Changes

|isbn=17876344930241636604|title=All Her FaultThe Trading Game: A Confession|author=Andrea MaraGary Stevenson

|genre=ThrillersAutobiography|summary=It had seemed If you were to bring up an image of a city banker in your mind, you're unlikely to think of someone like one of those serendipitous events which sometimes happenGary Stevenson. Marissa Irvine had been hoping that A hoodie and jeans replaces the pin-stripe suit and his background is the opportunity would arise for her sonEast End, Milowhere he was familiar with violence, to go on a play datepoverty and injustice. She There was concerned that no posh public school on his CV - but he didn't have any friends at his new schoolhad been to the London School of Economics. Milo would go home from Kerryglen National School in an affluent Dublin suburb with his classmate Jacob Stevenson is bright - extremely bright - and Marissa would pick him up from 14 Tudor Grove he has a little laterfacility with numbers which most of us can only envy. What could He also realised that most rich people expect poor people to be better? stupid. Only, when Marissa arrived It was his ability at the house, expecting to meet Jacob's motherwhat was, Jennyessentially, the door was answered by Esther, who didn't know Jenny or Jacoba card game which got him an internship with Citibank. The phone number she'd been given for Jenny was not recognised. Milo had disappeared. And so had Jenny's nannyEventually, this turned into permanent employment as a trader.

|authorisbn=Claire North1035021803|title=Notes from the Burning AgeThe Antique Hunter's Guide to Murder|author=C L Miller|rating=43.5|genre=Science FictionCrime|summary=At its core It''Notes From s twenty years since Freya Lockwood has been back to the Burning AgeEnglish country village where she grew up. She'' by Claire North is s back now because of a spy thrillerrequest for help from her beloved aunt, with as many double crosses, interrogations Carole. Freya's former mentor and night time escapes as Le Carre or Fleming. HoweverCarole's close friend, as with the best novelsArthur Crockleford, it wears many masks and its most affecting one is that of a new dead and timely genrethe circumstances seem suspicious, cli-fi, or climate change fictionto say the least. North's novel tells of a world devastated by climate change where humans have Arthur was the reason why Freya had not been forced back to start anew and live alongside nature without any of the modern and corrupting "luxuries" (readvillage: fossil fuelsArthur, weapons of mass destructionshe feels, let her down badly. Even though they were in business together as antique hunters, intensive farming)she has not felt able to be near the man or pursue the profession she loved. There is After the split, she worked in a growing unhappiness with this limiting worldcafe, met and one group, married James (on the rebound from the Brotherhoodlove of her life, aims to master these processes no matter the cost to the Earthwho was murdered) and Freya and James have now divorced.|isbn=0356514757

|isbn=AllTomorrowsFutureCover|title=All Tomorrow's Futures: Fictions that Disrupt|author=Eva Bjorg Aegisdottir Benjamin Greenaway and Victoria Cribb Stephen Oram (translatorEditors)|title=Girls Who Lie|rating=35|genre=ThrillersScience Fiction|summary=You might be forgiven for ''Opening up new ways of thinking that all about the dark corners shape of Iceland have featured in their noirish thrillers and crime books before nowthings to come. You think, seeing on the map '' I've heard it said that we'technology' is what happens after you're set in Akranes, and finding it's only twenty kilometres from the capital cityeighteen. Well, I must confess that this author is clutching at the there have been more than a few final straws leftdecades of technology in my lifetime. However just because I've kept up reasonably well with what's advantageous to me but I'm left with the book aims for the usual small-town feel, feeling that it's not just in Akranes that our interests lieall getting away from me. Some of it is - frankly - quite frightening. Six months ago a woman failed to turn up for her date eveningOf course, and was never seen again. This left a teenaged girl not at all disappointed that she I could now live permanently with research the couple who had given her foster care before her mother had asked for possibilities and the girl back, probabilities and a couple of delighted adopters. But it left our three detectives at a quandary – mobile phone use was at a high level until it stopped all of a sudden, in one place, the womanend up down rabbit holes without really understanding whether I'm reading someone who knows what they's car was found miles away in a second place, and now, after six months, re talking about or the body has been discovered, in a third, even more remote placelatest conspiracy theorist. Meanwhile, this narrative is interrupted by a confessional monologue from a mother I needed people I knew I could trust and who found herself with heavy post-natal depression, and very little maternal feeling could deliver information in her bodya way I could understand. Is the assumption that is so easy for the reader to make the right one?|isbn=191319373X

