134,727
edits
Changes
no edit summary
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= Rob KeeleyPaul B Preciado|title= The Boy Who Disappeared and Other StoriesDysphoria Mundi|rating=4|genre=Confident Readers|summary= Hooray! Bookbag favourite Rob Keeley is back with a return to the short story format! The Boy Who Disappeared treats us to eleven new tales, each as fun to read as his previous offerings.|isbn= B0BVW69N1G}}{{Frontpage|author= Michael Grothaus|title=Beautiful Shining People|rating=45|genre= Literary FictionPolitics and Society|summary= ''But fearing something and having it come It is never too late to pass are two different things. And I'm willing to bet most embrace the revolutionary optimism of what we fear will never happen, or we can take steps to change it.childhood''
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=B09BLBP3P8Samantha Harvey|title=Neville Chamberlain's War: How Great Britain Opposed Hitler, 1939-1940|author=Frederic SeagerOrbital
|rating=4.5
|genre=HistoryGeneral Fiction|summary=Received wisdom and simplified narrative often lead to misconceptions about history. One such is the scrubbing from the popular imagination of the early days of World War II from 1939-40In 2024, known as Samantha Harvey won the Booker Prize for ''Phoney WarOrbital''. We remember Neville Chamberlain appeasing Hitler, war breaking out, and Churchill coming a compact yet profound work that unfolds over a single day in to save the daylives of a group of astronauts aboard the International Space Station. Very little time is spent on this period in cultural reflections and yetThrough a narrative lens that mirrors the astronauts' orbital perspective, as Frederic Seager argues Harvey invites readers to see our planet in this book, it was of vital significance in how the war played outa wholly new light.|isbn=1529922933
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=0760378134295967572X|title=The First-Time Gardener: Container Food GardeningPale Pieces|author=Pamela FarleyG M Stevens
|rating=5
|genre=Home and FamilyLiterary Fiction|summary=If you've ever thought how good it would be to be able Our unnamed narrator is about to pop out into the garden and pick some fruit and vegetables for begin a meal – but realised that you wouldntrain journey with his companion Django. Where they't know where to startre going and what the purpose of this journey is, this is uncertain. Django found the book you need. Ittickets ''s comprehensive: youon the floor somewhere'll cover everything from why you should grow your own food, what you're going and has persuaded our narrator to grow, what you'll grow it accompany him. Why not? Not much else is clear either - but we are probably in (both containers the past as the pair travel to the station by coach and soil), where you'll put these containers, how you'll water and fertilise them and you finish the main part of the book with a handy section on troubleshooting. There's also train is a good glossarysteam locomotive. So, is it any good?
}}
{{frontpageFrontpage|isbn=18033630020008551324|authortitle= Eric LaRoccaThe Devil You Know (D S Max Craigie)|titleauthor= The Trees Grew Because I Bled ThereNeil Lancaster|rating= 4.5|genre= HorrorCrime|summary= Horror taps into something primeval within usIt's unusual for anyone from the Hardie family to approach the police. Neither side likes or has any respect for the other. It But Davie Hardie is used as struggling in prison and he's prepared to tell the police where the body of a way to reflect our darkest emotions missing person is buried and how we as humans react and process themwho was responsible for her death. Most horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad'' This person, he promises, whether that is a home invader, a monster or a ghost, someone big and it usually something tangible and, by the end of will be worth the story, beatablepolice doing what he wants. Eric LaRocca's ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' And what he wants is not like that. It is a collection of short stories more interested in to be transferred to an open prison to serve the horrors remainder of illness, grief his sentence and humiliationto get an early parole date. Horrors that linger and are harder Not much to defeat than any ask, is it? The new Deputy Police Constable doesn't think so and she'Big Bad'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.
