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[[Category:General Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]]==General fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Paul BroderickJenny Lecoat|title=The Bankruptcy DiariesBeyond Summerland|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=In 2000Jean lives on Jersey with her mother where they are celebrating the end of the occupation. During the war, Jean's father was arrested for listening to a banned radio and soldiers took him away one night, Paul Livingson graduated from university leaving Jean and got his first proper grown up job. By 2007 he had filed her mother waiting for years for bankruptcynews of him. With no failed businesses As the British finally free the Channel islands from the Nazis, and the war is finally over, unfortunate property depreciation or poor stock market investments in between you might be at their hopes rise that they will finally learn what became of him. But will the truth come as a loss to see how he ended up thererelief, until you read his diary of those years and or will it all becomes crystal clear.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>0956511937</amazonuk>1846976537
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Francis GilbertOnyi Nwabineli|title=The Last Day of TermAllow Me to Introduce Myself
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=It's Anuri spent her childhood on display to the last day of term at the Gilda Ball Academyworld, and English teacher Martin can't wait for the holiday thanks to start. Shaken by the death of his friend Jack in a riot at the school, heher step-mother Ophelia's failed to notice his marriage falling to pieces and his relationship with his son deteriorating. Just when he thinks things can't get any worseincreasingly popular presence on social media, an anonymous pupil accuses him where she posted every step of inappropriate sexual conduct.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906021511</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Evonne Wareham|title=Never Coming Home|rating=3.5|genre=Crime|summary=Kaz Elmore has almost come to terms with her daughterAnuri's deathchildhood for sponsorships and influencer deals and, basically, monetary gain. She died while on holiday Now Anuri is in America with her father (Kaz's ex husband) twenties and she is slowly trying to regain her ashes have been scattered on confidence and to get her life back, suing her step-mother to take down the rivercontent about her. As tragic as it Anuri isbattling alcoholism, Kaz has no alternative but failing to accept that start her daughter is never coming back. HoweverPhD, one day she receives a visit undergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online and receiving money from a man called Devlinthem for doing so. Most importantly, who witnessed the accident and was holding Jamie when she died. His sole intention is to provide some comfort for Kaz by telling desperately worried about her that her daughter was not alone but when he spots photographs of Jamielittle sister, he realises that she who is not the child who died in his arms.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906931704</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Andrea Eames|title=The Cry new focus of the Go-Away Bird|rating=3|genre=General Fiction|summary=Ophelia'The Cry of the Go-Away Bird' is the debut novel from Andrea Eamess online empire. It revolves around Elise Can she save her sister, a white Zimbabwean girl living through and perhaps herself and her teens on the eve of the Mugabe-sponsored farm invasions at the beginning of this century. The author herself grew up in Zimbabwe before moving to New Zealand relationship with her family father at the age of seventeen and there is a strong sense of memoir and personal experience in the novel, which has both positive and negative effects on the narrative.same time?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846553733</amazonuk>0861546873
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Alexander McCall Smith1529153298|title=The Saturday Big Tent Wedding PartyList of Suspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Alexander McCall Smith makes it look It'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, but to have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so easy, churning out book after delightful book frightening. Miv's upset because she's overheard that continue her father wants to delight and amuse his loyal readersmove the family 'Down South'. His writing seems effortlessWhen you're from Yorkshire, Down South is a frightening, and in this storyforeign place, once againbest avoided. For Miv, the characters remain move would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, and she'll do anything to prevent that. She's not worried about the wonderful friends we have always known and expected them dangers or that her Mum's stopped talking - to be, as if they really are alive and living these stories somewhere and AMS is simply transcribing them for our pleasureanyone.