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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=Michael Morpurgo and Emma Chichester ClarkPaul B Preciado|title=The Best of TimesDysphoria Mundi
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersPolitics and Society|summary=Most children enjoy ''It is never too late to embrace the revolutionary optimism of childhood'' Through this hybrid text, consisting of arias, letters, essays and autofiction, Preciado expresses his own hybrid self, and brings forth a good traditional tale and this lovely book by Michael Morpurgo seems new sensorium as an offering to have all the right ingredients – new generation, a handsome prince and new feeling mechanism in which detachment is not considered a beautiful princess who fall in lovesign of political apathy. Rather, it is the proportional, get married valid response to ''the epistemological and live happily ever after. Or do they? Sadlypolitical crack we are living through, not long after Prince Frederico marries and the lovely Princess Serafina, she becomes very sadtension between emancipatory forces and conservative resistances that characterize our present'' which Preciado calls ''dysphoria mundi''. Nobody knows what The whole text is framed against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic as that which has caused such great sadnesscatalysed this revolution, but poor Prince Frederico is desperate when dysphoria began to find emerge on a cure for his wifeglobal scale, or as ''pangea covidica''s misery. He tries everything in his power and eventually decides to offer his kingdom to anyone who can make her happy again before she dies of Rather than taking this extreme dysphoria as a broken heart. Lots sign of people come weakness, or mistaking detachment or withdrawal for political paralysis, Preciado urges his readers to the palace to try and help but in the end the solution is a simple one provided by some very kind travellers''use dysphoria as your revolutionary platform''.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1405232552</amazonuk>1804271454
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Shirley JacksonSamantha Harvey|title=We Have Always Lived In The CastleOrbital
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=In 2024, Samantha Harvey won the Booker Prize for ''Orbital'', a compact yet profound work that unfolds over a single day in the lives of a group of astronauts aboard the International Space Station. Through a narrative lens that mirrors the astronauts' orbital perspective, Harvey invites readers to see our planet in a wholly new light.
|isbn=1529922933
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=295967572X
|title=Pale Pieces
|author=G M Stevens
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Mary Katherine Blackwood, also known as Merricat, Our unnamed narrator is eighteen, and lives about to begin a train journey with her older sister Constance in the family home where his companion Django. Where they'Blackwoods had always lived'. Merricat quickly draws re going and what the reader into her world by a series purpose of matter of fact but bizarre statements – her likes include her sister and death cap mushroomsthis journey is, and everyone else in her family is deaduncertain. The wealthy Blackwood family has always kept Django found the house tickets 'steady against 'on the worldfloor somewhere'', shutting out other people, and they live near a villagehas persuaded our narrator to accompany him. Merricat believes that 'The people of Why not? Not much else is clear either - but we are probably in the past as the pair travel to the village have always hated us', station by coach and tells us that she hates them toothe train is a steam locomotive.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141191457</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Simon Weston0008551324|title=Nelson to the RescueThe Devil You Know (D S Max Craigie)|author=Neil Lancaster|rating=4.5|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=Nelson used It's unusual for anyone from the Hardie family to pull Mike approach the Milk's milk float, but he police. Neither side likes or has now retiredany respect for the other. He lives But Davie Hardie is struggling in prison and he's prepared to tell the stable at police where the back body of the dairy along with a couple of tricky rats, Rhodri missing person is buried and Rhys, a pigeon who has no sense of directionwas responsible for her death. This person, a frog who thinks he's a secret agent spy promises, is someone big and an old racehorse who spends most of his time sleepingit will be worth the police doing what he wants. Rhodri and Rhys find a mysterious message on Mike's fridge and the animals believe that Mike has been invited And what he wants is to Buckingham Palace be transferred to receive an MBE. Somehow our hero, Nelson, finds himself travelling down open prison to London, pulling a ceremonial coach for Prince Charles as well as giving a TV interview about serve the remainder of his experience.