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<metadesc>Book review site, with books from the many walks of literary life - fiction, biography, crime, cookery and anything else that takes our fancy. There are also lots of author interviews and top tens.</metadesc>
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<metadesc>Expert, full book reviews from most walks of literary life; fiction, non-fiction, children's books & self-published books plus author interviews & top tens.</metadesc>
Hello from The Bookbag, a book review site, featuring books from all the many walks of literary life - [[:Category:Fiction|fiction]], [[:Category:Biography|biography]], [[:Category:Crime|crime]], [[:Category:Cookery|cookery]] and anything else that takes our fancy. At Bookbag Towers the bookbag sits at the side of the desk. It's the bag we take to the library and the bookshop. Sometimes it holds the latest releases, but at other times there'll be old favourites, books for the children, books for the home. They're sometimes our own books or books from the local library. They're often books sent to us by publishers and we promise to tell you exactly what we think about them. You might not want to read through a full review, so we'll give you a quick review which summarises what we felt about the book and tells you whether or not we think you should buy or borrow it. There are also lots of [[:Category:Interviews|author interviews]], and all sorts of [[:Category:Lists|top tens]] - all of which you can find on our [[features]] page. If you're stuck for something to read, check out the [[Book Recommendations|recommendations]] page.
 
  
There are currently '''{{PAGESINCATEGORY:Reviews}}''' reviews at TheBookbag.
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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!
  
Want to find out more [[About Us|about us]]?
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There are currently '''{{PAGESINCATEGORY: Reviews}}''' [[:Category:Reviews|reviews]] at TheBookbag.
  
==New Reviews==
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Want to learn more [[About Us|about us]]? __NOTOC__
'''Read [[:Category:New Reviews|new reviews by genre]].'''
 
  
'''Read [[Features|new features]].'''
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==The Best New Books==
__NOTOC__
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{{newreview
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'''Read [[:Category:New Reviews|new reviews by category]]. '''<br>
|author=Robert Harris
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|title=The Fear Index
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'''Read [[:Category:Features|the latest features]].'''
|rating=4
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{{Frontpage
|genre=General Fiction
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|isbn=1529077745
|summary=With the FTSE recording its biggest quarterly drop in years, turmoil on the bond markets and the prospect of economic meltdown and the possible disintegration of the euro zone, Robert Harris' new thriller couldn't be more timely.
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|title=The Dark Wives (D I Vera Stanhope)
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091936969</amazonuk>
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|author=Ann Cleeves
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|rating=4.5
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|genre=Crime
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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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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1399613073
|author=John Julius Norwich
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|title=Moral Injuries
|title=A History of England in 100 Places: From Stonehenge to the Gherkin
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|author=Christie Watson
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
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|genre=Thrillers
|summary=There are many different ways of telling the history of England (indeed just England, not Wales and Scotland, as the author makes clear)This takes a very simple and very effective approach to the matter, by focusing on a hundred specific places which somehow illustrate the nation's progress from prehistoric times to today, in chronological order.
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|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 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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848546068</amazonuk>
 
 
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}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=0241636604
|author=Samuel Beckett, Martha Dow Fehsenfeld, Lois More Overbeck, George Craig and Dan Gunn
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|title=The Trading Game: A Confession
|title=The Letters of Samuel Beckett: Volume 2, 1941-1956
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|author=Gary Stevenson
|rating=4
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|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Autobiography
 
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Despite the title, Volume 2 really begins in 1945During the war, Beckett was working with the French Resistance, and had to go into hidingIn order to keep the picture reasonably complete, there is a chronology of the war years, and the introduction includes a lettercard sent to James Joyce in February 1941, a pre-printed postcard presenting prefabricated phrases which the sender could strike out as appropriateDuring the war only the mildest of family news could be sent through the mail, and even this was subject to censorship.  Joyce never received the card, as he died the day after it was written.
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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 injustice.  There was no posh public school on his CV - but he had been to the London School of EconomicsStevenson 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 CitibankEventually, this turned into permanent employment as a trader.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0521867940</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Leanne Egan
|author=Tom Bale
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|title=Lover Birds
|title=Blood Falls
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|rating=4.5
|rating=4
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|summary=I read and reviewed Bale's [[Terror's Reach by Tom Bale|Terror's Reach]]and enjoyed it. What would I think of his latest?  Joe is doing his level best to live an unremarkable (almost invisible) life in Bristol.  He uses his brawn to pay his modest bills for rent, food etc.  But you could say, once a copper, always a copper so his brain is not idle, it's in constant use.  Whirring away in the background and it's just as well.  Joe soon senses imminent danger when a couple of blokes stroll by, stop and ask his gaffer a couple of questions.  Joe needs to be somewhere else - and fast.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184809325X</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl
 
