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'''Read [[:Category:Features|the latest features]].'''{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Miss Read1035043092|title=Christmas at Thrush GreenThe Killing Stones (Jimmy Perez)|author=Ann Cleeves|rating=45|genre=Women's FictionCrime|summary=Set in I can't have been the rural village of Thrush Greenonly person who was sad when Inspector Jimmy Perez [[Wild Fire (Shetland, this book is the latest in Book 8) by Ann Cleeves|left Shetland]] to start a series surrounding familiar charactersnew life on Orkney. There is the feisty Ella Bembridge It's been seven years since we heard from him, but he's now living with Willow Reeves and their young son, James, who is finally having to admit that old age is creeping up as her eyesight fails. Friends such well as Dimity and Charles Henstock are concerned about herCassie, but she refuses to accept any helpthe daughter of his former partner. Albert Piggott has decided it Willow's time to retire now that also his wifeboss, and she ''should'' be on maternity leave, but when the body of a popular islander, NellyArchie Stout, is found, in the aftermath of a successful cafe owner and storm, she can afford to take care of him! And relative newcomer Phil Hurst and her husband are arranging 't resist getting involved. He'd been battered about the local nativity play, despite head with a number Neolithic stone - one of seta pair -backswhich had been stolen from a museum. Will everything be in place for Christmas? And will independent Ella make a decision about her future?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1409101592</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Matt and DavePolly Barton|title=Yuck's Robotic BottomWhat Am I, A Deer?
|rating=4
|genre=Confident ReadersLiterary Fiction|summary=ItPolly Barton's concerned me for a while debut novel is an intellectually playful yet emotionally exposed work that uses translation as both subject and governing metaphor. The narrator, newly relocated from London to Berlin, works translating video games into Japanese through the process of localisation, rewriting language until it's relatively easy feels comfortably familiar to pick up early readers a new audience. Barton treats this as a paradoxical act: arguably, in striving for girls – princessesuniversality, magic soft toyslanguage is endlessly repackaged, mermaids and pets abound – but there's a much smaller choice for boysits originality at risk of disappearing altogether. It's important too with early readers that From this, the content is ''interesting'' and reading becomes more than just something which you ''have'' novel opens out into a wider, resonant question: to what extent do at school and moves into being fun. Matt and Dave have found the answer we translate ourselves in Yuck.order to be understood, accepted, or loved?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847382991</amazonuk>1804272175
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{{Frontpage
|isbn= Zabriskie1
|title=A Village Where Many Ways Meet: A Story of Belonging and Community, Rooted in Indigenous Wisdom
|author=Stephanie Zabriskie
|rating=5
|genre=Children's Non-Fiction
|summary=''Across many African and Indigenous systems, differences in how children learn, sense , or process the world were not treated as disorders to be corrected. They were understood as natural variations of human intelligence and awareness, each holding value within the community.''
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Maxine Barry1787333175|title=River DeepYou Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here|author=Benji Waterhouse|rating=3.5|genre=Women's FictionPopular Science|summary=Two young women both have a love of the Thames. Melisande RayI was tempted to read ''s beloved hotel, the Ray of Sunshine is on the river bank. ItYou Don's here that guests come who want t Have to be pampered and looked after in the way that only the best hotels can do well, but when Wendell James checks in Mad to the hotel itWork Here's not pampering he's looking for. Heafter enjoying Adam Kay's buying first book {{amazonurl|isbn=1509858636|title=This is Going to Hurt}}, a piece glorious mixture of land not far from insight into the Ray workings of Sunshine the NHS, humour and heautobiography. 's sussing out the competition'You Don't Have to be Mad... There's something personal in there too – if his new hotel means that ' promised the same elements but moved from physical problems to mental illness and the Ray work of Sunshine goes under then that would be an added bonusa psychiatrist. There's just I did wonder whether it was acceptable to be looking for humour in this setting but the laughter is directed at a slight doubt in his mind when situation rather than a red-haired maid catches his eyeperson and it is always delivered with empathy and understanding.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0709088930</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Joe GoresMaria Stepanova and Sasha Dugdale (Translator)|title=Spade and ArcherThe Disappearing Act
|rating=4
