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[[Category:General Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]]==General fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreview|author=Kim Newman|title=Anno Dracula|rating=3.5|genre=Horror|summary=The story begins in London. It is 1888 and Queen Victoria is on the throne. She has recently remarried, taking as her husband the infamous vampire Count Dracula. Dracula's influence is all around London as more and more of its citizens turn willingly to vampirism, whilst others resist its temptations. A distinct sense of social and political unrest is in the air as factions speak out against the race of vampires, somehow spurred on by the serial killer at large. Known at first as the Silver Knife, but later as Jack the Ripper, this killer targets young vampire women in Whitechapel, prostitutes who have recently turned to vampirism, known as new-borns. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857680838</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alexander BaronJenny Lecoat|title=There's No HomeBeyond Summerland
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=It's Jean lives on Jersey with her mother where they are celebrating the year 1943 and Sicily has been invaded (along with other parts end of Europe)the occupation. The menfolk have gone (will they return?) and During the womenwar, children Jean's father was arrested for listening to a banned radio and old people left behind are a sorry sight. Impoverishedsoldiers took him away one night, ragged leaving Jean and with barely enough food to eather mother waiting for years for news of him. A As the British company of soldiers rolls into town ... and everything changes. The men are foot-sorefinally free the Channel islands from the Nazis, exhausted and dirty. They are also glassy-eyed with the horrors war is finally over, their hopes rise that they will finally learn what became of warhim. And But will the truth come as if that were not enougha relief, or will it raise further questions around what else happened during the war? Who was the informer who told the Sicilian sun beats down on them mercilessly. Nazis about the radio? But there's some good news - they're here to rest and recuperate for a while.And what other secrets have been kept throughout the occupation?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0956308600</amazonuk>1846976537
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Raj KumarOnyi Nwabineli|title=SharafAllow Me to Introduce Myself
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=With its subtitle "Forbidden love in Anuri spent her childhood on display to the kingdom world, thanks to her step-mother Ophelia's increasingly popular presence on social media, where she posted every step of faith Anuri's childhood for sponsorships and influencer deals and honour", I expected something entirely different from ''Sharaf'' 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 what it deliveredtake down the content about her. For the second time in as many weeks I had misjudged a book byAnuri is battling alcoholism, if not its cover exactlyfailing to start her PhD, certainly by its setting undergoing therapy and its blurbsecretly 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 Ophelia's online empire. Can she save her sister, and perhaps herself and her relationship with her father at the same time?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1905802331</amazonuk>0861546873
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Mark Watson1529153298|title=ElevenThe List of Suspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey|rating=45
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The bookIt's title has 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. (A woman? I mean, honestly...) She's not what's worrying Miv's family, though. Women have been well thought outdisappearing. Xavier IrelandWell, they've been murdered, the main character has the number but to have 'disappeared'doesn'Elevent sound quite so frightening. Miv's upset because she' if s overheard that her father wants to move the family 'Down South'. When you take his initials as Roman numbers (XI) and there are eleven individuals who are involved in this chain reaction of events're from Yorkshire, Down South is a frightening, foreign place, best avoided. When I read For Miv, the blurb on the back covermove would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, what caught my eye above all else was the line 'whether the choices we donand she't make affect us just as powerfully as those we ll doanything to prevent that. She' And of course, when we take no action s not worried about something in our lives, itthe dangers or that her Mum's a form of action in effectstopped talking - to anyone.