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[[Category:General Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]]==General fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ken McClureJenny Lecoat|title=Dust to Dust (Steven Dunbar)Beyond Summerland
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=John Motram is a cell biologistJean lives on Jersey with her mother where they are celebrating the end of the occupation. HeDuring the war, Jean's father was arrested for listening to a promising banned radio and well-though soldiers took him away one night, leaving Jean and her mother waiting for years for news of academic and his pet subject is - Black Deathhim. Intrigue is high on As the British finally free the agenda right Channel islands from the beginning. Motram Nazis, and the war is invited to a meeting along with other high-fliers in finally over, their respective fieldshopes rise that they will finally learn what became of him. This meeting is top secret. Motram isBut will the truth come as a relief, however, mystified. or will it raise further questions around what else happened during the war? The situation appears pretty straightforward, so why all this cloak-and-dagger stuff, he wonders. Who was the informer who told the Nazis about the radio? And why has everyone to refer to what other secrets have been kept throughout the patient only as 'Patient Xoccupation?'|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846971268</amazonuk>1846976537
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Robert RyanOnyi Nwabineli|title=Signal RedAllow Me to Introduce Myself|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Ryan has certainly researched thoroughly for this novel - and it shows. Straight away the blurb Anuri spent her childhood on display to the back cover tells us thereworld, thanks to her step-mother Ophelia's an 'afterword' by Bruce Reynoldsincreasingly popular presence on social media, no less than the ringmaster/leader where she posted every step of the Great Train Robbery gang. Notice how itAnuri's always given capital letterschildhood for sponsorships and influencer deals and, basically, monetary gain. Even all these decades 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 linecontent about her. Anuri is battling alcoholism, failing to start her PhD, those readers of a certain age remember it undergoing therapy and perhaps shake their head in amazement. And there's also a very useful 'aftermath' section as Ryan painstakingly sets out all the robbers' names secretly abusing people online and what's happened since that date in the summer of 1963receiving money from them for doing so. PerhapsMost importantly, like othersshe is desperately worried about her little sister, I also assumed who is the leader, the top man if you like, was Ronnie Biggsnew focus of Ophelia's online empire. No soCan she save her sister, apparently. I also remember television footage of his release from prison on compassionate grounds only a year or so ago. The crime seems to have achieved almost mythical proportions - some would say it's up there and perhaps herself and her relationship with what were you doing when JFK was assassinatedher father at the same time?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>075535818X</amazonuk>0861546873
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Giles Milton1529153298|title=According to Arnold: A Novel The List of Love and MushroomsSuspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Arnold Trevellyan’s ordinary life as a charismatic auctioneer It's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is about Prime Minister. (A woman? I mean, honestly...) She's not what's worrying Miv's family, though. Women have been disappearing. Well, they've been murdered, but to change in ways he could never have imagined'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. Encouraged by his wife Flora Miv's upset because she's overheard that her father wants to take move the family 'Down South'. When you're from Yorkshire, Down South is a sabbaticalfrightening, foreign place, best avoided. For Miv, the two head move would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, and she'll do anything to a remote region of France to indulge Arnold’s passion for mushrooms. Whilst out in the forest hunting for rare mushrooms Arnold stumbles across a secret hidden for centuriesprevent that. This secret makes him abandon Flora and their life together for She's not worried about the island of Tuva in the South Pacific where he soon finds himself married dangers or that her Mum's stopped talking - to Lola, its queenanyone.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330452517</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Chuck Palahniuk1035906708|title=Tell-AllDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Meet Katherine Kenton. A movie star We tend to think of great renownMaria Callas as Greek, but she's always on TV as someone famous - or the wife of somebody who happens was born to be famous and maleGreek parents in Manhattan, whether they were actually ever wedded. She herself has had copious real-life marriagesNew York, making somebody out of a nobody on many an instancein December 1923 and only moved to Athens when she was thirteen. Her shelves of original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to 'best lifetimeCallas' awards are groaning, and their dusting is a job akin to painting make it more manageable in the Forth bridgeStates. The person who dusts them is narrator for this book, but When she does more than was back in Athens - supposedly so that. She is everything to "Miss Kathie" she could get appropriate training for her voice - general housekeeper, housemate, she was raised under the Nazi occupation by a mother who mercilessly exploited her and string-puller. But what might those strings be being pulled made no secret of her preference for? When Katherine meets a new toyboyher elder sister, and our narrator seems to get in the way, to what purpose might this be?