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[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=RespectOnyi Nwabineli|authortitle=Mandasue HellerAllow Me to Introduce Myself|rating=4.5|genre=CrimeGeneral Fiction|summary=Growing up is difficult in Anuri spent her childhood on display to the best world, thanks to her step-mother Ophelia's increasingly popular presence on social media, where she posted every step of circumstancesAnuri's childhood for sponsorships and influencer deals and, basically, monetary gain. The council estate where Chantelle has grown up Now Anuri is in isn't decaying - it her twenties and she is dead slowly trying to regain her confidence and rotten. It has become a holding place for those who are condemned to a get her life of crimeback, at least when they aren't serving timesuing her step-mother to take down the content about her. It Anuri is the type of place that saps ambition battling alcoholism, failing to start her PhD, undergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online and hope receiving money from its unlucky inhabitantsthem for doing so. But Chantelle Most importantly, she is desperately worried about her little sister, who is determined to break outthe new focus of Ophelia's online empire. She has avoided all the pitfalls waiting for children in Can she save her situationsister, avoiding drugs, alcohol, crime and dead end relationships. perhaps herself and her relationship with her father at the same time?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444769472</amazonuk>0861546873

 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1529153298|title=Buddhaland BrooklynThe List of Suspicious Things|author=Richard C MoraisJennie Godfrey

|summary=Seido Oda has lived all of his life in the shadow of the Head Temple of the Clearwater Sect of Mahayana BuddhismIt's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. (A woman? I mean, honestly... His ) She's not what's worrying Miv's family home was an inn which catered to the pilgrims who flocked to the temple, and his mother a devout member of the sectthough. Women have been disappearing. He seemed marked for the priesthood from an early age Well, they've been murdered, and at age 11 was handed over but to have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. Miv's upset because she's overheard that her father wants to move the guardianship of the priests to begin his apprenticeshipfamily 'Down South'. Seido When you's young life re from Yorkshire, Down South is blighted by tragedy, and a promise he could not keep, and although a devout follower of the Buddhafrightening, he seemed unable to achieve true peaceforeign place, even in the beautiful tranquil surroundings of Mount Nagatabest avoided. He was unable to relate to other humans and sought solace in poetry For Miv, art, 'the prayers' of the river and the beauty of his rural home. At age 42move would mean leaving her best friend, he has spent almost all of his life in or near the templeSharon, and expects she'll do anything to spend the remainder of it there when a very unwelcome appointment to America is offered to himprevent that. Seido accepts with a heavy heart, but only on She's not worried about the agreement dangers or that it must be temporaryher Mum's stopped talking - to anyone.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846883105</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1035906708|title=The Night GuestDiva|author=Fiona McFarlaneDaisy Goodwin

|summary=WidowWe tend to think of Maria Callas as Greek, Ruthbut she was born to Greek parents in Manhattan, New York, lives alone in the isolated seaside house in New South Wales that December 1923 and only moved to Athens when she was once their family holiday housethirteen. Her two adult sons now work abroad leaving original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her just her cats for company. Oh, and possibly a tiger who prowls father changed it to 'Callas' to make it more manageable in the house at nightStates. When Frida turns up unannounced claiming to have been sent she was back in Athens - supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for her voice - she was raised under the Nazi occupation by the government to care for a mother who mercilessly exploited her things get more and more mysterious. As Ruth reminisces and then meets up again with made no secret of her former heartthrob from preference for her youth in Fiji, it becomes clear that something isn't rightelder sister, although with whom is a different matterJackie. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444776673</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Kevin MaherAlexander McCall Smith|title=The FieldsPerfect Passion Company

