132,662
edits
Changes
From TheBookbag
Jump to navigationJump to searchno edit summary
[[Category:General Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]]__NOTOC__{{Frontpage|author=Jenny Lecoat|title=Beyond Summerland|rating=4|genre=General fictionFiction|summary=Jean lives on Jersey with her mother where they are celebrating the end of the occupation. During the war, Jean's father was arrested for listening to a banned radio and soldiers took him away one night, leaving Jean and her mother waiting for years for news of him. As the British finally free the Channel islands from the Nazis, and the war is finally over, their hopes rise that they will finally learn what became of him. But will the truth come as a relief, or will it raise further questions around what else happened during the war? Who was the informer who told the Nazis about the radio? And what other secrets have been kept throughout the occupation?|isbn=1846976537__NOTOC__}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alexander McCall SmithOnyi Nwabineli|title=Sunshine on Scotland StreetAllow Me to Introduce Myself
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=I can hardly believe this is Anuri spent her childhood on display to the eighth book about Scotland Streetworld, and itthanks to her step-mother Ophelia's so nice to just pick up increasingly popular presence on social media, where we left off and discover whatshe posted every step of Anuri's been happening 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 all our friendstake down the content about her. This time we have Angus Anuri is battling alcoholism, failing to start her PhD, undergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online and Domenica's weddingreceiving money from them for doing so. Most importantly, she is desperately worried about her little sister, Cyrilwho is the new focus of Ophelia's adventures whilst they're away on their honeymoononline empire. Can she save her sister, Bruce encounters a rather strange gentleman and of course there's plenty of Bertie to entertain us!perhaps herself and her relationship with her father at the same time?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846972329</amazonuk>0861546873
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Michael Palin1529153298|title=The TruthList of Suspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey|rating=45
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Keith Mabbutt was at one of those points in life when everything seemed to be changingIt's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. His marriage was on the rocks(A woman? I mean, honestly... ) His relationship with his children was She's not goodwhat's worrying Miv's family, though. Women have been disappearing. He knew that he was a writer - he had a British Gas Award Well, they've been murdered, but to prove it - but the investigative journalist which he once was had been replaced by someone who did corporate vanity projectshave 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. He skated over Miv's upset because she's overheard that her father wants to move the unpalatable and accentuated what there was that was positive and he was paid passably well for doing itfamily 'Down South'. When he was offered the chance to write you're from Yorkshire, Down South is a biography of Hamish Melvillefrightening, foreign place, best avoided. For Miv, the influential humanitarian activistmove would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, he seized the chance and she'll do anything to prevent that. She's not just because worried about the money on offer was beyond his wildest dreamsdangers or that her Mum's stopped talking - to anyone.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0297860216</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Steven Amsterdam1035906708|title=What the Family NeededDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin|rating=34.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Steven Amsterdam's first novel [[Things We Didn't See Coming by Steven Amsterdam|Things We Didn't See Coming]] won several awards including The Guardian First Boom Award. His second booktend to think of Maria Callas as Greek, 'What the Family Needed', is similar but she was born to Greek parents in that it too contains a large dose of the strangeManhattan, yet it doesn't quite work as well. The book is centred around the families of two sistersNew York, with each member having their own chapter told at different stages of their livesin December 1923 and only moved to Athens when she was thirteen. In each one the various family members are facing problems of some sort or other and each mysteriously achieves some sort of super-power that they Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to 'needCallas' to partly overcome these, although not always with make it more manageable in the desired resultsStates. From early on, When she was back in Athens - supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for her voice - she was raised under the reader suspects that Alek, Nazi occupation by a mother who mercilessly exploited her and made no secret of her preference for her elder sister Natalie's younger son who appears as an imaginative kid when we first meet him, is at the heart of the weirdness and sure enough he has the final chapter in the book. Just don't expect everything to be explainedJackie.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846555809</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Andrey KurkovAlexander McCall Smith|title=The Milkman in the NightPerfect Passion Company|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=If you're going to go sleepwalkingThe Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, there are better places run by Ness and operating as an alternative to do so than in Kiev all the online apps in providing a more personal, tailored service. Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the grip business, as Ness is planning to take a trip to Canada to get away for a while. Katie is coming out of its usual snowya break up with a bad boyfriend, cold and bleak winter - even if there is a lovely blonde so jumps at the end of your journeychance to come home to Edinburgh. Semyon is living And so begins this realitynew story from Alexander McCall Smith, unaware of bringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, thanks to 44 Scotland Street and the strange consequencesIsabel Dalhousie novels, just as others around him are unaware of the strange consequences of their actions - such as the airport security men but with some new characters who purloin some impounded drugs and test them on the catquickly begin to charm. We also have Katie has no experience in running a young single mother selling herself business, or in match- just not making, but Ness has full confidence in that way - commuting into a capital where some are rich enough to try her abilities, and there's always her very helpful (and stave of ageingrather handsome) neighbour, William, and to cheat death in various ways...lend a hand…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099548860</amazonuk>1846976596
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Simon RichDean Koontz|title=What in God's NameThe Bad Weather Friend|rating=4.5|genre=General FictionParanormal|summary=In ''What in God's Name''Benny is having a terrifically bad day. He loses his job, Simon Rich imagines Heaven Inc as a corporate entityhe loses his fiancee, with all the dysfunctional trappings of many a large companyand his house gets trashed. At the head of the operation Oh, as you might expectand someone has delivered a really weird, is God, although he seems disturbing coffin-sized object to have lost his interest in planet Earth home, and certainly in it's possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the operation of heaven. In factthing that has trashed his house! The thing is, he'd rather be watching Benny is the religious channels on satellite television or opening very last person to deserve all this bad luck. He is a restaurantnice person. Although he would like to see rock group ''Lynyrd'' ''Skynyrd'' re-form before he's done with the planet A really nice person. In fact So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the only two who really care about what goes on down here are delivery to his house is a workaholic angel named Craig who works in the Miracles Department and the recently promoted Eliza who has been labouring awaynew friend, somewhat fruitlessly it seemsa bad weather friend called Spike, in the Prayers Department. When Eliza finds that her work on preparing prayers for God who has been sent to help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for nothingbeing a good person. Spike is going to take care of Benny, her anger threatens the end and will certainly take care of the worldBenny's enemies, if he, Benny, unless Craig and Eliza Harper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's wild adventure) can help a couple of hopeless humans find love with each otherfigure out who exactly they are.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846688485</amazonuk>1662500491
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jon CanterKatherine Howe|title=WorthA True Account|rating=34.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=RichardHannah Masury is living in Boston, having been sent to live with a family who run an Ad maninn, and being made to work there from a young age. When she hears there is to be a hanging of some pirates in the town, she decides to go and watch. Enthralled and Sarahhorrified in equal measure, Hannah finds herself embroiled in a city lawyer meetyoung boy's death at the hands of two vicious pirates. She hides away, get marriedso that they don't find and kill her too, and decide then to escape them completely she runs away to leave London behind for an idyllic country life instead. He’ll do some drawingsea, maybe look into illustrating. She’ll do voluntary work. They will start to Enjoy Life dressing as a boy and joining the notorious Ned Low's pirate ship as a bit morecabin boy. They will become Better People. They will be She soon finds herself in the envy thick of all their friends still toiling away things when there is a mutiny on board, and from there we are caught up in her rip roaring tale of life on the big smokeocean waves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099546825</amazonuk>0861547438
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Melanie Gideon1471180158|title=Wife 22Maybe Tomorrow|author=Penny Parkes
|rating=4.5
|genre=Women's General Fiction|summary=Alice and William Buckle have been married Jamie Matson works in an upper-class grocery store, for quite a few years and have two teenage children and man who's a control freak with all the subtlety of a doghalf brick. With their busy lives Jamie's son, they end up having little time for each other Bo, 'has his problems'. He's asthmatic and rarely get the opportunity to talk about more you read, the things more you'll suspect that matterhe's on the autistic spectrum. In order Sometimes Jamie needs to do something about her feelings of discontent, Alice googles take time off at short notice - she'happy marriage?' and although there seem to be no magic secrets for success, s a little later she is invited to take part frequent flier in an online survey about modern marriage. She is given the label, Wife 22, local A&E and is assigned sometimes Bo's not fit enough to her caseworker, Researcher 101, who sends her questions periodically, and is also available through email go to answer any queriesschool. Alice soon enjoys being able to pour her heart out through Missed shifts or the questions that she has need to answer but also finds that she is becoming more than a little attracted be away on time to her faceless caseworker. They start chatting through facebook pick Bo up from school are occasions when Jamie can be controlled and Alice finds it quite exciting to mildly flirt with her new friend. However, the more she does so, put in the more disgruntled she becomes with her own husbandwrong. There comes a point though where Alice has It was going to decide whether come to take things further and if she does, what will become of her marriage?