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==The Best New Books==
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=13987069061787333175|title=The LostYou Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here|author=Benji Waterhouse|rating=5|genre=Popular Science|summary=I was tempted to read ''You Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here'' after enjoying Adam Kay's first book {{amazonurl|isbn=1509858636|title=This is Going to Hurt}}, a glorious mixture of insight into the workings of the NHS, humour and autobiography. ''You Don't Have to be Mad...'' promised the same elements but moved from physical problems to mental illness and the work of a psychiatrist. 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 person and it is always delivered with empathy and understanding. }}{{Frontpage|author=Simon BeckettMaria Stepanova and Sasha Dugdale (Translator)|title=The Disappearing Act
|rating=4
|genre=CrimeLiterary Fiction|summary=The disappearance Despite her anonymisation of Metropolitan police firearms officerplace names and people, Jonah ColleyStepanova's young son, Theo, just about finished him, particularly as he blamed himself message in this short work of autofiction is unmistakable. A novelist named M travels from B (ostensibly Berlin) to the town of F for what had happeneda literary festival she is to be a guest speaker at. He'd fallen asleep in the park whilst Theo was playing Detoured by erratic train schedules and when he wokenudged by forces beyond her control, Theo had gone. It cost him his marriage and his home. Ten years later he's largely come through it and he's out with his team when he gets her journey slowly bends toward a phone call from DS Gavin McKinneytraveling circus. Gavin used Swept up in this series of events, M eventually offers to be his best friend but it's step in for a long time since they've spokencircus performer who has unexpectedly left the show. He's obviously in some difficulty now - Jonah can hear it in his voice - The train functions as a motif of transience and impermanence, while the circus embodies the reshaping of identity and he asks Jonah to meet him a retreat into fantasy, an impulse that lies at Slaughter Quay. ''There's no one else I can trust'', he saysthe very heart of the novel form itself.|isbn=1804272329
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Amanda MasonB0GFQ81YQK|title=The Hiding PlaceHow the Sky and the Earth Made People: From the Oral Stories of Malagasy Elders|author=Stephanie Zabriskie|rating=34.5|genre=HorrorChildren's Non-Fiction|summary=Needing an escape from their turbulent lifeBefore people came and joined the animals, Nell Galilee takes her husband there was only the sky and the earth. Everything was quiet until the earth and stepdaughter the sky began to tal to Whitbyeach other. First, the earth created bodies. And then, where they rent a cliffside holiday cottage by the name of Elder Housesky breathed life into them. She hopes that it will be These were the perfect place first humans and they belonged to sort things outboth earth and sky. But there's something not quite right about Elder HouseAnd so people lived between sky and soil and they planted and learned and remembered, especially how they came to be. The atmosphere is unsettling When they grew old and off – died, their bodies returned to the earth and before long Nell starts their life returned to suspect the sky. And that she is why the earth and her family aren't alone there…|isbn=1838771964}} {{Frontpage|author=Paul Cleave|title=The Quiet People|rating=5|genre=Crime|summary= I am not a fan of "the Prologue". Most books sky are the worse for themboth revered. In this case I might make an exceptionOnly together can they create human beings. We start with Luca Pittman who And that is in a hurry. He has why people must pay attention to hurry because he has children that he should not have, and when he hurriescare for, when he bundles things into the back of his car and tries to run and then hears sirens behind him, which he should not hear because this is New Zealand and that is not how they do things there, he takes a risk. It ends badlyboth.|isbn=1913193942
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Will CarverB0GHPMNF6P|title=Psychopaths AnonymousThe Zookeeper's Dragon: A Magical Modern Fantasy Tale for Grown-Ups|author=Carolyn Mathews|rating=34.5|genre=ThrillersFantasy|summary=Maeve is a high functioning alcoholicWhen Phil's father unexpectedly dies, drinking continuously and also, curiously, addicted he quits his Canary Wharf finance job to attending numerous AA groups. She is also a self-acknowledged psychopath. Whilst analysing and critiquing take over the AA steps she is mainly using running of the groups to find targets..family's farm zoo.targets for sexual encounters, targets to feed her desire to hear of peopleHe's miserynot expecting much excitement, until he receives an unidentified egg that his new-age stoner uncle Edgar found in a cave in New Zealand, and targets for her violent behavioursuddenly life is no longer quite what it seems. Yet she also seems to be searching for others who think as she doesThen the egg hatches into neither a reptile nor a bird, but a dragon! Now he, Edgar, his mother Abi, and when shethe zoo's unable part-time café waitress Pearl have to find like-minded people in any raise this little bundle of the groups she decides to set up her ownscales and joy, hoping despite having no idea how to encounter others who share similar obsessions, actually raise dragons and thus Psychopaths Anonymous is bornnot being able to tell anyone about it.|isbn=1913193756But this tiny little dragon may show them love and connection in ways they had never before imagined…
