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==The Best New Books==
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0008421714Paul B Preciado|title=Mrs March|author=Virginia FeitoDysphoria Mundi
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary FictionPolitics and Society|summary=The problem began just after ''It is never too late to embrace the publication revolutionary optimism of George Marchchildhood''s most successful novel Through this hybrid text, consisting of arias, letters, essays and autofiction, Preciado expresses his own hybrid self, and brings forth a new sensorium as an offering to date. Everyone but Mrs March (we know her first name only on the last page) seemed to either be reading it or had already done sonew generation, a new feeling mechanism in which detachment is not considered a sign of political apathy. Every day Mrs March went to the local patisserie to buy olive bread but on that particular morningRather, Patricia asked, as she was wrapping it is the breadproportional, valid response to ''but isn't this the first time heepistemological and political crack we are living through, and the tension between emancipatory forces and conservative resistances that characterize our present's based a character on you?'which Preciado calls ' She mentioned that Johanna, the principal character had 'her mannerismsdysphoria mundi''. Perhaps this would not have mattered, except for the fact that Johanna The whole text is framed against the whore backdrop of Nantes the Covid- 19 pandemic as that which has catalysed this revolution, when dysphoria began to emerge on a global scale, or as ''pangea covidica''. Rather than taking this extreme dysphoria as a weaksign of weakness, plainor mistaking detachment or withdrawal for political paralysis, detestable, pathetic, unloved, unloveable wretch.Preciado urges his readers to ''use dysphoria as your revolutionary platform''. |isbn=1804271454
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{{Frontpage
|author=John BoyneSamantha Harvey|title=The Echo ChamberOrbital|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Meet George Cleverley. He is self-defined as "one of In 2024, Samantha Harvey won the few television personalities over the age of fifty without a criminal record". He starts this book a bit worried when his mistress tells him sheBooker Prize for ''Orbital''s carrying his child, but then his author wife is getting her kicks with the Ukrainian partner "Strictly Come Dancing" paired her with. They have three children, who are a sad-sack with absolutely no social skills whatsoever, compact yet profound work that unfolds over a girl who hangs around with a virtue-signalling, keyboard warrior "wokester" who wants to save single day in the world's homeless with out-lives of-date food, and a fit young lad doing group of astronauts aboard the gay hustle thingInternational Space Station. Add in Through a few other characters – therapists, lawyers, random transgender types – narrative lens that all have two very different connections to his lifemirrors the astronauts' orbital perspective, and you have something that suggests an almost farcical approach Harvey invites readers to the modern world. What suggests the farcical approach even more, however, is the fact this is bloody funnysee our planet in a wholly new light.|isbn=08575262191529922933
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=0241989094295967572X|title=The Perfect LifePale Pieces|author=Nuala EllwoodG M Stevens|rating=45|genre=ThrillersLiterary Fiction|summary=In August 2018 we meet Our unnamed narrator is about to begin a young woman called Imogen and shetrain journey with his companion Django. Where they's viewing a house in Goring-on-Thames re going and telling what the estate agent about her three childrenpurpose of this journey is, Lavender, Freddie and Barclayis uncertain. The boys are a bit of a handful which is why sheDjango found the tickets ''s making this trip on her ownthe floor somewhere'' and has persuaded our narrator to accompany him. The house would be perfect for them. It's the same month Why not? Not much else is clear either - but now we're are probably in Wimbledon the past as the pair travel to the station by coach and we encounter the same young woman, only this time she's job hunting and living in her sister, Georgie's, spare room, where she's been since she broke up with her boyfriend, Connortrain is a steam locomotive.
