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==The Best New Books==
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Ananda Devi1806344777|title=Eve Out Arthur and the Land of Her RuinsNimbostratus: Arthur's Able Adventures|author=Rob Keeley|rating=4.5|genre=General FictionFor Sharing|summary=At not even 200 pages, Eve Out Arthur dreams of adventures. He looks out of Her Ruins is one his window each day and thinks of all the shortest books I've read in a long whileescapades he could have, but itthe places he could go and the things he could see. His favourite day is Saturday because that's one the day his friend Maxine - she of the most dramaticbooming laugh and silver bangles - comes to visit. It's also told Maxine is a great believer in a way that I can only describe as brutal: it spares nothing and pulls very few punches, the descriptions stark and unromanticpower of imagination.|isbn=0993009344}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=02419851371035043092|title=The Whole Truth Killing Stones (D I FawleyJimmy Perez)|author=Cara HunterAnn Cleeves
|rating=5
|genre=Crime
|summary=DI Adam FawleyI can's team got to Edith Launceleve College firstt have been the only person who was sad when Inspector Jimmy Perez [[Wild Fire (Shetland, called there Book 8) by Jancis Appleby Ann Cleeves|left Shetland]] to see the Principal, Professor Hilary Reynolds. There had been an accusation of sexual assault by start a professor new life on a studentOrkney. When Fawley arrived It's been seven years since we heard from him, but he was almost cross: what was the alleged perpetrator doing in the room before they'd even got s now living with Willow Reeves and their young son, James, as well as Cassie, the details from the victim? daughter of his former partner. The problem was that Caleb Morgan Willow's also his boss, and she ''wasshould'' be on maternity leave, but when the body of a popular islander, Archie Stout, is found, in the aftermath of a storm, she can'victimt resist getting involved. He' and d been battered about the alleged perpetrator was Professor Marina Fisherhead with a Neolithic stone - one of a pair - which had been stolen from a museum. Just to complicate matters further}}{{Frontpage|author=Polly Barton|title=What Am I, CalebA Deer?|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Polly Barton's mother debut novel is Petra Newsonan 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 local MPprocess of localisation, and Professor Fisher is rewriting language until it feels comfortably familiar to a new audience. Barton treats this as a big name paradoxical act: arguably, in striving for universality, language is Artificial Intelligenceendlessly repackaged, its originality at risk of disappearing altogether. She has an eight-year-old sonFrom this, buys her wine by the case from Berry Brothers & Rudd, spends more than £1000 novel opens out into a month on clothes and has more than ten thousand Twitter followers. When the excrement encounters the ventilation equipmentwider, this is going resonant question: to what extent do we translate ourselves in order to be ''very'' public.understood, accepted, or loved?|isbn=1804272175
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=0753558378Zabriskie1|title=EffortlessA Village Where Many Ways Meet: Make It Easier to Do What MattersA Story of Belonging and Community, Rooted in Indigenous Wisdom|author=Greg McKeownStephanie Zabriskie|rating=4.5|genre=LifestyleChildren's Non-Fiction|summary=''The marginal return of working harder wasAcross many African and Indigenous systems, differences in facthow 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, negativeeach holding value within the community.''
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=14711814051787333175|title=NighthawkingYou Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here|author=Russ ThomasBenji Waterhouse|rating=4.5|genre=CrimePopular Science|summary=SheffieldI was tempted to read 's [http://www.sbg.org.uk/ Botanical Gardens] (on Clarkehouse Road, if you'd like You Don't Have to visit) are an oasis of calm in whatbe Mad to Work Here'' after enjoying Adam Kay's otherwise thought first book {{amazonurl|isbn=1509858636|title=This is Going to Hurt}}, a glorious mixture of as an industrial city but this was disrupted when insight into the body workings of a young woman was discoveredthe NHS, humour and autobiography. It had obviously been buried in one of ''You Don't Have to be Mad...'' promised the beds same elements but who would have started moved from physical problems to dig her up? It had been in mental illness and the earth for months and could have been undiscovered for yearswork of a psychiatrist. The police need I did wonder whether it was acceptable to establish who stabbed her - and who left be looking for humour in this setting but the two, very rare, gold aurei on her eyes. DCI Diane Jordan laughter is the Investigating Officer directed at a situation rather than a person and her foot soldiers are DS Adam Tyler it is always delivered with empathy and DC Mina Rabbani. They're joined by DS Guy Daley who's just returned from extended sick leave. Mina thinks he's as obnoxious as ever but suspects that he's not fully recovered from his injuriesunderstanding.
