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==The Best New Books==
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{{Frontpage
|author=Paul B Preciado
|title=Dysphoria Mundi
|rating=4.5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=''It is never too late to embrace the revolutionary optimism of childhood''
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0008269041Samantha Harvey|title=Risk of Harm|author=Lucie WhitehouseOrbital
|rating=4.5
|genre=CrimeGeneral Fiction|summary=DCI Robin Lyons is back in her native Birmingham after her less-than-comfortable departure from In 2024, Samantha Harvey won the Met. She might have been reinstated but the whole episode left Booker Prize for ''Orbital'', a compact yet profound work that unfolds over a nasty taste single day in her mouth. She was now working for Detective Chief Superintendent Samir Jaffrey - then the man who had broken her heart nearly twenty years before. She and her fifteen-year-old daughter have moved out lives of her parent's home into a rented house but there's still a difficult situation with her brother Luke who has gone out group of his way to make life difficult for Robin since she was astronauts aboard the International Space Station. Through a young child. Henarrative lens that mirrors the astronauts's married orbital perspective, Harvey invites readers to Natalie, now and has see our planet in a young child but he's still got it in for Robinwholly new light.|isbn=1529922933
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=1786332388295967572X|title=The First Day of SpringPale Pieces|author=Nancy TuckerG M Stevens|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersLiterary Fiction|summary=Sometimes I wonder if I take my pleasures too sadly - and ''The First Day of Spring'' was one such occasion. The writing Our unnamed narrator is superb and completely compellingabout to begin a train journey with his companion Django. The characterisation is excellent and the plot grips you Where they're going and won't let go. So, what's the problem? Wellpurpose of this journey is, the problem is Chrissie, uncertain. Django found the main character. When we first meet her shetickets 's just eight years old, small for her age and she readily tells us that she's just killed someone - a two-year-old boy. Sheon the floor somewhere's completely cold about what she's done with her main memory being that whilst she was killing and has persuaded our narrator to accompany him. Why not? Not much else is clear either - suffocating - her hands seized up. There's a clue that Chrissie isn't completely responsible for her actions a little later but we are probably in the book: when will Steven come back, she wonders? Hasn't he been dead for long enough?past as the pair travel to the station by coach and the train is a steam locomotive.
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Catherine Steadman0008551324|title=The Disappearing ActDevil You Know (D S Max Craigie)|author=Neil Lancaster
|rating=4.5
|genre=ThrillersCrime|summary= British actress Mia Eliot is on It's unusual for anyone from the Hardie family to approach the cusp of successpolice. Great success Neither side likes or has any respect for the other. If But Davie Hardie is struggling in prison and he's prepared to tell the rumours are true, award season police where the body of a missing person is going to treat her well, acknowledging her buried and who was responsible for her latest, critically acclaimed productiondeath. She's going places but so This person, unfortunatelyhe promises, is her partnersomeone big and it will be worth the police doing what he wants. And the places what he's going take him towards lies, deceit and a pretty young thing in wants is to be transferred to an open prison to serve the form remainder of his sentence and to get an early parole date. Not much to ask, is it? The new co-star. ItDeputy Police Constable doesn't think so and she's a good time for Mia even prepared to escape, do the other thing that Hardie demanded - make certain that DS Max Craigie and pilot season in LA provides just the excuseanyone who works with him is kept well away from what's happening.|isbn=1471189783
}}
{{Frontpage
|author= Christophe MedlerJon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |title=Madrigal: A Closely Guarded SecretVaim
|rating=4
|genre=Historical Literary Fiction|summary= Set against ''All was strange''... This haunting phrase encapsulates the backdrop pervading sense of the English Civil Warotherworldliness which permeates this story set in Vaim, a secret plan (code-named Madrigal) is discovered by Sir Robert Douse fictional fishing village in the summer of 1642. As a loyal servant of the King, Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for Jatgeir and Head of the Secret ServiceEline, it is Robert's duty to uncover the details of the plan and follow the clues to uncover one two of the most guarded secrets protagonists caught in history—especially since the plot could affect the Kingits melancholic current.|isbn=B095HY8SXQ1804271829
