|summary=As it says on the tin, this powerful novel revolves around three women, connected by their strength and two countries and diverse cultures (France and Africa) but also other, more subtle factors. (More of that later.) First there's lawyer, Norah, returning to Africa at the behest of her estranged father. There has never been love lost between them, mainly because her father prefers to ignore his female offspring; therefore his reason for the summons is a mystery, until... The second story is that of African teacher, Fanta, forced by an event beyond her control to leave Africa and settle in France with her husband Rudy. Then the final section belongs to Khady, widowed after three years of marriage and sent to France by her Cinderella-esque mother-in-law. As Khady's status as a childless widow is financially unattractive, it has been deemed that she would be of more use sending money back from Europe... once she has entered France as an illegal immigrant.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857050567</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Marcello Fois
|title=Memory of the Abyss
|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=We are on Sardinia, over a hundred years ago. It is a land of legend, where storytellers can see a different nature to the moon each night and convey that in their earthly stories. It's a world of wonder, where sheep can fall from the skies for more than one reason. It's a poor land, where lads are expected to be responsible shepherds by the time they are ten. As a result people look after each other - except, while returning from a Christening Samuele and his father are refused basic hospitality. Later when the boy runs away one night the land falls away beneath him - yet he finds a girl to ground him to this earth. Which is most relevant when he goes to war, and particularly when he comes back and finds himself a wronged man, and in need of vengeance...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906694001</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Kim Thuy and Sheila Fischman (translator)
|title=Ru
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Everyone of a certain age will remember the American withdrawal from Vietnam in 1975. This was the answer to years of student protests and the prayers of many US parents who saw sons like theirs drafted to war only to return in body bags. As far as the west was concerned, the suffering was over. However, for the Vietnamese people, the suffering continued as the Khmer Rouge and then the invading Cambodians killed, tortured and destroyed people who were just trying to survive. ''Ru'' is written by and about one such person.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846685486</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Belinda Seaward
|title=The Beautiful Truth
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=There are two parallel story lines in Belinda Seaward's ''The Beautiful Truth'': one set in the present day and one in wartime Poland. Both involve love stories and personal struggles, and there are repeating themes such as horses and the stars that effectively provide links between the two in this clearly well-researched and engrossing narrative.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0719521114</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Helen Noble
|title=Tears of a Phoenix
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=It was almost inevitable that Jed Johnson would follow his brothers into crime. The slippery slope from care to young offenders' institute to an eventual life sentence was almost predictable despite his mother's attempts to raise him for responsibility. However, once serving the life sentence, Jed has time to think and, aided by Elisabeth, a prison service psychologist, he assesses his past and decides how he'd like his future to look. Decision doesn't guarantee fulfilment though, and Jed has a long way to go before he knows how his story will end.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846949882</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Kathleen MacMahon
|title=This Is How It Ends
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=
This is an incredibly gentle (and gently funny) love story set in the winter of 2008 when the Irish economy was booming and the US were about to elect their first black president. Hugh (a deliciously grumpy surgeon) and his currently unemployed architect daughter Addie lived happily in an Irish seaside town. Ok, he'd broken both his wrists tripping over Addie's dog and Addie found it hard not to cry sometimes, but they were alright. Then one day, out of the blue, they receive a voicemail message from Bruno, a distant American relative who's just popped over the ocean to say 'Hi!' Remembering the last US relative who came to visit (it didn't go well), Addie and Hugh decide to ignore the phone... and the front door... and the occupant of the bench seat across the road... He's bound to go home eventually.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847445462</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Carolyn Jess-Cooke
|title=The Boy Who Could See Demons
|rating=5
|genre=Fantasy
|summary=Alex can see demons. He's been able to ever since his dad left when he was five years old. Some demons are hideous, some are frightening, and some just lurk in corners doing not much at all. One is called Ruen, and he's Alex's best friend.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0749953136</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jess Richards
|title=Snake Ropes
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=It's the time for the tall mainland men to come to the island to trade, so 16 year old Mary prepares. She brings out her handmade 'broideries' and hides Barney, her little brother, in a cupboard. This is a necessary preparation born of fear, for the island boys have been vanishing, taken by the traders. On this particular day Mary's broideries go, but so does Barney.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>144473783X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Ginny Baily
|title=Africa Junction
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Adele has made a mess of her life and she knows it. Working with the stresses of being a teacher as well as a single mother and having shrugged off a disastrous relationship, her life seems to be set on self-destruct. Part of the problem is that the past won't leave her alone. Adele is haunted by the memory of Ellena, a friend from her childhood in Senegal, Africa. With one unthinking, childish action, Adele inadvertently devastated Ellena's family so, in order to go forward, Adele must go back to the continent where it all began.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099552728</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Laszlo Krasznahorkai
|title=Satantango
|rating=3
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=
A small community in rural Hungary is unsettled. One man has too much control over the place, with too much influence on the work done there, and over all the lives lived there. His effect is still felt, even though he has been dead for over a year. So whether you are the man itching to finish a swindle and leave with the proceedings, or the doctor, confined by will to a chair at his window, making the most personal, immaculate notes about the whole existence of the community, or the housewife whose loins still mourn the influence of said man, you are unsettled - especially when the dead man is said to be returning...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848877641</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Peter Carey
|title=The Chemistry of Tears
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=As he has done before on several occasions, Peter Carey offers us two parallel stories in his intriguingly titled 'The Chemistry of Tears'. The two elements of the title reflect that this is a book about grief, but also about science. It's also a book about human's relationship with machines and dependence that we have grown to have on them, and the ugliness of life and the beauty of, at least some, machines. In one strand of the story, Catherine is a modern day horologist working in a London museum whose world is shattered by the death of a married colleague with whom she was having an affair. Put to work on restoring a mysterious clockwork bird, she discovers the journals of Henry Brandling, the nineteenth century wealthy man who commissioned the construction of the toy for his consumptive son.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>057127997X</amazonuk>
}}
