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[[Category:General Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Robert CromptonOnyi Nwabineli|title=BunderlinAllow Me to Introduce Myself
|rating=4.5
|genre=CrimeGeneral Fiction|summary=As a child Martin had been fascinated and entranced by his neighbour Mrs BundyAnuri 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 household menageriechildhood for sponsorships and influencer deals and, basically, monetary gain. Her son Peter was there too but on the periphery; Martin was just there Now Anuri is in her twenties and she is slowly trying to regain her confidence and to get her life back, suing her step-mother to visit take down the animalscontent about her. In adulthood their paths cross again but this time Peter Bunderlin (as he's now known) isn't so easy Anuri is battling alcoholism, failing to avoid – start her PhD, undergoing therapy and Martinsecretly abusing people online and receiving money from them for doing so. Most importantly, she is desperately worried about her little sister, who is the new focus of Ophelia's tried! online empire. Perhaps if Martin could understand what Can she save her sister, and perhaps herself and her relationship with her father at the heck Peter is up tosame time?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1784078549</amazonuk>0861546873
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Eve Makis1529153298|title=The Spice Box LettersList of Suspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=KaterinaIt's Armenian grandmother Mariam dies leaving her 1979 and her mother a journal in Armenian and a spice box full of mysterious lettersMargaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. (A woman? I mean, honestly...) She's not what's worrying Miv's family, though. Women have been disappearing. TheyWell, they're special ve been murdered, but to them both have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. Miv's upset because theyshe're the legacy of a much loved relative but totally indecipherable s overheard that her father wants to move the monolingually English pairfamily 'Down South'. However When you're from Yorkshire, Down South is a holiday abroad frightening, foreign place, best avoided. For Miv, the move would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, and she'll do anything to get over a recent break up brings a random encounter for Katerinaprevent that. When Katerina meets Ara she also meets She's not worried about the key to dangers or that her grandmotherMum's secret paststopped talking - to anyone.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1910124087</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Robert Crompton1035906708|title=Leaving GileadDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Tom Sparrow finally does what he's always dreamt We tend to think of: buying the former Ridley house near his old childhood homeMaria Callas as Greek, but she was born to Greek parents in Manhattan, New York, in December 1923 and only moved to Athens when she was thirteen. As Tom explores he finds his new house isnHer original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to 't Callas' to make it more manageable in the only link with his pastStates. There's something When she was back in the outhouse Athens - supposedly so that takes him back to she could get appropriate training for her voice - she was raised under the days Nazi occupation by a mother who mercilessly exploited her and made no secret of young love and Susanher preference for her elder sister, the Ridley's daughterJackie. She had been raised in her parents' prohibitive faith as a Gilead Jehovah's Witness which didn't seem a problem to them but they were young and experience wasn't on their side…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784077623</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Emma CraigieAlexander McCall Smith|title= What Was Never Said The Perfect Passion Company|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary= This story The Perfect Passion Company is narrated a dating agency in Edinburgh, run by ZahraNess and operating as an alternative to all the online apps in providing a more personal, tailored service. Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the business, as Ness is planning to take a teenage girl who spends her early years in her home country of Somalia before her family move trip to the UK Canada to escape civil warget away for a while. Inevitably Katie is coming out of a break up with a bad boyfriend, some traditions travel with them and in so jumps at the novel Zahra recounts her efforts chance to come home to Edinburgh. And so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, thanks to protect herself 44 Scotland Street and her younger sisterthe Isabel Dalhousie novels, Samsambut with some new characters who quickly begin to charm. Katie has no experience in running a business, against FGMor in match-making, a practice that claimed the life of but Ness has full confidence in her older sister in Somalia several years previously. Zahra intersperses abilities, and there's always her account with flashbacks to Somalia very helpful (and the civil war that drove them awayrather handsome) neighbour, William, thus giving to lend a clear picture of the trials that she and her family have faced.hand…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>178072179X</amazonuk>1846976596
