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[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreview <!-- remove 28/12 -->Frontpage|author=Rob MurphyJenny Lecoat|title=Rotten to the CoreBeyond Summerland

|genre=Thrillers General Fiction|summary=It's 2009, and Russia look like being awarded Jean lives on Jersey with her mother where they are celebrating the football World Cup hosting rights for end of the oh-so-distant 2018 tournament - that is, until England stick their oar inoccupation. They have solved their hooligan problem During the war, Jean's father was arrested for listening to a banned radio and improved their transport systemsoldiers took him away one night, leaving Jean and so at last are valid final holdersher mother waiting for years for news of him. Watching this is France, who have to reciprocate with As the British finally free the Russians who helped them get France '98, and they have a plan. At this stage Channel islands from the UEFA European championship of 2016 has not been awardedNazis, and while France remain favourites to get the jobwar is finally over, again some upstart idea has poked its head above their hopes rise that they will finally learn what became of him. But will the parapet - a joint offering from Wales and Scotland. Yes, these two tiny countries, separated by 200 miles and without truth come as a brilliant connection from one to the otherrelief, and without some vital posh hotels here and there, and with no serious claim to soccer fame when or will it comes to winning things, are unlikely hosts. But raise further questions around what if France could persuade else happened during the world it war? Who was a good idea - and let Russian espionage prove it not to be so, with all the while informer who told the French around to pick up Nazis about the piecesradio? All of the UK would be damaged, meaning England '18 would be dead in the water, and Russia would win out. And who's to say what other secrets have been kept throughout the Brits, with their devolution habits, and their first coalition government in a long time, could not get through without damaging themselvesoccupation?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1546282998</amazonuk>1846976537

{{newreview <!-- remove 28/12 -->Frontpage|author=Paul StidolphOnyi Nwabineli|title=Forests in the SaharaAllow Me to Introduce Myself|rating=4.5|genre=Thrillers General Fiction|summary=''Everyone I speak Anuri spent her childhood on display to thinks you are going the world, thanks to come to some sort of sticky end.her step-mother Ophelia'' Those are not the most promising words a man can hear from his new partners increasingly popular presence on social media, but where she doesnposted every step of Anuri't lie s childhood for sponsorships and influencer deals and, basically, monetary gain. Now Anuri is in this instance. He her twenties and she is Jeffrey Harveyslowly trying to regain her confidence and to get her life back, a young Cambridge professor, who has been dabbling with some extrasuing her step-curricular work, creating GM trees that can keep vast quantities of water purifiedmother to take down the content about her. Get an iceberg or three worth of H2O near Africa Anuri is battling alcoholism, where clean water is still a scarce resourcefailing to start her PhD, undergoing therapy and the trees can do their bit secretly abusing people online and the water will advance the place and make Jeffrey a well-respected global entrepreneurreceiving money from them for doing so. If Most importantly, that she isdesperately worried about her little sister, he can get round all who is the problems in his life - fractions in the start-up involved in the project, a finance officer embezzling the funds for gambling - ohnew focus of Ophelia's online empire. Can she save her sister, and a man ready to accuse Jeffrey of murder perhaps herself and theft of research data on a case reaching back several years. It seems her relationship with her father at the lovely girlfriend was right to see no shortage of possible sticky ends...same time?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1546282351</amazonuk>0861546873

