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<metadesc>Book review site, with books from most walks of literary life; fiction, biography, crime, cookery and children's books plus author interviews and top tens.</metadesc><h1 id="mf-title">The Bookbag</h1>Hello from The Bookbag, a book review site, featuring books from all the many walks of literary life - [[:Category:Fiction|fiction]], [[:Category:Biography|biography]], [[:Category:Crime|crime]], [[:Category:Cookery|cookery]] and anything else that takes our fancy. At Bookbag Towers the bookbag sits at the side of the desk. It's the bag we take to the library , the charity shop and the bookshop. Sometimes it holds the latest releases, but at other times there'll be old favourites, books for the children, books for the home. They're sometimes our own books or books from the local library. They're often books sent to us by publishers and we promise to tell you exactly what we think about them. You might not want to read through a full review, so we'll give you a quick review which summarises what we felt about the book and tells you whether or not we think you should buy or borrow it. There are also lots of author [[:Category:Interviews|author interviews]], and all sorts of [[:Category:Lists|top tens]] - all of which you can find on our [[Featuresfeatures]] page. If you're stuck for something to read, check out the [[Book Recommendations|recommendations]] page.
'''Read [[:Category:Features|the latest features]].''' <!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Shirley JacksonSeishi Yokomizo and Louise Heal Kawai (translator)|title=We Have Always Lived In The CastleHonjin Murders|rating=4.5|genre=Literary FictionCrime|summary=Mary Katherine Blackwood, also known as MerricatTo many readers, the phrase 'locked room murder mystery' is eighteen, and lives with her older sister Constance in enough to make the book one to read; preferably quantified by the family home where words 'clever' or 'Blackwoods had always livedgood'. Merricat quickly draws For those who need more, here is the extra background – we're in rural Japan in the reader into her world by a series 1930s. The oldest son of matter of fact but bizarre statements an esteemed family is belatedly getting married, although the whole affair is really not as ostentatious as it might be – her likes include her sister and death cap mushroomshardly anybody has turned up, and everyone else in what with it being arranged at great haste. She only has an uncle representing her family is dead, for one thing. The wealthy Blackwood family has always kept Either way, the celebrations have gone ahead as planned, only for the wedded couple to be slashed to death in their private annex before the house 'steady against sun rises on their marriage. What with a man missing parts of his fingers being in the world', shutting out other peopleneighbourhood, and they live near some mysterious use of a village. Merricat believes that 'The people traditional musical instrument at the time of the village have always hated us'crime, and tells us that she hates them toothis case has a lot of the peculiar about it.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0141191457</amazonuk>1782275002
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Simon WestonCixin Liu|title=Nelson to the RescueDeath's End|rating=45|genre=Confident ReadersScience Fiction|summary=Nelson used to pull Mike If I'd been paying more attention when I picked this book up, I would have put it back on the Milkshelf. Not because I didn's milk floatt want to read it, but he has now retiredbecause I'd have figured out that it was the final part of a trilogy. He lives Coming in part way through a saga is never the stable at easiest thing to do and it's particularly true in science fiction because without knowing the back of the dairy along with a couple of tricky rats, Rhodri and Rhys, a pigeon who has no sense of direction, a frog who thinks he-story there are not just people whose names mean nothing to you (when it's a secret agent spy and an old racehorse who spends most of his time sleepingassumed they will) but there are whole concepts that you won't understand. Rhodri and Rhys find a mysterious message on MikeThis latter is particularly true of Cixin Liu's fridge and the animals believe that Mike has been invited to Buckingham Palace to receive an MBEwork – his range is phenomenal. Somehow our heroGeorge R R Martin, Nelson, finds himself travelling down to London, pulling who knows a ceremonial coach for Prince Charles as well as giving a TV interview thing or two about his experience.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848510454</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Elizabeth Baines|title=Too Many Magpies|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Becoming a mother brings a whole new world of fear into your life. Suddenly you see the danger in every situation-creation, and fear and trepidation can be become your constant companions. In this novella, we meet a young mother who is married to a logical scientist. They attempt to control their childrendescribed it as ''s futures on a unique blend of scientific basisand philosophical speculation, growing their own fruit conspiracy theory and vegetables, giving their children nothing sugary, eating no eggs for a whole year until any adverse affects from them were disprovedcosmology''. But after meeting with an enigmatic stranger our young mother begins to struggle as he introduces ideas All of freedom into her world. She begins an affair with him, begins to let things slip at home that and with the children, yet finds she is still continuously haunted by the sense of an ever-present dangermore.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1844717216</amazonuk>1784971650
