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[[Category:General Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Helle Helle Jenny Lecoat|title=Beyond Summerland|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|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 Martin Aitken (translator)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?|isbn=1846976537}}{{Frontpage|author=Onyi Nwabineli|title=This Should be Written Allow Me to Introduce Myself|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|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 Present Tensecontent 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?|isbn=0861546873}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1529153298|title=The List of Suspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey
|rating=5
|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary= This It's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is the first novel of Helle HellePrime Minister. (A woman? I mean, honestly...) She's not what's worrying Miv'sfamily, an award winning Danish authorthough. Women have been disappearing. Well, they've been murdered, but to be translated into Englishhave 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. It is easy Miv's upset because she's overheard that her father wants to see move the family 'Down South'. When you're from this novel why she Yorkshire, Down South is gaining accolades in her Danish homelanda frightening, foreign place, best avoided. The rhythmicFor Miv, natural flow of the narrative is mesmerising move would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, and appears she'll do anything to lull you through the bookprevent that. It has some lovely, spare sentences of description: She's not worried about the dangers or that her Mum'There were runs stopped talking -down cottages with open doors to anyone.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1035906708|title=Diva|author=Daisy Goodwin|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|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 news on the radioonly moved to Athens when she was thirteen. Gulls flocked around an early harvester Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to 'Callas' to make it more manageable in the late sun''States. But mostly, it is written 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 modernist, almost stream mother who mercilessly exploited her and made no secret of consciousness styleher preference for her elder sister, which I found refreshingJackie.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099587475</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Homer HickamAlexander McCall Smith|title=Carrying Albert Home: The Somewhat True Story of a Man, His Wife and Her AlligatorPerfect Passion Company|rating=4.5|genre= General Fiction|summary=Elsie The Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and Homer Hickam were West Virginians and knew how operating as an alternative to make their tales as ''tall as all the hills that surrounded them on all sides''online apps in providing a more personal, tailored service. There is a Hickam family legend that Ness has been told asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and retold so many times over look after the years that the lines between myth and reality have become well and truly blurredbusiness, as Ness is planning to take a trip to Canada to get away for a while. ''Carrying Albert Home'' Katie is the story coming out of a man break up with a bad boyfriend, and his wifeso 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, a sweet pet alligator thanks to 44 Scotland Street and a very lucky rooster the Isabel Dalhousie novels, but with some new characters who decide quickly begin to take charm. Katie has no experience in running a road trip to Florida business, or in match-making, but Ness has full confidence in 1935; the year of the Great Depression. What follows next is all completely trueher abilities, and there's always her very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, wellWilliam, except for the parts that are made up...to lend a hand…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>000815421X</amazonuk>1846976596
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Lina Wolff and Frank Perry (translator)Dean Koontz|title= Bret Easton Ellis and the Other DogsThe Bad Weather Friend|rating= 4.5|genre= General FictionParanormal|summary= UpstairsBenny 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 flat where mother really weird, disturbing coffin-sized object to his home, and daughter struggle from pay cheque to pay cheque; downstairsit's possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the thing that has trashed his house! The thing is, Benny is the love nest of very last person to deserve all this bad luck. He is a dying writer and her last of many conquestsnice person. A really nice person. Bret Easton Ellis and So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the Other Dogs delivery to his house is a multilayered testimonial to the writernew friend, the eccentric Alba Cambóa bad weather friend called Spike, gathered by Araceliwho 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, the teenager upstairs. Through Araceliand will certainly take care of Benny's bird's-eye viewenemies, anecdotes unfold as told by loversif he, business acquaintances (often both – for with Alba Cambó you can never know)Benny, and the short stories of Cambó Harper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herselfroped into Benny's wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908276649</amazonuk>1662500491
