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[[Category:General Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]]==General fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Daphne KalotayJenny Lecoat|title=Russian WinterBeyond Summerland
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The novel's structure goes back and forth from Jean lives on Jersey with her mother where they are celebrating the past to end of the present dayoccupation. The book opens with Nina, now elderlyDuring the war, in pain and in a wheelchair: waiting to die basically. And even although sheJean's lived an interesting life, now all she has father was arrested for company is listening to a daily home-help. I was struck straight banned radio and soldiers took him away by how prickly Nina is one night, leaving Jean and I could feel all those emotions seething underneath the surfaceher mother waiting for years for news of him. So As the British finally free the question Channel islands from the Nazis, and the war is - why has she decided to sell some finally over, their hopes rise that they will finally learn what became of her exquisite jewelleryhim. Is But will the truth come as a relief, or will it to help pay raise further questions around what else happened during the war? Who was the informer who told the Nazis about the billsradio? Or some And what other reasonsecrets have been kept throughout the occupation? We find out by degrees.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099553244</amazonuk>1846976537
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Scott MarianiOnyi Nwabineli|title=The Lost RelicAllow Me to Introduce Myself|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Ben Hope went Anuri spent her childhood on display to Italy the world, thanks to visit a former SAS comrade and offer him a jobher step-mother Ophelia's increasingly popular presence on social media, but hewhere she posted every step of Anuri's got marriage childhood for sponsorships and happiness – influencer deals and Ben's trade , basically, monetary gain. Now Anuri is in her twenties and she is far from slowly trying to regain her confidence and to get her life back, suing her step-mother to take down the front of his mindcontent about her. It's whilst he's driving away that Ben nearly runs down a small boy Anuri is battling alcoholism, failing to start her PhD, undergoing therapy and unwittingly walks into a deadly heist which will see the boy secretly abusing people online and his mother – and many others – brutally murderedreceiving money from them for doing so. ItMost importantly, she is desperately worried about her little sister, who is the new focus of Ophelia's only the beginning for Ben though as he find himself fleeing for his life and accused of murderonline empire. When Can she save her sister, and perhaps herself and her relationship with her father at the state needs to act people – even heroes – are disposable.same time?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847561977</amazonuk>0861546873
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Diane Janes1529153298|title=Why Don't You Come For Me?The List of Suspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Over a decade ago JoIt's daughter was abducted from in front of a shop whilst she 1979 and her husband were on holidayMargaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. (A woman? I mean, honestly...) She's not what's worrying Miv's family, though. Women have been disappearing. The pushchair was found on a cliff edge Well, they've been murdered, but there was no trace of Lauren, even on the beach belowto have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. Occasionally Jo receives postcards with an old picture of Miv's upset because she's overheard that her daughter on father wants to move the front simply saying that the writer still has Laurenfamily 'Down South'. The policeWhen you're from Yorkshire, the people who know what happened believe the cards to be Down South is a hoaxfrightening, foreign place, best avoided. Jo believes differentlyFor Miv, the move would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, and she'll do anything to prevent that. She also realises 's not worried about the dangers or that as she has moved house and remarried and the story has faded from press attention someone is going her Mum's stopped talking - to a great deal of trouble to keep track of heranyone.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849011257</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=G S Mattu1035906708|title=Sons and FascinationDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin|rating=34.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=This book concentrates on emotions. Take an impressionable young manWe tend to think of Maria Callas as Greek, add but she was born to Greek parents in a chance (?) encounter with an attractive older woman and then stand well back as the fireworks explode and as familyManhattan, New York, friends in December 1923 and colleagues get sucked in only moved to their deepening relationshipAthens when she was thirteen. I must say I Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to 'Callas'm not keen on the title (a little pretentious for a work of fiction in my opinion and more suited to poetry) and even when make it was ever so gently explained later on more manageable in the book (twice) I still didn't warm to itStates. All When she was back in all, not off to Athens - supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for her voice - she was raised under the greatest Nazi occupation by a mother who mercilessly exploited her and made no secret of startsher preference for her elder sister, Jackie. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907756000</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Philip WildingAlexander McCall Smith|title=Cross Country Murder SongThe Perfect Passion Company|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The novel opens with Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and operating as an alternative to all the (unnamed) central character online apps in providing a therapy session in downtown New Yorkmore personal, tailored service. The air is charged Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and tension look after the business, as Ness is present, big-timeplanning to take a trip to Canada to get away for a while. This Katie is one troubled human beingcoming out of a break up with a bad boyfriend, and so jumps at the chance to come home to Edinburgh. And of courseso begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, childhood issues thanks to 44 Scotland Street and experiences are dominant in this question and answer sessionthe Isabel Dalhousie novels, but with some new characters who quickly begin to charm. We soon find out that this individual Katie has no experience in running a business, or in match-making, but Ness has secrets full confidence in his basement. It all becomes too muchher abilities, he packs a bag and hits the road there's always her very helpful (and so the story starts proper.rather handsome) neighbour, William, to lend a hand…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099539934</amazonuk>1846976596
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Asa JonesDean Koontz|title=The Illustrated Mind of Mike ReevesBad Weather Friend|rating=34.5|genre=FantasyParanormal|summary=Mike Reeves doesn't have his troubles to seekBenny is having a terrifically bad day. His wife was brutally raped some four or five years ago He loses his job, he loses his fiancee, and whilst she might seem to be recovered she cannot stand to be touched by a man – any man, Mike includedhis house gets trashed. Quite suddenly Mike was aloneOh, in every way – until he found himself drawn to the darker arts and began someone has delivered a really weird, disturbing coffin-sized object to dabble in Tarothis home, the Runes and I Ching. Heit's guided by two spiritspossible 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. Sean He is a wise and benevolent older man and Debbie, well she… isn'tnice person. She's the one who satisfies Mike's sexual needsA really nice person. If So fortunately for Benny it turns out that's all sounding rather goodthe delivery to his house is a new friend, then hesitate a momentbad weather friend called Spike, who has been sent to help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for with the being a good comes the bad person. Spike is going to take care of Benny, and the bad is in the form will certainly take care of Tony Benny's enemies, if he, Benny, and Harper (a (very) real-life gangster waitress slash Private Investigator whofinds herself roped into Benny's been doing his own dabbling in the spirit world. When their worlds clash Mike has a problem which could well be more than he wild adventure) can handlefigure out who exactly they are.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>160693905X</amazonuk>1662500491
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Margaret ForsterKatherine Howe|title=Diary of an Ordinary WomanA True Account
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=After reading the introductionHannah Masury is living in Boston, having been sent to live with a family who run an inn, I couldn't help but sneak and being made to work there from a sly read at the author's note right at the end of the novelyoung age. I don't usually do this. I'm glad I did as the information When she hears there is both surprising and revelatory. Back to be a hanging of some pirates in the beginning town, she decides to go and Chapter 1 ..watch. We meet the 13 year old Millicent Enthralled and horrified in 1914. By her written statements and recorded mannerisms, we see that she's a girl who knows her own mind. For exampleequal measure, she thinks writing Hannah finds herself embroiled in her diary every single day could be dull and boring so she's made a golden rule that sheyoung boy's only going to write something down when she feels like it. Some may call her precocious but I liked Millicent right from death at the start. Courtesy hands of her diary we find out that she's part of a large and boisterous familytwo vicious pirates. She doesnhides away, so that they don't appreciate all the noise find and chatter from kill her siblings. She craves peace too, and quiet then to think escape them completely she runs away to sea, dressing as a boy and to read. Shejoining the notorious Ned Low's pirate ship as a prolific readercabin boy. She also believes that she's smart soon finds herself in the thick of things when there is a mutiny on board, and clever and wants to 'do' something with from there we are caught up in her rip roaring tale of life when she grows up. She's not sure what exactly but she certainly doesn't want to be a mere housewife and motheron the ocean waves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099449285</amazonuk>0861547438
