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==The Best New Books==
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{{Frontpage
|author=Paul B Preciado
|title=Dysphoria Mundi
|rating=4.5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=''It is never too late to embrace the revolutionary optimism of childhood''
Through this hybrid text, consisting of arias, letters, essays and autofiction, Preciado expresses his own hybrid self, and brings forth a new sensorium as an offering to the new generation, a new feeling mechanism in which detachment is not considered a sign of political apathy. Rather, it is the proportional, valid response to ''the epistemological and political crack we are living through, and the tension between emancipatory forces and conservative resistances that characterize our present'' which Preciado calls ''dysphoria mundi''. The whole text is framed against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic as that which has catalysed this revolution, when dysphoria began to emerge on a global scale, or as ''pangea covidica''Read [[Forthcoming Publications|reviews . Rather than taking this extreme dysphoria as a sign of books about weakness, or mistaking detachment or withdrawal for political paralysis, Preciado urges his readers to be published]]''use dysphoria as your revolutionary platform''.<!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->|isbn=1804271454}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Freya SampsonSamantha Harvey|title=The Last LibraryOrbital|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=I am always a little nervous to start a story about a libraryIn 2024, since I am a librarian. I always grit my teeth slightly at Samantha Harvey won the thought of the incoming cardigan-wearingBooker Prize for ''Orbital'', hair in a bun, cat-owning, glasses on compact yet profound work that unfolds over a chain stereotypes! In this story, single day in the main character, June, does put her hair in lives of a bun, and she does own group of astronauts aboard the International Space Station. Through a cat (called Alan Bennett), and she has barely any friends and spends her evenings eating narrative lens that mirrors the same Chinese takeaway meal once a week whilst reading books alone! But I didnastronauts't immediately throw the book out of the windoworbital perspective, because I found I was interested Harvey invites readers to see our planet in June, and why she lived as she dida wholly new light. Her mum used |isbn=1529922933}}{{Frontpage|isbn=295967572X|title=Pale Pieces|author=G M Stevens|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= Our unnamed narrator is about to be begin a librarian at the village library, but when she got sick, June gave up on train journey with his companion Django. Where they're going to University and stayed at home to take care what the purpose of her mumthis journey is, as well as taking is uncertain. Django found the tickets ''on a job as library assistant at the local library. And even though her mum sadly died some years ago, she is still working there, still eating her mumfloor somewhere''s favourite takeaway meal, and still reading her mum's old bookshas persuaded our narrator to accompany him. June Why not? Not much else is stuck, clear either - but little does she know, everything we are probably in her life the past as the pair travel to the station by coach and the train is about the changea steam locomotive.|isbn=183877369X
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=00083709820008551324|title=Rock Paper ScissorsThe Devil You Know (D S Max Craigie)|author=Alice FeeneyNeil Lancaster
|rating=4.5
|genre=ThrillersCrime|summary=Amelia Wright is forty-two and it was It's unusual for anyone from the Hardie family to approach the staff raffle at Battersea Dogs Home that gave her a weekend away in a converted chapel in Scotlandpolice. Her husband, Adam, isn't so keen on Neither side likes or has any respect for the ideaother. Like Amelia, he knows that their marriage has been under strain: But Davie Hardie is struggling in prison and he's prepared to tell the police where the body of a screenwriter missing person is buried and who was responsible for her death. This person, he's never shy of making promises, is someone big and it clear to Amelia that he'd prefer to spend time with will be worth the novels police doing what he's hoping to adapt than with herwants. Amelia's annoyed that And what he never enquires about how her day has been - and working with wants is to be transferred to an open prison to serve the dogs, many remainder of whom have been abusedhis sentence and to get an early parole date. Not much to ask, is never easy. it? Still - The new Deputy Police Constable doesn't think so and she's won the weekend away, even if it does mean driving for eight hours in her 1978 Morris Minor Traveller with Adam beside her in prepared to do the passenger seat other thing that Hardie demanded - make certain that DS Max Craigie and then doing the same thing to come back a couple of days lateranyone who works with him is kept well away from what's happening.
