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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
|isbnauthor=1509889612Samantha Harvey|title=The Rising Tide (D I Vera Stanhope)|author=Ann CleevesOrbital|rating=4.5|genre=CrimeGeneral Fiction|summary=ItIn 2024, Samantha Harvey won the Booker Prize for 's fifty years since 'Orbital'', a group of teenagers went on compact yet profound work that unfolds over a weekend retreat to Holy Island. Some single day in the lives of them found the Only Connect course transformative and they've been coming back for a reunion every five years since then. There was a tragedy at the first reunion when Isobel Hall drove off the island too close to high tide and her car was swept away, but her younger sister, Louisa, has returned with the group each year as her husband, Ken, was one of astronauts aboard the original teenagersInternational Space Station. Ken now has Alzheimer's and he's Through a shadow of narrative lens that mirrors the man he used to be. Philip Robson now a priestastronauts' orbital perspective, always gets there early as he likes Harvey invites readers to have some quiet time alone see our planet in the chapel. Annie Laidler lives locally and she provides much of the food: her deli is famous in the areaa wholly new light.|isbn=1529922933
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1473680883295967572X|title=The Skeleton KeyPale Pieces|author=Erin KellyG M Stevens
|rating=5
|genre=ThrillersLiterary Fiction|summary=''The Golden Bones Our unnamed narrator is going about to follow me around for the rest of my lifebegin a train journey with his companion Django. How can I trust anyone? It all leads back to you!Where they'' Nell didn't want to go to the reunion to celebrate re going and what the fiftieth anniversary purpose of the publication of ''The Golden Bones''. She'd had no benefit from it - in factthis journey is, it had made her life precarious and unbelievably challengingis uncertain. I'd better explain. Django found the tickets ''The Golden Boneson the floor somewhere'' was a treasure quest book painted and written by Frank and Cora Churcherhas persuaded our narrator to accompany him. The story revolved around murdered Elinore whose golden and bejewelled bones were hidden around the country. The clues - some of them quite tortuous Why not? Not much else is clear either - were disguised but we are probably in the words and pictures of past as the book - and all pair travel to the parts were discovered except for the pelvis. As with such quests, some people were obsessive station by coach and the theories became more and more outlandishtrain is a steam locomotive.
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Holly Webb0008551324|title=The Story of GreenriverDevil You Know (D S Max Craigie)|author=Neil Lancaster
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=Silken and Sedge, It's unusual for all their differences, have a lot in commonanyone from the Hardie family to approach the police. Silken Neither side likes or has any respect for the other. But Davie Hardie is a girl whose father is the Master Builder of what might be struggling in prison and he's prepared to tell the finest beaver lodge on police where the Greenriver. Unfortunately she is also a kind body of runt figure, and as a result missing person is patronised, and given the most tokenistic tasks when it comes to fetching wood buried and shoring the dam up. She also stands out who was responsible for the unique artistic ability to singher death. Otters like Sedge singThis person, but he toopromises, as is someone big and it will be worth the son of police doing what he wants. And what he wants is to be transferred to an open prison to serve the lady remainder of the holt, has pressure on him to be a bit less feckless his sentence and more attentive to classget an early parole date. HeNot much to ask, after all, will eventually inherit is it? The new Deputy Police Constable doesn't think so and she's even prepared to do the job of keeping the otters safe from the wolf other thing that Hardie demanded - make certain that both animal species fear the most, DS Max Craigie and anyone who works with him is kept well away from dreaded events like a Dark Springwhat's happening.|isbn=1510109625
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Anna Kemp Jon Fosse and David WyattDamion Searls (translator) |title=Into Goblyn WoodVaim
|rating=4
|genre=Confident ReadersLiterary Fiction|summary=Meet Hazel''All was strange''. For the last nine of her eleven years, she has been stuck as a foundling in a horrid, Victorian institution, generally peeling vegetables or acting as a servant. She'd arrived at the place at the same time as Pete, and they're inseparably good friends now, until a chance for them both to escape, and enter the outside world, does not go to plan. There had always been This haunting phrase encapsulates the idea pervading sense of a life idyllic otherworldliness which permeates this story set in the nearby forests, Goblyn WoodVaim, and a tribe of Wild Children, but none of that comes to pass, as Hazel finds herself fictional fishing village in the care of a professor at the Natural History Museum. But life with him is Norway which paradoxically could not anything like what she might have expected it to be – feel more real for Jatgeir and Hazel is determined to return to Eline, two of the Woods, restore her friendship with Pete – and to work out just what is going on protagonists caught in the forest, both the light and the shade, and the deathly dark..its melancholic current.|isbn=13985038351804271829
