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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=Frances Fyfield0008517061|title=Cold to the TouchDeath in a Lonely Place|author=Stig Abell
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=There's something obsessive about Jessica HurlyFormer Metropolitan Police detective, Jake Johnson, has settled into his rustic life at Little Sky. When Sarah Fortune encounters her on There’s perhaps a coldlittle uncertainty about the future of his life with his vet girlfriend, dark London morningLivia and her daughter Diana, she's distraught because the man who fills all her thoughts has rejected her as moving in together would mean a lot of compromise: does Jake give up his off-grid and it seems that her mother wants nothing relaxing life to do move in with Livia or does Livia move to Little Sky despite her. Jess reservations about whether or not this is a talented chef but she's short of work – the occasion when future she emptied a tureen of soup over the host at a dinner party did not enhance wants for herself and her reputation even if all the other guests were secretly delighted. daughter? Sarah senses her vulnerability, but it's Jess who organises For the let of one of her mother's cottages moment they’re enjoying life in the sea-side town where she grew up so that Sarah can have a long break from present and putting the future on the flat where she still smells a recent fireback burner.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847441092</amazonuk>
}}
{{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' apartments - when they discovered the bones of a child beneath a doorway. There was no skull. Was this a ritual killing or murder? Inevitably, Dr Ruth Galloway finds herself working with DCI Harry Nelson. It's difficult as Ruth knows, but Nelson doesn't, that she is pregnant with his child as a result of the one 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.}}{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Shirley Williams0008551324|title=Climbing the Bookshelves: The Autobiography of Shirley WilliamsDevil You Know (D S Max Craigie)|author=Neil Lancaster
|rating=4.5
|genre=AutobiographyCrime|summary=Who could resist a title like that? It's unusual for anyone from the Hardie family to approach the police. And Neither side likes or has any respect for the other. But Davie Hardie is this some lesser-known Shirley Williams, recalling a life spent struggling in libraries? The answer prison and he's prepared to tell the police where the latter body of a missing person is noburied and who was responsible for her death. Shirley Catlin This person, as she was bornhe promises, tells us in is someone big and it will be worth the early pages of this memoir that during her childhood her father encouraged her police doing what he wants. And what he wants is to be transferred to an open prison to climb serve the bookshelves in their Chelsea house, right up remainder of his sentence and to the ceilingget an early parole date. It was a secret between Not much to ask, is it? The new Deputy Police Constable doesn't think so and she's even prepared to do the two of them, as her mother, Testament of Youth Author Vera Brittain, would have immediately anticipated cracked skulls other thing that Hardie demanded - make certain that DS Max Craigie and broken armsanyone who works with him is kept well away from what's happening.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844084760</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Vyvyen Brendon0008405026|title=Prep School Children: A Class Apart Over Two CenturiesStranger in the Family (Maeve Kerrigan 11)|author=Jane Casey|rating=45|genre=Home and FamilyCrime|summary=''Prep School Children'' is Vyvyen BrendonIt's second collection (''Children of the Raj'' sixteen years since nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her bed one summer night. She was never found and the first)investigation ground to a halt. It explores the pupil experience Now, using primary sources like weekly letters homeher mother, memoirs and interviewsHelena, and less immediate material such as fictionher father are dead in their bed. Initially, school magazines it looks like a straightforward murder/suicide but there's something about the positioning of the bodies that makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and headmasters' biographiesher boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. I came to the book with some questions: what What looked as though it was it like going to be an open-and-shut case is now a boarder at a prep school? What difference did a prep school education make to life as an adult? complex double murder. Why parents might send their children to Kerrigan is convinced that the explanation lies in Rosalie's disappearance: others (such schools when the horrors were well-knownas Derwent's boss, many of the dads presumably having survived the experience themselvesUna Burt) are less convinced.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847062873</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Bill Butterworth0571379877|title=Reversing Global Warming For Profit The Kellerby Code|author=Jonny Sweet
|rating=3.5
|genre=Politics and SocietyCrime|summary=There aren't many climate change deniers leftEdward Jevons is a working-class young man, obsessed with his upper-class friends, are there? We all know it's thereRobert and Stanza. We all know, too, that the world Robert's population growth is on a collision course with the dwindling of its resourcestheatre director. The world He's going to get hotteralso self-obsessed, demanding, its weather more extreme. Fossil fuels are going handsome and entitled and uses Edward to run outerrands for him. More and more people will compete for fewer Edward has been in love with Stanza since their university days - and fewer of civilisationhe's luxuriesdrunkenly confided how he feels to Robert. We Most men in Robert're all worrieds 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. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904312810</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Margaret ThorntonJo Callaghan|title=Until We Meet AgainLeave No Trace
