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[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!{{Frontpage|author=Jeremy Cooper|title=Discord|rating= 3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Discord: a lack of agreement or harmony (as between persons, things, or ideas) The principal example of discord within the novel, as with most instances of discord, is easily located. The two protagonists of the novel, Rebekah Rosen and Evie Bennet, are as different as they come. Rebekah is an uptight, traditional and no-- Remove -->nonsense composer close to retirement, while Evie is a force of nature, bounding onto the musical scene as a precocious saxophonist, oozing with talent and charm. The two, predictably, don't always see eye to eye, their approaches different and Evie's progressive views at odds with Rebekah's conservative leaning. However, something connects them beyond just their musical project: a sort of fragile alliance formed within the clamour.|isbn=1804272264}}{{Frontpage|author=Polly Barton|title=What Am I, A Deer?|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Polly Barton's debut novel is an intellectually playful yet emotionally exposed work that uses translation as both subject and governing metaphor. The narrator, newly relocated from London to Berlin, works translating video games into Japanese through the process of localisation, rewriting language until it feels comfortably familiar to a new audience. Barton treats this as a paradoxical act: arguably, in striving for universality, language is endlessly repackaged, its originality at risk of disappearing altogether. From this, the novel opens out into a wider, resonant question: to what extent do we translate ourselves in order to be understood, accepted, or loved?|isbn=1804272175}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Marlon JamesMaria Stepanova and Sasha Dugdale (Translator)|title=The Disappearing Act|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Despite her anonymisation of place names and people, Stepanova's message in this short work of autofiction is unmistakable. A Brief History novelist named M travels from B (ostensibly Berlin) to the town of F for a literary festival she is to be a guest speaker at. Detoured by erratic train schedules and nudged by forces beyond her control, her journey slowly bends toward a traveling circus. Swept up in this series of events, M eventually offers to step in for a circus performer who has unexpectedly left the show. The train functions as a motif of transience and impermanence, while the circus embodies the reshaping of Seven Killingsidentity and a retreat into fantasy, an impulse that lies at the very heart of the novel form itself.|isbn=1804272329}}{{Frontpage|isbn=295967572X|title=Pale Pieces|author=G M Stevens

|genre=CrimeLiterary Fiction|summary=On December 3rd 1976 a group of armed men go Our unnamed narrator is about to Bob Marley's Jamaican home in Hope Road on begin a mission to kill 'The Singer'train journey with his companion Django. No one will be arrested for it but that doesnWhere they't mean their lives afterwards will be normal. This is a total fictionalisation of their story re going and therefore what the story purpose of this journey is, is uncertain. Django found the people of tickets ''on the Jamaican ghettoes: floor somewhere'' and has persuaded our narrator to accompany him. Why not? Not much else is clear either - but we are probably in the politics, past as the unrest, pair travel to the gang warfare station by coach and the deathtrain is a steam locomotive. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780746350</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Hanya YanagiharaMakenna Goodman|title=A Little LifeHelen of Nowhere|rating=34.5

|summary=Willem, JB, Malcolm and Jude don't have It could be argued that the pervading theme of this book is malaise - a lot hard-to-place feeling that something in common apart from their friendshipyour life is not quite right. They gravitated together at college and remain close as they become successful in careers as different as The protagonist, a disgraced professor on the theatre brink of losing both his career and architecturehis relationship, embodies this feeling. However even hopes for successful future can't erase , Goodman counteracts his discomfort with a force which is seductive, radical and unnerving: Helen. The connection between Helen and the blight of protagonist is indirect yet intimate. As the past for one former owner of them. Jude is physically disabled from a cause that isn't genetic or congenital. In fact the cause isn't even something countryside house he's shared with the other threeconsidering, Helen represents a volta in his life, her past tied to his potential fresh start. The events realtor who shows the protagonist around it stem back to his childhood the house shares stories about Helen, and haunt each thought and action he takes describes her as well as his ability to take them''an entity that is pure consciousness, beyond form''. 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>1447294815</amazonuk>1804272205