|title=Beautiful Chaos
 
|rating=5
 
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Those of you who've been hooked on this series already will remember where we left off. A choice was made. Everything seems to have been changed. And now, we find, the End of Days is near… Dark characters lurk. Some who we thought (or hoped) were gone, have returned. Other things we’ve not seen before are starting to tear the small town of Gatlin apart. The shorthand way of summing up how terrible things are is to note that Mrs Lincoln may be one of the good guys now…
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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?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141335262</amazonuk>
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|isbn=000862657X
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Sally Rooney
|author=John O'Connell
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|title=Intermezzo
|title=The Baskerville Legacy: A Novel
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|rating=4.5
|rating=4
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|genre=General Fiction  
|genre=General Fiction
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|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.
|summary=
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|isbn=0571365469
1900, and a man on a ship coming back from the Boer War to edit the Daily Express meets one of his heroes in the form of Arthur Conan Doyle. With similar experiences and interests yet different enough to bounce off each other they take up the idea of collaborating on a plot.  When they do fix on time to do so, it leads to literary prospects, which lead to a week's research together on Dartmoor, which leads to ''The Hound of the Baskervilles''.  But perhaps in a way that only one of them intended.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907595465</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1009473085
|author=Kenzaburo Oe
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|title=The Conservative Effect 2010 - 2024
|title=The Silent Cry
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|author=Anthony Seldon and Tom Egerton (Editors)
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
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|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=Featuring rioting and looting of corporate supermarkets and anger against immigrants, this is a timely re-issue of Nobel Prize for Literature winner’s Kenzaburo Óe’s 1967 classic ''The Silent Cry'' which was cited by the Nobel committee as his key work.
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|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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846688078</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
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{{Frontpage
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|author=Mark Lingane
 +
|title=Chimera
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|rating=4.5
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|genre=Science Fiction
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|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.''
  
{{newreview
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''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.''
|author=Luke Johnson
 
|title=Start It Up: Why Running Your Own Business is Easier Than You Think
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Business and Finance
 
|summary=Luke Johnson is one of our busiest tycoons, with a personal fortune which runs into nine figures. He's been the driving force behind Pizza Express and Channel 4 and has a renowned column in the 'Financial Times'. He's done all this over a couple of decades, so he obviously knows what the score is in terms of getting businesses up and running – and then turning a profit. So, 'Start It Up: Why Running Your Own Business is Easier Than You Think' is going to be perfect for my friends Mr and Mrs Cook, who want to open a restaurant, Mr Plumb, who's been havering about splitting from the builder who employs him and Miss Baker who think that our prosperous village is ripe for an artisan bread shop?  Well, perhaps…
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670919411</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
  
{{newreview
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''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.''
|author=Elizabeth Chatwin and Nicholas Shakespeare (ed)
 
|title=Under the Sun. The Letters of Bruce Chatwin
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Travel
 
|summary=Bruce Chatwin was best known as a travel writer – this collection both confirms his 'wanderlust' but also clearly establishes that his writing was far more of a creative process than the usual journalistic approach to travel writing. Nicholas Shakespeare’s selection and passages of narration makes this a mix of the biographical and the autobiographical, a fascinating insight into a restless spirit, but also into the experimentation and literary reflection that made him outstanding amongst his peers.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224089897</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
  
