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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__

{{newreview|author=J R Stephenson|title=Crooked Justice|rating=2.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Meet Barry Johns. You'll see him coming - he's five hundred pounds if he's an ounceRead [[:Category:New Reviews|new reviews by category]]. Just don't ever lend him money - he won't pay it back. A businessman with a share of a nightclub on Cyprus, he goes there for a customary break, and finds his sort-of moll-type sort-of girlfriend has been installed as the bar dancer. He manages to tread both on the toes of his local colleague and some Greek rivals. And when a rival in London chases him up for thousands of pounds owed he decides to pack up and shut up. It's a big stone that hides him, but he leaves a very awkward trail for everyone wanting to upturn it and get their revenge.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0955855713</amazonukbr>}}

{{newreview|author=Stephen Baker|title=They've Got Your Number|rating=4.5|genre=Popular Science|summary=If you are in the slightest bit paranoid, worry that ''Big Brother'' is always watching or like to believe that you are not a number, but a free man (or woman), then this may not be Read [[:Category:Features|the book for you, as it will do nothing to dispel any of those worrieslatest features]]. If, on the other hand, you think 'the mathematical modelling of humanity' sounds like one of the sexiest things ever, and are chomping at the bit to learn more about it, then you might well be interested in what Business Week journalist Baker has to say.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099507021' </amazonuk!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Rebecca TopeMark Lingane|title=Fear in the CotswoldsDegrade (Tesla Expansion)

|genre=CrimeTeens|summary=Thea Osborne is a house sitter by profession. When people go away she moves into their homes and looks after their animals and the property. This time it's winter and she's spending a month in the Cotswold village of Hampnett. It wouldnDegrade't be a job for all of us but Thea delights in getting to know the local people and the area. In the past she's also been involved with the police in solving various cases but opens as it looks as though that might have come means to an end as the relationship she had go on - with DS Phil Hollis has crumbledinyerface, banging action. For Poor Arid, alone in the first time Thea feels like an outsider – and desert since his parents were killed, has a foolish one narrow escape as two mega- when she rigs fight it out and his is pretty much destroyed. He finds footsteps in himself rescued by the snow which lead to a body in a nearby field. When the police finally arrive the body has disappeared mysterious-but-fascinating Ella and onboard the police obviously wonder if she's imagined it all.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0749007478</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Tad Tuleja|title=A Dictionary of Foreign Words and Phrases|rating=3|genre=Home and Family|summary=Take a look at 'Moonlight'' under the cover design suspicious eyes of this bookits leader, and youQueen Bea. Bea'd be mistaken for thinking this was a trivia compendium for all those foreign words s eyes flash with recognition when he tells her his name - Arid Geiger - but before he can find out why that have taken part in our English language since whenever they crossed over from their original homes. But the title is definitely honest, for this there's an assassination attempt and Arid is a dictionary book firstunder suspicion and imprisoned. An escape facilitated by Ella - Queen Bea's daughter - sees Arid and her other daughter, for referenceFrey, and a browser for stranded in the trivia buff seconddesert...|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0709089562</amazonuk>099461649X

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Anne RiceB07XLM3SM6|title=Angel Time|rating=2.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Toby O'Dare is an extremely efficient hit man with a passion for music, history and playing his beloved lute. He's also something of a lost soul having turned his back on God many years ago. One day while on a 'job' he is visited by an Angel who offers him a chance Murder at redemption. Toby agrees to become the Angel's human instrument and help save lives rather than take them. He is sent on an assignment to help a Jewish couple accused of murder in 13th Century England.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701178140</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewDolphin Hotel|author=Ian Mortimer|title=1415: Henry V's Year of Glory|rating=5|genre=History|summary=The medieval, in fact time-honoured, view of King Henry V as one of England's greatest heroes was propagated though not originated by Shakespeare, and again more recently to some extent by Olivier's portrayal in film. At least one historian has called him ''the greatest man that ever ruled England''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224079921</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Deborah Gregory|title=Dancing With The Dead|rating=3|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=I wanted to read ''Dancing with the Dead'', because I'm interested in family history. The blurb on the back of the book also mentioned Gill – our heroine of the piece – was moving from Bristol (my current home) to Lincolnshire (where I was born and brought up). I felt with all these links, the novel could not fail to interest me – but this was not the case.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904529305</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Miss Read|title=Christmas at Thrush GreenHelena Dixon