|isbnauthor=B0925KS87NSunny Singh|title=Dead Man's Grave (DS Max Craigie)|author=Neil LancasterHotel Arcadia|rating=43.5|genre=CrimeThrillers |summary=Tam Hardie had been determined to find the grave - and it took some finding - The Hotel Arcadia is a luxury hotel in an overgrown old cemeteryunnamed city that has suddenly been violently taken over by a terrorist group. It was Hiding from the terrorists who are rampaging through, killing everyone on site, there is Sam, a strange thing for Scotland's premier criminal to dowartime photographer and Abhi, but Tam was getting old and there were things he wanted to dothe hotel manager. OnlyAs Abhi continues to try to care remotely for the residents who are still alive in the hotel, his family didn't hear from him again after he'd said that he'd found the grave - the one which said that it shouldn't forms a bond with Sam who refuses to be opened - cowed by events, and his three sons began keeps on venturing out of her room to try to worrycapture what's happened through her photography. Tam JuniorAlthough they only ever talk over the phone, Frankie their friendship grows as Abhi tries to help her keep safe and Dave wouldn't normally go they both wait to the police but see if they weren't certain where their father had been and will be rescued before they were worriedare discovered by the terrorists.|isbn=086154742X

|authorisbn=Emily Critchley1529153298|title=The Tiny Gestures List of Small FlowersSuspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey|rating=35

|summary= The Tiny Gestures of Small Flowers had all the hallmarks of something goodIt's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. (A woman? I was intrigued by the plotmean, liked the design of the book, and thought the author's work sounded interestinghonestly. From the outset it all looked incredibly promising. So what on earth went wrong here?|isbn= 1911427091}} {{Frontpage|author=Sarah Langan|title=Good Neighbours|rating=4.5|genre=Thrillers|summary= If you) She're of a certain vintage, its not what's hard to read the words ''Good Neighbours'' without adding a sing-song ''thatworrying Miv's when Good Neighbours…become…good friends''. Maple Street is no Ramsay Streetfamily, though. Women have been disappearing. Well, Arlo and Gertie live a world apart from the Melbourne suburbs. Theythey're one of 18 households on the crescentve been murdered, but to have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite new arrivals having moved in a year earlierso frightening. They're not quite like all the other families (he Miv's an ex rocker, upset because she's a former beauty queen) but theyoverheard that her father wants to move the family 've made some friends and their kids have settled in, and itDown South's all going ok. Until it isn When you't. One hotre from Yorkshire, clammyDown South is a frightening, stickyforeign place, sweaty summerbest avoided. For Miv, a sinkhole opens up in the park across the waymove would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, and she'll do anything to prevent that. It She's a revolting mess of dirt and chaos, but for not worried about the residents of Maple Street, the worst is yet dangers or that her Mum's stopped talking - to comeanyone.|isbn=1789098211

|authorisbn=Lisa Thompson1398524085|title=The Small ThingsHas Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter?|author=Nicci French

|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=Although Anna has friends Charlotte Salter was expected at school, she feels like she her husband's fiftieth birthday party but never really fits inturned up. Her family don't have enough money to let her do after school activitieschildren, sons Niall, Paul and Ollie and so she feels like her life at home is boring in comparison to theirsdaughter, Etty. When a new girl joins are all worried but - strangely - her classhusband, Alec, Anna is asked to partner hernot. Shortly afterwards, Etty and Greg, but things are complicated because find the new girlbody of Greg's father, EllieDuncan Ackerley, is unwell in the river. It was an easy assumption for the police to make that Duncan had murdered Charlie and so canthen committed suicide when he couldn't attend school in person. Instead, she joins in with stand the class by using a robotguilt. Can Anna overcome the challenge of making friends The Salter children are not convinced but there's little else they can do but get on with someone through a robot, their lives and is she even interesting enough to be a good friend to Ellie?|isbn=1781129649wonder about what really happened.

|isbn=00083503881035906708|title=We Need to Talk About MoneyDiva|author=Otegha UwagbaDaisy Goodwin|rating=4.5|genre=Politics and SocietyGeneral Fiction|summary=''To be a dark-skinned Black woman is We tend to be seen think of Maria Callas as less desirableGreek, but she was born to Greek parents in Manhattan, less hireableNew York, less intelligent in December 1923 and ultimately less valuable than my light-skinned counterparts...'' ''We Need to Talk About Money'' by Otegha Uwagba ''0.7% of English Literature GCSE students in England study a book by a writer of colour while only 7% study a book by a woman.'' ''The Bookseller'' 29 June 2021 Otegha Uwagba came moved to the UK from Kenya Athens when she was five years oldthirteen. Her sisters were seven and nine. It original surname was her mother who came first, with Kalogeropoulos but her father joining them laterchanged it to 'Callas' to make it more manageable in the States. The family When she was hardback in Athens -working, principled and determined supposedly so that their children would have the best education possible. There was always a painful awareness of money although this did not translate into a shortage of anything: it was simply carefully harvested. When Otegha she could get appropriate training for her voice - she was ten raised under the family acquired Nazi occupation by a car. For Otegha, education meant a scholarship to a private school in London mother who mercilessly exploited her and then a place at New Collegemade no secret of her preference for her elder sister, OxfordJackie.