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Doug JohnstoneJon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |title=The Great SilenceVaim
|rating=4
|genre=CrimeLiterary Fiction|summary=For those who, like me, haven't come across the Skelfs before, I'll risk a quick synopsis of whoAll was strange''s who – although Johnstone does a good job of bringing the backstory in without being heavy handed about it. Skelf isn't some fantastic creature, though it sounds as though it ought to be, it is merely the surname of a family of undertakers. Undertakers and private investigators. Dorothy is This haunting phrase encapsulates the matriarch – Californian by birth and instinctpervading sense of otherworldliness which permeates this story set in Vaim, she married a scot and ended up helping to run the Edinburgh undertaking firm that had been fictional fishing village in the family Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for generations. Recently widowed Jatgeir and now involved with a black Swedish police officer. Swedish by nationality. Scottish police. Daughter JennyEline, 46, is haunted by her still-living husband – a violent escaped prisoner. And grand-daughter is about to graduate with a first-class physics degree and join two of the academic staff next termprotagonists caught in its melancholic current.|isbn=19131938371804271829
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=19015149781035043092|title=There's a Problem With DadThe Killing Stones (Jimmy Perez)|author=Carlos AlbaAnn Cleeves|rating=4.5|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=Life is different for George Lovelace and he I can't really understand whyhave 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. HeIt's always done everything been seven years since we heard from him, but he ought to: steady worker's now living with Willow Reeves and their young son, James, as well as Cassie, husband and father - and a father who was always there for school plays and sports daysthe daughter of his former partner. So why is he never quite in tune with those around him? Why does he upset people? Why is someone with such a Willow's also his boss, and she 'good'should' mind unable to progress at work or to relate to his colleagues? Why does he make so many breath-taking gaffes? It's almost become be on maternity leave, but when the body of a cliche these days to suggest that someone who popular islander, Archie Stout, is found, in the aftermath of a little different is storm, she can'on the spectrumt resist getting involved. He', but George Lovelace has all d been battered about the symptoms head with a Neolithic stone - one of Asperger's Syndrome: higha pair -functioning autismwhich had been stolen from a museum.
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{{Frontpage
|author=Louise CandlishThea Lenarduzzi|title=The HeightsTower|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersLiterary Fiction|summary=Ellen doesn't expect to see Kieran that day'How unctuous are the fats of another's life, how dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream''. In this compelling novel, Thea Lenarduzzi assumes the identity of T, the protagonist of this tale. SheJust as T's on sitestory is being told, visiting the story of a client for second protagonist is unveiled: Annie, the daughter of a lighting consultation when she spies him wealthy family in a building across the way. There are lots of things19th century, lots who died of people, you might see when you look out across Londontuberculosis after being locked in a tower, but this isncaptures T't one Ellen expected that day or in fact any other days imagination. Why? Because Kieran has been dead for over two yearsAnnie's fate is, above all, and Ellen knows this for an enticing story to T. It is a factstory which she consumes avariciously, because she had both in a hand quest for truth and knowledge, and in his murderservice of myth, fable and fantasy. |isbn=14711834831804271799
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0008421714Claire-Louise Bennett|title=Mrs March|author=Virginia FeitoBig Kiss, Bye-Bye
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The problem began just after the publication of George March's most successful novel to date. Everyone but Mrs March (we know her first name only on the last page) seemed to either be reading it Everything in this book, however sweet or had already done soseemingly innocent, is steeped in anguish and distortion. Every day Mrs March went to the local patisserie to buy olive bread but on that particular morningEven a kiss, Patricia askedusually a symbol of intimacy and closeness, as she was wrapping becomes evidence of love lost. When the breadnarrator cries out internally, ''but isncome over here and kiss me,'t this the first time he's based it is less an invitation than a character on you?'' She mentioned that Johanna, the principal character had 'desperate attempt to confirm her mannerisms''emotional numbness. Perhaps The imagined recipient of this would not have matteredplea is Xavier, except for the fact that Johanna is the whore of Nantes her ex- ''partner, a weak, plain, detestable, pathetic, unloved, unloveable wretchghost she conjures to test her detachment.''|isbn=1804271934
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=John Boyne0008405026|title=The Echo ChamberA Stranger in the Family (Maeve Kerrigan 11)|author=Jane Casey
|rating=5
|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=Meet George Cleverley. He is selfIt's sixteen years since nine-year-defined as "old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her bed one of summer night. She was never found and the few television personalities over the age of fifty without investigation ground to a criminal record"halt. He starts this book a bit worried when his mistress tells him she's carrying his child Now, but then his author wife is getting her kicks with the Ukrainian partner "Strictly Come Dancing" paired mother, Helena, and her withfather are dead in their bed. They have three children, who are a sad-sack with absolutely no social skills whatsoever Initially, it looks like a girl who hangs around with a virtue-signalling, keyboard warrior "wokester" who wants to save the worldstraightforward murder/suicide but there's homeless with out-something about the positioning ofthe bodies that makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and her boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. What looked as though it was going to be an open-date food, and -shut case is now a fit young lad doing the gay hustle thingcomplex double murder. Add in a few other characters – therapists, lawyers, random transgender types – Kerrigan is convinced that all have two very different connections to his life, and you have something that suggests an almost farcical approach to the modern world. What suggests the farcical approach even moreexplanation lies in Rosalie's disappearance: others (such as Derwent's boss, however, is the fact this is bloody funnyUna Burt) are less convinced.|isbn=0857526219
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0241989094Annie Ernaux and Alison L. Strayer (translator)|title=The Perfect Life|author=Nuala EllwoodOther Girl
|rating=4
|genre=ThrillersAutobiography|summary=In August 2018 we meet a young woman called Imogen and she's viewing a house in Goring-on-Thames and telling 'We were born from the estate agent about her three children, Lavender, Freddie and Barclaysame body. The boys are a bit of a handful which is why sheI's making ve never really wanted to think about this trip on her own. The house would be perfect for them.''
