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[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=295967572X|title=Pale Pieces|author=Sara Stridsberg G M Stevens|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= Our unnamed narrator is about to begin a train journey with his companion Django. Where they're going and what the purpose of this journey is, is uncertain. Django found the tickets ''on the floor somewhere'' and Deborah Braganhas persuaded our narrator to accompany him. Why not? Not much else is clear either -Turner (translator)but we are probably in the past as the pair travel to the station by coach and the train is a steam locomotive.}}{{Frontpage|author=Makenna Goodman|title=The Gravity Helen of LoveNowhere

|summary=Particularly literate cover… Setting It could be argued that the pervading theme of this book is malaise - a realhard-to-place feeling that something in your life mental hospital – in Sweden… Mature themes… Opening with an emotion- is not quite right. The protagonist, a disgraced professor on the brink of losing both his career and closure-laden death… Yeshis relationship, embodies this book has more than its share feeling. However, Goodman counteracts his discomfort with a force which is seductive, radical and unnerving: Helen. The connection between Helen and the protagonist is indirect yet intimate. As the former owner of things the countryside house he's considering, Helen represents a volta in his life, her past tied to put the his potential reader offfresh start. WhichThe realtor who shows the protagonist around the house shares stories about Helen, and describes her as ''an entity that is pure consciousness, beyond form''. Although she lives in this instancean assisted living facility now, is quite a large shame indeedHelen has powers beyond comprehension which the reader gets the sense are not altogether innocuous.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857054767</amazonuk>1804272205

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Carys Bray and othersOlga Tokarczuk|title=How Much the Heart Can Hold: Seven Stories on Love|rating=3.5|genre=Short Stories|summary=This Sceptre collection does not have as simple a remit as it might appear; these are no straightforward love stories. Instead, they each take one aspect House of love – often one of the ancient Greek classifications – and provide a whole new way of thinking about it. After allDay, the heart holds a lot House of metaphorical weight.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1473649420</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Salley Vickers|title= CousinsNight|rating=45|genre= Literary Fiction|summary=''We donWhat't know our own limits so how can we judge s the limits good of othersa world that keeps changing like that? And what How can one go on calmly living in it is easy to forget is that they were so young. Too young to bear all those horribly complicated family strains.?''

Salley Vickers' intense family odyssey revolves around one devastating accident in 1994. Reminiscent The title of the pastthis spellbinding work, Will Tye's accident has a powerful effect on three generations 'House of the Tye familyDay, revealing long forgotten truths and close kept secrets. House of Night''Cousins'' pieces together , somewhat reflects this notion of shifting realities - the events leading up to small, subtle changes which govern our lives, like the event shift from three different close relatives perspectives, in an attempt day to understand what exactly happened and why it happened that dark night. His sister, grandmother and aunt all recount Will's childhood and growth into an adulthowever quotidian, highlighting both his successes and mistakes whilst reflecting on their own pastscausing chaos. From But, the outbreak of the Second World War right up until constant in that image is the present dayhouse, stoic against the family's mysteries are laid out for all to see. Family loyalties are tested and the lengths you will go to for those you love are questioned. At its heart, ''Cousins'' ancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it is a love story between two cousins, Will and Cece, littered with complications, potential and realism as well as the struggle to determine your worth when you're youngperceived. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0241187710</amazonuk>1804271918

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Paul BeattyThea Lenarduzzi|title=The SelloutTower

|summary=''This may be hard to believeHow unctuous are the fats of another's life, coming from a black man, but Ihow dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream''ve never stolen anything.''

