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[[Category:General Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]]{{adsense2}}__NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Unfaithfully YoursJenny Lecoat|authortitle=Nigel WilliamsBeyond Summerland
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=When Nigel Williams first really burst Jean lives on to Jersey with her mother where they are celebrating the best-seller list, a couple end of decades ago, it was with a book set in Wimbledon that really quite tickled a younger me – and my motherthe occupation. But then he produced two more in During the same serieswar, and we soon decided he Jean's father was arrested for listening to a bit of a banned radio and soldiers took him away one-trick ponynight, leaving Jean and could never be sure how much her mother waiting for years for news of the trilogy we'd read, or be too eager to read morehim. Flash forwardAs the British finally free the Channel islands from the Nazis, and Williams has certainly branched out – his setting this time is Putney. Wimbledon Common the war is now Putney Heathfinally over, and so ontheir hopes rise that they will finally learn what became of him. But here he provides an epistolatory novel – and if there's one kind of novel to make me prick up my ears will the truth come as a relief, or will it is one built from letters. raise further questions around what else happened during the war? It is Who was the blatant two-and-fro timing of informer who told the narrative, and Nazis about the succinctness that characters are formed with, that radio? strike me as obvious benefits of such a book – and Unfaithfully Yours has those and many more.And what other secrets have been kept throughout the occupation?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1472106741</amazonuk>1846976537
}}
{{Frontpage|author=Onyi Nwabineli|title=Allow Me to Introduce Myself|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=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, 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. Anuri is battling alcoholism, failing to start her PhD, undergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online and receiving money from them for doing so. Most importantly, she is desperately worried about her little sister, who is the new focus of Ophelia's online empire. Can she save her sister, and perhaps herself and her relationship with her father at the same time?|isbn=0861546873}}{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1529153298|title=Love in RevolutionThe List of Suspicious Things|author=B R CollinsJennie Godfrey
|rating=5
|genre=TeensGeneral Fiction|summary=Everyone in her village - in an unnamed Basque country - loves pello It's 1979 and Esteya Margaret Thatcher is no differentPrime Minister. It (A woman? I mean, honestly...) She's not what's worrying Miv's the national sport and its heroes are national heroesfamily, though. Women have been disappearing. That the holder of the Kings Cup hails from her village is a source of pride to Esteya Well, her twin brother Martinthey've been murdered, and everyone elsebut to have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. Except older brother Leon Miv's upset because she's overheard that her father wants to move the family 'Down South'. So when the Bull comes home for a visit When you're from Yorkshire, everyone Down South is excited. And when a young peasant boy challenges him to a gamefrightening, foreign place, everyone laughsbest avoided. And when For Miv, the peasant boy winsmove would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, everyone is shocked and discomfitedshe'll do anything to prevent that. Except Leon. Leon, a communist sympathiser, sees it as a symbolic victory of She's not worried about the peasant over the dissolute regime of the Kingdangers or that her Mum's stopped talking - to anyone. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408815702</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1035906708|title=The Never PagesDiva|author=Graham ThomasDaisy Goodwin|rating=4.5|genre=FantasyGeneral Fiction|summary=''There are two rules that the Dream Investigator must follow:''<br>''1. Document everything.''<br>''2. Keep moving forward.'' Master G is in search We tend to think of his one true loveMaria Callas as Greek, Lucy. But Lucy is lost but she was born to Greek parents in the NeverRealmManhattan, the dimension that separates the living from whatever comes after. In the NeverRealmNew York, memories do not exist. So how is Master G - the Dream Investigator - to find her? From the very first moment, his journey into the NeverRealm is destroying his mind, turning thoughts in December 1923 and knowledge and recollection only moved to sand, shifting sandAthens when she was thirteen. He will need courage Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to face the nightmarish environment. He will need fortitude 'Callas' to resist make it more manageable in the degenerationStates. He will need to find Brekker, his unreliable scientist friend. And he'll need When she was back in Athens - supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for her voice - she was raised under the companionship Nazi occupation by a mother who mercilessly exploited her and made no secret of Paisleyher preference for her elder sister, a dog named after a carpetJackie...