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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=Joseph O'ConnorTom Percival|title=Ghost LightThe Wrong Shoes
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=There Will's life is one thing Measle could really be called afraid difficult, in a multitude ofways. Not He is bullied because he has 'the wrong shoes', he has the wrong shoes because his dad can't work and doesn't have enough money for even the usual teenage most basic of things, like having a bathfood, no. Heand his dad can's lived through being inches high and stuck t work because he lost his job at the college, was working a cash-in -hand job on a nightmarish train-set diorama with building site and had an evil cockroach accident. Throw into that mix the fact that his mum and worse for companydad are separated, and as a result, heWill's going to be afraid of a wrathmonk – a warlock turned bad – such as the one who put him therelife seems bleak in every direction. So you'll pity him when it becomes obvious And yet, he still has a gathering tiny amount of wrathmonks are forminghope. He is good at art, and clings to get their revenge on Measle's newly-found family. But what are wrathmonks in turn afraid the moments ofjoy when he is drawing, I hear you ask? That's right – that feel like a light at the end of a garden gnomelong, dark tunnel.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0192729713</amazonuk>1398527122
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Chloe NeillSylvie Cathrall|title=Firespell: The Dark EliteA Letter to the Luminous Deep
|rating=5
|genre=TeensScience Fiction|summary=Lily Parker There are few greater joys than a book which lives up to a compelling premise. And this is sent to boarding school one of them.|isbn= 0356522776}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0008517061|title=Death in Chicago when her parents get a Lonely Place|author=Stig Abell|rating=4|genre=Crime|summary= Former Metropolitan Police detective, Jake Johnson, has settled into his rustic life at Little Sky. There’s perhaps a little uncertainty about the opportunity to do some prestigious research work in Germany. She was expecting bitchy classmatesfuture of his life with his vet girlfriend, Livia and she gets them – but she wasn’t prepared for her suitematedaughter Diana, Scout, who stays out late at night and reappears covered as moving in bruises, together would mean a school full lot of secret hiding places, a principal who knows her parents compromise: does Jake give up his off-grid and seems relaxing life to have an entirely wrong idea move in with Livia or does Livia move to Little Sky despite her reservations about their work – whether or a mysterious group of supernatural teens called not this is the future she wants for herself and her daughter? For the moment they’re enjoying life in the present and putting the future on the Dark Eliteback burner.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0575095393</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Chris Mould1786482126|title=The Werewolf and the Ibis Janus Stone (Something Wickedly WeirdDr Ruth Galloway)|author=Elly Griffiths
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=The Builders were demolishing an old house in Norwich - the site was going to hold seventy-five 'Something Wickedly Weirdluxury' series is apartments - when they discovered the bones of a child beneath a splendid mix of Gothic horror and cartoon-style fundoorway. There was no skull. The scrawny young hero Was this a ritual killing or murder? Inevitably, young Stanley BugglesDr Ruth Galloway finds herself working with DCI Harry Nelson. It's difficult as Ruth knows, who lives in a 'darkened industrial townbut Nelson doesn't, as the first page tells us, that she is plunged into an adventure from the moment he arrives (all alone, pregnant with his child as tradition dictates) at Crampton Rock. He has inherited his great-uncle's mansion, a vast old pile on an island linked to result of the mainland by a one night they spent together some three months ago. Her condition will be obvious before long winding footbridge. The right atmosphere of isolation and claustrophobic unease is created immediately, especially when we learn that letters are only collected from the island once a fortnight. Whatever not least because Ruth is on this island, Stanley will have prone to deal with it alonesudden bouts of sickness.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340931027</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Katie Fforde0008551324|title=A Perfect ProposalThe Devil You Know (D S Max Craigie)|author=Neil Lancaster
|rating=4.5
|genre=Women's FictionCrime|summary=I have read most of Katie FfordeIt's books and each and every one unusual for anyone from the Hardie family to approach the police. Neither side likes or has proved to be enjoyable any respect for the other. But Davie Hardie is struggling in prison and entertaining. A Perfect Proposal comes up he's prepared to tell the same high standard police where the body of a missing person is buried andwho was responsible for her death. This person, having just finished reading ithe promises, is someone big and it has left me wanting more! Her style will be worth the police doing what he wants. And what he wants is very relaxed to be transferred to an open prison to serve the remainder of his sentence and easy going to get an early parole date. Not much to ask, is it? The new Deputy Police Constable doesn't think so and she always creates believable characters 's even prepared to do the other thing that you canHardie demanded - make certain that DS Max Craigie and anyone who works with him is kept well away from what't help caring abouts happening.}}{{Frontpage|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846054494<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 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/amazonuk>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-shut 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.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Najat El-Hachmi0571379877|title=The Last PatriarchKellerby Code|author=Jonny Sweet
