and a strange woman's name. Nor does it take a genius to figure out the precise nature of what Ian has been up to with the sender. A subsequent confession and proclamation from Ian that 'it meant nothing; she is nothing' does not diminish Jaz's rage and he is dispatched, forthwith, from the family homecompelling premise. As And this is the norm in these kind one of situations, you turn to the people you most trust to help you through and reinforcements in the shape of Jaz's mother, Carol, swiftly arrivethem.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847377505</amazonuk>0356522776
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jo Nesbo and Don Bartlett (translator)0008517061|title=The SnowmanDeath in a Lonely Place|author=Stig Abell
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=It's NorwayFormer Metropolitan Police detective, and it's a snowy and dark November. Women are disappearingJake Johnson, and/or being found horrifically killedhas settled into his rustic life at Little Sky. The police have There’s perhaps a little to go on, but with uncertainty about the help future of flashbacks across cases the police could never hope to connecthis life with his vet girlfriend, Livia and her daughter Diana, we can see hints as moving in together would mean a lot of a clever, but misogynistic man who seems compromise: does Jake give up his off-grid and relaxing life to move in with Livia or does Livia move to be Little Sky despite her reservations about whether or not this is the culprit, future she wants for herself and on a mission against marital infidelity. her daughter? But what could be For the connection with all those crimes and moment they’re enjoying life in the American presidential elections? And why - present and how - might putting the police, future on the victims, and the reader, all come to be so terrified of a good old Scandinavian snowman?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846553482</amazonuk>back burner.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Fridrik Erlings1786482126|title=Fish in the SkyThe Janus Stone (Dr Ruth Galloway)|author=Elly Griffiths
|rating=4.5
|genre=TeensCrime|summary=Builders were demolishing an old house in Norwich - the site was going to hold seventy-five 'Iluxury've got a dad in a shoe box and apartments - when they discovered the bones of a mum who's struggling for her life against child beneath a famished cannibalistic sewing machinedoorway.' Oh dear! Josh Stephenson is just thirteen There was no skull. His father is separated from his mother and works away on Was this a ship and so heritual killing or murder? Inevitably, Dr Ruth Galloway finds herself working with DCI Harry Nelson. It's a much-missed presence in Joshdifficult as Ruth knows, but Nelson doesn's life (the shoe box). Money t, that she is tight pregnant with only one parent at home, so his mother works multiple jobs, some child as a result of them at home (the sewing machine)one night they spent together some three months ago. Josh occupies a middle position at school: neither clever nor stupid; neither jock nor geek. He and his best friend Peter are natural history fanatics and they spend a great deal Her condition will be obvious before long, not least because Ruth is prone to sudden bouts of time watching documentaries on television, or planning their ownsickness. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845393422</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Melissa de la Cruz0008551324|title=Blue BloodsThe Devil You Know (D S Max Craigie)|author=Neil Lancaster|rating=4.5|genre=TeensCrime|summary=It''Blue Bloods'' 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 the first book struggling in a series aimed at teenagers prison and ithe's about vampires, currently prepared to tell the police where the body of a popular theme in young adult novelsmissing person is buried and who was responsible for her death. However Melissa De La Cruz offers an original twist on this topic: the Vampires are known as 'Blue Bloods' This person, he promises, is someone big and they're part of it will be worth the New York elitepolice doing what he wants. They're rich, young, beautiful And what he wants is to be transferred to an open prison to serve the remainder of his sentence and popularto get an early parole date. Thought Not much to be immortalask, their world is shattered as one of them it? The new Deputy Police Constable doesn't think so and she's even prepared to do the other thing that Hardie demanded - make certain that DS Max Craigie and anyone who works with him is found murderedkept well away from what's happening.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>190565474X</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Alexandra Horowitz0008405026|title=Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell and KnowA Stranger in the Family (Maeve Kerrigan 11)|author=Jane Casey
