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==The Best New Books==
'''Read [[:Category:Features|the latest features]].'''
{{Frontpage
|author=Paul B Preciado
|title=Dysphoria 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''Read [[Forthcoming Publications|reviews . Rather than taking this extreme dysphoria as a sign of books about weakness, or mistaking detachment or withdrawal for political paralysis, Preciado urges his readers to be published]]''use dysphoria as your revolutionary platform''.<!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->|isbn=1804271454}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Claire NorthSamantha Harvey|title=Notes from the Burning AgeOrbital|rating=4.5|genre=Science General Fiction|summary=At its core In 2024, Samantha Harvey won the Booker Prize for ''Notes From the Burning AgeOrbital'' by Claire North is , a spy thriller, with as many double crosses, interrogations and night time escapes as Le Carre or Fleming. However, as with the best novels, it wears many masks and its most affecting one is compact yet profound work that of unfolds over a new and timely genre, cli-fi, or climate change fiction. North's novel tells single day in the lives of a world devastated by climate change where humans have been forced to start anew and live alongside nature without any group of astronauts aboard the modern and corrupting "luxuries" (read: fossil fuels, weapons of mass destruction, intensive farming)International Space Station. There is Through a growing unhappiness with this limiting world, and one group, narrative lens that mirrors the Brotherhoodastronauts' orbital perspective, aims Harvey invites readers to master these processes no matter the cost to the Earthsee our planet in a wholly new light.|isbn=03565147571529922933
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Eva Bjorg Aegisdottir and Victoria Cribb (translator)295967572X|title=Girls Who LiePale Pieces|author=G M Stevens|rating=35|genre=ThrillersLiterary Fiction|summary=You might be forgiven for thinking that all the dark corners of Iceland have featured in their noirish thrillers and crime books before nowOur unnamed narrator is about to begin a train journey with his companion Django. You think, seeing on the map that weWhere they're set in Akranes, going and finding it's only twenty kilometres from what the capital citypurpose of this journey is, that this author is clutching at the few final straws leftuncertain. However just because Django found the book aims for tickets ''on the usual small-town feel, itfloor somewhere''s not just in Akranes that and has persuaded our interests lie. Six months ago a woman failed narrator to turn up for her date evening, and was never seen againaccompany him. This left a teenaged girl Why not at all disappointed that she could now live permanently with ? Not much else is clear either - but we are probably in the couple who had given her foster care before her mother had asked for past as the girl back, and a couple of delighted adopters. But it left our three detectives at a quandary – mobile phone use was at a high level until it stopped all of a sudden, in one place, pair travel to the woman's car was found miles away in a second place, station by coach and now, after six months, the body has been discovered, in a third, even more remote place. Meanwhile, this narrative train is interrupted by a confessional monologue from a mother who found herself with heavy post-natal depression, and very little maternal feeling in her bodysteam locomotive. Is the assumption that is so easy for the reader to make the right one?|isbn=191319373X
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B0925KS87N0008551324|title=Dead Man's Grave The Devil You Know (DS D S Max Craigie)
|author=Neil Lancaster
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=Tam It's unusual for anyone from the Hardie had been determined family to find approach the grave - and it took some finding - in an overgrown old cemeterypolice. It was a strange thing Neither side likes or has any respect for Scotlandthe other. But Davie Hardie is struggling in prison and he's premier criminal prepared to dotell the police where the body of a missing person is buried and who was responsible for her death. This person, he promises, but Tam was getting old is someone big and there were things it will be worth the police doing what he wanted to dowants. Only, his family didn't hear from him again after And what he'd said that he'd found wants is to be transferred to an open prison to serve the grave - the one which said that it shouldn't be opened - remainder of his sentence and his three sons began to worryget an early parole date. Tam JuniorNot much to ask, Frankie is it? The new Deputy Police Constable doesn't think so and Dave wouldnshe't normally go s even prepared to do the police but they weren't other thing that Hardie demanded - make certain where their father had been that DS Max Craigie and they were worriedanyone who works with him is kept well away from what's happening.
