132,585
edits
Changes
From TheBookbag
Jump to navigationJump to searchno edit summary
'''Read [[Forthcoming Publications|reviews of books about to be published]].
{{Frontpage
|isbn=183885410X0241636604|title=The Dark RemainsTrading Game: A Confession|author=William McIlvanney Gary Stevenson|rating=4.5|genre=Autobiography|summary=If you were to bring up an image of a city banker in your mind, you're unlikely to think of someone like Gary Stevenson. A hoodie and jeans replaces the pin-stripe suit and his background is the East End, where he was familiar with violence, poverty and Ian Rankininjustice. There was no posh public school on his CV - but he had been to the 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 be stupid. It was his ability at what was, essentially, a card game which got him an internship with Citibank. Eventually, this turned into permanent employment as a trader.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1035021803|title=The Antique Hunter's Guide to Murder|author=C L Miller
|rating=3.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=Bobby Carter was It's twenty years since Freya Lockwood has been back to the English country village where she grew up. She's back now because of a lawyer request for help from her beloved aunt, Carole. Freya's former mentor and consigliere Carole's close friend, Arthur Crockleford, is dead and the circumstances seem suspicious, to one of say the major crime families in nineteen seventies Glasgowleast. DC Jack Laidlaw is on Arthur was the CID team charged with reason why Freya had not been back to the investigationvillage: Arthur, she feels, let her down badly. I say ''on the team'' but Laidlaw never really seems Even though they were in business together as antique hunters, she has not felt able to be a part of itnear the man or pursue the profession she loved. He does his own thingAfter the split, she worked in a cafe, goes his own way met and ''The Dark Remains'' uncovers married James (on the rebound from the truth love of why Bobby Carter's body her life, who was found behind one of Glasgow's seedier pubsmurdered) and Freya and James have now divorced.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1942410255AllTomorrowsFutureCover|title=Tokyo Zangyo (Detective Hiroshi)All Tomorrow's Futures: Fictions that Disrupt|author=Michael PronkoBenjamin Greenaway and Stephen Oram (Editors)|rating=4.5|genre=CrimeScience Fiction|summary=''Zangyo: overtime work, often unpaidOpening up new ways of thinking about the shape of things to come.''
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0241425425Sunny Singh|title=The Man Who Died Twice|author=Richard OsmanHotel Arcadia|rating=43.5|genre=CrimeThrillers |summary=Elizabeth Best was The Hotel Arcadia is a luxury hotel in an unnamed city that has suddenly been violently taken over by a little surprised when she received the letterterrorist group. It came from a man whose body she had helped to pull Hiding from the Thames and terrorists who had never existed but then this are rampaging through, killing everyone on site, there is Sam, a wartime photographer and Abhi, the sort of conundrum which retired spies have to deal with on a regular basishotel manager. When she visits As Abhi continues to try to care remotely for the sender of residents who are still alive in the letter (hotel, he's moved into the Cooper's Chase Retirement Village) it comes as no surprise that it's someone forms a bond with whom she has a long professional history - and Sam who used refuses to be cowed by events, and keeps on venturing out of her husband. Heroom to try to capture what's made a bad mistake - something to do with a mask being removed within the range of a CCTV camera on a raid, a missing twenty-million pounds in diamonds and a few death threatshappened through her photography. He's now in hiding with a young woman called PollyAlthough they only ever talk over the phone, who's his MI5 handler their friendship grows as well as being an incompetent waitressAbhi tries to help her keep safe and they both wait to see if they will be rescued before they are discovered by the terrorists.|isbn=086154742X
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Andrew Sharp1529153298|title=The Chef, the Bird and the BlessingList of Suspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey|rating=45
|genre=General Fiction
|summary= Chef Mlantushi - Mozzy to his employer - It's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher isPrime Minister. (A woman? I mean, in his mindhonestly...) She's not what's worrying Miv's family, the head chef of a safari business catering though. Women have been disappearing. Well, they've been murdered, but to VIP guests in an unnamed African countryhave 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. Mozzy is earnest and dedicated Miv's upset because she's overheard that her father wants to his task and he puts all of himself into creating fine cuisine dishes for move the guests at BOD-W safaris but his dream family 'Down South'. When you're from Yorkshire, Down South is to become the head chef of a restaurant in London or a big American cityfrightening, foreign place, best avoided. Even For Miv, the move would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, and she'll do anything to win a Michelin starprevent that. He is thwarted in this ambition by his boss, Mr Bin (Ben to you and me) who incurs Mozzy She's not worried about the dangers or that her Mum's disapproval for his scruffy ways, his uninterest in his guests and stopped talking - shock, horror - his allowing of bush animals into the houseto anyone.|isbn=B09926MK8H