|isbnauthor=1787631869Christopher Edge|title=The Rising Tide|author=Sam LloydBlack Hole Cinema Club

|genre=ThrillersConfident Readers|summary=Lucy Locke's early life hadn't been easy but she'd built a good Lucas and decent life his friends are all booked in for a movie marathon at their local cinema, a place that has the aftermathnickname of 'The Black Hole'. SheAll big movie fans, they's now married re looking forward to Daniel, who co-owns Locke-Povey Marine on Penleith Beachlots of exciting films, and they live at Wild Ridge on Mortis Point with Billiemany, Lucy's daughter and Finmany snacks! However, as the child she had with Daniel. They have financial difficultiesmovie starts, some caused by Nick Poveythey very quickly realise that something about this new film format is very different, Danieland they are swept up into an adventure they couldn's partner and so-called best friendt even imagine. Nick and Daniel have a history together But as they lurch from one film genre to the time next, can they both spent in a children's home but it's difficult figure out what on earth is going on? Will they ever get back to think that Nick has Daniel's best interests at heartthe cinema, particularly where Lucy, or money, is concerned.and to their real lives?|isbn=1839942738

|author=Hannah PeckRachel Greenlaw|title=Kate on the CaseCompass and Blade

|genre=Confident ReadersTeens|summary=Meet Kate''I can hear the song of the sea. The call of the deep, although I got the impression sheanswering beat in my heart.''d rather be  Rosevear, a Catherine – remote and one specific Catherine at that. For Catherine Rodriguez is Kate's idolpartially forgotten island, survives on luring ships into the rocks and plundering the author of our heroine's favourite possession, ''The Special Correspondent Manual''wrecks. Armed with a plucky fatherMira, that book, and like her mother before her talking mouse called Rupert, she is all equipped one of the seven who swim out to manage survey the ruins – rescuing any survivors and any treasure that lies within. But when the Council Watch lays a train ride trap to end the Arcticwrecking, to see her scientist mother for they capture the first time in yonksisland's leader and Mira's father. HoweverDesperate to save him from death, this is Mira makes a train ride bargain with a difference, for on board wreck survivor who is as charming as he is a greedy-seeming harridan secretive and with only coordinates to guide her cat, she sets off in search of a thief – and two glowing eyesfamily secret that lies buried deep in the sea. With only nine days to unearth what might save her father, shining as her journey takes her from the darkness in a blink-and-you'll-miss-them style. Itwatched streets of foreign islands to the heart of the smuggler's definitely a case for a new young investigative journalist..territory, Mira must be determined to stop at nothing to save the future of her home and the ones she holds most dear.|isbn=184812970X0008664730

|author=Darren ShanJames Sherwood Metts|title=Archibald Lox and the Forgotten Crypt: Archibald Lox series, Volume 2, book 1 of 3Planet Storyland

|summary=The second trilogy in Shan's ''Merge'' saga opens with our hero, Archie, back in London in the world of Things have been a bit sticky for the BornEarthlings. It's not AI and automation have been easyproceeding apace, explaining often replacing jobs they're paid to his foster parents where he's been, or slipping back into ordinary life do and forgetting about Inez other tasks that took time to accomplish. Just as they were beginning to get used to all this technological change and his starting to think of other friends in the Merge, but Archie has done his bestnew ways to spend time, along came an awful pandemic.... wellLife was pretty much shut down and, except for visiting veteran locksmith Winston in Big Ben's clock tower and except for fiddling along with that sneaky master lock in Seven Dials every time he can sneak awayit, all the many daily social interactions on which they depend so heavily.|isbn=B093H8DPQZ1736128426

|isbnauthor=0571365884Matthew Tree|title=My Mess is a Bit of Life: Adventures in Anxiety|author=Georgia PritchettWe'll Never Know|rating=4.5|genre=AutobiographyLiterary Fiction|summary=Georgia Pritchett has always been anxiousTimothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, even as a child. She would worry about whether the monsters under the bed were comfortable: it was the sort drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of life where if she his artistic passions all failed miserably and who had nothing to worry about she would become anxious but such occasions were few and far betweenendless crises of self confidence. On a visit So Tim applied himself to a therapist, as an adulthis studies, when she was completely unable to speak about what was wrong with her it was suggested that she should write it down cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and ''My Mess is a Bit of a Life: Adventures in Anxiety'' is the result - or so we are given to believeset himself high but achievable ambitions.|isbn= B0CVFXPGP8

