Difference between revisions of "Book Reviews From The Bookbag"

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'''Read [[Forthcoming Publications|reviews of books about to be published]].
 
'''Read [[Forthcoming Publications|reviews of books about to be published]].
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{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
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|isbn=140639131X
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|author=Sylvie Cathrall
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|title=A Practical Present for Philippa Pheasant
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|title=A Letter to the Luminous Deep
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|author=Briony May Smith
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|rating=5
 +
|genre=Science Fiction
 +
|summary= There are few greater joys than a book which lives up to a compelling premise. And this is one of them.
 +
|isbn= 0356522776
 +
}}
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{{Frontpage
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|isbn=1786482126
 +
|title=The Janus Stone (Dr Ruth Galloway)
 +
|author=Elly Griffiths
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
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|genre=For Sharing
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|genre=Crime
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|summary=Philippa Pheasant was ''tired'' of nearly getting squished as she tried to cross the Old Oak Road.  She wrote to the mayor about the problem but didn't even get a reply.  Philippa wasn't a bird to sit back on her tail feathers when there was a problem which needed solving: she saw the benefits of the lollipop lady at the school crossing and decided that she would set up something similar herself.  Her uniform and lollipop stick were both a little amateur to start with but the benefits were obvious.  All the animals used the crossing and Hedgehog was even trained up to provide a safe path overnight.
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|summary=Builders were demolishing an old house in Norwich - the site was going to hold seventy-five 'luxury' apartments - when they discovered the bones of a 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.  It's difficult as Ruth knows, but Nelson doesn't, that she is pregnant with his child as a result of the one night they spent together some three months ago.  Her condition will be obvious before long, not least because Ruth is prone to sudden bouts of sickness.
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
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|isbn=000837936X
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|author=Joan Didion
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|title=The Last Girl to Die
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|title=The Year of Magical Thinking
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|author=Helen Fields
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|rating=4.5
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|rating=5
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|genre=Autobiography
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|genre=Crime
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|summary=This book is Joan Didion's heartbreaking autobiographical account of the grief she endured following her husband's sudden death. Books that shed light on taboo topics like death are such a beautiful and necessary resource to help people feel less alone. Didion unpicks unpleasant feelings surrounding death like self-pity, denial and delusion and makes them utterly normal, lends them a human face to wear.
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|summary=Seventeen-year-old Adriana Clarke's family moved to Tobermory, on the Isle of Mull, in search of a new life.  It was a bit of a change from Las Vegas, but the family seemed determined and Adriana had shown signs of developing a social life - until she disappeared.  The local police demonstrated little interest in the case (could it have been because Adriana's mother is obviously Latino?) and Rob and Isabella Clarke called in Sadie Levesque from Banff, who had successfully tracked down missing teenagers. Brandon, Adriana's twin, was upset and surly. Four-year-old Luna just knew that she missed her big sister.  It took four days, but Sadie found Adriana in Mackinnon's Cave.  She'd been murdered and it looked like a ritual killing.
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|isbn=0007216858
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
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|isbn=1509889612
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|author=Alba de Cespedes
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|title=The Rising Tide (D I Vera Stanhope)
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|title=Forbidden Notebook
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|author=Ann Cleeves
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|rating=4
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|rating=5
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|genre=Literary Fiction
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|genre=Crime
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|summary=This Italian work of feminist fiction holds an air of suspense and tension from the moment our protagonist, Valeria Cossati, purchases her forbidden notebook, and learns about herself in the most intimate and revealing ways.
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|summary=It's fifty years since a group of teenagers went on a weekend retreat to Holy Island.  Some of them found the Only Connect course transformative and they've been coming back for a reunion every five years since then.  There was a tragedy at the first reunion when Isobel Hall drove off the island too close to high tide and her car was swept away, but her younger sister, Louisa, has returned with the group each year as her husband, Ken, was one of the original teenagers.  Ken now has Alzheimer's and he's a shadow of the man he used to be. Philip Robson now a priest, always gets there early as he likes to have some quiet time alone in the chapel.  Annie Laidler lives locally and she provides much of the food: her deli is famous in the area.
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|isbn=1782278222
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
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|isbn=1473680883
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|author=Ottessa Moshfegh
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|title=The Skeleton Key
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|title=My Year of Rest and Relaxation
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|author=Erin Kelly
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|rating=3
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|rating=5
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|genre=Literary Fiction
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|genre=Thrillers
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|summary=At best, this novel is a scathing critique of modern society and reveals the fragility of human relationships; at worst, it is the cynical, predictable and slightly trite tale of an unlikeable protagonist. This unlikely heroine, a slim, attractive and newly orphaned girl in her twenties is disillusioned with the world, but resolves not to lose sleep over it: in fact, her solution lies in her hibernation.
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|summary=''The Golden Bones is going to follow me around for the rest of my life.  How can I trust anyone?  It all leads back to you!''
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|isbn=1784707422
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Nell didn't want to go to the reunion to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of ''The Golden Bones''. She'd had no benefit from it - in fact, it had made her life precarious and unbelievably challenging.  I'd better explain.  ''The Golden Bones'' was a treasure quest book painted and written by Frank and Cora Churcher.  The story revolved around murdered  Elinore whose golden and bejewelled bones were hidden around the country.  The clues - some of them quite tortuous - were disguised in the words and pictures of the book - and all the parts were discovered except for the pelvis.  As with such quests, some people were obsessive and the theories became more and more outlandish.
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
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|author=Holly Webb
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|isbn=0008551324
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|title=The Story of Greenriver
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|title=The Devil You Know (D S Max Craigie)
 +
|author=Neil Lancaster
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
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|genre=Confident Readers
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|genre=Crime
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|summary=Silken and Sedge, for all their differences, have a lot in common.  Silken is a girl whose father is the  Master Builder of what might be the finest beaver lodge on the Greenriver.  Unfortunately she is also a kind of runt figure, and as a result is patronised, and given the most tokenistic tasks when it comes to fetching wood and shoring the dam up.  She also stands out for the unique artistic ability to sing.  Otters like Sedge sing, but he too, as the son of the lady of the holt, has pressure on him to be a bit less feckless and more attentive to class.  He, after all, will eventually inherit the job of keeping the otters safe from the wolf that both animal species fear the most, and from dreaded events like a Dark Spring.
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|summary=It's unusual for anyone from the 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 police where the body of 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 police doing what he wants.  And what he wants is to be transferred to an open prison to serve the remainder of his sentence and to get an early parole date.  Not much to ask, is it?  The new Deputy Police Constable doesn't 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.
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|isbn=1510109625
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
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|author=Anna Kemp and David Wyatt
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|isbn=1739526910
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|title=Into Goblyn Wood
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|title=Where I've Not Been Lost
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|rating=4
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|author=Glen Sibley
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|genre=Confident Readers
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|rating=4.5
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|summary=Meet Hazel. For the last nine of her eleven years, she has been stuck as a foundling in a horrid, Victorian institution, generally peeling vegetables or acting as a servant. She'd arrived at the place at the same time as Pete, and they're inseparably good friends now, until a chance for them both to escape, and enter the outside world, does not go to plan. There had always been the idea of a life idyllic in the nearby forests, Goblyn Wood, and a tribe of Wild Children, but none of that comes to pass, as Hazel finds herself in the care of a professor at the Natural History Museum. But life with him is not anything like what she might have expected it to be – and Hazel is determined to return to the Woods, restore her friendship with Pete – and to work out just what is going on in the forest, both the light and the shade, and the deathly dark...
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|genre=General Fiction
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|isbn=1398503835
