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[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]]==General fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Paolo GiordanoOnyi Nwabineli|title=The Solitude of Prime NumbersAllow Me to Introduce Myself|rating=4.5|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=Anuri spent her childhood on display to the world, thanks to her step-mother Ophelia''The Solitude s increasingly popular presence on social media, where she posted every step of Prime NumbersAnuri'' follows the lives of Alice 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 Mattia from childhood to middle ageget her life back, suing her step-mother to take down the content about her. Alice Anuri is a wilful anorexicbattling alcoholism, scarred by a childhood skiing accident failing to start her PhD, undergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online and an overbearing fatherreceiving money from them for doing so. Mattia Most importantly, she is desperately worried about her little sister, who is an reclusive self-harmer trying to live with the guilt new focus of having been responsible for his disabled twin sisterOphelia's deathonline empire. Their paths cross Can she save her sister, and perhaps herself and her relationship with her father at a school friend's party during a painful adolescence and their lives are destined to intertwine throughout the coming years, despite the chronic awkwardness of their courtship.same time?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0552775983</amazonuk>0861546873

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Kathryn Stockett1529153298|title=The HelpList of Suspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey

|summary=JacksonIt's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. (A woman? I mean, Mississippi: 1960honestly. ..) The talk at the bridge club and the tennis club is of She's not what Jackie Kennedy is wearing's worrying Miv's family, though. Women have been disappearing. They're white womenWell, of course and they're free ve been murdered, but to play have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. Miv's upset because a coloured woman will be looking after she's overheard that her father wants to move the children, doing the shopping and cleaning the housefamily 'Down South'. TheyWhen you're trusted to bring from Yorkshire, Down South is a frightening, foreign place, best avoided. For Miv, the children upmove would mean leaving her best friend, but theySharon, and she'll do anything to prevent that. She're s not trusted to be honest worried about the silver. Aibileen is raising dangers or that her seventeenth white child but something hardened in her heart when her son died whilst the white bosses looked the other way. They took his body Mum's stopped talking - to the coloureds' hospital and rolled it off the back of the truck and leftanyone.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141039280</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Lauren Oliver1035906708|title=Before I FallDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin|rating=4.5|genre=Women's General Fiction|summary=Samantha 'Sam' Kingston isWe tend to think of Maria Callas as Greek, but she was born to Greek parents in many waysManhattan, your typical American high schooler whose concerns are pretty predictable: boysNew York, friends, fashion, weird parents, annoying little sistersin December 1923 and only moved to Athens when she was thirteen. Today Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it's Cupid Day, a chance to show off just how 'Callas'In'' you are at school, as measured by to make it more manageable in the number of roses you're sent, but Sam's not too worried about States. When she was back in Athens - supposedly so that. She knows she's part of could get appropriate training for her voice - she was raised under the Nazi occupation by a group mother who, by most definitions, would be called popular, mercilessly exploited her and though sometimes inside she might feel on the inside a little like an impostermade no secret of her preference for her elder sister, on the outside, well, she's the definition of ''in''Jackie.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340980893</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Olga GrushinAlexander McCall Smith|title=The Concert TicketPerfect Passion Company

|summary=''The Concert Ticket'' follows Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and operating as an alternative to all the lives of online apps in providing a family in Soviet Russia who have grown desperately distant from one anothermore personal, tailored service. Sergei, Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the fatherbusiness, as Ness is planning to take a frustrated musician who longs trip to Canada to play the pre-revolutionary masterpieces of composers like Igor Selinsky but get away for a while. Katie is forced to play the kind coming out of patriotic ditties he despises. His schoolteacher wifea break up with a bad boyfriend, Anna, longs for his love, but is never quite able and so jumps at the chance to come home to get his attention with her shy gesturesEdinburgh. Their shiftless son And so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, Alexanderbringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, has quietly given up going thanks to school 44 Scotland Street and spends his days hanging around the parkIsabel Dalhousie novels, consorting but with undesirablessome new characters who quickly begin to charm. Also living Katie has no experience in running a business, or in match-making, but Ness has full confidence in their house is Annaher abilities, and there's silentalways her very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, elderly mother.William, to lend a hand…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0670918482</amazonuk>1846976596

