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=='''14 APRIL4 JULY'''==
{{Frontpage
|author=Polly BartonMax Boucherat|title=Fifty SoundsThe Last Life of Lori Mills
|rating=4.5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary= Where do I start? I could start with where Barton herself starts, with the question ''Why Japan?'' Japan has been on my radar for a while and if the world hadn't gone into melt-down I would have visited by now. I may get there later this year, but I am not hopeful. And like Barton, I don't know the answer to the question ''why Japan?'' She explains her feelings in respect of the question in the first essay, which is on the sound ''giro' '' – which she describes as being, among other things, the sound of ''every party where you have to introduce yourself''.
|isbn=1913097501
}}
 
=='''15 APRIL'''==
{{Frontpage
|author=Lucy Holland
|title=Sistersong
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Sistersong is part of a genre I particularly enjoy, the modern retelling of folk and fairy tales. These stories, for most of us, are a cornerstone of childhood and I relish seeing them retold with fresh eyes and a fresh perspective. If handled well these retellings give new life and new meaning to stories that are now becoming increasingly narrow and outdated, fleshing out characters, examining relationships and re-evaluating the role of women. Sistersong is a perfect example of a modern retelling done well, the plot is handled with care, keeping its archaic historical feel but allowing the characters to come to life, to feel real and human, most importantly they feel relatable in a modern world whilst still feeling appropriate for the pre-Saxon age they live in. This is a masterpiece of storytelling and I was captivated from beginning to end.
|isbn=1529039037
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Goldy Moldavsky
|title=The Last Girl
|rating=5
|genre=teens
|summary= Rachel Chavez is the new girl at Manchester Prep. A school filled to the brim with the richest children in the city – and Rachel doesn't belong. She's not rich, she has no ties to some royal family in Serbia, and most of all, she spends the majority of her spare time watching horror movies as a source of comfort. She struggles to find anyone to connect with, until one day she stumbles upon the Mary Shelley Club. A secret society with one aim: pull off the best prank in true horror movie style, and unless someone screams, you have failed. Rachel becomes immediately engrossed in the competition. But as the pranks escalate, and Rachel finally feels like she has found her place in this school, things start to go wrong; a masked figure keeps showing up to the pranks, and people begin to get hurt. When the competition then takes a deadly turn, Rachel must figure out who this masked figure is before it's too late.
|isbn=0755501527
}}
 
=='''27 APRIL'''==
{{Frontpage
|isbn=0753558378
|title=Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters
|author=Greg McKeown
|rating=4.5
|genre=Lifestyle
|summary=''The marginal return of working harder was, in fact, negative.''
 
That's what happened to Patrick McGinnis. It's no exaggeration to say that he devoted his life to the company he worked for, struggling through, even when he was ill, only to find that he was working for a bankrupt company. His stock had fallen by 97%, he had lost his health and his job had little value. He made a bargain with God; if he survived, he would make some changes. He did survive and came through stronger - and richer. There is, you see, a different way: ''great things are not reserved for those who bleed, for those who almost break.''
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Kristen O'Neal
|title=Lycanthropy and Other Chronic Illnesses
|rating=5
|genre=Teens
|summary= Having recently been diagnosed with chronic Lyme disease, Priya has to come to terms with the fact that she may be in constant pain for the rest of her life. She joins ''Oof Ouch My Bones'', an online support group where she talks to a bunch of other teens living with chronic illnesses. They talk about their troubles and help each other out, while also providing an escape to just joke and mess around. When Brigid—one of her closest friends—doesn't respond to the chat for a while, Priya becomes concerned. She decides to steal her parents' car and drive to Brigid's house to check up on her. But what she doesn't expect to find there is a werewolf in the basement – and for that werewolf to be the girl she has been talking to online for the past few months.
|isbn=1683692349
}}
 