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Alex Foulkes1398524085|title=Rules for VampiresHas Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter?|author=Nicci French|rating=4.5|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary= Eleonore Von Motteberg (or Charlotte Salter was expected at her husband'Leo' for short) is a Vampires fiftieth birthday party but never turned up. She drinks blood Her children, she sleeps during the daysons Niall, Paul and she can Grimwalk (turning into a flock of bats to travel aroundOllie and her daughter, although not Etty. are all of them remember to come back). Pretty cool stuff. Nowworried but - strangely - her husband, on the night of her hundredth birthnightAlec, she has to go out and hunt her first humanis not. However Shortly afterwards, instead she ends up killing two humans by accident Etty and burning down an orphanage. Oops! And to make things worseGreg, find the ghosts of one of the orphans and the evil master body of Greg's father, Duncan Ackerley, in the orphanage come back to haunt herriver. So, not only does Leo have to team up with It was an easy assumption for the friendly ghost Minna police to stop make that Duncan had murdered Charlie and then committed suicide when he couldn't stand the ghost of the Orphanmaster before he becomes unstoppably powerful, she has to do it all while hiding it from her familyguilt. Did I mention vampires and ghosts hate each other? Yeah, The Salter children are not convinced but there's a reason why there are rules for vampires…|isbn=147119955Xlittle else they can do but get on with their lives and wonder about what really happened.
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Tori Bovalino1035906708|title=The Devil Makes ThreeDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin
|rating=4.5
|genre=TeensGeneral Fiction|summary= Working all summer We tend to think of Maria Callas as Greek, but she was born to Greek parents in her boarding school's library is the last thing Tess Matheson wants Manhattan, New York, in December 1923 and only moved to do — especially Athens when she gets a request for over a hundred books that she has was thirteen. Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to 'Callas' to deliver herself. What makes make it worse is more manageable in the man who requested the books: Mr BirchStates. The boarding school's headmaster, and a man Tess hates. As a petty act of revenge When she was back in Athens - supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for making her find and deliver such a large request, Tess sticks postvoice -it notes on each of she was raised under the books, scribbled with the ugliest insults she can think Nazi occupation by a mother who mercilessly exploited her and made no secret of. They're never meant to reach him, of course. Her plan is to get her anger out like this, and then take them all off before delivering them. No harm done… Or it would be, if someone hadn't delivered them preference for herelder sister, Jackie.|isbn=1789098130
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor= B09BG8V3Q6Christopher Edge|title= Who Needs Nappies? Not Me! (Everybody Potties!)|author= Justine Avery and Seema AmjadBlack Hole Cinema Club|rating=4.5|genre=For SharingConfident Readers|summary= ''Who Needs Nappies? Not Me!'' is the latest release 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'Everybody Potties!'. All big movie fans, they' series from Justine Avery. This series of fun picture books aims re looking forward to take the pain out lots of potty training children exciting films, and replace it with some fun. It's a worthy aimmany, many snacks! However, as any frustrated parent will tell youthe 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
