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[[Category:General Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]]__NOTOC__{{Frontpage|author=Onyi Nwabineli|title=Allow Me to Introduce Myself|rating=4.5|genre=General fictionFiction|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 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?|isbn=0861546873__NOTOC__}}{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Craig Silvey1529153298|title=Jasper JonesThe List of Suspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey|rating=45
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The title It's 1979 and central character of this bookMargaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. (A woman? I mean, Jasper Jones is a no-userhonestly...) She's not what's worrying Miv's family, a trouble-maker and hasthough. Women have been disappearing. Well, for some reason in his hour of needthey've been murdered, sought help from an unlikely sourcebut to have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. Charlie BucktinMiv's upset because she's overheard that her father wants to move the family 'Down South'. Charlie When you're from Yorkshire, Down South is a rather bookishfrightening, quietforeign place, unassuming teenagerbest avoided. And although both boys live in For Miv, the town of Corriganmove would mean leaving her best friend, until nowSharon, they havenand she't spoken a word ll do anything to each otherprevent that. They live in different worlds. Until now, She's not worried about the dangers or that isher Mum's stopped talking - to anyone.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099537540</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Thomas Mullen1035906708|title=The Many Deaths of the Firefly BrothersDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The country is in deep recession. The economy has collapsed. The banks are hated and there's 'the next round We tend to think of politicians, assuring us they were not afflicted by the same lack of vision Maria Callas as their predecessors'. Does this sound at all familiar? But just when you think you have strayed into the non-fiction aisleGreek, it all becomes clear. This is 1930s America - full of gangstersbut she was born to Greek parents in Manhattan, speakeasiesNew York, tommy guns, fedoras, beautiful heiresses, bumbling cops in December 1923 and the newly formed FBI, daring bank robberies and kidnapsonly moved to Athens when she was thirteen. Yes, the gang is all here, Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to 'Callas'The Many Deaths of 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 Firefly Brothers' is Nazi occupation by a lot more than your average gangster book mother who mercilessly exploited her and it's a hugely fun storymade no secret of her preference for her elder sister, Jackie.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007340826</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage
|author=Alexander McCall Smith
|title=The Dog Who Came In From The Cold (Corduroy Mansions)Perfect Passion Company
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=AhThe 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, bliss! 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. To sit down once more Katie is coming out of a break up with a bad boyfriend, and so jumps at the chance to come home to an Edinburgh. And so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith story , bringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, thanks to 44 Scotland Street and wish only for someone thoughtful the Isabel Dalhousie novels, but with some new characters who quickly begin to come charm. Katie has no experience in running a business, or in match-making, but Ness has full confidence in her abilities, and serve me tea there's always her very helpful (and biscuits whilst I read! We are backrather handsome) neighbour, once againWilliam, with the residents of Corduroy Mansions to earwig on their conversationslend a hand…|isbn=1846976596}}{{Frontpage|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, their private thoughts andhis house gets trashed. Oh, of courseand someone has delivered a really weird, disturbing coffin-sized object to catch up with what every onehis home, and it's favourite dogpossible that whoever or whatever was inside is the thing that has trashed his house! The thing is, Freddie de la HayBenny 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 getting up sent tohelp him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a good person. Written once again in serial format for The Daily Telegraph each short chapter Spike is a gemgoing to take care of Benny, and will certainly take care of Benny's enemies, if he, Benny, and all the characters we met previously in Corduroy Mansions Harper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are back again to entertain us.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846971616</amazonuk>1662500491
