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[[Category:General Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]]==General fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Dorothy B HughesJenny Lecoat|title=The Expendable ManBeyond Summerland|rating=54
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Dorothy B Hughes (1904-93) Jean lives on Jersey with her mother where they are celebrating the end of the occupation. During the war, Jean's father was arrested for listening to a banned radio and soldiers took a journalism degree in Kansas Cityhim away one night, Missouri leaving Jean and started her distinguished career with a prize-winning book mother waiting for years for news of poemshim. Her first hard-boiled thriller appeared in 1940 and it was followed by more than a dozen in As the British finally free the Channel islands from the next decade. Three were made into noir films and in 1944 Hughes went to Hollywood to assist Hitchcock on his filmNazis, ''Spellbound''. Here she met Ingrid Bergman and consequently Humphrey Bogart came to buy the film rights to one war is finally over, their hopes rise that they will finally learn what became of her novelshim. But will the truth come as a relief, 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>1903155584</amazonuk>1846976537
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Chuck PalahniukOnyi Nwabineli|title=DamnedAllow Me to Introduce Myself|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary='Are you thereAnuri spent her childhood on display to the world, Satan? Itthanks to her step-mother Ophelia's meincreasingly popular presence on social media, Madisonwhere she posted every step of Anuri'. I'm a spunkys childhood for sponsorships and influencer deals and, lively tweenage girl, except I'm a dead onebasically, monetary gain. Now Anuri is in her twenties and she is slowly trying to regain her confidence and I'm in Hellto get her life back, suing her step-mother to my surprisetake down the content about her. While I'm here I'll find out just where it Anuri is all those cold-calling telegraphers ring you from just while you're settling down battling alcoholism, failing to your evening mealstart her PhD, undergoing therapy and where the world's wasted sperm secretly abusing people online and discarded toenail clippings fetch upreceiving money from them for doing so. I'll have very hairy encounters with demons Most importantly, she is desperately worried about her little sister, who is the new focus of SatanOphelia's online empire. Can she save her sister, and mankind's making, perhaps herself and her relationship with some superlative plotting and flashbacks I'll find a clearer approach to why I was put here in her father at the first place.same time?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0224091158</amazonuk>0861546873
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Emily Barr1529153298|title=The First WifeList of Suspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Lilybella Tatiana Blossom Button It's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. (who thankfully – for our sake as well as hers – goes by a simple LilyA woman? I mean, honestly...) has had an upbringing almost as unconventional as her name She's not what's worrying Miv's family, though. Women have been disappearing. Raised by her grandparents Well, they've been murdered, we join her following their recent deaths and soon discover she is but to have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite unlike most other 20 year oldsso frightening. It’s going Miv's upset because she's overheard that her father wants to be a brisk transition move the family 'Down South'. When you're from Yorkshire, Down South is a sheltered life in a small cottagefrightening, foreign place, best avoided. For Miv, nursing elderly relatives to the Real World but with no money to speak offmove would mean leaving her best friend, she’ll have to pull herself togetherSharon, and quickly. Her background is an important part of Lily and contributes enormously she'll do anything to her trusting and a little immature personality prevent that will later be her downfall. A few weeks later, though, and things are looking up. She has taken a room in a house where she is much more one of 's not worried about the family than just a lodger. She’s found some cleaning work and, even more exciting, one of dangers or that her agency clients is a rather dashing exMum's stopped talking -celeb and his beautiful, elegant wife. Yes, Lily’s star is definitely on the riseto anyone.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755351371</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Erinna Mettler1035906708|title=StarlingsDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin|rating=34.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=I have We tend to say that what think of Maria Callas as Greek, but she was a big factor born to Greek parents in Manhattan, New York, in me choosing December 1923 and only moved to read (and review) this book Athens when she was its urban front coverthirteen. Monochrome, a bit gritty Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but with plenty of sky. The first character we meet is Andy, an ex-prisoner. Heher father changed it to 'Callas's on his own now and time is heavy on his handsto make it more manageable in the States. He stares out of his window, twelve floors up and thinks When she was back to when he had a nice family life. All in Athens - supposedly so that's gone now. He stands and looks down at she could get appropriate training for her voice - she was raised under the children in Nazi occupation by a nearby playground mother who mercilessly exploited her and temptation rises all over again (he was convicted as a paedophile)made no secret of her preference for her elder sister, Jackie. He'll need to find the inner strength to resist - but can he?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956511929</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage