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Katherine May1780894511|title=Burning OutDie Alone|author=Simon Kernick
|rating=4
|genre=Literary FictionThrillers|summary=Violet has it all – Ray Mason is in prison awaiting trial for murder and he's in the vulnerable prisoner unit: as a cop he's something of a well-paid jobtarget, but the unit is not as secure as the inmates would have hoped and Mason is injured in a luxurious apartment all riot. On his way to herself. Everything hospital he's broken free by armed men and an offer is catered for; her meals, her clothes, and her health are all how she would like them made to behim. But He's to assassinate the life she man who is leading is beginning likely to take its toll. On become the verge of snapping, a drained country's next prime minister and somewhat out-of-sorts Violet, withdraws back to her home town. There, she meets someone familiar, a ghost reminding her of how she used to he'll then be ten years earlier – given a young carefree girl, full of lifenew identity so that he can start afresh abroad. Only this isn His captors say that they't a ghostre MI6, but a girl living the life Violet once lived – exactly the sameMason has his doubts. Haunted by the past Violet realizes history is repeating itself His choices are limited though and is convinced events will happen again. Events he has personal reasons to believe that will in turn haunt the girlit would be better if Alastair Sheridan was dead.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906727392</amazonuk>
}}
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary FictionTeens|summary=After reviewing several long booksThe people of the town Lucille believe that all the monsters are gone. Their children are raised to understand that they were saved by the angels, those who rid the town of evil, it's been refreshing to read such a fluent yet pared down story as 'Kaminski and Me'there are no monsters anymore. In it But one day, Sebastian ZollnerJam accidentally cuts herself, the obnoxious main character, shoves himself forward in and bleeds a desperate attempt to research little onto one of her mother's paintings. The blood awakens a best seller which will rebizarre, terrifying-ignite his career as an art criticlooking creature named Pet, who somehow comes to life and declares that it is here to hunt the monster. Kaminski, Though Jam tries to convince it that all the proposed subjectmonsters are gone, was a fashionable painter long agoPet is certain that there is one, but nowstill, ancient and chronically ill, has virtually slid into oblivion. So that the second-rate writer monster is on a loser unless he can dig up some juicy details to hook hiding in the art world and general publichome of her best friend, Redemption.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847249892</amazonuk>0571355110
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Louis Barfe1686751680|title=Turned Out Nice Again: The Story of British Light EntertainmentMy Mummy does weird things / Maman fait des choses bizarres|author=Amelie Julien and Gustyawan
|rating=4
|genre=EntertainmentFor Sharing|summary=Light entertainment Which child doesn't think that there mother is often looked down upon, as if itwell, ''weird's a bit naff, tepid and ignorable. What's often forgotten is ? It might be that itin the morning their mother doesn's hugely populart like speaking much, enjoyable and much of it when every self-respecting child knows that that is when you're at your brightest with lots to say? ''Why'' then does Mummy stick her fingers in her ears? Then there's doing yoga in front of the highest qualitytelevision, which could be worrying if it wasn't so funny. Louis BarfeWe won's Turned Out Nice Again tells t go into too much detail about what goes on in the bathroom and the colour changes which have occured when Mummy emerges and frankly, the less said the better about her reactions to your artistic efforts on the complete story of British light entertainmentwall.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1843543818</amazonuk> I mean, what else would you use paint for?
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jim Helmore Justine Avery and Karen WallLiuba Syrotiuk|title=Oh No, Monster Tomato!What Wonders Do You See... When You Dream?