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author= David FinkleDean Koontz|title= The Man With The OvercoatBad Weather Friend|rating= 34.5|genre= General FictionParanormal|summary=''Why would anyone 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- he was soon sized object to ask himself innumerable times - take a coat from a complete stranger only because his home, and it had been offered?'' s possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the thing that has trashed his house! Skip Gerber steps off The thing is, Benny is the elevator after very last person to deserve all this bad luck. He is a long day at work; nice person. A really nice person. So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the foyer of delivery to his office building house is busy and buzzy and he does not notice the man holding the overcoat until the man hands it a new friend, a bad weather friend called Spike, who has been sent to Skip telling help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a good person. Spike is going to ''take very good care of itBenny, and will certainly take care of Benny''. Skip unthinkingly grasps the coat and before he has the chance to realise what s enemies, if he is doing - , Benny, and that he is now holding an overcoat of unknown providence - the man disappears Harper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's wild adventure) can figure out of the exit door to the buildingwho exactly they are.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0992618525</amazonuk>1662500491
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Fredrik BackmanKatherine Howe|title=My Grandmother Sends Her Regards and ApologisesA True Account|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=''Every 7-year-old needs Hannah Masury is living in Boston, having been sent to live with a family who run an inn, and being made to work there from a young age. When she hears there is to be a superherohanging of some pirates in the town, she decides to go and watch. That's just how it is…'' Enthralled and for Elsa ithorrified in equal measure, Hannah finds herself embroiled in a young boy's her Grandeath at the hands of two vicious pirates. When Gran diesShe hides away, Elsa is surprised and devastated. Granny canso that they don't be old - Elsa has only known find and kill her for 7 years! Elsa still has too, and then to escape them completely she runs away to carry out Gransea, dressing as a boy and joining the notorious Ned Low's last wish though; pirate ship as a cabin boy. She soon finds herself in the thick of things when there is a mutiny on board, and from there we are letters to be delivered and with each delivery Elsa learns something more about Gran caught up in her rip roaring tale of life on the person behind Gran the superheroocean waves. Will it enforce her hero status or destroy it?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444775839</amazonuk>0861547438
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Neil Smith1471180158|title=BooMaybe Tomorrow|author=Penny Parkes|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Oliver Dalrymple is deadJamie Matson works in an upper-class grocery store, for a man who's a control freak with all the subtlety of a half brick. Jamie's son, Bo, 'has his problems'. He realised this 's asthmatic and the more you read, the moment more you'll suspect that he woke up in 's on the rebirthing bedautistic spectrum. His friends and tormentors had always called him Boo because of his ghostly pale complexion Sometimes Jamie needs to take time off at short notice - she's a frequent flier in the local A&E and now hesometimes Bo's finally earned the nickname fullynot fit enough to go to school. What he hasn't realised is Missed shifts or the way in which he died; he thinks he died of holey heart problems need to be away on time to pick Bo up from school are occasions when Jamie can be controlled and put in front of his locker while reciting the periodic tablewrong. The location is correct but, meeting Johnny (an equally dead former classmate) reveals, he It was actually murdered. What's worse, their murderer has been spotted there in 13 year olds' heavengoing to come to a head.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0434023493</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Minette WaltersB0CKD1L5JL|title= CellarRadio Free Olympia|author=Jeffrey Dunn
