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==The Best New Books== '''Read [[:Category:New Reviews|new reviews by category]]. '''<br> '''Read [[:Category:Features|the latest features]].'''{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jaclyn Moriarty Paul B Preciado|title=The Spell Book of Listen TaylorDysphoria Mundi|rating=34.5|genre=TeensPolitics and Society|summary=Listen Taylor's father has just moved in with his girlfriend and they are adopted into 'It is never too late to embrace the Zing family, with all revolutionary optimism of its delightful eccentricities and unusual behaviour – the Zings meet every Friday night for dinner and then disappear into the garden shed to work on the childhood'Zing Family Secret'. Marbie Zing is terrified of doing something wrong and losing Nathaniel and Listen. Her sister Fancy is becoming increasingly disillusioned with her home life, and her daughter's year two teacher is coming to terms with a break up. The stories of these people come together to create a tale of life, love, and ultimately, what being part of a family means.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330446363</amazonuk>}}
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jon BerkeleySamantha Harvey|title=The Lightning Key (Circus Trilogy)Orbital
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersGeneral Fiction|summary=I shall start with a word of advice. When youIn 2024, Samantha Harvey won the Booker Prize for ''Orbital''re being hounded by a circus master, and a magician, for the soul of a tiger compact yet profound work that's contained in unfolds over a tiger's egg that's contained single day in the brain lives of your teddy bear, and your best friend - a fallen angel - is trying her best to make sure group of astronauts aboard the other angels do not turn on you in International Space Station. Through a big way - then you're probably living the third book in a fantasy trilogy. Still - never mind, narrative lens that mirrors the angelastronauts's efforts will involve you entering a dream world of flight and cloud citiesorbital perspective, the chase after your enemies will take you across the world Harvey invites readers to desert oases and back, and friends see our planet in a wholly new and old will be on board to helplight.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847384447</amazonuk>1529922933
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sue Townsend295967572X|title=Adrian Mole: The Prostrate YearsPale Pieces|author=G M Stevens
|rating=5
|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Adrian Mole Our unnamed narrator is now 39¼ and living, quite literally, in about to begin a pigsty, sharing an all too thin party wall train journey with his parents and working in a bookshopcompanion Django. ItWhere they's not quite how life was supposed to turn out. As he spends his days wrestling his strong willed 5 year old Gracie into her school uniform, trying to reassure glamorous wife Daisy that life in re going and what the provinces purpose of this journey is not as bad as she would like to believe, and desperately attempting to talk his mother out of her quest to appear on is uncertain. Django found the vile tickets ''Jeremy Kyleon the floor somewhere'' show, worrying over his increasingly frequent visits and has persuaded our narrator to the toilet accompany him. Why not? Not much else is really clear either - but we are probably in the last thing he needs. And yet, past as the worst is still pair travel to come. Think a crumbling economy, redundancy, affairs, death, a family member challenging him in the novel writing stakes station by coach and a query over the big C – it's going to be train is a tough year for the Moles, and there's little that ol' Adrian can do except sit back and watch his life spin out of control around himsteam locomotive.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0718153707</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Lauren Kate0008551324|title=FallenThe Devil You Know (D S Max Craigie)|author=Neil Lancaster
|rating=4.5
|genre=TeensCrime|summary=A 17 year old girl at a new school meets a mysterious and impossibly good-looking boy, who sheIt's immediately drawn unusual for anyone from the Hardie family toapproach the police. He seems determined to either ignore her Neither side likes or be outright rude has any respect for the other. But Davie Hardie is struggling in prison and he's prepared to tell the police where the body of a missing person is buried and who was responsible for herdeath. This person, until he saves her lifepromises, is someone big and it will be worth the police doing what he wants. And what he wants is to be transferred to an open prison to serve the two remainder of them end up drawn togetherhis sentence and to get an early parole date. This isn Not much to ask, is it? The new Deputy Police Constable doesn't Stephenie Meyerthink so and she's even prepared to do the other thing that Hardie demanded - make certain that DS Max Craigie and anyone who works with him is kept well away from what's happening.}}{{Frontpage|author=Jon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |title=Vaim|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary='Twilight'All was strange''... This haunting phrase encapsulates the pervading sense of otherworldliness which permeates this story set in Vaim, but it certainly has striking similaritiesa 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.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0385738935</amazonuk>1804271829
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Gareth Hinds1035043092|title=King LearThe Killing Stones (Jimmy Perez)|author=Ann Cleeves|rating=35|genre=Graphic NovelsCrime|summary=Hound me out of town in 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 most appropriate mannernew life on Orkney. It's been seven years since we heard from him, but I do not like King Learhe's now living with Willow Reeves and their young son, James, as well as Cassie, the daughter of his former partner. For meWillow's also his boss, and she ''should'' be on maternity leave, even as but when the body of a trained actorpopular islander, Archie Stout, the language is too dense and richfound, in the set-up too archly unfeasible to create the great tragedy itaftermath of a storm, she can's thought to bet resist getting involved. To my mind He'd been battered about the acclaim and esteem in which it's held is only mirrored by its own overhead with a Neolithic stone -long, overone of a pair -blown blusteringwhich had been stolen from a museum.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0763643440</amazonuk>
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{{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 our bloodstream''.
