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'''Read [[Forthcoming Publications|reviews of books about to be published]].
{{Frontpage
|author=Hannah Gold and Levi PinfoldSylvie Cathrall|title=Finding BearA Letter to the Luminous Deep|rating=4.5|genre=Confident ReadersScience Fiction|summary=[[The Last Bear by Hannah Gold|Last time]], April had been on Bear Island, a lot further north There are few greater joys than many people would venture, and finding a ridiculously unexpected but delightful friendship with book which lives up to a polar bear – that she called Bearcompelling premise. Back home, things on the domestic and family front are a bit advanced, but not perfect for her, and so can easily be ignored when word comes through from the islands Bear was last left on. For a bear doing very Bear-y things has been shot and wounded. Desperate to make sure he's OK, she and her father return to the Arctic and hope that in a world And this is one of very white and very dangerous things, she can find one specific white and dangerous thing – and that the friendship can continuethem.|isbn=00085820170356522776
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=18041832100008517061|title=No ReserveDeath in a Lonely Place|author=Felix FrancisStig Abell
|rating=4
|genre=ThrillersCrime|summary=Thirty-four-year-old Theo Jennings shouldn't have been on the rostrum when the colt - as yet unnamed - came up for auction, but Peter RadwayFormer Metropolitan Police detective, the chairmanJake Johnson, hadn't arrived, so he continued has settled into his sessionrustic life at Little Sky. To say that he was shocked when There’s perhaps a little uncertainty about the bidding reached three million pounds future of his life with his vet girlfriend, Livia and her daughter Diana, as moving in together would be an understatement. A lovely animal mean a lot of compromise: does Jake give up his off- but three million pounds? Two men had been bidding against each other. Brian Kitman grid and Elliot 'Mitch' Mitchell were well-known and respected relaxing life to move in with Livia or does Livia move to Little Sky despite her reservations about whether or not this is the racing industry. future she wants for herself and her daughter? Jennings was For the moment they’re enjoying life in one of the cubicles in present and putting the toilets when future on the two men came back burner.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1786482126|title=The Janus Stone (Dr Ruth Galloway)|author=Elly Griffiths|rating=4.5|genre=Crime|summary=Builders were demolishing an old house in and their conversation revealed that Norwich - the horse had been deliberately bid up site was going to that figurehold 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. Both were happy 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 had insurance in placespent together some three months ago. The following morningHer condition will be obvious before long, the horse was dead in its stallnot least because Ruth is prone to sudden bouts of sickness.
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|authorisbn=Sarah Wilson0008551324|title=This One Wild and Precious Life: the path back to connection in a fractured worldThe Devil You Know (D S Max Craigie)|author=Neil Lancaster|rating=34.5|genre= LifestyleCrime|summary= My favourite Mary Oliver line It's unusual for anyone from the Hardie family to approach the police. Neither side likes or has any respect for the other. But Davie Hardie is the one struggling in which she asks ''What is it you plan to do with your one wild prison and precious life?he'' I get s prepared to love that line so much because my answer tell the police where the body of a missing person is ''buried and who was responsible for her death. This! Precisely thisperson, he promises, is someone big and it will be worth the police doing what he wants.'' I'm lucky enough And what he wants is to be living my one wild transferred to an open prison to serve the remainder of his sentence and precious life the way I want toget an early parole date. Sarah Wilson Not much to ask, is equally lucky. it? In her book that takes Oliver's words as her title (though I canThe new Deputy Police Constable doesn't see that think so and she acknowledges the source) she pushes us 's even prepared to think about whether we really ''are'' living do the life we want – the best life other thing that Hardie demanded - make certain that we could be living. Her answer DS Max Craigie and anyone who works with him is an unequivocal ''no, we are not''. Don't care kept well away from what you're doing, she thinks you (we, I) could be doing more…And she's effing furious about the fact that we are nothappening.|isbn=1785633848
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=18399484930008405026|title=A World of DogsStranger in the Family (Maeve Kerrigan 11)|author=Carlie Sorosiak and Luisa UribeJane Casey
|rating=5
|genre=Children's Non-FictionCrime|summary=In the interests of full disclosure, I must tell you that IIt'm a sucker for dogss sixteen years since nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her bed one summer night. In nearly eight decades, I've She was never met one I didn't trust found and I've loved most of them. I wish I felt the same about human beingsinvestigation ground to a halt. SoNow, her mother, any book about dogsHelena, I'm going to sit down and devourher father are dead in their bed. Then IInitially, it looks like a straightforward murder/suicide but there'm going to go back s something about the positioning of the bodies that makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and read it properlyher boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. And so What looked as though it was with ''A World of Dogs'', with ninetygoing to be an open-six pages devoted entirely to my fourand-legged friendsshut case is now a complex double murder. Author Carlie Sorosiak found herself Kerrigan is convinced that the accidental owner of an American Dingo - sheexplanation lies in Rosalie's disappearance: others (such as Derwent's learned quite a lot about dogs since thenboss, Una Burt) are less convinced.