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Julia Franck and Anthea Bell (translator)Olga Tokarczuk|title=WestHouse of Day, House of Night|rating=3.5

|summary=Put yourself in ''What's the shoes good of a young mother to two children, who declares her intention to leave the Communist East Germany for West Berlin, and thus loses her scientist job. What would you expect world that keeps changing like that? How can one go on the other side – shops full calmly living in it?'' The title of attainable productsthis spellbinding work, pleasant neighbourhoods''House of Day, nice neighboursHouse of Night'', an active and busy new life, where things might feel alien but at least you speak somewhat reflects this notion of shifting realities - the same language? Wellsmall, for Nelly Senffsubtle changes which govern our lives, this is hardly the case. Once past like the depressing Eastern exit procedures she is confronted with more desultory interrogations shift from those 'welcoming' her day to the Westnight, beyond which she and her children (their fatherhowever quotidian, whom she never marriedcausing chaos. But, is long assumed dead by the authorities, if nobody else) are practically left in a shared accommodation constant in a transit camp. The shops are full of what that image is still unobtainablethe house, stoic against the children hate their new school – and people still look down on them as being foreign, even if they have only moved across a cityancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it is perceived.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099554321</amazonuk>1804271918

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Salman RushdieThea Lenarduzzi|title= Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight NightsThe Tower|rating= 3.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= Tediously captivating may not sound like ''How unctuous are the most fats of another's life, how dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream''. In this compelling recommendation for a book you've ever heardnovel, Thea Lenarduzzi assumes the identity of T, the protagonist of this tale. Yet itJust as T's story is being told, the nearest I can come to summing up story of a second protagonist is unveiled: Annie, the style daughter of this novela wealthy family in the 19th century, which features some who died of the most beautiful language and imagery Ituberculosis after being locked in a tower, captures T's imagination. Annie've ever read whilst telling s fate is, above all, an enticing story to T. It is a story which moves at she consumes avariciously, both in a glacial pacequest for truth and knowledge, and in service of myth, fable and fantasy. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>191070203X</amazonuk>1804271799

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Aldous HuxleyJon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |title= The Genius and the GoddessVaim|rating= 4|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= So, three books in, I've now got to grips with the idea that Huxley doesn't so much want to tell a story as expound his ideasAll was strange''.. Once you know that, it makes it easier to choose whether to read him or not. On balance, I have come down on This haunting phrase encapsulates the side pervading sense of otherworldliness which permeates this story set in Vaim, a fictional fishing village in Norway which paradoxically could not – I won't be dashing out to work my way through the rest feel more real for Jatgeir and Eline, two of his output the way I want to with, say, Nevil Shute, or George Orwellprotagonists caught in its melancholic current.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1784870366</amazonuk>1804271829

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Dan RhodesClaire-Louise Bennett|title=When the Professor Got Stuck in the SnowBig Kiss, Bye-Bye

|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary= Two people are on Everything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, is steeped in anguish and distortion. Even a train on their way tokiss, usually a symbol of all thingsintimacy and closeness, a WI meeting where the ladies becomes evidence of All Bottoms will be lectured on the non-existence of Godlove lost. One of When the two people is Professor Richard Dawkinsnarrator cries out internally, rampant atheist, hectoring scientist chappie, and all-round devotee of ''Deal or No Dealcome over here and kiss me,''. The other it is Smee, his mono-named assistant, amanuensis or 'male secretary'. Smee will come less an invitation than a desperate attempt to the fore when the weather sets in and the train journey has to be abandoned some way short of its ultimate destination, Upper Bottomconfirm her emotional numbness. Instead the pair fetch up at the isolated yet friendly community The imagined recipient of Market Horton, and the only option for accommodation this plea is taken – yesXavier, the diedher ex-in-the-wool non-believer has to be housed by a retired vicar and his wife. This clash of titanic opinionspartner, peppered with social faux pas aplenty will provide for a particularly English kind of farcical comedy, but one with the legs ghost she conjures to go as far as any other Good Books have reached in the past…test her detachment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1910709018</amazonuk>1804271934

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Aldous HuxleyHelene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)|title= Time Must Have A StopLili is Crying|rating= 34.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= Sometimes we start reading "authors" First published in 1953 in French, this novel is a timeless text which wrenches the hearts of its readers just as opposed to specific booksBessette wrenches words and sentences from their proper position on the page and positions them elsewhere, because we feel we ''should''. So it was with me and Huxleydisjointed, truncated. I seem to remember reading and actually enjoying Like the classic ''Brave New World'' and so felt compelled to explore more lives of the oeuvreher characters, they are often left tragically incomplete.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>178487034X</amazonuk>1804271675

