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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=EL James1529153298|title=Fifty Shades Of GreyThe List of Suspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=When college student Ana steps in at the last minute to cover an interview of a local tycoon for the uni paperIt's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. (A woman? I mean, she never imagines how honestly...) She's not what is supposed to be a one off meeting will change her life completely over the months to come's worrying Miv's family, though. Women have been disappearing. She has no plans or expectations to see him again Well, they've been murdered, but Christian Grey knows what he wants and takes great pains to get it, have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so with Ana now next on his list of target acquisitions, frightening. Miv's upset because she has very little hope of escaping unscathed's overheard that her father wants to move the family 'Down South'. Swiftly realising that he When you're from Yorkshire, Down South is not your average wealthy bachelora frightening, Ana falls head first into a foreign and confusing new world she has no clue how to navigateplace, best avoided. With pressure on to sign on For Miv, the dotted line or leave and never returnmove would mean leaving her best friend, Ana has to decide how far she’s willing to go to follow her heartSharon, and when she should listen 'll do anything to prevent that. She's not worried about the screaming voices in dangers or that her head insteadMum's stopped talking - to anyone. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099579936</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage|isbn=1035906708|title=Diva|author=Daisy Goodwin|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|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.}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=John IrvingAlexander McCall Smith|title=In One PersonThe Perfect Passion Company
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=''In One Person'' The Perfect Passion Company is a sensitive story of sexual identitydating agency in Edinburgh, narrated 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 bisexual writer who trip to Canada to get away for a while. Katie is now in his later years, recalling not only his own coming to terms out of a break up with his sexuality a bad boyfriend, and attraction so jumps at the chance to come home to Edinburgh. And so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us to menan Edinburgh we already love, women thanks to 44 Scotland Street and transgenders while at school the Isabel Dalhousie novels, but with some new characters who quickly begin to charm. Katie has no experience in running a New England schoolbusiness, or in match-making, but also his later years and the devastating impact of the AIDS virus Ness has full confidence in 1980s America. At times the content is quite graphicher abilities, but John Irving captures the outsiderand there's feelings beautifully in this tale of secrecy in always her very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, William, to lend a confusing world of identity.hand…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857520962</amazonuk>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, 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.|isbn=1662500491}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Wiley CashKatherine Howe|title=A Land More Kind Than HomeTrue Account
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=In Hannah Masury is living in Boston, having been sent to live with a small town in western North Carolina family who run an inn, and being made to work there was from a storefront church with newspapers across the windows so that no one could see inyoung age. Adelaide Lyle remembered When she hears there is to days when it was be a storehanging of some pirates in the town, as well as the days when she used decides to attend the church regularlygo and watch. Enthralled and horrified in equal measure, but after a woman died Hannah finds herself embroiled in a young boy'healings death at the hands of two vicious pirates. She hides away, so that they don' ritual which involved a snake t find and kill her body was left in her garden too, and then to escape them completely she decided that she couldn't attend runs away to sea, dressing as a boy and nor could she allow joining the townnotorious Ned Low's children to run the riskpirate ship as a cabin boy. For She soon finds herself in the thick of things when there is a while this separation worked reasonably well until a series of incidentsmutiny on board, many quite small and from there we are caught up in themselves, provoked a tragedyher rip roaring tale of life on the ocean waves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857520806</amazonuk>0861547438
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Andrew Nicoll1471180158|title=If You're Reading This, I'm Already DeadMaybe Tomorrow|author=Penny Parkes|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The story at Jamie Matson works in an upper-class grocery store, for a man who's a control freak with all the heart subtlety of Andrew Nicolla half brick. Jamie's son, Bo, 'has his problems'If You. He're Reading Thiss asthmatic and the more you read, I'm Already Deadthe more you'' is bizarre but not entirely of Nicollll suspect that he's own creationon the autistic spectrum. It is narrated by German Sometimes Jamie needs to take time off at short notice -born Otto Witte, who is rapidly recording she's a strange time in his life while Allied bombs are falling frequent flier in World War Two Germany, although the events that he relates go back to 1913 when Otto was an acrobat working in a travelling circus currently in Buda, or perhaps Pest - helocal A&E and sometimes Bo's not quite sure. In addition fit enough to go to his acrobatic skills, he is also blessed with an impressive set of whiskers which make him the dead ringer for the newly appointed Turkish King of Albaniaschool. If only he can get there before Missed shifts or the claimant need to the crown, perhaps he be away on time to pick Bo up from school are occasions when Jamie can steal the country be controlled and complete an unlikely rise put in statusthe wrong. In the company of his pal, Max, It was going to come to a strongman, a blind mind-reader and his beautiful daughter, an exotic dancer and a purloined camel, what could possibly go wrong?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857384937</amazonuk>head.
