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'''Read [[Forthcoming Publications|reviews of books about to be published]].
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Judith Eagle0241636604|title=The Accidental StowawayTrading Game: A Confession|author=Gary Stevenson
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersAutobiography|summary=Patch is If you were to bring up an image of a little girl who has been passed from one relation to anothercity banker in your mind, until it seems that there is nobody left for her to go you're unlikely tothink of someone like Gary Stevenson. Her father died when she A hoodie and jeans replaces the pin-stripe suit and his background is the East End, where he was very youngfamiliar with violence, poverty and her mother ran awayinjustice. The family lawyer, after consultation with ‘someone’, arranges for her to go to a There was no posh public school in Liverpool, on his CV - but on her arrival there, she gets caught up in an adventure with a little boy called Turo who works on a steamshiphe had been to the London School of Economics. During Stevenson is bright - extremely bright - and he has a chase facility with him (when she is both trying numbers which most of us can only envy. He also realised that most rich people expect poor people to get her rollerskate back and running away from the police!) she winds up on the steamship hiding in a lifeboatbe stupid. It was his ability at what was, and before she knows itessentially, the ship has left the docks and she is a card game which got him an accidental stowaway!|isbn=0571363121internship with Citibank. Eventually, this turned into permanent employment as a trader.
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=07603798741035021803|title=Super Easy Knitting for BeginnersThe Antique Hunter's Guide to Murder|author=Carri HammettC L Miller|rating=43.5|genre=CraftsCrime|summary=I learned It's twenty years since Freya Lockwood has been back to knit in the nineteen-fifties: it wasnEnglish country village where she grew up. She't s back now because of a choicerequest for help from her beloved aunt, it was a requirementCarole. Girls learned to knit Freya's former mentor and Carole's close friend, Arthur Crockleford, is dead and the circumstances seem suspicious, to embroider and boys did wood and metal worksay the least. My knitting wa accompanied by a lot of criticism and quite a few tears: it Arthur was a long time before I realised that there was pleasure the reason why Freya had not been back to be had in the skillvillage: Arthur, she feels, let her down badly. Nearly seventy years later it's Even though they were in business together as antique hunters, she has not felt able to be near the man or pursue the only thing that keeps my hands at all suppleprofession she loved. The turning point was After the split, she worked in a booklet published by Patons which gave all cafe, met and married James (on the basics rebound from the love of her life, who was murdered) and Freya and some patternsJames have now divorced. I've been looking for something simple to recommend to people who'd like to master the skill. So, how did ''Super Easy Knitting For Beginners'' work out?
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Sarah Todd TaylorAllTomorrowsFutureCover|title=Alice Eclair, Spy Extraordinaire! A Recipe for TroubleAll Tomorrow's Futures: Fictions that Disrupt|author=Benjamin Greenaway and Stephen Oram (Editors)|rating=45|genre=Confident ReadersScience Fiction|summary=Meet Alice Eclair''Opening up new ways of thinking about the shape of things to come. A perfect eye and very careful hands have made her one of Paris's best young cake makers and decorators, making sure her mother's establishment  I've heard it said that 'technology' is a classy affairwhat happens after you're eighteen. Not bad for a thirteen year old. OhWell, and a perfect eye and a very careful handler and remote trainer I must confess that there have also made sure she is been more than a very competent young spyfew decades of technology in my lifetime. Her first real mission will be I've kept up reasonably well with what's advantageous to chase a traitor across me but I'm left with the country – working behind feeling that it's all getting away from me. Some of it is - frankly - quite frightening. Of course, I could research the scenes on a posh sleeper train to possibilities and the south of France, probabilities and hoping against hope that she can prevent documents allowing foreign agents to creep into end up down rabbit holes without really understanding whether I'm reading someone who knows what they're talking about or the country from getting into nefarious handslatest conspiracy theorist. But while nobody would have her down as I needed people I knew I could trust and who could deliver information in a spy, can she possibly leave behind her rookie status and find the baddy?|isbn=1839940956way I could understand.
