132,655
edits
Changes
From TheBookbag
Jump to navigationJump to searchno edit summary
[[Category:General Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]]==General fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Chuck PalahniukJenny Lecoat|title=Tell-AllBeyond Summerland
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Meet Katherine KentonJean lives on Jersey with her mother where they are celebrating the end of the occupation. A movie star of great renownDuring the war, sheJean's always on TV as someone famous - or the wife of somebody who happens father was arrested for listening to be famous a banned radio and malesoldiers took him away one night, whether they were actually ever wedded. She herself has had copious real-life marriages, making somebody out leaving Jean and her mother waiting for years for news of a nobody on many an instancehim. Her shelves of 'best lifetime' awards are groaningAs the British finally free the Channel islands from the Nazis, and their dusting is a job akin to painting the Forth bridge. The person who dusts them war is narrator for this bookfinally over, but she does more than their hopes rise thatthey will finally learn what became of him. She is everything to "Miss Kathie" - general housekeeperBut will the truth come as a relief, housemate, and string-puller. But or will it raise further questions around what might those strings be being pulled forelse happened during the war? When Katherine meets a new toyboy, and our narrator seems to get in Who was the informer who told the Nazis about the way, to radio? And what purpose might this beother secrets have been kept throughout the occupation?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0224087150</amazonuk>1846976537
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Caryl PhillipsOnyi Nwabineli|title=In the Falling SnowAllow Me to Introduce Myself|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=We are introduced to the central character Keith right away and discover lots about him. His personal and professional CV is laid bare before us. He's one mixed up, middle-aged, not-quite-middle-class man. He appears to be rather weak-willed and almost seems to fall into situations, rather than choose to be part of them. When in his marital relationship (now on a downward spiral), his wife most definitely wore the trousers. I found Keith a very infuriating person. I wanted to take him by the scruff and give him a good old shake and then shout 'wake up and smell the coffee, before it's too late.'|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099539748</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Mark Neilson|title=The Valley of the Vines|rating=35
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The reader discovers that SophieAnuri spent her childhood on display to the world, thanks to her step-mother Ophelia's increasingly popular presence on social media, the central character is living in rural isolation. Shewhere she posted every step of Anuri's supposed to be living the dreamchildhood for sponsorships and influencer deals and, basically, monetary gain. She's separated from Now Anuri is in her twenties and she is slowly trying to regain her husband confidence and to get her two daughters are at boarding school life back in , suing her step-mother to take down the UKcontent about her. She's also now a one-woman organization. And she's Anuri is battling alcoholism, failing practically to start her PhD, undergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online and financially receiving money from them for many reasonsdoing so. ApparentlyMost importantly, according to Neilsonshe is desperately worried about her little sister, therewho is the new focus of Ophelia's a very small window in which to carry out the vital work of harvesting the grapes for wineonline empire. We are also told Can she save her sister, and perhaps herself and her relationship with her father at frequent intervals about the enigmatic 'Old Ones'. They are 'The timeless custodians of the vines.' I'm afraid I found their too-frequent references rather annoying.same time?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0709090595</amazonuk>0861546873
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Maggie O'Farrell1529153298|title=The Hand That First Held MineList of Suspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Lexie Sinclair was sent down from university for the crime of going through a door reserved for menIt's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. (A woman? I mean, honestly... ) She could 's not graduate until she apologised and this she was not going to dowhat's worrying Miv's family, though. Women have been disappearing. Home was not an option either Well, they've been murdered, but when she met the sophisticated Innes Kent she made up her mind to go to London and make her way therehave 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. It was the nineteen fifties and Lexie and Innes made a life for themselves in Soho. In the present day Elina and Ted are struggling Miv's upset because she's overheard that her father wants to recover from move the difficult birth of their first childfamily 'Down South'. Elina When you're from Yorkshire, Down South is an artist and she’s finding it difficult to come to terms with being a motherfrightening, foreign place, best avoided. Ted does his For Miv, the move would mean leaving her best to help but he is having to cope with disturbing visions friend, Sharon, and memories of his own childhood which don’t seem she'll do anything to agree with what he’s been told by his parentsprevent that. The further he looks, She's not worried about the stranger are the links which he uncoversdangers or that her Mum's stopped talking - to anyone.