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Asko SahlbergB0CKD1L5JL|title=The BrothersRadio Free Olympia|author=Jeffrey Dunn
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=We're in Petr is an orphan. Rescued by the family home of Erikstrange, reclusive Bear, in Finlandhe is brought up far from bustling cities and busy human society, in 1809. It's large enough to have been the most impressive farmstead when his mother was taken there as a young bride, and she still lives there, with an elderly retainer, Erik, Erikforests of Washington's untrusting wife and some other servantsOlympic Peninsula. One night the brother of the family, Henrik, returnsAfter Bear dies and a brief sojourn in human company, and all the bad blood gets spilled. Not just about armed with only a neighbour's horse and hotheaded plans for itpirate radio transmitter, not just over Petr goes on a marriagejourney through the forest, and not even about broadcasting the fact that when Sweden strange, wild and Russia fought over Finland and the territory changed hands, the brothers were on opposing sidesrarely heard voices he encounters.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>095628406X</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jennifer EganSarah Marsh|title=The Invisible CircusA Sign of Her Own
|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=Set in 1978After a bout of scarlet fever as a child, 18-year old Phoebe is living with Ellen Lark loses her mother in San Franciscohearing. Her father died some years ago Suddenly plunged into a world of silence, before everything about her elder sister, Faithlife changes. Living in a time when the use of sign language was seen as something only savages do, Ellen is sent to a charismatic idealist and true child of the 1960s left for Europe school where she died is taught to lip read, but physically restrained from signing. From here, she ends up in 1970another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the deaf and using a system called Visible Speech. Faith was always her father's favourite, While Phoebe's older brother, Barry At the same time, Bell is now a computer millionaireworking on other inventions and ideas, on leaving high school Phoebe decides on and Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a whim to follow her sister's path to Europe in the hope complicated tangle of finding what happened in Italy and to finally understand her beloved sister's actionsespionage.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1780331223</amazonuk>1035401614
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B0BC3YTCMR
|title=Good Girls Die
|author=Ayura Ayira
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=''This story is not for everyone.''
{{newreview|author=Kirsten Tranter|title=A Common Loss|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=There were five friends - DylanLavender Daniels was three weeks short of her fifteenth birthday when The Incident happened. She was a very bright student, Brian, Tallisa bit too nerdy if truth be told, Cameron and Elliot suffered from vitiligo - but then Dylan was killed people were afraid to hug her in case it's contagious. It's not easy being a road accident and the remaining four black girl whose skin is 84% white. She had to come to terms with how the dynamics of the group had changeda crush on seventeen-year-old Reggie Anderson but never thought he would notice her. Dylan had always been the fixer, the solver Then he did: Lavender was very good at math and the mediatorReggie asked if she would tutor him. He'd been the one the other four had gone to when they had problems because he'd always come up with She readily agreed: tutoring was something and it she gladly did at church: this was usually just an ingenious solutionextension. It wasn't until after Dylan's death that the four friends realised that Dylan knew their dirtiest secrets - She went to his house and that someone else had access he raped her. In shock, she even allowed him to all the informationgive her a lift home.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857382756</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Paul Broderick1472263936|title=The Bankruptcy DiariesFigurine|author=Victoria Hislop|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=In 2000, Paul Livingson graduated from university and got his It was in 1968 that Helena McCloud made her first proper grown up jobtrip to Greece. By 2007 he She was alone: her mother, Greek by birth, had filed for bankruptcy. With no failed businessesleft the family home and refused to return, unfortunate property depreciation but Mary and Hamish (Helena's parents) felt that it would be a pity if Helena grew up without knowing her grandparents or poor stock understanding her Greek heritage. Her trip to the family apartment in up-market investments in between you might Kolonaki would be at a loss the first of several annual visits. She grew to see how he ended up therelove her grandmother and the family's maid, Dina, but was wary - and frightened - of her grandfather, until you read retired general Stamatis Papagiannis. He was proud of his diary of those years 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 it all becomes crystal cleargreen eyes - inherited from her father's Scottish ancestors.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956511937</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage|author=Dean Koontz|title=After Death|rating=3|genre=General Fiction|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.