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Want to find out more [[About Us|about us]]? __NOTOC__ ==The Best New Books== '''For Read [[:Category:New Reviews|new features reviews by category]]. '''<br> '''Read [[:Category:Features|click herethe latest features]].'''__NOTOC__'''Read [[Forthcoming Publications|reviews of books about to be published]].{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Rick YanceyTom Percival|title=The Monstrumologist: The Terror BeneathWrong Shoes|rating=45
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=In late 19th century AmericaWill's life is difficult, young Will Henry in a multitude of ways. He is bullied because he has been the apprentice of 'the sternwrong shoes', forbidding Dr Warthrop since he has the death of wrong shoes because his parents, who were also employed by dad can't work and doesn't have enough money for even the doctor. The twelve year old boy has seen many most basic of things in like food, and his dad can't work because he lost his service to job at the monstrumologist college, was working a cash- a specialist in monsters - but nothing can prepare him for the fateful day when hand job on a building site and had an elderly grave robber brings accident. Throw into that mix the doctor fact that his mum and dad are separated, and Will's life seems bleak in every direction. And yet, he still has a tiny amount of hope. He is good at art, and clings to the twin corpses moments of joy when he is drawing, that feel like a young girl and light at the headless creature with fangs in his chest who had tried to feast on herend of a long, dark tunnel.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>184738546X</amazonuk>1398527122
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Stella WhitelawSylvie Cathrall|title=Midsummer MadnessA Letter to the Luminous Deep|rating=45|genre=Women's Science Fiction|summary=You'll like Sophie Gresham. She wanted to be an actress but suffers from paralysing stage fright and when the side effects became too much for her she worked behind the scenes. She's There are few greater joys than a very good prompt despite the fact that you need to wrap book which lives up very warmly to survive in the prompt corner she loves her job and most of the cast in the theatre company. It's a bit of a shock though when she realises that the guest producer from New York is Joe Harrison, the man she helped out when he had nothing to eat and nowhere to sleep. Sophie was a little softer in those days – in the meantime she's had to develop a protective shellcompelling premise.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0709089147</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Bonnie Greer|title=Obama Music|rating=3|genre=History|summary=This is an interesting read, but unless I'm missing something, the focus of the book seems a little difficult to grasp. It's best if I start with the author's intentions as set out in her Prologue. It And this is a mixture one of tales of her own life growing up on the South Side, she writes, interspersed with stories and observations about Obama, linking it with the music, musicians and music scene, past and present, including hip hop, country, classical, and rock'n'roll. All of these, she notes, were heard on the President's Inauguration Day. To them she adds the blues, gospel, soul and jazz of the South Side, when the people began to build the great institutions and great solidarity that enabled him to become the most powerful man on the planet.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1906558248</amazonuk>0356522776
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=P J Parrish0008517061|title=Dead of WinterDeath in a Lonely Place|author=Stig Abell
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=Loon LakeFormer Metropolitan Police detective, Michigan is picture-postcard pretty – an idyll that sits serenely and snugly in the midst of a pine-peppered winter wonderlandJake Johnson, has settled into his rustic life at Little Sky. Louis Kincaid needs There’s perhaps a little serenity 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: does Jake give up his off-grid and relaxing life and on arrival to move in Loon Lake he feels almost as if he has come home. Life has with Livia or does Livia move to Little Sky despite her reservations about whether or not been easy this is the future she wants for Kincaid. herself and her daughter? A troubled, unhappy child of mixed race, passed around various institutions For the moment they’re enjoying life in the present and foster homes, Louis figures that if he is going to put some integrity putting the future on the back into the world, he will need to wear a badge to do itburner.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847391346</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Russell Celyn Jones1786482126|title=The Ninth Wave Janus Stone (New Stories from the MabinogionDr Ruth Galloway) |author=Elly Griffiths