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184983136X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Mavis Cheek1035906708|title=The Lovers of Pound HillDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Archaeologist Molly Bonner had something about her. She definitely wasn't dressed for the country when she arrived in Lufferton Boney and she'd captured the heart of one young man before she'd even walked down the street. She captured another when she offered money We tend to work on the Gnome think of Pound HillMaria Callas as Greek, but Miles Whittington she was ruled by his wallet born to Greek parents in Manhattan, New York, in December 1923 and he only moved to Athens when she was keen to make money out of the Gnomethirteen. The Gnome, you see, Her original surname was what might euphemistically be called Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to 'well endowedCallas' and Miles had visions of charging visitors to make use of it more manageable in the, er, fertility ritesStates. One thing When she was certain – none of back in Athens - supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for her voice - she was raised under the villagers Nazi occupation by a mother who mercilessly exploited her and made no secret of Lufferton Boney would be the same by the time that Molly Bonner (not only an archaeologist but also the archaeologist's granddaughter) had finished her workpreference for her elder sister, Jackie.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091931665</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alan WarnerAlexander McCall Smith|title=The Stars in the Bright SkyPerfect Passion Company|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=In 1999, Alan Warner introduced us to a wonderful set of characters in 'The Sopranos' when a school choir from a backwater town in Scotland went on a trip to the big city. Much debauchery ensued. 'The Stars in the Bright Sky' once again reunites most of the original gang and there is no need to have read the first book to pick up on the diverse characters. Now though, they've grown up (or at least got older!) and are gathered at Gatwick Airport to set off on a girls' holiday.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009946182X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Geraint Anderson|title=Just Business|rating=45
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The inside cover blurb tells us that the author himself has worked Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and operating as an alternative to all the square mile online apps in Londonproviding a more personal, so presumably he'll have first-hand experience in tailored service. Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the world of financebusiness, as Ness is planning to take a trip to Canada to get away for a while. The book Katie is bang coming out of a break up-with a bad boyfriend, and so jumps at the chance to come home to Edinburgh. And so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us to-datean Edinburgh we already love, as it mentions thanks to 44 Scotland Street and the first whiff of the subIsabel Dalhousie novels, but with some new characters who quickly begin to charm. Katie has no experience in running a business, or in match-prime disaster which seemed to start the whole collapse of the making, but Ness has full confidence in her abilities, and there's always her very helpful (up till thenand rather handsome) safe and often extremely well-paid banking sector.neighbour, William, to lend a hand…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0755381726</amazonuk>1846976596
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Linda GillardDean Koontz|title=House of SilenceThe Bad Weather Friend
|rating=4.5
|genre=Women's FictionParanormal|summary=Gwen Rowland was Benny is having a sensibleterrifically bad day. He loses his job, cautious kind of girlhe loses his fiancee, and his house gets trashed. Oh, but then the only family she'd ever known were all dead from and someone has delivered a surfeit of unprotected sexreally weird, disturbing coffin-sized object to his home, drink and it's possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the sort of drugs thing that don't come in has trashed his house! The thing is, Benny is the very last person to deserve all this bad luck. He is a child-proof bottlenice person. A really nice person. So – her relationship with an actor was a little fortunately for Benny it turns out of that the ordinarydelivery to his house is a new friend, but they seemed a bad weather friend called Spike, who has been sent 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 ownhelp him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a good person. She did ''slightly'' twist his arm Spike is going to take her with him care of Benny, and will certainly take care of Benny's enemies, if he was obviously reluctant to comply. When they arrived at Creake Hall, home of author Rae Holbrook Benny, and her daughters, Gwen sensed Harper (a change in Alfie, a lack of warmth towards his family. Then there was the family photo which didnwaitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny't fit the known facts and the complication of the gardener s wild adventure) can figure out who said little but was a very good listenerexactly they are.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>B004USSPN2</amazonuk>1662500491