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|summary=''One year after a suicide attempt blows apart musician Brian O’Malley's life, he arrives in an unfamiliar Devon town to recover. Living with an unexpected housemate at his former manager’s holiday home, he dreams of reconnecting with everything he has lost. But as those tentative plans falter, he becomes swept up in a local world of unlikely friendships, mobile discos and surprising romantic possibilities.''
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
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|isbn=0241990165
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|isbn=0008405026
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|title=Hope to Die (D I Fawley)
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|title=A Stranger in the Family (Maeve Kerrigan 11)
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|author=Cara Hunter
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|author=Jane Casey
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
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|summary=It began rather oddly.  There was a 999 call suggesting that a shot had been fired in an isolated house but the call hadn't come from the householder.  A couple of PCs went to make certain that everything was alright and it took quite a while for the elderly householder to answer the door. He somewhat reluctantly told them that they'd better come in.  In the kitchen there was a body on the floor: the head had been blown off with a shotgun and the corpse was holding a knife in its right hand.  Richard Swann told the police that he'd heard sounds of an intruder and had come downstairs to investigate.  The ignorant young lout had called him ''Grandad'' and come at him with a knife.  Swann had shot him in self-defence.
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|summary=It's sixteen years since nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her bed one summer night.  She was never found and the investigation ground to a halt. Now, her mother, Helena, and her father are dead in their bed.  Initially, it looks like a straightforward murder/suicide but there's something about the positioning of the bodies that makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and her boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious.  What looked as though it was going to be an open-and-shut case is now a complex double murder.  Kerrigan is convinced that the explanation lies in Rosalie's disappearance: others (such as Derwent's boss, Una Burt) are less convinced.
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
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|author= Kit De Waal
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|author=Jo Callaghan
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|title= Without Warning and Only Sometimes
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|title=Leave No Trace
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|rating= 4
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|rating=4
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|genre= Autobiography
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|genre=Crime
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|summary= As Philip Larkin so eloquently put it, “They f*** you up, your mum and dad/ They may not mean to, but they do” Without Warning and Only Sometimes by Kit De Waal focuses on this idea of parenthood and the bonds that bind family. This book is a memoir focussing on the author’s formative years as a teenager living in a lower class area of Birmingham. Her father is from St. Kitts in the Caribbean and her mother is an Irish woman ostracized by her family for becoming pregnant by and marrying a black man. This intersectionality plays a large role in the autobiography. Kit De Waal faces multiple hurdles due to her race, her class and her gender. Her parents loom large and are written with care, love, and the kind of anger only a child can express to their parents.
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|summary=When 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.  It's their first live case together, having previously been very successful with several cold cases. But when there is a second body found crucified a few days later, Kat is suddenly struggling with a potential serial killer and a very high profile case that draws a lot of unwanted attention to their AI Future Policing project. Will they be able to solve the case in time, or will Kat find herself taken off the case and, potentially, out of a career?
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|isbn=1472284836
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|isbn=139851120X
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
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|author=David Lagercrantz
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|isbn=1529077745
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|title=Dark Music
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|title=The Dark Wives (D I Vera Stanhope)
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|rating=3
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|author=Ann Cleeves
 +
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
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|summary=How far from the original can a book allegedly inspired by Sherlock Holmes get before the allusion breaks?  This does have a wonder-mind at the heart of what little investigating is going on, but there is not a lot that Conan Doyle fans could really pin down as on their exact wavelength.  For one, the main focus of the narrative, Micaela, is no John Watson MD.  She's a Chilean in the Stockholm police, put on a murder squad as she knows the prime suspect of old, in a case where a referee of a junior football match was found stoned to death shortly after the match, and just outside the stadium.  Beppe, the suspect, was drunkenly antagonistic to the ref during the closing minutes, but refuses to admit anything, through days and weeks of interrogation.  When some disreputable coppers (the kind who dismiss anything their superior comes up with, the kind who think they can judge Micaela from her fringe and how she might dress – that kind) are told to go and see what brainbox Professor Rekke thinks of it all, she can only smirk when he says Beppe is innocent and the investigation is a shambles.  But taken off the case, she can no longer help solve the crime, and with Rekke the most erratic, irregular kind of guy, she can't get his full verdict on it all. Until, that may be, she manages to stop him in the middle of an apparent suicide attempt...
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|summary=A man walking his dog in the early morning discovered the body of a man in the park near Rosebank, a care home for troubled teens.  The dead man was Josh - one of the care workers who was due to work a shift the night before but who had never turned up.  D I Vera Stanhope is called in to investigate the murder - but her only clue is the disappearance of one of the residents, fourteen-year-old Chloe Spencer.  Some people believe that Chloe was responsible for the death but Vera thinks this is unlikely as the girl's diary makes it clear that she adored Josh. She knows that she has to find Chloe to discover what happened to Josh.
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|isbn=1529413192
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
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|isbn=B0B2N7MVYM
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|isbn=1399613073
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|title=The Calculations of Rational Men
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|title=Moral Injuries
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|author=Daniel Godfrey
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|author=Christie Watson
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|rating=5
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|rating=4.5
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|genre=General Fiction
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|genre=Thrillers
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|summary=It's the 10th of December 1962 when we first meet Dr Joseph Marr.  Just to put what happens in context, the Cuban missile crisis is still very fresh in people's minds.  The world has barely had a chance to breathe out.  But for Joe Marr, it's not the missile crisis that's at the front of his mind.  He's been convicted of murder.  With the current state of medical knowledge, it's hard to think otherwise than that the prosecution would never have been brought but Joe Marr has spent his first few days in HMP Queen's Bench, a relatively new prison.  He's just getting used to his roommate, Mervyn, and learning to be wary of the McArthur brothers.
+
|summary=Olivia, Laura and Anjali met on the first day of medical school and their friendship would keep them inseparable for a quarter of a century.  Olivia is ruthlessly ambitious, which is a bonus when you aim to be a cardiothoracic surgeon.  Laura is a perfectionist and a trauma doctor.  Anjali is the free spirit of the group and she becomes a GP.  When we first meet them they're at a drug and alcohol-fuelled party and it's 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 will impact the three friends.  This time, it's their teenage children who are involved.
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
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|isbn=1846976146
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|isbn=0241636604
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|title=The Bone Road
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|title=The Trading Game: A Confession
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|author=N E Solomons
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|author=Gary Stevenson
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
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|genre=Thrillers
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|genre=Autobiography
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|summary=Heather Bishop, the former Olympic cyclist, flew to Bosnia to surprise her boyfriend, cycling journalist Ryan Mackinnon.  She even took their bikes so they could have a few days' break in the region.  It was a little worrying that he didn't seem exactly pleased to see her: she even wondered if he had a woman in the hotel room.  Heather had to give up competitive cycling after a traumatic brain injury four years before: she was still fit but her reactions and her memory were not up to the standard she would need to race again.  Sometimes she couldn't be certain about what she had or hadn't done and she simply couldn't cope in difficult situations.  She didn't entirely trust herself.
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|summary=If you were to bring up an image of a city banker in your mind, you're unlikely to think of someone like Gary Stevenson.  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 has a facility with numbers which most of us can only envy.  He also realised that most rich people expect poor people to be stupid.  It was his ability at what was, essentially, a card game which got him an internship with Citibank.  Eventually, this turned into permanent employment as a trader.
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}}
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{{Frontpage
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|isbn=B0DB64PYV5
 +
|title=The White Rose
 +
|author=Dave Baines
 +
|rating=4
 +
|genre=Dystopian Fiction
 +
|summary=In 2033, a superstorm known as the White Rose devastates the Northern Hemisphere. And it's not a storm that gathers, wreaks havoc, then dissipates. Instead, it hovers across half the Earth with its octopus-like tentacles, not giving up and never going away.
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
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|author=Judith Eagle
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|author=Leanne Egan
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|title=The Accidental Stowaway
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|title=Lover Birds
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
