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{{Frontpage
|author=Keith GraySylvie Cathrall|title=The ClimbersA Letter to the Luminous Deep|rating=45|genre=Confident ReadersScience Fiction|summary=Sully is the best tree climber in the village. He has what's known amongst the kids as 'reach'. But what happens when There are few greater joys than a new kid shows up in town? A new kid, called Nottingham, who clambers book which lives up some of the hardest trees with ease? Suddenly Sully is worried that his status is being threatened, and not only that, that his chance to name the final, unnamed big tree in the park by being the first to conquer it, might be snatched from his handsa compelling premise. How can Sully stop Nottingham? And will it cost him his best friend, or maybe even all this is one of his friends, to do so?them.|isbn=17811299910356522776
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Emma Carroll0008517061|title=The Week at World's EndDeath in a Lonely Place|author=Stig Abell
|rating=4
|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=FirstFormer Metropolitan Police detective, the titleJake Johnson, has settled into his rustic life at Little Sky. We're in World's End Close, There’s perhaps a mediocre set little uncertainty about the future of houseshis life with his vet girlfriend, where Stevie (Vie to Livia and her friends) finds fun only with the family dog and with the boy over the road. But we could also be at World's Enddaughter Diana, because something taking as moving in together would mean a great chunk lot of the fun away is the fact that the Cuban Missile Crisis is kicking compromise: does Jake give up his off. The Soviet boats are getting blockaded as America tries -grid and relaxing life to move in with Livia or does Livia move to reduce the risk of nuclear missiles offshore, and Little Sky despite her reservations about whether or not much else this is able to make the news. That said, Vie has news of future she wants for herself and her own – Anna, a secretive young woman hiding in their coal shed. Anna has, in no short time, taken a strong interest daughter? For the moment they’re enjoying life in the American airforce base behind present and putting the future on the Close, said she'd locate something she wanted and leave, failed to leave, and implied her life was at riskback burner. But surely this bit of intrigue has got nothing to do with what the Cold War is doing miles away?|isbn=0571364438
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Kiran Millwood Hargrave and Tom de Freston1786482126|title=Julia and the SharkThe Janus Stone (Dr Ruth Galloway)|author=Elly Griffiths|rating=4.5|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=Julia, our preBuilders were demolishing an old house in Norwich -teen heroine, has been packed off with her parents and their cat from the family home in SW England site was going to be lighthousekeepers for a summer, in hold seventy-five 'luxury' apartments - when they discovered the far NE bones of the Scottish islandsa child beneath a doorway. There was no skull. Here be VikingsWas this a ritual killing or murder? Inevitably, that kind of Scottish islandDr Ruth Galloway finds herself working with DCI Harry Nelson. Dad is going to be automating the lanternIt's difficult as Ruth knows, but Nelson doesn't, which that she is pregnant with his specialist thing, while mum will be leaving her career in algae behind to hunt child as a result of the elusive Greenland sharkone night they spent together some three months ago. And Julia, well, she Her condition will be homesick and alone – until she suddenly finds company one nightobvious before long, not least because Ruth is prone to sudden bouts of sickness.|isbn=1510107789
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|authorisbn=Freya Sampson0008551324|title=The Last LibraryDevil You Know (D S Max Craigie)|author=Neil Lancaster|rating=4.5|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=I am always a little nervous It's unusual for anyone from the Hardie family to start a story about a library, since I am a librarianapproach the police. I always grit my teeth slightly at the thought of the incoming cardigan-wearing, hair in a bun, cat-owning, glasses on a chain stereotypes! In this story, the main character, June, does put her hair in a bun, and she does own a cat (called Alan Bennett), and she Neither side likes or has barely any friends and spends her evenings eating respect for the same Chinese takeaway meal once a week whilst reading books alone! other. But I didnDavie Hardie is struggling in prison and he't immediately throw s prepared to tell the police where the book out body of the windowa missing person is buried and who was responsible for her death. This person, because I found I was interested in Junehe promises, is someone big and why she lived as she didit will be worth the police doing what he wants. Her mum used And what he wants is to be a librarian at transferred to an open prison to serve the village library, but when she got sick, June gave up on going to University remainder of his sentence and stayed at home to take care of her mum, as well as taking on a job as library assistant at the local libraryget an early parole date. And even though her mum sadly died some years ago Not much to ask, is it? The new Deputy Police Constable doesn't think so and she is still working there, still eating her mum's favourite takeaway meal, even prepared to do the other thing that Hardie demanded - make certain that DS Max Craigie and still reading her mumanyone who works with him is kept well away from what's old books. June is stuck, but little does she know, everything in her life is about the changehappening.|isbn=183877369X
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=00083709820008405026|title=Rock Paper ScissorsA Stranger in the Family (Maeve Kerrigan 11)|author=Alice FeeneyJane Casey|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersCrime|summary=Amelia Wright is fortyIt's sixteen years since nine-year-two old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her bed one summer night. She was never found and it was the staff raffle at Battersea Dogs Home that gave her investigation ground to a weekend away in a converted chapel in Scotlandhalt. Her husbandNow, Adamher mother, isn't so keen on the ideaHelena, and her father are dead in their bed. Like AmeliaInitially, he knows that their marriage has been under strain: he's it looks like a screenwriter and hestraightforward murder/suicide but there's never shy something about the positioning of making it clear to Amelia the bodies that he'd prefer to spend time with the novels he's hoping to adapt than with makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and herboss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. Amelia's annoyed that he never enquires about how her day has been What looked as though it was going to be an open- and working with the dogs, many of whom have been abused, -shut case is never easynow a complex double murder. Still - sheKerrigan is convinced that the explanation lies in Rosalie's disappearance: others (such as Derwent's won the weekend awayboss, even if it does mean driving for eight hours in her 1978 Morris Minor Traveller with Adam beside her in the passenger seat - and then doing the same thing to come back a couple of days laterUna Burt) are less convinced.
