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<metadesc>Book review siteExpert, with books full book reviews from the many most walks of literary life - ; fiction, biography, crime, cookery and anything else that takes our fancy. There are also lots of author interviews and top tens.</metadesc>Hello from The Bookbag, a book review site, featuring books from all the many walks of literary life non- [[:Category:Fiction|fiction]], [[:Category:Biography|biography]], [[:Category:Crime|crime]], [[:Category:Cookery|cookery]] and anything else that takes our fancy. At Bookbag Towers the bookbag sits at the side of the desk. Itchildren's the bag we take to the library and the bookshop. Sometimes it holds the latest releases, but at other times there'll be old favourites, books for the children, & self-published books for the home. They're sometimes our own books or books from the local library. They're often books sent to us by publishers and we promise to tell you exactly what we think about them. You might not want to read through a full review, so we'll give you a quick review which summarises what we felt about the book and tells you whether or not we think you should buy or borrow it. There are also lots of [[:Category:Interviews|plus author interviews]], and all sorts of [[:Category:Lists|& top tens]] - all of which you can find on our [[features]] page. If you're stuck for something to read, check out the [[Book Recommendations|recommendations]] page.</metadesc>
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Various0008517061|title=Hello Kitty Guide to LifeDeath in a Lonely Place|author=Stig Abell
|rating=4
|genre=Children's Non-FictionCrime|summary=''Hello Kitty'' is Former Metropolitan Police detective, Jake Johnson, has settled into his rustic life at Little Sky. There’s perhaps a huge worldwide phenomenon little uncertainty about the future of his life with his vet girlfriend, Livia and her daughter Diana, as moving in together would mean a whole heap lot of related merchandise featuring the cute cartoon cat compromise: does Jake give up his off-grid and relaxing life to move in dresses and ribbons. It appeals with Livia or does Livia move to girls and women of many ages, but Little Sky despite her reservations about whether or not this new hardback book ''Hello Kitty – Guide to Life'' is aimed at the brand's younger fans, probably around 6 to 14 year oldsfuture 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.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>000732622X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Claire Tomalin1786482126|title=Thomas Hardy: The Time-Torn ManJanus Stone (Dr Ruth Galloway)|author=Elly Griffiths
|rating=4.5
|genre=BiographyCrime|summary=I came Builders were demolishing an old house in Norwich - the site was going to hold seventy-five 'luxury' apartments - when they discovered the bones of a child beneath a doorway. There was no skull. Was this biography having read three of Hardya ritual killing or murder? Inevitably, Dr Ruth Galloway finds herself working with DCI Harry Nelson. It's novelsdifficult as Ruth knows, two quite recentlybut Nelson doesn't, and some of that she is pregnant with his poetry, but knowing very little about him child as a personresult of the one night they spent together some three months ago. Claire Tomalin has brought him admirably Her condition will be obvious before long, not least because Ruth is prone to life in these pagessudden bouts of sickness.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141017414</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Liza Palmer0008551324|title=A Field Guide to Burying Your ParentsThe Devil You Know (D S Max Craigie)|author=Neil Lancaster
|rating=4.5
|genre=Women's FictionCrime|summary=Grace is reluctantly participating in a 5k race when she receives It's unusual for anyone from the news: her estranged sister is calling Hardie family to tell her their estranged father approach the police. Neither side likes or has had a strokeany respect for the other. ThatBut Davie Hardie is struggling in prison and he's two lots prepared to tell the police where the body of estrangement in just two generations of family, but a summons missing person is a summons, buried and Grace soon finds herself dragged back into the heart of the family she deserted, working with the others to discover the many hidden secrets of the father who deserted them allwas responsible for her death. It's a tough jump from her happy life of a good job This person, he promises, a new boyfriend is someone big and a home of her own it will be worth the police doing what he wants. And what he wants is to return be transferred to the family life she left behind a long time ago, and Grace has an open prison to decide whether she can ignore serve the pull remainder of her biological siblings once more or whether the time has come his sentence and to let bygones be bygonesget an early parole date. After all Not much to ask, while there are lots of four letter words is it? The new Deputy Police Constable doesn't think so and she would associate 's even prepared to do the other thing that Hardie demanded - make certain that DS Max Craigie and anyone who works with her family, him is kept well away from what''love'' is not one of thems happening.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340962151</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage|isbn=0008405026|title=A Stranger in the Family (Maeve Kerrigan 11)|author=Jane Casey|rating=5|genre=Crime|summary=It's sixteen years since nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her bed one summer night. She was never found and the investigation ground to a halt. Now, her mother, Helena, and her father are dead in their bed. Initially, it looks like a 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-and-shut case is now a complex double murder. Kerrigan is convinced that the explanation lies in Rosalie's disappearance: others (such as Derwent's boss, Una Burt) are less convinced.}}{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0571379877|title=The Kellerby Code|author=Jonny 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=Jennifer JohnstonJo Callaghan|title=Truth or FictionLeave No Trace