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Michel Houellebecq and Lorin Stein (translator)Jonathan Buckley|title=SubmissionOne Boat

|summary=What do you expect ''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 Submission? It is our narrator and protagonist, Teresa. Set against the evocative backdrop of a small coastal Greek town, this work masterfully captures the magic of its setting and its power to provoke profound introspection. Teresa herself recognises these qualities as the reason she has visited it after all from one the death of Europe's more blunt huge-sellersboth her parents. Prompted by her mourning, one who her narrative voice is most forthright in his opinionsmeditative and deeply self-aware, narratives and characters' sexual livesinviting the reader into her labyrinthine cogitations. It has become indelibly linked with is a new Europebook that not only requires but inspires depth of thought, after since its reception narrative structure is fragmentary and contents led to publicity ironically relies on analepsis for its propulsion.|isbn=1804271764}}{{Frontpage|author=Eowyn Ivey|title=Black Woods Blue Sky|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''Black Woods Blue Sky'' tells the cover story of Birdie, the young mother of toddler Emaleen, who longs for a life beyond the Alaskan lodge where she works as a bar waitress, a setting which enables her bad habits and her accidental neglect of Emaleen. Described as a ''Charlie Hebdowild card'', which resulted she feels stuck in something less savoury than literatureher day-to-day life, and yearns to say cross the leastWolverine river and live on the North Fork to fulfil her desires of a simple life surrounded by nature. Do you expect it to be about When she meets Arthur Nielson, a France of the near futurestrange, taciturn and solitary man, where who says he has a Muslim political party provides the president? Wellcabin over there, don't she feels called to go into - and bring Emaleen with her. Without realising it, this submissively following your expectationscalling will transform hers and Emaleen's lives forever.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1785150243</amazonuk>1472279042

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author= Rachel ElliottSally Rooney|title= Whispers Through A MegaphoneIntermezzo|rating= 4.5|genre= General Fiction|summary= Miriam doesn’t speak. Well, that’s not strictly true. She does speak, but nothing above a whisper which makes it hard to have a conversation with her. Particularly as she hasn’t left her house in three years. But today is Sally Rooney has studied the day. She’s going to open that door chessboard of life and walk outside. She really is. Ralph has finally twigged (and with no small amount something of surprise) that his wife Sadie doesn’t actually love him. And now he’s not sure if she ever really did. Having spent so much time regurgitating his every moment onto Social Media, Ralph hasn’t really had a chance to think about grandmaster at putting itinto words. But now he has, it Her dialogue is gripping and so shockingly awful that he has decided to run awaybrilliantly frustrating, as her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. And of all Among the places he could run away tomany relationships woven into this story, he has chosen the same woods that Miriam has picked central one for readers to be unravel is the first place she will visit out-of-doorsfraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. And Sadie? WellIvan, a socially awkward chess prodigy, she’s had enough of reading Tweets and contrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, a successful lawyer living vicariously through in Dublin. Following their father's passing after a long battle with cancer, the posts of others. Sadie is going to have an adventure of her ownbrothers' already strained relationship faces new trials. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0992918227</amazonuk>0571365469

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Benjamin JohncockFyodor Dostoyevsky|title=The Last PilotWhite Nights|rating=5|genre=Short Stories|summary=As always in Dostoyevsky, the character work is sublime. One is never left wondering what a character is thinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and temperaments with remarkable clarity.|isbn=0241619785}}{{Frontpage|author=James Baldwin|title=Giovanni's Room|rating=4.5

|summary=You'd be forgiven for assuming that debut novelist Benjamin Johncock is American: 'Giovanni'The Last Pilots Room'' has follows the literary weight of a Great narrator David, an American Novelman living in Paris, as he navigates his torturous affair with Giovanni, an Italian bartender he meets in a limitless desert setting plus the prospect of soon dominating spacegay bar. While David is engaged to Hella, and the spare yet profound writing style of Ernest Hemingway or Cormac McCarthy. Johncock who is Britishtravelling in Spain, the real tension in the novel arises not from his infidelity but you can tell he's taken inspiration from stories about the dawn of the astronaut age, including Tom Wolfedeeper conflict within himself. It is David's ''The Right Stuff'' crippling shame and films like ''Apollo 13''. His protagonist, Jim Harrison, is a fictional Air Force test pilot who rubs shoulders denial of his sexuality that ultimately dooms his relationship with historical figures like Chuck Yeager and John Glenn in the quest to break the sound barrier and conquer spaceGiovanni.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908434848</amazonuk>0141186356