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0760379912Sunny Singh|title=Super Easy Quilting for Beginners|author=Editors of Quarry BooksHotel Arcadia|rating=43.5|genre=CraftsThrillers |summary=I learned patchworking from necessity: old or outgrown clothes needed to be turned into something new and usable when I was The Hotel Arcadia is a luxury hotel in my twenties. It would be an unnamed city that has suddenly been violently taken over by a while before it became a pleasure rather than a chore but I've never felt completely at home with quiltingterrorist group. I needed something Hiding from the terrorists who are rampaging through, killing everyone on site, there is Sam, a little more stylish than my usual buttons or knotswartime photographer and Abhi, the hotel manager. ''Super Easy Quilting As Abhi continues to try to care remotely for Beginners'' seemed like the residents who are still alive in the hotel, he forms a good place bond with Sam who refuses to startbe cowed by events, and keeps on venturing out of her room to try to capture what's happened through her photography. SoAlthough they only ever talk over the phone, how did it stack up?their friendship grows as Abhi tries to help her keep safe and they both wait to see if they will be rescued before they are discovered by the terrorists.|isbn=086154742X
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=17883607371529153298|title= Artivism: The Battle for Museums in the Era List of PostmodernismSuspicious Things|author=Alexander AdamsJennie Godfrey|rating=25|genre= Politics and SocietyGeneral Fiction|summary= Can art ever be apoliticalIt's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. (A woman? All art is political because art is I mean, honestly...) She's not made in a vacuumwhat's worrying Miv's family, though. Women have been disappearing. It is made by people Well, they've been murdered, but to have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. Antonio Gramsci stated Miv's upset because she's overheard that ‘’Every man… contributes her father wants to modifying move the social environment in which he develops’’family 'Down South'. Therefore When you're from Yorkshire, all art must be politicalDown South is a frightening, foreign place, even implicitlybest avoided. Alexander Adams in his new book ‘Artivism: The Battle for Museum in For Miv, the Era of Postmodernism’ is adamant move would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, and she'll do anything to prevent that art is freer when it is art for art’s sake. The recent trend of so She's not worried about the dangers or that her Mum's stopped talking -called artivism has caused artists to become more overtly political (read: left wing). Their seemingly grass roots movements have been astroturfed by large “left-wing” donors and media elites hoping to create a more globalist and progressive regime. Or at least that’s what Alexander Adams believesanyone.
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=14087121721398524085|title=The Cliff HouseHas Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter?|author=Chris BrookmyreNicci French
|rating=5
|genre=ThrillersCrime|summary=Charlotte Salter was expected at her husband''Many of them didn't know each others fiftieth birthday party but never turned up. Her children, one of them didn't know anybodysons Niall, including Jen, one of them quite possibly hated Paul and Ollie and herdaughter, and two of them definitely hated each otherEtty. What could possibly go wrong?'' That's the roundare all worried but - strangely -up for Jen's hen party which her husband, Alec, is to take place on Clachan Geal an island just south of Barranot. They're all staying in The Cliff HouseShortly afterwards, hosted by LaurenEtty and Greg, and itfind the body of Greg's father, Duncan Ackerley, in the utmost in luxury living but then Jen can afford itriver. She's just sold her muffin business It was an easy assumption for millions but is staying on the police to run it. She's got her doubts about the long weekend: fiance Zaki Hussain has been acting a little strangely of late make that Duncan had murdered Charlie and wouldnthen committed suicide when he couldn't explain to her what stand the email he was hurriedly deleting was aboutguilt. Added to that, heThe Salter children are not convinced but there's just about forced her to bring his sister, Samira, whom Jen's never met, on the trip, little else they can do but get on the grounds that she's been stuck at home with newborn twins for the last six months their lives and desperately needs the breakwonder about what really happened.
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=17883607021035906708|title=Charles, The Alternative Prince: An Unauthorised BiographyDiva|author=Edzard ErnstDaisy Goodwin|rating=4.5|genre=BiographyGeneral Fiction|summary=For over forty yearsWe tend to think of Maria Callas as Greek, Prince Charles has been an ardent supporter of alternative medicine but she was born to Greek parents in Manhattan, New York, in December 1923 and complementary therapiesonly moved to Athens when she was thirteen. Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to 'Callas'Charles, The Alternative Prince'' critically assesses to make it more manageable in the Prince's opinions, beliefs and aims against the background of the scientific evidenceStates. There are few instances of his beliefs being vindicated and his relentless promotion of treatments which have no scientific support has done considerable damage to When she was back in Athens - supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for her voice - she was raised under the reputation of Nazi occupation by a man mother who is proud mercilessly exploited her and made no secret of his refusal to apply evidence-basedher preference for her elder sister, logical reasoning to his ambitionsJackie.
