Changes

[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]]__NOTOC__{{Frontpage|author=Onyi Nwabineli|title=Allow Me to Introduce Myself|rating=4.5|genre=General fictionFiction|summary=Anuri spent her childhood on display to the world, thanks to her step-mother Ophelia's increasingly popular presence on social media, where she posted every step of Anuri's childhood for sponsorships and influencer deals and, basically, monetary gain. Now Anuri is in her twenties and she is slowly trying to regain her confidence and to get her life back, suing her step-mother to take down the content about her. Anuri is battling alcoholism, failing to start her PhD, undergoing therapy and secretly 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 online empire. Can she save her sister, and perhaps herself and her relationship with her father at the same time?|isbn=0861546873__NOTOC__}}{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Lola Shoneyin1529153298|title=The Secret Lives List of Baba Segi's WivesSuspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey

|summary=The Secret Lives of Baba SegiIt's Wives 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is one of those books that you read with a smile on your facePrime Minister. (A woman? I mean, honestly... It) She's not what's worrying Miv's full of gloriously unsavoury characters caught in a terrible web of deceitfamily, though. Women have been disappearing. We are promised Well, they'four womenve been murdered, one husband and a devastating secretbut to have 'disappeared' and it delivers on all three counts. Sure the secret is quite well signposted and Shoneyin doesn't really make much of an effort sound quite so frightening. Miv's upset because she's overheard that her father wants to divert move the reader family 'Down South'. When you're from putting two and two togetherYorkshire, Down South is a frightening, although it takes wife number fourforeign place, Bolanlebest avoided. For Miv, an inordinate amount of time for the penny move would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, and she'll do anything to drop, but itprevent that. She's not worried about discovering the deception - itdangers or that her Mum's about the glorious journey of how things unfoldstopped talking - to anyone.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687497</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Cornelius Medvei1035906708|title=Caroline: A MysteryDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin|rating=4.5

|summary=Meet Mr Shaw. He's an insurance worker who takes his wife and son off on their annual vacation one yearWe tend to think of Maria Callas as Greek, and finds himself indulging but she was born to Greek parents in a surprisingly platonic holiday romance. The subject of his infatuationManhattan, CarolineNew York, has eyes, ears, hair in December 1923 and more that easily combine with Mr Shaw's fondness for classical Persian love poetryonly moved to Athens when she was thirteen. At the end of the holiday he lets his wife and son depart while he takes a further week off Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to 'Callas' to walk all make it more manageable in the way home with CarolineStates. Who isWhen 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 mother who mercilessly exploited her and made no secret of her preference for her elder sister, as it happens, a donkeyJackie.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846553881</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Steve MartinAlexander McCall Smith|title=An Object of BeautyThe Perfect Passion Company

|summary=Leave aside The Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and operating as an alternative to all the title of online apps in providing a more personal, tailored service. Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the book business, as Ness is planning to take a trip to Canada to get away for a minute, the book itself while. Katie is also 'an object coming out of beauty' a break up with its striking front cover a bad boyfriend, and primary colours artfully arrangedso jumps at the chance to come home to Edinburgh. And then I turned so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, thanks to 44 Scotland Street and the book over and said Isabel Dalhousie novels, but with some new characters who quickly begin to myselfcharm. Katie has no experience in running a business, ohor in match-making, itbut Ness has full confidence in her abilities, and there's ''that'' Steve Martinalways 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. I knew He loses his job, he was loses his fiancee, and his house gets trashed. Oh, and someone has delivered a really weird, disturbing coffin- sized object to his home, and is - a very funny actor but I didnit't know s possible that he whoever or whatever was also inside is the thing that has trashed his house! The thing is, Benny is the very last person to deserve all this bad luck. He is a writernice person. A really nice person. Sofortunately for Benny it turns out that the delivery to his house is a new friend, before I'd even opened the book I was thinking - will he be as good a writer as he bad weather friend called Spike, who has been sent to help him since Benny is an actorclearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a good person. I was about Spike is going to find take care of Benny, and will certainly take care of Benny's enemies, if he, Benny, and Harper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's wild adventure) can figure out ..who exactly they are.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0297863290</amazonuk>1662500491

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tom CampbellKatherine Howe|title=FoldA True Account|rating=4.5

|summary=Five men Hannah Masury is living in Reading circulate their monthly poker evenings around their respective housesBoston, having been sent to live with a family who run an inn, and being made to work there from a young age. None When she hears there is to be a hanging of them like all some pirates in the otherstown, none of them seem she decides to completely like the gamego and watch. Enthralled and horrified in equal measure, but theyHannah finds herself embroiled in a young boy're more-or-less happy with s death at the habithands of two vicious pirates. ItShe hides away, so that they don's the way the five different personalities approach the evenings that we are concerned witht find and kill her too, and enjoy principallythen to escape them completely she runs away to sea, especially when dressing as a boy and joining the poorest player, Nick, decides to clash with his polar opposite, Dougnotorious Ned Low's pirate ship as a cabin boy. And what might happen if She soon finds herself in the thick of things when there is a non-playing character were to enter thingsmutiny on board, and make them even feistier?from there we are caught up in her rip roaring tale of life on the ocean waves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408807602</amazonuk>0861547438

