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<metadesc>Expert , full book reviews & recommendations from most walks of literary life; fiction, non-fiction, children's books & self-published books plus author interviews & top tens.</metadesc>
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==Reviews of the The Best New Books==
'''Read [[:Category:New Reviews|new reviews by category]]. '''<br>
'''Read [[:Category:Features|the latest features]].''' <!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE--> '''Read [[Forthcoming Publications|reviews of books about to be published]].
{{Frontpage
|author= Laura Lam and Elizabeth MaySylvie Cathrall|title= Seven DevilsA Letter to the Luminous Deep|rating= 45|genre= Science Fiction|summary= Eris is one of the foremost operatives of the Novantae, There are few greater joys than a resistance movement fighting against the ruthlessly expansionist Tholosian Empire – an Empire she was destined book which lives up to inherit in her past life as Princess Discordia, whom everyone believed has been dead for years. Clo, an ace pilot for the Novantae, has a mission: hijack a Tholosian spacecraft to gather information vital to the war effortcompelling premise. Although she's less than pleased to discover that her former friend Eris is her partner on And this mission. Things get more interesting as the mission commences; aboard the ship are three defectors with a secret that could potentially cripple the Empire. Eris's brother Damocles, the runner-up heir to the Empire, is plotting to disrupt peace talks between Tholos and the last one of the free alien speciesthem. It's a race against time as the rebels move to put a stop Damocles' plans, with millions of lives hanging in the balance…|isbn=14732311400356522776
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Non Pratt0008517061|title=Every Little Piece of My HeartDeath in a Lonely Place|author=Stig Abell
|rating=4
|genre=TeensCrime|summary= Freya was a beautifulFormer Metropolitan Police detective, popular and complex girlJake Johnson, loved by many and seemingly stable in her existence as has settled into his rustic life at Little Sky. There’s perhaps a queen bee 16-year-old student, complete with best friend and little uncertainty about the promise future of the end of GCSEs just months away. But one dayhis life with his vet girlfriend, on January 1st, she just... left. No explanation. No warning. No goodbye. No one heard from Livia and her since. A once active social profile left deserted. Sodaughter Diana, when her best friend Sophie receives as moving in together would mean a mysterious parcel from her 5 months after, she expects it to contain answers lot of some kind, but is surprised to find the parcel contains another layer addressed to a complete stranger, compromise: does Jake give up his off-grid and then another layer relaxing life to another person and another, each containing an item unique move in with Livia or does Livia move to them Little Sky despite her reservations about whether or not this is the future she wants for herself and Freya, connecting 4 strangers through her mystery daughter? For the moment they’re enjoying life in the present and putting the promise of 'treasure' at the end of it all. With each parcel, a new layer of future on the story and of Freya is unwrapped - and painful truths come to light that threaten to break bonds, both new and oldback burner. Can what's been broken be fixed? And why did Freya leave?|isbn=1406366943
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=178089922X1786482126|title=Invisible GirlThe Janus Stone (Dr Ruth Galloway)|author=Lisa JewellElly Griffiths|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersCrime|summary=Builders were demolishing an old house in Norwich - the site was going to hold seventy-five 'luxury'When you wear apartments - when they discovered the bones of a hood, you're invisiblechild beneath a doorway.'' Saffyre Maddox is seventeen-years-old and beautiful There was no skull. By her own admission, she's Was this a bit of a boffinritual killing or murder? Inevitably, doing and enjoying maths, physics and biology at A levelDr Ruth Galloway finds herself working with DCI Harry Nelson. Life hasn't been easy for her: most people who have been close to her have died and sheIt's now living with her Uncle Aaron in an eighth-floor flat. Something difficult as Ruth knows, but Nelson doesn''reallyt, really bad happened'' to her when that she was ten and she self-harmed for is pregnant with his child as a long time. Aaron organised psychological help and for result of the one night they spent together some three years Roan Fours was her therapistmonths ago. He gently unpeeled the layers of her psycheHer condition will be obvious before long, but somehow managed not least because Ruth is prone to miss that 'something really, really bad'. When the therapy ended Saffyre felt cast adrift, but she retained an interest in Roansudden bouts of sickness.