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=02419901651035043092|title=Hope to Die The Killing Stones (D I FawleyJimmy Perez)|author=Cara HunterAnn Cleeves
|rating=5
|genre=Crime
|summary=It began rather oddlyI 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 new life on Orkney. There was a 999 call suggesting that a shot had It's been fired in an isolated house seven years since we heard from him, but the call hadnhe't come from s now living with Willow Reeves and their young son, James, as well as Cassie, the householderdaughter of his former partner. A couple Willow's also his boss, and she ''should'' be on maternity leave, but when the body of PCs went to make certain that everything was alright and it took quite a while for popular islander, Archie Stout, is found, in the elderly householder to answer the dooraftermath of a storm, she can't resist getting involved. He somewhat reluctantly told them that they'd better come in. In the kitchen there was a body on the floor: been battered about the head had been blown off with a shotgun and the corpse was holding Neolithic stone - one of a knife in its right hand. Richard Swann told the police that he'd heard sounds of an intruder and pair - which had come downstairs to investigate. The ignorant young lout had called him ''Grandad'' and come at him with been stolen from a knife. Swann had shot him in self-defencemuseum.
}}
{{Frontpage
|author= Kit De WaalThea Lenarduzzi|title= Without Warning and Only SometimesThe Tower|rating= 45|genre= AutobiographyLiterary Fiction|summary= As Philip Larkin so eloquently put it''How unctuous are the fats of another's life, “They f*** you uphow dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream''. In this compelling novel, your mum and dad/ They may not mean toThea Lenarduzzi assumes the identity of T, but they do” Without Warning and Only Sometimes by Kit De Waal focuses on the protagonist of this idea of parenthood and the bonds that bind familytale. This book Just as T's story is being told, the story of a memoir focussing on second protagonist is unveiled: Annie, the author’s formative years as daughter of a teenager living wealthy family in the 19th century, who died of tuberculosis after being locked in a lower class area of Birminghamtower, captures T's imagination. Her father Annie's fate is from St, above all, an enticing story to T. Kitts It is a story which she consumes avariciously, both in the Caribbean and her mother is an Irish woman ostracized by her family a quest for becoming pregnant by truth and marrying a black man. This intersectionality plays a large role in the autobiography. Kit De Waal faces multiple hurdles due to her raceknowledge, her class and her gender. Her parents loom large and are written with care, lovein service of myth, fable and the kind of anger only a child can express to their parentsfantasy. |isbn=14722848361804271799
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{{Frontpage
|author=David LagercrantzClaire-Louise Bennett|title=Dark MusicBig Kiss, Bye-Bye |rating=34.5|genre=CrimeLiterary Fiction|summary=How far from the original can a Everything in this book allegedly inspired by Sherlock Holmes get before the allusion breaks? This does have a wonder-mind at the heart of what little investigating is going on, but there is not a lot that Conan Doyle fans could really pin down as on their exact wavelength. For one, the main focus of the narrative, Micaelahowever sweet or seemingly innocent, is no John Watson MDsteeped in anguish and distortion. She's a Chilean in the Stockholm police, put on Even a murder squad as she knows the prime suspect of oldkiss, in a case where usually a referee symbol of a junior football match was found stoned to death shortly after the match, intimacy and just outside the stadium. Beppe, the suspect, was drunkenly antagonistic to the ref during the closing minutescloseness, but refuses to admit anything, through days and weeks becomes evidence of interrogationlove lost. When some disreputable coppers (the kind who dismiss anything their superior comes up withnarrator cries out internally, the kind who think they can judge Micaela from her fringe ''come over here and how she might dress – that kind) are told to go and see what brainbox Professor Rekke thinks of kiss me,'' it all, she can only smirk when he says Beppe is innocent and the investigation is less an invitation than a shamblesdesperate attempt to confirm her emotional numbness. But taken off the case, she can no longer help solve the crime, and with Rekke the most erratic, irregular kind The imagined recipient of guythis plea is Xavier, she can't get his full verdict on it all. Until, that may beher ex-partner, a ghost she manages conjures to stop him in the middle of an apparent suicide attempt..test her detachment.|isbn=15294131921804271934
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B0B2N7MVYM0008405026|title=The Calculations of Rational MenA Stranger in the Family (Maeve Kerrigan 11)|author=Daniel GodfreyJane Casey
|rating=5