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=Before reading ''Bloody Women'', I hadn't heard of the author Helen Fitzgerald and by the title and blurb, I expected When a standard crime-thriller novel. But early man is found crucified on, I realised this wasn't the case. The novel was top of a kind of black comedy and written with wit and humourhill in Nuneaton, despite DCS Kat Frank finds herself assigned to the theme of murder and violence.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846971330</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Patrick Casey and Richard I Hale|title=For Collegecase alongside her sidekick, Club & Country - A History of Clifton Rugby Football Club|rating=4|genre=History|summary=Clifton Rugby Football Club can proudly trace its history back to the very emergence of the sport of rugby unionAI detective Lock. Founded in September 1872 It's their first live case together, the same year that William Webb Ellis, who is reputed to have having previously been the rebellious Rugby schoolboy who first ran very successful with the ball, diedseveral cold cases. In reality But when there is a second body found crucified a few days later, it Kat is highly likely suddenly struggling with a potential serial killer and a very high profile case that the Webb Ellis story is something of draws a spin job on behalf lot of Rugby School, although it did mean that Rugby School was unwanted attention to their AI Future Policing project. Will they be able to impose its rules on solve the game at a case in time when most public schools had their own rules for playing versions , or will Kat find herself taken off the case and, potentially, out of the game.a career?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1904312756</amazonuk>139851120X
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jeffery Deaver1399613073|title=The Bodies Left BehindMoral Injuries|author=Christie Watson
|rating=4.5
|genre=CrimeThrillers|summary=When lawyer Emma Feldman Olivia, Laura and Anjali met on the first day of medical school and her husband Steven decided to buy a holiday home to give their friendship would keep them the opportunity inseparable for much needed breaks from their hectic professional lives, they brought an old colonial house in the woods by Lake Mondac in Wisconsin, on foreclosure – it seemed like the deal a quarter of a lifetimecentury. But on their first evening in the place Olivia is ruthlessly ambitious, which is a series of strange snapping noises outside begin bonus when you aim to freak the couple outbe a cardiothoracic surgeon. They know they are in real trouble when Laura is a man with shotgun perfectionist and stocking mask appears at their windowa trauma doctor. Another enters Anjali is the free spirit of the building group and the only hope she becomes a GP. When we first meet them they have is that someone will take notice of Steven're at a drug and alcohol-fuelled party and it's phone call going to end in tragedy. We don't know who suffered the police, cut off by tragedy or the intruders after he is able to get out only one word – Thisconsequences.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340994037</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Zadie Smith|title=Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays|rating=4|genre=Anthologies|summary=Zadie Smith is best known as Twenty-five years later there will be an eerily similar event that will impact the author of three novels: White Teeth, The Autograph Man and On Beauty. She now teaches Creative Writing at Columbia University in New Yorkfriends. This collection is a mixture of literary criticism and journalismtime, including travel writing, reviews and other writing on film and several pieces about Zadie Smithit's family, and especially her father. It is divided into five sections under the headings Reading, Being, Seeing, Feeling and Rememberingtheir teenage children who are involved.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241142954</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Emily Bearn0241636604|title=Tumtum and Nutmeg's Christmas AdventureThe Trading Game: A Confession|author=Gary Stevenson
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersAutobiography|summary=I do look forward If you were to bring up an image of a good children's storycity banker in your mind, and having read Tumtum and Nutmegyou's [[The Pirates' Treasure (Tumtum and Nutmeg) by Emily Bearn|previous adventure on a pirate ship]] I was particularly looking forward re unlikely to this onethink of someone like Gary Stevenson. It's Christmas, A hoodie and our two friendly little mice have been working hard, preparing delicious treats jeans replaces the pin-stripe suit and temptations ready for Christmas Day. One evening they go upstairs to check on his background is the children who live in their houseEast End, Arthur and Lucywhere he was familiar with violence, poverty and find their letters to Father Christmasinjustice. Last year the children didn't get any presents because their chimney There was blocked up and Father Christmas couldn't get in. They've asked for the same presents again this year, hopeful that this year Father Christmas will manage no posh public school on his CV - but he had been to find a way through even though their father refuses to unblock the chimney for fear London School of draftsEconomics. Tumtum Stevenson is bright - extremely bright - and Nutmeg are worried anyway that the letter won't reach Father Christmas in time, and that the children will be disappointed once againhe has a facility with numbers which most of us can only envy. They decide He also realised that most rich people expect poor people to take matters into their own hands and set off to visit the terrifying Baron Toymouse in Toy Kingdom to see if he can helpbe stupid. HoweverIt was his ability at what was, with clockwork cats to contend withessentially, and the capture of Tumtum by the evil Baron, Christmas could turn out to be a card game which got him an even bigger disaster than they'd thought.internship with Citibank. Eventually, this turned into permanent employment as a trader.