|isbn=1662500467}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Francis GilbertB0BVDC2VWH|title=The Last Day of TermGrave Listeners|author=William Frank|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The village is isolated and poor. It's surrounded by a Witching Forest. And the last day villagers subsist largely by farming Uphegia plants - its bread-like fruit provides nutrition and its blossom provides herbal medicines. The black wood of term at the Gilda Ball Academyforest provides heat and warmth, roofs on homes, and English teacher Martin can't wait for the holiday to starteven gallows, if needed. Shaken by the death The fear of his friend Jack being buried alive is an existential superstition in the village and that is the reason Volushka, a riot at the schooldrunken, he's failed to notice his marriage falling to pieces and his relationship with his son deteriorating. Just when he thinks things can't get any worseself-indulgent, an anonymous pupil accuses him lazy lout of inappropriate sexual conducta man is tolerated.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906021511</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Evonne WarehamB0BYF82CXT|title=Never Coming HomeSemi-Detached|author=Deborah Stone|rating=3.54|genre=CrimeGeneral Fiction|summary=Kaz Elmore has almost come to terms with her daughter's death. She died while on holiday 'Bill and Amanda are living in a semi-detached house, stuck in America with her father (Kaz's ex husband) a depressing rut of boredom and disappointment, when Terry and her ashes have been scattered on the river. As tragic as it isFiona – glamorous, Kaz has no alternative but to accept that her daughter is never coming backsuccessful and very much in love – move in next door. HoweverDespite their different outlooks on life, one day she receives a visit from a man called Devlin, who witnessed the accident couples befriend each other and was holding Jamie when she diedlife appears to improve for both pairs. His sole intention But all is to provide some comfort for Kaz by telling her that her daughter was not alone but when he spots photographs of Jamiewhat it seems, he realises that she is not the child who died in his armsand their increasingly interconnected relationships are fated for tragedy.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906931704</amazonuk>''
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Andrea EamesShalini Boland|title=The Cry of the Go-Away BirdSilent Bride
|rating=3
|genre=General Fiction
|summary='The Cry of 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 Go-Away Bird' inevitable proposal is eagerly accepted by Alice and the debut novel from Andrea Eameswedding is planned and set. It revolves around Elise When the much-anticipated day arrives, a white Zimbabwean girl living through Alice is walked down the aisle by her teens on father, beaming with pride and excitement as she surveys the eve of the Mugabe-sponsored farm invasions at the beginning of congregation – their friends assembled to celebrate this century. The author herself grew up in Zimbabwe before moving joyful day and when Seth turns to New Zealand with her family face his approaching bride, Alice's world implodes because she has absolutely no idea who the man at the age of seventeen and there altar is a strong sense of memoir and personal experience in the novel, which has both positive and negative effects on the narrativewho is waiting for her to become his wife.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846553733</amazonuk>1662507089
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Alexander McCall Smith1787636003|title=The Saturday Big Tent Wedding PartyGirls of Summer|author=Katie Bishop
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Alexander McCall Smith makes it look 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 easywhen thirty-four-year-old Alistair Wright started to take an interest in her, churning out book after delightful book that continue she was flattered rather than wary. It was quite a while before he made any sort of physical approach to delight her and amuse his loyal readersby that time she was obsessed by him. His writing seems effortlessAlistair worked for Henry Taylor, looking after his interests on the island and in this story, once again, particular in the characters remain bar where all the wonderful friends we have always known and expected them to be, as if they really are alive and living these stories somewhere and AMS is simply transcribing them for our pleasuregirls either worked or partied.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0349123136</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Rosie DastgirAmanda Craig|title=A Small FortuneThree Graces
