==General fiction==
__NOTOC__
{{newreview
|author=Elizabeth Speller
|title=The Return of Captain John Emmett
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Laurence Bartram has survived the war, but his life has changed dramatically. It will never be the same again. It's almost as if he doesn't recognize himself. Domestic life is now non-existent and he has no-one to please but himself. He is unsettled and edgy. War has obviously left its mark. He retreats graciously and wonders what he'll do with the rest of his life.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844086070</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Nick Hornby
|summary=There was a time before Stephen King. There was time before ''The Shining''. There was a time when 'horror' was not rooted in blood, guts and gore. I owe a slight apology to Mr King, because along with the gutsier side of the genre, I will own that he is a master at suspense.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141191449</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Julian Barnes
|title=Staring at the Sun
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Jean's first Incident involved Uncle Leslie, hyacinths and golf tees. It's perhaps best forgotten, but Jean doesn't forget. Uncle Leslie figures large in her life - mostly on the golf course - until the War comes and he runs away to America. He's replaced by Tommy Prosser, a grounded pilot who once saw the sun rise twice in one day and excites as many questions in Jean as he ever answers. Tommy is replaced by Michael, a policeman, whom Jean eventually marries. He doesn't know why minks are excessively tenacious of life and he doesn't much care. But Jean does. She cares much less for the Dutch cap that Michael sent her off to obtain before the wedding and much less again for their rather disastrous adventures in the bedroom.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099540096</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Russell Celyn Jones
|title=The Ninth Wave (New Stories from the Mabinogion)
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Pwyll rules a medieval-style fiefdom in a post-climate change Wales. Life is different in many ways - there's a new-but-old social order built on feudalism and horsepower is the main means of transport. But in many ways it's much the same - people still fight one another, towns still have sink estates, rich boys still have too much time on their hands and precious little meaning in their lives.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1854115146</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Owen Sheers
|title=White Ravens (New Stories from the Mabinogion)
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=In the old tale, Branwen is the sister of Bendigeidfran - the giant King of Britain. She marries the King of Ireland, who doesn't treat her well. She manages to send Bendigeidfran a message via a tamed starling and war and killings ensue.
In this new tale, a young girl has just walked away from her brothers who, in the wake of the devastating foot and mouth outbreak, are despoiling their heritage by rustling and illegally slaughtering sheep. She meets an old man who tells her a story involving the superstitions about the ravens in the Tower of London, propaganda work during World War II, and an equally doomed love affair.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1854115030</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=J R Stephenson
|title=Crooked Justice
|rating=2.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Meet Barry Johns. You'll see him coming - he's five hundred pounds if he's an ounce. Just don't ever lend him money - he won't pay it back. A businessman with a share of a nightclub on Cyprus, he goes there for a customary break, and finds his sort-of moll-type sort-of girlfriend has been installed as the bar dancer. He manages to tread both on the toes of his local colleague and some Greek rivals. And when a rival in London chases him up for thousands of pounds owed he decides to pack up and shut up. It's a big stone that hides him, but he leaves a very awkward trail for everyone wanting to upturn it and get their revenge.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0955855713</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Anne Rice
|title=Angel Time
|rating=2.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Toby O'Dare is an extremely efficient hit man with a passion for music, history and playing his beloved lute. He's also something of a lost soul having turned his back on God many years ago. One day while on a 'job' he is visited by an Angel who offers him a chance at redemption. Toby agrees to become the Angel's human instrument and help save lives rather than take them. He is sent on an assignment to help a Jewish couple accused of murder in 13th Century England.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701178140</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=John E Smelcer
|title=The Great Death
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary='As Western Europeans settled Alaska, they brought with them diseases against which the indigenous people had no natural immunity. At the beginning of the twentieth century, fully two thirds of all Alaska natives perished from a pandemic of measles, smallpox, and influenza. No community was spared. In most cases, half of a village's population died within a week. In some cases, there were no survivors. It was the end of an ancient way of life. Natives still refer to the dreadful period as the Great Death.'
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1842709194</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Sue Townsend
|title=Adrian Mole: The Prostrate Years
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Adrian Mole is now 39¼ and living, quite literally, in a pigsty, sharing an all too thin party wall with his parents and working in a bookshop. It's not quite how life was supposed to turn out. As he spends his days wrestling his strong willed 5 year old Gracie into her school uniform, trying to reassure glamorous wife Daisy that life in the provinces is not as bad as she would like to believe, and desperately attempting to talk his mother out of her quest to appear on the vile ''Jeremy Kyle'' show, worrying over his increasingly frequent visits to the toilet is really the last thing he needs. And yet, the worst is still to come. Think a crumbling economy, redundancy, affairs, death, a family member challenging him in the novel writing stakes and a query over the big C – it's going to be a tough year for the Moles, and there's little that ol' Adrian can do except sit back and watch his life spin out of control around him.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0718153707</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Paul Theroux
|title=A Dead Hand: A Crime in Calcutta
|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Set in India, familiar territory for Theroux, ''A Dead Hand'' tells the story of a travel writer suffering from writer's block (also known as 'dead hand') until a chance letter from an American ex-pat, the mysterious Mrs Unger, relating a story of a mystery of a dead body in a hotel leads him to release his creativity in very unexpected ways. The story is more about obsession and infatuation than it is about the mystery itself as the narrator falls under Mrs Unger's Tantric charms. But does she have more to hide than she's letting on?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241144639</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Dave Eggers
|title=The Wild Things
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Meet Max. When I say he sometimes gets the wrong end of the stick about adults, or dislikes his mother's new boyfriend, or gets a bit feisty when he feels the need for revenge, I am certainly understating the facts. He is a bit of a rascal to say the least. But all that might change when he finds himself travelling to a strange land of roisterous animals, and ends up installed as their king.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241144221</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Harlan Coben
|title=Tell No One
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=I've been meaning to get around to reading some or all of Harlan Coben's work, because if the reviews are to be believed and you are a fan of the 'Bloody Knife /Blunt Instrument' thriller, the man is quite simply not capable of turning out a duff novel. But you know how it is, what with one thing and another and a bulging pile of books to be read and reviewed, I just somehow hadn't managed to give him my full attention. Until now.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1409117022</amazonuk>
}}
