Difference between revisions of "Forthcoming Publications"

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[[image:Bookbag-banner-obooko1.jpg|center|link=https://www.obooko.com/]]
 
 
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=='''12 JANUARY'''==
+
=='''9 MAY'''==
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Sarah Todd Taylor
+
|author=Tom Percival
|title=Alice Eclair, Spy Extraordinaire! A Spoonful of Spying
+
|title=The Wrong Shoes
|rating=4
+
|rating=5
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=[[Alice Eclair, Spy Extraordinaire! A Recipe for Trouble by Sarah Todd Taylor|Last time around]], Alice Eclair had to prove herself as a spy and as a master at all things French and fancy and fondant, as the only way to save the day involved being an expert baker and icer on the French railways.  Here, we start on a bateau-mouche in Paris, and even though the espionage isn't a complete success it proves to Alice and her handlers that things are afoot.  And there will never be more feet than at the World's Fair, reviving the huge expo that gave the city the Eiffel Tower and this time showing all her interwar glories off to the world.  Once again Alice will have to present the front to the world of being a humble yet world-class cake decorator, while seeking out clues. At stake?  Pioneering flight technology that the enemy just cannot be allowed to smuggle out…
+
|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.
|isbn=1839940972
+
|isbn=1398527122
 
}}
 
}}
 +
=='''23 MAY'''==
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Hadeer Elsbai
+
|author=Onyi Nwabineli
|title=The Daughters of Izdihar
+
|title=Allow Me to Introduce Myself
|rating=4
+
|rating=4.5
|genre=Fantasy
+
|genre=General Fiction
|summary= Drawing inspiration from Egypt, ''The Daughters of Izdihar'' explores the lives of two women who could not be more different, yet find themselves fighting for the rights of women and weavers – those with magical abilities - in a society pitted against them. Nehal, born into the upper class, wishes to attend the Weaving Academy to learn to control her abilities and then join the military, but instead she is forced into an arranged marriage with Nico. Giorgina on the other hand did not have a privileged upbringing like Nehal and feels great pressure to provide for her family and maintain their reputation, whilst secretly attending meetings of the Daughters of Izdihar – a group campaigning for women's rights. Giorgina also happens to be in love with Nico. What follows is a story of an unjust society, filled with hypocrisy and cruelty, from which blossoms a group of admirable women fighting for their rights and overcoming their personal obstacles.
+
|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=0356520471
+
|isbn=0861546873
 
}}
 
}}
 +
=='''6 JUNE'''==
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=178563335X
+
|author=Kieran Larwood and Joe Todd-Stanton
|title=Sea Defences
+
|title=Dungeon Runners: Hero Trial
|author=Hilary Taylor
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|summary=When we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you need to pick the children up.  Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner.  Thelma's daughter-in-law won't let her see her grandson.  Holthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, is a lovely place, but Rachel is struggling to develop a real bond with the parish - and she's in awe of the vicar, Gail, but then she's been doing the job for more than thirty years.  Rachel and Christopher hoped that a walk on the beach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed.  And then Hannah went missing.
 
}}
 
=='''19 JANUARY'''==
 
{{Frontpage
 
|isbn=1848458436
 
|title=Just the Nicest Couple
 
|author=Mary Kubica
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre=Thrillers
+
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=''The whole thing has spiralled out of control, turning into someone I'm not.''
+
|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 wayUnfortunately 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 teamWhat chance does this friendless, muscle-free-zone have in actually managing that, and how could he possibly hope to succeed?
 
+
|isbn=1839945184
''Just the Nicest Couple'' is the story of two couples: Christian and Lily Scott, and Nina and Jake HayesThe connection between the two is that Lily and Nina teach in the same school: Nina teaches English and Lily covers high school algebra.  The couples have mixed as a foursome but it's not a regular thingChristian is a market research analyst and Jake is a neurosurgeon: they don't have much in common except their wives.  Lily hasn't said anything yet, but she's pregnant.  She has a lengthy history of miscarriages so she doesn't want to tempt fate by making the knowledge public.
 
 
}}
 
}}
 +
=='''13 JUNE'''==
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Heather Fawcett
+
|isbn=1635866847
|title=Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries
+
|title=The Lavender Companion
|rating=4
+
|author=Jessica Dunham and Terry Barlin Vesci
|genre=General Fiction
+
|rating=4.5
|summary=Emily Wilde is an expert academic scholar on faerie lore, and she has travelled extensively, and researched meticulously, to write her life's work, the very first encyclopaedia of faeriesWhilst she is brilliant at research and speaking to faeries, she is not so good with peopleSo when she finds herself far, far North in the small village of Hrafvsnik, having somehow offended the village matriarch, she is not sure what she has done, nor how to redeem herself and put her final investigations for her book back on the right trackEnter Wendell Bambleby, her dashingly handsome and insufferable rival who arrives unexpectedly, all charm and delight, much to Emily's frustrationBut why is he here? What does he want?  And what exactly is going on with the faerie folk around Hravsnik?
+
|genre=Lifestyle
|isbn=0356519120
+
|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 homepageI 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 sanctionedYou get to fold down the corners of pagesYou suspect that smears of butter would not be a problem. I ''loved'' this book already.
 
