Changes

|authorisbn=Keith Gray0241636604|title=The ClimbersTrading Game: A Confession|author=Gary Stevenson|rating=4.5|genre=Confident ReadersAutobiography|summary=Sully is the best tree climber If you were to bring up an image of a city banker in the village. He has what's known amongst the kids as 'reachyour mind, you're unlikely to think of someone like Gary Stevenson. But what happens when a new kid shows up in town? A new kid, called Nottingham, who clambers up some of hoodie and jeans replaces the hardest trees with ease? Suddenly Sully is worried that pin-stripe suit and his status background is being threatenedthe East End, where he was familiar with violence, poverty and not only that, that injustice. There was no posh public school on his chance CV - but he had been to name the final, unnamed big tree in the park by being the first London School of Economics. Stevenson is bright - extremely bright - and he has a facility with numbers which most of us can only envy. He also realised that most rich people expect poor people to conquer it, might be snatched from his handsstupid. How can Sully stop Nottingham? And will it cost him It was his best friendability at what was, or maybe even all of his friendsessentially, a card game which got him an internship with Citibank. Eventually, to do so?|isbn=1781129991this turned into permanent employment as a trader.

|authorisbn=Emma Carroll1035021803|title=The Week at WorldAntique Hunter's EndGuide to Murder|author=C L Miller|rating=43.5|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=First, It's twenty years since Freya Lockwood has been back to the titleEnglish country village where she grew up. We're in World She's End Close, back now because of a mediocre set of housesrequest for help from her beloved aunt, where Stevie (Vie to her friends) finds fun only with the family dog Carole. Freya's former mentor and with the boy over the road. But we could also be at WorldCarole's Endclose friend, Arthur Crockleford, because something taking a great chunk of the fun away is dead and the fact that circumstances seem suspicious, to say the Cuban Missile Crisis is kicking offleast. The Soviet boats are getting blockaded as America tries to reduce Arthur was the risk of nuclear missiles offshore, and reason why Freya had not much else is able been back to make the news. That saidvillage: Arthur, she feels, Vie has news of let her own – Anna, a secretive young woman hiding in their coal sheddown badly. Anna has, Even though they were in no short timebusiness together as antique hunters, taken a strong interest in she has not felt able to be near the man or pursue the American airforce base behind profession she loved. After the Closesplit, said she'd locate something she wanted and leave, failed to leaveworked in a cafe, met and implied married James (on the rebound from the love of her life , who was at riskmurdered) and Freya and James have now divorced. But surely this bit of intrigue has got nothing to do with what the Cold War is doing miles away?|isbn=0571364438

|authorisbn=Kiran Millwood Hargrave and Tom de FrestonAllTomorrowsFutureCover|title=Julia All Tomorrow's Futures: Fictions that Disrupt|author=Benjamin Greenaway and the SharkStephen Oram (Editors)|rating=45|genre=Confident ReadersScience Fiction|summary=Julia, our pre-teen heroine, has been packed off with her parents and their cat from ''Opening up new ways of thinking about the family home in SW England shape of things to be lighthousekeepers for a summer, in the far NE of the Scottish islandscome.'' I've heard it said that 'technology' is what happens after you're eighteen. Here be VikingsWell, I must confess that kind there have been more than a few decades of Scottish islandtechnology in my lifetime. Dad is going I've kept up reasonably well with what's advantageous to be automating me but I'm left with the lantern, which feeling that it's all getting away from me. Some of it is his specialist thing- frankly - quite frightening. Of course, while mum will be leaving her career in algae behind to hunt 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 elusive Greenland sharklatest conspiracy theorist. And Julia, well, she will be homesick I needed people I knew I could trust and alone – until she suddenly finds company one nightwho could deliver information in a way I could understand.|isbn=1510107789

|author=Freya SampsonSunny Singh|title=The Last LibraryHotel Arcadia|rating=43.5|genre=General FictionThrillers |summary=I am always The Hotel Arcadia is a little nervous to start luxury hotel in an unnamed city that has suddenly been violently taken over by a story about a library, since I am a librarianterrorist group. I always grit my teeth slightly at the thought of Hiding from the incoming cardigan-wearing, hair in a bunterrorists who are rampaging through, cat-owning, glasses killing everyone on a chain stereotypes! In this storysite, the main characterthere is Sam, June, does put her hair in a bun, wartime photographer and she does own a cat (called Alan Bennett)Abhi, and she has barely any friends and spends her evenings eating the same Chinese takeaway meal once a week whilst reading books alone! But I didn't immediately throw hotel manager. As Abhi continues to try to care remotely for the book out of residents who are still alive in the windowhotel, because I found I was interested in June, and why she lived as she did. Her mum used he forms a bond with Sam who refuses to be a librarian at the village librarycowed by events, but when she got sick, June gave up and keeps on going venturing out of her room to University and stayed at home try to take care of her mum, as well as taking on a job as library assistant at the local library. And even though her mum sadly died some years ago, she is still working there, still eating her mumcapture what's favourite takeaway meal, and still reading happened through her mum's old booksphotography. June is stuck Although they only ever talk over the phone, but little does she know, everything in their friendship grows as Abhi tries to help her life is about keep safe and they both wait to see if they will be rescued before they are discovered by the changeterrorists.|isbn=183877369X086154742X

