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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]__NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Adriaan van DisJeremy Cooper|title=BetrayalDiscord|rating=43.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= Dutchman Mulder renews his acquaintance with his old friend Donald Discord: a lack of agreement or harmony (as he returns to South Africabetween persons, a land he knew well in the days of apartheid. Life may have moved on and apartheid ceased but some things have worsened. Have Mulder and Donald made any difference at all? As they recall their shadier youth, they have one more chance to struggle for someone's freedom against all odds and a violent society.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857051849</amazonuk>}}or ideas)
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ruth OzekiPolly Barton|title=What Am I, A Tale for the Time BeingDeer?|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= Ruth finds a Polly Barton'Hello Kitty' bag washed up on the shore of Whaletown, the small Canadian island s debut novel is an intellectually playful yet emotionally exposed work that she uses translation as both subject and her husband Oliver call homegoverning metaphor. As Ruth opens it and begins reading The narrator, newly relocated from London to Berlin, works translating video games into Japanese through the diary safely protected insideprocess of localisation, she learns about Naorewriting language until it feels comfortably familiar to a new audience. Barton treats this as a paradoxical act: arguably, a teenager in Japanstriving for universality, language is endlessly repackaged, its originality at risk of disappearing altogether. Through her writing Nao becomes real and From this, the tales of her varied lifenovel opens out into a wider, struggles at school and fascinating relatives compels Ruth resonant question: to what extent do we translate ourselves in order to search for herbe understood, accepted, or at least to discover her fate.loved?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857867970</amazonuk>1804272175
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sebastian FaulksMaria Stepanova and Sasha Dugdale (Translator)|title=A Possible LifeThe Disappearing Act|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Geoffrey swaps Despite her anonymisation of place names and people, Stepanova's message in this short work of autofiction is unmistakable. A novelist named M travels from B (ostensibly Berlin) to the town of F for a career as literary festival she is to be a public school master for an existence as an English officer behind German lines during WWIIguest speaker at. Detoured by erratic train schedules and nudged by forces beyond her control, an experience that will take her journey slowly bends toward a lifetime traveling circus. Swept up in this series of events, M eventually offers to expunge. Billy is step in for a child sent to circus performer who has unexpectedly left the workhouse to give his family show. The train functions as a chance motif of survival. Elena has to come to terms with an adopted brothertransience and impermanence, Jeanne while the French nursemaid lives in circus embodies the shadow reshaping of identity and a one-off encounter and Jack? He bears retreat into fantasy, an impulse that lies at the indelible very heart print of a girl who travels with a guitar. Five lives, five stories, one human, emotional threadthe novel form itself.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099549220</amazonuk>1804272329
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tash Aw295967572X|title=Five Star BillionairePale Pieces|author=G M Stevens|rating=45
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=China Our unnamed narrator is a booming economy for people in a position about to take advantage; people like Gary the pop star who once won begin a talent show, Yinghui the lingerie magnate or her childhood friend train journey with his companion Django. Where they're going and property developer Justin who feels what the weight purpose of his familythis journey is, is uncertain. Django found the tickets 's expectations. Then there's Phoebe, moving to Shanghai from on the country on a promise floor somewhere'' and a belief that has persuaded our narrator to attract success one must act as if one already has itaccompany him. Life will bring them into each other's orbit Why not? Not much else is clear either - but it won't leave any of them we are probably in the same past as when they startedthe pair travel to the station by coach and the train is a steam locomotive.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007494157</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jhumpa LahiriMakenna Goodman|title=The LowlandHelen of Nowhere
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Subhash and Udayan Mitra are brothers growing up in an India growing into its post-independence status. Subhash goes along with Udayan's ideas but it's Udayan who's It could be argued that the radical, fighting against the injustices pervading theme of an elitism this book is malaise - a hard-to-place feeling that remains once the British have left Indiasomething in your life is not quite right. Eventually they go their separate waysThe protagonist, one studying abroad to avoid conflict and a disgraced professor on the other becoming more deeply embroiled. Life can't go on like this forever brink of losing both his career and it doesn't but the reverberations seem tohis relationship, affecting generation after generation as Subhash realises that the search for peace isn't always an external thing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408828111</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Colum McCann|title=TransAtlantic|rating=4embodies this feeling.5|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=In 1845 ex-slaveHowever, black American Frederick Douglass visits Ireland for Goodman counteracts his discomfort with a lecture tour about freedom force which is seductive, radical and emancipation only to discover he's not preaching to the converted after allunnerving: Helen. In 1919 Alcock The connection between Helen and Brown climb into a rickety aircraft to fly the Atlantic and land in Limerickprotagonist is indirect yet intimate. In 1994 Senator George Mitchell also travels to Ireland watched by a world thatAs the former owner of the countryside house he's about considering, Helen represents a volta in his life, her past tied to see a miracle of negotiationhis potential fresh start. Meanwhile through it all Lily The realtor who shows the protagonist around the house shares stories about Helen, and describes her descendants are also thereas ''an entity that is pure consciousness, not only watching history but beyond form''. Although she lives in an assisted living it on both sides of facility now, Helen has powers beyond comprehension which the reader gets the Atlanticsense are not altogether innocuous.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408829371</amazonuk>1804272205
