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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''
Through this hybrid text, consisting of arias, letters, essays and autofiction, Preciado expresses his own hybrid self, and brings forth a new sensorium as an offering to the new generation, a new feeling mechanism in which detachment is not considered a sign of political apathy. Rather, it is the proportional, valid response to ''the epistemological and political crack we are living through, and the tension between emancipatory forces and conservative resistances that characterize our present'' which Preciado calls ''dysphoria mundi''. The whole text is framed against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic as that which has catalysed this revolution, when dysphoria began to emerge on a global scale, or as ''pangea covidica''Read [[Forthcoming Publications|reviews . Rather than taking this extreme dysphoria as a sign of books about weakness, or mistaking detachment or withdrawal for political paralysis, Preciado urges his readers to be published]]''use dysphoria as your revolutionary platform''.<!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->|isbn=1804271454}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1800464495Samantha Harvey|title= 100 Ways in 100 Days to Teach Your Baby Maths: Support All Areas of Your Baby’s Development by Nurturing a Love of Maths|author=Emma SmithOrbital
|rating=4.5
|genre=Children's Non-General Fiction|summary=In 2024, Samantha Harvey won the Booker Prize for ''Orbital''Babies seem to be born with an amazing number sense: understanding shapes , a compact yet profound work that unfolds over a single day in the womb, being aware lives of a group of quantities at seven hours oldastronauts aboard the International Space Station. Through a narrative lens that mirrors the astronauts' orbital perspective, assessing probability at six months old, and comprehending addition and subtraction at nine months oldHarvey invites readers to see our planet in a wholly new light.''|isbn=1529922933}}{{Frontpage|isbn=295967572X|title=Pale Pieces|author=G M StevensDid you know this? I didn't! How about:|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction''Maths ability on entry |summary= Our unnamed narrator is about to school is begin a strong predictor train journey with his companion Django. Where they're going and what the purpose of later achievementthis journey is, double that of literacy skillsis uncertain.Django found the tickets '' I didnon the floor somewhere''t know this and has persuaded our narrator to accompany him. Why not? Not much else is clear either! I think most parents are aware that giving your children a good start in literacy - reading stories, teaching pen grips, singing rhymes - gives children a solid foundation when they start school. But do but we think the same way about maths, beyond counting? I don't think we do, in part because so many of us are afraid of maths. But why are we? Most of us use maths probably in daily life without realising the past as the pair travel to the station by coach and it follows that giving our children the train is a similar pre-school grounding will be just as beneficialsteam locomotive.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=15293793850008551324|title=The Madness of Crowds Devil You Know (Chief Inspector GamacheD S Max Craigie)|author=Louise PennyNeil Lancaster
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=In the Canadian village of Three Pines, weIt're post-pandemic: s unusual for anyone from the scars are still there but life is starting Hardie family to get back to normalapproach the police. The villagers are beginning to return Neither side likes or has any respect for the other. But Davie Hardie is struggling in prison and he's prepared to tell the police where the Bistro body of a missing person is buried and who was responsible for her death. This person, he promises, is someone big and it will be worth the Aubergepolice doing what he wants. They're visiting each other's homes And what he wants is to be transferred to an open prison to serve the remainder of his sentence and having friends and relatives to stayget an early parole date. A young Sudanese woman who has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize Not much to ask, is one such visitor it? The new Deputy Police Constable doesn't think so and she soon proves 's even prepared to do the other thing that not all saints are necessarily pleasant people to be around Hardie demanded - a bit like Vincent Gilbert, known in the village as the Asshole Saintmake certain that DS Max Craigie and anyone who works with him is kept well away from what's happening.