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[[Category:General Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]]__NOTOC__{{Frontpage|author=Jenny Lecoat|title=Beyond Summerland|rating=4|genre=General fictionFiction|summary=Jean 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, leaving Jean and her mother waiting for years for news of him. As the British finally free the Channel islands from the Nazis, and the war is finally over, their hopes rise that they will finally learn what became of him. But will the truth come as a relief, or will it raise further questions around what else happened during the war? Who was the informer who told the Nazis about the radio? And what other secrets have been kept throughout the occupation?|isbn=1846976537__NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=NoViolet BulawayoOnyi Nwabineli|title=We Need New NamesAllow Me to Introduce Myself
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=This powerful narrative bears witness Anuri spent her childhood on display to the experience world, thanks to her step-mother Ophelia's increasingly popular presence on social media, where she posted every step of economic migrantsAnuri's childhood for sponsorships and influencer deals and, basically, monetary gain. Now Anuri is in her twenties and she is slowly trying to regain her confidence and to get her life back, suing her step-mother to take down the content about her. Not just black Africans coming from ZimbabweAnuri is battling alcoholism, like NoViolet Bulawayofailing to start her PhD, but more generallyundergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online and receiving money from them for doing so. Most importantly, those several generations of hardyshe is desperately worried about her little sister, resourceful immigrants driven to who is the USA in search new focus of a better futureOphelia's online empire. Such people leave behind less courageous family membersCan she save her sister, but not their emotions towards those they have loved or their nation of birth.and perhaps herself and her relationship with her father at the same time?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701188030</amazonuk>0861546873
}}
{{Frontpage|isbn=1529153298|title=The List of Suspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary=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 frightening. Miv's upset because she's overheard that her father wants to move the family 'Down South'. When you're from Yorkshire, Down South is a frightening, foreign place, best avoided. For Miv, the move would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, and she'll do anything to prevent that. She's not worried about the dangers or that her Mum's stopped talking - to anyone.}}{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Kim Izzo 1035906708|title=My Life in Black and WhiteDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=''My Life We tend to think of Maria Callas as Greek, but she was born to Greek parents in Manhattan, New York, in Black December 1923 and Whiteonly moved to Athens when she was thirteen. Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to 'Callas' starts off to make it more manageable in a police station the States. When she was back in England. The film noir theme Athens - supposedly so that permeates she could get appropriate training for her voice - she was raised under the novel begins immediately. Clara Bishop is dressed in Nazi occupation by a gold evening gown, and treats the police officer mother who is interviewing mercilessly exploited her just as a femme fatale would. This girl has sass. But when she begins to recount and made no secret of her tale, it is clear this is a new development. The old Clara describes preference for her life as something from a screwball comedyelder sister, not a film noirJackie. How does a screenwriter-slash-gossip-columnist from LA end up being interviewed about an assault in England?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444737716</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Mave FellowesAlexander McCall Smith|title=Chaplin and The Perfect Passion Company
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=In 'Chaplin & The Perfect Passion Company'is a dating agency in Edinburgh, Mave Fellowes takes run by Ness and operating as an alternative to all the online apps in providing a quirky look at life on London's canal boatsmore personal, tailored service. Yet, while Ness has asked her story is full of eccentric characters, not least younger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the main human character of Odeline Milkbusiness, who moves as Ness is planning to take a trip to Canada to the boat that shares the title of the book after her mother passes get away to pursue her dream for a while. Katie is coming out of becoming a mime artist in the more culturally enlightened big city after break up with a lonely life in provincial Arundelbad boyfriend, and so jumps at the book is delightfully free of sentimentalitychance to come home to Edinburgh. I say And so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, thanks to 44 Scotland Street and the main human characterIsabel Dalhousie novels, because this is also the story of a boat but with some new characters who quickly begin to charm. Katie has no experience in running a remarkable history of ownersbusiness, or in match-making, but Ness has full confidence in her abilities, and also there's always her very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, William, to lend a story of the strange life on the canal which somehow exists beneath the city through which it flows. hand…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0224097350</amazonuk>1846976596