|rating=4
|genre=Literary FictionCrime|summary=Caroline Wallace When a man is not found crucified on the top of a happy womanhill in Nuneaton, DCS Kat Frank finds herself assigned to the case alongside her sidekick, the AI detective Lock. She has waited ten years for her lover to propose to herIt's their first live case together, having previously been very successful with several cold cases. But when there is a second body found crucified a few days later, Kat is suddenly struggling with a potential serial killer and now just as he finally does, she has a very high profile case that draws a lot of unwanted attention to go to Dublin to interview faded literary star Desmond Fitzmauricetheir AI Future Policing project. Desmond promises his tale Will they be able to solve the case in time, or will be brimful of 'sex Kat find herself taken off the case and violence', but Caroline has no idea potentially, out of the mystery that lies at the heart of his story.a career?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0755330544</amazonuk>139851120X
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Dr Richard Hale and Alan Chambers MBE 1399613073|title=Keep Walking - Leadership Learning in Action - A thrilling story of a polar adventure with powerful lessons in leadership and personal developmentMoral Injuries|author=Christie Watson
|rating=4.5
|genre=Business and FinanceThrillers|summary=One side Olivia, Laura and Anjali met on the first day of this book medical school and their friendship would keep them inseparable for a quarter of a century. Olivia is ruthlessly ambitious, which is completely alien a bonus when you aim to mebe a cardiothoracic surgeon. Laura is a perfectionist and a trauma doctor. I have had no reason to believe in any Anjali is the free spirit of the action learning, selfgroup and she becomes a GP. When we first meet them they're at a drug and alcohol-actualisation etc, that people fuelled party and it's going to end in business sometimes deem necessarytragedy. If pressed, IWe don'd guess that if people needed so much in-work training they might just be t know who suffered the wrong person for tragedy or the jobconsequences. There's Twenty-five years later there will be an anecdote here about a bright young thing fresh from business school, and faced with her first task at work, who panicked as ''she did not know which theory to apply''eerily similar event that will impact the three friends. The theory of common senseThis time, Iit'd have suggesteds their teenage children who are involved.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904312780</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Guy Delisle0241636604|title=PyongyangThe Trading Game: A Journey in North KoreaConfession|author=Gary Stevenson
|rating=4.5
|genre=Graphic NovelsAutobiography|summary=Meet GuyIf you were to bring up an image of a city banker in your mind, you're unlikely to think of someone like Gary Stevenson. He's a FrenchA hoodie and jeans replaces the pin-Canadian animatorstripe suit and his background is the East End, leaving home for a short stay in where he was familiar with violence, poverty and injustice. There was no posh public school on his CV - but he had been to the capital London School of one of the world's most intriguing, unknown and alien cultures Economics. Stevenson is bright - Pyongyang, North Korea extremely bright - so and he has a facility with numbers which most of us can work on a TV cartoon co-productiononly envy. Forced to stay in one of the three official hotels designed for foreigners, so He also realised that the locals and most rich people expect poor people such as he do not have to mixbe stupid. It was his ability at what was, he see glimpses of the unique socialist dictatorshipessentially, stunning views of the buildings forced through the povertya card game which got him an internship with Citibank. Eventually, and thousands of unreadable facesthis turned into permanent employment as a trader.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224079905</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sam Osman1035021803|title=Quicksilver|rating=4.5|genre=Confident Readers|summary=''Quicksilver'The Antique Hunter' is the story of Wolfie, Tala and Zi'ib, three ordinary children from three different continents. They have never met, until a strange chain of events involving gun-toting gangs and eccentric old men means they all end up in Thornham, a London suburb. They soon realise they are connected: they all have green eyes with golden flecks and a missing parent. But was it fate, chance or the ley lines that encompass the earth that brought them together? Before you know it they're solving clues and fulfilling a one thousand year old prophecy. But all they want s Guide to do is find their parents.