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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''
'''Read [[Forthcoming Publications|reviews Through this hybrid text, consisting of books about to be published]].<!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->{{Frontpage|author=Lisa Gray|title=The Dark Room|rating=4|genre=Crime|summary=What if you knew someone was deadarias, letters, essays and autofiction, because you'd watched them die several years agoPreciado expresses his own hybrid self, but then you come across and brings forth a photograph that seemed new sensorium as an offering to show their murder happened the new generation, a new feeling mechanism in which detachment is not considered a different place and time? This is what happens to Leonard in this storysign of political apathy. He Rather, it is an ex-crime reporter for a newspaperthe proportional, valid response to ''the epistemological and since leaving journalism he's found himself an unusual hobby where he finds oldpolitical crack we are living through, undeveloped rolls of film and develops them in his own dark room at homethe tension between emancipatory forces and conservative resistances that characterize our present'' which Preciado calls ''dysphoria mundi''. One The whole text is framed against the backdrop of these photographs turns out the Covid-19 pandemic as that which has catalysed this revolution, when dysphoria began to show the murder scene of emerge on a young woman he met some years agoglobal scale, and who he or as ''thoughtpangea covidica'' he had watched die in front . Rather than taking this extreme dysphoria as a sign of him one night in a hotel. He'd felt guilty ever since that nightweakness, or mistaking detachment or withdrawal for political paralysis, and lost everything because of it - Preciado urges his fiancee and his career - but now finds himself wondering if she hadnreaders to ''use dysphoria as your revolutionary platform''t really died the night she was with him, what on earth actually happened?. |isbn=154203535X1804271454
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Natasha Hastings and Alex T SmithSamantha Harvey|title=The Miraculous Sweetmakers: The Frost FairOrbital|rating=34.5|genre=Confident ReadersGeneral Fiction|summary=In 2024, Samantha Harvey won the Booker Prize for ''The River Thames had frozen to death in its sleep.'' And thus the Frost Fair could happen – people trading on the completely iced-over river, like our heroine ThomasinaOrbital's father with his gingerbread and confectionery shop. Thomasina will be working the Fair too – but her twin brother won't, as he dies in Chapter One. It was a tragedy she feels no small guilt for, and which has made her father compact yet profound work that unfolds over a sullen, closed shop – and her bed-bound mother has spoken not single day in the lives of a word – not even opened her eyes, more or less – in group of astronauts aboard the four years since, eitherInternational Space Station. But into Through a narrative lens that mirrors the dark, frosted London comes Inigo, with supreme magical powersastronauts' orbital perspective, and a willingness Harvey invites readers to help Thomasina. Not only can he introduce her to the fantastical Other Frost Fair, using the river surface at night for no end of mystical beasts and characters and their happenings, but he has see our planet in a unique proposal for Thomasina, which will shake her world to its corewholly new light.|isbn=00084960561529922933
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Jane Goodall and Douglas Abrams 295967572X|title=The Book of Hope Pale Pieces|author=G M Stevens
|rating=5
|genre=Politics and Society Literary Fiction|summary= The done thing Our unnamed narrator is about to read begin a book all the way through before you sit down to review ittrain journey with his companion Django. I’m making an exception here, because I don’t want to lose any of Where they're going and what the experience purpose of reading this amazing bookjourney is, I want is uncertain. Django found the tickets ''on the floor somewhere'' and has persuaded our narrator to capture it as it hits meaccompany him. And it Why not? Not much else is hitting me. This beautiful book has me clear either - but we are probably in tearsthe past as the pair travel to the station by coach and the train is a steam locomotive. |isbn=024147857X
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=15295047670008551324|title=The Christmas Doll Devil You Know (The Repair Shop StoriesD S Max Craigie)|author=Amy Sparkes and Katie HickeyNeil Lancaster|rating=4.5|genre=For SharingCrime|summary=Susan was very young when she was evacuated It's unusual for anyone from London in 1939 and nervous about how she would be greeted when she got the Hardie family to her final destinationapproach the police. She neednNeither side likes or has any respect for the other. But Davie Hardie is struggling in prison and he't have worried though as she went s prepared to tell the home police where the body of Mr a missing person is buried and Mrs Russell, who couldn't have been kinder to was responsible for herdeath. She even had her own room - all to herselfThis person, he promises, is someone big and it will be worth the police doing what he wants. Gradually she relaxed And what he wants is to be transferred to an open prison to serve the remainder of his sentence and began to enjoy her lifeget an early parole date. SheNot much to ask, is it? The new Deputy Police Constable doesn'd help Mrs Russell with the baking t think so and when it came she's even prepared to Christmas Eve Susan do the other thing that Hardie demanded - make certain that DS Max Craigie and Mr Russell put the decorations on the Christmas tree. The best surprise happened the following morninganyone who works with him is kept well away from what's happening.
