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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>

There are currently '''{{PAGESINCATEGORY: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' reviews at TheBookbagll want to read here.Dig in!

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==New There are currently '''{{PAGESINCATEGORY: Reviews==}}'''Read [[:Category:New Reviews|new reviews by genre]]at TheBookbag.'''

'''Read Want to find out more [[FeaturesAbout Us|new featuresabout us]].'''? __NOTOC__{{newrevi{{newreview|author=Will Eisner|title=Life on Another Planet|rating=2.5|genre=Graphic Novels|summary=There are some people who don't even need their name on their books, for the contents are so obviously and uniquely theirs. Will Eisner is one such person, for the esteem and renown his artwork and pioneering work in the graphic novel form is held under is rightfully his and his alone. I'm quite sure I could recognise a page of his black and white inkwork, and his easily drawn but realistic characters, more easily than any other sequential artist. That trademark signature on the cover, surely the most well-known in 'comic strips' outside Mr Disney's empire, is hardly necessary.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0393328120</amazonuk>}}ew|author=Evany Thomas|title=The Secret Language of Sleep: A Couple's Guide to the Thirty-nine Positions|rating=3|genre=Home and Family|summaryBest New Books=This volume takes the premise that the positions in which couples sleep together are an insight into their private mind. Therefore, with the help of the line drawings of 39 (apparently all of THE 39) positions, one might see where one is going wrong. It’s a chicken and egg situation where you might learn you’re with the wrong bed partner, and change either them or your nocturnal habits, or in order to change yourself alter things having reflected on the contents here – with the help as they suggest of a ceiling-mounted camcorder.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1932416471</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Dyan Sheldon|title=My Worst Best Friend|rating=4|genre=Teens|summary=Gracie Mooney and Savanna Zindle are, unlikely as it may seem, best friends. Savanna is popular, beautiful, loud, confident and, well, a little bit stupid. Gracie is short, plain, quiet, and an intelligent lizard-loving environmentalist. Their friendship really shouldn't work, but somehow it does, and they spend hours and hours together, then when they're not together spend hours discussing everything on the phone with each other'Read [[:Category:New Reviews|new reviews by category]]. You can tell already what's going to happen, can't you? Yes, it's a friendship bust-up just waiting to happen...|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1406304204</amazonukbr>}}

{{newreview|author=Mary Hoffman|title=City of Ships (Stravaganza) |rating=4|genre=Teens'''Read [[:Category:Features|summary=Isabel is unhappy. Her twin brother is better at everything and she has to make up an imaginary twin to compensate. But when she trips up on a bag of silver tesserae (mosaic tiles) all of that begins to change - she falls asleep holding the tiles and finds herself in Classe, in a parallel world, a country equivalent to Italy, encountered in previous books by Lucien, Georgia, Sky and Mattlatest features]]. She is a Stravagante, a traveller in time and space, and the bag of tesserae are her talisman. Invited into the Stravagante group, she encounters problems with pirates, politics and 'the usual' teenage troubles.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0747592535</amazonuk>}}'

'''Read [[Forthcoming Publications|reviews of books about to be published]].{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Steve VoakeTom Percival|title=Hooey Higgins and the SharkThe Wrong Shoes|rating=45

|summary=A shark has been spotted in Shrimpton-on-SeaWill's baylife is difficult, in a multitude of ways. The local chocolate shop He is bullied because he has a mahousive egg for sale for £65. Hooey Higgins decides to capture 'the former so wrong shoes', he has the wrong shoes because his dad can charge admission 't work and buy doesn't have enough money for even the latter. Hemost basic of things like food, and his dad can's helped out t work because he lost his job at the college, was working a cash-in-hand job on a building site and had an accident. Throw into that mix the fact that his adventures by Twig mum and dad are separated, and Will's life seems bleak in every direction. And yet, whilst they all he still has a tiny amount of hope they won't fall foul . He is good at art, and clings to the moments of joy when he is drawing, that feel like a light at the big bully Basboend of a long, dark tunnel.|isbn=1398527122}}{{Frontpage|author=Sylvie Cathrall|title=A Letter to the Luminous Deep|rating=5|genre=Science Fiction|summary= There are few greater joys than a book which lives up to a compelling premise. And this is one of them.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1406322342</amazonuk>0356522776

