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[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]]{{adsense2}}__NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Isabelle GreyJenny Lecoat|title=The Bad MotherBeyond Summerland|rating=34

|summary=When we first meet Tessa Parker she has a major problem Jean lives on Jersey with her handsmother where they are celebrating the end of the occupation. Her seventeen-year-old son has been missing since During the previous daywar, 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. The police are involved As the British finally free the Channel islands from the Nazis, and Tessa the war is beside herself with worryfinally over, their hopes rise that they will finally learn what became of him. She's 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 police quite a bit - however you can't help but feel that there's a lot more going on that she's not telling. Nazis about the radio? To find out And what other secrets have been kept throughout the full story we go back four months...occupation?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857386484</amazonuk>1846976537

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Irene Nemirovsky and Sandra Smith (translator)Onyi Nwabineli|title=The MisunderstandingAllow Me to Introduce Myself|rating=34.5

|summary=After the Great War Yves Harteloup was a disappointed young man when he returned to the resort where he had Anuri spent idyllic her childhood summers. It wasn't long before he became infatuated by on display to the beautiful Denise world, thanks to her step- mother of a young childOphelia's increasingly popular presence on social media, wife where she posted every step of an older man who was away on business Anuri's childhood for sponsorships and influencer deals and bored, basically, monetary gain. In the heat of the summer the relationship Now Anuri is in her twenties and she is intoxicating slowly trying to regain her confidence and Denise falls passionately in love with Yves. When they return to Paris Denise envisages a little flat which they will furnish get her life back, suing her step-mother to their taste for afternoons of leisure and pleasure but take down the truth content about her. Anuri is that Yves must return battling alcoholism, failing to his mundane office job start her PhD, undergoing therapy and try to make every franc stretch as far as it cansecretly abusing people online and receiving money from them for doing so. In Most importantly, she is desperately worried about her little sister, who is the drab autumn new focus of Paris Denise is driven mad Ophelia's online empire. Can she save her sister, and perhaps herself and her relationship with desire for Yves and their love disintegrates under her father at the burden of misunderstanding.same time?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099563843</amazonuk>0861546873

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Isabel Ashdown1529153298|title=Summer The List of '76Suspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey|rating=45

|summary=1976 was a blisteringly hot summerIt'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. People celebrated when it eventually did rain and at one point it was Well, they've been murdered, but to have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so hot that Big Ben stopped workingfrightening. It would be the summer Miv's upset because she's overheard that Luke Wolff turned eighteen and he planned on leaving her father wants to move the Isle of White and going to poly in Brightonfamily 'Down South'. He had When you're from Yorkshire, Down South is a job at the holiday campfrightening, foreign place, which was hard work but there was a great social life too and even the possibility of romancebest avoided. His parents were happy to let him have his independence - after allFor Miv, the move would mean leaving her best friend, he was a sensibleSharon, well-balanced young man - and they were rather preoccupied with their own problemsshe'll do anything to prevent that. Looking in, youShe'd have thought that the Wolffs were the ideal family: from s not worried about the inside there were obviously one dangers or two cracksthat her Mum's stopped talking - to anyone.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908434333</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Cees Nooteboom1035906708|title=RitualsDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin|rating=4.5

|summary=''Rituals'' introduces us We tend to Amsterdamthink of Maria Callas as Greek, and but she was born to Inni, firstly Greek parents in 1960Manhattan, then in 1950New York, and then in the 1970s. When we first meet Inni, it is when he is a middle-aged man in 1960. Far from responsible December 1923 and hard-working, we see him as someone who is impulsive and reckless, even only moved to the point of cruelty to his wife - who formulates plans to leave himAthens when she was thirteen. It is only after this frankly miserable first impression that we meet the younger Inni, and we see how a chance meeting with a man called Arnold Taads had Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed the course of his life. Taads is a man obsessed with matriculating his life down it to 'Callas' to the last second, letting time dictate what he can do, with whom he can do make it with, and, most importantly, when. In Part three, more manageable in another chance meeting, the now ageing Inni meets Taads' son, PhillipStates. Phillip, though having never met his father, curiously lives a life When she was back in Athens - supposedly so that is an echo of his father's; though as Arnold isolated himself in she could get appropriate training for her voice - she was raised under the mountains, Phillip isolates himself in meditation Nazi occupation by a mother who mercilessly exploited her and the methodology made no secret of the tea ceremonyher preference for her elder sister, Jackie.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782067175</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Anthony QuinnAlexander McCall Smith|title=The StreetsPerfect Passion Company