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The LuminariesOlga Tokarczuk|authortitle=Eleanor CattonHouse of Day, House of Night
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Eleanor Catton's 'What'The Luminaries'' is set in s the New Zealand gold rush good of the late 1860s. It's a story about greed, power, gold, dreams, opium, secrets, betrayal and identity, but most of all, it's a celebration of the art of story telling, both in terms of Catton's book and the stories her characters have to tell. It's the kind of book world that is perfect escapism and which wraps you up in its world. If you keeps changing like big, chunky books that you ? How can get lost one go on calmly living in for hours, then this is one for you.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847084311</amazonuk>}}it?''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Eve HarrisThea Lenarduzzi|title=The Marrying of Chani KaufmanTower
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=After waiting till all her elder sisters' weddings were done and dusted 'How unctuous are the fats of another's life, how dizzying their sugars in true ultra-orthodox Jewish styleour bloodstream''. In this compelling novel, itThea Lenarduzzi assumes the identity of T, the protagonist of this tale. Just as T's now 19-year-old Chanistory is being told, the story of a second protagonist is unveiled: Annie, the daughter of a wealthy family in the 19th century, who died of tuberculosis after being locked in a tower, captures T's turnimagination. SheAnnie's only met Baruchfate is, her fiancéabove all, an enticing story to T. It is a story which she consumes avariciously, four times both in a quest for truth and he hasn't even seen her elbows but the match is made knowledge, and the day eventually arrives. Baruch secretly studies forbidden gentile literature in service of myth, fable and Chani has an inquisitive streak often perceived as rebellious so God knows what the future holdsfantasy. Perhaps they should take the Rabbi's marriage as an example? Or perhaps not…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908737433</amazonuk>1804271799
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alison MacLeodJon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |title=UnexplodedVaim|rating=54
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=It's 1940 and Britain lives in fear of a Nazi invasion that could happen any day'All was strange''... In case This haunting phrase encapsulates the worst happenspervading sense of otherworldliness which permeates this story set in Vaim, Evelyn's husband Geoffrey has buried a little something fictional fishing village in Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for her Jatgeir and their young son Philip in the garden. He tells her the tin contains a bit of money and his favourite photo Eline, two of them. As she digs it up from impulse rather than necessity, she discovers that there's no photo but what there is instead makes Evelyn doubt that she knows the man she married. The events that follow make Evelyn realise that indeed she doesn't. Meanwhile the war continues and a German does invade their lives, but not protagonists caught in the way that either of them could envisageits melancholic current.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0241142636</amazonuk>1804271829
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Hannah KentClaire-Louise Bennett|title=Burial RitesBig Kiss, Bye-Bye
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime (Historical)Literary Fiction|summary=FridrikEverything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, Agnes is steeped in anguish and Sigridur are accused of murdering two men one Icelandic night in 1829 before setting fire to their homedistortion. Now Agnes awaits executionEven a kiss, imprisoned in the farm usually a symbol of a lowly local family who, rumour has itintimacy and closeness, wouldn't be too great a loss if the prisoner becomes dangerousevidence of love lost. Margrit Jonsdottir (When the farmernarrator cries out internally, 's wife) doesn't feel threatened come over here and sets the shockedkiss me, malnourished Agnes '' it is less an invitation than a desperate attempt to workconfirm her emotional numbness. Gradually Agnes reveals the events The imagined recipient of that night to Margrit and Totithis plea is Xavier, her ex-partner, a young priest. Her version seems ghost she conjures to be a little different from what everyone else concluded, predictably… Or perhaps not so predictablytest her detachment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1447233166</amazonuk>1804271934
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=HarvestHelene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)|authortitle=Jim CraceLili is Crying