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor= B09F4CTKJRJon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |title= Flights for Freedom|author= Steven BurgauerVaim|rating=4.5|genre=Historical Literary Fiction|summary=It's the later stages of World War I and the United States has just entered the conflict'All was strange''.. Petrol Petronus is a young American who has signed up and joined the 17 Aero Squadron. This company was haunting phrase encapsulates the first US Aero Squadron to be trained pervading sense of otherworldliness which permeates this story set in CanadaVaim, the first to be attached to the RAF a fictional fishing village in Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for Jatgeir and Eline, two of the first to be sent into the skies to fight the Germans protagonists caught in active combat. But before that can happen, Petrol has to master flying the notoriously difficult but majestic Sopwith Camelits melancholic current.|isbn=1804271829
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=183885410X1035043092|title=The Dark RemainsKilling Stones (Jimmy Perez)|author=William McIlvanney and Ian RankinAnn Cleeves|rating=3.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=Bobby Carter I can't have been the only person who was sad when Inspector Jimmy Perez [[Wild Fire (Shetland, Book 8) by Ann Cleeves|left Shetland]] to start a lawyer and consigliere to one of the major crime families in nineteen seventies Glasgow. DC Jack Laidlaw is new life on the CID team charged with the investigationOrkney. I say It's been seven years since we heard from him, but he'on s now living with Willow Reeves and their young son, James, as well as Cassie, the team'' but Laidlaw never really seems to be a part daughter of ithis former partner. He does Willow's also his own thingboss, goes his own way and she ''The Dark Remainsshould'' uncovers be on maternity leave, but when the body of a popular islander, Archie Stout, is found, in the truth aftermath of why Bobby Cartera storm, she can's body was found behind t resist getting involved. He'd been battered about the head with a Neolithic stone - one of Glasgow's seedier pubsa pair - which had been stolen from a museum.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1942410255Thea Lenarduzzi|title=Tokyo Zangyo (Detective Hiroshi)|author=Michael PronkoThe Tower|rating=4.5|genre=CrimeLiterary Fiction|summary=''Zangyo: overtime workHow unctuous are the fats of another's life, often unpaidhow dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream''.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0241425425Claire-Louise Bennett|title=The Man Who Died Twice|author=Richard OsmanBig Kiss, Bye-Bye
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Everything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, is steeped in anguish and distortion. Even a kiss, usually a symbol of intimacy and closeness, becomes evidence of love lost. When the narrator cries out internally, ''come over here and kiss me,'' it is less an invitation than a desperate attempt to confirm her emotional numbness. The imagined recipient of this plea is Xavier, her ex-partner, a ghost she conjures to test her detachment.
|isbn=1804271934
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=0008405026
|title=A Stranger in the Family (Maeve Kerrigan 11)
|author=Jane Casey
|rating=5
|genre=Crime
|summary=Elizabeth Best was a little surprised when she received the letterIt's sixteen years since nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her bed one summer night. It came from a man whose body she had helped to pull from the Thames She was never found and who had never existed but then this is the sort of conundrum which retired spies have investigation ground to deal with on a regular basishalt. When she visits Now, her mother, Helena, and her father are dead in their bed. Initially, it looks like a straightforward murder/suicide but there's something about the sender positioning of the letter (he's moved into the Cooper's Chase Retirement Village) it comes as no surprise bodies that it's someone with whom she has a long professional history - makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and who used to be her husbandboss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. He's made a bad mistake - something What looked as though it was going to do with a mask being removed within the range of a CCTV camera on a raid, a missing twentybe an open-million pounds in diamonds and -shut case is now a few death threatscomplex double murder. HeKerrigan is convinced that the explanation lies in Rosalie's now in hiding with a young woman called Polly, whodisappearance: others (such as Derwent's his MI5 handler as well as being an incompetent waitressboss, Una Burt) are less convinced.
