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==The Best New Books==
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Max Boucherat1786482126|title=The Last Life of Lori MillsJanus Stone (Dr Ruth Galloway)|author=Elly Griffiths
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=We meet Lori on Builders were demolishing an old house in Norwich - the first evening shesite was going to hold seventy-five 'luxury's got apartments - when they discovered the house to herself – bones of a child beneath a doorway. There was no neighbour to pop in, babysitter poorly, mother at work, just an avidly rule-breaking eleven year old, on her lonesomeskull. What could possibly go wrongWas this a ritual killing or murder? Snuggled in a blanket fortInevitably, she has one main intention, and that is to log on to Voxminer, the world-building, critter-collecting game that is a hit in LoriDr Ruth Galloway finds herself working with DCI Harry Nelson. It's world. But first Lori has a tiny inkling that this stormy night difficult as Ruth knows, but Nelson doesn't find herself entirely on her own, and then that she finds something even more spookyis pregnant with his child as a result of the one night they spent together some three months ago. For the server she and her bestie and nobody else should Her condition will be able obvious before long, not least because Ruth is prone to enter shows signs sudden bouts of tamperingsickness. When malevolent eyes spark up on her phone screen, and her safe place in the game has been doctored – well, where is a girl to turn?|isbn=0008666482
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Fyodor Dostoyevsky0008551375|title=White NightsWhen Shadows Fall (D S Max Craigie)|author=Neil Lancaster|rating=4.5|genre=Short StoriesCrime|summary=As always Leanne Wilson's body was found at the bottom of a Scottish mountain, seemingly the 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. Then it emerged that five other women had died in Dostoyevskysimilar circumstances in the last year. All were experienced climbers, properly equipped for what they were doing and sensible people. None of the character work is sublime'what a stupid thing to do' explanations applied. One They were all alone when they died: DS Max Craigie is never left wondering what certain there's a character is thinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and temperaments with remarkable claritykiller on the loose.|isbn=0241619785
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0008385068Paul B Preciado|title=The Midnight Feast|author=Lucy FoleyDysphoria Mundi
|rating=4.5
|genre=ThrillersPolitics and Society|summary=''Itis never too late to embrace the revolutionary optimism of childhood's midsummer on the Dorset coast and guests gather at The Manor. It's their opening weekend Through this hybrid text, consisting of arias, letters, essays and splendid celebrations are promised. It's all headed up by Francesca Meadows. The Manor was her ancestral home autofiction, Preciado expresses his own hybrid self, and she's converted it into brings forth a new sensorium as an impressive retreat for offering to the wealthy and famousnew generation, a new feeling mechanism in which detachment is not considered a sign of political apathy. Her husbandRather, Owenit is the proportional, was valid response to ''the architect epistemological and political crack we are living through, and work is still ongoing on parts of the sitetension between emancipatory forces and conservative resistances that characterize our present'' which Preciado calls ''dysphoria mundi''. The heat whole text is oppressive and amongst framed against the backdrop of the guests are enemies Covid-19 pandemic as well that which has catalysed this revolution, when dysphoria began to emerge on a global scale, or as friends''pangea covidica''. Old scores are going Rather than taking this extreme dysphoria as a sign of weakness, or mistaking detachment or withdrawal for political paralysis, Preciado urges his readers to be settled and it won't be long before a body is found'use dysphoria as your revolutionary platform''.|isbn=1804271454
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{{Frontpage
|author=James BaldwinSamantha Harvey|title=Giovanni's RoomOrbital
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary General Fiction |summary=In 2024, Samantha Harvey won the Booker Prize for ''Giovanni's RoomOrbital'' follows the narrator David, an American man living in Paris, as he navigates his torturous affair with Giovanni, an Italian bartender he meets in a gay bar. While David is engaged to Hella, who is travelling in Spain, the real tension compact yet profound work that unfolds over a single day in the novel arises not from his infidelity but from lives of a group of astronauts aboard the deeper conflict within himselfInternational Space Station. It is DavidThrough a narrative lens that mirrors the astronauts's crippling shame and denial of his sexuality that ultimately dooms his relationship with Giovanniorbital perspective, Harvey invites readers to see our planet in a wholly new light.|isbn=01411863561529922933