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary FictionCrime|summary=Pwyll rules a medieval-style fiefdom Builders were demolishing an old house in a postNorwich -climate change Wales. Life is different in many ways the site was going to hold seventy- therefive 's a newluxury' apartments -but-old social order built on feudalism and horsepower is when they discovered the main means bones of transporta child beneath a doorway. There was no skull. Was this a ritual killing or murder? Inevitably, Dr Ruth Galloway finds herself working with DCI Harry Nelson. But in many ways it It's much difficult as Ruth knows, but Nelson doesn't, that she is pregnant with his child as a result of the same - people still fight one anothernight they spent together some three months ago. Her condition will be obvious before long, towns still have sink estates, rich boys still have too much time on their hands and precious little meaning in their livesnot least because Ruth is prone to sudden bouts of sickness. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1854115146</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Owen Sheers0008551324|title=White Ravens The Devil You Know (New Stories from the MabinogionD S Max Craigie)|author=Neil Lancaster
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary FictionCrime|summary=In It's unusual for anyone from the old tale, Branwen Hardie family to approach the police. Neither side likes or has any respect for the other. But Davie Hardie is struggling in prison and he's prepared to tell the sister police where the body of Bendigeidfran - a missing person is buried and who was responsible for her death. This person, he promises, is someone big and it will be worth the giant King of Britainpolice doing what he wants. She marries And what he wants is to be transferred to an open prison to serve the King remainder of Irelandhis sentence and to get an early parole date. Not much to ask, who is it? The new Deputy Police Constable doesn't treat think so and she's even prepared to do the other thing that Hardie demanded - make certain that DS Max Craigie and anyone who works with him is kept well away from what's happening.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0008405026|title=A Stranger in the Family (Maeve Kerrigan 11)|author=Jane Casey|rating=5|genre=Crime|summary=It's sixteen years since nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her wellbed one summer night. She manages was never found and the investigation ground to send Bendigeidfran a message via a tamed starling and war and killings ensuehalt. In this new tale Now, a young girl has just walked away from her brothers whomother, Helena, and her father are dead in their bed. Initially, it looks like a straightforward murder/suicide but there's something about the wake positioning of the devastating foot bodies that makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and mouth outbreak, are despoiling their heritage by rustling and illegally slaughtering sheepher boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. She meets What looked as though it was going to be an old man who tells her open-and-shut case is now a story involving complex double murder. Kerrigan is convinced that the superstitions about the ravens explanation lies in the Tower of LondonRosalie's disappearance: others (such as Derwent's boss, propaganda work during World War II, and an equally doomed love affairUna Burt) are less convinced. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1854115030</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jennifer Bohnet0571379877|title=Follow Your StarThe Kellerby Code|author=Jonny Sweet
|rating=3.5
|genre=Women's FictionCrime|summary=ItEdward Jevons is a working-class young man, obsessed with his upper-class friends, Robert and Stanza. Robert's three years since Nanette Weston left Monacoa theatre director. SheHe'd been engaged s also self-obsessed, demanding, handsome and entitled and uses Edward to a Formula 1 racing driver and had lived the life of the wealthy but a serious car accident had ended all thatrun errands for him. The accident could have killed her fiancé Edward has been in love with Stanza since their university days - and she lost her driving licence because of the alcohol shehe'd consumeds drunkenly confided how he feels to Robert. Her slow recovery was hindered by the end of her engagement Most men in Robert's position would stay away from Stanza or tell Edward that a relationship had begun between them but shehe's found some contentment in being a nanny not like most men: Edward is left to stumble upon the two young children. When her friend and employer, Vanessa, remarries and takes an extended honeymoon of them kissing in the Amazon Nanette is asked to take the children back to Monaco where their father livesa dark passageway.