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==The Best New Books==
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0008405026Polly Barton|title=What Am I, A Stranger in the Family (Maeve Kerrigan 11)|author=Jane CaseyDeer?|rating=54|genre=CrimeLiterary Fiction|summary=ItPolly Barton's sixteen years since nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall disappeared debut novel is an intellectually playful yet emotionally exposed work that uses translation as both subject and governing metaphor. The narrator, newly relocated from her bed one summer night. She was never found and London to Berlin, works translating video games into Japanese through the investigation ground process of localisation, rewriting language until it feels comfortably familiar to a haltnew audience. NowBarton treats this as a paradoxical act: arguably, her motherin striving for universality, Helenalanguage is endlessly repackaged, and her father are dead in their bedits originality at risk of disappearing altogether. InitiallyFrom this, it looks like the novel opens out into 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 wider, resonant question: to what extent do we translate ourselves in order 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 bossunderstood, accepted, Una Burt) are less convinced.or loved?|isbn=1804272175
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|isbn=1529077745Zabriskie1|title=The Dark Wives (D I Vera Stanhope)A Village Where Many Ways Meet: A Story of Belonging and Community, Rooted in Indigenous Wisdom|author=Ann CleevesStephanie Zabriskie|rating=4.5|genre=CrimeChildren's Non-Fiction|summary=A man walking his dog ''Across many African and Indigenous systems, differences in how children learn, sense , or process the early morning discovered the body world were not treated as disorders to be corrected. They were understood as natural variations of a man in human intelligence and awareness, each holding value within the park near Rosebank, community.'' This lovely story is a care home for troubled teens. The dead man was Josh - one synthesis of the care workers who that tradition, which was due to work carried down through generations by oral retellings. It shows that a shift the night before but who had never turned community or society is not made up. D I Vera Stanhope is called in to investigate the murder - from interchangeable building blocks of human beings but her only clue is the disappearance by a range of one of the residentspeople with different skills and different personalities, fourteen-year-old Chloe Spencer. Some people believe all contributing to a whole that Chloe was responsible for combines them all and to the death but Vera thinks this is unlikely as the girl's diary makes it clear that she adored Josh. She knows that she has to find Chloe to discover what happened to Joshbenefit of them all.
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|isbn=13996130731787333175|title=Moral InjuriesYou Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here|author=Christie WatsonBenji Waterhouse|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersPopular Science|summary=Olivia, Laura and Anjali met on the I was tempted to read ''You Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here'' after enjoying Adam Kay's first day of medical school and their friendship would keep them inseparable for a quarter of a century. Olivia book {{amazonurl|isbn=1509858636|title=This is ruthlessly ambitiousGoing to Hurt}}, which is a bonus when you aim to be a cardiothoracic surgeon. Laura is a perfectionist and a trauma doctor. Anjali is glorious mixture of insight into the free spirit workings of the group NHS, humour and she becomes a GPautobiography. When we first meet them they're at a drug and alcohol-fuelled party and it's going You Don't Have to end in tragedybe Mad... We don't know who suffered ' promised the tragedy or same elements but moved from physical problems to mental illness and the consequenceswork of a psychiatrist. Twenty-five years later there will I did wonder whether it was acceptable to be an eerily similar event that will impact looking for humour in this setting but the three friends. This time, laughter is directed at a situation rather than a person and it's their teenage children who are involvedis always delivered with empathy and understanding.