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Ashley Hickson-Lovence295967572X|title=Wild EastPale Pieces|author=G M Stevens|rating=4.5|genre=TeensLiterary Fiction|summary=Written in verse, this Our unnamed narrator is Ronny's story, a young black fourteen year old boy from Hackney who suddenly has about to move to Norwich and start at begin a mostly white schooltrain journey with his companion Django. The move is initiated by RonnyWhere they's mum who re going and what the purpose of this journey is worried for Ronny's safety after a tragic event, and so Ronny finds himself trying to settle in a new town, a new school, and keep himself out of troubleis uncertain. He listens to music constantly, Django found the tickets ''on the floor somewhere'' and has always dreamed of being a rapperpersuaded our narrator to accompany him. But now, Why not? Not much else is clear either - but we are probably in this new school, his teacher encourages him the past as the pair travel to be part of a poetry writing workshop group and, slowly, Ronny begins to see the connections between rap and poetry, station by coach and the power of creativity and crafting your wordstrain is a steam locomotive.|isbn=0241645441
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=16358668470008551324|title=The Lavender CompanionDevil You Know (D S Max Craigie)|author=Jessica Dunham and Terry Barlin VesciNeil Lancaster
|rating=4.5
|genre=LifestyleCrime|summary=It's strange, unusual for anyone from the things that make you ''immediately'' feel that this is Hardie family to approach the book for youpolice. Before I started reading ''The Lavender Companion'', I visited Neither side likes or has any respect for the author's [https://wwwother.pinelavenderfarm.com/ website] But Davie Hardie is struggling in prison and therehe's a picture prepared to tell the police where the body of a slice of chocolate cake on the homepage. I don't eat cakes missing person is buried and desserts - but I wanted that cake viscerallywho was responsible for her death. (There's a recipe in the bookThis person, he promises, which I'm avoiding with some difficulty!!) Then I started reading the book is someone big and I was told to make a mess of it. Notes in will be worth the margins are sanctionedpolice doing what he wants. You get And what he wants is to be transferred to an open prison to fold down serve the corners remainder of pageshis sentence and to get an early parole date. You suspect that smears of butter would not be a problem. Not much to ask, is it? I The new Deputy Police Constable doesn't think so and she'loveds even prepared to do the other thing that Hardie demanded - make certain that DS Max Craigie and anyone who works with him is kept well away from what'' this book alreadys happening.
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{{Frontpage
|author=Jenny ValentineJon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |title=Us in the Before and AfterVaim|rating=54|genre=TeensLiterary Fiction|summary=Elk and Mab are best friends, or more than that even, their friendship is a once in a lifetime connection. They meet as children one day on a trip out but unfortunately they don't get each other's contact details at the timeAll was strange''.. But then chance brings them back together, and they are inseparable. Something has happened thoughThis haunting phrase encapsulates the pervading sense of otherworldliness which permeates this story set in Vaim, something terrible a fictional fishing village in Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for Jatgeir and tragicEline, and now they must work through their grief, and their friendship, togethertwo of the protagonists caught in its melancholic current.|isbn=14711965851804271829
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=17873331751035043092|title=You Don't Have to be Mad to Work HereThe Killing Stones (Jimmy Perez)|author=Benji WaterhouseAnn Cleeves
|rating=5
|genre=Popular ScienceCrime|summary=I was tempted to read ''You Doncan't Have have been the only person who was sad when Inspector Jimmy Perez [[Wild Fire (Shetland, Book 8) by Ann Cleeves|left Shetland]] to be Mad to Work Herestart a new life on Orkney. It'' after enjoying Adam Kays been seven years since we heard from him, but he's first book {{amazonurl|isbn=1509858636|title=This is Going to Hurt}}now living with Willow Reeves and their young son, James, as well as Cassie, a glorious mixture of insight into the workings daughter of the NHS, humour and autobiographyhis former partner. Willow's also his boss, and she 'You Don't Have to be Mad...should'' promised be on maternity leave, but when the same elements but moved from physical problems to mental illness and body of a popular islander, Archie Stout, is found, in the work aftermath of a psychiatriststorm, she can't resist getting involved. I did wonder whether it was acceptable to be looking for humour in this setting but He'd been battered about the laughter is directed at head with a situation rather than Neolithic stone - one of a person and it is always delivered with empathy and understandingpair - which had been stolen from a museum.
