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[[Category:General Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]]==General fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=D. J. ConnellJenny Lecoat|title=Sherry Cracker Gets NormalBeyond Summerland|rating=54
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Whilst itJean lives on Jersey with her mother where they are celebrating the end of the occupation. During the war, Jean's wrong father was arrested for listening to judge a book by its coverbanned radio and soldiers took him away one night, a mere sight leaving Jean and her mother waiting for years for news of D. J. Connell's second novel 'Sherry Cracker Gets Normal' is enough to make me smilehim. The title is amusing; As the British finally free the Channel islands from the colourful design enticing Nazis, and the effusive praise for Connell's debut 'Julian Corkle war is finally over, their hopes rise that they will finally learn what became of him. But will the truth come as a Filthy Liar' encouraging.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>000733219X</amazonuk>1846976537
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Gavin JamesOnyi Nwabineli|title=Ariadne's ThreadAllow Me to Introduce Myself|rating=34.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Anuri spent her childhood on display to the world, thanks to her step-mother Ophelia''Ariadnes increasingly popular presence on social media, where she posted every step of Anuri's Thread'' childhood for sponsorships and influencer deals and, basically, monetary gain. Now Anuri is the story of Elena Avgoulas who decided in May 1941 that her twenties and she would have is slowly trying to leave Chiosregain her confidence and to get her life back, suing her step-mother to take down the Greek island where she was born, until the war was overcontent about her. German soldiers had occupied the island and whilst they were there it would not be home Anuri is battling alcoholism, failing to start herPhD, her mother undergoing therapy and sister secretly abusing people online and brothersreceiving money from them for doing so. The brothers were in the Greek army. Her mother would run the family bakery and Most importantly, she is desperately worried about her little sister would support their mother, who is the new focus of Ophelia's online empire. Elena was a medical student in Athens and had a nursing qualification; she decided that Can she would make use of this in the war effort. And so began a journey that would take save her to Cyprussister, Palestine, Egypt, Italy and Germany in perhaps herself and her relationship with her father at the course of the war.same time?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>B005FRG8P4</amazonuk>0861546873
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Javier Marias1529153298|title=While the Women are Sleeping|rating=4.5|genre=Short Stories|summary=The first thing the trivially minded will note is that this is not the complete edition of While the Women are Sleeping, for not all the stories in the original Spanish volume are here. You might think that's because some have been hived off for a future 'best of' compilation. But if this isn't the best List of Javier Marias, then I don't know what is. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099553929</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewSuspicious Things|author=Joe Revill|title=A Case of WitchcraftJennie Godfrey|rating=45
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=As Holmes embarks on a journey towards the Northern IslesIt'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, we are treated but to a comprehensive background of the ways of witches all over the world; all points are pertinent and the history is fascinating as well as necessaryhave 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. The introduction Miv's upset because she's overheard that her father wants to move the ways of witchcraft demonstrates the worldwide links that will become highly significant laterfamily 'Down South'. When you're from Yorkshire, Down South is a frightening, foreign place, best avoided. Revill weaves in For Miv, the relevant history and all its complications with easemove would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, and she'll do anything to prevent that. She's not worried about the novel flows in spite of having dangers or that her Mum's stopped talking - to accommodate thisanyone.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780920091</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Kevin Gosselin1035906708|title=Hunt for the Blower BentleyDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin|rating=34.