|author=Alexander McCall Smith
|title=Isabel Dalhousie: The Forgotten Affairs of YouthPerfect Passion Company
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=My husband The Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and operating as an alternative to all the online apps in providing a more personal, tailored service. Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the business, as Ness is soon planning to take a work trip to Edinburgh and I am very jealousCanada to get away for a while. Mainly because thanks to AMS' novels I feel like I already know the cityKatie is coming out of a break up with a bad boyfriend, and I would love so jumps at the chance to come home to walk in the footsteps of Isabel or any of the characters from his other series, '44 Scotland Street'Edinburgh. SoAnd so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us to console mean Edinburgh we already love, I have turned thanks to the latest in 44 Scotland Street and the Isabel Dalhousie seriesnovels, but with some new characters who quickly begin to charm. I must admitKatie has no experience in running a business, or in match-making, I was a little wary at the beginning since I was quite disappointed with Isabelbut Ness has full confidence in her abilities, and there's seventh outingalways her very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, [[Isabel Dalhousie: The Charming Quirks of Others by Alexander McCall Smith|The Charming Quirks of Others]]William, and I wondered what I would do if this one also proved to be lend a let down. Fortunately it wasn't, and dear Isabel is back in sparkling form!hand…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408703394</amazonuk>1846976596
}}
{{Frontpage|author=Dean Koontz|title=The Bad Weather Friend|rating=4.5|genre=Paranormal|summary=Benny is having a terrifically bad day. He loses his job, he loses his fiancee, and his house gets trashed. Oh, and someone has delivered a really weird, disturbing coffin-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 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 bad weather friend called Spike, who has been sent to help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a good person. Spike is going to 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.|isbn=1662500491}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sara GruenKatherine Howe|title=Ape HouseA True Account
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Isabel Duncan Hannah Masury is living in Boston, having been sent to live with a scientist working with Bonobo chimpsfamily who run an inn, teaching them sign languageand being made to work there from a young age. John Thigpen When she hears there is to be a journalist who comes hanging of some pirates in the town, she decides to meet the apes go and watch. Enthralled and write horrified in equal measure, Hannah finds herself embroiled in a story about Isabelyoung boy's work with themdeath at the hands of two vicious pirates. He is moved by the apesShe hides away, so that they don't find and kill her too, by their behaviour and Isabel's obviously very close relationship with then to escape them. Soon after he leaves, howevercompletely she runs away to sea, there is dressing as a bomb at boy and joining the centre by notorious Ned Low's pirate ship as a group of extremists who want to liberate the apescabin boy. Isabel begins She soon finds herself in the thick of things when there is a desperate hunt to try and discover where they've gonemutiny on board, and John finds himself also from there we are caught up, trying to discover in her rip roaring tale of life on the truth of what's happenedocean waves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444716026</amazonuk>0861547438
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Roger Smith1471180158|title=Dust DevilsMaybe Tomorrow|author=Penny Parkes|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary="Rosie Dell had come to end itJamie Matson works in an upper-class grocery store, for a man who's a control freak with all the subtlety of a half brick. For keeps this time." Jamie's son, Bo, 'Ithas his problems'. He' is s asthmatic and the affair more you read, the more you'll suspect that shehe's been having with Ben Baker, one of on the richest men in the countryautistic spectrum. Unfortunately for Rosie, Sometimes Jamie needs to take time off at short notice - she doesn't say what shes a frequent flier in the local A&E and sometimes Bo's come not fit enough to say… unfortunately for Ben, for Rosie, and for her family, someone has plans go to end it for herschool. Actually, not plans, as suchMissed shifts or the need to be away on time to pick Bo up from school are occasions when Jamie can be controlled and put in the wrong. She shouldn't have been there. Everything that happens next wouldn't have, if she hadn't beenIt was going to come to a head.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687950</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Monique TruongB0CKD1L5JL|title=Bitter in the MouthRadio Free Olympia|author=Jeffrey Dunn|rating=34
