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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|titleisbn=Beautiful Fools295967572X|authortitle=R Clifton Spargo|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Famous writers' wives have had something of a literary revival in recent years. Paula McLain's ''The Paris Wife'' and Naomi Wood's ''Mrs Hemingway'' imagine the lives of the various Hemingway women, while the vogue for flappers and [[The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald|The Great Gatsby]] has led to a spate of books about Zelda Fitzgerald. Fans of the Roaring Twenties have been spoiled for choice, what with [[Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald by Therese Anne Fowler]], ''Call Me Zelda'' by Erika Robuck, and ''Guests on Earth'' by Lee Smith.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1468308807</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewPale Pieces|author=Roopa Farooki|title=The Good ChildrenG M Stevens
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=There Our unnamed narrator is never any end about to Parisbegin a train journey with his companion Django. The sentence pops up, hypnotic, through most Where they're going and what the purpose of the book. At times ironicthis journey is, thoughtful or questioning, it is a quote from Hemingway’s novel, uncertain. Django found the tickets ''A Moveable Feaston the floor somewhere'', in which the American author looked back at his days in Paris, where he was ‘very poor and very happy.’ The has persuaded our narrator of ''Never Any End to Paris'' tells us that when he lived accompany him. Why not? Not much else is clear either - but we are probably in Paris, he was ‘very poor the past as the pair travel to the station by coach and very unhappythe train is a steam locomotive.’|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846558042</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Johanna LaneMakenna Goodman|title=Black LakeHelen of Nowhere
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=John's family have owned Dulagh (Black Lake), It could be argued that the big mansion pervading theme of this book is malaise - a hard-to-place feeling that something in your life is not quite right. The protagonist, a disgraced professor on the Irish countrysidebrink of losing both his career and his relationship, for generationsembodies this feeling. Unfortunately now no longer able to afford its upkeepHowever, JohnGoodman counteracts his discomfort with a force which is seductive, his wife Marianne radical and children Kate unnerving: Helen. The connection between Helen and Philip, move into a cottage on the estate insteadprotagonist is indirect yet intimate. They still own As the former owner of the countryside house but ithe'll be run by the government with revenue from opening it s considering, Helen represents a volta in his life, her past tied to the publichis potential fresh start. At The realtor who shows the time it seems protagonist around the perfect solutionhouse shares stories about Helen, but and describes her as ''an entity that is pure consciousness, beyond form''. Although she lives in an assisted living facility now, Helen has powers beyond comprehension which the future has plans other than perfectionreader gets the sense are not altogether innocuous.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0755396294</amazonuk>1804272205
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Frances and BernardOlga Tokarczuk|authortitle=Carlene BauerHouse of Day, House of Night|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=There''What's something very special about an epistolary novel. The format might seem unnatural to readers in this day of abbreviated text messages and e-mails, but the conceit good of a written exchange allows for fully developed first-person voices and a confessional tone. Provided the author world that keeps changing like that? How can bypass the subtle difficulties of plot-building, letters are also a handy indicator of the passage of time, and ably convey period vocabulary.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099578603</amazonuk>}}one go on calmly living in it?''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=TaraShea NesbitThea Lenarduzzi|title=The Wives of Los AlamosTower
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=1943: In ''How unctuous are the US a group fats of menanother's life, women and children are uprooted from how dizzying their homes with hardly any notice and after being sworn to total secrecysugars in our bloodstream''. Their destination is a hastily knocked up In this compelling novel, unfinished small town in Thea Lenarduzzi assumes the New Mexico desert; a place where muddy water drips from identity of T, the taps and their lives are turned upside down for nearly 3 yearsprotagonist of this tale. This isn't mass abduction by a malevolent power but the US governmentJust as T's plan to end WWII. The men (and some of the women) are scientistsstory is being told, the place story of a second protagonist is Los Alamosunveiled: Annie, the site daughter of a wealthy family in the project that will result 19th century, who died of tuberculosis after being locked in Robert Oppenheimer stating a tower, captures T's imagination. Annie'Nows fate is, I am become Deathabove all, the destroyer of worldsan enticing story to T." His It is a story has been well documented which she consumes avariciously, both in the past; now the voices belong to the Los Alamos Wivesa quest for truth and knowledge, and in service of myth, fable and fantasy. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408845997</amazonuk>1804271799
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=OrfeoJon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |authortitle=Richard PowersVaim|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary='No one thinks twice about the quiet, older bohemian in the American Craftsman at 806 South Linden…people take up all kinds of hobbies in retirement'All was strange''.' Seventy-year-old Peter Els is an out-of-work composer in Pennsylvania. He teaches music appreciation at a senior centre, but much of his spare time is devoted to chemistry experiments. As a college student he agonised over This haunting phrase encapsulates the choice between chemistry and music, pervading sense of otherworldliness which permeates this story set in factVaim, and these days he wonders if he got it wrong. His avant-garde compositions, such as a three-hour opera based on medieval German history, were infrequent fictional fishing village in Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for Jatgeir and never very well received. Should he have gone into biochemistry after all? ThusEline, thanks to a few thousand dollars' worth two of semi-professional equipment purchased off the Internet, Els is now engaged protagonists caught in a new kind of composition – with bacterial DNA taking the place of musical notesits melancholic current.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782391614</amazonuk>1804271829
