Hello from The Bookbag, a book review site, featuring books from all the many walks of literary life - fiction, biography, crime, cookery and anything else that takes our fancy. At Bookbag Towers the bookbag sits at the side of the desk. It'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, 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 author interviews, and all sorts of top tens - all of which you can find on our features page. If you're stuck for something to read, check out the recommendations page.
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Saving Max by Antoinette Van Huegten
The one-page Prologue sees us at the scene of the crime. Two teenagers and a lot of blood - one of whom will not survive. Seems like an open-and-shut case - but is it? We then go back in time to a medical consulting room in downtown New York. Hot-shot lawyer and time-pressed, single mum Danielle is trying to understand her severely disabled son. Even allowing for the normal teenage angst and racing hormones, things are not good at home. She knows it. Max knows it. And the medical profession at large, know it. Something needs to be done before things get out of hand. Full review...
1923: A Memoir by Harry Leslie Smith
Harry Leslie Smith was born in 1923. If you're wondering about the title – that's the explanation – and although it's when Harry began his life it's not where his story began. He takes us back some years before to his father's family with its roots in mining and a sideline in running a pub which was to make them comfortable if not wealthy. Harry's father was middle-aged when he got involved with Lillian, a teenage girl. Unsurprisingly his family were not impressed or welcoming when the pair married because a child was on the way. Albert Smith expected that he would inherit the pub when his father died, but it passed to his uncle and so began a life of disappointment for Albert and Lillian. Full review...
The Kissing Game by Aidan Chambers
You don't see that many short story collections in YA circles. But when they do appear, you often wonder why there aren't more of them. And this is absolutely the case with The Kissing Game. Ranging from short pieces of flash fiction to "proper" short stories, each one will incite, surprise and stimulate. Full review...
The Sex Diaries Project by Arianne Cohen
It's often said 'there's nowt so queer as folk'. Surely this should be qualified as 'there's nowt so queer as folks' sex lives'. Arianne Cohen has made a major online database of testimony from people about their thoughts regarding sex - having it, not having it, having it with whom they're with, having it with those whom they're not with. And in every sense, the results can be exceedingly queer. Full review...
The Demon Trappers: Forsaken by Jana Oliver
You know that old saying, 'never judge a book by its cover', I'm guilty of it. I always fall into the trap – if the cover isn't amazing I pre-judge. And that's exactly what I did when this book landed on my doorstep – I took one look at the broody vamp looking girl on the cover and thought 'emo'. How wrong I was. Full review...
Life by Keith Richards
Nearly forty years ago, Keith Richards was considered the next most likely rock'n'roll star to succumb to drugs. The man has defied all the odds in staying alive, and continuing to do what he has been doing for almost half a century. In the process, he has earned the sometimes grudging, sometimes unqualified respect of those who would once never given him the time of day. Full review...
Getting Started in DSLR Photography by Daniel Lezano
The magazine-style layout of this 'magbook' (an ugly, but apt, term for the format) lends itself particularly well to the subject in hand, not least as the glossy pages beautifully illustrate the effects on the photographs that the publishers are showing. It's published by the team at 'Digital SLR Photography' magazine and it reads like a collection of the most useful articles published therein, particularly for the novice to SLR photography. Full review...
Travelling Matchmaker: Belinda Goes to Bath by M C Beaton
Miss Hannah Pym was a housekeeper until recently but has now received a legacy which lifts her out of the servant classes and enables her to fulfil her long-held wish to travel. It might be winter but Miss Pym is taking the stagecoach to The Bath (as the upper classes call the city) just for the adventure. The company in the stage is joined by an obviously well-bred young woman, Miss Belinda Earle who, accompanied by her companion, is being sent in disgrace to stay with her aunt. Full review...
Brainjack by Brian Falkner
Sam comes to the attention of the CDD (Homeland Security's Cyber Defence Division) when he crashes the entire American internet network because he wants a top spec laptop and one of those super-cool new neural headsets, but doesn't have the money to buy them. Thinking he's been given a hacker network initiation test, Sam then successfully penetrates the White House's security system. It's all the CDD needs to know, and Sam finds himself sprung from federal custody and recruited. Full review...