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Darren ShanMaxim Gorky and Bryan Karetnyk (translator)|title=Archibald Lox and the Slides Reminiscences of Bon Repell: Archibald Lox seriesTolstoy, Volume 2, book 2 of 3Chekhov and Andreyev|rating=43.5|genre=Confident ReadersBiography|summary=SoBiographies are often seen as the form of life-writing which offers less colour; it can be seen as more objective and less personal. Having done the impossible I think that Gorky completely rejects this perspective, and unpicked the lock to the Forgotten Cryptoffers a vibrant, from which subjective yet informed portrait of three of his literary contemporaries. In the Departed communicate with the Mergefirst section of this book, Archie now has ''gropTolstoy complains to his friend Gorky that: '' you write not of real life as it is, but of what you yourself imagine it to think aboutbe. But before Whom would it help to know how I see this tower, thatsea, soireesor that Tartar - why should it interest anyone? Of what use is it?''. Soirees! ArchieWell, Maxim Gorky shows exactly what can be gained from a subjective account, much giving us access to Inez's amusement, doesn't even know what one of those is. But how he manages to come through the fancy party unscathedsaw Tolstoy, even after an uncomfortable encounter with Kurtis, whose fledgling romance with Inez was crushed Chekhov and Andreyev in the first volume such privileged detail that one almost feels unworthy of this seriesit. |isbn=B093J9TF731804271977
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B07GZ81J7C1529077745|title=When Fred the Snake Got Squished and MendedThe Dark Wives (D I Vera Stanhope)|author=Peter CottonAnn Cleeves
|rating=4.5
|genre=For SharingCrime|summary=Meet Fred. WellA man walking his dog in the early morning discovered the body of a man in the park near Rosebank, actually, you're going to be meeting Fred-Fred a care home for reasons which will become all too obvious very quicklytroubled teens. But I'm getting ahead The dead man was Josh - one of myself: I'd better tell you the care workers who was due to work a bit more about Fredshift the night before but who had never turned up. Fred D I Vera Stanhope is called in to investigate the murder - but her only clue is a snake and even those the disappearance of us who have a phobia about snakes are going to warm to him. He arrived as a present in a box with holes so that he could breathe and immediately became part one of the familyresidents, to the extent that they would take Fred out with them when they went out for a walkfourteen-year-old Chloe Spencer. And Some people believe that Chloe was where responsible for the death but Vera thinks this is unlikely as the problem started. Fred didngirl't have any road senses diary makes it clear that she adored Josh. Or brakesShe knows that she has to find Chloe to discover what happened to Josh.
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn= Justine Avery and Naday MeldovaB0FK5LHKD9|title= Everybody Pees! (Everybody Potties!)The Colour of Memory|author=Christopher Bowden
|rating=4
|genre=For SharingGeneral Fiction|summary= Can potty training ever be joyous? It often isn't, as any parent will tell you. But reallys been three years since we last reviewed a book by favourite regular Christopher Bowden, why shouldn't it be? We all have to learn about our bodily functions just as so we have were very glad to learn about everything else when we are smallsee a new novel arrive here at Bookbag Towers. Why shouldnLike all Bowden't potty training be as much fun ass stories, say, learning about why there's a mystery at the sun heart of ''The Colour of Money''. We like this running theme in an author's work - take a mystery but give it different flavour and the moon take turns in the sky? |isbn= B098BJZYHHatmosphere each time.
