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'''Read [[Forthcoming Publications|reviews of books about to be published]].
{{Frontpage
|isbn=10350252990241636604|title=Went to London, Took the DogThe Trading Game: A Confession|author=Nina StibbeGary Stevenson|rating=4.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Nina Stibbe If you were to bring up an image of a city banker in your mind, you're unlikely to think of someone like Gary Stevenson. A hoodie and jeans replaces the pin-stripe suit and his background is returning the East End, where he was familiar with violence, poverty and injustice. There was no posh public school on his CV - but he had been to the London for School of Economics. Stevenson is bright - extremely bright - and he has a sabbatical after being away for twenty yearsfacility with numbers which most of us can only envy. She's been at Victoria's smallholding in Leicestershire which isn't all He also realised that conducive most rich people expect poor people to writing, as there's always something smallholding happening - as you might expectbe stupid. The other side of the decision It was his ability at what was sealed when , essentially, a room became available (courtesy of Deborah Moggach) at card game which got him an internship with Citibank. Eventually, this turned into permanent employment as a very reasonable renttrader.
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=B0CKD1L5JL1035021803|title=Radio Free OlympiaThe Antique Hunter's Guide to Murder|author=Jeffrey DunnC L Miller|rating=43.5|genre=General FictionCrime|summary= Petr is an orphanIt'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 request for help from her beloved aunt, Carole. Rescued by the strange Freya's former mentor and Carole's close friend, reclusive BearArthur Crockleford, he is brought up far from bustling cities dead and busy human societythe circumstances seem suspicious, to say the least. Arthur was the reason why Freya had not been back to 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 man or pursue the forests of Washington's Olympic Peninsulaprofession she loved. After Bear dies and the split, she worked in a brief sojourn in human companycafe, met and armed with only a pirate radio transmitter, Petr goes married James (on a journey through the forest, broadcasting rebound from the strangelove of her life, wild who was murdered) and Freya and rarely heard voices he encountersJames have now divorced.
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=1635866243AllTomorrowsFutureCover|title=The Knitting Pattern Writing HandbookAll Tomorrow's Futures: Fictions that Disrupt|author=Kristina McGrath Benjamin Greenaway and Sarah Walworth Stephen Oram (Editors)|rating=4.5|genre=CraftsScience Fiction|summary=''I quickly discovered that putting words and numbers on a page wasn't enough. Creating a pattern that was correct, clear, concise, and consistent required a great deal Opening up new ways of thinking about the shape of trial and error, patience, and perseverancethings to come.'' (Introduction byFrancoise Danoy)
A friend recently showed me a knitting pattern for which sheI've heard it said that 'technology' is what happens after you'd paid good moneyre eighteen. The first line Well, I must confess that there have been more than a few decades of the instructions began: technology in my lifetime. I've kept up reasonably well with what'Cast off 100 stitches...s advantageous to me but I'm left with the feeling that it' It was clear that no good could come s all getting away from me. Some of this it is - the instructions didn't get any better frankly - and (finally) PayPal obliged with a refund when the seller refused as she couldn't afford the repaymentquite frightening. The pattern looked prettyOf course, but I could research the possibilities and the creator didnprobabilities and end up down rabbit holes without really understanding whether I't have m reading someone who knows what they're talking about or the basic knowledge and skills to enable her to connect with her knitterslatest conspiracy theorist. She should have read ''The Knitting Pattern Writing Handbook''I needed people I knew I could trust and who could deliver information in a way I could understand.
