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[[Category:General Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]]==General fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreview|author=Clancy Martin|title=How To Sell|rating=3|genre=General Fiction|summary=In the 1980's, 16 year old Bobby Clark gets expelled from his high school in Canada for stealing. This is a young boy so immoral that he pilfers his own mother's wedding ring to pawn for cash to keep a girl happy. After the girl turns out to be less interested in him than he is in her, he follows his older brother Jim to Texas, where he gets a job working with Jim in a jewellery store. As he falls into a life of scams, drugs, hookers, gorgeous women, and an obsession with Jim's girlfriend Lisa, it's clear that this coming of age story is a tragedy waiting to happen.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099532182</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Patrick Marrinan|title=Degrees of Guilt|rating=3.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=The Police broke into the apartment in Sandymount Village in Dublin and woke Yuri Komarova rather roughly. He'd been drinking heavily, smoking dope and was difficult to arouse, but on the floor near his bed was the knife which he had apparently used to stab his mother to death. He seemed to have no memory of this but he spoke little English and had the mental age of a twelve-year old. An interpreter helped with the questioning and when the case came to trial his defence relied on proving that he had been sleep-walking at the time of the murder and had no intention of killing his mother. This is the most difficult defence to uphold and there was the added problem that Yuri seemed to have lied to the police when he told them that his mother had very little money as some Russian icons were found in a strongbox and they were worth several million Euros.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0709090749</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Katie KitamuraJenny Lecoat|title=The LongshotBeyond Summerland
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Cal and his long-time trainer Riley travel down to Jean lives on Jersey with her mother where they are celebrating the town end of Tijuana in Mexico for a crucial rematch with the undefeated champion Riveraoccupation. Three years earlier Cal During the war, Jean's promising career had been derailed following father was arrested for listening to a close yet devastating defeat at the hands banned radio and soldiers took him away one night, leaving Jean and her mother waiting for years for news of Riverahim. After that defeat Cal carried on fighting but never reached As the same heights as before. Now he British finally gets the chance to face his nemesis once more. The story takes place in free the two days before Channel islands from the rematch as he Nazis, and Riley prepare for the biggest fight of his lifewar is finally over, a fight their hopes rise that could once again end in tragedythey will finally learn what became of him. But will the truth come as a relief, or will it raise further questions around what else happened during the war? Who was the informer who told the Nazis about the radio? And what other secrets have been kept throughout the occupation?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847374999</amazonuk>1846976537
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Laurie GrahamOnyi Nwabineli|title=At SeaAllow Me to Introduce Myself|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=IAnuri spent her childhood on display to the world, thanks to her step-mother Ophelia've already read Grahams increasingly popular presence on social media, where she posted every step of Anuri's 'The Future Homemakers of Americachildhood for sponsorships and influencer deals and, basically, monetary gain.' It was goodNow Anuri is in her twenties and she is slowly trying to regain her confidence and to get her life back, but not particularly memorable so I was keen suing her step-mother to read this noveltake down the content about her. The reader Anuri is introduced battling alcoholism, failing to two vastly differing opposites in the shape of Mr start her PhD, undergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online and Mrs Finchreceiving money from them for doing so. WellMost importantly, Lady Enid (English) and Professor Bernard (American) Finchshe is desperately worried about her little sister, to be precise. And we're transported straight away onto who is the decks new focus of the liner 'Golden MemoriesOphelia' s online empire. Can she save her sister, and perhaps herself and Graham starts to have her fun: relationship with her father at the language, the characters and the whole set-up.same time?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1849162182</amazonuk>0861546873
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Laura Barton1529153298|title=Twenty-One LocksThe List of Suspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey|rating=45