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Linda HammerickPetr is an orphan. Rescued by the strange, reclusive Bear, a young girl growing he is brought up in North Carolina far from bustling cities and busy human society, in the late 1970forests of Washington's, is differentOlympic Peninsula. She suffers from synesthesia After Bear dies and a brief sojourn in human company, tasting things when she speaks or hears words. She grows up and armed with her great-uncleonly a pirate radio transmitter, Baby HarperPetr goes on a journey through the forest, as her best friend, as hissingsong voice is the only one she can hear without broadcasting the accompanying tastesstrange, wild and writes letters back and forth with her best friend Kelly rather than have long conversations with herrarely heard voices he encounters.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099474743</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Meg RosoffSarah Marsh|title=There Is No DogA Sign of Her Own
|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Two people road trip across AmericaAfter a bout of scarlet fever as a child, Ellen Lark loses her hearing. Sort Suddenly plunged into a world ofsilence, everything about her life changes. They don't start off together Living in a time when the use of sign language was seen as something only savages do, or meet up intentionally, and the age gap Ellen is sent to a school where she is purposely provocative. She likes him because he's old and has pointy, vampire teeth he might use taught to bite her with (Twilight sell outlip read, much?) She is 17but physically restrained from signing. We don't know her name From here, but it is she ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who tells us has been teaching the story. He is deaf and using a system called GuntherVisible Speech. People think she At the same time, Bell is his daughter. They hope she is. It's just too odd to comprehend otherwiseworking on other inventions and ideas, and Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a complicated tangle of espionage.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1447200411</amazonuk>1035401614
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Patrick deWittB0BC3YTCMR|title=The Sisters Brothers|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Invariably, the Booker Prize longlist contains one book that is more on the side of light reading than the more worthy and overtly literary fare that it is usually associated with. 'The Sisters Brothers' is the 2011 choice. Set in the US in 1851, it details the adventures of two brothers, Eli and Charlie Sisters, who are hired hands for a mysterious boss known only as the Commodore. Narrated by Eli, who has slightly more of a conscience than his older brother, the story starts with the Commodore ordering a hit, for reasons unknown, on a certain Hermann Kermit Warm.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847083188</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewGood Girls Die|author=Vanessa Diffenbaugh|title=The Language of FlowersAyura Ayira|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The ''This story see-saws a chapter at a time between the teenage Victoria and the child Victoria. The book opens with (the teen) Victoria leaving foster care is not for goodeveryone. She's been a difficult child to place so, now at 18, she is a troubled and angry young woman with many unsolved issues. The constant link has been Meredith, the loyal social worker. But Victoria now wants shot of the lot of them, Meredith included. Victoria can now be as free as a bird and do what she wants, when she wants. Bliss. Or is it?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230752586</amazonuk>}}'
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Zoe Heller1472263936|title=Notes on a ScandalThe Figurine|author=Victoria Hislop
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Barbara has been teaching at St George's for several years, and It was in spite of 1968 that Helena McCloud made her first trip to Greece. She was alone: her caustic words on mother, Greek by birth, had left the institutionfamily home and refused to return, but Mary and Hamish (Helena's parents) felt that it is very much would be a pity if Helena grew up without knowing her grandparents or understanding her Greek heritage. Her trip to the family apartment in up-market Kolonaki would be the focus first of her lonely lifeseveral annual visits. When newcomer, Sheba joins them, she forms a strong bond with She grew to love her, grandmother and becomes part of Shebathe family's life. Sheba is married with two childrenmaid, Dina, but was wary - and frightened - of her attraction grandfather, retired general Stamatis Papagiannis. He was proud of his close connections to the Junta and expected his family to a pupil, Connolly, leads her uphold his values but saw no reason to risk everything in a liaison of which Barbara is extremely jealousaccommodate them. As a result, their apparent friendship travels a sinister path His prejudices included Helena's red hair and green eyes - inherited from her father's Scottish ancestors.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>024195455X</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage|author=Dean Koontz|title=After Death|rating=3|genre=General Fiction|summary= Michael Mace, Head of Security, at a top secret biological research facility, is among 55 people who die when a virus is released in a bio-hazard accident. Finding himself in a makeshift mortuary, covered in plastic, he has a sense that something very, very bad has happened to him – and only him – as he sits up and looks around at the shrouded bodies of his dead friends and former colleagues. As he recovers his senses, he realises that there is something different about him; he can ''feel'' everything. ''Everything''. Michael isn't ''Michael'' anymore.|isbn=1662500467}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=A D MillerB0BVDC2VWH|title=SnowdropsThe Grave Listeners|author=William Frank
