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[[Category:General Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]]==General fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Aifric CampbellJenny Lecoat|title=On The FloorBeyond Summerland
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Geri Molloy, Jean lives on Jersey with her mother where they are celebrating the central character in Aifric Campbell's ''On The Floor'', may be earning a six figure salary working at a London investment bank just prior to end of the outbreak of occupation. During the 1991 invasion of Kuwaitwar, but sheJean's seriously messed upfather was arrested for listening to a banned radio and soldiers took him away one night, leaving Jean and her mother waiting for years for news of him. Drinking heavily As the British finally free the Channel islands from the Nazis, sleeping lightly and mourning the end war is finally over, their hopes rise that they will finally learn what became of him. But will the truth come as a relationshiprelief, she may be a mathematical genius with a direct line to a mysterious Hong Kong-based hedge fund manager with whom she trades, but her life is increasingly being controlled by 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 people.secrets have been kept throughout the occupation?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846688086</amazonuk>1846976537
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ada WilsonOnyi Nwabineli|title=Red Army Faction BluesAllow Me to Introduce Myself|rating=4.5|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=Ada Wilson admits that his fascination with Anuri spent her childhood on display to the period is what drove his work world, thanks to her step-mother Ophelia's increasingly popular presence on this novelsocial media, where she posted every step of Anuri's childhood for sponsorships and it influencer deals and, basically, monetary gain. Now Anuri is the wealth of detail in her twenties and she is slowly trying to regain her confidence and background that strikes one when reading his account of Peter Urbachto get her life back, the undercover agent whose role was to act as an agent provocateur suing her step-mother to take down the Red Brigadecontent about her. Urbach Anuri is revealed from the outset as a plantbattling alcoholism, an undercover operative who needs failing to keep all events of the group 'noted start her PhD, undergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online and filed' receiving money from them for his mastersdoing so. And throughout the first half of the novel we see Urbach recording the changes and developments Most importantly, she is desperately worried about her little sister, who is the complex web new focus of political ideologyOphelia's online empire. Can she save her sister, naivety and perhaps herself and her relationship with her father at the pure egocentricity of youth which created the happening of the Baader-Meinhof gang.same time?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1901927482</amazonuk>0861546873
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Matthew Green1529153298|title=Memoirs The List of an Imaginary FriendSuspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Max It's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is 8 years oldPrime Minister. He likes Lego and Star Wars and playing with toy soldiers (A woman? I mean, honestly. He can tell you 102 words that rhyme with tree. He scarfs down grilled cheese sandwiches and chicken and rice. He does ) She's not like physical contactwhat'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. He lives with his mum and dad who argue about what Miv's upset because she's overheard that her father wants to move the family 'Down South'. When you're from Yorkshire, Down South is a frightening, foreign place, best for him avoided. For Miv, the move would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, and why he’s she'll do anything to prevent that. She's not normal like other boys and girlsworried about the dangers or that her Mum's stopped talking - to anyone.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0751547875</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=William Nicholson1035906708|title=The Secret Intensity of Everyday LifeDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=William Nicholson's ''The Secret Intensity We tend to think of Everyday LifeMaria 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. Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to 'Callas' is an ensemble story focussing predominantly on middle class and mainly middle age people living to make it more manageable in a Sussex villagethe States. The cover of When she was back in Athens - supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for her voice - she was raised under the book suggests that it is little more than Nazi occupation by a superior chic-lit style story mother who mercilessly exploited her and made no secret of how Laura reacts when an ex-lover from her past appears from out of the blue to disrupt preference for her marriage and two children, but while this is a central issue that runs throughout the bookelder sister, this is only a small part of the story. It's far better than that might suggestJackie.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184916195X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Grace McCleenAlexander McCall Smith|title=The Land of DecorationPerfect Passion Company|rating=4.5|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=Grace McCleen's debut novelThe Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, ''The Land of Decoration'' paints run by Ness and operating as an originalalternative to all the online apps in providing a more personal, unsettling, sometimes dark tailored service. Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and generally rather wonderful picture. Narrated by ten year old Judithlook after the business, raised by her father who as Ness is planning to take a trip to Canada to get away for a fundamental religious follower while. Katie is coming out of a break up with a bad boyfriend, and so jumps at the end of chance to come home to Edinburgh. 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 world is nigh varietyIsabel Dalhousie novels, but with some new characters who quickly begin to charm. Katie has no experience in running a business, it looks at bullyingor in match-making, both at school and but Ness has full confidence in more general societyher abilities, faith and the possible rejection thereof there's always her very helpful (and the strength of childhood imagination.rather handsome) neighbour, William, to lend a hand…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>070118681X</amazonuk>1846976596