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= John Banks1529153298|title= WThe List of Suspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey|rating= 45|genre= General Fiction |summary=On It's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. (A woman? I mean, honestly...) She's not what's worrying Miv's family, though. Women have been disappearing. Well, they've been murdered, but to have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. Miv's upset because she's overheard that her father wants to move the slopes of Mt Hood in Oregonfamily 'Down South'. When you're from Yorkshire, an 1000-year old Viking Down South is discovered frozen - three thousand miles further west than any previously known Viking explorationa frightening, foreign place, best avoided. Josh Kinninger is inspired by For Miv, the Viking discovery - three personal catastrophes having left him angrymove would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, unmoored and with his world in turmoilshe'll do anything to prevent that. Beginning a journey westward, he She's not worried about the dangers or that her Mum's filled with a desire stopped talking - to wreak vengeance on the individuals he finds morally corruptanyone. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0983333416</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Ellen Wiles1035906708|title=The Invisible CrowdDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin|rating= 4.5|genre= General Fiction|summary=This novel follows the plight We tend to think of Eritrean Yonas Kelati Maria Callas as he tries Greek, but she was born to make a life for himself Greek parents in England. He and a good friendManhattan, GebreNew York, escape from prison in December 1923 and only moved to be thrown into captivity again: trafficked in a shellfish factory where they have Athens when she was thirteen. Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to earn their ‘payment’ 'Callas' to make it more manageable in the malicious Aziz States. When she was back in Athens - supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for entering her voice - she was raised under the UK illegally. When Yonas escapesNazi occupation by a mother who mercilessly exploited her and made no secret of her preference for her elder sister, the story really startsJackie.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0008228817</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Tony PeakeAlexander McCall Smith|title= North FacingThe Perfect Passion Company|rating= 4.5|genre= General Fiction|summary=At school The Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Pretoria in 1962Edinburgh, Paul Harvey struggles run by Ness and operating as an alternative to fit all the online apps in - desperate 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 join the popular group no matter what it may takea trip to Canada to get away for a while. His focus on surviving Katie is coming out of a break up with a bad boyfriend, and so jumps at the perils of school chance to come home to Edinburgh. And so intensebegins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, that he fails bringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, thanks to see the turbulence in both South Africa 44 Scotland Street and the larger world - Isabel Dalhousie novels, but with the arrest of Nelson Mandela and the Cuban Missile Crisis affecting the actions of the adults around him. A some new and charismatic teacher decides characters who quickly begin to educate the boys charm. Katie has no experience in the unstable situation running a business, or in the world outside match- making, but Ness has full confidence in her abilities, and a growing awareness of both that there's always her very helpful (and his sexuality pushes Paul Harvey into decisions that he later comes rather handsome) neighbour, William, to regret - and their weight pushes him to return to South Africa in the present day - lend a man in his sixties keen to make sense of a troubled and utterly fascinating past. hand…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0995590028</amazonuk>1846976596

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Abi CurtisDean Koontz|title= Water & GlassThe Bad Weather Friend|rating= 4.5|genre= General Fiction Paranormal|summary= Something Benny is having a terrifically bad day. He loses his job, he loses his fiancee, and his house gets trashed. Oh, and someone has happeneddelivered a really weird, something disturbing coffin-sized object to his home, and it's possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the thing that has trashed his house! The thing is, Benny is the very nasty and on last person to deserve all this bad luck. He is a nice person. A really nice person. So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the delivery to his house is a new friend, a submarine bad weather friend called Spike, who has been sent to help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a pregnant elephant good person. Spike is one going to take care of only a handful Benny, and will certainly take care of animals living below the waves. We follow Nerissa CraneBenny's enemies, a vetif he, as she remembers recent eventsBenny, looks after the animals and falls Harper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into a world of intrigueBenny's wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0995465754</amazonuk>1662500491

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Joe HillKatherine Howe|title= Strange WeatherA True Account|rating= 4.5|genre= Horror General Fiction|summary= Strange Weather Hannah Masury is living in Boston, having been sent to live with a collection family who run an inn, and being made to work there from a young age. When she hears there is to be a hanging of four short novels all linked bysome pirates in the town, unsurprisingly, strange she decides to go and cataclysmic weatherwatch. Each novel is distinct Enthralled and showcases Hillhorrified in equal measure, Hannah finds herself embroiled in a young boy's restrained yet vivid style which takes everyday events death at the hands of two vicious pirates. She hides away, so that they don't find and makes kill her too, and then to escape them bitinglycompletely she runs away to sea, acerbically macabre or blindingly beautiful, often switching from one sentence to dressing as a boy and joining the nextnotorious Ned Low's pirate ship as a cabin boy. As Hill himself says '' She soon finds herself in the beauty thick of the world things when there is a mutiny on board, and the horror from there we are caught up in her rip roaring tale of life on the world were twined together'', never is this truer than in Strange Weather where moments of abject horror are coupled with raw beautyocean waves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>147322117X</amazonuk>0861547438