Scarcity and Frontiers: How Economies Have Developed Through Natural Resource Exploitation by Edward B Barbier
Scarcity and Frontiers is an ambitious, fascinating book that examines how the world's economies have developed by exploiting natural resources. Throughout history, states have responded to natural resource scarcity by developing new frontiers, hence the title. The book begins with the development of agriculture along the banks of the Nile and runs right through to the present day, finally questioning whether we are entering a new era of natural resource scarcity. Full review...
The Lake of Dreams by Kim Edwards
The book opens with a lovely and intriguing sentence - 'My name is Lucy Jarrett and before I knew about the girl in the window ... I found myself living in a village near the sea in Japan.' Who could fail to be drawn into a story after reading that, I thought. I was hooked immediately. Edwards gives us a fleeting taste of life in Japan, particularly the importance (almost reverence) of nature and gardens, public and private. This sets the tone for the novel which is captivating and interesting, but put together beautifully, unhurried. Full review...
Long Lankin by Lindsey Barraclough
Long Lankin is a folk ballad about a bogeyman that lives on the edge of society in wild, desolate places and preys upon children. In this story, he lives out in East Anglia in the marshes outside the village of Bryers Guerdon. It's post-war Britain and when Cora's mother suffers a breakdown, she and her younger sister Mimi are sent to stay with their Auntie Ida in the manor house there. They don't know it - Auntie Ida does, though - but Long Lankin is attracted to young children. Full review...
Coconut Unlimited by Nikesh Shukla
It is the early 1990's and Amit, Anand and Nishant are three young Asian boys in an all white private school. As such they are considered massively uncool by default. Too bad then that their Asian peers in the North London Gujarati enclave known as Harrow think that they are a bunch of stuck up toffs. Soft. Weak. No street cred whatsoever. Worst of all they are labelled as 'Coconuts' (brown on the outside, white on the inside). There's only one thing for it - start a hip-hop band. The fact that they don't have any songs, talent or initially any idea what hip-hop actually sounds like isn't really a problem. As everyone knows, forming a band makes you 'pretty cool' and after that the girls simply fall at your feet. Full review...
Hamish Macbeth: Death of a Sweep by M C Beaton
Back in the mid-1990s, despite the encroachment of satellite and cable, Sunday evenings still seemed to be a time to sit down to watch the Beeb or ITV with the family for a dose of gentle viewing. "Drama" is too strong a word for the programmes that aired in that prime time slot (somewhere between 7pm and 9pm). Technically, they were dramas – but they were laced with humour, protected from over-exposure to violence or sex or the truly dark underbelly of the stories they actually told. Full review...
Solar by Ian McEwan
Ian McEwan's Michael Beard is possibly the most ignoble Nobel prize winner there has ever been. He's gloriously obnoxious and hateful in almost every way. Since winning his Nobel prize he has rested on his Nobel laurels and has traded on his reputation rather than his achievements in his specialist area of physics. When this book starts, he's on his fifth wife having managed to wreck all previous marriages by his compulsive infidelity. He's short, balding, ageing, obese, bigoted, and something of an opportunist, particularly if it means he can be lazy and get away with something. In short, which he is, he's morally vacant. But what makes Beard an effective creation, and what carries us along with him despite his obnoxiousness, is that he knows all these things about himself. He's rather like Shakespeare's Richard III - he's honest with the reader and himself about what he is doing. Sure he would like to change, but talking about it isn't doing it, is it? Full review...
Love is on the Air by Jane Moore
'Love is on the Air' is all about trying to find the perfect relationship. Cam knows that things are not right with her boyfriend Dean but after six years together, she is afraid to do anything about it. They are behaving like an old married couple and they are not even married. Therefore, when she goes on holiday with friends Saira and Ella, she is somewhat vulnerable and so it is no surprise that she is attracted to fun loving single dad Tom. After a few drinks one thing leads to another but the next day Cam is racked with guilt. She resolves to forget about Tom and to make more effort in her relationship with Dean. Full review...
