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'''Read [[Forthcoming Publications|reviews of books about to be published]].
{{Frontpage
|isbn=18038167590241636604|title=The UnravellingTrading Game: A Confession|author=Will GibsonGary Stevenson|rating=4.5|genre=Science FictionAutobiography|summary=ItIf you were to bring up an image of a city banker in your mind, you's 2038 re unlikely to think of someone like Gary Stevenson. A hoodie and Joe is a bored cop policing jeans replaces the wealthy pin-stripe suit and peaceful New York City. Joe longs for a bit of adventure and to get stuck into some really gritty crime detection. But then something goes horribly wrong with his background is the AI system that now runs everythingEast End, making life easier for manywhere he was familiar with violence, poverty and riots start to spreadinjustice. Finally, Joe gets There was no posh public school on his CV - but he had been to do some real policing. In the aftermath London School of the rioting global pop star Suki Economics. Stevenson is kidnapped bright - extremely bright - and Joe is assigned he has a facility with numbers which most of us can only envy. He also realised that most rich people expect poor people to bring her homebe stupid. Joe isn't the only one trying to save Suki - Dylan It was his ability at what was, essentially, a British superfan and tech nerdcard game which got him an internship with Citibank. Eventually, is also on the casethis turned into permanent employment as a trader. What went wrong? Did the system fail or was it hacked? And how is Suki's kidnapping connected?
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=15294212841035021803|title=Laying Out the BonesThe Antique Hunter's Guide to Murder|author=Kate WebbC L Miller|rating=43.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=It was one 's twenty years since Freya Lockwood has been back to the English country village where she grew up. She's back now because of those flash downpours that the British weather often delivers in a heatwaverequest for help from her beloved aunt, Carole. In a gullyFreya's former mentor and Carole's close friend, Arthur Crockleford, a human skeleton came to the surface is dead and forensic testing proved the body circumstances seem suspicious, to be Lee Geary, who had disappeared nine years earliersay the least. He'd Arthur was the reason why Freya had not been a known drug user and had learning disabilitiesback to the village: Arthur, she feels, so it could have been a simple case of misadventure but DI Matt Lockyer wasn't convincedlet her down badly. Geary was a townieEven though they were in business together as antique hunters, so what was he doing out on Salisbury Plain alone? There are connections she has not felt able to be near the suicide of Holly Gilbert and to two other deaths which were not considered suspicious at man or pursue the timeprofession she loved. Lockyer After the split, she worked in a cafe, met and DC Gemma Broad married James (on the rebound from the love of the Major Crimes Review Unit (that's cold cases to you her life, who was murdered) and Freya and me) investigateJames have now divorced.
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=0571379559AllTomorrowsFutureCover|title=The House of Broken BricksAll Tomorrow's Futures: Fictions that Disrupt|author=Fiona WilliamsBenjamin Greenaway and Stephen Oram (Editors)
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Science Fiction|summary=''The House Opening up new ways of Broken Bricksthinking about the shape of things to come.'' I've heard it said that 'technology' is the story what happens after you're eighteen. Well, I must confess that there have been more than a few decades of four peopletechnology in my lifetime. Tess HembryI've kept up reasonably well with what's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, advantageous to me but instead, she lives in I'm left with the house on the riverbank, built of broken bricks. Insubstantial as it might look, feeling that it's stood the passage all getting away from me. Some of time, storms and floodsit is - frankly - quite frightening. Her husbandOf course, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, to complete I could research the delivery rounds - possibilities and to bring in sufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny the probabilities and Max, the rainbow twins. Sonnyend up down rabbit holes without really understanding whether I's colouring reflects his motherm reading someone who knows what they's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his fatherre talking about or the latest conspiracy theorist. People don't believe that they're related, much less twins I needed people I knew I could trust and there's an assumption when Max is out with his mother that she's his nannywho could deliver information in a way I could understand.