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Francois Lelord1471180158|title=Hector and the Secrets of LoveMaybe Tomorrow|author=Penny Parkes

|summary=Professor Cormorant has gone AWOLJamie Matson works in an upper-class grocery store, for a man who's a control freak with all the subtlety of a half brick. Tasked with developing drugs to cure a lot of illsJamie's son, by making us fall in loveBo, he 'has fled with his secretsproblems'. He's asthmatic and the more you read, his prototypes, and a few samples the more you'll suspect that may or may not be dangeroushe's on the autistic spectrum. It is down Sometimes Jamie needs to Hector, take time off at short notice - she's a psychiatrist, to chase him down, work out where Cormorant is frequent flier in his researches, the local A&E and if possible help bring the trade secrets back sometimes Bo's not fit enough to go to the company his girlfriend, and now himself, works forschool. With Missed shifts or the exotic far East his destination, a partner left behind, and need to be away on time on his hand to muse on pick Bo up from school are occasions when Jamie can be controlled and put in the subject of love, will Hector find more than just wrong. It was going to come to a bunch of chemicals in a syringe?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906040338</amazonuk>head.

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Edward WrightB0CKD1L5JL|title=From BloodRadio Free Olympia|author=Jeffrey Dunn

|summary=While I'm not mad about Petr is an orphan. Rescued by the titlestrange, reclusive Bear, the book's cover he is atmospherically good - it says to the reader 'please pick me brought up far from bustling cities and read me.busy human society, in the forests of Washington' So I dids Olympic Peninsula. The book opens After Bear dies and a brief sojourn in 1960s America human company, and armed with only a pirate radio transmitter, Petr goes on a journey through the Prologue. A bunch of radical thinkers are angry. They turn this pent-up anger into a well-oiledforest, well-ordered act of violence. Lives are lost. But broadcasting the perpetrators are clever strange, wild and most of them escape justice. They do what many around the world have done before them; they go underground. But several key members are still at large ..rarely heard voices he encounters.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0752891774</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=David LindsleySarah Marsh|title=The Darkfall SwitchA Sign of Her Own

|summary=The book opens on After a bout of scarlet fever as a child, Ellen Lark loses her hearing. Suddenly plunged into a sultryworld of silence, hot summer's day in central Londoneverything about her life changes. Imagine Living in a time when the stifling heat use of sign language was seen as something only savages do, Ellen is sent to a school where she is the subliminal message taught to lip read, but physically restrained from signing. From here, especially for those passengers on the underground - ' ... as if they were all joined she ends up in some macabre dance as another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the train rattled along the tunnel. Everybody pressed against others.' Suddenly there's deaf and using a problem with the infrastructuresystem called Visible Speech. A big problem. As At the experts frantically work behind the scenes to get London moving again - the unthinkable happens. People lose their lives same time, Bell is working on other inventions and ideas, and Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in what appears to be a power cutcomplicated tangle of espionage.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>070909146X</amazonuk>1035401614

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Alan LorberB0BC3YTCMR|title=Benny Allen Was A Star: A New York Music StoryGood Girls Die|author=Ayura Ayira|rating=34.5

|summary=Alan Lorber has written a fictional and I suspect a semi autobiographical account of his years as a top music arranger in the 1950's and early 1960's, a period of huge change in the music industry culminating with the breakthrough of the Beatles in America. Rather than simply writing a factual narrative of his involvement during this period he decided to tell the This story of the fictional Benny Allen, a classically trained musician who almost by accident gets involved in the music publishing business and then goes on to produce some hugely successful orchestrations on many of the top hit records of the timeis not for everyone.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B0041VXCTA</amazonuk>}}''

{{newreview|author=Deborah Harkness|title=A Discovery Lavender Daniels was three weeks short of Witches|rating=4her fifteenth birthday when The Incident happened.5|genre=Fantasy|summary=The back cover is full of praise for this debut novel which has been involved She was a very bright student, a bit too nerdy if truth be told, and suffered from vitiligo - people were afraid to hug her in a publishing case it'tussles contagious. It', no lesss not easy being a black girl whose skin is 84% white. She had a crush on seventeen-year-old Reggie Anderson but never thought he would notice her. ImpressiveThen he did: Lavender was very good at math and Reggie asked if she would tutor him. I She readily agreed: tutoring was looking forward to reading what all the fuss something she gladly did at church: this was aboutjust an extension. The title is terrific tooShe went to his house and he raped her. But was the book In shock, she even allowed him to give her a terrific read?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755374029</amazonuk>lift home.