=='''29 APRIL'''==
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1471181405
|title=Nighthawking
|author=Russ Thomas
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=Sheffield's [http://www.sbg.org.uk/ Botanical Gardens] (on Clarkehouse Road, if you'd like to visit) are an oasis of calm in what's otherwise thought of as an industrial city but this was disrupted when the body of a young woman was discovered. It had obviously been buried in one of the beds but who would have started to dig her up? It had been in the earth for months and could have been undiscovered for years. The police need to establish who stabbed her - and who left the two, very rare, gold aurei on her eyes. DCI Diane Jordan is the Investigating Officer and her foot soldiers are DS Adam Tyler and DC Mina Rabbani. They're joined by DS Guy Daley who's just returned from extended sick leave. Mina thinks he's as obnoxious as ever but suspects that he's not fully recovered from his injuries.
}}
{{Frontpage
|author= Jennifer Saint
|title= Ariadne
|rating= 4.5
|genre= Women's Fiction
|summary= This re-telling of the myth of Ariadne and the Minotaur is interesting and unusual. Jennifer Saint presents the story in a way that is sympathetic to its origins but also appealing to a modern audience. Saint's narrative is told predominantly through the viewpoint of Ariadne, spanning from her childhood to her death, allowing the reader to really connect with Ariadne as a character in her own right rather than just a prop in the heroics of Theseus.
|isbn=1472273869
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=0241985137
|title=The Whole Truth (D I Fawley)
|author=Cara Hunter
|rating=5
|genre=Crime
|summary=DI Adam Fawley's team got to Edith Launceleve College first, called there by Jancis Appleby to see the Principal, Professor Hilary Reynolds. There had been an accusation of sexual assault by a professor on a student. When Fawley arrived he was almost cross: what was the alleged perpetrator doing in the room before they'd even got the details from the victim? The problem was that Caleb Morgan ''was'' the 'victim' and the alleged perpetrator was Professor Marina Fisher. Just to complicate matters further, Caleb's mother is Petra Newson, the local MP, and Professor Fisher is a big name is Artificial Intelligence. She has an eight-year-old son, buys her wine by the case from Berry Brothers & Rudd, spends more than £1000 a month on clothes and has more than ten thousand Twitter followers. When the excrement encounters the ventilation equipment, this is going to be ''very'' public.
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Mercedes Helnwein
|title=Slingshot
|rating=3
|genre=Teens
|summary=Gracie Welles has resigned herself to being lonely. As a secret illegitimate daughter of a man with a "real" family, she is used to not being a priority in people's lives. But when she defends a random boy in her class with her slingshot, her simple existence is changed for good. No longer can she spend her time writing novels in solitude, for her life now has a boy in it that she never asked for: Wade Scholfield.
|isbn=152905818X
}}
 
=='''30 APRIL'''==
{{Frontpage
|author=Ananda Devi
|title=Eve Out of Her Ruins
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=At not even 200 pages, Eve Out of Her Ruins is one of the shortest books I've read in a long while, but it's one of the most dramatic. It's also told in a way that I can only describe as brutal: it spares nothing and pulls very few punches, the descriptions stark and unromantic.
|isbn=0993009344
}}
 