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Julie CohenDean Koontz|title=Nina Jones and the Temple of GloomThe Bad Weather Friend

|genre=Women's FictionParanormal|summary=A sign of Benny is having a good bookterrifically bad day. He loses his job, for mehe loses his fiancee, often relates to how easily I can put it downand his house gets trashed. And then how much I want Oh, and someone has delivered a really weird, disturbing coffin-sized object to pick his home, and it back up again. Nina Jones 's possible that whoever or whatever was a particular challenge for me as after reading it for an hour whilst my toddler napped I kept my thumb in inside is the page whilst getting her out of bedthing that has trashed his house! The thing is, snuck her downstairs still saving my page, put on Cbeebies, and then sat next to her on Benny is the sofa very last person to carry on reading for at least another hour, if not deserve all this bad luck. He is a little bit more than thatnice person. A really nice person. I then kept So fortunately for Benny it in turns out that the kitchen so I could sneak delivery to his house is a few more pages in between stirring the spaghetti. And then once my daughter was in bed I went on to absently ignore my poornew friend, tireda bad weather friend called Spike, over-worked husband (who got bored and went has been sent to help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a bath) so that I could read on good person. Spike is going to the end take care of the story. I found myself mentally yelling at a fictional character (I hope it was mentally Benny, and I wasnwill certainly take care of Benny't actually shouting out loud...we have very thin walls)s enemies, if he, I swooned over the heroBenny, sniggered often and I even cried Harper (a little bit toowaitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are. So, a book that induces such family neglect and an emotional roller coaster of emotions is definitely a good read!|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0755341414</amazonuk>1662500491

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Elizabeth SpellerKatherine Howe|title=The Return of Captain John EmmettA True Account

|summary=Laurence Bartram has survived the warHannah Masury is living in Boston, having been sent to live with a family who run an inn, but his life has changed dramaticallyand being made to work there from a young age. It will never When she hears there is to be a hanging of some pirates in the same againtown, she decides to go and watch. ItEnthralled and horrified in equal measure, Hannah finds herself embroiled in a young boy's almost as if he doesndeath at the hands of two vicious pirates. She hides away, so that they don't recognize himself. Domestic life is now non-existent find and kill her too, and he has no-one then to please but himselfescape them completely she runs away to sea, dressing as a boy and joining the notorious Ned Low's pirate ship as a cabin boy. He She soon finds herself in the thick of things when there is unsettled and edgy. War has obviously left its mark. He retreats graciously a mutiny on board, and wonders what he'll do with the rest from there we are caught up in her rip roaring tale of his lifeon the ocean waves. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1844086070</amazonuk>0861547438

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Nick Hornby1471180158|title=Juliet, Naked|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary=A clever, comic delight, pitch-perfect, astutely observed, particularly insightful, must-read. Crumbs. Whatever else is there to say about Nick Hornby's latest book that isn't already plastered on this newly-published paperback edition? I can only report that ''Juliet,'' ''Naked'' bowled me over with yet another Hornby strike.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141020644</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewMaybe Tomorrow|author=Dan Rhodes|title=Little Hands ClappingPenny Parkes

|summary=The first character to mention Jamie Matson works in this book is an upper-class grocery store, for a moth. Itman who's a human moth, drawn to control freak with all the flame that is a museum subtlety of suicide - a supposedly cautionary, life-affirminghalf brick. Jamie's son, memento moriBo, somewhere in Germany'has his problems'. Its curator is an old hand at lonelyHe's asthmatic and the more you read, unloved museums, fresh from an art gallery in an airport - it didnthe more you'll suspect that he't s on the autistic spectrum. Sometimes Jamie needs to take time off at short notice - who notices she's a frequent flier in the noise of local A&E and sometimes Bo's not fit enough to go to school. Missed shifts or the latest suicide need to happen be away on time to pick Bo up from school are occasions when Jamie can be controlled and put in the museum, and goes right back to sleepwrong. A spider crawls into his mouth and gets eatenIt was going to come to a head.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847675298</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Robin CookB0CKD1L5JL|title=InterventionRadio Free Olympia|author=Jeffrey Dunn

|summary=Although Robin Cook has written many booksPetr is an orphan. Rescued by the strange, ''Intervention'' reclusive Bear, he is brought up far from bustling cities and busy human society, in the first one that I have read - Iforests of Washington'm a Robin Cook 'virgins Olympic Peninsula.' This is After Bear dies and a big book brief sojourn in many respects. It's a classichuman company, glossy 'coffee table' edition; it's and armed with only a bigpirate radio transmitter, satisfying read and it's Petr goes on a multi-layered book in that it covers many current-day topics which have their roots in history. In factjourney through the forest, this book is so multi-dimensional thatbroadcasting the strange, you could argue, there are several books within this bookwild and rarely heard voices he encounters.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230743633</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Karan MahajanSarah Marsh|title=Family PlanningA Sign of Her Own|rating=23.5