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Doug Johnstone0571379877|title=The Great SilenceKellerby Code|author=Jonny Sweet|rating=43.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=For those whoEdward Jevons is a working-class young man, like meobsessed with his upper-class friends, haven't come across the Skelfs before, I'll risk a quick synopsis of whoRobert and Stanza. Robert's who – although Johnstone does a good job of bringing the backstory in without being heavy handed about ittheatre director. Skelf isn He't some fantastic creatures also self-obsessed, though it sounds as though it ought to bedemanding, it is merely the surname of a family of undertakers. Undertakers handsome and private investigators. Dorothy is the matriarch – Californian by birth entitled and instinct, she married a scot and ended up helping uses Edward to run the Edinburgh undertaking firm that had errands for him. Edward has been in the family for generations. Recently widowed love with Stanza since their university days - and now involved with a black Swedish police officerhe's drunkenly confided how he feels to Robert. Swedish by nationality. Scottish police. Daughter Jenny, 46, is haunted by her still-living husband – Most men in Robert's position would stay away from Stanza or tell Edward that a violent escaped prisoner. And grand-daughter relationship had begun between them but he's not like most men: Edward is about left to graduate with stumble upon the two of them kissing in a first-class physics degree and join the academic staff next termdark passageway.|isbn=1913193837
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1901514978Jo Callaghan|title=There's a Problem With Dad|author=Carlos AlbaLeave No Trace|rating=4.5|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=Life When a man is different for George Lovelace and he can't really understand whyfound 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. HeIt's always done everything he ought to: steady workertheir first live case together, husband and father - and a father who was always there for school plays and sports dayshaving previously been very successful with several cold cases. So why But when there is he never quite in tune with those around him? Why does he upset people? Why a second body found crucified a few days later, Kat is someone suddenly struggling with such a ''good'' mind unable potential serial killer and a very high profile case that draws a lot of unwanted attention to progress at work or to relate to his colleagues? Why does he make so many breath-taking gaffes? their AI Future Policing project. It's almost become a cliche these days Will they be able to suggest that someone who is a little different is 'on solve the spectrum'case in time, but George Lovelace has all or will Kat find herself taken off the symptoms case and, potentially, out of Asperger's Syndrome: high-functioning autism.a career?|isbn=139851120X
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Louise Candlish1399613073|title=The HeightsMoral Injuries|author=Christie Watson
|rating=4.5
|genre=Thrillers
|summary=Ellen doesn't expect to see Kieran that Olivia, Laura and Anjali met on the first dayof medical school and their friendship would keep them inseparable for a quarter of a century. She's on site Olivia is ruthlessly ambitious, visiting which is a bonus when you aim to be a client for cardiothoracic surgeon. Laura is a perfectionist and a lighting consultation when trauma doctor. Anjali is the free spirit of the group and she spies him becomes a GP. When we first meet them they're at a drug and alcohol-fuelled party and it's going to end in a building across the waytragedy. There are lots of things, lots of people, you might see when you look out across London, but this isn We don't one Ellen expected that day know who suffered the tragedy or in fact any other daythe consequences. Why? Because Kieran has been dead for over two Twenty-five yearslater there will be an eerily similar event that will impact the three friends. This time, and Ellen knows this for a fact, because she had a hand in his murderit's their teenage children who are involved.|isbn=1471183483
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=00084217140241636604|title=Mrs MarchThe Trading Game: A Confession|author=Virginia FeitoGary Stevenson
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary FictionAutobiography|summary=The problem began just after the publication If you were to bring up an image of George Marcha city banker in your mind, you's most successful novel re unlikely to datethink of someone like Gary Stevenson. Everyone but Mrs March (we know her first name only on A hoodie and jeans replaces the last page) seemed to either be reading it or had already done so. Every day Mrs March went to pin-stripe suit and his background is the local patisserie to buy olive bread but on that particular morningEast End, Patricia askedwhere he was familiar with violence, as she poverty and injustice. There was wrapping the bread, ''no posh public school on his CV - but isn't this he had been to the first time London School of Economics. Stevenson is bright - extremely bright - and he's based has a character on you?'' facility with numbers which most of us can only envy. She mentioned He also realised that Johannamost rich people expect poor people to be stupid. It was his ability at what was, the principal character had 'her mannerisms''essentially, a card game which got him an internship with Citibank. Perhaps Eventually, this would not have mattered, except for the fact that Johanna is the whore of Nantes - ''turned into permanent employment as a weak, plain, detestable, pathetic, unloved, unloveable wretchtrader.''