Across Many Mountains: Three Daughters of Tibet by Yangzom Brauen and Katy Darbyshire
Fleeing your home can never be easy but when you are six, your only shoes are roughly hand-sewn and stuffed with hay, and your route is over the world's highest mountain range then it must be particularly challenging. This was the journey that Yangzom Brauen's mother took with her parents when they fled Tibet after the Chinese invasion of 1959. They were leaving behind all that they knew and travelling to India in the hope that they could find sanctuary in the country where the Dalai Lama was in exile. 'Across Many Mountains' is their story. Full review...
Mr Bishop and the Actress by Janet Mullany
Strait-laced Harry Bishop has just started his new job as steward in Lord Shad's ramshackle household when he is sent off to London to sort out Shad's errant relation Charlie and his debts. Here he meets actress Sophie Wallace, Charlie's mistress, who now finds herself set adrift from her protector with only a few dresses and a rather ostentatious bed to her name. Full review...
Kama Sutra by Vatsyayana
Kama Sutra, then... What could I possibly say to introduce it that you don't already know or think you know?
For all that Kama Sutra is, it's no longer a guide to the art of pleasure. It's a fascinating historical document, and undoubtedly influential, but it's very much of its time and of its society. Try to follow all its suggestions and at best you'd never get laid again; at worst, you'll be up on a rape charge within a week. (After sending the nurse's daughter away, he takes the girl's maidenhead while she is alone, asleep and out of her senses...) Full review...
The Story of Us by Felicity Everett
Back in 1982 there were five girls sharing a house in Brighton. Their course works takes second place to demos, parties and no-strings sex for Stella, Bridget, Vinnie, Maxine and Nell but it's against the background of Greenham Common and the miners' strike that the girls realise that life is not quite as straight forward as they imagined. They will forge friendships in Albacore Street which might occasionally be stretched to the limit, but they'll never be completely forgotten. Having met them back in the eighties we meet them again two decades later when they're struggling to cope with all that life throws at them. Full review...
Secret of the Sands by Sara Sheridan
It's the summer of the year 1883. William Wilberforce, hero of the anti-slavery movement is enjoying a gentleman's life in London. But, far away in Abyssinia, things are far from rosy for the local people. The situation facing them is ugly and very dangerous - slavers (what a horrible word) are in the area and with the stark sentence 'It takes only seven minutes to capture almost everyone' we get the picture, loud and clear. Sheridan wastes no time in giving her readers the heart-wrenching details: the elderly are separated and treated with very little dignity (they're almost worthless, not worth the bother of transportation), the fit and healthy are singled out and lastly, the young are segregated. They are 'prized' most of all. And into this latter category falls a pretty 17 year old girl called Zena. She is spirited. She will not show any fear. She thinks for a split second of running but is intelligent enough to know that she'd be beaten severely for her sheer insubordination and probably even killed on the spot. But behind her expressive eyes she is thinking and plotting ... Full review...
Big Big Secrets by Robert Arley and Marisa Lewis
When Jake's science experiment goes wrong he isn't faced with a room full of bad-smelling chemicals and a D grade as most students would be - instead he discovers that he has shrunk his teacher to the size of a Barbie doll! His friend, Annie, gets roped in to help him take care of his newly miniaturised teacher, keeping it a secret and trying, desperately, to find a way to reverse the process... Full review...
Mole's Babies by David Bedford and Rosalind Beardshaw
Morris the mole is about to become a first time dad. Excited and eager to be a good parent he goes looking around the farmyard to see the best way to make his babies happy. He tries to hop like a bunny, splash like a duck, and flap like a bird, but each attempt fails and Morris becomes worried about how he will ever manage to make his little babies happy. Full review...
