132,585
edits
Changes
From TheBookbag
Jump to navigationJump to searchno edit summary
'''Read [[Forthcoming Publications|reviews of books about to be published]].
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Lev Parikian 0241636604|title=Light Rains Sometimes FallThe Trading Game: A Confession|author=Gary Stevenson
|rating=4.5
|genre=Animals and WildlifeAutobiography|summary= If you’re you were to bring up an image of a writer yourselfcity 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, or an aspiring writerwhere he was familiar with violence, or someone who pretends poverty and injustice. There was no posh public school on his CV - but he had been to write, then you know 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 there are unnumbered types of booksmost rich people expect poor people to be stupid. Some you read for fun It was his ability at what was, some for distractionessentially, some for vicarious emotiona card game which got him an internship with Citibank. Eventually, some this turned into permanent employment as a trader.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1035021803|title=The Antique Hunter's Guide to learn from in Murder|author=C L Miller|rating=3.5|genre=Crime|summary=It's twenty years since Freya Lockwood has been back to the English country village where she grew up. She's back now because of a random way, some request for focussed researchhelp from her beloved aunt, Carole. Freya's former mentor and some because they areCarole's close friend, broadly speakingArthur Crockleford, is dead and the kind of thing you think you might like circumstances seem suspicious, to writesay the least. OrArthur was the reason why Freya had not been back to the village: Arthur, she feels, indeedlet her down badly. Even though they were in business together as antique hunters, are actually trying she has not felt able to writebe near the man or pursue the profession she loved. After the split, she worked in a cafe, met and married James (on the rebound from the love of her life, who was murdered) and Freya and James have now divorced.|isbn=1783966386
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=0751581577AllTomorrowsFutureCover|title=Lying Beside YouAll Tomorrow's Futures: Fictions that Disrupt|author=Michael RobothamBenjamin Greenaway and Stephen Oram (Editors)
|rating=5
|genre=ThrillersScience Fiction|summary=Elias Haven murdered his parents and his twin sisters two days after his nineteenth birthday''Opening up new ways of thinking about the shape of things to come. Voices told him to do '' I've heard itsaid that 'technology' is what happens after you're eighteen. Only two people survived the carnage - EliasWell, who was sent to Rampton, and his thirteen-year-old brother, Cyrus, who hid I must confess that there have been more than a few decades of technology in a shed until the police found himmy lifetime. Twenty years later, Cyrus is a forensic psychologist and heI've kept up reasonably well with what's been told advantageous to me but I'm left with the feeling that his brother it's all getting away from me. Some of it is being released- frankly - quite frightening. Can Cyrus forgive Of course, I could research the sinner whilst having to live on a daily basis with possibilities and the results of probabilities and end up down rabbit holes without really understanding whether I'm reading someone who knows what they're talking about or the crime? latest conspiracy theorist. Can he bear to have Elias living I needed people I knew I could trust and who could deliver information in the same house? How will his lodger, twenty-one-year-old Evie Cormac, cope?a way I could understand.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=140595115XSunny Singh|title=A Stranger on Board|author=Cameron WardHotel Arcadia|rating=43.5|genre=Thrillers|summary=Right The Hotel Arcadia is a luxury hotel in an unnamed city that has suddenly been violently taken over by a terrorist group. Hiding from the beginningterrorists who are rampaging through, killing everyone on site, we know this will not turn out well. Eight days into the trip to deliver the superyacht ''Escape'' to Antiguathere is Sam, all 300 tonnes a wartime photographer and six decks will be floundering without power in Abhi, the Atlantichotel manager. Those of As Abhi continues to try to care remotely for the crew residents who are left will be cowering still alive in fear the hotel, he forms a fellow crew member tries bond with Sam who refuses to pick them offbe cowed by events, one by one. Some are already dead. They are three days from shore and there is no way keeps on venturing out of making contacther room to try to capture what's happened through her photography. But let's go back Although they only ever talk over the phone, their friendship grows as Abhi tries to help her keep safe and they both wait to when all this started, in Southamptonsee if they will be rescued before they are discovered by the terrorists.|isbn=086154742X
