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[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Margaret ForsterOnyi Nwabineli|title= How Allow Me to Measure a CowIntroduce Myself|rating=34.5|genre= General Fiction|summary= Seeking Anuri spent her childhood on display to the world, thanks to escape her paststep-mother Ophelia's increasingly popular presence on social media, Tara has left Londonwhere she posted every step of Anuri's childhood for sponsorships and influencer deals and, resettling way up north basically, monetary gain. Now Anuri is in Cumbria where noher twenties and she is slowly trying to regain her confidence and to get her life back, suing her step-one knows mother to take down the content about her. She quickly settles into an anonymous Anuri is battling alcoholism, unexciting lifefailing to start her PhD, observed only by Nancyundergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online and receiving money from them for doing so. Most importantly, she is desperately worried about her elderly neighbour little sister, who begins to develop an odd obsession with heris the new focus of Ophelia's online empire. Meanwhile, her three childhood friends are baffled by Can she save her disappearancesister, and resolve to get back in touch perhaps herself and her relationship with her.father at the same time?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1784702307</amazonuk>0861546873

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Steven Anthony1529153298|title=Isaac Montgomery for the Love The List of BethSuspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey|rating=35

|summary=There are words to describe the Isaac Montgomery we meet at the beginning of the storyIt's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. (A woman? I mean, honestly... ) Unfortunately theyShe're s not words you usually use in polite companywhat's worrying Miv's family, though. Women have been disappearing. HeWell, they'd worked for many years in stockbroking and had made a substantial fortuneve been murdered, but his life was devoid of much in to have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. Miv's upset because she's overheard that her father wants to move the way of personal relationshipsfamily 'Down South'. When he required you're from Yorkshire, Down South is a woman as an escortfrightening, foreign place, he paidbest avoided. He assumed that if he was having a good timeFor Miv, the move would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, then and she were too - if he even bothered 'll do anything to think about itprevent that. He had a friend whom he didnShe't see all that often and it was when he thought s not worried about Phil the dangers or that a little ''jealousy'' crept into Isaacher Mum's heart. You see, Phil was engaged to Penelope and they were obviously happy. Isaac began to wonder what love was stopped talking - and how you went about finding someone to share your life withanyone.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>152466815X</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Kate Beaufoy1035906708|title= The Gingerbread HouseDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin|rating= 4.5|genre= General Fiction|summary=''The Gingerbread House'' is not a cottage from a fairytale where a wicked old witch lives We tend to think of Maria Callas as Greek, but it is she was born to Greek parents in a wonderful rural settingManhattan, perfect for getting away from it all. Or it would beNew York, if it weren't for the lady who lives there who, while far from a witch, can be a bit of a b*tch. It's not entirely her fault. Eleanor has dementia in December 1923 and her fading mind makes her confused, angry and quite hard work only moved to care forAthens when she was thirteen. With Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her current carer off father changed it to attend her daughter's wedding, EleanorCallas's daughter to make it more manageable in law Tess steps up to assume this role the States. When she was back in Athens - supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for her voice - she was raised under the interim, bringing Nazi occupation by a mother who mercilessly exploited her and made no secret of her precocious daughter Katia with preference for herelder sister, Jackie.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1785300865</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Pam JenoffAlexander McCall Smith|title=The Orphan's TalePerfect Passion Company

|summary=Herr Neuroff's circus has The Perfect Passion Company is a secret: dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and operating as well as a much needed wartime source of entertainment, it's also refuge an alternative to Jews escaping uncertain concentration camp fates. One such person, Astrid, all the online apps in providing a trapeze and high wire artistmore personal, lives a precarious life in which her possible discovery would be more dangerous than her nightly acttailored service. She's an expert who Ness has perfected asked her art over time younger cousin Katie if she could come and therefore resents Neuroff demanding she teach Noalook after the business, as Ness is planning to take a trip to Canada to get away for a non-circus family new comer, quicklywhile. There's Katie is coming out of a break up with a reason behind bad boyfriend, and so jumps at the circus owner's demand thoughchance to come home to Edinburgh. Noa arrives at the circus endangered by And so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us to an act of kindness: a Jewish baby she stole from a Nazi train before leaving Edinburgh we already love, thanks to 44 Scotland Street and the NetherlandsIsabel Dalhousie novels, but with some new characters who quickly begin to charm. It was Katie has no experience in running a spur of the moment decision that will bind business, or in match-making, but Ness has full confidence in her abilities, and there's always her to Astrid very helpful (and their futurerather handsome) neighbour, no matter how long… or short… William, to lend a time that may be.hand…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848455364</amazonuk>1846976596