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0709089090</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=J R StephensonJo Callaghan|title=Crooked JusticeLeave No Trace|rating=2.54|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=Meet Barry JohnsWhen a man is found crucified on the top of a hill in Nuneaton, DCS Kat Frank finds herself assigned to the case alongside her sidekick, the AI detective Lock. You'll see him coming - heIt's five hundred pounds if he's an ouncetheir first live case together, having previously been very successful with several cold cases. Just don't ever lend him money - he won't pay it back. A businessman with But when there is a share of second body found crucified a nightclub on Cyprusfew days later, he goes there for Kat is suddenly struggling with a customary break, potential serial killer and finds his sort-a very high profile case that draws a lot of moll-type sort-of girlfriend has been installed as the bar dancerunwanted attention to their AI Future Policing project. He manages Will they be able to tread both solve the case in time, or will Kat find herself taken off the case and, potentially, out of a career?|isbn=139851120X}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1399613073|title=Moral Injuries|author=Christie Watson|rating=4.5|genre=Thrillers|summary=Olivia, Laura and Anjali met on the toes first day of his local colleague medical school and some Greek rivalstheir friendship would keep them inseparable for a quarter of a century. And Olivia is ruthlessly ambitious, which is a bonus when you aim to be a cardiothoracic surgeon. Laura is a perfectionist and a rival in London chases him up for thousands trauma doctor. Anjali is the free spirit of pounds owed he decides to pack up the group and shut upshe becomes a GP. ItWhen we first meet them they're at a drug and alcohol-fuelled party and it's a big stone going to end in tragedy. We don't know who suffered the tragedy or the consequences. Twenty-five years later there will be an eerily similar event that hides himwill impact the three friends. This time, but he leaves a very awkward trail for everyone wanting to upturn it and get 's their revengeteenage children who are involved.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0955855713</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Stephen Baker0241636604|title=They've Got Your NumberThe Trading Game: A Confession|author=Gary Stevenson
|rating=4.5
|genre=Popular ScienceAutobiography|summary=If you are in the slightest bit paranoid, worry that ''Big Brother'' is always watching or like were to believe that you are not bring up an image of a numbercity banker in your mind, but a free man (or woman), then this may not be the book for you, as it will do nothing 're unlikely to dispel any think of those worriessomeone like Gary Stevenson. If 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 other hand, you think 'the mathematical modelling London School of humanity' sounds like one Economics. Stevenson is bright - extremely bright - and he has a facility with numbers which most of the sexiest things ever, and are chomping at the bit us can only envy. He also realised that most rich people expect poor people to learn more about it, then you might well be interested in stupid. It was his ability at what Business Week journalist Baker has to saywas, essentially, a card game which got him an internship with Citibank. Eventually, this turned into permanent employment as a trader.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099507021</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Rebecca Tope1035021803|title=Fear in the CotswoldsThe Antique Hunter's Guide to Murder|author=C L Miller|rating=43.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=Thea Osborne is a house sitter by professionIt's twenty years since Freya Lockwood has been back to the English country village where she grew up. When people go away she moves into their homes and looks after their animals and the propertyShe's back now because of a request for help from her beloved aunt, Carole. This time itFreya's winter former mentor and sheCarole's spending a month in close friend, Arthur Crockleford, is dead and the Cotswold village of Hampnett. It wouldn't be a job for all of us but Thea delights in getting circumstances seem suspicious, to know the local people and say the arealeast. In Arthur was the past she's also reason why Freya had not been involved with back to the police village: Arthur, she feels, let her down badly. Even though they were in solving various cases but it looks business together as though that might have come antique hunters, she has not felt able to an end as be near the man or pursue the relationship profession she had with DS Phil Hollis has crumbledloved. For After the first time Thea feels like an outsider – and a foolish one - when split, she finds footsteps in the snow which lead to a body worked in a nearby field. When cafe, met and married James (on the police finally arrive rebound from the body has disappeared love of her life, who was murdered) and Freya and the police obviously wonder if she's imagined it allJames have now divorced.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0749007478</amazonuk>
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{{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.''
