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[[Category:General Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]]==General fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Andrew GrantJenny Lecoat|title=Die Twice (David Trevellyan)Beyond Summerland
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The title is very much at home and in keeping Jean lives on Jersey with her mother where they are celebrating the thriller genre and it's both eye-catching and also has a perfectly reasonable explanation which comes right at the very end of the storyoccupation. I must admit During the war, Jean's father was arrested for listening to thrillers generally not being my most favourite reading material. Some can be a bit flashybanned radio and soldiers took him away one night, a bit trashy evenleaving Jean and her mother waiting for years for news of him. But not this novel. Right As the British finally free the Channel islands from the start I felt I was in for a goodNazis, and the war is finally over, intelligent readtheir hopes rise that they will finally learn what became of him. There were pointers to this all over But will the place. For starterstruth come as a relief, David Trevellyan has a nice line in witty humour. or will it raise further questions around what else happened during the war? There are numerous snazzy one-liners. Who was the informer who told the Nazis about the radio? It all went down very well.And what other secrets have been kept throughout the occupation?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0230747582</amazonuk>1846976537
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jonathan LeeOnyi Nwabineli|title=Who Is Mr Satoshi?Allow Me to Introduce Myself|rating=34.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The novel opens somewhere in Anuri spent her childhood on display to the Home Counties and Rob Fossick is attending his world, thanks to her step-motherOphelia's increasingly popular presence on social media, where she posted every step of Anuri's funeralchildhood for sponsorships and influencer deals and, basically, monetary gain. The event Now Anuri is in itself her twenties and she is extremely distressing slowly trying to regain her confidence and also depressing for him; factor in that he's become a bit of a recluse lately and I could feel to get her life back, suing her step-mother to take down the sheer loneliness creeping into Rob's very bonescontent about her. Lee describes the event as 'Zimmer framesAnuri is battling alcoholism, bifocalsfailing to start her PhD, trifocals, dark grey coats with yawning shouldersundergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online and receiving money from them for doing so. The apparatus Most importantly, she is desperately worried about her little sister, who is the new focus of old ageOphelia's online empire.' Can she save her sister, and perhaps herself and her relationship with her father at the same time?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0434020419</amazonuk>0861546873
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Hazel McHaffie1529153298|title=Remember RememberThe List of Suspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey|rating=45
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The story starts at the end It's 1979 and works back in timeMargaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. This works extremely well as we see Doris Mannering(A woman? I mean, mother, grandmother and great-grandmother now living in a residential homehonestly... ) The decision to She's not what'put mothers worrying Miv' into a home was verys family, very difficult and had though. Women have been put off time and time againdisappearing. We come Well, they've been murdered, but to realize have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. Miv's upset because she's overheard that this was her father wants to move the family 'Down South'. When you're from Yorkshire, Down South is a heart-wrenching decisionfrightening, foreign place, best avoided. The daughter and carerFor Miv, the move would mean leaving her best friend, JessicaSharon, will always be asking herself if and she'd done the right thing, made the right decision for the right reasonsll do anything to prevent that. A veritable minefield. And here is where many an ethical dilemma lies for many families in realShe's not worried about the dangers or that her Mum's stopped talking -life similar situationsto anyone.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906817294</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John Niven1035906708|title=The AmateursDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Gary Irvine only wants two things out We tend to think of life. He'd like Maria Callas as Greek, but she was born to have children and he wants to reduce his golf handicap. Nothing extraordinary thereGreek parents in Manhattan, you might think except for the fact that his wifeNew York, Pauline, is planning in December 1923 and only moved to leave him for a self-made carpet millionaire and Gary is a dreadful golferAthens when she was thirteen. His handicap is eighteen – Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but I'm not entirely certain how he got her father changed it down to that level in the first place. His family doesn't give him much solace either. His brother Lee is on the fringes of the local criminal underworld and hasnCallas't the wit to keep himself out of trouble with Ranta Campbell, make it more manageable in the local overlordStates. Ranta When she was back in Athens - supposedly so that she could be quite likeable if it wasn't for his penchant get appropriate training for her voice - she was raised under the Nazi occupation by a certain type mother who mercilessly exploited her and made no secret of violence designed to keep the others in line rather than to teach the victim a lessonher preference for her elder sister, Jackie.