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Otto de Kat and Laura Watkinson (translator)Dean Koontz|title=The Longest NightBad Weather Friend|rating=34.5|genre=Literary FictionParanormal|summary=Emma has Benny is having a philosophy – ''let the dead restterrifically bad day. He loses his job, he loses his fiancee, and love the living''his house gets trashed. The problem with thatOh, as and someone has delivered a 96really weird, disturbing coffin-year-oldsized object to his home, and it's possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the thing that there are too few living lefthas trashed his house! The thing is, and so while Benny is the very last person to deserve all this bad luck. He is a nice person. A really nice person. So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the love remains she will go through her memoriesdelivery to his house is a new friend, taking a woozybad weather friend called Spike, diaphanous path through all the major events of her lifewho has been sent to help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a good person. Starting in wartime Berlin with one husbandSpike is going to take care of Benny, and will certainly take care of Benny's enemies, who gets snatched from her at workif he, fleeing to another place to wait for peaceBenny, and wait for him Harper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are.|isbn=1662500491}}{{Frontpage|author=Katherine Howe|title=A True Account|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Hannah Masury is living in vainBoston, moving having been sent to Holland and finding new lovelive with a family who run an inn, and so on – this wispy journey will show all being made to work there from a young age. When she hears there is to be a hanging of some pirates in the impacts of wartown, from rationing right up she decides to exile, death go and survivalwatch. The memories are coming strongly here Enthralled and nowhorrified in equal measure, as Emma is waiting for Hannah finds herself embroiled in a young boy's death at least one the hands of two vicious pirates. She hides away, so that they don't find and kill her two sons to visittoo, and then to escape them completely she will die…runs away to sea, dressing as a boy and joining the notorious Ned Low's pirate ship as a cabin boy. She soon finds herself in the thick of things when there is a mutiny on board, and from there we are caught up in her rip roaring tale of life on the ocean waves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857056085</amazonuk>0861547438

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Irvine Welsh1471180158|title= The Blade ArtistMaybe Tomorrow|author=Penny Parkes|rating= 4.5|genre= Crime General Fiction|summary=So. In the interest of honest disclosure I should tell you that I love Irvine WelshJamie Matson works in an upper-class grocery store, for a man who's work and I must confess to a particularly gruesome fancy for Begbie, control freak with all the notoriously violent, terrifying protector/tormentor subtlety of the Trainspotting gang. Whilst this means you are unlikely to receive an unbiased review, it does mean you will get a passionate onehalf brick. It is fair to say that I loved Jamie's son, Bo, 'The Blade Artisthas his problems'. He' s asthmatic and my only critique would be that it was over too quickly. For those of the more you who may not be familiar with Welsh's earlier manifestations have no fearread, the more you can pick up 'll suspect that he'The Blade Artists on the autistic spectrum. Sometimes Jamie needs to take time off at short notice - she's a frequent flier in the local A&E and sometimes Bo' and s not fit enough to go to school. Missed shifts or the need to be away on time to pick Bo up from school are occasions when Jamie can be transfixed by Jim Francis, artist, father, husband controlled and elegant thugput in the wrong. For those of you with previous knowledge of Francis Begbie you'll be instantly drawn back into the world of It was going to come to a man previously defined by petty vengeance, violence and bloodhead.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>178470055X</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Amanda RobertsB0CKD1L5JL|title=The Roots of the TreeRadio Free Olympia|author=Jeffrey Dunn