|rating=5
|genre=PetsCrime|summary=IIt've long been aware that our two dogs have methods of communication which are far more subtle than anything s sixteen years since nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her bed one summer night. She was never found and the investigation ground to a mere human can musterhalt. They sense exactly how we Now, her mother, Helena, and her father are feeling – a slight change dead in the atmosphere and they will be alerttheir bed. The reactions to Initially, it looks like a frown or a smile, laughter or tears are all different and theystraightforward murder/suicide but there're capable s something about the positioning of communicating with us in ways which have no need of wordsthe bodies that makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and her boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. For a while I thought What looked as though it was our dogs who were special (well, ''obviously'' they are…) but I've noticed other dogs communicating with each other going to be an open-and with humans and the more -shut case is now a complex double murder. Kerrigan is convinced that I see the more that I wonder why they are referred to explanation lies in Rosalie's disappearance: others (such as Derwent'dumb animals's boss, Una Burt) are less convinced.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184737347X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Eva Montanari0571379877|title=The Alphabet FamilyKellerby Code|author=Jonny Sweet
|rating=3.5
|genre=For SharingCrime|summary=Mummy A wants to write Edward Jevons is a storyworking-class young man, obsessed with his upper-class friends, but she canRobert and Stanza. Robert't think what to writes a theatre director. She sees what her children (b He's also self-obsessed, cdemanding, d handsome and entitled and so on) are up uses Edward torun errands for him. Some are playing musical instruments, some are running races, Edward has been in love with Stanza since their university days - and some are playing he's drunkenly confided how he feels to Robert. Most men in Robert's position would stay away from Stanza or tell Edward that a relationship had begun between them but he's not like most men: Edward is left to stumble upon the garden. With plenty two of ideas to hand, Mummy A writes her story, and then tells it to all her children and Daddy Zthem kissing in a dark passageway.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845394054</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage|author=Jo Callaghan|title=Leave No Trace|rating=4|genre=Crime|summary=When a man is found crucified on the top of a hill in Nuneaton, DCS Kat Frank finds herself assigned to the case alongside her sidekick, the AI detective Lock. It's their first live case together, having previously been very successful with several cold cases. But when there is a second body found crucified a few days later, Kat is suddenly struggling with a potential serial killer and a very high profile case that draws a lot of unwanted attention to their AI Future Policing project. Will they be able to solve the case in time, or will Kat find herself taken off the case and, potentially, out of a career?|isbn=139851120X}}{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Louise Douglas1399613073|title=Missing YouMoral Injuries|author=Christie Watson
|rating=4.5
|genre=Women's FictionThrillers|summary=Sean seemed to have Olivia, Laura and Anjali met on the perfect lifefirst day of medical school and their friendship would keep them inseparable for a quarter of a century. He has a successful careerOlivia is ruthlessly ambitious, which is a beautiful wife bonus when you aim to whom he be a cardiothoracic surgeon. Laura is devoted, a daughter whom he adores perfectionist and he lives in a dream hometrauma doctor. But then one day it all falls apart when Belle announces that Anjali is the free spirit of the group and she has met someone else and wants Sean to move out. Fen, on the other hand, doesn't have becomes a perfect lifeGP. She works in When we first meet them they're at a bookshop drug and alcohol-fuelled party and is devoted it's going to her young son, Connor who has cerebral palsyend in tragedy. ThatWe don's not t know who suffered the tragedy or the least of her problems though as she hides a dreadful secret and fearful consequences. Twenty-five years later there will be an eerily similar event that it will be brought out into impact the open she lives a life drawn in on itselfthree friends. This time, far from her home and family and reluctant to become close to anyoneit's their teenage children who are involved.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330454412</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Frances Stonor Saunders0241636604|title=The Woman Who Shot MussoliniTrading Game: A Confession|author=Gary Stevenson
