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<metadesc>Book review siteExpert, with books full book reviews from the many most walks of literary life - ; fiction, biography, crime, cookery and anything else that takes our fancy. There are also lots of author interviews and top tens.</metadesc>Hello from The Bookbag, a book review site, featuring books from all the many walks of literary life non- [[:Category:Fiction|fiction]], [[:Category:Biography|biography]], [[:Category:Crime|crime]], [[:Category:Cookery|cookery]] and anything else that takes our fancy. At Bookbag Towers the bookbag sits at the side of the desk. Itchildren's the bag we take to the library and the bookshop. Sometimes it holds the latest releases, but at other times there'll be old favourites, books for the children, & self-published books for the home. They're sometimes our own books or books from the local library. They're often books sent to us by publishers and we promise to tell you exactly what we think about them. You might not want to read through a full review, so we'll give you a quick review which summarises what we felt about the book and tells you whether or not we think you should buy or borrow it. There are also lots of [[:Category:Interviews|plus author interviews]], and all sorts of [[:Category:Lists|& top tens]] - all of which you can find on our [[features]] page. If you're stuck for something to read, check out the [[Book Recommendations|recommendations]] page.</metadesc>
Want to find out more [[About Us|about us]]? __NOTOC__ ==The Best New Books== '''Read [[:Category:New Reviews|new reviews by category]]. '''<br> '''Read [[:Category:Features|new the latest features]].'''__NOTOC__'''Read [[Forthcoming Publications|reviews of books about to be published]].{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Dr Richard Hale and Alan Chambers MBE Onyi Nwabineli|title=Keep Walking - Leadership Learning in Action - A thrilling story of a polar adventure with powerful lessons in leadership and personal developmentAllow Me to Introduce Myself
|rating=4.5
|genre=Business and FinanceGeneral Fiction|summary=One side Anuri spent her childhood on display to the world, thanks to her step-mother Ophelia's increasingly popular presence on social media, where she posted every step of this book Anuri's childhood for sponsorships and influencer deals and, basically, monetary gain. Now Anuri is in her twenties and she is completely alien slowly trying to me. I have had no reason regain her confidence and to believe in any of the action learningget her life back, selfsuing her step-actualisation etc, that people in business sometimes deem necessarymother to take down the content about her. If pressedAnuri is battling alcoholism, I'd guess that if failing to start her PhD, undergoing therapy and secretly abusing people needed online and receiving money from them for doing so much in-work training they might just be the wrong person for the job. There's an anecdote here Most importantly, she is desperately worried about a bright young thing fresh from business school, and faced with her first task at worklittle sister, who panicked as ''she did not know which theory to apply'is the new focus of Ophelia's online empire. The theory of common senseCan she save her sister, I'd have suggested.and perhaps herself and her relationship with her father at the same time?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1904312780</amazonuk>0861546873
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Guy DelisleDavid Chadwick|title=Pyongyang: A Journey in North KoreaHeadload of Napalm
|rating=4.5
|genre=Graphic NovelsThrillers|summary=Meet Guy. HeIt's a French-Canadian animatorSeptember 1973 in Hicks, leaving home for California. Hicks is a short stay in the capital Mojave desert town of one a few thousand people with its nearest neighbours of the world's most intriguing, unknown LA and alien cultures - Pyongyang, North Korea - so he can work on Las Vegas both a TV cartoon co-productionsignificant drive away. Forced to stay Not much happens in one of Hicks. A silver mine and a defence contractor are the three official hotels designed for foreignersmain local employers but otherwise, so that the locals and people such as he do there's not have to mix, he see glimpses much of the unique socialist dictatorshipnote other than dive bars and Joshua trees. Life is quiet, stunning views of the buildings forced through the poverty, and thousands of unreadable facesuntil....|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0224079905</amazonuk>B0D321VJ76