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Harris Anwar is truly a man who is split between two worlds. He's a British Pakistani, proud Few styles of his Eastern roots, but when he came to contemporary fiction interest me like the UK he changed his name from Haaris state- with a long, flat vowel of- to the more acceptable Harris and his clothing was that favoured by an English gentleman-nation novel. HeThere's proud and he would say many reasons to be proud. Some something so utterly compelling about any writer who can catch hold of the things atmosphere of which he's proud are relatively small - the vacuum cleaner which he's had for twenty years might not work particularly wellday and capture it, but he's proud that he's hung on to crafting an image of the country as itstands in one particular moment. HeTo say that Amanda Craig is skilled at doing this would be embarrassingly inadequate: she's proud practically synonymous with the genre of his car, contemporary social fiction at this point. She has such a gift for weaving the central heating which he installed himself and most ongoing issues of all he's proud the day into the lives of his daughterher 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.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857383736</amazonuk>140871468X
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=David Nicholls152915118X|title=One DayPineapple Street|author=Jenny Jackson|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=I knew within the first ten pages that I was going to love ''One DayPineapple Street''. It is the only book that has kept me up at nightstory of three women: Sasha, distracted me throughout the day Darley and Georgiana. Darley and George are sisters and woken me up early in 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 morningtribe. I couldn The problem't put it downs exacerbated when the clan matriarch, Tilda, asks Cord and didnSasha if they't want d like to eithermove into the Pineapple Street property. I Tilda and Chip have always found it difficult renovated and downsized to settle on another property, a favourite type street or so away, which they own. They won't need any of storythe furniture from Pineapple Street, so Sasha and Cord can move straight in. Nominally, or even they had a specific genre that I like, choice but this novel made me realise that what I want in a book is realismwasn't the reality. As Dexter Mayhew Darley and Emma Morley enjoyed Georgiana start to call Sasha 'the gold digger'. She's living in ''their late night conversation in '' family home. They use it so often that they abbreviate it to 'the opening moments of the book, Nicholls pulled me into his worldGD'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340896981</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Emily Critchley
|title=One Puzzling Afternoon
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|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 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?
|isbn=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''
{{newreview|author=John Green|title=The Fault in Our Stars|rating=5|genre=Teens|summary=Having been diagnosed at age 12 with stage 4 thyroid cancer, Hazel was prepared to die. Then at age 14Told from a retrospective view, a miracle treatment shrunk young woman unravels the tumours in year-long relationship that once defined her lungs...for Overlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the time being. Hazel could live for affair with a man twenty years, or she could die at any time, but her days are spent tethered senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the summer after. Set against the backdrop of an oxygen tank and under constant surveillance and treatment to keep isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the cancer at bay. Hazel is now 16. With 24-year-old narrator's deepening relationship with her life in a constant holding patternolder lover, Hazel meets Augustus Waters at a cancer support group. Augustus is gorgeous, sharpdepicting its all-wittedconsuming nature, in remission how it changed her perspective on both romantic and completely attracted to Hazel. As their relationship blossoms familial relationships and grows, Hazel finds she has to re-examine how it altered her attitude about life and death, illness and wellness and love. Their brief journey together leaves a lasting legacy behind that will change everythingirrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0525478817</amazonuk>0861546490
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ken MacLeod0008506337|title=IntrusionThe Garnett Girls|author=Georgina Moore
|rating=5
|genre=Science General Fiction|summary=Pregnant Hope doesnThe love affair between Margo Garnett and poet Richard O't want to take the FixLeary was all-consuming, a genetic cureapparently on both sides. Margo was just sixteen when they fell in love. Richard was twenty-all pill one and described by Margo's mother as 'an older man'. Her parents worried that corrects Richard's influence would take her away from what they felt she could achieve - going to Oxford and having a glittering career. In the DNA of an unborn child event, they eloped and protects it Richard took her away from all sorts the Isle of diseasesWight. Hope's husband Hugh doesn't really understand her objections Margo did go to Oxford and went on to the Fix become a well- respected journalist. The couple had three children: Rachel, Imogen and Sasha. Life was lived in factLondon and holidays were spent at Sandcove, Hope the family home on the Isle of Wight. Even then the doubts about Richard's drinking were never really articulates them at all - but supports her right far from Margo's mind: ''she would never be able to chooseleave him in charge''. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1841499390</amazonuk>}}
