Changes

[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!{{Frontpage|author=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 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=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- Remove -->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?|isbn=0861546873}}{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Kate Atkinson1529153298|title=A God in RuinsThe List of Suspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey

|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=Teddy Todd never really expected 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 survive the warhave 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. As a bomber pilot it wasnMiv's upset because she't something which you could rely on and he certainly knew s overheard that her father wants to move the statisticsfamily 'Down South'. But - against all the oddsWhen you're from Yorkshire, Down South is a frightening, he came through itforeign place, albeit with some time spent as a prisoner of warbest avoided. On balance he had a good warFor Miv, the move would mean leaving her best friend, but time will see him married to NancySharon, father to Viola and grandfather she'll do anything to Sunny and Bertie - and left with prevent that. She's not worried about the feeling dangers or that ither Mum's more difficult stopped talking - to have a good peace than a good waranyone.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0552776645</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jessica Treadway1035906708|title=If She Did ItDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin

|summary=Hanna and Joe had two daughters. Iris, the elder, had done well at school and gone on We tend to be a medical studentthink of Maria Callas as Greek, but Dawn had always struggled. Hanna worried that it she was something born to Greek parents in Manhattan, New York, in December 1923 and only moved to do with the birth Athens when Dawn might have been starved of oxygen for a brief momentshe was thirteen. She Her original surname was never bright, bullied at school and suffered from amblyopia or lazy eye. Dawn called Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to 'lacy eyeCallas'to make it more manageable in the States. In her late teens When she had a boyfriend was back in Athens - tall, goodsupposedly so that she could get appropriate training for her voice -looking Rud and she was obviously besotted with him and brought him home for Thanksgiving, but the pair left raised under the next morning under Nazi occupation by a cloud with Joe accusing Rud of having stolen from the house whilst everyone else was out. That night Hanna and Joe were attacked in their beds; Joe died from his injuries and Hanna was left severely scarred mother who mercilessly exploited her and with made no memory secret of the events of that nighther preference for her elder sister, Jackie.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0751555266</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Christopher RansomAlexander McCall Smith|title=Beneath The LakePerfect Passion Company|rating=34.5

|summary=The Mercer family are on Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and operating as an alternative to all the holiday of online apps in providing a lifetime at more personal, tailored service. Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the somewhat remote Blundstone Lake in Nebraskabusiness, as Ness is planning to take a trip to Canada to get away for a while. It Katie is all the things coming out of a break up with a camping holiday should be; tranquillity bad boyfriend, and beautiful scenery in spades and lots of good old-fashioned family funso jumps at the chance to come home to Edinburgh. When another family arriveAnd so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, thanks to 44 Scotland Street and the Mercers try not Isabel Dalhousie novels, but with some new characters who quickly begin to feel disappointed that their solitude charm. Katie has been encroached upon no experience in running a business, or in match-making, but Ness has full confidence in her abilities, and do their best to keep out of the other familythere's wayalways her very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, but when the newcomers' family disharmony becomes violent and murderousWilliam, The Mercers have no option but to become rather more acquainted with them than they had bargained for. And so their lives are forever altered.lend a hand…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0751555223</amazonuk>1846976596

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jonathan CoeDean Koontz|title=Number 11The Bad Weather Friend|rating=4.5|genre=Paranormal|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.|isbn=1662500491}}{{Frontpage|author=Katherine Howe|title=A True Account|rating=4.5

|summary=There's 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 great deal hanging of significance some pirates in the title of ''Number 11''town, she decides to go and watch. ItEnthralled and horrified in equal measure, Hannah finds herself embroiled in a young boy's death at the common abbreviation for the home hands of the Chancellor of the Exchequertwo vicious pirates. She hides away, as well as a bus route around the outskirts of Birmingham which provides a useful haven for those who canso that they don't afford find and kill her too, and then to escape them completely she runs away to put sea, dressing as a boy and joining the heating on at home. Itnotorious Ned Low's also Jonathan Coe's eleventh novelpirate ship as a cabin boy. On a level more personal to the characters She soon finds herself in the book it's also the number thick of floors below ground which things when there is a mutiny on board, and from there we are being added to a house caught up in Chelsea owned by an obscenely-rich family. Even more obscene is the fact that the owner her rip roaring tale of the house doesn't know what she wants that floor for - everything that could possibly be added (swimming pool with palm trees, wine cellar, bank vault, staff quarters...) is life on the other floors or in the house itself. But Mrs Gunn wants it because she can have itocean waves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0670923796</amazonuk>0861547438

