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There are currently '''{{PAGESINCATEGORY: Reviews}}''' [[:Category:Reviews|reviews]] at TheBookbag.
 
There are currently '''{{PAGESINCATEGORY: Reviews}}''' [[:Category:Reviews|reviews]] at TheBookbag.
  
Want to find out more [[About Us|about us]]? __NOTOC__
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Want to learn more [[About Us|about us]]? __NOTOC__
  
 
==The Best New Books==
 
==The Best New Books==
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'''Read [[:Category:Features|the latest features]].'''
 
'''Read [[:Category:Features|the latest features]].'''
 
'''Read [[Forthcoming Publications|reviews of books about to be published]].
 
<!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->
 
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Hadeer Elsbai
+
|isbn=1529077745
|title=The Daughters of Izdihar
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|title=The Dark Wives (D I Vera Stanhope)
|rating=4
+
|author=Ann Cleeves
|genre=Fantasy
+
|rating=4.5
|summary= Drawing inspiration from Egypt, ''The Daughters of Izdihar'' explores the lives of two women who could not be more different, yet find themselves fighting for the rights of women and weavers – those with magical abilities - in a society pitted against them. Nehal, born into the upper class, wishes to attend the Weaving Academy to learn to control her abilities and then join the military, but instead she is forced into an arranged marriage with Nico. Giorgina on the other hand did not have a privileged upbringing like Nehal and feels great pressure to provide for her family and maintain their reputation, whilst secretly attending meetings of the Daughters of Izdihar – a group campaigning for women's rights. Giorgina also happens to be in love with Nico. What follows is a story of an unjust society, filled with hypocrisy and cruelty, from which blossoms a group of admirable women fighting for their rights and overcoming their personal obstacles.
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|genre=Crime
|isbn=0356520471
+
|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.
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Sarah Todd Taylor
+
|isbn=1399613073
|title=Alice Eclair, Spy Extraordinaire! A Spoonful of Spying
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|title=Moral Injuries
|rating=4
+
|author=Christie Watson
|genre=Confident Readers
+
|rating=4.5
|summary=[[Alice Eclair, Spy Extraordinaire! A Recipe for Trouble by Sarah Todd Taylor|Last time around]], Alice Eclair had to prove herself as a spy and as a master at all things French and fancy and fondant, as the only way to save the day involved being an expert baker and icer on the French railwaysHere, we start on a bateau-mouche in Paris, and even though the espionage isn't a complete success it proves to Alice and her handlers that things are afootAnd there will never be more feet than at the World's Fair, reviving the huge expo that gave the city the Eiffel Tower and this time showing all her interwar glories off to the worldOnce again Alice will have to present the front to the world of being a humble yet world-class cake decorator, while seeking out clues. At stake?  Pioneering flight technology that the enemy just cannot be allowed to smuggle out…
+
|genre=Thrillers
|isbn=1839940972
+
|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 GPWhen 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 consequencesTwenty-five years later there will be an eerily similar event that will impact the three friendsThis time, it's their teenage children who are involved.
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Amanthi Harris
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|isbn=0241636604
|title=Beautiful Place
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|title=The Trading Game: A Confession
|rating=5
+
|author=Gary Stevenson
|genre=Literary Fiction
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|rating=4.5
|summary= Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of her home countryThis is a place she spent her formative yearsIt is not a place she was born into, but the one she thinks of as home.   How she came to be at the Villa, how it became her home, and the machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the ''score'' for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel.  Padma's present fails to escape her past and much like the musical score of a film, that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the Villa.
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|genre=Autobiography
|isbn=1784631930
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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 StevensonA hoodie and jeans replaces the pin-stripe suit and his background is the East End, where he was familiar with violence, poverty and injusticeThere 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.
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Nigel Baines
+
|author=Leanne Egan
|title=A Tricky Kind of Magic
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|title=Lover Birds
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Emerging Readers
+
|genre=Teens
|summary=Cooper loves to perform magic tricksHis father was a magician, and named Cooper after the great Tommy Cooper.  But sadly Cooper's father died suddenly, and now Cooper doesn't quite know who to be, or how to be. And when his dad's prop rabbit starts talking to him, he ''really'' doesn't know what's going on anymore!
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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 herA 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?
|isbn=1444960261
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|isbn=000862657X
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
|isbn=1542037239
 