}}
 
}}
 +
 +
=='''4 JULY'''==
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Joe Thomas
+
|author=Max Boucherat
|title=White Riot
+
|title=The Last Life of Lori Mills
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
 
|summary= Whenever anyone writes fiction about politics there's always the danger of making it too reactionary; too raw. Knee-jerk observations and hot takes that don't age well or properly capture the spirit of the moment. It takes a truly talented writer to be able to capture the zeitgeist of a particular event or era of political history. Austerity Britain, the student riots, Donald Trump, Brexit – so much of what is, and has been, written in the immediate aftermath of these phenomena has been proven by time to be frothy and insubstantial and ultimately not particularly powerful or incisive. Inevitably (and perhaps disappointingly for people who do enjoy fiction of this nature), the best writing about current political events is that which is written when the events in question are no longer current and when time and experience has afforded the writer the benefit of a more objective view.
 
|isbn= 1529423376
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
|isbn=1529421241
 
|title=Stay Buried
 
|author=Kate Webb
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Crime
 
|summary=DI Matt Lockyer is on Major Crime Review which sounds quite grand until you realise that it's actually a cold case unit and there are just two of them doing the job.  Lockyer's not unduly worried, though although he's not quite so sure about DC Gemma Broad: she's probably capable of something better.  It was a bit of a shock when he got the phone call from Hedy Lambert: she's in H M Prison Eastwood Park for murder - and it was Lockyer who put her there, fourteen years ago.  She's keen to see him and to tell him that the man everyone thought she'd murdered - but the body turned out to be someone else - has returned home after being away for decades.
 
}}
 
=='''23 JANUARY'''==
 
{{Frontpage
 
|author=Jeremy Dronfield and David Ziggy Greene
 
|title=Fritz and Kurt
 
|rating=4
 
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=We start with the pair of brothers Fritz and Kurt, and their muckers, doing things any Jewish lad in 1930s Vienna would want to do kicking things around the empty market place, helping the neighbours, being dutiful when it comes to the synagogue choir and at a vocational school.  Kurt has to make sure the lamps are turned on at their very Orthodox neighbours' each Friday night – the Sabbath preventing them for using anything nearly as mechanical and workmanlike as a light switch.  But this is the time just before the Austrian leader is going to cave to Hitler's will, and instead of having a national vote to keep the Nazis out, invite them in with open arms.  ''Kristallnacht'' happened in Vienna just as much as in Germany, as did all the round-ups of Jews.  These in their turn leave the younger Kurt at home with his mother and sisters anxious to hear word of an evacuation to Britain or the US, while Fritz and his father are, unknown initially to each other, packed off on the same train to Buchenwald and the stone quarry thereAnd us wondering how the titular event for the adult variant of all this could come about…
+
|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 lonesomeWhat 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 spookyFor 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?
|isbn=024156574X
+
|isbn=0008666482
}}
 
=='''2 MARCH'''==
 
{{Frontpage
 
|author=Julia Bartz
 
|title=The Writing Retreat
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Thrillers
 
|summary= Roza Vallo. Anyone in the world of publishing knows the name. Writers want to be her, agents want to represent her. She's something of a legend with an impressive, if compact, back catalogue of works that started with her breakthrough novel, published when she was barely out of childhood. Alex, a writer-slash-editor, is more than a little obsessed with Roza, and is stunned when, following a series of unexpected events, she is invited to be part of her month-long writers' retreat.
 
|isbn=0861544439
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
|author=Patrick Ness and Tea Bendix
 
|title=Different for Boys
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Ant is in Year Eleven at quite a standard school, and is surprised to find his geography class (within which it seems absolutely nothing about geography is ever learnt) has been restructured, so his desk is one of four with both his best buddy from the football team, and two other old muckers – in fact they all go back to primary school days togetherAs they're all fired up, straining at the leash only a single-sex school can form, the talk in class and out often turns to sex.  Which is confusing for Ant, as he doesn't know what his score is, where his achievements in that regard lieHe's had a casual relationship, a secret one, for several months now, and so has effectively progressed up the ladder headed by 'experienced', but whether that's set in stone, he can't be sureAnd that's mostly because of who he's been having the relationship and the sex with.
 
|isbn=1529509491
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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Revision as of 13:12, 24 April 2024

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.