I've heard it said that 'technology' is what happens after you're eighteen. Well, I must confess that there have been more than a few decades of technology in 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 - frankly - quite frightening. 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 knows what they're talking about or the latest conspiracy theorist. I needed people I knew I could trust and who could deliver information in a way I could understand.}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tad TulejaSunny Singh|title=A Dictionary of Foreign Words and PhrasesHotel Arcadia|rating=3.5|genre=Home and FamilyThrillers |summary=Take The Hotel Arcadia is a look at the cover design of this book, and you'd be mistaken for thinking this was a trivia compendium for all those foreign words luxury hotel in an unnamed city that have has suddenly been violently taken part in our English language since whenever they crossed over from their original homesby a terrorist group. But Hiding from the title terrorists who are rampaging through, killing everyone on site, there is definitely honestSam, a wartime photographer and Abhi, the hotel manager. As Abhi continues to try to care remotely for this is the residents who are still alive in the hotel, he forms a dictionary book firstbond with Sam who refuses to be cowed by events, for referenceand keeps on venturing out of her room to try to capture what's happened through her photography. Although they only ever talk over the phone, their friendship grows as Abhi tries to help her keep safe and a browser for they both wait to see if they will be rescued before they are discovered by the trivia buff secondterrorists.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0709089562</amazonuk>086154742X
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Anne Rice1529153298|title=Angel TimeThe List of Suspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey|rating=2.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Toby OIt'Dare s 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is an extremely efficient hit man with a passion for musicPrime Minister. (A woman? I mean, history and playing his beloved lutehonestly... He) She's not what's worrying Miv's also something of a lost soul having turned his back on God many years agofamily, though. Women have been disappearing. Well, they've been murdered, but to have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. One day while on a Miv's upset because she's overheard that her father wants to move the family 'Down South'job. When you' he re from Yorkshire, Down South is visited by an Angel who offers him a chance at redemptionfrightening, foreign place, best avoided. Toby agrees For Miv, the move would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, and she'll do anything to become prevent that. She's not worried about the Angeldangers or that her Mum's human instrument and help save lives rather than take them. He is sent on an assignment stopped talking - to help a Jewish couple accused of murder in 13th Century Englandanyone.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701178140</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ian Mortimer1398524085|title=1415: Henry V's Year of GloryHas Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter?|author=Nicci French
|rating=5
|genre=HistoryCrime|summary=The medievalCharlotte Salter was expected at her husband's fiftieth birthday party but never turned up. Her children, sons Niall, Paul and Ollie and her daughter, in fact timeEtty. are all worried but - strangely -honouredher husband, Alec, view of King Henry V as one of England's greatest heroes was propagated though is not originated by Shakespeare. Shortly afterwards, Etty and again more recently to some extent by OlivierGreg, find the body of Greg's portrayal father, Duncan Ackerley, in filmthe river. At least one historian has called him ''It was an easy assumption for the greatest man police to make that ever ruled EnglandDuncan had murdered Charlie and then committed suicide when he couldn't stand the guilt. The Salter children are not convinced but there's little else they can do but get on with their lives and wonder about what really happened.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224079921</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Deborah Gregory1035906708|title=Dancing With The DeadDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin|rating=34.5|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=I wanted We tend to think of Maria Callas as Greek, but she was born to read ''Dancing with the Dead''Greek parents in Manhattan, New York, because I'm interested in family historyDecember 1923 and only moved to Athens when she was thirteen. The blurb on the back of the book also mentioned Gill – our heroine of the piece – Her original surname was moving from Bristol (my current home) Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to Lincolnshire (where I 'Callas' to make it more manageable in the States. When she was born and brought up). I felt with all these links, the novel back in Athens - supposedly so that she could not fail to interest me – but this get appropriate training for her voice - she was not raised under the caseNazi occupation by a mother who mercilessly exploited her and made no secret of her preference for her elder sister, Jackie.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904529305</amazonuk>
