Difference between revisions of "Newest General Fiction Reviews"

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[[Category:General Fiction|*]]
 
[[Category:General Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]]
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[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]]__NOTOC__
==General fiction==
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{{Frontpage
__NOTOC__
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|author=Jenny Lecoat
{{newreview
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|title=Beyond Summerland
|author=A L Kennedy
 
|title=What Becomes
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre=Short Stories
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|genre=General Fiction
|summary=You're three stories into this collection and two people have cut their hands open preparing food - a man with love drooping away from his marriage, making soup, and another, a greengrocer, preparing stock and thinking about his own relationship.  But there is no pattern to that.  Four stories in and there have been two bursts of non-sequitur comedyWhy your fruit might be ruined by stray fingers, and the thoughts of a woman in a flotation tank, remembering Doctor Who, locked parental doors - and the urban myths of gerbils. But there's still no pattern - and that's the point of these combined stories.  Life and all of its emotions does not live to rule.
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|summary=Jean lives on Jersey with her mother where they are celebrating the end of the occupation.  During the war, Jean's father was arrested for listening to a banned radio and soldiers took him away one night, leaving Jean and her mother waiting for years for news of him.  As the British finally free the Channel islands from the Nazis, and the war is finally over, their hopes rise that they will finally learn what became of himBut will the truth come as a relief, or will it raise further questions around what else happened during the war?  Who was the informer who told the Nazis about the radio? And what other secrets have been kept throughout the occupation?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009949406X</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1846976537
 
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}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Onyi Nwabineli
|author=Alexander McCall Smith
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|title=Allow Me to Introduce Myself
|title=The Importance of Being Seven (44 Scotland Street)
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|rating=4.5
|rating=4
 
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Evereyone's favourite, Bertie, is still struggling with his over-protective, over-zealous mother IrenePoor Bertie.  He still has yoga class, saxophone lessons, Italian lessons, and he longs to go away to Scout camp, but really doesn't want his mum to come along as a helperAnd, as the title suggests, he is looking forward to being sevenHis little brother, Ulysses, is getting bigger and has developed an interesting reaction to their mother, whilst Irene herself goes missing in a rather mysterious manner...
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|summary=Anuri spent her childhood on display to the world, thanks to her step-mother Ophelia's increasingly popular presence on social media, where she posted every step of Anuri's childhood for sponsorships and influencer deals and, basically, monetary gain.  Now Anuri is in her twenties and she is slowly trying to regain her confidence and to get her life back, suing her step-mother to take down the content about herAnuri is battling alcoholism, failing to start her PhD, undergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online and receiving money from them for doing soMost importantly, she is desperately worried about her little sister, who is the new focus of Ophelia's online empireCan she save her sister, and perhaps herself and her relationship with her father at the same time?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846971454</amazonuk>
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|isbn=0861546873
 
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}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1529153298
|author=Shannon Burke
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|title=The List of Suspicious Things
|title=Black Flies
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|author=Jennie Godfrey
|rating=3.5
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|rating=5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Ollie Cross has failed to get into medical school. While he thinks about what he plans to do, he takes a job as a paramedic on the tough streets of Harlem, New York City, and finds his whole perspective on life and death beginning to shift.
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|summary=It's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister.  (A woman?  I mean, honestly...)  She's not what's worrying Miv's family, though.  Women have been disappearing.  Well, they've been murdered, but to have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. Miv's upset because she's overheard that her father wants to move the family 'Down South'.  When you're from Yorkshire, Down South is a frightening, foreign place, best avoided.  For Miv, the move would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, and she'll do anything to prevent that.  She's not worried about the dangers or that her Mum's stopped talking - to anyone.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099535491</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1035906708
|author=Frances Kay
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|title=Diva
|title=Micka
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|author=Daisy Goodwin
|rating=4
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|rating=4.5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Micka and Laurie are two ten year old boysThey're in the same class at school and are friends, of a sortThey both have vivid imaginations, and Laurie's plans involve finding a magical bone and using it for murder.  Micka lives with his mum (who can't read and is often drunk) and his two older brothers who get into fights, are involved in crime, and who abuse Micka physically and sexually.  Laurie lives with his parents, until they suddenly break up, and he is left with his mum who seems to be having a breakdown.  The book is told from the point of view of the two boys, and so as we see how their own lives are falling apart, sympathising with them, we also read with horror their own descent into violence.
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|summary=We tend to think of Maria Callas as Greek, but she was born to Greek parents in Manhattan, New York, in December 1923 and only moved to Athens when she was thirteenHer original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to 'Callas' to make it more manageable in the StatesWhen she was back in Athens - supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for her voice - she was raised under the Nazi occupation by a mother who mercilessly exploited her and made no secret of her preference for her elder sister, Jackie.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330513826</amazonuk>
 
 
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}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Alexander McCall Smith
|author=Susan Wiggs
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|title=The Perfect Passion Company
|title=Just Breathe
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|rating=4.5
|rating=4
 
|genre=Women's Fiction
 
|summary=Sarah may be struggling to make a living off it, but she does enjoy her job as a cartoonist. She's been through a lot recently, including her husband's battle with cancer, and her alter ego Shirl provides an outlet for a lot of the emotions and confusion she's feeling.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0778303543</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=A J Cronin
 
|title=Dr Finlay's Casebook
 
|rating=4
 
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Most people will have heard of Dr Finlay, although they may not be entirely sure why - A J Cronin's stories of a fictional doctor in pre-War Scotland have been televised over the years, most recently in the nineties when David Rintoul starred as Dr Finlay. Although fictional, A J Cronin, who died in 1981, was himself a doctor and has apparently based some of Finlay's experiences on his own. This omnibus is made up of two books by Cronin, Dr Finlay of Tannochbrae, published in 1978 and Adventures of a Black Bag, published in 1943, both collections of short stories.
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|summary=The Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and operating as an alternative to all the online apps in providing a more personal, tailored service.  Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the business, as Ness is planning to take a trip to Canada to get away for a while. Katie is coming out of a break up with a bad boyfriend, and so jumps at the chance to come home to Edinburgh.  And so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, thanks to 44 Scotland Street and the Isabel Dalhousie novels, but with some new characters who quickly begin to charm. Katie has no experience in running a business, or in match-making, but Ness has full confidence in her abilities, and there's always her very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, William, to lend a hand…
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1841588547</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1846976596
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Dean Koontz
|author=Clancy Martin
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|title=The Bad Weather Friend
|title=How To Sell
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|rating=4.5
|rating=3
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|genre=Paranormal
|genre=General Fiction
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|summary=Benny is having a terrifically bad day.  He loses his job, he loses his fiancee, and his house gets trashed. Oh, and someone has delivered a really weird, disturbing coffin-sized object to his home, and it's possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the thing that has trashed his house!  The thing is, Benny is the very last person to deserve all this bad luck.  He is a nice person. A really nice person.  So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the delivery to his house is a new friend, a bad weather friend called Spike, who has been sent to help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a good person. Spike is going to take care of Benny, and will certainly take care of Benny's enemies, if he, Benny, and Harper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are.
|summary=In the 1980's, 16 year old Bobby Clark gets expelled from his high school in Canada for stealing. This is a young boy so immoral that he pilfers his own mother's wedding ring to pawn for cash to keep a girl happy. After the girl turns out to be less interested in him than he is in her, he follows his older brother Jim to Texas, where he gets a job working with Jim in a jewellery store. As he falls into a life of scams, drugs, hookers, gorgeous women, and an obsession with Jim's girlfriend Lisa, it's clear that this coming of age story is a tragedy waiting to happen.
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|isbn=1662500491
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099532182</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Katherine Howe
|author=Patrick Marrinan
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|title=A True Account
|title=Degrees of Guilt
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|rating=4.5
|rating=3.5
 