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{{Frontpage
|author=Will CarverChristopher Edge|title=The Daves Next DoorBlack Hole Cinema Club
|rating=4
|genre=General FictionConfident Readers|summary= Five strangers come together Lucas and his friends are all booked in one moment as for a suicide bomber prepares to detonate his vest on movie marathon at their local cinema, a London tube lineplace that has the nickname of 'The Black Hole'. As their fates overlap All big movie fans, they're looking forward to lots of exciting films, and many, many snacks! However, as the story movie starts, they very quickly realise that something about this new film format is told in backwards ordervery different, leading and they are swept up into an adventure they couldn't even imagine. But as they lurch from one film genre to the fateful moment.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= 19145851861839942738}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1529125790Rachel Greenlaw|title=The Family Remains|author=Lisa JewellCompass and Blade|rating=43.5|genre=ThrillersTeens|summary=In July 2019''I can hear the song of the sea. The call of the deep, the answering beat in my heart.'' Rosevear, a remote and partially forgotten island, Jason Mott was mud larking survives on luring ships into the rocks and plundering the banks wrecks. Mira, like her mother before her, is one of the River Thames seven who swim out to survey the ruins – rescuing any survivors and any treasure that lies within. But when he came across the Council Watch lays a bag of what appeared trap to be human bonesend the wrecking, they capture the island's leader and Mira's father. Detective Inspector Samuel Owusu and Saffron Brown Desperate to save him from forensics were there to investigate. The bones were indeed human: death, Mira makes a young woman had been killed by bargain with a blow wreck survivor who is as charming as he is secretive and with only coordinates to guide her, she sets off in search of a family secret that lies buried deep in the head many years ago - probably sea. With only nine days to unearth what might save her father, as long as twenty-five - but her journey takes her from the bones had not been in watched streets of foreign islands to the river longer than a year. There was no identification but heart of the bag contained vegetationsmuggler's territory, some Mira must be determined to stop at nothing to save the future of which was quite unusualher home and the ones she holds most dear.|isbn=0008664730
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{{Frontpage
|author=Jennifer MasonJames Sherwood Metts|title=Partitions of UnityPlanet Storyland|rating=4.5|genre=General FictionConfident Readers|summary= Here at Bookbag Towers, we first met Elizabeth Cromwell, dominatrix Things have been a bit sticky for the Earthlings. AI and unintentional detective in [[Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery by Jennifer Mason|Preposterous]]automation have been proceeding apace, when she investigated often replacing jobs they're paid to do and unravelled a series of disappearancesother tasks that took time to accomplish. In ''Partitions Just as they were beginning to get used to all this technological change and starting to think of Unity''other, she sets her mind new ways to solving a murder..spend time, along came an awful pandemic.Life was pretty much shut down and, along with it, all the many daily social interactions on which they depend so heavily.|isbn=B09LQR9FRF1736128426
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{{Frontpage
|author=Fiona Parashar Matthew Tree|title=A Beautiful Way to Coach We'll Never Know|rating=4.5|genre=Business and FinanceLiterary Fiction|summary= So what am I doing reading this book, using this bookTimothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, a drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of being audacious enough to review it? Truth is I bought it out exceptional at any of curiosity. I was at an on-line launch for the book his artistic passions all failed miserably and Fiona’s description who had endless crises of her Vision Days appealed to meself confidence. I wanted to see if there were things in there that I could use with someone I am currently helping / supporting / trying to mentor – without committing them to a full day, which I know would send them scurrying for their burrow. I also wanted So Tim applied himself to see if I could give myself a Vision Dayhis studies, to bring me away from their vision cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and back to my ownset himself high but achievable ambitions.|isbn=103211603XB0CVFXPGP8
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1913750353A G Slatter|title=Britannica's Word The Briar Book of the Day|author=Patrick Kelly, Renee Kelly and Sue MacyDead
|rating=5
|genre=Children's Non-FictionFantasy|summary=''BritannicaThere's Word a part of the Day'' has a sub-title: ''366 Elevating Utterances to Stretch Your Cranium and Tickle Your Humerus'' which probably tells you all me that you need wants to know about keep this brilliant bookjust to myself for however long I can. It starts on January 1st with ''Razzmatazz''This secret magic of my own, all mine, tells you how at last. I just want to pronounce enjoy it (for a while.''raz-muh-TAZ Within a remote mountain pass, far away from the world, lies Silverton; a town under the protection of the Briar'')s, gives you a definition family of witches who protect the town and then includes the word in wider world from the Darklands. Though she has always wished for magic, Ellie Briar is the first non-witch to be born into her family for generations and as such since she was young, her training as a sentence so that you know how it should be used. You also get an engaging steward revolved around letters and administration rather than spells and frequently amusing illustration toopotions. I donWhen her grandmother suddenly dies, Ellie't think Is cousin Audra becomes the Briar Witch, the town've ever encountered s leader, and Ellie takes her place beside her. As challenges come her way left, right and centre, Ellie uncovers the rare ability to communicate with the dead, putting her at the heart of a word which uses maelstrom of chaos. Reeling from one family secret to another, Ellie must decide who to trust and determine what to do as the letter Z four times before!Briar witches' legacy, everything they have sacrificed to survive, is under threat.|isbn=1803364548
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=A C Wise1529900360|title=HookedThe Ghost Orchid|author=Jonathan Kellerman
|rating=4
|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=It’s It hadn't been twenty-two years since Captain HookLt Milo Sturgis's fault that Alex Delaware had been badly injured but he felt responsible and even after Alex recovered, now going by just ‘James’, has been in NeverlandSturgis was reluctant to ask for his help on difficult cases. Living His assertions that there were only open-and-shut cases which didn't need the help of a new life in Londonpsychologist only worked for a while. Finally, it was Robin, Delaware's partner, he has never completely escaped his pastwho nudged Milo into asking for help again. But now he senses She knew that the edges of involvement was something that the beast circling around his life in Londonman she loved needed. The next case did look simple, and when suddenly he finds himself face to face though. Two lovers were murdered in the street with Wendy, he knows that swimming pool of a remote property in Bel Air. He was the line between this world heir to an Italian shoe empire and Neverland she is growing thin. The beast is finally coming married to get him, an extremely rich man and in it's not the process will pull Wendy and her daughter Jane back into their past once againItalian.|isbn=1789096839 But which of them was the primary target?