|rating=4
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=Marvin is entering the Great Grislygust Grow-Off, but just like him, his tomatoes aren't growing very big. He takes the only sensible course of action: he sings his tomatoes a song. 'The results are spectacular. Victory is surely within his grasp.|amazonuk=day has ended''<amazonukbr>140524741X''Hasn't it been splendid?'' </amazonukbr>}} {{newreview|author=Joseph Delaney |title=The Spook's Stories: Witches|rating=4|genre=Teens|summary='Warning: Not to be read after darkBut now,' are the only words on the back of ''The Spookit's Storiestime, to be sure'', and on the inside flap, <br>'The Times' warns us that this book is For an entirely different adventure'seriously scary'... <br>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Lisa UngerMichael Harris|title=Die For YouSolitude: In Pursuit of a Singular Life in a Crowded World|rating=3.5|genre=CrimeLifestyle|summary=Best-selling novelist Isabel Connelly This is married not the book I was expecting it to successful video game designer Marcus Rainebe. Or so she thinks. But when her husband fails For some reason I expected it to return from work, she realises something is wrong. Going to his office to try be another self-help manual on how to find out what happens calm, how to himstep outside the mainstream, she gets attacked and ends up in hospital, while his co-workers are killedbut it is not that at all. Things get worse for her Instead of telling us how, however, when investigating detective Grady Crowe reveals that Marcus Raine has been dead for several years, and it is more about the man she married was using a false identity''why''. Infuriated by the betrayal Harries examines how we're eroding solitude, and the realisation that she's been living which used to be a lie for the past five yearsnatural part of our human life, Izzy takes matters into her own hands and sets out to find her husband and work out why that matters. Of course he lied to her for so long. Ignoring police warnings, she delves deeper talks about how some people have found solitude and deeper into a nasty underworldwhat has come of that, and finds a tale which has its roots eventually in Prague the final chapter he talks about his own experience of having deliberately sought it out, but mostly he wanders down the alleys and rivals anything she could have plotted in one of her novelsby-ways that his thinking about this lost art led him.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099522179</amazonuk>1847947662
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Lisa McMannAndy Briggs|title=WakeCtrl+S|rating=45|genre=TeensScience Fiction|summary=Janie is seventeen and studying hard for college. SheLife in the near future's also working lots of hours at a local nursing home to earn money for college as itnot all bad. We's unlikely her alcoholic mother is going to provide much in ve reversed global warming and fixed the way of resourcescollapsing bee population. College is Janie's only chance at We even created SPACE, a life better than the one she's lived so far and so you virtual-sensory universe where average guys like Theo Wilson cando almost anything they desire. But almost anything isn't blame her enough for some. Every day, normal people are being so singletaken, their emotions harvested - and lives traded -minded in to create death-defying thrills for the pursuit rich and twisted. Now Theo’s mother has disappeared. And as he follows her breadcrumb trail of clues, he'll come up against the most dangerous SPACE has to offer: vPolice, AI Bots and anarchists - as well as a criminal empire that will kill to stop him finding her goal. Only one thing stands in her way...|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847385036</amazonuk>1409184641
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jaclyn Moriarty 1609809378|title=The Spell Book of Listen Taylor|rating=3.5|genre=Teens|summary=Listen Taylor's father has just moved in with his girlfriend and they are adopted into the Zing family, with all of its delightful eccentricities and unusual behaviour – the Zings meet every Friday night for dinner and then disappear into the garden shed to work on the 'Zing Family Secret'. Marbie Zing is terrified of doing something wrong and losing Nathaniel and Listen. Her sister Fancy is becoming increasingly disillusioned with her home life, and her daughterRabbits's year two teacher is coming to terms with a break up. The stories of these people come together to create a tale of life, love, and ultimately, what being part of a family means.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330446363</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewRebellion|author=F G Cottam|title=The Magdalena Curse|rating=2.5|genre=Horror|summary=Mark Hunter is the sort of father who would do anything for his son. After losing his wife and daughter in a tragic accident, his surviving son Adam has become his whole world. And Adam is an exceptional child – beautiful, incredibly smart and mature beyond his ten years – only recently he's been channelling the voices of the dead. Plagued by horrific dreams, able to speak Russian in the hours after he wakes, drawing occult symbols when he doodles, Hunter believes Adam to be possessed. Doctor Elizabeth Bancroft is sceptical, until she meets Adam, Ariel Dorfman and witnesses the horrors the poor boy endures for herself.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340980982</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Jon Berkeley|title=The Lightning Key (Circus Trilogy)Chris Riddell
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=I shall start with a word We're in the realm of advicethe rabbits, only the foxes and wolves have taken over. When youKing Wolf, His Wolfiness, has declared the rabbits don're being hounded by a circus mastert exist, and a magician, for but the soul of a tiger pesky birds have spread rumours from awing that's contained the bunnies are in fact still around. Demanding a tiger's egg that's contained in the brain of your teddy bearpropaganda spree, and your best friend - King Wolf orders a fallen angel - is trying her best humble monkey to make sure be his official portrait photographer, but whatever the other angels do not turn on you in a big way - then you're probably living the third book poor innocent monkey prints out in his darkroom there is a fantasy trilogydistinct leporine hint. Still - never mindCan King Wolf succeed in proving himself victorious, can the angel's efforts will involve you entering a dream world rabbits show their continued existence to all who need to know of flight it – and cloud cities, what can the chase after your enemies will take you across the world to desert oases and back, and friends new and old will be on board to help.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847384447</amazonuk>poor monkey caught in between do?