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The Police broke into the apartment in Sandymount Village in Dublin and woke Yuri Komarova rather roughly.  He'd been drinking heavily, smoking dope and was difficult to arouse, but on the floor near his bed was the knife which he had apparently used to stab his mother to deathHe seemed to have no memory of this but he spoke little English and had the mental age of a twelve-year oldAn interpreter helped with the questioning and when the case came to trial his defence relied on proving that he had been sleep-walking at the time of the murder and had no intention of killing his motherThis is the most difficult defence to uphold and there was the added problem that Yuri seemed to have lied to the police when he told them that his mother had very little money as some Russian icons were found in a strongbox and they were worth several million Euros.
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|summary=Hannah Masury is living in Boston, having been sent to live with a family who run an inn, and being made to work there from a young ageWhen she hears there is to be a hanging of some pirates in the town, she decides to go and watchEnthralled and horrified in equal measure, Hannah finds herself embroiled in a young boy's death at the hands of two vicious piratesShe hides away, so that they don't find and kill her too, and then to escape them completely she runs away to sea, dressing as a boy and joining the notorious Ned Low's pirate ship as a cabin boy.  She soon finds herself in the thick of things when there is a mutiny on board, and from there we are caught up in her rip roaring tale of life on the ocean waves.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0709090749</amazonuk>
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|isbn=0861547438
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1471180158
|author=Katie Kitamura
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|title=Maybe Tomorrow
|title=The Longshot
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|author=Penny Parkes
|rating=4
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|rating=4.5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Cal and his long-time trainer Riley travel down to the town of Tijuana in Mexico for a crucial rematch with the undefeated champion Rivera. Three years earlier Cal's promising career had been derailed following a close yet devastating defeat at the hands of Rivera. After that defeat Cal carried on fighting but never reached the same heights as before. Now he finally gets the chance to face his nemesis once more. The story takes place in the two days before the rematch as he and Riley prepare for the biggest fight of his life, a fight that could once again end in tragedy.
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|summary=Jamie Matson works in an upper-class grocery store, for a man who's a control freak with all the subtlety of a half brick.  Jamie's son, Bo, 'has his problems'. He's asthmatic and the more you read, the more you'll suspect that he's on the autistic spectrum. Sometimes Jamie needs to take time off at short notice - she's a frequent flier in the local A&E and sometimes Bo's not fit enough to go to school. Missed shifts or the need to be away on time to pick Bo up from school are occasions when Jamie can be controlled and put in the wrong.  It was going to come to a head.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847374999</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=B0CKD1L5JL
|author=Laurie Graham
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|title=Radio Free Olympia
|title=At Sea
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|author=Jeffrey Dunn
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=I've already read Graham's 'The Future Homemakers of America.'  It was good, but not particularly memorable so I was keen to read this novel.  The reader is introduced to two vastly differing opposites in the shape of Mr and Mrs FinchWell, Lady Enid (English) and Professor Bernard (American) Finch, to be precise.  And we're transported straight away onto the decks of the liner 'Golden Memories' and Graham starts to have her fun:  with the language, the characters and the whole set-up.
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|summary= Petr is an orphan. Rescued by the strange, reclusive Bear, he is brought up far from bustling cities and busy human society, in the forests of Washington's Olympic PeninsulaAfter Bear dies and a brief sojourn in human company, and armed with only a pirate radio transmitter, Petr goes on a journey through the forest, broadcasting the strange, wild and rarely heard voices he encounters.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849162182</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Sarah Marsh
|author=Laura Barton
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|title=A Sign of Her Own
|title=Twenty-One Locks
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|rating=3.5
|rating=4
 
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=This debut novel's central character is 20 year old sales girl, JeannieShe lives a very humdrum life in a rather ugly, down-at-heel town in the north.  And straight away Barton treats the reader to her lovely, descriptive proseFor example, when the reader is given some detail about Jeannie's workplace at the perfume and cosmetics counter where ..'the lipsticks ... all lined up like chorus girls ...'  Barton's writing style is very easy to read, very fluid and I found myself getting right into the story straight away - and caring about Jeannie.
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|summary=After a bout of scarlet fever as a child, Ellen Lark loses her hearingSuddenly plunged into a world of silence, everything about her life changes.  Living in a time when the use of sign language was seen as something only savages do, Ellen is sent to a school where she is taught to lip read, but physically restrained from signingFrom here, she ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the deaf and using a system called Visible SpeechAt the same time, Bell is working on other inventions and ideas, and Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a complicated tangle of espionage.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849161747</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1035401614
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=B0BC3YTCMR
|author=Anne Peile
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|title=Good Girls Die
|title=Repeat It Today With Tears
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|author=Ayura Ayira
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Repeat it Today with Tears follows the story of Susanna, a sixteen year old girl from a broken and loveless home who obsessively collects information in the back of a notebook about the father she has never met. When by chance she discovers that he still lives nearby she sets out deliberately to find and seduce him.
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|summary=''This story is not for everyone.''
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687462</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
  
{{newreview
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Lavender Daniels was three weeks short of her fifteenth birthday when The Incident happened. She was a very bright student, a bit too nerdy if truth be told, and suffered from vitiligo - people were afraid to hug her in case it's contagiousIt's not easy being a black girl whose skin is 84% white.  She had a crush on seventeen-year-old Reggie Anderson but never thought he would notice her.  Then he did: Lavender was very good at math and Reggie asked if she would tutor himShe readily agreed: tutoring was something she gladly did at church: this was just an extension.  She went to his house and he raped her.  In shock, she even allowed him to give her a lift home.
|author=Francine Prose
 
|title=Goldengrove
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|summary=On a hot day Nico and her older sister Margaret take a boat out onto Mirror Lake, but only Nico returns after Margaret dives off the boat and doesn't resurfaceMargaret's sudden death tears through Nico and her parents' lives, and each mourn for her in their own wayUnable to find the help she needs from her parents, who are both consumed by their own grief to help Nico to come to terms with her loss, Nico turns to the vast array of books in Goldengrove, her father's bookshop, for answers, and soon embarks on a dangerous relationship with Margaret's boyfriend Aaron, the only person who seems to understand her grief.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848870361</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
  
