Changes

From TheBookbag
Jump to navigationJump to search
no edit summary
[[Category:General Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|author=James WilsonOnyi Nwabineli|title=The Summer of Broken StoriesAllow Me to Introduce Myself|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=England 1950: Soon-Anuri spent her childhood on display to the world, thanks toher step-be-10mother Ophelia's increasingly popular presence on social media, Mark Davenant is a typical lad with a typical ladwhere she posted every step of Anuri's lifechildhood for sponsorships and influencer deals and, basically, monetary gain. He loves adding Now Anuri is in her twenties and she is slowly trying to regain her confidence and to his model train layoutget her life back, he plays with his mates and walking best friend Barney suing her step-mother to take down the dogcontent about her. It's on one such walk he comes across AubreyAnuri is battling alcoholism, failing to start her PhD, an elderly writer living in the forest. They build a friendship based on shared stories undergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online and imaginingsreceiving money from them for doing so. Not all in the village are accepting though andMost importantly, when they try to drive Aubrey outshe is desperately worried about her little sister, Mark feels himself torn between old loyalties and who is the newfocus of Ophelia's online empire. Can she save her sister, and perhaps herself and her relationship with her father at the same time?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846883571</amazonuk>0861546873
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Alexander McCall Smith1529153298|title= The Novel Habits List of HappinessSuspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=There are some authors who It's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. (A woman? I pick up with a contented sighmean, knowing that I am in safe handshonestly... ) Alexander McCall Smith is currently my favouriteShe's not what's worrying Miv's family, and thank goodness he is so prolific with his writing that my reading habit is fed on a regular basis! though. Women have been disappearing. This is the tenth novel in the Sunday Philosophy Club seriesWell, they've been murdered, and we settle down once more but to a visit have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. Miv's upset because she's overheard that her father wants to Isabel Dalhousie in her beloved Edinburghmove the family 'Down South'. Isabel When you're from Yorkshire, Down South is wonderinga frightening, perhaps belatedlyforeign place, if she is sometimes rather judgmental of peoplebest avoided. In particularFor Miv, she’s having an awful lot of qualms about the move would mean leaving her niecebest friend, Cat’sSharon, latest romanceand she'll do anything to prevent that. Will Isabel find herself forced She's not worried about the dangers or that her Mum's stopped talking - to intervene, or can she sit back and let nature take its course?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408706636</amazonuk>anyone.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Nina George and Simon Pare (translator)1035906708|title=The Little Paris BookshopDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Monsieur Perdu has a barge on the SeineWe tend to think of Maria Callas as Greek, but she was born to Greek parents in Manhattan, New York, in December 1923 and in that barge he has his bookshoponly moved to Athens when she was thirteen. Actually, rather than being a normal sort of bookshop Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it is more of a chemistto 'Callas's, since he is something of a literary apothecary, prescribing books to his customers that he senses will soothe their souls, and relieve whatever troubles are ailing themmake it more manageable in the States. He only has to speak to them When she was back in Athens - supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for her voice - she was raised under the Nazi occupation by a little, sometimes only has to see them, mother who mercilessly exploited her and he instinctively knows which book will help them. Despite his skills, however, he seems unable to diagnose and resolve his own emotional issues and he is, as the translation made no secret of his French surname tells usher preference for her elder sister, Mr LostJackie.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0349140359</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Marcus DalrympleAlexander McCall Smith|title=Flesh and Blood: True FictionThe Perfect Passion Company
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Brit John Colson The Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Mexico teachingEdinburgh, having been invited out there run by his godfather Ness and local school owner Carlos Manuel Ferminoperating as an alternative to all the online apps in providing a more personal, tailored service. John soon settles inNess has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the business, soon forming as Ness is planning to take a love of the countrytrip to Canada to get away for a while. But then it all changes… Visiting Katie is coming out of a break up with a public toilet bad boyfriend, and so jumps at the wrong moment means that John hears a murder being committed beyond his cubicle doorchance to come home to Edinburgh. He goes 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 police as he would in the UK Isabel Dalhousie novels, but this is Mexico; from that moment on John Colson is a marked manwith some new characters who quickly begin to charm. Meanwhile elsewhere Katie has no experience in Mexico tourists are being attracted by more than hot sunshine running a business, or in match-making, but Ness has full confidence in her abilities, and there's always her very helpful (and tacos.rather handsome) neighbour, William, to lend a hand…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1502821087</amazonuk>1846976596