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Amelia Estelle DellosJon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |title=Delilah RecoveredVaim
|rating=4
|genre=FantasyLiterary Fiction|summary= We meet Dee at a point when her life isn't going as planned but things might, just might, be about to look up. Out of work, about to lose her flat, Dee is up for an accountant's jobAll was strange''. But it's not to be. Dee is attacked by two men calling themselves witch hunters. She survives This haunting phrase encapsulates the attack but pervading sense of otherworldliness which permeates this story set in Vaim, a fictional fishing village in Norway which paradoxically could not unscathed. Witch hunters? What on earth has that to do with Dee? She's just an ordinary womanfeel more real for Jatgeir and Eline, living an ordinary life. Slivers of memory two of things that are not ordinary at all return to her and things will never be the same...protagonists caught in its melancholic current.|isbn=B0BKYFDLLV1804271829
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=00084049761035043092|title=The Close Killing Stones (DS Maeve KerriganJimmy Perez)|author=Jane CaseyAnn Cleeves
|rating=5
|genre=Crime
|summary=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 new life on Orkney. It was because '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. Rula Jacques that DS Maeve Kerrigan Willow's also his boss, and DI Josh Derwent were living together she ''should'' be on maternity leave, but when the body of a popular islander, Archie Stout, is found, in the aftermath of a storm, she can't resist getting involved. He'd been battered about the head with a Neolithic stone - one of a pair - which had been stolen from a museum.}}{{Frontpage|author=Thea Lenarduzzi|title=The Tower|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= ''How unctuous are the fats of another's life, how dizzying their sugars in Jellicoe Closeour bloodstream''.
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Merryn Glover0008405026|title=The Hidden FiresA Stranger in the Family (Maeve Kerrigan 11)|author=Jane Casey
|rating=5
|genre=TravelCrime|summary= It is always about 's sixteen years since nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her bed one summer night. She was never found and the bookinvestigation ground to a halt. Now, not the writerher mother, Helena, and her father are dead in their bed. Initially, it looks like a straightforward murder/suicide but there are times when the author's hinterland is also something about the background to positioning of the book bodies that makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and so it is necessary to understand that context, in order to appreciate the bookher boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. Merryn Glover is of Australian parentage, What looked as though it was born in Kathmandu, grew up in the Annapurna and Himalayan going to be an open-and -shut case is now lives in Badenoch in Scotlanda complex double murder. I can think of no-one better a combination to give us a re-appraisal of Nan Shepherds work than Kerrigan is convinced that the first Writer explanation lies in Residence in the Cairngorms National Park. Merryn walksRosalie's disappearance: others (such as Derwent's boss, not so much in the shadow of Shepherd, but in her spiritUna Burt) are less convinced. I think the two would have gotten along famously.|isbn=1846975751
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Alice M RossAnnie Ernaux and Alison L. Strayer (translator)|title=The Nowhere ThiefOther Girl|rating=4.5|genre=Confident ReadersAutobiography|summary=At last there ''We were born from the same body. I've never really wanted to think about this.'' Ernaux's work is new stock in the impoverished yet over-full antiques shop Elsbeth always very candid and her mother run tone transparent, but this raw epistolary text must be one of the most intimate accounts I've read. Ernaux writes in a seaside town. Elsbeth knows direct address to her sister, however, this because she has stolen itletter will never reach her. She also knows she should be free from worries about being found outWhy? Because Annie Ernaux's sister died of diphtheria at 6 years old, because she has a few months before the ability to leave this worldvaccine was made compulsory in France, and use an unworldly portal of kaleidoscope colours to enter other worlds, where 2 years before the sea levels are rising dramatically author was even born. The large and instant void created by the buildings are generally empty jarring concept of humans and ripe for plunder. With eviction imminent, can Elsbeth nab anything writing to actually generate custom at the shop? Well yes, is the answeran imaginary recipient emphasises Ernaux's process of reckoning with this giant absence in her life, an absence that she has always felt but the fact a mysterious man knows exactly which items come from these different Somewheres only raises more questions…often denied.|isbn=18399437691804271845
