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[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]]__NOTOC__
{{Frontpage
|author=John BoyneJenny Lecoat|title=Beyond Summerland|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=Jean lives on Jersey with her mother where they are celebrating the end of the occupation. During the war, Jean's father was arrested for listening to a banned radio and soldiers took him away one night, leaving Jean and her mother waiting for years for news of him. As the British finally free the Channel islands from the Nazis, and the war is finally over, their hopes rise that they will finally learn what became of him. But will the truth come as a relief, or will it raise further questions around what else happened during the war? Who was the informer who told the Nazis about the radio? And what other secrets have been kept throughout the occupation?|isbn=1846976537}}{{Frontpage|author=Onyi Nwabineli|title=Allow Me to Introduce Myself|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Anuri spent her childhood on display to the world, thanks to her step-mother Ophelia's increasingly popular presence on social media, where she posted every step of Anuri'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 to get her life back, suing her step-mother to take down the content about her. Anuri is battling alcoholism, failing to start her PhD, undergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online and receiving money from them for doing so. Most importantly, she is desperately worried about her little sister, who is the new focus of Ophelia's online empire. Can she save her sister, and perhaps herself and her relationship with her father at the same time?|isbn=0861546873}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1529153298|title=The Echo ChamberList of Suspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Meet George CleverleyIt's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. He is self-defined as "one of the few television personalities over the age of fifty without a criminal record"(A woman? I mean, honestly... ) He starts this book a bit worried when his mistress tells him sheShe's not what's worrying Miv's carrying his childfamily, but then his author wife is getting her kicks with the Ukrainian partner "Strictly Come Dancing" paired her withthough. They Women have three childrenbeen disappearing. Well, who are a sad-sack with absolutely no social skills whatsoeverthey've been murdered, a girl who hangs around with a virtue-signalling, keyboard warrior "wokester" who but to have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. Miv's upset because she's overheard that her father wants to save move the worldfamily 's homeless with out-of-date foodDown South'. When you're from Yorkshire, and Down South is a fit young lad doing the gay hustle thingfrightening, foreign place, best avoided. Add in a few other characters – therapistsFor Miv, lawyersthe move would mean leaving her best friend, random transgender types – that all have two very different connections to his lifeSharon, and you have something she'll do anything to prevent that suggests an almost farcical approach to the modern world. What suggests She's not worried about the farcical approach even more, however, is the fact this is bloody funnydangers or that her Mum's stopped talking - to anyone.|isbn=0857526219
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=00084445011035906708|title=The Answer Diva|author=Daisy Goodwin|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=We tend to think of Maria Callas as Greek, but she was born to Greek parents in Manhattan, New York, in December 1923 and only moved to Athens when she was thirteen. Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to 'Callas' to Everythingmake it more manageable in the States. When she was back in Athens - supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for her voice - she was raised under the Nazi occupation by a mother who mercilessly exploited her and made no secret of her preference for her elder sister, Jackie.}}{{Frontpage|author=Luke KennardAlexander McCall Smith|title=The Perfect Passion Company|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Life should have been good for Emily. She had The Perfect Passion Company is a lovely husbanddating agency in Edinburgh, Stevenrun by Ness and operating as an alternative to all the online apps in providing a more personal, who was a speech therapisttailored service. We'll pass over Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the fact that they rarely speak business, as Ness is planning to take a trip to each other and don't even sleep in the same bedCanada to get away for a while. It isn't so much that Emily has left the marital bed as that she's sharing Katie is coming out of a bed break up with one of her children as it's a bad boyfriend, and so jumps at the only way chance to get him come home to sleep during the nightEdinburgh. Arthur And so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, thanks to 44 Scotland Street and Matty are gorgeous the Isabel Dalhousie novels, but they are a handful and Emily has a job with some new characters who quickly begin to cope with too - she teaches drama two days a weekcharm. They've not long moved into Katie has no experience in running a new home business, or in Criterion Gardens: it's a trendy area that match-making, but Ness has been gentrified full confidence in her abilities, and itthere's run on semi-communal lines. The residents even share eco-friendly electric cars always her very helpful (and rather than owning their own.handsome) neighbour, William, to lend a hand…|isbn=1846976596
