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[[Category:General Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ian WalthewOnyi Nwabineli|title=The Complex Chemistry of LossAllow Me to Introduce Myself|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Deep 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 rural France James Kerr was admitted her twenties and she is slowly trying to regain her confidence and to get her life back, suing her step-mother to a psychiatric clinictake down the content about her. His mental problems were deep Anuri is battling alcoholism, failing to start her PhD, undergoing therapy and intractablesecretly abusing people online and receiving money from them for doing so. Superficially he seemed never to have got over Most importantly, she is desperately worried about her little sister, who is the sudden death new focus of his mother Ophelia's online empire. Can she save her sister, and sister when he was a child perhaps herself and after their death his her relationship with his her father had deteriorated because his father refused to speak of their loss. There were additional factors too: Kerr had spent some at the same time in Afghanistan in a secret capacity. In fact much of his life since he went to university had involved putting up a front, but doing something else in the background.?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>B00OLMHCW2</amazonuk>0861546873
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Brooke Davis1529153298|title=Lost and FoundThe List of Suspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Millie Bird keeps a notebookIt's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. (A woman? I mean, honestly... ) She writes in it all of the Dead Things 's not what's worrying Miv's family, though. Women have been disappearing. Well, they've been murdered, but to have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. Miv's upset because she's overheard that she sees. Her Very First Dead Thing was her dog Rambofather wants to move the family 'Down South'. Then there were other things When you're from Yorkshire, Down South is a spiderfrightening, a Bird… but then there was number 28foreign place, best avoided. For Miv, the move would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, and she'll do anything to prevent that. The twenty She's not worried about the dangers or that her Mum's stopped talking -eighth dead thing than Millie Bird noticed was her Dadto anyone.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091958903</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jonathan Lethem1035906708|title=Dissident GardensDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Rose Zimmer, a feisty American communist radical, takes on many good and great causes. These include everything from feminism and racism We tend to the changing course think of Stalinism in the American C.P. Maria Callas as Greek, but most of all; her biggest causes are the people around her. The effects upon them are diverse and devastating. She often propels them she was born to success but at the same time they feel battered Greek parents in Manhattan, New York, in December 1923 and must escape according only moved to their own needsAthens when she was thirteen. Her affections are real original surname was Kalogeropoulos but invasive. Rose keeps a shrine her father changed it to 'Callas' to Abraham Lincolnmake it more manageable in the States. Rose’s self When she was back in Athens -assertion within the perimeters of supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for her voice - she was raised under the German-designed 20th Century New York suburb of Queens, Nazi occupation by a multi-cultural suburb mother who mercilessly exploited her and a planned housing development similar to Hampstead Garden City provide the setting made no secret of her preference for Jonathan Lethem’s Tour de Forceher elder sister, Jackie.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099563428</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Virginia BurgesAlexander McCall Smith|title=The VirtuosoPerfect Passion Company|rating=34.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The title character of ''The Virtuoso'' Perfect Passion Company is Isabelle Bryanta dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and operating as an alternative to all the online apps in providing a professional violinist who more personal, tailored service. Ness has earned asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the affectionate nickname of 'Beethoven's Babe'business, as Ness is planning to take a trip to Canada to get away for a while. She was the youngest-ever winner Katie is coming out of the BBC Young Musician of the Year competition a break up with a bad boyfriend, and gave her first solo performance, of Beethoven's violin concerto, so jumps at Royal Albert Hall. 'Her violin represented another limb the chance to come home to her, it was that preciousEdinburgh. It felt And so naturalbegins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, like bringing us to an extension of her body.' It would hardly be an exaggeration Edinburgh we already love, thanks to say that 44 Scotland Street and the violin is IsabelleIsabel Dalhousie novels, but with some new characters who quickly begin to charm. Katie has no experience in running a business, or in match-making, but Ness has full confidence in her abilities, and there's life.always her very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, William, to lend a hand…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>B00R07U0B0</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=Anne TylerKatherine Howe|title=A Spool of Blue ThreadTrue Account