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The front cover, a snowy scene with majestic architecture in the background, village is arresting isolated and also suggests poor. It's surrounded by a thrillerWitching Forest. And the villagers subsist largely by farming Uphegia plants -type readits bread-like fruit provides nutrition and its blossom provides herbal medicines. I was keen to find out why The black wood of the book was called ''Snowdrops'' forest provides heat and hoped the author would enlighten me. He did - warmth, roofs on homes, and it's nothing to do with flowers or gardeningeven gallows, if needed. It's rather chilling The fear of being buried alive is an existential superstition in the village and altogether more interestingthat is the reason Volushka, a drunken, self-indulgent, lazy lout of a man is tolerated.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848874537</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Dori OstermillerB0BYF82CXT|title=Outside the Ordinary WorldSemi-Detached|author=Deborah Stone
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Although not keen ''Bill and Amanda are living in a semi-detached house, stuck in a depressing rut of boredom and disappointment, when Terry and Fiona – glamorous, successful and very much in love – move in next door. Despite their different outlooks on life, the title (a little clunky) I did feel that this was going couples befriend each other and life appears to be a book I'd enjoy. Ostermiller has some fulsome praise improve for this debut novel including from the author [[:Category:Diane Chamberlain|Diane Chamberlain]]both pairs. And after reading the back cover blurb I can sense a similarity which But all is fine by menot what it seems, and their increasingly interconnected relationships are fated for tragedy. (I thoroughly enjoyed all of Chamberlain's books). Would I enjoy this book as much?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>077830468X</amazonuk>'
}}
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=In this seventh outing to Scotland Street we're back with the cast of familiar charactersAlice and Seth are a match made in heaven. He is everything she has been searching for; handsome, accomplished, clever, funny; total and utter husband-material. Matthew She is all he could possibly want in a wife; beautiful, successful, confident… and Elspeth have had their triplets so the inevitable proposal is eagerly accepted by Alice and the wedding is planned and must now face set. When the much-anticipated day arrives, Alice is walked down the trials of being new parentsaisle by her father, beaming with three times pride and excitement as she surveys the trouble! Angus congregation – their friends assembled to celebrate this joyful day and Domenica are attempting when Seth turns to resolve the tricky issue of where they will live once they're married. And what of dear Bertie? Wellface his approaching bride, heAlice's finally reached a point of having had enough of his mother so, with world implodes because she has absolutely no idea who the man at the help of his friendaltar is, he puts himself up who is waiting for adoption on Ebay!her to become his wife.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846971888</amazonuk>1662507089
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Laura Kasischke1787636003|title=The RaisingGirls of Summer|author=Katie Bishop
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Craig is returning to universityIt 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, where he is widely viewed as being responsible for the death of his girlfriend Nicolenaive, so when thirty-four-year-old Alistair Wright started to take an interest in a road accidenther, she was flattered rather than wary. Suffering from post-traumatic stress and memory loss as It was quite a result while before he made any sort of the accident, Craig is an obvious candidate physical approach to fall victim to the hauntings her and by that start to occur around time she was obsessed by him. Alistair worked for Henry Taylor, looking after his interests on the campus. But it's not just Craig who is seeing inexplicable things happen at island and in particular in the university.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857891545</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Simon Ings|title=Dead Water|rating=3|genre=Crime|summary=The standard advice to artists has always been "don't gild bar where all the lily". For those writers who appear not to understand how this relates to their art form, let me offer up a basic translation: don't complicate a brilliant plot! Dead Water suffers from such gildinggirls either worked or partied.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848878885</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ludwig Bechstein, Axel Sceffler and Julia DonaldsonAmanda Craig|title=The GloomsterThree Graces