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099516667</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Adam RossAlexander McCall Smith|title=Mr PeanutThe Perfect Passion Company|rating=34.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The main couple who tend Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and operating as an alternative to take centre stage here are called David and Alice Pepin. They live all the online apps in providing a kind of comfortablemore personal, middle-class life in busy and bustling Manhattantailored service. After more than a decade of generally happy married life togetherNess has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the business, they want as Ness is planning to take the next step and have a familytrip to Canada to get away for a while. Easy Katie is coming out of a break up with a bad boyfriend, and so jumps at the chance to say but things don't quite work out according come home to planEdinburgh. We are taken on various 'dark' journeys within their marriage. These are situations which most of And so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us can identify to an Edinburgh we already love, thanks to 44 Scotland Street and the Isabel Dalhousie novels, but withsome new characters who quickly begin to charm. Some of these situations are painfulKatie 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, stressfulWilliam, unhappy.to lend a hand…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0224087738</amazonuk>1846976596
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Nicholas ShakespeareDean Koontz|title=InheritanceThe Bad Weather Friend|rating=4.5|genre=General FictionParanormal|summary=Andy Larkham's life and career are going nowhereBenny is having a terrifically bad day. He works for a small publishing loses his job, he loses his fiancee, and his housegets trashed. Oh, Carpe Diemand someone has delivered a really weird, that specialises in publishing selfdisturbing coffin-help bookssized object to his home, and it's possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the thing that has trashed his fiancée house! The thing is, Benny is about the very last person to dump him and he has no money and mountains of debtdeserve all this bad luck. He is a nice person. A really nice person. And So fortunately for Benny it turns out that's before we begin the delivery to talk about his dysfunctional family. His only real role model was the Montaigne-loving teacherhouse is a new friend, Stuart Furnivalla bad weather friend called Spike, whose funeral he who has been sent to help him since Benny is late clearly under attack from nefarious forces forbeing a good person. But an unexpected inheritance Spike is going to take care of £17 million has a habit Benny, and will certainly take care of changing oneBenny's outlook on life. But while enemies, if he trades self-help for help yourself, Andy also realises that he has inherited Benny, and Harper (a mysterywaitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846553156</amazonuk>1662500491
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Cath StaincliffeKatherine Howe|title=The Kindest ThingA True Account|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Imagine that your partner of twenty or so years discovers that they are dying Hannah Masury is living in Boston, having been sent to live with a family who run an inn, and being made to work there from a terminal diseaseyoung age. Now imagine that they've asked you When she hears there is to help them to die be a little soonerhanging of some pirates in the town, on their own termsshe decides to go and watch. What would you do? Enthralled and horrified in equal measure, Hannah finds herself embroiled in a young boy's death at the hands of two vicious pirates. This is the dilemma She hides away, so that faced Deborah they don't find andkill her too, after and then to escape them completely she went ahead and helped her husband Neil runs away to diesea, she found dressing as a boy and joining the notorious Ned Low's pirate ship as a cabin boy. She soon finds herself charged in the thick of things when there is a mutiny on board, and standing trial for murder with her own teenage daughter, Sophie, testifying against from there we are caught up in herrip roaring tale of life on the ocean waves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1849012083</amazonuk>0861547438
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Eliza Graham1471180158|title=JubileeMaybe Tomorrow|author=Penny Parkes
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=As Jamie Matson works in an upper-class grocery store, for a man who's a control freak with all the village celebrates the Queensubtlety of a half brick. Jamie's Golden Jubilee two people canson, Bo, 'has his problems't help but think back to the Silver Jubilee. Evie Winter He's asthmatic and her niece Rachel have vivid memories of the day when Eviemore you read, the more you'll suspect that he's daughter Jessamy wandered off and on the mystery of her disappearance has never been solvedautistic spectrum. She was eleven years old, bright, athletic Sometimes Jamie needs to take time off at short notice - she's a frequent flier in the local A&E and loved by her mother and cousinsometimes Bo's not fit enough to go to school. There would seem Missed shifts or the need to be no explanation as away on time to why she might have disappeared of her own free will pick Bo up from school are occasions when Jamie can be controlled and no evidence that she was abducted. Life has carried on, but it has not been put in the samewrong. It has not been easywas going to come to a head.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330509268</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Michael RobothamB0CKD1L5JL|title=Bleed For MeRadio Free Olympia|author=Jeffrey Dunn