|isbnauthor=B098FFFBH9Rachel Greenlaw|title=Snowcub|author=Graham FulbrightCompass and Blade|rating=43.5|genre=Literary FictionTeens|summary=Fourteen-year-old Rachel is her school's animal rights project leader 'I can hear the song of the sea. The call of the deep, the answering beat in my heart.'' Rosevear, a remote and she partially forgotten island, survives on luring ships into the rocks and plundering the wrecks. Mira, like her mother before her friend are producing , is one of the seven who swim out to survey the ruins – rescuing any survivors and any treasure that lies within. But when the Council Watch lays a competition entry trap to highlight end the way in which human beings exploit wrecking, they capture the animal worldisland's leader and Mira's father. She gets a great deal of support Desperate to save him from her family: father Pip Harrisondeath, Mira makes a bargain with a lecturer at Imperial College, London, mother Kate wreck survivor who is as charming as he is secretive and with only coordinates to guide her twin, Nick. Kate runs the she sets off in search of a family business, a toy shop called Cornucopia secret that lies buried deep in Putneythe sea. With only nine days to unearth what might save her father, which is where we'll meet Rachelas her journey takes her from the watched streets of foreign islands to the heart of the smuggler's main (if unsuspected) source territory, Mira must be determined to stop at nothing to save the future of information: five soft toysher home and the ones she holds most dear.|isbn=0008664730
}}
{{Frontpage
|author= Angharad WalkerJames Sherwood Metts|title= The Ash HousePlanet Storyland|rating= 4.5|genre= Confident Readers|summary= A new boy arrives at The Ash HouseThings have been a bit sticky for the Earthlings. He doesnAI and automation have been proceeding apace, often replacing jobs they't know his name, or why he is there but he is used re paid to do and other tasks that took time to accomplish. Just as they were beginning to the system, get used to different places and different faces. He meets Dom who names him Sol all this technological change and sets out starting to teach him the rules think of The Ash House. These rules centre on a variety of Nicenesses set out by the absent Headmasterother, new ways to spend time, along came an awful pandemic. All children must remember their Niceness Life was pretty much shut down and complete their chores, working as a hive in the smouldering shadows of The Ash House. But soon their easy peace is shattered by the arrival of the Doctor. By the end of the storyalong with it, lives will be changed forever and The Ash House will never be all the same againmany daily social interactions on which they depend so heavily.|isbn=19126269771736128426
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Yancey WilliamsMatthew Tree|title=Crosshairs of the DevilWe'll Never Know
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Award-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is getting on in years and, despite his strenuous objections and thanks to his daughter, finds himself living - or imprisoned, from Eddie's point of view - in room 315 of the Garden of Eden nursing home, with only a trusty nursing aide, Jenkins, for palatable company. Nothing is going Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to keep Eddie be different from his stock-in-trade of writing thoughfather, so here, for his readers, are his wanderings through his life's work.|isbn=0986031658}} {{Frontpage|author=Philip Reeve|title=Utterly Dark and the Face of the Deep|rating=5|genre=Confident Readers|summary=In a word, rich. There is certainly an abundance of riches in this story set on a peculiar island called Wildsea, British but way west, beyond the Scillies. There are troll people on it, and sea-witches, drunk and legends chronic underachiever whose dreams of the Dark family that has to keep watch for magical islands and their monster approaching from even further west, where no ship dare sail. The current Darks are the Watcher, Andrewe, who has to keep notes being exceptional at any of activity from the Hidden Lands, his brother Will who lives in London with too much science in his head to worry about such local yokel superstitions, artistic passions all failed miserably and Andrewe's foundling daughter, who washed up out had endless crises of the sea one day eleven years agoself confidence. But when Andrewe Dark drowns So Tim applied himselfto his studies, both cultivated his sullen brother abilities rather than his daydreams and his curious ward are thrust into the world of protecting their island, like it or notset himself high but achievable ambitions.|isbn=1788452372B0CVFXPGP8
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Erling KaggeA G Slatter|title=Walking: One Step At A TimeThe Briar Book of the Dead
|rating=5
|genre= LifestyleFantasy|summary= Those who have read my reviews before will know that how much I loved '' There's a book is evidenced by the number part of pages with corners turned, so let me start that wants to keep this one with an apology just to the Norfolk Library Service: sorry! myself for however long I forgot it was your book not minecan. In This secret magic of my defenceown, all mine, at last. I will say that as a reader of this type of book there is something connective about noting where prior readers were inspired (provided just want to enjoy it is subtle – I'll allow creased corners, but not scribbles – for the latter we must buy our own copy – which I am about to do as soon as I have finished telling you why)a while.''