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{{Frontpage
|author= Jennifer Saint Maria Stepanova and Sasha Dugdale (Translator)|title= Ariadne The Disappearing Act|rating= 4.5 |genre= Women's Literary Fiction |summary= This re-telling Despite her anonymisation of the myth place names and people, Stepanova's message in this short work of Ariadne and the Minotaur autofiction is interesting and unusualunmistakable. Jennifer Saint presents A novelist named M travels from B (ostensibly Berlin) to the story in town of F for a way that literary festival she is sympathetic to its origins but also appealing to be a guest speaker at. Detoured by erratic train schedules and nudged by forces beyond her control, her journey slowly bends toward a modern audiencetraveling circus. Saint's narrative is told predominantly through the viewpoint Swept up in this series of Ariadneevents, spanning from her childhood M eventually offers to her death, allowing step in for a circus performer who has unexpectedly left the reader to really connect with Ariadne show. The train functions as a character in her own right rather than just motif of transience and impermanence, while the circus embodies the reshaping of identity and a prop in retreat into fantasy, an impulse that lies at the heroics very heart of Theseusthe novel form itself. |isbn=14722738691804272329}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=B0GFQ81YQK|title=Gianna Pollero How the Sky and Sarah Hornethe Earth Made People: From the Oral Stories of Malagasy Elders|titleauthor=Monster DoughnutsStephanie Zabriskie
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersChildren's Non-Fiction|summary=After their parents mysteriously disappearedBefore people came and joined the animals, Grace there was only the sky and Danni have been left to run the family bakeryearth. But Grace needs Everything was quiet until the doughnuts earth and sweet treats that Danni bakes for a rather unusual reasonthe sky began to tal to each other.First, the earth created bodies.And then, the sky breathed life into them.even though she's only ten years old, she is a monster hunter! Monsters have a very sweet tooth, These were the first humans and Grace uses a number of methods they belonged to defeat them such as throwing baking powder on them, or tricking them into eating a sweet treat that will, ultimatelyboth earth and sky. And so people lived between sky and soil and they planted and learned and remembered, especially how they came to be their demise. One dayWhen they grew old and died, though, Grace finds herself facing a cyclops monster called Mr Harris, who has a weakness for doughnuts but doesn't seem their bodies returned to the earth and their life returned to explode as the other monsters dosky. 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 so things start to get very strange…|isbn=1848129432care for, both.
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=0995647895B0GHPMNF6P|title=Sadie and the Sea DogsThe Zookeeper's Dragon: A Magical Modern Fantasy Tale for Grown-Ups|author=Maureen Duffy and Anita JoiceCarolyn Mathews|rating=34.5|genre=For SharingFantasy|summary=SadieWhen Phil's mother always said that she was a dreamerfather unexpectedly dies, her mind never on what she should be doing. She lives by the River Thames at Greenwich and she loves he quits his Canary Wharf finance job to spend hours at The Maritime Museum or gazing at Cutty Sark. ''Her class had gone one rainy afternoon''<br>''When all take over the houses cowered in running of the gloom,''<br>''To the Maritime Museum'family's farm zoo. Her imagination was fired. SheHe'd love to sail the oceans on s not expecting much excitement, until he receives an ancient sailing ship unidentified egg that his new-age stoner uncle Edgar found in a cave in New Zealand, and went back regularlysuddenly life is no longer quite what it seems. One day she fell asleep under Then the egg hatches into neither a reptile nor a bird, but a glass case (it's the one where Nelson's Trafalgar breeches are on show) dragon! Now he, Edgar, his mother Abi, and missed the closing bell and the attendantzoo's warning shout. When she woke (hard floors don't make comfy beds) she was in the midst of an adventure that she could never part-time café waitress Pearl have imagined in a world to raise this little bundle of dolphinsscales and joy, pirates, mermaids despite having no idea how to actually raise dragons and treasurenot 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
|author=Kristen O'NealStephanie Zabriskie|title=Lycanthropy and Other Chronic IllnessesHow Maasai Women Spoke to Cows: From the Oral Stories of Maasai Elders
|rating=5