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Fayette FoxDean Koontz|title=The Deception ArtistBad Weather Friend|rating=34.5|genre=General FictionParanormal|summary=This story Benny is all about the charactershaving a terrifically bad day. He loses his job, he loses his fiancee, and his house gets trashed. Plot Oh, and someone has delivered a really weird, disturbing coffin-wisesized object to his home, and it 's possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the thing that has trashed his house! The thing is, Benny is set in 1980s suburban Americathe very last person to deserve all this bad luck. There are no explosions or even fairy tale adventures in this book He is a nice person. A really nice person. It’s just So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the simple adventure of life when you’re delivery to his house is a child and learning new things every dayfriend, a bad weather friend called Spike, who has been sent to help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a good person. Ivy accounts her day- Spike is going to-day life with an extreme attention to the strangest detailstake care of Benny, just like a child. As well as explaining what she has learnt in schooland will certainly take care of Benny's enemies, she describes her daydreamsif he, her friends and her family. When her dad loses his jobBenny, her parents start arguing and she is worried they might have to get Harper (a divorce like sad Sara in her class. And not only that, waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they might have to return their new TVare. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908434244</amazonuk>1662500491
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jonathan EvisonKatherine Howe|title=The Revised Fundamentals of CaregivingA True Account|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary= Ben hasn't worked for a while and soHannah Masury is living in Boston, deciding on having been sent to live with a career changefamily who run an inn, trains and being made to become work there from a caregiveryoung age. His first client When she hears there is Trevto be a hanging of some pirates in the town, she decides to go and watch. Enthralled and horrified in equal measure, Hannah finds herself embroiled in a 20 year old Duchene Muscular Dystrophy sufferer who hasnyoung boy't s death at the sunniest hands of dispositionstwo vicious pirates. In fact Trev is angryShe hides away, self-centred so that they don't find and goes through caregivers like a knife through milk. Howeverkill her too, Ben, needing a job, holds on tight and tries then to encourage Trev escape them completely she runs away to live sea, dressing as a little. Eventually Trev complies boy and dictates joining the notorious Ned Low's pirate ship as a way forward: a road tripcabin boy. A road trip with She soon finds herself in the thick of things when there is a houseboundmutiny on board, ill, angry person is not what Ben had and from there we are caught up in mind at all. Meanwhile it gradually becomes clear to us that Trev isn't her rip roaring tale of life on the only one who has to learn to live a little differentlyocean waves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1781851751</amazonuk>0861547438
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jenny Mayhew1471180158|title=A Wolf in HindelheimMaybe Tomorrow|author=Penny Parkes|rating=34.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=GermanyJamie Matson works in an upper-class grocery store, for a man who's a control freak with all the 1920ssubtlety of a half brick. Whatever that old proverb is about an ending of something merely being a beginning of something else in disguiseJamie's son, Bo, this novel is an evocation of it'has his problems'. In He's asthmatic and the rural habitation of more you read, the more you'll suspect that he's on the title autistic spectrum. Sometimes Jamie needs to take time off at short notice - she's a father frequent flier in the local A&E and son pair of policemen is called sometimes Bo's not fit enough to go to a remote house by news that a newborn baby is missingschool. In Missed shifts or the house is an awkward combination of families – elderly matriarch, her son and daughter and both their spouses – two couples living need to be away on top of each other, with a disabled boy time to pick Bo up from school are occasions when Jamie can be controlled and maid put in the mix toowrong. We soon are given an explanation for the child being dead – It was going to come to a terrible instance of clumsiness, but like I say, this is only the beginning – of several things, including the older policeman's infatuation with the grieving mother's sister-in-law…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091944384</amazonuk>head.
