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[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Julia Claiborne JohnsonB0FK5LHKD9|title=Be Frank with MeThe Colour of Memory|author=Christopher Bowden

|summary=In June 2009 Isaac Vargas sends his assistant, twenty-four-year-old Alice WhitleyIt's been three years since we last reviewed a book by favourite regular Christopher Bowden, so we were very glad to Bel Air, California to help Mimi Gillespie produce her long-awaited second see a new novelarrive here at Bookbag Towers. Under the name M.M. BanningLike all Bowden's stories, Mimi issued there's a wildly successful novel back in mystery at the 1970s, heart of ''Pitched'The Colour of Money', which quickly became a modern classic on every American adolescent's list of assigned reading for school. SheWe like this running theme in an author's the sort of figure Harper Lee was for decades: work - take a one-hit literary wonder mystery but give it different flavour and an infamous recluse. But there's one key difference here: Mimi has a nine-year-old son, Frankatmosphere each time.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782399208</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Kay LangdaleSaou Ichikawa and Polly Barton (translator)|title=The Way Back to UsHunchback|rating=54

|summary=A household revolves around its weakest member and because it's revolving there's always I was in the middle of a danger that some people self- such as a spouse imposed book- will be spun to buying ban when I made an exception for this one. What first drew me in was the outsidebook's bold fuchsia cover, whilst other children, loosely attached followed by its striking title: ''Hunchback''. This is a word I recognised to the main carer will be at a distanceloaded with historical and cultural baggage, never completely closeoften used to dehumanise or reduce. Curious, but never escaping either. In I leaned over the centre are display table and turned to the carer and back inside cover. There, I discovered the person who needs that careauthor: Saou Ichikawa, bonded together a woman diagnosed in such childhood with congenital myopathy, a way condition that causes severe muscular weakness and touches every aspect of her life. The title took on new complexity in light of her biography. I had to read it.|isbn=0241700787}}{{Frontpage|author=Jen Beagin|title=Big Swiss|rating=4.5|genre=Humour |summary=I found the premise of this book totally original and addictive. Greta possesses the power to know the population of Hudson, New York's actually difficult darkest secrets, their intimate lives, their fetishes and fears. How? Her job is to offer help or even friendshiptranscribe their sex therapy sessions. So it is with Anna and TeddySure, there's a confidentiality agreement, as the sex coach who suffers from Spinal Muscular Atrophycalls himself Om keeps reminding her, or SMA as but that just makes itmore exciting. Like we's generally knownve all probably wished for at some point in life, Greta can exist passively, placidly, as a fly on the wall. That is, until Greta decides to unglue her fly-feet from the safety of the wall and buzz far too close to the sun. HeThe sun in this analogy is the sex coach's five nownewest patient, confined to a wheelchair or his Whizzybug who Greta dubs 'Big Swiss', and who, like the sun, is bright, blonde and not putting on much weight as chewing beautiful - and swallowing are difficultirresistible to Greta. Suddenly, the confidentiality agreement, the ethics of her professional position, her loyalties to Om, fly out of the window. She's in too deep.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473618363</amazonuk>0571378579

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Hendrik Groen and Hester Velmans (translator)1784745758|title= The Secret Diary of Hendrik Groen, 83¼ years OldThree Days in June|author=Anne Tyler|rating= 4.5|genre= General Fiction|summary= As the old adage goes, to walk a mile in someone elseThe day before your daughter's shoes is to gain some understanding of what it is to wedding will always be that personbusy but Gail Baines got far more than she asked for. Admittedly First, Hendrik Groen isnit was her job as assistant head at the local school. There was a moment when she hoped that she would be promoted to head but the discussion moved into the subject of 't much up for long walks any morepeople skills' and before she knew what was happening Gail had been sacked or resigned, but he does acquire a swish mobility scooter to zoom around depending on who was explaining the situation. When she got home (in; one the middle of the day: who would have thought that could say happen?) her ex-husband was there with a cat. He thinks that he'll be staying and that Gail will be adopting the cat. And that we get to zoom a mile in Groen's shoes, and oh, what fun shoes he wears!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1405924004</amazonuk>before Gail discovers that the groom hasn't been entirely honest about his personal life.