|summary=The strength of a tree comes not from what you can see, not from Petr is an orphan. Rescued by the trunkstrange, the branches and the leavesreclusive Bear, but he is brought up far from what you can't see - the roots. Disturbance to the roots can be devastating. It's similar in bustling cities and busy human beings. Annie had lived for 63 yearssociety, secure in the love forests of her parents, Elsie and FrankWashington's Olympic Peninsula. She'd looked after them After Bear dies and a brief sojourn in her home in their final years human company, and it was quite by chance that she came across their wedding certificate when she was sorting out their effects. They had not been married until ''after'' her birtharmed with only a pirate radio transmitter, Petr goes on a journey through the forest, broadcasting the strange, but her birth certificate showed Frank as her father and that her mother was married to him. Something didn't add up wild and there was one inescapable conclusion: the man she'd loved as her father all those years ''wasn't'' her father after allrarely heard voices he encounters.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1909716863</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jeroen Blokhuis and Asja Novak (translator)Sarah Marsh|title=The Yellow HouseA Sign of Her Own|rating=3.5|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=If you were the needy kind, would you really join in the drumming-out of town of two people accused of murder purely because of their nationality? Would you get After a feeling bout of belonging just because you were there when someone carried scarlet fever as a dead dog down off a mountain? The main character in this novel doeschild, Ellen Lark loses her hearing. But he has something that will really get him noted, well-thought-Suddenly plunged into a world ofsilence, includedeverything about her life changes. He has come to Living in a time when the south use of France to set up an artists' collectivesign language was seen as something only savages do, where he can live and work alongside his counterparts, who can inspire each other and best each other Ellen is sent to create wonderful art. In fact a much-respected guest school where she is on his way nowtaught to lip read, so surely he can find kinship? but physically restrained from signing. The guest's name isFrom here, after all, Gauguinshe ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the deaf and using a system called Visible Speech. The main character At the same time, Bell isworking on other inventions and ideas, and Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a complicated tangle of course, Vincent van Gogh…espionage.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1907320563</amazonuk>1035401614

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Antonin Varenne and Sam Taylor (translator)B0BC3YTCMR|title=Retribution RoadGood Girls Die|author=Ayura Ayira

|genre=Historical General Fiction |summary=''Sergeant Bowman wasnThis story is not for everyone.''t just a hard man, he  Lavender Daniels was something else: a dangerous manthree weeks short of her fifteenth birthday when The Incident happened.'' If, indeed, there was someone who She was ideal for a suicide missionvery bright student, it was him. Working as a soldier for the East India Company in the ruralbit too nerdy if truth be told, remote, outlaw hotbeds of Asia and suffered from vitiligo - people were afraid to hug her in the 1850s, hecase it's tasked with taking a boat of unknown prospects up the Irrawaddy to try and combat local warlord Pagan Mincontagious. It doesn't go well – to start with, he's supposed to run the rule over ruffians saved from the gallows, not easy being a black girl whose skin is 84% white. She had a crush on seventeen-year-old Reggie Anderson but can't command them until never thought he would notice her. Then he's forced did: Lavender was very good at math and Reggie asked if she would tutor him. She readily agreed: tutoring was something she gladly did at church: this was just an extension. She went to his way to having the knowledge of the mission house and he needs first, only for all hell to break looseraped her. But get back he doesIn shock, only she even allowed him to find that while his nightmares about what really happened are met with equally dark goings-on, the official record suggests the mission never actually existed…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857053744</amazonuk>give her a lift home.