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|genre=Confident Readers
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|genre=Teens
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|summary=Patch is a little girl who has been passed from one relation to another, until it seems that there is nobody left for her to go to.  Her father died when she was very young, and her mother ran away. The family lawyer, after consultation with ‘someone’, arranges for her to go to a school in Liverpool, but on her arrival there, she gets caught up in an adventure with a little boy called Turo who works on a steamship.  During a chase with him (when she is both trying to get her rollerskate back and running away from the police!) she winds up on the steamship hiding in a lifeboat, and before she knows it, the ship has left the docks and she is an accidental stowaway!
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|summary=When new girl, Isabel, moves to Lou's hometown of Liverpool from London Lou immediately feels Isabel's disdain for everything around her.  A misunderstanding between them leaves them hating each other, but Lou feels her pulse racing every time she looks at Isabel or speaks with her, and that's definitely because Isabel makes her feel so cross, isn't it? Because Lou is straight, isn't she?  Even though none of her relationships with boys have gone very well so far, and she's never had a good kiss with any of them?  So she just finds herself watching Isabel, and wanting to hang out with her because fighting with her is fun, and she definitely just hates Isabel, doesn't she?
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|isbn=0571363121
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|isbn=000862657X
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}}
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{{Frontpage
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|isbn=1009473085
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|title=The Conservative Effect 2010 - 2024
 +
|author=Anthony Seldon and Tom Egerton (Editors)
 +
|rating=5
 +
|genre=Politics and Society
 +
|summary=Sometimes it's simpler to explain a book by describing what it ''isn't'' and that applies to ''The Conservative Effect: 2010-2024 - 14 Wasted Years?''.  If you're looking for an easy read which will deliver the inside story about what ''really'' happened on certain occasions, then this isn't the book for you.  If that's what you're looking for, I don't think Anthony Seldon's book, {{amazonurl|isbn=B0BH7SKG2S|title=Johnson at 10}}, can be bettered for those tumultuous years.  It's a compelling read and should be compulsory for anyone who thinks Johnson should return to politics.  ''The Conservative Effect'' is an entirely different beast.  It's the seventh book in a series which looks at the impact a government has made and co-editor Sir Anthony Seldon regards this as the most important. This book follows the well-established format: a series of experts from various fields review the state of the nation when the coalition took over in 2010, the changes that occurred and the situation in 2024.
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
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|isbn=0760379874
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|author=Max Boucherat
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|title=Super Easy Knitting for Beginners
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|title=The Last Life of Lori Mills
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|author=Carri Hammett
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
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|genre=Crafts
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|genre=Confident Readers
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|summary=I learned to knit in the nineteen-fifties: it wasn't a choice, it was a requirement.  Girls learned to knit and to embroider and boys did wood and metal work. My knitting wa accompanied by a lot of criticism and quite a few tears: it was a long time before I realised that there was pleasure to be had in the skill.  Nearly seventy years later it's the only thing that keeps my hands at all supple.  The turning point was a booklet published by Patons which gave all the basics and some patterns.  I've been looking for something simple to recommend to people who'd like to master the skill.  So, how did ''Super Easy Knitting For Beginners'' work out?
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|summary=We meet Lori on the first evening she's got the house to herself – no neighbour to pop in, babysitter poorly, mother at work, just an avidly rule-breaking eleven year old, on her lonesome.  What could possibly go wrong? Snuggled in a blanket fort, she has one main intention, and that is to log on to Voxminer, the world-building, critter-collecting game that is a hit in Lori's world.  But first Lori has a tiny inkling that this stormy night doesn't find herself entirely on her own, and then she finds something even more spooky.  For the server she and her bestie and nobody else should be able to enter shows signs of tampering.  When malevolent eyes spark up on her phone screen, and her safe place in the game has been doctored – well, where is a girl to turn?
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|isbn=0008666482
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
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|author=Sarah Todd Taylor
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|author=Jenny Lecoat
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|title=Alice Eclair, Spy Extraordinaire! A Recipe for Trouble
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|title=Beyond Summerland
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
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|genre=Confident Readers
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|genre=General Fiction
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|summary=Meet Alice Eclair.  A perfect eye and very careful hands have made her one of Paris's best young cake makers and decorators, making sure her mother's establishment is a classy affair.  Not bad for a thirteen year old.  Oh, and a perfect eye and a very careful handler and remote trainer have also made sure she is a very competent young spy.  Her first real mission will be to chase a traitor across the country – working behind the scenes on a posh sleeper train to the south of France, and hoping against hope that she can prevent documents allowing foreign agents to creep into the country from getting into nefarious hands. But while nobody would have her down as a spy, can she possibly leave behind her rookie status and find the baddy?
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|summary=Jean lives on Jersey with her mother where they are celebrating the end of the occupation.  During the war, Jean's father was arrested for listening to a banned radio and soldiers took him away one night, leaving Jean and her mother waiting for years for news of him.  As the British finally free the Channel islands from the Nazis, and the war is finally over, their hopes rise that they will finally learn what became of him.  But will the truth come as a relief, or will it raise further questions around what else happened during the war?  Who was the informer who told the Nazis about the radio? And what other secrets have been kept throughout the occupation?
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|isbn=1839940956
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|isbn=1846976537
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
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|isbn=0760379912
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|isbn=1529428289
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|title=Super Easy Quilting for Beginners
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|title=A Grave in the Woods (A Bruno, Chief of Police Novel)
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|author=Editors of Quarry Books
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|author=Martin Walker
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
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|genre=Crafts
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|genre=Crime
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|summary=I learned patchworking from necessity: old or outgrown clothes needed to be turned into something new and usable when I was in my twenties.  It would be a while before it became a pleasure rather than a chore but I've never felt completely at home with quilting.  I needed something a little more stylish than my usual buttons or knots.  ''Super Easy Quilting for Beginners'' seemed like a good place to start. So, how did it stack up?
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|summary=Because of various property transactions, people were searching for the grave but when they found it, it came with three sets of bones.  They dated back to World War II and it fell to Bruno, the Chief of Police for St Denis, to discover the identities of the bodies and establish whether or not a crime had been committed.  As if this isn't enough to worry about, the Dordogne River - normally tranquil - is flowing at record levels.  It's not just the local autumn rains that have caused the problem: various dams upstream on another river have had to release water and St Denis faces the possibility of a devastating flood.
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
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|isbn=1788360737
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|isbn=152919640X
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|title= Artivism: The Battle for Museums in the Era of Postmodernism
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|title=The Suspect
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|author=Alexander Adams
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|author=Rob Rinder
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|rating=2
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|rating=4.5
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|genre= Politics and Society
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|genre=Crime
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|summary= Can art ever be apolitical? All art is political because art is not made in a vacuum. It is made by people. Antonio Gramsci stated that ‘’Every man… contributes to modifying the social environment in which he develops’’. Therefore, all art must be political, even implicitly. Alexander Adams in his new book ‘Artivism: The Battle for Museum in the Era of Postmodernism’ is adamant that art is freer when it is art for art’s sake. The recent trend of so-called artivism has caused artists to become more overtly political (read: left wing). Their seemingly grass roots movements have been astroturfed by large “left-wing” donors and media elites hoping to create a more globalist and progressive regime. Or at least that’s what Alexander Adams believes.
+
|summary=The nation's favourite daytime TV presenter, Jessica Holby, was murdered live on television and it seems that there's only one suspect. He's celebrity chef Sebastian Brooks and his contract stated that he must not serve anything containing miso to Jessica Holby. She's seriously allergic and carries an EpiPen in case of emergencies. Everything seemed as normal - as normal as they can be in a busy, live television studio - and Brooks served a ragout to Holby. Her EpiPen was nowhere to be found and she was dead within minutes. It was soon clear that this was no accident.
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
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|isbn=1408712172
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|isbn=0008385068
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|title=The Cliff House
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|title=The Midnight Feast
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|author=Chris Brookmyre
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|author=Lucy Foley
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|rating=5
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|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Thrillers
 
