Changes

<metadesc>Expert , full book reviews & recommendations from most walks of literary life; fiction, biography, crimenon-fiction, cookery & children's books & self-published books plus author interviews & top tens.</metadesc>

Hello from The Bookbag, a site featuring books reviews and recommendations Reviews by readers from all the many walks of literary life - [[:Category:Fiction|fiction]], [[:Category:Biography|biography]], [[:Category:Crime|crime]], [[:Category:Cookery|cookery]] and anything else that takes our fancy. At Bookbag Towers the bookbag sits at the side of the desk. It's the bag we take to the libraryWith author interviews, the charity shop features and the bookshoptop tens. Sometimes it holds the latest releases, but at other times thereYou'll be old favourites, books for the children, books for the home. They're sometimes our own books or books from the local library. They're often books sent sure to us by publishers and we promise to tell find something you exactly what we think about them. You might not want to read through a full review, so we'll give you a quick review which summarises what we felt about the book and tells you whether or not we think you should buy or borrow it. There are also lots of [[:Category:Interviews|author interviews]], and all sorts of [[:Category:Lists|top tens]] - all of which you can find on our [[features]] page. If you're stuck for something want to read, check out the [[Book Recommendations|recommendations]] pagehere.Dig in!

There are currently Find us on [[File:facebook.gif|link=https://www.facebook.com/TheBookbagCoUk|alt=Facebook]] [https://www.facebook.com/TheBookbagCoUk '''Facebook'''], [[File:twitter.gif|link=http://twitter.com/TheBookbag|alt=Follow us on Twitter]] [http://twitter.com/TheBookbag '''Twitter'''{{PAGESINCATEGORY], [[File:instagram_classic_logo.png|link=https: Reviews}}//www.instagram.com/thebookbag.co.uk/|alt=Follow us on Instagram]] [https://www.instagram.com/thebookbag.co.uk/ '''Instagram' reviews at TheBookbag''] and [[File:LinkedIn.png|link=https://www.linkedin.com/in/the-bookbag-1b12a264/|alt=LinkedIn]]

Want to find out more There are currently '''{{PAGESINCATEGORY: Reviews}}''' [[About Us:Category:Reviews|about usreviews]]? __NOTOC__at TheBookbag.

Want to learn more [[About Us|about us]]? __NOTOC__ ==Reviews of the The Best New Books==

'''Read [[:Category:Features|the latest features]].''' <!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->

|authorisbn= Ukamaka Olisakwe0008551375|title= Ogadinma Or, Everything Will Be All RightWhen Shadows Fall (D S Max Craigie)|author=Neil Lancaster|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary FictionCrime|summary= The new novel by Ukamaka Olisakwe is Leanne Wilson's body was found at the bottom of a look at Scottish mountain, seemingly the trauma and heartache result of being a woman in 1980s Nigeriatragic accident. The title is She''Ogadinma Ord looked so happy, too, Everything Will Be All Right''when she posted her intentions on Facebook. Ogadinma is the eponymous heroine Her friends were relieved as she was just out of the storyan unpleasant relationship, but it looked like she was living her best life now. We are with her in every scene and Then it is her narrative voice emerged that leads the story, although Olisakwe writes five other women had died in similar circumstances in the third personlast year. This provides a sense of detachment All were experienced climbers, properly equipped for the reader what they were doing and highlights sensible people. None of the isolation of Ogadinma'what a stupid thing to do' explanations applied. She They were all alone when they died: DS Max Craigie is exiled from her fathercertain there's home and sent to Lagos where she is married to an older man named Tobea killer on the loose. Their marriage descends into violence and indignities and Ogadinma must utilise her resourcefulness to escape.|isbn=1911648160

|author=Lun Zhang, Adrien Gombeaud, Ameziane and Edward Gauvin (translator)Paul B Preciado|title=Tiananmen 1989: Our Shattered HopesDysphoria Mundi

