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{{Frontpage
|isbn=0008405026Zabriskie1|title=A Stranger Village Where Many Ways Meet: A Story of Belonging and Community, Rooted in Indigenous Wisdom|author=Stephanie Zabriskie|rating=5|genre=Children's Non-Fiction|summary=''Across many African and Indigenous systems, differences in how children learn, sense , or process the world were not treated as disorders to be corrected. They were understood as natural variations of human intelligence and awareness, each holding value within the Family (Maeve Kerrigan 11)community.'' This lovely story is a synthesis of that tradition, which was carried down through generations by oral retellings. It shows that a community or society is not made up from interchangeable building blocks of human beings but by a range of people with different skills and different personalities, all contributing to a whole that combines them all and to the benefit of them all.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1787333175|title=You Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here|author=Jane CaseyBenji Waterhouse
|rating=5
|genre=CrimePopular Science|summary=ItI was tempted to read ''You Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here'' after enjoying Adam Kay's sixteen years since nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her bed one summer night. She was never found and the investigation ground first book {{amazonurl|isbn=1509858636|title=This is Going to Hurt}}, a halt. Now, her mother, Helenaglorious mixture of insight into the workings of the NHS, humour and her father are dead in their bedautobiography. Initially, it looks like a straightforward murder/suicide ''You Don't Have to be Mad...'' promised the same elements but there's something about moved from physical problems to mental illness and the positioning work of the bodies that makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and her boss DI Josh Derwent suspiciousa psychiatrist. What looked as though I did wonder whether it was going acceptable to be an open-looking for humour in this setting but the laughter is directed at a situation rather than a person and-shut case it is now a complex double murderalways delivered with empathy and understanding. Kerrigan }}{{Frontpage|author=Maria Stepanova and Sasha Dugdale (Translator)|title=The Disappearing Act|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Despite her anonymisation of place names and people, Stepanova's message in this short work of autofiction is convinced that unmistakable. A novelist named M travels from B (ostensibly Berlin) to the explanation lies town of F for a literary festival she is to be a guest speaker at. Detoured by erratic train schedules and nudged by forces beyond her control, her journey slowly bends toward a traveling circus. Swept up in this series of events, M eventually offers to step in Rosalie's disappearance: others (such for a circus performer who has unexpectedly left the show. The train functions as Derwent's bossa motif of transience and impermanence, while the circus embodies the reshaping of identity and a retreat into fantasy, Una Burt) are less convincedan impulse that lies at the very heart of the novel form itself.|isbn=1804272329
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=1529077745B0GFQ81YQK|title=The Dark Wives (D I Vera Stanhope)How the Sky and the Earth Made People: From the Oral Stories of Malagasy Elders|author=Ann CleevesStephanie Zabriskie
|rating=4.5
|genre=CrimeChildren's Non-Fiction|summary=A man walking his dog in Before people came and joined the early morning discovered animals, there was only the body of a man in sky and the park near Rosebank, a care home for troubled teensearth. The dead man Everything was Josh - one of quiet until the earth and the care workers who was due sky began to tal to work a shift each other. First, the night before but who had never turned upearth created bodies. D I Vera Stanhope is called in to investigate And then, the murder - but her only clue is sky breathed life into them. These were the disappearance of one of the residentsfirst humans and they belonged to both earth and sky. And so people lived between sky and soil and they planted and learned and remembered, fourteen-year-especially how they came to be. When they grew old Chloe Spencerand died, their bodies returned to the earth and their life returned to the sky. Some people believe And that Chloe was responsible for is why the death but Vera thinks this is unlikely as earth and the girl's diary makes it clear that she adored Joshsky are both revered. Only together can they create human beings. She knows And that she has is why people must pay attention to find Chloe to discover what happened to Josh, and care for, both.