|genre=Women's FictionCrime (Historical)|summary=Set Elowed Underhay was just twenty-seven when she disappeared from Dartmouth in June 1916, leaving her daughter, Kitty, in the rural village care of Thrush Greenher grandmother. A great deal of money had been spent to find out what happened to her and the conclusion was that she was dead, mainly because there was no evidence to suggest otherwise. Kitty has come to terms with this book is and in 1933 she was running the latest Dolphin Hotel in a series surrounding familiar characters. There is the feisty Ella Bembridge, who is finally having Dartmouth with her grandmother when her grandmother had to leave to admit that old age is creeping up as look after her eyesight failssister who was ill. Friends such as Dimity She was reluctant to leave Kitty in charge - and Charles Henstock are concerned about herKitty could not understand why. She's always coped with the mix of holidaymakers, but boating people and the naval college on the edge of town before - and she refuses to accept any help's done every job in the hotel. Albert Piggott has decided it And she particularly cannot understand why her grandmother's time friends have been roped in to retire now that his wife, Nelly, is a successful cafe owner keep an eye on things ''and can afford '' why Captain Matthew Bryant has been hired to take care charge of him! And relative newcomer Phil Hurst and her husband are arranging security at the local nativity play, despite a number of set-backshotel. Will everything be in place for Christmas? And will independent Ella make a decision about her future?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1409101592</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Matt Seishi Yokomizo and DaveLouise Heal Kawai (translator)|title=Yuck's Robotic BottomThe Honjin Murders

|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=It's concerned me for a while that it's relatively easy to pick up early To many readers for girls – princesses, magic soft toys, mermaids and pets abound – but therethe phrase 's a much smaller choice for boys. Itlocked room murder mystery's important too with early readers that is enough to make the book one to read; preferably quantified by the content is words 'clever'interestingor 'good' and reading becomes . For those who need more than just something which you ', here is the extra background – we're in rural Japan in the 1930s. The oldest son of an esteemed family is belatedly getting married, although the whole affair is really not as ostentatious as it might be – hardly anybody has turned up, what with it being arranged at great haste. She only has an uncle representing her family, for one thing. Either way, the celebrations have'' gone ahead as planned, only for the wedded couple to be slashed to do at school and moves into being fundeath in their private annex before the sun rises on their marriage. Matt What with a man missing parts of his fingers being in the neighbourhood, and Dave have found some mysterious use of a traditional musical instrument at the time of the crime, this case has a lot of the answer in Yuckpeculiar about it.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847382991</amazonuk>1782275002

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=John E SmelcerCixin Liu|title=The Great Death's End|rating=45|genre=General Science Fiction|summary=If I'As Western Europeans settled Alaskad been paying more attention when I picked this book up, they brought with them diseases against which I would have put it back on the indigenous people had no natural immunityshelf. At the beginning of Not because I didn't want to read it, but because I'd have figured out that it was the twentieth century, fully two thirds final part of all Alaska natives perished from a pandemic of measles, smallpox, and influenzatrilogy. No community was spared. In most cases, half of Coming in partway through a villagesaga is never the easiest thing to do and it's population died within a week. In some cases, particularly true in science fiction because without knowing the back-story there were no survivors. It was the end of an ancient way of life. Natives still refer are not just people whose names mean nothing to the dreadful period as the Great Death.you (when it'|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1842709194</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Maxine Barry|title=River Deep|rating=3.5|genre=Womens assumed they will) but there are whole concepts that you won's Fiction|summary=Two young women both have a love of the Thamest understand. Melisande RayThis latter is particularly true of Cixin Liu's beloved hotel, the Ray of Sunshine work – his range is on the river bankphenomenal. It's here that guests come George R R Martin, who want to be pampered and looked after in the way that only the best hotels can do wellknows a thing or two about world-creation, but when Wendell James checks in to the hotel described itas 's not pampering he's looking for. He's buying a piece unique blend of land not far from the Ray of Sunshine scientific and philosophical speculation, conspiracy theory and hecosmology''s sussing out the competition. There's something personal in there too – if his new hotel means that the Ray All of Sunshine goes under then that would be an added bonus. There's just a slight doubt in his mind when a red-haired maid catches his eyeand more.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0709088930</amazonuk>1784971650