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=As harvest comes First published in1953 in French, this novel is a village finds itself under threat. Invaded by a series of unfamiliar visitors, it will find itself utterly transformed over a short but apocalyptic seven days. We watch through timeless text which wrenches the eyes hearts of Walter Thirsk its readers just as three vagabonds escaping the enclosure of Bessette wrenches words and sentences from their fields are blamed for proper position on the trangressions of otherspage and positions them elsewhere, as the chartmaker Mr Quill enumerates the common landdisjointed, and as Master Kent's benevolent rule is overtaken by a new owner, who comes with enforcers in truncated. Like the name lives of ''profither characters, progress and enterprise'' - or sheep farming as Walter quickly realisesthey are often left tragically incomplete.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0330445669</amazonuk>1804271675
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Meg WolitzerJonathan Buckley|title=The InterestingsOne Boat
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Back in 1974 six teenagers met at summer camp ''One Boat'' is a deeply introspective novella that defies traditional narrative structure, drawing the reader into a contemplative realm of philosophical musings and fragmented memories flowing from our narrator and did all those things which you get to do when your parents are not around to stop youprotagonist, Teresa. They smoked potSet against the evocative backdrop of a small coastal Greek town, drank vodka this work masterfully captures the magic of its setting and Tangs - and talked way into its power to provoke profound introspection. Teresa herself recognises these qualities as the reason she has visited it after the night about anything and everythingdeath of both her parents. Plays were put onPrompted by her mourning, animations were perfected, but most importantly friendships were made that would last for years her narrative voice is meditative and deeply self- for some it would be a lifetime. Back in 1974aware, as Nixon left inviting the White House under reader into her labyrinthine cogitations. It is a particularly heavy cloud, 'The Interestings', as one book that not only requires but inspires depth of their number called themthought, knew that they could achieve anything they set their minds to. For three summers they returned to Spirit-in-the-Woods since its narrative structure is fragmentary and then they faced the real worldironically relies on analepsis for its propulsion.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701188278</amazonuk>1804271764
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Charlotte MendelsonEowyn Ivey|title=Almost EnglishBlack Woods Blue Sky|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=In the late nineteen eighties sixteen year old Marina is a border at Combe school, destined - as she and all about her know - for Cambridge and the medical profession. After her first term she's wonders if she's made a mistake as it's definitely not like it was at Ealing Girls. There, a girl whose mother is emotionally fragile doesn't stand out, even if the mother gets to sleep on the sofa in her in-laws' flat because their son - her husband - upped and left her and their daughter. You would still fit in even if the family you're living with is Hungarian and hasn't entirely left the ways of the old country behind. At Combe there's too much about Marina that she could be mocked for - or could get her a cruel nickname. Marina simply doesn't fit in, but the family have sacrificed everything so that she can go there3.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>144721997X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=1Q84: The Complete Trilogy|author=Haruki Murakami|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The ''1Q84Black Woods Blue Sky'' trilogy istells the story of Birdie, without doubt, an impressive book. In many waysthe young mother of toddler Emaleen, who longs for a life beyond the trilogy almost has to be read in this way Alaskan lodge where she works as the three component books make little sense on their own. The first book in the series in particular is almost completely baffling if taken in isolation. It does, thougha bar waitress, demand a degree of dedication, setting which enables her bad habits and if the prospect her accidental neglect of Emaleen. Described as a 1300 page novel ''wild card'', she feels stuck in which not a huge amount happens in terms of plot her day-to-day life, and in which there is a significant level of repetition leaves you cold, then this might not be yearns to cross the best entry point into Wolverine river and live on the wonderful world of Haruki Murakami. As often with Murakami though, it's possible North Fork to read this book at a number fulfil her desires of levels. On the surface it's a love story set in a slightly fantastical setting with a little bit of crime thrown insimple life surrounded by nature. At When she meets Arthur Nielson, a deeper levelstrange, he explores the thin lines between imagination taciturn and realitysolitary man, life and death and what you might call yin and yang. It's who says he has a novel where balance cabin over there, she feels called to go - and vacuums play a big partbring Emaleen with her. It seems counter-intuitive to call a book of Without realising it, this magnitude 'delicate', but thatcalling will transform hers and Emaleen's just how the story appearslives forever.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099578077</amazonuk>1472279042
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=A Kind of Eden Sally Rooney|authortitle=Amanda SmythIntermezzo
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=Martin Rawlinson Sally Rooney has escaped from studied the cold dreary English weather to the exotic heat chessboard of life and exotic women is something of Trinidada grandmaster at putting it into words. He might have a wife Her dialogue is gripping and a daughter back homeso brilliantly frustrating, as her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Among the many relationships woven into this story, but home is a long way away and here the central one for readers to unravel is the young fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and beautiful SafiyaPeter Koubek. She's Ivan, a journalist and could easily have just dismissed him as some sad old white guysocially awkward chess prodigy, but somehow she didn't. Somehow they talkedcontrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, and walked, and she showed him the real Trinidad and he fell a successful lawyer living in love Dublin. Following their father's passing after a long battle with hercancer, and with her homethe brothers' already strained relationship faces new trials.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846688132</amazonuk>0571365469