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1405250267</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=M C Beaton1035021803|title=Agatha Raisin: There Goes The BrideAntique Hunter's Guide to Murder|author=C L Miller|rating=3.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=Private investigator Agatha Raisin is not a happy womanIt's twenty years since Freya Lockwood has been back to the English country village where she grew up. She is concerned with the rate at which 's back now because of a request for help from her body is ageing; even worsebeloved aunt, her ex-husbandCarole. Freya's former mentor and Carole's close friend, JamesArthur Crockleford, is getting married dead and the circumstances seem suspicious, to a much younger woman and Agatha has say the least. Arthur was the reason why Freya had not been invited back to the weddingvillage: Arthur, she feels, let her down badly. She goes, with plenty of friends Even though they were in tow and looks forward to the whole thing being over as soon business together as possible. She sees James just before the weddingantique hunters, when he makes it clear that he she has changed his mind and wants not felt able to pull out of be near the man or pursue the weddingprofession she loved. Then After the bride is killedsplit, by she worked in a bullet through cafe, met and married James (on the rebound from the windowlove of her life, who was murdered) and Freya and James and Agatha are the primary suspectshave now divorced. Can they prove their innocence while finding out who the real perpetrator is?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845299531</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Janice GallowayAllTomorrowsFutureCover|title=Collected StoriesAll Tomorrow's Futures: Fictions that Disrupt|author=Benjamin Greenaway and Stephen Oram (Editors)
|rating=5
|genre=Short StoriesScience Fiction|summary=In this collection, stories are taken from two previous volumes, Blood and Where You Find It. The forty-two snap shots ''Opening up new ways of life are mainly thinking about the shape of women and young girls, struggling with emotions, sometimes realized and sometimes not. In all, there seems things to be an underlying link of isolation and truthcome. The settings are varied, from a visit to the dentist to the place known as home, to a walk in the evening. We have a peek into the deepest darkest corners of everyday relationships, with lovers, partners and most of all ourselves.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099540398</amazonuk>}}''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Herta MullerSunny Singh|title=The PassportHotel Arcadia|rating=3.5|genre=Literary FictionThrillers |summary=Meet WindischThe Hotel Arcadia is a luxury hotel in an unnamed city that has suddenly been violently taken over by a terrorist group. A miller in a small village, he trudges Hiding from the terrorists who are rampaging through there, and through his neighbourskilling everyone on site, and through his lifethere is Sam, counting his days a wartime photographer and hoursAbhi, for reasons that are not initially clearthe hotel manager. But he does want something - he is waiting As Abhi continues to try to care remotely for a passport so he can leave for other climes. The perks of his job the residents who are still alive in the bags of flour hotel, he leaves forms a bond with Sam who refuses to be cowed by the mayorevents, and keeps on venturing out of her room to try to capture what's house with regularityhappened through her photography. Although they only ever talk over the phone, their friendship grows as an open bribe, but there might be a bigger sacrifice Abhi tries to have help her keep safe and they both wait to makesee if they will be rescued before they are discovered by the terrorists.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1852421398</amazonuk>086154742X
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Billy Hopkins1529153298|title=Tommy's WorldThe List of Suspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey|rating=45
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Tommy Hopkins was born in October 1886 in CollyhurstIt's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. (A woman? I mean, one of the poorerhonestly...) She's not what's worrying Miv's family, inner-city suburbs of Manchesterthough. Women have been disappearing. His father had Well, they've been murdered, but to have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite a good job and there wasnso frightening. Miv's upset because she't a lot of money s overheard that her father wants to spare but Tommy remembered move the home as being filled with love and laughterfamily 'Down South'. He was an only child but thought that he was spoilt in terms of affection rather than in the form of worldly goodsWhen you're from Yorkshire, Down South is a frightening, foreign place, best avoided. All that was to change when his father died of spinal meningitis For Miv, the move would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, and he and his mother had she'll do anything to move into cheaper lodgingsprevent that. Even She's not worried about the dangers or that tenuous security wasnher Mum't s stopped talking - to last for long – his mother died of a heart attack in her thirties, leaving Tommy an orphan before he was eight years oldanyone.