Difference between revisions of "Newest General Fiction Reviews"

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[[Category:General Fiction|*]]
 
[[Category:General Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->
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[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]]__NOTOC__
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Lorenzo Marone and Shaun Whiteside (Translator)
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|author=Onyi Nwabineli
|title=The Temptation to Be Happy
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|title=Allow Me to Introduce Myself
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Cesare is 77, widowed, generally ignored by the offspring he likes and bothered too much by the one he doesn'tStill, he finds ways to fill his daysIf he's not taking advantage of his friend-with-benefits arrangement with aging lady of the night Rossana, or keeping an eye on his grandson, he's making mischief in league with elderly neighbours like Signora Vitaliano (local mad cat woman) and Marino (the non-IT-literate computer guy)Their minds are diverted from their usual pursuits when a young couple move into the apartment block providing Cesare with a concern and the conviction that he has to do something, whatever the fall out or personal danger.
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|summary=Anuri spent her childhood on display to the world, thanks to her step-mother Ophelia's increasingly popular presence on social media, where she posted every step of Anuri's childhood for sponsorships and influencer deals and, basically, monetary gain.  Now Anuri is in her twenties and she is slowly trying to regain her confidence and to get her life back, suing her step-mother to take down the content about herAnuri is battling alcoholism, failing to start her PhD, undergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online and receiving money from them for doing soMost importantly, she is desperately worried about her little sister, who is the new focus of Ophelia's online empireCan she save her sister, and perhaps herself and her relationship with her father at the same time?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1786072882</amazonuk>
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|isbn=0861546873
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Lars Mytting and Paul Russell Grant (Translator)
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|isbn=1529153298
|title=The Sixteen Trees of the Somme
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|title=The List of Suspicious Things
 +
|author=Jennie Godfrey
 +
|rating=5
 +
|genre=General Fiction
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|summary=It's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister.  (A woman?  I mean, honestly...) She's not what's worrying Miv's family, though.  Women have been disappearing.  Well, they've been murdered, but to have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening.  Miv's upset because she's overheard that her father wants to move the family 'Down South'.  When you're from Yorkshire, Down South is a frightening, foreign place, best avoided.  For Miv, the move would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, and she'll do anything to prevent that.  She's not worried about the dangers or that her Mum's stopped talking - to anyone.
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}}
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{{Frontpage
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|isbn=1035906708
 +
|title=Diva
 +
|author=Daisy Goodwin
 +
|rating=4.5
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|genre=General Fiction
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|summary=We tend to think of Maria Callas as Greek, but she was born to Greek parents in Manhattan, New York, in December 1923 and only moved to Athens when she was thirteen.  Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to 'Callas' to make it more manageable in the States.  When she was back in Athens - supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for her voice - she was raised under the Nazi occupation by a mother who mercilessly exploited her and made no secret of her preference for her elder sister, Jackie.
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}}
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{{Frontpage
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|author=Alexander McCall Smith
 +
|title=The Perfect Passion Company
 +
|rating=4.5
 +
|genre=General Fiction
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|summary=The Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and operating as an alternative to all the online apps in providing a more personal, tailored service.  Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the business, as Ness is planning to take a trip to Canada to get away for a while.  Katie is coming out of a break up with a bad boyfriend, and so jumps at the chance to come home to Edinburgh.  And so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, thanks to 44 Scotland Street and the Isabel Dalhousie novels, but with some new characters who quickly begin to charm.  Katie has no experience in running a business, or in match-making, but Ness has full confidence in her abilities, and there's always her very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, William, to lend a hand…
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|isbn=1846976596
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}}
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{{Frontpage
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|author=Dean Koontz
 +
|title=The Bad Weather Friend
 +
|rating=4.5
 +
|genre=Paranormal
 +
|summary=Benny is having a terrifically bad day.  He loses his job, he loses his fiancee, and his house gets trashed.  Oh, and someone has delivered a really weird, disturbing coffin-sized object to his home, and it's possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the thing that has trashed his house!  The thing is, Benny is the very last person to deserve all this bad luck.  He is a nice person.  A really nice person.  So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the delivery to his house is a new friend, a bad weather friend called Spike, who has been sent to help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a good person.  Spike is going to take care of Benny, and will certainly take care of Benny's enemies, if he, Benny, and Harper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are.
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|isbn=1662500491
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}}
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{{Frontpage
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|author=Katherine Howe
 +
|title=A True Account
 +
|rating=4.5
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|genre=General Fiction
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|summary=Hannah Masury is living in Boston, having been sent to live with a family who run an inn, and being made to work there from a young age.  When she hears there is to be a hanging of some pirates in the town, she decides to go and watch.  Enthralled and horrified in equal measure, Hannah finds herself embroiled in a young boy's death at the hands of two vicious pirates.  She hides away, so that they don't find and kill her too, and then to escape them completely she runs away to sea, dressing as a boy and joining the notorious Ned Low's pirate ship as a cabin boy.  She soon finds herself in the thick of things when there is a mutiny on board, and from there we are caught up in her rip roaring tale of life on the ocean waves.
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|isbn=0861547438
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}}
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{{Frontpage
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|isbn=1471180158
 +
|title=Maybe Tomorrow
 +
|author=Penny Parkes
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=While his grandfather lived the past was an area of certainty for Edvard.  At aged 4 he'd been taken to live with his grandparents, having survived the accident that killed his parentsNow his grandfather has died revelations are coming to light showing Edvard his family history is different from what he'd believed… his mother's birthplace, his mother's name, the whereabouts of late Great-Uncle Einar… and that's without looking more deeply into the fatal accident itselfEdvard is determined to solve the puzzle, a determination that will take him away from his native Norway to an area of France synonymous with devastation and a remote Scottish island loaded with secrets.
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|summary=Jamie Matson works in an upper-class grocery store, for a man who's a control freak with all the subtlety of a half brickJamie's son, Bo, 'has his problems'.  He's asthmatic and the more you read, the more you'll suspect that he's on the autistic spectrum.  Sometimes Jamie needs to take time off at short notice - she's a frequent flier in the local A&E and sometimes Bo's not fit enough to go to schoolMissed shifts or the need to be away on time to pick Bo up from school are occasions when Jamie can be controlled and put in the wrong.  It was going to come to a head.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857056069</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Louis de Bernieres
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|isbn=B0CKD1L5JL
|title=Blue Dog
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|title=Radio Free Olympia
 +
|author=Jeffrey Dunn
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Mick's mother had a mental breakdown after his father's death and Mick was sent to live in in the outback with GranpaOn the face of it you'd think that it was going to be a lonely life for an eleven-year-old city boy, with no school to attend, in fact no other children anywhere nearGranpa's busy too: life on a cattle station is brutal for anyone, with all the heat and the dustBut they've all got to make the best of the situation.
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|summary= Petr is an orphan. Rescued by the strange, reclusive Bear, he is brought up far from bustling cities and busy human society, in the forests of Washington's Olympic Peninsula.  After Bear dies and a brief sojourn in human company, and armed with only a pirate radio transmitter, Petr goes on a journey through the forest, broadcasting the strange, wild and rarely heard voices he encounters.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784704172</amazonuk>
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}}
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{{Frontpage
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|author=Sarah Marsh
 +
|title=A Sign of Her Own
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|rating=3.5
 +
|genre=General Fiction
 +
|summary=After a bout of scarlet fever as a child, Ellen Lark loses her hearing.  Suddenly plunged into a world of silence, everything about her life changes.  Living in a time when the use of sign language was seen as something only savages do, Ellen is sent to a school where she is taught to lip read, but physically restrained from signing.  From here, she ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the deaf and using a system called Visible SpeechAt the same time, Bell is working on other inventions and ideas, and Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a complicated tangle of espionage.
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|isbn=1035401614
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}}
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{{Frontpage
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|isbn=B0BC3YTCMR
 +
|title=Good Girls Die
 +
|author=Ayura Ayira
 +
|rating=4.5
 +
|genre=General Fiction
 +
|summary=''This story is not for everyone.''
 +
 
