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[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ernst Haffner and Michael Hofmann (translator)295967572X|title=Blood BrothersPale Pieces|author=G M Stevens|rating=45

|summary=ItOur unnamed narrator is about to begin a train journey with his companion Django. Where they's Berlinre going and what the purpose of this journey is, and is uncertain. Django found the Nazis are tickets ''on their way the floor somewhere'' and has persuaded our narrator to power, even if they will never cross these pages themselvesaccompany him. The city – huge, glamorous, bustling, vicious in the way it can swallow people – Why not? Not much else is home to a countless hoard of teenagers, clear either - but we focus on just a few, most of whom have been are probably in some corrective institution or other before now. They call themselves the Blood Brothers, even if all they share is past as the most unglamorous drudgery of going from one doss-house pair travel to another, balancing the cost of a few cigarettes with that of station by coach and the train is a warm room for a few hours or some stale rolls to eat. But en route to them is another 'Borstal' escapee, Willisteam locomotive. Surely his fate is going to be nothing if not more of the same?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099594048</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sara TaylorMakenna Goodman|title=The ShoreHelen of Nowhere

|genre=Short StoriesLiterary Fiction|summary=It could be argued that the pervading theme of this book is malaise - a hard-to-place feeling that something in your life is not quite right. The first story we hear from the Shoreprotagonist, a group of isolated islands off disgraced professor on the coast brink of Virginialosing both his career and his relationship, embodies this feeling. However, Goodman counteracts his discomfort with a force which is from Chloeseductive, whoradical and unnerving: Helen. The connection between Helen and the protagonist is indirect yet intimate. As the former owner of the countryside house he's telling considering, Helen represents a volta in his life, her sister past tied to his potential fresh start. The realtor who shows the protagonist around the house shares stories about what she overheard in the store. She'd been there buying chicken necks so that they could go crabbing. Normally they used bacon rindsHelen, but they'd already eaten those. Cabel Bloxom had been murdered and describes her as ''they done cut his thang clean offan entity that is pure consciousness, beyond form''. The girls are motherless and Chloe is fiercely protective of her little sister Renee. She's the first of the strong women we'll encounter Although she lives in these storiesan assisted living facility now, Helen has powers beyond comprehension which interlink to give a greater picturethe reader gets the sense are not altogether innocuous.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>009959188X</amazonuk>1804272205

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Adam BaronOlga Tokarczuk|title=BlackheathHouse of Day, House of Night|rating=4.5|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Househusband James is happy in Blackheath. He''What's started doing stand-up again so the good of a world that keeps changing like that he too has an achievement ? How can one go on calmly living in his life to balance wife Aliceit?'' The title of this spellbinding work, ''House of Day, House of Night''s award winning poetry. Children Ida and Dominic are doing well so all is great. Elsewhere in , somewhat reflects this notion of shifting realities - the small, subtle changes which govern our lives, like the area Amelia is equally happy with her actor husband Richardshift from day to night, however quotidian, her own career and children Niamh and teenage Michaelcausing chaos. Sometimes happiness isn't enough though andBut, as the worlds of constant in that image is the two families start to minglehouse, things start changing for each of themstoic against the ancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it is perceived.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908434902</amazonuk>1804271918

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Julian BarnesThea Lenarduzzi|title=The Noise of TimeTower|rating=3.5

|summary=Julian Barnes''How unctuous are the fats of another's first life, how dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream''. In this compelling novel since he won , Thea Lenarduzzi assumes the Booker Prize for [[The Sense identity of an Ending by Julian Barnes]] is a fictionalised biography T, the protagonist of Russian composer Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich (1906–75)this tale. Knowing BarnesJust as T's penchant for stylistic experimentationstory is being told, thoughthe story of a second protagonist is unveiled: Annie, this was never going to be the daughter of a straightforwardwealthy family in the 19th century, chronological life story. Instead, as Barnes so often does, he sets up who died of tuberculosis after being locked in a tripartite structuretower, focussing on three moments in Shostakovichcaptures T's life when he has a reckoning with Power (always capitalised here)imagination. The title phrase helpfully spells out what the book Annie's fate is , above all about: 'Art , an enticing story to T. It is the whisper a story which she consumes avariciously, both in a quest for truth and knowledge, and in service of historymyth, heard above the noise of timefable and fantasy.' |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1910702609</amazonuk>1804271799