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0349123136</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Rosie Dastgir1035906708|title=A Small FortuneDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Harris Anwar is truly a man who is split between two worlds. He's a British Pakistani, proud We tend to think of his Eastern rootsMaria Callas as Greek, but when he came she was born to the UK he changed his name from Haaris - with a longGreek parents in Manhattan, New York, flat vowel - in December 1923 and only moved to the more acceptable Harris and his clothing Athens when she was that favoured by an English gentlemanthirteen. HeHer original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to 'Callas's proud and he would say many reasons to be proudmake it more manageable in the States. Some of the things of which he's proud are relatively small When she was back in Athens - the vacuum cleaner which he's had supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for twenty years might not work particularly well, but he's proud that he's hung on to it. He's proud of his car, her voice - she was raised under the central heating which he installed himself Nazi occupation by a mother who mercilessly exploited her and most made no secret of all he's proud of his daughterher preference for her elder sister, Jackie.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857383736</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=David NichollsAlexander McCall Smith|title=One DayThe Perfect Passion Company|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=I knew within The Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and operating as an alternative to all the online apps in providing a more personal, tailored service. Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the first ten pages that I was going business, as Ness is planning to take a trip to Canada to love ''One Day''get away for a while. It Katie is the only book that has kept me coming out of a break up at nightwith a bad boyfriend, distracted me throughout the day and woken me up early in so jumps at the morningchance to come home to Edinburgh. I couldn't put it down And so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, thanks to 44 Scotland Street and didn't want the Isabel Dalhousie novels, but with some new characters who quickly begin to eithercharm. I have always found it difficult to settle on Katie has no experience in running a favourite type of storybusiness, or even a specific genre that I likein match-making, but this novel made me realise that what I want Ness has full confidence in a book is realism. As Dexter Mayhew her abilities, and there's always her very helpful (and Emma Morley enjoyed their late night conversation in the opening moments of the bookrather handsome) neighbour, William, Nicholls pulled me into his world.to lend a hand…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0340896981</amazonuk>1846976596
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=John GreenDean Koontz|title=The Fault in Our StarsBad Weather Friend|rating=4.5|genre=TeensParanormal|summary=Having been diagnosed at age 12 with stage 4 thyroid cancerBenny is having a terrifically bad day. He loses his job, he loses his fiancee, Hazel was prepared to dieand his house gets trashed. Then at age 14 Oh, and someone has delivered a miracle treatment shrunk really weird, disturbing coffin-sized object to his home, and it's possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the tumours in her lungsthing that has trashed his house! The thing is, Benny is the very last person to deserve all this bad luck. He is a nice person. A really nice person. So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the time being. Hazel could live for years, or she could die at any time, but her days are spent tethered delivery to an oxygen tank and under constant surveillance and treatment to keep the cancer at bay. Hazel his house is now 16. With her life in a constant holding patternnew friend, Hazel meets Augustus Waters at a cancer support group. Augustus is gorgeousbad weather friend called Spike, sharp-witted, in remission and completely attracted to Hazel. As their relationship blossoms and grows, Hazel finds she who has been sent to re-examine her attitude about life and death, illness and wellness and love. Their brief journey together leaves help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a lasting legacy behind that will change everythinggood person.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0525478817</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Ken MacLeod|title=Intrusion|rating=5|genre=Science Fiction|summary=Pregnant Hope doesn't want Spike is going to take the Fixcare of Benny, a genetic cure-all pill that corrects the DNA of an unborn child and protects it from all sorts will certainly take care of diseases. HopeBenny's husband Hugh doesnenemies, if he, Benny, and Harper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny't really understand her objections to the Fix - in fact, Hope never really articulates them at all - but supports her right to chooses wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1841499390</amazonuk>1662500491
}}
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Aaron's wifeHannah Masury is living in Boston, Dorothyhaving been sent to live with a family who run an inn, was killed in an accidentand being made to work there from a young age. An oak tree fell on their home, demolishing the sun porch where Dorothy happened When she hears there is to be at the time. He worried that if he had done things differently (a matter hanging of some biscuits and a television set) Dorothy might not have been where pirates in the town, she was decides to go and might still be alive watch. Enthralled and for horrified in equal measure, Hannah finds herself embroiled in a while he camped out in young boy's death at the wrecked house until further damage forced him to move in with his sisterhands of two vicious pirates. It was then She hides away, so that he realised that Dorothy wasnthey don't really dead - wellfind and kill her too, and then to escape them completely she runs away to sea, not dead dressing as we understand it - a boy and joining the notorious Ned Low's pirate ship as she materialised a cabin boy. She soon finds herself in odd placesthe thick of things when there is a mutiny on board, wearing the clothes she used to wear and eventually staying with Aaron for longer periods from there we are caught up in her rip roaring tale of time. And gradually they began to bicker, just like a long-married couple..life on the ocean waves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701187190</amazonuk>0861547438
