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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=Chris StewartTom Percival|title=Three Ways to Capsize a Boat: An Optimist AfloatThe Wrong Shoes
|rating=5
|genre=AutobiographyConfident Readers|summary=Books about sailing fall into two sorts: those written by authors who know what they are talking aboutWill's life is difficult, (though sometimes they donin a multitude of ways. He is bullied because he has 'the wrong shoes', he has the wrong shoes because his dad can't convey it too well) work and those who dondoesn't have a clue, but enough money for even the most basic of things like to think they do. Wellfood, Chris Stewart may have started the book with a light and frothy touch as a novice sailor, but his dad can't work because he ends up with lost his job at the credentials of an Ancient Mariner.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956003842</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Keris Stainton|title=Della Says: OMG! |rating=4|genre=Teens|summary=Ever since she college, was four, Della has had working a secret crush cash-in-hand job on Dana building site and had an accident. Throw into that mix the fact that his mum and dad are separated, the good-looking and gentle boy who once shared his brand new crayons with herWill's life seems bleak in every direction. And now, more than ten years lateryet, he wants to kiss herstill has a tiny amount of hope. It seems too He is good to be trueat art, and for a while Della fears clings to the whole thing moments of joy when he is drawing, that feel like a joke, set up by mean girl Gemima. After all, Gemima is Dan's best friend. And then disaster strikes: Della's very private and confidential diary goes missing. The diary with all light at the excruciatingly embarrassing entries about Danend of a long, her family, her friends..dark tunnel.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408304279</amazonuk>1398527122
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Liane MoriartySylvie Cathrall|title=What Alice ForgotA Letter to the Luminous Deep
|rating=5
|genre=Women's Science Fiction|summary='This wasn't the worst thing that had ever happened There are few greater joys than a book which lives up to her…it was just the most ridiculous' laments thirty nine year old mother of three, Alice, who has had the last ten years of her life struck from her memory by a blow to the head in her step aerobics classcompelling premise. Alice now thinks she's twenty nine, newly pregnant with her first child and happily married to Nick and furthermore she hasn't a clue what she's doing at an aerobics class in the first placeAnd this is one of them. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0141043768</amazonuk>0356522776
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jonathan Coe0008517061|title=The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell SimDeath in a Lonely Place|author=Stig Abell
|rating=4
|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=Meet Maxwell Sim. ActuallyFormer Metropolitan Police detective, perhaps I should rephrase that so that it doesn't sound like an imperative instruction - for if you do meet himJake Johnson, you might not like the experiencehas settled into his rustic life at Little Sky. An ex-salesman, he's now in after sales (ie he's stuck on There’s perhaps a customer returns counter in a department store); however he is completely awful little uncertainty about the future of his life with regards to other people. His wife has run off with their his vet girlfriend, Livia and her daughterDiana, all as moving in together would mean a lot of compromise: does Jake give up his few friends have forsaken him (off-grid and his Facebook wall). We start the book with him trying relaxing life to patch things up move in with his father, who's safely in Australia. He finds all those who know of him are already aware he's depressed. Those who don't know him can find him painfully shy, Livia or able does Livia move to talk away their will to live, gabbling on and on Little Sky despite her reservations about Watford. But a lot whether or not this is about to change. the future she wants for herself and her daughter? He's about to be combined with some people excited about green toothbrushesFor the moment they’re enjoying life in the present and putting the future on the back burner.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670917389</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Samantha Hunt1786482126|title=The SeasJanus Stone (Dr Ruth Galloway)|author=Elly Griffiths|rating=4.5|genre=Literary FictionCrime|summary=Builders were demolishing an old house in Norwich - the site was going to hold seventy-five 'luxury'The Seas'' follows apartments - when they discovered the story bones of a nameless nineteen-year old girl who is lonely and adrift in child beneath a cruel coastal town so far to the north of the USA that the roads only run southdoorway. There was no skull. She misses her father Was this a ritual killing or murder? Inevitably, an absent alcoholic sailor, while her silence-loving mother, who grew up on an isolated island Dr Ruth Galloway finds herself working with deaf parents, worries deeply about herDCI Harry Nelson. Early on in the story we get the distinct impression that our narrator is not deemed It'normals difficult as Ruth knows, but Nelson doesn' by her peerst, who call her all sorts of unflattering things. With nothing to do in her small town, and no one to do it that she is pregnant with, she spends her time pining for his child as a local alcoholic called Jude who is fifteen years her senior, and who refuses her amorous advances on result of the grounds that it would one night they spent together some three months ago. Her condition will be wrong. As the story unfoldsobvious before long, Jude and the girl's relationship grows and changes, sometimes in unexpected waysnot least because Ruth is prone to sudden bouts of sickness.