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1529504775|title=The Toy Bus Maxim Gorky and Bryan Karetnyk (The Repair Shop Storiestranslator)|authortitle=Amy Sparkes Reminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Katie HickeyAndreyev|rating=43.5|genre=For SharingBiography|summary=Elsie Biographies are often seen as the form of life-writing which offers less colour; it can be seen as more objective and her little brother David loved to go to the park less personal. I think that Gorky completely rejects this perspective, and watch the red buses drive pastoffers a vibrant, subjective yet informed portrait of three of his literary contemporaries. Elsie would race In the buses along the side first section of the park but David couldnthis book, Tolstoy complains to his friend Gorky that: 't - he'd been born with cerebral palsy and even just standing up was very difficultyou write not of real life as it is, but of what you yourself imagine it to be. One day Elsie spotted a bus in the toy shop window which Whom would it help David - and was happy to use the coins from her money box to pay for it as cash was tight at home. Graduallyknow how I see this tower, David learned to stand upthat sea, or that Tartar - why should it interest anyone? Of what use the bus for support, and walk behind is it?''. Many decades laterWell, Elsie brought the bus, now damaged and rustedMaxim Gorky shows exactly what can be gained from a subjective account, giving us access to the Repair Shophow he saw Tolstoy, hoping Chekhov and Andreyev in such privileged detail that the experts there could make it so that her grandchildren could play with one almost feels unworthy of it.|isbn=1804271977
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=18479418341529077745|title=Atomic HabitsThe Dark Wives (D I Vera Stanhope)|author=James ClearAnn Cleeves
|rating=4.5
|genre=LifestyleCrime|summary=A man walking his dog in the early morning discovered the body of a man in the park near Rosebank, a care home for troubled teens. The dead man was Josh - one of the care workers who was due to work a shift the night before but who had never turned up. D I've said this before Vera Stanhope is called in to investigate the murder - but there are some books that you seek outher only clue is the disappearance of one of the residents, some books fourteen-year-old Chloe Spencer. Some people believe that you stumble across and some books that drop into your life because you really MUST read them, like, right now! ''Atomic Habits'' Chloe was responsible for the death but Vera thinks this is in unlikely as the last categorygirl's diary makes it clear that she adored Josh. She knows that she has to find Chloe to discover what happened to Josh.
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Natasha FarrantB0FK5LHKD9|title=The Rescue Colour of RavenwoodMemory|author=Christopher Bowden|rating=54|genre=Confident ReadersGeneral Fiction|summary=This story is another excellent adventure from the author of It''Voyage of the Sparrowhawk''. Ravenwood is an old house, in the North of England, where Bea and Raffy have s been living for most of their lives. They are part of three years since we last reviewed a complexbook by favourite regular Christopher Bowden, extended family arrangementso we were very glad to see a new novel arrive here at Bookbag Towers. Like all Bowden's stories, as Bea is there with her Uncle Leo, and Raffy is there with his mum, and they are living together as 's a family. They have grown up swimming in the cove, roaming through mystery at the trees, completely at one with all heart of the nature around the house and loving every inch ''The Colour of the placeMoney''. But now the house is under threat, as Leo is under pressure from his other two brothers to sell the property to a developer as itWe like this running theme in an author's becoming more and more expensive to maintain. The children find themselves worrying not only about where they're going to live, work - take a mystery but if they'll even be together, give it different flavour and if Ravenwood itself will be torn downatmosphere each time.|isbn=0571348785
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Nick BrooksOlga Tokarczuk|title=Promise BoysHouse of Day, House of Night|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''What's the good of a world that keeps changing like that? How can one go on calmly living in it?'' The title of this spellbinding work, ''House of Day, House of Night'', somewhat reflects this notion of shifting realities - the small, subtle changes which govern our lives, like the shift from day to night, however quotidian, causing chaos. But, the constant in that image is the house, stoic against the ancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it is perceived.|isbn=1804271918}}{{Frontpage|isbn=henleyA|title=Ultimate Obsession|author=Dai Henley
|rating=4
|genre=TeensCrime|summary=When the principal (headmaster) of Urban Promise Prep school is murderedEx-DCI Andy Flood has been a Private Investigator for some time now, and he should be doing quite well financially. Unfortunately, three boys find themselves called into the police station as suspectshis daughter's defence against a murder charge drained his savings. EachHis wife, seeminglyLaura, has a grudge of some description against Principal Moorebeen trying to persuade him to retire - ''maybe go travelling or go on cruises. That's what 'ordinary people do', and each could have '' He's not been there at entirely up front about the time state of his murdertheir savings. But who killed When Jack Durban tries to persuade himto take his case, and why, and if any it's the thought of the boys are innocent, will they be able to clear their names?|isbn=1035003155money he could make that convinces him that this is a miscarriage of justice that he really should put right.