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Danielle McLaughlinJon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |title=Dinosaurs on Other PlanetsVaim|rating=4.5|genre=Short Stories Literary Fiction|summary=Seeing as this book is clearly a talented author hitting the ground running, I will dispense with any major preamble''All was strange''. We start with a tale of a daughter affected by the emotions of her parents as they separate – and the influence of a certain school-teacher – from the mother's point of view. An ancient input shows how alien, and the modern day domesticity how regular, the isolation of a woman can feel, as events are peppered by minor acts of destruction. But men can be alienated too – especially one, a reluctant guest at a party for children hosted by someone he once had an affair with – he feels This haunting phrase encapsulates the new form pervading sense of otherworldliness which permeates this influence story set in the light of another one he has had to try and abandon. 'All About Alice' – that's what the title character wants to say but has nobody to speak it toVaim, but is it her – mid-40s and single, living with her father – that is most removed from her dreams or her old friend a fictional fishing village in Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for Jatgeir and now child factoryEline, Marian? And we complete a lap two of the calendar with the wintry tale of a man unable to tell his work superiors of the problems he faces at home – a new home, recently built like so many one sees while driving round Irelandprotagonists caught in its melancholic current.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473613701</amazonuk>1804271829

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Anne EnrightClaire-Louise Bennett|title=The Green RoadBig Kiss, Bye-Bye

|summary=''The Green Road'' is the story of a family. If the author was anyone other than Anne Enright it would be stereotypically Irish, with all the appropriate characters Everything in place: the boy who goes off to be a priestthis book, the daughter who likes the bottle far too muchhowever sweet or seemingly innocent, the son who does good works is steeped in anguish and the woman who stays back where she was born and marries distortion. Even a local mankiss, the dead husband who was perhaps just usually a little bit beneath the wife who plays symbol of intimacy and closeness, becomes evidence of love lost. When the narrator cries out internally, ''grande damecome over here and kiss me,'' and it is perfect at being needy, whilst all the while maintaining that she needs nothingless an invitation than a desperate attempt to confirm her emotional numbness. ButThe imagined recipient of this plea is Xavier, of courseher ex-partner, it ''is'' Anne Enrighta ghost she conjures to test her detachment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099539799</amazonuk>1804271934

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Helene Bessette and Kate AtkinsonBriggs (translator)|title=A God in RuinsLili is Crying|rating=4.5

|summary=Teddy Todd never really expected to survive the war. As First published in 1953 in French, this novel is a bomber pilot it wasn't something timeless text which you could rely wrenches the hearts of its readers just as Bessette wrenches words and sentences from their proper position on the page and he certainly knew the statisticspositions them elsewhere, disjointed, truncated. But - against all Like the odds, he came through it, albeit with some time spent as a prisoner lives of war. On balance he had a good war, but time will see him married to Nancyher characters, father to Viola and grandfather to Sunny and Bertie - and they are often left with the feeling that it's more difficult to have a good peace than a good wartragically incomplete.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0552776645</amazonuk>1804271675

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Chuck PalahniukJonathan Buckley|title=Beautiful YouOne Boat