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848510454</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Elizabeth Baines|title=Too Many Magpies|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Becoming a mother brings a whole new world of fear into your life. Suddenly you see the danger in every situation, sentence and fear and trepidation can be become your constant companionsto get an early parole date. In this novellaNot much to ask, we meet a young mother who is married to a logical scientist. it? They attempt to control their childrenThe new Deputy Police Constable doesn't think so and she's futures on a scientific basis, growing their own fruit even prepared to do the other thing that Hardie demanded - make certain that DS Max Craigie and vegetables, giving their children nothing sugary, eating no eggs for a whole year until any adverse affects from them were disproved. But after meeting with an enigmatic stranger our young mother begins to struggle as he introduces ideas of freedom into her world. She begins an affair anyone who works with him, begins to let things slip at home and with the children, yet finds she is still continuously haunted by the sense of an ever-present dangerkept well away from what's happening.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844717216</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Katherine MayJon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |title=Burning OutVaim
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Violet has it all – a well-paid job, and a luxurious apartment all to herself''All was strange''. Everything is catered for; her meals, her clothes, and her health are all how she would like them to be. But the life she is leading is beginning to take its toll. On This haunting phrase encapsulates the verge pervading sense of snappingotherworldliness which permeates this story set in Vaim, a drained fictional fishing village in Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for Jatgeir and somewhat out-of-sorts VioletEline, withdraws back to her home town. There, she meets someone familiar, a ghost reminding her of how she used to be ten years earlier – a young carefree girl, full two of life. Only this isn't a ghost, but a girl living the life Violet once lived – exactly the same. Haunted by the past Violet realizes history is repeating itself and is convinced events will happen again. Events that will protagonists caught in turn haunt the girlits melancholic current.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1906727392</amazonuk>1804271829
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Amanda Downum1035043092|title=The Drowning CityKilling Stones (Jimmy Perez)|author=Ann Cleeves|rating=3.5|genre=FantasyCrime|summary=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 nutshell, younew life on Orkney. It're reading this because you're wondering whether The Drowning City is goods been seven years since we heard from him, bad or mediocre. Youbut he've probably glanced at the rating s now living with Willow Reeves and guessed their young son, James, as well as Cassie, the latterdaughter of his former partner. IWillow's also his boss, and she ''should'm afraid it's not quite that simple. This is be on maternity leave, but when the body of a debut that provokes decidedly mixed feelings. I started off convinced that I was going to love this book. The cover art popular islander, Archie Stout, is effortlessly coolfound, in the premise intriguingaftermath of a storm, she can't resist getting involved. He'd been battered about the characters laden head with potential for greatness and the backdrop is certainly evocativea Neolithic stone - one of a pair - which had been stolen from a museum.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1841498149</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tove JanssonThea Lenarduzzi|title=The True DeceiverTower
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Most people ''How unctuous are the fats of my age will have come across Janssonanother's work unwittinglylife, how dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream''. In this compelling novel, via Thea Lenarduzzi assumes the televised renditions identity of T, the Moomin talesprotagonist of this tale. The readers amongst us would then have been entranced Just as T's story is being told, the story of a second protagonist is unveiled: Annie, the daughter of a few years ago to discover that at last Thomas Teal had set about wealthy family in the translation into English19th century, first of The Summer Book and then who died of tuberculosis after being locked in a collection of short stories which were published as tower, captures T'A Winter Books imagination. Annie's fate is, above all, an enticing story to T. It is a story which she consumes avariciously, both in a quest for truth and knowledge, and in service of myth, fable and fantasy. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0954899571</amazonuk>1804271799
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Daniel Kehlmann Claire-Louise Bennett|title=Me and KaminskiBig Kiss, Bye-Bye
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=After reviewing several long booksEverything in this book, it's been refreshing to read such a fluent yet pared down story as 'Kaminski however sweet or seemingly innocent, is steeped in anguish and Me'distortion. In itEven a kiss, Sebastian Zollnerusually a symbol of intimacy and closeness, becomes evidence of love lost. When the obnoxious main characternarrator cries out internally, ''come over here and kiss me, shoves himself forward in '' it is less an invitation than a desperate attempt to research a best seller which will re-ignite his career as an art criticconfirm her emotional numbness. KaminskiThe imagined recipient of this plea is Xavier, the proposed subjecther ex-partner, was a fashionable painter long ago, but now, ancient and chronically ill, has virtually slid into oblivion. So the second-rate writer is on a loser unless he can dig up some juicy details ghost she conjures to hook the art world and general publictest her detachment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847249892</amazonuk>1804271934
