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[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!{{Frontpage|author=Eowyn Ivey|title=Black Woods Blue Sky|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''Black Woods Blue Sky'' tells the story of Birdie, the young mother of toddler Emaleen, who longs for a life beyond the Alaskan lodge where she works as a bar waitress, a setting which enables her bad habits and her accidental neglect of Emaleen. Described as a ''wild card'', she feels stuck in her day-to- Remove day life, and yearns to cross the Wolverine river and live on the North Fork to fulfil her desires of a simple life surrounded by nature. When she meets Arthur Nielson, a strange, taciturn and solitary man, who says he has a cabin over there, she feels called to go -->and bring Emaleen with her. Without realising it, this calling will transform hers and Emaleen's lives forever.|isbn=1472279042}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jennifer DownSally Rooney|title=Our Magic HourIntermezzo

|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=There had always been Katy, Audrey Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard of life and Adamis something of a grandmaster at putting it into words. They've been friends since school Her dialogue is gripping and now, along with Audrey's partner Nickso brilliantly frustrating, as her characters never quite say exactly what they remain inseparable as young professionalsfeel. ThenAmong the many relationships woven into this story, the central one dayfor readers to unravel is the fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. Ivan, Katy kills herself. No warninga socially awkward chess prodigy, contrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, no reason just no Katy. The four are suddenly three trying to make sense of a moment that leaves so many questions successful lawyer living in Dublin. Following their father's passing after a world that refuses to pause while they figure it outlong battle with cancer, the brothers' already strained relationship faces new trials.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1925240835</amazonuk>0571365469

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Ayobami AdebayoFyodor Dostoyevsky|title= Stay With MeWhite Nights|rating= 5|genre= General FictionShort Stories|summary= I have a ''thing'' about blurbs which give away far too much of As always in Dostoyevsky, the storiescharacter work is sublime. Not this time. This time…''There are things even love can't do…if the burden One is too much and stays too long even love bends, cracks, comes close to breaking, and sometimes does break.'' ''But even when it's in never left wondering what a thousand pieces around your feet, that doesn't mean it's no longer love…'' That character is the most heart-breakingly beautiful truth I've read in a long time – thinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and it sums up this story. This is a story about love not being enough…but still being love. I hope this becomes a classic, not just in its native Nigeria but around the worldtemperaments with remarkable clarity. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782119469</amazonuk>0241619785

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Michael Farris SmithJames Baldwin|title= Desperation RoadGiovanni's Room|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= Maben is on the run. For a long while it''Giovanni's not clear whether sheRoom''s running from something or towards somethingfollows the narrator David, an American man living in Paris, or simply back to where it all started. She's got her small daughter as he navigates his torturous affair with herGiovanni, and they've been walking for an Italian bartender he meets in a very long timegay bar. It's hard on While David is engaged to Hella, who is travelling in Spain, the real tension in the child, novel arises not from his infidelity but itfrom the deeper conflict within himself. It is David's also clear that if it wasn't for the child Maben would stop running, crippling shame and it's clear denial of his sexuality that that would not be a good thingultimately dooms his relationship with Giovanni.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1843449870</amazonuk>0141186356

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Samanta Schweblin and Megan McDowell (translator)Alba de Cespedes |title=Fever DreamForbidden Notebook

|summary=Meet Carla. She's a glamorous older woman, with poise and beauty, and someone who still looks a treat in a golden bikini. But inside, she's different. The biggest issue she seems to bear relates to This Italian work of feminist fiction holds an event a few years ago, when her horse breeder husband had the drama air of both a hired, valuable stallion, suspense and their son, being poisoned. Away tension from the right medical treatmentmoment our protagonist, Valeria Cossati, Carla took David to a woman who said the only hope was a 'migration' – basicallypurchases her forbidden notebook, to farm out part of David's spirit and swap it with someone else's, to dilute learns about herself in the toxinmost intimate and revealing ways. This was a success, as David seems to have survived, although Carla is sure it was the wrong decision – she now sees David as at least part monster. But another odd thing about this tale is that it isn't being narrated by Carla, but by her neighbour, another mother called Amanda, who is renting a holiday home nearby. And the further odd thing is to whom she is narrating this story – it's to David…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1786070901</amazonuk>1782278222