|isbn=00083709821529153298|title=Rock Paper ScissorsThe List of Suspicious Things|author=Alice FeeneyJennie Godfrey|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersGeneral Fiction|summary=Amelia Wright It's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is forty-two and it was the staff raffle at Battersea Dogs Home that gave her a weekend away in a converted chapel in ScotlandPrime Minister. (A woman? I mean, honestly...) She's not what's worrying Miv's family, though. Women have been disappearing. Her husbandWell, Adamthey've been murdered, isnbut to have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so keen on the ideafrightening. Like Amelia, he knows that their marriage has been under strain: heMiv's a screenwriter and heupset because she's never shy of making it clear to Amelia overheard that he'd prefer her father wants to spend time with move the novels hefamily 'Down South's hoping to adapt than with her. AmeliaWhen you's annoyed that he never enquires about how re from Yorkshire, Down South is a frightening, foreign place, best avoided. For Miv, the move would mean leaving her day has been - and working with the dogsbest friend, many of whom have been abusedSharon, is never easyand she'll do anything to prevent that. Still - sheShe's won not worried about the weekend away, even if it does mean driving for eight hours in dangers or that her 1978 Morris Minor Traveller with Adam beside her in the passenger seat Mum's stopped talking - and then doing the same thing to come back a couple of days lateranyone.

|authorisbn=Doug Johnstone1398524085|title=The Great SilenceHas Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter?|author=Nicci French|rating=45

|summary=For those whoCharlotte Salter was expected at her husband's fiftieth birthday party but never turned up. Her children, sons Niall, Paul and Ollie and her daughter, Etty. are all worried but - strangely - her husband, like meAlec, haven't come across is not. Shortly afterwards, Etty and Greg, find the Skelfs before, I'll risk a quick synopsis body of whoGreg's who – although Johnstone does a good job of bringing the backstory in without being heavy handed about it. Skelf isn't some fantastic creaturefather, though it sounds as though it ought to beDuncan Ackerley, it is merely in the surname of a family of undertakersriver. Undertakers and private investigators. Dorothy is It was an easy assumption for the matriarch – Californian by birth and instinct, she married a scot and ended up helping police to run the Edinburgh undertaking firm make that Duncan had been in murdered Charlie and then committed suicide when he couldn't stand the family for generationsguilt. Recently widowed The Salter children are not convinced but there's little else they can do but get on with their lives and now involved with a black Swedish police officer. Swedish by nationality. Scottish police. Daughter Jenny, 46, is haunted by her still-living husband – a violent escaped prisoner. And grand-daughter is wonder about to graduate with a first-class physics degree and join the academic staff next termwhat really happened.|isbn=1913193837

|isbn=19015149781035906708|title=There's a Problem With DadDiva|author=Carlos AlbaDaisy Goodwin

|summary=Life is different for George Lovelace and he can't really understand why. He's always done everything he ought We tend to think of Maria Callas as Greek, but she was born to: steady workerGreek parents in Manhattan, New York, husband in December 1923 and father - and a father who only moved to Athens when she was always there for school plays and sports daysthirteen. So why is he never quite in tune with those around him? Why does he upset people? Why is someone with such a Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to 'Callas'good'' mind unable to progress at work or to relate to his colleagues? make it more manageable in the States. Why does he make When she was back in Athens - supposedly so many breaththat she could get appropriate training for her voice -taking gaffes? It's almost become she was raised under the Nazi occupation by a cliche these days to suggest that someone mother who is a little different is 'on the spectrum'mercilessly exploited her and made no secret of her preference for her elder sister, but George Lovelace has all the symptoms of Asperger's Syndrome: high-functioning autismJackie.

