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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=John E SmelcerGrady Hendrix|title=The Great DeathSouthern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires|rating=45|genre=General FictionHorror|summary='As Western Europeans settled Alaska Women, by and large, they brought with them diseases against which have always been the indigenous people had no natural immunitysubjugated sex. At the beginning of Throughout history, they have been confined to mere bit players who occasionally help hold up the twentieth century, fully two thirds of all Alaska natives perished from a pandemic of measles, smallpox, powerful man and influenzalet nothing stand in his way. No community was spared. In most cases, half of a villageGrady Hendrix's new novel ''The Southern Book Club's population died within a week. In some cases, there were no survivorsGuide to Slaying Vampires'' gives women their due. It was is an ode to the end of an ancient way of lifestrong selfless housewife. Natives still refer Hendrix illustrates this by having them go toe to the dreadful period as the Great Deathtoe with a predatory male vampire who moves into their quiet cul de sac.'|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1842709194</amazonuk>1683691431

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Maxine Barry0008149089|title=River Deep|rating=3.5|genre=Women's Fiction|summary=Two young women both have a love of the Thames. Melisande Ray's beloved hotel, the Ray of Sunshine is on the river bank. It's here that guests come who want to be pampered and looked after in the way that only the best hotels can do well, but when Wendell James checks in to the hotel it's not pampering he's looking for. He's buying a piece of land not far from the Ray of Sunshine and he's sussing out the competition. There's something personal in there too – if his new hotel means that the Ray of Sunshine goes under then that would be an added bonus. There's just a slight doubt in his mind when a red-haired maid catches his eye.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0709088930</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewThe Cutting Place (DS Maeve Kerrigan)|author=Joe Gores|title=Spade and ArcherJane Casey|rating=45

|summary=Sam Spade decides, bravely, to set up his one-man detective agency. It's was Kim Weldon who found the first bits of the 1920s in San Francisco so we have body - she was a mudlarker on the prohibition era and all that that entails. Many locals, banks of course, choose to disobey the lawThames and when she turned over what looked like a stick she realised it was a hand, stick two fingers upa right hand, so to speak in fact. DS Maeve Kerrigan and as a result thereDI Josh Derwent's lots of bootleg liquorteam would later find three other body parts. Straight awayIdentification of the body was not going to be easy, but eventually, it's evident that Sam is would be given a man of few words. He has the mannerisms of name - Paige Hargreaves, a cat twenty-eight-year- stealthy, quick on his feetold freelance journalist. He's also a compulsive chain-smokerHer friend, Bianca Drummond, but then againanother journalist, most people were. In said that era, holding she was working on a cigarette was an elegant, almost essential accessory. How times have changedstory which she reckoned would be explosive - and she hadn't been willing to share any of the details with Bianca.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>140911323X</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Michael Morpurgo and Emma Chichester ClarkJenny Valentine|title=The Best of TimesHello Now

|genre=Confident ReadersTeens|summary=Most children enjoy Jude reluctantly moves to a good traditional tale small, quiet seaside town after her Mum and her most recent boyfriend split (making this lovely book by Michael Morpurgo seems their 13th post-breakup move) and settle into a big, old house overlooking the sea - which happens to have all the right ingredients – contain a handsome prince and a beautiful princess strange, old sitting tenant named Henry, who fall stays rooted in love, get married and live happily ever afterthe house like a ghost that just won't leave – or can't. Or do they? SadlyAs Jude settles into this new, not long after Prince Frederico marries the lovely Princess Serafinaseemingly mundane, reality she becomes very sad. Nobody knows what has caused such great sadness, but poor Prince Frederico is desperate to find consumed by a cure longing for his wife's misery. He tries everything her old life in his power London and eventually decides to offer his kingdom to anyone who can make her happy again before anger at another forced change – but this will be the last time, she dies of a broken heartswears. This world is quiet, dull and yet suffocating for Jude. Lots of people come to That is until the palace to try day Novo arrives, and help but in the end her entire concept of the solution is a simple one provided by some very kind travellersworld changes forever.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1405232552</amazonuk>0007466498