|summary=Mr Rakesh Ahuja is Delhi's Mister After a bout of Urban Development and so farscarlet fever as a child, has managed to do well in his careerEllen Lark loses her hearing. However Suddenly plunged into a world of silence, his family everything about her life changes. Living in a time when the use of sign language was seen as something only savages do, Ellen is beginning sent to take over - he already has thirteen children and a fourteenth school where she is on the way. The eldest, Arjun, now a teenager was born taught to Mr Ahuja's first wifelip read, but up til now, Arjun is unaware of this factphysically restrained from signing. Sangita Ahuja From here, she ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the long-suffering wife, is aware that her relationship with Arjun may never be deaf and using a system called Visible Speech. At the same again. Meanwhiletime, Arjun Bell is only interested working on other inventions and ideas, and Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in one thing - how to attract the attention a complicated tangle of the gorgeous girl on his school busespionage. What will happen to the family when Mr Ahuja finally tells the truth?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099523299</amazonuk>1035401614

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jed MercurioB0BC3YTCMR|title=American AdultererGood Girls Die|author=Ayura Ayira|rating=4.5

|summary=I've often wondered how history would have viewed Jack Kennedy if he'd died a natural death rather than by an assassin's bullet. As an extension of that I've also thought that he might This story is not have lived that much longer had nature been allowed to take its coursefor everyone. He's one of the most-written-about Presidents of all time and finding a new angle – even a fictional one – is not easy, but Jed Mercurio has looked at Kennedy's adult life through the prism of his sexual peccadilloes and his health.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099515873</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Tim Pears|title=Landed|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=I have hesitated to write this review becauseLavender Daniels was three weeks short of her fifteenth birthday when The Incident happened. She was a very bright student, truthfullya bit too nerdy if truth be told, I am not and suffered from vitiligo - people were afraid to hug her in case it's contagious. It'entirely'' sure that I know what happened at the ends not easy being a black girl whose skin is 84% white. I read it allShe had a crush on seventeen-year-old Reggie Anderson but never thought he would notice her. I actually read the end several timesThen he did: Lavender was very good at math and Reggie asked if she would tutor him. And then I skipped back to the middle, She readily agreed: tutoring was something she gladly did at church: this was just to check something, before trying the end againan extension. I have decided She went to just believe in what I ''think'' happened, his house and since I don't want to spoil it for other readers then I don't have to make a complete fool of myself writing down what it is I think! And actually, that mysteriousness is part of the charm of the storyhe raped her. SoIn shock, slight confusion aside, I still gave this book four stars, and this is why..she even allowed him to give her a lift home.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0434020079</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Laila Lalami 1472263936|title=Secret SonThe Figurine|author=Victoria Hislop|rating=3.5

|summary=It was in 1968 that Helena McCloud made her first trip to Greece. She was alone: her mother, Greek by birth, had left the family home and refused to return, but Mary and Hamish (Helena''Secret Son'' is s parents) felt that it would be a pity if Helena grew up without knowing her grandparents or understanding her Greek heritage. Her trip to the story of Youssef Elfamily apartment in up-Mekki, market Kolonaki would be the slum-dwelling teenage son first of single mother Rachidaseveral annual visits. Youssef has always been told that his father is dead, so when he finds out his mother has lied She grew to conceal love her grandmother and the fact that he family's maid, Dina, but was born out wary - and frightened - of wedlockher grandfather, he plunges headlong into an identity crisisretired general Stamatis Papagiannis. He tracks down was proud of his close connections to the Junta and expected his real father, a wealthy businessman called Nabil Amrani who is surprisingly enthusiastic about family to uphold his illegitimate sonvalues but saw no reason to accommodate them. His prejudices included Helena's arrival. Nabil has recently fallen out with his daughter red hair and he seizes this opportunity to mould Youssef into the obedient son he has always wantedgreen eyes - inherited from her father's Scottish ancestors.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670918296</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Samuel BonnerDean Koontz|title=PlaygroundAfter Death