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sam OsmanTom Percival|title=QuicksilverThe Wrong Shoes|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Will's life is difficult, in a multitude of ways. He is bullied because he has 'Quicksilverthe wrong shoes', he has the wrong shoes because his dad can' is t work and doesn't have enough money for even the story most basic of Wolfiethings like food, Tala and Zihis dad can'ibt work because he lost his job at the college, three ordinary children from three different continents. They have never met, until was working a strange chain of events involving guncash-toting gangs and eccentric old men means they all end up in Thornham, -hand job on a London suburbbuilding site and had an accident. They soon realise they Throw into that mix the fact that his mum and dad are connected: they all have green eyes with golden flecks separated, and Will's life seems bleak in every direction. And yet, he still has a missing parenttiny amount of hope. But was it fate He is good at art, chance or and clings to the ley lines moments of joy when he is drawing, that encompass feel like a light at the earth that brought them together? Before you know it they're solving clues and fulfilling end of a one thousand year old prophecylong, dark tunnel. But all they want |isbn=1398527122}}{{Frontpage|author=Sylvie Cathrall|title=A Letter to the Luminous Deep|rating=5|genre=Science Fiction|summary= There are few greater joys than a book which lives up to do a compelling premise. And this is find their parentsone of them.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1407105736</amazonuk>0356522776
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{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0008517061|title=Death in a Lonely Place|author=Diane JanesStig Abell|rating=4|titlegenre=Crime|summary=Edwardian MurderFormer Metropolitan Police detective, Jake Johnson, has settled into his rustic life at Little Sky. There’s perhaps a little uncertainty about the future of his life with his vet girlfriend, Livia and her daughter Diana, as moving in together would mean a lot of compromise: Ightham & does Jake give up his off-grid and relaxing life to move in with Livia or does Livia move to Little Sky despite her reservations about whether or not this is the future she wants for herself and her daughter? For the Morpeth Train Robberymoment they’re enjoying life in the present and putting the future on the back burner.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1786482126|title=The Janus Stone (Dr Ruth Galloway)|author=Elly Griffiths
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=Two murders took place in Edwardian England less than two years apart, one Builders were demolishing an old house in Norwich - the southsite was going to hold seventy-five 'luxury' apartments -east and when they discovered the other in the north-eastbones of a child beneath a doorway. There was no skull. At first glance they seemed to have nothing to do Was this a ritual killing or murder? Inevitably, Dr Ruth Galloway finds herself working with each otherDCI Harry Nelson. It's difficult as Ruth knows, but years later Nelson doesn't, that she is pregnant with his child as a link between them was hinted at though never proved beyond doubtresult of the one night they spent together some three months ago. The author has investigated the connection and come up with a riveting bookHer condition will be obvious before long, not least because Ruth is prone to sudden bouts of sickness.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0752449451</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Peter Gay0008551324|title=Modernism: The Lure of Heresy - From Baudelaire to Beckett and BeyondDevil You Know (D S Max Craigie)|author=Neil Lancaster|rating=4.5|genre=HistoryCrime|summary=It is impossible not 's unusual for anyone from the Hardie family to be impressed by approach the sheer scope of cultural historian Peter Gay's 2007 study of Modernism, newly released in this paperback editionpolice. He notes in Neither side likes or has any respect for the introduction that it other. But Davie Hardie is not a 'comprehensive history' but rather struggling in prison and he's prepared to tell the police where the body of a study of its risemissing person is buried and who was responsible for her death. This person, triumphshe promises, is someone big and decline'it will be worth the police doing what he wants. What And what he wants is remarkable thoughto be transferred to an open prison to serve the remainder of his sentence and to get an early parole date. Not much to ask, is the attempt it? The new Deputy Police Constable doesn't think so and she's even prepared to include do the whole gamut of artistic fields in this coherent studyother thing that Hardie demanded - make certain that DS Max Craigie and anyone who works with him is kept well away from what's happening.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099441969</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Rachel Caine0008405026|title=Carpe Corpus A Stranger in the Family (Morganville VampiresMaeve Kerrigan 11)|author=Jane Casey|rating=45|genre=TeensCrime|summary=If you havenIt't already, meet Claires sixteen years since nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her bed one summer night. She is beholden was never found and the investigation ground to Mr Bishopa halt. Now, the horrid evil vampire that is ruling the town of Morganvilleher mother, even more so than the other humanHelena, and vampire, inhabitants her father aredead in their bed. Initially, now that he has taken over things from Claireit looks like a straightforward murder/suicide but there's former ruler Amelie. She is caught in a struggle between something about the two warring vampire factions, especially over an unusual form positioning of disease among the undead - Amelie's side definitely trying to cure bodies that makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and her boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. What looked as though it, Bishop somehow trying was going to provoke it be an open-and profit from it-shut case is now a complex double murder. Not only Kerrigan is convinced that, her boyfriend is imprisoned, along with his father, one of the worldexplanation lies in Rosalie's disappearance: others (such as Derwent's least subtle vampire huntersboss, Una Burt) are less convinced. Can she have enough quality time with him? Can she and her captured-and-turned ex-housemate Michael survive the horrid things asked of them? And who is Ada?