Changes

[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]__NOTOC__ {{Frontpage|author=Matthew Tree|title=We'll Never Know|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, a drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of his artistic passions all failed miserably and who had endless crises of self confidence. So Tim applied himself to his studies, cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and set himself high but achievable ambitions.|isbn= B0CVFXPGP8}}{{Frontpage|isbn=B0C47LV1PC|title=Fragility|author=Mosby Woods|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= Can you make a ''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, is the question should you make it? Or is the question if you did, would it land? The catch is that the answer for both could well be.... no.

''Fragility'' is set as the city of Portland, Oregon, cautiously begins to emerge from the restrictions imposed during the covid pandemic}}{{Frontpage|author=Mosby Woods|title=A Whirly Man Loses His Turn|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= The West isn't the dominant force it once was. Nobody in the West is quite sure how to mend this or even if mending it is the best course of action. Governments are flailing. A war here, a push for climate action there. A feeling that nobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, there was a man with precognition. Imagine the strategic advantage in this asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the most valuable asset in history. Imagine then, that this man loses this ability. What would governments do to get it back?|class-"wikitable" cellpaddingisbn=B0C9SNG8R1}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0571379559|title=The House of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary="15" ''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the story of four people. Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in the house on the riverbank, built of broken bricks. <!Insubstantial as it might look, it's stood the passage of time, storms and floods. Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, to complete the delivery rounds -and to bring in sufficient money. They have twin boys - INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->Sonny and Max, the rainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. People don't believe that they're related, much less twins and there's an assumption when Max is out with his mother that she's his nanny.}}{{Frontpage|author=Claire North|title=House of Odysseus|rating=5|genre= Literary Fiction |summary= ''What could matter more than love?''

<!The follow-up to the excellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a few months after where we left off. In the palace of Odysseus, with delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her husband, who sailed to war at Troy and then by divine intervention never returned home. As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the throne of the Western Isles. Having survived – politically and physical – the chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca's shores, Queen Penelope is on the brink of a fragile peace. One that shatters however with the return of Orestes, King of Mycenae, and his sister Elektra, seeking refuge.|isbn=0356516075}}{{Frontpage|author= Kay Chronister|title= Desert Creatures|rating= 4|genre= Dystopian Fiction|summary= With a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, post- Wilson apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is a robotic takeover, a world devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, this genre is a way for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. ''Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a new work of post-->apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the fears that exist for humanity today. It is a shocking novel that still manages to find hope.|isbn=1803364998}}{{frontpage|isbn=1803363002|author= Eric LaRocca|-title= The Trees Grew Because I Bled There| stylerating="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"5|genre= Horror[[image:1786496038.jpg|linksummary=http://wwwHorror taps into something primeval within us. It is used as a way to reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and process them. Most horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad'', whether that is a home invader, a monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and, by the end of the story, beatable.amazonEric LaRocca's ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that.coIt is a collection of short stories more interested in the horrors of illness, grief and humiliation.uk/dp/1786496038/refHorrors that linger and are harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''.}}{{Frontpage|author=Madelaine Lucas|title=Thirst for Salt|rating=5|genre=nosim?tagLiterary Fiction|summary=thebookbag-21]]''Love, I'd read, was supposed to be a light and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity''

''Beautiful Shining People'' revolves around the question of identity and acceptance. Of what it means to be human. Of what is real and what is artificial, and whether the development of technology is exciting or frightening.| styleisbn="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"191458564X}}{{Frontpage|author=Jennifer Saint|title=Atalanta|rating=5|genre=[[Aftershocks by A N Wilson]]==Literary Fiction|summary=''I was as worthy as any one of them. I would get on board that ship, I vowed. I would take my place, not just in the name of the goddess. It was for the sake of my name, too. Atalanta''