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1787634493Olga Tokarczuk|title=All Her Fault|author=Andrea MaraHouse of Day, House of Night|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersLiterary Fiction|summary=It had seemed ''What's 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 those serendipitous events Night'', somewhat reflects this notion of shifting realities - the small, subtle changes which sometimes happengovern our lives, like the shift from day to night, however quotidian, causing chaos. Marissa Irvine had been hoping But, the constant in that image is the house, stoic against the opportunity would arise ancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it is perceived.|isbn=1804271918}}{{Frontpage|isbn=henleyA|title=Ultimate Obsession|author=Dai Henley|rating=4|genre=Crime|summary=Ex-DCI Andy Flood has been a Private Investigator for her sonsome time now, Milo, to go on a play date. She was concerned that and he didn't have any friends at his new schoolshould be doing quite well financially. Milo would go home from Kerryglen National School in an affluent Dublin suburb with Unfortunately, his classmate Jacob - and Marissa would pick him up from 14 Tudor Grove daughter's defence against a little latermurder charge drained his savings. What could be better? OnlyHis wife, when Marissa arrived at the houseLaura, expecting has been trying to meet Jacobpersuade him to retire - ''maybe go travelling or go on cruises. That's motherwhat 'ordinary people do', Jenny, the door was answered by Esther, who didn't know Jenny or Jacob. ' The phone number sheHe'd s not been given for Jenny was not recognisedentirely up front about the state of their savings. Milo had disappeared. And so had JennyWhen Jack Durban tries to persuade him to take his case, it's nannythe thought of the money he could make that convinces him that this is a miscarriage of justice that he really should put right.
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Claire North1836284683|title=Notes from the Burning AgeThe Big Happy|author=David Chadwick|rating=4.5|genre=Science Dystopian Fiction|summary=At its core ''Notes From the Burning Age'' by Claire North Well! This is a spy thrillermurder mystery unlike any other! I do love it when I open a book, with as many double crossesit's nothing like I expected it to be, interrogations and night time escapes as Le Carre or Flemingit takes me on a wild ride. However, as And that is just what happened with the best novels, it wears many masks and its most affecting one is that of a new and timely genre, cli-fi, or climate change fiction''The Big Happy''. NorthI don's novel tells t want to ruin a similar experience for any of a world devastated by climate change where humans you reading but I'll have been forced to start anew and live alongside nature without any of at least set the modern and corrupting "luxuries" (read: fossil fuelsscene. Once that's done, weapons of mass destruction, intensive farming). There is a growing unhappiness with I think you should simply experience this limiting world, and one group, the Brotherhood, aims to master these processes no matter the cost to the Earthwonderfully original story for yourself.|isbn=0356514757
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Eva Bjorg Aegisdottir and Victoria Cribb (translator)Sally Rooney|title=Girls Who LieIntermezzo|rating=34.5|genre=ThrillersGeneral Fiction |summary=You might be forgiven for thinking that all Sally Rooney has studied the dark corners chessboard of Iceland have featured in their noirish thrillers life and crime books before nowis something of a grandmaster at putting it into words. You thinkHer dialogue is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, seeing on as her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Among the map that we're set in Akranesmany relationships woven into this story, and finding it's only twenty kilometres from the capital city, that this author central one for readers to unravel is clutching at the few final straws leftfraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. However just because the book aims for the usual small-town feelIvan, it's not just in Akranes that our interests lie. Six months ago a woman failed to turn up for her date eveningsocially awkward chess prodigy, and was never seen again. This left a teenaged girl not at all disappointed that she could now live permanently contrasts sharply with the couple who had given her foster care before her mother had asked for the girl backhis older brother Peter, and a couple of delighted adopterssuccessful lawyer living in Dublin. But 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 womanFollowing their father's car was found miles away in a second place, and now, passing after six months, the body has been discovered, in a third, even more remote place. Meanwhile, this narrative is interrupted by a confessional monologue from a mother who found herself long battle with heavy post-natal depressioncancer, and very little maternal feeling in her bodythe brothers' already strained relationship faces new trials. Is the assumption that is so easy for the reader to make the right one?|isbn=191319373X0571365469
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=B0925KS87N1036916375|title=Dead Man's Grave (DS Max Craigie)Just a Liverpool Lad|author=Neil LancasterPeter McArdle
|rating=4
|genre=CrimeAutobiography|summary=Tam Hardie had been determined to find ''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, such as the family history of a sea-going family, with the docks dominating lives. Other stories blend seamlessly into the grave what- and it took some finding might-have- in an overgrown old cemeterybeen. It was a strange thing for Scotland's premier criminal a book to dosettle into and allow your mind to roam across your childhood memories, but Tam was getting old and there were things he wanted to do. Onlythink of simpler times when life seemed less constrained, his family didn't hear from him again after he'd said that he'd found despite the grave - the one which said blitz that it shouldnwas a constant factor in McArdle't be opened - and his three sons began to worrys early years. Tam Junior, Frankie and Dave wouldnI't normally go to the police d never heard of parachute mines before - but they weren't certain where their father had been were almost soundless and they were worriedcould appear after the all-clear was sounded.