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1529425867Sunny Singh|title=Lost and Never Found (A D I Wilkins Mystery)|author=Simon MasonHotel Arcadia|rating=43.5|genre=CrimeThrillers |summary=In OxfordThe Hotel Arcadia is a luxury hotel in an unnamed city that has suddenly been violently taken over by a terrorist group. Hiding from the terrorists who are rampaging through, killing everyone on site, there are two D I Wilkins. Raymond Wilkins is of Nigerian descentSam, Balliol educated a wartime photographer and always exquisitely dressedAbhi, the hotel manager. D I Ryan WilkinsAs Abhi continues to try to care remotely for the residents who are still alive in the hotel, he forms a bond with Sam who refuses to be cowed by events, son of Ryan and father keeps on venturing out of Ryan, is not. Heher room to try to capture what's not any of those thingshappened through her photography. He's whiteAlthough they only ever talk over the phone, originated from a trailer park, barely educated (reading's not ''really'' his thing) their friendship grows as Abhi tries to help her keep safe and his wardrobe consists mainly of shell suits and trackies. They're usually in lime green or acid yellow. You might wonder they both wait to see if you're being introduced to a police procedural written for laughs. Well, you're not. The two men they will be rescued before they are just different sides of discovered by the same policing coin. Sometimes the combination works brilliantly well. Sometimes it's problematicterrorists.|isbn=086154742X
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Mosby Woods1529153298|title=A Whirly Man Loses His TurnThe List of Suspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey|rating=45|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary= The West isnIt't the dominant force it once wass 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. (A woman? I mean, honestly... Nobody in the West is quite sure how to mend this or even if mending it is the best course of action) She's not what's worrying Miv's family, though. Governments are flailing Women have been disappearing. A war here Well, they've been murdered, a push for climate action therebut to have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. A feeling Miv's upset because she's overheard that nobody is in actual chargeher father wants to move the family 'Down South'. Imagine then When you're from Yorkshire, there was Down South is a man with precognitionfrightening, foreign place, best avoided. Imagine For Miv, the strategic advantage in this asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. That man move would be valuablemean leaving her best friend, right? Perhaps the most valuable asset in history. Imagine thenSharon, and she'll do anything to prevent that this man loses this ability. What would governments do She's not worried about the dangers or that her Mum's stopped talking - to get it back?|isbn=B0C9SNG8R1anyone.
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Alastair Humphreys1398524085|title=LocalHas Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter?|author=Nicci French
|rating=5
|genre=Travel Crime|summary= Alastair Humphreys has walked and cycled all over the worldCharlotte Salter was expected at her husband's fiftieth birthday party but never turned up. And then written about it. For this book he walked Her children, sons Niall, Paul and cycled very close to home Ollie and then wrote about ither daughter, Etty. As he says in his introductionare all worried but - strangely - her husband, Alec, the book is an attempt ''to share what I have learnt about some big issues from a year exploring a small mapnot. Nature lossShortly afterwards, pollution, land use Etty and accessGreg, agriculturefind the body of Greg's father, the food systemDuncan Ackerley, rewilding…'' One of in the joys of river. It was an easy assumption for the book for me was police to make that Duncan had murdered Charlie and then committed suicide when he couldn't stand the biggest thing he learned about all of these things was that guilt. The Salter children are not convinced but there are no easy answers, no single 'right or wrong', that every upside is likely to have a downside for somebody s little else they can do but get on with their lives and that there are some hard choices aheadwonder about what really happened.|isbn=1785633678
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=18051418721035906708|title=The Teacher Who Knew Too MuchDiva|author=Rob KeeleyDaisy Goodwin
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=We tend to think of Maria Callas as Greek, but she was born to Greek parents in Manhattan, New York, in December 1923 and only moved to Athens when she was thirteen. Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to 'Callas' to make it more manageable in the States. When she was back in Athens - supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for her voice - she was raised under the Nazi occupation by a mother who mercilessly exploited her and made no secret of her preference for her elder sister, Jackie.