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=13985086321529153298|title=The Wilderness CureList of Suspicious Things|author=Mo WildeJennie Godfrey
|rating=5
|genre=LifestyleGeneral Fiction|summary=It had been on the cards for a while but it was the week-long consumer binge which pushed Mo Wilde into beginning her year of eating only wild food's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. The end of November(A woman? I mean, particularly in Central Scotland was perhaps honestly...) She's not the best time to startwhat's worrying Miv's family, in a world where the normal sores had though. Women have been exacerbated by climate change, Brexit and a pandemicdisappearing. Wilde had a few advantages: the area around her was a known habitat with a variety of terrainsWell, they've been murdered, but to have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. She had electricity which allowed Miv's upset because she's overheard that her father wants to run a fridge, freezer and dehydratormove the family 'Down South'. She had When you're from Yorkshire, Down South is a car - and fuelfrightening, foreign place, best avoided. Most importantlyFor Miv, the move would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, and she had shelter: this was not a plan 'll do anything to prevent that. She's not worried about the dangers or that her Mum'live'' wild just s stopped talking - to live off its produceanyone.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=16358646741398524085|title=Tomato Love: 44 Mouthwatering Recipes Has Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter?|author=Nicci French|rating=5|genre=Crime|summary=Charlotte Salter was expected at her husband's fiftieth birthday party but never turned up. Her children, sons Niall, Paul and Ollie and her daughter, Etty. are all worried but - strangely - her husband, Alec, is not. Shortly afterwards, Etty and Greg, find the body of Greg's father, Duncan Ackerley, in the river. It was an easy assumption for Saladsthe police to make that Duncan had murdered Charlie and then committed suicide when he couldn't stand the guilt. The Salter children are not convinced but there's little else they can do but get on with their lives and wonder about what really happened.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1035906708|title=Diva|author=Daisy Goodwin|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=We tend to think of Maria Callas as Greek, Saucesbut she was born to Greek parents in Manhattan, StewsNew York, in December 1923 and Moreonly moved to Athens when she was thirteen. Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to 'Callas' to make it more manageable in the States. When she was back in Athens - supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for her voice - she was raised under the Nazi occupation by a mother who mercilessly exploited her and made no secret of her preference for her elder sister, Jackie.}}{{Frontpage|author=Joy HowardChristopher Edge|title=Black Hole Cinema Club
|rating=4
|genre=CookeryConfident Readers|summary=Lucas and his friends are all booked in for a movie marathon at their local cinema, a place that has the nickname of 'The Black Hole'. All big movie fans, they'Think re looking forward to lots of it exciting films, and many, many snacks! However, as the movie starts, they very quickly realise that something about this new film format is very different, and they are swept up into an adventure they couldn't even imagine. But as no-whining diningthey lurch from one film genre to the next, can they figure out what on earth is going on? Will they ever get back to the cinema, and to their real lives?|isbn=1839942738}}{{Frontpage|author=Rachel Greenlaw|title=Compass and Blade|rating=3.5|genre=Teens|summary=''I can hear the song of the sea. The call of the deep, the answering beat in my heart.''