|author=Alex CotterA G Slatter|title=The House on Briar Book of the EdgeDead|rating=45|genre=Confident ReadersFantasy|summary=Faith'' There's family home is teetering on the edge a part of me that wants to keep this just to myself for however long I can. This secret magic of a cliffmy own, all mine, literallyat last. Is that crack in the garden getting bigger? Is the house starting I just want to slope enjoy it for a while.'' Within a little? And as remote mountain pass, far away from the house seems to be falling apartworld, so is Faithlies Silverton; a town under the protection of the Briar's , a familyof witches who protect the town and the wider world from the Darklands. Her dad Though she has disappearedalways wished for magic, and her mum Ellie Briar is struggling the first non-witch to copebe born into her family for generations and as such since she was young, barely leaving her bedtraining as a steward revolved around letters and administration rather than spells and potions. So that leaves Faith in charge, taking care of When her little brother Noahgrandmother suddenly dies, taking care of her mumEllie's cousin Audra becomes the Briar Witch, feeding everyone, getting Noah to schoolthe town's leader, and avoiding awkward questions from interfering teachersEllie takes her place beside her. Is As challenges come her little brother okay? Why is he obsessed way left, right and centre, Ellie uncovers the rare ability to communicate with what he claims is a ghost in the cellar? What should she do about dead, putting her at the house? Can she find heart of a way maelstrom of chaos. Reeling from one family secret to raise enough money another, Ellie must decide who to fix it? What's happened trust and determine what to her dad? Why did he disappear? Maybe hedo as the Briar witches'll come back if she manages legacy, everything they have sacrificed to get funding for the house? She carries the weight of all these worries on her constantlysurvive, and she doesn't know how much longer the cliff will hold together, or how long she can keep on keeping onis under threat.|isbn=17880086261803364548

|isbn=00082690411529900360|title=Risk of HarmThe Ghost Orchid|author=Lucie WhitehouseJonathan Kellerman|rating=4.5

|summary=DCI Robin Lyons is back in her native Birmingham It hadn't been Lt Milo Sturgis's fault that Alex Delaware had been badly injured but he felt responsible and even after her lessAlex recovered, Sturgis was reluctant to ask for his help on difficult cases. His assertions that there were only open-thanand-comfortable departure from shut cases which didn't need the Methelp of a psychologist only worked for a while. She might have been reinstated but the whole episode left a nasty taste in her mouthFinally, it was Robin, Delaware's partner, who nudged Milo into asking for help again. She knew that the involvement was now working for Detective Chief Superintendent Samir Jaffrey - then something that the man who had broken her heart nearly twenty years beforeshe loved needed. The next case did look simple, though. She and her fifteen-year-old daughter have moved out Two lovers were murdered in the swimming pool of her parent's home into a rented house but there's still a difficult situation with her brother Luke who has gone out of his way to make life difficult for Robin since she was a young childremote property in Bel Air. He's was the heir to an Italian shoe empire and she is married to Natalie, now an extremely rich man and has a young child but heit's still got it in for Robinnot the Italian. But which of them was the primary target?

|isbn=17863323881529395224|title=Letting the Cat Out of the Bag: The First Day Secret Life of Springa Vet|author=Nancy TuckerSion Rowlands|rating=43.5|genre=ThrillersAnimals and Wildlife|summary=Sometimes I wonder if I take my pleasures too sadly - and ''The First Day of Spring'' was one such occasionSiôn Rowlands fell into veterinary science accidentally. The writing is superb and completely compelling. The characterisation is excellent and the plot grips you His father was a GP and wonRowlands didn't let go. Sowant to follow in his footsteps, whatparticularly when he considered the strain that being on-call put on his father's life. When he was seventeen he took the problem? Well, opportunity of doing work experience with a family friend who was a vet and was convinced this was the problem is Chrissie, the main characterjob for him. When we first meet her she's just eight years oldBefore long, small for her age and she readily tells us that she's just killed someone - a two-year-old boyhe was at Liverpool University. SheIt hadn's completely cold about what she's done t - as with her main memory being that whilst she so many students - been his dream since he was killing - suffocating - her hands seized upa child. ThereIf anything, he's d wanted to be a clue that Chrissie isn't completely responsible for her actions a little later in the book: when will Steven come back, she wonders? Hasn't he been dead for long enough?professional footballer.