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=G K Holloway1836284683|title=In the Shadows of CastlesThe Big Happy|author=David Chadwick
|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical Dystopian Fiction|summary= We begin after the momentous battle in 1066 and on the day of William of Normandy's coronation as King of England. William's position Well! This is not secure and the new king has many challenges. Imposing authority through a coronation is important. And William is right to worry. While the previous king, Harold, is dead and the likelihood of more pitched battles is over, the rebels are stirring and much of the country does not wish to recognise a new overlord.|isbn=1800422466}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0008506337|title=The Garnett Girls|author=Georgina Moore|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary=The love affair between Margo Garnett and poet Richard O'Leary was all-consuming, apparently on both sides. Margo was just sixteen when they fell in love. Richard was twenty-one and described by Margo's mother as 'an older man'. Her parents worried that Richard's influence would take her away from what they felt she could achieve - going to Oxford and having a glittering career. In the event, they eloped and Richard took her away from the Isle of Wight. Margo did go to Oxford and went on to become a well-respected journalist. The couple had three children: Rachel, Imogen and Sasha. Life was lived in London and holidays were spent at Sandcove, the family home on the Isle of Wight. Even then the doubts about Richard's drinking were never far from Margo's mind: ''she would never be able to leave him in charge''.murder mystery unlike any other!
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Vanda SymonSally Rooney|title=Expectant (Detective Sam Shephard)Intermezzo
|rating=4.5
|genre=CrimeGeneral Fiction |summary=Detective Sam Shepherd is approaching Sally Rooney has studied the start chessboard of her maternity leave when there life and is something of a brutalgrandmaster at putting it into words. Her dialogue is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, shocking murder of an expectant woman in Dunedinas her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Suddenly she finds herself embroiled in Among the many relationships woven into this story, the hunt central one for readers to unravel is the fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. Ivan, a killer targeting pregnant womensocially awkward chess prodigy, contrasts sharply with all the extra pressure that entails being pregnant herselfhis older brother Peter, a successful lawyer living in Dublin. Finding herself put on desk duties, which she rails against, she just can't let the case go and she starts to follow every thread to uncover whatFollowing their father's actually happeningpassing after a long battle with cancer, and the increasingly disturbing worry of just what might happen nextbrothers' already strained relationship faces new trials.|isbn=19145855770571365469
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=15291259601036916375|title=Unnatural HistoryJust a Liverpool Lad|author=Jonathan KellermanPeter McArdle
|rating=4
|genre=CrimeAutobiography|summary=Donny Klement was ''Just a Liverpool Lad '' is a photographercollection of memories and reflections from the years Peter McArdle spent growing up in and around Liverpool. WellSome are factual, it was Adonissuch as the family history of a sea-going family, actually, but Donny had stuck unless he got Danny but whichever with the docks dominating lives. Other stories blend seamlessly into the what-might-have- itbeen. It's past tense as his PA found him dead in his bed. Three shots were placed neatly through his heart. The PA, Mel Gornick, is distraught a book to settle into and it falls allow your mind to psychologist Alex Delaware roam across your childhood memories, to calm her down whilst Lieutenant Milo Sturgis gets more agitated as he tries to establish whatthink of simpler times when life seemed less constrained, despite the blitz that was a constant factor in McArdle's happened. Donny had just finished a series of photographs called ''The Wishers''early years. HeI'd taken eight homeless people off the streets and asked them what never heard of parachute mines before - but they'd really like to be. They were then dressed up as their fantasy, photographed almost soundless and sent on their way with a generous gift in dollarscould appear after the all-clear was sounded.