|genre=CrimeLiterary Fiction|summary=Sam Spade decidesDespite her anonymisation of place names and people, bravely, to set up his one-man detective agency. ItStepanova's the 1920s message in San Francisco so we have this short work of autofiction is unmistakable. A novelist named M travels from B (ostensibly Berlin) to the prohibition era town of F for a literary festival she is to be a guest speaker at. Detoured by erratic train schedules and all that that entailsnudged by forces beyond her control, her journey slowly bends toward a traveling circus. Many locals, Swept up in this series of courseevents, choose M eventually offers to disobey step in for a circus performer who has unexpectedly left the law, stick two fingers up, so to speak and show. The train functions as a result there's lots motif of bootleg liquor. Straight awaytransience and impermanence, it's evident that Sam is a man of few words. He has while the circus embodies the mannerisms reshaping of identity and a cat - stealthyretreat into fantasy, quick on his feet. He's also a compulsive chain-smoker, but then again, most people were. In an impulse that era, holding a cigarette was an elegant, almost essential accessory. How times have changedlies at the very heart of the novel form itself.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>140911323X</amazonuk>1804272329
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Michael Morpurgo and Emma Chichester ClarkB0GFQ81YQK|title=The Best How the Sky and the Earth Made People: From the Oral Stories of TimesMalagasy Elders|author=Stephanie Zabriskie
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersChildren's Non-Fiction|summary=Most children enjoy a good traditional tale Before people came and this lovely book by Michael Morpurgo seems to have all joined the animals, there was only the right ingredients – a handsome prince sky and a beautiful princess who fall in love, get married the earth. Everything was quiet until the earth and live happily ever afterthe sky began to tal to each other. Or do they? SadlyFirst, not long after Prince Frederico marries the lovely Princess Serafinaearth created bodies. And then, she becomes very sadthe sky breathed life into them. These were the first humans and they belonged to both earth and sky. Nobody knows what has caused such great sadnessAnd so people lived between sky and soil and they planted and learned and remembered, but poor Prince Frederico is desperate especially how they came to find a cure for his wife's miserybe. He tries everything in his power When they grew old and eventually decides died, their bodies returned to offer his kingdom the earth and their life returned to anyone who the sky. And that is why the earth and the sky are both revered. Only together can make her happy again before she dies of a broken heartthey create human beings. Lots of And that is why people come must pay attention to the palace to try , and help but in the end the solution is a simple one provided by some very kind travellerscare for, both.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1405232552</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Shirley JacksonB0GHPMNF6P|title=We Have Always Lived In The CastleZookeeper's Dragon: A Magical Modern Fantasy Tale for Grown-Ups|author=Carolyn Mathews
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary FictionFantasy|summary=Mary Katherine BlackwoodWhen Phil's father unexpectedly dies, also known as Merricat, is eighteen, and lives with her older sister Constance in he quits his Canary Wharf finance job to take over the running of the family home where 'Blackwoods had always liveds farm zoo. He's not expecting much excitement, until he receives an unidentified egg that his new-age stoner uncle Edgar found in a cave in New Zealand, and suddenly life is no longer quite what it seems. Merricat quickly draws Then the reader egg hatches into her world by neither a series of matter of fact reptile nor a bird, but bizarre statements – her likes include her sister and death cap mushroomsa dragon! Now he, and everyone else in her family is dead. The wealthy Blackwood family has always kept the house 'steady against the world'Edgar, shutting out other peoplehis mother Abi, and they live near a village. Merricat believes that the zoo'The people s part-time café waitress Pearl have to raise this little bundle of the village have always hated us'scales and joy, despite having no idea how to actually raise dragons and tells us that she hates not being able to tell anyone about it. But this tiny little dragon may show them too.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141191457</amazonuk>love and connection in ways they had never before imagined…
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{{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 children’s nonfiction book drawn from the oral traditions of Maasai elders in Ngorongoro, Tanzania.''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Amanda DownumLivi Michael|title=The Drowning CityElizabeth and Ruth
|rating=3.5
