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'''Read [[Forthcoming Publications|reviews of books about to be published]].
{{Frontpage
|isbn=15293793850241636604|title=The Madness of Crowds (Chief Inspector Gamache)Trading Game: A Confession|author=Louise PennyGary 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 injustice. 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=In the Canadian village of Three Pines, weIt're post-pandemic: the scars are still there but life is starting to get s twenty years since Freya Lockwood has been back to normalthe English country village where she grew up. The villagers are beginning to return to the Bistro and the AubergeShe's back now because of a request for help from her beloved aunt, Carole. TheyFreya're visiting each others former mentor and Carole's homes close friend, Arthur Crockleford, is dead and having friends and relatives the circumstances seem suspicious, to staysay the least. A young Sudanese woman who has Arthur was the reason why Freya had not been nominated for back to the Nobel Peace Prize is one such visitor and village: Arthur, she feels, let her down badly. Even though they were in business together as antique hunters, she soon proves that has not all saints are necessarily pleasant people felt able to be around - near the man or pursue the profession she loved. After the split, she worked in a bit like Vincent Gilbertcafe, known in met and married James (on the village as rebound from the Asshole Saintlove of her life, who was murdered) and Freya and James have now divorced.
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{{Frontpage
|isbn= B09F4CTKJRAllTomorrowsFutureCover|title= Flights for FreedomAll Tomorrow's Futures: Fictions that Disrupt|author= Steven BurgauerBenjamin Greenaway and Stephen Oram (Editors)|rating=4.5|genre=Historical Science Fiction|summary=It's 'Opening up new ways of thinking about the later stages shape of World War things to come.'' I and the United States has just entered the conflict've heard it said that 'technology' is what happens after you're eighteen. Petrol Petronus is Well, I must confess that there have been more than a young American who has signed few decades of technology in my lifetime. I've kept up and joined reasonably well with what's advantageous to me but I'm left with the 17 Aero Squadronfeeling that it's all getting away from me. This company was the first US Aero Squadron to be trained in CanadaSome of it is - frankly - quite frightening. Of course, I could research the first to be attached to possibilities and the RAF probabilities and end up down rabbit holes without really understanding whether I'm reading someone who knows what they're talking about or the first to be sent into the skies to fight the Germans latest conspiracy theorist. I needed people I knew I could trust and who could deliver information in active combat. But before that can happen, Petrol has to master flying the notoriously difficult but majestic Sopwith Camela way I could understand.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=183885410XSunny Singh|title=The Dark Remains|author=William McIlvanney and Ian RankinHotel Arcadia
|rating=3.5
|genre=CrimeThrillers |summary=Bobby Carter was The Hotel Arcadia is a lawyer and consigliere to one of the major crime families luxury hotel in nineteen seventies Glasgowan unnamed city that has suddenly been violently taken over by a terrorist group. DC Jack Laidlaw Hiding from the terrorists who are rampaging through, killing everyone on site, there is on the CID team charged with Sam, a wartime photographer and Abhi, the investigationhotel manager. I say ''on As Abhi continues to try to care remotely for the residents who are still alive in the team'' but Laidlaw never really seems hotel, he forms a bond with Sam who refuses to be a part cowed by events, and keeps on venturing out of ither room to try to capture what's happened through her photography. He does his own thingAlthough they only ever talk over the phone, goes his own way their friendship grows as Abhi tries to help her keep safe and ''The Dark Remains'' uncovers they both wait to see if they will be rescued before they are discovered by the truth of why Bobby Carter's body was found behind one of Glasgow's seedier pubsterrorists.|isbn=086154742X
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=19424102551529153298|title=Tokyo Zangyo (Detective Hiroshi)The List of Suspicious Things|author=Michael PronkoJennie Godfrey|rating=4.5|genre=CrimeGeneral Fiction|summary=It''Zangyo: overtime works 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. (A woman? I mean, often unpaidhonestly...) She's not what' Its worrying Miv's the culturefamily, though. Women have been disappearing. Well, they've been murdered, isnbut to have 'disappeared' doesn't it? sound quite so frightening. The hours for which youMiv's upset because she're paid are really just a statement of s overheard that her father wants to move the minimum youfamily 'll be required to do: youDown South'll work more hours to get the job done and done to the satisfaction of bullies like Shigeru Onizuka. When he was found dead in front of Senden Centralyou's headquarters in Tokyo there was nothing in the way of regret or grief, even re from his familyYorkshire, but there was Down South is a mild curiosity as to whether he'd jumped from the roof of the building or been assisted in his descentfrightening, foreign place, best avoided. Gossip revolves around For Miv, the fact that he left the roof at the exact same spot that an employeemove would mean leaving her best friend, Mayu YamaseSharon, had committed suicide some three years earlierand she'll do anything to prevent that. She'd accused Onizuka of bullying her and forcing s not worried about the dangers or that her Mum's stopped talking - to work an unreasonable amount of overtimeanyone.
