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[[Category:General Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Diana SweeneyOnyi Nwabineli|title=The MinnowAllow Me to Introduce Myself
|rating=4.5
|genre=TeensGeneral Fiction|summary=Diana SweeneyAnuri 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''The Minnow'' is an Australian book aimed at Young Adults that features deaths childhood for sponsorships and influencer deals and, griefbasically, abuse, fear and lonelinessmonetary gain. Teenage pregnancy lies at its heart while bereavement, Now Anuri is in her twenties and she is slowly trying to come regain her confidence and to terms with lossget her life back, bubbles just under suing her step-mother to take down the surfacecontent about her. Anuri is battling alcoholism, constantly. But don't be misled. This novel isn't some earnest pedagogical attempt failing to convey teenage angst start her PhD, undergoing therapy and elicit grave pity or understanding secretly abusing people online and receiving money from the readerthem for doing so. What rescues it from mawkishness Most importantly, she is desperately worried about her little sister, who is the beautiful voice new focus of the narrator, Tom (or Holly, if you prefer her real name). Tom doesnOphelia't fall prey to self-pitys online empire. She simply describes her world as Can she sees it, matter-of-fact. And the fact that save her view is rather unusual (she talks to fishsister, dead people and perhaps herself and her unborn child - and they talk back) doesn't really matter. Nothing can detract from the sheer lyricism of relationship with her voice. As a reader, you just have to suspend disbelief and enjoy father at the ride. same time?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>192218201X</amazonuk>0861546873
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Hermione Eyre1529153298|title=Viper Wine|rating=4.5|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=Venetia Stanley lives in Seventeeth century London. A celebrated beauty, she has had poems written in honour of her, and portraits painted by one of the leading artists of the time. Married to a handsome, kind and adventurous man, Venetia is kept in a life of luxury, and, at first glance - has everything she could ever have dreamed of. Except Venetia is not happy. A woman who has made her name and fortune because The List of her beauty, she is convinced that her allure is quickly slipping through her fingers. Signing a pact with an apothecary for his famed restorative 'Viper Wine', Venetia is set on a dangerous path.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099581663</amazonuk>}}{{newreviewSuspicious Things|author=Liam Brown|title=Real MonstersJennie Godfrey
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Lorna was 12 when she was sent home from schoolIt's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. (A woman? I mean, watched the unfurling events of 9/11 on her TV and recognised her fatherhonestly...) She's not what's worrying Miv's office block aflame and fallingfamily, though. Her fight for mental survival started at that moment and the use of alcohol to quell the memories came soon after but then she meets Danny – her life saverWomen have been disappearing. Shortly after this Well, they marry and Danny joins the army've been murdered, but to have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. HeMiv's upset because she's sent overheard that her father wants to fight move the monstersfamily 'Down South'. When you're from Yorkshire, Down South is a frightening, foreign place, best avoided. For Miv, the fundamentalist organisationsmove would mean leaving her best friend, which destroyed LornaSharon, and she's childhoodll do anything to prevent that. However when whatShe's left of his unit becomes lost in not worried about the desert without food, water dangers or equipment, the focus changes from military victory that her Mum's stopped talking - to personal survival and those monsters are still out there…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1910394564</amazonuk>anyone.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Chigozie Obioma1035906708|title=The FishermenDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=This book is essentially a cautionary family tale We tend to think of four brothers Maria Callas as Greek, but she was born to Greek parents in Manhattan, New York, in December 1923 and the way they react only moved to Athens when she was thirteen. Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to 'Callas' to a prophecy about them by make it more manageable in the local madmanStates. It is also, When she was back in a sense, a comingAthens -ofsupposedly so that she could get appropriate training for her voice -age story where Ben, the young narrator, is plunged into premature adulthood she was raised under the most brutal Nazi occupation by a mother who mercilessly exploited her and made no secret of circumstances. And it is about brotherly love. None of these descriptions, howeverher preference for her elder sister, convey the fact that this book is written by an exciting new voice in African literary fictionJackie.