|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=It's sixteen years since nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her bed one summer night. She was never found and the 10th of December 1962 when we first meet Dr Joseph Marrinvestigation ground to a halt. Just to put what happens in contextNow, her mother, Helena, the Cuban missile crisis is still very fresh and her father are dead in people's minds. The world has barely had a chance to breathe outtheir bed. But for Joe MarrInitially, itlooks like a straightforward murder/suicide but there's not something about the missile crisis positioning of the bodies that's at the front of his mindmakes DS Maeve Kerrigan and her boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. He's been convicted of What looked as though it was going to be an open-and-shut case is now a complex double murder. With the current state of medical knowledge, it's hard to think otherwise than Kerrigan is convinced that the prosecution would never have been brought but Joe Marr has spent his first few days explanation lies in HMP QueenRosalie's Bench, a relatively new prison. Hedisappearance: others (such as Derwent's just getting used to his roommate, Mervynboss, and learning to be wary of the McArthur brothersUna Burt) are less convinced.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1846976146Annie Ernaux and Alison L. Strayer (translator)|title=The Bone Road|author=N E SolomonsOther Girl|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersAutobiography|summary=Heather Bishop''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 former Olympic cyclist, flew most intimate accounts I've read. Ernaux writes in direct address to Bosnia to surprise her boyfriendsister, however, cycling journalist Ryan Mackinnonthis letter will never reach her. She even took their bikes so they could have Why? Because Annie Ernaux's sister died of diphtheria at 6 years old, a few days' break in months before the region. It vaccine was a little worrying that he didn't seem exactly pleased to see her: she even wondered if he had a woman made compulsory in the hotel room. Heather had to give up competitive cycling after a traumatic brain injury four France, and 2 years before: she the author was still fit but her reactions even born. The large and her memory were not up to instant void created by the standard she would need jarring concept of writing to race again. Sometimes she couldnan imaginary recipient emphasises Ernaux't be certain about what s process of reckoning with this giant absence in her life, an absence that she had or hadn't done and she simply couldn't cope in difficult situations. She didn't entirely trust herselfhas always felt but often denied.|isbn=1804271845
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Judith EagleMaxim Gorky and Bryan Karetnyk (translator)|title=The Accidental StowawayReminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev|rating=43.5|genre=Confident ReadersBiography|summary=Patch is a little girl who has been passed from one relation to another, until Biographies are often seen as the form of life-writing which offers less colour; it seems can be seen as more objective and less personal. I think that there is nobody left for her to go to. Her father died when she was very youngGorky completely rejects this perspective, and her mother ran awayoffers a vibrant, subjective yet informed portrait of three of his literary contemporaries. The family lawyerIn the first section of this book, after consultation with ‘someone’Tolstoy complains to his friend Gorky that: ''you write not of real life as it is, arranges for her but of what you yourself imagine it to go be. Whom would it help to a school in Liverpoolknow how I see this tower, but on her arrival therethat sea, she gets caught up in an adventure with a little boy called Turo who works on a steamshipor that Tartar - why should it interest anyone? Of what use is it?''. During Well, Maxim Gorky shows exactly what can be gained from a chase with him (when she is both trying subjective account, giving us access to get her rollerskate back how he saw Tolstoy, Chekhov and running away from the police!) she winds up on the steamship hiding Andreyev in a lifeboat, and before she knows such privileged detail that one almost feels unworthy of it, the ship has left the docks and she is an accidental stowaway!.|isbn=05713631211804271977
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=07603798741529077745|title=Super Easy Knitting for BeginnersThe Dark Wives (D I Vera Stanhope)|author=Carri HammettAnn Cleeves
|rating=4.5
|genre=CraftsCrime|summary=I learned to knit A man walking his dog in the nineteen-fifties: it wasn't early morning discovered the body of a choiceman in the park near Rosebank, it was a requirementcare home for troubled teens. Girls learned to knit and The dead man was Josh - one of the care workers who was due to embroider and boys did wood and metal work. My knitting wa accompanied by a lot of criticism and quite a few tears: it was a long time shift the night before I realised that there was pleasure to be but who had in the skillnever turned up. Nearly seventy years later it's D I Vera Stanhope is called in to investigate the murder - but her only thing that keeps my hands at all suppleclue is the disappearance of one of the residents, fourteen-year-old Chloe Spencer. The turning point Some people believe that Chloe was a booklet published by Patons which gave all responsible for the death but Vera thinks this is unlikely as the basics and some patternsgirl's diary makes it clear that she adored Josh. I've been looking for something simple She knows that she has to recommend find Chloe to people who'd like discover what happened to master the skillJosh. So, how did ''Super Easy Knitting For Beginners'' work out?