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Louis Barfe0008405026|title=Turned Out Nice Again: The Story of British Light EntertainmentA Stranger in the Family (Maeve Kerrigan 11)|author=Jane Casey|rating=45|genre=EntertainmentCrime|summary=Light entertainment is often looked down upon, as if itIt'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 bit naffhalt. Now, her mother, Helena, tepid and ignorableher father are dead in their bed. What Initially, it looks like a straightforward murder/suicide but there's often forgotten is something about the positioning of the bodies that makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and her boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. What looked as though it's hugely popular, enjoyable was going to be an open-and much of it -shut case is now a complex double murder. Kerrigan is of convinced that the highest quality. Louis Barfeexplanation lies in Rosalie's disappearance: others (such as Derwent's Turned Out Nice Again tells the complete story of British light entertainmentboss, Una Burt) are less convinced.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1843543818</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jim Helmore Annie Ernaux and Karen WallAlison L. Strayer (translator)|title=Oh No, Monster Tomato!The Other Girl
|rating=4
|genre=For SharingAutobiography|summary=Marvin is entering the Great Grislygust Grow-Off, but just like him, his tomatoes aren't growing very big. He takes 'We were born from the only sensible course of action: he sings his tomatoes a songsame body. The results are spectacularI've never really wanted to think about this. Victory is surely within his grasp.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>140524741X</amazonuk>}}''
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Lisa UngerMaxim Gorky and Bryan Karetnyk (translator)|title=Die For YouReminiscences 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
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1529077745
|title=The Dark Wives (D I Vera Stanhope)
|author=Ann Cleeves
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=BestA 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 -selling novelist Isabel Connelly one of the care workers who was due to work a shift the night before but who had never turned up. D I Vera Stanhope is married called in to successful video game designer Marcus Raine. Or so she thinks. But when investigate the murder - but her husband fails to return from work, she realises something only clue is wrong. Going to his office to try to find out what happens to himthe disappearance of one of the residents, she gets attacked and ends up in hospital, while his cofourteen-year-workers are killedold Chloe Spencer. Things get worse for her, however, when investigating detective Grady Crowe reveals Some people believe that Marcus Raine has been dead Chloe was responsible for several years, and the man death but Vera thinks this is unlikely as the girl's diary makes it clear that she married was using a false identityadored Josh. Infuriated by the betrayal, and the realisation She knows that she's been living a lie for the past five years, Izzy takes matters into her own hands and sets out has to find her husband and work out why he lied Chloe to discover what happened to her for so long. Ignoring police warnings, she delves deeper and deeper into a nasty underworld, and finds a tale which has its roots in Prague and rivals anything she could have plotted in one of her novelsJosh.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099522179</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn= B0FK5LHKD9
|title=The Colour of Memory
|author=Christopher Bowden
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=It's been three years since we last reviewed a book by favourite regular Christopher Bowden, so we were very glad to see a new novel arrive here at Bookbag Towers. Like all Bowden's stories, there's a mystery at the heart of ''The Colour of Money''. We like this running theme in an author's work - take a mystery but give it different flavour and atmosphere each time.
}}
{{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=Lisa McMannhenleyA|title=WakeUltimate Obsession|author=Dai Henley
|rating=4
|genre=TeensCrime|summary=Janie is seventeen Ex-DCI Andy Flood has been a Private Investigator for some time now, and studying hard for collegehe should be doing quite well financially. She Unfortunately, his daughter's also working lots of hours at defence against a local nursing home murder charge drained his savings. His wife, Laura, has been trying to earn money for college as itpersuade him to retire - ''maybe go travelling or go on cruises. That's what 'ordinary people do','' He's unlikely her alcoholic mother is going to provide much in not been entirely up front about the way state of resourcestheir savings. College is JanieWhen Jack Durban tries to persuade him to take his case, it's only chance at a life better than the one she's lived so far and so you can't blame her for being so single-minded in thought of the pursuit money he could make that convinces him that this is a miscarriage of her goaljustice that he really should put right. Only one thing stands in her way...|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847385036</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1836284683
|title=The Big Happy
|author=David Chadwick
|rating=4.5
|genre=Dystopian Fiction
|summary=Well! This is a murder mystery unlike any other!
