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[[Category:General Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]]==General fiction==__NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Lucy Clarke1739526910|title=The Sea SistersWhere I've Not Been Lost|author=Glen Sibley
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Kate is as sensible''One year after a suicide attempt blows apart musician Brian O’Malley's life, focused and down he arrives in an unfamiliar Devon town to earth as her sister Mia is reckless and unsettledrecover. Living with an unexpected housemate at his former manager’s holiday home, so it’s no surprise that it’s Mia who leaves London behind to go traveling. With he dreams of seeing the USA, Australia and beyond, Mia sets off excitedly reconnecting with her best friend Finneverything he has lost. But as those tentative plans falter, but this once in a lifetime trip tragically he becomes just that as some months later Mia is found dead swept up in Bali, an apparent suicide plunge. With her life thrown into turmoil and unable to get past the things they said, and didn’t say, to each other when Mia was alive, Kate makes a rather Mia-like decision to leave it all behind too. Armed with Mia’s travel journeylocal world of unlikely friendships, she sets off to retrace her sister’s steps, stop by stop, to try mobile discos and work out what Mia was going through, and what ultimately lead to her deathsurprising romantic possibilities.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007481349</amazonuk>''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Julian ClaryJenny Lecoat|title=Briefs EncounteredBeyond Summerland
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Choosing this book from Julian Clary was irresistibleJean lives on Jersey with her mother where they are celebrating the end of the occupation. NormallyDuring the war, I try not Jean's father was arrested for listening to review books where I’m already familiar with authora banned radio and soldiers took him away one night, leaving Jean and her mother waiting for years for news of him. But I didn’t feel As the British finally free the Channel islands from the Nazis, and the war is finally over, their hopes rise that seeing they will finally learn what became of him live several times . But will the truth come as a relief, or watching him regularly 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}}{{Frontpage|author=Onyi Nwabineli|title=Allow Me to Introduce Myself|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Anuri spent her childhood on display to the world, thanks to her step-mother Ophelia's increasingly popular presence on TV countedsocial media, as I hadn’t read either where she posted every step of Anuri's 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 take down the content about her. Anuri is battling alcoholism, failing to start her PhD, undergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online and receiving money from them for doing so. Most importantly, she is desperately worried about her little sister, who is the new focus of his two previous novelsOphelia's online empire. Can she save her sister, and perhaps herself and her relationship with her father at the same time?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0091938856</amazonuk>0861546873
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Suzanne Bugler1529153298|title=The Safest PlaceList of Suspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Jane It's 1979 and David Berry Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. (A woman? I mean, honestly...) She's not what's worrying Miv's family, though. Women have always lived and worked in Londonbeen disappearing. However Well, they've been murdered, since their children but to have come along, 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. Miv's upset because she's overheard that her father wants to move the house has felt too cramped and Jane has often dreamed of moving awayfamily 'Down South'. When their son Sam fails to get you're from Yorkshire, Down South is a frightening, foreign place at his chosen secondary school, that is best avoided. For Miv, the catalyst move would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, and she needs 'll do anything to start making her dream a realityprevent that. The only problem is that the rest of the family are She's not quite as enthusiastic worried about moving as she would have hoped. David will have to commute every day to London and the children are anxious about starting a new school, particularly Sam who finds it difficult to make friends. Even Jane starts dangers or that her Mum's stopped talking - to wonder if it was a good idea, isolated in a house miles from anywhere, finding it difficult to get to know the local communityanyone.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330544969</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Maria Semple1035906708|title=Where'd You Go, BernadetteDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Much like the missing question mark in the title it would seem, Bernadette has disappeared. We tend to think of Maria Semple's ''Where'd You Go, Bernadette'' works Callas as both a physical and emotional question. Bernadette Fox is the wife of Elgie BranchGreek, a star at Microsoft but she was born to Greek parents in SeattleManhattan, New York, in December 1923 and mother of 15 year old, Beeonly moved to Athens when she was thirteen. The narrative begins with Bee wondering where Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her mother had gone, but then quickly moves father changed it to 'Callas' to an epistolary format told make it more manageable in e-mails, notes and messages between the major players, including some rather obnoxious mothers at Bee's school, one of whom also works at Microsoft with ElgieStates. We are taken When she was back a few weeks to when Bernadette in Athens - supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for her voice - she was around and raised under the Nazi occupation by a seemingly somewhat angry mother prior to who mercilessly exploited her mysterious disappearance. One of the delights about the book, which along with being very funny on issues like helicopter parenting, corporate life and, er, Canadians, is that it emerges that Bernadette is more than a wife and mother but has a past career made no secret of her own as a talented architect which she has sacrificed preference for one reason or another. Thusher elder sister, in many ways she disappeared long before her physical disappearanceJackie.