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|authorisbn=0008551375|title=Agnes Ravatn and Rosie Hedger When Shadows Fall (translatorD S Max Craigie)|titleauthor=The Seven DoorsNeil Lancaster|rating=4.5

|summary=Come here for a thriller that interestingly doesnLeanne Wilson't even try to suggest s body was found at the bottom of a genre Scottish mountain, seemingly the result of any kind until we're a full fifth of the way throughtragic accident. We start with our coupleShe'd looked so happy, too, when she posted her intentions on Facebook. Her friends were relieved as she a literature lecturer, he big in medical provision and decisions at the council, being forced to move was just out of their homean unpleasant relationship, a building but it looked like she was living her best life now. Then it emerged that five other women had existed throughout her life since childhood died in similar circumstances in the last year. All were experienced climbers, properly equipped for what they were doing and which they'd occupied for over thirty yearssensible people. The building heNone of the 's inherited, meanwhile, and which they let out to what a single mother, is needed by their adult daughter, who quite blatantly says stupid thing to its occupant 'take a hike, I'm moving in and you're moving outdo'explanations applied. Now, at this stage you may well, if you know this They were all alone when they died: DS Max Craigie is a genre read, think itcertain there's going to be a throwback to those 'home invasion' thrillers Hollywood gave us in the 1980s, but no. We avoid genre completely, as I say – instead learning about Greek tragedy, in case that has any bearing killer on what happens here, and seeing how an older-middle aged couple live their lives. Until at that twenty per cent stage we find something that raises an eyebrow as any crime book should – until the point where the evicted tenant is found to have completely vanishedloose.|isbn=1913193381

|author=Michael J MalonePaul B Preciado|title=A Song of IsolationDysphoria Mundi|rating=34.5|genre=CrimePolitics and Society|summary=Film star Amelie Hart throws up a career that ''It is only beginning never too late to hit embrace the heights 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 new sensorium as an offering to retire the new generation, a new feeling mechanism in which detachment is not considered a sign of political apathy. Rather, it is the proportional, valid response to ''the highlands with an ordinary guy…an accountant epistemological and political crack we are living through, and the tension between emancipatory forces and conservative resistances that characterize our present'' which Preciado calls ''dysphoria mundi''. The whole text is framed against the backdrop of all thingsthe Covid-19 pandemic as that which has catalysed this revolution, though when dysphoria began to his credit he would rather be working in forestryemerge on a global scale, or as ''pangea covidica''. They have found Rather than taking this extreme dysphoria as a hideaway on a small Scottish estatesign of weakness, or mistaking detachment or withdrawal for political paralysis, but things are starting Preciado urges his readers to feel wrong between them''use dysphoria as your revolutionary platform''. |isbn=19131933651804271454

|author= Christopher PaoliniSamantha Harvey|title= To Sleep in a Sea of Stars|rating= 5|genre= Science Fiction|summary= On the moon of a distant gas giant, Xenobiologist Kira Navárez is helping with the efforts to make the planet habitable to human life. However, a discovery of an ancient alien bunker under the moon's surface leaves her bonded with a strange alien entity. After the entity bonded to her loses control and kills half the staff of the research station, the United Military Command cruiser Extenuating Circumstances arrives in the system to take Kira in for examination. Things go from bad to worse when the Extenuating Circumstances is attacked and destroyed by an alien ship, and she has to flee to the 61 Cygnus star system. She is revived aboard the freighter Wallfish, crewed by Captain Falconi and a rag-tag bunch of misfits, and the news is grim. The same aliens that destroyed the Extenuating Circumstances are now wreaking havoc across all of human-occupied space, and only a mythical weapon known as the Staff of Blue can stop them. As the death toll climbs and more players are introduced into this war, Kira slowly begins to realise that she may have had a greater hand in the conflict than she could've possibly imagined…|isbn=1529046505}}{{Frontpage|author=Carlie Sorosiak|title=My Life as a CatOrbital