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{{Frontpage
|author=Adam Baron and Benji DaviesSunny Singh|title=Oscar's LionHotel Arcadia|rating=3.5|genre=Confident ReadersThrillers |summary=We start incredibly bluntly, with Oscar hoping to have his mother – or father, but mother The Hotel Arcadia is more likely – read him his very favourite book a couple of times before he luxury hotel in an unnamed city that has to be ready for schoolsuddenly been violently taken over by a terrorist group. But when he enters his parents' bedroomHiding from the terrorists who are rampaging through, all he sees is a mahoosive male lion killing everyone on their bedsite, looking sheepishthere is Sam, a wartime photographer and admitting that he won't be hungry for another two daysAbhi, the hotel manager. But there are benefits As Abhi continues to having a lion around – it can be shown as an unspoken threat try to care remotely for the bully that ruined a birthday party for Oscar residents who are still alive in the other month. And it can shapeshifthotel, so he can take it forms a bond with Sam who refuses to school be cowed by events, and it can get him keeps on venturing out of a problemher room to try to capture what's happened through her photography. And it's wonderful to have around Although they only ever talk over the house – not limiting his biscuit intakephone, being much more lax about 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 rules, and so on. OK, it can't work a dimmer switch but it can give Oscar a wonderful timeterrorists.|isbn=0008596751086154742X
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=B0BC3YTCMR1529153298|title=Good Girls DieThe List of Suspicious Things|author=Ayura AyiraJennie Godfrey|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=It's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. (A woman? I mean, honestly...) She'This story is s not for everyonewhat's worrying Miv's family, though. Women have been disappearing. Well, they've been murdered, but to have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. Miv's upset because sheLavender Daniels was three weeks short of s overheard that her fifteenth birthday when The Incident happenedfather wants to move the family 'Down South'. She was When you're from Yorkshire, Down South is a very bright studentfrightening, foreign place, a bit too nerdy if truth be toldbest avoided. For Miv, the move would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, and suffered from vitiligo - people were afraid she'll do anything to hug prevent that. She's not worried about the dangers or that her in case itMum's contagiousstopped talking - to anyone. It}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1398524085|title=Has Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter?|author=Nicci French|rating=5|genre=Crime|summary=Charlotte Salter was expected at her husband's not easy being a black girl whose skin is 84% whitefiftieth birthday party but never turned up. She had a crush on seventeenHer children, sons Niall, Paul and Ollie and her daughter, Etty. are all worried but -yearstrangely -old Reggie Anderson but never thought he would notice herhusband, Alec, is not. Then he did: Lavender was very good at math Shortly afterwards, Etty and Reggie asked if she would tutor himGreg, find the body of Greg's father, Duncan Ackerley, in the river. She readily agreed: tutoring was something she gladly did at church: this It was just an extension. She went easy assumption for the police to his house make that Duncan had murdered Charlie and then committed suicide when he raped hercouldn't stand the guilt. In shock, she even allowed him to give her a lift homeThe 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=V Castro1035906708|title=The Haunting of AlejandraDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin|rating=34.5|genre=HorrorGeneral Fiction|summary=''This We tend to think of Maria Callas as Greek, but she was a part of her past that had born to Greek parents in Manhattan, New York, in December 1923 and only moved to stop with Athens when she was thirteen. Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her. She would be the one father changed it to confront this.'CallasAt some point during her life, Alejandra lost herselfto make it more manageable in the States. She feels as if When she is playing parts for others was back in her life – her husband and her children – without ever giving any thought to her own desires, her own future, her own identity. Day by day Athens - supposedly so that she goes through quotient motions without anyone seeing that there is something fundamentally wrong. For invisible to all but Alejandra, there is a darkness threatening to consume could get appropriate training for her. More and more voice - she is visited was raised under the Nazi occupation by a ghost, a weeping woman in a fraying white gown dripping with water, mother who leaves distress in mercilessly exploited her and made no secret of her preference for her wakeelder sister, Jackie.|isbn=1803365617
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{{Frontpage
|author=Richard KadreyChristopher Edge|title=The Pale House DevilBlack Hole Cinema Club
|rating=4
|genre=HorrorConfident Readers|summary=Ford Lucas and Neuland his friends are all booked in for a couple ofmovie marathon at their local cinema, well, guys for hire I guess, though really a place that has the way I thought nickname of them through the book was as a couple of strange detectives! 'The Black Hole'. One All big movie fans, they're looking forward to lots of them is living, you seeexciting films, and the other is undeadmany, and so one of them kills the livingmany snacks! However, and the other kills as the undead. (Only not each othermovie starts, obviously). They're on a job in New York they very quickly realise that goes badlysomething about this new film format is very different, and so they head out are swept up into an adventure they couldn't even imagine. But as they lurch from one film genre to the West coast to try to lay low for a while and find some other work to keep them next, can they figure out what on earth is going. on? But when a young woman called Tilda hires them Will they ever get back to kill the 'something' that appears to be haunting a wealthy gentleman's house they find themselves uncovering a whole lot of family historycinema, and a terrifyingly powerful creature that they've never come across before!to their real lives?|isbn=18033638941839942738
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{{Frontpage
|author=Helen CooperRachel Greenlaw|title=The Taming of the CatCompass 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.''