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=John Van der KisteKatherine Howe|title=Always ThereA True Account|rating=34.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=When Dave left Plymouth Hannah Masury is living in Boston, having been sent to go live with a family who run an inn, and being made to college in Uxbridge he met Lisawork there from a young age. They sort of palled around together for When she hears there is to be a little while with no thought hanging of anything moresome pirates in the town, wellshe decides to go and watch. Enthralled and horrified in equal measure, not on DaveHannah finds herself embroiled in a young boy's part death at least. The he met Jo and for a long time they were really good friends and it would be a couple the hands of years before they were anything moretwo vicious pirates. Lisa didn't see it She hides away, so that way though: she reckoned that if Jo hadnthey don't come along she find and Dave would have stuck together kill her too, and made then to escape them completely she runs away to sea, dressing as a go of it. Dave boy and Jojoining the notorious Ned Low's couple pirate ship as a cabin boy. She soon finds herself in the thick of years at college were markedthings when there is a mutiny on board, if not marred, by Lisa's regular outburstsand from there we are caught up in her rip roaring tale of life on the ocean waves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1517761239</amazonuk>0861547438
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Pamela Hart1471180158|title=The Soldier's WifeMaybe Tomorrow|author=Penny Parkes|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Jamie Matson works in an upper-class grocery store, for a man who''...none of it was real, until s a control freak with all the last moment when his hand, the tips subtlety of his fingers, left the tips of hers and he was gonea half brick. Jamie's son, Bo, has his problems''Turned into just another soldier. He'' Ruby and Jimmy are newly-weds full of big dreams s asthmatic and plans for the futuremore you read, but all of the more you'll suspect that will have to waithe's on the autistic spectrum. It is 1915 and the world is in the grip Great War, sweeping Jimmy away Sometimes Jamie needs to fight battles in fartake time off at short notice -off Gallipoli. Ruby feels like she's a frequent flier in limbo; no longer an innocent child but the local A&E and sometimes Bo's not quite a fully-fledged married ladyfit enough to go to school. Not wanting Missed shifts or the need to return home, she decides be away on time to stay pick Bo up from school are occasions when Jamie can be controlled and put in Sydney, to keep herself occupied as she waits out the war, longing for the return of her beloved husbandwrong. She rents a room from a local landlady and finds a job as a bookkeeper at a Timber Merchant. Although she initially takes the job It was going to come to keep herself occupied and earn a little money, she soon falls into a comfortable routine and starts to enjoy her new-found independence and responsibilityhead.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0349410186</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Alice ThompsonB0CKD1L5JL|title=The Book CollectorRadio Free Olympia|author=Jeffrey Dunn
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Meet VioletPetr is an orphan. Swept off her feet Rescued by a disarming encounter with a landed gentleman and bookshop owner at a coffee shopthe strange, she immediately falls in love with himreclusive Bear, and he is quickly married, brought up far from bustling cities and almost as quickly with child. When the boy is bornbusy human society, however, fairly understandable doubts creep in. Is her husband hiding anything behind his assuredness – especially when she wakes in the middle forests of the night alone? Washington's Olympic Peninsula. What ghost is left by the fact he lost his first wife After Bear dies and baby a brief sojourn in childbirth? What should she understand from her own opinions about her new life, her new life's lifehuman company, and the idea of armed with only a nanny looking after it? Just what is going pirate radio transmitter, Petr goes on in her new country pile?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784630438</amazonuk>a journey through the forest, broadcasting the strange, wild and rarely heard voices he encounters.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sophie DuffySarah Marsh|title=Bright StarsA Sign of Her Own
