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==The Best New Books==
'''Read [[:Category:Features|the latest features]].'''
{{Frontpage
|isbn= 1806344777|title=Arthur and the Land of Nimbostratus: Arthur's Able Adventures|author=Charlie CarrollRob Keeley|rating=4.5|genre=For Sharing|summary= Arthur dreams of adventures. He looks out of his window each day and thinks of all the escapades he could have, the places he could go and the things he could see. His favourite day is Saturday because that's the day his friend Maxine - she of the booming laugh and silver bangles - comes to visit. Maxine is a great believer in the power of imagination.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1035043092|title=The LipKilling Stones (Jimmy Perez)|author=Ann Cleeves
|rating=5
|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''Melody Janie Rowe'' even 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 name is evocative of…probably process of whatever we want localisation, rewriting language until it feels comfortably familiar to bea new audience. Barton treats this as a paradoxical act: arguably, in striving for universality, language is endlessly repackaged, and maybe that's the pointits originality at risk of disappearing altogether. To me From this, the name sings of English folk musicnovel opens out into a wider, but even resonant question: to what extent do we translate ourselves in my use of that word Englishorder to be understood, accepted, I know I'm putting an emmet take on things. And Melody Janie Rowe is anti-emmet. or loved?|isbn=15293341791804272175
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn= Zabriskie1|title=Danny Wallace A Village Where Many Ways Meet: A Story of Belonging and Gemma CorrellCommunity, Rooted in Indigenous Wisdom|titleauthor=The Day the Screens Went BlankStephanie Zabriskie
|rating=5
|genre=Confident ReadersChildren's Non-Fiction|summary=Meet Stella ''Across many African and her familyIndigenous systems, differences in how children learn, sense , or process the world were not treated as disorders to be corrected. Theywere understood as natural variations of human intelligence and awareness, each holding value within the community.''re just innocently trying to have This lovely story is a Sunday evening in togethersynthesis of that tradition, watching 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 film – using three range of people with different screens to watch three skills and different thingspersonalities, mind – when 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'pooft Have to be Mad to Work Here'' everything goes blank. And itafter enjoying Adam Kay's not just their homefirst book {{amazonurl|isbn=1509858636|title=This is Going to Hurt}}, but a glorious mixture of insight into the entire south-western village workings of Mouseholethe NHS, humour and not just that, either, but the whole country, if not worldautobiography. Suddenly people are constantly on their phones – hoping they're first 'You Don't Have to get a screen back, and not what they were constantly doing on them beforebe Mad... Toasters can toast, '' promised the same elements but TVs cannot do moved from physical problems to mental illness and the V part work of their job, and no computer can show its computationsa psychiatrist. You might think I did wonder whether it was acceptable to be looking for humour in this setting but the laughter is going to be directed at a situation rather than a social comedy about 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 stuck in such a Luddite experience against their will, but no. For the family finally remember StellaStepanova's grandma, and see if they can get across country message in this short work of autofiction is unmistakable. A novelist named M travels from B (ostensibly Berlin) to her. Hence this has the town of F for a literary festival she is to go down as be a road-trip bookguest speaker at. But not just thatDetoured by erratic train schedules and nudged by forces beyond her control, her journey slowly bends toward a slapstick road-trip comedytraveling circus. And more than thatSwept up in this series of events, too – M eventually offers to step in for it's a slapstickcircus performer who has unexpectedly left the show. The train functions as a motif of transience and impermanence, high-dramawhile the circus embodies the reshaping of identity and a retreat into fantasy, high-octane road-trip comedy with oodles of cuddly an impulse that lies at the very heart that kids of all ages will lovethe novel form itself.|isbn=14711968871804272329
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1913193527B0GFQ81YQK|title=Bound (Detective Sam Shephard)How the Sky and the Earth Made People: From the Oral Stories of Malagasy Elders|author=Vanda SymonStephanie Zabriskie
|rating=4.5
