132,655
edits
Changes
From TheBookbag
Jump to navigationJump to searchno edit summary
[[Category:General Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]]==General fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreview|author=Linda Gillard|title=House of Silence|rating=4.5|genre=Women's Fiction|summary=Gwen Rowland was a sensible, cautious kind of girl, but then the only family she'd ever known were all dead from a surfeit of unprotected sex, drink and the sort of drugs that don't come in a child-proof bottle. So – her relationship with an actor was a little out of the ordinary, but they seemed to be friends before they were lovers. The crunch came at Christmas when Alfie said that he was spending it with his family – which would have left Gwen on her own. She did ''slightly'' twist his arm to take her with him and he was obviously reluctant to comply. When they arrived at Creake Hall, home of author Rae Holbrook and her daughters, Gwen sensed a change in Alfie, a lack of warmth towards his family. Then there was the family photo which didn't fit the known facts and the complication of the gardener who said little but was a very good listener.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B004USSPN2</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Annalena McAfee|title=The Spoiler|rating=3|genre=General Fiction|summary=Several things about this novel intrigued me. It is about two female journalists of very different generations. Also, it is set in the recent past – 1997. While newspaper production had been computerised, it was just before internet access at home and work became affordable and accessible to far more people and so became mass media, and newspapers were almost entirely a print medium – newspaper websites were just around the corner. Annalena McAfee has an insider's knowledge of the newspaper world as she was a journalist for many years, and her career included founding the Guardian's review section in its current form.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846554357</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Megan Abbott|title=The End of Everything|rating=5|genre=Teens|summary=On the surface this book is about the disappearance of a thirteen-year-old girl. Her best friend and neighbour Lizzie relates how she searches for clues, how she discovers that a local man may be involved, and how Evie and Lizzie's families struggle to cope. But look again at the title. What really unfolds here is the story of the effect a single incident has on three families, not two, how that one event came about, and why nothing will ever be the same for everyone involved. It is a book which is complex, deep and very, very intense.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330535455</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=C J BoxJenny Lecoat|title=Back of BeyondSummerland
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Connolly and [[Tell No One by Harlan Coben|Harlan Coben]], both Jean lives on Jersey with her mother where they are celebrating the end of whom I've readthe occupation. SoDuring the war, it Jean's father was off arrested for listening to a pretty good start. The front cover graphics banned radio and large print scream out 'thriller'. We get the essence of Cody early on. He's a man who likes to do his own thing and doesn't take kindly to orders or red tape. All that red tape is shitsoldiers took him away one night, is probably how Cody would describe it in his own colourful leaving Jean and down-to-earth fashion. He looks older than his her mother waiting for yearsfor news of him. Maybe that's down to a messy domestic life and also to As the British finally free the hours he puts in on Channel islands from the job. He lives on his own and has a teenage son he doesn't see often enough. OhNazis, and he smokes like a chimney and drinks like a fish. In shortthe war is finally over, he's a messtheir hopes rise that they will finally learn what became of him. But somehow he stumbles through his police work - with will the truth come as a lot of help and support from a long-suffering colleague.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>1848872984</amazonuk>1846976537
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Hans Werner Kettenbach and Anthea Bell (Translator)Onyi Nwabineli|title=The Stronger SexAllow Me to Introduce Myself|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=After reading the various comments Anuri spent her childhood on display to the back coverworld, I was looking forward thanks to reading this book as I love a story with a psychological element. Young Alex is driven to the home of his latest client; a man called Klofft. The reader soon finds out that Klofft has plenty of baggageher step-mother Ophelia's increasingly popular presence on social media, as well as plenty where she posted every step of money. HeAnuri's elderly childhood for sponsorships and very ill influencer deals and mobility is also an issue for him, basically, monetary gain. So, while he may have set out Now Anuri is in her twenties and she is slowly trying to impress others with his large home regain her confidence and beautiful things, sadly he seems no longer to