|title=Death in Heels
 
|author=Kitty Murphy
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Crime
 
|summary=Set against the backdrop of Dublin's drag scene, ''Death in Heels'' tells the story of Fi McKinnery and her best friend, Robyn, who is about to debut as drag queen Mae B. What is meant to be a night of excitement soon takes a downward turn when fellow drag queen, Eve, takes to the stage to mock Mae B. As if the night could not get any worse, when Fi heads home she discovers Eve dead in a gutter. Fi is adamant that Eve was murdered, yet the drag community, and the Guards, accept it as an accident. Fi takes it upon herself to solve the mystery as she fears for her friends, but instead ruins relationships as she delves deeper.
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1800465270
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|author=Sally Rooney
|title=The Lensky Connection
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|title=Intermezzo
|author=Conrad Delacroix
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Thrillers
+
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=When we first meet Major Valeri Grozky, it's June 1995 and he's at the Serafimov Cemetry in St Petersburg. He's a pallbearer for his elder brother, Timur, whose death was drug-related.  Valeri and Timur's father, Keto, is also a pallbearer and he's disgusted by what his son had become. Valeri thinks differently: he's determined to make his own stand against organised crime and avenge Timur's death. Within a matter of months, his obsession will have cost him his marriage to Marisha and created a dubious link with Natassja Petrovskaya, a journalist. She's determined to expose any and all corruption - and she's less concerned than she ought to be about her own safety.  To her, he's a good source.  For him, it's a way to get information published, which wouldn't otherwise be possible.
+
|summary=Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard of life and is something of a grandmaster at putting it into words. Her dialogue is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, as her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Among the many relationships woven into this story, the central one for readers to unravel is the fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. Ivan, a socially awkward chess prodigy, contrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, a successful lawyer living in Dublin. Following their father's passing after a long battle with cancer, the brothers' already strained relationship faces new trials.
 +
|isbn=0571365469
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1399702289
+
|isbn=1009473085
|title=A World of Curiosities (Chief Inspector Gamache)
+
|title=The Conservative Effect 2010 - 2024
|author=Louise Penny
+
|author=Anthony Seldon and Tom Egerton (Editors)
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=Crime
+
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=After a harsh winter, the tiny Canadian village of Three Pines is enjoying the arrival of spring.  But something is worrying Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and Inspector Jean-Guy Beauvoir of the Sûreté du QuébecGamache had offered help to a young woman after the murder of her mother: he'd been less certain about her charismatic brother.  For Jean-Guy, it had always been the other way aroundNow they're both in the village and neither can fathom what's happeningArmand will soon find that they're not just in Three Pines but in his home and in his life.
+
|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 youIf 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 beastIt'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
|isbn=B0BHR8KWSK
+
|author=Mark Lingane
|title=Dukkha
+
|title=Chimera
|author=Martin Hyde
+
|rating=4.5
|rating=4
+
|genre=Science Fiction
|genre=Horror
+
|summary=''The survivor stumbles forward, her steps echoing in the oppressive silence. Her heart pounds like a jackhammer. She doesn’t know where she’s heading. All she remembers is running. Terror chasing. Everything lost.''
|summary=Sam wakes up chained in a basement. He rails against his captor and the injustice of his imprisonment? Why? ''Why?''
+
 
 +
''Broken and fragmented recollections tumble around her head. Fear courses through her body. Her breaths come in shallow, ragged gasps as desperation claws at her throat. Dehydration consumes her, and a raging thirst feels unquenchable.''
 +
 
 +
''There must be a way out. As she moves through the foreign area, memories begin to gel. Disaster had ploughed through her life—not just hers, everyone’s.''
  
But of course, he knows why. Sam is an erstwhile drug dealer who escaped this down and dirty life by going to a retreat and emerging as a neophyte Buddhist monk. Recently returning to join the community in his old neighbourhood, he knew his past would be hard to escape but he hadn't imagined it exploding into this new life in quite such a violent fashion.
+
As our survivor struggles to orient herself, she's guided by a robot, which looks human-made, but she can't be sure. It says it is. It says she must try not to injure herself. Guided to an interview with an eerie, terrifying group of aliens, she desperately tries to make sense of flashes of memory - environmental degradation, deals done and then betrayed, horrifying rituals covering desperate attempts to survive - and to attempt to explain how she came to be here, apparently the last human being alive.
 +
|isbn=B0DNVWMYP2
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B09XWSXSKY
+
|author=Max Boucherat
|title=Maestro Orpheus and the World Clock
+
|title=The Last Life of Lori Mills
|author=Robert Penee and Joanne Grodzinski
+
|rating=4.5
|rating=4
 