|genre=CrimeChildren's Non-Fiction|summary=Dunedin Before people came and joined the animals, there was shocked when it heard of only the murder of a wealthy sky and apparently respectable businessman out at Seacliffthe earth. His wife had been bound Everything was quiet until the earth and gagged 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 placed sky. And so that she was forced people lived between sky and soil and they planted and learned and remembered, especially how they came to watch the murderbe. When they grew old and died, with their bodies returned to the scene being discovered by earth and their son, Declan, when he life returned home from an evening outto the sky. The subsequent investigation would prove And that John Henderson had been involved in some activities which might have been considered shady is why the earth and certainly questionable if not illegalthe sky are both revered. His company, Eros GlobalOnly together can they create human beings. And that is why people must pay attention to, manufactured and marketed ''vitamin-type supplements andcare for, well, sexual enhancers, that kind of thing'', as Henderson's employee, Blair Harvey-Boyd explainedboth.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1529109116B0GHPMNF6P|title=Call Me RedThe Zookeeper's Dragon: A Shepherd's JourneyMagical Modern Fantasy Tale for Grown-Ups|author=Hannah JacksonCarolyn Mathews
|rating=4.5
|genre=LifestyleFantasy|summary=When Phil's father unexpectedly dies, he quits his Canary Wharf finance job to take over the running of the family'I want 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 image of egg hatches into neither a reptile nor a bird, but a British farmer dragon! Now he, Edgar, his mother Abi, and the zoo's part-time café waitress Pearl have to simply be that raise this little bundle of a person who is proudly employed 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 feeding ways they had never before imagined…}}{{Frontpage|author=Stephanie Zabriskie|title=How Maasai Women Spoke to Cows: From the nation. I donOral Stories of Maasai Elders|rating=5|genre=Children's Non-Fiction|summary=''t think that How Maasai Women Spoke to Cows is too much to aska children’s nonfiction book drawn from the oral traditions of Maasai elders in Ngorongoro, Tanzania.''
The stereotypical farmer was probably born on the land where ''his'' family have farmed for generations. He's probably grown up without giving much thought as to what he really wants Maasai are a cattle-herding people and this story writes down its oral tradition explaining how they came to do: he knows that he'll be a farmerso. ItCattle are status and wealth in Maasai culture but this doesn's not always t tell the case though. Hannah Jackson was born and brought up on the Wirral: she'd never set foot on a commercial farm until she was twenty although she'd always had a deep love whole story of animals. Her original intention was that she would become 'Dr Jackson, whale scientist' and she was well on her way to achieving this when her life changed on a family holiday to the Lake District. She saw a lamb being born intimate andsymbiotic connection its people, although 'Hannah Jacksonand especially its women, farmer' lacked have with their cows and for the kudos of her original intention, she knew that she wanted to be a shepherdnatural world. With The oral tradition retelling the determination that you'll soon realise is an essential part of hermany conversations Maasai women have had with their cows, she set about achieving her ambitiondoes.|isbn=B0G9WTGY6J
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0857527231Livi Michael|title=Dog Days|author=Ericka WallerElizabeth and Ruth|rating=3.5|genre=General Historical Fiction|summary=George Dempsey is exceedingly angry. It's eight days since his wife, Ellen, died 'Elizabeth and itRuth''s is a work of historical fiction wrought from the life of the first time that she's let him down. He's lostVictorian author Elizabeth Gaskell, bereft without best known for her first novel Mary Barton ( he ''needs his wife1848), like a snail needs its shellradical critique of the treatment of the working class published under a pseudonym. The ''Ruth'). He misses their ordered life and rather than bringing him meals to leave on the doorstep, he'd much rather have a good row with someone. Hefrom Livi Michael's particularly angry about the dachshund puppy which Helen brought home just three weeks before she died. She even dared to contradict him when he told title appears in her that the dog wasn't staying. Now henovel as Pasley, a young Irish prostitute who was abandoned as a child and finds herself in Manchester's lumbered with New Bailey Prison after a dog he doesn't want difficult and a load of busybodies who are trying to interfere in his unjust hand at life. Worst of all is BettySet in Manchester between 1839 and 1842, who won't take no 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 an answer. Betty knits jumpers for Lucky, her greyhound. Lucky spends a lot of time trying to escape from and destroy themaddressing these injustices.|isbn=1784633682