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=John Boyne1035021803|title=The Echo ChamberAntique Hunter's Guide to Murder|author=C L Miller|rating=3.5|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=Meet George CleverleyIt's twenty years since Freya Lockwood has been back to the English country village where she grew up. He is self-defined as "one She's back now because of the few television personalities over the age of fifty without a criminal record"request for help from her beloved aunt, Carole. He starts this book a bit worried when his mistress tells him she Freya's former mentor and Carole's carrying his childclose friend, Arthur Crockleford, but then his author wife is getting her kicks with dead and the circumstances seem suspicious, to say the Ukrainian partner "Strictly Come Dancing" paired her withleast. They have three children Arthur was the reason why Freya had not been back to the village: Arthur, who are a sad-sack with absolutely no social skills whatsoevershe feels, a girl who hangs around with a virtue-signallinglet her down badly. Even though they were in business together as antique hunters, keyboard warrior "wokester" who wants she has not felt able to save be near the world's homeless with out-of-date food, and a fit young lad doing man or pursue the gay hustle thingprofession she loved. Add After the split, she worked in a few other characters – therapistscafe, lawyers, random transgender types – that all have two very different connections to his met and married James (on the rebound from the love of her life, who was murdered) and you Freya and James have something that suggests an almost farcical approach to the modern worldnow divorced. What suggests the farcical approach even more, however, is the fact this is bloody funny.|isbn=0857526219
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=0241989094AllTomorrowsFutureCover|title=The Perfect LifeAll Tomorrow's Futures: Fictions that Disrupt|author=Nuala EllwoodBenjamin Greenaway and Stephen Oram (Editors)|rating=45|genre=ThrillersScience Fiction|summary=In August 2018 we meet a young woman called Imogen and she's viewing a house in Goring-on-Thames and telling 'Opening up new ways of thinking about the estate agent about her three children, Lavender, Freddie and Barclayshape of things to come. The boys are a bit of a handful which is why she's making this trip on her own. The house would be perfect for them.'
ItI've heard it said that 'technology' is what happens after you're eighteen. Well, I must confess that there have been more than a few decades of technology in my lifetime. I've kept up reasonably well with what's the same month advantageous to me but now weI're in Wimbledon and we encounter m left with the same young woman, only this time shefeeling that it's job hunting all getting away from me. Some of it is - frankly - quite frightening. Of course, I could research the possibilities and living in her sister, Georgiethe probabilities and end up down rabbit holes without really understanding whether I's, spare room, where shem reading someone who knows what they's been since she broke up with her boyfriend, Connorre talking about or the latest conspiracy theorist. I needed people I knew I could trust and who could deliver information in a way I could understand.