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Shirley JacksonB0867X8NW7|title=We Have Always Lived In The Castle|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Mary Katherine Blackwood, also known as Merricat, is eighteen, and lives with her older sister Constance in the family home where 'Blackwoods had always lived'. Merricat quickly draws the reader into her world by a series of matter of fact but bizarre statements – her likes include her sister and death cap mushrooms, and everyone else in her family is dead. The wealthy Blackwood family has always kept the house 'steady against the world', shutting out other people, and they live near a village. Merricat believes that 'The people of the village have always hated us', and tells us that she hates them too.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141191457</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewAccess Point|author=Simon Weston|title=Nelson to the RescueT R Gabbay

|genre=Confident ReadersThrillers|summary=Nelson used to pull Mike the MilkWhen we first meet Ula Mishkin she's milk float, but he has now retired. He lives in the stable at the back having something of the dairy along with a couple of tricky rats, Rhodri and Rhys, professional success: using a pigeon who has no sense device of direction, a frog who thinks heher own invention she's helped a secret agent spy and man who has been blind for decades to see an old racehorse who spends most image of his time sleepinga hummingbird. Rhodri and Rhys find a mysterious message on MikeShe's fridge thirty-six years old and the animals believe that Mike has been invited her life is about to Buckingham Palace to receive an MBE. Somehow our herochange radically as, Nelsoncycling home, finds himself travelling down to London, pulling a ceremonial coach for Prince Charles as well as giving she's involved in an accident with 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 lifebus. Suddenly you see It's two years before we meet her again and in the danger in every situationmeantime, 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 childrenshe's futures on spent 392 days in a scientific basis, growing their own fruit coma and vegetables, giving their children nothing sugary, eating no eggs for now walks with a whole year until any adverse affects from them were disprovedstick. But after meeting with an enigmatic stranger our young mother begins A professional colleague persuades Ula that she should let out a spare bedroom to struggle as he introduces ideas of freedom into her worldbring in some income. 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>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Katherine MayBen Oliver|title=Burning OutThe Loop|rating=43.5|genre=Literary FictionTeens|summary=Violet has it all – Set during the aftermath of a Third World War where methods of punishment for criminal activities have been amped up to a well-paid jobhorrific level by machines, 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 luxurious apartment all to herselfliving hell with no chance of escape. Everything is catered for; her meals, her clothes, and her health are all how she would like them A detonator has been sewn inside his heart connecting him to be. But a trigger held by the guards who can end his life she with one squeeze. Luka is leading is beginning taunted by limited access to take its toll. On the verge his memories and relentlessly drained of snapping, energy through a drained and somewhat out-of-sorts Violet, withdraws back gruelling daily torture ritual. Doomed to her home town. There, she meets someone familiar, Delay [a ghost reminding her of how she used to be ten years earlier – risky medical trial where he is a young carefree girl, full guinea pig for Alts in place of lifeexecution] after Delay he is in despair. Only this isn't a ghost, but a girl living His prison is based on the life Violet once lived – exactly model of an infinity loop designed to make its inmates suffer. With the same. Haunted by only glimmers of hope being the past Violet realizes history is repeating itself rumours of rebellion outside and is convinced events will happen again. Events that will in turn haunt the girl.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>1906727392</amazonuk>1912626551

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Amanda DownumKirsty Applebaum|title=The Drowning CityTroofriend|rating=34.5|genre=FantasyConfident Readers|summary=In a nutshell, Are youtired of your child're reading this because s classmates constantly being horrible to them? Do you're wondering whether The Drowning City is goodwant your child to have some positive experiences with people? Introducing the new Jenson & Jenson Troofriend 560 Mark IV android! These state-of-the-art machines are capable of emulating the full range of human emotions without lying, bad stealing or mediocrebullying. YouThey've probably glanced at re the rating and guessed the latter. I'm afraid it's not quite perfect companion for any child! Any mention that simple. This is a debut that provokes decidedly mixed these androids are beginning to develop real human 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 are just unsubstantiated rumours and the backdrop is certainly evocative.have absolutely no basis in reality…right?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1841498149</amazonuk>1788003470