|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary= I fell into this novel from the first short chapter, set in 1983, at Lancaster University – perhaps because I grew up in the 1980's. The central character and first person narrator, Cameron Spark, comes across After a bout of scarlet fever as vulnerable, shy and unassuminga child, and at first, likeableEllen Lark loses her hearing. As the novel progressedSuddenly plunged into a world of silence, however, I did find him less plausible and a bit wet and annoyingeverything about her life changes. He falls Living in mad love with Bex right at a time when the beginning use of the booksign language was seen as something only savages do, who Ellen is sent to a much more interesting characterschool where she is taught to lip read, being a feistybut physically restrained from signing. From here, feminist, fox-hunting activist she ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the deaf and saboteurusing a system called Visible Speech. Cameron At the same time, Bell is clearly besotted working on other inventions and therefore biased in his affection for Bexideas, and you can sense that this is going to get him into deep trouble from the startEllen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a complicated tangle of espionage.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1785079840</amazonuk>1035401614
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jack WilsonB0BC3YTCMR|title=In FidelityGood Girls Die|author=Ayura Ayira|rating=34.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Dick ''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 Christine Blodgett suffered from vitiligo - people were only 22 when they got married afraid to hug her in 1955case it's contagious. As the novel opens in 1974, it It's clear their relationship not easy being a black girl whose skin is now precarious84% white. A brief allegorical prologue, echoing Heraclitus, warns that She had a crisis will change the course of the marriage irrevocablycrush on seventeen-year-old Reggie Anderson but never thought he would notice her. Then he did: 'one day there Lavender was a storm…and the stream never returned to the [channel] it had known beforevery good at math and Reggie asked if she would tutor him.' The title of Chapter 1, 'A Premonition of Danger', reinforces that sense of foreboding She readily agreed: tutoring was something she gladly did at church: this was just an extension. Driving on dark, icy roads, Dick She went to his house and Christine fret about he raped her health: a dental procedure revealed a serious problem with . In shock, she even allowed him to give her gums for which she will soon need a biopsylift home.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784623830</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jolien Janzing1472263936|title=Charlotte Bronte's Secret LoveThe Figurine|author=Victoria Hislop|rating=3.5|genre=Historical General Fiction|summary=This is It was in 1968 that Helena McCloud made her first trip to Greece. She was alone: her mother, Greek by birth, had left the second novel by Jolien Janzingfamily home and refused to return, a Dutch author who lives in Belgium. Originally published in Dutch as but Mary and Hamish (Helena''The Master'' in 2013, s parents) felt that it is already being made into would be a filmpity if Helena grew up without knowing her grandparents or understanding her Greek heritage. The flawlessly translated story zeroes Her trip to the family apartment in on two momentous years in Charlotte Brontëup-market Kolonaki would be the first of several annual visits. She grew to love her grandmother and the family's lifemaid, 1842–3Dina, when she but was a pupil wary - and then a teacher at frightened - of her grandfather, retired general Stamatis Papagiannis. He was proud of his close connections to the Pensionnat Heger in BrusselsJunta and expected his family to uphold his values but saw no reason to accommodate them. I read this in tandem with Claire Harman His prejudices included Helena's new biography of Charlotte Brontë; it was particularly fascinating to see that the two books open with the same climactic episode: lovesick Charlotte making a confession at a Catholic church, even though she was an Anglican parsonred hair and green eyes - inherited from her father's daughterScottish ancestors.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>9462380597</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jojo MoyesDean Koontz|title=After YouDeath|rating=3|genre=General Fiction|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 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.|isbn=1662500467}} {{Frontpage|isbn=B0BVDC2VWH|title=The Grave Listeners|author=William Frank
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=After writing the massively popular The village is isolated and poor. It''Me Before You'', all of Jojo Moyes' readers were clamouring for mores surrounded by a Witching Forest. Having been on And the edge villagers subsist largely by farming Uphegia plants - its bread-like fruit provides nutrition and its blossom provides herbal medicines. The black wood of our armchairs during the storyforest provides heat and warmth, we all wanted to know what happened to Lou nextroofs on homes, and even gallows, if needed. Would she be okay? Would she live her life with passion? Where would she go next? So The fear of being buried alive is an existential superstition in the arrival of this story village and that is the reason Volushka, a special treatdrunken, self-indulgent, as it continues the tale lazy lout of Lou, although perhaps not in the way we had imagined…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0718179617</amazonuk>a man is tolerated.