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=B003UH99X4Makenna Goodman|title=The Eustace Diamonds|author=Anthony TrollopeHelen of Nowhere|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=It was generally thought could be argued that Sir Florian Eustace had come the pervading theme of this book is malaise - a hard-to regret -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 marriage but he didn't live long enough for relationship, embodies this to become a problemfeeling. After his deathHowever, Goodman counteracts his wifediscomfort with a force which is seductive, Lizzie - still only in her late teens - was in possession of a very valuable diamond necklace radical and unnerving: Helen. The connection between Helen and was determined that she would not hand it over to her husband's executorsthe protagonist is indirect yet intimate. She was adamant that Sir Florian had given it to her absolutely, although As the precise circumstances former owner of the giving varied from telling to telling. Lady Eustace was not countryside house he's considering, Helen represents a woman volta in his life, her past tied to whom truth meant a great dealhis potential fresh start. All The realtor who shows the protagonist around the house shares stories about Helen, and describes her as ''an entity that was important to her nowis pure consciousness, beyond form''. Although she maintainedlives in an assisted living facility now, was her son. And, of course, her diamondsHelen has powers beyond comprehension which the reader gets the sense are not altogether innocuous.|isbn=1804272205
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1529047315B0GCB1MQ7D|title=The LamplightersWhy My Mother Went Away|author=Emma StonexAlan Kennedy
|rating=5
|genre=ThrillersAutobiography|summary=''A fisherman told him once about the sea having two faces. You I have often wondered how prominent people came to take hold their positions. them bothWith 'celebrities', he saidthere's frequently a book they might or might not have written, which might or might not tell the good and true story. It's not often that you find a book that gives the badfull backstory, and never turn your rarely do you discover a memoir where the telling is so perfect that you'll go back on either and reread paragraphs and sentences, just for the pleasure the words give. ''Why My Mother Went Away'' is one of themthose 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)
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Mary H K ChoiTom Percival|title=YolkThe Wrong Shoes
|rating=5
|genre=TeensConfident Readers|summary= Jayne Baek Will's life is difficult, in a fashion student thatmultitude of ways. He is bullied because he has 'the wrong shoes's barely getting by. She drinks. She smokes. She makes bad decisions about , he has the men she sleeps with. Shewrong shoes because his dad can's an all-round messy character; t work and thatdoesn's her charm. Junet have enough money for even the most basic of things like food, on and his dad can't work because he lost his job at the other college, was working a cash-in-hand, is job on a complete contrast to Jaynebuilding site and had an accident. She Throw into that mix the fact that his mum and dad are separated, and Will's a typical older sister: she's smartlife seems bleak in every direction. And yet, thinks she knows it all, and he still has a successful jobtiny amount of hope. She constantly criticises Jayne for her life choices He is good at art, and clings to the two have barely kept in contact despite living in moments of joy when he is drawing, that feel like a light at the same city for end of a long, dark tunnel.|isbn=1398527122}}{{Frontpage|author=Edward W Said|title=Representations of the past two yearsIntellectual |rating=4. This is until June finds out she5|genre=Politics and Society|summary=Edward Said's sick, ''Representations of the Intellectual'' is less a strict theory of what intellectuals are and Jayne is more a passionate argument for what they should be. Said clearly rejects the comfortable image of the intellectual as a detached expert speaking only person she can turn toother specialists. The two sisters have to come together Instead, he insists on the intellectual as a public figure, often awkward, abrasive, and decide how far they'll go unpopular, who speaks truth to save each other's lives – power even if when it means swapping identitiesis inconvenient or risky.|isbn= 03490036961804272248