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Darren Shan0008551324|title=Archibald Lox and the Slides of Bon Repell: Archibald Lox series, Volume 2, book 2 of 3The Devil You Know (D S Max Craigie)|author=Neil Lancaster
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=SoIt's unusual for anyone from the Hardie family to approach the police. Having done Neither side likes or has any respect for the impossible other. But Davie Hardie is struggling in prison and unpicked he's prepared to tell the lock to police where the Forgotten Cryptbody of a missing person is buried and who was responsible for her death. This person, from which he promises, is someone big and it will be worth the Departed communicate with police doing what he wants. And what he wants is to be transferred to an open prison to serve the Merge, Archie now has ''grop'' remainder of his sentence and to think aboutget an early parole date. But before that, soirees. Soirees! Archie, Not much to Inez's amusementask, is it? The new Deputy Police Constable doesn't think so and she's even know what one of those is. But he manages prepared to come through do the fancy party unscathed, even after an uncomfortable encounter other thing that Hardie demanded - make certain that DS Max Craigie and anyone who works with Kurtis, whose fledgling romance with Inez was crushed in the first volume of this serieshim is kept well away from what's happening. |isbn=B093J9TF73
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=B07GZ81J7CJon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |title=When Fred the Snake Got Squished and Mended|author=Peter CottonVaim|rating=4.5|genre=For SharingLiterary Fiction|summary=Meet Fred. Well, actually, you're going to be meeting Fred-Fred for reasons which will become all too obvious very quickly. But I'm getting ahead of myself: IAll was strange''d better tell you a bit more about Fred. Fred is a snake and even those .. This haunting phrase encapsulates the pervading sense of us who have otherworldliness which permeates this story set in Vaim, a phobia about snakes are going to warm to him. He arrived as a present fictional fishing village in a box with holes so that he Norway which paradoxically could breathe not feel more real for Jatgeir and immediately became part Eline, two of the family, to the extent that they would take Fred out with them when they went out for a walk. And that was where the problem started. Fred didn't have any road sense. Or brakesprotagonists caught in its melancholic current.|isbn=1804271829
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn= Justine Avery and Naday Meldova1035043092|title= Everybody Pees! The Killing Stones (Everybody Potties!Jimmy Perez)|author=Ann Cleeves|rating=45|genre=For SharingCrime|summary= Can potty training ever be joyous? It often isnI can'thave been the only person who was sad when Inspector Jimmy Perez [[Wild Fire (Shetland, as any parent will tell youBook 8) by Ann Cleeves|left Shetland]] to start a new life on Orkney. But really, why shouldn It't it be? We all have to learn about our bodily functions just as s been seven years since we have to learn about everything else when we are small. Why shouldnheard from him, but he't potty training be s now living with Willow Reeves and their young son, James, as much fun well asCassie, saythe daughter of his former partner. Willow's also his boss, learning about why the sun and she ''should'' be on maternity leave, but when the moon take turns body of a popular islander, Archie Stout, is found, in the sky? |isbn= B098BJZYHHaftermath 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.
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1787634493Thea Lenarduzzi|title=All Her Fault|author=Andrea MaraThe Tower|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersLiterary Fiction|summary=It had seemed like one ''How unctuous are the fats of those serendipitous events which sometimes happen. Marissa Irvine had been hoping that the opportunity would arise for her sonanother's life, Milo, to go on a play date. She was concerned that he didnhow dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream''t have any friends at his new school. Milo would go home from Kerryglen National School in an affluent Dublin suburb with his classmate Jacob - and Marissa would pick him up from 14 Tudor Grove a little later. What could be better? Only In this compelling novel, when Marissa arrived at Thea Lenarduzzi assumes the houseidentity of T, expecting to meet Jacobthe protagonist of this tale. Just as T's motherstory is being told, Jennythe story of a second protagonist is unveiled: Annie, the door was answered by Estherdaughter of a wealthy family in the 19th century, who didndied of tuberculosis after being locked in a tower, captures T't know Jenny or Jacobs imagination. The phone number Annie's fate is, above all, an enticing story to T. It is a story which she'd been given consumes avariciously, both in a quest for Jenny was not recognisedtruth and knowledge, and in service of myth, fable and fantasy. Milo had disappeared. And so had Jenny's nanny.|isbn=1804271799
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{{Frontpage