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alexander MaksikFyodor Dostoyevsky|title=A Marker to Measure DriftWhite Nights
|rating=5
|genre=CrimeShort Stories|summary=Jacqueline roams As always in Dostoyevsky, the beaches of the Greek islands offering massages for money to ward off starvationcharacter work is sublime. It helps but hunger One is always with her, lurking alongside the memory of never left wondering what a former life in Liberia character is thinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and the mind's ear voice of her mothertemperaments with remarkable clarity. Jacqueline is at least alive and existing, but at what cost?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848548052</amazonuk>0241619785
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=FamiliarJames Baldwin|authortitle=J Robert LennonGiovanni's Room
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Is there a greater change in ''Giovanni's Room'' follows the life of a middle-aged woman than the death of her teenage son? Elisa might have thought notnarrator David, having been forced to bury fifteen year old Silasan American man living in Paris, and try and move on as he navigates his torturous affair with her husband Derek and the year-older sonGiovanni, Sam. But an Italian bartender he meets in a greater change occurs on the way back from her annual, solo pilgrimage to his grave – something very weird happens to the universegay bar. She pops from one car While David is engaged to anotherHella, from under a cloudless sky to a slightly greyer one – and from her self as Elisa to a world where people call her Lisa, where she who is plumper, travelling in a different jobSpain, stiil married to Derek the real tension in the same home – novel arises not from his infidelity but still from the mother deeper conflict within himself. It is David's crippling shame and denial of two young men…his sexuality that ultimately dooms his relationship with Giovanni.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846689473</amazonuk>0141186356
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The Sorrow of AngelsAlba de Cespedes |authortitle=Jon Kalman StefanssonForbidden Notebook|rating=3.54
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Our decidedly unheroic main character has been at the café for three weeks now, so we are following on very closely This Italian work of feminist fiction holds an air of suspense and tension from [[Heaven and Hell by Jon Kalman Stefansson|Heaven and Hell]]. After the tragedy and soul-searching of that first bookmoment our protagonist, he seems settled in the ridiculous family that has formed around him thereValeria Cossati, finding employment, enjoying the literature, yet being very intrigued by the female body. The man who is still young enough to be known only as ''the boy'' might have latched on to stability for oncepurchases her forbidden notebook, and replaced learns about herself in the family and best friend he had lost. But everything is restless in this environment, most intimate and once again he might just be tempted to go on a journey, with another male companion, despite the harshness of the surroundsrevealing ways.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857051652</amazonuk>1782278222
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Heaven and HellOttessa Moshfegh|authortitle=Jon Kalman StefanssonMy Year of Rest and Relaxation|rating=43
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=IcelandAt best, this novel is a hundred years ago. From a place that scathing critique of modern society and reveals the fragility of human relationships; at worst, it is the very definition cynical, predictable and slightly trite tale of rural and remotean unlikeable protagonist. This unlikely heroine, a small fishing boat leaves for four hours' hard row to a profitable bank. It carries six men on the way outslim, attractive and five on the way back. The deceased newly orphaned girl in her twenties is disillusioned with the best friend – or perhaps only friend – of the main characterworld, who is still young enough to merely be known as ''boy''. When he returns but resolves not to port he enters an almost Camus-like semi-existence, wondering just how much life is an answer, and for whatlose sleep over it: in fact, after the tragedy he has witnessedher solution lies in her hibernation.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1849164061</amazonuk>1784707422
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The SonMatthew Tree|authortitle=Philipp MeyerWe'll Never Know
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Philipp Meyer's second novelTimothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, ''The Son,'' is an epic, multi-generational saga a drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of his artistic passions all failed miserably and who had endless crises of Texas lifeself confidence. Tracing the McCullough family from the middle of the nineteenth century So Tim applied himself to the present day, Meyer joins those writing today's masterpieces of American 'dirty realism': Ron Rash, [[:Category:David Vann|David Vann]]his studies, Richard Ford cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and especially Cormac McCarthy. Like McCarthy's ''Blood Meridian,'' ''The Son'' is a gory Western that transcends a simplistic cowboys-versus-Indians dichotomy to draw broader conclusions about the universality of violence in a nihilistic worldset himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857209426</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B0C47LV1PC
|title=Fragility
|author=Mosby Woods
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= Can you make a ''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, is the question should you make it? Or is the question if you did, would it land? The catch is that the answer for both could well be.... no.
