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Book Reviews From The Bookbag (view source)
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|author=James BaldwinMaria Stepanova and Sasha Dugdale (Translator)|title=Giovanni's RoomThe Disappearing Act|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction |summary=''GiovanniDespite her anonymisation of place names and people, Stepanova's Room'' follows message in this short work of autofiction is unmistakable. A novelist named M travels from B (ostensibly Berlin) to the narrator David, an American man living in Paris, as he navigates his torturous affair with Giovanni, an Italian bartender he meets in town of F for a gay bar. While David literary festival she is engaged to Hellabe a guest speaker at. Detoured by erratic train schedules and nudged by forces beyond her control, who is travelling her journey slowly bends toward a traveling circus. Swept up in Spainthis series of events, the real tension M eventually offers to step in for a circus performer who has unexpectedly left the novel arises not from his infidelity but from the deeper conflict within himselfshow. It is David's crippling shame The train functions as a motif of transience and denial impermanence, while the circus embodies the reshaping of his sexuality identity and a retreat into fantasy, an impulse that ultimately dooms his relationship with Giovannilies at the very heart of the novel form itself.|isbn=01411863561804272329
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|authorisbn=Ashley Hickson-LovenceB0GFQ81YQK|title=Wild EastHow the Sky and the Earth Made People: From the Oral Stories of Malagasy Elders|author=Stephanie Zabriskie
|rating=4.5
|genre=TeensChildren's Non-Fiction|summary=Written in verseBefore people came and joined the animals, this is Ronny's story, a young black fourteen year old boy from Hackney who suddenly has to move to Norwich there was only the sky and start at a mostly white schoolthe earth. The move is initiated by Ronny's mum who is worried for Ronny's safety after a tragic event, Everything was quiet until the earth and so Ronny finds himself trying the sky began to tal to settle in a new towneach other. First, a new schoolthe earth created bodies. And then, the sky breathed life into them. These were the first humans and keep himself out of trouble. He listens they belonged to music constantly, both earth and has always dreamed of being a rappersky. But now, in this new schoolAnd so people lived between sky and soil and they planted and learned and remembered, his teacher encourages him especially how they came to be part of a poetry writing workshop group . When they grew old anddied, slowly, Ronny begins their bodies returned to see the connections between rap earth and poetry, their life returned to the sky. And that is why the earth and the power of creativity sky are both revered. Only together can they create human beings. And that is why people must pay attention to, and crafting your wordscare for, both.|isbn=0241645441
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|isbn=1635866847B0GHPMNF6P|title=The Lavender CompanionZookeeper's Dragon: A Magical Modern Fantasy Tale for Grown-Ups|author=Jessica Dunham and Terry Barlin VesciCarolyn Mathews
|rating=4.5
|genre=LifestyleFantasy|summary=ItWhen Phil's strangefather unexpectedly dies, he quits his Canary Wharf finance job to take over the things that make you ''immediately'' feel that this is running of the book for you. Before I started reading ''The Lavender Companion'', I visited the authorfamily's [https://wwwfarm zoo.pinelavenderfarm.com/ website] and thereHe's not expecting much excitement, until he receives an unidentified egg that his new-age stoner uncle Edgar found in a picture of a slice of chocolate cake on the homepage. I don't eat cakes cave in New Zealand, and desserts - but I wanted that cake viscerallysuddenly life is no longer quite what it seems. (There's Then the egg hatches into neither a reptile nor a recipe in the bookbird, which I'm avoiding with some difficultybut a dragon!!) Then I started reading Now he, Edgar, his mother Abi, and the book and I was told zoo's part-time café waitress Pearl have to make a mess raise this little bundle of it. Notes in the margins are sanctioned. You get scales and joy, despite having no idea how to fold down the corners of pages. You suspect that smears of butter would actually raise dragons and not be a problembeing able to tell anyone about it. I ''loved'' But this book already.tiny little dragon may show them love and connection in ways they had never before imagined…
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|author=Jacqueline FeldmanStephanie Zabriskie|title=Precarious LeaseHow Maasai Women Spoke to Cows: From the Oral Stories of Maasai Elders|rating=3.5|genre=BiographyChildren's Non-Fiction|summary=The title of this novel refers ''How Maasai Women Spoke to Cows is a French legal term (''bail précaire'') associated with squatters children’s nonfiction book drawn from the oral traditions of Maasai elders in FranceNgorongoro, affording them temporary suspension from eviction charges and processes, but few scant property rightsTanzania. Among mentions of other squats dotted around Paris like Le Carrosse '' The Maasai are a cattle-herding people and La Miroiterie, Feldman takes particular interest in one squat of massive proportions which adopted an almost mythical status for this story writes down its inhabitants, admirers and detractors alike: Le Blocoral tradition explaining how they came to be so. Something like a haven for artists Cattle are status and marginal members of society (as one character, Le Général, repeats throughout, wealth in Maasai culture but this doesn''I live on t tell the margins whole story of the margins of the margins'')intimate and symbiotic connection its people, and especially its women, Le Bloc was subject to the continual threat of eviction have with their cows and for the pressures from above which oppressed its inhabitants' livesnatural world. We follow Le Bloc from its opening in 2012 until its eventual dissolutionThe oral tradition retelling the many conversations Maasai women have had with their cows, framed as a tragedy in this bookdoes. |isbn=1804271403B0G9WTGY6J
