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<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!

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|isbn=15294018010008551375|title=Grave's End When Shadows Fall (DS Alexandra CupidiD S Max Craigie)|author=William ShawNeil Lancaster

|summary=Gram HickmanLeanne Wilson's body was found at the bottom of a Scottish mountain, who worked for an estate agentseemingly the result of a tragic accident. She'd looked so happy, took his girlfriendtoo, Angela Booth, to a house which his firm was marketingwhen she posted her intentions on Facebook. Guildeford Hall Her friends were relieved as she was just out of an old Kentish oast house and unpleasant relationship, but it looked like she was on living her best life now. Then it emerged that five other women had died in similar circumstances in the market for millions of poundslast year. Gram was hoping that he could get Angela into bed All were experienced climbers, properly equipped for what they were doing and he'd brought a bottle of prosecco alongsensible people. It was when searching for somewhere to chill None of the bottle that he found the body of 'what a man in the freezer in the garagestupid thing to do' explanations applied. They were all alone when they died: DS Alexandra Cupidi and DC Jill Ferriter are Max Craigie is certain there's a killer on the caseloose.

|author= Ukamaka OlisakwePaul B Preciado|title= Ogadinma Or, Everything Will Be All RightDysphoria Mundi|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary FictionPolitics and Society|summary= The new novel by Ukamaka Olisakwe ''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 look at new sensorium as an offering to the trauma and heartache of being new generation, a woman new feeling mechanism in 1980s Nigeriawhich detachment is not considered a sign of political apathy. The title Rather, it is the proportional, valid response to ''Ogadinma Orthe epistemological and political crack we are living through, Everything Will Be All Rightand the tension between emancipatory forces and conservative resistances that characterize our present'' which Preciado calls ''dysphoria mundi''. Ogadinma The whole text is framed against the eponymous heroine backdrop of the story. We are with her in every scene and it is her narrative voice Covid-19 pandemic as that leads the storywhich has catalysed this revolution, when dysphoria began to emerge on a global scale, although Olisakwe writes in the third personor as ''pangea covidica''. This provides Rather than taking this extreme dysphoria as a sense sign of weakness, or mistaking detachment or withdrawal for the reader and highlights the isolation of Ogadinma. She is exiled from her fatherpolitical paralysis, Preciado urges his readers to ''use dysphoria as your revolutionary platform''s home and sent to Lagos where she is married to an older man named Tobe. Their marriage descends into violence and indignities and Ogadinma must utilise her resourcefulness to escape.|isbn=19116481601804271454

|author=Lun Zhang, Adrien Gombeaud, Ameziane and Edward Gauvin (translator)Samantha Harvey|title=Tiananmen 1989: Our Shattered HopesOrbital

|genre=Graphic NovelsGeneral Fiction|summary=I never really followed In 2024, Samantha Harvey won the events of Tiananmen Square with much attention when it was playing out – someone Booker Prize for ''Orbital'', a compact yet profound work that unfolds over a single day in the second half lives of their teens has other priorities, you know. I certainly didn't know a group of astronauts aboard the weeks of protests and hunger strikes from the students before International Space Station. Through a narrative lens that mirrors the massacre and the birth of the Tank Man image, I didnastronauts't know how the area had long been a venue for political protestorbital perspective, and I didn't know more than a spit about the people involved on either side. This book is practically flawless Harvey invites readers to see our planet in giving a general browser's context for the whole season of protests back in 1989wholly new light.|isbn=16840569931529922933

|authorisbn= Joan He295967572X|title= Descendant of the CranePale Pieces|author=G M Stevens