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Joe Gores1780894511|title=Spade and ArcherDie Alone|author=Simon Kernick

|genre=CrimeThrillers|summary=Sam Spade decides, bravely, to set up his one-man detective agency. ItRay Mason is in prison awaiting trial for murder and he's the 1920s in San Francisco so we have the prohibition era and all that that entails. Many localsvulnerable prisoner unit: as a cop, he's something of coursea target, choose to disobey but the unit is not as secure as the law, stick two fingers up, so to speak inmates would have hoped and as Mason is injured in a result there's lots of bootleg liquorriot. Straight away, itOn his way to hospital he's evident that Sam broken free by armed men and an offer is a man of few wordsmade to him. He has 's to assassinate the man who is likely to become the mannerisms of country's next prime minister and he'll then be given a cat - stealthy, quick on his feetnew identity so that he can start afresh abroad. HeHis captors say that they's also a compulsive chain-smokerre MI6, but then again, most people wereMason has his doubts. In His choices are limited though and he has personal reasons to believe that era, holding a cigarette it would be better if Alastair Sheridan was an elegant, almost essential accessorydead. How times have changed.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>140911323X</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Michael Morpurgo and Emma Chichester ClarkAkwaeke Emezi|title=The Best of TimesPet

|genre=Confident ReadersTeens|summary=Most children enjoy a good traditional tale and this lovely book by Michael Morpurgo seems to have The people of the town Lucille believe that all the right ingredients – a handsome prince and a beautiful princess who fall in love, get married and live happily ever aftermonsters are gone. Or do Their children are raised to understand that they? Sadlywere saved by the angels, not long after Prince Frederico marries those who rid the lovely Princess Serafinatown of evil, she becomes very sadand there are no monsters anymore. Nobody knows what has caused such great sadness But one day, but poor Prince Frederico is desperate to find Jam accidentally cuts herself and bleeds a cure for his wifelittle onto one of her mother's miserypaintings. He tries everything in his power The blood awakens a bizarre, terrifying-looking creature named Pet, who somehow comes to life and eventually decides declares that it is here to offer his kingdom to anyone who can make her happy again before she dies of a broken hearthunt the monster. Lots of people come Though Jam tries to convince it that all the palace to try monsters are gone, Pet is certain that there is one, still, and help but that the monster is hiding in the end the solution is a simple one provided by some very kind travellershome of her best friend, Redemption.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1405232552</amazonuk>0571355110

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Shirley Jackson1686751680|title=We Have Always Lived In The CastleMy Mummy does weird things / Maman fait des choses bizarres|author=Amelie Julien and Gustyawan|rating=4.5|genre=Literary FictionFor Sharing|summary=Mary Katherine BlackwoodWhich child doesn't think that their mother is, also known as Merricatwell, ''weird''? It might be that in the morning their mother doesn't like speaking much when every self-respecting child knows that that is eighteen, and lives when you're at your brightest with her older sister Constance in the family home where lots to say? ''Why'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 then does Mummy stick her sister and death cap mushrooms, and everyone else fingers in her family is dead. The wealthy Blackwood family has always kept the house ears? Then there'steady against s doing yoga in front of the worldtelevision, which could be worrying if it wasn', shutting out other people, and they live near a villaget so funny. Merricat believes that We won'The people of t go into too much detail about what goes on in the bathroom and the village colour changes which have always hated us'occurred when Mummy emerges and frankly, and tells us that she hates them toothe less said the better about her reactions to your artistic efforts on the wall.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141191457</amazonuk> I mean, what else would you use paint for?

