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'''Read [[Forthcoming Publications|reviews of books about to be published]].
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Robin Birch and Jobe Anderson0241636604|title=Secret Beast ClubThe Trading Game: The Unicorns of Silver StreetA Confession|author=Gary Stevenson|rating=4.5|genre=Confident ReadersAutobiography|summary=Jayden's nose is forever If you were to bring up an image of a city banker in a bookyour mind, which means he knows a lot about mythological creatures – the phoenixes and unicorns you're unlikely to think of the world, for examplesomeone like Gary Stevenson. Aisha A hoodie and jeans replaces the pin-stripe suit and his background is addicted to her new tabletthe East End, where she can see videos of anything that might be out therehe was familiar with violence, poverty and injustice. The problem, as their mothers see it, is that they are never 'out there' themselves, exploring There was no posh public school on his CV - but he had been to the outside world London School of Hackney, LondonEconomics. But when a narrowboat turns up carrying a scienceStevenson is bright - extremely bright -minded, educational purpose, and he has a facility with a past involving Jayden's cousin, they find a magical world they never knew existednumbers which most of us can only envy. For many of those mythological creatures are real, including the one Aisha thinks she's seen on a bit of local footageHe also realised that most rich people expect poor people to be stupid. The crew of the boatIt was his ability at what was, essentially, including a living gargoyle, are tasked card game which got him an internship with saving the rare critters – and the kids unknowingly have the magical sight needed to join inCitibank. Dare they side with LeilaEventually, the woman on board, and her relative who lives this turned into permanent employment as a figure in a painting, and become saviours of the unseen?|isbn=0241573483trader.
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=19138396561035021803|title=LetThe Antique Hunter's Celebrate Being DifferentGuide to Murder|author=Lainey DeeC L Miller
|rating=3.5
|genre=For SharingCrime|summary=Todd was excited about spending It's twenty years since Freya Lockwood has been back to the weekend with his grandmother, not least because English country village where she made the best beetle juicegrew up. He packed two pairs She's back now because of dungarees a request for help from her beloved aunt, Carole. Freya's former mentor and his favourite hat Carole's close friend, Arthur Crockleford, is dead and then gathered together his button collection the circumstances seem suspicious, to show his grandmothersay the least. She Arthur was the reason why Freya had promised not been back to take him the village: Arthur, she feels, let her down badly. Even though they were in business together as antique hunters, she has not felt able to be near the Friday Night Club at man or pursue the local community centre and Todd was pleased about this as he wanted to make new friendsprofession she loved. At homeAfter the split, his only friend she worked in a cafe, met and married James (on the rebound from the love of her life, who was his mum murdered) and Freya and he wondered why that could be. Grandma thought that it might be because he looked differentJames have now divorced.
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=1787301036AllTomorrowsFutureCover|title=What July KnewAll Tomorrow's Futures: Fictions that Disrupt|author=Emily KochBenjamin Greenaway and Stephen Oram (Editors)
|rating=5
|genre=ThrillersScience Fiction|summary=When we first meet July Hooper on 20 July 1995 she's just ten years old'Opening up new ways of thinking about the shape of things to come. She's a careful, meticulous child' I've heard it said that 'technology' is what happens after you're eighteen. The care has Well, I must confess that there have been taught by her father, Mick Hooper, who is not prepared to discuss the death more than a few decades of his wife, Julytechnology in my lifetime. I've kept up reasonably well with what's mother, and any hint that advantageous to me but I'm left with the conversation is heading feeling that way will lead to the necessity it's all getting away from me. Some of a Lessonit is - frankly - quite frightening. Other infractions of his requirements also lead to these Lessons Of course, I could research the possibilities and the probabilities and heend up down rabbit holes without really understanding whether I's not even careful m reading someone who knows what they're talking about whether or not the injuries are visiblelatest conspiracy theorist. July's teacher is concerned I needed people I knew I could trust and brings up the possibility of abuse with the head but her worries are dismissed: Mick has been good to the school, has he not? The playground wouldn't have been resurfaced but for himwho could deliver information in a way I could understand.