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sue TownsendInnosanto Nagara|title=Adrian Mole: The Prostrate YearsM is for Movement|rating=54|genre=General FictionEmerging Readers|summary=Adrian Mole is now 39¼ and living, quite literallySet in Indonesia, in a pigstythe not too distant past, sharing an all too thin party wall with his parents and working in this is a bookshopstory about social change. 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 Dealing with some difficult issues, trying to reassure glamorous wife Daisy that life in the provinces is not such as bad as she would like to believe, political corruption 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 needs. And yetnepotism, the worst book is still to comeneither boring nor preachy. Think a crumbling economy It educates gently, redundancywith vibrant, affairschallenging illustrations, deathand it portrays how social movements need people who will try, even when it seems that they will fail. The message is a family member challenging him positive one; that in an increasingly uncertain world, we do still have the novel writing stakes and a query over the big C – it's going power 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 of control around himinstigate change.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0718153707</amazonuk>1609809351
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Lauren Kate1780724047|title=FallenA Dictionary of Interesting and Important Dogs|author=Peter J Conradi|rating=4.5|genre=TeensPets|summary=A 17 year old girl at I struggle to resist a new school meets book about dogs, but I did wonder why this one was so ''thin'': given that I've never encountered a mysterious and impossibly good-looking boy, dog who shewasn's immediately drawn to. He seems determined to either ignore her t interesting or be outright rude to her, until he saves her lifeimportant - and probably both, I was expecting a massive tome. But ''A Dictionary of Interesting and the two of them end up drawn together. This isnImportant Dogs''t Stephenie Meyeris actually 's 'a rich compendium of the world'Twilights most significant and beloved dogs'', but and it 's certainly has striking similaritiesa rich treasure trove.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0385738935</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Gareth Hinds|title=King Lear|rating=3|genre=Graphic Novels|summary=Hound me out of town in a most appropriate manner We begin with Peter J Conradi's four collies: Cloudy, but I do not like King LearSky. Bradley and Max. For meThey're consecutive rather than simultaneous dogs, even as a trained actor, the language but what comes over is too dense and rich, the set-up too archly unfeasible to create the great tragedy itConradi's thought to belove for each and every one of them. To my mind the acclaim and esteem I knew that I was in which it's held is only mirrored by its own over-long, over-blown blusteringsafe hands.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0763643440</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Paul Theroux1785769294|title=A Dead Hand: A Crime in Calcutta|rating=3.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Set in India, familiar territory for Theroux, ''A Dead Hand'' tells Man at the story of a travel writer suffering from writer's block Window (also known as 'dead hand'Detective Cardilini) until a chance letter from an American ex-pat, the mysterious Mrs Unger, relating a story of a mystery of a dead body in a hotel leads him to release his creativity in very unexpected ways. The story is more about obsession and infatuation than it is about the mystery itself as the narrator falls under Mrs Unger's Tantric charms. But does she have more to hide than she's letting on?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241144639</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Toby Lester|title=The Fourth Part of the World: The Epic Story of History's Greatest MapRobert Jeffreys
|rating=4.5
|genre=HistoryCrime|summary=In 2003 It's when we read that a map was bought for $10 million, the highest price ever paid publicly for young boy is creeping reluctantly to a historical document, by the Library of Congress, where it teacher's bedroom one October night that we realise something is now on permanent public displaybadly wrong. No ordinary map, Nowadays you ''might'' hope that something would be done about it fairly quickly but this is sometimes described was 1965 and child abuse was generally regarded as America's birth certificate. It is malicious mischief on the sole survivor part of a thousand copies printed early in the 16th century, and was discovered by accident in some archives in a German castle in 1901child. The sale and story behind it intrigued Toby Lester so much boy would be safe that he was inspired to discover more, and this book is night though - albeit in the resultmost horrific fashion.