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[[Category:General Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]]==General fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Wendy Jones1739526910|title=The Thoughts and Happenings of Wilfred Price, Purveyor of Superior FuneralsWhere I've Not Been Lost|author=Glen Sibley|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=It's Spring 1924 in South Wales, and young undertaker Wilfred is going to learn the hard way how serious the trivial can be. Fascinated by 'One year after a girlsuicide attempt blows apart musician Brian O’Malley's dress - worn very seductively by Gracelife, who he has met but twice as arrives in an adult - he blurts out a marriage proposal. As much as wants unfamiliar Devon town to take it back, she won't let himrecover. He tries to move onLiving with an unexpected housemate at his former manager’s holiday home, leaving her disappointed, especially when he falls for the daughter dreams of a man reconnecting with everything he buries, buthas lost... There are things dangerously spokenBut as those tentative plans falter, dangerously left unsaid, and he becomes swept up in a complex web local world of divided loyalties unlikely friendships, mobile discos and enforced connections, in this brilliant debut novelsurprising romantic possibilities.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780330561</amazonuk>''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Karen HarperJenny Lecoat|title=Shakespeare's MistressBeyond Summerland|rating=24|genre=Historical General Fiction|summary=The conceit Jean lives on Jersey with her mother where they are celebrating the end of ''Shakespearethe occupation. During the war, Jean's Mistress'' is that Shakespeare father was married arrested for listening to Anne Whateley a banned radio and soldiers took him away one night, leaving Jean and her mother waiting for years for news of him. As the day before he was married to Anne HathawayBritish finally free the Channel islands from the Nazis, and Anne W remained the love of his lifewar is finally over, with an affair (if you can have an affair with your 'wife') continued in London where the same Anne was also the famed ''dark lady'' their hopes rise that they will finally learn what became of his sonnetshim. There is some basis for this theory in that But will the parish records do show truth come as a mysterious entry into relief, or will it raise further questions around what else happened during the register for just such a contract war? Who was the day before informer who told the Hathaway marriage but although Nazis about the author claims this is 'faction', it's very much at radio? And what other secrets have been kept throughout the fiction end of that scale and is really a 'what ifoccupation?' piece.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0091940427</amazonuk>1846976537
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sue TownsendOnyi Nwabineli|title=The Growing Pains of Adrian MoleAllow Me to Introduce Myself
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The country might be at war over Anuri spent her childhood on display to the Falklands but life is hardly straightworld, thanks to her step-forward in the Mole household. Adrianmother Ophelia's parents are back together after both had disastrous affairs and itincreasingly popular presence on social media, where she posted every step of Anuri's not long before Adrian childhood for sponsorships and influencer deals and, basically, monetary gain. Now Anuri is in her twenties and she is shocked slowly trying to regain her confidence and to learn that his get her life back, suing her step-mother is pregnantto take down the content about her. He's equally shocked Anuri is battling alcoholism, failing to see his father helping Doreen (astart her PhD, undergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online and receiving money from them for doing so.k.a. the 'stick insect') along a path which isn't particularly slippy Most importantly, although he does notice that she seems to have put on quite a bit of weight. Pandora Braithwaite is as fickledesperately worried about her little sister, but adorable, as ever and Adrianwho is the new focus of Ophelia's hormones are still playing hop-scotch with his brainonline empire. SoCan she save her sister, what's newand perhaps herself and her relationship with her father at the same time?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0141046430</amazonuk>0861546873
}}
{{Frontpage|isbn=1529153298|title=The List of Suspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary=It's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. (A woman? I mean, honestly...) She's not what's worrying Miv's family, though. Women have been disappearing. Well, they've been murdered, but to have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. Miv's upset because she's overheard that her father wants to move the family 'Down South'. When you're from Yorkshire, Down South is a frightening, foreign place, best avoided. For Miv, the move would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, and she'll do anything to prevent that. She's not worried about the dangers or that her Mum's stopped talking - to anyone.