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Elizabeth Haynes1471180158|title=Revenge of the TideMaybe Tomorrow|author=Penny Parkes
|rating=4.5
|genre=CrimeGeneral Fiction|summary=Genevieve worked as Jamie Matson works in an upper-class grocery store, for a sales executive by day and man who's a pole dancer by night but her dream was to buy and renovate control freak with all the subtlety of a boat where she could livehalf brick. That was why she persisted in the pressuredJamie's son, Bo, chauvinistic world of software sales 'has his problems'. He's asthmatic and the increasingly sleazy world of more you read, the private gentlemanmore you'll suspect that he's club where she could earn a four figure sum each evening as well as getting a good workouton the autistic spectrum. It was nip-andSometimes Jamie needs to take time off at short notice -tuck as to whether or not she made it but after 's a few months on frequent flier in the boat at a marina on the Medway she was feeling good local A&E and sometimes Bo's not fit enough about her life to hold a boat-warming partygo to school. It was planned as a mixture of Missed shifts or the people she'd met at need to be away on time to pick Bo up from school are occasions when Jamie can be controlled and put in the marina and some of her sales colleagues from Londonwrong. But on the night of the party It was going to come to a body washed up at the side of her boat and Genevieve knew the victimhead.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956792642</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sofka ZinovieffB0CKD1L5JL|title=The House on Paradise StreetRadio Free Olympia|author=Jeffrey Dunn
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Maud Perifanis wasn't unduly worried when her husband didn't return home one evening as he often stayed in his office when he was working and Petr is an orphan. Rescued by the news that he had been killed in a car accidentstrange, well out of Athens on the Saronic Gulfreclusive Bear, was a shock to everyone in the house on Paradise Street where the extended family lived. Nikitas had been he is brought up by his aunt Alexandra far from bustling cities and her husband and she now lived in one apartmentbusy human society, Orestes (his son from his second marriage) in the studio forests of Washington's Olympic Peninsula. After Bear dies and hea brief sojourn in human company, Maud and their daughter Tig lived in armed with only a pirate radio transmitter, Petr goes on a third apartment. There was someone missing though. Antigone was Alexandra's sister - and Nikitas' mother - but she'd left Greece for Russia when he was three journey through the forest, broadcasting the strange, wild and rarely heard voices he hadn't seen her since. She was over eighty when she heard the news and she came back for the funeralencounters.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907595694</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Francois LelordSarah Marsh|title=Hector Finds Time (Hector's Journeys)A Sign of Her Own|rating=43.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Meet, if you haven't alreadyAfter a bout of scarlet fever as a child, Hector the psychiatristEllen Lark loses her hearing. He's like Suddenly plunged into a champagne corkworld of silence, and when something prays on his mind a lot POP he's off on a global trip to set things righteverything about her life changes. And, like a champagne cork let off Living in a posh place, he'll likely crash through a chandelier time when the use of scintillatingsign language was seen as something only savages do, interesting little points, scattering them left, right and centre, and creating Ellen is sent to a pretty, if random, pattern on the book page. This time it school where she istaught to lip read, er, timebut physically restrained from signing. From patients worried they've none lefthere, to those she ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who want to grow up faster, has been teaching the deaf and those putting anti-ageing cream on crows'-feetusing a system called Visible Speech. What is At the best approach to spendingsame time, passing Bell is working on other inventions and perhaps not worrying aboutideas, time?and Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a complicated tangle of espionage.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1906040893</amazonuk>1035401614
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Alexander McCall SmithB0BC3YTCMR|title=The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection: The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency, Book 13Good Girls Die|author=Ayura Ayira|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Those of you who are frequent visitors to The Bookbag will know that I am a big fan of Alexander McCall Smith's writing'This story is not for everyone. I am supremely happy that he continues to write so regularly and reliably, providing me with much looked forward to reading matter several times through the year. This time it's the turn of Mma Ramotswe to slip back into my mind as we read of her detecting adventures in this, the thirteenth book in the series.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408702606</amazonuk>}}'