|summary=Jim Finnegan The Perfect Passion Company is embarking on his teens a dating agency in 1980s Dublin but that's not Edinburgh, run by Ness and operating as an alternative to all he's embarking onthe online apps in providing a more personal, tailored service. A lad from an average Catholic family in many ways, he Ness has five sistersasked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the business, as Ness is planning to take a mother who believes the supreme threat trip to Canada to get away for a while. Katie is coming out of a break up with a telling off from the parish priest bad boyfriend, and his father is understandably tired all so jumps at the timechance to come home to Edinburgh. Between school 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 cacophony of his mother's coffee mornings Jim learns a lot Isabel Dalhousie novels, but nothing as useful as what happens when you become very friendly with a pair of pillows or what some new characters who quickly begin to do with the girls he and his mates ogle from afarcharm. Then suddenly Katie has no experience in running a lot of things change almost simultaneously business, or in match-making, but Ness has full confidence in her abilities, and life doesnthere't seem so average any more.s always her very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, William, to lend a hand…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0349138672</amazonuk>1846976596

 {{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The BoatDean Koontz|authortitle=Clara SalamanThe Bad Weather Friend|rating=4.5|genre=General FictionParanormal|summary=This Benny is having a book that starts at the endterrifically bad day. He loses his job, he loses his fiancee, which saddened me a littleand his house gets trashed. Sometimes it’s hard to get lost in the mystery of a story when you know how it ends. But Oh, and someone has delivered a mystery this story is. Johnny and Clem are Brits abroadreally weird, traveling through Europedisturbing coffin-sized object to his home, sticking to the coast where the boats are. Johnny’s into all things nautical and as boat people, we understood this. The title it's possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the first thing that caught my eye on this bookhas trashed his house! The thing is, and Benny is the reason I picked it upvery last person to deserve all this bad luck. And it’s no lie: the vast majority of this book He is set not just on boats generally, but on one specific boata nice person. ''The Boat'' A really nice person. It belongs So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the delivery to another expat couplehis house is a new friend, Frank and Anniea bad weather friend called Spike, whose life who has been sent to help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a series good person. Spike is going to take care of ports Benny, and harbourswill 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 come to Johnny and Clem’s aid when they need it mostare.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1781855846</amazonuk>1662500491

 {{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Mother, MotherKatherine Howe|authortitle=Koren ZailckasA True Account

|summary=There’s 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 hideous advert on TV young boy's death at the moment hands of two vicious pirates. She hides away, so that tells mums they’re doing great. And wouldn’t they like don't find and kill her too, and then to buy some formula for their little onesescape them completely she runs away to sea, while they’re at it? It’s such dressing as a sweeping statement but boy and joining the theory must be that mothers try to do their best for notorious Ned Low's pirate ship as a cabin boy. She soon finds herself in the kidsthick of things when there is a mutiny on board, whatever and from there we are caught up in her rip roaring tale of life on the circumstances and whatever their resourcesocean waves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0007547382</amazonuk>0861547438

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Angela Jackson1471180158|title=The Emergence of Judy TaylorMaybe Tomorrow|author=Penny Parkes|rating=4.5

|summary=JudyJamie Matson works in an upper-class grocery store, for a man who's life had been a control freak with all the stuff which many others might envy: shesubtlety of a half brick. Jamie's son, Bo, 'has his problems'd grown up with friends about her whom she. He'd known since primary school s asthmatic and married the first man who asked her - but more you read, the more you'll suspect that he did seem to be doing rather well's on the autistic spectrum. Then one day Sometimes Jamie needs to take time off at short notice - she discovered 's a lump. frequent flier in the local A hard lump. In her right breast. Nerve-racking test followed nerve-racking test, but eventually she was told that everything was absolutely normal. Husband Oli wanted &E and sometimes Bo's not fit enough to go to celebrate. So did her friends. The problem was Judyschool. Missing Missed shifts or the bus home after her hospital appointment she sat need to be away on time to pick Bo up from school are occasions when Jamie can be controlled and put in a cafe and thoughtthe wrong. She realised that ''normal'' It was not what she wanted. She wanted something moregoing to come to a head.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1472101650</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Cathleen SchineB0CKD1L5JL|title=Fin and LadyRadio Free Olympia|author=Jeffrey Dunn