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=18389510670008551324|title=The Nothing ManDevil You Know (D S Max Craigie)|author=Catherine Ryan HowardNeil Lancaster|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersCrime|summary=When we first meet Jim Doyle, heIt's about unusual for anyone from the Hardie family to get a shockapproach the police. He's security at a supermarket Neither side likes or has any respect for the other. But Davie Hardie is struggling in prison and he's watching prepared to tell the police where the body of a woman who missing person is acting suspiciously. She has a book tucked under her arm buried and he wonders if she's planning to pay who was responsible for ither death. Suddenly This person, he promises, is someone big and it drops to will be worth the floor with the spine splayed upwardspolice doing what he wants. ''Nothing Man'' by Eve Black, And what he wants is to be transferred to an open prison to serve the titleremainder of his sentence and to get an early parole date. Why Not much to ask, is Jim shockedit? Well, Jim was - The new Deputy Police Constable doesn't think so and she's even prepared to do the other thing that Hardie demanded - make certain that DS Max Craigie and anyone who works with him iskept well away from what'' - the Nothing Man who, until eighteen years ago raped and killed. The author of the book was twelve years old when Jim raped her mother, and then killed her, her father and her seven-year-old sister, Annas happening.
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Christina Hammonds Reed0008405026|title=The Black KidsA Stranger in the Family (Maeve Kerrigan 11)|author=Jane Casey|rating=4.5|genre=Teens Crime|summary=Christina Hammonds ReedIt's debut novel is set against sixteen years since nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her bed one summer night. She was never found and the backdrop of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, a reaction investigation ground to the absolution of four police officers for beating a black manhalt. Now, Rodney Kingher mother, nearly to deathHelena, and her father are dead in their bed. Told from Initially, it looks like a straightforward murder/suicide but there's something about the perspective positioning of Ashley Bennett, the novel follows bodies that makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and her evolution from boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. What looked as though it was going to be an open-and-shut case is now a silent bystander when confronted with matters of racecomplex double murder. Kerrigan is convinced that the explanation lies in Rosalie's disappearance: others (such as Derwent's boss, to a woman finding her voice and embracing her heritageUna Burt) are less convinced.|isbn=1471188191
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=07515674260571379877|title=The Wicked SisterKellerby Code|author=Karen DionneJonny Sweet|rating=43.5|genre=ThrillersCrime|summary=When we first meet Rachel Cunningham sheEdward Jevons is a working-class young man, obsessed with his upper-class friends, Robert and Stanza. Robert's an inpatient at the Newberry Regional Mental Health Center in Michigan's Upper Peninsulaa theatre director. SheHe's twentyalso self-six obsessed, demanding, handsome and entitled and uses Edward to run errands for him. Edward has been there for fifteen years, convinced that she accidentally killed her mother when she was eleven-yearsin love with Stanza since their university days -old and that her father then took the gun and killed himselfhe's drunkenly confided how he feels to Robert. Her sister, Diana, just twenty-years-old, was left at the family home, a lodge Most men in the Upper Peninsula wilderness. RachelRobert's very bright and although sheposition would stay away from Stanza or tell Edward that a relationship had begun between them but he's a voluntary patient at the Mental Health Center she remains there, feeling that this not like most men: Edward is what she deserves. Perhaps, though, left to stumble upon the circumstances are not as she rememberstwo of them kissing in a dark passageway.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1506909442Jo Callaghan|title=The Worst Dogs: A Progressive Murder-Mystery|author=Matthew de Lacey DavidsonLeave No Trace
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=''The greatest hatredWhen a man is found crucified on the top of a hill in Nuneaton, like DCS Kat Frank finds herself assigned to the greatest virtue and case alongside her sidekick, the worst dogsAI detective Lock. It's their first live case together, having previously been very successful with several cold cases. But when there is silent.'' The title of this enjoyable crime procedurala second body found crucified a few days later, Kat is from German romantic writer Jean Paulsuddenly struggling with a potential serial killer and a very high profile case that draws a lot of unwanted attention to their AI Future Policing project. But who are Will they be able to solve the worst dogs case in de Lacey Davidson's latest novel and for whom is the hatred? This mystery time, or will last all the way to Kat find herself taken off the very last case and carefully plotted pages but you will be thinking about unwarranted hatred all the way through. It sounds uncomfortable - but it isn't: it's honest., potentially, out of a career?|isbn=139851120X