|genre=TeensChildren's Non-Fiction|summary= Having recently been diagnosed with chronic Lyme disease, Priya has to come to terms with the fact that she may be in constant pain for the rest of her life. She joins ''Oof Ouch My Bones'', an online support group where she talks How Maasai Women Spoke to Cows is a bunch children’s nonfiction book drawn from the oral traditions of other teens living with chronic illnesses. They talk about their troubles and help each other outMaasai elders in Ngorongoro, while also providing an escape to just joke and mess aroundTanzania. When Brigid—one of her closest friends—doesn't respond to the chat for ' The Maasai are a while, Priya becomes concerned. She decides to steal her parents' car cattle-herding people and drive this story writes down its oral tradition explaining how they came to Brigid's house to check up on herbe so. But what she Cattle are status and wealth in Maasai culture but this doesn't expect to find there is a werewolf in tell the whole story of the basement – intimate and symbiotic connection its people, and especially its women, have with their cows and for that werewolf to be the girl she has been talking to online for natural world. The oral tradition retelling the past few monthsmany conversations Maasai women have had with their cows, does.|isbn=1683692349B0G9WTGY6J
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{{Frontpage
|author=Mercedes HelnweinLivi Michael|title=SlingshotElizabeth and Ruth|rating=3.5|genre=TeensHistorical Fiction|summary=Gracie Welles has resigned herself to being lonely. As ''Elizabeth and Ruth'' is a secret illegitimate daughter work of historical fiction wrought from the life of the Victorian author Elizabeth Gaskell, best known for her first novel Mary Barton (1848), a man with radical critique of the treatment of the working class published under a "real" familypseudonym. The ''Ruth'' from Livi Michael's title appears in her novel as Pasley, she is used to not being a priority young Irish prostitute who was abandoned as a child and finds herself in peopleManchester's lives. But when she defends New Bailey Prison after a random boy in her class with her slingshot, her simple existence is changed for gooddifficult and unjust hand at life. No longer can she spend her time writing novels Set in solitudeManchester 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 her life now has a boy in it that she never asked for: Wade Scholfieldaddressing these injustices.|isbn=152905818X1784633682
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=B005FM76AAMakenna Goodman|title=The Duke's Children|author=Anthony TrollopeHelen of Nowhere
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The story opens to probably It could be argued that the worst news pervading theme of all: Lady Glencora Palliser this book is malaise - a hard-to-place feeling that something in your life is deadnot quite right. Her husband, Plantagenet PalliserThe protagonist, a disgraced professor on the Duke brink of Omniumlosing both his career and his relationship, embodies this feeling. However, Goodman counteracts his discomfort with a force which is nearly paralysed by grief seductive, radical and unnerving: Helen. The connection between Helen and struggling - at the same time - 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 adjust to no longer being prime ministerhis 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, or even beyond form''. Although she lives in officean 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. He seeks to protect and guide his three adult childrenWith '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 easier said than done when none of them wishes to so perfect that you'll go back and reread paragraphs and sentences, just for the pleasure the words give. ''beWhy My Mother Went Away'' guidedis one of those rare exceptions. Silverbridge 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 (his elder sonas between persons, actually called Plantagenetthings, but always known by his titleor 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 Gerald Evie Bennet, are destined to be sent down from Oxford as different as they come. Rebekah is an uptight, traditional and Cambridge respectively and to run up gambling debts, occasionally in eye-watering sums. Lady Helen has fallen in love with no- and wishes nonsense composer close to marry - Frank Tregearretirement, the penniless son while Evie is a force of a poor squirenature, which bounding onto the Duke cannot countenancemusical scene as a precocious saxophonist, not least because he sees echos of what might have happened when he married Lady Glencoraoozing with talent and charm. HeThe two, predictably, don't always see eye to eye, their approaches different and Evie's progressive views at odds with Rebekah's about to learn that parents do not always get conservative leaning. However, something connects them beyond just their waymusical project: a sort of fragile alliance formed within the clamour.|isbn=1804272264
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{{Frontpage