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|isbnauthor=0241636604Maria Stepanova and Sasha Dugdale (Translator)|title=The Trading Game: A Confession|author=Gary StevensonDisappearing Act|rating=4.5|genre=AutobiographyLiterary Fiction|summary=If you were to bring up an image Despite her anonymisation of a city banker in your mindplace names and people, youStepanova're unlikely to think s message in this short work of someone like Gary Stevensonautofiction is unmistakable. A hoodie 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 - but he had been novelist named M travels from B (ostensibly Berlin) to the London School town of Economics. Stevenson F for a literary festival she is bright - extremely bright - and he has a facility with numbers which most of us can only envy. He also realised that most rich people expect poor people to be stupida guest speaker at. It was his ability at what wasDetoured by erratic train schedules and nudged by forces beyond her control, essentiallyher journey slowly bends toward a traveling circus. Swept up in this series of events, M eventually offers to step in for a card game which got him an internship with Citibankcircus performer who has unexpectedly left the show. EventuallyThe train functions as a motif of transience and impermanence, this turned while the circus embodies the reshaping of identity and a retreat into permanent employment as a traderfantasy, an impulse that lies at the very heart of the novel form itself.|isbn=1804272329
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|authorisbn=Leanne EganB0GFQ81YQK|title=Lover BirdsHow 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=When new girlBefore people came and joined the animals, Isabel, moves there was only the sky and the earth. Everything was quiet until the earth and the sky began to tal 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. First, but Lou feels her pulse racing every time she looks at Isabel or speaks with herthe earth created bodies. And then, the sky breathed life into them. These were the first humans and that's definitely because Isabel makes her feel they belonged to both earth and sky. And so cross, isn't it? Because Lou is straight, isn't she? Even though none of her relationships with boys have gone very well so farpeople lived between sky and soil and they planted and learned and remembered, especially how they came to be. When they grew old and she's never had a good kiss with any of them? So she just finds herself watching Isabeldied, their bodies returned to the earth and wanting their life returned to hang out with her because fighting with her the sky. And that is why the earth and the sky are both revered. Only together can they create human beings. And that is funwhy people must pay attention to, and she definitely just hates Isabelcare for, doesn't she?|isbn=000862657Xboth.
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|authorisbn=Sally RooneyB0GHPMNF6P|title=IntermezzoThe Zookeeper's Dragon: A Magical Modern Fantasy Tale for Grown-Ups|author=Carolyn Mathews
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction Fantasy|summary=Sally Rooney has studied When Phil's father unexpectedly dies, he quits his Canary Wharf finance job to take over the chessboard running of the family's farm zoo. He's not expecting much excitement, until he receives an unidentified egg that his new-age stoner uncle Edgar found in a cave in New Zealand, and suddenly life and is something of a grandmaster at putting it into words. Her dialogue is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, as her characters never no longer quite say exactly what they feelit seems. Among Then the many relationships woven egg hatches into this storyneither a reptile nor a bird, the central one for readers to unravel is the fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. Ivanbut a dragon! Now he, a socially awkward chess prodigyEdgar, contrasts sharply with his older brother Petermother Abi, a successful lawyer living in Dublin. Following their fatherand the zoo's passing after a long battle with cancerpart-time café waitress Pearl have to raise this little bundle of scales and joy, the brothers' already strained relationship faces new trialsdespite having no idea how to actually raise dragons and not being able to tell anyone about it.|isbn=0571365469But this tiny little dragon may show them love and connection in ways they had never before imagined…
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|isbnauthor=1009473085Stephanie Zabriskie|title=The Conservative Effect 2010 - 2024|author=Anthony Seldon and Tom Egerton (Editors)How Maasai Women Spoke to Cows: From the Oral Stories of Maasai Elders
|rating=5