 +
Lavender Daniels was three weeks short of her fifteenth birthday when The Incident happened.  She was a very bright student, a bit too nerdy if truth be told, and suffered from vitiligo - people were afraid to hug her in case it's contagiousIt's not easy being a black girl whose skin is 84% white.  She had a crush on seventeen-year-old Reggie Anderson but never thought he would notice her.  Then he did: Lavender was very good at math and Reggie asked if she would tutor him.  She readily agreed: tutoring was something she gladly did at church: this was just an extension.  She went to his house and he raped herIn shock, she even allowed him to give her a lift home.
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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|author=Sarah Winman
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{{Frontpage
|title=Tin Man
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|isbn=1472263936
 +
|title=The Figurine
 +
|author=Victoria Hislop
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Ellis is a tin man – someone who practices the under-esteemed art of panel beatingHe can remove a dint, dent or blemish by expertly applying force so that you can't even feel where the mark was.  If he has to choose what would define his life, though, it wouldn’t be his jobIt would be Michael and AnnieMichael, the lad he grew up with and Annie who completed their triangle, changing 'everything and nothing'. Now only Ellis remains…
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|summary=It was in 1968 that Helena McCloud made her first trip to GreeceShe was alone: her mother, Greek by birth, had left the family home and refused to return, but Mary and Hamish (Helena's parents) felt that it would be a pity if Helena grew up without knowing her grandparents or understanding her Greek heritageHer trip to the family apartment in up-market Kolonaki would be the first of several annual visits.  She grew to love her grandmother and the family's maid, Dina, but was wary - and frightened - of her grandfather, retired general Stamatis PapagiannisHe was proud of his close connections to the Junta and expected his family to uphold his values but saw no reason to accommodate them.  His prejudices included Helena's red hair and green eyes - inherited from her father's Scottish ancestors.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755390954</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Durian Sukegawa and Alison Watts (translator)
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|author=Dean Koontz
|title= Sweet Bean Paste
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|title=After Death
|rating= 5
+
|rating=3
|genre= General Fiction
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|genre=General Fiction
|summary=''Sweet Bean Paste'' centres on Sentaro, an ex-con who dreams of being a writer, but instead spends his days making dorayaki, a type of Japanese pancake. He reluctantly employs Tokue, an elderly lady with disfigured hands, after tasting her divine bean paste - the perfect filling for said dorayaki. Predictably, a friendship soon blossoms between the pair, despite her age and appearance. In many ways, this could sound cliché - a protagonist learns a valuable lesson about not judging someone by their appearance after finding a friend in someone they never expected to like, not exactly an unheard-of concept. Yet, Sukegawa still manages to enthral his audience.
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|summary= Michael Mace, Head of Security, at a top secret biological research facility, is among 55 people who die when a virus is released in a bio-hazard accident. Finding himself in a makeshift mortuary, covered in plastic, he has a sense that something very, very bad has happened to him – and only him – as he sits up and looks around at the shrouded bodies of his dead friends and former colleagues. As he recovers his senses, he realises that there is something different about him; he can ''feel'' everything.  ''Everything''.  Michael isn't ''Michael'' anymore.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1786071959</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1662500467
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}}
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{{Frontpage
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|isbn=B0BVDC2VWH
 +
|title=The Grave Listeners
 +
|author=William Frank
 +
|rating=4
 +
|genre=General Fiction
 +
|summary=The village is isolated and poor. It's surrounded by a Witching Forest. And the villagers subsist largely by farming Uphegia plants - its bread-like fruit provides nutrition and its blossom provides herbal medicines. The black wood of the forest provides heat and warmth, roofs on homes, and even gallows, if needed. The fear of being buried alive is an existential superstition in the village and that is the reason Volushka, a drunken, self-indulgent, lazy lout of a man is tolerated.  
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview <!-- remove 11 Oct -->
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|author=Terence J Fry
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{{Frontpage
|title=The Creative Writer for the Creative Newspaper
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|isbn=B0BYF82CXT
|rating=1.5
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|title=Semi-Detached
 +
|author=Deborah Stone
 +
|rating=4
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The man we shall come to know as The Creative Writer was looking out of the window of his office when he spotted a beautiful woman struggling to stay upright in the tornado which was rattling the windows ferociously. Then he realised that it wasn't just the dreadful weather which was affecting her: the woman was doubled up in pain and he could see blood. Amazingly, no one was stopping to help her, worried, he would find out later that, they might be sued if something went wrong.  The Creative Writer had no such worries - he dashed out into the tornado and brought her back into  the house, shouting at his grandmother that she should call an ambulance.
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|summary=''Bill and Amanda are living in a semi-detached house, stuck in a depressing rut of boredom and disappointment, when Terry and Fiona – glamorous, successful and very much in love – move in next door. Despite their different outlooks on life, the couples befriend each other and life appears to improve for both pairs. But all is not what it seems, and their increasingly interconnected relationships are fated for tragedy.''
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1524682136</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author= Catherine Burns
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|author=Shalini Boland
|title= The Visitors
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|title=The Silent Bride
|rating= 5
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|rating=3
|genre= Thrillers
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|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Marion Zetland lives with her domineering older brother, John, in a decaying Georgian townhouse on the edge of a northern seaside resort. A timid spinster in her fifties who still sleeps with teddy bears, Marion does her best to shut out the shocking secret that John keeps in the cellar. Until, suddenly, John has a heart attack and Marion is forced to go down to the cellar herself and face the gruesome truth that her brother has kept hidden. As questions are asked and secrets unravel, maybe John isn't the only one with a dark side.
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|summary= Alice and Seth are a match made in heaven.  He is everything she has been searching for; handsome, accomplished, clever, funny; total and utter husband-material.  She is all he could possibly want in a wife; beautiful, successful, confident… and so the inevitable proposal is eagerly accepted by Alice and the wedding is planned and set. When the much-anticipated day arrives, Alice is walked down the aisle by her father, beaming with pride and excitement as she surveys the congregation – their friends assembled to celebrate this joyful day and when Seth turns to face his approaching bride, Alice's world implodes because she has absolutely no idea who the man at the altar is, who is waiting for her to become his wife.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1787199851</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1662507089
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author= J R Ward
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|isbn=1787636003
|title= Devil's Cut
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|title=The Girls of Summer
|rating= 4
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|author=Katie Bishop
|genre= General Fiction
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|rating=5
|summary=I feel as though I came to this book under false pretenses. I requested the book thinking I was getting a murder mystery and instead I was thrown head first into a roaring family saga. Indeed, said murder mystery though pivotal in the history of the family, is more of a quiet subplot and catalyst from where to begin the storytelling for the book. And so it was I was met with the Baldwine family and the Bradford Bourbon Company. The initial meeting is a romantic one as the family are presented high up in their castle on the hill - or in this case from their beautiful Kentuckian Bradford Family Estate replete with tea roses, fruit trees and hazy Southern sunshine. It isn't long however before Ward transports the reader from such rolling splendour to the darkest corners of human psychology wherein fathers and sons may share the same lover, brothers are divided by suspicion and jealousy and women are used as trophies and commodities.
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|genre=General Fiction
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0349417024</amazonuk>
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|summary=It was the summer when Rachel Evans turned eighteen that she and Caroline went backpacking around Greece and arrived on the island.  Rachel wasn't exactly innocent but she was, perhaps, naive, so when thirty-four-year-old Alistair Wright started to take an interest in her, she was flattered rather than wary. It was quite a while before he made any sort of physical approach to her and by that time she was obsessed by him.  Alistair worked for Henry Taylor, looking after his interests on the island and in particular in the bar where all the girls either worked or partied.
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author= Phill Featherstone
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|author=Amanda Craig
|title= Paradise Girl
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|title=Three Graces
|rating= 3
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|rating=4.5
|genre= General Fiction
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|genre=General Fiction
|summary= Kerryl Shaw lives on a Yorkshire farm – a somewhat idealised one that survives on a few hens and two or three cows and a few sheep.  The kind of farm that might have been profitable in the 1950s but by the time Kerryl has arrived should have been struggling. A teenage boy not pulling his weight, now that the grandparents are old and the father is dead, would not be met with exasperated indulgence. There are no stock-hands, no farm managers, no applications for subsidies, or worries about the tax return. Maybe the unwelcome wind turbine covers the costs of the rest of it.  Already, in setting, it's feeling a little unreal. But maybe we can forgive that…
