Difference between revisions of "Forthcoming Publications"

From TheBookbag
Jump to navigationJump to search
(308 intermediate revisions by 2 users not shown)
Line 1: Line 1:
−
[[image:Bookbag-banner-obooko1.jpg|center|link=https://www.obooko.com/]]
 
 
__NOTOC__
 
__NOTOC__
−
 
+
=='''25 APRIL'''==
−
=='''2 JUNE'''==
 
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
−
|author=John Henry Phillips
+
|author=Sylvie Cathrall
−
|title=The Search
+
|title=A Letter to the Luminous Deep
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
−
|genre=History
+
|genre=Science Fiction
−
|summary=Archaeology cannot be child's play, when you're scraping in the dirt looking to find what you can find, often knowing there should be something there but not always confident what. Archaeology must be a fair bit harder when you set out to find some specific thing. This book is a case of the latter, as our author promises to locate the topic of the titular search. And he really hasn't made it easy for himself – the search area is a wide one, the target might not exist any more – oh, and it's underwater, when he cannot dive. Latching on to a particular D-Day veteran through helping the heroic old man's visit back to France, our author has promised to find the landing craft that delivered him to Normandy, and that he was lucky to survive when it sank from beneath him. The secondary aim is to erect a memorial to everyone else aboard, the vast majority of whom perished. Who else would make such promises to someone in their nineties?
+
|summary= There are few greater joys than a book which lives up to a compelling premise. And this is one of them.
−
|isbn=1472146182
+
|isbn= 0356522776
 
}}
 
}}
−
 
+
=='''9 MAY'''==
−
=='''9 JUNE'''==
 
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
−
|isbn=152941363X
+
|author=Tom Percival
−
|title=To Kill a Troubadour (A Bruno, Chief of Police Novel)
+
|title=The Wrong Shoes
−
|author=Martin Walker
+
|rating=5
−
|rating=4.5
+
|genre=Confident Readers
−
|genre=Crime
+
|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 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.
−
|summary=''Nobody knows what the truth is any more.''
+
|isbn=1398527122
−
 
 
−
Bruno Courrèges is the police chief for St Denis and much of the Vézère valley and works closely with Commissaire Jean-Jaques Jalipeau (known as 'JJ'), the head of detectives for the départment of the Dordogne.  They're not just policemen - they're both deeply committed to the well-being and prosperity of this most beautiful part of France.  The discovery of an old, stolen Peugeot, crashed and abandoned in a ditch wouldn't normally have worried them so much had it not been for the strange bullet, with Russian letters stamped on the base, which they found in the car.  Oh, and there was a golf ball too, which didn't belong to the owner of the car.  A golf bag would be a good place to hide a sniper's weapon.  Was there going to be an attempt to kill someone, or were the detectives being pushed in a certain direction?
 
 
}}
 
}}
 +
=='''23 MAY'''==
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
−
|isbn=0241542405
+
|author=Onyi Nwabineli
−
|title=Meredith Alone
+
|title=Allow Me to Introduce Myself
−
|author=Claire Alexander
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
−
|summary=When we first meet Meredith Maggs it's Wednesday 14 November 2018 and she's not left her home for 1,214 days.  She'd ''like'' to: in fact, she so nearly does.  Her outdoor clothes are on and she's even considered which shoes to wear if she's going to catch her train.  Then, she can't.  She simply can't force herself to leave the safety of her home.  She's fortunate that she has a good friend, Sadie, who visits regularly with her two children, James and Matilda.  Sadie's a cardiac nurse and full of sound common sense.  In fact it was Sadie who gave Meredith her cat, Fred.  Groceries are online deliveries and there's also an internet-based support group where you'll find Meredith as JIGSAWGIRL, so you can guess what she does in her spare time.  Then Tom McDermott arrives.  He's from Holding Hands, a charity which supports people with problems such as Meredith's.
+
|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 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?
−
}}
+
|isbn=0861546873
−
{{Frontpage
 
−
|author=Will Brooker
 
−
|title=The Truth About Lisa Jewell
 
−
|rating=5
 
−
|genre=Biography
 
−
|summary=Meet [[:Category:Lisa Jewell|Lisa Jewell]], one of the most successful British authors I've never knowingly read.  Now meet Will Brooker, one of the thousands of less successful authors I quite confidently never have read.  This book starts with the two meeting each other, as well, and shows how 2021 drew the two closer and closer together.  The meeting was some unspecified combination, it seems, of her anecdote about cup cakes, the words of her latest book she was reciting, and her being in a ''black lace mini-dress with gold brocade'' (certainly a get-up never commonly worn at the author events I get to attend), but pulled Brooker, a professor of cultural studies who has swallowed Roland Barthes, down the rabbit-hole that is Jewell's diverse output.  Brooker decides he'd like nothing more than to follow her through a year in the published author's life, working to make a success of the latest title, and struggling with the next in line.  Jewell, due diligence appropriately done, agrees.  And this is the result.
 
−
|isbn=1529136024
 
−
}}
 
−
{{Frontpage
 
−
|isbn=1801109265
 
−
|title=The Companion
 
−
|author=Lesley Thomson
 
−
|rating=5
 
−
|genre=Crime
 
−
|summary=James Ritchie thought of himself as ''a punctual man who was inexplicably never on time'' and he was - as usual - late to pick up his son, Wilbur, for their 'boys' day out'.  These were always days which appealed more to James than to Wilbur and, competing for the boy's attention, his mother, Anna, promised him a roast dinner when he returned.  The dinner would never be served, as James and Wilbur are the victims of a double stabbing on the beach.  The case falls to DI Toni Kemp of Sussex police.  She's feeling the pressure.  You can always tell - she shoplifts Snickers Bars when the going gets tough.
 