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Frederick (or Fred, but never Freddy, please) couldn't sleepA tune, rather like the ticking of a clock was playing over and over in his mind.  It happened every time he came to visit his grandfather.  He hadn't really wanted to come; after all, he's ten now and all those old clocks don't appeal to him anymore.
+
|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 lonesomeWhat 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 worldBut 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 spookyFor the server she and her bestie and nobody else should be able to enter shows signs of tamperingWhen 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?
 
+
|isbn=0008666482
''Who needs old clocks anyway?  All they do is tell the timeAnd time isn't good for anything...''
 
 
 
And that was why he was looking at the clock beside the bedIt was nearly twelve o'clock but at midnight the clock chimed only six timesThere was nothing for it but to go and find grandad - but where was he?  And why had all the clocks stopped at twelve o'clock?
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=3756228711
+
|author=Fyodor Dostoyevsky
|title=CDC: The happy years with a spectacular IT 'Phenomena'
+
|title=White Nights
|author=Hans Bodmer
+
|rating=5
|rating=4
+
|genre=Short Stories
|genre=History
+
|summary=As always in Dostoyevsky, the character work is sublime. One is never left wondering what a character is thinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and temperaments with remarkable clarity.
|summary=''The history of the development of IT could fill books of several hundred pages.''
+
|isbn=0241619785
 
 
Author Hans Bodmer is quite right about that. He has chosen to tell us about the short, but explosive, history of the Control Data Company, CDC, for whom he worked. It's a fascinating tale, told in a mixture of technological summary and wry anecdote.  
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1529356660
+
|isbn=0008385068
|title=The Sanctuary
+
|title=The Midnight Feast
|author=Emma Haughton
+
|author=Lucy Foley
|rating=3.5
+
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Thrillers
 
|genre=Thrillers
|summary=It was the quiet which woke Zoey up - or, rather, the absence of the noise which was  a constant in New YorkHere it was silent and the heat was overwhelmingWhen she looked out of the window all she could see was the desertHow did she get here?  Zoey was house-sitting for Uncle Dan and his two Manx cats and she remembered that she'd been out with Franny and Rocco last night.   She knew that she'd had quite a lot to drink but how could she have got to the desert from New York? She had no memory of getting on a plane but as she thought back, a memory of sirens, flashing lights and of being pushed into a car snagged on the edge of her mind.
+
|summary=It's midsummer on the Dorset coast and guests gather at The ManorIt's their opening weekend and splendid celebrations are promisedIt's all headed up by Francesca MeadowsThe Manor was her ancestral home and she's converted it into an impressive retreat for the wealthy and famousHer 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.
 
}}
 
}}
 
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Christopher Golden
+
|author=James Baldwin
|title=Road of Bones
+
|title=Giovanni's Room
|rating=3.5
+
|rating=4.5
|genre=Horror
+
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The Kolyma Highway… the 'Road of Bones'… the R504.  Stretching for over a thousand miles across Siberia, it's one of the world's most notorious routes.  For months of the year it's a spread of sheet ice suspended above the permafrost surrounding it, while its 'spring' sees it turn into a huge blodge of unremitting, apocalyptic-level mud, which dries into rutted, puddly dust.  I don't think google streetview updates it very often.  Built because Stalin wanted so much uranium and other Siberian minerals, and because he wanted to give too many people a lesson, it legendarily cost a life every metre it covers. You can easily find documentaries about it online, but that's a bit rich, for one of our main characters, Felix 'Teig' Teigland, is a film-maker, doing a recce with his cameraman buddy, John Prentiss – who's mostly there to encourage the project to fruition to claw back some of the funds he'd invested in the pair's prior TV projects.  They pick up their oh-so-chatty local guide, gain the company of a local beauty, and fetch up at the guide's childhood village. And that's where things start to go awry…
+
|summary=''Giovanni's Room'' follows the narrator David, an American man living in Paris, as he navigates his torturous affair with Giovanni, an Italian bartender he meets in a gay bar. While David is engaged to Hella, who is travelling in Spain, the real tension in the novel arises not from his infidelity but from the deeper conflict within himself. It is David's crippling shame and denial of his sexuality that ultimately dooms his relationship with Giovanni.
|isbn=1803361476
+
|isbn=0141186356
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1838776184
+
|author=Ashley Hickson-Lovence
|title=Her Majesty the Queen Investigates: Murder Most Royal
+
|title=Wild East
|author=S J Bennett
+
|rating=4.5
|rating=5
+
|genre=Teens
|genre=Crime
+
|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 troubleHe listens to music constantly, and has always dreamed of being a rapperBut 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=''The Queen, like the sunrise and the tides, was generally a reliable way of marking time.''
+
|isbn=0241645441
 