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Nils Schou1471180158|title= Salinger's Letters|rating= 3|genre= General Fiction|summary=Dentist-turned-author Dan Moller is struggling, both financially and mentally, when an opportunity presents itself in the form of a pair of Americans. They offer to sweep away Moller's financial worries in exchange for his correspondence with J. D. Salinger, the elusive author of The Catcher in the Rye. What follows is, for Dan Moller, a journey to America to meet Salinger, and, for the reader, a journey through these letters into Moller's relationship with his depression, the lives of the eccentrics in his writers' collective, and into Western intelligentsia ranging from Kiergegaard's writings to a psychedelic apparition of pop icons featuring Andy Warhol and Woody Allen.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1910124656</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewMaybe Tomorrow|author=Chuck Palahniuk|title=Beautiful YouPenny Parkes|rating=4.5

|summary=Meet Penny Harrigan. And letJamie Matson works in an upper-class grocery store, for a man who's hope your introduction to her is more gentle than that we have on a control freak with all the first page of this book, where she is being raped in front subtlety of a full court househalf brick. Jamie's son, who – male to the bone – sit back and say nothingBo, if not whip out their camera phone'has his problems'. Once people take her out on a gurney He's asthmatic and recognise herthe more you read, we can start from the beginning, where she is a lowly underling at a law firm, having failed too many exams to progress satisfactorilymore you'll suspect that he's on the autistic spectrum. The company is where the worldSometimes Jamie needs to take time off at short notice - she's richest man is a frequent flier in legal negotiations having left the worldlocal A&E and sometimes Bo's best and most beautiful actress, and lo and behold he just happens not fit enough to pick Penny go to replace her with, even if she doesn't think of herself as the most beautiful girl aroundschool. But what exactly is it she is wanted for, and Missed shifts or the need to be away on time to pick Bo up from school are occasions when Jamie can her apolitical style of feminism be controlled and aspirations be met?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009958767X</amazonuk>put in the wrong. It was going to come to a head.

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Melissa HillB0CKD1L5JL|title=The Hotel on Mulberry BayRadio Free Olympia|author=Jeffrey Dunn

|summary=Penny and Elle Harte are sistersPetr is an orphan. Rescued by the strange, but they couldn't be more different. The two had an idyllic childhoodreclusive Bear, he is brought up far from bustling cities and busy human society, in the family hotel in the scenic Irish coastal town forests of Mulberry BayWashington's Olympic Peninsula. Ambitious Elle always had the urge to spread her wings After Bear dies and flya brief sojourn in human company, whereas her dreamy younger sister was content to stay at home and help her parents out in the hotel. As time passedarmed with only a pirate radio transmitter, Petr goes on a journey through the sisters no longer had the close bond they once shared, especially with Elle living in Londonforest, enjoying her successful and demanding role as an architect. A family tragedy brings broadcasting the sisters together once more; howeverstrange, wild and family loyalties are tested as never beforerarely heard voices he encounters.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1471127710</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=John SearanckeSarah Marsh|title=Prunes for BreakfastA Sign of Her Own|rating=43.5