 {{newreviewFrontpage |authorisbn=Tove Jansson1529123941 |title=The True DeceiverSilent Treatment |author=Abbie Greaves |rating=4.5|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=Most people When we meet Professor Frank Hobbs and his wife, Maggie, Frank is playing chess against his computer, although not very successfully. Maggie, on the other hand, has just taken some pills - eight of my age them, in fact - and before long she will have come across Jansson's work unwittingly, via collapse. When Frank rings the televised renditions emergency services in Oxford he has a bit of the Moomin talesa problem. The readers amongst us would then have been entranced a few years ago He has to discover admit that at last Thomas Teal had set he and Maggie haven't actually spoken for a while. How long? Well, it's about the translation into English, first of The Summer Book six months since he spoke to Maggie and then of a collection of short stories which were published as he can'A Winter Bookt really say if it's likely that Maggie has tried to take her own life. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0954899571</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Daniel Kehlmann Rob Harrell|title=Me and KaminskiWink

|genre=Literary FictionConfident Readers|summary=After reviewing several long booksWhen Ross is diagnosed with a rare form of cancer, aged 12, it's been refreshing his desperate attempts at school to read such a fluent yet pared down story as just be 'Kaminski and Menormal'become impossible. In it Suddenly he is the cancer kid, and everything he does, Sebastian Zollnerhow he looks, and how he behaves falls under the scrutiny of the obnoxious main characterother kids in school. Ross is, shoves himself forward understandably, angry. He is facing potential blindness, whilst dealing with an eye sealed in a desperate attempt permanent wink. He has gloopy eye medicine to try to help with the pain, plus the need to research wear a best seller which will re-ignite hat at all times to protect his career as an art criticface due to the ongoing treatment. Kaminski, With the proposed subjectsudden ghosting by one of his best friends, was and a fashionable painter long agoseries of horrible memes that someone at school creates about Ross, but nownothing about his life is normal any more, ancient and chronically ill, he has virtually slid into oblivion. So the second-rate writer is on a loser unless he can dig up some juicy details to hook the art world find new ways to deal with his feelings, and general publicsurvive.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847249892</amazonuk>1471409147

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Louis Barfe1786485575|title=Turned Out Nice Again: The Story of British Light EntertainmentMagpie Lane|author=Lucy Atkins|rating=45|genre=EntertainmentCrime|summary=Light entertainment is often looked down upon, as if itWhen we first meet Dee she's a bit nafftalking to Nick Law, tepid and ignorablethe new college master. What Law's often forgotten is that itlately of the BBC and he doesn't come with an entirely good reputation: he's hugely popular, enjoyable a bit of a bully and much Dee can sense something of it is that in their first conversation. She had been planning to return home to Scotland before taking on a new job as a nanny, but somehow she finds herself going to see Mariah, the Danish wife of the highest qualitymaster. Louis Barfe She's Turned Out Nice Again tells pregnant and looking for help, not with the complete story of British light entertainmentnew baby but with the master's daughter by his first wife, Ana. Felicity is selectively mute: she does talk to her father, but to no one else. The eight-year-old is grieving for her dead mother and struggling at school.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1843543818</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jim Helmore and Karen Wall|title=Oh No, Monster Tomato!|rating=4|genre=For Sharing|summary=Marvin is entering the Great Grislygust Grow-Off, but just like him, his tomatoes aren't growing very big. He takes the only sensible course of action: he sings his tomatoes a song. The results are spectacular. Victory is surely within his grasp.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>140524741X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Joseph Delaney Sally Magnusson|title=The SpookSealwoman's Stories: WitchesGift|rating=4.5|genre=TeensHistorical Fiction|summary='Warning: Not to be read after dark,' are the only words on the back of ''The Spook's Stories'', and on the inside flap, 'The Times' warns us that this book There is 'seriously scary'...  The whole thing kicks-off relatively tamely, though, with a story about a young Spook (a sort of monster-hunter) who falls legend that God came to visit Adam & Eve in love with a witch and is forced to bear the consequences when the witch's sister comes to stay Garden. Eve had not finished bathing her children 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 ashamed of those still not cleansed, she thinks. But when her husband fails attempted to return hide them from workthe eyes of God, denying that she realises something is wrong. Going to his office to try to find out what happens to himhad more children that those, already bathed, that she gets attacked and ends up in hospital, while his co-workers are killedwilling paraded for him. Things get worse for her God was not to be deceived, however, when investigating detective Grady Crowe reveals and decreed that Marcus Raine has been dead for several years, and what was sought to be hidden from the eyes of God would henceforth be hidden from the eyes of man she married was using a false identity. Infuriated by the betrayal, and so the realisation that she's been living a lie for Elves were born: the past five yearshidden folk. They can see man, Izzy takes matters into her own hands and sets out to find her husband and work out why he lied to her for but man can only see them if they 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 novelschoose.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099522179</amazonuk>1473638984

