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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.

Want to find out more [[About Us|about us]]?__NOTOC__

==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__{{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, 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 children's futures on a scientific basis, 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=<amazonuk>1844717216</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Katherine May|title=Burning Out|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Violet has it all – a well-paid job, and a luxurious apartment all to herself. Everything is catered for; her meals, her clothes, and her health are all how she would like them to be. But the life she is leading is beginning to take its toll. On the verge of snapping, a drained and somewhat out-of-sorts Violet, withdraws back to her home town. There, she meets someone familiar, a ghost reminding her of how she used to be ten years earlier – a young carefree girl, full of life. Only this isn't a ghost, but a girl living 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 girl.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906727392</amazonukbr>}}

'''Read [[:Category:Features|the latest features]].''' <!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Amanda DownumGrady Hendrix|title=The Drowning CitySouthern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires|rating=3.5|genre=FantasyHorror|summary=In a nutshell Women, you're reading this because you're wondering whether The Drowning City is goodby and large, bad or mediocrehave always been the subjugated sex. You've probably glanced at Throughout history, they have been confined to mere bit players who occasionally help hold up the rating powerful man and guessed the latterlet nothing stand in his way. IGrady Hendrix's new novel ''m afraid itThe Southern Book Club's not quite that simpleGuide to Slaying Vampires'' gives women their due. This It is a debut that provokes decidedly mixed feelingsan ode to the strong selfless housewife. I started off convinced that I was going Hendrix illustrates this by having them go toe to love this book. The cover art is effortlessly cool, the premise intriguing, the characters laden toe with potential for greatness and the backdrop is certainly evocativea predatory male vampire who moves into their quiet cul de sac.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1841498149</amazonuk>1683691431

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tove Jansson0008149089|title=The True DeceiverCutting 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 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 You|rating=3.5|genre=Crime|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 work, she realises something is 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 art machines are killed. Things get worse for her, however, when investigating detective Grady Crowe reveals that Marcus Raine has been dead for several yearscapable of emulating the full range of human emotions without lying, and the man she married was using a false identitystealing or bullying. Infuriated by They're the betrayal, and the realisation perfect companion for any child! Any mention that she's been living a lie for the past five years, Izzy takes matters into her own hands and sets out these androids are beginning to find her husband and work out why he lied to 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 develop real human feelings are just unsubstantiated rumours and rivals anything she could have plotted absolutely no basis in one of her novels.reality…right?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099522179</amazonuk>1788003470

 {{newreviewFrontpage |authorisbn=Lisa McMann1529123941 |title=WakeThe Silent Treatment |author=Abbie Greaves |rating=4.5 |genre=TeensGeneral Fiction |summary=Janie When we meet Professor Frank Hobbs and his wife, Maggie, Frank is seventeen playing chess against his computer, although not very successfully. Maggie, on the other hand, has just taken some pills - eight of them, in fact - and studying hard for collegebefore long she will collapse. She's also working lots When Frank rings the emergency services in Oxford he has a bit of hours at a local nursing home problem. He has to earn money admit that he and Maggie haven't actually spoken for college as a while. How long? Well, it's unlikely her alcoholic mother is going about six months since he spoke 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 Maggie and so you he can't blame really say if it's likely that Maggie has tried to take her for being so single-minded in the pursuit of her goalown life. Only one thing stands in her way...|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847385036</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jaclyn Moriarty Rob Harrell|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 finds herself going to. He seems determined to either ignore her or be outright rude to hersee Mariah, until he saves her life, and the two Danish wife of them end up drawn together. This isn't Stephenie Meyer's ''Twilight'', 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 Learthe master. 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 itShe's thought to be. To my mind the acclaim pregnant and esteem in which it's held is only mirrored by its own over-long, over-blown blustering.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0763643440</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Paul Theroux|title=A Dead Hand: A Crime in Calcutta|rating=3.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Set in India, familiar territory looking for Therouxhelp, ''A Dead Hand'' tells not with 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 to release his creativity in very unexpected ways. The story is more about obsession and infatuation than it is about the mystery itself as new baby but with the narrator falls under Mrs Unger's Tantric charms. But does she have more to hide than shemaster'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 Map|rating=4.5|genre=History|summary=In 2003 a map was bought for $10 million, the highest price ever paid publicly for a historical document, daughter by the Library of Congresshis first wife, where it is now on permanent public displayAna. No ordinary map, this Felicity is sometimes described as America's birth certificate. It is the sole survivor of a thousand copies printed early in the 16th century, 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 that he was inspired selectively mute: she does talk to discover moreher father, 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 but to Unremitting Global Misery|rating=3|genre=Humour|summary=''The banks fell over like fat Labradors running over a wet kitchen floorno one else.'' Surely that The eight-year-old is the wackiest, most inappropriate simile grieving for the credit crunch her dead mother and all it has done for the worldstruggling at school. You won't get any such namby-pamby animal likenesses from these authors, instead with quite a potty mouth 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>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Andy StantonSally Magnusson|title=WhatThe Sealwoman's For Dinner, Mr Gum?Gift

