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[[Category:General Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Nigel McCleaOnyi Nwabineli|title=A Word Glittering with SpikesAllow Me to Introduce Myself|rating=34.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=We're going Anuri spent her childhood on display to follow the fortunes of two couples (or are they 'wouldworld, thanks to her step-be couplesmother Ophelia' or 'might-have-been couples'?) as they navigate the treacherous waters s increasingly popular presence on social media, where she posted every step of love. David CastledineAnuri's first meeting with Jenny could hardly have been less auspicious: he hit herchildhood for sponsorships and influencer deals and, basically, monetary gain. He didn't ''actually'' mean Now Anuri is in her twenties and she is slowly trying to hit regain her but he threw a stick for his aunt's dog confidence and to chase and it caught get her life back, suing her on step-mother to take down the headcontent about her. Head wounds bleed profusely Anuri is battling alcoholism, failing to start her PhD, undergoing therapy and this one was no exceptionsecretly abusing people online and receiving money from them for doing so. Most importantly, so David had to take she is desperately worried about her back to his auntlittle sister, who is the new focus of Ophelia's apartment to clean her uponline empire. I suppose there have been worse meetingsCan she save her sister, but it's difficult to think of one!and perhaps herself and her relationship with her father at the same time?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0993025501</amazonuk>0861546873
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Patrick Modiano, Sempe (illustrator) and William Rodarmor (translator)1529153298|title=Catherine CertitudeThe List of Suspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey|rating=45|genre=Confident ReadersGeneral Fiction|summary=What little It's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. (A woman? I know of Patrick Modiano was gained from the number of mean, honestly...) She's not what's worrying Miv'nos family, though. Women have been disappearing. Well, wethey've never heard of himbeen murdered, eitherbut to have ' articles and summaries that came our way when he won the Nobel Prize for Literature at the end of 2014disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. They suggested his oeuvre was mature, slightly thriller-based but not exclusively so, and asked lots of accumulative questions regarding identity with regard Miv's upset because she's overheard that her father wants to move the Vichy government during WWIIfamily 'Down South'. Identity When you're from Yorkshire, Down South is a lot more fixed in this musing little piecefrightening, for the adult voice-over looks back over a wide removeforeign place, and says there will always be a little bit of her living the events and situations of the bookbest avoided. Those situations are of a young dance-school attendeeFor Miv, and the move would mean leaving her loving best friend, Sharon, and much-loved father, living a cosy life in Paris – even if she'll do anything to prevent that. She's not worried about the girl never once really works out what it is dangers or that her father does for a living…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1783443022</amazonuk>Mum's stopped talking - to anyone.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=R D Shanks1035906708|title=A Reverie of BrothersDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin|rating=34.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The castle We tend to think of Delzean's walls have always protected Emperor EliMaria Callas as Greek, his sonsbut she was born to Greek parents in Manhattan, sisterNew York, niece in December 1923 and nephew from the ravages and poverty of the people in the city beyondonly moved to Athens when she was thirteen. However the days may be numbered as a burgeoning revolution has infiltrated its walls thanks Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to 'Callas' to make it more manageable in the rebel movement known as The EyesStates. Their plan necessitates When she was back in Athens - supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for her voice - she was raised under the unwitting involvement Nazi occupation by a mother who mercilessly exploited her and made no secret of the spoilther preference for her elder sister, egotistical aforementioned niece, Princess Ava. Unfortunately there will be collateral damage with tragic effectsJackie.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1505631394</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Nick HarkawayAlexander McCall Smith|title=TigermanThe Perfect Passion Company|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Battle-weary The Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and operating as an alternative to all the online apps in providing a more personal, tailored service. Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and suffering from PTSDlook after the business, 40-year-old Sergeant Lester Ferris as Ness is posted planning to the island of Mancreu take a trip to Canada to mark time till his retirementget away for a while. With no family Katie is coming out of his owna break up with a bad boyfriend, Lester takes a local lad under his wing; an adolescent who lives his own life through comic books and superheroes in so jumps at the hope that he can be adoptedchance to come home to Edinburgh. Despite Mancreu beginning And so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, thanks to churn 44 Scotland Street and the Isabel Dalhousie novels, but with more than its customary black marketeering, Lester realises that he some new characters who quickly begin to charm. Katie has no experience in running a job on his handsbusiness, or in match-making, not only to take care of an island that sees him as a government puppet but also convince someone that he is the stuff of heroism Ness has full confidence in her abilities, and to convince himself while hethere's at it.always her very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, William, to lend a hand…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099591758</amazonuk>1846976596
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Karen Thompson WalkerDean Koontz|title=The Age of MiraclesBad Weather Friend|rating=4.5|genre=Dystopian FictionParanormal|summary=''The Age of Miracles'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 one of those much-talked about books inside is the thing that I never got has trashed his house! The thing is, Benny is the time very last person to read on its first go arounddeserve all this bad luck. I'm not sure how I managed that, but I did He is a nice person. A really nice person. Anyway, So fortunately for Benny it got debut author Thompson Walker turns out that the delivery to his house is a seven figure deal after new friend, a bidding war and it bad weather friend called Spike, who has dystopian themesbeen 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, so it is right up my alley and not the sort will certainly take care of thing IBenny'd usually miss. And sos enemies, if he, Benny, I was happy that Simon & Schuster decided to reissue it for and Harper (a YA market and even happier that waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they decided to send me a copyare.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1471124851</amazonuk>1662500491
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Gary KuryloKatherine Howe|title=The Seventh SimianA True Account|rating=34.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Edith has lived alone for many years and she has become irascible and rather anti-social. She avoids even going into the nearby village Hannah Masury is living in Boston, having been sent to do her shopping live with a family who run an inn, and the only human being made to work there from a young age. When she sees with any regularity hears there is the local shopkeeper who makes grocery deliveries to her and makes an art form be a hanging of palming off some pirates in the strange old lady with overpricedtown, underweight goodsshe decides to go and watch. If it weren Enthralled and horrified in equal measure, Hannah finds herself embroiled in a young boy't for her cat, Edith would have no companionship s death at all.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B00Q4SETM2</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Jane Lythell |title=After the Storm|rating=4|genre=Thrillers|summary=Rob and Anna are nearing the Honduras leg hands of their South American travelstwo vicious pirates. Here She hides away, so that they meet Kimberley don't find and Owenkill her too, and then to escape them completely she runs away to sea, an American couple who charter out their own boat for sailing trips around dressing as a boy and joining the local islands. Rob persuades Anna it will be a fun way to end their holiday but Anna isn't so sure. Therenotorious Ned Low's something about Owen and Kimberley that makes her hesitant about being shut away on pirate ship as a boat at sea with themcabin boy. Perhaps it's She soon finds herself in the way that he never sleeps or the mystery as to why thick of things when there is a mutiny on board, and from there we are no knives caught up in her rip roaring tale of life on the cutlery drawer. Rob thinks Anna's just overly imaginative, but time will tellocean waves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1781855323</amazonuk>0861547438
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Stewart Foster1471180158|title=We Used to Be KingsMaybe Tomorrow|author=Penny Parkes
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Tom Jamie Matson works in an upper-class grocery store, for a man who's a control freak with all the subtlety of a half brick. Jamie's son, Bo, 'has his problems'. He's asthmatic and Jack are 18 todaythe more you read, the more you'll suspect that he's on the autistic spectrum. Not that they have much cause for celebration Sometimes Jamie needs to take time off at short notice - stuck she's a frequent flier in a home for troubled children, they the local A&E and sometimes Bo's not fit enough to go to school. Missed shifts or the need to be away on time to pick Bo up from school are constantly examined occasions when Jamie can be controlled and questioned by doctors, when all they want is put in the wrong. It was going to be left alone come to live life togethera head.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099584190</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Victoria AveyardB0CKD1L5JL|title=Red QueenRadio Free Olympia|author=Jeffrey Dunn