|rating=4.5
|genre=HistoryAutobiography|summary=Most British titled families 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 19th East End, where he was familiar with violence, poverty and 20th centuries have produced their fair share of rebelsinjustice. Yet few came as close There was no posh public school on his CV - but he had been to changing the course London School of European history as the Honourable Violet GibsonEconomics. 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, one of eight children of Baron Ashbournea card game which got him an internship with Citibank. Eventually, this turned into permanent employment as a Protestant Anglo-Irish peer and MP in Disraeli's government during the 1870strader.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571239773</amazonuk>
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=1035021803
|title=The Antique Hunter's Guide to Murder
|author=C L Miller
|rating=3.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=It's twenty years since Freya Lockwood has been back to the English country village where she grew up. She's back now because of a request for help from her beloved aunt, Carole. Freya's former mentor and Carole's close friend, Arthur Crockleford, is dead and the circumstances seem suspicious, to say the least. Arthur was the reason why Freya had not been back to the village: Arthur, she feels, let her down badly. Even though they were in business together as antique hunters, she has not felt able to be near the man or pursue the profession she loved. After the split, she worked in a cafe, met and married James (on the rebound from the love of her life, who was murdered) and Freya and James have now divorced.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=AllTomorrowsFutureCover
|title=All Tomorrow's Futures: Fictions that Disrupt
|author=Benjamin Greenaway and Stephen Oram (Editors)
|rating=5
|genre=Science Fiction
|summary=''Opening up new ways of thinking about the shape of things to come.''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Poly BernateneSunny Singh|title=When Night Didn't ComeHotel Arcadia|rating=43.5|genre=For SharingThrillers |summary=One nightThe Hotel Arcadia is a luxury hotel in an unnamed city that has suddenly been violently taken over by a terrorist group. Hiding from the terrorists who are rampaging through, after the sun has gone to bedkilling everyone on site, the night doesn't come. There's no darknessthere is Sam, no moon a wartime photographer and no starsAbhi, the hotel manager. Someone's going As Abhi continues to have try to do something about it, so care remotely for the man residents who are still alive in charge rouses the hotel, he forms a group bond with Sam who refuses to be cowed by events, and keeps on venturing out of children her room to try to capture what's happened through her photography. Although they only ever talk over the phone, their friendship grows as Abhi tries to help her keep safe and they do what both wait to see if they will be rescued before they can to bring are discovered by the nightterrorists.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1845394925</amazonuk>086154742X
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Kathryn Stockett1529153298|title=The HelpList of Suspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=JacksonIt's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. (A woman? I mean, Mississippi: 1960honestly. ..) The talk at the bridge club and the tennis club is of She's not what Jackie Kennedy is wearing's worrying Miv's family, though. Women have been disappearing. They're white womenWell, of course and they're free ve been murdered, but to play have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. Miv's upset because a coloured woman will be looking after she's overheard that her father wants to move the children, doing the shopping and cleaning the housefamily 'Down South'. TheyWhen you're trusted to bring from Yorkshire, Down South is a frightening, foreign place, best avoided. For Miv, the children upmove would mean leaving her best friend, but theySharon, and she'll do anything to prevent that. She're s not trusted to be honest worried about the silver. Aibileen is raising dangers or that her seventeenth white child but something hardened in her heart when her son died whilst the white bosses looked the other way. They took his body Mum's stopped talking - to the coloureds' hospital and rolled it off the back of the truck and leftanyone.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141039280</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1398524085|title=Has Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter?