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[[Category:General Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]]==General fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Paula LichtarowiczJenny Lecoat|title=The First Book of Calamity LeekBeyond Summerland
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=I know I'm going to face a dilemma in reviewing this book, because, really, Jean lives on Jersey with her mother where they are celebrating the end of the best way to approach it is to come at it knowing nothing at alloccupation. And itDuring the war, Jean's very hard father was arrested for listening to write about it without giving some important things a banned radio and soldiers took him away! one night, leaving Jean and her mother waiting for years for news of him. Let's start with As the British finally free the Channel islands from the basicsNazis, in that this and the war is a story told by Calamity Leekfinally over, a child living together with her 'sisters', taken care their hopes rise that they will finally learn what became of by 'aunty' and occasionally visited by 'mother'him. Calamity is in charge of But will the truth come as a book called the Appendixrelief, in which everything or will it raise further questions around what else happened during the girls could possibly need to know about their lives is written. war? They live closeted in their own small farmyard area, protected from Who was the outside world by 'informer who told the wall', their enemies being Nazis about the 'injuns' and 'demonmales'. radio? I know, that's a lot of words in quotes. Let me explain...And what other secrets have been kept throughout the occupation?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0091944228</amazonuk>1846976537
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Will StorrOnyi Nwabineli|title=The Hunger and the Howling of Killian LoneAllow Me to Introduce Myself
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Killian Lone grows up in a home lacking in love Anuri spent her childhood on display to the world, thanks to her step-mother Ophelia's increasingly popular presence on social media, where she posted every step of Anuri's childhood for sponsorships and influencer deals and security. For these he relies on his elderly aunt Dorothy, an accomplished cookbasically, monetary gain. Indeed his visits to Dorothy revolve around food as he absorbs all Now Anuri is in her twenties and she can teach him, is slowly inheriting trying to regain her passion confidence and skill along with to get her life back, suing her step-mother to take down the content about her knowledge. This attachment Anuri is battling alcoholism, failing to food then becomes his career choicestart her PhD, leading to the unfortunate discovery of a family secret that has remained hidden undergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online and receiving money from them for a very long timedoing so. Why Most importantly, she is desperately worried about her little sister, who is the new focus of Ophelia'unfortunate'? s online empire. There's a reason for its concealment… a veryCan she save her sister, very good reason.and perhaps herself and her relationship with her father at the same time?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1780720807</amazonuk>0861546873
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tom Winter1529153298|title=Lost and FoundThe List of Suspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey|rating=45
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Carol has lived in a state of unhappiness for many years, married to a man she doesnIt't love (s 1979 and probably never has) and with a daughter whom she doesn't understand Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. (and probably never willA woman? I mean, honestly...). But Sophie is just about independent now and Carol is determined that sheShe's not what's going to tell Bob that the marriage is over - that sheworrying Miv's leaving - but something always gets in the wayfamily, though. As her frustration grows she writes letters - to the world at large - and posts themWomen have been disappearing. It Well, they've been murdered, but to have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. Miv's upset because she'changes overheard that her father wants to move the family 'Down South' anything. When you're from Yorkshire, Down South is a frightening, foreign place, best avoided. For Miv, the move would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, but and she does feel better'll do anything to prevent that. She even puts a smiley face on 's not worried about the envelopedangers or that her Mum's stopped talking - to anyone.