I do love it when I open a book, it's nothing like I expected it to be, and it takes me on a wild ride. And that is just what happened with ''The Big Happy''. I don't want to ruin a similar experience for any of you reading but I'll have to at least set the scene. Once that's done, I think you should simply experience this wonderfully original story for yourself.}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jaclyn Moriarty Sally Rooney|title=The Spell Book of Listen TaylorIntermezzo|rating=34.5|genre=TeensGeneral Fiction |summary=Listen Taylor's father Sally Rooney has just moved in with his girlfriend 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 are adopted feel. Among the many relationships woven into the Zing familythis story, with all of its delightful eccentricities and unusual behaviour – the Zings meet every Friday night central one for dinner and then disappear into the garden shed readers to work on unravel is the 'Zing Family Secret'. Marbie Zing is terrified of doing something wrong and losing Nathaniel fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and ListenPeter Koubek. Her sister Fancy is becoming increasingly disillusioned Ivan, a socially awkward chess prodigy, contrasts sharply with her home lifehis older brother Peter, and her daughtera successful lawyer living in Dublin. Following their father's year two teacher is coming to terms passing after a long battle with a break up. The stories of these people come together to create a tale of lifecancer, love, and ultimately, what being part of a family meansthe brothers' already strained relationship faces new trials.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0330446363</amazonuk>0571365469
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=F G Cottam1036916375|title=The Magdalena CurseJust a Liverpool Lad|author=Peter McArdle|rating=2.54|genre=HorrorAutobiography|summary=Mark Hunter ''Just a Liverpool Lad '' is the sort a collection of father who would do anything for his son. After losing his wife memories and daughter reflections from the years Peter McArdle spent growing up in a tragic accident, his surviving son Adam has become his whole worldand around Liverpool. And Adam is an exceptional child – beautiful Some are factual, incredibly smart and mature beyond his ten years – only recently he's been channelling such as the voices family history of a sea-going family, with the docks dominating lives. Other stories blend seamlessly into the deadwhat-might-have-been. Plagued by horrific dreams It's a book to settle into and allow your mind to roam across your childhood memories, able to speak Russian in the hours after he wakes, drawing occult symbols think of simpler times when he doodleslife seemed less constrained, Hunter believes Adam to be possesseddespite the blitz that was a constant factor in McArdle's early years. Doctor Elizabeth Bancroft is sceptical, until she meets Adam, I'd never heard of parachute mines before - but they were almost soundless and witnesses could appear after the horrors the poor boy endures for herselfall-clear was sounded.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340980982</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jon Berkeley1836285493|title=The Lightning Key (Circus Trilogy)Double Life of a Wheelchair User|author=Rob Keeley|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=I shall start with Will is a word keen player of advice. When you're being hounded by a circus mastervideo games, and a magicianconscientious student, for the soul of a tiger that's contained in slightly annoying brother and a tiger's egg that's contained in the brain supportive friend. But most of your teddy bearall, and your best friend - a fallen angel - he is trying her best to make sure the other angels do not turn on you in a big way - then you're probably living the third book in a fantasy trilogyan aspiring writer. Still - never mindEnglish is his favourite lesson at his school, the angelMarlowe Park, and one at which he excels. This hasn's efforts will involve you entering t gone unnoticed by his headteacher, Mrs Howarth, and she has suggested to Will and his mum that he spends a dream world couple of flight and cloud citiesafternoons a week at a different school, the chase after your enemies will take you across the world to desert oases and backStation Road, and friends new and old will where his ability might be on board to helpbetter extended.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847384447</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sue Townsend1009473085|title=Adrian Mole: The Prostrate YearsConservative Effect 2010 - 2024|author=Anthony Seldon and Tom Egerton (Editors)
|rating=5
