Book Reviews From The Bookbag

Isaac is a refugee from Ethiopia who finds a home in Uganda. At the university he's taken under the wing of a political activist also called Isaac. The 1970s is a dangerous time to be in Uganda as their world is about to explode. Years later Isaac the Ethiopian finds himself in America and lives under the care of social worker Helen. Slowly they form a less than professional relationship and Helen realises that what little she knows of him may not be the truth. Gradually his past is revealed as the guilt he carries comes to the surface. Full review...

DYFED ODYSSEY: Connell O'Keeffe and The Spider's Web by Patricia Watkins

Historical Fiction

Connell O'Keeffe looked to be settled. His stud was prospering. He was deeply, enduringly happy with his wife who was expecting their second child and despite the loss of his arm some years before which had put an end to his acting career, life was good. Then one morning Morgan, his manservant brought bad news before he was even out of bed. Khayri, one of his brood mares, was missing from her stable and there was a ransom demand. Reluctant to lose the mare - or to be beaten - O'Keeffe and Morgan set off to retrieve Khayri, hoping to be back that night, or - at the worst - the next day. Little did O'Keeffe know that it would be many months before he saw his home again. Full review...

The True and Splendid History of the Harristown Sisters by Michelle Lovric

Historical Fiction

The seven Swiney sisters are growing up during Ireland's 19th century potato famine so know what it is to go without. Therefore when their eldest sister Darcy works out a way for them to earn money using their talent and long, long hair, the other six follow on. (They'd be daft to cross the dangerous Darcy anyway.) Gradually their hair becomes their future and the 'Swiney Godivas' are created. However, fame doesn't always bring happiness with the adventure; in fact for the sisters it brings notoriety – a different thing altogether. Full review...

The Curse Of The House Of Foskett (The Gower Street Detective Series) by MRC Kasasian

Crime (Historical)

Personal (not private!) detective Sidney Grice is still smarting because he's thought to have sent an innocent man to the gallows. It's also hit him in the pocket as work has dried up as a result. He's therefore pleased and intrigued when he's visited by a potential client who wants him to look into the Last Death Club, a group of people who have each put £2,000 in the kitty, the sum of which will go to the last person surviving. Unfortunately they seem to be dying quicker than planned and rather unnaturally. Sidney is about to accept the case when his client drops dead in Grice's study in front of him and his ward and assistant March Middleton. It may not improve his reputation any, but his attention has been piqued; he'll take the case anyway. Full review...

Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey

Maud is a little forgetful as the rows of cooling cups of tea will attest. She also has a cupboard full of peaches for some reason but not to worry. She has a family who love her and rally round, a home help and her great friend Elizabeth. Come to think of it, Elizabeth seems to be missing and the notes that Maud writes herself each day keep reminding her of this. The problem is that no one will listen to her, let alone believe her. It also reminds Maud of something else; another disappearance a long, long time ago. Full review...

Rilla of Ingleside by L M Montgomery

Rilla of Ingleside is an interesting novel for many reasons. Being the only fictional book written by a Canadian woman just after the war, about the war, it is an incredibly important work. It tells of what happened to the women who stayed at home, the limited aspects of war work that they were able to do, the endless fear and dread they felt for their loved ones far away, and all of the emotional highs and lows they experienced during such a heightened time. The novel begins as Europe is on the brink of war, and Rilla is only 15 years old and, still, a rather silly young girl. I have to say, I never much cared for Rilla. In Rainbow Valley' the book that precedes this one, she's just a spoilt baby and at the start of this story it seems that nothing much has changed. However, just as the world goes through a dramatic change during this period of time, Rilla herself grows from a child to a woman. Full review...

Max the Brave by Ed Vere

Emerging Readers

I can truly believe that Curiosity Killed the Cat, if the cat is anything like Max from ‘Max the Brave’ by Ed Vere. Thankfully, as well as being curious, cats are also known for having several lives, Max uses some of them up in this adventure. Being an cat of action Max wishes to go out in the big world and chase some mice, but he is also young so does not know what a mouse is. After asking several animals if they are a mouse (including one with big ears, whiskers and a penchant for cheese), Max is pointed in the direction of something a little larger and greener than your average rodent. Full review...

