Changes

|authorisbn=Greg James and Chris Smith0241636604|title=The Great Dream Robbery|rating=5|genre=Confident Readers|summary=Maya's father is a professor who invented an amazing dream machine. But something went wrong, and now he can't wake up. Or at least, that's what Maya has been told. In a rather strange dream one night Maya makes a new friend, and discovers that the only way to save her dad may be by being asleep. Cue one madcap action adventure story where dreams and reality collide...really...and there's everything from llamas and bananas, dream machines made from hairdresser cast-offs, to a talking cat called Bin Bag!|isbn=024147051X}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1800464495|title= 100 Ways in 100 Days to Teach Your Baby MathsTrading Game: Support All Areas of Your Baby’s Development by Nurturing a Love of MathsA Confession|author=Emma SmithGary Stevenson

|genre=Children's Non-FictionAutobiography|summary=''Babies seem If you were to be born with bring up an amazing number sense: understanding shapes image of a city banker in the wombyour mind, being aware you're unlikely to think of quantities at seven hours oldsomeone like Gary Stevenson. A hoodie and jeans replaces the pin-stripe suit and his background is the East End, assessing probability at six months oldwhere he was familiar with violence, poverty and comprehending addition and subtraction at nine months oldinjustice.'' Did you know this? I didn't! How about: ''Maths ability There was no posh public school on entry his CV - but he had been to school the London School of Economics. Stevenson is bright - extremely bright - and he has a strong predictor facility with numbers which most of later achievement, double us can only envy. He also realised that of literacy skillsmost rich people expect poor people to be stupid.'' I didn't know this either! I think most parents are aware that giving your children a good start in literacy - reading stories It was his ability at what was, teaching pen gripsessentially, singing rhymes - gives children a solid foundation when they start schoolcard game which got him an internship with Citibank. But do we think the same way about maths Eventually, beyond counting? I don't think we do, in part because so many of us are afraid of maths. But why are we? Most of us use maths in daily life without realising and it follows that giving our children this turned into permanent employment as a similar pre-school grounding will be just as beneficialtrader.

|isbn=15293793851035021803|title=The Madness of Crowds (Chief Inspector Gamache)Antique Hunter's Guide to Murder|author=Louise PennyC L Miller|rating=43.5

|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.

|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.

|isbnauthor=183885410XSunny Singh|title=The Dark Remains|author=William McIlvanney and Ian RankinHotel Arcadia

|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

|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.

|isbn=02414254251398524085|title=The Man Who Died TwiceHas Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter?|author=Richard OsmanNicci French|rating=4.5

|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.

|authorisbn=Andrew Sharp1035906708|title=The Chef, the Bird and the BlessingDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin|rating=4.5

|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

|author=Alex FoulkesChristopher Edge|title=Rules for VampiresBlack Hole Cinema Club|rating=4.5

|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

|author=Tori BovalinoRachel Greenlaw|title=The Devil Makes ThreeCompass and Blade|rating=43.5

|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

|isbnauthor= B09BG8V3Q6James Sherwood Metts|title= Who Needs Nappies? Not Me! (Everybody Potties!)|author= Justine Avery and Seema AmjadPlanet Storyland

|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

|isbnauthor=B098FFFBH9Matthew Tree|title=Snowcub|author=Graham FulbrightWe'll Never Know

|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 drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at Imperial College, London, mother Kate any of his artistic passions all failed miserably and her twin, Nickwho had endless crises of self confidence. Kate runs the family businessSo Tim applied himself to his studies, a toy shop called Cornucopia in Putney, which is where we'll meet Rachel's main (if unsuspected) source of information: five soft toyscultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and set himself high but achievable ambitions.|isbn= B0CVFXPGP8