|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Meet Penny Harrigan. And let's hope your introduction to her 'One Boat'' is more gentle than a deeply introspective novella that we have on defies traditional narrative structure, drawing the first page reader into a contemplative realm of this bookphilosophical musings and fragmented memories flowing from our narrator and protagonist, where she is being raped in front Teresa. Set against the evocative backdrop of a full court housesmall coastal Greek town, who – male to this work masterfully captures the bone – sit back magic of its setting and say nothing, if not whip out their camera phoneits power to provoke profound introspection. Once people take Teresa herself recognises these qualities as the reason she has visited it after the death of both her out on a gurney and recognise parents. Prompted by hermourning, we can start from the beginning, where she her narrative voice is a lowly underling at a law firmmeditative and deeply self-aware, having failed too many exams to progress satisfactorily. The company is where the world's richest man is in legal negotiations having left inviting the world's best and most beautiful actress, and lo and behold he just happens to pick Penny to replace reader into her with, even if she doesn't think of herself as the most beautiful girl aroundlabyrinthine cogitations. But what exactly It is it she a book that not only requires but inspires depth of thought, since its narrative structure is wanted fragmentary and ironically relies on analepsis for, and can her apolitical style of feminism and aspirations be met?its propulsion.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>009958767X</amazonuk>1804271764

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Helle Helle and Martin Aitken (translator)Eowyn Ivey|title=This Should be Written in the Present TenseBlack Woods Blue Sky|rating=3.5

|summary= This is ''Black Woods Blue Sky'' tells the first novel story of Helle Helle'sBirdie, an award winning Danish authorthe young mother of toddler Emaleen, to be translated into Englishwho 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. It is easy to see from this novel why Described as a ''wild card'', she is gaining accolades feels stuck in her Danish homeland. The rhythmicday-to-day life, natural flow of and yearns to cross the narrative is mesmerising Wolverine river and appears live on the North Fork to lull you through the bookfulfil her desires of a simple life surrounded by nature. It When she meets Arthur Nielson, a strange, taciturn and solitary man, who says he has some lovelya cabin over there, spare sentences of description: ''There were runshe feels called to go -down cottages and bring Emaleen with open doors and news on the radioher. Gulls flocked around an early harvester in the late sun''. But mostly, Without realising it is written in a modernist, almost stream of consciousness style, which I found refreshingthis calling will transform hers and Emaleen's lives forever.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099587475</amazonuk>1472279042

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alice ThompsonSally Rooney|title=The Book CollectorIntermezzo|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Meet Violet. Swept off her feet by a disarming encounter with Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard of life and is something of a landed gentleman and bookshop owner grandmaster at a coffee shop, she immediately falls in love with him, putting it into words. Her dialogue is gripping and is quickly marriedso brilliantly frustrating, and almost as quickly with childher characters never quite say exactly what they feel. When Among the boy is born, howevermany relationships woven into this story, fairly understandable doubts creep in. Is her husband hiding anything behind his assuredness – especially when she wakes in the middle of the night alone? What ghost central one for readers to unravel is left by the fact he lost fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. Ivan, a socially awkward chess prodigy, contrasts sharply with his first wife and baby older brother Peter, a successful lawyer living in childbirth? What should she understand from her own opinions about her new life, her new lifeDublin. Following their father's lifepassing after a long battle with cancer, and the idea of a nanny looking after it? Just what is going on in her brothers' already strained relationship faces new country pile?trials.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1784630438</amazonuk>0571365469

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sasa Stanisic and Anthea Bell (translator)Fyodor Dostoyevsky|title=Before the FeastWhite Nights|rating=2.5|genre=Literary FictionShort Stories|summary= Deep As always in the heart of Germany sits the village of Furstenfelde. It lies on a spit of land thatDostoyevsky, legend has it, a giant created, between two lakes – the Great Lake, and the Deep Lake. All around character work is forestsublime. The village One is enjoying summer, and we can see the inhabitants as they go about their lazy life on the last hot day and night before the seasons change, from the teenage lads fishing and crashing cars or preparing for never left wondering what a bell-ringing exam, to the girl who wants out, to the middle-aged man who made a pub out of a garage and some curtains, to the older man (a retired soldier) who character is watching his last piece of titillating TV before going out to either fetch cigarettes thinking or shoot himself, to the older still lady painting a portrait of the town ready to auction it off on the morrow. For the morrow is the annual fete, feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and all those people are, one way or another, reacting to its imminent arrivaltemperaments with remarkable clarity.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782271295</amazonuk>0241619785