|summary=Edward Searancke was called up to serve his country in 1940After a bout of scarlet fever as a child, not long after the outbreak Ellen Lark loses her hearing. Suddenly plunged into a world of the Second World War and we hear his story from initial call-upsilence, through everything about her life changes. Living in a time when the years use of preparation for the invasion of Francesign language was seen as something only savages do, Ellen is sent to his eventual release as a Prisoner of War and return home school where she is taught to attempt to pick 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 pieces of everyday lifedeaf and using a system called Visible Speech. It's a delightful mixture of the mundane (At the difficulties of getting dry clothingsame time, problems with his feet) Bell is working on other inventions and the dramatic (being surrounded ideas, and captured Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in an orchard in Northern France and his life as a prisoner of war) and much of the story is told through the genuine letters from Searancke to his wife which were handed to his son after his father's death. John Searancke tells us the story complicated tangle of his father's warespionage.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1784625051</amazonuk>1035401614

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Alexander McCall SmithB0BC3YTCMR|title=Chance Developments: Unexpected Love StoriesGood Girls Die|author=Ayura Ayira|rating=4.5

|summary=Sometimes, if I'm in a cafe by myself, I like to watch the people around me and imagine stories about their lives'This story is not for everyone.'' Lavender Daniels was three weeks short of her fifteenth birthday when The Incident happened. Just She was a single sentencevery bright student, overhearda bit too nerdy if truth be told, can lead and suffered from vitiligo - people were afraid to wonderous tales of mystery and intrigue whilst I sip my cappuccino! hug her in case it's contagious. So I was delighted to sit down to read the latest offering from AMS, It's not only because easy being a black girl whose skin is 84% white. She had a crush on seventeen-year-old Reggie Anderson but never thought he wrote it, but because would notice her. Then he wrote it after looking did: Lavender was very good at 5 different black math and white photographs, and then imagining the stories behind themReggie asked if she would tutor him. She readily agreed: tutoring was something she gladly did at church: this was just an extension. Who are all these people, She went to his house and what are their stories? he raped her. Each story is uniqueIn shock, and yet they all have one abiding linkshe even allowed him to give her a lift home...love.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846973295</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Helle Helle and Martin Aitken (translator)1472263936|title=This Should be Written in the Present TenseThe Figurine|author=Victoria Hislop

|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary= This is the It was in 1968 that Helena McCloud made her first novel of Helle Helle'strip to Greece. She was alone: her mother, an award winning Danish authorGreek by birth, had left the family home and refused to return, but Mary and Hamish (Helena's parents) felt that it would be translated into Englisha pity if Helena grew up without knowing her grandparents or understanding her Greek heritage. It is easy Her trip to see from this novel why she is gaining accolades 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 Danish homelandgrandfather, retired general Stamatis Papagiannis. The rhythmic, natural flow He was proud of his close connections to the narrative is mesmerising Junta and appears expected his family to lull you through the bookuphold his values but saw no reason to accommodate them. It has some lovely, spare sentences of description: His prejudices included Helena''There were runs red hair and green eyes -down cottages with open doors and news on the radio. Gulls flocked around an early harvester in the late sun'inherited from her father's Scottish ancestors. But mostly, it is written in a modernist, almost stream of consciousness style, which I found refreshing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099587475</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Homer HickamDean Koontz|title=Carrying Albert Home: The Somewhat True Story of a Man, His Wife and Her AlligatorAfter Death|rating=53|genre= General Fiction|summary=Elsie and Homer Hickam were West Virginians and knew how to make their tales as ''tall as the hills that surrounded them on all sides''. There is a Hickam family legend that has been told and retold so many times over the years that the lines between myth and reality have become well and truly blurred. ''Carrying Albert Home'' is the story Michael Mace, Head of Security, at a man and his wifetop secret biological research facility, a sweet pet alligator and a very lucky rooster is among 55 people who decide to take die when a road trip to Florida virus is released in 1935; the year of the Great Depressiona bio-hazard accident. What follows next is all completely true Finding himself in a makeshift mortuary, wellcovered in plastic, except for the parts he has a sense that are made something very, very bad has happened to him – and only him – as he sits up...|amazonuk=<amazonuk>000815421X</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Lina Wolff and Frank Perry (translator)|title= Bret Easton Ellis and the Other Dogs|rating= 5|genre= General Fiction|summary= Upstairs, a flat where mother and daughter struggle from pay cheque to pay cheque; downstairs, looks around at the love nest shrouded bodies of a dying writer his dead friends and her last of many conquestsformer colleagues. Bret Easton Ellis and the Other Dogs As he recovers his senses, he realises that there is a multilayered testimonial to the writer, the eccentric Alba Cambó, gathered by Araceli, the teenager upstairssomething different about him; he can ''feel'' everything. ''Everything''. Through Araceli Michael isn't ''Michael's bird's-eye view, anecdotes unfold as told by lovers, business acquaintances (often both – for with Alba Cambó you can never know), and the short stories of Cambó herselfanymore.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908276649</amazonuk>1662500467}}{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John Van der KisteB0BVDC2VWH|title=Always ThereThe Grave Listeners|author=William Frank|rating=3.54