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007481772</amazonuk>a head.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ivo StourtonB0CKD1L5JL|title=The Book Lover's TaleRadio Free Olympia|author=Jeffrey Dunn
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Matt will admit that his writing career failedPetr is an orphan. Rescued by the strange, and so he had to join his wife in interior designreclusive Bear, where he can use his love of books to arrange - at a cost - the contentsis brought up far from bustling cities and busy human society, design and most importantly in the colours, forests of upper class peopleWashington's home libraries for themOlympic Peninsula. He'll concede that it's After Bear dies and a good way to get into the housesbrief sojourn in human company, and bedsarmed with only a pirate radio transmitter, of rich womenPetr goes on a journey through the forest, such as his latest flamebroadcasting the strange, Claudiawild and rarely heard voices he encounters. But why is this, his confession, talking of murder?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0552773875</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Heather GudenkaufSarah Marsh|title=One Breath AwayA Sign of Her Own|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Mrs Oliver has spent After a bout of scarlet fever as a child, Ellen Lark loses her hearing. Suddenly plunged into a world of silence, everything about her life changes. Living in a time when the classroom. Educating. Guiding. Nurturing. But on the last day use of term all sign language was seen as something only savages do, Ellen is sent to a school where she really wants is taught to get to lip read, but physically restrained from signing. From here, she ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the afternoon bell without any dramadeaf and using a system called Visible Speech. A gunman walking At the same time, Bell is working on other inventions and ideas, and Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in to her classroom really does not fit in with her plansa complicated tangle of espionage.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848451326</amazonuk>1035401614
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Timeri N MurariB0BC3YTCMR|title=The Taliban Cricket ClubGood Girls Die|author=Ayura Ayira
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Janie Ryan ''This story is born into a definitely underprivileged familynot for everyone. Despite a mother who tries to make the right decisions, growing up becomes a fight for survival (both figuratively and literally) as Janie encounters social services, tough schools, domestic violence and an array of 'uncles', all promising a better future that seems as tangible as the holy grail.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701186399</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Drew Thomas1472263936|title=CurtainsThe Figurine|author=Victoria Hislop
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Danny is a performer on London’s cabaret circuitIt was in 1968 that Helena McCloud made her first trip to Greece. She was alone: her mother, but his hard work isn’t doing much for his status. When he meets VeronicaGreek by birth, who promises had left the family home and refused to make him a starreturn, he never guesses but Mary and Hamish (Helena's parents) felt that this might it would be too good a pity if Helena grew up without knowing her grandparents or understanding her Greek heritage. Her trip to the family apartment in up-market Kolonaki would be truethe first of several annual visits. Rapidly falling in She grew to love with her – or so he thinks – soon grandmother and the family's maid, Dina, but was wary - and frightened - of her grandfather, retired general Stamatis Papagiannis. He was proud of his close connections to the Junta and expected his family to uphold his life revolves around doing her biddingvalues but saw no reason to accommodate them. But Veronica is a more complex individual than Danny could ever have imagined His prejudices included Helena's red hair and green eyes - and inherited from her forcefulness will lead them both down an unimaginable pathfather's Scottish ancestors.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0957187807</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Joanna KavennaDean Koontz|title=Come to the EdgeAfter Death|rating=4.53
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=If you are fortunate enough to own 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 rural second home hideaway makeshift mortuary, covered in the UKplastic, he has a sense that something very, this beautifully written book will probably give you nightmares. For very bad has happened to him – and only him – as he sits up and looks around at the rest shrouded bodies of ushis dead friends and former colleagues. As he recovers his senses, ithe realises that there is something different about him; he can ''feel'' everything. ''Everything''s a great read. The target for Joanna Kavenna Michael isn't ''Michael''s satire is the unused property, owned by the wealthy, depriving the local population of anywhere to live in the places they have grown upanymore.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1780872135</amazonuk>1662500467}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Simon DenmanB0BVDC2VWH|title=ConnectedThe Grave Listeners|author=William Frank|rating=3.54