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Ian Mark and Louis Ghibault1529900360|title=Monster Hunting For Beginners|rating=4.5|genre=Confident Readers|summary=Meet Jack. Now Jack knows very little about being fearless and nimble and quick, for he's a slight boy, and although he wants for danger and peril and interesting things his dad refuses to let him out of his sight. That's because Jack's mother knew all about monsters, and look what happened to her – she died. Luckily or unluckily then, depending on your point of view, a giant ogre will threaten his aunt when Jack's father also goes AWOL, Jack will fluke the ogre's death, a dwarfish wizard-type will make him an apprentice monster hunter, and he'll be given a book that tells him all he needs to know about the perils he always wanted closer contact with. The book's name? ''Monster Hunting for Beginners''...|isbn=0755501942}}{{FrontpageGhost Orchid|author=Keith Gray|title=The ClimbersJonathan Kellerman
|rating=4
|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=Sully is the best tree climber in the villageIt hadn't been Lt Milo Sturgis's fault that Alex Delaware had been badly injured but he felt responsible and even after Alex recovered, Sturgis was reluctant to ask for his help on difficult cases. He has what His assertions that there were only open-and-shut cases which didn's known amongst t need the kids as 'reach'help of a psychologist only worked for a while. But what happens when a new kid shows up in town? A new kid Finally, called Nottinghamit was Robin, Delaware's partner, who clambers up some of nudged Milo into asking for help again. She knew that the hardest trees with ease? Suddenly Sully is worried that his status is being threatened, and not only that, involvement was something that his chance to name the finalman she loved needed. The next case did look simple, unnamed big tree though. Two lovers were murdered in the park by being swimming pool of a remote property in Bel Air. He was the first heir to conquer an Italian shoe empire and she is married to an extremely rich man and it, might be snatched from his hands's not the Italian. How can Sully stop Nottingham? And will it cost him his best friend, or maybe even all But which of his friends, to do sothem was the primary target?|isbn=1781129991
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Emma Carroll1529395224|title=Letting the Cat Out of the Bag: The Week at World's EndSecret Life of a Vet|author=Sion Rowlands|rating=43.5|genre=Confident ReadersAnimals and Wildlife|summary=First, the titleSiôn Rowlands fell into veterinary science accidentally. We His father was a GP and Rowlands didn're t want to follow in Worldhis footsteps, particularly when he considered the strain that being on-call put on his father's End Close, a mediocre set life. When he was seventeen he took the opportunity of houses, where Stevie (Vie to her friends) finds fun only doing work experience with the a family dog friend who was a vet and with the boy over was convinced this was the roadjob for him. But we could also be Before long, he was at WorldLiverpool University. It hadn's End, because something taking a great chunk of the fun away is the fact that the Cuban Missile Crisis is kicking off. The Soviet boats are getting blockaded t - as America tries to reduce the risk of nuclear missiles offshore, and not much else is able to make the news. That said, Vie has news of her own – Anna, with so many students - been his dream since he was a secretive young woman hiding in their coal shedchild. Anna has If anything, in no short time, taken a strong interest in the American airforce base behind the Close, said shehe'd locate something she wanted and leave, failed to leave, and implied her life was at riskbe a professional footballer. But surely this bit of intrigue has got nothing to do with what the Cold War is doing miles away?|isbn=0571364438
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Kiran Millwood Hargrave and Tom de Freston0861541774|title=Julia and the SharkA Nye of Pheasants|author=Steve Burrows
|rating=4
|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=JuliaDCI Domenic Jejeune's close friend and former colleague, our pre-teen heroineDanny Maik, has been packed off with her parents and their cat from the family home taken a short holiday in SW England Singapore to be lighthousekeepers for a summermeet up with an old ally, Guy Trueman. Maik was involved in the far NE of the Scottish islandsa street brawl - he would later maintain that he was facing a man armed with a knife - and he killed a Ghurka. Here be VikingsInitially, he faced a charge of manslaughter but evidence came to light that kind of Scottish islandsuggested that he might have planned to murder the man. Dad is going to be automating the lantern, which is his specialist thing, while mum will Now he could be leaving her career in algae behind to hunt facing the elusive Greenland sharkdeath penalty. And Julia, well, she will be homesick Domenic Jejeune can do nothing to help as any interference from another police force could provoke a diplomatic incident and alone – until she suddenly finds company one nightwouldn't help Danny at all.|isbn=1510107789