|rating=3.5
|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=Najat ElEdward Jevons is a working-Hachmi's debut novelclass young man, The Last Patriarch is a difficult book obsessed with his upper- both in terms of content class friends, Robert and styleStanza. It Robert's a story of physical and sexual abuse in a patriarchal Moroccan familytheatre director. He's also self-obsessed, an immigrant storydemanding, when first the father handsome and entitled and then the family move uses Edward to Catalonia, run errands for him. Edward has been in love with Stanza since their university days - and ultimately a story of the narrator, the patriarchhe's daughter, breaking free of her past as she takes on different cultural valuesdrunkenly confided how he feels to Robert. Narrated entirely Most men in Robert's position would stay away from the perspective of the patriarch, Mimoun DriouchStanza or tell Edward that a relationship had begun between them but he's unnamed daughter, the story not like most men: Edward is also concerned with cultural and imagined histories, and left to stumble upon the importance two of origin storiesthem kissing in a dark passageway.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687179</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Joanna KavennaJo Callaghan|title=The Birth of LoveLeave No Trace
|rating=4
|genre=Literary FictionCrime|summary=The Birth When a man is found crucified on the top of Love has four interwoven storylines about characters a hill in different timesNuneaton, DCS Kat Frank finds herself assigned to the case alongside her sidekick, pastthe AI detective Lock. It's their first live case together, present and futurehaving previously been very successful with several cold cases. The common theme But when there is birtha second body found crucified a few days later, Kat is suddenly struggling with a potential serial killer and a very high profile case that draws a lot of unwanted attention to their AI Future Policing project. 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>057124517X</amazonuk>139851120X
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Louis Sachar1399613073|title=The Cardturner|rating=4|genre=Teens|summary=''How are we supposed to be partners? He can’t see the cards and I don’t know the rules!'' 17-year-old Alton Richards is shoehorned into becoming the driver and cardturner for his blind, octogenarian, bridge-playing, but above all rich, uncle by his grasping parents - who are up to their eyeballs in debt and have a weather eye on potential legacies. Alton sighs but goes along with it. He's used to being told to call Lester Trapp his favourite uncle and he's used to his unrepentently mercenary parents. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408808501</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewMoral Injuries|author=Sarah Blake|title=The PostmistressChristie Watson|rating=4.5|genre=General FictionThrillers|summary=The reader is in no doubt that a war is raging. 'And bombs were falling on CoventryOlivia, London Laura and Kent. Sleek metal pellets shaped like Anjali met on the blunt tipped ends first day of pencils ...' The Americans however, are carrying on with medical school and their daily lives regardlessfriendship would keep them inseparable for a quarter of a century. They are completely unfazed and uninvolved. Apart from one or twoOlivia is ruthlessly ambitious, namely radio reporter Frankie. She reports from London as it happens and she which is gradually becoming more and more concerned that her fellow Americans will be called upon. But she seems a bonus when you aim to be a lone voice blowing in the windcardiothoracic surgeon. Also, as you may expect, there are plenty of raised eyebrows as to why a woman Laura is doing a man's job. She should be at the kitchen sink or having babies, shouldn't she?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670918687</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Ian Ogilvy perfectionist and Chris Mould|title=The Train Set of Terror: A Measle Stubbs Adventure|rating=4|genre=Confident Readers|summary=You will feel sympathy for Measle from the very start of this booka trauma doctor. Not only Anjali is he an orphan, and stuck friendless in a horridly dingy house on the wrong side free spirit of the train tracks, but he shares his life with its main torment - his guardian, Basil Tramplebone. Basil makes no effort to improve Measle or his lot - he does not educate him, keeps Measle group and his inheritance she becomes a great distance apart, and feeds him slopGP. Measle would even like to have When we first meet them they're at a bath now drug and again alcohol- but not fuelled party and it's going to end in tragedy. We don't know who suffered the putrid brown and green gunk coming from tragedy or the tapsconsequences. The only thing Twenty-five years later there will be an eerily similar event that redeems Basil at all is that he owns will impact the world's best train set, one Measle would love to get to know a lot betterthree friends. Unfortunately for MeasleThis time, heit's about to get that wish granted.their teenage children who are involved..|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0192729705</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tess Callahan0241636604|title=April and OliverThe Trading Game: A Confession|author=Gary Stevenson