}}{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Susan Hill1035906708|title=A Kind ManDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Meet EveWe tend to think of Maria Callas as Greek, and her husbandbut she was born to Greek parents in Manhattan, the title characterNew York, Tommy. She's at a bit of a sticky wicket in life, for however much they want a baby, her sister December 1923 and his feckless husband churn out son after son after son, and go no lengths at all only moved to love themAthens when she was thirteen. So when Eve and Tommy do at last have a child, Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed itto 's a tragedy for Callas' to make it to die when only three years oldmore manageable in the States. But When she was back in this plot, which you'll thank me Athens - supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for not going into further, there will be her voice - she was raised under the Nazi occupation by a lot more swings mother who mercilessly exploited her and roundabouts, made no secret of torment and ecstasy, doldrums and delightsher preference for her elder sister, hell and heaven, to comeJackie.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099555441</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=John NivenAlexander McCall Smith|title=The Second Coming|rating=4|genre=Humour|summary=God has come back from a holiday and has some catching up to do. What’s been happening on Earth for the last couple of hundred years? The realisation hits him hard... it makes him sick in fact. So what’s the answer? To quote the religious cliché, Jesus is. After a board meeting with the senior saints, God decides that his son must be torn away from jamming with Hendrix to go back to the streets of the world to remind the sinners of the way.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099535521</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=R J Palacio|title=WonderPerfect Passion Company
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=On the face of it Matt King The Perfect Passion Company is very lucky. He's descended from one of Hawaii's largest landowners a dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and is a wealthy man operating as well as being an attorney. He's married alternative to all the flightyonline apps in providing a more personal, flirtatious Joanie tailored service. Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and has two daughters, teenager Alexlook after the business, as Ness is planning to take a model who might just have trip to Canada to get away for a bit while. Katie is coming out of a drug problem break up with a bad boyfriend, and ten year old Scottieso jumps at the chance to come home to Edinburgh. She's feistyAnd so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, clever thanks to 44 Scotland Street and - for me - stole the bookIsabel Dalhousie novels, but with some new characters who quickly begin to charm. Have you ever noticed that when luck changes it doesn't do it Katie has no experience in baby steps? It does it running a business, or in ''lumps''. Joanie is involved match-making, but Ness has full confidence in a powerboat accident her abilities, and sinks into an irreversible coma as a result of a head injury. But there's more piling up. Matt discovers that Joanie has been having an affair. Does the man who's been - er - enjoying his wife have the right always her very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, William, to say his goodbyes too?lend a hand…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099570246</amazonuk>1846976596
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Chris WomersleyDean Koontz|title=BereftThe Bad Weather Friend|rating=4.5|genre=Literary FictionParanormal|summary=Quinn Walker, Benny is having a young Australian man fresh from fighting on the European front in World War Oneterrifically bad day. He loses his job, returns to the very town he was drummed out of ten years beforeloses his fiancee, after being accused of raping and killing his own younger sisterhouse gets trashed. Two things have beaten him 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 small settlement - onething that has trashed his house! The thing is, Benny is the global flu pandemic; two very last person to deserve all this bad luck. He is a telegram saying he died bravely in action earlier in nice person. A really nice person. So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the wardelivery 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. And the less you know Spike is going to take care of Benny, and will certainly take care of what Benny's enemies, if he meets and does back in Flint the better, the more to keep this fresh Benny, and brilliant bookHarper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's many intrigues as secret as wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they were for meare.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857386549</amazonuk>1662500491