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{{Frontpage
|author=Christopher Edge
|title=Black Hole Cinema Club
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Lucas and his friends are all booked in for a movie marathon at their local cinema, a place that has the nickname of 'The Black Hole'Seventeen banks and a jeweller’s have been raided. The police are baffled All big movie fans, but only Ben knows the truth – his Maths teacherthey're looking forward to lots of exciting films, Miss Judsonand many, is really a safecrackermany snacks! With police and her gangster boyfriend Al on their trail However, Miss Judson and Ben go on as the run. But Al needs them for one last job...'' Goodness memovie starts, they very quickly realise that Miss Judson something about this new film format is a terror! How on earth did a nice teacher like her manage to get mixed very different, and they are swept up with a bad into an adventure they couldn'un like Al? We'll find outt even imagine. Luckily for Miss Judson But as they lurch from one film genre to the next, the pupil who discovers her terrible secret can they figure out what on earth is Ben, going on? Will they ever get back to the son of a famous magician who has ambitions to be as good as his father some daycinema, and who thinks Miss Judson is worth savingto their real lives?|isbn=1839942738
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0760381267Rachel Greenlaw|title=Verdura: Living a Garden Life|author=Perla Sofia Curbelo-SantiagoCompass and Blade
|rating=3.5
|genre=LifestyleTeens|summary=''I can hear the song of the sea. The most important part call of a garden is the one who enjoys itdeep, the answering beat in my heart.''.
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=B0CP95J1CGJames Sherwood Metts|title=Of Ghosts & Broken Promises|author=Mark LinganePlanet Storyland
|rating=4.5
|genre=Science FictionConfident Readers|summary= RonanThings have been a bit sticky for the Earthlings. AI and automation have been proceeding apace, often replacing jobs they's not entirely sure why he decides re paid to go do and other tasks that took time to the party but his interest is piqued by the way it arrivedaccomplish. And it seems like a good opportunity Just as they were beginning to get out used to all this technological change and starting to think of his room other, new ways to spend time, along came an awful pandemic. Life was pretty much shut down and away , along with it, all the many daily social interactions on which they depend so heavily.|isbn=1736128426}}{{Frontpage|author=Matthew Tree|title=We'll Never Know|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from the online activities he makes his father, a living drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional atany of his artistic passions all failed miserably and who had endless crises of self confidence. So he makes Tim applied himself to his way therestudies, dodging the buses that make up most of the traffic cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and watching the local energy storage indicator lights. Should be enough power. Hopefullyset himself high but achievable ambitions.|isbn= B0CVFXPGP8
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1454955546A G Slatter|title=Sugarless|author=Nicole M AvenaThe Briar Book of the Dead
|rating=5
|genre=LifestyleFantasy|summary=''This isnThere't s a diet bookpart of me that wants to keep this just to myself for however long I can. The This secret magic of my own, all mine, at last thing anyone needs is another diet book. I just want to enjoy it for a while.''
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=15211298861529900360|title=They Had It Coming (Greg Mason mysteries)The Ghost Orchid|author=Keith RedfernJonathan Kellerman
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=Greg MasonIt hadn't been Lt Milo Sturgis's just beginning fault that Alex Delaware had been badly injured but he felt responsible and even after Alex recovered, Sturgis was reluctant to get ask for his confidence as an investigator to the point where he'll warn someone about how much he chargeshelp on difficult cases. ItHis assertions that there were only open-and-shut cases which didn's t need the help of a good job too because Greg and Joyce will soon have psychologist only worked for a baby and theywhile. Finally, it was Robin, Delaware're both delighteds partner, who nudged Milo into asking for help again. Joyce will be more delighted about She knew that the involvement was something that the baby when man she gets past loved needed. The next case did look simple, though. Two lovers were murdered in the morning sicknessswimming pool of a remote property in Bel Air. Greg He was the heir to an Italian shoe empire and she is approached by married to an old friend whose brother-in-law appears to have killed himselfextremely rich man and it's not the Italian. 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. StuartHis father was a GP and Rowlands didn's concerned about t want to follow in his sisterfootsteps, Lucy, whoparticularly when he considered the strain that being on-call put on his father's struggling to make ends meet life. When he was seventeen he took the opportunity of doing work experience with a family friend who was a vet and her son is not thrivingwas convinced this was the job for him. LucyBefore long, he says, is convinced that Gil would never have killed himself - it simply wasnwas at Liverpool University. It hadn't in - as with so many students - been his naturedream since he was a child. The police and the coroner have accepted that the death was suicide If anything, but Stuarthe's prepared d wanted to pay Greg to find out what happened on the night Gil diedbe a professional footballer.