|genre=Politics and SocietyChildren's Non-Fiction|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=Johnson at 10}}, can be bettered for those tumultuous years. It's a compelling read and should be compulsory for anyone who thinks Johnson should return How Maasai Women Spoke to politics. ''The Conservative Effect'' Cows 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 children’s nonfiction book follows the well-established format: a series of experts drawn from various fields review the state oral traditions of the nation when the coalition took over Maasai elders in 2010Ngorongoro, the changes that occurred and the situation in 2024Tanzania.''}}{{Frontpage|author=Max Boucherat|title=The Last Life of Lori Mills|rating=4.5|genre=Confident Readers|summary=We meet Lori on the first evening she's got the house Maasai are a cattle-herding people and this story writes down its oral tradition explaining how they came to herself – no neighbour to pop in, babysitter poorly, mother at work, just an avidly rule-breaking eleven year old, on her lonesomebe so. What could possibly go wrong? Snuggled in a blanket fort, she has one main intention, Cattle are status and that is to log on to Voxminer, the world-building, critter-collecting game that is a hit wealth in Lori's world. But first Lori has a tiny inkling that Maasai culture but this stormy night doesn't find herself entirely on her own, and then she finds something even more spooky. For tell the whole story of the server she intimate and her bestie symbiotic connection its people, and nobody else should be able to enter shows signs of tampering. When malevolent eyes spark up on her phone screenespecially its women, have with their cows and her safe place in for the natural world. The oral tradition retelling the game has been doctored – wellmany conversations Maasai women have had with their cows, where is a girl to turn?does.|isbn=0008666482B0G9WTGY6J
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|author=Fyodor DostoyevskyLivi Michael|title=White NightsElizabeth and Ruth|rating=3.5|genre=Short StoriesHistorical Fiction|summary=As always in Dostoyevsky''Elizabeth and Ruth'' is a work of historical fiction wrought from the life of the Victorian author Elizabeth Gaskell, best known for her first novel Mary Barton (1848), a radical critique of the treatment of the character work is sublimeworking class published under a pseudonym. One is never left wondering what The ''Ruth'' from Livi Michael's title appears in her novel as Pasley, a young Irish prostitute who was abandoned as a child and finds herself in Manchester's New Bailey Prison after a character is thinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions difficult 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 temperaments with remarkable clarityinterrogates the extent to which the wealthy (including Gaskell herself) were responsible for addressing these injustices.|isbn=02416197851784633682
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|isbnauthor=0008385068Makenna Goodman|title=The Midnight Feast|author=Lucy FoleyHelen of Nowhere
|rating=4.5
|genre=ThrillersLiterary Fiction|summary=It's midsummer could be argued that the pervading theme of this book is malaise - a hard-to-place feeling that something in your life is not quite right. The protagonist, a disgraced professor on the Dorset coast brink of losing both his career and guests gather at The Manorhis relationship, embodies this feeling. It's their opening weekend However, Goodman counteracts his discomfort with a force which is seductive, radical and splendid celebrations are promised. It's all headed up by Francesca Meadowsunnerving: Helen. The Manor was her ancestral home connection between Helen and she's converted it into an impressive retreat for the wealthy and famousprotagonist is indirect yet intimate. Her husband, Owen, was As the architect and work is still ongoing on parts former owner of the sitecountryside house he's considering, Helen represents a volta in his life, her past tied to his potential fresh start. The heat is oppressive realtor who shows the protagonist around the house shares stories about Helen, and amongst the guests are enemies describes her as well as friends''an entity that is pure consciousness, beyond form''. Old scores Although she lives in an assisted living facility now, Helen has powers beyond comprehension which the reader gets the sense are going to be settled and it won't be long before a body is foundnot altogether innocuous.|isbn=1804272205
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|author=James Baldwin|title=Giovanni's Room|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction |summary=''Giovanni's Room'' follows the narrator David, an American man living in Paris, as he navigates his torturous affair with Giovanni, an Italian bartender he meets in a gay bar. While David is engaged to Hella, who is travelling in Spain, the real tension in the novel arises not from his infidelity but from the deeper conflict within himself. It is David's crippling shame and denial of his sexuality that ultimately dooms his relationship with Giovanni.|isbn=0141186356}}{{Frontpage|author=Ashley Hickson-Lovence|title=Wild East|rating=4.5|genre=Teens|summary=Written in verse, this is Ronny's story, a young black fourteen year old boy from Hackney who suddenly has to move to Norwich and start at a mostly white school. The move is initiated by Ronny's mum who is worried for Ronny's safety after a tragic event, and so Ronny finds himself trying to settle in a new town, a new school, and keep himself out of trouble. He listens to music constantly, and has always dreamed of being a rapper. But now, in this new school, his teacher encourages him to be part of a poetry writing workshop group and, slowly, Ronny begins to see the connections between rap and poetry, and the power of creativity and crafting your words.