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Freya SampsonAlexander McCall Smith|title=The Last LibraryPerfect Passion Company|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=I am always The Perfect Passion Company is a little nervous dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and operating as an alternative to start a story about a library, since I am a librarian. I always grit my teeth slightly at the thought of all the incoming cardigan-wearing, hair online apps in providing a bunmore personal, cat-owning, glasses on a chain stereotypes! In this story, the main character, June, does put tailored service. Ness has asked her hair in a bun, and she does own a cat (called Alan Bennett), and younger cousin Katie if she has barely any friends could come and spends her evenings eating look after the same Chinese takeaway meal once business, as Ness is planning to take a week whilst reading books alone! But I didn't immediately throw the book trip to Canada to get away for a while. Katie is coming out of the window, because I found I was interested in Junea break up with a bad boyfriend, and why she lived as she did. Her mum used to be a librarian so jumps at the village librarychance to come home to Edinburgh. And so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, but when she got sickbringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, June gave up on going thanks to University 44 Scotland Street and stayed at home the Isabel Dalhousie novels, but with some new characters who quickly begin to take care of her mum, as well as taking on charm. Katie has no experience in running a job as library assistant at the local library. And even though her mum sadly died some years agobusiness, she is still working thereor in match-making, still eating but Ness has full confidence in her mum's favourite takeaway mealabilities, and still reading her mumthere's old books. June is stuckalways her very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, but little does she knowWilliam, everything in her life is about the change.to lend a hand…|isbn=183877369X1846976596
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=00083709820811771741|title=Rock Paper Scissors|author=Alice Feeney|rating=4.5|genre=Thrillers|summary=Amelia Wright is forty-two and it was the staff raffle at Battersea Dogs Home that gave her a weekend away in a converted chapel in Scotland. Her husband, Adam, isn't so keen on the idea. Like Amelia, he knows that their marriage has been under strain: he's a screenwriter and he's never shy of making it clear to Amelia that he'd prefer to spend time with the novels he's hoping to adapt than with her. Amelia's annoyed that he never enquires about how her day has been - and working with the dogs, many of whom have been abused, is never easy. Still - she's won the weekend away, even if it does mean driving InstaKnits for eight hours in her 1978 Morris Minor Traveller with Adam beside her in the passenger seat - and then doing the same thing to come back a couple of days later.}}{{FrontpageBaby|author=Doug Johnstone|title=The Great SilenceMelissa Leapman
|rating=4
|genre=CrimeCrafts|summary=For those who, like me, havenMelissa Leapman's ''InstaKnits for Baby't come across the Skelfs before, I'll risk gives us a collection of knits from toys to blankets. Some will be quick synopsis knits - others are of whothe 's who – although Johnstone does a good job long, cosy afternoons in front of bringing the backstory in without being heavy handed about itfire' variety. Skelf isn The projects are divided by the time they't some fantastic creaturell take to complete - less than five hours, though it sounds as though it ought five to beten hours, it is merely the surname of a family of undertakers. Undertakers ten to twenty hours and private investigatorsmore than twenty hours. Dorothy is All the matriarch – Californian by birth and instinctprojects are attractive, she married a scot modern and ended up helping to run the Edinburgh undertaking firm that had been in the family for generationsuseable. Recently widowed and now involved with a black Swedish police officer. Swedish by nationality. Scottish police. Daughter Jenny, 46, is haunted by her still I perhaps show my age when I wonder about 'social-living husband – a violent escaped prisoner. And grandmedia-daughter is about to graduate with a first-class physics degree and join the academic staff next termworthy projects' but that's me being picky.|isbn=1913193837
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1901514978Dean Koontz|title=There's a Problem With Dad|author=Carlos AlbaThe Bad Weather Friend
|rating=4.5
|genre=General FictionParanormal|summary=Life Benny is different for George Lovelace and he can't really understand whyhaving a terrifically bad day. He's always done everything loses his job, he ought to: steady workerloses his fiancee, and his house gets trashed. Oh, husband and father someone has delivered a really weird, disturbing coffin- sized object to his home, and a father who it's possible that whoever or whatever was always there for school plays and sports daysinside is the thing that has trashed his house! The thing is, Benny is the very last person to deserve all this bad luck. So why He is he never quite in tune with those around him? a nice person. Why does he upset people? A really nice person. Why So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the delivery to his house is someone with such a ''good'' mind unable to progress at work or to relate to his colleagues? Why does he make so many breath-taking gaffes? It's almost become new friend, a cliche these days bad weather friend called Spike, who has been sent to suggest that someone who help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a little different good person. Spike is going to take care of Benny, and will certainly take care of Benny'on the spectrum's enemies, if he, Benny, but George Lovelace has all the symptoms of Aspergerand Harper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's Syndrome: high-functioning autismwild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are.|isbn=1662500491