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Andre AlexisJames Baldwin|title=Fifteen DogsGiovanni's Room

|summary=Gods (This Italian work of feminist fiction holds an air of suspense and brothers) Hermes tension from the moment our protagonist, Valeria Cossati, purchases her forbidden notebook, and Apollo were arguing in a bar learns about what would happen if animals had human intelligence and eventually a wager was agreed. Human intelligence would be granted to fifteen dogs staying overnight herself in a veterinary clinic the most intimate and the wager, suggested by Apollo, was that Hermes would be his servant for a year if the dogs were not more unhappy than they would have been originally. But - if even one of the dogs was happy at the end of its life Hermes would winrevealing ways.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>178125558X</amazonuk>1782278222

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Marina WarnerOttessa Moshfegh|title=Fly Away HomeMy Year of Rest and Relaxation

|genre=Short StoriesLiterary Fiction|summary=How would you subvert At best, this novel is a fairy tale? You know enough scathing critique of them modern society and enough about them to do itreveals the fragility of human relationships; at worst, so think on it. Would you give a mermaid a smartphone? Would you pepper them with pop starsis the cynical, predictable and perhaps let them be witness to the Schadenfreude caused by a cave that's sacred to native Canadians? Would you, in the light slightly trite tale of their characters usually being routinean unlikeable protagonist. This unlikely heroine, interchangeable tropesa slim, give them a closely-observed personality – as seen here attractive and newly orphaned girl in a teacher's interior thoughts when faced her twenties is disillusioned with a piece of East Anglian lore? Would you take the exoticism of the eastworld, and Egypt in particular, and see but resolves not to lose sleep over it : in the light of a musical teacher on a zero-hours contract who ends up muttering to himselffact, directing traffic her solution lies in the middle of the road, or from the remove of an elderly man with ''swollen feet in orthopaedic sandals'' with a message from the past? Certainly these two are not the standard Arabian Nights-styled pieces…her hibernation.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1784630381</amazonuk>1784707422

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jeanette WintersonMatthew Tree|title=The Gap of TimeWe'll Never Know|rating=34.5

|summary=This is the inaugural volume of a new series of Shakespeare retellings Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from Hogarth Press. Still to come: Margaret Atwood on ''The Tempest''his father, Howard Jacobson on ''The Merchant of Venice'' a drunk and Anne Tyler on ''The Taming chronic underachiever whose dreams of the Shrew'', among others. How is this first book? It's pretty good as Winterson novels go, incorporating Shakespearean themes being exceptional at any of time, deception and adoption and turning bears his artistic passions all failed miserably and statues into metaphors while remaining loyal to the essence who had endless crises of the plotself confidence. Yet two crucial elements of the play don't make sense in a modern settingSo Tim applied himself to his studies, cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and in the end I felt this added nothing to my enjoyment of the originalset himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1781090297</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Marlon JamesB0C47LV1PC|title=A Brief History of Seven KillingsFragility|author=Mosby Woods|rating=54|genre=CrimeLiterary Fiction|summary=On December 3rd 1976 Can you make a group of armed men go to Bob Marley's Jamaican home in Hope Road on a mission to kill 'The SingerYo birthing person''. No one will be arrested for joke? And if you could, is the question should you make it? Or is the question if you did, would it but land? The catch is that doesn't mean their lives afterwards will the answer for both could well be normal. This ... no. ''Fragility'' is a total fictionalisation of their story and therefore the story of set as the people city of the Jamaican ghettoes: the politicsPortland, the unrestOregon, cautiously begins to emerge from the gang warfare and restrictions imposed during the death. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780746350</amazonuk>covid pandemic