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Toby LesterClaire-Louise Bennett|title=The Fourth Part of the World: The Epic Story of History's Greatest MapBig Kiss, Bye-Bye
|rating=4.5
|genre=HistoryLiterary Fiction|summary=In 2003 Everything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, is steeped in anguish and distortion. Even a map was bought for $10 millionkiss, the highest price ever paid publicly for usually a historical documentsymbol of intimacy and closeness, by becomes evidence of love lost. When the Library of Congressnarrator cries out internally, ''come over here and kiss me, where '' it is now on permanent public displayless an invitation than a desperate attempt to confirm her emotional numbness. No ordinary map, The imagined recipient of this plea is sometimes described as America's birth certificate. It is the sole survivor of a thousand copies printed early in the 16th centuryXavier, her ex-partner, and was discovered by accident in some archives in a German castle in 1901. The sale and story behind it intrigued Toby Lester so much that he was inspired ghost she conjures to discover more, and this book is the resulttest her detachment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1861978030</amazonuk>1804271934
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Steven Lowe and Alan McArthur 0008405026|title=Is it Just Me or Has A Stranger in the Shit Hit the Fan?: Your Hilarious New Guide to Unremitting Global MiseryFamily (Maeve Kerrigan 11)|author=Jane Casey|rating=35|genre=HumourCrime|summary=It''The banks fell over like fat Labradors running over a wet kitchen floors sixteen years since nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her bed one summer night.'' Surely that is the wackiest, most inappropriate simile for the credit crunch She was never found and all it has done for the worldinvestigation ground to a halt. You won't get any such namby-pamby animal likenesses from these authorsNow, instead with quite a potty mouth on them they will lambast the modern worldher mother, the entire banking system, all those who failed to see it comingHelena, and those millions just seemingly waiting for us all to revert to high-interesther father are dead in their bed. Initially, high-risk, high-lending capitalism, so they can get back on the expenses train, and back up the rich lists.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847443656<it looks like a straightforward murder/amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Andy Stanton|title=Whatsuicide but there's For Dinner, Mr Gum?|rating=4.5|genre=Confident Readers|summary=As soon as heroine Polly turns her back, and leaves something about the town positioning of Lamonic Bibber for a day at the seaside, Mr Gum falls out with his best friend, causing carnivorous carnage all over the placebodies that makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and her boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. Meat is getting thrown around like What looked as though it's was going out of fashion, and we have to doubt whether Polly be an open-and her companions can ever utilise the power of love and put things to rights-shut case is now a complex double murder. Especially Kerrigan is convinced that the explanation lies in Rosalie's disappearance: others (such as this book does not contain a magic unicorn called ElizabethDerwent's boss, Una Burt) are less convinced.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1405248246</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Loose WomenAnnie Ernaux and Alison L. Strayer (translator)|title=Here Come the GirlsThe Other Girl
|rating=4
|genre=Home and FamilyAutobiography|summary=This is the second volume by the panelists from that nice ITV series, ''Loose Women''. Just as promised on We were born from the cover, this book is an entertaining night with the girlssame body. It turns out that theyI're just like usve never really wanted to think about this. The faces are already familiar and even if you don't know them yet, with nine contributors, you'll soon find a like-minded woman behind one of the celebrity faces. The women are universally warm-hearted and supportive: there will be many a lonely woman who reads this book and feels as if she sat down with a group of friends for the evening.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444700154</amazonuk>}}