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{{Frontpage
|author=Louise BeechDean Koontz|title=This Is How We Are HumanThe Bad Weather Friend|rating=4.5|genre=Paranormal|summary=Benny is having a terrifically bad day. He loses his job, he loses his fiancee, and his house gets trashed. Oh, and someone has delivered a really weird, disturbing coffin-sized object to his home, and it's possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the thing that has trashed his house! The thing is, 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 delivery to his house is a new friend, a bad weather friend called Spike, who has been sent to help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a good person. Spike is going to take care of Benny, and will certainly take care of Benny's enemies, if he, Benny, and 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=Veronica Hannah Masury is living in Boston, having been sent to live with a devoted single mother family who run an inn, and being made to her sonwork there from a young age. When she hears there is to be a hanging of some pirates in the town, Sebastian - but she candecides to go and watch. Enthralled and horrified in equal measure, Hannah finds herself embroiled in a young boy't give him everything he wantss death at the hands of two vicious pirates. Sebastian has decided She hides away, so that itthey don's time for him t find and kill her too, and then to escape them completely she runs away to have sex. But sea, dressing as an autistic 20 year-old, thata boy and joining the notorious Ned Low's easier said than donepirate ship as a cabin boy. And it's starting to cause them both problems 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. |isbn=19131937130861547438}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Ananda Devi1471180158|title=Eve Out of Her RuinsMaybe Tomorrow|author=Penny Parkes|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=At not even 200 pagesJamie Matson works in an upper-class grocery store, Eve Out of Her Ruins is one for a man who's a control freak with all the subtlety of a half brick. Jamie's son, Bo, 'has his problems'. He's asthmatic and the shortest books I've more you read in a long while, but itthe more you'll suspect that he's one of on the most dramaticautistic spectrum. It Sometimes Jamie needs to take time off at short notice - she's also told a frequent flier in a way that I the local A&E and sometimes Bo'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 only describe as brutal: it spares nothing be controlled and pulls very few punches, put in the descriptions stark and unromanticwrong. It was going to come to a head.|isbn=0993009344}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=C J CareyB0CKD1L5JL|title=WidowlandRadio Free Olympia|author=Jeffrey Dunn
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=It's April 1953, and Adolf Hitler's schedule includes going to Moscow to attend Petr is an orphan. Rescued by the state funeral of Joseph Stalin then within weeks coming to Londonstrange, parading around a bitreclusive Bear, he is brought up far from bustling cities and watching over the sanctioned return to the throne of Edward VIII with his wifebusy human society, Queen Wallis. For yes, Britain caved in the lead-up to the World War Two that certainly didn't happen as we know it, and we are now a protectorate – well, we share enough forests of the same blood as the Germanic peoples on ''the mainland'Washington's Olympic Peninsula. But this is most certainly After Bear dies and a different Britain, for Nazi-styled phrenologybrief sojourn in human company, and ideas of female purpose, has put all of that gender into armed with only a caste system, ranging from high-brow office bigwigs to the drudgespirate radio transmitter, and beyond those, right Petr goes on down to a journey through the childlessforest, broadcasting the husbandless and the widows. Female literacy is actively discouraged. And in this puritanical existence, our heroine, Rose Ransom, is employed with the task of bowdlerising classical literature to take all encouragement for female emancipation out of it – after all, not every book can be banned, and not every story excised immediately from British civilisationstrange, wild and so they just get a hefty tweak towards the party line before they're stamped ready for reprint. That is her job, at least, until the first emerging signs of female protest come to light, with their potential to spoil Hitler's visitrarely heard voices he encounters.|isbn=152941198X
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0857527231Sarah Marsh|title=Dog Days|author=Ericka WallerA Sign of Her Own|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=George Dempsey is exceedingly angry. It's eight days since his wifeAfter a bout of scarlet fever as a child, Ellen, died and it's the first time that she's let him downLark loses her hearing. He's lostSuddenly plunged into a world of silence, bereft without everything about her ( he ''needs his wife, like a snail needs its shell'')life changes. He misses their ordered life and rather than bringing him meals to leave on Living in a time when the doorstepuse of sign language was seen as something only savages do, he'd much rather have Ellen is sent to a good row with someoneschool where she is taught to lip read, but physically restrained from signing. He's particularly angry about the dachshund puppy which Helen brought home just three weeks before From here, she died. She even dared to contradict him when he told her that ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the dog wasn't staying. Now he's lumbered with a dog he doesn't want deaf and using a load of busybodies who are trying to interfere in his lifesystem called Visible Speech. Worst of all At the same time, Bell is Bettyworking on other inventions and ideas, who won't take no for an answer. Betty knits jumpers for Lucky, her greyhound. Lucky spends and Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a lot complicated tangle of time trying to escape from and destroy themespionage.|isbn=1035401614