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Shanthi SekaranOttessa Moshfegh|title=Lucky BoyMy Year of Rest and Relaxation|rating=53

|summary=Solimar wants more from her life than her Mexican home can offer and now she's 18At best, she can go find it. Her target this novel is to get to a scathing critique of modern society and reveals the USAfragility of human relationships; at worst, a target so blinding that she doesn't realise what reaching out for it will cost. Meanwhile Kavya is living the American dreamcynical, predictable and slightly trite tale of an unlikeable protagonist. She's rich in friendshipThis unlikely heroine, familya slim, a loving husband and life prospects attractive and yet Kavya has a baby-shaped hole newly orphaned girl in her twenties is disillusioned with the world, but resolves not to lose sleep over it: in fact, her solution lies in her hibernation. The problem is that there's only one baby for both of them… Lucky boy!|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0735212279</amazonuk>1784707422

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Rick BassMatthew Tree|title= For a Little WhileWe'll Never Know|rating= 4.5|genre= Short StoriesLiterary Fiction|summary=''For Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, a Little While'' is a collection drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of his artistic passions all failed miserably and who had endless crises of twenty-five short stories from Rick Bassself confidence. As someone previously unacquainted with Bass' work this new collection was a wonderful introduction So Tim applied himself to his quirkystudies, unusual style which focuses on stripped back, simple fables featuring often mundane situations, mysterious characters and magical experiences. The characters in each tale are beautifully crafted and the stories are dreamy, loose narratives covering everything from love to death to choices made cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and chances takenset himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782273042</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Dorthe NorsB0C47LV1PC|title=Mirror, Shoulder, SignalFragility|author=Mosby Woods|rating=3.54

|summary=Danish author Dorthe Nors has published four novels, Can you make a novella and a story collection. The protagonist of her latest novel, forty-something Sonja, has a problem with balance – literally. Due to an inner ear condition, if she bends over she's crippled by dizziness. It's inconvenient given that Sonja is currently taking lessons at Folke Driving School. SheYo birthing person's already doing poorly – her angry, sweary instructor Jytte doesn't trust her enough to change gears so does it all for her – and so can't have them finding out that she gets dizzy. Eventually Sonja switches so Folke himself is her instructor, but he's an odious lecher. She really can't win.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782273123</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Alice Hoffman|title= Faithful|rating= 4.5|genre= General Fiction |summary= Growing up on Long Islandjoke? And if you could, Shelby Richmond is an ordinary girl until one night an extraordinary tragedy changes her fate. Her best friend's future the question should you make it? Or is destroyed in an accidentthe question if you did, while Shelby walks away with the burden of guilt. What happens when a life is turned inside outwould it land? When love The catch is something so distant it may as that the answer for both could well be a star in the sky? Moving from a life in her parents basement to a life in New York City, Shelby remains damaged by the loss of her best friend, stumbling through life blindly and fighting desperately to become connected to anything at all. But, as she grows, she discovers emotion, survival and happiness, bundled up with dogs, food, books and men she... no. 's probably best avoiding… Deep in New York City she find a circle of lost and found souls, and the angel who's been watching over her since that fateful night all those years ago…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1471157717</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Miguel Bonnefoy and Emily Boyce (translator)|title=OctavioFragility's Journey|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction |summary=Meet Octavio. He's a large lunk, a gentle giant, living alone in a lowly Venezuelan town – a town which once, fleetingly, had fame, fashion and success through a minor miracle, but has none any longer. Octavio, it seems, has some unusual habits – here he is, marching off to the chemist's with a table across his back, for it was all the doctor had at set as the time to write a prescription on. Now we never learn exactly what the cause city of the prescription wasPortland, but we soon find out what the cause of the table is – Octavio cannot readOregon, and has learned nothing beyond cutting into his palm cautiously begins to allow emerge from the wound to let him escape restrictions imposed during the need to write. Until, that is, a woman seems to suggest a way for him to learn to read and write, and to love – but that experience also proves to Octavio that there is a whole host of other things he can put his mind to, both for good, and for bad…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1910477311</amazonuk>covid pandemic

