Changes

[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Robert CromptonJenny Lecoat|title=Bunderlin|rating=4.5|genre=Crime|summary=As a child Martin had been fascinated and entranced by his neighbour Mrs Bundy's household menagerie. Her son Peter was there too but on the periphery; Martin was just there to visit the animals. In adulthood their paths cross again but this time Peter Bunderlin (as he's now known) isn't so easy to avoid – and Martin's tried! Perhaps if Martin could understand what the heck Peter is up to?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784078549</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Robert Crompton|title=Leaving GileadBeyond Summerland

|summary=Tom Sparrow finally does what heJean lives on Jersey with her mother where they are celebrating the end of the occupation. During the war, Jean's always dreamt 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: buying the former Ridley house near his old childhood homehim. As Tom explores he finds his new house isn't the only link with his past. There's something in British finally free the Channel islands from the Nazis, and the outhouse war is finally over, their hopes rise that takes they will finally learn what became of him back to . But will the days of young love and Susantruth come as a relief, or will it raise further questions around what else happened during the Ridley's daughter. war? Who was the informer who told the Nazis about the radio? She had And what other secrets have been raised in her parents' prohibitive faith as a Gilead Jehovah's Witness which didn't seem a problem to them but they were young and experience wasn't on their side…kept throughout the occupation?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1784077623</amazonuk>1846976537

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Emma CraigieOnyi Nwabineli|title= What Was Never Said Allow Me to Introduce Myself|rating=4.5

|summary= This story is narrated by Zahra, a teenage girl who spends her early years in her home country of Somalia before Anuri spent her family move childhood on display to the UK world, thanks to escape civil war. Inevitablyher step-mother Ophelia's increasingly popular presence on social media, some traditions travel with them where she posted every step of Anuri's childhood for sponsorships and influencer deals and , basically, monetary gain. Now Anuri is in the novel Zahra recounts her efforts twenties and she is slowly trying to protect herself regain her confidence and to get her younger sisterlife back, Samsam, against FGM, a practice that claimed suing her step-mother to take down the life of content about her older sister in Somalia several years previously. Zahra intersperses Anuri is battling alcoholism, failing to start her account with flashbacks to Somalia PhD, undergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online and the civil war that drove receiving money from them awayfor doing so. Most importantly, she is desperately worried about her little sister, thus giving a clear picture who is the new focus of the trials that Ophelia's online empire. Can she save her sister, and perhaps herself and her family have faced.relationship with her father at the same time?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>178072179X</amazonuk>0861546873

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= David Finkle1529153298|title= The Man With The Overcoat|rating= 3.5|genre= General Fiction|summary=''Why would anyone - he was soon to ask himself innumerable times - take a coat from a complete stranger only because it had been offered?'' Skip Gerber steps off the elevator after a long day at work; the foyer List of his office building is busy and buzzy and he does not notice the man holding the overcoat until the man hands it to Skip telling him to ''take very good care of it''. Skip unthinkingly grasps the coat and before he has the chance to realise what he is doing - and that he is now holding an overcoat of unknown providence - the man disappears out of the exit door to the building.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0992618525</amazonuk>}}{{newreviewSuspicious Things|author=Fredrik Backman|title=My Grandmother Sends Her Regards and ApologisesJennie Godfrey

|summary=It's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. (A woman? I mean, honestly...) She'Every 7-year-old needs a superheros not what's worrying Miv's family, though. Women have been disappearing. ThatWell, they's just how it is…ve been murdered, but to have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. Miv' and for Elsa its upset because she's overheard that her Granfather wants to move the family 'Down South'. When Gran diesyou're from Yorkshire, Elsa Down South is surprised a frightening, foreign place, best avoided. For Miv, the move would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, and devastatedshe'll do anything to prevent that. Granny canShe't be old - Elsa has only known s not worried about the dangers or that her for 7 years! Elsa still has to carry out GranMum's last wish though; there are letters stopped talking - to be delivered and with each delivery Elsa learns something more about Gran the person behind Gran the superheroanyone. Will it enforce her hero status or destroy it?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444775839</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Neil Smith1035906708|title=BooDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin|rating=4.5