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Kate Maryon0008517061|title=ShineDeath in a Lonely Place|author=Stig Abell

|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=''You and meFormer Metropolitan Police detective, MumJake Johnson, you and mehas settled into his rustic life at Little Sky.'' Twelve-year-old Tiff There’s perhaps a little uncertainty about the future of his life with his vet girlfriend, Livia and her mother are a double act. They're so close that they're almost more like sisters than mother and daughter. They both like shiny, girly, thingsDiana, as moving in together would mean a lot of compromise: does Jake give up his off-grid and Tiff's mum seemingly has an endless supply of new, ever more glamorous baubles for them relaxing life to move in with Livia or does Livia move to share. There's only one problem: how Little Sky despite her reservations about whether or not this is the future she comes by them. Because Tiff's mum has rather sticky fingers. She shoplifts. She defrauds credit cards. She's very naughty wants for herself and her daughter? For the moment they’re enjoying life in the present and sometimes it makes Tiff feel rather uncomfortableputting the future on the back burner. She knows deep down that it can't last. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007326270</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Anthony McGowan1786482126|title=Einstein's Underpants - And How They Saved The WorldJanus Stone (Dr Ruth Galloway)|author=Elly Griffiths

|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=A delightfully silly school cum sciBuilders were demolishing an old house in Norwich -fi romp for confident readersthe 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 plenty of pants-based humourDCI Harry Nelson. It's difficult as Ruth knows, but never at Nelson doesn't, that she is pregnant with his child as a result of the expense one night they spent together some three months ago. Her condition will be obvious before long, not least because Ruth is prone to sudden bouts of a rollicking good readsickness.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0440869242</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Xavier Deneux0008551324|title=My CircusThe Devil You Know (D S Max Craigie)|author=Neil Lancaster

|genre=For SharingCrime|summary=An utterly gorgeous board book that everyone 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. This person, he promises, is someone big and it will love be worth the police doing what he wants. And what he wants is to be transferred to an open prison to serve the remainder of his sentence and to get an early parole date. Not much to pore overask, is it? The new Deputy Police Constable doesn't think so and she's even prepared to do the other thing that Hardie demanded - make certain that DS Max Craigie and anyone who works with him is kept well away from the very youngest right on upwhat's happening.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408807009</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Maureen Roffey0008405026|title=Bedtime A Stranger in the Family (SlipMaeve Kerrigan 11)|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 never found and the investigation ground to a halt. Now, her mother, Helena, and her father are dead in their 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 suspicious. What looked as though it was going to be an open-and-Slide Booksshut case is now a complex double murder. Kerrigan is convinced that the explanation lies in Rosalie's disappearance: others (such as Derwent's boss, Una Burt)are less convinced.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0571379877|title=The Kellerby Code|author=Jonny Sweet|rating=3.5|genre=Crime|summary=Edward Jevons is a working-class young man, obsessed with his upper-class friends, Robert and Stanza. Robert's a theatre director. He's also self-obsessed, demanding, handsome and entitled and uses Edward to run errands for him. Edward has been in love with Stanza since their university days - and he's drunkenly confided how he feels to Robert. Most men in Robert's position would stay away from Stanza or tell Edward that a relationship had begun between them but he's not like most men: Edward is left to stumble upon the two of them kissing in a dark passageway.}}{{Frontpage|author=Jo Callaghan|title=Leave No Trace

|genre=For SharingCrime|summary=''Bedtime'' When a man is found crucified on the top of a pull-hill in Nuneaton, DCS Kat Frank finds herself assigned to the case alongside her sidekick, the-tabs book about - unsurprisingly - bedtimeAI detective Lock. Page by page reveals child after child rubbing their eyes, changing into It's their pyjamas, kissing mummy goodnightfirst live case together, and cuddling up having previously been very successful with teddyseveral cold cases. Each pulled tab changes that picture But when there is a second body found crucified a few days later, much like Kat is suddenly struggling with a before potential serial killer and after shota 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?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0747599386</amazonuk>139851120X