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=02414254251398524085|title=The Man Who Died TwiceHas Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter?|author=Richard OsmanNicci French|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=Elizabeth Best Charlotte Salter was a little surprised when she received the letterexpected at her husband's fiftieth birthday party but never turned up. It came from a man whose body she had helped to pull from the Thames Her children, sons Niall, Paul and Ollie and who had never existed her daughter, Etty. are all worried but then this - strangely - her husband, Alec, is the sort of conundrum which retired spies have to deal with on a regular basisnot. When she visits Shortly afterwards, Etty and Greg, find the sender body of the letter (heGreg's moved into father, Duncan Ackerley, in the Cooper's Chase Retirement Village) it comes as no surprise river. It was an easy assumption for the police to make that itDuncan had murdered Charlie and then committed suicide when he couldn's someone with whom she has a long professional history - and who used to be her husbandt stand the guilt. HeThe Salter children are not convinced but there's made a bad mistake - something to little else they can do but get on with a mask being removed within the range of a CCTV camera on a raid, a missing twenty-million pounds in diamonds their lives and a few death threats. He's now in hiding with a young woman called Polly, who's his MI5 handler as well as being an incompetent waitresswonder about what really happened.
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Andrew Sharp1035906708|title=The Chef, the Bird and the BlessingDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary= Chef Mlantushi - Mozzy We tend to his employer - isthink of Maria Callas as Greek, but she was born to Greek parents in his mindManhattan, New York, the head chef of a safari business catering to VIP guests in an unnamed African country. Mozzy is earnest December 1923 and dedicated only moved to his task and he puts all of himself into creating fine cuisine dishes for the guests at BOD-W safaris Athens when she was thirteen. Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but his dream is her father changed it to become 'Callas' to make it more manageable in the head chef of a restaurant in London or a big American city. Even to win a Michelin starStates. He is thwarted When she was back in this ambition Athens - supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for her voice - she was raised under the Nazi occupation by his boss, Mr Bin (Ben to you a mother who mercilessly exploited her and me) who incurs Mozzy's disapproval made no secret of her preference for his scruffy waysher elder sister, his uninterest in his guests and - shock, horror - his allowing of bush animals into the houseJackie.|isbn=B09926MK8H
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Alex FoulkesChristopher Edge|title=Rules for VampiresBlack Hole Cinema Club|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary= Eleonore Von Motteberg (or 'Leo' Lucas and his friends are all booked in for short) is a Vampire. She drinks bloodmovie marathon at their local cinema, she sleeps during a place that has the day, and she can Grimwalk (turning into a flock nickname of bats to travel around'The Black Hole'. All big movie fans, although not all of them remember they're looking forward to come back). Pretty cool stuff. Now, on the night lots of her hundredth birthnightexciting films, she has to go out and hunt her first human. many, many snacks! However, instead she ends as the movie starts, they very quickly realise that something about this new film format is very different, and they are swept up killing two humans by accident and burning down into an orphanageadventure they couldn't even imagine. Oops! And But as they lurch from one film genre to make things worsethe next, the ghosts of one of the orphans and the evil master of the orphanage come can they figure out what on earth is going on? Will they ever get back to haunt her. So, not only does Leo have to team up with the friendly ghost Minna to stop the ghost of the Orphanmaster before he becomes unstoppably powerfulcinema, she has and to do it all while hiding it from her family. Did I mention vampires and ghosts hate each othertheir real lives? Yeah, there's a reason why there are rules for vampires…|isbn=147119955X1839942738
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Tori BovalinoRachel Greenlaw|title=The Devil Makes ThreeCompass and Blade|rating=43.5
|genre=Teens