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Lilja Sigurdardottir Jon Fosse and Quentin Bates Damion Searls (translator)|title=Red as BloodVaim
|rating=4
|genre=ThrillersLiterary Fiction|summary=When Flosi’s wife goes missing, all the evidence seems to point towards her having been kidnapped''All was strange''... The ransom note tells him not to have any contact with the police, so instead he enlists This haunting phrase encapsulates the help pervading sense of Aroraotherworldliness which permeates this story set in Vaim, a financial investigator. She manages to persuade Flosi that they will need the help of the police, fictional fishing village in Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for Jatgeir and she calls her detective friendEline, Daniel, whom she met when he was investigating her sister’s disappearance. Together, they start to secretly investigate Gudrun’s disappearance, trying not to arouse the suspicion two of anyone, since they have no idea who the kidnappers might be, yet the more they uncover, the more confusing things becomeprotagonists caught in its melancholic current.|isbn=19145853211804271829
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=08615419951035043092|title=Wolf PackThe Killing Stones (Jimmy Perez)|author=Will DeanAnn Cleeves|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=The story began I can't have been the only person who was sad when Tuva Moodyson drove her Hilux pickup truck on the road north of Visberg. She sees blood on the road and Inspector Jimmy Perez [[Wild Fire (Shetland, Book 8) by Ann Cleeves|left Shetland]] to start a creature new life on its side near the pine treesOrkney. It will turn out to be Bronco's been seven years since we heard from him, a Swedish Elkhoundbut he's now living with Willow Reeves and their young son, who has been attacked by a wolf. Tuva takes Bronco and his ownerJames, Bengt Nybergas well as Cassie, to the vetdaughter of his former partner. Bronco didnWillow't make it s also his boss, and she ''should'' be on maternity leave, but on when the waybody of a popular islander, Nyberg told Tuva that he was out looking for his nieceArchie Stout, is found, twenty-year-old Elsa Nybergin the aftermath of a storm, who had gone missingshe can't resist getting involved. She He'd been working at Rose Farm and Moodyson's journalist's instincts are soon brought to battered about the fore. Rose Farm is now home to head with a group Neolithic stone - one of survivalists but back in 1987 the then owner, Johan Svenson murdered his wife, and his two eldest children and then killed himselfa pair - which had been stolen from a museum. His newborn child, just four weeks old survived. Does this have any connection to the disappearance of Elsa Nyberg?
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Alison HughesThea Lenarduzzi|title=FlyThe Tower|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= ''How unctuous are the fats of another's life, how dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream''. In this compelling novel, Thea Lenarduzzi assumes the identity of T, the protagonist of this tale. Just as T's story is being told, the story of a second protagonist is unveiled: Annie, the daughter of a wealthy family in the 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=Confident ReadersLiterary Fiction|summary=This Everything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, is steeped in anguish and distortion. Even a very impressive readkiss, as it does usually a lot symbol of what mainstream teen intimacy and tween fiction still struggles withcloseness, becomes evidence of love lost. Its focus is courtesy of When the first-person narration from Flynarrator cries out internally, ''come over here and kiss me, '' it is less an invitation than a secondary school lad with cerebral palsydesperate attempt to confirm her emotional numbness. The imagined recipient of this plea is Xavier, a down-on-herex-luck single mom nearing retirement from being a cleanerpartner, a carer while at school, and a bundle of assumptions people lay on him. First they assume that with a broken body comes a broken mind, then they decide he's a maths savant – they even believe they can get away with calling him Fly, which isn't his real name, but everybody just uses itghost she conjures to test her detachment.|isbn=15253058321804271934
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=37913883980008405026|title=New European Baking: 99 Recipes for Breads, Brioches and PastriesA Stranger in the Family (Maeve Kerrigan 11)|author=Laurel KratochvilaJane Casey|rating=4.5|genre=CookeryCrime|summary=This is probably It's sixteen years since nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her bed one of summer night. She was never found and the most unusual baking books I've encounteredinvestigation ground to a halt. It's built around 99 recipes for breadsNow, her mother, Helena, brioches and pastries but the recipes her father are interwoven with some thought-provoking writing on how bread - and baking - have changed dead in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuriestheir bed. We start with the basics - the equipment you'll need (Initially, it looks like a straightforward murder/suicide but there's nothing extravagant or indulgent) and something about the ingredients, where positioning of the author bodies that makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and her boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. What looked as though it was going to be an open-and-shut case is particularnow a complex double murder. You might not have realised Kerrigan is convinced that different salts can change the flavour and sensation on the tongue of the finished product butexplanation lies in Rosalie's disappearance: others (such as Derwent's boss, apparently, they doUna Burt) are less convinced.
