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[[Category:General Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]]==General fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Diane ChamberlainJenny Lecoat|title=Breaking the SilenceBeyond Summerland
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=As I've reviewed several Jean lives on Jersey with her mother where they are celebrating the end of Chamberlain's previous books and enjoyed them, I was looking forward to getting stuck in to this onethe occupation. We meet During the central character; wife and mother to five-year-old Emmawar, Laura. SheJean's distraught. Her father (Emma's grandfather) has just passed was arrested for listening to a banned radio and soldiers took him away but his dying wish has really upset Lauraone night, leaving Jean and her mother waiting for years for news of him. It's a strange request As the British finally free the Channel islands from the Nazis, and she doesn't know the war is finally over, their hopes rise that they will finally learn what to make became of ithim. She confides in her husband thinking that two heads are better than one. He's But will the truth come as a brilliant academic and could give some much-needed advice. But he doesn't. In factrelief, he behaves like a five-year-old himself and almost has a tantrum. or will it raise further questions around what else happened during the war? Odd. Who was the informer who told the Nazis about the radio? Now poor Laura's doubly confused, upset and doesn't know how to handle her grief. Tough times.And what other secrets have been kept throughout the occupation?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0778304140</amazonuk>1846976537
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Lola ShoneyinOnyi Nwabineli|title=The Secret Lives Allow Me to Introduce Myself|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Anuri spent her childhood on display to the world, thanks to her step-mother Ophelia's increasingly popular presence on social media, where she posted every step of Anuri's childhood for sponsorships and influencer deals and, basically, monetary gain. Now Anuri is in her twenties and she is slowly trying to regain her confidence and to get her life back, suing her step-mother to take down the content about her. Anuri is battling alcoholism, failing to start her PhD, undergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online and receiving money from them for doing so. Most importantly, she is desperately worried about her little sister, who is the new focus of Baba SegiOphelia's Wivesonline empire. Can she save her sister, and perhaps herself and her relationship with her father at the same time?|isbn=0861546873}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1529153298|title=The List of Suspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The Secret Lives of Baba SegiIt's Wives 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is one of those books that you read with a smile on your facePrime Minister. (A woman? I mean, honestly... It) She's not what's worrying Miv's full of gloriously unsavoury characters caught in a terrible web of deceitfamily, though. Women have been disappearing. We are promised Well, they'four womenve been murdered, one husband and a devastating secretbut to have 'disappeared' and it delivers on all three counts. Sure the secret is quite well signposted and Shoneyin doesn't really make much of an effort sound quite so frightening. Miv's upset because she's overheard that her father wants to divert move the reader family 'Down South'. When you're from putting two and two togetherYorkshire, Down South is a frightening, although it takes wife number fourforeign place, Bolanlebest avoided. For Miv, an inordinate amount of time for the penny move would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, and she'll do anything to drop, but itprevent that. She's not worried about discovering the deception - itdangers or that her Mum's about the glorious journey of how things unfoldstopped talking - to anyone.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687497</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Cornelius Medvei1035906708|title=Caroline: A MysteryDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Meet Mr Shaw. He's an insurance worker who takes his wife and son off on their annual vacation one yearWe tend to think of Maria Callas as Greek, and finds himself indulging but she was born to Greek parents in a surprisingly platonic holiday romance. The subject of his infatuationManhattan, CarolineNew York, has eyes, ears, hair in December 1923 and more that easily combine with Mr Shaw's fondness for classical Persian love poetryonly moved to Athens when she was thirteen. At the end of the holiday he lets his wife and son depart while he takes a further week off Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to 'Callas' to walk all make it more manageable in the way home with CarolineStates. Who isWhen she was back in Athens - supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for her voice - she was raised under the Nazi occupation by a mother who mercilessly exploited her and made no secret of her preference for her elder sister, as it happens, a donkeyJackie.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846553881</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Steve MartinAlexander McCall Smith|title=An Object of BeautyThe Perfect Passion Company
