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[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]]==General fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Deborah MoggachJenny Lecoat|title=The Best Exotic Marigold HotelBeyond Summerland|rating=34|genre=Women's General Fiction|summary=When Ravi and his cousin Sonny decide to open Jean lives on Jersey with her mother where they are celebrating the end of the occupation. During the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel in Bangalore as a retirement homewar, they donJean't know whether they will get any takers. Howevers father was arrested for listening to a banned radio and soldiers took him away one night, by advertising it as a newly restored palatial hotel that will provide a life leaving Jean and her mother waiting for years for news of leisurehim. As the British finally free the Channel islands from the Nazis, good weather and mango ginthe war is finally over, their hopes rise that they soon get a great deal will finally learn what became of interest and are welcoming their new residentshim. Evelyn But will the truth come as a relief, Madge, Dorothy, Norman and all of or will it raise further questions around what else happened during the war? Who was the others informer who decide to move to told the Nazis about the hotel radio? And what other secrets have their own reasons for leaving Britain but they are all excited by been kept throughout the new opportunity and the lease of new life that it could provide.occupation?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099572028</amazonuk>1846976537

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Anuradha RoyOnyi Nwabineli|title=The Folded EarthAllow Me to Introduce Myself

|summary=Set in a remote hill top town in the Himalayas where the earth has folded Anuri spent her childhood on display to create the majestic sceneryworld, a young woman, Maya, recently widowed arrives thanks to be closer to the scene of her husbandstep-mother Ophelia's climbing accident. Thereincreasingly popular presence on social media, where she encounters a rich variety posted every step of characters who seem Anuri's childhood for sponsorships and influencer deals and, basically, monetary gain. Now Anuri is in her twenties and she is slowly trying to leap of the page, foremost of which two at opposite ends both of society regain her confidence and to get her life's journey back, suing her step- Charumother to take down the content about her. Anuri is battling alcoholism, a young peasant girl whose emerging relationship with a young cook is touching failing to start her PhD, undergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online and sweetreceiving money from them for doing so. Most importantly, and Maya's eccentric landlordshe is desperately worried about her little sister, a relict of who is the Raj who may or may not be in possession new focus of some intriguing personal letters that pertain to IndiaOphelia's history online empire. Can she save her sister, and perhaps herself and her relationship with her father at the departing British.same time?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857388312</amazonuk>0861546873

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Nick Alexander1529153298|title=The Case List of the Missing BoyfriendSuspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey|rating=45

|summary=You could be forgiven for thinking that CC had it allIt's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. At thirty nine she was near the top of the advertising business(A woman? I mean, owned her own flat in north London and had a group of close, party-going friendshonestly... ) ThatShe's not what you saw from the outside's worrying Miv's family, looking inthough. What CC saw was a life that lacked that one essential which she seemed unable to acquireWomen have been disappearing. She was desperate Well, they've been murdered, but to find the man of her dreams and preferably one who would whisk her off to a farm house in Devon where shehave 'd live disappeared'doesn'Thet sound quite so frightening. Miv's upset because she' s overheard that her father wants to move the family 'Down South'Good'' ''Life'. When you're from Yorkshire, Down South is a frightening, foreign place, best avoided. In For Miv, the meantime move would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, and she was stuck with the memories of too many heartbreaks, a mother whose current lifestyle brought a very unfortunate word 'll do anything to mind and being on prevent that. She's not worried about the periphery of dangers or that her friendsMum' dramas s stopped talking - and as they were all gay she didn't have a lot of chance of meeting that elusive manto anyone.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>085789630X</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jon Bauer1035906708|title=Rocks in the BellyDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin|rating=4.5|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=Jon Bauer's first novelWe tend to think of Maria Callas as Greek, ''Rocks but she was born to Greek parents in the Belly''Manhattan, New York, is an emotional journey. The narrator is a man in his late 20s who has returned from Canada December 1923 and only moved to visit his mother who has cancer of the brain. The narrator himself is emotionally damaged from the relationship that he had with his mother from childhood Athens when she and was thirteen. Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her husband fostered children and, interspersed with the narrative, is the voice of narrator at eight years old and father changed it to 'Callas' to make it more manageable in particular telling the experience of one foster boy, Robert, who we know from early on in the book suffered a significant tragedy while in their careStates. What that event When she was will be revealed back in due course, but it is clear Athens - supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for her voice - she was raised under the young boy suffered hugely from jealousy Nazi occupation by a mother who mercilessly exploited her and made no secret of his mother's love her preference for these foster childrenher elder sister, Jackie.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846688450</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Aifric CampbellAlexander McCall Smith|title=On The FloorPerfect Passion Company|rating=4.5

