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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.

There are currently '''{{PAGESINCATEGORY:Reviews}}''' reviews on the siteat TheBookbag.

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==Reviews of the Best New ReviewsBooks=='''For new reviews by genre [[:Category:New Reviews|click here]].'''

'''For new features Read [[Features:Category:New Reviews|click herenew reviews by category]].'''__NOTOC__<br>

'''Read [[:Category:Features|the latest features]].''' <!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tove JanssonGrady Hendrix|title=The True DeceiverSouthern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires|rating= 5|genre= Horror|summary= Women, by and large, have always been the subjugated sex. Throughout history, they have been confined to mere bit players who occasionally help hold up the powerful man and let nothing stand in his way. Grady Hendrix's new novel ''The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires'' gives women their due. It is an ode to the strong selfless housewife. Hendrix illustrates this by having them go toe to toe with a predatory male vampire who moves into their quiet cul de sac.|isbn=1683691431}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0008149089|title=The Cutting Place (DS Maeve Kerrigan)|author=Jane Casey

|genre=Literary FictionCrime|summary=Most people It was Kim Weldon who found the first bits of my age will have come across Jansson's work unwittingly, via the televised renditions body - she was a mudlarker on the banks of the Moomin talesThames and when she turned over what looked like a stick she realised it was a hand, a right hand, in fact. DS Maeve Kerrigan and DI Josh Derwent's team would later find three other body parts. The readers amongst us Identification of the body was not going to be easy, but eventually, it would then have been entranced be given a name - Paige Hargreaves, a few years ago to discover twenty-eight-year-old freelance journalist. Her friend, Bianca Drummond, another journalist, said that at last Thomas Teal had set about the translation into English, first of The Summer Book and then of she was working on a collection of short stories story which were published as 'A Winter Bookshe reckoned would be explosive - and she hadn't been willing to share any of the details with Bianca. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0954899571</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Daniel Kehlmann Jenny Valentine|title=Me and KaminskiHello Now

|genre=Literary FictionTeens|summary=After reviewing several long books, it's been refreshing Jude reluctantly moves to read such a fluent yet pared down story as 'Kaminski small, quiet seaside town after her Mum and her most recent boyfriend split (making this their 13th post-breakup move) and Me'. In itsettle into a big, Sebastian Zollnerold house overlooking the sea - which happens to contain a strange, the obnoxious main characterold sitting tenant named Henry, shoves himself forward who stays rooted in the house like a desperate attempt to research a best seller which will re-ignite his career as an art criticghost that just won't leave – or can't. KaminskiAs Jude settles into this new, the proposed subjectseemingly mundane, was reality she is consumed by a fashionable painter long agolonging for her old life in London and anger at another forced change – but this will be the last time, but nowshe swears. This world is quiet, ancient dull and chronically ill, has virtually slid into oblivionyet suffocating for Jude. So That is until the second-rate writer is on a loser unless he can dig up some juicy details to hook day Novo arrives, and her entire concept of the art world and general publicchanges forever.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847249892</amazonuk>0007466498

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Louis BarfeB0867X8NW7|title=Turned Out Nice Again: The Story of British Light EntertainmentAccess Point|author=T R Gabbay

|genre=EntertainmentThrillers|summary=Light entertainment is often looked down upon, as if itWhen we first meet Ula Mishkin she's having something of a professional success: using a device of her own invention she's helped a man who has been blind for decades to see an image of a bit naff, tepid and ignorablehummingbird. What She's often forgotten thirty-six years old and her life is that itabout to change radically as, cycling home, she's involved in an accident with a bus. It's hugely popular, enjoyable two years before we meet her again and much of it is of in the highest quality. Louis Barfemeantime, she's Turned Out Nice Again tells the complete story of British light entertainmentspent 392 days in a coma and now walks with a stick. A professional colleague persuades Ula that she should let out a spare bedroom to bring in some income.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1843543818</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jim Helmore and Karen WallBen Oliver|title=Oh No, Monster Tomato!The Loop|rating=43.5|genre=For SharingTeens|summary=Marvin is entering Set during the Great Grislygust Grow-Offaftermath of a Third World War where methods of punishment for criminal activities have been amped up to a horrific level by machines, but just like The Loop follows the precarious existence of adolescent Luka Kane. In a world of Have and Have Nots where Alts [cyborgs] have power over Regulars, he is trapped inside a living hell with no chance of escape. A detonator has been sewn inside his heart connecting him, to a trigger held by the guards who can end his tomatoes aren't growing very biglife with one squeeze. He takes the only sensible course Luka is taunted by limited access to his memories and relentlessly drained of action: energy through a gruelling daily torture ritual. Doomed to Delay [a risky medical trial where he sings his tomatoes is a songguinea pig for Alts in place of execution] after Delay he is in despair. The results are spectacular. Victory His prison is surely within his graspbased on the model of an infinity loop designed to make its inmates suffer.With the only glimmers of hope being the rumours of rebellion outside and the visits of sympathetic Alt guard Wren, can Luka ever be free? Why has he been imprisoned? What waits for him if he can break the loop?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>140524741X</amazonuk>1912626551