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1529418100Stephanie Zabriskie|title=Bruno's Challenge and Other Dordogne Tales|author=Martin WalkerHow Maasai Women Spoke to Cows: From the Oral Stories of Maasai Elders|rating=45|genre=Short StoriesChildren's Non-Fiction|summary=I'm not usually 'How Maasai Women Spoke to Cows is a fan of short stories - I find it all too easy to put children’s nonfiction book drawn from the book down between stories and forget to pick it up again - but I am a fan oral traditions of Martin Walker's [[Martin Walker's Commissar Bruno Courreges Mysteries Maasai elders in Chronological Order|Bruno Courreges Mysteries]] so the temptation to read Ngorongoro, Tanzania.''Bruno's Challenge'' was hard The Maasai are a cattle-herding people and this story writes down its oral tradition explaining how they came to resist be so. Cattle are status and I'm rather glad that I didnwealth in Maasai culture but this doesn't even try. For those new to tell the whole story of the seriesintimate and symbiotic connection its people, there's an excellent introduction that will tell you all you need to know about who's who and especially its women, have with their cows and for the natural world. The oral tradition retelling the background to why Bruno is in St Denismany conversations Maasai women have had with their cows, does.|isbn=B0G9WTGY6J
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=B09GJW49GFLivi Michael|title=Buried Lies (Gaby Darin Book 5)|author=Jenny O'BrienElizabeth and Ruth|rating=43.5|genre=CrimeHistorical Fiction|summary=Hannah Thomas was having her first night away from her son. Hunter had diabetes ''Elizabeth and this was controlled by Ruth'' is a pump attached to his stomachwork of historical fiction wrought from the life of the Victorian author Elizabeth Gaskell, so best known for her over-protectiveness was understandablefirst novel Mary Barton (1848), but her fiance, Ian, was pestering her to get married and she thought it would be a good idea for him to find out what parenting was radical critique of the treatment of the working class published under a pseudonym. The ''reallyRuth'' like. Her friend, Milly, had arranged to take from Livi Michael's title appears in her boyfriendnovel as Pasley, Liam, for a night young Irish prostitute who was abandoned as a child and finds herself in Manchester's New Bailey Prison after a posh hotel but then he dumped her difficult and unjust hand at life. Set in Manchester between 1839 and she couldn't get 1842, the novel examines the harsh conditions endured by the money back, so Hannah was offered Victorian working poor and interrogates the opportunity extent to go in his place. She would return home to find Ian dead and five-year-old Hunter missingwhich the wealthy (including Gaskell herself) were responsible for addressing these injustices.|isbn=1784633682
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=B09GV3WS1QMakenna Goodman|title=Without a Trace|author=Jane BettanyHelen of Nowhere|rating=4.5|genre=CrimeLiterary Fiction|summary=Life hadn't been easy for Ruth Prendergast: she'd just come through It could be argued that the pervading theme of this book is malaise - a divorce and hard-to-place feeling that something in your life is not quite right now it was raining hard. All she wanted was to get back to her new home The protagonist, a disgraced professor on the brink of losing both his career and settle down for his relationship, embodies this feeling. However, Goodman counteracts his discomfort with a quiet eveningforce which is seductive, radical and unnerving: Helen. The connection between Helen and the protagonist is indirect yet intimate. It wasnAs the former owner of the countryside house he't going to be though: when she went into her bedroom she found s considering, Helen represents a dead man on volta in his life, her bed with a knife in past tied to his chestpotential fresh start. SheThe realtor who shows the protagonist around the house shares stories about Helen, and describes her as ''an entity that is pure consciousness, beyond form''d no idea who he was.Although she lives in an assisted living facility now, Helen has powers beyond comprehension which the reader gets the sense are not altogether innocuous.|isbn=1804272205
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=1838774823B0GCB1MQ7D|title=Her Majesty the Queen Investigates: A Three Dog ProblemWhy My Mother Went Away|author=S J BennettAlan Kennedy
|rating=5
|genre=CrimeAutobiography|summary=ItI have often wondered how prominent people came to hold their positions. With 'celebrities', there's 2016 and frequently a book they might or might not have written, which might or might not tell the Queentrue story. It's Private Secretarynot often that you find a book that gives the full backstory, Sir Simon Holcroft has decided that too much good claret and too little exercise is putting rarely do you discover a strain on his waistband. Swimming, he decides, memoir where the telling is the way to so perfect that you'll go back and he can use reread paragraphs and sentences, just for the pleasure the Buckingham Palace pool which words give. ''Why My Mother Went Away'' is how he came to be there early one morning and discovered of those rare exceptions. It's the body story of Cynthia Harris how a boy from the Midlands, born at the side beginning of the poolSecond World War, would become a Professor of Psychology at Dundee University. There In fact, he was broken glass - a crystal tumbler, by one of the look at it - probably one founders of the young royals being careless - and it looked as though Mrs Harris had slipped and cut herself so badly that she had bled out. Still, it was a shock for Sir Simondepartment.
