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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''
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1529153298Samantha Harvey|title=The List of Suspicious Things|author=Jennie GodfreyOrbital|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=It's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. (A woman? I meanIn 2024, honestly...) SheSamantha Harvey won the Booker Prize for 's not what's worrying MivOrbital's family, though. Women have been disappearing. Well, they've been murdered, but to have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. Miv's upset because she's overheard a compact yet profound work that her father wants to move unfolds over a single day in the lives of a group of astronauts aboard the family 'Down South'International Space Station. When you're from Yorkshire, Down South is Through a frightening, foreign place, best avoided. For Miv, the move would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, and she'll do anything to prevent narrative lens that. She's not worried about mirrors the dangers or that her Mumastronauts's stopped talking - orbital perspective, Harvey invites readers to anyonesee our planet in a wholly new light.|isbn=1529922933
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=1398524085295967572X|title=Has Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter?Pale Pieces|author=Nicci FrenchG M Stevens
|rating=5
|genre=CrimeLiterary Fiction|summary=Charlotte Salter was expected at her husband's fiftieth birthday party but never turned up. Her children, sons Niall, Paul and Ollie and her daughter, Etty. are all worried but - strangely - her husband, Alec, Our unnamed narrator is notabout to begin a train journey with his companion Django. Shortly afterwards, Etty Where they're going and Greg, find what the body purpose of Greg's fatherthis journey is, Duncan Ackerley, in the riveris uncertain. It was an easy assumption for Django found the police to make that Duncan had murdered Charlie and then committed suicide when he couldntickets ''t stand on the guiltfloor somewhere'' and has persuaded our narrator to accompany him. The Salter children are Why not convinced but there's little ? Not much else they can do is clear either - but get on with their lives we are probably in the past as the pair travel to the station by coach and wonder about what really happenedthe train is a steam locomotive.
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=10359067080008551324|title=DivaThe Devil You Know (D S Max Craigie)|author=Daisy GoodwinNeil Lancaster
|rating=4.5
|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=We tend It's unusual for anyone from the Hardie family to approach the police. Neither side likes or has any respect for the other. But Davie Hardie is struggling in prison and he's prepared to think tell the police where the body of Maria Callas as Greek, but she a missing person is buried and who was born to Greek parents in Manhattanresponsible for her death. This person, New Yorkhe promises, in December 1923 is someone big and it will be worth the police doing what he wants. And what he wants is to be transferred to an open prison to serve the remainder of his sentence and only moved to Athens when she was thirteenget an early parole date. Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed Not much to ask, is it to ? The new Deputy Police Constable doesn'Callast think so and she' s even prepared to make it more manageable in do the States. When she was back in Athens other thing that Hardie demanded - supposedly so make certain that she could get appropriate training for her voice - she was raised under the Nazi occupation by a mother DS Max Craigie and anyone who mercilessly exploited her and made no secret of her preference for her elder sister, Jackieworks with him is kept well away from what's happening.