|genre=Thrillers
−
|summary=''Many of them didn't know each other, one of them didn't know anybody, including Jen, one of them quite possibly hated her, and two of them definitely hated each other.  What could possibly go wrong?''
+
|summary=It's midsummer on the Dorset coast and guests gather at The Manor.  It's their opening weekend and splendid celebrations are 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 the wealthy and famous.  Her husband, Owen, was the architect and work is still ongoing on parts of the site.  The heat is oppressive and amongst the guests are enemies as well as friends.  Old scores are going to be settled and it won't be long before a body is found.
−
 
 
−
That's the round-up for Jen's hen party which is to take place on Clachan Geal an island just south of Barra.  They're all staying in The Cliff House, hosted by Lauren, and it's the utmost in luxury living but then Jen can afford it.  She's just sold her muffin business for millions but is staying on to run it.  She's got her doubts about the long weekend: fiance Zaki Hussain has been acting a little strangely of late and wouldn't explain to her what the email he was hurriedly deleting was about.  Added to that, he's just about forced her to bring his sister, Samira, whom Jen's never met, on the trip, on the grounds that she's been stuck at home with newborn twins for the last six months and desperately needs the break.
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
−
|isbn=1788360702
+
|author=Ashley Hickson-Lovence
−
|title=Charles, The Alternative Prince: An Unauthorised Biography
+
|title=Wild East
−
|author=Edzard Ernst
+
|rating=4.5
−
|rating=4
+
|genre=Teens
−
|genre=Biography
+
|summary=Written in verse, this is Ronny's story, a young black fourteen year old boy from Hackney who suddenly has to move to Norwich and start at a mostly white school.  The move is initiated by Ronny's mum who is worried for Ronny's safety after a tragic event, and so Ronny finds himself trying to settle in a new town, a new school, and keep himself out of trouble.  He listens to music constantly, and has always dreamed of being a rapper.  But now, in this new school, his teacher encourages him to be part of a poetry writing workshop group and, slowly, Ronny begins to see the connections between rap and poetry, and the power of creativity and crafting your words.
−
|summary=For over forty years, Prince Charles has been an ardent supporter of alternative medicine and complementary therapies.  ''Charles, The Alternative Prince'' critically assesses the Prince's opinions, beliefs and aims against the background of the scientific evidence.  There are few instances of his beliefs being vindicated and his relentless promotion of treatments which have no scientific support has done considerable damage to the reputation of a man who is proud of his refusal to apply evidence-based, logical reasoning to his ambitions.
+
|isbn=0241645441
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
−
|author=Will Carver
+
|isbn=1635866847
−
|title=The Daves Next Door
+
|title=The Lavender Companion
−
|rating=4
+
|author=Jessica Dunham and Terry Barlin Vesci
−
|genre=General Fiction
+
|rating=4.5
−
|summary= Five strangers come together in one moment as a suicide bomber prepares to detonate his vest on a London tube line. As their fates overlap, the story is told in backwards order, leading up to the fateful moment.
+
|genre=Lifestyle
−
|isbn= 1914585186
+
|summary=It's strange, the things that make you ''immediately'' feel that this is the book for you. Before I started reading ''The Lavender Companion'', I visited the author's [https://www.pinelavenderfarm.com/ website] and there's a picture of a slice of chocolate cake on the homepage. I don't eat cakes and desserts - but I wanted that cake viscerally.  (There's a recipe in the book, which I'm avoiding with some difficulty!!) Then I started reading the book and I was told to make a mess of it.  Notes in the margins are sanctioned.  You get to fold down the corners of pages.  You suspect that smears of butter would not be a problem.  I ''loved'' this book already.
−
}}
 