{{newreview
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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.
|author=Betty G Birney
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|isbn=B0DNVWMYP2
|title=Humphrey's World of Pets
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Children's Non-Fiction
 
|summary=
 
The verb to pet means to cosset, pay loving attention to, to have loving, touching time with.  It might as well mean to have in your household while spending a lot of money on, and being duty-bound and beholden to.  Fish (which you can't even properly pet, of course) need a permanent power supply for their water's thermometer.  Chinchillas need a special sand for their bathing in.  There's even pet-friendly detergents for washing out your hamster cages.  Wherever you look there's time and money expenditure in owning a pet.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571270263</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Max Boucherat
|author=Jonathan Meres
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|title=The Last Life of Lori Mills
|title=May Contain Nuts (The World of Norm)
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|rating=4.5
|rating=4
 
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Nothing, but nothing, is Norm's faultIf he virtually sleepwalks into weeing in his parent's wardrobe it's because they've downsized to a new, smaller homeIf his best friend crashes Norm's own bike, it's his brother's faultIf his parents have had it up to there with him it's up to them to really state their mind and not be obtuse.  When everything happens - lies, deceit, unhappiness and dog poo on the carpet - it's the world's fault for being so unfair.
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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 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 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?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408313030</amazonuk>
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|isbn=0008666482
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Fyodor Dostoyevsky
|author=Jolyon Fenwick and Marcus Husselby
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|title=White Nights
|title=It Could Have Been Yours: The enlightened person's guide to the year's most desirable things
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|rating=5
|rating=4
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|genre=Short Stories
|genre=Trivia
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|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=In a world of diamond-encrusted skulls, gold-leafed iPhones and luxury yachts ten a penny, of blingy shit (or should that be shitty bling?) it's a relief to know people are still spending money on unique one-offs that are more worthwhile.  The records for costliest photo, artwork, musical instrument and manuscript have all been broken in the twenty four months leading up to this book's release.  Our collators have scoured the press for those and other, similarly noteworthy auctions, and found what other people paid for what you didn't know you would have wanted given the money.
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|isbn=0241619785
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846684900</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=0008385068
|author=Jean Marsh
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|title=The Midnight Feast
|title=Fiennders Abbey
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|author=Lucy Foley
|rating=3.5
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|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical Fiction
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|genre=Thrillers
|summary=In was the end of the nineteenth century and the family at Fiennders Abbey might lead much more leisurely lives than the staff who kept the house running as it should, but their fortunes were inextricably linkedMary Bowden was the tweenie when we first met her she did all the dirty jobs which were beneath those higher up the ladder – as well as being the daughter of the gamekeeperShe was also intelligent, ambitious and very attractive with her straight, milk-blonde hairAs a child she'd always been very friendly with Richard, the son of the house, but it's not a friendship which either of their mothers wishes to foster.
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|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 MeadowsThe 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 siteThe heat is oppressive and amongst the guests are enemies as well as friendsOld scores are going to be settled and it won't be long before a body is found.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1447200071</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=James Baldwin
|author=Hector Tobar
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|title=Giovanni's Room
|title=The Barbarian Nurseries
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
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|genre=Literary Fiction  
|summary=The Torres-Thompsons seem to have it all.  A beautiful home, two healthy boys and enough money not to have to worry about practical matters.  The cherry on the cake is their employment of their maid Araceli.  She works like a trouper and keeps the large house spick and span. She is lucky enough to have her own private quarters (if small and rather basic) in the back garden area.  She knows within herself that she should be grateful, should really be jumping up and down with glee and thanking her lucky stars to have this job.  She's managed to escape the poverty and violence of Mexico after all.  But as she goes about her daily housekeeping duties she feels like some alien living on another plant.  Planet America.  Araceli is young, single and childless and at times she misses the hustle and bustle of her old life.  And here Tobar gives an excellent account of the affluent part of LA where the Torres-Thompson's live - ' ... in this house on a hill high above the ocean, on a cul-de-sac absent of pedestrians or playing children, absent of traffic ...'
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|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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444726757</amazonuk>
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|isbn=0141186356
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Ashley Hickson-Lovence
|author=Stephen Games
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|title=Wild East
|title=Pevsner: The Early Life: Germany and Art
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|rating=4.5
|rating=4
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|genre=Teens
|genre=Biography
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|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 schoolThe 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=Nikolai Pewsner – the minor changes of name came as a young adult - was born in Saxony in 1902 into a Russian-Jewish familyJust too young to avoid having to take part in the war, he had studied art history at no less than four universities by the age of 22.  He then became an assistant keeper at the Dresden Gemaldegalerie, and four years later he was appointed lecturer at Gottingen University.
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|isbn=0241645441
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1441190937</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1635866847
|author=Jayne Woodhouse
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|title=The Lavender Companion
|title=And Rocky Too
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|author=Jessica Dunham and Terry Barlin Vesci
|rating=4
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|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
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|genre=Lifestyle
|summary=We [[The Stephensons'  Rocket by Jayne Woodhouse|first met Rocky]] when Anna's father, the feckless Pete, brought him home as the latest in his many money-making schemes which inevitably cost the family dearThis one was to have a longer-lasting effect than most though – through his affection for Rocky, the retired racing greyhound, Pete realised that he had to support his family and Anna's brother Darren made a friend of another boyEven Wilf, the pensioner who lived next door found hidden talents and it looked as though the family was set fair, right?
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|summary=It's strange, the things that make you ''immediately'' feel that this is the book for youBefore 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 homepageI 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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0954925696</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Han Kang
|author=Simon Packham
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|title=The Vegetarian
|title=The Bex Factor
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|rating=4.5
|rating=3.5
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|genre=General Fiction
|genre=Confident Readers
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|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.
|summary=Reality TV, especially the kind of talent competition where the backstory of the contestants is as much a part of the programme as their performance on stage, is a part of most young people's lives. A whole culture has grown up which dangles big breaks, lucrative contracts and happiness-ever-after to those talented few who can sing or dance, or, better still, do both at once. Fourteen-year-old Bex dreams of singing her way to stardom via the latest TV show, called 'The Tingle Factor'. All she needs to do is persuade geeky Year Ten Matthew to accompany her on the guitar.
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|isbn=1803510056
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848121636</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Jenny Valentine
|author=J R R Tolkien
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|title=Us in the Before and After
|title=Mr Bliss
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|summary=
 