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Andrew GivlerAnnie Ernaux and Alison L. Strayer (translator)|title=Soul Fraud (The Debt Collection Book 1)Other Girl
|rating=4
|genre=FantasyAutobiography|summary=''Matt has a terrible lifeWe were born from the same body. Seriously—itI's awful. It is so bad that Dan the Demon is shocked when Matt turns down his infernal offer: 10 years of a blissful life in exchange for his soulve never really wanted to think about this.''
Poor Dan! 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 know've read. Ernaux writes in direct address to her sister, I knowhowever, we shouldnthis letter will never reach her. Why? Because Annie Ernaux't feel sorry for soul-catching demons. But he really is s sister died of diphtheria at 6 years old, a terrible salesmanfew months before the vaccine was made compulsory in France, and 2 years before the author was even born. He never hits his targets The large and, when he fails instant void created by the jarring concept of writing to get even Matt to sign on the dotted line, hean imaginary recipient emphasises Ernaux's so desperate process of reckoning with this giant absence in her life, an absence that he simply forges Matt's signatureshe has always felt but often denied.|isbn=19582040211804271845
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Greg James Maxim Gorky and Chris SmithBryan Karetnyk (translator)|title=Super GhostReminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev|rating=3.5|genre=Confident ReadersBiography|summary=Paragon City has been lucky to have Biographies are often seen as the great Doctor Extraordinaryform 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, their very own superhero taking care subjective yet informed portrait of three of themhis literary contemporaries. Whenever In the evil Captain Chaos has come up with another cunning plan (usually involving a giant robot first section of this book, Tolstoy complains to his friend Gorky that: ''you write not of real life as it is, but of some description) Doctor Extraordinary has been there what you yourself imagine it to be. Whom would it help to thwart her mischief and save the dayknow how I see this tower, that sea, or that Tartar - why should it interest anyone? Of what use is it?''. But one day the Doctor and the Captain are trapped together inside Well, Maxim Gorky shows exactly what can be gained from a giant robot that then explodessubjective account, giving us access to how he saw Tolstoy, Chekhov and the hero and the villain are no moreAndreyev in such privileged detail that one almost feels unworthy of it. Or are they…?|isbn=02414705361804271977
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B0B7289HKQ1529077745|title=Conversations Across America: A Father and Son, Alzheimer's, and 300 Conversations Along the TransAmerica Bike Trail that Capture the Soul of AmericaThe Dark Wives (D I Vera Stanhope)|author=Kari LoyaAnn Cleeves|rating=4.5|genre=TravelCrime|summary=Kari (that rhymes with ‘sorry’, by A man walking his dog in the early morning discovered the way) wanted to spend some time with his father and body of a man in the period between two jobs seemed like park near Rosebank, a good time to do itcare home for troubled teens. The decision dead man was Josh - one of the care workers who was made due to ride work a shift the Trans America Bike Trail from Yorktown, Virginia night before but who had never turned up. D I Vera Stanhope is called in to Astoriainvestigate the murder - but her only clue is the disappearance of one of the residents, Oregon fourteen- all 4250 miles of it year- in 2015old Chloe Spencer. They had 73 days to do it - slightly less than Some people believe that Chloe was responsible for the recommended time - death but there were factors which pointed Vera thinks this up is unlikely as more of a challenge the girl's diary makes it clear that it would be for most people who considered taking it onshe adored Josh. Merv Loya was 75 years old and he was suffering from early-stage Alzheimer'sShe knows that she has to find Chloe to discover what happened to Josh.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn= B0FK5LHKD9