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224087150</amazonuk>Jackie.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Caryl PhillipsAlexander McCall Smith|title=In the Falling SnowThe Perfect Passion Company|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=We are introduced The Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and operating as an alternative to all the central character Keith right away and discover lots about himonline apps in providing a more personal, tailored service. His personal Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and professional CV look after the business, as Ness is laid bare before usplanning to take a trip to Canada to get away for a while. He's one mixed Katie is coming out of a break upwith a bad boyfriend, middle-aged, not-quite-middle-class manand so jumps at the chance to come home to Edinburgh. He appears And so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us to be rather weak-willed an Edinburgh we already love, thanks to 44 Scotland Street and almost seems to fall into situationsthe Isabel Dalhousie novels, rather than choose but with some new characters who quickly begin to be part of themcharm. When Katie has no experience in his marital relationship (now on running a downward spiral)business, or in match-making, but Ness has full confidence in her abilities, 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 there'wake up s always her very helpful (and smell the coffeerather handsome) neighbour, William, before it's too late.'to lend a hand…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099539748</amazonuk>1846976596
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Mark NeilsonDean Koontz|title=The Valley of the VinesBad Weather Friend|rating=34.5|genre=General FictionParanormal|summary=The reader discovers that SophieBenny is having a terrifically bad day. He loses his job, he loses his fiancee, the central character is living in rural isolationand his house gets trashed. SheOh, and someone has delivered a really weird, disturbing coffin-sized object to his home, and it's supposed to be living possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the dream. thing that has trashed his house! She's separated from her husband and her two daughters are at boarding school back in The thing is, Benny is the UKvery last person to deserve all this bad luck. She's also now He is a one-woman organizationnice person. And she's failing practically and financially for many reasonsA really nice person. Apparently, according So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the delivery to Neilsonhis house is a new friend, there's a very small window in which bad weather friend called Spike, who has been sent to carry out the vital work of harvesting the grapes help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for winebeing a good person. We are also told at frequent intervals about the enigmatic Spike is going to take care of Benny, and will certainly take care of Benny'Old Oness enemies, if he, Benny, and Harper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny'. They s wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are 'The timeless custodians of the vines.' I'm afraid I found their too-frequent references rather annoying.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0709090595</amazonuk>1662500491
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Maggie O'FarrellKatherine Howe|title=The Hand That First Held MineA True Account|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Lexie Sinclair was Hannah Masury is living in Boston, having been sent down to live with a family who run an inn, and being made to work there from university for the crime of going through a door reserved for menyoung age. She could not graduate until When she apologised and this she was not going hears there is to do. Home was not an option either but when she met be a hanging of some pirates in the sophisticated Innes Kent town, she made up her mind decides to go to London and make her way therewatch. It was the nineteen fifties Enthralled and Lexie and Innes made horrified in equal measure, Hannah finds herself embroiled in a life for themselves in Soho. In the present day Elina and Ted are struggling to recover from young boy's death at the difficult birth hands of their first childtwo vicious pirates. Elina is an artist She hides away, so that they don't find and kill her too, and she’s finding it difficult then to come escape them completely she runs away to terms with being sea, dressing as a boy and joining the notorious Ned Low's pirate ship as a mothercabin boy. Ted does his best to help but he She soon finds herself in the thick of things when there is having to cope with disturbing visions a mutiny on board, and memories from there we are caught up in her rip roaring tale of his own childhood which don’t seem to agree with what he’s been told by his parents. The further he looks, the stranger are life on the links which he uncoversocean waves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>075530845X</amazonuk>0861547438
