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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Teresa Driscoll0241636604|title=Her Perfect Family|rating=5|genre=Thrillers|summary=The novel begins by introducing you to Gemma, who at first instance appears to be your average student, faced with the familiar horrifying realisation, at the eleventh hour, that her graduation outfit is all wrong. Suddenly, Gemma receives an eerie message stating ''He is not who he says he is…'', paving the way for the sinister tone that remains throughout the novel. In a twist of events, and after a change of outfit, Gemma is shot in the midst of her graduation ceremony. With Gemma then in a coma, what follows is a complex whodunit with a list of suspects that continues to grow the further you read.|isbn=1542028752}}{{Frontpage|isbn=8409290103|title=If OnlyTrading Game: A Confession|author=Matthew TreeGary Stevenson
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary FictionAutobiography|summary=TwentyIf 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-one-year-old Malcolm Lowry had been sent abroad by stripe suit and his fatherbackground is the East End, cotton-broker AO Lowry: where he asked his accountantwas familiar with violence, Mr Patrick, to ensure that the young man got on board the boat poverty and thereafter Patrick injustice. There was no posh public school on his CV - but he had been to send him a monthly allowancethe London School of Economics. Patrick sent the money regularly Stevenson is bright - extremely bright - and he has a correspondence - facility with numbers which most of sorts - sprang up between the two although we hear more about what Lowry has us can only envy. He also realised that most rich people expect poor people to say than Patrickbe stupid. It wasn't that Lowry senior didn't care for was his sonability at what was, it was that he didn't care to have essentially, a card game which got him in an internship with Citibank. Eventually, this country where he might be turned into permanent employment as a danger to his wife and other children. The alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to get the young man on his waytrader.
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Antti Tuomainen and David Hackston (translator)1035021803|title=The Rabbit FactorAntique Hunter's Guide to Murder|author=C L Miller
|rating=3.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=Meet Henri. With a mind so much more focused on maths and calculations than it is other human beings, heIt's perfect for his job in twenty years since Freya Lockwood has been back to the insurance company – until they decide heEnglish country village where she grew up. She's not back now because of a team-memberrequest for help from her beloved aunt, that theyCarole. Freya'd prefer everyone to be all open-plan, holistic s former mentor and keen on stupid-as workshopping. This is when he finds his brother has died, having a heart attack while busy changing his VolvoCarole's radio channelclose friend, Arthur Crockleford, is dead and has left Henri everythingthe circumstances seem suspicious, to say the least. Unfortunately (or otherwise) that 'everything' is just an adventure park Arthur was the reason why Freya had not been back to the village: Arthur, she feels, and nothing elselet her down badly. ''YouMeFun'' is so Even though they were in business together as antique hunters, she has not what Henri wants felt able to occupy his mindbe near the man or pursue the profession she loved. After the split, but he perks up a little when he sees huge holes she worked in the finances – it runs at a steady money-moving pace, despite some desultory staff ideascafe, but loans have been made out met and the amount vanished. Fortunately married James (or otherwise) some people are quickly on the scene to explain that missing money – it's been turned into a gambling debt that has also now been inherited by Henri, and rebound from the activities love of these guys are not conducive to getting a cheap her life insurance plan.., who was murdered) and Freya and James have now divorced.|isbn=191319387X
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=1471179311AllTomorrowsFutureCover|title=The UnheardAll Tomorrow's Futures: Fictions that Disrupt|author=Nicci FrenchBenjamin Greenaway and Stephen Oram (Editors)|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersScience Fiction|summary=Tess, a teacher and Jason, a headmaster, have split ''Opening up: she and Poppy have moved out new ways of thinking about the family home and Jason is now married shape of things to Emilycome. The separation was amicable - they had just drifted apart'' I've heard it said that 'technology' is what happens after you're eighteen. They co-parent three-year-old Poppy who has her bedroom in what was the family home and another Well, I must confess that there have been more than a few decades of technology in the flat she shares with her mothermy lifetime. It I've kept up reasonably well with what'seemeds advantageous to me but I'' to be working well until m left with the day feeling that Poppy came home with a menacing drawing of a woman falling it's all getting away from a tall building and she started swearing, using words she was unlikely to have heard in either homeme. Her behaviour deteriorated and there were problems at nursery schoolSome of it is - frankly - quite frightening. Tess turns to a therapist for helpOf course, then her doctor I could research the possibilities and finally the police but no one will take probabilities and end up down rabbit holes without really understanding whether I'm reading someone who knows what she has to say seriouslythey're talking about or the latest conspiracy theorist. I needed people I knew I could trust and who could deliver information in a way I could understand.