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John Green1399613073|title=Paper TownsMoral Injuries|author=Christie Watson

|genre=TeensThrillers|summary=17-year-old Quentin Jacobsen has been in love with Margo Roth Spiegelmen ever since he can rememberOlivia, Laura and Anjali met on the first day of medical school and their friendship would keep them inseparable for a quarter of a century. Olivia is ruthlessly ambitious, which is a bonus when you aim to be a cardiothoracic surgeon. It's an unrequited love though - neighbours Laura is a perfectionist and childhood friends they may be, but their respective places in the High School pecking order are miles aparta trauma doctor. Margo Anjali is one the free spirit of the beautiful onesgroup and she becomes a GP. She When we first meet them they're at a drug and alcohol-fuelled party and it's cool, clever and a trendsettergoing to end in tragedy. We don't know who suffered the tragedy or the consequences. Q languishes in Twenty-five years later there will be an eerily similar event that will impact the middle ranks with his band member matesthree friends. This time, Radar, whoit's an obsessive editor of Omnictionary (read Wikipedia), and Ben, their teenage children who wants a girlfriend more than anything, but lacks the status to get oneare involved. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408806592</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Susannah Bates 0241636604|title=Under a Sapphire SkyThe Trading Game: A Confession|author=Gary Stevenson

|genre=Women's FictionAutobiography|summary=Marianne Cooper If you were to bring up an image of a city banker in your mind, you're unlikely to think of someone like Gary Stevenson. A hoodie and jeans replaces the pin-stripe suit and his background is happythe 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. She Stevenson is bright - extremely bright - and he has a thriving jewellery business facility with her best friend Gabby and is six months pregnant numbers which most of us can only envy. He also realised that most rich people expect poor people to be stupid. It was his ability at what was, essentially, a card game which got him an internship with GabbyCitibank. Eventually, this turned into permanent employment as a trader.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1035021803|title=The Antique Hunter's brother JayGuide to Murder|author=C L Miller|rating=3.5|genre=Crime|summary=It's babytwenty years since Freya Lockwood has been back to the English country village where she grew up. Marianne enjoys her passion She's back now because of a request for stones, help from her unconventional attitude to life and her pregnancybeloved aunt, Carole. Freya's former mentor and her unique relationship with JayCarole's close friend, but when her ex boyfriendArthur Crockleford, is dead and reformed manthe circumstances seem suspicious, Paul comes to say the least. Arthur was the reason why Freya had not been back into her life with his fiancée Sophie and a rare padparascha stone he wants Marianne to turn into an engagement ringthe village: Arthur, she soon finds herself questioning feels, let her decision down badly. Even though they were in business together as antique hunters, she has not felt able to reject Paul be near the man or pursue the profession she loved. After the split, she worked in a cafe, met and indeed married James (on the rebound from the love of her way of life, who was murdered) and Freya and James have now divorced.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099445441</amazonuk>

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=Tom HoltSunny Singh|title=Blonde BombshellHotel Arcadia|rating=3.5|genre=Thrillers |summary=The Hotel Arcadia is a luxury hotel in an unnamed city that has suddenly been violently taken over by a terrorist group. Hiding from the terrorists who are rampaging through, killing everyone on site, there is Sam, a wartime photographer and Abhi, the hotel manager. As Abhi continues to try to care remotely for the residents who are still alive in the hotel, he 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 phone, 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 terrorists.|isbn=086154742X}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1529153298|title=The List of Suspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary=It'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, they've been murdered, but to have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. Miv's upset because she's overheard that her father wants to move the 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 best friend, Sharon, and she'll do anything to prevent that. She's not worried about the dangers or that her Mum's stopped talking - to anyone.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1398524085|title=Has Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter?|author=Nicci French|rating=5|genre=Crime|summary=Charlotte Salter was expected at her husband's fiftieth birthday party but never turned up. Her children, sons Niall, Paul and Ollie and her daughter, Etty. are all worried but - strangely - her husband, Alec, is not. Shortly afterwards, Etty and Greg, find the body of Greg's father, Duncan Ackerley, in the river. It was an easy assumption for the police to make that Duncan had murdered Charlie and then committed suicide when he couldn't stand the guilt. The Salter children are not convinced but there's little else they can do but get on with their lives and wonder about what really happened.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1035906708|title=Diva|author=Daisy Goodwin