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Julie Orringer
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|isbn=1472263936
|title=The Invisible Bridge
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|title=The Figurine
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|author=Victoria Hislop
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=In a story that takes us from the elegance of Paris, through the streets of Budapest and on into the Hungarian countryside and the Ukraine this is an epic tale, masterfully toldIt is 1937 and Andras Levi, a young Hungarian Jewish student, is about to leave his brother Tibor to go and study architecture in ParisAndras' story unfolds first amongst the beautiful buildings of Paris, the theatres and the bars, as he struggles in his studies and falls in love with a beautiful ballerina who has a terrible secret to hideAs the tragedy of World War 2 edges ever closer to Andras, the book moves back to Hungary, to the little village where Andras and his brothers grew up, to Budapest where his new family live and then on into the forced labour camps across Hungary.  
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|summary=It was in 1968 that Helena McCloud made her first trip to Greece.  She was alone: her mother, Greek by birth, had left the family home and refused to return, but Mary and Hamish (Helena's parents) felt that it would be a pity if Helena grew up without knowing her grandparents or understanding her Greek heritageHer trip to the family apartment in up-market Kolonaki would be the first of several annual visitsShe grew to love her grandmother and the family's maid, Dina, but was wary - and frightened - of her grandfather, retired general Stamatis PapagiannisHe was proud of his close connections to the Junta and expected his family to uphold his values but saw no reason to accommodate them.  His prejudices included Helena's red hair and green eyes - inherited from her father's Scottish ancestors.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670914584</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Dean Koontz
|author=Maureen Gibbon
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|title=After Death
|title=Thief
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|rating=3
|rating=4
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|summary=It’s summer, and school teacher Suzanne is renting a cabin by a lake. Spending her days reading and swimming, she also finds time to engage in some old fashioned letter writing with a stranger who responded to a personal ad she placed. He’s currently an inmate at the state penitentiary, but Suzanne’s not one to judge, and agrees to give their correspondence a shot. Then she finds out what he’s in for – and it’s not pretty. Breville is a convicted thief and rapist, and Suzanne herself was raped as a teenager, by a friend’s brother. That should be the end of it: any sensible person would cut off all communication and turn their back on the situation.  But Suzanne is different and though she’s acknowledges that it might not be the healthiest of relationships, she maintains the back and forth with Breville.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848871821</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Guy Fraser
 
|title=Avenging the Dead
 
|rating=3.5
 
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=It's 1863 and the Superintendent covering the inner city area of Glasgow has his hands fullFirst off an alarming forgery scandal has just been discovered and no sooner has he drawn breath than one, two and counting suspicious deaths occurInstinctively, I want to say that it's all good, clean funBecause it isThe language Fraser uses is very much of that era which lends the book a particular old-fashioned and rather twee, charm.  It's all over the book in spades.  On almost every page.  Let me give you just one endearing example of the flavour of the book  'None of Mrs Maitland's four regulars at her superior guest house for single gentlemen would even dream of taking another's seat ...'
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|summary= Michael Mace, Head of Security, at a top secret biological research facility, is among 55 people who die when a virus is released in a bio-hazard accidentFinding himself in a makeshift mortuary, covered in plastic, he has a sense that something very, very bad has happened to him – and only him – as he sits up and looks around at the shrouded bodies of his dead friends and former colleaguesAs he recovers his senses, he realises that there is something different about him; he can ''feel'' everything''Everything''Michael isn't ''Michael'' anymore.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0709090684</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1662500467
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}}  
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=B0BVDC2VWH
|author=Jodi Compton
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|title=The Grave Listeners
|title=Hailey's War
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|author=William Frank
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=At the beginning of the book, Hailey Cain is a 23 year old cycle courier
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|summary=The village is isolated and poor. It's surrounded by a Witching Forest. And the villagers subsist largely by farming Uphegia plants - its bread-like fruit provides nutrition and its blossom provides herbal medicines. The black wood of the forest provides heat and warmth, roofs on homes, and even gallows, if needed. The fear of being buried alive is an existential superstition in the village and that is the reason Volushka, a drunken, self-indulgent, lazy lout of a man is tolerated.  
living in San Francisco. The story then takes a step back in time and we
 
discover that she had to leave West Point Military Academy during her
 
final year, for reasons she prefers to keep to herself. I continued to read under the assumption that Hailey had done something which forced her to leave. Her
 
next move is to L.A, where she spent the latter part of her childhood.
 
During these years, her mother with whom she has, at best, a very strained relationship is no source of comfort and Hailey develops a very close attachment to her cousin CJ. Aspects of this relationship make for uncomfortable reading at times.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847373577</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
  
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Andrew Grant
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|isbn=B0BYF82CXT
|title=Die Twice (David Trevellyan)
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|title=Semi-Detached
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|author=Deborah Stone
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The title is very much at home and in keeping with the thriller genre and it's both eye-catching and also has a perfectly reasonable explanation which comes right at the very end of the story.  I must admit to thrillers generally not being my most favourite reading material. Some can be a bit flashy, a bit trashy even.  But not this novel.  Right from the start I felt I was in for a good, intelligent read. There were pointers to this all over the place.  For starters, David Trevellyan has a nice line in witty humour.  There are numerous snazzy one-liners. It all went down very well.
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|summary=''Bill and Amanda are living in a semi-detached house, stuck in a depressing rut of boredom and disappointment, when Terry and Fiona – glamorous, successful and very much in love – move in next door. Despite their different outlooks on life, the couples befriend each other and life appears to improve for both pairs. But all is not what it seems, and their increasingly interconnected relationships are fated for tragedy.''
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230747582</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Shalini Boland
|author=Jonathan Lee
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|title=The Silent Bride
|title=Who Is Mr Satoshi?
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|rating=3
|rating=3.5
 