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Matt Dunn1471180158|title=The Accidental ProposalMaybe Tomorrow|author=Penny Parkes|rating=34.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Edward Middleton seems like a pretty decent guy. He always stops to buy a Big Issues from BillyJamie Matson works in an upper-class grocery store, for a local homeless man and he takes his elderly widowed neighbour shopping once who's a control freak with all the subtlety of a weekhalf brick. These are some of the reasons why his girlfriend Jamie's son, SamBo, loves him so much'has his problems'. One night, after a friend He's weddingasthmatic and the more you read, Sam asks Ed if the more you'll suspect that he would also like 's on the autistic spectrum. Sometimes Jamie needs to get married to which Ed enthusiastically replies take time off at short notice - she'yess a frequent flier in the local A&E and sometimes Bo's not fit enough to go to school. However, 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 following morning, whilst nursing his hangover, he cannot work out if it wrong. It was going to come to a hypothetical question or an actual proposal. His best mate Dan is no help at all and is quite incredulous that anyone should ever want to marry Edhead.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847395244</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=William StyronB0CKD1L5JL|title=The Suicide RunRadio Free Olympia|author=Jeffrey Dunn
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Meet Mary Watson - a distant second to John WatsonPetr is an orphan. Rescued by the strange, reclusive Bear, he is brought up far from bustling cities and busy human society, who in the forests of course was Washington's Olympic Peninsula. After Bear dies and a distant second to Sherlock Holmes. Fed up brief sojourn in human company, and armed with staying at home while her new husband spends too much time at 221b Baker Streetonly a pirate radio transmitter, or away with Holmes sleuthingPetr goes on a journey through the forest, she gets to dabble her own feet in broadcasting the underworld waters when a certain Professor Moriarty comes callingstrange, wild and rarely heard voices he encounters.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907685006</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jon Stephen FinkSarah Marsh|title=A Storm In The BloodSign of Her Own
|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=''A Storm In The Blood'' is based on 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 true story involving time when the police force and the government use of the day trying sign language was seen as something only savages do, Ellen is sent to a school where she is taught to suppress racial tensions lip read, but physically restrained from signing. From here, she ends up in early 20th century Londonanother school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the deaf and using a system called Visible Speech. It has resonance for our modern times as we grapple with similar situations At the same time, Bell is working on other inventions and ideas, and problemsEllen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a complicated tangle of espionage.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0956544517</amazonuk>1035401614
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B0BC3YTCMR
|title=Good Girls Die
|author=Ayura Ayira
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=''This story is not for everyone.''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Craig Smith1472263936|title=Cold RainThe Figurine|author=Victoria Hislop|rating=45
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Life It was pretty good for Dr David Alboin 1968 that Helena McCloud made her first trip to Greece. HeShe was alone: her mother, Greek by birth, had left the family home and refused to return, but Mary and Hamish (Helena'd just had fifteen months away from his job as an associate professor of English at s parents) felt that it would be a university pity if Helena grew up without knowing her grandparents or understanding her Greek heritage. Her trip to the family apartment in up-market Kolonaki would be the mid-western USAfirst of several annual visits. He lived on a plantationShe grew to love her grandmother and the family's maid, Dina, but was wary -style farmhouse with a beautiful and intelligent wife and a stepfrightened -daughter who adored himof her grandfather, retired general Stamatis Papagiannis. He was even going back proud of his close connections to work in the expectation that he might well be offered a full professorship in the not-too-distant future Junta and just expected his family to put the icing on the cake heuphold his values but saw no reason to accommodate them. His prejudices included Helena's red hair and green eyes - inherited from her father's been clear of alcohol for two years. Yes; life was very goodScottish ancestors.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>190580234X</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage|author=Dean Koontz|title=After Death|rating=3|genre=General Fiction|summary= Michael Mace, Head of Security, at a top secret biological research facility, is among 55 people who die when a virus is released in a bio-hazard accident. Finding himself in a makeshift mortuary, covered in plastic, he has a sense that something very, very bad has happened to him – and only him – as he sits up and looks around at the shrouded bodies of his dead friends and former colleagues. As he recovers his senses, he realises that there is something different about him; he can ''feel'' everything. ''Everything''. Michael isn't ''Michael'' anymore.