Difference between revisions of "Forthcoming Publications"

From TheBookbag
Jump to navigationJump to search
(205 intermediate revisions by the same user not shown)
Line 1: Line 1:
[[image:Bookbag-banner-obooko1.jpg|center|link=https://www.obooko.com/]]
 
 
__NOTOC__
 
__NOTOC__
=='''19 JANUARY'''==
+
=='''9 MAY'''==
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1848458436
+
|author=Tom Percival
|title=Just the Nicest Couple
+
|title=The Wrong Shoes
|author=Mary Kubica
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Thrillers
 
|summary=''The whole thing has spiralled out of control, turning into someone I'm not.''
 
 
 
''Just the Nicest Couple'' is the story of two couples: Christian and Lily Scott, and Nina and Jake Hayes.  The 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 thing.  Christian 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.
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
|author=Heather Fawcett
 
|title=Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|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 faeries.  Whilst she is brilliant at research and speaking to faeries, she is not so good with people.  So 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 track.  Enter Wendell Bambleby, her dashingly handsome and insufferable rival who arrives unexpectedly, all charm and delight, much to Emily's frustration.  But why is he here?  What does he want?  And what exactly is going on with the faerie folk around Hravsnik?
 
|isbn=0356519120
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
|author=Joe Thomas
 
|title=White Riot
 
|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
 
|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 schoolKurt 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 switchBut 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 JewsThese 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 there. And us wondering how the titular event for the adult variant of all this could come about…
+
|summary=Will's life is difficult, in a multitude of waysHe 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 accidentThrow 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=024156574X
+
|isbn=1398527122
 
}}
 
}}
=='''2 FEBRUARY'''==
+
=='''23 MAY'''==
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Lucy Ashe
+
|author=Onyi Nwabineli
|title=Clara and Olivia
+
|title=Allow Me to Introduce Myself
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The year is 1933. The place? Sadler's Wells. Ballerinas Clara and Olivia are sisters, twins no less. Identical on the outside but not, we learn, on the inside. And not on stage, either. Because there's a lot that builds a dancer. Some things that can be taught or learnt – discipline, attention to detail – and some things, that ''je ne sais quoi'', that don't come from the classroom. A stage presence, a charm, a ''joie de vivre''. The difference between a hard-worker, and a star.
+
|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=0861544080
+
|isbn=0861546873
 
}}
 
}}
=='''16 FEBRUARY'''==
+
=='''6 JUNE'''==
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Robin Birch and Jobe Anderson
+
|author=Kieran Larwood and Joe Todd-Stanton
|title=Secret Beast Club: The Unicorns of Silver Street
+
|title=Dungeon Runners: Hero Trial
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Jayden's nose is forever in a book, which means he knows a lot about mythological creatures – the phoenixes and unicorns of the world, for example.  Aisha is addicted to her new tablet, where she can see videos of anything that might be out there.  The problem, as their mothers see it, is that they are never 'out there' themselves, exploring the outside world of Hackney, London.  But when a narrowboat turns up carrying a science-minded, educational purpose, and with a past involving Jayden's cousin, they find a magical world they never knew existedFor many of those mythological creatures are real, including the one Aisha thinks she's seen on a bit of local footage.  The crew of the boat, including a living gargoyle, are tasked with saving the rare critters – and the kids unknowingly have the magical sight needed to join inDare they side with Leila, the woman on board, and her relative who lives as a figure in a painting, and become saviours of the unseen?
+
|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 team. What chance does this friendless, muscle-free-zone have in actually managing that, and how could he possibly hope to succeed?
|isbn=0241573483
+
|isbn=1839945184
}}
 
=='''30 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
 
 
}}
 
}}
 +
=='''13 JUNE'''==
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Patrick Ness and Tea Bendix
+
|isbn=1635866847
|title=Different for Boys
+
|title=The Lavender Companion
 +
|author=Jessica Dunham and Terry Barlin Vesci
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
+
|genre=Lifestyle
|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 sexWhich 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.
+
|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 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 sanctioned.  You get to fold down the corners of pages.  You suspect that smears of butter would not be a problemI ''loved'' this book already.
|isbn=1529509491
 
 
}}
 
}}
 +
 +
=='''4 JULY'''==
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=0857051741
+
|author=Max Boucherat
|title=The Sins of Our Fathers: A Rebecka Martinsson Investigation
+
|title=The Last Life of Lori Mills
|author= Asa Larsson and Frank Perry (Translator)
+
|rating=4.5
|rating=5
+
|genre=Confident Readers
|genre=Crime
+
|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 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?
|summary=Lars Pohjanen has only a few weeks to live but he's determined that Rebecka Martinsson is going to investigate the case of a body found in a freezer at the home of a deceased alcoholicThe problem is that the case has long passed the statute of limitations. Raimo Koskela disappeared without a trace in 1962.  He was the father of Olympic boxing champion Borje Strom.  Rebecka wants nothing to do with a fifty-year-old case on which she can take no action: the problem is that this is a dying man's wishThe situation changes when a post-mortem establishes that  Henry Pekkari, the dead alcoholic, was also murdered.  Is there a connection between the two deaths?
+
|isbn=0008666482
 
}}
 
}}
 
<!-- DO NOT REMOVE ANYTHING BELOW THIS LINE -->
 
<!-- DO NOT REMOVE ANYTHING BELOW THIS LINE -->

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.