|genre=Confident ReadersHistorical Fiction|summary=As soon as heroine Polly turns There is a legend that God came to visit Adam & Eve in the Garden. Eve had not finished bathing her backchildren and ashamed of those still not cleansed, and leaves she attempted to hide them from the town eyes of Lamonic Bibber for a day at the seasideGod, denying that she had more children that those, Mr Gum falls out with his best friendalready bathed, causing carnivorous carnage all over the placethat she willing paraded for him. Meat is getting thrown around like it's going out of fashionGod was not to be deceived, however, and we have decreed that what was sought to doubt whether Polly and her companions can ever utilise be hidden from the eyes of God would henceforth be hidden from the power eyes of love man, and put things to rightsso the Elves were born: the hidden folk. Especially as this book does not contain a magic unicorn called ElizabethThey can see man, but man can only see them if they so choose.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1405248246</amazonuk>1473638984

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Loose WomenWendy Cheyne |title=Here Come From the GirlsAuld Rock to a Hard Place

|genre=Home and FamilyHistorical Fiction|summary=This is After the second volume by Jacobite defeat at the panelists from that nice ITV seriesBattle of Culloden, ''Loose Women''many Scottish estates were given to English lords. Just as promised They were not kind to their crofting tenants. Many on the cover, mainland were cleared and while this book is an entertaining night with did not happen much on the girls. It turns out that they're just like us. The faces are already familiar and even if you don't know them yetislands such as Shetland, with nine contributors, you'll soon find a likethe new exploitative conditions led many Shetlanders to leave -minded woman behind one of to port cities on the celebrity faces. The women are universally warm-hearted mainland, to North America and supportive: there will be many a lonely woman who reads this book even to Australia and feels as if she sat down with a group of friends for the eveningNew Zealand.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444700154</amazonuk>1838591753

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jean UreEle Fountain|title=Fortune CookieLost