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Elfriede Jelinek1472263936|title=The Piano Teacher|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Erika is a single woman in her thirties, who, despite the best efforts of her mother, did not succeed as a concert musician, but instead works as a teacher at the Vienna Conservatory. I say best efforts, I mean outright pressure. Erika and her mother make for an unusual relationship - the older relying on the glory, company and complete obedience of the younger, the daughter sharing a bed with her mother even at this stage of her life. All this is until a young student at the school decides he will be a younger lover for Erika, and forces his will into the household. But who, should such a relationship actually form, is going to be the power-maker?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687373</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFigurine|author=Maria Angels Anglada|title=The Auschwitz ViolinVictoria Hislop|rating=45

|summary=In Poland It was in the early 1990s, a violin sings1968 that Helena McCloud made her first trip to Greece. The maestro who owns it produces such a music from itShe was alone: her mother, Greek by birth, people are forced had left the family home and refused to take note. Theyreturn, but Mary and Hamish (Helena'd s parents) felt that it would be even more amazed a pity if she could bring herself Helena grew up without knowing her grandparents or understanding her Greek heritage. Her trip to state exactly how the instrument came to family apartment in up-market Kolonaki would be. For this was the work first of Daniel, suffering in a subsidiary camp to Auschwitz-Birkenauseveral annual visits. StumblesShe grew to love her grandmother and the family's maid, chancesDina, halfbut was wary - and frightened -liesof her grandfather, all conspire retired general Stamatis Papagiannis. He was proud of his close connections to allow Daniel the Junta and expected his family to take time off uphold his enforced labour values but saw no reason to accommodate them. His prejudices included Helena's red hair and engage in his realgreen eyes -world careerinherited from her father's Scottish ancestors. But is there a price to pay in doing something you love, just for a man you can only hate?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849016437</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Bethan DarwinDean Koontz|title=Two Times TwentyAfter Death|rating=43

|summary=You can tell from the beginning Michael Mace, Head of this novel that you're Security, at a top secret biological research facility, is among 55 people who die when a virus is released in Walesa bio-hazard accident. The young Anna (as we travel back Finding himself in time) is meeting what will be long-term friendsa makeshift mortuary, Bob and Jane. We find Anna rather proudly introducing her two young sons and Bob butting covered in with 'Duwplastic, good-sized boys for their age ... Make good rugby players one day.' But the Welsh location and all things Welsh is given he has a subtle touch.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>190678423X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Adrian Dawson|title=CODEX|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=When I read the resume on the back cover I immediately thought sense that it was going something very, very bad has happened to be one him – and only him – as he sits up and looks around at the shrouded bodies of those high-octane, action every second paragraph, type of thrillershis dead friends and former colleagues. All action and perhaps very little substanceAs he recovers his senses, he realises that there is something different about him; he can ''feel'' everything. I was happily proved wrong''Everything''. And very early on in the novel, as well, which was goodMichael isn't ''Michael'' anymore.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0956577008</amazonuk>1662500467}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Peter DurantineB0BVDC2VWH|title=The Chocolate AssassinGrave Listeners|author=William Frank

|summary=In the final days of the Second World War as the allied guns came ever closer a young German was sent on The village is isolated and poor. It's surrounded by a secret mission to AmericaWitching Forest. He was only in his late teens but still resisted telling anyone, including And the Uvillagers subsist largely by farming Uphegia plants -boat captain who took him across the Atlantic, about the nature its bread-like fruit provides nutrition and its blossom provides herbal medicines. The black wood of his mission. Fifty five years later the U-boat captainforest provides heat and warmth, Eric Hoestroofs on homes, long settled in the Statesand even gallows, was murdered at his beach homeif needed. Samuel Grey, police detective and part-time student was called The fear of being buried alive is an existential superstition in to investigate the murder. The local police chief thought village and that is the most likely murderer was the neighbour who had reported the crimereason Volushka, a drunken, self-indulgent, but Grey suspected that the truth was hidden somewhere in Hoest's backgroundlazy lout of a man is tolerated.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1451579527</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sheila O'FlanaganB0BYF82CXT|title=A Season to RememberSemi-Detached|author=Deborah Stone

|summary=We first meet the Lodge owners''Bill and Amanda are living in a semi-detached house, stuck in a likable coupledepressing rut of boredom and disappointment, when Terry and Fiona – glamorous, successful and very much in love – move in next door. They find running Despite their upmarket country house type hotel both exhilarating and exhausting. The novel is bang up to date so O'Flanagan gets in the whole recession/banker-bashing thing early different outlooks on. As the festive season loomslife, the unthinkable has happenedcouples befriend each other and life appears to improve for both pairs. Empty rooms. They're But all is not used to empty roomswhat it seems, at any time of the year. Normally the Lodge is a full house. But then a slow and steady trickle starts as our characters book in - and the story starts proper, so to speaktheir increasingly interconnected relationships are fated for tragedy.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755375157</amazonuk>''