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{{Frontpage
|author=Andrew SharpAnnie Ernaux and Alison L. Strayer (translator)|title=The Chef, the Bird and the BlessingOther Girl
|rating=4
|genre=General FictionAutobiography|summary= Chef Mlantushi - Mozzy to his employer - is, in his mind, ''We were born from the head chef of a safari business catering same body. I've never really wanted to VIP guests in an unnamed African countrythink about this. Mozzy '' Ernaux's work is earnest always very candid and dedicated to his task and he puts all her tone transparent, but this raw epistolary text must be one of himself into creating fine cuisine dishes for the guests at BOD-W safaris but his dream is most intimate accounts I've read. Ernaux writes in direct address to become the head chef her sister, however, this letter will never reach her. Why? Because Annie Ernaux's sister died of diphtheria at 6 years old, a restaurant few months before the vaccine was made compulsory in London or a big American cityFrance, and 2 years before the author was even born. Even to win a Michelin star. He is thwarted in this ambition The large and instant void created by his boss, Mr Bin (Ben the jarring concept of writing to you and me) who incurs Mozzyan imaginary recipient emphasises Ernaux's disapproval for his scruffy ways, his uninterest process of reckoning with this giant absence in his guests and - shockher life, horror - his allowing of bush animals into the housean absence that she has always felt but often denied.|isbn=B09926MK8H1804271845
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Alex FoulkesMaxim Gorky and Bryan Karetnyk (translator)|title=Rules for VampiresReminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev|rating=43.5|genre=Confident ReadersBiography|summary= Eleonore Von Motteberg (or 'Leo' for short) is a VampireBiographies are often seen as the form of life-writing which offers less colour; it can be seen as more objective and less personal. She drinks blood, she sleeps during the dayI think that Gorky completely rejects this perspective, and she can Grimwalk (turning into offers a flock vibrant, subjective yet informed portrait of bats to travel around, although not all three of them remember to come back)his literary contemporaries. Pretty cool stuff. Now, on In the night first section of her hundredth birthnightthis book, she has Tolstoy complains to go out and hunt her first human. Howeverhis friend Gorky that: ''you write not of real life as it is, instead she ends up killing two humans by accident and burning down an orphanagebut of what you yourself imagine it to be. Oops! And Whom would it help to make things worseknow how I see this tower, that sea, the ghosts of one of the orphans and the evil master of the orphanage come back to haunt heror that Tartar - why should it interest anyone? Of what use is it?''. SoWell, Maxim Gorky shows exactly what can be gained from a subjective account, not only does Leo have to team up with the friendly ghost Minna giving us access to stop the ghost of the Orphanmaster before how he becomes unstoppably powerfulsaw Tolstoy, she has to do Chekhov and Andreyev in such privileged detail that one almost feels unworthy of it all while hiding it from her family. Did I mention vampires and ghosts hate each other? Yeah, there's a reason why there are rules for vampires…|isbn=147119955X1804271977
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Tori Bovalino1529077745|title=The Devil Makes ThreeDark Wives (D I Vera Stanhope)|author=Ann Cleeves
|rating=4.5
|genre=TeensCrime|summary= Working all summer A man walking his dog in her boarding school's library is the last thing Tess Matheson wants to do — especially when she gets a request for over early morning discovered the body of a hundred books that she has to deliver herself. What makes it worse is the man who requested in the books: Mr Birchpark near Rosebank, a care home for troubled teens. The boarding school's headmaster, and a dead man Tess hates. As a petty act of revenge for making her find and deliver such a large request, Tess sticks postwas Josh -it notes on each one of the books, scribbled with care workers who was due to work a shift the ugliest insults she can think of. They're night before but who had never meant to reach him, of courseturned up. Her plan D I Vera Stanhope is called in to get investigate the murder - but her anger out like thisonly clue is the disappearance of one of the residents, and then take them all off before delivering themfourteen-year-old Chloe Spencer. No harm done… Or Some people believe that Chloe was responsible for the death but Vera thinks this is unlikely as the girl's diary makes it would be, if someone hadn't delivered them for herclear that she adored Josh. She knows that she has to find Chloe to discover what happened to Josh.|isbn=1789098130
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn= B09BG8V3Q6B0FK5LHKD9|title= Who Needs Nappies? Not Me! (Everybody Potties!)The Colour of Memory|author= Justine Avery and Seema AmjadChristopher Bowden|rating=4.5|genre=For SharingGeneral Fiction|summary= It's been three years since we last reviewed a book by favourite regular Christopher Bowden, so we were very glad to see a new novel arrive here at Bookbag Towers. Like all Bowden'Who Needs Nappies? Not Me!s stories, there'' is the latest release in s a mystery at the heart of ''Everybody Potties!The Colour of Money'' series from Justine Avery. This series of fun picture books aims to take the pain out of potty training children and replace it with some fun. ItWe like this running theme in an author's work - take a worthy aim, as any frustrated parent will tell you. mystery but give it different flavour and atmosphere each time.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=B098FFFBH9Olga Tokarczuk|title=Snowcub|author=Graham FulbrightHouse of Day, House of Night|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Fourteen-year-old Rachel is her school''What's animal rights project leader and she and her friend are producing the good of a competition entry 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 highlight night, however quotidian, causing chaos. But, the way constant in that image is the house, stoic against the ancient diurnal cycle which human beings exploit the animal worldnonetheless controls how it is perceived.|isbn=1804271918}}{{Frontpage|isbn=henleyA|title=Ultimate Obsession|author=Dai Henley|rating=4|genre=Crime|summary=Ex-DCI Andy Flood has been a Private Investigator for some time now, and he should be doing quite well financially. She gets a great deal of support from her family: father Pip HarrisonUnfortunately, his daughter's defence against a lecturer at Imperial Collegemurder charge drained his savings. His wife, LondonLaura, mother Kate and her twinhas been trying to persuade him to retire - ''maybe go travelling or go on cruises. That's what 'ordinary people do', Nick. '' Kate runs He's not been entirely up front about the family businessstate of their savings. When Jack Durban tries to persuade him to take his case, a toy shop called Cornucopia in Putney, which is where we'll meet Rachelit's main (if unsuspected) source the thought of the money he could make that convinces him that this is a miscarriage of information: five soft toysjustice that he really should put right.