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Martin VenningB0BC3YTCMR|title=The Primary ObjectiveGood Girls Die|author=Ayura Ayira|rating=24.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary= Sometimes a book starts off slowly, but eventually draws you in to caring about the characters or simply wanting to know what happens next''This story is not for everyone. Sometimes it doesn't' Lavender Daniels was three weeks short of her fifteenth birthday when The Incident happened. The basic premise is She was a good one – a clandestine organisationvery bright student, operating as a charitybit too nerdy if truth be told, but funded by various governments around the world and partially (maybe, Isuffered from vitiligo - people were afraid to hug her in case it's contagious. It'm s not sure) under the auspices of the UN, with the primary objective of keeping the peace, by any means possibleeasy being a black girl whose skin is 84% white. She had a crush on seventeen-year-old Reggie Anderson but never thought he would notice her. Diplomacy is always the first option Then he did: Lavender was very good at math and sometimes one that needs 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 be carried out by third partieshis house and he raped her. In shock, but for situations when that looks unlikely she even allowed him to yield results Peace International maintains a call-on list of field operatives, ex-military, medics, scientists or anyone else with give her a taste for adventure and willing to risk their life for the sake of itlift home.|isbn=1800461100
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Karen M McManus1472263936|title=The CousinsFigurine|author=Victoria Hislop
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary= The rich and famous Story family led a life of luxury on Gull Cove IslandIt was in 1968 that Helena McCloud made her first trip to Greece. She was alone: her mother, Greek by birth, until 25 years ago when each of had left the Story children - Andersfamily home and refused to return, Archer, Adam but Mary and Allison - received Hamish (Helena's parents) felt that it would be a mysterious letter from their mother and were cut off completelypity if Helena grew up without knowing her grandparents or understanding her Greek heritage. But now, a quarter of a century later, their children have been called to return Her trip to the island for family apartment in up-market Kolonaki would be the summer by their grandmotherfirst of several annual visits. What does she want with the cousins? Why did she cut off She grew to love her children all those years ago? Are the deaths on Gull Cove Island really what they seem? The dark web of twisted lies, secrets grandmother and tragedy that has held the Story family up 's maid, Dina, but was wary - and held them apart frightened - for a quarter of a century is about her grandfather, retired general Stamatis Papagiannis. He was proud of his close connections to the Junta and expected his family to uphold his values but saw no reason to come crashing downaccommodate them. His prejudices included Helena's red hair and green eyes - inherited from her father's Scottish ancestors.|isbn=0241376947
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{{Frontpage
|author=Ruth HoganDean Koontz|title=Madame BurovaAfter Death|rating=3|genre=General Fiction|summary= 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 plastic, he has a sense that something very, very bad has happened to him – and only him – as he sits up and looks around at the shrouded bodies of his dead friends and former colleagues. As he recovers his senses, he realises that there is something different about him; he can ''feel'' everything. ''Everything''. Michael isn't ''Michael'' anymore.|isbn=1662500467}} {{Frontpage|isbn=B0BVDC2VWH|title=The Grave Listeners|author=William Frank|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=This book lets us discover several people in different stages of life in the early 1970s, all vaguely connectedThe village is isolated and poor. So we have It's surrounded by a bullied halfWitching Forest. And the villagers subsist largely by farming Uphegia plants - its bread-cast boy (as he would have been called then), a girl in a humdrum job wanting to become a singer, like fruit provides nutrition and chiefly, Imelda, its blossom provides herbal medicines. The black wood of the third generation of Madame Burovaforest provides heat and warmth, ''Tarot-Readerroofs on homes, Palmist and Clairvoyant''even gallows, to use her family's sea-front boothif needed. The singer, fear of being buried alive is an existential superstition in the scryer village and that is the sufferer's mother will all become staff at reason Volushka, a revamped holiday campdrunken, but just before then we see Imelda fly solo for the first time in the family stall. We also see her on her last day, fifty years laterself-indulgent, in possession lazy lout of a pair of letters that will change everything for a woman called Billieman is tolerated. Just who is she, and who delivered the secrets about her to Imelda, and why did it have to remain a secret all this time?|isbn=152937331X