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Leave aside The Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and operating as an alternative to all the title of online apps in providing a more personal, tailored service. Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the book business, as Ness is planning to take a trip to Canada to get away for a minute, the book itself while. Katie is also 'an object coming out of beauty' a break up with its striking front cover a bad boyfriend, and primary colours artfully arrangedso jumps at the chance to come home to Edinburgh. And then I turned so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, thanks to 44 Scotland Street and the book over and said Isabel Dalhousie novels, but with some new characters who quickly begin to myselfcharm. Katie has no experience in running a business, ohor in match-making, itbut Ness has full confidence in her abilities, and there's ''that'' Steve Martinalways her very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, William, to lend a hand…|isbn=1846976596}}{{Frontpage|author=Dean Koontz|title=The Bad Weather Friend|rating=4.5|genre=Paranormal|summary=Benny is having a terrifically bad day. I knew He loses his job, he was loses his fiancee, and his house gets trashed. Oh, and someone has delivered a really weird, disturbing coffin- sized object to his home, and is - a very funny actor but I didnit't know s possible that he whoever or whatever was also inside is the thing that has trashed his house! The thing is, Benny is the very last person to deserve all this bad luck. He is a writernice person. A really nice person. Sofortunately for Benny it turns out that the delivery to his house is a new friend, before I'd even opened the book I was thinking - will he be as good a writer as he bad weather friend called Spike, who has been sent to help him since Benny is an actorclearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a good person. I was about Spike is going to find take care of Benny, and will certainly take care of Benny's enemies, if he, Benny, and Harper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's wild adventure) can figure out ..who exactly they are.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0297863290</amazonuk>1662500491
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tom CampbellKatherine Howe|title=FoldA True Account|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Five men Hannah Masury is living in Reading circulate their monthly poker evenings around their respective housesBoston, having been sent to live with a family who run an inn, and being made to work there from a young age. None When she hears there is to be a hanging of them like all some pirates in the otherstown, none of them seem she decides to completely like the gamego and watch. Enthralled and horrified in equal measure, but theyHannah finds herself embroiled in a young boy're more-or-less happy with s death at the habithands of two vicious pirates. ItShe hides away, so that they don's the way the five different personalities approach the evenings that we are concerned witht find and kill her too, and enjoy principallythen to escape them completely she runs away to sea, especially when dressing as a boy and joining the poorest player, Nick, decides to clash with his polar opposite, Dougnotorious Ned Low's pirate ship as a cabin boy. And what might happen if She soon finds herself in the thick of things when there is a non-playing character were to enter thingsmutiny on board, and make them even feistier?from there we are caught up in her rip roaring tale of life on the ocean waves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408807602</amazonuk>0861547438
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Francois Lelord1471180158|title=Hector and the Secrets of LoveMaybe Tomorrow|author=Penny Parkes
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Professor Cormorant has gone AWOLJamie Matson works in an upper-class grocery store, for a man who's a control freak with all the subtlety of a half brick. Tasked with developing drugs to cure a lot of illsJamie's son, by making us fall in loveBo, he 'has fled with his secretsproblems'. He's asthmatic and the more you read, his prototypes, and a few samples the more you'll suspect that may or may not be dangeroushe's on the autistic spectrum. It is down Sometimes Jamie needs to Hector, take time off at short notice - she's a psychiatrist, to chase him down, work out where Cormorant is frequent flier in his researches, the local A&E and if possible help bring the trade secrets back sometimes Bo's not fit enough to go to the company his girlfriend, and now himself, works forschool. With Missed shifts or the exotic far East his destination, a partner left behind, and need to be away on time on his hand to muse on pick Bo up from school are occasions when Jamie can be controlled and put in the subject of love, will Hector find more than just wrong. It was going to come to a bunch of chemicals in a syringe?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906040338</amazonuk>head.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Edward WrightB0CKD1L5JL|title=From BloodRadio Free Olympia|author=Jeffrey Dunn