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary= To my mind, ''The Dark Room'' Petr is an orphan. Rescued by the most perfect psychological thriller ever written (and I've read lots in this genre). In her later worksstrange, reclusive Bear, Minette Walters seemed to veer away he is brought up far from this particular path to glory as her novels became steadily darker bustling cities and with increasingly dislikeable characters. So it was quite refreshing to discover that ''The Cellar'' was written from busy human society, in the point forests of view of a rather likeable protagonist. Muna is an African child living in, shall we say, somewhat unusual and very cruel conditions: she was stolen and now lives in captivityWashington's Olympic Peninsula. Her voice is compelling After Bear dies and from the first page I found myself wanting her to make good her escape from the dreadful - and sadly all too believable - circumstances a brief sojourn in which she finds herself. Sohuman company, naturally, I admired her cunning and resourcefulnessarmed with only a pirate radio transmitter, knowing that these attributes would serve her well. ButPetr goes on a journey through the forest, of coursebroadcasting the strange, this is Minette Walters wild and nothing is as simple as it first appears. As the story unfolded I found myself questioning who exactly were the victims and who, if anyone, was innocentrarely heard voices he encounters.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099594641</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Naomi NovikSarah Marsh|title=UprootedA Sign of Her Own|rating=3.5|genre=FantasyGeneral Fiction|summary=Many years ago, in After a bout of scarlet fever as a village deep in Eastern Europechild, the locals live Ellen Lark loses her hearing. Suddenly plunged into a life world of relative peace and happiness - knowing to always avoid the wood that borders their landsilence, and safe everything about her life changes. Living in the knowledge that they are guarded by a powerful wizard - time when the Dragon. Aware that he is the one thing keeping them safe from the dangers use of the woodsign language was seen as something only savages do, the villagers take part in Ellen is sent to a ritual called 'The Choosing' every ten years - when a young girl school where she is sent taught to serve lip read, but physically restrained from signing. From here, she ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the wizard for deaf and using a decadesystem called Visible Speech.Agnieszka is of age for At the choosingsame time, but nobody fears that she will be picked - her best friend Kasia Bell is pretty working on other inventions and gracefulideas, and sure to catch the eye Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a complicated tangle of the immortal Dragon. However, Agnieszka is not aware of the talents she holds that may attract the wizard - talents that the safety of the entire kingdom may come to depend on for their survival..espionage.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1447294130</amazonuk>1035401614
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Barbara LamplughB0BC3YTCMR|title=Secrets of the PomegranateGood Girls Die|author=Ayura Ayira|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Home in Bristol, Alice gets the news from her sister's partner, Paco'This story is not for everyone. Her sister, Deborah Hardy, '' Lavender Daniels was on board one three weeks short of the trains bombed at Madrid's Atocha station on 11 Marchher fifteenth birthday when The Incident happened. No one can yet confirm whether she is alive or dead. Deb had moved to Granada nearly 20 years ago She was a very bright student, after her divorce from Mark's fathera bit too nerdy if truth be told, and was starting suffered from vitiligo - people were afraid to make a name for herself as a scholar of women hug her in Andalusiacase it's contagious. It's historynot easy being a black girl whose skin is 84% white. Alice and her nine She had a crush on seventeen-year-old son Timmy fly to Spain to find that Deb is alive, Reggie Anderson but in a coma in hospitalnever thought he would notice her. Then he did: Lavender was very good at math and Reggie asked if she would tutor him. Over the weeks She readily agreed: tutoring was something she keeps vigil for Deb, Alice lives in her sister's home in Granada gladly did at church: this was just an extension. She went to his house and reads he raped her diaries. In shock, which proves she even allowed him to be give her a way of feeling closer to her and learning more about her than she ever knew. Meanwhile, Mark and Paco keep their distance, working through their complicated grief in their own wayslift home.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781323690</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Menna Van Praag1472263936|title=The House At The End Of Hope StreetFigurine|author=Victoria Hislop