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tomoka Shibasaki and Polly Barton (translator)Mosby Woods|title=Spring Garden|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction |summary=Murakami, and (long before the film) Endo's ''Silence''. That's my limit as regards contemporary Japanese writing. But now there's Tomoka Shibasaki, and her noted work ''Spring Garden''. Which, make no mistake, is definitely Japanese. For instance, if I told you it starts with a man looking up to watch his female neighbour on her balcony, and concerns obsession, you could well think it was his about her. But no – perhaps only in the west is the gaze so male. The obsession is very much hers here, and it – and the novel – concern a singular house. And the very singular country it lives in, and the changes it is going through…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782272704</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Laura Kaye|title= English Animals|rating= 5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= When Mirka gets a job in a country house in rural England, she has no idea of the struggle she faces to make sense of a very English couple, and a way of life that is entirely alien to her. Richard and Sophie are chaotic, drunken, frequently outrageous but also warm, generous and kind to Mirka, despite their argumentative and turbulent marriage. Mirka is swiftly commandeered by Richard for his latest money-making enterprise, taxidermy, and soon surpasses him in skill. After a traumatic break two years ago with her family in Slovakia, Mirka finds to her surprise that she is happy at Fairmont Hall. But when she tells Sophie that she is gay, everything she values is put in danger and she must learn the hard way what she really believes in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>140870823X</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Charles D Blanchard|title=Kingdom's EndA Whirly Man Loses His Turn

|summary=The rats made their massive colony inside West isn't the ruins dominant force it once was. Nobody in the West is quite sure how to mend this or even if mending it is the best course of an abandoned motion picture palaceaction. Governments are flailing. A war here, where a push for thirty long dark years, an aged blind leader ruled over themclimate action there. A beloved figure held feeling that nobody is in high regardactual charge. Imagine then, he rules there was a man with patience, understanding, justice and loveprecognition. When Imagine the strategic advantage in this asset; a young upstart challenges all he has built, ruling with harsh punishments and rash decisionsman who can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the rats must decide how best to protect their colony most valuable asset in order to preserve all that they have built togetherhistory. As the rats clash amongst themselvesImagine then, some fail to notice the ever growing threats and dangers that the outside world provides - who will come out on top in this very literal rat raceman loses this ability. What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>148344936X</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sebastian Barry0571379559|title=Days Without EndThe House of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams

|summary=It''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the story of four people. Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in the mid nineteenth century house on the riverbank, built of broken bricks. Insubstantial as it might look, it's stood the passage of time, storms and Thomas McNulty has left his home in Sligofloods. Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his family dead from faminevegetables, to make a new life complete the delivery rounds - and to bring in a new nationsufficient money. He teams up with prairie fairy They have twin boys - a dancer in drag - John Cole Sonny and together they sign up for Max, the US Armyrainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Their journey will take them through the American Indian wars and eventually to the Civil WarMax takes after his father. Along the way People don't believe that they're related, the two soldiers form a lasting bond with a young Sioux girl called Winona much less twins and their travels take them from Missouri to Wyoming and Tennessee. Itthere's the story of perhaps the most violent birth of a nation in history but itan assumption when Max is out with his mother that she's also a convention-defying love storyhis nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571277004</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Rose TremainClaire North|title=The Gustav SonataHouse of Odysseus

|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Gustav Perle grew ''What could matter more than love?'' The follow-up to the excellent ''Ithaca'' picks up in a small town in neutral Switzerland: few months after where we left off. In the horrors palace of the Second World War seemed distantOdysseus, with delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her husband, but neutrality was maintained partly who sailed to war at Troy and then by divine intervention never returned home. As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the expense throne of those who would seek refuge in the countryWestern Isles. Gustav's father died in mysterious circumstances Having survived – politically and whilst Gustav adored his mother, Emilie, she was cold and indifferent to him. Until he met Anton Zwiebel he was a lonely child with just one toy, a tin train, but he and Anton met at kindergarten where it fell physical – the chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Gustav to look after the nervous boy. Anton is Jewish and heIthaca's a talented pianistshores, but he lacks Queen Penelope is on the confidence to perform in publicbrink of a fragile peace. Throughout much One that shatters however with the return of his life he relies on Gustav's supportOrestes, but fails to appreciate just how importantKing of Mycenae, how necessary it is to and his wellbeingsister Elektra, seeking refuge.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1784700207</amazonuk>0356516075