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=14059516800571379877|title=The Safe HouseKellerby Code|author=Cameron WardJonny Sweet|rating=43.5|genre=ThrillersCrime|summary=Jess Walker accepted an offer (OKEdward Jevons is a working-class young man, actually she was gently nudged into it by her friendobsessed with his upper-class friends, Rupert) to caretake a luxury property in the Australian outback for Robert and Stanza. Robert's a couple of monthstheatre director. After the problems sheHe'd had at works also self-obsessed, demanding, it seemed like just the break she neededhandsome and entitled and uses Edward to run errands for him. She was no longer a data analyst for the Metropolitan police Edward has been in London: she was Jess who was returning to the country of her birth love with Stanza since their university days - and in need of the space he's drunkenly confided how he feels to get over the traumatic end of her relationship with CharlesRobert. A few weeks Most men in Robert's position would stay away from Stanza or tell Edward that a relationship had begun between them but he's not like most men: Edward is left to stumble upon the Otway Ranges two of them kissing in Victoria sounded like just the ticketa dark passageway.
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{{Frontpage
|author=Rachel HarrisonJo Callaghan|title=Bad DollsLeave No Trace
|rating=4
|genre=Short StoriesCrime|summary=It's been some time since I've read any horror. I had When a couple man is found crucified on the top of misspent teen years reading Stephen Kinga hill in Nuneaton, borrowing the books from a boy I fancied at school and scaring myself half silly with them DCS Kat Frank finds herself assigned to the point that I couldn't shut my bedroom curtains at night for fear of case alongside her sidekick, the vampires outside! Don't worry - this short story collection isn't like that! AI detective Lock. It doesn't have those jump scaress their first live case together, and I didn't have to read it during daylight hours only! having previously been very successful with several cold cases. But it when there is creepya second body found crucified a few days later, Kat is suddenly struggling with a potential serial killer and I found most a very high profile case that draws a lot of that feeling came from unwanted attention to their AI Future Policing project. Will they be able to solve the fact that these are stories about women, living normal lives, and that at least case in parttime, or will Kat find herself taken off the horrors arises from very normal situations such as a breakupcase and, trying a new dieting apppotentially, going to a hen party and out of a coping with grief.career?|isbn=1803363932139851120X
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=13941595441399613073|title=Recycling for DummiesMoral Injuries|author=Sarah WinklerChristie Watson|rating=4.5|genre=LifestyleThrillers|summary=''Recycling one ton Olivia, Laura and Anjali met on the first day of plastic can save up to 16.3 barrels medical school and their friendship would keep them inseparable for a quarter of oila century.'' ''Recycling one ton of paper can save 17 trees from being cut down.'' If Olivia is ruthlessly ambitious, which is a bonus when you send an apple core aim to landfill, it will take between 6 months and 2 years to decomposebe a cardiothoracic surgeon. A glass bottle will take up to 1 million years. As Laura is a just-post-WWII baby, I faced perfectionist and a dilemma: reducing, reusing and recycling trauma doctor. Anjali is part the free spirit of my DNAthe group and she becomes a GP. NEVER throw away anything that might When we first meet them they're at a drug and alcohol-fuelled party and it'possiblys going to end in tragedy. We don'' come in handy now t know who suffered the tragedy or in the futureconsequences. NEVER buy anything if you can cobble together something Twenty-five years later there will be an eerily similar event that would serve will impact the purposethree friends. Almost everything can be used one more This time and any purchase must pass the test of 'Is this absolutely essential?' On the other hand, I suspected I was guilty of wishcycling: assuming that something must be recyclable (toothpaste tubes - Iit'm looking at you) and dropping it in the kerbside bin. Yes, I could go searching on the internet - and get conflicting advice - but what I needed was a recycling bibles their teenage children who are involved.s
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Lauren St John0241636604|title=Finding WonderThe Trading Game: A Confession|author=Gary Stevenson|rating=4.5|genre=Confident ReadersAutobiography|summary=RooIf you were to bring up an image of a city banker in your mind, you's life has become almost impossibly difficultre unlikely to think of someone like Gary Stevenson. Her mum died when she A hoodie and jeans replaces the pin-stripe suit and his background is the East End, where he was youngfamiliar with violence, poverty and now she finds herself awoken in the middle of the night by the police banging on her door to tell her that her dad has dropped dead injustice. There was no posh public school on his way CV - but he had been to the corner shop to buy a lottery ticketLondon School of Economics. When asked what other family she Stevenson is bright - extremely bright - and he has, she a facility with numbers which most of us can only name her aunt, Joni, who she knows her dad didn't think very highly ofenvy. He also realised that most rich people expect poor people to be stupid. But she has no one elseIt was his ability at what was, essentially, and so off she goes to live a card game which got him an internship with her unreliable auntCitibank. Things continue to get worse for RooEventually, this turned into permanent employment as when she and Joni leave London in Joni's old campervan, it breaks down in the middle of nowhere and then bursts into flames! Poor Roo!|isbn=0571376169a trader.