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Marlene S LewisDean Koontz|title=RuthThe Bad Weather Friend|rating=4.5|genre=General FictionParanormal|summary=The late 1950s saw 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 lot of changes in society but they were late in coming really weird, disturbing coffin-sized object to Ruthhis home, and it's home in possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the Owen Stanley range in Papua New Guinea. thing that has trashed his house! RuthThe thing is, Benny is the only daughter of plantation owner John Madison, was still in her late teens and away at boarding school very last person to deserve all this bad luck. He is a nice person. A really nice person. So fortunately for much of Benny it turns out that the yeardelivery to his house is a new friend, a bad weather friend called Spike, but when she returned home one of the first people she wanted who has been sent to see was her great friend Tommyhelp him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a good person. They'd grown up together but there was no possibility Spike is going to take care of the relationship being taken any further as Tommy - despite being light skinned - was the son Benny, and will certainly take care of one of the black plantation workers Benny's enemies, if he, Benny, and certain Harper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny'standards' were expected of Ruths wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848766238</amazonuk>1662500491
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Annabelle R CharbitKatherine Howe|title=A Life Lived RidiculouslyTrue Account|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Maxine Hannah Masury is from living in Boston, having been sent to live with a Jewish family who think that as her 20s are nearing their endrun an inn, and being made to work there from a young age. When she should hears there is to be marrieda hanging of some pirates in the town, she decides to go and watch. MaxineEnthralled and horrified in equal measure, for her part, hasnHannah finds herself embroiled in a young boy't found anyone to interest her and is more concerned with combining her job and her studies and getting away from s death at the yoke hands of her parentstwo vicious pirates. She is also worried about her possessions and worries that she has too many and hides away, so that they make her flat look untidy. She just candon't get find and kill her flat organised the way she likes ittoo, either, with the light not being quite right and never quite being able then to escape them completely she runs away to decide which room her television should be in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0984642862</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Henning Mankell|title=The Troubled Man|rating=4|genre=Crime|summary=Hakan von Enke was sea, dressing as a retired naval officer boy and a man of routine. Each morning he went for a long walk in joining the forest near his Stockholm home, but one day he failed to return. Itnotorious Ned Low's pirate ship as a long way from Ystad, Kurt Wallander's home town and the only reason he became involved cabin boy. She soon finds herself in the case was the fact that von Enke's son Hans was the partner thick of Wallander's daughter Linda. Wallander became concerned about von Enke some months before things when they had there is a long discussion at his seventy-fifth birthday party. He'd seemed worried mutiny on board, and wary from there we are caught up in her rip roaring tale of a stranger in life on the street. Von Enke's disappearance hit the family hard - and then his wife disappeared as wellocean waves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099548402</amazonuk>0861547438
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sam Bourne1471180158|title=PantheonMaybe Tomorrow|author=Penny Parkes
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The year is 1940Jamie Matson works in an upper-class grocery store, for a man who's a control freak with all the subtlety of a half brick. Oxford don James Zennor wants to serve Jamie's son, Bo, 'has his countryproblems'. He's asthmatic and the more you read, but due to an injury sustained while fighting in the Spanish Civil War more you'll suspect that he's rejected as unfiton the autistic spectrum. When his wife and young son disappear, though, the trail leads Sometimes Jamie needs to America take time off at short notice - she's a frequent flier in a journey which will plunge him into a world of secret societies, clandestine deals, the local A&E and sometimes Bo's not fit enough to go to school. Missed shifts or the chance need to play his part be away on time to pick Bo up from school are occasions when Jamie can be controlled and put in the war effort after all. If he survives.wrong. It was going to come to a head.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007413637</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Bethan RobertsB0CKD1L5JL|title=My PolicemanRadio Free Olympia|author=Jeffrey Dunn
