Difference between revisions of "Forthcoming Publications"

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=='''22 JULY'''==
+
=='''21 MARCH'''==
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Claire North
+
|author=Sunny Singh
|title=Notes from the Burning Age
+
|title=Hotel Arcadia
|rating=4
+
|rating=3.5
|genre=Science Fiction
+
|genre=Thrillers
|summary=At its core ''Notes From the Burning Age'' by Claire North is a spy thriller, with as many double crosses, interrogations and night time escapes as Le Carre or Fleming. However, as with the best novels, it wears many masks and its most affecting one is that of a new and timely genre, cli-fi, or climate change fiction. North's novel tells of a world devastated by climate change where humans have been forced to start anew and live alongside nature without any of the modern and corrupting "luxuries" (read: fossil fuels, weapons of mass destruction, intensive farming). There is a growing unhappiness with this limiting world, and one group, the Brotherhood, aims to master these processes no matter the cost to the Earth.
+
|summary=The Hotel Arcadia is a 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 Sam, a wartime photographer and Abhi, the hotel manager. As Abhi continues to try to care remotely for the residents who are still alive in the hotel, he forms a bond with Sam who refuses to be cowed by 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 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 terrorists.
|isbn=0356514757
+
|isbn=086154742X
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
=='''25 APRIL'''==
=='''3 AUGUST'''==
 
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Darren Shan
+
|author=Sylvie Cathrall
|title=Archibald Lox and the Slides of Bon Repell: Archibald Lox series, Volume 2, book 2 of 3
+
|title=A Letter to the Luminous Deep
|rating=4.5
+
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers
+
|genre=Science Fiction
|summary=So. Having done the impossible and unpicked the lock to the Forgotten Crypt, from which the Departed communicate with the Merge, Archie now has ''grop'' to think about. But before that, soirees. Soirees! Archie, much to Inez's amusement, doesn't even know what one of those is. But he manages to come through the fancy party unscathed, even after an uncomfortable encounter with Kurtis, whose fledgling romance with Inez was crushed in the first volume of this series. 
+
|summary= There are few greater joys than a book which lives up to a compelling premise. And this is one of them.
|isbn=B093J9TF73
+
|isbn= 0356522776
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
=='''9 MAY'''==
=='''5 AUGUST'''==
 
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=John Boyne
+
|author=Tom Percival
|title=The Echo Chamber
+
|title=The Wrong Shoes
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
 
|summary=Meet George Cleverley. He is self-defined as "one of the few television personalities over the age of fifty without a criminal record". He starts this book a bit worried when his mistress tells him she's carrying his child, but then his author wife is getting her kicks with the Ukrainian partner "Strictly Come Dancing" paired her with. They have three children, who are a sad-sack with absolutely no social skills whatsoever, a girl who hangs around with a virtue-signalling, keyboard warrior "wokester" who wants to save the world's homeless with out-of-date food, and a fit young lad doing the gay hustle thing. Add in a few other characters – therapists, lawyers, random transgender types – that all have two very different connections to his life, and you have something that suggests an almost farcical approach to the modern world. What suggests the farcical approach even more, however, is the fact this is bloody funny.
 
|isbn=0857526219
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
|author=Louise Candlish
 
|title=The Heights
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Thrillers
 
|summary=Ellen doesn't expect to see Kieran that day. She's on site, visiting a client for a lighting consultation when she spies him in a building across the way. There are lots of things, lots of people, you might see when you look out across London, but this isn't one Ellen expected that day or in fact any other day. Why? Because Kieran has been dead for over two years, and Ellen knows this for a fact, because she had a hand in his murder.
 
|isbn=1471183483
 
}}
 
 
=='''19 AUGUST'''==
 
{{Frontpage
 
|author=Doug Johnstone
 
|title=The Great Silence
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Crime
 
|summary=For those who, like me, haven't come across the Skelfs before, I'll risk a quick synopsis of who's who – although Johnstone does a good job of bringing the backstory in without being heavy handed about it. Skelf isn't some fantastic creature, though it sounds as though it ought to be, it is merely the surname of a family of undertakers. Undertakers and private investigators. Dorothy is the matriarch – Californian by birth and instinct, she married a scot and ended up helping to run the Edinburgh undertaking firm that had been in the family for generations. Recently widowed and now involved with a black Swedish police officer. Swedish by nationality. Scottish police. Daughter Jenny, 46, is haunted by her still-living husband – a violent escaped prisoner. And grand-daughter is about to graduate with a first-class physics degree and join the academic staff next term.
 