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Rob Baker1399613073|title=Toubab Tales: The Joys and Trials of Expat Life in AfricaMoral Injuries|author=Christie Watson|rating=4.5|genre=TravelThrillers|summary=''"Go to MaliOlivia," they saidLaura and Anjali met on the first day of medical school and their friendship would keep them inseparable for a quarter of a century. "The music Olivia is amazingruthlessly ambitious," they said. "And which is a bonus when you get ten hours of sunshine every dayaim to be a cardiothoracic surgeon." So I did Laura is a perfectionist and a trauma doctor.'' Rob Baker Anjali is an ethnomusicologistthe free spirit of the group and she becomes a GP. When we first meet them they're at a drug and alcohol-fuelled party and it'A what?s going to end in tragedy. We don'' I hear you cryt know who suffered the tragedy or the consequences. Well, Twenty-five years later there will be an ethnomusicologist studies music in relation to cultureeerily similar event that will impact the three friends. This time, so rather like a folklorist studies the oral and written story traditions relating to a cultureit's their teenage children who are involved. |isbn=B089CSNFT7
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=James Patterson0241636604|title=HawkThe Trading Game: A Maximum Ride NovelConfession|author=Gary Stevenson|rating=4.5|genre=TeensAutobiography|summary=Hawk has been waiting on the same street cornerIf you were to bring up an image of a city banker in your mind, every day, for yearsyou're unlikely to think of someone like Gary Stevenson. She A hoodie and jeans replaces the pin-stripe suit and his background is waiting for her parents to come the East End, where he was familiar with violence, poverty and get herinjustice. They left her there when she There was just tiny, and although she's almost certain that they are never coming back for her, she continues no posh public school on his CV - but he had been to head back there each day, just in casethe London School of Economics. Hawk isn't your ordinary street urchin thoughStevenson is bright - extremely bright - and he has a facility with numbers which most of us can only envy. He also realised that most rich people expect poor people to be stupid..she has wings, and can fly! Since she It was his ability at what was abandoned she's been living with , essentially, a group of other children, all card game which got him an internship with interesting characteristics of their own and together they've made their own familyCitibank. But now the city is seemingly even more troubled than usualEventually, there's this turned into permanent employment as a mysterious child-killer who has been brought to the prison next door to where the children live, and then one day Hawk comes home to find her family has been taken awaytrader. Where have they been taken, and can Hawk rescue them before it's too late?|isbn=1529120004
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=17857656981035021803|title=Shed No TearsThe Antique Hunter's Guide to Murder|author=Caz FrearC L Miller|rating=43.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=In November 2012 Christopher Masters, the man who would become known as It's twenty years since Freya Lockwood has been back to the roommate killerEnglish country village where she grew up. She's back now because of a request for help from her beloved aunt, strangled three women in a fortnightCarole. When he was arrested he admitted Freya's former mentor and Carole's close friend, Arthur Crockleford, is dead and the circumstances seem suspicious, to say the killingsleast. A fourth death Arthur was attributed to him - that of Holly Kemp - and on occasions, Masters admitted the reason why Freya had not been back to the killingvillage: Arthur, then he denied it - then admitted itshe feels, then denied itlet her down badly. He played with the policeEven though they were in business together as antique hunters, but there was sufficient evidence on the first three killings she has not felt able to put him away for a long time and be near the CPS were not convinced about man or pursue the Holly Kemp caseprofession she loved. There was no body After the split, she worked in a cafe, met and once Masters married James (on the rebound from the love of her life, who was murdered in prison, no hope of progressing the case further) and Freya and James have now divorced.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1473682401AllTomorrowsFutureCover|title=The Turning Tide (Dandy Gilver)All Tomorrow's Futures: Fictions that Disrupt|author=Catriona McPhersonBenjamin Greenaway and Stephen Oram (Editors)|rating=45|genre=Crime (Historical)Science Fiction|summary=Those who were with us at ''Opening up new ways of thinking about the end shape of [[A Step So Grave (Dandy Gilver) by Catriona McPherson|A Step So Grave]] will remember that Donald was engaged things to Mallory Dunnochcome. They'' I've heard it said that 'technology' is what happens after you're now married and Mallory is having twinseighteen. Well, I must confess that there have been more than a few decades of technology in my lifetime. When they arrive no one can doubt I've kept up reasonably well with what's advantageous to me but I'm left with the charms feeling that it's all getting away from me. Some of Lavinia Dahlia Cherry and her brother, Edward Hugh Lachlan Gilverit is - frankly - quite frightening. There are two drawbacks: theyOf course, I could research the possibilities and the probabilities and end up down rabbit holes without really understanding whether I're noisy and m reading someone who knows what they're staying with Dandy talking about or the latest conspiracy theorist. I needed people I knew I could trust and Hughwho could deliver information in a way I could understand.