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1471196615Sunny Singh|title=Iced|author=Felix FrancisHotel Arcadia|rating=43.5|genre=Thrillers|summary=Miles Pussett used to be The Hotel Arcadia is a luxury hotel in an unnamed city that has suddenly been violently taken over by a Steeplechase jockey but those days terrorist group. Hiding from the terrorists who are past rampaging through, killing everyone on site, there is Sam, a wartime photographer and he now gets his thrills from hurling head-first down Abhi, the three-quarter-mile Cresta Run, occasionally reaching eighty miles an hourhotel manager. He was As Abhi continues to try to care remotely for the residents who are still alive in St Moritz the same weekend as White Turf - that's high-class horseracing on the frozen lake and against his better judgement hotel, he gets talked into helping forms a bond with the saddling Sam who refuses to be cowed by events, and keeps on venturing out of the horses. Ither room to try to capture what's seven years since he put horseracing behind him and he swore that he'd never go back to ithappened through her photography. But when he sees that something suspicious is going onAlthough they only ever talk over the phone, Miles can't their friendship grows as Abhi tries to help but look for answers, even when it puts him in dangerher keep safe and they both wait to see if they will be rescued before they are discovered by the terrorists.|isbn=086154742X
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=147228612X1529153298|title=The Late Train to Gipsy HillList of Suspicious Things|author=Alan JohnsonJennie Godfrey|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersGeneral Fiction|summary=We all know people like Gary Nelson, although we probably havenIt't taken much notice of thems 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. They live quiet(A woman? I mean, uneventful lives and stay mostly under the radarhonestly... ) In a city like London, thatShe's not what's quite easy - and even Garyworrying Miv's three flatmates largely ignore himfamily, though. Women have been disappearing. The highlight of his day is watching a beautiful young woman apply her makeup as she goes Well, they've been murdered, but to work on the train each morning: hehave 'disappeared'd love to ask her for a date but he doesn't have sound quite so frightening. Miv's upset because she's overheard that her father wants to move the couragefamily 'Down South'. Then When you're from Yorkshire, Down South is a frightening, on his homeward commuteforeign place, Arina speaks to him and asks for his helpbest avoided. Before long he finds himself on For Miv, the run from mobstersmove would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, Russian secret agents and she'll do anything to prevent that. She's not worried about the Metropolitan policedangers or that her Mum's stopped talking - to anyone.
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{{Frontpage
|author=Claire McGowan|title=I Know You|rating=4|genre=Thrillers|summary=''Then:'' Casey returns from a walk with the baby, Carson, and comes across three bodies, almost a whole family taken down. ''Now:'' Rachel is out for a walk with her dog, Brandy, when she comes across a body in the woods.|isbn=1542019974}}{{Frontpage|isbn=15291482511398524085|title=Misfits: A Personal ManifestoHas Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter?|author=Michaela CoelNicci French
|rating=5
|genre=Politics and SocietyCrime|summary=Charlotte Salter was expected at her husband''How am I able to be so transparent on paper about rapes fiftieth birthday party but never turned up. Her children, sons Niall, malpractice Paul and povertyOllie and her daughter, yet still compartmentalise? It's as though I were telling the truth whilst simultaneously running away from itEtty.'' Before you start reading ''Misfits'' you need to be in a certain frame of mind. You're are all worried but - strangely - her husband, Alec, is not going to read a book of essays or a self-help book. You're going to read writing which was inspired by Michaela CoelShortly afterwards, Etty and Greg, find the body of Greg's 2018 MacTaggart Lecture to professionals within father, Duncan Ackerley, in the television industry at the Edinburgh TV Festivalriver. You might be ''reading'' It was an easy assumption for the book but you need police to make that Duncan had murdered Charlie and then committed suicide when he couldn''listen'' to t stand the words as though you're in the lecture theatreguilt. The disjointedness will fade away and youSalter children are not convinced but there'll be carried s little else they can do but get on a cloud of exquisite writingwith their lives and wonder about what really happened.