|genre=General FictionPolitics and Society|summary=Adrian Mole is now 39¼ and living, quite literally, in a pigsty, sharing an all too thin party wall with his parents and working in a bookshop. ItSometimes it's not quite how life was supposed simpler 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 explain a book by describing what it ''isn't'' and that life in the provinces is not as bad as she would like applies to believe, and desperately attempting to talk his mother out of her quest to appear on the vile ''Jeremy KyleThe Conservative Effect: 2010-2024 - 14 Wasted Years?''. If you' show, worrying over his increasingly frequent visits to re looking for an easy read which will deliver the toilet is inside story about what ''really the last thing he needs. And yet'' happened on certain occasions, then this isn't the worst is still to comebook for you. Think a crumbling economy If that's what you're looking for, redundancyI don't think Anthony Seldon's book, affairs, death{{amazonurl|isbn=B0BH7SKG2S|title=Johnson at 10}}, can be bettered for those tumultuous years. It's a family member challenging him compelling read and should be compulsory for anyone who thinks Johnson should return to politics. ''The Conservative Effect'' is an entirely different beast. It's the seventh book in a series which looks at the novel writing stakes 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 query over series of experts from various fields review the state of the big C – it's going to be a tough year for nation when the Molescoalition took over in 2010, and there's little the changes that ol' Adrian can do except sit back occurred and watch his life spin out of control around himthe situation in 2024.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0718153707</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Lauren KateJenny Valentine|title=FallenUs in the Before and After|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
|summary=A 17 year old girl at a new school meets a mysterious Elk and impossibly good-looking boyMab are best friends, who she's immediately drawn to. He seems determined to either ignore her or be outright rude to hermore than that even, until he saves her life, and the two of them end up drawn togethertheir friendship is a once in a lifetime connection. This isn They meet as children one day on a trip out but unfortunately they don't Stephenie Meyerget each other's ''Twilight''contact details at the time. But then chance brings them back together, but it certainly and they are inseparable. Something has striking similaritieshappened though, something terrible and tragic, and now they must work through their grief, and their friendship, together.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0385738935</amazonuk>1471196585
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Gareth Hinds1787333175|title=King LearYou Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here|author=Benji Waterhouse|rating=35|genre=Graphic NovelsPopular Science|summary=Hound me out of town in a most appropriate manner, but I do not like King Lear. For mewas 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}}, even as a trained actorglorious mixture of insight into the workings of the NHS, the language is too dense humour and rich, autobiography. ''You Don't Have to be Mad...'' promised the set-up too archly unfeasible same elements but moved from physical problems to create mental illness and the great tragedy work of a psychiatrist. I did wonder whether it's thought was acceptable to be. To my mind looking for humour in this setting but the acclaim laughter is directed at a situation rather than a person and esteem in which it's held is only mirrored by its own over-long, over-blown blusteringalways delivered with empathy and understanding.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0763643440</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Paul TherouxMariana Enriquez|title=A Dead Hand: A Crime in CalcuttaSunny Place for Shady People|rating=3.5|genre=General FictionShort Stories|summary=Set in IndiaMariana Enriquez writes horror that is disturbingly real, familiar territory for Theroux, ''A Dead Hand'' tells the story achieving this uncanny familiarity by basing her paranormal plots on gritty realities: her settings include an abandoned field full of a travel writer suffering from writer's block (also known as 'dead hand') until a chance letter from disused refrigerators due to an American ex-paturban planning mishap, the mysterious Mrs Unger, relating an overcrowded homeless shelter and a story of a mystery of a dead body in a hotel leads him to release his creativity in very unexpected wayscrime-ridden neighbourhood where safety meetings are routine - all within Argentina. The story is more about obsession and infatuation than it is about circumstances of her characters are so plausible that the mystery itself as the narrator falls under Mrs Unger's Tantric charmssupernatural or otherworldly horror which seeps into these spaces adopts a similarly tangible texture. But does she have more to hide than she's letting on?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0241144639</amazonuk>1803511230
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Toby Lester1529934753|title=The Fourth Part of the World: The Epic Story of History's Greatest MapProtest|author=Rob Rinder
|rating=4.5