|genre= FantasyLiterary Fiction|summary=Our unnamed narrator is about to begin a train journey with his companion Django. Where they're going and what the purpose of this journey is, is uncertain. Django found the tickets 'Heroes cannot be forged without villains'on the floor somewhere''and has persuaded our narrator to accompany him. Why not? Not much else is clear either - but we are probably in the past as the pair travel to the station by coach and the train is a steam locomotive.Princess Hesina of }}{{Frontpage|isbn=0008551324|title=The Devil You Know (D S Max Craigie)|author=Neil Lancaster|rating=4.5|genre=Crime|summary=It's unusual for anyone from the kingdom of Yan has never wanted Hardie family to approach the thronepolice. Instead of craving power, she Neither side likes or has always considered any respect for the crown her inescapable duty other. But Davie Hardie is struggling in prison and shrank away from he's prepared to tell the police where the responsibilities body of being Queena missing person is buried and who was responsible for her death. To her This person, it has always been a distanthe promises, faraway future. Until that is, someone big and it isn'twill be worth the police doing what he wants. When her beloved father suddenly dies, she And what he wants is thrust into rulingto be transferred to an open prison to serve the remainder of his sentence and to get an early parole date. But contrary Not much to the official reportask, Hesina knows all is not as it seems, her father didn? The new Deputy Police Constable doesn't die. He was murdered.Determined to seek the truth think so and discover her fathershe's killer, Princess Hesina will stop at nothing even prepared to find justice, even committing treason. Under do the cover of darkness, her feet lead her to a soothsayer to learn what happened other thing that Hardie demanded - make certain that day DS Max Craigie and anyone who killed the Kingworks with him is kept well away from what's happening.|isbn=1789094046

|author=Pat GrantJon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |title=The Grot: The Story of the Swamp City GriftersVaim

|genre=Graphic NovelsLiterary Fiction|summary=Everything in this world runs on pedal-power, and that includes the punk bands''All was strange''... There are three pedallers at This haunting phrase encapsulates the front pervading sense of the Heath Robinson contraption taking our lead characters to the ferry across the swamp to Falter Cityotherworldliness which permeates this story set in Vaim, where a mother and her two sons aim to set up a yoghurt factory. You fictional fishing village in Norway which paradoxically could say that yoghurt would be the only culture around, not feel more real for this is a really rough-Jatgeir and-ready dump of a placeEline, but everyone is interested in small things that grow. For the only money to be had – the only fortunes to be found in Falter City – come from algae, gunk and other crud that – well, the use of it 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 hair. But which of the two will come off the worse as they make their own way protagonists caught in this dystopian, semi-Apocalyptic hellhole?its melancholic current.|isbn=16030946601804271829

|authorisbn= Ashley Poston1035043092|title= Bookish and the BeastThe Killing Stones (Jimmy Perez)|author=Ann Cleeves|rating= 3.5|genre= TeensCrime|summary= Set after I can't have been the ExcelsiCononly person who was sad when Inspector Jimmy Perez [[Wild Fire (Shetland, we are introduced Book 8) by Ann Cleeves|left Shetland]] to Rosie Thorne, start a Small Townnew life on Orkney. It's been seven years since we heard from him, USA girl who has recently lost her mother but he's now living with Willow Reeves and is entering her final year of high school. Things keep piling up for Rosietheir young son, James, and when she follows a stray dog into what she thinks is an abandoned castle in her townas well as Cassie, things just get worsethe daughter of his former partner. Rosie accidentally destroys a rare book and with her mother Willow's hospital also his boss, and funeral costs she has no money to cover the damage. She finds herself working for Vance Reigns, Hollywood royalty ''should'' be on a paparazzi escapematernity leave, to repay but when the debt.  For most Starfield superfans this would be body of a dream but Rosie soon realises Vance popular islander, Archie Stout, is found, in the aftermath of a jerk - and he isnstorm, she can't too fond of her eitherresist getting involved. However, as He'd been battered about the two are forced to get to know each other, their guards begin to lower and they discover that maybe this situation might not be so terrible after allhead with a Neolithic stone - one of a pair - which had been stolen from a museum. |isbn=1683691938

