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==The Best New Books==
'''Read [[:Category:Features|the latest features]].'''
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn= Jonathan Stroud1806344777|title= The Outlaws Scarlett Arthur and Brownethe Land of Nimbostratus: Arthur's Able Adventures|author=Rob Keeley|rating= 4.5|genre= TeensFor Sharing|summary= Scarlett McCain is an outlaw, rejecting the draconian conformity Arthur dreams of adventures. He looks out of the Surviving Towns his window each day and Faith Houses to wander thinks of all the wildlands between escapades he could have, the Seven Kingdoms of Britain, robbing banks places he could go and shooting other outlaws to keep herself alivethe things he could see. But then His favourite day is Saturday because that's the day his friend Maxine - she meets Albert Browne, a dark boy with dark powers and a darker past. With mysterious militiamen hunting them down, they plan to flee to the mythical Free Isles of the London Lagoon. Together, they must brave man-eating wildlife, the cannibalistic Tainted booming laugh and all the horrors of postsilver bangles -apocalyptic society comes to reach the Free Isles, but will they be any more accepted there than they are visit. Maxine is a great believer in the rest power of Britain?|isbn=1406394815imagination.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B08R7LXQ9S1035043092|title=Remy: A book about believing in yourselfThe Killing Stones (Jimmy Perez)|author=Mayuri Naidoo and Caroline SiegalAnn Cleeves|rating=45|genre=For SharingCrime|summary=Remy is feeling miserableI 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. He It's let himself down ''again'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. The school bully Jayden, together with Willow's also his sidekicks Ryan boss, and Brandonshe ''should'' be on maternity leave, have been laughing at Remy, calling him names because he is short and has small eyes. They are mean but they are not stupid. They are careful to wind up Remy when nobody can see and then push him just that little bit further when the other kids are around. Sobody of a popular islander, Archie Stout, when Remy reactsis found, it looks as though he was in the instigatoraftermath of a storm, she can't resist getting involved. And then he gets into trouble at school and He'd been battered about the teachers don't believe him when he tries to explain what happenedhead with a Neolithic stone - one of a pair - which had been stolen from a museum.
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=B00474HVX4Polly Barton|title=Phineas Redux|author=Anthony TrollopeWhat Am I, A Deer?|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=ItPolly Barton's some time since we heard debut novel is an intellectually playful yet emotionally exposed work that uses translation as both subject and governing metaphor. The narrator, newly relocated from [[Phineas Finn by Anthony Trollope|Phineas Finn]]. Having succeeded in parliament and achieved a paying position he fell out with those who provided his income and returned London to Ireland where he married MaryBerlin, his childhood sweetheart. He was fortunate to get a job in Cork (or Dublin - recollections may vary) and seemed settled works translating video games into a life Japanese through the process of domesticity. To bring Finn backlocalisation, Trollope had rewriting language until it feels comfortably familiar to kill off poor Mary and Phineas emerges in London a new audience. Barton treats this as a childless widower with a legacy from an aunt who died paradoxical act: arguably, in striving for universality, language is endlessly repackaged, its originality at just risk of disappearing altogether. From this, the right time novel opens out into a wider, resonant question: to allow the move what extent do we translate ourselves in order to be possible.understood, accepted, or loved?|isbn=1804272175
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Dean KoontzZabriskie1|title=The Other EmilyA Village Where Many Ways Meet: A Story of Belonging and Community, Rooted in Indigenous Wisdom|author=Stephanie Zabriskie|rating=45|genre=ThrillersChildren's Non-Fiction|summary=Our hero David Thorne is an author, who shares his life between the two US coasts. It's the western coast we're concerned withAcross many African and Indigenous systems, differences in how children learn, a place he has to return tosense , and a place he has or process the world were not treated as disorders to be able to leavecorrected. David lost contact with his partner there ten years agoThey were understood as natural variations of human intelligence and awareness, when she vanished from a remote road late at nighteach holding value within the community. He's paying for contact with the man he thinks the only suspect, ' This lovely story is a lifer nowsynthesis of that tradition, who went which was carried down through generations by oral retellings. It shows that a bit Hannibal Lecter, and has community or society is not made up from interchangeable building blocks of human beings but by a dozen range of people with different skills and more unfound Jane Does on his record. David is trying different personalities, all contributing to pry the connection between the murderer a whole that combines them all and his girl from the man's mind, but to no avail. He's also having a recharge ready for his next hit novel when into the restaurant walks the sheer spitting image, the very embodiment, the virtual resurrection, benefit of his lovethem all. What is a man to do?|isbn=1542019958