|author=Claire North-Louise Bennett|title=Notes from the Burning AgeBig Kiss, Bye-Bye |rating=4.5|genre=Science Literary Fiction|summary=At its core ''Notes From the Burning Age'' by Claire North is a spy thrillerEverything in this book, with as many double crosseshowever sweet or seemingly innocent, interrogations is steeped in anguish and night time escapes as Le Carre or Flemingdistortion. HoweverEven a kiss, as with the best novels, it wears many masks and its most affecting one is that usually a symbol of a new intimacy and timely genrecloseness, cli-fibecomes evidence of love lost. When the narrator cries out internally, or climate change fiction. North's novel tells of a world devastated by climate change where humans have been forced to start anew and live alongside nature without any of the modern 'come over here and corrupting "luxuries" (read: fossil fuelskiss me, weapons of mass destruction, intensive farming). There '' it is less an invitation than a growing unhappiness with desperate attempt to confirm her emotional numbness. The imagined recipient of this limiting worldplea is Xavier, and one groupher ex-partner, the Brotherhood, aims a ghost she conjures to master these processes no matter the cost to the Earthtest her detachment.|isbn=03565147571804271934
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=0008405026|title=Eva Bjorg Aegisdottir and Victoria Cribb A Stranger in the Family (translatorMaeve Kerrigan 11)|titleauthor=Girls Who LieJane Casey|rating=35|genre=ThrillersCrime|summary=You might be forgiven for thinking that all the dark corners of Iceland have featured in their noirish thrillers and crime books before now. You think, seeing on the map that we're set in Akranes, and finding itIt's only twenty kilometres sixteen years since nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from the capital city, that this author is clutching at the few final straws lefther bed one summer night. However just because She was never found and the book aims for the usual small-town feel, it's not just in Akranes that our interests lieinvestigation ground to a halt. Six months ago a woman failed to turn up for Now, her date eveningmother, Helena, and was never seen againher father are dead in their bed. This left Initially, it looks like a teenaged girl not at all disappointed that she could now live permanently with straightforward murder/suicide but there's something about the couple who had given her foster care before her mother had asked for positioning of the girl back, bodies that makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and a couple of delighted adoptersher boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. But What looked as though it left our three detectives at a quandary – mobile phone use was at a high level until it stopped all of a sudden, in one place, the woman's car was found miles away in a second place, going to be an open-and -shut case is now, after six months, the body has been discovered, in a third, even more remote placecomplex double murder. Meanwhile, this narrative Kerrigan is interrupted by a confessional monologue from a mother who found herself with heavy post-natal depressionconvinced that the explanation lies in Rosalie's disappearance: others (such as Derwent's boss, and very little maternal feeling in her bodyUna Burt) are less convinced. Is the assumption that is so easy for the reader to make the right one?|isbn=191319373X
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=B0925KS87N|title=Dead Man's Grave Annie Ernaux and Alison L. Strayer (DS Max Craigietranslator)|authortitle=Neil LancasterThe Other Girl
|rating=4
|genre=CrimeAutobiography|summary=Tam Hardie had been determined to find ''We were born from the grave - and it took some finding - in an overgrown old cemeterysame body. It was a strange thing for ScotlandI's premier criminal to do, but Tam was getting old and there were things he ve never really wanted to dothink about this. Only, his family didn't hear from him again after he'd said that he Ernaux'd found the grave - s work is always very candid and her tone transparent, but this raw epistolary text must be one of the one which said that it shouldnmost intimate accounts I't be opened - and his three sons began ve read. Ernaux writes in direct address to worryher sister, however, this letter will never reach her. Tam JuniorWhy? Because Annie Ernaux's sister died of diphtheria at 6 years old, Frankie a few months before the vaccine was made compulsory in France, and 2 years before the author was even born. The large and Dave wouldninstant void created by the jarring concept of writing to an imaginary recipient emphasises Ernaux't normally go to the police s process of reckoning with this giant absence in her life, an absence that she has always felt but they weren't certain where their father had been and they were worriedoften denied.|isbn=1804271845
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{{Frontpage
|author=Emily CritchleyMaxim Gorky and Bryan Karetnyk (translator)|title=The Tiny Gestures Reminiscences of Small FlowersTolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev|rating=3.5|genre=General FictionBiography|summary= The Tiny Gestures of Small Flowers had all Biographies are often seen as the hallmarks form of something goodlife-writing which offers less colour; it can be seen as more objective and less personal. I was intrigued by the plotthink that Gorky completely rejects this perspective, and offers a vibrant, liked subjective yet informed portrait of three of his literary contemporaries. In the design first section of the this book, and thought the authorTolstoy complains to his friend Gorky that: ''s work sounded interestingyou write not of real life as it is, but of what you yourself imagine it to be. From the outset 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 all looked incredibly promising?''. So Well, Maxim Gorky shows exactly what on earth went wrong here?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= 19114270911804271977}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Sarah Langan1529077745|title=Good NeighboursThe Dark Wives (D I Vera Stanhope)|author=Ann Cleeves