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0316204269</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Christopher CurrieAlexander McCall Smith|title=The Ottoman MotelPerfect Passion Company|rating=34.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Simon Sawyer The Perfect Passion Company is 11 years olda dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and operating as an alternative to 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 business, forced on as Ness is planning to take a road-trip with his parents to visit his grandmother, IrisCanada to get away for a while. Iris Katie is living in some backwater town hemmed in on three sides by corn fieldscoming out of a break up with a bad boyfriend, and on so jumps at the fourth by chance to come home to Edinburgh. And so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, thanks to 44 Scotland Street and the seaIsabel Dalhousie novels, but with some new characters who quickly begin to charm. The town is called Reception Katie has no experience in running a heavybusiness, or in match-handed attempt at ironymaking, as we learn the town actually but Ness has no reception for mobile phones full confidence in her abilities, and there's always her very helpful (and is pretty much isolated from the rest of the world but for rather handsome) neighbour, William, to lend a few dirt tracks leading out.hand…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908737190</amazonuk>1846976596
}}
{{Frontpage|author=Dean Koontz|title=The Bad Weather Friend|rating=4.5|genre=Paranormal|summary=Benny is having a terrifically bad day. He loses his job, he loses his fiancee, and his house gets trashed. Oh, and someone has delivered a really weird, disturbing coffin-sized object to his home, and it's possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the thing that has trashed his house! The thing is, Benny is the very last person to deserve all this bad luck. He is a nice person. A really nice person. So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the delivery to his house is a new friend, a bad weather friend called Spike, who has been sent to help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a good person. Spike 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's wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are.|isbn=1662500491}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Susie SteinerKatherine Howe|title=HomecomingA True Account|rating=34.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Ann and Joe Hartle are approaching their sixties Hannah Masury is living in Boston, having been sent to live with a family who run an inn, and hoping being made to slow down work there from a littleyoung age. Their sheep farming life When she hears there is starting to take its toll and it’s an enticing thought that they may be able to pass a hanging of some pirates in the farm on town, she decides to their son Maxgo and watch. The only problem is that the farm is hardly making any profit Enthralled and Max is not the most capable person horrified in equal measure, Hannah finds herself embroiled in a young boy's death at the worldhands of two vicious pirates. Added to She hides away, so thatthey don't find and kill her too, Max’s wife Primrose is expecting a baby and that is not without its difficulties. The Hartle’s other son, Bartholomew, is far then to escape them completely she runs away in London trying to run his own business sea, dressing as a boy and also scared about committing to his girlfriend, Rubyjoining the notorious Ned Low's pirate ship as a cabin boy. The family has started to fall apart over She soon finds herself in the years but thick of things when things go badly wrong there is a mutiny on the farm including a barn fire board, and a virus that spreads through the sheep and newborn lambs, from there is we are caught up in her rip roaring tale of life on the opportunity to pull together and start anewocean waves. Is this something that the family can do or will they fall apart even more?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0571297196</amazonuk>0861547438
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Val Harris1471180158|title=The Song the Waves Sing Maybe Tomorrow|author=Penny Parkes|rating=34.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Some time has passed since we [[Sea Creatures by Val Harris|last saw]] Jamie Matson works in an upper-class grocery store, for a man who's a control freak with all the Moon familysubtlety of a half brick. Charlie Moon Jamie's son, Bo, 'has been released from prisonhis problems'. His sister Olivia is in New York but Jenna is still in CornwallHe's asthmatic and the more you read, where shethe more you'll suspect that he's turned on the family home into a B&Bautistic spectrum. Their father Brendan is Sometimes Jamie needs to take time off at short notice - she's a reformed character frequent flier in the local A&E and hesometimes Bo's moved not fit enough to go to Looe, where he's a partner in an art galleryschool. But everyone's life has its ups and downs: Olivia is made redundant and Missed shifts or the only logical move is back need to be away on time to pick Bo up from school are occasions when Jamie can be controlled and put in the UKwrong. Then Brendan overhears It was going to come to a conversation and realises that his business partner is deep in an art fraudhead.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0955599784</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=O H RobssonB0CKD1L5JL|title=The SparkRadio Free Olympia|author=Jeffrey Dunn