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Doug, a maths The village is isolated and computing undergraduate at Essex University, has just pulled the most amazing girlpoor. So heIt's not really that interested in surrounded by a Witching Forest. And the file villagers subsist largely by farming Uphegia plants - its bread-like fruit provides nutrition and its blossom provides herbal medicines. The black wood of fractals research best friend Kal has just sent him. But while Doug the forest provides heat and Cindy are busily getting it warmth, roofs onhomes, something has gone horribly wrong for Kal and Doug emerges from afternoon delight to the horrific discovery that his friend has committed suicideeven gallows, if needed. Miles away The fear of being buried alive is an existential superstition in the countryside, Peter is attending his brother's funeral. Martin was a musician but not a tortured artist village and it seems inconceivable that he too would take his own life. But is the tripreason Volushka, for Petera drunken, is more than a family obligation self- it's the chance indulgent, lazy lout of a break from a stale marriage and an opportunity to indulge in some guilty proximity to his newly-bereaved sister-in-lawman is tolerated. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>B0089YQPI0</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jane FeaverB0BYF82CXT|title=An Inventory of HeavenSemi-Detached|author=Deborah Stone
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Mavis Gaunt was evacuated to Shipleigh in Devon during World War II and went to live with her aunt. It wasn't just an escape from the dangers of London - it was a welcome relief from her parents' loveless marriage Bill and Amanda are living in a semi-detached house, stuck in her mind it became a heavenly retreat. In her twenties depressing rut of boredom and with her mother dead there was nothing to keep her in London so she headed back to Shipleigh. She struck up an unlikely friendship with Frances Upcottdisappointment, one of three children of a reclusive farmer when Terry andFiona – glamorous, almost against her willsuccessful and very much in love – move in next door. Despite their different outlooks on life, found herself drawn into the couples befriend each other and life of the farmappears to improve for both pairs. It gave her a sense of belonging but But all is not what it ended in seems, and their increasingly interconnected relationships are fated for tragedy.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780330006</amazonuk>''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Martin AmisShalini Boland|title=Lionel AsboThe Silent Bride|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Martin Amis can be relied upon to create some pretty nasty, self-centred central characters. Usually they are upper class cads and bounders but in Lionel Asbo his central character is at the polar opposite in terms of class. He's violent, uncouth and ignorant. He's a criminal whose usual sidekicks are a pair of vicious pit bulls. His 'manner' is a fictitious down trodden area of London called Diston Town where he lives in a tower block with his nephew, Des, who in fact is the central character in the book. Des, in contrast is far more sympathetic - intelligent and kind, that is if you overlook the fact that as a 15 year old he had an affair with his grandmother, Lionel's mother. Hey, no one's perfect. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224096206</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Ben Fountain|title=Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=In Ben Fountain's ''Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk''Alice and Seth are a match made in heaven. He is everything she has been searching for; handsome, accomplished, clever, Billy funny; total and what utter husband-material. She is left of his Bravo troop colleagues are back from the war all he could possibly want in Iraq following a brave firefight caught on camera by embedded journalists. The US armywife; beautiful, successful, keen to gain PR from confident… and so the event has brought them back on an optimistically titled 'Victory Tour' despite inevitable proposal is eagerly accepted by Alice and the fact that they are all to be re-deployed the next weekwedding is planned and set. The majority of When the book takes place on the last much-anticipated day of this tour when Billy arrives, Alice is in his home-state of Texas, where walked down the Bush link makes it even more pro-waraisle by her father, beaming with pride and excitement as she surveys the boys are invited congregation – their friends assembled to celebrate this joyful day and when Seth turns to attend that most American of PR eventsface his approaching bride, Alice's world implodes because she has absolutely no idea who the Thanksgiving football game man at the Dallas Cowboys stadium. Accompanying the troop altar is a veteran Hollywood producer , who has promised the soldiers that he can sell their story is waiting for her to a movie studio for mega-bucks. If only it were that simplebecome his wife.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857864386</amazonuk>1662507089