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary= Alba Ashby is a wallflower of a girl; studious, bookish and excruciatingly shy, so when tragedy wields its ponderous bolt, she is less able than most to adjust It was in 1968 that Helena McCloud made her first trip to life as she now knows itGreece. In one of She was alone: her midnight walks around historical Cambridgemother, Greek by birth, she finds herself at had left the door family home and refused to Number 11 Hope Streetreturn, but Mary and Hamish (Helena's parents) felt that it would be a pity if Helena grew up without knowing her grandparents or understanding her Greek heritage. It is house that she has never before seen; quirky and turreted with a wild garden and grandly Victorian Her trip to the family apartment in hue and Alba is enchanted by itup-market Kolonaki would be the first of several annual visits. So she does something that she would never normally doShe grew to love her grandmother and the family's maid, Dina, but was wary - and frightened - of her grandfather, in a million yearsretired general Stamatis Papagiannis. She knocks on He was proud of his close connections to the doorJunta and expected his family to uphold his values but saw no reason to accommodate them. His prejudices included Helena's red hair and green eyes - inherited from her father's Scottish ancestors.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0749018623</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sara GruenDean Koontz|title=At The Water's EdgeAfter Death|rating=53
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=An indiscretion Michael Mace, Head of Security, at a party causes Ellis Hyde's parents 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 disown him, coming, – and only him – as it does, hot on he sits up and looks around at the heels shrouded bodies of his father not understanding why Ellis has been turned down for war servicedead friends and former colleagues. To prove As he recovers his senses, he realises that there is something different about him; hecan 's not a coward, Ellis, his new wife Maddie and best friend Hank leave the US for Scotland'feel'' everything. He's determined they will succeed where Ellis' father failed years before: they will find the Loch Ness monsterEverything''. Maddie Michael isn't as convinced but then she also thinks she knows Ellis. She and the locals at the inn where they're stranded by the global conflict will discover a lot more about him, and indeed themselves'Michael'' anymore.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473604702</amazonuk>1662500467}}{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sarah LeipcigerB0BVDC2VWH|title=The Mountain Can WaitGrave Listeners|author=William Frank|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Tom Berry The village is isolated and poor. It's surrounded by a quiet man Witching Forest. And the villagers subsist largely by farming Uphegia plants - its bread- one who lives for like fruit provides nutrition and in nature, spending a half of his year running a small team in remote, isolated forestsits blossom provides herbal medicines. The other half he spends tending to his family - a small group whom he brought up almost single handedlyblack wood of the forest provides heat and warmth, following the departure of his wife. A goodroofs on homes, determined manand even gallows, we learn if needed. The fear of Tom's life running forestry teams being buried alive is an existential superstition in remote wildernessthe village and that is the reason Volushka, before an accident forces Tom to leave his routine and seek out his son a drunken, self- and both become troubled by the events of the accidentindulgent, as well as ghosts lazy lout of the past that may cause more pain than either a man had anticipatedis tolerated.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1472223896</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Elizabeth RenzettiB0BYF82CXT|title=Based on a True StorySemi-Detached|author=Deborah Stone
|rating=4
|genre=Women's General Fiction|summary=Augusta Price, middle''Bill and Amanda are living in a semi-aged, washed updetached house, substance-addicted actress has just left rehab for the innumerable time. Her only friend stuck in the world is her equally washed-up former mentor. Augusta has recently received a sudden upsurge depressing rut of interest boredom and income when her tell all memoir became a baffling best-seller. Frances Bleeker is an American journalist who came to London with high hopesdisappointment, that were quickly dashed by the reality of the British magazine market. The two meet when Frances is sent to interview Augusta about her book where Frances realises there’s far more to the story of Augusta’s life than she’s cared to put in words. Needless to sayTerry and Fiona – glamorous, young, optimistic Frances successful and self-obsessed, drunk Augusta don’t exactly hit it off at oncevery much in love – move in next door. But when Frances loses her job and Augusta needs a ghost writer for her new bookDespite their different outlooks on life, the two offer couples befriend each other a lifeline ... or enough rope and life appears to hang themselvesimprove for both pairs. As Frances will learn by delving into her pastBut all is not what it seems, people close to Augusta don’t come away unscathedand their increasingly interconnected relationships are fated for tragedy. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782395539</amazonuk>''