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849013934</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Lara Fox0008551324|title=Miss Understanding: My Summer on the ShelfThe Devil You Know (D S Max Craigie)|author=Neil Lancaster
|rating=4.5
|genre=TeensCrime|summary=Anya Buxton is backIt's unusual for anyone from the Hardie family to approach the police. ItNeither side likes or has any respect for the other. But Davie Hardie is struggling in prison and he's prepared to tell the summer holidays police where the body of a missing person is buried and who was responsible for her mum death. This person, he promises, is someone big and it will be worth the police doing what he wants. And what he wants is keen for her to find a summer job rather than waste her days lounging around at homebe transferred to an open prison to serve the remainder of his sentence and to get an early parole date. After Not much to ask, is it? The new Deputy Police Constable doesn't think so and she's even prepared to do the brief, worrying possibility other thing that Hardie demanded - make certain that she might just end up as a newspaper delivery girl she lands a dream position gaining work experience DS Max Craigie and anyone who works with a London publishing househim is kept well away from what's happening.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0008405026|title=A Stranger in the Family (Maeve 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 finds herself simultaneously editing was never found and the investigation ground to a dishyhalt. Now, her mother, Helena, though slightly disturbed teen authorand her father are dead in their bed. Initially, struggling with it looks like a long distance relationship with Al, wondering if straightforward murder/suicide but there'The Boy' really has turned over 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-shut case is now a new leaf and being wooed by complex double murder. Kerrigan is convinced that the bossexplanation lies in Rosalie's son. And, of course, shedisappearance: others (such as Derwent's blogging it all for her dedicated followersboss, Una Burt) are less convinced.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340988835</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sheryl Webster and Tim Warnes0571379877|title=What Small Rabbit HeardThe Kellerby Code|author=Jonny Sweet|rating=43.5|genre=For SharingCrime|summary=ItEdward Jevons is a working-class young man, obsessed with his upper-class friends, Robert and Stanza. Robert's cold and windya theatre director. Small Rabbit just wants to stay inside, but Big Rabbit insists that it He's freshalso self-obsessed, not colddemanding, handsome and entitled and uses Edward to run errands for him. Edward has been in love with Stanza since their university days - and theyhe're going on a walks drunkenly confided how he feels to Robert. He Most men in Robert's position would stay away from Stanza or tell Edward that a bit of a cheeky scamp relationship had begun between them but he's not like most men: Edward is Small Rabbit, so when Big Rabbit says ''try left to keep up'', Small Rabbit somehow mishears it as ''jump in the mud''. As stumble upon the walk goes on, Small Rabbit mishears Big Rabbit time and time again, getting up to all sorts two of shenanigansthem kissing in a dark passageway.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0192728679</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Michael BoothJo Callaghan|title=Sushi and Beyond: What the Japanese Know About CookingLeave No Trace
|rating=4
|genre=CookeryCrime|summary=Japanese food has When a tendency man is found crucified on the top of a hill in Nuneaton, DCS Kat Frank finds herself assigned to sound a bit freakish or even controversialthe case alongside her sidekick, the AI detective Lock. Raw fish? It's their first live case together, having previously been very successful with several cold cases. Octopus ice cream? Whale meat? Yet it But when there is a second body found crucified a few days later, Kat is slowly infiltrating the UK suddenly struggling with sushi conveyor belt restaurants popping up everywhere a potential serial killer and noodle bars offering Westernised bowls a very high profile case that draws a lot of steaming noodlesunwanted attention to their AI Future Policing project. In this book Michael Booth takes his wife and two young children Will they be able to experience solve the real thingcase in time, travelling across or will Kat find herself taken off the whole of Japan tasting an enormous range of foods case and learning about their history, how the foods have been produced and are cooked and eaten.potentially, out of a career?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099516446</amazonuk>139851120X