|rating=4
|genre=TeensGeneral Fiction|summary=Mare Petr is a Red - a race kept in lives of poverty and servitude an orphan. Rescued by the Silversstrange, reclusive Bear, a race with wealth he is brought up far from bustling cities and mutant powers that allow them to live lives busy human society, in the forests of luxuryWashington's Olympic Peninsula. Learning to survive amongst the slum like conditions that After Bear dies and a brief sojourn in human company, and armed with only a pirate radio transmitter, Petr goes on a journey through the Reds inhabitforest, Mare is swiftly thrown into broadcasting the world of the Silvers - one that proves to be more dangerous than she had ever imagined, with treacherystrange, plots wild and deadly games lurking round every cornerrarely heard voices he encounters.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1409155846</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Margaret WildSarah Marsh|title=The Vanishing Moment|rating=4|genre=Teens|summary=This book appealed to me on various grounds. It is teen fiction (and, joy of joys, devoid A Sign of werewolves and dystopia), it is by an Australian author (under-represented on UK shelves), and it involves parallel universes (tantalising philosophical what-ifs). I was intrigued to see if the author could live up to my expectations.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1743315902</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Jack Sheffield|title=Silent NightHer Own
|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=I read After a couple bout of Jack Sheffield’s books about five years agoscarlet fever as a child, and enjoyed them very muchEllen Lark loses her hearing. They were written in Suddenly plunged into a similar style to those popularised byworld of silence, for instance, James Herriot or [[:Category:Gervase Phinn|Gervase Phinn]], told mostly everything about her life changes. Living in a time when the first person, describing the author’s first couple use of years sign language was seen as Headmaster at something only savages do, Ellen is sent to a small village primary school in Yorkshire. The village of Ragley where she is fictionaltaught to lip read, as are most of the charactersbut physically restrained from signing. From here, but she ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the incidents deaf and situations encountered are based using a system called Visible Speech. At the same time, Bell is working on the author’s experienceother inventions and ideas, and Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a complicated tangle of espionage.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0552167045</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.''
Lavender Daniels was three weeks short of her fifteenth birthday when The Incident happened. She was a very bright student, a bit too nerdy if truth be told, and suffered from vitiligo - people were afraid to hug her in case it's contagious. It's not easy being a black girl whose skin is 84% white. She had a crush on seventeen-year-old Reggie Anderson but never thought he would notice her. Then he did: Lavender was very good at math and Reggie asked if she would tutor him. She readily agreed: tutoring was something she gladly did at church: this was just an extension. She went to his house and he raped her. In shock, she even allowed him to give her a lift home.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Robert Schneider1472263936|title=Brother of SleepThe Figurine|author=Victoria Hislop|rating=3.5|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=''Brother of Sleep'' tells It was in 1968 that Helena McCloud made her first trip to Greece. She was alone: her mother, Greek by birth, had left the story of Elias Johannes Alderfamily home and refused to return, but Mary and Hamish (Helena's parents) felt that it would be a child born into a god forsaken village high pity if Helena grew up without knowing her grandparents or understanding her Greek heritage. Her trip to the family apartment in up-market Kolonaki would be the Austrian Vorarlbergfirst of several annual visits. He came into She grew to love her grandmother and the world as a silent childfamily's maid, Dina, while his mother but was screaming wary - and the midwife wasn't really paying attentionfrightened - of her grandfather, retired general Stamatis Papagiannis. It took a couple of loud intonations He was proud of his close connections to the Te Deum Junta and expected his family to uphold his values but saw no reason to accommodate them. His prejudices included Helena's red hair and green eyes - inherited from the neglectful nurse before he finally uttered a soundher father's Scottish ancestors. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0715649205</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=Joanne GrahamB0BVDC2VWH|title=To The Edge of ShadowsGrave Listeners|author=William Frank
