Changes

From TheBookbag
Jump to navigationJump to search
no edit summary
Reviews by readers from all the many walks of literary life. With author interviews, features and top tens. You'll be sure to find something you'll want to read here. Dig in!
Find us on [[File:facebook.gif|link=https://www.facebook.com/TheBookbagCoUk|alt=Facebook]] [https://www.facebook.com/TheBookbagCoUk '''Facebook'''], [[File:twitter.gif|link=http://twitter.com/TheBookbag|alt=Follow us on Twitter]] [http://twitter.com/TheBookbag '''Twitter'''] and , [[File:instagram_classic_logo.png|link=https://www.instagram.com/thebookbag.co.uk/|alt=Follow us on Instagram]] [https://www.instagram.com/thebookbag.co.uk/ '''Instagram'''] and [[File:LinkedIn.png|link=https://www.linkedin.com/in/the-bookbag-1b12a264/|alt=LinkedIn]]
There are currently '''{{PAGESINCATEGORY: Reviews}}''' [[:Category:Reviews|reviews ]] at TheBookbag.
Want to find out more [[About Us|about us]]? __NOTOC__
'''Read [[Forthcoming Publications|reviews of books about to be published]].
 
<!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Carlie Sorosiak0241636604|title=My Life as a CatThe Trading Game: A Confession|author=Gary Stevenson
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersAutobiography|summary=This is the story If you were to bring up an image of an alien who has come down a city banker in your mind, you're unlikely to spend some time on earth living as a humanthink of someone like Gary Stevenson. It's something that each member in A hoodie and jeans replaces the alien collective pin-stripe suit and his background is allowed to dothe East End, for 1 monthwhere he was familiar with violence, once they reach a certain agepoverty and injustice. Leonard comes to earth There was no posh public school on his CV - but gets distracted en route, and so something goes wrong with his arrival and he finds that instead of landing in Yellowstone Park, ready had been to work as a park ranger, he is instead in the body London School of Economics. Stevenson is bright - extremely bright - and he has a cat on the other side facility with numbers which most of the country! us can only envy. He also realised that most rich people expect poor people to be stupid. This is not It was his ability at what he had planned! Not only is he in the wrong place and the wrong bodywas, he is also in the middle of a stormessentially, stuck in a tree! card game which got him an internship with Citibank. And so he meets OliveEventually, the little girl who rows out in this turned into permanent employment as a boat to rescue him, and who names him Leonardtrader.|isbn=1788006089
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn= Tahi Saihate1035021803|title= Astral Season, Beastly SeasonThe Antique Hunter's Guide to Murder|author=C L Miller|rating= 3.5|genre= Literary FictionCrime|summary= We long for our past even though it is a place It's twenty years since Freya Lockwood has been back to which we can never returnthe English country village where she grew up. Tahi Saihate She's back now because of a request for help from her beloved aunt, in her debut novel Carole. Freya's former mentor and Carole'Astral Seasons close friend, Arthur Crockleford, Beastly Season'' illustrates how these rose-tinted glasses often lie. Her novel is a meditation on youth dead and how the things we do circumstances seem suspicious, to say the least. Arthur was the reason why Freya had not been back to the village: Arthur, she feels, let her down badly. Even though they were in business together as antique hunters, she has not felt able to be near the man or pursue the profession she loved. After the split, she worked in a teenager can seem intensely important cafe, met and often married James (on the rebound from the love of her life-altering, who was murdered) and Freya and James have now divorced.|isbn= 1916277101
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn= Andrea StewartAllTomorrowsFutureCover|title= The Bone Shard Daughter All Tomorrow's Futures: Fictions that Disrupt|author=Benjamin Greenaway and Stephen Oram (The Drowning EmpireEditors)|rating=4.5|genre= FantasyScience Fiction|summary=''I could never be what he wanted if I did not take what I wantedOpening up new ways of thinking about the shape of things to come.''