be able to enjoy get her life. His illness confines him back, suing her step-mother to just a couple of roomstake down the content about her. It's apparent that Alex Anuri is rather taken with his wifebattling alcoholism, Cilly Klofftfailing to start her PhD, who is still rather beautiful - undergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online and receiving money from them for her agedoing so. The reader assumes Most importantly, sheis desperately worried about her little sister, who is the new focus of Ophelia's in her late sixties or early seventiesonline empire. But what is it they say about age being only a number for some of usCan she save her sister, and perhaps herself and her relationship with her father at the same time? And age plays a big part, a very big part, in this novel.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1904738672</amazonuk>0861546873
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Robert Jackson Bennett1529153298|title=The Company ManList of Suspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey|rating=45
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=It's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. (A woman? I mean, honestly...) She'The Timess not what's worrying Miv' says on the front cover that Bennett is s family, though. Women have been disappearing. Well, they'clearly a writer ve been murdered, but to watchhave ' disappeared' doesn't sound quite so I had high hopes for this novelfrightening. We meet two of Miv's upset because she's overheard that her father wants to move the central characters, American policeman Garvey and Englishman Hayesfamily 'Down South'. GarveyWhen you's working cv re from Yorkshire, Down South is straightforward enough - he carries out police worka frightening, foreign place, some of which is pretty grislybest avoided. But what about Hayes? He appears to be all things to all men but at For Miv, the end of the day wellmove would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, heand she'll do anything to prevent that. She's not worried about the dangers or that her Mum'The Company Man' which gives the book its title. And so a complex scenario starts s stopped talking - to unravel ..anyone.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1841497924</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Justine Kilkerr1035906708|title=Advice for StraysDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=If you have ever fancied a grown up version of [[The Tiger Who Came to Tea by Judith Kerr|The Tiger who came We tend to Tea]], the cover think of this Vintage edition should hook you into reading Justine Kilkerr's first novel. Here sits a sad and patient-looking lionMaria Callas as Greek, and the female figure beside himbut she was born to Greek parents in Manhattan, hidden by an umbrellaNew York, has that same vulnerable look of mother in December 1923 and child in Judith Kerr's classic children's picture bookonly moved to Athens when she was thirteen. At first this seems like a ridiculous connection, Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but thinking about her father changed it later Ito 'Callas'm struck with the analogy, not to mention make it more manageable in the similarity States. When she was back in authors' namesAthens - 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, Jackie. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099535262</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Heather GudenkaufAlexander McCall Smith|title=These Things HiddenThe Perfect Passion Company
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Golden girl Allison Glenn was living The Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and operating as an alternative to all the perfect teenage life until she was imprisoned for online apps in providing a monstrous crimemore personal, tailored service. Now Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she's twenty-one could come and has been released from prison look after the business, as Ness is planning to take a trip to Canada to live in get away for a halfway housewhile. Allison Katie is keen coming out of a break up with a bad boyfriend, and so jumps at the chance to come home to put Edinburgh. And so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, thanks to 44 Scotland Street and the past behind herIsabel Dalhousie novels, but when she returns with some new characters who quickly begin to her home town of Linden Falls she soon discovers that charm. Katie has no one experience in running a business, or in match-making, but Ness has forgotten full confidence in her crimeabilities, least of all and there's always her parents very helpful (and her little sisterrather handsome) neighbour, William, Brynn.to lend a hand…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>077830437X</amazonuk>1846976596