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Mike BullenB0BYF82CXT|title= TrustSemi-Detached|author=Deborah Stone|rating= 4|genre= General Fiction|summary= Greg ''Bill and Amanda are happy. Unmarriedliving in a semi-detached house, stuck in a depressing rut of boredom and disappointment, but together thirteen years when Terry and with two young daughtersFiona – glamorous, they are successful and very much in love– move in next door. Dan Despite their different outlooks on life, the couples befriend each other and Sarah aren't so fortunatelife appears to improve for both pairs. Their marriage But all is going through the motionsnot what it seems, and they're staying together their increasingly interconnected relationships are fated for the sake of their troubled teenage sontragedy. Following a business conference away from home, one bad decision sends a happy couple into turmoil, and turns an unhappy couple into love's young dream. As secrets and betrayals threaten to send both relationships out of control, there's only one thing that can keep everything from falling apart: Trust|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0751559253</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Menna Van PraagShalini Boland|title=The Dress Shop Of DreamsSilent Bride|rating=3|genre=General Fiction|summary= 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.|isbn=1662507089}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1787636003|title=The Girls of Summer|author=Katie Bishop
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary= Cambridge is a city of winding streets It was the summer when Rachel Evans turned eighteen that she and cobbled alleyways Caroline went backpacking around Greece and in such a street you will find A Stich In Timearrived on the island. Rachel wasn't exactly innocent but she was, perhaps, naive, a tiny dress shop filled so when thirty-four-year-old Alistair Wright started to bursting with dresses that will take your breath awayan interest in her, she was flattered rather than wary. Etta Sparks spends her days crafting gowns from jewel-coloured velvets and beaded silks that are unlike It was quite a while before he made any dresses you have seen before; once you try one sort of Etta's creations on - and with a few stitches from physical approach to her expert and rather magical needle - these incredibleby that time she was obsessed by him. Alistair worked for Henry Taylor, amazing garments have looking after his interests on the power to reach within your soul island and extract your deepest desire and hidden-away dreamsin particular in the bar where all the girls either worked or partied.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0749018720</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ruth RendellAmanda Craig|title=Dark CornersThree Graces
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Carl Martin was in Few styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the fortunate position state-of having just had his first -the-nation novel published and inheriting his late father. There's house in Maida Vale. His father had accumulated a collection something so utterly compelling about any writer who can catch hold of the atmosphere of homeopathic remedies which really should have been thrown out, but Carl had other things on his mind the day and never got round to capture it. There was his girlfriend Nicola, work to start on his second novel and he wanted to let crafting an image of the top floor of his housecountry as it stands in one particular moment. Authors are not To say that well off, you see and he needed some ready money coming inAmanda Craig is skilled at doing this would be embarrassingly inadequate: she's practically synonymous with the genre of contemporary social fiction at this point. In addition to being She has such a bit remiss about gift for weaving the contents ongoing issues of the medicine cabinet he should have been day into the lives of her characters in a bit more careful about who he took on as a tenantway 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.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0091959241</amazonuk>140871468X
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=152915118X|title=Pineapple Street|author=Julia Franck Jenny Jackson|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|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 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 Anthea Bell (translator)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'.}}{{Frontpage|author=Emily Critchley|title=WestOne Puzzling Afternoon|rating=34|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, and before her memories are gone forever?