|genre=FantasyHistorical Fiction|summary=In a nutshell, you're reading this because you're wondering whether The Drowning City Elizabeth and Ruth'' is gooda work of historical fiction wrought from the life of the Victorian author Elizabeth Gaskell, best known for her first novel Mary Barton (1848), bad or mediocre. You've probably glanced at a radical critique of the rating and guessed treatment of the latterworking class published under a pseudonym. IThe 'm afraid it'Ruth'' from Livi Michael's not quite that simple. This is title appears in her novel as Pasley, a debut that provokes decidedly mixed feelings. I started off convinced that I young Irish prostitute who was going to love this bookabandoned as a child and finds herself in Manchester's New Bailey Prison after a difficult and unjust hand at life. The cover art is effortlessly coolSet in Manchester between 1839 and 1842, the premise intriguing, novel examines the harsh conditions endured by the characters laden with potential for greatness Victorian working poor and interrogates the backdrop is certainly evocativeextent to which the wealthy (including Gaskell herself) were responsible for addressing these injustices.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1841498149</amazonuk>1784633682
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tove JanssonMakenna Goodman|title=The True Deceiver|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Most people of my age will have come across Jansson's work unwittingly, via the televised renditions Helen of the Moomin tales. The readers amongst us would then have been entranced a few years ago to discover that at last Thomas Teal had set about the translation into English, first of The Summer Book and then of a collection of short stories which were published as 'A Winter Book'. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0954899571</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Daniel Kehlmann |title=Me and KaminskiNowhere
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=After reviewing several long booksIt 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, it's been refreshing to read such a fluent yet pared down story as 'Kaminski disgraced professor on the brink of losing both his career and Me'his relationship, embodies this feeling. In itHowever, Sebastian ZollnerGoodman counteracts his discomfort with a force which is seductive, radical and unnerving: Helen. The connection between Helen and the obnoxious main characterprotagonist is indirect yet intimate. As the former owner of the countryside house he's considering, shoves himself forward Helen represents a volta in a desperate attempt his life, her past tied to research a best seller which will re-ignite his career as an art criticpotential fresh start. Kaminski, The realtor who shows the protagonist around the proposed subjecthouse shares stories about Helen, was a fashionable painter long agoand describes her as ''an entity that is pure consciousness, but beyond form''. Although she lives in an assisted living facility now, ancient and chronically ill, Helen has virtually slid into oblivion. So powers beyond comprehension which the second-rate writer is on a loser unless he can dig up some juicy details to hook reader gets the art world and general publicsense are not altogether innocuous.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847249892</amazonuk>1804272205
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Louis BarfeB0GCB1MQ7D|title=Turned Out Nice Again: The Story of British Light EntertainmentWhy My Mother Went Away|author=Alan Kennedy|rating=45|genre=EntertainmentAutobiography|summary=Light entertainment is I have often looked down uponwondered how prominent people came to hold their positions. With 'celebrities', as if itthere's frequently a bit naffbook they might or might not have written, tepid and ignorablewhich might or might not tell the true story. WhatIt's not often forgotten that you find a book that gives the full backstory, and rarely do you discover a memoir where the telling is so perfect that ityou's hugely popularll go back and reread paragraphs and sentences, enjoyable and much of it just for the pleasure the words give. ''Why My Mother Went Away'' is one of the highest qualitythose rare exceptions. Louis Barfe It's Turned Out Nice Again tells the complete story of British light entertainmenthow 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.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1843543818</amazonuk>
}}
{{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)
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Joseph Delaney Tom Percival|title=The Spook's Stories: WitchesWrong Shoes|rating=45|genre=TeensConfident Readers|summary=Will'Warning: Not to be read after darks life is difficult,in a multitude of ways. He is bullied because he has ' are the only words on wrong shoes', he has the back of wrong shoes because his dad can't work and doesn'The Spook's Stories'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 on had an accident. Throw into that mix the inside flapfact that his mum and dad are separated, and Will'The Times' warns us that this book is 'seriously scary'..s life seems bleak in every direction. The whole thing kicks-off relatively tamely, though And yet, with he still has a story about a young Spook (a sort tiny amount of monster-hunter) who falls in love with a witch hope. He is good at art, and is forced clings to bear the consequences moments of joy when he is drawing, that feel like a light at the witch's sister comes to stay and exhibits end of a taste for the neighbor-childrenlong, dark tunnel.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0370329961</amazonuk>1398527122
