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{{Frontpage
|author=Melissa Fu Sylvie Cathrall|title=Peach Blossom Spring A Letter to the Luminous Deep|rating=3.5|genre=Historical Science Fiction |summary= I loved the prelude There are few greater joys than a book which lives up to Peach Blossom Spring, a short chapter entitled ''Origins''compelling premise. Unfortunately it And this is the only truly poetic part one of a book that I expected more from. Covering Chinese history from 1938 to 2005 as viewed through one family's perspective. When their home city is set ablaze during the war with Japan, a young mother (Meilin) and her four-year-old son (Renshu) are among those who flee. The story follows them on their journey across China, and in Renshu's case eventually to America. |isbn=14722775380356522776
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Vanda Symon0008517061|title=FacelessDeath in a Lonely Place|author=Stig Abell
|rating=4
|genre=ThrillersCrime|summary=In this book told from multiple viewpointsFormer Metropolitan Police detective, Jake Johnson, several troubled people are thrown has settled into the same story thanks to just one mis-stephis rustic life at Little Sky. Set in New Zealand, There’s perhaps a little uncertainty about the first future of our characters is Bradleyhis life with his vet girlfriend, Livia and her daughter Diana, as moving in together would mean a middle aged man struggling lot of compromise: does Jake give up his off-grid and relaxing life to move in with Livia or does Livia move to Little Sky despite her reservations about whether or not this is the future she wants for herself and her daughter? For the moment they’re enjoying life in the present and putting the future on the back burner.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1786482126|title=The Janus Stone (Dr Ruth Galloway)|author=Elly Griffiths|rating=4.5|genre=Crime|summary=Builders were demolishing an overbearing boss, 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 weighty mortgageritual killing or murder? Inevitably, and what he feels is an unappreciative wifeDr Ruth Galloway finds herself working with DCI Harry Nelson. Then there’s BillyIt's difficult as Ruth knows, a homeless teenage girl who but Nelson doesn't, that she is a street artist working pregnant with his child as a prostitute sometimes in order 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 pay sudden bouts of sickness.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0008551324|title=The Devil You Know (D S Max Craigie)|author=Neil Lancaster|rating=4.5|genre=Crime|summary=It's unusual for anyone from the materials she needsHardie family to approach the police. And then we have Max, who Neither side likes or has any respect for the other. But Davie Hardie is also living on struggling in prison and he's prepared to tell the police where the streets body of a missing person is buried and who keeps an eye on Billywas responsible for her death. He is a shell of a manThis person, barely able to take any care of himselfhe promises, is someone big and yet we can sense that it will be worth the police doing what he was once something more than wants. And what he wants is nowto be transferred to an open prison to serve the remainder of his sentence and to get an early parole date. One nightNot much to ask, Bradley finds himself half-crazed with stress is it? The new Deputy Police Constable doesn't think so and anxiety, driving down she's even prepared to do the street looking for a prostitute. He picks up Billy, other thing that Hardie demanded - make certain that DS Max Craigie and then anyone who works with one thoughtless decision finds his life thrown into turmoil and a spiral him is kept well away from the person he thought he was into someone very differentwhat's happening.|isbn=1914585046
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=07603735310008405026|title=Cozy Knits: 30 Hat, Mitten, Scarf and Sock Projects from Around A Stranger in the WorldFamily (Maeve Kerrigan 11)|author=Sue FlandersJane Casey
|rating=5
|genre=CraftsCrime|summary=Just occasionally you encounter 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 book of knitting patterns which seems to meet your every needhalt. Right nowNow, it's bitterly cold and we're in the sandwich filling between two storms: I need socksher mother, scarvesHelena, hats and mittensher father are dead in their bed. They have to look stylishInitially, keep me warm and be so cheerful that they make me feel better. If that sounds it looks like a lot to ask, have a look at straightforward murder/suicide but there''Cozy Knits'': it has thirty designs for those necessary items s something about the positioning of the bodies that makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and I don't think that there was one of them which I couldn't see myself wearingher boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. We start with What looked as though it was going to be an introduction by Nancy Bush which gives some of the history of knittingopen-and-shut case is now a complex double murder. ItKerrigan is convinced that the explanation lies in Rosalie's not essential but itdisappearance: others (such as Derwent's a nice extraboss, Una Burt) are less convinced.