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Connecticut innkeeper Faston Hanks is obsessiveWe tend to think of Maria Callas as Greek, but she was born to Greek parents in Manhattan, New York, in December 1923 and only moved to Athens when she was thirteen. He's very keen on food Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed itto 's cars – and particularly old cars – which drive him. This time heCallas's involved to make it more manageable in the search for the only one of the fifty Blower Bentleys made which remains unaccounted forStates. SM3912 When she was originally purchased back in Athens - supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for her voice - she was raised under the Nazi occupation by Lord Brougham a mother who mercilessly exploited her and Vaux and ownership can be traced to one D H Sessions, after which the trail goes cold. We know something which Faston doesn't know though – the Bentley came into the hands made no secret of Stephan Sidlow, who was high up in the APR during World War IIher preference for her elder sister, by less than honest means. But then Sidlow was less than honest about which side he was supporting in the warJackie.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780920180</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ernest ClineAlexander McCall Smith|title=Ready Player OneThe Perfect Passion Company
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=A short while agoThe Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, I stumbled across run by Ness and operating as an alternative to all the online apps in providing a highly enjoyable film called ''Fanboys''more personal, tailored service. Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the business, about as Ness is planning to take a bunch of ''Star Wars'' fans trying trip to break into George Lucas' mansion Canada to get away for a sneak preview while. Katie is coming out of a break up with a bad boyfriend, and so jumps at the new filmchance to come home to Edinburgh. I didn't pay much attention And so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, thanks to 44 Scotland Street and the name of the writerIsabel Dalhousie novels, but with some new characters who quickly begin to charm. Katie has no experience in running a business, or in match-making, but Ness has full confidence in her abilities, until I came across Ernest Clineand there's author bio in ''Ready Player One'' always her very helpful (and realised it was written by the same person. This immediately gave me high hopes.rather handsome) neighbour, William, to lend a hand…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846059372</amazonuk>1846976596
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Robert HarrisDean Koontz|title=The Fear IndexBad Weather Friend|rating=4.5|genre=General FictionParanormal|summary=With 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 FTSE recording its biggest quarterly drop in yearsthing that has trashed his house! The thing is, turmoil on Benny is the bond markets and 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 prospect 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 economic meltdown Benny, and the possible disintegration will certainly take care of the euro zoneBenny's enemies, if he, Benny, Robert Harris' new thriller couldnand Harper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny't be more timelys wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0091936969</amazonuk>1662500491
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tom BaleKatherine Howe|title=Blood FallsA True Account|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=I read and reviewed Bale's [[Terror's Reach by Tom Bale|Terror's Reach]]and enjoyed it. What would I think of his latest? Joe Hannah Masury is doing his level best living in Boston, having been sent to live with a family who run an unremarkable (almost invisible) life in Bristolinn, and being made to work there from a young age. He uses his brawn When she hears there is to pay his modest bills for rentbe a hanging of some pirates in the town, food etcshe decides to go and watch. But you could sayEnthralled and horrified in equal measure, once a copper, always Hannah finds herself embroiled in a copper so his brain is not idle, ityoung boy's in constant usedeath at the hands of two vicious pirates. Whirring She hides away, so that they don't find and kill her too, and then to escape them completely she runs away in to sea, dressing as a boy and joining the background and itnotorious Ned Low's just pirate ship as wella cabin boy. Joe She soon senses imminent danger finds herself in the thick of things when there is a couple of blokes stroll bymutiny on board, stop and ask his gaffer a couple from there we are caught up in her rip roaring tale of questions. Joe needs to be somewhere else - and fastlife on the ocean waves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>184809325X</amazonuk>0861547438
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John O'Connell1471180158|title=The Baskerville Legacy: A NovelMaybe Tomorrow|author=Penny Parkes|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=1900Jamie Matson works in an upper-class grocery store, and for a man on who's a ship coming back from control freak with all the Boer War to edit the Daily Express meets one subtlety of a half brick. Jamie's son, Bo, 'has his heroes in the form of Arthur Conan Doyleproblems'. With similar experiences He's asthmatic and interests yet different enough to bounce off each other they take up the idea of collaborating more you read, the more you'll suspect that he's on a plotthe autistic spectrum. When they do fix on Sometimes Jamie needs to take time off at short notice - she's a frequent flier in the local A&E and sometimes Bo's not fit enough to do so, it leads go to literary prospects, which lead school. Missed shifts or the need to a week's research together be away on Dartmoor, which leads time to ''The Hound of pick Bo up from school are occasions when Jamie can be controlled and put in the Baskervilles''wrong. But perhaps in It was going to come to a way that only one of them intendedhead.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907595465</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Syd MooreB0CKD1L5JL|title=The Drowning PoolRadio Free Olympia|author=Jeffrey Dunn