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=00084336311035906708|title=Next of KinDiva|author=Kia AbdullahDaisy Goodwin|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersGeneral Fiction|summary=It was the sort We tend to think of thing that happened every dayMaria Callas as Greek, although not but she was born to Leila Syed. She'd never driven her nephewGreek parents in Manhattan, MaxNew York, in December 1923 and only moved to school before but his father, Andrew Hanson, had rung her in a panicAthens when she was thirteen. He Her original surname was supposed Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to be taking Max 'Callas' to school but he'd been called into work and make it more manageable in the delay in getting there could lead to financial lossesStates. As the school When she was only five minutes out of Leila's way, back in Athens - supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for her voice - she drop him off? Of course, she could and a sleeping Max was duly strapped into raised under the back Nazi occupation by a mother who mercilessly exploited her and made no secret of her car. On the way Leila took a phone call - there was panic at preference for her work tooelder sister, with a problem which could put a multi-million-pound contract at riskJackie.
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{{Frontpage
|author= Justine Avery and Naday MeldovaChristopher Edge|title=Everybody Toots! (Everybody Potties!)Black Hole Cinema Club
|rating=4
|genre=For SharingConfident Readers|summary= Toots, trumps, farts. Whatever your word Lucas and his friends are all booked in for thema movie marathon at their local cinema, find us a child place that doesnhas the nickname of 'The Black Hole't find them irresistibly funny. Funny All big movie fans, they're looking forward to talk about lots of exciting films, and joke aboutmany, many snacks! However, as the movie starts, they very quickly realise that something about this new film format isvery different, and they are swept up into an adventure they couldn't even imagine. But horribly embarrassing if you let as they lurch from one go at film genre to the wrong time. In classnext, saycan they figure out what on earth is going on? Will they ever get back to the cinema, when everyone will hear it and everyone will laugh. At you. Justine Avery's latest entry in her ''Everybody Potties!'' series takes aim at any shame associated with tooting and gently and calmly, with the familiar humour attached, explains that tooting is perfectly normal. Everybody does it: ''Everybody Toots''!to their real lives?|isbn= B09C2RVJ2W1839942738}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1784165263Rachel Greenlaw|title=Invite Me In|author=Emma CurtisCompass and Blade|rating=43.5|genre=CrimeTeens|summary=Martin Curran's wife'I can hear the song of the sea. The call of the deep, Eliza knew that she had to be home to make his lunch for one othe answering beat in my heart.''clock  Rosevear, a remote and partially forgotten island, survives on luring ships into the rocks and plundering the dotwrecks. Mira, like her mother before her, despite the fact that she was actually painting is one of their properties prior the seven who swim out to it being letsurvey the ruins – rescuing any survivors and any treasure that lies within. If she didn't get home, there would be trouble. There was some excuse: Martin was But when the Council Watch lays a paraplegic and confined trap to a wheelchairend the wrecking, but donthey capture the island't be too quick s leader and Mira's father. Desperate to be understanding. He was also save him from death, Mira makes a bargain with a very unpleasant person: wreck survivor who is as charming as he once told Eliza ''you're good at being is secretive and with only coordinates to guide her, she sets off in search of a disappointment''family secret that lies buried deep in the sea. All this was in ElizaWith only nine days to unearth what might save her father, as her journey takes her from the watched streets of foreign islands to the heart of the smuggler's mind when she first met Dan Jones who arrived, unannouncedterritory, Mira must be determined to stop at the flat just as Eliza was about nothing to leave: he wanted save the lease future of flat 2, 42 Linden Road her home and he was desperate to get in before it was advertised as being availablethe ones she holds most dear.|isbn=0008664730