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Meg WolitzerDean Koontz|title=The UncouplingBad Weather Friend|rating=4.5|genre=General FictionParanormal|summary=Dory Benny is having a terrifically bad day. He loses his job, he loses his fiancee, and Robby Lang had one of those marriages that everyone envieshis house gets trashed. TheyOh, and someone has delivered a really weird, disturbing coffin-sized object to his home, and it're not just loverss possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the thing that has trashed his house! The thing is, they're best friends too and they never seem Benny is the very last person to tire of each otherdeserve all this bad luck. They're both popular teachers at Eleanor Roosevelt High School ('Elro' to those who know it well) where their daughter He is a studentnice person. A really nice person. It's sometimes difficult So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the delivery to have your parent teaching at your schoolhis house is a new friend, a bad weather friend called Spike, but everything seems who has been sent to rub along reasonably well and Dory was delighted when daughter Willa got help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a part in the school playgood person. ItSpike is going to take care of Benny, and will certainly take care of Benny's ''Lysistrata'' enemies, if he, Benny, and whilst the drama teacher has to tone it down Harper (a little it still the play about the women waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's wild adventure) can figure out who refuse to have sex with their men until exactly they call a halt to the war they're fightingare.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701186216</amazonuk>1662500491
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Natasha SolomonsKatherine Howe|title=The Novel in the ViolaA True Account
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Elise Landau arrived Hannah Masury is living in England in 1938Boston, having been sent to live with a refugee family who run an inn, and being made to work there from Vienna where she and her family had had a good lifestyleyoung age. In England When she's destined for Tyneford hears there is to be a hanging of some pirates in Dorset where the town, shedecides to go and watch. Enthralled and horrified in equal measure, Hannah finds herself embroiled in a young boy'll be a parlour maid s death at the big househands of two vicious pirates. Shehides away, so that they don's not exactly looking forward t find and kill her too, and then to escape them completely she runs away to itsea, but she's escaped Vienna with some of her mother's jewels sewn into dressing as a boy and joining the seams of her dresses and her fathernotorious Ned Low's latest novel, in manuscript, is hidden pirate ship as a cabin boy. She soon finds herself in the body thick of her viola. Her sister things when there is leaving for the USA a mutiny on board, and from there we are caught up in her parents hope to follow. Surely Elise will be able to join them before too long? She knows that she won't like Englandrip roaring tale of life on the ocean waves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>034099567X</amazonuk>0861547438
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Paul Magrs1471180158|title=The Bride That Time ForgotMaybe Tomorrow|author=Penny Parkes|rating=34.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Christmas is approaching Jamie Matson works in an upper-class grocery store, for a man who's a control freak with all the seaside town subtlety of Whitby and Brenda is busy sprucing up her B&Ba half brick. She hasnJamie't seen her best friends son, neighbour and investigating partner Effie for a few weeksBo, since Effie's strange gentleman friend Alucard has reappearedhis problems'. Brenda He's asthmatic and Effie are the guardians of more you read, the more you'll suspect that he's on the gateway autistic spectrum. Sometimes Jamie needs to Hell which just happens to be right on their doorstep take time off at short notice - she's a frequent flier in Whitby, but since Effie has shut herself away, Brenda has turned to her friend Robert, the owner of the local hotel A&E and sometimes Bo's not fit enough to go to help her with her investigations into school. Missed shifts or the ever present strange goings need to be away on time to pick Bo up from school are occasions when Jamie can be controlled and put in the town, involving vampires, monsters and wrong. It was going to come to a rather strange carhead. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755359453</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Naomi WoodB0CKD1L5JL|title=The Godless BoysRadio Free Olympia|author=Jeffrey Dunn
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=BritainPetr is an orphan. 1986Rescued by the strange, reclusive Bear, he is brought up far from bustling cities and busy human society, in the forests of Washington's Olympic Peninsula. The country became After Bear dies and a theocracy during the 1950s brief sojourn in human company, and since then outbreaks of secular terrorism have been dealt armed with by exile. The atheists have been sent to the Island where they can burn churches as they please. Aside from only a weekly boat bringing donated suppliespirate radio transmitter, the exiled must shift as best they can Petr goes on a remote snippet of land in journey through the forest, broadcasting the North Seastrange, wild and rarely heard voices he encounters. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330530127</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=James Patterson and Neil McMahonSarah Marsh|title=ToysA Sign of Her Own|rating=43.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The novel has After a bout of scarlet fever as a very glamorous openingchild, Ellen Lark loses her hearing. We're at President Jacklin's inauguration party and the easy flow Suddenly plunged into a world of narration gets me seamlessly and effortlessly into the storysilence, everything about her life changes. There are plenty of comments and observations pertaining to Living in a time when the super-duper hi-tech times use of the story, so as early sign language was seen as page 10 Hays and his beautiful wife Lizbethsomething only savages do, who are invitees, are attended Ellen is sent to by a well-trained and well-programmed ''iJeeves butlerschool where she is taught to lip read, but physically restrained from signing.'' I loved that phrase. It made me smile. The Bakers are an impressive From here, she ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the deaf and influential coupleusing a system called Visible Speech. As part of At the 'elite' society they expect a flawlesssame time, ordered life for themselves Bell is working on other inventions and their family. And Patterson then informs us that mere human beings have been relegated to menial work ideas, and most Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a complicated tangle of them live pitiful lives and serves them right, apparently. They're despised but their labour is necessary to oil the wheels of the important daily lives of the elites. But the elites have extremely ambitious plansespionage. Can they pull them off?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846057701</amazonuk>1035401614
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Louise WelshB0BC3YTCMR|title=Naming the Bones|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Murray Watson is a Doctor of English Literature embarking on a year-long sabbatical to pursue his long-held dream of writing the definitive biography of Archie Lunan and, as a specifically intended by-product, restore Lunan's poetry to its rightful place in the high canon of Scots creativity.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847672566</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewGood Girls Die|author=Anita Shreve|title=RescueAyura Ayira
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=When we meet Peter Webster he's a rookie paramedic who takes an emergency call to help a drunk driver who's been badly injured in a car crash. It was touch and go as to whether or This story is not Sheila Arsenault made it, but she did and afterwards Webster can't get her out of his thoughtsfor everyone. Every instinct tells him that he shouldn't get involved with her – that it'll mean trouble – but perhaps it was the long, shining, dark hair that tipped the balance and Webster is involved in an intense love affair. He's also involved in Sheila's life – for better or for worse.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408700735</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Philippe Claudel and Euan Cameron1472263936|title=Monsieur Linh and His ChildThe Figurine|author=Victoria Hislop
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=From a war-ravaged country a bit like a Vietnam or a Cambodia an old man carries It was in 1968 that Helena McCloud made her first trip to Greece. She was alone: her mother, Greek by birth, had left the fragile frame of his granddaughter aboard a refugeefamily home and refused to return, but Mary and Hamish (Helena's ship, staring at the receding horizon all the weeks parents) felt that it takes to arrive at would be a city a bit like a Seattle pity if Helena grew up without knowing her grandparents or a New Yorkunderstanding her Greek heritage. Her trip to the family apartment in up-market Kolonaki would be the first of several annual visits. He She grew to love her grandmother and she are given the basics of a new life together but itfamily's up to himmaid, Dina, Monsieur Linhbut was wary - and frightened - of her grandfather, retired general Stamatis Papagiannis. He was proud of his close connections to find friendship, which he does, accepting uncomprehendingly the chatty company of a fellow mourner called BarkJunta and expected his family to uphold his values but saw no reason to accommodate them. His prejudices included Helena's red hair and green eyes - inherited from her father's Scottish ancestors.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906694990</amazonuk>
}}