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Joseph Delaney Kirsty Applebaum|title=The Spook's Stories: WitchesTroofriend|rating=4.5|genre=TeensConfident Readers|summary='Warning: Not to be read after dark,' are the only words on the back Are you tired of ''The Spookyour child's Stories'', and on classmates constantly being horrible to them? Do you want your child to have some positive experiences with people? Introducing the inside flap, 'The Times' warns us that this book is 'seriously scary'...  The whole thing kicksnew Jenson & Jenson Troofriend 560 Mark IV android! These state-off relatively tamely, though, with a story about a young Spook (a sort of monster-hunter) who falls in love with a witch and is forced to bear the consequences when -art machines are capable of emulating the witchfull range of human emotions without lying, stealing or bullying. They's sister comes re the perfect companion for any child! Any mention that these androids are beginning to stay develop real human feelings are just unsubstantiated rumours and exhibits a taste for the neighbor-children.have absolutely no basis in reality…right?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0370329961</amazonuk>1788003470

 {{newreviewFrontpage |authorisbn=Lisa Unger1529123941 |title=Die For YouThe Silent Treatment |author=Abbie Greaves |rating=34.5|genre=CrimeGeneral Fiction |summary=Best-selling novelist Isabel Connelly is married to successful video game designer Marcus Raine. Or so she thinks. But when her husband fails to return from workWhen we meet Professor Frank Hobbs and his wife, Maggie, she realises something Frank is wrong. Going to playing chess against his office to try to find out what happens to himcomputer, she gets attacked and ends up in hospital, while his co-workers are killedalthough not very successfully. Things get worse for her Maggie, howeveron the other hand, when investigating detective Grady Crowe reveals that Marcus Raine has been dead for several yearsjust taken some pills - eight of them, in fact - and before long she will collapse. When Frank rings the man she married was using emergency services in Oxford he has a bit of a false identityproblem. Infuriated by the betrayal, He has to admit that he and the realisation that sheMaggie haven's been living t actually spoken for a lie for the past five yearswhile. How long? Well, Izzy takes matters into her own hands and sets out it's about six months since he spoke to find her husband Maggie and work out why he lied can't really say if it's likely that Maggie has tried to take her for so long. Ignoring police warnings, she delves deeper and deeper into a nasty underworld, and finds a tale which has its roots in Prague and rivals anything she could have plotted in one of her novelsown life.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099522179</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Lisa McMannRob Harrell|title=Wake|rating=4|genre=Teens|summary=Janie is seventeen and studying hard for college. She's also working lots of hours at a local nursing home to earn money for college as it's unlikely her alcoholic mother is going to provide much in the way of resources. College is Janie's only chance at a life better than the one she's lived so far and so you can't blame her for being so single-minded in the pursuit of her goal. 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 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 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 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>}} {{newreview|author=Jon Berkeley|title=The Lightning Key (Circus Trilogy)Wink

|summary=I shall start When Ross is diagnosed with a word rare form of advicecancer, aged 12, his desperate attempts at school to just be 'normal' become impossible. When you're being hounded by a circus masterSuddenly he is the cancer kid, and a magicianeverything he does, how he looks, for and how he behaves falls under the soul scrutiny of a tiger that's contained the other kids in school. Ross is, understandably, angry. He is facing potential blindness, whilst dealing with an eye sealed in a tiger's egg that's contained in permanent wink. He has gloopy eye medicine to try to help with the brain of your teddy bearpain, and your best friend - plus the need to wear a fallen angel - is trying her best hat at all times to protect his face due 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 trilogyongoing treatment. Still - never mindWith the sudden ghosting by one of his best friends, the angel's efforts will involve you entering and a dream world series of flight and cloud citieshorrible memes that someone at school creates about Ross, the chase after your enemies will take you across the world to desert oases and backnothing about his life is normal any more, and friends he has to find new ways to deal with his feelings, and old will be on board to helpsurvive.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847384447</amazonuk>1471409147