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ron ButlinClaire-Louise Bennett|title=Ghost MoonBig Kiss, Bye-Bye |rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Maggie sits Everything in an elderly persons' care home tgryig to exist through the ever tightening grip this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, is steeped in anguish and distortion. Even a kiss, usually a symbol of intimacy and closeness, becomes evidence of dementialove lost. Her sonWhen the narrator cries out internally, Tom, visits trying to jog her memory but she doesn't even recognise him. To Maggie'come over here and kiss me, Tom is 'Michael' it is less an invitation than a name that means nothing to a son getting more desperate attempt to break through to his mother once againconfirm her emotional numbness. However there was once a MichaelThe imagined recipient of this plea is Xavier, her ex-partner, in a life that bubbles with secrets that even Tom doesn't know; for once, long ago, Maggie was youngghost she conjures to test her detachment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1907773770</amazonuk>1804271934
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The One I WasHelene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)|authortitle=Eliza GrahamLili is Crying
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=In 1939First published in 1953 in French, before this novel is a timeless text which wrenches the outbreak hearts of its readers just as Bessette wrenches words and sentences from their proper position on the Second World Warpage and positions them elsewhere, a boy arrived at Harwich docks. He was a Kindertransport refugee fleeing the anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany. Benjamin Goldman would change his name to Benny Gault when his idea that the war wouldn't happen and he could go home to Germany came to nothingdisjointed, but in the meantime he was adopted by Lord and Lady Dornertruncated. Six boys were to live at their country home - Fairfleet - and be educated by a private tutor. On Like the face lives of it Benny's luck could not have worked out betterher characters, but he was hiding a secretthey are often left tragically incomplete. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1910229016</amazonuk>1804271675
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Indecent ActsJonathan Buckley|authortitle=Nick BrooksOne Boat|rating=3.54
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Meet Grace. She's in her forties'One Boat'' is a deeply introspective novella that defies traditional narrative structure, living with drawing the reader into a hit-contemplative realm of philosophical musings and fragmented memories flowing from our narrator and-miss family in a Glasgow council flatprotagonist, and in Teresa. Set against the middle evocative backdrop of a whole host small coastal Greek town, this work masterfully captures the magic of issuesits setting and its power to provoke profound introspection. She Teresa herself recognises these qualities as the reason she has issues about visited it after the death of both her parents. Prompted by her mourning, and their moving on or death; she has issues about her sister who might or might not have had a much superior life pattern than Grace; she has issues about her children – Francis who has left Grace with her own daughter to spend time with drink or drugs instead, narrative voice is meditative and son Vincentdeeply self-aware, who will like as not create an issue by joining inviting the army and moving on himselfreader into her labyrinthine cogitations. Grace also has issues with the fact that she It is nearly as blind as a bat, and can neither read nor write. She's started the novel where she shouldn't be – at home in Glasgow, struggling, as she was due to fly to meet her sister at last, yet packed her glasses in the case book that must be the other endnot only requires but inspires depth of thought, since its narrative structure is fragmentary and completely missed her flightironically relies on analepsis for its propulsion.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908754451</amazonuk>1804271764
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=A Well-Tempered HeartEowyn Ivey|authortitle=Jan-Philipp SendkerBlack Woods Blue Sky|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Ten years on from ''Black Woods Blue Sky'' tells the previous episodestory of Birdie, Julia Winthe young mother of toddler Emaleen, successful corporate lawyer specialising in intellectual property rights is exhaustedwho longs for a life beyond the Alaskan lodge where she works as a bar waitress, unhappy a setting which enables her bad habits and aloneher accidental neglect of Emaleen. Somewhat distant Described as a ''wild card'', she feels stuck in all senses her day-to-day life, and yearns to cross the Wolverine river and live on the North Fork to fulfil her desires of the worda simple life surrounded by nature. When she meets Arthur Nielson, if not exactly estrangeda strange, from her mother taciturn and brothersolitary man, she who says he has recently left a relationship that should have worked but just didn't cabin over there, she feels called to go - and her only real connection is bring Emaleen with her artist friend Amy Lee. Without realising it, this calling will transform hers and Emaleen's lives forever.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>184697285X</amazonuk>1472279042
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Something Like HappySally Rooney|authortitle=John BurnsideIntermezzo
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard of life and is something of a grandmaster at putting it into words. Her dialogue is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, as her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Among the many relationships woven into this story, the central one for readers to unravel is the fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. Ivan, a socially awkward chess prodigy, contrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, a successful lawyer living in Dublin. Following their father's passing after a long battle with cancer, the brothers' already strained relationship faces new trials.