|summary= Working all summer in her boarding school's library is 'I can hear the song of the last thing Tess Matheson wants to do — especially when she gets a request for over a hundred books that she has to deliver herselfsea. What makes it worse is The call of the man who requested deep, the books: Mr Birchanswering beat in my heart. The boarding school's headmaster' Rosevear, a remote and partially forgotten island, survives on luring ships into the rocks and a man Tess hatesplundering the wrecks. As a petty act Mira, like her mother before her, is one of revenge for making her find the seven who swim out to survey the ruins – rescuing any survivors and deliver such any treasure that lies within. But when the Council Watch lays a large request, Tess sticks post-it notes on each of trap to end the bookswrecking, scribbled with they capture the ugliest insults she can think ofisland's leader and Mira's father. They're never meant Desperate to reach save himfrom death, of course. Her plan Mira makes a bargain with a wreck survivor who is as charming as he is secretive and with only coordinates to get guide her anger out like this, and then take them all she sets off before delivering themin search of a family secret that lies buried deep in the sea. No harm done… Or it would beWith only nine days to unearth what might save her father, if someone hadnas her journey takes her from the watched streets of foreign islands to the heart of the smuggler't delivered them for s territory, Mira must be determined to stop at nothing to save the future of herhome and the ones she holds most dear.|isbn=17890981300008664730
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor= B09BG8V3Q6James Sherwood Metts|title= Who Needs Nappies? Not Me! (Everybody Potties!)|author= Justine Avery and Seema AmjadPlanet Storyland
|rating=4.5
|genre=For SharingConfident Readers|summary= ''Who Needs Nappies? Not Me!'' is the latest release in Things have been a bit sticky for the Earthlings. AI and automation have been proceeding apace, often replacing jobs they''Everybody Potties!'' series from Justine Averyre paid to do and other tasks that took time to accomplish. This series Just as they were beginning to get used to all this technological change and starting to think of fun picture books aims other, new ways to take the pain out of potty training children spend time, along came an awful pandemic. Life was pretty much shut down and replace , along with it with some fun. It's a worthy aim, as any frustrated parent will tell you. all the many daily social interactions on which they depend so heavily.|isbn=1736128426
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=B098FFFBH9Matthew Tree|title=Snowcub|author=Graham FulbrightWe'll Never Know
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Fourteen-year-old Rachel is her school's animal rights project leader and she and her friend are producing a competition entry Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to highlight the way in which human beings exploit the animal world. She gets a great deal of support be different from her family: his father Pip Harrison, a lecturer at Imperial College, London, mother Kate drunk and her twin, Nick. Kate runs the family business, a toy shop called Cornucopia in Putney, which is where we'll meet Rachel's main (if unsuspected) source chronic underachiever whose dreams of information: five soft toys.}}{{Frontpage|author= Angharad Walker|title= The Ash House|rating= 5|genre= Confident Readers|summary= A new boy arrives being exceptional at The Ash House. He doesn't know any of his name, or why he is there but he is used to the system, used to different places artistic passions all failed miserably and different faces. He meets Dom who names him Sol and sets out to teach him the rules had endless crises of The Ash Houseself confidence. These rules centre on a variety of Nicenesses set out by the absent Headmaster. All children must remember their Niceness and complete their choresSo Tim applied himself to his studies, 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 story, lives will be changed forever cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and The Ash House will never be the same againset himself high but achievable ambitions.|isbn=1912626977B0CVFXPGP8
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Yancey WilliamsA G Slatter|title=Crosshairs The Briar Book of the Devil|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 to keep Eddie from his stock-in-trade of writing though, 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 DeepDead
|rating=5
