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[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sjon Hodgkinson and Ten Hodgkinson (editors)Jeremy Cooper|title=The Dark-Blue Winter Overcoat and other stories from the NorthDiscord|rating=3.5|genre=Anthologies Literary Fiction|summary=A compilation like this should be nigh on brilliant. It's not one author's best short worksDiscord: a lack of agreement or harmony (as between persons, things, it's that or ideas) The principal example of a dozen. It's not from one snapshot in timediscord within the novel, as some were written the year with most instances of publication and some in the 1960sdiscord, is easily located. It's not from one tiny patch The two protagonists of author's desk or one set of laptop keys, but from the entire Nordic worldnovel, whether that be urban ScandinaviaRebekah Rosen and Evie Bennet, the Faroes are as different as they come. Rebekah is an uptight, traditional and other island groupsno-nonsense composer close to retirement, or Greenland. That while Evie is a world that's changing – force of nature, bounding onto the musical scene as the Greenland-born author now living in Brooklyna precocious saxophonist, oozing with talent and the Iraqi blood on these pagescharm. The two, predictably, don't always see eye to eye, testify. Ittheir approaches different and Evie's a world where new roads and new building works mean a family living on the edge of the forest progressive views at the beginning of the story are being surrounded by other life by the end, and odds with the influence of centuries of folklore featuredRebekah's conservative leaning. However, something connects them beyond just their musical project: a lot more than that changes – sometimes it seems to be even sort of fragile alliance formed within the characters' species…clamour.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782273824</amazonuk>1804272264

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Christina Hesselholdt and Paul Russell Garrett (translator)Polly Barton|title=CompanionsWhat Am I, A Deer?|rating=34

|summary=Polly Barton''Companions'' s debut novel is written as a series of monologues, where six middle-aged friends take it in turns to narrate scenes from their lives, charting the intimate details of their holidays, dinner parties, families, marriages, affairs and an intellectually playful yet emotionally exposed work lives in a style that mixes honesty uses translation as both subject and openness with fantasy and evasiongoverning metaphor. The charm of the novel lies in the way the friends' voices bicker with one another among the pagesnarrator, as we discover that there are always several sides newly relocated from London to the same story. We learn most about the characters not through what they say about themselves but Berlin, works translating video games into Japanese through what the others say about them. Along the wayprocess of localisation, there is heartbreak and grief, but this is always offset by an abundance of humour and a writing style that never fails rewriting language until it feels comfortably familiar to be refreshingly light-hearted.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1910695335</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Yaba Badoe|title= A Jigsaw of Fire and Stars|rating= 4|genre= Literary Fiction|summary=Sante was a baby when she was washed ashore in a sea-chest laden with treasurenew audience. It seems she is the sole survivor of the tragic sinking of Barton treats this as a ship carrying migrants and refugees. Her people. Fourteen years on she's a member of Mama Rose's unique and dazzling circus. Butparadoxical act: arguably, from their watery gravein striving for universality, the unquiet dead are calling Sante to avenge them. A bamboo flute. A golden bangle. A ripening mango which must not fall... if Sante language is to tell their story and her own. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1786695480</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Martha Batalha and Eric M B Becker (translator)|title= The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmao|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= On the surfaceendlessly repackaged, young housewife Euridice Gusmao has it all. A nice-enough, parent-pleasing husband with a steady banking job, two young children upon whom to dote, an immaculate home complete with maid. That's all anyone could ever want, isn't it? Not Euridice. She has an inexplicable ache inside her for something more, like many its originality at risk of usdisappearing altogether. Yet each of her pet projectsFrom this, from a desire to publish a recipe book to starting a cottage sewing industry in her living room, are met with scorn from her stern husband Antenor. He wants a wife who doesn't draw attention to herself, whose only domains are her house and her family.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>178607298X</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= David Bergen|title= Stranger|rating= 4|genre= Literary Fiction |summary=''Stranger'' tells the story of Íso, novel opens out into a young Guatemalan womanwider, and her affair with an American doctor. When an accident forces him to return to the States, she is left pregnant and lonely. Her anguish becomes even more profound when her daughter is abducted, and taken to live with the doctor and his wife. What followed - tales of the journey Íso embarked upon in the hope of finding her baby - was an amazing story of the lengths a mother will go resonant question: to what extent do we translate ourselves in order to save her child.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0715652419</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Clar Ni Chonghaile|title= Rain Falls On Everyone|rating= 5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= It's a cliché that the Irish have a picturesque turn of phrasebe understood, but clichés only exist because they're true. Roddy Doyle put it differently in a recent interview with ''Writing'' magazine, when he said that ''With Irishaccepted, there's another language bubbling under the English''. However you express it, that art of expression is woven into every other line of Clár's prose. Pick a page at random and you'll find something like ''the sickness that had come to roost in her home like a cursed owl'' or ''like he was God, Jesus and Justin Timberlake rolled into one'' or ''a low sobbing, slow and inevitable as rain on a Sunday'': expressions that catch your smile unawares, or tear at your heart in their mundane sadness. Or sometimes both.loved?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1785079018</amazonuk>1804272175

