Difference between revisions of "Forthcoming Publications"

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=='''7 APRIL'''==
+
=='''13 JUNE'''==
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Lissa Evans
+
|isbn=1635866847
|title=Wished
+
|title=The Lavender Companion
 +
|author=Jessica Dunham and Terry Barlin Vesci
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
+
|genre=Lifestyle
|summary=When things contrive to force Ed and his sister Roo (aka Lucy) to stay with the neighbourhood spinsterish old woman, Miss Filey, for a week of half-term, they're not looking forward to it. For one thing, she thinks Wi-Fi is a special brand of biscuitThey don't particularly take to Willard either, the new kid next door, who seems to ebulliently take over everything and everywhere.  But things soon change when they find some tiny old birthday candles, and manage to work out that these candles, for as long as their flames last, make birthday wishes come trueHow will things change for a second time when they realise that, having used up three of them, these should really be used for the wishes of someone two generations older than them?
+
|summary=It's strange, the things that make you ''immediately'' feel that this is the book for you.  Before I started reading ''The Lavender Companion'', I visited the author's [https://www.pinelavenderfarm.com/ website] and there's a picture of a slice of chocolate cake on the homepageI don't eat cakes and desserts - but I wanted that cake viscerally(There's a recipe in the book, which I'm avoiding with some difficulty!!) Then I started reading the book and I was told to make a mess of itNotes in the margins are sanctionedYou get to fold down the corners of pagesYou suspect that smears of butter would not be a problem.  I ''loved'' this book already.
|isbn=178845202X
 
}}
 
=='''14 APRIL'''==
 
{{Frontpage
 
|isbn=1529337968
 
|title=In Place of Fear
 
|author=Catriona McPherson
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Crime (Historical)
 
|summary=It's July 1948 and Helen Crowther is due to start work as a qualified medical almoner the following morning - on the day that the NHS is bornShe'll be working for Dr Deuchar and Dr Strasser in their GP surgery and her job will be to help patients with those non-medical problems which affect their healthThe hardest part of the job will be to persuade people that the services she offers really are free and that they don't have to do anything to qualify for themSome of the problems will require delicate handling but Helen has a problem of her own which might give her some insightHer marriage has never been consummated.
 
 
}}
 
}}
=='''28 APRIL'''==
+
=='''4 JULY'''==
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Jennifer Saint
+
|author=Max Boucherat
|title=Elektra
+
|title=The Last Life of Lori Mills
|rating=4
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|summary='Elektra' by Jennifer Saint tells the story of three women who live in the heavily male dominated world of Ancient Greece. Cassandra, Clytemnestra, and Elektra are all bit players in the story of the Trojan War. Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that often the silent women have the most compelling stories and the most extreme furies.
 
|isbn=1472273915
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
|isbn=1787634906
 
|title=No Less the Devil
 
|author=Stuart MacBride
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
+
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=We're in Oldcastle and Malcolm is in trouble.  He's in an abandoned house and he's being threatened by two young peopleOne is Alegra (we'll soon learn that she's Allegra Dean-Edwards) and Hugo. It seems that Allegra bought Malcolm a new coat to keep him warm (she often does this for homeless people, apparently) but she'd put a tracking device in it so that she and Hugo could find out where he was sleeping.  It won't be long before the police realise that Malcolm was one of their own: not many other people are going to have the Oldcastle police crest tattooed on their backs.
+
|summary=We meet Lori on the first evening she's got the house to herself – no neighbour to pop in, babysitter poorly, mother at work, just an avidly rule-breaking eleven year old, on her lonesomeWhat could possibly go wrong? Snuggled in a blanket fort, she has one main intention, and that is to log on to Voxminer, the world-building, critter-collecting game that is a hit in Lori's world. But first Lori has a tiny inkling that this stormy night doesn't find herself entirely on her own, and then she finds something even more spookyFor the server she and her bestie and nobody else should be able to enter shows signs of tampering. When malevolent eyes spark up on her phone screen, and her safe place in the game has been doctored – well, where is a girl to turn?
}}
+
|isbn=0008666482
=='''5 MAY'''==
 
{{Frontpage
 
|author= Ann Sei Lin
 
|title= Rebel Skies
 
|rating= 5
 
|genre= Teens
 
|summary= Kurara has spent her entire life as a servant on the Midori, a massive dining hall floating in the sky where soldiers of the Empire come to drink and make merry between their conquests. However, when a man named Himura arrives to tell her that she is a Crafter like him, someone with the power to form paper into whatever she desires – a power sought after all across the Empire. He asks her to come with him, to leave the life of dreary servitude that is all she has known. Well, soon Kurara won't have any say in the matter, because the Midori is destroyed by a monstrous paper spirit known as a shikigami, and she is forced to flee out into the world. She joins Himura aboard the Orihime, a sky-ship whose express purpose is to hunt down shikigami, and a whole world of adventure awaits her…
 
|isbn=1406399590
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
|author=Natalia Garcia Freire
 
|title=This World Does Not Belong To Us
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|summary= Early comments on this debut novel from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, a delight.   I will agree with the first – tremendous is no understatement – but 'a delight' is perhaps using the expression in a way I'm not familiar with.  I have to confess my ignorance of the Spanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here.  From the little I have read (in translation, I don't read Spanish) there does seem to be a tendency towards the fantastical – the mystical realism.
 
