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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=Neal ShustermanTom Percival|title=EverwildThe Wrong Shoes
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Neal Shusterman continues his part zany adventureWill's life is difficult, part philosophical enquiry, and part coming-in a multitude of-age story that began with Everlost in this follow-up that is perhaps even better than its predecessorways. Everlost He is a kind of limbo bullied because he has 'the wrong shoes', he has the wrong shoes because his dad can't work and home to children - Afterlights - who doesn't have diedenough money for even the most basic of things like food, but somehow missed the tunnel and his dad can't work because he lost his job at the light college, was working a cash-in- wherever hand job on a building site and whatever had an accident. Throw into that mix the light actually is. Adults never make it therefact that his mum and dad are separated, but significant or much-loved objects and buildings sometimes doWill's life seems bleak in every direction. Mary Hightower And yet, for instancehe still has a tiny amount of hope. He is good at art, is so-called because she took up residence in New York in and clings to the Twin Towers. Mary thinks Everlost moments of joy when he is drawing, that feel like a wonderful place and she "saves" light at the Afterlights she finds by giving them repetitive but addictive tasks to fill eternityend of a long, dark tunnel. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847387322</amazonuk>1398527122
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Gabriel WestonSylvie Cathrall|title=Direct RedA Letter to the Luminous Deep
|rating=5
|genre=AutobiographyScience Fiction|summary=Few people have the ability There are few greater joys than a book which lives up to convey the minutiae of their profession in ways which engage the reader, answer your unspoken questions and talk in such a way that you're neither patronised nor overburdened with jargoncompelling premise. Gabriel Weston And this is one such – and ''Direct Red'' held me as though I was hypnotised for several hours. She's a surgeon and we're pulled into the intricacies of her world without the need to don mask and gownthem.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099520699</amazonuk>0356522776
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=David Baldacci0008517061|title=True BlueDeath in a Lonely Place|author=Stig Abell|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=Jamie MeldonFormer Metropolitan Police detective, ex-criminal-defence attorney, now in private practiceJake Johnson, leaves has settled into his office very late one nightrustic life at Little Sky. He's met by There’s perhaps a little uncertainty about the FBI. Very shortly afterwards Jamie Meldon is dead in a dumpster. Mace Perry is working outfuture of his life with his vet girlfriend, trying to stay fitLivia and her daughter Diana, trying to stay sane, trying to stay alive long enough to get out jail as moving in together would mean a couple lot of days' time. Perry was a cop. Undercompromise: does Jake give up his off-cover, maverick grid and darn good at relaxing life to move in with Livia or does Livia move to Little Sky despite her job. Until reservations about whether or not this is the future she ended up stoned on meth, busted wants for robbery, convicted herself and sent down.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230706134</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=David Baldwin|title=The Kingmaker's Sisters: Six Powerful Women her daughter? For the moment they’re enjoying life in the Wars of the Roses|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=Due to the small amount of surviving personal sources, any book which purports to be a biography of a 15-century subject is almost inevitably going to be more a 'life present and times' than a life. In putting the case of women who were sisters but not sovereigns or consorts themselves, future on the lack of data will be even more acuteback burner.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0750950765</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Fred Vargas1786482126|title=The Chalk Circle ManJanus Stone (Dr Ruth Galloway)|author=Elly Griffiths
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=Meet JeanBuilders were demolishing an old house in Norwich - the site was going to hold seventy-Baptiste Adamsbergfive 'luxury' apartments - when they discovered the bones of a child beneath a doorway. An unlikely police commissaireThere was no skull. Was this a ritual killing or murder? Inevitably, heDr Ruth Galloway finds herself working with DCI Harry Nelson. It's an acquired taste for his colleagues. Shortdifficult as Ruth knows, ungainlybut Nelson doesn't, seemingly thinking about the most obtuse things in that she is pregnant with his pursuit child as a result of the truth, and endlessly doodlingone night they spent together some three months ago. Her condition will be obvious before long, but beneath his deathly slow speech and unexpected diversions into his childhood comes a surprisingly perceptive ability to find the culprit in whatever crime he not least because Ruth is forced prone to solvesudden bouts of sickness.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099488973</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jean Reidy and Genevieve Leloup0008551324|title=Too Purply!The Devil You Know (D S Max Craigie)|author=Neil Lancaster
|rating=4.5