{{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=Ed SiegleB0BVDC2VWH|title=InvisiblesThe Grave Listeners|author=William Frank|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The closest Brighton usually gets to Brazil village is in the pages of isolated and poor. It's surrounded by a dictionary, but in ''Invisibles'' Witching Forest. And the two are drawn together in the life of Joel Burns, a thirtyvillagers subsist largely by farming Uphegia plants - its bread-five year old dentist who lives in Brighton as does his mother, Jackie, like fruit provides nutrition and partner Debbie from whom he is separatedits blossom provides herbal medicines. When Joel sees a news clip The black wood of a bus hijack in Rio de Janeirothe forest provides heat and warmth, roofs on homes, where Joel and Jackie lived until Joel was teneven gallows, he if needed. The fear of being buried alive is convinced that one of an existential superstition in the bystanders is his Brazilian father. What makes this more unusual is that Jackie has always told Joel village and that his father is deadthe reason Volushka, a drunken, although Joel has never quite bought into this story which self-indulgent, lazy lout of a man is at least part of the cause of his problems with Debbie. The solution? Head off to Rio and see if he can track down this persontolerated.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956559913</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Michael DhillonB0BYF82CXT|title=The Cuckoo Parchment and the DykeSemi-Detached|author=Deborah Stone
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Tristan Jarry is the world's most famous artist but he's rather moved on from selling his work for millions Bill and has just kidnapped Angelique BurrAmanda are living in a semi-detached house, the step-daughter stuck in a depressing rut of the President of the United States. She's not an innocent child but an abused boredom and abusing womandisappointment, now a journalist when Terry and at times well able to hold her own with Jarry. He's got helpers though - Fiona – glamorous, successful and forward planning - and it's not long before Angelique finds herself involved very much in love – move in a trail of destruction and death as Jarry works towards his purposenext door. He intends to resurrect DadaDespite their different outlooks on life, the iconic movement founded in 1916 in Zurich with the intention of protesting against the warcouples befriend each other and life appears to improve for both pairs. He'll tell Angelique so much – but But all is not what he finally intends to doit seems, and their increasingly interconnected relationships are fated for tragedy.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849235104</amazonuk>''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Leo BenedictusShalini Boland|title=The AfterpartySilent Bride|rating=53
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=I opened the front cover Alice and was confronted with the lines 'This book Seth are a match made in heaven. He is differenteverything she has been searching for; handsome, accomplished, clever, funny; total and utter husband-material. You've really never read She is all he could possibly want in a book like this beforewife; beautiful, successful, confident… and so the inevitable proposal is eagerly accepted by Alice and the wedding is planned and set.' Confident wordsWhen the much-anticipated day arrives, Alice is walked down the aisle by her father, I thought but will beaming with pride and excitement as she surveys the book live up congregation – their friends assembled to celebrate this lofty expectation I now had? And joyful day and when I got round Seth turns to reading face his approaching bride, Alice's world implodes because she has absolutely no idea who the notes man at the end of the novelaltar is, I was pleasantly surprised and also rather taken aback, I have who is waiting for her to say. So, a refreshing take on the modern work of fiction, I thought, as I started on Chapter Onebecome his wife.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>022409114X</amazonuk>1662507089
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=David Baddiel1787636003|title=The Death Girls of Eli GoldSummer|author=Katie Bishop|rating=45
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Eli Gold is recognized as It was the 'the greatest living writer' - although his claim to this is slipping by by the day as he is on his death bed. He's not a nice character - his attitudes to his five wives summer when Rachel Evans turned eighteen that she and his children are deplorable Caroline went backpacking around Greece and he has been bound up in his own 'genius'arrived on the island. He Rachel wasn's a bit like the best and the worst of Saul Bellowt exactly innocent but she was, perhaps, Philip Roth and Norman Mailer combined. Now dying in hospital in New Yorknaive, the book explores this event from the perceptive of so when thirty-four people in his life; his eight -year -old, precocious daughter by his current wife; his first wife watching on the news from Alistair Wright started to take an old people's home interest in England; the angst-ridden son of his third marriageher, himself she was flattered rather than wary. It was quite a pale imitation while before he made any sort of the author physical approach to her and by that time she was obsessed by him. Alistair worked for Henry Taylor, looking after his father is; and a mysterious fourth character who appears to have a very different motive for seeing Gold snr interests on the island and who may be linked to Gold's fourth wife who died in a mutual suicide pact with her then-husband, from which Eli survived. (In fact his identity is revealed particular in the publisher's blurb on bar where all the jacket, but I'll let you decide if you want to know this girls either worked or to let the story unfold as I did)partied.