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{{Frontpage
|author=Sally Oliver
|title=The Weight of Loss
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= Marianne is grieving. Traumatised after the death of her sister, she awakes to find strange, thick black hairs sprouting from the bones of her spine which steadily increase in size and volume. Her GP, diagnosing the odd phenomenon as a physical reaction to her grief, recommends she go to stay at Nede, an experimental new treatment centre in Wales. Yet something strange is happening to Marianne and the other patients at Nede: a metamorphosis of a kind. As Marianne's memories threaten to overwhelm her, Nede offers her release from this cycle of memory and pain—but only at a terrible price: that of identity itself.
|isbn= 086154112X
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=17765740280571379877|title=Bumblebee GrumblebeeThe Kellerby Code|author=David ElliottJonny Sweet|rating=43.5|genre=For SharingCrime|summary=I love a good board book! ''Bumblebee Grumblebee'' Edward Jevons is aimed at quite a niche market: it's for the child who still enjoys board books (erworking-class young man, see my first sentence) but has mastered sufficient language skills to have realise that you can ''play'' obsessed with words his upper-class friends, Robert and make something quite different from each oneStanza. We have the elephant who dons Robert's a tutu theatre director. He's also self- obsessed, demanding, handsome and becomes a ''balletphant''entitled and uses Edward to run errands for him. The buffalo who Edward has had a bath (complete been in love with yellow duck) Stanza since their university days - and then dries off with a hair drier becomes a ''fluffalo'he's drunkenly confided how he feels to Robert. The rhinoceros who drops his ice cream cone is a Most men in Robert''crynoceros'' (think about it!) The pelican who sits on his potty changes into s position would stay away from Stanza or tell Edward that a ''sm.......'' OK, letrelationship had begun between them but he's not go there Some people are eating!like most men: Edward is left to stumble upon the two of them kissing in a dark passageway.
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=B09V1NQ5SXJo Callaghan|title=Death at Friar's Inn|author=Rob KeeleyLeave No Trace
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=Nat Webber and Tom Barton were When a man is found crucified on the top of a hill in Nuneaton, DCS Kat Frank finds herself assigned to the finals of case alongside her sidekick, the Moots to take place at The Honourable Society of FriarAI detective Lock. It's Inntheir first live case together, having previously been very successful with several cold cases. For aspiring barristersBut when there is a second body found crucified a few days later, moots test the participants' knowledge of several areas of law as well as their advocacy skills: it's Kat is suddenly struggling with a great way of getting invaluable practice potential serial killer and a very high profile case that draws a lot of getting yourself noticedunwanted attention to their AI Future Policing project. Tom and Nat are from 'a provincial university' and Will they're ''almost'' looked down on because of this. The other contestants - Becca Decker-Hamilton be able to solve the case in time, or will Kat find herself taken off the case and Lucia 'Mouse' Dawes have no such disadvantage and Becca has an abundance , potentially, out of confidence. Tom's £30 supermarket suit doesn't make him feel any better.a career?|isbn=139851120X
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=15291259441399613073|title=City of the DeadMoral Injuries|author=Jonathan KellermanChristie Watson|rating=4.5|genre=CrimeThrillers|summary=When you drive large vehicles Olivia, Laura and Anjali met on the first day of medical school and their friendship would keep them inseparable for a livingquarter of a century. Olivia is ruthlessly ambitious, which is a bonus when you're careful aim to be a cardiothoracic surgeon. Laura is a perfectionist and it's not just about the way that you drivea trauma doctor. You restrict your alcohol intake Anjali is the free spirit of the group and if it's she becomes a trip that needs overnight stays you make certain you get your sleepGP. When youwe first meet them they're taking a removals truck through a residential neighbourhood you head off at 5 a.m. when the roads are quieter, even if you have to wait up when you get to where youdrug and alcohol-fuelled party and it're s goingto end in tragedy. And it was going well until We don't know who suffered the tragedy or the men hit something in Westwood Village, consequences. Twenty-five years later there will be an upmarket neighbourhood of Los Angeleseerily similar event that will impact the three friends. The man was stark naked and couldnThis time, it't be identifieds their teenage children who are involved.