|genre=Confident ReadersFantasy|summary=In '' There's a word, richpart of me that wants to keep this just to myself for however long I can. There is certainly an abundance This secret magic of riches in this story set on a peculiar island called Wildseamy own, British but way westall mine, beyond the Scilliesat last. There are troll people on I just want to enjoy itfor a while.'' Within a remote mountain pass, and sea-witchesfar away from the world, and legends lies Silverton; a town under the protection of the Dark Briar's, a family that 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 keep watch be born into her family for magical islands generations and their monster approaching from even further westas such since she was young, where no ship dare sailher training as a steward revolved around letters and administration rather than spells and potions. The current Darks are When her grandmother suddenly dies, Ellie's cousin Audra becomes the WatcherBriar Witch, Andrewethe town's leader, who has and Ellie takes her place beside her. As challenges come her way left, right and centre, Ellie uncovers the rare ability to keep notes communicate with the dead, putting her at the heart of a maelstrom of activity chaos. Reeling from the Hidden Landsone family secret to another, his brother Will Ellie must decide who lives in London with too much science in his head to worry about such local yokel superstitions, trust and Andrewedetermine what to do as the Briar witches's foundling daughterlegacy, who washed up out of the sea one day eleven years ago. But when Andrewe Dark drowns himselfeverything they have sacrificed to survive, both his sullen brother and his curious ward are thrust into the world of protecting their island, like it or notis under threat.|isbn=17884523721803364548
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Erling Kagge1529900360|title=Walking: One Step At A TimeThe Ghost Orchid|author=Jonathan Kellerman|rating=54|genre= LifestyleCrime|summary= Those who have read my reviews before will know It hadn't been Lt Milo Sturgis's fault that how much I loved a book is evidenced by the number of pages with corners turnedAlex Delaware had been badly injured but he felt responsible and even after Alex recovered, so let me start this one with an apology Sturgis was reluctant to the Norfolk Library Service: sorry! I forgot it was your book not mineask for his help on difficult cases. In my defence, I will say His assertions that as a reader of this type of book there is something connective about noting where prior readers were inspired (provided only open-and-shut cases which didn't need the help of a psychologist only worked for a while. Finally, it is subtle – Iwas Robin, Delaware'll allow creased cornerss partner, but not scribbles – who nudged Milo into asking for help again. She knew that the involvement was something that the latter we must buy our own copy – which I am about to do as soon as I have finished telling you why)man she loved needed. Erligg Kagge is a Norwegian explorer who has walked to the South Pole The next case did look simple, though. Two lovers were murdered in the North Pole and the summit swimming pool of Everesta remote property in Bel Air. He knows a thing or two about walking. However, this isn't a travelogue about any of those epic journeys, it was the heir to an Italian shoe empire and she is instead a thoughtful exploration of what it means married to walk. It is a plenitude of unnumbered essays about walking. There is no 'contents' page an extremely rich man and I havenit't counteds not the Italian. In small format paperback, each essay is only a few pages long. Perhaps then, better thought But which of as a meditation rather than an essay.|isbn=0241357705them was the primary target?
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Ian Mark and Louis Ghibault1529395224|title=Monster Hunting For BeginnersLetting the Cat Out of the Bag: The Secret Life of a Vet|author=Sion Rowlands|rating=43.5|genre=Confident ReadersAnimals and Wildlife|summary=Meet JackSiôn Rowlands fell into veterinary science accidentally. Now Jack knows very little about being fearless His father was a GP and nimble and quickRowlands didn't want to follow in his footsteps, for particularly when heconsidered the strain that being on-call put on his father's life. When he was seventeen he took the opportunity of doing work experience with a slight boy, family friend who was a vet and although he wants was convinced this was the job 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 Before long, and look what happened to her – she diedhe was at Liverpool University. Luckily or unluckily then, depending on your point of view, a giant ogre will threaten It hadn't - as with so many students - been his aunt when Jack's father also goes AWOL, Jack will fluke the ogre's death, dream since he was a dwarfish wizard-type will make him an apprentice monster hunterchild. If anything, and he'll d wanted to be given a book that tells him all he needs to know about the perils he always wanted closer contact withprofessional footballer. The book's name? ''Monster Hunting for Beginners''...|isbn=0755501942
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Keith Gray0861541774|title=The ClimbersA Nye of Pheasants|author=Steve Burrows
|rating=4