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Lionel Shriver1399613073|title=We Need To Talk About Kevin|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Politicians continue to argue that the solution to social issues lies with the family, so it is timely that at the heart of Lionel Shriver's 2005 Orange Prize winning novel is the issue of nature vs nurture - what makes a person like he or she is? Is the eponymous Kevin born evil or is he influenced by his mother's coldness towards him. There are no clear answers and that's what gives this brave book, which tackles the taboos that some mothers don't bond with their children, such power.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687349</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewMoral Injuries|author=Elin Hilderbrand|title=The CastawaysChristie Watson
|rating=4.5
|genre=Women's FictionThrillers|summary=On Olivia, Laura and Anjali met on the island first day of Nantucket, four couples have forged strong bonds medical school and their friendship would keep them inseparable for a quarter of friendshipa century. Together they live and love Olivia is ruthlessly ambitious, raise their children, share their dreamswhich is a bonus when you aim to be a cardiothoracic surgeon. It's an idyllic existence Laura is a perfectionist and at the same time a very purposeful onetrauma doctor. The couples have worked hard to create Anjali is the quality free spirit of life they now enjoy the group and nothing can take it away from she becomes a GP. When we first meet them. Until now. Greg they're at a drug and Tess are dead, the result of what appears to be a sailing accident. They leave behind two young children, alcohol-fuelled party and six devastated friends, all of whom have it's going to come to terms with what has happenedend in tragedy. For some there is guilt over final words said We don't know who suffered the tragedy or final warnings left unsaidthe consequences. For others, Twenty-five years later there is the knowledge will be an eerily similar event that secret relationships will now have to stay that way evermoreimpact the three friends. 'The Castaways' is the book of that fateful summer This time, the accident and its aftermath, but it's more than just thattheir teenage children who are involved. It's a look at the precious role friends and family play in our lives, and how innocent actions or words can change the course of history forever.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340919825</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jenna Burtenshaw0241636604|title=WintercraftThe Trading Game: A Confession|author=Gary Stevenson
|rating=4.5
|genre=TeensAutobiography|summary=The wardens raid villages and cities for people competent If you were to fight bring up an image of a city banker in the waryour mind, a war nobody knows anything about other than if you’re sent you're unlikely to fight you don’t come back. The last time they raided Morvane was ten years ago, taking Kate’s parents with themthink of someone like Gary Stevenson. Kate is taken in by her uncle, Artemis, A hoodie and grows up in jeans replaces the book shop with him pin-stripe suit and her friendhis background is the East End, Edgar. But now the wardens are backwhere he was familiar with violence, poverty and looking for more people injustice. There was no posh public school on his CV - but he had been to fightthe London School of Economics. However, they are also looking for the Skilled – Stevenson is bright - extremely bright - and he has a dying breed facility with numbers which most of people who us can see through the veil of life and deathonly envy. They want He also realised that most rich people expect poor people to build be stupid. It was his ability at what was, essentially, a card game which got him an army of the deadinternship with Citibank. Eventually, this turned into permanent employment as a trader.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755370961</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sarah Dessen1035021803|title=Infinity (Pocket Money Puffins)The Antique Hunter's Guide to Murder|author=C L Miller
|rating=3.5
|genre=TeensCrime|summary=Girl is a teen from small town America. We donIt't know s twenty years since Freya Lockwood has been back to the English country village where exactly, but itshe grew up. She's somewhere people drive (which rules out the likes back now because of NYC) and it's somewhere that has a roundaboutrequest for help from her beloved aunt, Carole. Most of America doesn Freya't have these – instead they have much more sensible crossings s former mentor and lights and T-junctions – so itCarole's a source of intrigue for many of close friend, Arthur Crockleford, is dead and the circumstances seem suspicious, to say the town's residentsleast. For new driver Girl Arthur was the roundabout is joint top on her List Of Things To Masterreason why Freya had not been back to the village: Arthur, she feels, along with sleeping with let her boyfriend Anthonydown badly. They might seem entirely unrelated Even though they were in business together as antique hunters, she has not felt able to be near the likes of you and me, but to Girl man or pursue the links are clearprofession she loved. They're both things After the split, she will have to deal with for worked in a first time eventuallycafe, but she still can't decide whether to rush ahead in order to get them out met and married James (on the rebound from the love of the way quicklyher life, or put them off for just a little longerwho was murdered) and Freya and James have now divorced.