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Tasha Suri1035043092|title=The Jasmine ThroneKilling Stones (Jimmy Perez)|author=Ann Cleeves|rating=45|genre=FantasyCrime|summary= On I can't have been the night of her sacred burningonly person who was sad when Inspector Jimmy Perez [[Wild Fire (Shetland, Princess Malini defies her brother and refuses Book 8) by Ann Cleeves|left Shetland]] to step start a new life on to Orkney. It's been seven years since we heard from him, but he's now living with Willow Reeves and their young son, James, as well as Cassie, the pyredaughter of his former partner. She is immediately sent to Willow's also his boss, and she ''should'' be imprisoned on maternity leave, but when the Hirana: an ancient temple that was once filled body of a popular islander, Archie Stout, is found, in the aftermath of a storm, she can't resist getting involved. He'd been battered about the head with a community Neolithic stone - one of people who got powers a pair - which had been stolen from a museum.}}{{Frontpage|author=Thea Lenarduzzi|title=The Tower|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= ''How unctuous are the mysterious deathless watersfats of another's life, how dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream''. But now In this compelling novel, Thea Lenarduzzi assumes the identity of T, the temple protagonist of this tale. Just as T's story is nothing more than an overgrownbeing told, decaying ruin. One daythe story of a second protagonist is unveiled: Annie, Malini witnesses the daughter of a girl kill someone with magic. Instead wealthy family in the 19th century, who died of reporting her for such tuberculosis after being locked in a gruesome crimetower, captures T's imagination. Annie's fate is, above all, Malini claims that the girl saved her from an attacker enticing story to T. It is a story which she consumes avariciously, both in a quest for truth and knowledge, and in service of myth, fable and begs for the girl to become her own personal maidservantfantasy. |isbn=03565156481804271799
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=B088YWF5BCClaire-Louise Bennett|title=The Lies We Tell|author=Jane CorryBig Kiss, Bye-Bye |rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersLiterary Fiction|summary=Sarah Wallace said that she grew up on a council estate Everything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, is steeped in Kent anguish and that she had two brothers and two sistersdistortion. It seemed to have been Even a kiss, usually a lovingsymbol of intimacy and closeness, stable familybecomes evidence of love lost. When we first meet herthe narrator cries out internally, she can't sleep because her son, Freddie, who's nearly sixteencome over here and kiss me, hasn't come home by the time he sort of half-promised he'd be in by. Her husband, Tom, it is fast asleep: they're moving house in the morning but he's still going less an invitation than a desperate attempt to be going to work and he needs his sleepconfirm her emotional numbness. He wakesThe imagined recipient of this plea is Xavier, thoughher ex-partner, when Freddie does come in and overhears him tell his mother that he's killed someonea ghost she conjures to test her detachment.|isbn=1804271934
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Joseph Knox0008405026|title=True Crime StoryA Stranger in the Family (Maeve Kerrigan 11)|author=Jane Casey|rating=45|genre=ThrillersCrime|summary= Joseph Knox, known for his series surrounding Detective Aidan Waits, has created a new genre with his latest novel, "True Crime Story". The story follows the disappearance of Zoe Nolan It's sixteen years since nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her university halls of residencebed one summer night. Split into four parts, the reader is taken through the life She was never found and disappearance of Zoe through the eyes of investigation ground to a halt. Now, her twin sistermother, other familyHelena, friends and professionalsher father are dead in their bed. Initially, such as it looks like a straightforward murder/suicide but there's something about the positioning of the policebodies that makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and her boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. The various accounts help the reader get What looked as though it was going to know Zoe, or at least be an open-and-shut case is now a complex double murder. Kerrigan is convinced that the Zoe she presented to explanation lies in Rosalie's disappearance: others. However, the twists and turns at the end of each chapter leave you shocked(such as Derwent's boss, confused and unsure of what is true or fabricatedUna Burt) are less convinced. Whose accounts can we trust?|isbn=0857527703
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{{Frontpage
|author=Justine Avery Annie Ernaux and Naday MeldovaAlison L. Strayer (translator)|title=No, No, No!The Other Girl
|rating=4
|genre=For SharingAutobiography|summary=They say ''We were born from the best picture books are the simplest onessame body. And nothing could be truer of I've never really wanted to think about this latest from Justine Avery, a Bookbag favourite.''