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755359585</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Michael Grant1398524085|title=HungerHas Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter?|author=Nicci French|rating=4.5|genre=TeensCrime|summary=The kids of Perdido Beach are still within the FAYZ, a barrier erected by Little Pete - no-one knows how - when the nuclear plant went into meltdown. An uneasy truce between SamCharlotte Salter was expected at her husband's tribe of Perdido Beach kids and Caine's Coates Academy kids is beginning to waverfiftieth birthday party but never turned up. The food is running out Her children, sons Niall, Paul and the Darkness has its claws in all those it's encountered. Caine himself is reduced to delirium by the voice of the Darkness in his head Ollie and Lana the healer knows it's inevitable that she too will answer its callher daughter, Etty. Sam are all worried but - strangely - her husband, Alec, is struggling to keep any form of ordernot. As more and more kids begin to develop special powers Shortly afterwards, Etty and Greg, find the hunger bites deeper into everyonebody of Greg's belliesfather, it's inevitable that conflict will break out. And it doesDuncan Ackerley, in some very unpleasant ways. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1405251522</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Various|title=Hello Kitty Guide to Life|rating=4|genre=Children's Non-Fiction|summary=''Hello Kitty'' is a huge worldwide phenomenon with a whole heap of related merchandise featuring the cute cartoon cat in dresses and ribbonsriver. It appeals was an easy assumption for the police to girls make that Duncan had murdered Charlie and women of many ages, but this new hardback book ''Hello Kitty – Guide to Life'then committed suicide when he couldn' is aimed at t stand the brandguilt. The Salter children are not convinced but there's younger fans, probably around 6 to 14 year oldslittle else they can do but get on with their lives and wonder about what really happened.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>000732622X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Claire Tomalin1035906708|title=Thomas Hardy: The Time-Torn ManDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin
|rating=4.5
|genre=BiographyGeneral Fiction|summary=I came We tend to this biography having read three think of Hardy's novelsMaria Callas as Greek, two quite recentlybut she was born to Greek parents in Manhattan, and some of his poetryNew York, but knowing very little about him as a person. Claire Tomalin has brought him admirably to life in these pages.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141017414</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Liza Palmer|title=A Field Guide December 1923 and only moved to Burying Your Parents|rating=4.5|genre=Women's Fiction|summary=Grace is reluctantly participating in a 5k race Athens when she receives the news: was thirteen. Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her estranged sister is calling father changed it to tell her their estranged father has had a stroke. That's two lots of estrangement Callas' to make it more manageable in just two generations of family, but a summons is a summons, and Grace soon finds herself dragged the States. When she was back into the heart of the family in Athens - supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for her voice - she deserted, working with was raised under the others to discover the many hidden secrets of the father Nazi occupation by a mother who deserted them all. It's a tough jump from mercilessly exploited her happy life of a good job, a new boyfriend and a home made no secret of her own to return to the family life she left behind a long time ago, and Grace has to decide whether she can ignore the pull of preference for her biological siblings once more or whether the time has come to let bygones be bygones. After allelder sister, while there are lots of four letter words she would associate with her family, ''love'' is not one of themJackie.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340962151</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jennifer JohnstonChristopher Edge|title=Truth or FictionBlack Hole Cinema Club
|rating=4
|genre=Literary FictionConfident Readers|summary=Caroline Wallace is not Lucas and his friends are all booked in for a movie marathon at their local cinema, a happy womanplace that has the nickname of 'The Black Hole'. She has waited ten years for her lover All big movie fans, they're looking forward to propose to herlots of exciting films, and now just many, many snacks! However, as he finally doesthe movie starts, they very quickly realise that something about this new film format is very different, she has to go to Dublin to interview faded literary star Desmond Fitzmauriceand they are swept up into an adventure they couldn't even imagine. Desmond promises his tale will be brimful of 'sex and violence'But as they lurch from one film genre to the next, but Caroline has no idea of can they figure out what on earth is going on? Will they ever get back to the mystery that lies at the heart of his story.cinema, and to their real lives?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0755330544</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.''