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{{Frontpage
|author=Lucy AsheSunny Singh|title=Clara and OliviaHotel Arcadia|rating=43.5|genre=General FictionThrillers |summary=The year Hotel Arcadia is 1933a luxury hotel in an unnamed city that has suddenly been violently taken over by a terrorist group. The place? Sadler's Wells. Ballerinas Clara and Olivia Hiding from the terrorists who are sistersrampaging through, twins no less. Identical killing everyone on the outside but notsite, we learnthere is Sam, on the inside. And not on stage, either. Because there's a lot that builds a dancer. Some things that can be taught or learnt – discipline, attention to detail – wartime photographer and some thingsAbhi, that ''je ne sais quoi'', that don't come from the classroomhotel manager. A stage presence As Abhi continues to try to care remotely for the residents who are still alive in the hotel, he forms a charmbond with Sam who refuses to be cowed by events, a ''joie de vivre'and keeps on venturing out of her room to try to capture what's happened through her photography. The difference between a hard-worker Although they only ever talk over the phone, their friendship grows as Abhi tries to help her keep safe and a starthey both wait to see if they will be rescued before they are discovered by the terrorists.|isbn=0861544080086154742X
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=00084544931529153298|title=All the Dangerous The List of Suspicious Things|author=Stacy Willingham|rating=4.5|genre=Crime|summary=Isabelle Drake hasn't really slept for a year - well, apart from the odd occasion when she lost track of time or drifted off for a moment. It's now a year since her son, Mason, was stolen from his bed in the middle of the night and Izzy is consumed with guilt that she heard nothing and particularly about her relief in the morning when she thought he was sleeping in. In that year she's done everything she could to raise awareness about the case. She does interviews and when we meet her, she's just been to TrueCrimeCon where she gave a keynote presentation. On the plane back, she's approached by a podcaster, Waylon Spencer, who points out that she could do a podcast and get to so many more people than she could by giving speeches to a few hundred people at conferences.}}{{Frontpage|author=Jeremy Dronfield and David Ziggy Greene|title=Fritz and Kurt|rating=4|genre=Confident Readers|summary=We start with the pair of brothers Fritz and Kurt, and their muckers, doing things any Jewish lad in 1930s Vienna would want to do – kicking things around the empty market place, helping the neighbours, being dutiful when it comes to the synagogue choir and at a vocational school. Kurt has to make sure the lamps are turned on at their very Orthodox neighbours' each Friday night – the Sabbath preventing them for using anything nearly as mechanical and workmanlike as a light switch. But this is the time just before the Austrian leader is going to cave to Hitler's will, and instead of having a national vote to keep the Nazis out, invite them in with open arms. ''Kristallnacht'' happened in Vienna just as much as in Germany, as did all the round-ups of Jews. These in their turn leave the younger Kurt at home with his mother and sisters anxious to hear word of an evacuation to Britain or the US, while Fritz and his father are, unknown initially to each other, packed off on the same train to Buchenwald and the stone quarry there. And us wondering how the titular event for the adult variant of all this could come about…|isbn=024156574X}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1529421241|title=Stay Buried|author=Kate WebbJennie Godfrey
|rating=5
|genre=CrimeGeneral Fiction|summary=DI Matt Lockyer is on Major Crime Review which sounds quite grand until you realise that itIt's actually a cold case unit 1979 and there are just two of them doing the jobMargaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. (A woman? I mean, honestly... ) LockyerShe's not unduly worriedwhat's worrying Miv's family, though although he. Women have been disappearing. Well, they's not ve been murdered, but to have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so sure about DC Gemma Broad: frightening. Miv's upset because she's probably capable of something betteroverheard that her father wants to move the family 'Down South'. It was When you're from Yorkshire, Down South is a bit of a shock when he got frightening, foreign place, best avoided. For Miv, the phone call from Hedy Lambert: move would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, and she's in H M Prison Eastwood Park for murder - and it was Lockyer who put her there, fourteen years agoll do anything to prevent that. She's keen to see him and to tell him not worried about the dangers or that the man everyone thought sheher Mum'd murdered s stopped talking - but the body turned out to be someone else - has returned home after being away for decadesanyone.