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{{Frontpage
|author=Christopher EdgeJon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |title=Black Hole Cinema ClubVaim
|rating=4
|genre=Confident ReadersLiterary Fiction|summary=Lucas and his friends are all booked in for a movie marathon at their local cinema, a place that has the nickname of 'The Black Hole'. All big movie fans, theywas strange''re looking forward to lots ... This haunting phrase encapsulates the pervading sense of exciting filmsotherworldliness which permeates this story set in Vaim, a fictional fishing village in Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for Jatgeir and manyEline, many snacks! However, as two of the movie starts, they very quickly realise that something about this new film format is very different, and they are swept up into an adventure they couldn't even imagineprotagonists caught in its melancholic current. But as they lurch from one film genre to the next, can they figure out what on earth is going on? Will they ever get back to the cinema, and to their real lives?|isbn=18399427381804271829
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Rachel Greenlaw1035043092|title=Compass and BladeThe Killing Stones (Jimmy Perez)|author=Ann Cleeves|rating=3.5|genre=TeensCrime|summary=''I can hear 't have been the song of the sea. The call of the deeponly person who was sad when Inspector Jimmy Perez [[Wild Fire (Shetland, the answering beat in my heartBook 8) by Ann Cleeves|left Shetland]] to start a new life on Orkney. It's been seven years since we heard from him, but he' Rosevear, a remote s now living with Willow Reeves and partially forgotten islandtheir young son, survives on luring ships into the rocks and plundering the wrecks. MiraJames, like her mother before heras well as Cassie, is one the daughter of the seven who swim out to survey the ruins – rescuing any survivors and any treasure that lies withinhis former partner. But when the Council Watch lays a trap to end the wrecking, they capture the island Willow's leader also his boss, and Mirashe 's father. Desperate to save him from death'should'' be on maternity leave, Mira makes but when the body of a bargain with a wreck survivor who is as charming as he popular islander, Archie Stout, is secretive and with only coordinates to guide herfound, she sets off in search the aftermath of a family secret that lies buried deep in the seastorm, she can't resist getting involved. With only nine days to unearth what might save her father, as her journey takes her from the watched streets of foreign islands to the heart of the smuggler He's territory, Mira must be determined to stop at nothing to save d been battered about the future head with a Neolithic stone - one of her home and the ones she holds most deara pair - which had been stolen from a museum.|isbn=0008664730
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{{Frontpage
|author=James Sherwood MettsThea Lenarduzzi|title=Planet StorylandThe Tower|rating=4.5|genre=Confident ReadersLiterary Fiction|summary= Things have been a bit sticky for ''How unctuous are the Earthlingsfats of another's life, how dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream''. AI and automation have been proceeding apace In this compelling novel, Thea Lenarduzzi assumes the identity of T, often replacing jobs they're paid to do and other tasks that took time to accomplishthe protagonist of this tale. Just as they were beginning to get used to all this technological change and starting to think T's story is being told, the story of a second protagonist is unveiled: Annie, the daughter of a wealthy family in the 19th century, who died of othertuberculosis after being locked in a tower, captures T's imagination. Annie's fate is, new ways to spend timeabove all, along came an awful pandemicenticing story to T. Life was pretty much shut down It is a story which she consumes avariciously, both in a quest for truth andknowledge, along with itand in service of myth, all the many daily social interactions on which they depend so heavilyfable and fantasy. |isbn=17361284261804271799
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{{Frontpage
|author=Matthew TreeClaire-Louise Bennett|title=We'll Never KnowBig Kiss, Bye-Bye
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his fatherEverything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, is steeped in anguish and distortion. Even a kiss, usually a drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams symbol of being exceptional at any of his artistic passions all failed miserably intimacy and who had endless crises closeness, becomes evidence of self confidencelove lost. So Tim applied himself When the narrator cries out internally, ''come over here and kiss me,'' it is less an invitation than a desperate attempt to his studiesconfirm her emotional numbness. The imagined recipient of this plea is Xavier, cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and set himself high but achievable ambitionsher ex-partner, a ghost she conjures to test her detachment.|isbn= B0CVFXPGP81804271934
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=A G Slatter0008405026|title=The Briar Book of A Stranger in the DeadFamily (Maeve Kerrigan 11)|author=Jane Casey
|rating=5