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=This debut novelIt's central character 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is 20 year old sales girlPrime Minister. (A woman? I mean, Jeanniehonestly.. .) She lives a very humdrum life in a rather ugly's not what's worrying Miv's family, down-at-heel town in the norththough. Women have been disappearing. And straight away Barton treats the reader Well, they've been murdered, but to have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. Miv's upset because she's overheard that her lovelyfather wants to move the family 'Down South'. When you're from Yorkshire, Down South is a frightening, foreign place, descriptive prosebest avoided. For exampleMiv, when the reader is given some detail about Jeanniemove would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, and she's workplace at the perfume and cosmetics counter where ..ll do anything to prevent that. She's not worried about the lipsticks ... all lined up like chorus girls ...' Bartondangers or that her Mum's writing style is very easy stopped talking - to read, very fluid and I found myself getting right into the story straight away - and caring about Jeannieanyone.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849161747</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Anne Peile1035906708|title=Repeat It Today With TearsDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Repeat it Today with Tears follows the story We tend to think of SusannaMaria Callas as Greek, but she was born to Greek parents in Manhattan, a sixteen year old girl from a broken New York, in December 1923 and loveless home who obsessively collects information only moved to Athens when she was thirteen. Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to 'Callas' to make it more manageable in the back of a notebook about the father she has never metStates. When by chance she discovers was back in Athens - supposedly so that he still lives nearby she sets out deliberately to find could get appropriate training for her voice - she was raised under the Nazi occupation by a mother who mercilessly exploited her and seduce himmade no secret of her preference for her elder sister, Jackie.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687462</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Francine ProseAlexander McCall Smith|title=GoldengroveThe Perfect Passion Company
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=On The Perfect Passion Company is a hot day Nico dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and her older sister Margaret take operating as an alternative to all the online apps in providing a boat out onto Mirror Lakemore personal, but only Nico returns tailored service. Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and look after Margaret dives off the boat and doesn't resurfacebusiness, as Ness is planning to take a trip to Canada to get away for a while. Margaret's sudden death tears through Nico and her parents' livesKatie is coming out of a break up with a bad boyfriend, and each mourn for her in their own wayso jumps at the chance to come home to Edinburgh. Unable And so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us to find an Edinburgh we already love, thanks to 44 Scotland Street and the help she needs from her parentsIsabel Dalhousie novels, but with some new characters who are both consumed by their own grief quickly begin to help Nico to come to terms with her losscharm. Katie has no experience in running a business, Nico turns to the vast array of books or in Goldengrovematch-making, but Ness has full confidence in her father's bookshop, for answersabilities, and soon embarks on a dangerous relationship with Margaretthere's boyfriend Aaronalways her very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, William, the only person who seems to understand her grief.lend a hand…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848870361</amazonuk>1846976596
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Julie OrringerDean Koontz|title=The Invisible BridgeBad Weather Friend|rating=4.5|genre=General FictionParanormal|summary=In Benny is having a story that takes us from the elegance of Paristerrifically bad day. He loses his job, he loses his fiancee, through the streets of Budapest and on into the Hungarian countryside and the Ukraine this is an epic tale, masterfully toldhis house gets trashed. It is 1937 Oh, and Andras Levi, someone has delivered a young Hungarian Jewish studentreally weird, is about disturbing coffin-sized object to leave his brother Tibor to go home, and study architecture in Paris. Andrasit' story unfolds first amongst s possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the beautiful buildings of Paristhing that has trashed his house! The thing is, Benny is the theatres and very last person to deserve all this bad luck. He is a nice person. A really nice person. So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the barsdelivery to his house is a new friend, as he struggles in his studies and falls in love with a beautiful ballerina bad weather friend called Spike, who has been sent to help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a terrible secret to hidegood person. As the tragedy Spike is going to take care of Benny, and will certainly take care of World War 2 edges ever closer to AndrasBenny's enemies, the book moves back to Hungaryif he, to the little village where Andras and his brothers grew upBenny, to Budapest where his new family live and then on Harper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into the forced labour camps across HungaryBenny's wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0670914584</amazonuk>1662500491