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=While I'm not mad about Petr is an orphan. Rescued by the titlestrange, reclusive Bear, the book's cover he is atmospherically good - it says to the reader 'please pick me brought up far from bustling cities and read me.busy human society, in the forests of Washington' So I dids Olympic Peninsula. The book opens After Bear dies and a brief sojourn in 1960s America human company, and armed with only a pirate radio transmitter, Petr goes on a journey through the Prologue. A bunch of radical thinkers are angry. They turn this pent-up anger into a well-oiledforest, well-ordered act of violence. Lives are lost. But broadcasting the perpetrators are clever strange, wild and most of them escape justice. They do what many around the world have done before them; they go underground. But several key members are still at large ..rarely heard voices he encounters.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0752891774</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=David LindsleySarah Marsh|title=The Darkfall SwitchA Sign of Her Own
|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The book opens on After a bout of scarlet fever as a child, Ellen Lark loses her hearing. Suddenly plunged into a sultryworld of silence, hot summer's day in central Londoneverything about her life changes. Imagine Living in a time when the stifling heat use of sign language was seen as something only savages do, Ellen is sent to a school where she is the subliminal message taught to lip read, but physically restrained from signing. From here, especially for those passengers on the underground - ' ... as if they were all joined she ends up in some macabre dance as another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the train rattled along the tunnel. Everybody pressed against others.' Suddenly there's deaf and using a problem with the infrastructuresystem called Visible Speech. A big problem. As At the experts frantically work behind the scenes to get London moving again - the unthinkable happens. People lose their lives same time, Bell is working on other inventions and ideas, and Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in what appears to be a power cutcomplicated tangle of espionage.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>070909146X</amazonuk>1035401614
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Alan LorberB0BC3YTCMR|title=Benny Allen Was A Star: A New York Music StoryGood Girls Die|author=Ayura Ayira|rating=34.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Alan Lorber has written a fictional and I suspect a semi autobiographical account of his years as a top music arranger in the 1950's and early 1960's, a period of huge change in the music industry culminating with the breakthrough of the Beatles in America. Rather than simply writing a factual narrative of his involvement during this period he decided to tell the This story of the fictional Benny Allen, a classically trained musician who almost by accident gets involved in the music publishing business and then goes on to produce some hugely successful orchestrations on many of the top hit records of the timeis not for everyone.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B0041VXCTA</amazonuk>}}''
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Elfriede Jelinek1472263936|title=The Piano TeacherFigurine|author=Victoria Hislop|rating=45|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=Erika is a single woman It was in 1968 that Helena McCloud made her thirtiesfirst trip to Greece. She was alone: her mother, whoGreek by birth, despite had left the best efforts of her mother, did not succeed as a concert musicianfamily home and refused to return, but instead works as Mary and Hamish (Helena's parents) felt that it would be a teacher at the Vienna Conservatorypity if Helena grew up without knowing her grandparents or understanding her Greek heritage. I say best efforts, I mean outright pressureHer trip to the family apartment in up-market Kolonaki would be the first of several annual visits. Erika She grew to love her grandmother and her mother make for an unusual relationship - the older relying on the gloryfamily's maid, Dina, company but was wary - and complete obedience frightened - of the youngerher grandfather, the daughter sharing a bed with her mother even at this stage of her liferetired general Stamatis Papagiannis. All this is until a young student at He was proud of his close connections to the school decides he will be a younger lover for Erika, Junta and forces expected his will into the householdfamily to uphold his values but saw no reason to accommodate them. But who, should such a relationship actually form, is going to be the powerHis prejudices included Helena's red hair and green eyes -maker?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687373</amazonuk>inherited from her father's Scottish ancestors.
}}
{{Frontpage|author=Dean Koontz|title=After Death|rating=3|genre=General Fiction|summary= Michael Mace, Head of Security, 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 sits up and looks around at the shrouded bodies of his dead friends and former colleagues. As he recovers his senses, he realises that there is something different about him; he can ''feel'' everything. ''Everything''. Michael isn't ''Michael'' anymore.|isbn=1662500467}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Maria Angels AngladaB0BVDC2VWH|title=The Auschwitz ViolinGrave Listeners|author=William Frank
