132,625
edits
Changes
no edit summary
<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=Austin WrightTom Percival|title=Tony and SusanThe Wrong Shoes
|rating=5
|genre=General FictionConfident Readers|summary=Edward Sheffield hadn't exactly been SusanWill's childhood sweetheartlife is difficult, but after in a family tragedy left him homeless multitude of ways. He is bullied because he came to live with Susan and her parents for a year so that has 'the wrong shoes', he could finish school. Susan didnhas the wrong shoes because his dad can't particularly want him there but accepted that it was the right thing to do. Years later they met at university when Edward was studying law work and after a short relationship they married. The marriage wasndoesn't entirely successful; Edward gave up law to become a writerhave enough money for even the most basic of things like food, relying on Susanand his dad can's teaching income to support themt work because he lost his job at the college, but whilst he spent was working a month away cash-in -hand job on a remote cabin 'to find himself' Susan found Arnold insteadbuilding site and had an accident. Many years – Throw into that mix the fact that his mum and three children – later Susan receives a manuscript from Edwarddad are separated, and Will's life seems bleak in every direction. She wasAnd yet, he saidstill has a tiny amount of hope. He is good at art, always his best critic and clings to the moments of joy when he would is drawing, that feel like her opiniona light at the end of a long, dark tunnel.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848870205</amazonuk>1398527122
}}
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Science Fiction|summary=If you try to read 'The Book of Disquiet' from cover There are few greater joys than a book which lives up to cover, it is almost oppressively melancholic. Nothing much happens, and what we have is a collection of reveries and thoughts - almost a diary, but not quite - of existential musings about life, loneliness and the human condition. It's so introspective that after a while the monotony of the writer's mundane existence starts to wear on the readercompelling premise. '''But''' I would urge you not to read And this book like that. Rather, dip into it at random and you will find a work of undeniable genius. It's quite simply a masterpiece is one of modernist writingthem.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846687357</amazonuk>0356522776
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Toby Litt0008517061|title=King Deathin a Lonely Place|author=Stig Abell
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=SkeltonFormer Metropolitan Police detective, that's the musicianJake Johnson, adores has settled into his girlfriendrustic life at Little Sky. She's certainly exotic There’s perhaps a little uncertainty about the future of his life with ' ... his vet girlfriend, Livia and her hair ... like black oil flowing over a stone.' Howeverdaughter Diana, they are only as moving in together would mean a heartbeat away from breaking lot of compromise: does Jake give up when it happens. What looks like some internal part of the body, animal his off-grid and relaxing life to move in with Livia or does Livia move to Little Sky despite her reservations about whether or even human not this is hurled from a London train. the future she wants for herself and her daughter? The pair just happen to be travelling For the moment they’re enjoying life in the present and putting the future on that very train and they also just happen to witness this unsavoury actionthe back burner.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141039728</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Clinton Heylin1786482126|title=Still on the Road: Songs of Bob Dylan, 1974-2008The Janus Stone (Dr Ruth Galloway)|author=Elly Griffiths
|rating=4.5
|genre=EntertainmentCrime|summary=Heylin is also obviously Builders were demolishing an old house in Norwich - the site was going to hold seventy-five 'luxury' apartments - when they discovered the bones of a fan, child beneath a very knowledgeable and obsessive one to bootdoorway. There was no skull. He has never met Was this a ritual killing or directly interviewed his subject (who is known to guard his privacy quite fiercely most of the time)murder? Inevitably, but his research materials include official recording sessionographies and interviews conducted by othersDr Ruth Galloway finds herself working with DCI Harry Nelson. All this It's difficult as Ruth knows, but Nelson doesn't, that she is naturally invaluable information for pregnant with his analysis and history child as a result of all the 600-plus songs the man is known to have written or co-written from 1974 to almost the present dayone night they spent together some three months ago. In terms of his discography, that spans the albums from ‘Blood on the Tracks’, released in 1975 and commonly regarded as probably his best post-1960s setHer condition will be obvious before long, not least because Ruth is prone to ‘Together Through Life’, which appeared in 2009sudden bouts of sickness.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849010110</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Neil MacFarquhar0008551324|title=The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes Devil You a Happy BirthdayKnow (D S Max Craigie)|author=Neil Lancaster
|rating=4.5
