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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=Benji Waterhouse|rating=5|genre=Popular Science|summary=I was tempted to read ''You Don'Read [[Forthcoming Publicationst Have to be Mad to Work Here'' after enjoying Adam Kay's first book {{amazonurl|reviews isbn=1509858636|title=This is Going to Hurt}}, a glorious mixture of insight into the workings of books about the NHS, humour and autobiography. ''You Don't Have to be Mad...'' promised the same elements but moved from physical problems to mental illness and the work of a psychiatrist. I did wonder whether it was acceptable to be published]]looking for humour in this setting but the laughter is directed at a situation rather than a person and it is always delivered with empathy and understanding.<!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->}}

|author=Jennifer SaintMaria Stepanova and Sasha Dugdale (Translator)|title=ElektraThe Disappearing Act

|summary=Despite her anonymisation of place names and people, Stepanova's message in this short work of autofiction is unmistakable. A novelist named M travels from B (ostensibly Berlin) to the 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 for a circus performer who has unexpectedly left the show. The train functions as a motif of transience and impermanence, while the circus embodies the reshaping of identity and a retreat into fantasy, an impulse that lies at the very heart of the novel form itself.|isbn=1804272329}}{{Frontpage|isbn=B0GFQ81YQK|title=How the Sky and the Earth Made People: From the Oral Stories of Malagasy Elders|author=Stephanie Zabriskie|rating=4.5|genre=Children's Non-Fiction|summary= Before people came and joined the animals, there was only the sky and the earth. Everything was quiet until the earth and the sky began to tal to each other. First, the earth created bodies. And then, the sky breathed life into them. These were the first humans and they belonged to both earth and sky. And so people lived between sky and soil and they planted and learned and remembered, especially how they came to be. When they grew old and died, their bodies returned to the earth and their life returned to the sky. And that is why the earth and the sky are both revered. Only together can they create human beings. And that is why people must pay attention to, and care for, both.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=B0GHPMNF6P|title=The Zookeeper'Elektras Dragon: A Magical Modern Fantasy Tale for Grown-Ups|author=Carolyn Mathews|rating=4.5|genre=Fantasy|summary= When Phil' by Jennifer Saint tells s father unexpectedly dies, he quits his Canary Wharf finance job to take over the story running of three women who live 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 is no longer quite what it seems. Then the heavily maleegg hatches into neither a reptile nor a bird, but a dragon! Now he, Edgar, his mother Abi, and the zoo's part-dominated world time café waitress Pearl have to raise this little bundle of Ancient Greecescales and joy, despite having no idea how to actually raise dragons and not being able to tell anyone about it. Cassandra, ClytemnestraBut this tiny little dragon may show them love and connection in ways they had never before imagined…}}{{Frontpage|author=Stephanie Zabriskie|title=How Maasai Women Spoke to Cows: From the Oral Stories of Maasai Elders|rating=5|genre=Children's Non-Fiction|summary=''How Maasai Women Spoke to Cows is a children’s nonfiction book drawn from the oral traditions of Maasai elders in Ngorongoro, Tanzania.'' The Maasai are a cattle-herding people and Elektra this story writes down its oral tradition explaining how they came to be so. Cattle are all bit players status and wealth in Maasai culture but this doesn't tell the whole story of the Trojan Warintimate and symbiotic connection its people, and especially its women, have with their cows and for the natural world. Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that often The oral tradition retelling the silent many conversations Maasai women have the most compelling stories and the most extreme furieshad with their cows, does.|isbn=1472273915B0G9WTGY6J

|isbnauthor=1529149800Livi Michael|title=Things You Can Do: How to Fight Climate Change and Reduce Waste|author=Eduardo Garcia Elizabeth and Sara Boccaccini MeadowsRuth|rating=43.5|genre=Home and FamilyHistorical Fiction|summary=We begin with ''Elizabeth and Ruth'' is a telling story. All work of historical fiction wrought from the birds and animals fled when life of the forest fire took hold and most of them stood and watchedVictorian author Elizabeth Gaskell, best known for her first novel Mary Barton (1848), unable to think a radical critique of anything they could do. The tiny hummingbird flew to the river and began taking tiny amounts treatment of water and flying back to drop them into the fireworking class published under a pseudonym. The animals laughed: what good was that doing. ''IRuth'm doing the best I can'from Livi Michael's title appears in her novel as Pasley, said the hummingbirda young Irish prostitute who was abandoned as a child and finds herself in Manchester's New Bailey Prison after a difficult and unjust hand at life. And that, reallySet in Manchester between 1839 and 1842, is the only way that we will solve novel examines the problem of climate change – harsh conditions endured by each of us doing what we can, however small that might bethe Victorian working poor and interrogates the extent to which the wealthy (including Gaskell herself) were responsible for addressing these injustices.|isbn=1784633682