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Maureen GibbonKatherine Howe|title=ThiefA True Account|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=It’s summer, and school teacher Suzanne is renting a cabin by a lake. Spending her days reading and swimming, she also finds time to engage in some old fashioned letter writing with a stranger who responded to a personal ad she placed. He’s currently an inmate at the state penitentiary, but Suzanne’s not one to judge, and agrees to give their correspondence a shot. Then she finds out what he’s in for – and it’s not pretty. Breville is a convicted thief and rapist, and Suzanne herself was raped as a teenager, by a friend’s brother. That should be the end of it: any sensible person would cut off all communication and turn their back on the situation. But Suzanne is different and though she’s acknowledges that it might not be the healthiest of relationships, she maintains the back and forth with Breville.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848871821</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Guy Fraser|title=Avenging the Dead|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=It's 1863 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 young age. When she hears there is to be a hanging of some pirates in the Superintendent covering the inner city area of Glasgow has his hands fulltown, she decides to go and watch. First off an alarming forgery scandal has just been discovered Enthralled and no sooner has he drawn breath than onehorrified in equal measure, Hannah finds herself embroiled in a young boy's death at the hands of two and counting suspicious deaths occurvicious pirates. InstinctivelyShe hides away, I want to say so that itthey don's all goodt find and kill her too, and then to escape them completely she runs away to sea, clean fun. Because it is. The language Fraser uses is very much of that era which lends the book dressing as a particular old-fashioned boy and rather twee, charm. Itjoining the notorious Ned Low's all over the book in spadespirate ship as a cabin boy. On almost every page. Let me give you just one endearing example of She soon finds herself in the flavour thick of the book 'None of Mrs Maitland's four regulars at things when there is a mutiny on board, and from there we are caught up in her superior guest house for single gentlemen would even dream rip roaring tale of taking another's seat life on the ocean waves...'|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0709090684</amazonuk>0861547438
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jodi Compton1471180158|title=Hailey's WarMaybe Tomorrow|author=Penny Parkes|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=At Jamie Matson works in an upper-class grocery store, for a man who's a control freak with all the beginning subtlety of a half brick. Jamie's son, Bo, 'has his problems'. He's asthmatic and the bookmore you read, Hailey Cain is a 23 year old cycle courierliving in San Franciscothe more you'll suspect that he's on the autistic spectrum. The story then takes Sometimes Jamie needs to take time off at short notice - she's a step back frequent flier in time the local A&E and wediscover that she had sometimes Bo's not fit enough to leave West Point Military Academy during herfinal year, for reasons she prefers go to keep to herselfschool. I continued to read under Missed shifts or the assumption that Hailey had done something which forced her need to leave. Hernext move is be away on time to L.A, where she spent pick Bo up from school are occasions when Jamie can be controlled and put in the latter part of her childhoodwrong.During these years, her mother with whom she has, at best, It was going to come to a very strained relationship is no source of comfort and Hailey develops a very close attachment to her cousin CJ. Aspects of this relationship make for uncomfortable reading at timeshead.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847373577</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Andrew GrantB0CKD1L5JL|title=Die Twice (David Trevellyan)Radio Free Olympia|author=Jeffrey Dunn
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The title Petr is very much at home an orphan. Rescued by the strange, reclusive Bear, he is brought up far from bustling cities and busy human society, in keeping with the thriller genre and itforests of Washington's both eye-catching Olympic Peninsula. After Bear dies and also has a perfectly reasonable explanation which comes right at the very end of the story. I must admit to thrillers generally not being my most favourite reading material. Some can be brief sojourn in human company, and armed with only a bit flashypirate radio transmitter, Petr goes on a bit trashy even. But not this novel. Right from journey through the start I felt I was in for a goodforest, intelligent read. There were pointers to this all over broadcasting the place. For startersstrange, David Trevellyan has a nice line in witty humour. There are numerous snazzy one-liners. It all went down very wellwild and rarely heard voices he encounters.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230747582</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jonathan LeeSarah Marsh|title=Who Is Mr Satoshi?A Sign of Her Own
