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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.

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==New Reviews=='''For new reviews by genre Want to find out more [[:Category:New ReviewsAbout Us|click hereabout us]].'''? __NOTOC__

'''Read [[:Category:New Reviews|new reviews by category]]. '''<br> '''Read [[:Category:Features|the latest features]].''' <!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Joe GoresMark Lingane|title=Spade and ArcherDegrade (Tesla Expansion)

|genre=CrimeTeens|summary=Sam Spade decides, bravely, ''Degrade'' opens as it means to set up his onego on -man detective agencywith inyerface, banging action. It's the 1920s Poor Arid, alone in San Francisco so we have the prohibition era desert since his parents were killed, has a narrow escape as two mega-rigs fight it out and all that that entailshis is pretty much destroyed. Many locals, of course, choose to disobey He finds himself rescued by the law, stick two fingers up, so to speak mysterious-but-fascinating Ella and as a result thereonboard the ''Moonlight's lots of bootleg liquor. Straight away, it's evident that Sam is a man of few words. He has under the mannerisms suspicious eyes of a cat - stealthyits leader, quick on his feetQueen Bea. HeBea's also a compulsive chaineyes flash with recognition when he tells her his name - Arid Geiger -smoker, but then again, most people were. In before he can find out why that erais, holding a cigarette was there's an elegant, almost essential accessory. How times have changed.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>140911323X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Michael Morpurgo assassination attempt and Arid is under suspicion and Emma Chichester Clark|title=The Best of Times|rating=4imprisoned.5|genre=Confident Readers|summary=Most children enjoy a good traditional tale and this lovely book An escape facilitated by Michael Morpurgo seems to have all the right ingredients – a handsome prince Ella - Queen Bea's daughter - sees Arid and a beautiful princess who fall in loveher other daughter, get married and live happily ever after. Or do they? SadlyFrey, not long after Prince Frederico marries stranded in the lovely Princess Serafina, she becomes very sad. Nobody knows what has caused such great sadness, but poor Prince Frederico is desperate to find a cure for his wife's miserydesert. He tries everything in his power and eventually decides to offer his kingdom to anyone who can make her happy again before she dies of a broken heart. Lots of people come to the palace to try and help but in the end the solution is a simple one provided by some very kind travellers.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1405232552</amazonuk>099461649X

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Shirley JacksonB07XLM3SM6|title=We Have Always Lived In The Castle|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Mary Katherine Blackwood, also known as Merricat, is eighteen, and lives with her older sister Constance in the family home where 'Blackwoods had always lived'. Merricat quickly draws the reader into her world by a series of matter of fact but bizarre statements – her likes include her sister and death cap mushrooms, and everyone else in her family is dead. The wealthy Blackwood family has always kept the house 'steady against the world', shutting out other people, and they live near a village. Merricat believes that 'The people of Murder at the village have always hated us', and tells us that she hates them too.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141191457</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewDolphin Hotel|author=Simon Weston|title=Nelson to the RescueHelena Dixon

|genre=Confident ReadersCrime (Historical)|summary=Nelson used to pull Mike the Milk's milk floatElowed Underhay was just twenty-seven when she disappeared from Dartmouth in June 1916, leaving her daughter, Kitty, but he has now retired. He lives in the stable at the back care of the dairy along with a couple her grandmother. A great deal of tricky rats, Rhodri money had been spent to find out what happened to her and Rhysthe conclusion was that she was dead, a pigeon who has mainly because there was no sense of direction, a frog who thinks he's a secret agent spy and an old racehorse who spends most of his time sleepingevidence to suggest otherwise. Rhodri and Rhys find a mysterious message on Mike's fridge Kitty has come to terms with this and in 1933 she was running the animals believe that Mike has been invited Dolphin Hotel in Dartmouth with her grandmother when her grandmother had to Buckingham Palace leave to receive an MBElook after her sister who was ill. Somehow our hero, Nelson, finds himself travelling down She was reluctant to London, pulling a ceremonial coach for Prince Charles as well as giving a TV interview 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 lifeleave Kitty in charge - and Kitty could not understand why. Suddenly you see She's always coped with the danger in every situationmix of holidaymakers, boating people and fear the naval college on the edge of town before - and trepidation can be become your constant companionsshe's done every job in the hotel. In this novella, we meet a young mother who is married to a logical scientist. They attempt to control their childrenAnd she particularly cannot understand why her grandmother's futures friends have been roped in to keep an eye on a scientific basis, growing their own fruit things ''and vegetables, giving their children nothing sugary, eating no eggs for a whole year until any adverse affects from them were disproved. But after meeting with an enigmatic stranger our young mother begins '' why Captain Matthew Bryant has been hired to struggle as he introduces ideas take charge of freedom into her world. She begins an affair with him, begins to let things slip security at home and with the children, yet finds she is still continuously haunted by the sense of an ever-present dangerhotel.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844717216</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Katherine MaySeishi Yokomizo and Louise Heal Kawai (translator)|title=Burning OutThe Honjin Murders