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Saima MirSylvie Cathrall|title=The KhanA 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=Jia Khan has alway lived by the motto be twice as good as men and four times as good as white men. This has served her well Builders were demolishing an old house in her rise through Norwich - the criminal justice system and by site was going to hold seventy-five 'luxury' apartments - when they discovered the time she is called home for her sisterbones 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 wedding after fifteen years in self-imposed exiledifficult as Ruth knows, but Nelson doesn't, that she is at pregnant with his child as a result of the top of her gameone night they spent together some three months ago. Returning to the city of her birth Her condition will be obvious before long, not least because Ruth is prone to old scars and fresh wounds, Jia must confront her past and reconcile her visions for the future with her sense sudden bouts of honour and dutysickness.|isbn=1786079097
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=00083368300008551375|title=Two WrongsWhen Shadows Fall (D S Max Craigie)|author=Mel McGrathNeil Lancaster
|rating=4.5
|genre=ThrillersCrime|summary=Sondra Leanne Wilson's body was on her way home after work when she saw found at the bottom of a young woman looking as though she was going to jump from Scottish mountain, seemingly the Clifton suspension bridgeresult of a tragic accident. She talks to her'd looked so happy, too, and Sondra finally persuades Satnam to call when she posted her best friend and flatmate, Nevis Smithintentions on Facebook. Nevis is unworldly and rather reserved - and Her friends were relieved as she was just out of an unpleasant relationship, but it looked like she can't understand why Satnam hasn't shared her problems with was living herbest life now. Then it emerged that five other women had died in similar circumstances in the last year. She thought All were experienced climbers, properly equipped for what they shared everythingwere doing and sensible people. Satnam is taken None of the 'what a stupid thing to hospital and Nevis calls her mother, Honordo' explanations applied. Theywere all alone when they died: DS Max Craigie is certain there've not been s a killer on good terms since a discovery Nevis made the previous summer but right now, Nevis needs her motherloose.
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Andrea Bajani and Elizabeth Harris (translator)Paul B Preciado|title=If You Kept a Record of SinsDysphoria Mundi
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary FictionPolitics and Society|summary=This was an incredibly readable novella, but one that left me a little conflicted. We start as our hero arrives at Bucharest airport, and before we even know his gender or ''It is never too late to embrace the nature revolutionary optimism of the person hechildhood''s addressing in his second person monologue Through this hybrid text, consisting of a narrationarias, letters, essays and autofiction, we see him picked up by Preciado expresses his mother's chauffeurown hybrid self, and carted off brings forth a new sensorium as an offering to do all the necessary introductions before said mother new generation, a new feeling mechanism in which detachment is buried the following day. The mother was not considered a businesswoman, who clearly left northern Italy and settled in Romania with her (night-time and business) partner, and feelings sign of abandonment are still strongpolitical apathy. And so we flit from current (wellRather, this came out in it is the original Italian in 2007, so moderately current) Bucharestproportional, valid response to ''the lad's childhoodepistemological and political crack we are living through, and see just what he 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 tell her emerge on a global scale, or as ''pangea covidica''. Rather than taking this extreme dysphoria as a private farewell addresssign of weakness, or mistaking detachment or withdrawal for political paralysis, Preciado urges his readers to ''use dysphoria as your revolutionary platform''.|isbn=19398109651804271454
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Jane LightbourneSamantha Harvey|title= My Cat Called RedOrbital|rating= 4.5|genre=Emerging ReadersGeneral Fiction|summary= Robin has red hair. He hates itIn 2024, and Samantha Harvey won the freckles that go along with it. HeBooker Prize for 's been bullied and mocked at school because of it. 'Orbital'Ginger Minger! Carrots!'' Kids are mean. But red hair is not Robin's only misery , a compact yet profound work that unfolds over a single day in lifethe lives of a group of astronauts aboard the International Space Station. HeThrough a narrative lens that mirrors the astronauts's already lost his dad orbital perspective, Harvey invites readers to see our planet in a mountaineering accident when his mum gets ill and is taken into hospital. She doesn't come home againwholly new light.|isbn= 18382168121529922933
