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<metadesc>Book review siteExpert, with books full book reviews from most walks of literary life; fiction, biographynon-fiction, crime, cookery and children's books & self-published books plus author interviews and & top tens.</metadesc><h1 id="mf-title">The Bookbag</h1>Hello from The Bookbag, a site featuring books from all the many walks of literary life - [[:Category:Fiction|fiction]], [[:Category:Biography|biography]], [[:Category:Crime|crime]], [[:Category:Cookery|cookery]] and anything else that takes our fancy. At Bookbag Towers the bookbag sits at the side of the desk. It's the bag we take to the library, the charity shop and the bookshop. Sometimes it holds the latest releases, but at other times there'll be old favourites, books for the children, books for the home. They're sometimes our own books or books from the local library. They're often books sent to us by publishers and we promise to tell you exactly what we think about them. You might not want to read through a full review, so we'll give you a quick review which summarises what we felt about the book and tells you whether or not we think you should buy or borrow it. There are also lots of [[:Category:Interviews|author interviews]], and all sorts of [[:Category:Lists|top tens]] - all of which you can find on our [[features]] page. If you're stuck for something to read, check out the [[Book Recommendations|recommendations]] page.
Reviews by readers from all the many walks of literary life. With author interviews, features and top tens. You'll be sure to find something you'll want to read here. Dig in! Find us on [[File:facebook.gif|link=https://www.facebook.com/TheBookbagCoUk|alt=Facebook]] [https://www.facebook.com/TheBookbagCoUk '''Facebook'''], [[File:twitter.gif|link=http://twitter.com/TheBookbag|alt=Follow us on Twitter]] [http://twitter.com/TheBookbag '''Twitter'''], [[File:instagram_classic_logo.png|link=https://www.instagram.com/thebookbag.co.uk/|alt=Follow us on Instagram]] [https://www.instagram.com/thebookbag.co.uk/ '''Instagram'''] and [[File:LinkedIn.png|link=https://www.linkedin.com/in/the-bookbag-1b12a264/|alt=LinkedIn]] There are currently '''{{PAGESINCATEGORY:Reviews}}''' [[:Category:Reviews|reviews ]] at TheBookbag.
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==Reviews of the The Best New Books==
'''Read [[:Category:New Reviews|new reviews by category]]. '''<br>
'''Read [[:Category:Features|the latest features]].''' <!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE--> '''Read [[Forthcoming Publications|reviews of books about to be published]].
{{Frontpage
|author= M R CareySylvie Cathrall|title= The Book of KoliA Letter to the Luminous Deep|rating= 45|genre= Science Fiction|summary= ''The Book of Koli'' is the first in There are few greater joys than a post-apocalyptic trilogy, titled ''The Rampart Trilogy'', by M.R. Carey. The novel is set in a world where nature has turned against humans. Trees move as fast as animals book which lives up to crush their prey and then soak up their blood. Humans have eked out a small existence in isolated villagescompelling premise. They are primitive except for their reverence And this is one of 'old tech'. This is technology from the old world that seems to only work for certain chosen people. However, Koli, a young woodsmith, uncovers a secret about this technology that will upend his life and take him on a perilous journeythem.|isbn=03164775320356522776
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=178112938X0008517061|title=Survival Death in Space: The Apollo 13 Missiona Lonely Place|author=David Long Stig Abell|rating=4|genre=Crime|summary= Former Metropolitan Police detective, Jake Johnson, has settled into his rustic life at Little Sky. There’s perhaps a little uncertainty about the future of his life with his vet girlfriend, Livia and Stefano Tambellini her daughter Diana, as moving in together would mean a lot of compromise: does Jake give up his off-grid and relaxing life to move in with Livia or does Livia move to Little Sky despite her reservations about whether or not this is the future she wants for herself and her daughter? For the moment they’re enjoying life in the present and putting the future on the back burner.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1786482126|title=The Janus Stone (illustratorDr Ruth Galloway)|author=Elly Griffiths|rating=4.5|genre=Dyslexia FriendlyCrime|summary=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 doorway. There was no skull. Was this a ritual killing or murder? Inevitably, Dr Ruth Galloway finds herself working with DCI Harry Nelson. It's fifty years since the Apollo 13 mission was launched from the Kennedy Space Centre in Floridadifficult as Ruth knows, but the story of Nelson doesn't, that journey remains one she is pregnant with his child as a result of the greatest survival stories of all timeone night they spent together some three months ago. ''Survival in Space: The Apollo 13 Mission'' Her condition will be obvious before long, not least because Ruth is a brilliant retelling prone to sudden bouts of what happenedsickness.