|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The novel opens somewhere After a bout of scarlet fever as a child, Ellen Lark loses her hearing. Suddenly plunged into a world of silence, everything about her life changes. Living in a time when the Home Counties and Rob Fossick use of sign language was seen as something only savages do, Ellen is sent to a school where she is attending his mother's funeraltaught to lip read, but physically restrained from signing. The event From here, she ends up in itself is extremely distressing another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the deaf and also depressing for him; factor in that he's become a bit of using a recluse lately and I could feel the sheer loneliness creeping into Rob's very bonessystem called Visible Speech. Lee describes At the event as 'Zimmer framessame time, bifocalsBell is working on other inventions and ideas, trifocals, dark grey coats with yawning shoulders. The apparatus and Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a complicated tangle of old ageespionage.'|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0434020419</amazonuk>1035401614
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B0BC3YTCMR
|title=Good Girls Die
|author=Ayura Ayira
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=''This story is not for everyone.''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John Niven1472263936|title=The AmateursFigurine|author=Victoria Hislop|rating=45
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Gary Irvine only wants two things out of life. He'd like It was in 1968 that Helena McCloud made her first trip to have children and he wants to reduce his golf handicapGreece. Nothing extraordinary thereShe was alone: her mother, you might think except for Greek by birth, had left the fact that his wifefamily home and refused to return, Pauline, is planning to leave him for a self-made carpet millionaire but Mary and Gary is Hamish (Helena's parents) felt that it would be a dreadful golferpity if Helena grew up without knowing her grandparents or understanding her Greek heritage. His handicap is eighteen – but I'm not entirely certain how he got it down Her trip to that level the family apartment in up-market Kolonaki would be the first placeof several annual visits. His She grew to love her grandmother and the family doesn't give him much solace eithers maid, Dina, but was wary - and frightened - of her grandfather, retired general Stamatis Papagiannis. His brother Lee is on the fringes He was proud of his close connections to the local criminal underworld Junta and hasn't the wit expected his family to uphold his values but saw no reason to keep himself out of trouble with Ranta Campbell, the local overlordaccommodate them. Ranta could be quite likeable if it wasnHis prejudices included Helena's red hair and green eyes - inherited from her father't for his penchant for a certain type of violence designed to keep the others in line rather than to teach the victim a lessons Scottish ancestors.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099516667</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Adam RossDean Koontz|title=Mr PeanutAfter Death|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The main couple Michael Mace, Head of Security, at a top secret biological research facility, is among 55 people who tend to take centre stage here are called David and Alice Pepindie when a virus is released in a bio-hazard accident. They live Finding himself in a kind of comfortablemakeshift mortuary, middle-class life covered in busy and bustling Manhattan. After more than plastic, he has a decade of generally happy married life togethersense that something very, they want very bad has happened to take him – and only him – as he sits up and looks around at the next step shrouded bodies of his dead friends and have a familyformer colleagues. Easy to say but things donAs he recovers his senses, he realises that there is something different about him; he can ''feel''t quite work out according to planeverything. We are taken on various 'dark' journeys within their marriageEverything''. These are situations which most of us can identify with. Some of these situations are painful, stressful, unhappyMichael isn't ''Michael'' anymore.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0224087738</amazonuk>1662500467}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Nicholas ShakespeareB0BVDC2VWH|title=InheritanceThe Grave Listeners|author=William Frank