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Sarah FranklinSamantha Harvey|title= ShelterOrbital|rating= 4.5|genre= Historical General Fiction|summary=Connie Granger has escaped her bombed-out city homeIn 2024, finding refuge in Samantha Harvey won the WomenBooker Prize for ''Orbital''s Timber Corps. For her, this remote community must now serve a secret purpose.<br>Seppe, an Italian prisoner compact yet profound work that unfolds over a single day in the lives of war, is haunted by his memories. In the forest camp, he finds a strange kind group of freedomastronauts aboard the International Space Station.Their meeting signals new beginnings. But as they are drawn together, Through a narrative lens that mirrors the world outside their forest haven is being torn apart. Old certainties are crumblingastronauts' orbital perspective, and both must now make Harvey invites readers to see our planet in a life-defining choicewholly new light.<br>What price will they pay for freedom? What will they fight to protect?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1785762990</amazonuk>1529922933

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jennifer McVeighHan Kang|title=Leopard at the DoorThe Vegetarian|rating=4.5

|summary=18 year old Rachel Fullsmith returns home to Kenya after being away at school This novel, winner of the International Booker Prize in England 2016 and finds a lot can change in 6 years. Of course she realises her mother's death would alter things but she's not prepared penned by an author who received the Nobel Prize for her father's live-in 'companion' Sara nor Sara's son Harold sleeping in Rachel's old roomLiterature this year, is as close to unputdownable as it gets. Michael It more than lives up to the Kikuyu servant boy she grew up acclaim. The story introduces uncanny characters with is still there though and now a man with his own ideas. Meanwhile the unrest between the British rulers and the local Mau Mau fighters is increasing and about to blowfragile, vividly tangible bodies yet unknowable, elusive souls.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0241247616</amazonuk>1803510056

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Lucy DanielsSally Rooney|title= Summer at Hope MeadowsIntermezzo|rating= 4.5|genre= General Fiction|summary=''Animal Ark'' was a popular series Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard of children's books written between 1994 life and 2008is something of a grandmaster at putting it into words. The stories focus on a young girl called Mandy HopeHer dialogue is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, as her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Among the daughter of two vets who run a practicemany relationships woven into this story, Animal Ark, in the Yorkshire town of Welfordcentral one for readers to unravel is the fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. Along Ivan, a socially awkward chess prodigy, contrasts sharply with her best friend Jameshis older brother Peter, the children seek to help out creatures a successful lawyer living in needDublin. The series consisted of 94 books in total and was written by Following their father's passing after a collection of authors writing under long battle with cancer, the pseudonym Lucy Daniels. brothers''Summer at Hope Meadows'' is the first in a already strained relationship faces new series for adult readers, continuing grown-up Mandy's story now that she is a fully qualified vettrials.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473653878</amazonuk>0571365469

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sophie Divry and Alison Anderson (translator)B0DGDJRHYD|title=Madame Bovary of the SuburbsNowhere Man|author=Deborah Stone|rating=2.54

|summary=''It starts with becoming In a homeownerquiet suburban house, Patrick is making his final plans. A meticulous man, then settling inhe makes sure of every preparation, then reproducingdown to the last detail.'' WellSome last reflections, it actually starts a lot before and thenhe says goodbye to his wife, the world, with a set of fractured memories of our heroineand his life. It's childhood – things she recalls her parents and relatives saying both to and about herhorribly sad. It goes through At work in her childhoodshop, and pen letters to a best friend conveying her wishes for his wife Diana is fending off yet another phone call about her life, those wishes being revised ageing and affirmed by the liberty of university yearsailing mother, those wishes being met with or denied by married life… Someone archly could point out that you should who needs extricating from yet another accident. It will be careful a while before Diana realises what you wish for, but not even our wise, modern woman could not see the next step after the reproducing – ''standing disappointed in front of the refrigerator''Patrick has done.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857054686</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tania Hershman1739526910|title=Some of Us Glow More Than OthersWhere I've Not Been Lost|author=Glen Sibley