{{newreview|author=Etgar Keret|title=Suddenly, a Knock on the Door |rating=4|genre=Short Stories|summary=In the opening, titular story, Keret is forced by several people to create, and alter, a short short storyThen Richard left them. It's a plain metaphor for the history of Israel, but it proves that this modern Scheherazade is not too far removed geographically from the original. And what follows are probably the sort of short, tantalising, open-ended, rough-round-the-edges and surreal results of being compelled to carry on telling tall tales on a nightly basis.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701186674</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Anne Tyler1914585402|title=The Beginner's GoodbyeDashboard Elvis is Dead|author=David F Ross
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=AaronI reviewed David F Ross's wife, Dorothy, was killed in an accident. An oak tree fell on their home, demolishing the sun porch where Dorothy happened to be at the time. He worried that if he had done things differently (book [[There's Only One Danny Garvey by David F Ross|There's Only One Danny Garvey]] a matter couple of some biscuits years back and remember being absolutely floored by how powerful and a television set) Dorothy might not have been where she affecting it was and might still be alive and for a while he camped out in the wrecked house until further damage forced him to move in with his sister. It was then that he realised that Dorothy wasn't really dead - wella gripping, not dead as we understand it - as she materialised in odd placesemotionally wounding read, wearing the clothes she used to wear and eventually staying with Aaron for longer periods rereading my review of timeit my main takeaway was that I might not have lavished enough praise on it. And gradually they began to bicker, just like a long-married couple...|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701187190</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Elizabeth HaynesLucy Ashe|title=Revenge of the TideClara and Olivia
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=Genevieve worked as a sales executive by day and a pole dancer by night but her dream was to buy and renovate a boat where she could live. That was why she persisted in the pressured, chauvinistic world of software sales and the increasingly sleazy world of the private gentleman's club where she could earn a four figure sum each evening as well as getting a good workout. It was nip-and-tuck as to whether or not she made it but after a few months on the boat at a marina on the Medway she was feeling good enough about her life to hold a boat-warming party. It was planned as a mixture of the people she'd met at the marina and some of her sales colleagues from London. But on the night of the party a body washed up at the side of her boat and Genevieve knew the victim.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956792642</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Sofka Zinovieff
|title=The House on Paradise Street
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Maud Perifanis wasnThe year is 1933. The place? Sadler't unduly worried when her husband didn't return home one evening as he often stayed in his office when he was working s Wells. Ballerinas Clara and Olivia are sisters, twins no less. Identical on the news that he had been killed in a car accidentoutside but not, we learn, well out of Athens on the Saronic Gulfinside. And not on stage, was either. Because there's a shock lot that builds a dancer. Some things that can be taught or learnt – discipline, attention to everyone in the house on Paradise Street where the extended family lived. Nikitas had been brought up by his aunt Alexandra detail – and her husband and she now lived in one apartmentsome things, that ''je ne sais quoi'', Orestes (his son that don't come from his second marriage) in the studio and heclassroom. A stage presence, a charm, Maud and their daughter Tig lived in a third apartment. There was someone missing though. Antigone was Alexandra's sister - and Nikitas' mother - but shejoie de vivre'd left Greece for Russia when he was three and he hadn't seen her since. She was over eighty when she heard the news The difference between a hard-worker, and she came back for the funerala star.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1907595694</amazonuk>0861544080
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Francois LelordHeather Fawcett|title=Hector Finds Time (HectorEmily Wilde's Journeys)Encyclopaedia of Faeries
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=MeetEmily Wilde is an expert academic scholar on faerie lore, and she has travelled extensively, and researched meticulously, if you havento write her life't alreadys work, Hector the psychiatristvery first encyclopaedia of faeries. He's like a champagne cork, Whilst she is brilliant at research and when something prays on his mind a lot POP he's off on a global trip speaking to set things rightfaeries, she is not so good with people. AndSo when she finds herself far, like a champagne cork let off far North in a posh place, he'll likely crash through a chandelier the small village of scintillatingHrafvsnik, interesting little pointshaving somehow offended the village matriarch, scattering them leftshe is not sure what she has done, right nor how to redeem herself and centre, and creating a pretty, if random, pattern put her final investigations for her book back on the book pageright track. This time it isEnter Wendell Bambleby, erher dashingly handsome and insufferable rival who arrives unexpectedly, time. From patients worried they've none leftall charm and delight, much to those who want to grow up faster, and those putting anti-ageing cream on crowsEmily'-feets frustration. But why is he here? What does he want? And what exactly is going on with the best approach to spending, passing and perhaps not worrying about, timefaerie folk around Hravsnik?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1906040893</amazonuk>0356519120