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Sarah Todd TaylorB0FK5LHKD9|title=Alice Eclair, Spy Extraordinaire! A Recipe for TroubleThe Colour of Memory|author=Christopher Bowden
|rating=4
|genre=Confident ReadersGeneral Fiction|summary=Meet Alice Eclair. A perfect eye and very careful hands have made her one of Paris's best young cake makers and decorators, making sure her motherIt's establishment is a classy affair. Not bad for been three years since we last reviewed a thirteen year old. Ohbook by favourite regular Christopher Bowden, and a perfect eye and a so we were very careful handler and remote trainer have also made sure she is glad to see a very competent young spynew novel arrive here at Bookbag Towers. Her first real mission will be to chase Like all Bowden's stories, there's a traitor across mystery at the country – working behind the scenes on a posh sleeper train to the south heart of ''The Colour of France, and hoping against hope that she can prevent documents allowing foreign agents to creep into the country from getting into nefarious handsMoney''. But while nobody would have her down as We like this running theme in an author's work - take a spy, can she possibly leave behind her rookie status mystery but give it different flavour and find the baddy?|isbn=1839940956atmosphere each time.
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Olga 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 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 ancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it is perceived.|isbn=1804271918}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0760379912henleyA|title=Super Easy Quilting for BeginnersUltimate Obsession|author=Editors of Quarry BooksDai Henley
|rating=4
|genre=CraftsCrime|summary=I learned patchworking from necessity: old or outgrown clothes needed to Ex-DCI Andy Flood has been a Private Investigator for some time now, and he should be turned into something new and usable when I was in my twentiesdoing quite well financially. It would be Unfortunately, his daughter's defence against a while before it became a pleasure rather than a chore but I've never felt completely at home with quiltingmurder charge drained his savings. I needed something a little more stylish than my usual buttons His wife, Laura, has been trying to persuade him to retire - ''maybe go travelling or knotsgo on cruises. That's what 'ordinary people do','Super Easy Quilting for Beginners' He' seemed like a good place s not been entirely up front about the state of their savings. When Jack Durban tries to persuade him to start. Sotake his case, how did it stack up?'s the thought of the money he could make that convinces him that this is a miscarriage of justice that he really should put right.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=17883607371836284683|title= Artivism: The Battle for Museums in the Era of PostmodernismBig Happy|author=Alexander AdamsDavid Chadwick|rating=24.5|genre= Politics and SocietyDystopian Fiction|summary= Can art ever be apolitical? All art is political because art is not made in a vacuum. It is made by people. Antonio Gramsci stated that ‘’Every man… contributes to modifying the social environment in which he develops’’. Therefore, all art must be political, even implicitly. Alexander Adams in his new book ‘Artivism: The Battle for Museum in the Era of Postmodernism’ is adamant that art is freer when it Well! This is art for art’s sake. The recent trend of so-called artivism has caused artists to become more overtly political (read: left wing). Their seemingly grass roots movements have been astroturfed by large “left-wing” donors and media elites hoping to create a more globalist and progressive regime. Or at least that’s what Alexander Adams believes.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1408712172|title=The Cliff House|author=Chris Brookmyre|rating=5|genre=Thrillers|summary=''Many of them didn't know each murder mystery unlike any other, one of them didn't know anybody, including Jen, one of them quite possibly hated her, and two of them definitely hated each other. What could possibly go wrong?''!