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|author=Jenny ValentineLivi Michael|title=Us in the Before Elizabeth and AfterRuth|rating=3.5|genre=TeensHistorical Fiction|summary=Elk ''Elizabeth and Mab are Ruth'' is a work of historical fiction wrought from the life of the Victorian author Elizabeth Gaskell, best friendsknown for her first novel Mary Barton (1848), or more than that even, their friendship is a once radical critique of the treatment of the working class published under a pseudonym. The ''Ruth'' from Livi Michael's title appears in her novel as Pasley, a lifetime connection. They meet young Irish prostitute who was abandoned as children one day on a trip out but unfortunately they don't get each otherchild and finds herself in Manchester's contact details New Bailey Prison after a difficult and unjust hand at the timelife. But then chance brings them back together, Set in Manchester between 1839 and they are inseparable. Something has happened though1842, something terrible the novel examines the harsh conditions endured by the Victorian working poor and tragic, and now they must work through their grief, and their friendship, togetherinterrogates the extent to which the wealthy (including Gaskell herself) were responsible for addressing these injustices.|isbn=14711965851784633682
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|isbnauthor=1529425905Makenna Goodman|title=A Voice in the Night (A D I Wilkins Mystery)|author=Simon MasonHelen of Nowhere
|rating=4.5
|genre=CrimeLiterary Fiction|summary=There's It could be argued that the pervading theme of this book is malaise - a new Superintendent hard-to-place feeling that something in Thames Valley — DCS Wainwright—and she's youngyour life is not quite right. The protagonist, ambitious, and ruthless. She talks a good talk about work/life balance disgraced professor on the brink of losing both his career and family valueshis relationship, but as far as she's concernedembodies this feeling. However, she has two main problems, and they're both called DI Wilkins. Ray Wilkins Goodman counteracts his discomfort with a force which is of Nigerian descentseductive, Baliol educated radical and always immaculately dressedunnerving: Helen. He's married to Diane The connection between Helen and has twin sonsthe protagonist is indirect yet intimate. Management's opinion As the former owner of him is that he thinks too highly of himself and his last boss felt that he needed more experience at what the countryside house he called 'the wet end'. Ryan Wilkins comes from s considering, Helen represents a trailer park - volta in facthis life, it could be said that he's never really left ither past tied to his potential fresh start. He lives in shell suits The realtor who shows the protagonist around the house shares stories about Helen, and tracksuits, always in vivid colours. Previous management was adamant that he should describes her as ''neveran entity that is pure consciousness, beyond form'' be given responsibility. Wainwright feels that Although she would be best shut of both of themlives in an assisted living facility now, Helen has powers beyond comprehension which the reader gets the sense are not altogether innocuous.|isbn=1804272205
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|isbn=1787333175B0GCB1MQ7D|title=You Don't Have to be Mad to Work HereWhy My Mother Went Away|author=Benji WaterhouseAlan Kennedy
|rating=5
|genre=Popular ScienceAutobiography|summary=I was tempted have often wondered how prominent people came to read hold their positions. With 'celebrities'You Don, there't Have to be Mad to Work Here'' after enjoying Adam Kays frequently a book they might or might not have written, which might or might not tell the true story. It's first not often that you find a book {{amazonurl|isbn=1509858636|title=This that gives the full backstory, and rarely do you discover a memoir where the telling is Going to Hurt}}so perfect that you'll go back and reread paragraphs and sentences, a glorious mixture of insight into just for the workings of pleasure the NHS, humour and autobiographywords give. ''You DonWhy My Mother Went Away't Have to be Mad..' is one of those rare exceptions. It'' promised s the same elements but moved story of how a boy from physical problems to mental illness and the work Midlands, born at the beginning of the Second World War, would become a psychiatristProfessor of Psychology at Dundee University. I did wonder whether it In fact, he was acceptable to be looking for humour in this setting but one of the founders of the laughter is directed at a situation rather than a person and it is always delivered with empathy and understandingdepartment.