|summary=Jonah grew up Michael Mace, Head of Security, at a top secret biological research facility, is among 55 people who die when a virus is released in a bio-hazard accident. Finding himself in a makeshift mortuary, covered in London but his motherplastic, getting increasingly worried about social disintegration and increasing crimehe has a sense that something very, very bad has moved them happened to him – and only him – as he sits up to Nottinghamand looks around at the shrouded bodies of his dead friends and former colleagues. Jonah As he recovers his senses, he realises that there is a bright lad and halfway through a media course, but something different about him; hecan ''feel'' everything. ''Everything''. Michael isn's finding it difficult to fit int ''Michael'' 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. HeIt's also finding surrounded by a Witching Forest. And the new racial mix a problem villagers subsist largely by farming Uphegia plants - its bread- there's palpable tension between like fruit provides nutrition and its blossom provides herbal medicines. The black wood of the forest provides heat and brown-skinned people warmth, roofs on campushomes, and he often feels alienated even gallows, if needed. The fear of being buried alive is an existential superstition in the village and that is the reason Volushka, a bit like drunken, self-indulgent, lazy lout of a fish out of waterman is tolerated. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1902835190</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Joan BradyB0BYF82CXT|title=VenomSemi-Detached|author=Deborah Stone

|summary=David Marion isn't used to finding hitmen standing at his front door, though you wouldn't be able to tell that such Bill and Amanda are living in a thing might be truesemi-detached house, given the speed stuck in a depressing rut of boredom and competency with which Marion dispatches said hitman disappointment, when Terry and then disappearsFiona – glamorous, seeminglysuccessful and very much in love – move in next door. Despite their different outlooks on life, off the face of the Earth.  Dr. Helen Freyl is a physicist working couples befriend each other and life appears to improve for one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the worldboth pairs. She But all is alsonot what it seems, up until his disappearance, David Marion's sometime lover and is grief-stricken to the point of distraction by his sudden absence from her life, as she believes him to be deadtheir increasingly interconnected relationships are fated for tragedy.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0743267907</amazonuk>''

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jo BrandShalini Boland|title=The More You Ignore MeSilent Bride|rating=43

|summary=Alice is growing up in and Seth are a cottage match made in Herefordshire with her gentle, hippy father and her mother, Gina, who spends her days standing around like a chain-smoking zombie because heaven. He is everything she is kept on medication and has been searching for years. Gina's first psychotic episode occured after Alice's birth. Then there was the episode Alice remembers; handsome, the day her mother climbed onto the roof, nakedaccomplished, holding Smelly the hamsterclever, funny; total and refused to come downutter husband-material. From that dayShe is all he could possibly want in a wife; beautiful, the old Ginasuccessful, boisterous confident… and unconventional as she was, fell silent under so the numbing impact of constant medication. Jo Brand tells the story of how inevitable proposal is eagerly accepted by Alice coped with and the loneliness wedding is planned and worry of growing up with an ill motherset. Most importantlyWhen the much-anticipated day arrives, as I'm sure the teenage Alice would see it, we are shown is walked down the birth and life of aisle by her obsession father, beaming with Morrissey of The Smiths. In his music pride and excitement as she finds escapism and comfort surveys the congregation – their friends assembled to celebrate this joyful day and in him she finds a figure when Seth turns to adore. Her friends canface his approaching bride, Alice't understand her fixation and her mother understands fixation a little too well (s world implodes because she has absolutely no idea who the local weatherman having been man at the object of one of her fervent obsessions). Morrissey sings with such sensitivity and angst that surelyaltar is, Alice thinks, if she could just meet him and tell him who is waiting for her story he could help her and she could help him..to become his wife.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0755322320</amazonuk>1662507089

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Chris Mullin1787636003|title=A Very British CoupThe Girls of Summer|author=Katie Bishop

|summary=No one had anticipated It was the summer when Rachel Evans turned eighteen that Labour would win she and Caroline went backpacking around Greece and arrived on the electionisland. Rachel wasn't exactly innocent but she was, perhaps, not least because the party leader was Harry Perkinsnaive, a former steel worker. His manifesto included promises so when thirty-four-year-old Alistair Wright started to remove all American bases from British soiltake an interest in her, public control of finance and the dismantling of media empiresshe was flattered rather than wary. There were It was quite a few other things too – but they'll do for starters. The establishment – while before he made any sort of physical approach to a man – her and by that time she was appalledobsessed by him. Press baronsAlistair worked for Henry Taylor, media stars, bishops looking after his interests on the island and civil service mandarins knew that, for in particular in the good of bar where all the country (not themselves, ''of course'') something had to be done and ''obviously'' the end would justify whatever means they had to take to achieve their aims. Harry Perkins had to be removed from officegirls either worked or partied.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687403</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Rachel HeathAmanda Craig|title=The Finest Type Of English WomanhoodThree Graces