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Kristoffer lives in a house on the edge of a lake in Western Norway with his dog and occasional company from his friend MatsPetr is an orphan. By profession he’s a photographer and enough business comes his way to keep him Rescued by the way strange, reclusive Bear, he wishes to live. He’s relaxed - too much so at times when you’re relying on him (always a mistake) to be punctual. There has been the occasional girlfriend - some of them pretty stunning - but none of them ever came is brought up to Eva whom he met when they were both in their teens far from bustling cities and working busy human society, in the local hotel to earn some moneyforests of Washington's Olympic Peninsula. His grandfather has After Bear dies and a summer cabin up brief sojourn in the mountains human company, and Kristoffer’s happy to go up to spend time armed with him only a pirate radio transmitter, Petr goes on a journey through the forest, broadcasting the strange, wild and take him his supplies. You might think that’s pretty idyllic - and it israrely heard voices he encounters.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B00BJOS364</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Megan ShepherdSarah Marsh|title=The Madman's DaughterA Sign of Her Own
|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Teenager Juliet Moreau has had After a bout of scarlet fever as a hard life since child, Ellen Lark loses her father was vilified by Victorian societyhearing. Thinking him long deadSuddenly plunged into a world of silence, she scrapes everything about her life changes. Living in a living time when the use of sign language was seen as best something only savages do, Ellen is sent to a school where she can – is taught 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 deaf and using a chance discovery at a macabre event leads to her to learn that he system called Visible Speech. At the same time, Bell is alive working on other inventions and ideas, and her life is cast into chaosEllen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a complicated tangle of espionage.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0007500203</amazonuk>1035401614
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B0BC3YTCMR
|title=Good Girls Die
|author=Ayura Ayira
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=''This story is not for everyone.''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Robert Goolrick1472263936|title=Heading Out to WonderfulThe Figurine|author=Victoria Hislop|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Charlie Beale returned from the war It was in Europe and 1948 found him in Brownsburg, Virginia1968 that Helena McCloud made her first trip to Greece. He'd been driving around looking for somewhere She was alone: her mother, Greek by birth, had left the family home and refused to settle return, but Mary and all he had with him were two suitcasesHamish (Helena's parents) felt that it would be a pity if Helena grew up without knowing her grandparents or understanding her Greek heritage. One contained an excellent set of butchers' knives Her trip to the family apartment in up- and market Kolonaki would be the other was full first of moneyseveral annual visits. Brownsburg seemed like a fine place She grew to stay and before long he had a job with Will Haislett love her grandmother and the Haislett family became ''his'' family. He'd never hankered after children s maid, Dina, but their fivewas wary -yearand frightened -old sonof her grandfather, Sam found a place in his heartretired general Stamatis Papagiannis. Life might have been good if it had continued in this vein, He was proud of his close connections to the Junta and expected his family to uphold his values but Charlie Beale met Sylvan Glasssaw no reason to accommodate them. His prejudices included Helena's|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091953677</amazonuk>red hair and green eyes - inherited from her father's Scottish ancestors.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Mohsin HamidDean Koontz|title=How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising AsiaAfter Death|rating=4.53
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Inside Mohsin Hamid's ''How to Get Filthy Rich Michael Mace, Head of Security, at a top secret biological research facility, is among 55 people who die when a virus is released in Rising Asia'' is a bitterbio-sweet love story disguised as hazard accident. Finding himself in a self help book. It's makeshift mortuary, covered in plastic, he has a well structured concept sense that something very, very bad has happened to him – and works nicely. Each chapter is presented in only him – as he sits up and looks around at the format shrouded bodies of those common to the self help genrehis dead friends and former colleagues. As he recovers his senses, with advice like he realises that there is something different about him; he can 'Move to the City', feel'Get an Education' etceverything., although the chapter entitled ''Everything'Be Prepared to Use Violence' is a notable omission from most business tomes and self help books. After some general chatty comments in the self help book style, the attention turns to two people who are named only Michael isn't 'the boy' and Michael'the pretty girl', charting their rise and fall from rural poverty in an unnamed Asian country (although it certainly feels like Pakistan) to business success and wealth in the city. The two are not a couple, but their lives cross at frequent times and he, in particular, remains infatuated with his childhood acquaintanceanymore.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0241144663</amazonuk>1662500467}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Edward Kelsey MooreB0BVDC2VWH|title=The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-EatGrave Listeners|author=William Frank
