Book Reviews From The Bookbag
The Bookbag
Hello from The Bookbag, a site featuring books from all the many walks of literary life - fiction, biography, crime, 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 author interviews, and all sorts of top tens - all of which you can find on our features page. If you're stuck for something to read, check out the recommendations page.
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The Man Who Came to London by A S Cookson
In 1948, the first set of Caribbean nationals arrived in Great Britain on a ship called "Empire Windrush". They struggled to find housing. They worked as labourers. They faced open discrimination, forcing them to quickly form their own community. Decades later, Freddy makes the same journey. Does he find a place to live? Does he face stereotypes? Has Britain moved forward? Freddie arrives in London in the early 2000s, answering the call for teachers. He thinks about his own Jamaican education, based on the British system, and the way he was taught English nursery rhymes and about the River Thames. He thinks about the love of cricket and football, shared by both countries. And he thinks of the generations of the diaspora who came before him. Freddy does well in his job in East London but he does have to face down some stereotypical attitudes from his pupils - all Jamaicans smoke weed, don't they? Everybody knows that! Full Review |
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Red Snow by Will DeanLife in the small town of Gavrik is trying to return to normal, following the grim events of Dark Pines. As Tuva prepares to move on from both the death of her mother and her small hometown, she is drawn into another dark investigation. One suicide, and one murder. Are they connected? With black liquorice coins covering the murdered man's eyes, the hashtag #ferryman starts trending, and the local people stocking up on ammunition. With only a fortnight to investigate before moving to the South, Tuva is further troubled by a blizzard that descends on the town, cutting Gavrik off from the larger world. Desperate to stop the killer, Tuva must go delve deep into the heart of the community – but who's to say the Ferryman will let her go? Full Review |
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Katalin Street by Magda SzaboThis is a story about the past. A specific past, certainly, in the form of pre-war Budapest, but also a story about how that past can impact on the present and the future. In this book, the first of three Magda Szabó wrote on the same theme between 1969 and 1987 and now newly translated and reissued, we witness a heart-rending nostalgia for happier days, guilt about those who did not survive, and a dogged but doomed determination to cling to long-gone times, feelings and experiences which mark the here and now, staining and warping it into another, subtler misery. Full Review |
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The Winter of the Witch by Katherine ArdenThe Winter of the Witch is the conclusion of the story following Vasya, Vasilisa Petronova, as she negotiates her way towards her destiny through the world of medieval males and the Catholic Church's perception of witchcraft. The story picks up directly from the action in the second novel, The Girl in the Tower, and as a reader too much is lost if you haven't read this at the very least. My advice would be to read all three. The first two novels are beautiful and lyrical with extraordinary characters and a wonderful balance of magic and action. This final novel, however, is an absolute triumph. Full Review |
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Paper Avalanche by Lisa WilliamsonRo Snow spends her time at school trying to pass under the radar. She doesn't want anyone to notice her, because then they might start asking questions, or they might want to be friends, and she can't have any friends because she can't ever have anyone come over to her house. You see, Ro's mum is a hoarder, and their whole house, with the exception of Ro's bedroom, is an ever-growing mound of rubbish and paper, and Ro lives in fear of social services finding out and taking her away. Full Review |
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The Boy in a Turban by Joseph HucknallYou might not think that Georgian London contained many black people. But it contained more than you think. You may have heard of Francis Barber, the black African slave who became the friend of lexicographer Samuel Johnson and was a beneficiary of his will. The Boy in a Turban tells the story of a fictional black character, James, in Georgian London. James, then Quaccoe, is brought to the capital from a Jamaican plantation by a ship captain who wanted a servant for his two daughters. Full Review |
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Lightning Chase Me Home by Amber Lee DoddNamed after two famous female explorers, Amelia Hester McLeod loves to listen to stories of exciting adventures, but when it comes to being brave herself she finds it very difficult. She lives on a small Scottish island with her dad and her grandad, and spends her time daydreaming about where her adventurous mother might be off exploring. When her mum had lived with them, she had home-schooled Amelia, and her dad and grandad tried to continue that for a while. But now her dad has decided it's time for Amelia to go to school on the mainland. Amelia is afraid - afraid of having to make new friends, afraid of being picked on because of her problems with reading, and afraid of what's happening to her since she went and made a wish on a mysterious rock in the sea… Full Review |
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Dead Heat (A Harry Radcliffe Mystery) by Glenis WilsonOf course it wasn't champion jackey Harry Radcliffe's fault, but that didn't stop him feeling guilty. His attempts to solve the murder of prostitute Alice Goode had left his estranged wife, Annabel and her partner, Sir Jeffrey in danger and it was Harry who had urged them to get away as quickly as possible for the sake of themselves and their unborn child. It would be quite a while before he woke in hospital to find that Jeffrey and Annabel had been involved in a serious car accident. It looked as though Jeffrey would be in a wheelchair for life and Annabel had lost the baby. On top of that there was horsebox driver John Dunston's apparent suicide. Full Review |
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All the Lonely People by David OwenKat and Wesley are both loners, looking for places to fit in. Kat finds this with online communities, where she feels like she can be her true self - a feminist, an activist, someone who isn't scared to speak out. Wesley's desire to feel a sense of belonging sees him fall in with an altogether nastier crowd. Bullies, trolls, extremists. When he pulls the final trigger on a violent, targeted online bullying campaign, Kat is forced to delete her entire online presence. Bereft of everything that represented her identity, Kat's physical self starts to fade as well. As the entire world slowly forgets that Kat ever existed, only Wesley seems to remember the girl whom he erased. Wesley is faced with a choice: get sucked further into a sinister alt-right movement or help Kat to stop them. Full Review |