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Mari StrachanKatherine Howe|title=The Earth Hums in B FlatA True Account|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Choosing Hannah Masury is living in Boston, having been sent to live with a child as the viewpoint character of family who run an inn, and being made to work there from a novel requires confidence and imaginationyoung age. To succeed When she hears there is to convince the reader be a hanging of events at two levels – some pirates in the childtown, she decides to go and watch. Enthralled and horrified in equal measure, Hannah finds herself embroiled in a young boy's world within death at the adult world surrounding herhands of two vicious pirates. The very best novels about childhoodShe hides away, like say Harper Leeso that they don's classict find and kill her too, and then to escape them completely she runs away to sea, 'To Kill dressing as a Mockingbirdboy and joining the notorious Ned Low', also reflect s pirate ship as a wider cultural truthcabin boy. In 'The Earth Hums She soon finds herself in B Flat', a claustrophobic Welsh village the thick of things when there is both protection and straitjacket as the characters struggle to cope with their family secrets. If that sounds a bit tackymutiny on board, fear not, because and from there we are caught up in her rip roaring tale of life on the viewpoint character, Gwenni, is all whippet and sharp cornersocean waves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847673058</amazonuk>0861547438
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Brady Udall1471180158|title=The Lonely PolygamistMaybe Tomorrow|author=Penny Parkes
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Golden Richards bursts onto Jamie Matson works in an upper-class grocery store, for a man who's a control freak with all the printed pagesubtlety of a half brick. He is the central character and letJamie's be honestson, without him there would be no wivesBo, no children, no complicated domestic life - make that, domestic lives'has his problems'. Immediately I pictured Golden in my mindHe's eyeasthmatic and the more you read, as a Homer Simpson type - but with lots the more children. Heyou'll suspect that he's a bumbling, blustering, bear of a manon the autistic spectrum. ItSometimes Jamie needs to take time off at short notice - she's as if hea frequent flier in the local A&E and sometimes Bo's just 'turned not fit enough to go to school. Missed shifts or the need to be away on time to pick Bo up' for from school are occasions when Jamie can be controlled and put in the conception of his children, just idly ambled along when they were bornwrong. It was going to come to a head.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224078062</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Helen SlavinB0CKD1L5JL|title=The Stopping PlaceRadio Free Olympia|author=Jeffrey Dunn|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=How often do you pick up a book with no idea at all where it Petr is likely to lead? How often does such a book still have you wondering a hundred pages in? Not bemusedan orphan. Rescued by the strange, not lostreclusive Bear, absolutely sure that it he is going to lead somewherebrought up far from bustling cities and busy human society, but still with no clue as to exactly wherein the forests of Washington's Olympic Peninsula. How often do you get to the end of After Bear dies and a book brief sojourn in human company, and thinkarmed with only a pirate radio transmitter, simplyPetr goes on a journey through the forest, "Wow!"?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847391869</amazonuk>broadcasting the strange, wild and rarely heard voices he encounters.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Naomi AldermanSarah Marsh|title=The LessonsA Sign of Her Own
|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=James has been used to being very clever at schoolAfter a bout of scarlet fever as a child, Ellen Lark loses her hearing. Suddenly plunged into a world of silence, and it is everything about her life changes. Living in a shock for him time when he goes to Oxford University to find there are lots the use of people who are more able than he sign language was seen as something only savages do, Ellen is. He sent to a school where she is already struggling when he falls and seriously hurts his kneetaught to lip read, and he is also very lonelybut physically restrained from signing. Then he meets Jess From here, she ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who invites him to has been teaching the deaf and using a party at Mark’s housesystem called Visible Speech. Mark soon invites Jess At the same time, Bell is working on other inventions and ideas, James and other friends to move Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in to his run down mansiona complicated tangle of espionage.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0670916293</amazonuk>1035401614
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Christy LefteriB0BC3YTCMR|title=A Watermelon, a Fish and a BibleGood Girls Die|author=Ayura Ayira
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=It ''This story is 20 July 1974 in the small coastal town of Kyrenia, Cyprus. The radio continues to report that the Turkish forces did not manage to invade, and that they were thrown back into the sea, even as the Greek Cypriot population realises that they have been invaded. The story of this novel is set over just eight days, and is told from the alternating viewpoints of three charactersfor everyone.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849161275</amazonuk>}}''