|summary=When Dave left Plymouth to go to college in Uxbridge he met LisaThe village is isolated and poor. They sort of palled around together for It's surrounded by a little while with no thought 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 anything morethe forest provides heat and warmth, roofs on homes, welland even gallows, not on Dave's part at leastif needed. The he met Jo and for a long time they were really good friends fear of being buried alive is an existential superstition in the village and it would be a couple of years before they were anything more. Lisa didn't see it that way though: she reckoned that if Jo hadn't come along she and Dave would have stuck together and made is the reason Volushka, a go of it. Dave and Jo's couple of years at college were markeddrunken, if not marredself-indulgent, by Lisa's regular outburstslazy lout of a man is tolerated.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1517761239</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Pamela HartB0BYF82CXT|title=The Soldier's WifeSemi-Detached|author=Deborah Stone

|summary=''...none of it was real, until the last moment when his hand, the tips of his fingers, left the tips of hers Bill and he was gone.'' ''Turned into just another soldier.'' Ruby and Jimmy Amanda are newlyliving in a semi-weds full detached house, stuck in a depressing rut of big dreams boredom and plans for the futuredisappointment, but all of that will have to wait. It is 1915 when Terry and the world is in the grip Great WarFiona – glamorous, sweeping Jimmy away to fight battles successful and very much in far-off Gallipoli. Ruby feels like she's love – move in limbo; no longer an innocent child but not quite a fully-fledged married ladynext door. Not wanting to return homeDespite their different outlooks on life, she decides the couples befriend each other and life appears to stay in Sydney, to keep herself occupied as she waits out the war, longing improve for the return of her beloved husbandboth pairs. 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 to keep herself occupied and earn a little moneyBut all is not what it seems, she soon falls into a comfortable routine and starts to enjoy her new-found independence and responsibilitytheir increasingly interconnected relationships are fated for tragedy.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0349410186</amazonuk>''

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alice ThompsonShalini Boland|title=The Book CollectorSilent Bride|rating=43

|summary=Meet VioletAlice and Seth are a match made in heaven. Swept off her feet by a disarming encounter with a landed gentleman and bookshop owner at a coffee shopHe is everything she has been searching for; handsome, she immediately falls in love with himaccomplished, and is quickly marriedclever, funny; total and almost as quickly with childutter husband-material. When the boy She is bornall he could possibly want in a wife; beautiful, howeversuccessful, fairly understandable doubts creep in. Is her husband hiding anything behind his assuredness – especially when she wakes in confident… and so the middle of the night alone? What ghost inevitable proposal is left eagerly accepted by Alice and the fact he lost his first wife wedding is planned and baby in childbirth? set. What should she understand from her own opinions about her new lifeWhen the much-anticipated day arrives, Alice is walked down the aisle by her new life's lifefather, 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 of a nanny looking after it? Just what who the man at the altar is, who is going on in waiting for her new country pile?to become his wife.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1784630438</amazonuk>1662507089

