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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=Jennifer MasonSamantha Harvey|title=Partitions of UnityOrbital|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary= Here at Bookbag TowersIn 2024, we first met Elizabeth CromwellSamantha Harvey won the Booker Prize for ''Orbital'', dominatrix and unintentional detective a compact yet profound work that unfolds over a single day in [[Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery by Jennifer Mason|Preposterous]], when she investigated and unravelled the lives of a series group of disappearancesastronauts aboard the International Space Station. In ''Partitions of Unity'Through a narrative lens that mirrors the astronauts'orbital perspective, she sets her mind Harvey invites readers to solving see our planet in a murder...wholly new light.|isbn=B09LQR9FRF1529922933
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Fiona Parashar 295967572X|title=A Beautiful Way to Coach Pale Pieces|author=G M Stevens
|rating=5
|genre=Business and FinanceLiterary Fiction|summary= So Our unnamed narrator is about to begin a train journey with his companion Django. Where they're going and what am I doing reading the purpose of this bookjourney is, using this book, and being audacious enough to review it? Truth is I bought it out of curiosityuncertain. I was at an Django found the tickets ''on-line launch for the book floor somewhere'' and Fiona’s description of her Vision Days appealed has persuaded our narrator to meaccompany him. I wanted to see if there were things Why not? Not much else is clear either - but we are probably in there that I could use with someone I am currently helping / supporting / trying to mentor – without committing them the past as the pair travel to the station by coach and the train is a full day, which I know would send them scurrying for their burrowsteam locomotive. I also wanted to see if I could give myself a Vision Day, to bring me away from their vision and back to my own.|isbn=103211603X
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=19137503530008551324|title=Britannica's Word of the DayThe Devil You Know (D S Max Craigie)|author=Patrick Kelly, Renee Kelly and Sue MacyNeil Lancaster|rating=4.5|genre=Children's Non-FictionCrime|summary=''BritannicaIt's Word of unusual for anyone from the Hardie family to approach the Day'' police. Neither side likes or has a sub-title: any respect for the other. But Davie Hardie is struggling in prison and he''366 Elevating Utterances s prepared to Stretch Your Cranium tell the police where the body of a missing person is buried and Tickle Your Humerus'' which probably tells you all that you need to know about this brilliant bookwho was responsible for her death. It starts on January 1st with ''Razzmatazz'' This person, tells you how to pronounce it (''raz-muh-TAZ'')he promises, gives you a definition is someone big and then includes the word in a sentence so that you know how it should will be usedworth the police doing what he wants. You also And what he wants is to be transferred to an open prison to serve the remainder of his sentence and to get an engaging and frequently amusing illustration tooearly parole date. I donNot much to ask, is it? The new Deputy Police Constable doesn't think Iso and she've ever encountered a word which uses s even prepared to do the letter Z four times before!other thing that Hardie demanded - make certain that DS Max Craigie and anyone who works with him is kept well away from what's happening.