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn= Angharad Walker1836284683|title= The Ash HouseBig Happy|author=David Chadwick|rating= 4.5|genre= Confident ReadersDystopian Fiction|summary= A new boy arrives at The Ash House. He doesnWell! This is a murder mystery unlike any other! I do love it when I open a book, it't know his name, or why he is there but he is used s nothing like I expected it to the systembe, used to different places and different facesit takes me on a wild ride. He meets Dom who names him Sol and sets out to teach him the rules of And that is just what happened with ''The Ash HouseBig Happy''. These rules centre on I don't want to ruin a variety similar experience for any of Nicenesses you reading but I'll have to at least set out by the absent Headmasterscene. All children must remember their Niceness and complete their choresOnce that's done, working as a hive in the smouldering shadows of The Ash House. But soon their easy peace is shattered by the arrival of the Doctor. By the end of the I think you should simply experience this wonderfully original story, lives will be changed forever and The Ash House will never be the same againfor yourself.|isbn=1912626977
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Yancey WilliamsSally Rooney|title=Crosshairs of the DevilIntermezzo
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=Award-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard of life and is something of a grandmaster at putting it into words. Her dialogue is getting on in years gripping andso brilliantly frustrating, despite his strenuous objections and thanks to his daughter, finds himself living - or imprisonedas her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Among the many relationships woven into this story, from Eddie's point of view - in room 315 of the Garden of Eden nursing home, with only a trusty nursing aide, Jenkins, central one for palatable companyreaders to unravel is the fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. Nothing is going to keep Eddie from his stock-in-trade of writing thoughIvan, so herea socially awkward chess prodigy, for contrasts sharply with his readersolder brother Peter, are his wanderings through his lifea successful lawyer living in Dublin. Following their father's workpassing after a long battle with cancer, the brothers' already strained relationship faces new trials.|isbn=09860316580571365469}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Philip Reeve1036916375|title=Utterly Dark and the Face of the DeepJust a Liverpool Lad|author=Peter McArdle|rating=54|genre=Confident ReadersAutobiography|summary=In ''Just a word, rich. There Liverpool Lad '' is certainly an abundance a collection of riches memories and reflections from the years Peter McArdle spent growing up in this story set on a peculiar island called Wildsea, British but way west, beyond the Scilliesand around Liverpool. There Some are troll people on itfactual, and such as the family history of a sea-witchesgoing family, and legends of with the docks dominating lives. Other stories blend seamlessly into the Dark family that has what-might-have-been. It's a book to keep watch for magical islands settle into and their monster approaching from even further west, where no ship dare sail. The current Darks are the Watcherallow your mind to roam across your childhood memories, Andrewe, who has to keep notes think of activity from simpler times when life seemed less constrained, despite the Hidden Lands, his brother Will who lives blitz that was a constant factor in London with too much science in his head to worry about such local yokel superstitions, and AndreweMcArdle's foundling daughter, who washed up out of the sea one day eleven early years ago. But when Andrewe Dark drowns himself, both his sullen brother I'd never heard of parachute mines before - but they were almost soundless and his curious ward are thrust into could appear after the world of protecting their island, like it or notall-clear was sounded.|isbn=1788452372
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Erling Kagge1836285493|title=Walking: One Step At A TimeThe Double Life of a Wheelchair User|author=Rob Keeley