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn= Grady Hendrix0008551324|title= The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying VampiresDevil You Know (D S Max Craigie)|author=Neil Lancaster|rating= 4.5|genre= HorrorCrime|summary= It'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 missing person is buried and who was responsible for her death. WomenThis person, by he promises, is someone big and large, have always been it will be worth the subjugated sexpolice doing what he wants. Throughout history, they have been confined And what he wants is to be transferred to an open prison to mere bit players who occasionally help hold up serve the powerful man remainder of his sentence and let nothing stand in his wayto get an early parole date. Grady Hendrix's Not much to ask, is it? The new novel Deputy Police Constable doesn''The Southern Book Clubt think so and she's Guide to Slaying Vampires'' gives women their due. It is an ode even prepared to do the strong selfless housewife. Hendrix illustrates this by having them go toe to toe other thing that Hardie demanded - make certain that DS Max Craigie and anyone who works with a predatory male vampire who moves into their quiet cul de sachim is kept well away from what's happening.|isbn=1683691431
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=00081490890008405026|title=The Cutting Place A Stranger in the Family (DS Maeve Kerrigan11)
|author=Jane Casey
|rating=5
|genre=Crime
|summary=It 's sixteen years since nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her bed one summer night. She was Kim Weldon who never found and the first bits of the body - she was investigation ground to a mudlarker on the banks of the Thames and when she turned over what looked like a stick she realised it was a handhalt. Now, her mother, a right handHelena, and her father are dead in facttheir bed. Initially, it looks like a straightforward murder/suicide but there's something about the positioning of the bodies that makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and her boss DI Josh Derwent's team would later find three other body partssuspicious. Identification of the body What looked as though it was not going to be easy, but eventually, it would be given a name an open-and- Paige Hargreaves, shut case is now a twenty-eight-year-old freelance journalistcomplex double murder. Her friend, Bianca Drummond, another journalist, said Kerrigan is convinced that she was working on a story which she reckoned would be explosive - and she hadnthe explanation lies in Rosalie's disappearance: others (such as Derwent't been willing to share any of the details with Biancas boss, Una Burt) are less convinced.