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=An ex-detective Petr is found dead an orphan. Rescued by the strange, reclusive Bear, he is brought up far from bustling cities and busy human society, in a pool the forests of blood in his teenagerWashington's bedroomOlympic Peninsula. She runs from the scene of the crime. Is this the easiest cut-After Bear dies and-dried case ever? This novel is told a brief sojourn in the first person by the investigating psychologisthuman company, Professor Joe O'Loughlin. He's got and armed with only a lot going pirate radio transmitter, Petr goes on in his life right now. His health is not good so he's to keep popping pills to try and get a journey through another working day. He's also newly separated and his daughters seem to talk a completely different language. He feels old and very ragged round the edges. Into this mixforest, he discovers that broadcasting the teenager everyone is talking aboutstrange, the teenager who's been discussed wild and described as a cold-blooded killer, is his daughter's best friend. Could his life get any worse, rarely heard voices he thinks. Yes. Big-timeencounters.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847442188</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Catherine O'FlynnSarah Marsh|title=The News Where You AreA Sign of Her Own
|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The main character in this novel is Frank Allcroft. Husband, father, son and also After a bit bout of scarlet fever as a minor celebrity as he's beamed into the region's television screens nightlychild, presenting the local newsEllen Lark loses her hearing. Make that minor with Suddenly plunged into a small 'm'world of silence, everything about her life changes. He comes across Living in a time when the use of sign language was seen as a likeablesomething only savages do, middle-aged man, content with his lot and with his home life. But he does have some personal issues Ellen is sent to attend a school where she is taught tolip read, but physically restrained from signing. In particularFrom here, his grumpy, sometimes forgetful, elderly mother she ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who is now living in has been teaching the deaf and using a retirement homesystem called Visible Speech. Mother At the same time, Bell is working on other inventions and ideas, and son give each other lots Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a complicated tangle of grief on a regular basisespionage.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0670918555</amazonuk>1035401614
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Mario PuzoB0BC3YTCMR|title=Six Graves to MunichGood Girls Die|author=Ayura Ayira|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=In the dying days of the Second World War Michael Rogan, an American Intelligence officer was captured and tortured by a group of seven men, most of whom were senior Gestapo officers trying to obtain the secrets which Rogan could give them''This story is not for everyone. His wife was in another room and he could hear her screams. Ten years later, when he had recovered from the appalling injuries he suffered he made up his mind that he would avenge the death of his wife at the hands of the seven men. It's no easy task as he doesn't even know who they are.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184916276X</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Chioma Okereke1472263936|title=Bitter LeafThe Figurine|author=Victoria Hislop|rating=45
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=JerichoIt was in 1968 that Helena McCloud made her first trip to Greece. She was alone: her mother, Greek by birth, had left the family home and refused to return, but Mary and Hamish (whoHelena's female by the wayparents), is felt that it would be a beautiful young womanpity if Helena grew up without knowing her grandparents or understanding her Greek heritage. Her trip to the family apartment in up-market Kolonaki would be the first of several annual visits. Shegrew to love her grandmother and the family's curious about the outside world so like many before hermaid, Dina, she's taken the brave step but was wary - and frightened - of sampling life in a bigher grandfather, bustling cityretired general Stamatis Papagiannis. She returns He was proud of his close connections to her home village with some rather pretentious airs ... the Junta and a rich suitor in towexpected his family to uphold his values but saw no reason to accommodate them. By sheer coincidence JerichoHis prejudices included Helena's mother had attended an interview in her past at red hair and green eyes - inherited from her daughterfather's new boyfriend's family home. A veritable mansion with ' ... sweeping rooms that took longer than a river to crossScottish ancestors.' What a lovely way of describingluxury in an essentially poor area of Africa. Everyone thinks the next natural step is marriage and babies but is it?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844086275</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Keith ColquhounDean Koontz|title=Five Deadly WordsAfter Death