|genre=FantasyCrime|summary='' ThereIt's sixteen years since nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her bed one summer night. She was never found and the investigation ground to a part of me that wants to keep this just to myself for however long I canhalt. This secret magic of my own Now, her mother, all mineHelena, at lastand her father are dead in their bed. I just want to enjoy Initially, it for looks like a while.straightforward murder/suicide but there'' Within a remote mountain pass, far away from the world, lies Silverton; a town under s something about the protection positioning of the Briar's, a family of witches who protect the town bodies that makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and the wider world from the Darklandsher boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. Though she has always wished for magic, Ellie Briar is the first non-witch What looked as though it was going to be born into her family for generations an open-and as such since she was young, her training as -shut case is now a steward revolved around letters and administration rather than spells and potionscomplex double murder. When her grandmother suddenly dies, Ellie's cousin Audra becomes Kerrigan is convinced that the Briar Witch, the townexplanation lies in Rosalie's leader, and Ellie takes her place beside her. As challenges come her way left, right and centre, Ellie uncovers the rare ability to communicate with the dead, putting her at the heart of a maelstrom of chaos. Reeling from one family secret to another, Ellie must decide who to trust and determine what to do disappearance: others (such as the Briar witchesDerwent' legacy, everything they have sacrificed to survives boss, is under threatUna Burt) are less convinced.|isbn=1803364548
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1529900360Annie Ernaux and Alison L. Strayer (translator)|title=The Ghost Orchid|author=Jonathan KellermanOther Girl
|rating=4
|genre=CrimeAutobiography|summary=It hadn't been Lt Milo Sturgis'We were born from the same body. I've never really wanted to think about this.'' Ernaux's fault that Alex Delaware had been badly injured but he felt responsible work is always very candid and even after Alex recoveredher tone transparent, Sturgis was reluctant to ask for his help on difficult cases. His assertions that there were only open-and-shut cases which didnbut this raw epistolary text must be one of the most intimate accounts I't need the help of a psychologist only worked for a whileve read. FinallyErnaux writes in direct address to her sister, it was Robinhowever, Delawarethis letter will never reach her. Why? Because Annie Ernaux's partnersister died of diphtheria at 6 years old, who nudged Milo into asking for help again. She knew that a few months before the involvement vaccine was something that made compulsory in France, and 2 years before the man she loved neededauthor was even born. The next case did look simple, though. Two lovers were murdered in large and instant void created by the swimming pool jarring concept of a remote property in Bel Air. He was the heir to an Italian shoe empire and she is married writing to an extremely rich man and itimaginary recipient emphasises Ernaux's not the Italianprocess of reckoning with this giant absence in her life, an absence that she has always felt but often denied. But which of them was the primary target?|isbn=1804271845
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1529395224Maxim Gorky and Bryan Karetnyk (translator)|title=Letting the Cat Out Reminiscences of the Bag: The Secret Life of a Vet|author=Sion RowlandsTolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev
|rating=3.5
|genre=Animals and WildlifeBiography|summary=Siôn Rowlands fell into veterinary science accidentallyBiographies are often seen as the form of life-writing which offers less colour; it can be seen as more objective and less personal. His father was I think that Gorky completely rejects this perspective, and offers a GP and Rowlands didn't want to follow in his footstepsvibrant, particularly when he considered the strain that being on-call put on subjective yet informed portrait of three of his father's lifeliterary contemporaries. When he was seventeen he took In the opportunity first section of doing work experience with a family friend who was a vet and was convinced this was the job for him. Before longbook, he was at Liverpool University. It hadnTolstoy complains to his friend Gorky that: ''t - you write not of real life as with so many students it is, but of what you yourself imagine it to be. Whom would it help to know how I see this tower, that sea, or that Tartar - been his dream since he was a childwhy should it interest anyone? Of what use is it?''. If anythingWell, he'd wanted to Maxim Gorky shows exactly what can be gained from a professional footballersubjective account, giving us access to how he saw Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev in such privileged detail that one almost feels unworthy of it.|isbn=1804271977
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=08615417741529077745|title=A Nye of PheasantsThe Dark Wives (D I Vera Stanhope)|author=Steve BurrowsAnn Cleeves|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=DCI Domenic Jejeune's close friend and former colleague, Danny Maik, has taken A man walking his dog in the early morning discovered the body of a short holiday man in Singapore to meet up with an old allythe park near Rosebank, Guy Truemana care home for troubled teens. Maik The dead man was involved in a street brawl Josh - he would later maintain that he one of the care workers who was facing due to work a man armed with a knife - and he killed a Ghurkashift the night before but who had never turned up. Initially, he faced a charge of manslaughter but evidence came to light that suggested that he might have planned D I Vera Stanhope is called in to investigate the murder - but her only clue is the disappearance of one of the manresidents, fourteen-year-old Chloe Spencer. Now he could be facing Some people believe that Chloe was responsible for the death penaltybut Vera thinks this is unlikely as the girl's diary makes it clear that she adored Josh. Domenic Jejeune can do nothing She knows that she has to find Chloe to discover what happened to help as any interference from another police force could provoke a diplomatic incident and wouldn't help Danny at allJosh.