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=057136358XJeremy Cooper|title=April in Spain|author=John BanvilleDiscord|rating=3.5|genre=Crime (Historical)Literary Fiction|summary=Terry Tice was Discord: a hitmanlack of agreement or harmony (as between persons, although he didn't think things, or ideas) The principal example of himself in those terms. He saw what he did discord within the novel, as ''a matter with most instances of making things tidy''discord, is easily located. I couldn't resist The two protagonists of the thought that he was novel, Rebekah Rosen and Evie Bennet, are as different as they come. Rebekah is an extreme version of Marie Kondo. He enjoyed his jobuptight, something which occurred traditional and no-nonsense composer close to him when he was in Burma with the army ''where he got the chance to kill retirement, while Evie is a lot force of nature, bounding onto the little yellow fellows musical scene as a precocious saxophonist, oozing with talent and had a fine old time''charm. He was spending a lot of time with Percy Antrobus - who couldnThe two, predictably, don't understand why Terry didnalways see eye to eye, their approaches different and Evie't know the purpose of a swizzle stick - surely he wouldn't drink champagne s progressive views at odds with bubbles in the ''morning''? It was after PercyRebekah's death that he saw conservative leaning. However, something connects them beyond just their musical project: a sort of fragile alliance formed within the benefits of taking up a job in Spainclamour.|isbn=1804272264
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{{Frontpage
|author=Dave Letterfly KnodererTom Percival|title=Speedy: Hurled Through HavocThe Wrong Shoes|rating=45|genre=AutobiographyConfident Readers|summary=How to summarise the Will's life of Dave Letterfly Knodererv is difficult, in a pithy sentence to kick off a review multitude of ways. He is bullied because he has 'the wrong shoes', he has the wrong shoes because his memoir? Do you knowdad can't work and doesn't have enough money for even the most basic of things like food, I really donand his dad can't think I can. Dave is an author work because he lost his job at the college, was working a cash-in-hand job on a building site and had an artistaccident. An inspirational speaker Throw into that mix the fact that his mum and a professional horsemandad are separated, and Will's life seems bleak in every direction. And yet, he still has a recovering alcoholictiny amount of hope. The son He is good at art, and clings to the moments of a Lutheran ministerjoy when he is drawing, he's struggled with that feel like a controlling father, run away to join light at the circus (not end of a metaphor)long, trained horses, painted caravans, designed and painted theatre sets, and hit rock bottom when the bottle took overdark tunnel.|isbn=B0965V3LLN1398527122
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{{Frontpage
|author=Tade ThompsonEdward W Said|title=Far From Representations of the Light of HeavenIntellectual
|rating=4.5
|genre=Science FictionPolitics and Society|summary=Michelle Edward Said'Shells ' Campion is fulfilling her lifelong dream 'Representations of going to space. As first officer aboard the sleeper ship Ragtime, bound for the world Intellectual'' is less a strict theory of Bloodroot, she will essentially be what intellectuals are and more a babysitter passionate argument for the ship's AI captainwhat they should be. However, when she wakes up at Said clearly rejects the end comfortable image of her trip to find dozens of her passengers butchered and the Ragtime's AI almost non-responsive, she begins intellectual as a detached expert speaking only to realise that her first mission won't be going as smoothly as she hoped it wouldother specialists. Down on BloodrootInstead, disgraced investigator Rasheed Fin and his android partner Salvo are sent up to discover exactly what went wrong he insists on the Ragtime. Meanwhile, former astronaut and friend of Shell's father Lawrence Biz takes intellectual as a shuttle to Bloodrootpublic figure, half-alien daughter in towoften awkward, to see why the Ragtime has gone quietabrasive, leaving behind the politicking and bureaucracy of Space Station Lagosunpopular, who speaks truth to power even when it is inconvenient or risky. What the five of them discover on the Ragtime has ramifications not just for Bloodroot, but potentially the entirety of human space…|isbn=03565143231804272248
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{{Frontpage
|author=Rob KeeleySylvie Cathrall|title= Carrots Don’t Grow On Trees!A Letter to the Luminous Deep|rating= 45|genre=For SharingScience Fiction|summary= Lily loves eating fruit and vegetables. She likes carrots, broccoli, cabbage and aubergines. When her friends at school turn There are few greater joys than a book which lives up their noses, Lily is keen to explain how good they are for you and how nice to eata compelling premise. One day, poor Lily gets tricked by Jordan, who tells her that carrots grow on trees. Infuriated, Lily checks with the teacher, who explains that fruits grow on trees and vegetables, like carrots, grow in the ground. Jordan says, "I did try to tell her, Miss!" and everyone laughs at poor LilyAnd this is one of them.|isbn= B09HHN541V0356522776