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jennifer Down1472263936|title=Our Magic HourThe Figurine|author=Victoria Hislop|rating=4.5|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=There It was in 1968 that Helena McCloud made her first trip to Greece. She was alone: her mother, Greek by birth, had always been Katyleft the family home and refused to return, Audrey but Mary and AdamHamish (Helena's parents) felt that it would be a pity if Helena grew up without knowing her grandparents or understanding her Greek heritage. They've been friends since school Her trip to the family apartment in up-market Kolonaki would be the first of several annual visits. She grew to love her grandmother and now, along with Audreythe family's partner Nickmaid, they remain inseparable as young professionals. ThenDina, one daybut was wary - and frightened - of her grandfather, Katy kills herselfretired general Stamatis Papagiannis. No warning, He was proud of his close connections to the Junta and expected his family to uphold his values but saw no reason just no Katyto accommodate them. The four are suddenly three trying to make sense of a moment that leaves so many questions in a world that refuses to pause while they figure it outHis prejudices included Helena's red hair and green eyes - inherited from her father's Scottish ancestors.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1925240835</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Ayobami AdebayoDean Koontz|title= Stay With MeAfter Death|rating= 53|genre= General Fiction|summary= I have Michael Mace, Head of Security, at a top secret biological research facility, is among 55 people who die when a ''thing'' about blurbs which give away far too much of the storiesvirus is released in a bio-hazard accident. Not this time. This time…''There are things even love can't do…if the burden is too much and stays too long even love bendsFinding himself in a makeshift mortuary, covered in plastic, crackshe has a sense that something very, comes close very bad has happened to breaking, him – and only him – as he sits up and looks around at the shrouded bodies of his dead friends and sometimes does breakformer colleagues. As he recovers his senses, he realises that there is something different about him; he can '' feel'' everything. ''But even when itEverything''s in a thousand pieces around your feet, that doesn. Michael isn't mean it's no longer love…'Michael'' That anymore.|isbn=1662500467}} {{Frontpage|isbn=B0BVDC2VWH|title=The Grave Listeners|author=William Frank|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=The village is isolated and poor. It's surrounded by a Witching Forest. And the most heartvillagers subsist largely by farming Uphegia plants -breakingly beautiful truth I've read its bread-like fruit provides nutrition and its blossom provides herbal medicines. The black wood of the forest provides heat and warmth, roofs on homes, and even gallows, if needed. The fear of being buried alive is an existential superstition in a long time – the village and it sums up this story. This that is the reason Volushka, a story about love not being enough…but still being love. I hope this becomes drunken, self-indulgent, lazy lout of a classic, not just in its native Nigeria but around the worldman is tolerated. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782119469</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Elan MastaiB0BYF82CXT|title= All Our Wrong Todays|rating=3.5|genre= General Fiction|summary=Welcome to 2016, but not as we know it. This version of 2016 was like a picture-perfect scene from a science-fiction movie: a world free from war and poverty, with hover cars, spaceSemi-tourism, food replicators, shiny buildings and AI that catered to every whim. This was the resplendent 2016 we were supposed to have, thanks to the invention in 1965 of the Goettreider Engine, which created a sustainable form of energy that transformed the planet. With all of the major problems in the world gone, humans were free to dedicate their time to the pursuit of science and entertainment, culminating in what could be the most exciting development yet: a time machine. But of course, this perfect future would be completely derailed if, say, someone went back in time and messed up Goettreider's experiment. Maybe the result would be a world similar to the one we live in now: the world we were never meant to have.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0718184076</amazonuk>}}{{newreviewDetached|author=Samanta Schweblin and Megan McDowell (translator)|title=Fever DreamDeborah Stone

|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=Meet Carla. She's a glamorous older woman, with poise 'Bill and beauty, and someone who still looks a treat Amanda are living in a golden bikini. But insidesemi-detached house, she's different. The biggest issue she seems to bear relates to an event stuck in a few years agodepressing rut of boredom and disappointment, when her horse breeder husband had the drama of both a hired, valuable stallionTerry and Fiona – glamorous, successful and very much in love – move in next door. Despite their son, being poisoned. Away from the right medical treatmentdifferent outlooks on life, Carla took David to a woman who said the only hope was a 'migration' – basically, to farm out part of David's spirit couples befriend each other and swap it with someone else's, life appears to dilute the toxin. This was a success, as David seems to have survived, although Carla is sure it was the wrong decision – she now sees David as at least part monsterimprove for both pairs. But another odd thing about this tale all is that not what it isn't being narrated by Carlaseems, but by her neighbour, another mother called Amanda, who is renting a holiday home nearbyand their increasingly interconnected relationships are fated for tragedy. And the further odd thing is to whom she is narrating this story – it's to David…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1786070901</amazonuk>'