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1788360702Sally Rooney|title=Charles, The Alternative Prince: An Unauthorised Biography|author=Edzard ErnstIntermezzo|rating=4.5|genre=BiographyGeneral Fiction |summary=For over forty years, Prince Charles Sally Rooney has been an ardent supporter studied the chessboard of alternative medicine life and complementary therapiesis something of a grandmaster at putting it into words. ''CharlesHer dialogue is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, The Alternative Prince'' critically assesses as her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Among the Prince's opinionsmany relationships woven into this story, beliefs and aims against the background of central one for readers to unravel is the scientific evidencefraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. There are few instances of Ivan, a socially awkward chess prodigy, contrasts sharply with his beliefs being vindicated and his relentless promotion of treatments which have no scientific support has done considerable damage to the reputation of older brother Peter, a successful lawyer living in Dublin. Following their father's passing after a man who is proud of his refusal to apply evidence-basedlong battle with cancer, logical reasoning to his ambitionsthe brothers' already strained relationship faces new trials.|isbn=0571365469
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Will Carver1036916375|title=The Daves Next DoorJust a Liverpool Lad|author=Peter McArdle
|rating=4
|genre=General FictionAutobiography|summary= Five strangers come together in one moment as ''Just a suicide bomber prepares to detonate his vest on Liverpool Lad '' is a London tube line. As their fates overlap, collection of memories and reflections from the story is told years Peter McArdle spent growing up in backwards order, leading up to the fateful momentand around Liverpool.|isbn= 1914585186}} {{Frontpage|isbn=1529125790|title=The Family Remains|author=Lisa Jewell|rating=4|genre=Thrillers|summary=In July 2019 Some are factual, Jason Mott was mud larking on such as the banks family history of a sea-going family, with the River Thames when he came across a bag of what appeared to be human bones. Detective Inspector Samuel Owusu and Saffron Brown from forensics were there to investigatedocks dominating lives. The bones were indeed human: a young woman had been killed by a blow to Other stories blend seamlessly into the head many years ago what- probably as long as twentymight-five have- but the bones had not been in . It's a book to settle into and allow your mind to roam across your childhood memories, to think of simpler times when life seemed less constrained, despite the river longer than blitz that was a yearconstant factor in McArdle's early years. There was no identification I'd never heard of parachute mines before - but they were almost soundless and could appear after the bag contained vegetation, some of which all-clear was quite unusualsounded.
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Jennifer Mason1836285493|title=Partitions The Double Life of Unitya Wheelchair User|author=Rob Keeley|rating=45|genre=General FictionConfident Readers|summary= Here Will is a keen player of video games, a conscientious student, a slightly annoying brother and a supportive friend. But most of all, he is an aspiring writer. English is his favourite lesson at Bookbag Towershis school, we first met Elizabeth CromwellMarlowe Park, dominatrix and unintentional detective in [[Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery one at which he excels. This hasn't gone unnoticed by Jennifer Mason|Preposterous]]his headteacher, Mrs Howarth, when and she investigated has suggested to Will and unravelled his mum that he spends a series couple of disappearances. In ''Partitions of Unity''afternoons a week at a different school, Station Road, she sets her mind to solving a murderwhere his ability might be better extended....|isbn=B09LQR9FRF
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Fiona Parashar 1009473085|title=A Beautiful Way to Coach The Conservative Effect 2010 - 2024|author=Anthony Seldon and Tom Egerton (Editors)
|rating=5