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1861978030</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Steven Lowe and Alan McArthur |title=Is it Just Me or Has When he reached Captain Edmund's bedroom he found the Shit Hit man dead on the Fan?: Your Hilarious New Guide to Unremitting Global Misery|rating=3|genre=Humour|summary=''The banks fell over like fat Labradors running over a wet kitchen floor.'' Surely that is the wackiest, most inappropriate simile for the credit crunch and all it has done for the worldtop of his skull missing. You wonThe school't get any such namby-pamby animal likenesses from these authors, instead with quite s initial reaction was that this was a dreadful accident: there had been a potty mouth on them they will lambast the modern world, the entire banking system, all those who failed to see cull of kangaroos in some nearby fields and it coming, 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 was obviously a stray bullet which had killed the expenses train, and back up the rich listsCaptain.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847443656</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Andy Stanton1786695227|title=What's For Dinner, Mr Gum?Invisible in a Bright Light|author=Sally Gardner
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=As soon as heroine Polly turns her backThe beginning of this excellent story will leave the reader more than a little confused: who is the man in the green suit, what is the Reckoning, and leaves the town why are rows of Lamonic Bibber for people in a day at cave? But stick with it – Ms Gardner is very cleverly letting us experience the same disorientation as our heroine. We watch in dismay as the seasidestrange man, Mr Gum falls out with who seems to have no eyes, does his best friendto persuade her to answer his questions. But for some reason Celeste, despite her bewilderment, causing carnivorous carnage remains wary and gives nothing away.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1912374854|title=Violet|author=S J I Holliday|rating=3.5|genre=Thrillers|summary=I've never been but understand that travelling is all over the placeabout meeting new people and forming instantaneous bonds with people in often chance situations. Meat is getting thrown around like itWell that's going exactly what happens when the two main/only characters meet in a travel agency in Beijing - Carrie is unsuccessfully trying to get a refund on an extra ticket for the Trans-Siberian train and Violet is trying to unsuccessfully buy a ticket for the same sold-out of fashionjourney. As the two team up, travelling through Mongolia, Serbia and we have to doubt whether Polly and her companions can ever utilise into Russia, it could've been the power start of love and put things to rights. Especially as a beautiful friendship but this book does not contain a magic unicorn called Elizabeththriller after all so it quickly becomes a tale of obsession, manipulation and toxic friendships.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1405248246</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Loose Women1912374838|title=Here Come the GirlsNothing Important Happened Today|author=Will Carver
|rating=4
|genre=Home and FamilyGeneral Fiction|summary=This Nothing Important Happened Today is the second volume by the panelists from that nice ITV seriesa dark, twisted, ''Loose Women''difficult read. Just as promised on the coverStories about cults often are, but this book is an entertaining night different; it's written with the girls. It turns out a sense of style that theyis quite unlike anything I're just like usve read before. The faces are already familiar and even if you donI can't know them yet, remember ever having read a novel with nine contributorssuch an odd, you'll soon find distinctive narrative voice. While a like-minded woman behind one of slim and relatively small book, the celebrity faces. The women are universally warmslow-hearted and supportive: there will be many a lonely woman who reads this book and feels as if she sat down with a group moving nature of friends for the eveningplot makes it feel far larger than its 276 pages.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444700154</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jean Urewilliamabbey|title=Fortune CookieThe Pursuit of William Abbey|author=Claire North|rating=43.5|genre=Confident ReadersParanormal|summary=Fudge Cassidy and the Cupcake kid are best friends. If When William Abbey fails to prevent the names remind you lynching of a certain film then you'd be spot on as thatyoung boy in 1880's where Fudge's father got South Africa, he finds himself cursed by the idea fromgrieving mother. They're actually chalk and cheese – Fudge is loud mouthed and opinionated and Cupcake is quiet and thoughtful – but A naïve English Doctor, he slowly learns the weight of the curse upon him, as the shadow of the dead boy begins to follow him across the combination worksworld. They've just started at secondary school Never stopping, always growing – it crosses oceans and Cupcake has rather a lot on her platemountains in pursuit of William. Her brother Joey has muscular dystrophy and his problems are becoming more obvious. Add As he finds himself unable to this resist speaking the truths that her father couldn't cope with the problems and he now has another family. It's just Cupcakehears in others, Joey and her mother he also learns that the dark shadow is deadly – and not a lot of money.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007224621</amazonuk>seeks to kill the one he loves the most…