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=WeFew styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the state-of-the-nation novel. There've all been there. Finding fault with everything around uss something so utterly compelling about any writer who can catch hold of the atmosphere of the day and capture it, and perhaps picking on crafting an image of the country as it stands in one particular irritant moment. To say that gets us so rattled, tetchy and narked all we can do Amanda Craig is invoke "Hell skilled at doing this would be embarrassingly inadequate: she's practically synonymous with the genre of contemporary social fiction at this point. She 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 damnation!" down on all creation lived- includingin, of coursenever making them ciphers for social commentary but instead fully realised people, ourselves. After all, our lot is so bad it won't make anything much worsegrappling with issues far larger than themselves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0571274242</amazonuk>140871468X
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Alexander McCall Smith152915118X|title=Isabel Dalhousie: The Charming Quirks of OthersPineapple Street|author=Jenny Jackson|rating=34.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=I do wonder''Pineapple Street'' is the story of three women: Sasha, sometimes, how it Darley and Georgiana. Darley and George are sisters and Sasha is possible that Mr Alexander McCall Smith can possibly manage married to write their brother Cord. They're Stocktons, only Sasha isn't a Stockton by birth so many novels? she isn't readily accepted into the tribe. WouldnThe problem't it be fascinating to meet hims exacerbated when the clan matriarch, Tilda, asks Cord and see Sasha if they'd like to move into the stories just ooze out of him non-stop, Pineapple Street property. Tilda and if he walks around with pen Chip have renovated and paper at all times jotting things down as downsized to another property, a street or so away, which they occur to himown... In this book he They won's bringing us backt need any of the furniture from Pineapple Street, once again, to Isabel Dalhousie's worldso Sasha and Cord can move straight in. If you donNominally, they had a choice but that wasn't know who Isabel is then you should really forget all about this book for the moment reality. Darley and go right back Georgiana start to call Sasha 'the beginning to [http://wwwgold digger'.amazon She's living in ''their'' family home.co.uk/dp/0349118698?tag=thebookbag-21&camp=1406&creative=6394&linkCode=as1&creativeASIN=0349118698&adid=12XVW0J2SJ9MJA2J2YPB& The Sunday Philosophy Club] They use it so you can get all often that they abbreviate it to 'the characters in order and know whatGD's going on. If you're already up to date, however, and have read up to [[The Lost Art of Gratitude by Alexander McCall Smith|The Lost Art of Gratitude]] then you're good to go!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0349123128</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Brett BattlesEmily Critchley|title=The SilencedOne Puzzling Afternoon
|rating=4
|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=In 84 year old Edie has lived in the fourth instalment of the Jonathan Quinn seriessame small town for almost her whole life, Quinn but now she is facing a move as her son wants to move to another house and bring Edie to live with his team are hired family, as Edie is starting to clean up after an operation and find a mysterious woman has followed them therelose her memory. Before they can stop However, Edie is tormented by the memory of herchildhood friend, Lucy, who went missing over 60 years ago, and the worry that there was a secret she disappearswas keeping for Lucy that somehow might be the thing that reveals the truth of what happened all that time ago. On After 'seeing' Lucy in the next job high street, just as she turns up again, this was the last time with friendsshe saw her, and things start she starts to go drastically wrong. Quinn must find this woman and stop pockets of memories coming back to her. And yet as she remembers the past, but she is forgetting more and more in her day to day life. Will she uncover the meantime somebody has become very interested in finding out Jonathan Quinntruth about Lucy's real identity disappearance before her move, and is getting closer to his family. Quinn has to make a choice; do his job or save his familybefore her memories are gone forever?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848092881</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=Thierry Jonquet0008506337|title=Tarantula: The Skin I Live InGarnett Girls|author=Georgina Moore
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=In a large French country houseThe love affair between Margo Garnett and poet Richard O'Leary was all-consuming, an expert apparently on both sides. Margo was just sixteen when they fell in facial reconstruction surgery keeps a beautiful woman locked up in her bedroomlove. He placates her with opium, but barks orders through hugely powerful speakers Richard was twenty-one and described by Margo's mother as 'an intercomolder man'. She tantalises him with Her parents worried that Richard's influence would take her sexuality, which he tries away from what they felt she could achieve - going to ignore, except for when he seems to abuse it in Oxford and having a sort of S/M way when he does let her into societyglittering career. In the event, as he forces they eloped and Richard took her away from the Isle of Wight. Margo did go to Oxford and went on to prostitute herselfbecome a well-respected journalist. ElsewhereThe couple had three children: Rachel, a young, inept bank robber holes himself up Imogen and Sasha. Life was lived in a sunny houseLondon and holidays were spent at Sandcove, waiting for the heat to diefamily home on the Isle of Wight. And finally, a young man is held chained up Even then the doubts about Richard's drinking were never far from Margo's mind: ''she would never be able to leave him in a cellar at the hands of an unknown possessorcharge''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687942</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Joe Dunthorne1914585402|title=Wild AbandonDashboard Elvis is Dead|author=David F Ross