|genre=Short Stories General Fiction|summary=I won't be alone 'One year after a suicide attempt blows apart musician Brian O’Malley's life, he arrives in stating that reading short story collections can be slightly awkwardan unfamiliar Devon town to recover. Living with an unexpected housemate at his former manager’s holiday home, he dreams of reconnecting with everything he has lost. Going through from A-ZBut as those tentative plans falter, witnessing he becomes swept up in a bounty local world of ideas and characters in short order can be too muchunlikely friendships, but do you have the right to pick mobile discos and choose according to what appeals, and what time you have to fill? The sequence has carefully been considered, surelysurprising romantic possibilities. Such would appear to be ''}}{{Frontpage|author=Jenny Lecoat|title=Beyond Summerland|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=Jean lives on Jersey with her mother where they are celebrating the end of the case hereoccupation. The last time I read one of this authorDuring the war, Jean's collections, with [[The White Road by Tania Hershman|The White Road]], the only real difficulty father was holding back arrested for listening to a banned radio and rationing themsoldiers took him away one night, but here you not only get a whopping forty pieces leaving Jean and her mother waiting for years for news of writinghim. As the British finally free the Channel islands from the Nazis, and the war is finally over, their hopes rise that they are also spread into sectionswill finally learn what became of him. But will the truth come as a relief, or will it raise further questions around what else happened during the war? Who was the informer who told the Nazis about the radio? And what other secrets have been kept throughout the occupation?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1910061484</amazonuk>1846976537

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Jane JohnsonOnyi Nwabineli|title= Court of LionsAllow Me to Introduce Myself|rating= 4.5|genre= Historical General Fiction |summary= Kate Fordham arrived in the sunlit city of Granada a year ago. In the shadow of Anuri spent her childhood on display to the Alhambraworld, one of the most beautiful places thanks to her step-mother Ophelia's increasingly popular presence on earthsocial media, where she works as a waitress serving tourists in a busy bar. She pretends sheposted every step of Anuri's happy with childhood for sponsorships and influencer deals and, basically, monetary gain. Now Anuri is in her new life – but how could twenties and she be? Kate's alone, afraid is slowly trying to regain her confidence and hiding under a false name. And fate is about to bring get her life back, suing her facestep-mother to-face with take down the content about her greatest fear. Five centuries ago Anuri is battling alcoholism, a messagefailing to start her PhD, in a hand few could read, was inscribed in blood on a stolen scrap of paper. The paper was folded undergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online and pressed into one of the Alhambra's wallsreceiving money from them for doing so. There it has lain Most importantly, undisturbed by the tides of history – the Fall of Granadashe is desperately worried about her little sister, who is the expulsion new focus of its last Sultan – until Kate discovers itOphelia's online empire. Born of love Can she save her sister, in a time of danger and desperation, perhaps herself and her relationship with her father at the fragment will be the catalyst that changes Kate's life forever. same time?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1786694336</amazonuk>0861546873

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Julie Cohen1529153298|title=TogetherThe List of Suspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey

|summary=This It's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is a love story told backwardsPrime Minister. (A woman? I mean, honestly...) She's not what's worrying Miv's family, though. Women have been disappearing. Well, in the most beautiful mannerthey've been murdered, but to have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. Miv's upset because she's overheard that we know her father wants to move the family 'Down South'. When you're from Yorkshire, Down South is a frightening, foreign place, best avoided. For Miv, the very beginning that Emily and Robert love each other enormouslymove would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, and she'll do anything to prevent that he is . She's not worried about to break her heart in the most dreadful way in order to protect a secret dangers or that theyher Mum've lived with for decadess stopped talking - to anyone. Seeing their love unfold in reverse is beautiful}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1035906708|title=Diva|author=Daisy Goodwin|rating=4. 5|genre=General Fiction|summary=We get tend to know them once they have already gotten think of Maria Callas as Greek, but she was born to know each otherGreek parents in Manhattan, New York, in December 1923 and only moved to Athens when she was thirteen. Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to 'Callas' to make it makes more manageable in the States. When she was back in Athens - supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for an unusual her voice - she was raised under the Nazi occupation by a mother who mercilessly exploited her and interesting structuremade no secret of her preference for her elder sister, Jackie.}}{{Frontpage|author=Alexander McCall Smith|title=The Perfect Passion Company|rating=4. 5|genre=General Fiction|summary=The secret they hold Perfect Passion Company is referred a dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and operating as an alternative to throughoutall the online apps in providing a more personal, but it isn't revealed until very late in tailored service. Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the bookbusiness, as Ness is planning to take a trip to Canada to get away for a while. I'm guessing very few readers will figure it Katie is coming outof a break up with a bad boyfriend, and so jumps at the chance to come home to Edinburgh. Even once you knowAnd so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, you want thanks to go back 44 Scotland Street and read the whole story again Isabel Dalhousie novels, but with some new characters who quickly begin to charm. Katie has no experience in running a business, or in match-making, but Ness has full confidence in the light of the information you now hold.her abilities, and there's always her very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, William, to lend a hand…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1409171744</amazonuk>1846976596

