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[[Category:General Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]]__NOTOC__ <!{{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-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}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1529153298|title=The List of Suspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary=It's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. (A woman? I mean, honestly...) She's not what's worrying Miv's family, though. Women have been disappearing. Well, they've been murdered, but to have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. Miv's upset because she's overheard that her father wants to move the family 'Down South'. When you're from Yorkshire, Down South is a frightening, foreign place, best avoided. For Miv, the move would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, and she'll do anything to prevent that. She's not worried about the dangers or that her Mum's stopped talking - to anyone.}}{{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 only moved to Athens when she was thirteen. Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to 'Callas' to make it more manageable in the States. When she was back in Athens - supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for her voice - she was raised under the Nazi occupation by a mother who mercilessly exploited her and made no secret of her preference for her elder sister, Jackie.}}{{Frontpage|author=Alexander McCall Smith|title=The Perfect Passion Company|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=The Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and operating as an alternative to all the online apps in providing a more personal, tailored service. Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the business, as Ness is planning to take a trip to Canada to get away for a while. Katie is coming out of a break up with a bad boyfriend, and so jumps at the chance to come home to Edinburgh. And so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, thanks to 44 Scotland Street and the Isabel Dalhousie novels, but with some new characters who quickly begin to charm. Katie has no experience in running a business, or in match-making, but Ness has full confidence in her abilities, and there's always her very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, William, to lend a hand…|isbn=1846976596}}{{Frontpage|author=Dean Koontz|title=The 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- Remove 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|genre=General Fiction|summary=Hannah Masury is living in Boston, having been sent to live with a family who run an inn, and being made to work there from a young age. When she hears there is to be a hanging of some pirates in the town, she decides to go and watch. Enthralled and horrified in equal measure, Hannah finds herself embroiled in a young boy's death at the hands of two vicious pirates. She hides away, so that they don't find and kill her too, and then to escape them completely she runs away to sea, dressing as a boy and joining the notorious Ned Low's pirate ship as a cabin boy. She soon finds herself in the thick of things when there is a mutiny on board, and from there we are caught up in her rip roaring tale of life on the ocean waves.|isbn=0861547438}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1471180158|title=Maybe Tomorrow|author=Penny Parkes|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Jamie Matson works in an upper-class grocery store, for a man who's a control freak with all the subtlety of a half brick. Jamie's son, Bo, 'has his problems'. He's asthmatic and the more you read, the more you'll suspect that he's on the autistic spectrum. Sometimes Jamie needs to take time off at short notice ->she's a frequent flier in the local A&E and sometimes Bo's not fit enough to go to school. Missed shifts or the need to be away on time to pick Bo up from school are occasions when Jamie can be controlled and put in the wrong. It was going to come to a head.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=B0CKD1L5JL|title=Radio Free Olympia|author=Jeffrey Dunn|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary= Petr is an orphan. Rescued by the strange, reclusive Bear, he is brought up far from bustling cities and busy human society, in the forests of Washington's Olympic Peninsula. After Bear dies and a brief sojourn in human company, and armed with only a pirate radio transmitter, Petr goes on a journey through the forest, broadcasting the strange, wild and rarely heard voices he encounters.}}{{Frontpage|author=Sarah Marsh|title=A Sign of Her Own|rating=3.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=After a bout of scarlet fever as a child, Ellen Lark loses her hearing. Suddenly plunged into a world of silence, everything about her life changes. Living in a time when the use of sign language was seen as something only savages do, Ellen is sent to a school where she is taught to lip read, but physically restrained from signing. From here, she ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the deaf and using a system called Visible Speech. At the same time, Bell is working on other inventions and ideas, and Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a complicated tangle of espionage.|isbn=1035401614}}{{Frontpage|isbn=B0BC3YTCMR|title=Good Girls Die|author=Ayura Ayira|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=''This story is not for everyone.''