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141330775</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=Amanda Sington-WilliamsSunny Singh|title=The Eloquence of DesireHotel 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=The novel starts in the post-war austerity years in England It's 1979 and centres around a middle-class, traditional family unitMargaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. Sington-Williams gives the reader a detailed description of that period - the bland food, the monotony of commuting to London (some things don't change) and of courseA woman? I mean, the rainhonestly... ) GeorgeShe's not what's worrying Miv's family, his wife Dorothy and their teenage daughter Susan don't really talk to each otherthough. They tend to skirt round issues and walk on eggshellsWomen have been disappearing. Appearances are everythingWell, they've been murdered, but to have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. So a suitably fabricated story is told Miv's upset because she's overheard that her father wants to their small, move the family circle of George's company moveDown South'. George has no choice in the matterWhen you're from Yorkshire, Down South is a frightening, foreign place, best avoided. So he does what he always has done up till nowFor Miv, he puts a brave face on for the world move would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, and grins and bears itshe'll do anything to prevent that. ItShe's not worried about the dangers or that her Mum's a huge change in their domestic situation. Uprooted stopped talking - to a strange, foreign, tropical country they've only glimpsed in National Geographicanyone.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907230114</amazonuk>
}}
{{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.}}{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Nikki Dudley1035906708|title=EllipsisDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin|rating=34.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Both the title We tend to think of Maria Callas as Greek, but she was born to Greek parents in Manhattan, New York, in December 1923 and book cover are slick and glossyonly moved to Athens when she was thirteen. Can the contents live up Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to this positive image? Straight away the reader is drawn into Daniel's life ... but Callas' to make it more manageable in the clock is tickingStates. He will soon be spoken about When she was back in Athens - supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for her voice - she was raised under the past tense. He dies Nazi occupation by a mother who mercilessly exploited her and leaves manymade no secret of her preference for her elder sister, many questions that his immediate family struggle to answer. But as the story progresses we discover that secrets have been kept for a long timeJackie. Why? Too disturbing to reveal?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907230106</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Brian WildsmithChristopher Edge|title=Animal GalleryBlack Hole Cinema Club
|rating=4
|genre=For SharingConfident Readers|summary=Starting off with Lucas and his friends are all booked in for a crash of rhinocerosesmovie marathon at their local cinema, through a corps place that has the nickname of giraffes'The Black Hole'. All big movie fans, a hover they're looking forward to lots of troutexciting films, and many, many snacks! However, as the movie starts, they very quickly realise that something about this new film format is very different, and ending they are swept up with a dray of squirrelsinto an adventure they couldn't even imagine. But as they lurch from one film genre to the next, Brian Wildsmith treats us can they figure out what on earth is going on? Will they ever get back to a beautiful look at collections of animals.the cinema, and to their real lives?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>019272794X</amazonuk>1839942738
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=China MievilleRachel Greenlaw|title=KrakenCompass and Blade
|rating=3.5