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jessica SofferB0CKD1L5JL|title=Tomorrow There Will be ApricotsRadio Free Olympia|author=Jeffrey Dunn|rating=3.54
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Lorca Petr is in her early teens and struggling to get attention an orphan. Rescued by the strange, reclusive Bear, he is brought up far from her mother. She's resorted to self-harming bustling cities and even her obvious abilities busy human society, in the kitchen don't seem to be enough to merit some forests of her chef motherWashington's timeOlympic Peninsula. Her last chance to make an impact before she's sent away to boarding school seems to be to find After Bear dies and a way to make Masgouf - an Iraqi fish dish - which her mother has described as her favourite meal. Along brief sojourn in human company, and armed with her only friend - a young man who pirate radio transmitter, Petr goes by on a journey through the forest, broadcasting the name of Blot - they discover that some Iraqi Jewish cooking classes are being offered by a chefstrange, wild and rarely heard voices he encounters.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091943973</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Nick TroutSarah Marsh|title=The Patron Saint A Sign of Lost DogsHer Own
|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Dr Cyrus Mills only intended to return to Vermont for long enough to sell the veterinary practice which his father had left himAfter a bout of scarlet fever as a child, collect the money and get back to South Carolina where he was trying to sort out the little matter of having his licence to practice suspendedEllen Lark loses her hearing. He had never got on with his father who had - somehow - managed NOT to tell his son that his mother had died until after Suddenly plunged into a world of silence, everything about her funerallife changes. The first snag he encountered was quite Living in a big one: his father had been equally forgetful about dealing with his financial affairs and time when the Bedside Manor practice use of sign language was dying on its feetseen as something only savages do, Ellen is sent to a school where she is taught to lip read, but physically restrained from signing. Cyrus didn’t have the money to prop it From here, she ends up and it looked as though he would have to hand everything over to in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the Bank deaf and walk away with nothingusing a system called Visible Speech. The second problem was an aging Golden Retriever by At the name same time, Bell is working on other inventions and ideas, and Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a complicated tangle of Frieda and an owner who’s very keen to see her put to sleepespionage.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1401310885</amazonuk>1035401614
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Clive LawtonB0BC3YTCMR|title=Flowers From FukushimaGood Girls Die|author=Ayura Ayira
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary= In 2011, Japan was hit by a 9.0 magnitude earthquake. That and the subsequent tsunami caused level 7 meltdowns at the Fukushima nuclear power plant''This story is not for everyone.''
''Flowers Lavender Daniels was three weeks short of her fifteenth birthday when The Incident happened. She was a very bright student, a bit too nerdy if truth be told, and suffered from Fukushimavitiligo - people were afraid to hug her in case it's contagious. It' riffs s not easy being a black girl whose skin is 84% white. She had a crush on seventeen-year-old Reggie Anderson but never thought he would notice her. Then he did: Lavender was very good at math and Reggie asked if she would tutor him. She readily agreed: tutoring was something she gladly did at church: this in a post-apocalyptic story of a Japan devastated by even more was just an extension. She went to his house and even bigger natural disastershe raped her. It follows two main characters as they pick their way through the devastation In shock, each trying she even allowed him to make sense of this new and very different worldgive her a lift home.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B00CDLAK0E</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Lynsey Rose1472263936|title=First Aid Kit GirlThe Figurine|author=Victoria Hislop