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Annalena McAfeeKatherine Howe|title=The SpoilerA True Account|rating=34.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Several things about this novel intrigued meHannah 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. It When she hears there is about two female journalists to be a hanging of very different generationssome pirates in the town, she decides to go and watch. Also Enthralled and horrified in equal measure, it is set Hannah finds herself embroiled in a young boy's death at the recent past – 1997hands of two vicious pirates. While newspaper production had been computerised She hides away, it was just before internet access at home so that they don't find and work became affordable kill her too, and accessible then to escape them completely she runs away to far more people and so became mass mediasea, dressing as a boy and newspapers were almost entirely a print medium – newspaper websites were just around joining the corner. Annalena McAfee has an insidernotorious Ned Low's knowledge pirate ship as a cabin boy. She soon finds herself in the thick of the newspaper world as she was things when there is a journalist for many yearsmutiny on board, and from there we are caught up in her career included founding rip roaring tale of life on the Guardian's review section in its current formocean waves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846554357</amazonuk>0861547438
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Megan Abbott1471180158|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>}} {{newreviewMaybe Tomorrow|author=C J Box|title=Back of BeyondPenny Parkes|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Connolly and [[Tell No One by Harlan Coben|Harlan Coben]]Jamie Matson works in an upper-class grocery store, both for a man who's a control freak with all the subtlety of whom I've reada half brick. SoJamie's son, Bo, it was off to a pretty good start. The front cover graphics and large print scream out 'thrillerhas his problems'. We get the essence of Cody early on. He's a man who likes to do his own thing asthmatic and doesnthe more you read, the more you't take kindly to orders or red tapell suspect that he's on the autistic spectrum. All that red tape is shit, is probably how Cody would describe it in his own colourful and down-Sometimes Jamie needs totake time off at short notice -earth fashion. He looks older than his years. Maybe thatshe's down to a messy domestic life and also to the hours he puts frequent flier in on the job. He lives on his own local A&E and has a teenage son he doesnsometimes Bo't see often s not fit enoughto go to school. Oh, Missed shifts or the need to be away on time to pick Bo up from school are occasions when Jamie can be controlled and he smokes like a chimney and drinks like a fishput in the wrong. In short, he's a mess. But somehow he stumbles through his police work - with It was going to come to a lot of help and support from a long-suffering colleaguehead.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848872984</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Hans Werner Kettenbach and Anthea Bell (Translator)B0CKD1L5JL|title=The Stronger SexRadio Free Olympia|author=Jeffrey Dunn
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=After reading the various comments on the back cover, I was looking forward to reading this book as I love a story with a psychological elementPetr is an orphan. Young Alex is driven to Rescued by the home of his latest client; a man called Klofft. The reader soon finds out that Klofft has plenty of baggagestrange, as well as plenty of money. He's elderly and very ill and mobility is also an issue for him. Soreclusive Bear, while he may have set out to impress others with his large home is brought up far from bustling cities and beautiful thingsbusy human society, sadly he seems no longer to be able to enjoy life. His illness confines him to just a couple in the forests of rooms. ItWashington's apparent that Alex is rather taken with his wife, Cilly Klofft, who is still rather beautiful - for her ageOlympic Peninsula. The reader assumes she's After Bear dies and a brief sojourn in her late sixties or early seventies. But what is it they say about age being human company, and armed with only a number for some of us? And age plays pirate radio transmitter, Petr goes on a big partjourney through the forest, a very big partbroadcasting the strange, in this novelwild and rarely heard voices he encounters.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904738672</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Robert Jackson BennettSarah Marsh|title=The Company ManA Sign of Her Own|rating=43.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=''The Times'' says on the front cover that Bennett is 'clearly After a bout of scarlet fever as a writer to watch' so I had high hopes for this novelchild, Ellen Lark loses her hearing. We meet two Suddenly plunged into a world of the central characterssilence, American policeman Garvey and Englishman Hayeseverything about her life changes. Garvey's working cv is straightforward enough - he carries out police workLiving in a time when the use of sign language was seen as something only savages do, some of which Ellen is pretty grisly. But what about Hayes? He appears sent to be all things a school where she is taught to all men lip read, but at the end of the day wellphysically restrained from signing. From here, he's 'The Company Man' which gives she ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the book its titledeaf and using a system called Visible Speech. And so At the same time, Bell is working on other inventions and ideas, and Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a complex scenario starts to unravel ..complicated tangle of espionage.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1841497924</amazonuk>1035401614