|summary=Oliver Dalrymple is dead. He realised this the moment he woke up We tend to think of Maria Callas as Greek, but she was born to Greek parents in Manhattan, New York, in the rebirthing bedDecember 1923 and only moved to Athens when she was thirteen. His friends and tormentors had always called him Boo because of his ghostly pale complexion and now heHer original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to 's finally earned the nickname fully. What he hasnCallas't realised is the way in which he died; he thinks he died of holey heart problems to make it more manageable in front of his locker while reciting the periodic tableStates. The location is correct but, meeting Johnny (an equally dead former classmate) reveals, he When she was back in Athens - supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for her voice - she was actually murdered. What's worseraised under the Nazi occupation by a mother who mercilessly exploited her and made no secret of her preference for her elder sister, their murderer has been spotted there in 13 year olds' heavenJackie.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0434023493</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Minette WaltersAlexander McCall Smith|title= CellarThe Perfect Passion Company|rating=4.5

|summary= To my mind, ''The Dark Room'' Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and operating as an alternative to all the most perfect psychological thriller ever written (and I've read lots online apps in this genre)providing a more personal, tailored service. In Ness has asked her later worksyounger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the business, Minette Walters seemed as Ness is planning to veer away from this particular path take a trip to glory as her novels became steadily darker and with increasingly dislikeable characters. So it was quite refreshing Canada to discover that ''The Cellar'' was written from the point of view of get away for a rather likeable protagonistwhile. Muna Katie is an African child living in, shall we saycoming out of a break up with a bad boyfriend, somewhat unusual and very cruel conditions: she was stolen and now lives in captivity. Her voice is compelling and from so jumps at the first page I found myself wanting her chance to come home to make good her escape Edinburgh. And so begins this new story from the dreadful - and sadly all too believable - circumstances in which she finds herself. SoAlexander McCall Smith, naturallybringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, I admired her cunning thanks to 44 Scotland Street and resourcefulnessthe Isabel Dalhousie novels, knowing that these attributes would serve her wellbut with some new characters who quickly begin to charm. But Katie has no experience in running a business, or in match-making, of coursebut Ness has full confidence in her abilities, this is Minette Walters and nothing is as simple as it first appears. As the story unfolded I found myself questioning who exactly were the victims there's always her very helpful (and whorather handsome) neighbour, if anyoneWilliam, was innocent.to lend a hand…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099594641</amazonuk>1846976596

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Naomi NovikDean Koontz|title=UprootedThe Bad Weather Friend|rating=4.5|genre=FantasyParanormal|summary=Many years agoBenny is having a terrifically bad day. He loses his job, in he loses his fiancee, and his house gets trashed. Oh, and someone has delivered a village deep in Eastern Europereally weird, the locals live a life of relative peace and happiness disturbing coffin- knowing sized object to always avoid his home, and it's possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the wood thing that borders their landhas trashed his house! The thing is, and safe in Benny is the knowledge that they are guarded by very last person to deserve all this bad luck. He is a powerful wizard - the Dragonnice person. A really nice person. Aware So fortunately for Benny it turns out that he the delivery to his house is the one thing keeping them safe from the dangers of the wooda new friend, the villagers take part in a ritual bad weather friend called 'The Choosing' every ten years - when a young girl is Spike, who has been sent to serve the wizard help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a decadegood person.Agnieszka Spike is going to take care of age for the choosingBenny, but nobody fears that she and will be picked - her best friend Kasia is pretty and gracefulcertainly take care of Benny's enemies, if he, Benny, and sure to catch the eye of the immortal Dragon. However, Agnieszka is not aware of the talents she holds that may attract the wizard - talents that the safety of the entire kingdom may come to depend on for their survival..Harper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1447294130</amazonuk>1662500491

