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'''Read [[Forthcoming Publications|reviews of books about to be published]].
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Justine Avery and Naday Meldova0008517061|title=No, No, No!Death in a Lonely Place|author=Stig Abell
|rating=4
|genre=For SharingCrime|summary=They say the best picture books are Former Metropolitan Police detective, Jake Johnson, has settled into his rustic life at Little Sky. There’s perhaps a little uncertainty about the simplest ones. And nothing could be truer future of this latest from Justine Averyhis life with his vet girlfriend, Livia and her daughter Diana, as moving in together would mean a Bookbag favouritelot of compromise: does Jake give up his off-grid and relaxing life to move in with Livia or does Livia move to Little Sky despite her reservations about whether or not this is the future she wants for herself and her daughter? For the moment they’re enjoying life in the present and putting the future on the back burner.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1786482126|title=The Janus Stone (Dr Ruth Galloway)|author=Elly Griffiths|rating=4.5|genre=Crime|summary=Builders were demolishing an old house in Norwich - the site was going to hold seventy-five 'luxury'Noapartments - when they discovered the bones of a child beneath a doorway. There was no skull. Was this a ritual killing or murder? Inevitably, NoDr Ruth Galloway finds herself working with DCI Harry Nelson. It's difficult as Ruth knows, No!'but Nelson doesn' t, that she is based around pregnant with his child as a result of the simplest text imaginableone night they spent together some three months ago. Her condition will be obvious before long, not least because Ruth is prone to sudden bouts of sickness.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0008551324|title=The Devil You Know (D S Max Craigie)|author=Neil Lancaster''No, no, no! Okay, okay|rating=4. Yes, you may.''5|genre=CrimeThat|summary=It's it! unusual for anyone from the Hardie family to approach the police. Neither side likes or has any respect for the other. ButDavie Hardie is struggling in prison and he's prepared to tell the police where the body of a missing person is buried and who was responsible for her death. This person, like all he promises, is someone big and it will be worth the best picture bookspolice doing what he wants. And what he wants is to be transferred to an open prison to serve the remainder of his sentence and to get an early parole date. Not much to ask, this tiny snippet of text is a veritable tardis - it? The new Deputy Police Constable doesn't think so much bigger on and she's even prepared to do the inside other thing that it appears on the outsideHardie demanded - make certain that DS Max Craigie and anyone who works with him is kept well away from what's happening.|isbn=1638820457
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Monica Connell0008405026|title=Against a Peacock SkyA Stranger in the Family (Maeve Kerrigan 11)|author=Jane Casey
|rating=5
|genre=TravelCrime|summary= Monica Connell went to Nepal to do the fieldwork for her Ph.D. in social anthropology. I think it is important to know that. She went on a grantIt's sixteen years since nine-supported trip, with a relatively specific objective. She wasn't a hippy wanderer looking for Shangriyear-la. She wasn't a mere tourist passing throughold Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her bed one summer night. She went with a fundamental aim of learning about these people was never found and how they lived. She also went, presumably, with the academic discipline of how investigation ground to find these things outa halt. Now, how to organise them in her mindmother, how to "understand" them in the context of her own paradigmsHelena, and how to keep enough notes and files and photos to help her create some greater sense of the experience after the eventfather are dead in their bed. Fortunately Initially, she also went with it looks like a sense straightforward murder/suicide but there's something about the positioning of the bodies that makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and her boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. What looked as though it was going to be an open-ness and curiosity and -shut case is now a willingness to muck-complex double murder. Kerrigan is convinced that the explanation lies inRosalie's disappearance: others (such as Derwent's boss, to break her own rules and to truly connect with the people of the village where she hauled upUna Burt) are less convinced.|isbn=1780600429
