==General fiction==
__NOTOC__
{{newreview
|author=Raj Kumar
|title=Sharaf
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=With its subtitle "Forbidden love in the kingdom of faith and honour", I expected something entirely different from ''Sharaf'' to what it delivered. For the second time in as many weeks I had misjudged a book by, if not its cover exactly, certainly by its setting and its blurb.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1905802331</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Mark Watson
|summary=Having lived in China for a substantial period of time, Sam Meekings has clearly soaked up a great deal of the culture; something he has already put to great effect in his first book, [[Under Fishbone Clouds by Sam Meekings|Under Fishbone Clouds]]. In The Book of Crows, his third book, he continues to show his talent as a non-Chinese raconteur of Chinese culture, but goes one step further by telling a story that spans several periods of Chinese history, thereby giving the reader a glimpse into different people's lives.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846971721</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Rachel Simon
|title=The Story of Beautiful Girl
|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The book begins with widow Martha, an ex-teacher in her seventies living alone in her farmhouse in the Pennsylvanian countryside. Martha's life is filled with loneliness, a phone that never rings, and she rarely sees other people. But all that is set to change one rainy night in 1968 when Lynnie and Homan knock on Martha's door. Lynnie and Homan have escaped from The School for the Incurable and Feebleminded, a harsh institution where people with disabilities are kept away from the rest of the world. Martha takes the couple in and soon discovers that Lynnie is carrying a new born baby.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184809339X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Henry Sutton
|title=Get Me Out Of Here
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Hapless (and you could also say hopeless) Matt is fed up with his rather sad and unexciting life. So, at every opportunity he wants to spice it up a bit. But does this strategy work? We're barely pages into the book when we see that Matt is an out-and-out snob. He knows all the designer labels for the best clothes, the best shoes (handmade, natch), the best champagne label ... I think you may get my drift here. That's fine. As long as you can pay for this high life, what's the problem? Well, Matt's problem is cash - or the distinct lack of it. He's down on his financial luck at the minute so it's time to try another angle ...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099535629</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Joolz Denby
|title=The Curious Mystery of Miss Lydia Larkin and the Widow Marvell
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=I was a bit surprised by this book when it arrived. Joolz Denby is a punk poet, and has written four noir crime novels, including Billie Morgan, longlisted for the Orange Prize. This quirky little novella with a long title features a large black cat and recipes at the back. Has Joolz really written a cosy?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956778607</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Robert Dinsdale
|title=Three Miles
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Captain Abraham Matthews is so desperate to catch the villainous Albie Crowe and bring the youngster to justice that some people would say he was obsessed. After six months, Matthews has finally tracked down his prey, and captures him just three miles from the police station. But with Albie's boys trying to rescue him, other men without Abraham's moral compass more interested in vengeance than justice, and the Luftwaffe dropping bombs on Leeds, this is set to be the longest three miles of either of their lives...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>057126025X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Antoinette Van Huegten
|title=Saving Max
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The one-page Prologue sees us at the scene of the crime. Two teenagers and a lot of blood - one of whom will not survive. Seems like an open-and-shut case - but is it? We then go back in time to a medical consulting room in downtown New York. Hot-shot lawyer and time-pressed, single mum Danielle is trying to understand her severely disabled son. Even allowing for the normal teenage angst and racing hormones, things are not good at home. She knows it. Max knows it. And the medical profession at large, know it. Something needs to be done before things get out of hand.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0778304086</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Kim Edwards
|title=The Lake of Dreams
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The book opens with a lovely and intriguing sentence - 'My name is Lucy Jarrett and before I knew about the girl in the window ... I found myself living in a village near the sea in Japan.' Who could fail to be drawn into a story after reading that, I thought. I was hooked immediately. Edwards gives us a fleeting taste of life in Japan, particularly the importance (almost reverence) of nature and gardens, public and private. This sets the tone for the novel which is captivating and interesting, but put together beautifully, unhurried.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0142428396</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Nikesh Shukla
|title=Coconut Unlimited
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=It is the early 1990's and Amit, Anand and Nishant are three young Asian boys in an all white private school. As such they are considered massively uncool by default. Too bad then that their Asian peers in the North London Gujarati enclave known as Harrow think that they are a bunch of stuck up toffs. Soft. Weak. No street cred whatsoever. Worst of all they are labelled as 'Coconuts' (brown on the outside, white on the inside). There's only one thing for it - start a hip-hop band. The fact that they don't have any songs, talent or initially any idea what hip-hop actually sounds like isn't really a problem. As everyone knows, forming a band makes you 'pretty cool' and after that the girls simply fall at your feet.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0704372045</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Elizabeth Haynes
|title=Into The Darkest Corner
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=The book didn't actually look that appealing. The cover is on the sepia side of dull. I didn't know the author's name and the title didn't really grab me. When I started reading we were straight into the transcript of a court case in which it seemed that a police officer was being questioned in court about his relationship with a woman. He was accused of being violent to her, but it seemed that the boot was really on the other foot. Then we were into a story – or even two stories – with two time lines some four years apart. Within ten minutes I couldn't put it down.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956251579</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Ben Pastor
|title=Lumen
|rating=4
|genre=Crime (Historical)
|summary=Cracow, Poland, October 1939: The Germans have recently occupied Poland and are seeking to establish their authority. Captain Martin Bora of the Wehrmacht (the German army) has just arrived in the city from the battlefield to take up a posting to Intelligence. His boss asks Bora to drive him to a convent every day to see the renowned Abbess, rumoured to have mystic and healing powers. A few days later, though, she is found shot dead in the grounds of her convent. Bora is asked to investigate and report back. He proceeds to investigate who shot her and why, but as his investigation continues, there are more questions for Bora and the reader. Where does this case fit in with the priorities of the occupying forces?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904738664</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jake Wallis Simons
|title=The English German Girl
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=When it began it wasn't pleasant, but there was hope that it would get better. Rosa's father, Otto was a doctor and she lived with him, her mother, Inga, elder brother Heinrich and younger sister Hedi in a pleasant flat in Berlin. The turn of opinion against Jews was slow – an anti-Jewish pin handed to Rosa as she went shopping, friends who felt that they couldn't remain such obvious friends – certainly for the time being – and a change of employment for Otto. It was better for the patients if they didn't have contact with him, even if he was a good doctor.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846971764</amazonuk>
}}