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=A C WiseJon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |title=HookedVaim
|rating=4
|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=It’s been twenty-two years since Captain Hook, now going by just ‘James’, has been in Neverland''All was strange''.. Living a new life in London, he has never completely escaped his past. But now he senses This haunting phrase encapsulates the edges pervading sense of the beast circling around his life otherworldliness which permeates this story set in LondonVaim, a fictional fishing village in Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for Jatgeir and when suddenly he finds himself face to face in the street with WendyEline, he knows that two of the line between this world and Neverland is growing thin. The beast is finally coming to get him, and protagonists caught in the process will pull Wendy and her daughter Jane back into their past once againits melancholic current.|isbn=17890968391804271829
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=17873017451035043092|title=ConfidenceThe Killing Stones (Jimmy Perez)|author=Denise MinaAnn Cleeves|rating=3.5|genre=ThrillersCrime|summary=WeI can're back in t have been the world of podcasters Anna and Fin, whom we first met in only person who was sad when Inspector Jimmy Perez [[Conviction Wild Fire (Shetland, Book 8) by Denise MinaAnn Cleeves|Convictionleft Shetland]]to start a new life on Orkney. It was Anna who'd organised the s been seven years since we heard from him, but he'family' holiday: her ex, Hamish, is s now with her best friend, Estelle and her children are living with them. Fin (who was married to Estelle) is there too Willow Reeves and it was Anna who invited their young son, James, as well as Cassie, the daughter of his girlfriend, Sofia. It's not long before everyone realises that was a bad mistakeformer partner. SofiaWillow's difficult also his boss, and with everyone trapped inside their holiday accommodation - she ''should'' be on maternity leave, but when the body of a lighthousepopular islander, Archie Stout, is found, in the aftermath of a storm - , she begins talking about Annacan's past, including her real name and the rapet resist getting involved. This was something which Anna had intended to tell He'd been battered about the girls head with a Neolithic stone - twelveone of a pair -tear-old Jess and ten-year-old Lizzie - when the time was right. And this wasn't the right timewhich had been stolen from a museum.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=178763566XThea Lenarduzzi|title=Listen to Me|author=Tess GerritsenThe Tower|rating=4.5|genre=CrimeLiterary Fiction|summary=We're in Boston with Amy. When she set out for university this morning it was a spring day and she wore her new, buttery-leather pumps but as she comes out of the library she knows that they're going to be ruined - and unsafe - in How unctuous are the snow thatfats of another's now falling. As she crosses the roadlife, a car comes out of nowhere and hits her. It doesnhow dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream''t stop.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0008395632Claire-Louise Bennett|title=One Last Secret|author=Adele ParksBig Kiss, Bye-Bye
|rating=4.5
|genre=ThrillersLiterary Fiction|summary=Natalya Everything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, is an escortsteeped in anguish and distortion. Even a kiss, usually a symbol of intimacy and closeness, becomes evidence of love lost. WellWhen the narrator cries out internally, her name's not 'come over here and kiss me,'actually'' Natalya: that's her professional name but it is less an invitation than a nod desperate attempt to confirm her Serbian heritage. She's actually thirty-one-year-old Teodora Dziewulski, usually known as Dora Wulskiemotional numbness. If you're thinking The imagined recipient of 'escort' as being a polite description of a prostitute, run by a pimp, who's turning tricks to fund a drug habit, forget it. Dora this plea is a professional in all senses of the word. She has an agentXavier, Elspethher ex-partner, who takes 30% of her income and deals with the payments but checks out the clients to see that Dora is going to be safe. Dora describes herself as a self-employed clairvoyant ghost she conjures to Her Majesty's Revenue and Customstest her detachment. |isbn=1804271934
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=David Solomons0008405026|title=A BeginnerStranger in the Family (Maeve Kerrigan 11)|author=Jane Casey|rating=5|genre=Crime|summary=It's Guide sixteen years since nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her bed one summer night. She was never found and the investigation ground to Ruling a halt. Now, her mother, Helena, and her father are dead in their bed. Initially, it looks like a straightforward murder/suicide but there's something about the Galaxypositioning of the bodies that makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and her boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. What looked as though it was going to be an open-and-shut case is now a complex double murder. Kerrigan is convinced that the explanation lies in Rosalie's disappearance: others (such as Derwent's boss, Una Burt) are less convinced.}}{{Frontpage|author=Annie Ernaux and Alison L. Strayer (translator)|title=The Other Girl
|rating=4