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=1399613073B0GHPMNF6P|title=Moral InjuriesThe Zookeeper's Dragon: A Magical Modern Fantasy Tale for Grown-Ups|author=Christie WatsonCarolyn Mathews
|rating=4.5
|genre=ThrillersFantasy|summary=OliviaWhen Phil's father unexpectedly dies, Laura and Anjali met on he quits his Canary Wharf finance job to take over the first day running of medical school and their friendship would keep them inseparable for a quarter of a centurythe family's farm zoo. Olivia is ruthlessly ambitiousHe's not expecting much excitement, which is until he receives an unidentified egg that his new-age stoner uncle Edgar found in a bonus when you aim to be a cardiothoracic surgeon. Laura cave in New Zealand, and suddenly life is a perfectionist and a trauma doctorno longer quite what it seems. Anjali is Then the free spirit of the group and she becomes egg hatches into neither a reptile nor a GP. When we first meet them they're at bird, but a drug dragon! Now he, Edgar, his mother Abi, and alcohol-fuelled party and itthe zoo's going to end in tragedy. We don't know who suffered the tragedy or the consequences. Twentypart-five years later there will be an eerily similar event that will impact the three friends. This timecafé waitress Pearl have to raise this little bundle of scales and joy, despite having no idea how to actually raise dragons and not being able to tell anyone about it's their teenage children who are involved.But this tiny little dragon may show them love and connection in ways they had never before imagined…
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0241636604Stephanie Zabriskie|title=The Trading GameHow Maasai Women Spoke to Cows: A Confession|author=Gary StevensonFrom the Oral Stories of Maasai Elders|rating=4.5|genre=AutobiographyChildren's Non-Fiction|summary=If you were ''How Maasai Women Spoke to bring up an image Cows is a children’s nonfiction book drawn from the oral traditions of a city banker Maasai elders in your mindNgorongoro, youTanzania.'re unlikely ' The Maasai are a cattle-herding people and this story writes down its oral tradition explaining how they came to think of someone like Gary Stevensonbe so. A hoodie Cattle are status and jeans replaces the pin-stripe suit and his background is the East End, where he was familiar with violence, poverty and injustice. There was no posh public school on his CV - wealth in Maasai culture but he had been to this doesn't tell the London School whole story of Economics. Stevenson is bright - extremely bright - the intimate and he has a facility with numbers which most of us can only envy. He also realised that most rich symbiotic connection its people expect poor people to be stupid. It was his ability at what was, essentiallyand especially its women, a card game which got him an internship have with Citibanktheir cows and for the natural world. EventuallyThe oral tradition retelling the many conversations Maasai women have had with their cows, this turned into permanent employment as a traderdoes.|isbn=B0G9WTGY6J
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{{Frontpage
|author=Leanne EganLivi Michael|title=Lover BirdsElizabeth and Ruth|rating=43.5|genre=TeensHistorical Fiction|summary=When new girl, Isabel, moves to Lou's hometown 'Elizabeth and Ruth'' is a work of Liverpool historical fiction wrought from London Lou immediately feels Isabel's disdain the life of the Victorian author Elizabeth Gaskell, best known for everything around herfirst novel Mary Barton (1848), a radical critique of the treatment of the working class published under a pseudonym. 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 ''Ruth's definitely because Isabel makes her feel so cross, isn't it? Because Lou is straight, isnfrom Livi Michael't she? Even though none of s title appears in her relationships with boys have gone very well so farnovel as Pasley, a young Irish prostitute who was abandoned as a child and shefinds herself in Manchester's never had New Bailey Prison after a good kiss with any of them? So she just finds herself watching Isabeldifficult and unjust hand at life. Set in Manchester between 1839 and 1842, the novel examines the harsh conditions endured by the Victorian working poor and wanting interrogates the extent to hang out with her because fighting with her is fun, and she definitely just hates Isabel, doesn't she?which the wealthy (including Gaskell herself) were responsible for addressing these injustices.|isbn=000862657X1784633682
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{{Frontpage
|author=Sally RooneyMakenna Goodman|title=IntermezzoHelen of Nowhere
