Open main menu

Changes

no edit summary
'''Read [[Forthcoming Publications|reviews of books about to be published]].
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Richard Kadrey0008385068|title=The Pale House DevilMidnight Feast|author=Lucy Foley|rating=4.5|genre=HorrorThrillers|summary=Ford It's midsummer on the Dorset coast and guests gather at The Manor. It's their opening weekend and Neuland splendid celebrations are a couple of, well, guys promised. It's all headed up by Francesca Meadows. The Manor was her ancestral home and she's converted it into an impressive retreat for hire I guess, though really the way I thought of them through the book was as a couple of strange detectives! wealthy and famous. One of them is livingHer husband, you seeOwen, was the architect and the other work is undead, and so one still ongoing on parts of them kills the living, and the other kills the undeadsite. (Only not each other, obviously). They're on a job in New York that goes badly, The heat is oppressive and so they head out to amongst the West coast to try to lay low for a while and find some other work to keep them goingguests are enemies as well as friends. But when a young woman called Tilda hires them to kill the 'something' that appears Old scores are going to be haunting a wealthy gentleman's house they find themselves uncovering a whole lot of family history, settled and a terrifyingly powerful creature that theyit won've never come across t be long before!|isbn=1803363894a body is found.
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Helen CooperAshley Hickson-Lovence|title=The Taming of the CatWild East|rating=34.5|genre=Confident ReadersTeens|summary=Once againWritten in verse, mice are pitched against cat. In this case, principally, we have Brie the mouse, up against Gorgonzola the cat – and in case youis Ronny're seeing a connections story, they live in a cheese shop young black fourteen year old boy from Hackney who suddenly has to move to Norwich and therefore all the names used here seem to be the names of cheesesstart at a mostly white school. Anyway, Brie The move is initiated by Ronny's mum who is shunned, scorned and, if you must, mous-tracised, worried for the way his habits donRonny't match the other mice he lives with. They nibble up paper wrapping from the cheese for bedding – he displays it as art s safety after a tragic event, and makes stories based on the visuals on it. And that story-telling will come so Ronny finds himself trying to settle in handy one nighta new town, a new school, when he feels all alone and cast keep himself outof trouble. It's almost as if there were another character from fable who had had He listens to tell stories to keep themselves alivemusic constantly, and has always dreamed of being a rapper. This makes Brie the top dog But now, in the mouse communitythis new school, his teacher encourages him to be part of a poetry writing workshop group and, thoughslowly, as all Ronny begins to see the others had connections between rap and poetry, and the chance to half-inch some cheese while the cat was distractedpower of creativity and crafting your words. But will the story have the successful sequel it needs when that cheese runs out?|isbn=05713760100241645441
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B0CDZRGT1M1635866847|title=Super Short Stories: Flash FictionThe Lavender Companion|author=Mark C WallfischJessica Dunham and Terry Barlin Vesci
|rating=4.5
|genre=Short StoriesLifestyle|summary=It''Got a minute to be amuseds strange, entertained, or challenged?the things that make you ''immediately''These 100 stories are super short. None feel that this is more than 300 words. You can read one in a flashthe book for you. Before I started reading ''The Lavender Companion''Some are funny, I visited the author's [https://www. Some are poignant. All are shortpinelavenderfarm.com/ website] and there'' Question: how do you review flash fiction? How do you give s a flavour picture of a fully rounded little story if slice of chocolate cake on the homepage. I don't eat cakes and desserts - but I wanted that story is told cake viscerally. (There's a recipe in fewer than three hundred words? Or do you try to draw out themes from all the flash fictions in a book of them? , which I don't knowm avoiding with some difficulty!! Perhaps we could start by explaining that there really isn't ) Then I started reading the book and I was told to make a fixed definition mess of it. Notes in the margins are sanctioned. You get to fold down the corners of flash fiction but pages. You suspect that for this collection, author Mark C Wallfisch has gone for smears of butter would not be a three hundred word limitproblem. That I 's about a single page in your average paperback'loved'' this book already.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1732898766Rob Keeley|title=The Adventures of Birpus and BulbusChildish Spirits: Book One: The Sour Milk Dragon|author=Wynn Everett-Albanese, Michael Albanese and Indre Ta (Illustrator)10th anniversary special edition
|rating=4