|authorisbn=Catherine Steadman0861541774|title=The Disappearing ActA Nye of Pheasants|author=Steve Burrows|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersCrime|summary= British actress Mia Eliot is on the cusp of success. Great success. If the rumours are true, award season is going to treat her well, acknowledging her for her latest, critically acclaimed production. SheDCI Domenic Jejeune's going places but soclose friend and former colleague, Danny Maik, unfortunatelyhas taken a short holiday in Singapore to meet up with an old ally, is her partnerGuy Trueman. And the places Maik was involved in a street brawl - he would later maintain that he was facing a man armed with a knife - and he's going take him towards lieskilled a Ghurka. Initially, deceit and he faced a pretty young thing in charge of manslaughter but evidence came to light that suggested that he might have planned to murder the man. Now he could be facing the form of his new co-stardeath penalty. It's Domenic Jejeune can do nothing to help as any interference from another police force could provoke a good time for Mia to escape, diplomatic incident and pilot season in LA provides just the excusewouldn't help Danny at all.|isbn=1471189783

|author= Christophe MedlerAlexander McCall Smith|title=Madrigal: A Closely Guarded SecretThe Perfect Passion Company|rating=4.5|genre=Historical General Fiction|summary= Set against The Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and operating as an alternative to all the backdrop of online apps in providing a more personal, tailored service. Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the English Civil Warbusiness, as Ness is planning to take a secret plan (code-named Madrigal) trip to Canada to get away for a while. Katie is discovered by Sir Robert Douse in the summer coming out of 1642. As a loyal servant of break up with a bad boyfriend, and so jumps at the Kingchance 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 Head of the Secret ServiceIsabel Dalhousie novels, it is Robertbut with some new characters who quickly begin to charm. Katie has no experience in running a business, or in match-making, but Ness has full confidence in her abilities, and there's duty to uncover the details of the plan always her very helpful (and follow the clues rather handsome) neighbour, William, to uncover one of the most guarded secrets in history—especially since the plot could affect the King.lend a hand…|isbn=B095HY8SXQ1846976596

|authorisbn=Tasha Suri0811771741|title=The Jasmine ThroneInstaKnits for Baby|author=Melissa Leapman

|genre=FantasyCrafts|summary= On the night Melissa Leapman's ''InstaKnits for Baby'' gives us a collection of her sacred burning, Princess Malini defies her brother and refuses knits from toys to step on to the pyreblankets. She is immediately sent to Some will be imprisoned on quick knits - others are of the Hirana: an ancient temple that was once filled with a community 'long, cosy afternoons in front of people who got powers from the mysterious deathless watersfire' variety. But now The projects are divided by the temple is nothing time they'll take to complete - less than five hours, five to ten hours, ten to twenty hours and more than an overgrown, decaying ruintwenty hours. One day All the projects are attractive, Malini witnesses a girl kill someone with magicmodern and useable. Instead of reporting her for such a gruesome crime, Malini claims I perhaps show my age when I wonder about 'social-media-worthy projects' but that the girl saved her from an attacker and begs for the girl to become her own personal maidservant's me being picky.|isbn=0356515648

|isbnauthor=B088YWF5BCDean Koontz|title=The Lies We Tell|author=Jane CorryBad Weather Friend|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersParanormal|summary=Sarah Wallace said that she grew up on Benny is having a council estate in Kent and that she had two brothers and two sistersterrifically bad day. It seemed to have been a lovingHe loses his job, he loses his fiancee, stable familyand his house gets trashed. When we first meet herOh, she can't sleep because her sonand someone has delivered a really weird, Freddiedisturbing coffin-sized object to his home, whoand it's nearly sixteenpossible that whoever or whatever was inside is the thing that has trashed his house! The thing is, hasn't come home by Benny is the time he sort of half-promised he'd be in byvery last person to deserve all this bad luck. He is a nice person. A really nice person. Her husbandSo fortunately for Benny it turns out that the delivery to his house is a new friend, Toma 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 fast asleep: they're moving house in the morning but he's still going to be going to work take care of Benny, and will certainly take care of Benny's enemies, if he needs his sleep. He wakes, thoughBenny, when Freddie does come in and overhears him tell his mother that heHarper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's killed someonewild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are.|isbn=1662500491

|author=Joseph KnoxAdam Stower|title=True Crime StoryMurray and Bun|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersConfident Readers |summary= Joseph KnoxMurray is supposed to be a humble, tidy and friendly cat, one who is able to sleep and eat and eat and sleep and, well, known for whatever takes his series surrounding Detective Aidan Waitsfancy next of the two. But he's a bad magician's cat, so his favourite bun has created been turned into a new genre with his latest novelhyperactive sticky rabbit called Bun, and the catflap they both use can chuck them out, "True Crime Story". The story follows not into the disappearance regular back garden, but into a world of Zoe Nolan from her university halls of residencefrightening adventure and whiffs. Split This time round it drops them into four partsa Viking land, the reader where a troll hunter is taken through the life and disappearance of Zoe through the eyes of her twin sisterexpected – well, other family, friends and professionals, such as the police. The various accounts help the reader get to know Zoeone much bigger than Murray was, or at least the Zoe she presented to others. Howeverbe honest, the twists but he's turned up and turns at the end of each chapter leave you shocked, confused and unsure of what is true or fabricated. Whose accounts can we trust?he'll have to do…|isbn=08575277030008561249

