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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=Ian MortimerGrady Hendrix|title=1415: Henry VThe Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires|rating= 5|genre= Horror|summary= Women, by and large, have always been the subjugated sex. Throughout history, they have been confined to mere bit players who occasionally help hold up the powerful man and let nothing stand in his way. Grady Hendrix's new novel ''The Southern Book Club's Year of GloryGuide to Slaying Vampires'' gives women their due. It is an ode to the strong selfless housewife. Hendrix illustrates this by having them go toe to toe with a predatory male vampire who moves into their quiet cul de sac.|isbn=1683691431}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0008149089|title=The Cutting Place (DS Maeve Kerrigan)|author=Jane Casey

|genre=HistoryCrime|summary=The medievalIt was Kim Weldon who found the first bits of the body - she was a mudlarker on the banks of the Thames and when she turned over what looked like a stick she realised it was a hand, a right hand, in fact time-honoured, view of King Henry V as one of England. DS Maeve Kerrigan and DI Josh Derwent's greatest heroes team would later find three other body parts. Identification of the body was propagated though not originated by Shakespearegoing to be easy, but eventually, it would be given a name - Paige Hargreaves, and again more recently to some extent by Olivier's portrayal in filma twenty-eight-year-old freelance journalist. At least one historian has called him 'Her friend, Bianca Drummond, another journalist, said that she was working on a story which she reckoned would be explosive - and she hadn't been willing to share any of the greatest man that ever ruled England''details with Bianca.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224079921</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Deborah GregoryJenny Valentine|title=Dancing With The DeadHello Now|rating=34.5|genre=Literary FictionTeens|summary=I wanted Jude reluctantly moves to a small, quiet seaside town after her Mum and her most recent boyfriend split (making this their 13th post-breakup move) and settle into a big, old house overlooking the sea - which happens to read ''Dancing with contain a strange, old sitting tenant named Henry, who stays rooted in the Deadhouse like a ghost that just won't leave – or can't. As Jude settles into this new, because I'm interested seemingly mundane, reality she is consumed by a longing for her old life in family history. The blurb on the back of the book also mentioned Gill London and anger at another forced change – our heroine of but this will be the piece – was moving from Bristol (my current home) to Lincolnshire (where I was born last time, she swears. This world is quiet, dull and brought up)yet suffocating for Jude. I felt with all these linksThat is until the day Novo arrives, and her entire concept of the novel could not fail to interest me – but this was not the caseworld changes forever.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1904529305</amazonuk>0007466498

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Miss ReadB0867X8NW7|title=Christmas at Thrush GreenAccess Point|author=T R Gabbay

|genre=Women's FictionThrillers|summary=Set in the rural village When we first meet Ula Mishkin she's having something of a professional success: using a device of Thrush Green, this book is the latest in her own invention she's helped a series surrounding familiar characters. There is the feisty Ella Bembridge, man who is finally having has been blind for decades to admit that see an image of a hummingbird. She's thirty-six years old age and her life is creeping up about to change radically as , cycling home, she's involved in an accident with a bus. It's two years before we meet her eyesight fails. Friends such as Dimity again and Charles Henstock are concerned about herin the meantime, but she refuses to accept any help. Albert Piggott has decided it's time to retire spent 392 days in a coma and now walks with a stick. A professional colleague persuades Ula that his wife, Nelly, is she should let out a successful cafe owner and can afford spare bedroom to take care of him! And relative newcomer Phil Hurst and her husband are arranging the local nativity play, despite a number of set-backsbring in some income. Will everything be in place for Christmas? And will independent Ella make a decision about her future?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1409101592</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Matt and DaveBen Oliver|title=Yuck's Robotic BottomThe Loop|rating=43.5|genre=Confident ReadersTeens|summary=It's concerned me Set during the aftermath of a Third World War where methods of punishment for criminal activities have been amped up to a while that it's relatively easy to pick up early readers for girls – princesseshorrific level by machines, magic soft toysThe Loop follows the precarious existence of adolescent Luka Kane. In a world of Have and Have Nots where Alts [cyborgs] have power over Regulars, mermaids 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 life with one squeeze. Luka is taunted by limited access to his memories and pets abound – but there's relentlessly drained of energy through a gruelling daily torture ritual. Doomed to Delay [a much smaller choice risky medical trial where he is a guinea pig for boysAlts in place of execution] after Delay he is in despair. It's important too with early readers that His prison is based on the content is ''interesting'' and reading becomes more than just something which you ''have'' model of an infinity loop designed to do at school and moves into make its inmates suffer. With the only glimmers of hope being fun. Matt the rumours of rebellion outside and Dave have found the answer in Yuck.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>1847382991</amazonuk>1912626551