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jenifer Roberts1643785036|title=The Madness of Queen Maria: The Remarkable Life of Maria I of Portugal|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=Born in 1734 in Lisbon, at that time the richest and most opulent city in Europe, Maria was destined to become the first female monarch in Portuguese history. Married to her uncle Infante Pedro, seventeen years her senior, she had six children (outliving all but one of them), and became Queen in 1777. A conscientious woman, she had the misfortune to be born in during the 'age of reason', when church and state were vying for supremacy. Instinctively a supporter of the old religion, with a humanitarian approach to state affairs, she was no Queen Elizabeth, no Catherine the Great, and wore her crown rather reluctantly.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>095455891X</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewWondrous Apothecary|author=David Hughes|title=Thomas Wogan is Dead|rating=4.5|genre=Graphic Novels|summary=Well, with a title like that, need I bother with a plot summary? A man has a day out in Morecambe, then the next thing he knows he's in the ultimate waiting room, with a strange array of animals (a bat, a toad, a sea urchin...), all waiting for... well, something. Yup, as you didn't need telling, he's dead.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>095580888X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Dave Eggers|title=The Wild ThingsMary E Martin
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Meet MaxThose who have known Alexander Wainwright, the landscape artist famous for his Turner prize winning ''The Hay Wagon'', and Rinaldo, renowned conceptual artist would say that they're chalk and cheese, if not sworn enemies. When I say he sometimes gets If you've watched the wrong end of the stick about adultsrelationship, as has our narrator, art dealer Jamie Helmsworth, or dislikes his motheryou's new boyfriendd have said that they were magnets, or gets a bit feisty when he feels the need for revenge, I am certainly understating the factsdrawing and repulsing each other in equal measure. He is a bit Wainwright was at the socially acceptable end of the artistic continuum, but with Rinaldo it was all too obvious that there was but a rascal to say the leastfine dividing line between conceptual art and public nuisance. But all that might change when As time has worn on, he finds himself travelling 's frequently been brought to a strange land the attention of roisterous animals, the police. On this latest occasion we see him charged with arson and ends up installed as their kingtheft of ''The Hay Wagon''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241144221</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jeremy StrongMary H.K. Choi|title=Christmas Chaos for the Hundred-Mile-An-Hour Dog Permanent Record
|rating=4
|genre=Teens
|summary=Cassie lives on an Arctic research station Pablo, a college drop-out, is working at a New York bodega. He's massively in Alaska. She loves the ice debt, he's avoiding his mother, and he finds his joy in creating unusual snacks with random ingredients! Whilst working one evening, he's surprised to discover that the wilderness of her remote home girl he is chatting with as he serves is a super-famous pop star and she'd definitely prefer , as unlikely as it may seem, they start a relationship. With one character who is trying very hard not to spend her time on tracking polar bears be seen or noticed by anyone, and fending off frostbite rather than on mixing with her peers the other who is seen and enjoying college followed and home comforts back in Fairbanks. Howeverhounded by everyone all over the world, things arenit't all rosys an interesting clash as they come together. Cassie This isn's mother died when she was t just a baby love story though, and she canactually it's really just Pab't help feeling a huge hole s story, about the journey he takes in her heart. Her scientist father is remote and unloving and her grandmother left the station after an argument his life via his meet-up with him when Cassie was still very youngLeanna Smart. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847386571</amazonuk>0349003459
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Iain Smyth and Michael Terry1609809319|title=The WideLong-Mouthed Frog|rating=4.5|genre=For Sharing|summary=Do you know the joke about the wideHaired Cat-mouthed frog? You must have heard it. It's a classic. It's one that you really need to tell in person, with your fingers pulling your mouth wide open, but to hopefully spark your memory, the wide-mouthed frog introduces himself to a number of animals until he finally comes across a crocodile who eats wide-mouthed frogs, and the frog does his best to disguise who he is whilst saying ''Ooh, you don't see many of those round here, do you?'' I'm hardly doing it justice, but it's very cheesy and funny. Anyway, this is a book of that joke.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408804964</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewBoy Cub|author=Dr Aaron Carroll Etgar Keret, Aviel Basil and Dr Rachel Vreeman|title=Don't Swallow Your GumSondra Silverston (translator)