|genre=Politics and SocietyCrime|summary=It''What are s unusual for anyone from the chances of change in Hardie family to approach the Middle East?'' is the question central to this bookpolice. Since Neil MacFarquhar spent thirteen years wandering Neither side likes or has any respect for the length other. But Davie Hardie is struggling in prison and breadth of he's prepared to tell the police where the Islamic stronghold body of the Middle East, I feel inclined to believe his in-depth assessmenta missing person is buried and who was responsible for her death. In descriptive and reasoned termsThis person, he identifies conservative forces which predominate in promises, is someone big and it will be worth the region, primarily police doing what he wants. And what he wants is to be transferred to an open prison to serve the religious remainder of his sentence and political machinery which condemns liberalization and modernizationto get an early parole date. This discussion of attempts Not much to promote change, for example by individual dissidents or the mediaask, is strengthened in it? The new Deputy Police Constable doesn't think so and she's even prepared to do the second half of the book by detailed case studies of six nations other thing that Hardie demanded - make certain that DS Max Craigie and anyone who works with particular reference to their readiness and motivation for changehim is kept well away from what's happening. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1586488112</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jojo Moyes0008405026|title=The Horse DancerA Stranger in the Family (Maeve Kerrigan 11)|author=Jane Casey|rating=45|genre=Women's FictionCrime|summary=Only two things in life matter to fourteenIt's sixteen years since nine-year-old Sarah: Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her bed one summer night. She was never found and the investigation ground to a halt. Now, her horse Boo mother, Helena, and her grandfather Henri Lachapellefather are dead in their bed. Henri sees SarahInitially, it looks like a straightforward murder/suicide but there's skill at horsemanship as her way out something about the positioning of their inner city London life the bodies that makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and wants her boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. What looked as though it was going to follow in his footsteps be an open-and become -shut case is now a member of Francecomplex double murder. Kerrigan is convinced that the explanation lies in Rosalie's disappearance: others (such as Derwent's elite equestrian academy Le Cadre Noirboss, Una Burt) are less convinced.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0571379877|amazonuktitle=<amazonuk>0340961600</amazonuk>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.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Nancy WerlinJo Callaghan|title=ImpossibleLeave No Trace
|rating=4
|genre=TeensCrime|summary=Life When a man is just as it should be for Lucy Scarborough. She lives with loving foster parents and at seventeen is looking forward found crucified on the top of a hill in Nuneaton, DCS Kat Frank finds herself assigned to attending prom with her friends and the case alongside her datesidekick, who has definite boyfriend potentialthe AI detective Lock. The only fly in the ointment is Miranda Scarborough, LucyIt's birth mother whotheir first live case together, having given birth to Lucy at eighteenpreviously been very successful with several cold cases. But when there is a second body found crucified a few days later, promptly went mad Kat is suddenly struggling with a potential serial killer and vanished from Lucy's life leaving her in the care a very high profile case that draws a lot of Leo and Soledad MarKowitzunwanted attention to their AI Future Policing project. Lucy's life has been plagued by unwanted visits from Miranda who seems determined Will they be able to cause as much embarrassment as possible. solve the case in time, or will Kat find herself taken off the case and, potentially, out of a career?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0141330309</amazonuk>139851120X
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jeanne Peterson1399613073|title=Falling to HeavenMoral Injuries|author=Christie Watson
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary FictionThrillers|summary=Emma Olivia, Laura and Anjali met on the first day of medical school and Gerald Kittredge are either very brave or very naivetheir friendship would keep them inseparable for a quarter of a century. They've made the long journey from America Olivia is ruthlessly ambitious, which is a bonus when you aim to Tibetbe a cardiothoracic surgeon. Laura is a perfectionist and a trauma doctor. Hardly on Anjali is the free spirit of the tourist trail group and she becomes a GP. When we first meet them they're not missionaries, so why are they there? This novel is at a serious drug and alcohol-fuelled party and sweeping narrative trying it's going to answer end in tragedy. We don't know who suffered the tragedy or the consequences. Twenty-five years later there will be an eerily similar event that very question - and many morewill impact the three friends. This time, it's their teenage children who are involved.