−
{{Frontpage
 
−
|isbn=1529125790
 
−
|title=The Family Remains
 
−
|author=Lisa Jewell
 
−
|rating=4
 
−
|genre=Thrillers
 
−
|summary=In July 2019, Jason Mott was mud larking on the banks of the River Thames when he came across a bag of what appeared to be human bones. Detective Inspector Samuel Owusu and Saffron Brown from forensics were there to investigate.  The bones were indeed human: a young woman had been killed by a blow to the head many years ago - probably as long as twenty-five - but the bones had not been in the river longer than a year.  There was no identification but the bag contained vegetation, some of which was quite unusual.
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
−
|author=Jennifer Mason
+
|author=Rob Keeley
−
|title=Partitions of Unity
+
|title=Childish Spirits: 10th anniversary special edition
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
−
|genre=General Fiction
+
|genre=Confident Readers
−
|summary= Here at Bookbag Towers, we first met Elizabeth Cromwell, dominatrix and unintentional detective in [[Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery by Jennifer Mason|Preposterous]], when she investigated and unravelled a series of disappearances. In ''Partitions of Unity'', she sets her mind to solving a murder....
+
|summary=Around here, we're big fans of children's author Rob Keeley. He's a ball of happy positivity, he understands children, and he writes for their pleasure and enjoyment, not to lecture or hector.
−
|isbn=B09LQR9FRF
+
 
 +
The ''Childish Spirits'' series is one of his greatest achievements. It's a sequence of ghost stories centring on Ellie, a stalwart young girl who can cope with anything the spirit world throws at her, and Edward, a spoiled lordling and the first spirit Ellie encounters
 +
|isbn= 1783064617
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
−
|author=Fiona Parashar
+
|author=Jenny Valentine
−
|title=A Beautiful Way to Coach
+
|title=Us in the Before and After
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
−
|genre=Business and Finance
+
|genre=Teens
−
|summary= So what am I doing reading this book, using this book, and being audacious enough to review it?  Truth is I bought it out of curiosity.  I was at an on-line launch for the book and Fiona’s description of her Vision Days appealed to me.  I wanted to see if there were things in there that I could use with someone I am currently helping / supporting / trying to mentor – without committing them to a full day, which I know would send them scurrying for their burrow.  I also wanted to see if I could give myself a Vision Day, to bring me away from their vision and back to my own.
+
|summary=Elk and Mab are best friends, or more than that even, their friendship is a once in a lifetime connection.  They meet as children one day on a trip out but unfortunately they don't get each other's contact details at the time.  But then chance brings them back together, and they are inseparable.  Something has happened though, something terrible and tragic, and now they must work through their grief, and their friendship, together.
−
|isbn=103211603X
+
|isbn=1471196585
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
−
|isbn=1913750353
+
|author=Kieran Larwood and Joe Todd-Stanton
−
|title=Britannica's Word of the Day
+
|title=Dungeon Runners: Hero Trial
−
|author=Patrick Kelly, Renee Kelly and Sue Macy
 
−
|rating=5
 
−
|genre=Children's Non-Fiction
 
−
|summary=''Britannica's Word of the Day'' has a sub-title: ''366 Elevating Utterances to Stretch Your Cranium and Tickle Your Humerus'' which probably tells you all that you need to know about this brilliant book.  It starts on January 1st with ''Razzmatazz'', tells you how to pronounce it (''raz-muh-TAZ''), gives you a definition and then includes the word in a sentence so that you know how it should be used.  You also get an engaging and frequently amusing illustration too.  I don't think I've ever encountered a word which uses the letter Z four times before!
 
−
}}
 
−
{{Frontpage
 
−
|author=A C Wise
 
−
|title=Hooked
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
−
|genre=General Fiction
+
|genre=Confident Readers
−
|summary=It’s been twenty-two years since Captain Hook, now going by just ‘James’, has been in Neverland.  Living a new life in London, he has never completely escaped his past.  But now he senses the edges of the beast circling around his life in London, and when suddenly he finds himself face to face in the street with Wendy, he knows that the line between this world and Neverland is growing thin.  The beast is finally coming to get him, and in the process will pull Wendy and her daughter Jane back into their past once again.
+
|summary=Meet Kit.  Like most of the people in his 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-old, magical mazes, and race to the exit, perhaps bothering with the treasure or the big bad and the points they grant you along the way.  Unfortunately for Kit, the only thing he's seen of the latest race on the inn TV equivalent is that one team has been retired, eaten, and a new trio of questors is needed.  Possibly very unfortunately indeed for Kit, he has taken to the goading from the token bully of his world and stumbled into declaring he'll enter as a team. What chance does this friendless, muscle-free-zone have in actually managing that, and how could he possibly hope to succeed?
−
|isbn=1789096839
+
|isbn=1839945184
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
−
|isbn=1787301745
+
|isbn=1787333175
−
|title=Confidence
+
|title=You Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here
−
|author=Denise Mina
+
|author=Benji Waterhouse
−
|rating=3.5
+
|rating=5
−
|genre=Thrillers
+
|genre=Popular Science
−
|summary=We're back in the world of podcasters Anna and Fin, whom we first met in [[Conviction by Denise Mina|Conviction]].  It was Anna who'd organised the 'family' holiday: her ex, Hamish, is now with her best friend, Estelle and her children are living with them. Fin (who was married to Estelle) is there too and it was Anna who invited his girlfriend, Sofia. It's not long before everyone realises that was a bad mistake. Sofia's difficult and with everyone trapped inside their holiday accommodation - a lighthouse, in a storm - she begins talking about Anna's past, including her real name and the rape.  This was something which Anna had intended to tell the girls - twelve-tear-old Jess and ten-year-old Lizzie - when the time was right.  And this wasn't the right time.
+
|summary=I was tempted to read ''You Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here'' after enjoying Adam Kay's first book {{amazonurl|isbn=1509858636|title=This is Going to Hurt}}, a glorious mixture of insight into the workings of the NHS, humour and autobiography.  ''You Don't Have to be Mad...'' promised the same elements but moved from physical problems to mental illness and the work of a psychiatrist.  I did wonder whether it was acceptable to be looking for humour in this setting but the laughter is directed at a situation rather than a person and it is always delivered with empathy and understanding.  
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
−
|isbn=178763566X
+
|author=Onyi Nwabineli
−
|title=Listen to Me
+
|title=Allow Me to Introduce Myself
−
|author=Tess Gerritsen
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
−
|genre=Crime
+
|genre=General Fiction
−
|summary=We're in Boston with Amy. When she set out for university this morning it was a spring day and she wore her new, buttery-leather pumps but as she comes out of the library she knows that they're going to be ruined - and unsafe - in the snow that's now falling. As she crosses the road, a car comes out of nowhere and hits her. It doesn't stop.
+
|summary=Anuri spent her childhood on display to the world, thanks to her step-mother Ophelia's increasingly popular presence on social media, where she posted every step of Anuri's childhood for sponsorships and influencer deals and, basically, monetary gain.  Now Anuri is in her twenties and she is slowly trying to regain her confidence and to get her life back, suing her step-mother to take down the content about her.  Anuri is battling alcoholism, failing to start her PhD, undergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online and receiving money from them for doing so. Most importantly, she is desperately worried about her little sister, who is the new focus of Ophelia's online empire. Can she save her sister, and perhaps herself and her relationship with her father at the same time?
−
 