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jenifer RobertsMaxim Gorky and Bryan Karetnyk (translator)|title=The Madness of Queen Maria: The Remarkable Life of Maria I Reminiscences of PortugalTolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev|rating=43.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Born in 1734 in LisbonBiographies 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, at that time the richest and most opulent city in Europeoffers a vibrant, Maria was destined to become subjective yet informed portrait of three of his literary contemporaries. In the first female monarch in Portuguese history. Married section of this book, Tolstoy complains to her uncle Infante Pedrohis friend Gorky that: ''you write not of real life as it is, seventeen years her senior, she had six children (outliving all but one of them)what you yourself imagine it to be. Whom would it help to know how I see this tower, and became Queen in 1777. A conscientious womanthat sea, she had the misfortune to be born in during the or that Tartar - why should it interest anyone? Of what use is it?'age of reason'. Well, when church and state were vying for supremacy. Instinctively Maxim Gorky shows exactly what can be gained from a supporter of the old religionsubjective account, with a humanitarian approach giving us access to state affairs, she was no Queen Elizabeth, no Catherine the Greathow he saw Tolstoy, Chekhov and wore her crown rather reluctantlyAndreyev in such privileged detail that one almost feels unworthy of it.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>095455891X</amazonuk>1804271977
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=David Hughes1529077745|title=Thomas Wogan is DeadThe Dark Wives (D I Vera Stanhope)|author=Ann Cleeves
|rating=4.5
|genre=Graphic NovelsCrime|summary=Well, with a title like that, need I bother with a plot summary? A man has a day out walking his dog in Morecambe, then the next thing he knows he's in early morning discovered the ultimate waiting room, with a strange array body of animals (a bat, a toadman in the park near Rosebank, a sea urchin...), all waiting care home fortroubled 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.. well D I Vera Stanhope is called in to investigate the murder - but her only clue is the disappearance of one of the residents, somethingfourteen-year-old Chloe Spencer. Yup, Some people believe that Chloe was responsible for the death but Vera thinks this is unlikely as you didn't need telling, hethe girl's deaddiary makes it clear that she adored Josh. She knows that she has to find Chloe to discover what happened to Josh.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>095580888X</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Dave EggersB0FK5LHKD9|title=The Wild ThingsColour of Memory|author=Christopher Bowden
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Meet MaxIt'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. When I say he sometimes gets the wrong end of the stick about adultsLike all Bowden's stories, or dislikes his motherthere's new boyfriend, or gets a bit feisty when he feels mystery at the need for revenge, I am certainly understating the facts. He is a bit heart of ''The Colour of a rascal to say the leastMoney''. But all that might change when he finds himself travelling to We like this running theme in an author's work - take a strange land of roisterous animals, mystery but give it different flavour and ends up installed as their kingatmosphere each time.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241144221</amazonuk>
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{{Frontpage
|author=Olga Tokarczuk
|title=House 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}}{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jeremy StronghenleyA|title=Christmas Chaos for the Hundred-Mile-An-Hour Dog Ultimate Obsession|author=Dai Henley
|rating=4
|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=Trevor's troublesome dogEx-DCI Andy Flood has been a Private Investigator for some time now, Streaker, has had three puppiesand he should be doing quite well financially. They were fathered Unfortunately, according to local bully Charlie Smugg, by one of his Alsatiansdaughter's defence against a murder charge drained his savings. Trevor would ideally like to keep themHis wife, at least until ChristmasLaura, but his parents have other ideas and put them up for salehas been trying to persuade him to retire - ''maybe go travelling or go on cruises. Charlie Smugg declares that heThat's entitled to half of the money from the sale of the puppieswhat 'ordinary people do', but before they can be sold the three puppies go missing in the park and it'' He's not been entirely up front about the state of their savings. When Jack Durban tries to Trevor and his best friend Tina persuade him to try and track them down before Charlie demands take his cash!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141327243</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Sarah Beth Durst|title=Ice|rating=3.5|genre=Teens|summary=Cassie lives on an Arctic research station in Alaska. She loves the ice and the wilderness of her remote home and she'd definitely prefer to spend her time on tracking polar bears and fending off frostbite rather than on mixing with her peers and enjoying college and home comforts back in Fairbanks. Howevercase, things aren't all rosy. Cassieit's mother died when she was just a baby and she can't help feeling a huge hole in her heart. Her scientist father is remote and unloving and her grandmother left the station after an argument with thought of the money he could make that convinces him when Cassie was still very youngthat this is a miscarriage of justice that he really should put right. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847386571</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Iain Smyth and Michael Terry1836284683|title=The Wide-Mouthed FrogBig Happy|author=David Chadwick