=='''3 MAY'''==
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1635862353
|title=The Sandalmaking Workshop
|author=Rachel Corry
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crafts
|summary=A sandal-making workshop? I couldn't really believe it, mainly because I'd always thought that you'd need more equipment than the average home was likely to be able to contain but I was intrigued. Rachel Corry started sandal making accidentally - a small fire destroyed some of her shoes. One pair had come apart and she could see how the sandal was constructed. Then she realised that she couldn't afford to replace all her shoes. Could she combine these two facts to create a new and worthwhile craft? She showed quite a few people her first pair and they all either wanted to know how to do it - or if she'd make them a pair. A new career was born.
}}
=='''6 MAY'''==
{{Frontpage
|author=Daniel Gibbs with Teresa H Barker
|title=A Tattoo on my Brain
|rating=3.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Alzheimer's is a disease that slowly wears away your identity and sense of self. I have been directly affected by this cruel disease, as have many. Your memories and personality worn away like a statue over time affected the elements. It seems as if nature wants that final victory over you and your dignity. This is what makes Daniel Gibbs' memoir so admirable. Daniel Gibbs is a neurologist who was diagnosed with Alzheimers and has documented his journey in ''A Tattoo on my Brain''.
|isbn=1108838936
}}
=='''7 MAY'''==
{{Frontpage
|isbn=0241985137
|title=The Whole Truth (D I Fawley)
|author=Cara Hunter
|rating=5
|genre=Crime
|summary=DI Adam Fawley's team got to Edith Launceleve College first, called there by Jancis Appleby to see the Principal, Professor Hilary Reynolds. There had been an accusation of sexual assault by a professor on a student. When Fawley arrived he was almost cross: what was the alleged perpetrator doing in the room before they'd even got the details from the victim? The problem was that Caleb Morgan ''was'' the 'victim' and the alleged perpetrator was Professor Marina Fisher. Just to complicate matters further, Caleb's mother is Petra Newson, the local MP, and Professor Fisher is a big name is Artificial Intelligence. She has an eight-year-old son, buys her wine by the case from Berry Brothers & Rudd, spends more than £1000 a month on clothes and has more than ten thousand Twitter followers. When the excrement encounters the ventilation equipment, this is going to be ''very'' public.
}}
=='''11 MAY'''==
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1523092734
|title=A Women's Guide to Claiming Space
|author=Eliza Van Cort
|rating=5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=''She brings a hug-kick-thunderclap that every woman needs in her life. Again and again and again.'' (Alma Derricks, former CMO, Cirque du Soleil RSD)
 
''To claim space is to live the life of choosing unapologetically and bravely. It is to live the life you've always wanted.''
 