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=178607981X1786482126|title=Bad ApplesThe Janus Stone (Dr Ruth Galloway)|author=Will DeanElly Griffiths
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=Tuva Moodyson Builders were demolishing an old house in Norwich - the site was driving up a foggy hillside towards Visberg going to hold seventy-five 'luxury' apartments - when she they discovered an Audi 4x4 parked at the side bones of the roada child beneath a doorway. Wondering if someone needed help she got out of the car - and heard the screams from deep inside the forestThere was no skull. Determining the direction of Was this a sound isnritual killing or murder? Inevitably, Dr Ruth Galloway finds herself working with DCI Harry Nelson. It's difficult as Ruth knows, but Nelson doesn't easy when you need hearing aids and dampness , that she is causing interference but Tuva made her way to where pregnant with his child as a woman was holding her coat over result of the body of a manone night they spent together some three months ago. He'd been decapitated. He was Arne Gustav PerssonHer condition will be obvious before long, a resident not least because Ruth is prone to sudden bouts of Visbergsickness.
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Lilja Sigurdadottir0008551375|title=Cold As HellWhen Shadows Fall (D S Max Craigie)|author=Neil Lancaster|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary= In a red suitcase as Leanne Wilson's body was found at the bottom of a fissure in a lava fieldScottish mountain, there is seemingly the result of a bodytragic accident. And the man who has put She'd looked so happy, too, when she posted her there has intentions on Facebook. Her friends were relieved as she was just discovered out of an unpleasant relationship, but it looked like she was living her best life now. Then it emerged that he five other women had died in similar circumstances in the last year. All were experienced climbers, properly equipped for what they were doing and sensible people. None of the 'what a stupid thing to do' explanations applied. They were all alone when they died: DS Max Craigie is capable of killingcertain there's a killer on the loose.|isbn=1913193888
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{{Frontpage
|author=Lucy HopePaul B Preciado|title=FledglingDysphoria Mundi
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersPolitics and Society|summary=Bavaria''It is never too late to embrace the revolutionary optimism of childhood'' Through this hybrid text, 1900. Our scene is a most peculiar hilltop houseconsisting of arias, built bit by bit over the decadesletters, essays and now looking imperiously down on the village autofiction, Preciado expresses his own hybrid self, and woods below. It's brings forth a new sensorium as an eccentric house, offering to host eccentricsthe new generation, so the library shelving system a new feeling mechanism in which detachment is not as we'd know considered a sign of political apathy. Rather, itis the proportional, valid response to ''the roof is retractable, there is a steam-powered, hand-operated lift system cut epistemological and political crack we are living through it, and so on. At the moment it houses an ex-soldier with PTSD tension between emancipatory forces and a passion for conservative resistances that characterize our present'' which Preciado calls ''dysphoria mundi''. The whole text is framed against the long-standing family hobby backdrop of taxidermy, a woman who does nothing but quibble, kvetch and sing opera loudly, and the dying grandma to our heroine, Cassie, a young lass who Covid-19 pandemic as that which has to do all the maintenance of catalysed this bizarre machine-like abode. Oh but it's also going revolution, when dysphoria began to house someone emerge on a global scale, or something else, when crashing through Cassieas ''pangea covidica''s bedroom window one stormy day is a cherub. And if you think such Rather than taking this extreme dysphoria as a heavenly arrival is going sign of weakness, or mistaking detachment or withdrawal for political paralysis, Preciado urges his readers to be a completely great and wonderful thing, think again..''use dysphoria as your revolutionary platform''.|isbn=183994188X1804271454
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1846276772Samantha Harvey|title=The End of Bias: How We Change Our Minds|author=Jessica NordellOrbital
|rating=4.5
|genre=Politics and SocietyGeneral Fiction|summary=Anyone who is not an ableIn 2024, white man understands bias in that they may no longer even recognise Samantha Harvey won the extent to which they suffer from it: itBooker Prize for ''Orbital''s simply , a compact yet profound work that unfolds over a part single day in the lives of everyday life. White men will always come first. The able will come before the disabled. Jobs, promotions, higher salaries are the preserve a group of astronauts aboard the white manInternational Space Station. Even when those who wouldn't pass the medical become Through a part of an organisation it's rare that their views are heard, narrative lens that their concerns are acknowledged. It's personally appalling and degrading for the individuals on the receiving end of mirrors the bias but itastronauts's not just the individuals who are negatively impactedorbital perspective, Harvey invites readers to see our planet in a wholly new light.|isbn=1529922933