|author=Louise CandlishChristopher Edge|title=The HeightsBlack Hole Cinema Club|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersConfident Readers|summary=Ellen doesn't expect to see Kieran that day. She's on site, visiting a client Lucas and his friends are all booked in for a lighting consultation when she spies him in movie marathon at their local cinema, a building across place that has the waynickname of 'The Black Hole'. There are All big movie fans, they're looking forward to lots of thingsexciting films, lots of peopleand many, many snacks! However, you might see when you look out across Londonas the movie starts, but they very quickly realise that something about this isnnew film format is very different, and they are swept up into an adventure they couldn't even imagine. But as they lurch from one Ellen expected that day or in fact any other day. Whyfilm genre to the next, can they figure out what on earth is going on? Because Kieran has been dead for over two years Will they ever get back to the cinema, and Ellen knows this for a fact, because she had a hand in his murder.to their real lives?|isbn=14711834831839942738

|isbnauthor=0008421714Rachel Greenlaw|title=Mrs March|author=Virginia FeitoCompass and Blade|rating=43.5|genre=Literary FictionTeens|summary=The problem began just after the publication of George March's most successful novel to date. Everyone but Mrs March (we know her first name only on the last page) seemed to either be reading it or had already done so. Every day Mrs March went to the local patisserie to buy olive bread but on that particular morning, Patricia asked, as she was wrapping the bread, ''but isn't this I can hear the first time he's based a character on you?'' She mentioned that Johanna, song of the principal character had 'her mannerisms''sea. Perhaps this would not have mattered, except for the fact that Johanna is the whore of Nantes - ''a weak, plain, detestable, pathetic, unloved, unloveable wretch.''}}{{Frontpage|author=John Boyne|title=The Echo Chamber|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Meet George Cleverley. He is self-defined as "one call of the few television personalities over the age of fifty without a criminal record". He starts this book a bit worried when his mistress tells him she's carrying his childdeep, but then his author wife is getting her kicks with the Ukrainian partner "Strictly Come Dancing" paired her with. They have three children, who are a sad-sack with absolutely no social skills whatsoever, a girl who hangs around with a virtue-signalling, keyboard warrior "wokester" who wants to save the world's homeless with out-of-date food, and a fit young lad doing the gay hustle thing. Add answering beat in a few other characters – therapists, lawyers, random transgender types – that all have two very different connections to his life, and you have something that suggests an almost farcical approach to the modern world. What suggests the farcical approach even more, however, is the fact this is bloody funnymy heart.|isbn=0857526219}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0241989094|title=The Perfect Life|author=Nuala Ellwood|rating=4|genre=Thrillers|summary=In August 2018 we meet a young woman called Imogen and she's viewing a house in Goring-on-Thames and telling the estate agent about her three children, Lavender, Freddie and Barclay. The boys are a bit of a handful which is why she's making this trip on her own. The house would be perfect for them.

It's Rosevear, a remote and partially forgotten island, survives on luring ships into the rocks and plundering the wrecks. Mira, like her mother before her, is one of the seven who swim out to survey the same month but now we're in Wimbledon ruins – rescuing any survivors and we encounter any treasure that lies within. But when the same young womanCouncil Watch lays a trap to end the wrecking, only this time shethey capture the island's job hunting leader and living in her sister, GeorgieMira'sfather. Desperate to save him from death, spare roomMira makes a bargain with a wreck survivor who is as charming as he is secretive and with only coordinates to guide her, where shesets off in search of a family secret that lies buried deep in the sea. With only nine 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 been since territory, Mira must be determined to stop at nothing to save the future of her home and the ones she broke up with her boyfriend, Connorholds most dear.|isbn=0008664730

|author=Darren ShanJames Sherwood Metts|title=Archibald Lox and the Slides of Bon Repell: Archibald Lox series, Volume 2, book 2 of 3Planet Storyland

|summary=SoThings have been a bit sticky for the Earthlings. Having done the impossible AI and unpicked the lock to the Forgotten Cryptautomation have been proceeding apace, from which the Departed communicate with the Merge, Archie now has ''grop'often replacing jobs they' re paid to think about. But before do and other tasks that, soireestook time to accomplish. Soirees! ArchieJust as they were beginning to get used to all this technological change and starting to think of other, much new ways to Inez's amusementspend time, doesn't even know what one of those isalong came an awful pandemic. But he manages to come through the fancy party unscathedLife was pretty much shut down and, even after an uncomfortable encounter along with Kurtisit, whose fledgling romance with Inez was crushed in all the first volume of this seriesmany daily social interactions on which they depend so heavily. |isbn=B093J9TF731736128426