|isbn=0241645441}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1635866847B0GCB1MQ7D|title=The Lavender CompanionWhy My Mother Went Away|author=Jessica Dunham and Terry Barlin Vesci|rating=4.5|genre=Lifestyle|summary=It's strange, the things that make you ''immediately'' feel that this is the book for you. Before I started reading ''The Lavender Companion'', I visited the author's [https://www.pinelavenderfarm.com/ website] and there's a picture of a slice of chocolate cake on the homepage. I don't eat cakes and desserts - but I wanted that cake viscerally. (There's a recipe in the book, which I'm avoiding with some difficulty!!) Then I started reading the book and I was told to make a mess of it. Notes in the margins are sanctioned. You get to fold down the corners of pages. You suspect that smears of butter would not be a problem. I ''loved'' this book already.}}{{Frontpage|author=Jenny Valentine|title=Us in the Before and AfterAlan Kennedy
|rating=5
|genre=TeensAutobiography|summary=Elk and Mab are best friendsI have often wondered how prominent people came to hold their positions. With 'celebrities', there's frequently a book they might or might not have written, which might or more than might not tell the true story. It's not often that you find a book that evengives the full backstory, their friendship and rarely do you discover a memoir where the telling is a once in a lifetime connectionso perfect that you'll go back and reread paragraphs and sentences, just for the pleasure the words give. They meet as children ''Why My Mother Went Away'' is one day on a trip out but unfortunately they don't get each otherof those rare exceptions. It's contact details the story of how a boy from the Midlands, born at the time. But then chance brings them back togetherbeginning of the Second World War, and they are inseparablewould become a Professor of Psychology at Dundee University. Something has happened thoughIn fact, something terrible and tragic, and now they must work through their grief, and their friendship, togetherhe was one of the founders of the department.|isbn=1471196585
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|isbnauthor=1787333175Jeremy Cooper|title=You Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here|author=Benji WaterhouseDiscord|rating=3.5|genre=Popular ScienceLiterary Fiction|summary=I was tempted to read ''You Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here'' after enjoying Adam Kay's first book {{amazonurl|isbn=1509858636|title=This is Going to Hurt}}, Discord: a glorious mixture lack of insight into the workings agreement or harmony (as between persons, things, or ideas) The principal example of discord within the NHSnovel, humour and autobiography. ''You Don't Have to be Mad...'' promised the same elements but moved from physical problems to mental illness and the work of a psychiatrist. I did wonder whether it was acceptable to be looking for humour in this setting but the laughter is directed at a situation rather than a person and it is always delivered as with empathy and understanding. }}{{Frontpage|author=Mariana Enriquez|title=A Sunny Place for Shady People|rating=5|genre=Short Stories|summary=Mariana Enriquez writes horror that is disturbingly real, achieving this uncanny familiarity by basing her paranormal plots on gritty realities: her settings include an abandoned field full most instances of disused refrigerators due to an urban planning mishapdiscord, an overcrowded homeless shelter and a crime-ridden neighbourhood where safety meetings are routine - all within Argentinais easily located. The circumstances two protagonists of her characters are so plausible that the supernatural or otherworldly horror which seeps into these spaces adopts a similarly tangible texture. |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 worldnovel, thanks to her step-mother Ophelia's increasingly popular presence on social media, where she posted every step of Anuri's childhood for sponsorships and influencer deals Rebekah Rosen andEvie Bennet, basically, monetary gainare as different as they come. Now Anuri Rebekah is in her twenties and she is slowly trying to regain her confidence an uptight, traditional and no-nonsense composer close 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 and secretly abusing people online oozing with talent 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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|summary=Will's life is difficult, in a multitude of ways. He is bullied because he has 'the wrong shoes', he 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, and his dad can't work because he lost his job at the college, was working a cash-in-hand job on a building site and had an accident. Throw into that mix the fact that his mum and dad are separated, and Will's life seems bleak in every direction. And yet, he still 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 tunnel.