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Emily CritchleyJon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |title=The Tiny Gestures of Small FlowersVaim|rating=34|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary= The Tiny Gestures of Small Flowers had all the hallmarks of something good''All was strange''... I was intrigued by This haunting phrase encapsulates the plot, liked the design pervading sense of the bookotherworldliness which permeates this story set in Vaim, a fictional fishing village in Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for Jatgeir and thought the author's work sounded interesting. From Eline, two of the outset it all looked incredibly promisingprotagonists caught in its melancholic current. So what on earth went wrong here?|isbn= 19114270911804271829}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Sarah Langan1035043092|title=Good NeighboursThe Killing Stones (Jimmy Perez)|author=Ann Cleeves|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersCrime|summary= If youI can're of a certain vintaget have been the only person who was sad when Inspector Jimmy Perez [[Wild Fire (Shetland, it's hard Book 8) by Ann Cleeves|left Shetland]] to read the words ''Good Neighbours'' without adding start a sing-song new life on Orkney. It''thats been seven years since we heard from him, but he's when Good Neighbours…become…good friends''. Maple Street is no Ramsay Streetnow living with Willow Reeves and their young son, James, thoughas well as Cassie, Arlo and Gertie live a world apart from the Melbourne suburbs. They're one daughter of 18 households on the crescent, quite new arrivals having moved in a year earlierhis former partner. They're not quite like all the other families (he Willow's an ex rockeralso his boss, and she's a former beauty queen) but they've made some friends and their kids have settled in, and itshould's all going ok. Until it isn't. One hotbe on maternity leave, clammybut when the body of a popular islander, stickyArchie Stout, sweaty summeris found, a sinkhole opens up in the park across the wayaftermath of a storm, she can't resist getting involved. It He's d been battered about the head with a revolting mess Neolithic stone - one of dirt and chaos, but for the residents of Maple Street, the worst is yet to comea pair - which had been stolen from a museum.|isbn=1789098211
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Lisa ThompsonThea Lenarduzzi|title=The Small ThingsTower
|rating=5
|genre=Confident ReadersLiterary Fiction|summary=Although Anna has friends at school''How unctuous are the fats of another's life, she feels like she never really fits how dizzying their sugars inour bloodstream''. In this compelling novel, Thea Lenarduzzi assumes the identity of T, the protagonist of this tale. Her Just as T's story is being told, the story of a second protagonist is unveiled: Annie, the daughter of a wealthy family don't have enough money to let her do in the 19th century, who died of tuberculosis after school activitiesbeing locked in a tower, and so she feels like her life at home captures T's imagination. Annie's fate is boring in comparison , above all, an enticing story to theirsT. When It is a story which she consumes avariciously, both in a new girl joins her classquest for truth and knowledge, and in service of myth, Anna is asked to partner herfable and fantasy. |isbn=1804271799}}{{Frontpage|author=Claire-Louise Bennett|title=Big Kiss, but things are complicated because the new girlBye-Bye |rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Everything in this book, Elliehowever sweet or seemingly innocent, is unwell steeped in anguish and so can't attend school in persondistortion. InsteadEven a kiss, she joins in with the class by using usually a robotsymbol of intimacy and closeness, becomes evidence of love lost. Can Anna overcome When the challenge of making friends with someone through a robotnarrator cries out internally, ''come over here and kiss me,'' it is she even interesting enough less an invitation than a desperate attempt to be confirm her emotional numbness. The imagined recipient of this plea is Xavier, her ex-partner, a good friend ghost she conjures to Ellie?test her detachment.|isbn=17811296491804271934
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=00083503880008405026|title=We Need to Talk About MoneyA Stranger in the Family (Maeve Kerrigan 11)|author=Otegha UwagbaJane Casey
|rating=5
|genre=Politics and SocietyCrime|summary=It''To be a darks sixteen years since nine-skinned Black woman is to be seen as less desirable, less hireable, less intelligent and ultimately less valuable than my lightyear-skinned counterparts..old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her bed one summer night.'' ''We Need She was never found and the investigation ground to Talk About Money'' by Otegha Uwagba ''0.7% of English Literature GCSE students in England study a book by a writer of colour while only 7% study a book by a womanhalt.'' ''The Bookseller'' 29 June 2021 Otegha Uwagba came to the UK from Kenya when she was five years old. Her sisters were seven and nine. It was Now, her mother who came first, with Helena, and her father joining them laterare dead in their bed. The family was hard-workingInitially, principled it looks like a straightforward murder/suicide but there's something about the positioning of the bodies that makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and determined that their children would have the best education possibleher boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. There What looked as though it was always a painful awareness of money although this did not translate into going to be an open-and-shut case is now a shortage of anything: it was simply carefully harvestedcomplex double murder. When Otegha was ten Kerrigan is convinced that the family acquired a car. For Otegha, education meant a scholarship to a private school explanation lies in London and then a place at New CollegeRosalie's disappearance: others (such as Derwent's boss, OxfordUna Burt) are less convinced.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1787631869Annie Ernaux and Alison L. Strayer (translator)|title=The Rising Tide|author=Sam LloydOther Girl