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Fiona Mitchell1471180158|title=The Maid's RoomMaybe Tomorrow|author=Penny Parkes|rating=4.5

|summary=In some apartments Jamie Matson works in Singapore youan upper-class grocery store, for a man who'll find s a bomb shelter - airless and without control freak with all the subtlety of a windowhalf brick. It will probably house the washing machine and the other domestic paraphernalia thatJamie's got nowhere else to goson, Bo, 'has his problems'. ThereHe'll be a mattress on s asthmatic and the floor of this stifling roommore you read, with the heat increased by more you'll suspect that he's on the tumble dryerautistic spectrum. This is the maidSometimes Jamie needs to take time off at short notice - she's room. Ita frequent flier in the local A&E and sometimes Bo's possibly better than sleeping under the dining room table, but not by muchfit enough to go to school. Back in 2009 there were 201,000 female domestic workers in Singapore, many not earning any money for a year until they've repaid 'training' Missed shifts or the need to be away on time to pick Bo up from school are occasions when Jamie can be controlled and other fees to the agency, many living put in 'the maid's room'wrong. It was going to come to a head.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1473659566</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=B0CKD1L5JL|title=Scoop of the YearRadio Free Olympia|author=Tom ClaverJeffrey Dunn

|genre=ThrillersGeneral Fiction|summary=Martin Petr is an ambitious journalist working on orphan. Rescued by the Financial Review. Martin is good at his job - accuratestrange, dedicatedreclusive Bear, hardworking he is brought up far from bustling cities and with a good nose for a scoop. But Martin is also uninterested busy human society, in the culture that comes with reportingforests of Washington's Olympic Peninsula. He has After Bear dies and a wife and two daughters at home and he doesn't want to waste time and money brief sojourn in the pubhuman company, talking macho nonsense and armed with the other hacks. He is only a far cry from his colleague Tom de Lacypirate radio transmitter, Petr goes on a charismaticjourney through the forest, silver-spooned charmer with piercing blue eyes. Tom doesn't just grab broadcasting the limelight though - strange, wild and rarely heard voices he also grabs the promotion to industrial correspondentencounters. And that is the job Martin not only wanted, but needed.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1788036220</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sarah Marsh|title=A Sign of Her Own|rating=3.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=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 the use of sign language was seen as something only savages do, Ellen is sent to a school where she is taught to lip read, but physically restrained from signing. From here, she ends up in another school studying under Alexander McCall SmithGraham Bell who has been teaching the deaf and using a system called Visible Speech. At the same time, Bell is working on other inventions and ideas, and Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a complicated tangle of espionage.|isbn=1035401614}}{{Frontpage|isbn=B0BC3YTCMR|title=Good Girls Die|author=Ayura Ayira|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=''This story is not for everyone.'' Lavender Daniels was three weeks short of her fifteenth birthday when The Incident happened. 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 case it's contagious. It's 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. 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 extension. She went to his house and he raped her. In shock, she even allowed him to give her a lift home.}} {{Frontpage|isbn=1472263936|title=The Good Pilot Peter WoodhouseFigurine|author=Victoria Hislop