|author=Goldy MoldavskyTom Percival|title=The Last GirlWrong Shoes
|rating=5
|genre=TeensConfident Readers|summary= Rachel Chavez Will's life is the new girl at Manchester Prepdifficult, in a multitude of ways. A school filled to He is bullied because he has 'the brim with wrong shoes', he has the richest children in the city – wrong shoes because his dad can't work and Rachel doesn't belong. She's not rich, she has no ties to some royal family in Serbia, and have enough money for even the most basic of allthings like food, she spends and his dad can't work because he lost his job at the majority of her spare time watching horror movies as college, was working a cash-in-hand job on a source of comfortbuilding site and had an accident. She struggles to find anyone to connect with, until one day she stumbles upon Throw into that mix the Mary Shelley Club. A secret society with one aim: pull off the best prank in true horror movie stylefact that his mum and dad are separated, and unless someone screams, you have failed. Rachel becomes immediately engrossed Will's life seems bleak in the competitionevery direction. But as the pranks escalate And yet, and Rachel finally feels like she he still has found her place in this schoola tiny amount of hope. He is good at art, things start to go wrong; a masked figure keeps showing up and clings to the pranksmoments of joy when he is drawing, and people begin to get hurt. When that feel like a light at the competition then takes end of a deadly turnlong, Rachel must figure out who this masked figure is before it's too latedark tunnel.|isbn=07555015271398527122
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{{Frontpage
|author=Polly BartonEdward W Said|title=Fifty SoundsRepresentations of the Intellectual
|rating=4.5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary= Where do I start? I could start with where Barton herself starts, with the question Edward Said's ''Why Japan?Representations of the Intellectual'' Japan has been on my radar for is less a while strict theory of what intellectuals are and if the world hadn't gone into melt-down I would have visited by now. I may get there later this year, but I am not hopefulmore a passionate argument for what they should be. And like Barton, I don't know the answer to Said clearly rejects the question ''why Japan?'' She explains her feelings in respect comfortable image of the question in the first essayintellectual as a detached expert speaking only to other specialists. Instead, which is he insists on the sound ''giro' '' – which she describes intellectual as beinga public figure, among other thingsoften awkward, abrasive, and unpopular, the sound of ''every party where you have who speaks truth to introduce yourself''power even when it is inconvenient or risky.|isbn=19130975011804272248
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{{Frontpage
|author=Lucy HollandSylvie Cathrall|title=SistersongA Letter to the Luminous Deep
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Science Fiction|summary=Sistersong There are few greater joys than a book which lives up to a compelling premise. And this is part one of a them.|isbn= 0356522776}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1786482126|title=The Janus Stone (Dr Ruth Galloway)|author=Elly Griffiths|rating=4.5|genre I particularly enjoy, =Crime|summary=Builders were demolishing an old house in Norwich - the site was going to hold seventy-five 'luxury' apartments - when they discovered the modern retelling bones of folk and fairy talesa 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. These stories It's difficult as Ruth knows, for most of usbut Nelson doesn't, are that she is pregnant with his child as a cornerstone result of childhood and I relish seeing them retold with fresh eyes and a fresh perspectivethe one night they spent together some three months ago. If handled well these retellings give new life and new meaning Her condition will be obvious before long, not least because Ruth is prone to stories that are now becoming increasingly narrow and outdated, fleshing out characters, examining relationships and re-evaluating 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 role bottom of women. Sistersong is a perfect example Scottish mountain, seemingly the result of a modern retelling done welltragic accident. She'd looked so happy, too, the plot is handled with carewhen she posted her intentions on Facebook. Her friends were relieved as she was just out of an unpleasant relationship, keeping its archaic historical feel but allowing it looked like she was living her best life now. Then it emerged that five other women had died in similar circumstances in the characters to come to lifelast year. All were experienced climbers, to feel real properly equipped for what they were doing and human, most importantly they feel relatable in sensible people. None of the 'what a modern world whilst still feeling appropriate for the pre-Saxon age stupid thing to do' explanations applied. They were all alone when they live in. This died: DS Max Craigie is certain there's a masterpiece of storytelling and I was captivated from beginning to endkiller on the loose.|isbn=1529039037
