There are currently '''{{PAGESINCATEGORY: Reviews}}''' [[:Category:Reviews|reviews]] at TheBookbag.
Want to find out learn more [[About Us|about us]]? __NOTOC__
==The Best New Books==
'''Read [[:Category:Features|the latest features]].'''
{{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''. Rather than taking this extreme dysphoria as a sign of weakness, or mistaking detachment or withdrawal for political paralysis, Preciado urges his readers to ''Read [[Forthcoming Publicationsuse dysphoria as your revolutionary platform''. |isbn=1804271454}}{{Frontpage|author=Samantha Harvey|title=Orbital|rating=4.5|reviews genre=General Fiction|summary=In 2024, Samantha Harvey won the Booker Prize for ''Orbital'', a compact yet profound work that unfolds over a single day in the lives of a group of books astronauts aboard the International Space Station. Through a narrative lens that mirrors the astronauts' orbital perspective, Harvey invites readers to see our planet in a wholly new light.|isbn=1529922933}}{{Frontpage|isbn=295967572X|title=Pale Pieces|author=G M Stevens|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= Our unnamed narrator is about to begin a train journey with his companion Django. Where they're going and what the purpose of this journey is, is uncertain. Django found the tickets ''on the floor somewhere'' and has persuaded our narrator to accompany him. Why not? Not much else is clear either - but we are probably in the past as the pair travel to the station by coach and the train is a steam locomotive.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0008551324|title=The Devil You Know (D S Max Craigie)|author=Neil Lancaster|rating=4.5|genre=Crime|summary=It's unusual for anyone from the Hardie family to approach the police. 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 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 published]]worth the police doing what he wants. And what he wants is to be transferred to an open prison to serve the remainder of his sentence and to get an early parole date. Not much to ask, is it? The new Deputy Police Constable doesn't think so and she's even prepared to do the other thing that Hardie demanded - make certain that DS Max Craigie and anyone who works with him is kept well away from what's happening.<!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Jennifer SaintJon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |title=ElektraVaim
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary='Elektra' by Jennifer Saint tells All was strange''... This haunting phrase encapsulates the pervading sense of otherworldliness which permeates this story set in Vaim, a fictional fishing village in Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for Jatgeir and Eline, two of three women the protagonists caught in its melancholic current.|isbn=1804271829}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1035043092|title=The Killing Stones (Jimmy Perez)|author=Ann Cleeves|rating=5|genre=Crime|summary=I can't have been the only person who live was sad when Inspector Jimmy Perez [[Wild Fire (Shetland, Book 8) by Ann Cleeves|left Shetland]] to start a new life on 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 daughter of his former partner. Willow's also his boss, and she ''should'' be on maternity leave, but when the body of a popular islander, Archie Stout, is found, in the heavily maleaftermath of a storm, she can't resist getting involved. He'd been battered about the head with a Neolithic stone -dominated world one of Ancient Greecea pair - which had been stolen from a museum. Cassandra}}{{Frontpage|author=Thea Lenarduzzi|title=The Tower|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= ''How unctuous are the fats of another's life, Clytemnestrahow dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream''. In this compelling novel, and Elektra are all bit players in Thea Lenarduzzi assumes the story identity of T, the Trojan Warprotagonist of this tale. Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that often Just as T's story is being told, the story of a second protagonist is unveiled: Annie, the silent women have daughter of a wealthy family in the most compelling stories 19th century, who died of tuberculosis after being locked in a tower, captures T's imagination. Annie's fate is, above all, an 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 fantasy. |isbn=1804271799}}{{Frontpage|author=Claire-Louise Bennett|title=Big 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 most extreme furiesnarrator 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=14722739151804271934
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=15291498000008405026|title=Things You Can Do: How A Stranger in the Family (Maeve Kerrigan 11)|author=Jane Casey|rating=5|genre=Crime|summary=It's sixteen years since nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her bed one summer night. She was never found and the investigation ground to a halt. 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 positioning of the bodies that makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and her boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. What looked as though it was going to Fight Climate Change be an open-and Reduce Waste-shut case is now a complex double murder. Kerrigan is convinced that the explanation lies in Rosalie's disappearance: others (such as Derwent's boss, Una Burt) are less convinced.}}{{Frontpage|author=Eduardo Garcia Annie Ernaux and Sara Boccaccini MeadowsAlison L. Strayer (translator)|title=The Other Girl