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0241989027James Sherwood Metts|title=We All Have Our Secrets|author=Jane CorryPlanet Storyland
|rating=4.5
|genre=ThrillersConfident Readers|summary=Harold Gentle advertised Things have been a bit sticky for live-in help the Earthlings. AI and automation have been proceeding apace, often replacing jobs they're paid to do and other tasks that took time to accomplish. Just as he was failing they were beginning to get used to all this technological change and starting to cope at Willowmead House on his own. His advert was fairly specific: he was a retired lawyer needing help but he also spoke think of the ability other, new ways to cook a good steakspend time, enjoy decent wine and be free from any food fadsalong came an awful pandemic. The first person who came to the house Life was Francoisepretty much shut down and, a French woman in her early twentiesalong with it, who fit all the bill perfectly. She got the job but Francoise didn't know about the advert: she was there for a completely different reason. Emily Gentle is Harold's daughter and she came to Willowmead House because she was running away from a problem in London. Emily's a midwife and her last shift had seen her lacking concentration and a complaint had been mademany daily social interactions on which they depend so heavily.|isbn=1736128426
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Ewald Arenz and Rachel Ward (translator)Matthew Tree|title=Tasting SunlightWe'll Never Know
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Sally is a teenager who has run away from an anorexia treatment clinic. She just Timothy Wyndham wants space, and for people nothing more than to stop questioning her, tiptoeing around herbe different from his father, and trying to fix her without ever truly understanding her. She finds herself on some farmland with a woman called Liss who is in her forties drunk and seems to live alone. Liss is unlike chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any other adult Sally has ever metof his artistic passions all failed miserably and who had endless crises of self confidence. She just accepts Sally as she is, giving her a room So Tim applied himself to sleep inhis studies, cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and the space to just be. As they work together on the farm, a closeness develops between them, becoming a beautiful, powerful friendshipset himself high but achievable ambitions.|isbn=1914585143B0CVFXPGP8
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Jennifer MasonA G Slatter|title=Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell MysteryThe Briar Book of the Dead|rating=45|genre=General FictionFantasy|summary=''A struggling poetry zine, a mom-and-pop mobile diner in the Northern California redwoods, a 400-meter hurdler who just missed the 2004 Olympics, a womenThere's track coach with a yen part of me that wants to keep this just to myself for bullwhips, a billionaire with a state-however long I can. This secret magic of-the-art S&M dungeonmy own, a man serving a life sentence in Alabamaall mine, an enigmatic signature, K(s, x), on at last. I just want to enjoy it for a cheap oil painting, an erotic art dealer in Georgia..while.''
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Will Brooker1529900360|title=The Truth About Lisa JewellGhost Orchid|author=Jonathan Kellerman|rating=54|genre=BiographyCrime|summary=Meet [[:Category:Lisa Jewell|Lisa Jewell]], one of the most successful British authors IIt hadn't been Lt Milo Sturgis've never knowingly read. Now meet Will Brookers fault that Alex Delaware had been badly injured but he felt responsible and even after Alex recovered, one of the thousands of less successful authors I quite confidently never have readSturgis was reluctant to ask for his help on difficult cases. This book starts with the two meeting each other, as well, His assertions that there were only open-and shows how 2021 drew -shut cases which didn't need the two closer and closer togetherhelp of a psychologist only worked for a while. The meeting was some unspecified combinationFinally, it seems, of her anecdote about cup cakes, the words of her latest book she was recitingRobin, and her being in a Delaware''black lace mini-dress with gold brocade'' (certainly a get-up never commonly worn at the author events I get to attend), but pulled Brookers partner, a professor of cultural studies who has swallowed Roland Barthes, down nudged Milo into asking for help again. She knew that the rabbit-hole involvement was something that is Jewell's diverse outputthe man she loved needed. The next case did look simple, though. Brooker decides he'd like nothing more than to follow her through Two lovers were murdered in the swimming pool of a year remote property in Bel Air. He was the published authorheir to an Italian shoe empire and she is married to an extremely rich man and it's life, working to make a success of the latest title, and struggling with not the next in lineItalian. Jewell, due diligence appropriately done, agrees. And this is But which of them was the result.|isbn=1529136024primary target?