If you wanted to produce a classic of children's literature, it would probably look a lot like this.  It would be written by a famous name as a private exercise for their children, with the author's own illustrations.  It would feature a title character, with a typical Edwardian headstrong attitude, yet with an ability to create slapstick.  It may well have fairytale characters as you've never seen them before.  And it would be presented in a deluxe, pristine heritage edition such as this.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>000743619X</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Laurent de Brunhoff
 
|title=Babar's Celesteville Games
 
|rating=3
 
|genre=For Sharing
 
|summary=Babar the elephant is the king of Celesteville, and this year his country is hosting the Worldwide Games. Athletes come from all over the world to compete. There is a fairytale romance for one of Babar's children, now grown up, too.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1419701258</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Jutta Ash
 
|title=Rapunzel
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=For Sharing
 
|summary=Rapunzel is the story of a young man and his wife who long for a child of their own. Unfortunately, the wife also yearns to eat the lush rapunzel that grows in the garden next door. She pleads with her husband to fetch her some which he does. However he is spotted by the witch who lives there who tells him that in return for the rapunzel they must give her their first born child. This is a baby girl who is given the name Rapunzel. The witch imprisons her at the top of a tall tower and she can only be reached by the witch climbing up her long golden tresses.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849393729</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Jessica Warman
 
