Difference between revisions of "Forthcoming Publications"

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[[image:Bookbag-banner-obooko1.jpg|center|link=https://www.obooko.com/]]
 
 
__NOTOC__
 
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=='''7 APRIL'''==
+
=='''25 APRIL'''==
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Justyn Edwards
+
|author=Sylvie Cathrall
|title=The Great Fox Illusion
+
|title=A Letter to the Luminous Deep
|rating=4
+
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers
+
|genre=Science Fiction
|summary=The latest incoming reality TV show is a contest with a difference. No singing, no dancing, this show is looking for magical children! Children who can understand how magic tricks work, and who can attempt to win The Great Fox's magical legacy - the secrets to all of his tricks! Flick is determined to win, but not because she wants to own the tricks. She is interested in just ''one'' trick, the trick that The Great Fox stole from her father. And she's hoping if she can find that trick then she will be able to bring her missing father home.
+
|summary= There are few greater joys than a book which lives up to a compelling premise. And this is one of them.
|isbn=1529501946
+
|isbn= 0356522776
 
}}
 
}}
 +
=='''9 MAY'''==
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Lissa Evans
+
|author=Tom Percival
|title=Wished
+
|title=The Wrong Shoes
|rating=4.5
+
|rating=5
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=When things contrive to force Ed and his sister Roo (aka Lucy) to stay with the neighbourhood spinsterish old woman, Miss Filey, for a week of half-term, they're not looking forward to itFor one thing, she thinks Wi-Fi is a special brand of biscuitThey don't particularly take to Willard either, the new kid next door, who seems to ebulliently take over everything and everywhere.  But things soon change when they find some tiny old birthday candles, and manage to work out that these candles, for as long as their flames last, make birthday wishes come true. How will things change for a second time when they realise that, having used up three of them, these should really be used for the wishes of someone two generations older than them?
+
|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=178845202X
+
|isbn=1398527122
 
}}
 
}}
=='''14 APRIL'''==
+
=='''23 MAY'''==
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1529337968
+
|author=Onyi Nwabineli
|title=In Place of Fear
+
|title=Allow Me to Introduce Myself
|author=Catriona McPherson
+
|rating=4.5
|rating=5
+
|genre=General Fiction
|genre=Crime (Historical)
+
|summary=Anuri spent her childhood on display to the world, thanks to her step-mother Ophelia's increasingly popular presence on social media, where she posted every step of Anuri's childhood for sponsorships and influencer deals and, basically, monetary gain.  Now Anuri is in her twenties and she is slowly trying to regain her confidence and to get her life back, suing her step-mother to take down the content about herAnuri is battling alcoholism, failing to start her PhD, undergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online and receiving money from them for doing soMost importantly, she is desperately worried about her little sister, who is the new focus of Ophelia's online empire.  Can she save her sister, and perhaps herself and her relationship with her father at the same time?
|summary=It's July 1948 and Helen Crowther is due to start work as a qualified medical almoner the following morning - on the day that the NHS is born.  She'll be working for Dr Deuchar and Dr Strasser in their GP surgery and her job will be to help patients with those non-medical problems which affect their healthThe hardest part of the job will be to persuade people that the services she offers really are free and that they don't have to do anything to qualify for themSome of the problems will require delicate handling but Helen has a problem of her own which might give her some insight.  Her marriage has never been consummated.
+
|isbn=0861546873
 
}}
 
}}
=='''28 APRIL'''==
+
=='''6 JUNE'''==
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Jennifer Saint
+
|author=Kieran Larwood and Joe Todd-Stanton
|title=Elektra
+
|title=Dungeon Runners: Hero Trial
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
+
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary='Elektra' by Jennifer Saint tells the story of three women who live in the heavily male dominated world of Ancient Greece. Cassandra, Clytemnestra, and Elektra are all bit players in the story of the Trojan War. Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that often the silent women have the most compelling stories and the most extreme furies.
+
|summary=Meet Kit.  Like most of the people in his world, it seems, he is an avid fan of Dungeon Running – the sport where a team of warrior, mage and healer enter specially prepared, century-old, magical mazes, and race to the exit, perhaps bothering with the treasure or the big bad and the points they grant you along the way.  Unfortunately for Kit, the only thing he's seen of the latest race on the inn TV equivalent is that one team has been retired, eaten, and a new trio of questors is needed. Possibly very unfortunately indeed for Kit, he has taken to the goading from the token bully of his world and stumbled into declaring he'll enter as a team. What chance does this friendless, muscle-free-zone have in actually managing that, and how could he possibly hope to succeed?
|isbn=1472273915
+
|isbn=1839945184
 
}}
 
}}
 +
=='''13 JUNE'''==
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1787634906
+
|isbn=1635866847
|title=No Less the Devil
+
|title=The Lavender Companion
|author=Stuart MacBride
+
|author=Jessica Dunham and Terry Barlin Vesci
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
+
|genre=Lifestyle
|summary=We're in Oldcastle and Malcolm is in trouble.  He's in an abandoned house and he's being threatened by two young people.  One is Alegra (we'll soon learn that she's Allegra Dean-Edwards) and Hugo.  It seems that Allegra bought Malcolm a new coat to keep him warm (she often does this for homeless people, apparently) but she'd put a tracking device in it so that she and Hugo could find out where he was sleepingIt won't be long before the police realise that Malcolm was one of their own: not many other people are going to have the Oldcastle police crest tattooed on their backs.
+
|summary=It's strange, the things that make you ''immediately'' feel that this is the book for youBefore 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.
}}
 