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Diane Chamberlain1472263936|title=Before the Storm|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=We're first introduced to Laurel's son, Andy. He's a teenager with some sort of mental disorder. He's the pivotal character of the story and he's also the undisputed star. I recently read ''Henry's Sisters'' by Cathy Lamb and decided that every family should have a Henry. Now I'll enlarge on that by saying that every family should have a Henry - or an Andy. Both of these teenagers are 99% innocent and adorable - it's that other 1% that is worrying. Andy's descriptions of people, places and situations are truly unique. He has a language all of his own. So immediately, as a reader, I was drawn right into the world of Andy and therefore right into the heart of the story.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0778303381</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewThe Figurine|author=Ninni Holmqvist|title=The UnitVictoria Hislop
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Dorrit inhabits a world where society is split into two campsIt was in 1968 that Helena McCloud made her first trip to Greece. Not male or female She was alone: her mother, or young or oldGreek by birth, but those who are Necessary had left the family home and an asset refused to their communities versus those who are Dispensable return, but Mary and Hamish (Helena's parents) felt that it would be a drain on civilizationpity if Helena grew up without knowing her grandparents or understanding her Greek heritage. It’s not a birth right, nor a class firmly established from childhood, and everyone gets Her trip to the family apartment in up-market Kolonaki would be the chance to make a good go first of itseveral annual visits. But, if you’re a childless woman of 50, or a childless man of 60, She grew to love her grandmother and not working in a ‘needed’ industry your time is upthe family's maid, and you are quietlyDina, but was wary - and without any fussfrightened - of her grandfather, transported retired general Stamatis Papagiannis. He was proud of his close connections to a Second Reserve Bank Unit for Biological Material (‘the Unit’) where you will spend the rest of your days. Here you will participate in any number of psychological Junta and physiological experiments, donate cells for research and give up your body parts one by one as Needed people require expected his family to uphold his values but saw no reason to accommodate them, until the day of your final donation when you ultimately . His prejudices included Helena's red hair and rather ironically become a valuable member of society by losing your lifegreen eyes - inherited from her father's Scottish ancestors.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1851687440</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sue RulliereDean Koontz|title=Cinema BlueAfter Death|rating=43
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Frankie Michael Mace, Head of Security, at a top secret biological research facility, is among 55 people who die when a twenty nine year old woman living virus is released in Paris and working a bio-hazard accident. Finding himself in a supermarket while she tries to put her life back together after a split from her husband. The splitmakeshift mortuary, and what led up to itcovered in plastic, was clearly distressing, and exactly what happened is revealed through he has a series of flashbacks to the time when Frankie was Francescasense that something very, whose life was controlled by her husband, JP. The news that JP very bad has had an accident throws Frankie into confusion, because it seems that he turned happened to drink after she left him – and only him – as he sits up and she blames herselflooks around at the shrouded bodies of his dead friends and former colleagues. In the meantime As he recovers his senses, Frankie he realises that there is entering into a relationship with the enigmatic Antoine, who appears to be doing something rather strange in the flat below hersdifferent about him; he can ''feel'' everything. ''Everything''. Michael isn't ''Michael'' anymore. Will Frankie be able to retain her new identity? Will the relationship with Antoine go anywhere, or is he just as bad for her as JP was?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>190452947X</amazonuk>1662500467}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Bobbie DarbyshireB0BVDC2VWH|title=Love, Revenge and Buttered SconesThe Grave Listeners|author=William Frank
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Three people are travelling on The village is isolated and poor. It's surrounded by a train heading to InvernessWitching Forest. Their destination is And the town's library where villagers subsist largely by farming Uphegia plants - its bread-like fruit provides nutrition and its blossom provides herbal medicines. The black wood of the book group meets forest provides heat and warmth, roofs on the last Friday of each monthhomes, and even gallows, if needed. They each have their own reasons for going but none The fear of them realise being buried alive is an existential superstition in the village and that is the weekend reason Volushka, a drunken, self-indulgent, lazy lout of a man is going to have far reaching consequences for them alltolerated.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1905207379</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Christine Dwyer HickeyB0BYF82CXT|title=Last Train From LiguriaSemi-Detached|author=Deborah Stone