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>185168736X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=David Almond0241636604|title=The Boy Who Climbed Into The MoonTrading Game: A Confession|author=Gary Stevenson|rating=4.5|genre=Confident ReadersAutobiography|summary=Paul lives If you were to bring up an image of a city banker in the basement your mind, you're unlikely to think of a large tower blocksomeone like Gary Stevenson. He's feeling lonely A hoodie and jeans replaces the pin-stripe suit and out of sortshis background is the East End, so where he feigns a headache was familiar with violence, poverty and stomach ache injustice. There was no posh public school on his CV - but he had been to the London School of Economics. Stevenson is bright - extremely bright - and he has a day off schoolfacility with numbers which most of us can only envy. He also realised that most rich people expect poor people to be stupid. Spending It was his day wiselyability at what was, essentially, he gets to know the eccentric people who inhabit the buildinga card game which got him an internship with Citibank. Eventually, this turned into permanent employment as well as embracing his own eccentric idea that the moon is actually a hole in the skytrader.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1406314579</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Donald Spoto1035021803|title=High Society: Grace Kelly and HollywoodThe Antique Hunter's Guide to Murder|author=C L Miller|rating=3.5|genre=BiographyCrime|summary=In his defenceIt's twenty years since Freya Lockwood has been back to the English country village where she grew up. She's back now because of a request for help from her beloved aunt, we must acknowledge SpotoCarole. Freya's former mentor and Carole's subtitleclose friend, Arthur Crockleford, is dead and the circumstances seem suspicious, to say the least. It underlines that this does Arthur was the reason why Freya had not been back to the village: Arthur, she feels, let her down badly. Even though they were in any way shape or form claim business together as antique hunters, she has not felt able to be near the man or pursue the profession she loved. After the split, she worked in a biography of cafe, met and married James (on the rebound from the American actress who become Her Serene Highness Princess Grace of Monaco. It is an analysis love of her film career: a consideration of the "Hollywood years"life, who was murdered) and Freya and James have now divorced.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099515377</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.''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=John FosterSunny Singh|title=Whizz Bang Orang-UtanHotel Arcadia
|rating=3.5
|genre=Children's Rhymes and VerseThrillers |summary=Subtitled ''rhymes 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 very young''residents who are still alive in the hotel, you know what you're getting with ''Whizz Bang Orang-Utan''. It's he forms a poetry anthology, bond with sweet poems about kidsSam 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 get up only ever talk over the phone, their friendship grows as Abhi tries to, help her keep safe and of course whizzing and banging orang-utansthey both wait to see if they will be rescued before they are discovered by the terrorists.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0192729934</amazonuk>086154742X
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jess Walter1529153298|title=The Financial Lives List of the PoetsSuspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=There It's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is a certain type of modern fiction Prime Minister. (A woman? I just cannot get along withmean, honestly... ) ItShe's not what's worrying Miv's a narrative that features a concentration on a main character that goes through his plot with unhappinessfamily, making wrong decisions perhapsthough. Women have been disappearing. Well, getting crapped on by lifethey've been murdered, and discussing his woes with the readerbut to have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. I get Miv's upset because she's overheard that her father wants to move the end and think nothing of itfamily 'Down South'. When you're from Yorkshire, until I read the blurbDown South is a frightening, where I find the book was supposed to be hilariously funnyforeign place, the character an insincere cypher for our lives and timesbest avoided. For Miv, and the whole thing an ironic masterpiece - I should have been disbelievingmove would mean leaving her best friend, disagreeing and dis-everything else with the hapless hero. I hate such books - I always only see the sincerity in the narrativeSharon, and never the comedyshe'll do anything to prevent that. Thankfully, such is never She's not worried about the case with this bookdangers or that her Mum's stopped talking - to anyone.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141049138</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Carlos Ruiz Zafon1398524085|title=The Prince of MistHas Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter?|author=Nicci French
|rating=5