|isbnauthor=B07GZ81J7CMatthew Tree|title=When Fred the Snake Got Squished and Mended|author=Peter CottonWe'll Never Know

|genre=For SharingLiterary Fiction|summary=Meet Fred. Well, actually, you're going Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be meeting Fred-Fred for reasons which will become all too obvious very quickly. But I'm getting ahead of myself: I'd better tell you different from his father, a bit more about Fred. Fred is a snake drunk and even those chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of us his artistic passions all failed miserably and who have a phobia about snakes are going had endless crises of self confidence. So Tim applied himself to warm to him. He arrived as a present in a box with holes so that he could breathe his studies, cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and immediately became part of the family, to the extent that they would take Fred out with them when they went out for a walk. And that was where the problem started. Fred didn't have any road sense. Or brakesset himself high but achievable ambitions.|isbn= B0CVFXPGP8

|author= Justine Avery A G Slatter|title=The Briar Book of the Dead|rating=5|genre=Fantasy|summary='' There's a part of me that wants to keep this just to myself for however long I can. This secret magic of my own, all mine, at last. I just want to enjoy it for a while.'' Within a remote mountain pass, far away from the world, lies Silverton; a town under the protection of the Briar's, 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 non-witch to be born into her family for generations and as such since she was young, her training as a steward revolved around letters and administration rather than spells and potions. When her grandmother suddenly dies, Ellie's cousin Audra becomes the Briar Witch, the town's leader, and Ellie takes her place beside her. As challenges come her way left, right and centre, Ellie uncovers the rare ability to communicate with the dead, putting her at the heart of a maelstrom of chaos. Reeling from one family secret to another, Ellie must decide who to trust and Naday Meldovadetermine what to do as the Briar witches' legacy, everything they have sacrificed to survive, is under threat.|isbn=1803364548}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1529900360|title= Everybody Pees! (Everybody Potties!)The Ghost Orchid|author=Jonathan Kellerman

|genre=For SharingCrime|summary= Can potty training ever be joyous? It often isnhadn'tbeen Lt Milo Sturgis's fault that Alex Delaware had been badly injured but he felt responsible and even after Alex recovered, as any parent will tell youSturgis was reluctant to ask for his help on difficult cases. But really, why shouldn His assertions that there were only open-and-shut cases which didn't need the help of a psychologist only worked for a while. Finally, it be? We all have to learn about our bodily functions just as we have to learn about everything else when we are small. Why shouldnwas Robin, Delaware't potty training be as much fun ass partner, saywho 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, learning about why though. Two lovers were murdered in the sun 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 it's not the moon take turns in Italian. But which of them was the skyprimary target? |isbn= B098BJZYHH

|isbn=17876344931529395224|title=All Her FaultLetting the Cat Out of the Bag: The Secret Life of a Vet|author=Andrea MaraSion Rowlands|rating=43.5|genre=ThrillersAnimals and Wildlife|summary=It had seemed like one of those serendipitous events which sometimes happenSiôn Rowlands fell into veterinary science accidentally. Marissa Irvine had been hoping that the opportunity would arise for her son, Milo, to go on His father was a play date. She was concerned that he GP and Rowlands didn't have any friends at his new school. Milo would go home from Kerryglen National School want to follow in an affluent Dublin suburb with his classmate Jacob - and Marissa would pick him up from 14 Tudor Grove a little later. What could be better? Onlyfootsteps, particularly when Marissa arrived at he considered the house, expecting to meet Jacobstrain that being on-call put on his father's mother, Jenny, life. When he was seventeen he took the door opportunity of doing work experience with a family friend who was a vet and was answered by Estherconvinced this was the job for him. Before long, who didn't know Jenny or Jacobhe was at Liverpool University. The phone number sheIt hadn'd t - as with so many students - been given for Jenny his dream since he was not recogniseda child. Milo had disappeared. And so had JennyIf anything, he's nannyd wanted to be a professional footballer.