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1407105736</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewMurder|author=Diane Janes|title=Edwardian Murder: Ightham & the Morpeth Train RobberyC L Miller|rating=43.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=Two murders took place in Edwardian England less than two It's twenty years apartsince 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 Carole's close friend, Arthur Crockleford, one in the south-east is dead and the other in circumstances seem suspicious, to say the north-eastleast. At first glance they seemed Arthur was the reason why Freya had not been back to have nothing to do with each otherthe village: Arthur, she feels, but years later a link between them was hinted at let her down badly. Even though never proved beyond doubtthey were in business together as antique hunters, she has not felt able to be near the man or pursue the profession she loved. The author has investigated After the split, she worked in a cafe, met and married James (on the rebound from the connection love of her life, who was murdered) and Freya and come up with a riveting bookJames have now divorced.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0752449451</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=AllTomorrowsFutureCover
|title=All Tomorrow's Futures: Fictions that Disrupt
|author=Benjamin Greenaway and Stephen Oram (Editors)
|rating=5
|genre=Science Fiction
|summary=''Opening up new ways of thinking about the shape of things to come.''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Rachel CaineSunny Singh|title=Carpe Corpus (Morganville Vampires)Hotel Arcadia|rating=43.5|genre=TeensThrillers |summary=If you haven't already, meet Claire. She The Hotel Arcadia is beholden to Mr Bishop, the horrid evil vampire a luxury hotel in an unnamed city that is ruling the town of Morganville, even more so than the other human, and vampire, inhabitants are, now that he has suddenly been violently taken over things from Claire's former ruler Amelieby a terrorist group. She Hiding from the terrorists who are rampaging through, killing everyone on site, there is caught in Sam, a struggle between the two warring vampire factionswartime photographer and Abhi, especially over an unusual form of disease among the undead - Amelie's side definitely trying hotel manager. As Abhi continues to cure it, Bishop somehow trying try to provoke it and profit from it. Not only thatcare remotely for the residents who are still alive in the hotel, her boyfriend is imprisoned, along he forms a bond with his fatherSam who refuses to be cowed by events, one and keeps on venturing out of the worldher room to try to capture what's least subtle vampire huntershappened through her photography. Can she have enough quality time with him? Can she and Although they only ever talk over the phone, their friendship grows as Abhi tries to help her captured-keep safe and-turned ex-housemate Michael survive they both wait to see if they will be rescued before they are discovered by the horrid things asked of them? And who is Ada?terrorists.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>074900777X</amazonuk>086154742X
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Joanne Dahme 1529153298|title=Tombstone TeaThe List of Suspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey|rating=3.5|genre=Confident ReadersGeneral Fiction|summary=Having recently moved to a new schoolIt's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. (A woman? I mean, in a new town, Jessie is struggling to make friends and fit inhonestly... ) She is afraid to show these new people who she really is - in her old school she often found she had 'blanks not what's worrying Miv's family, though. Women have been disappearing. Well, they' momentsve been murdered, when she could hear voices and but to have 'seedisappeared' people who werendoesn't really theresound quite so frightening. In desperation to become part of a Miv'groups upset because she' she accepts the dare of a group of girls s overheard that her father wants to spend move the night in the Cemetery and collect some gravestone rubbings to prove she was therefamily 'Down South'. Once there she bumps into PaulWhen you're from Yorkshire, Down South is a frightening, foreign place, the handsome caretakerbest avoided. For Miv, and finds herself in the middle of a strange evening whenmove would mean leaving her best friend, Paul claimsSharon, local actors get together and she'll do anything to rehearse for something called the prevent that. She'Tombstone Tea', a play in which they portray those buried in s not worried about the graveyard...theredangers or that her Mum's something strange though about these actors and Jessie soon finds herself caught up in a chilling dramastopped talking - to anyone.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0762437189</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Stieg Larsson and Reg Keeland (translator)1398524085|title=The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets' NestHas Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter?|author=Nicci French|rating=45
|genre=Crime
