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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>

{{newreview|author=Michael Morpurgo and Emma Chichester Clark|title=The Best of Times'''Read [[:Category:Features|rating=4.5|genre=Confident Readers|summary=Most children enjoy a good traditional tale and this lovely book by Michael Morpurgo seems to have all the right ingredients – a handsome prince and a beautiful princess who fall in love, get married and live happily ever after. Or do they? Sadly, not long after Prince Frederico marries the lovely Princess Serafina, she becomes very sadlatest features]]. Nobody knows what has caused such great sadness, but poor Prince Frederico is desperate to find a cure for his wife's misery. He tries everything in his power and eventually decides to offer his kingdom to anyone who can make her happy again before she dies of a broken heart. Lots of people come to the palace to try and help but in the end the solution is a simple one provided by some very kind travellers.|amazonuk='' <amazonuk>1405232552</amazonuk!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Shirley JacksonGrady Hendrix|title=We Have Always Lived In The CastleSouthern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires|rating=4.5|genre=Literary FictionHorror|summary=Mary Katherine Blackwood, also known as Merricat, is eighteen Women, and lives with her older sister Constance in the family home where 'Blackwoods had always lived'. Merricat quickly draws the reader into her world by a series of matter of fact but bizarre statements – her likes include her sister and death cap mushroomslarge, and everyone else in her family is dead. The wealthy Blackwood family has have always kept been the house 'steady against the world'subjugated sex. Throughout history, shutting out other people, and they live near a village. Merricat believes that 'The people of the village have always hated us', and tells us that she hates them too.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141191457</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Simon Weston|title=Nelson been confined to mere bit players who occasionally help hold up the Rescue|rating=4|genre=Confident Readers|summary=Nelson used to pull Mike the Milk's milk float, but he has now retired. He lives powerful man and let nothing stand in the stable at the back of the dairy along with a couple of tricky rats, Rhodri and Rhys, a pigeon who has no sense of direction, a frog who thinks he's a secret agent spy and an old racehorse who spends most of his time sleepingway. Rhodri and Rhys find a mysterious message on MikeGrady Hendrix'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=<amazonuk>1848510454</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Elizabeth Baines|title=Too Many Magpies|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Becoming a mother brings a whole new world of fear into your life. Suddenly you see the danger in every situation, and fear and trepidation can be become your constant companions. In this novella, we meet a young mother who is married novel ''The Southern Book Club's Guide to a logical scientist. They attempt to control their childrenSlaying Vampires''s futures on a scientific basis, growing their own fruit and vegetables, giving gives women their children nothing sugary, eating no eggs for a whole year until any adverse affects from them were disproveddue. But after meeting with It is an enigmatic stranger our young mother begins ode to struggle as he introduces ideas of freedom into her worldthe strong selfless housewife. She begins an affair with him, begins Hendrix illustrates this by having them go toe to let things slip at home and toe with the children, yet finds she is still continuously haunted by the sense of an ever-present dangera predatory male vampire who moves into their quiet cul de sac.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1844717216</amazonuk>1683691431