|genre=Confident ReadersAutobiography|summary=Gavin ''We were born from the same body. I've never really wanted to think about this.'' Ernaux's work is being followedalways very candid and her tone transparent, seemingly constantly, by but this raw epistolary text must be one of the new (very annoying) girl at schoolmost intimate accounts I've read. Only Ernaux writes in direct address to her sister, however, this is not your typical boy meets girl storyletter will never reach her. Why? Because in this instanceAnnie Ernaux's sister died of diphtheria at 6 years old, a few months before the girl vaccine was made compulsory in question is NikiFrance, and she is a galactic princess (no, really, she is!) So what will Gavin do when he becomes embroiled in a situation where, potentially, Earth 2 years before the author was even born. The large and everyone on it will be blown instant void created by the jarring concept of writing to smithereensan imaginary recipient emphasises Ernaux's process of reckoning with this giant absence in her life, all because of Niki?an absence that she has always felt but often denied.|isbn=08576399351804271845
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Alex CotterMaxim Gorky and Bryan Karetnyk (translator)|title=The Mermaid CallReminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev
|rating=3.5
|genre=Confident ReadersBiography|summary=Vivien knows that mermaids don't exist. But she also knows they have to exist – at least in Biographies are often seen as the public eye. For there would form of life-writing which offers less colour; it can be nothing to Lake Splendour – a far northern English resort – without them. A hundred years seen as more objective and change ago, two teenaged girls allegedly spent months with mermaids, but were forced to return to help out with the Great War effortless personal. They also showed female emancipation, which helped create the town's tourism industryI think that Gorky completely rejects this perspective, now faded and falling apart but once offers a feminist success storyvibrant, subjective yet informed portrait of three of his literary contemporaries. AliceIn the first section of this book, a girl who stumbles into VivienTolstoy complains to his friend Gorky that: 's gran's tourist shop one dayyou write not of real life as it is, knows she certainly wants mermaids but of what you yourself imagine it to exist – she thinks her family's black sheep died searching for them, or else was just too successful in her huntbe. When the shyWhom would it help to know how I see this tower, doubting Thomasina that is Vivien collides with the exuberantsea, gungor that Tartar -ho Alicewhy should it interest anyone? Of what use is it?''. Well, Maxim Gorky shows exactly what on earth – or perhaps can be gained from a subjective account, giving us access to how he saw Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev in water – will they find?such privileged detail that one almost feels unworthy of it.|isbn=18399419011804271977
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=17398051001529077745|title=Loving the Enemy: Building bridges in a time of warThe Dark Wives (D I Vera Stanhope)|author=Andrew MarchAnn Cleeves
|rating=4.5
|genre=BiographyCrime|summary= ''Loving the Enemy'' tells the quite extraordinary story of author Andrew March's grandparents, who first met when grandfather Fred Clayton went to Dresden to teach A man walking his dog in the early days morning discovered the body of the Nazi regime a man in the 1930s. Fredpark near Rosebank, a sensitive and thoughtful care home for troubled teens. The dead man, had some vague ideas was Josh - one of "building bridges" which may guard against the growing hostilities between nations unfolding 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 Europe at to investigate the murder - but her only clue is the disappearance of one of the timeresidents, fourteen-year-old Chloe Spencer. Fred Some people believe that Chloe was responsible for the death but Vera thinks this is unlikely as the girl's attempts diary makes it clear that she adored Josh. She knows that she has to separate individual people from ideology weren't universally successful but he did make friendships and connections that lasted for a lifetimefind Chloe to discover what happened to Josh.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B0B575J99NB0FK5LHKD9|title=Beneath the PorticoesThe Colour of Memory|author=Brooke AdamsChristopher Bowden
|rating=4
|genre=Women's General Fiction|summary=Elizabeth Miller was thirty-four and It's been three years since we last reviewed a book by favourite regular Christopher Bowden, so we were very glad to see a teacher new novel arrive here at a prestigious girlBookbag Towers. Like all Bowden's school in York. It was stories, there''comfortable'' but she longed for something more in life. She'd s a mystery at the heart of ''still not found the right vocation nor met the right manThe Colour of Money'' and now was the time to make a change. She needed challenges. There was a little trepidation when she applied for the professoressa job We like this running theme in Bologna. After an author's work - take a telephone interview, she was offered the position and it wasn't long before she was exploring the beautiful city. There were some natural doubts before her first class mystery but give it went surprisingly welldifferent flavour and atmosphere each time.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1529125898Olga Tokarczuk|title=Godmersham Park|author=Gill HornbyHouse of Day, House of Night
|rating=5
|genre=Historical Literary Fiction|summary=''If it were not for What's the casual dereliction good of the odd gentleman's duty, there would no women to teach well-bred daughters at all.a world that keeps changing like that? How can one go on calmly living in it?''