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Antoine Laurain, Emily Boyce (translator) and Jane Aitken (translator)Dean Koontz|title=The Red NotebookBad Weather Friend|rating=4.5|genre=General FictionParanormal|summary=Meet LaureBenny is having a terrifically bad day. She's a widow in her 40sHe loses his job, who is entering her Parisian apartment building one night when she's muggedhe loses his fiancee, and her handbag stolenhis house gets trashed. Meet LaurentOh, and someone has delivered a middlereally weird, disturbing coffin-aged booksellersized object to his home, who happens upon and it's possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the handbag the following morning in the streetthing that has trashed his house! The thing is, just before Benny is the binmen take it away, never very last person to be seen againdeserve all this bad luck. More or less snubbed when trying to hand He is a nice person. A really nice person. So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the delivery to the police as lost propertyhis house is a new friend, a bad weather friend called Spike, he decides who has been sent to take it upon himself to reunite the bag with its rightful ownerhelp him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a good person. He has no idea their names are so intimately linkedSpike is going to take care of Benny, and despite a lot will certainly take care of things being in the bag (including the titular notebook) there is no cashBenny's enemies, if he, Benny, no phone and no ID documentation at all. WhatHarper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's more – and what looks like making the idea even more fruitless – he has no idea that Laure has fallen into a coma as a result of the mugging…wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908313862</amazonuk>1662500491
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Stefan MohamedKatherine Howe|title=Bitter Sixteen|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Stanly Bird is about to turn sixteen - a solitary teen in a small Welsh town, he has few friends. Unless you count his talking dog, Daryl... A splitting headache on the eve of his birthday soon develops into incredible powers, and Stanly swiftly finds himself defending his neighbourhood, falling in love, and gaining his first real friends. When jealous rivals, a mysterious figure and a horrific evil come into play though, Stanly finds himself cast away from home, and struggling to save everything he has come to hold dear.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784630136</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Fiona Neill|title=The Good GirlTrue Account
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary= Romy Hannah Masury is living in Boston, having been sent to live with a sixth former family who is unremarkable. A good student run an inn, and being made to work there from a professional family, her aspiration young age. When she hears there is to become be a doctorhanging of some pirates in the town, she decides to go and it’s an achievable, rather than lofty goal. Or it waswatch. Because a video has surfaced Enthralled and it shows Romy doing something that is hardly going to help her medical school application. Or her future career. Or her future lifehorrified in equal measure, full stopHannah finds herself embroiled in a young boy's death at the hands of two vicious pirates. For Ailsa She hides away, the head teacherso that they don't find and kill her too, and then to escape them completely she has runs away to sea, dressing as a boy and joining the double whammy of trying to keep notorious Ned Low's pirate ship as a cabin boy. She soon finds herself in the school out thick of the headlines things when there is a mutiny on board, and protect from there we are caught up in her child who is now at the centre rip roaring tale of life on the controversy. And it’s clearly all the neighbours’ faultocean waves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0718181271</amazonuk>0861547438
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Christina Nichol1471180158|title=Waiting for the ElectricityMaybe Tomorrow|author=Penny Parkes
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Slims Achmed Makashvili is determined to leave his native Georgia. ItJamie Matson works in an upper-class grocery store, for a man who's a country buffeted and often invaded by its neighbours and plagued control freak with lack all the subtlety of amenitiesa half brick. On hearing that Hilary Clinton is running a competitionJamie's son, Bo, 'has his problems'. He's asthmatic and the prize for which is a trip to more you read, the States and knowing all more you'll suspect that he has 's on the autistic spectrum. Sometimes Jamie needs to do is overstay his visa for take time off at short notice - she's a better life, Slimsfrequent flier in the local A&E and sometimes Bo' letters s not fit enough to go to Hilary beginschool. Eventually he gets 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 US but… Well, be careful what you wish forwrong. It was going to come to a head.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0715649876</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Stuart PrebbleB0CKD1L5JL|title=The Insect FarmRadio Free Olympia|author=Jeffrey Dunn