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|summary= Few styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the state-of-the-nation novel. There's something so utterly compelling about any writer who can catch hold of the atmosphere of the day and capture it, crafting an image of the country as it stands in one particular moment. To say that Amanda Craig is skilled at doing this would be embarrassingly inadequate: she's practically synonymous with the genre of contemporary social fiction at this point. She has such a gift for weaving the ongoing issues of the day into the lives of her characters in a way that feels natural and lived-in, never making them ciphers for social commentary but instead fully realised people, grappling with issues far larger than themselves.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1785898728</amazonuk>
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|isbn= 140871468X
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Sandra Aragona
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|isbn=152915118X
|title=Sorting the Priorities: Ambassadress and Beagle Survive Diplomacy
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|title=Pineapple Street
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|author=Jenny Jackson
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Sarah is married to Giorgio and when we first meet them he's Something Very Senior in the foreign ministry in Rome, much to the disappointment of his mother who thought that he'd be there for her (in Sicily), but not only does he go and marry a foreigner, he has a job which will take him all over the worldSuch is the life of the diplomatTheir two daughters have to lead a pretty peripatetic life too, but when the family comes into our lives they're all in Rome - for the time being - and just back from Nigeria. To add to the confusion there's Beagle, just about as undiplomatic a dog as you'll encounter.
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|summary=''Pineapple Street'' is the story of three women: Sasha, Darley and Georgiana.  Darley and George are sisters and Sasha is married to their brother Cord.  They're Stocktons, only Sasha isn't a Stockton by birth so she isn't readily accepted into the tribe.  The problem's exacerbated when the clan matriarch, Tilda, asks Cord and Sasha if they'd like to move into the Pineapple Street property.  Tilda and Chip have renovated and downsized to another property, a street or so away, which they own.  They won't need any of the furniture from Pineapple Street, so Sasha and Cord can move straight in.  Nominally, they had a choice but that wasn't the reality.  Darley and Georgiana start to call Sasha 'the gold digger'.  She's living in ''their'' family home. They use it so often that they abbreviate it to 'the GD'.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1542733405</amazonuk>
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}}
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{{Frontpage
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|author=Emily Critchley
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|title=One Puzzling Afternoon
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|rating=4
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|genre=Crime
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|summary=84 year old Edie has lived in the same small town for almost her whole life, but now she is facing a move as her son wants to move to another house and bring Edie to live with his family, as Edie is starting to lose her memory.  However, Edie is tormented by the memory of her childhood friend, Lucy, who went missing over 60 years ago, and the worry that there was a secret she was keeping for Lucy that somehow might be the thing that reveals the truth of what happened all that time ago.  After 'seeing' Lucy in the high street, just as she was the last time she saw her, she starts to find pockets of memories coming back to herAnd yet as she remembers the past, she is forgetting more and more in her day to day life.  Will she uncover the truth about Lucy's disappearance before her move, and before her memories are gone forever?
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|isbn=1804181250
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}}
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{{Frontpage
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|author=Madelaine Lucas
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|title=Thirst for Salt
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|rating=5
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|genre=Literary Fiction
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|summary= ''Love, I'd 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 year-long relationship that once defined her. Overlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the affair with a man twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the summer after. Set against the backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the 24-year-old narrator's deepening relationship with her older lover, depicting its all-consuming nature, how it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably.
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|isbn=0861546490
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Thomas Neviaser
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|isbn=0008506337
|title=You Dear, Sweet Man
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|title=The Garnett Girls
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|author=Georgina Moore
 +
|rating=5
 +
|genre=General Fiction
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|summary=The love affair between Margo Garnett and poet Richard O'Leary was all-consuming, apparently on both sides.  Margo was just sixteen when they fell in love.  Richard was twenty-one and described by Margo's mother as 'an older man'.  Her parents worried that Richard's influence would take her away from what they felt she could achieve - going to Oxford and having a glittering career.  In the event,  they eloped and Richard took her away from the Isle of Wight.  Margo did go to Oxford and went on to become a well-respected journalist.  The couple had three children: Rachel, Imogen and Sasha.  Life was lived in London and holidays were spent at Sandcove, the family home on the Isle of Wight.  Even then the doubts about Richard's drinking were never far from Margo's mind: ''she would never be able to leave him in charge''.
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Then Richard left them.
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}}
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{{Frontpage
 +
|isbn=1914585402
 +
|title=Dashboard Elvis is Dead
 +
|author=David F Ross
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Bobby Fastow's journey to work on the subway was an oasis of calm in an otherwise exhausting day: nothing was required of him.  He could sit and relax, gazing at the adverts until he got to his stop and went to his physically-demanding job. The ad for BurgerBlast caught his eye: a beautiful woman was sitting on a boardroom table, encouraging you to read about the business's move away from artery-choking food to a healthier menu, but it wasn't the message which caught Bobby's attention.  It was the woman.  She seemed to be looking directly at him and he could have sworn that she winked...
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|summary=I reviewed David F Ross's book [[There's Only One Danny Garvey by David F Ross|There's Only One Danny Garvey]] a couple of years back and remember being absolutely floored by how powerful and affecting it was. It was a gripping, emotionally wounding read, and rereading my review of it my main takeaway was that I might not have lavished enough praise on it.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0976018527</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author= Laura Solomon
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|author=Lucy Ashe
|title=Taking Wainui
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|title=Clara and Olivia
|rating=2
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|rating=4.5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary= This is the first time I have come across Laura Solomon's work, a New Zealand writer who has won writing prizes for both her fiction and poetry. Although this book appears to be a collection of short stories, I found its format somewhat confusing.
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|summary=The year is 1933. The place? Sadler's Wells. Ballerinas Clara and Olivia are sisters, twins no less. Identical on the outside but not, we learn, on the inside. And not on stage, either. Because there's a lot that builds a dancer. Some things that can be taught or learnt – discipline, attention to detail – and some things, that ''je ne sais quoi'', that don't come from the classroom. A stage presence, a charm, a ''joie de vivre''. The difference between a hard-worker, and a star.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>8193409353</amazonuk>
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|isbn=0861544080
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author= Debbie Howells
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|author=Heather Fawcett
|title= The Death of Her
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|title=Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries
|rating= 3
+
|rating=4
|genre= General Fiction
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|genre=General Fiction
|summary=In a quiet part of rural Cornwall, villagers are shocked to learn that a local woman has been attacked and left for dead in a maize field. So severe are her injuries, that her memory has been affected and she struggles to remember details of her life. She tells the police that she thinks her name is Evie. Then, she remembers something else; she has a three-year-old daughter called Angel. Where is Angel, and what happened to her when her mother was attacked? The police frantically search for Angel's whereabouts, but on closer examination of Evie's cottage, they find no evidence of a child ever having lived there...
+
|summary=Emily Wilde is an expert academic scholar on faerie lore, and she has travelled extensively, and researched meticulously, to write her life's work, the very first encyclopaedia of faeries. Whilst she is brilliant at research and speaking to faeries, she is not so good with people. So when she finds herself far, far North in the small village of Hrafvsnik, having somehow offended the village matriarch, she is not sure what she has done, nor how to redeem herself and put her final investigations for her book back on the right track.  Enter Wendell Bambleby, her dashingly handsome and insufferable rival who arrives unexpectedly, all charm and delight, much to Emily's frustration. But why is he here?  What does he want?  And what exactly is going on with the faerie folk around Hravsnik?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1509834648</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=0356519120
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=Alexander McCall Smith
+
|isbn=1398515388
|title=The House of Unexpected Sisters
+
|title=The Boy and the Dog
|rating=5
+
|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
 +
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Dear Mma Ramotswe is back, for the eighteenth (!) book in the series, and what a beautiful book it is.  I ran through the whole tumult of emotions whilst reading this story, with all the usual moments of humour, annoying (and yet endearing) idiosyncrasies of character, low level mystery solving and endless cups of redbush teaThere is a case for the agency with a lady who has been wrongfully fired from her jobThere's the worrying, background presence of Mma Makutsi's nemesis, Violet Sepotho, who must surely have been involved in this poor lady's job woes.  And there is the difficult discovery of an unknown family member for Mma Ramotswe, and an unwelcome return from another.
+
|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 widespreadThe 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 storeHe 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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408708140</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
 