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Robin Birch and Jobe Anderson1836285493|title=Secret Beast Club: The Unicorns Double Life of Silver Streeta Wheelchair User|author=Rob Keeley|rating=45
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Jayden's nose Will is forever in a bookkeen player of video games, a conscientious student, which means he knows a lot about mythological creatures – the phoenixes slightly annoying brother and unicorns a supportive friend. But most of the worldall, for example. Aisha he is addicted to her new tablet, where she can see videos of anything that might be out therean aspiring writer. The problem, as their mothers see it, English is that they are never 'out there' themselves, exploring the outside world of Hackney, London. But when a narrowboat turns up carrying a science-mindedhis favourite lesson at his school, educational purposeMarlowe Park, and with a past involving Jayden's cousin, they find a magical world they never knew existedone at which he excels. For many of those mythological creatures are real, including the one Aisha thinks sheThis hasn's seen on a bit of local footage. The crew of the boatt gone unnoticed by his headteacher, including a living gargoyleMrs Howarth, are tasked with saving the rare critters – and the kids unknowingly have the magical sight needed she has suggested to join in. Dare they side with Leila, the woman on board, Will and her relative who lives as his mum that he spends a couple of afternoons a figure in week at a paintingdifferent school, and become saviours of the unseen?|isbn=0241573483Station Road, where his ability might be better extended.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=19138396561009473085|title=Let's Celebrate Being DifferentThe Conservative Effect 2010 - 2024|author=Lainey DeeAnthony Seldon and Tom Egerton (Editors)|rating=3.5|genre=For SharingPolitics and Society|summary=Todd was excited 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 spending what ''really'' happened on certain occasions, then this isn't the weekend with his grandmotherbook 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}}, not least because she made the best beetle juicecan be bettered for those tumultuous years. He packed two pairs of dungarees It's a compelling read and his favourite hat and then gathered together his button collection should be compulsory for anyone who thinks Johnson should return to show his grandmotherpolitics. She had promised to take him to ''The Conservative Effect'' is an entirely different beast. It's the Friday Night Club seventh book in a series which looks at the local community centre impact a government has made and Todd was pleased about co-editor Sir Anthony Seldon regards this as he wanted to make new the most important. This book follows the well-established format: a series of experts 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. At homeThey 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, his only friend and their friendship, together.|isbn=1471196585}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1787333175|title=You Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here|author=Benji Waterhouse|rating=5|genre=Popular Science|summary=I was his mum tempted to read ''You Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here'' after enjoying Adam Kay's first book {{amazonurl|isbn=1509858636|title=This is Going to Hurt}}, a glorious mixture of insight into the workings of the NHS, humour and he wondered why that could autobiography. ''You Don't Have to beMad...'' promised the same elements but moved from physical problems to mental illness and the work of a psychiatrist. Grandma thought that I did wonder whether it might was acceptable to be because he looked differentlooking 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 understanding.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1787301036Mariana Enriquez|title=What July Knew|author=Emily KochA Sunny Place for Shady People
|rating=5
|genre=ThrillersShort Stories|summary=When we first meet July Hooper on 20 July 1995 she's just ten years old. She's a carefulMariana Enriquez writes horror that is disturbingly real, meticulous child. The care has been taught achieving this uncanny familiarity by basing her paranormal plots on gritty realities: her father, Mick Hooper, who is not prepared settings include an abandoned field full of disused refrigerators due to discuss the death of his wife, July's motheran urban planning mishap, an overcrowded homeless shelter and any hint that the conversation is heading that way will lead to the necessity of a Lesson. Other infractions of his requirements also lead to these Lessons and he's not even careful about whether or not the injuries crime-ridden neighbourhood where safety meetings are visibleroutine - all within Argentina. July's teacher is concerned and brings up the possibility The circumstances of abuse with the head but her worries characters are dismissed: Mick has been good to so plausible that the school, has he not? The playground wouldn't have been resurfaced but for himsupernatural or otherworldly horror which seeps into these spaces adopts a similarly tangible texture.|isbn=1803511230
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Lucy Ashe1529934753|title=Clara and OliviaThe Protest|author=Rob Rinder
|rating=4.5
