|summary=Back in the seventies a group of idealists (well, hippies) founded a commune in the grounds of Arcadia House, a decaying mansion in western New York State. In the early days the renovation of the house and the funding of the commune was hopeful, ''energising'' - the American dream encapsulated in bricks, crops and hard work - but as with many, if not most, such enterprises it was not to last. Power corrupted, personalities changed and commitment waivered. We see the commune and the people who made it through the early, hard-working days to its precarious peak and into its inevitable decline.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0434019623</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Francesca Kay
|title=The Translation of the Bones
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''The Translation of the Bones'' revolves around four women, all connected with the Church of the Sacred Heart, Battersea. Mary Margaret, not the sharpest knife in the box, lives between two poles. When she isn't in church, she's caring for her flat-bound, morbidly obese mother, Fidelma. Alice Armitage, happily married to Larry, counts the days until their son will be home from a tour of duty in Afghanistan. The fourth woman, Stella, lives in a loveless marriage to MP Rufus and spends her time wishing the days away till she can collect her 10 year old son from boarding school. Father Diamond ministers to these women and the church community in general, but whilst worrying about his own adequacy and faith. However, their problems thus far are nothing compared to the devastation to come.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0297865080</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Noah Hawley
|title=The Good Father
|rating=5
|genre=Crime
|summary=Dr Paul Allen is more than happy with his life. His second wife, Fran, is efficient, a good manager, a good mother to their young twins and not overly emotional as Ellen (Wife No. 1) was. In fact you could say that his life runs like clockwork, which is just how he likes it. Paul hates chaos and the unexpected, but he's about to be visited by both. As the Allens sit in horror watching news footage of the charismatic presidential front-runner being gunned down, there's a knock at the door. Their real horror is beginning; the FBI believes the son he had with Ellen is the guy who pulled the trigger.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444730363</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Stephen May
|title=Life! Death! Prizes!
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Billy's mum is dead. Billy is 19 years old when his mum resists a mugger; this is the last thing she ever does, leaving Billy with 6 year old Oscar to face life together. They'll be fine. For a start, their life isn't as bad as the 'Life! Death! Prizes!' type magazines at supermarket check-outs. Billy has a job at the local history museum, Oscar's doing ok at school, so, despite their Aunt Toni, despite Oscar's recently reappearing father, despite the PTA mothers at the school gates... and social services... and the fact that the mugger is a local lad that Billy sees around... yep, they'll be fine.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408819139</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Susan Hill
|title=In the Springtime of the Year
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Ben and Ruth had been married for just a year when he was killed in a tragic accident. One of the other foresters came to tell Ruth about what had happened, but in truth she had known before he arrived. From feeling deliriously happy she had descended within moments into the depths of despair and felt so ill that she could barely move. The confirmation was just that - and Ruth was bereft. She couldn't share her feelings with Ben's family. It's politic to say that they were dealing with their grief in their own way but more truthful to admit that they had never liked her and were disinclined to extend more than the socially-required gestures now that Ben was dead.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099570483</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Roopa Farooki
|title=The Flying Man
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''The Flying Man'' opens with the now elderly Maqil Karam writing a letter in his budget hotel in the South of France and facing death. His story takes in many locations, from his native Punjab, to New York, Cairo, London, Paris and Hong Kong. In each location, Maqil adopts a different name, including Mike Cram, Mehmet Kahn, Miguel Caram and Mikhail Lee. Often he acquires a different wife as well, Carine, Samira and Bernadette, although he doesn't go to the bother of divorcing them, he just simply walks away. He is a chancer and a gambler, avoiding attachment, responsibility and commitment throughout his life.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755383389</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Cynthia Ozick
|title=Foreign Bodies
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Bea Nightingale's brother Marvin wants her - is haranguing her - to retrieve his errant son Julian from post-war Paris, to where he has decamped in an effort to escape parental control. Bea, a New York high school teacher, is an unlikely candidate for the role of rescuer - she and her brother have been estranged for the best part of twenty years. But she capitulates to his demands and sets off on a journey in which her presence will affect not only Julian, but his sister who also runs off to Paris, his girlfriend, a displaced Eastern European Jew, his mother (also escaping Marvin, but this time in a psychiatric facility) and Bea's own ex-husband Leo.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848877366</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jane Harris
|title=Gillespie and I
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=
The 'I' in the title of Jane Harris's ''Gillespie and I'' is Harriet Baxter. Now elderly and residing in London in 1933, she is finally telling her events of what happened in the early 1880s in Glasgow and her relationship with the Gillespie family. At the time, a spinster of independent means, she arrived in Glasgow to visit the International Exhibition and became a champion of and friend to a young Scottish painter, Ned Gillespie and his young family. We know from early on that tragedy struck the Gillespie family leading to Ned destroying his career, but Harriet wants to set the record straight with regard to her involvement in events. You may or may not believe her story.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571238300</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Anna Stothard
|title=The Pink Hotel
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The phone call came when she was 17. Her mother had died; the mother who had just been a flimsy memory of a touch, an impression and a faded photograph. Not satisfied with her father and grandma's biased recollections of 'the slut', she steals her step-mother's credit card and catches a flight to the funeral in Los Angeles. Unfortunately she arrives too late for the funeral, but finding the pink hotel her mother owned, she walks in on the wake. Rooms full of drunken, drug-sodden eyes stare at her whilst she makes her way through the building to what must have been her mother's bedroom. It's then she decides, as her step-father lies, semi-consciousness, on the bed. She takes some of her mother's clothes, shoes and letters. Once she has a chance to read them, she realises they're cards and love letters from men who may be able to build her a picture of the woman who gave her life but not a lot else.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846881757</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Karin Altenberg
|title=Island of Wings
|rating=5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=Rev Neil MacKenzie has been assigned to the Hebridian island of St Kilda. His mission is to bring the locals back to the Victorian idea of God and propriety. He and his pregnant wife Lizzie not only have to fight the elements but also centuries of superstition that have trickled into the islanders' Christian faith. Life is made harder for Neil by a secret guilt emanating from the death of a friend years ago. However, the going becomes harder still for Lizzie, isolated by an inability to speak the local language and the burgeoning fear engendered by Neil's behaviour and attitudes.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857382322</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Georgina Harding
|title=Painter of Silence
|rating=5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=A young, anonymous, vagrant collapses on the steps of a hospital in Romania. He doesn't speak and remains a mystery to the staff that tries to treat his obvious symptoms but can't seem to reach the silent person beneath. However, Safta, a nurse, suggests that he may be deaf and produces drawing materials. Coincidentally, the man is able to draw beautifully, but this is no coincidence to Safta. There are reasons why she can't disclose it, but she knows this man. They grew up together in pre-war Romania, a whole world away when the country had a king, beautiful cities untouched by bombing and being able to read a foreign language wasn't punishable by imprisonment in work camps... or worse.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408821125</amazonuk>
}}