|author=Maja Lunde and Diane Oatley (translator)
+
{{Frontpage
|title=The History of Bees
+
|author=Christopher Bowden
 +
|title=Mr Magenta
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Bees are a handy symbol of the planet's environmental degradation, as you'll know if you've read anything by [[:Category:Dave Goulson|Dave Goulson]] – whose endorsement is featured proudly on the cover of this U.K. release of Norwegian children's writer Maja Lunde's first novel for adults. The creatures also provide subtle links between the book's three story lines.
+
|summary= Christopher Bowden's latest novel is a patient untangling of a seemingly ordinary woman's life, carried out by her nephew after she has died. The aunt who always provided a safe harbour and a little bit of indulgence to a young nephew had had a much more interesting life than that nephew Stephen had ever realised and it seems to him an obligation to find it all out.  
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1471162745</amazonuk>
+
|isbn= B0B6Z9VJDW
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=Jem Vanston
+
|author=Jennifer Mason
|title=A Cat Called Dog 2 - The One with the Kittens
+
|title=Partitions of Unity
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=George, Dog the cat and Eric the stray were indulging themselves with a philosophical discussion when they heard some strange mewing.  Three kittens had found their way into the garden and told  the resident cats that their mother had told them to run away when a two-legs cat catcher came for them all. Mother couldn't run as she had a sore paw, but Daisy, Maisie and Boo had run and run and run. They'd no idea what happened to her - or how to get back home again. George is getting on in years and wouldn't like to upset his two legs, The Lady, by being away from home for too long, so he appoints Dog as leader of an expedition to reunite the kittens and their Mother.
+
|summary= Here at Bookbag Towers, we first met Elizabeth Cromwell, dominatrix and unintentional detective in [[Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery by Jennifer Mason|Preposterous]], when she investigated and unravelled a series of disappearances. In ''Partitions of Unity'', she sets her mind to solving a murder...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1786293390</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=B09LQR9FRF
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=Susi Osborne
+
|author=Will Carver
|title=Angelica Stone
+
|title=The Daves Next Door
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=I'd say that Angelica Stone was known as Angel to her friends, but she's not big on friends. She has the sort of background you dread hearing about: sexually abused as a child, grabbed by the care system and didn't so much fall through the cracks as escaped its clutches and then had to learn how to cope.  She's been told that she's tainted, that she ruins every relationship without intending to and that she's best staying away from 'decent' people.  One of her jobs is working in a supermarket and it's there that she meets Lola Moriarty and ''she's'' a completely different kettle of fish.
+
|summary= Five strangers come together in one moment as a suicide bomber prepares to detonate his vest on a London tube line. As their fates overlap, the story is told in backwards order, leading up to the fateful moment.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1911320947</amazonuk>
+
|isbn= 1914585186
}}
+
}}  
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author= Virginia Macgregor
+
|author=Jennifer Mason
|title= Before I Was Yours
+
|title=Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery
|rating= 5
+
|rating=4
|genre= General Fiction
+
|genre=General Fiction
|summary= Rosie can see clearly her future family in her mind. And when that doesn't happen, she adapts. So maybe she won't carry the baby inside her, but that lovely blonde girl at the adoption event could be their new daughter. Yes, she looks like she belongs to them already. It's meant to be. Except it's not. Rosie and Sam don't get to have a genetic child of their own, and they don't get to adopt the perfect blonde girl. They end up with the exact opposite: a boy from Kenya with a peculiar back story and an ardent wish not to be adopted. As optimistic as Rosie and Sam try to be, this isn't quite what they pictured or hoped for.
+
|summary=''A struggling poetry zine, a mom-and-pop mobile diner in the Northern California redwoods, a 400-meter hurdler who just missed the 2004 Olympics, a women's track coach with a yen for bullwhips, a billionaire with a state-of-the-art S&M dungeon, a man serving a life sentence in Alabama, an enigmatic signature, K(s, x), on a cheap oil painting, an erotic art dealer in Georgia...''
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0751565229</amazonuk>
+
 