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Jenny Valentine0571379877|title=Hello NowThe Kellerby Code|author=Jonny Sweet|rating=43.5|genre=TeensCrime|summary= Jude reluctantly moves to Edward Jevons is a smallworking-class young man, quiet seaside town after her Mum and her most recent boyfriend split (making this their 13th postobsessed with his upper-breakup move) class friends, Robert and settle into Stanza. Robert's a bigtheatre director. He's also self-obsessed, old house overlooking the sea demanding, handsome and entitled and uses Edward to run errands for him. Edward has been in love with Stanza since their university days - which happens and he's drunkenly confided how he feels to contain a strange, old sitting tenant named Henry, who stays rooted Robert. Most men in the house like a ghost that just wonRobert't leave – s position would stay away from Stanza or can't. As Jude settles into this new, seemingly mundane, reality she is consumed by tell Edward that a longing for her old life in London and anger at another forced change – relationship had begun between them but this will be the last time, she swears. This world he's not like most men: Edward is quiet, dull and yet suffocating for Jude. That is until left to stumble upon the day Novo arrives, and her entire concept two of the world changes foreverthem kissing in a dark passageway.|isbn=0007466498
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=B0867X8NW7Jo Callaghan|title=Access Point|author=T R GabbayLeave 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
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1399613073
|title=Moral Injuries
|author=Christie Watson
|rating=4.5
|genre=Thrillers
|summary=When we Olivia, Laura and Anjali met on the first meet Ula Mishkin she's having something day of medical school and their friendship would keep them inseparable for a professional success: using quarter of a device of her own invention she's helped century. Olivia is ruthlessly ambitious, which is a man who has been blind for decades bonus when you aim to see an image be a cardiothoracic surgeon. Laura is a perfectionist and a trauma doctor. Anjali is the free spirit of the group and she becomes a hummingbirdGP. SheWhen we first meet them they's thirtyre at a drug and alcohol-six years old fuelled party and her life is about to change radically as, cycling home, sheit's involved going to end in an accident with a bustragedy. ItWe don's two t know who suffered the tragedy or the consequences. Twenty-five years before we meet her again and in later there will be an eerily similar event that will impact the meantimethree friends. This time, sheit's spent 392 days their teenage children who are involved.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0241636604|title=The Trading 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 a coma your mind, you're unlikely to think of someone like Gary Stevenson. A hoodie and jeans replaces the pin-stripe suit and now walks 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 stickfacility with numbers which most of us can only envy. A professional colleague persuades Ula He also realised that she should let out 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 spare bedroom to bring in some incometrader.
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn= Ben Oliver1035021803|title= The LoopAntique Hunter's Guide to Murder|author=C L Miller|rating= 3.5|genre= TeensCrime|summary= Set during It's twenty years since Freya Lockwood has been back to the aftermath English country village where she grew up. She's back now because of a Third World War where methods of punishment request for criminal activities have been amped up to a horrific level by machineshelp from her beloved aunt, The Loop follows the precarious existence of adolescent Luka KaneCarole. In a world of Have Freya's former mentor and Have Nots where Alts [cyborgs] have power over RegularsCarole's close friend, Arthur Crockleford, he is trapped inside a living hell with no chance of escapedead and the circumstances seem suspicious, to say the least. A detonator has Arthur was the reason why Freya had not been sewn inside his heart connecting him back to a trigger held by the guards who can end his life with one squeezevillage: Arthur, she feels, let her down badly. Luka is taunted by limited access Even though they were in business together as antique hunters, she has not felt able to his memories and relentlessly drained of energy through a gruelling daily torture ritualbe near the man or pursue the profession she loved. Doomed to Delay [ After the split, she worked in a risky medical trial where he is a guinea pig for Alts in place of execution] after Delay he is in despair. His prison is based cafe, met and married James (on the model of an infinity loop designed to make its inmates suffer. With rebound from the only glimmers love of hope being the rumours of rebellion outside her life, who was murdered) and Freya and the visits of sympathetic Alt guard Wren, can Luka ever be free? Why has he been imprisoned? What waits for him if he can break the loop?|isbn=1912626551James have now divorced.
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn= Kirsty ApplebaumAllTomorrowsFutureCover|title= TroofriendAll Tomorrow's Futures: Fictions that Disrupt|author=Benjamin Greenaway and Stephen Oram (Editors)|rating= 4.5|genre= Confident ReadersScience Fiction|summary= Are ''Opening up new ways of thinking about the shape of things to come.'' I've heard it said that 'technology' is what happens after you tired 're eighteen. Well, I must confess that there have been more than a few decades of your childtechnology in my lifetime. I've kept up reasonably well with what's classmates constantly being horrible advantageous to them? Do you want your child to have some positive experiences me but I'm left with people? Introducing the new Jenson & Jenson Troofriend 560 Mark IV android! These statefeeling that it's all getting away from me. Some of it is -offrankly -quite frightening. Of course, I could research the-art machines are capable of emulating possibilities and the full range of human emotions probabilities and end up down rabbit holes without lying, stealing or bullying. Theyreally understanding whether I'm reading someone who knows what they're talking about or the perfect companion for any child! Any mention that these androids are beginning to develop real human feelings are just unsubstantiated rumours latest conspiracy theorist. I needed people I knew I could trust and have absolutely no basis who could deliver information in reality…right?|isbn=1788003470a way I could understand.