}}
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=''Quicksilver'' is Things have been a bit sticky for the story of Wolfie, Tala Earthlings. AI and Zi'ib, three ordinary children from three different continents. They automation have never metbeen proceeding apace, until a strange chain of events involving gun-toting gangs often replacing jobs they're paid to do and eccentric old men means they all end up in Thornham, a London suburbother tasks that took time to accomplish. They soon realise they are connected: Just as they were beginning to get used to all have green eyes with golden flecks this technological change and a missing parentstarting to think of other, new ways to spend time, along came an awful pandemic. But Life was pretty much shut down and, along with it fate, chance or the ley lines that encompass all the earth that brought them together? Before you know it many daily social interactions on which they're solving clues and fulfilling a one thousand year old prophecy. But all they want to do is find their parentsdepend so heavily.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1407105736</amazonuk>1736128426
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Diane JanesMatthew Tree|title=Edwardian Murder: Ightham & the Morpeth Train RobberyWe'll Never Know
|rating=4.5
|genre=CrimeLiterary Fiction|summary=Two murders took place in Edwardian England less Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than two years apartto be different from his father, one in the south-east a drunk and the other in the north-eastchronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of his artistic passions all failed miserably and who had endless crises of self confidence. At first glance they seemed to have nothing So Tim applied himself to do with each otherhis studies, cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and set himself high but years later a link between them was hinted at though never proved beyond doubt. The author has investigated the connection and come up with a riveting bookachievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0752449451</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=A G Slatter
|title=The Briar Book of the Dead
|rating=5
|genre=Fantasy
|summary='' There's a part of me that wants to keep this just to myself for however long I can. This secret magic of my own, all mine, at last. I just want to enjoy it for a while.''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Rachel Caine1529900360|title=Carpe Corpus (Morganville Vampires)The Ghost Orchid|author=Jonathan Kellerman
|rating=4
|genre=TeensCrime|summary=If you havenIt hadn't alreadybeen Lt Milo Sturgis's fault that Alex Delaware had been badly injured but he felt responsible and even after Alex recovered, meet ClaireSturgis was reluctant to ask for his help on difficult cases. She is beholden to Mr Bishop, the horrid evil vampire His assertions that is ruling there were only open-and-shut cases which didn't need the town help of Morganvillea psychologist only worked for a while. Finally, even more so than the other human, and vampire, inhabitants areit was Robin, now that he has taken over things from ClaireDelaware's former ruler Ameliepartner, who nudged Milo into asking for help again. She is caught knew that the involvement was something that the man she loved needed. The next case did look simple, though. Two lovers were murdered in a struggle between the two warring vampire factions, especially over an unusual form swimming pool of disease among a remote property in Bel Air. He was the undead - Amelie's side definitely trying heir to cure it, Bishop somehow trying an Italian shoe empire and she is married to provoke it an extremely rich man and profit from it. Not only that, her boyfriend is imprisoned, along with his father, one of the world's least subtle vampire huntersnot the Italian. Can she have enough quality time with him? Can she and her captured-and-turned ex-housemate Michael survive the horrid things asked But which of themwas the primary target? And who is Ada?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>074900777X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Joanne Dahme 1529395224|title=Tombstone TeaLetting the Cat Out of the Bag: The Secret Life of a Vet|author=Sion Rowlands
|rating=3.5
|genre=Confident ReadersAnimals and Wildlife|summary=Having recently moved to Siôn Rowlands fell into veterinary science accidentally. His father was a new school, in a new town, Jessie is struggling to make friends GP and fit in. She is afraid Rowlands didn't want to show these new people who she really is - follow in her old school she often found she had 'blank' momentshis footsteps, particularly when she could hear voices and he considered the strain that being on-call put on his father'see' people who weren't really theres life. In desperation to become part When he was seventeen he took the opportunity of doing work experience with a 'group' she accepts the dare of family friend who was a group of girls to spend the night in the Cemetery vet and collect some gravestone rubbings to prove she was thereconvinced this was the job for him. Once there she bumps into PaulBefore long, the handsome caretaker, and finds herself in the middle of a strange evening when, Paul claims, local actors get together to rehearse for something called the he was at Liverpool University. It hadn'Tombstone Tea', t - as with so many students - been his dream since he was a play in which they portray those buried in the graveyardchild...there If anything, he's something strange though about these actors and Jessie soon finds herself caught up in d wanted to be a chilling dramaprofessional footballer.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0762437189</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Stieg Larsson and Reg Keeland (translator)0861541774|title=The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets' NestA Nye of Pheasants|author=Steve Burrows