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Charlie Carroll1787333175|title=The LipYou 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''Melody Janie Rowe'' even s message in this short work of autofiction is unmistakable. A novelist named M travels from B (ostensibly Berlin) to the name town of F for a literary festival she is evocative of…probably of whatever we want it to bea 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, and maybe that's M eventually offers to step in for a circus performer who has unexpectedly left the pointshow. To me the name sings The train functions as a motif of English folk musictransience and impermanence, but even in my use while the circus embodies the reshaping of that word Englishidentity and a retreat into fantasy, I know I'm putting an emmet take on things. And Melody Janie Rowe is anti-emmetimpulse that lies at the very heart of the novel form itself. |isbn=15293341791804272329
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Danny Wallace and Gemma CorrellB0GFQ81YQK|title=The Day How the Sky and the Earth Made People: From the Screens Went BlankOral Stories of Malagasy Elders|author=Stephanie Zabriskie|rating=4.5|genre=Confident ReadersChildren's Non-Fiction|summary=Meet Stella Before people came and her familyjoined the animals, there was only the sky and the earth. They're just innocently trying Everything was quiet until the earth and the sky began to have a Sunday evening in together, watching a film – using three different screens tal to watch three different thingseach other. First, mind – when ''poof'' everything goes blankthe earth created bodies. And it's not just their homethen, but the entire south-western village of Mousehole, sky breathed life into them. These were the first humans and they belonged to both earth and not just that, either, but the whole country, if not worldsky. Suddenly And so people are constantly on their phones – hoping lived between sky and soil and they're first to get a screen backplanted and learned and remembered, and not what especially how they were constantly doing on them beforecame to be. Toasters can toastWhen they grew old and died, but TVs cannot do their bodies returned to the V part of earth and their job, and no computer can show its computationslife returned to the sky. You might think this And that is going to be a social comedy about people stuck in such a Luddite experience against their will, but no. For why the family finally remember Stella's grandma, earth and see if the sky are both revered. Only together can they can get across country to hercreate human beings. Hence this has to go down as a road-trip book. But not just that, a slapstick road-trip comedy. And more than thatis why people must pay attention to, too – and care for it's a slapstick, high-drama, high-octane road-trip comedy with oodles of cuddly heart that kids of all ages will loveboth.|isbn=1471196887
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=1913193527B0GHPMNF6P|title=Bound (Detective Sam Shephard)The Zookeeper's Dragon: A Magical Modern Fantasy Tale for Grown-Ups|author=Vanda SymonCarolyn Mathews
|rating=4.5
|genre=CrimeFantasy|summary=Dunedin was shocked when it heard When Phil's father unexpectedly dies, he quits his Canary Wharf finance job to take over the running of the murder of a wealthy and apparently respectable businessman out at Seaclifffamily's farm zoo. His wife had been bound and gagged and placed so that she was forced to watch the murderHe's not expecting much excitement, with the scene being discovered by their son, Declan, when until he returned home from receives an evening out. The subsequent investigation would prove unidentified egg that John Henderson had been involved his new-age stoner uncle Edgar found in a cave in some activities which might have been considered shady New Zealand, and certainly questionable if not illegalsuddenly life is no longer quite what it seems. His companyThen the egg hatches into neither a reptile nor a bird, Eros Globalbut a dragon! Now he, Edgar, his mother Abi, manufactured and marketed the zoo''vitamins part-type supplements time café waitress Pearl have to raise this little bundle of scales andjoy, well, sexual enhancers, that kind of thing'', as Henderson's employee, Blair Harvey-Boyd explaineddespite 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…
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1529109116Stephanie Zabriskie|title=Call Me RedHow Maasai Women Spoke to Cows: A Shepherd's Journey|author=Hannah JacksonFrom the Oral Stories of Maasai Elders|rating=4.5|genre=LifestyleChildren's Non-Fiction|summary=''I want How Maasai Women Spoke to Cows is a children’s nonfiction book drawn from the image of a British farmer to simply be that oral traditions of a person who is proudly employed Maasai elders in feeding the nation. I don't think that is too much to askNgorongoro, 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
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{{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
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{{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
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{{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
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{{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
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{{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.
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{{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.