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|author=Mariana EnriquezJeremy Cooper|title=A Sunny Place for Shady PeopleDiscord|rating=3.5|genre=Short StoriesLiterary Fiction|summary=Mariana Enriquez writes horror that is disturbingly real, achieving this uncanny familiarity by basing her paranormal plots on gritty realitiesDiscord: her settings include an abandoned field full a lack of disused refrigerators due to an urban planning mishapagreement or harmony (as between persons, things, an overcrowded homeless shelter and a crime-ridden neighbourhood where safety meetings are routine - all within Argentina. The circumstances of her characters are so plausible that the supernatural or otherworldly horror which seeps into these spaces adopts a similarly tangible texture. ideas)|isbn=1803511230}}{{Frontpage|author=Onyi Nwabineli|title=Allow Me to Introduce Myself|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Anuri spent her childhood on display to The principal example of discord within the worldnovel, thanks to her step-mother Ophelia's increasingly popular presence on social mediaas with most instances of discord, where she posted every step is easily located. The two protagonists of Anuri's childhood for sponsorships and influencer deals the novel, Rebekah Rosen andEvie Bennet, basically, monetary gainare as different as they come. Now Anuri Rebekah is in her twenties an uptight, traditional and she is slowly trying no-nonsense composer close to regain her confidence and to get her life backretirement, suing her step-mother to take down the content about her. Anuri while Evie is battling alcoholisma force of nature, failing to start her PhDbounding onto the musical scene as a precocious saxophonist, undergoing therapy oozing with talent and secretly abusing people online and receiving money from them for doing socharm. Most importantlyThe two, she is desperately worried about her little sisterpredictably, who is the new focus of Opheliadon's online empire. Can she save her sistert always see eye to eye, their approaches different and perhaps herself and her relationship Evie's progressive views at odds with her father at the same time?|isbn=0861546873}}{{Frontpage|author=David Chadwick|title=Headload of Napalm|rating=4.5|genre=Thrillers|summary= ItRebekah's September 1973 in Hicksconservative leaning. However, California. Hicks is something connects them beyond just their musical project: a Mojave desert town sort of a few thousand people with its nearest neighbours of LA and Las Vegas both a significant drive away. Not much happens in Hicks. A silver mine and a defence contractor are fragile alliance formed within the main local employers but otherwise, there's not much of note other than dive bars and Joshua trees. Life is quiet, until...clamour.|isbn= B0D321VJ761804272264
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{{Frontpage|author=Edward W Said|title=Representations of the Intellectual |rating=4.5|genre=Politics and Society|summary=Edward Said's ''Representations of the Intellectual'' is less a strict theory of what intellectuals are and more a passionate argument for what they should be. Said clearly rejects the comfortable image of the intellectual as a detached expert speaking only to other specialists. Instead, he insists on the intellectual as a public figure, often awkward, abrasive, and unpopular, who speaks truth to power even when it is inconvenient or risky.|isbn=1804272248}}
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|author=Sylvie Cathrall
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|isbn=0008551375|title=When Shadows Fall (D S Max Craigie)|author=Joan DidionNeil Lancaster|rating=4.5|genre=Crime|summary=Leanne Wilson's body was found at the bottom of a Scottish mountain, seemingly the result of a tragic accident. She'd looked so happy, too, when she posted her intentions on Facebook. Her friends were relieved as she was just out of an unpleasant relationship, but it looked like she was living her best life now. Then it emerged that five other women had died in similar circumstances in the last year. All were experienced climbers, properly equipped for what they were doing and sensible people. None of the 'what a stupid thing to do' explanations applied. They were all alone when they died: DS Max Craigie is certain there's a killer on the loose.}}{{Frontpage|author=Paul B Preciado|title=The Year of Magical ThinkingDysphoria Mundi
|rating=4.5