In an empire controlled by I've heard it said that 'technology' is what happens after you're eighteen. Well, I must confess that there have been more than a bone shard magic few decades of technology in my lifetime. I've kept up reasonably well with what's advantageous to me but I'm left with the feeling that powers animalit's all getting away from me. Some of it is - frankly -like constructsquite frightening. Of course, an heir to I could research the possibilities and the probabilities and end up down rabbit holes without really understanding whether I'm reading someone who knows what they're talking about or the throne, a smuggler, latest conspiracy theorist. I needed people I knew I could trust and who could deliver information in a warrior will fight to find their place in the worldway I could understand.}}{{Frontpage|author=Sunny Singh|title=Hotel Arcadia|rating=3.5|genre=Thrillers Lin |summary=The Hotel Arcadia is the emperor's forgotten daughter, kept locked away a luxury hotel in an unnamed city that has suddenly been violently taken over by a palace of secrets and closed doorsterrorist group. When her father refuses to recognise her as heir to Hiding from the throneterrorists who are rampaging through, killing everyone on site, she vows to show him she there is capable of reviving Sam, a dying empire wartime photographer and in secretAbhi, she begins the hotel manager. As Abhi continues to unlock one door after another, searching try to care remotely for the mysteries of her past and residents who are still alive in the forbidden art of bone shard magic. Yet Lin is playing hotel, he forms a deadly game bond with Sam who refuses to be cowed by events, and keeps on venturing out of her quest for power will come at great costroom to try to capture what's happened through her photography. With revolution in Although they only ever talk over the air phone, their friendship grows as Abhi tries to help her keep safe and creeping closer and closer they both wait to see if they will be rescued before they are discovered by the gates of the palace, Lin must decide just how far she will to go to become a catalyst of change and save her peopleterrorists.|isbn=0356514943086154742X
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Sharon Doering1529153298|title=She Lies CloseThe List of Suspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey|rating=45|genre=ThrillersGeneral Fiction|summary= Ava Boone was five years old when she went missingIt's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. (A woman? I mean, around 6 months agohonestly... There has been no sign of her since) She's not what's worrying Miv's family, and no arrests though. Women have been madedisappearing. And yet Well, they've been murdered, this book is not about Avabut to have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. Not really Miv's upset because she's overheard that her father wants to move the family 'Down South'. This book is about Grace When you're from Yorkshire, who has just discovered her neighbour in her new house Down South is a suspect in Ava's disappearancefrightening, foreign place, best avoided. As a single mother to two young children For Miv, the move would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, and she'll do anything to prevent that. She's not worried about the dangers or that her Mum's really wishing this sort of information had come stopped talking - to light before they moved inanyone.|isbn=1789094194
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Yara Evans and Luciana Betti1398524085|title=The Adventures of an Urban Fox: Maggie ArrivesHas Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter?|author=Nicci French|rating=45|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=Black Cat Charlotte Salter was expected at her husband's fiftieth birthday party but never turned up. Her children, sons Niall, Paul and Tabby Cat Ollie and her daughter, Etty. are minding their own business in their own house when a very alarming thing happens. A creature all worried but - strangely - a largeher husband, dog-like creature - appears in their houseAlec, is not. Black Cat Shortly afterwards, always one to take chargeEtty and Greg, find the body of Greg's father, Duncan Ackerley, challenges this fearsome creature with all in the river. It was an easy assumption for the courage police to make that Duncan had murdered Charlie and then committed suicide when he can muster. Tabby Cat backs him.... from a rather safe distancecouldn't stand the guilt. The creature is indignant - Salter children are not convinced but there''I'm not a dogs little else they can do but get on with their lives and wonder about what really happened. I'm a fox!''|isbn=1511658649
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=17124357281035906708|title=Jamie's KeepsakeDiva|author=Michael GallagherDaisy Goodwin
|rating=4.5
|genre=TeensGeneral Fiction|summary=When we first meet Alex Hannah, he's just being released from the Southern General Hospital. The nurse thinks he'll come back We tend to visit the other patients but Alex has no intention think of doing that: he's been there for a yearMaria Callas as Greek, on the same ward where his brother died and nowbut she was born to Greek parents in Manhattan, with his hair all shorn offNew York, he's going home in his dead brother's clothesDecember 1923 and only moved to Athens when she was thirteen. He wants Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to get outside and back with his friends: his brother, Forbes, says that the fresh air will do him good and his mother tells him that he's not Callas' to mention TB and to say make it was tonsillitismore manageable in the States. Good luck with When she was back in Athens - supposedly so that oneshe could get appropriate training for her voice - she was raised under the Nazi occupation by a mother who mercilessly exploited her and made no secret of her preference for her elder sister, AlexJackie.