|rating=4
|genre=ThrillersAutobiography|summary=Lucy Locke's early life hadn't been easy but she'd built a good and decent life in We were born from the aftermathsame body. SheI's now married ve never really wanted to Daniel, who co-owns Locke-Povey Marine on Penleith Beach, and they live at Wild Ridge on Mortis Point with Billie, Lucythink about this.'' Ernaux's daughter work is always very candid and Finher tone transparent, but this raw epistolary text must be one of the child she had with Danielmost intimate accounts I've read. They have financial difficultiesErnaux writes in direct address to her sister, some caused by Nick Poveyhowever, Danielthis letter will never reach her. Why? Because Annie Ernaux's partner sister died of diphtheria at 6 years old, a few months before the vaccine was made compulsory in France, and so-called best friend2 years before the author was even born. Nick The large and Daniel have a history together from instant void created by the time they both spent in a childrenjarring concept of writing to an imaginary recipient emphasises Ernaux's home but it's difficult to think process of reckoning with this giant absence in her life, an absence that Nick she has Daniel's best interests at heart, particularly where Lucy, or money, is concernedalways felt but often denied.|isbn=1804271845
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Hannah PeckMaxim Gorky and Bryan Karetnyk (translator)|title=Kate on the CaseReminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev
|rating=3.5
|genre=Confident ReadersBiography|summary=Meet Kate, although I got Biographies are often seen as the impression she'd rather form of life-writing which offers less colour; it can be a Catherine – seen as more objective and one specific Catherine at less personal. I think that. For Catherine Rodriguez is Kate's idolGorky completely rejects this perspective, and offers a vibrant, subjective yet informed portrait of three of his literary contemporaries. In the author first section of our heroine's favourite possessionthis book, Tolstoy complains to his friend Gorky that: ''The Special Correspondent Manual''you write not of real life as it is, but of what you yourself imagine it to be. Armed with a plucky fatherWhom would it help to know how I see this tower, that booksea, and her talking mouse called Rupert, she or that Tartar - why should it interest anyone? Of what use is all equipped to manage a train ride to the Arctic, to see her scientist mother for the first time in yonksit?''. HoweverWell, this is Maxim Gorky shows exactly what can be gained from a train ride with a differencesubjective account, for on board is a greedy-seeming harridan and her catgiving us access to how he saw Tolstoy, a thief – Chekhov and two glowing eyes, shining from the darkness Andreyev in a blink-and-you'll-miss-them style. It's definitely a case for a new young investigative journalist..such privileged detail that one almost feels unworthy of it.|isbn=184812970X1804271977
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Darren Shan1529077745|title=Archibald Lox and the Forgotten Crypt: Archibald Lox series, Volume 2, book 1 of 3The Dark Wives (D I Vera Stanhope)|author=Ann Cleeves
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=The second trilogy A man walking his dog in Shan's ''Merge'' saga opens with our hero, Archie, back in London the early morning discovered the body of a man in the world park near Rosebank, a care home for troubled teens. The dead man was Josh - one of the Borncare workers who was due to work a shift the night before but who had never turned up. It's not been easy, explaining D I Vera Stanhope is called in to his foster parents where he's been, or slipping back into ordinary life and forgetting about Inez and his other friends in investigate the murder - but her only clue is the disappearance of one of the Mergeresidents, but Archie has done his bestfourteen-year-old Chloe Spencer.... well, except Some people believe that Chloe was responsible for visiting veteran locksmith Winston in Big Benthe death but Vera thinks this is unlikely as the girl's clock tower and except for fiddling with diary makes it clear that she adored Josh. She knows that sneaky master lock in Seven Dials every time he can sneak awayshe has to find Chloe to discover what happened to Josh.|isbn=B093H8DPQZ
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=0571365884B0FK5LHKD9|title=My Mess is a Bit The Colour of Life: Adventures in AnxietyMemory|author=Georgia PritchettChristopher Bowden
|rating=4
|genre=AutobiographyGeneral Fiction|summary=Georgia Pritchett has always It's been anxiousthree years since we last reviewed a book by favourite regular Christopher Bowden, even as so we were very glad to see a childnew novel arrive here at Bookbag Towers. She would worry about whether Like all Bowden's stories, there's a mystery at the monsters under the bed were comfortable: it was the sort heart of life where if she had nothing to worry about she would become anxious but such occasions were few and far between. On a visit to a therapist, as an adult, when she was completely unable to speak about what was wrong with her it was suggested that she should write it down and ''My Mess is a Bit The Colour of a Life: Adventures Money''. We like this running theme in Anxiety'an author' is the result s work - or so we are given to believetake a mystery but give it different flavour and atmosphere each time.
