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The Snow Child – Eowyn Ivey
Alaska, 1920: a brutal place to homestead, and especially tough for recent arrivals Jack and Mabel. Childless, they are drifting apart–he breaking under the weight of the work of the farm; she crumbling from loneliness and despair. In a moment of levity during the season’s first snowfall, they build a child out of snow. The next morning the snow child is gone–but they glimpse a young, blonde-haired girl running through the trees. This little girl, who calls herself Faina, seems to be a child of the woods. She hunts with a red fox at her side, skims lightly across the snow, and somehow survives alone in the Alaskan wilderness. As…
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A Box Of Stores – A monthly book subscription
Have you heard of A Box of Stories? If you are a book lover this is the monthly subscription you need in your life. Four books, each month, which otherwise would be left undsicovered. I love books so the idea of books and authors going undiscovered makes me cry. A Box Of Stories takes the titles of all the books that don’t make the bestseller lists and puts the titles into their algorithms and looks into the sales figures of the titles, the system scours the internet for blogs, reviews and book forum mentions to discover what the books are about and how good they are by real readers, not…
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The Miseducation of Cameron Post – Emily M Danforth
When Cameron Post’s parents die suddenly in a car crash, her shocking first thought is relief. Relief they’ll never know that, hours earlier, she had been kissing a girl.But that relief doesn’t last, and Cam is soon forced to move in with her conservative aunt Ruth and her well-intentioned but hopelessly old-fashioned grandmother. She knows that from this point on, her life will forever be different. Survival in Miles City, Montana, means blending in and leaving well enough alone (as her grandmother might say), and Cam becomes an expert at both.Then Coley Taylor moves to town. Beautiful, pickup-driving Coley is a perfect cowgirl with the perfect boyfriend to match. She…
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All Boys Aren’t Blue – George M Johnson
This powerful YA memoir-manifesto follows journalist and LGBTQ+ activist George M. Johnson as they explore their childhood, adolescence, and college years, growing up under the duality of being black and queer. From memories of getting their teeth kicked out by bullies at age five to their loving relationship with their grandmother, to their first sexual experience, the stories wrestle with triumph and tragedy and cover topics such as gender identity, toxic masculinity, brotherhood, family, inequality, consent, and Black joy. *** First of all, let me start by saying I’m not black, Queer or American. So quite a lot of the things that were discussed in All Boys Aren’t Blue were…
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Dragon Detective: That’s A Wrap – Gareth P Jones
When Holly and her family fly to L.A. for a holiday, it promises to be the trip of a lifetime. On her first day exploring the city of dreams, Holly befriends a movie director, who’s captured something suspiciously dragon-like on camera while filming out in the desert. But before she can examine the tape properly, it goes missing. . . Holly asks her partner-in-solving-crime, dragon detective Dirk Dilly, to join her on the hunt for clues in Hollywood. Will they be able to find the film before it falls into the wrong hands and exposes the existence of dragon-kind to the world? *** I love Gareth P Jones’ work, it…
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Bad Habits – Flynn Meaney
Alex is a rebel from the tip of her purple fauxhawk to the toes of her biker boots. She’s tried everything she can think of to get expelled from her strict Catholic boarding school. Nothing has worked so far – but now, Alex has a new plan. Tired of the sexism she sees in every corner of St Mary’s, Alex decides to stage the school’s first ever production of The Vagina Monologues. Which is going to be a challenge, as no one else at St Mary’s can even bear to say the word ‘vagina’ out loud… *** Bold and stubborn, Alex is a feminist rebel in a strict Catholic boarding…
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Space Detectives author Mark Powers on his Favourite Literary Detectives – Space Detectives blog tour
There’s something very satisfying about a good detective story, isn’t there? Especially when the ending is revealed and you pretend you noticed all the clues and worked it out yourself. Tales of detectives and their investigations reassure us that no matter how intractable our problems may appear, with the application of a little brainpower (what Agatha Christie’s Poirot refers to as his “little grey cells”) wrongs can be righted, the lost found and order eventually restored to a chaotic universe. But while we enjoy the twists and turns of the investigation, what brings us back to the detective story time and again is the personality of the sleuths themselves. They’re…
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In The Book Review – Personalised Winnie the Pooh
Spike loves books and I love reading with her. When I found out about In The Book I knew a collection of beautiful stories, with her name throughout, would make for an amazing gift. Thankfully I was able to choose one of the collections for her to tell you all about it! Read on to find out what we got and all about it. In The Book is a service that offers personalised, breathtaking collections of stories. The books are top quality, designed to be treasured forever. They are a perfect keepsake for any child and you can choose form a whole range of stories. I loved the Winnie The…
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The Invisible – Tom Percival
The Invisible is the story of a young girl called Isabel and her family. They don’t have much, but they have what they need to get by. Until one day, there isn’t enough money to pay their rent and bills and they have to leave their home full of happy memories and move to the other side of the city.It is the story of a girl who goes on to make one of the hardest things anyone can ever make…a difference.And it is the story of those who are overlooked in our society – who are made to feel invisible – and why everyone has a place here. We all belong. It’s not…
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The Book of Dust Vol 2: The Secret Commonwealth – Philip Pullman
The second volume of Sir Philip Pullman’s The Book of Dust sees Lyra, now twenty years old, and her daemon Pantalaimon, forced to navigate their relationship in a way they could never have imagined, and drawn into the complex and dangerous factions of a world that they had no idea existed.Pulled along on his own journey too is Malcolm; once a boy with a boat and a mission to save a baby from the flood, now a man with a strong sense of duty and a desire to do what is right.Theirs is a world at once familiar and extraordinary, and they must travel far beyond the edges of Oxford,…