|rating=3
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=''The Life to Come'' tells the story of several ''interesting'' characters who Alice and Seth are all linked by one person: Pippaa match made in heaven. He is everything she has been searching for; handsome, accomplished, clever, funny; total and utter husband-material. The novel She is split into five chapters with each one focusing on all he could possibly want in a different personwife; beautiful, from Cassie successful, confident… and her bizarre relationship with Ash to George who has finished his thesis so the inevitable proposal is eagerly accepted by Alice and the wedding is in planned and set. When the process of writing his first novel. Pippamuch-anticipated day arrives, who Alice is also a writerwalked down the aisle by her father, appears in each of these chapters, in some cases just beaming with pride and excitement as a background character. Howevershe surveys the congregation – their friends assembled to celebrate this joyful day and when Seth turns to face his approaching bride, what I found most fascinating about this novel was that de Kretser tells the story of PippaAlice's life through all these various appearances and leaves world implodes because she has absolutely no idea who the man at the reader with a real sense of altar is, who she is as a person and having watched waiting for her development as a characterto become his wife.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1760296708</amazonuk>1662507089
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{{newreview <!-- remove 29/12 -->Frontpage|isbn=1787636003|title=Servants The Girls of Summer|author=Katie Bishop|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary=It was the Undergroundsummer when Rachel Evans turned eighteen that she and Caroline went backpacking around Greece and arrived on the island. Rachel wasn't exactly innocent but she was, perhaps, naive, so when thirty-four-year-old Alistair Wright started to take an interest in her, she was flattered rather than wary. It was quite a while before he made any sort of physical approach to her and by that time she was obsessed by him. Alistair worked for Henry Taylor, looking after his interests on the island and in particular in the bar where all the girls either worked or partied.}}{{Frontpage|author=David SsembajjoAmanda Craig|title=Three Graces|rating=34.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Having experienced a terrible famine in his own country, Kalamchi leaves to travel and learn. He returns with a burning desire to feed his people Few styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the state-of-the- but not only to feed their stomachs but to feed their minds, toonation novel. Kalamchi wants to raise his peopleThere's consciousness something so that they utterly compelling about any writer who can fight against catch hold of the atmosphere of the day and capture it, crafting an image of the dictator Bamutu - chillingly known country as it stands in one particular moment. To say that Amanda Craig is skilled at doing this would be embarrassingly inadequate: she''president s practically synonymous with the genre of contemporary social fiction at this point. She has such a gift for life weaving the ongoing issues of the day into the lives of her characters in a way that feels natural and after death''lived-in, never making them ciphers for social commentary but instead fully realised people, grappling with issues far larger than themselves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848765800</amazonuk>140871468X
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{{newreview <!-- remove 28/12 -->Frontpage|authorisbn=Rob Murphy152915118X|title=Rotten to the CorePineapple Street|author=Jenny Jackson|rating=4.5|genre=Thrillers General Fiction|summary=It's 2009'Pineapple Street'' is the story of three women: Sasha, Darley and Russia look like being awarded the football World Cup hosting rights for the oh-so-distant 2018 tournament - that is, until England stick their oar inGeorgiana. They have solved their hooligan problem, Darley and improved their transport system, George are sisters and so at last are valid final holders. Watching this Sasha is France, who have married to reciprocate with the Russians who helped them get France their brother Cord. They'98re Stocktons, and they have only Sasha isn't a planStockton by birth so she isn't readily accepted into the tribe. At this stage The problem's exacerbated when the UEFA European championship of 2016 has not been awardedclan matriarch, Tilda, asks Cord and while France remain favourites Sasha if they'd like to get the job, again some upstart idea has poked its head above move into the parapet - a joint offering from Wales and ScotlandPineapple Street property. Yes, these two tiny countries, separated by 200 miles Tilda and without a brilliant connection from one to the other, Chip have renovated and without some vital posh hotels here and there, and with no serious claim to soccer fame when it comes downsized to winning thingsanother property, are unlikely hosts. But what if France could persuade the world it was a good idea - and let Russian espionage prove it not to be street or soaway, with all the while the French around to pick up the pieces? All which they own. They won't need any of the UK would be damagedfurniture from Pineapple Street, meaning England so Sasha and Cord can move straight in. Nominally, they had a choice but that wasn'18 would be dead in t the water, reality. Darley and Russia would win outGeorgiana start to call Sasha 'the gold digger'. And who She's living in ''their'' family home. They use it so often that they abbreviate it to say 'the Brits, with their devolution habits, and their first coalition government in a long time, could not get through without damaging themselves?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1546282998</amazonuk>GD'.