|summary=Geri MolloyThe Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and operating as an alternative to all the central character online apps in Aifric Campbell's ''On The Floor''providing a more personal, tailored service. Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the business, may be earning as Ness is planning to take a six figure salary working at trip to Canada to get away for a London investment bank just prior to the outbreak while. Katie is coming out of a break up with a bad boyfriend, and so jumps at the 1991 invasion of Kuwaitchance to come home to Edinburgh. And so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, but she's seriously messed up. Drinking heavilybringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, sleeping lightly thanks to 44 Scotland Street and mourning the end of a relationshipIsabel Dalhousie novels, she may be a mathematical genius but with a direct line some new characters who quickly begin to charm. Katie has no experience in running a mysterious Hong Kongbusiness, or in match-based hedge fund manager with whom she tradesmaking, but Ness has full confidence in her life is increasingly being controlled by other people.abilities, and there's always her very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, William, to lend a hand…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846688086</amazonuk>1846976596

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ada WilsonDean Koontz|title=Red Army Faction BluesThe Bad Weather Friend|rating=4.5|genre=Literary FictionParanormal|summary=Ada Wilson admits that Benny is having a terrifically bad day. He loses his job, he loses his fiancee, and his fascination with the period is what drove house gets trashed. Oh, and someone has delivered a really weird, disturbing coffin-sized object to his work on this novelhome, and it 's possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the wealth of detail and background thing that strikes one when reading has trashed his account of Peter Urbachhouse! The thing is, Benny is the undercover agent whose role was very last person to act as an agent provocateur to the Red Brigadedeserve all this bad luck. Urbach He is revealed from a nice person. A really nice person. So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the outset as delivery to his house is a new friend, a plantbad weather friend called Spike, an undercover operative who needs has been sent to keep all events of the group 'noted and filed' help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for his mastersbeing a good person. And throughout the first half Spike is going to take care of the novel we see Urbach recording the changes Benny, and developmentswill certainly take care of Benny's enemies, the complex web of political ideologyif he, Benny, naivety and the pure egocentricity of youth which created the happening of the Baader-Meinhof gangHarper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1901927482</amazonuk>1662500491

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Matthew GreenKatherine Howe|title=Memoirs of an Imaginary FriendA True Account|rating=4.5

|summary=Max Hannah Masury is 8 years oldliving in Boston, having been sent to live with a family who run an inn, and being made to work there from a young age. He likes Lego When she hears there is to be a hanging of some pirates in the town, she decides to go and Star Wars watch. Enthralled and playing with toy soldiershorrified in equal measure, Hannah finds herself embroiled in a young boy's death at the hands of two vicious pirates. He can tell you 102 words She hides away, so that rhyme with tree. He scarfs down grilled cheese sandwiches they don't find and kill her too, and chicken then to escape them completely she runs away to sea, dressing as a boy and rice. He does not like physical contactjoining the notorious Ned Low's pirate ship as a cabin boy. He lives with his mum and dad who argue about what She soon finds herself in the thick of things when there is best for him and why he’s not normal like other boys a mutiny on board, and girlsfrom there we are caught up in her rip roaring tale of life on the ocean waves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0751547875</amazonuk>0861547438