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|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersPolitics and Society|summary=I shall start with a word Edward Said's ''Representations of advice. When youthe Intellectual''re being hounded by is less a circus master, strict theory of what intellectuals are and more a magician, passionate argument for what they should be. Said clearly rejects the soul comfortable image of a tiger that's contained in a tiger's egg that's contained in the brain of your teddy bear, and your best friend - intellectual as a fallen angel - is trying her best detached expert speaking only to make sure the other angels do not turn specialists. Instead, he insists on you in a big way - then you're probably living the third book in intellectual as a fantasy trilogy. Still - never mindpublic figure, often awkward, the angel's efforts will involve you entering a dream world of flight and cloud citiesabrasive, the chase after your enemies will take you across the world to desert oases and backunpopular, and friends new and old will be on board who speaks truth to helppower even when it is inconvenient or risky.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847384447</amazonuk>1804272248
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sue TownsendSylvie Cathrall|title=Adrian Mole: The Prostrate YearsA Letter to the Luminous Deep
|rating=5
|genre=General Science Fiction|summary=Adrian Mole is now 39¼ and living, quite literally, in There are few greater joys than a pigsty, sharing an all too thin party wall with his parents and working in book which lives up to a bookshop. It's not quite how life was supposed to turn out. As he spends his days wrestling his strong willed 5 year old Gracie into her school uniform, trying to reassure glamorous wife Daisy that life in the provinces is not as bad as she would like to believe, and desperately attempting to talk his mother out of her quest to appear on the vile ''Jeremy Kyle'' show, worrying over his increasingly frequent visits to the toilet is really the last thing he needscompelling premise. And yet, the worst this is still to come. Think a crumbling economy, redundancy, affairs, death, a family member challenging him in the novel writing stakes and a query over the big C – it's going to be a tough year for the Moles, and there's little that ol' Adrian can do except sit back and watch his life spin out one of control around himthem.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0718153707</amazonuk>0356522776
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Lauren Kate1786482126|title=FallenThe Janus Stone (Dr Ruth Galloway)|author=Elly Griffiths
|rating=4.5
|genre=TeensCrime|summary=A 17 year Builders were demolishing an old girl at house in Norwich - the site was going to hold seventy-five 'luxury' apartments - when they discovered the bones of a new school meets child beneath a doorway. There was no skull. Was this a mysterious and impossibly good-looking boyritual killing or murder? Inevitably, who sheDr Ruth Galloway finds herself working with DCI Harry Nelson. It's immediately drawn to. He seems determined to either ignore her or be outright rude to herdifficult as Ruth knows, until he saves her lifebut Nelson doesn't, and that she is pregnant with his child as a result of the two of them end up drawn one night they spent togethersome three months ago. This isn't Stephenie Meyer's ''Twilight'' Her condition will be obvious before long, but it certainly has striking similaritiesnot least because Ruth is prone to sudden bouts of sickness.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0385738935</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Gareth Hinds0008551375|title=King LearWhen Shadows Fall (D S Max Craigie)|author=Neil Lancaster|rating=34.5|genre=Graphic NovelsCrime|summary=Hound me out Leanne Wilson's body was found at the bottom of town in a most appropriate mannerScottish mountain, but I do not like King Learseemingly the result of a tragic accident. For meShe'd looked so happy, too, even when she posted her intentions on Facebook. Her friends were relieved as a trained actorshe 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 language is too dense last year. All were experienced climbers, properly equipped for what they were doing and rich, sensible people. None of the set-up too archly unfeasible 'what a stupid thing to create the great tragedy itdo's thought to beexplanations applied. To my mind the acclaim and esteem in which itThey were all alone when they died: DS Max Craigie is certain there's held is only mirrored by its own over-long, over-blown blusteringa killer on the loose.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0763643440</amazonuk>
}}
{{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''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Toby LesterSamantha Harvey|title=The Fourth Part of the World: The Epic Story of History's Greatest MapOrbital
|rating=4.5