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Anuradha Roy1472263936|title=The Folded EarthFigurine|author=Victoria Hislop|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Set in a remote hill top town It was in 1968 that Helena McCloud made her first trip to Greece. She was alone: her mother, Greek by birth, had left the Himalayas where the earth has folded family home and refused to create the majestic sceneryreturn, but Mary and Hamish (Helena's parents) felt that it would be a young woman, Maya, recently widowed arrives 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 closer to the scene first of her husband's climbing accidentseveral annual visits. There, she encounters a rich variety of characters who seem She grew to leap of love her grandmother and the page, foremost of which two at opposite ends both of society and lifefamily's journey - Charumaid, a young peasant girl whose emerging relationship with a young cook is touching and sweetDina, but was wary - and Maya's eccentric landlordfrightened - of her grandfather, a relict retired general Stamatis Papagiannis. He was proud of his close connections to the Raj who may or may not be in possession of some intriguing personal letters that pertain Junta and expected his family to uphold his values but saw no reason to Indiaaccommodate them. His prejudices included Helena's history red hair and the departing Britishgreen eyes - inherited from her father's Scottish ancestors.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857388312</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Nick AlexanderDean Koontz|title=The Case of the Missing BoyfriendAfter Death|rating=43
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=You could be forgiven for thinking that CC had it all. At thirty nine she was near the Michael Mace, Head of Security, at a top of the advertising businesssecret biological research facility, owned her own flat is among 55 people who die when a virus is released in north London and had a group of close, partybio-going friendshazard accident. That's what you saw from the outsideFinding himself in a makeshift mortuary, looking covered in. What CC saw was plastic, he has a life sense that lacked that one essential which she seemed unable something very, very bad has happened to acquire. She was desperate to find him – and only him – as he sits up and looks around at the man shrouded bodies of her dreams his dead friends and preferably one who would whisk her off to a farm house in Devon where sheformer colleagues. As he recovers his senses, he realises that there is something different about him; he can 'd live 'feel'The'everything. ' 'Everything'Good'. Michael isn' t ''LifeMichael''. In the meantime she was stuck with the memories of too many heartbreaks, a mother whose current lifestyle brought a very unfortunate word to mind and being on the periphery of her friends' dramas - and as they were all gay she didn't have a lot of chance of meeting that elusive mananymore.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>085789630X</amazonuk>1662500467}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jon BauerB0BVDC2VWH|title=Rocks in the Belly|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Jon Bauer's first novel, ''Rocks in the Belly'', is an emotional journey. The narrator is a man in his late 20s who has returned from Canada 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 when she and her husband fostered children and, interspersed with the narrative, is the voice of narrator at eight years old and 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 care. What that event was will be revealed in due course, but it is clear that the young boy suffered hugely from jealousy of his mother's love for these foster children.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846688450</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewGrave Listeners|author=Aifric Campbell|title=On The FloorWilliam Frank
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Geri Molloy, the central character in Aifric CampbellThe village is isolated and poor. It's ''On The Floor'', may be earning surrounded by a six figure salary working at a London investment bank just prior to Witching Forest. And the outbreak villagers subsist largely by farming Uphegia plants - its bread-like fruit provides nutrition and its blossom provides herbal medicines. The black wood of the 1991 invasion of Kuwaitforest provides heat and warmth, roofs on homes, and even gallows, but she's seriously messed upif needed. Drinking heavily, sleeping lightly The fear of being buried alive is an existential superstition in the village and mourning that is the end of reason Volushka, a relationshipdrunken, she may be a mathematical genius with a direct line to a mysterious Hong Kongself-based hedge fund manager with whom she tradesindulgent, but her life lazy lout of a man is increasingly being controlled by other peopletolerated.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846688086</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ada WilsonB0BYF82CXT|title=Red Army Faction BluesSemi-Detached|author=Deborah Stone