|rating=4.5
|genre=For SharingDystopian Fiction|summary=Do you know the joke about the wide-mouthed frog? You must have heard it. It's a classic. It's one that you really need to tell in person, with your fingers pulling your mouth wide open, but to hopefully spark your memory, the wide-mouthed frog introduces himself to a number of animals until he finally comes across a crocodile who eats wide-mouthed frogs, and the frog does his best to disguise who he is whilst saying ''Ooh, you don't see many of those round here, do you?'' I'm hardly doing it justice, but it's very cheesy and funny. Anyway, this Well! This is a book of that joke.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408804964</amazonuk>}}murder mystery unlike any other!
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Annie TaylorSally Rooney|title=VioletIntermezzo
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersGeneral Fiction |summary=Violet Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard of life and is something of a very special hippograndmaster at putting it into words. She Her dialogue is extremely small but that does not make her adoptive parents Albert gripping and Mavis love so brilliantly frustrating, as her any characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Among the many relationships woven into this story, the lesscentral one for readers to unravel is the fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. HoweverIvan, a socially awkward chess prodigy, they are slightly worried that Violet has contrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, a successful lawyer living in Dublin. Following their father's passing after a very unusual habit of turning pink without warning and for no explicable reasonlong battle with cancer, the brothers' already strained relationship faces new trials.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1906847371</amazonuk>0571365469
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Hilary Dixon1036916375|title=When Rooks Speak of LoveJust a Liverpool Lad|author=Peter McArdle
|rating=4
|genre=Literary FictionAutobiography|summary=Arthur Transcombe ''Just a Liverpool Lad '' is a middlecollection 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-agedgoing family, greywith the docks dominating lives. Other stories blend seamlessly into the what-haired, selfmight-effacing poet. Unremarkable really have- on the outsidebeen. He hasIt's a book to settle into and allow your mind to roam across your childhood memories, howeverto think of simpler times when life seemed less constrained, managed to achieve some success with his poemsdespite the blitz that was a constant factor in McArdle's early years. (Being a guest speaker at I'd never heard of parachute mines before - but they were almost soundless and could appear after the Cheltenham Literary Festival is no mean feat)all-clear was sounded. He is also a babe magnet!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904529429</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=A J Healy1836285493|title=Tommy Storm and the Galactic KnightsThe Double Life of a Wheelchair User|author=Rob Keeley|rating=3.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Meet Tommy Storm. He's one Will is a keen player of five teenagers snapped up from around the universe to be video games, a conscientious student, a slightly annoying brother and a gang supportive friend. But most of heroic detectives charged with rescuing EVERYTHING from destructionall, he is an aspiring writer. Not just the planetEnglish is his favourite lesson at his school, or the solar systemMarlowe Park, or even the galaxy, but EVERYTHINGand one at which he excels. Nobody seems to know whatThis hasn's going to cause this destructiont gone unnoticed by his headteacher, or whenMrs Howarth, but he and she has suggested to Will and his friends and their ship seem to be the only people proactively going about saving the day. So it's mum that he spends a couple of afternoons a pity that they start this book strung up by week at a nasty loony who's about to kill themdifferent school, Station Road, where his ability might be better extended.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847247555</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Graham McCann1009473085|title=Bounder!: The Biography of TerryConservative Effect 2010 -Thomas2024|author=Anthony Seldon and Tom Egerton (Editors)|rating=4.5|genre=BiographyPolitics and Society|summary=When I was in my early teens, Sometimes it's simpler to explain a book by describing what it sometimes seemed as if Terry''isn't'' and that applies to ''The Conservative Effect: 2010-Thomas was one of the stars of almost every other five2024 -star British comedy film around14 Wasted Years?''