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=14091816690571379877|title=The MaidensKellerby Code|author=Alex MichaelidesJonny Sweet|rating=3.5|genre=Crime|summary=Edward Jevons is a working-class young man, obsessed with his upper-class friends, Robert and Stanza. Robert's a theatre director. He's also self-obsessed, demanding, handsome and entitled and uses Edward to run errands for him. Edward has been in love with Stanza since their university days - and he's drunkenly confided how he feels to Robert. Most men in Robert's position would stay away from Stanza or tell Edward that a relationship had begun between them but he's not like most men: Edward is left to stumble upon the two of them kissing in a dark passageway.}}{{Frontpage|author=Jo Callaghan|title=Leave No Trace|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=Mariana was convinced that Professor Edward Fosca had committed two murders and looked likely When a man is found crucified on the top of a hill in Nuneaton, DCS Kat Frank finds herself assigned to get away with them both. She needed to think carefully about what she knew and decide how she should proceed. Everything - or so she thought - had begun with the death of Tara Hampton on case alongside her sidekick, the Paradise nature reserve in CambridgeAI detective Lock. She'd been brutally stabbed and MarianaIt's niecetheir first live case together, Zoe, had telephoned her in distresshaving previously been very successful with several cold cases. Tara had been her best friend But when there is a second body found crucified a few days later, Kat is suddenly struggling with a potential serial killer and she was struggling a very high profile case that draws a lot of unwanted attention to copetheir AI Future Policing project. Mariana wasn't ''entirely'' happy about having Will they be able to go to Cambridgesolve the case in time, but she caught or will Kat find herself taken off the first fast train from King's Cross. Mariana case and Zoe were close and had been made all the more so by the death of Mariana's husband, Sebastianpotentially, in out of a swimming accident on Naxos some fourteen months earlier. Zoe had been their surrogate daughter after the death of Zoe's mother and Mariana's sister, Eliza.career?|isbn=139851120X
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Maisie Chan1399613073|title=Danny Chung Does Not Do MathsMoral Injuries|author=Christie Watson
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersThrillers|summary=Danny is eleven years oldOlivia, Laura and Anjali met on the first day of medical school and what he really, really loves to do is drawtheir friendship would keep them inseparable for a quarter of a century. He creates fantastical comicsOlivia is ruthlessly ambitious, whilst his best friend Ravi adds the wordswhich is a bonus when you aim to be a cardiothoracic surgeon. Danny's dad, however, wants Danny to concentrate on his maths, Laura is a perfectionist and forget about the drawing, because he says nobody can make a living from drawing! trauma doctor. At least Danny has his own room, where he can draw in secret Anjali is the free spirit of the group and in peaceshe becomes a GP. But then one day his parents tell him When we first meet them they have 're at a surprise for him, drug and alcohol-fuelled party and this surprise turns out it's going to be his grandmother who has come over from China to live with them, and end in tragedy. We don't know who suffered the tragedy or the consequences. Twenty-five years later there will not only be sharing Danny's bedroom but she an eerily similar event that will also be sleeping on the top bunk of his bunk bed! Danny is horrified! His Nai Nai (grandmother) speaks no English, and Danny finds himself forced into being her babysitter, and showing her around impact the townthree friends. Poor DannyThis time, stuck on a maths project, frustrated with his bedroom situation, and then he even has a falling out with Ravi..it's their teenage children who are involved.how on earth will things ever get better?!|isbn=180078001X
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Terry Miles0241636604|title=RabbitsThe Trading Game: A Confession|author=Gary Stevenson
|rating=4.5
|genre=Science FictionAutobiography|summary=Welcome If you were to the world bring up an image of The Game. Or should that be the gamea city banker in your mind, for while it ought to be capitalised to high heaven, it never leaves lower case throughout this book. Ityou's also called Rabbits, although only as a slangy term for it – as far as anyone knows, it has no official title, no official source, no hard and fast structure, and re unlikely to the average person no obvious entry pointthink of someone like Gary Stevenson. A bit like hoodie and jeans replaces the game of life then. Yes, this pin-stripe suit and his background is the game of life for a certain tribe of people – the fan of the conspiracyEast End, the computer gamewhere he was familiar with violence, the hack from the darkest of webspoverty and injustice. People like our hero, K, named like that in the least Kafkaesque manner possible. K and There was no posh public school on his bezzies are trying CV - but he had been to be historians the London School of the game, Economics. Stevenson is bright - extremely bright - and have studied amongst many things the he has a facility with numbers which most unique of high score boards, for the lists of who has successfully won the game are in the most peculiar places, and are still very shortus can only envy. However this time it's different. This time the game seems the He also realised that most dangerous, nay lethal, the most broken it's ever been – morally and otherwiserich people expect poor people to be stupid. Unfortunately for K, in trying to sort out It was his ability at what the game is doingwas, if it's even being playedessentially, and how his loved ones might be kept safe, he is only to find out that the line between observing and learning about the a card gamewhich got him an internship with Citibank. Eventually, and playing it, is this turned into permanent employment as a very thin one indeedtrader...|isbn=1529016932
