|summary=Set in Jerusalem in the late 1980s, an elderly, Jewish, celebrated cellist Elisheva is visiting Israel with her protégé, Rachel, ostensibly to give a concert performance. It quickly becomes apparent that Elisheva survived the Nazi camps by playing her music for the feared camp commander, known as the Butcher of Majdanek, and while on the surface she survived this ordeal well, it is clear that she has a darker intent with her three day visit. Through an underground network of Nazi hunters, she has managed to lure the Butcher from his home in Venezuela to visit Israel. Will they meet and what will happen when they do?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857050966</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Tan Twan Eng
|title=The Garden of Evening Mists
|rating=5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=Malay Chinese Teoh Yun Ling travels to the Cameron Highlands of Malaya to meet the legendary Japanese garden designer and expert, Nakamura Aritomo. As the sole survivor of a World War II Japanese slave labour camp, Yun Ling has many reasons to hate the Japanese but some things are stronger than hatred. For, whilst in the camp, she promised her sister a Japanese garden. When life became difficult during interment, the sisters discussed and visualised the finished result to keep them hanging on. Ling's sister perished but the dream of a memorial garden drives her on. Nothing is that straightforward, though. The designer refuses the commission. Instead he suggests that she stays, as his apprentice, learning the art in order to become her own designer. Yun Ling agrees and discovers more than horticultural finesse.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1905802625</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jane Urquhart
|title=Sanctuary Line
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Entomologist Liz Crane has returned to her family's property on the Canadian shores of Lake Erie where she's studying the migratory patterns of the monarch butterfly, which flies south, reproduces, dies, repeats this and a further generation returns to Lake Erie and the process begins again. As Liz works she reminisces about the family of which she's a part - almost incidentally - and how they have migrated. Foremost in her mind is her cousin, Amanda Butler, a gifted military strategist, who came home from Afghanistan is a flag-covered coffin, but moves on to her uncle who disappeared a decade or so before, the Mexican workers who came each year for the harvest and those members of the Butler family who came Ireland - some to grow fruit and others to become lighthouse keepers.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857051245</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jon Bauer
|title=Rocks in the Belly
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Jon Bauer's first novel, ''Rocks in the Belly'', is an emotional journey. The narrator is a man in his late 20s who has returned from Canada to visit his mother who has cancer of the brain. The narrator himself is emotionally damaged from the relationship that he had with his mother from childhood when she and her husband fostered children and, interspersed with the narrative, is the voice of narrator at eight years old and in particular telling the experience of one foster boy, Robert, who we know from early on in the book suffered a significant tragedy while in their care. What that event was will be revealed in due course, but it is clear that the young boy suffered hugely from jealousy of his mother's love for these foster children.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846688450</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Adam Johnson
|title=The Orphan Master's Son
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''The Orphan Master's Son'' follows the adventures of Jun Do who has been born without any say in his future. For this is North Korea, where all is organised for the good of the state or at the whim of the Dear Leader, Kim Jong Il.
Jun Do starts his adult life as a member of a state-sanctioned kidnap squad before joining a fishing boat as a 'listener', basically a spy monitoring and translating foreign radio traffic. His troubles start when he discovers that being a good citizen isn't enough and sometimes a person needs something else to believe in and fight for.