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0957548850</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jonathan KempAlexander McCall Smith|title=GhostingThe Perfect Passion Company|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Grace Wellbeck The Perfect Passion Company is 64 - living on a canal boat dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and operating as an alternative to all the online apps in London with providing a more personal, tailored service. Ness has asked her second husbandyounger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the business, she lives as Ness is planning to take a trip to Canada to get away for a relatively settled life while. Katie is coming out of routinea break up with a bad boyfriend, and so jumps at the chance to come home to Edinburgh.A chance encounter 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 Isabel Dalhousie novels, but with some new characters who quickly begin to charm. Katie has no experience in running a man business, or in match-making, but Ness has full confidence in her abilities, and there's always her very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, William, to lend a hand…|isbn=1846976596}}{{Frontpage|author=Dean Koontz|title=The Bad Weather Friend|rating=4.5|genre=Paranormal|summary=Benny is having a terrifically bad day. He loses his job, he loses his fiancee, 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 street changes everything though - 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 man 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 the spitting image going to take care of Benny, and will certainly take care of her firstBenny's enemies, deceased husband. Is if he , Benny, and Harper (a ghost? Is Grace going mad?waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0956251560</amazonuk>1662500491
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Nicci ClokeKatherine Howe|title=Lay Me DownA True Account
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=It's New Year's Eve and the nightclub Hannah Masury is pulsating living in Boston, having been sent to live with sounda family who run an inn, and being made to work there from a young age. The revellers heave and swell in oceanic waves and Jack When she hears there is preparing to call it be a nighthanging of some pirates in the town, she decides to go and watch. Enthralled and horrified in equal measure, when he is presented with ElsaHannah finds herself embroiled in a young boy's death at the hands of two vicious pirates. She is small; delicate hides away, so that they don't find and pretty kill her too, and alluringly confident - then to escape them completely she runs away to sea, dressing as a heady combination for boy and joining the notorious Ned Low's pirate ship as a man like Jack - and though he wants, with every fibre cabin boy. She soon finds herself in the thick of his beingthings when there is a mutiny on board, to walk away, to go home and forget from there we are caught up in her, he doesn'trip roaring tale of life on the ocean waves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099593653</amazonuk>0861547438
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Antonia Honeywell1471180158|title=The ShipMaybe Tomorrow|author=Penny Parkes|rating=4.5|genre=Dystopian General Fiction|summary=Sixteen year old Lalla has spent her life Jamie Matson works in London – mostly inside her family home. Because this is not an upper-class grocery store, for a man who's a control freak with all the London subtlety of todaya half brick. Jamie's son, or any other dayBo, 'has his problems'. When Lalla was seven, He's asthmatic and the apocalypse arrived; banks crashed, flood defences failedmore you read, power failed – and the world could only focus more you'll suspect that he's on survivalthe autistic spectrum. Now Sometimes Jamie needs to take time off at short notice - she's a frequent flier in the Nazareth Act is in force local A&E and without your identity card, you don’t exist – literally, as you will 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 shot if you don't produce itcontrolled and put in the wrong. It was going to come to a head.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0297871498</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Nigel PackerB0CKD1L5JL|title=The Restoration of Otto LairdRadio Free Olympia|author=Jeffrey Dunn