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Lev Parikian 1836284683|title=Light Rains Sometimes FallThe Big Happy|author=David Chadwick
|rating=4.5
|genre=Animals and WildlifeDystopian Fiction|summary= If you’re Well! This is a writer yourself, or an aspiring writer, or someone who pretends to write, then you know that there are unnumbered types of books. Some you read for fun, some for distraction, some for vicarious emotion, some to learn from in a random way, some for focussed research, and some because they are, broadly speaking, the kind of thing you think you might like to write. Or, indeed, are actually trying to write.|isbn=1783966386}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0751581577|title=Lying Beside You|author=Michael Robotham|rating=5murder mystery unlike any other!|genre=Thrillers|summary=Elias Haven murdered his parents and his twin sisters two days after his nineteenth birthday. Voices told him to I do love it. Only two people survived the carnage - Eliaswhen I open a book, who was sent it's nothing like I expected it to Ramptonbe, and his thirteen-year-old brother, Cyrus, who hid in it takes me on a shed until the police found himwild ride. Twenty years later, Cyrus And that is a forensic psychologist and hejust what happened with ''The Big Happy''s been told that his brother is being released. Can Cyrus forgive the sinner whilst having I don't want to live on ruin a daily basis with the results similar experience for any of the crime? Can he bear you reading but I'll have to have Elias living in at least set the same house? How will his lodgerscene. Once that's done, twenty-one-year-old Evie Cormac, cope?I think you should simply experience this wonderfully original story for yourself.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=140595115XSally Rooney|title=A Stranger on Board|author=Cameron WardIntermezzo
|rating=4.5
|genre=ThrillersGeneral Fiction |summary=Right from Sally Rooney has studied the beginningchessboard of life and is something of a grandmaster at putting it into words. Her dialogue is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, we know this will not turn out wellas her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Eight days Among the many relationships woven into this story, the trip central one for readers to deliver unravel is the superyacht ''Escape'' to Antigua, all 300 tonnes fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and six decks will be floundering without power in the AtlanticPeter Koubek. Those of the crew who are left will be cowering in fear Ivan, a fellow crew member tries to pick them offsocially awkward chess prodigy, contrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, one by one. Some are already dead. They are three days from shore and there is no way of making contacta successful lawyer living in Dublin. But letFollowing their father's go back to when all this startedpassing after a long battle with cancer, in Southamptonthe brothers' already strained relationship faces new trials.|isbn=0571365469
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=13985086321036916375|title=The Wilderness CureJust a Liverpool Lad|author=Mo WildePeter McArdle|rating=54|genre=LifestyleAutobiography|summary=It had been on the cards for ''Just a Liverpool Lad '' is a while but it was collection of memories and reflections from the week-long consumer binge which pushed Mo Wilde into beginning her year of eating only wild foodyears Peter McArdle spent growing up in and around Liverpool. The end Some are factual, such as the family history of Novembera sea-going family, particularly in Central Scotland was perhaps not with the best time to start, in a world where docks dominating lives. Other stories blend seamlessly into the normal sores had what-might-have-been exacerbated by climate change, Brexit and a pandemic. Wilde had It's a few advantages: book to settle into and allow your mind to roam across your childhood memories, to think of simpler times when life seemed less constrained, despite the area around her blitz that was a known habitat with a variety of terrainsconstant factor in McArdle's early years. She had electricity which allowed her to run a fridge, freezer I'd never heard of parachute mines before - but they were almost soundless and dehydrator. She had a car could appear after the all- and fuel. Most importantly, she had shelter: this clear was not a plan to ''live'' wild just to live off its producesounded.