|isbnauthor=1776574338Makenna Goodman|title=Leilong's Too Long!|author=Julia Liu and Bei LynnHelen of Nowhere|rating=4.5|genre=For SharingLiterary Fiction|summary=Every morning Leilong, It could be argued that the brontosaurus school buspervading theme of this book is malaise - a hard-to-place feeling that something in your life is not quite right. The protagonist, makes his way through a disgraced professor on the city, picking up children as he goes. Children who live at the top brink of tower blocks don't even need to go downstairs – they simply climb out of the window losing both his career and slide down his neckrelationship, embodies this feeling. It's perfectHowever, isn't it? What could be Goodman counteracts his discomfort with a more fun way of going to school? There force which is a problemseductive, thoughradical and unnerving: Helen. Leilong isn't happy in The connection between Helen and the protagonist is indirect yet intimate. As the former owner of the city: countryside house he's always having considering, Helen represents a volta in his life, her past tied to be careful his potential fresh start. The realtor who shows the protagonist around the house shares stories about where he puts his feet Helen, and – because hedescribes her as ''s longer than a tennis court – he often causes damage without intending to and traffic regularly gets snarled up. The school decides an entity that he canis pure consciousness, beyond form''t be . Although she lives in an assisted living facility now, Helen has powers beyond comprehension which the reader gets the bus anymoresense are not altogether innocuous.|isbn=1804272205

|isbn=303091657XB0GCB1MQ7D|title=Disaster in the Boardroom: Six Dysfunctions Everyone Should UnderstandWhy My Mother Went Away|author=Gerry Brown and Randall S PetersonAlan Kennedy

|genre=Business and FinanceAutobiography|summary=Boards must act in the best interests of I have often wondered how prominent people came to hold their stakeholders and ensure that they are well-managed and financially securepositions. This With 'celebrities', there's frequently a book they might seem obvious but a series of disasters - some of or might not have written, which have resulted in death might or might not tell the true story. It's not often that you find a book that gives the collapse of full backstory, and rarely do you discover a major company - have left interested parties asking what memoir where the telling is so perfect that you'll go back and reread paragraphs and sentences, just for the pleasure the board was doingwords give. Where were they? ''Why My Mother Went Away'' is one of those rare exceptions. Occasionally It's the boards were unaware story of what how a boy from the Midlands, born at the beginning of the Second World War, would become a Professor of Psychology at Dundee University. In fact, he was happening one of the founders of the department.}}{{Frontpage|author=Jeremy Cooper|title=Discord|rating= 3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Discord: a lack of agreement or they preferred to turn a blind eyeharmony (as between persons, things, leaving watchers wondering which was worse - ignorance or criminalityideas) The principal example of discord within the novel, as with most instances of discord, is easily located. The 21st century has delivered some major company scandals but what has happened two protagonists of the novel, Rebekah Rosen and Evie Bennet, are as different as they come. Rebekah is nothing new: Gerry Brown an uptight, traditional and Randall S Peterson give us no-nonsense composer close to retirement, while Evie is a very readable trip through such major debacles force of nature, bounding onto the musical scene as railway maniaa precocious saxophonist, the South Sea Bubble oozing with talent and even tulip maniacharm. Over three centuries we seem The two, predictably, don't always see eye to have learned very littleeye, their approaches different and Evie's progressive views at odds with Rebekah's conservative leaning. However, something connects them beyond just their musical project: a sort of fragile alliance formed within the clamour.|isbn=1804272264

|isbnauthor=1529337968Tom Percival|title=In Place of Fear|author=Catriona McPhersonThe Wrong Shoes