|genre=For SharingConfident Readers|summary=When Around here, we first meet Birpus and Bulbus they're running for their lives in the Forest big fans of Fine Reputechildren's author Rob Keeley. Their greatest fear has come about: the Sour Milk Dragon is chasing them. He's right behind thema ball of happy positivity, spewing hothe understands children, sour milk from his nostrilsand he writes for their pleasure and enjoyment, not to lecture or hector. (Please don The ''Childish Spirits't try this at home: it won't end wellseries is one of his greatest achievements.) FortunatelyIt's a sequence of ghost stories centring on Ellie, they were nearly a stalwart young girl who can cope with anything the spirit world throws at Nobby Lob-lolly - her, and when Edward, a ladder of moss spoiled lordling and vines was lowered for them, they escaped. They climbed up to the Tree Wee homes high up in the tangled woods where they lived with their Grand Wees, Nester Nook and Granny Cranny.first spirit Ellie encounters|isbn= 1783064617
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1472263936Jenny Valentine|title=The Figurine|author=Victoria HislopUs in the Before and After
|rating=5
|genre=General FictionTeens|summary=It was Elk and Mab are best friends, or more than that even, their friendship is a once in 1968 that Helena McCloud made her first a lifetime connection. They meet as children one day on a trip to Greeceout but unfortunately they don't get each other's contact details at the time. She was alone: her motherBut then chance brings them back together, and they are inseparable. Something has happened though, something terrible and tragic, Greek by birthand now they must work through their grief, had left the family home and refused to returntheir friendship, but Mary together.|isbn=1471196585}}{{Frontpage|author=Kieran Larwood and Hamish (Helena's parents) felt that it would be a pity if Helena grew up without knowing her grandparents or understanding her Greek heritageJoe Todd-Stanton|title=Dungeon Runners: Hero Trial|rating=4|genre=Confident Readers|summary=Meet Kit. Her trip to Like most of the family apartment people in uphis world, it seems, he is an avid fan of Dungeon Running – the sport where a team of warrior, mage and healer enter specially prepared, century-market Kolonaki would be old, magical mazes, and race to the exit, perhaps bothering with the treasure or the big bad and the first of several annual visitspoints they grant you along the way. She grew to love her grandmother and Unfortunately for Kit, the familyonly thing he's maidseen of the latest race on the inn TV equivalent is that one team has been retired, Dinaeaten, but was wary - and frightened - a new trio of her grandfather, retired general Stamatis Papagiannisquestors is needed. He was proud Possibly very unfortunately indeed for Kit, he has taken to the goading from the token bully of his close connections to the Junta world and expected his family to uphold his values but saw no reason to accommodate themstumbled into declaring he'll enter as a team. His prejudices included Helena's red hair What chance does this friendless, muscle-free-zone have in actually managing that, and green eyes - inherited from her father's Scottish ancestors.how could he possibly hope to succeed?|isbn=1839945184
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Cody GoodfellowSaima Mir|title=VerticalVengeance
|rating=3.5
|genre=Thrillers
|summary= ThereI was instantly intrigued by the premise of this novel – an organised crime syndicate in the north of England run by a Muslim woman. The fact that it was the second in a series I hadn's something about tall buildings that just captures my imagination. Who doesnt read didn't love stop me – I've jumped midway into a good view from up high, after all? Even the drabbest office building is somewhere Ifew series before (on page and screen) and it needn'm intrigued to get inside t be a hindrance if it's 40 stories tallgood enough. And that wasn't a problem here. So when I picked Vengeance swiftly brings you up this book – about people who scale tall buildings for fun – to speed, and I was instantly intriguednever felt lost.|isbn= 18033639910861541561
}}
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Hannah Gold and Levi PinfoldStuart Douglas|title=Finding BearLowe and Le Breton Mysteries - Death at the Dress Rehearsal|rating=43.5|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=[[The Last Bear by Hannah Gold|Last time]]During location filming for his 1970's sitcom 'Floggit and Leggit', April had been leading man Edward Lowe stumbles across the dead body of a woman on Bear Island, the edge of a lot further north than many people would venture, and finding a ridiculously unexpected but delightful friendship with a polar bear – that she called Bearreservoir. Back homeThe police seem happy to assign it as an accidental death, things on but something about the domestic and family front are a bit advanced, but not perfect for herwhole thing bothers Lowe, and so can easily be ignored when word comes through from he enlists the islands Bear was last left on. For help of a bear doing very Bear-y things has been shot and woundedfellow actor, John Le Breton to help him investigate matters further. Desperate to make sure he's OK, she and her father return to They travel across the Arctic and hope that in a world of very white and very dangerous thingscountry during their days off filming, she can find one specific white and dangerous thing – uncovering more possible murders and that the friendship can continue.