 
Rosevear, a remote and partially forgotten island, survives on luring ships into the rocks and plundering the wrecks. Mira, like her mother before her, is one of the seven who swim out to survey the ruins – rescuing any survivors and any treasure that lies within. But when the Council Watch lays a trap to end the wrecking, they capture the island's leader and Mira's father. Desperate to save him from death, Mira makes a bargain with a 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 sea. With only nine days to unearth what might save her father, as her journey takes her from the watched streets of foreign islands to the heart of the smuggler's territory, Mira must be determined to stop at nothing to save the future of her home and the ones she holds most dear.
|isbn=0008664730
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{{Frontpage
|author=James Sherwood Metts
|title=Planet Storyland
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Once again, mice are pitched against catThings have been a bit sticky for the Earthlings. In this case, principally, we AI and automation have Brie the mousebeen proceeding apace, up against Gorgonzola the cat – and in case youoften replacing jobs they're seeing a connection, they live in a cheese shop and therefore all the names used here seem paid to be the names of cheeses. Anyway, Brie is shunned, scorned do and, if you must, mous-tracised, for the way his habits don't match the other mice he lives withtasks that took time to accomplish. They nibble up paper wrapping from the cheese for bedding – he displays it Just as art and makes stories based on the visuals on it. And that story-telling will come in handy one night, when he feels they were beginning to get used to all alone this technological change and cast out. It's almost as if there were another character from fable who had had starting to tell stories think of other, new ways to keep themselves alivespend time, along came an awful pandemic. This makes Brie the top dog in the mouse communityLife was pretty much shut down and, thoughalong with it, as all the others had the chance to half-inch some cheese while the cat was distractedmany daily social interactions on which they depend so heavily. But will the story have the successful sequel it needs when that cheese runs out?|isbn=05713760101736128426
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=B0CDZRGT1MMatthew Tree|title=Super Short Stories: Flash Fiction|author=Mark C WallfischWe'll Never Know
|rating=4.5
|genre=Short StoriesLiterary Fiction|summary=''Got a minute Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be amuseddifferent from his father, entertaineda drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of his artistic passions all failed miserably and who had endless crises of self confidence. So Tim applied himself to his studies, or challenged?''''These 100 stories are super short. None is more cultivated his abilities rather than 300 words. You can read one in a flashhis daydreams and set himself high but achievable ambitions.|isbn= B0CVFXPGP8}}{{Frontpage|author=A G Slatter|title=The Briar Book of the Dead|rating=5|genre=Fantasy|summary=''There''Some are funnys a part of me that wants to keep this just to myself for however long I can. Some are poignantThis secret magic of my own, all mine, at last. All are shortI just want to enjoy it for a while.''
Question: how do you review flash fiction? How do you give Within a flavour of a fully rounded little story if that story is told in fewer than three hundred words? Or do you try to draw out themes remote mountain pass, far away from all the flash fictions in world, lies Silverton; a book town under the protection of them? I donthe Briar't know! Perhaps we could start by explaining that there really isn't s, a fixed definition family of flash fiction but that witches who protect the town and the wider world from the Darklands. Though she has always wished for this collectionmagic, author Mark C Wallfisch has gone 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 three hundred word limitsteward revolved around letters and administration rather than spells and potions. ThatWhen her grandmother suddenly dies, Ellie's about cousin Audra becomes the Briar Witch, the town'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 single page in your average paperbackmaelstrom of chaos. Reeling from one family secret to another, Ellie must decide who to trust and determine what to do as the Briar witches' legacy, everything they have sacrificed to survive, is under threat.|isbn=1803364548
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=17328987661529900360|title=The Adventures of Birpus and Bulbus: Book One: The Sour Milk DragonGhost Orchid|author=Wynn Everett-Albanese, Michael Albanese and Indre Ta (Illustrator)Jonathan Kellerman
|rating=4
|genre=For SharingCrime|summary=When we first meet Birpus It hadn't been Lt Milo Sturgis's fault that Alex Delaware had been badly injured but he felt responsible and Bulbus they're running even after Alex recovered, Sturgis was reluctant to ask for their lives in the Forest of Fine Reputehis help on difficult cases. Their greatest fear has come about: His assertions that there were only open-and-shut cases which didn't need the Sour Milk Dragon is chasing themhelp of a psychologist only worked for a while. HeFinally, it was Robin, Delaware's right behind thempartner, spewing hot, sour milk from his nostrilswho nudged Milo into asking for help again. (Please don't try this at home: it won't end wellShe knew that the involvement was something that the man she loved needed.) FortunatelyThe next case did look simple, they though. Two lovers were nearly at Nobby Lob-lolly - and when murdered in the swimming pool of a ladder of moss and vines was lowered for them, they escapedremote property in Bel Air. They climbed up He was the heir to an Italian shoe empire and she is married to an extremely rich man and it's not the Tree Wee homes high up in Italian. But which of them was the tangled woods where they lived with their Grand Wees, Nester Nook and Granny Cranny.primary target?