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The story opens with two schoolfriends Sylvie and Marion doing what teenagers do best - talking and giggling about boysPetr is an orphan. Sylvie has a rather dishy Rescued by the strange, reclusive Bear, he is brought up far from bustling cities and handsome older brother called Tom - and Marion has developed a bit busy human society, in the forests of a crush on him. But itWashington's nothing to worry about, she'll grow out of itOlympic Peninsula. Except she doesn't. Even althoughAfter Bear dies and a brief sojourn in human company, deep down, she has misgivings about this rather lukewarm romance. She's actually sizzling hot for some actionand armed with only a pirate radio transmitter, Petr goes on a bit of kissingjourney through the forest, a bit of harmless snogging - but Tom's broadcasting the one who is lukewarmstrange, wild and rarely heard voices he encounters. Why?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701185848</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Suzanne BuglerSarah Marsh|title=The Child InsideA Sign of Her Own|rating=43.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Rachel Morgan feels that she does not fit in anywhereAfter a bout of scarlet fever as a child, Ellen Lark loses her hearing. Certainly not with all Suddenly plunged into a world of the other mums at silence, everything about her son Jono's posh schoollife changes. Certainly not with all the happy jolly families on Living in a time when the beaches when they are on holiday. And most use of allsign language was seen as something only savages do, Ellen is sent to a school where she no longer feels that is taught to lip read, but physically restrained from signing. From here, she fits ends up in with her own little familyanother school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the deaf and using a system called Visible Speech. Nothing ever feels right At the same time, Bell is working on other inventions and ideas, and she continually feels isolated on the outside looking Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in. Of course, these feelings lead to an increasing sense a complicated tangle of dissatisfaction which she can only deal with by dwelling on what she perceives as her happier pastespionage.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0330510916</amazonuk>1035401614
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jack SheffieldB0BC3YTCMR|title=Educating JackGood Girls Die|author=Ayura Ayira|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=September 1982 sees the beginning of Jack Sheffield's sixth year as head of Ragley-on-the-Forest village school and some of the village regulars are realising that this 'This story is going to be a year to remember too. Nora Pratt has been in the coffee shop not for a quarter of a century noweveryone. Ronnie Smith decides that the world of employment might be for him after all - but is sacked from one job after a matter of seconds. At the cinema it's ET who's pulling in the crowds and Prince William comes into the world along with the 20p piece (well - not at ''exactly'' the same time), but it's Jack Sheffield who is going to face the biggest change.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0593065697</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Wendy Jones1472263936|title=The Thoughts and Happenings of Wilfred Price, Purveyor of Superior FuneralsFigurine|author=Victoria Hislop
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=It's Spring 1924 was in South Wales1968 that Helena McCloud made her first trip to Greece. She was alone: her mother, Greek by birth, had left the family home and young undertaker Wilfred is going refused to return, 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 learn the hard way how serious family apartment in up-market Kolonaki would be the trivial can befirst of several annual visits. Fascinated by a girlShe grew to love her grandmother and the family's dress - worn very seductively by Gracemaid, Dina, who he has met but twice as an adult was wary - and frightened - he blurts out a marriage proposal. As much as wants to take it backof her grandfather, she won't let himretired general Stamatis Papagiannis. He tries was proud of his close connections to move on, leaving her disappointed, especially when he falls for the daughter of a man he buries, Junta and expected his family to uphold his values but..saw no reason to accommodate them. There are things dangerously spoken, dangerously left unsaid, His prejudices included Helena's red hair and a complex web of divided loyalties and enforced connections, in this brilliant debut novelgreen eyes - inherited from her father's Scottish ancestors.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780330561</amazonuk>
}}
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The country might be Michael Mace, Head of Security, at war over the Falklands but life a top secret biological research facility, is among 55 people who die when a virus is hardly straightreleased in a bio-forward 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 Mole householdshrouded bodies of his dead friends and former colleagues. AdrianAs he recovers his senses, he realises that there is something different about him; he can ''feel's parents are back together after both had disastrous affairs and it's not long before Adrian is shocked to learn that his mother is pregnanteverything. He's equally shocked to see his father helping Doreen (a.k.a. the 'stick insectEverything'') along a path which . Michael isn't particularly slippy, although he does notice that she seems to have put on quite a bit of weight. Pandora Braithwaite is as fickle, but adorable, as ever and Adrian's hormones are still playing hop-scotch with his brain'Michael'' anymore. So, what's new?