|genre=Confident ReadersGeneral Fiction|summary=This is In 2024, Samantha Harvey won the story of an alien who has come down to spend some time on earth living as a human. ItBooker Prize for ''Orbital''s something that each member in the alien collective is allowed to do, for 1 month, once they reach a certain age. Leonard comes to earth but gets distracted en route, and so something goes wrong with his arrival and he finds compact yet profound work that instead of landing in Yellowstone Park, ready to work as unfolds over a park ranger, he is instead single day in the body lives of a cat on the other side group of astronauts aboard the country! This is not what he had planned! Not only is he in International Space Station. Through a narrative lens that mirrors the wrong place and the wrong bodyastronauts' orbital perspective, he is also in the middle of a storm, stuck Harvey invites readers to see our planet in a tree! And so he meets Olive, the little girl who rows out in a boat to rescue him, and who names him Leonardwholly new light.|isbn=17880060891529922933

|authorisbn= Tahi Saihate295967572X|title= Astral Season, Beastly SeasonPale Pieces|author=G M Stevens|rating= 3.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= We long for our past even though it Our unnamed narrator is about to begin a place to which we can never returntrain journey with his companion Django. Tahi SaihateWhere they're going and what the purpose of this journey is, in her debut novel is uncertain. Django found the tickets ''Astral Season, Beastly Seasonon the floor somewhere'' illustrates how these rose-tinted glasses often lieand has persuaded our narrator to accompany him. Her novel Why not? Not much else is a meditation on youth clear either - but we are probably in the past as the pair travel to the station by coach and how the things we do as train is a teenager can seem intensely important and often life-alteringsteam locomotive.|isbn= 1916277101

|authorisbn= Andrea Stewart0008551324|title= The Bone Shard Daughter Devil You Know (The Drowning EmpireD S Max Craigie)|author=Neil Lancaster

|genre= FantasyCrime|summary=It''I could never be what he wanted if I did not take what I wanted'' In an empire controlled by a bone shard magic that powers animal-like constructs, an heir s unusual for anyone from the Hardie family to approach the throne, a smuggler, and a warrior will fight to find their place in police. Neither side likes or has any respect for the worldother. Lin But Davie Hardie is the emperorstruggling in prison and he's forgotten daughter, kept locked away in a palace of secrets and closed doors. When her father refuses to recognise her as heir prepared to tell the police where the throne, she vows to show him she is capable body of reviving a dying empire missing person is buried and in secret, she begins to unlock one door after another, searching who was responsible for the mysteries of her past and the forbidden art of bone shard magicdeath. Yet Lin This person, he promises, is playing a deadly game someone big and her quest for power it will come at great costbe worth the police doing what he wants. With revolution in And what he wants is to be transferred to an open prison to serve the air remainder of his sentence and creeping closer and closer to the gates of the palaceget an early parole date. Not much to ask, Lin must decide just how far is it? The new Deputy Police Constable doesn't think so and she will 's even prepared to go to become a catalyst of change do the other thing that Hardie demanded - make certain that DS Max Craigie and save her peopleanyone who works with him is kept well away from what's happening.|isbn=0356514943

|author=Sharon DoeringJon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |title=She Lies CloseVaim

|genre=ThrillersLiterary Fiction|summary= Ava Boone ''All was five years old when she went missing, around 6 months agostrange''. There has been no sign of her since, and no arrests have been made. And yet, this book is not about Ava. Not really. This book is about Gracehaunting phrase encapsulates the pervading sense of otherworldliness which permeates this story set in Vaim, who has just discovered her neighbour in her new house is a suspect fictional fishing village in Ava's disappearance. As a single mother to Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for Jatgeir and Eline, two young children, she's really wishing this sort of information had come to light before they moved the protagonists caught inits melancholic current.|isbn=17890941941804271829