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=''The Restoration of Otto Laird'' Petr is an interesting concept for a storyorphan. It pitches an ageing architect against an ageing building that was built early Rescued by the strange, reclusive Bear, he is brought up far from bustling cities and busy human society, in Ottothe forests of Washington's careerOlympic Peninsula. When Otto makes 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 trip from Switzerland to London to try forest, broadcasting the strange, wild and save Marlowe house from demolition, rarely heard voices he takes an unwilling journey down his own pastencounters. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0751553077</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ian WalthewSarah Marsh|title=The Complex Chemistry A Sign of LossHer Own|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Deep in rural France James Kerr was admitted to After a bout of scarlet fever as a psychiatric clinicchild, Ellen Lark loses her hearing. His mental problems were deep and intractableSuddenly plunged into a world of silence, everything about her life changes. Superficially he seemed never to have got over Living in a time when the sudden death use of his mother and sister when he sign language was seen as something only savages do, Ellen is sent to a child and after their death his relationship with his father had deteriorated because his father refused school where she is taught to speak of their losslip read, but physically restrained from signing. There were additional factors too: Kerr had spent some time in Afghanistan From here, she ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the deaf and using a secret capacitysystem called Visible Speech. In fact much of his life since he went to university had involved putting At the same time, Bell is working on other inventions and ideas, and Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a front, but doing something else in the backgroundcomplicated tangle of espionage.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>B00OLMHCW2</amazonuk>1035401614
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Brooke DavisB0BC3YTCMR|title=Lost and FoundGood Girls Die|author=Ayura Ayira|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Millie Bird keeps a notebook''This story is not for everyone. She writes in it all '' Lavender Daniels was three weeks short of the Dead Things that she seesher fifteenth birthday when The Incident happened. Her Very First Dead Thing She was a very bright student, a bit too nerdy if truth be told, and suffered from vitiligo - people were afraid to hug her dog Ramboin case it's contagious. Then there were other things It's not easy being a spider, black girl whose skin is 84% white. She had a Bird… crush on seventeen-year-old Reggie Anderson but then there never thought he would notice her. Then he did: Lavender was number 28very good at math and Reggie asked if she would tutor him. The twenty-eighth dead thing than Millie Bird noticed 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 Dada lift home.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091958903</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jonathan Lethem1472263936|title=Dissident GardensThe Figurine|author=Victoria Hislop
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Rose ZimmerIt was in 1968 that Helena McCloud made her first trip to Greece. She was alone: her mother, Greek by birth, a feisty American communist radicalhad left the family home and refused to return, takes on many good but Mary and great causesHamish (Helena's parents) felt that it would be a pity if Helena grew up without knowing her grandparents or understanding her Greek heritage. These include everything from feminism and racism Her trip to the changing course of Stalinism family apartment in up-market Kolonaki would be the American C.Pfirst of several annual visits. She grew to love her grandmother and the family's maid, Dina, but most was wary - and frightened - of all; her biggest causes are the people around hergrandfather, retired general Stamatis Papagiannis. The effects upon them are diverse and devastating. She often propels them He was proud of his close connections to success but at the same time they feel battered Junta and must escape according expected his family to their own needs. Her affections are real uphold his values but invasive. Rose keeps a shrine saw no reason to Abraham Lincolnaccommodate them. Rose’s self His prejudices included Helena's red hair and green eyes -assertion within the perimeters of the German-designed 20th Century New York suburb of Queens, a multi-cultural suburb and a planned housing development similar to Hampstead Garden City provide the setting for Jonathan Lethem’s Tour de Forceinherited from her father's Scottish ancestors.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099563428</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Virginia BurgesDean Koontz|title=The VirtuosoAfter 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.5 ''Everything''. Michael isn't ''Michael'' anymore.|isbn=1662500467}} {{Frontpage|isbn=B0BVDC2VWH|title=The Grave Listeners|author=William Frank|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The title character of ''The Virtuoso'' village is Isabelle Bryant, a professional violinist who has earned the affectionate nickname of 'Beethovenisolated and poor. It's Babe'surrounded by a Witching Forest. She was And the youngestvillagers subsist largely by farming Uphegia plants -ever winner of the BBC Young Musician its bread-like fruit provides nutrition and its blossom provides herbal medicines. The black wood of the Year competition forest provides heat and gave her first solo performancewarmth, of Beethoven's violin concertoroofs on homes, at Royal Albert Hall. 