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Max is 8 years old. He likes Lego ''Bill and Star Wars Amanda are living in a semi-detached house, stuck in a depressing rut of boredom and playing with toy soldiers. He can tell you 102 words that rhyme with tree. He scarfs down grilled cheese sandwiches disappointment, when Terry and chicken Fiona – glamorous, successful and ricevery much in love – move in next door. He does not like physical contactDespite their different outlooks on life, the couples befriend each other and life appears to improve for both pairs. He lives with his mum and dad who argue about what But all is best for him and why he’s not normal like other boys what it seems, and girlstheir increasingly interconnected relationships are fated for tragedy.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0751547875</amazonuk>''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=William NicholsonShalini Boland|title=The Secret Intensity of Everyday LifeSilent Bride|rating=43
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=William Nicholson's ''The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life'' Alice and Seth are a match made in heaven. He is an ensemble story focussing predominantly on middle class everything she has been searching for; handsome, accomplished, clever, funny; total and mainly middle age people living utter husband-material. She is all he could possibly want in a Sussex villagewife; beautiful, successful, confident… and so the inevitable proposal is eagerly accepted by Alice and the wedding is planned and set. The cover of When the book suggests that it much-anticipated day arrives, Alice is little more than a superior chic-lit style story of how Laura reacts when an ex-lover from walked down the aisle by her past appears from out of father, beaming with pride and excitement as she surveys the blue congregation – their friends assembled to disrupt her marriage celebrate this joyful day and two childrenwhen Seth turns to face his approaching bride, but while this Alice's world implodes because she has absolutely no idea who the man at the altar is a central issue that runs throughout the book, this who is only a small part of the story. It's far better than that might suggestwaiting for her to become his wife.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>184916195X</amazonuk>1662507089
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Grace McCleen1787636003|title=The Land Girls of DecorationSummer|author=Katie Bishop
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The late 1950s saw a lot of changes in society but they were late in coming to Ruth's home in It was the summer when Rachel Evans turned eighteen that she and Caroline went backpacking around Greece and arrived on the Owen Stanley range in Papua New Guineaisland. RuthRachel wasn't exactly innocent but she was, the only daughter of plantation owner John Madisonperhaps, naive, was still so when thirty-four-year-old Alistair Wright started to take an interest in her late teens and away at boarding school for much of the year, but when she returned home one was flattered rather than wary. It was quite a while before he made any sort of the first people physical approach to her and by that time she wanted to see was her great friend Tommyobsessed by him. They'd grown up together but there was no possibility of Alistair worked for Henry Taylor, looking after his interests on the relationship being taken any further as Tommy - despite being light skinned - was island and in particular in the son of one of bar where all the black plantation workers and certain 'standards' were expected of Ruthgirls either worked or partied.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848766238</amazonuk>
}}
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The year is 1940Few styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the state-of-the-nation novel. Oxford don James Zennor wants to serve his countryThere's something so utterly compelling about any writer who can catch hold of the atmosphere of the day and capture it, but due to crafting an injury sustained while fighting image of the country as it stands in the Spanish Civil War heone particular moment. To say that Amanda Craig is skilled at doing this would be embarrassingly inadequate: she's rejected as unfitpractically synonymous with the genre of contemporary social fiction at this point. When his wife and young son disappear, though, She has such a gift for weaving the ongoing issues of the day into the trail leads to America lives of her characters in a journey which will plunge him into a world of secret societiesway that feels natural and lived-in, clandestine dealsnever making them ciphers for social commentary but instead fully realised people, and the chance to play his part in the war effort after all. If he survives..grappling with issues far larger than themselves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0007413637</amazonuk>140871468X
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Bethan Roberts152915118X|title=My Policeman|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=The story opens with two schoolfriends Sylvie and Marion doing what teenagers do best - talking and giggling about boys. Sylvie has a rather dishy and handsome older brother called Tom - and Marion has developed a bit of a crush on him. But it's nothing to worry about, she'll grow out of it. Except she doesn't. Even although, deep down, she has misgivings about this rather lukewarm romance. She's actually sizzling hot for some action, a bit of kissing, a bit of harmless snogging - but Tom's the one who is lukewarm. Why?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701185848</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewPineapple Street|author=Suzanne Bugler|title=The Child InsideJenny Jackson
