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[[Category:General Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Leanne HallJenny Lecoat|title=This is Shyness|rating=4.5|genre=Teens|summary=''This is Shyness'' is an unusual and brilliant story about Wolfboy and Wildgirl, two strangers who meet in a pub in the town of Shyness. The teenagers are drawn together, each adopting a different identity so for the night they can be anyone but themselves.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1921656522</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Antonin Varenne and Frank Wynne (translator)|title=Loser's CornerBeyond Summerland
|rating=4
|genre=ThrillersGeneral Fiction|summary=Meet Georges Crozat. He's a policeman in Paris, who boxes Jean lives on Jersey with her mother where they are celebrating the end of the sideoccupation. After a bout that leads to an almost embarrassing victory, he is made two offers – one from a clearly corrupt man behind During the scenes in the sportwar, who seems Jean's father was arrested for listening to offer a few thrown fights banned radio and soldiers took him away one night, leaving Jean and her mother waiting for Georges, then some kind years for news of status as assistant – training, guiding, profiteering; him. As the British finally free the other comes Channel islands from a man known always as ''the Pakistani'' (or an unkind abbreviation of Nazis, and the war is finally over, their hopes rise that), who has a friend they will finally learn what became of a friend who wants someone to do an enemy a mischief with their fistshim. Georges doesn't take too long to choose But will the latter. In alternating chapterstruth come as a relief, however, we're in or will it raise further questions around what else happened during the 1950s, and a rookie to war? Who was the forces, Pascal Verini, is being shipped out to Algeria to work on informer who told the civil war causing Nazis about the republic to break away and become independent from France. radio? Like Georges, he finds his situation one which also causes And what may be misguided violence, even if he has a very different attitude to it.other secrets have been kept throughout the occupation?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857052276</amazonuk>1846976537
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=J Robert LennonOnyi Nwabineli|title=See You In ParadiseAllow Me to Introduce Myself|rating=34.5|genre=Short StoriesGeneral Fiction|summary=Lennon writes with a relaxedAnuri spent her childhood on display to the world, thanks to her step-mother Ophelia's increasingly popular presence on social media, easy style where she posted every step of Anuri's childhood for sponsorships and his characters are instantly recognisable as people from everyday walks of lifeinfluencer deals and, basically, without being in any way stereotypicalmonetary gain. Many of the people Now Anuri is in these stories are dealing with normal frustrations, her twenties and Lennon she is cleverly detached enough not slowly trying to make them individuals that you're obviously supposed regain her confidence and to get her life back, suing her step-mother to root for (take down the only exception content about her. Anuri is the industrialist in the eponymous talebattling alcoholism, who is an archetypal capitalist fat cat). There are some very clever characterisations – in ''Weber’s Head''failing to start her PhD, undergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online and receiving money from them for exampledoing so. Most importantly, the narrator she is a flawed individual whose opinions of his housemate are gradually revealed to be unreliable and unfair. For medesperately worried about her little sister, the most unsettling story who is ''No Life'', because it portrays a decent couple at the mercy new focus of people more powerful and influential than themOphelia's online empire. There is no supernatural or bizarre element at work here Can she save her sister, just ordinary characters and perhaps herself and her relationship with her father at the mercy of social power.same time?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1781253358</amazonuk>0861546873
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Daisy Waugh1529153298|title=HoneyvilleThe List of Suspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey|rating=45
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The story It's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is told by Dora WhitworthPrime Minister. (A woman? I mean, a call girl in one of the most exclusive brothels in Trinidadhonestly...) She's not what's worrying Miv's family, Coloradothough. Women have been disappearing. At the time Well, they've been murdered, the town was the only place in the West where prostitution was legal and it was infamous for its red-light districtbut to have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. Dora’s voice rings true and Miv's upset because she's overheard that her life is convincingly describedfather wants to move the family 'Down South'. The sumptuous brothel in Plum Street, with its smells of perfume and disinfectant When you're from Yorkshire, Down South is as claustrophobic as a prison and Phoebefrightening, foreign place, best avoided. For Miv, the madammove would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, particularly chillingand she'll do anything to prevent that. She's not worried about the dangers or that her Mum's stopped talking - to anyone.