|rating=4.5
|genre=General FictionAutobiography|summary=After spending their childhoods togetherIf you were to bring up an image of a city banker in your mind, April and Oliver havenyou't seen each other for many yearsre unlikely to think of someone like Gary Stevenson. It A hoodie and jeans replaces the pin-stripe suit and his background is only after the death of April's little brother that they find their lives overlapping again. April is recklessEast End, damagedwhere he was familiar with violence, poverty and struggling from one day injustice. There was no posh public school on his CV - but he had been to the next whereas Oliver London School of Economics. Stevenson is mature bright - extremely bright - and sensiblehe has a facility with numbers which most of us can only envy. He is now a law studentalso realised that most rich people expect poor people to be stupid. It was his ability at what was, engaged to the sweetessentially, gentle Bernadette who is the antithesis of Aprila card game which got him an internship with Citibank. Seeing April's life in tattersEventually, Oliver tries to rescue her from herself, yet the more entangled he becomes the more his own seemingly perfect life starts to fall apartthis turned into permanent employment as a trader.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099537524</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Pauline Rowson1035021803|title=The Suffocating Sea: A DI Horton Marine Mystery Crime NovelAntique Hunter's Guide to Murder|author=C L Miller
|rating=3.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=Anyone who loves murder mystery novels will know there is It'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 big difference between a policeman request for help from her beloved aunt, Carole. Freya's former mentor and a copperCarole's close friend, Arthur Crockleford, is dead and Pauline Rowson’s character DI Andy Horton the circumstances seem suspicious, to say the least. 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 The Suffocating Sea is every bit a copperbusiness together as antique hunters, she has not felt able to be near the man or pursue the profession she loved. Tough on After the outsidesplit, soft she worked in a cafe, met and married James (on the inside Horton is just rebound from the chap to start nosing around a suspicious fire on board a boat – at least that’s where it startslove of her life, because DI Horton is about to discover he is more involved in the mystery than just as an investigating officerwho was murdered) and Freya and James have now divorced.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0955098246</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=Bonnie Hearn HillSunny Singh|title=Star Crossed: Taurus EyesHotel Arcadia|rating=43.5|genre=TeensThrillers |summary=Logan McRae The Hotel Arcadia is excited a luxury hotel in an unnamed city that has suddenly been violently taken over by a terrorist group. Hiding from the prospect of attending a writers' camp hosted by author Henry Jaffaterrorists who are rampaging through, killing everyone on site, there is Sam, who starts off by asking them all to write a project idea wartime photographer and then shuffles them around. Instead of her longed-for astrology feature, Logan ends up having to write about folk singer Sean BaylorAbhi, whose ghost may be haunting thelocalityhotel manager. The only person who doesn't have As Abhi continues to try to switch is care remotely for the cute boy at residents who are still alive in the camp, Jeremyhotel, he forms a bond with Sam who Jaffa allows refuses to keep his original topic – of Sean Baylor. Sobe cowed by events, Logan and Jeremy end up fighting over research material while also clearly wanting keeps on venturing out of her room to get try to know each other better – does the ghost exist? Will capture what's happened through her photography. Although they get it together? Who will write only ever talk over the best article phone, their friendship grows as Abhi tries to help her keep safe and get it published? The answers they both wait to all these questionsand more lie inside see if they will be rescued before they are discovered by the second book in the Star Crossed series (along with some temporary tattoos!)terrorists.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0762436719</amazonuk>086154742X
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=F G Cottam1529153298|title=The Waiting RoomList of Suspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey|rating=45