|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956742203</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Things We NeedAlexander McCall Smith|authortitle=Jennifer CloseThe Perfect Passion Company|rating=4.5|genre=Women's General Fiction|summary=Claire Coffey used The Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and operating as an alternative to live all the online apps in New York with providing a successful job 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 great fiancé; her sister Martha used trip to Canada to be get away for a nurse; and her brother Max should have been looking forward to finishing his final year at college before embarking on an exciting and interesting careerwhile. However, things don’t always turn Katie is coming out the way that one expects which is why all three siblings end of a break up back with a bad boyfriend, and so jumps at the family chance to come home needing to Edinburgh. 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 support of their parentsIsabel Dalhousie novels, but with some new characters who quickly begin to charm. Katie has no experience in running a business, or in match-making, but Ness has full confidence in her abilities, and there's always her very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, William, to lend a hand…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701186658</amazonuk>1846976596
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=A Cat Called DogDean Koontz|authortitle=Jem VanstonThe Bad Weather Friend|rating=34.5|genre=General FictionParanormal|summary= ''Cats are not dogsBenny is having a terrifically bad day. And dogs are not cats He loses his job, he loses his fiancee, and his house gets trashed. Even two-legs know that. But Dog was Oh, and someone has delivered a catreally weird, because that was disturbing coffin-sized object to his name: he was a cat - a cat called Dog - home, and he it's possible that whoever or whatever was happy with inside is the thing that too.'' Confused? Don't be. Dog may be happy but he has trashed his house! The thing is the confused one, not you. He Benny is a catthe very last person to deserve all this bad luck. He is ''a cat''nice person. But he's called Dog because he behaves like one A really nice person. He pokes So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the delivery to his tongue out like house is a puppy. When he gets excitednew friend, he wags his tail like a puppy. Andbad weather friend called Spike, horror of horrors, he even yaps and barks like who has been sent to help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a puppygood person. This kitten-cat Spike is only one summer oldgoing to take care of Benny, so perhaps itand will certainly take care of Benny's not too late. Perhapsenemies, if he were to find a tutor, he could learn to be a ''proper'' cat. A cat who understands the feline holy trinity of eatingBenny, sleeping and washing. A cat Harper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who understands his importance to two-legs. A cat finds herself roped into Benny's wild adventure) can figure out who can proudly take his place among the others of the best species in the worldexactly they are.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1780885598</amazonuk>1662500491
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Closed DoorsKatherine Howe|authortitle=Lisa O'DonnellA True Account
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Did you listen at doors when you were little? Hannah Masury is living in Boston, having been sent to live with a family who run an inn, and being made to work there from a young age. Did you hang from the banisters, trying When she hears there is to hear what was going on be a hanging of some pirates in the grown up world when you'd been banished town, she decides to your room? go and watch. In this storyEnthralled and horrified in equal measure, eleven year old Michael Hannah finds out most herself embroiled in a young boy's death at the hands of his information by listeningtwo vicious pirates. HeShe hides away, so that they don's adept at creeping around t find and kill her too, and learning snippets of informationthen to escape them completely she runs away to sea, local gossip dressing as a boy and tidbits of family dynamicsjoining the notorious Ned Low's pirate ship as a cabin boy. But one nightShe soon finds herself in the thick of things when there is a mutiny on board, when his mum comes home screaming and covered from there we are caught up in blood the secrets that Michael becomes privvy too are far more disturbing than what Tricia down her rip roaring tale of life on the road has been getting up toocean waves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0434022551</amazonuk>0861547438