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Steph hates It was in 1968 that Helena McCloud made her jobfirst trip to Greece. She hates was alone: her colleaguesmother, Greek by birth, had left the family home and refused to return, but Mary and Hamish (Helena's parents) felt that it would be a pity if Helena grew up without knowing her grandparents or understanding her Greek heritage. She likes Her trip to the family apartment in up-market Kolonaki would be the work first aid kit, a lotof several annual visits. She’s trundling along She grew to love her grandmother and the family's maid, doing not very muchDina, finding but was wary - and frightened - of her release where she cangrandfather, retired general Stamatis Papagiannis. To me it seems like she loves He was proud of his close connections to the Junta and expected his family to uphold his values but saw no reason to hate accommodate them. His prejudices included Helena's red hair and green eyes - inherited from her life. Takes great pleasure in despising it, in factfather's Scottish ancestors.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956235123</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=Gill HornbyB0BVDC2VWH|title=The HiveGrave Listeners|author=William Frank|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=ThereThe village is isolated and poor. It's an old joke that, for parents, there are only two good days in surrounded by a Witching Forest. And the school holidays villagers subsist largely by farming Uphegia plants - its bread-like fruit provides nutrition and its blossom provides herbal medicines. The black wood of the first forest provides heat and warmth, roofs on homes, and the lasteven gallows, but if needed. The fear of being buried alive is an existential superstition in St Ambrose the ''real'' work begins when the children go back to school at the start of the new school year. There's a new head at the school (village and he'll have to be knocked into shape) but the real power that is Beatrice - 'Bea' to those whom she elects to call friends for the time being reason Volushka, a drunken, self- who rules the parentsindulgent, decides who lazy lout of a man is in or out and what status they should have in the community. And how does she do it? Well, she's the queentolerated.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408704358</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jasper GibsonB0BYF82CXT|title=A Bright Moon For FoolsSemi-Detached|author=Deborah Stone
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Jasper Gibson’s debut novel''Bill and Amanda are living in a semi-detached house, stuck in a depressing rut of boredom and disappointment, A Bright Moon For Foolswhen Terry and Fiona – glamorous, tells the story of Harry Christmas successful and his drunken escapades very much in love – move in Caracas next door. Despite their different outlooks on life, the couples befriend each other and the small villages of Venezuelalife appears to improve for both pairs. Harry Christmas But all is nowhere near as jolly as his name suggestsnot what it seems, and their increasingly interconnected relationships are fated for tragedy.''}}{{Frontpage|author=Shalini Boland|title=The Silent Bride|rating=3|genre=General Fiction|summary= Alice and Seth are a match made in fact Harry is drunken conmanheaven. He is everything she has pushed his luck too far been searching for; handsome, accomplished, clever, funny; total and utter husband-material. She is forced to fly to Venezuela to evade William Sladeall he could possibly want in a wife; beautiful, successful, confident… and so the irate son of a woman Harry fleeced out of £27,000. Harry’s life inevitable proposal is defined eagerly accepted by booze Alice and where to get the next drink; he wedding is having a major breakdownplanned and set. Slade When the much-anticipated day arrives, Alice is walked down the aisle by her father, beaming with pride and excitement as she surveys the congregation – their friends assembled to celebrate this joyful day and when Seth turns to face his approaching bride, Alice's world implodes because she has absolutely no better off and idea who the man at the altar is also having his own mental crisis: unfortunately for Harry, Slade’s breakdown who is waiting for her to become his wife.|isbn=1662507089}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1787636003|title=The Girls of a much more psychotic nature.Summer|author=Katie Bishop|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|amazonuksummary=<amazonuk>0957468105</amazonuk>It was the summer when Rachel Evans turned eighteen that she and Caroline went backpacking around Greece and arrived on the island. Rachel wasn't exactly innocent but she was, perhaps, naive, so when thirty-four-year-old Alistair Wright started to take an interest in her, she was flattered rather than wary. It was quite a while before he made any sort of physical approach to her and by that time she was obsessed by him. Alistair worked for Henry Taylor, looking after his interests on the island and in particular in the bar where all the girls either worked or partied.