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Emily Critchley1836285493|title=The Tiny Gestures of Small Flowers|rating=3|genre=General Fiction|summary= The Tiny Gestures of Small Flowers had all the hallmarks of something good. I was intrigued by the plot, liked the design of the book, and thought the author's work sounded interesting. From the outset it all looked incredibly promising. So what on earth went wrong here?|isbn= 1911427091}} {{Frontpage|author=Sarah Langan|title=Good Neighbours|rating=4.5|genre=Thrillers|summary= If you're Double Life of a certain vintage, it's hard to read the words ''Good Neighbours'' without adding a sing-song ''that's when Good Neighbours…become…good friends''. Maple Street is no Ramsay Street, though, Arlo and Gertie live a world apart from the Melbourne suburbs. They're one of 18 households on the crescent, quite new arrivals having moved in a year earlier. They're not quite like all the other families (he's an ex rocker, she's a former beauty queen) but they've made some friends and their kids have settled in, and it's all going ok. Until it isn't. One hot, clammy, sticky, sweaty summer, a sinkhole opens up in the park across the way. It's a revolting mess of dirt and chaos, but for the residents of Maple Street, the worst is yet to come.|isbn=1789098211}}{{FrontpageWheelchair User|author=Lisa Thompson|title=The Small ThingsRob Keeley
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Although Anna has friends at schoolWill is a keen player of video games, a conscientious student, she feels like she never really fits ina slightly annoying brother and a supportive friend. Her family don't have enough money to let her do after school activitiesBut most of all, and so she feels like her life at home he is boring in comparison to theirsan aspiring writer. When a new girl joins her class, Anna English is asked to partner her, but things are complicated because the new girlhis favourite lesson at his school, EllieMarlowe Park, is unwell and so canone at which he excels. This hasn't attend school in person. Insteadgone unnoticed by his headteacher, Mrs Howarth, and she joins in with the class by using has suggested to Will and his mum that he spends a robot. Can Anna overcome the challenge couple of making friends with someone through afternoons a week at a robotdifferent school, and is she even interesting enough to Station Road, where his ability might be a good friend to Ellie?|isbn=1781129649better extended.
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=00083503881009473085|title=We Need to Talk About MoneyThe Conservative Effect 2010 - 2024|author=Otegha UwagbaAnthony Seldon and Tom Egerton (Editors)
|rating=5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=Sometimes it's simpler to explain a book by describing what it ''isn't'' and that applies to ''To be a darkThe Conservative Effect: 2010-skinned Black woman is to be seen as less desirable, less hireable, less intelligent and ultimately less valuable than my light2024 -skinned counterparts...14 Wasted Years?'' . If you're looking for an easy read which will deliver the inside story about what 'We Need to Talk About Money'really' by Otegha Uwagba 'happened on certain occasions, then this isn'0.7% of English Literature GCSE students in England study a book by a writer of colour while only 7% study a t the book by a womanfor you.'' If that's what you'The Booksellerre looking for, I don't think Anthony Seldon' 29 June 2021 Otegha Uwagba came to the UK from Kenya when she was five s book, {{amazonurl|isbn=B0BH7SKG2S|title=Johnson at 10}}, can be bettered for those tumultuous years old. Her sisters were seven It's a compelling read and nineshould be compulsory for anyone who thinks Johnson should return to politics. It was her mother who came first, with her father joining them later''The Conservative Effect'' is an entirely different beast. The family was hardIt's the seventh book in a series which looks at the impact a government has made and co-working, principled and determined that their children would have editor Sir Anthony Seldon regards this as the best education possiblemost important. There was always This book follows the well-established format: a painful awareness series of money although this did not translate into a shortage experts from various fields review the state of anything: it was simply carefully harvested. When Otegha was ten the family acquired a car. For Oteghanation when the coalition took over in 2010, education meant a scholarship to a private school the changes that occurred and the situation in London and then a place at New College, Oxford2024.