|isbn=0571365469
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Fyodor Dostoyevsky
|title=White Nights
|rating=5
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=How do you pick a name for a short story collection? It seems to me As always in Dostoyevsky, the ''character work is sublime...and other stories'' add-on One is like picking a favourite child, never left wondering what a promotion of one portion of the content above the rest. [[:Category:John Burnside|John Burnside]] has got a title story here, but such character is the mood of the book that he seems to have nailed the matter, thinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and picked the most apposite name. ''Something Like Happy'' could in a way be the title for practically every piece heretemperaments with remarkable clarity.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099575590</amazonuk>0241619785
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Brief Loves That Live ForeverJames Baldwin|authortitle=Andrei MakineGiovanni's Room
|rating=4.5
|genre=Short StoriesLiterary Fiction |summary=Our unnamed ''Giovanni's Room'' follows the narrator is inspired to think back through David, an American man living in Paris, as he navigates his life on the girls and women he has been in love torturous affair withGiovanni, partly because of a time spent with an associate – a time marked by a seemingly most unremarkable encounter with Italian bartender he meets in a further woman – whom he deemed had never been lovedgay bar. The associateWhile David is engaged to Hella, you seewho is travelling in Spain, had spent half the real tension in the novel arises not from his adult life in Soviet camps for political instruction – our narrator infidelity but from the deeper conflict within himself was an orphan in the 1960s. It is David' Soviet Union. This snappy volume takes us through episodes in several lives at different points during s crippling shame and since the second half of communist rule – and finally explains the import denial of his sexuality that unremarkable encounter…ultimately dooms his relationship with Giovanni.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1780870493</amazonuk>0141186356
}}
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Then: On This Italian work of feminist fiction holds an air of suspense and tension from the farm above a remote Norwegian hamletmoment our protagonist, in 1976Valeria Cossati, schoolgirl Else is waiting for purchases her mother to return through the wind forbidden notebook, and the snow. She is also clutching at the kitchen table as the contractions worsen. Now: fast forward to 2009. Else now lives learns about herself in the town the hamlet has grown into, on the back of oil money. Her daughter has a daughter of her own, but still spends many a night not coming home. ''She must have met someone'' the eleven-year-old granddaughter says matter-of-factly. Else has made a life for herself, running a spa, looking after her daughter most intimate and her granddaughter. A quiet life, but not such a bad onerevealing ways.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0091954290</amazonuk>1782278222
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The Beggar and the HareOttessa Moshfegh|authortitle=Tuomas KyroMy Year of Rest and Relaxation|rating=4.53
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Our hero, VatanescuAt best, this novel is a fish out scathing critique of water. He's a father without his family, a man without a home, a possibility without a chance. He's being transported across Europe by a criminal people-smuggler, who is also packing Vatanescu's sister off to the cosmetic surgeon then the prostitute trade. Our hero is destined to sit in discomfort, sleet modern society and in hateful gazes of others as a beggar on reveals the streets fragility of Helsinki. But human relationships; at worst, it is the same time impossibilities are amassing – one of which splits Vatanescu from his minder/mentorcynical, predictable and leaves him on the run with a fistful slightly trite tale of useless currencyan unlikeable protagonist. A further impossibility gifts him This unlikely heroine, a friendlyslim, warm companion – a rabbit being chased by local youths jumps into attractive and newly orphaned girl in her twenties is disillusioned with the sanctuary of his armsworld, and becomes a welcome source of focus. From then on many more jumps will be made from one impossibility but resolves not to anotherlose sleep over it: in fact, as the life of this illegal immigrant begins to resonate across his adopted homeland…her solution lies in her hibernation.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1780721641</amazonuk>1784707422
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The Blazing WorldMatthew Tree|authortitle=Siri HustvedtWe'll Never Know
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary='All intellectual Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, a drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of his artistic endeavours…fare better in the mind of the crowd when the crowd knows that somewhere behind the great work or the great spoof it can locate a cock passions all failed miserably and a pair who had endless crises of ballsself confidence.' Thus we are introduced So Tim applied himself to the unforgettable Harriet Burden – larger-his studies, cultivated his abilities rather than-life, six-foot-tall amazon artist – and to some of the novel's essential elements: musing on what makes intellectual products successful in a postmodern marketplace, feminist resentment of the overvaluing of male achievement, his daydreams and an unapologetic, playful boldness with languageset himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444779648</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=B0C47LV1PC|title=Clever GirlFragility|author=Tessa HadleyMosby Woods