|summary=If you've never read an Alexander McCall Smith novel, but have always thought you might like to try, one day then this might be the book It was in 1968 that Helena McCloud made her first trip to start withGreece. Rather than face the daunting task of leaping into one of his now very long-running seriesShe was alone: her mother, this is a standalone novelGreek by birth, had left the family home and it gives a good flavour of AMS's style, the way he can write refused to evoke a feeling of time and placereturn, but Mary and the warm optimism underlying his words Hamish (Helena's parents) felt that is so very reassuring and comforting it would be a pity if Helena grew up without knowing her grandparents or understanding her Greek heritage. Her trip to readthe family apartment in up-market Kolonaki would be the first of several annual visits. It calls itself 'a wartime romanceShe grew to love her grandmother and the family's maid, which it isDina, but was wary - and yet it is much more than that besides. Focussing mainly on Val, a young woman working as a Land Girl, we see frightened - of her falling in love with an American pilotgrandfather, Mike Rogersretired general Stamatis Papagiannis. Thanks He was proud of his close connections to the Junta and expected his family to uphold his values but saw no reason to a sheepdog on Valaccommodate them. His prejudices included Helena's farm (the Peter Woodhouse red hair and green eyes - inherited from the title) their lives become entwined with that of a German soldier, and the book shows us a variety of friendships as they grow and develop over the yearsher father's Scottish ancestors.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846974097</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Krysten RitterDean Koontz|title= BonfireAfter Death|rating= 4.53|genre= General Fiction|summary=It has been ten years since Abby Williams left home and scrubbed away all visible evidence Michael Mace, Head of her small town roots. Now working as an environmental lawyer in ChicagoSecurity, she has at a thriving careertop secret biological research facility, is among 55 people who die when a modern apartment, and her pick of meaningless onevirus is released in a bio-night standshazard accident.But when Finding himself in a new case takes her back home to Barrensmakeshift mortuary, Indianacovered in plastic, he has a sense that something very, very bad has happened to him – and only him – as he sits up and looks around at the life Abby painstakingly created begins to crackshrouded bodies of his dead friends and former colleagues. Tasked with investigating Optimal Plastics As he recovers his senses, the townhe realises that there is something different about him; he can ''feel'' everything. ''Everything''. Michael isn't ''Michael''s most high-profile company anymore.|isbn=1662500467}} {{Frontpage|isbn=B0BVDC2VWH|title=The Grave Listeners|author=William Frank|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=The village is isolated and economic heart, Abby begins to find strange connections to Barrenspoor. It' biggest scandal from more than s surrounded by a decade ago involving Witching Forest. And the popular Kaycee Mitchell and her closest friendsvillagers subsist largely by farming Uphegia plants -its bread-just before Kaycee disappeared for goodlike fruit provides nutrition and its blossom provides herbal medicines.Abby knows The black wood of the key to solving any case lies in the weak spotsforest provides heat and warmth, the unanswered questions. But as she tries desperately to find out what really happened to Kayceeroofs on homes, troubling memories begin to resurface and she begins to doubt her own observationseven gallows, if needed. And when she unearths The fear of being buried alive is an even more disturbing secret--existential superstition in the village and that is the reason Volushka, a ritual called ''The Gamedrunken,'' it will threaten the reputations, and livesself-indulgent, lazy lout of the community and risk exposing a darkness that may consume herman is tolerated.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1524759848</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Alice HoffmanB0BYF82CXT|title= The Rules of MagicSemi-Detached|author=Deborah Stone|rating= 54|genre= General Fiction |summary= I've read several of Alice Hoffman's novelsBill and Amanda are living in a semi-detached house, although strangely, not the one she's most famous for ''Practical Magic'', which went on to be made into stuck in a film. ''The Rules depressing rut of Magic'' is the long-awaited prequel to that bookboredom and disappointment, when Terry and tells the story of three siblings of the Owens family; FrannyFiona – glamorous, Jet successful and Vincentvery much in love – move in next door. The two sistersDespite their different outlooks on life, Franny the couples befriend each other and Jetlife appears to improve for both pairs. But all is not what it seems, go on to become the two aunts in the ''Practical Magicand their increasingly interconnected relationships are fated for tragedy.'' story.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1471157679</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Stephen FryShalini Boland|title= Mythos: A Retelling of the Myths of Ancient GreeceThe Silent Bride|rating= 53|genre= ReferenceGeneral Fiction|summary= The Greek Myths Alice and Seth area match made in heaven. He is everything she has been searching for; handsome, accomplished, arguablyclever, the greatest stories ever toldfunny; total and utter husband-material. So old She is all he could possibly want in a wife; beautiful, successful, confident… and influential they cast a shadow over western tales so the inevitable proposal is eagerly accepted by Alice and traditions, yet remain relatable the wedding is planned and readable millennia laterset. Here comedian When the much-anticipated day arrives, actorAlice is walked down the aisle by her father, television presenter, actor beaming with pride and author Stephen Fry brings his considerable talent excitement as she surveys the congregation – their friends assembled to these special stories celebrate this joyful day and recreates them with a witwhen Seth turns to face his approaching bride, warmth and humanity that brings them into Alice's world implodes because she has absolutely no idea who the modern age whilst still giving man at the honour and respect that such ancient and influential stories deservealtar is, who is waiting for her to become his wife. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0718188721</amazonuk>1662507089