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=C J Carey1035021803|title=WidowlandThe Antique Hunter's Guide to Murder|author=C L Miller|rating=43.5|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=It's April 1953twenty 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. Freya's former mentor and Adolf HitlerCarole's schedule includes going to Moscow to attend the state funeral of Joseph Stalin then within weeks coming to Londonclose friend, parading around a bitArthur Crockleford, is dead and watching over the sanctioned return circumstances seem suspicious, to say the throne of Edward VIII with his wife, Queen Wallisleast. For yes, Britain caved in Arthur was the lead-up reason why Freya had not been back to the World War Two that certainly didn't happen as we know itvillage: Arthur, and we are now a protectorate – wellshe feels, we share enough of the same blood as the Germanic peoples on ''the mainland''let her down badly. But this is most certainly a different Britain, for Nazi-styled phrenology, and ideas of female purposeEven though they were in business together as antique hunters, she has put all of that gender into a caste system, ranging from high-brow office bigwigs to the drudges, and beyond those, right on down not felt able to be near the childless, man or pursue the husbandless and the widowsprofession she loved. Female literacy is actively discouraged. And in this puritanical existence, our heroine, Rose Ransom, is employed with After the task of bowdlerising classical literature to take all encouragement for female emancipation out of it – after allsplit, not every book can be bannedshe worked in a cafe, met and not every story excised immediately married James (on the rebound from British civilisation, and so they just get a hefty tweak towards the party line before they're stamped ready for reprint. That is love of her joblife, at least, until the first emerging signs of female protest come to light, with their potential to spoil Hitler's visitwho was murdered) and Freya and James have now divorced.|isbn=152941198X
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Louise BeechAllTomorrowsFutureCover|title=This Is How We Are HumanAll Tomorrow's Futures: Fictions that Disrupt|author=Benjamin Greenaway and Stephen Oram (Editors)|rating=45|genre=General Science Fiction|summary=Veronica ''Opening up new ways of thinking about the shape of things to come.'' I've heard it said that 'technology' is what happens after you're eighteen. Well, I must confess that there have been more than a devoted single mother few decades of technology in my lifetime. I've kept up reasonably well with what's advantageous to her son, Sebastian - me but she canI't give him everything he wants. Sebastian has decided m left with the feeling that it's time for him to have sexall getting away from me. But as an autistic 20 yearSome of it is -oldfrankly - quite frightening. Of course, thatI could research the possibilities and the probabilities and end up down rabbit holes without really understanding whether I'm reading someone who knows what they's easier said than donere talking about or the latest conspiracy theorist. And it's starting to cause them both problems I needed people I knew I could trust and who could deliver information in a way I could understand. |isbn=1913193713
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=B093VPBL5LSunny Singh|title=Cape Henry House|author=Jolly Walker BittickHotel Arcadia|rating=43.5|genre=General FictionThrillers |summary=Meet BosnerThe 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, orthere is Sam, to give him his full titlea wartime photographer and Abhi, Petty Officer Third Class Bosnerthe hotel manager. We never really find out if As Abhi continues to try to care remotely for the residents who are still alive in the hotel, he has forms a first name: there's merely a hint that he had the nickname 'Secretary' at one point. He's simply Bosner bond with Sam who refuses to one be cowed by events, and all. When we first encounter him hekeeps on venturing out of her room to try to capture what's exploring his memories of 2008 when he was a greaser on helicopters (or helos, as they were called) at a naval establishmenthappened through her photography. The hours could be long and he was often working nights but at Although they only ever talk over the age of twenty-onephone, there was always a way their friendship grows as Abhi tries to work some fun (think drinking help her keep safe and eating) into his daythey both wait to see if they will be rescued before they are discovered by the terrorists.|isbn=086154742X
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Hannah Whitten1529153298|title=For the WolfThe List of Suspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey
|rating=5
|genre=FantasyGeneral Fiction|summary=In RedIt's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. (A woman? I mean, honestly...) She's not what's worrying Miv's family, the first daughter becomes queenthough. Women have been disappearing. Well, they've been murdered, and the second daughter becomes a sacrificebut to have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. To Red Miv's misfortune, upset because she is the second daughter. Sent alone into the woods with nothing but the cape on 's overheard that her back, Red knows what father wants to expect: within move the woods is a wolffamily 'Down South'. When you're from Yorkshire, and he Down South is the one who will decide the fate of their kingdom. If she is not a worthy sacrificefrightening, the monsters he keeps contained to the woods will be releasedforeign place, and the fabled kings he keeps hostage will never be returned—or so the stories gobest avoided. But when Red enters For Miv, the woodsmove would mean leaving her best friend, expecting nothing more than to be killed within the hourSharon, and she finds 'll do anything to prevent that the legends are lies. The wolf is She's not a monster—heworried about the dangers or that her Mum's a manstopped talking - to anyone.|isbn=0356516369