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|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=It's concerned me Lucas and his friends are all booked in for a while that it's relatively easy to pick up early readers for girls – princesses, magic soft toysmovie marathon at their local cinema, mermaids and pets abound – but there's a much smaller choice for boys. It's important too with early readers place that has the content is nickname of 'The Black Hole'interesting'' and reading becomes more than just something which you ''have'' to do at school and moves into being fun. Matt and Dave have found the answer in Yuck.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847382991</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=John E Smelcer|title=The Great Death|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary='As Western Europeans settled AlaskaAll big movie fans, they brought with them diseases against which the indigenous people had no natural immunity. At the beginning 're looking forward to lots of the twentieth centuryexciting films, fully two thirds of all Alaska natives perished from a pandemic of measlesand many, smallpoxmany snacks! However, and influenza. No community was spared. In most casesas the movie starts, half of a village's population died within a week. In some casesthey very quickly realise that something about this new film format is very different, there were no survivors. It was the end of and they are swept up into an ancient way of lifeadventure they couldn't even imagine. Natives still refer But as they lurch from one film genre to the dreadful period as next, can they figure out what on earth is going on? Will they ever get back to the Great Death.'cinema, and to their real lives?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1842709194</amazonuk>1839942738
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Maxine BarryRachel Greenlaw|title=River DeepCompass and Blade
|rating=3.5
|genre=Women's FictionTeens|summary=Two young women both have a love of the Thames. Melisande Ray's beloved hotel, 'I can hear the Ray song of Sunshine is on the river banksea. It's here that guests come who want to be pampered and looked after in The call of the way that only deep, the best hotels can do well, but when Wendell James checks answering beat in to the hotel it's not pampering he's looking formy heart. He's buying a piece of land not far from the Ray of Sunshine and he's sussing out the competition. There's something personal in there too – if his new hotel means that the Ray of Sunshine goes under then that would be an added bonus. There's just a slight doubt in his mind when a red-haired maid catches his eye.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0709088930</amazonuk>}}
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Michael Morpurgo and Emma Chichester ClarkJames Sherwood Metts|title=The Best of TimesPlanet Storyland
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Most children enjoy Things have been a good traditional tale bit sticky for the Earthlings. AI and this lovely book by Michael Morpurgo seems to automation have all the right ingredients – a handsome prince and a beautiful princess who fall in lovebeen proceeding apace, get married often replacing jobs they're paid to do and live happily ever afterother tasks that took time to accomplish. Or do Just as they? Sadly, not long after Prince Frederico marries the lovely Princess Serafina, she becomes very sad. Nobody knows what has caused such great sadness, but poor Prince Frederico is desperate were beginning to get used to find a cure for his wife's misery. He tries everything in his power all this technological change and eventually decides starting to offer his kingdom think of other, new ways to anyone who can make her happy again before she dies of a broken heartspend time, along came an awful pandemic. Lots of people come to the palace to try Life was pretty much shut down and help but in , along with it, all the end the solution is a simple one provided by some very kind travellersmany daily social interactions on which they depend so heavily.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1405232552</amazonuk>1736128426
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Shirley JacksonMatthew Tree|title=We Have Always Lived In The Castle'll Never Know
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Mary Katherine Blackwood, also known as Merricat, is eighteenTimothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, a drunk and lives with her older sister Constance in the family home where 'Blackwoods had always lived'. Merricat quickly draws the reader into her world by a series chronic underachiever whose dreams of matter being exceptional at any of fact but bizarre statements – her likes include her sister his artistic passions all failed miserably and death cap mushrooms, and everyone else in her family is deadwho had endless crises of self confidence. The wealthy Blackwood family has always kept the house 'steady against the world', shutting out other peopleSo Tim applied himself to his studies, cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and they live near a village. Merricat believes that 'The people of the village have always hated us', and tells us that she hates them tooset himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0141191457</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8
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{{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.''