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Bjorn Natthiko Lindeblad, Caroline Bankeler, Navid Modiiri and Agnes Bromme (Translator)0241636604|title=I May Be WrongThe Trading Game: A Confession|author=Gary Stevenson|rating=4.5|genre= Autobiography|summary= When the Dalai Lama adds his words If you were to bring up an image of a city banker in your frontispiecemind, Iyou'm inclined re unlikely to think it doesn't really matter how of someone like Gary Stevenson. A hoodie and jeans replaces the rest of pin-stripe suit and his background is the world responds East End, where he was familiar with violence, poverty and injustice. There was no posh public school on his CV - but he had been to your bookthe London School of Economics. I know, having read the book in question, that Lindeblad would disagree Stevenson is bright - extremely bright - and he has a facility with that thoughtnumbers which most of us can only envy. He knows (and at core so do I) also realised that it matters very much how the rest of the world responds most rich people expect poor people to be stupid. It was his ability at what was, essentially, a card game which got him an internship with Citibank. Eventually, this book, because it tells the truth turned into permanent employment as it is, in the early 21st centurya trader.|isbn=1526644827
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=B0949Q1DC11035021803|title=The Patient (A DS Cross thriller)Antique Hunter's Guide to Murder|author=Tim SullivanC L Miller|rating=3.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=DS George Cross has an autistic spectrum disorder, quite probably AspergerIt's Syndrometwenty years since Freya Lockwood has been back to the English country village where she grew up. He can be rude, difficult and awkward with people, although itShe's never intentionalback now because of a request for help from her beloved aunt, Carole. ItFreya's just that he thinks differently former mentor and social niceties simply donCarole't occur s close friend, Arthur Crockleford, is dead and the circumstances seem suspicious, to himsay the least. There's a Arthur was the reason why he's Freya had not been back to the village: Arthur, she feels, let her down badly. Even though they were in Bristol's Major Crime Unit and it's that he business together as antique hunters, she has not felt able to be near the best conviction rate with cases, everman or pursue the profession she loved. His partner is DS Josie Ottey: After the split, she regards Cross with affection worked in a cafe, met and married James (not an emotion he would recogniseon the rebound from the love of her life, or welcome being attached to himselfwho was murdered) and even attempts to instil some of those missing social niceties into Cross's behaviourFreya and James have now divorced.
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=1529151600AllTomorrowsFutureCover|title=Give Unto OthersAll Tomorrow's Futures: Fictions that Disrupt|author=Donna LeonBenjamin Greenaway and Stephen Oram (Editors)
|rating=5
|genre=CrimeScience Fiction|summary=Commissario Guido Brunetti senses that Venice has changed''Opening up new ways of thinking about the shape of things to come. The ''pandemia I've heard it said that ' stripped the city of its tourists for nearly two years and technology' is what happens after you're eighteen. Well, I must confess that there have been more than a lot few decades of businesses have closed, most never to reopentechnology in my lifetime. ThereI've kept up reasonably well with what's now a cascade advantageous to me but I'm left with the feeling that it's all getting away from me. Some of money as life begins again but even 125,000 deaths have not put an end to greedit is - frankly - quite frightening. The Mafias have liquidity problems: how on earth are they going to launder all Of course, I could research the possibilities and the money which is coming their way? Whilst heprobabilities and end up down rabbit holes without really understanding whether I's thinking about this, Brunetti encounters m reading someone hewho knows what they's seen only occasionally since they were neighbours when he was a childre talking about or the latest conspiracy theorist. Elisabetta Foscarini has I needed people I knew I could trust and who could deliver information in a problem and she'd like Brunetti's adviceway I could understand.
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{{Frontpage
|author=Marcus SedgwickSunny Singh|title=WrathHotel Arcadia|rating=43.5|genre=TeensThrillers |summary=Meet Fitz, The Hotel Arcadia is a luxury hotel in an unnamed city that has suddenly been violently taken over by a young Scottish lad full of frustration at himselfterrorist group. Lockdown Hiding from the terrorists who are rampaging through, killing everyone on site, there is only just overSam, a wartime photographer and he should be free Abhi, the hotel manager. As Abhi continues to try to do what he wantscare remotely for the residents who are still alive in the hotel, to go where he wants and forms a bond with whom he wants, but he cannot stop himself from putting his foot in it when he talks Sam who refuses to his best friendbe cowed by events, Cassie. They were half of a desultory school band, but Cassie was also one hundred per cent the enigmatic – saying she could hear a subhuman hum coming from the earth. Is this connected with one and keeps on venturing out of her eco-warrior parents saying the end of the world is already a done deal? Is it some spooky new kind of music sheroom to try to capture what's dreaming of? Is she just bonkers? And can Fitz find out happened through her photography. Although they only ever talk over the truth? Wellphone, not when Cassie has gone missing he can't..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 terrorists.|isbn=1800900899086154742X
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=16358640701529153298|title=Knit 2 Socks in 1The List of Suspicious Things|author=Safiyyah TalleyJennie Godfrey|rating=45|genre=CraftsGeneral Fiction|summary=If youIt's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. (A woman? I mean, honestly...) She's not what's worrying Miv's family, though. Women have been disappearing. Well, they've ever started knitting a pair of socksbeen murdered, finished but to have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. Miv's upset because she's overheard that her father wants to move the first one and either got bored by the idea of doing the same thing all over again, or started on the second sock and lost the first before family 'Down South'. When you finished it're from Yorkshire, this Down South is a frightening, foreign place, best avoided. For Miv, the book for you. Where is it that single socks go move would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, and she'll do anything to hide? Safiyyah Talley has developed a system prevent that allows you to knit two socks in one, divide them up and have a perfectly finished pair of socks. Sounds good? It She's not worried about the dangers or that her Mum's clever and wellstopped talking -thought-outto anyone.