|rating=3
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Five Deadly Words follows the story Michael Mace, Head of charismatic former dictator LucasSecurity, at a top secret biological research facility, is among 55 people who die when a virus is released in a bio-hazard accident. Finding himself in a makeshift mortuary, covered in plastic, he has a sense that something very, very bad has happened to him – and only him – as he charms sits up and 'collects' people during looks around at the shrouded bodies of his exile in Londondead friends and former colleagues. The story is seen mostly from the point of view of Helen Berlin As he recovers his senses, the bright young Detective Constable who he realises that there is put in charge of Lucassomething different about him; he can ''feel'' everything. ''Everything'' safety. Helen finds herself caught up in matters which become increasingly out of her depth as she falls further into the former dictator Michael isn't ''Michael''s worldanymore.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1904529496</amazonuk>1662500467}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Don BoydB0BVDC2VWH|title=Margot's SecretsThe Grave Listeners|author=William Frank|rating=54
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Margot The village is isolated and poor. It's surrounded by a psychologist who specialises in sexual disorders Witching Forest. And the villagers subsist largely by farming Uphegia plants - its bread-like fruit provides nutrition and obsessionsits blossom provides herbal medicines. She lives and works for herself in Barcelona amongst The black wood of the ex-pat community, forest provides heat and although she only has a dozen or so clients at any one timewarmth, spends much of her week living at her office. Her clientsroofs on homes, both male and femaleeven gallows, are bewildering and fascinating if needed. The fear of being buried alive is an existential superstition in equal portions, the village and that is the description reason Volushka, a drunken, self-indulgent, lazy lout of the therapy sessions make fascinating and revealing readinga man is tolerated.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0955405149</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Steven CarrollB0BYF82CXT|title=The Art of the Engine DriverSemi-Detached|author=Deborah Stone
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Carroll has chosen ''Bill and Amanda are living in a bygone era semi-detached house, stuck in the 1950s and also a bygone but much treasured mode depressing rut of transportboredom and disappointment, when Terry and Fiona – glamorous, whether it's Australia or the UK. Immediately I'm drawn successful and very much in love – move in to the storynext door. Both Despite their different outlooks on life, the title couples befriend each other and book's front cover are arresting and originallife appears to improve for both pairs. The novel centres on one evening in this suburban neighbourhood when But all its residents is not what it seems, and their increasingly interconnected relationships are invited to a celebration partyfated for tragedy. Carroll see-saws back and forth as he shares the individual lives with us. It is an engaging style.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099537273</amazonuk>''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Patrick WoodheadShalini Boland|title=The Forbidden TempleSilent Bride
|rating=3
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Luca, a mountaineer trying to escape from his disappointingly unsupportive parents Alice and Seth are a past accidentmatch made in heaven. He is everything she has been searching for; handsome, witnesses something strange in the distanceaccomplished, clever, while watching his climbing partner Bill put the kibosh on their latest sky-bursting Himalayan ascent funny; total and utter husband- material. She is all he could possibly want in a mountain shaped like a perfect pyramidwife; beautiful, successful, circled confident… and so the inevitable proposal is eagerly accepted by other peaks he's never seen beforeAlice and the wedding is planned and set. Back in England nobody else seems to have seen them eitherWhen the much-anticipated day arrives, but colleagues mention mysterious Shangri-La style Buddhist sanctuaries - could this be Alice is walked down the prime oneaisle by her father, hidden from prying eyes for centuries? Nobody wants beaming with pride and excitement as she surveys the congregation – their friends assembled to celebrate this joyful day and when Seth turns to declare it actually exists face his approaching bride, Alice's world implodes because she has absolutely no idea who the man at all. Meanwhilethe altar is, Himalayan natives are trying who is waiting for her to pull the wool over Chinese occupiers' eyes regarding a very sacred personagebecome his wife.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848090773</amazonuk>1662507089
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ken McClure1787636003|title=Dust to Dust (Steven Dunbar)The Girls of Summer|author=Katie Bishop|rating=45