|genre=Graphic NovelsPolitics and Society|summary=I ''It is never really followed too late to embrace the events revolutionary optimism of childhood''  Through this hybrid text, consisting of Tiananmen Square with much attention when arias, letters, essays and autofiction, Preciado expresses his own hybrid self, and brings forth a new sensorium as an offering to the new generation, a new feeling mechanism in which detachment is not considered a sign of political apathy. Rather, it was playing out – someone in is the second half of their teens has other prioritiesproportional, you know. I certainly didnvalid response to ''t know of the weeks of protests epistemological and political crack we are living through, and hunger strikes from the students before the massacre tension between emancipatory forces and conservative resistances that characterize our present'' which Preciado calls ''dysphoria mundi''. The whole text is framed against the birth backdrop of the Tank Man imageCovid-19 pandemic as that which has catalysed this revolution, when dysphoria began to emerge on a global scale, I didnor as ''t know how the area had long been pangea covidica''. Rather than taking this extreme dysphoria as a venue sign of weakness, or mistaking detachment or withdrawal for political protestparalysis, and I didnPreciado urges his readers to ''use dysphoria as your revolutionary platform't know more than a spit about the people involved on either side. This book is practically flawless in giving a general browser's context for the whole season of protests back in 1989.|isbn=16840569931804271454

|author= Joan HeSamantha Harvey|title= Descendant of the CraneOrbital|rating=4.5|genre= FantasyGeneral Fiction|summary=In 2024, Samantha Harvey won the Booker Prize for ''Heroes cannot be forged without villainsOrbital''Princess Hesina of , a compact yet profound work that unfolds over a single day in the kingdom lives of Yan has never wanted the throne. Instead a group of craving power, she has always considered astronauts aboard the crown her inescapable duty and shrank away from the responsibilities of being QueenInternational Space Station. To her, it has always been Through a distant, faraway future. Until narrative lens that is, it isn't. When her beloved father suddenly dies, she is thrust into ruling. But contrary to the official report, Hesina knows all is not as it seems, her father didn't die. He was murdered.Determined to seek mirrors the truth and discover her fatherastronauts's killerorbital perspective, Princess Hesina will stop at nothing to find justice, even committing treason. Under the cover of darkness, her feet lead her Harvey invites readers to see our planet in a soothsayer to learn what happened that day and who killed the Kingwholly new light.|isbn=17890940461529922933

|authorisbn=Pat Grant295967572X|title=The Grot: The Story of the Swamp City GriftersPale Pieces|author=G M Stevens|rating=45|genre=Graphic NovelsLiterary Fiction|summary=Everything in Our unnamed narrator is about to begin a train journey with his companion Django. Where they're going and what the purpose of this world runs on pedal-powerjourney is, and that includes the punk bandsis uncertain. There are three pedallers at Django found the front of tickets ''on the Heath Robinson contraption taking floor somewhere'' and has persuaded our lead characters to the ferry across the swamp narrator to Falter City, where a mother and her two sons aim to set up a yoghurt factoryaccompany him. You could say that yoghurt would be the only culture around, for this Why not? Not much else is a really roughclear either -and-ready dump of a place, but everyone is interested we are probably in small things that grow. For the only money past as the pair travel to be had – the only fortunes to be found in Falter City – come from algae, gunk station by coach and other crud that – well, the use of it train is never really made clear. Once there, the two brothers set themselves each up with a guide – Lippy, the more forward-thinking, industrious of the two, with a besuited gent, Penn with a ballsy young teenaged girl with bright red hairsteam locomotive. But which of the two will come off the worse as they make their own way in this dystopian, semi-Apocalyptic hellhole?|isbn=1603094660