|genre=HistoryGeneral Fiction|summary=In 2003 a map was bought for $10 million2024, Samantha Harvey won the highest price ever paid publicly Booker Prize for ''Orbital'', a compact yet profound work that unfolds over a historical document, by single day in the Library lives of a group of Congress, where it is now on permanent public displayastronauts aboard the International Space Station. No ordinary map, this is sometimes described as America's birth certificate. It is the sole survivor of Through a thousand copies printed early in narrative lens that mirrors the 16th centuryastronauts' orbital perspective, and was discovered by accident in some archives Harvey invites readers to see our planet in a German castle in 1901. The sale and story behind it intrigued Toby Lester so much that he was inspired to discover more, and this book is the resultwholly new light.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1861978030</amazonuk>1529922933
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Steven Lowe and Alan McArthur 295967572X|title=Is it Just Me or Has the Shit Hit the Fan?: Your Hilarious New Guide to Unremitting Global MiseryPale Pieces|author=G M Stevens|rating=35|genre=HumourLiterary Fiction|summary=''The banks fell over like fat Labradors running over Our unnamed narrator is about to begin a wet kitchen floortrain journey with his companion Django.Where they'' Surely that re going and what the purpose of this journey is, is uncertain. Django found the wackiest, most inappropriate simile for tickets ''on the credit crunch floor somewhere'' and all it has done for the worldpersuaded our narrator to accompany him. You won't get any such nambyWhy not? Not much else is clear either -pamby animal likenesses from these authors, instead with quite a potty mouth on them they will lambast but we are probably in the modern world, past as the entire banking system, all those who failed pair travel to see it coming, the station by coach and those millions just seemingly waiting for us all to revert to high-interest, high-risk, high-lending capitalism, so they can get back on the expenses train, and back up the rich listsis a steam locomotive.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847443656</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Andy Stanton0008551324|title=What's For Dinner, Mr Gum?The Devil You Know (D S Max Craigie)|author=Neil Lancaster
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=As soon as heroine Polly turns her back, and leaves the town of Lamonic Bibber It's unusual for a day at anyone from the seaside, Mr Gum falls out with his best friend, causing carnivorous carnage all over Hardie family to approach the placepolice. Meat Neither side likes or has any respect for the other. But Davie Hardie is getting thrown around like itstruggling in prison and he's going out prepared to tell the police where the body of fashiona missing person is buried and who was responsible for her death. This person, he promises, is someone big and we have it will be worth the police doing what he wants. And what he wants is to be transferred to an open prison to doubt whether Polly and her companions can ever utilise serve the power remainder of love his sentence and put things to rightsget an early parole date. Especially as this book does not contain a magic unicorn called ElizabethNot much to ask, is it? The new Deputy Police Constable doesn't think so and she's even prepared to do the other thing that Hardie demanded - make certain that DS Max Craigie and anyone who works with him is kept well away from what's happening.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1405248246</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Thea 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''.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jean UreClaire-Louise Bennett|title=Fortune CookieBig Kiss, Bye-Bye
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersLiterary Fiction|summary=Fudge Cassidy Everything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, is steeped in anguish and distortion. Even a kiss, usually a symbol of intimacy and the Cupcake kid are best friendscloseness, becomes evidence of love lost. If When the names remind you of a certain film then younarrator cries out internally, 'd be spot on as that's where Fudgecome over here and kiss me,'s father got the idea from. They're actually chalk and cheese – Fudge it is loud mouthed and opinionated and Cupcake is quiet and thoughtful – but the combination works. They've just started at secondary school and Cupcake has rather less an invitation than a lot on desperate attempt to confirm her plateemotional numbness. Her brother Joey has muscular dystrophy and his problems are becoming more obvious. Add to The imagined recipient of this that plea is Xavier, her father couldn't cope with the problems and he now has another family. It's just Cupcakeex-partner, Joey and a ghost she conjures to test her mother – and not a lot of moneydetachment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0007224621</amazonuk>1804271934