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Sarah awakes from The village is isolated and poor. It's surrounded by a coma to find her world destroyedWitching Forest. And the villagers subsist largely by farming Uphegia plants - its bread-like fruit provides nutrition and its blossom provides herbal medicines. The black wood of the forest provides heat and warmth, a long lost aunt her only remaining familyroofs on homes, and life as she knows it irrevocably changed forevereven gallows, if needed. Moving to a new town The fear of being buried alive is an existential superstition in the village and that is the reason Volushka, a new schooldrunken, making new friends self-indulgent, lazy lout of a man is the least of her challenges as she struggles to regain her physical and mental health following the accidenttolerated.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1910162841</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Leanne HallB0BYF82CXT|title=This is Shyness|rating=4.5|genre=Teens|summary=''This is Shyness'' is an unusual and brilliant story about Wolfboy and Wildgirl, two strangers who meet in a pub in the town of Shyness. The teenagers are drawn together, each adopting a different identity so for the night they can be anyone but themselves.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1921656522</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewSemi-Detached|author=Antonin Varenne and Frank Wynne (translator)|title=Loser's CornerDeborah Stone
|rating=4
|genre=ThrillersGeneral Fiction|summary=Meet Georges Crozat. He's a policeman 'Bill and Amanda are living in Paris, who boxes on the side. After a bout that leads to an almost embarrassing victorysemi-detached house, he is made two offers – one from a clearly corrupt man behind the scenes stuck in the sport, who seems to offer a few thrown fights for Georgesdepressing rut of boredom and disappointment, then some kind of status as assistant when Terry and Fiona – trainingglamorous, guidingsuccessful and very much in love – move in next door. Despite their different outlooks on life, profiteering; the couples befriend each other comes from a man known always as ''the Pakistani'' (or an unkind abbreviation of that), who has a friend of a friend who wants someone and life appears to do an enemy a mischief with their fistsimprove for both pairs. Georges doesn't take too long to choose the latter. In alternating chapters, however, we're in the 1950s, and a rookie to the forces, Pascal Verini, But all is being shipped out to Algeria to work on the civil war causing the republic to break away and become independent from France. Like Georges, he finds his situation one which also causes not what may be misguided violenceit seems, even if he has a very different attitude to itand their increasingly interconnected relationships are fated for tragedy.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857052276</amazonuk>''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=J Robert LennonShalini Boland|title=See You In ParadiseThe Silent Bride
|rating=3
|genre=Short StoriesGeneral Fiction|summary=Lennon writes with Alice and Seth are a relaxedmatch made in heaven. He is everything she has been searching for; handsome, easy style accomplished, clever, funny; total and his characters are instantly recognisable as people from everyday walks of life, without being in any way stereotypicalutter husband-material. Many of the people She is all he could possibly want in these stories are dealing with normal frustrationsa wife; beautiful, successful, confident… and Lennon so the inevitable proposal is cleverly detached enough not to make them individuals that you're obviously supposed to root for (eagerly accepted by Alice and the only exception wedding is planned and set. When the industrialist in the eponymous talemuch-anticipated day arrives, who Alice is an archetypal capitalist fat cat). There are some very clever characterisations – in ''Weber’s Head'', for examplewalked down the aisle by her father, beaming with pride and excitement as she surveys the narrator is a flawed individual whose opinions of his housemate are gradually revealed congregation – their friends assembled to be unreliable celebrate this joyful day and unfair. For mewhen Seth turns to face his approaching bride, the most unsettling story is 'Alice'No Life'', s world implodes because it portrays a decent couple she has absolutely no idea who the man at the mercy of people more powerful and influential than them. There altar is no supernatural or bizarre element at work here, just ordinary characters at the mercy of social powerwho is waiting for her to become his wife.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1781253358</amazonuk>1662507089
}}