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Xavier LeretShalini Boland|title=The Romeo and Juliet KillersSilent Bride
|rating=3
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=This is Alice and Seth are a book that suggests love across the tracks – all the while making the reader ask 'just how chuffing wide are those tracks supposed to be?!' match made in heaven. Franky He is a hard-done-by schoolboyeverything she has been searching for; handsome, accomplished, clever, whose ultrafunny; total and utter husband-Catholic parents are stifling him material. She is all he could possibly want in all aspects of lifea wife; beautiful, successful, confident… and so much so it's likely that when he gets into trouble the inevitable proposal is eagerly accepted by witnessing some porn on a friend's mobile phone at school it was really Alice and the hardware that he was gawping at in amazementwedding is planned and set. Hardware When the much-anticipated day arrives, Alice is nothing to Daizee, walked down the underage street hookeraisle by her father, who knows what hard stuffs she likes beaming with pride and what excitement as she doesn't, and what her punters surveys the congregation – their friends assembled to celebrate this joyful day and her mother, back when they had a connection – enjoyedSeth turns to face his approaching bride, or neededAlice's world implodes because she has absolutely no idea who the man at the altar is, en route who is waiting for her to it. Their unlikely connection is the subject of this gritty novellabecome his wife.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1910213187</amazonuk>1662507089
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Pascal Garnier and Melanie Florence (translator)1787636003|title=BoxesThe Girls of Summer|author=Katie Bishop|rating=45
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Meet BriceIt was the summer when Rachel Evans turned eighteen that she and Caroline went backpacking around Greece and arrived on the island. HeRachel wasn's an illustratort exactly innocent but she was, perhaps, naive, who had picked so when thirty-four-year-old Alistair Wright started to take an ideal house interest in the country with his journalist wifeher, only for her to disappear assumed dead on assignment abroadshe was flattered rather than wary. Therefore It was quite a while before he's having made any sort of physical approach to make the move himself, which he does – but without her at the other end he finds it hard to kick his new life into gear. Yes, a cat adopts him, and he gets to know the names of some new people, but by that's ittime she was obsessed by him. What's moreAlistair worked for Henry Taylor, one of those people is Blanche, attired most suitably looking after his interests on the island and in particular in the bar where all-white, who herself is missing someone – someone of whom Brice is the spitting image…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1910477044</amazonuk>girls either worked or partied.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Kevin MaherAmanda Craig|title=Last Night on EarthThree Graces
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Baby Bonnie is born in London in 1996 to Jay and Shauna but her traumatic birth Few styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the state-of-the-nation novel. There's something so utterly compelling about any writer who can catch hold of the atmosphere of the day and capture it, crafting an image of the aftermath causes country as it stands in one particular moment. To say that Amanda Craig is skilled at doing this would be embarrassingly inadequate: she's practically synonymous with the previously happy couple to separategenre of contemporary social fiction at this point. Jay looks back searching She has such a gift for how he got to this point weaving the ongoing issues of the day into the lives of her characters in a way that feels natural and Shauna looks lived-in, never making them ciphers for answers in psychotherapy social commentary but instead fully realised people, grappling with a less issues far larger than orthodox Danish analyst. Meanwhile both share Bonnie and worry about where they go from herethemselves. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408705079</amazonuk>140871468X