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The novel opens somewhere in the Home Counties and Rob Fossick is attending his mother's funeralThe event in itself is extremely distressing and also depressing for him; factor in that he's become a bit of a recluse lately and I could feel the sheer loneliness creeping into Rob's very bonesLee describes the event as 'Zimmer frames, bifocals, trifocals, dark grey coats with yawning shoulders. The apparatus of old age.'
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|summary= Alice and Seth are a match made in heavenHe is everything she has been searching for; handsome, accomplished, clever, funny; total and utter husband-material.  She is all he could possibly want in a wife; beautiful, successful, confident… and so the inevitable proposal is eagerly accepted by Alice and the wedding is planned and setWhen the much-anticipated day arrives, Alice is walked down the aisle by her father, beaming with pride and excitement as she surveys the congregation – their friends assembled to celebrate this joyful day and when Seth turns to face his approaching bride, Alice's world implodes because she has absolutely no idea who the man at the altar is, who is waiting for her to become his wife.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0434020419</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1662507089
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1787636003
|author=Hazel McHaffie
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|title=The Girls of Summer
|title=Remember Remember
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|author=Katie Bishop
|rating=4
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|rating=5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The story starts at the end and works back in timeThis works extremely well as we see Doris Mannering, mother, grandmother and great-grandmother now living in a residential homeThe decision to 'put mother' into a home was very, very difficult and had been put off time and time again.  We come to realize that this was a heart-wrenching decisionThe daughter and carer, Jessica, will always be asking herself if she'd done the right thing, made the right decision for the right reasons.  A veritable minefield.  And here is where many an ethical dilemma lies for many families in real-life similar situations.
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|summary=It was the summer when Rachel Evans turned eighteen that she and Caroline went backpacking around Greece and arrived on the islandRachel wasn't exactly innocent but she was, perhaps, naive, so when thirty-four-year-old Alistair Wright started to take an interest in her, she was flattered rather than waryIt was quite a while before he made any sort of physical approach to her and by that time she was obsessed by himAlistair worked for Henry Taylor, looking after his interests on the island and in particular in the bar where all the girls either worked or partied.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906817294</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Amanda Craig
|author=John Niven
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|title=Three Graces
|title=The Amateurs
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|rating=4.5
|rating=4
 
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Gary Irvine only wants two things out of life.  He'd like to have children and he wants to reduce his golf handicap.  Nothing extraordinary there, you might think except for the fact that his wife, Pauline, is planning to leave him for a self-made carpet millionaire and Gary is a dreadful golfer.  His handicap is eighteen – but I'm not entirely certain how he got it down to that level in the first place. His family doesn't give him much solace either.  His brother Lee is on the fringes of the local criminal underworld and hasn't the wit to keep himself out of trouble with Ranta Campbell, the local overlord. Ranta could be quite likeable if it wasn't for his penchant for a certain type of violence designed to keep the others in line rather than to teach the victim a lesson.
+
|summary= Few styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the state-of-the-nation novel. There's something so utterly compelling about any writer who can catch hold of the atmosphere of the day and capture it, crafting an image of the country as it stands in one particular moment. To say that Amanda Craig is skilled at doing this would be embarrassingly inadequate: she's practically synonymous with the genre of contemporary social fiction at this point. She has such a gift for weaving the ongoing issues of the day into the lives of her characters in a way that feels natural and lived-in, never making them ciphers for social commentary but instead fully realised people, grappling with issues far larger than themselves.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099516667</amazonuk>
+
|isbn= 140871468X
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=152915118X
|author=Adam Ross
+
|title=Pineapple Street
|title=Mr Peanut
+
|author=Jenny Jackson
|rating=3.5
+
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The main couple who tend to take centre stage here are called David and Alice Pepin.  They live a kind of comfortable, middle-class life in busy and bustling ManhattanAfter more than a decade of generally happy married life together, they want to take the next step and have a familyEasy to say but things don't quite work out according to plan. We are taken on various 'dark' journeys within their marriage. These are situations which most of us can identify with.  Some of these situations are painful, stressful, unhappy.
+
|summary=''Pineapple Street'' is the story of three women: Sasha, Darley and Georgiana.  Darley and George are sisters and Sasha is married to their brother Cord.  They're Stocktons, only Sasha isn't a Stockton by birth so she isn't readily accepted into the tribe.  The problem's exacerbated when the clan matriarch, Tilda, asks Cord and Sasha if they'd like to move into the Pineapple Street propertyTilda and Chip have renovated and downsized to another property, a street or so away, which they own.  They won't need any of the furniture from Pineapple Street, so Sasha and Cord can move straight inNominally, they had a choice but that wasn't the reality.  Darley and Georgiana start to call Sasha 'the gold digger'.   She's living in ''their'' family home. They use it so often that they abbreviate it to 'the GD'.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224087738</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Emily Critchley
|author=Nicholas Shakespeare
+
|title=One Puzzling Afternoon
|title=Inheritance
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
+
|genre=Crime
|summary=Andy Larkham's life and career are going nowhere. He works for a small publishing house, Carpe Diem, that specialises in publishing self-help books, his fiancée is about to dump him and he has no money and mountains of debt. And that's before we begin to talk about his dysfunctional family. His only real role model was the Montaigne-loving teacher, Stuart Furnivall, whose funeral he is late for. But an unexpected inheritance of £17 million has a habit of changing one's outlook on life. But while he trades self-help for help yourself, Andy also realises that he has inherited a mystery.
+
|summary=84 year old Edie has lived in the same small town for almost her whole life, but now she is facing a move as her son wants to move to another house and bring Edie to live with his family, as Edie is starting to lose her memory. However, Edie is tormented by the memory of her childhood friend, Lucy, who went missing over 60 years ago, and the worry that there was a secret she was keeping for Lucy that somehow might be the thing that reveals the truth of what happened all that time ago.  After 'seeing' Lucy in the high street, just as she was the last time she saw her, she starts to find pockets of memories coming back to her. And yet as she remembers the past, she is forgetting more and more in her day to day life. Will she uncover the truth about Lucy's disappearance before her move, and before her memories are gone forever?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846553156</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1804181250
 
}}
 
}}
 +
{{Frontpage
 +
|author=Madelaine Lucas
 +
|title=Thirst for Salt
 +
|rating=5
 +
|genre=Literary Fiction
 +
|summary= ''Love, I'd read, was supposed to be a light and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity''
  
{{newreview
+
Told from a retrospective view, a young woman unravels the year-long relationship that once defined her. Overlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the affair with a man twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the summer after. Set against the backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the 24-year-old narrator's deepening relationship with her older lover, depicting its all-consuming nature, how it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably.
|author=Cath Staincliffe
+
|isbn=0861546490
|title=The Kindest Thing
+
}}
|rating=4
+
{{Frontpage
 +
|isbn=0008506337
 +
|title=The Garnett Girls
 +
|author=Georgina Moore
 +
|rating=5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Imagine that your partner of twenty or so years discovers that they are dying from a terminal diseaseNow imagine that they've asked you to help them to die a little sooner, on their own termsWhat would you do?  This is the dilemma that faced Deborah and, after she went ahead and helped her husband Neil to die, she found herself charged and standing trial for murder with her own teenage daughter, Sophie, testifying against her.
+
|summary=The love affair between Margo Garnett and poet Richard O'Leary was all-consuming, apparently on both sides.  Margo was just sixteen when they fell in love.  Richard was twenty-one and described by Margo's mother as 'an older man'.  Her parents worried that Richard's influence would take her away from what they felt she could achieve - going to Oxford and having a glittering careerIn the event,  they eloped and Richard took her away from the Isle of Wight.  Margo did go to Oxford and went on to become a well-respected journalist.  The couple had three children: Rachel, Imogen and Sasha.  Life was lived in London and holidays were spent at Sandcove, the family home on the Isle of WightEven then the doubts about Richard's drinking were never far from Margo's mind: ''she would never be able to leave him in charge''.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849012083</amazonuk>
+
 
 +
Then Richard left them.
 