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=02419890271836285493|title=We All Have Our SecretsThe Double Life of a Wheelchair User|author=Jane CorryRob Keeley|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersConfident Readers|summary=Harold Gentle advertised for live-in help as he was failing to cope at Willowmead House on his own. His advert was fairly specific: he was Will is a retired lawyer needing help but he also spoke keen player of the ability to cook video games, a good steakconscientious student, enjoy decent wine a slightly annoying brother and be free from any food fadsa supportive friend. But most of all, he is an aspiring writer. The first person who came to the house was FrancoiseEnglish is his favourite lesson at his school, a French woman in her early twentiesMarlowe Park, who fit the bill perfectlyand one at which he excels. She got the job but Francoise didnThis hasn't know about the advert: she was there for a completely different reason. Emily Gentle is Harold's daughter gone unnoticed by his headteacher, Mrs Howarth, and she came has suggested to Willowmead House because she was running away from Will and his mum that he spends a problem in London. Emily's couple of afternoons a midwife and her last shift had seen her lacking concentration and week at a complaint had been madedifferent school, Station Road, where his ability might be better extended.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1009473085|title=The Conservative Effect 2010 - 2024|author=Ewald Arenz Anthony Seldon and Rachel Ward Tom Egerton (translatorEditors)|title=Tasting Sunlight|rating=4.5|genre=General FictionPolitics and Society|summary=Sally is Sometimes it's simpler to explain a teenager who has run away from book by describing what it ''isn't'' and that applies to ''The Conservative Effect: 2010-2024 - 14 Wasted Years?''. If you're looking for an anorexia treatment cliniceasy read which will deliver the inside story about what ''really'' happened on certain occasions, then this isn't the book for you. She just wants space If that's what you're looking for, and for people to stop questioning herI don't think Anthony Seldon's book, tiptoeing around her{{amazonurl|isbn=B0BH7SKG2S|title=Johnson at 10}}, and trying to fix her without ever truly understanding hercan be bettered for those tumultuous years. She finds herself on some farmland with It's a woman called Liss compelling read and should be compulsory for anyone who is in her forties and seems thinks Johnson should return to live alonepolitics. Liss ''The Conservative Effect'' is unlike any other adult Sally has ever metan entirely different beast. She just accepts Sally as she is, giving her It's the seventh book in a series which looks at the impact a room to sleep in, government has made and co-editor Sir Anthony Seldon regards this as the space to just bemost important. As they work together on This book follows the farm, well-established format: a closeness develops between themseries of experts from various fields review the state of the nation when the coalition took over in 2010, becoming a beautiful, powerful friendshipthe changes that occurred and the situation in 2024.|isbn=1914585143
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{{Frontpage
|author=Jennifer MasonJenny Valentine|title=Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell MysteryUs in the Before and After|rating=45|genre=General FictionTeens|summary=''A struggling poetry zineElk and Mab are best friends, or more than that even, their friendship is a mom-and-pop mobile diner once in the Northern California redwoods, a 400-meter hurdler who just missed the 2004 Olympics, lifetime connection. They meet as children one day on a womentrip out but unfortunately they don't get each other's track coach with a yen for bullwhips, a billionaire with a state-of-contact details at the-art S&M dungeontime. But then chance brings them back together, a man serving a life sentence in Alabamaand they are inseparable. Something has happened though, an enigmatic signaturesomething terrible and tragic, K(s, x), on a cheap oil paintingand now they must work through their grief, an erotic art dealer in Georgia...'' This is just a sample of the cast of characters and settings in Preposterous. As you can seetheir friendship, some keeping up will be required! The basic premise of this mystery story goes like this..together.|isbn=B09STS96HS1471196585