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=I was predisposed to enjoy this book before I'd even opened the cover. It set me in mind of [[The Behaviour of Moths by Poppy Adams]] - another tale of a challenged person who finds refuge in Petr is an obsession with insectsorphan. But where [[The Behaviour of Moths Rescued by Poppy Adams|The Behaviour of Moths]] focuses on two warring sisters, ''The Insect Farm'' has two brothers as the central characters: Rogerstrange, who has special needsreclusive Bear, he is brought up far from bustling cities and his devoted younger brother Jonathanbusy human society, in the forests of Washington's Olympic Peninsula. Both boys develop an obsession After Bear dies and a brief sojourn in human company, Roger with his insect farm and Jonathan armed with only a womanpirate radio transmitter, Harriet. When obsession eventually leads to Petr goes on a journey through the violence of destructionforest, other behaviours come into play: feelings of guilt quickly switch to broadcasting the fear of capture strange, wild and the sly acts of a man keen to lay the blame elsewhererarely heard voices he encounters.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846883547</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Caroline Vermalle and Anna Aitken (translator)Sarah Marsh|title=George's Grand TourA Sign of Her Own|rating=43.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=George loves the Tour de France so After a bout of scarlet fever as a child, Ellen Lark loses her hearing. Suddenly plunged into a world of silence, everything about her life changes. Living in a time when his over protective daughter goes way for an extended holiday the time use of sign language was seen as something only savages do, Ellen is right sent to do it himself. Being 83 there will have a school where she is taught to be some concessionslip read, using a car rather than a bike for a start and he'll take his neighbour Charles (a stripling at 76) with himbut physically restrained from signing. He'll also take his mobile phone since his landline From here, she ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been diverted to it so no one knows he's goneteaching the deaf and using a system called Visible Speech. YesAt the same time, Bell is working on other inventions and ideas, good luck with that George!and Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a complicated tangle of espionage.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908313730</amazonuk>1035401614
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Caitlin MoranB0BC3YTCMR|title=How to Build a GirlGood Girls Die|author=Ayura Ayira
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=1990 - Wolverhampton''This story is not for everyone.'' Lavender Daniels was three weeks short of her fifteenth birthday when The Incident happened. Johanna Morrigan is 14 She was a very bright student, intelligenta bit too nerdy if truth be told, funny and suffered from vitiligo - people were afraid to hug her in case it's contagious. It's not easy being a loving familyblack girl whose skin is 84% white. Unfortunately, said family consists of She had a depressed mother, a mostly drunk father, 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 older brother with issues of extension. She went to his own, house and three younger brothers to worry abouthe raped her. Well read In shock, witty and hugely intelligent, Johanna longs for escape, building a new version of herself and gaining employment as she even allowed him to give her a writer, frequently travelling to the drink, sex and drug filled bars and bedsits of Londonlift home.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091949017</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Margaret Henderson Smith1472263936|title=The Turn of the TideFigurine|author=Victoria Hislop|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Harriet Glover is well and truly over Mark after he left It was in 1968 that Helena McCloud made her standing at the altarfirst trip to Greece. She's pregnant with Sir Joris Sanderson's child was alone: her mother, Greek by birth, had left the family home and he's keen refused to make the relationship permanentreturn, but ghosts from Mary and Hamish (Helena''his'' past return to haunt him, unfortunately at s parents) felt that it would be a rather important dinner partypity if Helena grew up without knowing her grandparents or understanding her Greek heritage. The mystery of 'Amber' really has Her trip to the family apartment in up-market Kolonaki would be solved and the web first of lies which surround her dismantledseveral annual visits. Harriet is still being led astray by Tricia Harrington (or so HarrietShe grew to love her grandmother and the family's mother would have you believe...) maid, Dina, but was wary - and she can't really make up frightened - of her mind about 'Mr Sanderson'grandfather, particularly when the man from MI6 is aroundretired general Stamatis Papagiannis. She's got a lot He was proud of his close connections to cope with the Junta and that's before we even get on expected his family to uphold his values but saw no reason to the subject of the Prime Ministeraccommodate them. His prejudices included Helena's daughterred hair and green eyes - inherited from her father's wedding, which ''must'' remain secretScottish ancestors.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845496485</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ivan Repila 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 Sophie Hughes (translator)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}} {{Frontpage|isbn=B0BVDC2VWH|title=The Boy Who Stole Attila's HorseGrave Listeners|author=William Frank