|isbn=1913193837
 
}}
 
 
=='''2 SEPTEMBER'''==
 
{{Frontpage
 
|author=Kiran Millwood Hargrave and Tom de Freston
 
|title=Julia and the Shark
 
|rating=4
 
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Julia, our pre-teen heroine, has been packed off with her parents and their cat from the family home in SW England to be lighthousekeepers for a summer, in the far NE of the Scottish islandsHere be Vikings, that kind of Scottish islandDad is going to be automating the lantern, which is his specialist thing, while mum will be leaving her career in algae behind to hunt the elusive Greenland shark.  And Julia, well, she will be homesick and alone – until she suddenly finds company one night.
+
|summary=Will's life is difficult, in a multitude of ways.  He is bullied because he has 'the wrong shoes', he has the wrong shoes because his dad can't work and doesn't have enough money for even the most basic of things like food, and his dad can't work because he lost his job at the college, was working a cash-in-hand job on a building site and had an accident.  Throw into that mix the fact that his mum and dad are separated, and Will's life seems bleak in every directionAnd yet, he still has a tiny amount of hopeHe is good at art, and clings to the moments of joy when he is drawing, that feel like a light at the end of a long, dark tunnel.
|isbn=1510107789
+
|isbn=1398527122
 
}}
 
}}
 +
=='''13 JUNE'''==
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Ian Mark and Louis Ghibault
+
|isbn=1635866847
|title=Monster Hunting For Beginners
+
|title=The Lavender Companion
 +
|author=Jessica Dunham and Terry Barlin Vesci
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
+
|genre=Lifestyle
|summary=Meet Jack. Now Jack knows very little about being fearless and nimble and quick, for he's a slight boy, and although he wants for danger and peril and interesting things his dad refuses to let him out of his sight. That's because Jack's mother knew all about monsters, and look what happened to her – she died. Luckily or unluckily then, depending on your point of view, a giant ogre will threaten his aunt when Jack's father also goes AWOL, Jack will fluke the ogre's death, a dwarfish wizard-type will make him an apprentice monster hunter, and he'll be given a book that tells him all he needs to know about the perils he always wanted closer contact with. The book's name? ''Monster Hunting for Beginners''...
+
|summary=It's strange, the things that make you ''immediately'' feel that this is the book for you.  Before I started reading ''The Lavender Companion'', I visited the author's [https://www.pinelavenderfarm.com/ website] and there's a picture of a slice of chocolate cake on the homepage. I don't eat cakes and desserts - but I wanted that cake viscerally. (There's a recipe in the book, which I'm avoiding with some difficulty!!) Then I started reading the book and I was told to make a mess of it. Notes in the margins are sanctioned. You get to fold down the corners of pages. You suspect that smears of butter would not be a problem. I ''loved'' this book already.
|isbn=0755501942
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
|author=Emma Carroll
 
|title=The Week at World's End
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|summary=First, the title. We're in World's End Close, a mediocre set of houses, where Stevie (Vie to her friends) finds fun only with the family dog and with the boy over the road. But we could also be at World's End, because something taking a great chunk of the fun away is the fact that the Cuban Missile Crisis is kicking off. The Soviet boats are getting blockaded as America tries to reduce the risk of nuclear missiles offshore, and not much else is able to make the news. That said, Vie has news of her own – Anna, a secretive young woman hiding in their coal shed. Anna has, in no short time, taken a strong interest in the American airforce base behind the Close, said she'd locate something she wanted and leave, failed to leave, and implied her life was at risk. But surely this bit of intrigue has got nothing to do with what the Cold War is doing miles away?
 
|isbn=0571364438
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
|author= Angharad Walker
 
|title= The Ash House
 
|rating= 5
 
|genre= Confident Readers
 
|summary= A new boy arrives at The Ash House. He doesn't know his name, or why he is there but he is used to the system, used to different places and different faces. He meets Dom who names him Sol and sets out to teach him the rules of The Ash House. These rules centre on a variety of Nicenesses set out by the absent Headmaster. All children must remember their Niceness and complete their chores, working as a hive in the smouldering shadows of The Ash House. But soon their easy peace is shattered by the arrival of the Doctor. By the end of the story, lives will be changed forever and The Ash House will never be the same again.
 