|author= Angharad WalkerA G Slatter|title= The Ash HouseBriar Book of the Dead|rating= 5|genre= Confident ReadersFantasy|summary= A new boy arrives '' 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 The Ash Houselast. I just want to enjoy it for a while. He doesn't know his name' Within a remote mountain pass, or why he is there but he is used to far away from the systemworld, used to different places and different faces. He meets Dom who names him Sol and sets out to teach him lies Silverton; a town under the rules protection of The Ash House. These rules centre on the Briar's, a variety family of Nicenesses set out by witches who protect the absent Headmastertown and the wider world from the Darklands. All children must remember their Niceness Though she has always wished for magic, Ellie Briar is the first non-witch to be born into her family for generations and complete their choresas such since she was young, working her training as a hive in steward revolved around letters and administration rather than spells and potions. When her grandmother suddenly dies, Ellie's cousin Audra becomes the smouldering shadows of The Ash HouseBriar Witch, the town's leader, and Ellie takes her place beside her. But soon their easy peace is shattered by As challenges come her way left, right and centre, Ellie uncovers the arrival of rare ability to communicate with the Doctor. By dead, putting her at the end heart of the storya maelstrom of chaos. Reeling from one family secret to another, lives will be changed forever Ellie must decide who to trust and The Ash House will never be determine what to do as the same againBriar witches' legacy, everything they have sacrificed to survive, is under threat.|isbn=19126269771803364548

|authorisbn=Yancey Williams1529900360|title=Crosshairs of the DevilThe Ghost Orchid|author=Jonathan Kellerman|rating=4.5|genre=Literary FictionCrime|summary=Award-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is getting on in years It hadn't been Lt Milo Sturgis's fault that Alex Delaware had been badly injured but he felt responsible andeven after Alex recovered, despite Sturgis was reluctant to ask for his strenuous objections help on difficult cases. His assertions that there were only open-and thanks to his daughter, finds himself living - or imprisoned, from Eddieshut cases which didn's point of view - in room 315 of t need the Garden help of Eden nursing home, with a psychologist only worked for a trusty nursing aidewhile. Finally, it was Robin, JenkinsDelaware's partner, who nudged Milo into asking for palatable companyhelp again. She knew that the involvement was something that the man she loved needed. The next case did look simple, though. Nothing Two lovers were murdered in the swimming pool of a remote property in Bel Air. He was the heir to an Italian shoe empire and she is going married to keep Eddie from his stock-in-trade of writing though, so here, for his readers, are his wanderings through his lifean extremely rich man and it's worknot the Italian.|isbn=0986031658 But which of them was the primary target?}}

|authorisbn=Philip Reeve1529395224|title=Utterly Dark and Letting the Face Cat Out of the DeepBag: The Secret Life of a Vet|author=Sion Rowlands|rating=3.5|genre=Confident ReadersAnimals and Wildlife|summary=In Siôn Rowlands fell into veterinary science accidentally. His father was a word, rich. There is certainly an abundance of riches GP and Rowlands didn't want to follow in this story set on a peculiar island called Wildseahis footsteps, British but way west, beyond particularly when he considered the Scillies. There are troll people strain that being on it, and sea-witches, and legends of the Dark family that has to keep watch for magical islands and their monster approaching from even further west, where no ship dare sailcall put on his father's life. The current Darks are When he was seventeen he took the Watcher, Andrewe, who has to keep notes opportunity of activity from the Hidden Lands, his brother Will doing work experience with a family friend who lives in London with too much science in his head to worry about such local yokel superstitions, was a vet and Andrewe's foundling daughter, who washed up out of was convinced this was the sea one day eleven years agojob for him. But when Andrewe Dark drowns himself Before long, both he was at Liverpool University. It hadn't - as with so many students - been his sullen brother and his curious ward are thrust into the world of protecting their islanddream since he was a child. If anything, like it or nothe'd wanted to be a professional footballer.|isbn=1788452372

|authorisbn=Erling Kagge0861541774|title=Walking: One Step At A TimeNye of Pheasants|author=Steve Burrows|rating=54|genre= LifestyleCrime|summary= Those who have read my reviews before will know that how much I loved DCI Domenic Jejeune's close friend and former colleague, Danny Maik, has taken a book is evidenced by the number of pages short holiday in Singapore to meet up with corners turnedan old ally, so let me start this one Guy Trueman. Maik was involved in a street brawl - he would later maintain that he was facing a man armed with an apology to the Norfolk Library Service: sorry! I forgot it was your book not minea knife - and he killed a Ghurka. In my defence Initially, I will say that as he faced a reader charge of this type of book there is something connective about noting where prior readers were inspired (provided it is subtle – I'll allow creased corners, manslaughter but not scribbles – for the latter we must buy our own copy – which I am about evidence came to do as soon as I light that suggested that he might have finished telling you why). Erligg Kagge is a Norwegian explorer who has walked planned to murder the South Pole, man. Now he could be facing the North Pole and the summit of Everestdeath penalty. He knows a thing or two about walking. However, this isn't a travelogue about Domenic Jejeune can do nothing to help as any of those epic journeys, it is instead a thoughtful exploration of what it means to walk. It is interference from another police force could provoke a plenitude of unnumbered essays about walking. There is no 'contents' page diplomatic incident and I havenwouldn't countedhelp Danny at all. In small format paperback, each essay is only a few pages long. Perhaps then, better thought of as a meditation rather than an essay.|isbn=0241357705