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The book opens with a group of young women out on Petr is an orphan. Rescued by the townstrange, letting their hair down and having fun. Moore describes all of them in a fresh and modern voice which I really liked. It came across as a breath of fresh air. The storyreclusive Bear, Sarah's story he is told by Sarah herself. But it's told brought up far from bustling cities and busy human society, in the perspective forests of looking back after it's all happened so thereWashington's lots of why-didn't-I-see-that-coming languageOlympic Peninsula. HindsightAfter Bear dies and a brief sojourn in human company, and armed with only a pirate radio transmitter, in Petr goes on a wordjourney through the forest, broadcasting the strange, wild and rarely heard voices he encounters.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847562663</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Guillaume MussoSarah Marsh|title=The Girl on PaperA Sign of Her Own
|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=This is After a bout of scarlet fever as a modern book for modern timeschild, Ellen Lark loses her hearing. I loved Suddenly plunged into a world of silence, everything about her life changes. Living in a time when the reader-friendly layout with biguse of sign language was seen as something only savages do, bold type letting the reader know exactly Ellen is sent to a school where we wereshe is taught to lip read, but physically restrained from signing. From here, she ends up in terms of storyline another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the deaf and locationusing a system called Visible Speech. But At the story itself does jump about a lot same time, Bell is working on other inventions and I suspect Musso wants to give a sense of urgencyideas, and Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a sense complicated tangle of frenetic energy at timesespionage.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908313056</amazonuk>1035401614
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Victoria HislopB0BC3YTCMR|title=The ThreadGood Girls Die|author=Ayura Ayira|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=I read and enjoyed Hislop's 'The Island' so I was looking forward to reading this book. The Prologue is May 2007 and readers are treated to a vivid coastal description of the area which This story is to play such a big part in the novelnot for everyone. Lines such as 'With the lifting haze, Mount Olympus gradually emerged far away across the Thermaic Gulf and the restful blues of sea and sky shrugged off their pale shroud.'|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755377737</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Nicholas Sparks1472263936|title=The Best of Me|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=Since watching the film of 'The Notebook' years ago I've always fancied reading some Nicholas Sparks books but never quite got around to it until I saw this, his newest offering. Here we have the tale of two childhood sweethearts whose love was always threatened by the fact that they were from opposite sides of the tracks - he from the rough, poor family that is forever on the wrong side of the law, and she from one of the better, respected families in the town. After life forces them apart they go on to live very different lives, but it seems that neither one has ever forgotten that early passion. Drawn back together for the funeral of an old friend they are both forced to look at the choices they've made in their lives and where they go to from here.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847443206</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Marius Brill|title=How to Forget|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=If you are a fan of the BBC's 'Hustle' series, you will absolutely love Marius Brill’s 'How to Forget'. It’s a funny, clever and twisted tale of grifters and con tricks with a bit of magic thrown in for good measure. Brill gives us a cast of strange characters: there's an ethically dubious brain scientist, a dodgy Derren Brown-type TV celebrity whose interests are guarded by two violent but somewhat hapless Hasidic Jewish thugs, an equally violent FBI agent and a female British copper. At the heart of the story though is an apparently naïve British magician, Peter, and a supreme grifter, Kate, in whose life Peter finds himself entangled.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857520717</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFigurine|author=S G Browne|title=FatedVictoria Hislop