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Andy LarkhamThe village is isolated and poor. It's life surrounded by a Witching Forest. And the villagers subsist largely by farming Uphegia plants - its bread-like fruit provides nutrition and career are going nowhereits blossom provides herbal medicines. He works for a small publishing houseThe black wood of the forest provides heat and warmth, Carpe Diemroofs on homes, that specialises in publishing self-help booksand even gallows, his fiancée if needed. The fear of being buried alive is about to dump him an existential superstition in the village and he has no money and mountains of debt. And that's before we begin to talk about his dysfunctional family. His only real role model was is the Montaigne-loving teacherreason Volushka, Stuart Furnivalla drunken, whose funeral he is late for. But an unexpected inheritance of £17 million has a habit of changing one's outlook on life. But while he trades self-help for help yourselfindulgent, Andy also realises that he has inherited lazy lout of a mysteryman is tolerated.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846553156</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Cath StaincliffeB0BYF82CXT|title=The Kindest ThingSemi-Detached|author=Deborah Stone
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Imagine that your partner of twenty or so years discovers that they ''Bill and Amanda are dying from living in a terminal disease. Now imagine that they've asked you to help them to die semi-detached house, stuck in a little soonerdepressing rut of boredom and disappointment, when Terry and Fiona – glamorous, successful and very much in love – move in next door. Despite their different outlooks on their own terms. What would you do? This is life, the dilemma that faced Deborah and, after she went ahead couples befriend each other and helped her husband Neil life appears to dieimprove for both pairs. But all is not what it seems, she found herself charged and standing trial their increasingly interconnected relationships are fated for murder with her own teenage daughter, Sophie, testifying against hertragedy.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849012083</amazonuk>''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Eliza GrahamShalini Boland|title=JubileeThe Silent Bride|rating=4.53
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=As the village celebrates the Queen's Golden Jubilee two people can't help but think back to the Silver JubileeAlice and Seth are a match made in heaven. Evie Winter and her niece Rachel have vivid memories of the day when Evie's daughter Jessamy wandered off and the mystery of her disappearance He is everything she has never been solvedsearching for; handsome, accomplished, clever, funny; total and utter husband-material. She was eleven years oldis all he could possibly want in a wife; beautiful, brightsuccessful, athletic confident… and loved so the inevitable proposal is eagerly accepted by her mother Alice and the wedding is planned and cousinset. There would seem to be no explanation When the much-anticipated day arrives, Alice is walked down the aisle by her father, beaming with pride and excitement as she surveys the congregation – their friends assembled to why she might have disappeared of her own free will celebrate this joyful day and no evidence that when Seth turns to face his approaching bride, Alice's world implodes because she was abducted. Life has carried onabsolutely no idea who the man at the altar is, but it has not been the same. It has not been easywho is waiting for her to become his wife.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0330509268</amazonuk>1662507089
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Michael Robotham1787636003|title=Bleed For MeThe Girls of Summer|author=Katie Bishop|rating=45
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=An ex-detective is found dead in a pool of blood in his teenager's bedroom. She runs from It was the scene of summer when Rachel Evans turned eighteen that she and Caroline went backpacking around Greece and arrived on the crimeisland. Is this the easiest cutRachel wasn't exactly innocent but she was, perhaps, naive, so when thirty-four-andyear-dried case ever? This novel is told old Alistair Wright started to take an interest in the first person by the investigating psychologisther, Professor Joe O'Loughlinshe was flattered rather than wary. He's got It was quite a lot going on in his life right now. His health is not good so while before he's made any sort of physical approach to keep popping pills to try her and get through another working dayby that time she was obsessed by him. He's also newly separated and Alistair worked for Henry Taylor, looking after his daughters seem to talk a completely different language. He feels old interests on the island and very ragged round in particular in the edges. Into this mix, he discovers that bar where all the teenager everyone is talking about, the teenager who's been discussed and described as a cold-blooded killer, is his daughter's best friend. Could his life get any worse, he thinks. Yes. Big-timegirls either worked or partied.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847442188</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Catherine O'FlynnAmanda Craig|title=The News Where You AreThree Graces|rating=34.