'Her violin represented another limb to herand even gallows, it was that preciousif needed. It felt so natural, like an extension The fear of her body.' It would hardly be being buried alive is an exaggeration to say existential superstition in the village and that is the violin reason Volushka, a drunken, self-indulgent, lazy lout of a man is Isabelle's lifetolerated.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B00R07U0B0</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Anne TylerB0BYF82CXT|title=A Spool of Blue ThreadSemi-Detached|author=Deborah Stone|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Every family has its tales which ''Bill and Amanda are told and retold and living in a semi-detached house, stuck in the Whitshank family it was the story a depressing rut of how Abby boredom and Red had fallen in love one ''beautifuldisappointment, breezywhen Terry and Fiona – glamorous, yellow-successful and-green afternoon'' very much in love – move in July 1959next door. It would usually be told Despite their different outlooks on the porch of the Baltimore house which Red's father had builtlife, but on this final time of its telling the circumstances are differentcouples befriend each other and life appears to improve for both pairs. Abby and Red are aging - even the glorious house But all is beginning to show its age - not what it seems, and decisions have to be made about how to look after them. All the family their increasingly interconnected relationships are there, even Denny, who can generally be relied on to do only what pleases himfated for tragedy.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701189517</amazonuk>''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Miranda SherryShalini Boland|title=Black Dog SummerThe Silent Bride|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Yesterday, Sally was living Alice and Seth are a match made in a rambling farmstead with her teenage daughter Gigiheaven. Now Sally He is deadeverything she has been searching for; handsome, accomplished, murderedclever, funny; total and Gigi utter husband-material. She is alone all he could possibly want in a wife; beautiful, successful, confident… and so the inevitable proposal is eagerly accepted by Alice and the wedding is planned and set. When the much-anticipated day arrives, Alice is walked down the aisle by her father, beaming with pride and excitement as she surveys the congregation – their friends assembled to celebrate this joyful day and when Seth turns to face his approaching bride, Alice's worldimplodes because she has absolutely no idea who the man at the altar is, who is waiting for her to become his wife.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1781859574</amazonuk>1662507089
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Niyati Keni1787636003|title=Esperanza StreetThe Girls of Summer|author=Katie Bishop
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=JosephIt was the summer when Rachel Evans turned eighteen that she and Caroline went backpacking around Greece and arrived on the island. Rachel wasn's parents send him t exactly innocent but she was, perhaps, naive, so when thirty-four-year-old Alistair Wright started to work for Auntie Mary and take an interest in her B&B business on Esperanza Street, she was flattered rather than wary. Over the years there life for Joseph goes on the way it has for countless other youngsters from this Filipino town It was quite a while before he made any sort of Puertophysical approach to her and by that time she was obsessed by him. His mother may have died too young and Joseph only sees Alistair worked for Henry Taylor, looking after his father one day a week (interests on the island and has to suffer church for part in particular in the bar where all the girls either worked or partied.}}{{Frontpage|author=Amanda Craig|title=Three Graces|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary= Few styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the state-of that!) but there-the-nation novel. There's a rhythm to something so utterly compelling about any writer who can catch hold of the atmosphere of the market outside day and foreign visitors within Auntie Mary's walls capture it, crafting an image of the country as it stands in one particular moment. To say thatAmanda Craig is skilled at doing this would be embarrassingly inadequate: she's familiar and comfortingpractically synonymous with the genre of contemporary social fiction at this point. It's She has such a gift for weaving the ongoing issues of the day into the lives of her characters in a rhythm way that's been there feels natural and lived-in, never making them ciphers for generations social commentary but things changeinstead fully realised people, sometimes grappling with catastrophic resultsissues far larger than themselves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908276487</amazonuk>140871468X