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1472101596</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Beth Gutcheon1035906708|title=GossipDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Loviah FrenchWe tend to think of Maria Callas as Greek, Dinah Wainwright and Avis Metcalf met when they were at boarding school. Lovie owns a top-class dress shop but she was born to Greek parents in Manhattan - the place where women of a certain class go when they want something for a special occasion , New York, in December 1923 and only moved to be secure in the knowledge that they will be treated well and discreetlyAthens when she was thirteen. Dinah is a columnist who chronicles the lives of New YorkHer original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to 'Callas's rich and famous, whilst Avis is a prominent figure to make it more manageable in the art worldStates. Lovie is our narrator and When she was back in Athens - supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for her voice - she's also was raised under the glue which holds the three women together. They're both devoted to Nazi occupation by a mother who mercilessly exploited her and she to themmade no secret of her preference for her elder sister, but a small, imagined slight, many decades earlier, has left an icy distance between Dinah and AvisJackie.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857899821</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Bernardine BishopAlexander McCall Smith|title=Unexpected Lessons in LoveThe Perfect Passion Company
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Cecilia Banks The Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and Helen Gatehouse met by chance operating as an alternative to all the online apps in providing a doctor's waiting room more personal, tailored service. Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the business, as Ness is planning to take a trip to Canada to get away for a while. Katie is coming out of a friendship developed because they were both cancer survivors, albeit break up with a colostomybad boyfriend, and so jumps at the chance to come home to Edinburgh. It was a case of opposites attracting: Cecilia was quietAnd so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, reservedbringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, married for the second time thanks to 44 Scotland Street and the mother of Ian whom she idolisedIsabel Dalhousie novels, but with some new characters who quickly begin to charm. Helen had never marriedKatie has no experience in running a business, or in match-making, loud but Ness has full confidence in the nicest sense of the word her abilities, and there's always her very helpful (and an rather handsome) neighbour, William, to lend a hand…|isbn=1846976596}}{{Frontpage|author=Dean Koontz|title=The Bad Weather Friend|rating=4.5|genre=Paranormal|summary=Benny is having a terrifically bad day. They gave each other mutual support He loses his job, he loses his fiancee, and an outlet for their preoccupationshis house gets trashed. People with whom you can discuss theOh, and someone has delivered a really weird, erdisturbing coffin-sized object to his home, intricacies of your stoma are few and far betweenit's possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the thing that has trashed his house! The relationship wasn't entirely uncritical: Helen was less than impressed when Ian dumped (sorry - there's thing is, Benny is the very last person to deserve all this bad luck. He is a nice person. A really no other word nice person. So fortunately for Benny it) turns out that the delivery to his house is a new friend, a bad weather friend called Spike, who has been sent to help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a baby on his mothergood person. Cephas was the result Spike is going to take care of Benny, and will certainly take care of a fling he'd had with the childBenny's mother enemies, if he, Benny, and sheHarper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny'd disappeared. He - a war correspondent - was on his way abroads wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>184854782X</amazonuk>1662500491
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Amanda ProwseKatherine Howe|title=What have I done?A True Account|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=When Kate Gavier married Mark BrookerHannah Masury is living in Boston, having been sent to live with a family who run an inn, she was full of optimism for their marriage and their future. However, being made to work there from the first day of their marriage, her dreams were shattered as she realised that Mark was nothing more than a cruel bullyyoung age. He even insisted on calling her Kathryn rather than Kate which When she hears there is how she prefers to be known. There followed sixteen years a hanging of torment some pirates in the town, she decides to go and torture as Mark strove to control his wife watch. Enthralled and punish her for any wrongdoings – horrified in equal measure, Hannah finds herself embroiled in a young boy's death at the hands of which there were manytwo vicious pirates. To the outside world though She hides away, it looked as though Mark so that they don't find and Kathryn had the perfect loving marriagekill her too, mainly due and then to Kathryn’s resolve escape them completely she runs away to spare her childrensea, Dominic dressing as a boy and Lydia, from knowing joining the notorious Ned Low's pirate ship as a cabin boy. She soon finds herself in the thick of and witnessing their father’s cruelty. One day thoughthings when there is a mutiny on board, she snapped and, for the first time from there we are caught up in her rip roaring tale of life, fought back. Hours later, Mark was dead and Kathryn was locked up in a police cell being questioned about what happenedon the ocean waves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1781853789</amazonuk>0861547438