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=John Motram is a cell biologist. He's a promising It was the summer when Rachel Evans turned eighteen that she and well-though of academic Caroline went backpacking around Greece and his pet subject is - Black Death. Intrigue is high arrived on the agenda right from the beginningisland. Motram is invited to a meeting along with other high-fliers in their respective fields. This meeting is top secret. Motram isRachel wasn't exactly innocent but she was, howeverperhaps, mystified. The situation appears pretty straightforwardnaive, so why all this cloakwhen thirty-four-andyear-dagger stuffold Alistair Wright started to take an interest in her, she was flattered rather than wary. It was quite a while before he wondersmade any sort of physical approach to her and by that time she was obsessed by him. And why has everyone to refer to Alistair worked for Henry Taylor, looking after his interests on the island and in particular in the bar where all the patient only as 'Patient X?'|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846971268</amazonuk>girls either worked or partied.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Robert RyanAmanda Craig|title=Signal RedThree Graces|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Ryan has certainly researched thoroughly for this Few styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the state-of-the-nation novel - and it shows. Straight away the blurb on the back cover tells us thereThere's an 'afterword' by Bruce Reynolds, no less than something so utterly compelling about any writer who can catch hold of the ringmaster/leader atmosphere of the Great Train Robbery gang. Notice how day and capture it's always given capital letters. Even all these decades down the line, those readers crafting an image of a certain age remember the country as it and perhaps shake their head stands in amazementone particular moment. And thereTo say that Amanda Craig is skilled at doing this would be embarrassingly inadequate: she's also practically synonymous with the genre of contemporary social fiction at this point. She has such a very useful 'aftermath' section as Ryan painstakingly sets out all gift for weaving the robbers' names and what's happened since that date in the summer ongoing issues of 1963. Perhaps, like others, I also assumed the leader, day into the top man if you like, was Ronnie Biggs. No so, apparently. I also remember television footage lives of his release from prison on compassionate grounds only her characters in a year or so ago. The crime seems to have achieved almost mythical proportions way that feels natural and lived- some would say it's up there in, never making them ciphers for social commentary but instead fully realised people, grappling with what were you doing when JFK was assassinated?issues far larger than themselves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>075535818X</amazonuk>140871468X
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Giles Milton152915118X|title=According to Arnold: A Novel of Love and MushroomsPineapple Street|author=Jenny Jackson
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Arnold Trevellyan’s ordinary life as a charismatic auctioneer ''Pineapple Street'' is the story of three women: Sasha, Darley and Georgiana. Darley and George are sisters and Sasha is about married to change in ways he could never have imaginedtheir brother Cord. Encouraged They're Stocktons, only Sasha isn't a Stockton by his wife Flora birth so she isn't readily accepted into the tribe. The problem's exacerbated when the clan matriarch, Tilda, asks Cord and Sasha if they'd like to take a sabbatical, move into the two head Pineapple Street property. Tilda and Chip have renovated and downsized to another property, a remote region street or so away, which they own. They won't need any of France to indulge Arnold’s passion for mushroomsthe furniture from Pineapple Street, so Sasha and Cord can move straight in. Whilst out in Nominally, they had a choice but that wasn't the forest hunting for rare mushrooms Arnold stumbles across a secret hidden for centuriesreality. This secret makes him abandon Flora Darley and their life together for Georgiana start to call Sasha 'the island of Tuva gold digger'. She's living in ''their'' family home. They use it so often that they abbreviate it to 'the South Pacific where he soon finds himself married to Lola, its queenGD'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330452517</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Chuck PalahniukEmily Critchley|title=Tell-AllOne Puzzling Afternoon
|rating=4
|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=Meet Katherine Kenton. A movie star of great renown84 year old Edie has lived in the same small town for almost her whole life, but now she's always on TV is facing a move as someone famous - or the wife of somebody who happens her son wants to move to be famous another house and malebring Edie to live with his family, whether they were actually ever weddedas Edie is starting to lose her memory. She herself has had copious real-life marriagesHowever, making somebody out Edie is tormented by the memory of her childhood friend, Lucy, who went missing over 60 years ago, and the worry that there was a nobody on many an instancesecret she was keeping for Lucy that somehow might be the thing that reveals the truth of what happened all that time ago. Her shelves of After 'best lifetimeseeing' awards are groaningLucy in the high street, just as she was the last time she saw her, and their dusting is a job akin she starts to find pockets of memories coming back to painting the Forth bridgeher. The person who dusts them is narrator for this bookAnd yet as she remembers the past, but she does is forgetting more and more than that. She is everything in her day to "Miss Kathie" - general housekeeper, housemate, and string-pullerday life. But what might those strings be being pulled for? When Katherine meets a new toyboyWill she uncover the truth about Lucy's disappearance before her move, and our narrator seems to get in the way, to what purpose might this bebefore her memories are gone forever?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0224087150</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''