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=14483097431035021803|title=The Devil Stone (DCI Christine Caplan)Antique Hunter's Guide to Murder|author=Caro RamsayC L Miller|rating=43.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=In It's twenty years since Freya Lockwood has been back to the English country village where she grew up. She's back now because of Cronchie on a request for help from her beloved aunt, Carole. Freya's former mentor and Carole's close friend, Arthur Crockleford, is dead and the West coast of Scotlandcircumstances seem suspicious, five members of a wealthy family are found murderedto say the least. The only item missing from Arthur was the home is reason why Freya had not been back to the Devil Stonevillage: myth says that if Arthur, she feels, let her down badly. Even though they were in business together as antique hunters, she has not felt able to be near the man or pursue the stone is removed from Otterburn House, death will followprofession she loved. The only suspects are known Satanists but After the split, she worked in many waysa cafe, met and married James (on the rebound from the love of her life, thatwho was murdered) and Freya and James have now divorced.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=AllTomorrowsFutureCover|title=All Tomorrow's an easy conclusion given Futures: Fictions that two of them Disrupt|author=Benjamin Greenaway and Stephen Oram (Editors)|rating=5|genre=Science Fiction|summary='discovered' Opening up new ways of thinking about the bodyshape of things to come. The Senior Investigating Office '' I've heard it said that 'technology' is DCI Bob Oswald but when he disappearswhat happens after you're eighteen. Well, DCI Christine Caplan is pulled I must confess that there have been more than a few decades of technology in my lifetime. I've kept up reasonably well with what's advantageous to me but I'shadowm left with the feeling that it' hims all getting away from me. Some of it is - frankly - quite frightening. Of course, I could research the possibilities and the probabilities and end up down rabbit holes without really understanding whether I'm reading someone who knows what they're talking about or the latest conspiracy theorist. I needed people I knew I could trust and who could deliver information in a way I could understand.