|genre=For SharingCrime|summary=It's time unusual for anyone from the Hardie family to approach the police. Neither side likes or has any respect for school, but the young girl other. But Davie Hardie is struggling in prison and her tortoise donhe't want s prepared to wear any tell the police where the body of their clothesa missing person is buried and who was responsible for her death. They're too purply This person, too tickly, too puckery, too pricklyhe promises, is someone big and so onit will be worth the police doing what he wants. You And what he wants is to be transferred to an open prison to serve the remainder of his sentence and to get the ideaan early parole date. Adjectives abound in this fun getting dressed book.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408803151</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Rachel Isadora|title= Not much to ask, is it? The Twelve Dancing Princesses|rating=3|genre=For Sharing|summary=Bookbag recently loved Rachel Isadoranew Deputy Police Constable doesn's take on [[The Night Before Christmas by Rachel Isadora t think so and Clement Clarke Moore|The Night Before Christmas]], which put the classic Christmas poem in an African setting. This time round, she has turned her eye 's even prepared to do the Grimms' 'The Twelve Dancing Princessesother thing that Hardie demanded - make certain that DS Max Craigie and anyone who works with him is kept well away from what's happening.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0142414506</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Gemma Malley0008405026|title=The ReturnersA Stranger in the Family (Maeve Kerrigan 11)|author=Jane Casey
|rating=5
|genre=TeensCrime|summary=It'Ducks are cools sixteen years since nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her bed one summer night. Whatever happens, whatever gets thrown at them, they just carry on, their little legs paddling. Unfazed. They always look like they're smiling.' Will almost wishes he could be a duck. He has precious little to smile about. Sitting watching those ducks go about their business so blithely by the pond, he can't help but remember his mother who committed suicide there some years ago, when Will She was just a tiny lad. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408800918</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Alex Milway|title=Mousebeard's Revenge (Mousehunter Trilogy)|rating=4|genre=Confident Readers|summary=If you started this trilogy way back when, you would probably never expect the pirate, Mousebeard, found and the hero and heroine, Emiline and Scratcher, investigation ground to be working togethera halt. But they are - so deep is the world of Old Town in intrigueNow, her mother, subterfuge and wicked plansHelena, that they need to combine forces - and get other returning characters back on hand and on her father are dead in their side - to counter Mousebeard's enemies once and for allbed. OnlyInitially, one great thing has changed. Yes, thatit looks like a straightforward murder/suicide but there's right. Mousebeard has had a shave...|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571245102</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Chris Mullin|title=A Very British Coup|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary=No one had anticipated that Labour would win something about the election, not least because positioning of the party leader was Harry Perkins, a former steel workerbodies that makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and her boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. His manifesto included promises What looked as though it was going to remove all American bases from British soil, public control of finance be an open-and the dismantling of media empires. There were -shut case is now a few other things too – but they'll do for starterscomplex double murder. The establishment – to a man – was appalled. Press barons, media stars, bishops and civil service mandarins knew Kerrigan is convinced that, for the good of the country explanation lies in Rosalie's disappearance: others (not themselvessuch as Derwent's boss, ''of course''Una Burt) something had to be done and ''obviously'' the end would justify whatever means they had to take to achieve their aims. Harry Perkins had to be removed from officeare less convinced.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687403</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Orson Scott Card0571379877|title=Ender in ExileThe Kellerby Code|author=Jonny Sweet
|rating=3.5
|genre=Science FictionCrime|summary='Ender in Exile' Edward Jevons is the most recently published in the series set in the universe of 'Endera working-class young man, obsessed with his upper-class friends, Robert and Stanza. Robert's Game', a long standing and one of the best known series of science-fiction by Orson Scott Cardtheatre director. It He's been defined as an 'interquel'also self-obsessed, demanding, fitting chronologically between 'Ender's Game' handsome and entitled and the 'Speaker uses Edward to run errands for the Dead', the first two (and probably the best two) novels in the sequencehim. Technically speaking, 'Ender in Exile' actually fits Edward has been inlove with Stanza since their university days -between the last chapters of 'Enderand he's Game' and describes drunkenly confided how he feels to Robert. Most men in more detail events outlined in the resolving sections of Robert'Enders position would stay away from Stanza or tell Edward that a relationship had begun between them but he's Game'. Confusingly for the uninitiated, 'Ender in Exile' not like most men: Edward is also a sequel left to stumble upon the 'Shadow two of the Giant', them kissing in a parallel sub-series from the universe of the 'Ender's Game'dark passageway. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1841492272</amazonuk>