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Rachel Morgan feels that ''Pineapple Street'' is the story of three women: Sasha, Darley and Georgiana. Darley and George are sisters and Sasha is married to their brother Cord. They're Stocktons, only Sasha isn't a Stockton by birth so she does not fit in anywhereisn't readily accepted into the tribe. Certainly not with all of the other mums at her son Jono The problem's posh school. Certainly not with all exacerbated when the happy jolly families on clan matriarch, Tilda, asks Cord and Sasha if they'd like to move into the beaches when Pineapple Street property. Tilda and Chip have renovated and downsized to another property, a street or so away, which they are on holidayown. And most They won't need any of allthe furniture from Pineapple Street, she no longer feels so Sasha and Cord can move straight in. Nominally, they had a choice but that she fits in with her own little familywasn't the reality. Nothing ever feels right Darley and she continually feels isolated on Georgiana start to call Sasha 'the outside looking gold digger'. She's living in''their'' family home. Of course, these feelings lead They use it so often that they abbreviate it to an increasing sense of dissatisfaction which she can only deal with by dwelling on what she perceives as her happier past'the GD'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330510916</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jack SheffieldEmily Critchley|title=Educating JackOne Puzzling Afternoon
|rating=4
|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=September 1982 sees 84 year old Edie has lived in the beginning of Jack Sheffield's sixth year same small town for almost her whole life, but now she is facing a move as head of Ragley-on-the-Forest village school her son wants to move to another house and some of the village regulars are realising that this bring Edie to live with his family, as Edie is going to be a year starting to remember toolose her memory. Nora Pratt has been in However, Edie is tormented by the coffee shop for a quarter memory of her childhood friend, Lucy, who went missing over 60 years ago, and the worry that there was a century now. Ronnie Smith decides secret she was keeping for Lucy that somehow might be the thing that reveals the world truth of employment might be for him after what happened all - but is sacked from one job after a matter of secondsthat time ago. At the cinema itAfter 's ET whoseeing's pulling Lucy in the crowds and Prince William comes into high street, just as she was the world along with the 20p piece (well - not at ''exactly'' last time she saw her, she starts to find pockets of memories coming back to her. And yet as she remembers the same time)past, but it's Jack Sheffield who she is going forgetting more and more in her day to face day life. Will she uncover the biggest change.truth about Lucy's disappearance before her move, and before her memories are gone forever?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0593065697</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''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jon McGregor0008506337|title=This Isn't the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like You|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The clue is in the Christopher Brookmyre-styled title. If the events, characters and circumstances in these stories are known to you, then you have my sympathies. A man causes an embarrassment trying to watch his daughter's first school nativity play. Another has a phobia of eggs containing an avian foetus when he puts knife and fork to them. There's a car crash here - and there, a drowning, some arson, some theft... and a lot of clues that point 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 novel.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408809265</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewGarnett Girls|author=Wendy Jones|title=The Thoughts and Happenings of Wilfred Price, Purveyor of Superior FuneralsGeorgina Moore
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=ItThe love affair between Margo Garnett and poet Richard O's Spring 1924 Leary was all-consuming, apparently on both sides. Margo was just sixteen when they fell in South Wales, and young undertaker Wilfred is going to learn the hard way how serious the trivial can belove. Fascinated Richard was twenty-one and described by a girlMargo's dress - worn very seductively by Grace, who he has met but twice mother as 'an adult - he blurts out a marriage proposalolder man'. As much as wants to Her parents worried that Richard's influence would take it back, her away from what they felt she won't let himcould achieve - going to Oxford and having a glittering career. He tries to move onIn the event, leaving they eloped and Richard took her disappointed, especially when he falls for away from the daughter Isle of Wight. Margo did go to Oxford and went on to become a man he buries, but..well-respected journalist. There are things dangerously spoken, dangerously left unsaidThe couple had three children: Rachel, Imogen and a complex web of divided loyalties Sasha. Life was lived in London and enforced connectionsholidays were spent at Sandcove, the family home on the Isle of Wight. Even then the doubts about Richard's drinking were never far from Margo's mind: ''she would never be able to leave him in this brilliant debut novelcharge''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780330561</amazonuk>}}