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>075530845X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sue Peebles1035906708|title=The Death of Lomond FrielDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Rosie We tend to think of Maria Callas as Greek, but she was a successful radio presenter 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, Lomond Friel, had a strokechanged it to 'Callas' to make it more manageable in the States. Whether or not Rosie When she was always reckless and impulsive isn't entirely clear, but once back in Athens - supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for her voice - she heard about was raised under the stroke she took Nazi occupation by a break from work mother who mercilessly exploited her and began to build made no secret of her life around making a future preference for herself and her father. There are two problems here: Rosie isn't really all that capable of looking after herself, never mind her father and Lomond is quietly plotting his own death. He might not be able to speakelder sister, to move very much, but he has plansJackie.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701184302</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Najat El-HachmiAlexander McCall Smith|title=The Last PatriarchPerfect Passion Company|rating=34.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Najat El-Hachmi's debut novel, The Last Patriarch Perfect Passion Company is a difficult book - both dating agency in terms of content Edinburgh, run by Ness and styleoperating as an alternative to all the online apps in providing a more personal, tailored service. It's Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the business, as Ness is planning to take a trip to Canada to get away for a story while. Katie is coming out of physical a break up with a bad boyfriend, and sexual abuse in a patriarchal Moroccan familyso jumps at the chance to come home to Edinburgh. And so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us to an immigrant storyEdinburgh we already love, when first the father thanks to 44 Scotland Street and then the family move Isabel Dalhousie novels, but with some new characters who quickly begin to Catalonia, and ultimately charm. Katie has no experience in running a story of the narratorbusiness, the patriarch's daughteror in match-making, breaking free of but Ness has full confidence in her past as she takes on different cultural values. Narrated entirely from the perspective of the patriarchabilities, Mimoun Driouchand there's unnamed daughteralways her very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, the story is also concerned with cultural and imagined historiesWilliam, and the importance of origin stories.to lend a hand…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846687179</amazonuk>1846976596
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sarah BlakeDean Koontz|title=The PostmistressBad Weather Friend|rating=4.5|genre=General FictionParanormal|summary=The reader Benny is in no doubt that having a war is ragingterrifically bad day. 'And bombs were falling on CoventryHe loses his job, he loses his fiancee, London and Kenthis house gets trashed. Sleek metal pellets shaped like 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 blunt tipped ends of pencils ...' thing that has trashed his house! The Americans howeverthing is, are carrying on with their daily lives regardlessBenny is the very last person to deserve all this bad luck. They are completely unfazed and uninvolvedHe is a nice person. Apart from one or two, namely radio reporter FrankieA really nice person. She reports from London as So fortunately for Benny it happens and she turns out that the delivery to his house is gradually becoming more and more concerned that her fellow Americans will be a new friend, a bad weather friend called upon. But she seems Spike, who has been sent to be help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a lone voice blowing in the windgood person. AlsoSpike is going to take care of Benny, and will certainly take care of Benny's enemies, if he, as you may expectBenny, there are plenty of raised eyebrows as to why a woman is doing and Harper (a manwaitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's jobwild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are. She should be at the kitchen sink or having babies, shouldn't she?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0670918687</amazonuk>1662500491
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tess CallahanKatherine Howe|title=April and OliverA True Account
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=After spending their childhoods togetherHannah Masury is living in Boston, having been sent to live with a family who run an inn, April and Oliver haven't seen each other for many yearsbeing made to work there from a young age. It When she hears there is only after to be a hanging of some pirates in the town, she decides to go and watch. Enthralled and horrified in equal measure, Hannah finds herself embroiled in a young boy's death at the hands of April's little brother two vicious pirates. She hides away, so that they don't find their lives overlapping again. April is recklessand kill her too, damagedand then to escape them completely she runs away to sea, dressing as a boy and struggling from one day to joining the next whereas Oliver is mature and sensiblenotorious Ned Low's pirate ship as a cabin boy. He She soon finds herself in the thick of things when there is now a law studentmutiny on board, engaged to the sweet, gentle Bernadette who is the antithesis and from there we are caught up in her rip roaring tale of April. Seeing April's life in tatters, Oliver tries to rescue her from herself, yet on the more entangled he becomes the more his own seemingly perfect life starts to fall apartocean waves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099537524</amazonuk>0861547438
