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[[Category:New Reviews|Humour]] __NOTOC__ <!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Luke RhinehartDean Koontz|title= InvasionThe Bad Weather Friend|rating= 4.5|genre= Humour Paranormal|summary=Super-intelligent furry aliens suddenly appear from another universeBenny is having a terrifically bad day. And they've come to earth to have fun. Alien Louie follows fisherman Billy Morton home one day He loses his job, and he loses his fiancee, and his family quickly come to love the playful alienhouse gets trashed. But when Louie starts using their computer to hack into government Oh, and corporate networkssomeone has delivered a really weird, stealing millions from banks disturbing coffin-sized object to give to othershis home, they realise and it's possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the thing that Louie and has trashed his friends mean troublehouse! The thing is, Benny is the very last person to deserve all this bad luck. He is a nice person. A really nice person. As Billy and So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the delivery to his family begin house is a roller coaster ride of fame and fortunenew friend, as well as a ranking high on the FBI's most wanted listbad weather friend called Spike, the Government soon decides that these aliens are terroristswho has been sent to help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a good person. Spike is going to take care of Benny, and must be eliminated. Whilst the aliens are playing games they hope will help humans to see the insanity certainly take care of the American politicalBenny's enemies, if he, Benny, economic and military systems, they soon come to realise that the Powers that Be donHarper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny't play games: s wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they make warare. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1785651757</amazonuk>1662500491

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Rod Green1529153050|title=Only Fools and Horses: The Peckham ArchivesBritain's Best Political Cartoons 2022|author=Tim Benson

|summary= George Gordon Wentworth (1946-2011) lived a humdrum life. He was a barely adequate teacher in a fairly world renowned independent school in Kent and kept a copious diary of his quotidian existence. Most of what he recorded was dross. However, amongst all Seeking some light relief from the utterly uninteresting tailings of his life there were some nuggets current political turmoil which is coming to seem more and grains to catch the attention. Author Tony Stuart has created these amusing anecdotesmore like an adrenaline sport, panning them out over twenty six episodes which give us the best I was nudged towards ''Britain's Best Political Cartoons of Wentworth – comedy gold2022''. From losing all Sharp eyes will have noted that we're not yet through the pupils in his charge on a school trip to being arrested on suspicion of terrorism; from waking up in bed between the married couple year: the morning after their wedding, to destroying a ski cartoons run; from appearing full-frontal naked 4 September 2021 to 31 August 2022. Who can imagine what there will be to come in a sheep-farmers' gazette to triggering an air-sea rescue; Wentworth was, blinkered and befuddled, the subject – of these and so many more unlikely but highly amusing events.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1524634441</amazonuk>2023 edition?

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Graham Fulbright1785633074|title=Driving Mad: Maniacs, Morons and the Advanced Motorist's ClubStaggering Hubris|author=Josh Berry|rating=34.5

|summary=I passed my driving test when John F Kennedy was in the White House and I've recently had Members of Parliament like us to reapply for my driving licence having achieved a venerable age. When I started driving believe that the roads were kindercountry is run by politicians, more forgiving places headed by the Prime minister - or put another way, the idiots were fewer and further between. I don't know how long Graham Fulbright has been driving, but he certainly knows his motoring morons and in 'primus inter pares'Driving Mad'(that' he brings us a fictional sample s for those of their eccentricities. Well, Iyou who are Eton and Oxbridge educated) but the reality is that the ''prime'm pretty certain that they're fictional movers are the special advisers - but these days you never knowthe SPADS - who are the driving force behind the government. We are in the privileged position of having access to the memoirs of Rafe Hubris, the man who was behind the skilful control of the Covid crisis which was completely contained by the end of 2020. You might not know the name now but he will certainly be the man to watch.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1783062584</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Mario Giordano0571365884|title=Auntie Poldi and the Sicilian LionsMy Mess is a Bit of Life: Adventures in Anxiety|author=Georgia Pritchett