|genre=AutobiographyPolitics and Society|summary=This book ''It is Joan Didionnever too late to embrace the revolutionary optimism of childhood''s heartbreaking autobiographical account 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 the new generation, a new feeling mechanism in which detachment is not considered a sign of political apathy. Rather, it is the grief she endured following her husbandproportional, valid response to ''the 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''s sudden death. Books The whole text is framed against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic as that shed light which has catalysed this revolution, when dysphoria began to emerge on taboo topics like death are such a beautiful and necessary resource to help people feel less aloneglobal scale, or as ''pangea covidica''. Didion unpicks unpleasant feelings surrounding death like self-pityRather than taking this extreme dysphoria as a sign of weakness, denial and delusion and makes them utterly normalor mistaking detachment or withdrawal for political paralysis, lends them a human face Preciado urges his readers to wear''use dysphoria as your revolutionary platform''.|isbn=00072168581804271454
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|summary=In 2024, Samantha Harvey won the Booker Prize for ''Orbital'', a compact yet profound work that unfolds over a single day in the lives of a group of astronauts aboard the International Space Station. Through a narrative lens that mirrors the astronauts' orbital perspective, Harvey invites readers to see our planet in a wholly new light.
|isbn=1529922933
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|isbn=295967572X
|title=Pale Pieces
|author=G M Stevens
|rating=5
|genre=Literary 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 ''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.
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|isbn=02416784121035043092|title=The Proof of My InnocenceKilling Stones (Jimmy Perez)|author=Jonathan CoeAnn Cleeves|rating=45|genre=ThrillersCrime|summary=Life after university hasnI can't worked out quite have been the way that Phyl anticipatedonly 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. SheIt's back homebeen seven years since we heard from him, but he's now living with her parents Willow Reeves and on a zero-hours contract serving sushi to tourists at terminal 5 their young son, James, as well as Cassie, the daughter of Heathrow Airporthis former partner. All those ideas of becoming a writer seem to have come to nothing. The situation improves when Willow's also his boss, and she ''should'Uncle' Chris comes to stay and introduces Phyl to his adopted daughterbe on maternity leave, Rashida. Christopher Swann (described by some as but when the body of a lefty blogger) popular islander, Archie Stout, is investigating a think tank which originated at Cambridge University found, in the 1980saftermath of a storm, she can't resist getting involved. It plans to push He'd been battered about the government in head with a Neolithic stone - one of a pair - which had been stolen from a more extreme direction and is ready to actmuseum.
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|isbnauthor= 1836282028Thea Lenarduzzi|title=The Fighting Spirit|author=Rob KeeleyTower|rating=45|genre=Confident ReadersLiterary Fiction|summary=''Would you like to adopt a ghost?How unctuous are the fats of another's life, how dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream''.
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|isbnauthor=1739526910Claire-Louise Bennett|title=Where I've Not Been Lost|author=Glen SibleyBig Kiss, Bye-Bye
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=''One year after a suicide attempt blows apart musician Brian O’Malley's lifeEverything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, he arrives is steeped in an unfamiliar Devon town to recoveranguish and distortion. Living with an unexpected housemate at his former manager’s holiday homeEven a kiss, usually a symbol of intimacy and closeness, he dreams becomes evidence of reconnecting with everything he has love lost. But as those tentative plans falterWhen the narrator cries out internally, ''come over here and kiss me, he becomes swept up in '' it is less an invitation than a local world desperate attempt to confirm her emotional numbness. The imagined recipient of unlikely friendshipsthis plea is Xavier, mobile discos and surprising romantic possibilitiesher ex-partner, a ghost she conjures to test her detachment.''|isbn=1804271934
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|genre=Crime
|summary=It's sixteen years since nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her bed one summer night. She was never found and the investigation ground to a halt. Now, her mother, Helena, and her father are dead in their bed. Initially, it looks like a straightforward murder/suicide but there'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 now a complex double murder. Kerrigan is convinced that the explanation lies in Rosalie's disappearance: others (such as Derwent's boss, Una Burt) are less convinced.