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Kate MildenhallDean Koontz|title= SkylarkingThe Bad Weather Friend|rating= 4.5|genre= General Fiction Paranormal|summary= Kate Benny is having a terrifically bad day. He loses his job, he loses his fiancee, and Harriet are best friends growing up together on an isolated Australian capehis house gets trashed. As Oh, and someone has delivered a really weird, disturbing coffin-sized object to his home, and it's possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the daughters of thing that has trashed his house! The thing is, Benny is the lighthouse keepers, very last person to deserve all this bad luck. He is a nice person. A really nice person. So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the two girls share everythingdelivery to his house is a new friend, until a fishermanbad weather friend called Spike, McPhailwho has been sent to help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a good person. Spike is going to take care of Benny, arrives in their small community. When Kate witnesses the desire that flares between him and Harrietwill certainly take care of Benny's enemies, if he, Benny, she is torn by her feelings of envy and longing. An innocent moment in McPhailHarper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's hut then occurs that threatens to tear their peaceful community apartwild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1785079239</amazonuk>1662500491

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Zoe DuncanKatherine Howe|title= The Shifting PoolsA True Account|rating= 24.5|genre= General Fiction|summary= Perhaps the most overused phrase Hannah Masury is living in fiction publishing is ''life-affirming''Boston, having been sent to live with a family who run an inn, closely followed by ''human condition''. The Shifting Pools takes this and being made to work there from a whole new levelyoung age. Its blurb boasts that it When she hears there is ''charged throughout with to be a hanging of some pirates in the beautiful urgency of life''town, whatever that meansshe decides to go and watch. It isn't. And that Enthralled and horrified in equal measure, Hannah finds herself embroiled in a young boy's death at the problemhands of two vicious pirates. This isn She hides away, so that they don't a bad bookfind and kill her too, but it sets itself up and then to fail. A cardinal rule of writing is ''focus on the small stuff''. If you set out escape them completely she runs away to write sea, dressing as a ''life affirming'' novel that answers all boy and joining the notorious Ned Low''big questions'', you'll struggles pirate ship as a cabin boy. And it She soon finds herself in the thick of things when there is this trap that Zoe Duncan falls into. In a mutiny on board, and from there we are caught up in her quest for profundity she loses her wayrip roaring tale of life on the ocean waves. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1785630369</amazonuk>0861547438

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Sarah Healy1471180158|title= The Sisters ChaseMaybe Tomorrow|author=Penny Parkes|rating= 4.5|genre= General Fiction|summary=Mary and Bunny. ThatJamie Matson works in an upper-class grocery store, for a man who's how it has always been ever since Bunny was born. Two sisters a control freak with an unbreakable bond, twisted together so tight that they were two sides all the subtlety of the same coina half brick. Bunny was Mary Jamie's whole world; nothing else really mattered; school...friends...boys...wellson, maybe one boyBo, but he was something altogether extraordinary'has his problems'. When He's asthmatic and the unthinkable happenedmore you read, Mary and Bunny found themselves completely alone in the world, and more you'll suspect thathe's when Mary decided on the autistic spectrum. Sometimes Jamie needs to take an unforgettable road trip, just time off at short notice - she's a frequent flier in the two of them, across local A&E and sometimes Bo's not fit enough to go to school. Missed shifts or the United States, need to be away on time to pick Bo up from school are occasions when Jamie can be controlled and put in search of the wrong. It was going to come to a place where they could belonghead.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0544960076</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Joy RhoadesB0CKD1L5JL|title=The Woolgrower's CompanionRadio Free Olympia|author=Jeffrey Dunn

