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{{Frontpage
|author=David ChadwickMaria Stepanova and Sasha Dugdale (Translator)|title=Headload The Disappearing Act|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Despite her anonymisation of place names and people, Stepanova's message in this short work of autofiction is unmistakable. A novelist named M travels from B (ostensibly Berlin) to the town of F for a literary festival she is to be a guest speaker at. Detoured by erratic train schedules and nudged by forces beyond her control, her journey slowly bends toward a traveling circus. Swept up in this series of events, M eventually offers to step in for a circus performer who has unexpectedly left the show. The train functions as a motif of transience and impermanence, while the circus embodies the reshaping of identity and a retreat into fantasy, an impulse that lies at the very heart of the novel form itself.|isbn=1804272329}}{{Frontpage|isbn=B0GFQ81YQK|title=How the Sky and the Earth Made People: From the Oral Stories of NapalmMalagasy Elders|author=Stephanie Zabriskie|rating=4.5|genre=Children's Non-Fiction|summary= Before people came and joined the animals, there was only the sky and the earth. Everything was quiet until the earth and the sky began to tal to each other. First, the earth created bodies. And then, the sky breathed life into them. These were the first humans and they belonged to both earth and sky. And so people lived between sky and soil and they planted and learned and remembered, especially how they came to be. When they grew old and died, their bodies returned to the earth and their life returned to the sky. And that is why the earth and the sky are both revered. Only together can they create human beings. And that is why people must pay attention to, and care for, both.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=B0GHPMNF6P|title=The Zookeeper's Dragon: A Magical Modern Fantasy Tale for Grown-Ups|author=Carolyn Mathews
|rating=4.5
|genre=ThrillersFantasy|summary= ItWhen Phil's father unexpectedly dies, he quits his Canary Wharf finance job to take over the running of the family's farm zoo. He's September 1973 not expecting much excitement, until he receives an unidentified egg that his new-age stoner uncle Edgar found in a cave in HicksNew Zealand, Californiaand suddenly life is no longer quite what it seems. Hicks Then the egg hatches into neither a reptile nor a bird, but a dragon! Now he, Edgar, his mother Abi, and the zoo's part-time café waitress Pearl have to raise this little bundle of scales and joy, despite having no idea how to actually raise dragons and not being able to tell anyone about it. But this tiny little dragon may show them love and connection in ways they had never before imagined…}}{{Frontpage|author=Stephanie Zabriskie|title=How Maasai Women Spoke to Cows: From the Oral Stories of Maasai Elders|rating=5|genre=Children's Non-Fiction|summary=''How Maasai Women Spoke to Cows is a Mojave desert town children’s nonfiction book drawn from the oral traditions of Maasai elders in Ngorongoro, Tanzania.'' The Maasai are a few thousand cattle-herding people and this story writes down its oral tradition explaining how they came to be so. Cattle are status and wealth in Maasai culture but this doesn't tell the whole story of the intimate and symbiotic connection its people, and especially its women, have with their cows and for the natural world. The oral tradition retelling the many conversations Maasai women have had with its nearest neighbours their cows, does.|isbn=B0G9WTGY6J}}{{Frontpage|author=Livi Michael|title=Elizabeth and Ruth|rating=3.5|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=''Elizabeth and Ruth'' is a work of historical fiction wrought from the life of the Victorian author Elizabeth Gaskell, best known for her first novel Mary Barton (1848), a radical critique of the treatment of LA the working class published under a pseudonym. The ''Ruth'' from Livi Michael's title appears in her novel as Pasley, a young Irish prostitute who was abandoned as a child and finds herself in Manchester's New Bailey Prison after a difficult and unjust hand at life. Set in Manchester between 1839 and 1842, the novel examines the harsh conditions endured by the Victorian working poor and Las Vegas interrogates the extent to which the wealthy (including Gaskell herself) were responsible for addressing these injustices.|isbn=1784633682}}{{Frontpage|author=Makenna Goodman|title=Helen of Nowhere|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=It could be argued that the pervading theme of this book is malaise - a hard-to-place feeling that something in your life is not quite right. The protagonist, a disgraced professor on the brink of losing both his career and his relationship, embodies this feeling. However, Goodman counteracts his discomfort with a significant drive awayforce which is seductive, radical and unnerving: Helen. The connection between Helen and the protagonist is indirect yet intimate. Not much happens As the former owner of the countryside house he's considering, Helen represents a volta in Hickshis life, her past tied to his potential fresh start. A silver mine The realtor who shows the protagonist around the house shares stories about Helen, and a defence contractor describes her as ''an entity that is pure consciousness, beyond form''. Although she lives in an assisted living facility now, Helen has powers beyond comprehension which the reader gets the sense are the main local employers but otherwisenot altogether innocuous.