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Hesene Mete Maria Stepanova and Sasha Dugdale (Translator)|title=Sinful WordsThe Disappearing Act

|summary=When we meet himDespite her anonymisation of place names and people, Behram Stepanova's message in this short work of autofiction is a student at unmistakable. A novelist named M travels from B (ostensibly Berlin) to the school town of theology. He loves God with F for a passion and has a determination literary festival she is to live be a life dedicated ''to'' God guest speaker at. Detoured by erratic train schedules and to live nudged by His rulesforces beyond her control, her journey slowly bends toward a traveling circus. He rents a property from Lulu Khan and his wifeSwept up in this series of events, Lady Geshtina and Khan invites Behram M eventually offers to his own home step in for a visitcircus performer who has unexpectedly left the show. It's The train functions as a delightful place motif of transience and impermanence, while the wealth circus embodies the reshaping of the couple is obvious as is their standing within the local community: Lady Geshtina's late father is buried in what amounts to identity and a mausoleumretreat into fantasy, but it's not all this which enchants Behram. The couple have twin children and Behram is taken, enthralled by an impulse that lies at the very heart of the daughter, Naginanovel form itself.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1524682527</amazonuk>1804272329

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Juan-Tomas Avila Laurel295967572X|title= The Gurugu PledgePale Pieces|author=G M Stevens|rating= 5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= Juan Tomas Avila Laurel, one of Equatorial Guinea's best-known dissident writers, Our unnamed narrator is an author who deserves about to be read the world overbegin a train journey with his companion Django. With The Gurugu Pledge, heWhere they's captured a an angry re going and incredibly urgent slice of what the migrant experience – a snapshot purpose of this journey is, is uncertain. Django found the dangers faced by those crossing tickets ''on the African continent floor somewhere'' and has persuaded our narrator to accompany him. Why not? Not much else is clear either - but we are probably in search of the barbed wire fences at Melilla- past as the pair travel to the Spanish enclave on station by coach and the North Eastern tip of Moroccotrain is a steam locomotive.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908276940</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Matthew SmithMakenna Goodman|title= The WakingHelen of Nowhere|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary=Isabel Sykes, 23, recounts It could be argued that the recent attempt she made pervading theme of this book is malaise - a hard-to come to terms with the loss of her mother, the acclaimed but psychologically disturbed novelist Marianne Sykes. Marianne died -place feeling that something in an unexplained house fire when Isabel was tenyour life is not quite right. Inspired by the appearance of Imogen TaylorThe protagonist, an enchanting young woman who wants to write a PhD disgraced professor on her mother's work, Isabel plunges into the depths brink of her past losing both his career and an intense new friendshiphis relationship, embodies this feeling. After discovering that Imogen However, Goodman counteracts his discomfort with a force which is not who she seems to beseductive, Isabel must face radical and unnerving: Helen. The connection between Helen and the protagonist is indirect yet intimate. As the former owner of the darkest moments from countryside house he's considering, Helen represents a volta in his life, her childhood in order past tied to protect her family from more tragedyhis potential fresh start. She receives unexpected help from beyond The realtor who shows the grave: in protagonist around the strangehouse shares stories about Helen, glittering fragments of and describes her motheras 's last, unfinished work'an entity that is pure consciousness, beyond form'Midnightsong'. Although she lives in an assisted living facility now, Helen has powers beyond comprehension which the reader gets the sense are not altogether innocuous.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0995654158</amazonuk>1804272205