|summary=[[The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson and Reg Keeland (translator)|The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo]], the first of Steig LarssonCharlotte Salter was expected at her husband's Millennium trilogy of thrillersfiftieth birthday party but never turned up. Her children, sons Niall, Paul and Ollie and her daughter, was a fine standEtty. are all worried but - strangely -alone novelher husband, Alec, is not. The second in the series Shortly afterwards, [[The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson Etty and Reg Keeland (translator)|The Girl Who Played With Fire]]Greg, continues find the adventures body of Lisbeth Salander, LarssonGreg's finely crafted anti-herofather, Duncan Ackerley, in the river. If you haven It was an easy assumption for the police to make that Duncan had murdered Charlie and then committed suicide when he couldn't read this second volume yet I advise you to stop reading this review nowstand the guilt. I The Salter children are not convinced but there'm s little else they can do but get on with their lives and wonder about to spoil the ending for you…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906694168</amazonuk>what really happened.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Diane Chamberlain1035906708|title=The Bay at MidnightDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The story starts properly 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 a letter is discoveredshe was thirteen. It will have devastating consequences for several families - and life will never be Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to 'Callas' to make it more manageable in the same againStates. Apparently, the wrong person When she was convicted back in Athens - supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for her voice - she was raised under the Nazi occupation by a murder. Moreover, the writer mother who mercilessly exploited her and made no secret of this letter appears to know who did commit this crime. Unfortunatelyher preference for her elder sister, the writer dies before able to make contact with the policeJackie.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0778303640</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=David MillerChristopher Edge|title=Sea WolfBlack Hole Cinema Club|rating=3.54
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Meet Hanna, Ned Lucas and Jik. They're on an unlikely quest to recover the world's biggest and richest pearlhis friends are all booked in for a movie marathon at their local cinema, from a place that has the hiding place Jik alone knows nickname of, when there's a problem in the shape of a tornadoThe Black Hole'. They're thrown from the craft All big movie fans, they're onlooking forward to lots of exciting films, Ned disappears - and then there were two. many, many snacks! Hanna and Jik get rescued by However, as the occupants of a horridmovie starts, piratical craft, engaged in they very quickly realise that something about this new film format is very environmentally-unfriendly fishing. Jik gets overworked and underfeddifferent, and then there was one..they are swept up into an adventure they couldn't even imagine. Only But as they lurch from one - Hanna - with film genre to the spunknext, brainpower and energy can they figure out what on earth is going on? Will they ever get back to keep her spirit togetherthe cinema, and try and get one up on the Maestro who commands the boat.to their real lives?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0192729020</amazonuk>1839942738
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Rachel Greenlaw
|title=Compass 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}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Katie DaviesJames Sherwood Metts|title=The Great Hamster MassacrePlanet Storyland
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Meet AnnaThings have been a bit sticky for the Earthlings. Rather than write the usual staid what-I-did-in-my-holidays report for schoolAI and automation have been proceeding apace, she is taking the time often replacing jobs they're paid to tell us about her pet issues over the summer, from recalling the Old Cat, do and the horror other tasks that is the New Cat, took time to the New Rabbit down the road, and her own demands for a hamster or twoaccomplish. There are family secrets Just as they were beginning to be revealed relating get used to all this technological change and starting to hamsters think of oldother, parents new ways to argue spend time, along came an awful pandemic. Life was pretty much shut down and, along withit, and finally a trip to the pet shop - and that's just all the start of Anna's troublesmany daily social interactions on which they depend so heavily.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847385958</amazonuk>1736128426
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Shirley JacksonMatthew Tree|title=The Lottery and Other StoriesWe'll Never Know
|rating=4.5