[[image:3Princess.5starWarrior.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]], [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]]In a country very much like New Zealand, but at the same time most avowedly not, two women will find loveLover. Strong love too, for our narrator will say that her first attraction for her partner was the only thing to make sense of all those exaggerated songs she'd heard, and books and poems she'd read, and plays she'd acted in – works of art that had until then seemed sheer hyperboleHero. It was entirely unrequited love for quite some time, but it does burgeon, or so we're promised from the off, because of something quite drastic – a major earthquake very much like the one that hit Christchurch, but at the same time most avowedly not. This book then is the combined exploration of the lovers and the story of the quake. [[Aftershocks by A N Wilson|Full Review]]

<!Abandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a son, Atalanta is raised under the protective eye of the goddess Athemis and fashioned into a formidable huntress, one who longs for adventure. When the opportunity comes – to join the Argonauts, a fierce band of warriors, descendent from the Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the chance to fight in Artemis' name and carve out her own legendary place in history. What follows is a whirlwind of challenges and discovery and through it, Atalanta must remember Artemis' fatal warning: that if she marries, it will be her undoing.|isbn=1472292154}}{{Frontpage|author=Amanthi Harris|title=Beautiful Place|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of her home country. This is a place she spent her formative years. It is not a place she was born into, but the one she thinks of as home. How she came to be at the Villa, how it became her home, and the machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the ''score'' for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. Padma's present fails to escape her past and much like the musical score of a film, that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the Villa.|isbn=1784631930}}{{Frontpage|isbn=178563335X|title=Sea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=When we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you need to pick the children up. Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year- Davies old Hannah and her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter-in->law won't let her see her grandson. Holthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, is a lovely place, but Rachel is struggling to develop a real bond with the parish - and she's in awe of the vicar, Gail, but then she's been doing the job for more than thirty years. Rachel and Christopher hoped that a walk on the beach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing.}}{{Frontpage|-isbn=1398515388| styletitle="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"The Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)[[image:1786074443|rating=4.jpg5|linkgenre=http://wwwGeneral Fiction|summary=First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, in turn, caused the nuclear meltdown.amazon The result was complete and utter devastation.co The deaths were uncountable, and the loss of livelihoods was widespread.uk/dp/1786074443/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the tsunami -21]]Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. He wasn't a dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the dog jumped in.}}

| style="vertical''Walter stood waist-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[Tirzah deep in the fragrant water, naked except for his beaten leather hat. Long strands of their eggs wove around him, sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Two of the dogs leaned over the opening and barked down at the Prince strange noise of Crows by Deborah Kay Davies]]===the buckets as he filled them.''

[[image:5starHow is that for an opening? The style of this novel in the form of interconnected short stories goes from succinct and laconic to wistful and musing, turning on a sixpence.jpgAnd author Marco North, who has the most wonderful turn of phrase, starts as he means to go on.}}{{Frontpage|linkauthor=Category:{{{Daisy Hildyard|title=Emergency|rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The summary of this book doesn't come close to explaining what is done with the premise.|Literary Fiction]]isbn=1913097811}}

This {{Frontpage |author=Sally Oliver |title=The Weight of Loss |rating=4 |genre=Literary Fiction |summary= Marianne is grieving. Traumatised after the death of her sister, she awakes to find strange, thick black hairs sprouting from the bones of her spine which steadily increase in size and volume. Her GP, diagnosing the odd phenomenon as a quiet but remarkable storyphysical reaction to her grief, recommends she go to stay at Nede, written an experimental new treatment centre in Wales. Yet something strange is happening to Marianne and the other patients at Nede: a style reminiscent metamorphosis of Ea kind. MAs Marianne's memories threaten to overwhelm her, Nede offers her release from this cycle of memory and pain—but only at a terrible price: that of identity itself. Forster|isbn= 086154112X }} {{Frontpage|author=Natalia Garcia Freire|title=This World Does Not Belong To Us|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= Early comments on this debut novel from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, a delight. I will agree with the first – tremendous is no understatement – but 'a delight'[Tirzah and is perhaps using the Prince expression in a way I'm not familiar with. I have to confess my ignorance of Crowsthe Spanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. From the little I have read (in translation, I don't read Spanish) there does seem to be a tendency towards the fantastical – the mystical realism. |isbn=0861541901}}{{Frontpage|author=Jennifer Saint|title=Elektra|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=' has no great Elektra' by Jennifer Saint tells the story of three women who live in the heavily male dominated world of Ancient Greece. Cassandra, Clytemnestra, and Elektra are all bit players in the story of the Trojan War. Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that often the silent women have the most compelling stories and stirring action but rather small ripples the most extreme furies.|isbn=1472273915}}{{Frontpage|isbn=8409290103|title=If Only|author=Matthew Tree|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Twenty-one-year-old Malcolm Lowry had been sent abroad by his father, cotton-broker AO Lowry: he asked his accountant, Mr Patrick, to ensure that make the young man got on board the boat and thereafter Patrick was to send him a huge impactmonthly allowance. Patrick sent the money regularly and a correspondence - of sorts - sprang up between the two although we hear more about what Lowry has to say than Patrick. Tirzah is It wasn't that Lowry senior didn't care for his son, it was that he didn't care to have him in this country where he might be a danger to his wife and other children. The alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to get the young girl man on his way.}}{{Frontpage|author=Antoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)|title=Red is My Heart|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction |summary=[[:Category:Antoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]] books have always been black and white and read in my house. And so was this one, although I could have spelled that more accurately – this one was, and is, black and white and red. Yes, he has an artistic collaborator on this piece, and I think it's possible to say not one page lacks the influence of sixteen raised some striking visual ideas.|isbn=1913547183}}{{Frontpage|isbn=B098FFFBH9|title=Snowcub|author=Graham Fulbright|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Fourteen-year-old Rachel is her school's animal rights project leader and she and her friend are producing a competition entry to highlight the way in which human beings exploit the animal world. She gets a small Welsh town great deal of support from her family: father Pip Harrison, a lecturer at Imperial College, London, mother Kate and her twin, Nick. Kate runs the family business, a toy shop called Cornucopia in Putney, which is where we'll meet Rachel's main (if unsuspected) source of information: five soft toys.}}{{Frontpage|author=Yancey Williams|title=Crosshairs of the 1970s by highly religious parents as part Devil|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Award-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is getting on in years and, despite his strenuous objections and thanks to his daughter, finds himself living - or imprisoned, from Eddie's point of view - in room 315 of the Garden of Eden nursing home, with only a strict religious communitytrusty nursing aide, Jenkins, for palatable company. Nothing is going to keep Eddie from his stock-in-trade of writing though, so here, for his readers, are his wanderings through his life's work. |isbn=0986031658}} {{Frontpage|isbn=0008421714|title=Mrs March|author=Virginia Feito|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The book follows Tirzah though a tumultuous year as she tries problem began just after the publication of George March's most successful novel to decide who she wants date. Everyone but Mrs March (we know her first name only on the last page) seemed to either bereading it or had already done so. Every day Mrs March went to the local patisserie to buy olive bread but on that particular morning, and what Patricia asked, as she wants to do with was wrapping the bread, ''but isn't this the first time he's based a character on you?'' She mentioned that Johanna, the principal character had 'her lifemannerisms''. [[Tirzah and Perhaps this would not have mattered, except for the fact that Johanna is the Prince whore of Crows by Deborah Kay Davies|Full Review]]Nantes - ''a weak, plain, detestable, pathetic, unloved, unloveable wretch.''}}

<!-- Brooke Fieldhouse -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:1789013992.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1789013992/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[The Gilded Ones by Brooke Fieldhouse]]=== [[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Crime|Crime]], [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]] It was a hot day in 1984 and Pulse had two job interviews for the day, but the heat wasn't the only reason why he wasn't feeling on top form. He'd had a disturbing dream the night before. He'd been following a Porsche on a difficult route, probably somewhere in the Alps when the Porsche went off the road. The passenger, a man, was dead, but the woman was still alive. ''I'm Freia...'', she said. ''It's spelled the German way.'' Of the two job interviews, the first was with an up-and-coming design studio in Brighton and it would almost certainly be good for Pulse's career. The second was with a run-down practice based in an old London house and headed by Patrick Lloyd-Lewis, whose wife, Freia, had recently died in unexplained circumstances. The link with the dream of the night before was too much for Pulse to refuse the offer of a job. He couldn't resist the lure of the mystery. [[The Gilded Ones by Brooke Fieldhouse|Full Review]]  <!