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Alice OsemanChristopher Edge|title=SolitaireBlack Hole Cinema Club
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Lucas and his friends are all booked in for a movie marathon at their local cinema, a place that has the nickname of 'The Black Hole'. All big movie fans, they're looking forward to lots of exciting films, and many, many snacks! However, as the movie starts, they very quickly realise that something about this new film format is very different, and they are swept up into an adventure they couldn't even imagine. But as they lurch from one film genre to the next, can they figure out what on earth is going on? Will they ever get back to the cinema, and to their real lives?
|isbn=1839942738
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Rachel Greenlaw
|title=Compass and Blade
|rating=3.5
|genre=Teens
|summary= Victoria Spring has returned to Year 12 following Christmas break and feels dead to ''I can hear the world. Nothing is interesting. People are stupid and boring. She has one real friend; song of the rest are just people she sits near so she's not a complete lonersea. She hates a lot The call of things - including herselfthe deep, the answering beat in my heart. But suddenly'' Rosevear, a blog called Solitaire has arrived remote and is pulling pranks throughout partially forgotten island, survives on luring ships into the school. And Michael Holden has appeared rocks and is showing up everywhere in Tori's lifeplundering the wrecks. Tori doesn't know (or care) why she's involvedMira, like her mother before her, but suddenly she isone of the seven who swim out to survey the ruins – rescuing any survivors and any treasure that lies within. What does Solitaire want? WhoBut when the Council Watch lays a trap to end the wrecking, they capture the island's behind it? Why does it all seem to be linked to Tori? Why does Michael want to be in Torileader and Mira's life so badly and father. Desperate to save him from death, Mira makes a bargain with a wreck survivor who is as charming as heis secretive and with only coordinates to guide her, really? Things are she sets off in search of a family secret that lies buried deep in the sea. With only getting stranger and darkernine days to unearth what might save her father, as her journey takes her from the watched streets of foreign islands to the heart of the smuggler's territory, Mira must be determined to stop at nothing to save the future of her home and only one thing is certain – Tori isn't bored anymorethe ones she holds most dear.|isbn=97800075592200008664730
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Natasha FarrantJames Sherwood Metts|title=Voyage of the SparrowhawkPlanet Storyland|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Set in England in Things have been a bit sticky for the aftermath of World War One, this is the story of two children, Lotti Earthlings. AI and Benautomation have been proceeding apace, who have lost everyone often replacing jobs they love, but don't want re paid to do and other tasks that took time to let go of their last, tiny glimpses of hopeaccomplish. Ben is living on a narrowboat on the canal, lying Just as they were beginning to get used to the police about his brother's imminent return from the battlefields all this technological change and starting to take care think of him. Lottiother, meanwhile, has been expelled from school and is back at home; it's a beautiful house that belongs new ways to her but that her terrible Aunt and Uncle currently have guardianship for. The day Lotti meets Ben (the day she steals a dog!) is the beginning of a deepspend time, and powerful friendshipalong came an awful pandemic. It sees them become each other's family, Life was pretty much shut down and undertake a perilous trip to France, in the boatalong with it, to try to find out all the truth of the people many daily social interactions on which they both lovedepend so heavily.|isbn=05713487691736128426
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1471179273Matthew Tree|title=House We'll Never Know|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, a drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of his artistic passions all failed miserably and who had endless crises of Correctionself confidence. So Tim applied himself to his studies, cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and set himself high but achievable ambitions.|isbn= B0CVFXPGP8}}{{Frontpage|author=Nicci FrenchA G Slatter|title=The Briar Book of the Dead
|rating=5