{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1787636003|title=The Girls of Summer|author=Lorenzo Marone Katie Bishop|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary=It was the summer when Rachel Evans turned eighteen that she and Caroline went backpacking around Greece and arrived on the island. Rachel wasn't exactly innocent but she was, perhaps, naive, so when thirty-four-year-old Alistair Wright started to take an interest in her, she was flattered rather than wary. It was quite a while before he made any sort of physical approach to her and by that time she was obsessed by him. Alistair worked for Henry Taylor, looking after his interests on the island and Shaun Whiteside (Translator)in particular in the bar where all the girls either worked or partied.}}{{Frontpage|author=Amanda Craig|title=The Temptation to Be HappyThree Graces

|summary=Cesare is 77, widowed, generally ignored by Few styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the offspring he likes and bothered too much by state-of-the one he doesn't-nation novel. Still, he finds ways to fill his days. If heThere's not taking advantage something so utterly compelling about any writer who can catch hold of his friend-with-benefits arrangement with aging lady the atmosphere of the night Rossanaday and capture it, or keeping crafting an eye on his grandson, heimage of the country as it stands in one particular moment. To say that Amanda Craig is skilled at doing this would be embarrassingly inadequate: she's making mischief in league practically synonymous with elderly neighbours like Signora Vitaliano (local mad cat woman) and Marino (the non-IT-literate computer guy)genre of contemporary social fiction at this point. Their minds are diverted from their usual pursuits when She has such a young couple move gift for weaving the ongoing issues of the day into the apartment block providing Cesare with lives of her characters in a concern way that feels natural and the conviction that he has to do somethinglived-in, never making them ciphers for social commentary but instead fully realised people, whatever the fall out or personal dangergrappling with issues far larger than themselves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1786072882</amazonuk>140871468X

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Lars Mytting and Paul Russell Grant (Translator)152915118X|title=The Sixteen Trees of the SommePineapple Street|author=Jenny Jackson

|summary=While his grandfather lived ''Pineapple Street'' is the past was an area story of certainty for Edvardthree women: Sasha, Darley and Georgiana. Darley and George are sisters and Sasha is married to their brother Cord. At aged 4 heThey'd been taken to live with his grandparentsre Stocktons, having survived only Sasha isn't a Stockton by birth so she isn't readily accepted into the accident that killed his parentstribe. Now his grandfather has died revelations are coming to light showing Edvard his family history is different from what he'd believed… his motherThe problem's birthplaceexacerbated when the clan matriarch, his mother's nameTilda, the whereabouts of late Great-Uncle Einar… asks Cord and thatSasha if they's without looking more deeply d like to move into the fatal accident itselfPineapple Street property. Edvard is determined Tilda and Chip have renovated and downsized to solve the puzzleanother property, a determination that will take him street or so away , which they own. They won't need any of the furniture from his native Norway to an area of France synonymous with devastation Pineapple Street, so Sasha and Cord can move straight in. Nominally, they had a remote Scottish island loaded with secretschoice but that wasn't the 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 'the GD'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857056069</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Louis de BernieresEmily Critchley|title=Blue DogOne Puzzling Afternoon

|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=Mick's mother had 84 year old Edie has lived in the same small town for almost her whole life, but now she is facing a mental breakdown after his father's death move as her son wants to move to another house and Mick was sent bring Edie to live in in the outback with Granpahis family, as Edie is starting to lose her memory. On However, Edie is tormented by the face memory of it you'd think her childhood friend, Lucy, who went missing over 60 years ago, and the worry that it there was going to be a lonely life secret she was keeping for an eleven-year-old city boyLucy that somehow might be the thing that reveals the truth of what happened all that time ago. After 'seeing' Lucy in the high street, just as she was the last time she saw her, with no school she starts to find pockets of memories coming back to attendher. And yet as she remembers the past, she is forgetting more and more in fact no other children anywhere nearher day to day life. GranpaWill she uncover the truth about Lucy's busy too: life on 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 cattle station is brutal light and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for anyonegravity'' Told from a retrospective view, a young woman unravels the year-long relationship that once defined her. Overlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the affair with all a man twenty years her senior from its inception – the heat and summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the dustsummer after. But they've all got to make Set against the best backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the situation24-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>1784704172</amazonuk>0861546490