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=B0BQXSYYTF1398524085|title=Just LookingHas Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter?|author=Matthew Tree|rating=4.5|genre=Dystopian Fiction|summary=It was the summer of 2035 and on a cruise ship in Marseilles, Jim was celebrating his new-found wealth and the end of his marriage - not two celebrations generally found in the same sentence by a man! He's watching the tornado - they're more common in Europe these days - that's keeping the cruise ship in port and falls into conversation with Jean-Pierre, a French journalist in his thirties. He writes for a relatively new paper, the right-wing ''La Tribune Gauloise'' and he's interesting if a little wordy on subjects such as the difference between 'France' and 'the Nicci French'. His partner, Helen, who's English and Jewish, keeps him in check to some extent.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=057137493X|title=The Other Half|author=Charlotte Vassell
|rating=5
|genre=Crime
|summary=''The room Charlotte Salter was full of the sort of people expected at her husband''Tatler'' thinks you should know.'' ''The Other Half'' is the story of two men, both with what looks like the same surname. Rupert Beauchamp is the heir to a baronetcy and his thirtieth s fiftieth birthday party is a catered-with-butler event at McDonalds in Camden Townbut never turned up. Think Bollinger Her children, sons Niall, Paul and cocaineOllie and her daughter, Etty. His surname is pronounced 'Beecham'. Caius Beauchamp is a detective inspector with the Metropolitan police and is biare all worried but - strangely -racial. His surname her husband, Alec, is pronounced as you see itnot. The two encounter each other when CaiusShortly afterwards, out for a runEtty and Greg, stumbles across find the body of Clemmie OGreg'Haras father, Duncan Ackerley, Rupert's girlfriendin the river. Rupert thought that she It was being deliberately late an easy assumption for his partythe police to make that Duncan had murdered Charlie and then committed suicide when he couldn't stand the guilt. She was dead under a bushThe 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.
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Joe Thomas1035906708|title=White RiotDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin
|rating=4.5
|genre=CrimeGeneral Fiction|summary= Whenever anyone writes fiction about politics there's always the danger We tend to think of making it too reactionary; too raw. Knee-jerk observations Maria Callas as Greek, but she was born to Greek parents in Manhattan, New York, in December 1923 and hot takes that don't age well or properly capture the spirit of the momentonly moved to Athens when she was thirteen. It takes a truly talented writer Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to be able 'Callas' to capture make it more manageable in the zeitgeist of a particular event or era of political historyStates. Austerity Britain, the student riots, Donald Trump, Brexit – When she was back in Athens - supposedly so much of what is, and has been, written in that she could get appropriate training for her voice - she was raised under the immediate aftermath of these phenomena has been proven Nazi occupation by time to be frothy a mother who mercilessly exploited her and insubstantial and ultimately not particularly powerful or incisive. Inevitably (and perhaps disappointingly made no secret of her preference for people who do enjoy fiction of this nature)her elder sister, the best writing about current political events is that which is written when the events in question are no longer current and when time and experience has afforded the writer the benefit of a more objective viewJackie.|isbn= 1529423376
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{{Frontpage
|author=Heather FawcettChristopher Edge|title=Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of FaeriesBlack Hole Cinema Club
|rating=4
|genre=General FictionConfident Readers|summary=Emily Wilde is an expert academic scholar on faerie loreLucas and his friends are all booked in for a movie marathon at their local cinema, and she a place that has travelled extensively, and researched meticulously, to write her life's work, the very first encyclopaedia nickname of faeries'The Black Hole'. Whilst she is brilliant at research All big movie fans, they're looking forward to lots of exciting films, and speaking to faeriesmany, she is not so good with people. many snacks! So when she finds herself far, far North in the small village of HrafvsnikHowever, having somehow offended as the village matriarchmovie starts, she they very quickly realise that something about this new film format is not sure what she has donevery different, nor how to redeem herself and put her final investigations for her book back on the right track. Enter Wendell Bambleby, her dashingly handsome and insufferable rival who arrives unexpectedly, all charm and delight, much to Emilythey are swept up into an adventure they couldn's frustrationt even imagine. But why is he here? What does he want? And as they lurch from one film genre to the next, can they figure out what exactly on earth is going on with ? Will they ever get back to the faerie folk around Hravsnikcinema, and to their real lives?|isbn=03565191201839942738
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1848458436Rachel Greenlaw|title=Just the Nicest Couple|author=Mary KubicaCompass and Blade|rating=43.5|genre=ThrillersTeens|summary=''I can hear the song of the sea. The whole thing has spiralled out call of controlthe deep, turning into someone I'm notthe answering beat in my heart.''