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The heroine ''Bill and Amanda are living in this novel is Bella. She's a rather unassuming young woman who has had semi-detached house, stuck in a rather unassuming childhood - save for the fact that she was motherless at an early age depressing rut of boredom and her relationship with the father is a little straineddisappointment, to say the least. Bella needs to breathe. So she leaves the drizzle of England for the blue skies when Terry and heat of Italy. Her father has propelled her into ''gentle'' employment there. She's tentative about the whole thing but warms to it by degrees.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1843549883</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=David Eagleman|title=Sum: Tales from the Afterlives|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=For some reason I find myself unable to start this review. So I'll mention this book starts with the endFiona – glamorous, successful and see where we go from therevery much in love – move in next door. Of courseDespite their different outlooks on life, that's the key – this book does just that – starts with the end of our human couples befriend each other and life here on Earth (or wherever you happen appears to be reading this) and posits forty possibilities of improve for both pairs. But all is not what happens thereafterit seems, in the hereafterand their increasingly interconnected relationships are fated for tragedy. It's not so much 'Five People You Meet in Heaven' as 'Forty Heavens you Might Meet People In'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847674283</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=John BuchanShalini Boland|title=Sick Heart RiverThe Silent Bride|rating=4.53
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=This was Alice and Seth are a surprise match made in heaven. He is everything she has been searching for me; handsome, accomplished, clever, funny; total and utter husband-material. It’s rare for She is all he could possibly want in a book to come to my attention from wife; beautiful, successful, confident… and so the inevitable proposal is eagerly accepted by Alice and the reviewing gods that’s a rerelease of a 1930s novel, wedding is planned and one that surfaced a couple of years ago nowset. But when it strikes me as startlingly ConradianWhen the much-anticipated day arrives, updated for Alice is walked down the timesaisle by her father, beaming with pride and perfectly able excitement as she surveys the congregation – their friends assembled to stand alongside one of literature’s greatscelebrate this joyful day and when Seth turns to face his approaching bride, then it’s just a sign those reviewing gods are on Alice's world implodes because she has absolutely no idea who the man at the ballaltar is, who is waiting for her to become his wife.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>184697030X</amazonuk>1662507089
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=David Sartof1787636003|title=River of Judgement|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=Finn Jackson is an oilman, an engineer and he's developed a new way of extracting oil which doesn't ravage the countryside in the way of traditional methods. He's set up a company to take advantage of this along with his friend Aaron Philips, who's the money man. He's short of an operations manager – and has been for a while – after the tragic death The Girls of Shufang Su in a site accident. She was a geologist but had apparently flouted safety regulations and you know that there are going to be repercussions from her death.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956415202</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewSummer|author=Robert Dickinson|title=The Noise of StrangersKatie Bishop|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=In a dystopian Brighton where It was the Council summer when Rachel Evans turned eighteen that she and Caroline went backpacking around Greece and arrived on the Amex company are the only major employersisland. Rachel wasn't exactly innocent but she was, perhaps, naive, and council departments have very different purposes so when thirty-four-year-old Alistair Wright started to those they have take an interest in our own country today - notably the sinister Parks - four couples share dinner parties and discuss as little as possibleher, due she was flattered rather than wary. It was quite a while before he made any sort of physical approach to the problems they have trusting each otherher and by that time she was obsessed by him. When a Councillor is killed in a car crash Alistair worked for Henry Taylor, looking after his interests on the island and one of in particular in the couples witness it, it triggers a by-election which leads to political manouevring which they're bar where all caught up inthe girls either worked or partied.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>095625151X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Assaf GavronAmanda Craig|title=Croc-AttackThree Graces