|summary=Anthony Quinn's ''The Streets'' Perfect Passion Company is set in London a dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and operating as an alternative to all the early 1880s online apps in providing a more personal, tailored service. Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the area known business, as Somers Town, which Ness is planning to take a trip to Canada to those not familiar get away for a while. Katie is coming out of a break up with London geography is the area around Eustona bad boyfriend, St Pancras and King's Cross stationsso jumps at the chance to come home to Edinburgh. Today And so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, much of this falls under bringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, thanks to 44 Scotland Street and the trendy Camden areaIsabel Dalhousie novels, but with some new characters who quickly begin to charm. Katie has no experience in the 1880srunning a business, was the site of some of the worst slum tenements or in the capital. Some 50 years' earliermatch-making, Charles Dickens lived but Ness has full confidence in this part of London her abilities, and there's always her very helpful (and although 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. He loses his job, he had died by loses his fiancee, and his house gets trashed. Oh, and someone has delivered a really weird, disturbing coffin-sized object to his home, and it's possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the time this thing that has trashed his house! The thing is set, Benny is the depiction of 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 poverty delivery to his house is a new friend, a bad weather friend called Spike, who has been sent to help him since Benny is not far clearly under attack from what we would term Dickensiannefarious forces for being a good person. The book Spike is narrated by David Wildebloodgoing to take care of Benny, and will certainly take care of Benny's enemies, if he, Benny, who is and Harper (a principled but naive young man waitress slash Private Investigator who finds employment as an 'investigator' for the charismatic Mr Marchmontherself roped into Benny's ''The Labouring Classes of London'' - a strange mix of social geography and journalism publishing regular stories of the poor wild adventure) can figure out who reside in the slums of Londonexactly they are.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099575159</amazonuk>1662500491

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ruth ThomasKatherine Howe|title=The Home CornerA True Account|rating=34.5

|summary=When you finish your HighersHannah Masury is living in Boston, you’re supposed having been sent to go on live with a family who run an inn, and being made to university, especially if you’re work there from a girl like Luisayoung age. But she’s failed hers, so for now higher education When she hears there is outto be a hanging of some pirates in the town, she decides to go and watch. Enthralled and working is unfortunately horrified in. Soequal measure, she Hannah finds a job working as a classroom assistant herself embroiled in a primary schoolyoung boy's death at the hands of two vicious pirates. It’s not something She hides away, so that they don't find and kill her too, and then to escape them completely she ever wanted runs away to dosea, dressing as a boy and she joining the notorious Ned Low's pirate ship as a cabin boy. She soon finds herself in a weird sort the thick of limbo, at things when there is a life stage somewhere between the children in her classmutiny on board, and from there we are caught up in her proper grown-up adult colleaguesrip roaring tale of life on the ocean waves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>057123061X</amazonuk>0861547438

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Lucy Cruickshanks1471180158|title=The Trader of SaigonMaybe Tomorrow|author=Penny Parkes|rating=4.5

|summary=In Jamie Matson works in an upper-class grocery store, for a man who's a control freak with all the Saigon subtlety of the 1980s the Vietnam War is over but the traces remaina half brick. Alexander Jamie's son, Bo, 'has deserted from the US army and makes a comfortable living selling girls to local business menhis problems'. Phuc used to be a business man, complete with mansion He's asthmatic and the means to keep his wife and three children in affluence. Now his family live in a shanty hutmore you read, afraid of the ruling government more you'll suspect that spies through he's on the eyes of childrenautistic spectrum. At last he finds a way out, his luck just Sometimes Jamie needs to hold. Hanh also lives take time off at short notice - she's a frequent flier in poverty, desperately trying to help her sick mother with the pittance she earns from cleaning one of the citylocal A&E and sometimes Bo's many open latrinesnot fit enough to go to school. Then one day she meets someone who offers so much moreMissed shifts or the need to be away on time to pick Bo up from school are occasions when Jamie can be controlled and put in the wrong. His name is AlexanderIt was going to come to a head.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782063218</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Alain MabanckouB0CKD1L5JL|title=Tomorrow I'll Be TwentyRadio Free Olympia|author=Jeffrey Dunn|rating=54