|author=Ian Mark and Louis GhibaultAlexander McCall Smith|title=Monster Hunting For BeginnersThe Perfect Passion Company

|genre=Confident ReadersGeneral Fiction|summary=Meet Jack. Now Jack knows very little about being fearless and nimble and quick, for he's The Perfect Passion Company is a slight boydating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and although he wants for danger and peril and interesting things his dad refuses operating as an alternative to let him out of his sight. That's because Jack's mother knew all about monstersthe online apps in providing a more personal, tailored service. Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and look what happened after the business, as Ness is planning to her – she diedtake a trip to Canada to get away for a while. Luckily or unluckily then, depending on your point Katie is coming out of view, a giant ogre will threaten his aunt when Jack's father also goes AWOLbreak up with a bad boyfriend, Jack will fluke and so jumps at the ogre's deathchance to come home to Edinburgh. And so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, a dwarfish wizard-type will make him bringing us to an apprentice monster hunterEdinburgh we already love, thanks to 44 Scotland Street and he'll be given a book that tells him all he needs to know about the perils he always wanted closer contact Isabel Dalhousie novels, but withsome new characters who quickly begin to charm. The book Katie has no experience in running a business, or in match-making, but Ness has full confidence in her abilities, and there's name? ''Monster Hunting for Beginners''...always her very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, William, to lend a hand…|isbn=07555019421846976596

|authorisbn=Keith Gray0811771741|title=The ClimbersInstaKnits for Baby|author=Melissa Leapman

|genre=Confident ReadersCrafts|summary=Sully is Melissa Leapman's ''InstaKnits for Baby'' gives us a collection of knits from toys to blankets. Some will be quick knits - others are of the best tree climber 'long, cosy afternoons in front of the villagefire' variety. He has what The projects are divided by the time they's known amongst ll take to complete - less than five hours, five to ten hours, ten to twenty hours and more than twenty hours. All the kids as projects are attractive, modern and useable. I perhaps show my age when I wonder about 'social-media-worthy projects'reachbut that's me being picky. But what happens when }}{{Frontpage|author=Dean Koontz|title=The Bad Weather Friend|rating=4.5|genre=Paranormal|summary=Benny is having a new kid shows up in town? A new kidterrifically bad day. He loses his job, he loses his fiancee, and his house gets trashed. Oh, called Nottinghamand someone has delivered a really weird, who clambers up some of the hardest trees with ease? Suddenly Sully is worried that disturbing coffin-sized object to his status is being threatenedhome, and not only it's possible that, whoever or whatever was inside is the thing that has trashed his chance to name the finalhouse! The thing is, unnamed big tree in Benny is the park by being very last person to deserve all this bad luck. He is a nice person. A really nice person. So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the first delivery to conquer ithis house is a new friend, a bad weather friend called Spike, might be snatched who has been sent to help him since Benny is clearly under attack from his handsnefarious forces for being a good person. How can Sully stop Nottingham? And Spike is going to take care of Benny, and will it cost him his best friendcertainly take care of Benny's enemies, if he, or maybe even all of his friendsBenny, to do so?and Harper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are.|isbn=17811299911662500491