|authorisbn=Yara Evans and Luciana Betti1035043092|title=The Adventures of an Urban Fox: Maggie ArrivesKilling Stones (Jimmy Perez)|author=Ann Cleeves|rating=45|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=Black Cat and Tabby Cat are minding their own business in their own house 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 very alarming thing happensnew life on Orkney. A creature - a large It's been seven years since we heard from him, dog-like creature - appears in but he's now living with Willow Reeves and their houseyoung son, James, as well as Cassie, the daughter of his former partner. Black Cat Willow's also his boss, always one to take chargeand she ''should'' be on maternity leave, but when the body of a popular islander, Archie Stout, is found, challenges this fearsome creature with all in the courage he aftermath of a storm, she can muster. Tabby Cat backs him...'t resist getting involved. He'd been battered about the head with a Neolithic stone - one of a pair - which had been stolen from a rather safe distancemuseum. }}{{Frontpage|author=Thea Lenarduzzi|title=The creature is indignant - Tower|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= ''How unctuous are the fats of another's life, how dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream'I'm not a dog. I In this compelling novel, Thea Lenarduzzi assumes the identity of T, the protagonist of this tale. Just as T'm s story is being told, the story of a second protagonist is unveiled: Annie, the daughter of a wealthy family in the 19th century, who died of tuberculosis after being locked in a fox!tower, captures T's 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. |isbn=1511658649 1804271799

|isbnauthor=1712435728Claire-Louise Bennett|title=Jamie's Keepsake|author=Michael GallagherBig Kiss, Bye-Bye

|genre=TeensLiterary Fiction|summary=Everything 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 we first meet Alex Hannahthe narrator cries out internally, he's just being released from the Southern General Hospital. The nurse thinks he'll come back over here and kiss me,'' it is less an invitation than a desperate attempt to visit the other patients but Alex has no intention confirm her emotional numbness. The imagined recipient of doing that: he's been there for a yearthis plea is Xavier, on the same ward where his brother died and nowher ex-partner, with his hair all shorn off, he's going home a ghost she conjures to test her detachment.|isbn=1804271934}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0008405026|title=A Stranger in his dead brotherthe Family (Maeve Kerrigan 11)|author=Jane Casey|rating=5|genre=Crime|summary=It's clothessixteen years since nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her bed one summer night. He wants She was never found and the investigation ground to get outside and back with his friends: his brothera halt. Now, her mother, ForbesHelena, says that the fresh air will do him good and his mother tells him that heher father are dead in their bed. Initially, it looks like a straightforward murder/suicide but there's not to mention TB something about the positioning of the bodies that makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and to say her boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. What looked as though it was tonsillitisgoing to be an open-and-shut case is now a complex double murder. Good luck with Kerrigan is convinced that onethe explanation lies in Rosalie's disappearance: others (such as Derwent's boss, AlexUna Burt) are less convinced.

|author=Alice OsemanAnnie Ernaux and Alison L. Strayer (translator)|title=SolitaireThe Other Girl

|genre=TeensAutobiography|summary= Victoria Spring has returned ''We were born from the same body. I've never really wanted to Year 12 following Christmas break and feels dead to the worldthink about this. Nothing '' Ernaux's work is interesting. People are stupid always very candid and boring. She has her tone transparent, but this raw epistolary text must be one real friend; of the rest are just people she sits near so shemost intimate accounts I've read. Ernaux writes in direct address to her sister, however, this letter will never reach her. Why? Because Annie Ernaux's not a complete loner. She hates a lot sister died of things - including herself. But suddenlydiphtheria at 6 years old, a blog called Solitaire has arrived few months before the vaccine was made compulsory in France, and is pulling pranks throughout 2 years before the schoolauthor was even born. And Michael Holden has appeared The large and is showing up everywhere in Toriinstant void created by the jarring concept of writing to an imaginary recipient emphasises Ernaux's process of reckoning with this giant absence in her life. Tori doesn't know (or care) why , an absence that she's involved, has always felt but suddenly she is. What does Solitaire want? Who's behind it? Why does it all seem to be linked to Tori? Why does Michael want to be in Tori's life so badly and who is he, really? Things are only getting stranger and darker, and only one thing is certain – Tori isn't bored anymoreoften denied.|isbn=97800075592201804271845

