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[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ian McEwanJeremy Cooper|title=NutshellDiscord|rating=43.5|genre=Literary Fiction |summary=Meet Trudy. Successfully living in Discord: a large and valuable London homelack of agreement or harmony (as between persons, things, or ideas) The principal example of discord within the novel, as with most instances of discord, she is heavily pregnant, and in between easily located. The two men – she has swapped protagonists of the homeownernovel, poet Rebekah Rosen and publisher JohnEvie Bennet, for someone completely are as differentas they come. Rebekah is an uptight, namely Claudetraditional and no-nonsense composer close to retirement, while Evie is a nastyforce of nature, brutish bounding onto the musical scene as a precocious saxophonist, oozing with talent and short typecharm. Some people cannot work out why on earth she has made that decisionThe two, predictably, don't always see eye to eye, including our narratortheir approaches different and Evie's progressive views at odds with Rebekah's conservative leaning. OhHowever, something connects them beyond just their musical project: a sort of fragile alliance formed within the clamour.|isbn=1804272264}}{{Frontpage|author=Polly Barton|title=What Am I, A Deer?|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Polly Barton's debut novel is an intellectually playful yet emotionally exposed work that uses translation as both subject and he himselfgoverning metaphor. The narrator, our narratornewly relocated from London to Berlin, is works translating video games into Japanese through the child she's pregnant withprocess of localisation, rewriting language until it feels comfortably familiar to a new audience. He Barton treats this as a paradoxical act: arguably, in striving for universality, language is endlessly repackaged, its originality at risk of disappearing altogether. From this, the novel opens out into a very alert young thingwider, with nothing else resonant question: to what extent do but kick here and therewe translate ourselves in order to be understood, and practice what you might well call mindfulnessaccepted, and listen in on Claude and Trudy, as they calmly talk their way to plotting and carrying out murder…or loved?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1911214330</amazonuk>1804272175

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Matt WilvenMaria Stepanova and Sasha Dugdale (Translator)|title=The Blackbird SingularityDisappearing Act|rating= 54|genre= Literary Fiction|summary=Thirty-something writer Vince Watergate sees his partnerDespite her anonymisation of place names and people, Stepanova's pregnancy as a fresh start. He stops taking his lithium and the new clarity message in this short work of mind lets him start writing his best work in agesautofiction is unmistakable. He befriends a blackbird in the garden with A novelist named M travels from B (ostensibly Berlin) to the help town of F for a bag of sultanas, and begins preparing the baby's room. For literary festival she is to be a short while, everything seems full of peace and hopeguest speaker at. But Vince Detoured by erratic train schedules and Lyd's first childnudged by forces beyond her control, despite having died her journey slowly bends toward a couple traveling circus. Swept up in this series of years earlierevents, might not have completely M eventually offers to step in for a circus performer who has unexpectedly left them and the blackbird might not be show. The train functions as friendly as Vince first thought. Lithium withdrawala motif of transience and impermanence, stress, and while the circus embodies the pressure reshaping of appearing 'normal' push Vince identity and a retreat into a frighteningfantasy, irrational placean impulse that lies at the very heart of the novel form itself. Can he fight his way through it and return to his family?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1785079689</amazonuk>1804272329

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Carolyn Parkhurst295967572X|title=HarmonyPale Pieces|author=G M Stevens