|rating=4
|genre=Home and FamilyAutobiography|summary=''We begin with were born from the same body. I've never really wanted to think about this.'' 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've read. Ernaux writes in direct address to her sister, however, this letter will never reach her. Why? Because Annie Ernaux's sister died of diphtheria at 6 years old, a telling story. All few months before the birds vaccine was made compulsory in France, and animals fled when 2 years before the forest fire took hold author was even born. The large and most instant void created by the jarring concept of writing to an imaginary recipient emphasises Ernaux's process of them stood 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 watchedBryan Karetnyk (translator)|title=Reminiscences of Tolstoy, unable to Chekhov 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, and offers a vibrant, subjective yet informed portrait of anything they could dothree of his literary contemporaries. The tiny hummingbird flew to In the river and began taking tiny amounts first section of water and flying back this book, Tolstoy complains to drop them into the fire. The animals laughedhis friend Gorky that: ''you write not of real life as it is, but of what good was you yourself imagine it to be. Whom would it help to know how I see this tower, that sea, or that doing. 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'm doing Vera Stanhope)|author=Ann Cleeves|rating=4.5|genre=Crime|summary=A man walking his dog in the early morning discovered the body of a man in the best I can''park near Rosebank, said a care home for troubled teens. The dead man was Josh - one of the hummingbirdcare workers who was due to work a shift the night before but who had never turned up. And that, really, D I Vera Stanhope is called in to investigate the murder - but her only way that we will solve clue is the problem disappearance of climate change – by each one of us doing what we canthe residents, however small 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 clear that she adored Josh. She knows that might beshe has to find Chloe to discover what happened to Josh.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1776574338B0FK5LHKD9|title=Leilong's Too Long!The Colour of Memory|author=Julia Liu and Bei LynnChristopher Bowden
|rating=4
|genre=For SharingGeneral Fiction|summary=Every morning LeilongIt's been three years since we last reviewed a book by favourite regular Christopher Bowden, the brontosaurus school busso we were very glad to see a new novel arrive here at Bookbag Towers. Like all Bowden's stories, makes his way through the city, picking up children as he goes. Children who live there's a mystery at the top heart of tower blocks don't even need to go downstairs – they simply climb out 'The Colour of the window and slide down his neck. ItMoney's perfect, isn't it? What could be a more fun way of going to school? There is a problem, though. Leilong isn't happy We like this running theme in the city: he's always having to be careful about where he puts his feet and – because hean author's longer than work - take a tennis court – he often causes damage without intending to mystery but give it different flavour and traffic regularly gets snarled up. The school decides that he can't be the bus anymoreatmosphere each time.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=303091657XOlga Tokarczuk|title=Disaster in the Boardroom: Six Dysfunctions Everyone Should Understand|author=Gerry Brown and Randall S PetersonHouse of Day, House of Night
|rating=5
|genre=Business and FinanceLiterary Fiction|summary=Boards must act in ''What's the best interests good of their stakeholders and ensure a world that keeps changing like that they are well-managed and financially secure. This might seem obvious but a series ? 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 disasters shifting realities - some of the small, subtle changes which have resulted govern our lives, like the shift from day to night, however quotidian, causing chaos. But, the constant in death or that image is the house, stoic against the collapse of 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=Ex-DCI Andy Flood has been a major company - have left interested parties asking what the board was Private Investigator for some time now, and he should be doingquite well financially. Where were they? Unfortunately, his daughter's defence against a murder charge drained his savings. Occasionally the boards were unaware of what was happening or they preferred His wife, Laura, has been trying to persuade him to turn a blind eye, leaving watchers wondering which was worse retire - ignorance ''maybe go travelling or criminalitygo on cruises. The 21st century has delivered some major company scandals but That's what has happened is nothing new: Gerry Brown and Randall S Peterson give us a very readable trip through such major debacles as railway mania'ordinary people do', '' He's not been entirely up front about the South Sea Bubble and even tulip maniastate of their savings. Over three centuries we seem When Jack Durban tries to persuade him to have learned very littletake his case, it's the thought of the money he could make that convinces him that this is a miscarriage of justice that he really should put right.