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Mike Gayle1471180158|title=Turning FortyMaybe Tomorrow|author=Penny Parkes|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=I made Jamie Matson works in an upper-class grocery store, for a man who's a control freak with all the mistake subtlety of reading Mike Gaylea half brick. Jamie's son, Bo, 'has his problems'. He'Turning Thirtys asthmatic and the more you read, the more you'll suspect that he' in s on the weeks before I did soautistic spectrum. Despite it being Sometimes Jamie needs to take time off at short notice - she's a story of a man whose life fell apart just before his 30th birthday, he still seemed frequent flier in the local A&E and sometimes Bo's not fit enough to go to be doing better than I was, which made it a readable but depressing experienceschool. Fortunately, ''Turning Forty'' is being published about 15 months before I reach that milestone Missed shifts or the need to be away on time to pick Bo up from school are occasions when Jamie can be controlled and my life is put in a different place which, hopefully, will combine the wrong. It was going to come to make it a more enjoyable readhead.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340918535</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Simon PontB0CKD1L5JL|title=Remember to BreatheRadio Free Olympia|author=Jeffrey Dunn
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=We meet Sam Grant on his 27th birthdayPetr is an orphan. Rescued by the strange, reclusive Bear, but he's not out celebrating. He's got flu is brought up far from bustling cities and just to add to his problems he's got a boil busy human society, in his groin - or on his thigh - depending on which side the forests of the doctorWashington's desk you're sittingOlympic Peninsula. Sam's not been looking after himself since his girlfriend dumped him just over three months ago After Bear dies and when you work a brief sojourn in adland the opportunities for not looking after yourself are many and varied. The millenium hasn't quite arrivedhuman company, 'austerity' hasn't even been thought about and living an out-of-control life has never been easier. What we get is Sam's diaryarmed with only a pirate radio transmitter, but it's not in chronological orderPetr goes on a journey through the forest, with some of it going back to before he met Sarah - broadcasting the girl strange, wild and rarely heard voices he didn't really want, but struggles to get overencounters.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1909273007</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Grace McCleenSarah Marsh|title=The Professor A Sign of PoetryHer Own|rating=43.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Grace McCleen's ''The Professor After a bout of Poetry'' is Elizabeth Stone, a 52 year old aged professor at a London University. When the book opens she has just discovered that scarlet fever as a cancer scare is now in remissionchild, but forced by Ellen Lark loses her illness to take hearing. Suddenly plunged into a sabbaticalworld of silence, she sets everything about researching her latest book based on some papers of TS Eliotlife changes. This takes her back to Oxford, to her alma mater and raises Living in a time when the prospect use of seeing her former professor theresign language was seen as something only savages do, Ellen is sent to a man convinced of the young Miss Stone's potential at an early ageschool where she is taught to lip read, but whose last meeting was somewhat awkwardphysically restrained from signing. McCleen looks at the issues raised by generations of poets From here, namely time, death and love. For Professor Stone, the first she ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has passed, been teaching the second come uncomfortably close deaf and using a system called Visible Speech. At the third remains unknown to her. What's moresame time, her academic focus Bell is working on the music of love poetry which is somewhat ironic in that she avoids human relationships perhaps due to the death of her mother at an early age other inventions and an unhappy foster experienceideas, while also having and Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a peculiar aversion to music. Perhaps though this is what allows her a detached ability to write academic studiescomplicated tangle of espionage.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444769952</amazonuk>1035401614
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Rachel JoyceB0BC3YTCMR|title=PerfectGood Girls Die|author=Ayura Ayira
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=In 1972 two seconds ''This story is not for everyone.'' 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 vitiligo - people were added afraid to the yearhug her in case it's contagious. It's not easy being a black girl whose skin is 84% white. 11 She had a crush on seventeen-year -old Byron Hemmings heard about it from 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 was just an extension. She went to his friend James house and felt it wouldn't be a good thinghe raped her. In fact at the moment Bryon's watch's second hand reversed something happened that would mean neither his or James' lives would ever be the same againshock, she even allowed him to give her a lift home.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857520660</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1472263936|title=419The Figurine|author=Will FergusonVictoria Hislop
