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==The Best New Books==
'''Read [[:Category:Features|the latest features]].'''
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Ruth Hogan1806344777|title=Madame BurovaArthur and the Land of Nimbostratus: Arthur's Able Adventures|author=Rob Keeley
|rating=4.5
|genre=General FictionFor Sharing|summary=This book lets us discover several people in different stages Arthur dreams of adventures. He looks out of his window each day and thinks of life in all the early 1970s, all vaguely connected. So we have a bullied half-cast boy (as escapades he would could have been called then), a girl in a humdrum job wanting to become a singer, the places he could go and chiefly, Imelda, the third generation of Madame Burova, things he could see. His favourite day is Saturday because that''Tarots the day his friend Maxine -Reader, Palmist she of the booming laugh and Clairvoyant'', silver bangles - comes to use her family's sea-front boothvisit. The singer, the scryer and the sufferer's mother will all become staff at Maxine is a revamped holiday camp, but just before then we see Imelda fly solo for the first time great believer in the family stall. We also see her on her last day, fifty years later, in possession power of a pair of letters that will change everything for a woman called Billieimagination. Just who is she, and who delivered the secrets about her to Imelda, and why did it have to remain a secret all this time?|isbn=152937331X
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn= Jonathan Stroud1035043092|title= The Outlaws Scarlett and BrowneKilling Stones (Jimmy Perez)|author=Ann Cleeves|rating= 45|genre= TeensCrime|summary= Scarlett McCain is an outlaw, rejecting the draconian conformity of the Surviving Towns and Faith Houses to wander the wildlands between I can't have been the Seven Kingdoms of Britainonly person who was sad when Inspector Jimmy Perez [[Wild Fire (Shetland, robbing banks and shooting other outlaws Book 8) by Ann Cleeves|left Shetland]] to keep herself alivestart a new life on Orkney. But then she meets Albert Browne It's been seven years since we heard from him, a dark boy but he's now living with dark powers Willow Reeves and a darker past. With mysterious militiamen hunting them downtheir young son, James, as well as Cassie, they plan to flee to the mythical Free Isles daughter of the London Lagoonhis former partner. Together Willow's also his boss, they must brave man-eating wildlifeand she ''should'' be on maternity leave, but when the cannibalistic Tainted and all body of a popular islander, Archie Stout, is found, in the horrors aftermath of post-apocalyptic society to reach the Free Islesa storm, but will they be any more accepted there than they are in she can't resist getting involved. He'd been battered about the rest head with a Neolithic stone - one of Britain?|isbn=1406394815a pair - which had been stolen from a museum.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=B08R7LXQ9SPolly Barton|title=Remy: What Am I, A book about believing in yourself|author=Mayuri Naidoo and Caroline SiegalDeer?
|rating=4
|genre=For SharingLiterary Fiction|summary=Remy is feeling miserable. HePolly Barton's let himself down ''again''debut novel is an intellectually playful yet emotionally exposed work that uses translation as both subject and governing metaphor. The school bully Jaydennarrator, together with his sidekicks Ryan and Brandonnewly relocated from London to Berlin, have been laughing at Remyworks translating video games into Japanese through the process of localisation, calling him names because he is short and has small eyes. They are mean but they are not stupid. They are careful rewriting language until it feels comfortably familiar to wind up Remy when nobody can see and then push him just that little bit further when the other kids are arounda new audience. SoBarton treats this as a paradoxical act: arguably, in striving for universality, when Remy reactslanguage is endlessly repackaged, its originality at risk of disappearing altogether. From this, it looks as though he was the instigator. And then he gets novel opens out into trouble at school and the teachers don't believe him when he tries a wider, resonant question: to explain what happened.extent do we translate ourselves in order to be understood, accepted, or loved?|isbn=1804272175
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B00474HVX4Zabriskie1|title=Phineas ReduxA Village Where Many Ways Meet: A Story of Belonging and Community, Rooted in Indigenous Wisdom|author=Anthony TrollopeStephanie Zabriskie|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Children's Non-Fiction|summary=It's some time since we heard from [[Phineas Finn by Anthony Trollope|Phineas Finn]]'Across many African and Indigenous systems, differences in how children learn, sense , or process the world were not treated as disorders to be corrected. Having succeeded in parliament They were understood as natural variations of human intelligence and achieved awareness, each holding value within the community.'' This lovely story is a paying position he fell out with those who provided his income and returned to Ireland where he married Marysynthesis of that tradition, his childhood sweetheartwhich was carried down through generations by oral retellings. He was fortunate to get It shows that a job in Cork (community or Dublin - recollections may vary) and seemed settled into society is not made up from interchangeable building blocks of human beings but by a life range of domesticity. To bring Finn backpeople with different skills and different personalities, Trollope had all contributing to kill off poor Mary a whole that combines them all and Phineas emerges in London as a childless widower with a legacy from an aunt who died at just the right time to allow the move to be possiblebenefit of them all.