}}
 
}}
  
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=Eliza Graham
+
|isbn=1914585402
|title=Jubilee
+
|title=Dashboard Elvis is Dead
 +
|author=David F Ross
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=As the village celebrates the Queen's Golden Jubilee two people can't help but think back to the Silver Jubilee.  Evie Winter and her niece Rachel have vivid memories of the day when Evie's daughter Jessamy wandered off and the mystery of her disappearance has never been solved. She was eleven years old, bright, athletic and loved by her mother and cousin.  There would seem to be no explanation as to why she might have disappeared of her own free will and no evidence that she was abducted.  Life has carried on, but it has not been the same. It has not been easy.
+
|summary=I reviewed David F Ross's book [[There's Only One Danny Garvey by David F Ross|There's Only One Danny Garvey]] a couple of years back and remember being absolutely floored by how powerful and affecting it was. It was a gripping, emotionally wounding read, and rereading my review of it my main takeaway was that I might not have lavished enough praise on it.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330509268</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Lucy Ashe
|author=Michael Robotham
+
|title=Clara and Olivia
|title=Bleed For Me
+
|rating=4.5
|rating=4
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|summary=An ex-detective is found dead in a pool of blood in his teenager's bedroom.  She runs from the scene of the crime.  Is this the easiest cut-and-dried case ever?  This novel is told in the first person by the investigating psychologist, Professor Joe O'Loughlin.  He's got a lot going on in his life right now.  His health is not good so he's to keep popping pills to try and get through another working day.  He's also newly separated and his daughters seem to talk a completely different language.  He feels old and very ragged round the edges.  Into this mix, he discovers that the teenager everyone is talking about, the teenager who's been discussed and described as a cold-blooded killer, is his daughter's best friend.  Could his life get any worse, he thinks.  Yes.  Big-time.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847442188</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Catherine O'Flynn
 
|title=The News Where You Are
 
|rating=3.5
 
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The main character in this novel is Frank Allcroft. Husband, father, son and also a bit of a minor celebrity as he's beamed into the region's television screens nightly, presenting the local news. Make that minor with a small 'm'. He comes across as a likeable, middle-aged man, content with his lot and with his home life.  But he does have some personal issues to attend to. In particular, his grumpy, sometimes forgetful, elderly mother who is now living in a retirement home. Mother and son give each other lots of grief on a regular basis.
+
|summary=The year is 1933. The place? Sadler's Wells. Ballerinas Clara and Olivia are sisters, twins no less. Identical on the outside but not, we learn, on the inside. And not on stage, either. Because there's a lot that builds a dancer. Some things that can be taught or learnt – discipline, attention to detail – and some things, that ''je ne sais quoi'', that don't come from the classroom. A stage presence, a charm, a ''joie de vivre''. The difference between a hard-worker, and a star.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670918555</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=0861544080
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Heather Fawcett
|author=Mario Puzo
+
|title=Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries
|title=Six Graves to Munich
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=In the dying days of the Second World War Michael Rogan, an American Intelligence officer was captured and tortured by a group of seven men, most of whom were senior Gestapo officers trying to obtain the secrets which Rogan could give themHis wife was in another room and he could hear her screamsTen years later, when he had recovered from the appalling injuries he suffered he made up his mind that he would avenge the death of his wife at the hands of the seven menIt's no easy task as he doesn't even know who they are.
+
|summary=Emily Wilde is an expert academic scholar on faerie lore, and she has travelled extensively, and researched meticulously, to write her life's work, the very first encyclopaedia of faeriesWhilst she is brilliant at research and speaking to faeries, she is not so good with peopleSo when she finds herself far, far North in the small village of Hrafvsnik, having somehow offended the village matriarch, she is not sure what she has done, nor how to redeem herself and put her final investigations for her book back on the right trackEnter Wendell Bambleby, her dashingly handsome and insufferable rival who arrives unexpectedly, all charm and delight, much to Emily's frustration.  But why is he here?  What does he want?  And what exactly is going on with the faerie folk around Hravsnik?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184916276X</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=0356519120
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=1398515388
|author=Kishwar Desai
+
|title=The Boy and the Dog
|title=Witness the Night
+
|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=2.5
+
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The book opens on a disturbing dream sequence (or is it a memory?) that sets up the murder which is to be at the centre of this bookDurga, a young girl living in Julundur, is instructed by a mysterious male character to return to the house from which she has just fled, the house in which her whole family lies dead- poisoned, stabbed and partly scorchedThere Durga is tied up, having been attacked and raped.
+
|summary=First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, in turn, caused the nuclear meltdownThe result was complete and utter devastation.  The deaths were uncountable, and the loss of livelihoods was widespread.  The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience storeHe wasn't a dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the dog jumped in.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1905636857</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
  
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=Chioma Okereke
+
|author=Christopher Bowden
|title=Bitter Leaf
+
|title=Mr Magenta
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Jericho, (who's female by the way), is a beautiful young woman.  She's curious about the outside world so like many before her, she's taken the brave step of sampling life in a big, bustling city.  She returns to her home village with some rather pretentious airs ... and a rich suitor in tow.  By sheer coincidence Jericho's mother had attended an interview in her past at her daughter's new boyfriend's family home.  A veritable mansion with ' ... sweeping rooms that took longer than a river to cross.'  What a lovely way of describing
+
|summary= Christopher Bowden's latest novel is a patient untangling of a seemingly ordinary woman's life, carried out by her nephew after she has died. The aunt who always provided a safe harbour and a little bit of indulgence to a young nephew had had a much more interesting life than that nephew Stephen had ever realised and it seems to him an obligation to find it all out.  
luxury in an essentially poor area of Africa. Everyone thinks the next natural step is marriage and babies but is it?
+
|isbn= B0B6Z9VJDW
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844086275</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Jennifer Mason
|author=Keith Colquhoun
+
|title=Partitions of Unity
|title=Five Deadly Words
+
|rating=4
|rating=3
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|summary=Five Deadly Words follows the story of charismatic former dictator Lucas, as he charms and 'collects' people during his exile in London. The story is seen mostly from the point of view of Helen Berlin, the bright young Detective Constable who is put in charge of Lucas' safety. Helen finds herself caught up in matters which become increasingly out of her depth as she falls further into the former dictator's world.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904529496</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Don Boyd
 