}}{{Frontpage|author=Sunny Singh|title=Hotel Arcadia|rating=3.5|genre=Thrillers |summary=The Hotel Arcadia is a luxury hotel in an unnamed city that has suddenly been violently taken over by a terrorist group. Dandy Hiding from the terrorists who are rampaging through, killing everyone on site, there is Sam, a wartime photographer and her detective partner, Alec OsborneAbhi, had not taken up the chance hotel manager. As Abhi continues to look into try to care remotely for the residents who are still alive in the hotel, he forms a problem at the Cramond ferry when it was offered bond with Sam who refuses to them twice beforebe cowed by events, but suddenly the possibility of being and keeps on venturing out of her room to try to capture what's happened through her photography. Although they only ever talk over the phone, their friendship grows as Abhi tries to help her keep safe and they both wait to see if they will be rescued before they are discovered by the house at Gilverton seems irresistibleterrorists.|isbn=086154742X
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B07WWSCGVS1529153298|title=The Lies You ToldList of Suspicious Things|author=Harriet TyceJennie Godfrey
|rating=5
|genre=ThrillersGeneral Fiction|summary=Year six student Robin Spence isnIt't happy about having to start a new schools 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. (A woman? I mean, honestly... ) She's left the school she loved in New York and now shenot what's worrying Miv's going to Ashams in North Londonfamily, though. It's very upmarket; places are rare as hens' teeth and as the pupils Women have all been there disappearing. Well, they've been murdered, but to have 'foreverdisappeared'doesn', they have their established groupst sound quite so frightening. RobinMiv's upset because she's going overheard that her father wants to be an outsidermove the family 'Down South'. And why When you're from Yorkshire, Down South is this happening? Wella frightening, foreign place, over a matter of a few days her parents' marriage fell apartbest avoided. Andrew Spence is staying in New York - he works for a securities firm - and For Miv, the move would mean leaving her motherbest friend, Sadie RoperSharon, has come back and she'll do anything to London to pick up her practice as a criminal barristerprevent that. ThatShe's easier said than done when younot worried about the dangers or that her Mum've been out of the market place s stopped talking - and the country - for more than ten yearsto anyone.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=14087124151398524085|title=Cry BabyHas Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter?|author=Mark BillinghamNicci French|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=ItCharlotte Salter was expected at her husband's June 1996 and football's European Championships are about to start in Londonfiftieth birthday party but never turned up. DS Tom Thorne is having a nightmare and it's one he has regularly. It relates to a case from ten years earlier when he ''knew'' that a man was guiltyHer children, sons Niall, but didn't take any action until the man's wife Paul and three children had been murdered Ollie and the man had killed himselfher daughter, Etty. Cat Coyne and Maria Ashton are with their sons Kieron and Josh. It's a happy combination in that the boys are devoted to each other and all worried but - despite differences in the where and how they live strangely - the women are best friendsher husband, Alec, is not. The boys are seven-year-old Shortly afterwards, Etty and they play on Greg, find the swings body of Greg's father, Duncan Ackerley, in the park and then dash off to play hide and seek in Highgate Woodriver. Josh It was an easy assumption for the one doing the hiding - but he returned tearfully police to the women: Kieron never came to find him make that Duncan had murdered Charlie and now then committed suicide when he cancouldn't find Kieron.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=B08CHJLNBS|title=Capturing Emilia|author=Brooke Adams|rating=3|genre=Women's Fiction|summary=He's Charles Devereaux, thirty-eight and a partner at Wickham Jones, the Mayfair letting agents. She's Emilia, twenty-nine, librarian and archivist in stand the heritage library next doorguilt. Emilia has read [[The Secret by Rhonda Byrne|The Secret]] Salter children are not convinced but shethere's moved on from new age books like that, which leave you dependent on someone little else's philosophies, to something a little deeper. Charles is more of a [[Personal by Lee Child|Jack Reacher]] man himself, they can do but, above all, he's shocked that Emilia reads ''The Guardian''. They're obviously not at all compatible, so why can Charles not get this woman out of his mind? She's not his usual type at all: it's obvious to his friendson with their lives and wonder about what really happened. And given that Emilia regularly feels repulsed by Charles's superficiality, why does she feel drawn to him? The relationship's obviously a non-starter, isn't it?