|author=Justine Avery and Daria YudinaThea Lenarduzzi|title=Baby Trolls Get a Bad Rap (Underrated Babies Book 1)The Tower|rating=4|genre=For Sharing|summary= Horatio, Saul and Grizelda are three baby trolls who are fed up that everyone forgets about baby trolls. They are ignored in books and TV shows and films in favour of their very scary grown ups. Our three heroes want equal rights for baby trolls. They want to be seen and heard and they've started a petition about it that they want you to sign. But how should they go about it? |isbn= B07XGN4LGY}} {{Frontpage|author= Samira Ahmed|title= Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know|rating= 3.5|genre=TeensLiterary Fiction|summary=''In How unctuous are the endfats of another's life, we all become storieshow dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream''.

Spending In this compelling novel, Thea Lenarduzzi assumes the summer in Paris sounds like a dream for most peopleidentity of T, especially art-loversthe protagonist of this tale. Just as T's story is being told, but Khayyam can't relax and stop thinking about the mess she left behind in Chicago. On story of a chance encounter with a descendant second protagonist is unveiled: Annie, the daughter of Alexandre Dumas, Khayyam finds herself on a historical journey with him to unveil the truth about wealthy family in the 19th century Muslim woman , who may have crossed paths with Alexandre Dumasdied of tuberculosis after being locked in a tower, Eugene Delacroix and Lord Byroncaptures T's imagination. As the two teenagers travel the city they not only discover themselvesAnnie's fate is, above all, but uncover the true 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 the woman myth, fable and why it was one that should never have been forgottenfantasy. |isbn=03490035561804271799

|author= Hazel BarkworthClaire-Louise Bennett|title= HeatstrokeBig Kiss, Bye-Bye |rating= 34.5|genre= CrimeLiterary Fiction|summary=''Too hot to sleep. Too hot to think straight. Too hot to go back'' During a British heatwave 15-year-oldEverything in this book, Lily Dixonhowever sweet or seemingly innocent, has left home is steeped in anguish and is reported missingdistortion. Rachel is Even a kiss, usually a teacher at Lily's school symbol of intimacy and closeness, becomes evidence of love lost. When the mother of Mianarrator cries out internally, Lily's best friend. As Lily's family come over here and the police struggle to find any evidence that may lead to Lilykiss me, Rachel takes '' it upon herself is less an invitation than a desperate attempt to start looking for cluesconfirm her emotional numbness. HoweverThe imagined recipient of this plea is Xavier, as the case goes on Rachel becomes fixated on finding Lily and finds herself crossing boundariesher ex-partner, breaking trust and facing some impossible choicesa ghost she conjures to test her detachment. Will they find Lily? Does Lily want to be found? And will life for Rachel ever be the same again?|isbn=14722656021804271934

|isbn=15387317380008405026|title=Simple Abundance: 365 Days to a Balanced and Joyful LifeA Stranger in the Family (Maeve Kerrigan 11)|author= Sarah Ban BreathnachJane Casey

|genre=LifestyleCrime|summary=Someone once said: itIt's not selfsixteen years since nine-indulgenceyear-old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her bed one summer night. She was never found and the investigation ground to a halt. Now, her mother, Helena, and her father are dead in their bed. Initially, itlooks like a straightforward murder/suicide but there's therapy! something about the positioning of the bodies that makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and her boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. I think they were talking about shopping, but What looked as though it probably can was going to be applied to most thingsan open-and-shut case is now a complex double murder. In my case, it applies to writing about things because I want toKerrigan is convinced that the explanation lies in Rosalie's disappearance: others (such as Derwent's boss, rather than because I can sell it or because I've got something to sellUna Burt) are less convinced.