|title=Margot's Secrets
 
|rating=5
 
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Margot is a psychologist who specialises in sexual disorders and obsessions.  She lives and works for herself in Barcelona amongst the ex-pat community, and although she only has a dozen or so clients at any one time, spends much of her week living at her office. Her clients, both male and female, are bewildering and fascinating in equal portions, and the description of the therapy sessions make fascinating and revealing reading.
+
|summary= Here at Bookbag Towers, we first met Elizabeth Cromwell, dominatrix and unintentional detective in [[Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery by Jennifer Mason|Preposterous]], when she investigated and unravelled a series of disappearances. In ''Partitions of Unity'', she sets her mind to solving a murder...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0955405149</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=B09LQR9FRF
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Will Carver
|author=Steven Carroll
+
|title=The Daves Next Door
|title=The Art of the Engine Driver
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Carroll has chosen a bygone era in the 1950s and also a bygone but much treasured mode of transport, whether it's Australia or the UK.  Immediately I'm drawn in to the story.  Both the title and book's front cover are arresting and original.  The novel centres on one evening in this suburban neighbourhood when all its residents are invited to a celebration party.  Carroll see-saws back and forth as he shares the individual lives with us.  It is an engaging style.
+
|summary= Five strangers come together in one moment as a suicide bomber prepares to detonate his vest on a London tube line. As their fates overlap, the story is told in backwards order, leading up to the fateful moment.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099537273</amazonuk>
+
|isbn= 1914585186
}}
+
}}  
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Jennifer Mason
|author=Patrick Woodhead
+
|title=Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery
|title=The Forbidden Temple
 
|rating=3
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|summary=Luca, a mountaineer trying to escape from his disappointingly unsupportive parents and a past accident, witnesses something strange in the distance, while watching his climbing partner Bill put the kibosh on their latest sky-bursting Himalayan ascent - a mountain shaped like a perfect pyramid, circled by other peaks he's never seen before. Back in England nobody else seems to have seen them either, but colleagues mention mysterious Shangri-La style Buddhist sanctuaries - could this be the prime one, hidden from prying eyes for centuries?  Nobody wants to declare it actually exists at all.  Meanwhile, Himalayan natives are trying to pull the wool over Chinese occupiers' eyes regarding a very sacred personage.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848090773</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Ken McClure
 
|title=Dust to Dust (Steven Dunbar)
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=John Motram is a cell biologist.  He's a promising and well-though of academic and his pet subject is - Black Death.  Intrigue is high on the agenda right from the beginning.  Motram is invited to a meeting along with other high-fliers in their respective fields.  This meeting is top secret.  Motram is, however, mystified.  The situation appears pretty straightforward, so why all this cloak-and-dagger stuff, he wonders. And why has everyone to refer to the patient only as  'Patient X?'
+
|summary=''A struggling poetry zine, a mom-and-pop mobile diner in the Northern California redwoods, a 400-meter hurdler who just missed the 2004 Olympics, a women's track coach with a yen for bullwhips, a billionaire with a state-of-the-art S&M dungeon, a man serving a life sentence in Alabama, an enigmatic signature, K(s, x), on a cheap oil painting, an erotic art dealer in Georgia...''
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846971268</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
  
{{newreview
+
This is just a sample of the cast of characters and settings in Preposterous. As you can see, some keeping up will be required! The basic premise of this mystery story goes like this...
|author=Robert Ryan
+
|isbn=B09STS96HS
|title=Signal Red
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|summary=Ryan has certainly researched thoroughly for this novel - and it shows.  Straight away the blurb on the back cover tells us there's an 'afterword' by Bruce Reynolds, no less than the ringmaster/leader of the Great Train Robbery gang.  Notice how it's always given capital letters.  Even all these decades down the line, those readers of a certain age remember it and perhaps shake their head in amazement. And there's also a very useful 'aftermath' section as Ryan painstakingly sets out all the robbers' names and what's happened since that date in the summer of 1963.  Perhaps, like others, I also assumed the leader, the top man if you like, was Ronnie Biggs. No so, apparently. I also remember television footage of his release from prison on compassionate grounds only a year or so ago. The crime seems to have achieved almost mythical proportions -  some would say it's up there with what were you doing when JFK was assassinated?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>075535818X</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
  
{{newreview
+
Move on to [[Newest Graphic Novels Reviews]]
|author=Giles Milton
 
|title=According to Arnold: A Novel of Love and Mushrooms
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|summary=Arnold Trevellyan’s ordinary life as a charismatic auctioneer is about to change in ways he could never have imagined.  Encouraged by his wife Flora to take a sabbatical, the two head to a remote region of France to indulge Arnold’s passion for mushrooms. Whilst out in the forest hunting for rare mushrooms Arnold stumbles across a secret hidden for centuries.  This secret makes him abandon Flora and their life together for the island of Tuva in the South Pacific where he soon finds himself married to Lola, its queen.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330452517</amazonuk>
 
}}
 

Revision as of 13:52, 8 May 2024

1846976537.jpg

Review of

Beyond Summerland by Jenny Lecoat

4star.jpg General Fiction

Jean lives on Jersey with her mother where they are celebrating the end of the occupation. During the war, Jean's father was arrested for listening to a banned radio and soldiers took him away one night, leaving Jean and her mother waiting for years for news of him. As the British finally free the Channel islands from the Nazis, and the war is finally over, their hopes rise that they will finally learn what became of him. But will the truth come as a relief, or will it raise further questions around what else happened during the war? Who was the informer who told the Nazis about the radio? And what other secrets have been kept throughout the occupation? Full Review

0861546873.jpg

Review of

Allow Me to Introduce Myself by Onyi Nwabineli

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

Anuri spent her childhood on display to the world, thanks to her step-mother Ophelia's increasingly popular presence on social media, where she posted every step of Anuri's childhood for sponsorships and influencer deals and, basically, monetary gain. Now Anuri is in her twenties and she is slowly trying to regain her confidence and to get her life back, suing her step-mother to take down the content about her. Anuri is battling alcoholism, failing to start her PhD, undergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online and receiving money from them for doing so. Most importantly, she is desperately worried about her little sister, who is the new focus of Ophelia's online empire. Can she save her sister, and perhaps herself and her relationship with her father at the same time? Full Review

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Review of

The List of Suspicious Things by Jennie Godfrey

5star.jpg General Fiction

It's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. (A woman? I mean, honestly...) She's not what's worrying Miv's family, though. Women have been disappearing. Well, they've been murdered, but to have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. Miv's upset because she's overheard that her father wants to move the family 'Down South'. When you're from Yorkshire, Down South is a frightening, foreign place, best avoided. For Miv, the move would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, and she'll do anything to prevent that. She's not worried about the dangers or that her Mum's stopped talking - to anyone. Full Review

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Review of

Diva by Daisy Goodwin

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

We tend to think of Maria Callas as Greek, but she was born to Greek parents in Manhattan, New York, in December 1923 and only moved to Athens when she was thirteen. Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to 'Callas' to make it more manageable in the States. When she was back in Athens - supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for her voice - she was raised under the Nazi occupation by a mother who mercilessly exploited her and made no secret of her preference for her elder sister, Jackie. Full Review