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Barbara LamplughKatherine Howe|title=Secrets of the PomegranateA True Account|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=Home in Bristol, Alice gets the news from her sister's partner, Paco. Her sister, Deborah Hardy, was on board one of the trains bombed at Madrid's Atocha station on 11 March. No one can yet confirm whether she is alive or dead. Deb had moved to Granada nearly 20 years ago, after her divorce from Mark's father, and was starting to make a name for herself as a scholar of women in Andalusia's history. Alice and her nine-year-old son Timmy fly to Spain to find that Deb is alive, but in a coma in hospital. Over the weeks she keeps vigil for Deb, Alice lives in her sister's home in Granada and reads her diaries, which proves to be a way of feeling closer to her and learning more about her than she ever knew. Meanwhile, Mark and Paco keep their distance, working through their complicated grief in their own ways.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781323690</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Menna Van Praag|title=The House At The End Of Hope Street|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary= Alba Ashby is a wallflower of a girl; studious, bookish and excruciatingly shy, so when tragedy wields its ponderous bolt, she is less able than most to adjust to life as she now knows it. In one of her midnight walks around historical Cambridge, she finds herself at the door to Number 11 Hope Street. It is house that she has never before seen; quirky and turreted with a wild garden and grandly Victorian in hue and Alba is enchanted by it. So she does something that she would never normally do, in a million years. She knocks on the door.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0749018623</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Sara Gruen|title=At The Water's Edge|rating=5

|summary=An indiscretion at Hannah Masury is living in Boston, having been sent to live with a party causes Ellis Hyde's parents family who run an inn, and being made to disown him, coming, as it does, hot on the heels of his father not understanding why Ellis has been turned down for war servicework there from a young age. To prove he's not When she hears there is to be a cowardhanging of some pirates in the town, Ellis, his new wife Maddie she decides to go and best friend Hank leave the US for Scotlandwatch. HeEnthralled and horrified in equal measure, Hannah finds herself embroiled in a young boy's determined they will succeed where Ellis' father failed years before: they will find death at the Loch Ness monsterhands of two vicious pirates. Maddie isnShe hides away, so that they don't as convinced but find and kill her too, and then to escape them completely she also thinks she knows Ellisruns away to sea, dressing as a boy and joining the notorious Ned Low's pirate ship as a cabin boy. She and soon finds herself in the locals at the inn where they're stranded by the global conflict will discover thick of things when there is a lot more about himmutiny on board, and indeed themselvesfrom there we are caught up in her rip roaring tale of life on the ocean waves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473604702</amazonuk>0861547438

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sarah Leipciger1471180158|title=The Mountain Can WaitMaybe Tomorrow|author=Penny Parkes

|summary=Tom Berry is Jamie Matson works in an upper-class grocery store, for a quiet man - one who lives for and in nature, spending 's a half control freak with all the subtlety of his year running a small team in remotehalf brick. Jamie's son, Bo, isolated forests'has his problems'. The other half He's asthmatic and the more you read, the more you'll suspect that he spends tending 's on the autistic spectrum. Sometimes Jamie needs to his family take time off at short notice - she's a small group whom he brought up almost single handedly, following frequent flier in the departure of his wife. local A good, determined man, we learn of Tom&E and sometimes Bo's life running forestry teams in remote wilderness, before an accident forces Tom not fit enough to go to school. Missed shifts or the need to be away on time to leave his routine pick Bo up from school are occasions when Jamie can be controlled and seek out his son - and both become troubled by put in the events of the accident, as well as ghosts of the past that may cause more pain than either man had anticipatedwrong. It was going to come to a head.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1472223896</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Elizabeth RenzettiB0CKD1L5JL|title=Based on a True StoryRadio Free Olympia|author=Jeffrey Dunn

|summary=This Petr is a book that suggests love across an orphan. Rescued by the tracks – all the while making the reader ask 'just how chuffing wide are those tracks supposed to be?!' Franky strange, reclusive Bear, he is a hard-done-by schoolboybrought up far from bustling cities and busy human society, whose ultra-Catholic parents are stifling him in all aspects the forests of life, so much so it's likely that when he gets into trouble by witnessing some porn on a friendWashington's mobile phone at school it was really the hardware that he was gawping at in amazementOlympic Peninsula. Hardware is nothing to Daizee, the underage street hooker, who knows what hard stuffs she likes After Bear dies and what she doesn'ta brief sojourn in human company, and what her punters – and her motherarmed with only a pirate radio transmitter, back when they had Petr goes on a connection – enjoyedjourney through the forest, or neededbroadcasting the strange, en route to it. Their unlikely connection is the subject of this gritty novellawild and rarely heard voices he encounters.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1910213187</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Pascal Garnier and Melanie Florence (translator)Sarah Marsh|title=BoxesA Sign of Her Own|rating=43.5

