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==The Best New Books==
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{{Frontpage
|author=Leanne EganMaria Stepanova and Sasha Dugdale (Translator)|title=Lover BirdsThe Disappearing Act|rating=4.5|genre=TeensLiterary Fiction|summary=When new girl, IsabelDespite her anonymisation of place names and people, moves to LouStepanova's hometown message in this short work of Liverpool autofiction is unmistakable. A novelist named M travels from London Lou immediately feels Isabel's disdain B (ostensibly Berlin) to the town of F for everything around her. A misunderstanding between them leaves them hating each other, but Lou feels her pulse racing every time a literary festival she looks is to be a guest speaker at Isabel or speaks with . Detoured by erratic train schedules and nudged by forces beyond hercontrol, and that's definitely because Isabel makes her feel so cross, isn't it? Because Lou is straight, isn't she? Even though none journey slowly bends toward a traveling circus. Swept up in this series of her relationships with boys have gone very well so farevents, and she's never had M eventually offers to step in for a circus performer who has unexpectedly left the show. The train functions as a good kiss with any motif of them? So she just finds herself watching Isabel, transience and wanting to hang out with her because fighting with her is funimpermanence, while the circus embodies the reshaping of identity and she definitely just hates Isabela retreat into fantasy, doesn't she?an impulse that lies at the very heart of the novel form itself.|isbn=000862657X1804272329
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Sally RooneyB0GFQ81YQK|title=IntermezzoHow the Sky and the Earth Made People: From the Oral Stories of Malagasy Elders|author=Stephanie Zabriskie
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Children's Non-Fiction |summary=Sally Rooney has studied Before people came and joined the animals, there was only the chessboard of life sky and is something of a grandmaster at putting it into wordsthe earth. Her dialogue is gripping Everything was quiet until the earth and so brilliantly frustratingthe sky began to tal to each other. First, as her characters never quite say exactly what they feelthe earth created bodies. Among And then, the many relationships woven sky breathed life into this story, them. These were the central one for readers first humans and they belonged to unravel is the fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan both earth and Peter Koubeksky. Ivan, a socially awkward chess prodigy, contrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, a successful lawyer living in Dublin. Following their father's passing after a long battle with cancer, the brothers' already strained relationship faces new trials.|isbn=0571365469}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1009473085|title=The Conservative Effect 2010 - 2024|author=Anthony Seldon And so people lived between sky and soil and Tom Egerton (Editors)|rating=5|genre=Politics they planted and Society|summary=Sometimes it's simpler to explain a book by describing what it ''isn't'' learned and that applies remembered, especially how they came to ''The Conservative Effect: 2010-2024 - 14 Wasted Years?''be. If you're looking for an easy read which will deliver the inside story about what ''really'' happened on certain occasionsWhen they grew old and died, then this isn't their bodies returned to the book for you. If that's what you're looking for, I don't think Anthony Seldon's book, {{amazonurl|isbn=B0BH7SKG2S|title=Johnson at 10}}, can be bettered for those tumultuous years. It's a compelling read earth and should be compulsory for anyone who thinks Johnson should return their life returned to politicsthe sky. ''The Conservative Effect'' And that is an entirely different beast. It's why the seventh book in a series which looks at the impact a government has made earth and co-editor Sir Anthony Seldon regards this as the most importantsky are both revered. Only together can they create human beings. This book follows the well-established format: a series of experts from various fields review the state of the nation when the coalition took over in 2010And that is why people must pay attention to, the changes that occurred and the situation in 2024care for, both.