|rating=4
|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=If you pick up a copy of this book you realise how small it The village isisolated and poor. You'll know, of course, that pockets hardly exist that are normally big enough to hold what we used to call a pocket book, but here is the exception to prove the rule. It's wee. The story is on surrounded by a hundred pagesWitching Forest. The concision is partly down to it starting after And the beginning, for we first meet Big villagers subsist largely by farming Uphegia plants - its bread-like fruit provides nutrition and Small, two brothers, once they're stuck down a large well in its blossom provides herbal medicines. The black wood of the middle of a forest. Tasked with a family errandprovides heat and warmth, they're trapped at the bottom of a natural Erlenmeyer flaskroofs on homes, and even a desperate move cannot get either outgallows, if needed. This The fear of being buried alive is an existential superstition in the story of village and that is the next three months in their existencereason Volushka, as they brave hungera drunken, deliriumself-indulgent, loss lazy lout of language, and the brute and unstinting human selfishness needed for existencea man is tolerated.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782271015</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=James HannahB0BYF82CXT|title=The ASemi-Z of You and MeDetached|author=Deborah Stone
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Lying ''Bill and Amanda are living in a semi-detached house, stuck in a hospital beddepressing rut of boredom and disappointment, refusing visits from friendswhen Terry and Fiona – glamorous, Ivo is alonesuccessful and very much in love – move in next door. Only his carerDespite their different outlooks on life, Sheila, provides company - the couples befriend each other and she asks him life appears to think of a different part of his body improve for each letter of the alphabetboth pairs. But all is not what it seems, and then to tell a tale about each onetheir increasingly interconnected relationships are fated for tragedy.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857522647</amazonuk>''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ann-Marie MacDonaldShalini Boland|title=Adult OnsetThe Silent Bride|rating=3|genre=General Fiction|summary= Alice and Seth are a match made in heaven. He is everything she has been searching for; handsome, accomplished, clever, funny; total and utter husband-material. She is all he could possibly want in a wife; beautiful, successful, confident… and so the 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 world implodes because she has absolutely no idea who the man at the altar is, who is waiting for her to become his wife.|isbn=1662507089}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1787636003|title=The Girls of Summer|author=Katie Bishop|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=At midlifeIt 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, Mary Rose MacKinnon has settled down with her partnerperhaps, Hilarynaive, and is raising two young children. Opting so when thirty-four-year-old Alistair Wright started to fulfill the role of stay at home mumtake an interest in her, she has placed her career as an author on holdwas flattered rather than wary. What follows is It was quite a bid while before he made any sort of physical approach to reconcile this new identity with her former idea of selfand by that time she was obsessed by him. Success, however Alistair worked for Henry Taylor, depends looking after his interests on Mary Rose facing up to the confusions of her pastisland and in particular in the bar where all the girls either worked or partied.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1473610133</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Diana SweeneyAmanda Craig|title=The MinnowThree Graces
|rating=4.5
|genre=TeensGeneral Fiction|summary=Diana SweeneyFew styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the state-of-the-nation novel. There's ''The Minnow'' is an Australian book aimed at Young Adults that features death, grief, abuse, fear and loneliness. Teenage pregnancy lies at its heart while bereavement, and trying to come to terms with loss, bubbles just under something so utterly compelling about any writer who can catch hold of the atmosphere of the surface, constantly. But don't be misled. This novel isn't some earnest pedagogical attempt to convey teenage angst day and elicit grave pity or understanding from the reader. What rescues capture it from mawkishness is the beautiful voice , crafting an image of the narrator, Tom (or Holly, if you prefer her real name). Tom doesn't fall prey to self-pity. She simply describes her world country as she sees it, matter-of-factstands in one particular moment. And the fact To say that her view Amanda Craig is rather unusual (skilled at doing this would be embarrassingly inadequate: she talks to fish, dead people and her unborn child - and they talk back) doesn't really matters practically synonymous with the genre of contemporary social fiction at this point. Nothing can detract from She has such a gift for weaving the ongoing issues of the day into the sheer lyricism lives of her voice. As characters in a readerway that feels natural and lived-in, you just have to suspend disbelief and enjoy the ridenever making them ciphers for social commentary but instead fully realised people, grappling with issues far larger than themselves. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>192218201X</amazonuk>140871468X