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Stephen ClarkeB0BYF82CXT|title=The Spy Who Inspired MeSemi-Detached|author=Deborah Stone
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=This is ''Bill and Amanda are living in a semi-detached house, stuck in a spoof spy storydepressing rut of boredom and disappointment, when Terry and Fiona – glamorous, that isn't about James Bondsuccessful and very much in love – move in next door. Or Ian FlemingDespite their different outlooks on life, the couples befriend each other and life appears to improve for both pairs. But all is not what it features a man called Ian Lemmingseems, who dresses well and their increasingly interconnected relationships are fated for tragedy.'likes the ladies' }}{{Frontpage|author=Shalini Boland|title=The Silent Bride|rating=3|genre=General Fiction|summary= Alice and who works Seth are a match made in heaven. He is everything she has been searching for the secret service; handsome, accomplished, clever, but funny; total and utter husband-material. She is all he could possibly want in a wife; beautiful, successful, confident… and so the planning side of things more than inevitable proposal is eagerly accepted by Alice and the active servicewedding is planned and set. Lemming finds himself put on a mission with a female spy called MargauxWhen the much-anticipated day arrives, and Alice is walked down the pair end up stranded in Normandyaisle by her father, beaming with Margaux on a desperate mission pride and excitement as she surveys the congregation – their friends assembled to celebrate this joyful day and when Seth turns to unearth traitors in face his approaching bride, Alice's world implodes because she has absolutely no idea who the man at the resistance networkaltar is, and Lemming desperately trying who is waiting for her to keep up with her!become his wife.|isbn=29521638551662507089
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Andrea Bajani and Elizabeth Harris (translator)1787636003|title=If You Kept a Record The Girls of SinsSummer|author=Katie Bishop|rating=4.5|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=This It was an incredibly readable novella, but one the summer when Rachel Evans turned eighteen that left me a little conflicted. We start as our hero arrives at Bucharest airport, she and Caroline went backpacking around Greece and before we even know his gender or arrived on the nature of the person heisland. Rachel wasn's addressing in his second person monologue of a narrationt exactly innocent but she was, perhaps, we see him picked up by his mother's chauffeurnaive, and carted off so when thirty-four-year-old Alistair Wright started to do all the necessary introductions before said mother is buried the following daytake an interest in her, she was flattered rather than wary. The mother It was quite a businesswoman, who clearly left northern Italy while before he made any sort of physical approach to her and settled in Romania with her (night-by that time and business) partnershe was obsessed by him. Alistair worked for Henry Taylor, looking after his interests on the island and feelings of abandonment are still strong. And so we flit from current (well, this came out in particular in the original Italian in 2007, so moderately current) Bucharest, to bar where all the lad's childhood, and see just what he has to tell her as a private farewell addressgirls either worked or partied.|isbn=1939810965
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{{Frontpage
|author=David F RossAmanda Craig|title= There's Only One Danny GarveyThree Graces
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary= Years agoFew styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the state-of-the-nation novel. There's something so utterly compelling about any writer who can catch hold of the atmosphere of the day and capture it, Danny Garvey was crafting an image of the country as it stands in one particular moment. To say that Amanda Craig is skilled at doing this would be embarrassingly inadequate: she's practically synonymous with the genre of contemporary social fiction at this point. She has such a footballing prodigy playing gift for his local club. Everyone predicted weaving the ongoing issues of the day into the lives of her characters in a bright future – but his career way that feels natural and lived-in professional football , never quite worked out. Thirteen years on, convinced to return home by his "uncle" Higgy to visit his dying mothermaking them ciphers for social commentary but instead fully realised people, Danny takes over the shambolic and once-great team he used to play for and tries to reform themgrappling with issues far larger than themselves.|isbn= 1913193500140871468X}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Gail Honeyman152915118X|title=Eleanor Oliphant is Completely FinePineapple Street|author=Jenny Jackson