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=[[The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson DCI Domenic Jejeune's close friend and Reg Keeland (translator)|The Girl former colleague, Danny Maik, has taken a short holiday in Singapore to meet up with the Dragon Tattoo]], the first of Steig Larsson's Millennium trilogy of thrillersan old ally, Guy Trueman. Maik was involved in a street brawl - he would later maintain that he was facing a man armed with a fine standknife -alone noveland he killed a Ghurka. The second in Initially, he faced a charge of manslaughter but evidence came to light that suggested that he might have planned to murder the series, [[The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson and Reg Keeland (translator)|The Girl Who Played With Fire]], continues man. Now he could be facing the adventures of Lisbeth Salander, Larsson's finely crafted anti-herodeath penalty. If you haven Domenic Jejeune can do nothing to help as any interference from another police force could provoke a diplomatic incident and wouldn't read this second volume yet I advise you to stop reading this review nowhelp Danny at all. I'm about to spoil the ending for you…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906694168</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Diane ChamberlainAlexander McCall Smith|title=The Bay at MidnightPerfect Passion Company|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The story starts properly when 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 letter is discoveredmore personal, tailored service. It will have devastating consequences for several families - Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and life will never be look after the same again. Apparentlybusiness, the wrong person was convicted as Ness is planning to take a trip to Canada to get away for a murderwhile. MoreoverKatie is coming out of a break up with a bad boyfriend, and so jumps at the writer of chance to come home to Edinburgh. And so begins this letter appears new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us to know an Edinburgh we already love, thanks to 44 Scotland Street and the Isabel Dalhousie novels, but with some new characters who did commit this crimequickly begin to charm. UnfortunatelyKatie has no experience in running a business, or in match-making, but Ness has full confidence in her abilities, and there's always her very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, William, the writer dies before able to make contact with the police.lend a hand…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0778303640</amazonuk>1846976596
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=David Miller0811771741|title=Sea WolfInstaKnits for Baby|author=Melissa Leapman|rating=3.54|genre=Confident ReadersCrafts|summary=Meet Hanna, Ned and Jik. TheyMelissa Leapman's ''re on an unlikely quest to recover the worldInstaKnits for Baby's biggest and richest pearl, from the hiding place Jik alone knows of, when there's gives us a problem in the shape collection of a tornadoknits from toys to blankets. TheySome will be quick knits - others are of the 're thrown from long, cosy afternoons in front of the craft theyfire're on, Ned disappears - and then there were twovariety. Hanna and Jik get rescued The projects are divided by the occupants of a horridtime they'll take to complete - less than five hours, piratical craftfive to ten hours, engaged in very environmentally-unfriendly fishingten to twenty hours and more than twenty hours. Jik gets overworked and underfedAll the projects are attractive, modern and then there was one..useable. Only one I perhaps show my age when I wonder about 'social- Hanna media- with the spunk, brainpower and energy to keep her spirit together, and try and get one up on the Maestro who commands the boatworthy projects' but that's me being picky.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0192729020</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Katie DaviesDean Koontz|title=The Great Hamster MassacreBad Weather Friend
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersParanormal|summary=Meet AnnaBenny is having a terrifically bad day. He loses his job, he loses his fiancee, and his house gets trashed. Rather than write the usual staid whatOh, and someone has delivered a really weird, disturbing coffin-I-did-in-my-holidays report for school, she is taking the time sized object to tell us about her pet issues over the summer, from recalling the Old Cathis home, and it's possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the horror thing that has trashed his house! The thing is, Benny is the New Cat, very last person to deserve all this bad luck. He is a nice person. A really nice person. So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the New Rabbit down the roaddelivery to his house is a new friend, a bad weather friend called Spike, and her own demands who has been sent to help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a hamster or twogood person. There are family secrets Spike is going to be revealed relating to hamsters take care of oldBenny, parents to argue withand will certainly take care of Benny's enemies, if he, Benny, and finally Harper (a trip to the pet shop - and thatwaitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's just the start of Anna's troubleswild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847385958</amazonuk>1662500491