Ernaux's work is always very candid and her tone transparent, but this raw epistolary text must be one of the most intimate accounts I'Nove read. Ernaux writes in direct address to her sister, Nohowever, No!this letter will never reach her. Why? Because Annie Ernaux's sister died of diphtheria at 6 years old, a few months before the vaccine was made compulsory in France, and 2 years before the author was even born. The large and instant void created by the jarring concept of writing to an imaginary recipient emphasises Ernaux' is based around the simplest text imaginables process of reckoning with this giant absence in her life, an absence that she has always felt but often denied.|isbn=1804271845}}{{Frontpage|author=Maxim Gorky and Bryan Karetnyk (translator)''No|title=Reminiscences of Tolstoy, noChekhov and Andreyev|rating=3.5|genre=Biography|summary=Biographies are often seen as the form of life-writing which offers less colour; it can be seen as more objective and less personal. I think that Gorky completely rejects this perspective, no! Okayand offers a vibrant, okaysubjective yet informed portrait of three of his literary contemporaries. YesIn the first section of this book, Tolstoy complains to his friend Gorky that: ''you maywrite not of real life as it is, but of what you yourself imagine it to be.Whom would it help to know how I see this tower, that sea, or that Tartar - why should it interest anyone? Of what use is it?''. Well, Maxim Gorky shows exactly what can be gained from a subjective account, giving us access to how he saw Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev in such privileged detail that one almost feels unworthy of it.|isbn=1804271977}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1529077745|title=The Dark Wives (D I Vera Stanhope)|author=Ann Cleeves|rating=4.5|genre=CrimeThat's it! But, like all |summary=A man walking his dog in the early morning discovered the body of a man in the best picture bookspark near Rosebank, this tiny snippet a care home for troubled teens. The dead man was Josh - one of text the care workers who was due to work a shift the night before but who had never turned up. D I Vera Stanhope is a veritable tardis called in to investigate the murder - so much bigger on but her only clue is the inside disappearance of one of the residents, fourteen-year-old Chloe Spencer. Some people believe that Chloe was responsible for the death but Vera thinks this is unlikely as the girl's diary makes it appears on the outsideclear that she adored Josh. She knows that she has to find Chloe to discover what happened to Josh.|isbn=1638820457
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Monica ConnellB0FK5LHKD9|title=Against a Peacock SkyThe Colour of Memory|author=Christopher Bowden|rating=54|genre=TravelGeneral Fiction|summary= Monica Connell went to Nepal to do the fieldwork for her Ph.D. in social anthropology. I think it is important to know that. She went on It's been three years since we last reviewed a grant-supported tripbook by favourite regular Christopher Bowden, with so we were very glad to see a relatively specific objectivenew novel arrive here at Bookbag Towers. She wasnLike all Bowden't a hippy wanderer looking for Shangri-la. She wasns stories, there't s a mere tourist passing through. She went with a fundamental aim of learning about these people and how they lived. She also went, presumably, with mystery at the academic discipline heart of how to find these things out, how to organise them in her mind, how to "understand" them in the context ''The Colour of her own paradigms, and how to keep enough notes and files and photos to help her create some greater sense of the experience after the eventMoney''. Fortunately, she also went with a sense of openWe like this running theme in an author's work -ness and curiosity and take a willingness to muck-in, to break her own rules mystery but give it different flavour and to truly connect with the people of the village where she hauled upatmosphere each time.|isbn=1780600429
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1409181669Olga Tokarczuk|title=The Maidens|author=Alex MichaelidesHouse of Day, House of Night
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''What's the good of a world that keeps changing like that? How can one go on calmly living in it?''
The title of this spellbinding work, ''House of Day, House of Night'', somewhat reflects this notion of shifting realities - the small, subtle changes which govern our lives, like the shift from day to night, however quotidian, causing chaos. But, the constant in that image is the house, stoic against the ancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it is perceived.
|isbn=1804271918
}}{{Frontpage
|isbn=henleyA
|title=Ultimate Obsession
|author=Dai Henley
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=Mariana was convinced that Professor Edward Fosca had committed two murders Ex-DCI Andy Flood has been a Private Investigator for some time now, and looked likely to get away with them bothhe should be doing quite well financially. She needed to think carefully about what she knew and decide how she should proceedUnfortunately, his daughter's defence against a murder charge drained his savings. Everything His wife, Laura, has been trying to persuade him to retire - ''maybe go travelling or so she thought - had begun with the death of Tara Hampton go on the Paradise nature reserve in Cambridgecruises. SheThat's what 'd been brutally stabbed and Marianaordinary people do's niece, Zoe, had telephoned her in distress. Tara had been her best friend and she was struggling to cope. Mariana wasn't ' He's not been entirely'' happy up front about having the state of their savings. When Jack Durban tries to go persuade him to Cambridgetake his case, but she caught the first fast train from Kingit's Cross. Mariana and Zoe were close and had been made all the more so by thought of the death of Mariana's husband, Sebastian, in money he could make that convinces him that this is a swimming accident on Naxos some fourteen months earlier. Zoe had been their surrogate daughter after the death miscarriage of Zoe's mother and Mariana's sister, Elizajustice that he really should put right.