|summary=Michel Petr is as carefree as any child can be during that difficult process called 'growing up'an orphan. Here in Congo Brazzaville he has his best friend LounesRescued by the strange, a crush on Caroline (his best friend's sister)reclusive Bear, the hassles of school he is brought up far from bustling cities and a family consisting of two mothers busy human society, in two houses which seems perfectly normal. He's also being educated about the world by his father; a world that changes daily as itforests of Washington's 1979Olympic Peninsula. Never mindAfter Bear dies and a brief sojourn in human company, he can always marry Caroline as long as he meets her conditions: she requires childrenand armed with only a pirate radio transmitter, Petr goes on a red 5-seater car journey through the forest, broadcasting the strange, wild and a white dograrely heard voices he encounters.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846685842</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Hilary ReylSarah Marsh|title=Lessons In FrenchA Sign of Her Own

|summary=American graduate Kate leaves the States for After a bout of scarlet fever as a job in Parischild, working for Ellen Lark loses her hearing. Suddenly plunged into a [[The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger]] style bossworld of silence, world famous photo-journalist Lydia Schelleverything about her life changes. She’s lived Living in France beforea time when the use of sign language was seen as something only savages do, so she thinks she knows what she’s letting herself in for. She doesn’t. So while the title doesn’t refer Ellen is sent to the language itself (a school where she is beautifully fluent even before she arrives), there are many lessons for her taught to learnlip read, but physically restrained from how to act as a go-between for Lydia and her husband Clarence (and his graduate students)signing. From here, to how to handle she ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the handsome Olivier deaf and the ''bon chic bon genre'' boys, to where to source the lavish ingredients her employer needs for dinner or how to make using a proper timelinesystem called Visible Speech. The Berlin Wall is about to fall At the same time, the continent Bell is buzzingworking on other inventions and ideas, and Kate is Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a part complicated tangle of it, for better or worseespionage.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0007446268</amazonuk>1035401614

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tim ParksB0BC3YTCMR|title=Sex is ForbiddenGood Girls Die|author=Ayura Ayira

|summary=Tim Parks's ''Sex This story is Forbiddennot for everyone.'' is narrated by twenty-something, Beth Lavender Daniels was three weeks short of her fifteenth birthday when The Incident happened. She's working as was a volunteer server at very bright student, a Buddhist retreat called the Dasgupta Institute where she has been for the last nine months although the book covers one ten day cycle of retreat. The Dasgupta Institute imposes bans on attendeesbit too nerdy if truth be told, although the conditions are slightly less onerous on the servers who, nevertheless are expected and suffered from vitiligo - people were afraid to join hug her in the meditations. Therecase it's no talking, no writing, no mingling of the sexes and no physical or even eye contactcontagious. One day Beth, still a rebel at heart, wanders into the men It's side where she discoverers an attendee not easy being a black girl whose skin is keeping 84% white. She had a diary where crush on seventeen-year-old Reggie Anderson but never thought he would notice her. Then he is contemplating his moment of crisis did: Lavender was very good at math and Reggie asked if she is hookedwould tutor him. The revealing of the past that has driven both Beth and the mysterious diary keeper to such an austere retreat is part of the intrigue of the book, but while there is She readily agreed: tutoring was something she gladly did at church: this was just an inevitable focus on introspection and new age thinking, Beth's tone is delightfully sceptical and feels very authenticextension. It's almost impossible not She went to feel for his house and he raped her plight and . In shock, she even allowed him to admire give her approacha lift home.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099565897</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1472263936|title=The Figurine|author=Victoria Hislop|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary=It was in 1968 that Helena McCloud made her first trip to Greece. She was alone: her mother, 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. Her trip to the family apartment in up-market Kolonaki would be the first of several annual visits. She grew to love her grandmother and the family's maid, Dina, but was wary - and frightened - of her grandfather, retired general Stamatis Papagiannis. He was proud of his close connections to the Junta and expected his family to uphold his values but saw no reason to accommodate them. His prejudices included Helena's red hair and green eyes - inherited from her father's Scottish ancestors.}}{{Frontpage|author=Adam ThorpeDean Koontz|title=FlightAfter 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}} {{Frontpage|isbn=B0BVDC2VWH|title=The Grave Listeners|author=William Frank