|summary=In 1964 eleven-year-old Fin Hadley met his half sister againPetr is an orphan. His first contact with Lady had been some years before when Lady had left her bridegroom at Rescued by the altar strange, reclusive Bear, he is brought up far from bustling cities and run away to Capri. Finbusy human society, in the forests of Washington's mother and father took Fin with them as they went to Capri to bring Lady homeOlympic Peninsula. Fin's father had died After Bear dies and a while ago but it was at his mother's funeralbrief sojourn in human company, six years later, that he and Lady met again - she was his armed with only surviving relative and would be his guardian. Ladya pirate radio transmitter, Petr goes on a journey through the forest, broadcasting the strange, Fin wild and Fin's dog Gus left rural Connecticut for New York. The snag about this is that Lady's well, not exactly ''parent'' materialrarely heard voices he encounters.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>147211129X</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Lighthouse BaySarah Marsh|authortitle=Kimberley FreemanA Sign of Her Own

|summary=Having loved [[Wildflower Hill by Kimberley Freeman|Wildlflower Hill]]After a bout of scarlet fever as a child, Ellen Lark loses her hearing. Suddenly plunged into a world of silence, I everything about her life changes. Living in a time when the use of sign language was really looking forward seen as something only savages do, Ellen is sent to a school where she is taught to reading Kimberley Freeman’s newest worklip read, but physically restrained from signing. A story split over different time periods From here, featuring she ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the story of deaf and using a family who made their fortune system called Visible Speech. At the same time, Bell is working on other inventions and ideas, and Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in jewellery sounded appealing on several levelsa complicated tangle of espionage.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1780877269</amazonuk>1035401614

 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=B0BC3YTCMR|title=The School Inspector Calls!Good Girls Die|author=Gervase PhinnAyura Ayira|rating=34.5

|summary=If you've read any of Gervase Phinn's fictionalized autobiographies (the Dales series), or either of the previous two volumes in this Little Village School set, youThis story is not for everyone.'ll know what to expect here: cosy English fun set mostly around a primary school, full of Yorkshire dialect, quirky characters prone to malapropisms and many 'kids say the darndest things' moments.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444706055</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|title=Emily Lavender Daniels was three weeks short of New Moon: A Virago Modern Classic (Emily Trilogy)|author=L M Montgomery|rating=4her fifteenth birthday when The Incident happened.5|genre=Teens|summary=I think I should confess, before I write this review, that I am a true Lucy Maud Montgomery geek! I have loved her books since I She was a little girlvery bright student, a bit too nerdy if truth be told, and I have read them so many times that the covers are worn and faded and suffered from vitiligo - people were afraid to hug her stories live inside of me, at least in part making me who I amcase it's contagious. I wrote my masters dissertation on her booksIt's not easy being a black girl whose skin is 84% white. I went to Prince Edward Island, Canada, for She had a conference about crush on seventeen-year-old Reggie Anderson but never thought he would notice her works. I came back with a bottle of red sand Then he did: Lavender was very good at math and a heart full of memoriesReggie asked if she would tutor him. If anyone ever mentions ''Anne of Green Gables'' in my presence my eyes get very large and I get very excited (and my husband rolls his eyesShe readily agreed: tutoring was something she gladly did at church: this was just an extension...) So it is with trepidation that I sit down She went to review one of his house and he raped her books. Bear with meIn shock, I will try not she even allowed him to geek out too much, and I will do my best to be fair!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844089886</amazonuk>give her a lift home.