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Teresa Driscoll295967572X|title=Her Perfect FamilyPale Pieces|author=G M Stevens
|rating=5
|genre=ThrillersLiterary Fiction|summary=The novel begins by introducing you Our unnamed narrator is about to Gemma, who at first instance appears to be your average student, faced begin a train journey with his companion Django. Where they're going and what the familiar horrifying realisation, at the eleventh hourpurpose of this journey is, that her graduation outfit is all wronguncertain. Suddenly, Gemma receives an eerie message stating Django found the tickets ''He is not who he says he is…on the floor somewhere'', paving and has persuaded our narrator to accompany him. Why not? Not much else is clear either - but we are probably in the way for past as the sinister tone that remains throughout pair travel to the novel. In a twist of events, station by coach and after a change of outfit, Gemma is shot in the midst of her graduation ceremony. With Gemma then in a coma, what follows train is a complex whodunit with a list of suspects that continues to grow the further you readsteam locomotive.|isbn=1542028752
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=84092901030008551324|title=If OnlyThe Devil You Know (D S Max Craigie)|author=Matthew TreeNeil Lancaster
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary FictionCrime|summary=Twenty-one-year-old Malcolm Lowry had been sent abroad by his father, cotton-broker AO Lowry: It's 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 prison and he asked his accountant, Mr Patrick, 's prepared to ensure that tell the young man got on board police where the boat body of a missing person is buried and thereafter Patrick who was to send him a monthly allowanceresponsible for her death. Patrick sent the money regularly This person, he promises, is someone big and a correspondence - of sorts - sprang up between it will be worth the two although we hear more about police doing what Lowry has to say than Patrickhe wants. It wasn't that Lowry senior didn't care for his son, it was that And what he didn't care wants is to have him in this country where he might be a danger transferred to an open prison to serve the remainder of his wife sentence and other childrento get an early parole date. Not much to ask, is it? The alcohol problem was obvious new Deputy Police Constable doesn't think so and she's even before Patrick managed prepared to get do the young man on his wayother thing that Hardie demanded - make certain that DS Max Craigie and anyone who works with him is kept well away from what's happening.
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=1035043092|title=Antti Tuomainen and David Hackston The Killing Stones (translatorJimmy Perez)|titleauthor=The Rabbit FactorAnn Cleeves|rating=3.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=Meet Henri. With I can't have been the only person who was sad when Inspector Jimmy Perez [[Wild Fire (Shetland, Book 8) by Ann Cleeves|left Shetland]] to start a mind so much more focused new life on maths and calculations than it is other human beings, heOrkney. It's perfect for his job in the insurance company – until they decide been seven years since we heard from him, but he's not a team-membernow living with Willow Reeves and their young son, that they'd prefer everyone to be all open-planJames, holistic and keen on stupid-as workshopping. This is when he finds his brother has diedwell as Cassie, having a heart attack while busy changing the daughter of his Volvoformer partner. Willow's radio channelalso his boss, and has left Henri everything. Unfortunately (or otherwise) that she 'everything' is just an adventure park, and nothing else. should''YouMeFun'' is so not what Henri wants to occupy his mindbe on maternity leave, but he perks up a little when he sees huge holes in the finances – it runs at body of a steady money-moving pacepopular islander, Archie Stout, despite some desultory staff ideasis found, but loans have been made out and in the amount vanishedaftermath of a storm, she can't resist getting involved. Fortunately (or otherwise) some people are quickly on the scene to explain that missing money – it He's d been turned into battered about the head with a Neolithic stone - one of a gambling debt that has also now pair - which had been inherited by Henri, and the activities of these guys are not conducive to getting stolen from a cheap life insurance plan.museum..|isbn=191319387X
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1471179311Thea Lenarduzzi|title=The Unheard|author=Nicci FrenchTower|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersLiterary Fiction|summary=Tess''How unctuous are the fats of another's life, a teacher and Jasonhow dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream''. In this compelling novel, a headmasterThea Lenarduzzi assumes the identity of T, have split up: she and Poppy have moved out the protagonist of this tale. Just as T's story is being told, the family home and Jason story of a second protagonist is now married to Emily. The separation was amicable - they had just drifted apart. They co-parent three-year-old Poppy who has her bedroom in what was unveiled: Annie, the daughter of a wealthy family home and another in the flat she shares with her mother19th century, who died of tuberculosis after being locked in a tower, captures T's imagination. It ''seemed'Annie' s fate is, above all, an enticing story to be working well until the day that Poppy came home with T. It is a menacing drawing of a woman falling from a tall building and story which she started swearingconsumes avariciously, using words she was unlikely to have heard both in either home. Her behaviour deteriorated and there were problems at nursery school. Tess turns to a therapist quest for helptruth and knowledge, then her doctor and finally the police but no one will take what she has to say seriouslyin service of myth, fable and fantasy. |isbn=1804271799