|title=The Colour of Memory
|author=Christopher Bowden
|title=Mr Magenta
|rating=4
|genre=General 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's latest novel is stories, there's a patient untangling mystery at the heart of a seemingly ordinary woman's life, carried out by her nephew after she has died. 'The aunt who always provided a safe harbour and a little bit Colour of indulgence to Money''. We like this running theme in an author's work - take a young nephew had had a much more interesting life than that nephew Stephen had ever realised mystery but give it different flavour and it seems to him an obligation to find it all outatmosphere each time. |isbn= B0B6Z9VJDW
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1739593901Olga Tokarczuk|title=22 Ideas About The Future|author=Benjamin Greenaway and Stephen Oram (Editors)House of Day, House of Night
|rating=5
|genre=Science Literary Fiction|summary=''Our future will be more complex than we expected. Instead What's the good of flying cars, we got night-vision killer drones and automated elderly care with geolocation surveillance bracelets to track grandma.a world that keeps changing like that? How can one go on calmly living in it?''
I've got a couple The title of confessions to make. Ithis spellbinding work, 'm not keen on short stories as I find it easy to read a few stories and then forget to return to the book. There's got to be a very compelling hook to keep me engaged. Then thereHouse of Day, House of Night's science fiction: far too often it's , somewhat reflects this notion of shifting realities - the technology small, subtle changes which takes centre stage along with govern our lives, like the world-buildingshift from day to night, however quotidian, causing chaos. It's human beings who fascinate me: But, the technology and constant in that image is the world scape are purely incidental. Sohouse, what did I think of a book of twenty-two science fiction short stories? Well, I loved stoic against the ancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how itis perceived. |isbn=1804271918}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1405951184henleyA|title=The Girls Who DisappearedUltimate Obsession|author=Claire DouglasDai Henley
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=Back in November 1998Ex-DCI Andy Flood has been a Private Investigator for some time now, Olivia Rutherford was driving her three friends home after a night outand he should be doing quite well financially. As she passed through the darkly-wooded DevilUnfortunately, his daughter's Corridor, defence against a figure appeared in the roadmurder charge drained his savings. Olivia swerved His wife, Laura, has been trying to avoid persuade him and the car smashed into a tree, leaving her trappedto retire - ''maybe go travelling or go on cruises. When she regained consciousness her three friends had disappeared. That's what 'ordinary people do','' Ralph Middleton, who lived in He's not been entirely up front about the woods helped her before the police and ambulance arrivedstate of their savings. But what had happened When Jack Durban tries to persuade him to Sally Thornetake his case, Tamsin Cole and Hetty Riding? Their disappearance would be yet another mysterious happening in it's the Stafferbury area thought of Wiltshire. It was thought the money he could make that convinces him that this is a miscarriage of as Avebury's poor relationjustice that he really should put right.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=39496660791836284683|title=NoemaThe Big Happy|author=Dael AkkermanDavid Chadwick
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Dystopian Fiction|summary=''Well! This is a story about some things that happened to me about twelve thousand years ago.''murder mystery unlike any other!