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B003L7TDMU295967572X|title=Phineas FinnPale Pieces|author=Anthony TrollopeG M Stevens|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Phineas Finn Our unnamed narrator is the son of Dr Malachi Finn, about to begin a successful doctor in Killaloe in County Clare, who sent train journey with his son to London to train as a lawyercompanion Django. PhineasWhere they's interest is more in making influential friends than in becoming a lawyer re going and one what the purpose of themthis journey is, Barrington Erle, suggests that he runs for Parliament in is uncertain. Django found the tickets ''on the forthcoming electionfloor somewhere'' and has persuaded our narrator to accompany him. His father Why not? Not much else is not entirely clear either - but we are probably in favour of this the past as members are not remunerated and it would be up to him the pair travel to provide financial support for his son as well as funding his election. One of the doctor's patients is Lord Tulla who controls station by coach and the borough of Loughshane and by this stroke of luck Finn train is, eventually, elected by a small marginsteam locomotive.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=18385950310008551324|title=Crooked: Honest CriminalityThe Devil You Know (D S Max Craigie)|author=Bronwen JohnNeil Lancaster
|rating=4.5
|genre=ThrillersCrime|summary=The con had seemed like a good one: tricking people into buying artwork supposedly by It's unusual for anyone from the Hardie family to approach the new Banksy - and they should have made a decent profit from itpolice. The problem was they were too successful: one 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 the marks had bought a few missing person is buried and then discovered that they were valuelesswho was responsible for her death. Henry Martin Holmes had fallen for a simple con and his fatherThis person, celebrity criminal Harry Holmeshe promises, was determined that 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 his family could not lose face like thatto get an early parole date. The grifters were going Not much to pay. ask, is it? Ashia The new Deputy Police Constable doesn'Ash' Cox t think so and Max she'Colorado' Ying needed s even prepared to be got out of do the country. In the course of bringing this about, Luke Gaines, Ashother thing that Hardie demanded - make certain that DS Max Craigie and anyone who works with him is kept well away from what's foster father, lost his lifehappening.
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Hayley WebsterThea Lenarduzzi|title=Luna Rae is Not AloneThe Tower
|rating=5
|genre=Confident ReadersLiterary Fiction|summary=Luna Rae has just moved house. Moving house is always tricky''How unctuous are the fats of another's life, but especially when youhow dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream're ten years old'. In this compelling novel, and you miss your old homeThea Lenarduzzi assumes the identity of T, and you and your little sister have to start a new school but your mum seems to be out working all the timeprotagonist of this tale. Then thereJust as T's your dadstory is being told, the story of a second protagonist is unveiled: Annie, the daughter of a wealthy family in the 19th century, who doesndied of tuberculosis after being locked in a tower, captures T't seem like hes imagination. Annie's coping so wellfate is, above all, and so there's no one an enticing story to take care of things but youT. Everything feels different It is a story which she consumes avariciously, both in a quest for truth and strangeknowledge, and mysteriousin service of myth, fable and so Luna finds a way of coping is by watchingfantasy. She turns detective and starts keeping an eye on her new neighbourhood, but it turns out she's not the only one keeping watch!|isbn=17880060461804271799
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=B003A6W0FOClaire-Louise Bennett|title=Can You Forgive Her?|author=Anthony TrollopeBig Kiss, Bye-Bye
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=On the surface ''Can You Forgive Her?'' looks deceptively simple: it's the story of one woman Everything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, is steeped in anguish and two men who are vying with each other for her lovedistortion. Alice Vavasor was originally engaged to her cousinEven a kiss, George Vavasor but she broke off that engagement usually a symbol of intimacy and later became engaged to John Greycloseness, becomes evidence of love lost. When we first meet Alice shethe narrator cries out internally, ''s on an extended tour of the continent with George Vavasor come over here and his sister Kate. Itkiss me,'s obvious that there's still it is less an invitation than a great deal of chemistry between John and Alice - and Kate is all for encouraging the relationship as it would tie Alice desperate attempt to confirm heremotional numbness. George wants Alice but it's a matter The imagined recipient of ''amour propre'' rather than love: he has little consideration for anyone other than himself and the original engagement had fallen through because of his infidelity and deceitfulness. This thread this plea is the story of Xavier, her ex-partner, a very complicated love affair and a woman who lacks confidence in her own judgement. You might not like Alice to start with but you will warm ghost she conjures to test herdetachment.|isbn=1804271934