}}
{{Frontpage |isbnauthor=1529123941 Sunny Singh|title=The Silent Treatment |author=Abbie Greaves Hotel Arcadia|rating=43.5 |genre=General Fiction Thrillers |summary= When we meet Professor Frank Hobbs and his wife, Maggie, Frank The Hotel Arcadia is playing chess against his computer, although not very successfullya luxury hotel in an unnamed city that has suddenly been violently taken over by a terrorist group. MaggieHiding from the terrorists who are rampaging through, killing everyone on the other handsite, has just taken some pills - eight of themthere is Sam, in fact - a wartime photographer and before long she will collapseAbhi, the hotel manager. When Frank rings As Abhi continues to try to care remotely for the emergency services residents who are still alive in Oxford the hotel, he has forms a bit bond with Sam who refuses to be cowed by events, and keeps on venturing out of a problem. He has her room to try to admit that he and Maggie havencapture what't actually spoken for a whiles happened through her photography. How long? WellAlthough they only ever talk over the phone, it's about six months since he spoke their friendship grows as Abhi tries to Maggie help her keep safe and he can't really say they both wait to see if it's likely that Maggie has tried to take her own lifethey will be rescued before they are discovered by the terrorists.|isbn=086154742X
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Rob Harrell1529153298|title=WinkThe List of Suspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey|rating=4.5|genre=Confident ReadersGeneral Fiction|summary=When Ross It's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is diagnosed with a rare form of cancerPrime Minister. (A woman? I mean, honestly...) She's not what's worrying Miv's family, though. Women have been disappearing. Well, aged 12they've been murdered, his desperate attempts at school but to just be have 'normaldisappeared' become impossibledoesn't sound quite so frightening. Suddenly he is Miv's upset because she's overheard that her father wants to move the cancer kid, and everything he does, how he looks, and how he behaves falls under the scrutiny of the other kids in schoolfamily 'Down South'. Ross When you're from Yorkshire, Down South isa frightening, understandablyforeign place, angrybest avoided. He is facing potential blindnessFor Miv, whilst dealing with an eye sealed in a permanent wink. He has gloopy eye medicine to try to help with the painmove would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, plus the need and she'll do anything to wear a hat at all times to protect his face due to the ongoing treatmentprevent that. With She's not worried about the sudden ghosting by one of his best friends, and a series of horrible memes dangers or that someone at school creates about Ross, nothing about his life is normal any more, and he has her Mum's stopped talking - to find new ways to deal with his feelings, and surviveanyone.|isbn=1471409147
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=17864855751398524085|title=Magpie LaneHas Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter?|author=Lucy AtkinsNicci French
|rating=5
|genre=Crime
|summary=When we first meet Dee sheCharlotte Salter was expected at her husband's talking to Nick Law, the new college masterfiftieth birthday party but never turned up. Law's lately of the BBC Her children, sons Niall, Paul and he doesn't come with an entirely good reputation: he's a bit of a bully Ollie and Dee can sense something of that in their first conversationher daughter, Etty. She had been planning to return home to Scotland before taking on a new job as a nannyare all worried but - strangely - her husband, but somehow she finds herself going to see MariahAlec, the Danish wife of the masteris not. She's pregnant Shortly afterwards, Etty and looking for helpGreg, not with find the new baby but with the masterbody of Greg's daughter by his first wifefather, Duncan Ackerley, Anain the river. Felicity is selectively mute: she does talk It was an easy assumption for the police to her father, but to no one elsemake that Duncan had murdered Charlie and then committed suicide when he couldn't stand the guilt. The eight-year-old is grieving for her dead mother Salter children are not convinced but there's little else they can do but get on with their lives and struggling at schoolwonder about what really happened.