''Just the Nicest Couple'' is the story of two couples: Christian Rosevear, a remote and Lily Scottpartially forgotten island, survives on luring ships into the rocks and Nina and Jake Hayesplundering the wrecks. The connection between Mira, like her mother before her, is one of the two is that Lily and Nina teach in seven who swim out to survey the same school: Nina teaches English ruins – rescuing any survivors and Lily covers high school algebraany treasure that lies within. The couples have mixed as But when the Council Watch lays a foursome but ittrap to end the wrecking, they capture the island's not leader and Mira's father. Desperate to save him from death, Mira makes a regular thing. Christian bargain with a wreck survivor who is as charming as he is a market research analyst secretive and Jake is with only coordinates to guide her, she sets off in search of a neurosurgeon: they don't have much family secret that lies buried deep in common except their wivesthe sea. Lily hasn't said anything yetWith only nine days to unearth what might save her father, but sheas her journey takes her from the watched streets of foreign islands to the heart of the smuggler's pregnant. She has a lengthy history territory, Mira must be determined to stop at nothing to save the future of miscarriages so her home and the ones she doesn't want to tempt fate by making the knowledge publicholds most dear.|isbn=0008664730
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1914585402James Sherwood Metts|title=Dashboard Elvis is Dead|author=David F RossPlanet Storyland
|rating=4.5
|genre=General FictionConfident Readers|summary=I reviewed David F Ross's book [[There's Only One Danny Garvey by David F Ross|There's Only One Danny Garvey]] Things have been a couple of years back bit sticky for the Earthlings. AI and remember being absolutely floored by how powerful automation have been proceeding apace, often replacing jobs they're paid to do and affecting it wasother tasks that took time to accomplish. It was a grippingJust as they were beginning to get used to all this technological change and starting to think of other, emotionally wounding readnew ways to spend time, along came an awful pandemic. Life was pretty much shut down and rereading my review of , along with it my main takeaway was that I might not have lavished enough praise , all the many daily social interactions on itwhich they depend so heavily.|isbn=1736128426
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=178563335XMatthew Tree|title=Sea Defences|author=Hilary TaylorWe'll Never Know|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=When we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicarTimothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, sitting in on a PCC meeting drunk and wondering why they're held when you need to pick the children up. Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of his artistic passions all failed miserably and her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishionerwho had endless crises of self confidence. Thelma's daughter-in-law won't let her see her grandson. Holthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, is a lovely place, but Rachel is struggling So Tim applied himself to develop a real bond with the parish - and she's in awe of the vicar, Gailhis studies, but then she's been doing the job for more cultivated his abilities rather than thirty years. Rachel his daydreams and Christopher hoped that a walk on the beach would do them some good - it was stormy set himself high but it was probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missingachievable ambitions.|isbn= B0CVFXPGP8
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{{Frontpage
|author=Hadeer ElsbaiA G Slatter|title=The Daughters Briar Book of Izdiharthe Dead|rating=45
|genre=Fantasy
|summary= Drawing inspiration from Egypt, ''The Daughters There's a part of Izdiharme 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.'' explores  Within a remote mountain pass, far away from the lives of two women who could not be more differentworld, yet find themselves fighting for lies Silverton; a town under the rights protection of women and weavers – those with magical abilities - in a society pitted against them. Nehal, born into the upper classBriar's, wishes to attend a family of witches who protect the Weaving Academy to learn to control her abilities town and then join the militarywider world from the Darklands. Though she has always wished for magic, but instead she Ellie Briar is forced into an arranged marriage with Nico. Giorgina on the other hand did not have a privileged upbringing like Nehal and feels great pressure first non-witch to provide be born into her family for generations and as such since she was young, her family training as a steward revolved around letters and administration rather than spells and maintain their reputationpotions. When her grandmother suddenly dies, Ellie's cousin Audra becomes the Briar Witch, whilst secretly attending meetings of the Daughters of Izdihar – a group campaigning for womentown's rightsleader, and Ellie takes her place beside her. Giorgina also happens As challenges come her way left, right and centre, Ellie uncovers the rare ability to be in love communicate with Nico. What follows is the dead, putting her at the heart of a story maelstrom of an unjust societychaos. Reeling from one family secret to another, filled with hypocrisy Ellie must decide who to trust and crueltydetermine what to do as the Briar witches' legacy, everything they have sacrificed to survive, from which blossoms a group of admirable women fighting for their rights and overcoming their personal obstaclesis under threat.|isbn=03565204711803364548
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Sarah Todd Taylor1529900360|title=Alice Eclair, Spy Extraordinaire! A Spoonful of SpyingThe Ghost Orchid|author=Jonathan Kellerman
|rating=4