 
It seemed to begin as a cold.  Hardly surprising, really, as Prince Philip had been suffering for a couple of days but seemed to be getting betterHopefully, the Queen thought, her cold would go the same way.  She'd probably caught it from one of the great-grandchildrenUnfortunately, it didn't get better and when the doctor called he diagnosed full-blown flu.  She and the Duke were due to go to Sandringham by train that day but the doctor put his foot down.  He'd have preferred that the queen have a few days' bed rest before venturing out but had to be satisfied with the thought that they'd go by helicopter the following day.  It was annoying: people would be ready for her today and Her Majesty did not like to disappoint.
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Peter Owen Jones
+
|isbn=1635866847
|title=Conversations with Nature
+
|title=The Lavender Companion
|rating=5
+
|author=Jessica Dunham and Terry Barlin Vesci
|genre=Spirituality and Religion
+
|rating=4.5
|summary= One of the comments made when I was offered this beautiful book for review was that it's not very longHaving read the book twice over, I'm brought back inescapably to the Spanish proverb that Life may be short, but it is broad.   In this case I'm brought to the idea that the length of life is not the point; the point is its depthPeter Owen Jones dives deep.
+
|genre=Lifestyle
|isbn=1912992418
+
|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 problemI ''loved'' this book already.
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1916459943
+
|author=Han Kang
|title=Squeakily Baby
+
|title=The Vegetarian
|author=Beth Webb
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=For Sharing
 
|summary=Much as mothers love their babies, there's something they all dread - a squeakily baby.  He's so tired but he can't - or won't - go to sleep: instead, he just lies on his blanket and ''wails''.  The sea offers to help.  It rocks Baby gently and the waves sing ''hush, hush''.  Think of gentle wavelets falling onto a sandy beach and you have the sound perfectly.  The mermaids join in - ''la lou, la lay...''  And for a moment it seems to have worked as Baby closes his eyes.  Then a seagull '''shouts''' and we know exactly what's going to happen next.
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
|author=Robin Stevens
 
|title=The Ministry of Unladylike Activity
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
+
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=May Wong is a long way from her family in Hong Kong.  She’s stuck in her school, Deepdean, and desperate to get away, and do something useful to help end the war and to get home.  She just knows that she would make the perfect spy!  And when she finds herself turned away by the Ministry, she takes matters into her own hands, along with a boy she meets outside the Ministry, Eric.  They both go undercover in a large country house, pretending to be evacuees, in an attempt to prove that someone there is passing secrets to the Nazis. But there is a lot more going on in Elysium Hall than either them have imagined, and suddenly they find themselves in the middle of a murder scene, with even more to try to unravel and solve.
+
|summary=This novel, winner of the International Booker Prize in 2016 and penned by an author who received the Nobel Prize for Literature this year, is as close to unputdownable as it gets. It more than lives up to the acclaim. The story introduces uncanny characters with fragile, vividly tangible bodies yet unknowable, elusive souls.
|isbn=0241429862
+
|isbn=1803510056
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1919635017
+
|author=Jenny Valentine
|title=A Thief to Catch a Killer
+
|title=Us in the Before and After
|author=Kitt Townsend
+
|rating=5
|rating=4
 
