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{{Frontpage
|author=Jenny ValentinePaul B Preciado|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=1529425905|title=A Voice in the Night (A D I Wilkins Mystery)|author=Simon MasonDysphoria Mundi
|rating=4.5
|genre=CrimePolitics and Society|summary=There's a new Superintendent in Thames Valley — DCS Wainwright—and she's young, ambitious, and ruthless. She talks a good talk about work/life balance and family values, but as far as she's concerned, she has two main problems, and they're both called DI Wilkins. Ray Wilkins It is of Nigerian descent, Baliol educated and always immaculately dressed. He's married to Diane and has twin sons. Management's opinion of him is that he thinks never too highly of himself and his last boss felt that he needed more experience at what he called 'the wet end'. Ryan Wilkins comes from a trailer park - in fact, it could be said that he's never really left it. He lives in shell suits and tracksuits, always in vivid colours. Previous management was adamant that he should ''never'' be given responsibility. Wainwright feels that she would be best shut of both of them.}}{{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 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 autobiography. ''You Don't Have to be Mad...'' promised the same elements but moved from physical problems late to mental illness and embrace the work revolutionary optimism of a psychiatrist. I did wonder whether it was acceptable to be looking for humour in this setting but the laughter is directed at a situation rather than a person and it is always delivered with empathy and understanding. }}{{Frontpage|author=Mariana Enriquez|title=A 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|author=Onyi Nwabineli|title=Allow Me to Introduce Myself|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Anuri spent her childhood on display to the world, thanks to her step-mother Ophelia's increasingly popular presence on social media, where she posted every step of Anuri's childhood for sponsorships and influencer deals and, basically, monetary gain. Now Anuri is in her twenties and she is slowly trying to regain her confidence and to get her life back, suing her step-mother to take down the content about her. Anuri is battling alcoholism, failing to start her PhD, undergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online and receiving money from them for doing so. Most importantly, she is desperately worried about her little sister, who is the new focus of Ophelia's online empire. Can she save her sister, and perhaps herself and her relationship with her father at the same time?|isbn=0861546873}}{{Frontpage|author=David Chadwick|title=Headload of Napalm|rating=4.5|genre=Thrillers|summary= It's September 1973 in Hicks, California. Hicks is a Mojave desert town of a few thousand people with its nearest neighbours of LA and Las Vegas both a significant drive away. Not much happens in Hicks. A silver mine and a defence contractor are the main local employers but otherwise, there's not much of note other than dive bars and Joshua trees. Life is quiet, until....|isbn= B0D321VJ76}}{{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 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 Luminous Deep|rating=5|genre=Science Fiction|summary= There are few greater joys than new generation, a book new feeling mechanism in which lives up to detachment is not considered a compelling premisesign of political apathy. And this Rather, it is one of them.|isbn= 0356522776}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1786482126|title=The Janus Stone (Dr Ruth Galloway)|author=Elly Griffiths|rating=4.5|genre=Crime|summary=Builders were demolishing an old house in Norwich - the site was going proportional, valid response to hold seventy-five 'luxury' apartments - when they discovered the bones of a child beneath a doorway. There was no skull. Was this a ritual killing or murder? Inevitablyepistemological and political crack we are living through, Dr Ruth Galloway finds herself working with DCI Harry Nelson. Itand the tension between emancipatory forces and conservative resistances that characterize our present'' which Preciado calls ''dysphoria mundi's difficult as Ruth knows, but Nelson doesn't, that she . The whole text is pregnant with his child as a result framed against the backdrop of the one night they spent together some three months ago. Her condition will be obvious before longCovid-19 pandemic as that which has catalysed this revolution, not least because Ruth is prone when dysphoria began to sudden bouts of sickness.}}{{Frontpage|author=Joan Didion|title=The Year of Magical Thinking|rating=4.5|genre=Autobiography|summary=This book is Joan Didionemerge on a global scale, or as ''pangea covidica's heartbreaking autobiographical account of the grief she endured following her husband's sudden death. Books that shed light on taboo topics like death are such Rather than taking this extreme dysphoria as a beautiful and necessary resource to help people feel less alone. Didion unpicks unpleasant feelings surrounding death like self-pitysign of weakness, denial and delusion and makes them utterly normalor mistaking detachment or withdrawal for political paralysis, lends them a human face Preciado urges his readers to wear''use dysphoria as your revolutionary platform''.|isbn=00072168581804271454
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{{Frontpage
|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 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
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{{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.