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Hanya YanagiharaMosby Woods|title=A Little LifeWhirly Man Loses His Turn|rating=3.54

|summary=Willem, JB, Malcolm and Jude donThe West isn't have a lot in common apart from their friendshipthe dominant force it once was. They gravitated together at college and remain close as they become successful Nobody in careers as different as the theatre and architecture. However West is quite sure how to mend this or even hopes for successful future can't erase if mending it is the blight best course of the past action. Governments are flailing. A war here, a push for one of themclimate action there. Jude A feeling that nobody is physically disabled from in actual charge. Imagine then, there was a cause that isn't genetic or congenitalman with precognition. In fact Imagine the cause isn't even something he's shared with strategic advantage in this asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the other threemost valuable asset in history. Imagine then, that this man loses this ability. The events around What would governments do to get it stem back to his childhood and haunt each thought and action he takes as well as his ability to take them.?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1447294815</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Julia Franck and Anthea Bell (translator)0571379559|title=WestThe House of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams|rating=3.5

|summary=Put yourself in ''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the shoes story of a young mother to two childrenfour people. Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, who declares her intention to leave she lives in the house on the Communist East Germany for West Berlinriverbank, and thus loses her scientist jobbuilt of broken bricks. What would you expect on Insubstantial as it might look, it's stood the other side – shops full passage of attainable productstime, pleasant neighbourhoodsstorms and floods. Her husband, nice neighboursRichard, an active and busy new lifestruggles to grow his vegetables, where things might feel alien but at least you speak to complete the same language? delivery rounds - and to bring in sufficient money. Well, for Nelly SenffThey have twin boys - Sonny and Max, this is hardly the caserainbow twins. Once past the depressing Eastern exit procedures she is confronted with more desultory interrogations from those Sonny'welcomings colouring reflects his mother' her to the West, beyond which she and her children (their s Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father, whom she never married, is long assumed dead by the authorities, if nobody else) are practically left in a shared accommodation in a transit camp. The shops are full of what is still unobtainablePeople don't believe that they're related, the children hate their new school – much less twins and people still look down on them as being foreign, even if they have only moved across a citythere's an assumption when Max is out with his mother that she's his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099554321</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Salman RushdieClaire North|title= Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight NightsHouse of Odysseus|rating= 3.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= Tediously captivating may not sound like ''What could matter more than love?'' The follow-up to the most compelling recommendation for excellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a book you've 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 heardshe remains surrounded by suitors vying for the throne of the Western Isles. Yet itHaving survived – politically and physical – the chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca's shores, Queen Penelope is on the nearest I can come to summing up brink of a fragile peace. One that shatters however with the style return of this novelOrestes, which features some King of the most beautiful language Mycenae, and imagery I've ever read whilst telling a story which moves at a glacial pacehis sister Elektra, seeking refuge.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>191070203X</amazonuk>0356516075

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Aldous HuxleyKay Chronister|title= The Genius and the GoddessDesert Creatures

|genre= Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary= SoWith a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, three books inpost-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is a robotic takeover, I've now got to grips with the idea that Huxley doesn't so much want to tell a story as expound his ideas. Once you know thatworld devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, it makes it easier this genre is a way for humans to choose whether to read him or notcathartically experience their most existential fears. On balance, I have come down on the side of not – I won't be dashing out to 'Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a new work my way through the rest of his output post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the way I want fears that exist for humanity today. It is a shocking novel that still manages to with, say, Nevil Shute, or George Orwellfind hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1784870366</amazonuk>1803364998

{{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Dan RhodesEric LaRocca|title=When the Professor Got Stuck in the SnowThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=4.5|genre=General FictionHorror|summary= Two people are on Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is used as a train on their way toreflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and process them. Most horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad'', of all thingswhether that is a home invader, a WI meeting where monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and, by the ladies end of All Bottoms will be lectured on the non-existence of Godstory, beatable. One of the two people is Professor Richard Dawkins, rampant atheist, hectoring scientist chappie, and all-round devotee of Eric LaRocca's 'Deal or No Deal''. The other is Smee, his mono-named assistant, amanuensis or Trees Grew Because I Bled There'male secretary'is not like that. Smee will come to the fore when the weather sets It is a collection of short stories more interested in and the train journey has to be abandoned some way short horrors of its ultimate destinationillness, Upper Bottomgrief and humiliation. Instead the pair fetch up at the isolated yet friendly community of Market Horton, Horrors that linger and the only option for accommodation is taken – yes, the died-in-the-wool non-believer has are harder to be housed by a retired vicar and his wifedefeat than any ''Big Bad''. This clash of titanic opinions, peppered with social faux pas aplenty will provide for a particularly English kind of farcical comedy, but one with the legs to go as far as any other Good Books have reached in the past…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1910709018</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Aldous HuxleyMadelaine Lucas|title= Time Must Have A StopThirst for Salt|rating= 3|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= Sometimes we start reading "authors" as opposed to specific books, because we feel we ''should''. So it was with me and Huxley. I seem to remember reading and actually enjoying the classic ''Brave New World'' and so felt compelled to explore more of the oeuvre.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>178487034X</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Michel Houellebecq and Lorin Stein (translator)|title=Submission|rating=45