|genre=CrimeAutobiography|summary=Poldi had not long Georgia Pritchett has always been widowed when she decided to move from Bavaria to Sicily with the intention of drinking herself to deathanxious, even as a child. She could, would worry about whether the monsters under the bed were comfortable: it was the sort of course, have done this in Germany, life where if she had nothing to worry about she would become anxious but she felt that a sea view was essentialsuch occasions were few and far between. Once there, new friends, family already resident on the island and the corpse of On a young man, his face blown off by visit to a shotguntherapist, whom she found on the local beachas an adult, intervened to give her life some meaning. For a while when she was a suspect, but that (and her wig) were no obstacle completely unable to speak about what was wrong with her falling for Commissario Vito Montana who it was assigned to investigate suggested that she should write it down and ''My Mess is a Bit of a Life: Adventures in Anxiety'' is the case. Assisting him (result - or having him assist her) came naturally so we are given to Poldi and before long there was an investigative and personal partnership. At least so far as Poldi was concernedbelieve.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908524693</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Grady HendrixJohn Boyne|title= My Best Friend's ExorcismThe Echo Chamber|rating= 5|genre= HorrorGeneral Fiction|summary=1988, Charleston, South CarolinaMeet George Cleverley. High school sophomores Abby and Gretchen have been best friends since fourth grade. But after an evening He is self-defined as "one of the few television personalities over the age of skinny-dipping goes disatrously wrong, Gretchen begins to actfifty without a criminal record"...different. She's moody. She's irritable. And bizarre incidents keep happening whenever He starts this book a bit worried when his mistress tells him she's nearbycarrying his child, but then his author wife is getting her kicks with the Ukrainian partner "Strictly Come Dancing" paired her with. AbbyThey have three children, who are a sad-sack with absolutely no social skills whatsoever, a girl who hangs around with a virtue-signalling, keyboard warrior "wokester" who wants to save the world's investigation leads her to some startling discoveries homeless with out-of- date food, and by a fit young lad doing the time their story reaches its terrifying conclusiongay hustle thing. Add in a few other characters – therapists, lawyers, random transgender types – that all have two very different connections to his life, the fate of Abby and Gretchen will be determined by a single question: Is their friendship enough you have something that suggests an almost farcical approach to beat the devil?modern world. What suggests the farcical approach even more, however, is the fact this is bloody funny.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1594748624</amazonuk>0857526219

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Kevin MacNeilStephen Clarke|title=The Brilliant and ForeverSpy Who Inspired Me|rating= 3.54|genre= HumourGeneral Fiction|summary= You know sometimes when someone tells This is a jokespoof spy story, everyone else laughsthat isn't about James Bond. Or Ian Fleming. But it features a man called Ian Lemming, who dresses well and you're sat there wondering what was so funny?likes the ladies' and who works for the secret service, but in the planning side of things more than the active service. Lemming finds himself put on a mission with a female spy called Margaux, and the pair end up stranded in Normandy, with Margaux on a desperate mission to unearth traitors in the resistance network, and Lemming desperately trying to keep up with her!|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846973376</amazonuk>2952163855

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Christopher FowlerAfonso Cruz and Rahul Bery (translator)|title= Bryant and May: Strange TideKokoschka's Doll|rating= 32.5|genre= CrimeLiterary Fiction|summary= The thirteenth outing for Bryant and May is looking Well, this looked very much like a book I could love from the get-go, which is why I picked my review copy up and flipped pages over several times before actually reading any of it will be their last. Arthur Bryant is I found things to potentially delight me each time – a weird section in the middle on compassionate leave whilst tests are continuingdarker stock paper, a chapter whose number was in the 20,000s, letters used as narrative form, which are likely to confirm and so on. It intrigued with the subterranean voice a man hears in wartorn Dresden that he is suffering from Alzheimer'swhat little I knew of it mentioned, too. His condition is worsening almost by But you've seen the daystar rating that comes with this review, memory lapses are morphing into full-scale hallucinationsand can tell that if love was on these pages, it was not actually caused by them. So what happened?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857523422</amazonuk>1529402697