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Mariana EnriquezThea Lenarduzzi|title=A Sunny Place for Shady PeopleThe Tower
|rating=5
|genre=Short StoriesLiterary Fiction|summary=Mariana Enriquez writes horror that ''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. Just as T's story is disturbingly realbeing told, achieving this uncanny familiarity by basing her paranormal plots on gritty realitiesthe story of a second protagonist is unveiled: her settings include an abandoned field full Annie, the daughter of disused refrigerators due to an urban planning mishapa wealthy family in the 19th century, an overcrowded homeless shelter and who died of tuberculosis after being locked in a crime-ridden neighbourhood where safety meetings are routine - tower, captures T's imagination. Annie's fate is, above all within Argentina, an enticing story to T. The circumstances of her characters are so plausible that the supernatural or otherworldly horror It is a story which seeps into these spaces adopts she consumes avariciously, both in a similarly tangible texturequest for truth and knowledge, and in service of myth, fable and fantasy. |isbn=18035112301804271799
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Onyi NwabineliClaire-Louise Bennett|title=Allow Me to Introduce MyselfBig Kiss, Bye-Bye
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Anuri spent her childhood on display to the worldEverything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, thanks to her step-mother Ophelia's increasingly popular presence on social mediais steeped in anguish and distortion. Even a kiss, where she posted every step usually a symbol of Anuri's childhood for sponsorships and influencer deals intimacy andcloseness, basicallybecomes evidence of love lost. When the narrator cries out internally, monetary gain. Now Anuri is in her twenties ''come over here and she kiss me,'' it is slowly trying to regain her confidence and to get her life back, suing her step-mother less an invitation than a desperate attempt to take down the content about confirm heremotional numbness. Anuri The imagined recipient of this plea is battling alcoholismXavier, failing to start her PhD, undergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online and receiving money from them for doing so. Most importantlyex-partner, a ghost she is desperately worried about conjures to test her little sister, who is the new focus of Ophelia's online empiredetachment. Can she save her sister, and perhaps herself and her relationship with her father at the same time?|isbn=08615468731804271934
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=David Chadwick0008405026|title=Headload of Napalm|rating=4.5|genre=Thrillers|summary= It's September 1973 in Hicks, California. Hicks is a Mojave desert town of a few thousand people with its nearest neighbours of LA and Las Vegas both a significant drive away. Not much happens A Stranger in Hicks. A silver mine and a defence contractor are the main local employers but otherwise, there's not much of note other than dive bars and Joshua trees. Life is quiet, until....|isbn= B0D321VJ76}}{{FrontpageFamily (Maeve Kerrigan 11)|author=Tom Percival|title=The Wrong ShoesJane Casey
|rating=5
|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=WillIt's life is difficult, in a multitude of wayssixteen years since nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her bed one summer night. He is bullied because he has 'the wrong shoes', he has the wrong shoes because his dad can't work She was never found and doesn't have enough money for even the most basic of things like food, and his dad can't work because he lost his job at the college, was working investigation ground to a cash-in-hand job on a building site and had an accidenthalt. Throw into that mix the fact that his mum Now, her mother, Helena, and dad her father are separated, and Will's life seems bleak dead in every directiontheir bed. And yetInitially, he still has it looks like a tiny amount straightforward murder/suicide but there's something about the positioning of hopethe bodies that makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and her boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. He What looked as though it was going to be an open-and-shut case is good at art, and clings to the moments of joy when he now a complex double murder. Kerrigan is drawing, convinced that feel like a light at the end of a longexplanation lies in Rosalie's disappearance: others (such as Derwent's boss, dark tunnelUna Burt) are less convinced.|isbn=1398527122
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{{Frontpage