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=15043213831035906708|title=Single, Again, and Again, and AgainDiva|author=Louisa PatemanDaisy Goodwin
|rating=4.5
|genre=AutobiographyGeneral Fiction|summary=''You can't be happy We tend to think of Maria Callas as Greek, but she was born to Greek parents in Manhattan, New York, in December 1923 and fulfilled on your ownonly moved to Athens when she was thirteen. You are not complete until you find a manHer original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to 'Callas'. This was what Louisa Pateman was brought up to believemake it more manageable in the States. It wasn't unkind: it When she was simply the adults back in her life advising her as to what they thought would be best Athens - supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for her. It voice - she was reinforced by all those fairy tales where raised under the girl (she's usually fairly young) is rescued Nazi occupation by the handsome prince a mother who then marries mercilessly exploited her so that they can live happily ever after. Few girls are lucky enough to be brought up ''without'' the expectation that they will marry and have children. It was a belief and it would be many years before Louisa would conclude that ''a belief is a choice''made no secret of her preference for her elder sister, Jackie.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1787301435Christopher Edge|title=Dark Waters|author=G R HallidayBlack Hole Cinema Club
|rating=4
|genre=CrimeConfident Readers|summary=Twenty-two-year-old Annabelle Whittaker made her second mistake when she opted to drive down the private road Lucas and his friends are all booked in Glen Turrit. It was for a movie marathon at their local cinema, a long road through some breath-taking scenery and she could push place that has the car to its limits without fear nickname of being caught speeding'The Black Hole'. When the blond child stepped out in front All big movie fans, they're looking forward to lots of her she instinctively jerked the steering wheel exciting films, and hit a tree. many, many snacks! When she came round after However, as the accident she movie starts, they very quickly realise that something about this new film format is very different, and they are swept up into an adventure they couldn't work out where she was, but it obviously wasn't a conventional hospitaleven imagine. She'd made her first mistake some time agoBut as they lurch from one film genre to the next, although can they figure out what on earth is going on? Will they ever get back to the realisation wouldn't be obvious cinema, and to her for a long time. She'd made it when she chose to have her father buy her a pale blue BMW M4.their real lives?|isbn=1839942738
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Suzanne CollinsRachel Greenlaw|title=The Ballad of Songbirds Compass and SnakesBlade|rating=43.5
|genre=Teens
|summary= Coriolanus Snow is refined, charming, and one of ''I can hear the only surviving members song of the affluent Snow familysea. But their world was destroyed by The call of the war. Their riches gonedeep, his parents dead - and yet the facade must be maintainedanswering beat in my heart. As the 10th Hunger Games begins'' Rosevear, Coriolanus a remote and other students of partially forgotten island, survives on luring ships into the Academy become rocks and plundering the first Mentors wrecks. Mira, like her mother before her, is one of the tributes in seven who swim out to survey the gamesruins – rescuing any survivors and any treasure that lies within. This is his chance to prove himself But when the Council Watch lays a trap to end the wrecking, they capture the world island's leader and secure his place in the Capitol for goodMira's father. But when he is assigned Desperate to save him from death, Mira makes a tribute bargain with no hope - a girl from District 12 - wreck survivor who is as charming as he thinks all chances of winning (both for her is secretive and for him) are gone. But Lucy Gray Baird proves herself with only coordinates to be a spark in his worldguide her, she sets off in search of a way he could never have imaginedfamily secret that lies buried deep in the sea. As the Games commenceWith only nine days to unearth what might save her father, Lucy Gray fights for as her journey takes her life in from the watched streets of foreign islands to the arena - but behind heart of the scenessmuggler's territory, in Mira must be determined to stop at nothing to save the sly, complex future of her home and strangely dangerous world of the Capitol, Coriolanus is fighting for his life tooones she holds most dear. Will she survive the Games? Will he? And what happens then?|isbn=07023001790008664730
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Sakinu AhronglongJames Sherwood Metts|title=Hunter SchoolPlanet Storyland
|rating=4.5