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Every family has its tales which are told and retold and Hannah Masury is living in the Whitshank Boston, having been sent to live with a family it was the story of how Abby and Red had fallen in love one ''beautifulwho run an inn, breezy, yellow-and-green afternoon'' in July 1959being made to work there from a young age. It would usually When she hears there is to be told on the porch a hanging of some pirates in the Baltimore house which Redtown, she decides to go and watch. Enthralled and horrified in equal measure, Hannah finds herself embroiled in a young boy's father had built, but on this final time death at the hands of its telling the circumstances are differenttwo vicious pirates. Abby She hides away, so that they don't find and Red are aging - even the glorious house is beginning to show its age - kill her too, and decisions have then to be made about how escape them completely she runs away to look after themsea, dressing as a boy and joining the notorious Ned Low's pirate ship as a cabin boy. All She soon finds herself in the family are thick of things when thereis a mutiny on board, even Denny, who can generally be relied and from there we are caught up in her rip roaring tale of life on to do only what pleases himthe ocean waves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701189517</amazonuk>0861547438
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Miranda Sherry1471180158|title=Black Dog SummerMaybe Tomorrow|author=Penny Parkes|rating=34.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=YesterdayJamie Matson works in an upper-class grocery store, Sally was living in for a man who's a rambling farmstead control freak with her teenage daughter Gigiall the subtlety of a half brick. Now Sally is dead Jamie's son, murderedBo, 'has his problems'. He's asthmatic and the more you read, the more you'll suspect that he's on the autistic spectrum. Sometimes Jamie needs to take time off at short notice - she's a frequent flier in the local A&E and Gigi is alone sometimes Bo's not fit enough to go to school. Missed shifts or the need to be away on time to pick Bo up from school are occasions when Jamie can be controlled and put in the worldwrong. It was going to come to a head.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781859574</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Niyati KeniB0CKD1L5JL|title=Esperanza StreetRadio Free Olympia|author=Jeffrey Dunn|rating=54
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Joseph's parents send him to work for Auntie Mary and her B&B business on Esperanza StreetPetr is an orphan. Over Rescued by the years there life for Joseph goes on strange, reclusive Bear, he is brought up far from bustling cities and busy human society, in the way it has for countless other youngsters from this Filipino town forests of PuertoWashington's Olympic Peninsula. His mother may have died too young After Bear dies and Joseph a brief sojourn in human company, and armed with only sees his father one day a week (and has to suffer church for part of that!) but there's pirate radio transmitter, Petr goes on a rhythm to journey through the market outside forest, broadcasting the strange, wild and foreign visitors within Auntie Mary's walls that's familiar and comforting. It's a rhythm that's been there for generations but things change, sometimes with catastrophic resultsrarely heard voices he encounters.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908276487</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Nigel McCleaSarah Marsh|title=A Word Glittering with SpikesSign of Her Own
|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=We're going to follow the fortunes After a bout of two couples (or are they 'would-be couples' or 'might-have-been couples'?) scarlet fever as they navigate the treacherous waters of lovea child, Ellen Lark loses her hearing. David Castledine's first meeting with Jenny could hardly have been less auspicious: he hit Suddenly plunged into a world of silence, everything about herlife changes. He didn't ''actually'' mean Living in a time when the use of sign language was seen as something only savages do, Ellen is sent to hit her but he threw a stick for his aunt's dog school where she is taught to chase and it caught her on the headlip read, but physically restrained from signing. Head wounds bleed profusely and this one was no exceptionFrom here, so David had to take her back to his aunt's apartment to clean her she ends upin another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the deaf and using a system called Visible Speech. I suppose there have been worse meetingsAt the same time, Bell is working on other inventions and ideas, but it's difficult to think and Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a complicated tangle of one!espionage.