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=John E SmelcerKirsty Applebaum|title=The Great DeathTroofriend|rating=4.5|genre=General FictionConfident Readers|summary=Are you tired of your child'As Western Europeans settled Alaska, they brought s classmates constantly being horrible to them? Do you want your child to have some positive experiences with them diseases against which the indigenous people had no natural immunity. At ? Introducing the beginning new Jenson & Jenson Troofriend 560 Mark IV android! These state-of -the twentieth century, fully two thirds -art machines are capable of all Alaska natives perished from a pandemic emulating the full range of measles, smallpoxhuman emotions without lying, and influenzastealing or bullying. No community was spared. In most cases, half of a villageThey's population died within a week. In some cases, there were no survivors. It was re the end of an ancient way of life. Natives still refer perfect companion for any child! Any mention that these androids are beginning to the dreadful period as the Great Death.'develop real human feelings are just unsubstantiated rumours and have absolutely no basis in reality…right?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1842709194</amazonuk>1788003470

 {{newreviewFrontpage |authorisbn=Maxine Barry1529123941 |title=River DeepThe Silent Treatment |author=Abbie Greaves |rating=34.5|genre=Women's General Fiction|summary=Two young women both have a love of the ThamesWhen we meet Professor Frank Hobbs and his wife, Maggie, Frank is playing chess against his computer, although not very successfully. Melisande Ray's beloved hotelMaggie, on the Ray other hand, has just taken some pills - eight of Sunshine is on them, in fact - and before long she will collapse. When Frank rings the river bankemergency services in Oxford he has a bit of a problem. It's here that guests come who want He has to be pampered and looked after in the way admit that only the best hotels can do well, but when Wendell James checks in to the hotel it's not pampering heand Maggie haven's looking t actually spoken fora while. HeHow long? Well, it's buying a piece of land not far from the Ray of Sunshine about six months since he spoke to Maggie and hecan's sussing out the competition. Theret really say if it's something personal in there too – if his new hotel means likely 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 eyeMaggie has tried to take her own life.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0709088930</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Joe GoresRob Harrell|title=Spade and Archer|rating=4|genre=Crime|summary=Sam Spade decides, bravely, to set up his one-man detective agency. It's the 1920s in San Francisco so we have the prohibition era and all that that entails. Many locals, of course, choose to disobey the law, stick two fingers up, so to speak and as a result there's lots of bootleg liquor. Straight away, it's evident that Sam is a man of few words. He has the mannerisms of a cat - stealthy, quick on his feet. He's also a compulsive chain-smoker, but then again, most people were. In that era, holding a cigarette was an elegant, almost essential accessory. How times have changed.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>140911323X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Michael Morpurgo and Emma Chichester Clark|title=The Best of TimesWink