|rating=4.5
|genre=ThrillersCrime|summary= If you're A man walking his dog in the early morning discovered the body of a certain vintage, it's hard to read man in the words ''Good Neighbours'' without adding a sing-song ''that's when Good Neighbours…become…good friends''. Maple Street is no Ramsay Streetpark near Rosebank, though, Arlo and Gertie live a world apart from the Melbourne suburbscare home for troubled teens. They're The dead man was Josh - one of 18 households on the crescent, quite new arrivals having moved in care workers who was due to work a year earlier. They're not quite like all shift the other families (he's an ex rocker, she's a former beauty queen) night before but they've made some friends and their kids have settled in, and it's all going okwho had never turned up. Until it isn't. One hot, clammy, sticky, sweaty summer, a sinkhole opens up D I Vera Stanhope is called in to investigate the park across murder - but her only clue is the way. It's a revolting mess disappearance of one of dirt and chaos, but for the residents of Maple Street, fourteen-year-old Chloe Spencer. Some people believe that Chloe was responsible for the worst death but Vera thinks this is yet 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 comeJosh.|isbn=1789098211
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Lisa ThompsonB0FK5LHKD9|title=The Small ThingsColour of Memory|author=Christopher Bowden|rating=54|genre=Confident ReadersGeneral Fiction|summary=Although Anna has friends at school, she feels like she never really fits in. Her family donIt't have enough money to let her do after school activitiess been three years since we last reviewed a book by favourite regular Christopher Bowden, and so she feels like her life at home is boring in comparison we were very glad to theirs. When see a new girl joins her classnovel arrive here at Bookbag Towers. Like all Bowden's stories, Anna is asked to partner her, but things are complicated because there's a mystery at the new girl, Ellie, is unwell and so canheart of ''The Colour of Money''t attend school in person. Instead, she joins We like this running theme in with the class by using an author's work - take a robotmystery but give it different flavour and atmosphere each time. Can Anna overcome the challenge of making friends with someone through a robot, and is she even interesting enough to be a good friend to Ellie?|isbn=1781129649
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0008350388Olga Tokarczuk|title=We Need to Talk About Money|author=Otegha UwagbaHouse of Day, House of Night
|rating=5
|genre=Politics and SocietyLiterary Fiction|summary=''To be What's the good of a dark-skinned Black woman is to be seen as less desirable, less hireable, less intelligent and ultimately less valuable than my light-skinned counterparts...'' ''We Need to Talk About Moneyworld that keeps changing like that? How can one go on calmly living in it?'' by Otegha Uwagba
The title of this spellbinding work, ''0.7% House of English Literature GCSE students in England study a book by a writer Day, House of colour while only 7% study a book by a woman.Night'' ''The Bookseller'' 29 June 2021 Otegha Uwagba came to , somewhat reflects this notion of shifting realities - the small, subtle changes which govern our lives, like the UK shift from Kenya when she was five years old. Her sisters were seven and nine. It was her mother who came firstday to night, however quotidian, with her father joining them latercausing chaos. The family was hard-workingBut, principled and determined the constant in that their children would have image is the best education possible. There was always a painful awareness of money although this did not translate into a shortage of anything: house, stoic against the ancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it was simply carefully harvested. When Otegha was ten the family acquired a car. For Otegha, education meant a scholarship to a private school in London and then a place at New College, Oxfordis perceived.|isbn=1804271918}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1787631869henleyA|title=The Rising TideUltimate Obsession|author=Sam LloydDai Henley
|rating=4
|genre=ThrillersCrime|summary=Lucy Locke's early life hadn't Ex-DCI Andy Flood has been easy but she'd built a good Private Investigator for some time now, and decent life in the aftermathhe should be doing quite well financially. She's now married to DanielUnfortunately, who co-owns Locke-Povey Marine on Penleith Beach, and they live at Wild Ridge on Mortis Point with Billie, Lucyhis daughter's daughter and Fin, the child she had with Danieldefence against a murder charge drained his savings. They have financial difficultiesHis wife, some caused by Nick PoveyLaura, Danielhas been trying to persuade him to retire - ''s partner and so-called best friendmaybe go travelling or go on cruises. Nick and Daniel have a history together from the time they both spent in a childrenThat's home but itwhat 'ordinary people do','' He's difficult not been entirely up front about the state of their savings. When Jack Durban tries to think that Nick has Danielpersuade him to take his case, it's best interests at heart, particularly where Lucy, or the thought of the money, he could make that convinces him that this is concerneda miscarriage of justice that he really should put right.