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tessa HadleyAlba de Cespedes |title=The PastForbidden Notebook

|summary=Tessa Hadley writes beautifully subtle stories This Italian work of English family life. Her understated style has a touch feminist fiction holds an air of the 1950s or 1960s about it, calling to mind Elizabeth Taylor or early Margaret Drabble, suspense and she seems to adapt classic genres like the novel of manners or the country house novel. Here she deliberately channels Elizabeth Bowen with a setup borrowed tension from ''The House in Paris'': the novel is divided into three partsmoment our protagonist, titled 'The Present'Valeria Cossati, 'The Past'purchases her forbidden notebook, and 'The Present'. That structure allows for a deeper look at what learns about herself in the house most intimate and a neighbouring cottage have meant to the central family, and paves the way for one final shocker of a secretrevealing ways.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0224101692</amazonuk>1782278222

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Andrew MillerOttessa Moshfegh|title= The CrossingMy Year of Rest and Relaxation|rating= 53

|summary= Tim At best, this novel is a scathing critique of modern society and Maud seemreveals the fragility of human relationships; at worst, to everyone around themit is the cynical, mismatchedpredictable and slightly trite tale of an unlikeable protagonist. SheThis unlikely heroine, quite literally, falls into his lifea slim, attractive and they build a life – jobs, a house, a boat, then a child. Tim needs Maud, needs newly orphaned girl in her to complete himtwenties is disillusioned with the world, wants desperately but resolves not to completer herlose sleep over it: in fact, to help her. But what if Maud is already complete? What if she doesn’t need help? When tragedy strikes, Maud will find herself miles away from anyone, on a journey that will change everything, and test solution lies in her to the utmosthibernation.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444753495</amazonuk>1784707422

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Andrew Michael HurleyMatthew Tree|title= The Loney|rating= 5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= It's always a privilege when you're given an advance reading copy of something – and a real 'block' when you read the small print that says 'not for resale or quotation'. Fair comment on the resale bit, but when you get something as brilliant as We''The Loney'' being required not to quote is just plain unfair.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1473619823</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Eli Horowitz, Matthew Derby and Kevin Moffett|title=The Silent Historyll Never Know

|genre=Science Literary Fiction|summary=Well, they kept this quiet – for reasons that will become obvious. A couple of years ago people in America were giving birth to problematic kids. They (the children) were soon found Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be unnaturally quiet – perhaps crying with hunger or pain, but never even trying to 'ooga-wooga' their way into their parents' hearts. They were later found to be completely unable to speak, they could not read and indeed they could not understand anything said to them, or shown them, as an instruction. They were physically unable to parse anything as languagedifferent from his father, a drunk and were in a silent world chronic underachiever whose dreams of their own. But right about now they and we are combining worlds – schools are being set up, and funds are being made available, exceptional at any of his artistic passions all failed miserably and people are coming down on the who had endless divide as to whether they are just problematic, disabled – or even the blessed. In a couple crises of years, however, the problems the virus that is causing these people to be born with will be shown to be a major problem – and that is before the kids themselves changeself confidence. For they will be able So Tim applied himself to switch their mental his studies, cultivated his abilities much like a blind man can hear more rather than the average, his daydreams and will be able to comprehend body and facial language much more coherently than anyone elseset himself high but achievable ambitions. Throughout this timeline, however, people will be working hard to try and study the problem, and put it right – if indeed 'right' is the correct word…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>009959286X</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Meike ZiervogelB0C47LV1PC|title=KautharFragility|author=Mosby Woods

|summary=Meet Lydia. She's Can you make a normal British girl, interested in following both her father, and Nadia Comaneci, into the world of gymnastics but not brave enough to pull off the larger set pieces, and with not much more to interrupt her days than wondering why boys always have to talk about their willies. Now meet Kauthar, a white British convert to Islam, devoted follower of the precepts of her religion, ardent wife and stalwartly self-fulfilling, no-nonsense and satisfied. But what is this – why is she talking of being alone in a desert, and why is she directly addressing her god regarding how she ''can't perform any movement. Because it is torn apartYo birthing person''joke? Has something gone wrongAnd if you could, is the question should you make it?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784630292</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Philip K Dick|title= Humpty Dumpty in Oakland|rating= 3.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= Dick Or is known primarily as a science fiction writerthe question if you did, most famously for the novel would it land? The catch is that spawned the film ''Blade Runner''answer for both could well be.... no.