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=M G Leonard1398524085|title=TwitchHas Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter?|author=Nicci French
|rating=5
|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=Twitch is a boy who loves birdsCharlotte Salter was expected at her husband's fiftieth birthday party but never turned up. He keeps pigeons at homeHer children, and chickenssons Niall, Paul and even has swallows nesting in his bedroom! His time spent watching Ollie and helping birds is easy compared to that of his time in schoolher daughter, Etty. But things are about to change for Twitch in all aspects of his life as there worried but - strangely - her husband, Alec, is a dangerous bank robber on the runnot. Shortly afterwards, Etty and itGreg, find the body of Greg's possible that father, Duncan Ackerley, in the missing bank haul is hidden somewhere in Aves Wood, river. It was an easy assumption for the place where Twitch has his secret hide police to make that Duncan had murdered Charlie and that then committed suicide when he knows like couldn't stand the back of his hand! guilt. Can Twitch solve the mystery, The Salter children are not convinced but there's little else they can do but get on with their lives and find the missing millions?|isbn=1406389374wonder about what really happened.
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=18388538041035906708|title=The Cursed GirlsDiva|author=Caro RamsayDaisy Goodwin|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersGeneral Fiction|summary=Megan Melvick's earliest memory is We tend to think of her fourth birthday: Maria Callas as Greek, but she followed her grandfather down was born to the pondGreek parents in Manhattan, New York, in December 1923 and only moved to find that he'd hanged himself. Twenty years later Athens when she's back home again and this time the occasion is no less sadwas thirteen. She's there to say Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her final farewells father changed it to her sister, Melissa, who is dying of anorexia. As she dies, Melissa whispers 'sorryCallas' to Megan but what did she mean? There were lots of things, minor and major cruelties, for which Melissa might have been sorry - or was make it even a question? more manageable in the States. Was When she asking if Megan was sorry back in Athens - supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for sleeping with Melissa's husband, Jago, on their wedding day? The Melvicks might seem to have everything her voice - Ivan Melvick she was Lord Lieutenant of raised under the County and money was never in short supply - but there did seem to be Nazi occupation by a curse. In addition to Melissa's health problems, Megan was deaf mother who mercilessly exploited her and their mother, Beth, had left suddenly three years before. Would she come back made no secret of her preference for her elder daughter's funeral?sister, Jackie.
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0241400120Christopher Edge|title=The Girl Who Died|author=Ragnar Jonasson and Victoria CribbBlack Hole Cinema Club
|rating=4
|genre=CrimeConfident Readers|summary=Una was not thriving Lucas and his friends are all booked in Reykjavik: it was some years since her beloved father had committed suicide without leaving any explanation and since then shefor a movie marathon at their local cinema, a place that has the nickname of 'The Black Hole'd given up her medical studies and retrained as a teacher. She was thirty years old All big movie fans, they're looking forward to lots of exciting films, and money was tight. many, many snacks! Her friendHowever, Saraas the movie starts, showed her they very quickly realise that something about this new film format is very different, and they are swept up into an advert for a job in Skalar on the Langanes Peninsulaadventure they couldn't even imagine. There were only ten people in But as they lurch from one film genre to the village but a teacher was required for two children: a salary would be paid and accommodation provided. next, can they figure out what on earth is going on? Una was Will they ever get back to the only applicant cinema, and the job meant that she could let her flat in Reykjavik and, hopefully, save some money over the winter which her contract covered.to their real lives?|isbn=1839942738
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1846975719Rachel Greenlaw|title=For Any Other Truth (DCI Jim Daley)|author=Denzil MeyrickCompass and Blade
|rating=3.5
|genre=CrimeTeens|summary=We learn that MI5 is having its problems with environmental terrorists supergluing themselves to awkward places''I can hear the song of the sea. But that's LondonThe call of the deep, isnthe answering beat in my heart.'t it? What's happening in Kinloch?