|isbn=0008582017}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1804183210|title=No Reserve|author=Felix Francis|rating=4|genre=Thrillers|summary=Thirty-four-year-old Theo Jennings shouldn't have been on the rostrum when the colt - as yet unnamed - came up for auction, but Peter Radwayseemingly, a link to death during the chairman, hadn't arrived, so he continued his sessionSecond World War. To say that he was shocked when But is there really a link between the bidding reached three million pounds would be an understatement. A lovely animal - but three million poundsdeaths? Two men had been bidding against each other. Brian Kitman and Elliot 'Mitch' Mitchell were well-known and respected in the racing industry. Jennings was in one of the cubicles in the toilets when the two men came in and And will they manage to uncover who is responsible before more people lose their conversation revealed that the horse had been deliberately bid up to that figure. Both were happy that they had insurance in place. The following morning, the horse was dead in its stall.lives?|isbn=1803368209
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Sarah WilsonB0CYV674G2|title=This One Wild and Precious Life: the path back to connection in a fractured worldSwanton Morley (John Tanner)|author=David Blake
|rating=3.5
|genre= LifestyleCrime|summary= My favourite Mary Oliver line is the one It seemed like an open-and-shut case. A man, covered in which she asks ''What is it you plan to do with your one wild mud and blood - and precious life?'' I get to love carrying a knife, comes into the police station shouting that line so much because my answer is he hasn''This! Precisely thist killed the man.A body at the bottom of a freshly dug grave at Swanton Morley church - he'' I'm lucky enough to be living my one wild and precious life the way I want s been stabbed todeath. Sarah Wilson DCI John Tanner is equally luckyjust back from his honeymoon, which coincided with the birth of his daughter Samantha. In her book that takes Oliver's words as her title (though I can't see that she acknowledges the source) she pushes us to You would think about whether we really ''are'he' living the life we want – the best life that we could d be living. Her grateful for an easy answer is an unequivocal but the words 'perverse'no, we are notand 'John Tanner'were made for each other. DonHe't care what yous sleep-deprived to the point of falling asleep at work but he're doing, she thinks you (we, I) could be doing more…And shes determined to keep going - probably because he can's effing furious about the fact that we are nott get any sleep at home.|isbn=1785633848
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=18399484931787333175|title=A World of DogsYou Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here|author=Carlie Sorosiak and Luisa UribeBenji Waterhouse
|rating=5
|genre=Children's Non-FictionPopular Science|summary=In the interests of full disclosure, I must tell you that Iwas tempted to read 'm a sucker for dogs. In nearly eight decades, I've never met one I didnYou Don't trust and IHave to be Mad to Work Here'' after enjoying Adam Kay've loved most s first book {{amazonurl|isbn=1509858636|title=This is Going to Hurt}}, a glorious mixture of insight into the workings of them. I wish I felt the same about human beingsNHS, humour and autobiography. So, any book about dogs, I'm going 'You Don't Have to sit down and devourbe Mad... Then I'm going ' promised the same elements but moved from physical problems to go back mental illness and read it properlythe work of a psychiatrist. And so I did wonder whether it was with ''A World of Dogs'', with ninety-six pages devoted entirely acceptable to my four-legged friends. Author Carlie Sorosiak found herself be looking for humour in this setting but the accidental owner of an American Dingo - she's learned quite laughter is directed at a situation rather than a lot about dogs since thenperson and it is always delivered with empathy and understanding.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1405951680Onyi Nwabineli|title=The Safe House|author=Cameron WardAllow Me to Introduce Myself|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersGeneral Fiction|summary=Jess Walker accepted an offer (OKAnuri spent her childhood on display to the world, actually she was gently nudged into it by thanks to her friendstep-mother Ophelia's increasingly popular presence on social media, Rupert) to caretake a luxury property in the Australian outback where she posted every step of Anuri's childhood for a couple of monthssponsorships and influencer deals and, basically, monetary gain. After the problems Now Anuri is in her twenties and she'd had at workis slowly trying to regain her confidence and to get her life back, it seemed like just suing her step-mother to take down the break she neededcontent about her. She was no longer a data analyst Anuri is battling alcoholism, failing to start her PhD, undergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online and receiving money from them for the Metropolitan police in London: doing so. Most importantly, she was Jess is desperately worried about her little sister, who was returning to is the country new focus of Ophelia's online empire. Can she save her birth sister, and perhaps herself and in need of the space to get over the traumatic end of her relationship with Charles. A few weeks in her father at the Otway Ranges in Victoria sounded like just the ticket.same time?|isbn=0861546873