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Max BoucheratB0GHPMNF6P|title=The Last Life of Lori MillsZookeeper's Dragon: A Magical Modern Fantasy Tale for Grown-Ups|author=Carolyn Mathews
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersFantasy|summary=We meet Lori on When Phil's father unexpectedly dies, he quits his Canary Wharf finance job to take over the first evening sherunning of the family's farm zoo. He's got the house to herself – no neighbour to pop in, babysitter poorly, mother at worknot expecting much excitement, just until he receives an avidly ruleunidentified egg that his new-breaking eleven year old, on her lonesome. What could possibly go wrong? Snuggled age stoner uncle Edgar found in a blanket fort, she has one main intentioncave in New Zealand, and that suddenly life is to log on to Voxminer, no longer quite what it seems. Then the world-buildingegg hatches into neither a reptile nor a bird, critter-collecting game that is but a hit in Loridragon! Now he, Edgar, his mother Abi, and the zoo's world. But first Lori has a tiny inkling that part-time café waitress Pearl have to raise this stormy night doesn't find herself entirely on her ownlittle bundle of scales and joy, despite having no idea how to actually raise dragons and then she finds something even more spooky. For the server she and her bestie and nobody else should be not being able to enter shows signs of tamperingtell anyone about it. When malevolent eyes spark up on her phone screen, But this tiny little dragon may show them love and her safe place connection in the game has been doctored – well, where is a girl to turn?|isbn=0008666482ways they had never before imagined…
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{{Frontpage
|author=Fyodor DostoyevskyStephanie Zabriskie|title=White NightsHow Maasai Women Spoke to Cows: From the Oral Stories of Maasai Elders
|rating=5
|genre=Short StoriesChildren's Non-Fiction|summary=As always ''How Maasai Women Spoke to Cows is a children’s nonfiction book drawn from the oral traditions of Maasai elders in DostoyevskyNgorongoro, the character work is sublimeTanzania. One is never left wondering what '' The Maasai are a character is thinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare cattle-herding people and this story writes down its oral tradition explaining how they came to be so. Cattle are status and wealth in Maasai culture but this doesn't tell the whole story of the intimate and symbiotic connection its people, and especially its women, have with their innermost dispositions cows and temperaments for the natural world. The oral tradition retelling the many conversations Maasai women have had with remarkable claritytheir cows, does.|isbn=0241619785B0G9WTGY6J
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|isbnauthor=0008385068Livi Michael|title=The Midnight Feast|author=Lucy FoleyElizabeth and Ruth|rating=43.5|genre=ThrillersHistorical Fiction|summary=It's midsummer on 'Elizabeth and Ruth'' is a work of historical fiction wrought from the life of the Victorian author Elizabeth Gaskell, best known for her first novel Mary Barton (1848), a radical critique of the treatment of the Dorset coast and guests gather at working class published under a pseudonym. The Manor. It's their opening weekend and splendid celebrations are promised. It'Ruth'' from Livi Michael's all headed up by Francesca Meadows. The Manor title appears in her novel as Pasley, a young Irish prostitute who was her ancestral home abandoned as a child and shefinds herself in Manchester's converted it into an impressive retreat for the wealthy New Bailey Prison after a difficult and famousunjust hand at life. Her husbandSet in Manchester between 1839 and 1842, Owen, was the architect and work is still ongoing on parts of novel examines the harsh conditions endured by the site. The heat is oppressive Victorian working poor and amongst interrogates the guests are enemies as well as friends. Old scores are going extent to be settled and it won't be long before a body is foundwhich the wealthy (including Gaskell herself) were responsible for addressing these injustices.|isbn=1784633682
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|author=James BaldwinMakenna Goodman|title=Giovanni's RoomHelen of Nowhere
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction |summary=''Giovanni's Room'' follows It could be argued that the narrator Davidpervading theme of this book is malaise - a hard-to-place feeling that something in your life is not quite right. The protagonist, an American man living in Parisa disgraced professor on the brink of losing both his career and his relationship, embodies this feeling. However, as he navigates Goodman counteracts his torturous affair discomfort with Giovannia force which is seductive, an Italian bartender radical and unnerving: Helen. The connection between Helen and the protagonist is indirect yet intimate. As the former owner of the countryside house he meets 's considering, Helen represents a volta in a gay barhis life, her past tied to his potential fresh start. While David The realtor who shows the protagonist around the house shares stories about Helen, and describes her as ''an entity that is engaged to Hellapure consciousness, who is travelling beyond form''. Although she lives in Spainan assisted living facility now, Helen has powers beyond comprehension which the real tension in reader gets the novel arises sense are not from his infidelity but from the deeper conflict within himself. It is David's crippling shame and denial of his sexuality that ultimately dooms his relationship with Giovannialtogether innocuous.|isbn=01411863561804272205