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{{Frontpage
|author= Kay ChronisterSunny Singh|title= Desert CreaturesHotel Arcadia|rating= 43.5|genre= Dystopian FictionThrillers |summary= With The Hotel Arcadia is a world luxury hotel in an unnamed city that has suddenly been violently taken over by a terrorist group. Hiding from the terrorists who are rampaging through, killing everyone on site, there is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanitySam, post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is a robotic takeoverwartime photographer and Abhi, a world devoid of water or a nuclear holocaustthe hotel manager. As Abhi continues to try to care remotely for the residents who are still alive in the hotel, this genre is he forms a way for humans bond with Sam who refuses to cathartically experience their most existential fears. ''Desert Creatures'' be cowed by Kay Chronister is a new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many events, 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 fears that exist for humanity today. It is a shocking novel that still manages phone, their friendship grows as Abhi tries to help her keep safe and they both wait to find hopesee if they will be rescued before they are discovered by the terrorists.|isbn=1803364998086154742X
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Christopher Fowler1529153298|title=Word MonkeyThe List of Suspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey
|rating=5
|genre=AutobiographyGeneral Fiction|summary= It's the first of August in the middle of a cool wet summer in East Anglia1979 and Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. (A woman? I decided mean, honestly...) She's not to swim at the pool in favour of going to my beach hutwhat's worrying Miv's family, though. Women have been disappearing. The weather closed inWell, rain arrivedthey've been murdered, and I decided not but to do that eitherhave 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. When I finished reading this book, I realised it was Miv's upset because (a) I wanted to finish reading this book and (b) I did not want she's overheard that her father wants to do so anywhere near my shack. No spoiler alerts, move the dust jacket tells us who Christopher Fowler family 'wasDown South' – and his first chapter tells us about his terminal diagnosis. There When you're from Yorkshire, Down South is something very strange about being made to laugh by a man who repeatedly reminds you that he is dyingfrightening, foreign place, best avoided. For Miv, the move would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, and you know he actually is at she'll do anything to prevent that point, because he does. He didShe's not worried about the dangers or that her Mum's stopped talking - to anyone.|isbn=0857529625
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=15290776991398524085|title=The Raging Storm (Two Rivers)Has Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter?|author=Ann CleevesNicci French|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=''ItCharlotte Salter was expected at her husband's fiftieth birthday party but never turned up. Her children, sons Niall, Paul and Ollie and her daughter, Etty. are all bloody peculiarworried but - strangely - her husband, isn't itAlec, Sir?'' Well yes, it isnot. Jem Rosco blew into the local pub one evening in the middle of an autumn galeShortly afterwards, stayed for about a month Etty and then turned upGreg, naked and deadfind the body of Greg's father, in a small boatDuncan Ackerley, anchored in Scully Cove close to the village of Greystone, in Devonriver. Rosco It was an easy assumption for the police to make that Duncan had the status of a national treasure: a renowned adventurer, round the world sailor murdered Charlie and all round ''celebrity'then committed suicide when he couldn't stand the guilt. I ''nearly'' said 'all-round good egg' The Salter children are not convinced but as wethere'll find out, he could be more than a s little bit close else they can do but get on with money their lives and his background isn't exactly an open bookwonder about what really happened. Where did he get the money for his first boat? How did he finance the trip?
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=B0CC9W7GLR1035906708|title=On the Beach: The Winter VisitorDiva|author=Chris Green and Jenny FiondaDaisy Goodwin|rating=4.5|genre=For SharingGeneral Fiction|summary=Kit and Teal were just beginning We tend to wonder whether it think of Maria Callas as Greek, but she was better born to be at homeGreek parents in Manhattan, bored but warmNew York, or frozen cold in December 1923 and building sand sculptures on a snowy beach only moved to Athens when a large slab of silvery ice drifted onto the shorelineshe was thirteen. On top of the ice Her original surname was a polar bear. As Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to 'Callas' to make it more manageable in the ice bumped onto the sand, the bear woke and with wobbly legs moved from the iceStates. Kit When she was all back in Athens - supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for making a run for it, but Teal knew that the bear her voice - she was hungry and gave him one apple and then another. He obviously needed to be taken home on raised under the bus and given Nazi occupation by a good meal mother who mercilessly exploited her and somewhere to sleepmade no secret of her preference for her elder sister, Jackie. What else would you do?
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{{Frontpage
|author=Claire NorthChristopher Edge|title=House of OdysseusBlack Hole Cinema Club|rating=54|genre= Literary Fiction Confident Readers|summary= Lucas and his friends are all booked in for a movie marathon at their local cinema, a place that has the nickname of ''What could matter more than love?'' The follow-up to the excellent Black Hole''Ithaca'' picks up a few months after where we left off. In the palace of Odysseus All big movie fans, with delicate care Queen Penelope continues they're looking forward to rule without her husbandlots of exciting films, who sailed to war at Troy and then by divine intervention never returned home. As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for many, many snacks! However, as the throne of the Western Islesmovie 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 even imagine. Having survived – politically and physical – But as they lurch from one film genre to the chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca's shoresnext, Queen Penelope can they figure out what on earth is going on ? Will they ever get back to the brink of a fragile peace. One that shatters however with the return of Orestes, King of Mycenaecinema, and his sister Elektra, seeking refuge.to their real lives?|isbn=03565160751839942738
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1529427045Rachel Greenlaw|title=The Girl in the Eagle's Talons|author=Karin SmirnoffCompass and Blade|rating=3.5|genre=CrimeTeens|summary=''Life has more to offer than people - prime numbers for exampleI can hear the song of the sea. The call of the deep, the answering beat in my heart.''.