|summary=Josh and Alexandra Hammond have two daughtersOur unnamed narrator is about to begin a train journey with his companion Django. Iris is eleven years old Where they're going and neurotypical: her brain works in what the same way as most people's, but her elder sister, Tillypurpose of this journey is, is thirteen and uncertain. Django found the tickets ''on the autistic spectrumfloor somewhere'' and has persuaded our narrator to accompany him. Her parents Why not? Not much else is clear either - but we are finding it difficult, if not impossible, probably in the past as the pair travel to cope with her. Even her special the station by coach and rather expensive school has indicated that they can't continuethe train is a steam locomotive. She's subject to mood swings and unpredictable and inappropriate behaviour}}{{Frontpage|author=Makenna Goodman|title=Helen of Nowhere|rating=4. Josh 5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=It could be argued that the pervading theme of this book is lucky malaise - a hard- he goes to work - but Alexandra place feeling that something in your life is stuck with not quite right. The protagonist, a disgraced professor on the problembrink of losing both his career and his relationship, embodies this feeling. However, Goodman counteracts his discomfort with a force which is why Scott Beanseductive, educator radical and unnerving: Helen. The connection between Helen and expert the protagonist is indirect yet intimate. As the former owner of the countryside house he's considering, Helen represents a volta in parentinghis life, appeals her past tied to herhis potential fresh start. The name came to realtor who shows the protagonist around the house shares stories about Helen, and describes her attention on a couple of occasions: as ''an entity that is pure consciousness, beyond form''. Although she subscribed to his newsletterlives in an assisted living facility now, heard him speak and what he had to say rang a bell. Before long he was coming to Helen has powers beyond comprehension which the reader gets the house for private consultationssense are not altogether innocuous.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0340978171</amazonuk>1804272205

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=William RyanOlga Tokarczuk|title=The Constant SoldierHouse of Day, House of Night

|genre=ThrillersLiterary Fiction|summary=Paul Brandt returns home to his village without ''What's the arm he left at the Russian Front good of a world that keeps changing like that? How can one go on calmly living in defence it?'' The title of this spellbinding work, ''House of Germany. The village looks pretty much the same as he left itDay, House of Night'', with the exception somewhat reflects this notion of shifting realities - the lack of young men and a new building. His home now boasts an SS rest hutsmall, subtle changes which govern our lives, providing officers with entertainment and respite breaks like the shift from the fightingday to night, however quotidian, causing chaos. As Paul passes But, the hut for constant in that image is the first timehouse, he sees something… or rather someone… that will make him return to work for those he despises. The subject of his decision? A girl he once got into trouble with under different circumstances – before she wore stoic against the stripes of a concentration camp prisonerancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it is perceived.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1447255011</amazonuk>1804271918

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Pamela JohnsonThea Lenarduzzi|title=Taking in WaterThe Tower|rating=45

|summary=Pamela Johnson''How unctuous are the fats of another's third novel is set in 2002 but has its roots in a real-life tragedy from nearly 50 years earlier: , how dizzying their sugars in 1953 a storm surge hit the Norfolk coast, destroying Lydia Huttonour bloodstream's grandmother's home and sweeping her whole family out to sea. Seven-year-old Lydia was  In this compelling novel, Thea Lenarduzzi assumes the only one to surviveidentity of T, clinging to the wreckage and singing hymns to herself to surviveprotagonist of this tale. ItJust as T's story is being told, the story of a dark part second protagonist is unveiled: Annie, the daughter of her past she's never told anyone except Luc, a wealthy family in the half-French lover whose iconic performance art piece19th century, ''Taking who died of tuberculosis after being locked in Watera tower, captures T's imagination. Annie's fate is, above all, an enticing story to T. It is a story which she participated consumes avariciously, both in during a spell quest for truth and knowledge, and in New York City in the 1960sservice of myth, when she was known as 'Layla' fable and hung around with the likes of Andy Warholfantasy. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1534627243</amazonuk>1804271799

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=A N WilsonJon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |title=ResolutionVaim

|summary=In 1772 Reinhold Forster and his son George were hired as ship's naturalists for the ''ResolutionAll was strange'', the vessel Captain James Cook piloted to New Zealand and back on a three-year voyage of discovery. Once a Lutheran pastor near Danzig, Reinhold seemed unable to settle to one line of work and had a higher opinion of himself than was prudent. In Wilson's vision of life on the ''Resolution'', Reinhold seems fussy, argumentative and rather heartless, as when he offers George's dog up as fresh meat when the captain is desperately ill. George, just 18 when he joins This haunting phrase encapsulates the expeditionpervading sense of otherworldliness which permeates this story set in Vaim, is a self-taught illustrator fictional fishing village in Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for Jatgeir and botanist with a keen ear for languages. Though precociously intelligentEline, he is emotionally immature and cannot keep a handle on his masturbation habit or deal with their servant Nally's crush on himtwo of the protagonists caught in its melancholic current.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782398279</amazonuk>1804271829