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=17873017451529395224|title=ConfidenceLetting the Cat Out of the Bag: The Secret Life of a Vet|author=Denise MinaSion Rowlands
|rating=3.5
|genre=ThrillersAnimals and Wildlife|summary=WeSiôn Rowlands fell into veterinary science accidentally. His father was a GP and Rowlands didn're back t want to follow in his footsteps, particularly when he considered the world of podcasters Anna and Fin, whom we first met in [[Conviction by Denise Mina|Conviction]]strain that being on-call put on his father's life. It When he was Anna who'd organised seventeen he took the 'opportunity of doing work experience with a family' holiday: her ex, Hamish, is now with her best friend, Estelle and her children are living with them. Fin (who was married to Estelle) is there too a vet and it was Anna who invited his girlfriend, Sofiaconvinced this was the job for him. It's not Before long before everyone realises that , he was a bad mistakeat Liverpool University. SofiaIt hadn's difficult and t - as with everyone trapped inside their holiday accommodation so many students - been his dream since he was a lighthousechild. If anything, in a storm - she begins talking about Annahe's past, including her real name and the rape. This was something which Anna had intended d wanted to tell the girls - twelve-tear-old Jess and ten-year-old Lizzie - when the time was right. And this wasn't the right timebe a professional footballer.
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=178763566X0861541774|title=Listen to MeA Nye of Pheasants|author=Tess GerritsenSteve Burrows|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=WeDCI Domenic Jejeune're s close friend and former colleague, Danny Maik, has taken a short holiday in Boston Singapore to meet up with Amyan old ally, Guy Trueman. When she set out for university this morning it Maik was involved in a spring day and she wore her new, butterystreet brawl -leather pumps but as she comes out of the library she knows he would later maintain that they're going to be ruined he was facing a man armed with a knife - and unsafe - in the snow that's now falling. As she crosses the road, he killed a car comes out of nowhere and hits her. It doesn't stopGhurkaTwo months later Initially, we're with Angela Rizzoli, mother of Detective Jane Rizzoli, and he faced a keen defender charge of manslaughter but evidence came to light that suggested that he might have planned to murder the suburb of Revere, north of Boston, where she livesman. Nothing gets past her and whilst her boyfriend, Vince Korsak, is in California, looking after his sister, she has Now he could be facing the time death penalty. Domenic Jejeune can do nothing to watch whathelp as any interference from another police force could provoke a diplomatic incident and wouldn's happening in the neighbourhood. The people who are moving in t help Danny at no 2533 have aroused her suspicionsall.
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0008395632Alexander McCall Smith|title=One Last Secret|author=Adele ParksThe Perfect Passion Company
|rating=4.5
|genre=ThrillersGeneral Fiction|summary=Natalya The Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and operating as an escortalternative to all the online apps in providing a more personal, tailored service. WellNess has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the business, her name's not ''actually'' Natalya: that's her professional name but it as Ness is planning to take a nod trip to her Serbian heritageCanada to get away for a while. She's actually thirty-one-year-old Teodora Dziewulski, usually known as Dora Wulski. If you're thinking Katie is coming out of 'escort' as being a polite description of break up with a prostitutebad boyfriend, run by a pimp, who's turning tricks and so jumps at the chance to come home to fund a drug habit, forget itEdinburgh. Dora is a professional in all senses of the word. She has And so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us to an agentEdinburgh we already love, Elspeth, who takes 30% of her income thanks to 44 Scotland Street and deals with the payments Isabel Dalhousie novels, but checks out the clients with some new characters who quickly begin to see that Dora is going to be safecharm. Dora describes herself as Katie has no experience in running a selfbusiness, or in match-employed clairvoyant to Her Majestymaking, but Ness has full confidence in her abilities, and there's Revenue always her very helpful (and Customs. rather handsome) neighbour, William, to lend a hand…|isbn=1846976596
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=David Solomons0811771741|title=A Beginner's Guide to Ruling the GalaxyInstaKnits for Baby|author=Melissa Leapman
|rating=4
|genre=Confident ReadersCrafts|summary=Gavin is being followedMelissa Leapman's ''InstaKnits for Baby'' gives us a collection of knits from toys to blankets. Some will be quick knits - others are of the 'long, seemingly constantly, by cosy afternoons in front of the new (very annoying) girl at schoolfire' variety. Only this is not your typical boy meets girl storyThe projects are divided by the time they'll take to complete - less than five hours, five to ten hours, ten to twenty hours and more than twenty hours. Because in this instance, All the girl in question is Nikiprojects are attractive, modern and she is a galactic princess (no, really, she is!) useable. So what will Gavin do I perhaps show my age when he becomes embroiled in a situation where, potentially, Earth and everyone on it will be blown to smithereens, all because of Niki?|isbn=0857639935I wonder about 'social-media-worthy projects' but that's me being picky.