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sarah Winman0008506337|title=Tin ManThe Garnett Girls|author=Georgina Moore

|summary=Ellis is a tin man – someone who practices the underThe love affair between Margo Garnett and poet Richard O'Leary was all-esteemed art of panel beatingconsuming, apparently on both sides. Margo was just sixteen when they fell in love. He can remove a dint, dent or blemish Richard was twenty-one and described by expertly applying force so Margo's mother as 'an older man'. Her parents worried that you canRichard't even feel where s influence would take her away from what they felt she could achieve - going to Oxford and having a glittering career. In the event, they eloped and Richard took her away from the mark wasIsle of Wight. If he has Margo did go to choose what would define his lifeOxford and went on to become a well-respected journalist. The couple had three children: Rachel, though, it wouldn’t be his jobImogen and Sasha. It would be Michael Life was lived in London and Annieholidays were spent at Sandcove, the family home on the Isle of Wight. Michael, Even then the lad he grew up with and Annie who completed their triangle, changing doubts about Richard's drinking were never far from Margo's mind: ''she would never be able to leave him in charge'everything and nothing'. Now only Ellis remains…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755390954</amazonuk>Then Richard left them.

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Durian Sukegawa and Alison Watts (translator)1914585402|title= Sweet Bean PasteDashboard Elvis is Dead|author=David F Ross|rating= 4.5|genre= General Fiction|summary=I reviewed David F Ross's book [[There'Sweet Bean Pastes Only One Danny Garvey by David F Ross|There'' centres on Sentaro, an ex-con who dreams s Only One Danny Garvey]] a couple of years back and remember being absolutely floored by how powerful and affecting it was. It was a writergripping, but instead spends his days making dorayakiemotionally wounding read, a type and rereading my review of Japanese pancake. He reluctantly employs Tokue, an elderly lady with disfigured hands, after tasting her divine bean paste - the perfect filling for said dorayaki. Predictably, a friendship soon blossoms between the pair, despite her age and appearance. In many ways, this could sound cliché - a protagonist learns a valuable lesson about it my main takeaway was that I might not judging someone by their appearance after finding a friend in someone they never expected to like, not exactly an unheard-of concept. Yet, Sukegawa still manages to enthral his audiencehave lavished enough praise on it.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1786071959</amazonuk>

{{newreview <!-- remove 11 Oct -->Frontpage|author=Terence J FryLucy Ashe|title=The Creative Writer for the Creative NewspaperClara and Olivia|rating=14.5

|summary=The man we shall come to know as year is 1933. The Creative Writer was looking out of place? Sadler's Wells. Ballerinas Clara and Olivia are sisters, twins no less. Identical on the window of his office when he spotted a beautiful woman struggling to stay upright in outside but not, we learn, on the tornado which was rattling the windows ferociouslyinside. And not on stage, either. Then he realised Because there's a lot that it wasn't just the dreadful weather which was affecting her: the woman was doubled up in pain and he could see bloodbuilds a dancer. AmazinglySome things that can be taught or learnt – discipline, no one was stopping attention to help herdetail – and some things, worriedthat ''je ne sais quoi'', he would find out later thatdon't come from the classroom. A stage presence, a charm, they might be sued if something went wronga ''joie de vivre''. The Creative Writer had no such worries difference between a hard- he dashed out into the tornado worker, and brought her back into the house, shouting at his grandmother that she should call an ambulancea star.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1524682136</amazonuk>0861544080