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sue Peebles1471180158|title=The Death of Lomond FrielMaybe Tomorrow|author=Penny Parkes
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Rosie was Jamie Matson works in an upper-class grocery store, for a man who's a control freak with all the subtlety of a successful radio presenter when her fatherhalf brick. Jamie's son, Lomond FrielBo, had a stroke'has his problems'. Whether or not Rosie was always reckless He's asthmatic and impulsive isnthe more you read, the more you't entirely clear, but once she heard about ll suspect that he's on the stroke autistic spectrum. Sometimes Jamie needs to take time off at short notice - she took 's a break from work frequent flier in the local A&E and began sometimes Bo's not fit enough to build her life around making a future for herself and her fathergo to school. There Missed shifts or the need to be away on time to pick Bo up from school are two problems here: Rosie isn't really all that capable of looking after herself, never mind her father occasions when Jamie can be controlled and Lomond is quietly plotting his own deathput in the wrong. He might not be able It was going to speak, come to move very much, but he has plansa head.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701184302</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Najat El-HachmiB0CKD1L5JL|title=The Last PatriarchRadio Free Olympia|author=Jeffrey Dunn|rating=3.54
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Najat El-Hachmi's debut novelPetr is an orphan. Rescued by the strange, reclusive Bear, The Last Patriarch he is a difficult book - both brought up far from bustling cities and busy human society, in terms the forests of content and style. ItWashington's Olympic Peninsula. After Bear dies and a story of physical and sexual abuse brief sojourn in a patriarchal Moroccan familyhuman company, an immigrant story, when first the father and then the family move to Catalonia, and ultimately armed with only a story of the narrator, the patriarch's daughterpirate radio transmitter, breaking free of her past as she takes Petr goes on different cultural values. Narrated entirely from the perspective of a journey through the patriarch, Mimoun Driouch's unnamed daughterforest, broadcasting the story is also concerned with cultural and imagined historiesstrange, wild and the importance of origin storiesrarely heard voices he encounters.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687179</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sarah BlakeMarsh|title=The PostmistressA Sign of Her Own|rating=43.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The reader is in no doubt that After a bout of scarlet fever as a war is ragingchild, Ellen Lark loses her hearing. 'And bombs were falling on CoventrySuddenly plunged into a world of silence, London and Kenteverything about her life changes. Sleek metal pellets shaped like Living in a time when the blunt tipped ends use of pencils ...' The Americans howeversign language was seen as something only savages do, Ellen is sent to a school where she is taught to lip read, are carrying on with their daily lives regardless. They are completely unfazed and uninvolvedbut physically restrained from signing. Apart from one or twoFrom here, namely radio reporter Frankie. She reports from London as it happens and she is gradually becoming more ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the deaf and more concerned that her fellow Americans will be using a system called uponVisible Speech. But she seems to be a lone voice blowing in At the wind. Alsosame time, as you may expectBell is working on other inventions and ideas, there are plenty and Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a complicated tangle of raised eyebrows as to why a woman is doing a man's jobespionage. She should be at the kitchen sink or having babies, shouldn't she?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0670918687</amazonuk>1035401614
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tess CallahanB0BC3YTCMR|title=April and OliverGood Girls Die|author=Ayura Ayira
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=After spending their childhoods together, April and Oliver haven't seen each other 'This story is not for many yearseveryone. It is only after the death of April's little brother that they find their lives overlapping again. April is reckless, damaged, and struggling from one day to the next whereas Oliver is mature and sensible. He is now a law student, engaged to the sweet, gentle Bernadette who is the antithesis of April. Seeing April's life in tatters, Oliver tries to rescue her from herself, yet the more entangled he becomes the more his own seemingly perfect life starts to fall apart.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099537524</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Shane Jones1472263936|title=Light BoxesThe Figurine|author=Victoria Hislop|rating=45