''Fragility'' is set as the city of Portland, Oregon, cautiously begins to emerge from the restrictions imposed during the covid pandemic}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Donal RyanMosby Woods|title=The Spinning HeartA Whirly Man Loses His Turn
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The West isn'My father still lives back t the road past the weir dominant force it once was. Nobody in the cottage I was reared in. I go there every day West is quite sure how to see mend this or even if mending it is he dead and every day he lets me downthe best course of action. Governments are flailing. He hasn't yet missed A war here, a day of letting me downpush for climate action there.' This A feeling that nobody is how we meet Bobby - Bobby Mahon, as we'll learn - and he's brutally honest about his feelings for his father, who has deliberately drunk away the farm he inherited from ''his'' fatherin actual charge. But Frank Mahon isn't Bobby's onlyImagine then, or even main, problemthere was a man with precognition. He's been earning big money as Pokey Burke's foreman but Imagine the financial crash has hit and Pokey has done strategic advantage in this asset; a runnerman who can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. An investment That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the most valuable asset in a fake island off Dubai finished him and now he's disappearedhistory. On the estate of forty houses he was buildingImagine then, just two are occupied and the rutted roads are nothing more than a racetrack for the joyridersthat this man loses this ability.What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1781620067</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Natasha Solomons0571379559|title=The Gallery House of Vanished HusbandsBroken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=On her thirtieth birthday Juliet Montague went out to buy a fridge for ''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the princely sum story of twenty-one guineasfour people. SheTess Hembry'd saved hard for it - and her parents had given her s roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in the house on the final few pounds - but then Juliet did something impulsiveriverbank, built of broken bricks. Instead Insubstantial as it might look, it's stood the passage of buying a fridge she commissioned a portrait of herself time, storms and so began her involvement in floods. Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, to complete the postdelivery rounds -war art sceneand to bring in sufficient money. Juliet wasn't They have twin boys - by any stretch of Sonny and Max, the imagination - an artist, but she had a startling ability to spot a rainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother'good'' pictures Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. It was simply something which she ''knewPeople don't believe that they're related, much as less twins and there's an assumption when Max is out with his mother that she had known for certain that her husband had left for good on the day he didn't return home as expecteds his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444736345</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Claire North
|title=House of Odysseus
|rating=5
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= ''What could matter more than love?''
The follow-up to the excellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a 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 fragile peace. One that shatters however with the return of Orestes, King of Mycenae, and his sister Elektra, seeking refuge.|isbn=0356516075}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Kay Chronister|title=IndiscretionDesert Creatures|rating= 4|genre= Dystopian Fiction|summary= With a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is 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.|isbn=1803364998}}{{frontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Charles DubowEric LaRocca|title= The Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=35|genre= Horror|summary= Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is used as a way to reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and process them. Most horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad'', whether that is a home invader, a monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and, by the end of the story, beatable. Eric LaRocca's ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. It is a collection of short stories more interested in the horrors of illness, grief and humiliation. Horrors that linger and are harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''.}}{{Frontpage|author=Madelaine Lucas|title=Thirst for Salt|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Charles Dubow's debut novel promises 'Love, I'd read, was supposed to be a modern day Great Gatsby. It too is set amongst the rich light and famous outside New Yorkweightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity'' Told from a retrospective view, it too is narrated by a character seemingly on young woman unravels the outsideyear-long relationship that once defined her. Overlaid with later wisdom, Maddythe narrator relives the affair with a man twenty years her senior 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 childhood friend Walterdeepening 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>0007501307</amazonuk>0861546490
}}
{{Frontpage
|author= Michael Grothaus
|title=Beautiful Shining People
|rating=4
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= ''But fearing something and having it come to pass are two different things. And I'm willing to bet most of what we fear will never happen, or we can take steps to change it.''