+
|isbn=0861546873
−
Two months later, we're with Angela Rizzoli, mother of Detective Jane Rizzoli, and a keen defender of the suburb of Revere, north of Boston, where she lives. Nothing gets past her and whilst her boyfriend, Vince Korsak, is in California, looking after his sister, she has the time to watch what's happening in the neighbourhood. The people who are moving in at no 2533 have aroused her suspicions.
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
−
|isbn=0008395632
+
|author=David Chadwick
−
|title=One Last Secret
+
|title=Headload of Napalm
−
|author=Adele Parks
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Thrillers
 
|genre=Thrillers
−
|summary=Natalya is an escort.  Well, her name's not ''actually'' Natalya: that's her professional name but it is a nod to her Serbian heritage.  She's actually thirty-one-year-old Teodora Dziewulski, usually known as Dora Wulski.  If you're thinking of 'escort' as being a polite description of a prostitute, run by a pimp, who's turning tricks to fund a drug habit, forget it. Dora is a professional in all senses of the word. She has an agent, Elspeth, who takes 30% of her income and deals with the payments but checks out the clients to see that Dora is going to be safe.  Dora describes herself as a self-employed clairvoyant to Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs.  
+
|summary= It's September 1973 in Hicks, California. Hicks is a Mojave desert town of a few thousand people with 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 main local employers but otherwise, there's not much of note other than dive bars and Joshua trees. Life is quiet, until....
 +
|isbn= B0D321VJ76
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
−
|author=David Solomons
+
|author=Tom Percival
−
|title=A Beginner's Guide to Ruling the Galaxy
+
|title=The Wrong Shoes
−
|rating=4
+
|rating=5
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|genre=Confident Readers
−
|summary=Gavin is being followed, seemingly constantly, by the new (very annoying) girl at school.  Only this is not your typical boy meets girl story.  Because in this instance, the girl in question is Niki, and she is a galactic princess (no, really, she is!)  So what will Gavin do when he becomes embroiled in a situation where, potentially, Earth and everyone on it will be blown to smithereens, all because of Niki?
+
|summary=Will's life is difficult, in a multitude of ways.  He is bullied because he has 'the wrong shoes', he has the wrong shoes because his dad can't work and doesn't have enough money for even the most basic of things like food, and his dad can't work because he lost his job at the college, was working a cash-in-hand job on a building site and had an accident.  Throw into that mix the 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 moments of joy when he is drawing, that feel like a light at the end of a long, dark tunnel.
−
|isbn=0857639935
+
|isbn=1398527122
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
−
|author=Alex Cotter
+
|isbn=0008517061
−
|title=The Mermaid Call
+
|title=Death in a Lonely Place
−
|rating=3.5
+
|author=Stig Abell
−
|genre=Confident Readers
+
|rating=4
−
|summary=Vivien knows that mermaids don't exist.  But she also knows they have to exist – at least in the public eye.  For there would be nothing to Lake Splendour – a far northern English resort – without them.  A hundred years and change ago, two teenaged girls allegedly spent months with mermaids, but were forced to return to help out with the Great War effort.  They also showed female emancipation, which helped create the town's tourism industry, now faded and falling apart but once a feminist success story.  Alice, a girl who stumbles into Vivien's gran's tourist shop one day, knows she certainly wants mermaids to exist – she thinks her family's black sheep died searching for them, or else was just too successful in her hunt. When the shy, doubting Thomasina that is Vivien collides with the exuberant, gung-ho Alice, what on earth – or perhaps in water – will they find?
+
|genre=Crime
−
|isbn=1839941901
+
|summary= Former Metropolitan Police detective, Jake Johnson, has settled into his rustic life at Little Sky.  There’s perhaps a little uncertainty about the future of his life with his vet girlfriend, Livia and her daughter Diana, as moving in together would mean a lot of compromise: does Jake give up his off-grid and relaxing life to move in with Livia or does Livia move to Little Sky despite her reservations about whether or not this is the future she wants for herself and her daughter? For the moment they’re enjoying life in the present and putting the future on the back burner.
 
}}
 
}}

Latest revision as of 07:44, 19 September 2024

Reviews by readers from all the many walks of literary life. With author interviews, features and top tens. You'll be sure to find something you'll want to read here. Dig in!

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0356522776.jpg

Review of

A Letter to the Luminous Deep by Sylvie Cathrall

5star.jpg Science Fiction

There are few greater joys than a book which lives up to a compelling premise. And this is one of them. Full Review

1786482126.jpg

Review of

The Janus Stone (Dr Ruth Galloway) by Elly Griffiths

4.5star.jpg Crime

Builders were demolishing an old house in Norwich - the site was going to hold seventy-five 'luxury' apartments - when they discovered the bones of a 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. It's difficult as Ruth knows, but Nelson doesn't, that she is pregnant with his child as a result of the one night they spent together some three months ago. Her condition will be obvious before long, not least because Ruth is prone to sudden bouts of sickness. Full Review

0007216858.jpg

Review of

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

4.5star.jpg Autobiography

This book is Joan Didion's heartbreaking autobiographical account of the grief she endured following her husband's sudden death. Books that shed light on taboo topics like death are such a beautiful and necessary resource to help people feel less alone. Didion unpicks unpleasant feelings surrounding death like self-pity, denial and delusion and makes them utterly normal, lends them a human face to wear. Full Review

1782278222.jpg

Review of

Forbidden Notebook by Alba de Cespedes

4star.jpg Literary Fiction

This Italian work of feminist fiction holds an air of suspense and tension from the moment our protagonist, Valeria Cossati, purchases her forbidden notebook, and learns about herself in the most intimate and revealing ways. Full Review

1784707422.jpg

Review of

My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh

3star.jpg Literary Fiction

At best, this novel is a scathing critique of modern society and reveals the fragility of human relationships; at worst, it is the cynical, predictable and slightly trite tale of an unlikeable protagonist. This unlikely heroine, a slim, attractive and newly orphaned girl in her twenties is disillusioned with the world, but resolves not to lose sleep over it: in fact, her solution lies in her hibernation. Full Review