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tom TomaszewskiKay Chronister|title=The Eleventh LetterDesert Creatures|rating=34|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=At the end of the working day, Christopher With a world that is looking over the ghosts of his occupancy of some rooms on Harley Streetbecoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, before moving up the road to different chambers, and pastures newpost-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. He's half impelled and half reluctant to revisit Whether it is a pair of audio cassettesrobotic takeover, on which are interviews by him and someone else a world devoid of water or a woman called Louisenuclear holocaust, who was arrested in Italy in the 1980s this genre is a way for the double murder of two close friends, Kate and Johnhumans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. Hardly aware he's being snowed in by a London blizzard and the usual British response to any bad weather, he spontaneously provides shelter to a flame-haired beauty, Kay, who provokes him into playing the tapes. It's an occurrence which changes him much more profoundly than he does others at the therapistDesert Creatures''s couch. Indeed, the closer he gets to by Kay, the closer he gets to the voice of the victim from decades ago. What on earth could be the connection?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>099357582X</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Steinunn Sigurdardottir and Philip Roughton (translator)|title=The Good Lover|rating=2.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Karl Chronister is a global example new work of the Icelandic species, with more than one home abroad and an amanuensispost-cum-assistant to do his scheduling and arrange housework while he's going here and there being a businessman. He has a string of lovers apocalyptic fiction that has stretched into three figures, partly because with one exception three is the limit of liaisons he'll have with each. But he's also got a heart devoted to Una, his teenaged love whom he adores, despite her splitting with him decades ago. On a whim he leaves a beach holiday to go back to one aligns many of the icy limbs of Iceland, witnesses the changes wrought by fifteen years on her – and then ends up staying the night with the woman next doorfears that exist for humanity today. This It is purely platonic, but what with his host knowing everything about the situation, an ever-present taxi driver, and an ex on the line in America, is there a way he can snatch his love from her marriage and shocking novel that still manages to find happiness?hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>9462380139</amazonuk>1803364998

{{newreviewfrontpage|authorisbn=Eric Beck Rubin|title=School of Velocity|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Jan's head is dropping him in it. He's a trained concert pianist, but is having difficulty performing, with a horrendous problem, in that he can hear any discordant music, or just in fact horrid noise, when in the wings waiting to perform, and never the score he is due to follow. The devil's tinnitus, you might call it. With another failure behind him, but dignity somewhat intact, Jan decides he has to work back through his life to tell us the cause – and we're likewise dropped into an extended flashback, to his formative years at art school, with a pretentious drama student, Dirk. The book is a fast-moving exploration of what Jan finds of note (pun intended) through his life, and all that might have caused his mental problem. But is cognisance of what might lie behind it going to help?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0993506275</amazonuk>}}{{newreview1803363002|author=Gerard ReveEric LaRocca|title=The Evenings: A Winter's Tale|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''The Evenings'' was voted the best Dutch novel of all time by the Society of Dutch Literature, and its author, Gerard Reve (1923–2006), was the first openly gay writer in the Netherlands. It's a historic book for its native country, but will it have the same impact in English translation? Contemporary Dutch novelist Herman Koch compares ''The Evenings'' to the works of Kerouac and Salinger, and Trees Grew Because I can see how it could have achieved cult status for a certain generation, but plot-wise I found it more tedious than revelatory.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782271783</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Henrietta Rose-Innes|title= NinevehBled There