|summary=1945: The war Petr is an orphan. Rescued by the strange, reclusive Bear, he is in its dying days and creating problems brought up far from bustling cities and busy human society, in the different frontsforests of Washington's Olympic Peninsula. For instance, After Bear dies and a brief sojourn in Australiahuman company, what can be done and armed with only a pirate radio transmitter, Petr goes on a journey through the forest, broadcasting the Italian POWs brought strange, wild and rarely heard voices he encounters.}}{{Frontpage|author=Sarah Marsh|title=A Sign of Her Own|rating=3.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=After a bout of scarlet fever as a child, Ellen Lark loses her hearing. Suddenly plunged into a world of silence, everything about her life changes. Living in a time when the country? use of sign language was seen as something only savages do, Ellen is sent to a school where she is taught to lip read, but physically restrained from signing. From here, she ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the deaf and using a system called Visible Speech. At the same time, Bell is working on other inventions and ideas, and Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a complicated tangle of espionage.|isbn=1035401614}}{{Frontpage|isbn=B0BC3YTCMR|title=Good Girls Die|author=Ayura Ayira|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=''This story is not for everyone.'' Lavender Daniels was three weeks short of her fifteenth birthday when The solution seems Incident happened. She was a very bright student, a bit too nerdy if truth be told, and suffered from vitiligo - people were afraid to be their use as cheap labourhug her in case it's contagious. In this way Kate DowdIt's father agrees not easy being a black girl whose skin is 84% white. She had a crush on seventeen-year-old Reggie Anderson but never thought he would notice her. Then he did: Lavender was very good at math and Reggie asked if she would tutor him. She readily agreed: tutoring was something she gladly did at church: this was just an extension. She went to take two onto his sheep farm house and he raped her. In shock, she even allowed him to give her a lift home.}} {{Frontpage|isbn=1472263936|title=The Figurine|author=Victoria Hislop|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary=It was in drought-ridden New South Wales1968 that Helena McCloud made her first trip to Greece. Kate is initially wary of She was alone: her mother, Greek by birth, had left the two men – Vittorio family home and Luca – refused to return, but gradually she realises Mary and Hamish (Helena's parents) felt that not all dangers come from outside it would be a pity if Helena grew up without knowing her grandparents or understanding her communityGreek heritage. Life on a sheep station may Her trip to the family apartment in up-market Kolonaki would be harsh the first of several annual visits. She grew to love her grandmother and the family's maid, Dina, but was wary - and frightened - of her grandfather, retired general Stamatis Papagiannis. He was proud of his close connections to the Junta and expected his family to uphold his values but for Kate itsaw no reason to accommodate them. His prejudices included Helena's red hair and green eyes - inherited from her father's going to get a lot worseScottish ancestors.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784741345</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Jonathan LeviDean Koontz|title= SeptimaniaAfter Death|rating= 43|genre= General Fiction|summary= First and foremost Michael Mace, Head of Security, at a tale of lovetop secret biological research facility, Septimania delivers the frustrations and agony of two is among 55 people who find each other and then lose each other, all on the same daydie when a virus is released in a bio-hazard accident. But what Finding himself in a momentous day! Life takes Malory and Louisa off makeshift mortuary, covered in totally different directions but strangely their paths cross again and again. Maloryplastic, searching to uncover his pasthe has a sense that something very, moves very bad has happened to Rome him – and discovers great only him – as he sits up and incredible facts about looks around at the shrouded bodies of his ancestrydead friends and former colleagues. Louisa, a brilliant mathematician As he recovers his senses, he realises that there is head hunted for something different about him; he can ''feel'' everything. ''Everything''. Michael isn't ''Michael'secret' work anymore.|isbn=1662500467}} {{Frontpage|isbn=B0BVDC2VWH|title=The Grave Listeners|author=William Frank|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=The village is isolated and is signed up poor. It's surrounded by her father for a life time's contract with Witching Forest. And the American Governmentvillagers subsist largely by farming Uphegia plants - its bread-like fruit provides nutrition and its blossom provides herbal medicines. She completely disappears from Malory's life The black wood of the forest provides heat and warmth, roofs on homes, and he has no way even gallows, if needed. The fear of knowing how to find her again. They are both trapped being buried alive is an existential superstition in their separate livesthe village and that is the reason Volushka, a drunken, self-indulgent, lazy lout of a man is tolerated.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>071565196X</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Antoine Laurain, Jane Aitken (translator) and Emily Boyce (translator)B0BYF82CXT|title=The PortraitSemi-Detached|author=Deborah Stone