|genre=CrimeFantasy|summary=When we first meet Tabitha Hardy, she'' There's in prisona part of me that wants to keep this just to myself for however long I can. This secret magic of my own, on remandall mine, at last. SheI just want to enjoy it for a while.''s sharing  Within a cell with Michaelaremote mountain pass, far away from the world, wholies Silverton; a town under the protection of the Briar's more caring than , a family of witches who protect the town and the wider world from the Darklands. Though she has always wished for magic, Ellie Briar is the first appears. She delivers tough love non-witch to be born into her family for generations and gets Tabitha eating as such since she was young, her training as a steward revolved around letters and drinking - administration rather than spells and encourages potions. When her to have a showergrandmother suddenly dies, unpleasant as Ellie's cousin Audra becomes the whole processes might be. And how did Tabitha get here? WellBriar Witch, on 21 December the body of Stuart Robert Rees was discovered in town's leader, and Ellie takes her place beside her. As challenges come her garden shed by Andrew Kaneway left, who was helping with right and centre, Ellie uncovers the renovations rare ability to Tabitha's house. So far as communicate with the police are concerneddead, Tabitha is putting her at the only person heart of a maelstrom of chaos. Reeling from one family secret to another, Ellie must decide who could have killed Rees - to trust and when determine what to do as the Briar witches' legacy, everything they arrived at her house she was covered in his bloodhave sacrificed to survive, is under threat.|isbn=1803364548
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Darren Shan1529900360|title=Archibald Lox and the Vote of Alignment The Ghost Orchid|author=Jonathan Kellerman
|rating=4
|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=This third It hadn't been Lt Milo Sturgis's fault that Alex Delaware had been badly injured but he felt responsible and final book in even after Alex recovered, Sturgis was reluctant to ask for his help on difficult cases. His assertions that there were only open-and-shut cases which didn't need the first volume help of Darren Shana psychologist only worked for a while. Finally, it was Robin, Delaware's new ''Archibald Lox'' series sees Archie partner, who nudged Milo into asking for help again. She knew that the involvement was something that the man she loved needed. The next case did look simple, though. Two lovers were murdered in the swimming pool of a remote property in Bel Air. He was the heir to an Italian shoe empire and she is married to an extremely rich man and Inez make it almost all the way to the Cuckoo's Nest, where not the Vote of Alignment will be heldItalian. But how will they get inwhich of them was the primary target?|isbn=B086LLWP4V
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=00083147211529395224|title=Truth Be ToldLetting the Cat Out of the Bag: The Secret Life of a Vet|author=Kia AbdullahSion Rowlands|rating=3.5|genre=CrimeAnimals and Wildlife|summary=The Hadids are an Siôn Rowlands fell into veterinary science accidentally. His father was a GP and Rowlands didn't want to follow in his footsteps, particularly when he considered the strain that being on-call put on his father'effortful'' familys life. Flowers are sent for When he was seventeen he took the slightest problem or achievement: letters are sent to thank opportunity of doing work experience with a family friend who was a vet and was convinced this prompts a phone call in returnwas the job for him. There are two sons of the familyBefore long, seventeen-year-old Kamran and sixteen-year-old Adamhe was at Liverpool University. Their mother, Sofia, regrets that she didnIt hadn't name them the other way round: 'Adam and Kamran' trips off the tongue - as with so much more easily than 'Kamran and Adam'many students - been his dream since he was a child. Sofia worries about that sort of thing. Both boys go to the prestigious Hampton schoolIf anything, where they board, despite the school being less than ten miles from their Belsize Park home. Kamran has a place at Oxford next year and all seemed he'd wanted to be going well until the night when he was rapeda professional footballer.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=15098895150861541774|title=The Darkest Evening (D I Vera Stanhope)A Nye of Pheasants|author=Ann CleevesSteve Burrows|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=It was DCI Domenic Jejeune's close friend and former colleague, Danny Maik, has taken a mercy that DI Vera Stanhope took the wrong turning as she drove home short holiday in the blizzard. If she hadn't the car might not have been found until the morning and who knows what would have happened Singapore to the toddler strapped into the car seatmeet up with an old ally, particularly as the car door had been left openGuy Trueman. Vera took the boy and drove to the nearest habitation. She ''thought'' it Maik was involved in a street brawl - he would be the village but it later maintain that he was Brockburn, the ancestral home of the Stanhopes: her father had been the younger brother of the facing a man who inherited armed with a knife - and Hector was the black sheep of the familyhe killed a Ghurka. Calling there unannouncedInitially, particularly as they seemed he faced a charge of manslaughter but evidence came to light that suggested that he might have guests was going planned to murder the man. Now he could be embarrassing, but there was little else that she facing the death penalty. Domenic Jejeune can do nothing to help as any interference from another police force could do in the circumstancesprovoke a diplomatic incident and wouldn't help Danny at all.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0241425441Alexander McCall Smith|title=The Thursday Murder Club|author=Richard OsmanPerfect Passion Company