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jack Everett and David ColesShalini Boland|title=Last Mission: the last hours of the Third ReichThe Silent Bride|rating=3.5

|summary=We first meet Alice and Seth are a couple of characters living match made in the United Statesheaven. A He is everything she has been searching for; handsome, accomplished, clever, funny; total and utter husband and wife and a relation of theirs called Paul-material. On the surfaceShe is all he could possibly want in a wife; beautiful, they appear to be enjoying happysuccessful, normal lives. But all confident… and so the inevitable proposal is not what eagerly accepted by Alice and the wedding is seemsplanned and set. We soon find out that When the husbandmuch-anticipated day arrives, Carl has some secrets. Pretty big ones. He keeps a picture of Adolph Hitler on display - somewhere - in his homeAlice is walked down the aisle by her father, for example. Links beaming with Germany pride and excitement as she surveys the congregation – their friends assembled to celebrate this joyful day and when Seth turns to face his past life are often talked aboutapproaching bride, or rather whispered aboutAlice's world implodes because she has absolutely no idea who the man at the altar is, with a handful of trusted 'acquaintances' over a beer or twowho is waiting for her to become his wife.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>095653421X</amazonuk>1662507089

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Mary E Martin1787636003|title=The Drawing Lesson: The First in the Trilogy Girls of RemembranceSummer|author=Katie Bishop|rating=45

|summary=Alexander Wainwright is It was the summer when Rachel Evans turned eighteen that she and Caroline went backpacking around Greece and arrived on the UK's premier artistisland. HeRachel wasn's just won the Turner with ''The Hay Wagon'' – a painting with a luminoust exactly innocent but she was, perhaps, naive, so when thirty-four-year-old Alistair Wright started to take an interest in her, moonlit landscapeshe was flattered rather than wary. He should be at the peak It was quite a while before he made any sort of his powers, but he's about physical approach to lose his muse her andby that time she was obsessed by him. Alistair worked for Henry Taylor, more worryingly, there seems to be something wrong with looking after his sight and interests on the year to come is going to be traumatic. The story of it is told by his friend, art dealer Jamie Helmsworth, who has pieced together what he knows, what he's heard – island and used a little artistic licence to fill in particular in the gaps. It's a most unusual story which will take you deep into bar where all the world of artists and writersgirls either worked or partied.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1450229360</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Cathleen SchineAmanda Craig|title=The Three Weissmanns of WestportGraces|rating=34.5

|summary=The Few styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the state-of-the-nation novel begins with Joseph Weissmann. There's something so utterly compelling about any writer who can catch hold of the atmosphere of the day and capture it, or Josie crafting an image of the country as he it stands in one particular moment. To say that Amanda Craig is known, deciding skilled at the age of 78 that he no longer wants to doing this would be married to Betty after 48 years together. In an attempt to save Bettyembarrassingly inadequate: she's feelings he cites irreconcilable differences, but practically synonymous with the truth is he genre of contemporary social fiction at this point. She has fallen head over heels such a gift for weaving the ongoing issues of the day into the lives of her characters in a way that feels natural and lived-in love. Betty is devastated, her life in tattersnever making them ciphers for social commentary but instead fully realised people, grappling with even the beautiful Central Park apartment she adores soon lost to herissues far larger than themselves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1849015716</amazonuk>140871468X

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John Irving152915118X|title=Last Night in Twisted RiverPineapple Street|author=Jenny Jackson

|summary=We start in 1954, in ''Pineapple Street'' is the middle story of nowherethree women: Sasha, in a log-cutters' encampmentDarley and Georgiana. The cook lives alone with his twelve year old son, in some kind of comfort - a decent job, familiarity with the harsh surroundings Darley and George are sisters and the hardened people inhabiting it. But a pair of tragedies - one involving a fatal work accident with a young teenager new Sasha is married to the job, force the pair to fleetheir brother Cord. They leave behind a red herring that they hope will force the local brutal policeman to get the wrong impression're Stocktons, and only Sasha isn't a best friend in the shape of Ketchum, the most hardened logger in the camp as a kind of safety-net, but their destiny, spread over Stockton by birth so she isn't readily accepted into the next few generations, will prove to still be populated with tragedy, romance, despair - and the constant look over their shoulder to the tiny settlement of Twisted Rivertribe.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0552776572</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Tony Bayliss|title=Past Continuous|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary= The authorproblem's note tells exacerbated when the reader that this book clan matriarch, Tilda, asks Cord and Sasha if they'was inspired by the suicide of d like to move into the author's sonPineapple Street property.' Chapter 1 opens with the reader being in no doubt that the schoolboy Matthew has Tilda and Chip have renovated and downsized to another property, a knack with computersstreet or so away, which they own. HeThey won's a bit t need any of a whiz-kidthe furniture from Pineapple Street, so Sasha and Cord can move straight in. He's also shy and tongue-tied which makes him a bit of Nominally, they had a loner as well. He stands out at school for all the wrong reasons choice but hethat wasn's coping with it - justt the reality. And early on in Darley and Georgiana start to call Sasha 'the book we meet Sophiegold digger'. She's a big part of this book. Sheliving in 's around Matthew's age. She is bright and clever. Her adoptive parents would probably say that shetheir's too clever for her own good.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907230173</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Sam Hayes|title=Someone Else's Son|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=The book opens with Carrie Kentfamily home. Successful television presenter and mother of teenager, Max. Ms Kent immediately comes across as hard-headed, business-like, aloof and rather distant but They use it so often thatthey abbreviate it to 's the whole point, of course. Very good at her day job. But as a mother? Her television show is a reality programme, dealing with well, basically the dregs of society: single, young mums, drug addicts etc. Carrie knows that these people keep her in designer shoes and bags but she keeps them at armGD's length. She wouldn't want to catch something. Carrie sails through her life with a self-satisfied smile on her face. You can just tell.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755349873</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Brooke MorganEmily Critchley|title=TrappedOne Puzzling Afternoon