|genre=Science General Fiction|summary=The blonde bombshell in question in Tom Holt's latest book We tend to think of that name is Lucy Pavlov. If you are reading this review Maria Callas as Greek, but she was born to Greek parents in 2017 of course you will know who Lucy Pavlov is. She's the beautiful, talentedManhattan, wealthyNew York, CEO of PaySoft Industries - the revolutionary operating system that is running on every computer in the worldDecember 1923 and only moved to Athens when she was thirteen. Of course, if that is indeed Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to 'Callas' to make it more manageable in the case, then we've got a problemStates. A very big problem. Because what Lucy doesn't know is When she was back in Athens - supposedly so that she is literally a blonde bombshell could get appropriate training for her voice - well she knows she's blonde, just not that was raised under the Nazi occupation by a mother who mercilessly exploited her body is a shell for a bomb. A very big and a very smart bomb, but nevertheless a bomb. And she's been sent to destroy the planet. It kind made no secret of makes Bill Gates seem OK her preference for the time beingher elder sister, Jackie.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1841497789</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alec SillifantChristopher Edge|title=Jake Highfield: Chaos UnleashedBlack Hole Cinema Club

|summary=What's this that Jake is doing - breaking into Lucas and his friends are all booked in for a building? Vandalising it with graffitimovie marathon at their local cinema, having ruined someonea place that has the nickname of 's privacy and infiltrated something he shouldnThe Black Hole't have done? . Three years ago he would have been doing this as a yobbish kickAll big movie fans, but now hethey's a teenage agent re looking forward to lots of a shadowy organisation called exciting films, and many, many snacks! However, as the Academymovie starts, they very quickly realise that something about this new film format is very different, and people want him to succeed in his missionthey are swept up into an adventure they couldn't even imagine. But do as they lurch from one film genre to the next, can they all want thatfigure out what on earth is going on? Who are his taskmasters after all? And what does Will they ever get back to the Void have in store for his futurecinema, and to their real lives?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1845393481</amazonuk>1839942738

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Rhys ThomasRachel Greenlaw|title=The Suicide ClubCompass and Blade|rating=43.5

|summary=Craig Bartlett-Taylor's third attempt at killing himself is nearly successful – except when he announces in class that he's taken a whole bottle I can hear the song of the sea. The call of pillsthe deep, new boy Frederick Spaulding-Carter steps the answering beat in and saves his lifemy heart. Freddy attains instant celebrity as a hero, and our narrator Richard Harper is as impressed as anyone else.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0552774979</amazonuk>}}''

{{newreview|author=Jason Webster|title=Sacred Sierra: A Year on Rosevear, a Spanish Mountain|rating=4|genre=Travel|summary=Jason Webster remote and his partnerpartially forgotten island, Salud searched survives on luring ships into the rocks and bought forty acres plundering the wrecks. Mira, like her mother before her, is one of valley the seven who swim out to survey the ruins – rescuing any survivors and mountainside halfway up any treasure that lies within. But when the Council Watch lays a trap to end the Penyagolosa Ridge in Southern Spainwrecking, complete with two derelict sets of farm buildings. These ''masthey capture the island's leader and Mira's father. Desperate to save him from death, or smallholdingsMira makes a bargain with a wreck survivor who is as charming as he is secretive and with only coordinates to guide her, formed the backbone she sets off in search of Spanish agriculture until young people abandoned rural life for towns a family secret that lies buried deep in the mid-twentieth centurysea. The agro-economics 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 EEC enforced obsolescence heart of the smuggler''mas'' system. As old timers retired or dieds territory, their farms were abandoned, leaving most Mira must be determined to stop at nothing to save the future of her home and the land returning to wildones she holds most dear.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099512947</amazonuk>0008664730

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Diane JanesJames Sherwood Metts|title=The Pull of the MoonPlanet Storyland|rating=34.5|genre=CrimeConfident Readers|summary=The main story, Things have been a bit sticky for the events in Kate's memoryEarthlings. AI and automation have been proceeding apace, is set in summer 1972. Simonoften replacing jobs they's uncle has gone away for a few months re paid to do and Simon and his friend Danny are meant other tasks that took time to be doing some work on the garden over the holidayaccomplish. Danny brings his girlfriend Kate along, Just as they were beginning to get used to all this technological change and Trudie invites herself starting to join them a couple think of weeks laterother, new ways to spend time, along came an awful pandemic. How did a summer of lounging around Life was pretty much shut down and drinking , along with a little work it, all the many daily social interactions on the garden end in murder? And what can Kate tell Danny's mother Mrs Ivanisovic?which they depend so heavily.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1849010463</amazonuk>1736128426