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Clever 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 very funnyrefused to return, this is but Mary and Hamish (Helena's parents) felt that it would be a pity if Helena grew up without knowing her grandparents or understanding her Greek heritage. Her trip to the family apartment in up-market Kolonaki would be the sort first of book where you immediately feel in safe hands. S.Gseveral annual visits. Browne has gone She grew to town (New York)love her grandmother and the family's maid, Dina, satirising just about every aspect but was wary - and frightened - of modern lifeher grandfather, retired general Stamatis Papagiannis. He was proud of his close connections to the Junta and expected his family to uphold his values but saw no reason to accommodate them. His prejudices included Helena's red hair and my reading was continually interrupted by bells clanging loudly in recognition in my headgreen eyes - inherited from her father's Scottish ancestors.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0749954728</amazonuk>
}}
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=As Michael Mace, Head of Security, at a ''New York Times Bestseller'' I was expecting great things from this book; coupled with the fact that I really enjoy American fictiontop secret biological research facility, I was itching to get readingis among 55 people who die when a virus is released in a bio-hazard accident. The story is told from the perspective of SheilaFinding himself in a makeshift mortuary, covered in plastic, he has a sense that something very, sister very bad has happened to Mike him – and half-sister to Arthur (only him – as he's normally called Art). Art is the priest sits up and who is looks around at the centre shrouded bodies of the storm. We go back in time his dead friends and discover a rather pious woman who has had a hard start to married lifeformer colleagues. SheAs he recovers his senses, he realises that there is something different about him; he can 's now left to bring up her young son, Art, on her own'feel'' everything. But things pick up pretty quickly from here and as an attractive woman it's not long before she meets someone else'Everything''. Two more children are born and they all settle down into a normal, American family unitMichael isn't ''Michael'' anymore.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0007225091</amazonuk>1662500467}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jaimy GordonB0BVDC2VWH|title=Lord of MisruleThe Grave Listeners|author=William Frank
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Following on from ''The 2½ Pillars of Wisdomvillage is isolated and poor. It'' which was s surrounded by a compilation Witching Forest. And the villagers subsist largely by farming Uphegia plants - its bread-like fruit provides nutrition and its blossom provides herbal medicines. The black wood of three shorter volumes, this book sees Professor Dr Von Igelfeld still dealing with his academic colleagues but also with the prospect of a love interestforest provides heat and warmth, a recently widowed ladyroofs on homes, Frau Benzand even gallows, who has inherited the large Schloss in Regensburgif needed. Is love The fear of being buried alive is an existential superstition in the air? Or will his arch rivalvillage and that is the reason Volushka, Unterholzer interfere once again?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0316027545</amazonuk>a drunken, self-indulgent, lazy lout of a man is tolerated.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sophie DuffyB0BYF82CXT|title=The Generation GameSemi-Detached|author=Deborah Stone
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Do you remember ''The Generation Game'' TV showBill and Amanda are living in a semi-detached house, with old Brucie stuck in a depressing rut of boredom and then Larry Grayson managing the mayhem? Where were you disappointment, when Charles Terry and Di got married? What about when Diana died? There's plenty of reminiscing to be done Fiona – glamorous, successful and very much in love – move in this book as Sophie Duffy takes us from next door. Despite their different outlooks on life, the 1960's couples befriend each other and life appears to 2006 through the life of her characterimprove for both pairs. But all is not what it seems, Philippa, in a book that fleets from funny, heartwarming moments to real sadnessand their increasingly interconnected relationships are fated for tragedy.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908248017</amazonuk>''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Larry PontiusShalini Boland|title=Future KingThe Silent Bride
|rating=3