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Heather O'NeillShalini Boland|title= The Lonely Hearts HotelSilent Bride|rating= 53|genre= General Fiction |summary=Two babies Alice and Seth are abandoned in a Montreal orphanage match made in the winter of 1914heaven. He is everything she has been searching for; handsome, accomplished, clever, funny; total and utter husband-material. Pierrot She is all he could possibly want in a piano prodigywife; beautiful, successful, confident… and so the inevitable proposal is eagerly accepted by Alice and Rose lights up even the dreariest room with her dancing wedding is planned and comedyset. As they travel around When the city performing clown routinesmuch-anticipated day arrives, Alice is walked down the children fall in love aisle by her father, beaming with each other pride and dream up a plan for excitement as she surveys the most extraordinary show the world has ever seen. Seperated as teenagers congregation – their friends assembled to celebrate this joyful day and sent off when Seth turns to work during the Great Depressionface his approaching bride, both descend into the cityAlice's underworld - dabbling in sexworld implodes because she has absolutely no idea who the man at the altar is, drugs, and theft. Will Rose and Pierrot ever reunite? And if they do - what lengths will they go to who is waiting for her to make their dream come true? One thing's for sure - neither they nor the theatre nor the underworld will ever look the same..become his wife.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1849163359</amazonuk>1662507089

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Min Jin Lee1787636003|title= Pachinko|rating= 4|genre= General Fiction|summary= I have often said that much of what I know of the world, its geography, history and politics, I have learned from reading story books. Because I learn this way, I do wonder about people who profess not to read fiction. I wonder how much of the truth of how the world really is passes them by as a result. In the light of 2016 in the UK and the USA, I wonder if this is a concern to be added to all of the others about cuts to arts funding and arts learning and the absolute necessity of having public libraries where children can start to choose for themselves at the earliest age, which stories to read, uncensored by the views The Girls of those who might think they know better. I say all this because Pachinko is yet one more of those books that did not just make me think differently about what I thought I knew, but actually opened up to me a world that I knew nothing about: the world of the ethnic Korean in Japan.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1786691353</amazonuk>}}{{newreviewSummer|author=Shanthi Sekaran|title=Lucky BoyKatie Bishop

|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=Solimar wants more from her life than her Mexican home can offer and now she's 18, she can go find it. Her target is to get to It was the USA, a target so blinding summer when Rachel Evans turned eighteen that she doesn't realise what reaching out for it will cost. Meanwhile Kavya is living and Caroline went backpacking around Greece and arrived on the American dreamisland. SheRachel wasn's rich in friendshipt exactly innocent but she was, perhaps, familynaive, a loving husband and life prospects and yet Kavya has a babyso when thirty-four-year-shaped hole old Alistair Wright started to take an interest in her world, she was flattered rather than wary. The problem is It was quite a while before he made any sort of physical approach to her and by that there's only one baby time she was obsessed by him. Alistair worked for both of them… Lucky boy!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0735212279</amazonuk>Henry Taylor, looking after his interests on the island and in particular in the bar where all the girls either worked or partied.

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Anne TylerAmanda Craig|title=Vinegar GirlThree Graces|rating=4.5

|summary=Kate Battista is in an odd and not entirely satisfactory situation. At Few styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the age state-of twenty nine she finds herself working as a teaching assistant -the-nation novel. There''and'' running s something so utterly compelling about any writer who can catch hold of the home for her scientist father (who is eccentric, to say atmosphere of the least) day and her younger sister Bunnycapture it, who might be fifteen but is actually three going on thirtycrafting an image of the country as it stands in one particular moment. Dr Battista has other problems - and when he has a problem he offloads them onto Kate (he's concerned To say that Amanda Craig is skilled at doing this would be embarrassingly inadequate: she hasn't yet done his taxes). This time though, it's seriouspractically synonymous with the genre of contemporary social fiction at this point. Pyotr, his brilliant young lab assistant, is She has such a gift for weaving the ongoing issues of the day into the lives of her characters in the USA on a visa and it's about to expire. If way that happens Dr Battista is convinced that he'll not be able to complete his work feels natural and all that he's done will be lived-in, never making them ciphers for nothingsocial commentary but instead fully realised people, grappling with issues far larger than themselves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099589877</amazonuk>140871468X