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=In Poland in the early 1990s, a violin sings. The maestro who owns it produces such a music from it, people are forced to take notevillage is isolated and poor. TheyIt'd be even more amazed if she could bring herself to state exactly how the instrument came to bes surrounded by a Witching Forest. For this was And the work of Daniel, suffering in a subsidiary camp to Auschwitzvillagers subsist largely by farming Uphegia plants - its bread-Birkenaulike fruit provides nutrition and its blossom provides herbal medicines. StumblesThe black wood of the forest provides heat and warmth, chancesroofs on homes, half-liesand even gallows, all conspire to allow Daniel to take time off his enforced labour if needed. The fear of being buried alive is an existential superstition in the village and engage in his real-world career. But that is there the reason Volushka, a price to pay in doing something you lovedrunken, self-indulgent, just for lazy lout of a man you can only hate?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849016437</amazonuk>is tolerated.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Bethan DarwinB0BYF82CXT|title=Two Times TwentySemi-Detached|author=Deborah Stone
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=You can tell from the beginning of this novel that you're 'Bill and Amanda are living in Wales. The young Anna (as we travel back a semi-detached house, stuck in time) is meeting what will be long-term friendsa depressing rut of boredom and disappointment, Bob when Terry and Jane. We find Anna rather proudly introducing her two young sons Fiona – glamorous, successful and Bob butting very much in love – move in with 'Duwnext door. Despite their different outlooks on life, good-sized boys the couples befriend each other and life appears to improve for their age .both pairs.. Make good rugby players one day.' But the Welsh location and all things Welsh is given a subtle touchnot what it seems, and their increasingly interconnected relationships are fated for tragedy.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>190678423X</amazonuk>''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Adrian DawsonShalini Boland|title=CODEXThe Silent Bride|rating=4.53
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=When I read the resume on the back cover I immediately thought that it was going to be one of those high-octaneAlice and Seth are a match made in heaven. He is everything she has been searching for; handsome, accomplished, action every second paragraphclever, type of thrillersfunny; total and utter husband-material. All action She is all he could possibly want in a wife; beautiful, successful, confident… and so the inevitable proposal is eagerly accepted by Alice and perhaps very little substancethe wedding is planned and set. I was happily proved wrong. And very early on in When the much-anticipated day arrives, Alice is walked down the novelaisle by her father, beaming with pride and excitement as wellshe surveys the congregation – their friends assembled to celebrate this joyful day and when Seth turns to face his approaching bride, Alice's world implodes because she has absolutely no idea who the man at the altar is, which was goodwho is waiting for her to become his wife.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0956577008</amazonuk>1662507089
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Peter Durantine1787636003|title=The Chocolate AssassinGirls of Summer|author=Katie Bishop|rating=45
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=In It was the final days of the Second World War as summer when Rachel Evans turned eighteen that she and Caroline went backpacking around Greece and arrived on the allied guns came ever closer a young German was sent on a secret mission to Americaisland. He Rachel wasn't exactly innocent but she was only in his late teens but still resisted telling anyone, including the Uperhaps, naive, so when thirty-four-boat captain who took him across the Atlantic, about the nature of his mission. Fifty five years later the Uyear-boat captain, Eric Hoest, long settled old Alistair Wright started to take an interest in the Statesher, she was murdered at his beach homeflattered rather than wary. Samuel Grey, police detective It was quite a while before he made any sort of physical approach to her and part-by that time student she was called in to investigate the murderobsessed by him. The local police chief thought that Alistair worked for Henry Taylor, looking after his interests on the most likely murderer was island and in particular in the neighbour who had reported bar where all the crime, but Grey suspected that the truth was hidden somewhere in Hoest's backgroundgirls either worked or partied.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1451579527</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sheila O'FlanaganAmanda Craig|title=A Season to RememberThree Graces|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=We first meet Few styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the Lodge owners, a likable couplestate-of-the-nation novel. They find running their upmarket country house type hotel both exhilarating and exhausting. The novel is bang up to date There's something so O'Flanagan gets in utterly compelling about any writer who can catch hold of the whole recession/banker-bashing thing early on. As atmosphere of the festive season loomsday and capture it, crafting an image of the unthinkable has happenedcountry as it stands in one particular moment. Empty rooms. TheyTo say that Amanda Craig is skilled at doing this would be embarrassingly inadequate: she're not used to empty rooms, s practically synonymous with the genre of contemporary social fiction at any time this point. She has such a gift for weaving the ongoing issues of the year. Normally day into the Lodge is lives of her characters in a full house. But then a slow way that feels natural and steady trickle starts as our characters book lived-in - and the story starts proper, so to speaknever making them ciphers for social commentary but instead fully realised people, grappling with issues far larger than themselves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0755375157</amazonuk>140871468X