|author=Sylvie CathrallAnnie Ernaux and Alison L. Strayer (translator)|title=A Letter to the Luminous DeepThe Other Girl|rating=54|genre=Science FictionAutobiography|summary= There are few greater joys than a book which lives up ''We were born from the same body. I've never really wanted to a compelling premisethink about this. And '' Ernaux's work is always very candid and her tone transparent, but this is raw epistolary text must be one of themthe most intimate accounts I've read. Ernaux writes in direct address to her sister, however, this letter will never reach her. Why? Because Annie Ernaux's sister died of diphtheria at 6 years old, a few months before the vaccine was made compulsory in France, and 2 years before the author was even born. The large and instant void created by the jarring concept of writing to an imaginary recipient emphasises Ernaux's process of reckoning with this giant absence in her life, an absence that she has always felt but often denied.|isbn= 03565227761804271845
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=1786482126|titleauthor=The Janus Stone Maxim Gorky and Bryan Karetnyk (Dr Ruth Gallowaytranslator)|authortitle=Elly GriffithsReminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev|rating=43.5|genre=CrimeBiography|summary=Builders were demolishing an old house in Norwich - Biographies are often seen as the site was going to hold seventyform of life-five 'luxury' apartments - when they discovered the bones of a child beneath a doorwaywriting which offers less colour; it can be seen as more objective and less personal. There was no skull. Was I think that Gorky completely rejects this perspective, and offers a ritual killing or murder? Inevitablyvibrant, Dr Ruth Galloway finds herself working with DCI Harry Nelsonsubjective yet informed portrait of three of his literary contemporaries. ItIn the first section of this book, Tolstoy complains to his friend Gorky that: 's difficult 'you write not of real life as Ruth knowsit is, but Nelson doesn'tof what you yourself imagine it to be. Whom would it help to know how I see this tower, that sea, or that she Tartar - why should it interest anyone? Of what use is pregnant with his child as a result of the one night they spent together some three months agoit?''. Her condition will Well, Maxim Gorky shows exactly what can be obvious before longgained from a subjective account, not least because Ruth is prone giving us access to sudden bouts how he saw Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev in such privileged detail that one almost feels unworthy of sicknessit.|isbn=1804271977
}}
{{Frontpage
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=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 A man walking his dog in prison and he's prepared to tell the police where early morning discovered the body of a missing person is buried and who was responsible man in the park near Rosebank, a care home for her deathtroubled teens. This person, he promises, is someone big and it will be worth The dead man was Josh - one of the care workers who was due to work a shift the police doing what he wantsnight before but who had never turned up. And what he wants D I Vera Stanhope is called in to be transferred to an open prison to serve investigate the murder - but her only clue is the remainder disappearance of his sentence and to get an early parole dateone of the residents, fourteen-year-old Chloe Spencer. Not much to ask, Some people believe that Chloe was responsible for the death but Vera thinks this is it? The new Deputy Police Constable doesn't think so and sheunlikely as the girl's even prepared to do the other thing diary makes it clear that Hardie demanded - make certain she adored Josh. She knows that DS Max Craigie and anyone who works with him is kept well away from she has to find Chloe to discover what's happeninghappened to Josh.
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=1739526910B0FK5LHKD9|title=Where I've Not Been LostThe Colour of Memory|author=Glen SibleyChristopher Bowden|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=It''One year after s been three years since we last reviewed a book by favourite regular Christopher Bowden, so we were very glad to see a suicide attempt blows apart musician Brian O’Malleynew novel arrive here at Bookbag Towers. Like all Bowden's lifestories, he arrives in an unfamiliar Devon town to recover. Living with an unexpected housemate there's a mystery at his former manager’s holiday home, he dreams the heart of ''The Colour of reconnecting with everything he has lostMoney''. But as those tentative plans falter, he becomes swept up We like this running theme in an author's work - take a local world of unlikely friendships, mobile discos mystery but give it different flavour and surprising romantic possibilitiesatmosphere each time.''