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{{Frontpage
|author=Darren ShanSunny Singh|title=Archibald Lox and the Slides of Bon Repell: Archibald Lox series, Volume 2, book 2 of 3Hotel Arcadia|rating=43.5|genre=Confident ReadersThrillers |summary=SoThe Hotel Arcadia is a luxury hotel in an unnamed city that has suddenly been violently taken over by a terrorist group. Having done Hiding from the impossible terrorists who are rampaging through, killing everyone on site, there is Sam, a wartime photographer and unpicked Abhi, the lock hotel manager. As Abhi continues to try to care remotely for the residents who are still alive in the Forgotten Crypthotel, from which the Departed communicate he forms a bond with the MergeSam who refuses to be cowed by events, Archie now has ''grop'' and keeps on venturing out of her room to think about. But before that, soirees. Soirees! Archie, much try to Inezcapture what's amusement, doesn't even know what one of those ishappened through her photography. But he manages to come through Although they only ever talk over the fancy party unscathedphone, even after an uncomfortable encounter with Kurtis, whose fledgling romance with Inez was crushed in their friendship grows as Abhi tries to help her keep safe and they both wait to see if they will be rescued before they are discovered by the first volume of this seriesterrorists. |isbn=B093J9TF73086154742X
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|isbn=B07GZ81J7C1529153298|title=When Fred the Snake Got Squished and MendedThe List of Suspicious Things|author=Peter CottonJennie Godfrey|rating=4.5|genre=For SharingGeneral Fiction|summary=Meet FredIt's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. (A woman? I mean, honestly...) She's not what's worrying Miv's family, though. Women have been disappearing. Well, actuallythey've been murdered, youbut to have 'disappeared' doesn're going to be meeting Fred-Fred for reasons which will become all too obvious very quicklyt sound quite so frightening. But IMiv's upset because she's overheard that her father wants to move the family 'm getting ahead of myself: IDown South'd better tell you a bit more about Fred. Fred When you're from Yorkshire, Down South is a snake and even those of us who have a phobia about snakes are going to warm to himfrightening, foreign place, best avoided. He arrived as a present in a box with holes so that he could breathe and immediately became part of For Miv, the familymove would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, and she'll do anything to the extent prevent that they would take Fred out with them when they went out for a walk. And She's not worried about the dangers or that was where the problem started. Fred didnher Mum't have any road sense. Or brakess stopped talking - to anyone.
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn= Justine Avery and Naday Meldova1398524085|title= Everybody Pees! (Everybody Potties!)Has Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter?|author=Nicci French|rating=45|genre=For SharingCrime|summary= Can potty training ever be joyous? It often isnCharlotte Salter was expected at her husband'ts 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, as any parent will tell youis not. But really Shortly afterwards, Etty and Greg, why shouldnfind the body of Greg't it be? We all have s father, Duncan Ackerley, in the river. It was an easy assumption for the police to learn about our bodily functions just as we have to learn about everything else make that Duncan had murdered Charlie and then committed suicide when we are small. Why shouldnhe couldn't potty training be as much fun as, say, learning about why stand the sun guilt. The Salter children are not convinced but there's little else they can do but get on with their lives and the moon take turns in the sky? |isbn= B098BJZYHHwonder about what really happened.
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=17876344931035906708|title=All Her FaultDiva|author=Andrea MaraDaisy Goodwin
|rating=4.5
|genre=ThrillersGeneral Fiction|summary=It had seemed like one We tend to think of those serendipitous events which sometimes happen. Marissa Irvine had been hoping that the opportunity would arise for her sonMaria Callas as Greek, but she was born to Greek parents in Manhattan, MiloNew York, in December 1923 and only moved to go on a play dateAthens when she was thirteen. She Her original surname was concerned that he didnKalogeropoulos but her father changed it to 'Callas't have any friends at his new schoolto make it more manageable in the States. Milo would go home from Kerryglen National School When she was back in an affluent Dublin suburb with his classmate Jacob Athens - and Marissa would pick him up from 14 Tudor Grove a little later. What supposedly so that she could be better? Only, when Marissa arrived at get appropriate training for her voice - she was raised under the house, expecting to meet Jacob's Nazi occupation by a mother, Jenny, the door was answered by Esther, who didn't know Jenny or Jacob. The phone number she'd been given mercilessly exploited her and made no secret of her preference for Jenny was not recognised. Milo had disappeared. And so had Jenny's nannyher elder sister, Jackie.