|summary=Most children enjoy When Ross is diagnosed with 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? Sadlyrare form of cancer, not long after Prince Frederico marries the lovely Princess Serafinaaged 12, she becomes very sad. Nobody knows what has caused such great sadness, but poor Prince Frederico is his desperate attempts at school to find a cure for his wifejust be '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>}} {{newreview|author=Shirley Jackson|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 livednormal'become impossible. 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 Suddenly he 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'cancer kid, and tells us that she hates them too.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141191457</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Simon Weston|title=Nelson to the Rescue|rating=4|genre=Confident Readers|summary=Nelson used to pull Mike the Milk's milk floateverything he does, but how he has now retired. He lives in the stable at the back of the dairy along with a couple of tricky ratslooks, Rhodri and Rhys, a pigeon who has no sense of direction, a frog who thinks how he's a secret agent spy and an old racehorse who spends most of his time sleeping. Rhodri and Rhys find a mysterious message on Mike's fridge and behaves falls under 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 scrutiny of fear into your life. Suddenly you see the danger other kids in every situation, and fear and trepidation can be become your constant companionsschool. In this novella, we meet a young mother who Ross is married to a logical scientist. They attempt to control their children's futures on a scientific basis, growing their own fruit and vegetablesunderstandably, giving their children nothing sugary, eating no eggs for a whole year until any adverse affects from them were disprovedangry. But after meeting He is facing potential blindness, whilst dealing with an enigmatic stranger our young mother begins to struggle as he introduces ideas of freedom into her worldeye sealed in a permanent wink. She begins an affair with him, begins He has gloopy eye medicine to try to let things slip at home and help with the childrenpain, yet finds she is still continuously haunted by plus 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 – need to wear a well-paid job, and a luxurious apartment hat at all times to herself. Everything is catered for; her meals, her clothes, and her health are all how she would like them protect his face due to be. But the life she is leading is beginning to take its tollongoing treatment. On With the verge sudden ghosting by one of snappinghis best friends, and a drained and somewhat out-series of-sorts Violet, withdraws back to her home town. There, she meets horrible memes that someone familiarat school creates about Ross, 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 nothing about his 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 Downum|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 goodnormal any more, 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 he has to find new ways to deal with his 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 evocativesurvive.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1841498149</amazonuk>1471409147

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tove Jansson1786485575|title=The True DeceiverMagpie Lane|author=Lucy Atkins

|genre=Literary FictionCrime|summary=Most people of my age will have come across JanssonWhen we first meet Dee she's work unwittinglytalking to Nick Law, via the televised renditions new college master. Law's lately of the Moomin talesBBC and he doesn't come with an entirely good reputation: he's a bit of a bully and Dee can sense something of that in their first conversation. The readers amongst us would then have She had been entranced planning to return home to Scotland before taking on a few years ago new job as a nanny, but somehow she finds herself going to discover that at last Thomas Teal had set about see Mariah, the Danish wife of the translation into Englishmaster. She's pregnant and looking for help, not with the new baby but with the master's daughter by his first of wife, Ana. Felicity is selectively mute: she does talk to her father, but to no one else. The Summer Book eight-year-old is grieving for her dead mother and then of a collection of short stories which were published as 'A Winter Book'struggling at school. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0954899571</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Daniel Kehlmann Sally Magnusson|title=Me and KaminskiThe Sealwoman's Gift

|genre=Literary Historical Fiction|summary=After reviewing several long books, it's been refreshing There is a legend that God came to read such a fluent yet pared down story as 'Kaminski visit Adam & Eve in the Garden. Eve had not finished bathing her children and Me'. In itashamed of those still not cleansed, Sebastian Zollner, the obnoxious main character, shoves himself forward in a desperate attempt she attempted to research a best seller which will re-ignite his career as an art critic. Kaminski, hide them from the proposed subjecteyes of God, was a fashionable painter long agodenying that she had more children that those, but nowalready bathed, ancient and chronically ill, has virtually slid into oblivionthat she willing paraded for him. So the second-rate writer is on a loser unless he can dig up some juicy details God was not to hook the art world and general public.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847249892</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Louis Barfe|title=Turned Out Nice Again: The Story of British Light Entertainment|rating=4|genre=Entertainment|summary=Light entertainment is often looked down uponbe deceived, as if it's a bit naffhowever, tepid and ignorable. What's often forgotten is decreed that it's hugely popularwhat was sought to be hidden from the eyes of God would henceforth be hidden from the eyes of man, enjoyable and much of it is of so the highest quality. Louis Barfe's Turned Out Nice Again tells Elves were born: the complete story of British light entertainmenthidden folk.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1843543818</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|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 They can see man, but just like him, his tomatoes aren't growing very big. He takes the man can only sensible course of action: he sings his tomatoes a song. The results are spectacular. Victory is surely within his graspsee them if they so choose.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>140524741X</amazonuk>1473638984