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0008405026Olga Tokarczuk|title=A Stranger in the Family (Maeve Kerrigan 11)|author=Jane CaseyHouse 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=henleyA
|title=Ultimate Obsession
|author=Dai Henley
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=It's sixteen years since nineEx-year-old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her bed one summer nightDCI Andy Flood has been a Private Investigator for some time now, and he should be doing quite well financially. She was never found and the investigation ground to Unfortunately, his daughter's defence against a haltmurder charge drained his savings. NowHis wife, her motherLaura, Helenahas been trying to persuade him to retire - ''maybe go travelling or go on cruises. That's what 'ordinary people do', and her father are dead in '' He's not been entirely up front about the state of their bedsavings. InitiallyWhen Jack Durban tries to persuade him to take his case, it looks like a straightforward murder/suicide but there's something about the positioning thought of the bodies money he could make that convinces him 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 this is now a complex double murder. Kerrigan is convinced miscarriage of justice that the explanation lies in Rosalie's disappearance: others (such as Derwent's boss, Una Burt) are less convincedhe really should put right.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=15290777451836284683|title=The Dark Wives (D I Vera Stanhope)Big Happy|author=Ann CleevesDavid Chadwick
|rating=4.5
|genre=CrimeDystopian Fiction|summary=A man walking his dog in the early morning discovered the body of Well! This is a murder mystery unlike any other! I do love it when I open a man in the park near Rosebankbook, it's nothing like I expected it to be, and it takes me on a care home for troubled teenswild ride. And that is just what happened with ''The dead man was Josh - one of the care workers who was due Big Happy''. I don't want to work ruin a shift the night before similar experience for any of you reading but who had never turned up. D I Vera Stanhope is called in 'll have to investigate at least set the murder - but her only clue is the disappearance of one of the residents, fourteen-year-old Chloe Spencerscene. Some people believe Once that Chloe was responsible for the death but Vera thinks this is unlikely as the girl's diary makes it clear that she adored Josh. She knows that she has to find Chloe to discover what happened to Joshdone, I think you should simply experience this wonderfully original story for yourself.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1399613073Sally Rooney|title=Moral Injuries|author=Christie WatsonIntermezzo
|rating=4.5
|genre=ThrillersGeneral Fiction |summary=Olivia, Laura and Anjali met on Sally Rooney has studied the first day chessboard of medical school life and their friendship would keep them inseparable for a quarter is something of a centurygrandmaster at putting it into words. Olivia Her dialogue is ruthlessly ambitiousgripping and so brilliantly frustrating, which is a bonus when you aim as her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Among the many relationships woven into this story, the central one for readers to be a cardiothoracic surgeon. Laura unravel is a perfectionist the fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and a trauma doctorPeter Koubek. Anjali is the free spirit of the group and she becomes Ivan, a GP. When we first meet them they're at socially awkward chess prodigy, contrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, a drug and alcohol-fuelled party and it's going to end successful lawyer living in tragedyDublin. We donFollowing their father't know who suffered the tragedy or s passing after a long battle with cancer, the consequences. Twenty-five years later there will be an eerily similar event that will impact the three friends. This time, itbrothers's their teenage children who are involvedalready strained relationship faces new trials.|isbn=0571365469
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=02416366041036916375|title=The Trading Game: A ConfessionJust a Liverpool Lad|author=Gary StevensonPeter McArdle|rating=4.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=If you were to bring up an image of ''Just a city banker in your mind, youLiverpool Lad ''re unlikely to think is a collection of someone like Gary Stevenson. A hoodie memories and jeans replaces reflections from the pin-stripe suit years Peter McArdle spent growing up in and his background is around Liverpool. Some are factual, such as the East Endfamily history of a sea-going family, where he was familiar with violence, poverty and injusticethe docks dominating lives. There was no posh public school on his CV Other stories blend seamlessly into the what-might-have- but he had been to the London School of Economics. Stevenson is bright - extremely bright - It's a book to settle into and he has a facility with numbers which most allow your mind to roam across your childhood memories, to think of us can only envy. He also realised simpler times when life seemed less constrained, despite the blitz that most rich people expect poor people to be stupid. It was his ability at what was, essentially, a card game which got him an internship with Citibankconstant factor in McArdle's early years. Eventually, this turned into permanent employment as a traderI'd never heard of parachute mines before - but they were almost soundless and could appear after the all-clear was sounded.