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Maisie Chan1836284683|title=Danny Chung Does Not Do MathsThe Big Happy|author=David Chadwick
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersDystopian Fiction|summary=Danny Well! This is eleven years old, and what he really, really loves to a murder mystery unlike any other! I do is draw. He creates fantastical comicslove it when I open a book, whilst his best friend Ravi adds the words. Dannyit's dad, however, wants Danny nothing like I expected it to concentrate on his mathsbe, and forget about the drawing, because he says nobody can make it takes me on a living from drawing! At least Danny has his own room, where he can draw in secret and in peacewild ride. And that is just what happened with ''The Big Happy''. But then one day his parents tell him they have I don't want to ruin a surprise similar experience for him, and this surprise turns out any of you reading but I'll have to be his grandmother who has come over from China to live with them, and who will not only be sharing Dannyat least set the scene. Once that's bedroom but she will also be sleeping on the top bunk of his bunk bed! Danny is horrified! His Nai Nai (grandmother) speaks no Englishdone, and Danny finds himself forced into being her babysitter, and showing her around the townI think you should simply experience this wonderfully original story for yourself. Poor Danny, stuck on a maths project, frustrated with his bedroom situation, and then he even has a falling out with Ravi...how on earth will things ever get better?!|isbn=180078001X
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Terry MilesSally Rooney|title=RabbitsIntermezzo
|rating=4.5
|genre=Science General Fiction|summary=Welcome to the world of The Game. Or should that be the game, for while it ought to be capitalised to high heaven, it never leaves lower case throughout this book. It's also called Rabbits, although only as a slangy term for it – as far as anyone knows, it Sally Rooney has no official title, no official source, no hard and fast structure, and to the average person no obvious entry point. A bit like studied the game chessboard of life then. Yes, this and is the game something of life for a certain tribe of people – the fan of the conspiracy, the computer game, the hack from the darkest of websgrandmaster at putting it into words. People like our heroHer dialogue is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, K, named like that in the least Kafkaesque manner possibleas her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. K and his bezzies are trying to be historians of Among the game, and have studied amongst many things the most unique of high score boards, for the lists of who has successfully won the game are in the most peculiar places, and are still very short. However relationships woven into this time it's different. This time the game seems the most dangerous, nay lethalstory, the most broken it's ever been – morally and otherwise. Unfortunately central one for K, in trying readers to sort out what the game is doing, if it's even being played, and how his loved ones might be kept safe, he unravel is only to find out that the line between observing and learning about the game, fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and playing it, is a very thin one indeed..Peter Koubek.|isbn=1529016932}}{{Frontpage|author=C J Carey|title=Widowland|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=It's April 1953, and Adolf Hitler's schedule includes going to Moscow to attend the state funeral of Joseph Stalin then within weeks coming to LondonIvan, parading around a bitsocially awkward chess prodigy, and watching over the sanctioned return to the throne of Edward VIII contrasts sharply with his wifeolder brother Peter, Queen Wallisa successful lawyer living in Dublin. For yes, Britain caved in the lead-up to the World War Two that certainly didnFollowing their father't happen as we know it, and we are now a protectorate – well, we share enough of the same blood as the Germanic peoples on ''the mainland''. But this is most certainly a different Britain, for Nazi-styled phrenology, and ideas of female purpose, has put all of that gender into s passing after a caste system, ranging from high-brow office bigwigs to the drudges, and beyond those, right on down to the childless, the husbandless and the widows. Female literacy is actively discouraged. And in this puritanical existence, our heroine, Rose Ransom, is employed long battle with the task of bowdlerising classical literature to take all encouragement for female emancipation out of it – after all, not every book can be banned, and not every story excised immediately from British civilisation, and so they just get a hefty tweak towards the party line before they're stamped ready for reprint. That is her job, at leastcancer, until the first emerging signs of female protest come to light, with their potential to spoil Hitlerbrothers's visitalready strained relationship faces new trials.|isbn=152941198X0571365469
