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=Chioma OkerekeJenny Lecoat|title=Bitter LeafBeyond Summerland
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Jericho, (who's female by Jean lives on Jersey with her mother where they are celebrating the end of the way), is a beautiful young womanoccupation. She's curious about During the outside world so like many before herwar, sheJean's taken the brave step of sampling life in father was arrested for listening to a bigbanned radio and soldiers took him away one night, bustling city. She returns to leaving Jean and her home village with some rather pretentious airs ... and a rich suitor in tow. By sheer coincidence Jericho's mother had attended an interview in her past at her daughter's new boyfriend's family homewaiting for years for news of him. A veritable mansion with ' ... sweeping rooms As the British finally free the Channel islands from the Nazis, and the war is finally over, their hopes rise that took longer than a river to crossthey will finally learn what became of him.' What But will the truth come as a lovely way of describingluxury in an essentially poor area of Africa. 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? Everyone thinks And what other secrets have been kept throughout the next natural step is marriage and babies but is itoccupation?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1844086275</amazonuk>1846976537
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Keith ColquhounOnyi Nwabineli|title=Five Deadly WordsAllow Me to Introduce Myself|rating=34.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Five Deadly Words follows Anuri spent her childhood on display to the story of charismatic former dictator Lucasworld, as he charms and thanks to her step-mother Ophelia'collectss increasingly popular presence on social media, where she posted every step of Anuri' people during his exile s childhood for sponsorships and influencer deals and, basically, monetary gain. Now Anuri is in Londonher 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. The story Anuri is seen mostly battling alcoholism, failing to start her PhD, undergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online and receiving money from the point of view of Helen Berlinthem for doing so. Most importantly, she is desperately worried about her little sister, the bright young Detective Constable who is put in charge the new focus of LucasOphelia' safetys online empire. Helen finds Can she save her sister, and perhaps herself caught up in matters which become increasingly out of and her relationship with her depth as she falls further into father at the former dictator's world.same time?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1904529496</amazonuk>0861546873
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Don Boyd1529153298|title=Margot's SecretsThe List of Suspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Margot It's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is a psychologist who specialises in sexual disorders and obsessionsPrime Minister. (A woman? I mean, honestly... ) She lives and works for herself in Barcelona amongst 's not what's worrying Miv's family, though. Women have been disappearing. Well, they've been murdered, but to have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. Miv's upset because she's overheard that her father wants to move the ex-pat communityfamily 'Down South'. When you're from Yorkshire, and although she only has Down South is a dozen or so clients at any one timefrightening, foreign place, spends much of her week living at her officebest avoided. Her clientsFor Miv, both male and femalethe move would mean leaving her best friend, are bewildering and fascinating in equal portionsSharon, and she'll do anything to prevent that. She's not worried about the description of the therapy sessions make fascinating and revealing readingdangers or that her Mum's stopped talking - to anyone.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0955405149</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Steven Carroll1035906708|title=The Art of the Engine DriverDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Carroll has chosen a bygone era We tend to think of Maria Callas as Greek, but she was born to Greek parents in Manhattan, New York, in the 1950s December 1923 and also a bygone only moved to Athens when she was thirteen. Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but much treasured mode of transport, whether her father changed itto 's Australia or the UK. Immediately ICallas'm drawn to make it more manageable in to the storyStates. Both When she was back in Athens - supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for her voice - she was raised under the title and book's front cover are arresting and original. The novel centres on one evening in this suburban neighbourhood when all its residents are invited to Nazi occupation by a celebration party. Carroll see-saws back mother who mercilessly exploited her and forth as he shares the individual lives with us. It is an engaging stylemade no secret of her preference for her elder sister, Jackie.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099537273</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Patrick WoodheadAlexander McCall Smith|title=The Forbidden TemplePerfect Passion Company|rating=34.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=LucaThe Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, a mountaineer trying run by Ness and operating as an alternative to escape from his disappointingly unsupportive parents and all the online apps in providing a past accidentmore personal, witnesses something strange in tailored service. Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the distancebusiness, as Ness is planning to take a trip to Canada to get away for a while watching his climbing partner Bill put the kibosh on their latest sky-bursting Himalayan ascent - . Katie is coming out of a mountain shaped like break up with a perfect pyramidbad boyfriend, circled by other peaks he's never seen beforeand so jumps at the chance to come home to Edinburgh. Back in England nobody else seems And so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us to have seen them eitheran Edinburgh we already love, but colleagues mention mysterious Shangri-La style Buddhist sanctuaries - could this be thanks to 44 Scotland Street and the prime oneIsabel Dalhousie novels, hidden from prying eyes for centuries? Nobody wants but with some new characters who quickly begin to declare it actually exists at allcharm. MeanwhileKatie has no experience in running a business, or in match-making, but Ness has full confidence in her abilities, and there's always her very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, William, Himalayan natives are trying to pull the wool over Chinese occupiers' eyes regarding lend a very sacred personage.hand…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848090773</amazonuk>1846976596