Sometimes the reviewing gods are generous: at a time when violence against women is much in the news, ''A Women's Guide to Claiming Space'' by Eliza Van Cort dropped onto my desk. Now - to be clear - this book is not a 'how to disable your attacker with two simple jabs' manual: it's something far more effective, but discussion at the moment seems to be about how women can be ''protected''. I've always thought that women need to rise above this, to be people who don't need protection, people who claim their own space. If all women did this, those few men who are violent to women would realise that we are not just an easy target to be used to prove that they are big men.
}}
=='''27 MAY'''==
{{Frontpage
|isbn=walker14
|title=The Coldest Case (A Bruno, Chief of Police Novel)
|author=Martin Walker
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=It was when he saw Elisabeth Daynes' work in the prehistory museum at Les Eyzies that chief of police Bruno Courreges had the idea which he thought might help his boss, chief of detectives Jalipeau, known as J-J, to solve a case which had haunted him for thirty years. The body of a young male was found in the woods but he was never identified and his killer never brought to justice. What if an artist could recreate the face from the skull and the resulting publicity be used to identify the young man? J-J calls the skull 'Oscar' and has a picture on his door: he sees it every time he leaves his office: he doesn't want to forget Oscar until his killer has been brought to justice.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=0008404925
|title=The Killing Kind
|author=Jane Casey
|rating=5
|genre=Crime
|summary=Difficult clients were nothing new to barrister Ingrid Lewis but John Webster came as something of a surprise. After all, it was her cross-examination of the 'victim' which saved him from a lengthy prison sentence. He'd been accused of stalking the woman but it didn't take long to establish that - if anything - it was the other way around. Soon Ingrid never seemed to be free of John Webster and then she came to see him as a threat and was forced to remember that the police officer at his trial had told her that this was the best chance they'd had to put Webster away for a long time: he was a very dangerous man.
}}
=='''3 JUNE'''==
{{Frontpage
|author=M G Leonard
|title=Twitch
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Twitch is a boy who loves birds. He keeps pigeons at home, and chickens, and even has swallows nesting in his bedroom! His time spent watching and helping birds is easy compared to that of his time in school. But things are about to change for Twitch in all aspects of his life as there is a dangerous bank robber We meet Lori on the run, and itfirst evening she's possible that the missing bank haul is hidden somewhere in Aves Wood, got the place where Twitch has his secret hide and that he knows like the back of his hand! Can Twitch solve the mystery, and find the missing millions?|isbn=1406389374}} =='''10 JUNE'''=={{Frontpage|author=C J Carey|title=Widowland|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=It's April 1953, and Adolf Hitler's schedule includes going house to Moscow herself – no neighbour to attend the state funeral of Joseph Stalin then within weeks coming to Londonpop in, parading around a bitbabysitter poorly, and watching over the sanctioned return to the throne of Edward VIII with his wifemother at work, Queen Wallis. For yes, Britain caved in the leadjust an avidly rule-up to the World War Two that certainly didn't happen as we know it, and we are now a protectorate – wellbreaking eleven year old, we share enough of the same blood as the Germanic peoples on ''the mainland''her lonesome. But this is most certainly What could possibly go wrong? Snuggled in a different Britainblanket fort, for Nazi-styled phrenologyshe has one main intention, and ideas of female purpose, has put all of that gender into a caste system, ranging from high-brow office bigwigs is to the drudges, and beyond those, right log on down to the childlessVoxminer, the husbandless and the widows. Female literacy is actively discouraged. And in this puritanical existence, our heroine, Rose Ransomworld-building, critter-collecting game that is employed with the task of bowdlerising classical literature to take all encouragement for female emancipation out of it – after all, not every book can be banned, and not every story excised immediately from British civilisation, and so they just get a hefty tweak towards the party line before theyhit in Lori're stamped ready for reprints world. That is her job, at least, until the But first emerging signs of female protest come to light, with their potential to spoil Hitler's visit.|isbn=152941198X}}{{Frontpage|author=Terry Miles|title=Rabbits|rating=4.5|genre=Science Fiction|summary=Welcome to the world of The Game. Or should Lori has a tiny inkling that be the game, for while it ought to be capitalised to high heaven, it never leaves lower case throughout this book. Itstormy night doesn's also called Rabbits, although only as a slangy term for it – as far as anyone knows, it has no official title, no official source, no hard and fast structuret find herself entirely on her own, and to the average person no obvious entry point. A bit like the game of life thenshe finds something even more spooky. Yes, this is For the game of life for a certain tribe of people – the fan of the conspiracy, the computer game, the hack from the darkest of webs. People like our hero, K, named like that in the least Kafkaesque manner possible. K server she and her bestie and his bezzies are trying nobody else should be able to be historians enter shows signs of the gametampering. When malevolent eyes spark up on her phone screen, and have studied amongst many things the most unique of high score boards, for the lists of who has successfully won the game are her safe place in the most peculiar places, and are still very short. However this time it's different. This time the game seems the most dangerous, nay lethal, the most broken it's ever has been doctored morally and otherwise. Unfortunately for Kwell, in trying to sort out what the game where is doing, if it's even being played, and how his loved ones might be kept safe, he is only a girl to find out that the line between observing and learning about the game, and playing it, is a very thin one indeed...turn?|isbn=15290169320008666482