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1471196615Claire-Louise Bennett|title=Iced|author=Felix FrancisBig Kiss, Bye-Bye
|rating=4.5
|genre=ThrillersLiterary Fiction|summary=Miles Pussett used to be Everything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, is steeped in anguish and distortion. Even a kiss, usually a Steeplechase jockey but those days are past symbol of intimacy and he now gets his thrills from hurling head-first down the three-quarter-mile Cresta Runcloseness, occasionally reaching eighty miles an hourbecomes evidence of love lost. He was in St Moritz When the same weekend as White Turf - thatnarrator cries out internally, ''s high-class horseracing on the frozen lake come over here and against his better judgement he gets talked into helping with the saddling of the horses. Itkiss me,'s seven years since he put horseracing behind him and he swore that he'd never go back it is less an invitation than a desperate attempt to itconfirm her emotional numbness. But when he sees that something suspicious The imagined recipient of this plea is going onXavier, Miles can't help but look for answersher ex-partner, even when it puts him in dangera ghost she conjures to test her detachment.|isbn=1804271934
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=147228612X0008405026|title=The Late Train to Gipsy HillA Stranger in the Family (Maeve Kerrigan 11)|author=Alan JohnsonJane Casey|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersCrime|summary=We all know people like Gary Nelson, although we probably havenIt't taken much notice of thems sixteen years since nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her bed one summer night. They live quiet, uneventful lives She was never found and stay mostly under the radarinvestigation ground to a halt. In a city like LondonNow, her mother, Helena, that's quite easy - and even Gary's three flatmates largely ignore himher father are dead in their bed. The highlight of his day is watching a beautiful young woman apply her makeup as she goes to work on the train each morning: he'd love to ask her for Initially, it looks like a date straightforward murder/suicide but he doesnthere't have s something about the positioning of the couragebodies that makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and her boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. Then, on his homeward commute, Arina speaks What looked as though it was going to him be an open-and asks for his help-shut case is now a complex double murder. Before long he finds himself on Kerrigan is convinced that the run from mobstersexplanation lies in Rosalie's disappearance: others (such as Derwent's boss, Russian secret agents and the Metropolitan policeUna Burt) are less convinced.
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{{Frontpage
|author=Claire McGowanAnnie Ernaux and Alison L. Strayer (translator)|title=I Know YouThe Other Girl
|rating=4
|genre=ThrillersAutobiography|summary=''Then:'' Casey returns We were born from a walk with the baby, Carson, and comes across three bodies, almost a whole family taken downsame 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'Now: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' Rachel is out for a walk s process of reckoning with this giant absence in her dog, Brandylife, when an absence that she comes across a body in the woodshas always felt but often denied.|isbn=15420199741804271845
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1529148251Maxim Gorky and Bryan Karetnyk (translator)|title=Misfits: A Personal Manifesto|author=Michaela CoelReminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev|rating=3.5|genre=Politics and SocietyBiography|summary=''How am I able to be so transparent on paper about rape, malpractice and poverty, yet still compartmentalise? It's Biographies are often seen as though I were telling the truth whilst simultaneously running away from it.'' Before you start reading ''Misfits'' you need to be in a certain frame of mind. You're not going to read a book form of essays or a selflife-help book. You're going to read writing which was inspired by Michaela Coel's 2018 MacTaggart Lecture to professionals within the television industry at the Edinburgh TV Festival. You might offers less colour; it can be ''reading'' the book but you need to ''listen'' to the words seen as though you're in the lecture theatremore objective and less personal. The disjointedness will fade away I think that Gorky completely rejects this perspective, and you'll be carried on offers a cloud vibrant, subjective yet informed portrait of three of exquisite writinghis literary contemporaries.