|summary=Meet BriceAfter a bout of scarlet fever as a child, Ellen Lark loses her hearing. He's an illustratorSuddenly plunged into a world of silence, who had picked an ideal house everything about her life changes. Living in a time when the country with his journalist wifeuse of sign language was seen as something only savages do, only for her Ellen is sent to disappear assumed dead on assignment abroad. Therefore he's having a school where she is taught to make the move himselflip read, which he does – but without her at the other end he finds it hard to kick his new life into gearphysically restrained from signing. YesFrom here, she ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the deaf and using a cat adopts him, and he gets to know the names of some new people, but that's itsystem called Visible Speech. What's moreAt the same time, one of those people Bell is Blancheworking on other inventions and ideas, attired most suitably and Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in all-white, who herself is missing someone – someone a complicated tangle of whom Brice is the spitting image…espionage.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1910477044</amazonuk>1035401614

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Kevin MaherB0BC3YTCMR|title=Last Night on EarthGood Girls Die|author=Ayura Ayira

|summary=Baby Bonnie ''This story is born 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 London in 1996 to Jay and Shauna 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 traumatic birth . Then he did: Lavender was very good at math and the aftermath causes the previously happy couple to separateReggie asked if she would tutor him. Jay looks back searching for how he got to She readily agreed: tutoring was something she gladly did at church: this point and Shauna looks for answers in psychotherapy with a less than orthodox Danish analystwas just an extension. Meanwhile both share Bonnie She went to his house and worry about where they go from herehe raped her. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408705079</amazonuk>In shock, she even allowed him to give her a lift home.

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tina Seskis1472263936|title=When We Were FriendsThe Figurine|author=Victoria Hislop

|summary= Six friends meet 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.}}{{Frontpage|author=Dean Koontz|title=After Death|rating=3|genre=General Fiction|summary= Michael Mace, Head of Security, at Bristol University; six very different a top secret biological research facility, is among 55 people from six very different backgroundswho die when a virus is released in a bio-hazard accident. Six lives intertwined Finding himself in an assortment of ways… break-upsa makeshift mortuary, marriagescovered in plastic, careershe has a sense that something very, motherhood 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 bereavementformer colleagues. As he recovers his senses, he realises that there is something different about him; until one night six become fivehe can ''feel'' everything. ''Everything''. Michael isn't ''Michael'' anymore.|amazonukisbn=1662500467}} {{Frontpage|isbn=B0BVDC2VWH|title=The Grave Listeners|author=<amazonuk>1405917954</amazonuk >William Frank|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|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.

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Michael LaubB0BYF82CXT|title=Diary of the FallSemi-Detached|author=Deborah Stone

|summary=Diary ''Bill and Amanda are living in a semi-detached house, stuck in a depressing rut of the Fall is a story about regretboredom and disappointment, when Terry and Fiona – glamorous, guilt successful and resentmentvery much in love – move in next door. It's told from the point of view of an unnamed narrator, who reflects Despite their different outlooks on not just his own life but also , the lives of his father couples befriend each other and life appears to improve for both pairs. But all is not what it seems, and grandfathertheir increasingly interconnected relationships are fated for tragedy.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099581795</amazonuk>''

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=James WilsonShalini Boland|title=The Summer of Broken StoriesSilent Bride|rating=53

|summary=England 1950: Soon-to-be-10, Mark Davenant is Alice and Seth are a typical lad with a typical lad's lifematch made in heaven. He loves adding to his model train layoutis everything she has been searching for; handsome, accomplished, clever, he plays with his mates funny; total and walking best friend Barney the dogutter husband-material. It's on one such walk She is all he comes across Aubreycould possibly want in a wife; beautiful, successful, an elderly writer living in confident… and so the inevitable proposal is eagerly accepted by Alice and the forestwedding is planned and set. They build a friendship based on shared stories When the much-anticipated day arrives, Alice is walked down the aisle by her father, beaming with pride and imaginings. Not all in excitement as she surveys the village are accepting though congregation – their friends assembled to celebrate this joyful day and, when they try Seth turns to drive Aubrey outface his approaching bride, Mark feels himself torn between old loyalties and newAlice'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.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846883571</amazonuk>1662507089