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0241678412Jon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |title=The Proof of My Innocence|author=Jonathan CoeVaim
|rating=4
|genre=ThrillersLiterary Fiction|summary=Life after university hasn''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 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 worked out quite have been the way that Phyl anticipatedonly 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. SheIt's back homebeen seven years since we heard from him, but he's now living with her parents Willow Reeves and on a zero-hours contract serving sushi to tourists at terminal 5 their young son, James, as well as Cassie, the daughter of Heathrow Airporthis former partner. All those ideas of becoming a writer seem to have come to nothing. The situation improves when Willow's also his boss, and she ''should'Uncle' Chris comes to stay and introduces Phyl to his adopted daughterbe on maternity leave, Rashida. Christopher Swann (described by some as but when the body of a lefty blogger) popular islander, Archie Stout, is investigating a think tank which originated at Cambridge University found, in the 1980saftermath of a storm, she can't resist getting involved. It plans to push He'd been battered about the government in head with a Neolithic stone - one of a pair - which had been stolen from a more extreme direction and is ready to actmuseum.
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor= 1836282028Thea Lenarduzzi|title=The Fighting Spirit|author=Rob KeeleyTower|rating=45|genre=Confident ReadersLiterary Fiction|summary=''Would you like to adopt a ghost?How unctuous are the fats of another's life, how dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream''.
''Young spiritIn this compelling novel, born 1887Thea Lenarduzzi assumes the identity of T, seeks kind home to haunt. Gentleman by birth. Good company. Gets on well with other children. Jokes and shocks a specialitythe protagonist of this tale.Just as T'' ''If interesteds story is being told, place outside your home three twigsthe story of a second protagonist is unveiled: Annie, the daughter of a wealthy family in the shape 19th century, who died of an arrowtuberculosis after being locked in a tower, pointing to your front doorcaptures T's imagination...'' Hooray! Bookbag favourite Rob Keeley is celebrating a decade of his wonderfully entertaining [[Rob KeeleyAnnie's ''Spirits'' series in Chronological Order|Spirits]] series with a new adventure that fate is both a reboot and a continuation. Just like Doctor Who, Edward Fitzberrangerabove all, our incorrigible Victorian ghost boyan enticing story to T. It is a story which she consumes avariciously, has some new companions. Ruby both in a quest for truth and Jayden respond to this intriguing advertisement and Edwardknowledge, who has broken the rules as usual and absconded from his manor house homein service of myth, is adopted by them fable and takes up residence infantasy.... a wardrobe! |isbn=1804271799
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1739526910Claire-Louise Bennett|title=Where I've Not Been Lost|author=Glen SibleyBig Kiss, Bye-Bye
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=''One year after a suicide attempt blows apart musician Brian O’Malley's lifeEverything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, he arrives is steeped in an unfamiliar Devon town to recoveranguish and distortion. Living with an unexpected housemate at his former manager’s holiday homeEven a kiss, usually a symbol of intimacy and closeness, he dreams becomes evidence of reconnecting with everything he has love lost. But as those tentative plans falterWhen the narrator cries out internally, ''come over here and kiss me, he becomes swept up in '' it is less an invitation than a local world desperate attempt to confirm her emotional numbness. The imagined recipient of unlikely friendshipsthis plea is Xavier, mobile discos and surprising romantic possibilitiesher ex-partner, a ghost she conjures to test her detachment.''|isbn=1804271934
}}
{{Frontpage
|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 be an open-and-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.
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{{Frontpage
|author=Annie Ernaux and Alison L. Strayer (translator)
|title=The Other Girl
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=''We 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 few months before the vaccine was made compulsory in France, and 2 years before the author was even born. The large and instant void created by the jarring concept of writing to an imaginary recipient emphasises Ernaux's process of reckoning with this giant absence in her life, an absence that she has always felt but often denied.
|isbn=1804271845
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{{Frontpage
|author=Maxim Gorky and Bryan Karetnyk (translator)
|title=Reminiscences of Tolstoy, 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 three of his literary contemporaries. In the first section of this book, Tolstoy complains to his friend Gorky that: ''you write not of real life as it is, but of what you yourself imagine it to be. Whom would it help to know how I see this tower, that sea, or that Tartar - why should it interest anyone? Of what use is it?''. Well, Maxim Gorky shows exactly what can be gained from a subjective account, giving us access to how he saw Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev in such privileged detail that one almost feels unworthy of it.