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=In Plainview, Indiana there are three women who have been friends since their teensThe village is isolated and poor. Forty years after they first met theyIt're still known as the Supremes, s surrounded by a Witching Forest. And the name given to them villagers subsist largely by Big Earl at his All-Youfarming Uphegia plants -Canits bread-Eat dinerlike fruit provides nutrition and its blossom provides herbal medicines. The diner's now run by his sonblack wood of the forest provides heat and warmth, Little Earlroofs on homes, but you'll find the Supremes at the table in the window every Sunday, after churchand even gallows, along with their familiesif needed. Odette tells us her own story, from the time she was born The fear of being buried alive is an existential superstition in a sycamore tree, which made her the fearless soul she village and that is. But now she's up against something which even she might not be able to face down. Clarice was always the wellreason Volushka, a drunken, self-brought-up young lady as well as being indulgent, lazy lout of a musician of some considerable merit, but her husband man is causing her problems. Even serial philanderers would be in awe of what Richmond gets up totolerated.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444758020</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Eleanor HendersonB0BYF82CXT|title=Ten Thousand SaintsSemi-Detached|author=Deborah Stone|rating=3.54
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Eleanor Henderson's debut novel ''Ten Thousand Saints'' is set Bill and Amanda are living in a semi-detached house, stuck in late 1980s Vermont a depressing rut of boredom anddisappointment, more memorablywhen Terry and Fiona – glamorous, New York. Opening successful and very much in 1987 we discover love – move in the second sentence that one of the two boys hiding under the stands to the Vermont school football field on match day will die that night. It's a powerful openingnext door. From then Despite their different outlooks onlife, the book deals first with Teddy's death couples befriend each other and then with the life he has left behind in the form of his friend Judeappears to improve for both pairs. But all is not what it seems, Jude's sort of step sister Eliza and Teddytheir increasingly interconnected relationships are fated for tragedy.'s older brother Johnny. It's a world of broken homes and the trinity of sex and drugs and rock and roll, or more specifically punk. Henderson is particularly good at evoking the underground scene in New York at the time before the unlikely combination of AIDS and mayoral intervention combined to clean up the city.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780872194</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Robert DickinsonShalini Boland|title=The SchismSilent Bride
|rating=3
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Patrick Farrell works for Alice and Seth are a company that reclaims credit cards from those match made in debtheaven. He doesn't particularly enjoy the workis everything she has been searching for; handsome, but it gives him plenty of opportunity to visit his schizophrenic brotheraccomplished, Mikeclever, which funny; total and utter husband-material. She is all he does regularlycould possibly want in a wife; beautiful, successful, confident… and so the inevitable proposal is eagerly accepted by Alice and the wedding is planned and set. Mike used 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 be a fairly decent boxercelebrate this joyful day and when Seth turns to face his approaching bride, but now his only fight is against Alice's world implodes because she has absolutely no idea who the paranoid delusion that there are people watching him all man at the timealtar is, who is waiting for her to become his wife.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908434228</amazonuk>1662507089
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Syrie James1787636003|title=The Missing Manuscript Girls of Jane AustenSummer|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'A newly discoveredt exactly innocent but she was, incredibly rareperhaps, handwritten manuscript naive, so when thirty-four-year-old Alistair Wright started to take an interest in her, she was flattered rather than wary. It was quite a while before he made any sort of a previously unknown Jane Austen Novel is physical approach to appear at auction in Londonher and by that time she was obsessed by him. The neatly written but heavily corrected pages are Alistair worked for a full length work entitled 'The Stanhopes'Henry Taylor, looking after his interests on the island and in particular in the bar where all the girls either worked or partied.'|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0425253368</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage|author=Amanda Craig|title=Three Graces|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary= Few styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the state-of-the-nation novel. There's something so utterly compelling about any writer who can catch hold of the atmosphere of the day and capture it, crafting an image of the country as it stands in one particular moment. To say that Amanda Craig is skilled at doing this would be embarrassingly inadequate: she's practically synonymous with the genre of contemporary social fiction at this point. She has such a gift for weaving the ongoing issues of the day into the lives of her characters in a way that feels natural and lived-in, never making them ciphers for social commentary but instead fully realised people, grappling with issues far larger than themselves.