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Shams Uddin1787636003|title=The Year from JahannamGirls of Summer|author=Katie Bishop|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The Wright family begin a blog in January 2011. They all want to celebrate a new start after It was the turmoil of recent years. Father Richard had been a casualty of the financial crisis, working for Lehman Brothers at the time of its collapse, summer when Rachel Evans turned eighteen that she and the ensuing chaos had affected the entire family one way or another. But Richard retrained, secured a new job Caroline went backpacking around Greece and has recently earned a huge bonus. At last the family are back arrived on track and enjoying the fruits of hard labourisland. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0957175205</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Jan Wallentin|title=Strindberg Rachel wasn's Star|rating=3.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Just as he is preparing for t exactly innocent but she was, perhaps, naive, so when thirty-four-year-old Alistair Wright started to take an appearance on a television showinterest in her, a stranger approaches Don Titelman and asks for his helpshe was flattered rather than wary. This man, Erik Hall, has recently discovered It was quite a mysterious body at the bottom while before he made any sort of a flooded mine shaftphysical approach to her and by that time she was obsessed by him. Whilst perfectly preservedAlistair worked for Henry Taylor, medical checks confirm looking after his interests on the island and in particular in the bar where all the man had been dead for nearly a hundred years. The deceased apparently committed suicide whilst holding on to a metal ankh with some strange writings on itgirls either worked or partied.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848879873</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Natasa Dragnic and Liesl Schillinger (translator)Amanda Craig|title=Every Day, Every HourThree Graces
|rating=4.5
|genre=HumourGeneral Fiction|summary=Dora and Luka meet and become firm friendsFew styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the state-of-the-nation novel. In normal situations one might add 'There's something so utterly compelling about any writer who can catch hold of the atmosphere of the day and a whole lot more'' to that sentencecapture it, but Dora and Luka are crafting an image of the country as it stands in Kindergarten, which makes their intense relationship hard to defineone particular moment. As they grow into adults, however, it becomes obvious To say that there Amanda Craig is something between them and no matter how much they, or their circumstances, try to fight skilled at doing this would be embarrassingly inadequate: she's practically synonymous with the genre of contemporary social fiction at this it is there and is not going to fade awaypoint. Dora’s parents move her across She has such a gift for weaving the continent, careers develop and flourish, out ongoing issues of nowhere they are enveloped by family the day into the livesof her characters in a way that feels natural and lived-in, never making them ciphers for social commentary but still there is an invisible bond that draws them back to one anotherinstead fully realised people, grappling with issues far larger than themselves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701186941</amazonuk>140871468X
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Gerry Wells152915118X|title=Kicking the Hornets' NestPineapple Street|author=Jenny Jackson
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Hilary, a single mother ''Pineapple Street'' is the story of two troublesome boys meets Davidthree women: Sasha, an elderly writer with problems of his ownDarley and Georgiana. Darley and George are sisters and Sasha is married to their brother Cord. They're Stocktons, through Facebook. It’s an odd beginning – they have only Sasha isn't a mutual friend, Stockton by birth so one adds she isn't readily accepted into the tribe. The problem's exacerbated when the otherclan matriarch, Tilda, asks Cord and then Sasha if they start chatting quite spontaneously – but sets 'd like to move into the scene well for their atypical relationshipPineapple Street property. Hilary’s in New Zealand Tilda and Chip have renovated and downsized to another property, a street or so away, David’s in Londonwhich they own. They are many decades apart won't need any of the furniture from Pineapple Street, so Sasha and Cord can move straight in age . Nominally, they had a choice but are clearly both quite lonely that wasn't the reality. Darley and looking for someone to talk Georgiana start tocall Sasha 'the gold digger'. So, with the vague anonymity of social networking on She's living in ''their side, '' family home. They use it so often that they reach out abbreviate it to one another'the GD'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>9881993296</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Lionel ShriverEmily Critchley|title=The New RepublicOne Puzzling Afternoon|rating=34|genre=Literary FictionCrime|summary=Lionel Shriver adds a beard-shaped appendage to Southern Portugal 84 year old Edie has lived in The New Republic and immediately has it fighting the same small town for independencealmost her whole life, taking but now she is facing a wry look at terrorism move as well her son wants to move to another house and bring Edie to live with his family, as Edie is starting to lose her memory. However, Edie is tormented by the ethics memory of her childhood friend, Lucy, who went missing over 60 years ago, and the worry that there was a secret she was keeping for Lucy that somehow might be the thing that reveals the international press corpstruth of what happened all that time ago. After a series of international terrorism acts'seeing' Lucy in the high street, just as she was the Os Soldados Ousados De Barbalast time she saw her, or she starts to find pockets of memories coming back to her. And yet as she remembers the SOB for shortpast, have gone quiet at she is forgetting more and more in her day to day life. Will she uncover the same time as charismatic journalist Barrington Sadler has vanished without a trace. Insecure former lawyer Edgar Kellogg steps into Barringtontruth about Lucy's post: Kellogg on the hunt for serial killersdisappearance before her move, as it were. and before her memories are gone forever?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0007459807</amazonuk>1804181250