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Rachel HarrisonDavid Chadwick|title=Bad DollsHeadload of Napalm|rating=4.5|genre=Short StoriesThrillers|summary=It's been some time since I've read any horrorSeptember 1973 in Hicks, California. I had Hicks is a couple Mojave desert town of misspent teen years reading Stephen King, borrowing the books from a boy I fancied at school and scaring myself half silly few thousand people with them to the point that I couldn't shut my bedroom curtains at night for fear 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 the vampires outside! Don't worry - this short story collection isn't like that! It doesn't have those jump scaresmain local employers but otherwise, and I didnthere't have to read it during daylight hours only! But it is creepy, and I found most s not much of that feeling came from the fact that these are stories about women, living normal lives, note other than dive bars and that at least in partJoshua trees. Life is quiet, the horrors arises from very normal situations such as a breakup, trying a new dieting app, going to a hen party and a coping with griefuntil....|isbn=1803363932B0D321VJ76
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1394159544Tom Percival|title=Recycling for Dummies|author=Sarah WinklerThe Wrong Shoes
|rating=5
|genre=LifestyleConfident Readers|summary=Will''Recycling one ton s life is difficult, in a multitude of plastic can save up to 16.3 barrels of oilways. He is bullied because he has 'the wrong shoes, he has the wrong shoes because his dad can't work and doesn'Recycling one ton t have enough money for even the most basic of paper things like food, and his dad can save 17 trees from being cut down.'' If you send an apple core to landfillt work because he lost his job at the college, it will take between 6 months and 2 years to decompose. A glass bottle will take up to 1 million years. As was working a justcash-postin-WWII baby, I faced hand job on a dilemma: reducing, reusing building site and recycling is part of my DNAhad an accident. NEVER throw away anything Throw into that might mix the fact that his mum and dad are separated, and Will''possibly'' come s life seems bleak in handy now or in the futureevery direction. NEVER buy anything if you can cobble together something that would serve the purposeAnd yet, he still has a tiny amount of hope. Almost everything can be used one more time He is good at art, and any purchase must pass clings to the test moments of 'Is this absolutely essential?' On the other handjoy when he is drawing, I suspected I was guilty of wishcycling: assuming that something must be recyclable (toothpaste tubes - I'm looking feel like a light at you) and dropping it in the kerbside bin. Yesend of a long, I could go searching on the internet - and get conflicting advice - but what I needed was a recycling bibledark tunnel.s|isbn=1398527122
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Lauren St JohnSylvie Cathrall|title=Finding WonderA Letter to the Luminous Deep|rating=45|genre=Confident ReadersScience Fiction|summary=Roo's life has become almost impossibly difficult. Her mum died when she was young, and now she finds herself awoken in the middle of the night by the police banging on her door to tell her that her dad has dropped dead on his way to the corner shop There are few greater joys than a book which lives up to buy a lottery ticketcompelling premise. When asked what other family she has, she can only name her aunt, Joni, who she knows her dad didn't think very highly And this is one ofthem. But she has no one else, and so off she goes to live with her unreliable aunt. Things continue to get worse for Roo, as when she and Joni leave London in Joni's old campervan, it breaks down in the middle of nowhere and then bursts into flames! Poor Roo!|isbn=05713761690356522776
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=14483097430008517061|title=The Devil Stone (DCI Christine Caplan)Death in a Lonely Place|author=Caro RamsayStig Abell
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=In Former Metropolitan Police detective, Jake Johnson, has settled into his rustic life at Little Sky. There’s perhaps a little uncertainty about the village future of Cronchie on the West coast of Scotlandhis life with his vet girlfriend, Livia and her daughter Diana, five members as moving in together would mean a lot of a wealthy family are found murdered. compromise: 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? The only item missing from For the home is moment they’re enjoying life in the Devil Stone: myth says that if present and putting the stone is removed from Otterburn House, death will follow. The only suspects are known Satanists but in many ways, that's an easy conclusion given that two of them 'discovered' future on the body. The Senior Investigating Office is DCI Bob Oswald but when he disappears, DCI Christine Caplan is pulled in to 'shadow' himback burner.