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Dean Koontz1787333175|title=The Other EmilyYou Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here|author=Benji Waterhouse|rating=45|genre=ThrillersPopular Science|summary=Our hero David Thorne is an author, who shares his life between the two US coasts. ItI was tempted to read ''s the western coast weYou Don're concerned with, a place he has t Have to return be Mad to, and a place he has Work Here'' after enjoying Adam Kay's first book {{amazonurl|isbn=1509858636|title=This is Going to be able to leave. David lost contact with his partner there ten years agoHurt}}, when she vanished from a remote road late at night. He's paying for contact with glorious mixture of insight into the man he thinks workings of the only suspect, a lifer now, who went a bit Hannibal LecterNHS, humour and has a dozen and more unfound Jane Does on his recordautobiography. David is trying to pry the connection between the murderer and his girl from the man's mind, but 'You Don't Have to no availbe Mad. He..''s also having a recharge ready for his next hit novel when into promised the restaurant walks the sheer spitting image, the very embodiment, same elements but moved from physical problems to mental illness and the virtual resurrection, work of his lovea psychiatrist. What I did wonder whether it was acceptable to be looking for humour in this setting but the laughter is directed at a situation rather than a man to do?|isbn=1542019958person and it is always delivered with empathy and understanding.
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Charlie CarrollMaria Stepanova and Sasha Dugdale (Translator)|title=The LipDisappearing Act|rating=54
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Despite her anonymisation of place names and people, Stepanova''Melody Janie Rowe'' even s message in this short work of autofiction is unmistakable. A novelist named M travels from B (ostensibly Berlin) to the name town of F for a literary festival she is evocative of…probably of whatever we want it to bea guest speaker at. Detoured by erratic train schedules and nudged by forces beyond her control, her journey slowly bends toward a traveling circus. Swept up in this series of events, and maybe that's M eventually offers to step in for a circus performer who has unexpectedly left the pointshow. To me the name sings The train functions as a motif of English folk musictransience and impermanence, but even in my use while the circus embodies the reshaping of that word Englishidentity and a retreat into fantasy, I know I'm putting an emmet take on things. And Melody Janie Rowe is anti-emmetimpulse that lies at the very heart of the novel form itself. |isbn=15293341791804272329
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Danny Wallace and Gemma CorrellB0GFQ81YQK|title=The Day How the Sky and the Earth Made People: From the Screens Went BlankOral Stories of Malagasy Elders|author=Stephanie Zabriskie|rating=4.5|genre=Confident ReadersChildren's Non-Fiction|summary=Meet Stella Before people came and her familyjoined the animals, there was only the sky and the earth. They're just innocently trying Everything was quiet until the earth and the sky began to have a Sunday evening in together, watching a film – using three different screens tal to watch three different thingseach other. First, mind – when ''poof'' everything goes blankthe earth created bodies. And it's not just their homethen, but the entire south-western village of Mousehole, sky breathed life into them. These were the first humans and they belonged to both earth and not just that, either, but the whole country, if not worldsky. Suddenly And so people are constantly on their phones – hoping lived between sky and soil and they're first to get a screen backplanted and learned and remembered, and not what especially how they were constantly doing on them beforecame to be. Toasters can toastWhen they grew old and died, but TVs cannot do their bodies returned to the V part of earth and their job, and no computer can show its computationslife returned to the sky. You might think this And that is going to be a social comedy about people stuck in such a Luddite experience against their will, but no. For why the family finally remember Stella's grandma, earth and see if the sky are both revered. Only together can they can get across country to hercreate human beings. Hence this has to go down as a road-trip book. But not just that, a slapstick road-trip comedy. And more than thatis why people must pay attention to, too – and care for it's a slapstick, high-drama, high-octane road-trip comedy with oodles of cuddly heart that kids of all ages will loveboth.|isbn=1471196887
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1913193527B0GHPMNF6P|title=Bound (Detective Sam Shephard)The Zookeeper's Dragon: A Magical Modern Fantasy Tale for Grown-Ups|author=Vanda SymonCarolyn Mathews
|rating=4.5