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Simon WestonJustine Avery and Liuba Syrotiuk|title=Nelson to the RescueWhat Wonders Do You See... When You Dream?

|genre=Confident ReadersFor Sharing|summary=Nelson used to pull Mike the Milk's milk float, but he has now retired. He lives in the stable at the back of the dairy along with a couple of tricky rats, Rhodri and Rhys, a pigeon who 'The day has no sense of direction, a frog who thinks heended's a secret agent spy and an old racehorse who spends most of his time sleeping. Rhodri and Rhys find a mysterious message on Mike's fridge and the animals believe that Mike has been invited to Buckingham Palace to receive an MBE. Somehow our hero, Nelson, finds himself travelling down to London, pulling a ceremonial coach for Prince Charles as well as giving a TV interview about his experience.|amazonuk=<amazonukbr>1848510454''Hasn't it been splendid?'' </amazonukbr>}}{{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''But now, 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 childrenit's futures on a scientific basistime, growing their own fruit 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 to struggle as he introduces ideas of freedom into her world. She begins an affair with him, begins to let things slip at home and with the children, yet finds she is still continuously haunted by the sense of an ever-present danger.|amazonuk=be sure'' <amazonukbr>1844717216''For an entirely different adventure'' </amazonukbr>}}

{{newreview|author=Katherine May|title=Burning Out|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Violet has I hope you haven't forgotten how it all – feels to be much too excited for bed. If you're a well-paid jobparent at least, and a luxurious apartment all you'll know how it is to herself. Everything persuade an excited small person that yes, it is catered in fact time for; her meals, her clothes, and her health are all how she would like them to bebed. ''What Wonders DoYou See.. But the life she is leading is beginning to take its toll. On the verge of snapping, a drained and somewhat '' sets out-of-sorts Violet, withdraws back to her home towncater to these children. There, she meets someone familiar, a ghost reminding her Instead of how she used trying to be ten years earlier – persuade them that night time is a young carefree girlcalm time, full of lifeit takes a slightly different tack. Only this isn't It tells them that sleep is actually an exciting time: a ghost, but a girl living the life Violet once lived – exactly the sametime of dreams in which imagination takes over and has no limit. Haunted by But the past Violet realizes history trick in accessing this wonderful and exciting world is repeating itself to get calm and is convinced events will happen again. Events relaxed first so that will in turn haunt you can easily fall asleep and open the girldoor to it. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1906727392</amazonuk>194812422X

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Amanda DownumMichael Harris|title=The Drowning CitySolitude: In Pursuit of a Singular Life in a Crowded World|rating=3.5|genre=FantasyLifestyle|summary=In a nutshell, you're reading this because you're wondering whether The Drowning City This is good, bad or mediocre. You've probably glanced at not the rating and guessed the latterbook I was expecting it to be. For some reason I'm afraid expected it to be another self-help manual on how to find calm, how to step outside the mainstream, but it's is not quite that simpleat all. This Instead of telling us how it is more about the ''why''. Harries examines how we're eroding solitude, which used to be a debut natural part of our human life, and why that provokes decidedly mixed feelingsmatters. I started off convinced Of course, he talks about how some people have found solitude and what has come of that I was going to love this book. The cover art is effortlessly cool, and eventually in the premise intriguingfinal chapter he talks about his own experience of having deliberately sought it out, but mostly he wanders down the characters laden with potential for greatness alleys and the backdrop is certainly evocativeby-ways that his thinking about this lost art led him.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1841498149</amazonuk>1847947662