0008551324.jpg

Review of

The Devil You Know (D S Max Craigie) by Neil Lancaster

4.5star.jpg Crime

It's unusual for anyone from the 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 police where the body of 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 police doing what he wants. And what he wants is to be transferred to an open prison to serve the remainder of his sentence and to get an early parole date. Not much to ask, is it? The new Deputy Police Constable doesn't 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. Full Review

1739526910.jpg

Review of

Where I've Not Been Lost by Glen Sibley

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

One year after a suicide attempt blows apart musician Brian O’Malley's life, he arrives in an unfamiliar Devon town to recover. Living with an unexpected housemate at his former manager’s holiday home, he dreams of reconnecting with everything he has lost. But as those tentative plans falter, he becomes swept up in a local world of unlikely friendships, mobile discos and surprising romantic possibilities. Full Review

0008405026.jpg

Review of

A Stranger in the Family (Maeve Kerrigan 11) by Jane Casey

5star.jpg Crime

It's sixteen years since nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her bed one summer night. She was never found and the investigation ground to a halt. Now, her mother, Helena, and her father are dead in their bed. Initially, it looks like a straightforward murder/suicide but there's something about the positioning of the bodies that makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and her boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. What looked as though it was going to be an open-and-shut case is now a complex double murder. Kerrigan is convinced that the explanation lies in Rosalie's disappearance: others (such as Derwent's boss, Una Burt) are less convinced. Full Review

139851120X.jpg

Review of

Leave No Trace by Jo Callaghan

4star.jpg Crime

When 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. It's their first live case together, having previously been very successful with several cold cases. But when there is a second body found crucified a few days later, Kat is suddenly struggling with a potential serial killer and a very high profile case that draws a lot of unwanted attention to their AI Future Policing project. Will they be able to solve the case in time, or will Kat find herself taken off the case and, potentially, out of a career? Full Review

1529077745.jpg

Review of

The Dark Wives (D I Vera Stanhope) by Ann Cleeves

4.5star.jpg Crime

A man walking his dog in the early morning discovered the body of a man in the park near Rosebank, a care home for troubled teens. The dead man was Josh - one of the care workers who was due to work a shift the night before but who had never turned up. D I Vera Stanhope is called in to investigate the murder - but her only clue is the disappearance of one of the residents, fourteen-year-old Chloe Spencer. Some people believe that Chloe was responsible for the death but Vera thinks this is unlikely as the girl's diary makes it clear that she adored Josh. She knows that she has to find Chloe to discover what happened to Josh. Full Review

1399613073.jpg

Review of

Moral Injuries by Christie Watson

4.5star.jpg Thrillers

Olivia, Laura and Anjali met on the first day of medical school and their friendship would keep them inseparable for a quarter of a century. Olivia is ruthlessly ambitious, which is a bonus when you aim to be a cardiothoracic surgeon. Laura is a perfectionist and a trauma doctor. Anjali is the free spirit of the group and she becomes a GP. When we first meet them they're at a drug and alcohol-fuelled party and it's 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 will impact the three friends. This time, it's their teenage children who are involved. Full Review

0241636604.jpg

Review of

The Trading Game: A Confession by Gary Stevenson

4.5star.jpg Autobiography

If you were to bring up an image of a city banker in your mind, you're unlikely to think of someone like Gary Stevenson. 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 has a facility with numbers which most of us can only envy. He also realised that most rich people expect poor people to be stupid. It was his ability at what was, essentially, a card game which got him an internship with Citibank. Eventually, this turned into permanent employment as a trader. Full Review

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Review of

The White Rose by Dave Baines

4star.jpg Dystopian Fiction

In 2033, a superstorm known as the White Rose devastates the Northern Hemisphere. And it's not a storm that gathers, wreaks havoc, then dissipates. Instead, it hovers across half the Earth with its octopus-like tentacles, not giving up and never going away. Full Review

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Review of

Lover Birds by Leanne Egan

4.5star.jpg Teens

When new girl, Isabel, moves to Lou's hometown of Liverpool from London Lou immediately feels Isabel's disdain for everything around her. A misunderstanding between them leaves them hating each other, but Lou feels her pulse racing every time she looks at Isabel or speaks with her, and that's definitely because Isabel makes her feel so cross, isn't it? Because Lou is straight, isn't she? Even though none of her relationships with boys have gone very well so far, and she's never had a good kiss with any of them? So she just finds herself watching Isabel, and wanting to hang out with her because fighting with her is fun, and she definitely just hates Isabel, doesn't she? Full Review

1009473085.jpg

Review of

The Conservative Effect 2010 - 2024 by Anthony Seldon and Tom Egerton (Editors)

5star.jpg Politics and Society

Sometimes it's simpler to explain a book by describing what it isn't and that applies to The Conservative Effect: 2010-2024 - 14 Wasted Years?. If you're looking for an easy read which will deliver the inside story about what really happened on certain occasions, then this isn't the book for you. If that's what you're looking for, I don't think Anthony Seldon's book, Johnson at 10, can be bettered for those tumultuous years. It's a compelling read and should be compulsory for anyone who thinks Johnson should return to politics. The Conservative Effect is an entirely different beast. It's the seventh book in a series which looks at the impact a government has made and co-editor Sir Anthony Seldon regards this as the most important. This book follows the well-established format: a series of experts from various fields review the state of the nation when the coalition took over in 2010, the changes that occurred and the situation in 2024. Full Review

0008666482.jpg

Review of

The Last Life of Lori Mills by Max Boucherat

4.5star.jpg Confident Readers

We meet Lori on the first evening she's got the house to herself – no neighbour to pop in, babysitter poorly, mother at work, just an avidly rule-breaking eleven year old, on her lonesome. What could possibly go wrong? Snuggled in a blanket fort, she has one main intention, and that is to log on to Voxminer, the world-building, critter-collecting game that is a hit in Lori's world. But first Lori has a tiny inkling that this stormy night doesn't find herself entirely on her own, and then she finds something even more spooky. For the server she and her bestie and nobody else should be able to enter shows signs of tampering. When malevolent eyes spark up on her phone screen, and her safe place in the game has been doctored – well, where is a girl to turn? Full Review

1846976537.jpg

Review of

Beyond Summerland by Jenny Lecoat

4star.jpg General Fiction

Jean lives on Jersey with her mother where they are celebrating the end of the occupation. During the war, Jean's father was arrested for listening to a banned radio and soldiers took him away one night, leaving Jean and her mother waiting for years for news of him. As the British finally free the Channel islands from the Nazis, and the war is finally over, their hopes rise that they will finally learn what became of him. But will the truth come as a relief, or will it raise further questions around what else happened during the war? Who was the informer who told the Nazis about the radio? And what other secrets have been kept throughout the occupation? Full Review