|authorisbn=Claire North0861541774|title=Notes from the Burning AgeA Nye of Pheasants|author=Steve Burrows

|genre=Science FictionCrime|summary=At its core DCI Domenic Jejeune''Notes From the Burning Age'' by Claire North is s close friend and former colleague, Danny Maik, has taken a spy thriller, short holiday in Singapore to meet up with as many double crossesan old ally, interrogations and night time escapes as Le Carre or FlemingGuy Trueman. However, as Maik was involved in a street brawl - he would later maintain that he was facing a man armed with the best novels, it wears many masks a knife - and its most affecting one is that of he killed a new and timely genreGhurka. Initially, cli-fi, or climate change fiction. North's novel tells he faced a charge of a world devastated by climate change where humans manslaughter but evidence came to light that suggested that he might have been forced planned to start anew and live alongside nature without any of murder the man. Now he could be facing the modern and corrupting "luxuries" (read: fossil fuels, weapons of mass destruction, intensive farming)death penalty. There is Domenic Jejeune can do nothing to help as any interference from another police force could provoke a growing unhappiness with this limiting world, diplomatic incident and one group, the Brotherhood, aims to master these processes no matter the cost to the Earthwouldn't help Danny at all.|isbn=0356514757

|author=Eva Bjorg Aegisdottir and Victoria Cribb (translator)Alexander McCall Smith|title=Girls Who LieThe Perfect Passion Company|rating=34.5|genre=ThrillersGeneral Fiction|summary=You might be forgiven for thinking that The Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and operating as an alternative to all the dark corners of Iceland have featured online apps in their noirish thrillers and crime books before nowproviding a more personal, tailored service. You think, seeing on the map that we're set in Akranes, Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and finding it's only twenty kilometres from look after the capital citybusiness, that this author as Ness is clutching at the few final straws left. However just because the book aims planning to take a trip to Canada to get away for the usual small-town feel, it's not just in Akranes that our interests liea while. Six months ago Katie is coming out of a woman failed to turn break up for her date eveningwith a bad boyfriend, and was never seen again. This left a teenaged girl not so jumps at all disappointed that she could now live permanently with the couple who had given her foster care before her mother had asked for the girl back, and a couple of delighted adopterschance to come home to Edinburgh. But it left our three detectives at a quandary – mobile phone use was at a high level until it stopped all of a suddenAnd so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, in one placebringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, thanks to 44 Scotland Street and the woman's car was found miles away Isabel Dalhousie novels, but with some new characters who quickly begin to charm. Katie has no experience in running a second placebusiness, and now, after six monthsor in match-making, the body but Ness has been discovered, full confidence in a thirdher abilities, even more remote place. Meanwhileand there's always her very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, this narrative is interrupted by a confessional monologue from a mother who found herself with heavy post-natal depressionWilliam, and very little maternal feeling in her body. Is the assumption that is so easy for the reader to make the right one?lend a hand…|isbn=191319373X1846976596

|isbn=B0925KS87N0811771741|title=Dead Man's Grave (DS Max Craigie)InstaKnits for Baby|author=Neil LancasterMelissa Leapman

|genre=CrimeCrafts|summary=Tam Hardie had been determined Melissa Leapman's ''InstaKnits for Baby'' gives us a collection of knits from toys to find blankets. Some will be quick knits - others are of the grave - and it took some finding - 'long, cosy afternoons in an overgrown old cemeteryfront of the fire' variety. It was a strange thing for ScotlandThe projects are divided by the time they's premier criminal ll take to complete - less than five hours, five to doten hours, but Tam was getting old ten to twenty hours and there were things he wanted to domore than twenty hours. OnlyAll the projects are attractive, his family didn't hear from him again after he'd said that hemodern and useable. I perhaps show my age when I wonder about 'd found the grave social- the one which said that it shouldn't be opened media- and his three sons began to worry. Tam Junior, Frankie and Dave wouldnworthy projects't normally go to the police but they werenthat't certain where their father had been and they were worrieds me being picky.

|author=Emily CritchleyDean Koontz|title=The Tiny Gestures of Small Flowers|rating=3|genre=General Fiction|summary= The Tiny Gestures of Small Flowers had all the hallmarks of something good. I was intrigued by the plot, liked the design of the book, and thought the author's work sounded interesting. From the outset it all looked incredibly promising. So what on earth went wrong here?|isbn= 1911427091}} {{Frontpage|author=Sarah Langan|title=Good NeighboursBad Weather Friend

|genre=ThrillersParanormal|summary= If you're of Benny is having a terrifically bad day. He loses his job, he loses his fiancee, and his house gets trashed. Oh, and someone has delivered a certain vintagereally weird, disturbing coffin-sized object to his home, and it's hard to read possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the words ''Good Neighbours'' without adding a sing-song ''thing that's when Good Neighbours…become…good friends''has trashed his house! The thing is, Benny is the very last person to deserve all this bad luck. Maple Street He is no Ramsay Street, though, Arlo and Gertie live a world apart from the Melbourne suburbsnice person. A really nice person. They're one of 18 households on So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the crescentdelivery to his house is a new friend, quite new arrivals having moved in a year earlier. They're not quite like all the other families (he's an ex rockerbad weather friend called Spike, she's who has been sent to help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a former beauty queen) but they've made some friends and their kids have settled ingood person. Spike is going to take care of Benny, and itwill certainly take care of Benny's all going ok. Until it isn't. One hotenemies, clammyif he, sticky, sweaty summerBenny, and Harper (a sinkhole opens up in the park across the way. Itwaitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's a revolting mess of dirt and chaos, but for the residents of Maple Street, the worst is yet to comewild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are.|isbn=17890982111662500491