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=William Nicholson1471180158|title=The Secret Intensity of Everyday LifeMaybe Tomorrow|author=Penny Parkes|rating=4.5

|summary=William NicholsonJamie Matson works in an upper-class grocery store, for a man who's a control freak with all the subtlety of a half brick. Jamie's son, Bo, 'The Secret Intensity of Everyday Lifehas his problems'. He' is an ensemble story focussing predominantly on middle class s asthmatic and mainly middle age people living in a Sussex village. The cover of the book suggests more you read, the more you'll suspect that it is little more than he's on the autistic spectrum. Sometimes Jamie needs to take time off at short notice - she's a superior chic-lit style story of how Laura reacts when an ex-lover from her past appears from out of frequent flier in the local A&E and sometimes Bo's not fit enough to go to school. Missed shifts or the blue need to be away on time to disrupt her marriage pick Bo up from school are occasions when Jamie can be controlled and two children, but while this is a central issue that runs throughout the book, this is only a small part of put in the storywrong. It's far better than that might suggestwas going to come to a head.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184916195X</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Grace McCleenB0CKD1L5JL|title=The Land of Decoration|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Grace McCleen's debut novel, ''The Land of Decoration'' paints an original, unsettling, sometimes dark and generally rather wonderful picture. Narrated by ten year old Judith, raised by her father who is a fundamental religious follower of the end of the world is nigh variety, it looks at bullying, both at school and in more general society, faith and the possible rejection thereof and the strength of childhood imagination.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>070118681X</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewRadio Free Olympia|author=Marlene S Lewis|title=RuthJeffrey Dunn

|summary=The late 1950s saw a lot of changes in Petr is an orphan. Rescued by the strange, reclusive Bear, he is brought up far from bustling cities and busy human society but they were late , in coming to Ruththe forests of Washington's home in the Owen Stanley range in Papua New GuineaOlympic Peninsula. RuthAfter Bear dies and a brief sojourn in human company, the and armed with only daughter of plantation owner John Madisona pirate radio transmitter, was still in her late teens and away at boarding school for much of Petr goes on a journey through the yearforest, but when she returned home one of broadcasting the first people she wanted to see was her great friend Tommy. They'd grown up together but there was no possibility of the relationship being taken any further as Tommy - despite being light skinned - was the son of one of the black plantation workers strange, wild and certain 'standards' were expected of Ruthrarely heard voices he encounters.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848766238</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Annabelle R CharbitSarah Marsh|title=A Life Lived RidiculouslySign of Her Own|rating=43.5

|summary=Maxine is from After a Jewish family who think that bout of scarlet fever as a child, Ellen Lark loses her 20s are nearing their end, she should be marriedhearing. MaxineSuddenly plunged into a world of silence, for everything about her partlife changes. Living in a time when the use of sign language was seen as something only savages do, hasn't found anyone Ellen is sent to interest her and a school where she is more concerned with combining her job and her studies and getting away taught to lip read, but physically restrained from the yoke of her parentssigning. She is also worried about her possessions and worries that From here, she ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has too many been teaching the deaf and that they make her flat look untidyusing a system called Visible Speech. She just can't get her flat organised At the way she likes itsame time, eitherBell is working on other inventions and ideas, with the light not being quite right and never quite being able to decide which room her television should be Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up ina complicated tangle of espionage.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0984642862</amazonuk>1035401614

{{newreview|author=Henning Mankell|title=The Troubled Man|rating=4|genre=Crime|summary=Hakan von Enke Lavender Daniels was a retired naval officer and a man three weeks short of routineher fifteenth birthday when The Incident happened. Each morning he went for She was a long walk in the forest near his Stockholm homevery bright student, but one day he failed to return. It's a long way from Ystadbit too nerdy if truth be told, Kurt Wallander's home town and the only reason he became involved suffered from vitiligo - people were afraid to hug her in the case was the fact that von Enkeit's son Hans was the partner of Wallandercontagious. It's daughter Lindanot easy being a black girl whose skin is 84% white. Wallander became concerned about von Enke some months before when they She had a long discussion at his seventycrush on seventeen-year-fifth birthday partyold Reggie Anderson but never thought he would notice her. He'd seemed worried Then he did: Lavender was very good at math and wary of a stranger in the streetReggie asked if she would tutor him. She readily agreed: tutoring was something she gladly did at church: this was just an extension. Von Enke's disappearance hit the family hard - She went to his house and then his wife disappeared as wellhe raped her. In shock, she even allowed him to give her a lift home.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099548402</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sam Bourne1472263936|title=PantheonThe Figurine|author=Victoria Hislop|rating=4.5