}}
+
This is just a sample of the cast of characters and settings in Preposterous. As you can see, some keeping up will be required! The basic premise of this mystery story goes like this...
{{newreview
+
|isbn=B09STS96HS
|author= Gabrielle Zevin
 
|title= Young Jane Young
 
|rating= 4.5
 
|genre= General Fiction
 
|summary=Aviva Grossman, an ambitious Congressional intern in Florida, makes the life-changing mistake of having an affair with her boss - who is beloved, admired, successful, and very married - and blogging about it. When the affair comes to light, the Congressman doesn't take the fall, but Aviva does, and her life is over before it hardly begins. She becomes a late-night talk show punchline; she is slut-shamed, labelled as fat and ugly, and considered a blight on politics in general.How does one go on after this? In Aviva's case, she sees no way out but to change her name and move to a remote town in Maine. She starts over as a wedding planner, tries to be smarter about her life, and to raise her daughter to be strong and confident.But when, at the urging of others, she decides to run for public office herself, that long-ago mistake trails her via the Internet like a scarlet A. These days, Google guarantees that the past is never, ever, truly past, that everything you've done will live on for everyone to know about for all eternity. And it's only a matter of time until Aviva/Jane's daughter, Ruby, finds out who her mother was, and is, and must decide whether she can still respect her.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408709805</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author= Henrietta Rose-Innes
 