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Justine KilkerrB0BC3YTCMR|title=Advice for StraysGood Girls Die|author=Ayura Ayira
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=If you have ever fancied a grown up version ''This story is not for everyone.'' Lavender Daniels was three weeks short of [[The Tiger Who Came to Tea by Judith Kerr|her fifteenth birthday when The Tiger who came to Tea]], the cover of this Vintage edition should hook you into reading Justine Kilkerr's first novelIncident happened. Here sits She was a sad and patient-looking lionvery bright student, and the female figure beside him, hidden by an umbrellaa bit too nerdy if truth be told, has that same vulnerable look of mother and child suffered from vitiligo - people were afraid to hug her in Judith Kerrcase it's classic childrencontagious. It's picture booknot easy being a black girl whose skin is 84% white. At first this seems like She had a ridiculous connection, crush on seventeen-year-old Reggie Anderson but thinking about it later I'm struck with the analogynever thought he would notice her. Then he did: Lavender was very good at math and Reggie asked if she would tutor him. She readily agreed: tutoring was something she gladly did at church: this was just an extension. She went to his house and he raped her. In shock, not she even allowed him to mention the similarity in authors' namesgive her a lift home. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099535262</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Heather Gudenkauf1472263936|title=These Things HiddenThe Figurine|author=Victoria Hislop|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Golden girl Allison Glenn It was living in 1968 that Helena McCloud made her first trip to Greece. She was alone: her mother, Greek by birth, had left the perfect teenage life until she was imprisoned for family home and refused to return, but Mary and Hamish (Helena's parents) felt that it would be a monstrous crimepity if Helena grew up without knowing her grandparents or understanding her Greek heritage. Now she's twenty-one and has been released from prison Her trip to live the family apartment in a halfway houseup-market Kolonaki would be the first of several annual visits. Allison is keen She grew to put love her grandmother and the past behind herfamily's maid, Dina, but when she returns to her home town was wary - and frightened - of Linden Falls she soon discovers that no one has forgotten her crimegrandfather, least retired general Stamatis Papagiannis. He was proud of all her parents his close connections to the Junta 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 little sister, Brynnfather's Scottish ancestors.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>077830437X</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=Meg WolitzerB0BVDC2VWH|title=The UncouplingGrave Listeners|author=William Frank
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Dory The village is isolated and Robby Lang had one of those marriages that everyone enviespoor. TheyIt're not just loverss surrounded by a Witching Forest. And the villagers subsist largely by farming Uphegia plants - its bread-like fruit provides nutrition and its blossom provides herbal medicines. The black wood of the forest provides heat and warmth, roofs on homes, they're best friends too and they never seem to tire even gallows, if needed. The fear of each other. They're both popular teachers at Eleanor Roosevelt High School ('Elro' to those who know it well) where their daughter being buried alive is a student. It's sometimes difficult to have your parent teaching at your school, but everything seems to rub along reasonably well and Dory was delighted when daughter Willa got a part an existential superstition in the school play. It's ''Lysistrata'' village and whilst that is the drama teacher has to tone it down reason Volushka, a little it still the play about the women who refuse to have sex with their men until they call drunken, self-indulgent, lazy lout of a halt to the war they're fightingman is tolerated.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701186216</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Natasha SolomonsB0BYF82CXT|title=The Novel in the ViolaSemi-Detached|author=Deborah Stone|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Elise Landau arrived in England in 1938, a refugee from Vienna where she ''Bill and her family had had a good lifestyle. In England she's destined for Tyneford Amanda are living in Dorset where she'll be a parlour maid at the big semi-detached house. She's not exactly looking forward to it, but she's escaped Vienna with some stuck in a depressing rut of her mother's jewels sewn into the seams of her dresses boredom and disappointment, when Terry and her father's latest novelFiona – glamorous, successful and very much in manuscriptlove – move in next door. Despite their different outlooks on life, is hidden in the body of her violacouples befriend each other and life appears to improve for both pairs. Her sister But all is leaving not what it seems, and their increasingly interconnected relationships are fated for the USA and her parents hope to followtragedy. Surely Elise will be able to join them before too long? She knows that she won't like England.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>034099567X</amazonuk>'