|genre=CrimeFantasy|summary=Dunedin was shocked when it heard When Phil's father unexpectedly dies, he quits his Canary Wharf finance job to take over the running of the murder of a wealthy and apparently respectable businessman out at Seaclifffamily's farm zoo. His wife had been bound and gagged and placed so that she was forced to watch the murderHe's not expecting much excitement, with the scene being discovered by their son, Declan, when until he returned home from receives an evening out. The subsequent investigation would prove unidentified egg that John Henderson had been involved his new-age stoner uncle Edgar found in a cave in some activities which might have been considered shady New Zealand, and certainly questionable if not illegalsuddenly life is no longer quite what it seems. His companyThen the egg hatches into neither a reptile nor a bird, Eros Globalbut a dragon! Now he, Edgar, his mother Abi, manufactured and marketed the zoo''vitamins part-type supplements time café waitress Pearl have to raise this little bundle of scales andjoy, well, sexual enhancers, that kind of thing'', as Henderson's employee, Blair Harvey-Boyd explaineddespite having no idea how to actually raise dragons and not being able to tell anyone about it.But this tiny little dragon may show them love and connection in ways they had never before imagined…
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1529109116Stephanie Zabriskie|title=Call Me RedHow Maasai Women Spoke to Cows: A Shepherd's Journey|author=Hannah JacksonFrom the Oral Stories of Maasai Elders|rating=4.5|genre=LifestyleChildren's Non-Fiction|summary=''I want How Maasai Women Spoke to Cows is a children’s nonfiction book drawn from the image of a British farmer to simply be that oral traditions of a person who is proudly employed Maasai elders in feeding the nation. I don't think that is too much to askNgorongoro, Tanzania.''
The stereotypical farmer was probably born on the land where ''his'' family have farmed for generations. He's probably grown up without giving much thought as to what he really wants Maasai are a cattle-herding people and this story writes down its oral tradition explaining how they came to do: he knows that he'll be a farmerso. ItCattle are status and wealth in Maasai culture but this doesn's not always t tell the case though. Hannah Jackson was born and brought up on the Wirral: she'd never set foot on a commercial farm until she was twenty although she'd always had a deep love whole story of animals. Her original intention was that she would become 'Dr Jackson, whale scientist' and she was well on her way to achieving this when her life changed on a family holiday to the Lake District. She saw a lamb being born intimate andsymbiotic connection its people, although 'Hannah Jacksonand especially its women, farmer' lacked have with their cows and for the kudos of her original intention, she knew that she wanted to be a shepherdnatural world. With The oral tradition retelling the determination that you'll soon realise is an essential part of hermany conversations Maasai women have had with their cows, she set about achieving her ambitiondoes.|isbn=B0G9WTGY6J
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0857527231Livi Michael|title=Dog Days|author=Ericka WallerElizabeth and Ruth|rating=3.5|genre=General Historical Fiction|summary=George Dempsey is exceedingly angry. It's eight days since his wife, Ellen, died 'Elizabeth and itRuth''s is a work of historical fiction wrought from the life of the first time that she's let him down. He's lostVictorian author Elizabeth Gaskell, bereft without best known for her first novel Mary Barton ( he ''needs his wife1848), like a snail needs its shellradical critique of the treatment of the working class published under a pseudonym. The ''Ruth'). He misses their ordered life and rather than bringing him meals to leave on the doorstep, he'd much rather have a good row with someone. Hefrom Livi Michael's particularly angry about the dachshund puppy which Helen brought home just three weeks before she died. She even dared to contradict him when he told title appears in her that the dog wasn't staying. Now henovel as Pasley, a young Irish prostitute who was abandoned as a child and finds herself in Manchester's lumbered with New Bailey Prison after a dog he doesn't want difficult and a load of busybodies who are trying to interfere in his unjust hand at life. Worst of all is BettySet in Manchester between 1839 and 1842, who won't take no the novel examines the harsh conditions endured by the Victorian working poor and interrogates the extent to which the wealthy (including Gaskell herself) were responsible for an answer. Betty knits jumpers for Lucky, her greyhound. Lucky spends a lot of time trying to escape from and destroy themaddressing these injustices.|isbn=1784633682