|authorisbn= Ashley Poston0008551324|title= Bookish and the BeastThe Devil You Know (D S Max Craigie)|author=Neil Lancaster|rating= 34.5|genre= TeensCrime|summary= Set after It's unusual for anyone from the ExcelsiCon, we are introduced Hardie family to Rosie Thorne, a Small Town, USA girl who approach the police. Neither side likes or has recently lost her mother and is entering her final year of high schoolany respect for the other. Things keep piling up for Rosie, and when she follows a stray dog into what she thinks But Davie Hardie is an abandoned castle struggling in her town, things just get worse. Rosie accidentally destroys a rare book prison and with her motherhe's hospital and funeral costs she has no money prepared to cover tell the damagepolice where the body of a missing person is buried and who was responsible for her death. She finds herself working for Vance Reigns This person, Hollywood royalty on a paparazzi escapehe promises, to repay the debt.  For most Starfield superfans this would be a dream but Rosie soon realises Vance is a jerk - someone big and it will be worth the police doing what he isn't too fond of her eitherwants. However, as And what he wants is to be transferred to an open prison to serve the two are forced remainder of his sentence and to get an early parole date. Not much to know each otherask, their guards begin is it? The new Deputy Police Constable doesn't think so and she's even prepared to lower do the other thing that Hardie demanded - make certain that DS Max Craigie and they discover that maybe this situation might not be so terrible after allanyone who works with him is kept well away from what's happening. |isbn=1683691938

|author=Justine Avery Jon Fosse and Daria YudinaDamion Searls (translator) |title=Baby Trolls Get a Bad Rap (Underrated Babies Book 1)Vaim

|genre=For SharingLiterary Fiction|summary= Horatio, Saul and Grizelda are three baby trolls who are fed up that everyone forgets about baby trolls''All was strange''... They are ignored This haunting phrase encapsulates the pervading sense of otherworldliness which permeates this story set in books and TV shows and films Vaim, a fictional fishing village in favour of their very scary grown ups. Our three heroes want equal rights Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for baby trolls. They want to be seen Jatgeir and heard and they've started a petition about it that they want you to signEline, two of the protagonists caught in its melancholic current. But how should they go about it? |isbn= B07XGN4LGY1804271829}}

|authorisbn= Samira Ahmed1035043092|title= Mad, Bad and Dangerous to KnowThe Killing Stones (Jimmy Perez)|author=Ann Cleeves|rating= 3.5|genre=TeensCrime|summary=I can't have been the only person who was sad when Inspector Jimmy Perez [[Wild Fire (Shetland, Book 8) by Ann Cleeves|left Shetland]] to start a new life on Orkney. It'In s been seven years since we heard from him, but he's now living with Willow Reeves and their young son, James, as well as Cassie, the enddaughter of his former partner. Willow's also his boss, we all become storiesand she ''should'' Spending be on maternity leave, but when the summer body of a popular islander, Archie Stout, is found, in Paris sounds like the aftermath of a dream for most peoplestorm, especially art-lovers, but Khayyam she can't relax and stop thinking resist getting involved. He'd been battered about the mess she left behind in Chicago. On a chance encounter head with a descendant Neolithic stone - one of Alexandre Dumas, Khayyam finds herself on a historical journey with him to unveil the truth about the 19th century Muslim woman who may have crossed paths with Alexandre Dumas, Eugene Delacroix and Lord Byron. As the two teenagers travel the city they not only discover themselves, but uncover the true story of the woman and why it was one that should never have pair - which had been forgottenstolen from a museum.|isbn=0349003556

|author= Hazel BarkworthThea Lenarduzzi|title= HeatstrokeThe Tower|rating= 3.5|genre= CrimeLiterary Fiction|summary=''Too hot to sleep. Too hot to think straight. Too hot to go backHow unctuous are the fats of another's life, how dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream''.