|author=Natasha FarrantMaxim Gorky and Bryan Karetnyk (translator)|title=Voyage Reminiscences of the SparrowhawkTolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev|rating=3.5|genre=Confident ReadersBiography|summary=Set in England in Biographies are often seen as the aftermath form of World War One, life-writing which offers less colour; it can be seen as more objective and less personal. I think that Gorky completely rejects this is the story of two childrenperspective, Lotti and Benoffers a vibrant, who have lost everyone they love, but don't want to let go subjective yet informed portrait of their last, tiny glimpses three of hopehis literary contemporaries. Ben is living on a narrowboat on In the canalfirst section of this book, lying Tolstoy complains to the police about his brotherfriend Gorky that: ''s imminent return from the battlefields you write not of real life as it is, but of what you yourself imagine it to take care of himbe. LottiWhom would it help to know how I see this tower, meanwhilethat sea, has been expelled from school and or that Tartar - why should it interest anyone? Of what use is back at home; it?''s a beautiful house that belongs to her but that her terrible Aunt and Uncle currently have guardianship for. The day Lotti meets Ben (the day she steals Well, Maxim Gorky shows exactly what can be gained from a dog!) is the beginning of a deepsubjective account, and powerful friendship. It sees them become each other's familygiving us access to how he saw Tolstoy, Chekhov and undertake a perilous trip to France, Andreyev in the boat, to try to find out the truth such privileged detail that one almost feels unworthy of the people they both loveit.|isbn=05713487691804271977

|isbn=14711792731529077745|title=House of CorrectionThe Dark Wives (D I Vera Stanhope)|author=Nicci FrenchAnn Cleeves|rating=4.5

|summary=When we first meet Tabitha Hardy, she's A man walking his dog in the early morning discovered the body of a man in prisonthe park near Rosebank, on remand. She's sharing a cell with Michaela, who's more caring than she first appearscare home for troubled teens. She delivers tough love and gets Tabitha eating and drinking The dead man was Josh - and encourages her one of the care workers who was due to have work a shower, unpleasant as shift the whole processes might benight before but who had never turned up. And how did Tabitha get here? Well, on 21 December D I Vera Stanhope is called in to investigate the murder - but her only clue is the body disappearance of one of Stuart Robert Rees was discovered in her garden shed by Andrew Kanethe residents, who fourteen-year-old Chloe Spencer. Some people believe that Chloe was helping with responsible for the death but Vera thinks this is unlikely as the renovations to Tabithagirl's housediary makes it clear that she adored Josh. So far as the police are concerned, Tabitha is the only person who could have killed Rees - and when they arrived at her house She knows that she was covered in his bloodhas to find Chloe to discover what happened to Josh.

|authorisbn=Darren ShanB0FK5LHKD9|title=Archibald Lox and the Vote The Colour of Alignment Memory|author=Christopher Bowden

|genre=Confident ReadersGeneral Fiction|summary=This third and final book in the first volume of Darren ShanIt's been three years since we last reviewed a book by favourite regular Christopher Bowden, so we were very glad to see a new ''Archibald Lox'' series sees Archie and Inez make it almost novel arrive here at Bookbag Towers. Like all the way to the CuckooBowden's Neststories, where there's a mystery at the Vote heart of ''The Colour of Alignment will be heldMoney''. But how will they get We like this running theme in?|isbn=B086LLWP4Van author's work - take a mystery but give it different flavour and atmosphere each time.