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Joseph Delaney Wendy Cheyne |title=The Spook's Stories: WitchesFrom the Auld Rock to a Hard Place

|genre=TeensHistorical Fiction|summary='Warning: Not to be read after dark,' are After the only words on Jacobite defeat at the back Battle of ''The Spook's Stories''Culloden, many Scottish estates were given to English lords. They were not kind to their crofting tenants. Many on the mainland were cleared and while this did not happen much on the inside flapislands such as Shetland, 'The Times' warns us that this book is 'seriously scary'...  The whole thing kicksthe new exploitative conditions led many Shetlanders to leave -off relatively tamelyto port cities on the mainland, though, with a story about a young Spook (a sort of monster-hunter) who falls in love with a witch to North America and is forced even to bear the consequences when the witch's sister comes to stay Australia and exhibits a taste for the neighbor-childrenNew Zealand.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0370329961</amazonuk>1838591753

 {{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 are killed. Things get worse for her, however, when investigating detective Grady Crowe reveals that Marcus Raine has been dead for several years, and the man she married was using a false identity. Infuriated by 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 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 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 for college. She's also working lots of hours at a local nursing home to earn money for college as it's unlikely her alcoholic mother is going to provide much in the way of resources. College is Janie's only chance at a life better than the one she's lived so far and so you can't blame her for being so single-minded in the pursuit of her goal. Only one thing stands in her way...|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847385036</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Jaclyn Moriarty |title=The Spell Book of Listen Taylor|rating=3.5|genre=Teens|summary=Listen Taylor's father has just moved in with his girlfriend and they are adopted into the Zing family, with all of its delightful eccentricities and unusual behaviour – the Zings meet every Friday night for dinner and then disappear into the garden shed to work on the 'Zing Family Secret'. Marbie Zing is terrified of doing something wrong and losing Nathaniel and Listen. Her sister Fancy is becoming increasingly disillusioned with her home life, and her daughter's year two teacher is coming to terms with a break up. The stories of these people come together to create a tale of life, love, and ultimately, what being part of a family means.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330446363</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=F G Cottam|title=The Magdalena Curse|rating=2.5|genre=Horror|summary=Mark Hunter is the sort of father who would do anything for his son. After losing his wife and daughter in a tragic accident, his surviving son Adam has become his whole world. And Adam is an exceptional child – beautiful, incredibly smart and mature beyond his ten years – only recently he's been channelling the voices of the dead. Plagued by horrific dreams, able to speak Russian in the hours after he wakes, drawing occult symbols when he doodles, Hunter believes Adam to be possessed. Doctor Elizabeth Bancroft is sceptical, until she meets Adam, and witnesses the horrors the poor boy endures for herself.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340980982</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jon BerkeleyEle Fountain|title=The Lightning Key (Circus Trilogy)Lost