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{{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 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 surface narrator cries out internally, ''Can You Forgive Her?come over here and kiss me,'' looks deceptively simple: itis less an invitation than a desperate attempt to 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 the story of sixteen years since nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her bed one woman and two men who are vying with each other for her lovesummer night. Alice Vavasor She was originally engaged never found and the investigation ground to a halt. Now, her cousinmother, Helena, George Vavasor but she broke off that engagement and later became engaged to John Greyher father are dead in their bed. When we first meet Alice sheInitially, it looks like a straightforward murder/suicide but there's on an extended tour something about the positioning of the continent with George Vavasor 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 his sister Kate-shut case is now a complex double murder. ItKerrigan is convinced that the explanation lies in Rosalie's obvious that theredisappearance: others (such as Derwent's still a great deal of chemistry between John boss, Una Burt) are less convinced.}}{{Frontpage|author=Annie Ernaux and Alice - 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 Kate is all for encouraging her tone transparent, but this raw epistolary text must be one of the relationship as it would tie Alice most intimate accounts I've read. Ernaux writes in direct address to her sister, however, this letter will never reach her. George wants Alice but itWhy? Because Annie Ernaux's sister died of diphtheria at 6 years old, a matter of ''amour propre'' rather than love: he has little consideration for anyone other than himself few months before the vaccine was made compulsory in France, and 2 years before the original engagement had fallen through because of his infidelity author was even born. The large and deceitfulness. This thread is instant void created by the story jarring concept of a very complicated love affair and a woman who lacks confidence writing to an imaginary recipient emphasises Ernaux's process of reckoning with this giant absence in her own judgement. You might not like Alice to start with life, an absence that she has always felt but you will warm to heroften denied.|isbn=1804271845
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{{Frontpage
|author=Hannah GoldMaxim Gorky and Bryan Karetnyk (translator)|title=Reminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev|rating=3.5|genre=Biography|summary=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 vibrant, subjective yet informed portrait of three of his literary contemporaries. In the first section of this book, Tolstoy complains to his friend Gorky that: ''you write not of real life as it is, but of what you yourself imagine it to be. Whom would it help to know how I see this tower, that sea, or that Tartar - why should it interest anyone? Of what use is it?''. Well, Maxim Gorky shows exactly what can be gained from a subjective account, giving us access to how he saw Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev in such privileged detail that one almost feels unworthy of it.|isbn=1804271977}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1529077745|title=The Last BearDark Wives (D I Vera Stanhope)|author=Ann Cleeves
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=April's father, A man walking his dog in the early morning discovered the body of a scientistman in the park near Rosebank, 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 care home for her to experience the island and all its natural beautytroubled teens. April already has an affinity with nature, and she's excited to travel with her father, thinking The dead man was Josh - one of all the fun things they will be able care workers who was due to experience together on work a shift the islandnight before but who had never turned up. But when they get there, D I Vera Stanhope is called in to investigate the murder - but her father finds that his work monitoring and recording only clue is the temperatures just takes up too much disappearance of one of his timethe residents, and so April is left to explore by herselffourteen-year-old Chloe Spencer. Her father had reassured her Some people believe that there were no longer any bears living on Bear Island, Chloe was responsible for the death but one day April Vera thinks this is unlikely as the girl's diary makes it clear that she catches a glimpse of one, and so adored Josh. She knows that she sets out has to find the Bear, and then when she sees he is injured, Chloe to discover what happened to befriend and help himJosh.|isbn=000841128X
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1472276140Olga Tokarczuk|title=What Will Burn (Inspector McLean)|author=James OswaldHouse of Day, House of Night
|rating=5
|genre=CrimeLiterary Fiction|summary=When Cecily Slater''What's body was foundthe good of a world that keeps changing like that? How can one go on calmly living in it?'' The title of this spellbinding work, ''House of Day, sheHouse of Night''d already been dead for a week , somewhat reflects this notion of shifting realities - in a house fire in deserted woodland near Edinburgh. Heavy rain had washed away most of the evidencesmall, but DI Tony McLeansubtle changes which govern our lives, demoted and just returned like the shift from suspensionday to night, however quotidian, causing chaos. But, the constant in that image is reluctant to accept that this 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, it's nothing more than like I expected it to be, and it takes me on a careless accidentwild ride. There were indications And that Slater had been savagely, almost ritualistically beaten before the fireis just what happened with ''The Big Happy''. But who would hate I don't want to ruin a ninety-year-old woman to the extent similar experience for any of doing something like that? She was a virtual recluse: who could she you reading but I'll have upset to at least set the scene. Once that extent?'s done, I think you should simply experience this wonderfully original story for yourself.