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tove JanssonAndy Briggs|title=The True DeceiverCtrl+S

|genre=Literary Science Fiction|summary=Most people of my age will have come across JanssonLife in the near future's work unwittinglynot all bad. We've reversed global warming and fixed the collapsing bee population. We even created SPACE, a virtual-sensory universe where average guys like Theo Wilson can do almost anything they desire. But almost anything isn't enough for some. Every day, via normal people are being taken, their emotions harvested - and lives traded - to create death-defying thrills for the televised renditions rich and twisted. Now Theo’s mother has disappeared. And as he follows her breadcrumb trail of clues, he'll come up against the Moomin tales. The readers amongst us would then have been entranced a few years ago most dangerous SPACE has to discover that at last Thomas Teal had set about the translation into Englishoffer: police, first of The Summer Book AI Bots and then of anarchists - as well as a collection of short stories which were published as 'A Winter Book'criminal empire that will kill to stop him finding her . . . |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0954899571</amazonuk>1409184641

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Daniel Kehlmann 1609809378|title=Me The Rabbits' Rebellion|author=Ariel Dorfman and KaminskiChris Riddell

|genre=Literary FictionConfident Readers|summary=After reviewing several long booksWe're in the realm of the rabbits, it's been refreshing to read such a fluent yet pared down story as 'Kaminski only the foxes and Me'wolves have taken over. In it King Wolf, Sebastian ZollnerHis Wolfiness, has declared the obnoxious main characterrabbits don't exist, shoves himself forward but the pesky birds have spread rumours from awing that the bunnies are in fact still around. Demanding a propaganda spree, King Wolf orders a desperate attempt humble monkey to research a best seller which will re-ignite be his career as an art critic. Kaminskiofficial portrait photographer, but whatever the proposed subject, was poor innocent monkey prints out in his darkroom there is a fashionable painter long ago, but now, ancient and chronically ill, has virtually slid into obliviondistinct leporine hint. So Can King Wolf succeed in proving himself victorious, can the second-rate writer is on a loser unless he rabbits show their continued existence to all who need to know of it – and what can dig up some juicy details to hook the art world and general public.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847249892</amazonuk>poor monkey caught in between do?

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Louis BarfeInnosanto Nagara|title=Turned Out Nice Again: The Story of British Light EntertainmentM is for Movement

|genre=EntertainmentEmerging Readers|summary=Light entertainment Set in Indonesia, in the not too distant past, this is often looked down upona story about social change. Dealing with some difficult issues, such as if political corruption and nepotism, the book is neither boring nor preachy. It educates gently, with vibrant, challenging illustrations, and it's a bit naffportrays how social movements need people who will try, tepid and ignorableeven when it seems that they will fail. What's often forgotten The message is a positive one; that it's hugely popularin an increasingly uncertain world, enjoyable and much of it is of the highest quality. Louis Barfe's Turned Out Nice Again tells we do still have the complete story of British light entertainmentpower to instigate change.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1843543818</amazonuk>1609809351

 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1780724047|authortitle=Jim Helmore A Dictionary of Interesting and Karen WallImportant Dogs|titleauthor=Oh No, Monster Tomato!Peter J Conradi

|genre=For SharingPets|summary=Marvin is entering the Great Grislygust Grow-OffI struggle to resist a book about dogs, but just like him, his tomatoes arenI did wonder why this one was so ''thin'': given that I've never encountered a dog who wasn't growing very biginteresting or important - and probably both, I was expecting a massive tome. He takes But ''A Dictionary of Interesting and Important Dogs'' is actually ''a rich compendium of the only sensible course of actionworld's most significant and beloved dogs'' and it's certainly a rich treasure trove. We begin with Peter J Conradi's four collies: he sings his tomatoes a songCloudy, Sky. The results are spectacularBradley and Max. Victory They're consecutive rather than simultaneous dogs, but what comes over is surely within his graspConradi's love for each and every one of them. I knew that I was in safe hands.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>140524741X</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Joseph Delaney 1785769294|title=The Spook's Stories: Witches|rating=4|genre=Teens|summary='Warning: Not to be read after dark,' are the only words on the back of ''The Spook's Stories'', and on Man at the inside flap, 'The Times' warns us that this book is 'seriously scary'...  The whole thing kicks-off relatively tamely, though, with a story about a young Spook Window (a sort of monster-hunterDetective Cardellini) who falls in love with a witch and is forced to bear the consequences when the witch's sister comes to stay and exhibits a taste for the neighbor-children.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0370329961</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Lisa Unger|title=Die For YouRobert Jeffreys|rating=34.5