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Olivie Blake1398524085|title=The Atlas SixHas Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter?|author=Nicci French|rating=45|genre=FantasyCrime|summary= DarkCharlotte Salter was expected at her husband's fiftieth birthday party but never turned up. Her children, sharpsons Niall, Paul and Ollie and highly inquisitiveher daughter, Etty. are all worried but - strangely - her husband, Alec, is not. Shortly afterwards, Etty and Greg, find the body of Greg's father, Duncan Ackerley, in the river. It was an easy assumption for the police to make that Duncan had murdered Charlie and then committed suicide when he couldn't stand the guilt. The Atlas SixSalter children are not convinced but there'' makes its publishing debut after becoming a Tik-Tok sensations little else they can do but get on with their lives and wonder about what really happened.|isbn=1529095239
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=00083849831035906708|title=The Paris ApartmentDiva|author=Lucy FoleyDaisy Goodwin
|rating=4.5
|genre=ThrillersGeneral Fiction|summary=''Things are not what they seem''. It We tend to think of Maria Callas as Greek, but she was a Friday born to Greek parents in Manhattan, New York, in December 1923 and Jess Hadley only moved to Athens when she was keen to get to her half-brother's flat in Paristhirteen. She'd come across from London on Eurostar, courtesy of the money sheHer original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to 'd stolen from The PervertCallas's till to make it more manageable in the Copacabana Bar in BrightonStates. It wasn't likely When she was back in Athens - supposedly so that the police would be on to her yet but she'd like to be somewhere safe and with food and drink inside could get appropriate training for her. She'd phoned Ben and got the address voice - 12 Rue des Amants - and he told her that the apartment she was on raised under the third floor. She's outside what's obviously Nazi occupation by a very upmarket building but she hasn't been able to get in touch with Benmother who mercilessly exploited her and made no secret of her preference for her elder sister, Jackie.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0760373558Christopher Edge|title=Nordic Knits|author=Sue FlandersBlack Hole Cinema Club
|rating=4
|genre=CraftsConfident Readers|summary=I was so delighted by Sue FlandersLucas and his friends are all booked in for a movie marathon at their local cinema, a place that has the nickname of 'The Black Hole' [[Cozy Knits: 30 Hat. All big movie fans, Mittenthey're looking forward to lots of exciting films, Scarf and Sock Projects from Around many, many snacks! However, as the World by Sue Flanders|Cozy Knits]] movie starts, they very quickly realise that I didnsomething about this new film format is very different, and they are swept up into an adventure they couldn't need any persuading at all to pick up her ''Nordic Knits''even imagine. This delivers forty-four patterns inspired by textiles and local traditions But as they lurch from Norwayone film genre to the next, Sweden and Iceland. can they figure out what on earth is going on? There are a few sweaters or jackets but Will they ever get back to the majority of patterns are for smaller items such as mittens, glovescinema, hats and bags. All are bright and cheerful and very cosy.to their real lives?|isbn=1839942738
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1916072038Rachel Greenlaw|title=The House in the Hollow (The Talbot Saga)|author=Allie CresswellCompass and Blade|rating=43.5|genre=Historical FictionTeens|summary=We meet part ''I can hear the song of the Talbot family in Yorkshire in November 1811. Twenty-seven-year-old Jocelyn Talbot and her mother have travelled in some discomfort from their home at Ecklington, to the house in the hollowsea. The two women are angry with each other and Jocelyn is well aware call of her mother's strengths and weaknesses: ''She is practiced at subterfuge, at concealing, beneath a facade of respectabilitythe deep, the deplorable truth''answering beat in my heartHester is furious about Jocelyn's refusal to do as she was asked, which has precipitated ''this violent and unexpected removal''.