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Lisa ScottolineAmanda Craig|title=Come HomeThree Graces|rating=34.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=You divorce a partner, not a child, Few styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the state-of-the-nation novel. There's something so although Jill utterly compelling about any writer who can catch hold of the atmosphere of the day and William’s split meant she was no longer legal step mum to his daughter Abbycapture it, crafting an image of the country as it stands in some ways one particular moment. To say that Amanda Craig is skilled at doing this would be embarrassingly inadequate: she never stopped seeing her as a daughter. Now, years after they last met up, Abby shows up on Jill’s doorstep 's practically synonymous with some devastating news about Jill’s ex-husbandthe genre of contemporary social fiction at this point. News that will unsettle both their lives, and She has such a gift for weaving the ongoing issues of the day into the lives of Jill’s new fiancé Sam, and of her own biological daughter. While Abby wants to pull her into untangling characters in a mysteryway that feels natural and lived-in, Sam is reluctant to encourage this investigationnever making them ciphers for social commentary but instead fully realised people, and the family reunion it will bring, leaving Jill torn between her new family and her old onegrappling with issues far larger than themselves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0091944937</amazonuk>140871468X
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Antoine Laurain152915118X|title=The President's HatPineapple Street|author=Jenny Jackson
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The milliners' advertising used 'Pineapple Street'' is the story of three women: Sasha, Darley and Georgiana. Darley and George are sisters and Sasha is married to say their brother Cord. They'to get aheadre Stocktons, get only Sasha isn't a hatStockton by birth so she isn't readily accepted into the tribe. They would very much approve of this book The problem's exacerbated when the clan matriarch, Tilda, asks Cord and Sasha if they'd like to move into the Pineapple Street property. Daniel Mercier is Tilda and Chip have renovated and downsized to another property, a Mr Average - street or perhaps a Monsieur Mediocreso away, which they own. He They won's a lowly accountant until one evening he finds himself dining next to French Presidentt need any of the furniture from Pineapple Street, François Mitterrandso Sasha and Cord can move straight in. Nominally, who leaves they had a choice but that wasn't the restaurant without his hatreality. When Daniel decides Darley and Georgiana start to keep call Sasha 'the gold digger'. She's living in ''their'' family home. They use it so often that they abbreviate it, his life starts to change and he feels somehow more confident'the GD'. In other strands of }}{{Frontpage|author=Emily Critchley|title=One Puzzling Afternoon|rating=4|genre=Crime|summary=84 year old Edie has lived in the storysame small town for almost her whole life, Fanny Marquant but now she is having an affair facing a move as her son wants to move to another house and bring Edie to live with an older man who clearly has no intention of leaving his wife while celebrated perfumer Pierre Aslan has lost his ability family, as Edie is starting to detect smells and to create perfumeslose her memory. Bernard Lavallière However, meanwhile Edie is struggling to live up to tormented by the memory of her childhood friend, Lucy, who went missing over 60 years ago, and the worry that there was a secret she was keeping for Lucy that somehow might be the thing that reveals the right wing standards truth of his wifewhat happened all that time ago. After 'seeing's friends and Lucy in the high street, just as she was the last time she saw her, she starts to read find pockets of memories coming back to her. And yet as she remembers the past, she is forgetting more and more left wing papersin her day to day life. At some point, all will come into contact with Will she uncover the Presidenttruth about Lucy's hat disappearance before her move, and it will have an impact on all of them.before her memories are gone forever?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908313471</amazonuk>1804181250
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Madelaine Lucas
|title=Thirst for Salt
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= ''Love, I'd read, was supposed to be a light and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity''
Told from a retrospective view, a young woman unravels the year-long relationship that once defined her. Overlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the affair with a man twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the summer after. Set against the backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the 24-year-old narrator's deepening relationship with her older lover, depicting its all-consuming nature, how it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably.|isbn=0861546490}}{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ma Jian0008506337|title=The Dark RoadGarnett Girls|author=Georgina Moore