|author=Frederic GrosAnnie Ernaux and Alison L. Strayer (translator)|title=A Philosophy of WalkingThe Other Girl|rating=54|genre= Politics and SocietyAutobiography|summary= I confess I picked this one up ''We were born from the library in my pre-lockdown forage of random stuffsame body. Now I have 've never really wanted to go out an buy my own copy so that I can turn down think about this.'' Ernaux's work is always very candid and her tone transparent, but this raw epistolary text must be one of the pages most intimate accounts I have marked and return to its varying wisdom when I need 've read. Ernaux writes in direct address toher sister, however, this letter will never reach her. Some books draw you Why? Because Annie Ernaux's sister died of diphtheria at 6 years old, a few months before the vaccine was made compulsory in slowlyFrance, and 2 years before the author was even born. This one had me The large and instant void created by the jarring concept of writing to an imaginary recipient emphasises Ernaux's process of reckoning with this giant absence in the first two pagesher life, wherein Gros explains why ''walking is not a sport''an absence that she has always felt but often denied.|isbn=17816883701804271845

|isbnauthor=085752612XMaxim Gorky and Bryan Karetnyk (translator)|title=Rodham: What if Hillary hadn't Married Bill?|author=Curtis SittenfeldReminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev|rating=43.5|genre=General FictionBiography|summary=I was tempted to read ''Rodham'' by Biographies are often seen as the success form of Curtis Sittenfeld's ''American Wife''life-writing which offers less colour; it can be seen as more objective and less personal. That book wasn't marketed as being I think that Gorky completely rejects this perspective, and offers a vibrant, subjective yet informed portrait of Laura Bushthree of his literary contemporaries. In the first section of this book, but the word Tolstoy complains to his friend Gorky that: ''thinly-veiled'' seemed you write not of real life as it is, but of what you yourself imagine it to occur very regularly in reviewsbe. How Whom would ''Rodham'' compareit help to know how I see this tower, that sea, or that Tartar - why should it interest anyone? Unfortunately, there Of what use is a difference: relatively little was known about Laura Bush, which gave the book a freshness which the first third of it?''Rodham'' lacks. We've all heard the storiesWell, read the books - about Hillary and particularly about Bill. It's still an interesting conceptMaxim Gorky shows exactly what can be gained from a subjective account, though: giving us access to how would Hillary have fared if she hadn't subsumed her own ambitions into Bill's careerhe saw Tolstoy, if she hadn't had to carry the burden 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's what 'd answered an advert offering good money and accommodation in return for their labour: they could have a decent life ordinary people do','and' He' send money home to 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 this is a miscarriage of justice thathe really should put right. When they arrive in the UK - on an old}}{{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, uncomfortable busit's nothing like I expected it to be, - theyand it takes me on a wild ride. And that is just what happened with ''The Big Happy''. I don're dropped at t want to ruin a filthy house where several men similar experience for any of you reading but I'll have to share rooms and sleep on dirty mattresses on at least set the floorscene. ItOnce that's modern slaverydone, which isn't uncommon amongst agricultural workersI think you should simply experience this wonderfully original story for yourself.

|author=Amin MaaloufSally Rooney|title=The DisorientedIntermezzo

|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary= Adam 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 AdamTom Egerton (Editors)|rating=5|genre=Politics and Society|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 parentsdifficult as Ruth knows, but Nelson doesn't, that she is pregnant with his child as a result of the one night they spent together some three months ago. Myles and Kate were a little bit reluctant Her condition will be obvious before long, not least because Ruth is prone to say what their daughter had been doing recentlysudden bouts of sickness. }}{{Frontpage|author=Guadalupe Nettel and Rosalind Harvey (Translator)|title=The property where she Accidentals|rating=4.5|genre=Short Stories|summary=This collection was found was less homely than most hotel roomstruly enchanting in all senses of the word: her mother was about to accuse her husband spellbinding with its fantastical, magical elements and charming in its gentle portrayal of saying that Sammy was readynature and human relationships... But what was Sammy ready ''for'' Guadalupe Nettel writes intelligently and where was their other daughterprecisely, Sophie?her stories structured by a wisdom that appears to want to teach us something about the world.|isbn=1804271470