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Louise CandlishAdam Stower|title=The HeightsMurray and Bun
|rating=4.5
|genre=ThrillersConfident Readers |summary=Ellen doesn't expect Murray is supposed to be a humble, tidy and friendly cat, one who is able to see Kieran that daysleep and eat and eat and sleep and, well, whatever takes his fancy next of the two. She But he's a bad magician's on sitecat, visiting so his favourite bun has been turned into a client for hyperactive sticky rabbit called Bun, and the catflap they both use can chuck them out, not into the regular back garden, but into a world of frightening adventure and whiffs. This time round it drops them into a lighting consultation when she spies him in Viking land, where a building across the way. There are lots of thingstroll hunter is expected – well, lots of peopleone much bigger than Murray was, you might see when you look out across Londonto be honest, but this isnhe't one Ellen expected that day or in fact any other day. Why? Because Kieran has been dead for over two years, s turned up and Ellen knows this for a fact, because she had a hand in his murder.he'll have to do…|isbn=14711834830008561249
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=0008421714B0C47LV1PC|title=Mrs MarchFragility|author=Virginia FeitoMosby Woods|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The problem began just after the publication of George MarchCan you make a '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, 'Yo birthing person'but isn't this joke? And if you could, is the first time he's based a character on question should youmake it?'' She mentioned Or is the question if you did, would it land? The catch is that Johanna, the principal character had answer for both could well be.... no. ''her mannerismsFragility''. Perhaps this would not have mattered, except for the fact that Johanna is set as the whore city of Nantes - ''a weakPortland, plainOregon, detestable, pathetic, unloved, unloveable wretch.''cautiously begins to emerge from the restrictions imposed during the covid pandemic
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=John Boyne1529431735|title=The Echo ChamberWinter Visitor|author=James Henry|rating=54|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=Meet George Cleverley. He It's February 1991 and Essex is self-defined as "one of bitingly cold, which made Bruce Hopkins' return all the few television personalities over the age of fifty without a criminal record"more surprising. He starts this book a bit worried when his mistress tells him she's carrying his child, but then his author wife is getting her kicks with d been exiled on the Ukrainian partner "Strictly Come Dancing" paired her with. They have three children, who are Costa del Sol as a sad-sack with absolutely no social skills whatsoever, wanted drug smuggler for a girl who hangs around with decade. The return has come about because he's had a virtueletter from his ex-signallingwife, keyboard warrior "wokester" who wants to save the worldsaying that she's homeless with out-of-date food, ill and a fit young lad doing the gay hustle thinghasn't long to live. Add in a few other characters – therapists It's hard to feel any sympathy when Hopkins is abducted, lawyers, random transgender types – that all have two very different connections stripped to his life, underwear and you have something that suggests an almost farcical approach sent to a watery grave in the modern worldboot of a stolen Ford Sierra. What suggests the farcical approach even more, however, is the fact this is bloody funny.|isbn=0857526219 Is it a warning from a Spanish gang or a problem closer to home?
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0241989094Alex Bell and Tim McDonagh|title=The Perfect Life|author=Nuala EllwoodGlorious Race of Magical Beasts
|rating=4
|genre=ThrillersConfident Readers|summary=In August 2018 Eli is a busy lad – by day an apprentice in the wondrous library we meet start by visiting with him, and in the evening a young woman called Imogen helper at the dessert cafe his gran owns and she's viewing runs. Eli lives with his lovely gran, too – for there is a house generation missing in Goring-on-Thames and telling the estate agent about her three childrenfamily. A few short years ago, LavenderEli's parents were both lost to the titular race, Freddie and Barclay. The boys are a bit globe-trotting adventure where all entrants have to navigate the world in the company of a handful which is why she's making this trip on her ownmagical beast. The house would be perfect for them. It's This has made the race anathema to the same month pair – but now we're in Wimbledon and we encounter when a bad incident at the same young womaneatery leads to a confession from gran, Eli knows his only this time she's job hunting and living in her sisterhope is to dare to enter what he most hates, Georgie's, spare room, where she's been since she broke up with her boyfriend, Connorthe sole aim the prize of magic at the end – the only thing to possibly save his gran.|isbn=0571382231