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=15293379681836284683|title=In Place The Big Happy|author=David Chadwick|rating=4.5|genre=Dystopian Fiction|summary=Well! This is a murder mystery unlike any other! I do love it when I open a book, it's nothing like I expected it to be, and it takes me on a wild ride. And that is just what happened with ''The Big Happy''. I don't want to ruin a similar experience for any of you reading but I'll have to at least set the scene. Once that's done, I think you should simply experience this wonderfully original story for yourself.}}{{Frontpage|author=Sally Rooney|title=Intermezzo|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction |summary=Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard of life and is something of a grandmaster at putting it into words. Her dialogue is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, as her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Among the many relationships woven into this story, the central one for readers to unravel is the fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. Ivan, a socially awkward chess prodigy, contrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, a successful lawyer living in Dublin. Following their father's passing after a long battle with cancer, the brothers' already strained relationship faces new trials.|isbn=0571365469}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1036916375|title=Just a Liverpool Lad|author=Peter McArdle|rating=4|genre=Autobiography|summary=''Just a Liverpool Lad '' is a collection 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, with the docks dominating lives. Other stories blend seamlessly into the what-might-have-been. It's a book to settle into and allow your mind to roam across your childhood memories, to think of simpler times when life seemed less constrained, despite the blitz that was a constant factor in McArdle's early years. I'd never heard of parachute mines before - but they were almost soundless and could appear after the all-clear was sounded.}} {{Frontpage|isbn= 1836285493|title=The Double Life of a Wheelchair User|author=Rob Keeley|rating=5|genre=Confident Readers|summary= Will is a keen player of video games, a conscientious student, a slightly annoying brother and a supportive friend. But most of all, he is an aspiring writer. English is his favourite lesson at his school, Marlowe Park, and one at which he excels. This hasn't gone unnoticed by his headteacher, Mrs Howarth, and she has suggested to Will and his mum that he spends a couple of afternoons a week at a different school, Station Road, where his ability might be better extended.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1009473085|title=The Conservative Effect 2010 - 2024|author=Anthony Seldon and Tom Egerton (Editors)|rating=5|genre=Politics and Society|summary=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 inside story about what ''really'' happened on certain occasions, then this isn't the book for you. If that's what you're looking for, I don't think Anthony Seldon's book, {{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 an entirely different beast. It's the seventh book in a series which looks at the impact a government has made and co-editor Sir Anthony Seldon regards this as the most important. This book follows the well-established format: a series of Fearexperts from various fields review the state of the nation when the coalition took over in 2010, the changes that occurred and the situation in 2024.}}{{Frontpage|author=Jenny Valentine|title=Us in the Before and After|rating=5|genre=Teens|summary=Elk and Mab are best friends, or more than that even, their friendship is a once in a lifetime connection. They meet as children one day on a trip out but unfortunately they don't get each other's contact details at the time. But then chance brings them back together, and they are inseparable. Something has happened though, something terrible and tragic, and now they must work through their grief, and their friendship, together.|isbn=1471196585}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1787333175|title=You Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here|author=Catriona McPhersonBenji Waterhouse
|rating=5
|genre=Crime (Historical)Popular Science|summary=ItI was tempted to read ''You Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here'' after enjoying Adam Kay's July 1948 and Helen Crowther first book {{amazonurl|isbn=1509858636|title=This is due Going to start work as Hurt}}, a qualified medical almoner glorious mixture of insight into the following morning - on the day that workings of the NHS is born, humour and autobiography. She'll 'You Don't Have to be working for Dr Deuchar and Dr Strasser in their GP surgery and her job will be to help patients with those non-medical problems which affect their healthMad... The hardest part of '' promised the job will be same elements but moved from physical problems to persuade people that mental illness and the services she offers really are free and that they don't have work of a psychiatrist. I did wonder whether it was acceptable to do anything to qualify be looking for them. Some of humour in this setting but the problems will require delicate handling but Helen has laughter is directed at a situation rather than a problem of her own which might give her some insight. Her marriage has never been consummatedperson and it is always delivered with empathy and understanding.