1846976596.jpg

Review of

The Perfect Passion Company by Alexander McCall Smith

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

The Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and operating as an alternative to all the online apps in providing a more personal, tailored service. Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the business, as Ness is planning to take a trip to Canada to get away for a while. Katie is coming out of a break up with a bad boyfriend, and so jumps at the chance to come home to Edinburgh. And so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, thanks to 44 Scotland Street and the Isabel Dalhousie novels, but with some new characters who quickly begin to charm. Katie has no experience in running a business, or in match-making, but Ness has full confidence in her abilities, and there's always her very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, William, to lend a hand… Full Review

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Review of

The Bad Weather Friend by Dean Koontz

4.5star.jpg Paranormal

Benny is having a terrifically bad day. He loses his job, he loses his fiancee, and his house gets trashed. Oh, and someone has delivered a really weird, disturbing coffin-sized object to his home, and it's possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the thing that has trashed his house! The thing is, Benny is the very last person to deserve all this bad luck. He is a nice person. A really nice person. So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the delivery to his house is a new friend, a bad weather friend called Spike, who has been sent to help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a good person. Spike is going to take care of Benny, and will certainly take care of Benny's enemies, if he, Benny, and Harper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are. Full Review

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Review of

A True Account by Katherine Howe

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

Hannah Masury is living in Boston, having been sent to live with a family who run an inn, and being made to work there from a young age. When she hears there is to be a hanging of some pirates in the town, she decides to go and watch. Enthralled and horrified in equal measure, Hannah finds herself embroiled in a young boy's death at the hands of two vicious pirates. She hides away, so that they don't find and kill her too, and then to escape them completely she runs away to sea, dressing as a boy and joining the notorious Ned Low's pirate ship as a cabin boy. She soon finds herself in the thick of things when there is a mutiny on board, and from there we are caught up in her rip roaring tale of life on the ocean waves. Full Review

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Review of

Maybe Tomorrow by Penny Parkes

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

Jamie Matson works in an upper-class grocery store, for a man who's a control freak with all the subtlety of a half brick. Jamie's son, Bo, 'has his problems'. He's asthmatic and the more you read, the more you'll suspect that he's on the autistic spectrum. Sometimes Jamie needs to take time off at short notice - she's a frequent flier in the local A&E and sometimes Bo's not fit enough to go to school. Missed shifts or the need to be away on time to pick Bo up from school are occasions when Jamie can be controlled and put in the wrong. It was going to come to a head. Full Review

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Review of

Radio Free Olympia by Jeffrey Dunn

4star.jpg General Fiction

Petr is an orphan. Rescued by the strange, reclusive Bear, he is brought up far from bustling cities and busy human society, in the forests of Washington's Olympic Peninsula. After Bear dies and a brief sojourn in human company, and armed with only a pirate radio transmitter, Petr goes on a journey through the forest, broadcasting the strange, wild and rarely heard voices he encounters. Full Review

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Review of

A Sign of Her Own by Sarah Marsh

3.5star.jpg General Fiction

After a bout of scarlet fever as a child, Ellen Lark loses her hearing. Suddenly plunged into a world of silence, everything about her life changes. Living in a time when the use of sign language was seen as something only savages do, Ellen is sent to a school where she is taught to lip read, but physically restrained from signing. From here, she ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the deaf and using a system called Visible Speech. At the same time, Bell is working on other inventions and ideas, and Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a complicated tangle of espionage. Full Review

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Review of

Good Girls Die by Ayura Ayira

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

This story is not for everyone.

Lavender Daniels was three weeks short of her fifteenth birthday when The Incident happened. She was a very bright student, a bit too nerdy if truth be told, and suffered from vitiligo - people were afraid to hug her in case it's contagious. It's not easy being a black girl whose skin is 84% white. She had a crush on seventeen-year-old Reggie Anderson but never thought he would notice her. Then he did: Lavender was very good at math and Reggie asked if she would tutor him. She readily agreed: tutoring was something she gladly did at church: this was just an extension. She went to his house and he raped her. In shock, she even allowed him to give her a lift home. Full Review

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Review of

The Figurine by Victoria Hislop

5star.jpg General Fiction

It was in 1968 that Helena McCloud made her first trip to Greece. She was alone: her mother, Greek by birth, had left the family home and refused to return, but Mary and Hamish (Helena's parents) felt that it would be a pity if Helena grew up without knowing her grandparents or understanding her Greek heritage. Her trip to the family apartment in up-market Kolonaki would be the first of several annual visits. She grew to love her grandmother and the family's maid, Dina, but was wary - and frightened - of her grandfather, retired general Stamatis Papagiannis. He was proud of his close connections to the Junta and expected his family to uphold his values but saw no reason to accommodate them. His prejudices included Helena's red hair and green eyes - inherited from her father's Scottish ancestors. Full Review

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Review of

After Death by Dean Koontz

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Michael Mace, Head of Security, at a top secret biological research facility, is among 55 people who die when a virus is released in a bio-hazard accident. Finding himself in a makeshift mortuary, covered in plastic, he has a sense that something very, very bad has happened to him – and only him – as he sits up and looks around at the shrouded bodies of his dead friends and former colleagues. As he recovers his senses, he realises that there is something different about him; he can feel everything. Everything. Michael isn't Michael anymore. Full Review

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Review of

The Grave Listeners by William Frank

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The village is isolated and poor. It's surrounded by a Witching Forest. And the villagers subsist largely by farming Uphegia plants - its bread-like fruit provides nutrition and its blossom provides herbal medicines. The black wood of the forest provides heat and warmth, roofs on homes, and even gallows, if needed. The fear of being buried alive is an existential superstition in the village and that is the reason Volushka, a drunken, self-indulgent, lazy lout of a man is tolerated. Full Review

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Review of

Semi-Detached by Deborah Stone

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Bill and Amanda are living in a semi-detached house, stuck in a depressing rut of boredom and disappointment, when Terry and Fiona – glamorous, successful and very much in love – move in next door. Despite their different outlooks on life, the couples befriend each other and life appears to improve for both pairs. But all is not what it seems, and their increasingly interconnected relationships are fated for tragedy. Full Review

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Review of

The Silent Bride by Shalini Boland

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Alice and Seth are a match made in heaven. He is everything she has been searching for; handsome, accomplished, clever, funny; total and utter husband-material. She is all he could possibly want in a wife; beautiful, successful, confident… and so the inevitable proposal is eagerly accepted by Alice and the wedding is planned and set. When the much-anticipated day arrives, Alice is walked down the aisle by her father, beaming with pride and excitement as she surveys the congregation – their friends assembled to celebrate this joyful day and when Seth turns to face his approaching bride, Alice's world implodes because she has absolutely no idea who the man at the altar is, who is waiting for her to become his wife. Full Review