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0008433631|title=Next of Kin|author=Kia Abdullah|rating=5|genre=Thrillers|summary=It was In the sort first section of thing this book, Tolstoy complains to his friend Gorky that happened every day: ''you write not of real life as it is, although not but of what you yourself imagine it to Leila Syedbe. She'd never driven her nephew, Max, Whom would it help to school before but his fatherknow how I see this tower, Andrew Hansonthat sea, had rung her in a panicor that Tartar - why should it interest anyone? Of what use is it?''. He was supposed to Well, Maxim Gorky shows exactly what can be taking Max gained from a subjective account, giving us access to school but how he'd been called into work saw Tolstoy, Chekhov and the delay Andreyev in getting there could lead to financial losses. As the school was only five minutes out such privileged detail that one almost feels unworthy of Leila's way, could she drop him off? Of course, she could and a sleeping Max was duly strapped into the back of her car. On the way Leila took a phone call - there was panic at her work too, with a problem which could put a multi-million-pound contract at riskit.|isbn=1804271977
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|authorisbn= Justine Avery and Naday Meldova1529077745|title=Everybody Toots! The Dark Wives (Everybody Potties!D I Vera Stanhope)|rating=4|genre=For Sharing|summary= Toots, trumps, farts. Whatever your word for them, find us a child that doesn't find them irresistibly funny. Funny to talk about and joke about, that is. But horribly embarrassing if you let one go at the wrong time. In class, say, when everyone will hear it and everyone will laugh. At you. Justine Avery's latest entry in her ''Everybody Potties!'' series takes aim at any shame associated with tooting and gently and calmly, with the familiar humour attached, explains that tooting is perfectly normal. Everybody does it: ''Everybody Toots''!|isbn= B09C2RVJ2W}} {{Frontpage|isbn=1784165263|title=Invite Me In|author=Emma CurtisAnn Cleeves
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=Martin Curran's wife, Eliza knew that she had to be home to make A man walking his lunch for one o'clock on dog in the dot, despite early morning discovered the fact that she was actually painting one body of their properties prior to it being let. If she didn't get a man in the park near Rosebank, a care home, there would be troublefor troubled teens. There The dead man was some excuse: Martin Josh - one of the care workers who was a paraplegic and confined due to work a wheelchair, shift the night before but don't be too quick who had never turned up. D I Vera Stanhope is called in to be understandinginvestigate the murder - but her only clue is the disappearance of one of the residents, fourteen-year-old Chloe Spencer. He Some people believe that Chloe was also a very unpleasant person: he once told Eliza ''you're good at being a disappointment''. All responsible for the death but Vera thinks this was in Elizais unlikely as the girl's mind when diary makes it clear that she first met Dan Jones who arrived, unannounced, at the flat just as Eliza was about adored Josh. She knows that she has to find Chloe to leave: he wanted the lease of flat 2, 42 Linden Road and he was desperate discover what happened to get in before it was advertised as being availableJosh.
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|isbnauthor=1784742775Olga Tokarczuk|title=A Change House of Circumstance (Simon Serrailler)|author=Susan HillDay, House of Night
|rating=5
|genre=CrimeLiterary Fiction|summary=Drugs hadn't really been that much 'What's the good of a problem world that keeps changing like that? How can one go on calmly living in Lafferton and Detective Superintendent Simon Serrailler had thought it?'' The title of this spellbinding work, ''House of drugs ops as a bit Day, House of a waste Night'', somewhat reflects this notion of time. They still wereshifting realities - the small, subtle changes which govern our lives, like the shift from day to a great extentnight, however quotidian, but Serrailler knew that something had to be donecausing chaos. Children as young as nine were being recruited to transport But, the drugs and constant in that image is the operation running house, stoic against the county lines was tightancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it is perceived. A mule might know the name (although |isbn=1804271918}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1836284683|title=The Big Happy|author=David Chadwick|rating=4.5|genre=Dystopian Fiction|summary=Well! This is a murder mystery unlike any other! I do love it when I open a book, it's nothing like I expected it to be, and it probably wouldntakes me on a wild ride. And that is just what happened with ''The Big Happy''. I don't be the correct one) want to ruin a similar experience for any of the person who was running him you reading but he certainly wouldnI't know anything about those higher up in ll have to at least set the organisationscene. The police might catch a few of the runners but theyOnce that'd never get anywhere near those higher ups done, I think you should simply experience this wonderfully original story for yourself.