|author=Katie Fforde (Editor) Nicci French|rating=5|genre=Crime|summary=Charlotte Salter was expected at her husband's fiftieth birthday party but never turned up. Her children, sons Niall, Paul and Ollie and her daughter, Etty. are all worried but - strangely - her husband, Alec, is not. Shortly afterwards, Etty and Sue Moorcroft (Editor)Greg, find the body of Greg's father, Duncan Ackerley, in the river. It was an easy assumption for the police to make that Duncan had murdered Charlie and then committed suicide when he couldn't stand the guilt. 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=1035906708|title=Loves Me, Loves Me NotDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin
|rating=4.5
|genre=Short StoriesGeneral Fiction|summary=What a feast is presented in these forty stories from well-loved and prolific romantic authors, celebrating the fiftieth anniversary We tend to think of the Romantic Novelists' Association. In a Who's Who of the genreMaria Callas as Greek, there are writers from every age groupbut she was born to Greek parents in Manhattan, including one or two who might even have been founder members of the RNANew York, back in 1960December 1923 and only moved to Athens when she was thirteen. My advice is Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to sip through the stories slowly, rather than gobbling them up quickly and suffering from indigestion.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0778303373</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Lauren Oliver|title=Before I Fall|rating=5|genre=Women's Fiction|summary=Samantha Callas'Sam' Kingston is, to make it more manageable in many ways, your typical American high schooler whose concerns are pretty predictable: boys, friends, fashion, weird parents, annoying little sistersthe States. Today it's Cupid Day, a chance to show off just how ''In'' you are at school, as measured by the number of roses you're sent, but Sam's not too worried about When she was back in Athens - supposedly so that. She knows she's part of could get appropriate training for her voice - she was raised under the Nazi occupation by a group mother who, by most definitions, would be called popular, mercilessly exploited her and though sometimes inside she might feel on the inside a little like an imposter, on the outside, wellmade no secret of her preference for her elder sister, she's the definition of ''in''Jackie.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340980893</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Mal Peet and Elspeth Graham Christopher Edge|title=Cloud Tea MonkeysBlack Hole Cinema Club
|rating=4
|genre=For SharingConfident Readers|summary=Tashi Lucas and her mother live below his friends are all booked in for a tea plantation in Indiamovie marathon at their local cinema, a place that has the nickname of 'The Black Hole'. Usually Tashi goes along with her mumAll big movie fans, and whilst mum picks tea leaves with the other womenthey're looking forward to lots of exciting films, Tashi sits under a tree and plays with a group of monkeysmany, sharing her fruit with themmany snacks! However, allowing them to groom her and playing with as the little baby monkeys. One morningmovie starts, Tashi's mum they very quickly realise that something about this new film format is too poorly to go to workvery different, so Tashi struggles with the big tea basket herselfand they are swept up into an adventure they couldn't even imagine. The plantation owner derides her, saying she is too little But as they lurch from one film genre to pick the teanext, and Tashi can they figure out what on earth is worried about how she and her mother will cope with no money to going on? Will they ever get her mum a doctor, or back to buy food. She shares her worries with her monkey friends and somehow, at the end of the daycinema, Tashi's basket is full of beautiful, fresh, fragrant tea leaves that are a very rare type of tea called 'Cloud Tea'.and to their real lives?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1406300926</amazonuk>1839942738
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alice TaylorRachel Greenlaw|title=To School Through The FieldsCompass and Blade
|rating=3.5
|genre=Teens