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tina Seskis152915118X|title=When We Were FriendsPineapple Street|author=Jenny Jackson|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary= Six friends meet at Bristol University; six very different people from six very different backgrounds''Pineapple Street'' is the story of three women: Sasha, Darley and Georgiana. Darley and George are sisters and Sasha is married to their brother Cord. 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 renovated and downsized to another property, a street or so away, which they own. Six lives intertwined in an assortment They won't need any of ways… break-upsthe furniture from Pineapple Street, marriagesso Sasha and Cord can move straight in. Nominally, careers, motherhood they had a choice but that wasn't the reality. Darley and bereavement; until one night six become fiveGeorgiana start to call Sasha 'the gold digger'. She's living in ''their'' family home. They use it so often that they abbreviate it to 'the GD'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1405917954</amazonuk >
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Michael LaubEmily Critchley|title=Diary of the FallOne Puzzling Afternoon
|rating=4
|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=Diary of 84 year old Edie has lived in the Fall same small town for almost her whole life, but now she is facing a story about regretmove as her son wants to move to another house and bring Edie to live with his family, as Edie is starting to lose her memory. However, Edie is tormented by the memory of her childhood friend, Lucy, who went missing over 60 years ago, guilt and resentmentthe worry that there was a secret she was keeping for Lucy that somehow might be the thing that reveals the truth of what happened all that time ago. It After 's told from seeing' Lucy in the point of view of an unnamed narratorhigh street, who reflects on not just his own life but also as she was the lives last time she saw her, she starts to find pockets of his father memories coming back to her. And yet as she remembers the past, she is forgetting more and grandfathermore 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>0099581795</amazonuk>1804181250
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=James WilsonMadelaine Lucas|title=The Summer of Broken StoriesThirst for Salt
|rating=5
|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=England 1950: Soon-''Love, I'd read, was supposed to-be-10a light and weightless feeling, Mark Davenant is but I had always longed for gravity'' Told from a typical lad with retrospective view, a typical lad's lifeyoung woman unravels the year-long relationship that once defined her. He loves adding to his model train layoutOverlaid with later wisdom, he plays the narrator relives the affair with his mates and walking best friend Barney a man twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the dogsummer after. ItSet against the backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the 24-year-old narrator's on one such walk he comes across Aubreydeepening relationship with her older lover, depicting its all-consuming nature, an elderly writer living in the forest. They build a friendship based how it changed her perspective on shared stories both romantic and imaginings. Not all in the village are accepting though and, when they try to drive Aubrey out, Mark feels himself torn between old loyalties familial relationships and newhow it altered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846883571</amazonuk>0861546490
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Alexander McCall Smith0008506337|title= The Novel Habits of HappinessGarnett Girls|author=Georgina Moore
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=There are some authors who I pick up with a contented sighThe love affair between Margo Garnett and poet Richard O'Leary was all-consuming, knowing that I am apparently on both sides. Margo was just sixteen when they fell in safe handslove. Alexander McCall Smith is currently my favourite, Richard was twenty-one and thank goodness he is so prolific with his writing described by Margo's mother as 'an older man'. Her parents worried that my reading habit is fed on Richard's influence would take her away from what they felt she could achieve - going to Oxford and having a regular basis! glittering career. This is In the tenth novel in event, they eloped and Richard took her away from the Sunday Philosophy Club series, Isle of Wight. Margo did go to Oxford and we settle down once more went on to become a visit to Isabel Dalhousie in her beloved Edinburghwell-respected journalist. Isabel is wonderingThe couple had three children: Rachel, perhaps belatedly, if she is sometimes rather judgmental of peopleImogen and Sasha. In particularLife was lived in London and holidays were spent at Sandcove, she’s having an awful lot the family home on the Isle of qualms about her niece, Cat’s, latest romanceWight. Will Isabel find herself forced Even then the doubts about Richard's drinking were never far from Margo's mind: ''she would never be able to intervene, or can she sit back and let nature take its course?leave him in charge''. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408706636</amazonuk>Then Richard left them.