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1529124255Paul B Preciado|title=The Whispers|author=Heidi PerksDysphoria Mundi
|rating=4.5
|genre=ThrillersPolitics and Society|summary=We know straight away that there's going 'It is never too late to be a body. Itembrace the revolutionary optimism of childhood's on the beach under Crayne's Cliff near the town Through this hybrid text, consisting of Clearwater arias, letters, essays and autofiction, Preciado expresses his own hybrid self, and it's brings forth a new year's day. To understand what happened we're going to have to go back sensorium as an offering to the previous Septembernew generation, a new feeling mechanism in which detachment is not considered a sign of political apathy. Grace Goodwin has a soft Australian accent - she's lived there since her teens and nowRather, in her mid-thirtiesit is the proportional, shevalid response to 's returned to her home town to live. Her husband'the epistemological and political crack we are living through, Graham, works in Singapore and she the tension between emancipatory forces and her eightconservative resistances that characterize our present'' which Preciado calls ''dysphoria mundi''. The whole text is framed against the backdrop of the Covid-year-old daughter19 pandemic as that which has catalysed this revolution, Matildawhen dysphoria began to emerge on a global scale, might or as well be in the lovely apartment she's found'pangea covidica''. Grace's best friendRather than taking this extreme dysphoria as a sign of weakness, Anna Robinsonor mistaking detachment or withdrawal for political paralysis, is still in Clearwater and she has an eight-year-old child too. EthanPreciado urges his readers to ''use dysphoria as your revolutionary platform''s in the class Matilda will be joining. It's perfect!|isbn=1804271454
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{{Frontpage
|author=Sarah SultoonSamantha Harvey|title=The SourceOrbital|rating=24.5|genre=ThrillersGeneral Fiction|summary=1996. Essex. Thirteen-year-old schoolgirl Carly In 2024, Samantha Harvey won the Booker Prize for ''Orbital'', a compact yet profound work that unfolds over a single day in the lives in of a disenfranchised town dominated by group of astronauts aboard the International Space Station. Through a military basenarrative lens that mirrors the astronauts' orbital perspective, struggling Harvey invites readers to care for her baby sister while her mum sleeps off another binge. When her squaddie brother brings food and treats, and offers an exclusive invitation to army parties, things start to look see our planet in a little less bleak..wholly new light.|isbn=19131935941529922933
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=B004O37B6A295967572X|title=The Prime MinisterPale Pieces|author=Anthony TrollopeG M Stevens|rating=45
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Plantagenet Palliser, Our unnamed narrator is about to begin a train journey with his companion Django. Where they're going and what the Duke purpose of Omniumthis journey is, is uncertain. Django found the prime minister of a coalition government but hetickets ''s privately enraged at on the seemingly unstoppable rise of Ferdinand Lopezfloor somewhere'' and has persuaded our narrator to accompany him. Lopex Why not? Not much else is exotic clear either - some describe him but we are probably in the past as Jewish, others as Portuguese but the truth is that no one knows pair travel to the station by coach and Lopez the train is not going 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 explainapproach the police. The ladies of society, even PalliserNeither side likes or has any respect for the other. But Davie Hardie is struggling in prison and he's own wifeprepared to tell the police where the body of a missing person is buried and who was responsible for her death. This person, Lady Glencorahe promises, are supporters but after Lopez makes is someone big and it will be worth the police doing what he wants. And what he wants is to be transferred to an advantageous marriage Palliser is placed in open prison to serve the position remainder of having his sentence and to support his wife's actions when Lopez loses a by-electionget an early parole date. Not much to ask, is it? The Dukenew Deputy Police Constable doesn't think so and she's payment of Lopez' election expenses in an attempt even prepared to stem gossip about his wife will come back to haunt do the other thing that Hardie demanded - make certain that DS Max Craigie and anyone who works with himis kept well away from what's happening.