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Alexander McCall SmithB0FK5LHKD9|title=The Perfect Passion CompanyColour of Memory|author=Christopher Bowden|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The Perfect Passion Company is It's been three years since we last reviewed a dating agency in Edinburghbook by favourite regular Christopher Bowden, run by Ness and operating as an alternative so we were very glad to all the online apps in providing see a more personal, tailored servicenew novel arrive here at Bookbag Towers. Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the businessLike all Bowden's stories, as Ness is planning to take there's a trip to Canada to get away for a while. Katie is coming out of a break up with a bad boyfriend, and so jumps mystery at the chance to come home to Edinburghheart of ''The Colour of Money''. And so begins We like this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, thanks to 44 Scotland Street and the Isabel Dalhousie novels, but with some new characters who quickly begin to charm. Katie has no experience in running a business, or theme in matchan author's work -making, take a mystery but Ness has full confidence in her abilities, give it different flavour and there's always her very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, William, to lend a hand…|isbn=1846976596atmosphere each time.
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{{Frontpage
|author=Olga Tokarczuk|title=House of Day, House of Night|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''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 Night'', somewhat reflects this notion of shifting realities - the small, subtle changes which govern our lives, like the shift from day to night, however quotidian, causing chaos. But, the constant in that image is the house, stoic against the ancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it is perceived.|isbn=1804271918}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0811771741henleyA|title=InstaKnits for BabyUltimate Obsession|author=Melissa LeapmanDai Henley
|rating=4
|genre=CraftsCrime|summary=Melissa LeapmanEx-DCI Andy Flood has been a Private Investigator for some time now, and he should be doing quite well financially. Unfortunately, his daughter's ''InstaKnits for Baby'' gives us defence against a collection of knits from toys to blanketsmurder charge drained his savings. Some will be quick knits His wife, Laura, has been trying to persuade him to retire - others are of the 'long, cosy afternoons in front of the fire' varietymaybe go travelling or go on cruises. The projects are divided by the time theyThat's what 'ordinary people do'll take to complete - less than five hours, five '' He's not been entirely up front about the state of their savings. When Jack Durban tries to ten hours, ten persuade him to twenty hours and more than twenty hours. All the projects are attractivetake his case, modern and useable. I perhaps show my age when I wonder about it'social-media-worthy projects' but s the thought of the money he could make that convinces him that this is a miscarriage of justice that's me being pickyhe really should put right.