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sue Townsend1914585402|title=The Growing Pains of Adrian MoleDashboard Elvis is Dead|author=David F Ross
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The country might be at war over the Falklands but life is hardly straight-forward in the Mole household. AdrianI reviewed David F Ross's parents are back together after both had disastrous affairs and itbook [[There's not long before Adrian is shocked to learn that his mother is pregnant. HeOnly One Danny Garvey by David F Ross|There's equally shocked to see his father helping Doreen (Only One Danny Garvey]] acouple of years back and remember being absolutely floored by how powerful and affecting it was.k.It was a. the 'stick insect') along a path which isn't particularly slippygripping, emotionally wounding read, although he does notice and rereading my review of it my main takeaway was that she seems to I might not have put lavished enough praise on quite a bit of weightit. Pandora Braithwaite is as fickle, but adorable, as ever and Adrian's hormones are still playing hop-scotch with his brain. So, what's new?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141046430</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Susan HillLucy Ashe|title=A Kind ManClara and Olivia
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Meet EveThe year is 1933. The place? Sadler's Wells. Ballerinas Clara and Olivia are sisters, twins no less. Identical on the outside but not, and her husbandwe learn, on the title characterinside. And not on stage, Tommyeither. SheBecause there's at a bit of lot that builds a sticky wicket in lifedancer. Some things that can be taught or learnt – discipline, for however much they want a baby, her sister and his feckless husband churn out son after son after son, and go no lengths at all attention to love them. So when Eve detail – and Tommy do at last have a childsome things, itthat ''je ne sais quoi''s a tragedy for it to die when only three years old. But in this plot, which youthat don'll thank me for not going into furthert come from the classroom. A stage presence, there will be a lot more swings and roundaboutscharm, of torment and ecstasya ''joie de vivre''. The difference between a hard-worker, doldrums and delights, hell and heaven, to comea star.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099555441</amazonuk>0861544080
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=John NivenHeather Fawcett|title=The Second ComingEmily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries
|rating=4
|genre=HumourGeneral Fiction|summary=God Emily Wilde is an expert academic scholar on faerie lore, and she has come back from a holiday travelled extensively, and has some catching up researched meticulously, to do. What’s been happening on Earth for write her life's work, the last couple very first encyclopaedia of hundred years? faeries. The realisation hits him hard... it makes him sick in factWhilst she is brilliant at research and speaking to faeries, she is not so good with people. So what’s when she finds herself far, far North in the answer? To quote small village of Hrafvsnik, having somehow offended the religious clichévillage matriarch, Jesus she is. After a board meeting with the senior saintsnot sure what she has done, God decides that his son must be torn away from jamming with Hendrix nor how to go redeem herself and put her final investigations for her book back to on the streets of the world right track. Enter Wendell Bambleby, her dashingly handsome and insufferable rival who arrives unexpectedly, all charm and delight, much to remind Emily's frustration. But why is he here? What does he want? And what exactly is going on with the sinners of the way.faerie folk around Hravsnik?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099535521</amazonuk>0356519120
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=R J Palacio1398515388|title=WonderThe Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident ReadersGeneral Fiction|summary=August Pullman First of all, it was born with a rare genetic defect that has the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, in turn, caused extreme facial disfigurationthe nuclear meltdown. He has undergone 27 surgeries since he The result was born complete and has always been vulnerable to illnessutter devastation. In order to deal with his medical needs The deaths were uncountable, and to shield him from the staring and cruelty loss of the world, Auggie has been home-schooled by his parents for his entire lifelivelihoods was widespread. But Auggie is stronger now and all of The fact that is about to change. Auggie is about to enter school for the first time – and he’s petrified. ‘Wonder’ is many pets were separated from their owners came far down the story list of Auggie’s first year at Beecher Prep and his first journey alone into priorities but - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside worlda convenience store. But can he confront He wasn't a dog person but the challenges convenience store owner's comment that wait for him there and convince he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his classmates, new friends, family car door and himself that, underneath his unusual appearance, he is just Tamon the same as everybody else?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0370332288</amazonuk>dog jumped in.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Kaui Hart HemmingsChristopher Bowden|title=The DescendantsMr Magenta