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn= Kay Chronister1786482126|title= Desert Creatures|rating= 4|genre= Dystopian Fiction|summary= With a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is a robotic takeover, a world devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, this genre is a way for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. ''Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the fears that exist for humanity today. It is a shocking novel that still manages to find hope.|isbn=1803364998}}{{FrontpageThe Janus Stone (Dr Ruth Galloway)|author=Christopher Fowler|title=Word MonkeyElly Griffiths|rating=4.5|genre=AutobiographyCrime|summary= It's the first of August Builders were demolishing an old house in Norwich - the middle of a cool wet summer in East Anglia. I decided not site was going to swim at hold seventy-five 'luxury' apartments - when they discovered the pool in favour bones of going to my beach huta child beneath a doorway. The weather closed in, rain arrived, and I decided not to do that eitherThere was no skull. When I finished reading Was this booka ritual killing or murder? Inevitably, I realised it was because (a) I wanted to finish reading this book and (b) I did not want to do so anywhere near my shackDr Ruth Galloway finds herself working with DCI Harry Nelson. No spoiler alertsIt's difficult as Ruth knows, the dust jacket tells us who Christopher Fowler but Nelson doesn'was' – and t, that she is pregnant with his first chapter tells us about his terminal diagnosischild as a result of the one night they spent together some three months ago. There Her condition will be obvious before long, not least because Ruth is something very strange about being made prone to laugh by a man who repeatedly reminds you that he is dying, and you know he actually is at that point, because he doessudden bouts of sickness. He did.|isbn=0857529625
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=15290776990008551324|title=The Raging Storm Devil You Know (Two RiversD S Max Craigie)|author=Ann CleevesNeil Lancaster
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=''It's all bloody peculiar, isn't it, Sir?'' Well yes, it isunusual for anyone from the Hardie family to approach the police. Jem Rosco blew into Neither side likes or has any respect for the local pub one evening other. But Davie Hardie is struggling in prison and he's prepared to tell the middle police where the body of an autumn gale, stayed for about a month missing person is buried and then turned upwho was responsible for her death. This person, he promises, naked is someone big and dead, in a small boat, anchored in Scully Cove close to it will be worth the village of Greystone, in Devonpolice doing what he wants. Rosco had And what he wants is to be transferred to an open prison to serve the status remainder of a national treasure: a renowned adventurer, round the world sailor his sentence and all round ''celebrity''to get an early parole date. I Not much to ask, is it? The new Deputy Police Constable doesn't think so and she'nearly'' said 'alls even prepared to do the other thing that Hardie demanded -round good egg' but as we'll find out, he could be more than a little bit close make certain that DS Max Craigie and anyone who works with money and his background isnhim is kept well away from what't exactly an open books happening. Where did he get the money for his first boat? How did he finance the trip?
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B0CC9W7GLR0008405026|title=On A Stranger in the Beach: The Winter VisitorFamily (Maeve Kerrigan 11)|author=Chris Green and Jenny FiondaJane Casey
|rating=5
|genre=For SharingCrime|summary=Kit and Teal were just beginning to wonder whether it It's sixteen years since nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her bed one summer night. She was better to be at home, bored but warm, or frozen cold never found and building sand sculptures on a snowy beach when a large slab of silvery ice drifted onto the shoreline. On top of the ice was investigation ground to a polar bearhalt. As the ice bumped onto the sandNow, her mother, Helena, the bear woke and with wobbly legs moved from the iceher father are dead in their bed. Kit was all for making Initially, it looks like a run for it, straightforward murder/suicide but Teal knew there's something about the positioning of the bodies that the bear was hungry makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and gave him one apple and then anotherher boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. He obviously needed What looked as though it was going to be taken home on the bus an open-and given -shut case is now a good meal and somewhere to sleepcomplex double murder. What else would you do?Kerrigan is convinced that the explanation lies in Rosalie's disappearance: others (such as Derwent's boss, Una Burt) are less convinced.