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007431775</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tammy Cohen1035906708|title=Dying for ChristmasDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin|rating=34.5|genre=CrimeGeneral Fiction|summary=The book starts off promisingly enough with an introduction by JessicaWe tend to think of Maria Callas as Greek, but she was born to Greek parents in Manhattan, New York, in December 1923 and only moved to Athens when she was thirteen. Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to 'Callas' to make it more manageable in the narrator, who informs us States. When she was back in Athens - supposedly so that she is imprisoned could get appropriate training for her voice - she was raised under the Nazi occupation by a stranger mother who is handsome mercilessly exploited her and charming and extremely sadistic. Jessica then recounts the events leading up to and during made no secret of her incarceration, which takes place over the Christmas period. Her jailer, Dominic, has prepared twelve presents preference for herelder sister, for the Twelve Days of Christmas, and each present-opening episode builds up a sense of dread while providing a deepening understanding of the sinister and bitter mind at workJackie. Genuinely creepy stuff.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784160172</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Paul SussmanAlexander McCall Smith|title=The Final Testimony of Raphael Ignatius PhoenixPerfect Passion Company|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=On The Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and operating as an alternative to all the eve of the year 2000online apps in providing a more personal, Raphael Ignatius Phoenix decides that he tailored service. Ness has had enough. Having lived for a century, he takes his own life on asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the roof of his castlebusiness, swallowing as Ness is planning to take a small white pill he has kept on his person trip to Canada to get away for almost 90 yearsa while. In the days before Katie is coming out of a break up with a bad boyfriend, he had written his story all over and so jumps at the walls of the castle - a chance to come home to Edinburgh. And so begins this new story that takes in from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us to an Edwardian childhoodEdinburgh we already love, Hollywood in thanks to 44 Scotland Street and the 1920'sIsabel Dalhousie novels, the Second World War, life as a butler but with some new characters who quickly begin to charm. Katie has no experience in running a stately homebusiness, life or in a rock band match-making, but Ness has full confidence in the 60her abilities, and there'salways her very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, William, time spent in to lend a nursing home, and finally life in the castle - amongst other, enchanting tales.hand…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0552779679</amazonuk>1846976596
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jane StubbsDean Koontz|title=Thornfield HallThe Bad Weather Friend|rating=4.5|genre=General FictionParanormal|summary=I can't say that I'm Benny is having a fan of reworkings of classic books: [[Emma by Alexander McCall Smith|some]] suck the life out of the originalterrifically bad day. He loses his job, he loses his fiancee, and his house gets trashed. Oh, [[Jane Eyrotica by Charlotte Bronte and Karena Rose|others]] fail someone has delivered a really weird, disturbing coffin-sized object to add anything - his home, and why would you want to read an inferior version when you can read it's possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the real thing? that has trashed his house! GenerallyThe thing is, I try Benny is the very last person to avoid them - and I'm still not certain why I made an exception for ''Thornfield Hall'' - it certainly wasn't the headless woman (sighdeserve all this bad luck. He is a nice person. A really nice person.) on So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the cover - but I added it delivery to his house is a new friend, a bad weather friend called Spike, who has been sent to my reading pilehelp him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a good person. ISpike is going to take care of Benny, and will certainly take care of Benny's enemies, if he, Benny, and Harper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny'm glad that I dids wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782395245</amazonuk>1662500491
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Simon WroeKatherine Howe|title=Chop ChopA True Account