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007270836</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alma KatsuAmanda Craig|title=The TakerThree Graces|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=When Dr Luke Findley begins his nightshift at Aroostook County Hospital in St Andrews, Maine, things are quiet until Lanny McIlvrae is brought in by Few styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the police. Lanny is covered in blood and claims she has killed a man and left him in state-of-the woods-nation novel. Desperate to escape, Lanny quickly asks for LukeThere's help, but he is not sure at first, something so Lanny decides to tell Luke her life story, a story that begins in utterly compelling about any writer who can catch hold of the early Puritan settlement atmosphere of St Andrews in 1809 the day and spans nearly two hundred yearscapture it, taking Lanny from her home to Boston and beyondcrafting an image of the country as it stands in one particular moment. A story To say that Amanda Craig is rich, imaginative and entirely authentic, filling 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 gift for weaving the majority ongoing issues of the novel, day into the lives of her characters in a way that feels natural and there wasn't a moment when I questioned her reliability as she tells Luke everythinglived-in, chapter by chapternever making them ciphers for social commentary but instead fully realised people, as he helps her to escape, slowly drawing him and the reader into her worldgrappling with issues far larger than themselves. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846058171</amazonuk>140871468X
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Aimee Bender152915118X|title=The Particular Sadness of Lemon CakePineapple Street|author=Jenny Jackson
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The title ''Pineapple Street'' is the story of this novel first caught my eyethree women: Sasha, Darley and Georgiana. Darley and George are sisters and Sasha is married to their brother Cord. How can food feel emotions? Actually They're Stocktons, it is Rose who discovers that when only Sasha isn't a Stockton by birth so she is eating she can taste isn't readily accepted into the feelings of tribe. The problem's exacerbated when the person who cooked or prepared clan matriarch, Tilda, asks Cord and Sasha if they'd like to move into the foodPineapple Street property. I was Tilda and Chip have renovated and downsized to another property, a bit worried that this initial gimmick street or so away, which they own. They won't need any of the book furniture from which the title is taken would become annoyingPineapple Street, but really this is another very well-written so Sasha and readable novel about growing up Cord can move straight in . Nominally, they had a dysfunctional familychoice but that wasn't the reality. Rose is about Darley and Georgiana start to turn 9 at call Sasha 'the beginning, and comes home to find her mother making her birthday cakegold digger'. She can't resist tasting the cake, and at first it is delicious: s living in ''their'Warm citrus-baked batter lightness enfolded by cool deep dark swirled sugar'family home. But then she has They use it so often that they abbreviate it to 'the sensation of shrinking, of upset, tasting a distance I somehow knew was connected to my motherGD'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009953827X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Guillaume MussoEmily Critchley|title=Where Would I Be Without You?One Puzzling Afternoon
|rating=4
|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=I love 84 year old Edie has lived in the coversame small town for almost her whole life, which I think angles this book firmly towards women. With that old Beach Boys hit from the Sixties but now she is facing a move as the titleher son wants to move to another house and bring Edie to live with his family, it encapsulates everything you need as Edie is starting to know when choosing this booklose her memory. It's not really crime fiction However, in that it lacks a whodunnit aspect in favour Edie is tormented by the memory of following the protagonistsher childhood friend, Lucy, who went missing over 60 years ago, a French cop and the worry that there was a Scottish master criminal, through a romantic entanglement and into secret she was keeping for Lucy that somehow might be the thing that reveals the jaws truth of deathwhat happened all that time ago. The interest is After 'seeing' Lucy in which of the two men will gain command high street, just as she was the last time she saw her, she starts to find pockets of memories coming back to her. And yet as she remembers the other – past, she is forgetting more and who is really driving more in her day to day life. Will she uncover the action – when both their attentions truth about Lucy's disappearance before her move, and before her memories are focused on the same girl.gone forever?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1906040346</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=Sarah Winman0008506337|title=When God Was A RabbitThe Garnett Girls|author=Georgina Moore|rating=45