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jack Everett and David Coles152915118X|title=Last Mission: the last hours of the Third ReichPineapple Street|author=Jenny Jackson|rating=34.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=We first meet a couple ''Pineapple Street'' is the story of characters living in the United Statesthree women: Sasha, Darley and Georgiana. A husband Darley and wife George are sisters and Sasha is married to their brother Cord. They're Stocktons, only Sasha isn't a relation of theirs called PaulStockton by birth so she isn't readily accepted into the tribe. On The problem's exacerbated when the surfaceclan matriarch, Tilda, asks Cord and Sasha if they appear 'd like to move into the Pineapple Street property. Tilda and Chip have renovated and downsized to be enjoying happyanother property, a street or so away, normal liveswhich they own. But all is not what is seemsThey won't need any of the furniture from Pineapple Street, so Sasha and Cord can move straight in. We soon find out Nominally, they had a choice but that wasn't the husband, Carl has some secretsreality. Pretty big onesDarley and Georgiana start to call Sasha 'the gold digger'. He keeps a picture of Adolph Hitler on display - somewhere - She's living in his ''their'' family home, for example. Links with Germany and his past life are They use it so often talked about, or rather whispered about, with a handful of trusted that they abbreviate it to 'acquaintancesthe GD' over a beer or two.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>095653421X</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Mary E MartinEmily Critchley|title=The Drawing Lesson: The First in the Trilogy of RemembranceOne Puzzling Afternoon
|rating=4
|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=Alexander Wainwright is the UK's premier artist. He's just won the Turner with ''The Hay Wagon'' – a painting with a luminous, moonlit landscape. He should be at 84 year old Edie has lived in the peak of his powerssame small town for almost her whole life, but he's about now she is facing a move as her son wants to move to lose his muse another house and, more worryingly, there seems bring Edie to be something wrong live with his sight and the year to come family, as Edie is going starting to be traumaticlose her memory. The story of it However, Edie is told tormented by his the memory of her childhood friend, art dealer Jamie HelmsworthLucy, who has pieced together what he knowswent missing over 60 years ago, what he's heard – and used the worry that there was a little artistic licence to fill in secret she was keeping for Lucy that somehow might be the thing that reveals the gapstruth of what happened all that time ago. ItAfter 's a most unusual story which will take you deep into seeing' Lucy in the high street, just as she was the world last time she saw her, she starts to find pockets of artists memories coming back to her. And yet as she remembers the past, she is forgetting more and writersmore in her day to day life. Will she uncover the truth about Lucy's disappearance before her move, and before her memories are gone forever?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1450229360</amazonuk>1804181250
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Madelaine Lucas
|title=Thirst for Salt
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= ''Love, I'd read, was supposed to be a light and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity''
Told from a retrospective view, a young woman unravels the year-long relationship that once defined her. Overlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the affair with a man twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the summer after. Set against the backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the 24-year-old narrator's deepening relationship with her older lover, depicting its all-consuming nature, how it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably.|isbn=0861546490}}{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Cathleen Schine0008506337|title=The Three Weissmanns of WestportGarnett Girls|author=Georgina Moore|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The novel begins with Joseph Weissmannlove affair between Margo Garnett and poet Richard O'Leary was all-consuming, or Josie apparently on both sides. Margo was just sixteen when they fell in love. Richard was twenty-one and described by Margo's mother as he is known'an older man'. Her parents worried that Richard's influence would take her away from what they felt she could achieve - going to Oxford and having a glittering career. In the event, deciding at they eloped and Richard took her away from the age Isle of 78 that he no longer wants Wight. Margo did go to be married Oxford and went on to Betty after 48 years togetherbecome a well-respected journalist. In an attempt to save Betty's feelings he cites irreconcilable differencesThe couple had three children: Rachel, but the truth is he has fallen head over heels in loveImogen and Sasha. Betty is devastated, her life Life was lived in tattersLondon and holidays were spent at Sandcove, with even the beautiful Central Park apartment family home on the Isle of Wight. Even then the doubts about Richard's drinking were never far from Margo's mind: ''she adores soon lost would never be able to herleave him in charge''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849015716</amazonuk>Then Richard left them.