|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=Sully is the best tree climber in the village. He has whatDCI Domenic Jejeune's known amongst the kids as 'reach'. But what happens when close friend and former colleague, Danny Maik, has taken a new kid shows up short holiday in town? A new kid, called Nottingham, who clambers Singapore to meet up some of the hardest trees with ease? Suddenly Sully is worried an old ally, Guy Trueman. Maik was involved in a street brawl - he would later maintain that his status is being threatenedhe was facing a man armed with a knife - and he killed a Ghurka. Initially, and not only he faced a charge of manslaughter but evidence came to light that, suggested that his chance he might have planned to name murder the final, unnamed big tree in man. Now he could be facing the park by being the first death penalty. Domenic Jejeune can do nothing to conquer it, might be snatched help as any interference from his handsanother police force could provoke a diplomatic incident and wouldn't help Danny at all. How can Sully stop Nottingham? And will it cost him his best friend, or maybe even all of his friends, to do so?|isbn=1781129991
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{{Frontpage
|author=Emma CarrollAlexander McCall Smith|title=The Week at World's EndPerfect Passion Company|rating=4.5|genre=Confident ReadersGeneral Fiction|summary=FirstThe Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and operating as an alternative to all the title. We're online apps in World's End Close, providing a mediocre set of housesmore personal, where Stevie (Vie to tailored service. Ness has asked her friends) finds fun only with the family dog younger cousin Katie if she could come and with the boy over look after the road. But we could also be at World's Endbusiness, because something taking as Ness is planning to take a great chunk of the fun trip to Canada to get away for a while. Katie is coming out of a break up with a bad boyfriend, and so jumps at the fact that the Cuban Missile Crisis is kicking offchance to come home to Edinburgh. The Soviet boats are getting blockaded as America tries And so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, thanks to reduce 44 Scotland Street and the risk of nuclear missiles offshoreIsabel Dalhousie novels, and not much else is able but with some new characters who quickly begin to make the newscharm. That said, Vie Katie has news of her own – Anna, no experience in running a secretive young woman hiding in their coal shed. Anna hasbusiness, or in no short timematch-making, taken a strong interest but Ness has full confidence in the American airforce base behind the Closeher abilities, said sheand there'd locate something she wanted s always her very helpful (and leaverather handsome) neighbour, failed to leaveWilliam, and implied her life was at risk. But surely this bit of intrigue has got nothing to do with what the Cold War is doing miles away?lend a hand…|isbn=05713644381846976596
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Kiran Millwood Hargrave and Tom de Freston0811771741|title=Julia and the SharkInstaKnits for Baby|author=Melissa Leapman
|rating=4
|genre=Confident ReadersCrafts|summary=Julia, our pre-teen heroine, has been packed off with her parents and their cat from the family home in SW England to be lighthousekeepers Melissa Leapman's ''InstaKnits for Baby'' gives us a summer, in the far NE collection of the Scottish islandsknits from toys to blankets. Here Some will be Vikingsquick knits - others are of the 'long, that kind cosy afternoons in front of Scottish islandthe fire' variety. Dad is going The projects are divided by the time they'll take to be automating the lanterncomplete - less than five hours, which is his specialist thingfive to ten hours, while mum will be leaving her career in algae behind ten to hunt the elusive Greenland sharktwenty hours and more than twenty hours. And Julia, wellAll the projects are attractive, she will be homesick modern and alone – until she suddenly finds company one nightuseable. I perhaps show my age when I wonder about 'social-media-worthy projects' but that's me being picky.|isbn=1510107789
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{{Frontpage
|author=Freya SampsonDean Koontz|title=The Last LibraryBad Weather Friend|rating=4.5|genre=General FictionParanormal|summary=I am always Benny is having a little nervous to start a story about a libraryterrifically bad day. He loses his job, he loses his fiancee, since I am a librarianand his house gets trashed. I always grit my teeth slightly at the thought of the incoming cardigan-wearing Oh, hair in and someone has delivered a bunreally weird, catdisturbing coffin-owningsized object to his home, glasses on a chain stereotypesand it's possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the thing that has trashed his house! In The thing is, Benny is the very last person to deserve all this story, bad luck. He is a nice person. A really nice person. So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the main character, June, does put her hair in delivery to his house is a bunnew friend, and she does own a cat (bad weather friend called Alan Bennett)Spike, and she who has barely any friends and spends her evenings eating the same Chinese takeaway meal once been sent to