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Anyone who has ever opened an E-Mail which proves It was in 1968 that Helena McCloud made her first trip to be a plea for assistance in getting large amounts of money ahead of the authorities will recognise the themeGreece. Laura Curtis' father She was alone: her mother, Greek by birth, had such an E-Mail left the family home and having tried refused to help return, but Mary and spent all his money, he has driven his car off Hamish (Helena's parents) felt that it would be a bridgepity if Helena grew up without knowing her grandparents or understanding her Greek heritage. Meanwhile, Her trip to the family apartment in Nigeria, a pregnant young woman walks through up-market Kolonaki would be the dust, trying first of several annual visits. She grew to escape love her grandmother and the family and find something that ever she doesn't know what she is looking for. In the Niger Deltas maid, meanwhileDina, the oil companies are moving in but was wary - and a whole way frightened - of her grandfather, retired general Stamatis Papagiannis. He was proud of life is changing in his close connections to the fishing villages thereJunta 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. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781855056</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=Juan Pablo VillalobosB0BVDC2VWH|title=Down The Rabbit HoleGrave Listeners|author=William Frank
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Down The Rabbit Hole village is isolated and poor. It's surrounded by a fictional tale of a young boy’s life as Witching Forest. And the son villagers subsist largely by farming Uphegia plants - its bread-like fruit provides nutrition and its blossom provides herbal medicines. The black wood of a Mexican drug lord. Tochtli narrates the story forest provides heat and warmth, roofs on homes, and gives us a child’s view even gallows, if needed. The fear of being buried alive is an existential superstition in the sordid world village and that his father rules. We are shown is the positives and negatives of this kind of lifestyle as Tochtli sees thingsreason Volushka, from presents galore to having to call his father by his first name. This book is a strange blend drunken, self-indulgent, lazy lout of childlike wonder within a violent worldman is tolerated.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908276282</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Isabelle GreyB0BYF82CXT|title=The Bad MotherSemi-Detached|author=Deborah Stone|rating=34
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=When we first meet Tessa Parker she has ''Bill and Amanda are living in a semi-detached house, stuck in a major problem depressing rut of boredom and disappointment, when Terry and Fiona – glamorous, successful and very much in love – move in next door. Despite their different outlooks on her hands. Her seventeen-year-old son has been missing since life, the previous daycouples befriend each other and life appears to improve for both pairs. The police But all is not what it seems, and their increasingly interconnected relationships are involved and Tessa is beside herself with worryfated for tragedy. She's 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. To find out the full story we go back four months...|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857386484</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Irene Nemirovsky and Sandra Smith (translator)Shalini Boland|title=The MisunderstandingSilent Bride|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=After the Great War Yves Harteloup was Alice and Seth are a disappointed young man when he returned to the resort where he had spent idyllic childhood summersmatch made in heaven. He is everything she has been searching for; handsome, accomplished, clever, funny; total and utter husband-material. It wasn't long before She is all he became infatuated by the could possibly want in a wife; beautiful Denise - mother of a young child, wife of an older man who was away on business successful, confident… and bored. In so the heat of the summer inevitable proposal is eagerly accepted by Alice and the relationship wedding is intoxicating planned and Denise falls passionately in love with Yvesset. When they return to Paris Denise envisages a little flat which they will furnish to their taste for afternoons of leisure the much-anticipated day arrives, Alice is walked down the aisle by her father, beaming with pride and pleasure but excitement as she surveys the truth is that Yves must return congregation – their friends assembled to his mundane office job celebrate this joyful day and try when Seth turns to make every franc stretch as far as it can. In face his approaching bride, Alice's world implodes because she has absolutely no idea who the man at the drab autumn of Paris Denise altar is driven mad with desire , who is waiting for Yves and their love disintegrates under the burden of misunderstandingher to become his wife.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099563843</amazonuk>1662507089
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Isabel Ashdown1787636003|title=The Girls of Summer of '76|author=Katie Bishop|rating=45