|authorisbn=Justine Avery and Naday MeldovaB0C47LV1PC|title=No, No, No!Fragility|author=Mosby Woods

|genre=For SharingLiterary Fiction|summary=They say Can you make a ''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, is the best picture books are question should you make it? Or is the simplest ones. And nothing question if you did, would it land? The catch is that the answer for both could well be truer of this latest from Justine Avery, a Bookbag favourite.... no.

''No, No, No!Fragility'' is based around set as the simplest text imaginable. ''No, no, no! Okaycity of Portland, okay. YesOregon, you may.'' That's it! But, like all the best picture books, this tiny snippet of text is a veritable tardis - so much bigger on cautiously begins to emerge from the inside that it appears on restrictions imposed during the outside.|isbn=1638820457covid pandemic

|author=Monica Connell|title=Against a Peacock Sky|rating=5|genre=Travel|summary= Monica Connell went to Nepal to do the fieldwork for her Ph.D. in social anthropology. I think it is important to know that. She went on a grant-supported trip, with a relatively specific objective. She wasn't a hippy wanderer looking for Shangri-la. She wasn't a mere tourist passing through. She went with a fundamental aim of learning about these people and how they lived. She also went, presumably, with the academic discipline of how to find these things out, how to organise them in her mind, how to "understand" them in the context of her own paradigms, and how to keep enough notes and files and photos to help her create some greater sense of the experience after the event. Fortunately, she also went with a sense of open-ness and curiosity and a willingness to muck-in, to break her own rules and to truly connect with the people of the village where she hauled up.|isbn=1780600429}}{{Frontpage|isbn=14091816691529431735|title=The MaidensWinter Visitor|author=Alex MichaelidesJames Henry|rating=54

|summary=Mariana was convinced that Professor Edward Fosca had committed two murders It's February 1991 and looked likely to get away with them bothEssex is bitingly cold, which made Bruce Hopkins' return all the more surprising. She needed to think carefully about what she knew and decide how she should proceed. Everything - or so she thought - had begun with the death of Tara Hampton He'd been exiled on the Paradise nature reserve in CambridgeCosta del Sol as a wanted drug smuggler for a decade. SheThe return has come about because he'd been brutally stabbed and Marianas had a letter from his ex-wife, saying that she's niece, Zoe, had telephoned her in distress. Tara had been her best friend ill and she was struggling hasn't long to copelive. Mariana wasnIt't ''entirely'' happy about having s hard to go feel any sympathy when Hopkins is abducted, stripped to Cambridge, but she caught the first fast train from King's Cross. Mariana his underwear and Zoe were close and had been made all sent to a watery grave in the more so by the death boot of Mariana's husband, Sebastian, in a swimming accident on Naxos some fourteen months earlierstolen Ford Sierra. Zoe had been their surrogate daughter after the death of Zoe's mother and Mariana's sister, Eliza.Is it a warning from a Spanish gang or a problem closer to home?

|author=Maisie ChanAlex Bell and Tim McDonagh|title=Danny Chung Does Not Do MathsThe Glorious Race of Magical Beasts|rating=4.5

|summary=Danny Eli is eleven years olda busy lad – by day an apprentice in the wondrous library we start by visiting with him, and what he really, really loves to do is drawin the evening a helper at the dessert cafe his gran owns and runs. He creates fantastical comicsEli lives with his lovely gran, whilst his best friend Ravi adds too – for there is a generation missing in the wordsfamily. DannyA few short years ago, Eli's dad, however, wants Danny parents were both lost to concentrate on his maths, and forget about the drawingtitular race, because he says nobody can make a living from drawing! At least Danny has his own room, globe-trotting adventure where he can draw all entrants have to navigate the world in secret and in peacethe company of a magical beast. But then one day his parents tell him they have This has made the race anathema to the pair – but when a bad incident at the eatery leads to a surprise for himconfession from gran, and this surprise turns out Eli knows his only hope is to be his grandmother who has come over from China dare to live enter what he most hates, with them, and who will not only be sharing Danny's bedroom but she will also be sleeping on the top bunk sole aim the prize of his bunk bed! Danny is horrified! His Nai Nai (grandmother) speaks no English, and Danny finds himself forced into being her babysitter, and showing her around magic at the end – the town. Poor Danny, stuck on a maths project, frustrated with only thing to possibly save his bedroom situation, and then he even has a falling out with Ravi..gran.how on earth will things ever get better?!|isbn=180078001X0571382231