|author=Lisa ThompsonAdam Stower|title=The Small ThingsMurray and Bun|rating=4.5|genre=Confident Readers|summary=Although Anna has friends at school, she feels like she never really fits in. Her family don't have enough money Murray is supposed to let her do after school activitiesbe a humble, tidy and so she feels like her life at home friendly cat, one who is boring in comparison able to theirs. When a new girl joins her classsleep and eat and eat and sleep and, Anna is asked to partner herwell, but things are complicated because whatever takes his fancy next of the new girltwo. But he's a bad magician's cat, Ellieso his favourite bun has been turned into a hyperactive sticky rabbit called Bun, is unwell and so the catflap they both use can't attend school in person. Insteadchuck them out, she joins in with not into the class by using regular back garden, but into a robotworld of frightening adventure and whiffs. Can Anna overcome the challenge of making friends with someone through This time round it drops them into a robotViking land, and where a troll hunter is she even interesting enough expected – well, one much bigger than Murray was, to be a good friend honest, but he's turned up and he'll have to Ellie?do…|isbn=17811296490008561249

|isbn=0008350388B0C47LV1PC|title=We Need to Talk About MoneyFragility|author=Otegha UwagbaMosby Woods|rating=54|genre=Politics and SocietyLiterary Fiction|summary=Can you make a ''To be a dark-skinned Black woman Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, is the question should you make it? Or is the question if you did, would it land? The catch is to that the answer for both could well be seen as less desirable, less hireable, less intelligent and ultimately less valuable than my light-skinned counterparts...'' ''We Need to Talk About Money'' by Otegha Uwagba. no.

''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 BooksellerFragility'' 29 June 2021 Otegha Uwagba came to is set as the UK from Kenya when she was five years old. Her sisters were seven and nine. It was her mother who came firstcity of Portland, with her father joining them later. The family was hard-workingOregon, principled and determined that their children would have cautiously begins to emerge from 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 was ten restrictions imposed during the family acquired a car. For Otegha, education meant a scholarship to a private school in London and then a place at New College, Oxford.covid pandemic

|isbn=17876318691529431735|title=The Rising TideWinter Visitor|author=Sam LloydJames Henry

|genre=ThrillersCrime|summary=Lucy LockeIt's early life hadnFebruary 1991 and Essex is bitingly cold, which made Bruce Hopkins't been easy but shereturn all the more surprising. He'd built been exiled on the Costa del Sol as a good and decent life in the aftermathwanted drug smuggler for a decade. SheThe return has come about because he's now married to Daniel, who cohad a letter from his ex-owns Locke-Povey Marine on Penleith Beachwife, and they live at Wild Ridge on Mortis Point with Billie, Lucysaying that she's daughter ill and Fin, the child she had with Danielhasn't long to live. They have financial difficulties, some caused by Nick Povey, DanielIt's partner hard to feel any sympathy when Hopkins is abducted, stripped to his underwear and so-called best friendsent to a watery grave in the boot of a stolen Ford Sierra. Nick and Daniel have Is it a history together warning from the time they both spent in a children's Spanish gang or a problem closer to home but it's difficult to think that Nick has Daniel's best interests at heart, particularly where Lucy, or money, is concerned.?

|author=Hannah PeckAlex Bell and Tim McDonagh|title=Kate on the CaseThe Glorious Race of Magical Beasts|rating=3.54

|summary=Meet KateEli is a busy lad – by day an apprentice in the wondrous library we start by visiting with him, although I got and in the impression she'd rather be evening a Catherine – helper at the dessert cafe his gran owns and one specific Catherine at thatruns. For Catherine Rodriguez Eli lives with his lovely gran, too – for there is Kate's idol, and a generation missing in the author of our heroine's favourite possession, ''The Special Correspondent Manual''family. Armed with a plucky fatherA few short years ago, that book, and her talking mouse called Rupert, she is all equipped to manage a train ride Eli's parents were both lost to the Arctictitular race, a globe-trotting adventure where all entrants have to see her scientist mother for navigate the first time world in yonksthe company of a magical beast. However, this is This has made the race anathema to the pair – but when a train ride with bad incident at the eatery leads to a differenceconfession from gran, for on board Eli knows his only hope is a greedy-seeming harridan and her catto dare to enter what he most hates, a thief with the sole aim the prize of magic at the end – and two glowing eyes, shining from the darkness in a blink-and-you'll-miss-them style. It's definitely a case for a new young investigative journalist..only thing to possibly save his gran.|isbn=184812970X0571382231