|summary=What do you expect from Submission? It is after all from one of Europe's more blunt huge-sellers, one who is most forthright in his opinions, narratives and characters' sexual lives. It has become indelibly linked with a new EuropeLove, after its reception and contents led to publicity on the cover of ''Charlie Hebdo'I'd read, which resulted in something less savoury than literature, to say the least. Do you expect it was supposed to be about a France of the near futurelight and weightless feeling, where a Muslim political party provides the president? Well, donbut I had always longed for gravity''t go into this submissively following your expectations.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1785150243</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Rachel Elliott|title= Whispers Through A Megaphone|rating= 4.5|genre= General Fiction|summary= Miriam doesn’t speak. Well, that’s not strictly true. She does speakTold from a retrospective view, 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 young woman unravels the day. She’s going to open year-long relationship that door and walk outside. She really isonce defined her. Ralph has finally twigged (and Overlaid with no small amount 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 Medialater wisdom, Ralph hasn’t really had the narrator relives the affair with a chance man twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to think about itits sorrowful end the summer after. But now he has, it is so shockingly awful that he has decided to run away. And Set against the backdrop of all an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the places he could run away to24-year-old narrator's deepening relationship with her older lover, he has chosen the same woods that Miriam has picked to be the first place she will visit outdepicting its all-of-doors. And Sadie? Wellconsuming nature, she’s had enough of reading Tweets how it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and living vicariously through the posts of others. Sadie is going to have an adventure of how it altered her ownirrevocably. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0992918227</amazonuk>0861546490

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Benjamin JohncockMichael Grothaus|title=The Last PilotBeautiful Shining People

|genre=Literary Fiction |summary=You'd be forgiven for assuming that debut novelist Benjamin Johncock is American: 'But fearing something and having it come to pass are two different things. And I'The Last Pilot'' has the literary weight m willing to bet most of a Great American Novelwhat we fear will never happen, with a limitless desert setting plus the prospect of soon dominating space, and the spare yet profound writing style of Ernest Hemingway or Cormac McCarthywe can take steps to change it. Johncock is British, but you can tell he's taken inspiration from stories about the dawn of the astronaut age, including Tom Wolfe's  ''The Right StuffBeautiful Shining People'' revolves around the question of identity and films like ''Apollo 13''acceptance. Of what it means to be human. His protagonist, Jim HarrisonOf what is real and what is artificial, is a fictional Air Force test pilot who rubs shoulders with historical figures like Chuck Yeager and John Glenn in whether the quest to break the sound barrier and conquer spacedevelopment of technology is exciting or frightening.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908434848</amazonuk>191458564X