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Maggie O'Farrell0008506337|title=The Hand That First Held MineGarnett Girls|author=Georgina Moore
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Lexie Sinclair The love affair between Margo Garnett and poet Richard O'Leary was all-consuming, apparently on both sides. Margo was sent down from university for the crime of going through a door reserved for menjust sixteen when they fell in love. She could not graduate until she apologised Richard was twenty-one and this described by Margo's mother as 'an older man'. Her parents worried that Richard's influence would take her away from what they felt she was not could achieve - going to doOxford and having a glittering career. Home was not an option either but when she met In the sophisticated Innes Kent she made up event, they eloped and Richard took her mind away from the Isle of Wight. Margo did go to go Oxford and went on to become a well-respected journalist. The couple had three children: Rachel, Imogen and Sasha. Life was lived in London and make her way thereholidays were spent at Sandcove, the family home on the Isle of Wight. It was Even then the nineteen fifties and Lexie and Innes made a life for themselves doubts about Richard's drinking were never far from Margo's mind: ''she would never be able to leave him in Sohocharge''.
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sue Peebles1914585402|title=The Death of Lomond FrielDashboard Elvis is Dead|author=David F Ross
|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 isnI reviewed David F Ross's book [[There's Only One Danny Garvey by David F Ross|There't entirely clear, but once she heard about the stroke she took s Only One Danny Garvey]] a break from work couple of years back and began to build her life around making a future for herself remember being absolutely floored by how powerful and her fatheraffecting it was. There are two problems here: Rosie isn't really all that capable of looking after herselfIt was a gripping, emotionally wounding read, never mind her father and Lomond is quietly plotting his own death. He rereading my review of it my main takeaway was that I might not be able to speak, to move very much, but he has planshave lavished enough praise on it.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701184302</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Najat El-HachmiLucy Ashe|title=The Last PatriarchClara and Olivia|rating=34.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Najat El-HachmiThe year is 1933. The place? Sadler's debut novelWells. Ballerinas Clara and Olivia are sisters, The Last Patriarch is a difficult book - both in terms of content and styletwins no less. Identical on the outside but not, we learn, on the inside. And not on stage, either. ItBecause there's a story of physical and sexual abuse in lot that builds a patriarchal Moroccan family, an immigrant storydancer. Some things that can be taught or learnt – discipline, when first the father and then the family move attention to Catalonia, detail – and ultimately a story of the narratorsome things, the patriarchthat ''je ne sais quoi''s daughter, breaking free of her past as she takes on different cultural values. Narrated entirely that don't come from the perspective of the patriarchclassroom. A stage presence, a charm, Mimoun Drioucha 's unnamed daughter'joie de vivre''. The difference between a hard-worker, the story is also concerned with cultural and imagined histories, and the importance of origin storiesa star.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846687179</amazonuk>0861544080
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sarah BlakeHeather Fawcett|title=The PostmistressEmily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The reader Emily Wilde is in no doubt that a war is raging. 'And bombs were falling an expert academic scholar on Coventryfaerie lore, London and Kent. Sleek metal pellets shaped like she has travelled extensively, and researched meticulously, to write her life's work, the blunt tipped ends very first encyclopaedia of pencils ..faeries.' The Americans howeverWhilst she is brilliant at research and speaking to faeries, are carrying on she is not so good with their daily lives regardlesspeople. They are completely unfazed and uninvolved. Apart from one or twoSo when she finds herself far, far North in the small village of Hrafvsnik, having somehow offended the village matriarch, namely radio reporter Frankie. She reports from London as it happens and she is gradually becoming more not sure what she has done, nor how to redeem herself and more concerned that put her fellow Americans will be called upon. But she seems to be a lone voice blowing in final investigations for her book back on the windright track. AlsoEnter Wendell Bambleby, as you may expecther dashingly handsome and insufferable rival who arrives unexpectedly, all charm and delight, there are plenty of raised eyebrows as much to why a woman is doing a manEmily's jobfrustration. She should be at But why is he here? What does he want? And what exactly is going on with the kitchen sink or having babies, shouldn't shefaerie folk around Hravsnik?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0670918687</amazonuk>0356519120