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary= Eleanor Oliphant ''Pineapple Street'' is almost 30. She lives in Glasgowthe story of three women: Sasha, alone. And she likes it that wayDarley and Georgiana. She works 9-5, 5 days a week, Darley and spends the weekend not drunk, but not sober. alone. And she likes it that way. She lives by a routine, George are sisters and that's fine, thankyouverymuch. Nothing Sasha is missing from her lifemarried to their brother Cord. Except everything is. Until one day They're Stocktons, at only Sasha isn't a concert Stockton by birth so she won tickets for in an office raffle, she sees isn't readily accepted into the man she is sure will be her husbandtribe. Eleanor begins a journey to make herself The problem's exacerbated when the best version of herself that she canclan matriarch, Tilda, in order asks Cord and Sasha if they'd like to secure this beautiful musicianmove into the Pineapple Street property. Then, as she's on her way home one Friday, she Tilda and the new IT guy at her office see a man collapse in the street Chip have renovated and stay close downsized to him in hospital. Thenanother property, before she knows ita street or so away, her once quiet life becomes a hubbub which they own. They won't need any of social engagements with the man's family and friendsfurniture from Pineapple Street, with Raymond from IT so Sasha and of course her side project of falling Cord can move straight in love with Johnnie Lomond. But just as her life seems to be looking up Nominally, things take they had a turn for choice but that wasn't the worsereality. Is Johnnie all he Darley and Georgiana start to call Sasha 'the gold digger'. She's cracked up living in ''their'' family home. They use it so often that they abbreviate it to be? What secrets does Eleanor have from her childhood? Eleanor's walls have been broken down and she has to fight her way out of the shadows - but maybe she doesnGD't have to do it alone.|isbn=0008172145
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=B08GFSK2WZEmily Critchley|title=The Karma Trap|author=Lisette BoydOne Puzzling Afternoon
|rating=4
|genre=Women's FictionCrime|summary=George Jackson is thirty-three years 84 year oldEdie has lived in the same small town for almost her whole life, absolutely gorgeous but now she is facing a move as her son wants to move to look at - another house and singlebring Edie to live with his family, as Edie is starting to lose her memory. She's not had sex for eight months and she's stuck in However, Edie is tormented by the karma trap: an awful lot memory of bad luck is being visited on her childhood friend, Lucy, who went missing over 60 years ago, and the worry that there was a secret she has a real talent was keeping for attracting dramaLucy that somehow might be the thing that reveals the truth of what happened all that time ago. Her lifeAfter 'seeing's chaotic: Lucy in the high street, just as she dealt with was the leak from the shower by putting something down at the bottom last time she saw her, she starts to find pockets of the stairs memories coming back to absorb her. And yet as she remembers the water - then the shower fell through the roof whilst past, she was is forgetting more and more in it and left her, stark naked, staring at the pervy postmanday to day life. She only has to take her motherWill she uncover the truth about Lucy's dog out for a walk for disappearance before her to end up with dog poo spattered across move, and before her face - and a photo being taken by someone who shares it around the office.memories are gone forever?|isbn=1804181250
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{{Frontpage
|author=Matt HaigMadelaine Lucas|title=Thirst for Salt|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= ''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 year-long relationship that once defined her. Overlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the affair with a man twenty years her senior 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 deepening relationship with her older lover, depicting its all-consuming nature, how it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably.|isbn=0861546490}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0008506337|title=The Midnight LibraryGarnett Girls|author=Georgina Moore
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary= Between life The love affair between Margo Garnett and death there is a librarypoet Richard O'Leary was all-consuming, apparently on both sides. And so, 38 minutes after Nora decided to die, she finds herself Margo was just sixteen when they fell in the Midnight Librarylove. Everything that could Richard was twenty-one and described by Margo's mother as 've gone wrong in Noraan older man's life has. Her cat died, she lost her job, her brother wonparents worried that Richard't speak to her, s influence would take her parents are dead, the boy away from what they felt she teaches piano could achieve - going to no longer cares about piano, she called off her wedding, Oxford and old Mr Banerjee next door no longer needs her helphaving a glittering career. She gave up on all In the things that would've let event, they eloped and Richard took her escape away from the wet, cold town Isle of Bedford Wight. Margo did go to Oxford and given her life some purposeful directionwent on to become a well-respected journalist. So at 23 The couple had three children:22Rachel, she realises that she isn't made for life Imogen and decides to die. But instead of death, she finds the librarySasha. Each infinite shelf is filled with books, each book providing a chance to try another life she could have Life was lived, in a parallel time. And soLondon and holidays were spent at Sandcove, just after midnight the family home on Tuesday the 18th Isle of April, Nora Seed begins Wight. Even then the doubts about Richard's drinking were never far from Margo's mind: ''she would never be able to live every life she couldleave him in charge''ve.|isbn=1786892731Then Richard left them.