{{Frontpage|isbn=1787636003|title=The Girls of Summer|author=Katie Bishop|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary=It was the summer when Rachel Evans turned eighteen that she and Caroline went backpacking around Greece and arrived on the island. Rachel wasn't exactly innocent but she was, perhaps, naive, so when thirty-four-year-old Alistair Wright started to take an interest in her, she was flattered rather than wary. It was quite a while before he made any sort of physical approach to her and by that time she was obsessed by him. Alistair worked for Henry Taylor, looking after his interests on the island and in particular in the bar where all the girls either worked or partied.}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Daisy WaughAmanda Craig|title=HoneyvilleThree Graces|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary= Few styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the state-of-the-nation novel. There's something so utterly compelling about any writer who can catch hold of the atmosphere of the day and capture it, crafting an image of the country as it stands in one particular moment. To say that Amanda Craig is skilled at doing this would be embarrassingly inadequate: she's practically synonymous with the genre of contemporary social fiction at this point. She has such a gift for weaving the ongoing issues of the day into the lives of her characters in a way that feels natural and lived-in, never making them ciphers for social commentary but instead fully realised people, grappling with issues far larger than themselves.|isbn= 140871468X}}{{Frontpage|isbn=152915118X|title=Pineapple Street|author=Jenny Jackson|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The ''Pineapple Street'' is the story of three women: Sasha, Darley and Georgiana. Darley and George are sisters and Sasha is told by Dora Whitworthmarried to their brother Cord. They're Stocktons, only Sasha isn't a call girl in one of Stockton by birth so she isn't readily accepted into the most exclusive brothels in Trinidad, Coloradotribe. At The problem's exacerbated when the timeclan matriarch, Tilda, asks Cord and Sasha if they'd like to move into the town was the only place in the West where prostitution was legal Pineapple Street property. Tilda and it was infamous for its red-light district. Dora’s voice rings true Chip have renovated and her life is convincingly describeddownsized to another property, a street or so away, which they own. The sumptuous brothel in Plum They won't need any of the furniture from Pineapple Street, with its smells of perfume so Sasha and disinfectantCord can move straight in. Nominally, is as claustrophobic as they had a prison choice but that wasn't the reality. Darley and Phoebe, Georgiana start to call Sasha 'the gold digger'. She's living in ''their'' family home. They use it so often that they abbreviate it to 'the madam, particularly chillingGD'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007431775</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tammy CohenEmily Critchley|title=Dying for ChristmasOne Puzzling Afternoon|rating=3.54
|genre=Crime
|summary=The book starts off promisingly enough with an introduction by Jessica, 84 year old Edie has lived in the narratorsame small town for almost her whole life, who informs us that but now she is imprisoned by facing a stranger who move as her son wants to move to another house and bring Edie to live with his family, as Edie is handsome and charming and extremely sadisticstarting to lose her memory. Jessica then recounts However, Edie is tormented by the events leading up to and during memory of her incarcerationchildhood friend, Lucy, which takes place 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 Christmas periodthing that reveals the truth of what happened all that time ago. Her jailer After 'seeing' Lucy in the high street, Dominicjust as she was the last time she saw her, has prepared twelve presents for she starts to find pockets of memories coming back to her, for . And yet as she remembers the Twelve Days of Christmaspast, she is forgetting more and each present-opening episode builds up a sense of dread while providing a deepening understanding of more in her day to day life. Will she uncover the sinister truth about Lucy's disappearance before her move, and bitter mind at work. Genuinely creepy stuff.before her memories are gone forever?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1784160172</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=Paul Sussman0008506337|title=The Final Testimony of Raphael Ignatius PhoenixGarnett Girls|author=Georgina Moore
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=On the eve of the year 2000The love affair between Margo Garnett and poet Richard O'Leary was all-consuming, Raphael Ignatius Phoenix decides apparently on both sides. Margo was just sixteen when they fell in love. Richard was twenty-one and described by Margo's mother as 'an older man'. Her parents worried that he has had enough. Having lived for Richard's influence would take her away from what they felt she could achieve - going to Oxford and having a century, he takes his own life on the roof of his castle, swallowing a small white pill he has kept on his person for almost 90 yearsglittering career. In the days beforeevent, he had written his story all over they eloped and Richard took her away from the walls Isle of the castle Wight. Margo did go to Oxford and went on to become a well- a story that takes in an Edwardian childhoodrespected journalist. The couple had three children: Rachel, Hollywood Imogen and Sasha. Life was lived in the 1920'sLondon and holidays were spent at Sandcove, the Second World War, life as a butler in a stately family home, life in a rock band in on the Isle of Wight. Even then the 60doubts about Richard's, time spent drinking were never far from Margo's mind: ''she would never be able to leave him in a nursing home, and finally life in the castle - amongst other, enchanting talescharge''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0552779679</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Simon Wroe1914585402|title=Chop ChopDashboard Elvis is Dead|author=David F Ross