|genre= General FictionHorror|summary= Henritetta Rose-Inne's Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is used as a way to reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and process them. Most horror fiction feature a ''NinevehBig Bad'' instantly reassures you , whether that you are in the presence of is a confident and talented writer. The story of Katya Grubbshome invader, a second generation pest exterminator who specialises in relocating the bugs monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and rodents that ruin middle-class garden parties, Rose-Inne writes with by the enviable ability end of describing both the intricacies of Katyastory, beatable. Eric LaRocca's job and ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. It is a collection of short stories more interested in the feeling horrors of it simultaneouslyillness, grief and humiliation. Horrors that linger and are harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1910709166</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sara Stridsberg and Deborah Bragan-Turner (translator)Madelaine Lucas|title=The Gravity of LoveThirst for Salt|rating=4.5

|summary=Particularly literate cover… Setting of ''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 realyoung woman unravels the year-life mental hospital – in Sweden… Mature themes… Opening long relationship that once defined her. Overlaid with an emotion- and closure-laden death… Yeslater wisdom, this book has more than the narrator relives the affair with a man twenty years her senior from its share of things inception – the summer after finishing university – to put its sorrowful end the potential reader offsummer after. WhichSet 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, in this instancedepicting its all-consuming nature, is quite a large shame indeedhow it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857054767</amazonuk>0861546490

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Carys Bray and othersMichael Grothaus|title=How Much the Heart Can Hold: Seven Stories on Love|rating=3.5|genre=Short Stories|summary=This Sceptre collection does not have as simple a remit as it might appear; these are no straightforward love stories. Instead, they each take one aspect of love – often one of the ancient Greek classifications – and provide a whole new way of thinking about it. After all, the heart holds a lot of metaphorical weight.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1473649420</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Salley Vickers|title= CousinsBeautiful Shining People

|summary=''We donBut fearing something and having it come to pass are two different things. And I't know our own limits so how can we judge the limits m willing to bet most of others? And what we fear will never happen, or we can take steps to change it is easy to forget is that they were so young. Too young to bear all those horribly complicated family strains.''

Salley Vickers' intense family odyssey 'Beautiful Shining People'' revolves around one devastating accident in 1994. Reminiscent of the past, Will Tye's accident has a powerful effect on three generations question of the Tye family, revealing long forgotten truths identity and close kept secretsacceptance. ''Cousins'' pieces together the events leading up to the event from three different close relatives perspectives, in an attempt to understand Of what exactly happened and why it happened that dark nightmeans to be human. His sister, grandmother Of what is real and aunt all recount Will's childhood and growth into an adultwhat is artificial, highlighting both his successes and mistakes whilst reflecting on their own pasts. From whether the outbreak development of the Second World War right up until the present day, the family's mysteries are laid out for all to see. Family loyalties are tested and the lengths you will go to for those you love are questioned. At its heart, ''Cousins'' technology is a love story between two cousins, Will and Cece, littered with complications, potential and realism as well as the struggle to determine your worth when you're youngexciting or frightening. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0241187710</amazonuk>191458564X

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Paul BeattyJennifer Saint|title=The SelloutAtalanta

|summary=''This may be hard to believeI was as worthy as any one of them. I would get on board that ship, coming from a black manI vowed. I would take my place, not just in the name of the goddess. It was for the sake of my name, but I've never stolen anythingtoo.Atalanta''

Our black hero and narrator, surname MeAbandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a son, first name unknown, was born in Atalanta is raised under the southern Los Angeles suburb protective eye of Dickens the goddess Athemis and subjected fashioned into a formidable huntress, one who longs for adventure. When the opportunity comes – to an isolated upbringing dominated by his father's extreme views on racejoin the Argonauts, supposedly the subject a fierce band of a psychological memoir which will solve their financial problemswarriors, but cruel and unnatural descendent from the Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the chance to anyone with an ounce of humanity. To add insult to injury Me discovered after his fatherfight in Artemis's death (a racially provoked shooting) that there was no memoirname and carve out her own legendary place in history. A drive-by shooting produces nothing more substantial than What follows is a bill for a drive-whirlwind of challenges and discovery and through funeralit, Atalanta must remember Artemis' fatal warning: that if she marries, but it starts Me on the path which will end in the Supreme Court, the subject of a race trial: ''Me v the United States of America''be her undoing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1786070154</amazonuk>1472292154