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary='Monocle' isn't his real nameHannah Masury is living in Boston, having been sent to live with a family who run an inn, but that's what and being made to work there from a young age. When she hears there is to be a hanging of some pirates in the brigade at ''The Swan'' would call him once they knew him well enough town, she decides to insult himgo and watch. He has an English Literature degreeEnthralled and horrified in equal measure, you see, and the chefs think thatHannah finds herself embroiled in a young boy's what he would have worndeath at the hands of two vicious pirates. He She hides away, so that they don'd no interest in cookingt find and kill her too, and then to escape them completely she runs away to sea, but was two months behind on his rent dressing as a boy and being joining the lowest-rung chef in notorious Ned Low's pirate ship as a gastropub in Camden was the only job that he could getcabin boy. His co-workers are deranged and borderline criminal whilst She soon finds herself in the head chef, Bob thick of things when there is a top-rank sadist constantly mutiny on the look out for material board, and from there we are caught up in her rip roaring tale of life on which to practice. Monocle has little choice but to stay - given the situation between his parents, going home isn't really an optionocean waves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0241000009</amazonuk>0861547438
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Suzanne McCourt1471180158|title=The Lost ChildMaybe Tomorrow|author=Penny Parkes
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Sylvie lives Jamie Matson works in an upper-class grocery store, for a small Australian fishing village man who's a control freak with her mumall the subtlety of a half brick. Jamie's son, dad Bo, 'has his problems'. He's asthmatic and elder brotherthe more you read, Duncthe more you'll suspect that he's on the autistic spectrum. However all that is about Sometimes Jamie needs to change and little Sylvie finds herself take time off at short notice - she's a frequent flier in the middle of dramas she neither understands nor controlslocal A&E and sometimes Bo's not fit enough to go to school. Her world may never Missed shifts or the need to be away on time to pick Bo up from school are occasions when Jamie can be controlled and put in the same but she tries wrong. It was going to come to make sense of it, Trollop, clingy mother, moody father and alla head. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1922147788</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Monique RoffeyB0CKD1L5JL|title=House of AshesRadio Free Olympia|author=Jeffrey Dunn
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=There had been unrest in Petr is an orphan. Rescued by the Caribbean City of Silk strange, reclusive Bear, he is brought up far from bustling cities and busy human society, in Sans Amen for some time with people growing increasingly belligerent about the perceived corruption forests of the governmentWashington's Olympic Peninsula. Then After Bear dies and a brief sojourn in human company, and armed with only a pirate radio transmitter, Petr goes on a journey through the day came when The Leader called forest, broadcasting the Brothers together strange, wild and told them that they were going to make history: they would take over the House rarely heard voices he encounters.}}{{Frontpage|author=Sarah Marsh|title=A Sign of Power and the television studios and reclaim what was rightfully theirsHer Own|rating=3. Part 5|genre=General Fiction|summary=After a bout of this 'revolution' is Ashesscarlet fever as a child, Ellen Lark loses her hearing. Suddenly plunged into a quietworld of silence, bookish young man who seems to feel most guilty everything about the lie he told his wife - that he'd be back home for dinner - her life changes. Living in a time when he left the houseuse of sign language was seen as something only savages do, Ellen is sent to a school where she is taught to lip read, but physically restrained from signing. He'd From here, she ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been swayed by The Leader's rhetoric teaching the deaf and finds himself using a part of system called Visible Speech. At the rag-tag band of ill-trained but probably over-armed young men same time, Bell is working on other inventions and ideas, and teens who invade the House Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a complicated tangle of Power. It would not go as they expectedespionage.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1471126668</amazonuk>1035401614
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Betsy TobinB0BC3YTCMR|title=Things We Couldn't ExplainGood Girls Die|author=Ayura Ayira
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Jericho, Ohio - 1979. Annemarie ''This story is a clever, funny and spirited girl. Born with sight, she turned blind as a child, but more than compensates not for her disability. Living amongst the small-town folk of Jericho, she has a relatively standard, suburban life, schooled at home but more than friendly with many in the town - especially her charming neighbour Ethaneveryone. ''
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{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1472263936|title=The Figurine|author=Victoria Hislop|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary=It was in 1968 that Helena McCloud made her first trip to Greece. She was alone: her mother, Greek by birth, had left the family home and refused to return, but Mary and Hamish (Helena's parents) felt that it would be 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 the first of several annual visits. She grew to love her 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 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.}}{{Frontpage|author=Jonathan BrahamDean 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}} {{Frontpage|isbn=B0BVDC2VWH|title=The Pink House at AppletonGrave Listeners|author=William Frank