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=F G Cottam1471180158|title=The Waiting RoomMaybe Tomorrow|author=Penny Parkes|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=On Jamie Matson works in an upper-class grocery store, for a man who's a control freak with all the outskirts subtlety of ex rock star Martin Stridea half brick. Jamie's country estate lies the disused Shale Point Stationson, Bo, 'has his problems'. Abandoned in He's asthmatic and the 1960s more you read, the railway line has been dug up and removed and all more you'll suspect that remains is he's on the crumbling platform and eerie waiting roomautistic spectrum. Martin is quick Sometimes Jamie needs to employ Britaintake time off at short notice - she's top ghost hunter Julian Creed to investigate a frequent flier in the strange local A&E and threatening occurrences of sometimes Bo's not fit enough to go to school. Missed shifts or the waiting room that he need to be away on time to pick Bo up from school are occasions when Jamie can be controlled and his children have witnessed – put in the sound and smell of wrong. It was going to come to a steam train, male voices singing a famous World War One song, and most frightening of all, the leering face of a soldier at the waiting room windowhead. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444704214</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Shane JonesB0CKD1L5JL|title=Light BoxesRadio Free Olympia|author=Jeffrey Dunn
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=You will have to go a long way to find a more magical and quirky novella than ‘Light Boxes’Petr is an orphan. Set in a far off landRescued by the strange, as all good fairy stories should bereclusive Bear, the balloon-loving residents suffer a ban on all forms of flight. But the culprit he is not some unpronounceable Icelandic volcanobrought up far from bustling cities and busy human society, but rather February. And this February - who takes both in the form forests of Washington's Olympic Peninsula. After Bear dies and a person brief sojourn in human company, and armed with only a season - has lasted for more than three hundred days. And if that wasn’t bad enoughpirate radio transmitter, he has also started making children disappear. One manPetr goes on a journey through the forest, Thaddeus Lowebroadcasting the strange, is determined to do something about itwild and rarely heard voices he encounters.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241144957</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tom ShoneSarah Marsh|title=In The RoomsA Sign of Her Own|rating=43.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The book jacket for this novel is After a bout of New York by nightscarlet fever as a child, a cityscape par excellenceEllen Lark loses her hearing. It also boasts Toby Young's comment as ''laugh-out-loud funnySuddenly plunged into a world of silence, everything about her life changes.'' I have Living in a lot time when the use of time for Toby Young. I find him witty and entertaining. But I usually approach claims such sign language was seen as this with something only savages do, Ellen is sent to a healthy dose of 'we'll-wait-and-see' scepticismschool where she is taught to lip read, but physically restrained from signing. HoweverFrom here, he was rightshe ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the deaf and using a system called Visible Speech. And I am truly impressed with Shone's ability to make me laugh out loud At the same time, Bell is working on other inventions and ideas, and at the very beginning Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a complicated tangle of the novel too. A very good sign of delights to come, I thoughtespionage.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099534061</amazonuk>1035401614
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Rachel DeWoskinB0BC3YTCMR|title=Repeat After Me|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=September 1989: It is a few months after the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing, China. Aysha is teaching English at a private language school in New York City. She makes friends with some of her students. Da Ge is angry and disruptive yet attractive and interesting at the same time, and they quickly become involved, although his interest in her is not as romantic as, perhaps, she would like it to be. He asks her to marry him so he can stay in the country. Aysha agrees, although there is still a lot she does not know about the mysterious, unstable Da Ge.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0715638998</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewGood Girls Die|author=Jonathan Coe|title=The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell SimAyura Ayira|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=Meet Maxwell Sim. Actually, perhaps I should rephrase that so that it doesn't sound like an imperative instruction - for if you do meet him, you might not like the experience. An ex-salesman, he's now in after sales (ie he's stuck on a customer returns counter in a department store); however he is completely awful with regards to other people. His wife has run off with their daughter, all his few friends have forsaken him (and his Facebook wall). We start the book with him trying to patch things up with his father, who's safely in Australia. He finds all those who know of him are already aware he's depressed. Those who don't know him can find him painfully shy, or able to talk away their will to live, gabbling on and on about Watford. But a lot is about to change. He's about to be combined with some people excited about green toothbrushes.