help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a week whilst reading books alone! But I didn't immediately throw the book out of the window, because I found I was interested in June, and why she lived as she didgood person. Her mum used Spike is going to be a librarian at the village librarytake care of Benny, but when she got sick, June gave up on going to University and stayed at home to will certainly take care of her mumBenny's enemies, as well as taking on a job as library assistant at the local library. And even though her mum sadly died some years agoif he, she is still working there, still eating her mum's favourite takeaway mealBenny, and still reading her mumHarper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's old books. June is stuck, but little does she know, everything in her life is about the changewild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are.|isbn=183877369X1662500491
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0008370982Adam Stower|title=Rock Paper Scissors|author=Alice FeeneyMurray and Bun
|rating=4.5
|genre=ThrillersConfident Readers |summary=Amelia Wright Murray is forty-two supposed to be a humble, tidy and friendly cat, one who is able to sleep and eat and eat and sleep and it was the staff raffle at Battersea Dogs Home that gave her a weekend away in a converted chapel in Scotland. Her husband, Adamwell, isn't so keen on whatever takes his fancy next of the ideatwo. Like Amelia, he knows that their marriage has been under strain: But he's a screenwriter and hebad magician'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 cat, so his favourite bun has been - turned into a hyperactive sticky rabbit called Bun, and working with the dogscatflap they both use can chuck them out, many not into the regular back garden, but into a world of whom have been abusedfrightening adventure and whiffs. This time round it drops them into a Viking land, where a troll hunter is never easy. Still - sheexpected – well, one much bigger than Murray was, to be honest, but he's won the weekend away, even if it does mean driving for eight hours in her 1978 Morris Minor Traveller with Adam beside her in the passenger seat - turned up and then doing the same thing he'll have to come back a couple of days later.do…|isbn=0008561249
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Doug JohnstoneB0C47LV1PC|title=The Great SilenceFragility|author=Mosby Woods
|rating=4
|genre=CrimeLiterary Fiction|summary=For those who, like me, havenCan you make a 't come across the Skelfs before, I'll risk a quick synopsis of whoYo birthing person's who – although Johnstone does a good job of bringing the backstory in without being heavy handed about it. Skelf isn't some fantastic creature, though it sounds as though it ought to bejoke? And if you could, it is merely the surname of a family of undertakers. Undertakers and private investigators. Dorothy question should you make it? Or is the matriarch – Californian by birth and instinctquestion if you did, she married a scot and ended up helping to run the Edinburgh undertaking firm would it land? The catch is that had been in the family answer for generationsboth could well be.. Recently widowed and now involved with a black Swedish police officer. Swedish by nationality. Scottish policeno. Daughter Jenny ''Fragility'' is set as the city of Portland, 46Oregon, is haunted by her still-living husband – a violent escaped prisoner. And grand-daughter is about cautiously begins to graduate with a first-class physics degree and join emerge from the restrictions imposed during the academic staff next term.|isbn=1913193837covid pandemic
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=19015149781529431735|title=There's a Problem With DadThe Winter Visitor|author=Carlos AlbaJames Henry|rating=4.5|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=Life It's February 1991 and Essex is different for George Lovelace and he canbitingly cold, which made Bruce Hopkins't really understand whyreturn all the more surprising. He's always done everything he ought to: steady worker, husband and father - and d been exiled on the Costa del Sol as a father who was always there wanted drug smuggler for school plays and sports daysa decade. So why is The return has come about because he never quite in tune with those around him? Why does he upset people? Why is someone with such 's had a letter from his ex-wife, saying that she's ill and hasn'good'' mind unable t long to progress at work or to relate to his colleagues? Why does he make so many breath-taking gaffes? live. It's almost become a cliche these days hard to suggest that someone who feel any sympathy when Hopkins is abducted, stripped to his underwear and sent to a little different is 'on the spectrum', but George Lovelace has all watery grave in the symptoms boot of Asperger's Syndrome: high-functioning autisma stolen Ford Sierra. Is it a warning from a Spanish gang or a problem closer to home?