|summary=The past village is catching up with Bob Winrushisolated and poor. His marriage is over as It's surrounded by a result of his inconsiderate arrival home early when weather cancelled one of his jobs as a cargo pilot to find his wife in bed with another man but when an investigative journalist starts to dig into some Witching Forest. And the villagers subsist largely by farming Uphegia plants - its bread-like fruit provides nutrition and its blossom provides herbal medicines. The black wood of the content forest provides heat and warmth, roofs on homes, and even gallows, if needed. The fear of Bob's previous cargo trips, his life being buried alive is quickly placed an existential superstition in grave danger. His problems stemmed from having walked away from a particularly morally dubious trip to transport arms to the Taliban some years ago, although it turns out village and that his moral line in the sand is somewhat blurred. He has knowingly transported guns and military personnel in his time. He's sort of the aeronautical equivalent reason Volushka, a drunken, self-indulgent, lazy lout of white van a manis tolerated.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099539764</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Danny WallaceB0BYF82CXT|title=Charlotte StreetSemi-Detached|author=Deborah Stone|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=''Bill and Amanda are living in a semi-detached house, stuck in a depressing rut of boredom and disappointment, when Terry and Fiona – glamorous, successful and very much in love – move in next door.5Despite their different outlooks on life, the couples befriend each other and life appears to improve for both pairs. But all is not what it seems, and their increasingly interconnected relationships are fated for tragedy.''}}{{Frontpage|author=Shalini Boland|title=The Silent Bride|rating=3

|summary=In his early books, Danny Wallace was the new Tony Hawks, taking on silly challenges Alice and recounting them Seth are a match made in amusing waysheaven. With ''Charlotte Street''He is everything she has been searching for; handsome, his first entirely fictional workaccomplished, he seems to be moving into territory inhabited by [[:Category:Mike Gayle|Mike Gayle]]clever, that of blokefunny; total and utter husband-litmaterial. It seems She is all he could possibly want in a decent fitwife; beautiful, as his book ''Yes Man'' had elements of bloke-litsuccessful, despite being based on actual eventsconfident… and so the inevitable proposal is eagerly accepted by Alice and the wedding is planned and set. It may have suffered from a twee endingWhen the much-anticipated day arrives, Alice is walked down the aisle by her father, but it offered enough beaming with pride and excitement as she surveys the congregation – their friends assembled to suggest that celebrate this joyful day and when Seth turns to face his approaching bride, Alice's world implodes because she has absolutely no idea who the man at the altar is, who is a field Danny Wallace could work well inwaiting for her to become his wife.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>009191907X</amazonuk>1662507089

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=NoViolet Bulawayo1787636003|title=We Need New NamesThe Girls of Summer|author=Katie Bishop|rating=4.5

|summary=This powerful narrative bears witness to It was the summer when Rachel Evans turned eighteen that she and Caroline went backpacking around Greece and arrived on the experience of economic migrantsisland. Not just black Africans coming from ZimbabweRachel wasn't exactly innocent but she was, like NoViolet Bulawayoperhaps, but more generallynaive, those several generations of hardy, resourceful immigrants driven so when thirty-four-year-old Alistair Wright started to the USA take an interest in search her, she was flattered rather than wary. It was quite a while before he made any sort of a better futurephysical approach to her and by that time she was obsessed by him. Such people leave behind less courageous family membersAlistair worked for Henry Taylor, but not their emotions towards those they have loved looking after his interests on the island and in particular in the bar where all the girls either worked or their nation of birthpartied.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701188030</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Kim Izzo Amanda Craig|title=My Life in Black and WhiteThree Graces