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1787332098Thea Lenarduzzi|title=How to Love Animals in a Human-Shaped World|author=Henry ManceThe Tower
|rating=5
|genre=Politics and SocietyLiterary Fiction|summary=''When we do think about animals, we break them down into species and groups: cows, dogs, foxes, elephants and so on. And we assign them places in society: cows go on plates, dogs on sofas, foxes in rubbish bins, elephants in zoos, and millions How unctuous are the fats of wild animals stay out there, another''somewheres life,how dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream'' hopefully on the next David Attenborough series.''
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{{Frontpage
|author=Jessie GreengrassClaire-Louise Bennett|title=The High HouseBig Kiss, Bye-Bye
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Charles Darwin taught that all living matter evolved to pass on its genetic material with the implied belief that your progeny will then pass on theirs. HoweverEverything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, that train of thought is slowly seems to have fallen out of favour. Today's young generation are discovering that their parents steeped in anguish and their parents' parents did not seem to think that far aheaddistortion. Or they did think that far ahead Even a kiss, usually a symbol of intimacy and thought "it's not my problem" or "there's nothing I can do"closeness, becomes evidence of love lost. Raising a child and living in a world on When the precipice of catastrophe is what drives narrator cries out internally, ''The High Housecome over here and kiss me,'' by Jessie Greengrass. This it is not less an invitation than a science-fiction noveldesperate attempt to confirm her emotional numbness. This The imagined recipient of this plea is our reality. This is the life our children and their children will have Xavier, her ex-partner, a ghost she conjures to livetest her detachment.|isbn=18007500721804271934
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Ruth Hogan0008405026|title=Madame BurovaA Stranger in the Family (Maeve Kerrigan 11)|author=Jane Casey|rating=4.5|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=This book lets us discover several people in different stages of life in the early 1970s, all vaguely connectedIt's sixteen years since nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her bed one summer night. So we have a bullied half-cast boy (as he would have been called then), a girl in a humdrum job wanting She was never found and the investigation ground to become a singerhalt. Now, and chieflyher mother, ImeldaHelena, the third generation of Madame Burova, ''Tarot-Reader, Palmist and Clairvoyant'', to use her family's sea-front boothfather are dead in their bed. The singerInitially, the scryer and the suffererit looks like a straightforward murder/suicide but there's mother will all become staff at a revamped holiday camp, but just before then we see Imelda fly solo for something about the first time in positioning of the family stallbodies that makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and her boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. We also see her on her last day, fifty years later, in possession of a pair of letters that will change everything for What looked as though it was going to be an open-and-shut case is now a woman called Billiecomplex double murder. Just who Kerrigan is she, and who delivered convinced that the secrets about her to Imeldaexplanation lies in Rosalie's disappearance: others (such as Derwent's boss, and why did it have to remain a secret all this time?|isbn=152937331XUna Burt) are less convinced.
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{{Frontpage
|author= Jonathan StroudAnnie Ernaux and Alison L. Strayer (translator)|title= The Outlaws Scarlett and BrowneOther Girl|rating= 4|genre= TeensAutobiography|summary= Scarlett McCain ''We were born from the same body. I've never really wanted to think about this.'' Ernaux's work is an outlawalways very candid and her tone transparent, rejecting the draconian conformity but this raw epistolary text must be one of the Surviving Towns and Faith Houses most intimate accounts I've read. Ernaux writes in direct address to wander the wildlands between the Seven Kingdoms of Britainher sister, however, robbing banks and shooting other outlaws to keep herself alivethis letter will never reach her. But then she meets Albert BrowneWhy? Because Annie Ernaux's sister died of diphtheria at 6 years old, a dark boy with dark powers few months before the vaccine was made compulsory in France, and a darker past. With mysterious militiamen hunting them down, they plan to flee to 2 years before the mythical Free Isles of the London Lagoonauthor was even born. Together, they must brave man-eating wildlife, the cannibalistic Tainted The large and all instant void created by the horrors jarring concept of post-apocalyptic society writing to reach the Free Islesan imaginary recipient emphasises Ernaux's process of reckoning with this giant absence in her life, an absence that she has always felt but will they be any more accepted there than they are in the rest of Britain?often denied.|isbn=14063948151804271845