|isbn=1804181250}}{{Frontpage|author=Madelaine Lucas|title=Thirst for Salt|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Put yourself in the shoes of ''Love, I'd read, was supposed to be a young mother to two childrenlight and weightless feeling, who declares her intention to leave the Communist East Germany but I had always longed for West Berlingravity'' Told from a retrospective view, and thus loses a young woman unravels the year-long relationship that once defined her scientist job. What would you expect on Overlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the other side affair with a man twenty years her senior from its inception shops full of attainable products, pleasant neighbourhoods, nice neighbours, an active and busy new life, where things might feel alien but at least you speak the same language? Well, for Nelly Senff, this is hardly summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the casesummer after. Once past Set against the depressing Eastern exit procedures she is confronted with more desultory interrogations from those backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'welcoming' her to details the West, beyond which she and 24-year-old narrator's deepening relationship with her children (their fatherolder lover, whom she never marrieddepicting its all-consuming nature, is long assumed dead by the authorities, if nobody else) are practically left in a shared accommodation in a transit camp. The shops are full of what is still unobtainable, the children hate their new school – how it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and people still look down on them as being foreign, even if they have only moved across a cityhow it altered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099554321</amazonuk>0861546490
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Beverley Hansford0008506337|title=The Golden AnkletGarnett Girls|author=Georgina Moore|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Jane Carroll is becoming more The love affair between Margo Garnett and more successful as a young journalist poet Richard O'Leary was all-consuming, apparently on a woman's magazineboth sides. Yet, although her future looks secure, Jane would like to discover more about her pastMargo was just sixteen when they fell in love. As Richard was twenty-one and described by Margo's mother as 'an orphan she was raised in a childrenolder man'. Her parents worried that Richard's home with no information regarding the identity of influence would take her parents apart away from what was on her birth certificatethey felt she could achieve - going to Oxford and having a glittering career. Therefore armed with this certificate In the event, they eloped and Richard took her away from the help Isle of her new boyfriend BobWight. Margo did go to Oxford and went on to become a well-respected journalist. The couple had three children: Rachel, not to mention genealogist dabbling neighbour GeraldImogen and Sasha. Life was lived in London and holidays were spent at Sandcove, the search beginsfamily home on the Isle of Wight. However nothing is as straightforward, or indeed as safe, as Even then the doubts about Richard's drinking were never far from Margo's mind: ''she thought it would never beable to leave him in charge''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784624675</amazonuk>Then Richard left them.
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jane L Gibson1914585402|title=A Different ReflectionDashboard Elvis is Dead|author=David F Ross|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Eternal optimist Kat has always believed in fairytales and happy endings but canI reviewed David F Ross't help but wonder where her own life went wrong. Stuck in a dead-end relationship with dull workaholic John, its book [[There's hardly the happy-ever-after that sheOnly One Danny Garvey by David F Ross|There'd always hoped fors Only One Danny Garvey]] a couple of years back and remember being absolutely floored by how powerful and affecting it was. Things are about to changeIt was a gripping, howeveremotionally wounding read, when Kat discovers a mysterious house that has been cursed by an enchantment; a handsome Regency beau is trapped within the mirrors and only a declaration rereading my review of true love can break the spell and release himit my main takeaway was that I might not have lavished enough praise on it...|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784622508</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sandy HogarthLucy Ashe|title=The Glass GirlClara and Olivia|rating=34.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Sandy HogarthThe year is 1933. The place? Sadler's debut novel opens in 1975 with fifteen-year-old Ruth Bishop attending a party with her older sister, AlexisWells. 'They called me VL, Virgin LipsBallerinas Clara and Olivia are sisters, because I'd never kissed a boytwins no less. Sex wasn't mentioned at home.' That all changes when Alexis tells Ruth to go Identical on the outside – someone is waiting for her. It's one of Alexis's friends, a notorious bad boybut not, and he assaults Ruth right therewe learn, up against on the houseinside. Could Alexis really have intended for this to happen? Ruth soon learns she is pregnant and arranges to move to Australia and live with her friend Lucy's aunt in Melbourne until the birth. She gives her beloved daughter Clare up for adoptionAnd not on stage, but never stops thinking about hereither. No one but Lucy knows Because there ever was 's a baby.