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Anne SwardMadelaine Lucas|title=BreathlessThirst for Salt|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=There are those who say that''Love, on an individual levelI'd read, books are like Marmite: you love it or you hate it. Ohwas supposed to be a light and weightless feeling, if only it were so easy.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 ''BreathlessThirst for Salt'' is one of those that I neither love nor hatedetails 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 yet am not totally uninspired by eitherhow it altered her irrevocably. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857051032</amazonuk>0861546490
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Chris Cleave0008506337|title=Gold|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=Novels that feature sport often put people off reading them, particularly if you are not au fait with the sport in question. However, while the characters in Chris Cleave's ''Gold'' are athletes, specifically cyclists aiming for the 2012 London Olympics, it's more about the characters themselves. In fact, if you are looking for a book to read to avoid the brouhaha of the Olympics this year but still want to get a taste of what all the fuss is about, this would be a superb choice.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340963433</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewThe Garnett Girls|author=Jonathan Lee|title=JoyGeorgina Moore
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Very stylishThe love affair between Margo Garnett and poet Richard O'Leary was all-consuming, observant apparently on both sides. Margo was just sixteen when they fell in love. Richard was twenty-one and described by Margo's mother as 'an older man'. Her parents worried that Richard's influence would take her away from what they felt she could achieve - going to Oxford and oh so spikyhaving a glittering career. In the event, this is an incredible they eloped and Richard took her away from the Isle of Wight. Margo did go to Oxford and went on to become a well-respected journalist. The couple had three children: Rachel, Imogen and Sasha. Life was lived in London and holidays were spent at Sandcove, often uncomfortable novel that you just canthe family home on the Isle of Wight. Even then the doubts about Richard's drinking were never far from Margo's mind: ''she would never be able to leave him in charge''t put down.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0434020427</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sylvie Nickels1914585402|title=The Other Side of Silence|rating=3.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Pippa Eastman went to Australia to get away from her domineering father, the historian Joseph Eastman and it was there that she met Jude, the son of two Ten Pound Poms. Their relationship was good, but not exactly committed on either side. It was about having fun. Familial ties were surprisingly strong though and when Joseph Eastman developed Alzheimer's Disease Pippa returned to the UK to care for him. Slightly to her surprise, Jude followed her - determined to track down the alcoholic father who had left him and his mother in Australia. It's only after her father's death that Pippa finds herself in search of her father's life - and trying to establish that he wasn't a murderer.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781762686</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewDashboard Elvis is Dead|author=William Nicholson|title=The Golden HourDavid F Ross|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Maggie is nervous about committing to I reviewed David F Ross's book [[There's Only One Danny Garvey by David F Ross|There's Only One Danny Garvey]] a live-in relationship, terrified couple of years back and remember being absolutely floored by the idea that there must be something better out there. Dean is terrified of losing the love of his life how powerful and old Mrs Dickinson is just, well, terrifiedaffecting it was. Henry is frustrated by rabbits in his gardenIt was a gripping, Alan is frustrated by workemotionally wounding read, and Liz is frustrated by old Mrs Dickinson, who is her motherrereading my review of it my main takeaway was that I might not have lavished enough praise on it...|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849163936</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Daniel GlattauerLucy Ashe|title=Love VirtuallyClara and Olivia