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John Irving1914585402|title=Last Night in Twisted RiverDashboard Elvis is Dead|author=David F Ross
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=We start in 1954, in the middle of nowhere, in I reviewed David F Ross's book [[There's Only One Danny Garvey by David F Ross|There's Only One Danny Garvey]] a log-cutters' encampment. The cook lives alone with his twelve year old son, in some kind couple of comfort - a decent job, familiarity with the harsh surroundings years back and remember being absolutely floored by how powerful and the hardened people inhabiting affecting itwas. But a pair of tragedies - one involving a fatal work accident with a young teenager new to the job, force the pair to flee. They leave behind It was a red herring that they hope will force the local brutal policeman to get the wrong impressiongripping, and a best friend in the shape of Ketchum, the most hardened logger in the camp as a kind of safety-netemotionally wounding read, but their destiny, spread over the next few generations, will prove to still be populated with tragedy, romance, despair - and the constant look over their shoulder to the tiny settlement rereading my review of Twisted Riverit my main takeaway was that I might not have lavished enough praise on it.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0552776572</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tony BaylissLucy Ashe|title=Past ContinuousClara and Olivia|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=The author's note tells the reader that this book 'was inspired by the suicide of the author's son.' Chapter 1 opens with the reader being in no doubt that the schoolboy Matthew has a knack with computers. He's a bit of a whiz-kid. He's also shy and tongue-tied which makes him a bit of a loner as well. He stands out at school for all the wrong reasons but he's coping with it - just. And early on in the book we meet Sophie. She's a big part of this book. She's around Matthew's age. She is bright and clever. Her adoptive parents would probably say that she's too clever for her own good.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907230173</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Sam Hayes|title=Someone Else's Son|rating=45
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The book opens with Carrie Kentyear is 1933. The place? Sadler's Wells. Successful television presenter Ballerinas Clara and mother of teenagerOlivia are sisters, Maxtwins no less. Ms Kent immediately comes across as hard-headedIdentical on the outside but not, business-likewe learn, aloof and rather distant but that's on the whole pointinside. And not on stage, of courseeither. Very good at her day job. But as Because there's a mother? Her television show is lot that builds a reality programmedancer. Some things that can be taught or learnt – discipline, dealing with wellattention to detail – and some things, basically that ''je ne sais quoi'', that don't come from the dregs of society: singleclassroom. A stage presence, young mumsa charm, drug addicts etc. Carrie knows that these people keep her in designer shoes and bags but she keeps them at arma ''joie de vivre's length. She wouldn't want to catch something. Carrie sails through her life with The difference between a selfhard-satisfied smile on her face. You can just tellworker, and a star.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0755349873</amazonuk>0861544080
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Brooke MorganHeather Fawcett|title=TrappedEmily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Ellie Walters Emily Wilde is 36an expert academic scholar on faerie lore, divorced and keen she has travelled extensively, and researched meticulously, to start a new life away from write her cheating and control-freak ex-husband. Fulfilling a life-long dream's work, the very first encyclopaedia of faeries. Whilst she decides is brilliant at research and speaking to take her 15-year-old sonfaeries, Timshe is not so good with people. So when she finds herself far, to live with her far North in the small town village of Bourne. As she soon becomes good friends with her next-door neighbourHrafvsnik, Louisa Amoryhaving somehow offended the village matriarch, Ellie finally feels she is making a life of her own. She begins to feel a sense of freedom and independence but for not sure what she has done, nor how long? When strange events start occurring Ellie is forced to face some painful redeem herself and guilty memories connected to a tragic accident nineteen years ago; memories which she would rather forget. It is clear that someone has discovered put her well-kept secret and is reluctant to let final investigations for her forget about it. As a campaign of terror against Ellie unfolds she must come to terms with what happened all those years ago and try to discover who her tormentor is. Vulnerable and afraid, she relies book back on Louisa's friendship to help her through the ordealright track. However Enter Wendell Bambleby, when a misunderstanding causes a rift between Ellie her dashingly handsome and Louisa's soninsufferable rival who arrives unexpectedly, Joeall charm and delight, the womenmuch to Emily's friendship frustration. But why is he here? What does he want? And what exactly is threatened. Alone and afraid, she suddenly finds herself trapped in a nightmare from which she must do all she can to escape.going on with the faerie folk around Hravsnik?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099536285</amazonuk>0356519120