|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=During World War Two, Max's father decides to move the whole family to a seaside retreat he knows of - a wooden house far away from the city heCharlotte Salter was expected at her husband's grown his family fiftieth birthday party but never turned up in. Nobody seems too keen on the ideaHer children, neither of Max's sisterssons Niall, his motherPaul and Ollie and her daughter, nor he Etty. are all worried but - strangely - and Max is gifted a pocket watch by his lovingher husband, talented mechanic cum engineer cum watchmaker of a fatherAlec, enscribed as "Max's Time Machine"is not. But the house they move toShortly afterwards, Etty and its surroundingsGreg, are full find the body of more successful time machines - a stash of early home videosGreg's father, a public clock that runs backwardsDuncan Ackerley, a sunken shipwreck, a yard full of statues of a stone circus.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. And letThe Salter children are not convinced but there's not forget the mysterious, spider-eating cat that joins in little else they can do but get on with proceedingstheir lives and wonder about what really happened. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0297856421</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jim Butcher1035906708|title=Changes: The Dresden Files|rating=5|genre=Fantasy|summary=It's always wonderful to see a series going from strength to strength and getting better as it goes along. However, when this happens, there inevitably comes a point where it gets so good, you can't help but think that the next one can't possibly be any better as it feels like the series has peaked. ''Changes'', the twelfth in Jim Butcher's ''Dresden Files'' series, is such a book.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1841497134</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewDiva|author=Jane Feaver|title=Love Me TenderDaisy Goodwin
|rating=4.5
|genre=Short StoriesGeneral Fiction|summary=A woman remembers her dead husband playing Love Me Tender (the song made famous by Elvis Presley) on his tenor horn. She is in a dazeWe tend to think of Maria Callas as Greek, feeling the grief of the bereaved widow but she iswas born to Greek parents in Manhattan, the betrayal of the deceived wifeNew York, in December 1923 and only moved to Athens when she was thirteen. Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to 'Callas' to make it more manageable in the guilt of having murdered himStates. The title story of this collection is all When she was back in Athens - supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for her voice - she was raised under the more moving Nazi occupation by a mother who mercilessly exploited her and startling because made no secret of its understated styleher preference for her elder sister, and what is not said as well as what isJackie.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099521288</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=James RollinsChristopher Edge|title=Jake Ransom and the Skull King's ShadowBlack Hole Cinema Club|rating=54
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=The prologue to this splendid book recounts Lucas and his friends are all booked in for a terrifying chasemovie marathon at their local cinema, the discovery of fabulous Mayan artifacts, and a shadowy enemy. And place that gripping scene sets the tone for has the rest nickname of the book'The Black Hole'. After the strange disappearance All big movie fans, they're looking forward to lots of their parentsexciting films, and many, many snacks! However, who were on an archeological dig on as the Mountain of Bonesmovie starts, they very quickly realise that something about this new film format is very different, Jake Ransom and his sister Kady they are sent a parcel containing two halves of a Mayan coin, their motherswept up into an adventure they couldn's sketchbook and their father's notebookt even imagine. There But as they lurch from one film genre to the next, can they figure out what on earth is no indication what these things mean or what going on? Will they ever get back to the cinema, and to do with them.their real lives?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444000616</amazonuk>1839942738
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alison MaloneyRachel Greenlaw|title=St George: Let's Hear it for England!Compass and Blade
|rating=3.5
|genre=BiographyTeens|summary=''I was a bit can hear the song of a patriot, even when it wasn't as fashionable as it is now becomingthe sea. Perhaps this is due to my once having played St. George in a Cub Scout celebration and getting The call of the chance to personally slay deep, the dragon answering beat in knitted chain mail with a plastic sword. In a world where being English has become synonymous with football violence and the flag of St. George is being used by a political party condemned as racist, it's perhaps unsurprising that more people celebrate Stmy heart. Patrick's Day than St. George's Day.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848092628</amazonuk>}}
}}
|rating=4.5
|genre=TeensConfident Readers|summary=The Rat and Bob are prairie children. Winnipeg is Things have been a land ''so flat you can watch your dog run away bit sticky for three days''the Earthlings. When their father dies AI and automation have been proceeding apace, often replacing jobs they're orphaned, paid to do and other tasks that took time to accomplish. Just as they are determined were beginning to get used to avoid a children's home at all costs this technological change and embark upon a road trip starting to think of other, new ways to New York Cityspend time, in search of their long-lost unclealong came an awful pandemic. Bob is Life was pretty much shut down and, along with it, all the hanger-many daily social interactions on - he knows that the Rat is a special kid who would never make it in an institution and which they depend so he puts his fears aside to follow his singular sisterheavily. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1849162956</amazonuk>1736128426