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jenifer Roberts0008405026|title=The Madness of Queen Maria: The Remarkable Life of Maria I of PortugalA Stranger in the Family (Maeve Kerrigan 11)|author=Jane Casey|rating=4.5|genre=BiographyCrime|summary=Born in 1734 in Lisbon, at that time It's sixteen years since nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her bed one summer night. She was never found and the richest and most opulent city in Europe, Maria was destined investigation ground to become the first female monarch in Portuguese historya halt. Married to her uncle Infante PedroNow, seventeen years her seniormother, she had six children (outliving all but one of them)Helena, and became Queen her father are dead in 1777their bed. A conscientious womanInitially, she had it looks like a straightforward murder/suicide but there's something about the misfortune to be born in during positioning of the 'age of reason', when church bodies that makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and state were vying for supremacyher boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. Instinctively a supporter of the old religion, with a humanitarian approach What looked as though it was going to state affairs, she was no Queen Elizabeth, no Catherine the Great, be an open-and wore her crown rather reluctantly-shut case is now a complex double murder.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>095455891X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=David Hughes|title=Thomas Wogan Kerrigan is Dead|rating=4.5|genre=Graphic Novels|summary=Well, with a title like convinced that, need I bother with a plot summary? A man has a day out the explanation lies in Morecambe, then the next thing he knows heRosalie's in the ultimate waiting room, with a strange array of animals disappearance: others (a bat, a toad, a sea urchin...), all waiting for... well, something. Yup, such as you didnDerwent't need tellings boss, he's deadUna Burt) are less convinced.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>095580888X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Dave EggersAnnie Ernaux and Alison L. Strayer (translator)|title=The Wild ThingsOther Girl
|rating=4
|genre=General FictionAutobiography|summary=Meet Max''We were born from the same body. When I say he sometimes gets the wrong end of the stick about adults, or dislikes his mother's new boyfriend, or gets a bit feisty when he feels the need for revenge, I am certainly understating the facts. He is a bit of a rascal ve never really wanted to say the leastthink about this. But all that might change when he finds himself travelling to a strange land of roisterous animals, and ends up installed as their king.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241144221</amazonuk>}}''
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sarah Beth DurstMaxim Gorky and Bryan Karetnyk (translator)|title=IceReminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev
|rating=3.5
|genre=TeensBiography|summary=Cassie lives on an Arctic research station in AlaskaBiographies are often seen as the form of life-writing which offers less colour; it can be seen as more objective and less personal. She loves the ice I think that Gorky completely rejects this perspective, and offers a vibrant, subjective yet informed portrait of three of his literary contemporaries. In the wilderness first section of her remote home and shethis book, Tolstoy complains to his friend Gorky that: ''d definitely prefer you write not of real life as it is, but of what you yourself imagine it to spend her time on tracking polar bears and fending off frostbite rather than on mixing with her peers and enjoying college and home comforts back in Fairbanksbe. HoweverWhom would it help to know how I see this tower, that sea, things arenor that Tartar - why should it interest anyone? Of what use is it?''t all rosy. Cassie's mother died when she was just Well, Maxim Gorky shows exactly what can be gained from a baby subjective account, giving us access to how he saw Tolstoy, Chekhov and she can't help feeling a huge hole Andreyev in her heart. Her scientist father is remote and unloving and her grandmother left the station after an argument with him when Cassie was still very youngsuch privileged detail that one almost feels unworthy of it. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847386571</amazonuk>1804271977
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Iain Smyth and Michael Terry1529077745|title=The Wide-Mouthed FrogDark Wives (D I Vera Stanhope)|author=Ann Cleeves
|rating=4.5
|genre=For SharingCrime|summary=Do you know A man walking his dog in the joke about early morning discovered the body of a man in the wide-mouthed frog? You must have heard it. It's park near Rosebank, a classiccare home for troubled teens. It's The dead man was Josh - one that you really need of the care workers who was due to tell work a shift the night before but who had never turned up. D I Vera Stanhope is called in person, with your fingers pulling your mouth wide open, but to hopefully spark your memory, investigate the widemurder -mouthed frog introduces himself to a number but her only clue is the disappearance of one of animals until he finally comes across a crocodile who eats widethe residents, fourteen-year-mouthed frogs, and old Chloe Spencer. Some people believe that Chloe was responsible for the frog does his best to disguise who he death but Vera thinks this is whilst saying unlikely as the girl''Ooh, you don't see many of those round here, do you?'' I'm hardly doing s diary makes it justice, but it's very cheesy and funnyclear that she adored Josh. Anyway, this is a book of She knows that jokeshe has to find Chloe to discover what happened to Josh.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408804964</amazonuk>
}}
{{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?''