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Kevin SmithB08KKQ85FN|title=The Voyage of the DolphinBut Never For Lunch|author=Sandra Aragona|rating=54|genre=Historical FictionShort Stories|summary=Dublin 1916: Among ''If a woman approaching the unrest and anti-British feeling worsened by menopause can be likened to a Rottweiler in lipstick, an Ambassador nearing retirement resembles a pampered peacock about to be released into the threat company of conscription into a war seen as nothing carrion crows or, more to do with the Irishpoint, Trinity College faculty has other distractionsabout to discover the real world of bus timetables and paying his own gas bills. They'd like a trophy; the skeleton of an Irish 'giant You don' to be precise. t get many better opening sentences than that, do you? We first met His Excellency and The only glitch is that the main trophy contender, Bernard MacNeillAmbassador's skeleton, is somewhere difficult Wife in [[Sorting the Priorities: Ambassadress and Beagle Survive Diplomacy by Sandra Aragona|Sorting the Priorities]] and we learned what it was like to be moved around countries like accompanying baggage by the Italian Government but the time has come for HE to access retires and all seasoned explorers are otherwise engagedfor Sandra Aragona to become The Wife of Former Ambassador.. There may be hope though. They turn to Fitzmaurice, a student not good enough for anything else. Fitzmaurice agrees, picking his friends Crozier have left The Career and Rafferty to go with himsettled in Rome. So… Well 'settled'Gentlemenrather overstates the situation and their dog, Beagle, lace up your strongest boots and pack your warmest underwear – we're all off to the bloody Arctic!'' Whether battle cry or epitaphhas no intention of slowing down any time soon, three men despite being sixteen and a dog… and an iguana… are going anywaydeaf.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1910124826</amazonuk>|amazonus=<amazonus>1910124826</amazonus>

{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=B08GFSK2WZ|title=The Karma Trap|author=Tony HawksLisette Boyd|rating=4|titlegenre=Women's Fiction|summary=Once Upon George Jackson is thirty-three years old, absolutely gorgeous to look at - and single. She's not had sex for eight months and she's stuck in the karma trap: an awful lot of bad luck is being visited on her and she has a Time real talent for attracting drama. Her life's chaotic: she dealt with the leak from the shower by putting something down at the bottom of the stairs to absorb the water - then the shower fell through the roof whilst she was in it and left her, stark naked, staring at the West… Countrypervy postman. She only has to take her mother's dog out for a walk for her to end up with dog poo spattered across her face - and a photo being taken by someone who shares it around the office.}} {{Frontpage|author=David C Mason|title=Pandora's Gardener

|genre=TravelCrime|summary=I have often complained in John Cranston is a jokey voice to my partner about life in the sticksgardener, and the way she moved me from an inner-city flat to slumming it in the suburbs with fewer bussesalthough what he did before he became a gardener, no takeaways within walking-and-keeping-food-hot distancehe claims, and no 'Polish' shops for a can of beer whenever you fancy oneis classified. Things are different with Tony Hawks, That is just as here well because he has purposefully decided is about to be caught up sticks from London to Somewhere, Devon – a tiny village where the people who built their own homes decades ago still live in them, where slugs are a lot more of a problem for the wannabe lettuce-grower than they are for the metropolitan commutercriminal / spy / terrorist plot, and where village halls have only he can save the power to turn you into both a Pol Pot dictator if you get on their committee and into a quivering, bruise-inducing wreck if you're the wrong gender at a Zumba class…day. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444794809</amazonuk>0956180523