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=B0CK3MYJ560861541774|title=Responsibilities (Greg Mason mysteries)A Nye of Pheasants|author=Ann MacarthurSteve Burrows
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=ItDCI Domenic Jejeune's the 1990s close friend and Greg Mason's twenty-eight years former colleague, Danny Maik, has taken a short holiday in Singapore to meet up with an oldally, Guy Trueman. He used to have Maik was involved in a street brawl - he would later maintain that he was facing a man armed with a highknife -flying job in the city but it wasn't satisfying so and he's now set himself up as killed a private investigatorGhurka. 'Shades Initially, he faced a charge of Cameron Strike', you might be thinking. Nice bloke, manslaughter but where's the life experience evidence came to light that suggested that backs up this profession? On the other hand, he has been asked might have planned to look into somethingmurder the man. Joyce and Helen are half-sisters, or rather, they were until Helen was killed in what's been written off as a tragic accident at an unmanned level crossingNow he could be facing the death penalty. Joyce - and her parents, Oliver and Pam Hetherington - Domenic Jejeune can't understand what she was doing there - or how she do nothing to help as any interference from another police force could come to fall in front of provoke a train. Gregdiplomatic incident and wouldn's been asked to investigatet help Danny at all.
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{{Frontpage
|author=Katherine HoweAlexander McCall Smith|title=A True AccountThe Perfect Passion Company
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Hannah Masury The Perfect Passion Company is living a dating agency in BostonEdinburgh, having been sent to live with a family who run by Ness and operating as an inn, and being made alternative to work there from all the online apps in providing a young agemore personal, tailored service. When Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she hears there could come and look after the business, as Ness is planning to be take a hanging of some pirates in the town, she decides trip to Canada to go and watchget away for a while. Enthralled Katie is coming out of a break up with a bad boyfriend, and horrified in equal measure, Hannah finds herself embroiled in a young boy's death so jumps at the hands of two vicious pirateschance to come home to Edinburgh. She hides away, And so that they don't find and kill her toobegins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, and then bringing us to escape them completely she runs away an Edinburgh we already love, thanks to sea, dressing as a boy 44 Scotland Street and joining the notorious Ned Low's pirate ship as a cabin boyIsabel Dalhousie novels, but with some new characters who quickly begin to charm. She soon finds herself Katie has no experience in the thick of things when there is running a mutiny on boardbusiness, or in match-making, but Ness has full confidence in her abilities, and from there we are caught up in 's always her rip roaring tale of life on the ocean waves.very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, William, to lend a hand…|isbn=08615474381846976596
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Tananarive Due0811771741|title=The ReformatoryInstaKnits for Baby|author=Melissa Leapman|rating=54|genre=Historical FictionCrafts|summary= Gracetown, FloridaMelissa Leapman's ''InstaKnits for Baby'' gives us a collection of knits from toys to blankets. June 1950. After a scuffle with a white boy, twelve year Some will be quick knits -old Robbie Stephens Jr is sentenced to six months at others are of the Gracetown School for Boys'long, otherwise known as cosy afternoons in front of the Reformatoryfire' variety. It The projects are divided by the time they's a place with a brutal ll take to complete - less than five hours, five to ten hours, ten to twenty hours and dark reputationmore than twenty hours. But All the segregated reformatory is a chamber of horrorsprojects are attractive, haunted by the boys modern and useable. I perhaps show my age when I wonder about 'social-media-worthy projects' but that have died there. In order to survive the school governor and his Funhouse, Robert must enlist the help of the school's ghosts – only they have their own motivations..me being picky.|isbn=1803366532}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1471180158Dean Koontz|title=Maybe Tomorrow|author=Penny ParkesThe Bad Weather Friend
|rating=4.5
