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[[Category:General Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]]==General fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreview|author=Aifric Campbell|title=The Loss Adjustor|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Caro's job is to 'adjust' people's losses. Working for a large insurance company, she deals day to day with people grieving for their lost or stolen belongings. Digital cameras with priceless honeymoon photos, laptops with work files and engagement rings. It's Caro's responsibility to assess the case and decide on whether to financially reimburse or not. But Caro knows well that sometimes it's not about the money. Her job requires emotional sensitivity and the sort of manner that invites people to open up to you. Her years of experience have made her an expert in dealing with everyone else's loss. But not her own.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687306</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Bill Sheehy|title=The Argentine Kidnapping|rating=3.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Son Cardonsky is the type of guy that would make even the biggest of cowards want to take on the playground bully on their behalf. Which, funnily enough, is how Bernie Gould acquires Son Cardonsky as his 'best-friend-forever'; at least, that is, Son considers Bernie to be his best friend in the world, even if Bernie can't quite see it the same way.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0709089945</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=David AbbottJenny Lecoat|title=The Upright Piano PlayerBeyond Summerland
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The central character, one Mr Henry Cage (he'd approve Jean lives on Jersey with her mother where they are celebrating the end of the courteous form of address) is white, middle-aged and middle-classoccupation. He appears During the war, Jean's father was arrested for listening to have a perfectbanned radio and soldiers took him away one night, enviable lifeleaving Jean and her mother waiting for years for news of him. Reaping As the substantial rewards of a successful businessBritish finally free the Channel islands from the Nazis, he's acquired along and the way a lovely London homewar is finally over, a wife and a familytheir hopes rise that they will finally learn what became of him. All boxes tickedBut will the truth come as a relief, you'd think.or will it raise further questions around what else happened during the war? Who was the informer who told the Nazis about the radio? And what other secrets have been kept throughout the occupation?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1906694842</amazonuk>1846976537
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Joanna DaviesOnyi Nwabineli|title=FreshersAllow Me to Introduce Myself|rating=34.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Going Anuri spent her childhood on display to Uni 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 meant slowly trying to be one of regain her confidence and to get her life back, suing her step-mother to take down the best times of your lifecontent about her...that first taste of freedom from your family Anuri is battling alcoholism, learning independencefailing to start her PhD, meeting new friends undergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online and discovering who you arereceiving money from them for doing so. OhMost importantly, and a she is desperately worried about her little studying sister, who is the new focus of course! This book charts the first Ophelia'fresher' year of three students, Lois, Cerys and Hywel who are studying at Aberystwyth University during 1991/1992s online empire. I was interested because I did my first degree just a couple of years after thisCan she save her sister, and also I studied a post grad perhaps herself and her relationship with her father at Aberystwyth. Turns out this wasn't exactly a nice happy trip down memory lane however...the same time?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1906784140</amazonuk>0861546873
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=D J Taylor1529153298|title=Ask AliceThe List of Suspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey|rating=45
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The central character AliceIt's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. (A woman? I mean, has had a humble start in life but ' honestly... the silence of the Kansas flat ) 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. and Miv's upset because she's overheard that her father wants to move the distant murmur of the freight trains family 'Down South'. When you' re from Yorkshire, Down South is not for hera frightening, foreign place, best avoided. She dreams of For Miv, the bright lights of the big cities and although she is naive and unworldlymove would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, fancies herself as an actress. Painful and difficult decisions are made as she reaches for her goal'll do anything to prevent that. Her talent and resourcefulness see She's not worried about the dangers or that her through; give her a modest roof above her head in this precarious professionMum's stopped talking - to anyone.