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=On the outskirts of ex rock star Martin StrideIt's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. (A woman? I mean, honestly...) She's not what's worrying Miv's country estate lies the disused Shale Point Stationfamily, though. Abandoned in the 1960s the railway line has Women have been dug up and removed and all that remains is the crumbling platform and eerie waiting roomdisappearing. Martin is quick Well, they've been murdered, but to employ Britainhave 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. Miv's top ghost hunter Julian Creed upset because she's overheard that her father wants to investigate move the strange and threatening occurrences of the waiting room that he and his children have witnessed – the sound and smell of family 'Down South'. When you're from Yorkshire, Down South is a steam trainfrightening, male voices singing a famous World War One songforeign place, and most frightening of allbest avoided. For Miv, the leering face of a soldier at move would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, and she'll do anything to prevent that. She's not worried about the waiting room windowdangers or that her Mum's stopped talking - to anyone. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444704214</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Robert McCrum1398524085|title=Globish: How the English Language Became the World's LanguageHas Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter?|author=Nicci French|rating=3.5|genre=HistoryCrime|summary=We British tend to forget just how insignificant we areCharlotte Salter was expected at her husband's fiftieth birthday party but never turned up. Tiny geographically Her children, sons Niall, Paul and Ollie and her daughter, Etty. Tiny in populationare all worried but - strangely - her husband, Alec, is not. TinyShortly afterwards, whatever we tell ourselvesEtty and Greg, on find the world stage. Yet our language is spoken in various forms worldwide by approximately four billion people; about a third body of the worldGreg's populationfather, Duncan Ackerley, in the river. How did ''It was an easy assumption for the police to make thatDuncan had murdered Charlie and then committed suicide when he couldn't stand the guilt. The Salter children are not convinced but there' happen? This is s little else they can do but get on with their lives and wonder about what Robert McCrum attempts to explainreally happened.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670916404</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Alison Murray1035906708|title=Apple Pie ABCDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin
|rating=4.5
|genre=For SharingGeneral Fiction|summary=Take one traditional rhyme (''A We tend to think of Maria Callas as Greek, but she was an apple pieborn to Greek parents in Manhattan, B bit New 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'), mix to make it up a bit with new words, add more manageable in the States. When she was back in Athens - supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for her voice - she was raised under the Nazi occupation by a pinch of sweet girl mother who mercilessly exploited her and a dash made no secret of naughty dog, and you've got a recipe her preference for... well, a unbelievably cliched first line in a review from meher elder sister, but also a super bookJackie.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408308010</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tony RossChristopher Edge|title=Super Dooper JezebelBlack Hole Cinema Club|rating=4.5|genre=For SharingConfident Readers|summary=Jezebel is Lucas and his friends are all booked in for a good girl - so good, in factmovie marathon at their local cinema, a place that everyone calls her Super Dooper Jezebelhas the nickname of 'The Black Hole'. She All big movie fans, they's neat re looking forward to lots of exciting films, and tidymany, many snacks! However, does her choresas the movie starts, they very quickly realise that something about this new film format is perfectly behavedvery different, and is they are swept up into an inspiration to all. The Prime Minister sent her a special medal for being so good, and Jezebel gets her own TV show to show others how to behave. She wonadventure they couldn't even runimagine. But as they lurch from one film genre to the next, because it's against can they figure out what on earth is going on? Will they ever get back to the rules. Sometimescinema, just sometimes, rules are meant and to be broken...their real lives?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1849390169</amazonuk>1839942738
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Mark Sperring and Miriam LatimerRachel Greenlaw|title=The Sunflower SwordCompass and Blade
|rating=3.5
|genre=For SharingTeens|summary=There's a little knight (who looks remarkably like a boy with a colander on his head) who wants to battle with dragons a sword, but his mum says he 'I can't. He's desperate to whoosh and swoosh with a shining blade, so she gives him a sunflower instead, and off he goes to hear the top song of a hill to do battle with not one but three imaginary dragonsthe sea. There's a roar The call of fire and billowing smokethe deep, and he finds himself face to face with a real dragonthe answering beat in my heart...|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849390576</amazonuk>}}''
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Bernhard SchlinkJames Sherwood Metts|title=Guilt About the PastPlanet Storyland|rating=4.5|genre=Politics and SocietyConfident Readers|summary=Consider, if you will, guilt. You might Things have it tainting you, as 'beyond been a bit sticky for the perpetrators, every person who stands in solidarity with them Earthlings. AI and maintains solidarity after the fact becomes entangled'. The link might not strictly be a legal oneautomation have been proceeding apace, but concern often replacing jobs they'norms of religion and morals, etiquette and custom as well as day-re paid to-day communications do and interactions'. Hence a collective guilt like no other - tasks that witnessed in Germanytook time to accomplish. 'The assumption that membership Just as they were beginning to get used to all this technological change and starting to a people engenders solidarity is something Germans think of my generation do not easily like other, new ways to accept'spend time, we readalong came an awful pandemic. However difficult it might have been back then in its dayLife was pretty much shut down and, Germany had to physically renounce anything to do along with Nazismit, to actively 'opt-out' of connections to avoid the solidarity seen connecting the whole nation like a toxic spider web. And since then it's linked in all the children, in a ''bequeathal'' of guiltmany daily social interactions on which they depend so heavily.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1905636776</amazonuk>1736128426