|authorisbn=Terry Miles178763681X|title=RabbitsKnife Skills for Beginners|author=Orlando Murrin|rating=4.5|genre=Science FictionCrime|summary=Welcome Chef Paul Delamare took a teaching job at a residential cookery school in Belgravia. He didn't really want to the world but celebrity chef Christian Wagner had a way of The Gamegetting both men and women to do what he wanted. Or should Paul ''somehow'' got the impression that he'd be at the game, for while it ought school to be capitalised to high heavenassist Paul, it never leaves lower case throughout this book. It's also called Rabbits, although only as who had a slangy term for it – as far as anyone knowsbroken arm, but it has no official title, no official source, no hard and fast structure, and to the average person no obvious entry point. A bit like the game of life then. Yes, this is the game of life for a certain tribe of people – the fan of the conspiracy, the computer game, the hack from the darkest of webs. People like our hero, K, named like didn't turn out that in the least Kafkaesque manner possibleway. K and his bezzies are trying to be historians of the game, The teaching - and have studied amongst many things the most unique of high score boards, for the lists of who has successfully won the game problems - are in the most peculiar places, and are still very shortall his own. However this time it The one thing he hadn's differentt expected was for someone to turn up dead. This time the game seems the most dangerous, nay lethal Unfortunately, he was the most broken it's ever been – morally and otherwise. Unfortunately for K, in trying to sort out what person who discovered the game is doing, if it's even being played, body and how his loved ones might be kept safe, he is only to find out everyone knows that the line between observing and learning about police consider that person to be the game, and playing it, is a very thin one indeedprime suspect...|isbn=1529016932

|author=C J CareySarah Marsh|title=WidowlandA Sign of Her Own|rating=43.5

|summary=It's April 1953, and Adolf Hitler's schedule includes going to Moscow to attend the state funeral After a bout of Joseph Stalin then within weeks coming to Londonscarlet fever as a child, parading around Ellen Lark loses her hearing. Suddenly plunged into a bit, and watching over the sanctioned return to the throne world of Edward VIII with his wifesilence, Queen Walliseverything about her life changes. For yes, Britain caved Living in a time when the lead-up to the World War Two that certainly didn't happen use of sign language was seen as we know itsomething only savages do, and we are now Ellen is sent to a protectorate – wellschool where she is taught to lip read, we share enough of the same blood as the Germanic peoples on ''the mainland''but physically restrained from signing. But this is most certainly a different Britain, for Nazi-styled phrenologyFrom here, she ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the deaf and ideas of female purpose, has put all of that gender into using a caste system, ranging from high-brow office bigwigs to the drudges, and beyond those, right on down to the childless, the husbandless and the widowscalled Visible Speech. Female literacy is actively discouraged. And in this puritanical existence, our heroine, Rose RansomAt the same time, Bell is employed with the task of bowdlerising classical literature to take all encouragement for female emancipation out of it – after all, not every book can be banned, working on other inventions and not every story excised immediately from British civilisationideas, and so they just get Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a hefty tweak towards the party line before they're stamped ready for reprint. That is her job, at least, until the first emerging signs complicated tangle of female protest come to light, with their potential to spoil Hitler's visitespionage.|isbn=152941198X1035401614

|authorisbn=Louise Beech1803816759|title=This Is How We Are HumanThe Unravelling|author=Will Gibson

|genre=General Science Fiction|summary=Veronica It's 2038 and Joe is a devoted single mother bored cop policing the wealthy and peaceful New York City. Joe longs for a bit of adventure and to her son, Sebastian - but she can't give him everything he wantsget stuck into some really gritty crime detection. Sebastian has decided But then something goes horribly wrong with the AI system that it's time now runs everything, making life easier for him many, and riots start to spread. Finally, Joe gets to do some real policing. In the aftermath of the rioting global pop star Suki is kidnapped and Joe is assigned to have sexbring her home. But as an autistic 20 yearJoe isn't the only one trying to save Suki -oldDylan, a British superfan and tech nerd, that's easier said than doneis also on the case. What went wrong? Did the system fail or was it hacked? And ithow is Suki's starting to cause them both problems. |isbn=1913193713kidnapping connected?