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Dean Koontz1836284683|title=The Bad Weather FriendBig Happy|author=David Chadwick
|rating=4.5
|genre=ParanormalDystopian Fiction|summary=Benny Well! This is having a terrifically bad day. He loses his job, he loses his fiancee, and his house gets trashed. Oh, and someone has delivered murder mystery unlike any other! I do love it when I open a really weirdbook, disturbing coffin-sized object it's nothing like I expected it to his homebe, and it's possible takes me on a wild ride. And that whoever or whatever was inside is the thing that has trashed his house! just what happened with ''The thing is, Benny is the very last person Big Happy''. I don't want to deserve all this bad luck. He is ruin a nice person. A really nice person. So fortunately similar experience for Benny it turns out that any of you reading but I'll have to at least set the delivery to his house is a new friend, a bad weather friend called Spike, who has been sent to help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a good personscene. Spike is going to take care of Benny, and will certainly take care of BennyOnce that's enemiesdone, if he, Benny, and Harper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they areI think you should simply experience this wonderfully original story for yourself.|isbn=1662500491
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{{Frontpage
|author=Adam StowerSally Rooney|title=Murray and BunIntermezzo
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers General Fiction |summary=Murray Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard of life and is supposed to be something of a humble, tidy and friendly cat, one who grandmaster at putting it into words. Her dialogue is able to sleep and eat and eat and sleep gripping andso brilliantly frustrating, well, whatever takes his fancy next of as her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Among the two. But he's a bad magician's cat, so his favourite bun has been turned many relationships woven into a hyperactive sticky rabbit called Bunthis story, and the catflap they both use can chuck them out, not into central one for readers to unravel is the regular back garden, but into a world of frightening adventure fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and whiffsPeter Koubek. This time round it drops them into a Viking landIvan, where a troll hunter is expected – wellsocially awkward chess prodigy, one much bigger than Murray wascontrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, to be honest, but hea successful lawyer living in Dublin. Following their father's turned up and hepassing after a long battle with cancer, the brothers'll have to do…already strained relationship faces new trials.|isbn=00085612490571365469
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=B0C47LV1PC1036916375|title=FragilityJust a Liverpool Lad|author=Mosby WoodsPeter McArdle
|rating=4
|genre=Literary FictionAutobiography|summary= Can you make a ''Yo birthing personJust a Liverpool Lad '' joke? And if you could, is a collection of memories and reflections from the question should you make it? Or is years Peter McArdle spent growing up in and around Liverpool. Some are factual, such as the question if you didfamily history of a sea-going family, would it land? The catch is that with the answer for both could well bedocks dominating lives.Other stories blend seamlessly into the what-might-have-been. It's a 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 blitz that was a constant factor in McArdle's early years. I'd never heard of parachute mines before - but they were almost soundless and could appear after the all-clear was sounded. no.}}
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=15294317351009473085|title=The Winter VisitorConservative Effect 2010 - 2024|author=James HenryAnthony Seldon and Tom Egerton (Editors)|rating=45|genre=CrimePolitics and Society|summary=ItSometimes it's February 1991 simpler to explain a book by describing what it ''isn't'' and Essex is bitingly cold, which made Bruce Hopkinsthat applies to ''The Conservative Effect: 2010-2024 - 14 Wasted Years?'' return all the more surprising. HeIf you'd been exiled re looking for an easy read which will deliver the inside story about what ''really'' happened on certain occasions, then this isn't the Costa del Sol as a wanted drug smuggler book for a decadeyou. The return has come about because heIf that's what you're looking for, I don't think Anthony Seldon's had a letter from his ex-wifebook, {{amazonurl|isbn=B0BH7SKG2S|title=Johnson at 10}}, saying that shecan be bettered for those tumultuous years. It's ill a compelling read and hasnshould be compulsory for anyone who thinks Johnson should return to politics. ''t long to liveThe Conservative Effect'' is an entirely different beast. It's hard to feel any sympathy when Hopkins is abducted, stripped to his underwear and sent to the seventh book in a watery grave in series which looks at the boot of impact a stolen Ford Sierragovernment has made and co-editor Sir Anthony Seldon regards this as the most important. Is it This book follows the well-established format: a warning series of experts from a Spanish gang or a problem closer to home?various fields review the state of the nation when the coalition took over in 2010, the changes that occurred and the situation in 2024.