|isbn=1398527122
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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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|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 grief she endured following her husbandnew 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 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 global scale, or as ''pangea covidica''. Rather than taking this extreme dysphoria as a sign of weakness, or mistaking detachment or withdrawal for political paralysis, Preciado urges his readers to help people feel less alone''use dysphoria as your revolutionary platform''. Didion unpicks unpleasant feelings surrounding death like self-pity|isbn=1804271454}}{{Frontpage|author=Samantha Harvey|title=Orbital|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=In 2024, denial and delusion and makes them utterly normalSamantha Harvey won the Booker Prize for ''Orbital'', lends them a human face 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 wearsee our planet in a wholly new light.|isbn=00072168581529922933}}{{Frontpage|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=17395269101035043092|title=Where The Killing Stones (Jimmy Perez)|author=Ann Cleeves|rating=5|genre=Crime|summary=Ican't have been the only person who was sad when Inspector Jimmy Perez [[Wild Fire (Shetland, Book 8) by Ann Cleeves|left Shetland]] to start a new life on Orkney. It've Not Been Losts been seven years since we heard from him, but he's now living with Willow Reeves and their young son, James, as well as Cassie, the daughter of his former partner. Willow's also his boss, and she ''should'' be on maternity leave, but when the body of a popular islander, Archie Stout, is found, in the aftermath of a storm, she can'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 museum.}}{{Frontpage|author=Glen SibleyThea Lenarduzzi|title=The Tower|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= ''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 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 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=1804271799}}{{Frontpage|author=Claire-Louise Bennett|title=Big Kiss, Bye-Bye
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Literary 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 the narrator cries out internally, ''One year after come over here and kiss me,'' it is less an invitation than a suicide desperate attempt blows apart musician Brian O’Malleyto confirm her emotional numbness. The imagined recipient of this plea is Xavier, her ex-partner, a ghost she conjures to test her detachment.|isbn=1804271934}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0008405026|title=A Stranger in the Family (Maeve Kerrigan 11)|author=Jane Casey|rating=5|genre=Crime|summary=It's lifesixteen 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, he arrives her mother, Helena, and her father are dead in an unfamiliar Devon town to recovertheir bed. Living with an unexpected housemate at his former manager’s holiday home Initially, he dreams it looks like a straightforward murder/suicide but there's something about the positioning of reconnecting with everything he has lostthe bodies that makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and her boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. But What looked as those tentative plans falter, he becomes swept up in though it was going to be an open-and-shut case is now a local world of unlikely friendships, mobile discos and surprising romantic possibilitiescomplex 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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|isbnauthor=B0DGDJRHYDMaxim Gorky and Bryan Karetnyk (translator)|title=Nowhere Man|author=Deborah StoneReminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev|rating=43.5|genre=General FictionBiography|summary=In 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 quiet suburban housevibrant, Patrick is making subjective yet informed portrait of three of his final plansliterary contemporaries. A meticulous manIn the first section of this book, he makes sure Tolstoy complains to his friend Gorky that: ''you write not of every preparationreal life as it is, down but of what you yourself imagine it to the last detailbe. Some last reflections, and then he says goodbye Whom would it help to his wifeknow how I see this tower, the worldthat sea, and his life. Itor that Tartar - why should it interest anyone? Of what use is it?''s horribly sad. At work in her shopWell, his wife Diana is fending off yet another phone call about her ageing and ailing mother, who needs extricating Maxim Gorky shows exactly what can be gained from yet another accident. It will be a while before Diana realises what Patrick has donesubjective 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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|authorisbn=Virginie Despentes1529077745|title=King Kong TheoryThe Dark Wives (D I Vera Stanhope)|author=Ann Cleeves|rating=4.5|genre=Autobiography Crime|summary=''King Kong Theory'' is A man walking his dog in the early morning discovered the body of a hard-hitting memoir and feminist manifestoman in the park near Rosebank, which can be seen as a call care home for troubled teens. The dead man was Josh - one of the care workers who was due to arms for women in work a phallocentric society broken at its coreshift the night before but who had never turned up. Originally written D I Vera Stanhope is called in French, to investigate the book murder - but her only clue is a collection the disappearance of one of essays in which Virginie Despentes explores her experiences as a woman through the complex prism of her varied life: from rape to sex work and pornographyresidents, fourteen-year-old Chloe Spencer. Though these discussions are intertwined, their placement within Some people believe that Chloe was responsible for the book can feel somewhat disjointed, a reflection of their original form death but Vera thinks this is unlikely as independent essaysthe girl's diary makes it clear that she adored Josh. She knows that she has to find Chloe to discover what happened to Josh.|isbn=191309734X