-- Cullen -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:0718189140.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0718189140/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[The Lost Letters of William Woolf by Helen Cullen]]=== [[image:5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]], [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]] William Woolf is a letter detective, working in the Dead Letters Depot in East London. He spends his days deciphering smudged addresses, tracking down mysterious people and reading endless letters of love, guilt, death, hope, and everyday life. [[The Lost Letters of William Woolf by Helen Cullen|Full Review]] <!-- Dehnel -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:1786073579.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1786073579/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[Lala by Jacek Dehnel and Antonia Lloyd-Jones (translator)]]=== [[image:5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]] ''This is the mysterious nature of storytelling: the same start can also mean different endings, and different starts can lead to the same finale. It's all subordinate to the greater narrative, which starts somewhere in Kiev''. This beautiful book is exactly that, the mysterious art of storytelling. The wayward meanderings of memory, of tangents and digressions, of side notes and elaborations, but above all that of affection; for both the story and the storyteller. What makes us who we are if not our culture and heritage and in this book our narrator re-lives and re-tells the story of his heritage told to him by his grandmother. [[Lala by Jacek Dehnel and Antonia Lloyd-Jones (translator)|Full Review]] <!-- Wise -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:0857302183.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0857302183/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[The Emperor of Shoes by Spencer Wise]]=== [[image:3star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]] ''The Emperor of Shoes'' is the story of Alex Cohen, the heir to a lucrative shoe factory based in southern China. More idealistic than his profit-obsessed father, and less motivated solely by the bottom line, he's unsure of himself: unsure whether he can continue his father's success. But complications arise when he starts to question how morally sound the business really is, and whether the workers are being given a fair deal. [[The Emperor of Shoes by Spencer Wise|Full Review]] <!-- Vodolazkin -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:1786072718.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1786072718/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[The Aviator by Eugene Vodolazkin and Lisa Hayden (Translator)]]=== [[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]] Innokenty Petrovich Platonov wakes up in a hospital bed with no recollection of who he is or how he got there. He is tended by a single doctor, Doctor Geiger, who gives him a pencil and notebook and encourages him to write down his observations and memories. The notebook is thick, like a novel. How can Innokenty fill it if he cannot remember anything? But slowly the memories start to return, memories of childhood holidays at the beach, of life in the dacha, of the airfield and the aviators...and the island...it seems like some memories may be better left buried. He remembers that he is the same age as the century, born in 1900. But if that is the case, how is he still a young man when the pills by his bedside are dated 1999? [[The Aviator by Eugene Vodolazkin and Lisa Hayden (Translator)|Full Review]] <!-- Houm -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:1782273778.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1782273778/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[The Gradual Disappearance of Jane Ashland by Nicolai Houm and Anna Paterson (translator)]]=== [[image:4.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]], [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]] Jane Ashland is dying. That's a description of a very early scene here – but also, of course, a platitude that can apply to all of us. Jane's life, if anything, is going up and down in levels of pleasure, energy – sobriety – in these pages, but we soon learn that it recently found a very deeply dark down place. Here then, scattered through a timeline-bending narrative, we have her days finding a Lincolnesque lover as a student in New York, glimpses of therapy, a drive to find her ancestors that takes her from rural America to Norway – and a trip there with a new-found friend to watch the musk oxen, of all things. And nowhere in sight is anything like a platitude… [[The Gradual Disappearance of Jane Ashland by Nicolai Houm and Anna Paterson (translator)|Full Review]] <!-- Bonnefoy -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:1910477524.