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=When we first meet Boyd Longfellow Brookes heThe village is isolated and poor. It's musing over the fact that - however much you might wish otherwise - sounds, smells or small details can evoke the most painful of memories in full Technicolorsurrounded by a Witching Forest. On this particular afternoon it was And the music villagers subsist largely by farming Uphegia plants - Saintits bread-Saens ''Violin Concerto No 3 in B minor'' - which brought back the scene which regularly invaded his dreams ''like fruit provides nutrition and'' his waking hoursits blossom provides herbal medicines. Once again he was The black wood of the eight-year-old boy whose father was thrashing him with a leather strap whilst his mother wept forest provides heat and warmth, roofs on homes, and Papa demanded to know even gallows, if Boyd had molested the young daughter of a neighbourneeded. He didn't even know the meaning The fear of ''molest'' but being buried alive is an existential superstition in the expressions on village and that is the faces reason Volushka, a drunken, self-indulgent, lazy lout of those around him told him all he needed to knowa man is tolerated.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848767455</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sumia SukkarB0BYF82CXT|title=The Boy from Aleppo who Painted the WarSemi-Detached|author=Deborah Stone
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=This is ''Bill and Amanda are living in a semi-detached house, stuck in a book about colour against the grey backdrop depressing rut of the Syrian civil warboredom and disappointment, when Terry and Fiona – glamorous, successful and very much in love – move in next door. AdamDespite their different outlooks on life, the 14-year-old narrator, couples befriend each other and life appears to improve for both pairs. But all is an artist who describes emotionnot what it seems, people and things their increasingly interconnected relationships are fated for tragedy.''}}{{Frontpage|author=Shalini Boland|title=The Silent Bride|rating=3|genre=General Fiction|summary= Alice and Seth are a match made in colourheaven. Through colour He is everything she has been searching for; handsome, accomplished, clever, funny; total and utter husband-material. She is all he makes sense of could possibly want in a wife; beautiful, successful, confident… and so the inevitable proposal is eagerly accepted by Alice and the worldwedding is planned and set. So When the much-anticipated day arrives, Alice is walked down the aisle by her father, beaming with pride and excitement as she surveys the congregation – their friends assembled to celebrate this joyful day and when Seth turns to face his sisterapproaching bride, YasmineAlice's world implodes because she has absolutely no idea who the man at the altar is, 'who is usually rubywaiting for her to become his wife.|isbn=1662507089}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1787636003|title=The Girls of Summer|author=Katie Bishop|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary=It was the summer when Rachel Evans turned eighteen that she and Caroline went backpacking around Greece and arrived on the island. Rachel wasn' although at times t exactly innocent but she was, perhaps, naive, so when thirty-four-year-old Alistair Wright started to take an interest in her, she is grey or greenwas flattered rather than wary. Adam’s views are simple, uncomplicated – It was quite a while before he says ‘Lying is bad’made any sort of physical approach to her and by that time she was obsessed by him. Alistair worked for Henry Taylor, ‘I don’t like looking after his interests on the war’ island and ‘[Paintings] always say in particular in the right things’bar where all the girls either worked or partied.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908998466</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Susan HillAmanda Craig|title=Black SheepThree Graces
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Mount Few styles of Zeal is a mining village, and no mistake. Three concentric semicontemporary fiction interest me like the state-circular streets align across the side of a hill, like -the rows -nation novel. There's something so utterly compelling about any writer who can catch hold of seats in an amphitheatre, with little thought at all allowed for the life above the crest atmosphere of the hillday and capture it, and a lot crafting an image of effort and dreams focused on the coal mine at the village's corecountry as it stands in one particular moment. The Howker family (and how evocative To say that name Amanda Craig is, so akin to the noise of hawking coal dust from oneskilled at doing this would be embarrassingly inadequate: she's lungs), and Ted and Rose, practically synonymous with the youngest genre of contemporary social fiction at this point. She has such a gift for weaving the clan, in particular, will face ongoing issues of the destiny day into the environment they grow up lives of her characters in gives a way that feels natural and lived-in, never making them – ciphers for social commentary but instead fully realised people, grappling with only the merest glimmers of hope and the faintest of sparks to latch on to as regards a likeable futureissues far larger than themselves. But if that is a faint spark, then how safe is it so close to the tinderbox of a coal mine?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>009953956X</amazonuk>140871468X