|genre=Crime (Historical)Confident Readers|summary=ItWill's July 1948 and Helen Crowther life is due to start work as difficult, in a qualified medical almoner multitude of ways. He is bullied because he has 'the following morning - on wrong shoes', he has the day that wrong shoes because his dad can't work and doesn't have enough money for even the NHS is born. Shemost basic of things like food, and his dad can'll be t work because he lost his job at the college, was working for Dr Deuchar and Dr Strasser a cash-in their GP surgery -hand job on a building site and her job will be to help patients with those non-medical problems which affect their healthhad an accident. The hardest part of Throw into that mix the job will be to persuade people fact that the services she offers really his mum and dad are free separated, and that they donWill't have to do anything to qualify for thems life seems bleak in every direction. Some of the problems will require delicate handling but Helen And yet, he still has a problem tiny amount of her own which might give her some insighthope. Her marriage has never been consummatedHe 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

|author=Mark LinganeEdward W Said|title=GalaxyRepresentations 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}}{{Frontpage|author=Sylvie Cathrall|title=A Letter to the Luminous Deep|rating=5

|summary=SparkThere are few greater joys than a book which lives up to a compelling premise. And this is one of them.|isbn= 0356522776}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1786482126|title=The Janus Stone (Dr Ruth Galloway)|author=Elly Griffiths|rating=4.5|genre=Crime|summary=Builders were demolishing an old house in Norwich - the site was going to hold seventy-five 'luxury' apartments - 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 difficult as Ruth knows, who but Nelson doesn't, that she is an elite pilot pregnant with his child as a result of the Space Academyone night they spent together some three months ago. Her condition will be obvious before long, barely makes it through not least because Ruth is prone to sudden bouts of sickness.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0008551375|title=When Shadows Fall (D S Max Craigie)|author=Neil 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 battle alivetragic accident. She'd looked so happy, too, when she posted her intentions on Facebook. His co-pilot Her friends were relieved as she was just out of an unpleasant relationship, but it looked like she was not so fortunateliving her best life now. Waking from a coma Then it emerged that lasted yearsfive other women had died in similar circumstances in the last year. All were experienced climbers, he remembers little 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 in no physical shape to resume his dutiescertain there's a killer on the loose.}}{{Frontpage|author=Paul B Preciado|title=Dysphoria Mundi|rating=4. But Earth 5|genre=Politics and Society|summary=''It is under threat never too late to embrace the revolutionary optimism of childhood''  Through this hybrid text, consisting of arias, letters, essays and he must. Returned by autofiction, Preciado expresses his superiors own hybrid self, and brings forth a new sensorium as an offering to the space stationnew generation, he finds himself amid a last ditch attempt new feeling mechanism in which detachment is not considered a sign of political apathy. Rather, it is the proportional, valid response to save humanity - ''the epistemological and political crack we are living through, and not just from the alien threats tension between emancipatory forces and conservative resistances that characterize our present'' which Preciado calls ''dysphoria mundi''. The whole text is framed against itthe backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic as that which has catalysed this revolution, when dysphoria began to emerge on a 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, but also from its own sins against itselfPreciado urges his readers to ''use dysphoria as your revolutionary platform''. |isbn=B09X3NZ76W1804271454

|author=Lissa EvansSamantha Harvey|title=WishedOrbital

|genre=Confident ReadersGeneral Fiction|summary=When things contrive to force Ed and his sister Roo (aka Lucy) to stay with In 2024, Samantha Harvey won the neighbourhood spinsterish old womanBooker Prize for ''Orbital'', Miss Filey, for a week compact yet profound work that unfolds over a single day in the lives of a group of half-termastronauts 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}}{{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 not looking forward 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 itaccompany him. For one thing, she thinks WiWhy not? Not much else is clear either -Fi but we are probably in the past as the pair travel to the station by coach and the train is a special brand of biscuitsteam 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 donNeither side likes or has any respect for the other. But Davie Hardie is struggling in prison and he't particularly take s prepared to Willard eithertell the police where the body of a missing person is buried and who was responsible for her death. This person, he promises, is someone big and it will be worth the new kid next door, who seems police doing what he wants. And what he wants is to be transferred to an open prison to ebulliently take over everything serve the remainder of his sentence and everywhereto get an early parole date. But things soon change when they find some tiny old birthday candlesNot much to ask, is it? The new Deputy Police Constable doesn't think so and manage she's even prepared to work out do the other thing that Hardie demanded - make certain that these candlesDS Max Craigie and anyone who works with him is kept well away from what's happening.}}{{Frontpage|author=Thea Lenarduzzi|title=The Tower|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= ''How unctuous are the fats of another's life, for as long as how dizzying their flames lastsugars in our bloodstream''. In this compelling novel, make birthday wishes come trueThea Lenarduzzi assumes the identity of T, the protagonist of this tale. How will things change for Just as T's story is being told, the story of a second time when they realise thatprotagonist is unveiled: Annie, the daughter of a wealthy family in the 19th century, having used up three who died of themtuberculosis after being locked in a tower, these should really be used 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=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 wishes narrator cries out internally, ''come over here and kiss me,'' it is less an invitation than a desperate attempt to confirm her emotional numbness. The imagined recipient of someone two generations older than them?this plea is Xavier, her ex-partner, a ghost she conjures to test her detachment.|isbn=1804271934}}{{Frontpage|isbn=178845202X0008405026|title=A Stranger in the Family (Maeve Kerrigan 11)|author=Jane Casey|rating=5|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.