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Dawn O'Porter152915118X|title= The Cows|rating= 3.5|genre= General FictionPineapple Street|summary= Reading the blurb for this novel, the first novel for adults by author Dawn O'Porter, I got very excited. It talks about the cow being a piece of meat, born to breed, one of the herd, and compares this to women, saying how they don't have to fall into a stereotype. I expected a slightly subversive novel about feminism. What I found was an easy to read, enjoyable romp through three modern women's lives.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0008126038</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Joanna Trollope|title=City of FriendsJenny Jackson|rating=4.5

|summary=It would be unkind and certainly unfair to say that it was Stacey Grant's mother who was 'Pineapple Street'' is the cause story of Stacey losing her jobthree women: she might well have been the trigger but it was her managerSasha, Jeff Dodds, who used her request Darley and Georgiana. Darley and George are sisters and Sasha is married to work flexibly as an excuse to make her redundanttheir brother Cord. There was a lot of They're Stocktons, only Sasha isn'supportt a Stockton by birth so she isn't readily accepted into the tribe. The problem' for Stacey - s exacerbated when the staff were as stunned as she wasclan matriarch, Tilda, but in terms of asks Cord and Sasha if they'd like to move into the people she could rely onPineapple Street property. Tilda and Chip have renovated and downsized to another property, there were just a fewstreet or so away, which they own. Her mother was out They won't need any of the equation : it was her dementia which started the problem furniture from Pineapple Street, so Sasha and her husband Steve was wrapped up Cord can move straight in the fact . Nominally, they had a choice but that hewasn'd just been promoted t the reality. Darley and Georgiana start to board level call Sasha 'the gold digger'. She's living in his job. There ''weretheir'' the girls: the four of them had met at University and Stacey, Melissa, Beth and Gaby had been firm friends ever sincefamily home. And there was Bruno They use it so often that they abbreviate it to 'the dogGD'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1509823476</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Su BristowEmily Critchley|title= SealskinOne Puzzling Afternoon|rating= 4|genre= Fantasy Crime|summary= Donald 84 year old Edie has lived in the same small town for almost her whole life, but now she is facing a young fishermanmove as her son wants to move to another house and bring Edie to live with his family, eking out a lonely living on as Edie is starting to lose her memory. However, Edie is tormented by the west coast memory of Scotland. One night he witnesses something miraculous ...her childhood friend, Lucy, who went missing over 60 years ago, and makes the worry that there was a terrible mistakesecret she was keeping for Lucy that somehow might be the thing that reveals the truth of what happened all that time ago. His action changes lives - not only his own After 'seeing' Lucy in the high street, just as she was the last time she saw her, but those she starts to find pockets of his family memories coming back to her. And yet as she remembers the past, she is forgetting more and the entire tightly knit community more in which they liveher day to day life. Can he ever atone for Will she uncover the wrong he has donetruth about Lucy's disappearance before her move, and can love grow when its foundation is violencebefore her memories are gone forever?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1910633607</amazonuk>1804181250

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Cath WeeksMadelaine Lucas|title= BlindThirst for Salt|rating= 4.5|genre= General Literary Fiction|summary= American ex-pat Twyla is ready ''Love, I'd read, was supposed to be a light and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity'' Told from a retrospective view, a young woman unravels the perfect motheryear-long relationship that once defined her. She never dreamed Overlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the affair with a man twenty years her first child would be anything other than perfect himself, but when hesenior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the summer after. Set against the backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the 24-year-old narrator's born blind she is forced to redeepening relationship with her older lover, depicting its all-evaluate consuming nature, how it changed her view of the worldperspective on both romantic and familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0349410631</amazonuk>0861546490

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Rick Bass0008506337|title= For a Little WhileThe Garnett Girls|author=Georgina Moore|rating= 45|genre= Short StoriesGeneral Fiction|summary=The love affair between Margo Garnett and poet Richard O'Leary was all-consuming, apparently on both sides. Margo was just sixteen when they fell in love. Richard was twenty-one and described by Margo'For a Little Whiles mother as 'an older man'. Her parents worried that Richard' is s influence would take her away from what they felt she could achieve - going to Oxford and having a collection glittering career. In the event, they eloped and Richard took her away from the Isle of twenty-five short stories from Rick BassWight. As someone previously unacquainted with Bass' work this new collection was a wonderful introduction Margo did go to his quirky, unusual style which focuses Oxford and went on stripped backto become a well-respected journalist. The couple had three children: Rachel, simple fables featuring often mundane situations, mysterious characters Imogen and magical experiencesSasha. The characters Life was lived in each tale are beautifully crafted London and holidays were spent at Sandcove, the family home on the stories are dreamy, loose narratives covering everything Isle of Wight. Even then the doubts about Richard's drinking were never far from love Margo's mind: ''she would never be able to death to choices made and chances takenleave him in charge''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782273042</amazonuk>Then Richard left them.

