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'''Read [[:Category:Features|the latest features]].'''
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn= 1806344777|title=Jon Fosse Arthur and Damion Searls (translator) the Land of Nimbostratus: Arthur's Able Adventures|titleauthor=VaimRob Keeley|rating=4.5|genre=Literary FictionFor Sharing|summary=''All was strange''Arthur dreams of adventures... This haunting phrase encapsulates He looks out of his window each day and thinks of all the pervading sense of otherworldliness which permeates this story set in Vaimescapades he could have, a fictional fishing village in Norway which paradoxically the places he could not feel more real for Jatgeir go and Eline, two the things he could see. His favourite day is Saturday because that's the day his friend Maxine - she of the protagonists caught booming laugh and silver bangles - comes to visit. Maxine is a great believer in its melancholic currentthe power of imagination.|isbn=1804271829
}}
{{Frontpage
|genre=Crime
|summary=I can't have been the only person who was sad when Inspector Jimmy Perez [[Wild Fire (Shetland, Book 8) by Ann Cleeves|left Shetland]] to start a new life on Orkney. It's 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=Polly Barton
|title=What Am I, A Deer?
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Polly Barton's debut novel is an intellectually playful yet emotionally exposed work that uses translation as both subject and governing metaphor. The narrator, newly relocated from London to Berlin, works translating video games into Japanese through the process of localisation, rewriting language until it feels comfortably familiar to a new audience. Barton treats this as a paradoxical act: arguably, in striving for universality, language is endlessly repackaged, its originality at risk of disappearing altogether. From this, the novel opens out into a wider, resonant question: to what extent do we translate ourselves in order to be understood, accepted, or loved?
|isbn=1804272175
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn= Zabriskie1
|title=A 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 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=Benji Waterhouse
|rating=5
|genre=Popular Science
|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}}, a glorious mixture of insight into the workings of 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 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.
}}
{{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 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's Dragon: A Magical Modern Fantasy Tale for Grown-Ups
|author=Carolyn Mathews
|rating=4.5
|genre=Fantasy
|summary= When Phil's father unexpectedly dies, he quits his Canary Wharf finance job to take over the 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 is no longer quite what it seems. Then the egg hatches into neither a reptile nor a bird, but a dragon! Now he, Edgar, his mother Abi, and the zoo's part-time café 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. But 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 this story writes down its oral tradition explaining how they came to be so. Cattle are status and wealth in Maasai culture but this doesn't tell the whole story of the intimate and symbiotic connection its people, and especially its women, have with their cows and for the natural world. The oral tradition retelling the many conversations Maasai women have had with their cows, does.
|isbn=B0G9WTGY6J
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Livi Michael
|title=Elizabeth and Ruth
|rating=3.5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=''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 working class published under a pseudonym. 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 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 interrogates the extent to which the wealthy (including Gaskell herself) were responsible for addressing these injustices.
|isbn=1784633682
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Makenna Goodman
|title=Helen of Nowhere
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=It 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 brink of losing both his career and his relationship, embodies this feeling. However, Goodman counteracts his discomfort with a force which is seductive, radical and unnerving: Helen. The connection between Helen and the protagonist is indirect yet intimate. As the former owner of the countryside house he's considering, Helen represents a volta in his life, her past tied to his potential fresh start. The realtor who shows the protagonist around the house shares stories about Helen, and describes her as ''an entity that is pure consciousness, beyond form''. Although she lives in an assisted living facility now, Helen has powers beyond comprehension which the reader gets the sense are not altogether innocuous.
|isbn=1804272205
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B0GCB1MQ7D
|title=Why My Mother Went Away
|author=Alan Kennedy
|rating=5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=I 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 might not tell the true story. It's not often that you find a book that gives the full backstory, and rarely do you discover a memoir where the telling is so perfect that you'll go back and reread paragraphs and sentences, just for the pleasure the words give. ''Why My Mother Went Away'' is one of those rare exceptions. It's the story of 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 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 harmony (as between persons, things, or ideas)
The principal example of discord within the novel, as with most instances of discord, is easily located. The two protagonists of the novel, Rebekah Rosen and Evie Bennet, are as different as they come. Rebekah is an uptight, traditional and no-nonsense composer close to retirement, while Evie is a force of nature, bounding onto the musical scene as a precocious saxophonist, oozing with talent and charm. The two, predictably, don't always see eye to eye, 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
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Tom Percival
|title=The Wrong Shoes
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers
|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
}}
{{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
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Sylvie Cathrall
|title=A Letter to the Luminous Deep
|rating=5
|genre=Science Fiction
|summary= There 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, but Nelson doesn't, that she is pregnant with his child as a result of the one night they spent together some three months ago. Her condition will be obvious before long, 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 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=Dysphoria Mundi
|rating=4.5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=''It is never too late to embrace the revolutionary optimism of childhood''
Through this hybrid text, consisting of arias, letters, essays and autofiction, Preciado expresses his own hybrid self, and brings forth a new sensorium as an offering to the new generation, a new feeling mechanism in which detachment is not considered a sign of political apathy. Rather, it is the proportional, valid response to ''the epistemological and political crack we are living through, and the tension between emancipatory forces and conservative resistances that characterize our present'' which Preciado calls ''dysphoria mundi''. The whole text is framed against the backdrop of 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, Preciado urges his readers to ''use dysphoria as your revolutionary platform''.
|isbn=1804271454
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Samantha Harvey
|title=Orbital
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=In 2024, Samantha Harvey won the Booker Prize for ''Orbital'', a compact yet profound work that unfolds over a single day in the lives of a group of astronauts aboard the International Space Station. Through a narrative lens that mirrors the astronauts' orbital perspective, Harvey invites readers to see our planet in a wholly new light.
|isbn=1529922933
}}
{{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.
}}
{{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. Neither side likes or has any respect for the other. But Davie Hardie is struggling in prison and he's prepared to tell 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 police doing what he wants. And what he wants is to be transferred to an open prison to serve the remainder of his sentence and to get an early parole date. Not much to ask, is it? The new Deputy Police Constable doesn't think so and she's even prepared to do the other thing that Hardie demanded - make certain that DS Max Craigie and anyone who works with him is kept well away from what's happening.
}}
{{Frontpage
|genre=Crime
|summary=A man walking his dog in the early morning discovered the body of a man in the park near Rosebank, a care home for troubled teens. The dead man was Josh - one of the care workers who was due to work a shift the night before but who had never turned up. D I Vera Stanhope is called in to investigate the murder - but her only clue is the disappearance of one of the residents, fourteen-year-old Chloe Spencer. Some people believe that Chloe was responsible for 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 Josh.
}}
{{Frontpage
The title of this spellbinding work, ''House of Day, House of Night'', somewhat reflects this notion of shifting realities - the small, subtle changes which govern our lives, like the shift from day to night, however quotidian, causing chaos. But, the constant in that image is the house, stoic against the ancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it is perceived.
|isbn=1804271918
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=0571365469
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn= 1836285493
|summary=Elk and Mab are best friends, or more than that even, their friendship is a once in a lifetime connection. They meet as children one day on a trip out but unfortunately they don't get each other's contact details at the time. But then chance brings them back together, and they are inseparable. Something has happened though, something terrible and tragic, and now they must work through their grief, and their friendship, together.
|isbn=1471196585
}}