|genre=FantasyTeens|summary=Meet Billy Harrow, curator of molluscs and other pickled creatures. Imagine if you will Billy's thoughts on entering the chamber that houses 'I can hear the highlight song of his museum's tour - an immense squid, housed in a glass crate - only to find the entire thing - animal and tank - impossibly removedsea. Imagine, too, The call of the more esoteric kind of policeman and -woman needed to arrivedeep, to tell him that his exhibit was the keystone of a mysterious cult with the end of times on their mind, and that they might just like Billy to infiltrate it and see what was precisely whatanswering beat in my heart. Just consider - is Billy, the man who bottled the giant squid, a John the Baptist to this cult, or a Judas?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0333989503</amazonuk>}}''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Chris Welch and Lucian RandallJames Sherwood Metts|title=Ginger Geezer: The Life of Vivian StanshallPlanet Storyland|rating=4.5|genre=BiographyConfident Readers|summary=Redheads, they say, feel more pain than Things have been a bit sticky for the rest of usEarthlings. They may even AI and automation have a layer of skin too fewbeen proceeding apace, often replacing jobs they're paid to do and other tasks that took time to accomplish. However literally true Just as they were beginning to get used to all this might betechnological change and starting to think of other, it certainly seems new ways to be the case for Vivian Stanshallspend time, along came an awful pandemic. As his second wife says in this excellent bookLife was pretty much shut down and, along with it, 'There's nothing between him and all the sensations the world has to give us'many daily social interactions on which they depend so heavily.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1841156795</amazonuk>1736128426
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Paul CooksonMatthew Tree|title=The World At Our FeetWe'll Never Know|rating=4|genre=Children's Rhymes and Verse|summary=With the World Cup just around the corner, football is on everyone's lips. Paul Cookson, Poet in Residence at the [http://www.nationalfootballmuseum.com/ National Football Museum], has compiled the best football poems for young children.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>033051086X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Karen Abbott|title=A Most Rebellious Debutante|rating=35|genre=Women's Literary Fiction|summary=Lucy TempletonTimothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, daughter a drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of Lord Templeton, fell in love with her dancing master. It wasn't entirely unusual for a seventeen year old girl to feel this way, but it was better that it was unheard being exceptional at any of when she was caught in his arms. A substantial sum artistic passions all failed miserably and who had endless crises of money for the dancing master ensured that he would disappear and Lucy was sent to stay with her married sister as punishmentself confidence. She was not So Tim applied himself to attend parties or social functions and must spend her time looking after her sister's young children and doing good workshis studies, until such time as the Templetons could get her married off. All might have gone according to their plan had she not had a chance encounter with the notorious Lord Rockhaven cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and a stolen kiss catches her heartset himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0709090315</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ben OkriA G Slatter|title=Tales The Briar Book of Freedomthe Dead
|rating=5
|genre=Literary FictionFantasy|summary=Tales '' There's a part of Freedom is a book me that wants to keep this just to myself for however long I can. This secret magic of two halvesmy own, all mine, with a short story entitled Comic Destiny taking up the majority of the bookat last. Comic Destiny is made up of I just want to enjoy it for a series of short pieces that follow on from each other and are probably best described as being closer to prose poetry than anything elsewhile.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846041597</amazonuk>}}''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Austin Wright1529900360|title=Tony and SusanThe Ghost Orchid|author=Jonathan Kellerman|rating=54|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=Edward Sheffield It hadn't exactly been SusanLt Milo Sturgis's childhood sweetheart, fault that Alex Delaware had been badly injured but he felt responsible and even after a family tragedy left him homeless he came Alex recovered, Sturgis was reluctant to live with Susan and her parents ask for a year so that he could finish schoolhis help on difficult cases. Susan His assertions that there were only open-and-shut cases which didn't particularly want him there but accepted that need the help of a psychologist only worked for a while. Finally, it was the right thing to doRobin, Delaware's partner, who nudged Milo into asking for help again. Years later they met at university when Edward She knew that the involvement was studying law and after a short relationship they marriedsomething that the man she loved needed. The marriage wasn't entirely successful; Edward gave up law to become a writernext case did look simple, relying on Susan's teaching income to support them, but whilst he spent a month away though. Two lovers were murdered in the swimming pool of a remote cabin 'to find himself' Susan found Arnold insteadproperty in Bel Air. Many years – He was the heir to an Italian shoe empire and she is married to an extremely rich man and three children – later Susan receives a manuscript from Edwardit's not the Italian. She But which of them was, he said, always his best critic and he would like her opinion.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848870205</amazonuk>the primary target?