|isbn=1662500467}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Anna GavaldaB0BVDC2VWH|title=ConsolationThe Grave Listeners|author=William Frank|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=We meet Charles, the main character right at the startThe village is isolated and poor. And straight away, it's no secret that, as a middle-aged professional (heIt's an architect and surrounded by a successful one at that) he's jadedWitching Forest. BeenAnd the villagers subsist largely by farming Uphegia plants -there, doneits bread-that like fruit provides nutrition and got-its blossom provides herbal medicines. The black wood of the-bloody-tee-shirt just about sums him up pretty well. He's acquired (somehow) a beautifulforest provides heat and warmth, roofs on homes, witty and clever partner and also a step-daughter whom he adoreseven gallows, if needed. As The fear of being buried alive is an existential superstition in the story deepens, I soon acknowledged village and that is the stepreason Volushka, a drunken, self-daughter seems to be about the only true love in his life. He's luke-warm about the rest indulgent, lazy lout of his family and that includes his partner and his ageing parents. Is this a man going through some mid-life crisis, would be an obvious question to askis tolerated.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099531925</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sam HawkenB0BYF82CXT|title=The Dead Women of JuarezSemi-Detached|author=Deborah Stone
|rating=4
|genre=CrimeGeneral Fiction|summary=Although the story related here is ''Bill and Amanda are living in a semi-detached house, stuck in a work depressing rut of fictionboredom and disappointment, when Terry and Fiona – glamorous, the situation is based on fact. The Mexican border city of Juárez has a shocking problem with female homicides (usually young successful and invariably pretty)very much in love – move in next door. Official statistics put the number of murders at 400 since 1993 whileDespite their different outlooks on life, we are told, residents believe that the true number of disappeared women is closer couples befriend each other and life appears to 5000improve for both pairs. But attention to this problem all is diverted by drug crimenot what it seems, although the two may not be entirely unrelatedand their increasingly interconnected relationships are fated for tragedy. Anything that raises public awareness of this terrible situation, such as Hawken's book, is to be encouraged. So much for the fact, what about the fiction?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184668773X</amazonuk>'
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Pamela KlaffkeShalini Boland|title=SnappedThe Silent Bride
|rating=3
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=They say that Alice and Seth are a good idea is to write about what you knowmatch made in heaven. WellHe is everything she has been searching for; handsome, accomplished, Klaffke seems to have heeded that piece of adviceclever, funny; total and utter husband-material. She writes here about is all he could possibly want in a fictional fashion writer called Sara B (note wife; beautiful, successful, confident… and so the pretentious second capital letter) who inevitable proposal is eagerly accepted by Alice and the central character. And although Sara B wedding is now in her middle years, she's still acting like a teenagerplanned and set. She's got When the younger boyfriend/lovermuch-anticipated day arrives, got Alice is walked down the latest fashion look which she can deftly put aisle by her stamp onfather, got beaming with pride and excitement as she surveys the invites congregation – their friends assembled to celebrate this joyful day and when Seth turns to face his approaching bride, Alice's world implodes because she has absolutely no idea who the best parties in man at the best venues with the must-be-seen-with minor celebrities. But - altar is she happy? I know, it seems a silly question, but who is it?waiting for her to become his wife.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0778304337</amazonuk>1662507089
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Diane Chamberlain1787636003|title=Breaking the Silence|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=As I've reviewed several The Girls of Chamberlain's previous books and enjoyed them, I was looking forward to getting stuck in to this one. We meet the central character; wife and mother to five-year-old Emma, Laura. She's distraught. Her father (Emma's grandfather) has just passed away but his dying wish has really upset Laura. It's a strange request and she doesn't know what to make of it. She confides in her husband thinking that two heads are better than one. He's a brilliant academic and could give some much-needed advice. But he doesn't. In fact, he behaves like a five-year-old himself and almost has a tantrum. Odd. Now poor Laura's doubly confused, upset and doesn't know how to handle her grief. Tough times.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0778304140</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewSummer|author=Lola Shoneyin|title=The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's WivesKatie Bishop