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=18011092651529395224|title=Letting the Cat Out of the Bag: The CompanionSecret Life of a Vet|author=Lesley ThomsonSion Rowlands|rating=3.5|genre=CrimeAnimals and Wildlife|summary=James Ritchie thought of himself as ''Siôn Rowlands fell into veterinary science accidentally. His father was a punctual man who was inexplicably never on time'GP and Rowlands didn' and he was - as usual - late t want to pick up follow in his sonfootsteps, Wilbur, for their 'boys' day out'. These were always days which appealed more to James than to Wilbur and, competing for particularly when he considered the boystrain that being on-call put on his father's attention, his mother, Anna, promised him a roast dinner when life. When he was seventeen he returned. The dinner would never be served, as James and Wilbur are took the victims opportunity of doing work experience with a family friend who was a double stabbing on vet and was convinced this was the beachjob for him. The case falls to DI Toni Kemp of Sussex policeBefore long, he was at Liverpool University. SheIt hadn's feeling the pressuret - as with so many students - been his dream since he was a child. You can always tell - she shoplifts Snickers Bars when the going gets toughIf anything, he'd wanted to be a professional footballer.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=152941363X0861541774|title=To Kill a Troubadour (A Bruno, Chief Nye of Police Novel)Pheasants|author=Martin WalkerSteve Burrows|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=DCI Domenic Jejeune''Nobody knows what the truth is any more.'' Bruno Courrèges is the police chief for St Denis s close friend and much of the Vézère valley and works closely former colleague, Danny Maik, has taken a short holiday in Singapore to meet up with Commissaire Jean-Jaques Jalipeau (known as 'JJ')an old ally, the head of detectives for the départment of the DordogneGuy Trueman. They're not just policemen Maik was involved in a street brawl - they're both deeply committed to the wellhe would later maintain that he was facing a man armed with a knife -being and prosperity of this most beautiful part of Francehe killed a Ghurka. The discovery of an oldInitially, stolen Peugeot, crashed and abandoned in he faced a ditch wouldn't normally charge of manslaughter but evidence came to light that suggested that he might have worried them so much had it not been for planned to murder the strange bullet, with Russian letters stamped on the base, which they found in the carman. Oh, and there was a golf ball too, which didn't belong to the owner of Now he could be facing the cardeath penalty. A golf bag would be a good place Domenic Jejeune can do nothing to hide help as any interference from another police force could provoke a sniperdiplomatic incident and wouldn's weapont help Danny at all. Was there going to be an attempt to kill someone, or were the detectives being pushed in a certain direction?
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0241542405Alexander McCall Smith|title=Meredith Alone|author=Claire AlexanderThe Perfect Passion Company
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=When we first meet Meredith Maggs it's Wednesday 14 November 2018 The Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and she's not left her home for 1,214 days. She'd ''like'' operating as an alternative to: all the online apps in factproviding a more personal, she so nearly doestailored service. Her outdoor clothes are on Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and she's even considered which shoes look after the business, as Ness is planning to take a trip to wear if she's going Canada to catch her trainget away for a while. ThenKatie is coming out of a break up with a bad boyfriend, she can'tand so jumps at the chance to come home to Edinburgh. She simply can't force herself And so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, thanks to leave 44 Scotland Street and the safety of her homeIsabel Dalhousie novels, but with some new characters who quickly begin to charm. She's fortunate that she Katie has no experience in running a good friendbusiness, Sadieor in match-making, who visits regularly with but Ness has full confidence in her two childrenabilities, James and Matilda. Sadiethere's a cardiac nurse and full of sound common sense. In fact it was Sadie who gave Meredith always her cat, Fred. Groceries are online deliveries very helpful (and there's also an internet-based support group where you'll find Meredith as JIGSAWGIRLrather handsome) neighbour, so you can guess what she does in her spare time. Then Tom McDermott arrives. He's from Holding HandsWilliam, to lend a charity which supports people with problems such as Meredith's.hand…|isbn=1846976596
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B09Y451X9K0811771741|title= Greetings, aliens!: (do pop in InstaKnits for tea)Baby|author=Richard F WalkerMelissa Leapman
|rating=4
|genre=General FictionCrafts|summary= Melissa Leapman's 'Anything can happen at 'InstaKnits for Baby'' gives us a birthday partycollection of knits from toys to blankets. Some will be quick knits - others are of the 'long, particularly when the birthday boy is the young Lord cosy afternoons in front of the Manorfire' variety. But when an eerie signal is picked up in The projects are divided by the early time they'll take to complete - less than five hours, George and his new girlfriend, the vivacious Lady Antoniafive to ten hours, embark on a quest ten to uncover its incredible messagetwenty hours and more than twenty hours. Things get complicated when some total spoilsport lets All the cat out of the bag projects are attractive, modern and the world goes into a state of panicuseable. I perhaps show my age when I wonder about 'social-media-worthy projects'but that' Could it be? Could it? Have aliens reached out and contacted Earth? George and Antonia find themselves lifted out of their privileged lives of parties and drunken shenanigans and catapulted into the world of advanced science, secret agents.and politicians hungry for powers me being picky.