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=You will have It was in 1968 that Helena McCloud made her first trip to go a long way Greece. She was alone: her mother, Greek by birth, had left the family home and refused to find return, but Mary and Hamish (Helena's parents) felt that it would be a more magical and quirky novella than ‘Light Boxes’pity if Helena grew up without knowing her grandparents or understanding her Greek heritage. Set Her trip to the family apartment in a far off land, as all good fairy stories should up-market Kolonaki would be, the balloon-loving residents suffer a ban on all forms first of flightseveral annual visits. But She grew to love her grandmother and the culprit is not some unpronounceable Icelandic volcanofamily's maid, Dina, but rather February. And this February was wary - who takes both the form of a person and a season frightened - has lasted for more than three hundred days. And if that wasn’t bad enoughof her grandfather, he has also started making children disappearretired general Stamatis Papagiannis. One man, Thaddeus Lowe, is determined He was proud of his close connections to the Junta and expected his family to uphold his values but saw no reason to do something about itaccommodate them. His prejudices included Helena's red hair and green eyes - inherited from her father's Scottish ancestors.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241144957</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tom ShoneDean Koontz|title=In The RoomsAfter Death|rating=43
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The book jacket for this novel is Michael Mace, Head of New York by nightSecurity, at a top secret biological research facility, is among 55 people who die when a cityscape par excellence. It also boasts Toby Young's comment as ''laughvirus is released in a bio-out-loud funnyhazard accident.'' I have Finding himself in a makeshift mortuary, covered in plastic, he has a lot of time for Toby Young. I find sense that something very, very bad has happened to him witty – and entertaining. But I usually approach claims such only him – as this with a healthy dose he sits up and looks around at the shrouded bodies of 'we'll-wait-his dead friends and-see' scepticismformer colleagues. HoweverAs he recovers his senses, he was rightrealises that there is something different about him; he can ''feel'' everything. And I am truly impressed with Shone's ability to make me laugh out loud and at the very beginning of the novel too'Everything''. A very good sign of delights to come, I thoughtMichael isn't ''Michael'' anymore.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099534061</amazonuk>1662500467}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Rachel DeWoskinB0BVDC2VWH|title=Repeat After MeThe Grave Listeners|author=William Frank
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=September 1989: The village is isolated and poor. It is 's surrounded by a few months after Witching Forest. And the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing, Chinavillagers subsist largely by farming Uphegia plants - its bread-like fruit provides nutrition and its blossom provides herbal medicines. Aysha is teaching English at a private language school in New York City. She makes friends with some The black wood of her students. Da Ge is angry and disruptive yet attractive and interesting at the same time, forest provides heat and they quickly become involvedwarmth, although his interest in her is not as romantic asroofs on homes, perhapsand even gallows, she would like it to beif needed. He asks her to marry him so he can stay The fear of being buried alive is an existential superstition in the country. Aysha agreesvillage and that is the reason Volushka, although there is still a lot she does not know about the mysteriousdrunken, self-indulgent, unstable Da Gelazy lout of a man is tolerated.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0715638998</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jonathan CoeB0BYF82CXT|title=The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell SimSemi-Detached|author=Deborah Stone
|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'Bill and Amanda are living in a semi-salesmandetached house, 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 daughterdepressing rut of boredom and disappointment, all his few friends have forsaken him (when Terry and his Facebook wall). We start the book with him trying to patch things up with his fatherFiona – glamorous, who's safely successful and very much in love – move in Australia. He finds all those who know of him are already aware he's depressednext door. Those who don't know him can find him painfully shy, or able to talk away Despite their will to livedifferent outlooks on life, gabbling on the couples befriend each other and on about Watfordlife appears to improve for both pairs. But a lot all is about to changenot what it seems, and their increasingly interconnected relationships are fated for tragedy. He's about to be combined with some people excited about green toothbrushes.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670917389</amazonuk>'