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Katherine May1529900360|title=Burning OutThe Ghost Orchid|author=Jonathan Kellerman
|rating=4
|genre=Literary FictionCrime|summary=Violet has it all – a wellIt hadn't been Lt Milo Sturgis's fault that Alex Delaware had been badly injured but he felt responsible and even after Alex recovered, Sturgis was reluctant to ask for his help on difficult cases. His assertions that there were only open-paid job, and -shut cases which didn't need the help of a luxurious apartment all to herselfpsychologist only worked for a while. Everything is catered for; her meals Finally, it was Robin, her clothesDelaware's partner, and her health are all how she would like them to bewho nudged Milo into asking for help again. But She knew that the involvement was something that the life man she is leading is beginning to take its tollloved needed. The next case did look simple, though. On Two lovers were murdered in the verge swimming pool of snapping, a drained remote property in Bel Air. He was the heir to an Italian shoe empire and somewhat out-of-sorts Violet, withdraws back to her home town. There, she meets someone familiar, a ghost reminding her of how she used is married to be ten years earlier – a young carefree girl, full of life. Only this isnan extremely rich man and it't a ghost, but a girl living s not the life Violet once lived – exactly the sameItalian. Haunted by But which of them was the past Violet realizes history is repeating itself and is convinced events will happen again. Events that will in turn haunt the girl.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906727392</amazonuk>primary target?
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Amanda Downum1529395224|title=Letting the Cat Out of the Bag: The Drowning CitySecret Life of a Vet|author=Sion Rowlands
|rating=3.5
|genre=FantasyAnimals and Wildlife|summary=In Siôn Rowlands fell into veterinary science accidentally. His father was a nutshellGP and Rowlands didn't want to follow in his footsteps, youparticularly when he considered the strain that being on-call put on his father're reading this because you're wondering whether The Drowning City is good, bad or mediocres life. You've probably glanced at When he was seventeen he took the rating opportunity of doing work experience with a family friend who was a vet and guessed was convinced this was the latterjob for him. Before long, he was at Liverpool University. IIt hadn'm afraid it's not quite that simple. This is t - as with so many students - been his dream since he was a debut that provokes decidedly mixed feelingschild. I started off convinced that I was going If anything, he'd wanted to love this book. The cover art is effortlessly cool, the premise intriguing, the characters laden with potential for greatness and the backdrop is certainly evocativebe a professional footballer.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1841498149</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tove Jansson0861541774|title=The True DeceiverA Nye of Pheasants|author=Steve Burrows|rating=54|genre=Literary FictionCrime|summary=Most people of my age will have come across JanssonDCI Domenic Jejeune's work unwittinglyclose friend and former colleague, Danny Maik, has taken a short holiday in Singapore to meet up with an old ally, via the televised renditions of the Moomin talesGuy Trueman. The readers amongst us Maik was involved in a street brawl - he would then have been entranced later maintain that he was facing a man armed with a knife - and he killed a Ghurka. Initially, he faced a few years ago charge of manslaughter but evidence came to discover light that suggested that at last Thomas Teal had set about he might have planned to murder the man. Now he could be facing the translation into English, first of The Summer Book death penalty. Domenic Jejeune can do nothing to help as any interference from another police force could provoke a diplomatic incident and then of a collection of short stories which were published as 'A Winter Bookwouldn't help Danny at all. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0954899571</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Daniel Kehlmann Alexander McCall Smith|title=Me and KaminskiThe Perfect Passion Company