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Marian KeyesJester_Forever|title=Making It Up As I Go AlongForever After: a dark comedy|author=David Jester|rating=4.5|genre=EntertainmentHorror|summary=Oh, how the book reviewing gods like to give, and equally like to take away. Here before me Michael Holland is a brand, spanking new collection of journalism by cocky and brash young man who dies and gets made the wonderful Marian Keyes – but it's a proof copy, so there's no photo offer of the authorhis lifetime; immortality. Even if over the years I have stopped reading her novelsWe follow Michael, I have always turned to the author picture to remind myself such sights exist in this world. Himself is a lucky mangrim reaper and his friends, for sure. But beyond sounding like Chip (a stoner tooth fairy) and Naff (a letch, what can I say about this – stoner in the beauty's third large dose of essays, web columns and other journalism? I can start records department) as they grapple with agreeing that I am not the target audience, but it's easy enough to see from these pages exactly what the target is. So much like that test you do – you know the one, that formulates decisions about the age their long lives and commonality of all things in space to come up with how many billions of planets are likely finding a clean surface to have alien life sit on – you can narrow things down quite readily here, and still come up with a huge numberin their flat.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0718182529</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Jean-Yves Ferri1683691172|title= Asterix and the Missing Scroll (Album 36)|rating= 5|genre= For Sharing|summary=Asterix is those rarest of book series; one designed for kids which is actually even funnier when you are an adult. I used to love Asterix as a child, but now that I reread them I can't help but wonder why, because they are so full of hilarious jokes that I definitely wouldn't have understood when I was younger. I laughed loud and hard to myself twice within the first two pages of Asterix and the Missing Scroll, so IWilliam Shakespeare'd definitely say that this was a hit.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1510100458</amazonuk>}}{{newreviews Much Ado About Mean Girls|author=Spadge Whittaker|title=Braver Than Britain, OccasionallyIan Doescher|rating=42.5

|summary=In which Spadge researches BritainA long time ago, in a galaxy far away, all the Star Wars films were crunched up against Shakespeare, and the marriage seemed a perfectly suitable one. So much so – so easily did the plots and characters converse in Shakespearean dialogue, and behave with Shakespearean stage directions – that the producers tried again, with [[William Shakespeare's top ten fears and faces them all over Get Thee Back to the Future! by Ian Doescher|Back to the course of Future]] no less. And that worked. But simultaneously they put a yearreal test out. WeA film I can're quite a fearful society, you knowt even really remember seeing was transcribed into the original Elizabethan lingo. And A cult following I had never followed whatsoever was given the things we fear most arebrand new, in order: heights (acrophobia)yet oh so ancient, snakes (ophidiophobia)dressing. Here was the true challenge – would I manage to enjoy this, public speaking (glossophobia), spiders (arachnophobia), small spaces (claustrophobia), mice (musophobia), needles (trypanophobia), flying (pteromerhanophobia), crowds (agoraphobia) and clowns (coulrophobia).|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0993429904</amazonuk>based on little foreknowledge? Oh damn those shiny gold stars for letting the game away…

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Mike Bullen168369094X|title= Trust|rating= 4|genre= General Fiction|summary= Greg and Amanda are happy. Unmarried, but together thirteen years and with two young daughters, they are very much in love. Dan and Sarah aren't so fortunate. Their marriage is going through the motions, and they're staying together for the sake of their troubled teenage son. Following a business conference away from home, one bad decision sends a happy couple into turmoil, and turns an unhappy couple into loveWilliam Shakespeare's young dream. As secrets and betrayals threaten Get Thee Back to send both relationships out of control, there's only one thing that can keep everything from falling apart: Trust|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0751559253</amazonuk>}}{{newreviewthe Future!|author=Dan Rhodes|title=When the Professor Got Stuck in the SnowIan Doescher

|genre=General FictionHumour|summary= Two people are on A long time ago, in a train on their way publishing house far away, [[:Category:Ian Doescher|someone]] thought it wonderfully wacky to, rewrite the story of all thingsStar Wars in Shakespearean pentameter, colliding two entirely different genres and styles in such a WI meeting where the ladies of All Bottoms will be lectured on the non-existence of Godclever way they seemed perfectly suited. One of It was then duly repeated for all the other films in the two people is Professor Richard Dawkins, rampant atheist, hectoring scientist chappiemain Star Wars cycle, and all-round devotee of clearly someone''Deal or No Deal''. The other is Smee, his mono-named assistants buffing their quills ready for Episode Nine, amanuensis or 'male secretary'. Smee will come to the fore when the weather sets in and title of which became public knowledge the train journey has to be abandoned some way short of its ultimate destination, Upper Bottomday before I write. Instead the pair fetch up at In the isolated yet friendly community of Market Hortonhiatus, and the only option for accommodation is taken – yeshowever, the died-in-the-wool non-believer effort has been made to be housed by a retired vicar see if the same shtick works with other texts, and his wifeto riff on other seemingly unlikely source materials in iambs. This clash of titanic opinionsAnd could we have anything more suitably unsuitable-seeming than Back to the Future, peppered with social faux pas aplenty will provide for a particularly English kind its tales of farcical comedytime travel, but one with the legs to go as far as any bullying, and parent/child strife like no other Good Books have reached in the past…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1910709018</amazonuk>?