Isn't that one of In this compelling novel, Thea Lenarduzzi assumes the great opening lines identity of literature? Our black hero and narrator, surname Me, first name unknownT, was born in the southern Los Angeles suburb protagonist of Dickens and subjected to an isolated upbringing dominated by his fatherthis tale. Just as T's extreme views on racestory is being told, supposedly the subject story of a psychological memoir which will solve their financial problemssecond protagonist is unveiled: Annie, the daughter of a wealthy family in the 19th century, but cruel and unnatural to anyone with an ounce who died of humanitytuberculosis after being locked in a tower, captures T's imagination. To add insult to injury Me discovered after his fatherAnnie's death (fate is, above all, an enticing story to T. It is a racially provoked shooting) that there was no memoir. A drive-by shooting produces nothing more substantial than story which she consumes avariciously, both in a bill quest for a drive-through funeraltruth and knowledge, but it starts Me on the path which will end and in the Supreme Courtservice of myth, the subject of a race trial: ''Me v the United States of America''fable and fantasy. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1786070154</amazonuk>1804271799

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Nir BaramJon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |title=Good PeopleVaim

|summary=Thomas Heiselberg's self-focus pays off when he attracts the best clientele to the American advertising firm he helps establish across Europe from his German home. Meanwhile in Russia Sasha Weissberg is struggling with being in a literary, free-thinking family that doesn't go down too well with StalinAll was strange''s regime. As World War II arrives.. This haunting phrase encapsulates the pervading sense of otherworldliness which permeates this story set in Vaim, both of their worlds are shaken. As a result both decide to become collaborators rather than resistance fighters fictional fishing village in Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for different reasons Jatgeir and with far reaching effectsEline, two of the protagonists caught in its melancholic current.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1911231006</amazonuk>1804271829

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ian McEwanClaire-Louise Bennett|title=NutshellBig Kiss, Bye-Bye

|genre=Literary Fiction |summary=Meet Trudy. Successfully living Everything in a large and valuable London homethis book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, she is heavily pregnant, and steeped in between two men – she has swapped the homeowner, poet anguish and publisher John, for someone completely different, namely Claudedistortion. Even a kiss, usually a nastysymbol of intimacy and closeness, brutish and short typebecomes evidence of love lost. Some people cannot work When the narrator cries out why on earth she has made that decision, including our narrator. Ohinternally, ''come over here and he himself, our narratorkiss me, '' it is the child she's pregnant withless an invitation than a desperate attempt to confirm her emotional numbness. He The imagined recipient of this plea is Xavier, her ex-partner, a very alert young thing, with nothing else ghost she conjures to do but kick here test her detachment.|isbn=1804271934}}{{Frontpage|author=Helene Bessette and thereKate Briggs (translator)|title=Lili is Crying|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=First published in 1953 in French, this novel is a timeless text which wrenches the hearts of its readers just as Bessette wrenches words and practice what you might well call mindfulness, and listen in sentences from their proper position on Claude the page and Trudypositions them elsewhere, disjointed, truncated. Like the lives of her characters, as they calmly talk their way to plotting and carrying out murder…are often left tragically incomplete.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1911214330</amazonuk>1804271675

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Matt WilvenJonathan Buckley|title=The Blackbird SingularityOne Boat|rating= 54|genre= Literary Fiction|summary=Thirty-something writer Vince Watergate sees his partner's pregnancy as 'One Boat'' is a fresh start. He stops taking his lithium and deeply introspective novella that defies traditional narrative structure, drawing the new clarity reader into a contemplative realm of mind lets him start writing his best work in agesphilosophical musings and fragmented memories flowing from our narrator and protagonist, Teresa. He befriends a blackbird in the garden with Set against the help evocative backdrop of a bag of sultanassmall coastal Greek town, and begins preparing this work masterfully captures the baby's room. For a short while, everything seems full magic of peace its setting and hopeits power to provoke profound introspection. But Vince and Lyd's first child, despite having died a couple Teresa herself recognises these qualities as the reason she has visited it after the death of years earlierboth her parents. Prompted by her mourning, might not have completely left them her narrative voice is meditative and deeply self-aware, inviting the blackbird might reader into her labyrinthine cogitations. It is a book that not be as friendly as Vince first only requires but inspires depth of thought. Lithium withdrawal, stress, since its narrative structure is fragmentary and the pressure of appearing 'normal' push Vince into a frightening, irrational placeironically relies on analepsis for its propulsion. Can he fight his way through it and return to his family?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1785079689</amazonuk>1804271764