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Alexander McCall Smith1398515388|title=The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection: The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency, Book 13Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Those First of you who are frequent visitors to 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 Bookbag will know that I am a big fan deaths were uncountable, and the loss of Alexander McCall Smith's writinglivelihoods was widespread. I am supremely happy The fact that he continues to write so regularly and reliably, providing me with much looked forward to reading matter several times through many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the yeartsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. This time itHe wasn't a dog person but the convenience store owner's the turn of Mma Ramotswe comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to slip back into my mind as we read of her detecting adventures in this, open his car door and Tamon the thirteenth book dog jumped in the series.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408702606</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Deborah MoggachChristopher Bowden|title=The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel|rating=3|genre=Women's Fiction|summary=When Ravi and his cousin Sonny decide to open the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel in Bangalore as a retirement home, they don't know whether they will get any takers. However, by advertising it as a newly restored palatial hotel that will provide a life of leisure, good weather and mango gin, they soon get a great deal of interest and are welcoming their new residents. Evelyn, Madge, Dorothy, Norman and all of the others who decide to move to the hotel have their own reasons for leaving Britain but they are all excited by the new opportunity and the lease of new life that it could provide.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099572028</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Anuradha Roy|title=The Folded EarthMr Magenta|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Set in Christopher Bowden's latest novel is a remote hill top town in the Himalayas where the earth has folded to create the majestic scenery, patient untangling of a young seemingly ordinary woman, Maya, recently widowed arrives to be closer to the scene of her husband's climbing accident. Therelife, carried out by her nephew after she encounters has died. The aunt who always provided a safe harbour and a rich variety little bit of characters who seem indulgence to leap of the page, foremost of which two at opposite ends both of society and life's journey - Charu, a young peasant girl whose emerging relationship with nephew had had a young cook is touching much more interesting life than that nephew Stephen had ever realised and sweet, and Maya's eccentric landlord, a relict of the Raj who may or may not be in possession of some intriguing personal letters that pertain it seems to him an obligation to India's history and the departing Britishfind it all out.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857388312</amazonuk>B0B6Z9VJDW
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Nick AlexanderJennifer Mason|title=The Case Partitions of the Missing BoyfriendUnity
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=You could be forgiven for thinking that CC had it all. At thirty nine she was near the top of the advertising businessHere at Bookbag Towers, we first met Elizabeth Cromwell, owned her own flat dominatrix and unintentional detective in north London [[Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery by Jennifer Mason|Preposterous]], when she investigated and had unravelled a group series of close, party-going friendsdisappearances. ThatIn ''Partitions of Unity''s what you saw from the outside, looking in. What CC saw was a life that lacked that one essential which she seemed unable to acquire. She was desperate to find the man of sets her dreams and preferably one who would whisk her off mind to solving a farm house in Devon where she'd live ''The'' ''Good'' ''Life''murder.. In the meantime she was stuck with the memories of too many heartbreaks, a mother whose current lifestyle brought a very unfortunate word to mind and being on the periphery of her friends' dramas - and as they were all gay she didn't have a lot of chance of meeting that elusive man.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>085789630X</amazonuk>B09LQR9FRF
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jon BauerWill Carver|title=Rocks in the BellyThe Daves Next Door
|rating=4