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tessa HadleyJennifer Saint|title=The PastAtalanta|rating=45

|summary=Tessa Hadley writes beautifully subtle stories ''I was as worthy as any one of English family lifethem. Her understated style has a touch of the 1950s or 1960s about itI would get on board that ship, calling to mind Elizabeth Taylor or early Margaret DrabbleI vowed. I would take my place, and she seems to adapt classic genres like not just in the novel name of manners or the country house novelgoddess. Here she deliberately channels Elizabeth Bowen with a setup borrowed from ''The House in Paris'': It was for the novel is divided into three partssake of my name, titled too. Atalanta'The Present', 'The Past', and 'The Present' Princess. Warrior. Lover. Hero. That structure allows  Abandoned at birth for being born a deeper look at what daughter rather than a son, Atalanta is raised under the protective eye of the house goddess Athemis and fashioned into a neighbouring cottage have meant formidable huntress, one who longs for adventure. When the opportunity comes – to join the central familyArgonauts, a fierce band of warriors, descendent from the Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the chance to fight in Artemis' name and paves the way for one final shocker carve out her own legendary place in history. What follows is a whirlwind of a secretchallenges and discovery and through it, Atalanta must remember Artemis' fatal warning: that if she marries, it will be her undoing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0224101692</amazonuk>1472292154

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Andrew MillerAmanthi Harris|title= The CrossingBeautiful Place|rating= 5

|summary= Tim and Maud seemPadma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to everyone around them, mismatchedthe Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of her home country. She, quite literally, falls into his life, and they build This is a life – jobs, place she spent her formative years. It is not a houseplace she was born into, a boat, then a childbut the one she thinks of as home. Tim needs Maud How she came to be at the Villa, needs how it became her to complete himhome, wants desperately to completer 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 help escape 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 anyonepast and much like the musical score of a film, on a journey that will change strand weaves its way through everything, and test her to that happens at the utmostVilla.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444753495</amazonuk>1784631930

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Andrew Michael Hurley178563335X|title= The LoneySea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor|rating= 5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= ItWhen we first meet Rachel Bird she's always a privilege when youtrainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and wondering why they're given an advance reading copy of something – and a real 'block' held when you read need to pick the small print that says children up. Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Thelma'not for resale or quotations daughter-in-law won't let her see her grandson. Fair comment Holthorpe, on the resale bitNorfolk coast, is a lovely place, but when you get something as brilliant as Rachel is struggling to develop a real bond with the parish - and she's in awe of the vicar, Gail, but then she'The Loney'' being required not to quote is just plain unfairs been doing the job for more than thirty years. 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 Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1473619823</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Eli Horowitz, Matthew Derby and Kevin Moffett1398515388|title=The Silent HistoryBoy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)

|genre=Science General Fiction|summary=WellFirst of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, they kept which created the tsunami and this quiet – for reasons that will become obvious. A couple of years ago people , in America were giving birth to problematic kids. They (turn, caused the children) were soon found to be unnaturally quiet – perhaps crying with hunger or pain, but never even trying to 'ooga-wooga' their way into their parents' heartsnuclear meltdown. They were later found to be completely unable to speak, they could not read The result was complete and indeed they could not understand anything said to them, or shown them, as an instructionutter devastation. They The deaths were physically unable to parse anything as languageuncountable, and were in a silent world the loss of their ownlivelihoods was widespread. But right about now they and we are combining worlds – schools are being set up, and funds are being made available, and people are coming The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down on the endless divide as to whether they are just problematic, disabled – or even list of priorities but - six months after the blessedtsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. In He wasn't a couple of years, however, dog person but the problems the virus convenience store owner's comment that is causing these people to be born with will be shown he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to be a major problem – open his car door and that is before Tamon the dog jumped in.}} {{Frontpage|isbn=0989715337|title=Papa on the Moon|author=Marco North|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''Some frogs had gotten into the kids themselves changewell. For they will be able to switch their mental abilities much like a blind man can hear more than '' ''Walter stood waist-deep in the averagefragrant water, and will be able to comprehend body and facial language much more coherently than anyone elsenaked except for his beaten leather hat. Throughout this timelineLong strands of their eggs wove around him, however, people will be working hard to try sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Two of the dogs leaned over the opening and study barked down at the strange noise of the problem, and put it right – if indeed buckets as he filled them.'right'  How is that for an opening? The style of this novel in the form of interconnected short stories goes from succinct and laconic to wistful and musing, turning on a sixpence. And author Marco North, who has the correct word…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009959286X</amazonuk>most wonderful turn of phrase, starts as he means to go on.