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{{Frontpage
|author=Alex CotterDean Koontz|title=The Mermaid CallBad Weather Friend|rating=34.5|genre=Confident ReadersParanormal|summary=Vivien knows that mermaids don't existBenny is having a terrifically bad day. He loses his job, he loses his fiancee, and his house gets trashed. But she also knows they have Oh, and someone has delivered a really weird, disturbing coffin-sized object to exist – at least in his home, and it's possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the thing that has trashed his house! The thing is, Benny is the public eyevery last person to deserve all this bad luck. For there would be nothing to Lake Splendour – He is a far northern English resort – without themnice person. A hundred years and change agoreally nice person. So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the delivery to his house is a new friend, two teenaged girls allegedly spent months with mermaidsa bad weather friend called Spike, but were forced to return who has been sent to help out with the Great War efforthim since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a good person. They also showed female emancipationSpike is going to take care of Benny, which helped create the townand will certainly take care of Benny's tourism industryenemies, if he, Benny, now faded and falling apart but once a feminist success story. Alice, Harper (a girl waitress slash Private Investigator who stumbles finds herself roped into VivienBenny's gran's tourist shop one day, knows she certainly wants mermaids to exist – she thinks her family's black sheep died searching for them, or else was just too successful in her huntwild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are. When the shy, doubting Thomasina that is Vivien collides with the exuberant, gung-ho Alice, what on earth – or perhaps in water – will they find?|isbn=18399419011662500491
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1739805100Adam Stower|title=Loving the Enemy: Building bridges in a time of war|author=Andrew MarchMurray and Bun
|rating=4.5
|genre=BiographyConfident Readers |summary= ''Loving the Enemy'' tells the quite extraordinary story of author Andrew March's grandparentsMurray is supposed to be a humble, tidy and friendly cat, one who first met when grandfather Fred Clayton went is able to Dresden to teach in the early days sleep and eat and eat and sleep and, well, whatever takes his fancy next of the Nazi regime in the 1930stwo. Fred But he's a bad magician's cat, so his favourite bun has been turned into a sensitive hyperactive sticky rabbit called Bun, and thoughtful manthe catflap they both use can chuck them out, not into the regular back garden, had some vague ideas but into a world of "building bridges" which may guard against the growing hostilities between nations unfolding in Europe at the frightening adventure and whiffs. This time. Fred's attempts round it drops them into a Viking land, where a troll hunter is expected – well, one much bigger than Murray was, to separate individual people from ideology weren't universally successful be honest, but he did make friendships 's turned up and connections that lasted for a lifetime. he'll have to do…|isbn=0008561249
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=B0B575J99NB0C47LV1PC|title=Beneath the PorticoesFragility|author=Brooke AdamsMosby Woods
|rating=4
|genre=Women's Literary Fiction|summary=Elizabeth Miller was thirty-four and Can you make a teacher at a prestigious girl's school in York. It was 'Yo birthing person'comfortable'' but she longed for something more in life. She'd ''still not found the right vocation nor met the right man'' and now was joke? And if you could, is the time to question should you make a change. She needed challenges. There was a little trepidation when she applied for it? Or is the professoressa job in Bologna. After a telephone interviewquestion if you did, she was offered the position and would it wasn't long before she was exploring land? The catch is that the beautiful cityanswer for both could well be... There were some natural doubts before her first class but it went surprisingly well.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1529125898|title=Godmersham Park|author=Gill Hornby|rating=5|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=''If it were not for the casual dereliction of the odd gentleman's duty, there would no women to teach well-bred daughters at all.''