|isbn=1804271977
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=1399613073B0FK5LHKD9|title=Moral InjuriesThe Colour of Memory|author=Christie WatsonChristopher Bowden|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersGeneral Fiction|summary=Olivia, Laura and Anjali met on the first day of medical school and their friendship would keep them inseparable for a quarter of It's been three years since we last reviewed a century. Olivia is ruthlessly ambitiousbook by favourite regular Christopher Bowden, which is a bonus when you aim so we were very glad to be see a cardiothoracic surgeonnew novel arrive here at Bookbag Towers. Laura is Like all Bowden's stories, there's a perfectionist and a trauma doctor. Anjali is mystery at the free spirit heart of ''The Colour of the group and she becomes a GP. When we first meet them theyMoney're at a drug and alcohol-fuelled party and it's going to end in tragedy. We donlike this running theme in an author't know who suffered the tragedy or the consequences. Twentys work -five years later there will be an eerily similar event that will impact the three friends. This take a mystery but give it different flavour and atmosphere each time, it's their teenage children who are involved.
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0241636604Olga Tokarczuk|title=The Trading Game: A Confession|author=Gary StevensonHouse of Day, House of Night|rating=4.5|genre=AutobiographyLiterary Fiction|summary=If you were to bring up an image ''What's the good of a city banker world that keeps changing like that? How can one go on calmly living in your mindit?'' The title of this spellbinding work, you're unlikely to think 'House of Day, House of Night'', somewhat reflects this notion of someone shifting realities - the small, subtle changes which govern our lives, like Gary Stevensonthe shift from day to night, however quotidian, causing chaos. A hoodie and jeans replaces But, the pin-stripe suit and his background constant in that image is the East Endhouse, where he was familiar with violencestoic against the ancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it is perceived.|isbn=1804271918}}{{Frontpage|isbn=henleyA|title=Ultimate Obsession|author=Dai Henley|rating=4|genre=Crime|summary=Ex-DCI Andy Flood has been a Private Investigator for some time now, poverty and injusticehe should be doing quite well financially. There was no posh public school on Unfortunately, his daughter's defence against a murder charge drained his CV - but he had savings. His wife, Laura, has been trying to the London School of Economicspersuade him to retire - ''maybe go travelling or go on cruises. Stevenson is bright - extremely bright - and he has a facility with numbers which most That's what 'ordinary people do','' He's not been entirely up front about the state of us can only envytheir savings. He also realised that most rich people expect poor people When Jack Durban tries to persuade him to be stupid. It was take his ability at what wascase, essentially, a card game which got it's the thought of the money he could make that convinces him an internship with Citibank. Eventually, that this turned into permanent employment as is a tradermiscarriage of justice that he really should put right.
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Leanne Egan1836284683|title=Lover BirdsThe Big Happy|author=David Chadwick
|rating=4.5
|genre=TeensDystopian Fiction|summary=When new girlWell! This is a murder mystery unlike any other! I do love it when I open a book, Isabel, moves to Louit's hometown of Liverpool from London Lou immediately feels Isabel's disdain for everything around her. A misunderstanding between them leaves them hating each other, but Lou feels her pulse racing every time she looks at Isabel or speaks with hernothing like I expected it to be, and it takes me on a wild ride. And thatis just what happened with ''The Big Happy's definitely because Isabel makes her feel so cross, isn't it? Because Lou is straight, isn. I don't she? Even though none want to ruin a similar experience for any of her relationships with boys you reading but I'll have gone very well so far, and sheto at least set the scene. Once that's never had a good kiss with any of them? So she just finds herself watching Isabeldone, and wanting to hang out with her because fighting with her is fun, and she definitely just hates Isabel, doesn't she?|isbn=000862657XI think you should simply experience this wonderfully original story for yourself.
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{{Frontpage
|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.