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Alexander McCall Smith1787636003|title= The Novel Habits Girls of HappinessSummer|author=Katie Bishop

|summary=There are some authors who I pick up with a contented sigh, knowing It was the summer when Rachel Evans turned eighteen that I am in safe handsshe and Caroline went backpacking around Greece and arrived on the island. Alexander McCall Smith is currently my favouriteRachel wasn't exactly innocent but she was, perhaps, naive, and thank goodness he is so prolific with his writing that my reading habit is fed on a regular basis! This is the tenth novel in the Sunday Philosophy Club series, and we settle down once more when thirty-four-year-old Alistair Wright started to a visit to Isabel Dalhousie take an interest in her beloved Edinburgh. Isabel is wondering, perhaps belatedly, if she is sometimes was flattered rather judgmental of peoplethan wary. In particular, she’s having an awful lot It was quite a while before he made any sort of qualms about physical approach to her niece, Cat’s, latest romanceand by that time she was obsessed by him. Will Isabel find herself forced to interveneAlistair worked for Henry Taylor, looking after his interests on the island and in particular in the bar where all the girls either worked or can she sit back and let nature take its course?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408706636</amazonuk>partied.

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Nina George and Simon Pare (translator)Amanda Craig|title=The Little Paris BookshopThree Graces|rating=4.5

|summary=Monsieur Perdu has a barge on 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 Seine, day and in that barge he has his bookshop. Actuallycapture it, rather than being a normal sort crafting an image of bookshop the country as it stands in one particular moment. To say that Amanda Craig is more 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 chemist's, since he is something gift for weaving the ongoing issues of the day into the lives of her characters in a literary apothecary, prescribing books to his customers way that he senses will soothe their souls, feels natural and relieve whatever troubles are ailing them. He only has to speak to them a little, sometimes only has to see themlived-in, and he instinctively knows which book will help never making them. Despite his skills, howeverciphers for social commentary but instead fully realised people, he seems unable to diagnose and resolve his own emotional grappling with issues and he is, as the translation of his French surname tells us, Mr Lostfar larger than themselves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0349140359</amazonuk>140871468X

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Marcus Dalrymple152915118X|title=Flesh and Blood: True FictionPineapple Street|author=Jenny Jackson

|summary=Brit John Colson ''Pineapple Street'' is in Mexico teachingthe story of three women: Sasha, having been invited out there by his godfather Darley and Georgiana. Darley and George are sisters and local school owner Carlos Manuel FerminSasha is married to their brother Cord. John soon settles inThey're Stocktons, soon forming only Sasha isn't a love of Stockton by birth so she isn't readily accepted into the countrytribe. But then it all changes… The problem's exacerbated when the clan matriarch, Tilda, asks Cord and Sasha if they'd like to move into the Pineapple Street property. Visiting Tilda and Chip have renovated and downsized to another property, a public toilet at the wrong moment means that John hears a murder being committed beyond his cubicle doorstreet or so away, which they own. He goes to They won't need any of the police as he would furniture from Pineapple Street, so Sasha and Cord can move straight in the UK . Nominally, they had a choice but this is Mexico; from that moment on John Colson is a marked manwasn't the reality. Meanwhile elsewhere Darley and Georgiana start to call Sasha 'the gold digger'. She's living in Mexico tourists are being attracted by more than hot sunshine and tacos''their'' family home. They use it so often that they abbreviate it to 'the GD'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1502821087</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Antoine LaurainEmily Critchley|title=One Puzzling Afternoon|rating=4|genre=Crime|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, Emily Boyce (translator) and Jane Aitken (translator)before her memories are gone forever?|isbn=1804181250}}{{Frontpage|author=Madelaine Lucas|title=The Red NotebookThirst for Salt