|isbn=B093VPBL5L1529421284|title=Cape Henry HouseLaying Out the Bones|author=Jolly Walker BittickKate Webb|rating=4.5|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=Meet Bosner, or, to give him his full title, Petty Officer Third Class BosnerIt was one of those flash downpours that the British weather often delivers in a heatwave. We never really find out if he has In a first name: there's merely gully, a hint that he human skeleton came to the surface and forensic testing proved the body to be Lee Geary, who had the nickname 'Secretary' at one pointdisappeared nine years earlier. He's simply Bosner to one d been a known drug user and allhad learning disabilities, so it could have been a simple case of misadventure but DI Matt Lockyer wasn't convinced. When we first encounter him he's exploring his memories of 2008 when he Geary was a greaser townie, so what was he doing out on helicopters (or helos, as they Salisbury Plain alone? There are connections to the suicide of Holly Gilbert and to two other deaths which were called) not considered suspicious at a naval establishmentthe time. The hours could be long Lockyer and he was often working nights but at DC Gemma Broad of the age of twenty-one, there was always a way Major Crimes Review Unit (that's cold cases to work some fun (think drinking you and eatingme) into his dayinvestigate.

|authorisbn=Hannah Whitten0571379559|title=For the WolfThe House of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams

|genre=FantasyLiterary Fiction|summary=In Red's family, 'The House of Broken Bricks'' is the first daughter becomes queen, and the second daughter becomes a sacrificestory of four people. To Red Tess Hembry's misfortuneroots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she is lives in the second daughter. Sent alone into the woods with nothing but the cape house on her back, Red knows what to expect: within the woods is a wolfriverbank, and he is the one who will decide the fate built of their kingdombroken bricks. If she is not a worthy sacrifice Insubstantial as it might look, it's stood the monsters he keeps contained to the woods will be releasedpassage of time, storms and the fabled kings he keeps hostage will never be returned—or so the stories gofloods. But when Red enters the woods Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, expecting nothing more than to be killed within complete the hourdelivery rounds - and to bring in sufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, she finds that the legends are liesrainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. The wolf People don't believe that they're related, much less twins and there's an assumption when Max is not a monster—heout with his mother that she's a manhis nanny.|isbn=0356516369

|authorisbn=M G Leonard1529425867|title=TwitchLost and Never Found (A D I Wilkins Mystery)|author=Simon Mason|rating=4.5|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=Twitch In Oxford, there are two D I Wilkins. Raymond Wilkins is a boy who loves birdsof Nigerian descent, Balliol educated and always exquisitely dressed. He keeps pigeons at homeD I Ryan Wilkins, son of Ryan and chickensfather of Ryan, and even has swallows nesting in his bedroom! is not. His time spent watching and helping birds is easy compared to that He's not any of his time in schoolthose things. But things are about to change for Twitch in all aspects of his life as there is He's white, originated from a dangerous bank robber on the runtrailer park, and itbarely educated (reading's possible that the missing bank haul is hidden somewhere in Aves Wood, the place where Twitch has not ''really'' his secret hide thing) and that he knows like the back his wardrobe consists mainly of his hand! shell suits and trackies. They're usually in lime green or acid yellow. You might wonder if you're being introduced to a police procedural written for laughs. Well, you're not. Can Twitch solve The two men are just different sides of the mystery, and find same policing coin. Sometimes the missing millions?|isbn=1406389374combination works brilliantly well. Sometimes it's problematic.

|isbnauthor=1838853804Mosby Woods|title=The Cursed Girls|author=Caro RamsayA Whirly Man Loses His Turn

|genre=ThrillersLiterary Fiction|summary=Megan MelvickThe West isn's earliest memory is of her fourth birthday: she followed her grandfather down to t the pond, only to find that he'd hanged himselfdominant force it once was. Twenty years later she's back home again and this time Nobody in the occasion West is no less sad. She's there quite sure how to say her final farewells to her sister, Melissa, who mend this or even if mending it is dying the best course of anorexiaaction. As she diesGovernments are flailing. A war here, Melissa whispers 'sorry' to Megan but what did she mean? There were lots of thingsa push for climate action there. A feeling that nobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, minor and major cruelties, for which Melissa might have been sorry - or there was it even a question? Was she asking if Megan was sorry for sleeping man with Melissa's husbandprecognition. Imagine the strategic advantage in this asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. That man would be valuable, Jago, on their wedding dayright? The Melvicks might seem to have everything - Ivan Melvick was Lord Lieutenant of Perhaps the County and money was never most valuable asset in short supply - but there did seem to be a cursehistory. In addition to Melissa's health problemsImagine then, Megan was deaf and their mother, Beth, had left suddenly three years beforethat this man loses this ability. Would she come What would governments do to get it back for her elder daughter's funeral?|isbn=B0C9SNG8R1