|summary=It was just after Few styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the end state-of -the Second World War and seventeen year old Laura Trelling was at a loose end in her Sussex village-nation novel. She didnThere't really fit in with s something so utterly compelling about any writer who can catch hold of the atmosphere of the other young people and her eccentric parents were becoming more day and more isolatedcapture it, to crafting an image of the extent country as it stands in one particular moment. To say that Laura was embarrassed by their carelessness Amanda Craig is skilled at doing this would be embarrassingly inadequate: she's practically synonymous with the genre of her welfarecontemporary social fiction at this point. A chance encounter with Paul Lovell was to change everything and before long she was on She has such a gift for weaving the ongoing issues of the day into the lives of her characters in a way to a South Africa not yet burdened that feels natural and lived-in, never making them ciphers for social commentary but instead fully realised people, grappling with apartheidissues far larger than themselves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099532743</amazonuk>140871468X

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Bobbie Darbyshire152915118X|title=Truth GamesPineapple Street|author=Jenny Jackson|rating=4.5

|summary=The central theme in this book ''Pineapple Street'' is sex - the story of three women: Sasha, Darley and Georgiana. Darley and George are sisters and lots of itSasha is married to their brother Cord. WeThey're introduced to Stocktons, only Sasha isn't a group of mainly twentysomethings and thirtysomethingsStockton by birth so she isn't readily accepted into the tribe. Men The problem's exacerbated when the clan matriarch, Tilda, asks Cord and womenSasha if they'd like to move into the Pineapple Street property. Most of them are attractive Tilda and hold down glamorous jobs Chip have renovated and careersdownsized to another property, a street or so away, which they own. All in rude healthThey won't need any of the furniture from Pineapple Street, with wonderful social lives so Sasha and trendy homesCord can move straight in. They all appearNominally, on they had a choice but that wasn't the surface, reality. Darley and Georgiana start to call Sasha 'the gold digger'. She's living in ''their'' family home. They use it so often that they abbreviate it to be a bunch of shiny, happy people'the GD'. What on earth could be missing?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1905614721</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Anthony QuinnEmily Critchley|title=The Rescue ManOne Puzzling Afternoon|rating=4.5|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=This love affair tale 84 year old Edie has lived in the same small town for almost her whole life, but now she is facing a move as her son wants to move to another house and bring Edie to live with his family, as Edie is starting to lose her memory. However, Edie is tormented by the city memory of Liverpool is mostly told through her childhood friend, Lucy, who went missing over 60 years ago, and the worry that there was a secret she was keeping for Lucy that somehow might be the thing that reveals the eyes truth of architect Tom Baineswhat happened all that time ago. With After 'seeing' Lucy in the Second World War loominghigh street, Baines is desperately working on a book just as she was the last time she saw her, she starts to find pockets of memories coming back to capture her. And yet as she remembers the memory of buildings that are at riskpast, she is forgetting more and appears a man more in love with her day to day life. Will she uncover the past truth about Lucy's disappearance before her move, and solid, cold structures than mankind.before her memories are gone forever?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099531933</amazonuk>1804181250

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Paul MurrayMadelaine Lucas|title=Skippy DiesThirst for Salt|rating=3.5

|summary=Life in Seabrook College is a mess. Some of the staff are young enough to remember their own school days there''Love, but many are certainly too old for that. A lot of the boys are victims of ragging and bullying for being too chunkyI'd read, or too smart - but some are so chunky and smart there's a certain kudos was supposed to them. The female of the species is be a thing only spied from their own school next door, light and only met by selling them ritalin as a weight-control pillweightless feeling, or meeting them at the very rare combined school disco.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241141826</amazonuk>}}but I had always longed for gravity''

{{newreview|author=Sapphire|title=Precious|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=Precious Jones is Told from a retrospective view, a sixteen young woman unravels the year old black girl -long relationship that once defined her. Overlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the affair with a man twenty years her senior from Harlem its inception – well she's never actually been out of Harlem the summer after finishing university – and when we meet her she's pregnant by her own father for to its sorrowful end the second timesummer after. Her first child was a girl and she was born with DownSet against the backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town 's Syndrome. With unconscious irony Precious calls her 'Thirst for Salt'Little Mongo'details the 24-year-old narrator' and leaves her to live s deepening relationship with her grandmother. When older lover, depicting its all-consuming nature, how it changed her second pregnancy becomes obvious she's expelled from school perspective on both romantic and joins an alternative education programme. Precious really wants to learn familial relationships and the book is the story of how it altered her journey from illiteracy to maturityirrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099548720</amazonuk>0861546490