|summary=Few styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the state-of-the-nation novel. There''My Life in Black s something so utterly compelling about any writer who can catch hold of the atmosphere of the day and White'' starts off capture it, crafting an image of the country as it stands in a police station in Englandone particular moment. The film noir theme To say that permeates Amanda Craig is skilled at doing this would be embarrassingly inadequate: she's practically synonymous with the novel begins immediatelygenre of contemporary social fiction at this point. Clara Bishop is dressed in She has such a gold evening gown, and treats gift for weaving the ongoing issues of the day into the police officer who is interviewing lives of her just as characters in a femme fatale would. This girl has sass. But when she begins to recount her taleway that feels natural and lived-in, it is clear this is a new development. The old Clara describes her life as something from a screwball comedynever making them ciphers for social commentary but instead fully realised people, not a film noirgrappling with issues far larger than themselves. How does a screenwriter-slash-gossip-columnist from LA end up being interviewed about an assault in England?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444737716</amazonuk>140871468X

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Mave Fellowes152915118X|title=Chaplin and CompanyPineapple Street|author=Jenny Jackson

|summary=In 'Chaplin & Company'Pineapple Street'' is the story of three women: Sasha, Mave Fellowes takes Darley and Georgiana. Darley and George are sisters and Sasha is married to their brother Cord. They're Stocktons, only Sasha isn't a quirky look at life on LondonStockton by birth so she isn't readily accepted into the tribe. The problem's canal boatsexacerbated when the clan matriarch, Tilda, asks Cord and Sasha if they'd like to move into the Pineapple Street property. Yet Tilda and Chip have renovated and downsized to another property, while her story is full a street or so away, which they own. They won't need any of eccentric charactersthe furniture from Pineapple Street, so Sasha and Cord can move straight in. Nominally, not least they had a choice but that wasn't the main human character of Odeline Milk, who moves reality. Darley and Georgiana start to call Sasha 'the boat gold digger'. She's living in ''their'' family home. They use it so often that shares they abbreviate it to 'the GD'.}}{{Frontpage|author=Emily Critchley|title of =One Puzzling Afternoon|rating=4|genre=Crime|summary=84 year old Edie has lived in the book after same small town for almost her mother passes away whole life, but now she is facing a move as her son wants to move to another house and bring Edie to live with his family, as Edie is starting to pursue lose her dream memory. However, Edie is tormented by the memory of becoming her childhood friend, Lucy, who went missing over 60 years ago, and the worry that there was a mime artist 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 more culturally enlightened big city after a lonely life in provincial Arundelhigh street, just as she was the book is delightfully free last time she saw her, she starts to find pockets of sentimentalitymemories coming back to her. I say And yet as she remembers the main human characterpast, because this she is also forgetting more and more in her day to day life. Will she uncover the story of a boat with a remarkable history of ownerstruth about Lucy's disappearance before her move, and also a story of the strange life on the canal which somehow exists beneath the city through which it flows. before her memories are gone forever?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0224097350</amazonuk>1804181250

{{newreview|author=Fayette Fox|title=The Deception Artist|rating=3.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=This story is all about Told from a retrospective view, a young woman unravels the charactersyear-long relationship that once defined her. Plot-wiseOverlaid with later wisdom, it is set in 1980s suburban Americathe 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. There are no explosions or even fairy tale adventures in this book. It’s just Set against the simple adventure backdrop of life when you’re a child and learning new things every day. Ivy accounts her dayan isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the 24-toyear-day life old narrator's deepening relationship with an extreme attention to the strangest detailsher older lover, just like a child. As well as explaining what she has learnt in school, she describes her daydreamsdepicting its all-consuming nature, how it changed her friends perspective on both romantic and her family. When her dad loses his job, her parents start arguing familial relationships and she is worried they might have to get a divorce like sad Sara in how it altered her class. And not only that, they might have to return their new TVirrevocably. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908434244</amazonuk>0861546490