|genre=General FictionParanormal|summary=Jamie Matson works in an upper-class grocery store, for Benny is having a man who's a control freak with all the subtlety of a half brickterrifically bad day. Jamie's sonHe loses his job, Bohe loses his fiancee, 'has and his problems'house gets trashed. HeOh, and someone has delivered a really weird, disturbing coffin-sized object to his home, and it's asthmatic and possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the more you readthing that has trashed his house! The thing is, Benny is the more you'll suspect that he's on the autistic spectrumvery last person to deserve all this bad luck. Sometimes Jamie needs to take time off at short notice - she's He is a frequent flier in the local nice person. A&E and sometimes Bo's not fit enough to go to schoolreally nice person. Missed shifts or So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the need delivery to be away on time his house is a new friend, a bad weather friend called Spike, who has been sent to pick Bo up help him since Benny is clearly under attack from school are occasions when Jamie can be controlled and put in the wrongnefarious forces for being a good person. It was Spike is going to come to take care of Benny, and will certainly take care of Benny's enemies, if he, Benny, and Harper (a headwaitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are.|isbn=1662500491
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{{Frontpage
|author=Harry AllenAdam Stower|title=Children of the SunMurray and Bun|rating=4.5|genre=TeensConfident Readers |summary= Ra Eun Seo lives in a North Korean town and she Murray is supposed to be a talented singer. Life is hard humble, tidy and food friendly cat, one who is difficult able to come bysleep and eat and eat and sleep and, well, whatever takes his fancy next of the two. But he's a bad magician's cat, so Seo his favourite bun has been turned into a hyperactive sticky rabbit called Bun, and her friends Nari and Min go foraging every eveningthe catflap they both use can chuck them out, looking for tree bark and edible grasses to supplement not into the meagre rations regular back garden, but into a world of rice frightening adventure and kimchi at homewhiffs. This 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's turned up and he'll have to do…|isbn=18051404930008561249
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Edel RodriguezB0C47LV1PC|title=Worm: A Cuban American OdysseyFragility|author=Mosby Woods
|rating=4
|genre=Graphic NovelsLiterary Fiction|summary=WeCan you make a 're in childhood, and we're in Cuba. The revolution has happened, and Castro, first thought of as a saviour of the country, has proven himself a Communist, and not done nearly enough to create a level playing field for all. Well, those hours-long speeches of his were kind of taking his time away. Our narratorYo birthing person's family weren't in the happiest of places herejoke? And if you could, an uncle refusing to be is the good soldier question should you make it? Or is the country demanded (especially as he question if you did, would probably be shipped off to some minor pro-Communism skirmish, such as Angola) and it land? The catch is that the father being watched and watched, and not liked answer for his successful photography business, success being frowned uponboth could well be.... no. The mother gets the couple jobs with the party to ease some of the heat, but in this sultry island country, it remains the kind of heat forcing you out of the kitchen…|isbn=1474616720}}{{Frontpage|author=K P O'Donnell|title=The Vital Link (A Spark in the Ashes)|rating=3.5|genre=Science Fiction|summary=VL-15, a prototype robot, 'Fragility'' is desperate to understand who she is. Unfortunately, before she could find any answers, set as the world endedcity of Portland, consumed in an apocalyptic war between the nations of Drexel and Renada. Over half-a-century laterOregon, civilisation is starting to rebuild. Dr Amelia Wong is determined cautiously begins to continue her father's legacy, building a world where machines and humans can live together in harmony, but internal frictions and external enemies might bring it all crashing down again. Craig Anderson, leader of a group of salvagers called emerge from the Exhumers, has his entire life turned upside down when he unearths a prototype combat robot: none other than VL-15 herself. Even after being buried for 65 years, her determination hasn't diminished in restrictions imposed during the slightest, and no errant machine, no savage human tribe and not even Drexel's ravaged ecosystem will stop her on her quest for answers…|isbn=B0CKRYFRZMcovid pandemic
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=18389544811529431735|title=The MisperWinter Visitor|author=Kate LondonJames Henry
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=Ryan Kennedy killed a police officer: thereIt's no doubt about thatFebruary 1991 and Essex is bitingly cold, which made Bruce Hopkins' return all the more surprising. He was 'd been exiled on the fifteenCosta del Sol as a wanted drug smuggler for a decade. The return has come about because he's had a letter from his ex-year-old holding the gun wife, saying that she's ill and pointing it at DI Kieran Shawhasn't long to live. He pulled the trigger but due It's hard to feel any sympathy when Hopkins is abducted, stripped to the vagaries of the jury system he was found not guilty of both the murder his underwear and sent to a watery grave in the manslaughter boot of the officera stolen Ford Sierra. And so lives must go on. For DI Sarah Collins that means leaving the capital and hoping for Is it a quieter life in the countryside but when warning from a missing teenager is found on her territory she's drawn into Spanish gang or a wider investigation - and back into the orbit of Ryan Kennedy.problem closer to home?