|genre=AutobiographyConfident Readers|summary= The flyleaf to this little collection tells us that it is Things have been a work of fictionbit sticky for the Earthlings. ThatAI and automation have been proceeding apace, often replacing jobs they's possibly misleadingre paid to do and other tasks that took time to accomplish. I am not sure whether it is "fiction" in the sense that Ahronglong made it all up, or whether it is Just as the blurb goes on they were beginning to get used to say ''recollections, folklore all this technological change and autobiographical stories''. It feels like the latter. It feels like the stories he tells about his experiences as a childstarting to think of other, as an adolescentnew ways to spend time, as along came an adult are real awful pandemic. Life was pretty much shut down and true. But memory is a fickle thing, and maybe poetic licence has taken over here and there and maybe calling along with it fiction means that its safer and therefore more people will read it. More people should, all the many daily social interactions on which they depend so heavily.|isbn=19997912821736128426
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Kat EllisMatthew Tree|title=Harrow LakeWe'll Never Know
|rating=4.5
|genre=TeensLiterary Fiction|summary=When we first meet 17-year-old Lola, daughter Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to legendary horror movie director Nolan Nox, she is saying goodbye to New York City - by sneaking out and stealing be different from its residents. But when she is found by her his father's assistant and forced to come home, she arrives to find an unlocked door, a trail drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of blood, and her father dying in his study. And so, while he recovers, she is sent off to live with her grandmother in Harrow Lake, the small 1920s town in Indiana that served as the location for the film that made her parents famous. But something about this place isn't right. There's a darkness inside the people here. Secrets about her mother artistic passions all failed miserably and dark tales who had endless crises of the town's cannibal monster 'Mister Jitters' fill every corner, and disturbing happenings plague Lolaself confidence. But with every passing hour, secrets long buried come painfully So Tim applied himself to light and she begins to think that these stories may not be stories at allhis studies, cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and something very real and sinister lurks in Harrow Lakeset himself high but achievable ambitions.|isbn=0241397049B0CVFXPGP8
}}
{{Frontpage
|author= Helly ActonA G Slatter|title= The ShelfBriar Book of the Dead|rating= 45|genre= Women's FictionFantasy|summary= When we meet Amy, she'' There's in a relationship with Jamiepart 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. You can't really call it ' Within a partnershipremote mountain pass, because things tend to get done on his termsfar away from the world, but shelies Silverton; a town under the protection of the Briar's sticking around because , a family of witches who protect the town and the wider world from the Darklands. Though she hopes has always wished for magic, Ellie Briar is the first non-witch to be born into her family for generations and as such since she can change himwas young, her training as a steward revolved around letters and administration rather than spells and potions. AhWhen her grandmother suddenly dies, Ellie's cousin Audra becomes the Briar Witch, yesthe town's leader, and Ellie takes her place beside her. Haven't we all been there? Things are looking up when he tells As challenges come her way left, right and centre, Ellie uncovers the rare ability to pack for communicate with the dead, putting her at the heart of a surprise tripmaelstrom of chaos. Could this be it? Is he ''finally'' going Reeling from one family secret to another, Ellie must decide who to get down on one knee? Was the work (trust and determine what to do as the wait) worth it?Briar witches' legacy, everything they have sacrificed to survive, is under threat.|isbn=18387708791803364548
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn= Justine Avery and Daria Yudina1529900360|title= This Book Wants to Make You Laugh (Living Book)The Ghost Orchid|author=Jonathan Kellerman|rating= 4|genre= For SharingCrime|summary=This Living Book is 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 a missiondifficult cases. What His assertions that there were only open-and-shut cases which didn's t need the mission? To make you laugh! I can't think help of many better missions than thata psychologist only worked for a while. Finally, it was Robin, can you? LetDelaware's see how it doespartner, who nudged Milo into asking for help again. She knew that the involvement was something that the man she loved needed. The next case did look simple, though. .... well, it opens up with Two lovers were murdered in the swimming pool of a terrible jokeremote property in Bel Air. A groany joke, He was the heir to an eye-roll joke. The joke isn't very funny but it Italian shoe empire and she is funny married to see how enthusiastic an extremely rich man and how generously this book wants to make you laugh - it''Oh, I'm terrible at jokess not the Italian. Some books are so good at But which of them. I always wanted to help someone laugh.'' |isbn= 194812453Xwas the primary target?