|isbnauthor=0008314721Olga Tokarczuk|title=Truth Be Told|author=Kia AbdullahHouse of Day, House of Night

|summary=The Hadids are an ''effortful'' familyEx-DCI Andy Flood has been a Private Investigator for some time now, and he should be doing quite well financially. Flowers are sent for the slightest problem or achievement: letters are sent to thank and this prompts Unfortunately, his daughter's defence against a phone call in returnmurder charge drained his savings. There are two sons of the familyHis wife, Laura, seventeenhas been trying to persuade him to retire -year-old Kamran and sixteen-year-old Adam''maybe go travelling or go on cruises. Their mother, Sofia, regrets that she didnThat't name them the other way round: s what 'Adam and Kamranordinary people do' trips off the tongue so much more easily than ,'Kamran and Adam'. Sofia worries He's not been entirely up front about that sort the state of thingtheir savings. Both boys go When Jack Durban tries to persuade him to take his case, it's the prestigious Hampton school, where they board, despite thought of the school being less than ten miles from their Belsize Park home. Kamran has money he could make that convinces him that this is a place at Oxford next year and all seemed to be going well until the night when miscarriage of justice that he was rapedreally should put right.

|isbn=15098895151836284683|title=The Darkest Evening (D I Vera Stanhope)Big Happy|author=Ann CleevesDavid Chadwick

|genre=CrimeDystopian Fiction|summary=It was Well! This is a mercy that DI Vera Stanhope took the wrong turning as she drove home in the blizzard. If she hadnmurder mystery unlike any other! I do love it when I open a book, it't the car might not have been found until the morning and who knows what would have happened s nothing like I expected it to the toddler strapped into the car seatbe, particularly as the car door had been left open. Vera took the boy and drove to the nearest habitationit takes me on a wild ride. She And that is just what happened with ''thoughtThe Big Happy'' it would be the village but it was Brockburn, the ancestral home of the Stanhopes: her father had been the younger brother of the man who inherited - and Hector was the black sheep of the family. Calling there unannounced, particularly as they seemed I don't want to ruin a similar experience for any of you reading but I'll have guests was going to be embarrassingat least set the scene. Once that's done, but there was little else that she could do in the circumstancesI think you should simply experience this wonderfully original story for yourself.

|isbnauthor=0241425441Sally Rooney|title=The Thursday Murder Club|author=Richard OsmanIntermezzo

|genre=CrimeGeneral Fiction |summary=The first member Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard of The Thursday Murder Club we encounter life and is Joyce Meadowcroftsomething of a grandmaster at putting it into words. She used to be a nurse Her dialogue is gripping and is thus so brilliantly frustrating, as her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Among the many relationships woven into this story, the perfect person central one for Elizabeth readers to consult about how long it would take unravel is the fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. Ivan, a socially awkward chess prodigy, contrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, a person who has been stabbed to bleed out. Details of where and how are exchanged and Joyce confirms that it would have taken about forty-five minutes and that the victim could have been saved if she'd received prompt medical helpsuccessful lawyer living in Dublin. It didn't put Joyce off her shepherdFollowing their father's pie (which tells us that it was passing after a Monday) but it does get her interested in The Thursday Murder Club. They meet each Thursday (as you might have guessed) in long battle with cancer, the Jigsaw Room at Coopers Chase Retirement Villagebrothers' already strained relationship faces new trials.|isbn=0571365469

|isbn=19481244401036916375|title=What Wonders Await OutdoorsJust a Liverpool Lad|author=Justine Avery and Liuba SyrotiukPeter McArdle

|genre=For SharingAutobiography|summary=The second ''Just a Liverpool Lad '' is a collection of memories and reflections from the years Peter McArdle spent growing up in and around Liverpool. Some are factual, such as the family history of a sea-going family, with the docks dominating lives. Other stories blend seamlessly into the what-might-have-been. It's a book to settle into and allow your mind to roam across your childhood memories, to think of simpler times when life seemed less constrained, despite the blitz that was a constant factor in Justine AveryMcArdle's Wonders series is early years. I'd never heard of parachute mines before - but they were almost soundless and could appear after the perfect antidote to long summer days with bored children all- orclear 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, indeeda conscientious student, as we've found recentlya slightly annoying brother and a supportive friend. But most of all, for those long lockdown days when he is an awful pandemic aspiring writer. English is rolling across the worldhis favourite lesson at his school, Marlowe Park, and one at which he excels. What do you do when every book This hasn't gone unnoticed by his headteacher, Mrs Howarth, and she has been read suggested to Will and every toy has been played withhis mum that he spends a couple of afternoons a week at a different school, repurposedStation Road, and played with again?where his ability might be better extended.