|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Meet Laure. She's a widow in her 40s'Love, who is entering her Parisian apartment building one night when sheI's muggedd read, was supposed to be a light and her handbag stolen. Meet Laurentweightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity'' Told from a retrospective view, a middleyoung woman unravels the year-aged booksellerlong relationship that once defined her. Overlaid with later wisdom, who happens upon the handbag narrator relives the following morning in affair with a man twenty years her senior from its inception – the street, just before summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the binmen take it away, never to be seen againsummer after. More or less snubbed when trying to hand it to Set against the police as lost property, he decides to take it upon himself to reunite backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the bag 24-year-old narrator's deepening relationship with her older lover, depicting its rightful owner. He has no idea their names are so intimately linkedall-consuming nature, how it changed her perspective on both romantic and despite a lot of things being in the bag (including the titular notebook) there is no cash, no phone familial relationships and no ID documentation at allhow it altered her irrevocably. What's more – and what looks like making the idea even more fruitless – he has no idea that Laure has fallen into a coma as a result of the mugging…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908313862</amazonuk>0861546490

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Stefan Mohamed0008506337|title=Bitter SixteenThe Garnett Girls|author=Georgina Moore

|summary=Stanly Bird is about to turn 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 solitary teen in 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 small Welsh townwell-respected journalist. The couple had three children: Rachel, he has few friendsImogen and Sasha. Unless you count his talking dog Life was lived in London and holidays were spent at Sandcove, Daryl.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''.

A splitting headache on the eve of his birthday soon develops into incredible powers, and Stanly swiftly finds himself defending his neighbourhood, falling in love, and gaining his first real friendsThen Richard left them. When jealous rivals, a mysterious figure and a horrific evil come into play though, Stanly finds himself cast away from home, and struggling to save everything he has come to hold dear.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784630136</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Fiona Neill1914585402|title=The Good GirlDashboard Elvis is Dead|author=David F Ross

|summary= Romy is I reviewed David F Ross's book [[There's Only One Danny Garvey by David F Ross|There's Only One Danny Garvey]] a sixth former who is unremarkable. A good student from a professional family, her aspiration is to become a doctor, couple of years back and remember being absolutely floored by how powerful and it’s an achievable, rather than lofty goal. Or affecting it was. Because It was a video has surfaced and it shows Romy doing something that is hardly going to help her medical school application. Or her future career. Or her future lifegripping, full stop. For Ailsaemotionally wounding read, the head teacher, she has the double whammy of trying to keep the school out of the headlines and protect her child who is now at the centre rereading my review of the controversyit my main takeaway was that I might not have lavished enough praise on it. And it’s clearly all the neighbours’ fault.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0718181271</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Christina NicholLucy Ashe|title=Waiting for the ElectricityClara and Olivia

|summary=Slims Achmed Makashvili The year is determined to leave his native Georgia1933. ItThe place? Sadler's a country buffeted Wells. Ballerinas Clara and often invaded by its neighbours and plagued with lack of amenitiesOlivia are sisters, twins no less. Identical on the outside but not, we learn, on the inside. And not on stage, either. On hearing Because there's a lot that Hilary Clinton is running builds a competitiondancer. Some things that can be taught or learnt – discipline, the prize for which is a trip attention to detail – and some things, that ''je ne sais quoi'', that don't come from the States and knowing all he has to do is overstay his visa for classroom. A stage presence, a better lifecharm, Slimsa ''joie de vivre'' letters to Hilary begin. Eventually he gets to the US but… WellThe difference between a hard-worker, be careful what you wish forand a star.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0715649876</amazonuk>0861544080

