Changes

=='''21 JANUARY25 APRIL'''==

|isbn=0099551063|title=The Wisdom of Psychopaths: Lessons in life from Saints, Spies and Serial Killers|author=Dr Kevin Dutton|rating=4|genre=Popular Science|summary='' 'Donald Trump outscores Hitler on psychopathic traits' claims Oxford University researcher.'' Until the events of 6 January 2021 that might have surprised, even shocked many readers: now they're probably convinced that they knew it all along. The statement has lost a little of its shock value but it does help us to understand more about the nature of psychopathy. It's too easy to associate psychopathy with the Yorkshire Ripper, Jeffrey Dahmer, Saddam Hussein or Robert Maudsley, the real-life Hannibal Lecter, but the truth is that having psychopathic traits can sometimes be a good thing.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1529337925|title=The Mirror Dance (Dandy Gilver)|author=Catriona McPherson|rating=4.5|genre=Crime (Historical)|summary=It was the August Bank Holiday weekend and, as so often happened, it was cold enough to have the fire lit and Bunty the Dalmation wasn't inclined to leave it to keep Dandy Gilver warm on the sofa. The thought of work was almost cheering when Dandy took the call from Sandy Bissett in Dundee. She was the publisher of a magazine and had been told that the man running the Punch and Judy show in the local park had used copies of two of her cartoon characters - Rosie Cheek and her sister Freckle - to drum up some local interest in his show. Sandy Bissett's request was simple: she wanted Gilver and Osborne to warn the man about infringement of copyright - and Dandy and Alex would be cheaper than employing a solicitor to do the same job.}}{{Frontpage|author=David F Ross|title= There's Only One Danny Garvey|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary= Years ago, Danny Garvey was a footballing prodigy playing for his local club. Everyone predicted a bright future – but his career in professional football never quite worked out. Thirteen years on, convinced to return home by his "uncle" Higgy to visit his dying mother, Danny takes over the shambolic and once-great team he used to play for and tries to reform them.|isbn= 1913193500}}{{Frontpage|author=Afonso Cruz and Rahul Bery (translator)|title=Kokoschka's Doll|rating=2.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Well, this looked very much like a book I could love from the get-go, which is why I picked my review copy up and flipped pages over several times before actually reading any of it. I found things to potentially delight me each time – a weird section in the middle on darker stock paper, a chapter whose number was in the 20,000s, letters used as narrative form, and so on. It intrigued with the subterranean voice a man hears in wartorn Dresden that what little I knew of it mentioned, too. But you've seen the star rating that comes with this review, and can tell that if love was on these pages, it was not actually caused by them. So what happened?|isbn=1529402697}}=='''26 JANUARY'''=={{Frontpage|isbn=1529124417|title=Before She Disappeared|author=Lisa Gardner|rating=4.5|genre=Thrillers|summary=Frankie Elkin found Lani Whitehorse's body in her car at the bottom of the lake. She knew that the twenty-two-year-old waitress wouldn't have left her three-year-old daughter and run away. Lani was the fourteenth missing person to be located by Frankie and now she's moving on again, this time to Boston where there's a strong Haitian community which was home to Angelique Lovelie Badeau until her disappearance eleven months ago. Frankie, middle-aged and white, gets a job and accommodation at Stoney's bar and sets out to investigate the community which is just about exclusively black.}}=='''28 JANUARY'''=={{Frontpage|author=Rob Keeley|title=The Treasure in the Tower|rating=4|genre=Confident Readers|summary= Rob Keeley is back! Hooray! We here at Bookbag Towers are always happy to read a new adventure from Rob - his stories combine fast pace and lots of action, an easy to read style, an unerring eye for children's friendships and rivalries, and always a good dollop of naughty humour. They're all present here, in ''The Treasure in the Tower''. The chance purchase of a book during a school trip sparks the whole adventure. Who can follow the clues best and find the treasure? Jess, her brother Mason and their friend Kessie through sheer persistence? Or spoiled brat Perdita with her money and tech gadgets and willingness to cheat?|isbn=1800461321}}=='''1 FEBRUARY'''=={{Frontpage|isbn=B08LKT7HSRSylvie Cathrall|title=Murder in the Belltower (A Miss Underhay Mystery)|author=Helena Dixon|rating=3.5|genre=Crime (Historical)|summary=In December 1933 the remains of Elowed Underhay were discovered in the cellar of the Glass Bottle Public House. Ezekiel Hamett was sought in connection with the murder of Elowed and his half-brother, Denzil Hammett, whose body was also discovered. Kitty Underhay's long search for her mother, who disappeared in June 1916 was over. Now she's determined that the man responsible for her murder will be brought Letter to justice.}} =='''2 FEBRUARY'''=={{Frontpage|author=Anna Carey|title=This is Not the Jess Show|rating=4|genre=Teens|summary=Jess is a normal 90's teenage girl, just trying to navigate the usual stresses of school, and boys, and parent troubles. But strange things seem to be happening in her small town, with a mystery flu keeping lots of people indoors, and a strange metal device, with an apple on it, that slips out of her friend's bag, but that her friends just won't talk to her about. Jess feels like she might be hearing voices, and her sister (who is very ill) seems to be responding to her in strange ways sometimes. Is there something going on beneath the surface of Jess' life?|isbn=1683691970}}=='''4 FEBRUARY'''=={{Frontpage|isbn=0008379300|title=The Shadow Man|author=Helen Fields|rating=4|genre=Thrillers|summary=Fergus Ariss is in his late thirties and he knows that he's dying. His body is giving up on him, his internal organs beginning to putrify but before he dies he wants a wife, a child and a brother. He's been on the lookout for the perfect people and he's made certain preparations. The flat where the family will live is prepared and even windows with curtains, and pictures in frames have been painted onto the walls. Angela Fernycroft was to be his wife. Her husband, Cal, had taken the children - a boy of seven and a girl of five, away for the weekend. Unfortunately, it doesn't go according to plan and Angela dies.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=178089905X|title=Serpentine|author=Jonathan KellermanLuminous Deep