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Hannah Gold0008405026|title=The Last Bear|rating=4.5|genre=Confident Readers|summary=April's father, a scientist, has been given a job on a remote island called Bear Island, and he accepts the job deciding to take his daughter April with him. They live alone anyway, since April's mother died some time before, and he feels it will be educational for her to experience the island and all its natural beauty. April already has an affinity with nature, and she's excited to travel with her father, thinking of all the fun things they will be able to experience together on the island. But when they get there, her father finds that his work monitoring and recording the temperatures just takes up too much of his time, and so April is left to explore by herself. Her father had reassured her that there were no longer any bears living on Bear Island, but one day April thinks she catches a glimpse of one, and so she sets out to find A Stranger in the Bear, and then when she sees he is injured, to befriend and help him.|isbn=000841128X}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1472276140|title=What Will Burn Family (Inspector McLeanMaeve Kerrigan 11)|author=James OswaldJane Casey
|rating=5
|genre=Crime
|summary=When Cecily SlaterIt's body sixteen years since nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her bed one summer night. She was never found, she'd already been dead for and the investigation ground to a week - in a house fire in deserted woodland near Edinburghhalt. Heavy rain had washed away most of the evidenceNow, her mother, but DI Tony McLeanHelena, demoted and just returned from suspension, is reluctant to accept that this is nothing more than a careless accidenther father are dead in their bed. There were indications that Slater had been savagelyInitially, almost ritualistically beaten before the fire. But who would hate it looks like a ninety-year-old woman to straightforward murder/suicide but there's something about the extent positioning of doing something like the bodies that? makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and her boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. She What looked as though it was going to be an open-and-shut case is now a virtual reclusecomplex double murder. Kerrigan is convinced that the explanation lies in Rosalie's disappearance: who could she have upset to that extent?others (such as Derwent's boss, Una Burt) are less convinced.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=000845552XAnnie Ernaux and Alison L. Strayer (translator)|title=Where Ravens Roost|author=Karin NordinThe Other Girl
|rating=4
|genre=CrimeAutobiography|summary=Inspector Kjeld Nygaard had been estranged ''We were born from his father, Stenar, for more than a decade but when he got the rather muddled phone call from him saying that hesame body. I'd seen a murder in the barn on his land he didn't hesitate to drop everything and go ve never really wanted to Varsundthink about this. Actually, 'drop everything' rather overstates Ernaux's work is always very candid and her tone transparent, but this raw epistolary text must be one of the situationmost intimate accounts I've read. Nygaard was on suspension following the shooting of a suspect Ernaux writes in the Aubuchon murder enquiry. There had been a complication: the Kattegat Killer turned out direct address to be Nils Hedinher sister, however, Nygaardthis letter will never reach her. Why? Because Annie Ernaux's best friend. Stillsister died of diphtheria at 6 years old, a few months before the ten-hour drive from Gothenburg vaccine was made compulsory in France, and 2 years before the author was even born. The large and instant void created by the south jarring concept of Sweden writing to Varsund an imaginary recipient emphasises Ernaux's process of reckoning with this giant absence in the far north shouldn't be underestimatedher life, an absence that she has always felt but often denied.|isbn=1804271845