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Hannah Peck1836284683|title=Kate on the CaseThe Big Happy|author=David Chadwick|rating=34.5|genre=Confident ReadersDystopian Fiction|summary=Meet KateWell! This is a murder mystery unlike any other! I do love it when I open a book, although it's nothing like I got the impression she'd rather expected it to be , and it takes me on a Catherine – and one specific Catherine at wild ride. And that. For Catherine Rodriguez is Kate's idol, and the author of our heroine's favourite possession, just what happened with ''The Special Correspondent ManualBig Happy''. Armed with a plucky father, that book, and her talking mouse called Rupert, she is all equipped I don't want to manage ruin a train ride to the Arctic, to see her scientist mother similar experience for the first time in yonks. However, this is a train ride with a difference, for on board is a greedy-seeming harridan and her cat, a thief – and two glowing eyes, shining from the darkness in a blink-and-any of youreading but I'll-miss-them stylehave to at least set the scene. ItOnce that's definitely a case done, I think you should simply experience this wonderfully original story for a new young investigative journalist.yourself..|isbn=184812970X
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{{Frontpage
|author=Darren ShanSally Rooney|title=Archibald Lox and the Forgotten Crypt: Archibald Lox series, Volume 2, book 1 of 3Intermezzo
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersGeneral Fiction |summary=The second trilogy in Shan's ''Merge'' saga opens with our heroSally 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, Archieas her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Among the many relationships woven into this story, back in London in the world of central one for readers to unravel is the Bornfraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. It's not been easyIvan, a socially awkward chess prodigy, explaining to contrasts sharply with his foster parents where he's beenolder brother Peter, or slipping back into ordinary life and forgetting about Inez and his other friends a successful lawyer living in the Merge, but Archie has done his best..Dublin.. well, except for visiting veteran locksmith Winston in Big BenFollowing their father's clock tower and except for fiddling passing after a long battle with that sneaky master lock in Seven Dials every time he can sneak awaycancer, the brothers' already strained relationship faces new trials.|isbn=B093H8DPQZ0571365469
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|isbn=05713658841036916375|title=My Mess is Just a Bit of Life: Adventures in AnxietyLiverpool Lad|author=Georgia PritchettPeter McArdle
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Georgia Pritchett has always been anxious''Just a Liverpool Lad '' is a collection of memories and reflections from the years Peter McArdle spent growing up in and around Liverpool. Some are factual, even such as the family history of a childsea-going family, with the docks dominating lives. She would worry about whether Other stories blend seamlessly into the monsters under the bed were comfortable: it was the sort of life where if she had nothing to worry about she would become anxious but such occasions were few and far betweenwhat-might-have-been. On It's a visit book to a therapistsettle into and allow your mind to roam across your childhood memories, as an adultto think of simpler times when life seemed less constrained, when she despite the blitz that was completely unable to speak about what was wrong with her it was suggested that she should write it down and ''My Mess is a Bit of a Life: Adventures constant factor in AnxietyMcArdle's early years. I' is d never heard of parachute mines before - but they were almost soundless and could appear after the result all- or so we are given to believeclear was sounded.
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Alex Cotter1836285493|title=The House on the EdgeDouble Life of a Wheelchair User|author=Rob Keeley|rating=45
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Faith's family home Will is teetering on the edge a keen player of video games, a cliffconscientious student, literallya slightly annoying brother and a supportive friend. Is that crack in the garden getting bigger? Is the house starting to slope a little? And as the house seems to be falling apartBut most of all, so he is Faith's familyan aspiring writer. Her dad has disappearedEnglish is his favourite lesson at his school, Marlowe Park, and her mum is struggling to cope, barely leaving her bedone at which he excels. So that leaves Faith in chargeThis hasn't gone unnoticed by his headteacher, taking care of her little brother NoahMrs Howarth, taking care of her mum, feeding everyone, getting Noah and she has suggested to school, Will and avoiding awkward questions from interfering teachers. Is her little brother okay? Why is his mum that he obsessed with what he claims is spends a couple of afternoons a ghost in the cellar? What should she do about the house? Can she find week at a way to raise enough money to fix it? What's happened to her dad? Why did he disappear? Maybe he'll come back if she manages to get funding for the house? She carries the weight of all these worries on her constantlydifferent school, and she doesn't know how much longer the cliff will hold togetherStation Road, or how long she can keep on keeping onwhere his ability might be better extended.|isbn=1788008626
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=00082690411009473085|title=Risk of HarmThe Conservative Effect 2010 - 2024|author=Lucie WhitehouseAnthony Seldon and Tom Egerton (Editors)|rating=4.5|genre=CrimePolitics and Society|summary=DCI Robin Lyons is back in her native Birmingham after her lessSometimes it's simpler to explain a book by describing what it ''isn't'' and that applies to ''The Conservative Effect: 2010-than2024 -comfortable departure from the Met14 Wasted Years?''. She might have been reinstated but If you're looking for an easy read which will deliver the whole episode left a nasty taste in her mouthinside story about what ''really'' happened on certain occasions, then this isn't the book for you. She was now working If that's what you're looking for Detective Chief Superintendent Samir Jaffrey - then the man who had broken her heart nearly twenty , I don't think Anthony Seldon's book, {{amazonurl|isbn=B0BH7SKG2S|title=Johnson at 10}}, can be bettered for those tumultuous years before. She and her fifteen-year-old daughter have moved out of her parentIt's home into a rented house but there's still a difficult situation with her brother Luke compelling read and should be compulsory for anyone who has gone out of his way thinks Johnson should return to make life difficult for Robin since she was a young childpolitics. ''The Conservative Effect'' is an entirely different beast. HeIt's married to Nataliethe 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, now the changes that occurred and has a young child but he's still got it the situation in for Robin2024.