|isbn=1009473085|title=The Conservative Effect 2010 - 2024|author= Samira AhmedAnthony Seldon and Tom Egerton (Editors)|rating=5|genre=Politics and Society|summary=Sometimes it's simpler to explain a book by describing what it ''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 about what ''really'' happened on certain occasions, then this isn't the book for you. If that's what you're looking for, I don't think Anthony Seldon's book, {{amazonurl|isbn=B0BH7SKG2S|title= MadJohnson at 10}}, Bad can be bettered for those tumultuous years. It's a compelling read and Dangerous should be compulsory for anyone who thinks Johnson should return to Knowpolitics. ''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= 3.5

|summary=''In the endElk and Mab are best friends, or more than that even, we all become stories'' Spending the summer their friendship is a once in Paris sounds like a dream for most people, especially art-lovers, lifetime connection. They meet as children one day on a trip out but Khayyam canunfortunately they don't relax and stop thinking about get each other's contact details at the mess she left behind in Chicagotime. On a But then chance encounter with a descendant of Alexandre Dumasbrings them back together, and they are inseparable. Something has happened though, 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 Alendre Dumassomething terrible and tragic, Eugene Delacroix and Lord Byron. As the two teenagers travel the city now they not only discover themselvesmust work through their grief, but uncover the true story of the woman and why it was one that should never have been forgottentheir friendship, together.|isbn=03490035561471196585

|authorisbn=Alice Oseman1787333175|title=LovelessYou Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here|author=Benji Waterhouse

|genre=TeensPopular Science|summary= Georgia is a teenager whoI was tempted to read ''You Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here'' after enjoying Adam Kay's embarking on her first year of university and book {{amazonurl|isbn=1509858636|title=This is in Going to Hurt}}, a desperate struggle to figure herself out. She's always been in love with love. With glorious mixture of insight into the idea workings of lovethe NHS, the idea of falling madly for someone humour and finding blissautobiography. ''You Don't Have to be Mad. But the reality for her has always been different. She's never had a crush. She's never been kissed. And she's desperate promised the same elements but moved from physical problems to feel something mental illness and fall for someone. But when the opportunity presents itself in any kind work of real, tangible and physical way for her - she's disgusted by a psychiatrist. I did wonder whether it. But isn't that what she's supposed was acceptable to want? Isn't that what everyone be looking for humour in this setting but the laughter is supposed to do? How come everyone else can do directed at a situation rather than a person and it? Why can't she?|isbn=000824412Xis always delivered with empathy and understanding.

|isbnauthor=B086LLRZFHMariana Enriquez|title=Archibald Lox and the Empress of SuanpanA Sunny Place for Shady People|author=Darren Shan|rating=4.5|genre=Confident ReadersShort Stories|summary=Archie's second foray into 'the Merge' opens with a fantastic vista. All of the Born's most famous buildings and monuments - Big Ben, the Taj Mahal,  the Eiffel Tower - are collected togetherMariana Enriquez writes horror that is disturbingly real, joined achieving this uncanny familiarity by those clever Merge vines. But there's no time to waste in admirationbasing her paranormal plots on gritty realities: Archie is carrying her settings include an urgent cry for help from Inez abandoned field full of disused refrigerators due to an urban planning mishap, an overcrowded homeless shelter and a venerable locksmith called Winston.Winston is a darling but is afraid to help crime-ridden neighbourhood where safety meetings are routine - what is to be done? Despite yearning to go home and worry for his foster parents, Archie feels an obligation to take Winston's placeall within Argentina. And The circumstances of her characters are so Archie embarks on plausible that the supernatural or otherworldly horror which seeps into these spaces adopts a new, and even more dangerous, adventure...similarly tangible texture.|isbn=1803511230