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ru Freeman0008506337|title=A Disobedient GirlThe Garnett Girls|author=Georgina Moore

|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'A Disobedient Girls mother as 'an older man' follows two women struggling to retain control of their lives in the face of servitude. Latha is a servant girl to the affluent Vithanage family, whose daughter, Thara, is Latha Her parents worried that Richard's ageinfluence would take her away from what they felt she could achieve - going to Oxford and having a glittering career. As children In the event, they eloped and Richard took her away from the girls are the best Isle of friends, but they are destined Wight. Margo did go to Oxford and went on to be separated by class, which is made painfully obvious when boys come into the picturebecome a well-respected journalist. Meanwhile The couple had three children: Rachel, Biso serves a cruel Imogen and drunken husband who beats her Sasha. Life was lived in London and terrorises her childrenholidays were spent at Sandcove, one the family home on the Isle of whom is another manWight. Even then the doubts about Richard's love child. Bisodrinking were never far from Margo's husband murdered her lover in a hateful rage when he uncovered her affair and mind: ''she realises that she must escape his house if she and her children are would never be able to live. Latha too seeks escape, but she finds it leave him in the arms of Tharacharge''s boyfriend and this sets off a chain of events that will echo far into her future.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670917958</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Panos Karnezis|title=The Convent|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=Our Lady of Mercy is a small convent on the Spanish sierra made up of a handful of devoted nuns who live their lives simply, carrying out their daily duties like clockwork. However things change when a suitcase containing a newborn baby is Then Richard left mysteriously outside the convent doors. The Mother Superior, Sister Maria Ines, believes the baby to be a miracle and plans to keep him in the convent, but the other sisters do not agree. During the events that follow the true characters of the nuns inside the convent are revealed and the peace that the sisters enjoy is stripped away to show the tension that has been bubbling away under the surfacethem.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224079344</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Glenn Cooper1914585402|title=Book of SoulsDashboard Elvis is Dead|author=David F Ross

|summary=Area 51 is not what you think 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 back and remember being absolutely floored by how powerful and affecting it iswas. No - all that UFO kerfuffle is It was a smokescreen for the powers that be to hide even better the most unusual manuscript known to (a handful of) mankind - the most unearthlygripping, singularemotionally wounding read, and unsettling book, in thousands and thousands rereading my review of volumes. All except one, which is about to come under the hammer in a London auction house. Our hero Will Piper must go very reluctantly it my main takeaway was that I might not have lavished enough praise on the trail of it and its secrets, a trail which will force him and others to become entangled with shadowy agents, who in turn know the very day of all their enemy's deaths.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099534479</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=P Robert SmithLucy Ashe|title=Sunday Daffodil Clara and Other Happy EndingsOlivia|rating=34.5

|summary=The year is 1933. The place? Sadler''Sunday Daffodil s Wells. Ballerinas Clara and Other Happy Endings'' is Olivia are sisters, twins no less. Identical on the sort of book you finish with outside but not, we learn, on the feeling inside. And not on stage, either. Because there's a lot that you've just read something with builds a million different meaningsdancer. Don't Some things that can be surprised if you feel like you should start the whole thing again but with your brain more fully engagedtaught or learnt – discipline, attention to detail – and perhaps some things, that ''je ne sais quoi'', thatdon's t come from the whole pointclassroom. A stage presence, a charm, a ''joie de vivre''. The difference between a hard-worker, and a star.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099535238</amazonuk>0861544080

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Isabel AshdownHeather Fawcett|title=GlasshopperEmily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries

|summary=Thirteen-year-old Jake Emily Wilde is just like any other boy an expert academic scholar on the cusp of puberty: new music faerie lore, and Saturday jobs are at the top of his agendashe has travelled extensively, while girls are the strange exotic creatures that must be looked at but not touched (particularly his pretty Classics teacher). But behind closed doorsand researched meticulously, Jake struggles to cope with his motherwrite her life's ongoing battle work, the very first encyclopaedia of faeries. Whilst she is brilliant at research and speaking to faeries, she is not so good with depression and alcoholism. His father moved out a few weeks agopeople. So has his older brotherwhen she finds herself far, Matthew. That leaves Jake as far North in the man small village of Hrafvsnik, having somehow offended the house: the one who must remember village matriarch, she is not sure what she has done, nor how to get him redeem herself and little brotherput her final investigations for her book back on the right track. Enter Wendell Bambleby, Andyher dashingly handsome and insufferable rival who arrives unexpectedly, up in time for school in the morning; the one making toast for dinner; all charm and the one keeping a watchful eye over his mother delight, much to make sure she doesnEmily't get herself into any serious troubles frustration. But why is he here? What does he want? And what exactly is going on with the faerie folk around Hravsnik?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0954930975</amazonuk>0356519120