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{{newreview <!-- remove 28/12 -->Frontpage|author=Paul StidolphEmily Critchley|title=Forests in the SaharaOne Puzzling Afternoon
|rating=4
|genre=Thrillers Crime|summary=''Everyone I speak to thinks you are going to come to some sort of sticky end.'' Those are not 84 year old Edie has lived in the most promising words a man can hear from his new partnersame small town for almost her whole life, but now she doesn't lie in this instance. He is Jeffrey Harvey, facing a young Cambridge professor, who has been dabbling move as her son wants to move to another house and bring Edie to live with some extra-curricular workhis family, creating GM trees that can keep vast quantities of water purifiedas Edie is starting to lose her memory. Get an iceberg or three worth However, Edie is tormented by the memory of H2O near Africaher childhood friend, Lucy, where clean water is still a scarce resourcewho went missing over 60 years ago, and the trees can do their bit and the water will advance the place and make Jeffrey worry that there was a well-respected global entrepreneur. If, secret she was keeping for Lucy that is, he can get round all somehow might be the problems in his life - fractions in thing that reveals the start-up involved truth of what happened all that time ago. After 'seeing' Lucy in the projecthigh street, a finance officer embezzling just as she was the funds for gambling - ohlast time she saw her, and a man ready she starts to accuse Jeffrey of murder and theft find pockets of research data on a case reaching memories coming back several yearsto her. It seems And yet as she remembers the lovely girlfriend was right past, she is forgetting more and more in her day to see no shortage of possible sticky ends..day life. Will she uncover the truth about Lucy's disappearance before her move, and before her memories are gone forever?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1546282351</amazonuk>1804181250
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{{Frontpage
|author=Madelaine Lucas
|title=Thirst for Salt
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= ''Love, I'd read, was supposed to be a light and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity''
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Tony Peake1398515388|title= North FacingThe Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)|rating= 4.5|genre= General Fiction|summary=At school in Pretoria in 1962First of all, Paul Harvey struggles to fit in - desperate to join the popular group no matter what it may take. His focus on surviving was the perils of school so intenseearthquake, that he fails to see the turbulence deep in both South Africa and the larger world - with ocean floor, which created the arrest of Nelson Mandela tsunami and this, in turn, caused the Cuban Missile Crisis affecting nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and utter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, and the actions loss of the adults around himlivelihoods was widespread. A new and charismatic teacher decides to educate The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the boys in list of priorities but - six months after the unstable situation in the world tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside - and a growing awareness of both that and his sexuality pushes Paul Harvey into decisions convenience store. He wasn't a dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that he later comes would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to regret - open his car door and their weight pushes him to return to South Africa in Tamon the present day - a man dog jumped in his sixties keen to make sense of a troubled and utterly fascinating past. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0995590028</amazonuk>
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|genre=General Fiction
|summary=In some apartments Here at Bookbag Towers, we first met Elizabeth Cromwell, dominatrix and unintentional detective in Singapore you'll find a bomb shelter - airless [[Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery by Jennifer Mason|Preposterous]], when she investigated and without unravelled a windowseries of disappearances. It will probably house the washing machine and the other domestic paraphernalia thatIn 's got nowhere else to go. There'll be a mattress on the floor Partitions of this stifling room, with the heat increased by the tumble dryer. This is the maidUnity's room. It's possibly better than sleeping under the dining room table, but not by muchshe sets her mind to solving a murder.. Back in 2009 there were 201,000 female domestic workers in Singapore, many not earning any money for a year until they've repaid 'training' and other fees to the agency, many living in 'the maid's room'.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473659566</amazonuk>B09LQR9FRF
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Will Carver|title=Scoop of The 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 Yearstory is told in backwards order, leading up to the fateful moment.|isbn= 1914585186}} {{Frontpage|author=Tom ClaverJennifer Mason|title=Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery
|rating=4
|genre=ThrillersGeneral Fiction|summary=Martin is an ambitious journalist working on ''A struggling poetry zine, a mom-and-pop mobile diner in the Financial Review. Martin is good at his job Northern California redwoods, a 400- accuratemeter hurdler who just missed the 2004 Olympics, dedicated, hardworking and a women's track coach with a good nose yen for bullwhips, a scoop. But Martin is also uninterested in the culture that comes billionaire with reporting. He has a wife and two daughters at home and he doesn't want to waste time and money in state-of-the pub-art S&M dungeon, talking macho nonsense with the other hacks. He is a far cry from his colleague Tom de Lacyman serving a life sentence in Alabama, an enigmatic signature, K(s, x), on a charismaticcheap oil painting, silver-spooned charmer with piercing blue eyesan erotic art dealer in Georgia... Tom doesn't ' This is just grab a sample of the limelight though - he also grabs the promotion to industrial correspondentcast of characters and settings in Preposterous. And that is the job Martin not only wantedAs you can see, but neededsome keeping up will be required! The basic premise of this mystery story goes like this...|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1788036220</amazonuk>B09STS96HS
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Alexander McCall SmithB0B2N7MVYM|title=The Good Pilot Peter WoodhouseCalculations of Rational Men|author=Daniel Godfrey
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=If youIt've never read an Alexander McCall Smith novel, but have always thought you might like s the 10th of December 1962 when we first meet Dr Joseph Marr. Just to tryput what happens in context, one day then this might be the book Cuban missile crisis is still very fresh in people's minds. The world has barely had a chance to start withbreathe out. Rather than face the daunting task of leaping into one of his now very long-running series, this is a standalone novelBut for Joe Marr, and it gives a good flavour of AMS's style, not the missile crisis that's at the way he can write to evoke a feeling front of time and place, and the warm optimism underlying his words that is so very reassuring and comforting to readmind. It calls itself 'a wartime romanceHe's been convicted of murder. With the current state of medical knowledge, which it is, and yet it is much more 's hard to think otherwise than that besides. Focussing mainly on Valthe prosecution would never have been brought but Joe Marr has spent his first few days in HMP Queen's Bench, a young woman working as a Land Girl, we see her falling in love with an American pilot, Mike Rogersrelatively new prison. Thanks to a sheepdog on ValHe's farm (the Peter Woodhouse from the title) their lives become entwined with that of a German soldierjust getting used to his roommate, Mervyn, and the book shows us a variety learning to be wary of friendships as they grow and develop over the yearsMcArthur brothers.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846974097</amazonuk>
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