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Literary Fiction |summary=Sally Rooney has studied It could be argued that the chessboard pervading theme of life and this book is malaise - a hard-to-place feeling that something of a grandmaster at putting it into words. Her dialogue in your life is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, as her characters never not quite say exactly what they feelright. Among The protagonist, a disgraced professor on the many relationships woven into brink of losing both his career and his relationship, embodies this storyfeeling. However, Goodman counteracts his discomfort with a force which is seductive, radical and unnerving: Helen. The connection between Helen and the central one for readers to unravel protagonist is indirect yet intimate. As the former owner of the fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. Ivancountryside house he's considering, Helen represents a socially awkward chess prodigyvolta in his life, contrasts sharply with her past tied to his older brother Peterpotential fresh start. The realtor who shows the protagonist around the house shares stories about Helen, a successful lawyer and describes her as ''an entity that is pure consciousness, beyond form''. Although she lives in an assisted living in Dublin. Following their father's passing after a long battle with cancerfacility now, Helen has powers beyond comprehension which the reader gets the brothers' already strained relationship faces new trialssense are not altogether innocuous.|isbn=05713654691804272205
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=1009473085B0GCB1MQ7D|title=The Conservative Effect 2010 - 2024Why My Mother Went Away|author=Anthony Seldon and Tom Egerton (Editors)Alan Kennedy
|rating=5
|genre=Politics and SocietyAutobiography|summary=Sometimes it's simpler to explain a book by describing what it ''isn't'' and that applies I have often wondered how prominent people came to ''The Conservative Effect: 2010-2024 - 14 Wasted Years?''hold their positions. If youWith 're looking for an easy read which will deliver the inside story about what celebrities', there'really'' happened on certain occasionss frequently a book they might or might not have written, then this isn't which might or might not tell the book for youtrue story. If thatIt's what not often that you're looking for, I don't think Anthony Seldon's find a bookthat gives the full backstory, {{amazonurl|isbn=B0BH7SKG2S|title=Johnson at 10}}, can be bettered for those tumultuous years. Itand rarely do you discover a memoir where the telling is so perfect that you's a compelling read ll go back and reread paragraphs and should be compulsory sentences, just for anyone who thinks Johnson should return to politicsthe pleasure the words give. ''The Conservative EffectWhy My Mother Went Away'' is an entirely different beastone of those rare exceptions. It's the seventh book in story of how a series which looks boy from the Midlands, born at the impact beginning of the Second World War, would become a government has made and co-editor Sir Anthony Seldon regards this as the most importantProfessor of Psychology at Dundee University. This book follows the well-established format: a series In fact, he was one of experts from various fields review the state founders of the nation when the coalition took over in 2010, the changes that occurred and the situation in 2024department.
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{{Frontpage
|author=Mark LinganeJeremy Cooper|title=ChimeraDiscord|rating=43.5|genre=Science Literary Fiction|summary=''The survivor stumbles forwardDiscord: a lack of agreement or harmony (as between persons, her steps echoing 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.''things, or ideas)
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{{Frontpage
|author=Max BoucheratTom Percival|title=The Last Life of Lori MillsWrong Shoes|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=We meet Lori on the first evening sheWill's got life is difficult, in a multitude of ways. He is bullied because he has 'the house to herself – no neighbour to pop inwrong shoes', babysitter poorlyhe has the wrong shoes because his dad can't work and doesn't have enough money for even the most basic of things like food, mother and his dad can't work because he lost his job at workthe college, just an avidly rulewas working a cash-in-breaking eleven year old, hand job on her lonesomea building site and had an accident. What could possibly go wrong? Snuggled in a blanket fort, she has one main intention, and Throw into that is to log on to Voxminer, mix the world-buildingfact that his mum and dad are separated, critter-collecting game that is a hit in Loriand Will's worldlife seems bleak in every direction. But first Lori And yet, he still has a tiny inkling that this stormy night doesn't find herself entirely on her own, and then she finds something even more spookyamount of hope. For the server she He is good at art, and her bestie and nobody else should be able clings to enter shows signs the moments of tampering. When malevolent eyes spark up on her phone screenjoy when he is drawing, and her safe place in that feel like a light at the game has been doctored – wellend of a long, where is a girl to turn?dark tunnel.|isbn=00086664821398527122