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>074900777X</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Joanne Dahme 0571379877|title=Tombstone TeaThe Kellerby Code|author=Jonny Sweet
|rating=3.5
|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=Having recently moved to Edward Jevons is a new schoolworking-class young man, in a new townobsessed with his upper-class friends, Jessie is struggling to make friends Robert and fit inStanza. She is afraid to show these new people who she really is - in her old school she often found she had Robert'blanks a theatre director. He' momentss also self-obsessed, when she could hear voices demanding, handsome and entitled and 'see' people who weren't really thereuses Edward to run errands for him. In desperation to become part of a 'group' she accepts the dare of a group of girls to spend the night Edward has been in the Cemetery love with Stanza since their university days - and collect some gravestone rubbings he's drunkenly confided how he feels to prove she was thereRobert. Once there she bumps into Paul, the handsome caretaker, and finds herself Most men in the middle of a strange evening when, Paul claims, local actors get together to rehearse for something called the Robert'Tombstone Tea', s position would stay away from Stanza or tell Edward that a play in which they portray those buried in the graveyard...thererelationship had begun between them but he's something strange though about these actors and Jessie soon finds herself caught up not like most men: Edward is left to stumble upon the two of them kissing in a chilling dramadark passageway.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0762437189</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Stieg Larsson and Reg Keeland (translator)Jo Callaghan|title=The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets' NestLeave No Trace
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=[[The Girl with When a man is found crucified on the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson and Reg Keeland (translator)|The Girl with top of a hill in Nuneaton, DCS Kat Frank finds herself assigned to the Dragon Tattoo]]case alongside her sidekick, the first of Steig LarssonAI detective Lock. It's Millennium trilogy of thrillerstheir 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, was Kat is suddenly struggling with a potential serial killer and a fine stand-alone novelvery high profile case that draws a lot of unwanted attention to their AI Future Policing project. The second Will they be able to solve the case in time, or will Kat find herself taken off the seriescase and, [[The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson and Reg Keeland (translator)potentially, out of a career?|isbn=139851120X}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1399613073|title=Moral Injuries|author=Christie Watson|rating=4.5|genre=Thrillers|The Girl Who Played With Fire]]summary=Olivia, continues Laura and Anjali met on the adventures first day of medical school and their friendship would keep them inseparable for a quarter of Lisbeth Salandera century. Olivia is ruthlessly ambitious, Larssonwhich is a bonus when you aim to be a cardiothoracic surgeon. Laura is a perfectionist and a trauma doctor. Anjali is the free spirit of the group and she becomes a GP. When we first meet them they're at a drug and alcohol-fuelled party and it's finely crafted anti-herogoing to end in tragedy. If you haven We don't read this second volume yet I advise you to stop reading this review nowknow who suffered the tragedy or the consequences. Twenty-five years later there will be an eerily similar event that will impact the three friends. I This time, it'm about to spoil the ending for you…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906694168</amazonuk>s their teenage children who are involved.