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Claire North0571379877|title=House of OdysseusThe Kellerby Code|author=Jonny Sweet|rating=3.5|genre= Literary Fiction Crime|summary= ''What could matter more than love?'' The followEdward Jevons is a working-class young man, obsessed with his upper-up to the excellent class friends, Robert and Stanza. Robert''Ithaca'' picks up s a few months after where we left offtheatre director. In the palace of Odysseus He's also self-obsessed, with delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her husbanddemanding, who sailed handsome and entitled and uses Edward to war at Troy and then by divine intervention never returned home. As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying run errands for the throne of the Western Isleshim. Having survived – politically Edward has been in love with Stanza since their university days - and physical – the chaotic storm he's drunkenly confided how he feels to Robert. Most men in Robert's position would stay away from Stanza or tell Edward that Clytemnestra brought to Ithacaa relationship had begun between them but he's shores, Queen Penelope not like most men: Edward is on left to stumble upon the brink two of them kissing in a fragile peacedark passageway. One that shatters however with the return of Orestes, King of Mycenae, and his sister Elektra, seeking refuge.|isbn=0356516075
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1529427045Jo Callaghan|title=The Girl in the Eagle's Talons|author=Karin SmirnoffLeave No Trace|rating=54
|genre=Crime
|summary=''Life has more to offer than people - prime numbers for example''. Lisbeth Salander has headed north to When a man is found crucified on the small town top of Gasskasa hill in Nuneaton, where DCS Kat Frank finds herself assigned to the so-far-untapped natural resources of case alongside her sidekick, the area have sparked a gold rushAI detective Lock. The criminal underworld has not It's their first live case together, having previously been slow in coming forwardvery successful with several cold cases. Salander's niece's mother But when there is a second body found crucified a few days later, Kat is the latest woman in the area to have vanished without trace. It was only suddenly struggling with reluctance that Salander became her niece's guardian but it quickly becomes obvious a potential serial killer and a very high profile case that Svala is draws a remarkably gifted teenager who's unaware lot of unwanted attention to their AI Future Policing project. Will they be able to solve the part Salander played case in her father's death.time, or will Kat find herself taken off the case and, potentially, out of a career?|isbn=139851120X
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B0CCCPJJ5B1399613073|title=The Last Person in the WorldMoral Injuries|author=Matthew TreeChristie Watson|rating=4.5
|genre=Thrillers
|summary=Our narrator was a scholarship Olivia, Laura and Anjali met on the first day boy at the London-based public of medical school where he met Ralph Finnsand their friendship would keep them inseparable for a quarter of a century. It was an unusual relationship as Ralph was Olivia is ruthlessly ambitious, which is a boarder and had money bonus when you aim to throw around on be a cardiothoracic surgeon. Rolex watch, vintage wines Laura is a perfectionist and a state-trauma doctor. Anjali is the free spirit ofthe group and she becomes a GP. When we first meet them they're at a drug and alcohol-fuelled party and it's going to end in tragedy. We don't know who suffered thetragedy or the consequences. Twenty-art sound system. Both were probably quite surprised when they became almost five years later there will be an eerily similar event that will impact the three friends and certainly more than acquaintances. Finns had no intention of going on to UniversityThis time, unlike our storyteller it's their teenage children who had are involved.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0241636604|title=The Trading Game: A Confession|author=Gary Stevenson|rating=4.5|genre=Autobiography|summary=If you were to bring up an image of a place at Wolverton College city banker in Wellingfordyour mind, the UKyou's third most prestigious universityre unlikely to think of someone like Gary Stevenson. Before going up A hoodie and jeans replaces the pin-stripe suit and his background is the East End, where he was familiar with violence, poverty and injustice. There was no posh public school on his CV - but he had been to the London School of Economics. Stevenson is bright - extremely bright - and he took up has a loose invitation facility with numbers which most of us can only envy. He also realised that most rich people expect poor people to visit Ralph be stupid. It was his ability at his homewhat was, essentially, a card game which got him an internship with Citibank. Eventually, Clouds Manor in West Dorsetthis turned into permanent employment as a trader.