Anne Sharpe was thirty-one years old when she arrived at Godmersham Park to take up ''Fragility'' is set as the position city of governess Portland, Oregon, cautiously begins to twelve-year-old Fanny Austen. She had no experience of teaching but this was a case of necessity. Until emerge from the death of her mother, Anne had a comfortable life and was loved by both parents although her father was frequently absent from restrictions imposed during the household. When her mother died, her father cast her off and would have nothing more to do with her. No explanation was offered but she would receive an annuity of £35 a year. Her maid, Agnes, would receive nothing but was fortunately taken in by some neighbours.covid pandemic
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Lev Parikian 1529431735|title=Light Rains Sometimes FallThe Winter Visitor|author=James Henry|rating=4.5|genre=Animals and WildlifeCrime|summary= If you’re It's February 1991 and Essex is bitingly cold, which made Bruce Hopkins' return all the more surprising. He'd been exiled on the Costa del Sol as a wanted drug smuggler for a writer yourselfdecade. The return has come about because he's had a letter from his ex-wife, or an aspiring writer, or someone who pretends saying that she's ill and hasn't long to write, then you know that there are unnumbered types of bookslive. Some you read for fun It's hard to feel any sympathy when Hopkins is abducted, some for distraction, some for vicarious emotion, some stripped to his underwear and sent to learn from a watery grave in a random way, some for focussed research, and some because they are, broadly speaking, the kind boot of thing you think you might like to writea stolen Ford Sierra. Or, indeed, are actually trying Is it a warning from a Spanish gang or a problem closer to write.|isbn=1783966386home?
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0751581577Alex Bell and Tim McDonagh|title=Lying Beside You|author=Michael RobothamThe Glorious Race of Magical Beasts|rating=54|genre=ThrillersConfident Readers|summary=Elias Haven murdered 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 dessert cafe his parents gran owns and his twin sisters two days after his nineteenth birthdayruns. Voices told him to do it. Only two people survived the carnage - Elias, who was sent to Rampton, and Eli lives with his thirteen-year-old brotherlovely gran, Cyrus, who hid too – for there is a generation missing in a shed until the police found himfamily. Twenty A few short years laterago, Cyrus is a forensic psychologist and heEli's been told that his brother is being released. Can Cyrus forgive the sinner whilst having to live on a daily basis with the results of the crime? Can he bear parents were both lost to have Elias living in the same house? How will his lodgertitular race, twentya globe-one-year-old Evie Cormac, cope?}}{{Frontpage|isbn=140595115X|title=A Stranger on Board|author=Cameron Ward|rating=4.5|genre=Thrillers|summary=Right from the beginning, we know this will not turn out well. Eight days into the trip trotting adventure where all entrants have to deliver navigate the superyacht ''Escape'' to Antigua, all 300 tonnes and six decks will be floundering without power world in the Atlanticcompany of a magical beast. Those of This has made the race anathema to the crew who are left will be cowering in fear pair – but when a fellow crew member tries bad incident at the eatery leads to pick them offa confession from gran, one by one. Some are already dead. They are three days from shore and there Eli knows his only hope is no way of making contact. But let's go back to when all this starteddare to enter what he most hates, in Southampton.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1398508632|title=The Wilderness Cure|author=Mo Wilde|rating=5|genre=Lifestyle|summary=It had been on with the cards for a while but it was sole aim the week-long consumer binge which pushed Mo Wilde into beginning her year prize of eating only wild food. The magic at the end of November, particularly in Central Scotland was perhaps not the best time only thing to start, in a world where the normal sores had been exacerbated by climate change, Brexit and a pandemic. Wilde had a few advantages: the area around her was a known habitat with a variety of terrains. She had electricity which allowed her to run a fridge, freezer and dehydrator. She had a car - and fuel. Most importantly, she had shelter: this was not a plan to ''live'' wild just to live off its producepossibly save his gran.|isbn=0571382231
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=1635864674178763681X|title=Tomato Love: 44 Mouthwatering Recipes Knife Skills for Salads, Sauces, Stews, and MoreBeginners|author=Joy HowardOrlando Murrin
|rating=4
|genre=CookeryCrime|summary=Chef Paul Delamare took a teaching job at a residential cookery school in Belgravia. He didn''Think t really want to but celebrity chef Christian Wagner had a way of it as no-whining dininggetting both men and women to do what he wanted. Paul '' We know itsomehow''s a fruit rather than a vegetable but got the fact impression that so many people get confused just goes he'd be at the school to show how versatile the tomato is. Then there are all the different typesassist Paul, who had a broken arm, not to mention the cultivars - and you begin to understand why Joy Howard says that she hasn't met one she but it didn't loveturn out that way. I'd argue with her there The teaching - I have no affection for and the ones you find in the supermarket problems - are all his own. The one thing he hadn''next'' to the ones labelled 'grown t expected was for flavour' someone to distinguish them from the ones that have obviously just been grown for profitturn up dead. PersonallyUnfortunately, I'd prefer a tin of tomatoes he was the person who discovered the body and everyone knows that the police consider that person to those - and Howard makes good use of these. She's not at all precious if you get be the tasteprime suspect.