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary= Solomon Klyne isn't a bad lad, so why is he running around London committing a series of robberies? And how did he learn to crack safes? You'll have to wait to get an answer to the second question because I avoid spoilers. But I'll answer the first one: for his grandmother...
+
|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=1471196585
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1398515388
+
|isbn=1787333175
|title=The Boy and the Dog
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|title=You Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here
|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
+
|author=Benji Waterhouse
|rating=4.5
+
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
+
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, in turn, caused the nuclear meltdownThe result was complete and utter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, and the loss of livelihoods was widespreadThe fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store.  He wasn't a dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the dog jumped in.
+
|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 psychiatristI 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=1529153050
+
|author=Mariana Enriquez
|title=Britain's Best Political Cartoons 2022
+
|title=A Sunny Place for Shady People
|author=Tim Benson
+
|rating=5
|rating=4
+
|genre=Short Stories
|genre=Humour
+
|summary=Mariana Enriquez writes horror that is disturbingly real, achieving this uncanny familiarity by basing her paranormal plots on gritty realities: her settings include an abandoned field full of disused refrigerators due to an urban planning mishap, an overcrowded homeless shelter and a crime-ridden neighbourhood where safety meetings are routine - all within Argentina. The circumstances of her characters are so plausible that the supernatural or otherworldly horror which seeps into these spaces adopts a similarly tangible texture.  
|summary=Seeking some light relief from the current political turmoil which is coming to seem more and more like an adrenaline sport, I was nudged towards ''Britain's Best Political Cartoons of 2022''.  Sharp eyes will have noted that we're not yet through the year: the cartoons run from 4 September 2021 to 31 August 2022. Who can imagine what there will be to come in the 2023 edition?
+
|isbn=1803511230
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Lisa Gray
+
|author=Onyi Nwabineli
|title=The Dark Room
+
|title=Allow Me to Introduce Myself
|rating=4
+
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
+
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=What if you knew someone was dead, because you'd watched them die several years ago, but then you come across a photograph that seemed to show their murder happened in a different place and time?  This is what happens to Leonard in this storyHe is an ex-crime reporter for a newspaper, and since leaving journalism he's found himself an unusual hobby where he finds old, undeveloped rolls of film and develops them in his own dark room at homeOne of these photographs turns out to show the murder scene of a young woman he met some years ago, and who he ''thought'' he had watched die in front of him one night in a hotelHe'd felt guilty ever since that night, and lost everything because of it - his fiancee and his career - but now finds himself wondering if she hadn't really died the night she was with him, what on earth actually happened?
+
|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 herAnuri is battling alcoholism, failing to start her PhD, undergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online and receiving money from them for doing soMost importantly, she is desperately worried about her little sister, who is the new focus of Ophelia's online empireCan she save her sister, and perhaps herself and her relationship with her father at the same time?
|isbn=154203535X
+
|isbn=0861546873
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Natasha Hastings and Alex T Smith
+
|author=David Chadwick
|title=The Miraculous Sweetmakers: The Frost Fair
+
|title=Headload of Napalm
|rating=3.5
+
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
+
|genre=Thrillers
|summary=''The River Thames had frozen to death in its sleep.''  And thus the Frost Fair could happen – people trading on the completely iced-over river, like our heroine Thomasina's father with his gingerbread and confectionery shop.  Thomasina will be working the Fair too – but her twin brother won't, as he dies in Chapter One. It was a tragedy she feels no small guilt for, and which has made her father a sullen, closed shop – and her bed-bound mother has spoken not a word – not even opened her eyes, more or less – in the four years since, either. But into the dark, frosted London comes Inigo, with supreme magical powers, and a willingness to help Thomasina.  Not only can he introduce her to the fantastical Other Frost Fair, using the river surface at night for no end of mystical beasts and characters and their happenings, but he has a unique proposal for Thomasina, which will shake her world to its core.
+
|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=0008496056
+
|isbn= B0D321VJ76
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Jane Goodall and Douglas Abrams
+
|author=Tom Percival
|title=The Book of Hope 
+
|title=The Wrong Shoes
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=Politics and Society
+
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary= The done thing is to read a book all the way through before you sit down to review it. I’m making an exception here, because I don’t want to lose any of the experience of reading this amazing book, I want to capture it as it hits me. And it is hitting me. This beautiful book has me in tears.  
+
|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=024147857X
+
|isbn=1398527122
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1529504767
+
|author=Sylvie Cathrall
|title=The Christmas Doll (The Repair Shop Stories)
+
|title=A Letter to the Luminous Deep
|author=Amy Sparkes and Katie Hickey
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=For Sharing
+
|genre=Science Fiction
|summary=Susan was very young when she was evacuated from London in 1939 and nervous about how she would be greeted when she got to her final destination. She needn't have worried though as she went to the home of Mr and Mrs Russell, who couldn't have been kinder to her.  She even had her own room - all to herself.  Gradually she relaxed and began to enjoy her life.  She'd help Mrs Russell with the baking and when it came to Christmas Eve Susan and Mr Russell put the decorations on the Christmas tree.  The best surprise happened the following morning.
+
|summary= There are few greater joys than a book which lives up to a compelling premise. And this is one of them.
 +
|isbn= 0356522776
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Lilja Sigurdardottir and Quentin Bates (translator)
+
|isbn=1786482126
|title=Red as Blood
+
|title=The Janus Stone (Dr Ruth Galloway)
|rating=4
+
|author=Elly Griffiths
|genre=Thrillers
 