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=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</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Amanda Downum0008149089|title=The Drowning City|rating=3.5|genre=Fantasy|summary=In a nutshell, you're reading this because you're wondering whether The Drowning City is good, bad or mediocre. You've probably glanced at the rating and guessed the latter. I'm afraid it's not quite that simple. This is a debut that provokes decidedly mixed feelings. I started off convinced that I was going to love this book. The cover art is effortlessly cool, the premise intriguing, the characters laden with potential for greatness and the backdrop is certainly evocative.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1841498149</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewCutting Place (DS Maeve Kerrigan)|author=Tove Jansson|title=The True DeceiverJane 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 him, she gets attacked and ends up in hospitalcomputer, 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 the man before long she married was using a false identitywill collapse. Infuriated by When Frank rings the betrayal, and the realisation that she's been living a lie for the past five years, Izzy takes matters into her own hands and sets out to find her husband and work out why emergency services in Oxford he lied to her for so long. Ignoring police warnings, she delves deeper and deeper into has a nasty underworld, and finds bit of a tale which problem. He has its roots in Prague to admit that he and rivals anything she could have plotted in one of her novels.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099522179</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Lisa McMann|title=Wake|rating=4|genre=Teens|summary=Janie is seventeen and studying hard Maggie haven't actually spoken for collegea while. She's also working lots of hours at a local nursing home to earn money for college as 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 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 Taylorreally say if it's father likely that Maggie 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 tried 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 take 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 own 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>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jon BerkeleyRob Harrell|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 When we first meet Dee she's talking to Nick Law, the new college master. Law's lately of the BBC and living, quite literally, in he doesn't come with an entirely good reputation: he's a bit of a pigsty, sharing an all too thin party wall with his parents bully and working Dee can sense something of that in a bookshoptheir first conversation. It's not quite how life was supposed She had been planning to turn out. As he spends his days wrestling his strong willed 5 year old Gracie into her school uniform, trying return home to reassure glamorous wife Daisy that life in the provinces is not as bad Scotland before taking on a new job as a nanny, but somehow she would like finds herself going to believesee Mariah, and desperately attempting to talk his mother out the Danish wife of her quest to appear on the vile master. She''Jeremy Kyle'' shows pregnant and looking for help, worrying over his increasingly frequent visits to not with the toilet is really new baby but with the last thing he needsmaster's daughter by his first wife, Ana. And yet, the worst Felicity is still selectively mute: she does talk to come. Think a crumbling economyher father, redundancy, affairs, death, a family member challenging him in the novel writing stakes and a query over the big C – it's going but to be a tough no one else. The eight-year -old is grieving for the Moles, her dead mother and there's little that ol' Adrian can do except sit back and watch his life spin out of control around himstruggling at school.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0718153707</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Lauren KateSally Magnusson|title=FallenThe Sealwoman's Gift

|genre=TeensHistorical Fiction|summary=A 17 year old girl at There is a new school meets a mysterious legend that God came to visit Adam & Eve in the Garden. Eve had not finished bathing her children and impossibly good-looking boyashamed of those still not cleansed, who she's immediately drawn attempted tohide them from the eyes of God, denying that she had more children that those, already bathed, that she willing paraded for him. He seems determined God was not to either ignore her or be outright rude to herdeceived, until he saves her lifehowever, and decreed that what was sought to be hidden from the eyes of God would henceforth be hidden from the two eyes of them end up drawn togetherman, and so the Elves were born: the hidden folk. This isn't Stephenie Meyer's ''Twilight'' They can see man, but it certainly has striking similaritiesman can only see them if they so choose.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0385738935</amazonuk>1473638984

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Gareth HindsWendy Cheyne |title=King LearFrom the Auld Rock to a Hard Place|rating=34|genre=Graphic NovelsHistorical Fiction|summary=Hound me out After the Jacobite defeat at the Battle of town in a most appropriate mannerCulloden, but I do many Scottish estates were given to English lords. They were not like King Learkind to their crofting tenants. For me, even as a trained actor, Many on the language is too dense mainland were cleared and richwhile this did not happen much on the islands such as Shetland, the setnew exploitative conditions led many Shetlanders to leave -up too archly unfeasible to create port cities on the great tragedy it's thought mainland, to be. To my mind the acclaim North America and even to Australia and esteem in which it's held is only mirrored by its own over-long, over-blown blusteringNew Zealand.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0763643440</amazonuk>1838591753

 {{newreview|author=Paul Theroux|title=A Dead Hand: A Crime in Calcutta|rating=3.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Set in India, familiar territory for Theroux, ''A Dead Hand'' tells 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 the narrator falls under Mrs Unger's Tantric charms. But does she have more to hide than she's letting on?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241144639</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Toby Lester|title=The Fourth Part of the World: The Epic Story of History's Greatest 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, by the Library of Congress, where it is now on permanent public display. No ordinary map, this 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 to discover more, 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 floor.'' Surely that is the wackiest, most inappropriate simile for the credit crunch and all it has done for the world. 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 StantonEle Fountain|title=What's For Dinner, Mr Gum?Lost

|summary=As soon as heroine Polly turns Lola lives in an Indian city with her backfather, and leaves her brother, Amit. She lives with them in a nice apartment, and although they are not rich like some of the town of Lamonic Bibber for a day girls at the seasideschool, they have enough money to be comfortable. Lola spends her time thinking about her school friends, Mr Gum falls out and trying to fit in with his best friendthem, until one day, suddenly, causing carnivorous carnage all over the placeeverything in her life changes. Meat is getting thrown around like itAfter taking a work trip away, Lola's going out father doesn't come home. They have nobody else to help, and as they wait day after day, Lola wonders what will become of fashionthem until, finally, they are evicted from their flat, and we have to doubt whether Polly she and her companions can ever utilise brother find themselves forced to live on the power of love and put things to rights. Especially as this book does not contain a magic unicorn called Elizabethstreets.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1405248246</amazonuk>178269255X