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1471187179Maxim Gorky and Bryan Karetnyk (translator)|title=A Beautiful Spy|author=Rachel HoreReminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev|rating=43.5|genre=Historical FictionBiography|summary=Minnie is an 'ordinary' girl living an unexciting Biographies are often seen as the form of life in a leafy provincial suburb-writing which offers less colour; it can be seen as more objective and less personal. The book is set in the 1930s and Minnie is expected to live up to her mother's expectations I think that Gorky completely rejects this perspective, and find offers a nice young man to marryvibrant, produce children and spend subjective yet informed portrait of three of his literary contemporaries. In the rest first section of her days looking after her husband and their home. Unfortunatelythis book, this isnTolstoy complains to his friend Gorky that: ''t you write not of real life as it is, but of what she wants you yourself imagine it to do at all and neither does she want be. Whom would it help to continue working as a secretaryknow how I see this tower, that sea, or that Tartar - why should it interest anyone? Of what use is it?''. As a result of Well, Maxim Gorky shows exactly what can be gained from a chance meetingsubjective account, she finds herself drawn into espionagegiving us access to how he saw Tolstoy, working for the secret service Chekhov and effectively living a double life - attempting to infiltrate the Communist Party Andreyev in such privileged detail that one almost feels unworthy of Great Britain. Minnie finds herself torn between what she perceives as her duty and the friends she has made - and likes - whilst working for the Communist Partyit.|isbn=1804271977
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|authorisbn= T L Huchu1529077745|title= The Library of the DeadDark Wives (D I Vera Stanhope)|author=Ann Cleeves|rating= 4.5|genre= TeensCrime|summary= Ropa Moyo is A man walking his dog in the early morning discovered the body of a ghostalkerman in the park near Rosebank, using Zimbabwean magic (and a bit care home for troubled teens. The dead man was Josh - one of Scottish pragmatism) the care workers who was due to take messages from work a shift the dead of Edinburgh for their living relativesnight before but who had never turned up. Ever since she dropped out of school, she's been using it D I Vera Stanhope is called in to support not only herself, investigate the murder - but her younger sister and her aging grandmother. However, there's an evil stalking only clue is the ruined streets disappearance of one of Edinburgh, targeting the city's children. Soonresidents, Ropa is pulled into the search for a missing boy at the request of his dead motherfourteen-year-old Chloe Spencer. She will end up discovering an occult library and realise Some people believe that Chloe was responsible for the world of magic death but Vera thinks this is far bigger and more dangerous than unlikely as the girl's diary makes it clear that she ever could've imaginedadored Josh. Will She knows that she has to find the missing children and bring an end Chloe to discover what happened to this evil, or will it claim her too?|isbn= 1529039452Josh.
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|author=Everina MaxwellOlga Tokarczuk|title=Winter's OrbitHouse of Day, House of Night
|rating=5
|genre=Science Literary Fiction|summary= Prince Kiem is ''What's the good of a famous political disappointmentworld 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'', 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. He's outgoingBut, carefreethe constant in that image is the house, and has gotten into many drunken scandals over stoic against the past few yearsancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it is perceived. So |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 an important political alliance is I open a book, it's nothing like I expected it to be arranged – one , and it takes me on a wild ride. And that is supposed just what happened with ''The Big Happy''. I don't want to prevent an interplanetary war – no one expects him ruin a similar experience for any of you reading but I'll have to be chosen for at least set the rolescene. Least of all himOnce that's done, I think you should simply experience this wonderfully original story for yourself.|isbn=0356515885
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|isbnauthor=1838952012Sally Rooney|title=The Favour|author=Laura VaughanIntermezzo
|rating=4.5