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=On the face of it Matt King is very lucky. He's descended from one of HawaiiChristopher Bowden's largest landowners and latest novel 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 patient untangling of a drug problem and ten year old Scottie. Sheseemingly ordinary woman's feistylife, clever and - for me - stole the bookcarried out by her nephew after she has died. 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 The aunt who always provided a powerboat accident safe harbour and sinks into an irreversible coma as a result little bit of indulgence to a head injury. But there's young nephew had had a much more piling up. Matt discovers interesting life than that Joanie has been having nephew Stephen had ever realised and it seems to him an affairobligation to find it all out. Does the man who's been - er - enjoying his wife have the right to say his goodbyes too?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099570246</amazonuk>B0B6Z9VJDW
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Chris WomersleyJennifer Mason|title=Bereft|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Quinn Walker, a young Australian man fresh from fighting on the European front in World War One, returns to the very town he was drummed out Partitions of ten years before, after being accused of raping and killing his own younger sister. Two things have beaten him to the small settlement - one, the global flu pandemic; two a telegram saying he died bravely in action earlier in the war. And 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 me.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857386549</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Helen Schulman|title=This Beautiful LifeUnity|rating=54
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Richard and Liz are new in town which is always a bummer, except this town is Manhattan 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 Here 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 about making a space for herself among the other mothers at the school gates. Things are going ok. And then, one dayBookbag Towers, their nicewe first met Elizabeth Cromwell, comfortable world starts to crumble. Jake receives an explicit email from a classmate dominatrix and unintentional detective in disbelief[[Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery by Jennifer Mason|Preposterous]], forwards it straight on to when she investigated and unravelled a friendseries of disappearances. Except rather than coming back to him with advice on what the heck to do nextIn ''Partitions of Unity'', the friend chooses she sets her mind to send it on to another friend, who does the samesolving a murder. Round and round it goes, round the school, round the city, round the online world. Everyone knows where it came from and soon Jake’s academic future, his father’s career and his whole family’s social standing are hanging in the balance.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857896237</amazonuk>B09LQR9FRF
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Courtney SullivanWill Carver|title=MaineThe Daves Next Door|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The Kellehers' beach-front holiday home Five strangers come together 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 one moment as the Kennedy compound at Hyannis Port but there are a couple of substantial properties suicide bomber prepares to detonate his vest on the plot and there's still room to sparea London tube line. It's a place of indulgenceAs their fates overlap, secrets and the sort of burning cruelty which you only get story is told in families who care for each other - some of the time. ''Maine'' is essentially the story of a summer at backwards order, leading up to the property - but the seeds of what happens were, of course, planted long agofateful moment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>085789496X</amazonuk>1914585186}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Chad HarbachJennifer Mason|title=The Art of FieldingPreposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=''The Art of Fielding'' is basically A struggling poetry zine, a USmom-style campus novel featuring baseball. There are similarities and-pop mobile diner in style between this and many of John Irvingthe Northern California redwoods, a 400-meter hurdler who just missed the 2004 Olympics, a women's works, track coach with baseball substituting a yen for Irving's wrestling focus. Thisbullwhips, to the UK-reader, raises the first potential barrier as we are, as a rule, largely ignorant of the US fixation billionaire with the intricacies a state-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 art S&M dungeon, a loose understanding of the sport I felt that I would have benefitted from more knowledge particularly towards the end when there is man serving a climactic baseball match. You kind of get the pointlife sentence in Alabama, an enigmatic signature, K(s, x), but I certainly felt that I was missing out on a little of the tensioncheap oil painting, an erotic art dealer in much the same way IGeorgia...''d expect This is just a US reader to be perplexed if sample of the story had been based on saycast of characters and settings in Preposterous. As you can see, cricket. It's a minor flaw though and it would some keeping up will be a shame if potential readers dismissed it for required! The basic premise of this mystery story goes like this reason...|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0007374445</amazonuk>B09STS96HS
}}
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