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|rating=5
|genre=TeensAutobiography|summary=Elk and Mab are best friendsI have often wondered how prominent people came to hold their positions. With 'celebrities', there's frequently a book they might or might not have written, which might or more than might not tell the true story. It's not often that you find a book that evengives the full backstory, their friendship and rarely do you discover a memoir where the telling is a once in a lifetime connectionso perfect that you'll go back and reread paragraphs and sentences, just for the pleasure the words give. They meet as children ''Why My Mother Went Away'' is one day on a trip out but unfortunately they don't get each otherof those rare exceptions. It's contact details the story of how a boy from the Midlands, born at the time. But then chance brings them back togetherbeginning of the Second World War, and they are inseparablewould become a Professor of Psychology at Dundee University. Something has happened thoughIn fact, something terrible and tragic, and now they must work through their grief, and their friendship, togetherhe was one of the founders of the department.|isbn=1471196585
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1787333175Jeremy Cooper|title=You Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here|author=Benji WaterhouseDiscord|rating=3.5|genre=Popular ScienceLiterary Fiction|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}}, Discord: a glorious mixture lack of insight into the workings agreement or harmony (as between persons, things, or ideas) The principal example of discord within the NHSnovel, 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 as 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 most instances of disused refrigerators due to an urban planning mishapdiscord, an overcrowded homeless shelter and a crime-ridden neighbourhood where safety meetings are routine - all within Argentinais easily located. The circumstances two protagonists of her characters are so plausible that the supernatural or otherworldly horror which seeps into these spaces adopts a similarly tangible texture. |isbn=1803511230}}{{Frontpage|author=Onyi Nwabineli|title=Allow Me to Introduce Myself|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Anuri spent her childhood on display to the worldnovel, thanks to her step-mother Ophelia's increasingly popular presence on social media, where she posted every step of Anuri's childhood for sponsorships and influencer deals Rebekah Rosen andEvie Bennet, basically, monetary gainare as different as they come. Now Anuri Rebekah is in her twenties and she is slowly trying to regain her confidence an uptight, traditional and no-nonsense composer close to get her life backretirement, suing her step-mother to take down the content about her. Anuri while Evie is battling alcoholisma force of nature, failing to start her PhDbounding onto the musical scene as a precocious saxophonist, undergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online oozing with talent and receiving money from them for doing socharm. Most importantlyThe two, she is desperately worried about her little sisterpredictably, who is the new focus of Opheliadon's online empire. Can she save her sistert always see eye to eye, their approaches different and perhaps herself and her relationship Evie's progressive views at odds with her father at the same time?|isbn=0861546873}}{{Frontpage|author=David Chadwick|title=Headload of Napalm|rating=4.5|genre=Thrillers|summary= ItRebekah's September 1973 in Hicksconservative leaning. However, California. Hicks is something connects them beyond just their musical project: a Mojave desert town sort of a few thousand people with its nearest neighbours of LA and Las Vegas both a significant drive away. Not much happens in Hicks. A silver mine and a defence contractor are fragile alliance formed within the main local employers but otherwise, there's not much of note other than dive bars and Joshua trees. Life is quiet, until...clamour.|isbn= B0D321VJ761804272264
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{{Frontpage
|summary=Will's life is difficult, in a multitude of ways. He is bullied because he has 'the wrong shoes', he has the wrong shoes because his dad can't work and doesn't have enough money for even the most basic of things 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 building site and had an accident. Throw into that mix the fact that his mum and dad are separated, and Will's life seems bleak in every direction. And yet, he still has a tiny amount of hope. He is good at art, and clings to the moments of joy when he is drawing, that feel like a light at the end of a long, dark tunnel.