|genre=Short StoriesLiterary Fiction|summary=Even though it was written over sixty years ago, The Lottery, coming in at fewer Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than 3to be different from his father,500 words still has the power to shock. When it first appeared in the The New Yorker in 1948 it caused many outraged readers to cancel their subscriptions such was the devastating nature a drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of the story. Time may have lessened sensibilities over the latter half being exceptional at any of the twentieth century his artistic passions all failed miserably and the beginning who had endless crises of the twenty first but The Lottery, like many of the other stories in this timely reissue, still packs a mighty punchself confidence.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141191430</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Hazel McHaffie |title=Right So Tim applied himself to Die|rating=3.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=It must be hard enough watching your partner die just once, but for Naomi, Adam's death is just the beginning. Coming across his personalstudies, private diary of cultivated his time from diagnosis to subsequent demise, she is forced to relive the awful months during which abilities rather than his body began to betray him daydreams and his will to live was replaced with a will to die...on his own terms.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906307210</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Karen Sapp|title=Christmas Is...|rating=3|genre=For Sharing|summary=Christmas is looming and thus the market for picture books featuring santas, presents and Christmas trees. It's hard to come up with anything new here, and it's rather not the point - is it? Christmas is, after all, about annually repeated celebration of traditional rituals that add delight and nourishment to the spiritual, emotional and social fabric of lifeset himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0007303750</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Gary Giddins and Scott DeveauxA G Slatter|title=JazzThe Briar Book of the Dead
|rating=5
|genre=EntertainmentFantasy|summary=At first glance this 700-page volume might look '' There's a little daunting. Do not be daunted. If you want a small pocket book which merely scratches at the surface and can probably be digested in a sitting or two, look elsewhere. On the other hand, if you want an extremely readable and comprehensive book on jazz which can not only be read cover part of me that wants to cover, but also retained as a work of reference keep this just to use again and again, myself for however long I doubt if this can be bettered.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0393068617</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Richard Wrangham |title=Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human |rating=4.5|genre=Popular Science|summary=Humans are cooking apes. According to Richard WranghamThis secret magic of my own, all mine, mastery of fire and cooking of the food that resulted from it was at the root of human evolutionary development and ultimate successlast. Various factors have been proposed as the crucial stimulus which led I just want to the appearance of the first recognisably human creatures: leaving aside divine intervention (be enjoy it from God, extra-terrestrials or future humans travelling in time), the candidates for what made our ancestral apes stand straighter and start growing brains range from socialised hunting to chattering about kinship to eating seafooda while.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846682851</amazonuk>}}''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Nigel McCrery1529900360|title=Tooth and ClawThe Ghost Orchid|author=Jonathan Kellerman
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=Another serial killer is on the looseIt hadn't been Lt Milo Sturgis's fault that Alex Delaware had been badly injured but he felt responsible and even after Alex recovered, and yet again the police have failed Sturgis was reluctant to connect the deathsask for his help on difficult cases. Carl Whittley has just tortured a glamorous TV presenter to death His assertions that there were only open- leaving a singularly gruesome tableau and- and blown a hapless commuter to smithereens at a railway station. Heshut cases which didn's planning his next murder already, secreted away in the shed at the bottom of t need the garden help of the house he shares with his invalid father. Carl is embittered and lonely - with his mother living away and pursuing a career as psychologist only worked for a forensic psychologistwhile. Finally, it was Robin, thereDelaware's only him to take care of his severely disabled father: to change partner, who nudged Milo into asking for help again. She knew that the involvement was something that the colostomy bag, to cook, to clean, to, well, just to bear it, reallyman she loved needed. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847248071</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Nick Hornby|title=An Education: The Screenplay|rating=5|genre=Entertainment|summary=Adroit marketing? Wellnext case did look simple, yesthough. ''An Education'' has been published, Two lovers were murdered in the swimming pool of course, to coincide with the film's general release a remote property in the UKBel Air. Hardly surprising since our national appetite for nosiness seems insatiable He was the heir to an Italian shoe empire and cosy background details prop up every telly series and film these days. As well as the screenplay, Nick Hornby has provided she is married to an introduction extremely rich man and diary of the filmit's successful premiere at not the Sundance Festival in UtahItalian. Beyond trivia, I think this fascinating little book presents an excellent 'how to' guide for wannabes from one But which of Britain's most respected screen and novel writers.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141044748</amazonuk>them was the primary target?