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Nina George and Simon Pare (translator)1914585402|title=The Little Paris BookshopDashboard Elvis is Dead|author=David F Ross|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Monsieur Perdu has I reviewed David F Ross's book [[There's Only One Danny Garvey by David F Ross|There's Only One Danny Garvey]] a barge on the Seine, couple of years back and in that barge he has his bookshop. Actually, rather than remember being a normal sort of bookshop absolutely floored by how powerful and affecting it is more of a chemist'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 themwas. He only has to speak to them It was a little, sometimes only has to see them, and he instinctively knows which book will help them. Despite his skillsgripping, howeveremotionally wounding read, he seems unable to diagnose and resolve his own emotional issues and he is, as the translation rereading my review of his French surname tells us, Mr Lostit my main takeaway was that I might not have lavished enough praise on it.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0349140359</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Marcus DalrympleLucy Ashe|title=Flesh Clara and Blood: True FictionOlivia
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Brit John Colson The year is in Mexico teaching1933. The place? Sadler's Wells. Ballerinas Clara and Olivia are sisters, having been invited out there by his godfather and local school owner Carlos Manuel Fermintwins no less. John soon settles inIdentical on the outside but not, we learn, soon forming a love of on the countryinside. And not on stage, either. But then it all changes… Visiting Because there's a public toilet at the wrong moment means lot that John hears builds a murder being committed beyond his cubicle doordancer. He goes Some things that can be taught or learnt – discipline, attention to detail – and some things, that ''je ne sais quoi'', that don't come from the police as he would in the UK but this is Mexico; from that moment on John Colson is classroom. A stage presence, a charm, a marked man''joie de vivre''. Meanwhile elsewhere in Mexico tourists are being attracted by more than hot sunshine The difference between a hard-worker, and tacosa star.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1502821087</amazonuk>0861544080
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Antoine Laurain, Emily Boyce (translator) and Jane Aitken (translator)Heather Fawcett|title=The Red NotebookEmily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries|rating=54
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Meet Laure. She's a widow in her 40sEmily Wilde is an expert academic scholar on faerie lore, and she has travelled extensively, and researched meticulously, who is entering to write her Parisian apartment building one night when shelife's muggedwork, the very first encyclopaedia of faeries. Whilst she is brilliant at research and her handbag stolenspeaking to faeries, she is not so good with people. Meet LaurentSo when she finds herself far, a middle-aged bookseller, who happens upon the handbag the following morning far North in the streetsmall village of Hrafvsnik, just before having somehow offended the binmen take it awayvillage matriarch, never to be seen again. More or less snubbed when trying to hand it to the police as lost propertyshe is not sure what she has done, he decides nor how to take it upon himself to reunite redeem herself and put her final investigations for her book back on the bag with its rightful ownerright track. He has no idea their names are so intimately linkedEnter Wendell Bambleby, her dashingly handsome and despite a lot of things being in the bag (including the titular notebook) there is no cashinsufferable rival who arrives unexpectedly, no phone all charm and no ID documentation at alldelight, much to Emily's frustration. But why is he here? What's more – and does he want? 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 exactly is going on with the mugging…faerie folk around Hravsnik?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908313862</amazonuk>0356519120
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Stefan Mohamed1398515388|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 Boy and 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>}}{{newreviewDog|author=Fiona Neill|title=The Good GirlSeishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary= Romy is a sixth former who is unremarkable. A good student from a professional familyFirst of all, it was the earthquake, her aspiration is to become a doctordeep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and it’s an achievablethis, in turn, rather than lofty goalcaused the nuclear meltdown. Or it The result was. Because a video has surfaced complete and it shows Romy doing something that is hardly going to help her medical school applicationutter devastation. Or her future career. Or her future life The deaths were uncountable, full stopand the loss of livelihoods was widespread. For Ailsa, The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the head teacher, she has the double whammy list of trying to keep priorities but - six months after the school out of tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. He wasn't a dog person but the headlines convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and protect her child who is now at the centre of the controversy. And it’s clearly all Tamon the neighbours’ faultdog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0718181271</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Christina NicholChristopher Bowden|title=Waiting for the ElectricityMr Magenta|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Slims Achmed Makashvili is determined to leave his native Georgia. ItChristopher Bowden's latest novel is a country buffeted and often invaded by its neighbours and plagued with lack patient untangling of amenities. On hearing that Hilary Clinton is running a competitionseemingly ordinary woman's life, the prize for which is carried out by her nephew after she has died. The aunt who always provided a trip to the States safe harbour and knowing all he has a little bit of indulgence to do is overstay his visa for a better young nephew had had a much more interesting life, Slims' letters than that nephew Stephen had ever realised and it seems to Hilary begin. Eventually he gets him an obligation to the US but… Well, be careful what you wish forfind it all out.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0715649876</amazonuk>B0B6Z9VJDW