|summary=When Flosi’s wife goes missing, all the evidence seems to point towards her having been kidnapped. The ransom note tells him not to have any contact with the police, so instead he enlists the help of Arora, a financial investigator. She manages to persuade Flosi that they will need the help of the police, and she calls her detective friend, Daniel, whom she met when he was investigating her sister’s disappearance. Together, they start to secretly investigate Gudrun’s disappearance, trying not to arouse the suspicion of anyone, since they have no idea who the kidnappers might be, yet the more they uncover, the more confusing things become.
 
|isbn=1914585321
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
|isbn=0861541995
 
|title=Wolf Pack
 
|author=Will Dean
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=The story began when Tuva Moodyson drove her Hilux pickup truck on the road north of VisbergShe sees blood on the road and a creature on its side near the pine treesIt will turn out to be Bronco, a Swedish Elkhound, who has been attacked by a wolfTuva takes Bronco and his owner, Bengt Nyberg, to the vet.  Bronco didn't make it but on the way, Nyberg told Tuva that he was out looking for his niece, twenty-year-old Elsa Nyberg, who had gone missing.  She'd been working at Rose Farm and Moodyson's journalist's instincts are soon brought to the fore.  Rose Farm is now home to a group of survivalists but back in 1987 the then owner, Johan Svenson murdered his wife, and his two eldest children and then killed himselfHis newborn child, just four weeks old survived.  Does this have any connection to the disappearance of Elsa Nyberg?
+
|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 doorwayThere was no skullWas this a ritual killing or murder?  Inevitably, Dr Ruth Galloway finds herself working with DCI Harry NelsonIt'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 agoHer condition will be obvious before long, not least because Ruth is prone to sudden bouts of sickness.
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Alison Hughes
+
|author=Joan Didion
|title=Fly
+
|title=The Year of Magical Thinking
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
+
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=This is a very impressive read, as it does a lot of what mainstream teen and tween fiction still struggles with. Its focus is courtesy of the first-person narration from Fly, a secondary school lad with cerebral palsy, a down-on-her-luck single mom nearing retirement from being a cleaner, a carer while at school, and a bundle of assumptions people lay on him. First they assume that with a broken body comes a broken mind, then they decide he's a maths savant – they even believe they can get away with calling him Fly, which isn't his real name, but everybody just uses it.
+
|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.
|isbn=1525305832
+
|isbn=0007216858
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=3791388398
+
|isbn=0008551324
|title=New European Baking: 99 Recipes for Breads, Brioches and Pastries
+
|title=The Devil You Know (D S Max Craigie)
|author=Laurel Kratochvila
+
|author=Neil Lancaster
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Cookery
+
|genre=Crime
|summary=This is probably one of the most unusual baking books I've encountered.  It's built around 99 recipes for breads, brioches and pastries but the recipes are interwoven with some thought-provoking writing on how bread - and baking - have changed in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuriesWe start with the basics - the equipment you'll need (there's nothing extravagant or indulgent) and the ingredients, where the author is particularYou might not have realised that different salts can change the flavour and sensation on the tongue of the finished product but, apparently, they do.
+
|summary=It's unusual for anyone from the Hardie family to approach the policeNeither 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 deathThis 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.
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Andrew Givler
+
|isbn=0241678412
|title=Soul Fraud (The Debt Collection Book 1)
+
|title=The Proof of My Innocence
 +
|author=Jonathan Coe
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre=Fantasy
+
|genre=Thrillers
|summary=''Matt has a terrible life. Seriously—it's awful. It is so bad that Dan the Demon is shocked when Matt turns down his infernal offer: 10 years of a blissful life in exchange for his soul.''
+
|summary=Life after university hasn't worked out quite the way that Phyl anticipated.  She's back home, living with her parents and on a zero-hours contract serving sushi to tourists at terminal 5 of Heathrow Airport.  All those ideas of becoming a writer seem to have come to nothing. The situation improves when 'Uncle' Chris comes to stay and introduces Phyl to his adopted daughter, Rashida.  Christopher Swann (described by some as a lefty blogger) is investigating a think tank which originated at Cambridge University in the 1980s. It plans to push the government in a more extreme direction and is ready to act.
 