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Helen SchulmanKatherine Howe|title=This Beautiful LifeA True Account|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Richard and Liz are new Hannah Masury is living in town which is always Boston, having been sent to live with a bummerfamily who run an inn, except this town is Manhattan so really nothing else could ever compare. They’ve only moved and being made to work there from upstate New York but it seems a world away nowyoung age. Liz has given up her post at the university When she hears there is to concentrate on kids Coco and Jake and is finding juggling their social lives be a full time job hanging of some pirates in itself but is just about making a space for herself among the other mothers at the school gates. Things are going ok. And thentown, one day, their nice, comfortable world starts she decides to crumblego and watch. Jake receives an explicit email from a classmate Enthralled and horrified in disbeliefequal measure, forwards it straight on to Hannah finds herself embroiled in a friendyoung boy's death at the hands of two vicious pirates. Except rather than coming back to him with advice on what the heck to do next She hides away, so that they don't find and kill her too, the friend chooses and then to send it on escape them completely she runs away to another friendsea, who does the same. Round dressing as a boy and round it goes, round joining the school, round the city, round the online worldnotorious Ned Low's pirate ship as a cabin boy. Everyone knows where it came from and She soon Jake’s academic futurefinds herself in the thick of things when there is a mutiny on board, his father’s career and his whole family’s social standing from there we are hanging caught up in her rip roaring tale of life on the balanceocean waves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857896237</amazonuk>0861547438
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Courtney Sullivan1471180158|title=MaineMaybe Tomorrow|author=Penny Parkes
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The Kellehers' beachJamie Matson works in an upper-front holiday home in Maine was built on class grocery store, for a plot of land won in man who's a bar-room bet at control freak with all the end subtlety of World War IIa half brick. ItJamie's son, Bo, 'has his problems'. He's not in asthmatic and the same league as more you read, the Kennedy compound more you'll suspect that he's on the autistic spectrum. Sometimes Jamie needs to take time off at Hyannis Port but there are short notice - she's a couple of substantial properties on frequent flier in the plot local A&E and theresometimes Bo's still room not fit enough to sparego to school. It's a place of indulgence, secrets Missed shifts or the need to be away on time to pick Bo up from school are occasions when Jamie can be controlled and the sort of burning cruelty which you only get put in families who care for each other - some of the timewrong. ''Maine'' is essentially the story of It was going to come to a summer at the property - but the seeds of what happens were, of course, planted long agohead.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>085789496X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Chad HarbachB0CKD1L5JL|title=The Art of FieldingRadio Free Olympia|author=Jeffrey Dunn
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=''The Art of Fielding'' Petr is basically a US-style campus novel featuring baseball. There are similarities in style between this and many of John Irving's works, with baseball substituting for Irving's wrestling focusan orphan. This, to Rescued by the UK-readerstrange, raises the first potential barrier as we arereclusive Bear, as a rulehe is brought up far from bustling cities and busy human society, largely ignorant of the US fixation with in the intricacies forests of baseballWashington's Olympic Peninsula. Certainly you don't need an After Bear dies and a brief sojourn in depth knowledge to appreciate this story - it is really a story of friendshiphuman company, ambition and the sporting dreams of youth - but despite armed with only a loose understanding of the sport I felt that I would have benefitted from more knowledge particularly towards the end when there is a climactic baseball match. You kind of get the pointpirate radio transmitter, but I certainly felt that I was missing out Petr goes on a little of journey through the tensionforest, in much the same way I'd expect a US reader to be perplexed if broadcasting the story had been based on saystrange, cricket. It's a minor flaw though wild and it would be a shame if potential readers dismissed it for this reasonrarely heard voices he encounters.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007374445</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Eowyn IveySarah Marsh|title=The Snow ChildA Sign of Her Own|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The heart After a bout of Alaskan nativescarlet fever as a child, Eowyn Ivey's debut novel is Ellen Lark loses her hearing. Suddenly plunged into a re-telling world of the Russian fairy tale ''Snegurochka'' or ''The Snow Child''silence, everything about her life changes. Set here Living in Alaska in the 1920s, Jack and Mabel have moved from the East coast to start a new life, apart from anything to help Mabel get over time when the grief use of having lost her sign language was seen as something only child in childbirth. Life in Alaska savages do, Ellen is tough and Jack struggles sent to farm his new homestead. Then in the first snowfall of the season, a playful snowball fight leads school where she is taught to the couple building a snowmanlip read, or more accurately a snowgirlbut physically restrained from signing. The next morning the snowgirl From here, she ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has vanished along with been teaching the mittens and scarf that adorned her deaf and Jack sees using a ghostly figuresystem called Visible Speech. At the same time, possibly a young girlBell is working on other inventions and ideas, running and Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in the woodsa complicated tangle of espionage. Can they have created a snow child? Is this their longed for daughter?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0755380525</amazonuk>1035401614