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Rob Temple1473669065|title=Very British Problems AbroadQueenie Malone's Paradise Hotel|author=Ruth Hogan|rating=45

|summary=Meet, if you haven't alreadyTilda returns to Brighton, to tidy away the phenomenon remains of the Very British Problemher mother's life after her death. In this format they're in pithy little comments (ofWhilst there, ooh, about 140 characters in lengthshe returns to the Paradise hotel, a haven for some reason…) eccentrics and detail the minor things in life that we like nothing more than to inflate to a major factor of lifemisfits. They A place where people can involve manners, staring at things until they mend be themselves, hitting things dittoand let go of thoughts that torment them elsewhere. Little wonder that Tilda cannot forgive her mother for banishing her as a child, or the fact that nobody apart from you and I know how to queue properlythis place of wonder. And if With the idea hits the world outside our shoreshelp of Queenie Malone, caring, then – welland gregarious, you certainly have a book full of content regarding our attitude Tilda begins to pick apart the tricky and uncertain relationship she had with her sometimes cruel and ineptitude abroaddistant mother.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0751558494</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Fraser McAlpine1683690346|title=Stuff Brits LikeThe Con Artist|author=Fred Van Lente

|summary= With over 100 chapters on different aspects Comic-Cons are a place of Britain wonder and Britishnesssanctuary for many people, this and when Comic book is artist Mike Mason arrives at San Diego Comic-Con, he's looking for both fascinating that and sanctuary with other fans and hilarious. Just looking at creators, plus the list chance of subjects maybe, just maybe reuniting with his ex. However, when his rival is found dead, Mike is enough forced to produce a sardonic twist navigate every dark corner of that stiff upper lip: the chapters cover topics that range con in order to clear his name – from offal cosplay flash mobs and intrusive fans to curryzombie obstacle courses – Mike must prove his innocence and, from pedantry to banterin doing so, from conkers to rugby. There may be many chapters but this is no academic tome - each chapter is just two to three pages long, each is written with endearing affection, each is easy and satisfying - and quirkily funny - to readunravel a dark secret behind a legendary industry creator.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1857886348</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= John Samuel|title= What I Tell You in the Dark|rating= 3.5|genre= Humour|summary=A man called Will is fighting fiercely against corruption – desperate to expose his company's dodgy dealings to the press. Overcome with doubt and fear, he goes to kill himself. But, at the exact moment he attaches his noose to the back of the door, he is saved. By a curious housemate or a concerned girlfriend? No, by an Angel. Not the white-feathered guardian Angel you may expect, but one who wishes to help Will achieve his ends, and so possess the body of the hapless Will in order to finish what he started. It goes without saying that the Angel is hoping things go better than they did with the last guy he possessed – a hapless young man from Galilee called Jesus…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0715650505</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= John Niven|title= The Sunshine Cruise Company|rating= 4.5|genre= Humour|summary= Susan Frobisher and Julie Wickham live in a small Dorset town. Friends since school, they live fairly uneventful lives – Susan has a lovely house and a lengthy marriage to accountant Barry, whereas Julie is doing slightly less well – living in a council flat and working in an old people's home. When Barry is found dead trussed up in a sex dungeon, it transpires that he has been leading a hidden life for years, and his expensive fetishes lead to the bank moving to take Susan's home. Struck by both desperation and a sense of injustice, Sue and Julie conspire to rob a bank, taking along their friend Jill – a devout Christian conflicted due to lack of money and a terminally ill grandson, and Ethel – a foul mouthed resident of the nursing home longing for adventure.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0434023183</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Marie Phillips1473669588|title=The Table Of Less Valued Knights|rating=4.5|genre=Fantasy|summary=Sir Humphrey has been demoted from King Arthur's Round Table to the Table of Lesser Valued Knights. The only way to get his comfier seat back is to redeem himself via a quest. Therefore when damsel Elaine seeks help to find her kidnapped fiancé, Humphrey and his ward, the teenage giant Conrad, eagerly set forth. Meanwhile in the kingdom of Tuft, new Queen Martha has run away after a disastrous wedding to… a… well… disastrous Prince Edwin. She may not realise it yet, but she too will have a job for Humphrey!