|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=[[Alice Eclair, Spy Extraordinaire! A Recipe for Trouble by Sarah Todd Taylor|Last time around]], Alice Eclair It hadn't been Lt Milo Sturgis's fault that Alex Delaware had to prove herself as a spy been badly injured but he felt responsible and as a master at all things French and fancy and fondanteven after Alex recovered, as the only way Sturgis was reluctant to save the day involved being an expert baker and icer ask for his help on the French railwaysdifficult cases. Here, we start on a bateauHis assertions that there were only open-mouche in Paris, and even though the espionage isn-shut cases which didn't need the help of a psychologist only worked for a complete success it proves to Alice and her handlers that things are afootwhile. And there will never be more feet than at the WorldFinally, it was Robin, Delaware's Fairpartner, reviving who nudged Milo into asking for help again. She knew that the huge expo involvement was something that gave the city man she loved needed. The next case did look simple, though. Two lovers were murdered in the swimming pool of a remote property in Bel Air. He was the Eiffel Tower heir to an Italian shoe empire and this time showing all her interwar glories off she is married to an extremely rich man and it's not the worldItalian. Once again Alice will have But which of them was the primary target?}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1529395224|title=Letting the Cat Out of the Bag: The Secret Life of a Vet|author=Sion Rowlands|rating=3.5|genre=Animals and Wildlife|summary=Siôn Rowlands fell into veterinary science accidentally. His father was a GP and Rowlands didn't want to present follow in his footsteps, particularly when he considered the front to strain that being on-call put on his father's life. When he was seventeen he took the world opportunity of being doing work experience with a family friend who was a humble yet world-class cake decoratorvet and was convinced this was the job for him. Before long, while seeking out clueshe was at Liverpool University. At stake? It hadn't - as with so many students - been his dream since he was a child. Pioneering flight technology that the enemy just cannot If anything, he'd wanted to be allowed to smuggle out…|isbn=1839940972a professional footballer.
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Amanthi Harris0861541774|title=Beautiful PlaceA Nye of Pheasants|author=Steve Burrows|rating=54|genre=Literary FictionCrime|summary= PadmaDCI Domenic Jejeune's close friend and former colleague, a young Sri LankanDanny Maik, has returned taken a short holiday in Singapore to the Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of her home countrymeet up with an old ally, Guy Trueman. This is Maik was involved in a place she spent her formative yearsstreet brawl - he would later maintain that he was facing a man armed with a knife - and he killed a Ghurka. It is not Initially, he faced a place she was born into, charge of manslaughter but the one she thinks of as home. How she evidence came to be at the Villa, how it became her home, and the machinations light that suggested that he might have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide planned to murder the ''score'' for this gentle and yet subtly violent novelman. Now he could be facing the death penalty. Padma's present fails Domenic Jejeune can do nothing to escape her past help as any interference from another police force could provoke a diplomatic incident and much like the musical score of a film, that strand weaves its way through everything that happens wouldn't help Danny at the Villaall.|isbn=1784631930
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{{Frontpage
|author=Nigel BainesAlexander McCall Smith|title=A Tricky Kind of MagicThe Perfect Passion Company
|rating=4.5
|genre=Emerging ReadersGeneral Fiction|summary=Cooper loves The Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and operating as an alternative to perform magic tricksall the online apps in providing a more personal, tailored service. His father was a magician, Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and named Cooper look after the great Tommy Cooperbusiness, as Ness is planning to take a trip to Canada to get away for a while. But sadly Cooper's father died suddenlyKatie is coming out of a break up with a bad boyfriend, and now Cooper doesn't quite know who so jumps at the chance to be, or how come home to beEdinburgh. And when his dad's prop rabbit starts talking so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, thanks to 44 Scotland Street and the Isabel Dalhousie novels, but with some new characters who quickly begin to himcharm. Katie has no experience in running a business, he ''really'' doesn't know whator in match-making, but Ness has full confidence in her abilities, and there's going on anymore!always her very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, William, to lend a hand…|isbn=14449602611846976596
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=15420372390811771741|title=Death in HeelsInstaKnits for Baby|author=Kitty MurphyMelissa Leapman
|rating=4
|genre=CrimeCrafts|summary=Set against the backdrop of DublinMelissa Leapman's drag scene, ''Death in HeelsInstaKnits for Baby'' tells the story gives us a collection of Fi McKinnery and her best friend, Robyn, who is about knits from toys to debut as drag queen Mae Bblankets. What is meant to Some will be a night quick knits - others are of excitement soon takes a downward turn when fellow drag queenthe 'long, Eve, takes to cosy afternoons in front of the stage to mock Mae Bfire' variety. As if The projects are divided by the night could not get any worsetime they'll take to complete - less than five hours, five to ten hours, when Fi heads home she discovers Eve dead in a gutterten to twenty hours and more than twenty hours. Fi is adamant that Eve was murdered, yet All the drag communityprojects are attractive, modern and the Guards, accept it as an accidentuseable. Fi takes it upon herself to solve the mystery as she fears for her friends, I perhaps show my age when I wonder about 'social-media-worthy projects' but instead ruins relationships as she delves deeperthat's me being picky.