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{{Frontpage
|author=Fyodor DostoyevskyEdward W Said|title=White NightsRepresentations of the Intellectual |rating=4.5|genre=Short StoriesPolitics and Society|summary=As always in Dostoyevsky, Edward Said's ''Representations of the character work Intellectual'' is sublimeless a strict theory of what intellectuals are and more a passionate argument for what they should be. One is never left wondering what 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 character public figure, often awkward, abrasive, and unpopular, who speaks truth to power even when it is thinking inconvenient or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and temperaments with remarkable clarityrisky.|isbn=02416197851804272248
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0008385068Sylvie Cathrall|title=The Midnight Feast|author=Lucy FoleyA Letter to the Luminous Deep|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersScience Fiction|summary=It's midsummer on the Dorset coast and guests gather at The Manor. It's their opening weekend and splendid celebrations There are promised. It's all headed few greater joys than a book which lives up by Francesca Meadows. The Manor was her ancestral home and she's converted it into an impressive retreat for the wealthy and famousto a compelling premise. Her husband, Owen, was the architect and work And this is still ongoing on parts one of the site. The heat is oppressive and amongst the guests are enemies as well as friends. Old scores are going to be settled and it won't be long before a body is foundthem.|isbn= 0356522776
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=James Baldwin1786482126|title=Giovanni's RoomThe Janus Stone (Dr Ruth Galloway)|author=Elly Griffiths
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction Crime|summary=Builders were demolishing an old house in Norwich - the site was going to hold seventy-five 'luxury'Giovanniapartments - when they discovered the bones of a child beneath a doorway. There was no skull. Was this a ritual killing or murder? Inevitably, Dr Ruth Galloway finds herself working with DCI Harry Nelson. It's Roomdifficult as Ruth knows, but Nelson doesn'' follows the narrator David, an American man living in Parist, that she is pregnant with his child as he navigates his torturous affair with Giovanni, an Italian bartender he meets in a gay barresult of the one night they spent together some three months ago. While David is engaged to Hella, who is travelling in Spain Her condition will be obvious before long, the real tension in the novel arises not from his infidelity but from the deeper conflict within himself. It least because Ruth is David's crippling shame and denial prone to sudden bouts of his sexuality that ultimately dooms his relationship with Giovannisickness.|isbn=0141186356
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Ashley Hickson-Lovence0008551375|title=Wild EastWhen Shadows Fall (D S Max Craigie)|author=Neil Lancaster
|rating=4.5
|genre=TeensCrime|summary=Written in verse, this is RonnyLeanne Wilson's storybody was found at the bottom of a Scottish mountain, seemingly the result of a young black fourteen year old boy from Hackney who suddenly has to move to Norwich and start at a mostly white schooltragic accident. The move is initiated by RonnyShe's mum who is worried for Ronny's safety after a tragic event, and d looked so Ronny finds himself trying to settle in a new townhappy, a new schooltoo, and keep himself when she posted her intentions on Facebook. Her friends were relieved as she was just out of troublean 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. He listens to music constantlyAll were experienced climbers, properly equipped for what they were doing and has always dreamed sensible people. None of being the 'what a rapperstupid thing to do' explanations applied. But now, in this new school, his teacher encourages him to be part of They were all alone when they died: DS Max Craigie is certain there's a poetry writing workshop group and, slowly, Ronny begins to see killer on the connections between rap and poetry, and the power of creativity and crafting your wordsloose.|isbn=0241645441
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1635866847Paul B Preciado|title=The Lavender Companion|author=Jessica Dunham and Terry Barlin VesciDysphoria Mundi
|rating=4.5