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Sally Magnusson1035906708|title=The Sealwoman's GiftDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin
|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical General Fiction|summary= There is a legend that God came We tend to visit Adam & Eve in the Garden. Eve had not finished bathing her children and ashamed think of those still not cleansedMaria Callas as Greek, but she attempted was born to hide them from the eyes of God, denying that she had more children that thoseGreek parents in Manhattan, already bathedNew York, that in December 1923 and only moved to Athens when she willing paraded for himwas thirteen. God Her original surname was not Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to 'Callas' to be deceived, however, and decreed make it more manageable in the States. When she was back in Athens - supposedly so that what she could get appropriate training for her voice - she was sought to be hidden from raised under the eyes Nazi occupation by a mother who mercilessly exploited her and made no secret of God would henceforth be hidden from the eyes of manher preference for her elder sister, and so the Elves were born: the hidden folkJackie. They can see man, but man can only see them if they so choose.|isbn=1473638984
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{{Frontpage
|author=Wendy Cheyne Christopher Edge|title=From the Auld Rock to a Hard PlaceBlack Hole Cinema Club
|rating=4
|genre=Historical FictionConfident Readers|summary= After the Jacobite defeat Lucas and his friends are all booked in for a movie marathon at their local cinema, a place that has the Battle nickname of Culloden'The Black Hole'. All big movie fans, many Scottish estates were given they're looking forward to English lords. They were not kind to their crofting tenants. Many on the mainland were cleared lots of exciting films, and while this did not happen much on many, many snacks! However, as the islands such as Shetlandmovie starts, the they very quickly realise that something about this new exploitative conditions led many Shetlanders film format is very different, and they are swept up into an adventure they couldn't even imagine. But as they lurch from one film genre to leave - the next, can they figure out what on earth is going on? Will they ever get back to port cities on the mainlandcinema, to North America and even to Australia and New Zealand. their real lives?|isbn= 18385917531839942738
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Ele FountainRachel Greenlaw|title=LostCompass and Blade|rating=3.5|genre=Teens|summary=''I can hear the song of the sea. The call of the deep, the answering beat in my heart.'' Rosevear, a remote and partially forgotten island, survives on luring ships into the rocks and plundering the wrecks. Mira, like her mother before her, is one of the seven who swim out to survey the ruins – rescuing any survivors and any treasure that lies within. But when the Council Watch lays a trap to end the wrecking, they capture the island's leader and Mira's father. Desperate to save him from death, Mira makes a bargain with a wreck survivor who is as charming as he is secretive and with only coordinates to guide her, she sets off in search of a family secret that lies buried deep in the sea. With only nine days to unearth what might save her father, as her journey takes her from the watched streets of foreign islands to the heart of the smuggler's territory, Mira must be determined to stop at nothing to save the future of her home and the ones she holds most dear.|isbn=0008664730}}{{Frontpage|author=James Sherwood Metts|title=Planet Storyland
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Lola lives in an Indian city with her father, and her brother, AmitThings have been a bit sticky for the Earthlings. She lives with them in a nice apartment, AI and although they are not rich like some of the girls at schoolautomation have been proceeding apace, often replacing jobs they have enough money 're paid to do and other tasks that took time to be comfortableaccomplish. Lola spends her time thinking about her school friends, Just as they were beginning to get used to all this technological change and trying starting to fit in with themthink of other, until one daynew ways to spend time, suddenly, everything in her life changesalong came an awful pandemic. After taking a work trip away, Lola's father doesn't come home. They have nobody else to help, Life was pretty much shut down and as they wait day after day, Lola wonders what will become of them until, finallyalong with it, all the many daily social interactions on which they are evicted from their flat, and she and her brother find themselves forced to live on the streetsdepend so heavily.|isbn=178269255X1736128426