|isbn= 140871468X}}{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Nick Alexander152915118X|title=The French HousePineapple Street|author=Jenny Jackson|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=CC was trapped in a job she no longer felt able to do in a city which wasn't really her'Pineapple Street'' is the story of three women: Sasha, Darley and Georgiana. Her boyfriend, Victor, had moved to France to live in a farmhouse he'd inherited Darley and whilst giving everything up George are sisters and moving out there Sasha is married to join him wasntheir brother Cord. They're Stocktons, only Sasha isn't the most rational decision a Stockton by birth so sheisn'd ever taken it t readily accepted into the tribe. The problem's exacerbated when the clan matriarch, Tilda, asks Cord and Sasha if they'did'' feel d like a step in to move into the right directionPineapple Street property. Only - there were Tilda and Chip have renovated and downsized to another property, a couple of problemsstreet or so away, which they own. The south They won't need any of France the furniture from Pineapple Street, so Sasha and Cord can move straight in January can be bitterly cold. Nominally, particularly when youthey had a choice but that wasn're a good way up a mountaint the reality. And itDarley and Georgiana start to call Sasha 'the gold digger'. She's going living in ''their'' family home. They use it so often that they abbreviate it to feel even worse when 'the property youGD're going to lacks some of the most basic facilities - amongst them most of a roof.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857896350</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Lesley GrayEmily Critchley|title=The King's JockeyOne Puzzling Afternoon
|rating=4
|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=In June 1913 Emily Wilding Davison ran out 84 year old Edie has lived in front of the King's horse at the Epsom Derby: same small town for almost her whole life, but now she died of is facing a move as her injuries. Her actions are often quoted in history books son wants to move to another house and whether you think her bring Edie to be a suffragette martyr or a deluded womanlive with his family, few are ignorant of as Edie is starting to lose her or what she didmemory. But how many people remember However, Edie is tormented by the jockey memory of her childhood friend, Lucy, who went missing over 60 years ago, and the worry that there was up on a secret she was keeping for Lucy that fateful day? Few will know his name, or somehow might be the thing that reveals the truth of what happened at the Derby would haunt him for years to come as he believed himself responsible for killing Emily Davisonall that time ago. After 'seeing'The King's Jockey'' is Lucy in the high street, just as she was the story of Herbert 'Bertie' Joneslast time she saw her, she starts to find pockets of the life which brought him memories coming back to her. And yet as she remembers the Derby past, she is forgetting more and of what happened more in her day to day life. Will she uncover the years afterwards.truth about Lucy's disappearance before her move, and before her memories are gone forever?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1907947612</amazonuk>1804181250
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Madelaine Lucas
|title=Thirst for Salt
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= ''Love, I'd read, was supposed to be a light and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity''
Told from a retrospective view, a young woman unravels the year-long relationship that once defined her. Overlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the affair with a man twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the summer after. Set against the backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the 24-year-old narrator's deepening relationship with her older lover, depicting its all-consuming nature, how it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably.|isbn=0861546490}}{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jami Attenberg0008506337|title=The MiddlesteinsGarnett Girls|author=Georgina Moore
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Edie Middlestein almost has the American dream within her graspThe love affair between Margo Garnett and poet Richard O'Leary was all-consuming, apparently on both sides. Margo was just sixteen when they fell in love. She trained 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 having a lawyerglittering career. In the event, has a husband, a daughter who followed they eloped and Richard took her professional footsteps away from the Isle of Wight. Margo did go to Oxford and went on to become a son married to an ambitious wife who provided him with two highwell-achieving respected journalist. The couple had three children: Rachel, Imogen and Sasha. There are just two flies Life was lived in London and holidays were spent at Sandcove, the ointment preventing family home on the dreamIsle of Wight. Even then the doubts about Richard's drinking were never far from Margo's arrivalmind: 1. Edie is so morbidly obese that ''she has to undergo surgery; and 2. this is the moment her husband chooses would never be able to leave herhim in charge''. Apart from that…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846689325</amazonuk>Then Richard left them.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1914585402|title=Dashboard Elvis is Dead|author=David F Ross|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=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 years back and remember being absolutely floored by how powerful and affecting it was. It was a gripping, emotionally wounding read, and rereading my review of it my main takeaway was that I might not have lavished enough praise on it.