|genre=HistoryCrime|summary=In 2003 For a map little while, it looked as though Sir Max Bruce, the country's most famous living artist, was bought not going to show up for $10 million, the highest price ever paid publicly for a historical documentopening of his retrospective at the Royal Academy. Still, by he arrived in the Library nick of Congresstime, complete with his two wives and six children, where it is now on permanent public displayone of whom filmed what happened. No ordinary mapBeing an influencer, this is sometimes described as America's birth certificateyou tend to do things like that, but it was fortunate that there was a record of the protest. It is Lexi Williams, an intern at the sole survivor RA, grabbed a spray can of blue paint from under a thousand copies printed early chair and proceeded to spray Bruce in the 16th centuryface, whilst shouting ''Stop the War''. It seemed to be part of an ongoing series of 'blue-face' attacks, and but this was discovered by accident in some archives in a German castle in 1901different. The sale can had been laced with cyanide, and story behind it intrigued Toby Lester so much that he Sir Max Bruce was inspired to discover more, and this book is the resultdead.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1861978030</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Steven Lowe and Alan McArthur Ariel Saramandi|title=Is it Just Me or Has the Shit Hit the Fan?: Your Hilarious New Guide to Unremitting Global Misery|rating=3|genre=Humour|summary=''The banks fell over like fat Labradors running over a wet kitchen floor.'' Surely that is the wackiest, most inappropriate simile for the credit crunch and all it has done for the world. You won't get any such namby-pamby animal likenesses from these authors, instead with quite a potty mouth Portrait of an Island on them they will lambast the modern world, the entire banking system, all those who failed to see it coming, and those millions just seemingly waiting for us all to revert to high-interest, high-risk, high-lending capitalism, so they can get back on the expenses train, and back up the rich lists.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847443656</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Andy Stanton|title=What's For Dinner, Mr Gum?Fire
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersPolitics and Society|summary=As soon as heroine Polly turns her backIn this powerful collection of essays, and leaves Saramandi seeks to intradermally dissect the town sociopolitical fabric of Lamonic Bibber for a day at the seasideMauritius, Mr Gum falls out with his best friend, causing carnivorous carnage all over tunneling deep into the placewounds left by colonialism and slavery to expose how these legacies still shape modern life. Meat is getting thrown around like itSaramandi describes the country at one stage as ''rotting''s going out of fashion, and we have to doubt whether Polly and her companions can ever utilise a blunt yet apt metaphor for the systemic decay brought about by the power malignant forces of love racism, patriarchy, environmental degradation and put things to rightsgovernmental dysfunction. Especially Each essay in this collection serves as this book does not contain a magic unicorn called Elizabethkind of diagnostic, charting the various diseases afflicting the island state.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1405248246</amazonuk>1804271616
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Loose WomenPekka Harju-Autti|title=Here Come LoveVortex and the GirlsDrakor's Curse
|rating=4
|genre=Home and FamilyFantasy|summary=This is It's the second volume by the panelists from that nice ITV serieseighteenth century, ''Loose Women''a time of discovery and Britain is expanding its foreign trade. Just as promised on the coverCaptain Julius Hawthorne, an experienced Scottish sea captain, this book is an entertaining night with sent to the girlsAndaman Islands in his endeavour. It turns out that they're just like us. The faces are already familiar Along with his son, Peter, and even if you don't know them yettheir cat, with nine contributorsMichi, you'll soon find they set off on a like-minded woman behind one of the celebrity facesperilous voyage to these faraway lands. The women islands are universally warm-hearted beautiful and supportive: there will be many a lonely woman who reads this book stunning in their scenery and feels as if she sat down with a group of friends for the eveningislanders' leader, Aarav, is keen to establish good relations.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444700154</amazonuk>B0DS1VGHH3
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jean UreHelene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)|title=Fortune CookieLili is Crying
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersLiterary Fiction|summary=Fudge Cassidy and First published in 1953 in French, this novel is a timeless text which wrenches the Cupcake kid are best friends. If the names remind you hearts of a certain film then you'd be spot on its readers just as that's where Fudge's father got the idea Bessette wrenches words and sentences from. They're actually chalk and cheese – Fudge is loud mouthed and opinionated and Cupcake is quiet and thoughtful – but their proper position on the combination works. They've just started at secondary school page and Cupcake has rather a lot on her platepositions them elsewhere, disjointed, truncated. Her brother Joey has muscular dystrophy and his problems are becoming more obvious. Add to this that Like the lives of her father couldn't cope with the problems and he now has another family. It's just Cupcakecharacters, Joey and her mother – and not a lot of moneythey are often left tragically incomplete.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0007224621</amazonuk>1804271675