}}
{{Frontpage
|author= N K JemisinMatthew Tree|title= The City We Became'll Never Know|rating= 4.5|genre= Science Literary Fiction|summary= New York is being bornTimothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, the city has reached critical mass and has matured into a living almost-breathing entity drunk and is ready to make its way out into the world. Before it can be established, an ancient evil appears to attempt to destroy it just as it destroyed Atlantis chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of his artistic passions all failed miserably and other forgotten places. The city is not alone through the birthing process, people who embody the values are selected to become the living embodiment had endless crises of the city, some cities have one, some have twelve and New York has sixself confidence. Together these human-embodiments must defeat the woman in white and save New York from very real destruction. But these are five different boroughs which don't always see eye So Tim applied himself to eyehis studies, it's a personality clash on an epic scale and unity is both critical cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and not remotely guaranteedset himself high but achievable ambitions.|isbn=0356512665B0CVFXPGP8
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0241446732A G Slatter|title=Our House is on Fire: Scenes The Briar Book of a Family and a Planet in Crisis|author=Malena Ernman, Greta Thunberg, Beata Thunberg and Svante Thunbergthe Dead
|rating=5
|genre=Politics and SocietyFantasy|summary=The Ernman / Thunberg family seemed perfectly normal'' 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 last. I just want to enjoy it for a while. Malena Ernman was an opera singer and Svante Thunberg took on most '' Within a remote mountain pass, far away from the world, lies Silverton; a town under the protection of the parenting Briar's, a family of their two daughterswitches who protect the town and the wider world from the Darklands. Then elevenThough she has always wished for magic, Ellie Briar is the first non-year-old Greta stopped eating witch to be born into her family for generations and as such since she was young, her training as a steward revolved around letters and talking administration rather than spells and potions. When her sistergrandmother suddenly dies, Ellie's cousin Audra becomes the Briar Witch, the town's leader, Beataand Ellie takes her place beside her. As challenges come her way left, then nine years oldright and centre, struggled Ellie uncovers the rare ability to communicate with what was happeningthe dead, putting her at the heart of a maelstrom of chaos. In such circumstancesReeling from one family secret to another, itEllie must decide who to trust and determine what to do as the Briar witches's natural to seek a solution close legacy, everything they have sacrificed to homesurvive, is under threat.|isbn=1803364548}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1529900360|title=The Ghost Orchid|author=Jonathan Kellerman|rating=4|genre=Crime|summary=It hadn't been Lt Milo Sturgis's fault that Alex Delaware had been badly injured but eventuallyhe felt responsible and even after Alex recovered, it became clear Sturgis was reluctant to the family ask for his help on difficult cases. His assertions that they there were ''burnedonly open-out people on a burnedand-out planetshut cases which didn't need the help of a psychologist only worked for a while. Finally, it was Robin, Delaware's partner, who nudged Milo into asking for help again. She knew that the involvement was something that the man she loved needed. The next case did look simple, though. If they Two lovers were to find murdered in the swimming pool of a way remote property in Bel Air. He was the heir to live happily again their solution would need an Italian shoe empire and she is married to be radicalan extremely rich man and it's not the Italian. But which of them was the primary target?