I read that novel - [[Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K Dick|Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?]] - when I was about ten or eleven, a good ten years or so before ''Fragility'' is set as the film came out and – to be fair – a good five years or so before I was fully capable city of understanding the philosophical and ethical issues embedded in it. Not beforePortland, howeverOregon, I was capable of asking cautiously begins to emerge from the kind of questions that would get me restrictions imposed during the kind of answers that form my standpoint on those issues.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1473209579</amazonuk>covid pandemic

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Stephanie Bishop Mosby Woods|title= The Other Side of the WorldA Whirly Man Loses His Turn|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction |summary= This is a beautifully written book, located both in England and Australia, about adulthood, changing responsibilities, and The West isn't the universal desire for identity and belongingdominant force it once was. This theme is also reflected Nobody in the search for union and fulfilment in West is quite sure how to mend this or even if mending it is the marriage best course of Henry and Charlotte, struggling with the changes imposed on them by parenthood and family life across two continentsaction. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1472230612</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Chang Ying-Tai and Darryl Sterk (translator)|title= The Bear Whispers To Me: The Story of a Bear and a Boy|rating= 4|genre= Literary Fiction |summary=Award winning Taiwanese writer Chang Ying-Tai's emotive, elegiac fable is a meditation on the art of storytellingGovernments are flailing. Its immersive detail and enchanting musical cadences give it a magicalA war here, dream like quality. It is a special work as it is one of the few examples of Taiwanese fiction available in Englishpush for climate action there. The blind Paiwan poet Monaneng said of aboriginal Taiwanese culture: "With tender care let us set in motion our blood A feeling that nobody is once again warmin actual charge.<br>Let us recall our songsImagine then, our dances, our sacred ritualsthere was a man with precognition.<br> And Imagine the tradition strategic advantage in this asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of unselfish mutual coexistence between us and circumstances. That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the earthmost valuable asset in history. This is exactly what "The Bear Whispers Imagine then, that this man loses this ability. What would governments do to Me" effortlessly does.get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0993215408</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Fred Uhlman0571379559|title=ReunionThe House of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams

|summary=Hans Schwarz was a jew and attended ''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the Karl Alexander Gymnasium, the most famous grammar school in Wurttembergstory of four people. At sixteen he didnTess Hembry't really have a friend and was slightly apart from the other cliques s roots are in his classJamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, until she lives in the arrival house on the riverbank, built of Konradin von Hohenfelsbroken bricks. Insubstantial as it might look, it's stood the elegantly-dressed son passage of time, storms and floods. Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, to complete the aristocracydelivery rounds - and to bring in sufficient money. For some reason Hans They have twin boys - Sonny and Konradin became the best of friendsMax, spending a glorious summer walking in the Swabian hills, comparing their coin collections and talking about everythingrainbow twins. Only slowly does it occur to Hans that whilst Konradin is made welcome in Sonny's colouring reflects his home, Hans can only visit Konradinmother's home when Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his parents are absentfather. This was February 1932 People don't believe that they're related, much less twins and in the closing years of the Weimar Republicthere's an assumption when Max is out with his mother that she's his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1860463657</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ivan VladislavicClaire North|title=101 DetectivesHouse of Odysseus|rating=3.5|genre=Short StoriesLiterary Fiction |summary=101 Detectives had me baffled. ''What could matter more than love?'' The book comprises of follow-up to the excellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a collection few months after where we left off. In the palace of stories which explore multiple themes from 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 perspective throne of one personthe Western Isles. The stories are as varied as Having survived – politically and physical – the characters presenting chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca's shores, Queen Penelope is on the tale to youbrink of a fragile peace. This exquisitely written book leaves you asking many questions One that shatters however with the return of Orestes, King of Mycenae, and pondering many ideashis sister Elektra, seeking refuge. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908276568</amazonuk>0356516075