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Katherine Webb152915118X|title=The Night FallingPineapple Street|author=Jenny Jackson
|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical General Fiction|summary=In ''Pineapple Street'' is the summer story of 1921three women: Sasha, Leandro returns to his birthplace in ItalyDarley and Georgiana. He has made his fortune, Darley and George are sisters and his aim Sasha is married to transform their brother Cord. They're Stocktons, only Sasha isn't a crumbling palazzo Stockton by birth so she isn't readily accepted into an opulent mansionthe tribe. But The problem's exacerbated when the outside world is still reeling from clan matriarch, Tilda, asks Cord and Sasha if they'd like to move into the Great War, Pineapple Street property. Tilda and Chip have renovated and Leandro’s nephewdownsized to another property, Ettorea street or so away, is one which they own. They won't need any of those most the furniture from Pineapple Street, so Sasha and Cord can move straight in need of help. ReluctantlyNominally, Ettore asks his uncle for assistancethey had a choice but that wasn't the reality. But Ettero could not have foreseen what was Darley and Georgiana start to come from call Sasha 'the gold digger'. She's living in ''their'' family home. They use it so often that request…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1409131491</amazonuk>they abbreviate it to 'the GD'.
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Paul Fournel and David Bellos (translator)Emily Critchley|title=Dear ReaderOne Puzzling Afternoon
|rating=4
|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=Robert Dubois is a publisher of the 84 year old school: Edie has lived in the books matter - of course they do - same small town for almost her whole life, but then so does the food now she is facing a move as her son wants to move to another house and the drink which accompanies the professionbring Edie to live with his family, as Edie is starting to lose her memory. He's had a long career However, Edie is tormented by the memory of paper manuscriptsher childhood friend, Lucy, who went missing over 60 years ago, authors and lunches and he fully expects the worry that life will continue in this way until he finally retires, whenever there was a secret she was keeping for Lucy that somehow might bethe thing that reveals the truth of what happened all that time ago. Then one day an intern presents him with an ereader and nothing will ever be quite After 'seeing' Lucy in the same againhigh street, not least his briefcasejust as she was the last time she saw her, which is used she starts to accommodating vast quantities find pockets of papermemories coming back to her. He's not a Luddite - but getting used to this gizmo And yet as she remembers the past, she is not going forgetting more and more in her day to be easyday life. Will she uncover the truth about Lucy's disappearance before her move, and before her memories are gone forever?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782270264</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''
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{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0008506337|title=Everything I Never Told YouThe Garnett Girls|author=Celeste NgGeorgina Moore
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=To understand Lydia’s deathThe love affair between Margo Garnett and poet Richard O'Leary was all-consuming, we need 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 understand Lydia, Oxford and to understand Lydia we need to understand Lydia’s parentshaving a glittering career. Marilyn In the event, who wanted more they eloped and Richard took her away from her life than to play the dutiful housewife, who goes to college Isle of Wight. Margo did go to study Oxford and realise her dreams, not went on to meet become a man (her own mother’s dream for her), goes ahead and, well, she meets a man-respected journalist. That man is James The couple had three children: Rachel, whose credentials for teaching American history are up for debate, but who nonetheless manages to overcome his background to secure a role doing just thatImogen and Sasha. They settle down Life was lived in London and have Nathholidays were spent at Sandcove, then Lydia, then a little while later, Hannah. An unusual the family for 1970s Ohio, but a happy onehome on the Isle of Wight. The children are bright, Even then the home is cosydoubts about Richard's drinking were never far from Margo's mind: ''she would never be able to leave him in charge''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0349134286</amazonuk>Then Richard left them.