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1787631869Jenny Valentine|title=The Rising Tide|author=Sam LloydUs in the Before and After|rating=45|genre=ThrillersTeens|summary=Lucy Locke's early life hadn't been easy but she'd built Elk and Mab are best friends, or more than that even, their friendship is a good and decent life once in the aftermatha lifetime connection. She's now married to Daniel, who co-owns Locke-Povey Marine They meet as children one day on Penleith Beach, and a trip out but unfortunately they live at Wild Ridge on Mortis Point with Billie, Lucydon't get each other's daughter and Fin, contact details at the child she had with Danieltime. They have financial difficultiesBut then chance brings them back together, some caused by Nick Poveyand they are inseparable. Something has happened though, Daniel's partner something terrible and so-called best friend. Nick tragic, and Daniel have a history together from the time now they both spent in a children's home but it's difficult to think that Nick has Daniel's best interests at heartmust work through their grief, particularly where Lucyand their friendship, or money, is concernedtogether.|isbn=1471196585
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Hannah Peck1787333175|title=Kate on the CaseYou Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here|author=Benji Waterhouse|rating=3.5|genre=Confident ReadersPopular Science|summary=Meet Kate, although I got the impression shewas tempted to read ''You Don'd rather t Have to be a Catherine – and one specific Catherine at that. For Catherine Rodriguez is KateMad to Work Here'' after enjoying Adam Kay's idolfirst book {{amazonurl|isbn=1509858636|title=This is Going to Hurt}}, and a glorious mixture of insight into the author workings of our heroinethe NHS, humour and autobiography. 's favourite possession, 'You Don'The Special Correspondent Manualt Have to be Mad...''promised the same elements but moved from physical problems to mental illness and the work of a psychiatrist. Armed with a plucky father, that book, and her talking mouse called Rupert, she is all equipped I did wonder whether it was acceptable to manage a train ride to the Arctic, to see her scientist mother be looking for the first time humour in yonks. However, this setting but the laughter is directed at a train ride with situation rather than a difference, for on board person and it is a greedy-seeming harridan and her cat, a thief – and two glowing eyes, shining from the darkness in a blink-always delivered with empathy and-you'll-miss-them style. It's definitely a case for a new young investigative journalist..understanding.|isbn=184812970X
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{{Frontpage
|author=Darren ShanMariana Enriquez|title=Archibald Lox and the Forgotten Crypt: Archibald Lox series, Volume 2, book 1 of 3A Sunny Place for Shady People|rating=4.5|genre=Confident ReadersShort Stories|summary=The second trilogy in Shan's ''Merge'' saga opens with our heroMariana Enriquez writes horror that is disturbingly real, Archie, back in London in the world achieving this uncanny familiarity by basing her paranormal plots on gritty realities: her settings include an abandoned field full of the Born. It's not been easy, explaining disused refrigerators due to his foster parents where he's beenan urban planning mishap, or slipping back into ordinary life an overcrowded homeless shelter and forgetting about Inez and his other friends in the Merge, but Archie has done his besta crime-ridden neighbourhood where safety meetings are routine - all within Argentina.... well, except for visiting veteran locksmith Winston in Big Ben's clock tower and except for fiddling with The circumstances of her characters are so plausible that sneaky master lock in Seven Dials every time he can sneak awaythe supernatural or otherworldly horror which seeps into these spaces adopts a similarly tangible texture.|isbn=B093H8DPQZ1803511230
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=05713658841529934753|title=My Mess is a Bit of Life: Adventures in AnxietyThe Protest|author=Georgia PritchettRob Rinder|rating=4.5|genre=AutobiographyCrime|summary=Georgia Pritchett has always been anxiousFor a little while, even it looked as a child. She would worry about whether though Sir Max Bruce, the country's most famous living artist, was not going to show up for the monsters under opening of his retrospective at the bed were comfortable: it was Royal Academy. Still, he arrived in the sort nick of life where if she had nothing to worry about she would become anxious but such occasions were few time, complete with his two wives and far betweensix children, one of whom filmed what happened. On a visit to a therapist, as Being an adultinfluencer, when she was completely unable you tend to speak about what was wrong with her do things like that, but it was suggested fortunate that she should write it down and ''My Mess is there was a record of the protest. Lexi Williams, an intern at the RA, grabbed a Bit spray can of blue paint from under a Life: Adventures chair and proceeded to spray Bruce in Anxietythe face, whilst shouting '' is Stop the result War''. It seemed to be part of an ongoing series of 'blue- or so we are given to believeface' attacks, but this was different. The can had been laced with cyanide, and Sir Max Bruce was dead.