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{{Frontpage
|author=Alex Bell and Tim McDonaghJenny Valentine|title=The Glorious Race of Magical BeastsUs in the Before and After|rating=45|genre=Confident ReadersTeens|summary=Eli Elk and Mab are best friends, or more than that even, their friendship is a busy lad – by day an apprentice once in the wondrous library we start by visiting with him, and in the evening a helper at the dessert cafe his gran owns and runslifetime connection. Eli lives with his lovely gran, too – for there is They meet as children one day on a generation missing in trip out but unfortunately they don't get each other's contact details at the familytime. A few short years agoBut then chance brings them back together, Eli's parents were both lost to the titular race, a globe-trotting adventure where all entrants have to navigate the world in the company of a magical beastand they are inseparable. This Something has made the race anathema to the pair – but when a bad incident at the eatery leads to a confession from granhappened though, something terrible and tragic, and now they must work through their grief, Eli knows his only hope is to dare to enter what he most hatesand their friendship, with the sole aim the prize of magic at the end – the only thing to possibly save his grantogether.|isbn=05713822311471196585
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=178763681X1787333175|title=Knife Skills for BeginnersYou Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here|author=Orlando MurrinBenji Waterhouse|rating=45|genre=CrimePopular Science|summary=Chef Paul Delamare took a teaching job at a residential cookery school in Belgravia. He didnI was tempted to read ''You Don't really want Have to be Mad to Work Here'' after enjoying Adam Kay's first book {{amazonurl|isbn=1509858636|title=This is Going to but celebrity chef Christian Wagner had Hurt}}, a way glorious mixture of insight into the workings of getting both men the NHS, humour and women to do what he wantedautobiography. Paul ''somehowYou Don't Have to be Mad...' got the impression that he'd be at promised the school same elements but moved from physical problems to assist Paul, who had a broken arm, but it didn't turn out that way. The teaching - mental illness and the problems - are all his ownwork of a psychiatrist. The one thing he hadn't expected I did wonder whether it was acceptable to be looking for someone to turn up dead. Unfortunately, he was humour in this setting but the laughter is directed at a situation rather than a person who discovered the body and everyone knows that the police consider that person to be the prime suspectit is always delivered with empathy and understanding.
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{{Frontpage
|author=Sarah MarshMariana Enriquez|title=A Sign of Her OwnSunny Place for Shady People|rating=3.5|genre=General FictionShort Stories|summary=After a bout of scarlet fever as a childMariana Enriquez writes horror that is disturbingly real, Ellen Lark loses achieving this uncanny familiarity by basing her hearing. Suddenly plunged into a world of silence, everything about paranormal plots on gritty realities: her life changes. Living in a time when the use settings include an abandoned field full of sign language was seen as something only savages do, Ellen is sent disused refrigerators due to a school where she is taught to lip readan urban planning mishap, but physically restrained from signing. From here, she ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the deaf an overcrowded homeless shelter and using a system called Visible Speechcrime-ridden neighbourhood where safety meetings are routine - all within Argentina. At The circumstances of her characters are so plausible that the same time, Bell is working on other inventions and ideas, and Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in supernatural or otherworldly horror which seeps into these spaces adopts a complicated tangle of espionagesimilarly tangible texture.|isbn=10354016141803511230
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=18038167591529934753|title=The UnravellingProtest|author=Will GibsonRob Rinder|rating=4.5|genre=Science FictionCrime|summary=ItFor a little while, it looked as though Sir Max Bruce, the country's 2038 and Joe is a bored cop policing most famous living artist, was not going to show up for the wealthy and peaceful New York City. Joe longs for a bit opening of adventure and to get stuck into some really gritty crime detectionhis retrospective at the Royal Academy. But then something goes horribly wrong with Still, he arrived in the AI system that now runs everythingnick of time, making life easier for manycomplete with his two wives and six children, and riots start to spreadone of whom filmed what happened. Finally Being an influencer, Joe gets you tend to do some real policingthings like that, but it was fortunate that there was a record of the protest. In Lexi Williams, an intern at the aftermath RA, grabbed a spray can of the rioting global pop star Suki is kidnapped blue paint from under a chair and Joe is assigned proceeded to bring her home. Joe isnspray Bruce in the face, whilst shouting ''t Stop the only one trying War''. It seemed to save Suki be part of an ongoing series of 'blue- Dylanface' attacks, but this was different. The can had been laced with cyanide, a British superfan and tech nerd, is also on the caseSir Max Bruce was dead. What went wrong? Did the system fail or was it hacked? And how is Suki's kidnapping connected?