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Nir BaramAmanthi Harris|title=Good PeopleBeautiful Place|rating=45|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of her home country. This is a place she spent her formative years. It is not a place she was born into, but the one she thinks of as home. How she came to be at the Villa, how it became her home, and the machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the ''score'' for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. Padma's present fails to escape her past and much like the musical score of a film, that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the Villa.|isbn=1784631930}}{{Frontpage|isbn=178563335X|title=Sea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor|rating=5

|summary=Thomas HeiselbergWhen we first meet Rachel Bird she's self-focus pays off a trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and wondering why they're held when he attracts the best clientele you need to pick the American advertising firm he helps establish across Europe from his German homechildren up. Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Meanwhile Thelma's daughter-in Russia Sasha Weissberg -law won't let her see her grandson. Holthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, is a lovely place, but Rachel is struggling to develop a real bond with being the parish - and she's in a literaryawe of the vicar, Gail, free-thinking family that doesn't go down too well with Stalinbut then she's regimebeen doing the job for more than thirty years. As World War II arrives, both of their worlds are shakenRachel and Christopher hoped that a walk on the beach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. As a result both decide to become collaborators rather than resistance fighters for different reasons and with far reaching effectsAnd then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1911231006</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ian McEwan1398515388|title=NutshellThe Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)

|genre=Literary General Fiction |summary=Meet Trudy. Successfully living in a large and valuable London homeFirst of all, she is heavily pregnantit was the earthquake, and deep in between two men – she has swapped the homeownerocean floor, poet which created the tsunami and publisher Johnthis, for someone completely differentin turn, namely Claude, a nasty, brutish caused the nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and short typeutter devastation. Some people cannot work out why on earth she has made that decisionThe deaths were uncountable, including our narratorand the loss of livelihoods was widespread. Oh, and he himself, our narrator, is The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the child she's pregnant withtsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. He is wasn't a very alert young thing, with nothing else to do dog person but kick here and there, and practice what you might well the convenience store owner's comment that he would call mindfulness, Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and listen Tamon the dog jumped in on Claude and Trudy, as they calmly talk their way to plotting and carrying out murder…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1911214330</amazonuk>.

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Matt Wilven0989715337|title=The Blackbird SingularityPapa on the Moon|author=Marco North|rating= 54|genre= Literary Fiction|summary=Thirty''Some frogs had gotten into the well.'' ''Walter stood waist-something writer Vince Watergate sees deep in the fragrant water, naked except for his partner's pregnancy as a fresh startbeaten leather hat. He stops taking his lithium and the new clarity Long strands of mind lets their eggs wove around him start writing his best work in ages, sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. He befriends a blackbird in Two of the dogs leaned over the garden with opening and barked down at the help strange noise of a bag the buckets as he filled them.'' How is that for an opening? The style of sultanas, and begins preparing this novel in the baby's room. For a form of interconnected short while, everything seems full of peace stories goes from succinct and hope. But Vince laconic to wistful and Lyd's first childmusing, despite having died turning on a couple of years earlier, might not have completely left them and the blackbird might not be as friendly as Vince first thoughtsixpence. Lithium withdrawalAnd author Marco North, stress, and who has the pressure most wonderful turn of appearing 'normal' push Vince into a frighteningphrase, irrational place. Can starts as he fight his way through it and return means to his family?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1785079689</amazonuk>go on.