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Michael Wolff1529395224|title=The Man Who Owns Letting the Cat Out of the NewsBag: Inside the The Secret World Life of Rupert Murdocha Vet|author=Sion Rowlands
|rating=3.5
|genre=Politics Animals and SocietyWildlife|summary=There can be few people Siôn Rowlands fell into veterinary science accidentally. His father was a GP and Rowlands didn't want to follow in his footsteps, particularly when he considered the strain that being on-call put on his father's life. When he was seventeen he took the opportunity of doing work experience with a family friend who are unaware of was a vet and was convinced this was the name of Rupert Murdochjob for him. Over four decades Before long, hewas at Liverpool University. It hadn's built News International into t - as with so many students - been his dream since he was a seventy billion dollar corporation from its original Australian basechild. His position in the UK media is such that If anything, he'd wanted to be a professional footballer.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0861541774|title=A Nye of Pheasants|author=Steve Burrows|rating=4|genre=Crime|summary=DCI Domenic Jejeune's courted by politicians close friend and former colleague, Danny Maik, has what many believe taken a short holiday in Singapore to be meet up with an excessive amount of power for someone who is not elected 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 is not even he killed a UK citizenGhurka. He's now expanding into Southeast Asia 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 in his eightieth year itwouldn's still difficult to imagine when – or where – he will stopt help Danny at all.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099523523</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Meg RosoffAlexander McCall Smith|title=Vamoose (Pocket Money Puffins)The Perfect Passion Company
|rating=4.5
|genre=TeensGeneral Fiction|summary=There are lots of reasons not to become The Perfect Passion Company is a teen mum while still at school – there’s your loss of freedomdating agency in Edinburgh, for a start, plus the fact that babies spend their days crying run by Ness and pooing, not operating as an alternative to mention all the fact they’re expensiveonline apps in providing a more personal, tailored service. But what happens to Jess is something that no one Ness has warned asked her about: younger cousin Katie if she goes into hospital could come and gives birth look after the business, as Ness is planning to take a bouncing baby moosetrip to Canada to get away for a while. Which Katie iscoming out of a break up with a bad boyfriend, it has and so jumps at the chance to come home to be said, slightly oddEdinburgh. As she and boyfriend Nick struggle through first-time parenthood and learn to deal with the Unique Challenge of having a non-homo-sapien child And so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, there’s a lesson for all of bringing us about biting off more than to an Edinburgh we can chew already love, thanks to 44 Scotland Street and unpredictable consequences.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141329149</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Fernando Pessoa|title=The Book of Disquiet|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=If you try to read 'The Book of Disquiet' from cover the Isabel Dalhousie novels, but with some new characters who quickly begin to cover, it is almost oppressively melancholiccharm. Nothing much happens Katie has no experience in running a business, and what we have is a collection of reveries and thoughts or in match- almost a diarymaking, but not quite - of existential musings about lifeNess has full confidence in her abilities, loneliness and the human condition. Itthere's so introspective that after a while the monotony of the writer's mundane existence starts to wear on the reader. '''But''' I would urge you not always her very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, William, to read this book like that. Rather, dip into it at random and you will find lend a work of undeniable genius. It's quite simply a masterpiece of modernist writing.hand…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846687357</amazonuk>1846976596
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Toby Litt0811771741|title=King DeathInstaKnits for Baby|author=Melissa Leapman
|rating=4
|genre=CrimeCrafts|summary=Skelton, thatMelissa Leapman's the musician, adores his girlfriend. She's certainly exotic with ' ... her hair ... like black oil flowing over a stone.InstaKnits for Baby'' However, they are only gives us a heartbeat away collection of knits from breaking up when it happenstoys to blankets. What looks like some internal part Some will be quick knits - others are of the body'long, animal or even human is hurled from a London traincosy afternoons in front of the fire' variety. The pair just happen projects are divided by the time they'll take to complete - less than five hours, five to be travelling on ten hours, ten to twenty hours and more than twenty hours. All the projects are attractive, modern and useable. I perhaps show my age when I wonder about 'social-media-worthy projects' but that very train and they also just happen to witness this unsavoury action's me being picky.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141039728</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Clinton HeylinDean Koontz|title=Still on the Road: Songs of Bob Dylan, 1974-2008The Bad Weather Friend
|rating=4.5