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The main character in this Few styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the state-of-the-nation novel is Frank Allcroft. Husband, father, son and also a bit of a minor celebrity as heThere's beamed into something so utterly compelling about any writer who can catch hold of the atmosphere of the region's television screens nightlyday and capture it, presenting crafting an image of the local newscountry as it stands in one particular moment. Make To say that minor Amanda Craig is skilled at doing this would be embarrassingly inadequate: she's practically synonymous with the genre of contemporary social fiction at this point. She has such a small 'm'. He comes across as gift for weaving the ongoing issues of the day into the lives of her characters in a likeableway that feels natural and lived-in, middle-aged mannever making them ciphers for social commentary but instead fully realised people, content grappling with his lot and with his home life. But he does have some personal issues to attend to. In particular, his grumpy, sometimes forgetful, elderly mother who is now living in a retirement home. Mother and son give each other lots of grief on a regular basisfar larger than themselves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0670918555</amazonuk>140871468X
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Mario Puzo152915118X|title=Six Graves to MunichPineapple Street|author=Jenny Jackson|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=In ''Pineapple Street'' is the dying days story of the Second World War Michael Roganthree women: Sasha, an American Intelligence officer was captured Darley and tortured Georgiana. Darley and George are sisters and Sasha is married to their brother Cord. They're Stocktons, only Sasha isn't a Stockton by a group of seven menbirth so she isn't readily accepted into the tribe. The problem's exacerbated when the clan matriarch, Tilda, most of whom were senior Gestapo officers trying asks Cord and Sasha if they'd like to obtain move into the secrets Pineapple Street property. Tilda and Chip have renovated and downsized to another property, a street or so away, which Rogan could give themthey own. His wife was They won't need any of the furniture from Pineapple Street, so Sasha and Cord can move straight in another room and he could hear her screams. Ten years laterNominally, when he they had recovered from the appalling injuries he suffered he made up his mind a choice but that he would avenge wasn't the death of his wife at reality. Darley and Georgiana start to call Sasha 'the hands of the seven mengold digger'. It She's no easy task as he doesnliving in ''their't even know who ' family home. They use it so often that they areabbreviate it to 'the GD'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184916276X</amazonuk>
}}
|rating=4
|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=Jericho, (who's female by 84 year old Edie has lived in the way)same small town for almost her whole life, but now she is facing a beautiful young womanmove 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. She's curious about However, Edie is tormented by the outside world so like many before memory of herchildhood friend, Lucy, who went missing over 60 years ago, and the worry that there was a secret she's taken was keeping for Lucy that somehow might be the thing that reveals the brave step truth of sampling life what happened all that time ago. After 'seeing' Lucy in a bigthe high street, just as she was the last time she saw her, bustling city. She returns she starts to find pockets of memories coming back to her home village with some rather pretentious airs ... And yet as she remembers the past, she is forgetting more and a rich suitor more in towher day to day life. By sheer coincidence JerichoWill she uncover the truth about Lucy's mother had attended an interview in disappearance before her past at move, and before her daughter's new boyfriend's family home. A veritable mansion with ' ... sweeping rooms that took longer than a river to cross.' 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 itmemories are gone forever?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1844086275</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=Don Boyd0008506337|title=Margot's SecretsThe Garnett Girls|author=Georgina Moore
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Margot is a psychologist who specialises in sexual disorders The love affair between Margo Garnett and obsessionspoet Richard O'Leary was all-consuming, apparently on both sides. She lives and works for herself Margo was just sixteen when they fell in Barcelona amongst the exlove. Richard was twenty-pat community, one and although 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 only has could achieve - going to Oxford and having a dozen or so clients at any one timeglittering career. In the event, spends much they eloped and Richard took her away from the Isle of her week living at her officeWight. Her clients, both male Margo did go to Oxford and femalewent on to become a well-respected journalist. The couple had three children: Rachel, are bewildering Imogen and fascinating Sasha. Life was lived in equal portionsLondon and holidays were spent at Sandcove, and the description family home on the Isle of Wight. Even then the therapy sessions make fascinating and revealing readingdoubts about Richard's drinking were never far from Margo's mind: ''she would never be able to leave him in charge''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0955405149</amazonuk>}}