|summary=Meet Pierre''Bill and Amanda are living in a semi-Francois. He should by rights be an antiques dealerdetached house, as he made stuck in a fortune selling on his first collection (depressing rut of erasers) while at schoolboredom and disappointment, when Terry and funded both his university Fiona – glamorous, successful and carnal educationvery much in love – move in next door. Despite their different outlooks on life, with prostitutesthe couples befriend each other and life appears to improve for both pairs. But all is not what it seems, by trading tooand their increasingly interconnected relationships are fated for tragedy.''}}{{Frontpage|author=Shalini Boland|title=The Silent Bride|rating=3|genre=General Fiction|summary= Alice and Seth are a match made in heaven. He iseverything she has been searching for; handsome, howeveraccomplished, a patent and intellectual property lawyerclever, funny; total and his wife utter husband-material. She is forever demanding all he could possibly want in a reduction in wife; beautiful, successful, confident… and so the space his collections take up in their flat. But he still dabbles – although this latest visit to inevitable proposal is eagerly accepted by Alice and the showrooms will cause a lot of unexpected incidentwedding is planned and set. In amongst When the grot at a lowmuch-key sale he finds an ancient pastelanticipated day arrives, showing himself – a bewiggedAlice is walked down the aisle by her father, antique version of himself, even if, however, nobody else sees beaming with pride and excitement as she surveys the connection between Pierre-Francois congregation – their friends assembled to celebrate this joyful day and the picturewhen Seth turns to face his approaching bride, Alice's subject. Still, as an effeminate uncle told himworld implodes because she has absolutely no idea who the man at the altar is, ''real objects carry memory of their past owners'' – and Pierre-Francois who is intent on finding the truths behind those memorieswaiting for her to become his wife. Little does he know just what he will discover…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1910477435</amazonuk>1662507089

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Virginie Despentes and Frank Wynne (translator)1787636003|title= Vernon Subutex 1The Girls of Summer|author=Katie Bishop|rating= 5|genre= General Fiction|summary= Vernon Subutex is a wanted man. Following It was the death of Alex Bleach, Vernon's generous benefactor summer when Rachel Evans turned eighteen that she and Caroline went backpacking around Greece and publicly adored musician, Vernon now has arrived on the last recordings of Alexisland. Rachel wasn's drug induced ramblings. Kicked out of his apartment the story follows Vernon as he couch surfs his way across Parist exactly innocent but she was, perhaps, naive, pursued by journalists and media moguls desperate so when thirty-four-year-old Alistair Wright started to cash take an interest in on Bleach's deathher, she was flattered rather than wary. Eventually finding himself out It was quite a while before he made any sort of luck, friends physical approach to her and money Vernon is left sleeping roughby that time she was obsessed by him. Alistair worked for Henry Taylor, half mad looking after his interests on the island and forced to bear witness to a shocking act of violencein particular in the bar where all the girls either worked or partied. In a world of capricious friends and grasping avaricious journalists who can Vernon trust?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857055410</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Rowena MacDonaldAmanda Craig|title= The Threat Level Remains SevereThree Graces|rating= 34.5|genre= General Fiction|summary=Grace Ambrose isnFew styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the state-of-the-nation novel. There't Brigitte Joness something so utterly compelling about any writer who can catch hold of the atmosphere of the day and capture it, honest; for crafting an image of the country as it stands in one thing particular moment. To say that Amanda Craig is skilled at doing this would be embarrassingly inadequate: she doesn't keep a diary. Grace is our typical misogynistic Hollywood stereotype supporting female characters practically synonymous with the genre of contemporary social fiction at this point. She is has such a gift for weaving the ''secretly hot chick'' who will suddenly take off their glasses, shake out their hair and reveal themselves to have been beautiful all along. We follow Grace and her romantic adventures (and misadventures) over three years ongoing issues of her life at the House day into the lives of Commonsher characters in a way that feels natural and lived-in, never making them ciphers for social commentary but instead fully realised people, grappling with issues far larger than themselves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1910709158</amazonuk>140871468X