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0141046430</amazonuk>1662500467}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Susan HillB0BVDC2VWH|title=A Kind ManThe Grave Listeners|author=William Frank|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Meet Eve, The village is isolated and her husband, the title character, Tommypoor. SheIt's at surrounded by a bit 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 a sticky wicket in lifethe forest provides heat and warmth, for however much they want a babyroofs on homes, her sister and his feckless husband churn out son after son after soneven gallows, and go no lengths at all to love themif needed. So when Eve The fear of being buried alive is an existential superstition in the village and Tommy do at last have a childthat is the reason Volushka, it's a tragedy for it to die when only three years old. But in this plotdrunken, which you'll thank me for not going into furtherself-indulgent, there will be lazy lout of a lot more swings and roundabouts, of torment and ecstasy, doldrums and delights, hell and heaven, to comeman is tolerated.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099555441</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John NivenB0BYF82CXT|title=The Second ComingSemi-Detached|author=Deborah Stone
|rating=4
|genre=HumourGeneral Fiction|summary=God has come back from ''Bill and Amanda are living in a semi-detached house, stuck in a holiday depressing rut of boredom and disappointment, when Terry and Fiona – glamorous, successful and has some catching up to dovery much in love – move in next door. What’s been happening Despite their different outlooks on Earth life, the couples befriend each other and life appears to improve for the last couple of hundred years? The realisation hits him hard..both pairs. But all is not what it makes him sick in fact. So what’s the answer? To quote the religious clichéseems, Jesus is. After a board meeting with the senior saints, God decides that his son must be torn away from jamming with Hendrix to go back to the streets of the world to remind the sinners of the wayand their increasingly interconnected relationships are fated for tragedy.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099535521</amazonuk>''
}}
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=On the face of it Matt King is very lucky. He's descended from one of Hawaii's largest landowners Alice and is Seth are a wealthy man as well as being an attorneymatch made in heaven. He's married to the flighty, flirtatious Joanie and is everything she has two daughtersbeen searching for; handsome, teenager Alexaccomplished, a model who might just have a bit of a drug problem clever, funny; total and ten year old Scottieutter husband-material. She's feistyis all he could possibly want in a wife; beautiful, successful, clever confident… and so the inevitable proposal is eagerly accepted by Alice and - for me - stole the bookwedding is planned and set. Have you ever noticed that when luck changes it doesn't do it in baby steps? It does it in ''lumps''. Joanie When the much-anticipated day arrives, Alice is involved in a powerboat accident walked down the aisle by her father, beaming with pride and sinks into an irreversible coma excitement as a result of a head injury. But thereshe surveys the congregation – their friends assembled to celebrate this joyful day and when Seth turns to face his approaching bride, Alice's more piling up. Matt discovers that Joanie world implodes because she has been having an affair. Does absolutely no idea who the man at the altar is, who's been - er - enjoying is waiting for her to become his wife have the right to say his goodbyes too?.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099570246</amazonuk>1662507089
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Chris Womersley1787636003|title=BereftThe Girls of Summer|author=Katie Bishop
|rating=5
|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=Quinn Walker, a young Australian man fresh from fighting It was the summer when Rachel Evans turned eighteen that she and Caroline went backpacking around Greece and arrived on the European front island. Rachel wasn't exactly innocent but she was, perhaps, naive, so when thirty-four-year-old Alistair Wright started to take an interest in World War Oneher, returns to the very town he she was flattered rather than wary. It was drummed out of ten years quite a while before, after being accused he made any sort of raping physical approach to her and killing his own younger sisterby that time she was obsessed by him. Two things have beaten him to the small settlement - oneAlistair worked for Henry Taylor, looking after his interests on the global flu pandemic; two a telegram saying he died bravely island and in action earlier particular in the war. And bar where all the less you know of what he meets and does back in Flint the better, the more to keep this fresh and brilliant book's many intrigues as secret as they were for megirls either worked or partied.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857386549</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Helen SchulmanAmanda Craig|title=This Beautiful LifeThree Graces|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Richard and Liz are new in town which is always a bummer, except this town is Manhattan Few styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the state-of-the-nation novel. There's something so really nothing else could ever compare. They’ve only moved from upstate New York but it seems a world away now. Liz has given up her post at the university to concentrate on kids Coco and Jake and is finding juggling their social lives a full time job in itself but is just utterly compelling about making a space for herself among any writer who can catch hold of the other mothers at atmosphere of the school gates. Things are going ok. And then, one dayand capture it, their nice, comfortable world starts to crumble. Jake receives crafting an explicit email from a classmate and image of the country as it stands in disbelief, forwards it straight on to a friendone particular moment. Except rather than coming back to him To say that Amanda Craig is skilled at doing this would be embarrassingly inadequate: she's practically synonymous with advice on what the heck to do next, the friend chooses to send it on to another friend, who does the samegenre of contemporary social fiction at this point. Round and round it goes, round She has such a gift for weaving the school, round ongoing issues of the city, round day into the online world. Everyone knows where it came from lives of her characters in a way that feels natural and soon Jake’s academic futurelived-in, his father’s career and his whole family’s never making them ciphers for social standing are hanging in the balancecommentary but instead fully realised people, grappling with issues far larger than themselves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857896237</amazonuk>140871468X