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Michael HughesClaire-Louise Bennett|title= The Countenance DivineBig Kiss, Bye-Bye |rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary=In 1999Everything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, is steeped in anguish and distortion. Even a kiss, usually a programmer is trying to fix symbol of intimacy and closeness, becomes evidence of love lost. When the millennium bugnarrator cries out internally, but can't shake the sense he's been chosen for something. In 1888come over here and kiss me, five women are brutally murdered in the East End by '' it is less an invitation than a troubled young man in thrall desperate attempt to a mysterious masterconfirm her emotional numbness. In 1777The imagined recipient of this plea is Xavier, her ex-partner, an apprentice engraver called William Blake has a defining spiritual experience; thirteen years later this vision returns.  And in 1666, poet and revolutionary John Milton completes the epic for which he will be remembered centuries laterghost she conjures to test her detachment.  But where does the feeling come from that the world is about to end?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473636507</amazonuk>1804271934

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Emily BittoHelene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)|title= The StraysLili is Crying|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= Lily comes from an ordinary suburban familyFirst published in 1953 in French, but on her first day at this novel is a new school she meets Eva: timeless text which wrenches the super-confident middle daughter hearts of artist Evan Trenthamits readers just as Bessette wrenches words and sentences from their proper position on the page and positions them elsewhere, disjointed, truncated. The girls fast become firm friends, to Like the exclusion lives of all those ar ound them and it isn't long before Lily is spending more time at the Trentham's than she does at home. Why wouldn't she? Their life is everything her family's isn'tcharacters, they are often left tragically incomplete.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1785079514</amazonuk>1804271675

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Eowyn IveyJonathan Buckley|title=To the Bright Edge of the WorldOne Boat

|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=If you're going to go pioneering across unexplored lands, at least be prepared to accept what you seek – namely, what you've never seen before. That lesson seems quite obvious, but back in the time of 1885 Allen Forrester One Boat'' is a little too naïve to heed it. A career soldierdeeply introspective novella that defies traditional narrative structure, he is tasked with scouring drawing the potential reader into a contemplative realm of philosophical musings and fragmented memories flowing from our narrator and protagonist, Teresa. Set against the Wolverine River that threads south to the shores evocative backdrop of Alaskaa small coastal Greek town, even though this work masterfully captures the Russians (who magic of course used its setting and its power to own provoke profound introspection. Teresa herself recognises these qualities as the reason she has visited it after the Territory) have had all manner death of lethal encounters with those already living thereboth her parents. Prompted by her mourning, her narrative voice is meditative and even though a major stretch of the river has to be traversed in winter when entirely frozen overdeeply self-aware, as inviting the cliffs either side are too impenetrablereader into her labyrinthine cogitations. Allen leaves It is a much youngerbook that not only requires but inspires depth of thought, new bride behind – and right from the get-go his journals force him to pen words about strange happenings, strange encounters since its narrative structure is fragmentary and things of legend coming to lifeironically relies on analepsis for its propulsion. Like I say, what he's never seen before…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1472208609</amazonuk>1804271764