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Paul MagrsShalini Boland|title=The Silent Bride That Time Forgot|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Christmas Alice and Seth are a match made in heaven. He is approaching everything she has been searching for; handsome, accomplished, clever, funny; total and utter husband-material. She is all he could possibly want in a wife; beautiful, successful, confident… and so the seaside town of Whitby inevitable proposal is eagerly accepted by Alice and Brenda the wedding is busy sprucing up her B&Bplanned and set. She hasn't seen When the much-anticipated day arrives, Alice is walked down the aisle by her best friendfather, neighbour beaming with pride and excitement as she surveys the congregation – their friends assembled to celebrate this joyful day and investigating partner Effie for a few weekswhen Seth turns to face his approaching bride, since EffieAlice's strange gentleman friend Alucard world implodes because she has reappeared. Brenda and Effie are absolutely no idea who the guardians of man at the gateway to Hell which just happens to be right on their doorstep in Whitbyaltar is, but since Effie has shut herself away, Brenda has turned to who is waiting for her friend Robert, the owner of the local hotel to help her with her investigations into the ever present strange goings on in the town, involving vampires, monsters and a rather strange carbecome his wife. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0755359453</amazonuk>1662507089
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Naomi Wood1787636003|title=The Godless BoysGirls of Summer|author=Katie Bishop|rating=45
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=BritainIt was the summer when Rachel Evans turned eighteen that she and Caroline went backpacking around Greece and arrived on the island. 1986 Rachel wasn't exactly innocent but she was, perhaps, naive, so when thirty-four-year-old Alistair Wright started to take an interest in her, she was flattered rather than wary. The country became It was quite a theocracy during the 1950s while before he made any sort of physical approach to her and since then outbreaks of secular terrorism have been dealt with by exilethat time she was obsessed by him. The atheists have been sent to the Island where they can burn churches as they please. Aside from a weekly boat bringing donated supplies Alistair worked for Henry Taylor, looking after his interests on the exiled must shift as best they can on a remote snippet of land island and in particular in the North Seabar where all the girls either worked or partied. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330530127</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=James Patterson and Neil McMahonAmanda Craig|title=ToysThree Graces|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The novel has a very glamorous opening. We're at President Jacklin's inauguration party and Few styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the easy flow state-of narration gets me seamlessly and effortlessly into -the story-nation novel. There are plenty 's something so utterly compelling about any writer who can catch hold of comments and observations pertaining to the super-duper hi-tech times atmosphere of the story, so as early as page 10 Hays day and his beautiful wife Lizbethcapture it, who are invitees, are attended to by a well-trained and well-programmed ''iJeeves butler.'' I loved that phrase. It made me smile. The Bakers are crafting an impressive and influential couple. As part image of the 'elite' society they expect a flawless, ordered life for themselves and their familycountry as it stands in one particular moment. And Patterson then informs us To say that mere human beings have been relegated to menial work and most Amanda Craig is skilled at doing this would be embarrassingly inadequate: she's practically synonymous with the genre of them live pitiful lives and serves them right, apparentlycontemporary social fiction at this point. They're despised but their labour is necessary to oil She has such a gift for weaving the wheels ongoing issues of the important daily day into the lives of the elitesher characters in a way that feels natural and lived-in, never making them ciphers for social commentary but instead fully realised people, grappling with issues far larger than themselves. But the elites have extremely ambitious plans. Can they pull them off?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846057701</amazonuk>140871468X
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Louise Welsh152915118X|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>}} {{newreviewPineapple Street|author=Anita Shreve|title=RescueJenny Jackson