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Courtney Sullivan152915118X|title=MainePineapple Street|author=Jenny Jackson
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The Kellehers' beach-front holiday home in Maine was built on a plot 'Pineapple Street'' is the story of land won in 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 bar-room bet at Stockton by birth so she isn't readily accepted into the end of World War IItribe. ItThe problem's not in exacerbated when the same league as the Kennedy compound at Hyannis Port but there are a couple of substantial properties on the plot clan matriarch, Tilda, asks Cord and thereSasha if they's still room d like to sparemove into the Pineapple Street property. ItTilda and Chip have renovated and downsized to another property, a street or so away, which they own. They won's a place t need any of indulgencethe furniture from Pineapple Street, secrets so Sasha and the sort of burning cruelty which you only get Cord can move straight in families who care for each other - some of . Nominally, they had a choice but that wasn't the timereality. Darley and Georgiana start to call Sasha 'the gold digger'. She's living in ''their'Maine'family home. They use it so often that they abbreviate it to ' is essentially the story of a summer at the property - but the seeds of what happens were, of course, planted long agoGD'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>085789496X</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Chad HarbachEmily Critchley|title=The Art of FieldingOne Puzzling Afternoon
|rating=4
|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=''The Art of Fielding'' 84 year old Edie has lived in the same small town for almost her whole life, but now she is basically facing a US-style campus novel featuring baseball. There are similarities in style between this move as her son wants to move to another house and many of John Irving's works, bring Edie to live with baseball substituting for Irving's wrestling focus. Thishis family, as Edie is starting to the UK-readerlose her memory. However, raises Edie is tormented by the first potential barrier as we arememory of her childhood friend, as a ruleLucy, largely ignorant of the US fixation with the intricacies of baseball. Certainly you don't need an in depth knowledge to appreciate this story - it is really a story of friendshipwho went missing over 60 years ago, ambition and the sporting dreams of youth - but despite worry that there was a loose understanding of secret she was keeping for Lucy that somehow might be the sport I felt thing that I would have benefitted from more knowledge particularly towards reveals the end when there is a climactic baseball matchtruth of what happened all that time ago. You kind of get After 'seeing' Lucy in the pointhigh street, but I certainly felt that I just as she was missing out on a little the last time she saw her, she starts to find pockets of memories coming back to her. And yet as she remembers the tensionpast, she is forgetting more and more in much the same way I'd expect a US reader her day to be perplexed if day life. Will she uncover the story had been based on say, cricket. Ittruth about Lucy's a minor flaw though disappearance before her move, and it would be a shame if potential readers dismissed it for this reason.before her memories are gone forever?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0007374445</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=Eowyn Ivey0008506337|title=The Snow ChildGarnett Girls|author=Georgina Moore
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The heart of Alaskan nativelove affair between Margo Garnett and poet Richard O'Leary was all-consuming, Eowyn Iveyapparently on both sides. Margo was just sixteen when they fell in love. Richard was twenty-one and described by Margo's debut novel is a re-telling of the Russian fairy tale mother as 'an older man'Snegurochka'' or ''The Snow Child'. 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. Set here in Alaska in In the 1920sevent, Jack they eloped and Mabel have moved Richard took her away from the East coast Isle of Wight. Margo did go to Oxford and went on to start become a new lifewell-respected journalist. The couple had three children: Rachel, apart from anything to help Mabel get over the grief of having lost her only child in childbirthImogen and Sasha. Life was lived in Alaska is tough London and Jack struggles to farm his new homestead. Then in holidays were spent at Sandcove, the family home on the first snowfall Isle of Wight. Even then the season, a playful snowball fight leads doubts about Richard's drinking were never far from Margo's mind: ''she would never be able to the couple building a snowman, or more accurately a snowgirl. The next morning the snowgirl has vanished along with the mittens and scarf that adorned her and Jack sees a ghostly figure, possibly a young girl, running leave him in the woodscharge''. Can they have created a snow child? Is this their longed for daughter?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755380525</amazonuk>Then Richard left them.