|summary=The year is 1940It was in 1968 that Helena McCloud made her first trip to Greece. Oxford don James Zennor wants She was alone: her mother, Greek by birth, had left the family home and refused to serve his countryreturn, but due 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 an injury sustained while fighting the family apartment in up-market Kolonaki would be the first of several annual visits. She grew to love her grandmother and the Spanish Civil War hefamily's rejected as unfit. When his wife and young son disappearmaid, thoughDina, the trail leads to America in a journey which will plunge him into a world but was wary - and frightened - of secret societies, clandestine dealsher grandfather, retired general Stamatis Papagiannis. He was proud of his close connections to the Junta and the chance expected his family to play uphold his part in the war effort after all. If he survives.values but saw no reason to accommodate them. His prejudices included Helena's red hair and green eyes - inherited from her father's Scottish ancestors.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007413637</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=Bethan RobertsB0BVDC2VWH|title=My PolicemanThe Grave Listeners|author=William Frank

|summary=The story opens with two schoolfriends Sylvie and Marion doing what teenagers do best - talking village is isolated and giggling about boyspoor. Sylvie has It's surrounded by a rather dishy and handsome older brother called Tom Witching Forest. And the villagers subsist largely by farming Uphegia plants - its bread- like fruit provides nutrition and Marion has developed a bit its blossom provides herbal medicines. The black wood of a crush the forest provides heat and warmth, roofs on himhomes, and even gallows, if needed. But it's nothing to worry about, she'll grow out The fear of it. Except she doesn't. Even althoughbeing buried alive is an existential superstition in the village and that is the reason Volushka, deep downa drunken, she has misgivings about this rather lukewarm romance. She's actually sizzling hot for some actionself-indulgent, a bit lazy lout of kissing, a bit of harmless snogging - but Tom's the one who man is lukewarmtolerated. Why?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701185848</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Suzanne BuglerB0BYF82CXT|title=The Child InsideSemi-Detached|author=Deborah Stone|rating=4.5

|summary=Rachel Morgan feels that she does not fit ''Bill and Amanda are living in a semi-detached house, stuck in anywhere. Certainly not with all a depressing rut of the other mums at her son Jono's posh school. Certainly not with all the happy jolly families on the beaches boredom and disappointment, when they are on holiday. And most of allTerry and Fiona – glamorous, she no longer feels that she fits successful and very much in love – move in with her own little familynext door. Nothing ever feels right and she continually feels isolated Despite their different outlooks on life, the outside looking incouples befriend each other and life appears to improve for both pairs. Of courseBut all is not what it seems, these feelings lead to an increasing sense of dissatisfaction which she can only deal with by dwelling on what she perceives as her happier pastand their increasingly interconnected relationships are fated for tragedy.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330510916</amazonuk>''

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jack SheffieldShalini Boland|title=Educating JackThe Silent Bride|rating=43