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Talulah RileyEowyn Ivey|title= Acts of LoveBlack Woods Blue Sky|rating= 43.5|genre= Women's Literary Fiction |summary= Bernadette St John presents herself as ''Black Woods Blue Sky'' tells the very face story of contemporary feminine independence. She is strongBirdie, career-driventhe young mother of toddler Emaleen, beautiful…and definitely holds who longs for a life beyond the attention Alaskan lodge where she works as a bar waitress, a setting which enables her bad habits and her accidental neglect of the publicEmaleen. For Bernadette is the Described as a ''Man Whispererwild card'', winning herself fame with she feels stuck in her ability day-to coax secrets from -day life, and yearns to cross the richest Wolverine river and most powerful men of live on the world, exposing them with controversial distaste in North Fork to fulfil her articlesdesires of a simple life surrounded by nature. Hidden behind such a conniving and judgemental personaWhen she meets Arthur Nielson, however, is a deep insecuritystrange, taciturn and a desperate longing to be loved by the perfect solitary man. She , who says he has already decided that the newly engaged Tim Bazier is the only candidate for such a position in her heartcabin over there, and will stop at nothing she feels called to win him back from his allgo -too-lovely fiancéand bring Emaleen with her. Yet what is perfect is a subject for discussionWithout realising it, this calling will transform hers and charismatic entrepreneur Radley BlakeEmaleen's unwavering attention has also fallen upon the feisty journalist. It is a weaving tale of ''will-they-wont-they'' that Riley spins here, one that I found myself unable to put downlives forever.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473637902</amazonuk>1472279042

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jesse BallSally Rooney|title=How to Set a Fire and WhyIntermezzo|rating=4.5|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=Lucia Stanton Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard of life and is something of a sarcastic 14-year-old misfit who lives with grandmaster at putting it into words. Her dialogue is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, as her elderly Aunt Lucy in a garage characters never quite say exactly what they rent from an evil landlord at feel. Among the bottom of his large garden. She never comes right out and explains why she's theremany relationships woven into this story, but if you read between the lines you work out that her father central one for readers to unravel is dead the fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and her mother is in Peter Koubek. Ivan, a mental hospital – presumably for socially awkward chess prodigy, contrasts sharply with his murderolder brother Peter, a successful lawyer living in Dublin. Aunt Lucy is dignified and principled – Following their father's passing after a long battle with cancer, the brothers'Don't do things you aren't proud of'' is her motto – even though they are undeniably poor: Lucia only has one set of clothes and mostly lives off of liquorice and Aunt Lucy's terrible homemade breadalready strained relationship faces new trials.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1925355470</amazonuk>0571365469

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jenn AshworthFyodor Dostoyevsky|title=FellWhite Nights

|genre=General FictionShort Stories|summary=Now her parents have diedAs always in Dostoyevsky, Annette returns to sell her old childhood home but therethe character work is sublime. One is never left wondering what a character is thinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and temperaments with remarkable clarity.|isbn=0241619785}}{{Frontpage|author=James Baldwin|title=Giovanni's work to do on the decrepit building firstRoom|rating=4. As she wanders around and tries to make some order of the overgrown shambles, she5|genre=Literary Fiction |summary=''Giovanni's watched by Room'' follows the ghost of her mothernarrator David, an American man living in Paris, as he navigates his torturous affair with Giovanni, Netty; an Italian bartender he meets in a spirit with regretsgay bar. Netty reminisces about Annette's childhood and While David is engaged to Hella, who is travelling in Spain, the real tension in the turning point their lives reached when novel arises not from his infidelity but from the mysterious healer Timothy Richardson came to staydeeper conflict within himself. It was a time is David's crippling shame and denial of his sexuality that promised so much but one for which Netty now needs to make amends, even if she is beyond the graveultimately dooms his relationship with Giovanni.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473630606</amazonuk>0141186356

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sue GeeAlba de Cespedes |title=TrioForbidden Notebook

|genre=Historical Literary Fiction|summary=In the winter This Italian work of 1936, Steven Coulter's wife, Margaret, dies feminist fiction holds an air of tuberculosis, leaving their Northumberland cottage cold suspense and empty. His work as a history teacher at Kirkhoughton Boys' School isn't enough to distract him tension from his grief; he spends his long evenings writing letters to Margaret. Gradually, thoughthe moment our protagonist, as spring arrives he starts to take an interest in other things. His colleague Frank Embleton invites him to a performance by the Hepplewick Trio: Frank's sister Diana on cello; pianist Margot HeslopValeria Cossati, whose mother died when she was young and who looks after purchases her fatherforbidden notebook, a coal mine manager, at Hepplewick Hall; and their friend George Liddell, learns about herself in the violinist most intimate and leader, who is a Royal College of Music graduaterevealing ways.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1784630616</amazonuk>1782278222