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jonathan Evison0008506337|title=The Revised Fundamentals of CaregivingGarnett Girls|author=Georgina Moore

|summary= Ben hasnThe love affair between Margo Garnett and poet Richard O't worked for a while and soLeary was all-consuming, deciding apparently on a career change, trains to become a caregiverboth sides. Margo was just sixteen when they fell in love. His first client is Trev, a 20 year old Duchene Muscular Dystrophy sufferer who hasnRichard was twenty-one and described by Margo's mother as 'an older man't the sunniest of dispositions. In fact Trev is angry, selfHer parents worried that Richard's influence would take her away from what they felt she could achieve -centred going to Oxford and goes through caregivers like having a knife through milkglittering career. HoweverIn the event, Ben, needing a job, holds on tight they eloped and tries Richard took her away from the Isle of Wight. Margo did go to encourage Trev Oxford and went on to live become a littlewell-respected journalist. Eventually Trev complies The couple had three children: Rachel, Imogen and dictates a way forward: a road tripSasha. A road trip with a housebound, ill, angry person is not what Ben had Life was lived in mind London and holidays were spent at allSandcove, the family home on the Isle of Wight. Meanwhile it gradually becomes clear Even then the doubts about Richard's drinking were never far from Margo's mind: ''she would never be able to us that Trev isnleave him in charge''t the only one who has to learn to live a little differently.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781851751</amazonuk>Then Richard left them.

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jenny Mayhew1914585402|title=A Wolf in HindelheimDashboard Elvis is Dead|author=David F Ross|rating=34.5

|summary=Germany, the 1920s. Whatever that old proverb is about an ending 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 something merely years back and remember being a beginning of something else in disguise, this novel is an evocation of absolutely floored by how powerful and affecting itwas. In the rural habitation of the title It was a father gripping, emotionally wounding read, and son pair rereading my review of policemen is called to a remote house by news it my main takeaway was that a newborn baby is missing. In the house is an awkward combination of families – elderly matriarch, her son and daughter and both their spouses – two couples living I might not have lavished enough praise on top of each other, with a disabled boy and maid in the mix tooit. We soon are given an explanation for the child being dead – 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>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jessica SofferLucy Ashe|title=Tomorrow There Will be ApricotsClara and Olivia|rating=34.5

|summary=Lorca The year is in her early teens and struggling to get attention from her mother1933. SheThe place? Sadler's resorted to self-harming Wells. Ballerinas Clara and even her obvious abilities in Olivia are sisters, twins no less. Identical on the outside but not, we learn, on the kitchen doninside. And not on stage, either. Because there't seem to s a lot that builds a dancer. Some things that can be enough taught or learnt – discipline, attention to merit detail – and some of her chef motherthings, that 's time'je ne sais quoi'', that don't come from the classroom. Her last chance to make an impact before sheA stage presence, a charm, a ''joie de vivre''s sent away to boarding school seems to be to find a way to make Masgouf - an Iraqi fish dish - which her mother has described as her favourite meal. Along with her only friend - The difference between a young man who goes by the name of Blot hard- they discover that some Iraqi Jewish cooking classes are being offered by worker, and a chefstar.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0091943973</amazonuk>0861544080

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Nick TroutHeather Fawcett|title=The Patron Saint Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Lost DogsFaeries|rating=3.54

|summary=Dr Cyrus Mills only intended Emily Wilde is an expert academic scholar on faerie lore, and she has travelled extensively, and researched meticulously, to return to Vermont for long enough to sell the veterinary practice which his father had left himwrite her life's work, collect the money very first encyclopaedia of faeries. Whilst she is brilliant at research and get back speaking to South Carolina where he was trying to sort out faeries, she is not so good with people. So when she finds herself far, far North in the little matter small village of Hrafvsnik, having his licence somehow offended the village matriarch, she is not sure what she has done, nor how to practice suspendedredeem herself and put her final investigations for her book back on the right track. He had never got on with his father Enter Wendell Bambleby, her dashingly handsome and insufferable rival who had - somehow - managed NOT arrives unexpectedly, all charm and delight, much to tell his son that his mother had died until after her funeralEmily's frustration. The first snag But why is he encountered was quite a big one: his father had been equally forgetful about dealing with his financial affairs and the Bedside Manor practice was dying on its feet. here? Cyrus didn’t have the money to prop it up and it looked as though What does he would have to hand everything over to the Bank and walk away want? And what exactly is going on with nothing. The second problem was an aging Golden Retriever by the name of Frieda and an owner who’s very keen to see her put to sleep.faerie folk around Hravsnik?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1401310885</amazonuk>0356519120