|isbn=1804272205}}{{Frontpage|isbn=B0GCB1MQ7D|title=Why My Mother Went Away|author=Alan Kennedy|rating=5|genre=Autobiography|summary=I have often wondered how prominent people came to hold their positions. With 'celebrities', there's frequently a book they might or might not have written, which might or might not tell the true story. It's not much often that you find a book that gives the full backstory, and rarely do you discover a memoir where the telling is so perfect that you'll go back and reread paragraphs and sentences, just for the pleasure the words give. ''Why My Mother Went Away'' is one of those rare exceptions. It's the story of how a boy from the Midlands, born at the beginning of the Second World War, would become a Professor of Psychology at Dundee University. In fact, he was one of the founders of the department.}}{{Frontpage|author=Jeremy Cooper|title=Discord|rating= 3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Discord: a lack of agreement or harmony (as between persons, things, or ideas) The principal example of discord within the novel, as with most instances of discord, is easily located. The two protagonists of note other than dive bars the novel, Rebekah Rosen and Joshua treesEvie Bennet, are as different as they come. Life Rebekah is an uptight, traditional and no-nonsense composer close to retirement, while Evie is quieta force of nature, bounding onto the musical scene as a precocious saxophonist, until.oozing with talent and charm.The two, predictably, don't always see eye to eye, their approaches different and Evie's progressive views at odds with Rebekah's conservative leaning.However, something connects them beyond just their musical project: a sort of fragile alliance formed within the clamour.|isbn= B0D321VJ761804272264
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{{Frontpage
|summary=Will's life is difficult, in a multitude of ways. He is bullied 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 most basic of things like food, and his dad can't work because he lost his job at the college, was working a cash-in-hand job on a building site and had an accident. Throw into that mix the fact that his mum and dad are separated, and Will's life seems bleak in every direction. And yet, he still has a tiny amount of hope. He is good at art, and clings to the moments of joy when he is drawing, that feel like a light at the end of a long, dark tunnel.
|isbn=1398527122
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{{Frontpage
|author=Edward W Said
|title=Representations of the Intellectual
|rating=4.5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=Edward Said's ''Representations of the Intellectual'' is less a strict theory of what intellectuals are and more a passionate argument for what they should be. Said clearly rejects the comfortable image of the intellectual as a detached expert speaking only to other specialists. Instead, he insists on the intellectual as a public figure, often awkward, abrasive, and unpopular, who speaks truth to power even when it is inconvenient or risky.
|isbn=1804272248
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|isbn=0008551375|title=When Shadows Fall (D S Max Craigie)|author=Joan DidionNeil Lancaster|rating=4.5|genre=Crime|summary=Leanne Wilson's body was found at the bottom of a Scottish mountain, seemingly the result of a tragic accident. She'd looked so happy, too, when she posted her intentions on Facebook. Her friends were relieved as she was just out of an unpleasant relationship, but it looked like she was living her best life now. Then it emerged that 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 certain there's a killer on the loose.}}{{Frontpage|author=Paul B Preciado|title=The Year of Magical ThinkingDysphoria Mundi
|rating=4.5
|genre=AutobiographyPolitics and Society|summary=This book ''It is Joan Didionnever too late to embrace the revolutionary optimism of childhood's heartbreaking autobiographical account ' 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 grief she endured following her husbandnew 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''s sudden death. Books The whole text is framed against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic as that shed light which has catalysed this revolution, when dysphoria began to emerge on taboo topics like death are such a beautiful and necessary resource global scale, or as ''pangea covidica''. Rather than taking this extreme dysphoria as a sign of weakness, or mistaking detachment or withdrawal for political paralysis, Preciado urges his readers to help people feel less alone''use dysphoria as your revolutionary platform''. Didion unpicks unpleasant feelings surrounding death like self-pity|isbn=1804271454}}{{Frontpage|author=Samantha Harvey|title=Orbital|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=In 2024, denial and delusion and makes them utterly normalSamantha Harvey won the Booker Prize for ''Orbital'', lends them a human face compact yet profound work that unfolds over a single day in the lives of a group of astronauts aboard the International Space Station. Through a narrative lens that mirrors the astronauts' orbital perspective, Harvey invites readers to wearsee our planet in a wholly new light.|isbn=00072168581529922933}}{{Frontpage|isbn=295967572X|title=Pale Pieces|author=G M Stevens|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= Our unnamed narrator is about to begin a train journey with his companion Django. Where they're going and what the purpose of this journey is, is uncertain. Django found the tickets ''on the floor somewhere'' and has persuaded our narrator to accompany him. Why not? Not much else is clear either - but we are probably in the past as the pair travel to the station by coach and the train is a steam locomotive.