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|isbnauthor=B09FS89KX9Sally Rooney|title=Fall On Me|author=Penelope PottsIntermezzo|rating=34.5|genre=Women's General Fiction|summary=Life should have been good for Hollie: She was just going into Sally Rooney has studied the final year chessboard of her veterinary degree life and - three years later - was still working is something of a grandmaster at BB's dinerputting it into words. Her dialogue is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, as her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Bob - Among the owner - regarded her fondly: he was many relationships woven into this story, the central one for readers to unravel is the fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. Ivan, a good boss. Hollie had moved in socially awkward chess prodigy, contrasts sharply with her boyfriendhis older brother Peter, Marcus: her mother thought he was great and he was doing well a successful lawyer living in his careerDublin. Hollie wasnFollowing their father't quite so certain though: Marcus wanted to control her and most of all he wanted her to leave her job at s passing after a long battle with cancer, the diner. Then there was the fact that he would be violent, both to her and to other peoplebrothers' already strained relationship faces new trials.|isbn=0571365469
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|authorisbn=John Gwynne1836285493|title=The Shadow Of The GodsDouble Life of a Wheelchair User|author=Rob Keeley
|rating=5
|genre=FantasyConfident Readers|summary=The Shadow Of The Gods Will is the first installment a keen player of the Bloodsworn Sagavideo games, set in the era of the Vikings in the shadow of Ragnaroka conscientious student, when the Gods have battled a slightly annoying brother and their bones lie scattered for a supportive friend. But most of all to see, he is an aspiring writer. This story English is the ultimate in High Fantasy, and John Gwynne certainly does justice to the genrehis favourite lesson at his school, with mythical creaturesMarlowe Park, archaic language and battles galoreone at which he excels. This is a thick bookhasn't gone unnoticed by his headteacher, Mrs Howarth, with an intricate plot and fascinating characters she has suggested to Will and his mum that are woven together to create he spends a couple of afternoons a week at a wonderfully realistic and gritty world in which our heroes must do battledifferent school, Station Road, where his ability might be better extended.|isbn=0356514218
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|isbn=B09HTWX47X1009473085|title=Endless ObsessionThe Conservative Effect 2010 - 2024|author=Dai HenleyAnthony Seldon and Tom Egerton (Editors)|rating=45|genre=CrimePolitics and Society|summary=ItSometimes it's some years since we last caught up with Andy Flood, formerly simpler to explain a DCI in the Met but now a wellbook by describing what it ''isn't'' and that applies to ''The Conservative Effect: 2010-2024 -respected private investigator14 Wasted Years?''. HeIf you're looking for an easy read which will deliver the inside story about what ''s married to Laurareally'' happened on certain occasions, formerly his DS in then this isn't the Murder Squad but now working in a forensics laboratorybook for you. FloodIf that's daughterswhat you're looking for, Gemma and PippaI don't think Anthony Seldon's book, have flown the nest, Pippa to Australia, from where she has very little contact with the family{{amazonurl|isbn=B0BH7SKG2S|title=Johnson at 10}}, can be bettered for those tumultuous years. It's a compelling read and Gemma should be compulsory for anyone who thinks Johnson should return to married lifepolitics. She''The Conservative Effect'' is an entirely different beast. It's had mental problems since she was abducted many years ago but Andy the seventh book in a series which looks at the impact a government has made and Laura hope that married life will provide co-editor Sir Anthony Seldon regards this as the support she needsmost important. Flood's business is going This book follows the well -established format: a series of experts from various fields review the state of the nation when the coalition took over in 2010, the changes that occurred and that was why he felt able to turn down the case of Lisa Blacksituation in 2024.
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|author=Peter PapathanasiouJenny Valentine|title=The StoningUs in the Before and After|rating=3.5|genre=ThrillersTeens|summary=In Elk and Mab are best friends, or more than that even, their friendship is a town sleazy enough to make sh*tholes elsewhere look glamorous once in comparison, a teacher has been transported across town at night in lifetime connection. They meet as children one day on a shopping trolley, and shetrip out but unfortunately they don's been taped to a tree and shet get each other's had rocks bowled contact details at her as if she were the world's tallest cricket stumpstime. When she's discovered by the town gossip everyone, including the local cops But then chance brings them back together, and they are quite confident the culprit inseparable. Something has come from the immigrant detention centre the place is reluctantly home to. An arson attack on that shows the feeling – happened though, something terrible and it's only fairtragic, is the general opinionand now they must work through their grief, for the occupants are often setting and their own fires in protest at their conditions. Cue the arrival of George Manolis, a higher rank from the cityfriendship, to sort everything out. Because such an aggrieved, insular community is really going to welcome a Greek-heritaged city boy laying down the law..together.|isbn=15294169731471196585
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