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Carolyn ParkhurstEowyn Ivey|title=HarmonyBlack Woods Blue Sky|rating=3.5

|summary=Josh ''Black Woods Blue Sky'' tells the story of Birdie, the young mother of toddler Emaleen, who longs for a life beyond the Alaskan lodge where she works as a bar waitress, a setting which enables her bad habits and Alexandra Hammond have two daughtersher accidental neglect of Emaleen. Iris is eleven years old and neurotypical: her brain works in the same way Described as most peoplea ''wild card''s, but she feels stuck in her elder sisterday-to-day life, Tilly, is thirteen and yearns to cross the Wolverine river and live on the autistic spectrumNorth Fork to fulfil her desires of a simple life surrounded by nature. Her parents are finding it difficultWhen she meets Arthur Nielson, a strange, taciturn and solitary man, if not impossiblewho says he has a cabin over there, she feels called to cope go - and bring Emaleen with her. Even her special Without realising it, this calling will transform hers and rather expensive school has indicated that they canEmaleen't continues lives forever. She's subject to mood swings |isbn=1472279042}} {{Frontpage|author=Sally Rooney|title=Intermezzo|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction |summary=Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard of life and unpredictable is something of a grandmaster at putting it into words. Her dialogue is gripping and inappropriate behaviourso brilliantly frustrating, as her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Josh is lucky - he goes Among the many relationships woven into this story, the central one for readers to work - but Alexandra unravel is stuck with the problem, which is why Scott Bean, educator fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and expert in parentingPeter Koubek. Ivan, appeals to her. The name came to her attention on a couple of occasions: she subscribed to socially awkward chess prodigy, contrasts sharply with his newsletterolder brother Peter, heard him speak and what he had to say rang a bellsuccessful lawyer living in Dublin. Before Following their father's passing after a long he was coming to battle with cancer, the house for private consultationsbrothers' already strained relationship faces new trials.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0340978171</amazonuk>0571365469

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=William RyanFyodor Dostoyevsky|title=The Constant SoldierWhite Nights

|genre=ThrillersShort Stories|summary=Paul Brandt returns home to his village without As always in Dostoyevsky, the arm he left at the Russian Front in defence of Germanycharacter work is sublime. The village looks pretty much the same as he One is never left it, with the exception of the lack of young men and wondering what a new building. His home now boasts an SS rest hut, providing officers with entertainment character is thinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and respite breaks from the fighting. As Paul passes the hut for the first time, 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 temperaments with under different circumstances – before she wore the stripes of a concentration camp prisonerremarkable clarity.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1447255011</amazonuk>0241619785

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Pamela JohnsonJames Baldwin|title=Taking Giovanni's Room|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction |summary=''Giovanni's Room'' follows the narrator David, an American man living in Paris, as he navigates his torturous affair with Giovanni, an Italian bartender he meets in a gay bar. While David is engaged to Hella, who is travelling in WaterSpain, the real tension in the novel arises not from his infidelity but from the deeper conflict within himself. It is David's crippling shame and denial of his sexuality that ultimately dooms his relationship with Giovanni.|isbn=0141186356}}{{Frontpage|author=Alba de Cespedes |title=Forbidden Notebook

|summary=Pamela Johnson's third novel is set in 2002 but has its roots in a real-life tragedy This Italian work of feminist fiction holds an air of suspense and tension from nearly 50 years earlier: in 1953 a storm surge hit the Norfolk coastmoment our protagonist, Valeria Cossati, destroying Lydia Hutton's grandmother's home and sweeping purchases her whole family out to sea. Seven-year-old Lydia was the only one to surviveforbidden notebook, clinging to the wreckage and singing hymns to learns about herself to survive. It's a dark part of her past she's never told anyone except Luc, the half-French lover whose iconic performance art piece, ''Taking in Water'', she participated in during a spell in New York City in the 1960s, when she was known as 'Layla' most intimate and hung around with the likes of Andy Warholrevealing ways.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1534627243</amazonuk>1782278222