Maya is a young girl living in I do love it when I open a hunter-gatherer village during the Mesolithic era. Climate change is occurringbook, the Sea of Grass encroaches further and further into Mayait's forest homenothing like I expected it to be, and food it takes me on a wild ride. And that is becoming more and more scarcejust what happened with ''The Big Happy''. What I don't want to do? Can the law givers in the federation ruin a similar experience for any of villages muster peaceful ways you reading but I'll have to cope? Can at least set the Travellerscene. Once that's done, a spiritual figure who interprets the wisdom of All Life, provide solutions? I think you should simply experience this wonderfully original story for yourself.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=194241028X|title=Azabu Getaway (Detective Hiroshi)|author=Michael Pronko|rating=5|genre=Crime|summary=''You can't put 'good at golf' on your tombstone, can you?'' When we meet Patrick Walsh he's outside his family's home in the Azabu district of Tokyo, hoping that his key will still work but prepared to break in if it doesn't. He's there to remove his daughters, Jenna and Kiri, and take them back to Honolulu. It's a quick day trip, with just one purpose in mind. Patrick's employed by Nine Dragons Wealth Management and for the past year, he's been working in Wyoming because the privacy laws there are conducive to the business he's in. His wife, Miyuki, hasn't been in Wyoming with him and is in the process of divorcing him after photographs sent to her anonymously suggested that Patrick had not been faithful to her. Patrick's plan didn't work out and he finds himself on the run in Tokyo with the two girls.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=B09SGWCXQ8Sally Rooney|title=The Night Watch (D S Max Craigie)|author=Neil LancasterIntermezzo
|rating=4.5
|genre=CrimeGeneral Fiction |summary=Fergus Grigor went out for Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard of life and is something of a rungrandmaster at putting it into words. Her dialogue is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, as her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. The lawyer was on his honeymoon but his body was found dashed to pieces below Among the cliffs at Dunnett Head. Was it suicidemany relationships woven into this story, or did he - the central one for some reason - climb over readers to unravel is the stone wall fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and fall to Peter Koubek. Ivan, a socially awkward chess prodigy, contrasts sharply with his death? Or was he pushed? On balanceolder brother Peter, it looked like an accident but then his a successful lawyer living in Dublin. Following their father'accident' was linked to the deaths of others associated with him. Scott Paterson was released s passing after a long battle with cancer, the brothers'not-proven' verdict meant that Scotland's most notorious criminal wasn't facing life imprisonment. Paterson was Grigor's last clientalready strained relationship faces new trials.|isbn=0571365469
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=09897153371036916375|title=Papa on the MoonJust a Liverpool Lad|author=Marco NorthPeter McArdle
|rating=4
|genre=Literary FictionAutobiography|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 frogs had gotten are factual, such as the family history of a sea-going family, with the docks dominating lives. Other stories blend seamlessly into the wellwhat-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.}}
''Walter stood waist-deep in the fragrant water{{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, naked except for his beaten leather hata slightly annoying brother and a supportive friend. Long strands But most of their eggs wove around himall, sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside themhe is an aspiring writer. Two of the dogs leaned over the opening English is his favourite lesson at his school, Marlowe Park, and barked down one at the strange noise of the buckets as which he filled themexcels.This hasn'' How is that for an opening? The style of this novel in the form of interconnected short stories goes from succinct t gone unnoticed by his headteacher, Mrs Howarth, and laconic she has suggested to wistful Will and musing, turning on his mum that he spends a couple of afternoons a week at a sixpence. And author Marco Northdifferent school, who has the most wonderful turn of phraseStation Road, starts as he means to go onwhere his ability might be better extended.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=140639131X1009473085|title=A Practical Present for Philippa PheasantThe Conservative Effect 2010 - 2024|author=Briony May SmithAnthony Seldon and Tom Egerton (Editors)|rating=4.5|genre=For SharingPolitics and Society|summary=Philippa Pheasant was Sometimes it's simpler to explain a book by describing what it 'tired'isn' of nearly getting squished as she tried t'' and that applies to cross the Old Oak Road''The Conservative Effect: 2010-2024 - 14 Wasted Years?''