=='''5 MAY'''==
 
{{Frontpage
 
|author= Ann Sei Lin
 
|title= Rebel Skies
 
|rating= 5
 
|genre= Teens
 
|summary= Kurara has spent her entire life as a servant on the Midori, a massive dining hall floating in the sky where soldiers of the Empire come to drink and make merry between their conquests. However, when a man named Himura arrives to tell her that she is a Crafter like him, someone with the power to form paper into whatever she desires – a power sought after all across the Empire. He asks her to come with him, to leave the life of dreary servitude that is all she has known. Well, soon Kurara won't have any say in the matter, because the Midori is destroyed by a monstrous paper spirit known as a shikigami, and she is forced to flee out into the world. She joins Himura aboard the Orihime, a sky-ship whose express purpose is to hunt down shikigami, and a whole world of adventure awaits her…
 
|isbn=1406399590
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
|author=Natalia Garcia Freire
 
|title=This World Does Not Belong To Us
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|summary= Early comments on this debut novel from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, a delight.   I will agree with the first – tremendous is no understatement – but 'a delight' is perhaps using the expression in a way I'm not familiar with.  I have to confess my ignorance of the Spanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here.  From the little I have read (in translation, I don't read Spanish) there does seem to be a tendency towards the fantastical – the mystical realism.  
 
|isbn=0861541901
 
 
}}
 
}}
  
=='''2 JUNE'''==
+
=='''4 JULY'''==
{{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
 
}}
 
 
 
=='''21 JUNE'''==
 
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1635864674
+
|author=Max Boucherat
|title=Tomato Love: 44 Mouthwatering Recipes for Salads, Sauces, Stews, and More
+
|title=The Last Life of Lori Mills
|author=Joy Howard
+
|rating=4.5
|rating=4
+
|genre=Confident Readers
|genre=Cookery
+
|summary=We meet Lori on the first evening she's got the house to herself – no neighbour to pop in, babysitter poorly, mother at work, just an avidly rule-breaking eleven year old, on her lonesome. What could possibly go wrong?  Snuggled in a blanket fort, she has one main intention, and that is to log on to Voxminer, the world-building, critter-collecting game that is a hit in Lori's worldBut first Lori has a tiny inkling that this stormy night doesn't find herself entirely on her own, and then she finds something even more spooky.  For the server she and her bestie and nobody else should be able to enter shows signs of tamperingWhen malevolent eyes spark up on her phone screen, and her safe place in the game has been doctored – well, where is a girl to turn?
|summary=''Think of it as no-whining dining.''
+
|isbn=0008666482
 
 
We know it's a fruit rather than a vegetable but the fact that so many people get confused just goes to show how versatile the tomato is.  Then there are all the different types, not to mention the cultivars - and you begin to understand why Joy Howard says that she hasn't met one she didn't loveI'd argue with her there - I have no affection for the ones you find in the supermarket ''next'' to the ones labelled 'grown for flavour' to distinguish them from the ones that have obviously just been grown for profit.  Personally, I'd prefer a tin of tomatoes to those - and Howard makes good use of these.  She's not at all precious if you get the taste.
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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Revision as of 09:18, 8 April 2024

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

23 MAY

0861546873.jpg

Review of

Allow Me to Introduce Myself by Onyi Nwabineli

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

Anuri spent her childhood on display to the world, thanks to her step-mother Ophelia's increasingly popular presence on social media, where she posted every step of Anuri's childhood for sponsorships and influencer deals and, basically, monetary gain. Now Anuri is in her twenties and she is slowly trying to regain her confidence and to get her life back, suing her step-mother to take down the content about her. Anuri is battling alcoholism, failing to start her PhD, undergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online and receiving money from them for doing so. Most importantly, she is desperately worried about her little sister, who is the new focus of Ophelia's online empire. Can she save her sister, and perhaps herself and her relationship with her father at the same time? Full Review

6 JUNE

1839945184.jpg

Review of

Dungeon Runners: Hero Trial by Kieran Larwood and Joe Todd-Stanton

4star.jpg Confident Readers

Meet Kit. Like most of the people in his world, it seems, he is an avid fan of Dungeon Running – the sport where a team of warrior, mage and healer enter specially prepared, century-old, magical mazes, and race to the exit, perhaps bothering with the treasure or the big bad and the points they grant you along the way. Unfortunately for Kit, the only thing he's seen of the latest race on the inn TV equivalent is that one team has been retired, eaten, and a new trio of questors is needed. Possibly very unfortunately indeed for Kit, he has taken to the goading from the token bully of his world and stumbled into declaring he'll enter as a team. What chance does this friendless, muscle-free-zone have in actually managing that, and how could he possibly hope to succeed? 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

4 JULY

0008666482.jpg

Review of

The Last Life of Lori Mills by Max Boucherat

4.5star.jpg Confident Readers

We meet Lori on the first evening she's got the house to herself – no neighbour to pop in, babysitter poorly, mother at work, just an avidly rule-breaking eleven year old, on her lonesome. What could possibly go wrong? Snuggled in a blanket fort, she has one main intention, and that is to log on to Voxminer, the world-building, critter-collecting game that is a hit in Lori's world. But first Lori has a tiny inkling that this stormy night doesn't find herself entirely on her own, and then she finds something even more spooky. For the server she and her bestie and nobody else should be able to enter shows signs of tampering. When malevolent eyes spark up on her phone screen, and her safe place in the game has been doctored – well, where is a girl to turn? Full Review

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