|isbn=0861541901
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
|author=Patrice Lawrence
 
|title=Needle
 
|rating=3
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Brave. Charlene, the 'heroine' of this piece is extremely hard for some people to like, characters and readers bothKicked out of multiple homes and schools, she's fostering with a pleasant yoga tutor, Annie, and has taken up residence in her son Blake's old room while he's at uni. Such a tempestuous personality may be in need of a comfort blanket, you might perhaps think, and the creation of one such item is part of the plot here, as Charlene is a wonder knitter, and is making something full of love for her younger sister – a younger sister she's allowed contact with no more. We see Charlene prove her belligerence with a store detective, and then force people to give her two days off school, when she shouts someone down as expletively ignorant. And then... well, what exactly happens is not for me to say, only to remark how sharp and pointy those knitting needles can be...
 
|isbn=1800901011
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
=='''2 JUNE'''==
 
{{Frontpage
 
|author=Sally Oliver
 
|title=The Weight of Loss
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|summary= Marianne is grieving. Traumatised after the death of her sister, she awakes to find strange, thick black hairs sprouting from the bones of her spine which steadily increase in size and volume. Her GP, diagnosing the odd phenomenon as a physical reaction to her grief, recommends she go to stay at Nede, an experimental new treatment centre in Wales. Yet something strange is happening to Marianne and the other patients at Nede: a metamorphosis of a kind. As Marianne's memories threaten to overwhelm her, Nede offers her release from this cycle of memory and pain—but only at a terrible price: that of identity itself.
 
|isbn= 086154112X
 
}}
 
 
=='''21 JUNE'''==
 
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1635864674
+
|author=Jenny Lecoat
|title=Tomato Love: 44 Mouthwatering Recipes for Salads, Sauces, Stews, and More
+
|title=Beyond Summerland
|author=Joy Howard
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre=Cookery
+
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=''Think of it as no-whining dining.''
+
|summary=Jean lives on Jersey with her mother where they are celebrating the end of the occupationDuring the war, Jean's father was arrested for listening to a banned radio and soldiers took him away one night, leaving Jean and her mother waiting for years for news of himAs the British finally free the Channel islands from the Nazis, and the war is finally over, their hopes rise that they will finally learn what became of himBut will the truth come as a relief, or will it raise further questions around what else happened during the war?  Who was the informer who told the Nazis about the radio? And what other secrets have been kept throughout the occupation?
 
+
|isbn=1846976537
We know it's a fruit rather than a vegetable but the fact that so many people get confused just goes to show how versatile the tomato isThen there are all the different types, not to mention the cultivars - and you begin to understand why Joy Howard says that she hasn't met one she didn't loveI'd argue with her there - I have no affection for the ones you find in the supermarket ''next'' to the ones labelled 'grown for flavour' to distinguish them from the ones that have obviously just been grown for profitPersonally, I'd prefer a tin of tomatoes to those - and Howard makes good use of these. She's not at all precious if you get the taste.
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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Latest revision as of 14:06, 5 June 2024

13 JUNE

1635866847.jpg

Review of

The Lavender Companion by Jessica Dunham and Terry Barlin Vesci

4.5star.jpg Lifestyle

It's strange, the things that make you immediately feel that this is the book for you. Before I started reading The Lavender Companion, I visited the author's website and there's a picture of a slice of chocolate cake on the homepage. I don't eat cakes and desserts - but I wanted that cake viscerally. (There's a recipe in the book, which I'm avoiding with some difficulty!!) Then I started reading the book and I was told to make a mess of it. Notes in the margins are sanctioned. You get to fold down the corners of pages. You suspect that smears of butter would not be a problem. I loved this book already. Full Review

4 JULY

0008666482.jpg

Review of

The Last Life of Lori Mills by Max Boucherat

4.5star.jpg Confident Readers

We meet Lori on the first evening she's got the house to herself – no neighbour to pop in, babysitter poorly, mother at work, just an avidly rule-breaking eleven year old, on her lonesome. What could possibly go wrong? Snuggled in a blanket fort, she has one main intention, and that is to log on to Voxminer, the world-building, critter-collecting game that is a hit in Lori's world. But first Lori has a tiny inkling that this stormy night doesn't find herself entirely on her own, and then she finds something even more spooky. For the server she and her bestie and nobody else should be able to enter shows signs of tampering. When malevolent eyes spark up on her phone screen, and her safe place in the game has been doctored – well, where is a girl to turn? Full Review

1846976537.jpg

Review of

Beyond Summerland by Jenny Lecoat

4star.jpg General Fiction

Jean lives on Jersey with her mother where they are celebrating the end of the occupation. During the war, Jean's father was arrested for listening to a banned radio and soldiers took him away one night, leaving Jean and her mother waiting for years for news of him. As the British finally free the Channel islands from the Nazis, and the war is finally over, their hopes rise that they will finally learn what became of him. But will the truth come as a relief, or will it raise further questions around what else happened during the war? Who was the informer who told the Nazis about the radio? And what other secrets have been kept throughout the occupation? Full Review

You can work your way through the newest review, category by category, starting here.