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|isbnauthor=1786332388Jenny Valentine|title=The First Day of Spring|author=Nancy TuckerUs in the Before and After|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersTeens|summary=Sometimes I wonder if I take my pleasures too sadly - Elk and ''The First Day of Spring'' was one such occasion. The writing Mab are best friends, or more than that even, their friendship is superb and completely compellinga once in a lifetime connection. The characterisation is excellent and the plot grips you and wonThey meet as children one day on a trip out but unfortunately they don't let go. So, whatget each other's contact details at the problem? time. WellBut then chance brings them back together, the problem is Chrissieand they are inseparable. Something has happened though, something terrible and tragic, the main character. When we first meet her she's just eight years oldand now they must work through their grief, small for her age and she readily tells us that she's just killed someone - a two-year-old boytheir friendship, together. She's completely cold about what she's done with her main memory being that whilst she was killing - suffocating - her hands seized up. There's a clue that Chrissie isn't completely responsible for her actions a little later in the book: when will Steven come back, she wonders? Hasn't he been dead for long enough?|isbn=1471196585
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|authorisbn=Catherine Steadman1787333175|title=The Disappearing ActYou Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here|author=Benji Waterhouse|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersPopular Science|summary= British actress Mia Eliot 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 on Going to Hurt}}, a glorious mixture of insight into the cusp workings of success. Great success. If the rumours are trueNHS, award season is going humour and autobiography. ''You Don't Have to treat her well, acknowledging her for her latest, critically acclaimed productionbe Mad... She's going places ' promised the same elements but so, unfortunately, is her partner. And the places he's going take him towards lies, deceit moved from physical problems to mental illness and a pretty young thing in the form work of his new co-stara psychiatrist. It's a good time I did wonder whether it was acceptable to be looking for Mia to escape, and pilot season humour in LA provides just this setting but the excuselaughter is directed at a situation rather than a person and it is always delivered with empathy and understanding.|isbn=1471189783
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{{Frontpage
|author= Christophe MedlerMariana Enriquez|title=Madrigal: A Closely Guarded SecretSunny Place for Shady People|rating=45|genre=Historical FictionShort Stories|summary= Set against the backdrop Mariana Enriquez writes horror that is disturbingly real, achieving this uncanny familiarity by basing her paranormal plots on gritty realities: her settings include an abandoned field full of the English Civil Wardisused refrigerators due to an urban planning mishap, an overcrowded homeless shelter and a secret plan (codecrime-named Madrigal) is discovered by Sir Robert Douse in the summer of 1642ridden neighbourhood where safety meetings are routine - all within Argentina. As a loyal servant The circumstances of her characters are so plausible that the King, and Head of the Secret Service, it is Robert's duty to uncover the details of the plan and follow the clues to uncover one of the most guarded secrets in history—especially since the plot could affect the Kingsupernatural or otherworldly horror which seeps into these spaces adopts a similarly tangible texture.|isbn=B095HY8SXQ1803511230
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Tasha Suri1529934753|title=The Jasmine ThroneProtest|author=Rob Rinder|rating=4.5|genre=FantasyCrime|summary= On For a little while, it looked as though Sir Max Bruce, the night of her sacred burningcountry's most famous living artist, Princess Malini defies her brother and refuses to step on was not going to show up for the opening of his retrospective at the pyreRoyal Academy. She is immediately sent to be imprisoned on Still, he arrived in the Hirana: nick of time, complete with his two wives and six children, one of whom filmed what happened. Being an ancient temple influencer, you tend to do things like that, but it was fortunate that there was once filled with a community record of people who got powers from the mysterious deathless watersprotest. But now Lexi Williams, an intern at the temple is nothing more than an overgrownRA, decaying ruin. One day, Malini witnesses grabbed a girl kill someone with magic. Instead spray can of reporting her for such blue paint from under a gruesome crimechair and proceeded to spray Bruce in the face, Malini claims that whilst shouting ''Stop the girl saved her from War''. It seemed to be part of an attacker ongoing series of 'blue-face' attacks, but this was different. The can had been laced with cyanide, and begs for the girl to become her own personal maidservantSir Max Bruce was dead.|isbn=0356515648