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Nigel McClea152915118X|title=A Word Glittering with SpikesPineapple Street|author=Jenny Jackson|rating=34.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=We're going to follow the fortunes of two couples (or are they 'would-be couples' or Pineapple Street'might-have-been couples'?) as they navigate is the treacherous waters story of lovethree women: Sasha, Darley and Georgiana. David Castledine's first meeting with Jenny could hardly have been less auspicious: he hit herDarley and George are sisters and Sasha is married to their brother Cord. He didnThey're Stocktons, only Sasha isn't a Stockton by birth so she isn't readily accepted into the tribe. The problem'actually'' mean to hit her but he threw a stick for his aunts exacerbated when the clan matriarch, Tilda, asks Cord and Sasha if they's dog d like to chase and it caught her on move into the headPineapple Street property. Head wounds bleed profusely Tilda and Chip have renovated and this one was no exceptiondownsized to another property, a street or so David had to take her back to his auntaway, which they own. They won's apartment to clean her upt need any of the furniture from Pineapple Street, so Sasha and Cord can move straight in. I suppose there have been worse meetingsNominally, they had a choice but itthat wasn't the reality. Darley and Georgiana start to call Sasha 'the gold digger'. She's difficult living in ''their'' family home. They use it so often that they abbreviate it to think of one!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0993025501</amazonuk>'the GD'.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Patrick Modiano, Sempe (illustrator) and William Rodarmor (translator)Emily Critchley|title=Catherine CertitudeOne Puzzling Afternoon
|rating=4
|genre=Confident ReadersCrime|summary=What little I know of Patrick Modiano was gained from the number of 'no, we've never heard of him, either' articles and summaries that came our way when he won 84 year old Edie has lived in the Nobel Prize same small town for Literature at the end of 2014. They suggested his oeuvre was maturealmost her whole life, slightly thriller-based but not exclusively so, now she is facing a move as her son wants to move to another house and asked lots of accumulative questions regarding identity bring Edie to live with regard his family, as Edie is starting to the Vichy government during WWIIlose her memory. Identity However, Edie is a lot more fixed in this musing little piecetormented by the memory of her childhood friend, Lucy, for the adult voice-over looks back who went missing over a wide remove60 years ago, and says the worry that there will always was a secret she was keeping for Lucy that somehow might be a little bit the thing that reveals the truth of what happened all that time ago. After 'seeing' Lucy in the high street, just as she was the last time she saw her living the events and situations , she starts to find pockets of the bookmemories coming back to her. Those situations are of a young dance-school attendeeAnd yet as she remembers the past, she is forgetting more and more in her loving and much-loved father, living a cosy day to day life in Paris – even if . Will she uncover the girl never once really works out what it is truth about Lucy's disappearance before her move, and before her father does for a living…memories are gone forever?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1783443022</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=R D Shanks0008506337|title=A Reverie of BrothersThe Garnett Girls|author=Georgina Moore|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The castle of Delzeanlove affair between Margo Garnett and poet Richard O'Leary was all-consuming, apparently on both sides. Margo was just sixteen when they fell in love. Richard was twenty-one and described by Margo's mother as 'an older man'. Her parents worried that Richard's walls have always protected Emperor Eliinfluence would take her away from what they felt she could achieve - going to Oxford and having a glittering career. In the event, his sons, sister, niece they eloped and nephew Richard took her away from the ravages and poverty Isle of the people in the city beyondWight. However the days may be numbered as Margo did go to Oxford and went on to become a burgeoning revolution has infiltrated its walls thanks to the rebel movement known as well-respected journalist. The Eyescouple had three children: Rachel, Imogen and Sasha. Their plan necessitates Life was lived in London and holidays were spent at Sandcove, the family home on the unwitting involvement Isle of the spoilt, egotistical aforementioned niece, Princess AvaWight. Unfortunately there will Even then the doubts about Richard's drinking were never far from Margo's mind: ''she would never be collateral damage with tragic effectsable to leave him in charge''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1505631394</amazonuk>Then Richard left them.