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099531984</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Rhys Thomas1035906708|title=The Suicide ClubDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=It's rural FranceWe tend to think of Maria Callas as Greek, but she was born to Greek parents in Manhattan, New York, in December 1923 and 2000 is barely begun, only moved to Athens when hunters come across a spread of human corpses in the mountainsshe was thirteen. Several families, all Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to 'Callas' to make it more manageable in the same cult, seem to have killed themselves on their path to whereverStates. If When she was back in Athens - supposedly so, this is a problem, that she could get appropriate training for her voice - she was raised under the last time it happened, in Switzerland Nazi occupation by a few years previous, nobody could work out why – mother who mercilessly exploited her and who was there to dispose of some made no secret of the evidence. This isn't a problem her preference for the policeman involvedher elder sister, as he fell desperately in love with the investigative judge in collaborating on the initial case. Combining again, they see a link with everybody involved in both cases, a famous conductor /composerJackie.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408807041</amazonuk>
}}
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=''The Concert Ticket'' follows Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and operating as an alternative to all the lives of online apps in providing a family in Soviet Russia who have grown desperately distant from one anothermore personal, tailored service. Sergei, Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the fatherbusiness, as Ness is planning to take a frustrated musician who longs trip to Canada to play the pre-revolutionary masterpieces of composers like Igor Selinsky but get away for a while. Katie is forced to play the kind coming out of patriotic ditties he despises. His schoolteacher wifea break up with a bad boyfriend, Anna, longs for his love, but is never quite able and so jumps at the chance to come home to get his attention with her shy gesturesEdinburgh. Their shiftless son And so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, Alexanderbringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, has quietly given up going thanks to school 44 Scotland Street and spends his days hanging around the parkIsabel Dalhousie novels, consorting but with undesirablessome new characters who quickly begin to charm. Also living Katie has no experience in running a business, or in match-making, but Ness has full confidence in their house is Annaher abilities, and there's silentalways her very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, elderly mother.William, to lend a hand…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0670918482</amazonuk>1846976596
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Julie CohenDean Koontz|title=Nina Jones and the Temple of GloomThe Bad Weather Friend
|rating=4.5
|genre=Women's FictionParanormal|summary=A sign of Benny is having a good bookterrifically bad day. He loses his job, for mehe loses his fiancee, often relates to how easily I can put it downand his house gets trashed. And then how much I want Oh, and someone has delivered a really weird, disturbing coffin-sized object to pick his home, and it back up again. Nina Jones 's possible that whoever or whatever was a particular challenge for me as after reading it for an hour whilst my toddler napped I kept my thumb in inside is the page whilst getting her out of bedthing that has trashed his house! The thing is, snuck her downstairs still saving my page, put on Cbeebies, and then sat next to her on Benny is the sofa very last person to carry on reading for at least another hour, if not deserve all this bad luck. He is a little bit more than thatnice person. A really nice person. I then kept So fortunately for Benny it in turns out that the kitchen so I could sneak delivery to his house is a few more pages in between stirring the spaghetti. And then once my daughter was in bed I went on to absently ignore my poornew friend, tireda bad weather friend called Spike, over-worked husband (who got bored and went has been sent to help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a bath) so that I could read on good person. Spike is going to the end take care of the story. I found myself mentally yelling at a fictional character (I hope it was mentally Benny, and I wasnwill certainly take care of Benny't actually shouting out loud...we have very thin walls)s enemies, if he, I swooned over the heroBenny, sniggered often and I even cried Harper (a little bit toowaitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are. So, a book that induces such family neglect and an emotional roller coaster of emotions is definitely a good read!|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0755341414</amazonuk>1662500491
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Elizabeth SpellerKatherine Howe|title=The Return of Captain John EmmettA True Account
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Laurence Bartram has survived the warHannah Masury is living in Boston, having been sent to live with a family who run an inn, but his life has changed dramaticallyand being made to work there from a young age. It will never When she hears there is to be a hanging of some pirates in the same againtown, she decides to go and watch. ItEnthralled and horrified in equal measure, Hannah finds herself embroiled in a young boy's almost as if he doesndeath at the hands of two vicious pirates. She hides away, so that they don't recognize himself. Domestic life is now non-existent find and kill her too, and he has no-one then to please but himselfescape them completely she runs away to sea, dressing as a boy and joining the notorious Ned Low's pirate ship as a cabin boy. He She soon finds herself in the thick of things when there is unsettled and edgy. War has obviously left its mark. He retreats graciously a mutiny on board, and wonders what he'll do with the rest from there we are caught up in her rip roaring tale of his lifeon the ocean waves. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1844086070</amazonuk>0861547438