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=A N WilsonOttessa Moshfegh|title=ResolutionMy Year of Rest and Relaxation|rating=43

|summary=In 1772 Reinhold Forster At best, this novel is a scathing critique of modern society and his son George were hired as ship's naturalists for reveals the ''Resolution''fragility of human relationships; at worst, it is the vessel Captain James Cook piloted to New Zealand cynical, predictable and back on a three-year voyage slightly trite tale of discoveryan unlikeable protagonist. Once a Lutheran pastor near DanzigThis unlikely heroine, 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''slim, Reinhold seems fussy, argumentative attractive and rather heartless, as when he offers George's dog up as fresh meat when the captain newly orphaned girl in her twenties is desperately ill. George, just 18 when he joins disillusioned with the expeditionworld, is a self-taught illustrator and botanist with a keen ear for languages. Though precociously intelligentbut resolves not to lose sleep over it: in fact, he is emotionally immature and cannot keep a handle on his masturbation habit or deal with their servant Nally's crush on himher solution lies in her hibernation.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782398279</amazonuk>1784707422

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Michael HughesMatthew Tree|title= The Countenance DivineWe'll Never Know|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary=In 1999Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, a programmer is trying to fix the millennium bug, but can't shake the sense he's been chosen for somethingdrunk 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. In 1888, five women are brutally murdered in the East End by a troubled young man in thrall So Tim applied himself to a mysterious master. In 1777his studies, an apprentice engraver called William Blake has a defining spiritual experience; thirteen years later this vision returns.  And in 1666, poet cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and revolutionary John Milton completes the epic for which he will be remembered centuries laterset himself high but achievable ambitions.  But where does the feeling come from that the world is about to end?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473636507</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Emily BittoB0C47LV1PC|title= The Strays|rating= 5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= Lily comes from an ordinary suburban family, but on her first day at a new school she meets Eva: the super-confident middle daughter of artist Evan Trentham. The girls fast become firm friends, to the exclusion 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't.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1785079514</amazonuk>}}{{newreviewFragility|author=Eowyn Ivey|title=To the Bright Edge of the WorldMosby Woods

|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=If Can youmake a 're going to go pioneering across unexplored lands'Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, at least be prepared to accept what is the question should you seek – namely, what make it? Or is the question if you've never seen before. That lesson seems quite obviousdid, but back in would it land? The catch is that the time of 1885 Allen Forrester is a little too naïve to heed itanswer for both could well be.... no. A career soldier, he  ''Fragility'' is tasked with scouring set as the potential city of the Wolverine River that threads south to the shores of AlaskaPortland, even though the Russians (who of course used to own the Territory) have had all manner of lethal encounters with those already living thereOregon, and even though a major stretch of the river has cautiously begins to be traversed in winter when entirely frozen over, as emerge from the cliffs either side are too impenetrable. Allen leaves a much younger, new bride behind – and right from restrictions imposed during the get-go his journals force him to pen words about strange happenings, strange encounters and things of legend coming to life. Like I say, what he's never seen before…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1472208609</amazonuk>covid pandemic

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Talulah RileyMosby Woods|title= Acts of Love|rating= 4.5|genre= Women's Fiction |summary= Bernadette St John presents herself as the very face of contemporary feminine independence. She is strong, career-driven, beautiful…and definitely holds the attention of the public. For Bernadette is the ''A Whirly Man Whisperer'', winning herself fame with her ability to coax secrets from the richest and most powerful men of the world, exposing them with controversial distaste in her articles. Hidden behind such a conniving and judgemental persona, however, is a deep insecurity, and a desperate longing to be loved by the perfect man. She has already decided that the newly engaged Tim Bazier is the only candidate for such a position in her heart, and will stop at nothing to win him back from his all-too-lovely fiancé. Yet what is perfect is a subject for discussion, and charismatic entrepreneur Radley Blake'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 down.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1473637902</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Jesse Ball|title=How to Set a Fire and WhyLoses His Turn