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=B003UH99X4Makenna Goodman|title=The Eustace Diamonds|author=Anthony TrollopeHelen of Nowhere|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=It was generally thought could be argued that Sir Florian Eustace had come the pervading theme of this book is malaise - a hard-to regret -place feeling that something in your life is not quite right. The protagonist, a disgraced professor on the brink of losing both his career and his marriage but he didn't live long enough for relationship, embodies this to become a problemfeeling. After his deathHowever, Goodman counteracts his wifediscomfort with a force which is seductive, Lizzie - still only in her late teens - was in possession of a very valuable diamond necklace radical and unnerving: Helen. The connection between Helen and was determined that she would not hand it over to her husband's executorsthe protagonist is indirect yet intimate. She was adamant that Sir Florian had given it to her absolutely, although As the precise circumstances former owner of the giving varied from telling to telling. Lady Eustace was not countryside house he's considering, Helen represents a woman volta in his life, her past tied to whom truth meant a great dealhis potential fresh start. All The realtor who shows the protagonist around the house shares stories about Helen, and describes her as ''an entity that was important to her nowis pure consciousness, beyond form''. Although she maintainedlives in an assisted living facility now, was her son. And, of course, her diamondsHelen has powers beyond comprehension which the reader gets the sense are not altogether innocuous.|isbn=1804272205
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1529047315B0GCB1MQ7D|title=The LamplightersWhy My Mother Went Away|author=Emma StonexAlan Kennedy
|rating=5
|genre=ThrillersAutobiography|summary=''A fisherman told him once about the sea having two faces. You I have often wondered how prominent people came to take hold their positions. them bothWith 'celebrities', he saidthere's frequently a book they might or might not have written, which might or might not tell the good and true story. It's not often that you find a book that gives the badfull backstory, and never turn your rarely do you discover a memoir where the telling is so perfect that you'll go back on either and reread paragraphs and sentences, just for the pleasure the words give. ''Why My Mother Went Away'' is one of themthose rare exceptions. It''s the story of how a boy from the Midlands, born at the beginning of the Second World War, would become a Professor of Psychology at Dundee University. In fact, he was one of the founders of the department.}}{{Frontpage|author=Jeremy Cooper|title=Discord|rating= 3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Discord: a lack of agreement or harmony (as between persons, things, or ideas)
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Mary H K ChoiTom Percival|title=YolkThe Wrong Shoes
|rating=5
|genre=TeensConfident Readers|summary= Jayne Baek Will's life is difficult, in a fashion student thatmultitude of ways. He is bullied because he has 'the wrong shoes's barely getting by. She drinks. She smokes. She makes bad decisions about , he has the men she sleeps with. Shewrong shoes because his dad can's an all-round messy character; t work and thatdoesn's her charm. Junet have enough money for even the most basic of things like food, on and his dad can't work because he lost his job at the other college, was working a cash-in-hand, is job on a complete contrast to Jaynebuilding site and had an accident. She Throw into that mix the fact that his mum and dad are separated, and Will's a typical older sister: she's smartlife seems bleak in every direction. And yet, thinks she knows it all, and he still has a successful jobtiny amount of hope. She constantly criticises Jayne for her life choices He is good at art, and clings to the two have barely kept in contact despite living in moments of joy when he is drawing, that feel like a light at the same city for end of a long, dark tunnel.|isbn=1398527122}}{{Frontpage|author=Edward W Said|title=Representations of the past two yearsIntellectual |rating=4. This is until June finds out she5|genre=Politics and Society|summary=Edward Said's sick, ''Representations of the Intellectual'' is less a strict theory of what intellectuals are and Jayne is more a passionate argument for what they should be. Said clearly rejects the comfortable image of the intellectual as a detached expert speaking only person she can turn toother specialists. The two sisters have to come together Instead, he insists on the intellectual as a public figure, often awkward, abrasive, and decide how far they'll go unpopular, who speaks truth to save each other's lives – power even if when it means swapping identitiesis inconvenient or risky.|isbn= 03490036961804272248
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Saima MirSylvie Cathrall|title=The KhanA Letter to the Luminous Deep
|rating=5
|genre=Science Fiction
|summary= There are few greater joys than a book which lives up to a compelling premise. And this is one of them.