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Diane Chamberlain0241636604|title=The Bay at MidnightTrading Game: A Confession|author=Gary Stevenson|rating=4.5|genre=General FictionAutobiography|summary=The story starts properly when If you were to bring up an image of a letter is discoveredcity banker in your mind, you're unlikely to think of someone like Gary Stevenson. It will have devastating consequences for several families A hoodie and jeans replaces the pin- stripe suit and life will never be his background is the same againEast End, where he was familiar with violence, poverty and injustice. Apparently, There was no posh public school on his CV - but he had been to the wrong person was convicted for London School of Economics. Stevenson is bright - extremely bright - and he has a murderfacility with numbers which most of us can only envy. Moreover, the writer of this letter appears He also realised that most rich people expect poor people to know who did commit this crimebe stupid. UnfortunatelyIt was his ability at what was, essentially, the writer dies before able to make contact a card game which got him an internship with the policeCitibank. Eventually, this turned into permanent employment as a trader.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0778303640</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=David Miller1035021803|title=Sea WolfThe Antique Hunter's Guide to Murder|author=C L Miller
|rating=3.5
|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=Meet Hanna, Ned and Jik. TheyIt're on an unlikely quest s twenty years since Freya Lockwood has been back to recover the worldEnglish country village where she grew up. She's biggest and richest pearl, back now because of a request for help from the hiding place Jik alone knows ofher beloved aunt, when there's a problem in the shape of a tornadoCarole. TheyFreya're thrown from the craft theys former mentor and Carole're ons close friend, Arthur Crockleford, Ned disappears - is dead and then there were twothe circumstances seem suspicious, to say the least. Hanna and Jik get rescued by Arthur was the reason why Freya had not been back to the occupants of a horridvillage: Arthur, piratical craftshe feels, engaged in very environmentally-unfriendly fishinglet her down badly. Jik gets overworked and underfedEven though they were in business together as antique hunters, and then there was one..she has not felt able to be near the man or pursue the profession she loved. Only one - Hanna - with After the spunksplit, she worked in a cafe, brainpower met and energy to keep married James (on the rebound from the love of her spirit togetherlife, who was murdered) and try Freya and get one up on the Maestro who commands the boatJames have now divorced.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0192729020</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=AllTomorrowsFutureCover
|title=All Tomorrow's Futures: Fictions that Disrupt
|author=Benjamin Greenaway and Stephen Oram (Editors)
|rating=5
|genre=Science Fiction
|summary=''Opening up new ways of thinking about the shape of things to come.''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Shirley JacksonSunny Singh|title=The Lottery and Other StoriesHotel Arcadia|rating=43.5|genre=Short StoriesThrillers |summary=Even though it was written The Hotel Arcadia is a luxury hotel in an unnamed city that has suddenly been violently taken over sixty years agoby a terrorist group. Hiding from the terrorists who are rampaging through, The Lotterykilling everyone on site, there is Sam, coming in at fewer than 3a wartime photographer and Abhi,500 words still has the power hotel manager. As Abhi continues to shock. When it first appeared try to care remotely for the residents who are still alive in the The New Yorker in 1948 it caused many outraged readers hotel, he forms a bond with Sam who refuses to cancel their subscriptions such was the devastating nature be cowed by events, and keeps on venturing out of the storyher room to try to capture what's happened through her photography. Time may have lessened sensibilities Although they only ever talk over the latter half of the twentieth century phone, their friendship grows as Abhi tries to help her keep safe and they both wait to see if they will be rescued before they are discovered by the beginning of the twenty first but The Lottery, like many of the other stories in this timely reissue, still packs a mighty punchterrorists.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0141191430</amazonuk>086154742X
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Hazel McHaffie 1529153298|title=Right to DieThe List of Suspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=It must be hard enough watching your partner die just once's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. (A woman? I mean, honestly...) She's not what's worrying Miv's family, though. Women have been disappearing. Well, they've been murdered, but for Naomi, Adamto have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. Miv's upset because she's death is just overheard that her father wants to move the beginningfamily 'Down South'. Coming across his personal, private diary of his time When you're from diagnosis to subsequent demiseYorkshire, she Down South is forced to relive a frightening, foreign place, best avoided. For Miv, the awful months during which his body began to betray him move would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, and his will she'll do anything to live was replaced with a will prevent that. She's not worried about the dangers or that her Mum's stopped talking - to die...on his own termsanyone.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906307210</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Karen Sapp1398524085|title=Christmas Is...|rating=3|genre=For Sharing|summary=Christmas is looming and thus the market for picture books featuring santas, presents and Christmas trees. It's hard to come up with anything new here, and it's rather not the point - is itHas Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter? Christmas is, after all, about annually repeated celebration of traditional rituals that add delight and nourishment to the spiritual, emotional and social fabric of life.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007303750</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Gary Giddins and Scott Deveaux|title=JazzNicci French