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Hermione Eyre152915118X|title=Viper WinePineapple Street|author=Jenny Jackson
|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 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>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Liam Brown
|title=Real Monsters
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Lorna was 12 when she was sent home from school, watched ''Pineapple Street'' is the unfurling events story of 9/11 on her TV and recognised her father's office block aflame three women: Sasha, Darley and fallingGeorgiana. Her fight for mental survival started at that moment Darley and George are sisters and the use of alcohol Sasha is married to quell the memories came soon after but then she meets Danny – her life savertheir brother Cord. Shortly after this they marry and Danny joins They're Stocktons, only Sasha isn't a Stockton by birth so she isn't readily accepted into the armytribe. HeThe problem's sent exacerbated when the clan matriarch, Tilda, asks Cord and Sasha if they'd like to fight move into the monstersPineapple Street property. Tilda and Chip have renovated and downsized to another property, the fundamentalist organisationsa street or so away, which destroyed Lorna's childhoodthey own. However when whatThey won's left t need any of his unit becomes lost in the desert without foodfurniture from Pineapple Street, water or equipmentso Sasha and Cord can move straight in. Nominally, they had a choice but that wasn't the focus changes from military victory reality. Darley and 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 personal survival and those monsters are still out there…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1910394564</amazonuk>'the GD'.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Chigozie ObiomaEmily Critchley|title=The FishermenOne Puzzling Afternoon
|rating=4
|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=This book 84 year old Edie has lived in the same small town for almost her whole life, but now she is essentially facing a cautionary move as her son wants to move to another house and bring Edie to live with his family tale , as Edie is starting to lose her memory. However, Edie is tormented by the memory of four brothers her childhood friend, Lucy, who went missing over 60 years ago, and the way they react to worry that there was a prophecy about them by secret she was keeping for Lucy that somehow might be the thing that reveals the local madmantruth of what happened all that time ago. It is also, After 'seeing' Lucy in a sense, a coming-of-age story where Benthe high street, just as she was the young narratorlast time she saw her, is plunged into premature adulthood under the most brutal she starts to find pockets of circumstancesmemories coming back to her. And it yet as she remembers the past, she is forgetting more and more in her day to day life. Will she uncover the truth about brotherly love. None of these descriptionsLucy's disappearance before her move, and before her memories are gone forever?|isbn=1804181250}}{{Frontpage|author=Madelaine Lucas|title=Thirst for Salt|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= ''Love, I'd read, was supposed to be a light and weightless feeling, howeverbut I had always longed for gravity'' Told from a retrospective view, convey a young woman unravels the fact year-long relationship that this book is written by 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 exciting new voice in African literary fictionisolated 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.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0957548850</amazonuk>0861546490
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jonathan Kemp0008506337|title=GhostingThe Garnett Girls|author=Georgina Moore
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Grace Wellbeck is 64 The love affair between Margo Garnett and poet Richard O'Leary was all- living consuming, apparently on a canal boat both sides. Margo was just sixteen when they fell in London with love. Richard was twenty-one and described by Margo's mother as 'an older man'. Her parents worried that Richard's influence would take her second husband, away from what they felt she lives could achieve - going to Oxford and having a relatively settled life glittering career. In the event, they eloped and Richard took her away from the Isle of routineWight.A chance encounter with Margo did go to Oxford and went on to become a man well-respected journalist. The couple had three children: Rachel, Imogen and Sasha. Life was lived in London and holidays were spent at Sandcove, the street changes everything though - a man who is family home on the spitting image Isle of her first, deceased husbandWight. 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''. Is he a ghost? Is Grace going mad?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956251560</amazonuk>Then Richard left them.