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Darren ShanDean Koontz|title= Archibald Lox and the Sinkhole to Hell: Archibald Lox series, book 7 The Bad Weather Friend
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersParanormal|summary= SoBenny is having a terrifically bad day. He loses his job, he loses his fiancee, and his house gets trashed. We're back Oh, and someone has delivered a really weird, disturbing coffin-sized object to the Merge with the first chapter in the third volume of Darren Shanhis home, and it's saga of Archibald Loxpossible that whoever or whatever was inside is the thing that has trashed his house! The thing is, Benny is the very last person to deserve all this bad luck. He is a young man who can pick nice person. A really nice person. So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the locks of portals from our world delivery to anotherhis house is a new friend, a bad weather friend called the ''Merge''. Since his last adventureSpike, Archie who has persuaded his foster parents into been sent to help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a slightly uneasy truce on the topic good person. Spike is going to take care of his regular disappearances. They don't ask too many questions Benny, and Archie has settled into a fairly peaceful routine will certainly take care of visiting WinstonBenny's enemies, his lock-picking mentor in the ''Merge'' and showing Kojoif he, the young guardianBenny, around our world of the Bornand Harper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are. |isbn= B09Z2MTCZD1662500491
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=John Henry PhillipsAdam Stower|title=The SearchMurray and Bun|rating=4.5|genre=HistoryConfident Readers |summary=Archaeology cannot Murray is supposed to be child's playa humble, tidy and friendly cat, when you're scraping in the dirt looking one who is able to find what you can findsleep and eat and eat and sleep and, often knowing there should be something there but not always confident what. Archaeology must be a fair bit harder when you set out to find some specific thing. This book is a case of the latterwell, as our author promises to locate the topic whatever takes his fancy next of the titular searchtwo. And But he really hasn't made it easy for himself – the search area is a wide one, the target might not exist any more – oh, and it's underwater, when he cannot dive. Latching on to a particular D-Day veteran through helping the heroic old manbad magician's visit back to Francecat, our author so his favourite bun has promised to find the landing craft that delivered him to Normandy, and that he was lucky to survive when it sank from beneath him. The secondary aim is to erect been turned into a memorial to everyone else aboard, the vast majority of whom perished. Who else would make such promises to someone in their nineties?|isbn=1472146182}}{{Frontpage|author=Fiona Longmuir|title=Looking for Emily|rating=5|genre=Confident Readers|summary=Meet Lily. She and her mother have just moved from a city to a tiny seaside town hyperactive sticky rabbit called EdgeBun, and everyone from said mother to her teacher are making demands of Lily that she make new friends. It turns the catflap they both use can chuck them out that she doesn't have any say in , not into the matter, for while pretending when phoning home that she was with someone called Emily, she is unaware her neighbour, Sam, is just about to make herself knownregular back garden, but into a world of frightening adventure and in a big waywhiffs. But where does Emily come from? Well, Lily used that name because of what she'd just stumbled This time round it drops them into – a mysterious collection of the most mundane objectsViking land, in some converted houses behind where a most unassuming door, in a place calling itself 'The Museum of Emily'. Sam troll hunter is completely unaware of this 'museum'expected – well, tooone much bigger than Murray was, leaving the two girls to make sure they leave no stone unturned in finding whatbe honest, but he's behind the intrigue...turned up and he'll have to do…|isbn=18399427540008561249
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B09XZMCDVFB0C47LV1PC|title=Stories: 13 tantalising talesFragility|author=Richard F WalkerMosby Woods
|rating=4
|genre=Short StoriesLiterary Fiction|summary=Can you make a ''A news vendor Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, is crying out the headlines in question should you make it? Or is the middle of question if you did, would it land? The catch is that the night; a wheelchair user loses touch with reality when he tries walking around in his imagination; a stickler answer for correct grammar goes back in time to correct an iconic quote; a volunteer teacher proves the ideal person to have around in a lawless village; the new boy on the pub football team is very useful with his feet, and awfully familiar…''both could well be.... no.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=18009012321529431735|title=Stitched Up|author=Steve Cole|rating=5|genre=Dyslexia Friendly|summary=Twelve-year-old Hanh wanted to be a fashion designer. Life in the rural village where she lived with her family was happy, if not prosperous, so when the smartly-dressed man and woman came to the village to offer Hahn a job in Hanoi it was an opportunity not to be missed. Some money changed hands and Hanh was on the mini-bus to Hanoi. Only, Hanh and the other girls were not going to work in a shop, they were to work in virtual slavery in an illegal garment factory. You know those jeans you really wanted: the ones with intricate embroidery and beading on the legs? The ones with the artfully-placed rips and distressed seams that felt so soft when you touched them? It's quite possible that Hanh and her co-workers made them.}}{{FrontpageWinter Visitor|author=Daisy Hildyard|title=EmergencyJames Henry