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Amanda Sington-WilliamsShalini Boland|title=The Eloquence of DesireSilent Bride|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The novel starts Alice and Seth are a match made in the post-war austerity years in England heaven. He is everything she has been searching for; handsome, accomplished, clever, funny; total and centres around a middleutter husband-class, traditional family unitmaterial. Sington-Williams gives the reader She is all he could possibly want in a detailed description of that period - the bland foodwife; beautiful, successful, confident… and so the monotony of commuting to London (some things don't change) inevitable proposal is eagerly accepted by Alice and of course, the rainwedding is planned and set. GeorgeWhen the much-anticipated day arrives, his wife Dorothy Alice is walked down the aisle by her father, beaming with pride and excitement as she surveys the congregation – their teenage daughter Susan don't really talk friends assembled to each other. They tend to skirt round issues celebrate this joyful day and walk on eggshells. Appearances are everything. So a suitably fabricated story is told when Seth turns to their smallface his approaching bride, family circle of GeorgeAlice's company move. George world implodes because she has absolutely no choice in idea who the man at the matter. So he does what he always has done up till nowaltar is, he puts a brave face on who is waiting for the world and grins and bears it. It's a huge change in their domestic situation. Uprooted her to a strange, foreign, tropical country they've only glimpsed in National Geographicbecome his wife.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1907230114</amazonuk>1662507089
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Nikki Dudley1787636003|title=EllipsisThe Girls of Summer|author=Katie Bishop|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Both It was the title summer when Rachel Evans turned eighteen that she and book cover are slick Caroline went backpacking around Greece and glossyarrived on the island. Can the contents live up to this positive image? Straight away the reader is drawn into DanielRachel wasn's life ... t exactly innocent but the clock is ticking. He will soon be spoken about she was, perhaps, naive, so when thirty-four-year-old Alistair Wright started to take an interest in the past tenseher, she was flattered rather than wary. He dies It was quite a while before he made any sort of physical approach to her and leaves many, many questions by that his immediate family struggle to answertime she was obsessed by him. But as Alistair worked for Henry Taylor, looking after his interests on the story progresses we discover that secrets have been kept for a long timeisland and in particular in the bar where all the girls either worked or partied. Why? Too disturbing to reveal?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907230106</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Austin WrightAmanda Craig|title=Tony and SusanThree Graces|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Edward Sheffield hadn't exactly been SusanFew styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the state-of-the-nation novel. There's childhood sweetheart, but after a family tragedy left him homeless he came to live with Susan something so utterly compelling about any writer who can catch hold of the atmosphere of the day and her parents for a year so that he could finish school. Susan didn't particularly want him there but accepted that capture it was , crafting an image of the right thing to docountry as it stands in one particular moment. Years later they met To say that Amanda Craig is skilled at university when Edward was studying law and after a short relationship they married. The marriage wasn't entirely successful; Edward gave up law to become a writer, relying on Susandoing this would be embarrassingly inadequate: she's teaching income to support them, but whilst he spent practically synonymous with the genre of contemporary social fiction at this point. She has such a month away gift for weaving the ongoing issues of the day into the lives of her characters in a remote cabin 'to find himself' Susan found Arnold instead. Many years – way that feels natural and three children – later Susan receives a manuscript from Edward. She waslived-in, he saidnever making them ciphers for social commentary but instead fully realised people, always his best critic and he would like her opiniongrappling with issues far larger than themselves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848870205</amazonuk>140871468X
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jess Walter152915118X|title=The Financial Lives of the PoetsPineapple Street|author=Jenny Jackson
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=There ''Pineapple Street'' is a certain type the story of modern fiction I just cannot get along withthree women: Sasha, Darley and Georgiana. ItDarley and George are sisters and Sasha is married to their brother Cord. They're Stocktons, only Sasha isn's a narrative that features a concentration on t a main character that goes through his plot with unhappiness, making wrong decisions perhaps, getting crapped on Stockton by life, and discussing his woes with birth so she isn't readily accepted into the readertribe. I get to The problem's exacerbated when the end and think nothing of itclan matriarch, until I read the blurbTilda, where I find asks Cord and Sasha if they'd like to move into the book was supposed Pineapple Street property. Tilda and Chip have renovated and downsized to be hilariously funnyanother property, a street or so away, which they own. They won't need any of the character an insincere cypher for our lives and timesfurniture from Pineapple Street, so Sasha and the whole thing an ironic masterpiece - I should have been disbelievingCord can move straight in. Nominally, disagreeing and dis-everything else with they had a choice but that wasn't the hapless heroreality. I hate such books - I always only see Darley and Georgiana start to call Sasha 'the sincerity gold digger'. She's living in the narrative, and never the comedy''their'' family home. Thankfully, such is never They use it so often that they abbreviate it to 'the case with this bookGD'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141049138</amazonuk>