|genre=LifestylePolitics and Society|summary=It's strange, the things that make you ''immediately'' feel that this It is never too late to embrace the book for you. Before I started reading ''The Lavender Companionrevolutionary optimism of childhood'' Through this hybrid text, consisting of arias, letters, essays and autofiction, Preciado expresses his own hybrid self, I visited and brings forth a new sensorium as an offering to the author's [https://www.pinelavenderfarm.com/ website] and there's new generation, a picture of new feeling mechanism in which detachment is not considered a slice sign of chocolate cake on political apathy. Rather, it is the homepage. I donproportional, valid response to ''t eat cakes the epistemological and desserts - but I wanted political crack we are living through, and the tension between emancipatory forces and conservative resistances that cake viscerally. (Therecharacterize our present''s a recipe in the book, which IPreciado calls ''dysphoria mundi''m avoiding with some difficulty!!) Then I started reading . The whole text is framed against the book and I was told to make a mess backdrop of it. Notes in the margins are sanctioned. You get Covid-19 pandemic as that which has catalysed this revolution, when dysphoria began to fold down the corners of pagesemerge on a global scale, or as ''pangea covidica''. You suspect that smears Rather than taking this extreme dysphoria as a sign of butter would not be a problem. I weakness, or mistaking detachment or withdrawal for political paralysis, Preciado urges his readers to ''loveduse dysphoria as your revolutionary platform'' this book already.|isbn=1804271454
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{{Frontpage
|author=Han KangSamantha Harvey|title=The VegetarianOrbital
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=This novelIn 2024, winner of Samantha Harvey won the International Booker Prize for ''Orbital'', a compact yet profound work that unfolds over a single day in 2016 and penned by an author who received the Nobel Prize for Literature this year, is as close to unputdownable as it gets. It more than lives up to of a group of astronauts aboard the acclaimInternational Space Station. The story introduces uncanny characters with fragileThrough a narrative lens that mirrors the astronauts' orbital perspective, vividly tangible bodies yet unknowable, elusive soulsHarvey invites readers to see our planet in a wholly new light.|isbn=18035100561529922933
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Jenny Valentine295967572X|title=Us in the Before and AfterPale Pieces|author=G M Stevens
|rating=5
|genre=TeensLiterary Fiction|summary=Elk Our unnamed narrator is about to begin a train journey with his companion Django. Where they're going and Mab are best friendswhat the purpose of this journey is, or more than that even, their friendship is a once 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 lifetime connectionsteam locomotive.}}{{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 Hardie family to approach the police. They meet as children one day on a trip out but unfortunately they don't get each Neither side likes or has any respect for the other. But Davie Hardie is struggling in prison and he's contact details at prepared to tell the timepolice where the body of a missing person is buried and who was responsible for her death. But then chance brings them back togetherThis person, he promises, is someone big and they are inseparableit will be worth the police doing what he wants. Something has happened though, something terrible And what he wants is to be transferred to an open prison to serve the remainder of his sentence and tragicto get an early parole date. Not much to ask, is it? The new Deputy Police Constable doesn't think so and now they must work through their grief, she's even prepared to do the other thing that Hardie demanded - make certain that DS Max Craigie and their friendship, togetheranyone who works with him is kept well away from what's happening.|isbn=1471196585
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=17873331751035043092|title=You Don't Have to be Mad to Work HereThe Killing Stones (Jimmy Perez)|author=Benji WaterhouseAnn Cleeves
|rating=5
|genre=Popular ScienceCrime|summary=I was tempted to read ''You Doncan't Have have been the only person who was sad when Inspector Jimmy Perez [[Wild Fire (Shetland, Book 8) by Ann Cleeves|left Shetland]] to be Mad to Work Herestart a new life on Orkney. It'' after enjoying Adam Kays been seven years since we heard from him, but he's first book {{amazonurl|isbn=1509858636|title=This is Going to Hurt}}now living with Willow Reeves and their young son, James, as well as Cassie, a glorious mixture of insight into the workings daughter of the NHS, humour and autobiographyhis former partner. Willow's also his boss, and she 'You Don't Have to be Mad...should'' promised be on maternity leave, but when the same elements but moved from physical problems to mental illness and body of a popular islander, Archie Stout, is found, in the work aftermath of a psychiatriststorm, she can't resist getting involved. I did wonder whether it was acceptable to be looking for humour in this setting but He'd been battered about the laughter is directed at head with a situation rather than Neolithic stone - one of a person and it is always delivered with empathy and understandingpair - which had been stolen from a museum.