Rose and the Silver Ghost by Holly Webb
This is the fourth volume in the Rose series, and its blend of magic, peril and excitement has proved a winning formula. Rose herself is a delightful character, combining the down-to-earth, practical qualities one would hope for in a housemaid with growing magical powers and a mysterious past. In this story, she discovers there may be a way to find out what happened to her mother a decade before, but her path is, as usual, fraught with danger and thrills. Full review...
Private: The Book of Spells by Kate Brian
Following in her older sister's footsteps after May's return from the exclusive Billings School for Girls to marry the handsome George Thackery III, Eliza Williams is expecting that everyone at the school will remember her sister with affection. But Theresa Billings – as powerful as her name suggests – clearly wasn't a great friend of May's, and Eliza must navigate the rivalries and friendships of school as she tries to settle in. Then the girls find a spell book, and bond over frivolous magic as they help each other and embarrass people they dislike. What could possibly go wrong? Full review...
Entangled by Cat Clarke
The story starts on day three of Grace's imprisonment by a kidnapper. She's been given pen and paper to explain her recent actions, including falling in love with her boyfriend Nat, the ups and downs of her friendship with Sal, her self-harming, and her attempted suicide. As we learn more and more about Grace's life, the one thing we're never quite sure of is where the mysterious Ethan, her kidnapper, fits into things… Full review...
Furnace: Execution by Alexander Gordon Smith
And so to the end. Alex and his closest friends have escaped the Furnace Penitentiary, that mile-deep hell-hole cum nightmare scientific experiment writ large. He's arisen to find the country in tatters, as the nasty creatures born there are in charge and decimating the population. There is only one thing to do - kill the man responsible. And Alex, eight feet tall, with an obsidian blade for an arm and muscles upon his muscles, will still face his hardest battle yet. Full review...
Tyranny by Lesley Fairfield
As Tyranny shakes her - I TOLD you not to eat! You are TOO fat! - Anna thinks back. She used to take joy in life. She used to dream of a bright future - a career, boyfriends, children - but it all went wrong when she hit puberty. She wasn't keen on on the curves of her new, more womanly body. When she looked in the mirror, she didn't see an hourglass figure developing; she saw fat and flab. Deaf to the warnings of her parents and her boyfriend, she listened to Tyranny and entered into the desperate, downward cycle of anorexia. Full review...
Breaking Bamboo by Tim Murgatroyd
Summer 1266, Nancheng in Central China and Doctor Shih is struggling to cope with the monsoon season, when he gets a midnight summons to Peacock Hill: ancient palace complex and now home to the Pacification Commissioner, his wife, concubines and various officials and hangers on. Wang Ting-bo's only son and heir is apparently dying and all the great and good of the medical guild are unable to save him. They recommend the employment of magicians in the hope of driving out the evil spirits. Full review...
Sabina Kane: Green-Eyed Demon by Jaye Wells
Sabina Kane is on a mission. Her evil grandmother Lavinia, Alpha Domina of the whole vampire race, has kidnapped her twin sister from beneath Sabina's nose, and Sabina isn't about to let her get away with it. Not this time. Sabina knows time is short if she's to rescue Maisie alive and put an end to Lavinia once and for all, but before she can storm in and kick ass, she has to find her. And that's no easy task. Full review...
Running in Heels by Helen Bailey
You'd like Daisy Davenport. Her father might be rich but she's a lot nicer than most fourteen year old girls. She's perhaps a little too attached to the good things in life, such as her mother's Louboutins and her own cracked silver Mulberry bag, but as she's always had that sort of lifestyle it's easy to understand why she sees nothing wrong in them. And besides everyone else at her private school has the same sort of lifestyle: some girls don't even look the side you're on unless you have a swimming pool at home. Full review...
Watson's Afghan Adventure by Kieran McMullen
In truth, I could write this review in two words = (oh dear) and be done with it. But I'd better be fair and put some meat on those bones. Where to start... With its dark, almost apocalyptic front cover this book looks very much like a 'man's' book. That's fine but is this what McMullen wants? Is he happy to discard some or even perhaps most of the female reading population in one fell swoop? It appears so. Now I know that this is a historical yarn but even so, given the current situation in Afghanistan with British and American Troops, the word 'adventure' in the title doesn't sit easily with me. If I saw this book on a bookstore shelf, I would feel a little uncomfortable. Not a good start ... and it's generally downhill from here, I'm afraid. Full review...