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1910477524/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[Black Sugar by Miguel Bonnefoy and Emily Boyce (translator)]]=== [[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]] Miguel Bonnefoy's ''Black Sugar'' is a sensual epic chronicling three generations of the Otero family. The tale begins with the disappearance of Captain Henry Morgan's treasure and then illustrates the power this treasure holds over people. Multiple people become obsessed with finding this fabled treasure that has become an urban legend in the town in which the story is set. [[Black Sugar by Miguel Bonnefoy and Emily Boyce (translator)|Full Review]] <!-- Ruby -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:1455565180.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1455565180/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[The Zero and the One by Ryan Ruby]]=== [[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]] ''The Zero and the One'' is an incredibly well written and well crafted book. We meet our narrator, Owen, on the plane to New York for the funeral of his best friend. He is still reeling after recent events, a suicide pact in which his friend died but he lived, and he is going through the motions of the funeral and consoling family whilst still trying to get to grips with his own feelings of grief and guilt. So far, so simple. But this is where the talent of Ryan Ruby steps in and slowly, so slowly, he reveals little tantalising clues that all is not what it seems, a throw-away comment here, a mis-step there, and it becomes clear that Owen is not a reliable narrator. [[The Zero and the One by Ryan Ruby|Full Review]] <!-- Miles -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:0553447580.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0553447580/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[Anatomy of a Miracle by Jonathan Miles]]=== [[image:3.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]] Look closely at the cover of Jonathan Miles's third novel and you'll see the central drama depicted: white wheelchair tracks snake up from the bottom and stop three-quarters of the way from the top, where they are replaced by footprints. On 23 August 2014, wheelchair-bound veteran Cameron Harris stands up and walks outside the Biz-E-Bee convenience store in Biloxi, Mississippi. In the rest of the novel we find out how he got to this point and what others – ranging from his doctor to representatives of the Roman Catholic Church – will make of his recovery. Was it a miracle, or an explainable medical phenomenon? [[Anatomy of a Miracle by Jonathan Miles|Full Review]] <!-- Mcneil -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:Mcneil Fire.jpg|left|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1785078992/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[Fire on the Mountain by Jean McNeil]]=== [[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]] This is an unusual book, in style it feels like a novel by E M Forster; with a deep study at the minutiae of life and thought, yet the plot and content is thoroughly modern. The bulk of the story is told through the perspective of Nick, and we see his point of view on life around him. The main characters of the book, however, are Pieter and Riaan, as it is these characters who fascinate Nick and are the focus of his contemplation and crisis. [[Fire on the Mountain by Jean McNeil|Full Review]] <!-- Morrall -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:Morrall_Last.jpg|left|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/ISBN/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]] | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[The Last of the Greenwoods by Clare Morrall]]=== [[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]] Down in hidden railway carriages, deep behind foliage and further down Long Meadow Road than most care to go, live the Greenwood Brothers. They haven't spoken to each other in years, but one morning a letter arrives on their doorstep - a letter from a sister long thought dead...As the brothers are forced to confront painful memories of a past that both tried to keep buried, the post-woman who delivered the letter struggles with secrets of her own... [[The Last of the Greenwoods by Clare Morrall|Full Review]] <!-- Rawi -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:Rawi_Baghdad.jpg|left|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1786073226/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[The Baghdad Clock by Shahad Al Rawi]]=== [[image:2.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]], [[:Category:Historical Fiction|Historical Fiction]] ''The Baghdad Clock'' is a tale of two friends growing up during the first and second Iraqi war. Shahad Al Rawi uses magic realism to illustrate the displacement felt by a young girl and her neighbourhood. The novel introduces us to the various characters surrounding the protagonist. They are full of life and yet never seem to add anything to the central narrative. Rawi, it would seem, has a problem with telling a story. [[The Baghdad Clock by Shahad Al Rawi|Full Review]] <!-- Clements -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:Clements_Coffin.jpg|left|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1472204271/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]] | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[The Coffin Path by Katherine Clements]]=== [[image:4.