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Nick Hornby1471180158|title=Juliet, Naked|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary=A clever, comic delight, pitch-perfect, astutely observed, particularly insightful, must-read. Crumbs. Whatever else is there to say about Nick Hornby's latest book that isn't already plastered on this newly-published paperback edition? I can only report that ''Juliet,'' ''Naked'' bowled me over with yet another Hornby strike.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141020644</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewMaybe Tomorrow|author=Dan Rhodes|title=Little Hands ClappingPenny Parkes
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The first character to mention Jamie Matson works in this book is an upper-class grocery store, for a moth. Itman who's a human moth, drawn to control freak with all the flame that is a museum subtlety of suicide - a supposedly cautionary, life-affirminghalf brick. Jamie's son, memento moriBo, somewhere in Germany'has his problems'. Its curator is an old hand at lonelyHe's asthmatic and the more you read, unloved museums, fresh from an art gallery in an airport - it didnthe more you'll suspect that he't s on the autistic spectrum. Sometimes Jamie needs to take time off at short notice - who notices she's a frequent flier in the noise of local A&E and sometimes Bo's not fit enough to go to school. Missed shifts or the latest suicide need to happen be away on time to pick Bo up from school are occasions when Jamie can be controlled and put in the museum, and goes right back to sleepwrong. A spider crawls into his mouth and gets eatenIt was going to come to a head.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847675298</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Robin CookB0CKD1L5JL|title=InterventionRadio Free Olympia|author=Jeffrey Dunn
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Although Robin Cook has written many booksPetr is an orphan. Rescued by the strange, ''Intervention'' reclusive Bear, he is brought up far from bustling cities and busy human society, in the first one that I have read - Iforests of Washington'm a Robin Cook 'virgins Olympic Peninsula.' This is After Bear dies and a big book brief sojourn in many respects. It's a classichuman company, glossy 'coffee table' edition; it's and armed with only a bigpirate radio transmitter, satisfying read and it's Petr goes on a multi-layered book in that it covers many current-day topics which have their roots in history. In factjourney through the forest, this book is so multi-dimensional thatbroadcasting the strange, you could argue, there are several books within this bookwild and rarely heard voices he encounters.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230743633</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Karan MahajanSarah Marsh|title=Family PlanningA Sign of Her Own|rating=23.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Mr Rakesh Ahuja is Delhi's Mister After a bout of Urban Development and so farscarlet fever as a child, has managed to do well in his careerEllen Lark loses her hearing. However Suddenly plunged into a world of silence, his family everything about her life changes. Living in a time when the use of sign language was seen as something only savages do, Ellen is beginning sent to take over - he already has thirteen children and a fourteenth school where she is on the way. The eldest, Arjun, now a teenager was born taught to Mr Ahuja's first wifelip read, but up til now, Arjun is unaware of this factphysically restrained from signing. Sangita Ahuja From here, she ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the long-suffering wife, is aware that her relationship with Arjun may never be deaf and using a system called Visible Speech. At the same again. Meanwhiletime, Arjun Bell is only interested working on other inventions and ideas, and Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in one thing - how to attract the attention a complicated tangle of the gorgeous girl on his school busespionage. What will happen to the family when Mr Ahuja finally tells the truth?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099523299</amazonuk>1035401614
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jed MercurioB0BC3YTCMR|title=American AdultererGood Girls Die|author=Ayura Ayira|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=I've often wondered how history would have viewed Jack Kennedy if he'd died a natural death rather than by an assassin's bullet. As an extension of that I've also thought that he might This story is not have lived that much longer had nature been allowed to take its coursefor everyone. He's one of the most-written-about Presidents of all time and finding a new angle – even a fictional one – is not easy, but Jed Mercurio has looked at Kennedy's adult life through the prism of his sexual peccadilloes and his health.