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Alex CotterOlga Tokarczuk|title=House of Day, House of Night|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''What's the good of a world that keeps changing like that? How can one go on calmly living in it?'' The title of this spellbinding work, ''House of Day, House on of Night'', somewhat reflects this notion of shifting realities - the small, subtle changes which govern our lives, like the shift from day to night, however quotidian, causing chaos. But, the constant in that image is the house, stoic against the Edgeancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it is perceived.|isbn=1804271918}}{{Frontpage|isbn=henleyA|title=Ultimate Obsession|author=Dai Henley
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=Ex-DCI Robin Lyons is back in her native Birmingham after her less-than-comfortable departure from the Met. She might have Andy Flood has been reinstated but the whole episode left a nasty taste in her mouth. She was Private Investigator for some time now working for Detective Chief Superintendent Samir Jaffrey - then the man who had broken her heart nearly twenty years before, and he should be doing quite well financially. She and her fifteen-year-old Unfortunately, his daughter have moved out of her parent's home into defence against a rented house but there's still a difficult situation with her brother Luke who murder charge drained his savings. His wife, Laura, has gone out of his way been trying to persuade him to make life difficult for Robin since she was a young childretire - ''maybe go travelling or go on cruises. That's what 'ordinary people do','' He's married not been entirely up front about the state of their savings. When Jack Durban tries to persuade him to Natalietake his case, now and has it's the thought of the money he could make that convinces him that this is a young child but miscarriage of justice that he's still got it in for Robinreally should put right.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=17863323881836284683|title=The First Day of SpringBig Happy|author=Nancy TuckerDavid Chadwick
|rating=4.5
|genre=ThrillersDystopian Fiction|summary=Sometimes Well! This is a murder mystery unlike any other! I do love it when I wonder if open a book, it's nothing like I take my pleasures too sadly - expected it to be, and it takes me on a wild ride. And that is just what happened with ''The First Day of SpringBig Happy'' was one such occasion. The writing is superb and completely compelling. The characterisation is excellent and the plot grips you and wonI don't let go. So, whatwant to ruin a similar experience for any of you reading but I's the problem? Well, the problem is Chrissie, ll have to at least set the main characterscene. When we first meet her she's just eight years old, small for her age and she readily tells us Once that she's just killed someone - a two-year-old boy. She's completely cold about what she's done with her main memory being that whilst she was killing - suffocating - her hands seized up. There's a clue that Chrissie isn't completely responsible for her actions a little later in the book: when will Steven come back, she wonders? Hasn't he been dead I think you should simply experience this wonderfully original story for long enough?yourself.
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Catherine SteadmanSally Rooney|title=The Disappearing ActIntermezzo
|rating=4.5
|genre=ThrillersGeneral Fiction |summary= British actress Mia Eliot Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard of life and is on the cusp something of successa grandmaster at putting it into words. Great successHer dialogue is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, as her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. If Among the rumours are truemany relationships woven into this story, award season the central one for readers to unravel is going to treat her well, acknowledging her for her latest, critically acclaimed productionthe fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. She's going places but soIvan, unfortunatelya socially awkward chess prodigy, is her partner. And the places he's going take him towards liescontrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, deceit and a pretty young thing successful lawyer living in the form of his new co-starDublin. ItFollowing their father's passing after a good time for Mia to escapelong battle with cancer, and pilot season in LA provides just the excusebrothers' already strained relationship faces new trials.|isbn=14711897830571365469
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn= Christophe Medler1036916375|title=Madrigal: A Closely Guarded SecretJust a Liverpool Lad|author=Peter McArdle
|rating=4
|genre=Historical FictionAutobiography|summary= Set against the backdrop ''Just a Liverpool Lad '' is a collection of memories and reflections from the English Civil Waryears Peter McArdle spent growing up in and around Liverpool. Some are factual, such as the family history of a secret plan (codesea-named Madrigal) is discovered by Sir Robert Douse in going family, with the summer of 1642docks dominating lives. As a loyal servant of Other stories blend seamlessly into the King, and Head of the Secret Service, it is Robertwhat-might-have-been. It's duty a book to uncover the details of the plan settle into and follow the clues allow your mind to roam across your childhood memories, to uncover one think of simpler times when life seemed less constrained, despite the most guarded secrets blitz that was a constant factor in history—especially since the plot McArdle's early years. I'd never heard of parachute mines before - but they were almost soundless and could affect appear after the Kingall-clear was sounded.|isbn=B095HY8SXQ