|genre=Literary FictionCrime|summary=Violet has it all – a well-paid jobTo many readers, and a luxurious apartment all to herself. Everything the phrase 'locked room murder mystery' is catered for; her meals, her clothes, and her health are all how she would like them enough to be. But make the life she is leading is beginning book one to take its tollread; preferably quantified by the words 'clever' or 'good'. On For those who need more, here is the extra background – we're in rural Japan in the verge 1930s. The oldest son of snappingan esteemed family is belatedly getting married, a drained and somewhat out-of-sorts Violetalthough the whole affair is really not as ostentatious as it might be – hardly anybody has turned up, withdraws back to what with it being arranged at great haste. She only has an uncle representing her home townfamily, for one thing. There Either way, she meets someone familiarthe celebrations have gone ahead as planned, a ghost reminding her of how she used only for the wedded couple to be ten years earlier – slashed to death in their private annex before the sun rises on their marriage. What with a young carefree girlman missing parts of his fingers being in the neighbourhood, full and some mysterious use of life. Only this isn't a ghosttraditional musical instrument at the time of the crime, but this case has a girl living lot of the life Violet once lived – exactly the same. Haunted by the past Violet realizes history is repeating itself and is convinced events will happen again. Events that will in turn haunt the girlpeculiar about it.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1906727392</amazonuk>1782275002

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Amanda DownumCixin Liu|title=The Drowning CityDeath's End|rating=3.5|genre=FantasyScience Fiction|summary=In a nutshell, youIf I're reading d been paying more attention when I picked this book up, I would have put it back on the shelf. Not because youI didn're wondering whether The Drowning City is goodt want to read it, bad or mediocrebut because I'd have figured out that it was the final part of a trilogy. You've probably glanced at Coming in partway through a saga is never the rating easiest thing to do and guessed it's particularly true in science fiction because without knowing the latter. I'm afraid back-story there are not just people whose names mean nothing to you (when it's not quite assumed they will) but there are whole concepts that simpleyou won't understand. This latter is particularly true of Cixin Liu's work – his range is phenomenal. George R R Martin, who knows a thing or two about world-creation, described it as ''a debut that provokes decidedly mixed feelingsunique blend of scientific and philosophical speculation, conspiracy theory and cosmology''. I started off convinced All of that I was going to love this book. The cover art is effortlessly cool, the premise intriguing, the characters laden with potential for greatness and the backdrop is certainly evocativemore.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1841498149</amazonuk>1784971650

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tove Jansson1780894511|title=The True DeceiverDie Alone|author=Simon Kernick|rating=54|genre=Literary FictionThrillers|summary=Most people of my age will have come across JanssonRay Mason is in prison awaiting trial for murder and he's work unwittinglyin the vulnerable prisoner unit: as a cop, via he's something of a target, but the televised renditions of unit is not as secure as the Moomin tales. The readers amongst us inmates would then have been entranced hoped and Mason is injured in a few years ago riot. On his way to discover that at last Thomas Teal had set about hospital he's broken free by armed men and an offer is made to him. He's to assassinate the man who is likely to become the translation into English, first of The Summer Book country's next prime minister and he'll then of be given a collection of short stories which were published as 'A Winter Booknew identity so that he can start afresh abroad. His captors say that they're MI6, but Mason has his doubts. His choices are limited though and he has personal reasons to believe that it would be better if Alastair Sheridan was dead. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0954899571</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Daniel Kehlmann Akwaeke Emezi|title=Me and KaminskiPet

|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, itand there are no monsters anymore. But one day, Jam accidentally cuts herself and bleeds a little onto one of her mother's been refreshing paintings. The blood awakens a bizarre, terrifying-looking creature named Pet, who somehow comes to read such a fluent yet pared down story as 'Kaminski life and Me'. In declares that it, Sebastian Zollner, is here to hunt the obnoxious main character, shoves himself forward in a desperate attempt monster. Though Jam tries to research a best seller which will re-ignite his career as an art critic. Kaminski, 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