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Jan-Philipp SendkerKay Chronister|title= Whispering ShadowsDesert Creatures|rating= 5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= Paul Leibovitz was a journalist. That was before. Before he had a small child, who did not survive as long as he should have. Before the end of the marriage that did not survive the loss of a child. Now Leibovitz himself, merely survives. He lives in a kind of self-imposed exile on Lamma, third largest of the Hong Kong islands, a place of greenery and solitude.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846973309</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Jo Walton|title= The Just City|rating= 3.54

|summary=Urged on by her brother ApolloWith a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, goddess Pallas Athene founds the Just City of Atlantis – a city based on Plato’s republicpost-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Filling Whether it with an assortments is a robotic takeover, a world devoid of adults collected from throughout timewater or a nuclear holocaust, as well as ten thousand ten year olds, (one of whom this genre is a disguised Apollo)way for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. Whilst ''Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the city flourishes, the arrival of Socrates may prove fears that exist for humanity today. It is a shocking novel that still manages to be a fly in the ointment…find hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1472150767</amazonuk>1803364998

{{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author= David FinkleEric LaRocca|title= The Man With The OvercoatTrees Grew Because I Bled There|rating= 3.5|genre= General FictionHorror|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''Why would anyone - he was soon to ask himself innumerable times - take , whether that is a home invader, a coat from monster or a complete stranger only because ghost, it had been offered?'' Skip Gerber steps off usually something tangible and, by the elevator after a long day at work; the foyer end of his office building is busy and buzzy and he does not notice the man holding the overcoat until the man hands it to Skip telling him to story, beatable. Eric LaRocca's ''take very good care of itThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There''. Skip unthinkingly grasps the coat and before he has the chance to realise what he is doing - and not like that he . It is now holding an overcoat a collection of unknown providence - short stories more interested in the man disappears out horrors of the exit door illness, grief and humiliation. Horrors that linger and are harder to the buildingdefeat than any ''Big Bad''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0992618525</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Rebecca DinersteinMadelaine Lucas|title=The Sunlit NightThirst for Salt|rating=45

|summary=Frances comes from ''Love, I'd read, was supposed to be a light and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity'desperately artistic family' Told from a retrospective view, her father a medical illustrator and young woman unravels the year-long relationship that once defined her mother an interior designer. Along Overlaid with her younger sister Sarahlater wisdom, she grew up in a tiny one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan: bunk beds for the girls and narrator relives the affair with a fold-out sofa bed for man twenty years her senior from its inception – the parents. The claustrophobic atmosphere has gotten summer after finishing university – to everyone and now, with Frances graduating from college, it looks like its sorrowful end the family might fall apartsummer after. Her parents argue constantly and disapprove Set against the backdrop of Sarahan isolated Australian coastal town 's fiancé (not 'Thirst for Salt'just'details the 24-year-old narrator' because he isn't Jewish). Frances has s deepening relationship with her own romantic crisis: after a pregnancy scareolder lover, Robert breaks up with her. A highdepicting its all-flyer with a future in politicsconsuming nature, he tells how it changed her that her art has no purpose; it isn't helping anyone. 'What does perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and how it matter if you do what you love, if what you love doesn't matter?' she asks altered her father. Still, she has no other prospects, so agrees to take up a painting apprenticeship in the furthest reaches of Norway; 'All I had was a direction, northirrevocably.'|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408863049</amazonuk>0861546490

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Claire FullertonMichael Grothaus|title=Dancing to an Irish ReelBeautiful Shining People

|summary=Hailey ''I was as worthy as any one of them. I would get on a sabbatical from her job board that ship, I vowed. I would take my place, not just in the music business in Los Angeles and taking name of the goddess. It was for the holiday sake of my name, too. Atalanta'' Princess. Warrior. Lover. Hero. Abandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a lifetime to Irelandson, when she walked into Atalanta is raised under the protective eye of the Galway Music Centre goddess Athemis and found fashioned into a job which she simply couldn't turn downformidable huntress, one who longs for adventure. She also found When the opportunity comes – to join the Argonauts, a home in a local villagefierce band of warriors, a liking for descendent from the Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the rural life chance to fight in Artemis' name and a man whom she could lovecarve out her own legendary place in history. Liam Hennessy was What follows is a talented accordion player: music was his life whirlwind of challenges and discovery and whilst he was more attracted to Hailey than he had ever been to another woman through it wasn, Atalanta must remember Artemis't entirely clear whether 'love' could ever fatal warning: that if she marries, it will be on the cards for himher undoing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0990304256</amazonuk>1472292154