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{{Frontpage
|author=Claire NorthChristopher Edge|title=Notes from the Burning AgeBlack Hole Cinema Club
|rating=4
|genre=Science FictionConfident Readers|summary=At its core Lucas and his friends are all booked in for a movie marathon at their local cinema, a place that has the nickname of 'The Black Hole'Notes From the Burning Age. All big movie fans, they'' by Claire North is a spy thrillerre looking forward to lots of exciting films, with as and many double crosses, interrogations and night time escapes as Le Carre or Fleming. many snacks! However, as with the best novelsmovie starts, it wears many masks and its most affecting one is they very quickly realise that of a something about this new film format is very different, and timely they are swept up into an adventure they couldn't even imagine. But as they lurch from one film genre, cli-fi, or climate change fiction. North's novel tells of a world devastated by climate change where humans have been forced to start anew and live alongside nature without any of the modern and corrupting "luxuries" (read: fossil fuelsnext, weapons of mass destruction, intensive farming). There can they figure out what on earth is a growing unhappiness with this limiting worldgoing on? Will they ever get back to the cinema, and one group, the Brotherhood, aims to master these processes no matter the cost to the Earth.their real lives?|isbn=03565147571839942738
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{{Frontpage
|author=Eva Bjorg Aegisdottir and Victoria Cribb (translator)Rachel Greenlaw|title=Girls Who LieCompass and Blade|rating=3.5|genre=ThrillersTeens|summary=You might be forgiven for thinking that all ''I can hear the dark corners song of Iceland have featured in their noirish thrillers and crime books before nowthe sea. You thinkThe call of the deep, seeing on the map that weanswering beat in my heart.''re set in Akranes Rosevear, a remote and finding it's only twenty kilometres from partially forgotten island, survives on luring ships into the capital city, that this author is clutching at rocks and plundering the few final straws leftwrecks. However just because the book aims for the usual small-town feelMira, it's not just in Akranes that our interests lie. Six months ago a woman failed to turn up for like her mother before her date evening, and was never seen again. This left a teenaged girl not at all disappointed that she could now live permanently with is one of the couple seven who had given her foster care before her mother had asked for swim out to survey the girl back, ruins – rescuing any survivors and a couple of delighted adoptersany treasure that lies within. But it left our three detectives at when the Council Watch lays a quandary – mobile phone use was at a high level until it stopped all of a sudden, in one placetrap to end the wrecking, they capture the womanisland's car was found miles away in a second place, leader and now, after six months, the body has been discovered, in a third, even more remote placeMira's father. MeanwhileDesperate to save him from death, this narrative is interrupted by Mira makes a confessional monologue from bargain with a mother wreck survivor who found herself is as charming as he is secretive and with heavy post-natal depressiononly coordinates to guide her, and very little maternal feeling 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 body. Is from the watched streets of foreign islands to the assumption that is so easy for heart of the reader smuggler's territory, Mira must be determined to make stop at nothing to save the future of her home and the right one?ones she holds most dear.|isbn=191319373X0008664730
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|isbnauthor=B0925KS87NJames Sherwood Metts|title=Dead Man's Grave (DS Max Craigie)|author=Neil LancasterPlanet Storyland|rating=4.5|genre=CrimeConfident Readers|summary=Tam Hardie had Things have been determined to find a bit sticky for the grave - Earthlings. AI and it took some finding - in an overgrown old cemetery. It was a strange thing for Scotlandautomation have been proceeding apace, often replacing jobs they's premier criminal re paid to do, but Tam was getting old and there other tasks that took time to accomplish. Just as they were things he wanted beginning to get used to all this technological change and starting to think of other, new ways to dospend time, along came an awful pandemic. OnlyLife was pretty much shut down and, his family didn't hear from him again after he'd said that he'd found the grave - the one which said that along with it shouldn't be opened - and his three sons began to worry. Tam Junior, Frankie and Dave wouldn't normally go to all the police but they weren't certain where their father had been and many daily social interactions on which they were worrieddepend so heavily.|isbn=1736128426
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|author=Emily CritchleyMatthew Tree|title=The Tiny Gestures of Small Flowers|rating=3|genre=General Fiction|summary= The Tiny Gestures of Small Flowers had all the hallmarks of something good. I was intrigued by the plot, liked the design of the book, and thought the authorWe's work sounded interesting. From the outset it all looked incredibly promising. So what on earth went wrong here?|isbn= 1911427091}} {{Frontpage|author=Sarah Langan|title=Good Neighboursll Never Know
|rating=4.5