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Tasha Suri1836285493|title=The Jasmine ThroneDouble Life of a Wheelchair User|author=Rob Keeley|rating=45|genre=FantasyConfident Readers|summary= On the night Will is a keen player of her sacred burningvideo games, Princess Malini defies her a conscientious student, a slightly annoying brother and refuses to step on to the pyrea supportive friend. She But most of all, he is immediately sent to be imprisoned on the Hirana: an ancient temple that was once filled with a community of people who got powers from the mysterious deathless watersaspiring writer. But now the temple English is nothing more than an overgrownhis favourite lesson at his school, Marlowe Park, decaying ruinand one at which he excels. One dayThis hasn't gone unnoticed by his headteacher, Malini witnesses Mrs Howarth, and she has suggested to Will and his mum that he spends a girl kill someone with magic. Instead couple of reporting her for such afternoons a week at a gruesome crimedifferent school, Malini claims that the girl saved her from an attacker and begs for the girl to become her own personal maidservantStation Road, where his ability might be better extended.|isbn=0356515648
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=B088YWF5BC1009473085|title=The Lies We TellConservative Effect 2010 - 2024|author=Jane CorryAnthony Seldon and Tom Egerton (Editors)|rating=45|genre=ThrillersPolitics and Society|summary=Sarah Wallace said that she grew up on Sometimes it's simpler to explain a council estate in Kent book by describing what it ''isn't'' and that she had two brothers and two sistersapplies to ''The Conservative Effect: 2010-2024 - 14 Wasted Years?''. It seemed to have been a lovingIf you're looking for an easy read which will deliver the inside story about what ''really'' happened on certain occasions, stable familythen this isn't the book for you. When we first meet herIf that's what you're looking for, she canI don't sleep because her sonthink Anthony Seldon's book, Freddie{{amazonurl|isbn=B0BH7SKG2S|title=Johnson at 10}}, can be bettered for those tumultuous years. It's a compelling read and should be compulsory for anyone whothinks Johnson should return to politics. 's nearly sixteen, hasn't come home by the time he sort of half-promised heThe Conservative Effect''d be in byis an entirely different beast. Her husband, Tom, is fast asleep: theyIt're moving house s the seventh book in a series which looks at the morning but he's still going to be going to work impact a government has made and he needs his sleepco-editor Sir Anthony Seldon regards this as the most important. He wakes, though, This book follows the well-established format: a series of experts from various fields review the state of the nation when Freddie does come the coalition took over in 2010, the changes that occurred and overhears him tell his mother that he's killed someonethe situation in 2024.
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{{Frontpage
|author=Joseph KnoxJenny Valentine|title=True Crime StoryUs in the Before and After|rating=45|genre=ThrillersTeens|summary= Joseph KnoxElk and Mab are best friends, known for his series surrounding Detective Aidan Waitsor more than that even, has created their friendship is a once in a new genre with his latest novel, "True Crime Story"lifetime connection. The story follows They meet as children one day on a trip out but unfortunately they don't get each other's contact details at the disappearance of Zoe Nolan from her university halls of residencetime. Split into four parts But then chance brings them back together, the reader is taken through the life and disappearance of Zoe through the eyes of her twin sisterthey are inseparable. Something has happened though, other familysomething terrible and tragic, friends and professionals, such as the police. The various accounts help the reader get to know Zoenow they must work through their grief, or at least the Zoe she presented to others. However, the twists and turns at the end of each chapter leave you shockedtheir friendship, confused and unsure of what is true or fabricatedtogether. Whose accounts can we trust?|isbn=08575277031471196585
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Justine Avery and Naday Meldova1787333175|title=No, No, No!|rating=4|genre=For Sharing|summary=They say the best picture books are the simplest ones. And nothing could You Don't Have to be truer of this latest from Justine Avery, a Bookbag favourite. ''No, No, No!'' is based around the simplest text imaginable. ''No, no, no! Okay, okay. Yes, you may.'' That's it! But, like all the best picture books, this tiny snippet of text is a veritable tardis - so much bigger on the inside that it appears on the outside.|isbn=1638820457}}{{FrontpageMad to Work Here|author=Monica Connell|title=Against a Peacock SkyBenji Waterhouse
|rating=5