|isbn= 0356522776
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1786482126
|title=The Janus Stone (Dr Ruth Galloway)
|author=Elly Griffiths
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=Jia Khan has alway lived by the motto be twice as good as men and four times as good as white men. This has served her well Builders were demolishing an old house in her rise through Norwich - the criminal justice system and by site was going to hold seventy-five 'luxury' apartments - when they discovered the time she is called home for her sisterbones of a child beneath a doorway. There was no skull. Was this a ritual killing or murder? Inevitably, Dr Ruth Galloway finds herself working with DCI Harry Nelson. It's wedding after fifteen years in self-imposed exiledifficult as Ruth knows, but Nelson doesn't, that she is at pregnant with his child as a result of the top of her gameone night they spent together some three months ago. Returning to the city of her birth Her condition will be obvious before long, not least because Ruth is prone to old scars and fresh wounds, Jia must confront her past and reconcile her visions for the future with her sense sudden bouts of honour and dutysickness.|isbn=1786079097
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=00083368300008551375|title=Two WrongsWhen Shadows Fall (D S Max Craigie)|author=Mel McGrathNeil Lancaster
|rating=4.5
|genre=ThrillersCrime|summary=Sondra Leanne Wilson's body was on her way home after work when she saw found at the bottom of a young woman looking as though she was going to jump from Scottish mountain, seemingly the Clifton suspension bridgeresult of a tragic accident. She talks to her'd looked so happy, too, and Sondra finally persuades Satnam to call when she posted her best friend and flatmate, Nevis Smithintentions on Facebook. Nevis is unworldly and rather reserved - and Her friends were relieved as she was just out of an unpleasant relationship, but it looked like she can't understand why Satnam hasn't shared her problems with was living herbest life now. Then it emerged that five other women had died in similar circumstances in the last year. She thought All were experienced climbers, properly equipped for what they shared everythingwere doing and sensible people. Satnam is taken None of the 'what a stupid thing to hospital and Nevis calls her mother, Honordo' explanations applied. Theywere all alone when they died: DS Max Craigie is certain there've not been s a killer on good terms since a discovery Nevis made the previous summer but right now, Nevis needs her motherloose.
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Andrea Bajani and Elizabeth Harris (translator)Paul B Preciado|title=If You Kept a Record of SinsDysphoria Mundi
|rating=4.5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=''It is never too late to embrace the revolutionary optimism of childhood''
Through this hybrid text, consisting of arias, letters, essays and autofiction, Preciado expresses his own hybrid self, and brings forth a new sensorium as an offering to the new generation, a new feeling mechanism in which detachment is not considered a sign of political apathy. Rather, it is the proportional, valid response to ''the epistemological and political crack we are living through, and the tension between emancipatory forces and conservative resistances that characterize our present'' which Preciado calls ''dysphoria mundi''. The whole text is framed against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic as that which has catalysed this revolution, when dysphoria began to emerge on a global scale, or as ''pangea covidica''. Rather than taking this extreme dysphoria as a sign of weakness, or mistaking detachment or withdrawal for political paralysis, Preciado urges his readers to ''use dysphoria as your revolutionary platform''.
|isbn=1804271454
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Samantha Harvey
|title=Orbital
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=In 2024, Samantha Harvey won the Booker Prize for ''Orbital'', a compact yet profound work that unfolds over a single day in the lives of a group of astronauts aboard the International Space Station. Through a narrative lens that mirrors the astronauts' orbital perspective, Harvey invites readers to see our planet in a wholly new light.