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{{Frontpage
|author=Richard BrookJames Sherwood Metts|title=Understanding Human Nature: A User's Guide to LifePlanet Storyland
|rating=4.5
|genre=LifestyleConfident Readers|summary= I am Things have been a firm believer that sometimes we choose books, and sometimes books choose us. In my case, this is one of bit sticky for the latterEarthlings. Not so very long ago, if I had come across this book I'd AI and automation have skimmed itbeen proceeding apace, found some of it interesting, but it would not have often replacing jobs they'hit home' in the way re paid to do and other tasks that it does nowtook time to accomplish. I believe it came Just as they were beginning to get used to me not just because I was likely all this technological change and starting to give it a favourable review [ ''full disclosure The Bookbag's u.s.p. is that people chose their own books rather than getting them randomlythink of other, so there is a predisposition towards expecting new ways to like the bookspend time, along came an awful pandemic. Life was pretty much shut down and, even if it doesn't always turn out that way'' ] – but also because along with it is a book I needed to read, right nowall the many daily social interactions on which they depend so heavily.|isbn=18004616821736128426
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=B095CY7NBNMatthew Tree|title=Autumn Camp|author=Barry FowlerWe'll Never Know
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=It was Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be Brian's last camp. He'd founded the organisation some four years ago different from his father, a drunk and had done chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of his artistic passions all the organisation since but he was leaving school failed miserably and the time who had come to hand the reins to someone elseendless crises of self confidence. The obvious person was Gary, who'd always been the fun element of the camps and Brian had said that on this camp, Gary should act as the leader and he'd just be there So Tim applied himself to observe. The problem with this was that Gary wasn't really an organiserhis studies, an administrator if you like. He was the entertainer, the person who basked in the spotlight and made things fun - so Brian stepped in and did the organising. He handed the camp over - and then took it back. And Gary determined to have cultivated his revenge. This should have been ''abilities rather than his'' campdaydreams and set himself high but achievable ambitions.|isbn= B0CVFXPGP8
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=194812467XA G Slatter|title=The Farm Shop|author=Devon Avery, Justine Avery and Ema TepicBriar Book of the Dead|rating=45|genre=For SharingFantasy|summary=Kirelle and her best friend Sam the cat decide '' There's a part of me that wants to keep this just to go myself for a walkhowever long I can. Kirelle is dressed for This secret magic of my own, all weathers in her bright yellow wellies and Sam is perfectly turned out as ever in his smart grey fur coatmine, at last. As they walk I just want to the top of the hill, they see enjoy it for a big barn with a sign outsidewhile. It's a farm shop! But this is a farm shop with a difference: all the stallholders and customers are farmyard animals. There are sheep and ducks and cows, goats and chickens, and even some mice. Excited, Kirelle and Sam go shopping.'
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=00084049251529900360|title=The Killing KindGhost Orchid|author=Jane CaseyJonathan Kellerman|rating=54
|genre=Crime
|summary=Difficult clients It hadn't been Lt Milo Sturgis's fault that Alex Delaware had been badly injured but he felt responsible and even after Alex recovered, Sturgis was reluctant to ask for his help on difficult cases. His assertions that there were nothing new to barrister Ingrid Lewis but John Webster came as something only open-and-shut cases which didn't need the help of a surprisepsychologist only worked for a while. After allFinally, it was her cross-examination of the Robin, Delaware'victim' which saved him from a lengthy prison sentences partner, who nudged Milo into asking for help again. He'd been accused of stalking She knew that the woman but it didn't take long to establish involvement was something that - if anything - it was the other way aroundman 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. Soon Ingrid never seemed He was the heir to be free of John Webster an Italian shoe empire and then she came is married to see him as a threat an extremely rich man and was forced to remember that it's not the police officer at his trial had told her that this Italian. But which of them was the best chance they'd had to put Webster away for a long time: he was a very dangerous man.primary target?