|summary=September 1982 sees the beginning of Jack Sheffield's sixth year as head of Ragley-on-the-Forest village school Alice and some of the village regulars Seth are realising that this is going to be a year to remember toomatch made in heaven. Nora Pratt He is everything she has been in the coffee shop searching for a quarter of a century now; handsome, accomplished, clever, funny; total and utter husband-material. Ronnie Smith decides that the world of employment might be for him after She is all - but is sacked from one job after he could possibly want in a matter of seconds. At wife; beautiful, successful, confident… and so the cinema it's ET who's pulling in the crowds inevitable proposal is eagerly accepted by Alice 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 wedding is going to face the biggest change.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0593065697</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Tony Ross|title=A Fairy Tale|rating=4.5|genre=Confident Readers|summary=In Balaclava Street Bessie was bored. Even her book wasn't helping. It was about fairies planned and she didn't believe in them, ''obviously''set. And even if they did exist they'd have more sense than to live in When the gloomy streets around the millmuch-anticipated day arrives, wouldn't they? Playing with her ball in Alice is walked down the back yard she encountered aisle by her next-door neighbourfather, Mrs Leaf beaming with pride and a strange friendship developed between the old woman and the young girl. It was difficult for Bessie to work out if Mrs Leaf actually believed in fairies, but it seemed strange that excitement as Bessie got older, Mrs Leaf seemed to get younger. And who ''exactly'' was Mrs Leaf?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849393559</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Jon McGregor|title=This Isn't she surveys the Sort of Thing That Happens congregation – their friends assembled to Someone Like You|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The clue is in the Christopher Brookmyre-styled title. If the events, characters celebrate this joyful day and circumstances in these stories are known when Seth turns to youface his approaching bride, then you have my sympathies. A man causes an embarrassment trying to watch his daughterAlice's first school nativity play. Another world implodes because she has a phobia of eggs containing an avian foetus when he puts knife and fork to them. There's a car crash here - and thereabsolutely no idea who the man at the altar is, a drowning, some arson, some theft... and a lot of clues that point who is waiting for her to some national disaster. Take all those clues as one and you eventually see this is more than just a collection of disparate short stories, but a very fractured, obfuscated novelbecome his wife.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408809265</amazonuk>1662507089

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Wendy Jones1787636003|title=The Thoughts and Happenings Girls of Wilfred Price, Purveyor of Superior FuneralsSummer|author=Katie Bishop

|summary=It's Spring 1924 in South Wales, was the summer when Rachel Evans turned eighteen that she and Caroline went backpacking around Greece and young undertaker Wilfred is going to learn arrived on the hard way how serious the trivial can beisland. Fascinated by a girlRachel wasn's dress t exactly innocent but she was, perhaps, naive, so when thirty- worn very seductively by Grace, who he has met but twice as an adult four-year- he blurts out a marriage proposal. As much as wants old Alistair Wright started to take it backan interest in her, she won't let himwas flattered rather than wary. He tries It was quite a while before he made any sort of physical approach to move on, leaving her disappointed, especially when he falls for the daughter of a man he buries, but..and by that time she was obsessed by him. There are things dangerously spoken, dangerously left unsaidAlistair worked for Henry Taylor, looking after his interests on the island and a complex web of divided loyalties and enforced connections, in this brilliant debut novelparticular in the bar where all the girls either worked or partied.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780330561</amazonuk>

 {{newreview|author=Karen Harper|title=Shakespeare's Mistress|rating=2|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=The conceit of ''Shakespeare's Mistress'' is that Shakespeare was married to Anne Whateley the day before he was married to Anne Hathaway, and Anne W remained the love of his life, with an affair (if you can have an affair with your 'wife') continued in London where the same Anne was also the famed ''dark lady'' of his sonnets. There is some basis for this theory in that the parish records do show a mysterious entry into the register for just such a contract the day before the Hathaway marriage but although the author claims this is 'faction', it's very much at the fiction end of that scale and is really a 'what if?' piece.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091940427</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sue TownsendAmanda Craig|title=The Growing Pains of Adrian MoleThree Graces

|summary=The country might be at war over Few styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the Falklands but life is hardly straightstate-of-forward in the Mole household-nation novel. AdrianThere's parents are back together after both had disastrous affairs something so utterly compelling about any writer who can catch hold of the atmosphere of the day and capture it's not long before Adrian is shocked to learn , crafting an image of the country as it stands in one particular moment. To say that his mother Amanda Craig is pregnant. Heskilled at doing this would be embarrassingly inadequate: she's equally shocked to see his father helping Doreen (a.kpractically 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 'stick insect') along lives of her characters in a path which isn't particularly slippy, although he does notice way that she seems to have put on quite a bit of weight. Pandora Braithwaite is as ficklefeels natural and lived-in, never making them ciphers for social commentary but adorableinstead fully realised people, as ever and Adrian's hormones are still playing hop-scotch grappling with his brainissues far larger than themselves. So, what's new?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0141046430</amazonuk>140871468X