. She wrote to If you're looking for an easy read which will deliver the mayor inside story about what ''really'' happened on certain occasions, then this isn't the problem but didnbook for you. If that's what you're looking for, I don't even get a replythink Anthony Seldon's book, {{amazonurl|isbn=B0BH7SKG2S|title=Johnson at 10}}, can be bettered for those tumultuous years. Philippa wasnIt't s a bird compelling read and should be compulsory for anyone who thinks Johnson should return to sit back on her tail feathers when there was politics. ''The Conservative Effect'' is an entirely different beast. It's the seventh book in a problem series which needed solving: she saw the benefits of the lollipop lady looks at the school crossing impact a government has made and decided that she would set up something similar herselfco-editor Sir Anthony Seldon regards this as the most important. Her uniform and lollipop stick were both This book follows the well-established format: a little amateur to start with but series of experts from various fields review the state of the benefits were obvious. All nation when the animals used coalition took over in 2010, the crossing changes that occurred and Hedgehog was even trained up to provide a safe path overnightthe situation in 2024.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=000837936XJenny Valentine|title=The Last Girl to Die|author=Helen FieldsUs in the Before and After
|rating=5
|genre=CrimeTeens|summary=Seventeen-year-old Adriana Clarke's family moved to TobermoryElk and Mab are best friends, on the Isle of Mullor more than that even, their friendship is a once in search of a new lifelifetime connection. It was a bit of They meet as children one day on a change from Las Vegas, trip out but unfortunately they don't get each other's contact details at the family seemed determined and Adriana had shown signs of developing a social life - until she disappearedtime. The local police demonstrated little interest in the case (could it have been because Adriana's mother is obviously Latino?) and Rob But then chance brings them back together, and Isabella Clarke called in Sadie Levesque from Banff, who had successfully tracked down missing teenagersthey are inseparable. Brandon Something has happened though, Adriana's twinsomething terrible and tragic, was upset and surly. Four-year-old Luna just knew that she missed her big sister. It took four daysnow they must work through their grief, but Sadie found Adriana in Mackinnon's Cave. She'd been murdered and it looked like a ritual killingtheir friendship, together.|isbn=1471196585
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=15098896121787333175|title=The Rising Tide (D I Vera Stanhope)You Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here|author=Ann CleevesBenji Waterhouse
|rating=5
|genre=CrimePopular Science|summary=ItI was tempted to read ''You Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here'' after enjoying Adam Kay's fifty years since first book {{amazonurl|isbn=1509858636|title=This is Going to Hurt}}, a group glorious mixture of teenagers went on a weekend retreat to Holy Island. Some insight into the workings of them found the Only Connect course transformative NHS, humour and theyautobiography. 've been coming back for a reunion every five years since then'You Don't Have to be Mad... There was a tragedy at '' promised the first reunion when Isobel Hall drove off the island too close same elements but moved from physical problems to high tide mental illness and her car was swept away, but her younger sister, Louisa, has returned with the group each year as her husband, Ken, was one work of the original teenagersa psychiatrist. Ken now has Alzheimer's and he's a shadow of the man he used I did wonder whether it was acceptable to be. Philip Robson now a priest, always gets there early as he likes to have some quiet time alone looking for humour in this setting but the chapel. Annie Laidler lives locally laughter is directed at a situation rather than a person and she provides much of the food: her deli it is famous in the areaalways delivered with empathy and understanding.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1473680883Mariana Enriquez|title=The Skeleton Key|author=Erin KellyA Sunny Place for Shady People
|rating=5
|genre=ThrillersShort Stories|summary=''The Golden Bones Mariana Enriquez writes horror that is going 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 follow me around for 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 rest of my lifesupernatural 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. How can I trust anyone? It all leads back to you!''5|genre=CrimeNell didn|summary=For a little while, it looked as though Sir Max Bruce, the country't want to go s most famous living artist, was not going to show up for the reunion to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary opening of his retrospective at the publication of ''The Golden Bones''Royal Academy. She'd had no benefit from it - Still, he arrived in factthe nick of time, it had made her life precarious complete with his two wives and unbelievably challengingsix children, one of whom filmed what happened. I'd better explainBeing 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 ''The Golden BonesStop the War'' was a treasure quest book painted and written by Frank and Cora Churcher. The story revolved around murdered Elinore whose golden and bejewelled bones were hidden around the country. The clues - some It seemed to be part of them quite tortuous - were disguised in the words and pictures an ongoing series of the book 'blue- and all the parts were discovered except for the pelvisface' attacks, but this was different. As The can had been laced with such questscyanide, some people were obsessive and the theories became more and more outlandishSir Max Bruce was dead.