. He was certainly one of If you're looking for an easy read which will deliver the most recognizable characters of all with his gap-toothed grininside story about what ''really'' happened on certain occasions, cigarette holder and inimitable then this isn't the book for you. If that'Hel-lo!s what you're looking for, I don'Hard cheese!t think Anthony Seldon's book, {{amazonurl|isbn=B0BH7SKG2S|title=Johnson at 10}}, can be bettered for those tumultuous years. It's a compelling read and best of all, the angry, should be compulsory for anyone who thinks Johnson should return to politics. ''The Conservative Effect'You're is an absolute shower!entirely different beast. It'|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845134419</amazonuk>s the seventh book in a series which looks at the impact a government has made and co-editor Sir Anthony Seldon regards this as the most important. This book follows the well-established format: a series of 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.
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Richard Jay ParkerJenny Valentine|title=Stop MeUs in the Before and After|rating=3.5|genre=CrimeTeens|summary=Spam E-Mails can be incredibly annoyingElk and Mab are best friends, but most of us will have had to deal with themor more than that even, their friendship is a once in a lifetime connection. Fortunately, we can hit the delete button and forget about them as quickly They meet as children one day on a trip out but unfortunately they came. I certainly prefer not to torture my friends by sending such rubbish on, no matter how bad my luck is supposed to become if I don'tget each other's contact details at the time. But I wonder how many of us would react if a spam E-Mail actually was a matter of life 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 deaththeir friendship, rather than just claiming to be?together.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0749007079</amazonuk>1471196585
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jeanette Winterson1787333175|title=The Battle of the SunYou Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here|author=Benji Waterhouse
|rating=5
|genre=Confident ReadersPopular Science|summary=London 1601. Elizabeth 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 getting on in years. Her capital city is Going to Hurt}}, a busyglorious mixture of insight into the workings of the NHS, bustling place. Boats fill the river humour and people fill the streetsautobiography. Jack is happy because it 's his birthday and his present is his heart's desire: an excitable black puppy named Max, whoYou Don's a t Have to be Mad...''licking promised the same elements but moved from physical problems to mental illness and the work of a running and psychiatrist. I did wonder whether it was acceptable to be looking for humour in this setting but the laughter is directed at a leaping and situation rather than a jumping person and a tummy in the air and a tail wagging it is always delivered with empathy and a barking, racing, braking, spinning energy dog of delight''understanding. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>140880042X</amazonuk>
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|rating=5
|genre=Business and FinanceShort Stories|summary=''Study after study has shown Mariana Enriquez writes horror that managers work at an unrelenting pace'' How trueis disturbingly real, though it always makes me wonder why, as a result, there's such a market for bulky management and leadership and general business books like achieving this one. How does anyone who needs or wants to read one ever find the time uncanny familiarity by basing her paranormal plots on gritty realities: her settings include an abandoned field full of disused refrigerators due to do so? This title actually has an answer to this, by providing two books in oneurban planning mishap, an overcrowded homeless shelter and it is such a simple yet effective solution that I have to start therecrime-ridden neighbourhood where safety meetings are routine - all within Argentina. You can read this book in one The circumstances of two ways. Option one is to read every word, chapter by chapter, cover to cover. If you have her characters are so plausible that the time I would recommend this approach because the book is very readable, not too repetitive, and quite thought-provokingsupernatural or otherworldly horror which seeps into these spaces adopts a similarly tangible texture.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0273709305</amazonuk>1803511230