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670917389</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Amanda Sington-Williams|title=The Eloquence of Desire|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The novel starts in the post-war austerity years in England and centres around a middle-class, traditional family unit. Sington-Williams gives the reader a detailed description of that period - the bland food, the monotony of commuting to London (some things don't change) and of course, the rain. George, his wife Dorothy and their teenage daughter Susan don't really talk to each other. They tend to skirt round issues and walk on eggshells. Appearances are everything. So a suitably fabricated This story is told to their small, family circle of George's company move. George has no choice in the matter. So he does what he always has done up till now, he puts a brave face on not for the world and grins and bears iteveryone. It's a huge change in their domestic situation. Uprooted to a strange, foreign, tropical country they've only glimpsed in National Geographic.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907230114</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Austin Wright1472263936|title=Tony and SusanThe Figurine|author=Victoria Hislop
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Edward Sheffield hadn't exactly been Susan's childhood sweetheartIt was in 1968 that Helena McCloud made her first trip to Greece. She was alone: her mother, Greek by birth, but after a had left the family tragedy left him homeless he came home and refused to live with Susan return, but Mary and her Hamish (Helena's parents for ) felt that it would be a year so that he could finish schoolpity if Helena grew up without knowing her grandparents or understanding her Greek heritage. Susan didn't particularly want him there but accepted that it was Her trip to the family apartment in up-market Kolonaki would be the right thing to dofirst of several annual visits. Years later they met at university when Edward She grew to love her grandmother and the family's maid, Dina, but was studying law wary - and after a short relationship they marriedfrightened - of her grandfather, retired general Stamatis Papagiannis. The marriage wasn't entirely successful; Edward gave up law He was proud of his close connections to become a writer, relying on Susan's teaching income the Junta and expected his family to support them, uphold his values but whilst he spent a month away in a remote cabin 'saw no reason to find himself' Susan found Arnold insteadaccommodate them. Many years – His prejudices included Helena's red hair and three children – later Susan receives a manuscript green eyes - inherited from Edward. She was, he said, always his best critic and he would like her opinionfather's Scottish ancestors.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848870205</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jess WalterDean Koontz|title=The Financial Lives of the PoetsAfter Death|rating=4.53
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=There Michael Mace, Head of Security, at a top secret biological research facility, is among 55 people who die when a certain type of modern fiction I just cannot get along withvirus is released in a bio-hazard accident. It's Finding himself in a narrative that features makeshift mortuary, covered in plastic, he has a concentration on a main character sense that goes through his plot with unhappiness, making wrong decisions perhaps, getting crapped on by lifesomething very, and discussing his woes with the reader. I get very bad has happened to the end and think nothing of it, until I read the blurb, where I find the book was supposed to be hilariously funny, the character an insincere cypher for our lives and times, and the whole thing an ironic masterpiece - I should have been disbelieving, disagreeing him – and dis-everything else with the hapless hero. I hate such books - I always only see the sincerity in the narrative, him – as he sits up and never the comedy. Thankfully, such is never the case with this book.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141049138</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Carlos Ruiz Zafon|title=The Prince of Mist|rating=5|genre=Confident Readers|summary=During World War Two, Max's father decides to move looks around at the whole family to a seaside retreat he knows shrouded bodies of - a wooden house far away from the city he's grown his family up indead friends and former colleagues. Nobody seems too keen on the idea, neither of Max's sisters, As he recovers his mothersenses, nor he - and Max realises that there is gifted a pocket watch by his loving, talented mechanic cum engineer cum watchmaker of a father, enscribed as "Maxsomething different about him; he can ''feel''s Time Machine"everything. But the house they move to, and its surroundings, are full of more successful time machines - a stash of early home videos, a public clock that runs backwards, a sunken shipwreck, a yard full of statues of a stone circus..''Everything''. And letMichael isn's not forget the mysterious, spider-eating cat that joins in with proceedingst ''Michael'' anymore. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0297856421</amazonuk>1662500467}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Danielle TrussoniB0BVDC2VWH|title=AngelologyThe Grave Listeners|author=William Frank