1529428289.jpg

Review of

A Grave in the Woods (A Bruno, Chief of Police Novel) by Martin Walker

4star.jpg Crime

Because of various property transactions, people were searching for the grave but when they found it, it came with three sets of bones. They dated back to World War II and it fell to Bruno, the Chief of Police for St Denis, to discover the identities of the bodies and establish whether or not a crime had been committed. As if this isn't enough to worry about, the Dordogne River - normally tranquil - is flowing at record levels. It's not just the local autumn rains that have caused the problem: various dams upstream on another river have had to release water and St Denis faces the possibility of a devastating flood. Full Review

152919640X.jpg

Review of

The Suspect by Rob Rinder

4.5star.jpg Crime

The nation's favourite daytime TV presenter, Jessica Holby, was murdered live on television and it seems that there's only one suspect. He's celebrity chef Sebastian Brooks and his contract stated that he must not serve anything containing miso to Jessica Holby. She's seriously allergic and carries an EpiPen in case of emergencies. Everything seemed as normal - as normal as they can be in a busy, live television studio - and Brooks served a ragout to Holby. Her EpiPen was nowhere to be found and she was dead within minutes. It was soon clear that this was no accident. Full Review

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Review of

The Midnight Feast by Lucy Foley

4.5star.jpg Thrillers

It's midsummer on the Dorset coast and guests gather at The Manor. It's their opening weekend and splendid celebrations are 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 the wealthy and famous. Her husband, Owen, was the architect and work is still ongoing on parts of the site. The heat is oppressive and amongst the guests are enemies as well as friends. Old scores are going to be settled and it won't be long before a body is found. Full Review

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Review of

Wild East by Ashley Hickson-Lovence

4.5star.jpg Teens

Written in verse, this is Ronny's story, a young black fourteen year old boy from Hackney who suddenly has to move to Norwich and start at a mostly white school. The move is initiated by Ronny's mum who is worried for Ronny's safety after a tragic event, and so Ronny finds himself trying to settle in a new town, a new school, and keep himself out of trouble. He listens to music constantly, and has always dreamed of being a rapper. But now, in this new school, his teacher encourages him to be part of a poetry writing workshop group and, slowly, Ronny begins to see the connections between rap and poetry, and the power of creativity and crafting your words. Full Review

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Review of

The Lavender Companion by Jessica Dunham and Terry Barlin Vesci

4.5star.jpg Lifestyle

It's strange, the things that make you immediately feel that this is the book for you. Before I started reading The Lavender Companion, I visited the author's website and there's a picture of a slice of chocolate cake on the homepage. I don't eat cakes and desserts - but I wanted that cake viscerally. (There's a recipe in the book, which I'm avoiding with some difficulty!!) Then I started reading the book and I was told to make a mess of it. Notes in the margins are sanctioned. You get to fold down the corners of pages. You suspect that smears of butter would not be a problem. I loved this book already. Full Review

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Review of

Childish Spirits: 10th anniversary special edition by Rob Keeley

4star.jpg Confident Readers

Around here, we're big fans of children's author Rob Keeley. He's a ball of happy positivity, he understands children, and he writes for their pleasure and enjoyment, not to lecture or hector.

The Childish Spirits series is one of his greatest achievements. It's a sequence of ghost stories centring on Ellie, a stalwart young girl who can cope with anything the spirit world throws at her, and Edward, a spoiled lordling and the first spirit Ellie encounters Full Review

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Review of

Us in the Before and After by Jenny Valentine

5star.jpg Teens

Elk and Mab are best friends, or more than that even, their friendship is a once in a lifetime connection. They meet as children one day on a trip out but unfortunately they don't get each other's contact details at the time. But then chance brings them back together, and they are inseparable. Something has happened though, something terrible and tragic, and now they must work through their grief, and their friendship, together. Full Review

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Review of

Dungeon Runners: Hero Trial by Kieran Larwood and Joe Todd-Stanton

4star.jpg Confident Readers

Meet Kit. Like most of the people in his 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-old, magical mazes, and race to the exit, perhaps bothering with the treasure or the big bad and the points they grant you along the way. Unfortunately for Kit, the only thing he's seen of the latest race on the inn TV equivalent is that one team has been retired, eaten, and a new trio of questors is needed. Possibly very unfortunately indeed for Kit, he has taken to the goading from the token bully of his world and stumbled into declaring he'll enter as a team. What chance does this friendless, muscle-free-zone have in actually managing that, and how could he possibly hope to succeed? Full Review

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Review of

You Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here by Benji Waterhouse

5star.jpg Popular Science

I was tempted to read You Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here after enjoying Adam Kay's first book This is Going to Hurt, a glorious mixture of insight into the workings of the NHS, humour and autobiography. You Don't Have to be Mad... promised the same elements but moved from physical problems to mental illness and the work of a psychiatrist. I did wonder whether it was acceptable to be looking for humour in this setting but the laughter is directed at a situation rather than a person and it is always delivered with empathy and understanding. Full Review

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Review of

Allow Me to Introduce Myself by Onyi Nwabineli

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

Anuri spent her childhood on display to the world, thanks to her step-mother Ophelia's increasingly popular presence on social media, where she posted every step of Anuri's childhood for sponsorships and influencer deals and, basically, monetary gain. Now Anuri is in her twenties and she is slowly trying to regain her confidence and to get her life back, suing her step-mother to take down the content about her. Anuri is battling alcoholism, failing to start her PhD, undergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online and receiving money from them for doing so. Most importantly, she is desperately worried about her little sister, who is the new focus of Ophelia's online empire. Can she save her sister, and perhaps herself and her relationship with her father at the same time? Full Review

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Review of

Headload of Napalm by David Chadwick

4.5star.jpg Thrillers

It's September 1973 in Hicks, California. Hicks is a Mojave desert town of a few thousand people with 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 main local employers but otherwise, there's not much of note other than dive bars and Joshua trees. Life is quiet, until.... Full Review

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Review of

The Wrong Shoes by Tom Percival

5star.jpg Confident Readers

Will's life is difficult, in a multitude of ways. He is bullied because he has 'the wrong shoes', he has the wrong shoes because his dad can't work and doesn't have enough money for even the most basic of things like food, and his dad can't work because he lost his job at the college, was working a cash-in-hand job on a building site and had an accident. Throw into that mix the 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 moments of joy when he is drawing, that feel like a light at the end of a long, dark tunnel. Full Review

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Review of

Death in a Lonely Place by Stig Abell

4star.jpg Crime

Former Metropolitan Police detective, Jake Johnson, has settled into his rustic life at Little Sky. There’s perhaps a little uncertainty about the future of his life with his vet girlfriend, Livia and her daughter Diana, as moving in together would mean a lot of compromise: does Jake give up his off-grid and relaxing life to move in with Livia or does Livia move to Little Sky despite her reservations about whether or not this is the future she wants for herself and her daughter? For the moment they’re enjoying life in the present and putting the future on the back burner. Full Review

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