|title= Green Lion
 
|rating= 4
 
|genre= General Fiction
 
|summary= The opening of ''Green Lion'' is an apparently simple premise; a young South African man, Con, is tasked with picking up the belongings of an old friend, Mark, who is lying in a coma in hospital. Mark worked at a small zoo with a rare black-maned lioness, who mauled him and caused the coma. However, as the story unfolds, Rose-Innes reveals an unflinching embrace of the messiness of human and animal life, and their troubled interactions.  
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1910709255</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=Alexander McCall Smith
+
|isbn=B0B2N7MVYM
|title=A Time of Love and Tartan
+
|title=The Calculations of Rational Men
 +
|author=Daniel Godfrey
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Here we are, back on Scotland Street, eager to see what everyone (especially Bertie…) has been up to!  This is now the twelfth book in the Scotland Street series which is remarkableThat a serial novel has such momentum, and that the characters within have become so very familiar to AMS's loyal readers, is a testament to his skills as a writerThis time around our nerves are on edge as Pat ventures back towards a relationship with the dreadful Bruce!  Surely she'll see sense...won't she?! Matthew, of all people, is in trouble with the police, Irene is busy planning a PhD, and Bertie?  Could there be a happy ending for Bertie in the air?
+
|summary=It's the 10th of December 1962 when we first meet Dr Joseph Marr.  Just to put what happens in context, the Cuban missile crisis is still very fresh in people's mindsThe world has barely had a chance to breathe out.  But for Joe Marr, it's not the missile crisis that's at the front of his mindHe's been convicted of murderWith the current state of medical knowledge, it's hard to think otherwise than that the prosecution would never have been brought but Joe Marr has spent his first few days in HMP Queen's Bench, a relatively new prison.  He's just getting used to his roommate, Mervyn, and learning to be wary of the McArthur brothers.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846973821</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
  
{{newreview
+
Move on to [[Newest Graphic Novels Reviews]]
|author= Jess Richards
 
|title= City of Circles
 
|rating= 4
 
|genre= Fantasy
 
|summary= Danu is a tightrope walker who is mourning her parents, after a disease has ravaged the circus where she grew up. Her mother has entrusted her with a locket that hides a secret. Over the years, Danu pushes away her grief and develops elaborate and successful high-wire acts with Morrie, a charismatic hunchback who wants to marry her. When the circus returns to Danu's birthplace, Matryoshka, Danu is enchanted by the temples, spice mists, and pleasure seekers within the intoxicating outer circle district. Here, she finally gains the courage to open her mother's locket, and discovers the name of a stranger who lives behind the locked gate of the Inner Circle. Fated to remain in Matryoshka, Danu attempts to resolve this mystery. Will she and Morrie ever be reunited, or will something far more unexpected be waiting for her in the mysterious heart of the city?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1473656680</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Pascal Garnier and Melanie Florence (translator)
 
|title=Low Heights
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|summary=Edouard is an exemplary example of a crotchety old man – changing his mind, and blaming anything and everything – even that decision – on other people.  He's physically fine, apart from one hand disabled by a stroke, but mentally, what with forgetting his past, assuming too many days are Sundays when they're not and buying too many inappropriate things, he needs a nurse – Therese, who has formed an unlikely and almost unwanted couple with him.  For Edouard, the memory of his wife who died ten years ago is still a little too strong.  But this unusual 'family' is about to be upset by an unexpected arrival, who will stir the emotions and life of their remote house no end…
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1910477427</amazonuk>
 
}}
 

Revision as of 10:04, 22 March 2024

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Review of

Allow Me to Introduce Myself by Onyi Nwabineli

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

Anuri spent her childhood on display to the world, thanks to her step-mother Ophelia's increasingly popular presence on social media, where she posted every step of Anuri's childhood for sponsorships and influencer deals and, basically, monetary gain. Now Anuri is in her twenties and she is slowly trying to regain her confidence and to get her life back, suing her step-mother to take down the content about her. Anuri is battling alcoholism, failing to start her PhD, undergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online and receiving money from them for doing so. Most importantly, she is desperately worried about her little sister, who is the new focus of Ophelia's online empire. Can she save her sister, and perhaps herself and her relationship with her father at the same time? Full Review

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Review of

The List of Suspicious Things by Jennie Godfrey

5star.jpg General Fiction

It's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. (A woman? I mean, honestly...) She's not what's worrying Miv's family, though. Women have been disappearing. Well, they've been murdered, but to have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. Miv's upset because she's overheard that her father wants to move the family 'Down South'. When you're from Yorkshire, Down South is a frightening, foreign place, best avoided. For Miv, the move would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, and she'll do anything to prevent that. She's not worried about the dangers or that her Mum's stopped talking - to anyone. Full Review

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Review of

Diva by Daisy Goodwin

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

We tend to think of Maria Callas as Greek, but she was born to Greek parents in Manhattan, New York, in December 1923 and only moved to Athens when she was thirteen. Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to 'Callas' to make it more manageable in the States. When she was back in Athens - supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for her voice - she was raised under the Nazi occupation by a mother who mercilessly exploited her and made no secret of her preference for her elder sister, Jackie. Full Review

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Review of

The Perfect Passion Company by Alexander McCall Smith

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

The Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and operating as an alternative to all the online apps in providing a more personal, tailored service. Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the business, as Ness is planning to take a trip to Canada to get away for a while. Katie is coming out of a break up with a bad boyfriend, and so jumps at the chance to come home to Edinburgh. And so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, thanks to 44 Scotland Street and the Isabel Dalhousie novels, but with some new characters who quickly begin to charm. Katie has no experience in running a business, or in match-making, but Ness has full confidence in her abilities, and there's always her very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, William, to lend a hand… Full Review

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Review of

The Bad Weather Friend by Dean Koontz

4.5star.jpg Paranormal

Benny is having a terrifically bad day. He loses his job, he loses his fiancee, and his house gets trashed. Oh, and someone has delivered a really weird, disturbing coffin-sized object to his home, and it's possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the thing that has trashed his house! The thing is, Benny is the very last person to deserve all this bad luck. He is a nice person. A really nice person. So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the delivery to his house is a new friend, a bad weather friend called Spike, who has been sent to help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a good person. Spike is going to take care of Benny, and will certainly take care of Benny's enemies, if he, Benny, and Harper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are. Full Review

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Review of

A True Account by Katherine Howe

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

Hannah Masury is living in Boston, having been sent to live with a family who run an inn, and being made to work there from a young age. When she hears there is to be a hanging of some pirates in the town, she decides to go and watch. Enthralled and horrified in equal measure, Hannah finds herself embroiled in a young boy's death at the hands of two vicious pirates. She hides away, so that they don't find and kill her too, and then to escape them completely she runs away to sea, dressing as a boy and joining the notorious Ned Low's pirate ship as a cabin boy. She soon finds herself in the thick of things when there is a mutiny on board, and from there we are caught up in her rip roaring tale of life on the ocean waves. Full Review