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Yasmina KhadraMatthew Tree|title=What the Day Owes the NightWe'll Never Know|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Nine year old Algerian Muslim Younes is devastated when Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father's farm is destroyed , a drunk and his family have to move to the slum chronic underachiever whose dreams of Jenane Jato. However, while the rest being exceptional at any of his family struggle, this turns out to be something artistic passions all failed miserably and who had endless crises of a blessing in disguise for Younes,who is rescued by his wealthy uncle, a pharmacistself confidence. Renamed Jonas, he moves So Tim applied himself to live with his uncle and aunt in the vibrant European district of Rio Salado. There, he meets new friends Jean-Christophe, Simonstudies, cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and Fabrice. But what seems to be an unbreakable friendship is tested to its limits by the return to the area of the beautiful Emilie, and the boys' problems increase as Algeria fights for its independence from France. The book is narrated by Jonas at a much older age, lookingback at his life, although the epilogue brings us to the present day as he visits a graveset himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0434019933</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.''
Within a remote mountain pass, far away from the world, lies Silverton; a town under the protection of the Briar's, a family of witches who protect the town and the 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 letters and administration rather than spells and potions. 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 heart of a maelstrom 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 have sacrificed to survive, is under threat.|isbn=1803364548}}{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Cara Black1529900360|title=Murder in the Latin Quarter (Aimee Leduc)The Ghost Orchid|author=Jonathan Kellerman
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=Aimée Leduc is back and this time she might just have found the sister sheIt hadn't been Lt Milo Sturgis's always longed fault that Alex Delaware had been badly injured but he felt responsible and even after Alex recovered, Sturgis was reluctant to ask forhis help on difficult cases. When a Haitian woman arrived in His assertions that there were only open-and-shut cases which didn't need the offices help of Leduc detective in central Paris and announced that she a psychologist only worked for a while. Finally, it was AiméeRobin, Delaware's father's illegitimate daughter Aimée allowed enthusiasm to overrule logic as partner, who nudged Milo into asking for help again. She knew that the involvement was something that the man she'd been lonely since her mother's disappearance and her father's deathloved needed. RenéThe next case did look simple, her partner though. Two lovers were murdered in the swimming pool of a remote property in Leduc Detective, is wary but he can't dissuade AiméeBel Air. ItHe was the heir to an Italian shoe empire and she is married to an extremely rich man and it's not long before she's involved in the murky world Italian. But which of Haitian politics and murder in Paris' bohemian Latin Quarter.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849013144</amazonuk>them was the primary target?
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John Harvey1529395224|title=A Darker Shade Letting the Cat Out of the Bag: The Secret Life of Bluea Vet|author=Sion Rowlands|rating=43.5|genre=Short StoriesAnimals and Wildlife|summary=There are eighteen short stories covering 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 East Midlands, those parts strain that being on-call put on his father's life. When he was seventeen he took the opportunity of London you'd generally really rather avoid doing work experience with a family friend who was a vet and rural East Angliawas convinced this was the job for him. You'll see broken familiesBefore long, revenge killings, prostitution and drugshe was at Liverpool University. ThereIt hadn's corruption – not unusual when you have an overstretched police force and underpaid men and women staffing itt - as with so many students - been his dream since he was a child. And then there are the people whoIf anything, in spite of everything, fight for justicehe'd wanted to be a professional footballer.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099548232</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Gladys Mitchell0861541774|title=The Mystery A Nye of a Butcher's ShopPheasants|author=Steve Burrows|rating=34
|genre=Crime