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=17395269101035043092|title=Where The Killing Stones (Jimmy Perez)|author=Ann Cleeves|rating=5|genre=Crime|summary=Ican'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. It've Not Been Losts been seven years since we heard from him, but he's now living with Willow Reeves and their young son, James, as well as Cassie, the daughter of his former partner. Willow's also his boss, and she ''should'' be on maternity leave, but when the body of a popular islander, Archie Stout, is found, in the aftermath of a storm, she can't resist getting involved. He'd been battered about the head with a Neolithic stone - one of a pair - which had been stolen from a museum.}}{{Frontpage|author=Glen SibleyThea Lenarduzzi|title=The Tower|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= ''How unctuous are the fats of another's life, how dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream''. In this compelling novel, Thea Lenarduzzi assumes the identity of T, the protagonist of this tale. Just as T's story is being told, the story of a second protagonist is unveiled: Annie, the daughter of a wealthy family in the 19th century, who died of tuberculosis after being locked in a tower, captures T's imagination. Annie's fate is, above all, an enticing story to T. It is a story which she consumes avariciously, both in a quest for truth and knowledge, and in service of myth, fable and fantasy. |isbn=1804271799}}{{Frontpage|author=Claire-Louise Bennett|title=Big Kiss, Bye-Bye
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=''One year after a suicide attempt blows apart musician Brian O’Malley's lifeEverything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, he arrives is steeped in an unfamiliar Devon town to recoveranguish and distortion. Living with an unexpected housemate at his former manager’s holiday homeEven a kiss, usually a symbol of intimacy and closeness, he dreams becomes evidence of reconnecting with everything he has love lost. But as those tentative plans falterWhen the narrator cries out internally, ''come over here and kiss me, he becomes swept up in '' it is less an invitation than a local world desperate attempt to confirm her emotional numbness. The imagined recipient of unlikely friendshipsthis plea is Xavier, mobile discos and surprising romantic possibilitiesher ex-partner, a ghost she conjures to test her detachment.''|isbn=1804271934
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{{Frontpage
|genre=Crime
|summary=It's sixteen years since nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her bed one summer night. She was never found and the investigation ground to a halt. Now, her mother, Helena, and her father are dead in their bed. Initially, it looks like a straightforward murder/suicide but there's something about the positioning of the bodies that makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and her boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. What looked as though it was going to be an open-and-shut case is now a complex double murder. Kerrigan is convinced that the explanation lies in Rosalie's disappearance: others (such as Derwent's boss, Una Burt) are less convinced.
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{{Frontpage
|author=Annie Ernaux and Alison L. Strayer (translator)
|title=The Other Girl
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=''We were born from the same body. I've never really wanted to think about this.''
Ernaux's work is always very candid and her tone transparent, but this raw epistolary text must be one of the most intimate accounts I've read. Ernaux writes in direct address to her sister, however, this letter will never reach her. Why? Because Annie Ernaux's sister died of diphtheria at 6 years old, a few months before the vaccine was made compulsory in France, and 2 years before the author was even born. The large and instant void created by the jarring concept of writing to an imaginary recipient emphasises Ernaux's process of reckoning with this giant absence in her life, an absence that she has always felt but often denied.
|isbn=1804271845
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{{Frontpage
|author=Maxim Gorky and Bryan Karetnyk (translator)
|title=Reminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev
|rating=3.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Biographies are often seen as the form of life-writing which offers less colour; it can be seen as more objective and less personal. I think that Gorky completely rejects this perspective, and offers a vibrant, subjective yet informed portrait of three of his literary contemporaries. In the first section of this book, Tolstoy complains to his friend Gorky that: ''you write not of real life as it is, but of what you yourself imagine it to be. Whom would it help to know how I see this tower, that sea, or that Tartar - why should it interest anyone? Of what use is it?''. Well, Maxim Gorky shows exactly what can be gained from a subjective account, giving us access to how he saw Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev in such privileged detail that one almost feels unworthy of it.