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=14722639361529395224|title=Letting the Cat Out of the Bag: The FigurineSecret Life of a Vet|author=Victoria HislopSion Rowlands|rating=3.5|genre=General FictionAnimals and Wildlife|summary=It was in 1968 that Helena McCloud made her first trip to GreeceSiôn Rowlands fell into veterinary science accidentally. She His father was alone: her mother, Greek by birth, had left the family home a GP and refused Rowlands didn't want to returnfollow in his footsteps, but Mary and Hamish (Helenaparticularly when he considered the strain that being on-call put on his father's parents) felt that it would be a pity if Helena grew up without knowing her grandparents or understanding her Greek heritagelife. Her trip to When he was seventeen he took the opportunity of doing work experience with a family apartment in up-market Kolonaki would be friend who was a vet and was convinced this was the first of several annual visitsjob for him. She grew to love her grandmother and the family's maid, DinaBefore long, but he was wary at Liverpool University. It hadn't - and frightened as with so many students - of her grandfather, retired general Stamatis Papagiannis. He been his dream since he was proud of his close connections to the Junta and expected his family to uphold his values but saw no reason to accommodate thema child. His prejudices included HelenaIf anything, he's red hair and green eyes - inherited from her father's Scottish ancestorsd wanted to be a professional footballer.
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Cody Goodfellow0861541774|title=VerticalA Nye of Pheasants|author=Steve Burrows|rating=3.54|genre=ThrillersCrime|summary= ThereDCI Domenic Jejeune's something about tall buildings close friend and former colleague, Danny Maik, has taken a short holiday in Singapore to meet up with an old ally, Guy Trueman. Maik was involved in a street brawl - he would later maintain that just captures my imaginationhe was facing a man armed with a knife - and he killed a Ghurka. Who doesn't love Initially, he faced a good view from up high, after all? Even charge of manslaughter but evidence came to light that suggested that he might have planned to murder the man. Now he could be facing the drabbest office building is somewhere I'm intrigued death penalty. Domenic Jejeune can do nothing to get inside if ithelp as any interference from another police force could provoke a diplomatic incident and wouldn's 40 stories tallt help Danny at all. So when I picked up this book – about people who scale tall buildings for fun – I was instantly intrigued.|isbn= 1803363991
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{{Frontpage
|author=Hannah Gold and Levi PinfoldAlexander McCall Smith|title=Finding BearThe Perfect Passion Company
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersGeneral Fiction|summary=[[The Last Bear Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Hannah Gold|Last time]], April had been on Bear Island, Ness and operating as an alternative to all the online apps in providing a lot further north than many people would venturemore personal, tailored service. Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and finding look after the business, as Ness is planning to take a ridiculously unexpected but delightful friendship with trip to Canada to get away for a polar bear – that she called Bearwhile. Back homeKatie is coming out of a break up with a bad boyfriend, things on and so jumps at the domestic and family front are a bit advancedchance to come home to Edinburgh. And so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, but not perfect for herbringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, thanks to 44 Scotland Street and so can easily be ignored when word comes through from the islands Bear was last left onIsabel Dalhousie novels, but with some new characters who quickly begin to charm. For Katie has no experience in running a bear doing very Bearbusiness, or in match-y things making, but Ness has been shot full confidence in her abilities, and wounded. Desperate to make sure hethere's OK, she and always her father return to the Arctic and hope that in a world of very white helpful (and very dangerous thingsrather handsome) neighbour, William, she can find one specific white and dangerous thing – and that the friendship can continue.to lend a hand…|isbn=00085820171846976596
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=18041832100811771741|title=No ReserveInstaKnits for Baby|author=Felix FrancisMelissa Leapman
|rating=4
|genre=ThrillersCrafts|summary=Thirty-four-year-old Theo Jennings shouldnMelissa Leapman's ''t have been on the rostrum when the colt - as yet unnamed - came up InstaKnits for auction, but Peter Radway, the chairman, hadnBaby''t arrived, so he continued his sessiongives us a collection of knits from toys to blankets. To say that he was shocked when the bidding reached three million pounds would Some will be an understatement. A lovely animal quick knits - but three million pounds? Two men had been bidding against each otherothers are of the 'long, cosy afternoons in front of the fire' variety. Brian Kitman and Elliot The projects are divided by the time they'Mitch' Mitchell were wellll take to complete -known less than five hours, five to ten hours, ten to twenty hours and respected in the racing industrymore than twenty hours. Jennings was in one of All the cubicles in the toilets when the two men came in projects are attractive, modern and their conversation revealed that the horse had been deliberately bid up to that figureuseable. Both were happy I perhaps show my age when I wonder about 'social-media-worthy projects' but that they had insurance in place. The following morning, the horse was dead in its stall's me being picky.