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=When your first novel has been successful, it adds pressure onto the second. This is the situation facing Joe Dunthorne, as his debut I reviewed David F Ross's book [[Submarine There's Only One Danny Garvey by Joe DunthorneDavid F Ross|SubmarineThere's Only One Danny Garvey]] won several awards, was adapted into a film couple of years back and came highly praised remember being absolutely floored by The Bookbaghow powerful and affecting it was. This means ''Wild Abandon'' has to be rather good to keep his reputation intactIt was a gripping, emotionally wounding read, and rereading my review of it my main takeaway was that I might not have lavished enough praise on it. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>024114406X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Stella GibbonsLucy Ashe|title=WestwoodClara and Olivia
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=I was instantly attracted to this novel as itThe year is 1933. The place? Sadler's set largely in Hampstead Wells. Ballerinas Clara and HighgateOlivia are sisters, which is territory I'm fortunate enough to be familiar withtwins no less. I was also instantly attracted to Margaret – a young woman with Identical on the worries of outside but not, we learn, on the world inside. And not on her shouldersstage, either. Because there's a lot that builds a dancer. Continually concerned with politics Some things that can be taught or learnt – discipline, attention to detail – and some things, that ''je ne sais quoi'', that don't come from the impact of war on those far away as well as close byclassroom. A stage presence, a charm, Margaret has genuine warmth and concern for her fellow human beingsa ''joie de vivre''. The difference between a hard-worker, and this pulls the reader into her story straight awaya star.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>009952872X</amazonuk>0861544080
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Esi EdugyanHeather Fawcett|title=Half-Blood BluesEmily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Sid Emily Wilde is an expert academic scholar on faerie lore, and his friend Chip are revisiting their youth, more than 50 years ago. They were jazz musiciansshe has travelled extensively, living and working in Berlin and Parisresearched meticulously, until they had to escape Nazi occupied Paris in 1940 to return to Baltimorewrite her life's work, the very first encyclopaedia of faeries. Now it Whilst she is 1992brilliant at research and speaking to faeries, and all the others they worked she is not so good with are long since deadpeople. They have just been involved So when she finds herself far, far North in a documentary about their experiences, and are about to return to Germany (soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall) for a jazz festival in memory small village of Hrafvsnik, having somehow offended the great Hiero Falk. Hieronymus Falk was a young black German musician with an exceptional musical talentvillage matriarch, the star of their bandshe is not sure what she has done, nor how to redeem herself and put her final investigations for her book back on the Hot-Time Swingersright track. He was picked up by 'the Boots' as Sid refers to the Germans Enter Wendell Bambleby, in Paris in 1940her dashingly handsome and insufferable rival who arrives unexpectedly, all charm and disappeared into a concentration campdelight, then they heard much to Emily's frustration. But why is he here? What does he was released but died in 1948.want? And what exactly is going on with the faerie folk around Hravsnik?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846687756</amazonuk>0356519120
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ira Levin1398515388|title=Rosemary's BabyThe Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=A young couple find First of all, it was the beginnings of a dream life together earthquake, deep in a new apartment the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, in a New York building that a friend says is a hotbed of death and misfortuneturn, caused the nuclear meltdown. But it seems perfectThe result was complete and utter devastation. His job prospects as an actor have never been betterThe deaths were uncountable, and they're quickly accepted into the elderly community loss of their neighbourslivelihoods was widespread. What's more, she The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - Rosemary six months after the tsunami - gets pregnantKazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. Nothing can go wrong, can it? None of this happiness He wasn't a dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and hope can come at a dreadful cost - can it?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849015880</amazonuk>Tamon the dog jumped in.