|isbn=1804271977
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|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=13996130731836284683|title=Moral InjuriesThe Big Happy|author=Christie WatsonDavid Chadwick
|rating=4.5
|genre=ThrillersDystopian Fiction|summary=Olivia, Laura and Anjali met on the first day of medical school and their friendship would keep them inseparable for Well! This is a quarter of murder mystery unlike any other! I do love it when I open a century. Olivia is ruthlessly ambitiousbook, which is a bonus when you aim it's nothing like I expected it to be a cardiothoracic surgeon. Laura is a perfectionist , and it takes me on a trauma doctorwild ride. Anjali And that is the free spirit of the group and she becomes a GP. When we first meet them theyjust what happened with ''The Big Happy're at a drug and alcohol-fuelled party and it's going to end in tragedy. We I don't know who suffered the tragedy or want to ruin a similar experience for any of you reading but I'll have to at least set the consequencesscene. Twenty-five years later there will be an eerily similar event Once that will impact the three friends. This time, it's their teenage children who are involveddone, I think you should simply experience this wonderfully original story for yourself.
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0241636604Sally Rooney|title=The Trading Game: A Confession|author=Gary StevensonIntermezzo
|rating=4.5
|genre=AutobiographyGeneral Fiction |summary=If you were to bring up an image Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard of life and is something of a city banker in your mindgrandmaster at putting it into words. Her dialogue is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, you're unlikely to think of someone like Gary Stevensonas her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. A hoodie and jeans replaces Among the many relationships woven into this story, the pin-stripe suit and his background central one for readers to unravel is the East End, where he was familiar with violence, poverty fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and injusticePeter Koubek. There was no posh public school on his CV - but he had been to the London School of Economics. Stevenson is bright - extremely bright - and he has Ivan, a facility socially awkward chess prodigy, contrasts sharply with numbers which most of us can only envy. He also realised that most rich people expect poor people to be stupid. It was his ability at what was, essentiallyolder brother Peter, a card game which got him an internship successful lawyer living in Dublin. Following their father's passing after a long battle with Citibank. Eventuallycancer, this turned into permanent employment as a traderthe brothers' already strained relationship faces new trials.|isbn=0571365469
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|authorisbn=Leanne Egan1836285493|title=Lover BirdsThe Double Life of a Wheelchair User|author=Rob Keeley|rating=4.5|genre=TeensConfident Readers|summary=When new girlWill is a keen player of video games, Isabela conscientious student, moves to Lou's hometown a slightly annoying brother and a supportive friend. But most of Liverpool from London Lou immediately feels Isabel's disdain for everything around herall, he is an aspiring writer. A misunderstanding between them leaves them hating each otherEnglish is his favourite lesson at his school, but Lou feels her pulse racing every time she looks at Isabel or speaks with herMarlowe Park, and that's definitely because Isabel makes her feel so cross, isnone at which he excels. This hasn't it? Because Lou is straightgone unnoticed by his headteacher, isn't she? Even though none of her relationships with boys have gone very well so farMrs Howarth, and she's never had has suggested to Will and his mum that he spends a good kiss with any couple of them? So she just finds herself watching Isabel, and wanting to hang out with her because fighting with her is funafternoons a week at a different school, and she definitely just hates IsabelStation Road, doesn't she?|isbn=000862657Xwhere his ability might be better extended.
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{{Frontpage
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=Sometimes it's simpler to explain a book by describing what it ''isn't'' and that applies to ''The Conservative Effect: 2010-2024 - 14 Wasted Years?''. If 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 don't think Anthony Seldon's book, {{amazonurl|isbn=B0BH7SKG2S|title=Johnson at 10}}, can be bettered for those tumultuous years. It's a compelling read and should be compulsory for anyone who thinks Johnson should return to politics. ''The Conservative Effect'' is an entirely different beast. It's the seventh book in a series which looks at the impact a government has made and co-editor Sir Anthony Seldon regards this as the most important. 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 the situation in 2024.
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{{Frontpage
|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.
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