 {{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

|genre=EntertainmentFor Sharing|summary=Light entertainment Which child doesn't think that their 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 popular, enjoyable and t like speaking 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 occurred 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?

|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.day has ended''<br>|amazonuk=''Hasn't it been splendid?'' <amazonukbr>140524741X''But now, it's time, to be sure'' </amazonukbr>}}''For an entirely different adventure'' <br>

{{newreview|author=Joseph Delaney |title=The SpookI hope you haven's Stories: Witches|rating=4|genre=Teens|summary='Warning: Not t forgotten how it feels to be read after dark,' are the only words on the back of ''The Spook's Stories'much too excited for bed. If you're a parent at least, and on the inside flap, you'The Times' warns us ll know how it is to persuade an excited small person that this book yes, it is in fact time for bed. 'seriously scary'What Wonders DoYou See...  The whole thing kicks-off relatively tamely, though'' sets out to cater to these children. Instead of trying to persuade them that night time is a calm time, with it takes a story about slightly different tack. It tells them that sleep is actually an exciting time: a young Spook (a sort time of monster-hunter) who falls dreams in which imagination takes over and has no limit. But the trick in love with a witch accessing this wonderful and exciting world is forced to bear get calm and relaxed first so that you can easily fall asleep and open the consequences when the witch's sister comes door to stay and exhibits a taste for the neighbor-childrenit. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0370329961</amazonuk>194812422X

 {{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, however, when investigating detective Grady Crowe reveals that Marcus Raine has been dead for several years, and Instead of telling us how 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 he lied to her for so longthat matters. Ignoring police warnings Of course, she delves deeper he 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

 {{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 being so single-minded in the pursuit of her goalsome. Only one thing stands in her way...|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847385036</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Jaclyn Moriarty |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 Every day, normal people are adopted into the Zing familybeing taken, with all of its delightful eccentricities their emotions harvested - and unusual behaviour – the Zings meet every Friday night lives traded - to create death-defying thrills 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 rich and Listentwisted. Her sister Fancy is becoming increasingly disillusioned with her home life, and her daughter'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>}} {{newreview|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 Now Theo’s mother has become his whole worlddisappeared. And Adam is an exceptional child – beautifulas he follows her breadcrumb trail of clues, incredibly smart and mature beyond his ten years – only recently he's been channelling ll come up against the voices of the dead. Plagued by horrific dreams, able most dangerous SPACE has to speak Russian in the hours after he wakesoffer: police, drawing occult symbols when he doodles, Hunter believes Adam AI Bots and anarchists - as well as a criminal empire that will kill to be possessedstop him finding her . . Doctor Elizabeth Bancroft is sceptical, until she meets Adam, and witnesses the horrors the poor boy endures for herself.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0340980982</amazonuk>1409184641

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jon Berkeley1609809378|title=The Lightning Key (Circus Trilogy)Rabbits' Rebellion|author=Ariel Dorfman and Chris Riddell

|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 Important Dogs'' is actually ''a rich compendium of the two of them end up drawn together. This isn't Stephenie Meyerworld's most significant and beloved dogs''Twilightand it's certainly a rich treasure trove. We begin with Peter J Conradi's four collies: Cloudy, Sky. Bradley and Max. They're consecutive rather than simultaneous dogs, but it certainly has striking similaritieswhat comes over is Conradi's love for each and every one of them. I knew that I was in safe hands.|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, but I do not like King Lear. For me, even as a trained actor, the language is too dense and rich, the set-up too archly unfeasible to create the great tragedy it's thought to be. To my mind the acclaim and esteem in which it's held is only mirrored by its own over-long, over-blown blustering.|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 Cardellini) 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

|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 that 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

|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 seasidesame disorientation as our heroine. We watch in dismay as the strange 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, causing carnivorous carnage Celeste, despite her bewilderment, 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