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jessie Greengrass Amanthi Harris|title=An Account of the Decline of the Great Auk, According to One Who Saw It Beautiful Place|rating=35|genre=Short StoriesLiterary Fiction|summary=The title storyPadma, which appears firsta young Sri Lankan, is exactly what it says has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the tin: one hunter's story southern coast of travelling to remote islands to take part in massive culls of great auks, until they were simply goneher home country. This is a place she spent her formative years. It's always hard to believe that species that once numbered in their millionsis not a place she was born into, such but the one she thinks of as home. How she came to be at the passenger pigeonVilla, could go extinct so quicklyhow it became her home, but when you read about the brutal slaughter tactics here – swinging clubs and boiling birds alive – you can see how a flightless bird was a sitting target. The narrator makes no real attempt to defend himself: the birds were machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there for provide the taking; that was that. Still, he regrets their extinction, because 'in any loss you can see a shadow of the way that you will be lost yourself'score'' for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel.' (Those interested in the great auk Padma's extinction may also want present fails to read escape her past and much like the 2013 novel ''The Collector musical score of Lost Things'' by Jeremy Pagea film, that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the Villa.)|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473610850</amazonuk>1784631930

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Patricia Park178563335X|title=Re JaneSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor|rating=3.5

|summary= Growing up When we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, sitting in Flushing, New York –Jane Re has long been hoping on a PCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you need to escape her whole lifepick the children up. A half Her husband, Christopher, collects six-Koreanyear-old Hannah and her elder brother, half-American OrphanJamie, Jane struggles to find her place as whilst Rachel holds a spirited and intelligent young woman growing up sobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter-in a strict and mirthless family-law won't let her see her grandson. Holthorpe, observing on the traditional Korean principle of “Nunchi” (a combination of good manners, obligation and hierarchy). Desperate to escapeNorfolk coast, Jane is thrilled when she becomes the au pair for a rich couple – two Brooklyn based professors of Englishlovely place, who have adopted but Rachel is struggling to develop a young Chinese girl into their family. Jane soon falls for real bond with the man parish - and she's in awe of the familyvicar, Gail, but their blossoming affair is soon curtailed by a family death, prompting Jane’s return to Korea. As then she learns 's been doing the job for more about herself, her history than thirty years. Rachel and her culture, Jane must make huge decisions about her life, her future, and her man…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0525427406</amazonuk>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 Hannah went missing.

{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1398515388|title=The Boy and the Dog|author=Patricia DunckerSeishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, in turn, caused the nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and utter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, and the loss of 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 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 dog jumped in.}} {{Frontpage|isbn=0989715337|title=Sophie and Papa on the Sibyl: A Victorian RomanceMoon|author=Marco North

|genre=Historical Literary Fiction|summary=''Sophie and Some frogs had gotten into the Sibylwell.'', consciously modelled on John Fowles's ''The French Lieutenant's Woman ''Walter stood waist-deep in the fragrant water, is a postmodern blending naked except for his beaten leather hat. Long strands of historytheir eggs wove around him, fiction, and metafictional commentarysticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Brothers Max Two of the dogs leaned over the opening and Wolfgang Duncker really were George Eliot's German publishers, but barked down at the accident strange noise of their surname matching the author's makes buckets as he filled them her clever stand-in. As the '' How is that for an opening? The style of this novel opens in 1872, the venerable English author is exploring Homburg form of interconnected short stories goes from succinct and laconic to wistful and Berlin in the company of her 'husband' while ushering her latest novelmusing, ''Middlemarch'', into German translationturning on a sixpence. MaxAnd author Marco North, a young cad fond who has the most wonderful turn of casinos and brothelsphrase, has two tasks: ensuring Eliot's loyalty starts as he means to their publishing house, and securing Countess Sophie von Hahn's hand in marriagego on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>140886052X</amazonuk>