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1785071548</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=John Boyne|title=The Boy at the Top of the Mountain|rating=4.5|genre=Teens|summary=Meet Pierrot. As a very young child in 1930s Paris he is going to have lot that builds a very awkward journey through his young lifedancer. His father is a violent drunkSome things that can be taught or learnt – discipline, reacting badly attention to what he saw in WWI, detail – and although married to a French womansome things, is still staunchly German. That womanthat ''je ne sais quoi'', Emilie, is going to die, and leave Pierrot an orphan, which will leave him in a home where he is bullied. But that don't come from the reaches of Europe and from the black corners of his family comes an aunt, Beatrixclassroom. A stage presence, who will give him a homecharm, of a kind, at a most unusual mountaintop building. It's not her home – she just works there and had to ask special permission from someone special'joie de vivre''. The place? The Berghofdifference between a hard-worker, and a star.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857534521</amazonuk>0861544080
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Emma BurstallHeather Fawcett|title=Tremarnock: The Lives, Loves and Secrets Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of a Cornish VillageFaeries
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Welcome to Tremarnock; Emily Wilde is an idyllic Cornish fishing village with pastel-painted cottages expert academic scholar on faerie lore, and she has travelled extensively, and colourful fishing boats bobbing in researched meticulously, to write her life's work, the harbourvery first encyclopaedia of faeries. This picture-postcard setting Whilst she is home brilliant at research and speaking to single-mum Liz and her disabled daughterfaeries, Rosieshe is not so good with people. Liz works hard to make ends meet and relies on So when she finds herself far, far North in the kindness small village of neighbours for childcare. ThankfullyHrafvsnik, having somehow offended the community are happy to rally round and provide friendshipvillage matriarch, supportshe is not sure what she has done, a listening ear nor how to redeem herself and a cup of tea put her final investigations for hard-working Lizher book back on the right track. Soon she will need to rely on them more than ever Enter Wendell Bambleby, as her life takes an unexpected turn that threatens dashingly handsome and insufferable rival who arrives unexpectedly, all charm and delight, much to destroy her happinessEmily's frustration. But why is he here? What does he want? And what exactly is going on with the faerie folk around Hravsnik?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1781857881</amazonuk>0356519120
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Leigh Bardugo1398515388|title= Six of Crows|rating= 5|genre= Fantasy|summary=In The Barrel, anything is possible for the right price, Boy and no one knows this better than criminal mastermind, Kaz Brekker. When Kaz is offered a chance at a perilous mission that could turn his poverty-stricken life upside down, he is determined to see the task fulfilled - but he won't be able to do it alone.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1627792120</amazonuk>}}{{newreviewDog|author=Dan Rhodes|title=When the Professor Got Stuck in the SnowSeishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary= Two people are on a train on their way to, First of all things, a WI meeting where it was the ladies of All Bottoms will be lectured on earthquake, deep in the non-existence of God. One of ocean floor, which created the two people is Professor Richard Dawkinstsunami and this, rampant atheist, hectoring scientist chappiein turn, caused the nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and all-round devotee of ''Deal or No Deal''utter devastation. The other is Smee, his mono-named assistantdeaths were uncountable, amanuensis or 'male secretary'. Smee will come to the fore when the weather sets in and the train journey has to be abandoned some way short loss of its ultimate destination, Upper Bottomlivelihoods was widespread. Instead the pair fetch up at The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the isolated yet friendly community list of Market Horton, and the only option for accommodation is taken – yes, the died-inpriorities but -six months after thetsunami -wool non-believer has to be housed by Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a retired vicar and his wifeconvenience store. This clash of titanic opinions, peppered with social faux pas aplenty will provide for He wasn't a particularly English kind of farcical comedy, dog person but one with the legs convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to go as far as any other Good Books have reached open his car door and Tamon the dog jumped in the past…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1910709018</amazonuk>.