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Vincent Panettiere1914585402|title=These Thy GiftsDashboard Elvis is Dead|author=David F Ross|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=I reviewed David F Ross's book [[There'2006 is a tumultuous year for the Catholic Church. Reports of horrific sexual abuse are becoming widespread. Monsignor Steven Trimboli is troubled. He worries for the future of the church—and rightly so. A new crime will soon reverberate throughout his church and hit closer to home than he ever imagined.'' As ageing priest Steve Trimboli begins to try to make sense of the child sexual abuse scandal that is rocking his beloved Catholic church, he discovers that one child in his own parish has been abused s Only One Danny Garvey by a priest sent by his bishop. And this isn't just any boy: this is SteveDavid F Ross|There's grandson whose mother is the offspring Only One Danny Garvey]] a couple of a long past relationship between Steve years back and a gangster's widow. Steve is determined to seek justice for this boy remember being absolutely floored by how powerful and all children victimised by priests who have been protected by his churchaffecting it was. But he must also face up to his own failingsIt was a gripping, emotionally wounding read, going right back to his breaking and rereading my review of the celibacy vowsit my main takeaway was that I might not have lavished enough praise on it.|isbn=1503199886}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Delia OwensLucy Ashe|title=Where The Crawdads SingClara and Olivia|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary= In 1952, KyaThe year is 1933. The place? Sadler's mother disappeared up Wells. Ballerinas Clara and Olivia are sisters, twins no less. Identical on the dirt track to townoutside but not, wearing her alligator heelswe learn, and never came homeon the inside. Then one by one her siblings left, ran from the shack And not on the North Carolina marsh that served as home and the life that would lead to nothing but sufferingstage, leaving 7-year-old Kya with her drunken fathereither. Years pass and Kya - now nicknamed Because there'Marsh-Girl' – still yearns for s a mother lot that would never return and grew up far too fast for builds a girl who dancer. Some things that can neither read nor write. Finallybe taught or learnt – discipline, one night her father never came home leaving Kya completely alone attention to survive on the marsh. Eventuallydetail – and some things, as the years drift painfully bythat ''je ne sais quoi'', that don't come from the time comes when Kya, now an emotional and vastly intelligent young woman, yearns for company besides the gulls and the land, yearning to be loved and to be heldclassroom. SoA stage presence, when 2 boys from the town of Barkley Cove find their way to hera charm, she finds a new way of life''joie de vivre''. But in 1969, the body of former star quarterback and new husband Chase Andrews is found lying in the mud of the marsh, and everyone in town immediately suspects the mysterious, run-down MarshThe difference between a hard-Girl. Who is Kya nowworker, after years of isolation and a broken, hardened heart? Is she really capable of murder?star.|isbn=14721546650861544080
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1473692407Heather Fawcett|title=The Book Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Two Ways|author=Jodi PicoultFaeries
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Dawn Edelstein Emily Wilde is a death doula: that's someone who is there for the person who is dyingan expert academic scholar on faerie lore, and she has travelled extensively, to make their passage to whatever they believe in as easy as possible and researched meticulously, to support their carers. Itwrite her life's a rewardingwork, caring occupation and Dawn puts her heart and soul into it but this wasn't always her lifethe very first encyclopaedia of faeries. Some fifteen years ago Whilst she was a graduate student is brilliant at Yale working towards her doctorate: as an Egyptologistresearch and speaking to faeries, she was working is not so good with her supervisorpeople. So when she finds herself far, Professor Ian Dumphriesfar North in the small village of Hrafvsnik, on having somehow offended the Djehutyakht tombs at Deir el-Bersha village matriarch, she is not sure what she has done, nor how to redeem herself and put her final investigations for her book back on the Nile in Middle Egyptright track. Then she was Dawn McDowell: that was Enter Wendell Bambleby, her maiden namedashingly handsome and insufferable rival who arrives unexpectedly, all charm and delight, much to Emily's frustration. But why is he here? What does he want? And what exactly is going on with the name she published under.faerie folk around Hravsnik?|isbn=0356519120