+
}}
Poor Dan! I know, I know, we shouldn't feel sorry for soul-catching demons. But he really is a terrible salesman. He never hits his targets and, when he fails to get even Matt to sign on the dotted line, he's so desperate that he simply forges Matt's signature.
+
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1958204021
+
|title=Monsters: What Do We Do with Great Art by Bad People?
 +
|author=Claire Dederer
 +
|rating=3
 +
|genre=Politics and Society
 +
|summary=Dederer sets out to unveil what she calls a ''biography of the audience'' in a deconstructed, thoroughly nitpicked, exploration of the old aphorism of separating the art from the artist in the context of contemporary ''cancel culture''. Dederer's work is original and expressive. The reader gets the impression that the thoughts simply sprang and leapt from her brilliant mind and onto the page. In particular, the prologue packs a punch: she simultaneously condemns and exalts the director Roman Polanski, an artist she personally admires for his art, and yet despises for his actions. This model of ''monstrous men'' as she calls them, is consistent for the first few chapters, interrogating the likes of Woody Allen, Michael Jackson and Pablo Picasso. Her critical voice is acutely present throughout, never slipping into anonymity and maintaining her own subjectivity, as she holds it so dearly, and a personal, rather than collective voice.
 +
|isbn=1399715070
 +
}}
 +
{{Frontpage
 +
|isbn=1739526910
 +
|title=Where I've Not Been Lost
 +
|author=Glen Sibley
 +
|rating=4.5
 +
|genre=General Fiction
 +
|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
|author=Greg James and Chris Smith
+
|isbn=0008405026
|title=Super Ghost
+
|title=A Stranger in the Family (Maeve Kerrigan 11)
 +
|author=Jane Casey
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers
+
|genre=Crime
|summary=Paragon City has been lucky to have the great Doctor Extraordinary, their very own superhero taking care of themWhenever the evil Captain Chaos has come up with another cunning plan (usually involving a giant robot of some description) Doctor Extraordinary has been there to thwart her mischief and save the dayBut one day the Doctor and the Captain are trapped together inside a giant robot that then explodes, and the hero and the villain are no more. Or are they…?
+
|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 bedInitially, 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 suspiciousWhat 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.
|isbn=0241470536
+
}}
 +
 
 +
{{Frontpage
 +
|isbn=B0DGDJRHYD
 +
|title=Nowhere Man
 +
|author=Deborah Stone
 +
|rating=4
 +
|genre=General Fiction
 +
|summary=In a quiet suburban house, Patrick is making his final plans. A meticulous man, he makes sure of every preparation, down to the last detail. Some last reflections, and then he says goodbye to his wife, the world, and his life. It's horribly sad. At work in her shop, his wife Diana is fending off yet another phone call about her ageing and ailing mother, who needs extricating from yet another accident. It will be a while before Diana realises what Patrick has done.
 
}}
 
}}

Latest revision as of 09:34, 22 December 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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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

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

0571365469.jpg

Review of

Intermezzo by Sally Rooney

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard of life and is something of a grandmaster at putting it into words. Her dialogue is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, as her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Among the many relationships woven into this story, the central one for readers to unravel is the fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. Ivan, a socially awkward chess prodigy, contrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, a successful lawyer living in Dublin. Following their father's passing after a long battle with cancer, the brothers' already strained relationship faces new trials. Full Review

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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

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Review of

Chimera by Mark Lingane

4.5star.jpg Science Fiction

The survivor stumbles forward, her steps echoing in the oppressive silence. Her heart pounds like a jackhammer. She doesn’t know where she’s heading. All she remembers is running. Terror chasing. Everything lost.

Broken and fragmented recollections tumble around her head. Fear courses through her body. Her breaths come in shallow, ragged gasps as desperation claws at her throat. Dehydration consumes her, and a raging thirst feels unquenchable.