Then we are told 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 birth of 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 child wreck survivor who is as charming as he is secretive andwith only coordinates to guide her, soon aftershe 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, Hester Talbot departsas her journey takes her from the watched streets of foreign islands to the heart of the smuggler's territory, leaving Jocelyn in shame Mira must be determined to stop at nothing to save the future of her home and isolation in Yorkshirethe ones she holds most dear.|isbn=0008664730
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Matthieu AikinsJames Sherwood Metts|title=The Naked Don't Fear the WaterPlanet Storyland
|rating=4.5
|genre=Politics and SocietyConfident Readers|summary=ItThings have been a bit sticky for the Earthlings. AI and automation have been proceeding apace, often replacing jobs they's easy re paid to forget at times do and other tasks that The Naked Don't Fear the Water isn't actually fiction, because it reads very much like a well-paced thriller at timestook time to accomplish. This is not by any means a criticism, but rather a testament Just as they were beginning to how well Matthieu Aikins – a Canadian citizen who decided get used to accompany his friend as a refugee from Afghanistan through Europe – recounts a vast all this technological change and at times painful journeystarting to think of other, new ways to spend time, along came an awful pandemic. There are tense moments Life was pretty much shut down and gripping accounts of border crossings which had me on edge the whole way through. But , along with it's written with a haunting and almost lyrical quality that allows , all the reader to perfectly envisage the environments and people describedmany daily social interactions on which they depend so heavily.|isbn= B09N9157T61736128426
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Jorn Lier Horst and Thomas EngerMatthew Tree|title=Unhinged (Volume 3) (Blix and Ramm)We'll Never Know
|rating=4.5
|genre=CrimeLiterary Fiction|summary=This is the third book in a series of stories featuring Alexander BlixTimothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, a police officer, drunk and Emma Ramm, a crime journalist. In this book we find that when one chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of Blix's colleagues, Kovic, uncovers a connection between several Oslo cases, she tries to contact her superior, Blix. Before she can reach him, however, she is murdered, his artistic passions all failed miserably and Blix's daughter Iselin who shares the same apartment, narrowly escapes being murdered toohad endless crises of self confidence. We then find ourselves a few days later with Blix and Ramm, who are being interviewed by the National Criminal Investigation Service because Blix has shot and killed someoneSo Tim applied himself to his studies, cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and Ramm saw it all happenset himself high but achievable ambitions. What had Kovic discovered? And what did Blix and Ramm uncover that led to Blix killing someone?|isbn=1914585003B0CVFXPGP8
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Daniel AbrahamA G Slatter|title=Age The Briar Book of Ashthe Dead|rating=4.5
|genre=Fantasy
|summary= We meet Alys '' 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.'' Within a remote mountain pass, far away from the world, lies Silverton; a town under the most northerly protection of Oldgatethe Briar's four bridges, a family of witches who protect the town and the wider world from the Darklands. Though she has a knife in always wished for magic, Ellie Briar is the first non-witch to be born into her hand family for generations and as such since she was young, her training as a meeting that she dreadssteward revolved around letters and administration rather than spells and potions. MeanwhileWhen her grandmother suddenly dies, Ellie's cousin Audra becomes the City of Kithamar is at a point in Briar Witch, the turning of years when the worlds are at their thinnest town's leader, and all things are possibleEllie takes her place beside her. It is As challenges come her way left, right and centre, Ellie uncovers the rare ability to communicate with the night between dead, putting her at the funeral heart of a Prince and the coronation maelstrom of his successorchaos. For a night Reeling from one family secret to another, Ellie must decide who to trust and determine what to do as the Kithamar Briar witches' legacy, everything they have sacrificed to survive, is un-ruledunder threat.|isbn=03565154271803364548
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=15290955221529900360|title=The InterviewGhost Orchid|author=C M EwanJonathan Kellerman
|rating=4
|genre=ThrillersCrime|summary=Kate Harding is going for an interview for her dream job at Edge Communications. Ithadn's the last interview of the day at one of Londont been Lt Milo Sturgis's newest office buildings fault that Alex Delaware had been badly injured but he felt responsible and Edge have fitted out their part even after Alex recovered, Sturgis was reluctant to ask for his help on difficult cases. His assertions that there were only open-and-shut cases which didn't need the help of the building to be something speciala psychologist only worked for a while. Maggie Finally, Kateit was Robin, Delaware's recruitment agentpartner, is keen to see who nudged Milo into asking for help again. She knew that the involvement was something that Kate approaches the interview man she loved needed. The next case did look simple, though. Two lovers were murdered in a good state the swimming pool of mind: Kate assumes that this is because Maggie will get a decent bonus if Kate gets remote property in Bel Air. He was the job - heir to an Italian shoe empire and she has is married to admit that life has an extremely rich man and it's not been easy for her recentlythe Italian. But which of them was the primary target?
