|summary=If you have ever fancied a grown up version of [[The Tiger Who Came to Tea by Judith Kerr|The Tiger who came to Tea]], the cover of this Vintage edition should hook you into reading Justine Kilkerr's first novel. Here sits a sad and patient-looking lion, and the female figure beside him, hidden by an umbrella, has that same vulnerable look of mother and child in Judith Kerr's classic children's picture book. At first this seems like a ridiculous connection, but thinking about it later I'm struck with the analogy, not to mention the similarity in authors' names.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099535262</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Heather Gudenkauf
|title=These Things Hidden
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Golden girl Allison Glenn was living the perfect teenage life until she was imprisoned for a monstrous crime. Now she's twenty-one and has been released from prison to live in a halfway house. Allison is keen to put the past behind her, but when she returns to her home town of Linden Falls she soon discovers that no one has forgotten her crime, least of all her parents and her little sister, Brynn.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>077830437X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Meg Wolitzer
|title=The Uncoupling
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Dory and Robby Lang had one of those marriages that everyone envies. They're not just lovers, they're best friends too and they never seem to tire of each other. They're both popular teachers at Eleanor Roosevelt High School ('Elro' to those who know it well) where their daughter is a student. It's sometimes difficult to have your parent teaching at your school, but everything seems to rub along reasonably well and Dory was delighted when daughter Willa got a part in the school play. It's ''Lysistrata'' and whilst the drama teacher has to tone it down a little it still the play about the women who refuse to have sex with their men until they call a halt to the war they're fighting.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701186216</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Natasha Solomons
|title=The Novel in the Viola
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Elise Landau arrived in England in 1938, a refugee from Vienna where she and her family had had a good lifestyle. In England she's destined for Tyneford in Dorset where she'll be a parlour maid at the big house. She's not exactly looking forward to it, but she's escaped Vienna with some of her mother's jewels sewn into the seams of her dresses and her father's latest novel, in manuscript, is hidden in the body of her viola. Her sister is leaving for the USA and her parents hope to follow. Surely Elise will be able to join them before too long? She knows that she won't like England.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>034099567X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Paul Magrs
|title=The Bride That Time Forgot
|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Christmas is approaching in the seaside town of Whitby and Brenda is busy sprucing up her B&B. She hasn't seen her best friend, neighbour and investigating partner Effie for a few weeks, since Effie's strange gentleman friend Alucard has reappeared. Brenda and Effie are the guardians of the gateway to Hell which just happens to be right on their doorstep in Whitby, but since Effie has shut herself away, Brenda has turned to her friend Robert, the owner of the local hotel to help her with her investigations into the ever present strange goings on in the town, involving vampires, monsters and a rather strange car.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755359453</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Naomi Wood
|title=The Godless Boys
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Britain. 1986.
The country became a theocracy during the 1950s and since then outbreaks of secular terrorism have been dealt with by exile. The atheists have been sent to the Island where they can burn churches as they please. Aside from a weekly boat bringing donated supplies, the exiled must shift as best they can on a remote snippet of land in the North Sea.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330530127</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=James Patterson and Neil McMahon
|title=Toys
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The novel has a very glamorous opening. We're at President Jacklin's inauguration party and the easy flow of narration gets me seamlessly and effortlessly into the story. There are plenty of comments and observations pertaining to the super-duper hi-tech times of the story, so as early as page 10 Hays and his beautiful wife Lizbeth, who are invitees, are attended to by a well-trained and well-programmed ''iJeeves butler.'' I loved that phrase. It made me smile. The Bakers are an impressive and influential couple. As part of the 'elite' society they expect a flawless, ordered life for themselves and their family. And Patterson then informs us that mere human beings have been relegated to menial work and most of them live pitiful lives and serves them right, apparently. They're despised but their labour is necessary to oil the wheels of the important daily lives of the elites. But the elites have extremely ambitious plans. Can they pull them off?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846057701</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Louise Welsh
|title=Naming the Bones
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Murray Watson is a Doctor of English Literature embarking on a year-long sabbatical to pursue his long-held dream of writing the definitive biography of Archie Lunan and, as a specifically intended by-product, restore Lunan's poetry to its rightful place in the high canon of Scots creativity.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847672566</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Anita Shreve
|title=Rescue
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=When we meet Peter Webster he's a rookie paramedic who takes an emergency call to help a drunk driver who's been badly injured in a car crash. It was touch and go as to whether or not Sheila Arsenault made it, but she did and afterwards Webster can't get her out of his thoughts. Every instinct tells him that he shouldn't get involved with her – that it'll mean trouble – but perhaps it was the long, shining, dark hair that tipped the balance and Webster is involved in an intense love affair. He's also involved in Sheila's life – for better or for worse.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408700735</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Manu Joseph
|title=Serious Men
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Ayyan Mani is a Dalit, an untouchable, stuck in a flat in Mumbai's slums but hoping, somehow, for a better future for his son. Working at the Insitute of Theory and Research he uses all his cunning and wiles to stay ahead of the game amongst the Brahmin scientists. Does he have the intelligence, and nerves, to convince everyone that his son, against all odds, is a genius?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848543085</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Philippe Claudel and Euan Cameron
|title=Monsieur Linh and His Child
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=From a war-ravaged country a bit like a Vietnam or a Cambodia an old man carries the fragile frame of his granddaughter aboard a refugee's ship, staring at the receding horizon all the weeks it takes to arrive at a city a bit like a Seattle or a New York. He and she are given the basics of a new life together but it's up to him, Monsieur Linh, to find friendship, which he does, accepting uncomprehendingly the chatty company of a fellow mourner called Bark.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906694990</amazonuk>
}}