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The Nephilim have lived among village is isolated and poor. It's surrounded by a Witching Forest. And the human race since before the days villagers subsist largely by farming Uphegia plants - its bread-like fruit provides nutrition and its blossom provides herbal medicines. The black wood of the Great Flood. Horrific creatures, the hybrid children of humans forest provides heat and angelswarmth, their strengthroofs on homes, beauty and cruelty are unmatchedeven gallows, and they have infiltrated human society completelyif needed. For centuries, a secret society, students The fear of being buried alive is an existential superstition in a branch of theology known as 'Angelology', have studied the ways of the heavens village and that is the Nephilimreason Volushka, and waged a secret war against them – a war that has spanned every continent. But the Nephilim grow weakdrunken, self-indulgent, their blood contaminated by the blood lazy lout of their human ancestorsa man is tolerated.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0718155580</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Joanne HarrisB0BYF82CXT|title=BlueeyedboySemi-Detached|author=Deborah Stone
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=BB - or ''blueyedboy'' Bill and Amanda are living in his online persona - is a middlesemi-aged man who lives with his mother detached house, stuck in the Yorkshire town a depressing rut of Malbry. He has a dead-end job boredom and disappointment, when Terry and Fiona – glamorous, successful and very much in love – move in a hospital although his mother would have it that he's of some importancenext door. BB has a way of escaping his rather boring Despite their different outlooks on life; he writes murderous fantasies on his website in company with , the couples befriend each other misfitsand life appears to improve for both pairs. But all is not what it seems, some of whom he knows in real lifeand their increasingly interconnected relationships are fated for tragedy. It might be fiction on ''badguysrock'' but he and Albertine share a troubled history and BB's manipulation of friends and enemies causes his past to unravel.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0385609507</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ned BeaumanShalini Boland|title=Boxer, BeetleThe Silent Bride
|rating=3
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=According to the blurb Alice and Seth are a match made in heaven. He is everything she has been searching for Boxer; handsome, Beetleaccomplished, 'This clever, funny; total and utter husband-material. She isall he could possibly want in a novel for people with breeding… It wife; beautiful, successful, confident… and so the inevitable proposal is clever. It eagerly accepted by Alice and the wedding is distinctiveplanned and set. It When the much-anticipated day arrives, Alice is entertaining. We hope you are too.' I like about half of itwalked down the aisle by her father, beaming with pride and excitement as she surveys the congregation – their friends assembled to celebrate this joyful day and when Seth turns to face his approaching bride, sodoes that mean IAlice'm on s world implodes because she has absolutely no idea who the man at the way altar is, who is waiting for her to being those things?become his wife.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0340998393</amazonuk>1662507089
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Craig Silvey1787636003|title=Jasper JonesThe Girls of Summer|author=Katie Bishop|rating=45
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The title It was the summer when Rachel Evans turned eighteen that she and Caroline went backpacking around Greece and central character of this bookarrived on the island. Rachel wasn't exactly innocent but she was, perhaps, naive, Jasper Jones is a noso when thirty-four-user, a troubleyear-maker and has, for some reason old Alistair Wright started to take an interest in his hour of needher, sought help from an unlikely source. Charlie Bucktinshe was flattered rather than wary. Charlie is It was quite a rather bookish, quiet, unassuming teenager. And although both boys live in the town while before he made any sort of Corrigan, until now, they haven't spoken a word physical approach to each otherher and by that time she was obsessed by him. They live Alistair worked for Henry Taylor, looking after his interests on the island and in different worlds. Until now, that isparticular in the bar where all the girls either worked or partied.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099537540</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Thomas MullenAmanda Craig|title=The Many Deaths of the Firefly BrothersThree Graces