|summary=Two years ago, Ali and her friends saved Daniel Feeny from committing suicide''I can hear the song of the sea. They became local heroes and were looked up to as good examples The call of modern day teenagers. Ali was on her way to Cambridgethe deep, Stephen about to start his own business, Jackson getting ready to be reunited with his brother the answering beat in Brighton where hemy heart.'d also study history, and Hannah joining her mother's hairdressing business.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Elizabeth ChandlerJames Sherwood Metts|title=Dark Secrets: Legacy of Lies and Don't TellPlanet Storyland|rating=4.5|genre=TeensConfident Readers|summary=After years without seeing her grandmother, Megan receives an invitation - or perhaps Things have been a summons - to visit bit sticky for the old lady at her house in the town of WisteriaEarthlings. ReluctantlyAI and automation have been proceeding apace, she goes there often replacing jobs they're paid to please her mother, but finds out do and other tasks that despite the invitationtook time to accomplish. Just as they were beginning to get used to all this technological change and starting to think of other, her grandmother doesn't seem happy new ways to see herspend time, along came an awful pandemic. Life was pretty much shut down and neither does her cute but sullen cousin Matt, who's currently living there. More worryinglyalong with it, all the house seems strangely familiar, because she's seen it many times in her dreams..daily social interactions on which they depend so heavily.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847388728</amazonuk>1736128426
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Catherine AirdMatthew Tree|title=Past TenseWe'll Never Know|rating=34.5|genre=CrimeLiterary Fiction|summary=Jan Wakefield was surprised Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to find herself arranging the refreshments for mourners after be different from his father, a funeral, not least because she had never met the deceased drunk and was unaware that her husband was the next chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of kin. He was working in South America his artistic passions all failed miserably and not expected home for some time. Josephine Short who had obviously been a feisty character thoughendless crises of self confidence. Despite being unmarried she had had a child (at a time when this would have been frowned upon) So Tim applied himself to his studies, cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and amassed a considerable fortune. Her grandson Joe was flying home from Lasserta for the funeralset himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0749007648</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=N K JemisinA G Slatter|title=The Hundred-Thousand Kingdoms (Inheritance Trilogy)Briar Book of the Dead
|rating=5
|genre=Fantasy
|summary=A month after her mother'' There's death, outcast Yeine Darr is summoned by her grandfather, king a part of the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, me that wants to come keep this just to the palace of Skymyself for however long I can. There named one This secret magic of his three heirsmy own, along with her feuding cousinsall mine, she quickly realizes that without allies she will surely lose the contest for the throneat last. Thus begins an epic quest I just want to find her mother's murderer, save her own life, and fulfil enjoy it for a destiny she never knew she hadwhile.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1841498173</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=David Conway and Dubravka Kolanovic|title=The Secret To Teddy's Happiness|rating=3.5|genre=For Sharing|summary=When the toys discover an old, bedraggled teddy bear, they rack their brains to find a way to mend his broken heart, to make him smile again. The velvet rabbit who knows everything offers to tell them the secret of Teddy's happiness, but he wants them to do him a favour first.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1862337624</amazonuk>}}
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Philip Ball1529900360|title=The Music Instinct: How Music Works and Why We Can't Do without it Ghost Orchid|author=Jonathan Kellerman
|rating=4
|genre=Popular ScienceCrime|summary=It hadn'We need t been Lt Milo Sturgis's fault that Alex Delaware had been badly injured but he felt responsible and even after Alex recovered, Sturgis was reluctant to talk about music, but it is hard. Very few people can do itask for his help on difficult cases. His assertions that there were only open-and-shut cases which didn' So says Philip Ball after 400 pages t need the help of talking about musica psychologist only worked for a while. Very few readers Finally, it was Robin, Delaware's partner, who make it nudged Milo into asking for help again. She knew that the involvement was something that far will disagree with his conclusionthe man she loved needed. The next case did look simple, but most will have gained some enlightenment about how music works though. 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 married to an extremely rich man and why we enjoy it's not the Italian.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847920888</amazonuk> But which of them was the primary target?