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Dean Koontz1035021803|title=The House at the End of the WorldAntique Hunter's Guide to Murder|author=C L Miller|rating=43.5|genre=ThrillersCrime|summary=When you experience overwhelming tragedy and feel that there is no one on your side, you can either suck it up, saddle up and ride on or you can retreat It's twenty years since Freya Lockwood has been back to your own private fortress on an island that sits snugly in a small chain of tiny dots on the map and live out your days in peace and solitudeEnglish country village where she grew up. ThatShe's what Katie thought she was doing when she shut down back now because of a request for help from her old life to start afresh on Jacobbeloved aunt, Carole. Freya's former mentor and Carole's Ladder; close friend, Arthur Crockleford, is dead and all would have the circumstances seem suspicious, to say the least. Arthur was the reason why Freya had not been back to the aforementioned peace and solitude village: Arthur, she feels, let her down badly. Even though they were it in business together as antique hunters, she has not for felt able to be near the man or pursue the profession she loved. After the pesky US Government occupying Ringrocksplit, she worked in a cafe, met and married James (on the neighbouring island and perpetrating all manner of mischief in rebound from the name love of science her life, who was murdered) and quite possibly bringing about the end of all mankindFreya and James have now divorced.|isbn=1662453159
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=T KingfisherAllTomorrowsFutureCover|title=ThornhedgeAll Tomorrow's Futures: Fictions that Disrupt|author=Benjamin Greenaway and Stephen Oram (Editors)
|rating=5
|genre=FantasyScience Fiction|summary=''You had a right Opening up new ways of thinking about the shape of things to retake your placecome.''
T KingfisherI's latest novella is a lovely reimagining of a fairytale ve heard it said that 'technology' is well known and well belovedwhat happens after you're eighteen. But whilst Well, I must confess that there is have been more than a princess trapped few decades of technology in a tower, sleeping under an eternal enchantment, Thornhedge my lifetime. I've kept up reasonably well with what's advantageous to me but I'm left with the feeling that it's all getting away from me. Some of it is not her story- frankly - quite frightening. Instead, our protagonist is Toadling Of course, I could research the possibilities and the probabilities and end up down rabbit holes without really understanding whether I'm reading someone who was stolen away by fairies when she was a new-born baby and secreted away to knows what they're talking about or the land of fairie where her childhood was spent being taught how to draw magic from her veins latest conspiracy theorist. I needed people I knew I could trust and cast spellswho could deliver information in a way I could understand.|isbn=1803364238
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor= B0CCCVRSGXSunny Singh|title=Stories 2|author=Richard F WalkerHotel Arcadia|rating=43.5|genre=Short StoriesThrillers |summary= This The Hotel Arcadia is Richard F Walker's second volume of short storiesa luxury hotel in an unnamed city that has suddenly been violently taken over by a terrorist group. There Hiding from the terrorists who are thirteen in all rampaging through, killing everyone on site, there is Sam, a wartime photographer and I took something from each of themAbhi, the hotel manager. There isn't a single one that doesn't deserve As Abhi continues to try to be among care remotely for the others or brings down residents who are still alive in the overall quality. It can hotel, he forms a bond with Sam who refuses to be tricky cowed by events, and keeps on venturing out of her room to try to review short stories without giving too much awaycapture what's happened through her photography. Although they only ever talk over the phone, so I'll just pick two their friendship grows as Abhi tries to talk about help her keep safe and I think they give a general flavourboth wait to see if they will be rescued before they are discovered by the terrorists.|isbn=086154742X
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=17876366071529153298|title=The TrapList of Suspicious Things|author=Catherine Ryan HowardJennie Godfrey|rating=4.5|genre=CrimeGeneral Fiction|summary=It's a scene replicated all too often in the early hours of the morning1979 and Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. (A woman? I mean, honestly...) She's not what's worrying Miv's family, though. Drunken revellers spilling out of clubs and looking for a way to get homeWomen have been disappearing. Some are lucky and manage Well, they've been murdered, but to get one of the few taxis availablehave 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. Others squash onto the night bus Miv's upset because she's overheard that will only go as far as one of her father wants to move the outlying villagesfamily 'Down South'. The woman all regret the 'taxi problemWhen you're from Yorkshire, Down South is a frightening, foreign place, particularly in the light of 'the missing women'best avoided. For one young womanMiv, the final stop on the bus leaves move would mean leaving her a long way short of her homebest friend, Sharon, and she'll do anything to prevent that. She had intended to ring someone to come and collect her - but her phone's dead. The bus had driven off before she had not worried about the chance to beg the bus driver to let dangers or that her use his. ThereMum's no option but stopped talking - to start walking - unsuitably clothed and in high-heeled shoesanyone.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=14059571741398524085|title=A Death at the PartyHas Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter?|author=Amy StuartNicci French|rating=45
|genre=Crime
|summary=From the first page, we know that Nadine WalshCharlotte Salter was expected at her husband's fiftieth birthday party will not end wellbut never turned up. The victim Her children, sons Niall, Paul and Ollie and her daughter, Etty. are all worried but - a man strangely - her husband, Alec, is dying when we first meet him not. Shortly afterwards, Etty and Nadine consciously makes no effort to call Greg, find the body of Greg's father, Duncan Ackerley, in the ambulance he so desperately needsriver. What we donIt was an easy assumption for the police to make that Duncan had murdered Charlie and then committed suicide when he couldn't know is who stand the man is or why Nadine prefers to have him dieguilt. IThe Salter children are not convinced but there'd better give you a s little more background so that you else they can understand do but get on with their lives and wonder about what's happeningreally happened.