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1800465270Dean Koontz|title=The Lensky Connection|author=Conrad DelacroixBad Weather Friend
|rating=4.5
|genre=ThrillersParanormal|summary=When we first meet Major Valeri Grozky, it's June 1995 and he's at the Serafimov Cemetry in St PetersburgBenny is having a terrifically bad day. He's a pallbearer for loses his elder brotherjob, Timurhe loses his fiancee, whose death was drug-relatedand his house gets trashed. Valeri Oh, and Timur's fathersomeone has delivered a really weird, Ketodisturbing coffin-sized object to his home, is also a pallbearer and heit's disgusted by what possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the thing that has trashed his son had becomehouse! The thing is, Benny is the very last person to deserve all this bad luck. Valeri thinks differently: he's determined He is a nice person. A really nice person. So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the delivery to make his own stand against organised crime and avenge Timur's death. Within house is a matter of monthsnew friend, his obsession will have cost him his marriage to Marisha and created a dubious link with Natassja Petrovskayabad weather friend called Spike, who has been sent to help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a journalistgood person. She's determined Spike is going to expose any take care of Benny, and all corruption - and shewill certainly take care of Benny's less concerned than she ought to be about her own safety. To herenemies, if he's , Benny, and Harper (a good source. For him, itwaitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's a way to get information published, which wouldn't otherwise be possiblewild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are.|isbn=1662500491
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1399702289Adam Stower|title=A World of Curiosities (Chief Inspector Gamache)|author=Louise PennyMurray and Bun|rating=4.5|genre=CrimeConfident Readers |summary=After Murray is supposed to be a harsh winterhumble, the tiny Canadian village of Three Pines tidy and friendly cat, one who is enjoying the arrival of spring. But something is worrying Chief Inspector Armand Gamache able to sleep and eat and eat and sleep and Inspector Jean-Guy Beauvoir , well, whatever takes his fancy next of the Sûreté du Québectwo. Gamache had offered help to But he's a young woman after the murder of her mother: hebad magician'd s cat, so his favourite bun has been less certain about her charismatic brother. For Jean-Guyturned into a hyperactive sticky rabbit called Bun, it had always been and the other way around. Now catflap they're both in use can chuck them out, not into the village regular back garden, but into a world of frightening adventure and neither can fathom what's happeningwhiffs. Armand will soon find that theyThis time round it drops them into a Viking land, where a troll hunter is expected – well, one much bigger than Murray was, to be honest, but he're not just in Three Pines but in his home s turned up and in his life.he'll have to do…|isbn=0008561249
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=B0BHR8KWSKB0C47LV1PC|title=DukkhaFragility|author=Martin HydeMosby Woods
|rating=4
|genre=HorrorLiterary Fiction|summary=Sam wakes up chained in Can you make a basement. He rails against his captor and the injustice of his imprisonment? Why? ''Why?Yo birthing person''joke? And if you could, is the question should you make it? Or is the question if you did, would it land? The catch is that the answer for both could well be.... no.