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B097XNMCRK1529395224|title=Letting the Cat Out of the Bag: The Blood Tide (DS Max Craigie)Secret Life of a Vet|author=Neil LancasterSion Rowlands|rating=43.5|genre=CrimeAnimals and Wildlife|summary=Loch Torridon ''is'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 back of beyond: therestrain that being on-call put on his father's not even any light pollution which is why it life. When he was seventeen he took the perfect place to land illegal deliveries opportunity of drugsdoing work experience with a family friend who was a vet and was convinced this was the job for him. Jimmy McLeish thought that Before long, he was onto a nice little earner, only to find that Macca, at Liverpool University. the man he thought It hadn't - as with so many students - been his dream since he was working with, is deada child. His remains would never be found. The delivery is hijacked by Davie and Callum. As the story progresses weIf anything, he'll get d wanted to know them quite wellbe a professional footballer.
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{{Frontpage
|isbn= B09NDJ77LM0861541774|title=Me and My ShadowA Nye of Pheasants|author=Deborah StoneSteve Burrows
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary= ''What happens when someone is pushed too far and they begin to lose their grip on reality? How would you cope if you felt that no one loved you? And how far would you go to be happy? Accompany Rachel as she tries to shake off the shadows of her past and attempts to repair decades worth of pain.''
 
Rachel is in a current conversation with her psychiatrist, who pushes her to recall her life from very young childhood onwards. But Rachel is combative with Doctor Blake, sometimes even contemptuous of her. You can see that it's not an easy therapeutic relationship. Rachel's recall of her life is in remarkable detail. She remembers each minor slight and each major betrayal in perfect detail with absolute and unforgiving clarity.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1529409659
|title=The Locked Room (Dr Ruth Galloway)
|author=Elly Griffiths
|rating=5
|genre=Crime
|summary=It was some time since her father had remarried but his wife was now keen to do some decorating and Dr Ruth Galloway volunteered to clear out her motherDCI Domenic Jejeune's belongings. She was intrigued by the discovery of close friend and former colleague, Danny Maik, has taken a picture of her own house: it was short holiday in Singapore to meet up with an old photograph, taken in misty conditions and on the back it said 'dawn 1963'ally, some years before Ruth was bornGuy Trueman. It Maik was involved in a street brawl - he would later maintain that he was before her parents were marriedfacing a man armed with a knife - and he killed a Ghurka. When she returned Initially, he faced a charge of manslaughter but evidence came to Norfolk she was determined light that suggested that he might have planned to find out what was behind the photograph but Covid intervened and murder the country was in lockdownman. Ruth and Kate are restricted to Now he could be facing the cottage with Ruth attempting to home school Kate and continue with her university teaching dutiesdeath penalty. The good thing was meeting Zoe, the new tenant Domenic Jejeune can do nothing to help as any interference from next door whom they got to know whilst clapping for carersanother police force could provoke a diplomatic incident and wouldn't help Danny at all.