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=Part of It's February 1991 and Essex is bitingly cold, which made Bruce Hopkins' return all the Oslo Detectives series, this crime story is a mixture of police procedural and thrillermore surprising. Beginning with He'd been exiled on the death of Costa del Sol as a young woman in wanted drug smuggler for a carpark, that looks very much like an overdose, it unravels into decade. The return has come about because he's had a farletter from his ex-reaching investigation of murder, fraudwife, saying that she's ill and international pharmaceutical dealingshasn't long to live. Our two detectives are Gunnarstranda It's hard to feel any sympathy when Hopkins is abducted, stripped to his underwear and Frolich, who end up working separately on the case as Gunnarstranda remains sent to a watery grave in Norway whilst Frolich is led to Africa as they follow the twists and turns boot of the investigationa stolen Ford Sierra. Gunnarstranda and Frolich are tenacious, chasing down the truth in increasingly difficult, frustrating circumstances, trying hard Is it a warning from a Spanish gang or a problem closer to uncover the truth as they are sure that something much bigger, and much more dangerous, is going on.|isbn=1914585127home?
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0008541477Alex Bell and Tim McDonagh|title=Clarice Bean: Scram!|author=Lauren ChildThe Glorious Race of Magical Beasts|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=It was Eli is a hot summer busy lad – by day right an apprentice in the wondrous library we start by visiting with him, and in the evening a helper at the beginning of the summer holidays dessert cafe his gran owns and Clarice Bean was bored: ''Nothing ever happens except for sometimesruns... And only on rare-sh occasions Eli lives with his lovely gran, which too – for there is hardly ever.'' There are seven members of a generation missing in the Bean family living in the house: Grandad (who lives on the ground floor because he's wobbly), Mum and Dad, Clarice's older brother, Kurt and younger brother, Minal Cricket. There's also MarcieA few short years ago, whoEli's main claim parents were both lost to fame seems the titular race, a globe-trotting adventure where all entrants have to be that she steals navigate the batteries from Clarice's torch, which means that she can't read world in the airing cupboardcompany of a magical beast. Clarice would love This has made the race anathema to have someone who listened the pair – but when a bad incident at the eatery leads to hera confession from gran, rather than wanting Eli knows his only hope is to talkdare to enter what he most hates, but with the sole aim the prize of magic at the end – the only one who does that is Granny and she lives in New York. The Bean family is ''different''thing to possibly save his gran.|isbn=0571382231
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=0711266204178763681X|title=The Secret Life of Birds|author=Moira Butterfield and Vivian Mineker (illustrator)|rating=5|genre=Children's Non-Fiction|summary=I have recently discovered a great pleasure: I sit and watch the vast numbers of birds which visit our garden on a daily basis. An hour can pass without my noticing. I've established which species feed from the ground, which pop to the feeders Knife Skills for a quick snatch of some food and who settles in for a good munch but I wish I was more knowledgeable. It would have been wonderful if, as a child, I'd had access to a book such as ''The Secret Life of Birds''. So – what is it?}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1737030942|title=Bag O'GoodiesBeginners|author=Jolly Walker BittickOrlando Murrin
|rating=4
|genre= AnthologiesCrime|summary=Sometimes, you deserve Chef Paul Delamare took a teaching job at a residential cookery school in Belgravia. He didn't really want to but celebrity chef Christian Wagner had a treat way of getting both men and mine was Jolly Walker Bittickwomen to do what he wanted. Paul 's 'somehow'Bag O'Goodiesgot the impression that he''. I first encountered his writing about a year ago, when I read his [[Cape Henry House by Jolly Walker Bittick|Cape Henry House]]d be at the school to assist Paul, who had a rollicking tale of what happens when five young men find a base for their partying. Right nowbroken arm, I but it didn't want a fullturn out that way. The teaching -length novel, so I turned to this anthology of verse and short storiesthe problems - are all his own. BittickThe one thing he hadn's writing has matured - and so have his characterst expected was for someone to turn up dead. Well.Unfortunately, he was the person who discovered the body and everyone knows that the police consider that person to be the prime suspect.. most of them!