}}
{{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 takes me on a wild ride. And that is just what happened with ''The Big Happy''. I don't want to ruin a similar experience for any of you reading but I'll have to at least set the scene. Once that's done, I think you should simply experience this wonderfully original story for yourself.}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Annie TaylorSally Rooney|title=VioletIntermezzo
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersGeneral Fiction |summary=Violet Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard of life and is something of a very special hippograndmaster at putting it into words. She Her dialogue is extremely small but that does not make her adoptive parents Albert gripping and Mavis love so brilliantly frustrating, as her any characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Among the many relationships woven into this story, the lesscentral one for readers to unravel is the fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. HoweverIvan, a socially awkward chess prodigy, they are slightly worried that Violet has contrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, a successful lawyer living in Dublin. Following their father's passing after a very unusual habit of turning pink without warning and for no explicable reasonlong battle with cancer, the brothers' already strained relationship faces new trials.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1906847371</amazonuk>0571365469
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Hilary Dixon1836285493|title=When Rooks Speak The Double Life of Love|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Arthur Transcombe is a middle-aged, grey-haired, self-effacing poet. Unremarkable really - on the outside. He has, however, managed to achieve some success with his poems. (Being a guest speaker at the Cheltenham Literary Festival is no mean feat). He is also a babe magnet!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904529429</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewWheelchair User|author=A J Healy|title=Tommy Storm and the Galactic KnightsRob Keeley|rating=3.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Meet Tommy Storm. He's one Will is a keen player of five teenagers snapped up from around the universe to be video games, a conscientious student, a slightly annoying brother and a gang supportive friend. But most of heroic detectives charged with rescuing EVERYTHING from destructionall, he is an aspiring writer. Not just the planetEnglish is his favourite lesson at his school, or the solar systemMarlowe Park, or even the galaxy, but EVERYTHINGand one at which he excels. Nobody seems to know whatThis hasn's going to cause this destructiont gone unnoticed by his headteacher, or whenMrs Howarth, but he and she has suggested to Will and his friends and their ship seem to be the only people proactively going about saving the day. So it's mum that he spends a couple of afternoons a pity that they start this book strung up by week at a nasty loony who's about to kill themdifferent school, Station Road, where his ability might be better extended.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847247555</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Graham McCann1009473085|title=Bounder!: The Biography of TerryConservative Effect 2010 -Thomas2024|author=Anthony Seldon and Tom Egerton (Editors)|rating=4.5|genre=BiographyPolitics and Society|summary=When I was in my early teens, Sometimes it's simpler to explain a book by describing what it sometimes seemed as if Terry''isn't'' and that applies to ''The Conservative Effect: 2010-Thomas was one of the stars of almost every other five2024 -star British comedy film around14 Wasted Years?''. He was certainly one of If you're looking for an easy read which will deliver the most recognizable characters of all with his gap-toothed grin, cigarette holder and inimitable inside story about what 'Hel-lo!', really'Hard cheese!'happened on certain occasions, and best of all, then this isn't the angry, book for you. If that'Yous what you're an absolute shower!looking for, I don't think Anthony Seldon'|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845134419</amazonuk>}} s book, {{newreviewamazonurl|authorisbn=Richard Jay ParkerB0BH7SKG2S|title=Stop Me|rating=3.5|genre=Crime|summary=Spam E-Mails Johnson at 10}}, can be incredibly annoying, but most of us will have had to deal with thembettered for those tumultuous years. Fortunately, we can hit the delete button It's a compelling read and forget about them as quickly as they cameshould be compulsory for anyone who thinks Johnson should return to politics. I certainly prefer not to torture my friends by sending such rubbish on, no matter how bad my luck ''The Conservative Effect'' is supposed to become if I don'tan entirely different beast. But I wonder how many of us would react if It's the seventh book in a series which looks at the impact a spam Egovernment has made and co-Mail actually was editor Sir Anthony Seldon regards this as the most important. This book follows the well-established format: a matter series of life experts from various fields review the state of the nation when the coalition took over in 2010, the changes that occurred and death, rather than just claiming to be?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0749007079</amazonuk>the situation in 2024.
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jeanette WintersonJenny Valentine|title=The Battle of Us in the SunBefore and After
|rating=5
|genre=Confident ReadersTeens|summary=London 1601. Elizabeth I Elk and Mab are best friends, or more than that even, their friendship is getting on a once in yearsa lifetime connection. Her capital city is They meet as children one day on a busy, bustling place. Boats fill the river and people fill the streets. Jack is happy because ittrip out but unfortunately they don's his birthday and his present is his heartt get each other's desire: an excitable black puppy named Maxcontact details at the time. But then chance brings them back together, who's a ''licking and a running they are inseparable. Something has happened though, something terrible and a leaping tragic, and a jumping and a tummy in the air now they must work through their grief, and a tail wagging and a barkingtheir friendship, racing, braking, spinning energy dog of delight''together. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>140880042X</amazonuk>1471196585
}}