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{{Frontpage
|author=Sarah WilsonDean Koontz|title=This One Wild and Precious Life: the path back to connection in a fractured worldThe Bad Weather Friend|rating=34.5|genre= LifestyleParanormal|summary= My favourite Mary Oliver line Benny is the one in which she asks ''What is it you plan having a terrifically bad day. He loses his job, he loses his fiancee, and his house gets trashed. Oh, and someone has delivered a really weird, disturbing coffin-sized object to do with your one wild his home, and precious life?it'' I get to love s possible that line so much because my answer whoever or whatever was inside is ''Thisthe thing that has trashed his house! Precisely The thing is, Benny is the very last person to deserve all thisbad luck.'' I'm lucky enough to be living my one wild and precious life the way I want toHe is a nice person. Sarah Wilson is equally luckyA really nice person. In her book So fortunately for Benny it turns out that takes Oliver's words as her title (though I can't see that she acknowledges the source) she pushes us delivery to his house is a new friend, a bad weather friend called Spike, who has been sent to think about whether we really ''are'' living the life we want – the best life that we could be livinghelp him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a good person. Her answer Spike is an unequivocal ''nogoing to take care of Benny, we are not''. Don't and will certainly take care what youof Benny're doings enemies, if he, Benny, she thinks you and Harper (we, I) could be doing more…And shea waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's effing furious about the fact that we wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are not.|isbn=17856338481662500491
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1839948493Adam Stower|title=A World of Dogs|author=Carlie Sorosiak Murray and Luisa UribeBun|rating=4.5|genre=Children's Non-FictionConfident Readers |summary=In the interests of full disclosureMurray is supposed to be a humble, I must tell you that I'm a sucker for dogs. In nearly eight decadestidy and friendly cat, I've never met one I didn't trust who is able to sleep and eat and eat and sleep and I've loved most , well, whatever takes his fancy next of them. I wish I felt the same about human beingstwo. SoBut he's a bad magician's cat, any book about dogsso his favourite bun has been turned into a hyperactive sticky rabbit called Bun, I'm going to sit down and devour. Then I'm going to go the catflap they both use can chuck them out, not into the regular back garden, but into a world of frightening adventure and read it properlywhiffs. And so This time round it drops them into a Viking land, where a troll hunter is expected – well, one much bigger than Murray was with ''A World of Dogs'', with ninety-six pages devoted entirely to my four-legged friends. Author Carlie Sorosiak found herself the accidental owner of an American Dingo - shebe honest, but he's learned quite a lot about dogs since then.turned up and he'll have to do…|isbn=0008561249
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|isbn=1405951680B0C47LV1PC|title=The Safe HouseFragility|author=Cameron WardMosby Woods
|rating=4
|genre=ThrillersLiterary Fiction|summary=Jess Walker accepted an offer (OKCan you make a ''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, actually she was gently nudged into is the question should you make it by her friend? Or is the question if you did, Rupert) to caretake a luxury property in would it land? The catch is that the Australian outback answer for a couple of monthsboth could well be... After the problems she'd had at work, it seemed like just the break she needed. She was no longer a data analyst for . ''Fragility'' is set as the Metropolitan police in London: she was Jess who was returning to the country city of her birth and in need of the space Portland, Oregon, cautiously begins to get over emerge from the traumatic end of her relationship with Charles. A few weeks in the Otway Ranges in Victoria sounded like just restrictions imposed during the ticket.covid pandemic
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Rachel Harrison1529431735|title=Bad DollsThe Winter Visitor|author=James Henry
|rating=4