|isbn=14087122881529934753|title=Still Life (DCI Karen Pirie)The Protest|author=Val McDermidRob Rinder|rating=4.5

|summary=It For a little while, it looked as though Sir Max Bruce, the country's most famous living artist, was not going to show up for the middle opening of February and bitterly cold when a fishing boat out of St Monans pulled a body out his retrospective at the Royal Academy. Still, he arrived in the Firth nick of Forth instead time, complete with his two wives and six children, one of a lobster potwhom filmed what happened. It fell Being an influencer, you tend to DCI Charlie Todd and DS Daisy Mortimer to investigate and do things like that, but it didn't take too long to establish was fortunate that the man there was Paul Allard, ostensibly a Frenchman, but in reality James Auld record of Edinburghthe protest. A decade earlier he's gone missing when he was Lexi Williams, an intern at the prime suspect RA, grabbed a spray can of blue paint from under a chair and proceeded to spray Bruce in the disappearance and possible murder of his brotherface, prominent civil servant, Iain Auldwhilst shouting ''Stop the War''. DCI Karen Pirie, as head It seemed to be part of an ongoing series of Police Scotland Historic Crimes Unit'blue-face' attacks, but this was different. The can had been the last person to review the caselaced with cyanide, a couple of years earlier and it seemed sensible to bring her into the case at an early stageSir Max Bruce was dead.

|author= Adrian TchaikovskyAriel Saramandi|title= The Doors Portrait of Edenan Island on Fire|rating= 4.5|genre=Science FictionPolitics and Society|summary= Wow – In this novel is giganticpowerful collection of essays, in every sense Saramandi seeks to intradermally dissect the sociopolitical fabric of Mauritius, tunneling deep into the wordwounds left by colonialism and slavery to expose how these legacies still shape modern life. "Epic" is a word thatSaramandi describes the country at one stage as ''rotting''s thrown around a lot these days, but if a book ever earned blunt yet apt metaphor for the name it's systemic decay brought about by the malignant forces of racism, patriarchy, environmental degradation and governmental dysfunction. Each essay in this one. It's collection serves as a doorstopper full kind of big ideasdiagnostic, and at times it almost felt too big for my braincharting the various diseases afflicting the island state.|isbn=15098658881804271616

|author=Will CarverPekka Harju-Autti|title=Hinton Hollow Death TripLoveVortex and the Drakor's Curse|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersFantasy|summary= Hinton Hollow, population 5,120. It sounds like one of those signs you see on improbably wide highways in America's mid-westthe eighteenth century, a time of discovery and Britain is expanding its foreign trade. Captain Julius Hawthorne, an experienced Scottish sea captain, but this particular Hinton Hollow is a small town sent to the Andaman Islands in Berkshirehis endeavour. Along with his son, England. Detective Sergeant Pace grew up herePeter, until something happened and he ran away their cat, Michi, they set off on a perilous voyage to these faraway lands. The islands are beautiful and stunning in their scenery and the city. Heislanders's running away again…only this time evil leader, Aarav, is following him and is going keen to touch just about everyone in townestablish good relations.|isbn=1913193306B0DS1VGHH3

|author=Jacqueline WilsonHelene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)|title=Love FrankieLili is Crying

|genre=TeensLiterary Fiction|summary= Frankie First published in 1953 in French, this novel is nearly fourteen. Being nearly fourteen is not easy when your mum has been diagnosed with MS when your dad has decided to leave her for another woman, when your older sister has turned into a timeless text which wrenches the girliest girl who ever lived, hearts of its readers just as Bessette wrenches words and, above all when Sally sentences from their proper position on the page and her mates are bullying you at school. Ohpositions them elsewhere, and when Samdisjointed, your best friend since forevertruncated. Like the lives of her characters, suddenly starts sending out signs that he might fancy you - and you don't fancy him backthey are often left tragically incomplete. Poor Frankie! |isbn= 0857535897 1804271675

|isbnauthor=1776572858Tom Percival|title=How Do You Make a Baby?|author=Anna Fiske and Don Bartlett (translator)The Wrong Shoes