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Luke WilliamsChristopher Bowden|title=The Echo ChamberMr Magenta
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Born in Lagos, Nigeria in 1946, in the last days of the British Empire, Evie Steppman had exceptional hearing. She remembers what it was like in the womb, the pumping of her motherChristopher Bowden's blood, the different tones latest novel is a patient untangling of her fathera seemingly ordinary woman's voice telling life, carried out by her stories, nephew after she has died. The aunt who always provided a safe harbour and the clatter a little bit of outside noise, yet indulgence to be recognized as the falling of rain or the whining of the wind. As she grew up she learnt to listen to the sounds around her, for even in silence there is still the echo of one's own heartbeat. Now, many years later, her hearing is going, a young nephew had had a much more interesting life than that nephew Stephen had ever realised and with it her memories. Confined seems to him an attic space in Scotland she needs obligation to write her story down before find it is too late. To do this she turns to objects – a pocket watch, maps, photos and diaries, to help re-form her past, to take us on a journey – not through sights, but through soundsall out.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0241143004</amazonuk>B0B6Z9VJDW
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ben BrooksJennifer Mason|title=Grow UpPartitions of Unity
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=This book has reached the dizzy heights Here at Bookbag Towers, we first met Elizabeth Cromwell, dominatrix and unintentional detective in [[Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery by Jennifer Mason|Preposterous]], when she investigated and unravelled a series of an disappearances. In ''International BestsellerPartitions of Unity'' with plaudits all over its covers, she sets her mind to solving a murder.. And it's a debut novel, albeit by an author who has worked in journalism. So, am I going to be another notch on the book-reading bedpost, so to speak?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1849160317</amazonuk>B09LQR9FRF
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jon SteeleWill Carver|title=The Watchers|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=At over 500 pages I'm sincerely hoping that this book is going to appeal. The back cover blurb is promising, informing the reader that the author is a well-travelled cameraman/editor of many years standing. The story opens with a young Marc Rochat starting a new life in Switzerland. Everything is strange and new to him. He becomes a night-watchman at the local cathedral and carries out his duties diligently. He doesn't mind the fact that it's a rather solitary job as he more than makes up for the silence (when the bells are not ringing that is) by chatting away to all of the various bells as if they were human. Marc's conversations with his 'ladies' are utterly charming. I could listen to them all day.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0593067517</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=John Hart|title=Iron HouseDaves Next Door
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Hart is already a best-selling author so he has Five strangers come together in one moment as a lot suicide bomber prepares to live up to with detonate his latest book. At over 400 pages it's vest on a big, meaty readLondon tube line. The story opens with MichaelAs their fates overlap, now an adult. In his prime, with the woman he loves and about to become a father: life story is looking very rosy indeed. He thinks that he's left his shady past behind him forever. He's wrong. Hart gives his readers a little background info on Michael, the central character, just enough to whet our appetites. It worked for me and I was eager to keep turning the pages. At the start of the book there's a definite sense of something catastrophic about to happen and that it involves Michael told in some way.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848541791</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Tim Thornton|title=Death of an Unsigned Band|rating=3.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Russell knows that his band is going nowhere, and the prospect of a life consisting only of a grim day job and some depressing creative exercises is getting him down. But when Josh turns up with a potential way outbackwards order, it's not quite the way Russell, or any of the other band members, would have envisaged.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099531879</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Haley Tanner|title=Vaclav and Lena|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Vaclav and Lena are both children of Russian immigrants, growing leading up in Brooklyn. Vaclav dreams of becoming a fantastic magician, with his friend Lena as his assistant, and as children they practise their routine together, making lists of the things they'll need, the costumes they will wear and to the tricks they will perform. Vaclav is confident and happy, but Lena is quiet, withdrawn and struggles with speaking English. Yet Vaclav believes, always, that they are destined to be together. Even when Lena disappears one day and is gone from his life for many years still he hopes that, somehow, he will find her againfateful moment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0434020443</amazonuk>1914585186}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jon BlakeJennifer Mason|title=69ersPreposterous: A Novel About the 1969 Isle of Wight Festival of MusicAn Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=In the summer of 1969''A struggling poetry zine, as Thunderclap Newman proclaimed in their one a mom-and only musical claim to fame, there was something -pop mobile diner in the air. The alternative generation were talking about Northern California redwoods, a 400-meter hurdler who just missed the recent Woodstock Festival in America2004 Olympics, and eagerly looking forward to what promised to be a similar gatheringwomen's track coach with a yen for bullwhips, albeit on a smaller scale, at the Isle billionaire with a state-of Wight at -the end of August-art S&M dungeon, where Bob Dylan was headlining.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908105658</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Wesley Stace|title=Charles Jessold, Considered as a Murderer|rating=3.5|genre=Crime|summary="Nothing man serving a life sentence in recent fiction prepared me for the power and the polish of this subtle tale of English music in the makingAlabama, an enigmatic signature, K(s, x), on a chiller wrapped cheap oil painting, an erotic art dealer in an enigma [New Statesman]" Georgia...''
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