|summary=Lucia Stanton 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 a sarcastic 14-year-old misfit who lives with her elderly Aunt Lucy in a garage they rent from an evil landlord at the bottom best course of his large gardenaction. Governments are flailing. She never comes right out and explains why she's A war here, a push for climate action there, but if you read between the lines you work out . A feeling that her father is dead and her mother nobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, there was a mental hospital – presumably for his murderman with precognition. Aunt Lucy is dignified and principled – ''Don't do things Imagine the strategic advantage in this asset; a man who can tell you aren't proud of'' is her motto – even though they are undeniably poor: Lucia only has one what will happen given any set of clothes and mostly lives off of liquorice and Aunt Lucy's terrible homemade breadcircumstances. 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?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1925355470</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jenn Ashworth0571379559|title=FellThe House of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams

|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Now her parents have died''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the story of four people. Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, Annette returns to sell her old childhood home but thereinstead, she lives in the house on the riverbank, built of broken bricks. Insubstantial as it might look, it's work stood the passage of time, storms and floods. Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, to do on complete the decrepit building firstdelivery rounds - and to bring in sufficient money. As she wanders around They have twin boys - Sonny and tries to make some order of Max, the overgrown shambles, sherainbow twins. Sonny's watched by the ghost of her colouring reflects his mother, Netty; a spirit with regrets's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. Netty reminisces about AnnettePeople don't believe that they're related, much less twins and there's childhood and the turning point their lives reached an assumption when the mysterious healer Timothy Richardson came to stay. It was a time Max is out with his mother that promised so much but one for which Netty now needs to make amends, even if she is beyond the grave's his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1473630606</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sue GeeClaire North|title=TrioHouse of Odysseus|rating=45|genre=Historical Literary Fiction|summary=In ''What could matter more than love?'' The follow-up to the winter of 1936, Steven Coulterexcellent ''s wife, Margaret, dies of tuberculosis, leaving their Northumberland cottage cold and empty. His work as a history teacher at Kirkhoughton BoysIthaca' School isn't enough to distract him from his grief; he spends his long evenings writing letters to Margaretpicks up a few months after where we left off. GraduallyIn the palace of Odysseus, thoughwith delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her husband, as spring arrives he starts who sailed to take an interest in other thingswar at Troy and then by divine intervention never returned home. His colleague Frank Embleton invites him to a performance As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the throne of the Western Isles. Having survived – politically and physical – the Hepplewick Trio: Frankchaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca's sister Diana shores, Queen Penelope is on cello; pianist Margot Heslop, whose mother died when she was young and who looks after her father, the brink of a coal mine managerfragile peace. One that shatters however with the return of Orestes, at Hepplewick Hall; and their friend George LiddellKing of Mycenae, the violinist and leaderhis sister Elektra, who is a Royal College of Music graduateseeking refuge.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1784630616</amazonuk>0356516075

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Stephanie DanlerKay Chronister|title= SweetbitterDesert Creatures

|genre= Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary= Twenty –two year old Tess With a world that is a restless graduate from a broken family. With the intention of finally starting her lifebecoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, she moves to New York City with no real plan but a need to do somethingpost-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. She manages to get Whether it is a job at one of the most exclusive restaurants in town as robotic takeover, a back-waiter and Tess is thrown into the comforting commotion world devoid of New York life. It's at her new job that she becomes fascinated by two people: Simone, water or a know-it-all server and Jakenuclear holocaust, this genre is a handsome yet moody bartenderway for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. While the restaurant becomes her home and her colleagues her new family, ''SweetbitterDesert Creatures'' follows Tess through by Kay Chronister is a year new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of her life as she grows and learns about the complexities of human relationshipsfears that exist for humanity today. It is a shocking novel that still manages to find hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1780749155</amazonuk>1803364998