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Richard ForteyMatthew Tree|title=The Hidden Landscape|rating=4|genre=Popular Science|summary=The purpose of this book is to explore the connection between the landscape and the geology underlying it, which in one of his many vivid similes Fortey compares the surface personality with the workings of the unconscious mind beneath. He starts by describing a journey he once made from Paddington Station to Haverford West, a market town in Pembrokeshire and with it a passage back into the plutonic depths of geological aeons, indicated by the large 60cm monster trilobites that have been found in the Cambrian rocks near St DavidWe's. Fortey describes the magnificence of the Cathedral constructed from the local purple sandstone and mottled with moisture-loving lichens. He contrasts this with the anonymous character of a nearby brightly-coloured service station, anonymous and synthetic, an invader cheaply built and out of context.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847920713</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Glen Duncan|title=A Day and a Night and a Dayll Never Know

|summary=Augustus Rose was brought up in New YorkTimothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, but not in a des res, in an altogether grittier part drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of the city. ' ... his childhood in East Harlem, darkness framing the blistered stoop, the blinding asphalt, the smell of garbage cans artistic passions all failed miserably and urine.' He's who had an unfortunate start in lifeendless crises of self confidence. MotherSo Tim applied himself to his studies, white, father (unknown) black so that makes the young Augustus an in-between, a not-sure, a neither-one-colour-nor-the-other. Today, in the 21st century, no one would raise an eyebrow, bat an eyelid. But this novel is cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and set in the 1960s where racial tensions abound. Yes, even in cosmopolitan cities such as New Yorkhimself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847394175</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8

{{newreview|author=Garth Edwards|title=Shipwrecked (The Adventures of Titch and Mitch)|rating=3.5|genre=Confident Readers|summary=Titch and Mitch are two little pixies who have run Within a remote mountain pass, far away from home. Through the world, lies Silverton; a series town under the protection of misadventures they find themselves shipwrecked on an islandthe Briar's, a family of witches who protect the town and the story revolves wider world from 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 young, her training as a steward revolved around them making new friends thereletters and administration rather than spells and potions. They When her grandmother suddenly dies, Ellie's cousin Audra becomes the Briar Witch, the town's leader, and Ellie takes her place beside her. As challenges come her way left, right and centre, Ellie uncovers the rare ability to communicate with the dead, putting her at the rescue heart of a strange coloured seagullmaelstrom of chaos. Reeling from one family secret to another, Ellie must decide who to trust and determine what to do as the Briar witches' legacy, everything they save a trapped fairyhave sacrificed to survive, they play dentist for a little dragon mouse and they aid and abet an intelligent turkey who is trying to escape from the turkey farmunder threat.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0956231500</amazonuk>1803364548

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Steve Voake1529900360|title=FightbackThe Ghost Orchid|author=Jonathan Kellerman|rating=3.54|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=Meet Kier. A smart, yet lonely, young teen, heIt hadn't been Lt Milo Sturgis's fault that Alex Delaware had been farmed off badly injured but he felt responsible and even after Alex recovered, Sturgis was reluctant to a private school by ask for his dad since mother diedhelp on difficult cases. Among his achievements are several successes on His assertions that there were only open-and-shut cases which didn't need the karate mat, but all this is about to changehelp of a psychologist only worked for a while. When his father is rammed off a motorway and murderedFinally, it was Robin, Kier finds heDelaware's even more alone, and duty-bound to fight even morepartner, when he gets clues to just who his father might have been, and how to go about responding to his deathnudged Milo into asking for help again.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571230032</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Kat Falls|title=Dark Life|rating=5|genre=Teens|summary=Climate change came She knew that the involvement was something that the man she loved needed. The oceans rosenext case did look simple, though. Half Two lovers were murdered in the land mass disappeared uner the water. Some swimming pool of what was left simply crumbled away. Now, Topsiders live in giant tower blocks a remote property in a society under an authoritarian regime with emergency powersBel Air. Time outside is limited because He was the sun heir to an Italian shoe empire and she is so strong married to an extremely rich man and it causes third degree burns. Status brings space, 's not moneythe Italian. Using space to But which you aren't entitled brings severe punishment crashing down upon you. It's no wonder Gemma wants to find her brother, who is living as Dark Life on of them was the ocean floor. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847387616</amazonuk>primary target?