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Ali SmithOlga Tokarczuk|title= AutumnHouse of Day, House of Night|rating= 5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= The first part in Ali Smith''What's four part the good of a world that keeps changing like that? How can one go on calmly living in it?'Seasonal' series The title of this spellbinding work, Autumn is the story ''House of Daniel Gluck and Elisabeth DemandDay, unexpected friends who used to be neighbours when Elisabeth was a little girl. In a series House of Night'', somewhat reflects this notion of memories and dreamsshifting realities - the small, subtle changes which govern our lives, we discover their friendship like the shift from Daniel babysitting Elisabeth through day to her visits with him now night, however quotidian, causing chaos. But, the constant in that he image is in a home and drawing towards the end of his extremely long and fascinating life. Along the way, we get a wonderfully written insight into time, memorieshouse, and stoic against the fleeting nature of life itselfancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it is perceived. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0241973317</amazonuk>1804271918

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Nicola Pugliese and Shaun Whiteside (translator)Thea Lenarduzzi|title=MalacquaThe Tower|rating=35

|summary=We're in Naples, in recent history, and it'How unctuous are the fats of another's raining. It will life, how dizzying their sugars in fact rain for four days solid – and seeing as itour bloodstream's October everyone's dressed for all seasons and expecting a bit . In this compelling novel, Thea Lenarduzzi assumes the identity of greyT, but the protagonist of this is taking the proverbialtale. ItJust as T's also making story is being told, the story of a second protagonist is unveiled: Annie, the city rather dangerous – when people report daughter of a huge sink-hole appearing wealthy family in one street it's soon found that a pair of cars went into itthe 19th century, and two people have who diedof tuberculosis after being locked in a tower, and more passed on with a whole building collapsingcaptures T's imagination. WhatAnnie's morefate is, above all, some strange noises are coming from an abandoned civic palaceenticing story to T. Is the city being told something by these strange eventsIt is a story which she consumes avariciously, or can both in a journalist find a logic behind the circumstances?quest for truth and knowledge, and in service of myth, fable and fantasy. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1911508067</amazonuk>1804271799

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Iosi HavilioJon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |title= Petite FleurVaim|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= Every now and then you read a book that leaves you thinking “well I have no idea what just happened but I know I enjoyed it”''All was strange''... This is how I felt after reading Petite Fleurhaunting phrase encapsulates the pervading sense of otherworldliness which permeates this story set in Vaim, a fictional fishing village in Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for Jatgeir and Eline, two of the fifth novel (perhaps 'long paragraph' would be more appropriate) from cult Argentinian writer Iosi Havilioprotagonists caught in its melancholic current.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1911508040</amazonuk>1804271829

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tania HershmanClaire-Louise Bennett|title=Some of Us Glow More Than OthersBig Kiss, Bye-Bye

|genre=Short Stories Literary Fiction|summary=I won't be alone Everything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, is steeped in stating that reading short story collections can be slightly awkwardanguish and distortion. Going through from A-ZEven a kiss, witnessing usually a bounty symbol of ideas intimacy and characters in short order can be too muchcloseness, but do you have becomes evidence of love lost. When the right to pick and choose according to what appealsnarrator cries out internally, ''come over here and what time you have to fill? The sequence has carefully been consideredkiss me, surely. Such would appear '' it is less an invitation than a desperate attempt to be the case hereconfirm her emotional numbness. The last time I read one imagined recipient of this author's collectionsplea is Xavier, with [[The White Road by Tania Hershman|The White Road]]her ex-partner, the only real difficulty was holding back and rationing them, but here you not only get a whopping forty pieces of writing, they are also spread into sectionsghost she conjures to test her detachment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1910061484</amazonuk>1804271934

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=James KelmanHelene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)|title=That Was a Shiver, and Other StoriesLili is Crying|rating=34.5|genre=Short Stories Literary Fiction|summary=This First published in 1953 in French, this novel is a timeless text which wrenches the ninth book hearts of short stories by this author, which means he's presented its readers just as many collections of Bessette wrenches words and sentences from their proper position on the short form as he has novels. You will find it hard to think of another author that has been so noted for longer works (what with [[How Late It Waspage and positions them elsewhere, How Late by James Kelman|How Late It Was, How Late]] winning the Booker) but who is so generous in presenting shorter pieces for the time-poordisjointed, or those like me who see the variety in a writer's short or less typical works to be the more interesting places to turntruncated. Opening these pages, from Like the pen lives of such an esteemed proher characters, came with no small sense of anticipationthey are often left tragically incomplete.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1786890909</amazonuk>1804271675