|isbn=1398527122
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{{Frontpage
|author=Edward W Said
|title=Representations of the Intellectual
|rating=4.5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=Edward Said's ''Representations of the Intellectual'' is less a strict theory of what intellectuals are and more a passionate argument for what they should be. Said clearly rejects the comfortable image of the intellectual as a detached expert speaking only to other specialists. Instead, he insists on the intellectual as a public figure, often awkward, abrasive, and unpopular, who speaks truth to power even when it is inconvenient or risky.
|isbn=1804272248
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|isbn=0008551375|title=When Shadows Fall (D S Max Craigie)|author=Joan DidionNeil Lancaster|rating=4.5|genre=Crime|summary=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 similar circumstances in the last year. All were experienced climbers, properly equipped for what they were doing and sensible people. None of the 'what a stupid thing to do' explanations applied. They were all alone when they died: DS Max Craigie is certain there's a killer on the loose.}}{{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 Year whole text is framed against the backdrop of Magical Thinkingthe Covid-19 pandemic as that which has catalysed this revolution, when dysphoria began to emerge on a global scale, or as ''pangea covidica''. Rather than taking this extreme dysphoria as a sign of weakness, or mistaking detachment or withdrawal for political paralysis, Preciado urges his readers to ''use dysphoria as your revolutionary platform''. |isbn=1804271454}}{{Frontpage|author=Samantha Harvey|title=Orbital
|rating=4.5
|genre=AutobiographyGeneral Fiction|summary=This book is Joan DidionIn 2024, Samantha Harvey won the Booker Prize for ''Orbital''s heartbreaking autobiographical account , a compact yet profound work that unfolds over a single day in the lives of a group of astronauts aboard the grief she endured following her husband's sudden deathInternational Space Station. Books Through a narrative lens that shed mirrors the astronauts' orbital perspective, Harvey invites readers to see our planet in a wholly new light .|isbn=1529922933}}{{Frontpage|isbn=295967572X|title=Pale Pieces|author=G M Stevens|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= Our unnamed narrator is about to begin a train journey with his companion Django. Where they're going and what the purpose of this journey is, is uncertain. Django found the tickets ''on taboo topics like death are such a beautiful the floor somewhere'' and necessary resource has persuaded our narrator to help people feel less aloneaccompany him. Didion unpicks unpleasant feelings surrounding death like selfWhy not? Not much else is clear either -pity, denial but we are probably in the past as the pair travel to the station by coach and delusion and makes them utterly normal, lends them the train is a human face to wearsteam locomotive.|isbn=0007216858
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=17395269101035043092|title=Where The Killing Stones (Jimmy Perez)|author=Ann Cleeves|rating=5|genre=Crime|summary=Ican't have been the only person who was sad when Inspector Jimmy Perez [[Wild Fire (Shetland, Book 8) by Ann Cleeves|left Shetland]] to start a new life on Orkney. It've Not Been Losts been seven years since we heard from him, but he's now living with Willow Reeves and their young son, James, as well as Cassie, the daughter of his former partner. Willow's also his boss, and she ''should'' be on maternity leave, but when the body of a popular islander, Archie Stout, is found, in the aftermath of a storm, she can't resist getting involved. He'd been battered about the head with a Neolithic stone - one of a pair - which had been stolen from a museum.}}{{Frontpage|author=Glen SibleyThea Lenarduzzi|title=The Tower|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= ''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 being told, the story of a second protagonist is unveiled: Annie, the daughter of a wealthy family in the 19th century, who died of tuberculosis after being locked in a tower, captures T's imagination. Annie's fate is, above all, an enticing story to T. It is a story which she consumes avariciously, both in a quest for truth and knowledge, and in service of myth, fable and fantasy. |isbn=1804271799}}{{Frontpage|author=Claire-Louise Bennett|title=Big Kiss, Bye-Bye
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=''One year after a suicide attempt blows apart musician Brian O’Malley's lifeEverything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, he arrives is steeped in an unfamiliar Devon town to recoveranguish and distortion. Living with an unexpected housemate at his former manager’s holiday homeEven a kiss, usually a symbol of intimacy and closeness, he dreams becomes evidence of reconnecting with everything he has love lost. But as those tentative plans falterWhen the narrator cries out internally, ''come over here and kiss me, he becomes swept up in '' it is less an invitation than a local world desperate attempt to confirm her emotional numbness. The imagined recipient of unlikely friendshipsthis plea is Xavier, mobile discos and surprising romantic possibilitiesher ex-partner, a ghost she conjures to test her detachment.''|isbn=1804271934
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{{Frontpage
|genre=Crime
|summary=It'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 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 positioning 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.