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Keith Colquhoun1398515388|title=Beyond ReasonThe Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)|rating=4.5

|summary=''Beyond Reason'' is a deceptively complex novel - a black comedy about the conflicts within religion. The main focus First of all, it was the plotearthquake, Edward Bunyandeep in the ocean floor, is a radical within which created the Church of England who is trying to take religion in a new (tsunami and rather amusing) direction this, in order to get turn, caused the public interested in it againnuclear meltdown. Bunyan claims to have a direct link with God as well as spiritual powers, such as being able to levitate The result was complete and read mindsutter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, which leave his colleague and old college friend, Reverend Ralph the loss of livelihoods was widespread. The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. He wasn'Marmyt a dog person but the convenience store owner' Marmaduke, unsure about both s comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his friendship with Bunyan car door and his own religious beliefsTamon the dog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904529348</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jonathan Buckley Christopher Bowden|title=Contact|rating=2.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Dominic Pattison's life began to veer off course badly on a Tuesday in May. It's a fairly banal Tuesday. The kind of Tuesday that Dominic probably experiences quite frequently. He feels the need to tell us about it.  In detail.  And, sadly, not in a particularly engaging style.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956003869</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Wayne J Harris|title=Sins of the Angel|rating=3.5|genre=Fantasy|summary=Dr Gideon Matthews, a shouty hellfire and damnation preacher, has just delivered a sermon all about the evils of women being allowed into the church hierarchy and, on his way home afterwards, he is murdered. The following day however he wakes up in hospital or, actually, an angel called Gabriel finds himself inside Dr Matthews' body, able to recall Dr Matthews' memories and thoughts and feelings but acting now as himself. Gabriel goes a little bit wild, finding himself overwhelmed by the new feelings and desires he experiences in this body, sinning left, right and centre and causing scandal at his every move. He is also wondering for what purpose he has been brought into this body and finds that he is dreaming about a demon, someone who is persuading an unknown monk to commit murders in God's name and who seems to be getting closer and closer to Dr Matthews in order to kill him too...|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1438994699</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Stephen M Irwin|title=The Darkening|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=This book has the 'S' word written all over it. No, not sex - supernatural. So, it's got all things a bit spooky, not-quite-right, strange coincidences. They are sprinkled throughout like rock salt. I must admit that when I read the blurb on the back cover with its supernatural theme, I gave an inward groan. Not really my cup of tea. But I'm open-minded and I'll read anything once. I'm glad I did. Irwin is Australian. For some reason I haven't read too many books by Australian authors, so I was keen to get reading.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0751543969</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Robert Kaplow|title=Me and Orson WellesMr Magenta

|summary=Richard Samuels sees everything in terms Christopher Bowden's latest novel is a patient untangling of a performanceseemingly ordinary woman's life, through the rose-tinted lens carried out by her nephew after she has died. The aunt who always provided a safe harbour and a little bit of the theatrical celebrities he listens indulgence to on the radio. So when he stumbles onto the Broadway stage through a chance encounter with Orson Welles, young nephew had had a much more interesting life than that nephew Stephen had ever realised and it seems as if all his dreams may be about to come true. He goes from being the guy that him an obligation to find it all the girls see as a friend, one of the bookish kids at school, to the glamour of mingling with stars of the stage. We follow Richard's struggle to balance this newly discovered wonderland and his school life, not to mention his disapproving motherout.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099540193</amazonuk>B0B6Z9VJDW

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=John Van der KisteJennifer Mason|title=The Man on the MoorPartitions of Unity

|summary=In the summer of 1913 relations with Germany were deteriorating steadilyHere at Bookbag Towers, but there didn't seem to be any connection with the international situation when a London clerkwe first met Elizabeth Cromwell, George Stephensdominatrix and unintentional detective in [[Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery by Jennifer Mason|Preposterous]], was found dead in when she investigated and unravelled a country lane on the edge series of Dartmoordisappearances. The moor had been his passion and heIn 'd always been keen to escape London and return to Devon. It was an odd death but in all probability it would have been put down as an accident if George's mother had not announced that George was the son Partitions of the Kaiser. Despite Unity'', she sets her fondness for gin the story she told was oddly compelling and when it was linked up with the fact that two German officers had been staying at mind to solving a nearby farm George's death seemed less and less like an accidentmurder...|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1904744230</amazonuk>B09LQR9FRF