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Will Brooker1787333175|title=The Truth About Lisa JewellYou Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here|author=Benji Waterhouse
|rating=5
|genre=BiographyPopular Science|summary=Meet [[:Category:Lisa Jewell|Lisa Jewell]], one of the most successful British authors Iwas tempted to read 've never knowingly read. Now meet Will Brooker'You Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here'' after enjoying Adam Kay's first book {{amazonurl|isbn=1509858636|title=This is Going to Hurt}}, one a glorious mixture of insight into the thousands workings of less successful authors I quite confidently never have read. This book starts with the two meeting each other, as wellNHS, humour and shows how 2021 drew the two closer and closer togetherautobiography. The meeting was some unspecified combination, it seems, of her anecdote about cup cakes, the words of her latest book she was reciting, and her being in a ''black lace mini-dress with gold brocadeYou Don't Have to be Mad...'' (certainly a get-up never commonly worn at promised the author events I get same elements but moved from physical problems to attend), but pulled Brooker, mental illness and the work of a professor of cultural studies who has swallowed Roland Barthes, down the rabbit-hole that is Jewell's diverse outputpsychiatrist. Brooker decides he'd like nothing more than I did wonder whether it was acceptable to follow her through a year be looking for humour in this setting but the published author's life, working to make laughter is directed at a situation rather than a success of the latest title, person and struggling it is always delivered with the next in line. Jewell, due diligence appropriately done, agrees. And this is the resultempathy and understanding.|isbn=1529136024
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1801109265Mariana Enriquez|title=The Companion|author=Lesley ThomsonA Sunny Place for Shady People
|rating=5
|genre=CrimeShort Stories|summary=James Ritchie thought 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 himself as ''a punctual man who was inexplicably never on time'' and he was - as usual - late disused refrigerators due to pick up his sonan urban planning mishap, Wilbur, for their 'boys' day out'. These were always days which appealed more to James than to Wilbur an overcrowded homeless shelter and, competing for the boy's attention, his mother, Anna, promised him a roast dinner when he returnedcrime-ridden neighbourhood where safety meetings are routine - all within Argentina. The dinner would never be served, as James and Wilbur circumstances of her characters are so plausible that the victims of supernatural or otherworldly horror which seeps into these spaces adopts a double stabbing on the beach. The case falls to DI Toni Kemp of Sussex police. She's feeling the pressure. You can always tell - she shoplifts Snickers Bars when the going gets toughsimilarly tangible texture.|isbn=1803511230
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=152941363X1529934753|title=To Kill a Troubadour (A Bruno, Chief of Police Novel)The Protest|author=Martin WalkerRob Rinder
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=''Nobody knows what the truth is any more.'' Bruno Courrèges is the police chief for St Denis and much of the Vézère valley and works closely with Commissaire Jean-Jaques Jalipeau (known For a little while, it looked as 'JJ')though Sir Max Bruce, the head of detectives for the départment of the Dordogne. Theycountry're s most famous living artist, was not just policemen - they're both deeply committed going to show up for the well-being and prosperity opening of this most beautiful part of Francehis retrospective at the Royal Academy. The discovery of an oldStill, stolen Peugeot, crashed and abandoned he arrived in a ditch wouldn't normally have worried them so much had it not been for the strange bulletnick of time, complete