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=15294022711529395224|title=Murder on Letting the Moorland (Kitt Hartley Yorkshire Mysteries)Cat Out of the Bag: The Secret Life of a Vet|author=Helen CoxSion Rowlands
|rating=3.5
|genre=Animals and Wildlife
|summary=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 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 was convinced this was the 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 child. If anything, he'd wanted to be a professional footballer.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=0861541774
|title=A Nye of Pheasants
|author=Steve Burrows
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=DI Malcolm Halloran and Kitt HartleyDCI Domenic Jejeune's relationship is developing nicely: they're even into close friend and former colleague, Danny Maik, has taken a spot of bandage nowshort holiday in Singapore to meet up with an old ally, although the details are (mercifully) scantGuy Trueman. After Maik was involved in a street brawl - he would later maintain that he was facing a night of passion Halloran is called away in the early hours of the morning. There's been man armed with a murder in Irendale, where Halloran used to live knife - and where his wife, Kamala, was strangled five years agohe killed a Ghurka. There are sufficient details Initially, he faced a charge of the current murder manslaughter but evidence came to make Halloran suspect light that suggested that he might have planned to murder the man who murdered his wife - and others - is in some way involved, despite being in prison. The DI heads off Now he could be facing the death penalty. Domenic Jejeune can do nothing to speak to Jeremy Kerrhelp as any interference from another police force could provoke a diplomatic incident and wouldn't help Danny at all.
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{{Frontpage
|author= Mark DawsonAlexander McCall Smith|title= The CleanerPerfect Passion Company|rating= 4.5|genre= ThrillersGeneral Fiction|summary= Ruthless The Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and coldly competentoperating as an alternative to all the online apps in providing a more personal, John Milton tailored service. Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the business, as Ness is planning to take a trip to Canada to get away for a while. Katie is one coming out of the British government's best assets – a contract killer break up with lethal instinctsa bad boyfriend, and so jumps at the chance to come home to Edinburgh. Now And so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, after ten yearsbringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, thanks to 44 Scotland Street and the Isabel Dalhousie novels, he wants outbut with some new characters who quickly begin to charm. But his job isn Katie has no experience in running a business, or in match-making, but Ness has full confidence in her abilities, and there't one you can just walk away from…s always her very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, William, to lend a hand…|isbn=178739462X1846976596
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Angela Mack0811771741|title=I Am UnworthyInstaKnits for Baby|author=Melissa Leapman
|rating=4
|genre=TeensCrafts|summary= Isabel is determined Melissa Leapman's ''InstaKnits for Baby'' gives us a collection of knits from toys to start freshblankets. Start again. Sixth form Some will be differentquick knits - others are of the 'long, cosy afternoons in front of the fire' variety. Her tormentor doesn The projects are divided by the time they't go ll take to complete - less than five hours, five to ten hours, ten to Gilleford Secondary School anymoretwenty hours and more than twenty hours. She can escape All the hurtprojects are attractive, modern and useable. I perhaps show my age when I wonder about 'social-media-worthy projects' but that's me being picky.}}{{Frontpage|author=Dean Koontz|title=The Bad Weather Friend|rating=4.5|genre=Paranormal|summary=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 home, and it's possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the fearthing that has trashed his house! The thing is, and Benny is the very last person she becameto deserve all this bad luck. Josh He is determined a nice person. A really nice person. So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the delivery to keep his house is a new friend, a bad weather friend called Spike, who has been sent to help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a good person. Spike is goingto take care of Benny, and will certainly take care of Benny's enemies, even through the rageif he, the painBenny, and using his fists Harper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are.