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|author=Alex CotterAriel Saramandi|title=The House on the Edge|rating=4|genre=Confident Readers|summary=Faith's family home is teetering on the edge of a cliff, literally. Is that crack in the garden getting bigger? Is the house starting to slope a little? And as the house seems to be falling apart, so is Faith's family. Her dad has disappeared, and her mum is struggling to cope, barely leaving her bed. So that leaves Faith in charge, taking care of her little brother Noah, taking care of her mum, feeding everyone, getting Noah to school, and avoiding awkward questions from interfering teachers. Is her little brother okay? Why is he obsessed with what he claims is a ghost in the cellar? What should she do about the house? Can she find 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 Portrait of all these worries on her constantly, and she doesn't know how much longer the cliff will hold together, or how long she can keep on keeping an Island on.|isbn=1788008626}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0008269041|title=Risk of Harm|author=Lucie WhitehouseFire
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|genre=CrimePolitics and Society|summary=DCI Robin Lyons is back in her native Birmingham after her less-than-comfortable departure from In this powerful collection of essays, Saramandi seeks to intradermally dissect the Met. She might have been reinstated but sociopolitical fabric of Mauritius, tunneling deep into the whole episode wounds left a nasty taste in her mouthby colonialism and slavery to expose how these legacies still shape modern life. She was now working for Detective Chief Superintendent Samir Jaffrey - then Saramandi describes the man who had broken her heart nearly twenty years before. She and her fifteen-year-old daughter have moved out of her parentcountry at one stage as ''rotting's home into a rented house but there's still , a difficult situation with her brother Luke who has gone out blunt yet apt metaphor for the systemic decay brought about by the malignant forces of his way to make life difficult for Robin since she was a young child. He's married to Natalieracism, patriarchy, now environmental degradation and has governmental dysfunction. Each essay in this collection serves as a young child but he's still got it in for Robinkind of diagnostic, charting the various diseases afflicting the island state.|isbn=1804271616
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|isbnauthor=1786332388Pekka Harju-Autti|title=The First Day of Spring|author=Nancy TuckerLoveVortex and the Drakor's Curse|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersFantasy|summary=Sometimes I wonder if I take my pleasures too sadly - and It''The First Day s the eighteenth century, a time of Spring'' was one such occasion. The writing is superb discovery and completely compelling. The characterisation Britain is excellent and the plot grips you and won't let goexpanding its foreign trade. SoCaptain Julius Hawthorne, what's the problem? Wellan experienced Scottish sea captain, the problem is Chrissie, sent to the main characterAndaman Islands in his endeavour. When we first meet her she's just eight years oldAlong with his son, Peter, small for her age and she readily tells us that she's just killed someone - their cat, Michi, they set off on a two-year-old boyperilous voyage to these faraway lands. 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 The islands are beautiful and stunning in their scenery and the book: when will Steven come backislanders' leader, she wonders? Hasn't he been dead for long enough?Aarav, is keen to establish good relations.|isbn=B0DS1VGHH3
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|author=Catherine SteadmanHelene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)|title=The Disappearing ActLili is Crying
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|genre=ThrillersLiterary Fiction|summary= British actress Mia Eliot First published in 1953 in French, this novel is on a timeless text which wrenches the cusp hearts of success. Great success. If its readers just as Bessette wrenches words and sentences from their proper position on the rumours are truepage and positions them elsewhere, award season is going to treat her welldisjointed, acknowledging her for her latest, critically acclaimed productiontruncated. She's going places but so, unfortunately, is her partner. And Like the places he's going take him towards lies, deceit and a pretty young thing in the form lives of his new co-star. It's a good time for Mia to escapeher characters, and pilot season in LA provides just the excusethey are often left tragically incomplete.|isbn=14711897831804271675