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1847941834Alexander McCall Smith|title=Atomic Habits|author=James ClearThe Perfect Passion Company
|rating=4.5
|genre=LifestyleGeneral Fiction|summary=I've said this before but there are some books that you seek outThe Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, some books that you stumble across run by Ness and some books that drop into your life because you really MUST read themoperating as an alternative to all the online apps in providing a more personal, liketailored service. Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the business, right now! as Ness is planning to take a trip to Canada to get away for a while. ''Atomic Habits'' Katie is coming out of a break up with a bad boyfriend, and so jumps at the chance to come home to Edinburgh. is in And so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, thanks to 44 Scotland Street and the last categoryIsabel Dalhousie novels, but with some new characters who quickly begin to charm. Katie 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, to lend a hand…|isbn=1846976596
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=B09MSC981W0811771741|title=The Woke IliadInstaKnits for Baby|author=George BoreasMelissa Leapman
|rating=4
|genre=General FictionCrafts|summary=Helen is Melissa Leapman's ''InstaKnits for Baby'' gives us a popular activistcollection of knits from toys to blankets. Or should we call her a popular influencer? Or perhaps a popular franchise owner? Anyway Some will be quick knits - others are of the 'long, Helen is so popular that cosy afternoons in front of the United States government has made her its Ambassador of Wokefire' variety. Helen runs all sorts of initiatives on behalf of The projects are divided by the governmenttime they'll take to complete - less than five hours, five to ten hours, including ten to twenty hours and more than twenty hours. All the Shaming Conference projects are attractive, modern and the Permissible Entertainment Committee useable. I perhaps show my age when I wonder about 'social-media- worthy projects'but that'for indoctrinating and legislating against summer fun for any who still knew how to have it''s me being picky. Ouch!
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=B09D95TRKZDean Koontz|title=The Wedding Murders|author=Sarah LinleyBad Weather Friend
|rating=4.5
|genre=ThrillersParanormal|summary=Libby Steele was hoping to get Benny is having a permanent job with the newspaper and the case she was covering was her big chance. It was even more important to her than the celebrity wedding she was to attend the following terrifically bad day with her ex-rock star boyfriend, Matthew. She was leaving her seven-year-old sonHe loses his job, Patrick with her sister, Emmahe loses his fiancee, and heading off to a grand manor his house hotel in the North Yorkshire countrysidegets trashed. Daniel AcroydOh, television presenter and former member of the rock band was marrying Vicky someone has delivered a really weird, disturbing coffin-sized object to his home, and Libby suspected it's possible that the wedding wasn't ''quite'' as high-profile as had been suggested as there was no ban on photos whoever or phones.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1838226834|title=Carried Away With the Carnival|author=Ed Boxall|rating=4|genre=For Sharing|summary=It whatever was one of those memories we treasure from our childhoods: an outing with our grandparents. They're there to undo all inside is the good thing that parents dohas trashed his house! The thing is, so Benny is the trips out were always so much funvery last person to deserve all this bad luck. He is a nice person. A young boy was going really nice person. So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the delivery to the carnival with his Grandadhouse is a new friend, a bad weather friend called Spike, who told has been sent to help him: since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a good person. Spike is going to take care of Benny, and will certainly take care of Benny''It'll be brilliants enemies, if he, just rememberBenny, donand Harper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny't let go of my hands wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are.''|isbn=1662500491
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1529135362Adam Stower|title=The Long Weekend|author=Gilly MacmillanMurray and Bun
|rating=4.5
|genre=ThrillersConfident Readers |summary=It was Murray is supposed to be a long drive to the weekend retreat in Northumbriahumble, right up near the Scottish borders tidy and to make it worse the three husbands had all - for friendly cat, one reason or another - had who is able to delay making sleep and eat and eat and sleep and, well, whatever takes his fancy next of the trip until the Saturday morningtwo. Jane and Ruth had known each other for But he's a long time but Emily was bad magician's cat, so his favourite bun has been turned into a bit of an outsider. She hyperactive sticky rabbit called Bun, and Paul had married only relatively recently and she was ten years younger than the other two women. The friendship of catflap they both use can chuck them out, not into the group went regular back to school days. Paul had coached rugby at the school where Markgarden, Toby but into a world of frightening adventure and Rob were pupilswhiffs. Mark had married JaneThis time round it drops them into a Viking land, and Toby where a troll hunter is Ruthexpected – well, one much bigger than Murray was, to be honest, but he's husband. And Rob? Well, Robturned up and he's dead.ll have to do…|isbn=0008561249
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=gareth_steelB0C47LV1PC|title=Never Work With AnimalsFragility|author=Gareth SteelMosby Woods
|rating=4