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{{Frontpage
|author=Mark LinganeJenny Valentine|title=ChimeraUs 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=Benji Waterhouse|rating=5|genre=Popular Science|summary=I was 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 autobiography. ''You Don't Have to be Mad...'' promised the same elements but moved from physical problems to mental illness and the work of a psychiatrist. I did wonder whether it was acceptable to be looking for humour in this setting but the laughter is directed at a situation rather than a person and it is always delivered with empathy and understanding. }}{{Frontpage|author=Mariana Enriquez|title=A 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=Science FictionCrime|summary=For a little while, it looked as though Sir Max Bruce, the country''The survivor stumbles forwards most famous living artist, was not going to show up for the opening of his retrospective at the Royal Academy. Still, her steps echoing he arrived in the oppressive silencenick of time, complete with his two wives and six children, one of whom filmed what happened. Her heart pounds Being an influencer, you tend to do things like that, but it was fortunate that there was a jackhammer. She doesn’t know where she’s heading. All she remembers is running. Terror chasing. Everything lostrecord of the protest.'' ''Broken and fragmented recollections tumble around her head. Fear courses through her body. Her breaths come in shallow Lexi Williams, ragged gasps as desperation claws an intern at her throat. Dehydration consumes herthe RA, and grabbed a raging thirst feels unquenchable.'' ''There must be spray can of blue paint from under a way out. As she moves through chair and proceeded to spray Bruce in the foreign areaface, memories begin to gel. Disaster had ploughed through her life—not just hers, everyone’s.whilst shouting '' As our survivor struggles to orient herself, sheStop the War's guided by a robot, which looks human-made, but she can't be sure. It says it is. It says she must try not seemed to injure herself. Guided to an interview with be part of an eerie, terrifying group ongoing series of aliens, she desperately tries to make sense of flashes of memory 'blue- environmental degradationface' attacks, deals done and then betrayedbut this was different. The can had been laced with cyanide, horrifying rituals covering desperate attempts to survive - and to attempt to explain how she came to be here, apparently the last human being aliveSir Max Bruce was dead.|isbn=B0DNVWMYP2
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{{Frontpage
|author=Max BoucheratAriel Saramandi|title=The Last Life Portrait of Lori Millsan Island on Fire
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersPolitics and Society|summary=We meet Lori on In this powerful collection of essays, Saramandi seeks to intradermally dissect the first evening she's got sociopolitical fabric of Mauritius, tunneling deep into the house wounds left by colonialism and slavery to herself – no neighbour to pop inexpose how these legacies still shape modern life. Saramandi describes the country at one stage as ''rotting'', babysitter poorly, mother at worka blunt yet apt metaphor for the systemic decay brought about by the malignant forces of racism, just an avidly rule-breaking eleven year oldpatriarchy, on her lonesomeenvironmental degradation and governmental dysfunction. What could possibly go wrong? Snuggled Each essay in this collection serves as a blanket fortkind of diagnostic, she has one main intentioncharting 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 that Britain is to log on to Voxminerexpanding its foreign trade. Captain Julius Hawthorne, the world-buildingan experienced Scottish sea captain, critter-collecting game that is a hit sent to the Andaman Islands in Lori's worldhis endeavour. But first Lori has a tiny inkling that this stormy night doesn't find herself entirely on her ownAlong with his son, Peter, and then she finds something even more spooky. For the server she and her bestie and nobody else should be able their cat, Michi, they set off on a perilous voyage to enter shows signs of tamperingthese faraway lands. When malevolent eyes spark up on her phone screen, The islands are beautiful and her safe place stunning in their scenery and the game has been doctored – wellislanders' leader, Aarav, where is a girl keen to turn?establish good relations.|isbn=0008666482B0DS1VGHH3
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0008385068Helene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)|title=The Midnight Feast|author=Lucy FoleyLili is Crying
|rating=4.5
|genre=ThrillersLiterary Fiction|summary=It's midsummer on First published in 1953 in French, this novel is a timeless text which wrenches the Dorset coast hearts of its readers just as Bessette wrenches words and guests gather at The Manor. It's sentences from their opening weekend and splendid celebrations are promised. It's all headed up by Francesca Meadows. The Manor was her ancestral home and she's converted it into an impressive retreat for proper position on the wealthy page and famous. Her husbandpositions them elsewhere, Owendisjointed, was truncated. Like the architect and work is still ongoing on parts lives of the site. The heat is oppressive and amongst the guests are enemies as well as friends. Old scores her characters, they are going to be settled and it won't be long before a body is foundoften left tragically incomplete.|isbn=1804271675