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Kathryn Fox1529934753|title=Blood BornThe Protest|author=Rob Rinder|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=To give support to For a vulnerable gang-rape victimlittle while, it looked as though Sir Max Bruce, forensic pathologist Anya Crichton offers to drive Giverny Hart to the courthouse on the day she is due country's most famous living artist, was not going to testify against show up for the notorious Harbourn brothers. But when Anya arrives opening of his retrospective at the house she finds Giverny close to death and faces a battle against time to save herRoyal Academy. In Still, he arrived in the panicnick of time, complete with his two wives and six children, Anya fails to take note one of whom filmed what happened. Being an important clue which might help tell whether influencer, you tend to do things like that, but it really was suicide or fortunate that there was a cleverly staged murderrecord of the protest. Worse still Lexi Williams, in trying to save an intern at the girl's lifeRA, Anya has interfered with grabbed a spray can of blue paint from under a crime scene chair and proceeded to spray Bruce in the face, whilst shouting ''Stop the case falls apartWar''. She blames herself for the Harbourn brothers being allowed It seemed to walk free be part of an ongoing series of 'blue-face' attacks, but this was different. The can had been laced with cyanide, and only hours later there is news Sir Max Bruce was dead.}}{{Frontpage|author=Ariel Saramandi|title=Portrait of another attackan Island on Fire|rating=4. A pair 5|genre=Politics and Society|summary=In this powerful collection of sisters have been stabbed and raped resulting in essays, Saramandi seeks to intradermally dissect the death sociopolitical fabric of oneMauritius, while tunneling deep into the other clings wounds left by colonialism and slavery to expose how these legacies still shape modern life. Saramandi describes the country at one stage as ''rotting'', a blunt yet apt metaphor for the systemic decay brought about by the malignant forces of racism, patriarchy, environmental degradation and governmental dysfunction. Each essay in this collection serves as a kind of diagnostic, charting the various diseases afflicting the island state.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0340933097</amazonuk>1804271616
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Leah FlemingPekka Harju-Autti|title=Remembrance DayLoveVortex and the Drakor's Curse
|rating=4
|genre=Women's FictionFantasy|summary=In It's the year 2000 an old lady in eighteenth century, a wheelchair watches the unveiling time of discovery and Britain is expanding its foreign trade. Captain Julius Hawthorne, an experienced Scottish sea captain, is sent to the new war memorial Andaman Islands in the village squarehis endeavour. There's pride in what has been achievedAlong with his son, Peter, in the family who are gathered around her and there are memories tootheir cat, Michi, they set off on a perilous voyage to these faraway lands. Some The islands are beautiful and stunning in their scenery and the islanders' leader, Aarav, is keen to establish good but many are notrelations.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847561039</amazonuk>B0DS1VGHH3
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Neal LaytonHelene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)|title=Surf's Up (Mammoth Academy)Lili is Crying|rating=34.5|genre=Confident ReadersLiterary Fiction|summary=Having successfully seen off the rather unpleasant humans First published in 1953 in earlier volumesFrench, our favourite junior mammoths Oscar this novel is a timeless text which wrenches the hearts of its readers just as Bessette wrenches words and Arabella have nothing much else to do apart sentences from return to Mammoth Academy for lots more double periods of Difficult Sums. They're supposed to be making presentations about what they did during their proper position on the holidays too, but Oscar hasn't done any preparation page andpositions them elsewhere, franklydisjointed, he can't really remember what he actually did do with all that free time other than no Difficult Sumstruncated. Like the lives of her characters, they are often left tragically incomplete. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>034098967X</amazonuk>1804271675
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ursula Jones and Sarah GibbTom Percival|title=The Princess Who Had No KingdomWrong Shoes|rating=45