Lobsters by Tom Ellen and Lucy Ivison

It’s no secret that I’m a massive fan of teen fiction and I think it does an awful lot of things really well. Amongst other things, it can transport the reader to faraway times and places. It can also let them empathise with people in situations that they’ll probably – and in many cases hopefully – never be in themselves. I think it’s fair to say, looking at the recent Carnegie longlist as just one example, that books which do either of the above things tend to be the most critically-acclaimed. Full review...

Murder Most Unladylike (Wells & Wong Mystery 1) by Robin Stevens

How do you solve a murder with no body when nobody even realises that a murder has taken place?

Such is the task facing the Wells & Wong Detective Society - Deepdean School's most secret society. Society Secretary Hazel Wong found mistress Miss Bell's dead body in the gym. But by the time she returned with President Daisy Wells, Miss Bell's body had disappeared. It's the first decent case the Society has had - who really cared about Lavinia's Missing Tie? - and Daisy has at it with gusto. Hazel follows along at a slower pace but with, it must be said, a great deal more attention to detail. Of course, school life continues unhindered and Daisy and Hazel must conduct their investigation while avoiding Latin prep and lacrosse practice, and enjoying midnight feasts and buntime biscuits. Full review...

The Apple Tart of Hope by Sarah Moore Fitzgerald

Meg's parents think six months away in New Zealand is a great idea. Meg isn't convinced. A big part of the reason she doesn't want to go is Oscar. Oscar Dunleavey is Meg's best friend, the boy next door who makes perfect apple tarts. Full review...

Travelling Sprinkler by Nicholson Baker

Meet Nicholson Baker. Now, I know I normally introduce a book with such a phrase, and every time before now I've used the name of the main character. But I feel such is the nature of Baker's books that he is the greatest character therein, and the one most important for the potential reader to understand, however close he may or may not be to his fictional creations. Baker is a very stylised author, intricately bound up in providing amusing evidence of the value of all the small things in our world. If anybody can rustle up thousands of words about those baby nubbins that are left when you split a sheet of paper across a ready-made perforation – you know the tiny scads that are left dangling outwards – it's Baker. His early books practically were a day spent in real-time, and by rights you'd think this book should not exist – surely he's covered the world already. But no – here is love, poetry, drone warfare, Debussy, and a view of dance music production as seen from the prospect of a 55-year old American male. Full review...

Jim's Lion by Russell Hoban and Alexis Deacon

You must find your finder for yourself. So says a nurse to Jim, who is lying in hospital, plagued by some unnamed disease and bad dreams. The finder in question will be an animal totem, a frequenter of a nice, safe and loved place in Jim's mind, that will be able to keep him optimistic, hopeful and perhaps even alive throughout the procedures to come. The title gives the name away as to what the lad sees approach him in his fantasies, but there is no clue there as to what we see approach us in the fantastic that follows. Full review...

Someday We'll Tell Each Other Everything by Daniela Krien

Eastern Germany, and the country is in the limbo-land of time that lay between the end of the Communist state of the DDR and reunification. Teenager Maria is also in a limbo-land of a kind herself, living on a farm with the Brendels family, but not one of them. The matriarch still speaks to her in the third person for one, and while she does some of the house- and farm-work, and is in a relationship with the wannabe photographer son of the family, she knows she's not quite settled within those walls. Especially, as she is to learn, when there is a neighbour who can stir passionate emotions inside her… Full review...

The Murder of Harriet Krohn by Karin Fossum

Crime

It was early November and Charlo Torp, an obsessive gambler who was so deep in debt to the people he should not owe money to that he feared for his life, set out to solve his problems. An expensive bunch of flowers which needed a signature on delivery would get him into the house of Harriet Krohn - and a spot of burglary would net him enough to pay off his debts. All goes according to plan up to a point - but then it all goes wrong when Harriet Krohn fights back and Torp uses the butt of the revolver he brought to frighten her to bludgeon her about the head and she's found dead the following morning. The only clue for Inspector Konrad Sejer is the abandoned bunch of flowers. Full review...

Smart by Kim Slater

Kieran sees the world in a different way from most 14-year-old boys. He’s an artist, inspired by Lowry, and a boy with a strong sense of right and wrong. So when a homeless man called Colin is killed, and the police don’t seem interested, Kieran decides to investigate himself. Can he solve the mystery? Perhaps even more importantly, can he survive his home life with horrible stepfather Tony and stepbrother Ryan bullying him? Full review...