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=C J Sansom1914585402|title=Winter in MadridDashboard Elvis is Dead|author=David F Ross
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Despite being injured at Dunkirk Harry Brett was still willing to do his bit for his country. The deafness from the bomb which killed the man standing next to him on the beach - and the resulting panic attacks had begun to recede and he was willing, if not keen, to go to Spain to do some work for the I reviewed David F Ross's book [[There'sneaky beakiess Only One Danny Garvey by David F Ross|There''. He wasn't s Only One Danny Garvey]] a spy by nature or inclination but he was one couple of the few people who might be able to make contact with - years back and report back on - Sandy Forsyth who'd been at his public school. There's another old Rookwoodian who's left some history in Madrid. Bernie Piper went to Spain to fight for the International Brigades in the Civil War remember being absolutely floored by how powerful and affecting it was thought to have been killed at Jarama but his body had never been found. The school is not the only link though. Barbara Clare was Bernie's girlfriend - she It was a Red Cross nurse - gripping, emotionally wounding read, and now she rereading my review of it my main takeaway was living with Sandy Forsyththat I might not have lavished enough praise on it.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330411985</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sue TownsendLucy Ashe|title=The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾Clara and Olivia
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Adrian Mole was just three months away from his fourteenth birthday when he began writing his diary on New YearThe year is 1933. The place? Sadler's DayWells. Ballerinas Clara and Olivia are sisters, twins no less. He's just Identical on the edge of true adolescence - pimples are appearing as is a little bit of interest in outside but not, we learn, on the opposite sexinside. And not on stage, either. HeBecause there's thinking about what he might like a lot that builds a dancer. Some things that can be taught or learnt – discipline, attention to do detail – and some things, that ''eventuallyje ne sais quoi'', but his first major challenge is that don't come from the breakdown of his parents' marriageclassroom. He writes with A stage presence, a charm, a wonderful mixture of ''knowingnessjoie de vivre'' . The difference between a hard-worker, and innocence and usually manages to get things just ever-so-slightly wronga star.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0141046422</amazonuk>0861544080
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Bruce RobinsonHeather Fawcett|title=The Rum Diary - A ScreenplayEmily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries|rating=54
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Kemp Emily Wilde is an expert academic scholar on faerie lore, and she has lied his way onto a failing newspaper in San Juantravelled extensively, Puerto Ricaand researched meticulously, as the only candidate for the jobto write her life's work, and in a semi-comatose state induced by too many miniatures from the hotel minibar, stumbles into a conspiracy very first encyclopaedia of epic proportionsfaeries. Whilst she is brilliant at research and speaking to faeries, via classic bar room brawls and nightclub mayhemshe is not so good with people. On the way he (almost) writes horoscopes and bowling championship stories So when she finds herself far, meets far North in the fantastically erotic girlfriend small village of Hrafvsnik, having somehow offended the evil businessmanvillage matriarch, she is not sure what she has done, nor how to redeem herself and teams up with a proto-Nazi out of his mind put her final investigations for her book back on a cocktail of hootch the right track. Enter Wendell Bambleby, her dashingly handsome and LSDinsufferable rival who arrives unexpectedly, all charm and a photographer side kickdelight, much to Emily's frustration. There But why is no question that this he here? What does he want? And what exactly is Hunter S Thompson territory, especially when all the above is combined going on with a witty, slow-talking hero who in spite of his alcoholic haze sees clearly through the exploitation of a third world country by its massive first world near neighbour. faerie folk around Hravsnik?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099555697</amazonuk>0356519120
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Louisa Young1398515388|title=My Dear I Wanted to Tell YouThe Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=It takes a while for the full power First of Louisa Young's remarkable ''My Dear I Wanted To Tell You'' to become apparentall, but when it doeswas the earthquake, it can hardly fail to move youdeep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, in turn, caused the nuclear meltdown. Set just before The result was complete and during World War Oneutter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, it's a story of love and human spirit against the oddsloss of livelihoods was widespread. The impact fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the book is in what happens to the characters, so I dontsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. He wasn't want to give too much away, a dog person but itthe convenience store owner's worth pointing out comment that it's not for the overly squeamish reader particularly in some of the descriptions of surgical procedures, which have clearly been meticulously researched by Young. The title itself it taken from the opening words of he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the standard letters that the wounded were given to send to loved ones back home. The wounded were required to fill dog jumped in the blanks.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007361432</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Janette JenkinsChristopher Bowden|title=Little BonesMr Magenta