|genre=Short StoriesCrime|summary=It's been some time since IFebruary 1991 and Essex is bitingly cold, which made Bruce Hopkins've read any horrorreturn all the more surprising. I had a couple of misspent teen years reading Stephen King, borrowing He'd been exiled on the books from Costa del Sol as a boy I fancied at school and scaring myself half silly with them to the point that I couldn't shut my bedroom curtains at night wanted drug smuggler for fear of the vampires outside! a decade. DonThe return has come about because he't worry s had a letter from his ex- this short story collection isn't like wife, saying that! It doesnshe't have those jump scares, s ill and I didnhasn't have long to read it during daylight hours only! live. But it It's hard to feel any sympathy when Hopkins is creepy, and I found most of that feeling came from the fact that these are stories about womenabducted, living normal lives, and that at least in part, the horrors arises from very normal situations such as a breakup, trying a new dieting app, going stripped to a hen party his underwear and a coping with grief.|isbn=1803363932}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1394159544|title=Recycling for Dummies|author=Sarah Winkler|rating=5|genre=Lifestyle|summary=''Recycling one ton of plastic can save up to 16.3 barrels of oil.'' ''Recycling one ton of paper can save 17 trees from being cut down.'' If you send an apple core to landfill, it will take between 6 months and 2 years to decompose. A glass bottle will take up sent to 1 million years. As a just-post-WWII baby, I faced a dilemma: reducing, reusing and recycling is part of my DNA. NEVER throw away anything that might ''possibly'' come in handy now or watery grave in the future. NEVER buy anything if you can cobble together something that would serve the purposeboot of a stolen Ford Sierra. Almost everything can be used one more time and any purchase must pass the test of 'Is this absolutely essential?' On the other hand, I suspected I was guilty of wishcycling: assuming that something must be recyclable (toothpaste tubes - I'm looking at you) and dropping it in the kerbside bin. Yes, I could go searching on the internet - and get conflicting advice - but what I needed was a recycling bible.swarning from a Spanish gang or a problem closer to home?
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{{Frontpage
|author=Lauren St JohnAlex Bell and Tim McDonagh|title=Finding WonderThe Glorious Race of Magical Beasts
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Roo's life has become almost impossibly difficult. Her mum died when she was youngEli is a busy lad – by day an apprentice in the wondrous library we start by visiting with him, and now she finds herself awoken in the middle of evening a helper at the night by the police banging on her door to tell her that her dad has dropped dead on dessert cafe his gran owns and runs. Eli lives with his way to lovely gran, too – for there is a generation missing in the corner shop to buy a lottery ticketfamily. When asked what other family she hasA few short years ago, she can only name her auntEli's parents were both lost to the titular race, Joni, who she knows her dad didn't think very highly a globe-trotting adventure where all entrants have to navigate the world in the company ofa magical beast. But she This has no one elsemade the race anathema to the pair – but when a bad incident at the eatery leads to a confession from gran, and so off she goes Eli knows his only hope is to live with her unreliable aunt. Things continue dare to get worse for Rooenter what he most hates, as when she and Joni leave London in Joni's old campervan, it breaks down in with the sole aim the middle prize of nowhere and then bursts into flames! Poor Roo!magic at the end – the only thing to possibly save his gran.|isbn=05713761690571382231
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=1448309743178763681X|title=The Devil Stone (DCI Christine Caplan)Knife Skills for Beginners|author=Caro RamsayOrlando Murrin
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=In the village 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 way of Cronchie on the West coast of Scotland, five members of a wealthy family are found murderedgetting both men and women to do what he wanted. The only item missing from Paul ''somehow'' got the home is the Devil Stone: myth says impression that if he'd be at the stone is removed from Otterburn Houseschool to assist Paul, who had a broken arm, death will follow. The only suspects are known Satanists but in many ways, thatit didn's an easy conclusion given t turn out that two of them 'discovered' way. The teaching - and the bodyproblems - are all his own. The Senior Investigating Office is DCI Bob Oswald but when one thing he disappearshadn't expected was for someone to turn up dead. Unfortunately, DCI Christine Caplan is pulled in he was the person who discovered the body and everyone knows that the police consider that person to 'shadow' himbe the prime suspect.