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=C J SansomB0BC3YTCMR|title=Winter in MadridGood Girls Die|author=Ayura Ayira
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Despite being injured at Dunkirk Harry Brett was still willing to do his bit for his country. The deafness from the bomb which killed the man standing next to him on the beach - and the resulting panic attacks had begun to recede and he was willing, if not keen, to go to Spain to do some work for the ''sneaky beakies''. He wasn't a spy by nature or inclination but he was one of the few people who might be able to make contact with - and report back on - Sandy Forsyth who'd been at his public school. There's another old Rookwoodian who's left some history in Madrid. Bernie Piper went to Spain to fight for the International Brigades in the Civil War and was thought to have been killed at Jarama but his body had never been found. The school This story is not the only link thoughfor everyone. Barbara Clare was Bernie's girlfriend - she was a Red Cross nurse - and now she was living with Sandy Forsyth.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330411985</amazonuk>}}'
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Bruce Robinson1472263936|title=The Rum Diary - A ScreenplayFigurine|author=Victoria Hislop
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Kemp has lied his way onto a failing newspaper It was in San Juan1968 that Helena McCloud made her first trip to Greece. She was alone: her mother, Puerto RicaGreek by birth, as had left the only candidate for the jobfamily 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 a semiup-comatose state induced by too many miniatures from market Kolonaki would be the hotel minibar, stumbles into a conspiracy first of epic proportions, via classic bar room brawls several annual visits. She grew to love her grandmother and nightclub mayhem. On the way he (almost) writes horoscopes and bowling championship storiesfamily's maid, meets the fantastically erotic girlfriend of the evil businessmanDina, but was wary - and teams up with a protofrightened -Nazi out of his mind on a cocktail of hootch and LSDher grandfather, and a photographer side kickretired general Stamatis Papagiannis. There is no question that this is Hunter S Thompson territory, especially when all the above is combined with a witty, slow-talking hero who in spite He was proud of his alcoholic haze sees clearly through close connections to the exploitation of a third world country by its massive first world near neighbourJunta 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. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099555697</amazonuk>
}}
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=''Tiny Sunbirds Far Away'' starts in Lagos but soon moves to the ruralMichael Mace, oil producing Niger Delta. This allows Christie Watson's young narratorHead of Security, 12 year old Blessingat a top secret biological research facility, to view the traditional ways afresh. It's is among 55 people who die when a clever device and young Blessing virus is shocked by the rural conditions after released in a relatively luxurious life bio-hazard accident. Finding himself in Lagos with a good school and a modern apartment. But when her mother discovers her father on top of another womanmakeshift mortuary, she takes Blessing and her older brothercovered in plastic, the asthmatic Ezikielhe has a sense that something very, back very bad has happened to her family home.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849163758</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Nick Lake|title=In Darkness|rating=5|genre=Teens|summary=Shorty is lying in him – and only him – as he sits up and looks around at the rubble shrouded bodies of the great Haitian earthquake of 2010his dead friends and former colleagues. If As he's not rescued soonrecovers his senses, he will die. Shorty realises that there is from Site Soley, the sprawling slum of Port-au-Princesomething different about him; he can ''feel'' everything. After the murder of his father and abduction of his twin sister, Shorty has allowed himself to fall further and further into the slum ''Everything''s gang culture. But Route 9 Michael isn't all about drug-dealing and gun-running - it's also about feeding the poor and educating the children. And Shorty has a great deal to teach his readers, as he recounts his life while waiting to die'Michael'' anymore. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408824183</amazonuk>1662500467}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Simon LelicB0BVDC2VWH|title=The Child WhoGrave Listeners|author=William Frank