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Margaret Atwood1398515388|title=The Handmaid's TaleBoy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=In First of all, it was the near-future USA that they call Gileadearthquake, society has changed. For deep in the worse, of course. The population is dying outocean floor, which created the tsunami and people who are capable of breeding the next generation are given a cherished status of Handmaid - gifted to any male of enough esteemthis, called a Commanderin turn, who balances caused the household with his wife nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and what is practically a walking wombutter devastation. Other women get drudge workThe deaths were uncountable, or run horrid finishing schools for and the Handmaids, or are packed off to what are reported to be polluted hellholes abroad, for laborious work for lifeloss of livelihoods was widespread. Men are restricted too The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - Handmaids are offsix months after the tsunami -limits to everybody but their Commander, and those households are patrolled carefully by other eunuch typesKazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. ItHe wasn't a dog person but the convenience store owner's up comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to our nameless narrator open his car door and main character, however, to show us just how cherished Tamon the status of Handmaid feelsdog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099511665</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Carmine AbateChristopher Bowden|title=The Homecoming Party|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Every year young Marco eagerly awaits his father's return, when he can for a few months spend precious time with him before he leaves again. Marco's father Tullio is a migrant worker forced through poverty to work in Northern France doing hard manual work. In this way he manages to earn enough to help his family have a decent living. The family, his eldest daughter Elise now at college, Marco his only son and a younger sister known only as 'la piccola' along with his wife and elderly mother live in Calabria, an economically depressed area of southern Italy. They belong to the minority Arberesh community, descended from Albanian immigrants settling small villages in the mountainous regions of La Sila. Just as the Calabrian people are looked down upon by other Italians the Arberesh people are even looked down upon by the Calabrians.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1933372834</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Chris Kuzneski|title=The Secret CrownMr Magenta
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The riddle Christopher Bowden's latest novel is the whole crux a patient untangling of the book. So wea seemingly ordinary woman're taken right back, albeit brieflys life, to Bavaria in the year 1886, via the Prologuecarried out by her nephew after she has died. So, the scene is now set, foul play is most definitely afoot The aunt who always provided a safe harbour and lots a little bit of questions should pop into the reader's mind. Such as who? Why? etc. So far, so good, I thought. We then fast-forward straight indulgence to present-day Germany a young nephew had had a much more interesting life than that nephew Stephen had ever realised and due it seems to him an unfortunate hunting accident, something which was a secret, is no longerobligation to find it all out.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0241952123</amazonuk>B0B6Z9VJDW
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Padgett PowellJennifer Mason|title=The Interrogative MoodPartitions of Unity|rating=2.54
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=SoHere at Bookbag Towers, what is a novel? Does it need a plotwe first met Elizabeth Cromwell, dominatrix and unintentional detective in [[Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery by Jennifer Mason|Preposterous]], climax when she investigated and resolution? Characters who grow? A setting? Themes which explore the human condition? And must it entertain? Padgett Powell challenges our perceptions unravelled a series of disappearances. In ''Partitions of fiction with a book that explores what it is Unity'', she sets her mind to be solving a novel, but without any preconditionsmurder. How far he succeeds is down to the individual reader. But I thought I'd give it a go.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846683661</amazonuk>B09LQR9FRF
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ken FollettWill Carver|title=Fall of GiantsThe Daves Next Door|rating=54
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=This is Five strangers come together in one moment as a suicide bomber prepares to detonate his vest on a thumping, great read at 850 pagesLondon tube line. We meet a clutch of families who are all vastly different in terms of class, outlookAs their fates overlap, values etc. I have to admit at the outset that this story is the first Ken Follett book I've read even although two of his previous books are told in my ever-growing 'backwards order, leading up to read' pile. So although I know of him, my reading expectations were wide-openthe fateful moment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0230710077</amazonuk>1914585186}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Linda SargentJennifer Mason|title=Paper WingsPreposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=In ''A struggling poetry zine, a wood mom-and-pop mobile diner in Kent two children played happily and as is the way Northern California redwoods, a 400-meter hurdler who just missed the 2004 Olympics, a women's track coach with children they sometimes went where they shouldn'ta yen for bullwhips, but it was a billionaire with a state-of-the nineteen fifties and the worry was more about whether they would injure themselves by falling down -art S&M dungeon, a man serving a life sentence in Alabama, an abandoned well than the problems which we worry over half a century later. It was enigmatic signature, K(s, x), on a place for plans and gamescheap oil painting, projects they didn't always tell their parents about and generally growing upan erotic art dealer in Georgia. Ruby loved climbing trees and longed to fly. Peter was more sensible but the pair were inseparable.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956483305</amazonuk>}}''
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