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Nicci Cloke1914585402|title=Lay Me DownDashboard Elvis is Dead|author=David F Ross
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=ItI reviewed David F Ross's book [[There's New YearOnly One Danny Garvey by David F Ross|There's Eve Only One Danny Garvey]] a couple of years back and the nightclub is pulsating with sound. The revellers heave and swell in oceanic waves remember being absolutely floored by how powerful and Jack is preparing to call affecting it a night, when he is presented with Elsawas. She is small; delicate and pretty and alluringly confident - It was a heady combination for a man like Jack - and though he wantsgripping, with every fibre of his beingemotionally wounding read, to walk away, to go home and forget her, he doesn'trereading my review of it my main takeaway was that I might not have lavished enough praise on it.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099593653</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Antonia HoneywellLucy Ashe|title=The ShipClara and Olivia|rating=4.5|genre=Dystopian General Fiction|summary=Sixteen The year old Lalla has spent her life in London – mostly inside her family homeis 1933. The place? Sadler's Wells. Because this is not the London of todayBallerinas Clara and Olivia are sisters, or any other daytwins no less. When Lalla was seven, Identical on the apocalypse arrived; banks crashedoutside but not, flood defences failedwe learn, power failed – and on the world could only focus inside. And not on survivalstage, either. Because there's a lot that builds a dancer. Now the Nazareth Act is in force Some things that can be taught or learnt – discipline, attention to detail – and without your identity cardsome things, you don’t exist – literallythat ''je ne sais quoi'', as you will be shot if you that don't produce itcome from the classroom. A stage presence, a charm, a ''joie de vivre''. The difference between a hard-worker, and a star.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0297871498</amazonuk>0861544080
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Nigel PackerHeather Fawcett|title=The Restoration Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Otto LairdFaeries
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Emily Wilde is an expert academic scholar on faerie lore, and she has travelled extensively, and researched meticulously, to write her life''The Restoration s work, the very first encyclopaedia of Otto Laird'' faeries. Whilst she is brilliant at research and speaking to faeries, she is an interesting concept for a storynot so good with people. It pitches an ageing architect against an ageing building that was built early So when she finds herself far, far North in Otto's career. When Otto makes the trip from Switzerland small village of Hrafvsnik, having somehow offended the village matriarch, she is not sure what she has done, nor how to London to try redeem herself and put her final investigations for her book back on the right track. Enter Wendell Bambleby, her dashingly handsome and insufferable rival who arrives unexpectedly, all charm and save Marlowe house from demolitiondelight, much to Emily's frustration. But why is he takes an unwilling journey down his own past. here? What does he want? And what exactly is going on with the faerie folk around Hravsnik?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0751553077</amazonuk>0356519120
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ian Walthew1398515388|title=The Complex Chemistry of LossBoy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Deep First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, in rural France James Kerr turn, caused the nuclear meltdown. The result was admitted to a psychiatric cliniccomplete and utter devastation. His mental problems The deaths were deep uncountable, and intractable. Superficially he seemed never to have got over the sudden death loss of his mother and sister when he livelihoods was a child and after their death his relationship with his father had deteriorated because his father refused to speak of their losswidespread. There The fact that many pets were additional factors too: Kerr had spent some time in Afghanistan in separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a secret capacityconvenience store. In fact much of his life since He wasn't a dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that he went would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to university had involved putting up a front, but doing something else open his car door and Tamon the dog jumped in the background.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B00OLMHCW2</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Brooke DavisChristopher Bowden|title=Lost and FoundMr Magenta|rating=54
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Millie Bird keeps Christopher Bowden's latest novel is a notebook. She writes in it all patient untangling of the Dead Things that a seemingly ordinary woman's life, carried out by her nephew after she seeshas died. Her Very First Dead Thing was her dog Rambo. Then there were other things The aunt who always provided a safe harbour and a little bit of indulgence to a spider, young nephew had had a Bird… but then there was number 28. The twenty-eighth dead thing much more interesting life than Millie Bird noticed was her Dadthat nephew Stephen had ever realised and it seems to him an obligation to find it all out.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0091958903</amazonuk>B0B6Z9VJDW