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0993025501</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=Patrick Modiano, Sempe (illustrator) and William Rodarmor (translator)|title=Catherine Certitude|rating=4|genre=Confident Readers|summary=What little I know of Patrick Modiano Lavender Daniels was gained from the number three weeks short of 'no, we've never heard of him, either' articles and summaries that came our way her fifteenth birthday when he won the Nobel Prize for Literature at the end of 2014The Incident happened. They suggested his oeuvre She was maturea very bright student, slightly thriller-based but not exclusively soa bit too nerdy if truth be told, and asked lots of accumulative questions regarding identity with regard suffered from vitiligo - people were afraid to the Vichy government during WWIIhug her in case it's contagious. Identity It's not easy being a black girl whose skin is 84% white. She had a lot more fixed in this musing little piece, for the adult voicecrush on seventeen-year-over looks back over a wide remove, and says there will always be a little bit of old Reggie Anderson but never thought he would notice her living the events . Then he did: Lavender was very good at math and situations of the bookReggie asked if she would tutor him. She readily agreed: tutoring was something she gladly did at church: this was just an extension. Those situations are of a young dance-school attendee, She went to his house and he raped her loving and much-loved father. In shock, living a cosy life in Paris – she even if the girl never once really works out what it is allowed him to give her father does for a living…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1783443022</amazonuk>lift home.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=R D Shanks1472263936|title=A Reverie of BrothersThe Figurine|author=Victoria Hislop|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The castle of Delzean's walls have always protected Emperor EliIt was in 1968 that Helena McCloud made her first trip to Greece. She was alone: her mother, his sonsGreek by birth, sisterhad left the family home and refused to return, niece but Mary and nephew from Hamish (Helena's parents) felt that it would be a pity if Helena grew up without knowing her grandparents or understanding her Greek heritage. Her trip to the ravages and poverty of the people family apartment in up-market Kolonaki would be the city beyondfirst of several annual visits. However the days may be numbered as a burgeoning revolution has infiltrated its walls thanks She grew to love her grandmother and the rebel movement known as The Eyesfamily's maid, Dina, but was wary - and frightened - of her grandfather, retired general Stamatis Papagiannis. Their plan necessitates the unwitting involvement He was proud of his close connections to the spoilt, egotistical aforementioned niece, Princess AvaJunta and expected his family to uphold his values but saw no reason to accommodate them. Unfortunately there will be collateral damage with tragic effectsHis prejudices included Helena's red hair and green eyes - inherited from her father's Scottish ancestors.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1505631394</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=Nick HarkawayB0BVDC2VWH|title=TigermanThe Grave Listeners|author=William Frank
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Battle-weary The village is isolated and suffering from PTSD, 40poor. It's surrounded by a Witching Forest. And the villagers subsist largely by farming Uphegia plants -yearits bread-old Sergeant Lester Ferris is posted to like fruit provides nutrition and its blossom provides herbal medicines. The black wood of the island of Mancreu to mark time till his retirementforest provides heat and warmth, roofs on homes, and even gallows, if needed. With no family The fear of his own, Lester takes a local lad under his wing; being buried alive is an adolescent who lives his own life through comic books and superheroes existential superstition in the hope village and that he can be adopted. Despite Mancreu beginning to churn with more than its customary black marketeeringis the reason Volushka, Lester realises that he has a job on his handsdrunken, self-indulgent, not only to take care lazy lout of an island that sees him as a government puppet but also convince someone that he man is the stuff of heroism and to convince himself while he's at ittolerated.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099591758</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Karen Thompson WalkerB0BYF82CXT|title=The Age of MiraclesSemi-Detached|author=Deborah Stone
|rating=4