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{{Frontpage
|author=James BaldwinTom Percival|title=Giovanni's RoomThe Wrong Shoes|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction Confident Readers|summary=Will's life is difficult, in a multitude of ways. He is bullied because he has 'Giovannithe wrong shoes's Room, he has the wrong shoes because his dad can't work and doesn' follows t have enough money for even the narrator Davidmost basic of things like food, an American man living in Paris, as and his dad can't work because he navigates lost his torturous affair with Giovannijob at the college, was working a cash-in-hand job on a building site and had an Italian bartender 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 meets in still has a gay bartiny amount of hope. While David He is engaged good at art, and clings to Hella, who the moments of joy when he is travelling in Spaindrawing, that feel like a light at the real tension in end of a long, dark tunnel.|isbn=1398527122}}{{Frontpage|author=Sylvie Cathrall|title=A Letter to the novel arises not from his infidelity but from the deeper conflict within himselfLuminous Deep|rating=5|genre=Science Fiction|summary= There are few greater joys than a book which lives up to a compelling premise. It And this is David's crippling shame and denial one of his sexuality that ultimately dooms his relationship with Giovannithem.|isbn=01411863560356522776
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Ashley Hickson-Lovence1786482126|title=Wild EastThe Janus Stone (Dr Ruth Galloway)|author=Elly Griffiths
|rating=4.5
|genre=TeensCrime|summary=Written Builders were demolishing an old house in verse, this is RonnyNorwich - the site was going to hold seventy-five 'luxury's story, apartments - when they discovered the bones of a young black fourteen year old boy from Hackney who suddenly has to move to Norwich and start at child beneath a mostly white schooldoorway. There was no skull. The move is initiated by Ronny's mum who is worried for Ronny's safety after Was this a tragic eventritual killing or murder? Inevitably, and so Ronny Dr Ruth Galloway finds himself trying to settle in a new town, a new school, and keep himself out of troubleherself working with DCI Harry Nelson. He listens to music constantlyIt's difficult as Ruth knows, but Nelson doesn't, and has always dreamed that she is pregnant with his child as a result of being a rapperthe one night they spent together some three months ago. But now, in this new school, his teacher encourages him to Her condition will be part of a poetry writing workshop group andobvious before long, slowly, Ronny begins not least because Ruth is prone to see the connections between rap and poetry, and the power sudden bouts of creativity and crafting your wordssickness.|isbn=0241645441
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1635866847Guadalupe Nettel and Rosalind Harvey (Translator)|title=The Lavender Companion|author=Jessica Dunham and Terry Barlin VesciAccidentals
|rating=4.5
|genre=LifestyleShort Stories|summary=It's strange, This collection was truly enchanting in all senses of the things that make you ''immediately'' feel that this is the book for you. Before I started reading ''The Lavender Companion''word: spellbinding with its fantastical, I visited the author's [https://www.pinelavenderfarm.com/ website] magical elements and there's a picture charming in its gentle portrayal of a slice of chocolate cake on the homepagenature and human relationships. I don't eat cakes Guadalupe Nettel writes intelligently and desserts - but I wanted precisely, her stories structured by a wisdom that cake viscerally. (There's a recipe in the book, which I'm avoiding with some difficulty!!) Then I started reading the book and I was told appears to make a mess of it. Notes in the margins are sanctioned. You get want to fold down teach us something about the corners of pages. You suspect that smears of butter would not be a problem. I ''loved'' this book alreadyworld.|isbn=1804271470
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Han Kang0008551375|title=The VegetarianWhen Shadows Fall (D S Max Craigie)|author=Neil Lancaster
|rating=4.5
|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=This novelLeanne Wilson's body was found at the bottom of a Scottish mountain, seemingly the result of a tragic accident. She'd looked so happy, winner too, when she posted her intentions on Facebook. Her friends were relieved as she was just out of the International Booker Prize 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 2016 and penned by an author who received the Nobel Prize for Literature this last year. All were experienced climbers, is as close properly equipped for what they were doing and sensible people. None of the 'what a stupid thing to unputdownable as it getsdo' explanations applied. It more than lives up to They were all alone when they died: DS Max Craigie is certain there's a killer on the acclaimloose. The story introduces uncanny characters with fragile, vividly tangible bodies yet unknowable, elusive souls.|isbn=1803510056
}}