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ken McClureDean Koontz|title=Dust to Dust (Steven Dunbar)The Bad Weather Friend|rating=4.5|genre=General FictionParanormal|summary=John Motram Benny is having a cell biologistterrifically bad day. He's loses his job, he loses his fiancee, and his house gets trashed. Oh, and someone has delivered a promising and wellreally weird, disturbing coffin-though of academic sized object to his home, and it's possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the thing that has trashed his pet subject house! The thing is - Black Death. Intrigue , Benny is high on the agenda right from the beginningvery last person to deserve all this bad luck. Motram He is invited to a meeting along with other high-fliers in their respective fieldsnice person. This meeting is top secretA really nice person. Motram So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the delivery to his house isa new friend, howevera bad weather friend called Spike, mystifiedwho has been sent to help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a good person. The situation appears pretty straightforwardSpike is going to take care of Benny, so why all this cloak-and-dagger stuffwill certainly take care of Benny's enemies, if he wonders, Benny, and Harper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are. And why has everyone to refer to the patient only as 'Patient X?'|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846971268</amazonuk>1662500491
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Robert RyanKatherine Howe|title=Signal RedA True Account|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Ryan has certainly researched thoroughly for this novel - Hannah Masury is living in Boston, having been sent to live with a family who run an inn, and it showsbeing made to work there from a young age. Straight away the blurb on the back cover tells us When she hears there's an 'afterword' by Bruce Reynolds, no less than the ringmaster/leader is to be a hanging of some pirates in the Great Train Robbery gangtown, she decides to go and watch. Notice how it's always given capital letters. Even all these decades down the lineEnthralled and horrified in equal measure, those readers of a certain age remember it and perhaps shake their head Hannah finds herself embroiled in amazement. And there's also a very useful 'aftermath' section as Ryan painstakingly sets out all the robbers' names and whatyoung boy's happened since that date in death at the summer hands of 1963two vicious pirates. PerhapsShe hides away, like othersso that they don't find and kill her too, I also assumed the leaderand then to escape them completely she runs away to sea, dressing as a boy and joining the top man if you like, was Ronnie Biggsnotorious Ned Low's pirate ship as a cabin boy. No soShe soon finds herself in the thick of things when there is a mutiny on board, apparently. I also remember television footage and from there we are caught up in her rip roaring tale of his release from prison life on compassionate grounds only a year or so agothe ocean waves. The crime seems to have achieved almost mythical proportions - some would say it's up there with what were you doing when JFK was assassinated?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>075535818X</amazonuk>0861547438
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Giles Milton1471180158|title=According to Arnold: A Novel of Love and MushroomsMaybe Tomorrow|author=Penny Parkes
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Arnold Trevellyan’s ordinary life as a charismatic auctioneer is about to change Jamie Matson works in ways he could never have imagined. Encouraged by his wife Flora to take a sabbaticalan upper-class grocery store, the two head to for a remote region of France to indulge Arnold’s passion for mushrooms. Whilst out in the forest hunting for rare mushrooms Arnold stumbles across man who's a secret hidden for centuries. This secret makes him abandon Flora and their life together for control freak with all the island subtlety of Tuva in the South Pacific where he soon finds himself married to Lola, its queen.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330452517</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Chuck Palahniuk|title=Tell-All|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=Meet Katherine Kentona half brick. A movie star of great renown, sheJamie's always on TV as someone famous - or the wife of somebody who happens to be famous and maleson, Bo, whether they were actually ever wedded. She herself 'has had copious real-life marriages, making somebody out of a nobody on many an instancehis problems'. Her shelves of He'best lifetime' awards are groaning, s asthmatic and their dusting is a job akin to painting the Forth bridge. The person who dusts them is narrator for this bookmore you read, but she does the more than you'll suspect thathe's on the autistic spectrum. She is everything Sometimes Jamie needs to "Miss Kathie" take time off at short notice - general housekeeper, housemate, she's a frequent flier in the local A&E and string-pullersometimes Bo's not fit enough to go to school. But what might those strings Missed shifts or the need to be being pulled for? When Katherine meets a new toyboy, away on time to pick Bo up from school are occasions when Jamie can be controlled and our narrator seems to get put in the way, wrong. It was going to come to what purpose might this be?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224087150</amazonuk>a head.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Caryl PhillipsB0CKD1L5JL|title=In the Falling SnowRadio Free Olympia|author=Jeffrey Dunn