|author=Emma CarrollAdam Stower|title=The Week at World's EndMurray and Bun|rating=4.5|genre=Confident Readers|summary=FirstMurray is supposed to be a humble, the title. We're in World's End Closetidy and friendly cat, a mediocre set of houses, where Stevie (Vie one who is able to her friends) finds fun only with the family dog sleep and eat and eat and sleep and with , well, whatever takes his fancy next of the boy over the roadtwo. But we could also be at Worldhe's a bad magician's Endcat, because something taking so his favourite bun has been turned into a great chunk of the fun away is the fact that hyperactive sticky rabbit called Bun, and the Cuban Missile Crisis is kicking off. The Soviet boats are getting blockaded as America tries to reduce the risk of nuclear missiles offshorecatflap they both use can chuck them out, and not much else is able to make into the news. That saidregular back garden, Vie has news but into a world of her own – Anna, a secretive young woman hiding in their coal shedfrightening adventure and whiffs. Anna has, in no short This timeround it drops them into a Viking land, taken where a strong interest in the American airforce base behind the Closetroll hunter is expected – well, said she'd locate something she wanted and leaveone much bigger than Murray was, failed to leavebe honest, but he's turned up and implied her life was at risk. But surely this bit of intrigue has got nothing he'll have to do with what the Cold War is doing miles away?do…|isbn=05713644380008561249

|authorisbn=Kiran Millwood Hargrave and Tom de FrestonB0C47LV1PC|title=Julia and the SharkFragility|author=Mosby Woods

|genre=Confident ReadersLiterary Fiction|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 for Can you make a summer''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, in is the far NE of question should you make it? Or is the Scottish islands. Here be Vikingsquestion if you did, would it land? The catch is that kind of Scottish islandthe answer for both could well be.... no. Dad  ''Fragility'' is going to be automating set as the lanterncity of Portland, which is his specialist thingOregon, while mum will be leaving her career in algae behind cautiously begins to hunt emerge from the elusive Greenland shark. And Julia, well, she will be homesick and alone – until she suddenly finds company one night.|isbn=1510107789restrictions imposed during the covid pandemic

|authorisbn=Freya Sampson1529431735|title=The Last LibraryWinter Visitor|author=James Henry

|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=I am always a little nervous to start a story about a libraryIt's February 1991 and Essex is bitingly cold, since I am a librarianwhich made Bruce Hopkins' return all the more surprising. I always grit my teeth slightly at He'd been exiled on the thought of the incoming cardigan-wearing, hair in Costa del Sol as a bun, cat-owning, glasses on wanted drug smuggler for a chain stereotypes! In this story, the main character, June, does put her hair in decade. The return has come about because he's had a bunletter from his ex-wife, and saying that she does own a cat (called Alan Bennett), 's ill 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 didnhasn't immediately throw the book out of the window, because I found I was interested in June, and why she lived as she didlong to live. Her mum used It's hard to be a librarian at the village library, but feel any sympathy when she got sickHopkins is abducted, June gave up on going stripped to University his underwear and stayed at home sent 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 mum's favourite takeaway meal, and still reading her mum's old books. June is stuck, but little does she know, everything watery grave in her life is about the changeboot of a stolen Ford Sierra.|isbn=183877369X Is it a warning from a Spanish gang or a problem closer to home?

|isbnauthor=0008370982Alex Bell and Tim McDonagh|title=Rock Paper Scissors|author=Alice FeeneyThe Glorious Race of Magical Beasts|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersConfident Readers|summary=Amelia Wright Eli is forty-two a busy lad – by day an apprentice in the wondrous library we start by visiting with him, and it was in the staff raffle evening a helper at Battersea Dogs Home that gave her a weekend away in a converted chapel in Scotlandthe dessert cafe his gran owns and runs. Her husbandEli lives with his lovely gran, Adam, isn't so keen on too – for there is a generation missing in the ideafamily. Like AmeliaA few short years ago, he knows that their marriage has been under strain: heEli's parents were both lost to the titular race, a screenwriter and he's never shy of making it clear globe-trotting adventure where all entrants have to Amelia that he'd prefer to spend time with navigate the world in the novels he's hoping to adapt than with hercompany of a magical beast. Amelia's annoyed that he never enquires about how her day This has been - and working with made the race anathema to the pair – but when a bad incident at the dogs, many of whom have been abusedeatery leads to a confession from gran, Eli knows his only hope is never easy. Still - she's won the weekend awayto dare to enter what he most hates, even if it does mean driving for eight hours in her 1978 Morris Minor Traveller with Adam beside her in the passenger seat - and then doing sole aim the prize of magic at the end – the same only thing to come back a couple of days laterpossibly save his gran.|isbn=0571382231