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Kate MildenhallJonathan Buckley|title= SkylarkingOne Boat|rating= 4|genre= General Literary Fiction |summary= Kate ''One Boat'' is a deeply introspective novella that defies traditional narrative structure, drawing the reader into a contemplative realm of philosophical musings and Harriet are best friends growing up together on an isolated Australian capefragmented memories flowing from our narrator and protagonist, Teresa. As Set against the daughters evocative backdrop of the lighthouse keepersa small coastal Greek town, this work masterfully captures the two girls share everything, until a fisherman, McPhail, arrives in their small communitymagic of its setting and its power to provoke profound introspection. When Kate witnesses Teresa herself recognises these qualities as the desire that flares between him and Harriet, reason she is torn has visited it after the death of both her parents. Prompted by her feelings of envy mourning, her narrative voice is meditative and longingdeeply self-aware, inviting the reader into her labyrinthine cogitations. An innocent moment in McPhail's hut then occurs It is a book that threatens to tear their peaceful community apartnot only requires but inspires depth of thought, since its narrative structure is fragmentary and ironically relies on analepsis for its propulsion. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1785079239</amazonuk>1804271764

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Joanna WalshEowyn Ivey|title=Worlds from the Word's EndBlack Woods Blue Sky

|genre=Short StoriesLiterary Fiction|summary=We here at The Bookbag liked this author's fairly recent collection 'Black Woods Blue Sky'' tells the story of short storiesBirdie, [[Vertigo by Joanna Walsh|Vertigo]]. I myself missed outthe young mother of toddler Emaleen, but that seemed to be vignettes from one character's narration – here we get homosexual male narrators and who longs for a life beyond the Alaskan lodge where she works as a host morebar waitress, as well as much less of the sadness prevalent before. Having had a brief encounter with this author courtesy of setting which enables her entry into the [[Bookshelf (Object Lessons) by Lydia Pyne|Object Lessons]] series, I was intrigued by bad habits and her name being stamped on a selection accidental neglect of shortsEmaleen. Was it the ideal calling Described as a ''wild card? Let's face it', she feels stuck in her day-to-day life, and yearns to cross the Wolverine river and live on the very short story itself can be North Fork to fulfil her desires of a postcard – let's saysimple life surrounded by nature. When she meets Arthur Nielson, from a specific hotel or two, as we see here. Perhaps I should have geared myself upstrange, however, for such intricate writing on said postcards – taciturn and for the exotic locations from which they came…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1911508105</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Raja Alemsolitary man, Katharine Halls (translator) and Adam Talib (translator)|title= The Dove's Necklace|rating= 3|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= I always hated Lit-Crit at school, so it came as something as who says he has a surprise that I ended up reviewing bookscabin over there, for fun. Now I understand. Finally, I see why literary critics get so upshe feels called to go -in-arms about lowly book reviewersand bring Emaleen with her. There is a difference. This book explains Without realising it all. The author is ''the first woman to win the International Prize for Arabic fiction'' for , this book. The book also the LiBerator prize for ''the best book translated into German'' in 2014. I suspect itcalling will transform hers and Emaleen's not done yet. ''The Times'' tells us that it ''exemplifies everything that is currently shaking the foundations of Arab societylives forever.'' I am sure that not only will more plaudits fall upon the author and the book, but also that it will become a classic, spoken of in the same breath as the international classics: Proust, Márquez, Joyce, Rushdie, Nabokov…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0715651757</amazonuk>1472279042

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Daniel Kehlmann and Ross Benjamin (translator)Sally Rooney|title=You Should Have LeftIntermezzo

|summary=Our narrator Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard of life and is something of a screenwritergrandmaster at putting it into words. Her dialogue is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, tasked with coming up with a sequel to his hit movie ''Besties'' – a film which helped pay for a house, but which his actress wife keeps letting him know, isn't ''art''as her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. To concentrateAmong the many relationships woven into this story, the family – he, central one for readers to unravel is the wife, fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and their four year old daughter – have rented a largePeter Koubek. Ivan, modern house at the end of a horridsocially awkward chess prodigy, hairpin bend-filled roadcontrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, a successful lawyer living in a charming alpine landscapeDublin. But things arenFollowing their father't right. The couple are at loggerheads too much, things keep unsettling our narrators passing after a long battle with cancer, and the sole shopkeeper for miles around is ready with the Hammer Horror styled warnings of strange eventsbrothers' already strained relationship faces new trials. Quickly we see the book's title in all its galling clarity – but it isn't too late to get out… is it? And out of what, exactly?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1786484048</amazonuk>0571365469