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Meet Jack. Now Jack knows very little about being fearless and nimble and quickWill is a keen player of video games, for he's a slight boyconscientious student, a slightly annoying brother and although a supportive friend. But most of all, he wants for danger and peril and interesting things is an aspiring writer. English is his dad refuses to let him out of favourite lesson at his sightschool, Marlowe Park, and one at which he excels. ThatThis hasn's because Jack's mother knew all about monsterst gone unnoticed by his headteacher, Mrs Howarth, and look what happened she has suggested to her – she died. Luckily or unluckily then, depending on your point Will and his mum that he spends a couple of view, afternoons a week at a giant ogre will threaten his aunt when Jack's father also goes AWOLdifferent school, Jack will fluke the ogre's deathStation Road, a dwarfish wizard-type will make him an apprentice monster hunter, and he'll where his ability might be given a book that tells him all he needs to know about the perils he always wanted closer contact with. The book's name? ''Monster Hunting for Beginners''..better extended.|isbn=0755501942
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Keith Gray1009473085|title=The ClimbersConservative Effect 2010 - 2024|author=Anthony Seldon and Tom Egerton (Editors)|rating=45|genre=Confident ReadersPolitics and Society|summary=Sully is the best tree climber in Sometimes it's 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 village. He has inside story about what's known amongst the kids as 'reachreally'' happened on certain occasions, then this isn't the book for you. But If that's what happens when a new kid shows up in town? A new kidyou're looking for, called NottinghamI don't think Anthony Seldon's book, who clambers up some of the hardest trees with ease? Suddenly Sully is worried that his status is being threatened{{amazonurl|isbn=B0BH7SKG2S|title=Johnson at 10}}, can be bettered for those tumultuous years. It's a compelling read and not only that, that his chance should be compulsory for anyone who thinks Johnson should return to name politics. ''The Conservative Effect'' is an entirely different beast. It's the final, unnamed big tree seventh book in a series which looks at the impact a government has made and co-editor Sir Anthony Seldon regards this as the park by being most important. This book follows the first to conquer it, might be snatched well-established format: a series of experts from his hands. How can Sully stop Nottingham? And will it cost him his best friend, or maybe even all various fields review the state of his friendsthe nation when the coalition took over in 2010, to do so?|isbn=1781129991the changes that occurred and the situation in 2024.
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Emma CarrollJenny Valentine|title=The Week at World's EndUs in the Before and After|rating=45|genre=Confident ReadersTeens|summary=FirstElk and Mab are best friends, the titleor more than that even, their friendship is a once in a lifetime connection. We They meet as children one day on a trip out but unfortunately they don're in Worldt get each other's End Close, a mediocre set of houses, where Stevie (Vie to her friends) finds fun only with contact details at the family dog and with the boy over the roadtime. But we could also be at World's Endthen chance brings them back together, because something taking a great chunk of the fun away is the fact that the Cuban Missile Crisis is kicking off. The Soviet boats and they are getting blockaded as America tries to reduce the risk of nuclear missiles offshore, and not much else is able to make the newsinseparable. That said, Vie Something has news of her own – Annahappened though, a secretive young woman hiding in their coal shed. Anna has, in no short time, taken a strong interest in the American airforce base behind the Close, said she'd locate something she wanted terrible and leavetragic, failed to leaveand now they must work through their grief, and implied her life was at risktheir friendship, together. But surely this bit of intrigue has got nothing to do with what the Cold War is doing miles away?|isbn=05713644381471196585
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Kiran Millwood Hargrave and Tom de Freston1787333175|title=Julia and the SharkYou Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here|author=Benji Waterhouse|rating=45|genre=Confident ReadersPopular Science|summary=Julia, our pre-teen heroine, has been packed off with her parents and their cat from the family home in SW England I was tempted to read ''You Don't Have to be lighthousekeepers for Mad to Work Here'' after enjoying Adam Kay's first book {{amazonurl|isbn=1509858636|title=This is Going to Hurt}}, a summer, in glorious mixture of insight into the far NE workings of the Scottish islands. Here be VikingsNHS, that kind of Scottish islandhumour and autobiography. Dad is going ''You Don't Have to be automating Mad...'' promised the lantern, which is his specialist thing, while mum will be leaving her career in algae behind same elements but moved from physical problems to hunt mental illness and the elusive Greenland sharkwork of a psychiatrist. And Julia, well, she will I did wonder whether it was acceptable to be homesick looking for humour in this setting but the laughter is directed at a situation rather than a person and it is always delivered with empathy and alone – until she suddenly finds company one nightunderstanding.|isbn=1510107789