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{{Frontpage
|author= Kay ChronisterSarah Marsh|title= Desert CreaturesA Sign of Her Own|rating= 43.5|genre= Dystopian General Fiction|summary= With After a bout of scarlet fever as a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanitychild, post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrillEllen Lark loses her hearing. Whether it is Suddenly plunged into a robotic takeoverworld of silence, everything about her life changes. Living in a world devoid time when the use of water or a nuclear holocaustsign language was seen as something only savages do, this genre Ellen is sent to a way for humans school where she is taught to cathartically experience their most existential fearslip read, but physically restrained from signing. ''Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is From here, she ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the deaf and using a new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of system called Visible Speech. At the fears that exist for humanity today. It same time, Bell is working on other inventions and ideas, and Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a shocking novel that still manages to find hopecomplicated tangle of espionage.|isbn=18033649981035401614
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Christopher Fowler1803816759|title=Word MonkeyThe Unravelling|author=Will Gibson|rating=54|genre=AutobiographyScience Fiction|summary= It's 2038 and Joe is a bored cop policing the first of August in the middle of wealthy and peaceful New York City. Joe longs for a cool wet summer in East Anglia. I decided not to swim at the pool in favour bit of going adventure and to my beach hutget stuck into some really gritty crime detection. The weather closed inBut then something goes horribly wrong with the AI system that now runs everything, rain arrivedmaking life easier for many, and I decided not riots start to do that eitherspread. When I finished reading this bookFinally, I realised it was because (a) I wanted to finish reading this book and (b) I did not want Joe gets to do so anywhere near my shacksome real policing. No spoiler alerts, In the aftermath of the dust jacket tells us who Christopher Fowler 'was' – rioting global pop star Suki is kidnapped and his first chapter tells us about his terminal diagnosisJoe is assigned to bring her home. There is something very strange about being made Joe isn't the only one trying to laugh by save Suki - Dylan, a man who repeatedly reminds you that he is dyingBritish superfan and tech nerd, and you know he actually is at that point, because he doesalso on the case. He did.|isbn=0857529625What went wrong? Did the system fail or was it hacked? And how is Suki's kidnapping connected?
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=15290776991529421284|title=The Raging Storm (Two Rivers)Laying Out the Bones|author=Ann CleevesKate Webb
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=''It's all bloody peculiar, isn't it, Sir?'' Well yes, it is. Jem Rosco blew into the local pub was one evening in of those flash downpours that the middle of an autumn gale, stayed for about a month and then turned up, naked and dead, British weather often delivers in a small boat, anchored in Scully Cove close to the village of Greystone, in Devonheatwave. Rosco had the status of In a national treasure: gully, a renowned adventurer, round human skeleton came to the world sailor surface and all round ''celebrity''forensic testing proved the body to be Lee Geary, who had disappeared nine years earlier. I He''nearly'' said 'all-round good egg' but as we'll find outd been a known drug user and had learning disabilities, he so it could be more than have been a little bit close with money and his background isnsimple case of misadventure but DI Matt Lockyer wasn't exactly an open bookconvinced. Where did Geary was a townie, so what was he get doing out on Salisbury Plain alone? There are connections to the money for his first boat? suicide of Holly Gilbert and to two other deaths which were not considered suspicious at the time. How did he finance Lockyer and DC Gemma Broad of the trip?Major Crimes Review Unit (that's cold cases to you and me) investigate.
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=B0CC9W7GLR0571379559|title=On the Beach: The Winter VisitorHouse of Broken Bricks|author=Chris Green and Jenny FiondaFiona Williams
|rating=5
|genre=For SharingLiterary Fiction|summary=Kit and Teal were just beginning to wonder whether it was better to ''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the story of four people. Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be at homehappier there, bored but warminstead, or frozen cold and building sand sculptures she lives in the house on a snowy beach when a large slab the riverbank, built of silvery ice drifted onto the shorelinebroken bricks. On top Insubstantial as it might look, it's stood the passage of the ice was a polar beartime, storms and floods. As the ice bumped onto the sandHer husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, to complete the bear woke delivery rounds - and with wobbly legs moved from the iceto bring in sufficient money. Kit was all for making a run for itThey have twin boys - Sonny and Max, but Teal knew that the bear was hungry and gave him one apple and then anotherrainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. He obviously needed to be taken home on the bus People don't believe that they're related, much less twins and given a good meal and somewhere to sleepthere's an assumption when Max is out with his mother that she's his nanny. What else would you do?