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Susan Hill152915118X|title=A Kind ManPineapple Street|author=Jenny Jackson

|summary=Meet Eve''Pineapple Street'' is the story of three women: Sasha, Darley and Georgiana. Darley and her husbandGeorge are sisters and Sasha is married to their brother Cord. They're Stocktons, only Sasha isn't a Stockton by birth so she isn't readily accepted into the title character, Tommytribe. SheThe problem's at a bit of a sticky wicket in life, for however much they want a babyexacerbated when the clan matriarch, her sister and his feckless husband churn out son after son after sonTilda, asks Cord and go no lengths at all Sasha if they'd like to love themmove into the Pineapple Street property. So when Eve Tilda and Tommy do at last Chip have renovated and downsized to another property, a childstreet or so away, it's a tragedy for it to die when only three years oldwhich they own. But in this plot, which youThey won'll thank me for not going into further, there will be a lot more swings and roundabouts, t need any of torment and ecstasythe furniture from Pineapple Street, doldrums so Sasha and delightsCord can move straight in. Nominally, hell they had a choice but that wasn't the reality. Darley and heaven, Georgiana start to call Sasha 'the gold digger'. She's living in ''their'' family home. They use it so often that they abbreviate it to come'the GD'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099555441</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=John NivenEmily Critchley|title=The Second ComingOne Puzzling Afternoon

|genre=HumourCrime|summary=God 84 year old Edie has come back from lived in the same small town for almost her whole life, but now she is facing a holiday move as her son wants to move to another house and has some catching up bring Edie to live with his family, as Edie is starting to dolose her memory. What’s been happening on Earth for However, Edie is tormented by the last couple memory of hundred her childhood friend, Lucy, who went missing over 60 years? The realisation hits him hard... it makes him sick in fact. So what’s ago, and the worry that there was a secret she was keeping for Lucy that somehow might be the answer? To quote thing that reveals the religious cliché, Jesus istruth of what happened all that time ago. After a board meeting with 'seeing' Lucy in the high street, just as she was the senior saintslast time she saw her, God decides that his son must be torn away from jamming with Hendrix she starts to go find pockets of memories coming back to her. And yet as she remembers the streets of the world past, she is forgetting more and more in her day to remind day life. Will she uncover the sinners of the way.truth about Lucy's disappearance before her move, and before her memories are gone forever?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099535521</amazonuk>1804181250

 {{newreview|author=R J Palacio|title=Wonder|rating=4.5|genre=Confident Readers|summary=August Pullman was born with a rare genetic defect that has caused extreme facial disfiguration. He has undergone 27 surgeries since he was born and has always been vulnerable to illness. In order to deal with his medical needs and to shield him from the staring and cruelty of the world, Auggie has been home-schooled by his parents for his entire life. But Auggie is stronger now and all of that is about to change. Auggie is about to enter school for the first time – and he’s petrified. ‘Wonder’ is the story of Auggie’s first year at Beecher Prep and his first journey alone into the outside world. But can he confront the challenges that wait for him there and convince his classmates, new friends, family and himself that, underneath his unusual appearance, he is just the same as everybody else?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0370332288</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Kaui Hart HemmingsMadelaine Lucas|title=The Descendants|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=On the face of it Matt King is very lucky. He's descended from one of Hawaii's largest landowners and is a wealthy man as well as being an attorney. He's married to the flighty, flirtatious Joanie and has two daughters, teenager Alex, a model who might just have a bit of a drug problem and ten year old Scottie. She's feisty, clever and - Thirst for me - stole the book. Have you ever noticed that when luck changes it doesn't do it in baby steps? It does it in ''lumps''. Joanie is involved in a powerboat accident and sinks into an irreversible coma as a result of a head injury. But there's more piling up. Matt discovers that Joanie has been having an affair. Does the man who's been - er - enjoying his wife have the right to say his goodbyes too?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099570246</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Chris Womersley|title=BereftSalt

|summary=Quinn Walker''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 Australian man fresh from fighting on woman unravels the European front in World War Oneyear-long relationship that once defined her. Overlaid with later wisdom, returns to the very town he was drummed out of ten narrator relives the affair with a man twenty years before, her senior from its inception – the summer after being accused of raping and killing his own younger sister. Two things have beaten him finishing university – to its sorrowful end the small settlement - one, the global flu pandemic; two a telegram saying he died bravely in action earlier in the warsummer after. And Set against the less you know backdrop of what he meets and does back in Flint an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the better24-year-old narrator's deepening relationship with her older lover, depicting its all-consuming nature, the more to keep this fresh how it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and brilliant book's many intrigues as secret as they were for mehow it altered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857386549</amazonuk>0861546490