|authorisbn=Doug Johnstone178763681X|title=The Great SilenceKnife Skills for Beginners|author=Orlando Murrin

|summary=For those who, like me, haven't come across the Skelfs before, I'll risk Chef Paul Delamare took a quick synopsis of who's who – although Johnstone does teaching job at a good job of bringing the backstory residential cookery school in without being heavy handed about itBelgravia. Skelf isn He didn't some fantastic creature, though it sounds as though it ought really want to be, it is merely the surname of but celebrity chef Christian Wagner had a family way of undertakers. Undertakers getting both men and private investigatorswomen to do what he wanted. Dorothy is Paul ''somehow'' got the impression that he'd be at the matriarch – Californian by birth and instinctschool to assist Paul, she married who had a scot broken arm, but it didn't turn out that way. The teaching - and ended the problems - are all his own. The one thing he hadn't expected was for someone to turn up helping to run dead. Unfortunately, he was the person who discovered the Edinburgh undertaking firm body and everyone knows that had been in the family for generations. Recently widowed 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 about consider that person to graduate with a first-class physics degree and join be the academic staff next termprime suspect.|isbn=1913193837

|isbnauthor=1901514978Sarah Marsh|title=There's a Problem With Dad|author=Carlos AlbaA Sign of Her Own|rating=43.5

|summary=Life is different for George Lovelace and he can't really understand whyAfter a bout of scarlet fever as a child, Ellen Lark loses her hearing. He's always done Suddenly plunged into a world of silence, everything he ought to: steady worker, husband and father - and a father who was always there for school plays and sports daysabout her life changes. So why is he never quite Living in tune with those around him? Why does he upset people? Why a time when the use of sign language was seen as something only savages do, Ellen is someone with such sent to a ''good'' mind unable school where she is taught to progress at work or to relate to his colleagues? lip read, but physically restrained from signing. Why does he make so many breath-taking gaffes? It's almost become a cliche these days to suggest that someone From here, she ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who is has been teaching the deaf and using a little different system called Visible Speech. At the same time, Bell is 'working on the spectrum'other inventions and ideas, but George Lovelace has all the symptoms and Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a complicated tangle of Asperger's Syndrome: high-functioning autismespionage.|isbn=1035401614

|authorisbn=Louise Candlish1803816759|title=The HeightsUnravelling|author=Will Gibson|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersScience Fiction|summary=Ellen doesn't expect to see Kieran that day. SheIt's on site, visiting 2038 and Joe is a client bored cop policing the wealthy and peaceful New York City. Joe longs for a lighting consultation when she spies him in a building across bit of adventure and to get stuck into some really gritty crime detection. But then something goes horribly wrong with the wayAI system that now runs everything, making life easier for many, and riots start to spread. There are lots of thingsFinally, lots Joe gets to do some real policing. In the aftermath of people, you might see when you look out across London, but this the rioting global pop star Suki is kidnapped and Joe is assigned to bring her home. Joe isn't the only one Ellen expected that day or in fact any other day. Why? Because Kieran has been dead for over two yearstrying to save Suki - Dylan, a British superfan and Ellen knows this for a facttech nerd, because she had a hand in his murderis also on the case.|isbn=1471183483What went wrong? Did the system fail or was it hacked? And how is Suki's kidnapping connected?

|isbn=00084217141529421284|title=Mrs MarchLaying Out the Bones|author=Virginia FeitoKate Webb

|genre=Literary FictionCrime|summary=The problem began just after It was one of those flash downpours that the publication of George March's most successful novel to dateBritish weather often delivers in a heatwave. Everyone but Mrs March (we know her first name only on In a gully, a human skeleton came to the surface and forensic testing proved the last page) seemed body to either be reading it or Lee Geary, who had already done sodisappeared nine years earlier. Every day Mrs March went to the local patisserie to buy olive bread but on that particular morningHe'd been a known drug user and had learning disabilities, Patricia asked, as she was wrapping the bread, ''so it could have been a simple case of misadventure but isnDI Matt Lockyer wasn't this the first time convinced. Geary was a townie, so what was he's based a character doing out on youSalisbury Plain alone?'' She mentioned that Johanna, There are connections to the suicide of Holly Gilbert and to two other deaths which were not considered suspicious at the principal character had 'her mannerisms''time. Perhaps this would not have mattered, except for Lockyer and DC Gemma Broad of the fact Major Crimes Review Unit (that Johanna is the whore of Nantes - ''a weak, plain, detestable, pathetic, unloved, unloveable wretchs cold cases to you and me) investigate.''