|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=Jon Bauer's first novel, ''Rocks Five strangers come together in the Belly'', is an emotional journey. The narrator is one moment as a man in his late 20s who has returned from Canada suicide bomber prepares to visit detonate his mother who has cancer of the brainvest on a London tube line. The narrator himself is emotionally damaged from the relationship that he had with his mother from childhood when she and her husband fostered children andAs their fates overlap, interspersed with the narrative, story is the voice of narrator at eight years old and told in particular telling the experience of one foster boybackwards order, Robert, who we know from early on in leading up to the book suffered a significant tragedy while in their care. What that event was will be revealed in due course, but it is clear that the young boy suffered hugely from jealousy of his mother's love for these foster childrenfateful moment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846688450</amazonuk>1914585186}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Aifric CampbellJennifer Mason|title=On The FloorPreposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Geri Molloy, the central character in Aifric Campbell's ''On The Floor''A struggling poetry zine, may be earning a six figure salary working at mom-and-pop mobile diner in the Northern California redwoods, a London investment bank 400-meter hurdler who just prior to the outbreak of missed the 1991 invasion of Kuwait2004 Olympics, but shea women's seriously messed up. Drinking heavily, sleeping lightly and mourning the end of track coach with a relationshipyen for bullwhips, she may be a mathematical genius billionaire with a direct line to a mysterious Hong Kongstate-of-the-based hedge fund manager with whom she tradesart S&M dungeon, but her a man serving a life is increasingly being controlled by other peoplesentence in Alabama, an enigmatic signature, K(s, x), on a cheap oil painting, an erotic art dealer in Georgia.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846688086</amazonuk>}}..''
{{newreview|author=Ada Wilson|title=Red Army Faction Blues|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Ada Wilson admits that his fascination with the period This is what drove his work on this novel, and it is the wealth of detail and background that strikes one when reading his account just a sample of Peter Urbach, the undercover agent whose role was to act as an agent provocateur to the Red Brigade. Urbach is revealed from the outset as a plant, an undercover operative who needs to keep all events cast of the group 'noted characters and filed' for his masterssettings in Preposterous. And throughout the first half of the novel we As you can see Urbach recording the changes and developments, the complex web some keeping up will be required! The basic premise of political ideology, naivety and the pure egocentricity of youth which created the happening of the Baader-Meinhof gangthis mystery story goes like this...|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1901927482</amazonuk>B09STS96HS
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Matthew GreenB0B2N7MVYM|title=Memoirs The Calculations of an Imaginary FriendRational Men|author=Daniel Godfrey
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Max is 8 years oldIt's the 10th of December 1962 when we first meet Dr Joseph Marr. He likes Lego and Star Wars and playing with toy soldiers. He can tell you 102 words that rhyme with tree. He scarfs down grilled cheese sandwiches and chicken and rice. He does not like physical contact. He lives with his mum and dad who argue about Just to put what happens in context, the Cuban missile crisis is best for him and why he’s not normal like other boys and girlsstill very fresh in people's minds.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0751547875</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=William Nicholson|title= The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=William Nicholsonworld 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'The Secret Intensity s been convicted of Everyday Life'' is an ensemble story focussing predominantly on middle class and mainly middle age people living in a Sussex villagemurder. The cover With the current state of the book suggests that medical knowledge, it is little more 's hard to think otherwise than a superior chic-lit style story of how Laura reacts when an ex-lover from her past appears from out of that the blue to disrupt her marriage and two children, prosecution would never have been brought but while this is a central issue that runs throughout the bookJoe Marr has spent his first few days in HMP Queen's Bench, this is only a small part of the storyrelatively new prison. It He's far better than that might suggestjust getting used to his roommate, Mervyn, and learning to be wary of the McArthur brothers.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184916195X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview|author=Grace McCleen|title=The Land of Decoration|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Grace McCleen's debut novel, ''The Land of Decoration'' paints an original, unsettling, sometimes dark and generally rather wonderful picture. Narrated by ten year old Judith, raised by her father who is a fundamental religious follower of the end of the world is nigh variety, it looks at bullying, both at school and in more general society, faith and the possible rejection thereof and the strength of childhood imagination.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>070118681X</amazonuk>}}Move on to [[Newest Graphic Novels Reviews]]

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