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Phil Daniels1529395224|title=Phil DanielsLetting the Cat Out of the Bag: Class ActorThe Secret Life of a Vet|author=Sion Rowlands|rating=43.5|genre=AutobiographyAnimals and Wildlife|summary=If we were asked Siôn Rowlands fell into veterinary science accidentally. His father was a GP and Rowlands didn't want to nominate follow in his footsteps, particularly when he considered the archetypal Cockney actor strain that being on large or small screen over -call put on his father's life. When he was seventeen he took the last twenty years or so, Phil Daniels would undoubtedly come high on opportunity of doing work experience with a family friend who was a vet and was convinced this was the listjob for him. Born in Islington in 1958 and raised in Kings CrossBefore long, he was at Liverpool University. It hadn't - as with so many students - been his dream since he was a child. If anything, he'd wanted to be a graduate of the Anna Scher Theatre in the 1970sprofessional footballer.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847376207</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sam Enthoven0861541774|title=CrawlersA Nye of Pheasants|author=Steve Burrows
|rating=4
|genre=TeensCrime|summary=Why are the men that want DCI Domenic Jejeune's close friend and former colleague, Danny Maik, has taken a short holiday in Singapore to take over the world using evil alien beings always so stupid? Steadman is stupidmeet up with an old ally, Guy Trueman. Ever since the Great Fire of London trapped her Maik was involved in an underground dungeon in 1666, the Queen has been neutraliseda street brawl - he would later maintain that he was facing a man armed with a knife - and he killed a Ghurka. Even then Initially, the great and the powerful couldn't quite bring themselves he faced a charge of manslaughter but evidence came to kill her. She had too much potential. But they did light that suggested that he might have planned to murder the sense to keep her safely locked awayman. But now Steadman thinks Now he knows bettercould be facing the death penalty. He thinks he Domenic Jejeune can rule the world through the Queen do nothing to help as any interference from another police force could provoke a diplomatic incident and hewouldn's set her a test. If she passes, he will set her freet help Danny at all. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0552558702</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Scott WesterfeldAlexander McCall Smith|title=PrettiesThe Perfect Passion Company
|rating=4.5
|genre=TeensGeneral Fiction|summary=In the unnamed city of the futureThe Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and operating as an alternative to all the adults are prettyonline apps in providing a more personal, tailored service. They've had mental Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and physical surgery to make them calmlook after the business, placid and perfectly aesthetic human beings. If they have any trouble as young adults it Ness is the problem of what planning to take a trip to wear at parties, or how Canada to get rid away for a while. Katie is coming out of their hangovers when they wake a break up with a bad boyfriend, and so jumps at 5pmthe chance to come home to Edinburgh. UnfortunatelyAnd so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, one of these bright young things is our heroinebringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, Tally, one of the few people in the world thanks to have learnt how damnably horrid 44 Scotland Street and sapping the life of Riley can beIsabel Dalhousie novels, but with some new characters who quickly begin to charm. Katie has no experience in running a business, or in match-making, but Ness has full confidence in her abilities, and there's always her very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, William, to lend a hand…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847389074</amazonuk>1846976596
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Suzanne Bugler0811771741|title=This Perfect WorldInstaKnits for Baby|author=Melissa Leapman|rating=54|genre=Women's FictionCrafts|summary=Laura Hamley sees herself as Melissa Leapman's ''InstaKnits for Baby'' gives us a fortunate womancollection of knits from toys to blankets. She has a successful husband, two beautiful children Some will be quick knits - others are of the 'long, a big house cosy afternoons in a good neighbourhood, and a coterie front of friends who fall nicely into the category of people like usfire' variety. She The projects are divided by the time they's always beautifully turned outll take to complete - less than five hours, five to ten hours, ten to twenty hours and her position in the social pecking order is never less more than hightwenty hours. She simply shrugs off All the occasional moments of dissatisfaction projects are attractive, modern and useable. I perhaps show my age when I wonder about 'social-media- what on Earth could she have to complain about? And then Mrs Partridge makes an unwelcome phone call..worthy projects' but that's me being picky. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>023074401X</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jill NewtonDean Koontz|title=Crash Bang Donkey!The Bad Weather Friend|rating=34.5|genre=For SharingParanormal|summary=Farmer Gruff spends all Benny is having a terrifically bad day. He loses his job, he loses his time chasing the crows from fiancee, and his cornhouse gets trashed. Eventually he needs Oh, and someone has delivered a really weird, disturbing coffin-sized object to sleephis home, so all and it's possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the animals tiptoe aroundthing that has trashed his house! The thing is, making no noise whatsoeverBenny is the very last person to deserve all this bad luck. He is a nice person. A really nice person. What's this coming over So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the hill with delivery to his house is a crash and new friend, a bang? Oh no! It's bad weather friend called Spike, who has been sent to help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a donkey with a drumgood person. How Spike is going to take care of Benny, and will certainly take care of Benny's Farmer Gruff going to get his sleep? If enemies, if he can't sleep, howBenny, and Harper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's he ever going to be able to keep the crows from his corn?wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1862337209</amazonuk>1662500491