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|author=Alba de Cespedes Olga Tokarczuk|title=Forbidden NotebookHouse of Day, House of Night|rating=45
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=This Italian ''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 feminist fiction holds an air Day, House of Night'', somewhat reflects this notion of suspense and tension shifting realities - the small, subtle changes which govern our lives, like the shift from day to night, however quotidian, causing chaos. But, the moment our protagonistconstant in that image is the house, stoic against the ancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it is perceived.|isbn=1804271918}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1836284683|title=The Big Happy|author=David Chadwick|rating=4.5|genre=Dystopian Fiction|summary=Well! This is a murder mystery unlike any other! I do love it when I open a book, Valeria Cossatiit's nothing like I expected it to be, purchases and it takes me on a wild ride. And that is just what happened with ''The Big Happy''. I don't want to ruin a similar experience for any of you reading but I'll have to at least set the scene. Once that's done, I think you should simply experience this wonderfully original story for yourself.}}{{Frontpage|author=Sally Rooney|title=Intermezzo|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction |summary=Sally Rooney has 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 forbidden notebookcharacters 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 learns about herself 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 most intimate and revealing waysbrothers' already strained relationship faces new trials.|isbn=17822782220571365469}}{{Frontpage|isbn= 1836285493|title=The Double Life of a Wheelchair User|author=Rob Keeley|rating=5|genre=Confident Readers|summary= Will is a keen player of video games, a conscientious student, a slightly annoying brother and a supportive friend. But most of all, 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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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Ottessa Moshfegh1009473085|title=My Year of Rest The Conservative Effect 2010 - 2024|author=Anthony Seldon and RelaxationTom Egerton (Editors)|rating=35|genre=Literary FictionPolitics and Society|summary=At bestSometimes 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 novel is 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=Johnson at 10}}, can be bettered for those tumultuous years. It's a scathing critique of modern society compelling read and reveals should be compulsory for anyone who thinks Johnson should return to politics. ''The Conservative Effect'' is an entirely different beast. It's the fragility of human relationships; seventh book in a series which looks at worst, it is the cynical, predictable impact a government has made and slightly trite tale of an unlikeable protagonistco-editor Sir Anthony Seldon regards this as the most important. This unlikely heroine, book follows the well-established format: a slim, attractive and newly orphaned girl in her twenties is disillusioned with series of experts from various fields review the state of the nation when the world, but resolves not to lose sleep coalition took over it: in fact2010, her solution lies the changes that occurred and the situation in her hibernation2024.|isbn=1784707422
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{{Frontpage
|author=Jo CallaghanJenny Valentine|title=Leave No TraceUs in the Before and After|rating=45|genre=CrimeTeens|summary=When a man Elk and Mab are best friends, or more than that even, their friendship is found crucified on the top of a hill once in Nuneaton, DCS Kat Frank finds herself assigned to the case alongside her sidekick, the AI detective Locka lifetime connection. ItThey meet as children one day on a trip out but unfortunately they don't get each other's their first live case together, having previously been very successful with several cold casescontact details at the time. But when there is a second body found crucified a few days laterthen chance brings them back together, Kat is suddenly struggling with a potential serial killer and a very high profile case that draws a lot of unwanted attention to their AI Future Policing projectthey are inseparable. Will Something has happened though, something terrible and tragic, and now they be able to solve the case in timemust work through their grief, or will Kat find herself taken off the case andtheir friendship, potentially, out of a career?together.|isbn=139851120X1471196585
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