|isbn=1529922933
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=295967572X
|title=Pale Pieces
|author=G M Stevens
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=This was an incredibly readable novella, but one that left me Our unnamed narrator is about to begin a little conflictedtrain journey with his companion Django. We start as our hero arrives at Bucharest airportWhere they're going and what the purpose of this journey is, is uncertain. Django found the tickets ''on the floor somewhere'' and before has persuaded our narrator to accompany him. Why not? Not much else is clear either - but we even know his gender or are probably in the past as the pair travel to the nature of station by coach and the person hetrain is a steam locomotive.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0008551324|title=The Devil You Know (D S Max Craigie)|author=Neil Lancaster|rating=4.5|genre=Crime|summary=It's addressing unusual for anyone from the Hardie family to approach the police. Neither side likes or has any respect for the other. But Davie Hardie is struggling in his second person monologue of a narration, we see him picked up by his motherprison and he's chauffeur, and carted off prepared to do all tell the police where the necessary introductions before said mother body of a missing person is buried the following dayand who was responsible for her death. The mother was a businesswoman This person, who clearly left northern Italy and settled in Romania with her (night-time and business) partnerhe promises, is someone big and feelings of abandonment are still strongit will be worth the police doing what he wants. And so we flit from current (well, this came out in what he wants is to be transferred to an open prison to serve the original Italian in 2007remainder of his sentence and to get an early parole date. Not much to ask, is it? The new Deputy Police Constable doesn't think so moderately current) Bucharest, and she's even prepared to do the ladother thing that Hardie demanded - make certain that DS Max Craigie and anyone who works with him is kept well away from what's childhood, and see just what he has to tell her as a private farewell addresshappening.|isbn=1939810965
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Jane LightbourneThea Lenarduzzi|title= My Cat Called RedThe Tower|rating= 45|genre=Emerging ReadersLiterary Fiction|summary= Robin has red hair''How unctuous are the fats of another's life, how dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream''. He hates it In this compelling novel, Thea Lenarduzzi assumes the identity of T, and the freckles that go along with itprotagonist of this tale. HeJust as T's been bullied and mocked at school because story is being told, the story of it. ''Ginger Minger! Carrots!'' Kids are mean. But red hair a second protagonist is not Robinunveiled: Annie, the daughter of a wealthy family in the 19th century, who died of tuberculosis after being locked in a tower, captures T's only misery in lifeimagination. HeAnnie's already lost his dad fate is, above all, an enticing story to T. It is a story which she consumes avariciously, both in a mountaineering accident when his mum gets ill quest for truth and knowledge, and is taken into hospital. She doesn't come home againin service of myth, fable and fantasy. |isbn= 18382168121804271799
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=B003L7TDMUClaire-Louise Bennett|title=Phineas Finn|author=Anthony TrollopeBig Kiss, Bye-Bye
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Phineas Finn Everything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, is the son of Dr Malachi Finnsteeped in anguish and distortion. Even a kiss, usually a successful doctor in Killaloe in County Claresymbol of intimacy and closeness, who sent his son to London to train as a lawyerbecomes evidence of love lost. PhineasWhen the narrator cries out internally, ''come over here and kiss me,''s interest it is more in making influential friends less an invitation than in becoming a lawyer and one desperate attempt to confirm her emotional numbness. The imagined recipient of themthis plea is Xavier, Barrington Erleher ex-partner, suggests that he runs for Parliament a ghost she conjures to test her detachment.|isbn=1804271934}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0008405026|title=A Stranger in the forthcoming electionFamily (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. His She was never found and the investigation ground to a halt. Now, her mother, Helena, and her father is not entirely are dead in favour their bed. Initially, it looks like a straightforward murder/suicide but there's something about the positioning of this the bodies that makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and her boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. What looked as members are not remunerated and though it would was going to be up to him to provide financial support for his son as well as funding his electionan open-and-shut case is now a complex double murder. One of Kerrigan is convinced that the doctorexplanation lies in Rosalie's disappearance: others (such as Derwent's patients is Lord Tulla who controls the borough of Loughshane and by this stroke of luck Finn isboss, eventually, elected by a small marginUna Burt) are less convinced.