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The country is in deep recessionFew styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the state-of-the-nation novel. The economy has collapsed. The banks are hated and thereThere's 'something so utterly compelling about any writer who can catch hold of the next round atmosphere of politiciansthe day and capture it, assuring us they were not afflicted by crafting an image of the same lack of vision country as their predecessors'it stands in one particular moment. Does To say that Amanda Craig is skilled at doing this sound at all familiar? But just when you think you have strayed into would be embarrassingly inadequate: she's practically synonymous with the non-genre of contemporary social fiction aisle, it all becomes clearat this point. This is 1930s America - full She has such a gift for weaving the ongoing issues of gangsters, speakeasies, tommy guns, fedoras, beautiful heiresses, bumbling cops and the newly formed FBI, daring bank robberies day into the lives of her characters in a way that feels natural and kidnaps. Yeslived-in, the gang is all herenever making them ciphers for social commentary but instead fully realised people, but 'The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers' is a lot more grappling with issues far larger than your average gangster book and it's a hugely fun storythemselves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0007340826</amazonuk>140871468X
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Alexander McCall Smith152915118X|title=The Dog Who Came In From The Cold (Corduroy Mansions)Pineapple Street|author=Jenny Jackson
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Ah''Pineapple Street'' is the story of three women: Sasha, bliss! Darley and Georgiana. To sit down once more Darley and George are sisters and Sasha is married to an Alexander McCall Smith story their brother Cord. They're Stocktons, only Sasha isn't a Stockton by birth so she isn't readily accepted into the tribe. The problem's exacerbated when the clan matriarch, Tilda, asks Cord and wish only for someone thoughtful Sasha if they'd like to come move into the Pineapple Street property. Tilda and serve me tea Chip have renovated and biscuits whilst I read! downsized to another property, a street or so away, which they own. We are backThey won't need any of the furniture from Pineapple Street, once againso Sasha and Cord can move straight in. Nominally, with they had a choice but that wasn't the residents of Corduroy Mansions reality. Darley and Georgiana start to earwig on call Sasha 'the gold digger'. She's living in ''their conversations'' family home. They use it so often that they abbreviate it to 'the GD'.}}{{Frontpage|author=Emily Critchley|title=One Puzzling Afternoon|rating=4|genre=Crime|summary=84 year old Edie has lived in the same small town for almost her whole life, their private thoughts but now she is facing a move as her son wants to move to another house andbring Edie to live with his family, as Edie is starting to lose her memory. However, Edie is tormented by the memory of courseher childhood friend, to catch up with 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 truth of what every onehappened all that time ago. After 'seeing's favourite dogLucy in the high street, Freddie de la Hayjust as she was the last time she saw her, has been getting up she starts to find pockets of memories coming back toher. Written once again in serial format for The Daily Telegraph each short chapter And yet as she remembers the past, she is a gem, forgetting more and all the characters we met previously more in Corduroy Mansions are back again her day to entertain usday life. Will she uncover the truth about Lucy's disappearance before her move, and before her memories are gone forever?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846971616</amazonuk>1804181250
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Madelaine 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}}{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Mari Strachan0008506337|title=The Earth Hums in B FlatGarnett Girls|author=Georgina Moore
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Choosing a child as the viewpoint character of a novel requires confidence The love affair between Margo Garnett and imaginationpoet Richard O'Leary was all-consuming, apparently on both sides. To succeed is to convince the reader of events at two levels – the childMargo was just sixteen when they fell in love. Richard was twenty-one and described by Margo's world within the adult world surrounding hermother as 'an older man'. The very best novels about childhood, like say Harper LeeHer parents worried that Richard's classic, 'To Kill influence would take her away from what they felt she could achieve - going to Oxford and having a Mockingbird'glittering career. In the event, also reflect they eloped and Richard took her away from the Isle of Wight. Margo did go to Oxford and went on to become a wider cultural truthwell-respected journalist. In 'The Earth Hums couple had three children: Rachel, Imogen and Sasha. Life was lived in B Flat'London and holidays were spent at Sandcove, a claustrophobic Welsh village is both protection and straitjacket as the characters struggle to cope with their family secretshome on the Isle of Wight. If that sounds a bit tacky, fear not, because Even then the viewpoint character, Gwenni, is all whippet and sharp cornersdoubts about Richard's drinking were never far from Margo's mind: ''she would never be able to leave him in charge''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847673058</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Helen Slavin1914585402|title=The Stopping PlaceDashboard Elvis is Dead|author=David F Ross