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=When God Was a Rabbit is a book that tugs at the emotions The love affair between Margo Garnett and poet Richard O'Leary was all-consuming, apparently on both sides. Margo was just sixteen when they fell in a sweet but uncompromising waylove. It Richard was twenty-one and described by Margo's in no way a RomCom but if you are a fan of mother as 'an older man'. Her parents worried that genre of film, I Richard's influence would suggest that you might too enjoy this book as it shares many of take her away from what they felt she could achieve - going to Oxford and having a glittering career. In the traits if not event, they eloped and Richard took her away from the storylineIsle of Wight. The analogy Margo did go to Oxford and went on to become a movie is apposite too as first time author Sarah Winmanwell-respected journalist. The couple had three children: Rachel, Imogen and Sasha. Life was lived in London and holidays were spent at Sandcove, the family home on the Isle of Wight. Even then the doubts about Richard's drinking were never far from Margo's mind: 'day job' is as an actor - she has appeared recently would never be able to leave him in Holby City, for examplecharge''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755379284</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Rachel Simon1914585402|title=The Story of Beautiful GirlDashboard Elvis is Dead|author=David F Ross|rating=34.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The I reviewed David F Ross's book begins with widow Martha, an ex-teacher in her seventies living alone in her farmhouse in the Pennsylvanian countryside. Martha[[There's Only One Danny Garvey by David F Ross|There's life is filled with loneliness, Only One Danny Garvey]] a phone that never rings, couple of years back and she rarely sees other people. But all that is set to change one rainy night in 1968 when Lynnie remember being absolutely floored by how powerful and Homan knock on Martha's dooraffecting it was. Lynnie and Homan have escaped from The School for the Incurable It was a gripping, emotionally wounding read, and Feebleminded, a harsh institution where people with disabilities are kept away from the rest rereading my review of the world. Martha takes the couple in and soon discovers it my main takeaway was that Lynnie is carrying a new born babyI might not have lavished enough praise on it. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>184809339X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Henry SuttonLucy Ashe|title=Get Me Out Of HereClara and Olivia
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Hapless (and you could also say hopeless) Matt The year is fed up with his rather sad and unexciting life. So, at every opportunity he wants to spice it up a bit1933. But does this strategy workThe place? WeSadler're barely pages into the book when we see that Matt is an out-s Wells. Ballerinas Clara and-out snobOlivia are sisters, twins no less. He knows all Identical on the designer labels for the best clothesoutside but not, the best shoes (handmade, natch)we learn, on the best champagne label inside.And not on stage, either.. I think you may get my drift here. ThatBecause there's finea lot that builds a dancer. As long as you Some things that can pay for this high lifebe taught or learnt – discipline, attention to detail – and some things, whatthat ''je ne sais quoi''s the problem? Well, Mattthat don's problem is cash - or t come from the distinct lack of itclassroom. HeA stage presence, a charm, a ''joie de vivre's down on his financial luck at the minute so it's time to try another angle ..The difference between a hard-worker, and a star.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099535629</amazonuk>0861544080
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Joolz DenbyHeather Fawcett|title=The Curious Mystery Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Miss Lydia Larkin and the Widow MarvellFaeries
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=I was a bit surprised by this book when it arrived. Joolz Denby Emily Wilde is a punk poetan expert academic scholar on faerie lore, and she has written four noir crime novelstravelled extensively, and researched meticulously, including Billie Morganto write her life's work, longlisted for the Orange Prizevery first encyclopaedia of faeries. This quirky little novella Whilst she is brilliant at research and speaking to faeries, she is not so good with a long title features a large black cat people. So when she finds herself far, far North in the small village of Hrafvsnik, having somehow offended the village matriarch, she is not sure what she has done, nor how to redeem herself and recipes at put her final investigations for her book back on the backright track. Enter Wendell Bambleby, her dashingly handsome and insufferable rival who arrives unexpectedly, all charm and delight, much to Emily's frustration. Has Joolz really written a cosy But why is he here? What does he want? And what exactly is going on with the faerie folk around Hravsnik?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0956778607</amazonuk>0356519120