|summary=A body is found in a butcherDCI Domenic Jejeune's shop one morning in Wandles Parva. It has been expertly chopped up close friend and hung just like a piece of porkformer colleague, Danny Maik, but because it is missing has taken a headshort holiday in Singapore to meet up with an old ally, identification is impossibleGuy Trueman. There are soon suggestions Maik was involved in a street brawl - he would later maintain that it must be Rupert Sethleighhe was facing a man armed with a knife - and he killed a Ghurka. Initially, he faced a land-owner who had supposedly gone charge of manslaughter but evidence came to light that suggested that he might have planned to murder the USman. His cousin, Jim Redsey is Now he could be facing the obvious suspectdeath penalty. The two men didn Domenic Jejeune can do nothing to help as any interference from another police force could provoke a diplomatic incident and wouldn't like each other - in fact, nobody actually liked Rupert Sethleighhelp Danny at all. The local vicar's daughter, Felicity, and Aubrey, related to Jim and Rupert, decide to play detective. Before long, they are joined by Mrs Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley, an elderly woman who fancies herself a detective. Can they sort out the red herrings and find the killer? |amazonuk=<amazonuk>009954685X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Shane JonesAlexander McCall Smith|title=Light BoxesThe Perfect Passion Company|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=You will have to go The Perfect Passion Company is a long way dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and operating as an alternative to find all the online apps in providing a more magical personal, tailored service. Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and quirky novella than ‘Light Boxes’. Set in a far off landlook after the business, as all good fairy stories should be, the balloon-loving residents suffer Ness is planning to take a trip to Canada to get away for a ban on all forms of flightwhile. But the culprit Katie is not some unpronounceable Icelandic volcanocoming out of a break up with a bad boyfriend, but rather Februaryand so jumps at the chance to come home to Edinburgh. And so begins this February - new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, thanks to 44 Scotland Street and the Isabel Dalhousie novels, but with some new characters who takes both the form of quickly begin to charm. Katie has no experience in running a person and a season business, or in match- making, but Ness has lasted for more than three hundred days. And if that wasn’t bad enoughfull confidence in her abilities, he has also started making children disappear. One manand there's always her very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, Thaddeus LoweWilliam, is determined to do something about it.lend a hand…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0241144957</amazonuk>1846976596
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ian Whybrow and Caroline Jayne Church0811771741|title=Wobble Bear Gets BusyInstaKnits for Baby|author=Melissa Leapman
|rating=4
|genre=For SharingCrafts|summary=Wobble is Melissa Leapman's ''InstaKnits for Baby'' gives us a very busy little bear who has just learned to walk and now, collection of course, wants knits from toys to walk everywhereblankets. We see him here walking in to wake up his parents, treading on Some will be quick knits - others are of the cat'long, dancing and falling over, walking on a wall, splashing cosy afternoons in a puddle until, front of course, the fire' variety. The projects are divided by the end of time they'll take to complete - less than five hours, five to ten hours, ten to twenty hours and more than twenty hours. All the day he has worn himself out projects are attractive, modern and is too tired to walk up the stairs to bed!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0192792628</amazonuk>useable. I perhaps show my age when I wonder about 'social-media-worthy projects' but that's me being picky.
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ian Whybrow and Caroline Jayne ChurchDean Koontz|title=Wobble Bear Says YellowThe Bad Weather Friend
|rating=4.5
|genre=For SharingParanormal|summary=Wobble Bear Benny is having a delightful little bear who terrifically bad day. He loses his job, he loses his fiancee, and his house gets trashed. Oh, and someone has delivered a really weird, disturbing coffin-sized object to his home, and it's possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the thing that has trashed his house! The thing is, Benny is just starting the very last person to learn about coloursdeserve all this bad luck. He insists through is a nice person. A really nice person. So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the book on calling everything 'yellow'delivery to his house is a new friend, a bad weather friend called Spike, whether it who has been sent to help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a good person. Spike is or notgoing to take care of Benny, much to his mummyand will certainly take care of Benny's frustration enemies, if he, Benny, and my daughterHarper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's delight!wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>019279261X</amazonuk>1662500491