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Review of

The Girls of Summer by Katie Bishop

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It was the summer when Rachel Evans turned eighteen that she and Caroline went backpacking around Greece and arrived on the island. Rachel wasn't exactly innocent but she was, perhaps, naive, so when thirty-four-year-old Alistair Wright started to take an interest in her, she was flattered rather than wary. It was quite a while before he made any sort of physical approach to her and by that time she was obsessed by him. Alistair worked for Henry Taylor, looking after his interests on the island and in particular in the bar where all the girls either worked or partied. Full Review

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Review of

Three Graces by Amanda Craig

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Few styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the state-of-the-nation novel. There's something so utterly compelling about any writer who can catch hold of the atmosphere of the day and capture it, crafting an image of the country as it stands in one particular moment. To say that Amanda Craig is skilled at doing this would be embarrassingly inadequate: she's practically synonymous with the genre of contemporary social fiction at this point. She has such a gift for weaving the ongoing issues of the day into the lives of her characters in a way that feels natural and lived-in, never making them ciphers for social commentary but instead fully realised people, grappling with issues far larger than themselves. Full Review

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Review of

Pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson

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Pineapple Street is the story of three women: Sasha, Darley and Georgiana. Darley and George are sisters and Sasha is married to their brother Cord. They're Stocktons, only Sasha isn't a Stockton by birth so she isn't readily accepted into the tribe. The problem's exacerbated when the clan matriarch, Tilda, asks Cord and Sasha if they'd like to move into the Pineapple Street property. Tilda and Chip have renovated and downsized to another property, a street or so away, which they own. They won't need any of the furniture from Pineapple Street, so Sasha and Cord can move straight in. Nominally, they had a choice but that wasn't the reality. Darley and Georgiana start to call Sasha 'the gold digger'. She's living in their family home. They use it so often that they abbreviate it to 'the GD'. Full Review

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Review of

One Puzzling Afternoon by Emily Critchley

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84 year old Edie has lived in the same small town for almost her whole life, but now she is facing a move as her son wants to move to another house and bring Edie to live with his family, as Edie is starting to lose her memory. However, Edie is tormented by the memory of her childhood friend, Lucy, who went missing over 60 years ago, and the worry that there was a secret she was keeping for Lucy that somehow might be the thing that reveals the truth of what happened all that time ago. After 'seeing' Lucy in the high street, just as she was the last time she saw her, she starts to find pockets of memories coming back to her. And yet as she remembers the past, she is forgetting more and more in her day to day life. Will she uncover the truth about Lucy's disappearance before her move, and before her memories are gone forever? Full Review

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Review of

Thirst for Salt by Madelaine Lucas

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Love, I'd read, was supposed to be a light and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity

Told from a retrospective view, a young woman unravels the year-long relationship that once defined her. Overlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the affair with a man twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the summer after. Set against the backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town Thirst for Salt details the 24-year-old narrator's deepening relationship with her older lover, depicting its all-consuming nature, how it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably. Full Review

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Review of

The Garnett Girls by Georgina Moore

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The love affair between Margo Garnett and poet Richard O'Leary was all-consuming, apparently on both sides. Margo was just sixteen when they fell in love. Richard was twenty-one and described by Margo's mother as 'an older man'. Her parents worried that Richard's influence would take her away from what they felt she could achieve - going to Oxford and having a glittering career. In the event, they eloped and Richard took her away from the Isle of Wight. Margo did go to Oxford and went on to become a well-respected journalist. The couple had three children: Rachel, Imogen and Sasha. Life was lived in London and holidays were spent at Sandcove, the family home on the Isle of Wight. Even then the doubts about Richard's drinking were never far from Margo's mind: she would never be able to leave him in charge.

Then Richard left them. Full Review

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Review of

Dashboard Elvis is Dead by David F Ross

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

I reviewed David F Ross's book There's Only One Danny Garvey a couple of years back and remember being absolutely floored by how powerful and affecting it was. It was a gripping, emotionally wounding read, and rereading my review of it my main takeaway was that I might not have lavished enough praise on it. Full Review

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Review of

Clara and Olivia by Lucy Ashe

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The year is 1933. The place? Sadler's Wells. Ballerinas Clara and Olivia are sisters, twins no less. Identical on the outside but not, we learn, on the inside. And not on stage, either. Because there's a lot that builds a dancer. Some things that can be taught or learnt – discipline, attention to detail – and some things, that je ne sais quoi, that don't come from the classroom. A stage presence, a charm, a joie de vivre. The difference between a hard-worker, and a star. Full Review

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Review of

Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett

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Emily Wilde is an expert academic scholar on faerie lore, and she has travelled extensively, and researched meticulously, to write her life's work, the very first encyclopaedia of faeries. Whilst she is brilliant at research and speaking to faeries, she is not so good with people. So when she finds herself far, far North in the small village of Hrafvsnik, having somehow offended the village matriarch, she is not sure what she has done, nor how to redeem herself and put her final investigations for her book back on the right track. Enter Wendell Bambleby, her dashingly handsome and insufferable rival who arrives unexpectedly, all charm and delight, much to Emily's frustration. But why is he here? What does he want? And what exactly is going on with the faerie folk around Hravsnik? Full Review

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Review of

The Boy and the Dog by Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)

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First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, in turn, caused the nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and utter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, and the loss of livelihoods was widespread. The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. He wasn't a dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the dog jumped in. Full Review

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Review of

Mr Magenta by Christopher Bowden

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Christopher Bowden's latest novel is a patient untangling of a seemingly ordinary woman's life, carried out by her nephew after she has died. The aunt who always provided a safe harbour and a little bit of indulgence to a young nephew had had a much more interesting life than that nephew Stephen had ever realised and it seems to him an obligation to find it all out. Full Review

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Review of

Partitions of Unity by Jennifer Mason

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Here at Bookbag Towers, we first met Elizabeth Cromwell, dominatrix and unintentional detective in Preposterous, when she investigated and unravelled a series of disappearances. In Partitions of Unity, she sets her mind to solving a murder... Full Review

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Review of

The Daves Next Door by Will Carver

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Five strangers come together in one moment as a suicide bomber prepares to detonate his vest on a London tube line. As their fates overlap, the story is told in backwards order, leading up to the fateful moment. Full Review

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Review of

Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery by Jennifer Mason

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A struggling poetry zine, a mom-and-pop mobile diner in the Northern California redwoods, a 400-meter hurdler who just missed the 2004 Olympics, a women's track coach with a yen for bullwhips, a billionaire with a state-of-the-art S&M dungeon, a man serving a life sentence in Alabama, an enigmatic signature, K(s, x), on a cheap oil painting, an erotic art dealer in Georgia...

This is just a sample of the cast of characters and settings in Preposterous. As you can see, some keeping up will be required! The basic premise of this mystery story goes like this... Full Review

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