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=The Harvard Lampoon1529395224|title=NightlightLetting the Cat Out of the Bag: A Parody The Secret Life of Twilight a Vet|author=Sion Rowlands
|rating=3.5
|genre=HumourAnimals and Wildlife|summary=Most people will have heard of Siôn Rowlands fell into veterinary science accidentally. His father was a GP and Rowlands didn't want to follow in his footsteps, particularly when he considered the worldwide phenomenon strain that is [[Twilight by Stephenie Meyer|Twilight]]being on-call put on his father's life. The books by Stephenie Meyer When he was seventeen he took the opportunity of doing work experience with a family friend who was a vet and was convinced this was the film have made job for him. Before long, he was at Liverpool University. It hadn't - as with so many students - been his dream since he was a legend of the romance between vampire Edward Mullen (Robert Pattinson plays the movie role) and teenage schoolgirl Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart)child. If anything, he'd wanted to be a professional footballer.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849013330</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Kate Elliott0861541774|title=Traitors' Gate (Crossroads)A Nye of Pheasants|author=Steve Burrows
|rating=4
|genre=FantasyCrime|summary=Kate ElliottDCI Domenic Jejeune's ''Crossroads'' series close friend and former colleague, Danny Maik, has so far come taken a short holiday in largeSingapore to meet up with an old ally, slightly offGuy Trueman. Maik was involved in a street brawl -putting chunkshe would later maintain that he was facing a man armed with a knife - and he killed a Ghurka. Initially, he faced a 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 death penalty. TheyDomenic Jejeune can do nothing to help as any interference from another police force could provoke a diplomatic incident and wouldn've been decent readst help Danny at all.}}{{Frontpage|author=Alexander McCall Smith|title=The Perfect Passion Company|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=The Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and operating as an alternative to all the online apps in providing a more personal, tailored service. Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and largelook after the business, as Ness is planning to take a trip to Canada to get away for a while. Katie is coming out of a break up with a huge cast of wonderfully drawn charactersbad boyfriend, but and so jumps at the sheer size chance to come home to Edinburgh. And so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, thanks to 44 Scotland Street and slow pace of the action has meant I didn't enjoy them as much as I may otherwise have doneIsabel Dalhousie novels, but with some new characters who quickly begin to charm. ''Traitors' Gate''Katie has no experience in running a business, the third or in the sequence is different match-making, but Ness has full confidence in only one aspect; the character development is still her abilities, and there's always her very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, the huge page count is still thereWilliam, but the pacing is to lend a lot better.hand…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1841498351</amazonuk>1846976596
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Shirley Jackson0811771741|title=The Haunting of Hill HouseInstaKnits for Baby|author=Melissa Leapman
|rating=4
|genre=General FictionCrafts|summary=There was Melissa Leapman's ''InstaKnits for Baby'' gives us a time before Stephen Kingcollection of knits from toys to blankets. There was time before ''The ShiningSome will be quick knits - others are of the 'long, cosy afternoons in front of the fire'variety. There was a The projects are divided by the time when they'horror' was not rooted in bloodll take to complete - less than five hours, five to ten hours, guts ten to twenty hours and goremore than twenty hours. I owe a slight apology to Mr King, because along with the gutsier side of All the genreprojects are attractive, modern and useable. I perhaps show my age when I will own wonder about 'social-media-worthy projects' but that he is a master at suspense's me being picky.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141191449</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jill Tomlinson and Paul HowardDean Koontz|title=The Penguin Who Wanted To Find OutBad Weather Friend
|rating=4.5
|genre=For SharingParanormal|summary=Otto the penguin lives on Benny is 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 his fatherhome, and it's feet at possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the bottom of thing that has trashed his house! The thing is, Benny is the worldvery last person to deserve all this bad luck. He's an inquisitive little thing and wants to know why they haven't fallen off the worldis a nice person. A really nice person. His dad explains So fortunately for Benny it turns out that they won't Because I say so. Otto and the delivery to his house is a new friend, a bad weather friend Leo gradually expand their horizons called Spike, who has been sent to help him since Benny is clearly under attack from their fathersnefarious forces for being a good person. Spike is going to take care of Benny, and will certainly take care of Benny' feet - they meet other penguin chickss enemies, if he, get to know their aunts who watch them when their fathers are awayBenny, and eventually grow feathers so Harper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they're big enough to toboggan on their bellies and swim in the seaare.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>140523041X</amazonuk>1662500491
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ryan David Jahn Adam Stower|title=Acts of ViolenceMurray and Bun
|rating=4.5