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jenifer RobertsTom Percival|title=The Madness of Queen Maria: The Remarkable Life of Maria I of Portugal|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=Born in 1734 in Lisbon, at that time the richest and most opulent city in Europe, Maria was destined to become the first female monarch in Portuguese history. Married to her uncle Infante Pedro, seventeen years her senior, she had six children (outliving all but one of them), and became Queen in 1777. A conscientious woman, she had the misfortune to be born in during the 'age of reason', when church and state were vying for supremacy. Instinctively a supporter of the old religion, with a humanitarian approach to state affairs, she was no Queen Elizabeth, no Catherine the Great, and wore her crown rather reluctantly.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>095455891X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=David Hughes|title=Thomas Wogan is DeadWrong Shoes|rating=4.5|genre=Graphic Novels|summary=Well, with a title like that, need I bother with a plot summary? A man has a day out in Morecambe, then the next thing he knows he's in the ultimate waiting room, with a strange array of animals (a bat, a toad, a sea urchin...), all waiting for... well, something. Yup, as you didn't need telling, he's dead.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>095580888X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Dave Eggers|title=The Wild Things|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=Meet Max. When I say he sometimes gets the wrong end of the stick about adults, or dislikes his mother's new boyfriend, or gets a bit feisty when he feels the need for revenge, I am certainly understating the facts. He is a bit of a rascal to say the least. But all that might change when he finds himself travelling to a strange land of roisterous animals, and ends up installed as their king.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241144221</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Jeremy Strong|title=Christmas Chaos for the Hundred-Mile-An-Hour Dog |rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=TrevorWill's troublesome doglife is difficult, Streaker, has had three puppies. They were fathered, according to local bully Charlie Smugg, by one in a multitude of his Alsatiansways. Trevor would ideally like to keep themHe is bullied because he has 'the wrong shoes', at least until Christmas, but he has the wrong shoes because his parents have other ideas dad can't work and put them up for sale. Charlie Smugg declares that hedoesn's entitled to half of the t have enough money from for even the sale most basic of the puppiesthings like food, but before they and his dad can be sold 't work because he lost his job at the three puppies go missing college, was working a cash-in -hand job on a building site and had an accident. Throw into that mix the park fact that his mum and itdad are separated, and Will's up to Trevor life seems bleak in every direction. And yet, he still has a tiny amount of hope. He is good at art, and his best friend Tina clings to try and track them down before Charlie demands his cash!the moments of joy when he is drawing, that feel like a light at the end of a long, dark tunnel.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0141327243</amazonuk>1398527122
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sarah Beth DurstSylvie Cathrall|title=IceA Letter to the Luminous Deep|rating=3.5|genre=TeensScience Fiction|summary=Cassie There are few greater joys than a book which lives on an Arctic research station in Alaska. She loves the ice and the wilderness of her remote home and she'd definitely prefer up 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. However, things aren't all rosy. Cassie's mother died when she was just a baby and she can't help feeling a huge hole in her heartcompelling premise. Her scientist father And this is remote and unloving and her grandmother left the station after an argument with him when Cassie was still very youngone of them. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847386571</amazonuk>0356522776
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Iain Smyth and Michael Terry1786482126|title=The Wide-Mouthed FrogJanus Stone (Dr Ruth Galloway)|author=Elly Griffiths
|rating=4.5