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Tove JanssonFyodor Dostoyevsky|title= Letters From KlaraWhite Nights|rating= 5|genre= Literary FictionShort Stories|summary= Famed As always in Dostoyevsky, the UK for her creation of the Moomin family, Jansson character work is rather belatedly beginning to gather the richly deserved esteem for her adult writingssublime. For that I offer my heart-felt thanks to publishers ''Sort of books'' and Thomas Teal, who has been responsible for most of the translations. Receiving this one, two things strike: firstly I somehow seem to have missed one of the series, and secondly there'll come One is never left wondering what a time sooner rather than later when there'll be no more to be had. The former will be rectified, the latter character is a sad thoughtthinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and temperaments with remarkable clarity.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908745614</amazonuk>0241619785

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tom Malmquist and Henning Koch (translator)James Baldwin|title=In Every Moment We Are Still AliveGiovanni's Room

|summary=Tom Malmquist is a poet from Sweden. Originally published in Swedish in 2015, this is his first This Italian work of prose. While it's being marketed as a novelfeminist fiction holds an air of suspense and tension from the moment our protagonist, it reads more like a stylized memoir. Similar to Karl Ove Knausgaard's booksValeria Cossati, it features the author as the central character and narratorpurchases her forbidden notebook, and learns about herself in the story of grief it tells is a highly personal onemost intimate and revealing ways.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473640008</amazonuk>1782278222

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Michel DeonOttessa Moshfegh|title= Your Father's RoomMy Year of Rest and Relaxation|rating= 4.53|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= I don't feel altogether qualified to review Michel Déon's 2004 fictionalised memoir ''Your Father's Room''At best, translated here into English for this novel is a scathing critique of modern society and reveals the first time. I hadn't heard fragility of Déon before receiving my copyhuman relationships; at worst, let alone read any it is the cynical, predictable and slightly trite tale of his booksan unlikeable protagonist. This unlikely heroine, published over a 70 year period slim, attractive and newly orphaned girl in her twenties is disillusioned with the world, but resolves not to much acclaim lose sleep over it: in his homelandfact, her solution lies in her hibernation. But it|isbn=1784707422}}{{Frontpage|author=Matthew Tree|title=We's part ll Never Know|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, a drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of the pleasure being exceptional at any of his artistic passions all failed miserably and who had endless crises of book reviewing self confidence. So Tim applied himself to read with no prior knowledge or prejudicehis studies, all the more so if you discover an absolute gemcultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and set himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1910477346</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Naomi AldermanB0C47LV1PC|title= The PowerFragility|author=Mosby Woods|rating= 54|genre= Literary Fiction|summary=It started with Can you make a ''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, is the girls and spread. From younger woman to older woman, question should you make it was awoken and everything changed. Womankind now has ? Or is the power of electricity in their fingertips and, slowly at firstquestion if you did, would it land? The catch is that the balance of power in the world starts shiftinganswer for both could well be.... no. We follow  ''Fragility'' is set as the stories city of different peoplePortland, in different walks of lifeOregon, who see this cautiously begins to emerge from the very beginning and hurtle towards 'restrictions imposed during the event'. One thing in this startling new development is certain, patriarchal archetypes and chauvinist thinkers are in for the shock of their lives. Literally. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670919969</amazonuk>covid pandemic

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Anna PitoniakMosby Woods|title=The FuturesA Whirly Man Loses His Turn

|summary=When we first meet Evan Peck, he has just started at Yale College, where he plays ice hockeyThe West isn't the dominant force it once was. Like lots Nobody in the West is quite sure how to mend this or even if mending it is the best course of the other playersaction. Governments are flailing. A war here, he a push for climate action there. A feeling that nobody is actually Canadianin actual charge. Imagine then, from small-town British Columbiathere was a man with precognition. One night after Imagine the strategic advantage in this asset; a party Evan meets Julia Edwards at their dorm and they go out for pizzaman who can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. She technically has a boyfriend from her Boston boarding school daysThat man would be valuable, but they soon break up and before long Julia and Evan have become inseparableright? Perhaps the most valuable asset in history. Imagine then, as they will remain for the rest of their college yearsthat this man loses this ability.What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0718184564</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1