|genre=Dystopian General Fiction|summary=''The Age Bill and Amanda are living in a semi-detached house, stuck in a depressing rut of Miracles'' was one of those boredom and disappointment, when Terry and Fiona – glamorous, successful and very much-talked about books that I never got in love – move in next door. Despite their different outlooks on life, the time couples befriend each other and life appears to read on its first go aroundimprove for both pairs. I'm But all is not sure how I managed thatwhat it seems, but I didand their increasingly interconnected relationships are fated for tragedy. Anyway, it got debut ''}}{{Frontpage|author Thompson Walker =Shalini Boland|title=The Silent Bride|rating=3|genre=General Fiction|summary= Alice and Seth are a seven figure deal after 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 bidding war wife; beautiful, successful, confident… and it has dystopian themes, so it the inevitable proposal is right up my alley eagerly accepted by Alice and not the sort of thing I'd usually misswedding is planned and set. And so When the much-anticipated day arrives, Alice is walked down the aisle by her father, I was happy that Simon & Schuster decided beaming with pride and excitement as she surveys the congregation – their friends assembled to celebrate this joyful day and when Seth turns to reissue it face his approaching bride, Alice's world implodes because she has absolutely no idea who the man at the altar is, who is waiting for a YA market and even happier that they decided her to send me a copybecome his wife.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1471124851</amazonuk>1662507089
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Gary Kurylo1787636003|title=The Seventh SimianGirls of Summer|author=Katie Bishop|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Edith has lived alone for many years 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 has become irascible and rather antiwas, perhaps, naive, so when thirty-four-year-social. She avoids even going into the nearby village old Alistair Wright started to do take an interest in her shopping and the only human being , she sees with was flattered rather than wary. It was quite a while before he made any regularity is the local shopkeeper who makes grocery deliveries sort of physical approach to her and makes an art form of palming off the strange old lady with overpriced, underweight goodsby that time she was obsessed by him. If it weren't Alistair worked for her catHenry Taylor, Edith would have no companionship at looking after his interests on the island and in particular in the bar where allthe girls either worked or partied.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B00Q4SETM2</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jane Lythell Amanda Craig|title=After the StormThree Graces|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersGeneral Fiction|summary=Rob and Anna are nearing Few styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the Honduras leg state-of their South American travels. Here they meet Kimberley and Owen, an American couple who charter out their own boat for sailing trips around -the local islands-nation novel. Rob persuades Anna it will be a fun way to end their holiday but Anna isn't so sure. There's something so utterly compelling about Owen any writer who can catch hold of the atmosphere of the day and Kimberley capture it, crafting an image of the country as it stands in one particular moment. To say that makes her hesitant about being shut away on a boat Amanda Craig is skilled at sea doing this would be embarrassingly inadequate: she's practically synonymous with themthe genre of contemporary social fiction at this point. Perhaps it's She has such a gift for weaving the ongoing issues of the day into the lives of her characters in a way that he never sleeps or the mystery as to why there are no knives feels natural and lived-in the cutlery drawer. Rob thinks Anna's just overly imaginative, never making them ciphers for social commentary but time will tellinstead fully realised people, grappling with issues far larger than themselves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1781855323</amazonuk>140871468X
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Stewart Foster152915118X|title=We Used to Be KingsPineapple Street|author=Jenny Jackson
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Tom ''Pineapple Street'' is the story of three women: Sasha, Darley and Georgiana. Darley and Jack George are 18 todaysisters and Sasha is married to their brother Cord. Not that They're Stocktons, only Sasha isn't a Stockton by birth so she isn't readily accepted into the tribe. The problem's exacerbated when the clan matriarch, Tilda, asks Cord and Sasha if they 'd like to move into the Pineapple Street property. Tilda and Chip have much cause for celebration - stuck in renovated and downsized to another property, a home for troubled childrenstreet or so away, which they are constantly examined own. They won't need any of the furniture from Pineapple Street, so Sasha and questioned by doctorsCord can move straight in. Nominally, when all they want is had a choice but that wasn't the reality. Darley and Georgiana start to be left alone call Sasha 'the gold digger'. She's living in ''their'' family home. They use it so often that they abbreviate it to live life together'the GD'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099584190</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Victoria AveyardEmily Critchley|title=Red QueenOne Puzzling Afternoon