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=178730101X1529395224|title=Keep Him CloseLetting the Cat Out of the Bag: The Secret Life of a Vet|author=Emily KochSion Rowlands
|rating=3.5
|genre=Animals and Wildlife
|summary=Siôn Rowlands fell into veterinary science accidentally. His father was a GP and Rowlands didn't want to follow in his footsteps, particularly when he considered the strain that being on-call put on his father's life. When he was seventeen he took the opportunity of doing work experience with a family friend who was a vet and was convinced this was the job for him. Before 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 professional footballer.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=0861541774
|title=A Nye of Pheasants
|author=Steve Burrows
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=Alice had two children: Benny (wellDCI Domenic Jejeune's close friend and former colleague, BenoîtDanny Maik, actually) and Louishas taken a short holiday in Singapore to meet up with an old ally, Guy Trueman. Lou's seventeen and Maik was involved in a street brawl - he would later maintain that he's just got his A level results was facing a man armed with a knife - and he and his brother are going out to celebratekilled a Ghurka. Someone has Initially, he faced a charge of manslaughter but evidence came to find something light that suggested that he might have planned to celebrate in murder the letters, D, D and Eman. Alice has always had a good relationship with nineteen-year-old Benny but it's a touch problematic with Lou and being honest, Now he's not terribly likeablecould be facing the death penalty. The letters which kept coming Domenic Jejeune can do nothing to my mind were ADHDhelp as any interference from another police force could provoke a diplomatic incident and wouldn't help Danny at all.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0241396840Alexander McCall Smith|title=Keeper|author=Jessica MoorThe Perfect Passion Company
|rating=4.5
|genre=CrimeGeneral Fiction|summary=Katie Straw worked The Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and operating as an alternative to all the women's refuge online apps in providing a more personal, tailored service. Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the women who lived there liked and respected herbusiness, as Ness is planning to take a trip to Canada to get away for a while. She treated them well Katie is coming out of a break up with a bad boyfriend, and seemed so jumps at the chance to have an understanding of what they were going throughcome home to Edinburgh. Why then did she jump And so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, thanks to 44 Scotland Street and the local suicide spot into the river below? Isabel Dalhousie novels, but with some new characters who quickly begin to charm. There had been Katie has no signs that she was unhappy and she and her boyfriend seemed to have been content together experience in running a business, or in match- and Noah making, but Ness has a decent alibi for the time when she diedfull confidence in her abilities, but what other explanation could and there be for her death? The police are convinced that it's suicidealways her very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, but the women who knew her believed otherwise.William, to lend a hand…|isbn=1846976596
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=18388806580811771741|title=Murder at Enderley Hall (Miss Underhay)InstaKnits for Baby|author=Helena DixonMelissa Leapman
|rating=4
|genre=CrimeCrafts|summary=ItMelissa Leapman's the summer ''InstaKnits for Baby'' gives us a collection of 1933 and Kitty Underhay is on her way knits from toys to visit blankets. Some will be quick knits - others are of the family which she never knew she had'long, at Enderley Hallcosy afternoons in front of the fire' variety. Her grandmother The projects are divided by the time they'll take to complete - less than five hours, Mrs Treadwellfive to ten hours, ten to twenty hours and Great Aunt Livvy more than twenty hours. All the projects are back at the Dolphin Hotel in Dartmouthattractive, modern and useable. Kitty gets easily bored working at the Dolphin I perhaps show my age when I wonder about 'social- every day is much the same media- worthy projects' but her real reason for going away is that she needs a break after her recent adventures, which involved three vicious murders, an arson attack and an attempt on her life's me being picky.