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=B08R7LXQ9SMaxim Gorky and Bryan Karetnyk (translator)|title=Remy: A book about believing in yourself|author=Mayuri Naidoo Reminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Caroline SiegalAndreyev|rating=43.5|genre=For SharingBiography|summary=Remy is feeling miserableBiographies are often seen as the form of life-writing which offers less colour; it can be seen as more objective and less personal. He's let himself down ''again''. The school bully JaydenI think that Gorky completely rejects this perspective, together with his sidekicks Ryan and Brandonoffers a vibrant, have been laughing at Remysubjective yet informed portrait of three of his literary contemporaries. In the first section of this book, calling him names because he Tolstoy complains to his friend Gorky that: ''you write not of real life as it is short and has small eyes. They are mean , but they are not stupidof what you yourself imagine it to be. They are careful Whom would it help to wind up Remy when nobody can know how I see and then push him just this tower, that sea, or that little bit further when the other kids are aroundTartar - why should it interest anyone? Of what use is it?''. SoWell, when Remy reactsMaxim Gorky shows exactly what can be gained from a subjective account, it looks as though giving us access to how he was the instigator. And then he gets into trouble at school saw Tolstoy, Chekhov and the teachers don't believe him when he tries to explain what happenedAndreyev in such privileged detail that one almost feels unworthy of it.|isbn=1804271977
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=B00474HVX41529077745|title=Phineas ReduxThe Dark Wives (D I Vera Stanhope)|author=Anthony TrollopeAnn Cleeves
|rating=4.5
|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.
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|author=Olga Tokarczuk
|title=House of Day, House of Night
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=It''What's some time since we heard the good of a world that keeps changing like that? How can one go on calmly living in it?'' The title of this spellbinding work, ''House of Day, House of Night'', somewhat reflects this notion of shifting realities - the small, subtle changes which govern our lives, like the shift 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 day to Ireland where he married Marynight, his childhood sweetheart. He was fortunate to get a job in Cork (or Dublin - recollections may vary) and seemed settled into a life of domesticityhowever quotidian, causing chaos. To bring Finn backBut, Trollope had to kill off poor Mary and Phineas emerges the constant in London as a childless widower with a legacy from an aunt who died at just that image is the right time to allow house, stoic against the move to be possibleancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it is perceived.|isbn=1804271918
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Dean Koontz1836284683|title=The Other EmilyBig Happy|author=David Chadwick|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersDystopian Fiction|summary=Our hero David Thorne Well! This is an authora murder mystery unlike any other! I do love it when I open a book, who shares his life between the two US coasts. Itit's the western coast we're concerned with, a place he has to return nothing like I expected it tobe, and it takes me on a place he has to be able to leavewild ride. David lost contact And that is just what happened with his partner there ten years ago, when she vanished from a remote road late at night''The Big Happy''. HeI don's paying t want to ruin a similar experience for contact with any of you reading but I'll have to at least set the man he thinks the only suspect, a lifer now, who went a bit Hannibal Lecter, and has a dozen and more unfound Jane Does on his recordscene. David is trying to pry the connection between the murderer and his girl from the manOnce that's minddone, but to no avail. He's also having a recharge ready I think you should simply experience this wonderfully original story for his next hit novel when into the restaurant walks the sheer spitting image, the very embodiment, the virtual resurrection, of his loveyourself. What is a man to do?|isbn=1542019958
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{{Frontpage
|author=Charlie CarrollSally Rooney|title=The LipIntermezzo|rating=4.5|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=''Melody Janie Rowe'' even Sally Rooney has studied the name chessboard of life and is evocative of…probably something of whatever we want a grandmaster at putting it into words. Her dialogue is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, as her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Among the many relationships woven into this story, the central one for readers to be, unravel is the fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and maybe that's the pointPeter Koubek. To me the name sings of English folk musicIvan, a socially awkward chess prodigy, contrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, but even a successful lawyer living in my use of that word EnglishDublin. Following their father's passing after a long battle with cancer, I know Ithe brothers'm putting an emmet take on things. And Melody Janie Rowe is anti-emmetalready strained relationship faces new trials. |isbn=15293341790571365469