|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=The year is 1933. The place? SadlerFor a little while, it looked as though Sir Max Bruce, the country's Wellsmost famous living artist, was not going to show up for the opening of his retrospective at the Royal Academy. Ballerinas Clara and Olivia are sistersStill, twins no less. Identical on he arrived in the outside but notnick of time, we learncomplete with his two wives and six children, on the insideone of whom filmed what happened. And not on stage Being an influencer, either. Because there's a lot that builds a dancer. Some things that can be taught or learnt – discipline, attention you tend to detail – and some do things, like that ''je ne sais quoi'', but it was fortunate that don't come from there was a record of the classroomprotest. A stage presence Lexi Williams, an intern at the RA, grabbed a spray can of blue paint from under a charmchair and proceeded to spray Bruce in the face, a whilst shouting ''joie de vivreStop the War''. It seemed to be part of an ongoing series of 'blue-face' attacks, but this was different. The difference between a hard-workercan had been laced with cyanide, and a starSir Max Bruce was dead.|isbn=0861544080
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0008454493Ariel Saramandi|title=All the Dangerous Things|author=Stacy WillinghamPortrait of an Island on Fire
|rating=4.5
|genre=CrimePolitics and Society|summary=Isabelle Drake hasn't really slept for a year - wellIn this powerful collection of essays, apart from Saramandi seeks to intradermally dissect the odd occasion when she lost track sociopolitical fabric of time or drifted off for a moment. It's now a year since her sonMauritius, Mason, was stolen from his bed in tunneling deep into the middle of the night wounds left by colonialism and Izzy is consumed with guilt that she heard nothing and particularly about her relief in slavery to expose how these legacies still shape modern life. Saramandi describes the morning when she thought he was sleeping in. In that year shecountry at one stage as ''rotting''s done everything she could to raise awareness about the case. She does interviews and when we meet her, she's just been to TrueCrimeCon where she gave a keynote presentation. On blunt yet apt metaphor for the plane back, she's approached systemic decay brought about by a podcasterthe malignant forces of racism, Waylon Spencerpatriarchy, who points out that she could do a podcast environmental degradation and get to so many more people than she could by giving speeches to governmental dysfunction. Each essay in this collection serves as a few hundred people at conferenceskind of diagnostic, charting the various diseases afflicting the island state.|isbn=1804271616
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Jeremy Dronfield and David Ziggy GreenePekka Harju-Autti|title=Fritz LoveVortex and Kurtthe 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=We start with the pair of brothers Fritz and Kurt, and their muckersWill's life is difficult, doing things any Jewish lad in 1930s Vienna would want to do – kicking things around the empty market place, helping the neighbours, being dutiful when it comes to the synagogue choir and at a vocational schoolmultitude of ways. Kurt He is bullied because he has to make sure 'the lamps are turned on at their very Orthodox neighbourswrong shoes' each Friday night – , he has the Sabbath preventing them wrong shoes because his dad can't work and doesn't have enough money for using anything nearly as mechanical even the most basic of things like food, and workmanlike as his dad can't work because he lost his job at the college, was working a light switchcash-in-hand job on a building site and had an accident. But this is Throw into that mix the time just before the Austrian leader is going to cave to Hitlerfact that his mum and dad are separated, and Will's will, and instead of having a national vote to keep the Nazis out, invite them life seems bleak in with open armsevery direction. ''Kristallnacht'' happened in Vienna just as much as in GermanyAnd yet, as did all the round-ups he still has a tiny amount of Jewshope. These in their turn leave the younger Kurt He is good at home with his mother art, and sisters anxious clings to hear word the moments of an evacuation to Britain or joy when he is drawing, that feel like a light at the US, while Fritz and his father are, unknown initially to each otherend of a long, packed off on the same train to Buchenwald and the stone quarry theredark tunnel. And us wondering how the titular event for the adult variant of all this could come about…|isbn=024156574X1398527122
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1529421241Sylvie Cathrall|title=Stay Buried|author=Kate WebbA Letter to the Luminous Deep
|rating=5
|genre=CrimeScience Fiction|summary=DI Matt Lockyer is on Major Crime Review There are few greater joys than a book which sounds quite grand until you realise that it's actually lives up to a cold case unit and there are just two compelling premise. And this is one of them doing the job. Lockyer's not unduly worried, though although he's not quite so sure about DC Gemma Broad: she's probably capable of something better. It was a bit of a shock when he got the phone call from Hedy Lambert: she's in H M Prison Eastwood Park for murder - and it was Lockyer who put her there, fourteen years ago. She's keen to see him and to tell him that the man everyone thought she'd murdered - but the body turned out to be someone else - has returned home after being away for decades.|isbn= 0356522776