|author=Justyn EdwardsAnnie Ernaux and Alison L. Strayer (translator)|title=The Great Fox IllusionOther Girl

|genre=Confident ReadersAutobiography|summary=The latest incoming reality TV show ''We were born from the same body. I've never really wanted to think about this.'' Ernaux's work is a contest with a differencealways very candid and her tone transparent, but this raw epistolary text must be one of the most intimate accounts I've read. No singingErnaux writes in direct address to her sister, no dancinghowever, this show is looking for magical children! Children who can understand how magic tricks work, and who can attempt to win The Great Foxletter will never reach her. Why? Because Annie Ernaux's magical legacy - the secrets to all sister died of his tricks! Flick is determined to windiphtheria at 6 years old, but not because she wants to own a few months before the tricks. She is interested vaccine was made compulsory in just ''one'' trickFrance, and 2 years before the trick that author was even born. The Great Fox stole from her father. And shelarge and instant void created by the jarring concept of writing to an imaginary recipient emphasises Ernaux's hoping if she can find process of reckoning with this giant absence in her life, an absence that trick then she will be able to bring her missing father homehas always felt but often denied.|isbn=15295019461804271845

|author=Jason RohanMaxim Gorky and Bryan Karetnyk (translator)|title=S.T.E.A.L.T.H.: Access DeniedReminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev

|summary=Arun Will is a keen player of video games, a conscientious student, a slightly annoying brother and Sam have had little to do with Donnaa supportive friend. But most of all, a girl he is an aspiring writer. English is his favourite lesson at their his school, Marlowe Park, and one at which he excels. But things immediately change 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 the start of this extended sprint of a noveldifferent school, Station Road, when she insists Arunwhere his ability might be better extended.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1009473085|title=The Conservative Effect 2010 - 2024|author=Anthony Seldon and Tom Egerton (Editors)|rating=5|genre=Politics and Society|summary=Sometimes it's house has become the attention of plain-clothes coppers simpler to explain a book by describing what it ''isn't'' and that they should bunk off school applies to find out why''The Conservative Effect: 2010-2024 - 14 Wasted Years?''. And thus If you're looking for an unlikely trio of misfit young heroes is formed – Sam is easy read which will deliver the inside story about what ''really not Donna'' 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 idea of companybook, {{amazonurl|isbn=B0BH7SKG2S|title=Johnson at 10}}, but he can be bettered for those tumultuous years. It's a compelling read and should be compulsory for anyone who thinks Johnson should return to politics. ''The Conservative Effect'' is an entirely different beast. It's the seventh book in a series which looks at the impact a government has made and co-editor Sir Anthony Seldon regards this as the most important. This book follows the well-established format: a series of experts from various fields review the state of the nation when the computer buffcoalition took over in 2010, Donna seems to know all the criminal ins changes that occurred and outs the situation in 2024.}}{{Frontpage|author=Jenny Valentine|title=Us in the Before and survival skills, After|rating=5|genre=Teens|summary=Elk and Arun? WellMab are best friends, it's his lot to find out or more than that all he based his family life even, their friendship is a once in a lifetime connection. They meet as children one day on isna trip out but unfortunately they don't trueget each other's contact details at the time. But then chance brings them back together, and that his father – kidnapped that very morning – is involved in they are inseparable. Something has happened though, something quite unexpected. But how can this disparate trio hope to best MI6terrible and tragic, and now they must work through their grief, kidnappersand their friendship, people abltogether.|isbn=1471196585}}