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Violet One day a boy is in the zoo with his father, when the man gets called away on urgent business. The boy isn't hustled into a very special hippocab and taken home first, though, no – he's given hot dog money, and taxi money, and told to just stick around on his own and enjoy himself. She is extremely small but Well, it's no surprise that does not the orphan-for-an-afternoon sensation the lad feels doesn't make her adoptive parents Albert him happy, and Mavis love her any the less. Howeverso he thinks of a species name for himself, and curls himself up into an empty cage, they are slightly worried that Violet has as if he were a very unusual habit of turning pink without warning and for no explicable reasonnew exhibit.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906847371</amazonuk> And it's then the drama begins…
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Hilary Dixon1785785516|title=When Rooks Speak of LoveFucking Good Manners|author=Simon Griffin
|rating=4
|genre=Literary FictionLifestyle|summary=Arthur Transcombe is Manners maketh man, they say. It certainly makes life easier if everybody abides by a middle-agedset of conventions, grey-hairedsome of which are ages old and other which have evolved over time. Manners are not about how much to tip or how you should behave if you get an invitation to Buckingham Palace, self-effacing poet. they have nothing to do with class or financial status: Unremarkable really - on they're about getting the outsidebasics right before we try to deal with more difficult matters. He hasOf course we all have more relaxed manners when we're with family and friends, however, managed but it's best if we learn to distinguish between our public and private lives and to achieve some success with his poemsact appropriately. (Being a guest speaker at ''Fucking Good Manners'' aims to help us on the Cheltenham Literary Festival is no mean feat)way. He is also a babe magnet!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904529429</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=A J Healy0008324859|title=Tommy Storm and the Galactic Knights|rating=3.5|genre=Confident Readers|summary=Meet Tommy Storm. He's one of five teenagers snapped up from around the universe to be a gang of heroic detectives charged with rescuing EVERYTHING from destruction. Not just the planet, or the solar system, or even the galaxy, but EVERYTHING. Nobody seems to know what's going to cause this destruction, or when, but he and his friends and their ship seem to be the only people proactively going about saving the day. So it's a pity that they start this book strung up by a nasty loony who's about to kill them.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847247555</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFowl Twins|author=Graham McCann|title=Bounder!: The Biography of Terry-Thomas|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=When I was in my early teens, it sometimes seemed as if Terry-Thomas was one of the stars of almost every other five-star British comedy film around. He was certainly one of the most recognizable characters of all with his gap-toothed grin, cigarette holder and inimitable 'Hel-lo!', 'Hard cheese!', and best of all, the angry, 'You're an absolute shower!'|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845134419</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Richard Jay Parker|title=Stop Me|rating=3.5|genre=Crime|summary=Spam E-Mails can be incredibly annoying, but most of us will have had to deal with them. Fortunately, we can hit the delete button and forget about them as quickly as they came. I certainly prefer not to torture my friends by sending such rubbish on, no matter how bad my luck is supposed to become if I don't. But I wonder how many of us would react if a spam E-Mail actually was a matter of life and death, rather than just claiming to be?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0749007079</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Jeanette Winterson|title=The Battle of the SunEoin Colfer
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=London 1601. Elizabeth I is getting on in years. Her capital city is a busyRelax, everyone – our old friend Artemis may be off planet, bustling place. Boats fill but the river and people fill baddies aren't getting away with skulduggery any time soon because they now have not one but two members of the streetsFowl family to contend with. Jack is happy because it's his birthday Those cute little twins are now eleven (and his present is his heart's desire: an excitable black puppy named Max, who's a ''licking frankly, cute no longer) and in this, their first independent adventure, they meet a running troll and without even trying manage to make two deadly enemies: a leaping and a jumping and a tummy in nobleman obsessed with immortality whatever the air cost (to other people), and a tail wagging and a barkingan unusual interrogator-nun. The boys are chased, racingkidnapped, brakingarrested and even killed (though not for long), spinning energy dog all with the help of delight''one trainee fairy. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>140880042X</amazonuk>
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