But of course, he knows why. Sam ''Fragility'' is an erstwhile drug dealer who escaped this down and dirty life by going to a retreat and emerging set as a neophyte Buddhist monk. Recently returning to join the community in his old neighbourhoodcity of Portland, Oregon, he knew his past would be hard cautiously begins to escape but he hadn't imagined it exploding into this new life in quite such a violent fashion.emerge from the restrictions imposed during the covid pandemic
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=B09XWSXSKY1529431735|title=Maestro Orpheus The Winter Visitor|author=James Henry|rating=4|genre=Crime|summary=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 decade. The return has come about because he's had a letter from his ex-wife, saying that she's ill and hasn't long to live. It's hard to feel any sympathy when Hopkins is abducted, stripped to his underwear and sent to a watery grave in the World Clockboot of a stolen Ford Sierra. Is it a warning from a Spanish gang or a problem closer to home?}}{{Frontpage|author=Robert Penee Alex Bell and Joanne GrodzinskiTim McDonagh|title=The Glorious Race of Magical Beasts
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Frederick (or FredEli is a busy lad – by day an apprentice in the wondrous library we start by visiting with him, but never Freddy, please) couldn't sleep. A tune, rather like and in the ticking of evening a clock was playing over helper at the dessert cafe his gran owns and over in his mindruns. It happened every time he came to visit Eli lives with his grandfatherlovely gran, too – for there is a generation missing in the family. He hadnA few short years ago, Eli't really wanted s parents were both lost to come; after allthe titular race, he's ten now and a globe-trotting adventure where all those old clocks don't appeal entrants have to him anymore. ''Who needs old clocks anyway? All they do is tell navigate the world in the timecompany of a magical beast. And time isn't good for anything...'' And that was why he was looking at This has made the clock beside race anathema to the bed. It was nearly twelve o'clock pair – but when a bad incident at midnight the clock chimed eatery leads to a confession from gran, Eli knows his only six times. There was nothing for it but hope is to dare to go and find grandad - but where was enter what he? And why had all most hates, with the sole aim the clocks stopped prize of magic at twelve o'clock?the end – the only thing to possibly save his gran.|isbn=0571382231
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=3756228711178763681X|title=CDC: The happy years with a spectacular IT 'Phenomena'Knife Skills for Beginners|author=Hans BodmerOrlando Murrin
|rating=4
|genre=HistoryCrime|summary=Chef Paul Delamare took a teaching job at a residential cookery school in Belgravia. He didn''The history t really want to but celebrity chef Christian Wagner had a way of the development of IT could fill books of several hundred pagesgetting both men and women to do what he wanted. Paul ''somehow'' Author Hans Bodmer is quite right about got the impression that. He has chosen he'd be at the school to tell us about the shortassist Paul, who had a broken arm, but explosive, history of it didn't turn out that way. The teaching - and the Control Data Company, CDC, problems - are all his own. The one thing he hadn't expected was for whom he workedsomeone to turn up dead. It's a fascinating tale Unfortunately, told in a mixture of technological summary he was the person who discovered the body and wry anecdoteeveryone knows that the police consider that person to be the prime suspect.
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1529356660Sarah Marsh|title=The Sanctuary|author=Emma HaughtonA Sign of Her Own
|rating=3.5
|genre=ThrillersGeneral Fiction|summary=It was the quiet which woke Zoey up - orAfter a bout of scarlet fever as a child, rather, the absence of the noise which was Ellen Lark loses her hearing. Suddenly plunged into a constant in New Yorkworld of silence, everything about her life changes. Here it was silent and Living in a time when the heat use of sign language was overwhelming. When seen as something only savages do, Ellen is sent to a school where she looked out of the window all she could see was the desertis taught to lip read, but physically restrained from signing. How did she get From here? Zoey was house-sitting for Uncle Dan and his two Manx cats and , she remembered that she'd ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been out with Franny teaching the deaf and Rocco last nightusing a system called Visible Speech. She knew that she'd had quite a lot to drink but how could she have got to At the desert from New York? She had no memory of getting same time, Bell is working on a plane but as she thought backother inventions and ideas, a memory of sirens, flashing lights and of being pushed into Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a car snagged on the edge complicated tangle of her mindespionage.|isbn=1035401614
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Christopher Golden1803816759|title=Road of BonesThe Unravelling|author=Will Gibson|rating=3.54|genre=HorrorScience Fiction|summary=The Kolyma Highway… the It'Road of Bones'… s 2038 and Joe is a bored cop policing the R504wealthy and peaceful New York City. Stretching Joe longs for over a thousand miles across Siberia, it's one bit of the world's most notorious routesadventure and to get stuck into some really gritty crime detection. For months of But then something goes horribly wrong with the year it's a spread of sheet ice suspended above the permafrost surrounding itAI system that now runs everything, while its 'spring' sees it turn into a huge blodge of unremitting, apocalyptic-level mud, which dries into rutted, puddly dust. I don't think google streetview updates it very often. Built because Stalin wanted so much uranium and other Siberian mineralsmaking life easier for many, and because he wanted riots start to give too many people a lesson, it legendarily cost a life every metre it coversspread. You can easily find documentaries about it online, but that's a bit rich, for one of our main characters, Felix 'Teig' Teigland, is a film-maker, doing a recce with his cameraman buddyFinally, John Prentiss – who's mostly there Joe gets to encourage do some real policing. In the project to fruition to claw back some aftermath of the funds herioting global pop star Suki is kidnapped and Joe is assigned to bring her home. Joe isn'd invested in t the pair's prior TV projects. They pick up their oh-soonly one trying to save Suki -chatty local guideDylan, gain the company of a local beautyBritish superfan and tech nerd, and fetch up at is also on the guide's childhood villagecase. What went wrong? Did the system fail or was it hacked? And thathow is Suki's where things start to go awry…|isbn=1803361476kidnapping connected?