}}
|rating=4
|genre=For SharingCrime|summary=Milo suspects his mum has x-ray visionWhen 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. She can see through the ceiling downstairs when he It's jumping on her bedtheir 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. She can see through Will they be able to solve the outside wall when he's making potions case in time, or will Kat find herself taken off the garden in her saucepans. Is she really case and, potentially, out of a superherocareer? Milo puts her to the test...|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1407105388</amazonuk>139851120X
}}
|rating=4.5
|genre=FantasyThrillers|summary=Sometimes with authors you just don't know what you've been missingOlivia, Laura and Anjali met on the first day of medical school and their friendship would keep them inseparable for a quarter of a century. Other times Olivia is ruthlessly ambitious, which is a bonus when you doaim to be a cardiothoracic surgeon. Jasper Fforde has long been on my catch-up listLaura is a perfectionist and a trauma doctor. Snippets Anjali is the free spirit of Thursday Next the group and she becomes a GP. When we first meet them they're at a drug and reviews alcohol-fuelled party and interviews were enough to convince me I had to get it's going to end in tragedy. We don't know this workwho suffered the tragedy or the consequences. My chance finally came with Twenty-five years later there will be an eerily similar event that will impact the first in a completely new series: three friends. Shades of GreyThis time, it's their teenage children who are involved.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340963034</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sam Mills0241636604|title=BlackoutThe Trading Game: A Confession|author=Gary Stevenson
|rating=4.5
|genre=TeensAutobiography|summary='I am If you were to bring up an image of a murderer. 'I'm standing city banker in a bookshopyour mind, a gun hot in my palmyou're unlikely to think of someone like Gary Stevenson. The bullet that sat in my barrel thirty seconds ago has pierced flesh A hoodie and jeans replaces the pin-stripe suit and his background is the East End, blown into brain tissuewhere he was familiar with violence, metal now fighting consciousnesspoverty and injustice. The woman slumps ont There was no posh public school on his CV - but he had been to the floorLondon School of Economics. Blood begins to trickle from her head. It drips onto Stevenson is bright - extremely bright - and he has a pile facility with numbers which most of signed copies stacked on the floorus can only envy.' Oh my word! What an explosive beginning He also realised that most rich people expect poor people to a book! But be stupid. It was his ability at what made was, essentially, a boy do something like card game which got him an internship with Citibank. Eventually, this? |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571239412</amazonuk>turned into permanent employment as a trader.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ebony McKenna1035021803|title=Ondine: The Summer of Shambles|rating=3|genre=Teens|summary=Ondine de Groot wants out of psychic summercamp, so together with her pet ferret Shambles, she flees from the tea leaf readings and astral projection classes, back to her familyAntique Hunter's restaurant. Only, as soon as she leaves summercamp, she starts hearing voices. Specifically a broad Scottish voice – one that seems Guide to be coming from her ferret. Shambles, it transpires, is in fact a man, turned into a ferret by a witch. Ondine starts to wonder what Shambles would look like as a man, but her imaginings are soon interrupted by the arrival of handsome Lord Vincent, son of the Duke, who sets Ondine's heart fluttering.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1405249617</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewMurder|author=Jean Rowden|title=More Deaths Than OneC L Miller
|rating=3.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=Constable Thomas It'Thornys twenty years since Freya Lockwood has been back to the English country village where she grew up. She' Deepbriar has s back now because of a broken leg after his involvement in a case request for help from her beloved aunt, Carole. Freya's former mentor and so Carole's close friend, Arthur Crockleford, is taken by his wife, Marydead and the circumstances seem suspicious, to recuperate in say the least. Arthur was the seaside town where he worked as a policeman during reason why Freya had not been back to the warvillage: Arthur, she feels, let her down badly. He expects Even though they were in business together as antique hunters, she has not felt able to be bored - near the most interesting thing on man or pursue the horizon is a case of missing gnomesprofession she loved. Then he bumps into an old colleague - someone who left After the force split, she worked in a haze of suspicion. Shortly afterwardscafe, a body is found met and married James (on the beach. Even stranger is that rebound from the dead man is someone that Thorny love of her life, who was murdered) and Freya and his colleague thought had died during the war. It seems that things are not as they seemJames have now divorced. Can Thorny work out what is going on, even with a broken leg?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0709089309</amazonuk>
}}
{{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.''