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Eitan Enoch is known as Croc to his friendsFew styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the state-of-the-nation novel. There's a good reason but it's something so utterly compelling about to become rather more famous than Croc would like. It's begins on any writer who can catch hold of the morning that he takes his regular bus to work – atmosphere of the Little Number 5 – day and a fellow passenger worries about capture it, crafting an image of the dark-skinned man with a suit bag whocountry as it stands in one particular moment. To say that Amanda Craig is skilled at doing this would be embarrassingly inadequate: she's sitting practically synonymous with the genre of contemporary social fiction at this point. She has such a gift for weaving the front. Just before Croc gets off at his stop he asks why people are so paranoid ongoing issues of the day into the lives of her characters in a way that feels natural and wonders whether it's impossible lived-in, never making them ciphers for dark-skinned guys social commentary but instead fully realised people, grappling with suit bags to get on buses any moreissues far larger than themselves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0007327463</amazonuk>140871468X
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Heather Gudenkauf152915118X|title=The Weight of SilencePineapple Street|author=Jenny Jackson
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=On a hot August morning in ''Pineapple Street'' is the small town story of Willow Creekthree women: Sasha, Iowa, Calli Clark Darley and Georgiana. Darley and Petra Gregory George are reported missingsisters and Sasha is married to their brother Cord. They are both seven years old'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, live in asks Cord and Sasha if they'd like to move into the same Pineapple Street property. Tilda and Chip have renovated and downsized to another property, a streetor so away, which they own. They won't need any of the furniture from Pineapple Street, so Sasha and are Cord can move straight in. Nominally, they had a choice but that wasn't the very best of friendsreality. Calli has suffered from selective mutism from Darley and Georgiana start to call Sasha 'the age of four when she witnessed a traumatic event gold digger'. She's living in her ''their'' family home. As a result Petra has become Calli’s voice, speaking for her and is even able They use it so often that they abbreviate it to tell others what Calli is thinking'the GD'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0778303691</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Katherine Hall PageEmily Critchley|title=The Body in the BasementOne Puzzling Afternoon
|rating=4
|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=The central character with 84 year old Edie has lived in the unforgettable name of Pix same small town for almost her whole life, but now she is one of those 'apple pie' moms. The 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 lifememory. Every summerHowever, most members de-camp to Edie is tormented by the coastmemory of her childhood friend, Lucy, to get away from it allwho went missing over 60 years ago, recharge and the batteriesworry 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. But this particular yearAfter 'seeing' Lucy in the high street, Pix notesjust as she was the last time she saw her, is going she starts to be a ''summer find pockets of womenmemories coming back to her.'' Pix is a middle-aged, middle-of-And yet as she remembers the-roadpast, ordinary person she is forgetting more and more in her day to day life... until Will she makes some gruesome discoveries.uncover the truth about Lucy's disappearance before her move, and before her memories are gone forever?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0709090390</amazonuk>1804181250
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Madelaine Lucas
|title=Thirst for Salt
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|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.|isbn=0861546490}}{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Aifric Campbell0008506337|title=The Loss AdjustorGarnett Girls|author=Georgina Moore|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=CaroThe 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 job is to mother as 'adjustan older man' people. Her parents worried that Richard's losses. Working for a large insurance company, influence would take her away from what they felt she deals day could achieve - going to day with people grieving for their lost or stolen belongingsOxford and having a glittering career. Digital cameras with priceless honeymoon photos In the event, laptops with work files they eloped and engagement ringsRichard took her away from the Isle of Wight. It's Caro's responsibility Margo did go to assess the case Oxford and decide went on whether to financially reimburse or notbecome a well-respected journalist. But Caro knows well that sometimes it's not about the money The couple had three children: Rachel, Imogen and Sasha. Her job requires emotional sensitivity Life was lived in London and holidays were spent at Sandcove, the family home on the sort Isle of manner that invites people to open up Wight. Even then the doubts about Richard's drinking were never far from Margo's mind: ''she would never be able to you. Her years of experience have made her an expert leave him in dealing with everyone elsecharge''s loss. But not her own.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687306</amazonuk>}}