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Loose WomenN K Jemisin|title=Here Come the GirlsThe City We Became|rating=4|genre=Home and FamilyScience Fiction|summary=This New York is being born, the second volume by city has reached critical mass and has matured into a living almost-breathing entity and is ready to make its way out into the panelists from that nice ITV seriesworld. Before it can be established, ''Loose Women''an ancient evil appears to attempt to destroy it just as it destroyed Atlantis and other forgotten places. Just as promised on The city is not alone through the coverbirthing process, this book is an entertaining night with people who embody the values are selected to become the living embodiment of the girlscity, some cities have one, some have twelve and New York has six. It turns out that they're just like usTogether these human-embodiments must defeat the woman in white and save New York from very real destruction. The faces But these are already familiar and even if you five different boroughs which don't know them yet, with nine contributorsalways see eye to eye, youit'll soon find s a like-minded woman behind one of the celebrity faces. The women are universally warm-hearted personality clash on an epic scale and supportive: there will be many a lonely woman who reads this book unity is both critical and feels as if she sat down with a group of friends for the eveningnot remotely guaranteed.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444700154</amazonuk>0356512665

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jean Ure0241446732|title=Fortune CookieOur House is on Fire: Scenes of a Family and a Planet in Crisis|author=Malena Ernman, Greta Thunberg, Beata Thunberg and Svante Thunberg|rating=4.5|genre=Confident ReadersPolitics and Society|summary=Fudge Cassidy and the Cupcake kid are best friendsThe Ernman / Thunberg family seemed perfectly normal. If Malena Ernman was an opera singer and Svante Thunberg took on most of the names remind you parenting of a certain film then you'd be spot on as that's where Fudge's father got the idea fromtheir two daughters. They're actually chalk Then eleven-year-old Greta stopped eating and cheese – Fudge is loud mouthed talking and opinionated and Cupcake is quiet and thoughtful – but the combination worksher sister, Beata, then nine years old, struggled with what was happening. TheyIn such circumstances, it've just started at secondary school and Cupcake has rather s natural to seek a lot on her plate. Her brother Joey has muscular dystrophy and his problems are becoming more obvious. Add solution close to home, but eventually, it became clear to this the family that her father couldnthey were ''burned-out people on a burned-out planet''t cope with the problems and he now has another family. It's just Cupcake, Joey and her mother – and not If they were to find a lot of moneyway to live happily again their solution would need to be radical.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007224621</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jenifer Roberts178730101X|title=The Madness of Queen Maria: The Remarkable Life of Maria I of PortugalKeep Him Close|author=Emily Koch|rating=43.5|genre=BiographyCrime|summary=Born in 1734 in LisbonAlice had two children: Benny (well, Benoît, at that time the richest actually) and most opulent city in Europe, Maria was destined to become the first female monarch in Portuguese historyLouis. Married to her uncle Infante Pedro, Lou's seventeen years her senior, she had six children (outliving all but one of them), and became Queen in 1777he's just got his A level results and he and his brother are going out to celebrate. A conscientious woman, she had the misfortune Someone has to find something to be born celebrate in during the 'age of reason'letters, D, when church D and state were vying for supremacyE. Instinctively Alice has always had a supporter of the good relationship with nineteen-year-old religionBenny but it's a touch problematic with Lou and being honest, with a humanitarian approach he's not terribly likeable. The letters which kept coming to state affairs, she was no Queen Elizabeth, no Catherine the Great, and wore her crown rather reluctantlymy mind were ADHD.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>095455891X</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=David Hughes0241396840|title=Thomas Wogan is DeadKeeper|author=Jessica Moor