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Leanne Egan1836285493|title=Lover BirdsThe Double Life of a Wheelchair User|author=Rob Keeley|rating=4.5|genre=TeensConfident Readers|summary=When new girlWill is a keen player of video games, Isabela conscientious student, moves to Lou's hometown a slightly annoying brother and a supportive friend. But most of Liverpool from London Lou immediately feels Isabel's disdain for everything around herall, he is an aspiring writer. A misunderstanding between them leaves them hating each otherEnglish is his favourite lesson at his school, but Lou feels her pulse racing every time she looks at Isabel or speaks with herMarlowe Park, and that's definitely because Isabel makes her feel so cross, isnone at which he excels. This hasn't it? Because Lou is straightgone unnoticed by his headteacher, isn't she? Even though none of her relationships with boys have gone very well so farMrs Howarth, and she's never had has suggested to Will and his mum that he spends a good kiss with any couple of them? So she just finds herself watching Isabel, and wanting to hang out with her because fighting with her is funafternoons a week at a different school, and she definitely just hates IsabelStation Road, doesn't she?|isbn=000862657Xwhere his ability might be better extended.
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{{Frontpage
|author=Jenny Valentine|title=Us in the Before and After|rating=5|genre=Teens|summary=Elk and Mab are best friends, or more than that even, their friendship is a once in a lifetime connection. They meet as children one day on a trip out but unfortunately they don't get each other's contact details at the time. But then chance brings them back together, and they are inseparable. Something has happened though, something terrible and tragic, and now they must work through their grief, and their friendship, together.|isbn=1471196585}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1787333175|title=You Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here|author=Benji Waterhouse|rating=5|genre=Popular Science|summary=I was tempted to read ''You Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here'' after enjoying Adam Kay's first book {{amazonurl|isbn=1509858636|title=This is Going to Hurt}}, a glorious mixture of insight into the workings of the NHS, humour and autobiography. ''You Don't Have to be Mad...'' promised the same elements but moved from physical problems to mental illness and the work of a psychiatrist. I did wonder whether it was acceptable to be looking for humour in this setting but the laughter is directed at a situation rather than a person and it is always delivered with empathy and understanding. }}{{Frontpage|author=Mariana Enriquez|title=A Sunny Place for Shady People|rating=5|genre=Short Stories|summary=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 disused refrigerators due to an urban planning mishap, an overcrowded homeless shelter and a crime-ridden neighbourhood where safety meetings are routine - all within Argentina. The circumstances of her characters are so plausible that the supernatural or otherworldly horror which seeps into these spaces adopts a similarly tangible texture. |isbn=B0DGDJRHYD1803511230}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1529934753|title=Nowhere ManThe Protest|author=Deborah StoneRob Rinder|rating=4.5|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=In For a quiet suburban houselittle while, it looked as though Sir Max Bruce, the country's most famous living artist, Patrick is making was not going to show up for the opening of his final plansretrospective at the Royal Academy. A meticulous manStill, he makes sure arrived in the nick of time, complete with his two wives and six children, one of every preparationwhom filmed what happened. Being an influencer, down you tend to do things like that, but it was fortunate that there was a record of the last detailprotest. Some last reflections Lexi Williams, an intern at the RA, grabbed a spray can of blue paint from under a chair and then he says goodbye proceeded to spray Bruce in the face, whilst shouting ''Stop the War''. It seemed to his wifebe part of an ongoing series of 'blue-face' attacks, but this was different. The can had been laced with cyanide, and Sir Max Bruce was dead.}}{{Frontpage|author=Ariel Saramandi|title=Portrait of an Island on Fire|rating=4.5|genre=Politics and Society|summary=In this powerful collection of essays, Saramandi seeks to intradermally dissect the worldsociopolitical fabric of Mauritius, tunneling deep into the wounds left by colonialism and his slavery to expose how these legacies still shape modern life. ItSaramandi describes the country at one stage as ''rotting''s horribly sad. At work in her shop, his wife Diana is fending off a blunt yet another phone call apt metaphor for the systemic decay brought about her ageing by the malignant forces of racism, patriarchy, environmental degradation and ailing mother, who needs extricating from yet another accidentgovernmental dysfunction. It will be Each essay in this collection serves as a while before Diana realises what Patrick has donekind of diagnostic, charting the various diseases afflicting the island state.|isbn=1804271616