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=I reviewed David F Ross'Monocles book [[There' isn't his real name, but thats Only One Danny Garvey by David F Ross|There's what the brigade at ''The Swan'' would call him once they knew him well enough to insult himOnly One Danny Garvey]] a couple of years back and remember being absolutely floored by how powerful and affecting it was. He has an English Literature degreeIt was a gripping, you seeemotionally wounding read, and the chefs think rereading my review of it my main takeaway was that's what he would I might not have worn. He'd no interest in cooking, but was two months behind on his rent and being the lowest-rung chef in a gastropub in Camden was the only job that he could get. His co-workers are deranged and borderline criminal whilst the head chef, Bob is a top-rank sadist constantly on the look out for material lavished enough praise on which to practiceit. Monocle has little choice but to stay - given the situation between his parents, going home isn't really an option.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241000009</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Suzanne McCourtLucy Ashe|title=The Lost ChildClara and Olivia
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Sylvie lives in a small Australian fishing village with her mumThe year is 1933. The place? Sadler's Wells. Ballerinas Clara and Olivia are sisters, twins no less. Identical on the outside but not, we learn, dad and elder brotheron the inside. And not on stage, Dunceither. Because there's a lot that builds a dancer. However all Some things that is about can be taught or learnt – discipline, attention to change detail – and little Sylvie finds herself in some things, that ''je ne sais quoi'', that don't come from the middle of dramas she neither understands nor controlsclassroom. Her world may never be the same but she tries to make sense of itA stage presence, Trollopa charm, clingy mothera ''joie de vivre''. The difference between a hard-worker, moody father and alla star. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1922147788</amazonuk>0861544080
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Monique RoffeyHeather Fawcett|title=House Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of AshesFaeries
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=There had been unrest in Emily Wilde is an expert academic scholar on faerie lore, and she has travelled extensively, and researched meticulously, to write her life's work, the Caribbean City very first encyclopaedia of Silk in Sans Amen for some time faeries. Whilst she is brilliant at research and speaking to faeries, she is not so good with people growing increasingly belligerent about the perceived corruption of the government. Then So when she finds herself far, far North in the day came when The Leader called small village of Hrafvsnik, having somehow offended the Brothers together and told them that they were going village matriarch, she is not sure what she has done, nor how to make history: they would take over the House of Power redeem herself and put her final investigations for her book back on the television studios and reclaim what was rightfully theirsright track. Part of this 'revolution' is AshesEnter Wendell Bambleby, her dashingly handsome and insufferable rival who arrives unexpectedly, a quietall charm and delight, bookish young man who seems much to feel most guilty about the lie Emily's frustration. But why is he told his wife - that he'd be back home for dinner - when here? What does he left the house. want? He'd been swayed by The Leader's rhetoric and finds himself a part of the rag-tag band of ill-trained but probably over-armed young men and teens who invade And what exactly is going on with the House of Power. It would not go as they expected.faerie folk around Hravsnik?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1471126668</amazonuk>0356519120
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Betsy Tobin1398515388|title=Things We Couldn't ExplainThe Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=JerichoFirst of all, it was the earthquake, Ohio - 1979deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, in turn, caused the nuclear meltdown. Annemarie is a clever, funny The result was complete and spirited girlutter devastation. Born with sight The deaths were uncountable, she turned blind as a child, but more than compensates for her disabilityand the loss of livelihoods was widespread. Living amongst The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the small-town folk list of Jericho, she has a relatively standard, suburban life, schooled at home priorities but more than friendly with many in - six months after the town tsunami - especially her charming neighbour EthanKazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. All is calm, until one day Annemarie finds herself pregnant He wasn't a dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the dog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1783753080</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jonathan BrahamChristopher Bowden|title=The Pink House at AppletonMr Magenta