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{{Frontpage
|author=Louise CandlishAlex Bell and Tim McDonagh|title=The HeightsGlorious Race of Magical Beasts|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersConfident Readers|summary=Ellen doesn't expect to see Kieran that Eli is a busy lad – by dayan apprentice in the wondrous library we start by visiting with him, and in the evening a helper at the dessert cafe his gran owns and runs. She's on site Eli lives with his lovely gran, visiting a client too – for there is a lighting consultation when she spies him generation missing in a building across the wayfamily. There are lots of things A few short years ago, lots of peopleEli's parents were both lost to the titular race, you might see when you look out across London, but this isn't one Ellen expected that day or a globe-trotting adventure where all entrants have to navigate the world in fact any other daythe company of a magical beast. Why? Because Kieran This has been dead for over two yearsmade the race anathema to the pair – but when a bad incident at the eatery leads to a confession from gran, and Ellen Eli knows this for a facthis only hope is to dare to enter what he most hates, because she had a hand in with the sole aim the prize of magic at the end – the only thing to possibly save his murdergran.|isbn=14711834830571382231
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=0008421714178763681X|title=Mrs MarchKnife Skills for Beginners|author=Virginia FeitoOrlando Murrin|rating=4.5|genre=Literary FictionCrime|summary=The problem began just after the publication of George MarchChef Paul Delamare took a teaching job at a residential cookery school in Belgravia. He didn's most successful novel t really want to date. Everyone but Mrs March (we know her first name only on the last page) seemed celebrity chef Christian Wagner had a way of getting both men and women to either be reading it or had already done sodo what he wanted. 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, Paul ''somehow'but isn't this got the first time impression that he's based d be at the school to assist Paul, who had a character on you?broken arm, but it didn'' She mentioned t turn out that Johanna, way. The teaching - and the principal character had 'her mannerisms'problems - are all his own. The one thing he hadn't expected was for someone to turn up dead. Perhaps this would not have matteredUnfortunately, except for he was the person who discovered the body and everyone knows that the fact police consider that Johanna is person to be the whore of Nantes - ''a weak, plain, detestable, pathetic, unloved, unloveable wretchprime suspect.''
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{{Frontpage
|author=John BoyneSarah Marsh|title=The Echo ChamberA Sign of Her Own|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Meet George Cleverley. He is self-defined After a bout of scarlet fever as "one 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 child, but then his author wife is getting her kicks with the Ukrainian partner "Strictly Come Dancing" paired Ellen Lark loses her withhearing. They have three children, who are a sad-sack with absolutely no social skills whatsoever, a girl who hangs around with Suddenly plunged into a virtue-signalling, keyboard warrior "wokester" who wants to save the world's homeless with out-of-date foodsilence, and a fit young lad doing the gay hustle thingeverything about her life changes. Add Living in a few other characters – therapiststime when the use of sign language was seen as something only savages do, lawyersEllen is sent to a school where she is taught to lip read, random transgender types – that all have two very different connections to his lifebut physically restrained from signing. From here, she ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the deaf and you have something that suggests an almost farcical approach to the modern worldusing a system called Visible Speech. What suggests At the farcical approach even moresame time, howeverBell is working on other inventions and ideas, is the fact this is bloody funnyand Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a complicated tangle of espionage.|isbn=08575262191035401614
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=02419890941803816759|title=The Perfect LifeUnravelling|author=Nuala EllwoodWill Gibson
|rating=4
|genre=ThrillersScience Fiction|summary=In August 2018 we meet a young woman called Imogen and sheIt's viewing 2038 and Joe is a house in Goring-on-Thames and telling bored cop policing the estate agent about her three children, Lavender, Freddie wealthy and Barclaypeaceful New York City. The boys are Joe longs for a bit of a handful which is why she's 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 this trip on her ownlife easier for many, and riots start to spread. The house would be perfect for themFinally, Joe gets to do some real policing. It's In the same month but now we're in Wimbledon and we encounter aftermath of the same young woman, only this time she's job hunting rioting global pop star Suki is kidnapped and living in Joe is assigned to bring her sister, Georgiehome. Joe isn'st the only one trying to save Suki - Dylan, spare rooma British superfan and tech nerd, where sheis also on the case. What went wrong? Did the system fail or was it hacked? And how is Suki's been since she broke up with her boyfriend, Connor.kidnapping connected?