|summary=I shall start Lola lives in an Indian city with a word of adviceher father, and her brother, Amit. When you're being hounded by She lives with them in a circus masternice apartment, and a magician, for the soul although they are not rich like some of a tiger that's contained in a tiger's egg that's contained in the brain of your teddy beargirls at school, they have enough money to be comfortable. Lola spends her time thinking about her school friends, and your best friend - a fallen angel - is trying her best to make sure the other angels do not turn on you fit in a big way - then you're probably living the third book with them, until one day, suddenly, everything in a fantasy trilogyher life changes. Still - never mindAfter taking a work trip away, the angelLola's efforts father doesn't come home. They have nobody else to help, and as they wait day after day, Lola wonders what will involve you entering a dream world become of flight and cloud citiesthem until, finally, the chase after your enemies will take you across the world to desert oases and backthey are evicted from their flat, and friends new she and old will be her brother find themselves forced to live on board to helpthe streets.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847384447</amazonuk>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 has matured into a living almost-breathing entity and is ready to make 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 forgotten places. The city is not alone through the birthing process, people who embody the values are selected to become the living embodiment of the city, some cities have one, some have twelve and New York has six. Together these human-embodiments must defeat the woman in white and save New York from very real destruction. But these are five different boroughs which don't always see eye to eye, it's a personality clash on an epic scale and unity is both critical and not remotely guaranteed.|isbn=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 The 5th of November was D I Ben Kitto's thirty-fifth birthday and the Cupcake kid are best friends. If occasion for the usual bonfire celebrations, but it would be marred this year by the names remind you discovery of Professor Alex Rogan's body on a certain film then youbonfire. He'd be spot obviously been alive when he was put on as that's where Fudge's father got the idea fromfire and can only have died a terrible death. They're actually chalk The body was first discovered by Jimmy Curwen, better known on St Agnes as the Bird Man because he speaks little or nothing and cheese – Fudge his only concern is loud mouthed and opinionated and Cupcake is quiet and thoughtful – but the combination workswelfare of the birds he looks after. TheyHis instinct is to cover Rogan've just started at secondary school and Cupcake has rather a lot on her plate. Her brother Joey has muscular dystrophy s body and he uses his problems are becoming more obvious. Add sheepskin coat to do this that her father couldn't cope , with the problems and result that he now has another family. It's just Cupcake, Joey and her mother – and not a lot of moneythe prime suspect.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007224621</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jenifer RobertsElliot Reed|title=The Madness of Queen Maria: The Remarkable Life of Maria I of Portugal|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=Born in 1734 in Lisbon, at that time the richest and most opulent city in Europe, Maria was destined to become the first female monarch in Portuguese history. Married to her uncle Infante Pedro, seventeen years her senior, she had six children (outliving all but one of them), and became Queen in 1777. A conscientious woman, she had the misfortune Key to be born in during the 'age of reason', when church and state were vying for supremacy. Instinctively a supporter of the old religion, with a humanitarian approach to state affairs, she was no Queen Elizabeth, no Catherine the Great, and wore her crown rather reluctantly.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>095455891X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=David Hughes|title=Thomas Wogan is Dead|rating=4.5|genre=Graphic Novels|summary=Well, with a title like that, need I bother with a plot summary? A man has a day out in Morecambe, then the next thing he knows he's in the ultimate waiting room, with a strange array of animals (a bat, a toad, a sea urchin...), all waiting for... well, something. Yup, as you didn't need telling, he's dead.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>095580888X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Dave Eggers|title=The Wild ThingsTreehouse Living

|summary=Meet Max. When I say he sometimes gets This is the wrong end story of the stick about adults, or dislikes his mother's new boyfrienda young boy, or gets a bit feisty when he feels the need for revengeWilliam Tyce, I am certainly understating the facts. He who is a bit of a rascal to say the least. But all that might change when he finds himself travelling to a strange land of roisterous animals, 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 dog, Streaker, has had three puppies. They were fathered, according to local bully Charlie Smugg, being raised 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 uncle after the sale death 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 mother 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 shefather'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 Fairbankss abandonment. However, things aren't all rosy. Cassie's mother died when she was just a baby and she canit isn't help feeling a huge hole told 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 youngusual narrative way. |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 Instead, the joke about the wide-mouthed frog? You must have heard it. It's book is made up of glossary entries, written by William, as a classicway of describing certain events, situations and emotions. It's one that you really need to tell in personruns alphabetically, starting with your fingers pulling your mouth wide openABSENCE, but then moving to hopefully spark your memory, the wide-mouthed frog introduces himself ALPHABETICAL ORDER. As I began 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 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