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===[[The Gradual Disappearance of Jane Ashland by Nicolai Houm and Anna Paterson (translator)]]===
[[image:4.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]], [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]]
Jane Ashland is dying. That's a description of a very early scene here – but also, of course, a platitude that can apply to all of us. Jane's life, if anything, is going up and down in levels of pleasure, energy – sobriety – in these pages, but we soon learn that it recently found a very deeply dark down place. Here then, scattered through a timeline-bending narrative, we have her days finding a Lincolnesque lover as a student in New York, glimpses of therapy, a drive to find her ancestors that takes her from rural America to Norway – and a trip there with a new-found friend to watch the musk oxen, of all things. And nowhere in sight is anything like a platitude… [[The Gradual Disappearance of Jane Ashland by Nicolai Houm and Anna Paterson (translator)|Full Review]]
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===[[The Company of Eight by Harriet Whitehorn]]===
[[image:5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Confident Readers|Confident Readers]]
Fourteen-year-old orphan Cass lives in the Magical District, but as she hasn't the slightest ability in that direction she doesn't exactly fit in. She takes after her dad, and she hopes desperately that she'll pass the upcoming auditions for acrobats and join the Circus Boat as it tours to give performances on all the islands of the Longest World. Her guardian Mrs Potts, however, does ''not'' approve: her hope that Cass will demonstrate magical abilities like her mother's (and make Mrs Potts very rich) has been disappointed so she is determined her ward will take on a sedate, genteel job instead: governess, maybe, or draper's model. So poor Cass is reduced to practising her routines in secret, using an old book her father left her. [[The Company of Eight by Harriet Whitehorn|Full Review]]
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===[[Us vs Them: The Failure of Globalism by Ian Bremmer]]===
[[image:4.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Politics and Society|Politics and Society]]
It wasn't supposed to be like this, was it? Every day seems to bring yet more news of doom and gloom. The spectre of terrorism hangs over most of the world, fuelling refugee crises and worries about national security. People keep saying that robots are coming to take all our jobs. Anti-establishment political parties are making huge gains in countries all around the world. And inequality is as much of a problem as it ever was – if not more so. [[Us vs Them: The Failure of Globalism by Ian Bremmer|Full Review]]
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===[[Humanatomy: How the Body Works by Nicola Edwards and Jem Maybank]]===
[[image:5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Confident Readers|Confident Readers]]
''Get under your own skin, pick your brains, and go inside your insides!''
That's what ''Humanatomy'' invites you to do and honestly, I don't see how you could resist. This informative book provides a wonderful primer about the human body to curious children- from the skeletal system to the muscular system via circulation, respiration and digestion, right up to the DNA that makes who we are.
[[Humanatomy: How the Body Works by Nicola Edwards and Jem Maybank|Full Review]]
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===[[My Favourite People by Rob Keeley]]===
[[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:For Sharing|For Sharing]]
In ''My Favourite People'' the central character takes us to meet all the important people in his life. There's Auntie Meg, who does brilliant haircuts and loves cats. She has four of them! There's Uncle Steve, who's a gentle giant and an inveterate joker. There's best friend Alice, who can do that clever whistle when you put your fingers in your mouth. There's Carmel the library lady, who always suggests brilliant books to read. And loads more. The book ends with a fabulous party to which everyone is invited. [[My Favourite People by Rob Keeley|Full Review]]
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===[[The Lady Killer by Masako Togawa and Simon Grove (translator)]]===
[[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Crime|Crime]]
Japan, the early 1960s. The prologue of this book sets us up in a lovely way with a world of both innocence and seedy nightclubs. When a young girl enters one alone for a drink she ends up singing along with the musical duet doing the rounds of the venues for tips – as does a man with a distinctive bass voice. They leave together. Six months later, she clings to a balcony at work, thinks about it – and drops to her death in suicide. She was pregnant. But the man involved, a rampant womaniser with an intricate diary of all his comings and goings, is not having a perfect time, either. He returns to an old flame, to find her murdered – and then the lady who would be his alibi for that death also gets killed, and so on. From our point of view, he cannot be a killer of ladies, as the title might imply – but what else could it mean? [[The Lady Killer by Masako Togawa and Simon Grove (translator)|Full Review]]
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Nickerbacher is doing his dragonly duty as all dragons do. That dragonly duty is, of course, princess-guarding. That's what dragons are for, after all. But Gwendolyn isn't any princess. She finds the whole princessing thing quite boring really and she is much less interested in fairy tales than she is in watching comedy on ''The Late Knight Show''. Nickerbacher likes ''The Late Knight Show'' too - in fact, it's his favourite TV show because he wants to be a stand-up comedian himself. He tries out his jokes on Princess Gwendolyn but they don't always come off quite as Nickerbacher intended. [[Nickerbacher by Terry John Barto|Full Review]]
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