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Lisa McMannWendy Cheyne |title=WakeFrom the Auld Rock to a Hard Place

|genre=TeensHistorical Fiction|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 After the way of resources. College is Janie's only chance Jacobite defeat 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 Battle of her goalCulloden, many Scottish estates were given to English lords. Only one thing stands in her wayThey were not kind to their crofting tenants...|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 Many on the mainland were cleared and they are adopted into while this did not happen much on the Zing familyislands such as Shetland, with all of its delightful eccentricities and unusual behaviour – the Zings meet every Friday night for dinner and then disappear into the garden shed new exploitative conditions led many Shetlanders to leave - to work port cities 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 lifemainland, to North America and her daughter's year two teacher is coming to terms with a break up. The stories of these people come together even to create a tale of life, love, Australia and ultimately, what being part of a family meansNew Zealand.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0330446363</amazonuk>1838591753

 {{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 BerkeleyEle Fountain|title=The Lightning Key (Circus Trilogy)Lost

|summary=I shall start Lola lives in an Indian city with her father, and her brother, Amit. She lives with them in a word nice apartment, and although they are not rich like some of advicethe girls at school, they have enough money to be comfortable. When you're being hounded by a circus masterLola spends her time thinking about her school friends, and a magiciantrying to fit in with them, until one day, suddenly, for the soul of a tiger that's contained everything in her life changes. After taking a tigerwork trip away, Lola's egg thatfather doesn's contained in t come home. They have nobody else to help, and as they wait day after day, Lola wonders what will become of them until, finally, they are evicted from their flat, and she and her brother find themselves forced to live on the brain of your teddy bearstreets.|isbn=178269255X}}{{Frontpage|author= N K Jemisin|title= The City We Became|rating= 4|genre= Science Fiction|summary= New York is being born, the city has reached critical mass and your best friend - has matured into a fallen angel living almost- breathing entity and is trying her best ready to make sure its way out into the world. Before it can be established, an ancient evil appears to attempt to destroy it just as it destroyed Atlantis and other angels do forgotten places. The city is not turn on you in a big way - then you're probably living alone through the third book in a fantasy trilogy. Still - never mindbirthing process, people who embody the angel's efforts will involve you entering a dream world values are selected to become the living embodiment of flight and cloud the city, some citieshave one, some have twelve and New York has six. Together these human-embodiments must defeat the chase after your enemies will take you across the world woman in white and save New York from very real destruction. But these are five different boroughs which don't always see eye to desert oases and backeye, it's a personality clash on an epic scale and friends new unity is both critical and old will be on board to helpnot remotely guaranteed.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847384447</amazonuk>0356512665

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sue Townsend0241446732|title=Adrian MoleOur House is on Fire: The Prostrate YearsScenes of a Family and a Planet in Crisis|author=Malena Ernman, Greta Thunberg, Beata Thunberg and Svante Thunberg

|genre=General FictionPolitics and Society|summary=Adrian Mole is now 39¼ and living, quite literally, in a pigsty, sharing The Ernman / Thunberg family seemed perfectly normal. Malena Ernman was an all too thin party wall with his parents opera singer and working in a bookshopSvante Thunberg took on most of the parenting of their two daughters. It's not quite how life was supposed to turn out. As he spends his days wrestling his strong willed 5 Then eleven-year -old Gracie into Greta stopped eating and talking and her school uniformsister, trying to reassure glamorous wife Daisy that life in the provinces is not as bad as she would like to believeBeata, and desperately attempting to talk his mother out of her quest to appear on the vile ''Jeremy Kyle'' showthen nine years old, worrying over his increasingly frequent visits to the toilet is really the last thing he needsstruggled with what was happening. And yet In such circumstances, the worst is still it's natural to come. Think seek a crumbling economysolution close to home, redundancybut eventually, affairs, death, a family member challenging him in the novel writing stakes and a query over the big C – it's going became clear to be a tough year for the Moles, and therefamily that they were 's little that ol' Adrian can do except sit back and watch his life spin burned-out of control around him.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0718153707</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Lauren Kate|title=Fallen|rating=4.5|genre=Teens|summary=A 17 year old girl at people on a new school meets a mysterious and impossibly goodburned-looking boy, who she's immediately drawn to. He seems determined to either ignore her or be outright rude to her, until he saves her life, and the two of them end up drawn together. This isn't Stephenie Meyer's ''Twilightout planet'', 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 If they were to find a trained actor, the language is too dense and rich, the set-up too archly unfeasible way to create the great tragedy it's thought live happily again their solution would need to beradical. To my mind the acclaim and esteem in which it's held is only mirrored by its own over-long, over-blown blustering.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0763643440</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Paul Theroux178730101X|title=A Dead Hand: A Crime in CalcuttaKeep Him Close|author=Emily Koch