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=How often do you pick up a I reviewed David F Ross's book with no idea at all where it is likely to lead? How often does such [[There's Only One Danny Garvey by David F Ross|There's Only One Danny Garvey]] a book still have you wondering a hundred pages in? Not bemused, not lost, absolutely sure that it is going to lead somewhere, but still with no clue as to exactly where. How often do you get to the end couple of a book years back and think, simply, "Wow!"?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847391869</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Naomi Alderman|title=The Lessons|rating=3.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=James has been used to remember being very clever at school, absolutely floored by how powerful and affecting it is was. It was a shock for him when he goes to Oxford University to find there are lots of people who are more able than he is. He is already struggling when he falls and seriously hurts his kneegripping, and he is also very lonely. Then he meets Jessemotionally wounding read, who invites him to a party at Mark’s house. Mark soon invites Jess, James and other friends to move in to his run down mansionrereading my review of it my main takeaway was that I might not have lavished enough praise on it.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670916293</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Christy LefteriLucy Ashe|title=A Watermelon, a Fish Clara and a BibleOlivia
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=It The year is 20 July 1974 in 1933. The place? Sadler's Wells. Ballerinas Clara and Olivia are sisters, twins no less. Identical on the small coastal town of Kyreniaoutside but not, Cypruswe learn, on the inside. And not on stage, either. Because there's a lot that builds a dancer. The radio continues Some things that can be taught or learnt – discipline, attention to report detail – and some things, that the Turkish forces did not manage to invade''je ne sais quoi'', and that they were thrown back into don't come from the seaclassroom. A stage presence, a charm, even as the Greek Cypriot population realises that they have been invadeda ''joie de vivre''. The story of this novel is set over just eight daysdifference between a hard-worker, and is told from the alternating viewpoints of three charactersa star.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1849161275</amazonuk>0861544080
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Heidi W DurrowHeather Fawcett|title=The Girl Who Fell From the Sky|rating=3.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Set in 1980s America, ''The Girl Who Fell From The Sky'' is a story built around a tragic event in a young girl’s childhood. The opening scene introduces you to Rachel, an elusive young girl, not black, not white but ''light skinned-ed'Emily Wilde' as she is packed off to live with her grandma after a devastating family event. Immediately, Durrow highlights race and identity as the primary themes, and we follow blue-eyed Rachel as she struggles between two worlds – the white world of her Danish mother, and the other black world s Encyclopaedia of her African-American G.I. father.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1851687459</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Diane Chamberlain|title=Before the StormFaeries
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=We're first introduced Emily Wilde is an expert academic scholar on faerie lore, and she has travelled extensively, and researched meticulously, to Laurelwrite her life's sonwork, Andythe very first encyclopaedia of faeries. He's a teenager Whilst she is brilliant at research and speaking to faeries, she is not so good with some sort of mental disorderpeople. He's So when she finds herself far, far North in the pivotal character small village of Hrafvsnik, having somehow offended the story village matriarch, she is not sure what she has done, nor how to redeem herself and he's also put her final investigations for her book back on the undisputed starright track. I recently read ''HenryEnter Wendell Bambleby, her dashingly handsome and insufferable rival who arrives unexpectedly, all charm and delight, much to Emily's Sisters'' by Cathy Lamb and decided that every family should have a Henry. Now I'll enlarge on that by saying that every family should have a Henry - or an Andyfrustration. Both of these teenagers are 99% innocent and adorable - it's that other 1% that But why is worrying. Andy's descriptions of people, places and situations are truly unique. he here? He has a language all of his own. What does he want? So immediately, as a reader, I was drawn right into the world of Andy and therefore right into And what exactly is going on with the heart of the story.faerie folk around Hravsnik?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0778303381</amazonuk>0356519120
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ninni Holmqvist1398515388|title=The UnitBoy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Dorrit inhabits a world where society is split into two camps. Not male or femaleFirst of all, it was the earthquake, or young or olddeep in the ocean floor, but those who are Necessary which created the tsunami and an asset to their communities versus those who are Dispensable this, in turn, caused the nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and a drain on civilizationutter devastation. It’s not a birth right, nor a class firmly established from childhood The deaths were uncountable, and everyone gets the chance to make a good go loss of itlivelihoods was widespread. But, if you’re a childless woman The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of 50, or priorities but - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a childless man of 60, and not working in dog outside a ‘needed’ industry your time is up, and you are quietly, and without any fuss, transported to convenience store. He wasn't a Second Reserve Bank Unit for Biological Material (‘the Unit’) where you will spend dog person but the rest of your days. Here you will participate in any number of psychological and physiological experiments, donate cells for research convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and give up your body parts one by one as Needed people require them, until Tamon the day of your final donation when you ultimately and rather ironically become a valuable member of society by losing your lifedog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1851687440</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sue RulliereChristopher Bowden|title=Cinema BlueMr Magenta