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Louise Harwood1529395224|title=Kiss Like You Mean ItLetting the Cat Out of the Bag: The Secret Life of a Vet|author=Sion Rowlands

|genre=Women's FictionAnimals and Wildlife|summary=This book is Siôn Rowlands fell into veterinary science accidentally. His father was a modernGP and Rowlands didn't want to follow in his footsteps, particularly when he considered the strain that being on-day love story. Itcall put on his father's all about trendy characters life. When he was seventeen he took the opportunity of doing work experience with trendy names living rather trendy lives in glossy location setsa family friend who was a vet and was convinced this was the job for him. The title gives a very clear message as to its contentsBefore long, he was at Liverpool University. Romantic fiction which will appeal generally to women. But thereIt hadn's also a story within t - as with so many students - been his dream since he was a story (and for me the more interesting one) which is the Hollywood movie being filmed in Europechild. It takes us back If anything, he'd wanted to the first World War and the heroic actions of one young man, in particularbe a professional footballer.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330442090</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John Gordon0861541774|title=Fen RunnersA Nye of Pheasants|author=Steve Burrows

|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=Years ago, a boy fell through the ice under CottleDCI Domenic Jejeune's Bridge. He said afterwards that something pulled himclose friend and former colleague, Danny Maik, has taken a sleek silvery creature dragging him down into the blacknessshort holiday in Singapore to meet up with an old ally, Guy Trueman. Now, decades Maik was involved in a street brawl - he would later, two boys go swimming in the very same spot maintain that he was facing a man armed with a knife - and find one of his ice skateshe killed a Ghurka. Initially, he faced a so-called fen runner, buried in charge of manslaughter but evidence came to light that suggested that he might have planned to murder the mud at man. Now he could be facing the bottom of the channeldeath penalty. But when they take it home, dark secrets begin Domenic Jejeune can do nothing to resurface around them help as any interference from another police force could provoke a diplomatic incident and they become aware that an ancient evil is stirring out in the fenswouldn't help Danny at all.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1842556843</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Eleanor ThomAlexander McCall Smith|title=The Tin-KinPerfect Passion Company

|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=Dawn The Perfect Passion Company is a single mother who dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and operating as an alternative to all the online apps in providing a more personal, tailored service. Ness has been avoiding asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the business, as Ness is planning to take a lot of things trip to Canada to get away for a long timewhile. When her aunt, who raised Dawn as Katie is coming out of a break up with a daughterbad boyfriend, dies, Dawn finds and so jumps at the key chance to a cupboard which she was forbidden come home to look into as a childEdinburgh. Inside she finds clues And so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, thanks to her family history44 Scotland Street and the Isabel Dalhousie novels, links but with some new characters who quickly begin to charm. Katie has no experience in running a Traveller Communitybusiness, or in match-making, unearthing a journey that sees but Ness has full confidence in her finding abilities, and there's always her rootsvery helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, William, to lend a hand…|isbn=1846976596}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0811771741|title=InstaKnits for Baby|author=Melissa Leapman|rating=4|genre=Crafts|summary=Melissa Leapman's ''InstaKnits for Baby'' gives us a collection of knits from toys to blankets. We also witness her struggle Some will be quick knits - others are of the 'long, cosy afternoons in front of the fire' variety. The projects are divided by the time they'll take to complete - less than five hours, five to ten hours, ten to renew her complicated relationship with her family twenty hours and her efforts to escape more than twenty hours. All the everprojects are attractive, modern and useable. I perhaps show my age when I wonder about 'social-present memory of her abusive husbandmedia-worthy projects' but that's me being picky.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0715639013</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Leslie KentonDean Koontz|title=Love Affair: The Memoir of a Forbidden Father-daughter RelationshipBad Weather Friend