|summary=Best-selling novelist Isabel Connelly It's when we read that a young boy is married creeping reluctantly to successful video game designer Marcus Raine. Or so she thinks. But when her husband fails to return from work, she realises a teacher's bedroom one October night that we realise something is badly wrong. Going to his office to try to find out what happens to him, she gets attacked and ends up in hospital, while his co-workers are killed. Things get worse for her, however, when investigating detective Grady Crowe reveals Nowadays you ''might'' hope that Marcus Raine has been dead for several years, something would be done about it fairly quickly but this was 1965 and the man she married child abuse was using a false identity. Infuriated by generally regarded as malicious mischief on the betrayal, and part of the realisation child. The boy would be safe that shenight though - albeit in the most horrific fashion. When he reached Captain Edmund's been living a lie for bedroom he found the man dead on the past five yearsfloor, Izzy takes matters into her own hands and sets out to find her husband and work out why he lied to her for so longthe top of his skull missing. Ignoring police warnings, she delves deeper and deeper into The school's initial reaction was that this was a nasty underworld, and finds dreadful accident: there had been a tale which has its roots cull of kangaroos in Prague some nearby fields and rivals anything she could have plotted in one of her novelsit was obviously a stray bullet that had killed the Captain.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099522179</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Lisa McMann1786695227|title=WakeInvisible in a Bright Light|author=Sally Gardner|rating=4.5|genre=TeensConfident Readers|summary=Janie is seventeen and studying hard for college. She's also working lots The beginning of hours at this excellent story will leave the reader more than a local nursing home to earn money for college as it's unlikely her alcoholic mother little confused: who is going to provide much the man in the way green suit, what is the Reckoning, and why are rows of resourcespeople in a cave? But stick with it – Ms. College Gardner is Janie's only chance at a life better than very cleverly letting us experience the one she's lived so far and so you can't blame her for being so single-minded same disorientation as our heroine. We watch in dismay as the pursuit of strange man, who seems to have no eyes, does his best to persuade her goalto answer his questions. Only one thing stands in But for some reason, Celeste, despite her way..bewilderment, remains wary and gives nothing away.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847385036</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jaclyn Moriarty 1912374854|title=The Spell Book of Listen TaylorViolet|author=S J I Holliday

|genre=TeensThrillers|summary=Listen TaylorI's father has just moved ve never been but understand that travelling is all about meeting new people and forming instantaneous bonds with people in with his girlfriend and they are adopted into the Zing familyoften chance situations. Well, with all of its delightful eccentricities and unusual behaviour – that's exactly what happens when the Zings two main/only characters meet every Friday night in a travel agency in Beijing - Carrie is unsuccessfully trying to get a refund on an extra ticket for dinner the Trans-Siberian train and then disappear into the garden shed Violet is trying to work on unsuccessfully buy a ticket for the 'Zing Family Secret'same sold-out journey. Marbie Zing is terrified of doing something wrong As the two team up, travelling through Mongolia, Serbia and losing Nathaniel and Listen. Her sister Fancy is becoming increasingly disillusioned with her home lifeinto Russia, and her daughterit could's year two teacher is coming to terms with ve been the start of a beautiful friendship but this a break up. The stories of these people come together to create thriller after all so it quickly becomes a tale of lifeobsession, lovemanipulation, and ultimately, what being part of a family meanstoxic friendships.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330446363</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=F G Cottam1912374838|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, and witnesses the horrors the poor boy endures for herself.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340980982</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewNothing Important Happened Today|author=Jon Berkeley|title=The Lightning Key (Circus Trilogy)Will Carver|rating=4.5|genre=Confident Readers|summary=I shall start with a word of advice. When you're being hounded by a circus master, and a magician, for the soul 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 - a fallen angel - is trying her best to make sure the other angels do not turn on you in a big way - then you're probably living the third book in a fantasy trilogy. Still - never mind, the angel's efforts will involve you entering a dream world of flight and cloud cities, 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>}} {{newreview|author=Sue Townsend|title=Adrian Mole: The Prostrate Years|rating=5