|authorisbn=John Boyne0571379559|title=The Echo ChamberHouse of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams

|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Meet George Cleverley. He ''The House of Broken Bricks'' is self-defined as "one of the few television personalities over the age story of fifty without a criminal record"four people. He starts this book a bit worried when his mistress tells him she Tess Hembry's carrying his childroots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but then his author wife is getting her kicks with instead, she lives in the house on the Ukrainian partner "Strictly Come Dancing" paired her withriverbank, built of broken bricks. They have three children, who are a sad-sack with absolutely no social skills whatsoever Insubstantial as it might look, a girl who hangs around with a virtue-signalling, keyboard warrior "wokester" who wants to save the worldit's homeless with out-stood the passage of-date foodtime, storms and a fit young lad doing the gay hustle thingfloods. Add in a few other characters – therapists Her husband, lawyersRichard, random transgender types – that all have two very different connections struggles to grow his lifevegetables, to complete the delivery rounds - and you to bring in sufficient money. They have something that suggests an almost farcical approach to twin boys - Sonny and Max, the modern worldrainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. What suggests the farcical approach even more, however People don't believe that they're related, much less twins and there's an assumption when Max is the fact this is bloody funnyout with his mother that she's his nanny.|isbn=0857526219

|isbn=02419890941529425867|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 Lost 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 the same month but now we're in Wimbledon and we encounter the same young woman, only this time she's job hunting and living in her sister, Georgie's, spare room, where she's been since she broke up with her boyfriend, Connor.}}{{FrontpageNever Found (A D I Wilkins Mystery)|author=Darren Shan|title=Archibald Lox and the Slides of Bon Repell: Archibald Lox series, Volume 2, book 2 of 3Simon Mason

|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=SoIn Oxford, there are two D I Wilkins. Having done the impossible Raymond Wilkins is of Nigerian descent, Balliol educated and always exquisitely dressed. D I Ryan Wilkins, son of Ryan and unpicked the lock to the Forgotten Cryptfather of Ryan, is not. He's not any of those things. He's white, originated from which the Departed communicate with the Mergea trailer park, Archie now has barely educated (reading's not 'grop'really' to think about' his thing) and his wardrobe consists mainly of shell suits and trackies. But before that, soirees They're usually in lime green or acid yellow. Soirees! Archie, much You might wonder if you're being introduced to Inez's amusementa police procedural written for laughs. Well, doesnyou't even know what one re not. The two men are just different sides of those isthe same policing coin. But he manages to come through Sometimes the fancy party unscathed, even after an uncomfortable encounter with Kurtis, whose fledgling romance with Inez was crushed in the first volume of this seriescombination works brilliantly well. Sometimes it's problematic. |isbn=B093J9TF73

|isbn=B07GZ81J7C|title=When Fred the Snake Got Squished and Mended|author=Peter Cotton|rating=4.5|genre=For Sharing|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 of myself: I'd better tell you a bit more about Fred. Fred is a snake and even those of us who have a phobia about snakes are going to warm to him. He arrived as a present in a box with holes so that he could breathe 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 brakes.}}{{Frontpage|author= Justine Avery and Naday MeldovaMosby Woods|title= Everybody Pees! (Everybody Potties!)A Whirly Man Loses His Turn

|genre=For SharingLiterary Fiction|summary= Can potty training ever be joyous? It often The West isn't, as any parent will tell youthe dominant force it once was. But really, why shouldn't Nobody in the West is quite sure how to mend this or even if mending it be? We all have to learn about our bodily functions just as we have to learn about everything else when we is the best course of action. Governments are smallflailing. Why shouldn't potty training be as much fun asA war here, saya push for climate action there. A feeling that nobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, learning about why there was a man with precognition. Imagine the sun and strategic advantage in this asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the moon take turns most valuable asset in the skyhistory. Imagine then, that this man loses this ability. What would governments do to get it back? |isbn= B098BJZYHHB0C9SNG8R1