|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 When William Abbey fails to prevent the Cupcake kid are best friends. If 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 combination works. They've just started at secondary school and Cupcake has rather a lot on her plate. Her brother Joey has muscular dystrophy and his problems are becoming more obvious. Add to this that her father couldn't cope with weight of the problems and he now has another family. It's just Cupcakecurse upon him, Joey and her mother – and not a lot of money.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007224621</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Jenifer Roberts|title=The Madness of Queen Maria: The Remarkable Life as the shadow 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 dead boy begins to become follow him across the first female monarch in Portuguese historyworld. Married to her uncle Infante Pedro, seventeen years her senior, she had six children (outliving all but one of them)Never stopping, always growing – it crosses oceans and became Queen in 1777. A conscientious woman, she had the misfortune to be born mountains in during the 'age pursuit of reason', when church and state were vying for supremacyWilliam. Instinctively a supporter of the old religion, with a humanitarian approach As he finds himself unable to state affairs, she was no Queen Elizabeth, no Catherine resist speaking the Great, and wore her crown rather reluctantly.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>095455891X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=David Hughes|title=Thomas Wogan is Dead|rating=4.5|genre=Graphic Novels|summary=Well, with a title like truths that, need I bother with a plot summary? A man has a day out he hears in Morecambeothers, then he also learns that the next thing dark shadow is deadly – and seeks to kill the one he knows he's in loves 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>most…

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Dave Eggers1643785036|title=The Wild ThingsWondrous Apothecary|author=Mary E Martin

|summary=Meet Max. When I say he sometimes gets Those who have known Alexander Wainwright, the wrong end of the stick about adults, or dislikes landscape artist famous for his motherTurner prize-winning ''The Hay Wagon''s new boyfriend, or gets a bit feisty when he feels and Rinaldo, the need for revengerenowned conceptual artist would say that they're chalk and cheese, I am certainly understating if not sworn enemies. If you've watched the factsrelationship, as has our narrator, art dealer Jamie Helmsworth, you'd have said that they were magnets, drawing 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 animalsthe 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>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jeremy StrongMary H.K. Choi|title=Christmas Chaos for the Hundred-Mile-An-Hour Dog Permanent Record

|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

 {{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)

|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, they are slightly worried that Violet has and curls himself up into an empty cage 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

|genre=Literary FictionLifestyle|summary=Arthur Transcombe is a middle-agedManners maketh man, grey-haired, self-effacing poetthey say. Unremarkable really - on the outside. He hasIt certainly makes life easier if everybody abides by a set of conventions, 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>}} {{newreview|author=A J Healy|title=Tommy Storm of which are ages old and the Galactic Knights|rating=3.5|genre=Confident Readers|summary=Meet Tommy Stormothers which have evolved over time. He's one of five teenagers snapped up from around the universe Manners are not about how much to be a gang of heroic detectives charged with rescuing EVERYTHING from destruction. Not just the planet, tip or the solar systemhow you should behave if you get an invitation to Buckingham Palace, or even the galaxy, but EVERYTHING. Nobody seems they have nothing to know what's going to cause this destruction, do with class or when, but he and his friends and their ship seem to be the only people proactively going about saving the day. financial status: So it's a pity that they start this book strung up by a nasty loony who's re about getting the basics right before we try to kill them.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847247555</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|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 arounddeal with more difficult matters. He was certainly one of the most recognizable characters of all with his gap-toothed grinOf course, cigarette holder and inimitable 'Hel-lo!', 'Hard cheese!', and best of we all, the angry, 'Youhave more relaxed manners when we'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 family 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 donbut it't. But I wonder how many of us would react s best if a spam E-Mail actually was a matter of life we learn to distinguish between our public and private lives and death, rather than just claiming to be?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0749007079</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Jeanette Winterson|title=The Battle of the Sun|rating=5|genre=Confident Readers|summary=London 1601act appropriately. Elizabeth I is getting on in years. Her capital city is a busy, bustling place. Boats fill the river and people fill the streets. Jack is happy because it 's his birthday and his present is his heart's desire: an excitable black puppy named Max, whoFucking Good Manners's a ''licking and a running and a leaping and a jumping and a tummy in aims to help us on the air and a tail wagging and a barking, racing, braking, spinning energy dog of delight''way. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>140880042X</amazonuk>