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sue Townsend1786485575|title=Adrian Mole: The Prostrate YearsMagpie Lane|author=Lucy Atkins

|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=Adrian Mole is now 39¼ and living, quite literally, in a pigsty, sharing an all too thin party wall with his parents and working in a bookshop. ItWhen we first meet Dee she's not quite how life was supposed talking to turn out. As he spends his days wrestling his strong willed 5 year old Gracie into her school uniformNick Law, trying to reassure glamorous wife Daisy that life in the provinces is not as bad as she would like to believe, and desperately attempting to talk his mother out new college master. Law's lately of her quest to appear on the vile BBC and he doesn''Jeremy Kyle'' show, worrying over his increasingly frequent visits to the toilet is really the last thing t come with an entirely good reputation: he needs. And yet, the worst is still to come. Think a crumbling economy, redundancy, affairs, death, a family member challenging him in the novel writing stakes and a query over the big C – it's going to be a tough year for the Moles, bit of a bully and there's little that ol' Adrian Dee can do except sit back and watch his life spin out sense something of control around himthat in their first conversation.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0718153707</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Lauren Kate|title=Fallen|rating=4.5|genre=Teens|summary=A 17 year old girl at She had been planning to return home to Scotland before taking on a new school meets job as a mysterious and impossibly good-looking boynanny, who but somehow she's immediately drawn to. He seems determined to either ignore her or be outright rude finds herself going to hersee Mariah, until he saves her life, and the two Danish wife of them end up drawn togetherthe master. This isn't Stephenie Meyer She's ''Twilight''pregnant and looking for help, but it certainly has striking similarities.|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, with the language is too dense and rich, the set-up too archly unfeasible to create new baby but with the great tragedy itmaster's thought to bedaughter by his first wife, Ana. To my mind the acclaim and esteem in which it's held Felicity is only mirrored by its own over-long, over-blown blustering.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0763643440</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Paul Theroux|title=A Dead Handselectively mute: A Crime in Calcutta|rating=3.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Set in Indiashe does talk to her father, familiar territory for Theroux, ''A Dead Hand'' 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 Unger, relating a story of a mystery of a dead body in a hotel leads him but to release his creativity in very unexpected waysno one else. The story eight-year-old is more about obsession grieving for her dead mother and infatuation than it is about the mystery itself as the narrator falls under Mrs Unger's Tantric charmsstruggling at school. But does she have more to hide than she's letting on?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241144639</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Toby LesterSally Magnusson|title=The Fourth Part of the World: The Epic Story of HistorySealwoman's Greatest MapGift

|genre=HistoryHistorical Fiction|summary=In 2003 There is a map was bought for $10 million, legend that God came to visit Adam & Eve in the highest price ever paid publicly for a historical documentGarden. Eve had not finished bathing her children and ashamed of those still not cleansed, by she attempted to hide them from the Library eyes of CongressGod, denying that she had more children that those, already bathed, where it is now on permanent public displaythat she willing paraded for him. No ordinary mapGod was not to be deceived, this is sometimes described as America's birth certificate. It is the sole survivor of a thousand copies printed early in the 16th centuryhowever, and was discovered by accident in some archives in a German castle in 1901. The sale and story behind it intrigued Toby Lester so much decreed that he what was inspired sought to discover morebe hidden from the eyes of God would henceforth be hidden from the eyes of man, and this book is so 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?Elves were born: 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 worldhidden folk. You won't get any such namby-pamby animal likenesses from these authorsThey can see man, instead with quite a potty mouth on but man can only see them if 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 listschoose.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847443656</amazonuk>1473638984