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Clive Lawton1398515388|title=Flowers From FukushimaThe Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)

|summary= In 2011First of all, Japan it was hit by a 9.0 magnitude the earthquake. That and , deep in the ocean floor, which created the subsequent tsunami and this, in turn, caused level 7 meltdowns at the Fukushima nuclear power plantmeltdown. ''Flowers The result was complete and utter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, and the loss of livelihoods was widespread. The fact that many pets were separated from Fukushima'' riffs on this in their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a post-apocalyptic story of dog outside a Japan devastated by even more and even bigger natural disastersconvenience store. It follows two main characters as they pick their way through He wasn't a dog person but the devastation, each trying convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to make sense of this new open his car door and very different worldTamon the dog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B00CDLAK0E</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Lynsey RoseChristopher Bowden|title=First Aid Kit GirlMr Magenta|rating=54

|summary=Steph hates her job. She hates her colleagues. She likes the work first aid kit, Christopher Bowden's latest novel is a patient untangling of a lot. She’s trundling along, doing not very muchseemingly ordinary woman's life, finding carried out by her release where nephew after she canhas died. To me The aunt who always provided a safe harbour and a little bit of indulgence to a young nephew had had a much more interesting life than that nephew Stephen had ever realised and it seems like she loves to hate her life. Takes great pleasure in despising him an obligation to find it, in factall out.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0956235123</amazonuk>B0B6Z9VJDW

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Gill HornbyJennifer Mason|title=The HivePartitions of Unity|rating=4.5

|summary=There's an old joke thatHere at Bookbag Towers, for parentswe first met Elizabeth Cromwell, there are only two good days dominatrix and unintentional detective in the school holidays - the first and the last[[Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery by Jennifer Mason|Preposterous]], but in St Ambrose the ''real'' work begins when the children go back to school at the start she investigated and unravelled a series of the new school yeardisappearances. ThereIn 's a new head at the school (and he'll have to be knocked into shape) but the real power is Beatrice - Partitions of Unity'Bea' to those whom , she elects sets her mind to call friends for the time being - who rules the parents, decides who is in or out and what status they should have in the communitysolving a murder.. And how does she do it? Well, she's the queen.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408704358</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=Jasper GibsonJennifer Mason|title=A Bright Moon For FoolsPreposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery

|summary=Jasper Gibson’s debut novel, ''A Bright Moon For Foolsstruggling poetry zine, tells the story of Harry Christmas a mom-and his drunken escapades -pop mobile diner in Caracas and the small villages Northern California redwoods, a 400-meter hurdler who just missed the 2004 Olympics, a women's track coach with a yen for bullwhips, a billionaire with a state-of Venezuela. Harry Christmas is nowhere near as jolly as his name suggests-the-art S&M dungeon, a man serving a life sentence in fact Harry is drunken conman. He has pushed his luck too far and is forced to fly to Venezuela to evade William SladeAlabama, an enigmatic signature, K(s, x), the irate son of on a woman Harry fleeced out of £27cheap oil painting,000an erotic art dealer in Georgia... Harry’s life '' This is defined by booze just a sample of the cast of characters and where to get the next drink; he is having a major breakdownsettings in Preposterous. Slade is no better off and is also having his own mental crisis: unfortunately for HarryAs you can see, Slade’s breakdown is some keeping up will be required! The basic premise of a much more psychotic naturethis mystery story goes like this...|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0957468105</amazonuk>B09STS96HS