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tess Callahan1398515388|title=April The Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and OliverAlison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=After spending their childhoods togetherFirst of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, in turn, April caused the nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and Oliver haven't seen each other for many yearsutter devastation. It is only after The deaths were uncountable, and the death loss of April's little brother that they find their lives overlapping againlivelihoods was widespread. April is reckless, damaged, and struggling The fact that many pets were separated from one day to their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the next whereas Oliver is mature and sensibletsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. He is now wasn't a law student, engaged to dog person but the sweet, gentle Bernadette who is the antithesis of April. Seeing Aprilconvenience store owner's life in tatters, Oliver tries comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to rescue her from herself, yet open his car door and Tamon the more entangled he becomes the more his own seemingly perfect life starts to fall apartdog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099537524</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=F G CottamChristopher Bowden|title=The Waiting RoomMr Magenta
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=On the outskirts Christopher Bowden's latest novel is a patient untangling of ex rock star Martin Stridea seemingly ordinary woman's country estate lies the disused Shale Point Station. Abandoned in the 1960s the railway line life, carried out by her nephew after she has been dug up and removed and all that remains is the crumbling platform and eerie waiting roomdied. Martin is quick to employ Britain's top ghost hunter Julian Creed to investigate the strange The aunt who always provided a safe harbour and threatening occurrences of the waiting room that he and his children have witnessed – the sound and smell a little bit of indulgence to a steam train, male voices singing young nephew had had a famous World War One song, much more interesting life than that nephew Stephen had ever realised and most frightening of it seems to him an obligation to find it all, the leering face of a soldier at the waiting room windowout. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444704214</amazonuk>B0B6Z9VJDW
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Shane JonesJennifer Mason|title=Light BoxesPartitions of Unity
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=You will have to go a long way to find a more magical Here at Bookbag Towers, we first met Elizabeth Cromwell, dominatrix and quirky novella than ‘Light Boxes’. Set unintentional detective in a far off land[[Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery by Jennifer Mason|Preposterous]], as all good fairy stories should be, the balloon-loving residents suffer when she investigated and unravelled a ban on all forms series of flightdisappearances. But the culprit is not some unpronounceable Icelandic volcanoIn ''Partitions of Unity'', but rather February. And this February - who takes both the form of a person and she sets her mind to solving a season - has lasted for more than three hundred daysmurder. And if that wasn’t bad enough, he has also started making children disappear. One man, Thaddeus Lowe, is determined to do something about it.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0241144957</amazonuk>B09LQR9FRF
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tom ShoneWill Carver|title=In The RoomsDaves Next Door
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The book jacket for this novel is of New York by night, a cityscape par excellence. It also boasts Toby Young's comment Five strangers come together in one moment as ''laugh-out-loud funny.'' I have a lot of time for Toby Young. I find him witty and entertaining. But I usually approach claims such as this with suicide bomber prepares to detonate his vest on a healthy dose of 'we'll-wait-and-see' scepticismLondon tube line. HoweverAs their fates overlap, he was right. And I am truly impressed with Shone's ability the story is told in backwards order, leading up to make me laugh out loud and at the very beginning of the novel too. A very good sign of delights to come, I thoughtfateful moment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099534061</amazonuk>1914585186}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Rachel DeWoskinJennifer Mason|title=Repeat After MePreposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=September 1989: It is ''A struggling poetry zine, a mom-and-pop mobile diner in the Northern California redwoods, a few months after 400-meter hurdler who just missed the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing2004 Olympics, a women's track coach with a yen for bullwhips, China. Aysha is teaching English at a private language school in New York City. She makes friends billionaire with some a state-of her students. Da Ge is angry and disruptive yet attractive and interesting at -the same time-art S&M dungeon, and they quickly become involveda man serving a life sentence in Alabama, although his interest in her is not as romantic asan enigmatic signature, perhapsK(s, she would like it to be. He asks her to marry him so he can stay in the country. Aysha agreesx), although there is still on a lot she does not know about the mysteriouscheap oil painting, unstable Da Gean erotic art dealer in Georgia...|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0715638998</amazonuk>}}''
}}