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Matt Haig152915118X|title=How to Stop TimePineapple Street|author=Jenny Jackson

|summary=Tom ''Pineapple Street'' is the story of three women: Sasha, Darley and Georgiana. Darley and George are sisters and Sasha is an albatrossmarried to their brother Cord. They're Stocktons, only Sasha isn't a Stockton by birth so she isn't readily accepted into the tribe. That The problem's not to say he has a freakish wingspanexacerbated when the clan matriarch, or anythingTilda, but it means heasks Cord and Sasha if they's not a mayflyd like to move into the Pineapple Street property. In contrast Tilda and Chip have renovated and downsized to all us regular humans with our temperamental bodies living out short lifespansanother property, he ages at a speed roughly one-fifteenth of that at street or so away, which we do, and barely gets touched by they own. They won't need any disease. It means he will live for several more centuries than of the ones he has witnessed furniture from Pineapple Street, so far, but ever since his mother was drowned as a witch due to his teenaged self never ageing, he has known the best thing for him – Sasha and others – is to regularly Cord can move onstraight in. Solitude has been tempered since the late Victorian era, when other people even older than him press-ganged him into their society of albatrosses Nominally, they had a choice but that wasn't the fact of reality. Darley and Georgiana start to call Sasha 'the matter is that falling in love really is a no-nogold digger'. But that She's not to say living in ''their'' family home. They use it never happened, and so often that's not they abbreviate it to say that he can't feel things for the albatross daughter heGD's not seen for centuries. It might be the only thing he has to live for…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782118616</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Dane HuckelbridgeEmily Critchley|title= Castle of WaterOne Puzzling Afternoon|rating= 4|genre= General FictionCrime|summary= Barry Bleeker and Sophie Ducel are two very different people destined to take 84 year old Edie has lived in the same journey. As they are both aboard small town for almost her whole life, but now she is facing a flight 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. However, Edie is tormented by the Marquesas Islandsmemory of her childhood friend, Lucy, who went missing over 60 years ago, their tiny plane crashes leaving Barry and Sophie the only survivors. Until recently, Barry worry that there was a secret she was an investment banker in New York before he decided to leave his life behind and pursue his dream keeping for Lucy that somehow might be the thing that reveals the truth of paintingwhat happened all that time ago. Sophie meanwhile After 'seeing' Lucy in the high street, just as she was a French architect who along with the last time she saw her husband Etienne was planning a honeymoon , she starts to find pockets of a lifetimememories coming back to her. Now Barry And yet as she remembers the past, she is forgetting more and Sophie are alone on an uninhabited island more in her day to day life. Will she uncover the South Pacifictruth about Lucy's disappearance before her move, where they must learn to put aside their differences and survive.before her memories are gone forever?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0008217858</amazonuk>1804181250

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= M L RioMadelaine Lucas|title= If We Were VillainsThirst for Salt|rating= 4.5|genre= General Literary Fiction|summary= Murder most horrid amongst ''Love, I'd read, was supposed to be a group of 4th Year university students of Shakespeare. We open as our protagonist is released light and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity'' Told from jail having served his time for a crime retrospective view, a young woman unravels the year-long relationship that he may or may not have committedonce defined her. What did he do? What happened that year? Why did things turn out Overlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the affair with a man twenty years her senior from its inception – the way they did? We have summer after finishing university – to push our way through its sorrowful end the undergrowth summer after. Set against the backdrop of flashbacks to find outan isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the 24-year-old narrator's deepening relationship with her older lover, depicting its all-consuming nature, how it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1785656473</amazonuk>0861546490