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Stephanie DanlerOttessa Moshfegh|title= SweetbitterMy Year of Rest and Relaxation|rating= 43|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= Twenty –two year old Tess At best, this novel is a restless graduate from a broken family. With scathing critique of modern society and reveals the intention fragility of finally starting her lifehuman relationships; at worst, she moves to New York City with no real plan but a need to do something. She manages to get a job at one of it is the most exclusive restaurants in town as a back-waiter cynical, predictable and Tess is thrown into the comforting commotion slightly trite tale of New York lifean unlikeable protagonist. It's at her new job that she becomes fascinated by two people: SimoneThis unlikely heroine, a know-it-all server and Jakeslim, a handsome yet moody bartender. While the restaurant becomes her home attractive and newly orphaned girl in her colleagues twenties is disillusioned with the world, but resolves not to lose sleep over it: in fact, her new family, ''Sweetbitter'' follows Tess through a year of solution lies in her life as she grows and learns about the complexities of human relationshipshibernation.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1780749155</amazonuk>1784707422

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Rodrigo Hasbun and Sophie Hughes (translator)Matthew Tree|title=AffectionsWe'll Never Know

|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=If you thought your teenaged years were a struggle Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to work out the worldbe different from his father, a drunk and yourself, consider that chronic underachiever whose dreams of Heidi Ertl. Or either being exceptional at any of her sisters – this book serves as a sort his artistic passions all failed miserably and who had endless crises of tribute self confidence. So Tim applied himself to these three real-life womenhis studies, cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and the lives that came out of their very disjointed youth, forced to be rarefied from the norm by their family uprootingset himself high but achievable ambitions. Father Hans was one of Leni Riefenstahl|isbn= B0CVFXPGP8}}{{Frontpage|isbn=B0C47LV1PC|title=Fragility|author=Mosby Woods|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= Can you make a ''Yo birthing person''s key cameramenjoke? And if you could, and a Nazi military photographeris the question should you make it? Or is the question if you did, before taking would it land? The catch is that the whole family into post-war exile in Boliviaanswer for both could well be. Their mother would have followed him to the ends of the earth – ... no. ''Fragility'' is set as in part would their daughters, the older two of which start the book by joining him on an expedition to discover a lost Incan city. Heidi finds young, instant love on the trek – but sees the dark side of such emotionsPortland, too. Older sister MonikaOregon, who might well be manic depressive, finds something else, while cautiously begins to emerge from the baby of the family stays at home with a maudlin mother. So much here could be restrictions imposed during the hook on which to hang a full novel, but if anything it's the reaction of them all to this unusual formative journey that inspires this book.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782272135</amazonuk>covid pandemic