|genre=Graphic NovelsCrime|summary=Well, with a title like that, need I bother with a plot summary? A man has a day out Katie Straw worked in Morecambe, then the next thing he knows hewomen's in refuge and the ultimate waiting room, with a strange array women who lived there liked and respected her. She treated them well and seemed to have an understanding of animals (what they were going through. Why then did she jump from the local suicide spot into the river below? There had been no signs that she was unhappy and she and her boyfriend seemed to have been content together - and Noah has a batdecent alibi for the time when she died, a toad, a sea urchin...), all waiting but what other explanation could there be for... well, something. her death? Yup, as you didnThe police are convinced that it't need tellings suicide, he's deadbut the women who knew her believed otherwise.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>095580888X</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Dave Eggers1838880658|title=The Wild ThingsMurder at Enderley Hall (Miss Underhay)|author=Helena Dixon

|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=Meet Max. When I say he sometimes gets It's the wrong end summer of 1933 and Kitty Underhay is on her way to visit the stick about adultsfamily which she never knew she had, or dislikes his mother's new boyfriendat Enderley Hall. Her grandmother, or gets a bit feisty when he feels the need for revengeMrs Treadwell, I am certainly understating and Great Aunt Livvy are back at the factsDolphin Hotel in Dartmouth. He Kitty gets easily bored working at the Dolphin - every day is a bit of a rascal to say much the least. But all same - but her real reason for going away is that might change when he finds himself travelling to she needs a strange land of roisterous animalsbreak after her recent adventures, which involved three vicious murders, an arson attack and ends up installed as their kingan attempt on her life.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241144221</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jeremy Strong1788638026|title=Christmas Chaos for Where the Hundred-Mile-An-Hour Dog Innocent Die (D I Ridpath)|author=M J Lee

|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=Trevor's troublesome dog, Streaker, has had three puppies. They were fathered, according It was easy to local bully Charlie Smugg, by one assume that the death of his Alsatiansthe young Chinese girl at the Immigrant Removal Centre was suicide. Trevor would ideally like to keep themHer throat was cut, there was a lot of blood and the knife was on the floor at least until Christmasthe side of the bed, but his parents have other ideas She was due to be deported that day. But... how did the knife get into the secure centre and put them up for sale. why was the girl's room the only one which was unlocked? Charlie Smugg declares that DI Thomas Ridpath, the coroner's officer, is sent to investigate and hequickly becomes suspicious, There's entitled a snag though: the inquest is due to half open in a couple of days' time, the money girl's parents are coming over from China and they want to take their daughter's body home with them. Ridpath has just five days to solve the sale of case. The coroner is disinclined to delay the puppiesinquest: for her, but before they can be sold the three puppies go missing in the park and it's up about giving closure to Trevor and his best friend Tina to try and track them down before Charlie demands his cash!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141327243</amazonuk>the parents.

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sarah Beth Durst1471166023|title=IceBurnt Island (Ben Kitto)|author=Kate Rhodes|rating=34.5|genre=TeensCrime|summary=Cassie lives on an Arctic research station in Alaska. She loves The 5th of November was D I Ben Kitto's thirty-fifth birthday and the occasion for the ice and usual bonfire celebrations, but it would be marred this year by the wilderness discovery of her remote home and sheProfessor Alex Rogan'd definitely prefer to spend her time s body on tracking polar bears and fending off frostbite rather than on mixing with her peers and enjoying college and home comforts back in Fairbanksa bonfire. However, things aren He't all rosy. Cassie's mother died d obviously been alive when she he was just a baby put on the fire and she can't help feeling only have died a huge hole in her heartterrible death. Her scientist father The body was first discovered by Jimmy Curwen, better known on St Agnes as the Bird Man because he speaks little or nothing and his only concern is remote and unloving and her grandmother left the station welfare of the birds he looks after an argument . His instinct is to cover Rogan's body and he uses his sheepskin coat to do this, with him when Cassie was still very youngthe result that he's the prime suspect. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847386571</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Iain Smyth and Michael TerryElliot Reed|title=The Wide-Mouthed FrogA Key to Treehouse Living|rating=4.5|genre=For SharingGeneral Fiction|summary=Do you know This is the joke about story of a young boy, William Tyce, who is being raised by his uncle after the wide-mouthed frog? You must have heard it. Itdeath of his mother and his father's a classicabandonment. It However, it isn's one that you really need to tell t told in personthe usual narrative way. Instead, with your fingers pulling your mouth wide openthe book is made up of glossary entries, but to hopefully spark your memorywritten by William, the wide-mouthed frog introduces himself to as a number way of animals until he finally comes across a crocodile who eats wide-mouthed frogsdescribing certain events, situations and the frog does his best emotions. It runs alphabetically, starting with ABSENCE, then moving to ALPHABETICAL ORDER. As I began to disguise who he is whilst saying read I did find myself thinking ''Ooh, you don't see many of those round here, do youwhat on earth?!'' but I'm hardly doing it justicesoon grew used to the style, but itand was instead caught up in William's very cheesy and funny. Anyway, this is a book of that jokestory.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408804964</amazonuk>1911545418