|genre=CrimeScience Fiction|summary=It wasn't exactly the case Lt Milo Sturgis had been dreaming about: There are few greater joys than a death from thirty-six years ago and the daughter of the woman who died wanted some answers. She had money and money translated into clout and so the problem was dropped onto Milo's toes. Dorothy Swoboda was twenty-four years old when she died in a car book which went off a cliff on Mulholland Drive and burst into flames. It turned out that she wasn't actually married lives up to the man with whom she'd left her daughter but Dr Stanley R Barker, optometrist, was a good man and he took out adoption papers for Ellie - and she took his namecompelling premise. Ellie was three when her mother left her with Dr Barker and she has nothing of her but And this is one photograph of her mother and father and a necklace made of serpentinethem.|isbn= 0356522776

|summary=AprilWill's fatherlife is difficult, in a scientist, multitude of ways. He is bullied because he has been given a job on a remote island called Bear Island'the wrong shoes', and he accepts has the job deciding to take wrong shoes because his daughter April with him. They live alone anyway, since Aprildad can's mother died some time before, t work and he feels it will be educational doesn't have enough money for her to experience even the island and all its natural beauty. April already has an affinity with naturemost basic of things like food, and shehis dad can's excited to travel with her fathert work because he lost his job at the college, thinking of all the fun things they will be able to experience together was working a cash-in-hand job on the islanda building site and had an accident. But when they get there, her father finds Throw into that mix the fact that his work monitoring mum and recording the temperatures just takes up too much of his timedad are separated, and so April is left to explore by herselfWill's life seems bleak in every direction. Her father had reassured her that there were no longer any bears living on Bear IslandAnd yet, but one day April thinks she catches he still has a glimpse tiny amount of onehope. He is good at art, and so she sets out clings to find the Bear, and then moments of joy when she sees he is injureddrawing, that feel like a light at the end of a long, to befriend and help himdark tunnel.|isbn=000841128X1398527122