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Sun-mi HwangMosby Woods|title= The Dog who Dared to DreamA Whirly Man Loses His Turn|rating= 4|genre= Literary Fiction|summary=From The West isn't the dominant force it once was. Nobody in the very beginning, Scraggly knows that she West is different quite sure how to her brothers and sistersmend this or even if mending it is the best course of action. Governments are flailing. Her siblings have shortA war here, glossy coats, but Scraggly's blue/black fur a push for climate action there. A feeling that nobody is long, wild and untamedin actual charge. She may be an outsiderImagine then, but she still enjoys life there was a man with her family precognition. Imagine the strategic advantage in Grandpa Screecher's sunny yard, even if it means putting up with the evil cat next door. Scraggly dreams that things this asset; a man who can stay this way forever, but fate has other planstell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. One tragic nightThat man would be valuable, everything she loves is cruelly ripped away from herright? Perhaps the most valuable asset in history. As she struggles to rebuild a new life and family for herselfImagine then, she comes to understand that sadness, betrayal and loss are an inevitable part of lifethis man loses this ability. Can Scraggly ever learn What would governments do to trust another human againget it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0349142106</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Sarah Perry0571379559|title= The Essex SerpentHouse of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= I confess to a bias… when I came across a reference to Sarah Perry''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the story of four people. Tess Hembry's latest novel; I wanted to read 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 for two reasons only's stood the passage of time, storms and floods. She is a local writerHer husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, to complete the delivery rounds - and the book is set to bring in a place not too far away, but that I sufficient money. They have yet to explore twin boys - Sonny and which fascinates me: Max, the Blackwater estuary in Essexrainbow twins. ThatSonny's a place of the kind of wide open skies and mud creeks colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. People don't believe that you will find up they're related, much of the Norfolk less twins and Suffolk coast as well, and a landscape type there's an assumption when Max is out with his mother that probably only appeals to a certain type of personshe's his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>178125544X</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Susan BealeClaire North|title=The Good GuyHouse of Odysseus|rating=45|genre=Literary Fiction |summary=September 1964: an Indian summer in suburban Massachusetts''What could matter more than love?'' The follow-up to the excellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a few months after where we left off. Ted McDougall is a twenty-three-year-old Goodyear tyre salesman In the palace of Odysseus, with delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her husband, who lives with his wife Abigail sailed to war at Troy and ten-month-old daughter Mindy in then by divine intervention never returned home. As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the throne of the up-and-coming Elm Grove communityWestern Isles. Both Ted Having survived – politically and Abigail feel unappreciated in their roles. Ted knows his in-laws wanted him physical – the chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to become a lawyer and join AbigailIthaca's father's firmshores, but he's Queen Penelope is on the brink of a good salesman and wishes they wouldn't look down on him for itfragile peace. Meanwhile Abigail, an American history buff, can't master One that shatters however with the domestic arts return of cooking and cleaningOrestes, much as she triesKing of Mycenae, and longs to go back to schoolhis sister Elektra, seeking refuge.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473630339</amazonuk>0356516075

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Emma ClineKay Chronister|title= The GirlsDesert Creatures

|genre= Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=California. Summer 1969With a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Fourteen year old Evie Boyd Whether it is a thoughtful yet bored teenager from robotic takeover, a broken home. The attention she craves is nowhere to be found in the form world devoid of her neglectful, serial dating mother, water or even in the friendship of her fickle best friend Connie. Abandoned by those around hera nuclear holocaust, Evie's path collides with Suzanne – this genre is a mysterious older girl who introduces Evie way for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. ''Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a strange yet thrilling new life, offering her work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the intimate relationship her life back home lacksfears that exist for humanity today. It is a shocking novel that still manages to find hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1784740446</amazonuk>1803364998

{{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author= Simon Van BooyEric LaRocca|title= Father's DayThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There

|genre= General FictionHorror|summary=When devastating news shatters the life of six year old HarveyHorror 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'', she finds herself in the care of whether that is a veteran social workerhome invader, Wandaa monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and alone in , by the end of the world save for one relative she has never met - a disabled ex-constory, haunted by a violent past he can't escapebeatable. Moving between past and present, FatherEric LaRocca's Day weaves together ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. It is a collection of short stories more interested in the story horrors of Harvey's childhood on Long Islandillness, grief and humiliation. Horrors that linger and her life as a young woman in Parisare harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780749694</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Thomas KeneallyMadelaine Lucas|title=Napoleon's Last IslandThirst for Salt|rating=4.5