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Jem Lester1914585402|title= Shtum.Dashboard Elvis is Dead|author=David F Ross|rating= 4.5|genre= General Fiction|summary= Jonah Jewell is ten I reviewed David F Ross's book [[There's Only One Danny Garvey by David F Ross|There's Only One Danny Garvey]] a couple of years old; he likes Marmite sandwiches, back and remember being outside absolutely floored by how powerful and sticking exactly to his routineaffecting it was. He cannot speak but he communicates his wants It was a gripping, emotionally wounding read, and needs clearly. The adults in his life do nothing but speak but they do rereading my review of it my main takeaway was that I might not communicate nearly as effectively as Jonah. While functioning from the outside, this is the story of a family falling and tearing each other aparthave lavished enough praise on it. Ben Jewell needs to fight for his son and by doing so needs to learn how to fight for himself. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1409162982</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Alice HoffmanLucy Ashe|title= FaithfulClara and Olivia|rating= 4.5|genre= General Fiction |summary= Growing up on Long Island, Shelby Richmond The year is an ordinary girl until one night an extraordinary tragedy changes her fate1933. Her best friendThe place? Sadler's future is destroyed in an accidentWells. Ballerinas Clara and Olivia are sisters, while Shelby walks away with the burden of guilttwins no less. What happens when a life is turned inside out? When love is something so distant it may as well be a star in Identical on the sky? Moving from a life in her parents basement to a life in New York Cityoutside but not, we learn, Shelby remains damaged by on the loss of her best friendinside. And not on stage, stumbling through life blindly and fighting desperately to become connected to anything at alleither. Because there's a lot that builds a dancer. ButSome things that can be taught or learnt – discipline, as she growsattention to detail – and some things, she discovers emotionthat ''je ne sais quoi'', survival and happinessthat don't come from the classroom. A stage presence, bundled up with dogsa charm, food, books and men shea ''joie de vivre''s probably best avoiding… Deep in New York City she find . The difference between a circle of lost and found soulshard-worker, and the angel who's been watching over her since that fateful night all those years ago…a star.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1471157717</amazonuk>0861544080

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Tim PearsHeather Fawcett|title= The HorsemanEmily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries|rating= 4|genre= General Fiction|summary= The Horseman feels like a novel written much earlier than 2016Emily Wilde is an expert academic scholar on faerie lore, and she has travelled extensively, and researched meticulously, to write her life's work, the very first encyclopaedia of faeries. This Whilst she is in large part because it brilliant at research and speaking to faeries, she is set not so good with people. So when she finds herself far, far North in 1911 in rural Somerset but also because Pears writes in a style which is reminiscent the small village of authors in Hrafvsnik, having somehow offended the twentieth centuryvillage matriarch, if she is not sure what she has done, nor how to redeem herself and put her final investigations for her book back on the nineteenthright track. Readers who are hoping for action Enter Wendell Bambleby, pace her dashingly handsome and suspense will be sorely disappointed in The Horsemaninsufferable rival who arrives unexpectedly, in which not a lot happens at all; the story could easily be condensed into a couple of pages. Howevercharm and delight, if you have a rainy weekend in a cosy cottage somewhere, Pears provides the perfect companion, giving readers an antidote much to frenetic, twenty first century urban lifeEmily's frustration. But why is he here? What does he want? And what exactly is going on with the faerie folk around Hravsnik?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1632866935</amazonuk>0356519120

{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1398515388|title=The Boy and the Dog|author=Miguel Bonnefoy Seishu Hase and Emily Boyce Alison Watts (translator)|title=Octavio's Journey|rating=34.5|genre=Literary General Fiction |summary=Meet Octavio. He's a large lunkFirst of all, a gentle giantit was the earthquake, living alone deep in a lowly Venezuelan town – a town the ocean floor, which oncecreated the tsunami and this, fleetinglyin turn, had fame, fashion caused the nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and success through a minor miracle, but has none any longerutter devastation. OctavioThe deaths were uncountable, it seems, has some unusual habits – here he is, marching off to and the chemist's with a table across his back, for it loss of livelihoods was all the doctor had at the time to write a prescription onwidespread. Now we never learn exactly what The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the cause list of the prescription was, priorities but we soon find out what - six months after the cause of the table is – Octavio cannot read, and has learned nothing beyond cutting into his palm to allow the wound to let him escape the need to writetsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. Until, that is, a woman seems to suggest He wasn't a way for him to learn to read and write, and to love – dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that experience also proves he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to Octavio that there is a whole host of other things he can put open his mind to, both for good, car door and for bad…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1910477311</amazonuk>Tamon the dog jumped in.