|rating=4
|genre=Historical General Fiction|summary=While this might sound like the afterlife of a brilliant and unlikely cabaret mimic, it's not. ItChristopher Bowden's latest novel is a rich, evocative and engaging novel set in the last years patient untangling of Victoriaa seemingly ordinary woman's reignlife, in the depths of carried out by her darkest Londonnephew after she has died. Fate - The aunt who always provided a safe harbour and being abandoned by, in turn, her mother and older sister - leaves Jane Stretch living with and working for a doctor and his lumpen, housebound wife. Jane is alternatively called an 'unfortunate' and little bit of indulgence to a young nephew had had a 'cripple' for her disabilities much more interesting life than that nephew Stephen had ever realised and distorted frame, but she has enough bookish intelligence it seems to pass herself off as him an assistant obligation to the doctor, who only ever does one operation - abortions, for music hall artistes. The plot is evidently gearing up to reveal how dangerous such a criminal business might be, for the both of themfind it all out.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>070118194X</amazonuk>B0B6Z9VJDW
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Christie WatsonJennifer Mason|title=Tiny Sunbirds Far AwayPartitions of Unity
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=''Tiny Sunbirds Far Away'' starts in Lagos but soon moves to the ruralHere at Bookbag Towers, oil producing Niger Delta. This allows Christie Watson's young narratorwe first met Elizabeth Cromwell, 12 year old Blessing, to view the traditional ways afresh. It's a clever device dominatrix and young Blessing is shocked unintentional detective in [[Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery by the rural conditions after a relatively luxurious life in Lagos with a good school Jennifer Mason|Preposterous]], when she investigated and unravelled a modern apartmentseries of disappearances. But when her mother discovers her father on top In ''Partitions of another womanUnity'', she takes Blessing and sets her older brother, the asthmatic Ezikiel, back mind to her family home.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849163758</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Nick Lake|title=In Darkness|rating=5|genre=Teens|summary=Shorty is lying in the rubble of the great Haitian earthquake of 2010. If he's not rescued soon, he will die. Shorty is from Site Soley, the sprawling slum of Port-au-Prince. After the solving a murder of his father and abduction of his twin sister, Shorty has allowed himself to fall further and further into the slum's gang culture. But Route 9 isn't all about drug-dealing and gun-running - it's also about feeding the poor and educating the children. And Shorty has a great deal to teach his readers, as he recounts his life while waiting to die. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408824183</amazonuk>B09LQR9FRF
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Simon LelicWill Carver|title=The Child WhoDaves Next Door
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Simon Lelic's third book, ''The Child Who'', takes him back Five strangers come together in one moment as a suicide bomber prepares to the format that worked so successfully with detonate his first novel, ''Rupture''vest on a London tube line. As their fates overlap, avoiding the near-future angle he took, less successfully I felt, with his second book. Lelic's themes are always inspired by real events that have been story is told in the news. Herebackwards order, he tackles the murder of an 11 year old child by Daniel, a 12 year old. The creative inspiration is surely the James Bulger case and he acknowledges leading up to the creative debt to Blake Morrison's ''As If'' on that very subjectfateful moment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0330522744</amazonuk>1914585186}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Heather PeaceJennifer Mason|title=All To Play ForPreposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Back ''A struggling poetry zine, a mom-and-pop mobile diner in August 1985 at the time of Northern California redwoods, a 400-meter hurdler who just missed the Edinburgh Festival 2004 Olympics, a women's track coach with a group of people met in what could have been difficult circumstances. They were arrested yen for causing bullwhips, a disturbance despite the fact that they weren't really involved in the fracas and it was all billionaire with a misunderstanding. Little did they know that in the following decade they would all be involved state- one way and another of- in producing drama for the BBC as it went through one of the toughest periods -art S&M dungeon, a man serving a life sentence in its history. The tale is told - mainly - by RhiannonAlabama, an enigmatic signature, but we hear the stories of NickyK(s, Maggiex), Jillon a cheap oil painting, Jonathan and Chrisan erotic art dealer in Georgia... Names will change, but they'll all wander ' This is just a sample of the circular corridors cast of power characters and settings in Langford PlacePreposterous. As you can see, some keeping up will be required! The basic premise of this mystery story goes like this...|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908248130</amazonuk>B09STS96HS
}}
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