|rating=4.5
|genre=CrimeGeneral Fiction|summary=The first member of The Thursday Murder Club we encounter Perfect Passion Company is Joyce Meadowcrofta dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and operating as an alternative to all the online apps in providing a more personal, tailored service. She used to be a nurse Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the business, as Ness is thus the perfect person for Elizabeth planning to consult about how long it would take a person who has been stabbed trip to Canada to bleed outget away for a while. Details Katie is coming out of where a break up with a bad boyfriend, and how are exchanged and Joyce confirms that it would have taken about forty-five minutes so jumps at the chance to come home to Edinburgh. And so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, thanks to 44 Scotland Street and that the victim could have been saved if she'd received prompt medical helpIsabel Dalhousie novels, but with some new characters who quickly begin to charm. It didn't put Joyce off Katie has no experience in running a business, or in match-making, but Ness has full confidence in her shepherdabilities, and there's pie (which tells us that it was a Monday) but it does get always her interested in The Thursday Murder Club. They meet each Thursday very helpful (as you might have guessedand rather handsome) in the Jigsaw Room at Coopers Chase Retirement Village.neighbour, William, to lend a hand…|isbn=1846976596
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=19481244400811771741|title=What Wonders Await OutdoorsInstaKnits for Baby|author=Justine Avery and Liuba SyrotiukMelissa Leapman
|rating=4
|genre=For SharingCrafts|summary=The second book in Justine AveryMelissa Leapman's Wonders series is the perfect antidote ''InstaKnits for Baby'' gives us a collection of knits from toys to long summer days with bored children blankets. Some will be quick knits - or, indeed, as weothers are of the 've found recentlylong, for those long lockdown days when an awful pandemic is rolling across cosy afternoons in front of the worldfire' variety. What do you do when every book has been read The projects are divided by the time they'll take to complete - less than five hours, five to ten hours, ten to twenty hours and every toy has been played with, repurposedmore than twenty hours. All the projects are attractive, modern and played with again?useable. I perhaps show my age when I wonder about 'social-media-worthy projects' but that's me being picky.
}}
{{Frontpage
|author= Samira AhmedDean Koontz|title= Mad, The Bad and Dangerous to KnowWeather Friend|rating= 34.5|genre=TeensParanormal|summary=''In the endBenny is having a terrifically bad day. He loses his job, he loses his fiancee, and his house gets trashed. Oh, we all become stories'' Spending the summer in Paris sounds like and someone has delivered a dream for most peoplereally weird, especially artdisturbing coffin-loverssized object to his home, but Khayyam canand it't relax and stop thinking about s possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the thing that has trashed his house! The thing is, Benny is the mess she left behind in Chicagovery last person to deserve all this bad luck. On He is a chance encounter with nice person. A really nice person. So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the delivery to his house is a descendant of Alexandre Dumasnew friend, Khayyam finds herself on a historical journey with bad weather friend called Spike, who has been sent to help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a good person. Spike is going to unveil the truth about the 19th century Muslim woman who may have crossed paths with Alendre Dumastake care of Benny, Eugene Delacroix and Lord Byron. As the two teenagers travel the city they not only discover themselveswill certainly take care of Benny's enemies, if he, Benny, but uncover the true story of the woman and why it was one that should never have been forgottenHarper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are.|isbn=03490035561662500491