with Russian letters stamped on the basehis two wives and six children, which they found in the carone of whom filmed what happened. OhBeing an influencer, you tend to do things like that, and but it was fortunate that there was a golf ball too, which didn't belong to the owner record of the carprotest. A golf bag would be Lexi Williams, an intern at the RA, grabbed a spray can of blue paint from under a good place chair and proceeded to hide a sniperspray Bruce in the face, whilst shouting ''Stop the War''s weapon. Was there going It seemed to be part of an attempt to kill someoneongoing series of 'blue-face' attacks, but this was different. The can had been laced with cyanide, or were the detectives being pushed in a certain direction?and Sir Max Bruce was dead.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0241542405Ariel Saramandi|title=Meredith Alone|author=Claire AlexanderPortrait of an Island on Fire
|rating=4.5
|genre=General FictionPolitics and Society|summary=When we first meet Meredith Maggs it's Wednesday 14 November 2018 and she's not left her home for 1In this powerful collection of essays,214 days. She'd ''like'' Saramandi seeks to: in factintradermally dissect the sociopolitical fabric of Mauritius, she so nearly doestunneling deep into the wounds left by colonialism and slavery to expose how these legacies still shape modern life. Her outdoor clothes are on and sheSaramandi describes the country at one stage as 's even considered which shoes to wear if she's going to catch her train. Then, she canrotting't. She simply can't force herself to leave , a blunt yet apt metaphor for the systemic decay brought about by the safety malignant forces of her home. She's fortunate that she has a good friend, Sadieracism, who visits regularly with her two childrenpatriarchy, James environmental degradation and Matildagovernmental dysfunction. Sadie's Each essay in this collection serves as a cardiac nurse and full kind of sound common sense. In fact it was Sadie who gave Meredith her catdiagnostic, Fred. Groceries are online deliveries and there's also an internet-based support group where you'll find Meredith as JIGSAWGIRL, so you can guess what she does in her spare time. Then Tom McDermott arrives. He's from Holding Hands, a charity which supports people with problems such as Meredith'scharting the various diseases afflicting the island state.|isbn=1804271616
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=B09Y451X9KPekka Harju-Autti|title= Greetings, aliens!: (do pop in for tea)|author=Richard F WalkerLoveVortex and the Drakor's Curse
|rating=4
|genre=General FictionFantasy|summary= It''Anything can happen at s the eighteenth century, a birthday party, particularly when the birthday boy time of discovery and Britain is the young Lord of the Manorexpanding its foreign trade. But when Captain Julius Hawthorne, an eerie signal experienced Scottish sea captain, is picked up sent to the Andaman Islands in the early hourshis endeavour. Along with his son, Peter, George and his new girlfriendtheir cat, the vivacious Lady AntoniaMichi, embark they set off on a quest perilous voyage to uncover its incredible messagethese faraway lands. Things get complicated when some total spoilsport lets the cat out of the bag The islands are beautiful and the world goes into a state of panic.'' Could it be? Could it? Have aliens reached out and contacted Earth? George and Antonia find themselves lifted out of stunning in their privileged lives of parties and drunken shenanigans scenery and catapulted into the world of advanced scienceislanders' leader, Aarav, secret agents.and politicians hungry for poweris keen to establish good relations.|isbn=B0DS1VGHH3
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Darren ShanHelene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)|title= Archibald Lox and the Sinkhole to Hell: Archibald Lox series, book 7 Lili is Crying
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=First published in 1953 in French, this novel is a timeless text which wrenches the hearts of its readers just as Bessette wrenches words and sentences from their proper position on the page and positions them elsewhere, disjointed, truncated. Like the lives of her characters, they are often left tragically incomplete.