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sophie Duffy1787636003|title=Bright StarsThe Girls of Summer|author=Katie Bishop|rating=3.5

|summary= I fell into this novel from It was the first short chapter, set in 1983, at Lancaster University – perhaps because I grew up in summer when Rachel Evans turned eighteen that she and Caroline went backpacking around Greece and arrived on the 1980'sisland. The central character and first person narratorRachel wasn't exactly innocent but she was, Cameron Sparkperhaps, comes across as vulnerablenaive, shy and unassumingso when thirty-four-year-old Alistair Wright started to take an interest in her, and at first, likeableshe was flattered rather than wary. As the novel progressed, however, I did find him less plausible and It was quite a bit wet and annoying. He falls in mad love with Bex right at the beginning while before he made any sort of the book, who is a much more interesting character, being a feisty, feminist, fox-hunting activist physical approach to her and saboteurby that time she was obsessed by him. Cameron is clearly besotted and therefore biased in his affection Alistair worked for BexHenry Taylor, looking after his interests on the island and you can sense that this is going to get him into deep trouble from in particular in the bar where all the startgirls either worked or partied.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1785079840</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jack WilsonAmanda Craig|title=In FidelityThree Graces|rating=34.5

|summary=Dick and Christine Blodgett were only 22 when they got married in 1955Few styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the state-of-the-nation novel. As There's something so utterly compelling about any writer who can catch hold of the atmosphere of the novel opens in 1974day and capture it, crafting an image of the country as itstands in one particular moment. To say that Amanda Craig is skilled at doing this would be embarrassingly inadequate: she's clear their relationship is now precariouspractically synonymous with the genre of contemporary social fiction at this point. A brief allegorical prologue, echoing Heraclitus, warns that She has such a crisis will change gift for weaving the course ongoing issues of the marriage irrevocably: 'one day there was a storm…and into the stream never returned to the [channel] it had known before.' The title lives of Chapter 1, 'A Premonition of Danger', reinforces her characters in a way that sense of foreboding. Driving on darkfeels natural and lived-in, icy roadsnever making them ciphers for social commentary but instead fully realised people, Dick and Christine fret about her health: a dental procedure revealed a serious problem grappling with her gums for which she will soon need a biopsyissues far larger than themselves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1784623830</amazonuk>140871468X

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jolien Janzing152915118X|title=Charlotte Bronte's Secret LovePineapple Street|author=Jenny Jackson|rating=34.5|genre=Historical General Fiction|summary=This ''Pineapple Street'' is the second novel by Jolien Janzingstory of three women: Sasha, a Dutch author who lives in BelgiumDarley and Georgiana. Darley and George are sisters and Sasha is married to their brother Cord. Originally published in Dutch as They're Stocktons, only Sasha isn't a Stockton by birth so she isn't readily accepted into the tribe. The Masterproblem's exacerbated when the clan matriarch, Tilda, asks Cord and Sasha if they' in 2013d like to move into the Pineapple Street property. Tilda and Chip have renovated and downsized to another property, it is already being made into a filmstreet or so away, which they own. The flawlessly translated story zeroes in on two momentous years in Charlotte Brontë They won's lifet need any of the furniture from Pineapple Street, 1842–3so Sasha and Cord can move straight in. Nominally, when she was they had a pupil choice but that wasn't the reality. Darley and then a teacher at Georgiana start to call Sasha 'the Pensionnat Heger in Brusselsgold digger'. I read this She's living in tandem with Claire Harman's new biography of Charlotte Brontë; 'their'' family home. They use it so often that they abbreviate 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 parsonGD's daughter.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>9462380597</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jojo MoyesEmily Critchley|title=After YouOne Puzzling Afternoon

|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=After writing 84 year old Edie has lived in the massively popular ''Me Before You''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, all Edie is tormented by the memory of Jojo Moyes' readers were clamouring her childhood friend, Lucy, who went missing over 60 years ago, and the worry that there was a secret she was keeping for moreLucy that somehow might be the thing that reveals the truth of what happened all that time ago. Having been on After 'seeing' Lucy in the edge of our armchairs during high street, just as she was the storylast time she saw her, we all wanted she starts to know what happened find pockets of memories coming back to Lou nexther. Would And yet as she be okay? Would remembers the past, she live is forgetting more and more in her day to day life with passion? . Where would Will she go next? So uncover the arrival of this story is a special treattruth about Lucy's disappearance before her move, as it continues the tale of Lou, although perhaps not in the way we had imagined…and before her memories are gone forever?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0718179617</amazonuk>1804181250