|summary=Adrian Mole Nothing Important Happened Today is now 39¼ and livinga dark, quite literallytwisted, in a pigstydifficult read. Stories about cults often are, sharing an all too thin party wall but this is different; it's written with his parents and working in 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 sense of style 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 quite unlike anything I've read before. I can'Jeremy Kyle'' show, worrying over his increasingly frequent visits to the toilet is really the last thing he needs. And yett remember ever having read a novel with such an odd, the worst is still to comedistinctive narrative voice. Think While a crumbling economy, redundancy, affairsslim and relatively small book, death, a family member challenging him in the novel writing stakes and a query over slow-moving nature of the big C – plot makes 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 of control around himfeel far larger than its 276 pages.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0718153707</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Lauren Katewilliamabbey|title=FallenThe Pursuit of William Abbey|author=Claire North|rating=43.5|genre=TeensParanormal|summary=A 17 year old girl at When William Abbey fails to prevent the lynching of a new school meets a mysterious and impossibly good-looking young boy, who shein 1880's immediately drawn toSouth Africa, he finds himself cursed by the grieving mother. He seems determined to either ignore her or be outright rude to herA naïve English Doctor, until he saves her lifeslowly learns the weight of the curse upon him, and as the two shadow of them end up drawn togetherthe dead boy begins to follow him across the world. This isn't Stephenie Meyer's ''Twilight''Never stopping, but always growing – it certainly has striking similaritiescrosses oceans and mountains in pursuit of William.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0385738935</amazonuk>As he finds himself unable to resist speaking the truths that he hears in others, he also learns that the dark shadow is deadly – and seeks to kill the one he loves the most…

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Gareth Hinds1643785036|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>}} {{newreviewThe Wondrous Apothecary|author=Paul Theroux|title=A Dead Hand: A Crime in CalcuttaMary E Martin|rating=3.54

|summary=Set in IndiaThose who have known Alexander Wainwright, familiar territory the landscape artist famous for Theroux, his Turner prize-winning ''A Dead HandThe Hay Wagon'' tells the story of a travel writer suffering from writer's block (also known as 'dead hand') until a chance letter from an American ex-pat, the mysterious Mrs Ungerand Rinaldo, 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 Ungerrenowned conceptual artist would say that they's Tantric charmsre chalk and cheese, if not sworn enemies. But does she have more to hide than she If you's letting on?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241144639</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Toby Lester|title=The Fourth Part of ve watched the World: The Epic Story of History's Greatest Map|rating=4.5|genre=History|summary=In 2003 a map was bought for $10 millionrelationship, the highest price ever paid publicly for a historical documentas has our narrator, by the Library of Congressart dealer Jamie Helmsworth, where it is now on permanent public display. No ordinary mapyou'd have said that they were magnets, this is sometimes described as America's birth certificatedrawing and repulsing each other in equal measure. It is Wainwright was at the sole survivor socially acceptable end of a thousand copies printed early in the 16th centuryartistic continuum, but with Rinaldo, and it was discovered by accident in some archives in a German castle in 1901. The sale and story behind it intrigued Toby Lester so much all too obvious that he there was inspired to discover more, but a fine dividing line between conceptual art and this book is the result.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1861978030</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Steven Lowe and Alan McArthur |title=Is it Just Me or Has the Shit Hit 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 floorpublic nuisance.'' Surely that is the wackiest, most inappropriate simile for the credit crunch and all it As time has done for the world. You won't get any such namby-pamby animal likenesses from these authors, instead with quite a potty mouth worn on them they will lambast the modern world, the entire banking system, all those who failed to see 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 the expenses train, and back up the rich lists.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847443656</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Andy Stanton|title=Whathe's For Dinner, Mr Gum?|rating=4.5|genre=Confident Readers|summary=As soon as heroine Polly turns her back, and leaves frequently been brought to the town attention of Lamonic Bibber for a day at the seaside, Mr Gum falls out with his best friend, causing carnivorous carnage all over the placepolice. Meat is getting thrown around like it's going out of fashionOn this latest occasion, and we have to doubt whether Polly see him charged with arson and her companions can ever utilise the power theft of love and put things to rights. Especially as this book does not contain a magic unicorn called Elizabeth''The Hay Wagon''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1405248246</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Loose WomenMary H.K. Choi|title=Here Come the GirlsPermanent Record