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Review of

Maybe Tomorrow by Penny Parkes

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

Jamie Matson works in an upper-class grocery store, for a man who's a control freak with all the subtlety of a half brick. Jamie's son, Bo, 'has his problems'. He's asthmatic and the more you read, the more you'll suspect that he's on the autistic spectrum. Sometimes Jamie needs to take time off at short notice - she's a frequent flier in the local A&E and sometimes Bo's not fit enough to go to school. Missed shifts or the need to be away on time to pick Bo up from school are occasions when Jamie can be controlled and put in the wrong. It was going to come to a head. Full Review

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Review of

Radio Free Olympia by Jeffrey Dunn

4star.jpg General Fiction

Petr is an orphan. Rescued by the strange, reclusive Bear, he is brought up far from bustling cities and busy human society, in the forests of Washington's Olympic Peninsula. After Bear dies and a brief sojourn in human company, and armed with only a pirate radio transmitter, Petr goes on a journey through the forest, broadcasting the strange, wild and rarely heard voices he encounters. Full Review

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Review of

A Sign of Her Own by Sarah Marsh

3.5star.jpg General Fiction

After a bout of scarlet fever as a child, Ellen Lark loses her hearing. Suddenly plunged into a world of silence, everything about her life changes. Living in a time when the use of sign language was seen as something only savages do, Ellen is sent to a school where she is taught to lip read, but physically restrained from signing. From here, she ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the deaf and using a system called Visible Speech. At the same time, Bell is working on other inventions and ideas, and Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a complicated tangle of espionage. Full Review

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Review of

Good Girls Die by Ayura Ayira

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

This story is not for everyone.

Lavender Daniels was three weeks short of her fifteenth birthday when The Incident happened. She was a very bright student, a bit too nerdy if truth be told, and suffered from vitiligo - people were afraid to hug her in case it's contagious. It's not easy being a black girl whose skin is 84% white. She had a crush on seventeen-year-old Reggie Anderson but never thought he would notice her. Then he did: Lavender was very good at math and Reggie asked if she would tutor him. She readily agreed: tutoring was something she gladly did at church: this was just an extension. She went to his house and he raped her. In shock, she even allowed him to give her a lift home. Full Review

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Review of

The Figurine by Victoria Hislop

5star.jpg General Fiction

It was in 1968 that Helena McCloud made her first trip to Greece. She was alone: her mother, Greek by birth, had left the family home and refused to return, but Mary and Hamish (Helena's parents) felt that it would be a pity if Helena grew up without knowing her grandparents or understanding her Greek heritage. Her trip to the family apartment in up-market Kolonaki would be the first of several annual visits. She grew to love her grandmother and the family's maid, Dina, but was wary - and frightened - of her grandfather, retired general Stamatis Papagiannis. He was proud of his close connections to the Junta and expected his family to uphold his values but saw no reason to accommodate them. His prejudices included Helena's red hair and green eyes - inherited from her father's Scottish ancestors. Full Review

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Review of

After Death by Dean Koontz

3star.jpg General Fiction

Michael Mace, Head of Security, at a top secret biological research facility, is among 55 people who die when a virus is released in a bio-hazard accident. Finding himself in a makeshift mortuary, covered in plastic, he has a sense that something very, very bad has happened to him – and only him – as he sits up and looks around at the shrouded bodies of his dead friends and former colleagues. As he recovers his senses, he realises that there is something different about him; he can feel everything. Everything. Michael isn't Michael anymore. Full Review

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Review of

The Grave Listeners by William Frank

4star.jpg General Fiction

The village is isolated and poor. It's surrounded by a Witching Forest. And the villagers subsist largely by farming Uphegia plants - its bread-like fruit provides nutrition and its blossom provides herbal medicines. The black wood of the forest provides heat and warmth, roofs on homes, and even gallows, if needed. The fear of being buried alive is an existential superstition in the village and that is the reason Volushka, a drunken, self-indulgent, lazy lout of a man is tolerated. Full Review

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Review of

Semi-Detached by Deborah Stone

4star.jpg General Fiction

Bill and Amanda are living in a semi-detached house, stuck in a depressing rut of boredom and disappointment, when Terry and Fiona – glamorous, successful and very much in love – move in next door. Despite their different outlooks on life, the couples befriend each other and life appears to improve for both pairs. But all is not what it seems, and their increasingly interconnected relationships are fated for tragedy. Full Review

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Review of

The Silent Bride by Shalini Boland

3star.jpg General Fiction

Alice and Seth are a match made in heaven. He is everything she has been searching for; handsome, accomplished, clever, funny; total and utter husband-material. She is all he could possibly want in a wife; beautiful, successful, confident… and so the inevitable proposal is eagerly accepted by Alice and the wedding is planned and set. When the much-anticipated day arrives, Alice is walked down the aisle by her father, beaming with pride and excitement as she surveys the congregation – their friends assembled to celebrate this joyful day and when Seth turns to face his approaching bride, Alice's world implodes because she has absolutely no idea who the man at the altar is, who is waiting for her to become his wife. Full Review

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Review of

The Girls of Summer by Katie Bishop

5star.jpg General Fiction

It was the summer when Rachel Evans turned eighteen that she and Caroline went backpacking around Greece and arrived on the island. Rachel wasn't exactly innocent but she was, perhaps, naive, so when thirty-four-year-old Alistair Wright started to take an interest in her, she was flattered rather than wary. It was quite a while before he made any sort of physical approach to her and by that time she was obsessed by him. Alistair worked for Henry Taylor, looking after his interests on the island and in particular in the bar where all the girls either worked or partied. Full Review

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Review of

Three Graces by Amanda Craig

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

Few styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the state-of-the-nation novel. There's something so utterly compelling about any writer who can catch hold of the atmosphere of the day and capture it, crafting an image of the country as it stands in one particular moment. To say that Amanda Craig is skilled at doing this would be embarrassingly inadequate: she's practically synonymous with the genre of contemporary social fiction at this point. She has such a gift for weaving the ongoing issues of the day into the lives of her characters in a way that feels natural and lived-in, never making them ciphers for social commentary but instead fully realised people, grappling with issues far larger than themselves. Full Review