|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=Ellie Walters is 36, divorced and keen to start a new life away from her cheating and control-freak ex-husband. Fulfilling a life-long dream, she decides to take her 15-84 year-old son, Tim, to live with her Edie has lived in the same small town of Bourne. As she soon becomes good friends with for almost her next-door neighbourwhole life, Louisa Amory, Ellie finally feels but now she is making facing a life of move as her own. She begins son wants to move to feel a sense of freedom another house and independence but for how long? When strange events start occurring Ellie bring Edie to live with his family, as Edie is forced starting to face some painful and guilty memories connected to a tragic accident nineteen years ago; memories which she would rather forgetlose her memory. It However, Edie is clear that someone has discovered tormented by the memory of her well-kept secret childhood friend, Lucy, who went missing over 60 years ago, and is reluctant to let her forget about it. As the worry that there was a campaign secret she was keeping for Lucy that somehow might be the thing that reveals the truth of terror against Ellie unfolds she must come to terms with what happened all those years that time ago and try to discover who . After 'seeing' Lucy in the high street, just as she was the last time she saw her tormentor is. Vulnerable and afraid, she relies on Louisa's friendship starts to find pockets of memories coming back to help her through . And yet as she remembers the ordeal. Howeverpast, when a misunderstanding causes a rift between Ellie she is forgetting more and Louisamore in her day to day life. Will she uncover the truth about Lucy's sondisappearance before her move, Joe, the women's friendship is threatened. Alone and afraid, she suddenly finds herself trapped in a nightmare from which she must do all she can to escape.before her memories are gone forever?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099536285</amazonuk>1804181250

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Margaret AtwoodMadelaine Lucas|title=The Handmaid's Tale|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=In the near-future USA that they call Gilead, society has changed. For the worse, of course. The population is dying out, and people who are capable of breeding the next generation are given a cherished status of Handmaid - gifted to any male of enough esteem, called a Commander, who balances the household with his wife and what is practically a walking womb. Other women get drudge work, or run horrid finishing schools Thirst for the Handmaids, or are packed off to what are reported to be polluted hellholes abroad, for laborious work for life. Men are restricted too - Handmaids are off-limits to everybody but their Commander, and those households are patrolled carefully by other eunuch types. It's up to our nameless narrator and main character, however, to show us just how cherished the status of Handmaid feels.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099511665</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Carmine Abate|title=The Homecoming PartySalt

|summary=Every year young Marco eagerly awaits his father's return'Love, when he can for a few months spend precious time with him before he leaves again. MarcoI's father Tullio is a migrant worker forced through poverty to work in Northern France doing hard manual work. In this way he manages to earn enough d read, was supposed to help his family have be a decent living. The familylight and weightless feeling, his eldest daughter Elise now at college, Marco his only son and a younger sister known only as but I had always longed for gravity'la piccola' along with his wife and elderly mother live in Calabria, an economically depressed area of southern Italy. They belong to the minority Arberesh community, descended from Albanian immigrants settling small villages in the mountainous regions of La Sila. Just as the Calabrian people are looked down upon by other Italians the Arberesh people are even looked down upon by the Calabrians.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1933372834</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Chris Kuzneski|title=The Secret Crown|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=The riddle is Told from a retrospective view, a young woman unravels the whole crux of the bookyear-long relationship that once defined her. So we're taken right back, albeit brieflyOverlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the affair with a man twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to Bavaria in its sorrowful end the year 1886, via the Prologuesummer after. So, Set against the scene is now set, foul play is most definitely afoot and lots backdrop of questions should pop into an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the reader24-year-old narrator's mind. Such as who? Why? etc. So fardeepening relationship with her older lover, so gooddepicting its all-consuming nature, I thought. We then fast-forward straight to present-day Germany how it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and due to an unfortunate hunting accident, something which was a secret, is no longerhow it altered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0241952123</amazonuk>0861546490