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Caryl Lewis and George ErmosSarah Marsh|title=SeedA Sign of Her Own|rating=3.5|genre=Confident ReadersGeneral Fiction|summary=Marty has two parental figures in his life, and they both might be thought After a bout of scarlet fever as complete embarrassmentsa child, Ellen Lark loses her hearing. His grandfather runs an allotment Suddenly plunged into a world of silence, and manages to stink the entire town out from it everything about her life changes. Living in a time when he douses it in fish guts each spring to fertilise his vegetables. His mother somehow combines the dual roles use of housebound failure and hoarder – while she seems sign language was seen as something only savages do, Ellen is sent to do nothing and hasn't left the building in years a school where she has still managed is taught to fill it to the brim with junklip read, but physically restrained from signing. What Marty's classmates don't know about this they can draw lines to from how poor Marty always looks From here, with his one she ends up in another school uniform built from lost propertystudying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the deaf and using a system called Visible Speech. We see him as once again At the council threaten her same time, Bell is working on other inventions and him with evictionideas, and as he celebrates his birthday with the gift from his grandfather Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a complicated tangle of a solitary plant seedespionage.|isbn=15290776641035401614
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Sophie Cameron1803816759|title=Our Sister, AgainThe Unravelling|author=Will Gibson|rating=4.5|genre=Confident ReadersScience Fiction|summary=After IslaIt's older sister Flora dies, her family struggle 2038 and Joe is a bored cop policing the wealthy and peaceful New York City. Joe longs for a bit of adventure and to find a way forwardget stuck into some really gritty crime detection. In particularBut then something goes horribly wrong with the AI system that now runs everything, making life easier for many, Isla's mum who can’t seem and riots start to be able to let her daughter gospread. When Isla passes her mum's details onto a support group she finds onlineFinally, she thinks they might be able Joe gets to helpdo some real policing. But actually, it turns out they are part In the aftermath of an experimental company who offer the family the chance rioting global pop star Suki is kidnapped and Joe is assigned to have Flora back again, in robot formbring her home. But this wonJoe isn't just be a lookthe only one trying to save Suki -Dylan, a-like. They use all of Flora's online history, and interviews with family British superfan and friendstech nerd, and through this data they will recreate Flora as closely as possibleis also on the case. But what will What went wrong? Did the system fail or was it really mean for the family, to have Flora backhacked? And how is it really Flora at allSuki's kidnapping connected?|isbn=1788953916
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=13985075041529421284|title=Cold ReckoningLaying Out the Bones|author=Russ ThomasKate Webb
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=DS Adam Tyler never believed It was one of those flash downpours that his father committed suicide the British weather often delivers in a heatwave. In a gully, a human skeleton came to the surface and for forensic testing proved the last sixteen body to be Lee Geary, who had disappeared nine years heearlier. He's d been searching for evidence to prove that he's right. When a frozen body was found in Damflask Reservoirknown drug user and had learning disabilities, there was so it could have been a link back to a cold simple case from 2002. There didnof misadventure but DI Matt Lockyer wasn't immediately seem to be any connection with DI Richard Tyler's death but Adam Tyler senses convinced. Geary was a link to the case his father townie, so what was investigating before he died. Above all there's a growing sense that doing out on Salisbury Plain alone? There are connections to the criminality suicide of Det Supt Stevens is going Holly Gilbert and to be brought out into two other deaths which were not considered suspicious at the opentime. Perhaps Tyler is going Lockyer and DC Gemma Broad of the Major Crimes Review Unit (that's cold cases to get the answers he needs?you and me) investigate.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=07278505470571379559|title=Blind Justice (DS McAvoy 10)|author=David Mark|rating=4|genre=Crime|summary=Acting DI Aector McAvoy hadn't even had time for breakfast when the call came through. A body had been found in the roots The House of a fallen tree at Brantingham, near Hull. When he gets to the scene, he will find what greets him is even worse than he could have imagined. A young man's corpse is entangled with the roots of a newly-fallen tree – the roots have grown through him – and two silver Roman coins have been nailed through his eyes. It would seem that this was done whilst the man was still alive. McAvoy makes a promise to the victim: I will find answers. You will know justice. But justice always comes at a cost and this time the cost might be to McAvoy's own family.}}{{FrontpageBroken Bricks|author=Natalia Garcia Freire|title=This World Does Not Belong To UsFiona Williams