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Stella grows up with her single mother in Bristol in the 1960s; her father left when she was Can you make a baby''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, but her mother has cultivated is the convenient myth that he died. In question should you make it? Or is the stand-alone first chapterquestion if you did, Stella recounts a disturbing incident of domestic violence would it land? The catch is that affected her Aunt Andythe answer for both could well be. Sordid snippets from the ensuing court case stay with Stella over the years; ... no. ''Fragility'Innocent-seeming fragments would get in past my defences…then stick to my imagination like tar.' Even so, the novel that follows is about set as the way in which we engage with memory – facts that linger versus those wecity of Portland, deliberately or subconsciouslyOregon, choose not cautiously begins to tell.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099570521</amazonuk>emerge from the restrictions imposed during the covid pandemic
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=All That is Solid Melts into AirMosby Woods|authortitle=Darragh McKeonA Whirly Man Loses His Turn
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Moscow, 1986The West isn't the dominant force it once was. Nobody in the West is quite sure how to mend this or even if mending it is the best course of action. Governments are flailing. A war here, and a nine-year old piano prodigy push for climate action there. A feeling that nobody is trapped in a subway station by bullies, who carefully break one of his little fingersactual charge. Rehearsal cancelledImagine then, the boy finds his favourite aunt, who takes him to treatment only to discover her ex-husband the doctor involved. Many miles away there was a slightly older young man is off on his first hunting trip with precognition. Imagine the men strategic advantage in this asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of the village, only to find diseased cows, and the grouse they seek sickly and weirdly uncoordinatedcircumstances. What has affected themThat man would be valuable, and will of course affect all right? Perhaps the characters most valuable asset in the bookhistory. Imagine then, is the nuclear disaster in the plant at Chernobylthat this man loses this ability.What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0670922706</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0571379559|title=The Black SnowHouse of Broken Bricks|author=Paul LynchFiona Williams|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Barnabas Kane returned to his birthplace in Ireland with his family with ''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the goal story of setting up his own farm and raising his son four people. Tess Hembry's roots are in a better setting than New York. With his farm of a decent size and a good herd of cattle all seems well with Kane until out ploughing one day he and his farm hand Matthew Peoples spot smoke Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in the sky from house on the direction riverbank, built of his byrebroken bricks. The fire marks Insubstantial as it might look, it's stood the start passage of a sometimes bleak downward spiral time, storms and floods. Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, to complete the delivery rounds - and Kane is forced to rely on bring in sufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, the kindness of rainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his neighbours who still see him as father. People don't believe that they're related, much less twins and there's an outsiderassumption when Max is out with his mother that she's his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782062041</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=Truman CapoteKay Chronister|title=Breakfast at TiffanyDesert 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= Eric LaRocca|title= The Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating= 5|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=Holly Golightly. Who doesn't know her? Whether in the pages of 'Love, I'Breakfast at Tiffany'sd read, was supposed to be a light and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity'' Told from a retrospective view, a young woman unravels the short novel by Truman Capote or capture on film by Audrey Hepburn, she's an American iconyear-long relationship that once defined her. A young country girl becomes a New York socialiteOverlaid with later wisdom, trading on amusement value to make the narrator relives the affair with a life paid for by rich men who are titillated by man twenty years her outrageous opinions and anecdotessenior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the summer after. We Set against the backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''wantThirst for Salt'' to know her. And details the 24-year-old narrator ''wants'' to know s deepening relationship with her as mucholder lover, if not moredepicting its all-consuming nature, than we dohow it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>B00HX9UTSE</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.''