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=One of my many lovable traitsThe love affair between Margo Garnett and poet Richard O'Leary was all-consuming, according 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 my belovedOxford and having a glittering career. In the event, is my ability they eloped and Richard took her away from the Isle of Wight. Margo did go to Oxford and went on to absolutely insist I haven't read become a book before (when he catches me reading it again)well-respected journalist. The couple had three children: Rachel, Imogen and Sasha. This has Life was lived in London and holidays were spent at Sandcove, the huge benefit family home on the Isle of my getting to discover it all over again – and Wight. Even then the massive downside that I will doubts about Richard's drinking were never far from Margo's mind: ''she would never get be able to the end of my reading list, which must exist leave him in some kind of Möbius loopcharge''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701187530</amazonuk>Then Richard left them.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Julie Sarkissian1914585402|title=Dear LucyDashboard Elvis is Dead|author=David F Ross
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Dear LucyI 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. Dear, sweet Lucy. Lucy lives on It was a farm with Mister and Missusgripping, but the only person who is truly kind to her is Samanthaemotionally wounding read, who lives there with them. Lucy finds and rereading my review of it difficult, sometimes. She doesn’t always my main takeaway was that I might not have the words she needs. She tries very hard to be good but sometimes her helping is more of a hindrance. But she knows more that people think. She knows that although Mum Mum sent her to live lavished enough praise on the farm, she will come back for her one dayit. That is why Lucy must never leave the farm, otherwise Mum Mum won’t know where to find her.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444767585</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Brian KimberlingLucy Ashe|title=SnapperClara and Olivia
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=There's little doubt that Brian KimberlingThe year is 1933. The place? Sadler's debut novel, ''Snapper'' is a slightly unusual bookWells. The publishers describe it as a coming of age story, Ballerinas Clara and it is after a fashionOlivia are sisters, but it's more in the vein of an adult looking back twins no less. Identical on his young adult self than the more conventional young person grows up way of looking at things. The narratoroutside but not, Nathanwe learn, shares many of on the traits of his creatorinside. Like KimberlingAnd not on stage, he is brought up in Indiana and is involved in research of songbirds in either. Because there's a lot that state; effectively builds a paid bird watcherdancer. The title of the book though comes not from any type of birdSome things that can be taught or learnt – discipline, attention to detail – and some things, that ''je ne sais quoi'', but that don't come from the snapping turtle that lives in the stateclassroom. It's A stage presence, a broadly affectionate and wry look at the people of Indianacharm, known as a 'Hoosiers'joie de vivre''. The difference between a hard-worker, and a star.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0307908054</amazonuk>0861544080
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Melvyn BraggHeather Fawcett|title=Grace and MaryEmily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Grace Emily Wilde is an expert academic scholar on faerie lore, and Mary is a tender she has travelled extensively, and moving account spanning three generations of the same family. In the first chapterresearched meticulously, we are introduced to ninety-two year old Mary and write her doting sonlife's work, Johnthe very first encyclopaedia of faeries. Mary Whilst she is in a nursing home brilliant at research and has dementiaspeaking to faeries, she is not so good with people. So when she finds herself far, hovering far North in a limbo-worldthe small village of Hrafvsnik, precariously balanced between having somehow offended the present village matriarch, she is not sure what she has done, nor how to redeem herself and put her final investigations for her book back on the pastright track. John delights when he catches the occasional glimpse of the ''real'' Mary Enter Wendell Bambleby, her dashingly handsome and they find a meeting placeinsufferable rival who arrives unexpectedly, of sorts in their shared world of memories all charm and songsdelight, much to Emily's frustration. But why is he here? What does he want? And what exactly is going on with the faerie folk around Hravsnik?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444762346</amazonuk>0356519120