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author= Charlie LaidlawChristopher Bowden|title= The Things We Learn When We're DeadMr Magenta|rating= 54|genre= General Fiction|summary= On the way to Christopher Bowden's latest novel is a dinner party, Lorna Love steps into the path patient untangling of an oncoming car. Waking up in what appears to be a hospitalseemingly ordinary woman's life, but a hospital in which wine is served for supper, everyone avoids carried out by her questions, and her nurse looks suspiciously like Sean Connery, it soon transpires that Lorna is in Heaven, or, at least, on HVNnephew after she has died. Because HVN is The aunt who always provided a lost, dysfunctional spaceship, safe harbour and God the aging hippy captain. At first Lorna can remember nothing, but as her memories return – some good, some bad, she realises that she has a decision little bit of indulgence to make, a young nephew had had a much more interesting life than that nephew Stephen had ever realised and that maybe, she needs it seems to him an obligation to find a way home…it all out. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1786150352</amazonuk>B0B6Z9VJDW

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Federico AxatJennifer Mason|title= Kill the Next OnePartitions of Unity|rating= 4|genre= ThrillersGeneral Fiction|summary= After getting started with the opening chapters of Spanish writerHere at Bookbag Towers, we first met Elizabeth Cromwell, Federico Axat's ''Kill the Next One''dominatrix and unintentional detective in [[Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery by Jennifer Mason|Preposterous]], you might be forgiven for thinking you are stuck with one of those machismo riddled tales where a middle-aged man with when she investigated and unravelled a mysterious past is forced to shoot or blunder his way through a by-the-numbers thriller. The spectre of Lee Child's successful Jack Reacher series creeping in around the edges of the pagedisappearances. The novel opens with Ted McKay and his Browning pointed to his temple. He has the perfect life, including a beautiful wife and two adoring children, but has discovered that he is also in possession In ''Partitions of an untreatable tumour buried deep within his brain which is slowly killing him. HoweverUnity'', right before he decides she sets her mind to take the shot and end his life, there is solving a knock on his doormurder. Standing behind it is a man named Justin Lynch who tells Ted that he represents an all-knowing organisation that turns would-be suicides into opportunities to correct the imbalances of the law. Ted, instead of killing himself, could kill someone who really deserves it.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1911231065</amazonuk>B09LQR9FRF

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Laurie FrankelWill Carver|title=This Is How It Always IsThe Daves Next Door

|summary=Claude Five strangers come together in one moment as a suicide bomber prepares to detonate his vest on a London tube line. As their fates overlap, the story is told in backwards order, leading up to the baby of the familyfateful moment. He|isbn= 1914585186}} {{Frontpage|author=Jennifer Mason|title=Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=''s very bright. He has A struggling poetry zine, a vocabulary way beyond his years so he can hold his own mom-and-pop mobile diner in the rough and tumble Northern California redwoods, a 400-meter hurdler who just missed the 2004 Olympics, a women's track coach with a yen for bullwhips, a billionaire with a state-of -the-art S&M dungeon, a house containing four older brothersman serving a life sentence in Alabama, an emergency doctor mother and a writer father. Claude also likes to wear dresses. He wants to become a night fairy when he grows up. And one dayenigmatic signature, Claude becomes Poppy. He becomes she. Poppy'K(s parents, Penn and Rosiex), aren't too concerned at first - children all like to try on different identities and why should Claude/Poppy be any different? But it soon becomes clear that Poppy isn't play-acting at being a girlcheap oil painting, an erotic art dealer in Georgia. Poppy ..'' This is just a girlsample of the cast of characters and settings in Preposterous. And things get complicatedAs you can see, some keeping up will be required! The basic premise of this mystery story goes like this...|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1472241584</amazonuk>B09STS96HS