|title=Between
 
|rating=3
 
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary=Elisabeth Valcher, a spoilt, vain but popular girl, wakes up after a party to celebrate her 18th birthday on her father's yacht to discover herself dead, lying face down in the water. Luckily for Liz, who has trouble remembering exactly who she is and what happened in the run up to her death, she is soon joined by another ghost, Alex, one of the unpopular boys from her high school, who was killed a year earlier in a hit and run accident.  
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|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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1405260483</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1471196585
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=1787333175
|author=Roy Tomkinson
+
|title=You Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here
|title=Of Boys, Men and Mountains - Life in the Rhondda Valley
+
|author=Benji Waterhouse
|rating=3
+
|rating=5
|genre=Autobiography
+
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=Roy Tomkinson comes over as pretty sentimental about aspects of his childhood. He was born into a family of boys, and surrounded by an extended family spread along the valley. He was a child in the nineteen fifties, when post-War austerity was still a feature of life in Wales. Nevertheless, discipline, love and understanding were meted out by his parents in equal measures to provide a strong platform for his childhood adventures. Roy and his gang grew up free-ranging the valley, teaching their dogs and ferrets to catch rats, trespassing on industrial land, learning about girls, and entirely missing the growing affluence of central Britain. For them, it was idyllic, and the author makes it clear, many times, how lucky he feels to have enjoyed such a stable childhood environment.
+
|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.  
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0862438683</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Mariana Enriquez
|author=Nancy Mitford
+
|title=A Sunny Place for Shady People
|title=The Sun King
+
|rating=5
|rating=4
+
|genre=Short Stories
|genre=History
+
|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=Nancy Mitford assumes that you'll need no introduction to Louis XIV, who ascended the throne when he was four years old and reigned for well over seventy two years. To put him in context his reign began before Charles I was executed in Whitehall, lasted through the English Civil War, Oliver Cromwell's Commonwealth, the reigns of Charles I, James II, William III and into the beginning of the reign of Queen Anne.  He bridged the gap between the middle ages and the early modern era.
+
|isbn=1803511230
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099528886</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Onyi Nwabineli
|author=Syd Moore
+
|title=Allow Me to Introduce Myself
|title=The Drowning Pool
+
|rating=4.5
|rating=4
 
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The book opens with a group of young women out on the town, letting their hair down and having funMoore describes all of them in a fresh and modern voice which I really likedIt came across as a breath of fresh airThe story, Sarah's story is told by Sarah herself.  But it's told from the perspective of looking back after it's all happened so there's lots of why-didn't-I-see-that-coming languageHindsight, in a word.
+
|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 gainNow 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?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847562663</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=0861546873
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=David Chadwick
|author=Guillaume Musso
+
|title=Headload of Napalm
|title=The Girl on Paper
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|summary=This is a modern book for modern times.  I loved the reader-friendly layout with big, bold type letting the reader know exactly where we were, in terms of storyline and location.  But the story itself does jump about a lot and I suspect Musso wants to give a sense of urgency, a sense of frenetic energy at times.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908313056</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Frances Hardinge
 
|title=Fly by Night
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
+
|genre=Thrillers
|summary=The Fractured Realm is a country existing in an uneasy peace. Each province is ruled by the craftsmen guilds which hold ultimate control, an ineffective Duke, and citizens who honour a multitude of demi-gods, 'The Beloved', who haunt them their entire life. This is the world Mosca Mye inhabits. An orphan, Mosca is fostered by her aunt and uncle, who think little of her and use her as a bookkeeper due to her unique, and quite illegal, ability to read and write. She runs away the night she burns their mill to the ground.  
+
|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....
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330418262</amazonuk>
+
|isbn= B0D321VJ76
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Tom Percival
|author=Stephen O'Shea
+
|title=The Wrong Shoes
|title=The Friar of Carcassonne: Revolt Against the Inquisition in the Last Days of the Cathars
+
|rating=5
|rating=4
+
|genre=Confident Readers
|genre=History
+
|summary=Will's life is difficult, in a multitude of waysHe 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 accidentThrow into that mix the fact that his mum and dad are separated, and Will's life seems bleak in every directionAnd yet, he still has a tiny amount of hopeHe 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.
|summary=It starts with a paintingThe painting isn't the point: the subject is.  In the Autumn of 1319 a Franciscan Friar stands before his accusers. Entitled ''L'Agitateur du Languedoc'' the artwork portrays the trial of Bernard Délicieux, the eponymous Friar of CarcassonneAlthough O'Shea veers clear of telling us the outcome of the trial, one cannot help feeling that it wasn't an acquittalSuch things tended not to go down in history quite so resoundinglyNot in those days.
+
|isbn=1398527122
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184668319X</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Sylvie Cathrall
|author=50 Cent
+
|title=A Letter to the Luminous Deep
|title=Playground
+
|rating=5
|rating=4
+
|genre=Science Fiction
|genre=Teens
+
|summary= There are few greater joys than a book which lives up to a compelling premise. And this is one of them.
|summary=When Butterball fills a sock with batteries and attacks geeky Maurice in the playground, his school sends him off to twice-weekly meetings with a therapist. Butterball is not impressed. It's a waste of his time and he will never, never, tell anyone the truth about that day. Besides, any problem could be easily fixed if his mother just gave up on this idea of nursing school and moved them out of the stifling suburbs and back to New York City.
+
|isbn= 0356522776
 