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=When Emmi sends The year is 1933. The place? Sadler's Wells. Ballerinas Clara and email to cancel a magazine subscriptionOlivia are sisters, she has twins no idea what a slight typo in less. Identical on the email address will lead to – a life-changingoutside but not, potentially marriage-wreckingwe learn, all-consuming online love affair with on the man whom she emails in errorinside. And not on stage, either. Because there's a lot that builds a dancer. What starts as an insignificantSome things that can be taught or learnt – discipline, casual message quickly becomes something much more important attention to both her detail – and Leo as two people who have never met start to share their secrets and wishessome things, that ''je ne sais quoi'', dreams and fears with each otherthat don't come from the classroom. A stage presence, not just because they can buta charm, it seemsa ''joie de vivre''. The difference between a hard-worker, because they have toand a star.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857050958</amazonuk>0861544080
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alan ClarkHeather Fawcett|title=Rory's Boys|rating=5|genre=Humour|summary=Rory Blaine, grandson of Lady Sybil Blaine is gay, free, single and loving it, as he tells himself a dozen times a day. He may be middle aged but he's still got it. He's a partner in a successful advertising firm and so, so over having been thrown out of home when he was a teenager; yes, over it – totally and completely. When he hears his grandmother is dying, he decides itEmily Wilde's time to remind her (and her considerable wealth) of his existence. The tardy but intensive attention seems to pay off when he's left the ancestral pile. But the stately home wasn't left to him quite in the way that he thought. There are so many strings attached it resembles a marionette: if he wants to keep it he must transform it into the first retirement home for elderly gay gentlemen and he also seems to have acquired his first resident, whether he's wanted or not.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906413886</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Allan Hendry|title=End Game|rating=3.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=A decade ago arms dealer Peter Rossi and Bill Rawlings, theologian, were in rough terrain two thousand feet above the Dead Sea. Rawlings was looking for something, but what, or where? It still wasn't entirely clear to Rossi when it was necessary for them to make a dramatic escape from a group of men - and the resulting carnage would be the stuff of nightmares for Rossi for many years to come. A decade later and at the other side of the world Bradley O'Connor, billionaire computer scientist, was forced to land his vintage plane on a mountain track in heavy snow and in the cold and lonely night which followed found his plane surrounded by a group Encyclopaedia of men eerily similar - had he but known it - to those Rossi and Rawlings had encountered.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848972431</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Eliza Graham|title=The History RoomFaeries|rating=54
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The novel begins with a key scene from Meredith’s childhood Emily Wilde is an expert academic scholar on faerie lore, and she has travelled extensively, and then springs forward researched meticulously, to write her life's work, the present day and the incident in the history room. The prank sets the tone for the whole novel – sinister in many subtle ways and having several layers very first encyclopaedia of meaningfaeries. The cast assemble around the fall out from the prank Whilst she is brilliant at research and each character speaking to faeries, she is beautifully drawnnot so good with people. Hugh So when she finds herself far, Meredith’s husband, is suffering far North in the results small village of horrors he experienced in Helmand. Meredith’s immediate family are also traumatised by Hrafvsnik, having somehow offended the death of her mother. In this highly charged atmospherevillage matriarch, she is not sure what she has done, it’s hard nor how to know whether they are taking redeem herself and put her final investigations for her book back on the prank too seriously or if it does indeed imply worrying occurrences within the schoolright track. Add in the presence of strangers in the form of new pupils Enter Wendell Bambleby, her dashingly handsome and new staffinsufferable rival who arrives unexpectedly, all charm and before long even the most long-held relationships begin delight, much to suffer as a result of all Emily's frustration. But why is he here? What does he want? And what exactly is going on with the suspicions that are brought out by the prank.faerie folk around Hravsnik?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0330509276</amazonuk>0356519120
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Chuck Palahniuk1398515388|title=Invisible Monsters RemixThe Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary='Don't expect this to be First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the kind of story that goes: tsunami and thenthis, and thenin turn, caused the nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and thenutter devastation.' And yet... Once upon a time I collected a couple of Palahniuk booksThe deaths were uncountable, upon his first, ''Fight Club''-inspired flush and the loss of British success, and never got round to reading themlivelihoods was widespread. And then The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the book reviewing gods conspired to give me [[Pygmy by Chuck Palahniuk|Pygmy]], [[Telllist of priorities but -All by Chuck Palahniuk|Tellsix months after the tsunami -All]] and [[Damned by Chuck Palahniuk|Damned]] to peruseKazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. And then I still didnHe wasn't go back through his past works. But then a dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that he revised Invisible Monsters, would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his second-written car door and third-published novel, and I got