|rating=5
|genre=EntertainmentCrime|summary=At first glance this 700-page volume might look a little dauntingCharlotte Salter was expected at her husband's fiftieth birthday party but never turned up. Do Her children, sons Niall, Paul and Ollie and her daughter, Etty. are all worried but - strangely - her husband, Alec, is not be daunted. If you want a small pocket book which merely scratches at Shortly afterwards, Etty and Greg, find the surface and can probably be digested body of Greg's father, Duncan Ackerley, in a sitting or two, look elsewherethe river. On It was an easy assumption for the other hand, if you want an extremely readable police to make that Duncan had murdered Charlie and comprehensive book on jazz which then committed suicide when he couldn't stand the guilt. The Salter children are not convinced but there's little else they can not only be read cover to cover, do but also retained as a work of reference to use again get on with their lives and again, I doubt if this can be betteredwonder about what really happened.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0393068617</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Richard Wrangham 1035906708|title=Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human Diva|author=Daisy Goodwin
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Distracted by the discovery that her husband has been having an affairWe tend to think of Maria Callas as Greek, a middle-aged woman loses concentration while driving along a quiet lanebut she was born to Greek parents in Manhattan, killing Ruth MitchellNew York, an elderly cyclist. The woman doesn't wait for the police in December 1923 and only moved to arrive; Athens when she goes home and parks her car in the garage where she smashes it almost beyond recognitionwas thirteen. When Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her arrogant husband sees the damage he believes father changed itto 's been done to punish him and he packs his bags. After a few days the woman goes to the home of the dead woman; she doesnCallas't go to make it more manageable in the door, but from a hidden spot nearby States. When she can see the widower, an elderly gentleman who is clearly not coping well. Wracked with guilt, the woman makes a decision: the only way was back in Athens - supposedly so that she can atone could get appropriate training for her actions is to step into voice - she was raised under the shoes Nazi occupation by a mother who mercilessly exploited her and made no secret of the dead womanher preference for her elder sister, Jackie.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0715638815</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Nigel McCreryChristopher Edge|title=Tooth and ClawBlack Hole Cinema Club
|rating=4
|genre=CrimeConfident Readers|summary=Another serial killer is on the loose, Lucas and yet again the police have failed to connect the deaths. Carl Whittley has just tortured a glamorous TV presenter to death - leaving a singularly gruesome tableau - and blown his friends are all booked in for a hapless commuter to smithereens movie marathon at their local cinema, a railway station. He's planning his next murder already, secreted away in place that has the shed at the bottom nickname of the garden of the house he shares with his invalid father'The Black Hole'. Carl is embittered and lonely - with his mother living away and pursuing a career as a forensic psychologist All big movie fans, therethey's only him re looking forward to take care lots of his severely disabled father: to change exciting films, and many, many snacks! However, as the colostomy bagmovie starts, to cookthey 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 imagine. But as they lurch from one film genre to cleanthe next, can they figure out what on earth is going on? Will they ever get back tothe cinema, well, just and to bear it, really. their real lives?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847248071</amazonuk>1839942738
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Nick HornbyRachel Greenlaw|title=An Education: The Screenplay|rating=5|genre=Entertainment|summary=Adroit marketing? Well, yes. ''An Education'' has been published, of course, to coincide with the film's general release in the UK. Hardly surprising since our national appetite for nosiness seems insatiable and cosy background details prop up every telly series Compass and film these days. As well as the screenplay, Nick Hornby has provided an introduction and diary of the film's successful premiere at the Sundance Festival in Utah. Beyond trivia, I think this fascinating little book presents an excellent 'how to' guide for wannabes from one of Britain's most respected screen and novel writers.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141044748</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=The Harvard Lampoon|title=Nightlight: A Parody of Twilight Blade