 
But Liz has other ideas...  
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780873301</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=1786482126
|author=Jessica Martinez
+
|title=The Janus Stone (Dr Ruth Galloway)
|title=Virtuosity
+
|author=Elly Griffiths
|rating=4
+
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
+
|genre=Crime
|summary=Carmen Bianchi plays the violin; in fact she might well be the best young violinist in the worldShe plays a Stradivarius worth $1.2 million, provided by the grandparents who otherwise have little to do with her and she's managed by her mother, whose word is law.  Schooling is provided by a home tutor – and she doesn't even get to knock on doors because of the possible damage to her hands: she kicks insteadSo far she hasn't really minded that she doesn't have a life outside of violin, but then she meets Jeremy King – a fellow competitor in the world's most prestigious violin competition – and she has to think about her priorities.
+
|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 skullWas 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 agoHer condition will be obvious before long, not least because Ruth is prone to sudden bouts of sickness.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857072846</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Joan Didion
|author=Eric Carle
+
|title=The Year of Magical Thinking
|title=The Artist Who Painted a Blue Horse
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=For Sharing
+
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Eric Carle's latest story consists of just 50 words, 10 animal paintings and two pictures of the young artist at work. Simply, a child creates a series of vibrant paintings of animals in unusual, striking colours, including a blue horse, a green lion and a multi-coloured, polka-dotted donkey. My own favourite is the purple fox. The child says, I am a good artist.
+
|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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141340010</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=0007216858
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=0008551324
|author=Mick O'Hare
+
|title=The Devil You Know (D S Max Craigie)
|title=Why Are Orangutans Orange?
+
|author=Neil Lancaster
|rating=3.5
+
|rating=4.5
|genre=Popular Science
+
|genre=Crime
|summary=Another year has passed, and once again we're treated to another offering from New Scientist's Last Word column. We've been here before, with [[Why Don't Penguins' Feet Freeze? by Mick O'Hare|Penguins]], [[Do Polar Bears Get Lonely? by Mick O'Hare|Polar Bears]], [[How To Make A Tornado by Mick O'Hare|Tornadoes]], [[Why Can't Elephants Jump? by Mick O'Hare|Elephants]] and [[How To Fossilise Your Hamster by Mick O'Hare|Hamsters]]. Now it's time for the orangutan to find out why he's orange.
+
|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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846685079</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=0241678412
|author=Mia James
+
|title=The Proof of My Innocence
|title=Darkness Falls
+
|author=Jonathan Coe
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre=Teens
+
|genre=Thrillers
|summary=April's not had the best time of it lately. First her family up and moved her clear across the country and sent her to an exclusive college full of the smartest (and apparently most beautiful) kids in the country. Then, while April was struggling to fit in, she discovered Ravenwood school's terrible secret - it's run by vampires.
+
|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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780620411</amazonuk>
+
}}
 +
{{Frontpage
 +
|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
{{newreview
+
|isbn=1739526910
|author=Victoria Hislop
+
|title=Where I've Not Been Lost
|title=The Thread
+
|author=Glen Sibley
|rating=4
+
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=I read and enjoyed Hislop's 'The Island' so I was looking forward to reading this book. The Prologue is May 2007 and readers are treated to a vivid coastal description of the area which is to play such a big part in the novel. Lines such as 'With the lifting haze, Mount Olympus gradually emerged far away across the Thermaic Gulf and the restful blues of sea and sky shrugged off their pale shroud.'
+
|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.''
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755377737</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=0008405026
|author=David Borgenicht
+
|title=A Stranger in the Family (Maeve Kerrigan 11)
|title=WCS Ultimate Adventure: Mars! (Worst-Case Scenario Ultimate Adventure)
+
|author=Jane Casey
|rating=3.5
+
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|summary=
 