|summary=It's not usual 'Love, I'd read, was supposed to open be a light and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity'' Told from a retrospective view, a review young woman unravels the year-long relationship that once defined her. Overlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the history of how affair with a man twenty years her senior from its inception – the book came summer after finishing university – to be written but with its sorrowful end the summer after. Set against the backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''NapoleonThirst for Salt's Last Island'details the 24-year-old narrator' the story sheds an intriguing light s deepening relationship with her older lover, depicting its all-consuming nature, how it changed her perspective on the plotboth romantic and familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably. In 2012 |isbn=0861546490}}{{Frontpage|author Thomas Keneally was given tickets to an exhibition of Napoleonic artefacts: uniforms, furniture, china, paintings, military decorations, snuff boxes and memorabilia as well as Napoleon= Michael Grothaus|title=Beautiful Shining People|rating=4|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= ''s death mask. He was intrigued as to how the exhibits But fearing something and particularly the mask came having it come to be in Australiapass are two different things. Some pieces in the exhibition had been bought in later but And I'm willing to bet most came from the descendants of the Balcombe familywhat we fear will never happen, who came or we can take steps to the colony in the first half of the nineteenth century, from St Helena via Englandchange it. The result of Keneally's research into the story is ' 'Napoleon's Last IslandBeautiful 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.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473625335</amazonuk>191458564X

{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The Natural Way of ThingsJennifer Saint|authortitle=Charlotte WoodAtalanta

|summary=Yolanda and Verla wake up disorientated. They realise they've been drugged'I was as worthy as any one of them. Yolanda thinks I would get on board that perhaps they are ship, I vowed. I would take my place, not just in some kind the name of mental facility - She knew she the goddess. It was not madfor the sake of my name, but all lunatics thought thattoo. Atalanta'' Princess. Warrior. Lover. Hero. Verla just sits Abandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a son, still Atalanta is raised under the protective eye of the goddess Athemis and frozenfashioned into a formidable huntress, waitingone who longs for adventure. And soon enough, two men arrive When the opportunity comes – to reveal their fate. Yolanda and Verlajoin the Argonauts, along with eight other girlsa fierce band of warriors, have been brought descendent from the Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the chance to a remote farmhouse surrounded by an electrified fence. Their heads are shaved. They are dressed fight in Artemis' name and carve out her own legendary place in uncomfortable, scratchy, Amish-style clotheshistory. They are tied together like What follows is a chain gang. Andwhirlwind of challenges and discovery and through it, like any chain gang, their days are marked with forced labour. Two menAtalanta must remember Artemis' fatal warning: that if she marries, one more cruel than the other, and a so-called nurse are their jailers, not their guardiansit will be her undoing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1760291870</amazonuk>1472292154

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Emma GeenAmanthi Harris|title=The Many Selves of Katherine NorthBeautiful Place|rating=3.5|genre=Science Literary Fiction|summary=As Padma, a Bristol-area 'phenomenaut'young Sri Lankan, nineteen-year-old Kit projects herself into has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the lab-grown bodies southern coast of all sorts of creaturesher home country. She's recently This is a place she spent her formative years. It is not a lot place she was born into, but the one she thinks of time as a fox (appropriate given her nickname) and got particularly close with a vixen named Tomokohome. It's becoming much harder for her How she came to leave the animal world behind be at the end of her 'jumps'. Even after BuckleyVilla, how it became her neuroengineerhome, signals and the machinations that have flowed through her to life ever since she first arrived there provide the ''score'Come home' for this gentle and she resumes yet subtly violent novel. Padma's present fails to escape her original body, she has trouble giving up animal tendencies past and much like territorialismthe musical score of a film, toileting outdoors and raiding binsthat strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the Villa.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408858436</amazonuk>1784631930

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sjon and Victoria Cribb (translator)178563335X|title=Moonstone: The Boy Who Never WasSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor

|summary=SixteenWhen 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-old Mani Stein Hannah and her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter- Moonstone in translation - existed on the fringes of societylaw won't let her see her grandson. He lived in Reykjavik and in 1918 the night sky (and the day for that matter) was lit by the eruptions of Holthorpe, on the Katla volcano. The Great War was ragingNorfolk coast, or possibly grinding onis a lovely place, but life Rachel is struggling to develop a real bond with the parish - and she's in awe of the capital carried on much as usual. There were shortagesvicar, such as coalGail, but there was then she's been doing the new fashion and it was job for the movies that Mani lived, seeing every production he could, sometimes several timesmore than thirty years. He dreamed about Rachel and Christopher hoped that a walk on the films, changing beach would do them to suit his tastes, working his own life into the plotssome good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. But there was another reason why Mani was a misfit: Mani was gay and frequently made a living as a sex workerAnd then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1473613132</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Conor O'Callaghan1398515388|title=Nothing on EarthThe Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)