{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1472263936|title=Love...Under Different SkiesThe Figurine|author=Nick SpaldingVictoria Hislop|rating=3.5

|summary=JamieIt was in 1968 that Helena McCloud made her first trip to Greece. She was alone: her mother, LauraGreek by birth, and baby Poppy have had a few mishaps here at left the family home, so when the opportunity comes to flit off and refused to the land down underreturn, but Mary and start Hamish (Helena's parents) felt that it would be a new life pity if Helena grew up without knowing her grandparents or understanding her Greek heritage. Her trip to the family apartment in Australia, they’re more excited than they are apprehensiveup-market Kolonaki would be the first of several annual visits. It might get them out of She grew to love her grandmother and the rut they’ve fallen intofamily's maid, Dina, but was wary - and it will definitely give them the sort frightened - of warm glow that comes from living under theher grandfather, erm, warm glow retired general Stamatis Papagiannis. He was proud of his close connections to the sun. There’s really Junta and expected his family to uphold his values but saw no reason not to goaccommodate them. His prejudices included Helena's red hair and green eyes - inherited from her father's Scottish ancestors.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444767070</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|isbn=B0BVDC2VWH|title=The First Phone Call From HeavenGrave Listeners|author=Mitch AlbomWilliam Frank|rating=54

|summary=Something extraordinary The village is going to happen, isolated and will continue to happen, through poor. It's surrounded by a long Witching Forest. And the villagers subsist largely by farming Uphegia plants - its bread-like fruit provides nutrition and eventful autumn in its blossom provides herbal medicines. The black wood of the small town of Coldwater. People will pick up phones, forest provides heat and hear a loved one speak to themwarmth, with assurancesroofs on homes, loveand even gallows, delight – but they will all be if needed. The fear of being buried alive is an existential superstition in the voices of dead loved ones. One woman has her slightly older, late sister contact her, another her deceased mother, who had ended her life disabled village and wordless, while that is the local policeman will regain contact with the son killed in action in Afghanistan. The whole town will be transformedreason Volushka, but it might actually hit someone else hardest – Sullya drunken, fresh out of prison and patching his life back together with his six year old sonself-indulgent, with both lazy lout of them puzzled at why the lad's dead mother a man is among the silent majoritytolerated.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847442269</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=B0BYF82CXT|title=At Night We Walk In CirclesSemi-Detached|author=Daniel AlarconDeborah Stone

|summary=Peruvian''Bill and Amanda are living in a semi-born Daniel Alarcón returns to South America detached house, stuck in this story a depressing rut of one man's downfall boredom and disappointment, when Terry and the twists Fiona – glamorous, successful and turns of fate that not only contributed to this but also which compelled the narrator of this story to seek to understand what happenedvery much in love – move in next door. The main characterDespite their different outlooks on life, a young man named Nelson whose plans to follow his older brother to the US are halted when his father dies forcing him couples befriend each other and life appears to care improve for his mother, has trained to be an actor but his career is going nowhereboth pairs. Then he lands a part in a notorious three person play that But all is going to tour the provinces. One of the trio is the play's writernot what it seems, Henry, a man who was imprisoned under terrorist charges when the play was first producedand their increasingly interconnected relationships are fated for tragedy. With Nelson's ex girlfriend now pregnant with another man's child, the temptation to get away from his life in his home city is too tempting. No one could have forecast what the impact this tour would have on his life though.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007517394</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sebastiana RandoneShalini Boland|title=The HouseSilent Bride|rating=3.5

|summary=A woman wakes to find herself alone Alice and Seth are a match made in a dark forestheaven. He is everything she has been searching for; handsome, accomplished, clever, funny; total and utter husband-material. She sees is all he could possibly want in a man wife; beautiful, successful, confident… and so the inevitable proposal is eagerly accepted by Alice and the wedding is planned and calls out to him but he ignores herset. Eventually When the much-anticipated day arrives, she finds Alice is walked down the aisle by her way to a house father, beaming with pride and takes shelter. With no idea of how excitement as she came surveys the congregation – their friends assembled to be there - or recall of her own name, even - the woman explores celebrate this dilipidated mansion joyful day and discovers a portal that transports her back when Seth turns to Regency England. Hereface his approaching bride, a dreadful thing happens before Alice's world implodes because she has absolutely no idea who the man at the altar is, who is transported back in time againwaiting for her to become his wife. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1483613712</amazonuk>1662507089