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Mike BullenMadelaine Lucas|title= TrustThirst for Salt|rating= 45|genre= General Literary Fiction|summary= Greg ''Love, I'd read, was supposed to be a light and Amanda are happy. Unmarriedweightless feeling, but together thirteen years and 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 two young daughterslater wisdom, they are very much in lovethe 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. Dan and Sarah arenSet against the backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town 't so fortunate. Their marriage is going through the motions, and they're staying together Thirst for Salt'' details the sake of their troubled teenage son. Following a business conference away from home24-year-old narrator's deepening relationship with her older lover, one bad decision sends a happy couple into turmoildepicting its all-consuming nature, how it changed her perspective on both romantic and turns an unhappy couple into love's young dreamfamilial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably. 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|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0751559253</amazonuk>0861546490

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Menna Van Praag0008506337|title=The Dress Shop Of DreamsGarnett Girls|author=Georgina Moore

|summary= Cambridge is a city of winding streets and cobbled alleyways 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 such a street you will find A Stich In Time, a tiny dress shop filled to bursting with dresses that will take your breath awaylove. Etta Sparks spends her days crafting gowns from jewelRichard was twenty-coloured velvets one and beaded silks described by Margo's mother as 'an older man'. Her parents worried that are unlike any dresses you have seen before; once you try one of EttaRichard's creations on influence would take her away from what they felt she could achieve - going to Oxford and with having a few stitches glittering career. In the event, they eloped and Richard took her away from her expert the Isle of Wight. Margo did go to Oxford and rather magical needle went on to become a well- these incrediblerespected journalist. The couple had three children: Rachel, Imogen and Sasha. Life was lived in London and holidays were spent at Sandcove, amazing garments have the power 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 reach within your soul and extract your deepest desire and hidden-away dreamsleave him in charge''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0749018720</amazonuk>Then Richard left them.

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ruth Rendell1914585402|title=Dark CornersDashboard Elvis is Dead|author=David F Ross

|summary=Carl Martin was in the fortunate position of having just had his first novel published and inheriting his late fatherI reviewed David F Ross's book [[There's Only One Danny Garvey by David F Ross|There's house in Maida Vale. His father had accumulated Only One Danny Garvey]] a collection couple of homeopathic remedies which really should have been thrown out, but Carl had other things on his mind years back and remember being absolutely floored by how powerful and never got round to affecting itwas. There It was his girlfriend Nicolaa gripping, emotionally wounding read, work to start on his second novel and he wanted to let the top floor rereading my review of his house. Authors are it my main takeaway was that I might not that well off, you see and he needed some ready money coming in. In addition to being a bit remiss about the contents of the medicine cabinet he should have been a bit more careful about who he took lavished enough praise on as a tenantit.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091959241</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Julia Franck and Anthea Bell (translator)Lucy Ashe|title=WestClara and Olivia|rating=34.5|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=Put yourself in 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 shoes of inside. And not on stage, either. Because there's a lot that builds a young mother dancer. Some things that can be taught or learnt – discipline, attention to two childrendetail – and some things, that ''je ne sais quoi'', who declares her intention to leave that don't come from the Communist East Germany for West Berlinclassroom. A stage presence, a charm, a ''joie de vivre''. The difference between a hard-worker, and thus loses her scientist joba star. What would you expect |isbn=0861544080}}{{Frontpage|author=Heather Fawcett|title=Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=Emily Wilde is an expert academic scholar on the other side – shops full of attainable productsfaerie lore, pleasant neighbourhoodsand she has travelled extensively, nice neighboursand researched meticulously, an active and busy new to write her life's work, where things might feel alien but at least you speak the same language? very first encyclopaedia of faeries. WellWhilst she is brilliant at research and speaking to faeries, for Nelly Senff, this she is hardly the casenot so good with people. Once past So when she finds herself far, far North in the small village of Hrafvsnik, having somehow offended the depressing Eastern exit procedures village matriarch, she is confronted with more desultory interrogations from those 'welcoming' not sure what she has done, nor how to redeem herself and put her final investigations for her to book back on the Westright track. Enter Wendell Bambleby, beyond which she her dashingly handsome and her children (their fatherinsufferable rival who arrives unexpectedly, whom she never marriedall charm and delight, much to Emily's frustration. But why is long assumed dead by the authorities, if nobody else) are practically left in a shared accommodation in a transit camp. he here? What does he want? The shops are full of And what exactly is still unobtainable, going on with the children hate their new school – and people still look down on them as being foreign, even if they have only moved across a city.faerie folk around Hravsnik?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099554321</amazonuk>0356519120