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=When we first meet Boyd Longfellow Brookes heChristopher Bowden's musing over the fact that - however much you might wish otherwise - sounds, smells or small details can evoke the most painful latest novel is a patient untangling of memories in full Technicolor. On this particular afternoon it was the music - Saint-Saens a seemingly ordinary woman''Violin Concerto No 3 in B minor'' - which brought back the scene which regularly invaded his dreams ''and'' his waking hourss life, carried out by her nephew after she has died. Once again he was the eight-year-old boy whose father was thrashing him with The aunt who always provided a leather strap whilst his mother wept safe harbour and Papa demanded a little bit of indulgence to know if Boyd a young nephew had had molested the young daughter of a neighbour. He didn't even know the meaning of ''molest'' but the expressions on the faces of those around him told much more interesting life than that nephew Stephen had ever realised and it seems to him an obligation to find it all he needed to knowout.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848767455</amazonuk>B0B6Z9VJDW
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sumia SukkarJennifer Mason|title=The Boy from Aleppo who Painted the WarPartitions of Unity
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=This is a book about colour against the grey backdrop of the Syrian civil war. AdamHere at Bookbag Towers, the 14-year-old narratorwe first met Elizabeth Cromwell, is an artist who describes emotion, people dominatrix and things unintentional detective in colour. Through colour[[Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery by Jennifer Mason|Preposterous]], he makes sense when she investigated and unravelled a series of the worlddisappearances. So his sister, Yasmine, In ''Partitions of Unity'is usually ruby' although at times , she is grey or greensets her mind to solving a murder.. Adam’s views are simple, uncomplicated – he says ‘Lying is bad’, ‘I don’t like the war’ and ‘[Paintings] always say the right things’.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908998466</amazonuk>B09LQR9FRF
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Will Carver
|title=The Daves Next Door
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary= Five strangers come together in one moment as a suicide bomber prepares to detonate his vest on a London tube line. As their fates overlap, the story is told in backwards order, leading up to the fateful moment.
|isbn= 1914585186
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Jennifer Mason
|title=Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=''A struggling poetry zine, a mom-and-pop mobile diner in the Northern California redwoods, a 400-meter hurdler who just missed the 2004 Olympics, a women's track coach with a yen for bullwhips, a billionaire with a state-of-the-art S&M dungeon, a man serving a life sentence in Alabama, an enigmatic signature, K(s, x), on a cheap oil painting, an erotic art dealer in Georgia...''
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|authorisbn=Susan HillB0B2N7MVYM|title=Black SheepThe Calculations of Rational Men|author=Daniel Godfrey|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Mount It's the 10th of Zeal is a mining village, and no mistakeDecember 1962 when we first meet Dr Joseph Marr. Three concentric semi-circular streets align across the side of a hillJust to put what happens in context, like the rows of seats Cuban missile crisis is still very fresh in an amphitheatre, with little thought at all allowed people's minds. The world has barely had a chance to breathe out. But for the life above the crest of the hillJoe Marr, and a lot of effort and dreams focused on it's not the coal mine missile crisis that's at the villagefront of his mind. He's corebeen convicted of murder. The Howker family (and how evocative that name is, so akin to With the noise current state of hawking coal dust from onemedical knowledge, it's lungs), and Ted and Rose, the youngest of hard to think otherwise than that the clan, prosecution would never have been brought but Joe Marr has spent his first few days in particularHMP Queen's Bench, will face the destiny the environment they grow up in gives them – with only the merest glimmers of hope and the faintest of sparks to latch on to as regards a likeable futurerelatively new prison. But if that is a faint sparkHe's just getting used to his roommate, Mervyn, then how safe is it so close and learning to be wary of the tinderbox of a coal mine?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009953956X</amazonuk>McArthur brothers.
}}