|rating=3.5
|genre=HumourTeens|summary=Most people will have heard ''I can hear the song of the worldwide phenomenon that is [[Twilight by Stephenie Meyer|Twilight]]sea. The books by Stephenie Meyer and the film have made a legend call of the romance between vampire Edward Mullen (Robert Pattinson plays deep, the movie role) and teenage schoolgirl Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart)answering beat in my heart.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849013330</amazonuk>}}''
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|rating=4.5
|genre=For SharingConfident Readers|summary=Otto Things have been a bit sticky for the penguin lives on his father's feet at the bottom of the worldEarthlings. HeAI and automation have been proceeding apace, often replacing jobs they's an inquisitive little thing re paid to do and wants other tasks that took time to know why they haven't fallen off the worldaccomplish. His dad explains that Just as they won't Because I say so. Otto were beginning to get used to all this technological change and his friend Leo gradually expand their horizons from their fathers' feet - they meet starting to think of other penguin chicks, get new ways to know their aunts who watch them when their fathers are awayspend time, along came an awful pandemic. Life was pretty much shut down and eventually grow feathers , along with it, all the many daily social interactions on which they depend so they're big enough to toboggan on their bellies and swim in the seaheavily.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>140523041X</amazonuk>1736128426
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ryan David Jahn Matthew Tree|title=Acts of ViolenceWe'll Never Know
|rating=4.5
|genre=CrimeLiterary Fiction|summary=Kat Marino is stabbed on her way home Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from work. All she wanted was his father, a hot bath after a hard day's work. From this point the novel skips nimbly from one neighbour to the next, drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of his artistic passions all of whom are absorbed in their own dilemmas. There is the draftee with a sick mother, the nurse who thinks she has run over a baby, the woman failed miserably and who suspects her husband had endless crises of cheating and othersself confidence. We are shown what these characters were doing that evening, and how these events drag through So Tim applied himself to the morning. We are shown how in the midst of their own interestinghis studies, poignant cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and dangerous concerns a woman is stabbed in the courtyard onto which all their windows look, through which windows they witness the attack, and how these people did nothingset himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0230743595</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=A G Slatter
|title=The Briar Book of the Dead
|rating=5
|genre=Fantasy
|summary='' There's a part of me that wants to keep this just to myself for however long I can. This secret magic of my own, all mine, at last. I just want to enjoy it for a while.''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Nigel McCrery1529900360|title=Core of EvilThe Ghost Orchid|author=Jonathan Kellerman
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=Violet Chambers becomes Daisy Wilson through an aromatic cup of tea, flavoured with Christmas roses. It hadn't been Lt Milo Sturgis'"There are all kinds of horrible things in the Christmas rose," she saids fault that Alex Delaware had been badly injured but he felt responsible and even after Alex recovered, watching Sturgis was reluctant to see whether Daisy could still hear herask for his help on difficult cases. "Helleborin His assertions that there were only open-and hellebrin are both like digitalis, -shut cases which Ididn've also used before, but there's saporin and protoanemonin as well. It's t need the help of a psychologist only worked for a very nasty cocktailwhile."' And now Daisy has met her rather sticky - and graphically effluent - end Finally, and Violet has become Daisyit was Robin, Daisy sets her sights on a new townDelaware's partner, a new identity and, most importantly, a new victimwho nudged Milo into asking for help again. Daisy has problems with her memory - She knew that the identities go back so far involvement was something that sometimes the man she can barely remember who is she is nowloved needed. The next case did look simple, let alone all though. Two lovers were murdered in the swimming pool of a remote property in Bel Air. He was the whos heir to an Italian shoe empire and sheis married to an extremely rich man and it's been before, and most certainly not the who with whom she beganItalian. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847243843</amazonuk> But which of them was the primary target?