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Simon Lelic's third book, ''The Child Who'', takes him back to the format that worked so successfully with his first novel, ''Rupture'', avoiding the near-future angle he took, less successfully I felt, with his second bookvillage is isolated and poor. LelicIt's themes are always inspired surrounded by real events that have been in a Witching Forest. And the newsvillagers subsist largely by farming Uphegia plants - its bread-like fruit provides nutrition and its blossom provides herbal medicines. HereThe black wood of the forest provides heat and warmth, roofs on homes, he tackles the murder of an 11 year old child by Danieland even gallows, a 12 year oldif needed. The creative inspiration fear of being buried alive is surely an existential superstition in the James Bulger case village and he acknowledges that is the creative debt to Blake Morrison's ''As If'' on that very subjectreason Volushka, a drunken, self-indulgent, lazy lout of a man is tolerated.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330522744</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Heather PeaceB0BYF82CXT|title=All To Play ForSemi-Detached|author=Deborah Stone
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Back ''Bill and Amanda are living in a semi-detached house, stuck in August 1985 at the time of the Edinburgh Festival a group depressing rut of people met boredom and disappointment, when Terry and Fiona – glamorous, successful and very much in what could have been difficult circumstances. They were arrested for causing a disturbance despite the fact that they weren't really involved love – move in the fracas and it was all a misunderstandingnext door. Little did they know that in Despite their different outlooks on life, the following decade they would all be involved - one way couples befriend each other and another - in producing drama life appears to improve for the BBC as it went through one of the toughest periods in its historyboth pairs. The tale But all is told - mainly - by Rhiannonnot what it seems, but we hear the stories of Nicky, Maggie, Jill, Jonathan and Christheir increasingly interconnected relationships are fated for tragedy. Names will change, but they'll all wander the circular corridors of power in Langford Place.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908248130</amazonuk>'
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Damian McNichollShalini Boland|title=Twisted AgendasThe Silent Bride
|rating=3
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Writing about Ireland Alice and the IrishSeth are a match made in heaven. He is everything she has been searching for; handsome, accomplished, clever, funny; total and utter husband-material. She is all he could possibly want in a wife; beautiful, successful, especially confident… and so the dimension of inevitable proposal is eagerly accepted by Alice and the Troubles wedding is planned and set. When the IRAmuch-anticipated day arrives, from a third hand American perspective Alice is a recipe for cliché walked down the aisle by her father, beaming with pride and stereotype. Balancing excitement as she surveys the congregation – their friends assembled to celebrate this joyful day and interweaving the story of American journalist Piper with that of Irishman Dannywhen Seth turns to face his approaching bride, Alice's search world implodes because she has absolutely no idea who the man at the altar is, who is waiting for independence in London does enable McNicholl in some part her to achieve a wry and knowing stance, making us hope for a clever twist away from the predictably which always seems so closebecome his wife.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908248025</amazonuk>1662507089
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Kevin Barry1787636003|title=City The Girls of BohaneSummer|author=Katie Bishop
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Bohane is a thoroughly lawless townIt was the summer when Rachel Evans turned eighteen that she and Caroline went backpacking around Greece and arrived on the island. Rachel wasn't exactly innocent but she was, perhaps, naive, set in what would appear so when thirty-four-year-old Alistair Wright started to be some kind of parallel universe. We are told it is set take an interest in 2053her, but it's a town without any technology or modern luxuriesshe was flattered rather than wary. It's was quite a violent place fuelled while before he made any sort of physical approach to her and by alcohol, drugs and lust with a patois style language that takes a little work to get intotime she was obsessed by him. Novels with this kind of premise have to be beyond good if they are to interest Alistair worked for Henry Taylor, looking after his interests on the annual literary prize judges; this is one such book island and ''City of Bohane'' is nominated for this year's Costa First Novel prize. It is stunningly goodin particular in the bar where all the girls either worked or partied.