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{{Frontpage
|author=Mariana EnriquezThea Lenarduzzi|title=A Sunny Place for Shady PeopleThe Tower
|rating=5
|genre=Short StoriesLiterary Fiction|summary=Mariana Enriquez writes horror that ''How unctuous are the fats of another's life, how dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream''. In this compelling novel, Thea Lenarduzzi assumes the identity of T, the protagonist of this tale. Just as T's story is disturbingly realbeing told, achieving this uncanny familiarity by basing her paranormal plots on gritty realitiesthe story of a second protagonist is unveiled: her settings include an abandoned field full Annie, the daughter of disused refrigerators due to an urban planning mishapa wealthy family in the 19th century, an overcrowded homeless shelter and who died of tuberculosis after being locked in a crime-ridden neighbourhood where safety meetings are routine - tower, captures T's imagination. Annie's fate is, above all within Argentina, an enticing story to T. The circumstances of her characters are so plausible that the supernatural or otherworldly horror It is a story which seeps into these spaces adopts she consumes avariciously, both in a similarly tangible texturequest for truth and knowledge, and in service of myth, fable and fantasy. |isbn=18035112301804271799
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{{Frontpage
|author=Onyi NwabineliClaire-Louise Bennett|title=Allow Me to Introduce MyselfBig Kiss, Bye-Bye
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Anuri spent her childhood on display to the worldEverything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, thanks to her step-mother Ophelia's increasingly popular presence on social mediais steeped in anguish and distortion. Even a kiss, where she posted every step usually a symbol of Anuri's childhood for sponsorships and influencer deals intimacy andcloseness, basicallybecomes evidence of love lost. When the narrator cries out internally, monetary gain. Now Anuri is in her twenties ''come over here and she kiss me,'' it is slowly trying to regain her confidence and to get her life back, suing her step-mother less an invitation than a desperate attempt to take down the content about confirm heremotional numbness. Anuri The imagined recipient of this plea is battling alcoholismXavier, failing to start her PhD, undergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online and receiving money from them for doing so. Most importantlyex-partner, a ghost she is desperately worried about conjures to test her little sister, who is the new focus of Ophelia's online empiredetachment. Can she save her sister, and perhaps herself and her relationship with her father at the same time?|isbn=08615468731804271934
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=David Chadwick0008405026|title=Headload of NapalmA Stranger in the Family (Maeve Kerrigan 11)|author=Jane Casey|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersCrime|summary= It's September 1973 in Hicks, Californiasixteen years since nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her bed one summer night. Hicks is a Mojave desert town of a few thousand people with its nearest neighbours of LA She was never found and Las Vegas both the investigation ground to a significant drive awayhalt. Not much happens Now, her mother, Helena, and her father are dead in Hickstheir bed. A silver mine and Initially, it looks like a defence contractor are the main local employers straightforward murder/suicide but otherwise, there's not much something about the positioning of note other than dive bars the bodies that makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and Joshua treesher boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. Life What looked as though it was going to be an open-and-shut case is now a complex double murder. Kerrigan is quietconvinced that the explanation lies in Rosalie's disappearance: others (such as Derwent's boss, until..Una Burt) are less convinced..|isbn= B0D321VJ76
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{{Frontpage
|author=Tom PercivalAnnie Ernaux and Alison L. Strayer (translator)|title=The Wrong ShoesOther Girl|rating=54|genre=Confident ReadersAutobiography|summary=Will's life is difficult, in a multitude of ways'We were born from the same body. I've never really wanted to think about this. He is bullied because he has 'the wrong shoes', he has the wrong shoes because his dad can Ernaux't s work is always very candid and doesn't have enough money for even her tone transparent, but this raw epistolary text must be one of the most basic of things like foodintimate accounts I've read. Ernaux writes in direct address to her sister, however, and his dad canthis letter will never reach her. Why? Because Annie Ernaux't work because he lost his job s sister died of diphtheria at 6 years old, a few months before the college, vaccine was working a cash-made compulsory in-hand job on a building site France, and had an accident2 years before the author was even born. Throw into that mix The large and instant void created by the fact that his mum and dad are separated, and Willjarring concept of writing to an imaginary recipient emphasises Ernaux's process of reckoning with this giant absence in her life seems bleak in every direction. And yet, he still an absence that she has a tiny amount of hope. He 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, dark tunnelalways felt but often denied.|isbn=13985271221804271845
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{{Frontpage