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1784742775James Sherwood Metts|title=A Change of Circumstance (Simon Serrailler)|author=Susan HillPlanet Storyland|rating=4.5|genre=CrimeConfident Readers|summary=Drugs hadn't really Things have been that much of a problem in Lafferton and Detective Superintendent Simon Serrailler had thought of drugs ops as a bit of a waste of timesticky for the Earthlings. They still wereAI and automation have been proceeding apace, often replacing jobs they're paid to a great extent, but Serrailler knew do and other tasks that something had took time to be doneaccomplish. Children Just as young as nine they were being recruited beginning to get used to transport the drugs all this technological change and the operation running the county lines starting to think of other, new ways to spend time, along came an awful pandemic. Life was tight. A mule might know the name (although pretty much shut down and, along with it probably wouldn't be the correct one) of the person who was running him but he certainly wouldn't know anything about those higher up in the organisation. The police might catch a few of , all the runners but many daily social interactions on which they'd never get anywhere near those higher updepend so heavily.|isbn=1736128426
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=B09FS89KX9Matthew Tree|title=Fall On Me|author=Penelope PottsWe'll Never Know|rating=34.5|genre=Women's Literary Fiction|summary=Life should have been good for Hollie: She was just going into the final year Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, a drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of her veterinary degree and - three years later - was still working being exceptional at BB's diner. Bob - the owner - regarded her fondly: he was a good boss. Hollie had moved in with her boyfriend, Marcus: her mother thought he was great and he was doing well in any of his career. Hollie wasn't quite so certain though: Marcus wanted to control her artistic passions all failed miserably and most who had endless crises of all he wanted her self confidence. So Tim applied himself to leave her job at the diner. Then there was the fact that he would be violenthis studies, both to her cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and to other peopleset himself high but achievable ambitions.|isbn= B0CVFXPGP8
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{{Frontpage
|author=John GwynneA G Slatter|title=The Shadow Of The GodsBriar Book of the Dead
|rating=5
|genre=Fantasy
|summary=The Shadow Of The Gods is the first installment '' There's a part of me that wants to keep this just to myself for however long I can. This secret magic of my own, all mine, at last. I just want to enjoy it for a while.'' Within a remote mountain pass, far away from the Bloodsworn Sagaworld, set in lies Silverton; a town under the era protection of the Vikings in the shadow Briar's, a family of Ragnarok, when witches who protect the Gods have battled town and their bones lie scattered the wider world from the Darklands. Though she has always wished for all to see. This story magic, Ellie Briar is the ultimate in High Fantasyfirst non-witch to be born into her family for generations and as such since she was young, her training as a steward revolved around letters and administration rather than spells and John Gwynne certainly does justice to potions. When her grandmother suddenly dies, Ellie's cousin Audra becomes the genreBriar Witch, with mythical creaturesthe town's leader, archaic language and battles galoreEllie takes her place beside her. This is a thick bookAs challenges come her way left, with an intricate plot right and fascinating characters that are woven together centre, Ellie uncovers the rare ability to create communicate with the dead, putting her at the heart of a wonderfully realistic maelstrom of chaos. Reeling from one family secret to another, Ellie must decide who to trust and gritty world in which our heroes must determine what to do battleas the Briar witches' legacy, everything they have sacrificed to survive, is under threat.|isbn=03565142181803364548
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=B09HTWX47X1529900360|title=Endless ObsessionThe Ghost Orchid|author=Dai HenleyJonathan Kellerman
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=Ithadn't been Lt Milo Sturgis's some years since we last caught up with Andy Floodfault that Alex Delaware had been badly injured but he felt responsible and even after Alex recovered, formerly Sturgis was reluctant to ask for his help on difficult cases. His assertions that there were only open-and-shut cases which didn't need the help of a DCI in the Met but now psychologist only worked for a well-respected private investigatorwhile. HeFinally, it was Robin, Delaware's married to Laurapartner, who nudged Milo into asking for help again. She knew that the involvement was something that the man she loved needed. The next case did look simple, formerly his DS though. Two lovers were murdered in the Murder Squad but now working swimming pool of a remote property in a forensics laboratoryBel Air. Flood's daughters, Gemma and Pippa, have flown He was the nest, Pippa heir to Australia, from where an Italian shoe empire and she has very little contact with the family, is married to an extremely rich man and Gemma to married life. Sheit's had mental problems since she was abducted many years ago but Andy and Laura hope that married life will provide not the support she needsItalian. Flood's business is going well and that But which of them was why he felt able to turn down the case of Lisa Black.primary target?