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Alice OsemanAdam Stower|title=LovelessMurray and Bun|rating=4.5|genre=TeensConfident Readers |summary= Georgia Murray is supposed to be a teenager humble, tidy and friendly cat, one who's embarking on her first year of university and is in a desperate struggle able to figure herself out. She's always been in love with love. With the idea sleep and eat and eat and sleep and, well, whatever takes his fancy next of love, the idea of falling madly for someone and finding blisstwo. But the reality for her has always been different. Shehe's never had a crush. Shebad magician's never cat, so his favourite bun has been kissed. And she's desperate to feel something turned into a hyperactive sticky rabbit called Bun, and fall for someone. But when the opportunity presents itself in any kind catflap they both use can chuck them out, not into the regular back garden, but into a world of real, tangible frightening adventure and physical way for her - she's disgusted by whiffs. This time round it. But isn't that what shedrops them into a Viking land, where a troll hunter is expected – well, one much bigger than Murray was, to be honest, but he's supposed to want? Isnturned up and he't that what everyone is supposed ll have to do? How come everyone else can do it? Why can't she?do…|isbn=000824412X0008561249
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B086LLRZFHB0C47LV1PC|title=Archibald Lox and the Empress of SuanpanFragility|author=Darren ShanMosby Woods|rating=4.5|genre=Confident ReadersLiterary Fiction|summary=ArchieCan you make a 's second foray into 'the MergeYo birthing person' opens with a fantastic vista. All of the Born's most famous buildings and monuments - Big Benjoke? And if you could, is the Taj Mahal,  question should you make it? Or is the Eiffel Tower - are collected togetherquestion if you did, joined by those clever Merge vines. But there's no time to waste in admiration: Archie would it land? The catch is carrying an urgent cry that the answer for help from Inez to a venerable locksmith called Winston.Winston is a darling but is afraid to help - what is to both could well be done? Despite yearning to go home and worry for his foster parents, Archie feels an obligation to take Winston's place. And so Archie embarks on a new, and even more dangerous, adventure...no''Fragility'' is set as the city of Portland, Oregon, cautiously begins to emerge from the restrictions imposed during the covid pandemic
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=14087122881529431735|title=Still Life (DCI Karen Pirie)The Winter Visitor|author=Val McDermidJames Henry
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=It was the middle of 's February 1991 and bitterly Essex is bitingly cold when a fishing boat out of St Monans pulled , which made Bruce Hopkins' return all the more surprising. He'd been exiled on the Costa del Sol as a body out the Firth of Forth instead of wanted drug smuggler for a lobster potdecade. It fell to DCI Charlie Todd The return has come about because he's had a letter from his ex-wife, saying that she's ill and DS Daisy Mortimer to investigate and it didnhasn't take too long to establish that the man was Paul Allard, ostensibly a Frenchman, but in reality James Auld of Edinburghlive. A decade earlier heIt's gone missing hard to feel any sympathy when he was the prime suspect Hopkins is abducted, stripped to his underwear and sent to a watery grave in the disappearance and possible murder boot of his brother, prominent civil servant, Iain Aulda stolen Ford Sierra. DCI Karen Pirie, as head of Police Scotland Historic Crimes Unit, had been the last person to review the case, Is it a warning from a Spanish gang or a couple of years earlier and it seemed sensible problem closer to bring her into the case at an early stage.home?
}}
{{Frontpage
|author= Adrian TchaikovskyAlex Bell and Tim McDonagh|title= The Doors Glorious Race of EdenMagical Beasts|rating= 4.5|genre=Science FictionConfident Readers|summary= Wow Eli is a busy lad this novel is giganticby day an apprentice in the wondrous library we start by visiting with him, and in every sense of the wordevening a helper at the dessert cafe his gran owns and runs. "Epic" Eli lives with his lovely gran, too – for there is a word thatgeneration missing in the family. A few short years ago, Eli's thrown around parents were both lost to the titular race, a lot these days, globe-trotting adventure where all entrants have to navigate the world in the company of a magical beast. This has made the race anathema to the pair – but if when a book ever earned bad incident at the name it's this one. It's eatery leads to a doorstopper full confession from gran, Eli knows his only hope is to dare to enter what he most hates, with the sole aim the prize of big ideas, and magic at times it almost felt too big for my brainthe end – the only thing to possibly save his gran.|isbn=15098658880571382231
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Will Carver178763681X|title=Hinton Hollow Death TripKnife Skills for Beginners|author=Orlando Murrin|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersCrime|summary= Hinton Hollow, population 5,120Chef Paul Delamare took a teaching job at a residential cookery school in Belgravia. It sounds like one He didn't really want to but celebrity chef Christian Wagner had a way of those signs you see on improbably wide highways in Americagetting both men and women to do what he wanted. Paul ''somehow'' got the impression that he's mid-westd be at the school to assist Paul, but this particular Hinton Hollow is who had a small town in Berkshirebroken arm, Englandbut it didn't turn out that way. The teaching - and the problems - are all his own. Detective Sergeant Pace grew The one thing he hadn't expected was for someone to turn up heredead. Unfortunately, until something happened and he ran away to was the person who discovered the city. He's running away again…only this time evil is following him body and is going everyone knows that the police consider that person to touch just about everyone in townbe the prime suspect.|isbn=1913193306