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Patrick Woodhead1914585402|title=The Forbidden TempleDashboard Elvis is Dead|author=David F Ross|rating=34.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Luca, I reviewed David F Ross's book [[There's Only One Danny Garvey by David F Ross|There's Only One Danny Garvey]] a mountaineer trying to escape from his disappointingly unsupportive parents couple of years back and remember being absolutely floored by how powerful and affecting it was. It was a past accidentgripping, witnesses something strange in the distanceemotionally wounding read, while watching his climbing partner Bill put the kibosh and rereading my review of it my main takeaway was that I might not have lavished enough praise on their latest sky-bursting Himalayan ascent - a mountain shaped like a perfect pyramid, circled by other peaks he's never seen before. Back in England nobody else seems to have seen them either, but colleagues mention mysterious Shangri-La style Buddhist sanctuaries - could this be the prime one, hidden from prying eyes for centuries? Nobody wants to declare it actually exists at all. Meanwhile, Himalayan natives are trying to pull the wool over Chinese occupiers' eyes regarding a very sacred personage.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848090773</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ken McClureLucy Ashe|title=Dust to Dust (Steven Dunbar)Clara and Olivia|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=John Motram The year is a cell biologist1933. HeThe place? Sadler's a promising Wells. Ballerinas Clara and well-though of academic and his pet subject is - Black DeathOlivia are sisters, twins no less. Intrigue is high Identical on the agenda right from outside but not, we learn, on the beginninginside. And not on stage, either. Motram is invited to Because there's a lot that builds a meeting along with other high-fliers in their respective fieldsdancer. This meeting is top secretSome things that can be taught or learnt – discipline, attention to detail – and some things, that ''je ne sais quoi'', that don't come from the classroom. Motram isA stage presence, howevera charm, mystifieda ''joie de vivre''. The situation appears pretty straightforwarddifference between a hard-worker, so why all this cloak-and-dagger stuff, he wondersa star. And why has everyone to refer to the patient only as 'Patient X?'|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846971268</amazonuk>0861544080
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Robert RyanHeather Fawcett|title=Signal RedEmily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Ryan Emily Wilde is an expert academic scholar on faerie lore, and she has certainly travelled extensively, and researched thoroughly for this novel - and it shows. Straight away the blurb on the back cover tells us theremeticulously, to write her life's an 'afterword' by Bruce Reynoldswork, no less than the ringmaster/leader very first encyclopaedia of the Great Train Robbery gangfaeries. Notice how it's always given capital lettersWhilst she is brilliant at research and speaking to faeries, she is not so good with people. Even all these decades down the lineSo when she finds herself far, those readers of a certain age remember it and perhaps shake their head far North in amazement. And there's also a very useful 'aftermath' section as Ryan painstakingly sets out all the robbers' names and what's happened since that date in the summer small village of 1963. PerhapsHrafvsnik, like othershaving somehow offended the village matriarch, I also assumed the leadershe is not sure what she has done, nor how to redeem herself and put her final investigations for her book back on the top man if you like, was Ronnie Biggsright track. No soEnter Wendell Bambleby, her dashingly handsome and insufferable rival who arrives unexpectedly, all charm and delight, apparentlymuch to Emily's frustration. I also remember television footage of his release from prison on compassionate grounds only a year or so ago. But why is he here? The crime seems to have achieved almost mythical proportions - What does he want? some would say it's up there And what exactly is going on with what were you doing when JFK was assassinatedthe faerie folk around Hravsnik?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>075535818X</amazonuk>0356519120