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives is one of those books It was the summer when Rachel Evans turned eighteen that you read with a smile on your face. It's full of gloriously unsavoury characters caught in a terrible web of deceit. We are promised 'four women, one husband she and a devastating secret' Caroline went backpacking around Greece and it delivers arrived on all three countsthe island. Sure the secret is quite well signposted and Shoneyin doesn Rachel wasn't really make much of an effort to divert the reader from putting two and two togetherexactly innocent but she was, although it takes wife number fourperhaps, Bolanlenaive, so when thirty-four-year-old Alistair Wright started to take an inordinate amount 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 penny to drop, but it's not about discovering island and in particular in the deception - it's about bar where all the glorious journey of how things unfoldgirls either worked or partied.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687497</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Cornelius MedveiAmanda Craig|title=Caroline: A MysteryThree Graces|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Meet Mr ShawFew styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the state-of-the-nation novel. HeThere's an insurance worker something so utterly compelling about any writer who takes his wife can catch hold of the atmosphere of the day and son off on their annual vacation one yearcapture it, and finds himself indulging crafting an image of the country as it stands in a surprisingly platonic holiday romanceone particular moment. The subject of his infatuation, Caroline, has eyes, ears, hair and more To say that easily combine with Mr ShawAmanda Craig is skilled at doing this would be embarrassingly inadequate: she's fondness practically synonymous with the genre of contemporary social fiction at this point. She has such a gift for classical Persian love poetry. At weaving the end ongoing issues of the holiday he lets his wife and son depart while he takes day into the lives of her characters in a further week off to walk all the way home with Caroline. Who isthat feels natural and lived-in, as it happensnever making them ciphers for social commentary but instead fully realised people, a donkeygrappling with issues far larger than themselves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846553881</amazonuk>140871468X
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Steve Martin152915118X|title=An Object of BeautyPineapple Street|author=Jenny Jackson
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Leave aside ''Pineapple Street'' is the title story of the book for a minutethree women: Sasha, the book itself is also 'an object of beauty' with its striking front cover Darley and primary colours artfully arrangedGeorgiana. And then I turned the book over Darley and George are sisters and said Sasha is married to myself, ohtheir brother Cord. They're Stocktons, itonly Sasha isn's t a Stockton by birth so she isn't readily accepted into the tribe. The problem'thats exacerbated when the clan matriarch, Tilda, asks Cord and Sasha if they'' Steve Martind like to move into the Pineapple Street property. I knew he was - Tilda and is - Chip have renovated and downsized to another property, a very funny actor but I didnstreet or so away, which they own. They won't know that he was also a writerneed any of the furniture from Pineapple Street, so Sasha and Cord can move straight in. SoNominally, before Ithey had a choice but that wasn'd even opened t the book I was thinking - will he be as good a writer as he is an actorreality. I was about Darley and Georgiana start to find out call Sasha 'the gold digger'. She's living in ''their'' family home.They use it so often that they abbreviate it to 'the GD'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0297863290</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tom CampbellEmily Critchley|title=FoldOne Puzzling Afternoon
|rating=4
|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=Five men 84 year old Edie has lived in Reading circulate their monthly poker evenings around their respective housesthe 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. None However, Edie is tormented by the memory of them like all her childhood friend, Lucy, who went missing over 60 years ago, and the others, none of them seem to completely like worry that there was a secret she was keeping for Lucy that somehow might be the game, but they're more-or-less happy with thing that reveals the habittruth of what happened all that time ago. ItAfter 's seeing' Lucy in the way the five different personalities approach the evenings that we are concerned with, and enjoy principallyhigh street, especially when just as she was the poorest playerlast time she saw her, Nick, decides she starts to find pockets of memories coming back to clash with his polar opposite, Dougher. And what might happen if a non-playing character were yet as she remembers the past, she is forgetting more and more in her day to enter thingsday life. Will she uncover the truth about Lucy's disappearance before her move, and make them even feistierbefore her memories are gone forever?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408807602</amazonuk>1804181250
}}