|genre=Business Politics and FinanceSociety|summary= So Sometimes it's simpler to explain a book by describing what am I doing reading this book, using this book, it ''isn't'' and being audacious enough that applies to review it''The Conservative Effect: 2010-2024 - 14 Wasted Years? ''. Truth is I bought it out of curiosityIf you're looking for an easy read which will deliver the inside story about what ''really'' happened on certain occasions, then this isn't the book for you. If that's what you're looking for, I was don't think Anthony Seldon's book, {{amazonurl|isbn=B0BH7SKG2S|title=Johnson at an on-line launch 10}}, can be bettered for the those tumultuous years. book It's a compelling read and Fiona’s description of her Vision Days appealed should be compulsory for anyone who thinks Johnson should return to mepolitics. I wanted to see if there were things ''The Conservative Effect'' is an entirely different beast. It's the seventh book in there that I could use with someone I am currently helping / supporting / trying to mentor – without committing them to a full day, series which I know would send them scurrying for their burrowlooks at the impact a government has made and co-editor Sir Anthony Seldon regards this as the most important. I also wanted to see if I could give myself This book follows the well-established format: a Vision Dayseries of experts from various fields review the state of the nation when the coalition took over in 2010, to bring me away from their vision the changes that occurred and back to my ownthe situation in 2024.|isbn=103211603X
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1913750353Jenny Valentine|title=Britannica's Word of Us in the Day|author=Patrick Kelly, Renee Kelly Before and Sue MacyAfter
|rating=5
|genre=Children's Non-FictionTeens|summary=''Britannica's Word of the Day'' has a sub-title: ''366 Elevating Utterances to Stretch Your Cranium Elk and Tickle Your Humerus'' which probably tells you all Mab are best friends, or more than that you need to know about this brilliant book. It starts on January 1st with ''Razzmatazz''even, tells you how to pronounce it (''raz-muh-TAZ''), gives you their friendship is a definition and then includes the word once in a sentence so that you know how it should be used. You also get an engaging and frequently amusing illustration toolifetime connection. I They meet as children one day on a trip out but unfortunately they don't think Iget each other've ever encountered a word which uses s contact details at the letter Z four times before!time. But then chance brings them back together, and they are inseparable. Something has happened though, something terrible and tragic, and now they must work through their grief, and their friendship, together.|isbn=1471196585
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=A C Wise1787333175|title=HookedYou Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here|author=Benji Waterhouse|rating=45|genre=General FictionPopular Science|summary=It’s been twenty-two years since Captain Hook, now going by just ‘James’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}}, has been in Neverland. Living a new life in London, he has never completely escaped his past. But now he senses glorious mixture of insight into the edges workings of the beast circling around his life in LondonNHS, humour and when suddenly he finds himself face autobiography. ''You Don't Have to face in be Mad...'' promised the street with Wendy, he knows that same elements but moved from physical problems to mental illness and the line between this world and Neverland is growing thinwork of a psychiatrist. The beast is finally coming I did wonder whether it was acceptable to get him, and be looking for humour in this setting but the process will pull Wendy laughter is directed at a situation rather than a person and her daughter Jane back into their past once againit is always delivered with empathy and understanding.|isbn=1789096839
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1787301745Mariana Enriquez|title=Confidence|author=Denise MinaA Sunny Place for Shady People|rating=3.5|genre=ThrillersShort Stories|summary=We're back in the world of podcasters Anna and FinMariana Enriquez writes horror that is disturbingly real, whom we first met in [[Conviction achieving this uncanny familiarity by Denise Mina|Conviction]]. It was Anna who'd organised the 'family' holidaybasing her paranormal plots on gritty realities: her ex, Hamish, is now with her best friendsettings include an abandoned field full of disused refrigerators due to an urban planning mishap, Estelle and her children are living with them. Fin (who was married to Estelle) is there too an overcrowded homeless shelter and it was Anna who invited his girlfriend, Sofia. It's not long before everyone realises that was a bad mistake. Sofia's difficult and with everyone trapped inside their holiday accommodation crime- a lighthouse, in a storm ridden neighbourhood where safety meetings are routine - she begins talking about Anna's past, including all within Argentina. The circumstances of her real name and characters are so plausible that the rape. This was something supernatural or otherworldly horror which Anna had intended to tell the girls - twelve-tear-old Jess and ten-year-old Lizzie - when the time was right. And this wasn't the right timeseeps into these spaces adopts a similarly tangible texture.|isbn=1803511230