{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0571379559|title=The House of Broken Bricks|author= Stephan CollishawFiona Williams|titlerating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= ''The Song House of Broken Bricks'' is the story of four people. Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in the house on the riverbank, built of broken bricks. Insubstantial as it might look, it's stood the passage of time, storms and floods. Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, to complete the Storkdelivery rounds - and to bring in sufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, the rainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. People don't believe that they're related, much less twins and there's an assumption when Max is out with his mother that she's his nanny.}}{{Frontpage|author=Claire North|title=House of Odysseus|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= Stephan Collishaw has achieved ''What could matter more than love?'' The follow-up to the excellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a rare feat few months after where we left off. In the palace of Odysseus, with delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her husband, who sailed to war at Troy and then by divine intervention never returned home. As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the throne of the Western Isles. Having survived – politically and physical – the chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca's shores, Queen Penelope is on the brink of a novel set amidst fragile peace. One that shatters however with the horrors return of Nazi tyranny Orestes, King of Mycenae, and his sister Elektra, seeking refuge.|isbn=0356516075}}{{Frontpage|author= Kay Chronister|title= Desert Creatures|rating= 4|genre= Dystopian Fiction|summary= With a world that does not shy away from human sufferingis becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, but does not drown in post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it eitheris a robotic takeover, a world devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, this genre is a way for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. ''Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the fears that exist for humanity today. It is a shocking novel that still manages to find hope. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1785079190</amazonuk>1803364998

{{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author= Sabrina MahfouzEric LaRocca|title= The Things Trees Grew Because I Would Tell You: British Muslim Women WriteBled There

|genre= AnthologiesHorror|summary= What does it mean Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is used as a way to be British reflect our darkest emotions and Muslim? This how we as humans react and process them. Most horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad'', whether that is a question these writers tackle with stunning clarity. Modern day British society has home invader, a varied sense of cultural heritage; it is monster or a society that is changing and moving forward as ghost, it adds more usually something tangible and more voices to , by the end of the populationstory, but beatable. Eric LaRocca's ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is also one not like that has an undercurrent of anxiety and fear towards those that are minorities. So this It is a collection displays how all that fear is received; it comes of short stories more interested in the form horrors of stereotypical labels illness, grief and humiliation. Horrors that linger and racial prejudice, which are themes eloquently reproduced hereharder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0863561462</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= David SzalayMadelaine Lucas|title= All That Man IsThirst for Salt|rating= 5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= Two teenage boys on an Inter Rail trip around Europe find themselves staying with ''Love, I'd read, was supposed to be a frustrated housewife on the outskirts of Praguelight and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity'' Told from a driftless young Frenchman discovers sexual fulfilment on a package holiday in Cyprusretrospective view, a lovestruck Hungarian minder is embroiled in a prostitution racket at an upmarket London hotelyoung woman unravels the year-long relationship that once defined her. Overlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the affair with a Belgian academic is forced man twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to confront his egotism when his partner becomes pregnant, a Danish tabloid journalist exposes a highits sorrowful end the summer after. Set against the backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the 24-year-ranking politicianold narrator's love affairdeepening relationship with her older lover, a property developer inspects a new project in the French alpsdepicting its all-consuming nature, a Scot living in Croatia fails in love how it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and business, a Russian millionaire confronts divorce, an elderly English politician survives a road accident in Italyhow it altered her irrevocably. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099593696</amazonuk>0861546490

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Elizabeth HayMichael Grothaus|title= His Whole LifeBeautiful Shining People|rating= 54

|summary= If you think that ''un-put-down-ableBut fearing something and having it come to pass are two different things. And I'' is the greatest accolade for a bookm willing to bet most of what we fear will never happen, think againor we can take steps to change it. ''Put-down-able '' can be stronger praise: Beautiful Shining People''His Whole Life'' is put-down-able. It encourages you to put it down, to wrap yourself in the slow-moving story, the exquisite writing, revolves around the subtleties question of the characters, identity and just walk around for a while with them slowly sinking in; acceptance. Of what it encourages you means to come back to it again be human. Of what is real and again; mostly it encourages you to put it downwhat is artificial, to read it slowly, because you don't want it to endand whether the development of technology is exciting or frightening.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857055445</amazonuk>191458564X