|rating=4
|genre=TeensCrime|summary=Mare is a Red - a race kept 84 year old Edie has lived in lives of poverty and servitude by the Silverssame small town for almost her whole life, but now she is facing a race with wealth move as her son wants to move to another house and mutant powers that allow them bring Edie to live lives of luxurywith his family, as Edie is starting to lose her memory. Learning to survive amongst the slum like conditions that the Reds inhabit However, Mare Edie is swiftly thrown into tormented by the world memory of her childhood friend, Lucy, who went missing over 60 years ago, and the Silvers - one worry that proves to there was a secret she was keeping for Lucy that somehow might be more dangerous than 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 had ever imaginedsaw her, with treacheryshe starts to find pockets of memories coming back to her. And yet as she remembers the past, plots she is forgetting more and deadly games lurking round every cornermore 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?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1409155846</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''
{{newreview|author=Margaret Wild|title=The Vanishing Moment|rating=4|genre=Teens|summary=This book appealed 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 me on various groundsits sorrowful end the summer after. It is teen fiction (and, joy Set against the backdrop of joysan isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the 24-year-old narrator's deepening relationship with her older lover, devoid of werewolves and dystopia)depicting its all-consuming nature, how it is by an Australian author (under-represented changed her perspective on UK shelves), both romantic and familial relationships and how it involves parallel universes (tantalising philosophical what-ifs). I was intrigued to see if the author could live up to my expectationsaltered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1743315902</amazonuk>0861546490
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jack Sheffield0008506337|title=Silent NightThe Garnett Girls|author=Georgina Moore|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=I read a couple of Jack Sheffield’s books about five years agoThe love affair between Margo Garnett and poet Richard O'Leary was all-consuming, apparently on both sides. Margo was just sixteen when they fell in love. Richard was twenty-one and enjoyed them very muchdescribed by Margo's mother as 'an older man'. They were written in Her parents worried that Richard's influence would take her away from what they felt she could achieve - going to Oxford and having a similar style to those popularised by, for instance, James Herriot or [[:Category:Gervase Phinn|Gervase Phinn]], told mostly in glittering career. In the first personevent, describing they eloped and Richard took her away from the author’s first couple Isle of years as Headmaster at Wight. Margo did go to Oxford and went on to become a small village primary school in Yorkshirewell-respected journalist. The village of Ragley is fictionalcouple had three children: Rachel, as are most of the charactersImogen and Sasha. Life was lived in London and holidays were spent at Sandcove, but the incidents and situations encountered are based family home on the author’s experienceIsle of Wight. Even then the doubts about Richard's drinking were never far from Margo's mind: ''she would never be able to leave him in charge''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0552167045</amazonuk>}}
 {{newreview|author=Robert Schneider|title=Brother of Sleep|rating=3Then Richard left them.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''Brother of Sleep'' tells the story of Elias Johannes Alder, a child born into a god forsaken village high in the Austrian Vorarlberg. He came into the world as a silent child, while his mother was screaming and the midwife wasn't really paying attention. It took a couple of loud intonations of the Te Deum from the neglectful nurse before he finally uttered a sound. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0715649205</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Joanne Graham1914585402|title=To The Edge of ShadowsDashboard Elvis is Dead|author=David F Ross|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Sarah awakes from I reviewed David F Ross's book [[There's Only One Danny Garvey by David F Ross|There's Only One Danny Garvey]] a coma to find her world destroyed, a long lost aunt her only remaining family, couple of years back and remember being absolutely floored by how powerful and life as she knows affecting it irrevocably changed foreverwas. Moving to It was a new town gripping, emotionally wounding read, and a new school, making new friends is the least rereading my review of her challenges as she struggles to regain her physical and mental health following the accidentit my main takeaway was that I might not have lavished enough praise on it.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1910162841</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Leanne HallLucy Ashe|title=This is ShynessClara and Olivia