 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1787636003|title=If I Never Went HomeThe Girls of Summer|author=Ingrid PersaudKatie Bishop|rating=45

|summary=Bea is a practising psychologistIt was the summer when Rachel Evans turned eighteen that she and Caroline went backpacking around Greece and arrived on the island. It Rachel wasn's her second career - t exactly innocent but she was once an ambitious academic, a professor of historyperhaps, naive, but a longstanding depression led so when thirty-four-year-old Alistair Wright started to a breakdown and recovery meant a search for pastures new and more fulfilling. But even nowtake an interest in her, she can't cast off the family crises that led to her illnesswas flattered rather than wary. Tina is It was quite a young girl living in Trinidad with her mother. One question preoccupies Tina - who is while before he made any sort of physical approach to her father? Her mother won't say and her grandmother and aunt claim not to knowby that time she was obsessed by him. Tina feels lonely a lot of Alistair worked for Henry Taylor, looking after his interests on the time island and she is sure that finding her father would put an end to her unhappinessin particular in the bar where all the girls either worked or partied. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0992697700</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The Ice-Cold HeavenAmanda Craig|authortitle=Mirko BonneThree Graces|rating=4.5|genre=Historical General Fiction|summary=They say that if you fall off a horse you should get back on one right away, but even so… I donFew styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the state-of-the-nation novel. There't think many people s something so utterly compelling about any writer who had only just left their first love – a shopgirl in their village – for their second – exploring can catch hold of the atmosphere of the world on sailing cargo ships – would leap to a further voyage having been wrecked day and stranded off capture it, crafting an image of the coast of South America for well over a weekcountry as it stands in one particular moment. But Merce here does – he wants to follow his best friend on to a ship called To say that Amanda Craig is skilled at doing this would be embarrassingly inadequate: she''The Endurance'' and head s practically synonymous with Shackleton to the Antarcticgenre of contemporary social fiction at this point. But Merce is only seventeen, and is rejected – causing him to stow away onto one She has such a gift for weaving the ongoing issues of the world's worst ever journeysday 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.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0715645846</amazonuk>140871468X

 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=152915118X|title=All my Friends are SuperheroesPineapple Street|author=Andrew KaufmanJenny Jackson

|summary='There are 249 superheroes in 'Pineapple Street'' is the city story of Torontothree women: Sasha, Ontario, CanadaDarley and Georgiana.' Tom Darley and George are sisters and Sasha is not one of them, but he had just got married to one – their brother Cord. They're Stocktons, only Sasha isn't a Stockton by birth so she isn't readily accepted into the Perfectionist – tribe. The problem's exacerbated when her jealous exthe clan matriarch, HypnoTilda, hypnotised her asks Cord and Sasha if they'd like to move into being completely unable the Pineapple Street property. Tilda and Chip have renovated and downsized to see another property, a street or hear or otherwise respond 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 himcall Sasha 'the gold digger'. She's living in ''their'' family home. It certainly led They use it so often that they abbreviate it to 'the wedding night Tom was least expecting – instead of GD'.}}{{Frontpage|author=Emily Critchley|title=One Puzzling Afternoon|rating=4|genre=Crime|summary=84 year old Edie has lived in the usualsame small town for almost her whole life, he began but now she is facing a move as her son wants to work out her new responses move to him when he tried another house and bring Edie to touch herlive with his family, such as hiccupping when he touched Edie is starting to lose her head, spasms when he tried hand contactmemory. NowHowever, six months onEdie 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 Perfectionist is quitting thing that reveals the city for a new lifetruth of what happened all that time ago. He is After 'seeing' Lucy in the plane seat right next 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, hoping against hope she is forgetting more and more in her day to get what they had back…day life. Will she uncover the truth about Lucy's disappearance before her move, and before her memories are gone forever?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846591600</amazonuk>1804181250