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Padgett Powell0008506337|title=The Interrogative Mood|rating=2.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=So, what is a novel? Does it need a plot, climax and resolution? Characters who grow? A setting? Themes which explore the human condition? And must it entertain? Padgett Powell challenges our perceptions of fiction with a book that explores what it is to be a novel, but without any preconditions. How far he succeeds is down to the individual reader. But I thought I'd give it a go.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846683661</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewGarnett Girls|author=Ken Follett|title=Fall of GiantsGeorgina Moore

|summary=This is The love affair between Margo Garnett and poet Richard O'Leary was all-consuming, apparently on both sides. Margo was just sixteen when they fell in love. Richard was twenty-one and described by Margo's mother as 'an older man'. Her parents worried that Richard's influence would take her away from what they felt she could achieve - going to Oxford and having a thumpingglittering career. In the event, great read at 850 pages they eloped and Richard took her away from the Isle of Wight. We meet Margo did go to Oxford and went on to become a clutch of families who are all vastly different in terms of class, outlookwell-respected journalist. The couple had three children: Rachel, values etcImogen and Sasha. I have to admit Life was lived in London and holidays were spent at Sandcove, the family home on the outset that this is Isle of Wight. Even then the first Ken Follett book Idoubts about Richard's drinking were never far from Margo's mind: ''ve read even although two of his previous books are she would never be able to leave him in my ever-growing charge'to read' pile. So although I know of him, my reading expectations were wide-open.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230710077</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Linda Sargent|title=Paper Wings|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=In a wood in Kent two children played happily and as is the way with children they sometimes went where they shouldn't, but it was the nineteen fifties and the worry was more about whether they would injure themselves by falling down an abandoned well than the problems which we worry over half a century laterThen Richard left them. It was a place for plans and games, projects they didn't always tell their parents about and generally growing up. Ruby loved climbing trees and longed to fly. Peter was more sensible but the pair were inseparable.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956483305</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Michelle Paver1914585402|title=Dark MatterDashboard Elvis is Dead|author=David F Ross|rating=4.5

|summary=ItI reviewed David F Ross's book [[There's Only One Danny Garvey by David F Ross|There's January 1937 Only One Danny Garvey]] a couple of years back and remember being absolutely floored by how powerful and dark clouds of impending war are gathering over Europeaffecting it was. Jack Miller is in LondonIt was a gripping, working as a clerk and living in one lonely room. He should probably think himself lucky because many people have neither job nor home in this Great Depressionemotionally wounding read, but he doesn't. He feels lonely and isolated and angry rereading my review of it my main takeaway was that a career in research physics was snatched away from him by economic circumstance. So when the chance of becoming the wireless operator for an Arctic expedition comes along, he jumps at I might not have lavished enough praise on it - even though the team comprises of the exact privileged young men he most resents. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1409123782</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Janet EvanovichLucy Ashe|title=Wicked AppetiteClara and Olivia|rating=34.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Take one rather ditzy girl. Add a funny, extrovert friend, and another, more sensible one. Stir in two seriously attractive men, an unhinged pet or two, a slapstick plot and an unending series of cars. What have you got? A Janet Evanovich novel! This has been the formula for the winning 'Stephanie Plum' series for years, about a hopelessly incompetent bounty hunter who never quite manages to choose between the two hunks in her life, and it has given much pleasure and amusement. But even the best formulas get stale, so this year Ms Evanovich has branched out into something new. Well, almost.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755352769</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Alan Hamilton|title=Two Unknown|rating=4

|summary=The story year is based 1933. The place? Sadler'between s Wells. Ballerinas Clara and Olivia are sisters, twins no less. Identical on the wars'outside but not, we learn, on the 1920s to be exactinside. And not on stage, either. WeBecause there're introduced to the main characters: s a lot that builds a small family unit of motherdancer. Some things that can be taught or learnt – discipline, father attention to detail – and two children. On the surface this normalsome things, middle-class set-up all appears fine - but underneaththat ''je ne sais quoi'', things are far that don't come from finethe classroom. The fatherA stage presence, a charm, Ian is actually the step-father to the twinsa ''joie de vivre''. And through various detailed and sometimes unusually lengthy parentThe difference between a hard-child conversations worker, and chats the reader is filled in with the background story. A bit staccato in places, I have to admita star.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1907230130</amazonuk>0861544080