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Andy StantonWendy Cheyne |title=What's For Dinner, Mr Gum?|rating=4.5|genre=Confident Readers|summary=As soon as heroine Polly turns her back, and leaves From the town of Lamonic Bibber for a day at the seaside, Mr Gum falls out with his best friend, causing carnivorous carnage all over the place. Meat is getting thrown around like it's going out of fashion, and we have to doubt whether Polly and her companions can ever utilise the power of love and put things Auld Rock to rights. Especially as this book does not contain a magic unicorn called Elizabeth.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1405248246</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Loose Women|title=Here Come the GirlsHard Place

|genre=Home and FamilyHistorical Fiction|summary=This is After the second volume by Jacobite defeat at the panelists from that nice ITV series, ''Loose Women''. Just as promised on the cover, this book is an entertaining night with the girls. It turns out that they're just like us. The faces are already familiar and even if you don't know them yet, with nine contributorsBattle of Culloden, you'll soon find a like-minded woman behind one of the celebrity faces. The women are universally warm-hearted and supportive: there will be many a lonely woman who reads this book and feels as if she sat down with a group of friends for the eveningScottish estates were given to English lords.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444700154</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Jean Ure|title=Fortune Cookie|rating=4They were not kind to their crofting tenants.5|genre=Confident Readers|summary=Fudge Cassidy and the Cupcake kid are best friends. If the names remind you of a certain film then you'd be spot Many on as that's where Fudge's father got the idea from. They're actually chalk and cheese – Fudge is loud mouthed and opinionated and Cupcake is quiet mainland were cleared and thoughtful – but 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 while this that her father couldn't cope with the problems and he now has another family. It's just Cupcake, Joey and her mother – and did not a lot of money.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007224621</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Jenifer Roberts|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 happen much on the richest and most opulent city in Europeislands such as Shetland, Maria was destined to become the first female monarch in Portuguese history. Married new exploitative conditions led many Shetlanders 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 leave - to be born in during port cities on the 'age of reason'mainland, when church to North America and state were vying for supremacy. Instinctively a supporter of the old religion, with a humanitarian approach even to state affairs, she was no Queen Elizabeth, no Catherine the Great, Australia and wore her crown rather reluctantlyNew Zealand.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>095455891X</amazonuk>1838591753

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=David HughesEle Fountain|title=Thomas Wogan is DeadLost

|summary=Trevor's troublesome dogLola lives in an Indian city with her father, Streakerand her brother, has had three puppies. They were fathered, according to local bully Charlie Smugg, by one of his AlsatiansAmit. Trevor would ideally like to keep She lives with themin a nice apartment, at least until Christmas, but his parents have other ideas and put them up for sale. Charlie Smugg declares that he's entitled to half although they are not rich like some of the money from the sale of the puppiesgirls at school, but before they can have enough money to be sold the three puppies go missing in the park and it's up to Trevor and his best friend Tina to try and track them down before Charlie demands his cash!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141327243</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Sarah Beth Durst|title=Ice|rating=3comfortable.5|genre=Teens|summary=Cassie lives on an Arctic research station in Alaska. She loves the ice and the wilderness of Lola spends her time thinking about her remote home school friends, and she'd definitely prefer trying to spend her time on tracking polar bears and fending off frostbite rather than on mixing fit in with them, until one day, suddenly, everything in her peers and enjoying college and home comforts back in Fairbankslife changes. However After taking a work trip away, things aren't all rosy. CassieLola's mother died when she was just a baby and she canfather doesn't come home. They have nobody else to help feeling a huge hole in her heart. Her scientist father is remote , and as they wait day after day, Lola wonders what will become of them until, finally, they are evicted from their flat, and unloving she and her grandmother left brother find themselves forced to live on the station after an argument with him when Cassie was still very youngstreets. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847386571</amazonuk>178269255X