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=1976 It was a blisteringly hot the summer. People celebrated when it eventually did rain and at one point it was so hot that Big Ben stopped working. It would be the summer that Luke Wolff Rachel Evans turned eighteen that she and Caroline went backpacking around Greece and he planned arrived on leaving the Isle of White and going island. Rachel wasn't exactly innocent but she was, perhaps, naive, so when thirty-four-year-old Alistair Wright started to poly take an interest in Brightonher, she was flattered rather than wary. He had a job at the holiday camp, which was hard work but there It was quite a great social life too and even the possibility while before he made any sort of romance. His parents were happy physical approach to let her and by that time she was obsessed by him have his independence - after all, he was a sensible, well-balanced young man - and they were rather preoccupied with their own problems. Looking inAlistair worked for Henry Taylor, you'd have thought that looking after his interests on the Wolffs were island and in particular in the ideal family: from bar where all the inside there were obviously one girls either worked or two crackspartied.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908434333</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Cees NooteboomAmanda Craig|title=RitualsThree Graces|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=''Rituals'' introduces us to Amsterdam, and to Inni, firstly in 1960, then in 1950, and then in Few styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the state-of-the 1970s. When we first meet Inni, it is when he is a middle-aged man in 1960nation novel. Far from responsible and hard-working, we see him as someone There's something so utterly compelling about any writer who is impulsive can catch hold of the atmosphere of the day and recklesscapture it, even to crafting an image of the point of cruelty to his wife - who formulates plans to leave himcountry as it stands in one particular moment. It To say that Amanda Craig is only after skilled at doing this frankly miserable first impression that we meet the younger Inni, and we see how a chance meeting would be embarrassingly inadequate: she's practically synonymous with a man called Arnold Taads had changed the course genre of his lifecontemporary social fiction at this point. Taads is She has such a man obsessed with matriculating his life down to gift for weaving the ongoing issues of the last second, letting time dictate what he can do, with whom he can do it with, and, most importantly, when. In Part three, in another chance meeting, day into the now ageing Inni meets Taads' son, Phillip. Phillip, though having never met his father, curiously lives of her characters in a life way that is an echo of his father's; though as Arnold isolated himself feels natural and lived-in the mountains, Phillip isolates himself in meditation and the methodology of the tea ceremonynever making them ciphers for social commentary but instead fully realised people, grappling with issues far larger than themselves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782067175</amazonuk>140871468X
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Anthony Quinn152915118X|title=The StreetsPineapple Street|author=Jenny Jackson
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Anthony Quinn's ''The StreetsPineapple Street'' is set in London in the early 1880s in the area known as Somers Townstory of three women: Sasha, which Darley and Georgiana. Darley and George are sisters and Sasha is married to those not familiar with London geography is their brother Cord. They're Stocktons, only Sasha isn't a Stockton by birth so she isn't readily accepted into the area around Euston, St Pancras and Kingtribe. The problem's Cross stations. Today, much of this falls under exacerbated when the trendy Camden areaclan matriarch, but in the 1880sTilda, was the site of some of the worst slum tenements in asks Cord and Sasha if they'd like to move into the capitalPineapple Street property. Some 50 years' earlier Tilda and Chip have renovated and downsized to another property, Charles Dickens lived in this part of London and although he had died by the time this is seta street or so away, the depiction which they own. They won't need any of the poverty is not far furniture from what we would term DickensianPineapple Street, so Sasha and Cord can move straight in. The book is narrated by David Wildeblood Nominally, who is they had a principled choice but naive young man who finds employment as an that wasn'investigatort the reality. Darley and Georgiana start to call Sasha ' for the charismatic Mr Marchmontgold digger'. She's living in ''The Labouring Classes of Londontheir'' - a strange mix of social geography and journalism publishing regular stories of family home. They use it so often that they abbreviate it to 'the poor who reside in the slums of LondonGD'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099575159</amazonuk>
}}
{{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 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 lose her memory. However, Edie is 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 truth of what happened all that time ago. After 'seeing' Lucy in the high street, just as she was the last time she saw her, she starts to find pockets of memories coming back to her. And yet as she remembers the past, 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?