There must be a way out. As she moves through the foreign area, memories begin to gel. Disaster had ploughed through her life—not just hers, everyone’s.

As our survivor struggles to orient herself, she's guided by a robot, which looks human-made, but she can't be sure. It says it is. It says she must try not to injure herself. Guided to an interview with an eerie, terrifying group of aliens, she desperately tries to make sense of flashes of memory - environmental degradation, deals done and then betrayed, horrifying rituals covering desperate attempts to survive - and to attempt to explain how she came to be here, apparently the last human being alive. Full Review

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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

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Review of

White Nights by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

5star.jpg Short Stories

As always in Dostoyevsky, the character work is sublime. One is never left wondering what a character is thinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and temperaments with remarkable clarity. 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

Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin

4.5star.jpg Literary Fiction

Giovanni's Room follows the narrator David, an American man living in Paris, as he navigates his torturous affair with Giovanni, an Italian bartender he meets in a gay bar. While David is engaged to Hella, who is travelling in Spain, the real tension in the novel arises not from his infidelity but from the deeper conflict within himself. It is David's crippling shame and denial of his sexuality that ultimately dooms his relationship with Giovanni. 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

1803510056.jpg

Review of

The Vegetarian by Han Kang

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

This novel, winner of the International Booker Prize in 2016 and penned by an author who received the Nobel Prize for Literature this year, is as close to unputdownable as it gets. It more than lives up to the acclaim. The story introduces uncanny characters with fragile, vividly tangible bodies yet unknowable, elusive souls. Full Review

1471196585.jpg

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

1787333175.jpg

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

1803511230.jpg

Review of

A Sunny Place for Shady People by Mariana Enriquez

5star.jpg Short Stories

Mariana Enriquez writes horror that is disturbingly real, achieving this uncanny familiarity by basing her paranormal plots on gritty realities: her settings include an abandoned field full of disused refrigerators due to an urban planning mishap, an overcrowded homeless shelter and a crime-ridden neighbourhood where safety meetings are routine - all within Argentina. The circumstances of her characters are so plausible that the supernatural or otherworldly horror which seeps into these spaces adopts a similarly tangible texture. Full Review

0861546873.jpg

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

B0D321VJ76.jpg

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

1398527122.jpg

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

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

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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

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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

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Review of

The Proof of My Innocence by Jonathan Coe

4star.jpg Thrillers

Life after university hasn't worked out quite the way that Phyl anticipated. She's back home, living with her parents and on a zero-hours contract serving sushi to tourists at terminal 5 of Heathrow Airport. All those ideas of becoming a writer seem to have come to nothing. The situation improves when 'Uncle' Chris comes to stay and introduces Phyl to his adopted daughter, Rashida. Christopher Swann (described by some as a lefty blogger) is investigating a think tank which originated at Cambridge University in the 1980s. It plans to push the government in a more extreme direction and is ready to act. Full Review

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Review of

Monsters: What Do We Do with Great Art by Bad People? by Claire Dederer

3star.jpg Politics and Society

Dederer sets out to unveil what she calls a biography of the audience in a deconstructed, thoroughly nitpicked, exploration of the old aphorism of separating the art from the artist in the context of contemporary cancel culture. Dederer's work is original and expressive. The reader gets the impression that the thoughts simply sprang and leapt from her brilliant mind and onto the page. In particular, the prologue packs a punch: she simultaneously condemns and exalts the director Roman Polanski, an artist she personally admires for his art, and yet despises for his actions. This model of monstrous men as she calls them, is consistent for the first few chapters, interrogating the likes of Woody Allen, Michael Jackson and Pablo Picasso. Her critical voice is acutely present throughout, never slipping into anonymity and maintaining her own subjectivity, as she holds it so dearly, and a personal, rather than collective voice. Full Review

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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

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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

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Review of

Nowhere Man by Deborah Stone

4star.jpg General Fiction

In a quiet suburban house, Patrick is making his final plans. A meticulous man, he makes sure of every preparation, down to the last detail. Some last reflections, and then he says goodbye to his wife, the world, and his life. It's horribly sad. At work in her shop, his wife Diana is fending off yet another phone call about her ageing and ailing mother, who needs extricating from yet another accident. It will be a while before Diana realises what Patrick has done. Full Review