|author=Sylvie CathrallMaxim Gorky and Bryan Karetnyk (translator)|title=A Letter to the Luminous DeepReminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev|rating=3.5|genre=Science FictionBiography|summary= There Biographies are few greater joys than 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 which lives up , Tolstoy complains to his friend Gorky that: ''you write not of real life as it is, but of what you yourself imagine it to a compelling premisebe. And 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 themit.|isbn= 03565227761804271977
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=17864821261529077745|title=The Janus Stone Dark Wives (Dr Ruth GallowayD I Vera Stanhope)|author=Elly GriffithsAnn Cleeves
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=Builders were demolishing an old house A man walking his dog in Norwich - the site was going to hold seventy-five 'luxury' apartments - when they early morning discovered the bones body of a child beneath man in the park near Rosebank, a doorwaycare home for troubled teens. There The dead man was no skullJosh - one of the care workers who was due to work a shift the night before but who had never turned up. Was this a ritual killing or D I Vera Stanhope is called in to investigate the murder? Inevitably- but her only clue is the disappearance of one of the residents, Dr Ruth Galloway finds herself working with DCI Harry Nelsonfourteen-year-old Chloe Spencer. ItSome people believe that Chloe was responsible for the death but Vera thinks this is unlikely as the girl's difficult as Ruth diary makes it clear that she adored Josh. She knowsthat she has to find Chloe to discover what happened to Josh.}}{{Frontpage|author=Olga Tokarczuk|title=House of Day, but Nelson doesnHouse 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''t, that she is pregnant with his child as a result somewhat reflects this notion of shifting realities - the one small, subtle changes which govern our lives, like the shift from day to night they spent together some three months ago, however quotidian, causing chaos. Her condition will be obvious before longBut, the constant in that image is the house, not least because Ruth stoic against the ancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it is prone to sudden bouts of sicknessperceived.|isbn=1804271918
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Joan Didion1836284683|title=The Year of Magical ThinkingBig Happy|author=David Chadwick
|rating=4.5
|genre=AutobiographyDystopian Fiction|summary=Well! This is a murder mystery unlike any other! I do love it when I open a book , it's nothing like I expected it to be, and it takes me on a wild ride. And that is Joan Didionjust what happened with ''The Big Happy's heartbreaking autobiographical account of the grief she endured following her husband's sudden death. Books that shed light on taboo topics like death are such I don't want to ruin a beautiful and necessary resource similar experience for any of you reading but I'll have to help people feel less aloneat least set the scene. Didion unpicks unpleasant feelings surrounding death like self-pity, denial and delusion and makes them utterly normalOnce that's done, lends them a human face to wearI think you should simply experience this wonderfully original story for yourself.|isbn=0007216858
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0008551324Sally Rooney|title=The Devil You Know (D S Max Craigie)|author=Neil LancasterIntermezzo
|rating=4.5
|genre=CrimeGeneral Fiction |summary=It's unusual for anyone from the Hardie family to approach the police. Neither side likes or Sally Rooney has any respect for studied the other. But Davie Hardie chessboard of life and is struggling in prison and he's prepared to tell the police where the body something of a missing person grandmaster at putting it into words. Her dialogue is buried gripping and who was responsible for so brilliantly frustrating, as her deathcharacters never quite say exactly what they feel. This personAmong the many relationships woven into this story, he promises, is someone big and it will be worth the police doing what he wants. And what he wants central one for readers to unravel is to be transferred to an open prison to serve the remainder of his sentence fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and to get an early parole datePeter Koubek. Not much to askIvan, a socially awkward chess prodigy, contrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, is it? The new Deputy Police Constable doesn't think so and shea successful lawyer living in Dublin. Following their father's even prepared to do passing after a long battle with cancer, the other thing that Hardie demanded - make certain that DS Max Craigie and anyone who works with him is kept well away from whatbrothers's happeningalready strained relationship faces new trials.|isbn=0571365469
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=02416784121836285493|title=The Proof Double Life of My Innocencea Wheelchair User|author=Jonathan CoeRob Keeley|rating=45|genre=ThrillersConfident Readers|summary=Life after university hasn't worked out quite the way that Phyl anticipated. She's back homeWill is a keen player of video games, a conscientious student, living with her parents a slightly annoying brother and on a zero-hours contract serving sushi to tourists at terminal 5 of Heathrow Airportsupportive friend. All those ideas But most of becoming a all, he is an aspiring writer seem to have come to nothing. The situation improves when English is his favourite lesson at his school, Marlowe Park, and one at which he excels. This hasn'Uncle' Chris comes t gone unnoticed by his headteacher, Mrs Howarth, and she has suggested to stay Will and introduces Phyl to his adopted daughter, Rashida. Christopher Swann (described by some as mum that he spends a lefty blogger) is investigating couple of afternoons a think tank which originated week at Cambridge University in the 1980s. It plans to push the government in a more extreme direction and is ready to actdifferent school, Station Road, where his ability might be better extended.