|genre=CrimeConfident Readers |summary=Kat Marino Murray is stabbed on her way home from work. All she wanted was supposed to be a hot bath after a hard day's work. From this point the novel skips nimbly from humble, tidy and friendly cat, one neighbour who is able to the sleep and eat and eat and sleep and, well, whatever takes his fancy next, all of whom are absorbed in their own dilemmasthe two. There is the draftee with But he's a sick motherbad magician's cat, the nurse who thinks she so his favourite bun has run over been turned into a babyhyperactive sticky rabbit called Bun, and the catflap they both use can chuck them out, not into the woman who suspects her husband regular back garden, but into a world of cheating frightening adventure and otherswhiffs. We are shown what these characters were doing that evening, and how these events drag through to the morning. We are shown how in the midst of their own interestingThis time round it drops them into a Viking land, poignant and dangerous concerns where a woman troll hunter is stabbed in the courtyard onto which all their windows lookexpected – well, one much bigger than Murray was, through which windows they witness the attackto be honest, but he's turned up and how these people did nothing.he'll have to do…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0230743595</amazonuk>0008561249
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Josh LaceyB0C47LV1PC|title=Two Tigers on a StringFragility|author=Mosby Woods
|rating=4
|genre=Confident ReadersLiterary Fiction|summary=BenCan you make a 's not too keen to be sharing his bedroom with his half-brother, Frank. But you don't have to be the hero of a detective adventure such as this book to know that as FrankYo birthing person''s mother has vanished from joke? And if you could, is the face of question should you make it? Or is the Earthquestion if you did, Ben will let would it lie - for a while. Nor land? The catch is it too surprising to see that the four Misfitz together, on another case, as they go on the hunt answer for the missing womanboth could well be.... no.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1407109782</amazonuk>}}
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Nigel McCrery1529431735|title=Core of EvilThe Winter Visitor|author=James Henry
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=Violet Chambers becomes Daisy Wilson through an aromatic cup of teaIt's February 1991 and Essex is bitingly cold, flavoured with Christmas roses. which made Bruce Hopkins'"There are return all kinds of horrible things in the Christmas rose," she said, watching to see whether Daisy could still hear hermore surprising. "Helleborin and hellebrin are both like digitalis, which I He've also used before, but there's saporin and protoanemonin d been exiled on the Costa del Sol as wella wanted drug smuggler for a decade. It The return has come about because he's had a very nasty cocktail."' And now Daisy has met her rather sticky letter from his ex- and graphically effluent - end, and Violet has become Daisy, Daisy sets her sights on a new town, a new identity and, most importantlywife, a new victim. Daisy has problems with her memory - the identities go back so far saying that sometimes she can barely remember who is she is now, let alone all the whos she's been before, ill and most certainly not the who with whom she began. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847243843</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=John Van der Kiste|title=Jonathan Wild: Conman and Cutpurse|rating=4|genre=History|summary=Born towards the end of the seventeenth century Jonathan Wild was hasn't long to become the eighteenth century's most famous criminal, plying his trade in a rather curious fashion. He was born in Wolverhampton of parents described as ''mean but honest''live. It seems likely that he first travelled 's hard to London as the servant of a lawyer where he was eventually feel any sympathy when Hopkins is abducted, stripped to settle, leaving his wife underwear and child sent to fend for themselves. It was whilst serving a term of imprisonment in Wood Street Compter that he mixed with the cream of London's criminal underclass and learned the rudiments of his trade.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848682190</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=K M Grant|title=Paradise Red (Perfect Fire Trilogy)|rating=5|genre=Teens|summary=We are back watery grave in the south boot of France for the third and final time. In one corner, the 'French', with King Louis and his henchmen rampaging through, warring in the name of peace. In another corner, the local people, struggling in the harsh environment and none too pleased to see their corner of the world the location for religious wars, with the Cathar ''heretics'' also present. The lines are drawn, in a realistically convoluted way, and this book will see one of our heroes cross one such line, just as other people make their own momentous decisionsstolen Ford Sierra. It will take all the narrative skills of the land itself to get the story across to us.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847247075</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Camilla Noli|title=The Mother's Tale|rating=4|genre=Women's Fiction|summary=''It is early evening. I am suckling my infant son… We are picture perfect. Madonna and child''. No doubt about Is it: a new mother totally smitten with her son. Zach is adorable. Quiet. Undemanding. A happy, generally relaxed, child. Gorgeous. But Zach isn't her first-born. First there was Cassie. A child who entered the world screaming and has since learned exactly what power she can wring with such lungs. Not yet two years old, Cassie adores her father, but even him she manipulates. Her mother she terrorises.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1409101584</amazonuk>warning from a Spanish gang or a problem closer to home?