I'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 advantageous to me but I'm left with the feeling that it's all getting away from me. Some of it is - frankly - quite frightening. Of course, I could research the possibilities and the probabilities and end up down rabbit holes without really understanding whether I'm reading someone who knows what they're talking about or the latest conspiracy theorist. I needed people I knew I could trust and who could deliver information in a way I could understand.}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Paul StrathernSunny Singh|title=The Artist, The Philosopher and The WarriorHotel Arcadia
|rating=3.5
|genre=HistoryThrillers |summary=The interaction between three very differentHotel 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, killing everyone on site, not to say contrastingthere is Sam, a wartime photographer and Abhi, personalities of the Renaissance period sets the scene for what promises to be an intriguing titlehotel manager. In 1502 As Abhi continues to try to care remotely for the paths of Cesare Borgia, notorious son of residents who are still alive in the equally infamous Pope Alexander VIhotel, Niccolò Machiavellihe forms a bond with Sam who refuses to be cowed by events, and keeps on venturing out of her room to try to capture what's happened through her photography. Although they only ever talk over the intellectual and diplomatphone, their friendship grows as Abhi tries to help her keep safe and Leonardo da Vinci, at they both wait to see if they will be rescued before they are discovered by the time best known as a military engineer though remembered today primarily as a great artist, were destined to crossterrorists.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1845951212</amazonuk>086154742X
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Rachel Heath1529153298|title=The Finest Type Of English WomanhoodList of Suspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=It was just after the end of the Second World War 's 1979 and seventeen year old Laura Trelling was at a loose end in her Sussex villageMargaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. (A woman? I mean, honestly... ) She didn's not what's worrying Miv's family, though. Women have been disappearing. Well, they've been murdered, but to have 'disappeared' doesn't really fit in with sound quite so frightening. Miv's upset because she's overheard that her father wants to move the other young people and family 'Down South'. When you're from Yorkshire, Down South is a frightening, foreign place, best avoided. For Miv, the move would mean leaving her eccentric parents were becoming more best friend, Sharon, and more isolated, she'll do anything to the extent prevent that Laura was embarrassed by their carelessness of her welfare. A chance encounter with Paul Lovell was to change everything and before long she was on She's not worried about the dangers or that her way Mum's stopped talking - to a South Africa not yet burdened with apartheidanyone.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099532743</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Bobbie Darbyshire1398524085|title=Truth GamesHas Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter?|author=Nicci French|rating=45|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=The central theme in this book is sex - and lots of itCharlotte Salter was expected at her husband's fiftieth birthday party but never turned up. We're introduced to a group of mainly twentysomethings Her children, sons Niall, Paul and thirtysomethings. Men Ollie and womenher daughter, Etty. Most of them are attractive and hold down glamorous jobs and careersall worried but - strangely - her husband, Alec, is not. All in rude healthShortly afterwards, with wonderful social lives Etty and trendy homesGreg, find the body of Greg's father, Duncan Ackerley, in the river. They all appear, on It was an easy assumption for the surface, police to be a bunch of shiny, happy peoplemake that Duncan had murdered Charlie and then committed suicide when he couldn't stand the guilt. What The Salter children are not convinced but there's little else they can do but get on earth could be missing?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1905614721</amazonuk>with their lives and wonder about what really happened.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Nia Pritchard1035906708|title=More Than Just A Hairdresser|rating=2.5|genre=Women's Fiction|summary=It's a brand new year, and Liverpudlian hairdresser Shirley is looking forward to the months ahead following one hell of a new year's eve party. What's more, she's going to chronicle her adventures in her brand spanking new diary which she will write in diligently, even when she's feeling a bit 'morning after the night before'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1870206851</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewDiva|author=Anthony Quinn|title=The Rescue ManDaisy Goodwin