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Joyce Carol Oates1471180158|title=Daddy LoveMaybe Tomorrow|author=Penny Parkes
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=A short while agoJamie Matson works in an upper-class grocery store, I read [[The Corn Maiden and Other Nightmares by Joyce Carol Oates]] and was moved by for a man who's a control freak with all the sheer emotional impact subtlety of the stories it containeda half brick. Jamie's son, Bo, 'has his problems'. This was especially true of He's asthmatic and the title storymore you read, which looked at the impact more you'll suspect that he's on a family torn by the disappearance of their daughterautistic spectrum. The synopsis of ''Daddy Love'Sometimes Jamie needs to take time off at short notice - she' suggested s a similar impact, given frequent flier in the nature of local A&E and sometimes Bo's not fit enough to go to school. Missed shifts or the story need to be away on time to pick Bo up from school are occasions when Jamie can be controlled and what I'd recently discovered about put in the power of Oates' writingwrong. It was going to come to a head.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781850658</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=J E RyderB0CKD1L5JL|title=Blood PoolRadio Free Olympia|author=Jeffrey Dunn
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Samantha Shelley was surprised to become the owner of a boatyard when her husband died in a cliff fallPetr is an orphan. She had worked in Rescued by the East Devon boatyard - run it strange, reclusive Bear, he is brought up far from bustling cities and busy human society, in fact - for quite some time but it's the men forests of the Shelley Washington'blood pool' who have always inherited the land for the past two hundred yearss Olympic Peninsula. She was aware of ill-feeling against her After Bear dies and a brief sojourn in the villagehuman company, but her priority was to keep the business running as smoothly as possible for herself and for armed with only a pirate radio transmitter, Petr goes on a journey through the staff she employed. There was some support in forest, broadcasting the village - an old friendstrange, known to one and all as 'the Prof' - had always been there for her wild and willing to listen to her outpourings or just to chatter as she drank coffee. Then rarely heard voices he disappeared in violent circumstancesencounters.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B00AR0XFX2</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Julia GregsonSarah Marsh|title=Jasmine NightsA Sign of Her Own|rating=43.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The temptingly titled Jasmine Nights starts promisinglyAfter a bout of scarlet fever as a child, Ellen Lark loses her hearing. Saba Suddenly plunged into a world of silence, everything about her life changes. Living in a talented singer whose gift time when the use of sign language was seen as something only savages do, Ellen is sent to the war a school where she is entertaining the troopstaught to lip read, comes but physically restrained from an unhappy family backgroundsigning. From here, and one that she ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has little patience for been teaching the opportunities for women brought about by wardeaf and using a system called Visible Speech. Dom At the same time, Bell is working on other inventions and ideas, and Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a fighter pilot who has sustained injuries, is feeling displaced - the war has changed his world forevercomplicated tangle of espionage.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1409103048</amazonuk>1035401614
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B0BC3YTCMR
|title=Good Girls Die
|author=Ayura Ayira
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=''This story is not for everyone.''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sarah Butler1472263936|title=Ten Things I've Learnt About LoveThe Figurine|author=Victoria Hislop
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Alice returns home It was in 1968 that Helena McCloud made her first trip to spend time with her dying fatherGreece. Shewas alone: her mother, Greek by birth, had left the family home and refused to return, but Mary and Hamish (Helena's been travelling in Mongolia, finding temporary escape from the issues parents) felt that had haunted it would be a pity if Helena grew up without knowing her grandparents or understanding her life Greek heritage. Her trip to the family apartment in London but now, on her return, events bring up-market Kolonaki would be the pain she thought was behind her into sharp focusfirst of several annual visits. Meanwhile Daniel is an elderly vagrant who calls She grew to love her grandmother and the streets family's maid, Dina, but was wary - and frightened - of London homeher grandfather, retired general Stamatis Papagiannis. He seeks was proud of his lost child, leaving a trail of random items across close connections to the city in the hope of reunion like someone occupying a verse of ''Eleanor Rigby''Junta and expected his family to uphold his values but saw no reason to accommodate them. Disparate lives, seeking love His prejudices included Helena's red hair and acceptance in a world that seems to exclude itgreen eyes - inherited from her father's Scottish ancestors.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1447222490</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Gavin ExtenceDean Koontz|title=The Universe Versus Alex WoodsAfter Death|rating=4.53