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{{Frontpage
|author=Annie Ernaux and Alison L. Strayer (translator)
|title=The Other Girl
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=''We were born from the same body. I've never really wanted to think about this.''
Ernaux's work is always very candid and her tone transparent, but this raw epistolary text must be one of the 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=1804271845
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{{Frontpage
|author=Maxim Gorky and Bryan Karetnyk (translator)
|title=Reminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev
|rating=3.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Biographies are often seen as the form of life-writing which offers less colour; it can be seen as more objective and less personal. I think that Gorky completely rejects this perspective, and offers a vibrant, subjective yet informed portrait of three of his literary contemporaries. In the first section of this book, Tolstoy complains to his friend Gorky that: ''you write not of real life as 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 - why should it interest anyone? Of what use is it?''. Well, Maxim Gorky shows exactly what can be gained from a subjective account, giving us access to how he saw Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev in such privileged detail that one almost feels unworthy of it.
|isbn=1804271977
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|isbnauthor=1399613073Olga Tokarczuk|title=Moral Injuries|author=Christie WatsonHouse of Day, House of Night|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersLiterary Fiction|summary=Olivia, Laura and Anjali met on ''What's the first day good of medical school and their friendship would keep them inseparable for a quarter world that keeps changing like that? How can one go on calmly living in it?'' The title of this spellbinding work, ''House of a century. Olivia is ruthlessly ambitiousDay, which is a bonus when you aim to be a cardiothoracic surgeon. Laura is a perfectionist and a trauma doctor. Anjali is the free spirit House of the group and she becomes a GP. When we first meet them theyNight''re at a drug and alcohol, somewhat reflects this notion of shifting realities -fuelled party and it's going the small, subtle changes which govern our lives, like the shift from day to end in tragedynight, however quotidian, causing chaos. We don't know who suffered But, the tragedy or the consequences. Twenty-five years later there will be an eerily similar event constant in that will impact image is the three friends. This timehouse, stoic against the ancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it's their teenage children who are involvedis perceived.|isbn=1804271918
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=02416366041836284683|title=The Trading Game: A ConfessionBig Happy|author=Gary StevensonDavid Chadwick
|rating=4.5
|genre=AutobiographyDystopian Fiction|summary=If you were to bring up an image of Well! This is a murder mystery unlike any other! I do love it when I open a city banker in your mindbook, youit're unlikely s nothing like I expected it to think of someone like Gary Stevensonbe, and it takes me on a wild ride. A hoodie and jeans replaces the pin-stripe suit and his background And that is the East End, where he was familiar just what happened with violence, poverty and injustice''The Big Happy''. There was no posh public school on his CV - but he had been I don't want to the London School of Economics. Stevenson is bright - extremely bright - and he has ruin a facility with numbers which most similar experience for any of us can only envy. He also realised that most rich people expect poor people you reading but I'll have to be stupid. It was his ability at what was, essentially, a card game which got him an internship with Citibankleast set the scene. EventuallyOnce that's done, I think you should simply experience this turned into permanent employment as a traderwonderfully original story for yourself.