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Mark LinganeMariana Enriquez|title=GalaxyA Sunny Place for Shady People|rating=5|genre=Short Stories|summary=Mariana Enriquez writes horror that is disturbingly real, achieving this uncanny familiarity by basing her paranormal plots on gritty realities: her settings include an abandoned field full of disused refrigerators due to an urban planning mishap, an overcrowded homeless shelter and a crime-ridden neighbourhood where safety meetings are routine - all within Argentina. The circumstances of her characters are so plausible that the supernatural or otherworldly horror which seeps into these spaces adopts a similarly tangible texture. |isbn=1803511230}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1529934753|title=The Protest|author=Rob Rinder|rating=4.5|genre=Crime|summary=For a little while, it looked as though Sir Max Bruce, the country's most famous living artist, was not going to show up for the opening of his retrospective at the Royal Academy. Still, he arrived in the nick of time, complete with his two wives and six children, one of whom filmed what happened. Being an influencer, you tend to do things like that, but it was fortunate that there was a record of the protest. 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 War''. It seemed to be part of an ongoing series of 'blue-face' attacks, but this was different. The can had been laced with cyanide, and Sir Max Bruce was dead.}}{{Frontpage|author=Ariel Saramandi|title=Portrait of an Island on Fire|rating=4.5|genre=Politics and Society|summary=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 slavery to expose how these legacies still shape modern life. Saramandi describes the country at one stage as ''rotting'', a blunt yet apt metaphor for the systemic decay brought about by the malignant forces of racism, patriarchy, environmental degradation and governmental dysfunction. Each essay in this collection serves as a kind of diagnostic, charting the various diseases afflicting the island state.|isbn=1804271616}}{{Frontpage|author=Pekka Harju-Autti|title=LoveVortex and the Drakor's Curse
|rating=4
|genre=Fantasy
|summary=It's the eighteenth century, a time of discovery and Britain is expanding its foreign trade. Captain Julius Hawthorne, an experienced Scottish sea captain, is sent to the Andaman Islands in his endeavour. Along with his son, Peter, and their cat, Michi, they set off on a perilous voyage to these faraway lands. The islands are beautiful and stunning in their scenery and the islanders' leader, Aarav, is keen to establish good relations.
|isbn=B0DS1VGHH3
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Helene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)
|title=Lili is Crying
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=First published in 1953 in French, this novel is a timeless text which wrenches the hearts of its readers just as Bessette wrenches words and sentences from their proper position on the page and positions them elsewhere, disjointed, truncated. Like the lives of her characters, they are often left tragically incomplete.
|isbn=1804271675
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Tom Percival
|title=The Wrong Shoes
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Will's life is difficult, in a multitude of ways. He is bullied because he has 'the wrong shoes', he has the wrong shoes because his dad can't work and doesn't have enough money for even the most basic of things like food, and his dad can't work because he lost his job at the college, was working a cash-in-hand job on a building site and had an accident. Throw into that mix the fact that his mum and dad are separated, and Will's life seems bleak in every direction. And yet, he still has a tiny amount of hope. He is good at art, and clings to the moments of joy when he is drawing, that feel like a light at the end of a long, dark tunnel.