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0241989027Sarah Marsh|title=We All Have Our Secrets|author=Jane Corry|rating=4.5|genre=Thrillers|summary=Harold Gentle advertised for live-in help as he was failing to cope at Willowmead House on his own. His advert was fairly specific: he was a retired lawyer needing help but he also spoke A Sign of the ability to cook a good steak, enjoy decent wine and be free from any food fads. The first person who came to the house was Francoise, a French woman in her early twenties, who fit 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 made.}}{{Frontpage|author=Ewald Arenz and Rachel Ward (translator)|title=Tasting SunlightHer Own|rating=43.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Sally is After a bout of scarlet fever as a teenager who has run away from an anorexia treatment clinic. She just wants spacechild, and for people to stop questioning Ellen Lark loses herhearing. Suddenly plunged into a world of silence, tiptoeing around everything about herlife changes. Living in a time when the use of sign language was seen as something only savages do, and trying Ellen is sent to fix her without ever truly understanding her. She finds herself on some farmland with a woman called Liss who school where she is in her forties and seems taught to live alonelip read, but physically restrained from signing. Liss is unlike any other adult Sally has ever met. She just accepts Sally as From here, she is, giving her a room to sleep ends up in, another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the deaf and the space to just beusing a system called Visible Speech. As they work together on At the farmsame time, a closeness develops between themBell is working on other inventions and ideas, becoming and Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a beautiful, powerful friendshipcomplicated tangle of espionage.|isbn=19145851431035401614
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Jennifer Mason1803816759|title=Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell MysteryThe Unravelling|author=Will Gibson
|rating=4
|genre=General Science Fiction|summary=It''A struggling poetry zine, a mom-s 2038 and-pop mobile diner in the Northern California redwoods, Joe is a 400-meter hurdler who just missed bored cop policing the 2004 Olympics, a women's track coach with a yen wealthy and peaceful New York City. Joe longs for bullwhips, a billionaire bit of adventure and to get stuck into some really gritty crime detection. But then something goes horribly wrong with a state-of-the-art S&M dungeonAI system that now runs everything, a man serving a making life sentence in Alabamaeasier for many, an enigmatic signatureand riots start to spread. Finally, K(s, x), on a cheap oil painting, an erotic art dealer in Georgia.Joe gets to do some real policing.In the aftermath of the rioting global pop star Suki is kidnapped and Joe is assigned to bring her home.Joe isn'' This is just t the only one trying to save Suki - Dylan, a sample of the cast of characters British superfan and settings in Preposterous. As you can seetech nerd, some keeping up will be required! The basic premise of this mystery story goes like thisis also on the case...|isbn=B09STS96HSWhat went wrong? Did the system fail or was it hacked? And how is Suki's kidnapping connected?
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Will Brooker1529421284|title=The Truth About Lisa JewellLaying Out the Bones|author=Kate Webb|rating=4.5|genre=BiographyCrime|summary=Meet [[:Category:Lisa Jewell|Lisa Jewell]], It was one of those flash downpours that the most successful British authors I've never knowingly readweather often delivers in a heatwave. Now meet Will BrookerIn a gully, one of a human skeleton came to the thousands of less successful authors I quite confidently never have read. This book starts with surface and forensic testing proved the two meeting each otherbody to be Lee Geary, as well, and shows how 2021 drew the two closer and closer togetherwho had disappeared nine years earlier. The meeting was some unspecified combination, it seems, of her anecdote about cup cakes, the words of her latest book she was reciting, and her being in a He''black lace mini-dress with gold brocade'' (certainly d been a get-up never commonly worn at the author events I get to attend), but pulled Brookerknown drug user and had learning disabilities, so it could have been a professor simple case of cultural studies who has swallowed Roland Barthes, down the rabbit-hole that is Jewellmisadventure but DI Matt Lockyer wasn's diverse outputt convinced. Brooker decides Geary was a townie, so what was he'd like nothing more than doing out on Salisbury Plain alone? There are connections to follow her through a year in the published author's life, working to make a success suicide of the latest title, Holly Gilbert and struggling with to two other deaths which were not considered suspicious at the next in linetime. Jewell, due diligence appropriately done, agrees. And this is Lockyer and DC Gemma Broad of the resultMajor Crimes Review Unit (that's cold cases to you and me) investigate.|isbn=1529136024
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=18011092650571379559|title=The CompanionHouse of Broken Bricks|author=Lesley ThomsonFiona Williams
|rating=5
|genre=CrimeLiterary Fiction|summary=James Ritchie thought of himself as ''a punctual man who was inexplicably never on timeThe House of Broken Bricks'' and he was - as usual - late to pick up his son, Wilbur, for their 'boys' day out'is the story of four people. These were always days which appealed more to James than to Wilbur and, competing for the boyTess Hembry's attentionroots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, his motherbut instead, Annashe lives in the house on the riverbank, promised him a roast dinner when he returnedbuilt of broken bricks. The dinner would never be servedInsubstantial as it might look, as James and Wilbur are it's stood the victims passage of a double stabbing on time, storms and floods. Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, to complete the beachdelivery rounds - and to bring in sufficient money. The case falls to DI Toni Kemp of Sussex policeThey have twin boys - Sonny and Max, the rainbow twins. SheSonny's feeling the pressurecolouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. You can always tell - People don't believe that they're related, much less twins and there's an assumption when Max is out with his mother that she shoplifts Snickers Bars when the going gets tough's his nanny.