During a British heatwave 15-year-oldIn this compelling novel, Lily DixonThea Lenarduzzi assumes the identity of T, has left home and the protagonist of this tale. Just as T's story is reported missing. Rachel being told, the story of a second protagonist is unveiled: Annie, the daughter of a teacher at Lily's school and wealthy family in the mother 19th century, who died of Miatuberculosis after being locked in a tower, Lilycaptures T's best friendimagination. As LilyAnnie's family and the police struggle fate is, above all, an enticing story to find any evidence that may lead to LilyT. It is a story which she consumes avariciously, Rachel takes it upon herself to start looking both in a quest for clues. Howevertruth and knowledge, as the case goes on Rachel becomes fixated on finding Lily and finds herself crossing boundariesin service of myth, breaking trust fable and facing some impossible choicesfantasy. Will they find Lily? Does Lily want to be found? And will life for Rachel ever be the same again? |isbn=14722656021804271799

|isbnauthor=1538731738Claire-Louise Bennett|title=Simple Abundance: 365 Days to a Balanced and Joyful Life|author= Sarah Ban BreathnachBig Kiss, Bye-Bye |rating=4.5|genre=LifestyleLiterary Fiction|summary=Someone once said: itEverything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, is steeped in anguish and distortion. Even a kiss, usually a symbol of intimacy and closeness, becomes evidence of love lost. When the narrator cries out internally, ''s not self-indulgencecome over here and kiss me, it's therapy! I think they were talking about shopping, but ' it probably can be applied is less an invitation than a desperate attempt to most thingsconfirm her emotional numbness. In my caseThe imagined recipient of this plea is Xavier, it applies to writing about things because I want toher ex-partner, rather than because I can sell it or because I've got something a ghost she conjures to selltest her detachment.|isbn=1804271934

|authorisbn=Frederic Gros0008405026|title=A Philosophy of WalkingStranger in the Family (Maeve Kerrigan 11)|author=Jane Casey

|genre= Politics and SocietyCrime|summary= I confess I picked this It's sixteen years since nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her bed one up from summer night. She was never found and the library in my pre-lockdown forage of random stuffinvestigation ground to a halt. Now I have to go out an buy my own copy so that I can turn down the pages I have marked , her mother, Helena, and return to its varying wisdom when I need to. Some books draw you her father are dead in slowlytheir bed. This one had me in the first two pagesInitially, wherein Gros explains why it looks like a straightforward murder/suicide but there''walking 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 not now a sportcomplex double murder. Kerrigan is convinced that the explanation lies in Rosalie's disappearance: others (such as Derwent's boss, Una Burt) are less convinced.|isbn=1781688370

|isbnauthor=085752612XAnnie Ernaux and Alison L. Strayer (translator)|title=Rodham: What if Hillary hadn't Married Bill?|author=Curtis SittenfeldThe Other Girl

|genre=General FictionAutobiography|summary=I was tempted to read ''Rodham'' by We were born from the success of Curtis Sittenfeldsame body. I's ve never really wanted to think about this.''American Wife Ernaux''. That book wasn't marketed as being a portrait of Laura Bushs work is always very candid and her tone transparent, but this raw epistolary text must be one of the word most intimate accounts I''thinly-veiled'' seemed ve read. Ernaux writes in direct address to occur very regularly in reviewsher sister, however, this letter will never reach her. How would Why? Because Annie Ernaux''Rodham'' compare? Unfortunatelys sister died of diphtheria at 6 years old, there is a difference: relatively little few months before the vaccine was known about Laura Bushmade compulsory in France, which gave and 2 years before the book a freshness which author was even born. The large and instant void created by the first third jarring concept of writing to an imaginary recipient emphasises Ernaux''Rodham'' lackss process of reckoning with this giant absence in her life, an absence that she has always felt but often denied. We've all heard the stories|isbn=1804271845}}{{Frontpage|author=Maxim Gorky and Bryan Karetnyk (translator)|title=Reminiscences of Tolstoy, read Chekhov and Andreyev|rating=3.5|genre=Biography|summary=Biographies are often seen as the books form of life- about Hillary writing which offers less colour; it can be seen as more objective and less personal. I think that Gorky completely rejects this perspective, and particularly about Billoffers a vibrant, subjective yet informed portrait of three of his literary contemporaries. ItIn the first section of this book, Tolstoy complains to his friend Gorky that: 's still an interesting concept'you write not of real life as it is, though: but of what you yourself imagine it to be. Whom would it help to know how would Hillary have fared if she hadnI see this tower, that sea, or that Tartar - why should it interest anyone? Of what use is it?'t subsumed her own ambitions into Bill's career. Well, Maxim Gorky shows exactly what can be gained from a subjective account, if she hadn't had giving us access to carry the burden how he saw Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev in such privileged detail that one almost feels unworthy of all Bill's baggage and if she hadn't left her own run at the presidency so late? Could she have done better without the Clinton surname?it.|isbn=1804271977