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|author=Annie Ernaux and Alison L. Strayer (translator)
|title=The Other Girl
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=''We were born from the same body. I've never really wanted to think about this.''
Ernaux's work is always very candid and her tone transparent, but this raw epistolary text must be one of the most 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 sister died of diphtheria at 6 years old, a few months before the vaccine was made compulsory in France, and 2 years before the author was even born. 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 her life, an absence that she has always felt but often denied.
|isbn=1804271845
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|author=Maxim Gorky and Bryan Karetnyk (translator)
|title=Reminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev
|rating=3.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Biographies are often seen as the form of life-writing which offers less colour; it can be seen as more objective and less personal. I think that Gorky completely rejects this perspective, and offers a vibrant, subjective yet informed portrait of three of his literary contemporaries. In the first section of this book, Tolstoy complains to his friend Gorky that: ''you write not of real life as it is, but of what you yourself imagine it to be. Whom would it help to know how I see this tower, that sea, or that Tartar - why should it interest anyone? Of what use is it?''. Well, Maxim Gorky shows exactly what can be gained from a subjective account, giving us access to how he saw Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev in such privileged detail that one almost feels unworthy of it.
|isbn=1804271977
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|isbnauthor=1399613073Olga Tokarczuk|title=Moral Injuries|author=Christie WatsonHouse of Day, House of Night|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersLiterary Fiction|summary=Olivia, Laura and Anjali met on ''What's the first day good of medical school and their friendship would keep them inseparable for a quarter world that keeps changing like that? How can one go on calmly living in it?'' The title of this spellbinding work, ''House of a century. Olivia is ruthlessly ambitiousDay, which is a bonus when you aim to be a cardiothoracic surgeon. Laura is a perfectionist and a trauma doctor. Anjali is the free spirit House of the group and she becomes a GP. When we first meet them theyNight''re at a drug and alcohol, somewhat reflects this notion of shifting realities -fuelled party and it's going the small, subtle changes which govern our lives, like the shift from day to end in tragedynight, however quotidian, causing chaos. We don't know who suffered But, the tragedy or the consequences. Twenty-five years later there will be an eerily similar event constant in that will impact image is the three friends. This timehouse, stoic against the ancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it's their teenage children who are involvedis perceived.|isbn=1804271918
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|isbn=02416366041836284683|title=The Trading Game: A ConfessionBig Happy|author=Gary StevensonDavid Chadwick
|rating=4.5
|genre=AutobiographyDystopian Fiction|summary=If you were to bring up an image of Well! This is a murder mystery unlike any other! I do love it when I open a city banker in your mindbook, youit're unlikely s nothing like I expected it to think of someone like Gary Stevenson. A hoodie and jeans replaces the pin-stripe suit and his background is the East Endbe, where he was familiar with violence, poverty and injustice. There was no posh public school it takes me on his CV - but he had been to the London School of Economics. Stevenson is bright - extremely bright - and he has a facility with numbers which most of us can only envywild ride. He also realised And that most rich people expect poor people to be stupid. It was his ability at is just what was, essentially, a card game which got him an internship happened with Citibank. Eventually, this turned into permanent employment as a trader.}}{{Frontpage|author=Leanne Egan|title=Lover Birds|rating=4.5|genre=Teens|summary=When new girl, Isabel, moves to Lou's hometown of Liverpool from London Lou immediately feels Isabel's disdain for everything around her. A misunderstanding between them leaves them hating each other, but Lou feels her pulse racing every time she looks at Isabel or speaks with her, and thatThe Big Happy's definitely because Isabel makes her feel so cross, isn't it? Because Lou is straight, isn. I don't she? Even though none want to ruin a similar experience for any of her relationships with boys you reading but I'll have gone very well so far, and sheto at least set the scene. Once that's never had a good kiss with any of them? So she just finds herself watching Isabeldone, and wanting to hang out with her because fighting with her is fun, and she definitely just hates Isabel, doesn't she?|isbn=000862657XI think you should simply experience this wonderfully original story for yourself.