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Brian FreemanHeather Fawcett|title=The Bone HouseEmily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries

|summary=The novel opens with one of the central charactersEmily Wilde is an expert academic scholar on faerie lore, Mark. And straight away we see that he and she has an eye for travelled extensively, and researched meticulously, to write her life's work, the girls - young girls, it would seemvery first encyclopaedia of faeries. He's a married manWhilst she is brilliant at research and speaking to faeries, she is not so tongues start to waggood with people. The book's front cover depicts a house going up So when she finds herself far, far North in flames the small village of Hrafvsnik, having somehow offended the village matriarch, she is not sure what she has done, nor how to redeem herself and put her final investigations for her book back on the very first page there's another mention of fire, Billy Joel's hit song 'We Didn't Start The Fireright track.' SoEnter Wendell Bambleby, her dashingly handsome and insufferable rival who arrives unexpectedly, all charm and delight, fire seems as if itmuch to Emily's going to play an important part in this bookfrustration. And it But why is he here? What does. he want? Big-time.And what exactly is going on with the faerie folk around Hravsnik?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0755348788</amazonuk>0356519120

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Rebecca Hunt1398515388|title=Mr ChartwellThe Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)

|summary=For a couple First of years now Esther Hammerhans has lived alone and money is a little tight. She works all, it was the earthquake, deep in the House of Commons library but it doesn't pay particularly well. Letting ocean floor, which created the spare room to a lodger seemed like a good ideatsunami and this, in turn, but she's somewhat surprised when she sees Mr Chartwell's silhouettecaused the nuclear meltdown. It's the size of a mattress The result was complete and Mr Chartwell is a dogutter devastation. A large black dog. At home in KentThe deaths were uncountable, Winston Churchill wakes upand the loss of livelihoods was widespread. He's reaching The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the end list of his time in parliament and in some ways he's not surprised to sense that there's priorities but - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a visitor in the roomconvenience store. It's someone he hasnHe wasn't seen for a while, dog person but the presence of the huge, mute hulk who watched him with a tortured expression was only to be expected. Winstonconvenience store owner's black comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the dog was backjumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1905490690</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alice de SmithChristopher Bowden|title=Welcome to LifeMr Magenta|rating=3.54

|summary=ItChristopher Bowden's the 80s. Freya latest novel is 14 and an only child. She lives with her parents in Cambridge. So far, so normal. Except... Freya's home life is slightly a-typical. Shepatient untangling of a seemingly ordinary woman's on first name terms with the parental figures (no affectionate ''Mum'' or ''Daddy'' here) and is under the distinct impression that they spend their days imagining life without , carried out by hernephew after she has died. Her best friend is The aunt who always provided a safe harbour and a little bit of indulgence to a middle aged housewife on whose son she has young nephew had had a rather too obvious crush. Her mother communicates with her through lists much more interesting life than that nephew Stephen had ever realised and shows her affection in the oddest ways. Her father has just moved his business associate in, but he's not just sleeping in the spare roomit seems to him an obligation to find it all out.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1843549840</amazonuk>B0B6Z9VJDW

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alex DrydenJennifer Mason|title=The Blind SpyPartitions of Unity

|summary=The author writes under a pseudonym Here at Bookbag Towers, we first met Elizabeth Cromwell, dominatrix and he has worked unintentional detective in intelligence[[Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery by Jennifer Mason|Preposterous]], so he should know what he's talking - when she investigated and writing aboutunravelled a series of disappearances. He concentrates on the battle for supremacy (and weIn ''ve been here before) as Russia and the USA clash. The story itself is an intricate one. Full Partitions of agents/counter-agentsUnity'', spies/double spies and the like and appearances by members of the CIA and MI6 amongst othersshe sets her mind to solving a murder. If you like spy thrillers, then this novel will suit you down to the ground. Lots of furtive and secretive missions all over the place to keep the reader guessing and interested.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0755373332</amazonuk>B09LQR9FRF

 {{newreview|author=Andrea Newman|title=A Bouquet of Barbed Wire|rating=2.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=For those of you who've never heard of it, A Bouquet of Barbed Wire was most famous as a landmark 70's TV series based on this 1969 novel by Andrea Newman. I'd never read the book before - in fact I'm not even sure I knew there ''was'' a book - or seen the TV series but I was aware of the controversy it created at the time ofrelease so lapped up the chance to read the rerelease, accompanying the remake of the TV series which has just started.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687721</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=David WilliamsWill Carver|title=11:59The Daves Next Door

|summary=The back cover blurb informs the reader that this novel was a semi-finalist Five strangers come together in the 2010 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. And the front jacket is stylish and one moment as a bit Hitchcock-esque. All the signs looked promising for a decent read. But did it deliver?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956373356</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=William Nicholson|title=All the Hopeful Lovers|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=I had previously read Nicholson's ''The Society Of Others'' and thoroughly enjoyed it so I was looking forward suicide bomber prepares to reading this book. Nicholson writes detonate his vest on a modern-day story which is relevant and bang up to date. We first meet Laura and Belinda. Two middle-aged, middle-class wives and mothersLondon tube line. Feeling sort of okay with As their lives generally but all too aware alsofates overlap, that the marital 'spark' in their marriages story is now a low peep - if there at all. Belinda told in particularbackwards order, knows she is bumbling along in life. She's not sure what leading up to do to make things more interesting in the sex departmentfateful moment. A fling would probably help - but would it be the answer?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>184916388X</amazonuk>1914585186}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ruth DugdallJennifer Mason|title=The Woman Before MePreposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery