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Annie Ernaux and Alison L. Strayer (translator)|title=The Other Girl|rating=4|genre=Autobiography|summary=''We were born from the same body. I've never really wanted to think about this.'' Ernaux's work is always very candid and her tone transparent, but this raw epistolary text must be one of the most intimate accounts I've read. Ernaux writes in direct address to her sister, however, this letter will never reach her. Why? Because Annie Ernaux's sister died of diphtheria at 6 years old, a few months before the vaccine was made compulsory in France, and 2 years before the author was even born. The large and instant void created by the jarring concept of writing to an imaginary recipient emphasises Ernaux's process of reckoning with this giant absence in her life, an absence that she has always felt but often denied.|isbn=18385950311804271845}}{{Frontpage|author=Maxim Gorky and Bryan Karetnyk (translator)|title=CrookedReminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev|rating=3.5|genre=Biography|summary=Biographies are often seen as the form of life-writing which offers less colour; it can be seen as more objective and less personal. I think that Gorky completely rejects this perspective, and offers a vibrant, subjective yet informed portrait of three of his literary contemporaries. In the first section of this book, Tolstoy complains to his friend Gorky that: Honest Criminality''you write not of real life as it is, but of what you yourself imagine it to be. Whom would it help to know how I see this tower, that sea, or that Tartar - why should it interest anyone? Of what use is it?''. Well, Maxim Gorky shows exactly what can be gained from a subjective account, giving us access to how he saw Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev in such privileged detail that one almost feels unworthy of it.|isbn=1804271977}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1529077745|title=The Dark Wives (D I Vera Stanhope)|author=Bronwen JohnAnn Cleeves
|rating=4.5
|genre=ThrillersCrime|summary=The con had seemed like A man walking his dog in the early morning discovered the body of a good one: tricking people into buying artwork supposedly by man in the new Banksy - and they should have made park near Rosebank, a decent profit from itcare home for troubled teens. The problem dead man was they were too successful: Josh - one of the marks had bought care workers who was due to work a few and then discovered that they were valueless. Henry Martin Holmes shift the night before but who had fallen for a simple con and his father, celebrity criminal Harry Holmes, was determined that he and his family could not lose face like that. The grifters were going to paynever turned up. Ashia 'Ash' Cox and Max 'Colorado' Ying needed D I Vera Stanhope is called in to be got out investigate the murder - but her only clue is the disappearance of one of the countryresidents, fourteen-year-old Chloe Spencer. In Some people believe that Chloe was responsible for the course of bringing death but Vera thinks this about, Luke Gaines, Ashis unlikely as the girl's foster father, lost his lifediary makes it clear that she adored Josh. She knows that she has to find Chloe to discover what happened to Josh.
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{{Frontpage
|author=Hayley WebsterOlga Tokarczuk|title=Luna Rae is Not AloneHouse of Day, House of Night
|rating=5
|genre=Confident ReadersLiterary Fiction|summary=Luna Rae has just moved house. Moving house is always tricky, but especially when you're ten years old, and you miss your old home, and you and your little sister have to start 'What's the good of a new school but your mum seems to be out working all the time. Then thereworld that keeps changing like that? How can one go on calmly living in it?''s your dad The title of this spellbinding work, who doesn't seem like he's coping so wellHouse of Day, and so thereHouse of Night's no one ', somewhat reflects this notion of shifting realities - the small, subtle changes which govern our lives, like the shift from day to take care of things but younight, however quotidian, causing chaos. Everything feels different and strangeBut, and mysteriousthe constant in that image is the house, and so Luna finds a way of coping stoic against the ancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it is by watchingperceived. She turns detective and starts keeping an eye on her new neighbourhood, but it turns out she's not the only one keeping watch!|isbn=17880060461804271918
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=B003A6W0FO1836284683|title=Can You Forgive Her?The Big Happy|author=Anthony TrollopeDavid Chadwick
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=On the surface ''Can You Forgive Her?'' looks deceptively simple: Well! This is a murder mystery unlike any other! I do love it when I open a book, it's the story of one woman and two men who are vying with each other for her love. Alice Vavasor was originally engaged nothing like I expected it to her cousinbe, George Vavasor but she broke off that engagement and later became engaged to John Grey. When we first meet Alice she's it takes me on an extended tour of the continent with George Vavasor and his sister Katea wild ride. It's obvious And that there's still a great deal of chemistry between John and Alice - and Kate is all for encouraging the relationship as it would tie Alice to her. George wants Alice but itjust what happened with 's a matter of 'The Big Happy'amour propre'. I don' rather than love: he has little consideration t want to ruin a similar experience for anyone other than himself and the original engagement had fallen through because any of his infidelity and deceitfulness. This thread is you reading but I'll have to at least set the story of a very complicated love affair and a woman who lacks confidence in her own judgementscene. You might not like Alice to start with but Once that's done, I think you will warm to hershould simply experience this wonderfully original story for yourself.