|genre=ThrillersGeneral Fiction |summary=The rejection by Oxford came as a bit Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard of life and is something of a shock to Ada Howell: she wasgrandmaster at putting it into words. Her dialogue is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, after allas her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Among the many relationships woven into this story, the daughter of central one for readers to unravel is the renowned authorfraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. Ivan, Anthony Howella socially awkward chess prodigy, contrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, who'd been to this collegea successful lawyer living in Dublin. Well, she wasn't ''actually'' HowellFollowing their father's daughter: he'd married her mother passing after her birth and had then adopted hera long battle with cancer, so she was 'chosen' rather than just 'made', which was better really. And whilst we're being honest, we might as well admit that 'renowned author' might be stretching the truth a little: his books degenerated into self-published poetry which Ada couldnbrothers't understand. Still, Ada had felt entitled and this was why her godmother's offer had come at such a brilliant timealready strained relationship faces new trials.|isbn=0571365469
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|authorisbn=C A Sacha1836285493|title=Legacy: A Political ThrillerThe Double Life of a Wheelchair User|author=Rob Keeley|rating=45|genre=ThrillersConfident Readers|summary= Corporate boss Gene Finnegan has Will is a keen player of video games, a conscientious student, a slightly annoying brother and a plan to increase supportive friend. But most of all, he is an aspiring writer. English is his already startling wealth and ensure favourite lesson at his legacy: to bring the world's first emission-free car to market school, Marlowe Park, and dominate productionone at which he excels. The secret development project to enable thisThis hasn't gone unnoticed by his headteacher, BucephalusMrs Howarth, is already underway and Finnegan bankrolls US president Joseph Montgomery into a second term she has suggested to help him carry it out. Montgomery is also looking for a legacy Will and one his mum that does not involve he spends a couple of afternoons a week at a different school, Station Road, where his controlling mother and her foundation, so grabs onto Finnegan's Feed Africa programme with both handsability might be better extended...|isbn=1800461976
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|authorisbn=Martin Venning1009473085|title=The Primary ObjectiveConservative Effect 2010 - 2024|author=Anthony Seldon and Tom Egerton (Editors)|rating=25|genre=General FictionPolitics and Society|summary= Sometimes it's simpler to explain a book starts off slowly, but eventually draws by describing what it ''isn't'' and that applies to ''The Conservative Effect: 2010-2024 - 14 Wasted Years?''. If you in to caring 're looking for an easy read which will deliver the inside story about what ''really'' happened on certain occasions, then this isn't the characters or simply wanting to know book for you. If that's what happens nextyou'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. Sometimes it doesnIt'ts a compelling read and should be compulsory for anyone who thinks Johnson should return to politics. ''The basic premise Conservative Effect'' is an entirely different beast. It's the seventh book in a good one – series which looks at the impact a clandestine organisation, operating government has made and co-editor Sir Anthony Seldon regards this as the most important. This book follows the well-established format: a charity, but funded by series of experts from various governments around fields review the world and partially (maybe, I'm not sure) under the auspices state of the UN, with nation when the primary objective of keeping the peacecoalition took over in 2010, by any means possible. Diplomacy is always the first option and sometimes one changes that needs to be carried out by third parties, but for situations when that looks unlikely to yield results Peace International maintains a call-on list of field operatives, ex-military, medics, scientists or anyone else with a taste for adventure occurred and willing to risk their life for the sake of itsituation in 2024.|isbn=1800461100
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|author=Francesca Simon and Steve MayJenny Valentine|title=Two Terrible VikingsUs in the Before and After|rating=45|genre=Emerging ReadersTeens|summary=In a small Viking village there live two twins, Hack Elk and Whack, who Mab are eager to be the very worst Vikings ever! Nothing can stop their mad maraudingbest friends, as they cause havoc at a birthday partyor more than that even, chaos whilst tracking their friendship is a troll, and undertake once in a grand journey to raid Bad Island with their friends! lifetime connection. They meet as children one day on a trip out but unfortunately they don't get up to all kinds of mischief each other's contact details at the time. But then chance brings them back together, and naughty behaviourthey are inseparable. Something has happened though, along with something terrible and tragic, and now they must work through their wolf-cub Bitey-Biteygrief, and their crazy cast of friendsfriendship, together.|isbn=05713494981471196585
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