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]], [[:Category:Horror|Horror]], [[:Category:Historical Fiction|Historical Fiction]] Maybe you've heard about Scarcross Hall? Hidden on the old coffin path that winds from the village to the moor top, the villagers only speak of it in hushed tones - of how it's a foreboding place filled with evil. Mercy Booth has lived there since birth, and she's always loved the grand house and its isolation, but a recurrence of strange events begins to unsettle her. From objects disappearing through to a shadowy presence sensed in the house, mysteries come to light that can only be solved by Mercy unearthing long-buried secrets. And will a dark stranger help Mercy protect everything she has come to love or tear it from her grasp? [[The Coffin Path by Katherine Clements|Full Review]] <!-- Durrenmatt -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:Durrenmatt_Justice.jpg|left|link=https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1782273875?ie=UTF8&tag=thebookbag-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=1782273875]] | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[The Execution of Justice by Friedrich Durrenmatt and John E Woods (translator)]]=== [[image:2.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Crime|Crime]] It's 1957, and we're somewhere in Switzerland, and there's just one case on everyone's lips – the simple fact that a politician has gone into the crowded room of one of those 'the place to go' restaurants, and point blank shot a professor everyone there must have known, and ferried a British companion to the airport in his chauffeur-driven Rolls before handing himself in to face the murder rap. Of course he's found guilty, even if the gun involved has managed to disappear. He's certainly of much interest, not only to our narrator, a young lawyer called Spaet – even if he rarely gets to frequent such establishments with such people, he is eager to know more, especially once he is actually tasked by the man in hand to look into things a second time. But what's this, where he opens his testimony about the affair with the conclusion, that he himself will need to turn killer to redress the balance? [[The Execution of Justice by Friedrich Durrenmatt and John E Woods (translator)|Full Review]] <!-- Cercas -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:Cercas_Impostor.jpg|left|link=https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0857056506?ie=UTF8&tag=thebookbag-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=0857056506]] | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[The Impostor by Javier Cercas and Frank Wynne (translator)]]=== [[image:5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]] Enric Marco is without doubt an extraordinary man. A veteran of the Spanish Civil War, honoured for his bravery on the battlefield. A political prisoner of two fascist regimes. A survivor of the Nazi concentration camps. A prominent figure in the clandestine resistance against Franco's tyranny. A tireless warrior for social justice and the defence of human rights. A national hero. But the most extraordinary thing about Enric Marco is this: that he is really none of these things. He is an impostor. And Javier Cercas sets out to tell his story – the true story of Spain's most notorious liar. [[The Impostor by Javier Cercas and Frank Wynne (translator)|Full Review]] <!-- Badoe -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:Badoe_Jigsaw.jpg|left|link=https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1786695480?ie=UTF8&tag=thebookbag-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=1786695480]] | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[A Jigsaw of Fire and Stars by Yaba Badoe]]=== [[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]], [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]], [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]], [[:Category:Teens|Teens]] Sante was a baby when she was washed ashore in a sea-chest laden with treasure. It seems she is the sole survivor of the tragic sinking of a ship carrying migrants and refugees. Her people. Fourteen years Move on she's a member of Mama Rose's unique and dazzling circus. But, from their watery grave, the unquiet dead are calling Sante to avenge them. A bamboo flute. A golden bangle. A ripening mango which must not fall... if Sante is to tell their story and her own. [[A Jigsaw of Fire and Stars by Yaba Badoe|Full Review]] <!-- Batalha -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:Batalha_Invisible.jpg|left|link=https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/178607298X?ie=UTF8&tag=thebookbag-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=178607298X]] | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmao by Martha Batalha and Eric M B Becker (translator)]]=== [[image:4.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Newest Paranormal Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]] On the surface, young housewife Euridice Gusmao has it all. A nice-enough, parent-pleasing husband with a steady banking job, two young children upon whom to dote, an immaculate home complete with maid. That's all anyone could ever want, isn't it? Not Euridice. She has an inexplicable ache inside her for something more, like many of us. Yet each of her pet projects, from a desire to publish a recipe book to starting a cottage sewing industry in her living room, are met with scorn from her stern husband Antenor. He wants a wife who doesn't draw attention to herself, whose only domains are her house and her family. [[The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmao by Martha Batalha and Eric M B Becker (translator)|Full Review]] <!-- DO NOT REMOVE ANYTHING BELOW THIS LINE -->|}