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{{Frontpage
|author=Hannah GoldSally Rooney|title=The Last BearIntermezzo
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersGeneral Fiction |summary=April's father, a scientist, Sally Rooney has been given a job on a remote island called Bear Island, and he accepts studied the job deciding to take his daughter April with him. They live alone anyway, since April's mother died some time before, chessboard of life and he feels is something of a grandmaster at putting it will be educational for her to experience the island into words. Her dialogue is gripping and all its natural beauty. April already has an affinity with natureso brilliantly frustrating, and she's excited to travel with as her fathercharacters never quite say exactly what they feel. Among the many relationships woven into this story, thinking of all the fun things they will be able central one for readers to experience together on unravel is the islandfraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. But when they get thereIvan, a socially awkward chess prodigy, her father finds that his work monitoring and recording the temperatures just takes up too much of contrasts sharply with his timeolder brother Peter, and so April is left to explore by herselfa successful lawyer living in Dublin. Her Following their father had reassured her that there were no longer any bears living on Bear Island, but one day April thinks she catches 's passing after a glimpse of onelong battle with cancer, and so she sets out to find the Bear, and then when she sees he is injured, to befriend and help himbrothers' already strained relationship faces new trials.|isbn=000841128X0571365469
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=14722761401836285493|title=What Will Burn (Inspector McLean)The Double Life of a Wheelchair User|author=James OswaldRob Keeley
|rating=5
|genre=CrimeConfident Readers|summary=When Cecily Slater's body was foundWill is a keen player of video games, a conscientious student, she'd already been dead for a week - in slightly annoying brother and a house fire in deserted woodland near Edinburghsupportive friend. Heavy rain had washed away But most of the evidenceall, he is an aspiring writer. English is his favourite lesson at his school, but DI Tony McLeanMarlowe Park, demoted and just returned from suspensionone at which he excels. This hasn't gone unnoticed by his headteacher, is reluctant Mrs Howarth, and she has suggested to accept Will and his mum that this is nothing more than he spends a couple of afternoons a week at a careless accident. There were indications that Slater had been savagelydifferent school, Station Road, almost ritualistically beaten before the firewhere his ability might be better extended. But who would hate a ninety-year-old woman to the extent of doing something like that? She was a virtual recluse: who could she have upset to that extent?
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=000845552X1009473085|title=Where Ravens RoostThe Conservative Effect 2010 - 2024|author=Karin NordinAnthony Seldon and Tom Egerton (Editors)|rating=45|genre=CrimePolitics and Society|summary=Inspector Kjeld Nygaard had been estranged from his father, Stenar, for more than Sometimes it's simpler to explain a decade but when he got the rather muddled phone call from him saying book by describing what it ''isn't'' and that heapplies to ''d seen a murder in The Conservative Effect: 2010-2024 - 14 Wasted Years?''. If you're looking for an easy read which will deliver the barn inside story about what ''really'' happened on his land he didncertain occasions, then this isn't hesitate to drop everything the book for you. If that's what you're looking for, I don't think Anthony Seldon's book, {{amazonurl|isbn=B0BH7SKG2S|title=Johnson at 10}}, can be bettered for those tumultuous years. It's a compelling read and go should be compulsory for anyone who thinks Johnson should return to Varsundpolitics. Actually, 'drop everything' rather overstates the situationThe Conservative Effect'' is an entirely different beast. Nygaard was on suspension following It's the shooting of seventh book in a suspect in series which looks at the Aubuchon murder enquiry. There had been impact a complication: government has made and co-editor Sir Anthony Seldon regards this as the Kattegat Killer turned out to be Nils Hedin, Nygaard's best friendmost important. Still, This book follows the tenwell-hour drive established format: a series of experts from Gothenburg in various fields review the south state of Sweden to Varsund the nation when the coalition took over in 2010, the far north shouldn't be underestimatedchanges that occurred and the situation in 2024.
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1471187179Jenny Valentine|title=A Beautiful Spy|author=Rachel HoreUs in the Before and After|rating=45|genre=Historical FictionTeens|summary=Minnie Elk and Mab are best friends, or more than that even, their friendship is an 'ordinary' girl living an unexciting life a once in a leafy provincial suburblifetime connection. The book is set in the 1930s and Minnie is expected to live up to her motherThey meet as children one day on a trip out but unfortunately they don't get each other's expectations and find a nice young man to marry, produce children and spend contact details at the rest of her days looking after her husband and their hometime. UnfortunatelyBut then chance brings them back together, this isn't what she wants to do at all and neither does she want to continue working as a secretarythey are inseparable. As a result of a chance meeting Something has happened though, she finds herself drawn into espionagesomething terrible and tragic, working for the secret service and effectively living a double life - attempting to infiltrate the Communist Party of Great Britain. Minnie finds herself torn between what she perceives as her duty now they must work through their grief, and the friends she has made - and likes - whilst working for the Communist Partytheir friendship, together.|isbn=1471196585
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