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Louise Beech1036916375|title=This Is How We Are HumanJust a Liverpool Lad|author=Peter McArdle
|rating=4
|genre=General FictionAutobiography|summary=Veronica ''Just a Liverpool Lad '' is a devoted single mother to her soncollection of memories and reflections from the years Peter McArdle spent growing up in and around Liverpool. Some are factual, such as the family history of a sea-going family, Sebastian with the docks dominating lives. Other stories blend seamlessly into the what- but she can't give him everything he wantsmight-have-been. Sebastian has decided that it It's time for him a book to have sex. But as an autistic 20 year-oldsettle into and allow your mind to roam across your childhood memories, to think of simpler times when life seemed less constrained, despite the blitz thatwas a constant factor in McArdle's easier said than doneearly years. And it I's starting to cause them both problemsd never heard of parachute mines before - but they were almost soundless and could appear after the all-clear was sounded. |isbn=1913193713
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=B093VPBL5L1836285493|title=Cape Henry HouseThe Double Life of a Wheelchair User|author=Jolly Walker BittickRob Keeley|rating=45|genre=General FictionConfident Readers|summary=Meet BosnerWill is a keen player of video games, ora conscientious student, to give him his full title, Petty Officer Third Class Bosner. We never really find out if he has a first name: there's merely slightly annoying brother and a hint that supportive friend. But most of all, he had the nickname 'Secretary' is an aspiring writer. English is his favourite lesson at his school, Marlowe Park, and one pointat which he excels. HeThis hasn's simply Bosner t gone unnoticed by his headteacher, Mrs Howarth, and she has suggested to one Will and all. When we first encounter him his mum that he's exploring his memories spends a couple of 2008 when he was afternoons a greaser on helicopters (or helos, as they were called) week at a naval establishment. The hours could be long and he was often working nights but at the age of twenty-onedifferent school, Station Road, there was always a way to work some fun (think drinking and eating) into where his dayability might be better extended.
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Hannah Whitten1009473085|title=For the WolfThe Conservative Effect 2010 - 2024|author=Anthony Seldon and Tom Egerton (Editors)
|rating=5
|genre=FantasyPolitics and Society|summary=In RedSometimes it's family, simpler to explain a book by describing what it ''isn't'' and that applies to ''The Conservative Effect: 2010-2024 - 14 Wasted Years?''. If you're looking for an easy read which will deliver the first daughter becomes queeninside story about what ''really'' happened on certain occasions, and then this isn't the second daughter becomes a sacrificebook for you. To Red If that's what you're looking for, I don't think Anthony Seldon's misfortunebook, she {{amazonurl|isbn=B0BH7SKG2S|title=Johnson at 10}}, can be bettered for those tumultuous years. It's a compelling read and should be compulsory for anyone who thinks Johnson should return to politics. ''The Conservative Effect'' is the second daughteran entirely different beast. Sent alone into It's the woods with nothing but the cape on her back, Red knows what to expect: within seventh book in a series which looks at the woods is impact a wolf, government has made and he is co-editor Sir Anthony Seldon regards this as the one who will decide most important. This book follows the fate well-established format: a series of their kingdom. If she is not a worthy sacrifice, experts from various fields review the monsters he keeps contained to the woods will be released, and the fabled kings he keeps hostage will never be returned—or so state of the stories go. But nation when Red enters the woodscoalition took over in 2010, expecting nothing more than to be killed within the hour, she finds changes that occurred and the legends are liessituation in 2024. The wolf is not a monster—he's a man.|isbn=0356516369
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{{Frontpage
|author=M G LeonardJenny Valentine|title=TwitchUs in the Before and After
|rating=5
|genre=Confident ReadersTeens|summary=Twitch is a boy who loves birds. He keeps pigeons at home, Elk and chickensMab are best friends, and or more than that even has swallows nesting in his bedroom! His time spent watching and helping birds , their friendship is easy compared to that of his time a once in schoola lifetime connection. But things are about to change for Twitch in all aspects of his life They meet as there is children one day on a dangerous bank robber on the run, and ittrip out but unfortunately they don't get each other's possible that contact details at the missing bank haul is hidden somewhere in Aves Woodtime. But then chance brings them back together, the place where Twitch and they are inseparable. Something has his secret hide happened though, something terrible and that he knows like the back of his hand! Can Twitch solve the mysterytragic, and now they must work through their grief, and find the missing millions?their friendship, together.|isbn=14063893741471196585