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tania ChandlerChristopher Bowden|title=Please Don't Leave Me HereMr Magenta
|rating=4
|genre=fiction
|summary= If you like unreliable narrators then this is the book for you. In Brigitte, the protagonist of Please Don't Leave Me Here, Tania Chandler has created an unforgettable troubled character whose fractured mental state leads to erratic thought processes, vivid and none too pleasant dreams and an inability, or unwillingness, to recover her memory of her former life. None of which is helped by her drink problem and, as the story progresses, an addiction to prescription medication.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1925228258</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Emylia Hall
|title=The Sea Between Us
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=To her parents, the move to Cornwall was an escape to Christopher Bowden's latest novel is a better way patient untangling of a seemingly ordinary woman's life. For city-girl Robyn, it was wet, remote and miserable and carried out by her nephew after she was counting down the days to University and her return to civilizationhas died. Desperate for something to do to entertain herself, Robyn takes The aunt who always provided a wetsuit safe harbour and surfboard and makes her way a little bit of indulgence to a secluded cove. An inexperienced surfer, she soon gets into difficulty, but is rescued from the sea by a young local man called Jago. From that moment on, the two lives are intertwined by an invisible bond; nephew had had a bond much more interesting life than that will be tested nephew Stephen had ever realised and stretched during the years that followit seems to him an obligation to find it all out.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1472211979</amazonuk>B0B6Z9VJDW
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Anne BarnettJennifer Mason|title=The Largest Baby in Ireland After The FaminePartitions of Unity|rating= 4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=She was all colour and swayHere at Bookbag Towers, we first met Elizabeth Cromwell, dominatrix and as far away as imaginable from the local women. Paleunintentional detective in [[Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery by Jennifer Mason|Preposterous]], pale skin when she investigated and strong dark auburn hair falling free to large wide hips. She wore a purple shawl. That night Felix, unravelled a bachelor, aged 43, living in the house he was born in, dreamt series of purpledisappearances. Purple in the shape In ''Partitions of Unity'', she sets her mind to solving a woman.And just like that, things changemurder. I love this passage. It shows how strong the human pull is. Even when men and women are surrounded by great events - war, political upheaval, famine, depression - individual human desires can change the picture in an instant.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>186151526X</amazonuk>B09LQR9FRF
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alexander CordellWill Carver|title=The Hosts of RebeccaDaves Next Door|rating=54
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=At the end of [[Rape of the Fair Country by Alexander Cordell|Rape of the Fair Country]] Iestyn Mortymer had been sentenced to deportation for seven years because of the part he played Five strangers come together in the Chartist rebellion and the Newport Rising of 1839. His mother, wife, Marie, younger brother, Jethro, sister, Morfydd and the two children of the family returned one moment as a suicide bomber prepares to the land, living detonate his vest on a farm owned by Marie's grandfatherLondon tube line. The life was hard and not just for the MortymersAs their fates overlap, with poverty breathing over their shoulders and it was made worse by the tollgates installed by landownersstory is told in backwards order, effectively adding a levy leading up to any produce which the farmers attempted to movefateful moment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>B0100NC1GM</amazonuk>1914585186}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alexander McCall SmithJennifer Mason|title=The Woman Who Walked in SunshinePreposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery|rating=54
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Back to Botswana I go''A struggling poetry zine, having saved this newest outing in the No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series for a delightful weekend read. I never tire of these characters, mom-and I always look forward to seeing what is happening -pop mobile diner in their lives. This time around the story is about holidaysNorthern California redwoods, amongst other things, and the tricky plans to persuade Mma Ramostwe to take a holiday. But what is Mma Makutsi up to? Does she have plans to take over 400-meter hurdler who just missed the agency entirely whilst Mma Ramotswe is away? |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408706660</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Aldous Huxley|title= After Many A Summer|rating= 4|genre= Dystopian Fiction|summary= Like many of us2004 Olympics, I suspecta women's track coach with a yen for bullwhips, I knew nothing a billionaire with a state-of Huxley other than -the "required reading" of ''Brave New World''. Naturally-art S&M dungeon, on that basis alone, he was pigeon-holed a man serving a life sentence in my head under the heading ''Sci-fi - must check out further''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784870358</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Jill Ciment|title=Heroic Measures|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Ruth and Alex Cohen have to move from their beloved New York apartment. They love itAlabama, but it's five floors up and there's no elevator. Reluctantly they're having an open day for prospective purchasers - and hoping that they'll be able to buy something not ''too'' far out which has that elusive elevator. It'enigmatic signature, K(s not just them, either. There's Dorothy. Dorothy ('Dottie' to those who know her wellx) is their Daschund. She's getting , on a cheap oil painting, an erotic art dealer in years, but then so are Ruth and AlexGeorgia.. Then - the day before the open house - two things happen. An unmarked petrol truck is blocking the city's main tunnel and there's no sign  This is just a sample of the driver. You don't even need to have ''long'' memories to worry about terrorists cast of characters and settings in ManhattanPreposterous. Then Dottie yelps in pain and she As you can't stand see, some keeping upwill be required! The basic premise of this mystery story goes like this...|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782271945</amazonuk>B09STS96HS
}}
 
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