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=152941363X1529425867|title=To Kill a Troubadour Lost and Never Found (A Bruno, Chief of Police NovelD I Wilkins Mystery)|author=Martin WalkerSimon Mason
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=''Nobody knows what the truth is any moreIn Oxford, there are two D I Wilkins.'' Bruno Courrèges Raymond Wilkins is the police chief for St Denis of Nigerian descent, Balliol educated and much always exquisitely dressed. D I Ryan Wilkins, son of the Vézère valley Ryan and works closely with Commissaire Jean-Jaques Jalipeau father of Ryan, is not. He's not any of those things. He's white, originated from a trailer park, barely educated (known as reading's not ''really'JJ'his thing), the head and his wardrobe consists mainly of detectives for the départment of the Dordogneshell suits and trackies. They're not just policemen - theyusually in lime green or acid yellow. You might wonder if you're both deeply committed being introduced to the well-being and prosperity of this most beautiful part of Francea police procedural written for laughs. The discovery of an old, stolen PeugeotWell, crashed and abandoned in a ditch wouldnyou't normally have worried them so much had it re not been for . The two men are just different sides of the strange bullet, with Russian letters stamped on the base, which they found in the carsame policing coin. Oh, and there was a golf ball too, which didn't belong to Sometimes the owner of the carcombination works brilliantly well. A golf bag would be a good place to hide a sniperSometimes it's weaponproblematic. Was there going to be an attempt to kill someone, or were the detectives being pushed in a certain direction?
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=0241542405|title=Meredith Alone|author=Claire Alexander|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=When we first meet Meredith Maggs it's Wednesday 14 November 2018 and she's not left her home for 1,214 days. She'd ''like'' to: in fact, she so nearly does. Her outdoor clothes are on and she's even considered which shoes to wear if she's going to catch her train. Then, she can't. She simply can't force herself to leave the safety of her home. She's fortunate that she has a good friend, Sadie, who visits regularly with her two children, James and Matilda. Sadie's a cardiac nurse and full of sound common sense. In fact it was Sadie who gave Meredith her cat, Fred. Groceries are online deliveries and there's also an internet-based support group where you'll find Meredith as JIGSAWGIRL, so you can guess what she does in her spare time. Then Tom McDermott arrives. He's from Holding Hands, a charity which supports people with problems such as Meredith's.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=B09Y451X9KMosby Woods|title= Greetings, aliens!: (do pop in for tea)|author=Richard F WalkerA Whirly Man Loses His Turn
|rating=4
|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary= The West isn''Anything can happen at a birthday party, particularly when t the birthday boy is the young Lord of the Manordominant force it once was. But when an eerie signal is picked up Nobody in the early hours, George and his new girlfriend, the vivacious Lady Antonia, embark on a quest West is quite sure how to uncover its incredible message. Things get complicated when some total spoilsport lets the cat out of the bag and the world goes into a state of panic.'' Could mend this or even if mending 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 is the world best course of advanced science, secret agentsaction.and politicians hungry for powerGovernments are flailing.}}{{Frontpage|author=Darren Shan|title= Archibald Lox and the Sinkhole to Hell: Archibald Lox seriesA war here, book 7 |rating=4a push for climate action there.5|genre=Confident Readers|summary= SoA feeling that nobody is in actual charge. We're back to the Merge Imagine then, there was a man with precognition. Imagine the first chapter strategic advantage in the third volume of Darren Shan's saga of Archibald Lox, this asset; a young man who can pick the locks tell you what will happen given any set of portals from our world to another, called the ''Merge''circumstances. Since his last adventureThat man would be valuable, Archie has persuaded his foster parents into a slightly uneasy truce on right? Perhaps the topic of his regular disappearancesmost valuable asset in history. They don't ask too many questions and Archie has settled into a fairly peaceful routine of visiting WinstonImagine then, his lock-picking mentor in the ''Merge'' and showing Kojo, the young guardian, around our world of the Bornthat this man loses this ability. What would governments do to get it back?|isbn= B09Z2MTCZDB0C9SNG8R1
}}

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