 =='''4 MARCH23 MAY'''==

|author=Saima MirOnyi Nwabineli|title=The Khan|rating=5|genre=Crime|summary=Jia Khan has alway lived by the motto be twice as good as men and four times as good as white men. This has served her well in her rise through the criminal justice system and by the time she is called home for her sister's wedding after fifteen years in self-imposed exile, she is at the top of her game. Returning Allow Me to the city of her birth, to old scars and fresh wounds, Jia must confront her past and reconcile her visions for the future with her sense of honour and duty.|isbn=1786079097}}{{Frontpage|author=Andrea Bajani and Elizabeth Harris (translator)|title=If You Kept a Record of SinsIntroduce Myself

|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=This was an incredibly readable novellaAnuri spent her childhood on display to the world, but one that left me a little conflicted. We start as our hero arrives at Bucharest airportthanks to her step-mother Ophelia's increasingly popular presence on social media, and before we even know his gender or the nature where she posted every step of the person heAnuri's addressing in his second person monologue of a narrationchildhood for sponsorships and influencer deals and, we see him picked up by his mother's chauffeurbasically, monetary gain. Now Anuri is in her twenties and she is slowly trying to regain her confidence and carted off to do all the necessary introductions before said get her life back, suing her step-mother is buried to take down the following daycontent about her. The mother was a businesswoman Anuri is battling alcoholism, who clearly left northern Italy and settled in Romania with failing to start her (night-time PhD, undergoing therapy and business) partner, secretly abusing people online and feelings of abandonment are still strongreceiving money from them for doing so. And so we flit from current (well Most importantly, this came out in the original Italian in 2007she is desperately worried about her little sister, so moderately current) Bucharest, to who is the ladnew focus of Ophelia's childhoodonline empire. Can she save her sister, and see just what he has to tell perhaps herself and her relationship with her as a private farewell address.father at the same time?|isbn=19398109650861546873

|author=Mary H.K. Choi|title=Yolk|rating=5|genre=Teens|summary= Jayne Baek is a fashion student that's barely getting by. She drinks. She smokes. She makes bad decisions about the men she sleeps with. She's an all-round messy character; and that's her charm. June, on the other hand, is a complete contrast to Jayne. She's a typical older sister: she's smart, thinks she knows it all, and has a successful job. She constantly criticises Jayne for her life choices, and the two have barely kept in contact despite living in the same city for the past two years. This is until June finds out she's sick, and Jayne is the only person she can turn to. The two sisters have to come together and decide how far they'll go to save each other's lives – even if it means swapping identities.|isbn= 0349003696}} =='''23 MARCH'''=={{Frontpage|author=Dean Koontz1635866847|title=The Other EmilyLavender Companion|rating=4|genre=Thrillers|summary=Our hero David Thorne is an author, who shares his life between the two US coasts. It's the western coast we're concerned with, a place he has to return to, and a place he has to be able to leave. David lost contact with his partner there ten years ago, when she vanished from a remote road late at night. He's paying for contact with the man he thinks the only suspect, a lifer now, who went a bit Hannibal Lecter, and has a dozen and more unfound Jane Does on his record. David is trying to pry the connection between the murderer and his girl from the man's mind, but to no avail. He's also having a recharge ready for his next hit novel when into the restaurant walks the sheer spitting image, the very embodiment, the virtual resurrection, of his love. What is a man to do?|isbn=1542019958}} =='''1 APRIL'''=={{Frontpage|isbn=B08R7LXQ9S|title=Remy: A book about believing in yourself|author=Mayuri Naidoo and Caroline Siegal|rating=4|genre=For Sharing|summary=Remy is feeling miserable. He's let himself down ''again''. The school bully Jayden, together with his sidekicks Ryan Jessica Dunham and Brandon, have been laughing at Remy, calling him names because he is short and has small eyes. They are mean but they are not stupid. They are careful to wind up Remy when nobody can see and then push him just that little bit further when the other kids are around. So, when Remy reacts, it looks as though he was the instigator. And then he gets into trouble at school and the teachers don't believe him when he tries to explain what happened.}}{{Frontpage|author=Ruth Hogan|title=Madame BurovaTerry Barlin Vesci