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=This love affair tale with the city We tend to think of Liverpool is mostly told through the eyes of architect Tom Baines. With the Second World War loomingMaria Callas as Greek, Baines is desperately working on a book but she was born to capture the memory of buildings that are at riskGreek parents in Manhattan, New York, and appears a man more in love with the past December 1923 and solid, cold structures than mankind.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099531933</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Paul Murray|title=Skippy Dies|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Life in Seabrook College is a mess. Some of the staff are young enough only moved to remember their own school days there, but many are certainly too old for thatAthens when she was thirteen. A lot of the boys are victims of ragging and bullying for being too chunky, or too smart - Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but some are so chunky and smart thereher father changed it to 'Callas's a certain kudos to themmake it more manageable in the States. The female of When she was back in Athens - supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for her voice - she was raised under the species is Nazi occupation by a thing only spied from their own school next door, mother who mercilessly exploited her and only met by selling them ritalin as a weight-control pillmade no secret of her preference for her elder sister, or meeting them at the very rare combined school discoJackie.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241141826</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=A G TaylorChristopher Edge|title=Meteorite StrikeBlack Hole Cinema Club
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Sarah is not readyLucas 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'. SheAll big movie fans, they's not ready re looking forward to forgive the man who is her fatherlots of exciting films, for abandoning her and her young brother Robert eight years ago. many, many snacks! She cannot yet forgive However, as the circumstances of her mother dyingmovie starts, and of the promise they were forced to make, to go to Australia with the manvery quickly realise that something about this new film format is very different, and start a new lifethey are swept up into an adventure they couldn't even imagine. She is certainly not prepared for the meteor strike to smash into Australia just But as they fly above itlurch from one film genre to the next, which downs can they figure out what on earth is going on? Will they ever get back to the plane in a horrid crashcinema, and seems to carry with it an alien virus which forces many people to drop permanently asleep.their real lives?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1409508579</amazonuk>1839942738
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Rachel Greenlaw
|title=Compass 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.''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Cynthia KadohataJames Sherwood Metts|title=A Million Shades of GreyPlanet Storyland|rating=34.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=At just twelve, Tin is Things have been a bit sticky for the youngest elephant handler in his villageEarthlings. Ever since he can rememberAI and automation have been proceeding apace, Tin has dreamed often replacing jobs they're paid to do and other tasks that took time to accomplish. Just as they were beginning to get used to all this technological change and starting to think of working with elephants and he loves his own elephant, Ladyother, new ways to distractionspend time, even spending most of his nights sleeping by her sidealong came an awful pandemic. Tin is Life was pretty much less keen on schoolshut down and, but his parents insist that he goes. Tin really can't see the pointalong with it, as his sole ambition is to become a fully-fledged elephant trainer. His parents may talk about opportunities in all the world outside his village but if many daily social interactions on which they don't involve elephants, he's not interesteddepend so heavily. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>184738823X</amazonuk>1736128426
}}
|rating=4.5
|genre=HistoryLiterary Fiction|summary=As the fictional schoolboy hero Nigel Molesworth might have said, 'any fule kno' that Adolf Hitler was notorious for burning books. Nevertheless he was also an avid collector and passionate reader, as around 1200 surviving volumes once in Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his possession now in the Rare Book Division of the Library of Congressfather, and a smaller quantity in Brown University, Rhode Island, demonstrate. Among them were world literature classics, such as 'Robinson Crusoe', 'Uncle Tom's Cabin', drunk and 'Gulliver's Travels'. He also owned an edition chronic underachiever whose dreams of the collected works being exceptional at any of Shakespeare, in hand-tooled Moroccan leather with a gold-embossed eagle flanked by his initials on the spineartistic passions all failed miserably and who had endless crises of self confidence. The BardSo Tim applied himself to his studies, he once said, was greatly superior to Goethe cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and Schillerset himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099532174</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Druin BurchA G Slatter|title=Taking The Briar Book of the MedicineDead
|rating=5