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Frankie Christopher Bowden's latest novel is a twenty nine year old patient untangling of a seemingly ordinary woman living in Paris and working in a supermarket while she tries to put 's life, carried out by her life back together nephew after a split from her husbandshe has died. The split, and what led up to it, was clearly distressing, aunt who always provided a safe harbour and exactly what happened is revealed through a series little bit of flashbacks indulgence to the time when Frankie was Francesca, whose a young nephew had had a much more interesting life was controlled by her husband, JP. The news than that JP has nephew Stephen had an accident throws Frankie into confusion, because ever realised and it seems that he turned to drink after she left him and she blames herself. In the meantime, Frankie is entering into a relationship with the enigmatic Antoine, who appears an obligation to be doing something rather strange in the flat below hersfind it all out. Will Frankie be able to retain her new identity? Will the relationship with Antoine go anywhere, or is he just as bad for her as JP was?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>190452947X</amazonuk>B0B6Z9VJDW
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Bobbie DarbyshireJennifer Mason|title=Love, Revenge and Buttered SconesPartitions of Unity
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Three people are travelling on Here 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 train heading to Invernessseries of disappearances. Their destination is the townIn ''s library where the book group meets on the last Friday Partitions of each monthUnity'', she sets her mind to solving a murder.. They each have their own reasons for going but none of them realise that the weekend is going to have far reaching consequences for them all.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1905207379</amazonuk>B09LQR9FRF
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Christine Dwyer HickeyWill Carver|title=Last Train From LiguriaThe Daves Next Door
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The heroine in this novel is Bella. She's a rather unassuming young woman who has had a rather unassuming childhood - save for the fact that she was motherless at an early age and her relationship with the father is a little strained, to say the least. Bella needs to breathe. So she leaves the drizzle of England for the blue skies and heat of Italy. Her father has propelled her into ''gentle'' employment there. She's tentative about the whole thing but warms to it by degrees.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1843549883</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=David Eagleman|title=Sum: Tales from the Afterlives|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=For some reason I find myself unable to start this review. So I'll mention this book starts with the end, and see where we go from there. Of course, that's the key – this book does just that – starts with the end of our human life here on Earth (or wherever you happen to be reading this) and posits forty possibilities of what happens thereafter, in the hereafter. It's not so much 'Five People You Meet strangers come together in Heaven' one moment as 'Forty Heavens you Might Meet People In'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847674283</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=John Buchan|title=Sick Heart River|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=This was a surprise for me. It’s rare for a book suicide bomber prepares to come to my attention from the reviewing gods that’s a rerelease of detonate his vest on a 1930s novel, and one that surfaced a couple of years ago nowLondon tube line. But when it strikes me as startlingly ConradianAs their fates overlap, updated for the timesstory is told in backwards order, and perfectly able leading up to stand alongside one of literature’s greats, then it’s just a sign those reviewing gods are on the ballfateful moment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>184697030X</amazonuk>1914585186}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=David SartofJennifer Mason|title=River of JudgementPreposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Finn Jackson is an oilman''A struggling poetry zine, an engineer a mom-and he's developed a new way of extracting oil which doesn't ravage the countryside -pop mobile diner in the way of traditional methods. He's set up Northern California redwoods, a company to take advantage of this along with his friend Aaron Philips, 400-meter hurdler who's just missed the money man. He2004 Olympics, a women's short of an operations manager – and has been track coach with a yen for bullwhips, a while – after billionaire with a state-of-the tragic death of Shufang Su -art S&M dungeon, a man serving a life sentence in Alabama, an enigmatic signature, K(s, x), on a site accidentcheap oil painting, an erotic art dealer in Georgia.. She was a geologist but had apparently flouted safety regulations and you know that there are going to be repercussions from her death.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956415202</amazonuk>}}''
}}