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=18388538041787333175|title=The Cursed GirlsYou Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here|author=Caro RamsayBenji Waterhouse|rating=45|genre=ThrillersPopular Science|summary=Megan MelvickI was tempted to read 's earliest memory is of her fourth birthday: she followed her grandfather down 'You Don't Have to the pond, only be Mad to find that heWork Here''d hanged himself. Twenty years later sheafter enjoying Adam Kay's back home again and this time the occasion first book {{amazonurl|isbn=1509858636|title=This is no less sad. She's there Going to say her final farewells to her sisterHurt}}, Melissaa glorious mixture of insight into the workings of the NHS, who is dying of anorexiahumour and autobiography. As she dies, Melissa whispers 'sorry' You Don't Have to Megan be Mad...'' promised the same elements but what did she mean? There were lots moved from physical problems to mental illness and the work of things, minor and major cruelties, for which Melissa might have been sorry - or was it even a question? psychiatrist. Was she asking if Megan I did wonder whether it was sorry acceptable to be looking for sleeping with Melissa's husband, Jago, on their wedding day? The Melvicks might seem to have everything - Ivan Melvick was Lord Lieutenant of the County and money was never humour in short supply - this setting but there did seem to be the laughter is directed at a situation rather than a curse. In addition to Melissa's health problems, Megan was deaf person and it is always delivered with empathy and their mother, Beth, had left suddenly three years beforeunderstanding. Would she come back for her elder daughter's funeral?
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0241400120Mariana Enriquez|title=The Girl Who Died|author=Ragnar Jonasson and Victoria CribbA Sunny Place for Shady People|rating=45|genre=CrimeShort Stories|summary=Una was not thriving in ReykjavikMariana Enriquez writes horror that is disturbingly real, achieving this uncanny familiarity by basing her paranormal plots on gritty realities: it was some years since her beloved father had committed suicide without leaving any explanation and since then she'd given up her medical studies settings include an abandoned field full of disused refrigerators due to an urban planning mishap, an overcrowded homeless shelter and retrained as a teachercrime-ridden neighbourhood where safety meetings are routine - all within Argentina. She was thirty years old and money was tight. Her friend, Sara, showed The circumstances of her an advert for a job in Skalar on the Langanes Peninsula. There were only ten people in the village but a teacher was required for two children: a salary would be paid and accommodation provided. Una was the only applicant and the job meant characters are so plausible that she could let her flat in Reykjavik and, hopefully, save some money over the winter supernatural or otherworldly horror which her contract coveredseeps into these spaces adopts a similarly tangible texture.|isbn=1803511230
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=18469757191529934753|title=For Any Other Truth (DCI Jim Daley)The Protest|author=Denzil MeyrickRob Rinder|rating=34.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=We learn that MI5 is having its problems with environmental terrorists supergluing themselves to awkward places. But that's LondonFor a little while, isn't it? Whatlooked as though Sir Max Bruce, the country's happening most famous living artist, was not going to show up for the opening of his retrospective at the Royal Academy. Still, he arrived in Kinloch? When a light aircraft crash lands at Machrie airportthe nick of time, DCI Jim Daley complete with his two wives and his colleaguesix children, one of whom filmed what happened. Being an influencer, Acting DI Brian Scottyou tend to do things like that, head off for but it was fortunate that there was a record of the airport straight awayprotest. It soon becomes evident though that both occupants Lexi Williams, an intern at the RA, grabbed a spray can of blue paint from under a chair and proceeded to spray Bruce in the face, whilst shouting ''Stop the plane were dead before take offWar''. How could that It seemed to be? The sort part of an ongoing series of tech which would make that possible isn't available to the paying publicblue-face' attacks, but this was different. And why have the man no identification on them - or even labels in their clothes?The can had been laced with cyanide, and Sir Max Bruce was dead.