}}{{Frontpage|author=Jodi PicoultLucy Ashe|title=The StorytellerClara and Olivia|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Sage Singer The year is scarred both mentally and physically and has never really got over her mother1933. The place? Sadler's deathWells. She works as a baker as the night work allows her to hide away from people Ballerinas Clara and sleep in daylight hoursOlivia are sisters, twins no less. Identical on the outside but she does develop one friendship which probably only happens because it seems non-threatening. Josef Webernot, we learn, pillar of on the local communityinside. And not on stage, attends the same grief counselling group as Sage - and heeither. Because there's in his ninetiesa lot that builds a dancer. But when Sage relaxes into Some things that can be taught or learnt – discipline, attention to detail – and some things, that ''je ne sais quoi'', that don't come from the relationship Josef tells her about himself and asks her to help him to dieclassroom. A stage presence, a charm, a ''joie de vivre''. Sage is shocked at the request The difference between a hard-worker, and then repelled as Josef tells her more of his storya star.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444766635</amazonuk>0861544080
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Paula LichtarowiczHeather Fawcett|title=The First Book Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Calamity LeekFaeries
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=I know I'm going to face a dilemma in reviewing this bookEmily Wilde is an expert academic scholar on faerie lore, becauseand she has travelled extensively, reallyand researched meticulously, the best way to approach it is to come at it knowing nothing at all. And it's very hard to write about it without giving some important things away! Lether life's start with work, the basics, in that this is a story told by Calamity Leek, a child living together with her 'sisters', taken care very first encyclopaedia of by 'aunty' and occasionally visited by 'mother'faeries. Calamity Whilst she is in charge of a book called the Appendixbrilliant at research and speaking to faeries, in which everything the girls could possibly need to know about their lives she is writtennot so good with people. They live closeted So when she finds herself far, far North in their own the small farmyard areavillage of Hrafvsnik, protected from having somehow offended the outside world by 'the wall'village matriarch, she is not sure what she has done, their enemies being nor how to redeem herself and put her final investigations for her book back on the 'injuns' and 'demonmales'right track. I knowEnter Wendell Bambleby, her dashingly handsome and insufferable rival who arrives unexpectedly, thatall charm and delight, much to Emily's a lot of words in quotesfrustration. Let me explain...But why is he here? What does he want? And what exactly is going on with the faerie folk around Hravsnik?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0091944228</amazonuk>0356519120
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Will Storr1398515388|title=The Hunger Boy and the Howling of Killian LoneDog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Killian Lone grows up First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in a home lacking the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, in love and securityturn, caused the nuclear meltdown. For these he relies on his elderly aunt Dorothy, an accomplished cookThe result was complete and utter devastation. Indeed his visits to Dorothy revolve around food as he absorbs all she can teach himThe deaths were uncountable, slowly inheriting her passion and skill along with her knowledgethe loss of livelihoods was widespread. This attachment to food then becomes his career choice, leading to The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the unfortunate discovery list of priorities but - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a family secret that has remained hidden for dog outside a very long timeconvenience store. Why He wasn'unfortunate'? Theret a dog person but the convenience store owner's a reason for its concealment… a very, very good reasoncomment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the dog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780720807</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tom WinterChristopher Bowden|title=Lost Mr Magenta|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary= Christopher Bowden's latest novel is a patient untangling of a seemingly ordinary woman's life, 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 had a much more interesting life than that nephew Stephen had ever realised and Foundit seems to him an obligation to find it all out. |isbn= B0B6Z9VJDW}}{{Frontpage|author=Jennifer Mason|title=Partitions of Unity
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Carol has lived Here at Bookbag Towers, we first met Elizabeth Cromwell, dominatrix and unintentional detective in a state of unhappiness for many years[[Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery by Jennifer Mason|Preposterous]], married to a man when she doesn't love (investigated and probably never has) and with unravelled a daughter whom she doesn't understand (and probably never will). But Sophie is just about independent now and Carol is determined that she's going to tell Bob that the marriage is over - that she's leaving - but something always gets in the way. As her frustration grows she writes letters - to the world at large - and posts themseries of disappearances. It doesnIn 't 'Partitions of Unity'change'' anything, but she does feel bettersets her mind to solving a murder.. She even puts a smiley face on the envelope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1472101596</amazonuk>B09LQR9FRF
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Will Carver
|title=The Daves Next Door
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary= Five strangers come together in one moment as a suicide bomber prepares to detonate his vest on a London tube line. As their fates overlap, the story is told in backwards order, leading up to the fateful moment.
|isbn= 1914585186
}}
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