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{{Frontpage
|author=Freya SampsonMariana Enriquez|title=The Last LibraryA Sunny Place for Shady People|rating=45|genre=General FictionShort Stories|summary=I am always a little nervous to start a story about a library, since I am a librarian. I always grit my teeth slightly at the thought of the incoming cardigan-wearing, hair in a bun, cat-owningMariana Enriquez writes horror that is disturbingly real, glasses on a chain stereotypes! In achieving this story, the main character, June, does put uncanny familiarity by basing her hair in a bun, and she does own a cat (called Alan Bennett), and she has barely any friends and spends paranormal plots on gritty realities: her evenings eating the same Chinese takeaway meal once a week whilst reading books alone! But I didn't immediately throw the book out settings include an abandoned field full of the window, because I found I was interested in June, and why she lived as she did. Her mum used disused refrigerators due to be a librarian at the village library, but when she got sickan urban planning mishap, June gave up on going to University an overcrowded homeless shelter and stayed at home to take care of her mum, as well as taking on a job as library assistant at the local librarycrime-ridden neighbourhood where safety meetings are routine - all within Argentina. And even though The circumstances of her mum sadly died some years ago, she is still working there, still eating her mum's favourite takeaway meal, and still reading her mum's old books. June is stuck, but little does she know, everything in her life is about characters are so plausible that the changesupernatural or otherworldly horror which seeps into these spaces adopts a similarly tangible texture.|isbn=183877369X1803511230
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=00083709821529934753|title=Rock Paper ScissorsThe Protest|author=Alice FeeneyRob Rinder
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=For those whoa little while, like meit looked as though Sir Max Bruce, haven't come across the Skelfs before, I'll risk a quick synopsis of whocountry's who – although Johnstone does a good job most famous living artist, was not going to show up for the opening of bringing his retrospective at the backstory Royal Academy. Still, he arrived in without being heavy handed about itthe nick of time, complete with his two wives and six children, one of whom filmed what happened. Skelf isn't some fantastic creature Being an influencer, though it sounds as though it ought you tend to bedo things like that, but it is merely the surname of was fortunate that there was a family record of undertakersthe protest. Undertakers and private investigators. Dorothy is Lexi Williams, an intern at the matriarch – Californian by birth and instinctRA, she married grabbed a spray can of blue paint from under a scot chair and ended up helping proceeded to run spray Bruce in the Edinburgh undertaking firm that had been in face, whilst shouting ''Stop the family for generationsWar''. Recently widowed and now involved with a black Swedish police officer. Swedish by nationality. Scottish police. Daughter Jenny It seemed to be part of an ongoing series of 'blue-face' attacks, 46, is haunted by her still-living husband – a violent escaped prisonerbut this was different. And grand-daughter is about to graduate The can had been laced with a first-class physics degree cyanide, and join the academic staff next termSir Max Bruce was dead.|isbn=1913193837
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1901514978Ariel Saramandi|title=There's a Problem With Dad|author=Carlos AlbaPortrait of an Island on Fire
|rating=4.5
|genre=General FictionPolitics and Society|summary=Life is different for George Lovelace In this powerful collection of essays, Saramandi seeks to intradermally dissect the sociopolitical fabric of Mauritius, tunneling deep into the wounds left by colonialism and he canslavery to expose how these legacies still shape modern life. Saramandi describes the country at one stage as ''rotting't really understand why. He's always done everything he ought to: steady worker, husband and father - and a father who was always there blunt yet apt metaphor for school plays the systemic decay brought about by the malignant forces of racism, patriarchy, environmental degradation and sports daysgovernmental dysfunction. So why is he never quite Each essay in tune with those around him? Why does he upset people? Why is someone with such this collection serves as a ''good'' mind unable to progress at work or to relate to his colleagues? Why does he make so many breath-taking gaffes? It's almost become a cliche these days to suggest that someone who is a little different is 'on kind of diagnostic, charting the spectrum', but George Lovelace has all various diseases afflicting the symptoms of Asperger's Syndrome: high-functioning autismisland state.|isbn=1804271616