{{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Rodrigo Hasbun and Sophie Hughes (translator)Eric LaRocca|title=AffectionsThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=4.5|genre=General FictionHorror|summary=If you thought your teenaged years were Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is used as a struggle way to work out the world, reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and yourselfprocess them. Most horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad'', consider whether that of Heidi Ertl. Or either of her sisters – this book serves as is a home invader, a monster or a sort of tribute to these three real-life womenghost, it usually something tangible and , by the lives that came out end of their very disjointed youththe story, forced to be rarefied from the norm by their family uprootingbeatable. Father Hans was one of Leni RiefenstahlEric LaRocca's key cameramen, and ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. It is a Nazi military photographer, before taking the whole family into post-war exile in Bolivia. Their mother would have followed him to the ends collection of the earth – as short stories more interested in part would their daughters, the older two horrors of which start the book by joining him on an expedition to discover a lost Incan city. Heidi finds youngillness, instant love on the trek – but sees the dark side of such emotions, toogrief and humiliation. Older sister Monika, who might well be manic depressive, finds something else, while the baby of the family stays at home with a maudlin mother. So much here could be the hook on which Horrors that linger and are harder to hang a full novel, but if anything itdefeat than any ''Big Bad''s the reaction of them all to this unusual formative journey that inspires this book.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782272135</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Sun-mi HwangMadelaine Lucas|title= The Dog who Dared to DreamThirst for Salt|rating= 45|genre= Literary Fiction|summary=From the very beginning''Love, I'd read, Scraggly knows that she is different was supposed to her brothers be a light and sisters. Her siblings have short, glossy coatsweightless feeling, but ScragglyI had always longed for gravity's blue/black fur is ' Told from a retrospective view, a young woman unravels the year-long, wild and untamedrelationship that once defined her. She may be an outsiderOverlaid with later wisdom, but she still enjoys life the narrator relives the affair with a man twenty years her family in Grandpa Screechersenior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the summer after. Set against the backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the 24-year-old narrator's sunny yard, even if it means putting up deepening relationship with the evil cat next door. Scraggly dreams that things can stay this way foreverher older lover, but fate has other plans. One tragic nightdepicting its all-consuming nature, everything she loves is cruelly ripped away from how it changed her. As she struggles to rebuild a new life perspective on both romantic and family for herself, she comes to understand that sadness, betrayal familial relationships and loss are an inevitable part of lifehow it altered her irrevocably. Can Scraggly ever learn to trust another human again?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0349142106</amazonuk>0861546490

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Sarah PerryMichael Grothaus|title= The Essex Serpent|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= I confess to a bias… when I came across a reference to Sarah Perry's latest novel; I wanted to read it for two reasons only. She is a local writer, and the book is set in a place not too far away, but that I have yet to explore and which fascinates me: the Blackwater estuary in Essex. That's a place of the kind of wide open skies and mud creeks that you will find up much of the Norfolk and Suffolk coast as well, and a landscape type that probably only appeals to a certain type of person.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>178125544X</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Susan Beale|title=The Good GuyBeautiful Shining People

|summary=California''But fearing something and having it come to pass are two different things. Summer 1969. Fourteen year old Evie Boyd is a thoughtful yet bored teenager from a broken home. The attention she craves is nowhere And I'm willing to be found in the form bet most of her neglectful, serial dating motherwhat we fear will never happen, or even in we can take steps to change it.'' ''Beautiful Shining People'' revolves around the friendship question of her fickle best friend Connieidentity and acceptance. Abandoned by those around her, Evie's path collides with Suzanne – a mysterious older girl who introduces Evie Of what it means to a strange yet thrilling new lifebe human. Of what is real and what is artificial, offering her and whether the intimate relationship her life back home lacksdevelopment of technology is exciting or frightening.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1784740446</amazonuk>191458564X

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Simon Van BooyJennifer Saint|title= Father's DayAtalanta|rating= 5|genre= General Literary Fiction|summary=When devastating news shatters the life ''I was as worthy as any one of six year old Harveythem. I would get on board that ship, I vowed. I would take my place, she finds herself not just in the care name of the goddess. It was for the sake of my name, too. Atalanta'' Princess. Warrior. Lover. Hero. Abandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a veteran social workerson, WandaAtalanta is raised under the protective eye of the goddess Athemis and fashioned into a formidable huntress, and alone in one who longs for adventure. When the opportunity comes – to join the world save for one relative she has never met - Argonauts, a disabled ex-confierce band of warriors, haunted by a violent past he candescendent from the Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the chance to fight in Artemis't escapename and carve out her own legendary place in history. Moving between past What follows is a whirlwind of challenges and discovery and presentthrough it, FatherAtalanta must remember Artemis's Day weaves together the story of Harvey's childhood on Long Islandfatal warning: that if she marries, and it will be her life as a young woman in Parisundoing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1780749694</amazonuk>1472292154