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=When we meet Peter Webster he's a rookie paramedic who takes an emergency call 'Pineapple Street'' is the story of three women: Sasha, Darley and Georgiana. Darley and George are sisters and Sasha is married to help their brother Cord. They're Stocktons, only Sasha isn't a drunk driver whoStockton by birth so she isn't readily accepted into the tribe. The problem's been badly injured in a car crashexacerbated when the clan matriarch, Tilda, asks Cord and Sasha if they'd like to move into the Pineapple Street property. It was touch Tilda and go as Chip have renovated and downsized to whether another property, a street or not Sheila Arsenault made itso away, but she did and afterwards Webster canwhich they own. They won't get her out need any of his thoughtsthe furniture from Pineapple Street, so Sasha and Cord can move straight in. Every instinct tells him Nominally, they had a choice but that he shouldnwasn't get involved with her – that itthe reality. Darley and Georgiana start to call Sasha 'll mean trouble – but perhaps it was the long, shining, dark hair that tipped the balance and Webster is involved in an intense love affairgold digger'. He She's also involved living in Sheila's life – for better or for worse'their'' family home. They use it so often that they abbreviate it to 'the GD'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408700735</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Manu JosephEmily Critchley|title=Serious MenOne Puzzling Afternoon
|rating=4
|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=Ayyan Mani 84 year old Edie has lived in the same small town for almost her whole life, but now she is facing a Dalitmove as her son wants to move to another house and bring Edie to live with his family, an untouchableas Edie is starting to lose her memory. However, stuck in a flat in Mumbai's slums but hopingEdie is tormented by the memory of her childhood friend, Lucy, somehowwho went missing over 60 years ago, for and the worry that there was a better future secret she was keeping for his sonLucy that somehow might be the thing that reveals the truth of what happened all that time ago. Working at After 'seeing' Lucy in the high street, just as she was the Insitute last time she saw her, she starts to find pockets of Theory and Research he uses all his cunning and wiles memories coming back to stay ahead of the game amongst the Brahmin scientistsher. Does he have And yet as she remembers the intelligencepast, she is forgetting more and nerves, more in her day to convince everyone that his sonday life. Will she uncover the truth about Lucy's disappearance before her move, against all odds, is a geniusand before her memories are gone forever?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848543085</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=Philippe Claudel and Euan Cameron0008506337|title=Monsieur Linh and His ChildThe Garnett Girls|author=Georgina Moore
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=From a warThe love affair between Margo Garnett and poet Richard O'Leary was all-consuming, apparently on both sides. Margo was just sixteen when they fell in love. Richard was twenty-ravaged country a bit like a Vietnam or a Cambodia one and described by Margo's mother as 'an old older man carries the fragile frame of his granddaughter aboard a refugee'. Her parents worried that Richard's shipinfluence would take her away from what they felt she could achieve - going to Oxford and having a glittering career. In the event, staring at they eloped and Richard took her away from the receding horizon all the weeks it takes Isle of Wight. Margo did go to Oxford and went on to arrive at become a city a bit like a Seattle or a New Yorkwell-respected journalist. The couple had three children: Rachel, Imogen and Sasha. He Life was lived in London and she are given holidays were spent at Sandcove, the family home on the basics Isle of a new life together but itWight. Even then the doubts about Richard's drinking were never far from Margo's up mind: ''she would never be able to leave him, Monsieur Linh, to find friendship, which he does, accepting uncomprehendingly the chatty company of a fellow mourner called Barkin charge''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906694990</amazonuk>Then Richard left them.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ed Siegle1914585402|title=InvisiblesDashboard Elvis is Dead|author=David F Ross
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The closest Brighton usually gets to Brazil is in the pages of a dictionary, but in I reviewed David F Ross's book [[There'Invisibless Only One Danny Garvey by David F Ross|There'' the two are drawn together in the life s Only One Danny Garvey]] a couple of Joel Burns, years back and remember being absolutely floored by how powerful and affecting it was. It was a thirty-five year old dentist who lives in Brighton as does his mothergripping, Jackieemotionally wounding read, and partner Debbie from whom he is separated. When Joel sees a news clip rereading my review of a bus hijack in Rio de Janeiro, where Joel and Jackie lived until Joel it my main takeaway was ten, he is convinced that one of the bystanders is his Brazilian father. What makes this more unusual is that Jackie has always told Joel that his father is dead, although Joel has never quite bought into this story which is at least part of the cause of his problems with DebbieI might not have lavished enough praise on it. The solution? Head off to Rio and see if he can track down this person.