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Helen Schulman0008506337|title=This Beautiful LifeThe Garnett Girls|author=Georgina Moore

|summary=The love affair between Margo Garnett and poet Richard and Liz are new O'Leary was all-consuming, apparently on both sides. Margo was just sixteen when they fell in town which is always a bummer, except this town is Manhattan so really nothing else could ever comparelove. They’ve only moved from upstate New York but it seems a world away now Richard was twenty-one and described by Margo's mother as 'an older man'. Liz has given up Her parents worried that Richard's influence would take her post at the university away from what they felt she could achieve - going to concentrate on kids Coco and Jake Oxford and is finding juggling their social lives having a full time job in itself but is just about making a space for herself among glittering career. In the other mothers at event, they eloped and Richard took her away from the school gates. Things are going okIsle of Wight. And then, one day, their nice, comfortable world starts Margo did go to crumble. Jake receives an explicit email from a classmate Oxford and in disbelief, forwards it straight went on to become a friendwell-respected journalist. Except rather than coming back to him with advice on what the heck to do next The couple had three children: Rachel, the friend chooses to send it on to another friend, who does the sameImogen and Sasha. Round Life was lived in London and round it goesholidays were spent at Sandcove, round the school, round family home on the city, round Isle of Wight. Even then the online world. Everyone knows where it came doubts about Richard's drinking were never far from and soon Jake’s academic future, his father’s career and his whole family’s social standing are hanging Margo's mind: ''she would never be able to leave him in the balancecharge''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857896237</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Courtney Sullivan|title=Maine|rating=4Then Richard left them.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=The Kellehers' beach-front holiday home in Maine was built on a plot of land won in a bar-room bet at the end of World War II. It's not in the same league as the Kennedy compound at Hyannis Port but there are a couple of substantial properties on the plot and there's still room to spare. It's a place of indulgence, secrets and the sort of burning cruelty which you only get in families who care for each other - some of the time. ''Maine'' is essentially the story of a summer at the property - but the seeds of what happens were, of course, planted long ago.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>085789496X</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Chad Harbach1914585402|title=The Art of Fielding|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=''The Art of Fielding'' is basically a US-style campus novel featuring baseball. There are similarities in style between this and many of John Irving's works, with baseball substituting for Irving's wrestling focus. This, to the UK-reader, raises the first potential barrier as we are, as a rule, 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 friendship, ambition and the sporting dreams of youth - but despite a loose understanding of the sport I felt that I would have benefitted from more knowledge particularly towards the end when there Dashboard Elvis is a climactic baseball match. You kind of get the point, but I certainly felt that I was missing out on a little of the tension, in much the same way I'd expect a US reader to be perplexed if the story had been based on say, cricket. It's a minor flaw though and it would be a shame if potential readers dismissed it for this reason.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007374445</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewDead|author=Eowyn Ivey|title=The Snow Child|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary=The heart of Alaskan native, Eowyn Ivey's debut novel is a re-telling of the Russian fairy tale ''Snegurochka'' or ''The Snow Child''. Set here in Alaska in the 1920s, Jack and Mabel have moved from the East coast to start a new life, apart from anything to help Mabel get over the grief of having lost her only child in childbirth. Life in Alaska is tough and Jack struggles to farm his new homestead. Then in the first snowfall of the season, a playful snowball fight leads 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 in the woods. Can they have created a snow child? Is this their longed for daughter?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755380525</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=C J Sansom|title=Winter in MadridDavid F Ross

|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>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sue TownsendLucy Ashe|title=The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾Clara and Olivia

|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

|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

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Louisa Young1398515388|title=My Dear I Wanted to Tell YouThe Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)

|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

|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

|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

|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

|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