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Iain Smyth and Michael TerryN K Jemisin|title=The Wide-Mouthed FrogCity We Became|rating=4.5|genre=For SharingScience Fiction|summary=Do you know New York is being born, the joke about city has reached critical mass and has matured into a living almost-breathing entity and is ready to make its way out into the wide-mouthed frog? You must have heard world. Before it. It's a classic. It's one that you really need can be established, an ancient evil appears to tell in person, with your fingers pulling your mouth wide open, but attempt to hopefully spark your memorydestroy it just as it destroyed Atlantis and other forgotten places. The city is not alone through the birthing process, people who embody the wide-mouthed frog introduces himself values are selected to a number become the living embodiment of animals until he finally comes across a crocodile who eats wide-mouthed frogsthe city, some cities have one, some have twelve and New York has six. Together these human-embodiments must defeat the frog does his best to disguise who he is whilst saying ''Ooh, you woman in white and save New York from very real destruction. But these are five different boroughs which don't always see many of those round here, do you?'' I'm hardly doing it justiceeye to eye, but it's very cheesy a personality clash on an epic scale and funny. Anyway, this unity is a book of that jokeboth critical and not remotely guaranteed.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408804964</amazonuk>0356512665

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=0241446732|title=Dr Aaron Carroll Our House is on Fire: Scenes of a Family and Dr Rachel Vreemana Planet in Crisis|titleauthor=Don't Swallow Your GumMalena Ernman, Greta Thunberg, Beata Thunberg and Svante Thunberg

|genre=LifestylePolitics and Society|summary='''BANG'''The Ernman / Thunberg family seemed perfectly normal. That's Malena Ernman was an opera singer and Svante Thunberg took on most of the sound parenting of copious urban myths being shot downtheir two daughters. '''BANG'''Then eleven-year-old Greta stopped eating and talking and her sister, Beata, then nine years old, struggled with what was happening. ThatIn such circumstances, it's natural to seek a solution close to home, but eventually, it became clear to the sound of the old wives slamming the door, as their tales get revealed as baseless. family that they were '''CLICK'burned-out people on a burned-out planet''. That's the noise lots of ill-informed websites make as If they get closed down. All noises come due were to find a way to live happily again their solution would need to this brilliant bookbe radical.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141043369</amazonuk>

 {{newreview|author=Annie Taylor|title=Violet|rating=4.5|genre=Confident Readers|summary=Violet is a very special hippo. She is extremely small but that does not make her adoptive parents Albert and Mavis love her any the less. However, they are slightly worried that Violet has a very unusual habit of turning pink without warning and for no explicable reason.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906847371</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Hilary Dixon178730101X|title=When Rooks Speak of Love|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Arthur Transcombe is a middle-aged, grey-haired, self-effacing poet. Unremarkable really - on the outside. He has, however, managed to achieve some success with his poems. (Being a guest speaker at the Cheltenham Literary Festival is no mean feat). He is also a babe magnet!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904529429</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewKeep Him Close|author=A J Healy|title=Tommy Storm and the Galactic KnightsEmily Koch

|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=Meet Tommy StormAlice had two children: Benny (well, Benoît, actually) and Louis. HeLou's seventeen and he's one of five teenagers snapped up from around the universe just got his A level results and he and his brother are going out to be a gang of heroic detectives charged with rescuing EVERYTHING from destructioncelebrate. Not just the planet, or the solar system, or even the galaxy, but EVERYTHING. Nobody seems Someone has to know what's going find something to cause this destructioncelebrate in the letters, or whenD, but he D and his friends and their ship seem to be the only people proactively going about saving the dayE. So Alice has always had a good relationship with nineteen-year-old Benny but it's a pity that they start this book strung up by a nasty loony who touch problematic with Lou and being honest, he's about not terribly likeable. The letters which kept coming to kill themmy mind were ADHD.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847247555</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Graham McCann0241396840|title=Bounder!: The Biography of Terry-ThomasKeeper|author=Jessica Moor