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=178763566X1529934753|title=Listen to MeThe Protest|author=Tess GerritsenRob Rinder
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=We're in Boston with Amy. When she set out for university this morning it was For a spring day and she wore her newlittle while, buttery-leather pumps but it looked as she comes out of though Sir Max Bruce, the library she knows that theycountry're s most famous living artist, was not going to be ruined - and unsafe - in show up for the opening of his retrospective at the snow that's now fallingRoyal Academy. As she crosses Still, he arrived in the road, a car comes out nick of nowhere and hits her. It doesn't stop. Two months latertime, we're complete with Angela Rizzolihis two wives and six children, mother one of Detective Jane Rizzoliwhom filmed what happened. Being an influencer, you tend to do things like that, and but it was fortunate that there was a keen defender record of the suburb of Revereprotest. Lexi Williams, an intern at the RA, north grabbed a spray can of Boston, where she lives. Nothing gets past her blue paint from under a chair and whilst her boyfriend, Vince Korsak, is proceeded to spray Bruce in Californiathe face, looking after his sister, she has whilst shouting ''Stop the time War''. It seemed to watch whatbe part of an ongoing series of 'blue-face's happening in the neighbourhoodattacks, but this was different. The people who are moving in at no 2533 have aroused her suspicionscan had been laced with cyanide, and Sir Max Bruce was dead.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0008395632Ariel Saramandi|title=One Last Secret|author=Adele ParksPortrait of an Island on Fire
|rating=4.5
|genre=ThrillersPolitics and Society|summary=Natalya is an escort. WellIn this powerful collection of essays, Saramandi seeks to intradermally dissect the sociopolitical fabric of Mauritius, her name's not ''actually'' Natalya: that's her professional name but it is a nod tunneling deep into the wounds left by colonialism and slavery to her Serbian heritageexpose how these legacies still shape modern life. She's actually thirty-Saramandi describes the country at one-year-old Teodora Dziewulski, usually known stage as Dora Wulski. If you're thinking of 'escortrotting'' as being , a polite description blunt yet apt metaphor for the systemic decay brought about by the malignant forces of a prostituteracism, run by a pimppatriarchy, who's turning tricks to fund a drug habit, forget itenvironmental degradation and governmental dysfunction. Dora is Each essay in this collection serves as a professional in all senses kind of the word. She has an agent, Elspethdiagnostic, who takes 30% of her income and deals with charting the payments but checks out various diseases afflicting the clients to see that Dora is going to be safe. Dora describes herself as a self-employed clairvoyant to Her Majesty's Revenue and Customsisland state. |isbn=1804271616
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|author=David SolomonsPekka Harju-Autti|title=A BeginnerLoveVortex and the Drakor's Guide to Ruling the GalaxyCurse
|rating=4
|genre=Fantasy
|summary=It's the eighteenth century, a time of discovery and Britain is expanding its foreign trade. Captain Julius Hawthorne, an experienced Scottish sea captain, is sent to the Andaman Islands in his endeavour. Along with his son, Peter, and their cat, Michi, they set off on a perilous voyage to these faraway lands. The islands are beautiful and stunning in their scenery and the islanders' leader, Aarav, is keen to establish good relations.
|isbn=B0DS1VGHH3
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{{Frontpage
|author=Helene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)
|title=Lili is Crying
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=First published in 1953 in French, this novel is a timeless 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, truncated. Like the lives of her characters, they are often left tragically incomplete.