|rating=4.5
|genre=TeensGeneral Fiction|summary=The year is 1933. The place? Sadler's Wells. Ballerinas Clara and Olivia are sisters, twins no less. Identical on the outside but not, we learn, on the inside. And not on stage, either. Because there's a lot that builds a dancer. Some things that can be taught or learnt – discipline, attention to detail – and some things, that ''je ne sais quoi'This is Shyness', that don' is an unusual and brilliant story about Wolfboy and Wildgirlt come from the classroom. A stage presence, a charm, two strangers who meet in a pub in the town of Shyness''joie de vivre''. The teenagers are drawn togetherdifference between a hard-worker, each adopting and a different identity so for the night they can be anyone but themselvesstar.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1921656522</amazonuk>0861544080
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Antonin Varenne and Frank Wynne (translator)Heather Fawcett|title=LoserEmily Wilde's CornerEncyclopaedia of Faeries
|rating=4
|genre=ThrillersGeneral Fiction|summary=Meet Georges Crozat. HeEmily Wilde is an expert academic scholar on faerie lore, and she has travelled extensively, and researched meticulously, to write her life's a policeman in Pariswork, who boxes on the sidevery first encyclopaedia of faeries. After a bout that leads Whilst she is brilliant at research and speaking to an almost embarrassing victoryfaeries, he she is made two offers – one from a clearly corrupt man behind the scenes not so good with people. So when she finds herself far, far North in the sport, who seems to offer a few thrown fights for Georges, then some kind small village of status as assistant – trainingHrafvsnik, guiding, profiteering; having somehow offended the other comes from a man known always as ''the Pakistani'' (or an unkind abbreviation of that)village matriarch, who she is not sure what she has a friend of a friend who wants someone done, nor how to do an enemy a mischief with their fists. Georges doesn't take too long to choose redeem herself and put her final investigations for her book back on the latterright track. In alternating chaptersEnter Wendell Bambleby, however, we're in the 1950sher dashingly handsome and insufferable rival who arrives unexpectedly, all charm and a rookie to the forcesdelight, Pascal Verini, is being shipped out much to Algeria to work on the civil war causing the republic to break away and become independent from FranceEmily's frustration. Like Georges, But why is he here? What does he finds his situation one which also causes want? And what may be misguided violence, even if he has a very different attitude to it.exactly is going on with the faerie folk around Hravsnik?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857052276</amazonuk>0356519120
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=J Robert Lennon1398515388|title=See You In ParadiseThe Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)|rating=34.5|genre=Short StoriesGeneral Fiction|summary=Lennon writes with a relaxedFirst of all, easy style and his characters are instantly recognisable as people from everyday walks of lifeit was the earthquake, without being deep in any way stereotypical. Many of the people in these stories are dealing with normal frustrationsocean floor, which created the tsunami and Lennon is cleverly detached enough not to make them individuals that you're obviously supposed to root for (the only exception is the industrialist this, in turn, caused the eponymous tale, who is an archetypal capitalist fat cat)nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and utter devastation. There are some very clever characterisations – in ''Weber’s Head'', for example The deaths were uncountable, and the narrator is a flawed individual whose opinions loss of his housemate are gradually revealed to be unreliable and unfairlivelihoods was widespread. For me, The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the most unsettling story is tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. He wasn''No Life'', because it portrays t a decent couple at dog person but the mercy of people more powerful convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and influential than them. There is no supernatural or bizarre element at work here, just ordinary characters at Tamon the mercy of social powerdog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781253358</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Daisy WaughChristopher Bowden|title=HoneyvilleMr Magenta