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Lucy Clarke1398515388|title=The Sea SistersBoy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Kate is as sensibleFirst of all, focused and down to earth as her sister Mia is reckless and unsettledit was the earthquake, so it’s no surprise that it’s Mia who leaves London behind to go traveling. With dreams of seeing deep in the USAocean floor, Australia which created the tsunami and beyondthis, Mia sets off excitedly with her best friend Finn, but this once in a lifetime trip tragically becomes just that as some months later Mia is found dead in Baliturn, an apparent suicide plungecaused the nuclear meltdown. With her life thrown into turmoil The result was complete and unable to get past the things they saidutter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, and didn’t say, to each other when Mia the loss of livelihoods was alive, Kate makes widespread. The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a rather Mia-like decision to leave it all behind tooconvenience store. Armed with Mia’s travel journey, she sets off He wasn't a dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to retrace her sister’s steps, stop by stop, to try open his car door and work out what Mia was going through, and what ultimately lead to her deathTamon the dog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007481349</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Julian ClaryChristopher Bowden|title=Briefs EncounteredMr Magenta
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Choosing this book from Julian Clary was irresistibleChristopher Bowden's latest novel is a patient untangling of a seemingly ordinary woman's life, carried out by her nephew after she has died. Normally, I try not The aunt who always provided a safe harbour and a little bit of indulgence to review books where I’m already familiar with author. But I didn’t feel a young nephew had had a much more interesting life than that seeing nephew Stephen had ever realised and it seems to him live several times or watching him regularly on TV counted, as I hadn’t read either of his two previous novelsan obligation to find it all out.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0091938856</amazonuk>B0B6Z9VJDW
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Suzanne BuglerJennifer Mason|title=The Safest PlacePartitions of Unity|rating=54
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Jane and David Berry have always lived Here at Bookbag Towers, we first met Elizabeth Cromwell, dominatrix and worked unintentional detective in London. However[[Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery by Jennifer Mason|Preposterous]], since their children have come along, the house has felt too cramped when she investigated and Jane has often dreamed unravelled a series of moving awaydisappearances. When their son Sam fails to get a place at his chosen secondary schoolIn ''Partitions of Unity'', that is the catalyst she needs sets her mind to start making her dream solving a reality. The only problem is that the rest of the family are not quite as enthusiastic about moving as she would have hopedmurder. David will have to commute every day to London and the children are anxious about starting a new school, particularly Sam who finds it difficult to make friends. Even Jane starts to wonder if it was a good idea, isolated in a house miles from anywhere, finding it difficult to get to know the local community.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0330544969</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=Maria SempleJennifer Mason|title=Where'd You Go, BernadettePreposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Much like the missing question mark in the title it would seem, Bernadette has disappeared. Maria Semple's ''Where'd You GoA struggling poetry zine, Bernadette'' works as both a physical mom-and emotional question. Bernadette Fox is -pop mobile diner in the wife of Elgie BranchNorthern California redwoods, a star at Microsoft in Seattle, and mother of 15 year old, Bee. The narrative begins with Bee wondering where her mother had gone, but then quickly moves to an epistolary format told in e400-mails, notes and messages between meter hurdler who just missed the major players2004 Olympics, including some rather obnoxious mothers at Beea women's schooltrack coach with a yen for bullwhips, one of whom also works at Microsoft a billionaire with Elgie. We are taken back a few weeks to when Bernadette was around and a seemingly somewhat angry mother prior to her mysterious disappearance. One state-of -the delights about the book-art S&M dungeon, a man serving a life sentence in Alabama, which along with being very funny on issues like helicopter parentingan enigmatic signature, corporate life andK(s, erx), Canadianson a cheap oil painting, an erotic art dealer in Georgia...'' This is that it emerges that Bernadette is more than just a wife sample of the cast of characters and mother but has a past career settings in Preposterous. As you can see, some keeping up will be required! The basic premise of her own as a talented architect which she has sacrificed for one reason or anotherthis mystery story goes like this.. Thus, in many ways she disappeared long before her physical disappearance.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0316204269</amazonuk>B09STS96HS
}}
{{newreview|author=Christopher Currie|title=The Ottoman Motel|rating=3.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Simon Sawyer is 11 years old, forced Move on a road-trip with his parents to visit his grandmother, Iris. Iris is living in some backwater town hemmed in on three sides by corn fields, and on the fourth by the sea. The town is called Reception in a heavy-handed attempt at irony, as we learn the town actually has no reception for mobile phones and is pretty much isolated from the rest of the world but for a few dirt tracks leading out.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908737190</amazonuk>}}[[Newest Graphic Novels Reviews]]