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Olga GrushinAdam Stower|title=The Concert TicketMurray and Bun
|rating=4.5
|genre=General FictionConfident Readers |summary=''The Concert Ticket'' follows the lives of Murray is supposed to be a family in Soviet Russia who have grown desperately distant from one another. Sergeihumble, the fathertidy and friendly cat, one who is a frustrated musician who longs able to play the pre-revolutionary masterpieces sleep and eat and eat and sleep and, well, whatever takes his fancy next of composers like Igor Selinsky but is forced to play the kind of patriotic ditties two. But he despises. His schoolteacher wife's a bad magician's cat, so his favourite bun has been turned into a hyperactive sticky rabbit called Bun, Annaand the catflap they both use can chuck them out, longs for his lovenot into the regular back garden, but is never quite able to get his attention with her shy gesturesinto a world of frightening adventure and whiffs. Their shiftless son This time round it drops them into a Viking land, Alexanderwhere a troll hunter is expected – well, one much bigger than Murray was, has quietly given up going to school and spends his days hanging around the parkbe honest, consorting with undesirables. Also living in their house is Annabut he's silent, elderly mother.turned up and he'll have to do…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0670918482</amazonuk>0008561249
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Aatish TaseerB0C47LV1PC|title=The Temple-GoersFragility|author=Mosby Woods|rating=34
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Aatish Taseer Can you make a ''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, is the question should you make it? Or is probably best known for his journalism, publishing regularly in the Indian pressquestion if you did, in Prospect, and perhaps most prolifically in Time magazine. He has won acclaim for his memoir: Stranger to History in which he, raised by his Indian Sikh mother, traces his absent Muslim father across would it land? The catch is that the border in Pakistan – and also answer for his translations of the short stories of Saadat Hasan Mantoboth could well be.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670918504</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Kate Saunders|title=Beswitched|rating=4.5|genre=Confident Readers|summary=Flora is furious at being sent away to boarding school, even one which is very progressive with luxurious facilities and school rock bands. Her parents need to sell her grandmother's house in Italy and build a granny flat at home, and Flora is resentful at having her life turned upside down for a grumpy, unpleasant old woman. On the train, she falls asleep and wakes up to find herself in another era. Trendy 21st century Flora is horrified to find herself in a hideous pinafore dress with a childish haircut and no make up. What has happened to her Ipod, mobile phone and brand new laptop?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1407108972</amazonuk>}}
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ken Bruen1529431735|title=The GuardsWinter Visitor|author=James Henry
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=A woman makes an unlikely choice by asking Jack Taylor to investigate the apparent suicide of her teenage daughter in Galway. Jack is ex Irish police (Garda) but also a known alcoholic with nothing much else in his life. His approach to investigation is haphazard - he doesnIt't really have a method beyond asking direct questions s February 1991 and, if necessary, using his fists. Predictably, there Essex is more to the suicide case than first meets the eye and Jack, aided by his unsavoury friend, Suttonbitingly cold, uncover some very disturbing secrets and levels of corruption within the city. ''The Guardswhich made Bruce Hopkins'' is not your conventional crime thriller; it's darker and has a grim realism.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0863224105</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Elizabeth Speller|title=The Return of Captain John Emmett|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Laurence Bartram has survived return all the war, but his life has changed dramaticallymore surprising. It will never be He'd been exiled on the same again. It's almost Costa del Sol as if he doesn't recognize himselfa wanted drug smuggler for a decade. Domestic life is now non-existent and he The return has no-one to please but himself. He is unsettled and edgy. War has obviously left its mark. He retreats graciously and wonders what come about because he'll do with the rest of s had a letter from his life. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844086070</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Salman Rushdie|title=Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticisms 1981 ex- 1991|rating=3.5|genre=Politics and Society|summary=We read some authors because we know we're going to enjoy them. Otherswife, we feel somehow obliged to read. If we consider ourselves saying that she''readers'', s ill and certainly if we have any pretensions (I use the word advisedly) to being hasn''well-read'', then there are some books and more particularly some authors with whom we are required t long to become familiarlive.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099542250</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Neel Mukherjee|title=A Life Apart|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Ritwik Ghosh grows up in India in the 1970 It's, one of two children of an abusive mother. In the 1990's, finally escaping the country after her death, he comes hard to England to study at Oxfordfeel any sympathy when Hopkins is abducted, then moves stripped to London. There, he looks after 86 year old Anne Cameron in exchange for free accommodation, while looking for work, his underwear and for sexual encounters with other men. He also writes sent to a novel - watery grave in the extended story boot of Miss Gilby, a character in Rabindranath Tagore's novel Ghare Bairestolen Ford Sierra. Miss Gilby becomes English teacher Is it a warning from a Spanish gang or a problem closer to Bimala, the wife of a minor official in 1900's Bengal just before the Partition of the province.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184901101X</amazonuk>home?