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Louise CandlishPekka Harju-Autti|title=The HeightsLoveVortex and the Drakor's Curse|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersFantasy|summary=Ellen doesn't expect to see Kieran that day. SheIt's on sitethe eighteenth century, visiting a client for a lighting consultation when she spies him in a building across the waytime of discovery and Britain is expanding its foreign trade. There are lots of thingsCaptain Julius Hawthorne, lots of peoplean experienced Scottish sea captain, you might see when you look out across London, but this isn't one Ellen expected that day or is sent to the Andaman Islands in fact any other dayhis endeavour. Why? Because Kieran has been dead for over two yearsAlong with his son, Peter, and Ellen knows this for a facttheir cat, Michi, because she had they set off on a hand perilous voyage to these faraway lands. The islands are beautiful and stunning in his murdertheir scenery and the islanders' leader, Aarav, is keen to establish good relations.|isbn=1471183483B0DS1VGHH3
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0008421714Helene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)|title=Mrs March|author=Virginia FeitoLili is Crying
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The problem began just after First published in 1953 in French, this novel is a timeless text which wrenches the publication hearts of George March's most successful novel to date. Everyone but Mrs March (we know her first name only its readers just as Bessette wrenches words and sentences from their proper position on the last page) seemed to either be reading it or had already done so. Every day Mrs March went to the local patisserie to buy olive bread but on that particular morning, Patricia asked, as she was wrapping the breadand positions them elsewhere, ''but isn't this the first time he's based a character on you?'' She mentioned that Johannadisjointed, the principal character had 'her mannerisms''truncated. Perhaps this would not have mattered, except for Like the fact that Johanna is the whore lives of Nantes - ''a weak, plain, detestable, pathetic, unlovedher characters, unloveable wretchthey are often left tragically incomplete.''|isbn=1804271675
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|author=John BoyneTom Percival|title=The Echo ChamberWrong Shoes
|rating=5
|genre=General FictionConfident Readers|summary=Meet George CleverleyWill's life is difficult, in a multitude of ways. He is self-defined as "one of bullied because he has 'the wrong shoes', he has the few television personalities over wrong shoes because his dad can't work and doesn't have enough money for even the age most basic of fifty without a criminal record". He starts this book a bit worried when things like food, and his mistress tells him shedad can's carrying his child, but then t work because he lost his author wife is getting her kicks with job at the Ukrainian partner "Strictly Come Dancing" paired her with. They have three childrencollege, who are was working a sadcash-sack with absolutely no social skills whatsoever, in-hand job on a girl who hangs around with a virtue-signallingbuilding site and had an accident. Throw into that mix the fact that his mum and dad are separated, keyboard warrior "wokester" who wants to save the worldand Will's homeless with out-of-date foodlife seems bleak in every direction. And yet, and he still has a fit young lad doing the gay hustle thingtiny amount of hope. Add in a few other characters – therapists He is good at art, lawyers, random transgender types – that all have two very different connections and clings to his lifethe moments of joy when he is drawing, and you have something that suggests an almost farcical approach to feel like a light at the modern world. What suggests the farcical approach even moreend of a long, however, is the fact this is bloody funnydark tunnel.|isbn=08575262191398527122
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0241989094Sylvie Cathrall|title=The Perfect Life|author=Nuala EllwoodA Letter to the Luminous Deep|rating=45|genre=ThrillersScience Fiction|summary=In August 2018 we meet There are few greater joys than a young woman called Imogen and she's viewing book which lives up to a house in Goring-on-Thames and telling the estate agent about her three children, Lavender, Freddie and Barclaycompelling premise. The boys are a bit And this is one of a handful which is why she's making this trip on her own. The house would be perfect for them. It's the same month but now we're in Wimbledon and we encounter the same young woman, only this time she's job hunting and living in her sister, Georgie's, spare room, where she's been since she broke up with her boyfriend, Connor.|isbn= 0356522776