{{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''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Edward Wright0008506337|title=From BloodThe Garnett Girls|author=Georgina Moore|rating=45
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=While IThe love affair between Margo Garnett and poet Richard O'm not mad about the titleLeary was all-consuming, the bookapparently on both sides. Margo was just sixteen when they fell in love. Richard was twenty-one and described by Margo's mother as 'an older man'. Her parents worried that Richard's cover is atmospherically good influence would take her away from what they felt she could achieve - it says going to the reader 'please pick me up Oxford and read mehaving a glittering career.' So I did. In the event, The book opens in 1960s America with they eloped and Richard took her away from the Prologue. A bunch Isle of radical thinkers are angryWight. They turn this pent-up anger into Margo did go to Oxford and went on to become a well-oiled, well-ordered act of violencerespected journalist. Lives are lostThe couple had three children: Rachel, Imogen and Sasha. But Life was lived in London and holidays were spent at Sandcove, the family home on the perpetrators are clever and most Isle of them escape justiceWight. They do what many around Even then the world have done before them; they go underground. But several key members are still at large ..doubts about Richard's drinking were never far from Margo's mind: ''she would never be able to leave him in charge''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0752891774</amazonuk>}}
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Alan Lorber1914585402|title=Benny Allen Was A Star: A New York Music StoryDashboard Elvis is Dead|author=David F Ross|rating=34.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Alan Lorber has written a fictional and I suspect a semi autobiographical account of his years as a top music arranger in the 1950reviewed David F Ross's book [[There's and early 1960Only One Danny Garvey by David F Ross|There's, Only One Danny Garvey]] a period couple of huge change in the music industry culminating with the breakthrough of the Beatles in Americayears back and remember being absolutely floored by how powerful and affecting it was. Rather than simply writing It was a factual narrative of his involvement during this period he decided to tell the story of the fictional Benny Allengripping, emotionally wounding read, a classically trained musician who almost by accident gets involved in the music publishing business and then goes rereading my review of it my main takeaway was that I might not have lavished enough praise on to produce some hugely successful orchestrations on many of the top hit records of the timeit.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B0041VXCTA</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Deborah HarknessLucy Ashe|title=A Discovery of WitchesClara and Olivia
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=In Poland in The year is 1933. The place? Sadler's Wells. Ballerinas Clara and Olivia are sisters, twins no less. Identical on the early 1990soutside but not, we learn, a violin singson the inside. The maestro who owns it produces such a music from itAnd not on stage, people are forced to take noteeither. TheyBecause there'd s a lot that builds a dancer. Some things that can be even more amazed if she could bring herself taught or learnt – discipline, attention to state exactly how detail – and some things, that ''je ne sais quoi'', that don't come from the instrument came to beclassroom. For this was the work of DanielA stage presence, a charm, suffering in a subsidiary camp to Auschwitz-Birkenau''joie de vivre''. Stumbles, chances, halfThe difference between a hard-liesworker, all conspire to allow Daniel to take time off his enforced labour and engage in his real-world careera star. But is there a price to pay in doing something you love, just for a man you can only hate?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1849016437</amazonuk>0861544080
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Bethan DarwinHeather Fawcett|title=Two Times TwentyEmily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=You can tell from Emily Wilde is an expert academic scholar on faerie lore, and she has travelled extensively, and researched meticulously, to write her life's work, the beginning very first encyclopaedia of this novel that you're in Walesfaeries. Whilst she is brilliant at research and speaking to faeries, she is not so good with people. The young Anna (as we travel back So when she finds herself far, far North in time) the small village of Hrafvsnik, having somehow offended the village matriarch, she is meeting not sure what will be long-term friendsshe has done, Bob nor how to redeem herself and Janeput her final investigations for her book back on the right track. We find Anna rather proudly introducing Enter Wendell Bambleby, her two young sons dashingly handsome and insufferable rival who arrives unexpectedly, all charm and Bob butting in with delight, much to Emily'Duw, good-sized boys for their age ... Make good rugby players one days frustration.' But why is he here? What does he want? And what exactly is going on with the Welsh location and all things Welsh is given a subtle touch.faerie folk around Hravsnik?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>190678423X</amazonuk>0356519120