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Robert Dinsdale1398515388|title=Three MilesThe Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Captain Abraham Matthews is so desperate to catch First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the villainous Albie Crowe tsunami and bring this, in turn, caused the youngster to justice that some people would say he nuclear meltdown. The result was obsessedcomplete and utter devastation. After six months, Matthews has finally tracked down his prey The deaths were uncountable, and captures him just three miles the loss of livelihoods was widespread. The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the police stationtsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. But with Albie He wasn't a dog person but the convenience store owner's boys trying comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to rescue him, other men without Abraham's moral compass more interested in vengeance than justice, open his car door and Tamon the Luftwaffe dropping bombs on Leeds, this is set to be the longest three miles of either of their lives..dog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>057126025X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Antoinette Van HuegtenChristopher Bowden|title=Saving MaxMr Magenta
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The one-page Prologue sees us at the scene Christopher Bowden's latest novel is a patient untangling of the crimea seemingly ordinary woman's life, carried out by her nephew after she has died. Two teenagers The aunt who always provided a safe harbour and a lot little bit of blood - one of whom will not survive. Seems like an open-indulgence to a young nephew had had a much more interesting life than that nephew Stephen had ever realised and-shut case - but is it? We then go back in time seems to a medical consulting room in downtown New York. Hot-shot lawyer and time-pressed, single mum Danielle is trying him an obligation to understand her severely disabled son. Even allowing for the normal teenage angst and racing hormones, things are not good at home. She knows find it. Max knows it. And the medical profession at large, know it. Something needs to be done before things get all out of hand.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0778304086</amazonuk>B0B6Z9VJDW
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Kim EdwardsJennifer Mason|title=The Lake Partitions of DreamsUnity|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The book opens with a lovely Here at Bookbag Towers, we first met Elizabeth Cromwell, dominatrix and intriguing sentence - 'My name is Lucy Jarrett unintentional detective in [[Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery by Jennifer Mason|Preposterous]], when she investigated and before I knew about the girl in the window ... I found myself living in unravelled a village near the sea in Japanseries of disappearances.In ''Partitions of Unity'' Who could fail , she sets her mind to be drawn into solving a story after reading that, I thoughtmurder. I was hooked immediately. Edwards gives us a fleeting taste of life in Japan, particularly the importance (almost reverence) of nature and gardens, public and private. This sets the tone for the novel which is captivating and interesting, but put together beautifully, unhurried.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0142428396</amazonuk>B09LQR9FRF
}}
{{Frontpage|author=Will Carver|title=The Daves Next Door|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary= Five strangers come together in one moment as a suicide bomber prepares to detonate his vest on a London tube line. As their fates overlap, the story is told in backwards order, leading up to the fateful moment.|isbn= 1914585186}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Nikesh ShuklaJennifer Mason|title=Coconut UnlimitedPreposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=It is the early 1990's and Amit'A struggling poetry zine, Anand a mom-and Nishant are three young Asian boys in an all white private school. As such they are considered massively uncool by default. Too bad then that their Asian peers -pop mobile diner in the North London Gujarati enclave known as Harrow think that they are Northern California redwoods, a bunch of stuck up toffs. Soft. Weak. No street cred whatsoever. Worst of all they are labelled as 'Coconuts' (brown on 400-meter hurdler who just missed the outside2004 Olympics, white on the inside). Therea women's only one thing track coach with a yen for it bullwhips, a billionaire with a state-of- start a hipthe-hop band. The fact that they don't have any songsart S&M dungeon, talent or initially any idea what hip-hop actually sounds like isn't really a problem. As everyone knowsman serving a life sentence in Alabama, an enigmatic signature, K(s, x), forming on a band makes you cheap oil painting, an erotic art dealer in Georgia...'pretty cool' and after that the girls simply fall at your feet.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0704372045</amazonuk>}}
}}