|genre=ThrillersLiterary Fiction|summary= If you're of a certain vintageTimothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, it's hard to read the words ''Good Neighbours'' without adding a sing-song ''that's when Good Neighbours…become…good friends''. Maple Street is no Ramsay Street, though, Arlo drunk and Gertie live a world apart from the Melbourne suburbs. They're one chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of 18 households on the crescent, quite new arrivals having moved in a year earlier. They're not quite like his artistic passions all the other families (he's an ex rocker, she's a former beauty queen) but they've made some friends failed miserably and their kids have settled in, and it's all going okwho had endless crises of self confidence. Until it isn't. One hot, clammy, stickySo Tim applied himself to his studies, sweaty summer, a sinkhole opens up in the park across the way. It's a revolting mess of dirt cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and chaos, set himself high but for the residents of Maple Street, the worst is yet to comeachievable ambitions.|isbn=1789098211B0CVFXPGP8
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|author=Lisa ThompsonA G Slatter|title=The Small ThingsBriar Book of the Dead
|rating=5
|genre=Confident ReadersFantasy|summary=Although Anna has friends at school, she feels like she never really fits in. Her family don't have enough money to let her do after school activities, and so she feels like her life at home is boring in comparison ' There's a part of me that wants to theirs. When a new girl joins her class, Anna is asked keep this just to partner her, but things are complicated because the new girl, Ellie, is unwell and so myself for however long I can't attend school in person. Instead, she joins in with the class by using a robot. Can Anna overcome the challenge This secret magic of making friends with someone through a robotmy own, and is she even interesting enough to be a good friend to Ellie?|isbn=1781129649}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0008350388|title=We Need to Talk About Money|author=Otegha Uwagba|rating=5|genre=Politics and Society|summary=''To be a dark-skinned Black woman is to be seen as less desirableall mine, less hireable, less intelligent and ultimately less valuable than my light-skinned counterpartsat last...'' ''We Need I just want to Talk About Money'' by Otegha Uwagba ''0.7% of English Literature GCSE students in England study enjoy it for a book by a writer of colour while only 7% study a book by a woman.'' ''The Bookseller'' 29 June 2021
Otegha Uwagba came to Within a remote mountain pass, far away from the world, lies Silverton; a town under the protection of the Briar's, a family of witches who protect the town and the UK wider world from Kenya when the Darklands. Though she has always wished for magic, Ellie Briar is the first non-witch to be born into her family for generations and as such since she was five years old. Her sisters were seven young, her training as a steward revolved around letters and administration rather than spells and ninepotions. It was When her mother who came firstgrandmother suddenly dies, Ellie's cousin Audra becomes the Briar Witch, the town's leader, with and Ellie takes her place beside her father joining them later. The family was hard-workingAs challenges come her way left, principled right and determined that their children would have centre, Ellie uncovers the rare ability to communicate with the dead, putting her at the best education possible. There was always a painful awareness heart of money although this did not translate into a shortage maelstrom of anything: it was simply carefully harvestedchaos. When Otegha was ten the Reeling from one family acquired a car. For Oteghasecret to another, education meant a scholarship Ellie must decide who to a private school in London trust and then a place at New Collegedetermine what to do as the Briar witches' legacy, everything they have sacrificed to survive, Oxfordis under threat.|isbn=1803364548
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|isbn=17876318691529900360|title=The Rising TideGhost Orchid|author=Sam LloydJonathan Kellerman
|rating=4
|genre=ThrillersCrime|summary=Lucy Locke's early life It hadn't been easy Lt Milo Sturgis's fault that Alex Delaware had been badly injured but she'd built a good he felt responsible and decent life in the aftermatheven after Alex recovered, Sturgis was reluctant to ask for his help on difficult cases. She's now married to Daniel, who coHis assertions that there were only open-owns Lockeand-Povey Marine on Penleith Beachshut cases which didn't need the help of a psychologist only worked for a while. Finally, and they live at Wild Ridge on Mortis Point with Billieit was Robin, LucyDelaware's daughter and Finpartner, who nudged Milo into asking for help again. She knew that the involvement was something that the child man she had with Danielloved needed. They have financial difficultiesThe next case did look simple, some caused by Nick Povey, Daniel's partner and so-called best friendthough. Nick and Daniel have Two lovers were murdered in the swimming pool of a history together from remote property in Bel Air. He was the time they both spent in a children's home but heir to an Italian shoe empire and she is married to an extremely rich man and it's difficult to think that Nick has Daniel's best interests at heart, particularly where Lucy, or money, is concernednot the Italian. But which of them was the primary target?