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Darren Shan1529421284|title=Archibald Lox and Laying Out the Slides of Bon Repell: Archibald Lox series, Volume 2, book 2 of 3Bones|author=Kate Webb
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=SoIt was one of those flash downpours that the British weather often delivers in a heatwave. Having done In a gully, a human skeleton came to the impossible surface and unpicked forensic testing proved the lock body to the Forgotten Cryptbe Lee Geary, from which the Departed communicate with the Merge, Archie now has ''grop'' to think aboutwho had disappeared nine years earlier. But before that, soirees. Soirees! Archie, much to Inez He's amusementd been a known drug user and had learning disabilities, doesnso it could have been a simple case of misadventure but DI Matt Lockyer wasn't even know convinced. Geary was a townie, so what one of those is. But was he manages doing out on Salisbury Plain alone? There are connections to come through the fancy party unscathed, even after an uncomfortable encounter with Kurtis, whose fledgling romance with Inez was crushed in suicide of Holly Gilbert and to two other deaths which were not considered suspicious at the first volume time. Lockyer and DC Gemma Broad of this seriesthe Major Crimes Review Unit (that's cold cases to you and me) investigate. |isbn=B093J9TF73
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=B07GZ81J7C0571379559|title=When Fred the Snake Got Squished and MendedThe House of Broken Bricks|author=Peter CottonFiona Williams|rating=4.5|genre=For SharingLiterary Fiction|summary=Meet Fred''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the story of four people. WellTess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, actuallybut instead, she lives in the house on the riverbank, you're going to be meeting Fred-Fred for reasons which will become all too obvious very quicklybuilt of broken bricks. But IInsubstantial as it might look, it'm getting ahead s stood the passage of myself: I'd better tell you a bit more about Fredtime, storms and floods. Fred is a snake Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, to complete the delivery rounds - and even those of us who have a phobia about snakes are going to warm to himbring in sufficient money. He arrived as a present in a box with holes so that he could breathe They have twin boys - Sonny and immediately became part of the familyMax, to the extent rainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. People don't believe that they would take Fred 're related, much less twins and there's an assumption when Max is out with them when they went out for a walk. And his mother that was where the problem started. Fred didnshe't have any road sense. Or brakess his nanny.
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn= Justine Avery and Naday Meldova1529425867|title= Everybody Pees! Lost and Never Found (Everybody Potties!A D I Wilkins Mystery)|rating=4|genre=For Sharing|summary= Can potty training ever be joyous? It often isn't, as any parent will tell you. But really, why shouldn't 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 shouldn't potty training be as much fun as, say, learning about why the sun and the moon take turns in the sky? |isbn= B098BJZYHH}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1787634493|title=All Her Fault|author=Andrea MaraSimon Mason
|rating=4.5
|genre=ThrillersCrime|summary=It had seemed like one In Oxford, there are two D I Wilkins. Raymond Wilkins is of those serendipitous events which sometimes happenNigerian descent, Balliol educated and always exquisitely dressed. Marissa Irvine had been hoping that the opportunity would arise for her D I Ryan Wilkins, sonof Ryan and father of Ryan, Milo, to go on a play dateis not. She was concerned that he didnHe't have s not any friends at his new schoolof those things. Milo would go home He's white, originated from Kerryglen National School in an affluent Dublin suburb with a trailer park, barely educated (reading's not ''really'' his thing) and his classmate Jacob - wardrobe consists mainly of shell suits and Marissa would pick him up from 14 Tudor Grove a little latertrackies. What could be better? They're usually in lime green or acid yellow. Only, when Marissa arrived at the house, expecting You might wonder if you're being introduced to meet Jacob's mother, Jenny, the door was answered by Esthera police procedural written for laughs. Well, who didnyou't know Jenny or Jacobre not. The phone number she'd been given for Jenny was not recognisedtwo men are just different sides of the same policing coin. Milo had disappearedSometimes the combination works brilliantly well. And so had JennySometimes it's nannyproblematic.
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{{Frontpage
|author=Claire NorthMosby Woods|title=Notes from the Burning AgeA Whirly Man Loses His Turn
|rating=4
|genre=Science Literary Fiction|summary=At its core The West isn''Notes From t the dominant force it once was. Nobody in the Burning Age'' by Claire North West is a spy thriller, with as many double crosses, interrogations and night time escapes as Le Carre quite sure how to mend this or Fleming. However, as with even if mending it is the best novels, it wears many masks and its most affecting one is that course of a new and timely genre, cli-fiaction. Governments are flailing. A war here, or climate change fiction. North's novel tells of a world devastated by push for climate change where humans have been forced to start anew and live alongside nature without any of the modern and corrupting "luxuries" (read: fossil fuels, weapons of mass destruction, intensive farming)action there. There A feeling that nobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, there was a growing unhappiness man with precognition. Imagine the strategic advantage in this limiting world, and one groupasset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the Brotherhoodmost valuable asset in history. Imagine then, aims that this man loses this ability. What would governments do to master these processes no matter the cost to the Earth.get it back?|isbn=0356514757B0C9SNG8R1
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