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=The princess who has no kingdom wanders around in a cart pulled by her horse Pretty. SheWill's very politelife is difficult, friendly, and kind-hearted, but she feels like something is lacking because she doesn't have in a kingdom multitude of her ownways. The other royals she meets treat her nicely enough, but there He is bullied because he has 's always a feeling that shethe wrong shoes's not quite as good as them , he has the wrong shoes because she isnhis dad can't the princess of anywhere.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846160421</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Mij Kelly work and Louise Nisbet|title=The Happiest Man in the World or the Mouse Who Made Christmas|rating=4|genre=For Sharing|summary=Mouse doesn't have enough money for even the most basic of things like anyone food, and keeps herself to herself. Her things are her things and she is too selfish to share them with anyone else. One day, an old man moves in to Mousehis dad can's house. He used to be the happiest man in the world, but now t work because he's sad. He's fed up of having given, given, given all lost his life and never got anything back. He just sits quietly and mopes. This makes Mouse miserablejob at the college, so one day she decides to cheer him up by giving him was working a cash-in-hand job on a clementinebuilding site and had an accident...|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340931558</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Nick Bland|title=The Very Cranky Bear|rating=4|genre=For Sharing|summary=Moose, Lion, Zebra and Sheep head Throw into a cave to get out of that mix the rainfact that his mum and dad are separated, but little do they know that Bear is fast asleep and Will's life seems bleak in thereevery direction. When they wake him up And yet, he roars at them, chasing them outside, so they decide to cheer him up somehow. Zebra paints stripes on him, Moose fashions antlers for him and Lion sticks still has a mane tiny amount of straw on him. Unsurprisingly, this makes Bear even crankier, so it's down to Sheep to save the day...|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340989424</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Kes Gray and Lee Wildish|title=Mum and Dad Glue|rating=4|genre=For Sharing|summary=A young boy's parents are splitting uphope. He's going through the usual emotions that children of divorce go through: worry, feeling unsure, blaming himself, anger, denialis good at art, and then trying to get them clings to stay together. His method for this isn't the usual response though: moments of joy when he looks for glue to stick his mum and dad together. Thankfullyis drawing, he finds some wise and kindly advice in that feel like a light at the processend of a long, dark tunnel.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0340957107</amazonuk>1398527122
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Clara VulliamySylvie Cathrall|title=The Bear With Sticky Paws Won't Go To Bed|rating=4|genre=For Sharing|summary=It's Pearl's bedtime, but she says she's really busy and isn't going to sleep. She just wants A Letter to play and play and play. When the bear with sticky paws rings the doorbell, he whisks her away on an amazing adventure - although as you might expect, the bear has a little more energy than Pearl and eventually she does get a little sleepy.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408300648</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Stephen Mackey|title=Miki|rating=4|genre=For Sharing|summary=It's cold, dark and icy, and Miki and Penguin are trudging through the snow. But it's Midwinter Eve, when wishes come true. They wish for a tree, lights, someone strong to power the lights, and finally a star that will shine brightly forever. Miki is taken deep below the ice to find the star, whilst up top Penguin and new friend Polar Bear start to worry about her.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>034095065X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Kristin Cashore|title=FireLuminous Deep
|rating=5
|genre=Science Fiction
|summary=Of all the big books announced for this year, this one must have raised more eyebrows There are few greater joys than many. Why try and write a new Hitchhiker's Guide book which lives up to the Galaxy book, when way before the end, its creator Douglas Adams was proving quite hopeless at such a task? compelling premise. And why approach an Irishman, Eoin Colfer, when the originals - tempered with their humour which could only be described as Monty Python doing a sci-fi Terry Pratchett, and with their cups this is one of tea and dressing gowns, could only be described as very English? Well the answer is most evident - Colfer is a world-beater when it comes to knocking up a storythem.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0718155149</amazonuk>0356522776