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Stuart PrebbleHeather Fawcett|title=The Insect FarmEmily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries

|summary=I was predisposed Emily Wilde is an expert academic scholar on faerie lore, and she has travelled extensively, and researched meticulously, to enjoy this book before Iwrite her life'd even opened s work, the coververy first encyclopaedia of faeries. Whilst she is brilliant at research and speaking to faeries, she is not so good with people. It set me in mind of [[The Behaviour of Moths by Poppy Adams]] - another tale of a challenged person who So when she finds refuge herself far, far North in an obsession with insects. But where [[The Behaviour the small village of Moths by Poppy Adams|The Behaviour of Moths]] focuses on two warring sistersHrafvsnik, ''The Insect Farm'' has two brothers as having somehow offended the central characters: Rogervillage matriarch, who she is not sure what she has special needsdone, nor how to redeem herself and his devoted younger brother Jonathanput her final investigations for her book back on the right track. Both boys develop an obsession Enter Wendell Bambleby, Roger with his insect farm her dashingly handsome and Jonathan with a womaninsufferable rival who arrives unexpectedly, Harriet. When obsession eventually leads to the violence of destructionall charm and delight, other behaviours come into play: feelings of guilt quickly switch much to Emily's frustration. But why is he here? What does he want? And what exactly is going on with the fear of capture and the sly acts of a man keen to lay the blame elsewhere.faerie folk around Hravsnik?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846883547</amazonuk>0356519120

{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1398515388|title=The Boy and the Dog|author=Caroline Vermalle Seishu Hase and Anna Aitken Alison Watts (translator)|title=George's Grand Tour

|summary=George loves First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the Tour de France so when his over protective daughter goes way for an extended holiday tsunami and this, in turn, caused the time is right to do it himselfnuclear meltdown. The result was complete and utter devastation. Being 83 there will have to be some concessionsThe deaths were uncountable, using 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 car rather than dog outside a bike for a start and he'll take his neighbour Charles (a stripling at 76) with himconvenience store. Hewasn'll also take his mobile phone since his landline has been diverted to it so no one knows het a dog person but the convenience store owner's gonecomment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the dog jumped in. Yes, good luck with that George!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908313730</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Caitlin MoranChristopher Bowden|title=How Mr Magenta|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|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 Build a Girlyoung 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. |isbn= B0B6Z9VJDW}}{{Frontpage|author=Jennifer Mason|title=Partitions of Unity|rating=4.5

|summary=1990 - Wolverhampton. Johanna Morrigan is 14Here at Bookbag Towers, intelligentwe first met Elizabeth Cromwell, funny dominatrix and from a loving family. Unfortunatelyunintentional detective in [[Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery by Jennifer Mason|Preposterous]], said family consists of when she investigated and unravelled a depressed mother, a mostly drunk father, an older brother with issues series of his own, and three younger brothers to worry aboutdisappearances. Well read, witty and hugely intelligent, Johanna longs for escape, building a new version In ''Partitions of herself and gaining employment as a writerUnity'', frequently travelling she sets her mind to the drink, sex and drug filled bars and bedsits of Londonsolving a murder...|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0091949017</amazonuk>B09LQR9FRF

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Margaret Henderson SmithWill Carver|title=The Turn of Daves Next Door|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|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 Tidestory is told in backwards order, leading up to the fateful moment.|isbn= 1914585186}} {{Frontpage|author=Jennifer Mason|title=Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery|rating=3.54

|summary=Harriet Glover is well and truly over Mark after he left her standing at the altar. She's pregnant with Sir Joris Sanderson's child A struggling poetry zine, a mom-and he's keen to make -pop mobile diner in the Northern California redwoods, a 400-meter hurdler who just missed the relationship permanent2004 Olympics, but ghosts from a women''his'' past return to haunt hims track coach with a yen for bullwhips, unfortunately at a rather important dinner party. The mystery billionaire with a state-of 'Amber' really has to be solved and -the web of lies which surround her dismantled. Harriet is still being led astray by Tricia Harrington -art S&M dungeon, a man serving a life sentence in Alabama, an enigmatic signature, K(or so Harriet's mother would have you believe, x), on a cheap oil painting, an erotic art dealer in Georgia...) and she can't really make up her mind about 'Mr Sanderson', particularly when the man from MI6  This is around. She's got just a lot to cope with and that's before we even get on to sample of the subject cast of the Prime Minister's daughter's weddingcharacters and settings in Preposterous. As you can see, which ''must'' remain secretsome keeping up will be required! The basic premise of this mystery story goes like this...|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1845496485</amazonuk>B09STS96HS