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Thomas KeneallyAmanthi Harris|title=Napoleon's Last IslandBeautiful Place|rating=4.5

|summary=It's not usual to open Padma, a review with the history of how the book came young Sri Lankan, has returned to be written but with ''Napoleon's Last Island'' the story sheds an intriguing light Villa Hibiscus on the plotsouthern coast of her home country. In 2012 author Thomas Keneally This is a place she spent her formative years. It is not a place she was given tickets to an exhibition born into, but the one she thinks of Napoleonic artefacts: uniforms, furniture, china, paintings, military decorations, snuff boxes and memorabilia as well as Napoleon's death maskhome. He was intrigued as to how the exhibits and particularly the mask How she came to be in Australia. Some pieces in at the exhibition had been bought in later but most came from the descendants of the Balcombe familyVilla, how it became her home, who came to the colony in and the machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first half of arrived there provide the nineteenth century, from St Helena via England. The result of Keneally's research into the story is 'score'Napoleon' for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. Padma's Last Island''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.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473625335</amazonuk>1784631930

{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=178563335X|title=The Natural Way of ThingsSea Defences|author=Charlotte WoodHilary Taylor

|summary=Yolanda When we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and Verla wake up disorientated. They realise wondering why they've been druggedre held when you need to pick the children up. Yolanda thinks that perhaps they are in some kind of mental facility - She knew she was not mad Her husband, but all lunatics thought that. Verla just sitsChristopher, still collects six-year-old Hannah and frozenher elder brother, waiting. And soon enoughJamie, two men arrive to reveal their fate. Yolanda and Verla, along with eight other girls, have been brought to whilst Rachel holds a remote farmhouse surrounded by an electrified fencesobbing parishioner. Their heads are shaved Thelma's daughter-in-law won't let her see her grandson. They are dressed in uncomfortable Holthorpe, scratchyon the Norfolk coast, Amish-style clothes. They are tied together like is a chain gang. Andlovely place, like any chain gangbut Rachel is struggling to develop a real bond with the parish - and she's in awe of the vicar, their days are marked with forced labour. Two menGail, one but then she's been doing the job for more cruel than the other, thirty years. Rachel and Christopher hoped that a sowalk on the beach would do them some good -called nurse are their jailers, not their guardiansit was stormy but it was probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1760291870</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Emma Geen1398515388|title=The Many Selves of Katherine NorthBoy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)|rating=34.5|genre=Science General Fiction|summary=As a Bristol-area 'phenomenaut'First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, in turn, caused the nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and utter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, nineteen-year-old Kit projects herself into and the lab-grown bodies loss of all sorts of creatureslivelihoods was widespread. She's recently spent a lot The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of time as priorities but - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a fox (appropriate given her nickname) and got particularly close with dog outside a vixen named Tomokoconvenience store. It He wasn't a dog person but the convenience store owner's becoming much harder for her comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to leave open his car door and Tamon the animal world behind at dog jumped in.}} {{Frontpage|isbn=0989715337|title=Papa on the end of her Moon|author=Marco North|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary='jumps'Some frogs had gotten into the well. Even after Buckley'' ''Walter stood waist-deep in the fragrant water, her neuroengineernaked except for his beaten leather hat. Long strands of their eggs wove around him, signals her to sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Two of the dogs leaned over the opening and barked down at the strange noise of the buckets as he filled them.'Come home'  How is that for an opening? The style of this novel in the form of interconnected short stories goes from succinct and she resumes her original bodylaconic to wistful and musing, she turning on a sixpence. And author Marco North, who has trouble giving up animal tendencies like territorialismthe most wonderful turn of phrase, toileting outdoors and raiding binsstarts as he means to go on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408858436</amazonuk>