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224090577</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Kerry YoungAmanda Craig|title=PaoThree Graces|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=In her Costa Prize shortFew styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the state-of-the-listed first nation novel, Kerry Young brings together a huge number of elements that make up a good story. Set in Jamaica, the time period covers 1938 to almost present day, it is the political backdrop of independence and control over JamaicaThere's assets that informs much something so utterly compelling about any writer who can catch hold of the story. But while atmosphere of the politics day and capture it, crafting an image of Jamaica resound throughout the book, country as itstands in one particular moment. To say that Amanda Craig is skilled at doing this would be embarrassingly inadequate: she's also practically synonymous with the genre of contemporary social fiction at this point. She has such a very personal story about gift for weaving the life ongoing issues of the eponymous Yang Pao. Issues day into the lives of raceher characters in a way that feels natural and lived-in, classnever making them ciphers for social commentary but instead fully realised people, love, family, ambition and business philosophy - Pao's guiding light is Sun Tzu's ''The Art of War'' - are skilfully woven into the mix to make this a great book to curl up grappling with on a cold winter's nightissues far larger than themselves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>140881207X</amazonuk>140871468X
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Gavin James Bower152915118X|title=Made in BritainPineapple Street|author=Jenny Jackson|rating=24.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=''Pineapple Street'' is the story of three women: Sasha, Darley and Georgiana. Darley and George are sisters and Sasha is married to their brother Cord. They're Stocktons, only Sasha isn't a Stockton by birth so she isn't readily accepted into the tribe. The settings of problem's exacerbated when the clan matriarch, Tilda, asks Cord and Sasha if they'd like to move into the intertwined tales Pineapple Street property. Tilda and Chip have renovated and downsized to another property, a street or so away, which they own. They won't need any of Russell, the working class swot trapped by his conditionsfurniture from Pineapple Street, Charlieso Sasha and Cord can move straight in. Nominally, they had a choice but that wasn't the heroic reality. Darley and Georgiana start to call Sasha 'ladthe gold digger' who gets caught . She's living in ''their'' family home. They use it so often that they abbreviate it to 'the drugs scene and Hayley GD'.}}{{Frontpage|author=Emily Critchley|title=One Puzzling Afternoon|rating=4|genre=Crime|summary=84 year old Edie has lived in the naïve wannabee with same small town for almost her whole life, but now she is facing a single parent father are the school rooms move as her son wants to move to another house and backstreetsbring Edie to live with his family, flatsas Edie is starting to lose her memory. However, pubs and clubs Edie is tormented by the memory of Every Townher childhood friend, Lucy, who went missing over 60 years ago, and the vision of twenty-first century deprivation worry that Bower conjures. Or rather fails to conjure, there was a secret she was keeping for Lucy that somehow might be the device thing that reveals the truth of making what happened all that time ago. After 'seeing' Lucy in the 16 year olds tell high street, just as she was the story from their own first person narrative deprives the reader of a genuine sense last time she saw her, she starts to find pockets of memories coming back to her. And yet as she remembers the physical reality past, she is forgetting more and more in which this story unfoldsher day to day life. Will she uncover the truth about Lucy's disappearance before her move, and before her memories are gone forever?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0704372290</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=Laura Wilkinson0008506337|title=BloodminingThe Garnett Girls|author=Georgina Moore|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Although Wilkinson has placed The 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. Richard was twenty-one and described by Margo's mother as 'an older man'. Her parents worried that Richard's influence would take her story in away from what they felt she could achieve - going to Oxford and having a glittering career. In the near futureevent, for they eloped and Richard took her away from the most part, you wouldn't necessarily be aware Isle of that factWight. Margo did go to Oxford and went on to become a well-respected journalist. PersonallyThe couple had three children: Rachel, I Imogen and Sasha. Life was delighted as Ilived in London and holidays were spent at Sandcove, the family home on the Isle of Wight. Even then the doubts about Richard's drinking were never far from Margo's mind: ''she would never be able to leave him in charge''m not a fan of futuristic fiction.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907335145</amazonuk>Then Richard left them.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Kerry Jamieson1914585402|title=The Forgotten LiesDashboard Elvis is Dead|author=David F Ross
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=In the mid-thirties, the golden age of Hollywood, three aspiring starlets shared a studio house on Lantana Drive as they waited to hear if they were going to have a career in the movies – or not. Charlotte (soon to be Carlie for acting purposes), Verbena, known to her friends (and I reviewed David F Ross's book [[There'onlys Only One Danny Garvey by David F Ross|There'' her friends) as Bee s Only One Danny Garvey]] a couple of years back and remember being absolutely floored by how powerful and Ivy were desperate for the role of affecting it was. It was a lifetimegripping, which would put their name in lights. There was an added appeal. Whoever won would star opposite Liam Malone – good lookingemotionally wounding read, charismatic and ''very'' married with six children. It wasn't just a case rereading my review of being able to actit my main takeaway was that I might not have lavished enough praise on it. Their lives would be under intense scrutiny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141026049</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Conny BraamLucy Ashe|title=The Cocaine SalesmanClara and Olivia