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Nick Harkaway1914585402|title=TigermanDashboard Elvis is Dead|author=David F Ross|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Battle-weary I reviewed David F Ross's book [[There's Only One Danny Garvey by David F Ross|There's Only One Danny Garvey]] a couple of years back and suffering from PTSD, 40-year-old Sergeant Lester Ferris is posted to the island of Mancreu to mark time till his retirementremember being absolutely floored by how powerful and affecting it was. With no family of his own, Lester takes It was a local lad under his wing; an adolescent who lives his own life through comic books and superheroes in the hope that he can be adopted. Despite Mancreu beginning to churn with more than its customary black marketeeringgripping, Lester realises that he has a job on his handsemotionally wounding read, not only to take care and rereading my review of an island it my main takeaway was that sees him as a government puppet but also convince someone that he is the stuff of heroism and to convince himself while he's at I might not have lavished enough praise on it.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099591758</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Karen Thompson WalkerLucy Ashe|title=The Age of MiraclesClara and Olivia|rating=4|genre=Dystopian Fiction|summary=''The Age of Miracles'' was one of those much-talked about books that I never got the time to read on its first go around. I'm not sure how I managed that, but I did. Anyway, it got debut author Thompson Walker a seven figure deal after a bidding war and it has dystopian themes, so it is right up my alley and not the sort of thing I'd usually miss. And so, I was happy that Simon & Schuster decided to reissue it for a YA market and even happier that they decided to send me a copy.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1471124851</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Gary Kurylo|title=The Seventh Simian|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Edith has lived alone for many years The year is 1933. The place? Sadler's Wells. Ballerinas Clara and she has become irascible and rather anti-socialOlivia are sisters, twins no less. She avoids even going into Identical on the nearby village to do her shopping and outside but not, we learn, on the only human being she sees with any regularity is the local shopkeeper who makes grocery deliveries 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 her detail – and makes an art form of palming off some things, that ''je ne sais quoi'', that don't come from the strange old lady with overpricedclassroom. A stage presence, underweight goodsa charm, a ''joie de vivre''. If it weren't for her catThe difference between a hard-worker, Edith would have no companionship at alland a star.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>B00Q4SETM2</amazonuk>0861544080
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jane Lythell Heather Fawcett|title=After the StormEmily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries
|rating=4
|genre=ThrillersGeneral Fiction|summary=Rob Emily Wilde is an expert academic scholar on faerie lore, and Anna are nearing she has travelled extensively, and researched meticulously, to write her life's work, the Honduras leg very first encyclopaedia of their South American travelsfaeries. Here they meet Kimberley Whilst she is brilliant at research and Owenspeaking to faeries, an American couple who charter out their own boat for sailing trips around the local islands. Rob persuades Anna it will be a fun way to end their holiday but Anna isn't she is not so sure. There's something about Owen and Kimberley that makes her hesitant about being shut away on a boat at sea good with thempeople. Perhaps it's So when she finds herself far, far North in the way that he never sleeps or small village of Hrafvsnik, having somehow offended the mystery as village matriarch, she is not sure what she has done, nor how to why there are no knives in redeem herself and put her final investigations for her book back on the cutlery drawerright track. Rob thinks AnnaEnter Wendell Bambleby, her dashingly handsome and insufferable rival who arrives unexpectedly, all charm and delight, much to Emily's just overly imaginative, but time will tellfrustration. But why is he here? What does he want? And what exactly is going on with the faerie folk around Hravsnik?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1781855323</amazonuk>0356519120
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Stewart Foster1398515388|title=We Used to Be KingsThe Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Tom First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, in turn, caused the nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and utter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, and Jack are 18 todaythe loss of livelihoods was widespread. Not The fact that they have much cause for celebration many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the tsunami - stuck in Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. He wasn't a home for troubled children, they are constantly examined dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and questioned by doctors, when all they want is to be left alone to live life togetherTamon the dog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099584190</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Victoria AveyardChristopher Bowden|title=Red QueenMr Magenta