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=David Abbott1914585402|title=The Upright Piano PlayerDashboard Elvis is Dead|author=David F Ross|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The central character, one Mr Henry Cage (heI reviewed David F Ross's book [[There's Only One Danny Garvey by David F Ross|There'd approve s Only One Danny Garvey]] a couple of the courteous form of address) is white, middle-aged years back and remember being absolutely floored by how powerful and middle-classaffecting it was. He appears to have It was a perfectgripping, enviable life. Reaping the substantial rewards of a successful businessemotionally wounding read, he's acquired along the way a lovely London home, a wife and a family. All boxes ticked, you'd thinkrereading my review of it my main takeaway was that I might not have lavished enough praise on it.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906694842</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Joanna DaviesLucy Ashe|title=FreshersClara and Olivia|rating=34.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Going to Uni The year is meant to be one of 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 best times of your lifeinside.And not on stage, either.Because there's a lot that builds a dancer.Some things that first taste of freedom from your familycan be taught or learnt – discipline, learning independenceattention to detail – and some things, meeting new friends and discovering who you arethat ''je ne sais quoi'', that don't come from the classroom. OhA stage presence, a charm, and a little studying of course! This book charts the first 'fresher' year of three students, Lois, Cerys and Hywel who are studying at Aberystwyth University during 1991/1992joie de vivre''. I was interested because I did my first degree just The difference between a couple of years after thishard-worker, and also I studied a post grad at Aberystwyth. Turns out this wasn't exactly a nice happy trip down memory lane however..star.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1906784140</amazonuk>0861544080
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=D J TaylorHeather Fawcett|title=Ask AliceEmily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The central character AliceEmily Wilde is an expert academic scholar on faerie lore, and she has had a humble start in travelled extensively, and researched meticulously, to write her life but ' ... s work, the silence very first encyclopaedia of the Kansas flat ..faeries. Whilst she is brilliant at research and the distant murmur of the freight trains ' speaking to faeries, she is not for herso good with people. She dreams of So when she finds herself far, far North in the bright lights small village of Hrafvsnik, having somehow offended the big cities and although village matriarch, she is naive and unworldlynot sure what she has done, fancies nor how to redeem herself as an actress. Painful and difficult decisions are made as she reaches put her final investigations for her goalbook back on the right track. Her talent Enter Wendell Bambleby, her dashingly handsome and insufferable rival who arrives unexpectedly, all charm and resourcefulness see her through; give her a modest roof above her head in this precarious professiondelight, 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?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099531984</amazonuk>0356519120
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Rhys Thomas1398515388|title=The Suicide ClubBoy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=TeensGeneral Fiction|summary=Craig BartlettFirst 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 -Taylorsix 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 third attempt at killing himself is nearly successful – except when he announces in class comment that he's taken a whole bottle of pills, new boy Frederick Spaulding-Carter steps in and saves would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his life. Freddy attains instant celebrity as a hero, car door and our narrator Richard Harper is as impressed as anyone elseTamon the dog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0552774979</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Richard FlanaganChristopher Bowden|title=WantingMr Magenta
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Read the blurb on the back Christopher Bowden's latest novel is a patient untangling of Flanagana seemingly ordinary woman's ''Wantinglife,'' carried out by her nephew after she has died. The aunt who always provided a safe harbour and you'll think it's the usual post colonial tale a little bit of Britain as enemy number one, ''wanting'' indulgence to impose its rule on everyone else. In a way it is such young nephew had had a tale, but what makes it much more interesting is the story of a little girl caught up in the wider historical eventslife than that nephew Stephen had ever realised and it seems to him an obligation to find it all out.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848870779</amazonuk>B0B6Z9VJDW