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1035025299Alex Bell and Tim McDonagh|title=Went to London, Took the Dog|author=Nina StibbeThe Glorious Race of Magical Beasts
|rating=4
|genre=AutobiographyConfident Readers|summary=Nina Stibbe Eli is returning to London 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 gran owns and runs. Eli lives with his lovely gran, too – for there is a sabbatical after being away for twenty yearsgeneration missing in the family. SheA few short years ago, Eli's been at Victoria's smallholding in Leicestershire which isn't all that conducive parents were both lost to writingthe titular race, as there's always something smallholding happening a globe- as you might expecttrotting adventure where all entrants have to navigate the world in the company of a magical beast. The other side of This has made the race anathema to the decision was sealed pair – but when a room became available (courtesy bad incident at the eatery leads to a confession from gran, Eli knows his only hope is to dare to enter what he most hates, with the sole aim the prize of Deborah Moggach) magic at a very reasonable rentthe end – the only thing to possibly save his gran.|isbn=0571382231
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=B0CKD1L5JL178763681X|title=Radio Free OlympiaKnife Skills for Beginners|author=Jeffrey DunnOrlando Murrin
|rating=4
|genre=General FictionCrime|summary= Petr is an orphanChef Paul Delamare took a teaching job at a residential cookery school in Belgravia. Rescued by He didn't really want to but celebrity chef Christian Wagner had a way of getting both men and women to do what he wanted. Paul ''somehow'' got the strangeimpression that he'd be at the school to assist Paul, reclusive Bearwho had a broken arm, he is brought up far from bustling cities but it didn't turn out that way. The teaching - and busy human society, in the forests of Washingtonproblems - are all his own. The one thing he hadn's Olympic Peninsulat expected was for someone to turn up dead. After Bear dies and a brief sojourn in human companyUnfortunately, he was the person who discovered the body and armed with only a pirate radio transmitter, Petr goes on a journey through everyone knows that the forest, broadcasting police consider that person to be the strange, wild and rarely heard voices he encountersprime suspect.