|authorisbn=Darren Shan178763681X|title=Archibald Lox and the Forgotten Crypt: Archibald Lox series, Volume 2, book 1 of 3Knife Skills for Beginners|author=Orlando Murrin|rating=4.5|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=The second trilogy Chef Paul Delamare took a teaching job at a residential cookery school in ShanBelgravia. He didn's t really want to but celebrity chef Christian Wagner had a way of getting both men and women to do what he wanted. Paul ''Mergesomehow'' saga opens with our hero, Archie, back in London in got the world of impression that he'd be at the Born. It's not been easyschool to assist Paul, who had a broken arm, explaining to his foster parents where hebut it didn's been, or slipping back into ordinary life and forgetting about Inez t turn out that way. The teaching - and his other friends in the Merge, but Archie has done problems - are all his best.own. The one thing he hadn't expected was for someone to turn up dead.. well Unfortunately, except for visiting veteran locksmith Winston in Big Ben's clock tower he was the person who discovered the body and except for fiddling with everyone knows that the police consider that sneaky master lock in Seven Dials every time he can sneak awayperson to be the prime suspect.|isbn=B093H8DPQZ

|isbnauthor=0571365884Sarah Marsh|title=My Mess is a Bit A Sign of Life: Adventures in Anxiety|author=Georgia PritchettHer Own|rating=43.5|genre=AutobiographyGeneral Fiction|summary=Georgia Pritchett has always been anxious, even After a bout of scarlet fever as a child, Ellen Lark loses her hearing. She would worry Suddenly plunged into a world of silence, everything about whether her life changes. Living in a time when the monsters under the bed were comfortable: it use of sign language was the sort of life seen as something only savages do, Ellen is sent to a school where if she had nothing is taught to worry about lip read, but physically restrained from signing. From here, she would become anxious but such occasions were few ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the deaf and far betweenusing a system called Visible Speech. On a visit to a therapistAt the same time, as an adultBell is working on other inventions and ideas, when she was completely unable to speak about what was wrong with her it was suggested that she should write it down and ''My Mess is Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a Bit complicated tangle of a Life: Adventures in Anxiety'' is the result - or so we are given to believeespionage.|isbn=1035401614

|authorisbn=Alex Cotter1803816759|title=The House on the EdgeUnravelling|author=Will Gibson

|genre=Confident ReadersScience Fiction|summary=FaithIt's family home 2038 and Joe is teetering on a bored cop policing the edge wealthy and peaceful New York City. Joe longs for a bit of a cliffadventure and to get stuck into some really gritty crime detection. But then something goes horribly wrong with the AI system that now runs everything, making life easier for many, and riots start to spread. Finally, literallyJoe gets to do some real policing. Is that crack in In the garden getting bigger? Is aftermath of the house starting to slope a little? And as the house seems to be falling apart, so rioting global pop star Suki is Faith's family. Her dad has disappeared, kidnapped and her mum Joe is struggling assigned to cope, barely leaving bring her bedhome. So that leaves Faith in charge, taking care of her little brother Noah, taking care of her mum, feeding everyone, getting Noah Joe isn't the only one trying to schoolsave Suki - Dylan, a British superfan and avoiding awkward questions from interfering teachers. Is her little brother okay? Why tech nerd, is he obsessed with what he claims is a ghost in also on the cellarcase. What went wrong? What should she do about Did the house? Can she find a way to raise enough money to fix system fail or was ithacked? WhatAnd how is Suki's happened to her dadkidnapping connected? Why did he disappear? Maybe he'll come back if she manages to get funding for the house? She carries the weight of all these worries on her constantly, and she doesn't know how much longer the cliff will hold together, or how long she can keep on keeping on.|isbn=1788008626

|isbn=00082690411529421284|title=Risk of HarmLaying Out the Bones|author=Lucie WhitehouseKate Webb