|genre=Home and FamilyConfident Readers|summary=ItWill's more than sixty years since I asked how babies were madelife is difficult, in a multitude of ways. My mother was deeply embarrassed He is bullied because he has 'the wrong shoes', he has the wrong shoes because his dad can't work and told me that shedoesn'd get me a book about it. A couple t have enough money for even the most basic of days later I things like food, and his dad can't work because he lost his job at the college, was handed working a pamphlet (which delivered nothing more than the basics, cash-in clinical language which -hand job on a building site and had never been used in our house before) an accident. Throw into that mix the fact that his mum and dad are separated, and I was told that it wouldn't be discussed any further as it ''wasn't something which nice people talked about'Will's life seems bleak in every direction. I ''knew'' moreAnd yet, but was little ''wiser''he still has a tiny amount of hope. ThankfullyHe is good at art, and clings to the moments of joy when he is drawing, that feel like a light at the end of a long, times have changeddark tunnel.|isbn=1398527122

|isbnauthor=1542017432Sylvie Cathrall|title=The Nidderdale Murders|author=J R EllisA Letter to the Luminous Deep|rating=35|genre=CrimeScience Fiction|summary=It was a Friday in mid-September when the shoot was held on the grouse moor near Niddersgill. The shooters at the butts were There are few greater joys than a strange mixture: Alexander Fraser (Sandy book which lives up to his friends) was the owner of the moor and a retired judgecompelling premise. James Symonds was a local landowner and Henry Saunders was a banker. He and Fraser had known each other since their school days. The fourth member was Gideon Rawnsley, who dealt in exclusive cars in nearby Ripon. Rawnsley had a gripe with Fraser: he'd sold him an expensive car and Fraser was being slow to pay. Other people had reason to comment on Fraser's attitude to money: his gamekeeper, Ian Davis thought he was stingy and very difficult to work forAnd this is one of them.|isbn= 0356522776

|isbn=02414335681786482126|title=Eight DetectivesThe Janus Stone (Dr Ruth Galloway)|author=Alex PavesiElly Griffiths|rating=4.5|genre=Crime (Historical)|summary=It's 1930 and Megan and Henry are staying with Bunny at his Builders were demolishing an old house in Spain. ItNorwich - the site was going to hold seventy-five 's unbearably hot and Bunny drank too much at lunch: heluxury's going to have apartments - when they discovered the bones of a child beneath a rest and then he wants to talk to Megan and Henry about something seriousdoorway. Only it never gets that far: when Bunny doesn't emerge after his siesta his guests find that he's been murderedThere was no skull. How can that have happenedWas this a ritual killing or murder? ThereInevitably, Dr Ruth Galloway finds herself working with DCI Harry Nelson. It's no difficult as Ruth knows, but Nelson doesn't, that she is pregnant with his child as a result of the one else in the housenight they spent together some three months ago. Her condition will be obvious before long, so one not least because Ruth is prone to sudden bouts of them must be the killersickness.

|isbnauthor=1526362759Guadalupe Nettel and Rosalind Harvey (Translator)|title=Dosh: How to Earn It, Save It, Spend It, Grow It, Give It|author=Rashmi SirdeshpandeThe Accidentals|rating=4.5|genre=Children's Non-FictionShort Stories|summary=What a relief! A book about money, for children, This collection was truly enchanting in all senses of the word: spellbinding with clear explanations of what it isits fantastical, why it matters, how to acquire more magical elements and charming in its gentle portrayal of it (nope - robbing banks is out) nature and what you can do with it when you've managed to get hold of ithuman relationships. Your reasons for wanting money don't matter: we all need it Guadalupe Nettel writes intelligently and precisely, her stories structured by a wisdom that appears to some extent. You might want to go into business, be a clever shopper, a saver (you might even become an ''investor'') and there might be teach us something you really, ''really'' want to buy. There's also the possibility of using to do good in about the world.|isbn=1804271470