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Giles Milton1398515388|title=According to Arnold: A Novel of Love The Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and MushroomsAlison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Arnold Trevellyan’s ordinary life as a charismatic auctioneer is about to change First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, in ways he could never have imaginedturn, caused the nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and utter devastation. Encouraged by his wife Flora to take a sabbaticalThe deaths were uncountable, and the two head to a remote region loss of France to indulge Arnold’s passion for mushroomslivelihoods was widespread. Whilst out in The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the forest hunting for rare mushrooms Arnold stumbles across tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a secret hidden for centuriesdog outside a convenience store. This secret makes him abandon Flora He wasn't a dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and their life together for Tamon the island of Tuva dog jumped in the South Pacific where he soon finds himself married to Lola, its queen.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330452517</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Chuck PalahniukChristopher Bowden|title=Tell-AllMr Magenta
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Meet Katherine Kenton. A movie star Christopher Bowden's latest novel is a patient untangling of great renown, shea seemingly ordinary woman's always on TV as someone famous - or the wife of somebody who happens to be famous and male, whether they were actually ever wedded. She herself has had copious real-life marriages, making somebody carried out of by her nephew after she has died. The aunt who always provided a nobody on many an instance. Her shelves of 'best lifetime' awards are groaning, safe harbour and their dusting is a job akin little bit of indulgence to painting the Forth bridge. The person who dusts them is narrator for this book, but she does a young nephew had had a much more interesting life than that. She is everything to "Miss Kathie" - general housekeeper, housemate, and string-puller. But what might those strings be being pulled for? When Katherine meets a new toyboy, nephew Stephen had ever realised and our narrator it seems to get in the way, him an obligation to what purpose might this be?find it all out. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0224087150</amazonuk>B0B6Z9VJDW
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Caryl PhillipsJennifer Mason|title=In the Falling SnowPartitions of Unity
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=We are introduced to the central character Keith right away Here at Bookbag Towers, we first met Elizabeth Cromwell, dominatrix and discover lots about him. His personal unintentional detective in [[Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery by Jennifer Mason|Preposterous]], when she investigated and professional CV is laid bare before usunravelled a series of disappearances. HeIn ''Partitions of Unity''s one mixed up, middle-aged, not-quite-middle-class man. He appears to be rather weak-willed and almost seems she sets her mind to fall into situations, rather than choose to be part of them. When in his marital relationship (now on solving a downward spiral), his wife most definitely wore the trousersmurder. I found Keith a very infuriating person. I wanted to take him by the scruff and give him a good old shake and then shout 'wake up and smell the coffee, before it's too late.'|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099539748</amazonuk>B09LQR9FRF
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|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Najat El-Hachmi's debut novel, The Last Patriarch is a difficult book - both in terms of content and style. It's a story of physical and sexual abuse Five strangers come together in one moment as a patriarchal Moroccan family, an immigrant story, when first the father and then the family move suicide bomber prepares to Catalonia, and ultimately detonate his vest on a story of the narrator, the patriarch's daughter, breaking free of her past as she takes on different cultural valuesLondon tube line. Narrated entirely from the perspective of the patriarch, Mimoun Driouch's unnamed daughterAs their fates overlap, the story is also concerned with cultural and imagined historiestold in backwards order, and leading up to the importance of origin storiesfateful moment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846687179</amazonuk>1914585186}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sarah BlakeJennifer Mason|title=The PostmistressPreposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The reader is in no doubt that a war is raging. 'And bombs were falling on Coventry'A struggling poetry zine, London a mom-and Kent. Sleek metal pellets shaped like -pop mobile diner in the Northern California redwoods, a 400-meter hurdler who just missed the blunt tipped ends of pencils ...2004 Olympics, a women' The Americans howevers track coach with a yen for bullwhips, are carrying on a billionaire with their daily lives regardless. They are completely unfazed and uninvolved. Apart from one or twoa state-of-the-art S&M dungeon, 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 a lone voice blowing man serving a life sentence in the wind. AlsoAlabama, an enigmatic signature, K(s, as you may expectx), there are plenty of raised eyebrows as to why on a woman is doing a mancheap oil painting, an erotic art dealer in Georgia...'s job. She should be at the kitchen sink or having babies, shouldn't she?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670918687</amazonuk>}}
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