|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=Set in IndiaAlice had two children: Benny (well, familiar territory for TherouxBenoît, actually) and Louis. Lou's seventeen and he's just got his A Dead Hand'' tells level results and he and his brother are going out to celebrate. Someone has to find something to celebrate in the story of letters, D, D and E. Alice has always had a travel writer suffering from writergood relationship with nineteen-year-old Benny but it's block (also known as 'dead hand') until a chance letter from an American ex-pat touch problematic with Lou and being honest, 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 Ungerhe's Tantric charmsnot terribly likeable. But does she have more The letters which kept coming to hide than she's letting on?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241144639</amazonuk>my mind were ADHD.

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Toby Lester0241396840|title=The Fourth Part of the World: The Epic Story of History's Greatest MapKeeper|author=Jessica Moor

|genre=HistoryCrime|summary=In 2003 a map was bought for $10 million, Katie Straw worked in the highest price ever paid publicly for a historical document, by women's refuge and the Library of Congress, where it is now on permanent public displaywomen who lived there liked and respected her. No ordinary map, this is sometimes described as America's birth certificateShe treated them well and seemed to have an understanding of what they were going through. It is Why then did she jump from the sole survivor of 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 thousand copies printed early in decent alibi for the 16th centurytime when she died, and was discovered by accident in some archives in a German castle in 1901. but what other explanation could there be for her death? The sale and story behind police are convinced that it intrigued Toby Lester so much that he was inspired to discover more's suicide, and this book is but the resultwomen who knew her believed otherwise.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1861978030</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Steven Lowe and Alan McArthur 1838880658|title=Is it Just Me or Has the Shit Hit the Fan?: Your Hilarious New Guide to Unremitting Global MiseryMurder at Enderley Hall (Miss Underhay)|author=Helena Dixon|rating=34|genre=HumourCrime|summary=It''The banks fell over like fat Labradors running over a wet kitchen floor.'' Surely that is s the wackiest, most inappropriate simile for the credit crunch summer of 1933 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 Kitty Underhay is on them they will lambast her way to visit the modern worldfamily which she never knew she had, the entire banking systemat Enderley Hall. Her grandmother, all those who failed to see it comingMrs Treadwell, and those millions just seemingly waiting for us all to revert to highGreat Aunt Livvy are back at the Dolphin Hotel in Dartmouth. Kitty gets easily bored working at the Dolphin -interest, highevery day is much the same -riskbut her real reason for going away is that she needs a break after her recent adventures, high-lending capitalismwhich involved three vicious murders, so they can get back an arson attack and an attempt on the expenses train, and back up the rich listsher life.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847443656</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Andy Stanton1788638026|title=What's For Dinner, Mr Gum?|rating=4.5|genre=Confident Readers|summary=As soon as heroine Polly turns her back, and leaves Where 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 to rights. Especially as this book does not contain a magic unicorn called Elizabeth.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1405248246</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewInnocent Die (D I Ridpath)|author=Loose Women|title=Here Come the GirlsM J Lee

|genre=Home and FamilyCrime|summary=This is It was easy to assume that the death of the second volume by young Chinese girl at the panelists from that nice ITV seriesImmigrant Removal Centre was suicide. Her throat was cut, ''Loose Women''. Just as promised there was a lot of blood and the knife was on the coverfloor at the side of the bed, this book is an entertaining night with the girls She was due to be deported that day. It turns out that they're just like usBut... The faces are already familiar how did the knife get into the secure centre and even if you donwhy was the girl't know them yets room the only one which was unlocked? DI Thomas Ridpath, the coroner's officer, with nine contributorsis sent to investigate and he quickly becomes suspicious, you There'll soon find s a snag though: the inquest is due to open in a like-minded woman behind one couple of days' time, the celebrity facesgirl'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 case. The women are universally warm-hearted and supportivecoroner is disinclined to delay the inquest: there will be many a lonely woman who reads this book and feels as if she sat down with a group of friends for her, it's about giving closure to the eveningparents.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444700154</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jean Ure1471166023|title=Fortune CookieBurnt Island (Ben Kitto)|author=Kate Rhodes