 {{newreview|author=Frances Day|title=Dead Cat With Firelighter|rating=3|genre=General Fiction|summary=We're in the world of modern art. A couple who met at art college are on the verge of breaking up, as her success at fine arts is only bettered by his sudden rise to fame in the world of his conceptual, pompous bits of (almost literally) rubbish and nothing. We're also in the world of the wannabe stars and starlets, trying to make the jump from well-thought of provincial comedy theatre to Hollywood. And in the background in both instances, are guru-type Svengalis, pulling strings, and aiming to do as much as is morally justifiable - and a lot more - to get their charges to fame. And a bit of contract killing and murder on the side.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0954337751</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Billy HopkinsWill Carver|title=Tommy's WorldThe Daves Next Door

|summary=Tommy Hopkins was born Five strangers come together in October 1886 in Collyhurst, one of the poorer, inner-city suburbs of Manchester. His father had quite moment as a good job and there wasn't suicide bomber prepares to detonate his vest on a lot of money to spare but Tommy remembered the home as being filled with love and laughterLondon tube line. He was an only child but thought that he was spoilt in terms of affection rather than in As their fates overlap, the form of worldly goods. All that was to change when his father died of spinal meningitis and he and his mother had to move into cheaper lodgings. Even that tenuous security wasn't to last for long – his mother died of a heart attack story is told in her thirtiesbackwards order, leaving Tommy an orphan before he was eight years oldleading up to the fateful moment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0755359585</amazonuk>1914585186}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Diane ChamberlainJennifer Mason|title=The Bay at MidnightPreposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery

|summary=The story starts properly when ''A struggling poetry zine, a letter is discovered. It will have devastating consequences for several families mom- and life will never be -pop mobile diner in the same again. ApparentlyNorthern California redwoods, a 400-meter hurdler who just missed the wrong person was convicted 2004 Olympics, a women's track coach with a yen for bullwhips, a billionaire with a murderstate-of-the-art S&M dungeon, a man serving a life sentence in Alabama, an enigmatic signature, K(s, x), on a cheap oil painting, an erotic art dealer in Georgia. Moreover, the writer of this letter appears to know who did commit this crime. Unfortunately, the writer dies before able to make contact with the police.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0778303640</amazonuk>}}''

{{newreview|author=Hazel McHaffie |title=Right to Die|rating=3.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=It must be hard enough watching your partner die just once, but for Naomi, Adam's death This is just a sample of the beginningcast of characters and settings in Preposterous. Coming across his personalAs you can see, private diary some keeping up will be required! The basic premise of his time from diagnosis to subsequent demise, she is forced to relive the awful months during which his body began to betray him and his will to live was replaced with a will to die.this mystery story goes like this..on his own terms.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1906307210</amazonuk>B09STS96HS

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Morag JossB0B2N7MVYM|title=The Night FollowingCalculations of Rational Men|author=Daniel Godfrey|rating=45

|summary=Distracted by It's the 10th of December 1962 when we first meet Dr Joseph Marr. Just to put what happens in context, the discovery that her husband Cuban missile crisis is still very fresh in people's minds. The world has been having an affair, barely had a middle-aged woman loses concentration while driving along a quiet lanechance to breathe out. But for Joe Marr, killing Ruth Mitchell, an elderly cyclist. The woman doesnit't wait for s not the police to arrive; she goes home and parks her car in missile crisis that's at the garage where she smashes it almost beyond recognitionfront of his mind. He's been convicted of murder. When her arrogant husband sees With the damage he believes current state of medical knowledge, it's hard to think otherwise than that the prosecution would never have been done to punish him and he packs brought but Joe Marr has spent his bags. After a first few days the woman goes to the home of the dead woman; she doesnin HMP Queen't go to the doors Bench, but from a hidden spot nearby she can see the widowerrelatively new prison. He's just getting used to his roommate, an elderly gentleman who is clearly not coping well. Wracked with guiltMervyn, the woman makes a decision: the only way she can atone for her actions is and learning to step into the shoes be wary of the dead womanMcArthur brothers.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0715638815</amazonuk>

{{newreview|author=Shirley Jackson|title=The Haunting of Hill House|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=There was a time before Stephen King. There was time before ''The Shining''. There was a time when 'horror' was not rooted in blood, guts and gore. I owe a slight apology Move on to Mr King, because along with the gutsier side of the genre, I will own that he is a master at suspense.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141191449</amazonuk>}}[[Newest Graphic Novels Reviews]]