|isbn=07278892301529077745|title=The Red, Red SnowDark Wives (D I Vera Stanhope)|author=Caro RamsayAnn Cleeves

|summary=In Glasgow, Eric Callaghan A man walking his dog in the early morning discovered the body of Inkermann Tattoo Parlour had been to a man in the ice show with his wifepark near Rosebank, Geraldine and daughter, Lisa when he was stabbed in Planet Burgera care home for troubled teens. He died within minutes, but his murder seemed motiveless and there were no clues. He The dead man was Josh - one of the care workers who was due to work a genuine man and a talented artist: those investigating his death shift the night before but who had hit a dead endnever turned up. There were two deaths D I Vera Stanhope is called in to investigate in the north murder - but her only clue is the disappearance of Scotland: it wasn't thought wise to involve one of the residents, fourteen-year-old Chloe Spencer. Some people believe that Chloe was responsible for the local murder team death but Vera thinks this is unlikely as someone on the Glen Riske police force was indirectly involved in the casegirl's diary makes it clear that she adored Josh. Christmas - and a lot of snow were rapidly approachingShe knows that she has to find Chloe to discover what happened to Josh.}}

|isbn=B07S6DBCFTB0FK5LHKD9|title=Little Girls Tell TalesThe Colour of Memory|author=Rachel BennettChristopher Bowden

|genre=CrimeGeneral Fiction|summary=In 2004 RosalieIt's been three years since we last reviewed a book by favourite regular Christopher Bowden, Beth and Dallin so we were walking in the boggy wetlands by Rosalie and Dallinvery glad to see a new novel arrive here at Bookbag Towers. Like all Bowden's cottage. Beth and Dallin, both twelve-years-oldstories, got ahead of ten-year-old Rosalie and it wasnthere't long before she realised that she was lost. Trying to find her way back to the main path she found s a skeleton, but when she finally got to mystery at the road she could never find her way back to the bog when sheheart of ''The Colour of Money''d seen the body. Most people didnWe like this running theme in an author't believe her, putting the story down to her vivid imaginations work - take a mystery but give it different flavour and atmosphere each time.

|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}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0008273790henleyA|title=Remain SilentUltimate Obsession|author=Susie SteinerDai Henley

|summary=When we first meet Matis and Dimitri, Matis is in Ex-DCI Andy Flood has been a bad wayPrivate Investigator for some time now, vomiting and obviously traumatisedhe should be doing quite well financially. When heUnfortunately, his daughter's able defence against a murder charge drained his savings. His wife, Laura, has been trying to speak he tells Dimitri that ''Lukas is deadpersuade him to retire - ''maybe go travelling or go on cruises. Lukas was in his late teens and he and Matis had come to Cambridgeshire from Klaipeda in Lithuania. TheyThat'd answered an advert offering good money and accommodation in return for their labour: they could have a decent life s what 'ordinary people do'and,'' send money home to He's not been entirely up front about the state of their familiessavings. SadlyWhen Jack Durban tries to persuade him to take his case, it doesn't work out like s the thought of the money he could make that convinces him that. When they arrive in the UK - on an old, uncomfortable bus, - they're dropped at this is a filthy house where several men have to share rooms and sleep on dirty mattresses on the floor. It's modern slavery, which isn't uncommon amongst agricultural workersmiscarriage of justice that he really should put right.