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=It's the near future Alice and King Charles III Seth are a match made in heaven. He is everything she has ascended the throne of the United Kingdom with Camilla as his Queen Consortbeen searching for; handsome, accomplished, clever, funny; total and utter husband-material. The country She is all he could possibly want in a mess with rampant inflationwife; beautiful, unemploymentsuccessful, a crumbling infrastructure confident… and riots: so the people have taken to calling this time ''The Troubles''. Such situations breed power-hungry politicians inevitable proposal is eagerly accepted by Alice and Prime Minister Alistair Saxon has plans to become the dictator of the countrywedding is planned and set. When the King refuses to give his assent to much-anticipated day arrives, Alice is walked down the Emergency Powers Actaisle by her father, Saxon beaming with pride and excitement as she surveys the congregation – their friends assembled to celebrate this joyful day and when Seth turns to face his fellow-conspirators kidnap approaching bride, Alice's world implodes because she has absolutely no idea who the man at the Royal family altar is, who is waiting for her to prevent Charles speaking against the EPAbecome his wife.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1463766297</amazonuk>1662507089
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Kirsten Tranter1787636003|title=The LegacyGirls of Summer|author=Katie Bishop|rating=45
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=This is quite a chunky book so Tranter has given herself plenty of space It was the summer when Rachel Evans turned eighteen that she and Caroline went backpacking around Greece and time to build up a nice level of suspense here as well as putting some flesh arrived on the bones of her central characters. The book opens - towards the end of the storyisland. So we have firmRachel wasn't exactly innocent but she was, but platonic friendsperhaps, Julia and Ralph both very concerned about their mutual friendnaive, Ingrid. She supposedly died on 9/11 so when thirty-four-year- but with no remainsold Alistair Wright started to take an interest in her, no burial, their grief hasn't an outletshe was flattered rather than wary. They need (It was quite a while before he made any sort of physical approach to quote her and by that much used word) closuretime she was obsessed by him. Alistair worked for Henry Taylor, looking after his interests on the island and in particular in the bar where all the girls either worked or partied.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857380621</amazonuk>
}}
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Annie Fang and her brother Buster are back living at home with their parents Few styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the state- where they never thought they'd ever be again. But it has come to this of- her film actress career is on the rocks with -nation novel. There's something so utterly compelling about any writer who can catch hold of the kind atmosphere of self-destruction so much enjoyed by tabloid writers, the day and he - wellcapture it, hecrafting an image 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 here because practically synonymous with the genre of contemporary social fiction at this point. She has such a jumbo spud gun. Neither want life back at home, as throughout their childhood they were used by their parents - without much planning, without any consideration gift for weaving the ongoing issues of the day into the lives of feelings, or consent her characters in a way that feels natural and lived- in a whole career of performance art pieces, designed to enact a point of life or just cause havocnever making them ciphers for social commentary but instead fully realised people, grappling with issues far larger than themselves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1447202384</amazonuk>140871468X
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Philip Roth152915118X|title=NemesisPineapple Street|author=Jenny Jackson
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=1944''Pineapple Street'' is the story of three women: Sasha, Newark, New JerseyDarley and Georgiana. SummerDarley and George are sisters and Sasha is married to their brother Cord. HotThey're Stocktons, only Sasha isn't a Stockton by birth so she isn't readily accepted into the tribe. Bucky CantorThe problem's exacerbated when the clan matriarch, a young Jewish manTilda, is gym teacher asks Cord and playground attendant-cum-sports instructor for the district, helping all those interested become fit young men, able Sasha if they'd like to do what his eyesight prevents him from doing - serving in move into the forcesPineapple Street property. Things would be fine if his girlfriend were closer at handTilda and Chip have renovated and downsized to another property, if it were coolera street or so away, and if there were no polio epidemic happeningwhich they own. But there isThey won't need any of the furniture from Pineapple Street, so Sasha and nobody knows what is causing itCord can move straight in. Is it flies? Nominally, they had a choice but that wasn't the reality. Is Darley and Georgiana start to call Sasha 'the gold digger'. She's living in ''their'' family home. They use it a gang of taunting Italian kids spreading so often that they abbreviate it from neighbourhood to neighbourhood? Is it blacks, germs on money - is it in fact Cantor himself, draining all 'the youthful vigour from his charges under a blistering sun?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099542269</amazonuk>GD'.