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Peter Papathanasiou1529395224|title=Letting the Cat Out of the Bag: The StoningSecret Life of a Vet|author=Sion Rowlands
|rating=3.5
|genre=ThrillersAnimals and Wildlife|summary=In Siôn Rowlands fell into veterinary science accidentally. His father was a town sleazy enough GP and Rowlands didn't want to make sh*tholes elsewhere look glamorous follow in comparisonhis footsteps, a teacher has been transported across town at night in a shopping trolley, and she's been taped to a tree and she's had rocks bowled at her as if she were particularly when he considered the worldstrain that being on-call put on his father's tallest cricket stumpslife. When she's discovered by he was seventeen he took the town gossip everyone, including opportunity of doing work experience with a family friend who was a vet and was convinced this was the local cops, are quite confident the culprit has come from the immigrant detention centre the place is reluctantly home tojob for him. An arson attack on that shows the feeling – and it's only fair, is the general opinion Before long, for the occupants are often setting their own fires in protest he was at their conditionsLiverpool University. Cue the arrival of George Manolis, It hadn't - as with so many students - been his dream since he was a higher rank from the city, to sort everything outchild. Because such an aggrieved If anything, insular community is really going he'd wanted to welcome be a Greek-heritaged city boy laying down the law..professional footballer.|isbn=1529416973
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=B08Z8BMZ7H0861541774|title=The Mystery A Nye of HealingPheasants|author=A P McGrathSteve Burrows
|rating=4
|genre=Crime (Historical)|summary=We meet Solon in Pergamon in the second century of the common era and heDCI Domenic Jejeune's the physician on duty at the munus - the games put on for the amusement of the populaceclose friend and former colleague, Danny Maik, has taken a short holiday in Singapore to meet up with an old ally, Guy Trueman. The remuneration isn't high but the work gives the doctor Maik was involved in a street brawl - he would later maintain that he was facing a man armed with a feeling of virtue knife - and hones his skills: Solon ''wants'' the warriors to livehe killed a Ghurka. It's quite Initially, he faced a spectacle: the magistri are the charge hands and when we first see them, they're sprinkling gold dust onto of manslaughter but evidence came to light that suggested that he might have planned to murder the lions' manes to make them look more impressiveman. The sagitarii are the archers and Now he could be facing the beastiarii are the condemned criminals who are going to fight for their lives with the wild animalsdeath penalty. Today, itDomenic Jejeune can do nothing to help as any interference from another police force could provoke a diplomatic incident and wouldn's the crocodilest help Danny at all.
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{{Frontpage
|author=Kate DiCamillo and Sophie BlackallAlexander McCall Smith|title=The Beatryce ProphecyPerfect Passion Company|rating=4.5|genre=Confident ReadersGeneral Fiction|summary=''Stories have joy The Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and surprises operating as an alternative to all the online apps in them''providing a more personal, we are told heretailored service. And none more so than in this wondrous story, which feels an instant classic with the freshness Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the agelessness it has in equal proportionbusiness, as Ness is planning to take a trip to Canada to get away for a while. We start Katie is coming out of a break up with a group of monksbad boyfriend, and so jumps at the Order of the Chronicles of Sorrowingchance to come home to Edinburgh. And so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, and the demonic goat that loves nothing more than upendingbringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, trampling on thanks to 44 Scotland Street and biting the poor Brothers. Things change drastically when the beast takes a totally maternal approach to a homeless girlIsabel Dalhousie novels, one but with some new characters who quickly begin to charm. Katie has survived some trauma that has blocked her past from her memory. Elsewhere sits no experience in running a King business, or in his castlematch-making, desperate to find the girlbut Ness has full confidence in her abilities, for it is prophesied that a young child can unseat the throne and cause great change. Who foretold that revolution but the Order of the Chronicles of Sorrowing? But how can a simplethere's always her very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, William, amnesiac lass ever prove to lend a threat to anyone?hand…|isbn=15295008931846976596