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Catherine BurnsHeather Fawcett|title= The VisitorsEmily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries|rating= 54|genre= ThrillersGeneral Fiction|summary=Marion Zetland lives with Emily Wilde is an expert academic scholar on faerie lore, and she has travelled extensively, and researched meticulously, to write her domineering older brotherlife's work, Johnthe very first encyclopaedia of faeries. Whilst she is brilliant at research and speaking to faeries, she is not so good with people. So when she finds herself far, far North in a decaying Georgian townhouse 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 edge of a northern seaside resortright track. A timid spinster in Enter Wendell Bambleby, her fifties dashingly handsome and insufferable rival who still sleeps with teddy bearsarrives unexpectedly, all charm and delight, Marion much to Emily's frustration. But why is he here? What does her best to shut out he want? And what exactly is going on with the shocking secret that John keeps in faerie folk around Hravsnik?|isbn=0356519120}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1398515388|title=The Boy and the cellarDog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)|rating=4. Until5|genre=General Fiction|summary=First of all, suddenlyit was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, John has a heart attack which created the tsunami and Marion is forced to go down to this, in turn, caused the cellar herself nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and utter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, and face the gruesome truth loss of livelihoods was widespread. The fact that her brother has kept hiddenmany pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. As questions are asked and secrets unravel, maybe John isn He wasn't a dog person but the only one with a dark sideconvenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the dog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1787199851</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author= J R WardChristopher Bowden|title= Devil's CutMr Magenta|rating= 4|genre= General Fiction|summary=I feel as though I came to this book under false pretensesChristopher Bowden's latest novel is a patient untangling of a seemingly ordinary woman's life, carried out by her nephew after she has died. I requested the book thinking I was getting The aunt who always provided a murder mystery safe harbour and instead I was thrown head first into a roaring family saga. Indeed, said murder mystery though pivotal in the history little bit of the family, is indulgence to a young nephew had had a much more of a quiet subplot interesting life than that nephew Stephen had ever realised and catalyst from where it seems to him an obligation to begin the storytelling for the book. And so find it was I was met with the Baldwine family and the Bradford Bourbon Company. The initial meeting is a romantic one as the family are presented high up in their castle on the hill - or in this case from their beautiful Kentuckian Bradford Family Estate replete with tea roses, fruit trees and hazy Southern sunshine. It isn't long however before Ward transports the reader from such rolling splendour to the darkest corners of human psychology wherein fathers and sons may share the same lover, brothers are divided by suspicion and jealousy and women are used as trophies and commoditiesall out.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0349417024</amazonuk>B0B6Z9VJDW

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Phill FeatherstoneJennifer Mason|title= Paradise GirlPartitions of Unity|rating= 34|genre= General Fiction|summary= Kerryl Shaw lives on a Yorkshire farm – a somewhat idealised one that survives on a few hens Here at Bookbag Towers, we first met Elizabeth Cromwell, dominatrix and two or three cows and a few sheep. The kind of farm that might have been profitable unintentional detective in the 1950s but [[Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery by the time Kerryl has arrived should have been struggling. A teenage boy not pulling his weightJennifer Mason|Preposterous]], now that the grandparents are old when she investigated and the father is dead, would not be met with exasperated indulgenceunravelled a series of disappearances. There are no stock-handsIn ''Partitions of Unity'', no farm managers, no applications for subsidies, or worries about the tax returnshe sets her mind to solving a murder. Maybe the unwelcome wind turbine covers the costs of the rest of it. Already, in setting, it's feeling a little unreal. But maybe we can forgive that… |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1785898728</amazonuk>B09LQR9FRF

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sandra AragonaWill Carver|title=Sorting The Daves Next Door|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary= Five strangers come together in one moment as a suicide bomber prepares to detonate his vest on a London tube line. As their fates overlap, the Prioritiesstory is told in backwards order, leading up to the fateful moment.|isbn= 1914585186}} {{Frontpage|author=Jennifer Mason|title=Preposterous: Ambassadress and Beagle Survive DiplomacyAn Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery|rating=4.5

|summary=Sarah is married to Giorgio ''A struggling poetry zine, a mom-and when we first meet them he's Something Very Senior -pop mobile diner in the foreign ministry in RomeNorthern California redwoods, much to a 400-meter hurdler who just missed the disappointment of his mother who thought that he2004 Olympics, a women'd be there s track coach with a yen for her (in Sicily)bullwhips, but not only does he go and marry a foreigner, he has billionaire with a job which will take him all over the world. Such is the life state-of -the diplomat. Their two daughters have to lead -art S&M dungeon, a man serving a pretty peripatetic life toosentence in Alabama, but when the family comes into our lives they're all an enigmatic signature, K(s, x), on a cheap oil painting, an erotic art dealer in Rome - for the time being - and just back from NigeriaGeorgia... To add to the confusion there's Beagle, ' This is just about as undiplomatic a dog as sample of the cast of characters and settings in Preposterous. As you'll encountercan see, some keeping up will be required! The basic premise of this mystery story goes like this...|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1542733405</amazonuk>B09STS96HS