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1788638026Dean Koontz|title=Where the Innocent Die (D I Ridpath)|author=M J LeeThe Bad Weather Friend|rating=4.5|genre=CrimeParanormal|summary=It was easy to assume that the death of the young Chinese girl at the Immigrant Removal Centre was suicideBenny is having a terrifically bad day. He loses his job, he loses his fiancee, and his house gets trashed. Her throat was cutOh, there was and someone has delivered a lot of blood really weird, disturbing coffin-sized object to his home, and the knife it's possible that whoever or whatever was on inside is the floor at the side of thing that has trashed his house! The thing is, Benny is the bed, She was due very last person to be deported that daydeserve all this bad luck. ButHe is a nice person. A really nice person.. how did So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the knife get into the secure centre and why was the girl's room the only one which was unlocked? DI Thomas Ridpathdelivery to his house is a new friend, the coroner's officera bad weather friend called Spike, is who has been sent to investigate and he quickly becomes suspicious, help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a good person. There's a snag though: the inquest Spike is due going to open in a couple take care of days' timeBenny, the girl's parents are coming over from China and they want to will certainly take their daughtercare of Benny's body home with them. Ridpath has just five days to solve the case. The coroner is disinclined to delay the inquest: for herenemies, if he, Benny, itand Harper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's about giving closure to the parentswild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are.|isbn=1662500491
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1471166023Adam Stower|title=Burnt Island (Ben Kitto)|author=Kate RhodesMurray and Bun
|rating=4.5
|genre=CrimeConfident Readers |summary=The 5th of November was D I Ben Kitto's thirty-fifth birthday Murray is supposed to be a humble, tidy and friendly cat, one who is able to sleep and eat and eat and sleep and the occasion for the usual bonfire celebrations, but it would be marred this year by well, whatever takes his fancy next of the discovery of Professor Alex Rogantwo. But he's body on a bonfire. Hebad magician'd obviously s cat, so his favourite bun has been alive when he was put on turned into a hyperactive sticky rabbit called Bun, and the fire and catflap they both use can only have died a terrible death. The body was first discovered by Jimmy Curwenchuck them out, better known on St Agnes as not into the Bird Man because he speaks little or nothing regular back garden, but into a world of frightening adventure and his only concern is the welfare of the birds he looks afterwhiffs. His instinct This time round it drops them into a Viking land, where a troll hunter is expected – well, one much bigger than Murray was, to cover Roganbe honest, but he's body turned up and he uses his sheepskin coat 'll have to do this, with the result that he's the prime suspect.do…|isbn=0008561249
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Elliot ReedB0C47LV1PC|title=A Key to Treehouse LivingFragility|author=Mosby Woods
|rating=4
|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=This Can you make a ''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, is the story of a young boy, William Tyce, who question should you make it? Or is being raised by his uncle after the death of his mother and his father's abandonment. Howeverquestion if you did, would it isn't told in land? The catch is that the usual narrative wayanswer for both could well be. Instead, the book ... no. ''Fragility'' is made up of glossary entries, written by William, set as a way the city of describing certain events, situations and emotions. It runs alphabeticallyPortland, starting with ABSENCEOregon, then moving to ALPHABETICAL ORDER. As I began to read I did find myself thinking 'what on earth?!' but I soon grew used cautiously begins to emerge from the restrictions imposed during the style, and was instead caught up in William's story.|isbn=1911545418covid pandemic
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Will Dean 1529431735|title=Black River The Winter Visitor|author=James Henry|rating=54
|genre=Crime
|summary=Tuva Moodyson returns It's February 1991 and Essex is bitingly cold, which made Bruce Hopkins' return all the more surprising. He'd been exiled on the Costa del Sol as a wanted drug smuggler for a decade. The return has come about because he's had a letter from his ex- wife, saying that she's ill and this third book hasn't long to live. It's hard to feel any sympathy when Hopkins is abducted, stripped to his underwear and sent to a watery grave in the Tuva Moodyson mystery series delves deep into her personal life, returning her boot of a stolen Ford Sierra. Is it a warning from a Spanish gang or a problem closer to home?}}{{Frontpage|author=Alex Bell and Tim McDonagh|title=The Glorious Race of Magical Beasts|rating=4|genre=Confident Readers|summary=Eli is a busy lad – by day an apprentice in the isolated town of Gavrik wondrous library we start by visiting with him, and into in the evening a desperate search helper at the dessert cafe his gran owns and runs. Eli lives with his lovely gran, too – for her there is a generation missing best friendin the family. With A few short years ago, Eli's parents were both lost to the Midsommar sun blocked out by titular race, a globe-trotting adventure where all entrants have to navigate the world in the dark pines company of a magical beast. This has made the forestrace anathema to the pair – but when a bad incident at the eatery leads to a confession from gran, Eli knows his only hope is to dare to enter what he most hates, Tuva fights with the sole aim the prize of magic at the end – the only thing to possibly save her friendhis gran. But who’ll be there to save Tuva?|isbn=17860771160571382231
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