This is an incredibly hard book to sum up, but I also realise this will be an awfully short review if I don't try, so here goes...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857520555</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Gerbrand Bakker
|title=The Detour
|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Gerbrand Bakker's Dutch novel, ''The Detour'' translated by David Colmer, is a very odd story indeed. Mostly set in Snowdonia, the book tells the story of a Dutch woman, who gives her name as Emilie, who rents a remote farm. She's clearly on the run from something, perhaps an affair with a student at the university where she was researching the works of Emily Dickinson, but it increasingly becomes clear that this is only part of the story. Certainly her husband and parents back in the Netherlands have no clue where she has gone - or why. Once these details are established, the book takes a turn to the seriously odd which is more of a full blooded journey rather than a mere 'detour'.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846556392</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Angela Carter
|title=Burning Your Boats
|rating=5
|genre=Short Stories
|summary='Burning your Boats' brings together Carter's early works and her uncollected short stories, alongside the collections 'Fireworks', 'The Bloody Chamber', 'Black Venus' and 'American Ghosts'. Carter's ability to take the everyday and transform it into the fantastic is evident in stories that range from a cautionary tale of a musician in love with his instrument to a lost motorist whose journey ends in nightmarish circumstances in the Snow Pavilion.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099592916</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Ada Wilson
|title=Red Army Faction Blues
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Ada Wilson admits that his fascination with the period is what drove his work on this novel, and it is the wealth of detail and background that strikes one when reading his account of Peter Urbach, the undercover agent whose role was to act as an agent provocateur to the Red Brigade. Urbach is revealed from the outset as a plant, an undercover operative who needs to keep all events of the group 'noted and filed' for his masters. And throughout the first half of the novel we see Urbach recording the changes and developments, the complex web of political ideology, naivety and the pure egocentricity of youth which created the happening of the Baader-Meinhof gang.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1901927482</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Matthew Green
|title=Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Max is 8 years old. He likes Lego and Star Wars and playing with toy soldiers. He can tell you 102 words that rhyme with tree. He scarfs down grilled cheese sandwiches and chicken and rice. He does not like physical contact. He lives with his mum and dad who argue about what is best for him and why he’s not normal like other boys and girls.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0751547875</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Shalom Auslander
|title=Hope: a Tragedy
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Meet Solomon Kugel, who is almost universally known by his surname. He is about to join the list of kvetching Jewish heroes of comedy fiction, and at a very esteemed position in that list. He's a man who worries that by having had a kid he's betraying the boy's soul by bringing it into a world such as this. He's forced to live with his mother, who continually expects a second Holocaust and complains about suffering from the first, although she was not born then. He's faced with the eternal dilemma of not finding gluten-free matzo bread for his observances. He's moved to a rural location, and found houses like his are on the hit-list of an arsonist, but his new home has an even more unusual secret...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1447207653</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Grace McCleen
|title=The Land of Decoration
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Grace McCleen's debut novel, ''The Land of Decoration'' paints an original, unsettling, sometimes dark and generally rather wonderful picture. Narrated by ten year old Judith, raised by her father who is a fundamental religious follower of the end of the world is nigh variety, it looks at bullying, both at school and in more general society, faith and the possible rejection thereof and the strength of childhood imagination.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>070118681X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Dasa Drndic and Ellen Elias-Bursac (translator)
|title=Trieste
|rating=5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=Haya Tedeschi, an 82 year old woman, sits alone in Italy, waiting. She waits for the adult son she hasn't seen since he was a baby. As Haya waits, she goes through her red basket of photographs and memorabilia, hanging ''out her life on an imaginary washing line''. She then takes the reader back in time, back to her life as a Catholicised Jew, before, during and after World War II in an area called Trieste.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857050222</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Charles Dickens
|title=The Mystery of Edwin Drood
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=
If you have never come across 'Drood' before, there are certain significant factors which make this a 'must read'. It is Dickens' last work, and he died without completing it. Given that this is a detective story, one of the very first in that tradition, it is doubly intriguing, because although we are clearly being fed clues and hints throughout, at the point where the text ends we aren't even fully sure even if a crime has been committed. So as the basis for endless speculation about what really happens this novel could hardly be bettered. We certainly have potential villains and victims, but we also have a number of likely red herrings; complex threads of romantic interest, but again it is by no means clear exactly which way these will resolve; and a shadowy detective figure, whose speculations certainly have no sense of conclusion.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849904278</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Alexander MacLeod