|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical General Fiction|summary=Picture a world of hellish exclusion, nightmarish noise The year is 1933. The place? Sadler's Wells. Ballerinas Clara and imagesOlivia are sisters, and horrid violencetwins no less. Picture one person trying to live through Identical on the sleepless nightsoutside but not, we learn, on the isolation among his peersinside. And not on stage, the permanent sense of dreadful threateither. Picture him needing drugsBecause there's a lot that builds a dancer. His best friend might even Some things that can be called Charlie. But taught or learnt – discipline, attention to detail – and some things, that ''je ne sais quoi'', that don't picture an inner city slumcome from the classroom. A stage presence, 2012a charm, but a man on the front in World War One''joie de vivre''. The difference between a hard-worker, and a star.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1907822054</amazonuk>0861544080
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Rachel ConnorHeather Fawcett|title=SisterwivesEmily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=When I Emily Wilde is an expert academic scholar on faerie lore, and she has travelled extensively, and researched meticulously, to write her life's work, the very first read encyclopaedia of faeries. Whilst she is brilliant at research and speaking to faeries, she is not so good with people. So when she finds herself far, far North in the title (I hadn't yet read small village of Hrafvsnik, having somehow offended the village matriarch, she is not sure what she has done, nor how to redeem herself and put her final investigations for her book back cover blurb) I glibly thought that it was about two sisters on the right track. Enter Wendell Bambleby, her dashingly handsome and insufferable rival who arrives unexpectedly, all charm and their marriagesdelight, much to Emily's frustration. Wrong. But why is he here? What does he want? This debut novel by Connor And what exactly is about two very different women going on with the faerie folk around Hravsnik?|isbn=0356519120}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1398515388|title=The Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (one is no more than a girl reallytranslator) who just happen to 'marry' |rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, in turn, caused the same mannuclear meltdown. The result was complete and utter devastation. I use The deaths were uncountable, and the word marry very loosely indeedloss of livelihoods was widespread. Their community, The fact that many pets were separated from their rules, their descriptions etc can be rather quirkyowners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. Marriages are normally called He wasn'sealingst a dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the dog jumped in.'|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0946745587</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Neil ForsythChristopher Bowden|title=Why Me? The Very Important Emails of Bob ServantMr Magenta|rating=3.54
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Catchy title and catchy front cover graphics. WhatChristopher Bowden's not to like? It takes latest novel is a patient untangling of a lot to make me laugh generallyseemingly ordinary woman's life, but as I had an initial flick through this book, things looked promisingcarried out by her nephew after she has died. And I was also thinking that it's The aunt who always provided a safe harbour and a pleasant change little bit of indulgence to see another location (other a young nephew had had a much more interesting life than perhaps the predictable Glasgow that nephew Stephen had ever realised and Edinburgh) get it seems to him an airingobligation to find it all out.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1780270097</amazonuk>B0B6Z9VJDW
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=D. J. ConnellJennifer Mason|title=Sherry Cracker Gets NormalPartitions of Unity|rating=54
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Whilst it's wrong to judge a book Here at Bookbag Towers, we first met Elizabeth Cromwell, dominatrix and unintentional detective in [[Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery by its coverJennifer Mason|Preposterous]], when she investigated and unravelled a mere sight series of Ddisappearances. J. ConnellIn ''s second novel Partitions of Unity'Sherry Cracker Gets Normal' is enough , she sets her mind to make me smilesolving a murder.. The title is amusing; the colourful design enticing and the effusive praise for Connell's debut 'Julian Corkle is a Filthy Liar' encouraging.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>000733219X</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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