February by Lisa Moore
When the phone rings in the middle of the night, Helen thinks it must be bad news again. Nearly 27 years ago her oil rig worker husband died at sea on 14 February 1982 (Valentine's Day), leaving her with three children and a fourth on the way. This time, no one has died – her son John is travelling round the world but a woman he had a brief fling with is pregnant with his baby. He was phoning from Singapore. What should he do? Full review...
Troubletwisters by Garth Nix and Sean Williams
Jack and Jaide Shield, twins, are living perfectly normal lives until a brief visit from their elusive father sparks an unexplainable, chaotic, reality-bending storm that destroys their home and introduces them to the mysterious world of the Wardens, a group gifted with diverse powers, and their perpetual struggle against a force known only as The Evil. As young Wardens, or Troubletwisters, just growing into their Gifts, the pair struggle to make sense of the chaos that surrounds them and discover the true nature of their heritage. Full review...
The A-Men by John Trevillian
In this future, man has developed the technology to live in space. With the Earth's resources all but depleted and swathes of civil unrest, space stations become desirable real estate. If you've got enough money, you live offworld. Most of the civil institutions have decamped, too, including all the people with influence and power. This leaves Earth a lawless pace, full of poverty and dominated by violent gangs. Turf wars abound and life on the planet is nasty, brutish, and often very short. Full review...
Maxwell's Island by M J Trow
Maxwell had never been intending to go to the Isle of Wight but when his colleague went sick at the last moment he volunteered to take her place on the school trip. His wife, Jacquie wasn't entirely convinced that this lived up to the family holiday they'd been planning, but she went along too. There were quite a few adults, as there have to be nowadays, including Medlicott, the new head of art, and his wife. Jacquie feels that it's even less of a holiday for her when Medlicott's wife goes missing and she's forced to be the policewoman she'd hoped to leave at home. Full review...
The Chronicles of Avantia: Call to War by Adam Blade
Our three heroes and their magical giant beasts are still trying to snatch the quarters of an ancient, power-giving mask from the clutches of their realm's enemy. They're not doing too well in the chase, for he has two of the bits, and even his assistant they thought dead at the end of book one is still around. Can they have any luck this third time of asking, even when their country is being ravaged, turning once-helpful villagers against their quest, and their enemies are getting stronger by the battle? Full review...
The Last Days of Richard III by John Ashdown-Hill
The controversy surrounding King Richard III has meant that there have been far more biographies about him than on any other pre-Tudor monarch, some extremely partisan in exonerating him of the crimes laid at his door, some (a minority, it seems) more than keen to endorse the Shakespearean portrait of a fiend in human shape, and others steering a middle course. Full review...
Ekaterinburg: The Last Days of the Romanovs by Helen Rappaport
The city of Ekaterinburg was once regarded as imperial Russia's gateway to the east. In 1918 it became symbolic with one of the most savage executions, or might one say liquidations, ever recorded in history – the cold-blooded annihilation of the former Tsar Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra, their children, the last remaining servants who had stayed with them in captivity, and their pet dogs. Full review...
The Dead Tracks by Tim Weaver
At over 500 pages this book covers a lot of ground. I immediately took to Weaver's style. Plain, not showy or over-flowery, just sensible words telling a story. Conversational almost, as if he were telling it over the breakfast table, so that even as early as page one, I knew that I was in for a decent read. PI David Raker has a troubled past and a rather sad personal life so he puts 110% into his work - and then some, in order to try and dull his own pain. But does this strategy work? He's not unattractive to women but you can just tell he's not all that interested. A microwaved dinner for one is the order of the day and anyway, the unsocial hours that his job warrant don't make for an active social life. I liked him straight away and no, I didn't feel the need to feel sorry for him. Full review...