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|isbnauthor=000845552XSally Rooney|title=Where Ravens Roost|author=Karin NordinIntermezzo|rating=4.5|genre=CrimeGeneral Fiction |summary=Inspector Kjeld Nygaard had been estranged from his fatherSally 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, Stenaras her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Among the many relationships woven into this story, the central one for more than a decade but when he got readers to unravel is the rather muddled phone call from him saying that he'd seen fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. Ivan, a murder in the barn on socially awkward chess prodigy, contrasts sharply with his land he didn't hesitate to drop everything and go to Varsund. Actuallyolder brother Peter, 'drop everything' rather overstates the situation. Nygaard was on suspension following the shooting of a suspect successful lawyer living in the Aubuchon murder enquiryDublin. There had been a complication: the Kattegat Killer turned out to be Nils Hedin, NygaardFollowing their father's best friend. Stillpassing after a long battle with cancer, the ten-hour drive from Gothenburg in the south of Sweden to Varsund in the far north shouldnbrothers't be underestimatedalready strained relationship faces new trials.|isbn=0571365469
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=14711871791836285493|title=A Beautiful SpyThe Double Life of a Wheelchair User|author=Rachel HoreRob Keeley|rating=45|genre=Historical FictionConfident Readers|summary=Minnie Will is an 'ordinary' girl living an unexciting life in a leafy provincial suburbkeen player of video games, a conscientious student, a slightly annoying brother and a supportive friend. The book But most of all, he is set in the 1930s and Minnie an aspiring writer. English is expected to live up to her mother's expectations and find a nice young man to marryhis favourite lesson at his school, Marlowe Park, produce children and spend the rest of her days looking after her husband and their homeone at which he excels. Unfortunately, this isnThis hasn't what gone unnoticed by his headteacher, Mrs Howarth, and she wants has suggested to do at all Will and neither does she want to continue working as his mum that he spends a secretary. As couple of afternoons a result of week at a chance meetingdifferent school, she finds herself drawn into espionageStation Road, working for the secret service and effectively living a double life - attempting to infiltrate the Communist Party 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 Partywhere his ability might be better extended.
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|authorisbn= T L Huchu1009473085|title= The Library of the DeadConservative Effect 2010 - 2024|author=Anthony Seldon and Tom Egerton (Editors)|rating= 4.5|genre= TeensPolitics and Society|summary= Ropa Moyo is Sometimes it's simpler to explain a ghostalker, using Zimbabwean magic (book by describing what it ''isn't'' and a bit of Scottish pragmatism) that applies to take messages from ''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 dead of Edinburgh book for their living relativesyou. Ever since she dropped out of school If that's what you're looking for, sheI don't think Anthony Seldon's been using it to support not only herselfbook, {{amazonurl|isbn=B0BH7SKG2S|title=Johnson at 10}}, but her younger sister can be bettered for those tumultuous years. It's a compelling read and her aging grandmothershould be compulsory for anyone who thinks Johnson should return to politics. However, there ''The Conservative Effect''s is an evil stalking the ruined streets of Edinburgh, targeting the cityentirely different beast. It's children. Soon, Ropa is pulled into the search for seventh book in a missing boy series which looks at the request 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 his dead mother. She will end up discovering an occult library and realise that experts from various fields review the world state of magic is far bigger the nation when the coalition took over in 2010, the changes that occurred and more dangerous than she ever could've imaginedthe situation in 2024. Will she find the missing children and bring an end to this evil, or will it claim her too?|isbn= 1529039452
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{{Frontpage
|author=Everina MaxwellJenny Valentine|title=Winter's OrbitUs in the Before and After
|rating=5
|genre=Science FictionTeens|summary= Prince Kiem Elk and Mab are best friends, or more than that even, their friendship is a famous political disappointmentonce in a lifetime connection. He They meet as children one day on a trip out but unfortunately they don't get each other's outgoingcontact details at the time. But then chance brings them back together, and they are inseparable. Something has happened though, something terrible and tragic, carefreeand now they must work through their grief, and has gotten into many drunken scandals over the past few years. So when an important political alliance is to be arranged – one that is supposed to prevent an interplanetary war – no one expects him to be chosen for the role. Least of all himtheir friendship, together.|isbn=03565158851471196585
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