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|isbnauthor=B088YWF5BCAriel Saramandi|title=The Lies We Tell|author=Jane CorryPortrait of an Island on Fire|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersPolitics and Society|summary=Sarah Wallace said that she grew up on a council estate in Kent and that she had two brothers In this powerful collection of essays, Saramandi seeks to intradermally dissect the sociopolitical fabric of Mauritius, tunneling deep into the wounds left by colonialism and two sisters. It seemed slavery to have been a loving, stable familyexpose how these legacies still shape modern life. When we first meet her, she canSaramandi describes the country at one stage as ''rotting't sleep because her son, Freddie, who's nearly sixteen, hasn't come home a blunt yet apt metaphor for the systemic decay brought about by the time he sort malignant forces of half-promised he'd be in by. Her husbandracism, Tompatriarchy, is fast asleep: they're moving house in the morning but he's still going to be going to work environmental degradation and he needs his sleepgovernmental dysfunction. He wakesEach essay in this collection serves as a kind of diagnostic, though, when Freddie does come in and overhears him tell his mother that he's killed someonecharting the various diseases afflicting the island state.|isbn=1804271616
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{{Frontpage
|author=Joseph KnoxPekka Harju-Autti|title=True Crime StoryLoveVortex and the Drakor's Curse
|rating=4
|genre=ThrillersFantasy|summary= Joseph KnoxIt's the eighteenth century, known for his series surrounding Detective Aidan Waits, has created a new genre with his latest novel, "True Crime Story". The story follows the disappearance time of Zoe Nolan from her university halls of residencediscovery and Britain is expanding its foreign trade. Split into four partsCaptain Julius Hawthorne, an experienced Scottish sea captain, the reader is taken through sent to the life and disappearance of Zoe through the eyes of her twin sisterAndaman Islands in his endeavour. Along with his son, other familyPeter, friends and professionalstheir cat, such as the police. The various accounts help the reader get to know ZoeMichi, or at least the Zoe she presented they set off on a perilous voyage to othersthese faraway lands. However, the twists The islands are beautiful and stunning in their scenery and turns at the end of each chapter leave you shockedislanders' leader, Aarav, confused and unsure of what is true or fabricatedkeen to establish good relations. Whose accounts can we trust?|isbn=0857527703B0DS1VGHH3
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{{Frontpage
|author=Justine Avery Helene Bessette and Naday MeldovaKate Briggs (translator)|title=No, No, No!Lili is Crying|rating=4.5|genre=For SharingLiterary Fiction|summary=They say the best picture books are First published in 1953 in French, this novel is a timeless text which wrenches the simplest ones. And nothing could be truer hearts of this latest its readers just as Bessette wrenches words and sentences from Justine Avery, a Bookbag favourite. ''No, No, No!'' is based around their proper position on the simplest text imaginable. ''Nopage and positions them elsewhere, nodisjointed, no! Okay, okaytruncated. Yes, you may.'' That's it! But, like all Like the best picture bookslives of her characters, this tiny snippet of text is a veritable tardis - so much bigger on the inside that it appears on the outsidethey are often left tragically incomplete.|isbn=16388204571804271675
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{{Frontpage
|author=Monica ConnellTom Percival|title=Against a Peacock SkyThe Wrong Shoes
|rating=5
|genre=TravelConfident Readers|summary= Monica Connell went to Nepal to do the fieldwork for her Ph.D. Will's life is difficult, in social anthropologya multitude of ways. I think it He is important to know that. She went on a grant-supported tripbullied because he has 'the wrong shoes', with a relatively specific objective. She wasnhe has the wrong shoes because his dad can't work and doesn't a hippy wanderer looking have enough money for Shangri-la. She wasneven the most basic of things like food, and his dad can't work because he lost his job at the college, was working a mere tourist passing through. She went with cash-in-hand job on a fundamental aim of learning about these people building site and how they livedhad an accident. She also went, presumably, with Throw into that mix the academic discipline of how to find these things outfact that his mum and dad are separated, how to organise them and Will's life seems bleak in her mindevery direction. And yet, how to "understand" them in the context he still has a tiny amount of her own paradigmshope. He is good at art, and how clings to keep enough notes and files and photos to help her create some greater sense the moments of the experience after the event. Fortunatelyjoy when he is drawing, she also went with that feel like a sense light at the end of open-ness and curiosity and a willingness to muck-inlong, to break her own rules and to truly connect with the people of the village where she hauled updark tunnel.|isbn=17806004291398527122
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1409181669Sylvie Cathrall|title=The Maidens|author=Alex MichaelidesA Letter to the Luminous Deep
|rating=5
|genre=CrimeScience Fiction|summary=Mariana was convinced that Professor Edward Fosca had committed two murders and looked likely to get away with them both. She needed to think carefully about what she knew and decide how she should proceed. Everything - or so she thought - had begun with the death of Tara Hampton on the Paradise nature reserve in Cambridge. She'd been brutally stabbed and Mariana's niece, Zoe, had telephoned her in distress. Tara had been her best friend and she was struggling There are few greater joys than a book which lives up to cope. Mariana wasn't ''entirely'' happy about having to go to Cambridge, but she caught the first fast train from King's Cross. Mariana and Zoe were close and had been made all the more so by the death of Mariana's husband, Sebastian, in a swimming accident on Naxos some fourteen months earliercompelling premise. Zoe had been their surrogate daughter after the death And this is one of Zoe's mother and Mariana's sister, Elizathem.|isbn= 0356522776