|genre=General FictionLifestyle|summary=This book lets us discover several people in different stages of life in the early 1970s, all vaguely connected. So we have a bullied half-cast boy (as he would have been called then), a girl in a humdrum job wanting to become a singer, and chiefly, ImeldaIt's strange, the third generation of Madame Burova, things that make you ''Tarot-Reader, Palmist and Clairvoyantimmediately'', to use her family's sea-front booth. The singer, feel that this is the scryer and the sufferer's mother will all become staff at a revamped holiday camp, but just before then we see Imelda fly solo book for the first time in the family stallyou. We also see her on her last day, fifty years later, in possession of a pair of letters that will change everything for a woman called Billie. Just who is she, and who delivered the secrets about her to Imelda, and why did it have to remain a secret all this time?|isbn=152937331X}} ==Before I started reading ''The Lavender Companion'15 APRIL'''=={{Frontpage|author=Lucy Holland|title=Sistersong|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Sistersong is part of a genre , I particularly enjoy, visited the modern retelling of folk and fairy talesauthor's [https://www.pinelavenderfarm. These stories, for most of us, are a cornerstone of childhood and I relish seeing them retold with fresh eyes com/ website] and there's a fresh perspective. If handled well these retellings give new life and new meaning to stories that are now becoming increasingly narrow and outdated, fleshing out characters, examining relationships and re-evaluating the role picture of women. Sistersong is a perfect example slice of a modern retelling done well, the plot is handled with care, keeping its archaic historical feel but allowing the characters to come to life, to feel real and human, most importantly they feel relatable in a modern world whilst still feeling appropriate for chocolate cake on the pre-Saxon age they live inhomepage. This is a masterpiece of storytelling and I was captivated from beginning to end.|isbn=1529039037}}{{Frontpage|author=Goldy Moldavsky|title=The Last Girl|rating=5|genre=teens|summary= Rachel Chavez is the new girl at Manchester Prep. A school filled to the brim with the richest children in the city – and Rachel doesndon't belongeat cakes and desserts - but I wanted that cake viscerally. She (There's not rich, she has no ties to some royal family a recipe in Serbia, and most of all, she spends the majority of her spare time watching horror movies as a source of comfort. She struggles to find anyone to connect withbook, until one day she stumbles upon the Mary Shelley Club. A secret society which I'm avoiding with one aim: pull off some difficulty!!) Then I started reading the best prank in true horror movie style, book and unless someone screams, you have failed. Rachel becomes immediately engrossed in the competition. But as the pranks escalate, and Rachel finally feels like she has found her place in this school, things start I was told to go wrong; make a masked figure keeps showing up to the pranks, and people begin to get hurt. When the competition then takes a deadly turn, Rachel must figure out who this masked figure is before mess of it's too late.|isbn=0755501527}} =='''27 APRIL'''=={{Frontpage|author=Kristen O'Neal|title=Lycanthropy and Other Chronic Illnesses|rating=5|genre=Teens|summary= Having recently been diagnosed with chronic Lyme disease, Priya has to come to terms with the fact that she may be Notes in constant pain for the rest of her lifemargins are sanctioned. She joins ''Oof Ouch My Bones'', an online support group where she talks You get to a bunch fold down the corners of other teens living with chronic illnessespages. They talk about their troubles and help each other out, while also providing an escape to just joke and mess around. When Brigid—one You suspect that smears of her closest friends—doesn't respond to the chat for butter would not be a while, Priya becomes concernedproblem. She decides to steal her parents I '' car and drive to Brigidloved's house to check up on her. But what she doesn't expect to find there is a werewolf in the basement – and for that werewolf to be the girl she has been talking to online for the past few monthsthis book already.|isbn=1683692349