|genre=TravelPopular Science|summary= Monica Connell went I was tempted to Nepal read ''You Don't Have to do the fieldwork for her Ph.D. in social anthropology. I think it be Mad to Work Here'' after enjoying Adam Kay's first book {{amazonurl|isbn=1509858636|title=This is important Going to know that. She went on Hurt}}, a grant-supported tripglorious mixture of insight into the workings of the NHS, with a relatively specific objectivehumour and autobiography. She wasn ''You Don't a hippy wanderer looking for Shangri-laHave to be Mad. She wasn't a mere tourist passing through. She went with a fundamental aim of learning about these people and how they lived. She also went, presumably, with '' promised the academic discipline of how same elements but moved from physical problems to find these things out, how to organise them in her mind, how to "understand" them in mental illness and the context work of her own paradigms, and how a psychiatrist. I did wonder whether it was acceptable to keep enough notes and files and photos to help her create some greater sense of be looking for humour in this setting but the experience after the event. Fortunately, she also went with laughter is directed at a sense of open-ness and curiosity and situation rather than a willingness to muck-in, to break her own rules person and to truly connect it is always delivered with the people of the village where she hauled upempathy and understanding.|isbn=1780600429
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1409181669Mariana Enriquez|title=The Maidens|author=Alex MichaelidesA Sunny Place for Shady People
|rating=5
|genre=CrimeShort Stories|summary=Mariana was convinced Enriquez writes horror that Professor Edward Fosca had committed two murders and looked likely to get away with them both. She needed to think carefully about what she knew and decide how she should proceed. Everything - or so she thought - had begun with the death of Tara Hampton on the Paradise nature reserve in Cambridge. She'd been brutally stabbed and Mariana's nieceis disturbingly real, Zoe, had telephoned achieving this uncanny familiarity by basing her in distress. Tara had been paranormal plots on gritty realities: her best friend and she was struggling settings include an abandoned field full of disused refrigerators due to cope. Mariana wasn't ''entirely'' happy about having to go to Cambridgean urban planning mishap, but she caught the first fast train from King's Cross. Mariana an overcrowded homeless shelter and Zoe were close and had been made a crime-ridden neighbourhood where safety meetings are routine - all the more within Argentina. The circumstances of her characters are so by plausible that the death of Mariana's husband, Sebastian, in supernatural or otherworldly horror which seeps into these spaces adopts a swimming accident on Naxos some fourteen months earlier. Zoe had been their surrogate daughter after the death of Zoe's mother and Mariana's sister, Elizasimilarly tangible texture.|isbn=1803511230
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Maisie Chan1529934753|title=Danny Chung Does Not Do MathsThe Protest|author=Rob Rinder
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=Danny is eleven years oldFor a little while, and what he really, really loves to do is draw. He creates fantastical comicsit looked as though Sir Max Bruce, whilst his best friend Ravi adds the words. Dannycountry's dadmost famous living artist, however, wants Danny was not going to concentrate on show up for the opening of his mathsretrospective at the Royal Academy. Still, and forget about he arrived in the drawingnick of time, because he says nobody can make a living from drawing! At least Danny has complete with his own roomtwo wives and six children, where he can draw in secret and in peaceone of whom filmed what happened. But then one day his parents tell him they have a surprise for himBeing an influencer, and this surprise turns out you tend to be his grandmother who has come over from China to live with themdo things like that, and who will not only be sharing Danny's bedroom but she will also be sleeping on it was fortunate that there was a record of the top bunk of his bunk bed! protest. Danny is horrified! His Nai Nai (grandmother) speaks no EnglishLexi Williams, an intern at the RA, grabbed a spray can of blue paint from under a chair and Danny finds himself forced into being her babysitterproceeded to spray Bruce in the face, and showing her around whilst shouting ''Stop the townWar''. Poor DannyIt seemed to be part of an ongoing series of 'blue-face' attacks, stuck on a maths project, frustrated but this was different. The can had been laced with his bedroom situationcyanide, and then he even has a falling out with RaviSir Max Bruce was dead...how on earth will things ever get better?!|isbn=180078001X
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Terry MilesAriel Saramandi|title=RabbitsPortrait of an Island on Fire
|rating=4.5