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=B0CCCPJJ5BJames Sherwood Metts|title=The Last Person in the World|author=Matthew TreePlanet Storyland|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersConfident Readers|summary=Our narrator was Things have been a scholarship day boy at bit sticky for the London-based public school where he met Ralph FinnsEarthlings. It was an unusual relationship as Ralph was a boarder AI and had money automation have been proceeding apace, often replacing jobs they're paid to throw around on a Rolex watch, vintage wines do and a state-of-the-art sound systemother tasks that took time to accomplish. Both Just as they were probably quite surprised when they became almost friends beginning to get used to all this technological change and certainly more than acquaintances. Finns had no intention starting to think of going on other, new ways to Universityspend time, unlike our storyteller who had a place at Wolverton College in Wellingford, the UK's third most prestigious universityalong came an awful pandemic. Before going upLife was pretty much shut down and, he took up a loose invitation to visit Ralph at his homealong with it, Clouds Manor in West Dorsetall the many daily social interactions on which they depend so heavily.|isbn=1736128426
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{{Frontpage
|author=Dean KoontzMatthew Tree|title=The House at the End of the WorldWe'll Never Know|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersLiterary Fiction|summary=When you experience overwhelming tragedy and feel that there is no one on your sideTimothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, you can either suck it up, saddle up a drunk and ride on or you can retreat to your own private fortress on an island that sits snugly in a small chain chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of tiny dots on the map his artistic passions all failed miserably and live out your days in peace and solitudewho had endless crises of self confidence. That's what Katie thought she was doing when she shut down her old life So Tim applied himself to start afresh on Jacob's Ladder; and all would have been the aforementioned peace and solitude were it not for the pesky US Government occupying Ringrockhis studies, the neighbouring island cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and perpetrating all manner of mischief in the name of science and quite possibly bringing about the end of all mankindset himself high but achievable ambitions.|isbn=1662453159B0CVFXPGP8
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{{Frontpage
|author=T KingfisherA G Slatter|title=ThornhedgeThe Briar Book of the Dead
|rating=5
|genre=Fantasy
|summary=''You had There's a right part of me that wants to retake your placekeep 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.''
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{{Frontpage
|isbn= B0CCCVRSGX1529900360|title=Stories 2The Ghost Orchid|author=Richard F WalkerJonathan Kellerman
|rating=4
|genre=Short StoriesCrime|summary= This is Richard F WalkerIt hadn't been Lt Milo Sturgis's second volume of short storiesfault that Alex Delaware had been badly injured but he felt responsible and even after Alex recovered, Sturgis was reluctant to ask for his help on difficult cases. There are thirteen in all His assertions that there were only open-and I took something from each -shut cases which didn't need the help of thema psychologist only worked for a while. There isn Finally, it was Robin, Delaware't a single one s partner, who nudged Milo into asking for help again. She knew that the involvement was something that doesn't deserve to be among the others or brings down man she loved needed. The next case did look simple, though. Two lovers were murdered in the overall qualityswimming pool of a remote property in Bel Air. It can be tricky He was the heir to review short stories without giving too much away, so I'll just pick two an Italian shoe empire and she is married to talk about an extremely rich man and I think they give a general flavourit's not the Italian. But which of them was the primary target?
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=17876366071529395224|title=Letting the Cat Out of the Bag: The TrapSecret Life of a Vet|author=Catherine Ryan HowardSion Rowlands|rating=43.5|genre=CrimeAnimals and Wildlife|summary=It's a scene replicated all too often in the early hours of the morningSiôn Rowlands fell into veterinary science accidentally. Drunken revellers spilling out of clubs and looking for His father was a way to get home. Some are lucky GP and manage Rowlands didn't want to get one of follow in his footsteps, particularly when he considered the few taxis available. Others squash onto the night bus strain that will only go as far as one of the outlying villagesbeing on-call put on his father's life. The woman all regret When he was seventeen he took the 'taxi problem', particularly in the light opportunity of 'doing work experience with a family friend who was a vet and was convinced this was the missing women'job for him. For one young womanBefore long, the final stop on the bus leaves her a long way short of her homehe was at Liverpool University. She had intended to ring someone to come and collect her It hadn't - as with so many students - but her phone's dead. The bus had driven off before she had the chance to beg the bus driver to let her use been hisdream since he was a child. ThereIf anything, he's no option but d wanted to start walking - unsuitably clothed and in high-heeled shoesbe a professional footballer.