|isbn=1912626977
 
}}
 
 
 
=='''7 OCTOBER'''==
 
{{Frontpage
 
|author=John Gwynne
 
|title=The Shadow Of The Gods
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Fantasy
 
|summary=The Shadow Of The Gods is the first installment of the Bloodsworn Saga, set in the era of the Vikings in the shadow of Ragnarok, when the Gods have battled and their bones lie scattered for all to see. This story is the ultimate in High Fantasy, and John Gwynne certainly does justice to the genre, with mythical creatures, archaic language and battles galore. This is a thick book, with an intricate plot and fascinating characters that are woven together to create a wonderfully realistic and gritty world in which our heroes must do battle.
 
|isbn=0356514218
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
|author=Peter Papathanasiou
 
|title=The Stoning
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Thrillers
 
|summary=In a town sleazy enough to make sh*tholes elsewhere look glamorous in comparison, a teacher has been transported across town at night in a shopping trolley, and she's been taped to a tree and she's had rocks bowled at her as if she were the world's tallest cricket stumps. When she's discovered by the town gossip everyone, including the local cops, are quite confident the culprit has come from the immigrant detention centre the place is reluctantly home to. An arson attack on that shows the feeling – and it's only fair, is the general opinion, for the occupants are often setting their own fires in protest at their conditions. Cue the arrival of George Manolis, a higher rank from the city, to sort everything out. Because such an aggrieved, insular community is really going to welcome a Greek-heritaged city boy laying down the law...
 
|isbn=1529416973
 
}}
 
 
 
=='''19 OCTOBER'''==
 
{{Frontpage
 
|author=Claire McGowan
 
|title=I Know You
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Thrillers
 
|summary=''Then:'' Casey returns from a walk with the baby, Carson, and comes across three bodies, almost a whole family taken down.
 
 
 
''Now:'' Rachel is out for a walk with her dog, Brandy, when she comes across a body in the woods.
 
 
 
|isbn=1542019974
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
 
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You can work your way through the newest review, category by category, starting [[Newest Animals and Wildlife Reviews|here]].
 
You can work your way through the newest review, category by category, starting [[Newest Animals and Wildlife Reviews|here]].

Latest revision as of 12:51, 14 March 2024

21 MARCH

086154742X.jpg

Review of

Hotel Arcadia by Sunny Singh

3.5star.jpg Thrillers

The Hotel Arcadia is a 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 Sam, a wartime photographer and Abhi, the hotel manager. As Abhi continues to try to care remotely for the residents who are still alive in the hotel, he forms a bond with Sam who refuses to be cowed by 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 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 terrorists. Full Review

25 APRIL

0356522776.jpg

Review of

A Letter to the Luminous Deep by Sylvie Cathrall

5star.jpg Science Fiction

There are few greater joys than a book which lives up to a compelling premise. And this is one of them. Full Review

9 MAY

1398527122.jpg

Review of

The Wrong Shoes by Tom Percival

5star.jpg Confident Readers

Will's life is difficult, in a multitude of ways. He is bullied because he has 'the wrong shoes', he has the wrong shoes because his dad can't work and doesn't have enough money for even the most basic of things like food, and his dad can't work because he lost his job at the college, was working a cash-in-hand job on a building site and had an accident. Throw into that mix the fact that his mum and dad are separated, and Will's life seems bleak in every direction. And yet, he still has a tiny amount of hope. He is good at art, and clings to the moments of joy when he is drawing, that feel like a light at the end of a long, dark tunnel. Full Review

13 JUNE

1635866847.jpg

Review of

The Lavender Companion by Jessica Dunham and Terry Barlin Vesci

4.5star.jpg Lifestyle

It's strange, the things that make you immediately feel that this is the book for you. Before I started reading The Lavender Companion, I visited the author's website and there's a picture of a slice of chocolate cake on the homepage. I don't eat cakes and desserts - but I wanted that cake viscerally. (There's a recipe in the book, which I'm avoiding with some difficulty!!) Then I started reading the book and I was told to make a mess of it. Notes in the margins are sanctioned. You get to fold down the corners of pages. You suspect that smears of butter would not be a problem. I loved this book already. Full Review

You can work your way through the newest review, category by category, starting here.