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John Van der Kiste1529395224|title=Jonathan WildLetting the Cat Out of the Bag: Conman and CutpurseThe Secret Life of a Vet|author=Sion Rowlands|rating=43.5|genre=HistoryAnimals and Wildlife|summary=Born towards the end of the seventeenth century Jonathan Wild Siôn Rowlands fell into veterinary science accidentally. His father was a GP and Rowlands didn't want to become follow in his footsteps, particularly when he considered the eighteenth centurystrain that being on-call put on his father's most famous criminal, plying his trade in a rather curious fashionlife. He When he was born in Wolverhampton of parents described as ''mean but honest''. It seems likely that seventeen he first travelled to London as took the servant opportunity of doing work experience with a lawyer where he family friend who was eventually to settle, leaving his wife a vet and child to fend was convinced this was the job for themselveshim. It Before long, he was whilst serving a term of imprisonment in Wood Street Compter that he mixed with the cream of London's criminal underclass and learned the rudiments of his trade.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848682190</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=K M Grant|title=Paradise Red (Perfect Fire Trilogy)|rating=5|genre=Teens|summary=We are back in the south of France for the third and final timeat Liverpool University. In one corner, the It hadn'French', t - as with King Louis and so many students - been his henchmen rampaging through, warring in the name of peacedream since he was a child. In another cornerIf anything, the local people, struggling in the harsh environment and none too pleased he'd wanted to see their corner of the world the location for religious wars, with the Cathar ''heretics'' also present. The lines are drawn, in be a realistically convoluted way, and this book will see one of our heroes cross one such line, just as other people make their own momentous decisionsprofessional footballer. It will take all the narrative skills of the land itself to get the story across to us.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847247075</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Camilla Noli0861541774|title=The Mother's TaleA Nye of Pheasants|author=Steve Burrows
|rating=4
|genre=Women's FictionCrime|summary=DCI Domenic Jejeune''It is early evening. I am suckling my infant son… We are picture perfect. Madonna s close friend and child''. No doubt about it: former colleague, Danny Maik, has taken a new mother totally smitten short holiday in Singapore to meet up with her son. Zach is adorable. Quiet. Undemanding. A happy, generally relaxedan old ally, childGuy Trueman. Gorgeous. But Zach isn't her firstMaik was involved in a street brawl -born. First there he would later maintain that he was Cassiefacing a man armed with a knife - and he killed a Ghurka. A child who entered Initially, he faced a charge of manslaughter but evidence came to light that suggested that he might have planned to murder the world screaming and has since learned exactly what power she can wring with such lungsman. Not yet two years old, Cassie adores her father, but even him she manipulatesNow he could be facing the death penalty. Her mother she terrorisesDomenic Jejeune can do nothing to help as any interference from another police force could provoke a diplomatic incident and wouldn't help Danny at all.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1409101584</amazonuk>
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|genre=For SharingGeneral Fiction|summary=It The Perfect Passion Company is a sci-fi future of no danger whatsoeverdating agency in Edinburgh, with no technological breakdownrun by Ness and operating as an alternative to all the online apps in providing a more personal, tailored service. Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and no fatal meteor strikelook after the business, but that of course as Ness is only planning to be expected take a trip to Canada to get away for this marketa while. I say it more Katie is coming out of a break up with a bad boyfriend, and so jumps at the chance to come home to highlight how well the book has been illustratedEdinburgh. Digital airbrush techniques And so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, thanks to 44 Scotland Street and more have taken the antiseptic sheen off the whole Isabel Dalhousie novels, but with some new characters who quickly begin to charm. Katie has no experiencein running a business, or in match-making, but have still allowed for a great detail Ness has full confidence in the machineryher abilities, and also there's always her very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, William, to lend a lovely warmth in the face of the lad we're empathising with.hand…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0399246347</amazonuk>1846976596