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Louise BeechJenny Lecoat|title=This Is How We Are HumanBeyond Summerland
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Veronica is a devoted single mother to her son, Sebastian - but she can't give him everything he wants. Sebastian has decided that it's time for him to have sex. But as an autistic 20 year-old, that's easier said than done. And it's starting to cause them both problems. |isbn=1913193713}} =='''17 JUNE'''=={{Frontpage|author=Joseph Knox|title=True Crime Story|rating=4|genre=Thrillers|summary= Joseph Knox, known for his series surrounding Detective Aidan Waits, has created a new genre Jean lives on Jersey with his latest novel, "True Crime Story". The story follows the disappearance of Zoe Nolan from her university halls of residence. Split into four parts, the reader is taken through the life and disappearance of Zoe through the eyes of her twin sister, other family, friends and professionals, such as the police. The various accounts help the reader get to know Zoe, or at least the Zoe she presented to others. However, the twists and turns at mother where they are celebrating the end of each chapter leave you shocked, confused and unsure of what is true or fabricated. Whose accounts can we trust?|isbn=0857527703}} =='''24 JUNE'''=={{Frontpage|author=Catherine Steadman|title=The Disappearing Act|rating=4.5|genre=Thrillers|summary= British actress Mia Eliot is on the cusp of success. Great success. If the rumours are true, award season is going to treat her well, acknowledging her for her latest, critically acclaimed productionoccupation. She's going places but so, unfortunately, is her partner. And During the places he's going take him towards lieswar, deceit and a pretty young thing in the form of his new co-star. ItJean's a good time father was arrested for Mia listening to escape, and pilot season in LA provides just the excuse.|isbn=1471189783}} =='''8 JULY'''=={{Frontpage|author=Hannah Peck|title=Kate on the Case|rating=3.5|genre=Confident Readers|summary=Meet Kate, although I got the impression she'd rather be a Catherine – banned radio and soldiers took him away one specific Catherine at that. For Catherine Rodriguez is Kate's idol, and the author of our heroine's favourite possession, ''The Special Correspondent Manual''. Armed with a plucky father, that booknight, leaving Jean and her talking mouse called Rupert, she is all equipped to manage a train ride to the Arctic, to see her scientist mother waiting for years for the first time in yonksnews of him. However, this is a train ride with a difference, for on board is a greedy-seeming harridan and her cat, a thief – and two glowing eyes, shining from As the darkness in a blink-and-you'll-miss-them style. It's definitely a case for a new young investigative journalist...|isbn=184812970X}} =='''22 JULY'''=={{Frontpage|author=Eva Bjorg Aegisdottir and Victoria Cribb (translator)|title=Girls Who Lie|rating=3|genre=Thrillers|summary=You might be forgiven for thinking that all British finally free the dark corners of Iceland have featured in their noirish thrillers and crime books before now. You think, seeing on Channel islands from the map that we're set in AkranesNazis, and finding it's only twenty kilometres from the capital city, that this author war is clutching at the few final straws left. However just because the book aims for the usual small-town feelfinally over, it's not just in Akranes their hopes rise that our interests lie. Six months ago a woman failed to turn up for her date evening, and was never seen again. This left a teenaged girl not at all disappointed that she could now live permanently with the couple who had given her foster care before her mother had asked for the girl back, and a couple they will finally learn what became of delighted adoptershim. But it left our three detectives at will the truth come as a quandary – mobile phone use was at a high level until relief, or will it stopped all of a sudden, in one place, raise further questions around what else happened during the woman's car war? Who was found miles away in a second place, and now, after six months, the body has been discovered, in a third, even more remote place. Meanwhile, this narrative is interrupted by a confessional monologue from a mother informer who found herself with heavy post-natal depression, and very little maternal feeling in her body. Is the assumption that is so easy for told the reader to make Nazis about the right oneradio?|isbn=191319373X}} =='''7 OCTOBER'''=={{Frontpage|author=John Gwynne|title=The Shadow Of The Gods|rating=5|genre=Fantasy|summary=The Shadow Of The Gods is the first installment of the Bloodsworn Saga, set in the era of the Vikings in the shadow of Ragnarok, when the Gods And what other secrets have battled and their bones lie scattered for all to see. This story is been kept throughout the ultimate in High Fantasy, and John Gwynne certainly does justice to the genre, with mythical creatures, archaic language and battles galore. This is a thick book, with an intricate plot and fascinating characters that are woven together to create a wonderfully realistic and gritty world in which our heroes must do battle.occupation?|isbn=03565142181846976537
}}
 
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