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Adrian Dawson1398515388|title=CODEXThe Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=When I read First of all, it was the resume on earthquake, deep in the back cover I immediately thought that it was going to be one of those high-octaneocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, action every second paragraphin turn, type of thrillerscaused the nuclear meltdown. All action The result was complete and perhaps very little substanceutter devastation. I The deaths were uncountable, and the loss of livelihoods was happily proved wrongwidespread. And very early on The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a 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 the novel, as well, which was good.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956577008</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Peter DurantineChristopher Bowden|title=The Chocolate AssassinMr Magenta
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=In the final days Christopher Bowden's latest novel is a patient untangling of the Second World War as the allied guns came ever closer a young German was sent on a secret mission to Americaseemingly ordinary woman's life, carried out by her nephew after she has died. He was only in his late teens but still resisted telling anyone, including the U-boat captain The aunt who took him across the Atlantic, about the nature always provided a safe harbour and a little bit of his mission. Fifty five years later the U-boat captain, Eric Hoest, long settled in the States, was murdered at his beach home. Samuel Grey, police detective and part-time student was called in indulgence to investigate the murder. The local police chief thought a young nephew had had a much more interesting life than that the most likely murderer was the neighbour who nephew Stephen had reported the crime, but Grey suspected that the truth was hidden somewhere in Hoest's backgroundever realised and it seems to him an obligation to find it all out.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1451579527</amazonuk>B0B6Z9VJDW
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sheila O'FlanaganJennifer Mason|title=A Season to RememberPartitions of Unity
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=We Here at Bookbag Towers, we first meet the Lodge ownersmet Elizabeth Cromwell, a likable couple. They find running their upmarket country house type hotel both exhilarating dominatrix and exhausting. The novel is bang up to date so O'Flanagan gets unintentional detective in the whole recession/banker-bashing thing early on. As the festive season looms[[Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery by Jennifer Mason|Preposterous]], the unthinkable has happenedwhen she investigated and unravelled a series of disappearances. Empty rooms. TheyIn ''Partitions of Unity''re not used , she sets her mind to empty rooms, at any time of the yearsolving a murder. Normally the Lodge is a full house. But then a slow and steady trickle starts as our characters book in - and the story starts proper, so to speak.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0755375157</amazonuk>B09LQR9FRF
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jack Everett and David ColesWill Carver|title=Last Mission: the last hours of the Third ReichThe Daves Next Door|rating=3.54
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=We first meet Five strangers come together in one moment as a couple of characters living in the United States. A husband and wife and suicide bomber prepares to detonate his vest on a relation of theirs called PaulLondon tube line. On As their fates overlap, the surfacestory is told in backwards order, they appear leading up to be enjoying happy, normal lives. But all is not what is seems. We soon find out that the husband, Carl has some secrets. Pretty big ones. He keeps a picture of Adolph Hitler on display - somewhere - in his home, for example. Links with Germany and his past life are often talked about, or rather whispered about, with a handful of trusted 'acquaintances' over a beer or twofateful moment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>095653421X</amazonuk>1914585186}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Mary E MartinJennifer Mason|title=The Drawing LessonPreposterous: The First in the Trilogy of RemembranceAn Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Alexander Wainwright is the UK's premier artist. He's A struggling poetry zine, a mom-and-pop mobile diner in the Northern California redwoods, a 400-meter hurdler who just won missed the Turner 2004 Olympics, a women's track coach with ''The Hay Wagon'' – a painting yen for bullwhips, a billionaire with a luminousstate-of-the-art S&M dungeon, moonlit landscape. He should be at the peak of his powersa man serving a life sentence in Alabama, an enigmatic signature, but he'K(s about to lose his muse and, more worryinglyx), there seems to be something wrong with his sight and the year to come is going to be traumatic. The story of it is told by his friendon a cheap oil painting, an erotic art dealer Jamie Helmsworth, who has pieced together what he knows, what he's heard – and used a little artistic licence to fill in the gapsGeorgia... It's a most unusual story which will take you deep into the world of artists and writers.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1450229360</amazonuk>}}'
}}