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|author= Christophe MedlerTom Percival|title=Madrigal: A Closely Guarded SecretThe Wrong Shoes|rating=45|genre=Historical FictionConfident Readers|summary= Set against Will's life is difficult, in a multitude of ways. He is bullied because he has 'the wrong shoes', he has the wrong shoes because his dad can't work and doesn't have enough money for even the backdrop most basic of things like food, and his dad can't work because he lost his job at the English Civil Warcollege, was working a secret plan (codecash-named Madrigal) is discovered by Sir Robert Douse in -hand job on a building site and had an accident. Throw into that mix the summer of 1642fact that his mum and dad are separated, and Will's life seems bleak in every direction. As And yet, he still has a loyal servant tiny amount of the Kinghope. He is good at art, and Head of the Secret Service, it is Robert's duty clings to uncover the details moments of joy when he is drawing, that feel like a light at the plan and follow the clues to uncover one end of the most guarded secrets in history—especially since the plot could affect the Kinga long, dark tunnel.|isbn=B095HY8SXQ1398527122
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|author=Tasha SuriSylvie Cathrall|title=The Jasmine ThroneA Letter to the Luminous Deep|rating=45|genre=FantasyScience Fiction|summary= On the night of her sacred burning, Princess Malini defies her brother and refuses to step on to the pyre. She is immediately sent There are few greater joys than a book which lives up to be imprisoned on the Hirana: an ancient temple that was once filled with a community of people who got powers from the mysterious deathless waterscompelling premise. But now the temple And this is nothing more than an overgrown, decaying ruin. One day, Malini witnesses a girl kill someone with magic. Instead one of reporting her for such a gruesome crime, Malini claims that the girl saved her from an attacker and begs for the girl to become her own personal maidservantthem.|isbn=03565156480356522776
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|isbn=B088YWF5BC1786482126|title=The Lies We TellJanus Stone (Dr Ruth Galloway)|author=Jane CorryElly Griffiths|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersCrime|summary=Sarah Wallace said that she grew up on Builders were demolishing an old house in Norwich - the site was going to hold seventy-five 'luxury' apartments - when they discovered the bones of a child beneath a council estate in Kent and that she had two brothers and two sistersdoorway. There was no skull. It seemed to have been Was this a lovingritual killing or murder? Inevitably, stable familyDr Ruth Galloway finds herself working with DCI Harry Nelson. When we first meet her, she can't sleep because her son, Freddie, whoIt's nearly sixteendifficult as Ruth knows, hasnbut Nelson doesn't come home by , that she is pregnant with his child as a result of the time he sort of half-promised he'd be in byone night they spent together some three months ago. Her husband, Tomcondition will be obvious before long, not least because Ruth is fast asleep: they're moving house in the morning but he's still going prone to be going to work and he needs his sleep. He wakes, though, when Freddie does come in and overhears him tell his mother that he's killed someonesudden bouts of sickness.
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|author=Joseph KnoxGuadalupe Nettel and Rosalind Harvey (Translator)|title=True Crime StoryThe Accidentals|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersShort Stories|summary= Joseph Knox, known for his series surrounding Detective Aidan Waits, has created a new genre This collection was truly enchanting in all senses of the word: spellbinding with his latest novelits fantastical, "True Crime Story". The story follows the disappearance magical elements and charming in its gentle portrayal of Zoe Nolan from her university halls of residencenature and human relationships. Split into four partsGuadalupe Nettel writes intelligently and precisely, the reader is taken through the life and disappearance of Zoe through the eyes of her twin sister, other family, friends and professionals, such as the police. The various accounts help the reader get stories structured by a wisdom that appears to know Zoe, or at least the Zoe she presented want to others. However, the twists and turns at teach us something about the end of each chapter leave you shocked, confused and unsure of what is true or fabricatedworld. Whose accounts can we trust?|isbn=08575277031804271470
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|authorisbn=Justine Avery and Naday Meldova0008551375|title=No, No, No!When Shadows Fall (D S Max Craigie)|author=Neil Lancaster|rating=4.5|genre=For SharingCrime|summary=They say Leanne Wilson's body was found at the best picture books are bottom of a Scottish mountain, seemingly the simplest ones. And nothing could be truer result of this latest from Justine Avery, a Bookbag favouritetragic accident. She''Nod looked so happy, Notoo, No!'' is based around the simplest text imaginablewhen she posted her intentions on Facebook. ''No Her friends were relieved as she was just out of an unpleasant relationship, no, no! Okay, okaybut it looked like she was living her best life now. Then it emerged that five other women had died in similar circumstances in the last year. Yes All were experienced climbers, you mayproperly equipped for what they were doing and sensible people. None of the 'what a stupid thing to do' Thatexplanations applied. They were all alone when they died: DS Max Craigie is certain there's it! But, like all the best picture books, this tiny snippet of text is a veritable tardis - so much bigger killer on the inside that it appears on the outsideloose.|isbn=1638820457
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