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Shirley JacksonAdam Stower|title=The Lottery Murray and Other StoriesBun
|rating=4.5
|genre=Short StoriesConfident Readers |summary=Even though it was written over sixty years agoMurray is supposed to be a humble, The Lotterytidy and friendly cat, coming in at fewer than 3one who is able to sleep and eat and eat and sleep and, well,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 whatever takes his fancy next of the storytwo. Time may have lessened sensibilities over the latter half of the twentieth century But he's a bad magician's cat, so his favourite bun has been turned into a hyperactive sticky rabbit called Bun, and the beginning of catflap they both use can chuck them out, not into the twenty first regular back garden, but The Lottery, like many into a world of the other stories in this timely reissuefrightening adventure and whiffs. This time round it drops them into a Viking land, still packs where a mighty punch.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…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0141191430</amazonuk>0008561249
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=B0C47LV1PC
|title=Fragility
|author=Mosby Woods
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= Can you make a ''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, is the question should you make it? Or is the question if you did, would it land? The catch is that the answer for both could well be.... no.
''Fragility'' is set as the city of Portland, Oregon, cautiously begins to emerge from the restrictions imposed during the covid pandemic}}{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Hazel McHaffie 1529431735|title=Right to DieThe Winter Visitor|author=James Henry|rating=3.54|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=It must be hard enough watching your partner die just once, but for Naomi, Adam's death February 1991 and Essex is just bitingly cold, which made Bruce Hopkins' return all the beginningmore surprising. Coming across He'd been exiled on the Costa del Sol as a wanted drug smuggler for a decade. The return has come about because he's had a letter from his personalex-wife, private diary of his time from diagnosis saying that she's ill and hasn't long to live. It's hard to subsequent demisefeel any sympathy when Hopkins is abducted, she is forced stripped to relive the awful months during which his body began to betray him underwear and his will sent to live was replaced with a will watery grave in the boot of a stolen Ford Sierra. Is it a warning from a Spanish gang or a problem closer to die...on his own terms.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906307210</amazonuk>home?
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Karen SappAlex Bell and Tim McDonagh|title=Christmas Is...The Glorious Race of Magical Beasts|rating=34|genre=For SharingConfident Readers|summary=Christmas Eli is looming a busy lad – by day an apprentice in the wondrous library we start by visiting with him, and thus in the evening a helper at the market for picture books featuring santas, presents dessert cafe his gran owns and Christmas treesruns. It's hard to come up Eli lives with anything new herehis lovely gran, and ittoo – for there is a generation missing in the family. A few short years ago, Eli's rather not parents were both lost to the point titular race, a globe- is it? Christmas is, after trotting adventure where all, about annually repeated celebration entrants have to navigate the world in the company of traditional rituals that add delight and nourishment a magical beast. This has made the race anathema to the spiritualpair – but when a bad incident at the eatery leads to a confession from gran, emotional and social fabric Eli knows his only hope is to dare to enter what he most hates, with the sole aim the prize of lifemagic at the end – the only thing to possibly save his gran.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0007303750</amazonuk>0571382231
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Gary Giddins and Scott Deveaux178763681X|title=JazzKnife Skills for Beginners|author=Orlando Murrin|rating=54|genre=EntertainmentCrime|summary=At first glance this 700-page volume might look Chef Paul Delamare took a teaching job at a little daunting. Do not be dauntedresidential cookery school in Belgravia. If you He didn't really want to but celebrity chef Christian Wagner had a small pocket book which merely scratches at the surface way of getting both men and can probably be digested in a sitting or two, look elsewherewomen to do what he wanted. On Paul ''somehow'' got the other hand, if you want an extremely readable and comprehensive book on jazz which can not only impression that he'd be read cover at the school to coverassist Paul, who had a broken arm, but also retained as a work of reference it didn't turn out that way. The teaching - and the problems - are all his own. The one thing he hadn't expected was for someone to use again turn up dead. Unfortunately, he was the person who discovered the body and again, I doubt if this can everyone knows that the police consider that person to be betteredthe prime suspect.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0393068617</amazonuk>
}}