|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=Fudge Cassidy and the Cupcake kid are best friends. If the names remind you The 5th of a certain film then you'd be spot on as thatNovember was D I Ben Kitto's where Fudge's father got thirty-fifth birthday and the occasion for the idea from. They're actually chalk and cheese – Fudge is loud mouthed and opinionated and Cupcake is quiet and thoughtful – usual bonfire celebrations, but it would be marred this year by the combination works. Theydiscovery of Professor Alex Rogan've just started at secondary school and Cupcake has rather s body on a lot on her plate. Her brother Joey has muscular dystrophy and his problems are becoming more obviousbonfire. Add to this that her father couldnHe't cope with d obviously been alive when he was put on the problems fire and he now has another familycan only have died a terrible death. It's just Cupcake, Joey and her mother – and not a lot of money.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007224621</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Jenifer Roberts|title=The Madness of Queen Maria: The Remarkable Life of Maria I of Portugal|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=Born in 1734 in Lisbonbody was first discovered by Jimmy Curwen, at that time better known on St Agnes as the richest Bird Man because he speaks little or nothing and most opulent city in Europe, Maria was destined to become his only concern is the first female monarch in Portuguese history. Married to her uncle Infante Pedro, seventeen years her senior, she had six children (outliving all but one welfare of them), and became Queen in 1777the birds he looks after. A conscientious woman, she had the misfortune His instinct is to be born in during the cover Rogan'age of reason', when church s body and state were vying for supremacy. Instinctively a supporter of the old religionhe uses his sheepskin coat to do this, with a humanitarian approach to state affairs, she was no Queen Elizabeth, no Catherine the Great, and wore her crown rather reluctantly.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>095455891X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=David Hughes|title=Thomas Wogan is Dead|rating=4.5|genre=Graphic Novels|summary=Well, with a title like result that, need I bother with a plot summary? A man has a day out in Morecambe, then the next thing he knows he's in the ultimate waiting room, with a strange array of animals (a bat, a toad, a sea urchinprime suspect...), all waiting for... well, something. Yup, as you didn't need telling, he's dead.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>095580888X</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Dave EggersElliot Reed|title=The Wild ThingsA Key to Treehouse Living

|summary=Meet Max. When I say he sometimes gets This is the wrong end story of a young boy, William Tyce, who is being raised by his uncle after the stick about adults, or dislikes death of his motherand his father's new boyfriendabandonment. However, or gets a bit feisty when he feels it isn't told in the need for revengeusual narrative way. Instead, I am certainly understating the facts. He book is made up of glossary entries, written by William, as a bit way of a rascal describing certain events, situations and emotions. It runs alphabetically, starting with ABSENCE, then moving to say the leastALPHABETICAL ORDER. But all that might change when he finds himself travelling As I began to a strange land of roisterous animalsread I did find myself thinking 'what on earth?!' but I soon grew used to the style, and ends was instead caught up installed as their kingin William's story.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0241144221</amazonuk>1911545418

 {{newreview|author=Jeremy Strong|title=Christmas Chaos for the Hundred-Mile-An-Hour Dog |rating=4|genre=Confident Readers|summary=Trevor's troublesome dog, Streaker, has had three puppies. They were fathered, according to local bully Charlie Smugg, by one of his Alsatians. Trevor would ideally like to keep them, 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 of the money from the sale of the puppies, 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 and the wilderness of her remote home and she'd definitely prefer to spend her time 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 young. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847386571</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Iain Smyth and Michael Terry|title=The Wide-Mouthed Frog|rating=4.5|genre=For Sharing|summary=Do you know the joke about the wide-mouthed frog? You must have heard it. It's a classic. It's one that you really need to tell in person, with your fingers pulling your mouth wide open, but to hopefully spark your memory, the wide-mouthed frog introduces himself to a number of animals until he finally comes across a crocodile who eats wide-mouthed frogs, and the frog does his best to disguise who he is whilst saying ''Ooh, you don't see many of those round here, do you?'' I'm hardly doing it justice, but it's very cheesy and funny. Anyway, this is a book of that joke.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408804964</amazonuk>}} {{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