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|isbn=0008506337|title=Butterflies in NovemberThe Garnett Girls|author=Audur Ava OlafsdottirGeorgina Moore|rating=45

|summary=The love affair between Margo Garnett and poet Richard O' 'It's Leary was all threes here-consuming,apparently on both sides. Margo was just sixteen when they fell in love. Richard was twenty-one and described by Margo' she says, s mother as 'three men in your life over a distance of 300 kilometres, three dead animals, three minor accidents or mishaps… animals will be maimed… itan older man'll wet more than your ankles… . it wouldnHer parents worried that Richard't be a bad idea s influence would take her away from what they felt she could achieve - going to buy Oxford and having a lottery ticket'glittering career.' And so an over-priced but miraculously accurate fortune-teller sets in process a narrative that provides for a very quirky readIn the event, with quite a bit they eloped and Richard took her away from the Isle of charm amongst the unusualWight. The lottery ticket Margo did go to Oxford and went on to become a loose end well-respected journalist. The couple had three children: Rachel, Imogen and a best friend stuck Sasha. Life was lived in hospital all conspire to make the narrator London and said best friend's four-year-old son embark on a journey of discoveryholidays were spent at Sandcove, all the family home on the southern stretch Isle of Wight. Even then the ring road that encircles Icelanddoubts about Richard's drinking were never far from Margo's mind: ''she would never be able to leave him in charge''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782270108</amazonuk>Then Richard left them.

{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1914585402|title=The Flavours of LoveDashboard Elvis is Dead|author=Dorothy KoomsonDavid F Ross

|summary=SaffronI reviewed David F Ross's husband, Joel, was stabbed in the street eighteen months ago and no one has ever been arrested for his murder. Itbook [[There's hard for Saffron and her two children, Pheobe and Zane, to live with what happened but somehow they have to find a way of getting on with their lives; lives that no longer have Joel in them. ItOnly One Danny Garvey by David F Ross|There's hardly surprising that they struggle on Only One Danny Garvey]] a daily basis couple of years back and remember being absolutely floored by how powerful and affecting it all culminates when Saffron is called into school to discuss fourteen year old Pheobewas. Saffron doesn't know how to deal with the situation especially as her daughter won't talk to her. On top of all thatIt was a gripping, emotionally wounding read, Joel's killer is still out there somewhere and rereading my review of it my main takeaway was that makes her scared for all her family's safetyI might not have lavished enough praise on it.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780875002</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The CircleLucy Ashe|authortitle=Dave EggersClara and Olivia|rating=4.5

|summary=Following a string of recent scandalsThe year is 1933. The place? Sadler's Wells. Ballerinas Clara and Olivia are sisters, twins no less. Identical on the government this month announced that secret cameras could be introduced into care homes in outside but not, we learn, on the hope of improving patient careinside. And not on stage, either. The theory being Because there's a lot that constantly recording staff would prevent any inappropriate behaviour from those in positions of authoritybuilds a dancer. Could such surveillance possibly work? And if it did would any potential rewards Some things that can be outweighed by the threat taught or learnt – discipline, attention to privacy of both the patients detail – and some things, that ''je ne sais quoi'', that don't come from the wholly innocent staff who become caught up in the snooping? Itclassroom. A stage presence, a charm, a ''joie de vivre's this question of surveillance over privacy that is central to '. The Circle'difference between a hard-worker, the new novel from Dave Eggersand a star.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0241146488</amazonuk>0861544080

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Diane SetterfieldHeather Fawcett|title=Bellman and BlackEmily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries

|summary=When he was a young boy William Bellman committed one cruel act - he used his catapult Emily Wilde is an expert academic scholar on faerie lore, and she has travelled extensively, and researched meticulously, to kill a rook. He didnwrite her life't believe he could do it - believed until s work, the moment that the rook fell that it would fly away before the stone hit - but the rook was deadvery first encyclopaedia of faeries. It can't be said that the killing worried William Whilst she is brilliant at research and as he grew it seemed that he was a fortunate manspeaking to faeries, she is not so good with people. His work satisfied himSo 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. He loved his wife Enter Wendell Bambleby, her dashingly handsome and his childreninsufferable rival who arrives unexpectedly, but then tragedy struck all charm and the visits from the stranger in black begandelight, much to Emily's frustration. William - now 'Bellman' to most of those who knew him - had a solution. But why is he here? He worked harder, obsessively and What does he founded a business which was decidedly macabre. want? And that business was Bellman and Black.what exactly is going on with the faerie folk around Hravsnik?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1409128016</amazonuk>0356519120