|isbn=1398527122
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Sylvie Cathrall
|title=A Letter to the Luminous Deep
|rating=5
|genre=Science Fiction
|summary=Spark, who is an elite pilot with the Space Academy, barely makes it through There are few greater joys than a battle alive. His co-pilot was not so fortunate. Waking from book which lives up to a coma that lasted years, he remembers little and is in no physical shape to resume his dutiescompelling premise. But Earth And this is under threat and he must. Returned by his superiors to the space station, he finds himself amid a last ditch attempt to save humanity - and not just from the alien threats against it, but also from its own sins against itselfone of them. |isbn=B09X3NZ76W0356522776
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Lissa Evans1786482126|title=WishedThe Janus Stone (Dr Ruth Galloway)|author=Elly Griffiths
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=When things contrive Builders were demolishing an old house in Norwich - the site was going to force Ed and his sister Roo (aka Lucy) to stay with hold seventy-five 'luxury' apartments - when they discovered the neighbourhood spinsterish old woman, Miss Filey, for bones of a child beneath a doorway. There was no skull. Was this a week of half-termritual killing or murder? Inevitably, they're not looking forward to itDr Ruth Galloway finds herself working with DCI Harry Nelson. For one thingIt's difficult as Ruth knows, but Nelson doesn't, that she thinks Wi-Fi is pregnant with his child as a special brand result of biscuit. They don't particularly take to Willard either, the new kid next door, who seems to ebulliently take over everything and everywhere. But things soon change when one night they find spent together some tiny old birthday candles, and manage to work out that these candles, for as long as their flames last, make birthday wishes come truethree months ago. How Her condition will things change for a second time when they realise thatbe obvious before long, having used up three not least because Ruth is prone to sudden bouts of them, these should really be used for the wishes of someone two generations older than them?|isbn=178845202Xsickness.
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Justyn EdwardsGuadalupe Nettel and Rosalind Harvey (Translator)|title=The Great Fox IllusionAccidentals|rating=4.5|genre=Confident ReadersShort Stories|summary=The latest incoming reality TV show is a contest This collection was truly enchanting in all senses of the word: spellbinding with a difference. No singing, no dancingits fantastical, this show is looking for magical children! Children who can understand how magic tricks work, elements and who can attempt to win The Great Fox's magical legacy - the secrets to all charming in its gentle portrayal of his tricks! Flick is determined to win, but not because she wants to own the tricksnature and human relationships. She is interested in just ''one'' trickGuadalupe Nettel writes intelligently and precisely, the trick that The Great Fox stole from her father. And she's hoping if she can find stories structured by a wisdom that trick then she will be able appears to want to bring her missing father hometeach us something about the world.|isbn=15295019461804271470
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Jason Rohan0008551375|title=When Shadows Fall (D S.T.E.A.L.T.H.: Access DeniedMax Craigie)|author=Neil Lancaster|rating=34.5|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=Arun and Sam have had little to do with Donna, a girl at their school. But things immediately change Leanne Wilson's body was found at the start bottom of this extended sprint a Scottish mountain, seemingly the result of a noveltragic accident. She'd looked so happy, too, when she insists Arun's house has become the attention posted her intentions on Facebook. Her friends were relieved as she was just out of plain-clothes coppers and an unpleasant relationship, but it looked like she was living her best life now. Then it emerged that five other women had died in similar circumstances in the last year. All were experienced climbers, properly equipped for what they should bunk off school to find out whywere doing and sensible people. And thus an unlikely trio None of misfit young heroes is formed – Sam is really not Donnathe 's idea of company, but he is the computer buff, Donna seems what a stupid thing to know do' explanations applied. They were all the criminal ins and outs and survival skills, and Arun? Well, italone when they died: DS Max Craigie is certain there's his lot to find out that all he based his family life a killer on isn't true, and that his father – kidnapped that very morning – is involved in something quite unexpectedthe loose. But how can this disparate trio hope to best MI6, kidnappers, people abl}}