to look at it after allTamon the dog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099575051</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Marcello FoisChristopher Bowden|title=Memory of the Abyss|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=We are on Sardinia, over a hundred years ago. It is a land of legend, where storytellers can see a different nature to the moon each night and convey that in their earthly stories. It's a world of wonder, where sheep can fall from the skies for more than one reason. It's a poor land, where lads are expected to be responsible shepherds by the time they are ten. As a result people look after each other - except, while returning from a Christening Samuele and his father are refused basic hospitality. Later when the boy runs away one night the land falls away beneath him - yet he finds a girl to ground him to this earth. Which is most relevant when he goes to war, and particularly when he comes back and finds himself a wronged man, and in need of vengeance...|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906694001</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Francis Bennett|title=The Crabber StoriesMr Magenta
|rating=4
|genre=Short StoriesGeneral Fiction|summary=John White was known to everyone as Crabber - Christopher Bowden's latest novel is a nickname which he once earned and which then stuck - and he grew up on the shores patient untangling of Long Island in the nineteen-fiftiesa seemingly ordinary woman's life, carried out by her nephew after she has died. It was The aunt who always provided a close-knit community safe harbour and a time when children little bit of indulgence to a young nephew had had a much more freedom interesting life than they are likely that nephew Stephen had ever realised and it seems to be allowed now. We watch as Crabber grows from being a boy still suffering from the death of his elder brother when we first met him through to a time when he's old enough an obligation to go on a hunting trip on the mainland with a local family. He tells his own stories, as truthfully as he can and with the sort of insight which children have before life injects its cynicismfind it all out.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>B00737IKIW</amazonuk>B0B6Z9VJDW
}}
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=When the [[Fifty Shades Of Grey by EL James|Here at Bookbag Towers, we first]] book in a trilogy is outstandingly awesomemet Elizabeth Cromwell, dominatrix and the unintentional detective in [[Fifty Shades Darker Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery by EL JamesJennifer Mason|secondPreposterous]] is pretty darn excellent, to read the final instalment is when she investigated and unravelled a no-brainer reallyseries of disappearances. And, I suspect that is why this book is selling so well, because while it’s a mildly interesting readingIn ''Partitions of Unity'', in my she sets her mind it didn’t come close to the first two offerings in terms of intriguing characters, solving a suspense filled plot or general ''kinky-fuckery''murder...|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099579944</amazonuk>B09LQR9FRF
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Maggie ShipsteadWill Carver|title=Seating ArrangementsThe Daves Next Door
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Weddings are always Five strangers come together in one moment as a potential source for intrigue and drama. In Maggie Shipstead's debut novel, ''Seating Arrangements'', there's plenty of that going suicide bomber prepares to detonate his vest ona London tube line. Set in a New England island called WaskekeAs their fates overlap, Winn Van Meter's eldest daughter, Daphne, who the story is already heavily pregnant is about to marry Greyson Duff. The problems start when Daphne's retinue of bridesmaids, who include her sister, Liviatold in backwards order, who has had her heart broken by her first love leading up to the son of Winn's social arch rival, and the flirtatious Agatha mix with Greyson's brothers. Add in the fact that Winn has always had a yearning for Agatha and things get decidedly messyfateful moment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>000742521X</amazonuk>1914585186}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tony ParsonsJennifer Mason|title=Catching the SunPreposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Tom Finn had been ''A struggling poetry zine, a builder, but bankruptcy intervened mom-and taxi driving provided some sort of living for him-pop mobile diner in the Northern California redwoods, his wifea 400-meter hurdler who just missed the 2004 Olympics, Tess and twins Rory and Keeva. And so it might have continued but a women's track coach with a yen for two burglars in his home. Tom 'confronted' them - and nearly went to jailbullwhips, but his conviction mean that taxi driving was no longer an option. Then a chance encounter brought him billionaire with a state-of-the offer of another driving job - but this one was art S&M dungeon, a man serving a life sentence in Phuket in Thailand - and included accommodation. There'Alabama, an enigmatic signature, K(s , x), on a saying that if something seems too good to be true then it probably ischeap oil painting, but when youan erotic art dealer in Georgia...'re as close to the bottom as Tom Finn there comes a time when you've got to take This is just a chance sample of the cast of characters and hope that settings in Preposterous. As you can see, some keeping up will be required! The basic premise of this is your lucky daymystery story goes like this...|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0007327811</amazonuk>B09STS96HS
}}
Move on to [[Newest Graphic Novels Reviews]]