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Keep Your Health and Fitness For Life: Don't Let Age Be A Barrier by Stuart RobertsMy birth certificate might suggest a higher figure, but I know that I'm only 42. I learned a long time ago that I could retain that feeling by keeping my life in balance. This meant eating sensibly, getting quality sleep and having regular exercise which I enjoyed. There was an added bonus too: I was juggling four chronic conditions and living this way meant that I could keep three of them in the background. Then a silly mis-step meant that the hip problem flared up. The only way I could get more than an hour or two asleep was to take pain relief and the duodenal ulcer started to complain. Because I was masking symptoms I didn't dare to exercise - and the black dog of depression prowled along behind me. Full Review |
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Gone by Midnight by Candice FoxIn a hotel in Cairns, a group of 7 grown ups go for dinner, leaving their 4 children upstairs in a hotel room. When they return, only 3 children remain. Wow, that's all a bit…familiar. But the resemblance to the McCann case ends there, in many ways. Parents may be suspects and judgements may be made of their choice to leave the children unsupervised, but beyond that this is not the same story, not least because by the end of this book we do know once and for all what happened to Richie. Full Review |
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The Twisted Tree by Rachel BurgeMartha's world has changed. Blind in one eye after falling from a tree, she wakes with a disturbing gift. She can read people through their clothes, secrets tumble from the weave, revealing insights she doesn't really want, and knowledge she doesn't understand. She flees to her grandmother, Mormor's cabin, seeking answers no one is prepared to give, and stumbles into world of menace. Full Review |
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Friends Like These by Sarah AldersonLife in London isn’t always glam, especially if you’re young and underpaid. For Lizzie it’s all a bit of a balancing act. She has a nice home but it technically belongs to her room-mate’s parents. She works in the entertainment industry, but her job itself is probably not one you’d covet. She doesn’t have much spare time, but that’s because she’s been working through some self-improvement. If they could only see her now. And, well, actually, they can, although there’s a lot less of her to see than there once was. But yes, she doesn’t really have much time for the past and the people from it. Full Review |
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Malice in Malmo: (Inspector Anita Sundstrom) by Torquil MacLeodIt was embarrassing when a leading Malmo business man was kidnapped, particularly as the police didn't know anything about it until the man was discovered afterwards, tied to a park bench in a cemetery. He was coy about how much ransom was paid, but it was sufficient that he'd felt the pain of the digital transfers. That would have been bad enough, but a second businessman was snatched soon afterwards and the pressure on Inspector Anita Sundström and her colleagues was to find the businessman and to capture the kidnappers before they took anyone else. Worse was to come though when an investigative journalist was found murdered in his flat. Was one of his victims the murderer, or was it someone he was about to expose? Full Review |
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Vera Magpie by Laura SolomonI have murdered three husbands. As an opening line that must take some beating, but Vera's telling us the truth. The first two husbands, Gary and Harry were abusive, but Larry was a treasure, a keeper, and it's difficult to understand why Vera would have killed him, particularly when she was likely to get found out very quickly and now she's in prison with a mandatory life sentence. Her only friend is Shirley, a lesbian, but Vera's not one to let herself be a victim. She's not keen on having a sexual relationship with Shirley (she wouldn't risk the security of her life in prison for the sake of a fling), but she is keen on getting an education and she's studying for a degree in English Literature. Full Review |
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The Whisperer by Karin FossumWhen we first meet Ragna we can't understand what's going on. She's talking to Inspector Konrad Sejer and it's obvious that she's being held in custody because of a crime which she admits she's committed. Only, as we hear about Greta's life it seems that she's more sinned against than sinning. After a botched operation on her vocal chords she can't speak above a whisper and to add insult to injury she's been left with a horrible scar across her throat. She's done her best to make a go of her life though: she enjoys her work in a shop and has learned ways of coping with the difficulties of communicating with people. Full Review |
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And So It Begins by Rachel AbbottWe know there's something very strange going on as soon as we join the story: we begin by hearing how it's going to end and that someone must die. But that's just a hint: for the time being we're with two police persons. Stephanie's the sergeant and she has Jason, the probationer with her in the squad car, but Stephanie doesn't like where they're heading. The house is stunning, but the last time she was here it was because there was a dead body at the bottom of the stairs to the pool. This time there's been a 999 call with a woman screaming for help: the omens are not good and when they enter the house they find two tangled, blood-soaked bodies in the bed. They both look dead, but one of them moves - it's Evie Clark and she confesses to killing her partner. Full Review |
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The Drop: A Slough House Novella by Mick HerronWhen you've done a job for any length of time, the memory, the instincts of it stay with you and they're impossible to forget. It was the same with Solomon Dortmund, a retired spy: when he watches a woman making a drop he knows exactly what he's seeing and he passes this on John Batchelor, the man charged with looking after the retired spooks. Bachelor has problems of his own: the closest he comes to a home is the back seat of his car and he's run out of people whose sofas he can commandeer for the night. The best he can do with Solomon's problem is to pass it on the someone else and hope that they'll deal with it/solve the problem/quietly forget about it. Full Review |