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=02412959551398515388|title=TrioThe Boy and the Dog|author=William BoydSeishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=It First of all, it was 1968: the year when Bobby Kennedy earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and Martin Luther King were assassinatedthis, in turn, caused the nuclear meltdown. It's also the year when YSK Films are making a movie in BrightonThe result was complete and utter devastation. It's called ''Emily Bracegirdle's Extremely Useful Ladder to the Moon''The deaths were uncountable, or ''Ladder and the Moon'' as it's known on setloss of livelihoods was widespread. Anny Viklund is The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the female star in tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a production which is proving to be just dog outside a little bit racketyconvenience store. There are odd pressures on He wasn't a dog person but the producer, Talbot Kydd, to employ this old actor friend for a couple of days because convenience store owner's comment that he needs the money, allow a fading star would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to use open his catchphrase, or include a song from car door and Tamon the leading man, whose musical star is fadingdog jumped in.
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Anna BrunoChristopher Bowden|title=Ordinary HazardsMr Magenta|rating=24|genre=General Fiction|summary= Christopher Bowden's latest novel is a patient untangling of a seemingly ordinary woman's life, carried out by her nephew after she has died. The aunt who always provided a safe harbour and a little bit of indulgence to a young nephew had had a much more interesting life than that nephew Stephen had ever realised and it seems to him an obligation to find it all out. |isbn= B0B6Z9VJDW}}{{Frontpage|author=Jennifer Mason|title=Partitions of Unity|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary= Some books either grab you or bore youHere at Bookbag Towers, we first met Elizabeth Cromwell, dominatrix and unintentional detective in [[Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery by Jennifer Mason|Preposterous]], when she investigated and unravelled a series of disappearances. And this was one that I wanted so badly In ''Partitions of Unity'', she sets her mind to like but unfortunately, I just wasn't hookedsolving a murder...|isbn=1471184862B09LQR9FRF
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1712435728Will Carver|title=Jamie's KeepsakeThe Daves Next Door|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary= 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 fateful moment.|isbn= 1914585186}} {{Frontpage|author=Michael GallagherJennifer Mason|title=Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery|rating=4.5|genre=TeensGeneral Fiction|summary=When we first meet Alex Hannah''A struggling poetry zine, he's a mom-and-pop mobile diner in the Northern California redwoods, a 400-meter hurdler who just being released from missed the Southern General Hospital. The nurse thinks he'll come back to visit the other patients but Alex has no intention of doing that: he2004 Olympics, a women's been there track coach with a yen for bullwhips, a billionaire with a yearstate-of-the-art S&M dungeon, on the same ward where his brother died and nowa man serving a life sentence in Alabama, with his hair all shorn offan enigmatic signature, he'K(s going home , x), on a cheap oil painting, an erotic art dealer in his dead brotherGeorgia...''s clothes This is just a sample of the cast of characters and settings in Preposterous. He wants to get outside and back with his friends: his brother, ForbesAs you can see, says that the fresh air some keeping up will do him good and his mother tells him that he's not to mention TB and to say it was tonsillitisbe required! The basic premise of this mystery story goes like this.. Good luck with that one, Alex.|isbn=B09STS96HS
}}
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