|genre=Home and FamilyTeens|summary=This is the second volume by the panelists from that nice ITV seriesPablo, ''Loose Women''. Just as promised on the covera college drop-out, this book is an entertaining night with the girlsworking at a New York bodega. It turns out that theyHe're just like us. The faces are already familiar and even if you dons massively in debt, he't know them yets avoiding his mother, and he finds his joy in creating unusual snacks with nine contributorsrandom ingredients! Whilst working one evening, youhe'll soon find s surprised to discover that the girl he is chatting with as he serves is a likesuper-minded woman behind one of the celebrity facesfamous pop star and, as unlikely as it may seem, they start a relationship. The women are universally warm-hearted With one character who is trying very hard not to be seen or noticed by anyone and supportive: there will be many a lonely woman the other who reads this book is seen and feels followed and hounded by everyone all over the world, it's an interesting clash as if she sat down with they come together. This isn't just a group of friends for love story though, and actually it's really just Pab's story, about the eveningjourney he takes in his life via his meet-up with Leanna Smart.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444700154</amazonuk>0349003459

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jean Ure1609809319|title=Fortune CookieLong-Haired Cat-Boy Cub|author=Etgar Keret, Aviel Basil and Sondra Silverston (translator)|rating=4.5

|summary=Fudge Cassidy and One day a boy is in the Cupcake kid are best friends. If zoo with his father when the names remind you of a certain film then you'd be spot man gets called away on as that's where Fudge's father got the idea fromurgent business. TheyThe boy isn're actually chalk t hustled into a cab and cheese taken home first, though, no – Fudge is loud mouthed he's given hot dog money, and opinionated taxi money, and Cupcake is quiet and thoughtful – but the combination works. They've told to just started at secondary school and Cupcake has rather a lot stick around on her plate. Her brother Joey has muscular dystrophy his own and his problems are becoming more obviousenjoy himself. Add to this Well, it's no surprise that her father couldnthe orphan-for-an-afternoon sensation the lad feels doesn't cope with the problems make him happy, and so he thinks of a species name for himself, and curls himself up into an empty cage as if he now has another familywere a new exhibit. ItAnd it's just Cupcake, Joey and her mother – and not a lot of money.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007224621</amazonuk>then the drama begins…

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jenifer Roberts1785785516|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>}} {{newreviewFucking Good Manners|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 ThingsSimon Griffin

|genre=General FictionLifestyle|summary=Meet MaxManners maketh man, they say. When I say he sometimes gets the wrong end It certainly makes life easier if everybody abides by a set of conventions, some of the stick which are ages old and others which have evolved over time. Manners are not about adultshow much to tip or how you should behave if you get an invitation to Buckingham Palace, they have nothing to do with class or dislikes his motherfinancial status: they's new boyfriend, or gets a bit feisty when he feels re about getting the need for revenge, I am certainly understating the facts. He is a bit of a rascal basics right before we try to say the leastdeal with more difficult matters. But Of course, we all that might change have more relaxed manners when he finds himself travelling we're with family and friends, but it's best if we learn to a strange land of roisterous animals, distinguish between our public and private lives and ends up installed as their kingto act appropriately. ''Fucking Good Manners'' aims to help us on the way.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241144221</amazonuk>