|summary=DCI Robin Lyons is back It was one of those flash downpours that the British weather often delivers in her native Birmingham after her less-than-comfortable departure from the Meta heatwave. She might have been reinstated but In a gully, a human skeleton came to the whole episode left a nasty taste in her mouth. She was now working for Detective Chief Superintendent Samir Jaffrey - then surface and forensic testing proved the man body to be Lee Geary, who had broken her heart nearly twenty disappeared nine years beforeearlier. She He'd been a known drug user and her fifteen-year-old daughter had learning disabilities, so it could have moved out been a simple case of her parent's home into a rented house misadventure but thereDI Matt Lockyer wasn's still t convinced. Geary was a difficult situation with her brother Luke who has gone townie, so what was he doing out on Salisbury Plain alone? There are connections to the suicide of his way Holly Gilbert and to make life difficult for Robin since she was a young childtwo other deaths which were not considered suspicious at the time. HeLockyer and DC Gemma Broad of the Major Crimes Review Unit (that's married cold cases to Natalie, now you and has a young child but he's still got it in for Robinme) investigate.

|isbn=17863323880571379559|title=The First Day House of SpringBroken Bricks|author=Nancy TuckerFiona Williams|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersLiterary Fiction|summary=Sometimes I wonder if I take my pleasures too sadly - and ''The First Day House of SpringBroken Bricks'' was one such occasion. The writing is superb and completely compellingthe story of four people. The characterisation is excellent and Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in the house on the plot grips you and won't let goriverbank, built of broken bricks. SoInsubstantial as it might look, whatit's stood the problem? passage of time, storms and floods. WellHer husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, to complete the problem is Chrissiedelivery rounds - and to bring in sufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, the main characterrainbow twins. When we first meet her sheSonny's just eight years old, small for her age and she readily tells us that shecolouring reflects his mother's just killed someone - a two-year-old boyJamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. ShePeople don's completely cold about what shet believe that they're related, much less twins and there's done an assumption when Max is out with her main memory being his mother that whilst she was killing - suffocating - her hands seized up. There's 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?his nanny.

|authorisbn=Catherine Steadman1529425867|title=The Disappearing ActLost and Never Found (A D I Wilkins Mystery)|author=Simon Mason

|genre=ThrillersCrime|summary= British actress Mia Eliot In Oxford, there are two D I Wilkins. Raymond Wilkins is on the cusp of successNigerian descent, Balliol educated and always exquisitely dressed. Great success. If the rumours are true D I Ryan Wilkins, son of Ryan and father of Ryan, award season is going to treat her well, acknowledging her for her latest, critically acclaimed productionnot. She He's going places but so, unfortunately, is her partnernot any of those things. And the places he He's going take him towards lieswhite, deceit and originated from a pretty young trailer park, barely educated (reading's not ''really'' his thing ) and his wardrobe consists mainly of shell suits and trackies. They're usually in the form of his new co-starlime green or acid yellow. It You might wonder if you's re being introduced to a good time police procedural written for Mia to escapelaughs. Well, and pilot season in LA provides you're not. The two men are just different sides of the excusesame policing coin. Sometimes the combination works brilliantly well. Sometimes it's problematic.|isbn=1471189783

|author= Christophe MedlerMosby Woods|title=Madrigal: A Closely Guarded SecretWhirly Man Loses His Turn

|genre=Historical Literary Fiction|summary= Set against The West isn't the backdrop of dominant force it once was. Nobody in the English Civil War, a secret plan (code-named Madrigal) West is quite sure how to mend this or even if mending it is discovered by Sir Robert Douse in the summer best course of 1642action. As Governments are flailing. A war here, a loyal servant of the King, and Head of the Secret Service, it push for climate action there. A feeling that nobody is Robert's duty to uncover the details of the plan and follow the clues to uncover one of the most guarded secrets in history—especially since the plot could affect the Kingactual charge.|isbn=B095HY8SXQ}}{{Frontpage|author=Tasha Suri|title=The Jasmine Throne|rating=4|genre=Fantasy|summary= On the night of her sacred burningImagine then, Princess Malini defies her brother and refuses to step on to the pyrethere was a man with precognition. She is immediately sent to be imprisoned on Imagine the Hirana: an ancient temple that was once filled with strategic advantage in this asset; a community man who can tell you what will happen given any set of people who got powers from the mysterious deathless waterscircumstances. But now That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the temple is nothing more than an overgrown, decaying ruinmost valuable asset in history. One dayImagine then, Malini witnesses a girl kill someone with magicthat this man loses this ability. Instead of reporting her for such a gruesome crime, Malini claims that the girl saved her from an attacker and begs for the girl What would governments do to become her own personal maidservant.get it back?|isbn=0356515648B0C9SNG8R1