|genre=Science FictionPolitics and Society|summary=Welcome to the world In this powerful collection of The Game. Or should that be the gameessays, for while it ought to be capitalised to high heaven, it never leaves lower case throughout this book. It's also called Rabbits, although only as a slangy term for it – as far as anyone knows, it has no official title, no official source, no hard and fast structure, and Saramandi seeks to intradermally dissect the average person no obvious entry point. A bit like the game sociopolitical fabric of life then. YesMauritius, this is tunneling deep into the game of wounds left by colonialism and slavery to expose how these legacies still shape modern life for a certain tribe of people – the fan of the conspiracy, the computer game, the hack from the darkest of webs. People like our hero, K, named like that in Saramandi describes the least Kafkaesque manner possible. K and his bezzies are trying to be historians of the gamecountry at one stage as ''rotting'', and have studied amongst many things a blunt yet apt metaphor for the most unique of high score boards, for systemic decay brought about by the lists malignant forces of who has successfully won the game are in the most peculiar places, and are still very short. However this time it's different. This time the game seems the most dangerousracism, nay lethalpatriarchy, the most broken it's ever been – morally environmental degradation and otherwisegovernmental dysfunction. Unfortunately for K, Each essay in trying to sort out what the game is doing, if it's even being played, and how his loved ones might be kept safethis collection serves as a kind of diagnostic, he is only to find out that charting the line between observing and learning about various diseases afflicting the game, and playing it, is a very thin one indeed..island state.|isbn=15290169321804271616
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|author=C J CareyPekka Harju-Autti|title=WidowlandLoveVortex and the Drakor's Curse
|rating=4
|genre=General FictionFantasy|summary=It's April 1953, and Adolf Hitler's schedule includes going to Moscow to attend the state funeral of Joseph Stalin then within weeks coming to Londoneighteenth century, parading around a bit, time of discovery and watching over the sanctioned return to the throne of Edward VIII with his wifeBritain is expanding its foreign trade. Captain Julius Hawthorne, Queen Wallis. For yesan experienced Scottish sea captain, Britain caved in the lead-up is sent to the World War Two that certainly didn't happen as we know it, and we are now a protectorate – well, we share enough of the same blood as the Germanic peoples on ''the mainland''Andaman Islands in his endeavour. But this is most certainly a different BritainAlong with his son, for Nazi-styled phrenologyPeter, and ideas of female purposetheir cat, has put all of that gender into a caste systemMichi, ranging from high-brow office bigwigs to the drudges, and beyond those, right they set off on down a perilous voyage to the childless, the husbandless these faraway lands. The islands are beautiful and the widows. Female literacy is actively discouraged. And stunning in this puritanical existence, our heroine, Rose Ransom, is employed with the task of bowdlerising classical literature to take all encouragement for female emancipation out of it – after all, not every book can be banned, and not every story excised immediately from British civilisation, their scenery and so they just get a hefty tweak towards the party line before theyislanders're stamped ready for reprint. That is her jobleader, at leastAarav, until the first emerging signs of female protest come is keen to light, with their potential to spoil Hitler's visitestablish good relations.|isbn=152941198XB0DS1VGHH3
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|author=Louise BeechHelene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)|title=This Is How We Are HumanLili is Crying|rating=4.5|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Veronica First published in 1953 in French, this novel is a devoted single mother to her sontimeless text which wrenches the hearts of its readers just as Bessette wrenches words and sentences from their proper position on the page and positions them elsewhere, disjointed, Sebastian - but she can't give him everything he wantstruncated. Sebastian has decided that it's time for him to have sex. But as an autistic 20 year-oldLike the lives of her characters, that's easier said than done. And it's starting to cause them both problemsthey are often left tragically incomplete. |isbn=19131937131804271675
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|isbnauthor=B093VPBL5LTom Percival|title=Cape Henry House|author=Jolly Walker BittickThe Wrong Shoes|rating=45|genre=General FictionConfident Readers|summary=Meet BosnerWill's life is difficult, or, to give him his full title, Petty Officer Third Class Bosnerin a multitude of ways. We never really find out if He is bullied because he has a first name: there's merely a hint that the wrong shoes', he had has the nickname wrong shoes because his dad can'Secretaryt work and doesn' t have enough money for even the most basic of things like food, and his dad can't work because he lost his job at one pointthe college, was working a cash-in-hand job on a building site and had an accident. HeThrow into that mix the fact that his mum and dad are separated, and Will's simply Bosner to one and alllife seems bleak in every direction. When we first encounter him And yet, he's exploring his memories still has a tiny amount of hope. He is good at art, and clings to the moments of 2008 joy when he was a greaser on helicopters (or helosis drawing, as they were called) at that feel like a naval establishment. The hours could be long and he was often working nights but light at the age end of twenty-onea long, there was always a way to work some fun (think drinking and eating) into his daydark tunnel.|isbn=1398527122