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=18387761841529421284|title=Her Majesty Laying Out the Queen Investigates: Murder Most RoyalBones|author=S J BennettKate Webb|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=''The Queen, like the sunrise and the tides, It was generally a reliable way one of marking time.'' It seemed to begin as those flash downpours that the British weather often delivers in a coldheatwave. Hardly surprisingIn a gully, really, as Prince Philip had been suffering for a couple of days but seemed human skeleton came to the surface and forensic testing proved the body to be getting better. HopefullyLee Geary, the Queen thought, her cold would go the same waywho had disappeared nine years earlier. SheHe'd probably caught been a known drug user and had learning disabilities, so it from one could have been a simple case of the great-grandchildrenmisadventure but DI Matt Lockyer wasn't convinced. UnfortunatelyGeary was a townie, it didn't get better and when the doctor called so what was he diagnosed full-blown flu. doing out on Salisbury Plain alone? She There are connections to the suicide of Holly Gilbert and the Duke to two other deaths which were due to go to Sandringham by train that day but not considered suspicious at the doctor put his foot downtime. He'd have preferred Lockyer and DC Gemma Broad of the Major Crimes Review Unit (that the queen have a few days' bed rest before venturing out but had s cold cases to be satisfied with the thought that they'd go by helicopter the following day. It was annoying: people would be ready for her today you and Her Majesty did not like to disappointme) investigate.
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Peter Owen Jones0571379559|title=Conversations with NatureThe House of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams
|rating=5
|genre=Spirituality and ReligionLiterary Fiction|summary= One ''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the comments made when I was offered this beautiful book for review was that itstory of four people. Tess Hembry's not very longroots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in the house on the riverbank, built of broken bricks. Having read the book twice overInsubstantial as it might look, Iit'm brought back inescapably to s stood the Spanish proverb that Life may be shortpassage of time, but it is broadstorms and floods. In this case I'm brought Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, to complete the idea that delivery rounds - and to bring in sufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, the length of life is not the point; the point is its depthrainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. Peter Owen Jones dives deepPeople don't believe that they're related, much less twins and there's an assumption when Max is out with his mother that she's his nanny.|isbn=1912992418
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=19164599431529425867|title=Squeakily BabyLost and Never Found (A D I Wilkins Mystery)|author=Beth WebbSimon Mason|rating=4.5|genre=Crime|summary=In Oxford, there are two D I Wilkins. Raymond Wilkins is of Nigerian descent, Balliol educated and always exquisitely dressed. D I Ryan Wilkins, son of Ryan and father of Ryan, is not. He's not any of those things. He's white, originated from a trailer park, barely educated (reading's not ''really'' his thing) and his wardrobe consists mainly of shell suits and trackies. They're usually in lime green or acid yellow. You might wonder if you're being introduced to a police procedural written for laughs. Well, you're not. The two men are just different sides of the same policing coin. Sometimes the combination works brilliantly well. Sometimes it's problematic.}}{{Frontpage|author=Mosby Woods|title=A Whirly Man Loses His Turn
|rating=4
|genre=For SharingLiterary Fiction|summary=Much as mothers love their babies, thereThe West isn's something they all dread - a squeakily babyt the dominant force it once was. He's so tired but he can't - Nobody in the West is quite sure how to mend this or won't - go to sleep: instead, he just lies on his blanket and ''wails''even if mending it is the best course of action. The sea offers to helpGovernments are flailing. It rocks Baby gently and the waves sing ''hushA war here, hush''. Think of gentle wavelets falling onto a sandy beach and you have the sound perfectlypush for climate action there. The mermaids join A feeling that nobody is in - ''la louactual charge. Imagine then, la lay...'' And for there was a moment it seems to have worked as Baby closes his eyesman with precognition. Then Imagine the strategic advantage in this asset; a seagull '''shouts''' and we know exactly man who can tell you what's going to will happen nextgiven any set of circumstances. That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the most valuable asset in history.Imagine then, that this man loses this ability. What would governments do to get it back?|isbn=B0C9SNG8R1
}}

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