|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 Petr is laid bare before usan orphan. He's one mixed upRescued by the strange, middle-agedreclusive Bear, not-quite-middle-class man. He appears to be rather weak-willed he is brought up far from bustling cities and almost seems to fall into situationsbusy human society, rather than choose to be part in the forests of themWashington's Olympic Peninsula. When After Bear dies and a brief sojourn in his marital relationship (now on human company, and armed with only a downward spiral)pirate radio transmitter, his wife most definitely wore the trousers. I found Keith Petr goes on a very infuriating person. I wanted to take him by journey through the scruff and give him a good old shake and then shout 'wake up and smell forest, broadcasting the coffeestrange, before it's too latewild and rarely heard voices he encounters.'|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099539748</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Mark NeilsonSarah Marsh|title=The Valley of the Vines|rating=3|genre=General Fiction|summary=The reader discovers that Sophie, the central character is living in rural isolation. She's supposed to be living the dream. She's separated from her husband and her two daughters are at boarding school back in the UK. She's also now a one-woman organization. And she's failing practically and financially for many reasons. Apparently, according to Neilson, there's a very small window in which to carry out the vital work of harvesting the grapes for wine. We are also told at frequent intervals about the enigmatic 'Old Ones'. They are 'The timeless custodians A Sign of the vines.' I'm afraid I found their too-frequent references rather annoying.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0709090595</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Maggie O'Farrell|title=The Hand That First Held Mine|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Lexie Sinclair was sent down from university for the crime of going through a door reserved for men. She could not graduate until she apologised and this she was not going to do. Home was not an option either but when she met the sophisticated Innes Kent she made up her mind to go to London and make her way there. 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 to recover from the difficult birth of their first child. Elina is an artist and she’s finding it difficult to come to terms with being a mother. Ted does his best to help but he is having to cope with disturbing visions and memories 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 the links which he uncovers.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>075530845X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Sue Peebles|title=The Death of Lomond Friel|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Rosie was a successful radio presenter when her father, Lomond Friel, had a stroke. Whether or not Rosie was always reckless and impulsive isn't entirely clear, but once she heard about the stroke she took a break from work and began to build her life around making a future 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 speak, to move very much, but he has plans.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701184302</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Najat El-Hachmi|title=The Last PatriarchHer Own
|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Najat El-Hachmi's debut novel, The Last Patriarch is After a difficult book - both in terms bout of content and stylescarlet fever as a child, Ellen Lark loses her hearing. It's Suddenly plunged into a story world of physical and sexual abuse silence, everything about her life changes. Living in a patriarchal Moroccan family, an immigrant story, time when first the father and then the family move to Catalonia, and ultimately a story use of the narrator, the patriarch's daughter, breaking free of her past sign language was seen as she takes on different cultural values. Narrated entirely from the perspective of the patriarch, Mimoun Driouch's unnamed daughtersomething only savages do, the story Ellen is also concerned with cultural and imagined histories, and the importance of origin stories.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687179</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Sarah Blake|title=The Postmistress|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=The reader is in no doubt that sent to a war school where she is ragingtaught to lip read, but physically restrained from signing. 'And bombs were falling on CoventryFrom here, London she ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the deaf and Kentusing a system called Visible Speech. Sleek metal pellets shaped like At the blunt tipped ends of pencils ...' The Americans howeversame time, are carrying Bell is working on with their daily lives regardless. They are completely unfazed other inventions and uninvolved. Apart from one or twoideas, namely radio reporter Frankie. She reports from London as it happens and she is gradually becoming more and more concerned that her fellow Americans will be called upon. But she seems to be Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a lone voice blowing in the wind. Also, as you may expect, there are plenty 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
}}
{{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>
}}
{{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
}}
{{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 t a narrative that features a concentration on 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 the book was supposed asks Cord and Sasha if they'd like to be hilariously funny, move into the character an insincere cypher for our lives Pineapple Street property. Tilda and Chip have renovated and timesdownsized to another property, and the whole thing an ironic masterpiece - I should have been disbelievinga street or so away, disagreeing and dis-everything else with the hapless herowhich they own. I hate such books - I always only see They won't need any of the sincerity in the narrativefurniture from Pineapple Street, so Sasha and never the comedyCord can move straight in. ThankfullyNominally, such is never they had a choice but that wasn't the case with this bookreality.|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 Darley and Georgiana start to call Sasha 's father decides to move the whole family to a seaside retreat he knows of - a wooden house far away from the city hegold digger'. She's grown his family up living in. Nobody seems too keen on the idea, neither of Max's sisters, his mother, nor he - and Max is gifted a pocket watch by his loving, talented mechanic cum engineer cum watchmaker of a father, enscribed as "Max's Time Machine"their'' family home. But the house They use it so often that they move abbreviate it 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... And let's not forget the mysterious, spider-eating cat that joins in with proceedingsGD'. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0297856421</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Danielle TrussoniEmily Critchley|title=AngelologyOne Puzzling Afternoon
|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
}}
{{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
}}
{{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
}}
{{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...''
}}