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=After reviewing several long booksThe Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, it's been refreshing run by Ness and operating as an alternative to read such all the online apps in providing a fluent yet pared down story more personal, tailored service. Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the business, as 'Kaminski and Me'Ness is planning to take a trip to Canada to get away for a while. In it, Sebastian Zollner Katie is coming out of a break up with a bad boyfriend, and so jumps at the obnoxious main characterchance to come home to Edinburgh. And so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, shoves himself forward in a desperate attempt bringing us to research a best seller which will re-ignite his career as an art critic. KaminskiEdinburgh we already love, thanks to 44 Scotland Street and the proposed subjectIsabel Dalhousie novels, was but with some new characters who quickly begin to charm. Katie has no experience in running a fashionable painter long agobusiness, or in match-making, but nowNess has full confidence in her abilities, ancient and chronically illthere's always her very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, William, has virtually slid into oblivion. So the second-rate writer is on to lend a loser unless he can dig up some juicy details to hook the art world and general public.hand…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847249892</amazonuk>1846976596
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Louis Barfe0811771741|title=Turned Out Nice Again: The Story of British Light EntertainmentInstaKnits for Baby|author=Melissa Leapman
|rating=4
|genre=EntertainmentCrafts|summary=Light entertainment is often looked down uponMelissa Leapman's ''InstaKnits for Baby'' gives us a collection of knits from toys to blankets. Some will be quick knits - others are of the 'long, cosy afternoons in front of the fire' variety. The projects are divided by the time they'll take to complete - less than five hours, five to ten hours, ten to twenty hours and more than twenty hours. All the projects are attractive, as if itmodern and useable. I perhaps show my age when I wonder about 'social-media-worthy projects' but that's me being picky.}}{{Frontpage|author=Dean Koontz|title=The Bad Weather Friend|rating=4.5|genre=Paranormal|summary=Benny is having a bit naffterrifically bad day. He loses his job, he loses his fiancee, tepid and ignorablehis house gets trashed. What Oh, and someone has delivered a really weird, disturbing coffin-sized object to his home, and it's often forgotten possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the thing that has trashed his house! The thing is, Benny is the very last person to deserve all this bad luck. He is a nice person. A really nice person. So fortunately for Benny itturns out that the delivery to his 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 good person. Spike is going to take care of Benny, and will certainly take care of Benny's hugely popularenemies, if he, Benny, enjoyable and much of it is of the highest quality. Louis BarfeHarper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's Turned Out Nice Again tells the complete story of British light entertainmentwild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1843543818</amazonuk>1662500491
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jim Helmore and Karen WallAdam Stower|title=Oh No, Monster Tomato!Murray and Bun|rating=4.5|genre=For SharingConfident Readers |summary=Marvin Murray is entering the Great Grislygust Grow-Offsupposed to be a humble, tidy and friendly cat, one who is able to sleep and eat and eat and sleep and, but just like himwell, whatever takes his tomatoes aren't growing very bigfancy next of the two. He takes the only sensible course of action: But he sings 's a bad magician's cat, so his tomatoes favourite bun has been turned into a songhyperactive sticky rabbit called Bun, and the catflap they both use can chuck them out, not into the regular back garden, but into a world of frightening adventure and whiffs. The results are spectacular. Victory This time round it drops them into a Viking land, where a troll hunter is surely within his grasp.expected – well, one much bigger than Murray was, to be honest, but he's turned up and he'll have to do…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>140524741X</amazonuk>0008561249
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Joseph Delaney B0C47LV1PC|title=The Spook's Stories: WitchesFragility|author=Mosby Woods
|rating=4
|genre=TeensLiterary Fiction|summary=Can you make a 'Warning: Not to be read after dark,' are the only words on the back of ''The Spook's StoriesYo birthing person''joke? And if you could, and on is the inside flapquestion should you make it? Or is the question if you did, 'would it land? The Times' warns us catch is that this book is 'seriously scary'the answer for both could well be....no.