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=00083955941529395224|title=Both Letting the Cat Out of Youthe Bag: The Secret Life of a Vet|author=Adele ParksSion Rowlands|rating=43.5|genre=ThrillersAnimals and Wildlife|summary=You could be forgiven for thinking that Leigh Fletcher has it all: great husband and two gorgeous stepsons whom she adoresSiôn Rowlands fell into veterinary science accidentally. ThenHis father was a GP and Rowlands didn't want to follow in his footsteps, one Monday, she went to particularly when he considered the strain that being on-call put on his father's life. When he was seventeen he took the opportunity of doing work experience with a family friend who was a vet and never came homewas convinced this was the job for him. MarkBefore long, Oli and Seb are shattered. Well, Mark and Seb are but Oli's sixteen and he was at the stage where he thinks boredom is his best lookLiverpool University. HeIt hadn's t - as with so many students - been his dream since he was a bit off with Leigh for a while but she put it down to him growing up and starting to become independentchild. SebIf anything, he's only twelve and Leigh's absence hits him hard. Then Daan Janssen, d wanted to be a wealthy Dutch businessman, reports his wife, Kai missing. She too has vanished without traceprofessional footballer.
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=14736857450861541774|title=Unbreak Your HeartA Nye of Pheasants|author=Katie MarshSteve Burrows
|rating=4
|genre=Women's FictionCrime|summary=When Beth Carlyle and Simon Withers first met they were on opposite ends of an angry exchange - well, Simon was angry and Beth was doing her best to apologise for having knocked SimonDCI Domenic Jejeune's sonclose friend and former colleague, JakeDanny Maik, off his bike. He wasn't hurt but Jake has historytaken a short holiday in Singapore to meet up with an old ally, Guy Trueman. He has HLHS Maik was involved in a street brawl - he would later maintain that's Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome for those of you who are not ''au fait'' he was facing a man armed with your medical acronymsa knife - and he killed a Ghurka. When Initially, he was born, the left side faced a charge of his heart hadn't developed properly and manslaughter but evidence came to light that suggested that he needed open-heart surgery when might have planned to murder the man. Now he was a few days oldcould be facing the death penalty. So, Simon has every right Domenic Jejeune can do nothing to be over-protective particularly when someone isnhelp as any interference from another police force could provoke a diplomatic incident and wouldn't looking where they're drivinghelp Danny at all.
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{{Frontpage
|author=Louie StowellAlexander McCall Smith|title=OtherlandThe Perfect Passion Company|rating=4.5|genre=Confident ReadersGeneral Fiction|summary= Myra The Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and Rohan are like Yin and Yang – Myra is loudoperating as an alternative to all the online apps in providing a more personal, bright tailored service. Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and hates ruleslook after the business, as Ness is planning to take a trip to Canada to get away for a while Rohan . Katie is very politecoming out of a break up with a bad boyfriend, serious and worries about the tiniest things. Their only connection? Being born and briefly dying so jumps at the same time at the same hospital on Midsummer's daychance to come home to Edinburgh. And sobegins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, every year their families get together bringing us to celebrate the two's birthday/deathday. But when Rohan's little sister Shilpa is taken by the fairy queenan Edinburgh we already love, they must journey thanks to 44 Scotland Street and the OtherlandIsabel Dalhousie novels, but with some new characters who quickly begin to charm. Katie has no experience in running a magical realm full of fairiesbusiness, vampiresor in match-making, dragonsbut Ness has full confidence in her abilities, and Gods. Itthere's going always her very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, William, to be the worst night of their lives.lend a hand…|isbn=17880004631846976596
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=walker140811771741|title=The Coldest Case (A Bruno, Chief of Police Novel)InstaKnits for Baby|author=Martin WalkerMelissa Leapman
|rating=4
|genre=CrimeCrafts|summary=It was when he saw Elisabeth DaynesMelissa Leapman's ''InstaKnits for Baby'' work in the prehistory museum at Les Eyzies that chief gives us a collection of knits from toys to blankets. Some will be quick knits - others are of police Bruno Courreges had the idea which he thought might help his boss'long, chief cosy afternoons in front of detectives Jalipeau, known as J-J, to solve a case that had haunted him for thirty yearsthe fire' variety. The body of a young male was found in projects are divided by the woods but he was never identified time they'll take to complete - less than five hours, five to ten hours, ten to twenty hours and his killer never brought to justicemore than twenty hours. What if an artist could recreate All the face from the skull projects are attractive, modern and the resulting publicity be used to identify the young man? useable. JI perhaps show my age when I wonder about 'social-media-J calls the skull worthy projects'Oscarbut that' and has a picture on his door: he sees it every time he leaves his office: he doesn't want to forget Oscar until his killer has been brought to justices me being picky.