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=14059571740861541774|title=A Death at the PartyNye of Pheasants|author=Amy StuartSteve Burrows
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=From the first page, we know that Nadine WalshDCI Domenic Jejeune's party will not end wellclose friend and former colleague, Danny Maik, has taken a short holiday in Singapore to meet up with an old ally, Guy Trueman. The victim Maik was involved in a street brawl - he would later maintain that he was facing a man armed with a knife - is dying when we first meet him and Nadine consciously makes no effort he killed a Ghurka. Initially, he faced a charge of manslaughter but evidence came to light that suggested that he might have planned to call murder the ambulance he so desperately needsman. What we don't know is who Now he could be facing the man is or why Nadine prefers to have him diedeath penalty. I'd better give you Domenic Jejeune can do nothing to help as any interference from another police force could provoke a little more background so that you can understand whatdiplomatic incident and wouldn's happeningt help Danny at all.
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{{Frontpage
|author=Tania UnsworthAlexander McCall Smith|title=Nowhere IslandThe Perfect Passion Company
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersGeneral Fiction|summary=Meet Gil. Just twelveThe Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, he is so determined run by Ness and operating as an alternative to escape the care system – all the system that constantly puts him online apps in futureless places that are not homes – and find providing a home for himselfmore personal, tailored service. He Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the business, as Ness is en route planning to take a trip to yet another fosterer, when he jumps into an anonymous car, and lets it ride him Canada to his futureget away for a while. That future seems to be in jeopardy when someone steals his one bag Katie is coming out of belongings – but that someone lives a break up with his brother in a camp on an island between the two directions of a motorwaybad boyfriend, a place inaccessible and definitely ignored enough so jumps at the chance to come home to provide for their safety and seclusionEdinburgh. ThemAnd so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, thanks to 44 Scotland Street and a mute girl also finding a home therethe Isabel Dalhousie novels, albeit so much more successfullybut with some new characters who quickly begin to charm. Over Katie has no experience in running a few weeks we see if their oddball destinies can combinebusiness, or if this is one place where life as we would want it just would not work…|isbn=1804540080}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0008530025|title=Murder in the Family|author=Cara Hunter|rating=4.5|genre=Crime|summary=It was in December 2003 that fifteen-yearmatch-old Maura Howard came home and found the body of her stepfather, Luke Rydermaking, but Ness has full confidence in the garden of their West London home. He had an injury on the back of his head which could have happened if he'd slipped down the steps but the vicious beating his face had taken was obviously deliberate. Twenty years laterher abilities, no one has been charged with his murder and itthere's now the subject of ''Infamous''always her very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, a true-crime show. A group of experts has been brought together to review the evidence and to take the investigation further. More to the pointWilliam, they're going to do this live on camera, episode by episode. There's no dump of the whole box set - and no shortage of cliffhangers. It's compelling viewing.lend a hand…|isbn=1846976596
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Judith Eagle0811771741|title=The Stolen SongbirdInstaKnits for Baby|author=Melissa Leapman
|rating=4
|genre=Confident ReadersCrafts|summary=CaroMelissa Leapman's mother, ''InstaKnits for Baby'' gives us a world-famous whistler, has failed collection of knits from toys to return home from her recent work trip abroad and is now missingblankets. Her other motherSome will be quick knits - others are of the 'long, Ronnie, is having to go up North to take care cosy afternoons in front of her sister who is unwellthe fire' variety. So who is going The projects are divided by the time they'll take to look after Caro? Sent complete - less than five hours, five to stay with Gamten hours, someone Caro has heard her mother despises, she feels frustrated ten to twenty hours and confused and worriedmore than twenty hours. All her summer holiday plans of building herself some equipment to practise her gymnastics the projects are brought to a halt whilst she is stuck inside this staid old Victorian lady's houseattractive, along with an orphan boy, Albie, who is living there toomodern and useable. But she soon finds herself caught up in a mystery, as she discovers a painting of a bird hidden away inside her mumI perhaps show my age when I wonder about 'social-media-worthy projects' but that's old suitcase, and all across London a fearsome gang called the Snakes are thieving artworks and terrorising peopleme being picky. Is the painting somehow linked to the gang? And what has happened to Caro's mother? Is she somehow involved in the mystery too?|isbn=0571363148