|summary=Fudge Cassidy and the Cupcake kid are best friends. If the names remind you of a certain film then you'd be spot on as that's where Fudge's Lola lives in an Indian city with her father got the idea from. They're actually chalk , and cheese – Fudge is loud mouthed and opinionated and Cupcake is quiet 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, Amit. Add to this that her father couldn't cope She lives with the problems and he now has another family. It's just Cupcakethem in a nice apartment, Joey and her mother – and although they are not a lot rich like some 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, the girls at that time the richest and most opulent city in Europeschool, Maria was destined they have enough money to become the first female monarch in Portuguese historybe comfortable. Married to Lola spends her uncle Infante Pedro, seventeen years time thinking about her senior, she had six children (outliving all but one of them)school friends, and became Queen in 1777. A conscientious woman, she had the misfortune trying to be born fit 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 affairsthem, she was no Queen Elizabethuntil one day, no Catherine the Greatsuddenly, and wore everything in her crown rather reluctantly.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>095455891X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=David Hughes|title=Thomas Wogan is Dead|rating=4life changes.5|genre=Graphic Novels|summary=Well, with a title like that, need I bother with a plot summary? A man has After taking a day out in Morecambework trip away, then the next thing he knows heLola'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 didnfather doesn't need telling, he's dead.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>095580888X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Dave Eggers|title=The Wild Things|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=Meet Maxcome home. When I say he sometimes gets the wrong end of the stick about adults, or dislikes his mother's new boyfriend, or gets a bit feisty when he feels the need for revenge, I am certainly understating the facts. He is a bit of a rascal They have nobody else to say the least. But all that might change when he finds himself travelling to a strange land of roisterous animalshelp, and ends up installed as their king.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241144221</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Jeremy Strong|title=Christmas Chaos for the Hundred-Mile-An-Hour Dog |rating=4|genre=Confident Readers|summary=Trevor's troublesome dogthey wait day after day, Streaker, has had three puppies. They were fathered, according to local bully Charlie Smugg, by one Lola wonders what will become of his Alsatians. Trevor would ideally like to keep themuntil, at least until Christmasfinally, but his parents have other ideas and put them up for sale. Charlie Smugg declares that he's entitled to half of the money they are evicted from the sale of the puppiestheir flat, but before they can 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=3.5|genre=Teens|summary=Cassie lives on an Arctic research station in Alaska. She loves the ice she and the wilderness of her remote home and she'd definitely prefer brother find themselves forced to spend her time live on tracking polar bears and fending off frostbite rather than on mixing with her peers and enjoying college and home comforts back in Fairbanks. However, things aren't all rosy. Cassie's mother died when she was just a baby and she can't help feeling a huge hole in her heart. Her scientist father is remote and unloving and her grandmother left 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 this brilliant book.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141043369</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Annie Taylor|title=Violet|rating=4.5|genre=Confident Readers|summary=Violet is find a very special hippo. She is extremely small but that does not make her adoptive parents Albert and Mavis love her any the lessway to live happily again their solution would need to be radical. 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 themKatie Straw worked in the women's refuge and the women who lived there liked and respected her. Fortunately, we can hit the delete button She treated them well and forget about them as quickly as seemed to have an understanding of what they camewere going through. I certainly prefer not to torture my friends by sending such rubbish on, Why then did she jump from the local suicide spot into the river below? There had been no matter how bad my luck is supposed signs that she was unhappy and she and her boyfriend seemed to become if I don't. But I wonder how many of us would react if a spam Ehave been content together -Mail actually was and Noah has a matter of life and deathdecent alibi for the time when she died, rather than just claiming to but what other explanation could there befor her death?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0749007079</amazonuk> The police are convinced that it's suicide, but the women who knew her believed otherwise.

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jeanette Winterson1838880658|title=The Battle of the Sun|rating=5|genre=Confident Readers|summary=London 1601. 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, 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 and were the good girls. Neither missed school, skipped her homework nor had boyfriends. Well, that is, not so far. Up until then Tamsin had been the boffin head – consistently strong academically and looking forward to going on to university. All that seemed to change when she met Alex. Well, when I say 'met' I should perhaps clarify and say that Alex pushed his wheelbarrow into her, from the building site where he worked. Oh, and did I mention that he was seventeen, Polish and spoke very little English?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007281722</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Henry Mintzberg|title=Managing|rating=5|genre=Business and Finance|summary=''Study after study has shown that managers work Murder at an unrelenting pace'' How true, though it always makes me wonder why, as a result, there's such a market 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 so? This title actually has an answer to this, by providing two books in one, and 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, chapter by chapter, cover to cover. If you have the time I would recommend this approach because the book is very readable, not too repetitive, and quite thought-provoking.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0273709305</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewEnderley Hall (Miss Underhay)|author=Kathryn Fox|title=Blood BornHelena 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