|genre=For SharingCrime|summary=Do you know Builders were demolishing an old house in Norwich - the joke about the widesite was going to hold seventy-mouthed frog? You must have heard it. Itfive 'luxury's apartments - when they discovered the bones of a child beneath a classicdoorway. There was no skull. Was this a ritual killing or murder? Inevitably, Dr Ruth Galloway finds herself working with DCI Harry Nelson. It's one that you really need to tell in person, with your fingers pulling your mouth wide opendifficult as Ruth knows, but to hopefully spark your memoryNelson doesn't, the wide-mouthed frog introduces himself to that she is pregnant with his child as a number result 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 funnyone night they spent together some three months ago. Anyway Her condition will be obvious before long, this not least because Ruth is a book prone to sudden bouts of that jokesickness.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408804964</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Dr Aaron Carroll Guadalupe Nettel and Dr Rachel Vreeman|title=Don't Swallow Your Gum|rating=5|genre=Lifestyle|summary='''BANG'''. That's the sound of copious urban myths being shot down. '''BANG'''. That's the sound of the old wives slamming the door, as their tales get revealed as baseless. '''CLICK'''. That's the noise lots of ill-informed websites make as they get closed down. All noises come due to this brilliant book.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141043369</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Annie TaylorRosalind Harvey (Translator)|title=VioletThe Accidentals
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersShort Stories|summary=Violet is a very special hippoThis collection was truly enchanting in all senses of the word: spellbinding with its fantastical, magical elements and charming in its gentle portrayal of nature and human relationships. She is extremely small but that does not make her adoptive parents Albert Guadalupe Nettel writes intelligently and Mavis love precisely, her any stories structured by a wisdom that appears to want to teach us something about the less. However, they are slightly worried that Violet has a very unusual habit of turning pink without warning and for no explicable reasonworld.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1906847371</amazonuk>1804271470
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Hilary Dixon0008551375|title=When Rooks Speak of Love|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Arthur Transcombe is a middle-aged, grey-haired, self-effacing poet. Unremarkable really - on the outside. He has, however, managed to achieve some success with his poems. Shadows Fall (Being a guest speaker at the Cheltenham Literary Festival is no mean featD S Max Craigie). He is also a babe magnet!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904529429</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=A J Healy|title=Tommy Storm and the Galactic Knights|rating=3.5|genre=Confident Readers|summary=Meet Tommy Storm. He's one of five teenagers snapped up from around the universe to be a gang of heroic detectives charged with rescuing EVERYTHING from destruction. Not just the planet, or the solar system, or even the galaxy, but EVERYTHING. Nobody seems to know what's going to cause this destruction, or when, but he and his friends and their ship seem to be the only people proactively going about saving the day. So it's a pity that they start this book strung up by a nasty loony who's about to kill them.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847247555</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Graham McCann|title=Bounder!: The Biography of Terry-ThomasNeil Lancaster
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=Spam E-Mails can be incredibly annoyingLeanne Wilson's body was found at the bottom of a Scottish mountain, but most seemingly the result of us will have had to deal with thema tragic accident. FortunatelyShe'd looked so happy, we can hit the delete button and forget about them as quickly as they cametoo, when she posted her intentions on Facebook. I certainly prefer not to torture my Her friends by sending such rubbish onwere relieved as she was just out of an unpleasant relationship, no matter how bad my luck is supposed to become if I don't. But I wonder how many of us would react if a spam E-Mail actually but it looked like she was a matter of living her best life and death, rather than just claiming to be?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0749007079</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Jeanette Winterson|title=The Battle of the Sun|rating=5|genre=Confident Readers|summary=London 1601now. Elizabeth I is getting on Then it emerged that five other women had died in similar circumstances in yearsthe last year. Her capital city is a busy All were experienced climbers, bustling place. Boats fill the river properly equipped for what they were doing and sensible people fill . None of the streets. Jack is happy because it's his birthday and his present is his heartwhat a stupid thing to do's desireexplanations applied. They were all alone when they died: an excitable black puppy named DS Max, whoCraigie is certain there's a ''licking and a running and a leaping and a jumping and a tummy in killer on the air and a tail wagging and a barking, racing, braking, spinning energy dog of delight''loose. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>140880042X</amazonuk>
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