|isbn=1662500491}}{{Frontpage|author=Adam Stower|title=Murray and Bun|rating=4.5|genre=Confident Readers |summary=Murray is supposed to solve any problem or situation. But he has secrets that threaten be a humble, tidy and friendly cat, one who is able to tear him sleep and eat and eat and sleep and , well, whatever takes his brothers apartfancy next of the two. When Josh and Isabel But he's a bad magician's worlds collidecat, so his favourite bun has been turned into a hyperactive sticky rabbit called Bun, can they make their relationship work? Can and the catflap they both finally use can chuck them out, not into the regular back garden, but into a world of frightening adventure and whiffs. This time round it drops them into a Viking land, where a troll hunter is expected – well, one much bigger than Murray was, to be happy? Or will Joshhonest, but he's time run out?turned up and he'll have to do…|isbn=B089FL7H4H0008561249
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Laura Imai MessinaB0C47LV1PC|title=The Phone Box at the End of the WorldFragility|author=Mosby Woods|rating=54
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= In the northeast of Japan, in Inwate Prefecture Can you make a man installed a telephone box in his garden. ''Inside there Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, is the question should you make it? Or is an old black, telephone, disconnectedthe question if you did, would it land? The catch is that carries voices into the windanswer for both could well be.... no. ''Fragility'' It is a real placeset as the city of Portland, a necessary placeOregon, and I am pleased cautiously begins to see the IMPORTANT NOTE that emerge from the author attaches to her story, that restrictions imposed during the place is not a tourist destination, it is a sacred place, a place that must be left to those who really need it.|isbn=178658039Xcovid pandemic
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=B0859115X51529431735|title=Lies to Tell (DI Clare Mackay)The Winter Visitor|author=Marion ToddJames Henry
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=When we meet up with DI Clare Mackay again sheIt's at Daisy Cottage February 1991 and Essex is bitingly cold, which made Bruce Hopkins' return all the more surprising. He'd been exiled on the outskirts of St Andrews with her English Bull Terrier, BenjyCosta del Sol as a wanted drug smuggler for a decade. SheThe return has come about because he's just had a postcard letter from Geoffrey Dark his ex-wife, saying that she's ill and hehasn's in Provincetown, Cape Codt long to live. He wishes that she was there, but ClareIt's struggling hard to think of what he ''actually'' feel any sympathy when Hopkins is abducted, stripped to her nowhis underwear and sent to a watery grave in the boot of a stolen Ford Sierra. Is he her boyfriend? Her ex-boyfriendit a warning from a Spanish gang or a problem closer to home? }}{{Frontpage|author=Alex Bell and Tim McDonagh|title=The Glorious Race of Magical Beasts|rating=4|genre=Confident Readers|summary=Eli is a busy lad – by day an apprentice in the wondrous library we start by visiting with him, and in the evening a helper at the dessert cafe his gran owns and runs. She can't work it out and thinks that Geoffrey probably can't eitherEli lives with his lovely gran, too – for there is a generation missing in the family. WorkA few short years ago, Eli's about parents were both lost to the titular race, a globe-trotting adventure where all entrants have to get very busy and she can't work out why DCI Alastair Gibson navigate the world in the company of a magical beast. This has cancelled made the race anathema to the pair – but when a meeting she'd arranged without discussing it bad incident at the eatery leads to a confession from gran, Eli knows his only hope is to dare to enter what he most hates, with her first. They're off somewhere top secretthe sole aim the prize of magic at the end – the only thing to possibly save his gran.|isbn=0571382231
}}