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Harlan Coben1786482126|title=Tell No OneThe Janus Stone (Dr Ruth Galloway)|author=Elly Griffiths|rating=4.5|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=I've been meaning to get around to reading some or all of Harlan Coben's work, because if Builders were demolishing an old house in Norwich - the reviews are site was going to be believed and you are a fan of the hold seventy-five 'Bloody Knife /Blunt Instrumentluxury' thriller, apartments - when they discovered the man is quite simply not capable bones of turning out a duff novelchild beneath a doorway. There was no skull. But you know how it Was this a ritual killing or murder? Inevitably, Dr Ruth Galloway finds herself working with DCI Harry Nelson. It's difficult as Ruth knows, but Nelson doesn't, that she is, what pregnant with one thing and another and his child as a bulging pile result of books to the one night they spent together some three months ago. Her condition will be read and reviewedobvious before long, I just somehow hadn't managed not least because Ruth is prone to give him my full attention. Until nowsudden bouts of sickness.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1409117022</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=John Peel Guadalupe Nettel and Sheila RavenscroftRosalind Harvey (Translator)|title=Margrave of the MarshesThe Accidentals
|rating=4.5
|genre=EntertainmentShort Stories|summary=John Peel This collection was without doubt one of the most important disc jockeys of truly enchanting in all time. Born in Merseyside in 1939, he began his career in mid-60s America before returning home to join Radio London and then become one senses of the original Radio 1 teamword: spellbinding with its fantastical, where he stayed until his death 37 years later. I admired the man for his passion for playing the music nobody else would give the time of day (even if I didn't always enjoy it myself) magical elements and his readiness to say exactly what he thought, even if it was not what his employers at the BBC wanted to hear, and I always enjoyed reading his columns charming in the music weeklies its gentle portrayal of nature and later Radio Timeshuman relationships. Nevertheless I found much of his show unlistenable towards the end, recall some of his rather curmudgeonly remarks on air (guest slots on Radio 1's Round Table review programme come to mind), Guadalupe Nettel writes intelligently and thought his build-'em-upprecisely, knock-'em-down stance rather irritating after her stories structured by a while. So I approached this book with an open mind as a fan, but not an uncritical onewisdom that appears to want to teach us something about the world.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0552551198</amazonuk>1804271470
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez 0008551375|title=Perfumes: The A - Z Guide|rating=5|genre=Lifestyle|summary=Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. The only thing that could be conceivably better than reading ''Perfumes'' would be to read it while sampling the scents it reviews, but even without the olfactory component, ''Perfumes'' is a delight: Turin (a lyrical scientist) and Sanchez (an analytically enthusiastic collector) not only treat perfume creation as high art, but turn perfume criticism into an art form When Shadows Fall (or at least a sophisticated genre of writingD S Max Craigie) too. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846681278</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=David Malouf |title=Ransom|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Taking his theme from a small part of Homer's Iliad, Malouf tells the story of the king of Troy, Priam's grief-stricken voyage into the Greek camp to ransom Troy's wealth for the body of his fallen son, Hector, killed by the equally grief-stricken Achilles whose great friend Hector had killed in battle before Achilles took his cruel revenge. Malouf tells the story in sparse, yet lyrical and poetic fashion suggesting the personal stories behind the epic themes that Homer related. It is an exquisitely written piece managing to be both deeply moving as well as a great piece of story telling.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701184159</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Steven M Gillon|title=The Kennedy Assassination: 24 Hours AfterNeil Lancaster
|rating=4.5
|genre=HistoryCrime|summary=The assassination of President Kennedy came Leanne Wilson's body was found at a pivotal moment in my life and for more than forty years I've read most of what has been written about the event. It's been bottom of variable qualitya Scottish mountain, but seemingly the books fed the curiosity result of people entranced by the charismatic young President who died so publiclya tragic accident. IShe'd come to the point looked so happy, too, when she posted her intentions on Facebook. Her friends were relieved as she was just out of wondering if there was anything new to be saidan unpleasant relationship, but Stephen Gillom has it looked at like she was living her best life now. Then it emerged that five other women had died in similar circumstances in the last year. All were experienced climbers, properly equipped for what happened from an unusual they were doing and largely overlooked angle – sensible people. None of the first twenty four hours of Lyndon Johnson'what a stupid thing to do' explanations applied. They were all alone when they died: DS Max Craigie is certain there's Presidencya killer on the loose.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>046501870X</amazonuk>
}}