|genre=General Fiction
|summary= While re-entering the UK with some human ashes and Michael Mace, Head of Security, at a stash of marijuanatop secret biological research facility, Alex Woods is stopped by customs and referred to the policeamong 55 people who die when a virus is released in a bio-hazard accident. It all started 6 years before whenFinding himself in a makeshift mortuary, as an 11 year old living covered in England's West Countryplastic, his escape from bullies necessitates breaking into he has a shed; sense that something very, very bad has happened to him – and only him – as he sits up and looks around at the shed shrouded bodies of a man with a gun pointing at Alexhis dead friends and former colleagues. The man is American Vietnam veteran Isaac Peterson and, whatever As he recovers his school teachers may say to the contrarysenses, this he realises that there is the moment when Alex's education really beginssomething different about him; this and the moment when he was hit on the head by a passing meteor of coursecan ''feel'' everything. ''Everything''. Michael isn't ''Michael'' anymore.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444765884</amazonuk>1662500467}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Carolyn MathewsB0BVDC2VWH|title=Transforming PandoraThe Grave Listeners|author=William Frank
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=When we first meet Pandora Armstrong in the spring of 2003 sheThe village is isolated and poor. It's grieving for her husband, Mike, who had died just surrounded by a few weeks beforeWitching Forest. It hadn't been his first heart attack And the villagers subsist largely by farming Uphegia plants - its bread-like fruit provides nutrition and he had reduced his workload but this attack was fatalits blossom provides herbal medicines. He was only in his fifties The black wood of the forest provides heat and warmth, roofs on homes, and Pandora feels that he'd been snatched away from her as they'd only been married for a few yearseven gallows, if needed. When a friend suggests that she goes with her to The fear of being buried alive is an Evening of Clairvoyance she runs out of excuses to refuse and although she's not exactly ''convinced'' by what she hears there's a lingering doubt. A spirit voice mentioned her children existential superstition in the village and Pandora was adamant that she didn't have any children - it's actually quite is the reason Volushka, a sore point drunken, self- but that wasn't true indulgent, lazy lout of Mikea man is tolerated.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780997450</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Chloe HooperB0BYF82CXT|title=The EngagementSemi-Detached|author=Deborah Stone
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Chloe Hooper's gothic, psychological thriller concerns an affair between 'Bill and Amanda are living in a thirtysemi-something English girl, Liesedetached house, working stuck in Australia at her uncle's real estate business and a blandly handsome Australian farmer, Alexander. Set over one weekend as Liese is heading to Alexander's remote family farm for the first time for a weekend depressing rut of passionboredom and disappointment, this is a classic 'girl trapped in spooky house when Terry and situation' story with a darkFiona – glamorous, sexual twistsuccessful and very much in love – move in next door. LieseDespite their different outlooks on life, who trained as an interior architect, met Alexander while showing him around exclusive Melbourne properties the couples befriend each other and, has somehow managed life appears to get herself into a situation whereby Alexander pays her improve for her attentionsboth pairs. But all is not what it seems, believing that she is some kind of prostituteand their increasingly interconnected relationships are fated for tragedy. He's even paying her handsomely for her time at the weekend. With debts of her own, Liese willingly encourages this perception with little idea of the problems to which this fantasy will lead.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224096346</amazonuk>'
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jack SheffieldShalini Boland|title=School's Out!The Silent Bride|rating=43
|genre=General Fiction