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1635866243Sarah Marsh|title=The Knitting Pattern Writing Handbook|author=Kristina McGrath and Sarah Walworth A Sign of Her Own|rating=43.5|genre=CraftsGeneral Fiction|summary=''I quickly discovered that putting words and numbers on After a bout of scarlet fever as a page wasn't enoughchild, Ellen Lark loses her hearing. Creating a pattern that was correct, clear, concise, and consistent required Suddenly plunged into a great deal world of trial and errorsilence, patience, and perseverance.'' (Introduction byFrancoise Danoy) A friend recently showed me a knitting pattern for which she'd paid good moneyeverything about her life changes. The first line of the instructions began: ''Cast off 100 stitches...'' It was clear that no good could come of this - the instructions didn't get any better - and (finally) PayPal obliged with Living in a refund time when the seller refused use of sign language was seen as something only savages do, Ellen is sent to a school where she couldn't afford the repaymentis taught to lip read, but physically restrained from signing. The pattern looked prettyFrom here, but she ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the creator didn't have the basic knowledge deaf and skills to enable her to connect with her knittersusing a system called Visible Speech. She should have read ''The Knitting Pattern Writing Handbook''At the same time, Bell is working on other inventions and ideas, and Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a complicated tangle of espionage.|isbn=1035401614
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Adam Baron and Benji Davies1803816759|title=Oscar's LionThe Unravelling|author=Will Gibson|rating=34|genre=Confident ReadersScience Fiction|summary=We start incredibly bluntly, with Oscar hoping to have his mother – or father, but mother It's 2038 and Joe is more likely – read him his very favourite book a couple bored cop policing the wealthy and peaceful New York City. Joe longs for a bit of times before he has adventure and to be ready for schoolget stuck into some really gritty crime detection. But when he enters his parents' bedroomthen something goes horribly wrong with the AI system that now runs everything, all he sees is a mahoosive male lion on their bed, looking sheepishmaking life easier for many, and admitting that he won't be hungry for another two daysriots start to spread. But there are benefits to having a lion around – it can be shown as an unspoken threat Finally, Joe gets to do some real policing. In the bully that ruined a birthday party for Oscar aftermath of the other month. And it can shapeshift, so he can take it rioting global pop star Suki is kidnapped and Joe is assigned to school and it can get him out of a problembring her home. And itJoe isn's wonderful t the only one trying to have around the house – not limiting his biscuit intakesave Suki - Dylan, being much more lax about the rulesa British superfan and tech nerd, and so is also onthe case. OK, What went wrong? Did the system fail or was it canhacked? And how is Suki't work a dimmer switch but it can give Oscar a wonderful time.|isbn=0008596751s kidnapping connected?
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=B0BC3YTCMR1529421284|title=Good Girls DieLaying Out the Bones|author=Ayura AyiraKate Webb
|rating=4.5
|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=''This story is not for everyone.'' Lavender Daniels It was three weeks short one of her fifteenth birthday when The Incident happenedthose flash downpours that the British weather often delivers in a heatwave. She was In a very bright studentgully, a bit too nerdy if truth human skeleton came to the surface and forensic testing proved the body to be toldLee Geary, and suffered from vitiligo - people were afraid to hug her in case it's contagiouswho had disappeared nine years earlier. ItHe's not easy being d been a black girl whose skin is 84% white. She known drug user and had learning disabilities, so it could have been a crush on seventeen-year-old Reggie Anderson simple case of misadventure but never thought he would notice herDI Matt Lockyer wasn't convinced. Then he did: Lavender Geary was very good at math and Reggie asked if she would tutor him. She readily agreed: tutoring a townie, so what was something she gladly did at church: this was just an extension. he doing out on Salisbury Plain alone? She went There are connections to his house the suicide of Holly Gilbert and he raped herto two other deaths which were not considered suspicious at the time. In shock, she even allowed him Lockyer and DC Gemma Broad of the Major Crimes Review Unit (that's cold cases to give her a lift homeyou and me) investigate.