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|summary=Sally Rooney has 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 readers to 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 successful lawyer living in Dublin. Following their father's passing after a long battle with cancer, the brothers' already strained relationship faces new trials.
|isbn=0571365469
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|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, he is an aspiring writer. English is his favourite lesson at his school, Marlowe Park, and one at which he excels. 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 different school, Station Road, where his ability might be better extended.
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|author=Mark LinganeJenny Valentine|title=ChimeraUs in the Before and After|rating=4.5|genre=Science FictionTeens|summary=''The survivor stumbles forwardElk and Mab are best friends, or more than that even, her steps echoing their friendship is a once in the oppressive silence. Her heart pounds like a jackhammer. She doesn’t know where she’s heading. All she remembers is running. Terror chasing. Everything lost.'' ''Broken and fragmented recollections tumble around her headlifetime connection. Fear courses through her body. Her breaths come in shallow, ragged gasps They meet as desperation claws at her throat. Dehydration consumes her, and children one day on a raging thirst feels unquenchable.trip out but unfortunately they don't get each other' ''There must be a way out. As she moves through s contact details at the foreign area, memories begin to geltime. Disaster had ploughed through her life—not just hers But then chance brings them back together, everyone’sand they are inseparable.'' As our survivor struggles to orient herself Something has happened though, she's guided by a robotsomething terrible and tragic, which looks human-made, but she can't be sure. It says it is. It says she and now they must try not to injure herself. Guided to an interview with an eeriework through their grief, terrifying group of aliens, she desperately tries to make sense of flashes of memory - environmental degradation, deals done and then betrayed, horrifying rituals covering desperate attempts to survive - and to attempt to explain how she came to be heretheir friendship, apparently the last human being alivetogether.|isbn=B0DNVWMYP21471196585
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|authorisbn=Max Boucherat1787333175|title=The Last Life of Lori MillsYou Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here|author=Benji Waterhouse|rating=4.5|genre=Confident ReadersPopular Science|summary=We meet Lori on the first evening sheI was tempted to read ''You Don's got the house t Have to herself – no neighbour be Mad to pop in, babysitter poorly, mother at work, just an avidly rule-breaking eleven year old, on her lonesome. What could possibly go wrong? Snuggled in a blanket fort, she has one main intention, and that is to log on to Voxminer, the world-building, critter-collecting game that is a hit in LoriWork Here'' after enjoying Adam Kay's world. But first Lori has a tiny inkling that this stormy night doesn't find herself entirely on her own, and then she finds something even more spooky. For the server she and her bestie and nobody else should be able to enter shows signs of tampering. When malevolent eyes spark up on her phone screen, and her safe place in the game has been doctored – well, where is a girl to turn?|isbn=0008666482}}book {{Frontpageamazonurl|isbn=00083850681509858636|title=The Midnight Feast|author=Lucy Foley|rating=4.5|genre=Thrillers|summary=It's midsummer on This is Going to Hurt}}, a glorious mixture of insight into the workings of the Dorset coast NHS, humour and guests gather at The Manorautobiography. It's their opening weekend and splendid celebrations are promised'You Don't Have to be Mad... It's all headed up by Francesca Meadows. The Manor was her ancestral home and she's converted it into an impressive retreat for promised the wealthy same elements but moved from physical problems to mental illness and famous. Her husband, Owen, was the architect and work is still ongoing on parts of the sitea psychiatrist. The heat is oppressive and amongst the guests are enemies as well as friends. Old scores are going I did wonder whether it was acceptable to be settled looking for humour in this setting but the laughter is directed at a situation rather than a person and it won't be long before a body is foundalways delivered with empathy and understanding.
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