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{{Frontpage
|author=Richard BrookAriel Saramandi|title=Understanding Human Nature: A User's Guide to LifePortrait of an Island on Fire
|rating=4.5
|genre=LifestylePolitics and Society|summary= I am a firm believer that sometimes we choose books, and sometimes books choose us. In my case, this is one powerful collection of essays, Saramandi seeks to intradermally dissect the latter. Not so very long ago, if I had come across this book I'd have skimmed it, found some sociopolitical fabric of it interestingMauritius, but it would not have 'hit home' in tunneling deep into the way that it does nowwounds left by colonialism and slavery to expose how these legacies still shape modern life. I believe it came to me not just because I was likely to give it a favourable review [ Saramandi describes the country at one stage as ''rotting'full disclosure The Bookbag's u.s.p. is that people chose their own books rather than getting them randomly, so there is a predisposition towards expecting to like blunt yet apt metaphor for the systemic decay brought about by the bookmalignant forces of racism, even if it doesn't always turn out that way'' ] – but also because it is patriarchy, environmental degradation and governmental dysfunction. Each essay in this collection serves as a book I needed to readkind of diagnostic, right nowcharting the various diseases afflicting the island state.|isbn=18004616821804271616
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=B095CY7NBNPekka Harju-Autti|title=Autumn Camp|author=Barry FowlerLoveVortex and the Drakor's Curse|rating=4.5|genre=General FictionFantasy|summary=It was to be Brian's last camp. He'd founded the organisation some four years ago eighteenth century, a time of discovery and had done all the organisation since but he was leaving school and the time had come Britain is expanding its foreign trade. Captain Julius Hawthorne, an experienced Scottish sea captain, is sent to hand the reins to someone elseAndaman Islands in his endeavour. The obvious person was GaryAlong with his son, Peter, who'd always been the fun element of the camps and Brian had said that their cat, Michi, they set off on this camp, Gary should act as the leader and he'd just be there a perilous voyage to observethese faraway lands. The problem with this was that Gary wasn't really an organiser, an administrator if you like. He was the entertainer, the person who basked in the spotlight islands are beautiful and made things fun - so Brian stepped stunning in their scenery and did the organising. He handed the camp over - and then took it back. And Gary determined islanders' leader, Aarav, is keen to have his revenge. This should have been ''his'' campestablish good relations.|isbn=B0DS1VGHH3
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|isbnauthor=194812467XHelene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)|title=The Farm Shop|author=Devon Avery, Justine Avery and Ema TepicLili is Crying|rating=4.5|genre=For SharingLiterary Fiction|summary=Kirelle and her best friend Sam the cat decide to go for a walk. Kirelle is dressed for all weathers First published in her bright yellow wellies and Sam is perfectly turned out as ever 1953 in his smart grey fur coat. As they walk to the top of the hillFrench, they see a big barn with a sign outside. It's a farm shop! But this novel is a farm shop with a difference: all timeless text which wrenches the stallholders hearts of its readers just as Bessette wrenches words and customers are farmyard animals. There are sheep and ducks sentences from their proper position on the page and cowspositions them elsewhere, goats and chickensdisjointed, and even some micetruncated. ExcitedLike the lives of her characters, Kirelle and Sam go shoppingthey are often left tragically incomplete. What will they buy?|isbn=1804271675
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|isbnauthor=0008404925Tom Percival|title=The Killing Kind|author=Jane CaseyWrong Shoes
|rating=5
|genre=CrimeConfident Readers|summary=Difficult clients were nothing new to barrister Ingrid Lewis but John Webster came as something Will's life is difficult, in a multitude of a surpriseways. After allHe is bullied because he has 'the wrong shoes', it was her cross-examination of he has the wrong shoes because his dad can'victimt work and doesn' which saved him from a lengthy prison sentence. He'd been accused t have enough money for even the most basic of stalking the woman but it didnthings like food, and his dad can't take long to establish that work because he lost his job at the college, was working a cash- if anything in- it was hand job on a building site and had an accident. Throw into that mix the other way aroundfact that his mum and dad are separated, and Will's life seems bleak in every direction. Soon Ingrid never seemed to be free And yet, he still has a tiny amount of John Webster hope. He is good at art, and then she came clings to see him as the moments of joy when he is drawing, that feel like a threat and was forced to remember that the police officer light at his trial had told her that this was the best chance they'd had to put Webster away for end of a long time: he was a very dangerous man, dark tunnel.|isbn=1398527122