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=B09FFJF8YS0811771741|title=You Can't Wear Panties! (No More Nappies!)InstaKnits for Baby|author=Justine Avery and Kate ZhoidikMelissa Leapman|rating=3.54|genre=For SharingCrafts|summary=Melissa Leapman's ''InstaKnits for Baby'For the big, grownup girls out there, the potty masters in training, "You Can't Wear Panties!" is gives us a cry (the bigcollection of knits from toys to blankets. Some will be quick knits -girl kind!) others are of toilet triumph and persevering panty pride.the 'long, cosy afternoons in front of the fire'  And so it is! This latest book from Justine Avery celebrates a little girlvariety. The projects are divided by the time they's final goodbye ll take to nappies and pullcomplete -ups and graduation less than five hours, five to "proper" pants by following her around as she proudly explains ten hours, ten to her dog, her cat, her stuffed rabbit twenty hours and her baby sibling that ''she'' can wear super-duper proper pants, while they cannotmore than twenty hours. Neither can All the flowersprojects are attractive, nor the fish, nor the birdsmodern and useable. Boy I perhaps show my age when I wonder about 's certainly cansocial-media-worthy projects't. Shebut that's a big girl now and she wants everyone to know it!me being picky.}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Nick Lake and Emily GravettDean Koontz|title=Locked Out LilyThe Bad Weather Friend
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersParanormal|summary=Lily Benny ishaving a terrifically bad day. He loses his job, he loses his fiancee, or wasand his house gets trashed. Oh, or and someone has beendelivered a really weird, very illdisturbing coffin-sized object to his home, and to give her parents relief sheit's been told possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the thing that has trashed his house! The thing is, Benny is the very last person to stay with her grandma for deserve all this bad luck. He is a few daysnice person. A really nice person. The parents need So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the relief as Lily's baby sibling delivery to his house is just about a new friend, a bad weather friend called Spike, who has been sent to be born – help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a child Lily swears she hates already and wants nothing good person. Spike is going to do with. But on tracking back home for word take care of her parents (Benny, and her plush toy so she can sleep) she finds stony-eyed simulacra will certainly take care of her parentsBenny's enemies, and the babe-in-armsif he, already installed. These devilish interlopers need to be ousted to get the family back intactBenny, even if itand Harper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's not the family Lily wants – and all she has to help her in the task wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are some talking animals – Crow, Mole, Mouse and Snake.|isbn=14711948331662500491
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{{Frontpage
|author=Greg James and Chris SmithAdam Stower|title=The Great Dream RobberyMurray and Bun|rating=4.5|genre=Confident Readers|summary=Maya's father Murray is supposed to be a professor humble, tidy and friendly cat, one who invented an amazing dream machineis able to sleep and eat and eat and sleep and, well, whatever takes his fancy next of the two. But something went wrong, and now he can't wake up. Or at least, thats a bad magician's what Maya cat, so his favourite bun has been toldturned into a 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. In This time round it drops them into a rather strange dream Viking land, where a troll hunter is expected – well, one night Maya makes a new friendmuch bigger than Murray was, 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 therehonest, but he's everything from llamas turned up and bananas, dream machines made from hairdresser cast-offs, he'll have to a talking cat called Bin Bag!do…|isbn=024147051X0008561249
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=1800464495B0C47LV1PC|title= 100 Ways in 100 Days to Teach Your Baby Maths: Support All Areas of Your Baby’s Development by Nurturing a Love of MathsFragility|author=Emma SmithMosby Woods|rating=4.5|genre=Children's Non-Literary Fiction|summary=Can you make a ''Babies seem to be born with an amazing number sense: understanding shapes in the womb, being aware of quantities at seven hours old, assessing probability at six months old, and comprehending addition and subtraction at nine months old.Yo birthing person'' Did joke? And if you could, is the question should you know thismake it? I didn't! How about: ''Maths ability on entry to school Or is a strong predictor of later achievementthe question if you did, double would it land? The catch is that of literacy skillsthe answer for both could well be.... no.''
I didn't know this either! I think most parents are aware that giving your children a good start in literacy - reading stories'Fragility'' is set as the city of Portland, teaching pen gripsOregon, singing rhymes - gives children a solid foundation when they start school. But do we think cautiously begins to emerge from the restrictions imposed during the same way about maths, 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 a similar pre-school grounding will be just as beneficial.covid pandemic
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{{Frontpage
|author=Robert Peston
|title=The Whistleblower
|rating=3
|genre=Thrillers
|summary=I'm not the first to point out how fitting it is for Robert Peston to write a political thriller, so I'll move on quickly – but this won't be winning any awards for originality. It's an interesting plot with a good pace, but it does very little to differentiate itself and I suspect before much time has passed I'll have forgotten a lot of it.