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=AQA 63336|title=More Brilliant Answers|rating=4|genre=Trivia|summary=If you've got a question you can text those nice people at AQA 63336 and they'll do their best to provide you with a prompt Alex Bell and accurate answer. Over the last five years they've answered some twenty million questions and each autumn they publish a book with the best and most interesting of the year's answers. There's some fun to be had in this year's book.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846683262</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Patrick O'BrienTim McDonagh|title=You Are The First Kid On Mars|rating=4.5|genre=For Sharing|summary=It is a sci-fi future Glorious Race of no danger whatsoever, with no technological breakdown, and no fatal meteor strike, but that of course is only to be expected for this market. I say it more to highlight how well the book has been illustrated. Digital airbrush techniques and more have taken the antiseptic sheen off the whole experience, but have still allowed for a great detail in the machinery, and also a lovely warmth in the face of the lad we're empathising with.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0399246347</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Mary Naylus|title=The DresskeeperMagical Beasts
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Things are pretty grim for Picky. She Eli is thirteen years olda busy lad – by day an apprentice in the wondrous library we start by visiting with him, being bullied and in the evening a helper at school, the dessert cafe his gran owns and has to spend her weekends helping her singleruns. Eli lives with his lovely gran, working mum to take care of her little brother and her senile grandmothertoo – for there is a generation missing in the family. One eveningA few short years ago, at her GranEli's houseparents were both lost to the titular race, she goes up into a globe-trotting adventure where all entrants have to navigate the attic and tries on an old dress that she finds inside an old chestworld in the company of a magical beast. The dress turns out This has made the race anathema to the pair – but when a bad incident at the eatery leads to be magic, and she suddenly finds herself back in 17th Century Londona confession from gran, struggling with a strange man who Eli knows his only hope is calling her 'Amelia' and is trying to kill her. Picky ends up embroiled in Amelia's 17th century life as she tries dare to find out enter what he most hates, with the truth sole aim the prize of who is attempting to murder her, magic at the same time as trying end – the only thing to avoid arousing suspicion with her strange behaviour whenever she returns to the present daypossibly save his gran.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0956122280</amazonuk>0571382231
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John Abbott Nez 178763681X|title=Cromwell Dixon's Sky-CycleKnife Skills for Beginners|author=Orlando Murrin
|rating=4
|genre=For SharingCrime|summary=Meet Cromwell DixonChef Paul Delamare took a teaching job at a residential cookery school in Belgravia. Hedidn's t really want to but celebrity chef Christian Wagner had a real tinkerer, forever in a barn or somewhere building something manically unusualway of getting both men and women to do what he wanted. Luckily - although his long-suffering mother may disagree with Paul ''somehow'' got the impression that word - he's around d be at the birth of powered flight. Will his plans for school to assist Paul, who had a pedalled air machine work?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0399250417</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Sue Moorcroft|title=Starting Over|rating=4|genre=Women's Fiction|summary=The story opens when Tess bumps her old reliable car into a breakdown truck. That's rather convenientbroken arm, since she isnbut it didn't hurt, turn out that way. The teaching - and the guy driving it is able to tow her to problems - are all his garage, and then give her a lift own. The one thing he hadn't expected was for someone to her new hometurn up dead. Naturally Unfortunately, since this is he was the 'chick-lit' genre, Tess and the truck-driver, person who goes by discovered the unlikely name of Ratty (an abbreviation of his surname) feel mutual antipathy of body and everyone knows that the sort police consider that's clearly going person to lead, sooner or later, to strong attractionbe the prime suspect.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906931224</amazonuk>
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