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Hannah Peck1529395224|title=Kate on Letting the CaseCat Out of the Bag: The Secret Life of a Vet|author=Sion Rowlands
|rating=3.5
|genre=Confident ReadersAnimals and Wildlife|summary=Meet Kate, although I got the impression she'd rather be Siôn Rowlands fell into veterinary science accidentally. His father was a Catherine – GP and one specific Catherine at that. For Catherine Rodriguez is KateRowlands didn's idolt want to follow in his footsteps, and particularly when he considered the author of our heroinestrain that being on-call put on his father's favourite possession, ''The Special Correspondent Manual''life. Armed When he was seventeen he took the opportunity of doing work experience with a plucky father, that book, family friend who was a vet and her talking mouse called Rupert, she is all equipped to manage a train ride to was convinced this was the Arctic, to see her scientist mother job for the first time in yonkshim. HoweverBefore long, this is a train ride he was at Liverpool University. It hadn't - as with a difference, for on board is a greedyso many students -seeming harridan and her cat, a thief – and two glowing eyes, shining from the darkness in been his dream since he was a blink-and-you'll-miss-them stylechild. ItIf anything, he's definitely a case for d wanted to be a new young investigative journalist.professional footballer..|isbn=184812970X
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|authorisbn=Darren Shan0861541774|title=Archibald Lox and the Forgotten Crypt: Archibald Lox series, Volume 2, book 1 A Nye of 3Pheasants|author=Steve Burrows|rating=4.5|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=The second trilogy in ShanDCI Domenic Jejeune's ''Merge'' saga opens with our heroclose friend and former colleague, ArchieDanny Maik, back has taken a short holiday in London Singapore to meet up with an old ally, Guy Trueman. Maik was involved in the world of the Borna street brawl - he would later maintain that he was facing a man armed with a knife - and he killed a Ghurka. It's not been easy Initially, explaining he faced a charge of manslaughter but evidence came to his foster parents where light that suggested that he's been, or slipping back into ordinary life and forgetting about Inez and his other friends in might have planned to murder the Merge, but Archie has done his bestman. Now he could be facing the death penalty... well, except for visiting veteran locksmith Winston in Big Ben Domenic Jejeune can do nothing to help as any interference from another police force could provoke a diplomatic incident and wouldn's clock tower and except for fiddling with that sneaky master lock in Seven Dials every time he can sneak awayt help Danny at all.|isbn=B093H8DPQZ
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|isbnauthor=0571365884Alexander McCall Smith|title=My Mess is a Bit of Life: Adventures in Anxiety|author=Georgia PritchettThe Perfect Passion Company|rating=4.5|genre=AutobiographyGeneral Fiction|summary=Georgia Pritchett has always been anxiousThe Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, even run by Ness and operating as an alternative to all the online apps in providing a childmore personal, tailored service. She would worry about whether the monsters under the bed were comfortable: it was the sort of life where Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she had nothing could come and look after the business, as Ness is planning to worry about she would become anxious but such occasions were few and far betweentake a trip to Canada to get away for a while. On Katie is coming out of a visit break up with a bad boyfriend, and so jumps at the chance to come home to a therapistEdinburgh. And so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, as bringing us to an adultEdinburgh we already love, when she was completely unable thanks to speak about what was wrong 44 Scotland Street and the Isabel 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 it was suggested that she should write it down abilities, and there''My Mess is s always her very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, William, to lend a Bit of a Life: Adventures in Anxiety'' is the result - or so we are given to believe.hand…|isbn=1846976596
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|authorisbn=Alex Cotter0811771741|title=The House on the EdgeInstaKnits for Baby|author=Melissa Leapman
|rating=4
|genre=Confident ReadersCrafts|summary=FaithMelissa Leapman's family home is teetering on ''InstaKnits for Baby'' gives us a collection of knits from toys to blankets. Some will be quick knits - others are of the edge of a cliff'long, literally. Is that crack cosy afternoons in front of the garden getting bigger? Is fire' variety. The projects are divided by the house starting time they'll take to slope a little? And as the house seems complete - less than five hours, five to be falling apart, so is Faith's family. Her dad has disappearedten hours, ten to twenty hours and her mum is struggling to cope, barely leaving her bedmore than twenty hours. So that leaves Faith in charge, taking care of her little brother Noah, taking care of her mum, feeding everyone, getting Noah to school All the projects are attractive, modern and avoiding awkward questions from interfering teachersuseable. Is her little brother okay? Why is he obsessed with what he claims is a ghost in the cellar? What should she do I perhaps show my age when I wonder about the house? Can she find a way to raise enough money to fix it? What's happened to her dad? Why did he disappear? Maybe hesocial-media-worthy projects'll come back if she manages to get funding for the house? She carries the weight of all these worries on her constantly, and she doesnbut that't know how much longer the cliff will hold together, or how long she can keep on keeping ons me being picky.|isbn=1788008626
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|isbnauthor=0008269041Dean Koontz|title=Risk of Harm|author=Lucie WhitehouseThe Bad Weather Friend
|rating=4.5