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Tania Unsworth1035906708|title=Nowhere IslandDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=We tend to think of Maria Callas as Greek, but she was born to Greek parents in Manhattan, New York, in December 1923 and only moved to Athens when she was thirteen. Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to 'Callas' to make it more manageable in the States. When she was back in Athens - supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for her voice - she was raised under the Nazi occupation by a mother who mercilessly exploited her and made no secret of her preference for her elder sister, Jackie.
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Christopher Edge
|title=Black Hole Cinema Club
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Meet GilLucas and his friends are all booked in for a movie marathon at their local cinema, a place that has the nickname of 'The Black Hole'. Just twelveAll big movie fans, he is so determined they're looking forward to escape lots of exciting films, and many, many snacks! However, as the care system – the system movie starts, they very quickly realise that constantly puts him in futureless places that are not homes – and find a home for himself. He something about this new film format is en route to yet another fosterervery different, when he jumps and they are swept up into an anonymous car, and lets it ride him to his futureadventure they couldn't even imagine. That future seems But as they lurch from one film genre to be in jeopardy when someone steals his one bag of belongings – but that someone lives with his brother in a camp the next, can they figure out what on earth is going on an island between ? Will they ever get back to the two directions of a motorwaycinema, a place inaccessible and definitely ignored enough to provide for their safety and seclusion. Them, and a mute girl also finding a home there, albeit so much more successfully. Over a few weeks we see if their oddball destinies can combine, or if this is one place where life as we would want it just would not work…real lives?|isbn=18045400801839942738
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0008530025Rachel Greenlaw|title=Murder in the Family|author=Cara HunterCompass and Blade|rating=43.5|genre=CrimeTeens|summary=It was in December 2003 that fifteen-year-old Maura Howard came home and found ''I can hear the body song of her stepfather, Luke Ryder, in the garden of their West London homesea. He had an injury on the back The call of his head which could have happened if he'd slipped down the steps but the vicious beating his face had taken was obviously deliberate. Twenty years laterdeep, no one has been charged with his murder and it's now the subject of ''Infamous'', a true-crime show. A group of experts has been brought together to review the evidence and to take the investigation furtheranswering beat in my heart. More to the point, they're going to do this live on camera, episode by episode. There's no dump of the whole box set - and no shortage of cliffhangers. It's compelling viewing.}}
{{Frontpage|author=Judith Eagle|title=The Stolen Songbird|rating=4|genre=Confident Readers|summary=Caro's motherRosevear, a world-famous whistlerremote and partially forgotten island, has failed to return home from her recent work trip abroad survives on luring ships into the rocks and is now missingplundering the wrecks. Her other Mira, like her mother, Ronniebefore her, is having to go up North to take care one of her sister the seven who is unwellswim out to survey the ruins – rescuing any survivors and any treasure that lies within. So who is going But when the Council Watch lays a trap to look after Caro? Sent to stay with Gamend the wrecking, someone Caro has heard her mother despises, she feels frustrated they capture the island's leader and confused and worriedMira's father. All her summer holiday plans of building herself some equipment to practise her gymnastics are brought Desperate to save him from death, Mira makes a bargain with a halt whilst she wreck survivor who is as charming as he is stuck inside this staid old Victorian lady's house, along secretive and with an orphan boy, Albieonly coordinates to guide her, who is living there too. But she soon finds herself caught up sets off in search of a mysteryfamily secret that lies buried deep in the sea. With only nine days to unearth what might save her father, as she discovers a painting her journey takes her from the watched streets of foreign islands to the heart of a bird hidden away inside her mumthe smuggler's old suitcaseterritory, and all across London a fearsome gang called Mira must be determined to stop at nothing to save the Snakes are thieving artworks future of her home and terrorising people. Is the painting somehow linked to the gang? And what has happened to Caro's mother? Is ones she somehow involved in the mystery too?holds most dear.|isbn=05713631480008664730
}}