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Xanthe MiltonAdam Stower|title=Eat Me!: The Stupendous, Self-raising World of Cupcakes Murray and Bakes According to Cookie GirlBun|rating=4.5|genre=CookeryConfident Readers |summary=What Murray is supposed to be a stunning book this humble, tidy and friendly cat, one who is. The insideable to sleep and eat and eat and sleep and, well, that iswhatever takes his fancy next of the two. I was almoststunned in But he's a less positive way by the brightness of the front cover.I donbad magician't like pink at the best of timess cat, and this book is veryso his favourite bun has been turned into a hyperactive sticky rabbit called Bun, verypink.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091925118</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Sandra Wilson|title=A Change of Fortune|rating=3|genre=Women's Fiction|summary=Leonie Conyngham seemed to have everything going for her. She was beautiful and set to be the belle of catflap they both use can chuck them out, not into the forthcoming seasonregular back garden, but into a family disaster stripped her world of her position as the most important pupil in her school frightening adventure and placed her there as the lowliest teacher, there to do the bidding of those above herwhiffs. Her possessions stolen and in debt she had little choice in the matter. Her physical attractions have not left her thoughThis time round it drops them into a Viking land, but now the young rakes of London are not looking at her as where a possible wifetroll hunter is expected – well, one much bigger than Murray was, but to see who can be the first honest, but he's turned up and he'll have to deprive her of her virtue.do…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0709089996</amazonuk>0008561249
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Cathy CassidyB0C47LV1PC|title=Love, Peace and Chocolate (Pocket Money Puffins)Fragility|author=Mosby Woods
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Josh and Caroline and their daughter Zoe live on an old red bus in Oxford, even though both have quite well paid jobs as an academic and headteacher. Caroline has spent her adult life deferring her plans for the future in order to support her widowed mother who lives in Can you make a house nearby. Josh’s job in the drama department of Bristol University does offer him some opportunities to escape abroad though, this time to a conference in his native South Africa.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408802325</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Catherine Forde|title=Fifteen Minute Bob|rating=3.5|genre=Teens|summary=For years, conscientious student Rory and his hard-working mother have struggled to cope with his father, an eyeliner wearing struggling singer-songwriter unable to hold down a job, and obsessed with a star called Bob Blade. While Rory finds hisfather's unreliability a nightmare to live with, his two friends Smiler and Barry think he's cool and spend more time hanging out with him than with Rory. As the trio of Smiler, Barry, and RoryYo birthing person''s dad team up to make a music video that goes viral on the internetjoke? And if you could, Rory gets unwittingly involved and, in is the words of question should you make it? Or is the blurb from the back,'everything flips'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1405229306</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Olga Alexandrovnaquestion if you did, Paul Kulikovsky, Sue Woolmans and Karen Roth-Nicholls|title=25 Chapters of My Life: would it land? The Memoirs of Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna|rating=4catch is that the answer for both could well be.5|genre=Autobiography|summary=Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna was born in 1882, youngest child of Tsar Alexander III of Russia and thus sister of the ill-fated Tsar Nicholas II. Her first marriage to Prince Peter Oldenburg, who was probably gay, ended in an amicable divorce, and in 1916 she married Colonel Nicholas Kulikovsky. They escaped from Russia after the revolution, and settled in Denmark for nearly thirty years until, feeling threatened by Stalin’s regime, they moved to Canada. She outlived him by two years, dying in 1960no.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906775168</amazonuk>}}
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tom Shone1529431735|title=In The RoomsWinter Visitor|author=James Henry
|rating=4
|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=The book jacket for this novel It's February 1991 and Essex is of New York by nightbitingly cold, a cityscape par excellencewhich made Bruce Hopkins' return all the more surprising. It also boasts Toby YoungHe's comment d been exiled on the Costa del Sol as ''laugh-out-loud funny.'' I have a lot of time wanted drug smuggler for Toby Young. I find him witty and entertaininga decade. But I usually approach claims such as this with The return has come about because he's had a healthy dose of 'we'llletter from his ex-wait-and-see' scepticism. Howeverwife, he was right. And I am truly impressed with Shonesaying that she's ability ill and hasn't long to make me laugh out loud and at the very beginning of the novel toolive. A very good sign of delights to come, I thought.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099534061</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Natasha Narayan|title=The MaharajahIt's Monkey: A Kit Salter Adventure|rating=4|genre=Confident Readers|summary=Kit Salter has a nose for adventure. Somehow she always finds trouble, or it finds herhard to feel any sympathy when Hopkins is abducted, stripped to his underwear and this latest episode is no exception as she finds herself travelling from the home comforts of Oxford all the way to India, then on sent to a watery grave in the freezing mountains boot of Tibeta stolen Ford Sierra. What has happened to Monsieur Champlon? Has he abandoned poor Aunt Hilda? Why is the mysterious monkey leaving threatening messages for Kit? And what does Is it all have a warning from a Spanish gang or a problem closer to do with the Maharajahhome? Kit and her friends set off on a fantastic journey to investigate.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847245293</amazonuk>}}