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{{Frontpage
|author= Martha LeighDean Koontz|title= Invisible Ink: A Family MemoirThe Bad Weather Friend|rating= 4.5|genre= BiographyParanormal|summary= Benny is having a terrifically bad day. Martha Leigh begins her book talking about a childhood spent in a slightly eccentricHe loses his job, he loses his fiancee, immediately recognisable upper middle class English familyand his house gets trashed. Her father is Oh, and someone has delivered a Cambridge donreally weird, forever clacking away on disturbing coffin-sized object to his typewriter as he edits the complete correspondence of the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseauhome, his lifeand it's workpossible that whoever or whatever was inside is the thing that has trashed his house! The thing is, Benny is the very last person to deserve all this bad luck. He is a nice person. A really nice person. Her mother So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the delivery to his house is a concert pianist new friend, a bad weather friend called Spike, who practises has been sent to help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for hours every daybeing a good person. Neither parent Spike is hugely interested in the practicalities going to take care of Benny, and will certainly take care of life. There is love in the house but also darker undercurrents that Benny's enemies, if he, Benny, and Harper (a child does not fully understand but knows is therewaitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are.|isbn=18004603841662500491
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{{Frontpage
|author=Darren ShanAdam Stower|title=Archibald Lox Murray and the Slides of Bon Repell: Archibald Lox series, Volume 2, book 2 of 3Bun
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers|summary=So. Having done the impossible Murray is supposed to be a humble, tidy and unpicked the lock friendly cat, one who is able to sleep and eat and eat and sleep and, well, whatever takes his fancy next of the Forgotten Crypttwo. But he's a bad magician's cat, from which so his favourite bun has been turned into a hyperactive sticky rabbit called Bun, and the Departed communicate with catflap they both use can chuck them out, not into the Mergeregular back garden, Archie now has ''grop'' to think aboutbut into a world of frightening adventure and whiffs. But before that This time round it drops them into a Viking land, soirees. Soirees! Archiewhere a troll hunter is expected – well, one much bigger than Murray was, to Inezbe honest, but he's amusement, doesnturned up and he't even know what one of those is. But he manages ll have to come through the fancy party unscathed, even after an uncomfortable encounter with Kurtis, whose fledgling romance with Inez was crushed in the first volume of this series. do…|isbn=B093J9TF730008561249
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|authorisbn= Adrian TchaikovskyB0C47LV1PC|title= Shards of EarthFragility|author=Mosby Woods|rating= 4|genre= Science Literary Fiction|summary= Eighty years agoCan you make a ''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, Earth was destroyed, warped into an unrecognisable shape by is the moon-sized aliens known as question should you make it? Or is the Architects. Humanity question if you did, would it land? The catch is scattered, constantly fleeing as world after world falls to that the architect's reshapinganswer for both could well be.. Then, just when they had the human race on the run, the Architects vanished. And so, the memories of the war fades, heroes are forgotten, and humanity begins to fracture and fight among themselves. Idris Telemmier, a man genetically engineered to try and communicate with the Architects, does not want to be rememberedno. But, when he and ''Fragility'' is set as the crew city of the salvage ship he calls home discover what appears to be recent Architect activity, suddenly he is thrust back into the spotlight. As he and his allies bounce from star system to star system, chased by alien crime syndicatesPortland, human secret police and rich slaversOregon, he slowly cautiously begins to realise that emerge from the restrictions imposed during the real war is only just getting started…|isbn=1529051886covid pandemic
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|isbn=18484584281529431735|title=Local Woman MissingThe Winter Visitor|author=Mary KubicaJames Henry
|rating=4
|genre=ThrillersCrime|summary=Eleven years agoIt's February 1991 and Essex is bitingly cold, a man regularly came home to his wife with lipstick marks on his collar and lame excuses as to why he was late - againwhich made Bruce Hopkins' return all the more surprising. His wife was in He'd been exiled on the habit of going out Costa del Sol as a wanted drug smuggler for a run late at nightdecade. It was the only time she The return has come about because he's had for herself when a letter from his ex-wife, saying that she didn's ill and hasn't have long to look after her baby - but when she was out she would meet up with a man, grateful for the unquestioning affection he gave herlive. The locality was stunned It's hard to feel any sympathy when Shelby Tebow disappearedHopkins is abducted, seemingly without a trace, leaving her husband stripped to look after her disabled baby. Ten days later, a local woman his underwear and her six-year-old daughter disappeared. Meredith Dickey was sent to a birth doula and she'd seemed to be under some strain for watery grave in the last couple boot of weeks or soa stolen Ford Sierra. Her body was eventually found in Is it a warning from a seedy motel - it appeared that she'd committed suicide. She left Spanish gang or a note saying that her daughter, Delilah, was safe and there was no point in looking for her.problem closer to home?