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099555875</amazonuk>}}{{newreviewFalling Short|author=Tim Flannery|title=The Mystery of the Venus Island Fetish|rating=3|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=Meet Archie Meek. He's about to leave the Venus Islands, where he's lived for the last five years, and return to Sydney, where he'll take his office in the museum and fill it with all the cultural artefacts he's found and wildlife he's plucked or pickled. That's not to ignore the fact he'll count as something quite alien himself, with his filled-out frame, nearly all-over suntan and totemic tattoo, in amongst other changes to his body. But what's this? When he gets back, he finds one of the main Venus Islands artefacts that caused him to go there in the first place, a huge, macabre ceremonial fetish mask, purloined as corporate artwork. And some of the curators he wishes to work alongside have vanished. Is the weird society of the museum he's returning to, perchance, even weirder, stranger and more violent than the cannibalistic society he's waving farewell to?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1922079308</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Roman Dirge|title=The Cat with a Really Big Head|rating=3.5|genre=Graphic Novels|summary= How many picture books are there about cats? And how many do you know that you would really NOT prefer your children to see? If the answer to the second question is 'none – yet', scratch that last word. The title piece in this collection is, by the author's own admission, his imagining of the Joseph Merrick (the 'Elephant Man') of the feline world – who struggles to sneak up behind a mouse when the shadow of his head is a total giveaway, and who can hardly even eat with dignity as bending down to his bowl would break his neck. If that's too dark or oddball for you, try the second major piece, which has a most revealing foreword – ''Dedicated to a certain girl… I hope your life is filled with wonderful accomplishments, love and all the magic you desire… - But I hope your death is slow and horrible.''|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782762876</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Val Hennessy|title=Not Far From Dreamland|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Ronald Tonks has reached that stage in life which I call upper middle age: you've qualified for your pension but not yet got to the free television licence barrier. What Ronald ''has'' got is a roof that leaks (there's good reason why his home is called 'the shack'), a dog who is going bald (in patches) and money that's in very short supply. On the plus side he has friends, mostly platonic and usually in much the same boat as Ronald. But are they downhearted? Well, they are occasionally, but mostly they're generously optimistic and out to make the most of what they've got, usually bought from charity shops and jumble sales. ''Not Far From Dreamland'' is the story of a year (2012) in the life of Ronald Tonks, his friends and relatives.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0704373874</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Harry Harrison|title=Bill, the Galactic Hero|rating=3.5|genre=Science Fiction|summary=Meet Bill. He's a simple farmer – well, he ''is'' taking a correspondence course in being a Technical Fertiliser Operator – but fate has something else in store. And so does the mechanised, technological, industrial military, which needs several billion grunts to fight the Chingers, in mankind's first inter-galactic war. Still, at least he gets medals just for signing up. After that it's all downhill, and the likes of Petty Chief Officer Deathwish Drang can only make that a straight line down. Really, what hope is there?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>147320531X</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Ian Doescher|title=William Shakespeare's The Phantom of MenaceLex Coulton|rating=4.5

|summary= Join usLex Coulton's debut novel is a story about mistakes, good gentlesfailures, for a merry reimagining of `Star Wars Episode 1' as only Shakespeare could have written itand relationships. 'Tis The main protagonist, Frances Pilgrim, is a true Shakespearean drama, filled sixth form English teacher who has recently fallen out with sword fightsher best friend Jackson, soliloquies a work colleague and doomed romance…all in glorious iambic pentameter and coupled is grappling with gorgeous illustrationsthe increasingly eccentric behaviour of her mother. Hold on to your midichlorians: The plays This relationship is complicated by the thing, wherein youfact that Frances'll catch the rise of Anakin!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1594748063</amazonuk>s father disappeared at sea when she was five years old.