}}
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=This is the fifth novel 84 year old Edie has lived in Susan Hill's series about the detective Simon Serraillersame small town for almost her whole life, but now she is facing a move as her son wants to move to another house and bring Edie to live with his family, as Edie is starting to lose her memory. Although you could probably follow However, Edie is tormented by the story without knowing memory of her childhood friend, Lucy, who went missing over 60 years ago, and the previous books I think it does help to have some background on who worry that there was a secret she was keeping for Lucy that somehow might be the thing that reveals the truth of what happened all the characters arethat time ago. I really love After 'seeing' Lucy in the high street, just as she was the way Hill weaves last time she saw her, she starts to find pockets of memories coming back to her story around some wonderful character studies. Simon And yet as she remembers the past, she is actually hardly forgetting more and more in this novel, and the focus instead is on her day to day life. Will she uncover the truth about Lucy'extras's disappearance before her move, with a lot of details being put into characters who will only be around for this particular novel but who live and breathe through it wonderfully well. before her memories are gone forever?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099499282</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=Jonathan Lewis0008506337|title=Into DustThe Garnett Girls|author=Georgina Moore|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The front cover graphics leave the reader love affair between Margo Garnett and poet Richard O'Leary was all-consuming, apparently on both sides. Margo was just sixteen when they fell in no doubt love. Richard was twenty-one and described by Margo's mother as 'an older man'. Her parents worried that this is Richard's influence would take her away from what they felt she could achieve - going to Oxford and having a thriller glittering career. In the event, they eloped and Richard took her away from the blurb Isle of Wight. Margo did go to Oxford and went on to become a well-respected journalist. The couple had three children: Rachel, Imogen and Sasha. Life was lived in London and holidays were spent at Sandcove, the back cover mentions family home on the troubles in Afghanistan, deadly bombs, sniffer dogs, so Isle of Wight. Even then the theme here is bang up doubts about Richard's drinking were never far from Margo's mind: ''she would never be able to-date and many would possibly say, relevantleave him in charge''. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848092598</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Arnaldur Indridason1914585402|title=Operation NapoleonDashboard Elvis is Dead|author=David F Ross|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=In 1945 I reviewed David F Ross's book [[There's Only One Danny Garvey by David F Ross|There's Only One Danny Garvey]] a German bomber crashed on a glacier in Iceland. This might not have been quite so extraordinary were couple of years back and remember being absolutely floored by how powerful and affecting it not for the fact that there were both German and American officers on boardwas. Two of the passengers are killed in the crashIt was a gripping, emotionally wounding read, one sets off for help and four people remain, trapped in the plane, eventually freezing to death. Just before the end rereading my review of last century the glacier gave up the plane and the US army began an operation to remove the wreckage as secretly as possible, but two young Icelanders are caught up in what is going it my main takeaway was that I might not have lavished enough praise onit. One contacts his sister but before he can complete the call they are grabbed by the soldiers, brutally attacked and their bodies and snowmobiles dumped in a crevasse.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099535637</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Linda GillardLucy Ashe|title=Untying the KnotClara and Olivia
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=IThe year is 1933. The place? Sadler've often wondered why its Wells. Ballerinas Clara and Olivia are sisters, twins no less. Identical on the outside but not, we learn, on the inside. And not on stage, either. Because there's not axiomatic a lot that builds a man should stand by his woman dancer. Some things that can be taught or learnt – although perhaps it couldn't be set discipline, attention to music quite so easily detail – but Fay had failed to stand by her man. To make it worseand some things, that ''je ne sais quoi'', she was an army wife and they just that don't desert – and Magnus was come from the classroom. A stage presence, a charm, a hero. He'd been in bomb disposal and despite being blown up had briefed his number two about the bomb before he was taken off to hospital'joie de vivre''. He was goodThe difference between a hard-lookingworker, charismatic – and divorced. Fay knew that marrying Magnus had been a mistake – but she also admitted that the biggest mistake of all was divorcing himstar.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>B005JTAMQO</amazonuk>0861544080
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ulrika JonssonHeather Fawcett|title=The Importance Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Being MyrtleFaeries