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Danny Wallace and Gemma Correll1836285493|title=The Day the Screens Went BlankDouble Life of a Wheelchair User|author=Rob Keeley
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Meet Stella and her family. They're just innocently trying to have Will is a Sunday evening in togetherkeen player of video games, watching a film – using three different screens to watch three different things, mind – when ''poof'' everything goes blank. And it's not just their home, but the entire south-western village of Mouseholeconscientious student, a slightly annoying brother and not just that, either, but the whole country, if not world. Suddenly people are constantly on their phones – hoping they're first to get a screen back, and not what they were constantly doing on them beforesupportive friend. Toasters can toast, but TVs cannot do the V part But most of their joball, and no computer can show its computationshe is an aspiring writer. You might think this English is going to be a social comedy about people stuck in such a Luddite experience against their willhis favourite lesson at his school, Marlowe Park, but noand one at which he excels. For the family finally remember StellaThis hasn's grandmat gone unnoticed by his headteacher, Mrs Howarth, and see if they can get across country to her. Hence this she has suggested to go down as Will and his mum that he spends a road-trip book. But not just that, couple of afternoons a slapstick road-trip comedy. And more than that, too – for it's week at a slapstickdifferent school, high-dramaStation Road, high-octane road-trip comedy with oodles of cuddly heart that kids of all ages will lovewhere his ability might be better extended.|isbn=1471196887
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|isbn=19131935271009473085|title=Bound (Detective Sam Shephard)The Conservative Effect 2010 - 2024|author=Vanda SymonAnthony Seldon and Tom Egerton (Editors)|rating=4.5|genre=CrimePolitics and Society|summary=Dunedin was shocked when Sometimes it heard of the murder of 's simpler to explain a wealthy book by describing what it ''isn't'' and apparently respectable businessman out at Seacliffthat applies to ''The Conservative Effect: 2010-2024 - 14 Wasted Years?''. His wife had been bound and gagged and placed so that she was forced to watch If you're looking for an easy read which will deliver the murderinside story about what ''really'' happened on certain occasions, with then this isn't the scene being discovered by their sonbook for you. If that's what you're looking for, I don't think Anthony Seldon's book, Declan{{amazonurl|isbn=B0BH7SKG2S|title=Johnson at 10}}, when he returned home from an evening outcan be bettered for those tumultuous years. The subsequent investigation would prove that John Henderson had been involved in some activities which might have been considered shady It's a compelling read and certainly questionable if not illegalshould be compulsory for anyone who thinks Johnson should return to politics. His company, Eros Global, manufactured and marketed ''vitamin-type supplements and, well, sexual enhancers, that kind of thingThe Conservative Effect'', as Hendersonis an entirely different beast. It's employeethe seventh book in a series which looks at the impact a government has made and co-editor Sir Anthony Seldon regards this as the most important. This book follows the well-established format: a series of experts from various fields review the state of the nation when the coalition took over in 2010, Blair Harvey-Boyd explainedthe changes that occurred and the situation in 2024.
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1529109116Jenny Valentine|title=Call Me Red: A Shepherd's Journey|author=Hannah JacksonUs in the Before and After|rating=4.5|genre=LifestyleTeens|summary=''I want the image of a British farmer to simply be Elk and Mab are best friends, or more than that of even, their friendship is a person who is proudly employed once in feeding the nationa lifetime connection. I They meet as children one day on a trip out but unfortunately they don't think that is too much to ask.'' The stereotypical farmer was probably born on the land where ''his'' family have farmed for generations. Heget each other's probably grown up without giving much thought as to what he really wants to do: he knows that he'll be a farmer. It's not always contact details at the case thoughtime. Hannah Jackson was born But then chance brings them back together, 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 of animalsthey are inseparable. Her original intention was that she would become 'Dr Jackson Something has happened though, whale scientist' something terrible 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 tragic, andnow they must work through their grief, although 'Hannah Jackson, farmer' lacked the kudos of her original intention, she knew that she wanted to be a shepherd. With the determination that you'll soon realise is an essential part of herand their friendship, she set about achieving her ambitiontogether.|isbn=1471196585
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