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Review of

Pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

Pineapple Street is the story of three women: Sasha, Darley and Georgiana. Darley and George are sisters and Sasha is married to their brother Cord. They're Stocktons, only Sasha isn't a Stockton by birth so she isn't readily accepted into the tribe. The problem's exacerbated when the clan matriarch, Tilda, asks Cord and Sasha if they'd like to move into the Pineapple Street property. Tilda and Chip have renovated and downsized to another property, a street or so away, which they own. They won't need any of the furniture from Pineapple Street, so Sasha and Cord can move straight in. Nominally, they had a choice but that wasn't the reality. Darley and Georgiana start to call Sasha 'the gold digger'. She's living in their family home. They use it so often that they abbreviate it to 'the GD'. Full Review

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Review of

One Puzzling Afternoon by Emily Critchley

4star.jpg Crime

84 year old Edie has lived in the same small town for almost her whole life, but now she is facing a move as her son wants to move to another house and bring Edie to live with his family, as Edie is starting to lose her memory. However, Edie is tormented by the memory of her childhood friend, Lucy, who went missing over 60 years ago, and the worry that there was a secret she was keeping for Lucy that somehow might be the thing that reveals the truth of what happened all that time ago. After 'seeing' Lucy in the high street, just as she was the last time she saw her, she starts to find pockets of memories coming back to her. And yet as she remembers the past, she is forgetting more and more in her day to day life. Will she uncover the truth about Lucy's disappearance before her move, and before her memories are gone forever? Full Review

0861546490.jpg

Review of

Thirst for Salt by Madelaine Lucas

5star.jpg Literary Fiction

Love, I'd 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 year-long relationship that once defined her. Overlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the affair with a man twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the summer after. Set against the backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town Thirst for Salt details the 24-year-old narrator's deepening relationship with her older lover, depicting its all-consuming nature, how it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably. Full Review

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Review of

The Garnett Girls by Georgina Moore

5star.jpg General Fiction

The love affair between Margo Garnett and poet Richard O'Leary was all-consuming, apparently on both sides. Margo was just sixteen when they fell in love. Richard was twenty-one and described by Margo's mother as 'an older man'. Her parents worried that Richard's influence would take her away from what they felt she could achieve - going to Oxford and having a glittering career. In the event, they eloped and Richard took her away from the Isle of Wight. Margo did go to Oxford and went on to become a well-respected journalist. The couple had three children: Rachel, Imogen and Sasha. Life was lived in London and holidays were spent at Sandcove, the family home on the Isle of Wight. Even then the doubts about Richard's drinking were never far from Margo's mind: she would never be able to leave him in charge.

Then Richard left them. Full Review

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Review of

Dashboard Elvis is Dead by David F Ross

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

I reviewed David F Ross's book There's Only One Danny Garvey a couple of years back and remember being absolutely floored by how powerful and affecting it was. It was a gripping, emotionally wounding read, and rereading my review of it my main takeaway was that I might not have lavished enough praise on it. Full Review

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Review of

Clara and Olivia by Lucy Ashe

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

The year is 1933. The place? Sadler's Wells. Ballerinas Clara and Olivia are sisters, twins no less. Identical on the outside but not, we learn, on the inside. And not on stage, either. Because there's a lot that builds a dancer. Some things that can be taught or learnt – discipline, attention to detail – and some things, that je ne sais quoi, that don't come from the classroom. A stage presence, a charm, a joie de vivre. The difference between a hard-worker, and a star. Full Review

0356519120.jpg

Review of

Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett

4star.jpg General Fiction

Emily Wilde is an expert academic scholar on faerie lore, and she has travelled extensively, and researched meticulously, to write her life's work, the very first encyclopaedia of faeries. Whilst she is brilliant at research and speaking to faeries, she is not so good with people. So when she finds herself far, far North in the small village of Hrafvsnik, having somehow offended the village matriarch, she is not sure what she has done, nor how to redeem herself and put her final investigations for her book back on the right track. Enter Wendell Bambleby, her dashingly handsome and insufferable rival who arrives unexpectedly, all charm and delight, much to Emily's frustration. But why is he here? What does he want? And what exactly is going on with the faerie folk around Hravsnik? Full Review

1398515388.jpg

Review of

The Boy and the Dog by Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

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. Full Review

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Review of

Mr Magenta by Christopher Bowden

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Christopher Bowden's latest novel is a patient untangling of a seemingly ordinary woman's life, carried out by her nephew after she has died. The aunt who always provided a safe harbour and a little bit of indulgence to a young nephew had had a much more interesting life than that nephew Stephen had ever realised and it seems to him an obligation to find it all out. Full Review

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Review of

Partitions of Unity by Jennifer Mason

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Here at Bookbag Towers, we first met Elizabeth Cromwell, dominatrix and unintentional detective in Preposterous, when she investigated and unravelled a series of disappearances. In Partitions of Unity, she sets her mind to solving a murder... Full Review

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Review of

The Daves Next Door by Will Carver

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Five strangers come together in one moment as a suicide bomber prepares to detonate his vest on a London tube line. As their fates overlap, the story is told in backwards order, leading up to the fateful moment. Full Review

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Review of

Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery by Jennifer Mason

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A struggling poetry zine, a mom-and-pop mobile diner in the Northern California redwoods, a 400-meter hurdler who just missed the 2004 Olympics, a women's track coach with a yen for bullwhips, a billionaire with a state-of-the-art S&M dungeon, a man serving a life sentence in Alabama, an enigmatic signature, K(s, x), on a cheap oil painting, an erotic art dealer in Georgia...

This is just a sample of the cast of characters and settings in Preposterous. As you can see, some keeping up will be required! The basic premise of this mystery story goes like this... Full Review

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Review of

The Calculations of Rational Men by Daniel Godfrey

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It's the 10th of December 1962 when we first meet Dr Joseph Marr. Just to put what happens in context, the Cuban missile crisis is still very fresh in people's minds. The world has barely had a chance to breathe out. But for Joe Marr, it's not the missile crisis that's at the front of his mind. He's been convicted of murder. With the current state of medical knowledge, it's hard to think otherwise than that the prosecution would never have been brought but Joe Marr has spent his first few days in HMP Queen's Bench, a relatively new prison. He's just getting used to his roommate, Mervyn, and learning to be wary of the McArthur brothers. Full Review

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