|genre=AutobiographyParanormal|summary=For some yearsBenny is having a terrifically bad day. He loses his job, I had been aware of Leslie Kenton's books on healthy livinghe loses his fiancee, and his house gets trashed. Oh, and someone has delivered a really weird, disturbing coffin-sized object to his home, and also of Stan Kentonit's work as a jazz bandleaderpossible that whoever or whatever was inside is the thing that has trashed his house! The thing is, though I had never made Benny is the connection until nowvery last person to deserve all this bad luck. He is a nice person. This family memoir reveals all about A really nice person. So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the famous father delivery to his house is 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 good person. Spike is going to take care of Benny, and later-to-be-famous daughterwill certainly take care of Benny's enemies, if he, Benny, and it is Harper (a disturbing talewaitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0091910536</amazonuk>1662500491

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sarah McConnell and Lucy Courtenay Adam Stower|title=Swashbuckle School (Scarlet Silver)Murray and Bun

|genre=Confident Readers|summary=Young Scarlet Silver had always wanted Murray is supposed to be a pirate humble, tidy and friendly cat, one who is able to sleep and eat and eat and eventually her wish came true when she sleep and her family took to , well, whatever takes his fancy next of the high seas in their pirate shiptwo. But he's a bad magician's cat, 55 Ocean Drive. The problem was though that neither Scarlet nor anyone else in the family knew how to be so his favourite bun has been turned into a pirate hyperactive sticky rabbit called Bun, and the catflap they soon discovered that it was quite a tricky business. Scarlet became both use can chuck them out, not into the self appointed captain and did her best regular back garden, but her parents, brother Cedric, grandfather into a world of frightening adventure and his mate One Eyed Jake formed a pretty inept crewwhiffs. This resulted in time round it drops them all soon falling foul into a Viking land, where a troll hunter is expected – well, one much bigger than Murray was, to hostile pirate ships be honest, but he's turned up and narrowly escaping death and disaster!he'll have to do…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0340959673</amazonuk>0008561249

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Richard FlanaganB0C47LV1PC|title=WantingFragility|author=Mosby Woods

|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Read the blurb on the back of Flanagan's Can you make a ''Wanting,Yo birthing person'' and joke? And if you'll think it's could, is the usual post colonial tale of Britain as enemy number one, ''wanting'' to impose its rule on everyone else. In a way question should you make it ? Or is such a talethe question if you did, but what makes would it more interesting land? The catch is that the story of a little girl caught up in the wider historical eventsanswer for both could well be.... no.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848870779</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Simone Elkeles|title=Perfect Chemistry|rating=4|genre=Teens|summary=On the outside, Brittany ''Fragility'' is set as the flawless high-school girl. She has the perfect hair, the perfect outfit, and the perfect boyfriend. Any girl should be jealous city of herPortland, right? Wrong. Underneath the immaculately applied mascara lies a multitude of family problemsOregon, her despair at cautiously begins to emerge from the thought of her severely disabled sister being bundled off to a nursing home never leaving her mind. She has to keep her hurt hidden to save her image, but surely enough this mask starts to crack as more and more of her life refuses to live up to restrictions imposed during the expectations she has forced upon herself.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847388051</amazonuk>covid pandemic

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Patricia Duncker1529431735|title=The Strange Case of the Composer and His JudgeWinter Visitor|author=James Henry

|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=It's rural France, February 1991 and 2000 Essex is barely begunbitingly cold, when hunters come across a spread of human corpses in which made Bruce Hopkins' return all the mountainsmore surprising. Several families, all in He'd been exiled on the same cult, seem to have killed themselves on their path to whereverCosta del Sol as a wanted drug smuggler for a decade. If so, this is The return has come about because he's had a problemletter from his ex-wife, for the last time it happened, in Switzerland a few years previous, nobody could work out why – saying that she's ill and who was there hasn't long to dispose of some of the evidencelive. This isnIt't s hard to feel any sympathy when Hopkins is abducted, stripped to his underwear and sent to a problem for the policeman involved, as he fell desperately watery grave in love with the investigative judge in collaborating on the initial caseboot of a stolen Ford Sierra. Combining again, they see Is it a warning from a link with everybody involved in both cases, Spanish gang or a famous conductor /composer.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408807041</amazonuk>}}problem closer to home?