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Carolyn ParkhurstDaisy Hildyard|title=HarmonyEmergency|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The summary of this book doesn't come close to explaining what is done with the premise.|isbn=1913097811}}  {{Frontpage |author=Sally Oliver |title=The Weight of Loss |rating=4 |genre=Literary Fiction |summary= Marianne is grieving. Traumatised after the death of her sister, she awakes to find strange, thick black hairs sprouting from the bones of her spine which steadily increase in size and volume. Her GP, diagnosing the odd phenomenon as a physical reaction to her grief, recommends she go to stay at Nede, an experimental new treatment centre in Wales. Yet something strange is happening to Marianne and the other patients at Nede: a metamorphosis of a kind. As Marianne's memories threaten to overwhelm her, Nede offers her release from this cycle of memory and pain—but only at a terrible price: that of identity itself.|isbn= 086154112X }} {{Frontpage|author=Natalia Garcia Freire|title=This World Does Not Belong To Us

|summary=Josh and Alexandra Hammond have two daughtersEarly comments on this debut novel from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, a delight. Iris I will agree with the first – tremendous is no understatement – but 'a delight' is eleven years old and neurotypical: her brain works perhaps using the expression in the same a way as most peopleI's, but her elder sister, Tilly, is thirteen and on the autistic spectrum. Her parents are finding it difficult, if m not impossible, to cope familiar with her. Even her special and rather expensive school has indicated that they can't continue. She's subject I have to mood swings and unpredictable and inappropriate behaviourconfess my ignorance of the Spanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. Josh is lucky - he goes to work - but Alexandra is stuck with From the problem, which is why Scott Bean, educator and expert little I have read (in parentingtranslation, appeals I don't read Spanish) there does seem to her. The name came to her attention on be a couple of occasions: she subscribed to his newsletter, heard him speak and what he had to say rang a bell. Before long he was coming to tendency towards the fantastical – the house for private consultationsmystical realism.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0340978171</amazonuk>0861541901

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=William RyanJennifer Saint|title=The Constant SoldierElektra|rating=54|genre=ThrillersLiterary Fiction|summary=Paul Brandt returns home to his village without 'Elektra' by Jennifer Saint tells the arm he left at story of three women who live in the Russian Front heavily male dominated world of Ancient Greece. Cassandra, Clytemnestra, and Elektra are all bit players in defence the story of Germanythe Trojan War. The village looks pretty much Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that often the silent women have the most compelling stories and the same as most extreme furies.|isbn=1472273915}}{{Frontpage|isbn=8409290103|title=If Only|author=Matthew Tree|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Twenty-one-year-old Malcolm Lowry had been sent abroad by his father, cotton-broker AO Lowry: he left itasked his accountant, Mr Patrick, with to ensure that the exception of young man got on board the lack of young men boat and thereafter Patrick was to send him a new buildingmonthly allowance. His home now boasts an SS rest hut, providing officers with entertainment Patrick sent the money regularly and respite breaks from a correspondence - of sorts - sprang up between the fightingtwo although we hear more about what Lowry has to say than Patrick. As Paul passes the hut It wasn't that Lowry senior didn't care for the first timehis son, it was that he sees something… or rather someone… that will make didn't care to have him return in this country where he might be a danger to work for those he despiseshis wife and other children. The subject of his decision? A girl he once got into trouble with under different circumstances – alcohol problem was obvious even before she wore Patrick managed to get the stripes of a concentration camp prisoneryoung man on his way.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1447255011</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Pamela JohnsonB098FFFBH9|title=Taking in WaterSnowcub|author=Graham Fulbright|rating=4.5

|summary=Pamela Johnson's third novel Fourteen-year-old Rachel is set in 2002 but has its roots in a real-life tragedy from nearly 50 years earlier: in 1953 a storm surge hit the Norfolk coast, destroying Lydia Huttonher school's grandmother's home animal rights project leader and she and sweeping her whole family out friend are producing a competition entry to sea. Seven-year-old Lydia was highlight the only one to survive, clinging to way in which human beings exploit the wreckage and singing hymns to herself to surviveanimal world. It's She gets a dark part great deal of support from her past she's never told anyone except Lucfamily: father Pip Harrison, a lecturer at Imperial College, London, mother Kate and her twin, Nick. Kate runs the half-French lover whose iconic performance art piecefamily business, ''Taking in Water'', she participated in during a spell toy shop called Cornucopia in New York City in the 1960sPutney, when she was known as which is where we'Laylall meet Rachel' and hung around with the likes s main (if unsuspected) source of Andy Warholinformation: five soft toys.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1534627243</amazonuk>