}}
|rating=4
|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=The Nephilim have 84 year old Edie has lived among in the human race since before the days of the Great Floodsame 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. Horrific creatures However, Edie is tormented by the hybrid children memory of humans and angelsher childhood friend, their strengthLucy, beauty and cruelty are unmatchedwho went missing over 60 years ago, and they have infiltrated human society completely. For centuries, the worry that there was a secret society, students in a branch she was keeping for Lucy that somehow might be the thing that reveals the truth of theology known as what happened all that time ago. After 'Angelologyseeing'Lucy in the high street, have studied just as she was the ways last time she saw her, she starts to find pockets of memories coming back to her. And yet as she remembers the heavens and the Nephilimpast, she is forgetting more and waged a secret war against them – a war that has spanned every continentmore in her day to day life. But Will she uncover the Nephilim grow weaktruth about Lucy's disappearance before her move, their blood contaminated by the blood of their human ancestors.and before her memories are gone forever?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0718155580</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''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ned Beauman0008506337|title=Boxer, BeetleThe Garnett Girls|author=Georgina Moore|rating=35
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=According to the blurb for Boxer, BeetleThe 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's mother as 'an older man'. Her parents worried that Richard'This iss influence would take her away from what they felt she could achieve - going to Oxford and having a novel for people with breeding… It is cleverglittering career. It is distinctive In the event, they eloped and Richard took her away from the Isle of Wight. Itis entertaining Margo did go to Oxford and went on to become a well-respected journalist. We hope you are too The couple had three children: Rachel, Imogen and Sasha.' I like about half of it Life was lived in London and holidays were spent at Sandcove, sodoes that mean I'm the family home on the way Isle of Wight. Even then the doubts about Richard's drinking were never far from Margo's mind: ''she would never be able to being those things?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340998393</amazonuk>}}leave him in charge''.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Thomas Mullen1914585402|title=The Many Deaths of the Firefly BrothersDashboard Elvis is Dead|author=David F Ross
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The country is in deep recession. The economy has collapsed. The banks are hated and thereI reviewed David F Ross's book [[There'the next round of politicians, assuring us they were not afflicted s Only One Danny Garvey by the same lack of vision as their predecessorsDavid F Ross|There'. Does this sound at all familiar? But just when you think you have strayed into the non-fiction aisle, it all becomes clear. This is 1930s America - full s Only One Danny Garvey]] a couple of gangsters, speakeasies, tommy guns, fedoras, beautiful heiresses, bumbling cops years back and the newly formed FBI, daring bank robberies remember being absolutely floored by how powerful and kidnapsaffecting it was. YesIt was a gripping, the gang is all hereemotionally wounding read, but 'The Many Deaths and rereading my review of the Firefly Brothers' is a lot more than your average gangster book and it's a hugely fun storymy main takeaway was that I might not have lavished enough praise on it.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007340826</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alexander McCall SmithLucy Ashe|title=The Dog Who Came In From The Cold (Corduroy Mansions)Clara and Olivia
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Ah, bliss! To sit down once more to an Alexander McCall Smith story The year is 1933. The place? Sadler's Wells. Ballerinas Clara and wish only for someone thoughtful to come and serve me tea and biscuits whilst I read! We Olivia are backsisters, once againtwins no less. Identical on the outside but not, we learn, with on the residents of Corduroy Mansions to earwig inside. And not on their conversationsstage, their private thoughts either. Because there's a lot that builds a dancer. Some things that can be taught or learnt – discipline, attention to detail – andsome things, of coursethat ''je ne sais quoi'', to catch up with what every onethat don's favourite dogt come from the classroom. A stage presence, a charm, Freddie a ''joie de la Hay, has been getting up tovivre''. Written once again in serial format for The Daily Telegraph each short chapter is difference between a gemhard-worker, and all the characters we met previously in Corduroy Mansions are back again to entertain usa star.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846971616</amazonuk>0861544080