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Holly WebbAriel Saramandi|title=The Story Portrait of Greenriveran Island on Fire
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersPolitics and Society|summary=Silken and SedgeIn this powerful collection of essays, for all their differences, have a lot in common. Silken is a girl whose father is Saramandi seeks to intradermally dissect the Master Builder sociopolitical fabric of what might be Mauritius, tunneling deep into the finest beaver lodge on the Greenriver. Unfortunately she is also a kind of runt figure, and as a result is patronised, wounds left by colonialism and given the most tokenistic tasks when it comes slavery to fetching wood and shoring the dam upexpose how these legacies still shape modern life. She also stands out for Saramandi describes the unique artistic ability to sing. Otters like Sedge singcountry at one stage as ''rotting'', but he too, as a blunt yet apt metaphor for the son of systemic decay brought about by the lady malignant forces of the holtracism, patriarchy, has pressure on him to be a bit less feckless environmental degradation and more attentive to classgovernmental dysfunction. He, after allEach essay in this collection serves as a kind of diagnostic, will eventually inherit the job of keeping the otters safe from charting the wolf that both animal species fear various diseases afflicting the most, and from dreaded events like a Dark Springisland state.|isbn=15101096251804271616
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Anna Kemp and David WyattPekka Harju-Autti|title=Into Goblyn WoodLoveVortex and the Drakor's Curse
|rating=4
|genre=Confident ReadersFantasy|summary=Meet Hazel. For It's the last nine of her eleven years, she has been stuck as a foundling in a horrid, Victorian institutioneighteenth century, generally peeling vegetables or acting as a servant. She'd arrived at the place at the same time as Pete, of discovery and they're inseparably good friends nowBritain is expanding its foreign trade. Captain Julius Hawthorne, until a chance for them both to escapean experienced Scottish sea captain, and enter the outside world, does not go is sent to plan. There had always been the idea of a life idyllic Andaman Islands in the nearby forestshis endeavour. Along with his son, Goblyn WoodPeter, and a tribe of Wild Childrentheir cat, but none of that comes to passMichi, as Hazel finds herself in the care of they set off on a professor at the Natural History Museumperilous voyage to these faraway lands. But life with him is not anything like what she might have expected it to be – The islands are beautiful and stunning in their scenery and Hazel the islanders' leader, Aarav, is determined keen to return to the Woods, restore her friendship with Pete – establish good relations.|isbn=B0DS1VGHH3}}{{Frontpage|author=Helene Bessette and to work out just what Kate Briggs (translator)|title=Lili is going on Crying|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=First published in 1953 in the forestFrench, both this novel is a timeless text which wrenches the light hearts of its readers just as Bessette wrenches words and sentences from their proper position on the shadepage and positions them elsewhere, and disjointed, truncated. Like the deathly dark..lives of her characters, they are often left tragically incomplete.|isbn=13985038351804271675
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|isbnauthor=0241990165Tom Percival|title=Hope to Die (D I Fawley)|author=Cara HunterThe Wrong Shoes
|rating=5
|genre=CrimeConfident Readers|summary=It began rather oddlyWill's life is difficult, in a multitude of ways. There was a 999 call suggesting that a shot had been fired in an isolated house but He is bullied because he has 'the wrong shoes', he has the call hadnwrong shoes because his dad can't come from work and doesn't have enough money for even the householder. A couple most basic of PCs went to make certain that everything was alright things like food, and it took quite a while for the elderly householder to answer the door. He somewhat reluctantly told them that theyhis dad can'd better come in. In t work because he lost his job at the kitchen there college, was working a body cash-in-hand job on the floor: the head had been blown off with a shotgun building site and had an accident. Throw into that mix the corpse was holding a knife fact that his mum and dad are separated, and Will's life seems bleak in its right handevery direction. Richard Swann told the police that And yet, he'd heard sounds still has a tiny amount of an intruder and had come downstairs to investigatehope. The ignorant young lout had called him ''Grandad'' He is good at art, and come clings to the moments of joy when he is drawing, that feel like a light at him with the end of a knife. Swann had shot him in self-defencelong, dark tunnel.|isbn=1398527122