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099515873</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Laila Lalami 1472263936|title=Secret SonThe Figurine|author=Victoria Hislop|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=It was in 1968 that Helena McCloud made her first trip to Greece. She was alone: her mother, Greek by birth, had left the family home and refused to return, but Mary and Hamish (Helena''Secret Son'' is s parents) felt that it would be a pity if Helena grew up without knowing her grandparents or understanding her Greek heritage. Her trip to the story of Youssef Elfamily apartment in up-Mekki, market Kolonaki would be the slum-dwelling teenage son first of single mother Rachidaseveral annual visits. Youssef has always been told that his father is dead, so when he finds out his mother has lied She grew to conceal love her grandmother and the fact that he family's maid, Dina, but was born out wary - and frightened - of wedlockher grandfather, he plunges headlong into an identity crisisretired general Stamatis Papagiannis. He tracks down was proud of his close connections to the Junta and expected his real father, a wealthy businessman called Nabil Amrani who is surprisingly enthusiastic about family to uphold his illegitimate sonvalues but saw no reason to accommodate them. His prejudices included Helena's arrival. Nabil has recently fallen out with his daughter red hair and he seizes this opportunity to mould Youssef into the obedient son he has always wantedgreen eyes - inherited from her father's Scottish ancestors.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670918296</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Samuel BonnerDean Koontz|title=PlaygroundAfter Death
|rating=3
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Jonah grew up Michael Mace, Head of Security, at a top secret biological research facility, is among 55 people who die when a virus is released in a bio-hazard accident. Finding himself in a makeshift mortuary, covered in London but his motherplastic, getting increasingly worried about social disintegration and increasing crimehe has a sense that something very, very bad has moved them happened to him – and only him – as he sits up to Nottinghamand looks around at the shrouded bodies of his dead friends and former colleagues. Jonah As he recovers his senses, he realises that there is a bright lad and halfway through a media course, but something different about him; hecan ''feel'' everything. ''Everything''. Michael isn's finding it difficult to fit int ''Michael'' anymore.|isbn=1662500467}} {{Frontpage|isbn=B0BVDC2VWH|title=The Grave Listeners|author=William Frank|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=The village is isolated and poor. HeIt's also finding surrounded by a Witching Forest. And the new racial mix a problem villagers subsist largely by farming Uphegia plants - its bread- there's palpable tension between like fruit provides nutrition and its blossom provides herbal medicines. The black wood of the forest provides heat and brown-skinned people warmth, roofs on campushomes, and he often feels alienated even gallows, if needed. The fear of being buried alive is an existential superstition in the village and that is the reason Volushka, a bit like drunken, self-indulgent, lazy lout of a fish out of waterman is tolerated. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1902835190</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Joan BradyB0BYF82CXT|title=VenomSemi-Detached|author=Deborah Stone
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=David Marion isn't used to finding hitmen standing at his front door, though you wouldn't be able to tell that such Bill and Amanda are living in a thing might be truesemi-detached house, given the speed stuck in a depressing rut of boredom and competency with which Marion dispatches said hitman disappointment, when Terry and then disappearsFiona – glamorous, seeminglysuccessful and very much in love – move in next door. Despite their different outlooks on life, off the face of the Earth. Dr. Helen Freyl is a physicist working couples befriend each other and life appears to improve for one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the worldboth pairs. She But all is alsonot what it seems, up until his disappearance, David Marion's sometime lover and is grief-stricken to the point of distraction by his sudden absence from her life, as she believes him to be deadtheir increasingly interconnected relationships are fated for tragedy.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0743267907</amazonuk>''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jo BrandShalini Boland|title=The More You Ignore MeSilent Bride|rating=43
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Alice is growing up in and Seth are a cottage match made in Herefordshire with her gentle, hippy father and her mother, Gina, who spends her days standing around like a chain-smoking zombie because heaven. He is everything she is kept on medication and has been searching for years. Gina's first psychotic episode occured after Alice's birth. Then there was the episode Alice remembers; handsome, the day her mother climbed onto the roof, nakedaccomplished, holding Smelly the hamsterclever, funny; total and refused to come downutter husband-material. From that dayShe is all he could possibly want in a wife; beautiful, the old Ginasuccessful, boisterous confident… and unconventional as she was, fell silent under so the numbing impact of constant medication. Jo Brand tells the story of how inevitable proposal is eagerly accepted by Alice coped with and the loneliness wedding is planned and worry of growing up with an ill motherset. Most importantlyWhen the much-anticipated day arrives, as I'm sure the teenage Alice would see it, we are shown is walked down the birth and life of aisle by her obsession father, beaming with Morrissey of The Smiths. In his music pride and excitement as she finds escapism and comfort surveys the congregation – their friends assembled to celebrate this joyful day and in him she finds a figure when Seth turns to adore. Her friends canface his approaching bride, Alice't understand her fixation and her mother understands fixation a little too well (s world implodes because she has absolutely no idea who the local weatherman having been man at the object of one of her fervent obsessions). Morrissey sings with such sensitivity and angst that surelyaltar is, Alice thinks, if she could just meet him and tell him who is waiting for her story he could help her and she could help him..to become his wife.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0755322320</amazonuk>1662507089