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Mari StrachanHeather Fawcett|title=The Earth Hums in B FlatEmily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries|rating=54
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Choosing a child as the viewpoint character of a novel requires confidence Emily Wilde is an expert academic scholar on faerie lore, and she has travelled extensively, and imagination. To succeed is researched meticulously, to convince the reader of events at two levels – the childwrite her life's world within work, the adult world surrounding hervery first encyclopaedia of faeries. The very best novels about childhoodWhilst she is brilliant at research and speaking to faeries, like say Harper Lee's classic, 'To Kill a Mockingbird', also reflect a wider cultural truthshe is not so good with people. In 'The Earth Hums So when she finds herself far, far North in B Flat'the small village of Hrafvsnik, a claustrophobic Welsh having somehow offended the village matriarch, she is both protection not sure what she has done, nor how to redeem herself and straitjacket as put her final investigations for her book back on the characters struggle to cope with their family secretsright track. If that sounds a bit tackyEnter Wendell Bambleby, fear not, because the viewpoint character, Gwenniher dashingly handsome and insufferable rival who arrives unexpectedly, is all whippet charm and sharp cornersdelight, much to Emily's frustration. But why is he here? What does he want? And what exactly is going on with the faerie folk around Hravsnik?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847673058</amazonuk>0356519120
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Brady Udall1398515388|title=The Lonely PolygamistBoy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Golden Richards bursts onto First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the printed page. He is ocean floor, which created the central character tsunami and let's be honestthis, without him there would be no wivesin turn, no childrencaused the nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and utter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, no complicated domestic life - make that, domestic livesand the loss of livelihoods was widespread. Immediately I pictured Golden in my mind's eye, as 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 Homer Simpson type - but with lots more childrenconvenience store. Hewasn's t a bumbling, blustering, bear of a man. Itdog person but the convenience store owner's as if comment that he's just 'turned up' for would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the conception of his children, just idly ambled along when they were borndog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224078062</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Helen SlavinChristopher Bowden|title=The Stopping PlaceMr Magenta|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=How often do you pick up Christopher Bowden's latest novel is a patient untangling of a book with no idea at all where it is likely 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 lead? How often does such a book still have you wondering young nephew had had a hundred pages in? Not bemused, not lost, absolutely sure much more interesting life than that nephew Stephen had ever realised and it is going seems to lead somewhere, but still with no clue as him an obligation to exactly wherefind it all out. How often do you get to the end of a book and think, simply, "Wow!"?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847391869</amazonuk>B0B6Z9VJDW
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Naomi AldermanJennifer Mason|title=The LessonsPartitions of Unity|rating=3.54
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=James has been used to being very clever Here at schoolBookbag Towers, we first met Elizabeth Cromwell, dominatrix and unintentional detective in [[Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery by Jennifer Mason|Preposterous]], when she investigated and it is unravelled a shock for him when he goes to Oxford University to find there are lots series of people who are more able than he isdisappearances. He is already struggling when he falls and seriously hurts his knee, and he is also very lonely. Then he meets JessIn ''Partitions of Unity'', who invites him she sets her mind to solving a party at Mark’s housemurder.. Mark soon invites Jess, James and other friends to move in to his run down mansion.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0670916293</amazonuk>B09LQR9FRF
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Will Carver
|title=The 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=Jennifer Mason
|title=Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=''A struggling poetry zine, a mom-and-pop mobile diner in the Northern California redwoods, a 400-meter hurdler who just missed the 2004 Olympics, a women's track coach with a yen for bullwhips, a billionaire with a state-of-the-art S&M dungeon, a man serving a life sentence in Alabama, an enigmatic signature, K(s, x), on a cheap oil painting, an erotic art dealer in Georgia...''
}}