|genre=Popular ScienceFantasy|summary=In 1898, Burch points out that '' There's a new drug was developed and marketed for the treatment of tuberculosis by Bayer & Co. TB is such an ancient enemy part of man me that there is apparently evidence of an earlier strain wants to keep this just to be found in Egyptian mummiesmyself for however long I can. The German firm had discovered a chemical that seemed to work wellThis secret magic of my own, and patients and indeed their own staffall mine, who were tested seemed to respond well - it was named Heroin - and its addictive effects were at first missedlast.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845951506</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Gigi Amateau|title=Chancey|rating=4|genre=Confident Readers|summary=Chancey's dam was Starry Night and her owner loved that horse so much that she wanted a foal who was exactly like her, but when Chancey was born she was bitterly disappointed for instead of the black Appaloosa with white marking Chancey was born albino. It was only his striped hooves which proved his breeding. The owner was not big enough I just want to overcome her feelings and when she fell on hard times enjoy it was Chancey who was left out in the field to suffer despite the fact that he was no longer for a young horsewhile.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>140632258X</amazonuk>}}''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sapphire1529900360|title=PreciousThe Ghost Orchid|author=Jonathan Kellerman
|rating=4
|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=Precious Jones is a sixteen year old black girl from Harlem – well sheIt hadn't been Lt Milo Sturgis's never actually fault that Alex Delaware had been out badly injured but he felt responsible and even after Alex recovered, Sturgis was reluctant to ask for his help on difficult cases. His assertions that there were only open-and-shut cases which didn't need the help of Harlem – and when we meet her shea psychologist only worked for a while. Finally, it was Robin, Delaware's pregnant by her own father partner, who nudged Milo into asking for the second timehelp again. Her first child She knew that the involvement was a girl and something that the man she was born with Down's Syndromeloved needed. With unconscious irony Precious calls her ''Little Mongo'' and leaves her to live with her grandmotherThe next case did look simple, though. When her second pregnancy becomes obvious she's expelled from school and joins an alternative education programmeTwo lovers were murdered in the swimming pool of a remote property in Bel Air. Precious really wants He was the heir to learn an Italian shoe empire and the book she is married to an extremely rich man and it's not the story Italian. But which of her journey from illiteracy to maturity.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099548720</amazonuk>them was the primary target?
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Dean Hale, Shannon Hale and Nathan Hale 1529395224|title=Calamity JackLetting the Cat Out of the Bag: The Secret Life of a Vet|author=Sion Rowlands
|rating=3.5
|genre=Confident ReadersAnimals and Wildlife|summary=Siôn Rowlands fell into veterinary science accidentally. His father was a GP and Rowlands didn''I was born t want to schemefollow in his footsteps, particularly when he considered the strain that being on-call put on his father'', declares our hero Jacks life. With flashbacks we see When he was seventeen he took the young lad and opportunity of doing work experience with a pixie family friend, larking about who was a vet and was convinced this was the job for revenge or small profithim. But when his mother's bakery gets more and more into the redBefore long, the size of the profit has to increasehe was at Liverpool University. And when you add in revenge against the local crime lord It hadn't - as with so many students - been his dream since he was a giant of child. If anything, he'd wanted to be a man - so does the size of the target of the japeprofessional footballer.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0747587426</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sue Grafton0861541774|title=U is for UndertowA Nye of Pheasants|author=Steve Burrows|rating=54
|genre=Crime
|summary=Several years ago I joined DCI Domenic Jejeune's close friend and former colleague, Danny Maik, has taken a funny little book group short holiday in LondonSingapore to meet up with an old ally, Guy Trueman. Maik was involved in a street brawl - he would later maintain that he was facing a man armed with a knife - and one of the first books we read was he killed a Sue Grafton alphabet bookGhurka. I hadInitially, up he faced a charge of manslaughter but evidence came to this point, never read any crime fiction, foolishly feeling myself above such books, and so I was dubious about what I'd light that suggested that he might have planned to say about itmurder the man. That book changed my literary lifeNow he could be facing the death penalty. I devoured it. I couldnDomenic Jejeune can do nothing to help as any interference from another police force could provoke a diplomatic incident and wouldn't get enough! I immediately searched for help Danny at all.}}{{Frontpage|author=Alexander McCall Smith|title=The Perfect Passion Company|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=The Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and operating as an alternative to all the other books online apps in providing a more personal, tailored service. Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the series and read them quicklybusiness, one by one, swiftly followed by as Ness is planning to take a trip to Canada to get away for a delicious plunge into the world while. Katie is coming out of Agatha Christie which gave me a joyously long reading listbreak up with a bad boyfriend, and so jumps at the chance to come home to Edinburgh. And so nowbegins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, years laterthanks to 44 Scotland Street and the Isabel Dalhousie novels, I find myself but with the latest book some new characters who quickly begin to charm. Katie has no experience in running a business, or in the alphabet series lying match-making, but Ness has full confidence in my lapher abilities, and there's always her very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, William, to lend a happy smile on my face as I found I read voraciously once again!hand…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>023070932X</amazonuk>1846976596
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jethro Adlington0811771741|title=Online Therapy: Reading Between the LinesInstaKnits for Baby|author=Melissa Leapman
|rating=4
|genre=Home and FamilyCrafts|summary=You can get most things online these days and even therapy is becoming more widely available on the internet. It might seem like Melissa Leapman's ''InstaKnits for Baby'' gives us a simple step to take but many collection of the signals beyond the spoken word are not available knits from toys to the online therapistblankets. In a faceSome will be quick knits -to-face situation body language is an added form others are of communication and even small changes the 'long, cosy afternoons in skin tone can give clues as to state front of mindthe fire' variety. In a situation where these clues The projects are not available itdivided by the time they's essential ll take to complete - less than five hours, five to ten hours, ten to make twenty hours and more than twenty hours. All the most of projects are attractive, modern and useable. I perhaps show my age when I wonder about 'social-media-worthy projects'allbut that'' the clues offered by the written words me being picky.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904312748</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Laurie Halse AndersonDean Koontz|title=ChainsThe Bad Weather Friend
|rating=4.5
|genre=TeensParanormal|summary=Isabel Benny is having a terrifically bad day. He loses his job, he loses his fiancee, and her sister Ruth are slaveshis house gets trashed. But they should be free Oh, and someone has delivered a really weird, disturbing coffin- Miss Mary Finch left a will sized object to his home, and it's possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the thing that said sohas trashed his house! The thing is, Benny is the very last person to deserve all this bad luck. But Miss Mary Finch He is dead and her greedy nephew and heir denies all knowledge of the willa nice person. A really nice person. So Isabel and Ruth are sold to fortunately for Benny it turns out that the Locktons and taken delivery to New York. The Revolutionary War his house is underway and New York a new friend, a bad weather friend called Spike, who has been sent to help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a dangerous placegood person. The Locktons are loyalists Spike is going to take care of Benny, and will certainly take care of Benny's enemies, if he, Benny, but the patriots and Harper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are in control of the city. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0747598061</amazonuk>1662500491
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Lorraine JenkinAdam Stower|title=Chocolate Mousse Murray and Two SpoonsBun
|rating=4.5
|genre=Women's FictionConfident Readers |summary=From the first sentence: 'With one hell of Murray is supposed to be a crashhumble, Lettie Howell’s dinner service hit the wall…'tidy and friendly cat, I knew that I was going one who is able to enjoy this talesleep and eat and eat and sleep and, well, whatever takes his fancy next of the two. An opening thus full of expletive But he's a bad magician's cat, so his favourite bun has been turned into a hyperactive sticky rabbit called Bun, and resounding Welsh Voice immediately makes it clear who’s the boss and I catflap they both use can relaxchuck them out, knowing I’m in competent handsnot into the regular back garden, but into a world of frightening adventure and whiffs. WelcomeThis time round it drops them into a Viking land, where a troll hunter is expected – well, Lorraine Jenkinone much bigger than Murray was, to my handful of favourite chick-lit authors.be honest, but he's turned up and he'll have to do…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1870206959</amazonuk>0008561249
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=B0C47LV1PC
|title=Fragility
|author=Mosby Woods
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= Can you make a ''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, is the question should you make it? Or is the question if you did, would it land? The catch is that the answer for both could well be.... no.
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=1529431735
|title=The Winter Visitor
|author=James Henry
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=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 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 boot of a stolen Ford Sierra. Is it a warning from a Spanish gang or a problem closer to home?