|authorisbn=Amin Maalouf1836284683|title=The DisorientedBig Happy|author=David Chadwick

|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary= Adam 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.}}{{Frontpage|author=Sally Rooney|title=Intermezzo|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction |summary=Sally Rooney has lived in Paris 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 yearsreaders to unravel is the fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. Ivan, a socially awkward chess prodigy, speaks French more easily than contrasts sharply with his native Arabicolder brother Peter, a successful lawyer living in Dublin. In factFollowing their father's passing after a long battle with cancer, he hasnthe 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 ''t been back to his homeland for 25 is a collection of memories and reflections from the yearsPeter McArdle spent growing up in and around Liverpool. An old friend is dying…or Some are factual, such as Adam prefers 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 him simpler times when life seemed less constrained, despite the blitz that was a formerconstant 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, perhaps not as harsh as he is an ex-friendaspiring writer. English is his favourite lesson at his school, Marlowe Park, or maybeand one at which he excels. The falling out was 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 long time agodifferent school, Station Road, where his ability might be better extended.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1009473085|title=The Conservative Effect 2010 - 2024|author=Anthony Seldon and Tom Egerton (Editors)|rating=5|genre=Politics and AdamSociety|summary=Sometimes it's partner has no idea simpler to explain a book by describing what it was ''isn't'' and that applies to ''The Conservative Effect: 2010-2024 - 14 Wasted Years?''. If you're looking for an easy read which will deliver the inside story aboutwhat ''really'' happened on certain occasions, even so she urges him to go knowing then this isn't the book for you. If that he'll regret not doing sos what you're looking for, I don't think Anthony Seldon's book, {{amazonurl|isbn=B0BH7SKG2S|title=Johnson at 10}}, can be bettered for those tumultuous years. Not knowing whether heIt's going because he needs or wants a compelling read and should be compulsory for anyone who thinks Johnson should return topolitics. ''The Conservative Effect'' is an entirely different beast. It'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.}}{{Frontpage|author=Jenny Valentine|title=Us in the Before and After|rating=5|genre=Teens|summary=Elk and Mab are best friends, or simply because he was askedmore than that even, hetheir 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 on contact details at the next planetime. 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=B07ZQSK9CY1471196585}}{{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.

|author=Anstey HarrisMariana Enriquez|title=Where We BelongA Sunny Place for Shady People

|genre=General FictionShort Stories|summary= I've always believed Mariana Enriquez writes horror that places and buildings absorb what happens within them and reflect it back; this is how we can tell that a sacred space is sacred. Cate Morris believes a similar thingdisturbingly real, she believes that ''A house absorbs happiness, it blooms into the wallpaper, the wood achieving this uncanny familiarity by basing her paranormal plots on gritty realities: her settings include an abandoned field full of the window framesdisused refrigerators due to an urban planning mishap, the bricks: that's how it becomes an overcrowded homeless shelter and a homecrime-ridden neighbourhood where safety meetings are routine - all within Argentina.'' She is having these thoughts as she packs up The circumstances of her home. She has to leave. A combination of circumstances means characters are so plausible that is not only redundant but also homeless. With nowhere else to go, she has called on her late husband's family for help. Just for the supernatural or otherworldly horror which seeps into these spaces adopts a few weekssimilarly tangible texture.|isbn=14711738361803511230

|isbn=17874776811529934753|title=A Shooting at Chateau Rock (A Bruno, Chief of Police Novel)The Protest|author=Martin WalkerRob Rinder|rating=4.5