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Darren Shan1786482126|title=Archibald Lox and the Slides of Bon Repell: Archibald Lox series, Volume 2, book 2 of 3The Janus Stone (Dr Ruth Galloway)|author=Elly Griffiths
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=So. Having done Builders were demolishing an old house in Norwich - the impossible and unpicked the lock site was going to the Forgotten Crypt, from which the Departed communicate with the Merge, Archie now has hold seventy-five 'luxury'grop'' to think aboutapartments - when they discovered the bones of a child beneath a doorway. There was no skull. But before that Was this a ritual killing or murder? Inevitably, soireesDr Ruth Galloway finds herself working with DCI Harry Nelson. Soirees! Archie, much to Inez It's amusementdifficult as Ruth knows, but Nelson doesn't even know what , that she is pregnant with his child as a result of the one of those night they spent together some three months ago. Her condition will be obvious before long, not least because Ruth is. But he manages prone to come through the fancy party unscathed, even after an uncomfortable encounter with Kurtis, whose fledgling romance with Inez was crushed in the first volume sudden bouts of this seriessickness. |isbn=B093J9TF73
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=B07GZ81J7CGuadalupe Nettel and Rosalind Harvey (Translator)|title=When Fred the Snake Got Squished and Mended|author=Peter CottonThe Accidentals
|rating=4.5
|genre=For SharingShort Stories|summary=Meet Fred. Well, actually, you're going to be meeting Fred-Fred for reasons which will become This collection was truly enchanting in all too obvious very quickly. But I'm getting ahead senses of myselfthe word: I'd better tell you a bit more about Fred. Fred is a snake spellbinding with its fantastical, magical elements and even those charming in its gentle portrayal of us who have a phobia about snakes are going to warm to himnature and human relationships. He arrived as a present in a box with holes so that he could breathe Guadalupe Nettel writes intelligently and immediately became part of the familyprecisely, to the extent that they would take Fred out with them when they went out for her stories structured by a walk. And wisdom that was where appears to want to teach us something about the problem started. Fred didn't have any road sense. Or brakesworld.|isbn=1804271470
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn= Justine Avery and Naday Meldova0008551375|title= Everybody Pees! When Shadows Fall (Everybody Potties!D S Max Craigie)|rating=4|genre=For Sharing|summary= Can potty training ever be joyous? It often isn't, as any parent will tell you. But really, why shouldn't it be? We all have to learn about our bodily functions just as we have to learn about everything else when we are small. Why shouldn't potty training be as much fun as, say, learning about why the sun and the moon take turns in the sky? |isbn= B098BJZYHH}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1787634493|title=All Her Fault|author=Andrea MaraNeil Lancaster
|rating=4.5
|genre=ThrillersCrime|summary=It had seemed like one Leanne Wilson's body was found at the bottom of a Scottish mountain, seemingly the result of those serendipitous events which sometimes happena tragic accident. Marissa Irvine had been hoping that the opportunity would arise for her sonShe'd looked so happy, Milotoo, to go when she posted her intentions on a play dateFacebook. She Her friends were relieved as she was just out of an unpleasant relationship, but it looked like she was concerned living her best life now. Then it emerged that he didn't have any friends at his new schoolfive other women had died in similar circumstances in the last year. Milo would go home from Kerryglen National School in an affluent Dublin suburb with his classmate Jacob - All were experienced climbers, properly equipped for what they were doing and Marissa would pick him up from 14 Tudor Grove a little latersensible people. What could be better? Only, when Marissa arrived at None of the house, expecting 'what a stupid thing to meet Jacob's mother, Jenny, the door was answered by Esther, who didndo't know Jenny or Jacobexplanations applied. The phone number she'd been given for Jenny was not recognised. Milo had disappeared. And so had JennyThey were all alone when they died: DS Max Craigie is certain there's nannya killer on the loose.
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