==General fiction==
__NOTOC__
{{newreview
|author=Sue Townsend
|title=The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Adrian Mole was just tree months away from his fourteenth birthday when he began writing his diary on New Year's Day. He's just on the edge of true adolescence - pimples are appearing as is a little bit of interest in the opposite sex. He's thinking about what he might like to do ''eventually'', but his first major challenge is the breakdown of his parents' marriage. He writes with a wonderful mixture of ''knowingness'' and innocence and usually manages to get things just ever-so-slightly wrong.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141046422</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Bruce Robinson
|summary=West Virginia, 1970. We're at a rundown race track, of the dusty kind rundown horses and their rundown owner/trainers fetch up living in, with the occasional race to interrupt the boredom. Into things comes a young upstart hoping to surprise all with his four unknown quantities and make a packet before fleeing. His girlfriend is here too to help out, and naively eager for success and knowledge, but old hands like Medicine Ed have seen it all before. Also in the background are some small-time gangsters who are not too keen at for once not knowing who is doing what and how races are going to be run and won.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857386697</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Alexander McCall Smith
|title=Unusual Uses for Olive Oil: A Von Igelfeld Novel
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=
Following on from ''The 2½ Pillars of Wisdom'' which was a compilation of three shorter volumes, this book sees Professor Dr Von Igelfeld still dealing with his academic colleagues but also with the prospect of a love interest, a recently widowed lady, Frau Benz, who has inherited the large Schloss in Regensburg. Is love in the air? Or will his arch rival, Unterholzer interfere once again?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0316027545</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Sophie Duffy
|title=The Generation Game
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Do you remember ''The Generation Game'' TV show, with old Brucie and then Larry Grayson managing the mayhem? Where were you when Charles and Di got married? What about when Diana died? There's plenty of reminiscing to be done in this book as Sophie Duffy takes us from the 1960's to 2006 through the life of her character, Philippa, in a book that fleets from funny, heartwarming moments to real sadness.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908248017</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Larry Pontius
|title=Future King
|rating=3
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=It's the near future and King Charles III has ascended the throne of the United Kingdom with Camilla as his Queen Consort. The country is in a mess with rampant inflation, unemployment, a crumbling infrastructure and riots: the people have taken to calling this time ''The Troubles''. Such situations breed power-hungry politicians and Prime Minister Alistair Saxon has plans to become the dictator of the country. When the King refuses to give his assent to the Emergency Powers Act, Saxon and his fellow-conspirators kidnap the Royal family to prevent Charles speaking against the EPA.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1463766297</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Kirsten Tranter
|title=The Legacy
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=This is quite a chunky book so Tranter has given herself plenty of space and time to build up a nice level of suspense here as well as putting some flesh on the bones of her central characters. The book opens - towards the end of the story. So we have firm, but platonic friends, Julia and Ralph both very concerned about their mutual friend, Ingrid. She supposedly died on 9/11 - but with no remains, no burial, their grief hasn't an outlet. They need (to quote that much used word) closure.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857380621</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Joe Simpson
|title=The Sound of Gravity
|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Patrick is climbing in the Alps with his girlfriend. They are taking an unusual and difficult ascent, and it is winter. A storm blows up. Whilst they are camping overnight, Patrick's girlfriend loses her footing. He manages to catch her hand, and then she slips through his fingers and falls into a chasm. The novel details the days and hours in the run-up to this tragedy, and the aftermath, both immediate and long term.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224072641</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Kevin Wilson
|title=The Family Fang
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=
Annie Fang and her brother Buster are back living at home with their parents - where they never thought they'd ever be again. But it has come to this - her film actress career is on the rocks with the kind of self-destruction so much enjoyed by tabloid writers, and he - well, he's here because of a jumbo spud gun. Neither want life back at home, as throughout their childhood they were used by their parents - without much planning, without any consideration of feelings, or consent - in a whole career of performance art pieces, designed to enact a point of life or just cause havoc.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1447202384</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Philip Roth
|title=Nemesis
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=1944, Newark, New Jersey. Summer. Hot. Bucky Cantor, a young Jewish man, is gym teacher and playground attendant-cum-sports instructor for the district, helping all those interested become fit young men, able to do what his eyesight prevents him from doing - serving in the forces. Things would be fine if his girlfriend were closer at hand, if it were cooler, and if there were no polio epidemic happening. But there is, and nobody knows what is causing it. Is it flies? Is it a gang of taunting Italian kids spreading it from neighbourhood to neighbourhood? Is it blacks, germs on money - is it in fact Cantor himself, draining all the youthful vigour from his charges under a blistering sun?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099542269</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Nina Bell
|title=The Empty Nesters
|rating=3
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=With their children all off to university (most from the same school year, plus an erroneous one who took a handy-for-the-sake-of-the-story gap year), it's all change for the parents in this book – for Clover and George, and Laura and Tim, and Alice. Though some of the fathers are present, as you'd expect this is a tale told mainly from the eyes of the mothers. Clover and Laura have been friends forever, while Clover and Alice's relationship is more recent. As for Laura and Alice, well they really don't get on, making life a little tricky at times for Clover, stuck somewhere in the middle.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0751543667</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Susan Hill
|title=The Shadows in the Street
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=This is the fifth novel in Susan Hill's series about the detective Simon Serrailler. Although you could probably follow the story without knowing the previous books I think it does help to have some background on who all the characters are. I really love the way Hill weaves her story around some wonderful character studies. Simon is actually hardly in this novel, and the focus instead is on the 'extras', with a lot of details being put into characters who will only be around for this particular novel but who live and breathe through it wonderfully well.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099499282</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jonathan Lewis
|title=Into Dust
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|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>
}}