|isbn=1804271675
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Tom Percival
|title=The Wrong Shoes
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary= SoWill's life is difficult, in a multitude of ways. We He is bullied because he has 're back to the Merge with the first chapter in the third volume of Darren Shanwrong shoes's saga of Archibald Lox, a young man who he has the wrong shoes because his dad can pick 't work and doesn't have enough money for even the locks most basic of portals from our world to anotherthings like food, called the and his dad can''Merge''. Since t work because he lost his last adventurejob at the college, Archie has persuaded his foster parents into was working a slightly uneasy truce cash-in-hand job on a building site and had an accident. Throw into that mix the topic of fact that his regular disappearancesmum and dad are separated, and Will's life seems bleak in every direction. They don't ask too many questions and Archie And yet, he still has settled into a fairly peaceful routine tiny amount of visiting Winstonhope. He is good at art, his lock-picking mentor in and clings to the ''Merge'' and showing Kojomoments of joy when he is drawing, that feel like a light at the young guardianend of a long, around our world of the Borndark tunnel. |isbn= B09Z2MTCZD1398527122
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{{Frontpage
|author=John Henry PhillipsSylvie Cathrall|title=The SearchA Letter to the Luminous Deep
|rating=5
|genre=HistoryScience Fiction|summary=Archaeology cannot be child's play, when you're scraping in the dirt looking to find what you can find, often knowing there should be something there but not always confident what. Archaeology must be There are few greater joys than a fair bit harder when you set out book which lives up to find some specific thing. This book is a case of the latter, as our author promises to locate the topic of the titular searchcompelling premise. And he really hasn't made it easy for himself – the search area this is a wide one, the target might not exist any more – oh, and it's underwater, when he cannot dive. Latching on to a particular D-Day veteran through helping the heroic old man's visit back to France, our author has promised to find the landing craft that delivered him to Normandy, and that he was lucky to survive when it sank from beneath him. The secondary aim is to erect a memorial to everyone else aboard, the vast majority of whom perishedthem. Who else would make such promises to someone in their nineties?|isbn=14721461820356522776
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Fiona Longmuir1786482126|title=Looking for EmilyThe Janus Stone (Dr Ruth Galloway)|author=Elly Griffiths|rating=4.5|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=Meet LilyBuilders 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 doorway. There was no skull. She and her mother have just moved from Was this a city to a tiny seaside town called Edgeritual killing or murder? Inevitably, and everyone from said mother to her teacher are making demands of Lily that she make new friendsDr Ruth Galloway finds herself working with DCI Harry Nelson. It turns out that she 's difficult as Ruth knows, but Nelson doesn't have any say in the matter, for while pretending when phoning home that she was is pregnant with someone called Emily, she is unaware her neighbour, Sam, is just about to make herself known, and in a big way. But where does Emily come from? Well, Lily used that name because of what she'd just stumbled into – his child as a mysterious collection result of the most mundane objects, in one night they spent together some converted houses behind a most unassuming doorthree months ago. Her condition will be obvious before long, in a place calling itself 'The Museum of Emily'. Sam not least because Ruth is completely unaware prone to sudden bouts of this 'museum', too, leaving the two girls to make sure they leave no stone unturned in finding what's behind the intriguesickness...|isbn=1839942754
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=B09XZMCDVFGuadalupe Nettel and Rosalind Harvey (Translator)|title=Stories: 13 tantalising tales|author=Richard F WalkerThe Accidentals|rating=4.5
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=''A news vendor is crying out the headlines This collection was truly enchanting in the middle all senses of the night; a wheelchair user loses touch word: spellbinding with reality when he tries walking around its fantastical, magical elements and charming in his imagination; its gentle portrayal of nature and human relationships. Guadalupe Nettel writes intelligently and precisely, her stories structured by a stickler for correct grammar goes back in time wisdom that appears to correct an iconic quote; a volunteer teacher proves the ideal person want to have around in a lawless village; teach us something about the new boy on the pub football team is very useful with his feet, and awfully familiar…''world.|isbn=1804271470}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0008551375|title=When Shadows Fall (D S Max Craigie)|author=Neil Lancaster|rating=4.5|genre=CrimeThis collection |summary=Leanne Wilson's body was found at the bottom of thirteen short stories by Richard F Walker has a lot to offer Scottish mountain, seemingly the eclectic readerresult of a tragic accident. Tying them together is the idea that remarkable and strange She'd looked so happy, too, even miraculouswhen she posted her intentions on Facebook. Her friends were relieved as she was just out of an unpleasant relationship, things can happen to ordinary peoplebut it looked like she was living her best life now. And Then it emerged that ordinary doesn't mean boring or uninterestingfive other women had died in similar circumstances in the last year. Form All were experienced climbers, properly equipped for what they were doing and tone varies so this little treasury sensible people. None of short fiction is never boring and youthe 're never quite sure whata stupid thing to do' explanations applied. They were all alone when they died: DS Max Craigie is certain there's coming nexta killer on the loose.
}}