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Maisie Chan1786482126|title=Danny Chung Does Not Do MathsThe Janus Stone (Dr Ruth Galloway)|author=Elly Griffiths
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=Danny is eleven years Builders were demolishing an old, and what he really, really loves house in Norwich - the site was going to do is drawhold seventy-five 'luxury' apartments - when they discovered the bones of a child beneath a doorway. He creates fantastical comics, whilst his best friend Ravi adds the wordsThere was no skull. Danny's dad, however, wants Danny to concentrate on his maths, and forget about the drawing, because he says nobody can make Was this a living from drawing! ritual killing or murder? At least Danny has his own roomInevitably, where he can draw in secret and in peaceDr Ruth Galloway finds herself working with DCI Harry Nelson. But then one day his parents tell him they have a surprise for him, and this surprise turns out to be his grandmother who has come over from China to live with them, and who will not only be sharing DannyIt's bedroom difficult as Ruth knows, but Nelson doesn't, that she will also be sleeping on the top bunk is pregnant with his child as a result of his bunk bed! Danny is horrified! His Nai Nai (grandmother) speaks no English, and Danny finds himself forced into being her babysitter, and showing her around the townone night they spent together some three months ago. Poor DannyHer condition will be obvious before long, stuck on a maths project, frustrated with his bedroom situation, and then he even has a falling out with Ravinot least because Ruth is prone to sudden bouts of sickness...how on earth will things ever get better?!|isbn=180078001X
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{{Frontpage
|author=Terry MilesGuadalupe Nettel and Rosalind Harvey (Translator)|title=RabbitsThe Accidentals
|rating=4.5
|genre=Science FictionShort Stories|summary=Welcome to the world This collection was truly enchanting in all senses of The Game. Or should that be the game, for while it ought to be capitalised to high heaven, it never leaves lower case throughout this book. It's also called Rabbits, although only as a slangy term for it – as far as anyone knows, it has no official title, no official source, no hard and fast structureword: spellbinding with its fantastical, magical elements and to the average person no obvious entry point. A bit like the game of life then. Yes, this is the game of life for a certain tribe of people – the fan of the conspiracy, the computer game, the hack from the darkest of webs. People like our hero, K, named like that charming in the least Kafkaesque manner possible. K and his bezzies are trying to be historians its gentle portrayal of the game, nature and have studied amongst many things the most unique of high score boards, for the lists of who has successfully won the game are in the most peculiar places, and are still very short. However this time it's differenthuman relationships. This time the game seems the most dangerous, nay lethal, the most broken it's ever been – morally Guadalupe Nettel writes intelligently and otherwise. Unfortunately for Kprecisely, in trying her stories structured by a wisdom that appears to sort out what the game is doing, if it's even being played, and how his loved ones might be kept safe, he is only want to find out that the line between observing and learning teach us something about the game, and playing it, is a very thin one indeed..world.|isbn=15290169321804271470
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=C J Carey0008551375|title=WidowlandWhen Shadows Fall (D S Max Craigie)|author=Neil Lancaster|rating=4.5|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=ItLeanne Wilson's April 1953, and Adolf Hitler's schedule includes going to Moscow to attend body was found at the state funeral bottom of Joseph Stalin then within weeks coming to London, parading around a bitScottish mountain, and watching over the sanctioned return to seemingly the throne result of Edward VIII with his wife, Queen Wallisa tragic accident. For yes, Britain caved in the lead-up to the World War Two that certainly didnShe't happen as we know itd looked so happy, and we are now a protectorate – welltoo, we share enough of the same blood as the Germanic peoples when she posted her intentions on ''the mainland''Facebook. But this is most certainly a different Britain, for Nazi-styled phrenology, and ideas Her friends were relieved as she was just out of female purposean unpleasant relationship, has put all of but it looked like she was living her best life now. Then it emerged that gender into a caste system, ranging from high-brow office bigwigs to five other women had died in similar circumstances in the drudgeslast year. All were experienced climbers, properly equipped for what they were doing and beyond those, right on down to the childless, the husbandless and the widowssensible people. Female literacy is actively discouraged. And in this puritanical existence, our heroine, Rose Ransom, is employed with None of the task of bowdlerising classical literature 'what a stupid thing to take all encouragement for female emancipation out of it – after all, not every book can be banned, and not every story excised immediately from British civilisation, and so they just get a hefty tweak towards the party line before theydo're stamped ready for reprintexplanations applied. That They were all alone when they died: DS Max Craigie is her job, at least, until the first emerging signs of female protest come to light, with their potential to spoil Hitlercertain there's visita killer on the loose.|isbn=152941198X
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