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|author=Nicolas BouvierAlex Bell and Tim McDonagh|title=The Japanese ChroniclesGlorious Race of Magical Beasts|rating=54|genre=TravelConfident Readers|summary= It never does to Eli is a busy lad – by day an apprentice in the wondrous library we start by visiting with him, and in the evening a review of a book helper at the dessert cafe his gran owns and runs. Eli lives with his lovely gran, too – for there is a quote from generation missing in the blurbfamily. A few short years ago, but sometimes itEli's unavoidable. Le Monde reviewed this bookparents were both lost to the titular race, at some point, with a globe-trotting adventure where all entrants have to navigate the words ''what world in the old master craftsmen would call company of a masterpiece.'' It is precisely thatmagical beast. A masterpiece in This has made the sense of race anathema to the craft as well as pair – but when a bad incident at the art of writing. I'm going eatery leads to hesitate to call it 'travel writing' because this is as much a history of Japanconfession from gran, a mythology-primer for the Japanese culture as it Eli knows his only hope is a personal response to living and travelling in dare to enter what he most hates, with the sole aim the prize of magic at the end – the countryonly thing to possibly save his gran. |isbn=19060110440571382231
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|authorisbn=Genevieve Gornichec178763681X|title=The Witch's HeartKnife Skills for Beginners|author=Orlando Murrin
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=It was July 2019 and Erin was happy. She and Danny Ryan were planning Chef Paul Delamare took a few days away: that's always a dangerous thing to do when you're married to a cop but she was hopeful. They'd been married for six months and life was good with teaching job at a decent apartment by the sea residential cookery school in Newport, Long IslandBelgravia. The knock on the door was insistent and when it was opened, DannyHe didn's partner, Ben Mitchell was there with t really want to but celebrity chef Christian Wagner had a couple way of other officers. Danny took one look, turned, walked to the open window getting both men and jumped women to his death from the fourth floordo what he wanted. Eighteen months later, Erin would be on trial for her husbandPaul 's murder.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1523092734|title=A Women's Guide to Claiming Space|author=Eliza Van Cort|rating=5|genre=Politics and Society|summary=somehow''She brings a hug-kick-thunderclap got the impression that every woman needs in her life. Again and again and again.he'' (Alma Derricks, former CMO, Cirque du Soleil RSD) ''To claim space is to live d be at the life of choosing unapologetically and bravely. It is school to live the life you've always wanted.'' Sometimes the reviewing gods are generous: at assist Paul, who had a time when violence against women is much in the newsbroken arm, but it didn''A Women's Guide to Claiming Space'' by Eliza Van Cort dropped onto my deskt turn out that way. Now The teaching - to be clear and the problems - this book is not a 'how to disable your attacker with two simple jabs' manual: it's something far more effective, but discussion at the moment seems to be about how women can be ''protected''are all his own. IThe one thing he hadn've always thought that women need to rise above this, t expected was for someone to be people who don't need protection, people who claim their own spaceturn up dead. If all women did thisUnfortunately, those few men he was the person who are violent to women would realise discovered the body and everyone knows that the police consider that we are not just an easy target person to be used to prove that they are big menthe prime suspect.
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