How many endings do you prefer your books to have?  This claims 24, is the reason I ask.  I can't be sure that the original Fighting Fantasy books of old didn't have a lot more, as well as the combat process, but in this style of choose-your-own-adventure franchise, two dozen isn't too bad at all.  It's a younger-styled decision-making read, for the under-thirteens, and follows Borgenicht's seeming lifelong plan to get all sorts of survival info, either vital or trivial, into as many books as possible.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>081187124X</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Gladys Mitchell
 
|title=Watson's Choice
 
|rating=3.5
 
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=Sir Bohun (that's pronounced 'Boon', in case you're wondering) Chantrey is not the brightest or most sensitive of men, but Sherlock Holmes is one of his great passions in life is Sherlock Holmes. To celebrate the great man's anniversary he throws a party at which the guests are invited to come as characters from the storiesOur heroine, Mrs Bradley, and her secretary Laura Menzies are among the guests but not everyone there is interested in Sherlock HolmesQuite a few are interested in Chantrey's money and his announcement that he is to marry his poverty-stricken nursery governess provokes anger in certain quartersThen the Hound of the Baskervilles makes an unscheduled appearance...
+
|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 haltNow, 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 suspicious.  What looked as though it was going to be an open-and-shut case is now a complex double murderKerrigan is convinced that the explanation lies in Rosalie's disappearance: others (such as Derwent's boss, Una Burt) are less convinced.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099548593</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
  
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=Penelope Lively
+
|isbn=B0DGDJRHYD
|title=A Stitch in Time
+
|title=Nowhere Man
|rating=5
+
|author=Deborah Stone
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|summary=Hunting for fossils on the Dorset coast is a pleasure which has delighted generations of families. And when Maria is taken by her father and mother to Lyme Regis for the summer holidays, she quickly becomes fascinated by the myriads of long-dead creatures which are still visible, fixed forever in the local grey-blue stone. Her interest in the history of the area leads her to make a friend – a rare occurrence for Maria, who can be painfully shy at times, and it involves her in a mystery. What sad event prevented Harriet from finishing the sampler? And how is it that Maria is aware of a dog barking, when no one else can hear it?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007443277</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=David Borgenicht
 
|title=WCS Junior SurviveoPedia HC (Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook Junior Editions)
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre=Children's Non-Fiction
+
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=You probably recall all the Worst-Case Scenario books that were a big publishing phenomenon about a decade ago. They itemised things that might be a cause for concern, whether in the office, or the dating world, or the jungle.  And then they seemed to run out of info, and vanish.  But worry not, for the main instigator, David Borgenicht, is back, with a range of similar books for the junior audience.  And here he offers a large format encyclopaedia pictorially warning us about dangers in the world around us, and offering advice for us to memorise so we can escape as best we can.
+
|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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>081187690X</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Alistair MacLeod
 
|title=No Great Mischief
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|summary=No Great Mischief is a novel which captures the essence of belonging and the need to be a part of one's history. This is the story of a small part of Clann Calum Ruadh, the people of Red Calum, emigrants to Canada. It sweeps from contemporary Toronto to evoke Cape Breton in the fifties and back to the clearances of Scottish history. MacLeod tells the tale with the dignity and stature of an ancient myth, holding up to our gaze what it means to be a part of a race, a family and a place.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099283921</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Sarah Mlynowski
 
|title=Ten Things We Shouldn't Have Done
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=April doesn't want to move to Cleveland with her dad and his new wife. She doesn't want to move to Paris with her mum either. So April decides the best thing to do is to move in with her best friend Vi, and Vi's mum. But, Vi's mum has recently landed herself the role as Mary Poppins in a travelling theatre, so she's not going to be home. That's not going to stop April from staying in Westport, armed with a couple of fake emails addresses the plan is set.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408309793</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}

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

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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

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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

B0DNVWMYP2.jpg

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

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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

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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

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

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

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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

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

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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