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Chris Mullin1787636003|title=A Very British CoupThe Girls of Summer|author=Katie Bishop
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=No one had anticipated It was the summer when Rachel Evans turned eighteen that Labour would win she and Caroline went backpacking around Greece and arrived on the electionisland. Rachel wasn't exactly innocent but she was, not least because the party leader was Harry Perkinsperhaps, naive, a former steel worker. His manifesto included promises so when thirty-four-year-old Alistair Wright started to remove all American bases from British soiltake an interest in her, public control of finance and the dismantling of media empiresshe was flattered rather than wary. There were It was quite a few other things too – but they'll do for starters. The establishment – while before he made any sort of physical approach to a man – her and by that time she was appalledobsessed by him. Press baronsAlistair worked for Henry Taylor, media stars, bishops looking after his interests on the island and civil service mandarins knew that, for in particular in the bar where all the good girls either worked or partied.}}{{Frontpage|author=Amanda Craig|title=Three Graces|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary= Few styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the country (not themselves, ''state-of course'-the-nation novel. There') s something had to so utterly compelling about any writer who can catch hold of the atmosphere of the day and capture it, crafting an image of the country as it stands in one particular moment. To say that Amanda Craig is skilled at doing this would be done and ''obviously'embarrassingly inadequate: she' s practically synonymous with the end would justify whatever means they had to take to achieve their aimsgenre of contemporary social fiction at this point. Harry Perkins had to be removed from officeShe has 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, never making them ciphers for social commentary but instead fully realised people, grappling with issues far larger than themselves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846687403</amazonuk>140871468X
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Rachel Heath152915118X|title=The Finest Type Of English WomanhoodPineapple Street|author=Jenny Jackson
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=It was just after ''Pineapple Street'' is the end 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 Second World War clan matriarch, Tilda, asks Cord and seventeen year old Laura Trelling was at Sasha if they'd like to move into the Pineapple Street property. Tilda and Chip have renovated and downsized to another property, a loose end street or so away, which they own. They won't need any of the furniture from Pineapple Street, so Sasha and Cord can move straight in her Sussex village. She didnNominally, they had a choice but that wasn't really fit in with the other young people and her eccentric parents were becoming more reality. Darley and more isolated, Georgiana start to call Sasha 'the extent that Laura was embarrassed by gold digger'. She's living in ''their carelessness of her welfare'' family home. A chance encounter with Paul Lovell was They use it so often that they abbreviate it to change everything and before long she was on her way to a South Africa not yet burdened with apartheid'the GD'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099532743</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Bobbie DarbyshireEmily Critchley|title=Truth GamesOne Puzzling Afternoon
|rating=4
|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=The central theme 84 year old Edie has lived in this book the same small town for almost her whole life, but now she is sex - facing a move as her son wants to move to another house and lots of itbring Edie to live with his family, as Edie is starting to lose her memory. We're introduced to a group However, Edie is tormented by the memory of mainly twentysomethings her childhood friend, Lucy, who went missing over 60 years ago, and thirtysomethings. Men and women. Most the worry that there was a secret she was keeping for Lucy that somehow might be the thing that reveals the truth of them are attractive and hold down glamorous jobs and careerswhat happened all that time ago. All After 'seeing' Lucy in rude healththe high street, with wonderful social lives and trendy homesjust as she was the last time she saw her, she starts to find pockets of memories coming back to her. They all appear, on And yet as she remembers the surfacepast, she is forgetting more and more in her day to be a bunch of shiny, happy peopleday life. What on earth could be missingWill she uncover the truth about Lucy's disappearance before her move, and before her memories are gone forever?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1905614721</amazonuk>1804181250