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jonathan LethemJennifer Mason|title=Dissident GardensPartitions of Unity|rating=54
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Rose ZimmerHere at Bookbag Towers, a feisty American communist radicalwe first met Elizabeth Cromwell, takes on many good dominatrix and great causes. These include everything from feminism unintentional detective in [[Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery by Jennifer Mason|Preposterous]], when she investigated and racism to the changing course unravelled a series of Stalinism in the American C.Pdisappearances. but most In ''Partitions of all; Unity'', she sets her biggest causes are the people around her. The effects upon them are diverse and devastating. She often propels them mind to success but at the same time they feel battered and must escape according to their own needssolving a murder. Her affections are real but invasive. Rose keeps a shrine to Abraham Lincoln. Rose’s self-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 Force.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099563428</amazonuk>B09LQR9FRF
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Virginia BurgesWill Carver|title=The VirtuosoDaves Next Door|rating=3.54
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The title character of ''The Virtuoso'' is Isabelle Bryant, Five strangers come together in one moment as a suicide bomber prepares to detonate his vest on a professional violinist who has earned the affectionate nickname of 'Beethoven's Babe'London tube line. She was As their fates overlap, the youngest-ever winner of the BBC Young Musician of the Year competition and gave her first solo performancestory is told in backwards order, of Beethoven's violin concerto, at Royal Albert Hall. 'Her violin represented another limb leading up to her, it was that precious. It felt so natural, like an extension of her body.' It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that the violin is Isabelle's lifefateful moment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>B00R07U0B0</amazonuk>1914585186}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Anne TylerJennifer Mason|title=A Spool of Blue ThreadPreposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Every family has its tales which are told and retold and in the Whitshank family it was the story of how Abby and Red had fallen in love one ''beautiful, breezyA struggling poetry zine, yellowa mom-and-green afternoon'' pop mobile diner in July 1959. It would usually be told on the porch of Northern California redwoods, a 400-meter hurdler who just missed the Baltimore house which Red2004 Olympics, a women's father had builttrack coach with a yen for bullwhips, but on this final time a billionaire with a state-of its telling -the circumstances are different-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... Abby and Red are aging - even '' This is just a sample of the glorious house is beginning to show its age - cast of characters and decisions have to be made about how to look after themsettings in Preposterous. All the family are there, even DennyAs you can see, who can generally some keeping up will be relied on to do only what pleases himrequired! The basic premise of this mystery story goes like this...|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701189517</amazonuk>B09STS96HS
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Miranda SherryB0B2N7MVYM|title=Black Dog Summer|rating=3.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Yesterday, Sally was living in a rambling farmstead with her teenage daughter Gigi. Now Sally is dead, murdered, and Gigi is alone in the world.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781859574</amazonuk>}}{{newreviewThe Calculations of Rational Men|author=Niyati Keni|title=Esperanza StreetDaniel Godfrey
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=JosephIt's parents send him to work for Auntie Mary and her B&B business on Esperanza Streetthe 10th of December 1962 when we first meet Dr Joseph Marr. Over Just to put what happens in context, the years there life for Joseph goes on the way it has for countless other youngsters from this Filipino town of PuertoCuban missile crisis is still very fresh in people's minds. His mother may have died too young and Joseph only sees his father one day The world has barely had a week (and has chance to suffer church breathe out. But for part of that!) but thereJoe Marr, it's a rhythm to not the market outside and foreign visitors within Auntie Marymissile crisis that's walls thatat the front of his mind. He's familiar and comfortingbeen convicted of murder. ItWith the current state of medical knowledge, 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 rhythm thatrelatively new prison. He's been there for generations but things changejust getting used to his roommate, Mervyn, sometimes with catastrophic resultsand learning to be wary of the McArthur brothers.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908276487</amazonuk>
}}
 
Move on to [[Newest Graphic Novels Reviews]]

Navigation menu