|rating=4
|genre=TeensGeneral Fiction|summary=Mare Christopher Bowden's latest novel is a Red - patient untangling of a race kept in lives of poverty and servitude seemingly ordinary woman's life, carried out by the Silvers, her nephew after she has died. The aunt who always provided a race with wealth safe harbour and mutant powers that allow them to live lives a little bit of luxury. Learning indulgence to survive amongst the slum like conditions that the Reds inhabit, Mare is swiftly thrown into the world of the Silvers - one that proves to be a young nephew had had a much more dangerous interesting life than she that nephew Stephen had ever imagined, with treachery, plots realised and deadly games lurking round every cornerit seems to him an obligation to find it all out.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1409155846</amazonuk>B0B6Z9VJDW
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Margaret WildJennifer Mason|title=The Vanishing MomentPartitions of Unity
|rating=4
|genre=TeensGeneral Fiction|summary=This book appealed to me on various grounds. It is teen fiction (andHere at Bookbag Towers, joy of joyswe first met Elizabeth Cromwell, devoid of werewolves dominatrix and dystopia), it is unintentional detective in [[Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery by an Australian author (under-represented on UK shelves)Jennifer Mason|Preposterous]], when she investigated and it involves parallel universes (tantalising philosophical what-ifs)unravelled a series of disappearances. I was intrigued In ''Partitions of Unity'', she sets her mind to see if the author could live up to my expectationssolving a murder...|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1743315902</amazonuk>B09LQR9FRF
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jack SheffieldWill Carver|title=Silent NightThe Daves Next Door|rating=3.54
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=I read a couple of Jack Sheffield’s books about five years ago, and enjoyed them very much. They were written Five strangers come together in one moment as a similar style suicide bomber prepares to those popularised by, for instance, James Herriot or [[:Category:Gervase Phinn|Gervase Phinn]], told mostly in the first person, describing the author’s first couple of years as Headmaster at detonate his vest on a small village primary school in YorkshireLondon tube line. The village of Ragley is fictionalAs their fates overlap, as are most of the characters, but the incidents and situations encountered are based on the author’s experience.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0552167045</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Robert Schneider|title=Brother of Sleep|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''Brother of Sleep'' tells the story of Elias Johannes Alder, a child born into a god forsaken village high is told in the Austrian Vorarlberg. He came into the world as a silent childbackwards order, while his mother was screaming and leading up to 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 soundfateful moment. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0715649205</amazonuk>1914585186}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Joanne GrahamJennifer Mason|title=To The Edge of ShadowsPreposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Sarah awakes from ''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 coma to find her world destroyedyen for bullwhips, a long lost aunt her only remaining familybillionaire with a state-of-the-art S&M dungeon, and a man serving a life as she knows it irrevocably changed forever. Moving to sentence in Alabama, an enigmatic signature, K(s, x), on a new town and a new schoolcheap oil painting, making new friends an erotic art dealer in Georgia...'' This is just a sample of the least cast of her challenges as she struggles to regain her physical characters and mental health following the accidentsettings in Preposterous. As you can see, some keeping up will be required! The basic premise of this mystery story goes like this...|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1910162841</amazonuk>B09STS96HS
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Leanne HallB0B2N7MVYM|title=This is ShynessThe Calculations of Rational Men|author=Daniel Godfrey|rating=4.5|genre=TeensGeneral Fiction|summary=It's the 10th of December 1962 when we first meet Dr Joseph Marr. Just to put what happens in context, the Cuban missile crisis is still very fresh in people's minds. The world has barely had a chance to breathe out. But for Joe Marr, it'This is Shynesss not the missile crisis that's at the front of his mind. He' is an unusual and brilliant story about Wolfboy and Wildgirls been convicted of murder. With the current state of medical knowledge, two strangers who meet it's hard to think otherwise than that the prosecution would never have been brought but Joe Marr has spent his first few days in HMP Queen's Bench, a pub in the town of Shynessrelatively new prison. The teenagers are drawn together He's just getting used to his roommate, Mervyn, each adopting a different identity so for and learning to be wary of the night they can be anyone but themselvesMcArthur brothers.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1921656522</amazonuk>
}}
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