|summary=It was For a couple of days after old Driantlittle while, it looked as though Sir Max Bruce, the country's funeral that Bruno Courrèges got an angry phone call from most famous living artist, was not going to show up for the opening of his retrospective at the Royal Academy. Still, he arrived in the nick of time, complete with his sontwo wives and six children, one of whom filmed what happened. Gaston's father had sold the family farm in order to buy Being an insurance policy which he had used influencer, you tend to secure do things like that, but it was fortunate that there was a life record of luxury the protest. Lexi Williams, an intern at an expensive retirement home near Sarlatthe RA, owned by grabbed a Russian oligarch. Before he even got to go there he died, apparently spray can of blue paint from under a heart attack, chair and proceeded to spray Bruce in the retirement home collected face, whilst shouting ''Stop the proceeds War''. It seemed to be part of the policy and Gaston and Claudette Driant were left with just the contents an ongoing series of the farmhouse'blue-face' attacks, but this was different. The family hadn't exactly fallen outcan had been laced with cyanide, but Gaston lived some way away and Claudette had fallen out of favour when she announced that she Sir Max Bruce was gay, but they weren't expecting to be almost completely disinheriteddead.

|isbnauthor=B083Z3ZZ61Ariel Saramandi|title=Broken Silence (DS Nikki Parekh 2)|author=Liz MistryPortrait of an Island on Fire|rating=4.5|genre=CrimePolitics and Society|summary=When we first meet him Stefan Marcovici has been in In this powerful collection of essays, Saramandi seeks to intradermally dissect the sociopolitical fabric of Mauritius, tunneling deep into the UK with his daughter Maria for a whilewounds left by colonialism and slavery to expose how these legacies still shape modern life. He came expecting to work Saramandi describes the country at one stage as ''rotting'', a gardener blunt yet apt metaphor for the systemic decay brought about by the malignant forces of racism, patriarchy, environmental degradation and Maria was to be a nannygovernmental dysfunction. Stefan ends up doing slave labour Each essay in this collection serves as a chicken factory: you can imagine what happens to an eighteen-year-old girlkind of diagnostic, charting the various diseases afflicting the island state.|isbn=1804271616

|author=Justine Avery and Daria YudinaPekka Harju-Autti|title=This Book Is Alive! (Living Book)LoveVortex and the Drakor's Curse

|genre=For SharingFantasy|summary= Books It''want'' you to read them! They're not intimidating or standoffish or particular about readerss the eighteenth century, a time of discovery and Britain is expanding its foreign trade. Books ''want'' Captain Julius Hawthorne, an experienced Scottish sea captain, is sent to be read. This is the key message Andaman Islands in Justine Avery's latest offering, ''This Book Is Alive!''his endeavour. By anthropomorphising the relationship between book and young readerAlong with his son, she's sending an invitation to all - pick me upPeter, read meand their cat, be my friendMichi, we can go they set off on a journey togetherperilous voyage to these faraway lands. ItThe islands are beautiful and stunning in their scenery and the islanders's a great messageleader, Aarav, don't you think?is keen to establish good relations.|isbn= 1948124416B0DS1VGHH3}}

|isbnauthor=0241984653Helene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)|title=I Made a Mistake|author=Jane CorryLili is Crying

|genre=ThrillersLiterary Fiction|summary=We know First published in 1953 in French, this novel is a timeless text which wrenches the hearts of its readers just as Bessette wrenches words and sentences from their proper position on the very beginning that there's a tragedy about to happenpage and positions them elsewhere, disjointed, truncated. On a January evening on a very crowded platform 3 of Waterloo Underground station a man falls under an oncoming train. That man is Matthew Gordon. Much later we see Poppy Page in Like the witness box lives of a crown courther characters, getting a very rough ride from the prosecuting barristerthey are often left tragically incomplete.|isbn=1804271675