|title=Light Lifting
|rating=4.5
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=Short stories may not be everyone's cup of tea. Sometimes, particularly with first time authors, there is an annoying tendency to be overly experimental. Not so with Alexander MacLeod's stunningly assured debut. True he has genetic 'form' in that he is the son of novelist and short story writer [[:Category:Alistair MacLeod|Alistair MacLeod]], but even so, the quality of this collection, is remarkable. The collection of seven stories is not overly themed, although certain issues and concerns do reappear, but what binds the stories together is a very human approach to adversity.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224093940</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Terri Armstrong
|title=Standing Water
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Dom has made the long flight from London to Australia and he's shattered, physically and emotionally. He's been busy getting on with his shiny new life in cosmopolitan London and has barely spared a thought for the folks back home. He's not relishing meeting up again with his brother Neal. Neal took over the family farm and land when their father died. The two brothers are like chalk and cheese. They had nothing in common as young boys growing up and when Dom left for Europe, Neal was relieved. But there is still an unsolved issue between them and it's a biggy. Now that they're older and hopefully wiser, will they manage to talk about it and even resolve it. Time will tell.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908136006</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Andrea Gillies
|title=The White Lie
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=One scorching hot summer's afternoon Ursula Salter hurls herself into the drawing room of her parents' house and delivers the devastating news that she's killed her nephew, Michael, and that he's in the loch. But is this what's happened? Ursula might be in her late twenties but she has the mind and understanding of a child and – crucially – there's no body to be found. There are contradictions and inconsistencies in what Ursula says – and evidence from someone else who might have this own agenda – all of which allows the Salters to close ranks and construct a version of what happened designed to protect Ursula and allow themselves to avoid the truth.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780720394</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Patrick Flanery
|title=Absolution
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=If Patrick Flanery's South African-set debut novel ''Absolution'' is anything to go by, he could well be one of the next big names in literary fiction. It's complex and at times challenging, but ultimately an extremely rewarding reading experience.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857892002</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Angela Carter
|title=Wise Children
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Dora and Nora Chance are the twin daughters of Shakespearean actor Melchior Hazard and Pretty Kitty, the chambermaid at the theatrical boarding house where he was lodging in the First World War. Kitty died in childbirth and the girls were brought up by the woman they knew as Grandma. As for Melchior, he preferred that it be thought that his twin brother Peregrine was responsible and Perry was not unhappy to bear the burden. What Melchior didn't know was that the twin daughters which his first wife produced were actually sired by Perry. If you're getting confused, then bear in mind that there are more sets of twins to appear and that this is comedy, not of the cheap canned laughter variety, but of the type written by the bard himself.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099981106</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Nicky Harlow
|title=Amelia and the Virgin
|rating=5
|genre=Humour
|summary=
Amelia is 13 years old and lives with her mother, brother and extended family in 1980s Liverpool. Con, her great-uncle, is a psychiatrist with prestigious patients and a bit of a drink problem, Great-Aunt Edith is a devout Catholic with an inclination towards eccentricity and her brother, Julian, is a junky. Amelia's mother tries to hold everyone together but becomes slightly distracted when she inherits a convent in Ireland, complete with nuns. Amelia has her own problems, though. She sees visions of the Goddess Irena and is pregnant with the next Messiah. (A girl this time as the original male Messiah didn't have much luck.)
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>095600539X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Helen Dunmore
|title=The Greatcoat
|rating=4
|genre=Horror
|summary=Set in 1952 in Yorkshire, a young couple move into a rented flat. Philip is the new, young doctor while his new wife Isabel struggles with the isolated life with no friends or family and Philip's frequent absence due to the demands of his job. Things take a turn to the spooky when, waking from under the warmth of the old greatcoat Isabel finds in the flat, she hears a tapping at the window and finds there an RAF pilot, Alec, who appears to know Isabel intimately.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099564939</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Caroline Brothers
|title=Hinterland
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Aryan (14) and his brother Kabir (aged 8) are refugees, fleeing the horrors of their homeland, Afghanistan. Equipped only with some money sewn into a belt and stories of a promised land called England, they learn about desperation, misplaced trust and other lessons normally kept from children.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408817756</amazonuk>
}}