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= Early comments on this debut novel from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, a delight. I will agree with the first – tremendous is no understatement – but 'a delight'The House of Broken Bricks'' is perhaps using the expression story of four people. Tess Hembry's roots are in a way IJamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in the house on the riverbank, built of broken bricks. Insubstantial as it might look, it'm not familiar withs stood the passage of time, storms and floods. I have Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, to confess my ignorance of complete the Spanishdelivery rounds -language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation hereand to bring in sufficient money. From the little I They have read (in translationtwin boys - Sonny and Max, I the rainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. People don't read Spanish) believe that they're related, much less twins and there does seem to be a tendency towards the fantastical – the mystical realism's an assumption when Max is out with his mother that she's his nanny. |isbn=0861541901
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn= Ann Sei Lin1529425867|title= Rebel SkiesLost and Never Found (A D I Wilkins Mystery)|author=Simon Mason|rating= 4.5|genre= TeensCrime|summary= Kurara has spent her entire life as a servant on the MidoriIn Oxford, a massive dining hall floating in the sky where soldiers there are two D I Wilkins. Raymond Wilkins is of the Empire come to drink Nigerian descent, Balliol educated and make merry between their conquestsalways exquisitely dressed. However D I Ryan Wilkins, son of Ryan and father of Ryan, when a man named Himura arrives to tell her that she is a Crafter like him, someone with the power to form paper into whatever she desires – a power sought after all across the Empirenot. He asks her to come with him, to leave the life 's not any of dreary servitude that is all she has knownthose things. Well, soon Kurara won He't have any say in the matters white, because the Midori is destroyed by a monstrous paper spirit known as originated from a shikigamitrailer park, barely educated (reading's not ''really'' his thing) and his wardrobe consists mainly of shell suits and she is forced trackies. They're usually in lime green or acid yellow. You might wonder if you're being introduced to flee out into a police procedural written for laughs. Well, you're not. The two men are just different sides of the worldsame policing coin. She joins Himura aboard Sometimes the Orihime, a sky-ship whose express purpose is to hunt down shikigami, and a whole world of adventure awaits her…|isbn=1406399590combination works brilliantly well. Sometimes it's problematic.
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Patrice LawrenceMosby Woods|title=NeedleA Whirly Man Loses His Turn|rating=34|genre=TeensLiterary Fiction|summary=BraveThe West isn't the dominant force it once was. Charlene, Nobody in the 'heroine' of West is quite sure how to mend this piece or even if mending it is extremely hard for some people to like, characters and readers boththe best course of action. Governments are flailing. Kicked out of multiple homes and schoolsA war here, she's fostering with a pleasant yoga tutor, Annie, and has taken up residence push for climate action there. A feeling that nobody is in her son Blake's old room while he's at uniactual charge. Such Imagine then, there was a tempestuous personality may be man with precognition. Imagine the strategic advantage in need of this asset; a comfort blanket, man who can tell you might perhaps thinkwhat will happen given any set of circumstances. That man would be valuable, and right? Perhaps the creation of one such item is part of the plot here, as Charlene is a wonder knitter, and is making something full of love for her younger sister – a younger sister she's allowed contact with no moremost valuable asset in history. We see Charlene prove her belligerence with a store detective, and Imagine then force people to give her two days off school, when she shouts someone down as expletively ignorant. And thenthat this man loses this ability... well, what exactly happens is not for me What would governments do to say, only to remark how sharp and pointy those knitting needles can be...get it back?|isbn=1800901011B0C9SNG8R1
}}