|isbn=1838775242
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=15293793851529431735|title=The Madness of Crowds (Chief Inspector Gamache)Winter Visitor|author=Louise PennyJames Henry|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=In It's February 1991 and Essex is bitingly cold, which made Bruce Hopkins' return all the Canadian village of Three Pinesmore surprising. He'd been exiled on the Costa del Sol as a wanted drug smuggler for a decade. The return has come about because he's had a letter from his ex-wife, wesaying that she's ill and hasn't long to live. It're post-pandemic: the scars are still there but life s hard to feel any sympathy when Hopkins is starting abducted, stripped to get back his underwear and sent to normala watery grave in the boot of a stolen Ford Sierra. Is it a warning from a Spanish gang or a problem closer to home?}}{{Frontpage|author=Alex Bell and Tim McDonagh|title=The villagers are beginning to return to Glorious Race of Magical Beasts|rating=4|genre=Confident Readers|summary=Eli is a busy lad – by day an apprentice in the wondrous library we start by visiting with him, and in the evening a helper at the Bistro dessert cafe his gran owns and runs. Eli lives with his lovely gran, too – for there is a generation missing in the Aubergefamily. They're visiting each otherA few short years ago, Eli's homes and having friends and relatives parents were both lost to the titular race, a globe-trotting adventure where all entrants have to staynavigate the world in the company of a magical beast. A young Sudanese woman who This has been nominated for made the race anathema to the pair – but when a bad incident at the Nobel Peace Prize eatery leads to a confession from gran, Eli knows his only hope is one such visitor and she soon proves that not all saints are necessarily pleasant people to be around - a bit like Vincent Gilbertdare to enter what he most hates, known in with the sole aim the prize of magic at the village as end – the Asshole Saintonly thing to possibly save his gran.|isbn=0571382231
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|isbn= B09F4CTKJR178763681X|title= Flights Knife Skills for FreedomBeginners|author= Steven BurgauerOrlando Murrin|rating=4.5|genre=Historical FictionCrime|summary=ItChef Paul Delamare took a teaching job at a residential cookery school in Belgravia. He didn's the later stages t really want to but celebrity chef Christian Wagner had a way of World War I getting both men and women to do what he wanted. Paul ''somehow'' got the United States has just entered impression that he'd be at the conflictschool to assist Paul, who had a broken arm, but it didn't turn out that way. Petrol Petronus is a young American who has signed up The teaching - and joined the 17 Aero Squadronproblems - are all his own. This company The one thing he hadn't expected was the first US Aero Squadron for someone to be trained in Canadaturn up dead. Unfortunately, he was the first to be attached to person who discovered the RAF body and everyone knows that the first police consider that person to be sent into the skies to fight the Germans in active combat. But before that can happen, Petrol has to master flying the notoriously difficult but majestic Sopwith Camelprime suspect.
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=183885410XSarah Marsh|title=The Dark Remains|author=William McIlvanney and Ian RankinA Sign of Her Own
|rating=3.5
|genre=CrimeGeneral Fiction|summary=Bobby Carter was After a lawyer and consigliere to one bout of the major crime families in nineteen seventies Glasgowscarlet fever as a child, Ellen Lark loses her hearing. DC Jack Laidlaw is on the CID team charged with the investigationSuddenly plunged into a world of silence, everything about her life changes. I say ''on Living in a time when the team'' but Laidlaw never really seems use of sign language was seen as something only savages do, Ellen is sent to be a part of itschool where she is taught to lip read, but physically restrained from signing. He does his own thingFrom here, goes his own way she ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the deaf and ''The Dark Remains'' uncovers using a system called Visible Speech. At the truth same time, Bell is working on other inventions and ideas, and Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a complicated tangle of why Bobby Carter's body was found behind one of Glasgow's seedier pubsespionage.|isbn=1035401614
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|isbn=19424102551803816759|title=Tokyo Zangyo (Detective Hiroshi)The Unravelling|author=Michael PronkoWill Gibson|rating=4.5|genre=CrimeScience Fiction|summary=''Zangyo: overtime work, often unpaid'' It's 2038 and Joe is a bored cop policing the culture, isn't it? The hours wealthy and peaceful New York City. Joe longs for which you're paid are really just a statement bit of the minimum you'll be required to do: you'll work more hours adventure and to get stuck into some really gritty crime detection. But then something goes horribly wrong with the job done AI system that now runs everything, making life easier for many, and done riots start to the satisfaction of bullies like Shigeru Onizukaspread. When he was found dead in front of Senden Central's headquarters in Tokyo there was nothing in the way of regret or grief, even from his familyFinally, but there was a mild curiosity as Joe gets to whether he'd jumped from do some real policing. In the roof aftermath of the building or been assisted in his descentrioting global pop star Suki is kidnapped and Joe is assigned to bring her home. Gossip revolves around Joe isn't the fact that he left the roof at the exact same spot that an employeeonly one trying to save Suki - Dylan, Mayu Yamasea British superfan and tech nerd, had committed suicide some three years earlieris also on the case. SheWhat went wrong? Did the system fail or was it hacked? And how is Suki'd accused Onizuka of bullying her and forcing her to work an unreasonable amount of overtime.s kidnapping connected?