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Claire North1529425867|title=House of Odysseus|rating=5|genre= Literary Fiction |summary= ''What could matter more than love?'' The follow-up to the excellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a few months after where we left off. In the palace of Odysseus, with delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her husband, who sailed to war at Troy and then by divine intervention never returned home. As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the throne of the Western Isles. Having survived – politically and physical – the chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca's shores, Queen Penelope is on the brink of a fragile peace. One that shatters however with the return of Orestes, King of Mycenae, Lost and his sister Elektra, seeking refuge.|isbn=0356516075}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1529427045|title=The Girl in the Eagle's TalonsNever Found (A D I Wilkins Mystery)|author=Karin SmirnoffSimon Mason|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=''Life has more to offer than people - prime numbers for example''In Oxford, there are two D I WilkinsLisbeth Salander has headed north to the small town Raymond Wilkins is of GasskasNigerian descent, Balliol educated and always exquisitely dressed. D I Ryan Wilkins, where the so-far-untapped natural resources son of Ryan and father of the area have sparked a gold rushRyan, is not. The criminal underworld has He's not been slow in coming forwardany of those things. SalanderHe's niecewhite, originated from a trailer park, barely educated (reading's mother is the latest woman not ''really'' his thing) and his wardrobe consists mainly of shell suits and trackies. They're usually in the area to have vanished without tracelime green or acid yellow. It was only with reluctance that Salander became her nieceYou might wonder if you's guardian but it quickly becomes obvious that Svala is re being introduced to a remarkably gifted teenager whopolice procedural written for laughs. Well, you's unaware re not. The two men are just different sides of the part Salander played in her fathersame policing coin. Sometimes the combination works brilliantly well. Sometimes it's deathproblematic.
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=B0CCCPJJ5BMosby Woods|title=The Last Person in the World|author=Matthew TreeA Whirly Man Loses His Turn
|rating=4
|genre=ThrillersLiterary Fiction|summary=Our narrator The West isn't the dominant force it once was a scholarship day boy at . Nobody in the London-based public school where he met Ralph Finns. It was an unusual relationship as Ralph was a boarder and had money West is quite sure how to throw around on a Rolex watch, vintage wines and a state-mend this or even if mending it is the best course of-the-art sound systemaction. Both were probably quite surprised when they became almost friends and certainly more than acquaintancesGovernments are flailing. Finns had no intention of going on to UniversityA war here, unlike our storyteller who had a place at Wolverton College push for climate action there. A feeling that nobody is in Wellingford, the UK's third most prestigious universityactual charge. Before going upImagine then, he took up there was a loose invitation to visit Ralph at his home, Clouds Manor in West Dorsetman with precognition.}}{{Frontpage|author=Dean Koontz|title=The House at Imagine the End of the World|rating=4|genre=Thrillers|summary=When you experience overwhelming tragedy and feel that there is no one on your side, you strategic advantage in this asset; a man who can either suck it up, saddle up and ride on or tell you can retreat to your own private fortress on an island that sits snugly in a small chain what will happen given any set of tiny dots on the map and live out your days in peace and solitudecircumstances. That's what Katie thought she was doing when she shut down her old life to start afresh on Jacob's Ladder; and all man would have been the aforementioned peace and solitude were it not for the pesky US Government occupying Ringrockbe valuable, right? Perhaps the neighbouring island and perpetrating all manner of mischief most valuable asset in the name of science and quite possibly bringing about the end of all mankindhistory.|isbn=1662453159}}{{Frontpage|author=T Kingfisher|title=Thornhedge|rating=5|genre=Fantasy|summary=''You had a right to retake your place.'' T Kingfisher's latest novella is a lovely reimagining of a fairytale Imagine then, that is well known and well belovedthis man loses this ability. But whilst there is a princess trapped in a tower, sleeping under an eternal enchantment, Thornhedge is not her story. Instead, our protagonist is Toadling, who was stolen away by fairies when she was a new-born baby and secreted away What would governments do to the land of fairie where her childhood was spent being taught how to draw magic from her veins and cast spells.get it back?|isbn=1803364238B0C9SNG8R1
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