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==General fiction==
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{{newreview
|author=Gavin James Bower
|title=Made in Britain
|rating=2
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The settings of the intertwined tales of Russell, the working class swot trapped by his conditions, Charlie, the heroic 'lad' who gets caught in the drugs scene and Hayley the naïve wannabee with a single parent father are the school rooms and backstreets, flats, pubs and clubs of Every Town, the vision of twenty-first century deprivation that Bower conjures. Or rather fails to conjure, for the device of making the 16 year olds tell the story from their own first person narrative deprives the reader of a genuine sense of the physical reality in which this story unfolds.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0704372290</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Laura Wilkinson
|summary=The front cover graphics leave the reader in no doubt that this is a thriller and the blurb on the back cover mentions the troubles in Afghanistan, deadly bombs, sniffer dogs, so the theme here is bang up to-date and many would possibly say, relevant.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848092598</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Evelio Rosero
|title=Good Offices
|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Here is a church in Bogota nobody seems to want to leave. In part one it is a large group of the elderly, given a weekly, tasteless meal from the charitable funds, but bitterly refusing to quit the place, making our main character Tancredo fear for his passivity. In part two it is the congregation, as a rare need for a stand-in priest seems to be a blessing. And in part three it is that priest himself, stuck among the household of Tancredo, the girl who loves him, and chorus of three weird old women.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857050672</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Arnaldur Indridason
|title=Operation Napoleon
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=In 1945 a German bomber crashed on a glacier in Iceland. This might not have been quite so extraordinary were it not for the fact that there were both German and American officers on board. Two of the passengers are killed in the crash, one sets off for help and four people remain, trapped in the plane, eventually freezing to death. Just before the end of last century the glacier gave up the plane and the US army began an operation to remove the wreckage as secretly as possible, but two young Icelanders are caught up in what is going on. One contacts his sister but before he can complete the call they are grabbed by the soldiers, brutally attacked and their bodies and snowmobiles dumped in a crevasse.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099535637</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Linda Gillard
|title=Untying the Knot
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=I've often wondered why it's not axiomatic that a man should stand by his woman – although perhaps it couldn't be set to music quite so easily – but Fay had failed to stand by her man. To make it worse, she was an army wife and they just don't desert – and Magnus was a hero. He'd been in bomb disposal and despite being blown up had briefed his number two about the bomb before he was taken off to hospital. He was good-looking, charismatic – and divorced. Fay knew that marrying Magnus had been a mistake – but she also admitted that the biggest mistake of all was divorcing him.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B005JTAMQO</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Ulrika Jonsson
|title=The Importance of Being Myrtle
|rating=4
|genre=Women's Fiction
|summary=title will help to draw readers in, I think. The blurb on the back cover suggests a cosy, domestic read. I was looking forward to it. We initially get all the sorry details leading up to Austin's untimely death. On the local bus, of all places, as he made his way to work. A kindly Italian/Australian man called Gianni sees it all happening (in fact Austin dies in his arms). We also get a lot of background info on Gianni, right at the very beginning, which I thought slowed up the story somewhat.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141043202</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Sheila Kohler
|title=Becoming Jane Eyre
|rating=2
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=There is no denying that the Brontë family lived an interesting life. While some authors' lives are shrouded in mystery, with their characters far better known than they themselves are, that's not really the case with the Brontës. Various biographers have, over the years, provided a clear picture of 19th century Yorkshire life thanks to a wealth of original letters and diaries preserved from the time. This makes Kohler's choice of topic slightly odd. Rather than an attempt to imagine the unknown lives of the sisters, it is a cobbling together of facts and assumptions that have been in the public arena for some time. For anyone who knows anything about the Brontës, it really is nothing new, and that's a shame.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849010862</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Phil Rickman
|title=The Secrets of Pain
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=It's a freezing winter's night and a couple of the locals are driving home when they come across a strange and disturbing incident. They don't know what to make of it but as the SAS have a training presence in the area Gomer and Danny put it down to exercises and breath a sigh of relief. It's anything for a quiet life round these parts and thanks to Rickman's excellent writing, we soon see that these men, Gomer especially, are characters in themselves. Plenty of personality. Once seen, difficult to forget. And I didn't want to forget them. They also speak in the local dialect which comes across very well indeed.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848872739</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Erin Morgenstern
|title=The Night Circus
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The Night Circus moves from town to town; appearing with no warning, no announcements. The attractions seem impossible – a carousel with breathing animals, handkerchiefs that turn into birds in front of the watchful eyes of the audience, doors that appear and disappear. In the middle of it all are Celia, the daughter of a famous illusionist, and Marco, the apprentice of a mysterious magician. From a young age the lovers have been destined to compete against each other using their unusual skills to win a prize that neither of them understands; and an end that will leave only one standing.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184655523X</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Dorothy B Hughes
|title=The Expendable Man
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Dorothy B Hughes (1904-93) took a journalism degree in Kansas City, Missouri and started her distinguished career with a prize-winning book of poems. Her first hard-boiled thriller appeared in 1940 and it was followed by more than a dozen in the next decade. Three were made into noir films and in 1944 Hughes went to Hollywood to assist Hitchcock on his film, ''Spellbound''. Here she met Ingrid Bergman and consequently Humphrey Bogart came to buy the film rights to one of her novels.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1903155584</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Chuck Palahniuk
|title=Damned
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary='Are you there, Satan? It's me, Madison'. I'm a spunky, lively tweenage girl, except I'm a dead one, and I'm in Hell, to my surprise. While I'm here I'll find out just where it is all those cold-calling telegraphers ring you from just while you're settling down to your evening meal, and where the world's wasted sperm and discarded toenail clippings fetch up. I'll have very hairy encounters with demons of Satan's and mankind's making, and with some superlative plotting and flashbacks I'll find a clearer approach to why I was put here in the first place.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224091158</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Emily Barr
|title=The First Wife
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Lilybella Tatiana Blossom Button (who thankfully – for our sake as well as hers – goes by a simple Lily) has had an upbringing almost as unconventional as her name. Raised by her grandparents, we join her following their recent deaths and soon discover she is quite unlike most other 20 year olds. It’s going to be a brisk transition from a sheltered life in a small cottage, nursing elderly relatives to the Real World but with no money to speak off, she’ll have to pull herself together, and quickly. Her background is an important part of Lily and contributes enormously to her trusting and a little immature personality that will later be her downfall. A few weeks later, though, and things are looking up. She has taken a room in a house where she is much more one of the family than just a lodger. She’s found some cleaning work and, even more exciting, one of her agency clients is a rather dashing ex-celeb and his beautiful, elegant wife. Yes, Lily’s star is definitely on the rise.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755351371</amazonuk>
}}