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Mark Sperring Alex Bell and Leo TimmersTim McDonagh|title=GreenThe Glorious Race of Magical Beasts
|rating=4
|genre=For SharingConfident Readers|summary=Clive loves wearing green. It's all he ever wears. He thinks he looks mighty snazzy, but his big sister (boo! hiss!) takes every opportunity to call him Eli is a cabbage, moss, a sprout or a toad. Clive keeps wearing his green clothes, certain that he'll have the last laugh and get one over on his sister.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845394534</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Ian Whybrow and Lynne Chapman|title=Stinky! Or How The Beautiful Smelly Warthog Found A Friend|rating=3.5|genre=For Sharing|summary=Stinky the warthog lives busy lad – by day an apprentice in a neighbourhood with the Crocodile family, the Monkey family and the Littlebird family. One wondrous library we start by one they invite Stinky round to play visiting with their childrenhim, but his foul odour and in the flies buzzing around him cause all manner of problems. Will he be able to find evening a friend? ...Well, yes, it says so in helper at the title.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1862337594</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Josephine Wilkinson|title=The Early Loves of Anne Boleyn|rating=3.5|genre=History|summary=Before her marriage to King Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn had already been courted by three suitors, any of whom might have become her husband - dessert cafe his gran owns and possibly saved her from her eventual end on the scaffoldruns. The first was her Irish cousin James ButlerEli lives with his lovely gran, later Earl of Ormond, whom she was at one time intended to marry too – for there is a generation missing in order to settle a the family dispute over the title and estates of the Earldom of Ormond. After their marriage negotiations came A few short years ago, Eli's parents were both lost to an end in the face of legal obstaclestitular race, she became betrothed to Henry Percy, heir a globe-trotting adventure where all entrants have to navigate the world in the Duke company of Northumberlanda magical beast. With a little help from This has made the scheming Cardinal Wolsey, the Duke, who had little time for his son, insisted that any idea of marriage between them should be dismissed forthwith. Soon after this race anathema to the poet Thomas Wyatt became enamoured of her, pair – but by this time there was fierce competition from his sovereign, and her destiny was sealed.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848684304</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Scott Westerfeld|title=Uglies|rating=4.5|genre=Teens|summary="This city is when a paradise, Tally. It feeds you, educates you, keeps you safe. It makes you pretty." And that's meant literally. As soon as they're sixteen years old, ugly people like Tally are completely rebuilt - no more freckles, dull eyes, rough skin, or ideas about biting their fingernails, and made a pretty. It's scientific, and obviously of benefit, considering bad incident at the parties, status and love afforded eatery leads to pretties. But is it essential? When her best friend is prettified Tally finds a new friendconfession from gran, ShayEli knows his only hope is to dare to enter what he most hates, who has secrets to share in with the sole aim the prize of magic at the few weeks before end – the operation they're due only thing to have on the same day. Secrets of another place, another way, and of people staying forever ugly - through choicepossibly save his gran.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847389066</amazonuk>0571382231
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