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Phillip LewisJennifer Saint|title= The BarrowfieldsAtalanta|rating= 45|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= Just before Henry Aster's birth'I was as worthy as any one of them. I would get on board that ship, his fatherI vowed. I would take my place, a frustrated novelist and lawyer, reluctantly returns to not just in the name of the remote North Carolina mountains in which he goddess. It was improbably raised and installs his young family in a gothic mansion - nicknamed for the sake of my name, too. Atalanta'the vulture house' - worthy of his hero Edgar Allan Poe Princess. Warrior. Lover. Hero. There Abandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a son, Henry grows up Atalanta is raised under the desk protective eye of this fierce the goddess Athemis and brilliant manfashioned into a formidable huntress, one who longs for adventure. But when a death in When the opportunity comes – to join the family tips his father toward Argonauts, a fearsome unravellingfierce band of warriors, what was once a young sondescendent from the Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the chance to fight in Artemis's reverence name and carve out her own legendary place in history. What follows is poisoned, a whirlwind of challenges and discovery and Henry fleesthrough it, not to return until years later when he, tooAtalanta must remember Artemis' fatal warning: that if she marries, must go home againit will be her undoing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473636825</amazonuk>1472292154

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Paula CocozzaAmanthi Harris|title= How to Be HumanBeautiful Place|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= When Mary arrives home from work one day Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to find a magnificent fox the Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of her lawn - his ears spiked in attention and every hair bristling with his power to surprise - it home country. This is only the beginninga place she spent her formative years. He brings gifts (at least It is not a place she was born into, Mary imagines they are gifts), and gradually makes himself at but the one she thinks of as home. And as he listens How she came to Marybe at the Villa, Mary listens back. She begins to hear herself for the first time in years. Her bullish ex-boyfriendhow it became her home, still lurking on and the fringes of machinations that have flowed through her life, would be appalled. So would ever since she first arrived there provide the neighbours with a new baby''score'' for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. They only Padma's present fails to escape her past and much like wildlife that fits with the decor. But inside Mary musical score of a wildness is growing film, that strand weaves its way through everything that will not be tamedhappens at the Villa. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1786330334</amazonuk>1784631930

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Helen Dunmore178563335X|title=Birdcage WalkSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor

|genre=Historical Literary Fiction|summary=Bristol 1792: Lizzie married wellWhen 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 Hannah and her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter-in-law won't let her see her grandson. John Diner Tredevant Holthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, is a property developer who has reached lovely place, but Rachel is struggling to develop a real bond with the zenith parish - and she's in awe of his lifethe vicar, Gail, but then she's work: building a terrace of prestigious houses overlooking been doing the Avon Gorgejob for more than thirty years. In Rachel and Christopher hoped that a time of turbulence as France reaches walk on the dawn of revolution, Britain, including Diner, fears beach would do them some good - it was stormy but it may spreadwas probably what they needed. This puts Lizzie in a difficult position since her mother And then Hannah went missing.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1398515388|title=The Boy and step-father both believe in propagating pamphlets the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and ideas Alison Watts (translator)|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=First of egalitarianism for all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and to allthis, in turn, including womencaused the nuclear meltdown. In other wordsThe result was complete and utter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, they think nothing and the loss of spreading ideas livelihoods was widespread. The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the sort tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. He wasn't a dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that fanned he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the dog jumped in.}} {{Frontpage|isbn=0989715337|title=Papa on the Moon|author=Marco North|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''Some frogs had gotten into the well.'' ''Walter stood waist-deep in the French flamesfragrant water, naked except for his beaten leather hat. HoweverLong strands of their eggs wove around him, thatsticky 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.'s not Lizzie's only problem… there  How is that for an opening? The style of this novel in the form of interconnected short stories goes from succinct and laconic to wistful and musing, turning on a darkness in her husband's past sixpence. And author Marco North, who has the most wonderful turn of which she's unawarephrase, starts as he means to go on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091959403</amazonuk>