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Darren Shan178763681X|title=Archibald Lox and the Slides of Bon Repell: Archibald Lox series, Volume 2, book 2 of 3Knife Skills for Beginners|author=Orlando Murrin|rating=4.5|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=SoChef Paul Delamare took a teaching job at a residential cookery school in Belgravia. Having done the impossible He didn't really want to but celebrity chef Christian Wagner had a way of getting both men and unpicked the lock women to the Forgotten Crypt, from which the Departed communicate with the Merge, Archie now has do what he wanted. Paul ''somehow'grop'got the impression that he' d be at the school to think about. But before thatassist Paul, soirees. Soirees! Archiewho had a broken arm, much to Inez's amusement, doesnbut it didn't even know what turn out that way. The teaching - and the problems - are all his own. The one of those is. But thing he manages hadn't expected was for someone to come through the fancy party unscathedturn up dead. Unfortunately, even after an uncomfortable encounter with Kurtis, whose fledgling romance with Inez he was crushed in the first volume of this seriesperson who discovered the body and everyone knows that the police consider that person to be the prime suspect. |isbn=B093J9TF73
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=B07GZ81J7CSarah Marsh|title=When Fred the Snake Got Squished and Mended|author=Peter CottonA Sign of Her Own|rating=43.5|genre=For SharingGeneral Fiction|summary=Meet Fred. Well, actually, you're going to be meeting Fred-Fred for reasons which will become all too obvious very quickly. But I'm getting ahead After a bout of myself: I'd better tell you scarlet fever as a bit more about Fredchild, Ellen Lark loses her hearing. Fred is Suddenly plunged into a snake and even those world of us who have a phobia silence, everything about snakes are going to warm to himher life changes. He arrived as a present Living in a box with holes so that he could breathe and immediately became part time when the use of the familysign language was seen as something only savages do, Ellen is sent to the extent that they would take Fred out with them when they went out for a walkschool where she is taught to lip read, but physically restrained from signing. And that was where From here, she ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the problem starteddeaf and using a system called Visible Speech. Fred didn't have any road sense. Or brakesAt the same time, Bell is working on other inventions and ideas, and Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a complicated tangle of espionage.|isbn=1035401614
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn= Justine Avery and Naday Meldova1803816759|title= Everybody Pees! (Everybody Potties!)The Unravelling|author=Will Gibson
|rating=4
|genre=For SharingScience Fiction|summary= Can potty training ever be joyous? It often isn'ts 2038 and Joe is a bored cop policing the wealthy and peaceful New York City. Joe longs for a bit of adventure 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, as any parent will tell youand riots start to spread. But reallyFinally, why shouldn't it be? We all have Joe gets to learn about our bodily functions just as we have do some real policing. In the aftermath of the rioting global pop star Suki is kidnapped and Joe is assigned to learn about everything else when we are smallbring her home. Why shouldnJoe isn't potty training be as much fun asthe only one trying to save Suki - Dylan, saya British superfan and tech nerd, learning about why is also on the sun and case. What went wrong? Did the moon take turns in the skysystem fail or was it hacked? And how is Suki's kidnapping connected? |isbn= B098BJZYHH
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=17876344931529421284|title=All Her FaultLaying Out the Bones|author=Andrea MaraKate Webb
|rating=4.5
|genre=ThrillersCrime|summary=It had seemed like was one of those serendipitous events which sometimes happen. Marissa Irvine had been hoping flash downpours that the opportunity would arise for her son, Milo, to go on British weather often delivers in a play dateheatwave. She was concerned that he didn't have any friends at his new school. Milo would go home from Kerryglen National School in an affluent Dublin suburb with his classmate Jacob - and Marissa would pick him up from 14 Tudor Grove In a little later. What could be better? Onlygully, when Marissa arrived at a human skeleton came to the surface and forensic testing proved the house, expecting body to meet Jacob's mother, Jenny, the door was answered by Estherbe Lee Geary, who didn't know Jenny or Jacobhad disappeared nine years earlier. The phone number sheHe'd been given for Jenny a known drug user and had learning disabilities, so it could have been a simple case of misadventure but DI Matt Lockyer wasn't convinced. Geary was a townie, so what was he doing out on Salisbury Plain alone? There are connections to the suicide of Holly Gilbert and to two other deaths which were not recognisedconsidered suspicious at the time. Milo had disappeared. And so had JennyLockyer and DC Gemma Broad of the Major Crimes Review Unit (that's nannycold cases to you and me) investigate.