|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 Sun|rating=5|genre=Confident Readers|summary=London 1601. Elizabeth I is getting on Katie Straw worked in years. Her capital city is a busy, bustling place. Boats fill the river and people fill the streets. Jack is happy because itwomen's his birthday refuge and his present is his heart's desire: an excitable black puppy named Max, the women who's a ''licking and a running and a leaping and a jumping and a tummy in the air and a tail wagging and a barking, racing, braking, spinning energy dog of delight''. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>140880042X</amazonuk>}}  {{newreview|author=Jean Ure|title=Love and Kisses|rating=4.5|genre=Confident Readers|summary=Tamsin and Katie were just thirteen and worried that they were boring. They'd been best friends since forever lived there liked and were the good girls. Neither missed school, skipped respected her homework nor had boyfriends. Well, that is, not so far. Up until then Tamsin had been the boffin head – consistently strong academically She treated them well and looking forward seemed to have an understanding of what they were going on to universitythrough. All that seemed to change when Why then did she met Alex. Well, when I say 'met' I should perhaps clarify and say that Alex pushed his wheelbarrow jump from the local suicide spot into her, from the building site where he worked. river below? Oh, and did I mention There had been no signs that he she was seventeen, Polish unhappy and she and spoke very little English?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007281722</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Henry Mintzberg|title=Managing|rating=5|genre=Business her boyfriend seemed to have been content together - and Finance|summary=''Study after study Noah has shown that managers work at an unrelenting pace'' How true, though it always makes me wonder why, as a resultdecent alibi for the time when she died, but what other explanation could there's such a market be for bulky management and leadership and general business books like this one. How does anyone who needs or wants to read one ever find the time to do soher death? This title actually has an answer to this, by providing two books in one, and The police are convinced that it is such a simple yet effective solution that I have to start there. You can read this book in one of two ways. Option one is to read every word's suicide, chapter by chapter, cover to cover. If you have but the time I would recommend this approach because the book is very readable, not too repetitive, and quite thought-provokingwomen who knew her believed otherwise.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0273709305</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Kathryn Fox1838880658|title=Blood BornMurder at Enderley Hall (Miss Underhay)|author=Helena Dixon

|summary=To give support to a vulnerable gang-rape victim, forensic pathologist Anya Crichton offers to drive Giverny Hart to It's the courthouse summer of 1933 and Kitty Underhay is on her way to visit the day family which she never knew she is due to testify against had, at Enderley Hall. Her grandmother, Mrs Treadwell, and Great Aunt Livvy are back at the notorious Harbourn brothersDolphin Hotel in Dartmouth. But when Anya arrives Kitty gets easily bored working at the house Dolphin - every day is much the same - but her real reason for going away is that she finds Giverny close to death and faces needs a battle against time to save break after her. In the panicrecent adventures, Anya fails to take note of an important clue which might help tell whether it really was suicide or a cleverly staged murder. Worse stillinvolved three vicious murders, in trying to save the girl's life, Anya has interfered with a crime scene and the case falls apart. She blames herself for the Harbourn brothers being allowed to walk free and only hours later there is news of another an arson attack. A pair of sisters have been stabbed and raped resulting in the death of one, while the other clings to an attempt on her life.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340933097</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Leah Fleming1788638026|title=Remembrance DayWhere the Innocent Die (D I Ridpath)|author=M J Lee

|genre=Women's FictionCrime|summary=In It was easy to assume that the year 2000 an old lady in death of the young Chinese girl at the Immigrant Removal Centre was suicide. Her throat was cut, there was a wheelchair watches lot of blood and the knife was on the floor at the unveiling side of the new war memorial in bed, She was due to be deported that day. But... how did the knife get into the secure centre and why was the girl's room the only one which was unlocked? DI Thomas Ridpath, the village square. coroner's officer, is sent to investigate and he quickly becomes suspicious, There's pride a snag though: the inquest is due to open in what has been achieveda couple of days' time, in the family who girl's parents are gathered around her coming over from China and there are memories toothey want to take their daughter's body home with them. Ridpath has just five days to solve the case. Some are good but many are notThe coroner is disinclined to delay the inquest: for her, it's about giving closure to the parents.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847561039</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Neal Layton1471166023|title=Surf's Up Burnt Island (Mammoth AcademyBen Kitto)|author=Kate Rhodes|rating=34.5|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=Having successfully seen off The 5th of November was D I Ben Kitto's thirty-fifth birthday and the rather unpleasant humans in earlier volumesoccasion for the usual bonfire celebrations, our favourite junior mammoths Oscar but it would be marred this year by the discovery of Professor Alex Rogan's body on a bonfire. He'd obviously been alive when he was put on the fire and Arabella can only have died a terrible death. The body was first discovered by Jimmy Curwen, better known on St Agnes as the Bird Man because he speaks little or nothing much else to do apart from return to Mammoth Academy for lots more double periods and his only concern is the welfare of Difficult Sumsthe birds he looks after. They're supposed His instinct is to be making presentations about what they did during the holidays too, but Oscar hasncover Rogan't done any preparation s body and, frankly, he can't really remember what he actually did uses his sheepskin coat to do this, with all the result that free time other than no Difficult Sumshe's the prime suspect. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>034098967X</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ursula Jones and Sarah GibbElliot Reed|title=The Princess Who Had No KingdomA Key to Treehouse Living