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=02414254251529421284|title=The Man Who Died TwiceLaying Out the Bones|author=Richard OsmanKate Webb
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=Elizabeth Best It was one of those flash downpours that the British weather often delivers in a little surprised when she received the letterheatwave. It In a gully, a human skeleton came from a man whose body she had helped to pull from the Thames surface and forensic testing proved the body to be Lee Geary, who had never existed but then this is the sort of conundrum which retired spies have to deal with on a regular basisdisappeared nine years earlier. When she visits the sender of the letter (heHe's moved into the Cooper's Chase Retirement Village) it comes as no surprise that d been a known drug user and had learning disabilities, so itcould have been a simple case of misadventure but DI Matt Lockyer wasn's someone with whom she has a long professional history - and who used to be her husbandt convinced. He's made Geary was a bad mistake - something townie, so what was he doing out on Salisbury Plain alone? There are connections to do with a mask being removed within the range suicide of a CCTV camera on a raid, a missing twenty-million pounds in diamonds Holly Gilbert and a few death threatsto two other deaths which were not considered suspicious at the time. HeLockyer and DC Gemma Broad of the Major Crimes Review Unit (that's now in hiding with a young woman called Polly, who's his MI5 handler as well as being an incompetent waitresscold cases to you and me) investigate.
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Andrew Sharp0571379559|title=The Chef, the Bird and the BlessingHouse of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams|rating=45|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary= Chef Mlantushi - Mozzy to his employer - ''The House of Broken Bricks'' isthe story of four people. Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in his mindthe house on the riverbank, built of broken bricks. Insubstantial as it might look, it's stood the head chef passage of a safari business catering to VIP guests in an unnamed African countrytime, storms and floods. Mozzy is earnest and dedicated Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his task and he puts all of himself into creating fine cuisine dishes for vegetables, to complete the guests at BODdelivery rounds -W safaris but his dream is and to become bring in sufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, the head chef of a restaurant in London or a big American cityrainbow twins. Even to win a Michelin star Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. He is thwarted in this ambition by Max takes after his bossfather. People don't believe that they're related, Mr Bin (Ben to you much less twins and me) who incurs Mozzythere's disapproval for an assumption when Max is out with his scruffy ways, his uninterest in mother that she's his guests and - shock, horror - his allowing of bush animals into the housenanny.|isbn=B09926MK8H
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Alex Foulkes1529425867|title=Rules for VampiresLost and Never Found (A D I Wilkins Mystery)|author=Simon Mason
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary= Eleonore Von Motteberg (or 'Leo' for short) In Oxford, there are two D I Wilkins. Raymond Wilkins is a Vampireof Nigerian descent, Balliol educated and always exquisitely dressed. She drinks blood, she sleeps during the day D I Ryan Wilkins, son of Ryan and she can Grimwalk (turning into a flock father of bats to travel aroundRyan, although is not all . He's not any of them remember to come back)those things. Pretty cool stuff. Now He's white, originated from a trailer park, on the night barely educated (reading's not ''really'' his thing) and his wardrobe consists mainly of her hundredth birthnight, she has to go out shell suits and hunt her first humantrackies. However, instead she ends up killing two humans by accident and burning down an orphanage They're usually in lime green or acid yellow. Oops! And You might wonder if you're being introduced to make things worsea police procedural written for laughs. Well, the ghosts of one you're not. The two men are just different sides of the orphans and the evil master of same policing coin. Sometimes the orphanage come back to haunt hercombination works brilliantly well. 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 powerful, she has to do it all while hiding Sometimes it from her family. Did I mention vampires and ghosts hate each other? Yeah, there's a reason why there are rules for vampires…|isbn=147119955Xproblematic.
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{{Frontpage
|author=Tori BovalinoMosby Woods|title=The Devil Makes ThreeA Whirly Man Loses His Turn|rating=4.5|genre=TeensLiterary Fiction|summary= Working all summer The West isn't the dominant force it once was. Nobody in her boarding school's library the West is quite sure how to mend this or even if mending it is the last thing Tess Matheson wants to do — especially when she gets best course of action. Governments are flailing. A war here, a request push for over a hundred books climate action there. A feeling that she has to deliver herself. What makes it worse nobody is the man who requested the books: Mr Birchin actual charge. The boarding school's headmasterImagine then, and there was a man Tess hateswith precognition. As Imagine the strategic advantage in this asset; a petty act man who can tell you what will happen given any set of revenge for making her find and deliver such a large requestcircumstances. That man would be valuable, Tess sticks post-it notes on each of right? Perhaps the books, scribbled with the ugliest insults she can think ofmost valuable asset in history. They're never meant to reach himImagine then, of coursethat this man loses this ability. Her plan is What would governments do 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 for her.back?|isbn=1789098130B0C9SNG8R1
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