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1529421284Ariel Saramandi|title=Laying Out the Bones|author=Kate WebbPortrait of an Island on Fire
|rating=4.5
|genre=CrimePolitics and Society|summary=It was one In this powerful collection of those flash downpours that essays, Saramandi seeks to intradermally dissect the British weather often delivers in a heatwave. In a gullysociopolitical fabric of Mauritius, a human skeleton came to tunneling deep into the surface wounds left by colonialism and forensic testing proved the body slavery to be Lee Geary, who had disappeared nine years earlierexpose how these legacies still shape modern life. HeSaramandi describes the country at one stage as ''rotting''d been a known drug user and had learning disabilities, so it could have been a simple case blunt yet apt metaphor for the systemic decay brought about by the malignant forces of misadventure but DI Matt Lockyer wasn't convincedracism, patriarchy, environmental degradation and governmental dysfunction. Geary was Each essay in this collection serves as a towniekind of diagnostic, so what was he doing out on Salisbury Plain alone? There are connections to charting the suicide of Holly Gilbert and to two other deaths which were not considered suspicious at various diseases afflicting the time. Lockyer and DC Gemma Broad of the Major Crimes Review Unit (that's cold cases to you and me) investigateisland state.|isbn=1804271616
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0571379559Pekka Harju-Autti|title=The House of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona WilliamsLoveVortex and the Drakor's Curse|rating=54|genre=Literary FictionFantasy|summary=It''The House s the eighteenth century, a time of Broken Bricks'' discovery and Britain is the story of four peopleexpanding its foreign trade. Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier thereCaptain Julius Hawthorne, but insteadan experienced Scottish sea captain, she lives is sent to the Andaman Islands in the house on the riverbank, built of broken brickshis endeavour. Insubstantial as it might lookAlong with his son, it's stood the passage of timePeter, storms and floods. Her husbandtheir cat, RichardMichi, struggles they set off on a perilous voyage to grow his vegetables, to complete the delivery rounds - these faraway lands. The islands are beautiful and to bring stunning in sufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny their scenery and Max, the rainbow twins. Sonnyislanders's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. People don't believe that they're relatedleader, Aarav, much less twins and there's an assumption when Max is out with his mother that she's his nannykeen to establish good relations.|isbn=B0DS1VGHH3
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1529425867|title=Lost Helene Bessette and Never Found Kate Briggs (A D I Wilkins Mysterytranslator)|authortitle=Simon MasonLili is Crying
|rating=4.5
|genre=CrimeLiterary Fiction|summary=In OxfordFirst published in 1953 in French, there are two D I Wilkins. Raymond Wilkins this novel is a timeless text which wrenches the hearts of Nigerian descent, Balliol educated its readers just as Bessette wrenches words and sentences from their proper position on the page and always exquisitely dressed. D I Ryan Wilkinspositions them elsewhere, son of Ryan and father of Ryandisjointed, is nottruncated. He's not any of those things. He's white, originated from a trailer park, barely educated (reading's not ''really'' his thing) and his wardrobe consists mainly Like the lives of shell suits and trackies. They're usually in lime green or acid yellow. You might wonder if you're being introduced to a police procedural written for laughs. Wellher characters, you're not. The two men they are just different sides of the same policing coin. Sometimes the combination works brilliantly well. Sometimes it's problematicoften left tragically incomplete.|isbn=1804271675
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|author=Mosby WoodsTom Percival|title=A Whirly Man Loses His TurnThe Wrong Shoes|rating=45|genre=Literary FictionConfident Readers|summary= The West isnWill's life is difficult, in a multitude of ways. He is bullied because he has 't the dominant force it once was. Nobody in wrong shoes', he has the West is quite sure how to mend this or wrong shoes because his dad can't work and doesn't have enough money for even if mending it is the best course most basic of action. Governments are flailing. A war herethings like food, and his dad can't work because he lost his job at the college, was working a cash-in-hand job on a push for climate action therebuilding site and had an accident. A feeling Throw into that mix the fact that nobody is his mum and dad are separated, and Will's life seems bleak in actual chargeevery direction. Imagine then And yet, there was he still has a man with precognitiontiny amount of hope. Imagine He is good at art, and clings to the strategic advantage in this asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set moments of circumstances. That man would be valuablejoy when he is drawing, right? Perhaps that feel like a light at the most valuable asset in history. Imagine thenend of a long, that this man loses this abilitydark tunnel. What would governments do to get it back?|isbn=B0C9SNG8R11398527122