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|authorisbn=V Castro0571379559|title=The Haunting House of AlejandraBroken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams|rating=3.5|genre=HorrorLiterary Fiction|summary=''This was a part The House of her past that had to stop with herBroken Bricks'' is the story of four people. She would Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in the house on the one to confront thisriverbank, built of broken bricks. Insubstantial as it might look, it'' At some point during her lifes stood the passage of time, Alejandra lost herselfstorms and floods. She feels as if she is playing parts for others in her life – her Her husband , Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, to complete the delivery rounds - and her children – without ever giving any thought to her own desiresbring in sufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, her own future, her own identitythe rainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. Day by day she goes through quotient motions without anyone seeing People don't believe that there is something fundamentally wrong. For invisible to all but Alejandrathey're related, much less twins and there 's an assumption when Max is a darkness threatening to consume her. More and more out with his mother that she is visited by a ghost, a weeping woman in a fraying white gown dripping with water, who leaves distress in her wake's his nanny.|isbn=1803365617
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|authorisbn=Richard Kadrey1529425867|title=The Pale House Devil|rating=4|genre=Horror|summary=Ford Lost and Neuland are a couple of, well, guys for hire I guess, though really the way Never Found (A D I thought of them through the book was as a couple of strange detectives! One of them is living, you see, and the other is undead, and so one of them kills the living, and the other kills the undead. (Only not each other, obviouslyWilkins Mystery). They're on a job in New York that goes badly, and so they head out to the West coast to try to lay low for a while and find some other work to keep them going. But when a young woman called Tilda hires them to kill the 'something' that appears to be haunting a wealthy gentleman's house they find themselves uncovering a whole lot of family history, and a terrifyingly powerful creature that they've never come across before!|isbn=1803363894}}{{Frontpage|author=Helen Cooper|title=The Taming of the Cat|rating=3.5|genre=Confident Readers|summary=Once again, mice are pitched against cat. In this case, principally, we have Brie the mouse, up against Gorgonzola the cat – and in case you're seeing a connection, they live in a cheese shop and therefore all the names used here seem to be the names of cheeses. Anyway, Brie is shunned, scorned and, if you must, mous-tracised, for the way his habits don't match the other mice he lives with. They nibble up paper wrapping from the cheese for bedding – he displays it as art and makes stories based on the visuals on it. And that story-telling will come in handy one night, when he feels all alone and cast out. It's almost as if there were another character from fable who had had to tell stories to keep themselves alive. This makes Brie the top dog in the mouse community, though, as all the others had the chance to half-inch some cheese while the cat was distracted. But will the story have the successful sequel it needs when that cheese runs out?|isbn=0571376010}}{{Frontpage|isbn=B0CDZRGT1M|title=Super Short Stories: Flash Fiction|author=Mark C WallfischSimon Mason
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|genre=Short StoriesCrime|summary=''Got a minute to be amusedIn Oxford, entertained, or challenged?''''These 100 stories there are super shorttwo D I Wilkins. None Raymond Wilkins is more than 300 wordsof Nigerian descent, Balliol educated and always exquisitely dressed. You can read one in a flash 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 ''Some are funny. Some are poignant. All are short.really'' Question: how do you review flash fiction? How do you give a flavour his thing) and his wardrobe consists mainly of a fully rounded little story shell suits and trackies. They're usually in lime green or acid yellow. You might wonder if that story is told in fewer than three hundred words? Or do you try 're being introduced to draw out themes from all the flash fictions in a book of them? I donpolice procedural written for laughs. Well, you't know! Perhaps we could start by explaining that there really isn't a fixed definition re not. The two men are just different sides of flash fiction but that for this collection, author Mark C Wallfisch has gone for a three hundred word limitthe same policing coin. Sometimes the combination works brilliantly well. That Sometimes it's about a single page in your average paperbackproblematic.
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|isbnauthor=1732898766Mosby Woods|title=The Adventures of Birpus and Bulbus: Book One: The Sour Milk Dragon|author=Wynn Everett-Albanese, Michael Albanese and Indre Ta (Illustrator)A Whirly Man Loses His Turn
|rating=4
|genre=For SharingLiterary Fiction|summary=When we first meet Birpus and Bulbus theyThe West isn're running for their lives in t the Forest of Fine Reputedominant force it once was. Their greatest fear has come about: Nobody in the Sour Milk Dragon West is chasing them. He's right behind them, spewing hot, sour milk from his nostrils. (Please don't try quite sure how to mend this at home: or even if mending it won't end wellis the best course of action. Governments are flailing.) FortunatelyA war here, they were nearly at Nobby Lob-lolly - and when a ladder of moss and vines was lowered push for themclimate action there. A feeling that nobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, they escapedthere was a man with precognition. They climbed up to Imagine the Tree Wee homes high up strategic advantage in this asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the tangled woods where they lived with their Grand Weesmost valuable asset in history. Imagine then, Nester Nook and Granny Crannythat this man loses this ability.What would governments do to get it back?|isbn=B0C9SNG8R1
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