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=1009473085|title=Monsters: What Do We Do with Great Art by Bad People?The Conservative Effect 2010 - 2024|author=Claire DedererAnthony Seldon and Tom Egerton (Editors)|rating=35
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=Dederer sets out Sometimes it's simpler to unveil explain a book by describing what she calls a it ''isn't'' and that applies to ''The Conservative Effect: 2010-2024 - 14 Wasted Years?''. If you'biography of re looking for an easy read which will deliver the audienceinside story about what ''really'' in a deconstructedhappened on certain occasions, thoroughly nitpicked, exploration of then this isn't the old aphorism of separating the art from the artist in the context of contemporary book for you. If that's what you'cancel culturere looking for, I don't think Anthony Seldon's book, {{amazonurl|isbn=B0BH7SKG2S|title=Johnson at 10}}, can be bettered for those tumultuous years. Dederer It's work is original a compelling read and expressiveshould be compulsory for anyone who thinks Johnson should return to politics. ''The reader gets Conservative Effect'' is an entirely different beast. It's the impression that seventh book in a series which looks at the thoughts simply sprang impact a government has made and leapt from her brilliant mind and onto co-editor Sir Anthony Seldon regards this as the pagemost important. In particular, This book follows the prologue packs well-established format: a punch: she simultaneously condemns and exalts series of experts from various fields review the director Roman Polanski, an artist she personally admires for his art, and yet despises for his actions. This model state of ''monstrous men'' as she calls them, is consistent for the first few chaptersnation when the coalition took over in 2010, interrogating the likes of Woody Allen, Michael Jackson changes that occurred and Pablo Picassothe situation in 2024. Her critical voice is acutely present throughout, never slipping into anonymity and maintaining her own subjectivity, as she holds it so dearly, and a personal, rather than collective voice.|isbn=1399715070
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1739526910Jenny Valentine|title=Where I've Not Been Lost|author=Glen SibleyUs in the Before and After|rating=4.5|genre=General FictionTeens|summary=''One year after Elk and Mab are best friends, or more than that even, their friendship is a suicide attempt blows apart musician Brian O’Malley's life, he arrives once in an unfamiliar Devon town to recovera lifetime connection. Living with an unexpected housemate at his former manager’s holiday home, he dreams of reconnecting with everything he has lost. But They meet as those tentative plans falter, he becomes swept up in children one day on a local world of unlikely friendships, mobile discos and surprising romantic possibilities.trip out but unfortunately they don't get each other'}} {{Frontpage|isbn=B0DGDJRHYD|title=Nowhere Man|author=Deborah Stone|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=In a quiet suburban house, Patrick is making his final planss contact details at the time. A meticulous man But then chance brings them back together, he makes sure of every preparation, down to the last detailand they are inseparable. Some last reflections Something has happened though, something terrible and then he says goodbye to his wife, the worldtragic, and his life. It's horribly sad. At now they must work in her shopthrough their grief, his wife Diana is fending off yet another phone call about her ageing and ailing mothertheir friendship, who needs extricating from yet another accident. It will be a while before Diana realises what Patrick has donetogether.|isbn=1471196585
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