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Claire North0571379559|title=Notes from the Burning AgeThe House of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams|rating=45|genre=Science Literary Fiction|summary=At its core ''Notes From the Burning AgeThe House of Broken Bricks'' by Claire North is a spy thrillerthe story of four people. Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, with as many double crossesshe lives in the house on the riverbank, interrogations and night time escapes as Le Carre or Flemingbuilt of broken bricks. However, Insubstantial as with the best novelsit might look, it wears many masks and its most affecting one is that of a new and timely genre, cli-fi, or climate change fiction. North's novel tells of a world devastated by climate change where humans have been forced to start anew and live alongside nature without any of stood the modern and corrupting "luxuries" (read: fossil fuels, weapons passage of mass destructiontime, intensive farming)storms and floods. There is a growing unhappiness with this limiting world Her husband, and one groupRichard, the Brotherhoodstruggles to grow his vegetables, aims to master these processes no matter complete the cost delivery rounds - and to bring in sufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, the Earthrainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. People don't believe that they're related, much less twins and there's an assumption when Max is out with his mother that she's his nanny.|isbn=0356514757
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=1529425867|title=Eva Bjorg Aegisdottir Lost and Victoria Cribb Never Found (translatorA D I Wilkins Mystery)|titleauthor=Girls Who LieSimon Mason|rating=34.5|genre=ThrillersCrime|summary=You might be forgiven for thinking that all the dark corners In Oxford, there are two D I Wilkins. Raymond Wilkins is of Iceland have featured in their noirish thrillers Nigerian descent, Balliol educated and crime books before nowalways exquisitely dressed. You think, seeing on the map that we're set in AkranesD I Ryan Wilkins, son of Ryan and finding it's only twenty kilometres from the capital cityfather of Ryan, that this author is clutching at the few final straws leftnot. However just because the book aims for the usual small-town feel, itHe's not just in Akranes that our interests lieany of those things. Six months ago He's white, originated from a woman failed to turn up for her date eveningtrailer park, and was never seen again. This left a teenaged girl barely educated (reading's not 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, ''really'' his thing) and a couple his wardrobe consists mainly of delighted adoptersshell suits and trackies. But it left our three detectives at a quandary – mobile phone use was at a high level until it stopped all of a sudden, They're usually in one place, the womanlime green or acid yellow. You might wonder if you's car was found miles away in re being introduced to a second place, and now, after six months, the body has been discovered, in a third, even more remote placepolice procedural written for laughs. MeanwhileWell, this narrative is interrupted by a confessional monologue from a mother who found herself with heavy post-natal depression, and very little maternal feeling in her bodyyou're not. Is The two men are just different sides of the assumption that is so easy for same policing coin. Sometimes the reader to make the right one?|isbn=191319373Xcombination works brilliantly well. Sometimes it's problematic.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=B0925KS87NMosby Woods|title=Dead A Whirly Man's Grave (DS Max Craigie)|author=Neil LancasterLoses His Turn
|rating=4
|genre=CrimeLiterary Fiction|summary=Tam Hardie had been determined to find The West isn't the grave - and dominant force it took some finding - once was. Nobody in an overgrown old cemeterythe West is quite sure how to mend this or even if mending it is the best course of action. It was Governments are flailing. A war here, a strange thing push for Scotland's premier criminal to do, but Tam was getting old and climate action there were things he wanted to do. Only, his family didn't hear from him again after he'd said A feeling that he'd found the grave - the one which said that it shouldn't be opened - and his three sons began to worrynobody is in actual charge. Tam JuniorImagine then, Frankie and Dave wouldn't normally go to the police but they weren't certain where their father had been and they were worriedthere was a man with precognition.}}{{Frontpage|author=Emily Critchley|title=The Tiny Gestures of Small Flowers|rating=3|genre=General Fiction|summary= The Tiny Gestures of Small Flowers had all Imagine the hallmarks strategic advantage in this asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of something goodcircumstances. I was intrigued by the plotThat man would be valuable, liked right? Perhaps the design of the bookmost valuable asset in history. Imagine then, and thought the author's work sounded interestingthat this man loses this ability. From the outset What would governments do to get it all looked incredibly promising. So what on earth went wrong hereback?|isbn= 1911427091B0C9SNG8R1
}}