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Madelaine Lucas
|title=Thirst for Salt
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= ''Love, I'd read, was supposed to be a light and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity''
Told from a retrospective view, a young woman unravels the year-long relationship that once defined her. Overlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the affair with a man twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the summer after. Set against the backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the 24-year-old narrator's deepening relationship with her older lover, depicting its all-consuming nature, how it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably.|isbn=0861546490}}{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Anthony Quinn0008506337|title=The Rescue ManGarnett Girls|author=Georgina Moore|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=This The love affair tale with 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 glittering career. In the city of Liverpool is mostly told through event, they eloped and Richard took her away from the eyes Isle of architect Tom BainesWight. With the Second World War looming, Baines is desperately working Margo did go to Oxford and went on to become a book to capture the memory of buildings that are at riskwell-respected journalist. The couple had three children: Rachel, Imogen and appears a man more Sasha. Life was lived in love with the past London and solidholidays were spent at Sandcove, cold structures than mankindthe family home on the Isle of Wight. Even then the doubts about Richard's drinking were never far from Margo's mind: ''she would never be able to leave him in charge''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099531933</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sapphire1914585402|title=PreciousDashboard Elvis is Dead|author=David F Ross|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Precious Jones is a sixteen year old black girl from Harlem – well sheI reviewed David F Ross's never actually been out of Harlem – and when we meet her shebook [[There's pregnant Only One Danny Garvey by her own father for the second time. Her first child was a girl and she was born with DownDavid F Ross|There's Syndrome. With unconscious irony Precious calls her ''Little Mongo'' Only One Danny Garvey]] a couple of years back and leaves her to live with her grandmother. When her second pregnancy becomes obvious she's expelled from school remember being absolutely floored by how powerful and joins an alternative education programmeaffecting it was. Precious really wants to learn It was a gripping, emotionally wounding read, and the book is the story rereading my review of her journey from illiteracy to maturityit my main takeaway was that I might not have lavished enough praise on it.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099548720</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ru FreemanLucy Ashe|title=A Disobedient GirlClara and Olivia|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The year is 1933. The place? Sadler''A Disobedient Girl'' follows two women struggling to retain control of their lives in the face of servitudes Wells. Ballerinas Clara and Olivia are sisters, twins no less. Latha is a servant girl to Identical on the affluent Vithanage familyoutside but not, whose daughterwe learn, Tharaon the inside. And not on stage, is Lathaeither. Because there's agea lot that builds a dancer. As childrenSome things that can be taught or learnt – discipline, the girls are the best of friendsattention to detail – and some things, but they are destined to be separated by classthat ''je ne sais quoi'', which is made painfully obvious when boys that don't come into from the pictureclassroom. MeanwhileA stage presence, Biso serves a cruel and drunken husband who beats her and terrorises her childrencharm, one of whom is another mana ''joie de vivre''s love child. Biso's husband murdered her lover in The difference between a hateful rage when he uncovered her affair and she realises that she must escape his house if she and her children are to live. Latha too seeks escapehard-worker, but she finds it in the arms of Thara's boyfriend and this sets off a chain of events that will echo far into her futurestar.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0670917958</amazonuk>0861544080
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Panos KarnezisHeather Fawcett|title=The ConventEmily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Our Lady of Mercy Emily Wilde is a small convent an expert academic scholar on faerie lore, and she has travelled extensively, and researched meticulously, to write her life's work, the Spanish sierra made up very first encyclopaedia of a handful of devoted nuns who live their lives simply, carrying out their daily duties like clockworkfaeries. However things change when a suitcase containing a newborn baby Whilst she is left mysteriously outside the convent doors. The Mother Superior, Sister Maria Ines, believes the baby to be a miracle brilliant at research and plans speaking to keep him in the conventfaeries, but the other sisters do she is not agreeso good with people. During So when she finds herself far, far North in the events that follow the true characters small village of Hrafvsnik, having somehow offended the nuns inside 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 convent are revealed right track. Enter Wendell Bambleby, her dashingly handsome and the peace that the sisters enjoy insufferable rival who arrives unexpectedly, all charm and delight, much to Emily's frustration. But why is he here? What does he want? And what exactly is stripped away to show the tension that has been bubbling away under going on with the surface.faerie folk around Hravsnik?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0224079344</amazonuk>0356519120