The Sword of Kuromori by Jason Rohan

Greek legends seems to have been done to death in YA and MG recently, there’s been a fair amount influenced by Norse mythology over the years, and Rick Riordan’s Kane Chronicles are probably the most popular of several books and series which have brought us stories based on that of Egypt. Japanese culture doesn’t seem to have played as big a part (although we’re huge fans of Stormdancer by Jay Kristoff and Kinslayer at The Bookbag) so it’s refreshing to see an adventure here featuring kappas, nure-onnas, and oni, amongst other fearsome creatures. Full review...

I Predict a Riot by Catherine Bruton

Aspiring film-maker Maggie lives on Coronation Road with her mum, a politician, but without her dad, who's left them. Tokes is another teen living without a father - new to the neighbourhood, he and his mother are trying not to be found by his dad. The pair meet and become friends, but fury is brewing in their town, and a young boy called Little Pea is about to unwittingly set things in motion that will lead to terrible events. Will Maggie and Tokes survive as the streets turn to violence? Full review...

Seven Second Delay by Tom Easton

In the future, the difference between West and East are greater than ever. Europe has evolved into the (British) Isles and the (E)U, linked by a bridge, and immigrants risk everything to pass from the third world of the latter to the first world of the former. Mila has made it across, but the danger is not over, and as she falls into the hands of the Agents, she realises the real price of freedom. Full review...

To Rise Again At A Decent Hour by Joshua Ferris

An identity thief is wreaking havoc in the oddest of ways and forcing a dentist to confront his online presence. This is a book like no other you’ll know. Full review...

Never Any End to Paris by Enrique Vila-Matas

Literary Fiction

There is never any end to Paris. The sentence pops up, hypnotic, through most of the book. At times ironic, thoughtful or questioning, it is a quote from Hemingway’s novel, A Moveable Feast, in which the American author looked back at his days in Paris, where he was ‘very poor and very happy.’ The narrator of Never Any End to Paris tells us that when he lived in Paris, he was ‘very poor and very unhappy.’ Full review...

Last Days of the Bus Club by Chris Stewart

Humour

I could well have been a near-neighbour of Chris Stewart. Not, of course, near his current primary occupancy, an ecological farmstead just beyond the turning off from the back end of nowhere in the most rural of corners of southern Spain, but back when he lived in the south-east of England, being Genesis' first ever drummer, and building bridges in the North Downs. The fact I learnt the latter from this book shows up several of the features of this warm-hearted 'travelogue' – the fact that Stewart is never shy about portraying family details and history – given a good map and a prevailing wind one could find where he lives and descend on the farm, if one wished; and that while this might be on the travel shelves, the narrative is so fragmented it actually moves a lot more than any of the characters do. Full review...

Code Red Lipstick by Sarah Sky

Jessica Cole is a schoolgirl model with an ex-spy for a father. When he mysteriously vanishes and MI6 are less than helpful, she's forced to use her talents for both modelling and spying to try and mount her own rescue mission. But the bad guys here have some really evil plans, and if Jessica's not able to stop them, she could find that she's not only lost her father, but she's missed the chance to save many more people. With danger seeming to lurk around every corner, she'll need not only all her resourcefulness but also help from her allies. If she can only work out who she can trust... Full review...

OMG! Is This Actually My Life? Hattie Moore's Unbelievable Year! by Rae Earl

Hattie Moore has got a nightmare family with an evil brother, a gran who’s a ‘total mental’, and a father who she knows nothing about. As well, she wants to be a total hotness goddess and take down rival Miss Gorgeous Knickers but there’s no boy interested in her (or is there?) Hattie’s diary tells the story of a year that could just change her life. As long as her stepfather doesn’t hate her too much for throwing up in his fish tank, that is… Full review...

Bob and Rob by Sue Pickford

For Sharing

Rob is a burglar who is very, very bad. Bob is his dog, who is very, very good. Well, as good as a dog whose owner is a burglar can be... Full review...

Horrid Henry's Krazy Ketchup by Francesca Simon and Tony Ross