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Jacqueline WilsonSarah Marsh|title=Love FrankieA Sign of Her Own|rating=43.5|genre=TeensGeneral Fiction|summary= Frankie After a bout of scarlet fever as a child, Ellen Lark loses her hearing. Suddenly plunged into a world of silence, everything about her life changes. Living in a time when the use of sign language was seen as something only savages do, Ellen is nearly fourteen. Being nearly fourteen sent to a school where she is not easy when your mum has been diagnosed with MS when your dad has decided taught to leave her for lip read, but physically restrained from signing. From here, she ends up in another woman, when your older sister school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has turned into been teaching the girliest girl who ever lived, deaf and, above all when Sally and her mates are bullying you at schoolusing a system called Visible Speech. Oh At the same time, Bell is working on other inventions and when Samideas, your best friend since forever, suddenly starts sending out signs that he might fancy you - and you don't fancy him backEllen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a complicated tangle of espionagePoor Frankie! |isbn= 0857535897 1035401614
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=17765728581803816759|title=How Do You Make a Baby?The Unravelling|author=Anna Fiske and Don Bartlett (translator)Will Gibson|rating=54|genre=Home and FamilyScience Fiction|summary=It's more than sixty years since I asked how babies were made2038 and Joe is a bored cop policing the wealthy and peaceful New York City. My mother was deeply embarrassed Joe longs for a bit of adventure and told me to get stuck into some really gritty crime detection. But then something goes horribly wrong with the AI system that she'd get me a book about itnow runs everything, making life easier for many, and riots start to spread. Finally, Joe gets to do some real policing. A couple In the aftermath of days later I was handed a pamphlet (which delivered nothing more than the basics, in clinical language which had never been used in our house before) rioting global pop star Suki is kidnapped and I was told that it wouldnJoe is assigned to bring her home. Joe isn't be discussed any further as it ''wasn't something which nice people talked about''the only one trying to save Suki - Dylan, a British superfan and tech nerd, is also on the case. I ''knew'' more, but What went wrong? Did the system fail or was little it hacked? And how is Suki''wiser''. Thankfully, times have changed.s kidnapping connected?
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=15420174321529421284|title=The Nidderdale MurdersLaying Out the Bones|author=J R EllisKate Webb|rating=34.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=It was one of those flash downpours that the British weather often delivers in a Friday in mid-September when the shoot was held on the grouse moor near Niddersgillheatwave. The shooters at the butts were In a gully, a strange mixture: Alexander Fraser (Sandy human skeleton came to his friends) was the owner of surface and forensic testing proved the moor and a retired judgebody to be Lee Geary, who had disappeared nine years earlier. James Symonds was He'd been a local landowner known drug user and Henry Saunders was had learning disabilities, so it could have been a bankersimple case of misadventure but DI Matt Lockyer wasn't convinced. He and Fraser had known each other since their school days. The fourth member Geary was Gideon Rawnsleya townie, who dealt in exclusive cars in nearby Ripon. Rawnsley had a gripe with Fraser: so what was he'd sold him an expensive car and Fraser was being slow to pay. doing out on Salisbury Plain alone? Other people had reason There are connections to comment on Fraser's attitude to money: his gamekeeper, Ian Davis thought he was stingy the suicide of Holly Gilbert and very difficult to work for.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0241433568|title=Eight Detectives|author=Alex Pavesi|rating=5|genre=Crime (Historical)|summary=It's 1930 and Megan and Henry are staying with Bunny two other deaths which were not considered suspicious at his house in Spainthe time. It's unbearably hot Lockyer and Bunny drank too much at lunch: heDC Gemma Broad of the Major Crimes Review Unit (that's going to have a rest and then he wants cold cases to talk to Megan you and Henry about something serious. Only it never gets that far: when Bunny doesn't emerge after his siesta his guests find that he's been murdered. How can that have happened? There's no one else in the house, so one of them must be the killerme) investigate.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=15263627590571379559|title=Dosh: How to Earn It, Save It, Spend It, Grow It, Give ItThe House of Broken Bricks|author=Rashmi SirdeshpandeFiona Williams