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Mark Millar and John Romita JrMatthew Tree|title=Kick-AssWe'll Never Know
|rating=4.5
|genre=Graphic NovelsLiterary Fiction|summary=Meet Dave. The average Joe personifiedTimothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, he sits a drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at home with any of his internet connection, his comics collection, his dad, artistic passions all failed miserably and very little contact with anyone else. He is a typical loner teenager, nearly friendless, wears glasses at school - especially around the hot, mature biology teacher who for some reason seems to have maths sums on her blackboardhad endless crises of self confidence... Until one day he decides So Tim applied himself to emulate the comics in his collection. The only superheroes in studies, cultivated his world are those whose colourful adventures he follows on the page - why not get abilities rather than his own costume mucked up, daydreams and go and fight crime?set himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848565356</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=A G Slatter
|title=The Briar Book of the Dead
|rating=5
|genre=Fantasy
|summary='' There's a part of me that wants to keep this just to myself for however long I can. This secret magic of my own, all mine, at last. I just want to enjoy it for a while.''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Gillian Galbraith1529900360|title=No Sorrow to Die: An Alice Rice MysteryThe Ghost Orchid|author=Jonathan Kellerman
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=Straight awayIt hadn't been Lt Milo Sturgis's fault that Alex Delaware had been badly injured but he felt responsible and even after Alex recovered, DS Rice has a gruesome murder Sturgis was reluctant to ask for his help on her handsdifficult cases. The victim, a Mr Brodie (a suitably Scottish name) has had to give up a lucrative His assertions that there were only open-and interesting career due to ill-health. Heshut cases which didn's now merely existing. He's waiting to die, basically. He wants to die. So straight away, t need the plot starts to thicken nicely. We're introduced to help of a psychologist only worked for a clutch of characters, or, more appropriately, suspectswhile. Apart from the immediate familyFinally, the extended familyit was Robin, thereDelaware's also various otherspartner, home helps etcwho nudged Milo into asking for help again. It seems several people have an axe to grind as far as She knew that the involvement was something that the recently deceased Mr Brodie is concernedman she loved needed. You have to ask yourself the question at this point, who'd murder a frailThe next case did look simple, almost-dead man? It would take a particularly callous personthough. Mr Brodie would have been virtually unable to have put up any sort Two lovers were murdered in the swimming pool of struggle. It would have been similar to killing a tiny, helpless kittenremote property in Bel Air. Hewas the heir to an Italian shoe empire and she is married to an extremely rich man and it's so far gone, why not just play the waiting gameItalian. But which of them was the primary target?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846971640</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ronald Skirth and Duncan Barrett1529395224|title=Letting the Cat Out of the Bag: The Reluctant Tommy: An Extraordinary Memoir Secret Life of the First World Wara Vet|author=Sion Rowlands|rating=43.5|genre=AutobiographyAnimals and Wildlife|summary=Ronald Skirth was one of many young Englishmen of nineteen caught up in the First World WarSiôn Rowlands fell into veterinary science accidentally. He joined the Royal Garrison Artillery in 1916, His father was promoted to Corporal, a GP and sent Rowlands didn't want to the western front. Like most of follow in his contemporariesfootsteps, particularly when he went considered the strain that being on-call put on his father's life. When he was an unquestioning servant seventeen he took the opportunity of King doing work experience with a family friend who was a vet and country, fighting was convinced this was the job for what he believed was righthim. On the battlefields of FlandersBefore long, one day he came across the body of Hans, a German soldier the same age, if not youngerwas at Liverpool University. The dead manIt hadn's hand t - as with so many students - been his dream since he was clutching a photograph of his girlfriend, who could almost have been the twin sister of Ella, Skirth's own sweetheartchild. Like two of his friends who had just been killedIf anything, Hans had died as he'd wanted to be a result of the stupidity of othersprofessional footballer.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>023074673X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Danielle Trussoni0861541774|title=AngelologyA Nye of Pheasants|author=Steve Burrows
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=DCI Domenic Jejeune's close friend and former colleague, Danny Maik, has taken a short holiday in Singapore 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 he killed a Ghurka. Initially, he faced a charge of manslaughter but evidence came to light that suggested that he might have planned to murder the man. Now he could be facing the death penalty. Domenic Jejeune can do nothing to help as any interference from another police force could provoke a diplomatic incident and wouldn't help Danny at all.