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{{Frontpage
|author=Alastair HumphreysSylvie Cathrall|title=LocalA Letter to the Luminous Deep
|rating=5
|genre=Travel Science Fiction|summary= Alastair Humphreys has walked and cycled all over the worldThere are few greater joys than a book which lives up to a compelling premise. And then written about itthis is one of them. For this book he walked and cycled very close to home and then wrote about it|isbn= 0356522776}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1786482126|title=The Janus Stone (Dr Ruth Galloway)|author=Elly Griffiths|rating=4. As he says 5|genre=Crime|summary=Builders were demolishing an old house in his introduction, Norwich - the book is an attempt site was going to hold seventy-five 'luxury'to share what I have learnt about some big issues from apartments - when they discovered the bones of a year exploring child beneath a small mapdoorway. Nature loss, pollution, land use and access, agriculture, the food system, rewilding…'' One of the joys of the book for me was that the biggest thing he learned about all of these things There was that there are no easy answersskull. Was this a ritual killing or murder? Inevitably, no single Dr Ruth Galloway finds herself working with DCI Harry Nelson. It'right or wrongs difficult as Ruth knows, but Nelson doesn't, that every upside she is likely to have pregnant with his child as a downside for somebody and that there are result of the one night they spent together some hard choices aheadthree months ago. Her condition will be obvious before long, not least because Ruth is prone to sudden bouts of sickness.|isbn=1785633678
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1805141872Guadalupe Nettel and Rosalind Harvey (Translator)|title=The Teacher Who Knew Too Much|author=Rob KeeleyAccidentals
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersShort Stories|summary=''Seventeen banks and a jeweller’s have been raided. The police are baffled, but only Ben knows This collection was truly enchanting in all senses of the truth – his Maths teacherword: spellbinding with its fantastical, Miss Judson, is really a safecracker! With police magical elements and her gangster boyfriend Al on their trail, Miss Judson charming in its gentle portrayal of nature and Ben go on the runhuman relationships. But Al needs them for one last job...'' Goodness meGuadalupe Nettel writes intelligently and precisely, her stories structured by a wisdom that Miss Judson is a terror! How on earth did a nice teacher like her manage appears to want to get mixed up with a bad 'un like Al? We'll find outteach us something about the world. Luckily for Miss Judson, the pupil who discovers her terrible secret is Ben, the son of a famous magician who has ambitions to be as good as his father some day, and who thinks Miss Judson is worth saving|isbn=1804271470
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=07603812670008551375|title=Verdura: Living a Garden LifeWhen Shadows Fall (D S Max Craigie)|author=Perla Sofia Curbelo-SantiagoNeil Lancaster|rating=34.5|genre=LifestyleCrime|summary=Leanne Wilson''The most important part s body was found at the bottom of a garden is Scottish mountain, seemingly the one who enjoys result of a tragic accident. She'd looked so happy, too, when she posted her intentions on Facebook. Her friends were relieved as she was just out of an unpleasant relationship, but it''looked like she was living her best life now. I've 'gardened' Then it emerged that five other women had died in similar circumstances in a vaguethe last year. All were experienced climbers, indefinite sort of way properly equipped for more than half a centurywhat they were doing and sensible people. I know (most None of) the basics but life has changed and I needed 'projects' rather than what a general commitment stupid thing to gardeningdo' explanations applied. They were all alone when they died: DS Max Craigie is certain there''Verdura'' with its promise of projects for both indoors and outdoors of varying complexity seemed like s a killer on the answerloose. So, how did it stack up?
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