|summary= The beginning of September 1983 starts Alice and Seth are a new academic year match made in heaven. He is everything she has been searching for the village primary school of Ragley-on-the; handsome, accomplished, clever, funny; total and utter husband-Forestmaterial. Headmaster Jack Sheffield starts the autumn term with She is all he could possibly want in a skip in his step as he and wife Sally enjoy their new baby; beautiful, successful, John William despite confident… and so the inevitable proposal is eagerly accepted by Alice and the broken nightswedding is planned and set. What else will When the year bring? The advent of a new teacher much-anticipated day arrives, Alice is walked down the aisle by her father, beaming with pride and a tragedy that strikes sorrow in excitement as she surveys the heart of the village reduces Jack's skip a bit but there are always moments congregation – their friends assembled to celebrate this joyful day and when Seth turns to lift the mood; for instanceface his approaching bride, whatever it was that little Madonna Fazackerly did in her catAlice's ear. It's all there in world implodes because she has absolutely no idea who the school's daily log; perhaps not man at the one that the inspectors seealtar is, you understand, all who is explained in living detail here in Jack's memoir of life as a teacher and villagerwaiting for her to become his wife.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0552167037</amazonuk>1662507089
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sophie Divry1787636003|title=The Library Girls of Unrequited LoveSummer|author=Katie Bishop
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Prepare yourself to try a book It was the likes of which you'd never particularly expect, and prepare yourself to find it becoming a favourite – one summer when Rachel Evans turned eighteen that has a snappy story, yet is a monologue, one that concerns what we all love – books, she and love, yet one that also intrigues Caroline went backpacking around Greece and tempts us with other, very diverse subjectsarrived on the island. One morning our narrator turns up to start work early at her geography station in a very large Rachel wasn't exactly innocent but provincial libraryshe was, and finds a lockedperhaps, naive, so when thirty-four-year-old Alistair Wright started to take an interest in regularher, she was flattered rather than wary. Over the next hour It was quite a while before he made any sort of physical approach to her and twenty or so (for I read it out loud) by that time she talks to him, barely allowing was obsessed by him a word in edgeways, and what we get is one big, fat lump of a paragraph of her world. Told you to be prepared Alistair worked for Henry Taylor, looking after his interests on the unusual…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857051415</amazonuk>island and in particular in the bar where all the girls either worked or partied.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Owen MartellAmanda Craig|title=IntermissionThree Graces|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Few styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the state-of-the-nation novel. There is a line in Alan Bennett's play 'The History Boys' that I love. It talks something so utterly compelling about 'subjunctive history'any writer who can catch hold of the atmosphere of the day and capture it, imagining things crafting an image of the country as it stands in one particular moment. To say that might have happenedAmanda Craig is skilled at doing this would be embarrassingly inadequate: she's practically synonymous with the genre of contemporary social fiction at this point. In ''Intermission'', his first book She has such a gift for weaving the ongoing issues of the day into the lives of her characters in a way that feels natural and lived-in English as opposed to Welsh, Owen Martell borrows this ideanever making them ciphers for social commentary but instead fully realised people, taking an event a surmising what may have happened afterwardsgrappling with issues far larger than themselves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0434022047</amazonuk>140871468X
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Samantha Harvey152915118X|title=All is SongPineapple Street|author=Jenny Jackson|rating=34.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Some books ''Pineapple Street'' is the story of three women: Sasha, Darley and Georgiana. Darley and George are hard worksisters and Sasha is married to their brother Cord. I have no They're Stocktons, only Sasha isn't a Stockton by birth so she isn't readily accepted into the tribe. The problem with that 's exacerbated when the clan matriarch, Tilda, asks Cord and Sasha if I feel there’s they'd like to move into the Pineapple Street property. Tilda and Chip have renovated and downsized to another property, a reason street or so away, which they own. They won't need any of the furniture from Pineapple Street, so Sasha and Cord can move straight in. Nominally, they had a choice but that wasn't the reality. Darley and Georgiana start to persevere; if I can sense call Sasha 'the gold digger'. She's living in ''their'' family home. They use it so often that they abbreviate it to 'the book GD'.}}{{Frontpage|author=Emily Critchley|title=One Puzzling Afternoon|rating=4|genre=Crime|summary=84 year old Edie has lived in the same small town for almost her whole life, but now she is going facing a move as her son wants to move to deliver a story another house and the hard work bring Edie to live with his family, as Edie is necessary starting to enjoy it fullylose her memory. However, Edie is tormented by the memory of her childhood friend, Lucy, who went missing over 60 years ago, then I will happily plod alongand the worry that there was a secret she was keeping for Lucy that somehow might be the thing that reveals the truth of what happened all that time ago. After 'seeing' Lucy in the high street, re-reading sections if necessaryjust as she was the last time she saw her, she starts to get the full benefit find pockets of memories coming back to her. And yet as she remembers the novelpast, she is forgetting more and more in her day to day life. Will she uncover the truth about Lucy's disappearance before her move, and before her memories are gone forever?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099566060</amazonuk>1804181250