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|author= Kit De WaalSylvie Cathrall|title= Without Warning and Only SometimesA Letter to the Luminous Deep|rating= 45|genre= AutobiographyScience Fiction|summary= As Philip Larkin so eloquently put it, “They f*** you There are few greater joys than a book which lives up, your mum and dad/ They may not mean to, but they do” Without Warning and Only Sometimes by Kit De Waal focuses on this idea of parenthood and the bonds that bind family. This book is a memoir focussing on the author’s formative years as a teenager living in a lower class area of Birminghamcompelling premise. Her father is from St. Kitts in the Caribbean and her mother And this is an Irish woman ostracized by her family for becoming pregnant by and marrying a black man. This intersectionality plays a large role in the autobiography. Kit De Waal faces multiple hurdles due to her race, her class and her gender. Her parents loom large and are written with care, love, and the kind one of anger only a child can express to their parentsthem.|isbn=14722848360356522776
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|authorisbn=David Lagercrantz1786482126|title=Dark MusicThe Janus Stone (Dr Ruth Galloway)|author=Elly Griffiths|rating=34.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=How far from Builders were demolishing an old house in Norwich - the original can a book allegedly inspired by Sherlock Holmes get before the allusion breaks? This does have a wondersite was going to hold seventy-five 'luxury' apartments -mind at when they discovered the heart bones of what little investigating is going on, but there is not a lot that Conan Doyle fans could really pin down as on their exact wavelengthchild beneath a doorway. For one, the main focus of the narrative, Micaela, is There was no John Watson MDskull. She's a Chilean in the Stockholm police, put on Was this a ritual killing or murder squad as she knows the prime suspect of old? Inevitably, in a case where a referee of a junior football match was found stoned to death shortly after the match, and just outside the stadiumDr Ruth Galloway finds herself working with DCI Harry Nelson. Beppe, the suspect, was drunkenly antagonistic to the ref during the closing minutesIt's difficult as Ruth knows, but refuses to admit anythingNelson doesn't, through days and weeks of interrogation. When some disreputable coppers (the kind who dismiss anything their superior comes up with, the kind who think they can judge Micaela from her fringe and how she might dress – that kind) are told to go and see what brainbox Professor Rekke thinks of it all, she can only smirk when he says Beppe is innocent and the investigation is pregnant with his child as a shambles. But taken off result of the case, she can no longer help solve the crime, and with Rekke the most erratic, irregular kind of guy, she can't get his full verdict on it allone night they spent together some three months ago. Until, that may Her condition will beobvious before long, she manages not least because Ruth is prone to stop him in the middle sudden bouts of an apparent suicide attempt..sickness.|isbn=1529413192
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|isbnauthor=B0B2N7MVYMGuadalupe Nettel and Rosalind Harvey (Translator)|title=The Calculations of Rational Men|author=Daniel GodfreyAccidentals|rating=4.5|genre=General FictionShort Stories|summary=It's This collection was truly enchanting in all senses of the 10th of December 1962 when we first meet Dr Joseph Marr. Just to put what happens in contextword: spellbinding with its fantastical, the Cuban missile crisis is still very fresh magical elements and charming in people's minds. The world has barely had a chance to breathe out. But for Joe Marr, it's not the missile crisis that's at the front its gentle portrayal of his mindnature and human relationships. He's been convicted of murder. With the current state of medical knowledgeGuadalupe Nettel writes intelligently and precisely, it's hard to think otherwise than her stories structured by a wisdom that the prosecution would never have been brought but Joe Marr has spent his first few days in HMP Queen's Bench, a relatively new prison. He's just getting used appears to his roommate, Mervyn, and learning want to be wary of teach us something about the McArthur brothersworld.|isbn=1804271470
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|isbn=18469761460008551375|title=The Bone RoadWhen Shadows Fall (D S Max Craigie)|author=N E SolomonsNeil Lancaster
|rating=4.5
|genre=ThrillersCrime|summary=Heather BishopLeanne Wilson's body was found at the bottom of a Scottish mountain, seemingly the former Olympic cyclist, flew to Bosnia to surprise her boyfriend, cycling journalist Ryan Mackinnonresult of a tragic accident. She even took their bikes 'd looked so they could have a few days' break in the regionhappy, too, when she posted her intentions on Facebook. It Her friends were relieved as she was a little worrying just out of an unpleasant relationship, but it looked like she was living her best life now. Then it emerged that he didn't seem exactly pleased to see her: she even wondered if he five other women had a woman died in similar circumstances in the hotel roomlast year. Heather had to give up competitive cycling after a traumatic brain injury four years before: she was still fit but her reactions All were experienced climbers, properly equipped for what they were doing and her memory were not up to the standard she would need to race againsensible people. Sometimes she couldnNone of the 't be certain about what she had or hadn't done and she simply couldna stupid thing to do't cope in difficult situationsexplanations applied. She didnThey were all alone when they died: DS Max Craigie is certain there't entirely trust herselfs a killer on the loose.
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