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Glenn Cooper1398515388|title=Book of SoulsThe Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Area 51 is not what you think First of all, it is. No - all that UFO kerfuffle is a smokescreen for was the powers that be to hide even better earthquake, deep in the most unusual manuscript known to (a handful of) mankind - ocean floor, which created the most unearthlytsunami and this, singularin turn, caused the nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and unsettling bookutter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, in thousands and thousands the loss of volumeslivelihoods was widespread. All except one, which is about to come under The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the hammer in tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a London auction houseconvenience store. Our hero Will Piper must go very reluctantly on the trail of it and its secrets, He wasn't a trail which will force him and others to become entangled with shadowy agents, who in turn know dog person but the very day of all their enemyconvenience store owner's deathscomment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the dog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099534479</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=P Robert SmithChristopher Bowden|title=Sunday Daffodil and Other Happy EndingsMr Magenta|rating=3.54
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Christopher Bowden''Sunday Daffodil and Other Happy Endings'' s latest novel is the sort a patient untangling of book you finish with the feeling that you've just read something with a million different meanings. Donseemingly ordinary woman't be surprised if you feel like you should start the whole thing again but with your brain more fully engageds life, carried out by her nephew after she has died. The aunt who always provided a safe harbour and perhaps a little bit of indulgence to a young nephew had had a much more interesting life than that's the whole pointnephew Stephen had ever realised and it seems to him an obligation to find it all out.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099535238</amazonuk>B0B6Z9VJDW
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Isabel AshdownJennifer Mason|title=GlasshopperPartitions of Unity
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Thirteen-year-old Jake is just like any other boy on the cusp of pubertyHere at Bookbag Towers, we first met Elizabeth Cromwell, dominatrix and unintentional detective in [[Preposterous: new music An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery by Jennifer Mason|Preposterous]], when she investigated and Saturday jobs are at the top unravelled a series of his agenda, while girls are the strange exotic creatures that must be looked at but not touched (particularly his pretty Classics teacher)disappearances. But behind closed doorsIn ''Partitions of Unity'', Jake struggles she sets her mind to cope with his mother's ongoing battle with depression and alcoholism. His father moved out solving a few weeks agomurder. So has his older brother, Matthew. That leaves Jake as the man of the house: the one who must remember to get him and little brother, Andy, up in time for school in the morning; the one making toast for dinner; and the one keeping a watchful eye over his mother to make sure she doesn't get herself into any serious trouble.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0954930975</amazonuk>B09LQR9FRF
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Keith ColquhounWill Carver|title=Beyond ReasonThe Daves Next Door
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=''Beyond Reason'' is Five strangers come together in one moment as a deceptively complex novel - suicide bomber prepares to detonate his vest on a black comedy about the conflicts within religionLondon tube line. The main focus of the plot, Edward BunyanAs their fates overlap, is a radical within the Church of England who story is trying to take religion in a new (and rather amusing) direction told in backwards order , leading up to get the public interested in it again. Bunyan claims to have a direct link with God as well as spiritual powers, such as being able to levitate and read minds, which leave his colleague and old college friend, Reverend Ralph 'Marmy' Marmaduke, unsure about both his friendship with Bunyan and his own religious beliefsfateful moment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1904529348</amazonuk>1914585186}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jonathan Buckley Jennifer Mason|title=ContactPreposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery|rating=2.54
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Dominic Pattison''A struggling poetry zine, a mom-and-pop mobile diner in the Northern California redwoods, a 400-meter hurdler who just missed the 2004 Olympics, a women's track coach with a yen for bullwhips, a billionaire with a state-of-the-art S&M dungeon, a man serving a life began to veer off course badly sentence in Alabama, an enigmatic signature, K(s, x), on a Tuesday cheap oil painting, an erotic art dealer in May. It's a fairly banal TuesdayGeorgia. The kind of Tuesday that Dominic probably experiences quite frequently. He feels the need to tell us about it. ''