|summary=We're introduced to one of the female central characters'A struggling poetry zine, Rose. There's been a serious house fire mom-and a baby has been involved. Rose is implicated. But is she innocent or guilty? Unfortunately for Rose, she's been -pop mobile diner in the wrong place at Northern California redwoods, a 400-meter hurdler who just missed the wrong time - and she2004 Olympics, a women's put behind bars. Five years is track coach with a long time yen for bullwhips, a young woman billionaire with a state-of-the rest of her -art S&M dungeon, a man serving a life to lead. Even more sosentence in Alabama, an enigmatic signature, K(s, x), if you're telling anyone and everyone that you areon a cheap oil painting, an erotic art dealer in fact, innocent of the crimeGeorgia... But is anyone listening?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907461159</amazonuk>}}''

{{newreview|author=John Buchan|title=The Island of Sheep (John Hannay)|rating=3.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Richard Hannay This is feeling old. He looks at himself and his contemporaries and sees just a spread sample of the cast of complacency. Luckily - or perhaps very unluckily - an old pledge will come to haunt him. His earlier career in Africa saw Hannay characters and his friends swear to protect a man from others - and now a second generation of animosity is ripe for Hannay to step settings in and be a protective detectivePreposterous. Add in a supposed treasure hoardAs you can see, and who knows where his last journey might end some keeping up?will be required! The basic premise of this mystery story goes like this...|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>184697156X</amazonuk>B09STS96HS

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jed RubenfeldB0B2N7MVYM|title=The Death InstinctCalculations of Rational Men|author=Daniel Godfrey

|summary=It's three years since the 10th of December 1962 when we were all blown away by [[The Interpretation of Murder by Jed Rubenfeld|The Interpretation of Murder]] but Jed Rubenfeld first meet Dr Joseph Marr. Just to put what happens in context, the Cuban missile crisis is back with the sequel, which takes place ten years laterstill very fresh in people's minds. And what The world has barely had a decade chance to breathe out. But for Joe Marr, it's not the missile crisis that has 's at the front of his mind. He's been, with the appalling tragedy convicted of the First World War and the influenza outbreak which followedmurder. ThereWith the current state of medical knowledge, it's a hope hard to think otherwise than that things are getting better as New York moves into the twenties and Stratham Younger and Captain James Littlemore meet up for the prosecution would never have been brought but Joe Marr has spent his first time few days in ten yearsHMP Queen's Bench, a relatively new prison. TheyHe're in Wall Street on September the sixteenth – s just as a quarter getting used to his roommate, Mervyn, and learning to be wary of a ton of explosives is detonated in the worst terrorist attack in the country's hundred and fifty year historyMcArthur brothers.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755343999</amazonuk>

{{newreview|author=Katherine Hall Page|title=The Body in the Fjord|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=Page gives us another ''The Body In The...'' book within a tried and tested format. The book jacket covers are always bright and jazzy and this one is no exception. We're deep in Norway, its picturesque countryside and world-famous fjords. We are in the company of two different but interesting women. Mother and daughter. Pix, the daughter (I think the name sounds as if it belongs to someone young) is a mother in middle-age with teenage children. She has responsibilities, but at times she behaves like a sixteen year old and I suppose that is part of her appeal. She cannot seem to say ''no'' to anyone and now finds herself enlisted to solve an unexplained death and a missing person. The latter is the more important as the missing person, Kari, is related to Ursula's best friend. Yes, perhaps a few too many names at the beginning of the book to grapple with but it soon settles down.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0709090641</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Marcelo Figueras|title=Kamchatka|rating=3|genre=General Fiction|summary=Initially I was very excited and interested when The Bookbag was given this novel to review. Set at a time in which I lived in Buenos Aires, I was looking forward to a fictionalised account of these traumatic years - made all the more appealing, as the narrator purported to be the eldest of the family's two sons - 10 year old 'Haroldo' as he comes to be known, having by necessity left his former identity behind. In this respect, I was to be sadly disappointed. The majority of the novel comprises recollections from an adult Haroldo - not quite what the Amazon blurb, nor the précis Move on the cover, leads the reader to believe! In fairness, the author can't be blamed for this - but I felt mislead by the dust jacket - which may have coloured my enjoyment, and which lead, in part, to the relatively low star rating which I gave the book.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1843548267</amazonuk>}}[[Newest Graphic Novels Reviews]]