|genre=Animals and WildlifeLiterary Fiction|summary=I don't often begin my reviews with Can you make a warning but with ''Never Work With AnimalsYo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, is the question should you make it seems to be appropriate. Stories of a vet's life have proved popular since ''All Creatures Great and Small'' but ''Never Work With Animals'' ? Or is definitely not the companion volume question if you've been looking did, would it land? The catch is that the answer forboth could well be. As a TV show the author would argue that ... no. ''All CreaturesFragility'' lacked realism, is set as do other similar programmes. Gareth Steel says that the book is not suitable for younger readers and - after reading - I agree with him. He says that he's written it to inform and provoke thoughtcity of Portland, particularly amongst aspiring vets. It deals with some uncomfortable and distressing issues but it doesn't lack sensitivityOregon, although there are occasions when you would be best choosing between reading and eating.cautiously begins to emerge from the restrictions imposed during the covid pandemic
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=17876348841529431735|title=The HerdWinter Visitor|author=Emily EdwardsJames Henry|rating=54|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=Our story opens in December 2019, before most of us had even heard of Covid or realised that whether or not we should be vaccinated would come to be a major issue. WeIt're in Farley County Court, where Elizabeth s February 1991 and Jack Chamberlain are facing Bryony and Ash Kohli. As they were best friends until just a few months ago we know that whatever has happened Essex is major and thatbitingly cold, regardless of which made Bruce Hopkins' return all the outcome, this is not going to work out well for anyonemore surprising.}}{{Frontpage|author=Annabel Abbs|title=The Language of Food|rating=5|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=Eliza Acton is a poet who has never had He'd been exiled on the slightest inclination to boil an egg. When tasked with writing Costa del Sol as a cookery book, she recruits Ann Kirby, wanted drug smuggler for a local woman with a troubled home life. Together, they test, craft, refine and reshape the world of domestic cookery, reinventing the recipe book and changing the face of cookery writing forever.|isbn=1398502227}}{{Frontpage|author=Louie Stowell|title=Loki: A Bad God's Guide to Being Good|rating=4.5|genre=Confident Readers|summary=Meet Lokidecade. The trickster god return has got into trouble again, so the other gods have decided therecome about because he's only one thing for it – he must be banished. And transformed – for Loki is spending had a month both in exile and in the physical form of a middleletter from his ex-school kid here on Earth. Hewife, saying that she's guarded by a giant ill and a god in disguise as his parents, and Thor has come along as well, hasn't long to be the more suave, more popular and more successful brother of the twolive. Loki has a month It's hard to redeem his reputationfeel any sympathy when Hopkins is abducted, and get stripped to his moral compass pointing the right way again, or else, underwear and sent to prove it he has to write a watery grave in the text we read in boot of a sentient notebook, that is able to cry foul of his lies, and judge his progressstolen Ford Sierra. But Loki is the kind of god who insists he can do anything, so surviving Is it a warning from a bit more virtuously for Spanish gang or a month is going problem closer to be a walk in the park...righthome?|isbn=1406399752
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0008454442Alex Bell and Tim McDonagh|title=A Flicker in the Dark|author=Stacy WillinghamThe Glorious Race of Magical Beasts
|rating=4
|genre=Thrillers
|summary=It's May 2019 and Dr Chloe Davis, a medical psychologist, is completing a session with a new patient. Lacey is suffering mentally but Chloe has hopes of getting her through the trauma. You see, Chloe knows what it's like to have a traumatic childhood. Her father is Richard Davis, the man who murdered six girls some twenty years ago. Their bodies have never been found but Chloe found some jewellery belonging to the girls - trophies taken from their bodies - tucked away in a cupboard at home and she and her mother handed it to the police. Dick Davis is in the Louisiana State Penitentiary and Chloie has had nothing to do with him for the last twenty years. Her mother is in a care home.
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{{Frontpage
|author=Christopher Edge
|title=Escape Room
|rating=3
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=I've seen junior variants of the 'Choose Your Own Adventure' format cover escape rooms Eli is a busy lad by day an apprentice in the process by which a character or characters wondrous library we start by being trapped visiting with him, and in the evening a specific location, helper at the dessert cafe his gran owns and have to solve problems in order to get their way outruns. What I've not done (alongside experience one for myself Eli lives with his lovely gran, too – for that would require actual friends) there is seen a prose book describing people generation missing in such an adventure, with the regular second person narrative replaced by the firstfamily. Here A few short years ago, Ami and four other tweenagersEli's parents were both lost to the titular race, a globe-trotting adventure where all new entrants have to each other and booked into navigate the world in the game without any company of their friends, are a team magical beast. This has made the race anathema to the pair starting out but when a bad incident at the game's main officeseatery leads to a confession from gran, Eli knows his only hope is to dare to enter what he most hates, where they're told they and their quest for The Answer are a world-changer. But could watching people engage with such a pastime, despite the ramped-up threat levels, change much in sole aim the world prize of literature?magic at the end – the only thing to possibly save his gran.|isbn=17880079640571382231
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