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956559913</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Michael DhillonLucy Ashe|title=The Cuckoo Parchment Clara and the DykeOlivia|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Tristan Jarry The year is the world1933. The place? Sadler's most famous artist but he's rather moved on from selling his work for millions Wells. Ballerinas Clara and has just kidnapped Angelique BurrOlivia are sisters, twins no less. Identical on the step-daughter of the President of outside but not, we learn, on the United Statesinside. She's And not an innocent child but an abused and abusing womanon stage, now a journalist and at times well able to hold her own with Jarryeither. HeBecause there's got helpers though - and forward planning - and it's not long before Angelique finds herself involved in a trail of destruction and death as Jarry works towards his purposelot that builds a dancer. He intends Some things that can be taught or learnt – discipline, attention to resurrect Dadadetail – and some things, that ''je ne sais quoi'', that don't come from the iconic movement founded in 1916 in Zurich with the intention of protesting against the warclassroom. HeA stage presence, a charm, a ''joie de vivre''ll tell Angelique so much – but not what he finally intends to do. The difference between a hard-worker, and a star.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1849235104</amazonuk>0861544080
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Leo BenedictusHeather Fawcett|title=The Afterparty|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary=I opened the front cover and was confronted with the lines 'This book is different. YouEmily Wilde've really never read a book like this before.' Confident words, I thought but will the book live up to this lofty expectation I now had? And when I got round to reading the notes at the end of the novel, I was pleasantly surprised and also rather taken aback, I have to say. So, a refreshing take on the modern work of fiction, I thought, as I started on Chapter One.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>022409114X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=David Baddiel|title=The Death s Encyclopaedia of Eli GoldFaeries
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Eli Gold is recognized as the 'the greatest living writer' - although his claim to this is slipping by by the day as he Emily Wilde is an expert academic scholar on his death bed. He's not a nice character - his attitudes to his five wives faerie lore, and his children are deplorable she has travelled extensively, and he has been bound up in his own 'genius'. Heresearched meticulously, to write her life's a bit like work, the best and the worst very first encyclopaedia of Saul Bellow, Philip Roth faeries. Whilst she is brilliant at research and Norman Mailer combined. Now dying in hospital in New Yorkspeaking to faeries, the book explores this event from the perceptive of four she is not so good with people in his life; his eight year old. So when she finds herself far, precocious daughter by his current wife; his first wife watching on the news from an old people's home far North in England; the angst-ridden son small village of his third marriageHrafvsnik, himself a pale imitation of having somehow offended the author that his father village matriarch, she is; not sure what she has done, nor how to redeem herself and a mysterious fourth character who appears to have a very different motive put her final investigations for seeing Gold snr her book back on the right track. Enter Wendell Bambleby, her dashingly handsome and insufferable rival who may be linked arrives unexpectedly, all charm and delight, much to GoldEmily's fourth wife who died in a mutual suicide pact with her then-husband, from which Eli survivedfrustration. (In fact his identity But why is he here? What does he want? And what exactly is revealed in the publisher's blurb going on with the jacket, but I'll let you decide if you want to know this or to let the story unfold as I did).faerie folk around Hravsnik?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0007270836</amazonuk>0356519120
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Alma Katsu1398515388|title=The Taker|rating=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 the police. Lanny is covered in blood and claims she has killed a man and left him in the woods. Desperate to escape, Lanny quickly asks for Luke's help, but he is not sure at first, so Lanny decides to tell Luke her life story, a story that begins in the early Puritan settlement of St Andrews in 1809 and spans nearly two hundred years, taking Lanny from her home to Boston and beyond. A story that is rich, imaginative Boy and entirely authentic, filling the majority of the novel, and there wasn't a moment when I questioned her reliability as she tells Luke everything, chapter by chapter, as he helps her to escape, slowly drawing him and the reader into her world. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846058171</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewDog|author=Aimee Bender|title=The Particular Sadness of Lemon CakeSeishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The title First of this novel first caught my eye. How can food feel emotions? Actuallyall, it is Rose who discovers that when she is eating she can taste was the earthquake, deep in the feelings of ocean floor, which created the person who cooked or prepared tsunami and this, in turn, caused the foodnuclear meltdown. I The result was complete and utter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, and the loss of livelihoods was a bit worried widespread. The fact that this initial gimmick of the book many pets were separated from which their owners came far down the title is taken would become annoying, list of priorities but really this is another very well-written and readable novel about growing up in six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a dysfunctional familyconvenience store. Rose is about to turn 9 at the beginning, and comes home to find her mother making her birthday cake. She can He wasn't resist tasting a dog person but the cake, convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and at first it is delicious: 'Warm citrus-baked batter lightness enfolded by cool deep dark swirled sugar'. But then she has 'Tamon the sensation of shrinking, of upset, tasting a distance I somehow knew was connected to my mother'dog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009953827X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Guillaume MussoChristopher Bowden|title=Where Would I Be Without You?Mr Magenta
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=I love the cover, which I think angles this book firmly towards women. With that old Beach Boys hit from the Sixties as the title, it encapsulates everything you need to know when choosing this book. ItChristopher Bowden's not really crime fiction, in that it lacks latest novel is a whodunnit aspect in favour patient untangling of following the protagonistsa seemingly ordinary woman's life, carried out by her nephew after she has died. The aunt who always provided a French cop safe harbour and a Scottish master criminal, through little bit of indulgence to a young nephew had had a romantic entanglement much more interesting life than that nephew Stephen had ever realised and into the jaws of death. The interest is in which of the two men will gain command of the other – and who is really driving the action – when both their attentions are focused on the same girlit seems to him an obligation to find it all out.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1906040346</amazonuk>B0B6Z9VJDW
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Mischa HillerJennifer Mason|title=Shake OffPartitions of Unity|rating=3.54
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=''Shake Off'' is the latest from the pen of Mischa HellerHere at Bookbag Towers, we first met Elizabeth Cromwell, dominatrix and unintentional detective in [[Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery by Jennifer Mason|Preposterous]], when she investigated and unravelled a student series of the John Le Carre universe where the Spies had to Come disappearances. In From The Cold. Set in the 80s against a backdrop ''Partitions of daggers and cloaks, wests and easts and defectors and double agents, HellerUnity''s protagonist, Michel Khoury, hooked on pain killers and posing as a student, has been tasked with the unlikely mission of scouting for a Cambridge location in which she sets her mind to host secret talks between those Palestinians and Israelis who seek solving a 'secular democratic state for Jews, Christians and Muslims'murder...|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846590884</amazonuk>B09LQR9FRF
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sarah WinmanWill Carver|title=When God Was A RabbitThe Daves Next Door
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=When God Was Five strangers come together in one moment as a Rabbit is suicide bomber prepares to detonate his vest on a book that tugs at the emotions in a sweet but uncompromising wayLondon tube line. It's in no way a RomCom but if you are a fan of that genre of filmAs their fates overlap, I would suggest that you might too enjoy this book as it shares many of the traits if not the storyline. The analogy to a movie story is apposite too as first time author Sarah Winman's 'day job' is as an actor - she has appeared recently told in Holby Citybackwards order, for exampleleading up to the fateful moment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0755379284</amazonuk>1914585186}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sam MeekingsJennifer Mason|title=The Book of CrowsPreposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Having lived ''A struggling poetry zine, a mom-and-pop mobile diner in China the Northern California redwoods, a 400-meter hurdler who just missed the 2004 Olympics, a women's track coach with a yen for bullwhips, a billionaire with a substantial period state-of time-the-art S&M dungeon, Sam Meekings has clearly soaked up a great deal of the culture; something he has already put to great effect man serving a life sentence in his first bookAlabama, [[Under Fishbone Clouds by Sam Meekings|Under Fishbone Clouds]]. In The Book of Crowsan enigmatic signature, K(s, his third bookx), he continues to show his talent as on a non-Chinese raconteur of Chinese culturecheap oil painting, but goes one step further by telling an erotic art dealer in Georgia...'' This is just a story that spans several periods sample of the cast of Chinese historycharacters and settings in Preposterous. As you can see, thereby giving the reader a glimpse into different people's livessome keeping up will be required! The basic premise of this mystery story goes like this... |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846971721</amazonuk>B09STS96HS
}}
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