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|isbnauthor=1529195977Dean Koontz|title=None of this is True|author=Lisa JewellThe Bad Weather Friend|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersParanormal|summary=On her 45th birthdayBenny is having a terrifically bad day. He loses his job, Alix Summer celebrated with a crowd of friends in the Landsdown pub on Salisbury Road when she encountered Josie Fairhe loses his fiancee, and his house gets trashed. SheOh, tooand someone has delivered a really weird, was out celebrating her 45th birthdaydisturbing coffin-sized object to his home, only she and it's possible that whoever or whatever was just with her husbandinside is the thing that has trashed his house! The thing is, WalterBenny is the very last person to deserve all this bad luck. He is a nice person. It A really nice person. So fortunately for Benny it turns out that not only are Alix and Josie birthday twinsthe delivery to his house is a new friend, a bad weather friend called Spike, they were both born in St Mary's hospitalwho has been sent to help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a good person. That's where the similarities end, though: Alix, with her husband, Nathan, are in the midst Spike is going to take care of a joyfulBenny, monied group and will certainly take care of friends and whilst theyBenny're not ''exactly'' rowdys enemies, they're enjoying themselves. Josieif he, on the other handBenny, holds her handbag close to her tummy and you get the sense that Walter's not too happy. He's not used to spending this much money on Harper (a meal - but it is Josiewaitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's birthday after allwild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are.|isbn=1662500491
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|isbn=1803136383B0C47LV1PC|title=Tin SoldiersFragility|author=David ChadwickMosby Woods|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersLiterary Fiction|summary= Wat Tyler has returned from fighting in Vietnam under something of Can you make a cloud. What actually happened out there ''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, is gossiped about and nobody the question should you make it? Or is sure exactly what took placethe question if you did, but an act of heroism leading to a rare battlefield commission followed by rank cowardice and disgrace seems to would it land? The catch is that the answer for both could well be the consensus. Wat himself ... no. ''Fragility'' is keeping his cards close set as the city of Portland, Oregon, cautiously begins to his chest, as he always does. emerge from the restrictions imposed during the covid pandemic
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|isbn=B0C7J9D21B1529431735|title=A Captive in Algiers (Muhammed Amalfi Mysteries)The Winter Visitor|author=A J LewisJames Henry|rating=4.5|genre=Historical FictionCrime|summary=When we first meet our hero, his name is Ettore and he lives at The House of Beautiful Swallows. Idyllic as this might sound, itIt's a bordello February 1991 and EttoreEssex is bitingly cold, which made Bruce Hopkins's mother died when he was bornreturn all the more surprising. He's not d been short of mothers, though - but exiled on the Costa del Sol as a wanted drug smuggler for someone of a decade. The return has come about because he's had a letter from his background in lateex-eighteenth-century Amalfiwife, itsaying that she's difficult ill and hasn't long to obtain decent employmentlive. The stint working with It's hard to feel any sympathy when Hopkins is abducted, stripped to his underwear and sent to a watery grave in the preparation boot of anchovies didn't work out and bastards are considered bad luck on fishing boatsa stolen Ford Sierra. Ettore was nothing if not resourceful - and determined - and Is it was not long before he had a successful business as warning from a Spanish gang or a guide for visitors. He was even saving some money.problem closer to home?
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|author=Dean KoontzAlex Bell and Tim McDonagh|title=After DeathThe Glorious Race of Magical Beasts|rating=34|genre=General FictionConfident Readers|summary= Michael Mace, Head of Security, at a top secret biological research facility, Eli is among 55 people who die when a virus is released busy lad – by day an apprentice in a bio-hazard accident. Finding himself in a makeshift mortuarythe wondrous library we start by visiting with him, covered and in plastic, he has the evening a sense that something very, very bad has happened to him – and only him – as he sits up and looks around helper at the shrouded bodies of dessert cafe his dead friends gran owns and former colleaguesruns. As he recovers Eli lives with his senseslovely gran, he realises that too – for there is something different about him; he can ''feel'' everythinga generation missing in the family. A few short years ago, Eli''Everything''s parents were both lost to the titular race, a globe-trotting adventure where all entrants have to navigate the world in the company of a magical beast. Michael isn't ''Michael'' anymoreThis has made the race anathema to the pair – but when a 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 the sole aim the prize of magic at the end – the only thing to possibly save his gran.|isbn=16625004670571382231
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