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{{Frontpage
|author=Virginie DespentesPekka Harju-Autti|title=King Kong TheoryLoveVortex and the Drakor's Curse
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography Fantasy|summary=It''King Kong Theory'' is s the eighteenth century, a hard-hitting memoir time of discovery and feminist manifestoBritain is expanding its foreign trade. Captain Julius Hawthorne, an experienced Scottish sea captain, which can be seen as a call is sent to arms for women the Andaman Islands in a phallocentric society broken at its corehis endeavour. Originally written in FrenchAlong with his son, Peter, and their cat, Michi, the book is a collection of essays in which Virginie Despentes explores her experiences as they set off on a woman through the complex prism of her varied life: from rape perilous voyage to sex work and pornographythese faraway lands. Though these discussions The islands are intertwined, beautiful and stunning in their placement within scenery and the book can feel somewhat disjointedislanders' leader, Aarav, a reflection of their original form as independent essaysis keen to establish good relations.|isbn=191309734XB0DS1VGHH3
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Alba de Cespedes Helene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)|title=Forbidden NotebookLili is Crying|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=This Italian work First published in 1953 in French, this novel is a timeless text which wrenches the hearts of feminist fiction holds an air of suspense its readers just as Bessette wrenches words and tension sentences from their proper position on the moment our protagonistpage and positions them elsewhere, Valeria Cossatidisjointed, purchases truncated. Like the lives of her forbidden notebookcharacters, and learns about herself in the most intimate and revealing waysthey are often left tragically incomplete.|isbn=17822782221804271675
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|author=Ottessa MoshfeghTom Percival|title=My Year of Rest and RelaxationThe Wrong Shoes|rating=35|genre=Literary FictionConfident Readers|summary=At bestWill's life is difficult, this novel is in a scathing critique multitude of modern society ways. He is bullied because he has 'the wrong shoes', he has the wrong shoes because his dad can't work and reveals doesn't have enough money for even the fragility most basic of human relationships; things like food, and his dad can't work because he lost his job at worstthe college, it is was working a cash-in-hand job on a building site and had an accident. Throw into that mix the cynicalfact that his mum and dad are separated, predictable and slightly trite tale of an unlikeable protagonistWill's life seems bleak in every direction. This unlikely heroine And yet, he still has a slimtiny amount of hope. He is good at art, attractive and newly orphaned girl in her twenties clings to the moments of joy when he is disillusioned with drawing, that feel like a light at the worldend of a long, but resolves not to lose sleep over it: in fact, her solution lies in her hibernationdark tunnel.|isbn=17847074221398527122
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|author=Jo CallaghanSylvie Cathrall|title=Leave No TraceA Letter to the Luminous Deep|rating=45|genre=CrimeScience Fiction|summary=When There are few greater joys than a man is found crucified on the top of book which lives up to a hill in Nuneaton, DCS Kat Frank finds herself assigned to the case alongside her sidekick, the AI detective Lockcompelling premise. It's their first live case together, having previously been very successful with several cold cases. But when there is a second body found crucified a few days later, Kat And this is suddenly struggling with a potential serial killer and a very high profile case that draws a lot one of unwanted attention to their AI Future Policing projectthem. Will they be able to solve the case in time, or will Kat find herself taken off the case and, potentially, out of a career?|isbn=139851120X0356522776
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|isbnauthor=B0DB64PYV5Guadalupe Nettel and Rosalind Harvey (Translator)|title=The White Rose|author=Dave BainesAccidentals|rating=4.5|genre=Dystopian FictionShort Stories|summary=In 2033This collection was truly enchanting in all senses of the word: spellbinding with its fantastical, a superstorm known as the White Rose devastates the Northern Hemispheremagical elements and charming in its gentle portrayal of nature and human relationships. And it's not Guadalupe Nettel writes intelligently and precisely, her stories structured by a storm wisdom that gathers, wreaks havoc, then dissipates. Instead, it hovers across half appears to want to teach us something about the Earth with its octopus-like tentacles, not giving up and never going awayworld.|isbn=1804271470
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