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Patricia DunckerJennifer Mason|title=The Strange Case Partitions of the Composer and His JudgeUnity
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=It's rural FranceHere at Bookbag Towers, we first met Elizabeth Cromwell, dominatrix and 2000 is barely begununintentional detective in [[Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery by Jennifer Mason|Preposterous]], when hunters come across she investigated and unravelled a spread series of human corpses in the mountainsdisappearances. Several familiesIn ''Partitions of Unity'', all in the same cult, seem she sets her mind to have killed themselves on their path to wherever. If so, this is solving a problem, for the last time it happened, in Switzerland a few years previous, nobody could work out why – and who was there to dispose of some of the evidencemurder. This isn't a problem for the policeman involved, as he fell desperately in love with the investigative judge in collaborating on the initial case. Combining again, they see a link with everybody involved in both cases, a famous conductor /composer.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408807041</amazonuk>B09LQR9FRF
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sylvie NickelsWill Carver|title=Long ShadowsThe Daves Next Door|rating=3.54
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=We first met Minkie and Mike Five strangers come together in [[Another Kind of Loving by Sylvie Nickels|Another Kind of Loving]] when Mike, one moment as a reporter in war-torn Sarajevo rescued Jasminka from an orphanage and brought her back suicide bomber prepares to leafy Oxfordshiredetonate his vest on a London tube line. He and his wife, SaraAs their fates overlap, fostered the girlstory is told in backwards order, who was known as Minkie because few people could pronounce her real name. They gave her love, security and the opportunity leading up to turn into a beautiful, confident young woman, but whose heart was torn between the family who had done so much for her and her native Sarajevofateful moment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0951867024</amazonuk>1914585186}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Paolo GiordanoJennifer Mason|title=The Solitude of Prime NumbersPreposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=''The Concert Ticket'' follows the lives of A struggling poetry zine, a family mom-and-pop mobile diner in Soviet Russia who have grown desperately distant from one another. Sergei, the fatherNorthern California redwoods, is a frustrated musician 400-meter hurdler who longs to play just missed the pre2004 Olympics, a women's track coach with a yen for bullwhips, a billionaire with a state-revolutionary masterpieces of composers like Igor Selinsky but is forced to play -the kind of patriotic ditties he despises. His schoolteacher wife-art S&M dungeon, Annaa man serving a life sentence in Alabama, longs for his lovean enigmatic signature, but is never quite able to get his attention with her shy gestures. Their shiftless sonK(s, Alexanderx), has quietly given up going to school and spends his days hanging around the parkon a cheap oil painting, consorting with undesirablesan erotic art dealer in Georgia... Also living in their house is Anna's silent, elderly mother.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670918482</amazonuk>}}'
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Elizabeth SpellerB0B2N7MVYM|title=The Return of Captain John Emmett|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Laurence Bartram has survived the war, but his life has changed dramatically. It will never be the same again. It's almost as if he doesn't recognize himself. Domestic life is now non-existent and he has no-one to please but himself. He is unsettled and edgy. War has obviously left its mark. He retreats graciously and wonders what he'll do with the rest Calculations of his life. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844086070</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewRational Men|author=Nick Hornby|title=Juliet, NakedDaniel Godfrey
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=A cleverIt's the 10th of December 1962 when we first meet Dr Joseph Marr. Just to put what happens in context, comic delight, pitch-perfect, astutely observed, particularly insightful, must-readthe Cuban missile crisis is still very fresh in people's minds. CrumbsThe world has barely had a chance to breathe out. Whatever else is there to say about Nick HornbyBut for Joe Marr, it's latest book not the missile crisis that isn't already plastered on this newly-published paperback edition? s at the front of his mind. I can only report that He''Juliets 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''Naked'' bowled me over with yet another Hornby strikes just getting used to his roommate, Mervyn, and learning to be wary of the McArthur brothers.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141020644</amazonuk>
}}