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|isbnauthor=0008395594Sylvie Cathrall|title=Both of You|author=Adele ParksA Letter to the Luminous Deep|rating=45|genre=ThrillersScience Fiction|summary=You could be forgiven for thinking that Leigh Fletcher has it all: great husband and two gorgeous stepsons whom she adores. Then, one Monday, she went to work and never came home. Mark, Oli and Seb There are shattered. Well, Mark and Seb are but Oli's sixteen and at the stage where he thinks boredom is his best look. He's been few greater joys than a bit off with Leigh for a while but she put it down to him growing book which lives up and starting to become independent. Seb's only twelve and Leigh's absence hits him hard. Then Daan Janssen, a wealthy Dutch businessman, reports his wife, Kai missingcompelling premise. She too has vanished without traceAnd this is one of them.|isbn= 0356522776
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|isbn=14736857451786482126|title=Unbreak Your HeartThe Janus Stone (Dr Ruth Galloway)|author=Katie MarshElly Griffiths|rating=4.5|genre=Women's FictionCrime|summary=When Beth Carlyle and Simon Withers first met they Builders were on opposite ends of demolishing an angry exchange old house in Norwich - well, Simon the site was angry and Beth was doing her best going to apologise for having knocked Simonhold seventy-five 'luxury's son, Jake, off his bikeapartments - when they discovered the bones of a child beneath a doorway. He wasn't hurt but Jake has historyThere was no skull. He has HLHS - that's Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome for those of you who are not ''au fait'' Was this a ritual killing or murder? Inevitably, Dr Ruth Galloway finds herself working with your medical acronymsDCI Harry Nelson. When he was bornIt's difficult as Ruth knows, the left side of his heart hadnbut Nelson doesn't developed properly and he needed open-heart surgery when he was , that she is pregnant with his child as a few days oldresult of the one night they spent together some three months ago. SoHer condition will be obvious before long, Simon has every right not least because Ruth is prone to be over-protective particularly when someone isn't looking where they're drivingsudden bouts of sickness.
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|author=Louie StowellGuadalupe Nettel and Rosalind Harvey (Translator)|title=OtherlandThe Accidentals|rating=4.5|genre=Confident ReadersShort Stories|summary= Myra and Rohan are like Yin and Yang – Myra is loudThis collection was truly enchanting in all senses of the word: spellbinding with its fantastical, bright magical elements and hates rules, while Rohan is very polite, serious charming in its gentle portrayal of nature and worries about the tiniest thingshuman relationships. Their only connection? Being born Guadalupe Nettel writes intelligently and briefly dying at the same time at the same hospital on Midsummer's day. And soprecisely, every year their families get together to celebrate the two's birthday/deathday. But when Rohan's little sister Shilpa is taken her stories structured by the fairy queen, they must journey a wisdom that appears to the Otherland, a magical realm full of fairies, vampires, dragons, and Gods. It's going want to be teach us something about the worst night of their livesworld.|isbn=17880004631804271470
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|isbn=walker140008551375|title=The Coldest Case When Shadows Fall (A Bruno, Chief of Police NovelD S Max Craigie)|author=Martin WalkerNeil Lancaster|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=It Leanne Wilson's body was when he saw Elisabeth Daynes' work in found at the prehistory museum at Les Eyzies that chief bottom of police Bruno Courreges had a Scottish mountain, seemingly the idea which he thought might help his boss, chief result of detectives Jalipeaua tragic accident. She'd looked so happy, known as J-Jtoo, to solve a case that had haunted him for thirty yearswhen she posted her intentions on Facebook. The body Her friends were relieved as she was just out of a young male an unpleasant relationship, but it looked like she was found living her best life now. Then it emerged that five other women had died in similar circumstances in the woods but he was never identified and his killer never brought to justicelast year. What if an artist could recreate the face from the skull All were experienced climbers, properly equipped for what they were doing and the resulting publicity be used to identify the young man? sensible people. J-J calls None of the skull 'Oscar' and has what a picture on his door: he sees it every time he leaves his office: he doesnstupid thing to do't want to forget Oscar until his killer has been brought to justiceexplanations applied.}}{{Frontpage|author= Martha Leigh|title= Invisible Ink They were all alone when they died: A Family Memoir|rating= 5|genre= Biography|summary= Martha Leigh begins her book talking about a childhood spent in a slightly eccentric, immediately recognisable upper middle class English family. Her father DS Max Craigie is a Cambridge don, forever clacking away on his typewriter as he edits the complete correspondence of the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, his lifecertain there's work. Her mother is a concert pianist who practises for hours every day. Neither parent is hugely interested in killer on the practicalities of life. There is love in the house but also darker undercurrents that a child does not fully understand but knows is thereloose.|isbn=1800460384
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