''Beautiful Shining People'' revolves around the question of identity and acceptance. Of what it means to be human. Of what is real and what is artificial, and whether the development of technology is exciting or frightening.|isbn=191458564X}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Patrick NessJennifer Saint|title=The Crane WifeAtalanta|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''The Crane Wife'' ticks all my boxes. It's by Patrick Ness who is I was as worthy as any one of them. I would get on board that ship, I vowed. I would take my favourite writers place, not just in the name of Young Adult fictionthe goddess. It has a basis in myth and legend and still better in an ancient story new to mewas for the sake of my name, too. It doesnAtalanta''t go on and on and Ariston Princess. Warrior. Lover. Hero. Abandoned at birth for half being born a billion pages. Best daughter rather than a son, Atalanta is raised under the protective eye of all, the author includes goddess Athemis and fashioned into a shout-out formidable huntress, one who longs for adventure. When the opportunity comes – to join the brilliant Decemberists. I agree with Ness: this is Argonauts, a fierce band you should look up. A heavy reading schedule meant I didn't get of warriors, descendent from the Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the chance to it last year when it was first published but now itfight in Artemis's name and carve out her own legendary place in paperback history. What follows is a whirlwind of challenges and discovery and here I am. I wasnthrough it, Atalanta must remember Artemis't disappointedfatal warning: that if she marries, it will be her undoing. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857868748</amazonuk>1472292154
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jill DawsonAmanthi Harris|title=The Tell-Tale HeartBeautiful Place|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Being told that you have six months Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to live concentrates the mind most wonderfully: fifty Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of her home country. This is a place she spent her formative years. It is no age not a place she was born into, but the one she thinks of as home. How she came to diebe at the Villa, how it became her home, even if you and the machinations that have lived flowed through her life to ever since she first arrived there provide the full''score'' for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. Patrick Padma's heart was giving up on him present fails to escape her past and much like the Professor musical score of American Studiesa film, philanderer and heavy drinker was that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the head of the list for a heart transplant. His other problems - entirely of his own making - faded into insignificance. Sixteen-year-old Drew Beamish died in a motorcycle accident in the village where he lived in rural Cambridgeshire and it will be his (still beating) heart which is transplanted into Patrick. The two, who had never met, would be permanently joinedVilla.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444731068</amazonuk>1784631930
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=178563335X|title=The People in the PhotoSea Defences|author=Helene GesternHilary Taylor|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Hélène Hivert works at the Museum of the History of the Postcard. It is a job she loves, as When we first meet Rachel Bird she finds delving into other people's lives 'most excitinga trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you need to pick the children up. Luckily Her husband, she is 'regularly sent collections to catalogue'Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and each time the 'moment of discovery' gives her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a thrillsobbing parishioner. It may be Thelma'addictives daughter-in-law won't let her see her grandson. Holthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, is a lovely place, but 'There Rachel is something very moving about the thought that just two or three sources can be enough struggling to build develop a picture real bond with the parish - and she's in awe of an entire life'. But what happens when the sources are a bit too close to homevicar, Gail, when Hélène must play Holmes among the artefacts of her own familybut then she's past, pondering 'been doing the silence of surfaces'? Well, job for more than thirty years. Rachel and Christopher hoped that a walk on the professional detachment goes straight out the window, and beach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what had been a genuine pleasure, tinged by wonder, now becomes an uncomfortable obsessionthey needed. And then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908313544</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1398515388|title=The Atheist's PrayerBoy and the Dog|author=Amy R BiddleSeishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)|rating=34.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=I don’t shy away from a book with a little edgeFirst of all, it was the earthquake, deep in fact [[:Category:Chuck Palahniuk|Chuck Palahniuk]] is one of my favourite authors the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and his books can be so sharp you can shave with themthis, in turn, caused the nuclear meltdown. On the surface ''The Atheist’s Prayer'' result was complete and utter devastation. would seem to be courting controversy; why else have such a provocative title? The deaths were uncountable, and the loss of livelihoods was widespread. But, is it really The fact that shocking? Nopemany pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. This is He wasn't a story about how people deal with dog person but the modern world convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and what happens when dangerous ideals infect a vulnerable groupTamon the dog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780995822</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0989715337|title=The Three MusketeersPapa on the Moon|author=Alexandre Dumas and Will Hobson (translator)Marco North|rating=4.5|genre=Historical Literary Fiction|summary=Leaving his home to try and join ''Some frogs had gotten into the famous musketeers well.'' ''Walter stood waist-deep in Paris, young Gascon d'Artagnan encounters troubles on the way but quickly falls in with title characters Athosfragrant water, Aramis and Porthosnaked except for his beaten leather hat. SoonLong strands of their eggs wove around him, sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Two of the quartet are caught up in a diabolical plot of dogs leaned over the wicked Cardinal Richelieu opening and his accomplice Milady de Winter - can they save barked down at the strange noise of the Queenbuckets as he filled them.''s honour?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849907498</amazonuk>}}
}}