|author= Maryse CondéTom Percival|title= The Wondrous and Tragic Life of Ivan and IvanaWrong Shoes|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary FictionConfident Readers|summary= We live Will's life is difficult, in a post-world: post-colonialism, post-modernism, post-truthmultitude of ways. The list goes on. There are numerous works that utilise He is bullied because he has 'the prefix post- in their categorisation, but perhaps none more so than Maryse Condé. In her new novelwrong shoes', he has the wrong shoes because his dad can't work and doesn'The Wondrous and Tragic Life t have enough money for even the most basic of Ivan things like food, and Ivana'his dad can't work because he lost his job at the college, Condé writes with fervour about the scars left by colonialism was working a cash-in-hand job on a building site and had an accident. Throw into that mix the countries to which it latched itself. Ivan fact that his mum and Ivana dad are twins born separated, and Will's life seems bleak in Guadeloupeevery direction. And yet, he still has a French overseas departmenttiny amount of hope. They grow up with intense He is good at art, and passionate feelings for each other. As they grow up and move overseasclings to the moments of joy when he is drawing, that feel like a light at the ravages end of a post-colonial society drive them apart with tragic consequenceslong, dark tunnel.|isbn=16428606971398527122

|author= Abi ElphinstoneSylvie Cathrall|title= Jungle Drop (The Unmapped Chronicles)A Letter to the Luminous Deep|rating= 45|genre= Confident ReadersScience Fiction|summary= Abi Elphinstone has said that she connects with her world-building through her characters. In an interview with [Books For Keeps], she described visualising her characters "wearing head torches There are few greater joys than a book which gradually reveal the world they are seeing lives up to her and to the readera compelling premise." Just as the darkness of a mine And this is cut through by a spear one of light so too do quarrelsome Fox and Fibber get their first glimpse of the phantasmagorical glow-in-the-dark realm of Jungle Drop when they emerge through the mouth of a Dragon on the Here and There Express. Running from the opprobrium of their demanding and selfish parents, they must address what is in their hearts to find what they seekthem.|isbn= 14711736820356522776

|isbn=B084VNRRD61786482126|title=Killing Mind The Janus Stone (D I Kim StoneDr Ruth Galloway)|author=Angela MarsonsElly Griffiths|rating=4.5

|summary=It looked very like a suicide, and Builders were demolishing an old house in Norwich - the site was going to begin with, that was how both DI Kim Stone and Keats, hold seventy-five 'luxury' apartments - when they discovered the pathologist called itbones of a child beneath a doorway. It was only later that Stone and her team realised that when Samantha Brown cut her throat, hers There was not the only hand holding the knifeno skull. It was Was this a ritual killing or murder? Inevitably, Dr Ruth Galloway finds herself working with DCI Harry Nelson. SammyIt's parents. Myles and Kate were difficult as Ruth knows, but Nelson doesn't, that she is pregnant with his child as a little bit reluctant to say what their daughter had been doing recentlyresult of the one night they spent together some three months ago. The property where she was found was less homely than most hotel rooms: her mother was about Her condition will be obvious before long, not least because Ruth is prone to accuse her husband sudden bouts of saying that Sammy was ready..sickness. But what was Sammy ready ''for'' and where was their other daughter, Sophie?

|author= Hana TookeGuadalupe Nettel and Rosalind Harvey (Translator)|title= The UnadoptablesAccidentals|rating= 4.5|genre= Confident ReadersShort Stories|summary= In This collection was truly enchanting in all senses of the winter of 1880word: spellbinding with its fantastical, five babies are abandoned at the Little Tulip orphanage magical elements and charming in Amsterdam, much to the annoyance its gentle portrayal of matron Gasbeeknature and human relationships. Twelve years later, Milou, the last of the five babies to be abandoned back in that winterGuadalupe Nettel writes intelligently and precisely, struggles to work out the identity of her parents from the clues she was abandoned with: a small coffin with claw-marks on the outside, a cat doll made stories structured by someone called Bram Poppenmaker and a velvet blanket. She, along with the other four, patiently wait for Milou's parents wisdom that appears to come back and take her home. However, when the five children are sold want to teach us something about the dodgy merchant Meneer Rotman, they know they have to escapeworld. And so begins the adventure of a lifetime as the Unadoptables join forces to reunite Milou with her parents, all the time being pursued by the Kinderbureau and Rotman…|isbn=02414174651804271470