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Dr Aaron Carroll and Dr Rachel VreemanWill Dean |title=Don't Swallow Your GumBlack River

|genre=LifestyleCrime|summary='''BANG'''. That's Tuva Moodyson returns - and this third book in the Tuva Moodyson mystery series delves deep into her personal life, returning her to the sound isolated town of copious urban myths being shot downGavrik and into a desperate search for her missing best friend. '''BANG'''. That's With the Midsommar sun blocked out by the sound dark pines of the old wives slamming the doorforest, as their tales get revealed as baselessTuva fights to save her friend. '''CLICK'''. That's the noise lots of ill-informed websites make as they get closed down. All noises come due But who’ll be there to this brilliant book.save Tuva?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0141043369</amazonuk>1786077116

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Annie Taylor1782407480|title=VioletBird Love: The Family Life of Birds|author=Wenfei Tong and Mike Webster

|genre=Confident ReadersAnimals and Wildlife|summary=Violet is I was a little perturbed when I looked at the blurb for ''Bird Love'' on a couple of on-line booksellers: ''exploring the sex life of birds'' it said. I very special hippo. She is extremely small nearly passed over the book, but a closer examination suggested that does not make her adoptive parents Albert the book is about the ''family life'' of birds, which is rather different. If the book was confined to the sex life of birds, you would be missing an opportunity to understand how birds live day-to-day, bring up their families and Mavis love her any cope in the lesswild. However Not only that, they are slightly worried that Violet has you have missed the treat of so many beautiful illustrations about a very unusual habit wide variety of turning pink without warning and for no explicable reasonbirds which run through this book from the first page to the last.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906847371</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Hilary DixonCamilla Bruce|title=When Rooks Speak of LoveYou Let Me In

|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=Arthur Transcombe is a middle-aged, grey-hairedEccentric, self-effacing poet. Unremarkable really - on the outside. He isolated romance novelist Cassandra Tipp has, however, managed to achieve some success with his poems. (Being been missing for a guest speaker at the Cheltenham Literary Festival is no mean feat). He is also a babe magnet!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904529429</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=A J Healy|title=Tommy Storm year and the Galactic Knights|rating=3.5|genre=Confident Readers|summary=Meet Tommy Storm. He's one of five teenagers snapped up from around the universe to be a gang of heroic detectives charged with rescuing EVERYTHING from destruction. Not just the planet, or the solar system, or even the galaxy, but EVERYTHING. Nobody seems to know what's going to cause this destruction, or when, but he and his friends and their ship seem to be the only people proactively going about saving the day. So it's a pity that they start this book strung up has been pronounced legally dead by a nasty loony who's about to kill themher lawyers.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847247555</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Graham McCann|title=Bounder!: The Biography of Terry-Thomas|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=When I was in my early teens, it sometimes seemed as if Terry-Thomas was one of the stars of almost every other five-star British comedy film around. He was certainly one of the most recognizable characters of all with his gap-toothed grin, cigarette holder and inimitable 'Hel-lo!', 'Hard cheese!', and best of all, the angry, 'You're an absolute shower!'|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845134419</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Richard Jay Parker|title=Stop Me|rating=3.5|genre=Crime|summary=Spam E-Mails can be incredibly annoying, but most of us Her will have had to deal with them. Fortunately, we can hit the delete button instructs her niece 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 nephew 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 enter her home and death, rather than just claiming find the key 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 their inheritance 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 old manuscript left in her office: the air and a tail wagging and a barking, racing, braking, spinning energy dog of delight'last story she'll ever tell. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>140880042X</amazonuk>1787633179