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Mary Naylus0811771741|title=The DresskeeperInstaKnits for Baby|author=Melissa Leapman
|rating=4
|genre=Confident ReadersCrafts|summary=Things are pretty grim Melissa Leapman's ''InstaKnits for PickyBaby'' gives us a collection of knits from toys to blankets. She is thirteen years oldSome will be quick knits - others are of the 'long, being bullied at schoolcosy afternoons in front of the fire' variety. The projects are divided by the time they'll take to complete - less than five hours, and has five to spend her weekends helping her singleten hours, working mum ten to take care of her little brother twenty hours and her senile grandmothermore than twenty hours. One eveningAll the projects are attractive, at her Gran's house, she goes up into the attic modern and tries on an old dress that she finds inside an old chestuseable. The dress turns out to be magic, and she suddenly finds herself back in 17th Century London, struggling with a strange man who is calling her I perhaps show my age when I wonder about 'Ameliasocial-media-worthy projects' and is trying to kill her. Picky ends up embroiled in Ameliabut that's 17th century life as she tries to find out the truth of who is attempting to murder her, at the same time as trying to avoid arousing suspicion with her strange behaviour whenever she returns to the present dayme being picky.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956122280</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=John Abbott Nez Dean Koontz|title=Cromwell Dixon's Sky-CycleThe Bad Weather Friend|rating=4.5|genre=For SharingParanormal|summary=Meet Cromwell DixonBenny is having a terrifically bad day. He's a real tinkererloses his job, he loses his fiancee, forever in a barn or somewhere building something manically unusualand his house gets trashed. Luckily Oh, and someone has delivered a really weird, disturbing coffin- although sized object to his long-suffering mother may disagree with that word - hehome, and it's around at possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the thing that has trashed his house! The thing is, Benny is the birth of powered flightvery last person to deserve all this bad luck. He is a nice person. A really nice person. Will So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the delivery to his plans 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 pedalled air machine work?good person. Spike is going to take care of Benny, and will certainly take care of Benny's enemies, 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 are.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0399250417</amazonuk>1662500491
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sue MoorcroftAdam Stower|title=Starting OverMurray and Bun|rating=4.5|genre=Women's FictionConfident Readers |summary=The story opens when Tess bumps her old reliable car into Murray is supposed to be a breakdown truck. That's rather convenienthumble, since she isn't hurttidy and friendly cat, and the guy driving it one who is able to tow her to his garagesleep and eat and eat and sleep and, and then give her a lift to her new home. Naturallywell, since this is whatever takes his fancy next of the two. But he'chick-lits a bad magician' genres cat, so his favourite bun has been turned into a hyperactive sticky rabbit called Bun, Tess and the truck-drivercatflap they both use can chuck them out, who goes by not into the unlikely name regular back garden, but into a world of Ratty (an abbreviation of his surname) feel mutual antipathy of the sort thatfrightening adventure and whiffs. This time round it drops them into a Viking land, where a troll hunter is expected – well, one much bigger than Murray was, to be honest, but he's clearly going to lead, sooner or later, turned up and he'll have to strong attraction.do…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1906931224</amazonuk>0008561249
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