|rating=5
|genre=Children's Non-Literary Fiction|summary=What a relief! ''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the story of four people. A book about moneyTess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, for childrenshe lives in the house on the riverbank, with clear explanations built of what broken bricks. Insubstantial as it ismight look, why it matters's stood the passage of time, storms and floods. Her husband, how Richard, struggles to acquire more of it (nope grow his vegetables, to complete the delivery rounds - robbing banks is out) and what you can do with it when you've managed to get hold of itbring in sufficient money. Your reasons for wanting money don't matter: we all need it to some extentThey have twin boys - Sonny and Max, the rainbow twins. You might want to go into business, be a clever shopper, a saver (you might even become an Sonny's colouring reflects his mother'investors Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. People don't believe that they') re related, much less twins and there might be something you really, ''really'' want to buy. Theres an assumption when Max is out with his mother that she's also the possibility of using to do good in the worldhis nanny.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=00083783631529425867|title=One Perfect Morning|author=Pamela Crane|rating=3.5|genre=Thrillers|summary=Lost and Never Found (A husband is about to have his throat cut in his own bed. To find out who - and why - we need to go back nine days and twenty years. Mackenzie, Robin and Lily met when they all went to the same college in Monroeville, Pennsylvania and twenty years later they're still the best of friends. When they first met they called themselves the Spicier Girls as a nod to the famous girl band of the day. Lily would be Adventure Spice, Robin the Homemaker and Mackenzie - well, Mackenzie would be the supporting actress in her own life. She married Owen, her college sweetheart and they have a daughter, Aria, who's now fifteen-year-old.}}{{FrontpageD I Wilkins Mystery)|author=Darren Shan|title=Archibald Lox and the Bridge Between WorldsSimon Mason
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=Time to catch you all up with some In Oxford, there are two D I Wilkins. Raymond Wilkins is of my lockdown reading - Nigerian descent, Balliol educated and always exquisitely dressed. D I've been doing so much Ryan Wilkins, son of Ryan and father of it that I'm a bit late to the party with actual reviewing. Oops! And where better to start than with the new series from Bookbag favouriteRyan, Darren Shan? Archie is very downnot. He's lost a dear friend recentlynot any of those things. He's white, in originated from a tragic accidenttrailer park, barely educated (reading's not ''really'' his thing) and his wardrobe consists mainly of shell suits and Archie blames himselftrackies. He can They're usually in lime green or acid yellow. You might wonder if you't face school so he takes himself re being introduced to a police procedural written for a truanting wander around Londonlaughs. As he strolls across a footbridge Well, he sees a girl who is being pursued by some murderous-looking you're not. The two men in white suitsare just different sides of the same policing coin. Sometimes the combination works brilliantly well. He watches, aghast Sometimes it's problematic. What is going on?|isbn=B086LKBHD6
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Antony WoottenMosby Woods|title=Season of the Mammoth (BigShorts)A Whirly Man Loses His Turn
|rating=4
|genre=Confident ReadersLiterary Fiction|summary= Tannash and her brother Geb are waiting The West isn't the dominant force it once was. Nobody in great excitement for the hunting party led by their uncle West is quite sure how to returnmend this or even if mending it is the best course of action. They're hoping Governments are flailing. A war here, a push for climate action there. A feeling that nobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, there was a feast of mammoth meatman with precognition. Geb longs for Imagine the day he strategic advantage in this asset; a man who can join his uncle Gagba and the other warriors on a hunting party and take part in their deeds tell you what will happen given any set of derring-docircumstances. But their fatherThat man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the leader of the villagemost valuable asset in history. Imagine then, thinks that they also need an education; that knowledge is powerthis man loses this ability.What would governments do to get it back?|isbn=1939269679B0C9SNG8R1
}}

Navigation menu