|genre=Confident ReadersGeneral Fiction|summary=The princess This is the story of a young boy, William Tyce, who has no kingdom wanders around in a cart pulled is being raised by her horse Prettyhis uncle after the death of his mother and his father's abandonment. She However, it isn's very politet told in the usual narrative way. Instead, friendlythe book is made up of glossary entries, and kind-heartedwritten by William, but she feels like something is lacking because she doesn't have as a kingdom way of her owndescribing certain events, situations and emotions. The other royals she meets treat her nicely enough It runs alphabetically, starting with ABSENCE, then moving to ALPHABETICAL ORDER. As I began to read I did find myself thinking 'what on earth?!' but there's always a feeling that sheI soon grew used to the style, and was instead caught up in William's not quite as good as them because she isn't the princess of anywherestory.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846160421</amazonuk>1911545418

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Mij Kelly and Louise NisbetWill Dean |title=The Happiest Man in the World or the Mouse Who Made ChristmasBlack River |rating=45|genre=For SharingCrime|summary=Mouse doesn't like anyone Tuva Moodyson returns - and keeps herself to herself. Her things are this third book in the Tuva Moodyson mystery series delves deep into her things and she is too selfish to share them with anyone else. One daypersonal life, an old man moves in returning her to Mouse's housethe isolated town of Gavrik and into a desperate search for her missing best friend. He used to be With the happiest man in Midsommar sun blocked out by the world, but now he's sad. He's fed up dark pines of having giventhe forest, given, given all his life and never got anything backTuva fights to save her friend. He just sits quietly and mopes. This makes Mouse miserable, so one day she decides But who’ll be there to cheer him up by giving him a clementine...save Tuva?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0340931558</amazonuk>1786077116

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Nick Bland1782407480|title=Bird Love: The Very Cranky BearFamily Life of Birds|author=Wenfei Tong and Mike Webster|rating=4.5|genre=For SharingAnimals and Wildlife|summary=Moose, Lion, Zebra and Sheep head into I was a little perturbed when I looked at the blurb for ''Bird Love'' on a cave to get out couple of on-line booksellers: ''exploring the rainsex life of birds'' it said. I very nearly passed over the book, but little do they know a closer examination suggested that Bear the book is fast asleep in thereabout the ''family life'' of birds, which is rather different. When they wake him up If the book was confined to the sex life of birds, he roars at themyou would be missing an opportunity to understand how birds live day-to-day, chasing them outside, so they decide to cheer him bring up somehowtheir families and cope in the wild. Zebra paints stripes on him Not only that, Moose fashions antlers for him and Lion sticks you have missed the treat of so many beautiful illustrations about a mane wide variety of straw on him. Unsurprisingly, birds which run through this makes Bear even crankier, so it's down book from the first page to Sheep to save the day.last..|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340989424</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Kes Gray and Lee WildishCamilla Bruce|title=Mum and Dad GlueYou Let Me In

|genre=For SharingGeneral Fiction|summary=A young boy's parents are splitting up. He's going through the usual emotions that children of divorce go through: worryEccentric, feeling unsure, blaming himself, anger, denial, and then trying to get them to stay together. His method isolated romance novelist Cassandra Tipp has been missing for this isn't the usual response though: he looks for glue to stick his mum a year and dad togetherhas been pronounced legally dead by her lawyers. Thankfully, he finds some wise Her will instructs her niece and kindly advice in the process.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340957107</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Clara Vulliamy|title=The Bear With Sticky Paws Won't Go To Bed|rating=4|genre=For Sharing|summary=It's Pearl's bedtime, but she says she's really busy and isn't going nephew to sleep. She just wants to play enter her home and play and play. When find the bear with sticky paws rings the doorbell, he whisks key to their inheritance in an old manuscript left in her away on an amazing adventure - although as you might expect, office: the bear has a little more energy than Pearl and eventually last story she does get a little sleepy'll ever tell.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408300648</amazonuk>1787633179