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Patrick Rothfuss1914585402|title=The Slow Regard of Silent ThingsDashboard Elvis is Dead|author=David F Ross
|rating=4.5
|genre=FantasyGeneral Fiction|summary=Deep below the University, the ancient home I reviewed David F Ross's book [[There's Only One Danny Garvey by David F Ross|There's Only One Danny Garvey]] a couple of magic years back and remember being absolutely floored by how powerful and learning, affecting it was. It was a young girl lives amongst the cavesgripping, tunnelsemotionally wounding read, and abandoned rooms. In Seven days, her friend will be visiting - one rereading my review of her few friends, and someone who Auri cannot wait to seeit my main takeaway was that I might not have lavished enough praise on it. Those seven days are filled with Auri's preparations - her hunt amongst the tunnels and caves for a proper gift, and her thoughts as she goes about her business. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1473209323</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Dear Committee MembersLucy Ashe|authortitle=Julie SchumacherClara and Olivia
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Jason Fitger (Jay) The year is 1933. The place? Sadler's Wells. Ballerinas Clara and Olivia are sisters, twins no less. Identical on the outside but not, we learn, on the inside. And not on stage, either. Because there's a Professor of creative writing lot that builds a dancer. Some things that can be taught or learnt – discipline, attention to detail – and literature at a small university in some things, that ''je ne sais quoi'', that don't come from the American mid-westclassroom. He is also A stage presence, a charm, a frustrated novelist with ''joie de vivre''. The difference between a colourful personal historyhard-worker, much of which bleeds into his professional life, with interesting resultsand a star.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0007586345</amazonuk>0861544080
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Michael PitreHeather Fawcett|title=Fives and Twenty-Fives Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries|rating=54
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=In Iraq any soldier within 5 metres of a roadside bomb explosion will die as even Emily Wilde is an armoured truck will be torn expert academic scholar on faerie lore, and she has travelled extensively, and researched meticulously, to pieces. Being within 25 metres write her life's work, the very first encyclopaedia of a roadside explosion would be fatal to foot soldiersfaeries. Lieutenant Pete Donovan Whilst she is brilliant at research and his US marine unit know this better than anyonespeaking to faeries, she is not so good with people. Their job So when she finds herself far, far North in Iraq the small village of Hrafvsnik, having somehow offended the village matriarch, she is not sure what she has done, nor how to repair redeem herself and put her final investigations for her book back on the roads but it's not as simple as it soundsright track. Every pothole (yesEnter Wendell Bambleby, her dashingly handsome and insufferable rival who arrives unexpectedly, all charm and delight, much to Emily''every'' pothole) contains a bomb; even the kerbstones could be dummies filled with explosivess frustration. That's But why every serviceman and woman has it drilled into them: no matter is he here? What does he want? And what, no matter where, always watch your fives and twenty-fives.exactly is going on with the faerie folk around Hravsnik?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>B00M7S1NL8</amazonuk>0356519120
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{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1398515388|title=The TowerBoy and the Dog|author=Alessandro GallenziSeishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)|rating=34.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=AmmanFirst of all, it was the earthquake, Jordandeep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and even while this, in turn, caused the world's tallest building is still being constructednuclear meltdown. The result was complete and utter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, Biblia are hard at work insideand the loss of livelihoods was widespread. The global Internet conglomerate is undergoing its efforts to digitise fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the entire world's knowledge, including a priceless archive held by a local dignitary, when one list of the workers involved priorities but - on behalf of six months after the Vatican tsunami - vanishes, along with some unknown quantities of the worksKazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. Enter Peter Simms from England, and He wasn't a classy Italian colleague, dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to help relocate whatever it was that was missing - in open his car door and Tamon the face of threats from elsewhere dog jumped in the Muslim kingdom...|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846883377</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=EmmaChristopher Bowden|authortitle=Alexander McCall SmithMr Magenta|rating=3.54