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jenn AshworthMadelaine Lucas|title=The Friday GospelsThirst for Salt
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=There are five in the Leeke family. Martin is the father and he works in the mail sorting office. There's not a lot of 'Love, I'pleasured read, was supposed to be a light and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity'' in Martin's life Told from a retrospective view, but if you were making a list you'd put Bovril at young woman unravels the top of ityear-long relationship that once defined her. She's a labrador and Martin's obsessed Overlaid with her training. Welllater wisdom, he's partly obsessed with the training and narrator relives the training is partly an excuse for his other obsession. Nina owns two labradors and Martin sees them (he and Nina, that is - not he and affair with a man twenty years her senior from its inception – the labs) as having a future together. It would be easy summer after finishing university – to be critical, but Martin's wife is in a wheelchairits sorrowful end the summer after. Pauline's been unwell since Set against the birth backdrop of their youngest child. Shean isolated Australian coastal town 's not quite doubly incontinent, but accidents are frequent and embarrassing. She's also got a penchant Thirst for spending on home improvements - despite the fact that there Salt''reallydetails the 24-year-old narrator'' isn't the money for thems deepening relationship with her older lover, depicting its all-consuming nature, how it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444707728</amazonuk>0861546490
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=0008506337
|title=The Garnett Girls
|author=Georgina Moore
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The love affair between Margo Garnett and poet Richard O'Leary was all-consuming, apparently on both sides. Margo was just sixteen when they fell in love. Richard was twenty-one and described by Margo's mother as 'an older man'. Her parents worried that Richard's influence would take her away from what they felt she could achieve - going to Oxford and having a glittering career. In the event, they eloped and Richard took her away from the Isle of Wight. Margo did go to Oxford and went on to become a well-respected journalist. The couple had three children: Rachel, Imogen and Sasha. Life was lived in London and holidays were spent at Sandcove, the 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 charge''.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1914585402|title=Dashboard Elvis is Dead|author=David F Ross|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=I reviewed David F Ross's book [[There's Only One Danny Garvey by David F Ross|There's Only One Danny Garvey]] a couple of years back and remember being absolutely floored by how powerful and affecting it was. It was a gripping, emotionally wounding read, and rereading my review of it my main takeaway was that I might not have lavished enough praise on it.}}{{Frontpage|author=Francesca SegalLucy Ashe|title=Clara and Olivia|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=The year is 1933. The place? Sadler's Wells. Ballerinas Clara and Olivia are sisters, twins no less. Identical on the outside but not, we learn, on the inside. And not on stage, either. Because there's a lot that builds a dancer. Some things that can be taught or learnt – discipline, attention to detail – and some things, that ''je ne sais quoi'', that don't come from the classroom. A stage presence, a charm, a ''joie de vivre''. The Innocentsdifference between a hard-worker, and a star.|isbn=0861544080}}{{Frontpage|author=Heather Fawcett|title=Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Francesca SegalEmily Wilde is an expert academic scholar on faerie lore, and she has travelled extensively, and researched meticulously, to write her life's debut novelwork, ''The Innocents'' the very first encyclopaedia of faeries. Whilst she is brilliant at research and speaking to faeries, she is set not so good with people. So when she finds herself far, far North in upper classthe small village of Hrafvsnik, Jewishhaving somehow offended the village matriarch, North London. Adam she is about not sure what she has done, nor how to marry his childhood sweetheartredeem herself and put her final investigations for her book back on the right track. Enter Wendell Bambleby, Rachelher dashingly handsome and insufferable rival who arrives unexpectedly, all charm and is working as a lawyer in her fatherdelight, much to Emily's businessfrustration. But why is he here? What does he want? And what exactly is going on with the faerie folk around Hravsnik?