 
}}
 
}}
−
=='''21 JUNE'''==
+
=='''6 JUNE'''==
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
−
|isbn=1635864674
+
|author=Kieran Larwood and Joe Todd-Stanton
−
|title=Tomato Love: 44 Mouthwatering Recipes for Salads, Sauces, Stews, and More
+
|title=Dungeon Runners: Hero Trial
−
|author=Joy Howard
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
−
|genre=Cookery
+
|genre=Confident Readers
−
|summary=''Think of it as no-whining dining.''
+
|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=1839945184
−
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 love.  I'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.
 
 
}}
 
}}
−
 
+
=='''13 JUNE'''==
−
=='''23 JUNE'''==
 
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
−
|author=Ewald Arenz and Rachel Ward (translator)
+
|isbn=1635866847
−
|title=Tasting Sunlight
+
|title=The Lavender Companion
 +
|author=Jessica Dunham and Terry Barlin Vesci
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
−
|genre=General Fiction
 
−
|summary=Sally is a teenager who has run away from an anorexia treatment clinic. She just wants space, and for people to stop questioning her, tiptoeing around her, and trying to fix her without ever truly understanding her. She finds herself on some farmland with a woman called Liss who is in her forties and seems to live alone.  Liss is unlike any other adult Sally has ever met. She just accepts Sally as she is, giving her a room to sleep in, and the space to just be. As they work together on the farm, a closeness develops between them, becoming a beautiful, powerful friendship.
 
−
|isbn=1914585143
 
−
}}
 
−
{{Frontpage
 
−
|isbn=1398508632
 
−
|title=The Wilderness Cure
 
−
|author=Mo Wilde
 
−
|rating=5
 
 
|genre=Lifestyle
 
|genre=Lifestyle
−
|summary=It had been on the cards for a while but it was the week-long consumer binge which pushed Mo Wilde into beginning her year of eating only wild food.  The end of November, particularly in Central Scotland was perhaps not the best time to start, in a world where the normal sores had been exacerbated by climate change, Brexit and a pandemic.  Wilde had a few advantages: the area around her was a known habitat with a variety of terrains.  She had electricity which allowed her to run a fridge, freezer and dehydrator.  She had a car - and fuel.  Most importantly, she had shelter: this was not a plan to ''live'' wild just to live off its produce.
+
|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.
 
}}
 
}}
  
−
=='''18 AUGUST'''==
+
=='''4 JULY'''==
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
−
|author= Kit De Waal
+
|author=Max Boucherat
−
|title= Without Warning and Only Sometimes
+
|title=The Last Life of Lori Mills
−
|rating= 4
+
|rating=4.5
−
|genre= Autobiography
+
|genre=Confident Readers
−
|summary= As Philip Larkin so eloquently put it, “They f*** you up, your mum and dad/ They may not mean to, but they do” Without Warning and Only Sometimes by Kit De Waal focuses on this idea of parenthood and the bonds that bind family. This book is a memoir focussing on the author’s formative years as a teenager living in a lower class area of Birmingham. Her father is from St. Kitts in the Caribbean and her mother is an Irish woman ostracized by her family for becoming pregnant by and marrying a black man. This intersectionality plays a large role in the autobiography. Kit De Waal faces multiple hurdles due to her race, her class and her gender. Her parents loom large and are written with care, love, and the kind of anger only a child can express to their parents.
+
|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 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?
−
|isbn=1472284836
+
|isbn=0008666482
−
}}
 
−
{{Frontpage
 
−
|author=David Lagercrantz
 
−
|title=Dark Music
 
−
|rating=3
 
−
|genre=Crime
 
−
|summary=How far from the original can a book allegedly inspired by Sherlock Holmes get before the allusion breaks?  This does have a wonder-mind at the heart of what little investigating is going on, but there is not a lot that Conan Doyle fans could really pin down as on their exact wavelength.  For one, the main focus of the narrative, Micaela, is no John Watson MD.  She's a Chilean in the Stockholm police, put on a murder squad as she knows the prime suspect of old, in a case where a referee of a junior football match was found stoned to death shortly after the match, and just outside the stadium.  Beppe, the suspect, was drunkenly antagonistic to the ref during the closing minutes, but refuses to admit anything, through days and weeks of interrogation.  When some disreputable coppers (the kind who dismiss anything their superior comes up with, the kind who think they can judge Micaela from her fringe and how she might dress – that kind) are told to go and see what brainbox Professor Rekke thinks of it all, she can only smirk when he says Beppe is innocent and the investigation is a shambles.  But taken off the case, she can no longer help solve the crime, and with Rekke the most erratic, irregular kind of guy, she can't get his full verdict on it all.  Until, that may be, she manages to stop him in the middle of an apparent suicide attempt...
 
−
|isbn=1529413192
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
<!-- DO NOT REMOVE ANYTHING BELOW THIS LINE -->
 
<!-- DO NOT REMOVE ANYTHING BELOW THIS LINE -->

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.

Retrieved from "http://www.thebookbag.co.uk/w/index.php?title=Forthcoming_Publications&oldid=170971"