|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=On a sweltering night First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in what is a blisteringly hot summer a young girl hammers at a man's door the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and when let into this, in turn, caused the house tells him that her father has disappeared ''too''nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and utter devastation. Gradually her story emergesThe deaths were uncountable, of a home on one of those estates so common in Ireland after and the collapse loss of the Celtic Tiger with only the occasional house occupied and others only part builtlivelihoods was widespread. It could be any one of hundreds of Irish towns at The fact that time and its main feature is many pets were separated from their owners came far down the lack list of hope that it will never be any betterpriorities but - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. Our narrator tells her story, much, He wasn't a dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that he says, as it was told would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to him open his car door and we hear of a life on the edge of poverty, with strange noises in Tamon the night, words written dog jumped in the dust on the windows mirrored by those written in blue ink on her skin.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781620342</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Per Olov Enquist and Deborah Bragan-Turner (translator)0989715337|title=The Parable Book|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=It's not only springtime when a man's fancies turn to thoughts of love – he can also do it in the autumn of his life, as does the man involved here. But being a well-known author, and being beholden to silence, can he really put his thoughts Papa on paper? It happened a long time ago, and he only met the woman concerned a couple of times, but with it being such a powerful event and such a slightly unusual circumstance, what should he do? It takes a notebook of his father's love poems to his mother, that he finds both incomplete and scorched, to give him the green light – the voice from the past that says to him, 'go for it'. And what we read here is a result.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857059912</amazonuk>}}{{newreviewMoon|author=Maggie O'Farrell|title=This Must Be the PlaceMarco North

|summary=Maggie O'Farrell's globe-trotting seventh novel opens in 2010 with Daniel Sullivan, an American linguistics professor. He lives with his wife Claudette, a French actress who retreated from the limelight, and their two children in a remote home in Donegal. It was 10 years ago that he first came here and met Claudette by chance when her van Some frogs had a flat tire; he struck up a conversation with her son Ari and gave gotten into the boy tips for dealing with his stutterwell. Now, preparing to fly back to Brooklyn for his father's ninetieth birthday party, he's caught short by a long-lost voice he hears on the radio. It belongs to Nicola Janks, a former lover he last saw 24 years ago; when he learns that she died soon after they were together, he determines to figure out whether he played a role, even if he doesn't like what he finds.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755358805</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Joanne Harris|title=Different Class|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= St Oswald's Grammar School For Boys is 'Walter stood waist-deep in crisisthe fragrant water, naked except for his beaten leather hat. A murdered schoolboy, a procession Long strands of new Head Masters, a(nother) new Head Mastertheir eggs wove around him, a Crisis Intervention Team and a potential merger sticky gray pearls with St Oswald's all female counterpart, Mulberry Housetadpoles inside them. Roy Straitley is not altogether dismayed Two of the dogs leaned over the opening and barked down at the prospect strange noise of delaying his retirement; St Oswaldthe buckets as he filled them.''s has been his life, man and boy and a crisis  How is a crisis after all is said and done, isn't itthat for an opening? It's probably his duty to stay and right The style of this novel in the ship. So when the latest form of the new Head Masters interconnected short stories goes from succinct and laconic to wistful and his duo of crisis managers walk into the staff roommusing, Straitley can't quite believe his old eyesturning on a sixpence. The new Head is an ex-pupil of St Oswald's; a boy And author Marco North, who, in his time at has the esteemed old School caused such an uproarious scandal that one most wonderful turn of the Masters ended up in prison! |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0385619235</amazonuk>phrase, starts as he means to go on.