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B0BQXSYYTF1786482126|title=Just LookingThe Janus Stone (Dr Ruth Galloway)|author=Matthew TreeElly Griffiths
|rating=4.5
|genre=Dystopian FictionCrime|summary=It was the summer of 2035 and on a cruise ship Builders were demolishing an old house in Marseilles, Jim was celebrating his newNorwich -found wealth and the end of his marriage site was going to hold seventy- not two celebrations generally found in the same sentence by a man! Hefive 'luxury's watching the tornado apartments - when they're more common in Europe these days - that's keeping discovered the cruise ship in port and falls into conversation with Jean-Pierre, bones of a child beneath a French journalist in his thirtiesdoorway. There was no skull. He writes for Was this a relatively new paperritual killing or murder? Inevitably, the right-wing ''La Tribune Gauloise'' and heDr Ruth Galloway finds herself working with DCI Harry Nelson. It's interesting if a little wordy on subjects such difficult as the difference between 'France' and Ruth knows, but Nelson doesn't, that she is pregnant with his child as a result of the French'one night they spent together some three months ago. His partnerHer condition will be obvious before long, Helen, who's English and Jewish, keeps him in check not least because Ruth is prone to some extentsudden bouts of sickness.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=057137493XGuadalupe Nettel and Rosalind Harvey (Translator)|title=The Other Half|author=Charlotte VassellAccidentals|rating=4.5|genre=CrimeShort Stories|summary=''The room This collection was full truly enchanting in all senses of the sort of people ''Tatler'' thinks you should know.'' ''The Other Half'' is the story of two menword: spellbinding with its fantastical, both with what looks like the same surname. Rupert Beauchamp is the heir to a baronetcy magical elements and his thirtieth birthday party is a catered-with-butler event at McDonalds charming in Camden Town. Think Bollinger its gentle portrayal of nature and cocaine. His surname is pronounced 'Beecham'human relationships. Caius Beauchamp is a detective inspector with the Metropolitan police Guadalupe Nettel writes intelligently and is bi-racial. His surname is pronounced as you see it. The two encounter each other when Caiusprecisely, out for her stories structured by a run, stumbles across wisdom that appears to want to teach us something about the body of Clemmie O'Hara, Rupert's girlfriend. Rupert thought that she was being deliberately late for his party. She was dead under a bushworld.|isbn=1804271470
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Joe Thomas0008551375|title=White RiotWhen Shadows Fall (D S Max Craigie)|author=Neil Lancaster
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary= Whenever anyone writes fiction about politics thereLeanne Wilson's always body was found at the danger bottom of making it too reactionary; too raw. Knee-jerk observations and hot takes that don't age well or properly capture the spirit of the moment. It takes a truly talented writer to be able to capture Scottish mountain, seemingly the zeitgeist result of a particular event or era of political historytragic accident. Austerity Britain, the student riots, Donald Trump, Brexit – She'd looked so much of what ishappy, and has beentoo, written in the immediate aftermath of these phenomena has been proven by time to be frothy and insubstantial and ultimately not particularly powerful or incisive. Inevitably (and perhaps disappointingly for people who do enjoy fiction of this nature), the best writing about current political events is that which is written when the events in question are no longer current and when time and experience has afforded the writer the benefit of a more objective viewshe posted her intentions on Facebook.|isbn= 1529423376}}{{Frontpage|author=Heather Fawcett|title=Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia Her friends were relieved as she was just out of Faeries|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=Emily Wilde is an expert academic scholar on faerie loreunpleasant relationship, and but it looked like she has travelled extensively, and researched meticulously, to write was living her best life's work, now. Then it emerged that five other women had died in similar circumstances in the very first encyclopaedia of faerieslast year. Whilst she is brilliant at research All were experienced climbers, properly equipped for what they were doing and speaking to faeries, she is not so good with sensible people. So when she finds herself far, far North in the small village None of Hrafvsnik, having somehow offended the village matriarch, she is not sure 'what she has done, nor how a stupid thing to redeem herself and put her final investigations for her book back on the right trackdo' explanations applied. Enter Wendell Bambleby, her dashingly handsome and insufferable rival who arrives unexpectedly, They were all charm and delight, much to Emilyalone when they died: DS Max Craigie is certain there's frustration. But why is he here? What does he want? And what exactly is going a killer on with the faerie folk around Hravsnik?|isbn=0356519120loose.
}}