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|isbnauthor=B0DGDJRHYDSally Rooney|title=Nowhere Man|author=Deborah StoneIntermezzo|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=In Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard of life and is something of a quiet suburban housegrandmaster at putting it into words. Her dialogue is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, Patrick is making his final plansas her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. A meticulous manAmong the many relationships woven into this story, he makes sure of every preparation, down the central one for readers to unravel is the last detailfraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. Some last reflectionsIvan, and then he says goodbye to a socially awkward chess prodigy, contrasts sharply with his wifeolder brother Peter, the world, and his lifea successful lawyer living in Dublin. ItFollowing their father's horribly sad. At work in her shoppassing after a long battle with cancer, his wife Diana is fending off yet another phone call about her ageing and ailing mother, who needs extricating from yet another accident. It will be a while before Diana realises what Patrick has donethe brothers' already strained relationship faces new trials.|isbn=0571365469
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|authorisbn=Virginie Despentes1836285493|title=King Kong TheoryThe Double Life of a Wheelchair User|author=Rob Keeley|rating=45|genre=Autobiography Confident Readers|summary=''King Kong Theory'' Will is a hard-hitting memoir and feminist manifestokeen player of video games, a conscientious student, which can be seen as a call to arms for women in slightly annoying brother and a phallocentric society broken at its coresupportive friend. Originally written in FrenchBut most of all, the book he is an aspiring writer. English is a collection of essays in his favourite lesson at his school, Marlowe Park, and one at which Virginie Despentes explores her experiences as a woman through the complex prism of her varied life: from rape to sex work and pornographyhe excels. Though these discussions are intertwinedThis hasn't gone unnoticed by his headteacher, their placement within the book can feel somewhat disjointedMrs Howarth, and she has suggested to Will and his mum that he spends a reflection couple of their original form as independent essaysafternoons a week at a different school, Station Road, where his ability might be better extended.|isbn=191309734X
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|authorisbn=Alba de Cespedes 1009473085|title=Forbidden NotebookThe Conservative Effect 2010 - 2024|author=Anthony Seldon and Tom Egerton (Editors)|rating=45|genre=Literary FictionPolitics and Society|summary=This Italian work of feminist fiction holds Sometimes it's simpler to explain a 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 air of suspense and tension from easy read which will deliver the inside story about what ''really'' happened on certain occasions, then this isn't the moment our protagonistbook for you. If that's what you're looking for, Valeria CossatiI don't think Anthony Seldon's book, purchases her forbidden notebook{{amazonurl|isbn=B0BH7SKG2S|title=Johnson at 10}}, can be bettered for those tumultuous years. It's a compelling read and learns about herself should be compulsory for anyone who thinks Johnson should return to politics. ''The Conservative Effect'' is an entirely different beast. It's the seventh book in a series which looks at the impact a government has made and co-editor Sir Anthony Seldon regards this as the most intimate important. This book follows the well-established format: a series of experts from various fields review the state of the nation when the coalition took over in 2010, the changes that occurred and revealing waysthe situation in 2024.|isbn=1782278222
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|author=Ottessa MoshfeghJenny Valentine|title=My Year of Rest Us in the Before and RelaxationAfter|rating=35|genre=Literary FictionTeens|summary=At Elk and Mab are bestfriends, or more than that even, this novel their friendship is a scathing critique of modern society and reveals the fragility of human relationships; 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 worst, it is the cynicaltime. But then chance brings them back together, predictable and slightly trite tale of an unlikeable protagonistthey are inseparable. This unlikely heroine Something has happened though, a slimsomething terrible and tragic, attractive and newly orphaned girl in her twenties is disillusioned with the worldnow they must work through their grief, but resolves not to lose sleep over it: in factand their friendship, her solution lies in her hibernationtogether.|isbn=17847074221471196585
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|authorisbn=Jo Callaghan1787333175|title=Leave No TraceYou Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here|author=Benji Waterhouse|rating=45|genre=CrimePopular Science|summary=When 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 man is found crucified on glorious mixture of insight into the top workings of a hill in Nuneaton, DCS Kat Frank finds herself assigned to the case alongside her sidekickNHS, the AI detective Lockhumour and autobiography. It's their first live case together, having previously been very successful with several cold cases'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. But when there I did wonder whether it was acceptable to be looking for humour in this setting but the laughter is directed at a second body found crucified situation rather than a few days later, Kat person and it is suddenly struggling always delivered with a potential serial killer empathy and a very high profile case that draws a lot of unwanted attention to their AI Future Policing projectunderstanding. 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=139851120X
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