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=There Emily Wilde is no denying that the Brontë family lived an interesting life. While some authors' lives are shrouded in mysteryexpert academic scholar on faerie lore, and she has travelled extensively, with their characters far better known than they themselves areand researched meticulously, thatto write her life's not really the case with the Brontës. Various biographers havework, over the years, provided a clear picture very first encyclopaedia of 19th century Yorkshire life thanks faeries. Whilst she is brilliant at research and speaking to a wealth of original letters and diaries preserved from the timefaeries, she is not so good with people. This makes Kohler's choice of topic slightly odd. Rather than an attempt to imagine So when she finds herself far, far North in the unknown lives small village of Hrafvsnik, having somehow offended the sistersvillage matriarch, it she is a cobbling together of facts not sure what she has done, nor how to redeem herself and assumptions that have been in put her final investigations for her book back on the public arena for some timeright track. For anyone Enter Wendell Bambleby, her dashingly handsome and insufferable rival who knows anything about the Brontësarrives unexpectedly, it really is nothing newall charm and delight, and thatmuch to Emily's a shamefrustration. But why is he here? What does he want? And what exactly is going on with the faerie folk around Hravsnik?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1849010862</amazonuk>0356519120
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Phil Rickman1398515388|title=The Secrets of PainBoy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=It's a freezing winter's night and a couple of the locals are driving home when they come across a strange and disturbing incident. They don't know what to make First of all, it but as was the SAS have a training presence earthquake, deep in the area Gomer ocean floor, which created the tsunami and Danny put it down to exercises and breath a sigh of reliefthis, in turn, caused the nuclear meltdown. It's anything for a quiet life round these parts The result was complete and thanks to Rickman's excellent writing, we soon see that these men, Gomer especially, are characters in themselvesutter devastation. Plenty The deaths were uncountable, and the loss of personalitylivelihoods was widespread. Once seen, difficult to forgetThe fact that many 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. And I didnHe wasn't want a dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to forget them. They also speak open his car door and Tamon the dog jumped in the local dialect which comes across very well indeed.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848872739</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Erin MorgensternChristopher Bowden|title=The Night CircusMr Magenta|rating=54
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The Night Circus moves from town to town; appearing with no warningChristopher Bowden's latest novel is a patient untangling of a seemingly ordinary woman's life, no announcementscarried out by her nephew after she has died. The attractions seem impossible – aunt who always provided a carousel with breathing animals, handkerchiefs that turn into birds in front of the watchful eyes of the audience, doors that appear safe harbour and disappear. In the middle of it all are Celia, the daughter of a famous illusionist, and Marco, the apprentice little bit of a mysterious magician. From indulgence to a young age the lovers have been destined to compete against each other using their unusual skills to win nephew had had a prize much more interesting life than that neither of them understands; nephew Stephen had ever realised and it seems to him an end that will leave only one standingobligation to find it all out.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>184655523X</amazonuk>B0B6Z9VJDW
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Dorothy B HughesJennifer Mason|title=The Expendable ManPartitions of Unity|rating=54
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Dorothy B Hughes (1904-93) took a journalism degree Here at Bookbag Towers, we first met Elizabeth Cromwell, dominatrix and unintentional detective in Kansas City[[Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery by Jennifer Mason|Preposterous]], Missouri when she investigated and started her distinguished career with unravelled a prize-winning book series of poems. Her first hard-boiled thriller appeared in 1940 and it was followed by more than a dozen in the next decadedisappearances. Three were made into noir films and in 1944 Hughes went to Hollywood to assist Hitchcock on his film, In ''SpellboundPartitions of Unity''. Here , she met Ingrid Bergman and consequently Humphrey Bogart came sets her mind to buy the film rights to one of her novelssolving a murder...|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1903155584</amazonuk>B09LQR9FRF
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{{Frontpage|author=Will Carver|title=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 story is told in backwards order, leading up to the fateful moment.|isbn= 1914585186}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Chuck PalahniukJennifer Mason|title=DamnedPreposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary='Are you there'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, Satan? Ita women's metrack coach with a yen for bullwhips, a billionaire with a state-of-the-art S&M dungeon, Madison'. I'm a spunkyman serving a life sentence in Alabama, lively tweenage girlan enigmatic signature, except I'm K(s, x), on a dead onecheap oil painting, and I'm an erotic art dealer in Hell, to my surpriseGeorgia... While I'm here I'll find out just where it This is all those cold-calling telegraphers ring you from just while you're settling down to your evening meal, and where a sample of the world's wasted sperm cast of characters and discarded toenail clippings fetch upsettings in Preposterous. I'll have very hairy encounters with demons of Satan's and mankind's makingAs you can see, and with some superlative plotting and flashbacks I'll find a clearer approach to why I was put here in the first placekeeping up will be required! The basic premise of this mystery story goes like this...|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0224091158</amazonuk>B09STS96HS
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