 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1398515388|title=Black ChalkThe Boy and the Dog|author=Albert AllaSeishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)|rating=34.5

|summary=Seventeen-year-old Nate Dillingham is hailed as a hero following a horrific school shooting First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which he is created the only survivor. It soon becomes cleartsunami and this, howeverin turn, that Nate has neglected to share caused the full extent of his involvement with nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and utter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, and the police, instead allowing others to place a more positive spin on his version loss of eventslivelihoods was widespread. After recuperating in hospital and facing The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the interrogation list of both priorities but - six months after the police and tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. He wasn't a dog person but the media, Nate abandons convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his family car door and spends eight years working abroad Tamon the dog jumped in a succession of odd jobs. Black Chalk begins with Nate’s return to his family home, as Nate seeks catharsis by finally opening up about his experiences.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1859643574</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ann LearyChristopher Bowden|title=The Good HouseMr Magenta

|summary=Hildy Good has reached Christopher Bowden's latest novel is a patient untangling of a strange stage in her life. Sheseemingly ordinary woman's entering life, carried out by her seventh decade (that's one of the few phrases that make ''sixty'' feel good) nephew after she has died. The aunt who always provided a safe harbour and divorced. Most people - Hildy included - would have said that she had a lot little bit of friends, but the reality is indulgence to a little different. Her daughters young nephew had had staged an intervention because they thought a much more interesting life than that her drinking nephew Stephen had got ever realised and it seems to him an obligation to find it all out of control and after a period in rehab Hildy found social occasions a little difficult. Evenings spent at home - on her own - were no fun.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>178239320X</amazonuk>B0B6Z9VJDW

 {{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The Reluctant CannibalsJennifer Mason|authortitle=Ian FlitcroftPartitions of Unity

|summary=Over a truffled turkey Here at their college Christmas dinner Bookbag Towers, we first met Elizabeth Cromwell, dominatrix and unintentional detective in 1964[[Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery by Jennifer Mason|Preposterous]], when she investigated and unravelled a group series of Oxford dons decide to join their love of fine food and drink with their mutual appreciation for nineteenth-century French philosopher of food Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (author of the 1825 classic ''La Physiologie du Goût'', or disappearances. In ''The Physiology Partitions of Taste'Unity') by forming a secret dining society. Together these fellows of St Jerome's College form the Shadow Faculty of Gastronomic Science, a group that will continue meeting to share new and daring culinary experiences until Oxford agrees she sets her mind to set up solving a proper gastronomic school of its ownmurder...|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1909593591</amazonuk>B09LQR9FRF

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...|isbn=B09STS96HS}}{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=B0B2N7MVYM|title=Isabel's SkinThe Calculations of Rational Men|author=Peter BensonDaniel Godfrey|rating=45

|summary=David Morris is a book trader and valuer It's the 10th of December 1962 when we first meet Dr Joseph Marr. Just to put what happens in some indeterminate Victorian yearcontext, when he the Cuban missile crisis is given the job of perusing a great and valued collection held still very fresh in people's minds. The world has barely had a rich house in rural Somersetchance to breathe out. One can guess – especially given But for Joe Marr, it's not the mood missile crisis that leaps off these pages from 's at the first and never relents – 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 something might go wrong, just him and the houseprosecution would never have been brought but Joe Marr has spent his first few days in HMP Queen's sole servant and her catsBench, a relatively new prison. But the clues build when we find He's just how much she dislikes a neighbour – who seems a decent enough fellowgetting used to his roommate, living in seclusionMervyn, and culture and intellect wise learning to be wary of the only equal to Morris for his short working holidayMcArthur brothers. But whose unusual behaviour can Morris trust – and who is Isabel?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846882958</amazonuk>