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=When I read about the plan to re-imagine Jane AustenChristopher Bowden's novels through contemporary, bestselling authors I wasn't entirely sure this was latest novel is a good thing. Sense and Sensibility by Joanna Trollope? Really? But then, patient untangling of course, my eyes lit upon the magic authora seemingly ordinary woman's namelife, Alexander McCall Smith! Not only carried out by her nephew after she has died. The aunt who always provided a safe harbour and a little bit of indulgence to a young nephew had been asked had a much more interesting life than that nephew Stephen had ever realised and it seems to be involved, but the book he was going him an obligation to work on was my most favourite Austen book, Emmafind it all out. What could possibly go wrong?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0007553854</amazonuk>B0B6Z9VJDW
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{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=LucyJennifer Mason|authortitle=Alan KennedyPartitions of Unity
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Lucy is a painter. Hiding away Here at Bookbag Towers, we first met Elizabeth Cromwell, dominatrix and unintentional detective in Dundee on VE Day[[Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery by Jennifer Mason|Preposterous]], when she returns from investigated and unravelled a disaster series of an exhibition to a letter from a figure from her pastdisappearances. Uncle AlbertIn ''Partitions of Unity'', still in France, wants she sets her mind to sort out his affairs - who will get what after he's deadsolving a murder. The letter sends Lucy on a voyage of discovery - about a past full of art, lost love, found love, grief, war and about what could possibly come next. Set in pre-war London, pre-war and wartime France and windy, rainy Dundee, Lucy is a love story, but it's also a kind of coming-home. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0956469663</amazonuk>B09LQR9FRF
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Judy ChicurelWill Carver|title=If I Knew You Were Going To Be This Beautiful, I Never Would Have Let You GoThe Daves Next Door|rating=54
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Katie and her friends Five strangers come together in Elephant Beach, Long Island are going to make the most of summer 1972. High school is behind them, there's booze to be drunk and weed to be smoked. There's also one moment as a lot suicide bomber prepares to contend with. This is detonate his vest on a working class community, ignored and disenfranchised by those with the money and influence to helpLondon tube line. Also the Vietnam War rages onAs their fates overlap, producing local heroes like Luke and Mitch. For some of the young people the future story is a blank canvastold in backwards order, for others their future is foreseen or foreshortened. As for Katie's hopes and dreams, they all revolve around leading up to the hope of a date with Lukefateful moment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1472221656</amazonuk>1914585186}} {{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The Love Song of Miss Queenie HennessyJennifer Mason|authortitle=Rachel JoycePreposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Rachel Joyce envisions ''The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy'' not as A struggling poetry zine, a prequel or sequel to [[The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce|The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry]] but as mom-and-pop mobile diner in the Northern California redwoods, a companion volume. Giving Queenie's side of 400-meter hurdler who just missed the story through an extended letter she is writing to Harold from St Bernadine's hospice as she awaits his arrival2004 Olympics, Joyce gives readers a new perspective on her characterwomen's unrequited love track coach with a yen for Haroldbullwhips, a surprising friendship she kept up billionaire with his son David until his suicidea state-of-the-art S&M dungeon, a man serving a life sentence in Alabama, an enigmatic signature, K(s, x), and her sudden move from Devon to Northumbriaon a cheap oil painting, where she lived an erotic art dealer in Georgia...'' This is just a quaint beachside cottage sample of the cast of characters and maintained her sea garden until she became ill with cancersettings in Preposterous. As you can see, some keeping up will be required! The basic premise of this mystery story goes like this...|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857522450</amazonuk>B09STS96HS
}}
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