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Attaboy1683690133|title=The Book of HugsMy Lady's Choosing|author=Kitty Curran and Larissa Zageris

|summary=A hug's You are a huglass of twenty-eight. Plucky, OK? You either dopenniless and in Regency-era London the race is on to find a suitable suitor - or else doom yourself to life as an eternal spinster. Along your journey, or you don't. Some people might ll be accompanied by Lady Evangeline Youngblood - a fiesty noble eager to save you from a life alone, and fired by a little more enthusiastic about rogueish sense for adventure. When it comes to suitors though, you'll have to make the process whilst others are more elegant in the execution of ultimate decision between witty, pretty and wealthy Sir Benedict Granville, wholesome, rugged and caring Captain Angus MacTaggart, or the hugmad, but basically you just get on bad and do it terrifyingly sexy Lord Garraway Craven. With orphans, werewolves, long lost lovers and then forget about ancient Egyptian artefacts along the way, it, right?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0867197978</amazonuk>'s clear this isn't going to be an easy decision...

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Christopher FowlerStibbe_Xmas|title= Bryant and May – The Burning Man|rating=4|genre=Crime|summary= The Peculiar Crimes Unit (PCU) has a new set of overlords. For reasons that were explored in the previous couple of outings they have been transferred to the City Of London Police. The Met are still the big players in the area. City of London Police only police the old city, the square mile, the financial district in other words, that has very little in the way of street crime, because no-one lives there anymore and the people who work there are, by and large, either too rich to need to steal, or too smart to have to do so on the streets.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857522043</amazonuk>}}{{newreviewAn Almost Perfect Christmas|author=Catharina Ingelman-Sundberg|title=The Little Old Lady Who Struck Lucky Again! Nina Stibbe|rating=34.5

|summary=Following Christmas – the success time of ''The Little Old Lady Who Broke All traditional trauma. You only have to think about the turkey for that – once upon a time it was leaving it sat on the downstairs loo to defrost overnight, and if that failed the Ruleshair-dryer shoved inside it treatment was your next best bet. Nowadays it's all having to make sure it', the League of Pensioners are back s suitably free-range and organic – but not too organic that you can go and this timevisit it, they’re in Vegas! I haven’t read the first book but and get too friendly with it was on my list when the opportunity arose to review this onewant to eat it. The idea Christmas, though, is of the League course also a time of Pensioners marching towards great boons. It's cash in hand for a fairer world through fun lot of plump people who can hire red suits and frolics beards, it was hugely appealing always a godsend for postmen with all the thank-you letters to me and this is aunties you saw twice a stand alone novel so I thought I would dive straight decade that your parents made you write out in with this one.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1447274903</amazonuk>long-hand as a child, and as for the makers of Meltis Newberry Fruits – well, did they even try and sell them any other time of the year?

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=WinshlussDoescher_Will|title=In God We TrustWilliam Shakespeare's the Force Doth Awaken: Star Wars Part the Seventh|author=Ian Doescher

|genre=Graphic NovelsHumour|summary=To start withA long time ago, in a galaxy far away, there was a rhetorical test. How about God and Adam playing badminton day in and day outman called William Shakespeare, until one gets bored and decides who was able to create Eve? Or the defeater a series of dramatic histories full of Goliath machinations most foul, rulers most evil and rebellious heroes and heroines most sturdy. You may or may not have noticed the saviour cinematic version of his original stage play for ''The Force Doth Awaken'', but here at last we get the Israelites being one Conan the Barbarian? Or this as a test – Jesus Himself failing to have a successful session of tequila slammers actual script, complete with Gabriel due annoying-in-different-ways-to -before droids anew, returning heroes from elsewhere in his oeuvre, and people keeping it in the holes through His hands? family til it hurts. I barely And if you need mention that in these pages God does battle with Supermanfurther encouragement, for you to have answered the test and put yourself firmly in one don't forget his audience only demanded three parts of two camps for this book Henry VI – one very much opposed here the series is so popular we're on to buying it, and one very much in favour.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0861662350</amazonuk>part seven – surely making this over twice as good…