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Jennifer Saint
|title=Atalanta
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''I was as worthy as any one of them. I would get on board that ship, I vowed. I would take my place, not just in the 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 son, Atalanta is raised under the protective eye of the goddess Athemis and fashioned into a formidable huntress, one who longs for adventure. When the opportunity comes – to join the Argonauts, a fierce band of warriors, descendent from the Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the chance to fight in Artemis' name and carve out her own legendary place in history. What follows is a whirlwind of challenges and discovery and through it, Atalanta must remember Artemis' fatal warning: that if she marries, it will be her undoing.|isbn=1472292154}}{{Frontpage|author=Amanthi Harris|title=Beautiful Place|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of her home country. This is a place she spent her formative years. It is not a place she was born into, but the one she thinks of as home. How she came to be at the Villa, how it became her home, and the machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the ''score'' for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. Padma's 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.|isbn=1784631930}}{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=178563335X|title=Russian StoriesSea Defences|author=Francesc SeresHilary Taylor
|rating=5
|genre=Short StoriesLiterary Fiction|summary=This brilliant When we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and varied collection of short stories is wondering why they're held when you need to pick the product of children up. Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a current academic interest sobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter-in cross-cultural translationlaw won't let her see her grandson. Francisco Guillen Serés Holthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, is a Catalan professor lovely place, but Rachel is struggling to develop a real bond with the parish - and she's in awe of Art History from Aragon. A Russophilethe vicar, Gail, he has travelled widely to collect stories from those writing during but then she's been doing the past hundred job for more than thirty years of Russian history. These have been translated into Catalan Rachel and Christopher hoped that a walk on the beach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. And then into EnglishHannah went missing. These unusual }}{{Frontpage|isbn=1398515388|title=The Boy and delightful stories, some twenty one of them written by five writers read fluently the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and engaginglyAlison Watts (translator)|rating=4. They form an informative tapestry 5|genre=General Fiction|summary=First of Soviet and post-Soviet lifeall, it was the earthquake, moving back deep in time with the olderocean floor, earlier writers like Bergchenkowhich created the tsunami and this, who died in the siege of Stalingradturn, at caused the endnuclear meltdown. The result was complete and utter devastation. Ranging over mythic The deaths were uncountable, and symbolic tales to realistic portrayals the loss of personal relationships; love trysts in St Petersburg, ferocious bears in livelihoods was widespread. The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the deep heart list of priorities but - six months after the Taiga tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. He wasn't a dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the perils of becoming lost in continuous orbit dog jumped in space. All aspects are impressively recounted.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>085705158X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0989715337|title=The ParrotsPapa on the Moon|author=Filippo BolognaMarco North
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=When confronted with ''Some frogs had gotten into the topic of parrots, most people would describe them as tamed tropical birds that are taught to repeat simple phrases, having no particular intelligence to engender an originality of their ownwell. Filippo Bologna has not in fact written a book about birds, but about writers '' ''Walter stood waist- deep in factthe fragrant water, three writersnaked except for his beaten leather hat. Just as the Neo-Pagans have a liking Long strands of the Triple Goddesses of The Maidentheir eggs wove around him, The Mother and The Crone, our three writers are similarly split into The Beginner, The Writer, and The Mastersticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. All three Two of these novelists are battling it out for The Prize, a prestigious award that would revitalise the career of The Master, legitimize dogs leaned over the efforts of The Beginner opening and assure The Writer a place in barked down at the annals strange noise of historythe buckets as he filled them. '' How is that for an opening? The setting style of Rome is utilised to provide both a stunning backdrop and one that is sympathetic to this novel in the mood form of our characters. The interconnected short stories of our three protagonists are interwoven in a delightfully clear fashion; Bologna's prose is delicate goes from succinct and laconic to wistful and descriptivemusing, but not at the sacrifice of pacingturning on a sixpence. The stage is set; And author Marco North, who has the characters have learned their lines. There is just one problem... out most wonderful turn of the three writersphrase, none of them deserves starts as he means to win The Prizego on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908968192</amazonuk>
}}