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Alexander McCall Smith
|title=The Perfect Passion Company
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The Nephilim have lived among Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and operating as an alternative to all the human race since before online apps in providing a more personal, tailored service. Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the days business, as Ness is planning to take a trip to Canada to get away for a while. Katie is coming out of a break up with a bad boyfriend, and so jumps at the Great Floodchance to come home to Edinburgh. Horrific creatures, the hybrid children of humans and angels And so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, their strengthbringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, beauty thanks to 44 Scotland Street and cruelty are unmatchedthe Isabel Dalhousie novels, and they have infiltrated human society completelybut with some new characters who quickly begin to charm. For centuries, Katie has no experience in running a secret societybusiness, students or in a branch of theology known as 'Angelologymatch-making, but Ness has full confidence in her abilities, and there's always her very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, have studied the ways of the heavens and the NephilimWilliam, and waged to lend a secret war against them – a war that has spanned every continent. But the Nephilim grow weak, their blood contaminated by the blood of their human ancestors.hand…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0718155580</amazonuk>1846976596
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Carsten Jensen0811771741|title=We, the DrownedInstaKnits for Baby|author=Melissa Leapman|rating=54|genre=Literary FictionCrafts|summary=In 1848Melissa Leapman's ''InstaKnits for Baby'' gives us a collection of knits from toys to blankets. Some will be quick knits - others are of the 'long, Laurids Madsen and other men cosy afternoons in front of the smalltown of Marstal go to war to fight fire' variety. The projects are divided by the Germans, and an explosionflings him up time they'll take to heavencomplete - less than five hours, as far as anyone can tell. But Lauridsreturns, claiming his sea boots were too heavy for him five to stay upthere – only to be lost to Marstal anywayten hours, as he abandons his familyten to sail twenty hours and more than twenty hours. All the high seasprojects are attractive, modern and useable. I perhaps show my age when I wonder about 'social-media-worthy projects' but that's me being picky.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846550963</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Joanne HarrisDean Koontz|title=BlueeyedboyThe Bad Weather Friend|rating=4.5|genre=General FictionParanormal|summary=BB - or ''blueyedboy'' in his online persona - Benny is having a middle-aged man who lives with terrifically bad day. He loses his job, he loses his fiancee, and his mother in the Yorkshire town of Malbryhouse gets trashed. He Oh, and someone has delivered a deadreally weird, disturbing coffin-end job in a hospital although sized object to his mother would have home, and it that he's of some importancepossible that whoever or whatever was inside is the thing that has trashed his house! The thing is, Benny is the very last person to deserve all this bad luck. He is a nice person. A really nice person. BB So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the 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 way good person. Spike is going to take care of escaping his rather boring life; he writes murderous fantasies on his website in company with other misfitsBenny, some and will certainly take care of whom he knows in real life. It might be fiction on Benny''badguysrock'' but s enemies, if he , Benny, and Albertine share Harper (a troubled history and BBwaitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's manipulation of friends and enemies causes his past to unravelwild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0385609507</amazonuk>1662500491
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Marcus SedgwickAdam Stower|title=White CrowMurray and Bun|rating=34.5|genre=TeensConfident Readers |summary=Rebecca Murray is not happy supposed to be leaving Londona humble, tidy and friendly cat, one who is able to sleep and eat and eat and sleep and, well, whatever takes his fancy next of the two. She But he's not happy with her dad, shea bad magician's cat, so his favourite bun has been turned into a hyperactive sticky rabbit called Bun, and the catflap they both use can chuck them out, not happy with her boyfriendinto the regular back garden, but into a world of frightening adventure and she just generally an unhappy personwhiffs. Having to move to This time round it drops them into a Viking land, where a dead-end place like Winterfold doesn't help at all. Her only friend there troll hunter is a strange girl named Ferelith who expected – well, one hot summermuch bigger than Murray was, to be honest, but he's day shows her an abandoned mansion where two hundred years ago a priest performed horrible experiments on human corpses. He wanted turned up and he'll have to learn something from the dead. But what was it? And what does Ferelith really want from Rebecca?do…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1842551876</amazonuk>0008561249
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Matthew HootonB0C47LV1PC|title=Deloume RoadFragility|author=Mosby Woods
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=A tinyCan you make a ''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, rural community with a handful of characters is at the heart of this novel. And question should you make it? Or is the thing question if you did, would it land? The catch is that binds them all together is Deloume Roadthe answer for both could well be... Hooton gives over every chapter (and some are very short) to one of his characters - Irene, Andy, the butcher. Each is very different from the otherno.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224087657</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{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?