|isbn=0356519120}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1398515388|title=The Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)|rating=4. Into this romantic idyl though comes Ellie5|genre=General Fiction|summary=First of all, Rachel's wayward cousin who has been forced to flee it was the US following an appearance earthquake, deep in an 'art house' movie of dubious repute the ocean floor, which created the tsunami andthis, it turns outin turn, further scandalcaused the nuclear meltdown. Ellie is everything The result was complete and utter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, and the loss of livelihoods was widespread. The fact that Rachel is not; many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a model, worldly, sexy and temptingconvenience store. As Adam gets drawn into wanting to He wasn'rescuet a dog person but the convenience store owner' her and look after her, s comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his whole future with Rachel is thrown into doubt car door and Tamon the story becomes a will they, won't they get together narrativedog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701186992</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Kimberley FreemanChristopher Bowden|title=Wildflower HillMr Magenta|rating=54
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Christopher Bowden'tis the season to be…thoroughly depressed if yous latest novel is a patient untangling of a seemingly ordinary woman're anything like me – can't bear the colds life, the grey, the forced jollitycarried out by her nephew after she has died. Whatever book I pick up at this time The aunt who always provided a safe harbour and a little bit of year needs indulgence to be a highly effective escapist tonic, otherwise there's young nephew had had a good chance I won't even finish much more interesting life than that nephew Stephen had ever realised and it. So I'd like seems to him an obligation to thank Kimberley Freeman for the most find it all-encompassing, escapist and enjoyable novel I can remember reading in winter; something tells me I'll revisit this one a few timesout.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1780877080</amazonuk>B0B6Z9VJDW
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Harriet LaneJennifer Mason|title=Alys, AlwaysPartitions of Unity|rating=54
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Harriet Lane's debut novelHere at Bookbag Towers, ''Alyswe first met Elizabeth Cromwell, Always'' garnered a raft of favourable coverage from the professional reviewers when it was first published dominatrix and unintentional detective in hardback. Concerning[[Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery by Jennifer Mason|Preposterous]], as it does, a young woman who works as a sub-editor in a publishing company when she investigated and unravelled a Booker winning novelistseries of disappearances. In ''Partitions of Unity'', there is always the chance that this was due she sets her mind to the reviewers merely recognizing the world that is portrayedsolving a murder. This view is unfounded though - it is a superbly drawn, frequently very funny, and often psychologically chilling story of ambition and class differences. It thoroughly deserves all the praise that has been heaped upon it.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1780220014</amazonuk>B09LQR9FRF
}}
{{Frontpage|author=Will Carver|title=The Daves Next Door|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary= Five strangers come together in one moment as a suicide bomber prepares to detonate his vest on a London tube line. As their fates overlap, the story is told in backwards order, leading up to the fateful moment.|isbn= 1914585186}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Rebecca HarringtonJennifer Mason|title=PenelopePreposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Penelope is ''A struggling poetry zine, a socially awkward Harvard studentmom-and-pop mobile diner in the Northern California redwoods, chronicling her first year at a 400-meter hurdler who just missed the famed institution. She has 2004 Olympics, a women's track coach with a thing yen for Hercule Poirot bullwhips, a billionaire with a state-of-the-art S&M dungeon, a man serving a life sentence in Alabama, an enigmatic signature, K(don’t we all?s, x), is allergic to catson a cheap oil painting, and quite worryingly believes that ''Dirty Dancing: Havana Nightsan erotic art dealer in Georgia...'' This is one just a sample of the best films cast of all times. She is determined to make friends but finds the options quite limited. Her roommates are either too studious (Emma) or too dubious (Lan) characters and the boys downstairs are peculiar creatures, to say the leastsettings in Preposterous. The dashingAs you can see, mysterious foreigner Gustav is worth a second glance, but never seems to some keeping up will be where she wants him to be, when she wants him to be there, which is annoyingrequired! The basic premise of this mystery story goes like this...|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1844089266</amazonuk>B09STS96HS
}}
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