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Martha Conway0008506337|title= The Floating TheatreGarnett Girls|author=Georgina Moore|rating= 5|genre= Historical General Fiction|summary=When young seamstress May Bedloe is left alone The love affair between Margo Garnett and penniless on the shore of the Ohiopoet Richard O'Leary was all-consuming, she finds work apparently on the famous floating theatre that plies its trade along the riverboth 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 creativity parents worried that Richard's influence would take her away from what they felt she could achieve - going to Oxford and needlework skills quickly become invaluable and she settles into life among having a glittering career. In the colourful troupe of actors. She finds friendsevent, they eloped and possibly Richard took her away from the promise Isle of moreWight. But cruising the border between the Confederate South Margo did go to Oxford and the 'free' North is fraught with dangerwent on to become a well-respected journalist. For the sake of a debt that must be repaid The couple had three children: Rachel, May is compelled to transport secret passengersImogen and Sasha. Life was lived in London and holidays were spent at Sandcove, under cover of darkness, across the river and family home on, along the underground railroadIsle of Wight. But as May Even then the doubts about Richard's drinking were never far from Margo's secrets become harder to keep, mind: ''she learns she must endanger those now dear would never be able to herleave him in charge''.

And to save the lives of others, she must risk her ownThen Richard left them... |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1785762907</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Daniel Kehlmann and Ross Benjamin (translator)1914585402|title=You Should Have LeftDashboard Elvis is Dead|author=David F Ross

|genre=General Fiction |summary=Our narrator is a screenwriter, tasked with coming up with a sequel to his hit movie I reviewed David F Ross's book [[There'Bestiess Only One Danny Garvey by David F Ross|There'' – s Only One Danny Garvey]] a film which helped pay for a house, but which his actress wife keeps letting him know, isn't ''art''couple of years back and remember being absolutely floored by how powerful and affecting it was. To concentrate, the family – he, the wife, and their four year old daughter – have rented a large, modern house at the end of It was a horrid, hairpin bend-filled roadgripping, in a charming alpine landscape. But things aren't right. The couple are at loggerheads too much, things keep unsettling our narratoremotionally wounding read, and the sole shopkeeper for miles around is ready with the Hammer Horror styled warnings rereading my review of strange events. Quickly we see the book's title in all its galling clarity – but it isn't too late to get out… is my main takeaway was that I might not have lavished enough praise on it? And out of what, exactly?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1786484048</amazonuk>.

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Amanda CraigLucy Ashe|title=The Lie of the LandClara and Olivia|rating=4.5

|summary=The Bredins can't afford to divorceyear is 1933. The house in London place? Sadler''would'' sells Wells. Ballerinas Clara and Olivia are sisters, twins no less. Identical on the outside but not for a priced that would allow Quentin and Lottie ( she with her son and their two girls) to each get somewhere to live. Unemployment has barrelled into , we learn, on the equation too: Lottie's lost her job as an architect and Quentin's prowess as a journalist is in reducing demandinside. There's And not much in the way of family help available: Lottie's mother's house might be worth six millionon stage, but she barely scrapes by on her incomeeither. ThereBecause there's one solution a lot that builds a dancer. Some things that just might work: the house in London can be let and they'll move taught or learnt – discipline, attention to somewhere cheap in the country detail – and live as best they can on the rent they receive.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408709295</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Ann Osome things, that ' Loughlin|title= The Ludlow Ladies' Society|rating= 3.5|genre= General Fiction|summary=je ne sais quoi''The Ludlow Ladies, that don' Society'' is the story of two women and their struggle to t come to terms with from the terrible tragedies in their livesclassroom. Connie Carter arrives at Ludlow HallA stage presence, a property she has inherited in Irelandcharm, with no clue as to what to expect. The close-knit community are curious about a ''The American,joie de vivre'' who seems to have no desire to integrate herself into the community. Nearby, lives Eve, The difference between a widow, who formerly lived at Ludlow Hall. She, toohard-worker, has painful memories and scars that are slow to heal, but as she begins to form a friendship with the reclusive Connie, the two form a bond that will help them both face their grief togetherstar.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1785301276</amazonuk>0861544080