|isbn=1804271675
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{{Frontpage
|author=Tom Percival
|title=The Wrong Shoes
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Gavin Will's life is being followeddifficult, seemingly constantly, by the new (very annoying) girl at schoolin a multitude of ways. Only this He is not your typical boy meets girl story. Because in this instancebullied because he has 'the wrong shoes', he has the wrong shoes because his dad can't work and doesn't have enough money for even the girl in question is Nikimost basic of things like food, and she is his dad can't work because he lost his job at the college, was working a cash-in-hand job on a galactic princess (nobuilding site and had an accident. Throw into that mix the fact that his mum and dad are separated, reallyand Will's life seems bleak in every direction. And yet, she is!) So what will Gavin do when he becomes embroiled in still has a situation where, potentiallytiny amount of hope. He is good at art, Earth and everyone on it will be blown clings to smithereensthe moments of joy when he is drawing, all because that feel like a light at the end of Niki?a long, dark tunnel.|isbn=08576399351398527122
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|author=Alex CotterSylvie Cathrall|title=The Mermaid CallA Letter to the Luminous Deep|rating=3.5|genre=Confident ReadersScience Fiction|summary=Vivien knows that mermaids don't exist. But she also knows they have to exist – at least in the public eye. For there would be nothing to Lake Splendour – There are few greater joys than a far northern English resort – without them. A hundred years and change ago, two teenaged girls allegedly spent months with mermaids, but were forced book which lives up to return to help out with the Great War effort. They also showed female emancipation, which helped create the town's tourism industry, now faded and falling apart but once a feminist success storycompelling premise. Alice, a girl who stumbles into Vivien's gran's tourist shop And this is one day, knows she certainly wants mermaids to exist – she thinks her family's black sheep died searching for of them, or else was just too successful in her hunt. When the shy, doubting Thomasina that is Vivien collides with the exuberant, gung-ho Alice, what on earth – or perhaps in water – will they find?|isbn=18399419010356522776
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|isbn=17398051001786482126|title=Loving the Enemy: Building bridges in a time of warThe Janus Stone (Dr Ruth Galloway)|author=Andrew MarchElly Griffiths
|rating=4.5
|genre=BiographyCrime|summary= ''Loving Builders were demolishing an old house in Norwich - the Enemysite was going to hold seventy-five 'luxury' tells the quite extraordinary story of author Andrew March's grandparents, who first met apartments - when grandfather Fred Clayton went to Dresden to teach in they discovered the early days bones of the Nazi regime in the 1930sa child beneath a doorway. There was no skull. Fred, Was this a sensitive and thoughtful manritual killing or murder? Inevitably, had some vague ideas of "building bridges" which may guard against the growing hostilities between nations unfolding in Europe at the timeDr Ruth Galloway finds herself working with DCI Harry Nelson. Fred It's attempts to separate individual people from ideology werendifficult as Ruth knows, but Nelson doesn't universally successful but he did make friendships and connections , that lasted for she is pregnant with his child as a lifetimeresult of the one night they spent together some three months ago. Her condition will be obvious before long, not least because Ruth is prone to sudden bouts of sickness.
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|isbnauthor=B0B575J99NGuadalupe Nettel and Rosalind Harvey (Translator)|title=Beneath the Porticoes|author=Brooke AdamsThe Accidentals|rating=4.5|genre=Women's FictionShort Stories|summary=Elizabeth Miller This collection was thirty-four and a teacher at a prestigious girl's school truly enchanting in York. It was ''comfortable'' but she longed for something more in life. She'd ''still not found all senses of the right vocation nor met the right man'' word: spellbinding with its fantastical, magical elements and now was the time to make a change. She needed challenges. There was a little trepidation when she applied for the professoressa job charming in Bolognaits gentle portrayal of nature and human relationships. After Guadalupe Nettel writes intelligently and precisely, her stories structured by a telephone interview, she was offered the position and it wasn't long before she was exploring wisdom that appears to want to teach us something about the beautiful city. There were some natural doubts before her first class but it went surprisingly wellworld.|isbn=1804271470
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|isbn=15291258980008551375|title=Godmersham ParkWhen Shadows Fall (D S Max Craigie)|author=Gill HornbyNeil Lancaster|rating=4.5|genre=Historical FictionCrime|summary=Leanne Wilson''If it were not for s body was found at the casual dereliction bottom of a Scottish mountain, seemingly the odd gentlemanresult of a tragic accident. She's dutyd looked so happy, too, there would no women to teach well-bred daughters at all.'' Anne Sharpe was thirty-one years old when she arrived at Godmersham Park to take up the position of governess to twelve-year-old Fanny Austenposted her intentions on Facebook. She had no experience Her friends were relieved as she was just out of teaching an unpleasant relationship, but this it looked like she was a case of necessityliving her best life now. Until the death of her mother, Anne Then it emerged that five other women had a comfortable life and was loved by both parents although her father was frequently absent from died in similar circumstances in the householdlast year. When her mother diedAll were experienced climbers, her father cast her off properly equipped for what they were doing and would have nothing more to do with hersensible people. No explanation was offered but she would receive an annuity None of £35 the 'what a yearstupid thing to do' explanations applied. Her maid, Agnes, would receive nothing but was fortunately taken in by some neighboursThey were all alone when they died: DS Max Craigie is certain there's a killer on the loose.
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