|genre=EntertainmentParanormal|summary=Heylin Benny is also obviously having a fanterrifically bad day. He loses his job, he loses his fiancee, a very knowledgeable and obsessive one to boothis house gets trashed. He Oh, and someone has never met delivered a really weird, disturbing coffin-sized object to his home, and it's possible that whoever or directly interviewed whatever was inside is the thing that has trashed his subject (who house! The thing is, Benny is known the very last person to guard his privacy quite fiercely most of the time), but his research materials include official recording sessionographies and interviews conducted by othersdeserve all this bad luck. All this He is naturally invaluable information a nice person. A really nice person. So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the delivery to his analysis and history of all the 600-plus songs the man house is known a new friend, a bad weather friend called Spike, who has been sent to have written or co-written help him since Benny is clearly under attack from 1974 to almost the present daynefarious forces for being a good person. In terms Spike is going to take care of his discographyBenny, that spans the albums from ‘Blood on the Tracks’and will certainly take care of Benny's enemies, released in 1975 and commonly regarded as probably his best post-1960s setif he, to ‘Together Through Life’Benny, which appeared in 2009and Harper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1849010110</amazonuk>1662500491
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Neil MacFarquharAdam Stower|title=The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes You a Happy BirthdayMurray and Bun
|rating=4.5
|genre=Politics and SocietyConfident Readers |summary=''What are the chances of change in the Middle East?'' Murray is the question central supposed to this book. Since Neil MacFarquhar spent thirteen years wandering the length be a humble, tidy and breadth of the Islamic stronghold of the Middle Eastfriendly cat, I feel inclined one who is able to believe sleep and eat and eat and sleep and, well, whatever takes his in-depth assessmentfancy next of the two. In descriptive But he's a bad magician's cat, so his favourite bun has been turned into a hyperactive sticky rabbit called Bun, and reasoned termsthe catflap they both use can chuck them out, he identifies conservative forces which predominate in not into the regionregular back garden, primarily the religious and political machinery which condemns liberalization but into a world of frightening adventure and modernizationwhiffs. This discussion of attempts to promote changetime round it drops them into a Viking land, where a troll hunter is expected – well, for example by individual dissidents or the mediaone much bigger than Murray was, is strengthened in the second half of the book by detailed case studies of six nations with particular reference to their readiness be honest, but he's turned up and motivation for change. he'll have to do…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1586488112</amazonuk>0008561249
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jojo MoyesB0C47LV1PC|title=The Horse Dancer|rating=4|genre=Women's Fiction|summary=Only two things in life matter to fourteen-year-old Sarah: her horse Boo and her grandfather Henri Lachapelle. Henri sees Sarah's skill at horsemanship as her way out of their inner city London life and wants her to follow in his footsteps and become a member of France's elite equestrian academy Le Cadre Noir.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340961600</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFragility|author=Nancy Werlin|title=ImpossibleMosby Woods
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Emma and Gerald Kittredge are either very brave or very naive. TheyCan you make a ''Yo birthing person''ve made joke? And if you could, is the long journey from America to Tibet. Hardly on question should you make it? Or is the tourist trail and they're not missionariesquestion if you did, so why are they therewould it land? This novel The catch is a serious and sweeping narrative trying to that the answer that very question - and many morefor both could well be.... no.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>185168736X</amazonuk>}}
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Donald Spoto1529431735|title=High Society: Grace Kelly and Hollywood|rating=3|genre=Biography|summary=In his defence, we must acknowledge Spoto's subtitle. It underlines that this does not in any way shape or form claim to be a biography of the American actress who become Her Serene Highness Princess Grace of Monaco. It is an analysis of her film career: a consideration of the "Hollywood years".|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099515377</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewThe Winter Visitor|author=Nicola Killen|title=Not Me!James Henry
|rating=4
|genre=For SharingCrime|summary=A group of kids are playing, and making an awful mess. One by one theyIt're asked if they're responsible, s February 1991 and one by one they deny any involvement. But have they been caught red handedEssex is bitingly cold, and will it really fall upon Jess the pup to do which made Bruce Hopkins' return all the tidying up?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1405248297</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=John Foster|title=Whizz Bang Orang-Utan|rating=3more surprising.5|genre=Children He's Rhymes and Verse|summary=Subtitled ''rhymes d been exiled on the Costa del Sol as a wanted drug smuggler for the very young'a decade. The return has come about because he's had a letter from his ex-wife, you know what you're getting with ''Whizz Bang Orang-Utansaying that she's ill and hasn't long to live. It's a poetry anthology, with sweet poems about kidshard to feel any sympathy when Hopkins is abducted, what they get up stripped to, his underwear and sent to a watery grave in the boot of course whizzing and banging orang-utansa stolen Ford Sierra.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0192729934</amazonuk>}} Is it a warning from a Spanish gang or a problem closer to home?