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Beverley Hansford1398515388|title=The Golden AnkletBoy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)|rating=34.5

|summary=Jane Carroll is becoming more First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and more successful as a young journalist on a woman's magazine. Yetthis, although her future looks securein turn, Jane would like to discover more about her pastcaused the nuclear meltdown. As an orphan she The result was raised in a children's home with no information regarding complete and utter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, and the identity loss of her parents apart from what livelihoods was on her birth certificatewidespread. Therefore armed with this certificate and The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the help list of her new boyfriend Bob, not to mention genealogist dabbling neighbour Gerald, priorities but - six months after the search beginstsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. However nothing is as straightforward, or indeed as safe, as she thought it He wasn't a dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that he would becall Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the dog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784624675</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jane L GibsonChristopher Bowden|title=A Different ReflectionMr Magenta

|summary=Eternal optimist Kat has always believed in fairytales and happy endings but canChristopher Bowden't help but wonder where her own life went wrong. Stuck in s latest novel is a patient untangling of a dead-end relationship with dull workaholic John, itseemingly ordinary woman's hardly the happy-ever-life, carried out by her nephew after that she'd has died. The aunt who always hoped for. Things are about to change, however, when Kat discovers provided a mysterious house that has been cursed by an enchantment; a handsome Regency beau is trapped within the mirrors safe harbour and only a declaration little bit of true love can break the spell indulgence to a young nephew had had a much more interesting life than that nephew Stephen had ever realised and release it seems to him..an obligation to find it all out.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1784622508</amazonuk>B0B6Z9VJDW

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sandy HogarthJennifer Mason|title=Partitions of Unity|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|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...|isbn=B09LQR9FRF}}{{Frontpage|author=Will Carver|title=The Glass GirlDaves Next Door|rating=34|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.5As their fates overlap, the story is told in backwards order, leading up to the fateful moment.|isbn= 1914585186}} {{Frontpage|author=Jennifer Mason|title=Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery|rating=4

|summary=Sandy Hogarth''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 debut novel opens in 1975 track coach with a yen for bullwhips, a billionaire with fifteena state-yearof-old Ruth Bishop attending the-art S&M dungeon, a party with her older sisterman serving a life sentence in Alabama, an enigmatic signature, Alexis. 'They called me VLK(s, Virgin Lipsx), because I'd never kissed on a boycheap oil painting, an erotic art dealer in Georgia. Sex wasn't mentioned at home.' That all changes when Alexis tells Ruth to go outside – someone is waiting for her. It's one of Alexis's friends,  This is just a notorious bad boy, sample of the cast of characters and he assaults Ruth right theresettings in Preposterous. As you can see, some keeping up against the house. Could Alexis really have intended for will be required! The basic premise of this mystery story goes like 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 adoption, but never stops thinking about her. No one but Lucy knows there ever was a baby.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1785071548</amazonuk>B09STS96HS