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Lisa Unger1529431735|title=Die For YouThe Winter Visitor|author=James Henry|rating=3.54
|genre=Crime
|summary=Best-selling novelist Isabel Connelly is married to successful video game designer Marcus Raine. Or so she thinks. But when her husband fails to return from work, she realises something is wrong. Going to his office to try to find out what happens to him, she gets attacked and ends up in hospital, while his co-workers are killed. Things get worse for her, however, when investigating detective Grady Crowe reveals that Marcus Raine has been dead for several years, and the man she married was using a false identity. Infuriated by the betrayal, and the realisation that sheIt's been living a lie for the past five years, Izzy takes matters into her own hands February 1991 and sets out to find her husband and work out why he lied to her for so long. Ignoring police warningsEssex is bitingly cold, she delves deeper and deeper into a nasty underworld, and finds a tale which has its roots in Prague and rivals anything she could have plotted in one of her novels.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099522179</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Lisa McMann|title=Wake|rating=4|genre=Teens|summary=Janie is seventeen and studying hard for college. Shemade Bruce Hopkins's also working lots of hours at a local nursing home to earn money for college as it's unlikely her alcoholic mother is going to provide much in return all the way of resourcesmore surprising. College is Janie He's only chance at a life better than the one she's lived so far and so you can't blame her for being so single-minded in the pursuit of her goal. Only one thing stands in her way...|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847385036</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Jaclyn Moriarty |title=The Spell Book of Listen Taylor|rating=3.5|genre=Teens|summary=Listen Taylor's father has just moved in with his girlfriend and they are adopted into the Zing family, with all of its delightful eccentricities and unusual behaviour – the Zings meet every Friday night for dinner and then disappear into the garden shed to work d been exiled on the 'Zing Family Secret'. Marbie Zing is terrified of doing something wrong and losing Nathaniel and Listen. Her sister Fancy is becoming increasingly disillusioned with her home life, and her daughter's year two teacher is coming to terms with Costa del Sol as a break up. The stories of these people come together to create wanted drug smuggler for a tale of life, love, and ultimately, what being part of a family meansdecade.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330446363</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=F G Cottam|title= The Magdalena Curse|rating=2.5|genre=Horror|summary=Mark Hunter is the sort of father who would do anything for his son. After losing his wife and daughter in a tragic accident, his surviving son Adam return has become his whole world. And Adam is an exceptional child – beautiful, incredibly smart and mature beyond his ten years – only recently come about because he's been channelling the voices of the dead. Plagued by horrific dreams, able to speak Russian in the hours after he wakes, drawing occult symbols when he doodles, Hunter believes Adam to be possessed. Doctor Elizabeth Bancroft is sceptical, until she meets Adam, and witnesses the horrors the poor boy endures for herself.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340980982</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Jon Berkeley|title=The Lightning Key (Circus Trilogy)|rating=4.5|genre=Confident Readers|summary=I shall start with had a word of advice. When you're being hounded by a circus master, and a magicianletter from his ex-wife, for the soul of a tiger saying thatshe's contained in a tigerill and hasn's egg that's contained in the brain of your teddy bear, and your best friend - a fallen angel - is trying her best t long to make sure the other angels do not turn on you in a big way - then you're probably living the third book in a fantasy trilogylive. Still - never mind, the angelIt's efforts will involve you entering a dream world of flight and cloud cities, the chase after your enemies will take you across the world hard to desert oases and back, and friends new and old will be on board to help.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847384447</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Sue Townsend|title=Adrian Mole: The Prostrate Years|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Adrian Mole feel any sympathy when Hopkins is now 39¼ and living, quite literally, in a pigstyabducted, sharing an all too thin party wall with his parents and working in a bookshop. It's not quite how life was supposed stripped to turn out. As he spends his days wrestling his strong willed 5 year old Gracie into her school uniform, trying to reassure glamorous wife Daisy that life in the provinces is not as bad as she would like to believe, underwear and desperately attempting to talk his mother out of her quest sent to appear on the vile ''Jeremy Kyle'' show, worrying over his increasingly frequent visits to the toilet is really the last thing he needs. And yet, the worst is still to come. Think a crumbling economy, redundancy, affairs, death, a family member challenging him watery grave in the novel writing stakes and boot of a query over the big C – stolen Ford Sierra. Is it's going to be a tough year for the Moles, and there's little that ol' Adrian can do except sit back and watch his life spin out of control around him.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0718153707</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Lauren Kate|title=Fallen|rating=4.5|genre=Teens|summary=A 17 year old girl at warning from a new school meets Spanish gang or a mysterious and impossibly good-looking boy, who she's immediately drawn problem closer to. He seems determined to either ignore her or be outright rude to her, until he saves her life, and the two of them end up drawn together. This isn't Stephenie Meyer's ''Twilight'', but it certainly has striking similarities.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0385738935</amazonuk>}}home?