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The story Christopher Bowden's latest novel is told by Dora Whitworth, a call girl in one patient untangling of the most exclusive brothels in Trinidada seemingly ordinary woman's life, Colorado. At the time, the town was the only place in the West where prostitution was legal and it was infamous for its red-light district. Dora’s voice rings true and carried out by her life is convincingly describednephew after she has died. The sumptuous brothel in Plum Street, with its smells aunt who always provided a safe harbour and a little bit of perfume and disinfectant, is as claustrophobic as indulgence to a young nephew had had a prison much more interesting life than that nephew Stephen had ever realised and Phoebe, the madam, particularly chillingit seems to him an obligation to find it all out.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0007431775</amazonuk>B0B6Z9VJDW
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tammy CohenJennifer Mason|title=Dying for ChristmasPartitions of Unity|rating=3.54|genre=CrimeGeneral Fiction|summary=The book starts off promisingly enough with an introduction by JessicaHere at Bookbag Towers, the narratorwe first met Elizabeth Cromwell, who informs us that she is imprisoned dominatrix and unintentional detective in [[Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery by a stranger who is handsome and charming and extremely sadistic. Jessica then recounts the events leading up to and during her incarceration, which takes place over the Christmas period. Her jailer, Dominic, has prepared twelve presents for her, for the Twelve Days of ChristmasJennifer Mason|Preposterous]], when she investigated and each present-opening episode builds up unravelled a sense series of dread while providing a deepening understanding disappearances. In ''Partitions of the sinister and bitter Unity'', she sets her mind at workto solving a murder.. Genuinely creepy stuff.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1784160172</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...''
{{newreview|author=Paul Sussman|title=The Final Testimony This is just a sample of Raphael Ignatius Phoenix|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary=On the eve cast of the year 2000, Raphael Ignatius Phoenix decides that he has had enoughcharacters and settings in Preposterous. Having lived for a centuryAs you can see, he takes his own life on the roof some keeping up will be required! The basic premise of his castle, swallowing a small white pill he has kept on his person for almost 90 yearsthis mystery story goes like this.. In the days before, he had written his story all over the walls of the castle - a story that takes in an Edwardian childhood, Hollywood in the 1920's, the Second World War, life as a butler in a stately home, life in a rock band in the 60's, time spent in a nursing home, and finally life in the castle - amongst other, enchanting tales.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0552779679</amazonuk>B09STS96HS
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jane StubbsB0B2N7MVYM|title=Thornfield HallThe Calculations of Rational Men|author=Daniel Godfrey
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=I canIt't say that I'm a fan of reworkings of classic books: [[Emma by Alexander McCall Smith|some]] suck s the life out 10th of December 1962 when we first meet Dr Joseph Marr. Just to put what happens in context, the original, [[Jane Eyrotica by Charlotte Bronte and Karena Rose|others]] fail Cuban missile crisis is still very fresh in people's minds. The world has barely had a chance to add anything - and why would you want to read an inferior version when you can read the real thing? breathe out. GenerallyBut for Joe Marr, I try to avoid them - and Iit'm still s not certain why I made an exception for ''Thornfield Hall'' - it certainly wasnthe missile crisis that't s at the headless woman (sighfront of his mind. He's been convicted of murder..) on With the cover - but I added current state of medical knowledge, it 's hard to my reading pilethink otherwise than that the prosecution would never have been brought but Joe Marr has spent his first few days in HMP Queen's Bench, a relatively new prison. IHe'm glad that I dids just getting used to his roommate, Mervyn, and learning to be wary of the McArthur brothers.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782395245</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview|author=Simon Wroe|title=Chop Chop|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary='Monocle' isn't his real name, but that's what the brigade at ''The Swan'' would call him once they knew him well enough to insult him. He has an English Literature degree, you see, and the chefs think that's what he would 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 Move on which to practice. Monocle has little choice but to stay - given the situation between his parents, going home isn't really an option.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241000009</amazonuk>}}[[Newest Graphic Novels Reviews]]

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