Forthcoming Publications

1 SEPTEMBER

Review of The Story of Greenriver by Holly Webb Confident Readers Silken and Sedge, for all their differences, have a lot in common. Silken is a girl whose father is the Master Builder of what might be the finest beaver lodge on the Greenriver. Unfortunately she is also a kind of runt figure, and as a result is patronised, and given the most tokenistic tasks when it comes to fetching wood and shoring the dam up. She also stands out for the unique artistic ability to sing. Otters like Sedge sing, but he too, as the son of the lady of the holt, has pressure on him to be a bit less feckless and more attentive to class. He, after all, will eventually inherit the job of keeping the otters safe from the wolf that both animal species fear the most, and from dreaded events like a Dark Spring. Full Review

Review of Into Goblyn Wood by Anna Kemp and David Wyatt Confident Readers Meet Hazel. For the last nine of her eleven years she has been stuck as a foundling in a horrid, Victorian institution, generally peeling vegetables or acting as a servant. She'd arrived at the place at the same time as Pete, and they're inseparably good friends now, until a chance for them both to escape, and enter the outside world, does not go to plan. There had always been the idea of a life idyllic in the nearby forests, Goblyn Wood, and a tribe of Wild Children, but none of that comes to pass, as Hazel finds herself in the care of a professor at the Natural History Museum. But life with him is not anything like what she might have expected it to be – and Hazel is determined to return to the Woods, restore her friendship with Pete – and to work out just what is going on in the forest, both the light and the shade, and the deathly dark... Full Review

Review of The Skeleton Key by Erin Kelly Thrillers The Golden Bones is going to follow me around for the rest of my life. How can I trust anyone? It all leads back to you! Nell didn't want to go to the reunion to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of The Golden Bones. She'd had no benefit from it - in fact, it had made her life precarious and unbelievably challenging. I'd better explain. The Golden Bones was a treasure quest book painted and written by Frank and Cora Churcher. The story revolved around murdered Elinore whose golden and bejewelled bones were hidden around the country. The clues - some of them quite tortuous - were disguised in the words and pictures of the book - and all the parts were discovered except for the pelvis. As with such quests, some people were obsessive and the theories became more and more outlandish. Full Review

Review of The Rising Tide (D I Vera Stanhope) by Ann Cleeves Crime It's fifty years since a group of teenagers went on a weekend retreat to Holy Island. Some of them found the Only Connect course transformative and they've been coming back for a reunion every five years since then. There was a tragedy at the first reunion when Isobel Hall drove off the island too close to high tide and her car was swept away, but her younger sister, Louisa, has returned with the group each year as her husband, Ken, was one of the original teenagers. Ken now has Alzheimer's and he's a shadow of the man he used to be. Philip Robson now a priest, always gets there early as he likes to have some quiet time alone in the chapel. Annie Laidler lives locally and she provides much of the food: her deli is famous in the area. Full Review

6 OCTOBER

Review of Fly by Alison Hughes Confident Readers This is a very impressive read, as it does a lot of what mainstream teen and tween fiction still struggles with. Its focus is courtesy of the first-person narration from Fly, a secondary school lad with cerebral palsy, a down-on-her-luck single mom nearing retirement from being a cleaner, a carer while at school, and a bundle of assumptions people lay on him. First they assume that with a broken body comes a broken mind, then they decide he's a maths savant – they even believe they can get away with calling him Fly, which isn't his real name, but everybody just uses it. Full Review

13 OCTOBER

Review of Red as Blood by Lilja Sigurdardottir and Quentin Bates (translator) Thrillers When Flosi’s wife goes missing, all the evidence seems to point towards her having been kidnapped. The ransom note tells him not to have any contact with the police, so instead he enlists the help of Arora, a financial investigator. She manages to persuade Flosi that they will need the help of the police, and she calls her detective friend, Daniel, whom she met when he was investigating her sister’s disappearance. Together, they start to secretly investigate Gudrun’s disappearance, trying not to arouse the suspicion of anyone, since they have no idea who the kidnappers might be, yet the more they uncover, the more confusing things become. Full Review

21 OCTOBER

Review of The Book of Hope by Jane Goodall and Douglas Abrams Politics and Society The done thing is to read a book all the way through before you sit down to review it. I’m making an exception here, because I don’t want to lose any of the experience of reading this amazing book, I want to capture it as it hits me. And it is hitting me. This beautiful book has me in tears. Full Review

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