|genre=CrimeParanormal|summary=DCI Robin Lyons Benny is back in her native Birmingham after her lesshaving a terrifically bad day. He loses his job, he loses his fiancee, and his house gets trashed. Oh, and someone has delivered a really weird, disturbing coffin-than-comfortable departure from sized object to his home, and it's possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the thing that has trashed his house! The thing is, Benny is the Metvery last person to deserve all this bad luck. She might have been reinstated but the whole episode left He is a nasty taste in her mouthnice person. She was now working for Detective Chief Superintendent Samir Jaffrey - then the man who had broken her heart nearly twenty years beforeA really nice person. She and her fifteen-year-old daughter have moved So fortunately for Benny it turns out of her parent's home into that the delivery to his house is a rented house but there's still new friend, a difficult situation with her brother Luke bad weather friend called Spike, who has gone out of his way been sent to make life difficult help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for Robin since she was being a young childgood person. HeSpike is going to take care of Benny, and will certainly take care of Benny's married to Natalieenemies, if he, Benny, now and has Harper (a young child but hewaitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's still got it in for Robinwild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are.|isbn=1662500491
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|isbnauthor=1786332388Adam Stower|title=The First Day of Spring|author=Nancy TuckerMurray and Bun
|rating=4.5
|genre=ThrillersConfident Readers |summary=Sometimes I wonder if I take my pleasures too sadly - Murray is supposed to be a humble, tidy and ''The First Day of Spring'' was friendly cat, one such occasion. The writing who is superb able to sleep and completely compelling. The characterisation is excellent eat and eat and sleep and , well, whatever takes his fancy next of the plot grips you and won't let gotwo. So, whatBut he's a bad magician's the problem? Wellcat, so his favourite bun has been turned into a hyperactive sticky rabbit called Bun, and the problem is Chrissiecatflap they both use can chuck them out, not into the main character. When we first meet her she's just eight years oldregular back garden, small for her age but into a world of frightening adventure and she readily tells us that she's just killed someone - a two-year-old boywhiffs. She's completely cold about what she's done with her main memory being that whilst she was killing - suffocating - her hands seized up. There's This time round it drops them into a clue that Chrissie isn't completely responsible for her actions Viking land, where a little later in the book: when will Steven come backtroll hunter is expected – well, one much bigger than Murray was, to be honest, she wonders? Hasnbut he't s turned up and he been dead for long enough?'ll have to do…|isbn=0008561249
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|authorisbn=Catherine SteadmanB0C47LV1PC|title=The Disappearing ActFragility|author=Mosby Woods|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersLiterary Fiction|summary= British actress Mia Eliot Can you make a ''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, is on the cusp of success. Great success. If question should you make it? Or is the rumours are truequestion if you did, award season would it land? The catch is going to treat her that the answer for both could well, acknowledging her for her latest, critically acclaimed productionbe.... no. She ''Fragility''s going places but so, unfortunately, is her partner. And set as the places he's going take him towards liescity of Portland, Oregon, deceit and a pretty young thing in cautiously begins to emerge from the form of his new co-star. It's a good time for Mia to escape, and pilot season in LA provides just restrictions imposed during the excuse.|isbn=1471189783covid pandemic
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|authorisbn= Christophe Medler1529431735|title=Madrigal: A Closely Guarded SecretThe Winter Visitor|author=James Henry
|rating=4
|genre=Historical FictionCrime|summary= Set against It's February 1991 and Essex is bitingly cold, which made Bruce Hopkins' return all the backdrop of more surprising. He'd been exiled on the English Civil War, Costa del Sol as a wanted drug smuggler for a secret plan (code-named Madrigal) is discovered by Sir Robert Douse in the summer of 1642decade. As The return has come about because he's had a loyal servant of the Kingletter from his ex-wife, saying that she's ill and Head of the Secret Service, it is Roberthasn't long to live. It's duty hard to uncover the details of the plan feel any sympathy when Hopkins is abducted, stripped to his underwear and follow the clues sent to uncover one of the most guarded secrets a watery grave in history—especially since the plot could affect the Kingboot of a stolen Ford Sierra.|isbn=B095HY8SXQ Is it a warning from a Spanish gang or a problem closer to home?
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|author=Tasha SuriAlex Bell and Tim McDonagh|title=The Jasmine ThroneGlorious Race of Magical Beasts
|rating=4
|genre=FantasyConfident Readers|summary= On Eli is a busy lad – by day an apprentice in the night of her sacred burningwondrous library we start by visiting with him, Princess Malini defies her brother and refuses to step on to in the evening a helper at the pyredessert cafe his gran owns and runs. She Eli lives with his lovely gran, too – for there is immediately sent a generation missing in the family. A few short years ago, Eli's parents were both lost to be imprisoned on the Hirana: an ancient temple that was once filled with titular race, a community globe-trotting adventure where all entrants have to navigate the world in the company of people who got powers from a magical beast. This has made the race anathema to the mysterious deathless waters. But now pair – but when a bad incident at the temple eatery leads to a confession from gran, Eli knows his only hope is nothing more than an overgrownto dare to enter what he most hates, decaying ruin. One day, Malini witnesses a girl kill someone with the sole aim the prize of magic. Instead of reporting her for such a gruesome crime, Malini claims that at the girl saved her from an attacker and begs for end – the girl only thing to become her own personal maidservantpossibly save his gran.|isbn=03565156480571382231
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