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|author=Hannah WhittenSylvie Cathrall|title=For A Letter to the WolfLuminous Deep
|rating=5
|genre=FantasyScience Fiction|summary=In Red's family, the first daughter becomes queen, and the second daughter becomes There are few greater joys than a sacrifice. To Red's misfortune, she is the second daughter. Sent alone into the woods with nothing but the cape on her back, Red knows what book which lives up to expect: within the woods is a wolf, and he compelling premise. And this is the one who will decide the fate of their kingdom. If she is not a worthy sacrifice, the monsters he keeps contained to the woods will be released, and the fabled kings he keeps hostage will never be returned—or so the stories go. But when Red enters the woods, expecting nothing more than to be killed within the hour, she finds that the legends are lies. The wolf is not a monster—he's a manthem.|isbn=03565163690356522776
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|authorisbn=M G Leonard1786482126|title=TwitchThe Janus Stone (Dr Ruth Galloway)|author=Elly Griffiths|rating=4.5|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=Twitch is Builders were demolishing an old house in Norwich - the site was going to hold seventy-five 'luxury' apartments - when they discovered the bones of a child beneath a boy who loves birdsdoorway. There was no skull. He keeps pigeons at homeWas this a ritual killing or murder? Inevitably, and chickens, and even has swallows nesting in his bedroom! His time spent watching and helping birds is easy compared to that of his time in schoolDr Ruth Galloway finds herself working with DCI Harry Nelson. But things are about to change for Twitch in all aspects of his life It's difficult as there is a dangerous bank robber on the runRuth knows, and itbut Nelson doesn's possible t, that the missing bank haul she is hidden somewhere in Aves Wood, the place where Twitch has pregnant with his secret hide and that he knows like child as a result of the back of his hand! one night they spent together some three months ago. Can Twitch solve the mysteryHer condition will be obvious before long, and find the missing millions?|isbn=1406389374not least because Ruth is prone to sudden bouts of sickness.
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|isbnauthor=1838853804Guadalupe Nettel and Rosalind Harvey (Translator)|title=The Cursed Girls|author=Caro RamsayAccidentals|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersShort Stories|summary=Megan Melvick's earliest memory is This collection was truly enchanting in all senses of her fourth birthdaythe word: she followed her grandfather down to the pondspellbinding with its fantastical, only to find that he'd hanged himself. Twenty years later she's back home again magical elements and this time the occasion is no less sad. She's there to say her final farewells to her sister, Melissa, who is dying charming in its gentle portrayal of anorexianature and human relationships. As she dies, Melissa whispers 'sorry' to Megan but what did she mean? There were lots of things, minor Guadalupe Nettel writes intelligently and major crueltiesprecisely, for which Melissa might have been sorry - or was it even her stories structured by a question? Was she asking if Megan was sorry for sleeping with Melissa's husband, Jago, on their wedding day? The Melvicks might seem wisdom that appears to want to have everything - Ivan Melvick was Lord Lieutenant of teach us something about the County and money was never in short supply - but there did seem to be a curseworld. In addition to Melissa's health problems, Megan was deaf and their mother, Beth, had left suddenly three years before. Would she come back for her elder daughter's funeral?|isbn=1804271470
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|isbn=02414001200008551375|title=The Girl Who DiedWhen Shadows Fall (D S Max Craigie)|author=Ragnar Jonasson and Victoria CribbNeil Lancaster|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=Una Leanne Wilson's body was not thriving in Reykjavik: it was some years since her beloved father had committed suicide without leaving any explanation and since then she'd given up her medical studies and retrained as found at the bottom of a Scottish mountain, seemingly the result of a teachertragic accident. She was thirty years old and money was tight'd looked so happy, too, when she posted her intentions on Facebook. Her friendfriends were relieved as she was just out of an unpleasant relationship, Sara, showed but it looked like she was living her an advert for a job best life now. Then it emerged that five other women had died in similar circumstances in Skalar on the Langanes Peninsulalast year. There All were experienced climbers, properly equipped for what they were only ten doing and sensible people in . None of the village but 'what a teacher was required for two childrenstupid thing to do' explanations applied. They were all alone when they died: DS Max Craigie is certain there's a salary would be paid and accommodation provided. Una was killer on the only applicant and the job meant that she could let her flat in Reykjavik and, hopefully, save some money over the winter which her contract coveredloose.
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