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Stuart PrebbleJennifer Mason|title=The Insect FarmPartitions of Unity
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=I was predisposed to enjoy this book before I'd even opened the cover. It set me Here at Bookbag Towers, we first met Elizabeth Cromwell, dominatrix and unintentional detective in mind of [[The Behaviour of Moths Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery by Poppy AdamsJennifer Mason|Preposterous]] - another tale , when she investigated and unravelled a series of a challenged person who finds refuge in an obsession with insectsdisappearances. But where [[The Behaviour of Moths by Poppy Adams|The Behaviour of Moths]] focuses on two warring sisters, In ''The Insect FarmPartitions of Unity'' has two brothers as the central characters: Roger, who has special needs, and his devoted younger brother Jonathanshe sets her mind to solving a murder. Both boys develop an obsession, Roger with his insect farm and Jonathan with a woman, Harriet. When obsession eventually leads to the violence of destruction, other behaviours come into play: feelings of guilt quickly switch to the fear of capture and the sly acts of a man keen to lay the blame elsewhere.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846883547</amazonuk>B09LQR9FRF
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Caroline Vermalle and Anna Aitken (translator)Will Carver|title=George's Grand TourThe Daves Next Door|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=George loves the Tour de France so when Five strangers come together in one moment as a suicide bomber prepares to detonate his over protective daughter goes way for an extended holiday vest on a London tube line. As their fates overlap, the time story is right to do it himself. Being 83 there will have to be some concessionstold in backwards order, using a car rather than a bike for a start and he'll take his neighbour Charles (a stripling at 76) with him. He'll also take his mobile phone since his landline has been diverted leading up to it so no one knows he's gonethe fateful moment. Yes, good luck with that George!|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908313730</amazonuk>1914585186}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Caitlin MoranJennifer Mason|title=How to Build a GirlPreposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=1990 ''A struggling poetry zine, a mom-and- Wolverhampton. Johanna Morrigan is 14pop mobile diner in the Northern California redwoods, intelligenta 400-meter hurdler who just missed the 2004 Olympics, funny and from a loving family. Unfortunatelywomen's track coach with a yen for bullwhips, said family consists a billionaire with a state-of -the-art S&M dungeon, a depressed mother, man serving a mostly drunk fatherlife sentence in Alabama, an older brother with issues of his ownenigmatic signature, and three younger brothers to worry about. Well readK(s, witty and hugely intelligentx), Johanna longs for escapeon a cheap oil painting, building an erotic art dealer in Georgia...'' This is just a new version sample of the cast of herself characters and gaining employment as a writer, frequently travelling to the drinksettings in Preposterous. As you can see, sex and drug filled bars and bedsits some keeping up will be required! The basic premise of Londonthis mystery story goes like this...|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0091949017</amazonuk>B09STS96HS
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Margaret Henderson SmithB0B2N7MVYM|title=The Turn Calculations of the TideRational Men|author=Daniel Godfrey|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Harriet Glover is well and truly over Mark after he left her standing at It's the altar10th of December 1962 when we first meet Dr Joseph Marr. SheJust to put what happens in context, the Cuban missile crisis is still very fresh in people's pregnant with Sir Joris Sandersonminds. The world has barely had a chance to breathe out. But for Joe Marr, it's child and henot the missile crisis that's keen to make at the relationship permanent, but ghosts from ''front of his'' past return to haunt him, unfortunately at a rather important dinner partymind. The mystery of He'Amber' really has to be solved and the web s been convicted of lies which surround her dismantledmurder. Harriet is still being led astray by Tricia Harrington (or so HarrietWith the current state of medical knowledge, it's mother hard to think otherwise than that the prosecution would never have you believe...) and she can't really make up her mind about 'Mr Sandersonbeen brought but Joe Marr has spent his first few days in HMP Queen's Bench, particularly when the man from MI6 is arounda relatively new prison. SheHe's got a lot just getting used to cope with his roommate, Mervyn, and that's before we even get on learning to the subject be wary of the Prime Minister's daughter's wedding, which ''must'' remain secretMcArthur brothers.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845496485</amazonuk>
}}
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