|isbn=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=Ruth Thomas0008506337|title=The Home CornerGarnett Girls|author=Georgina Moore|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=When you finish your HighersThe love affair between Margo Garnett and poet Richard O'Leary was all-consuming, you’re supposed to go 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 university, especially if you’re Oxford and having a girl like Luisaglittering career. But she’s failed hers, so for now higher education is out In the event, they eloped and working is unfortunately inRichard took her away from the Isle of Wight. So, she finds Margo did go to Oxford and went on to become a job working as a classroom assistant in a primary schoolwell-respected journalist. It’s not something she ever wanted to do The couple had three children: Rachel, Imogen and she finds herself Sasha. Life was lived in a weird sort London and holidays were spent at Sandcove, the family home on the Isle of limbo, at a life stage somewhere between Wight. Even then the children doubts about Richard's drinking were never far from Margo's mind: ''she would never be able to leave him in her class, and her proper grown-up adult colleaguescharge''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>057123061X</amazonuk>Then Richard left them.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Lucy Cruickshanks1914585402|title=The Trader of SaigonDashboard Elvis is Dead|author=David F Ross|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=In the Saigon 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 the 1980s the Vietnam War is over but the traces remain. Alexander has deserted from the US army years back and remember being absolutely floored by how powerful and makes a comfortable living selling girls to local business menaffecting it was. Phuc used to be It was a business mangripping, emotionally wounding read, complete with mansion and the means to keep his wife and three children in affluence. Now his family live in a shanty hut, afraid rereading my review of the ruling government it my main takeaway was that spies through the eyes of children. At last he finds a way out, his luck just needs to hold. Hanh also lives in poverty, desperately trying to help her sick mother with the pittance she earns from cleaning one of the city's many open latrinesI might not have lavished enough praise on it. Then one day she meets someone who offers so much more. His name is Alexander.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782063218</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alain MabanckouLucy Ashe|title=Tomorrow I'll Be TwentyClara and Olivia|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Michel The year is as carefree as any child can be during that difficult process called 'growing up1933. The place? Sadler's Wells. Here in Congo Brazzaville he has his best friend LounesBallerinas Clara and Olivia are sisters, a crush twins no less. Identical on Caroline (his best friend's sister)the outside but not, we learn, on the hassles of school and a family consisting of two mothers in two houses which seems perfectly normalinside. And not on stage, either. HeBecause there's also being educated about the world by his father; a world 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 changes daily as itdon's 1979t come from the classroom. Never mindA stage presence, he can always marry Caroline as long as he meets her conditions: she requires childrena charm, a red 5''joie de vivre''. The difference between a hard-seater car worker, and a white dogstar.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846685842</amazonuk>0861544080
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Hilary ReylHeather Fawcett|title=Lessons In FrenchEmily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries|rating=3.54
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=American graduate Kate leaves the States for a job in ParisEmily Wilde is an expert academic scholar on faerie lore, and she has travelled extensively, and researched meticulously, working for a [[The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger]] style bossto write her life's work, world famous photo-journalist Lydia Schellthe very first encyclopaedia of faeries. She’s lived in France before Whilst she is brilliant at research and speaking to faeries, she is not so good with people. So when she thinks she knows what she’s letting finds herself far, far North in for. She doesn’t. So while the title doesn’t refer to small village of Hrafvsnik, having somehow offended the language itself (village matriarch, she is beautifully fluent even before not sure what she arrives)has done, there are many lessons nor how to redeem herself and put her final investigations for her to learnbook back on the right track. Enter Wendell Bambleby, from how to act as a go-between for Lydia and her husband Clarence (dashingly handsome and his graduate students)insufferable rival who arrives unexpectedly, to how to handle the handsome Olivier all charm and the ''bon chic bon genre'' boysdelight, much to where to source the lavish ingredients her employer needs for dinner or how to make a proper timelineEmily's frustration. The Berlin Wall But why is he here? What does he want? And what exactly is about to fall, going on with the continent is buzzing, and Kate is a part of it, for better or worse.faerie folk around Hravsnik?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0007446268</amazonuk>0356519120
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tim Parks1398515388|title=Sex is ForbiddenThe Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Tim Parks's ''Sex is Forbidden'' is narrated by twenty-something, Beth. She's working as a volunteer server at a Buddhist retreat called the Dasgupta Institute where she has been for the last nine months although the book covers one ten day cycle First of retreat. The Dasgupta Institute imposes bans on attendeesall, although it was the conditions are slightly less onerous on the servers whoearthquake, nevertheless are expected to join deep in the meditations. There's no talking, no writingocean floor, no mingling of which created the sexes tsunami and no physical or even eye contact. One day Beththis, still a rebel at heartin turn, wanders into caused the men's side where she discoverers an attendee is keeping a diary where he is contemplating his moment of crisis nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and she is hookedutter devastation. The revealing of the past that has driven both Beth deaths were uncountable, and the mysterious diary keeper to such an austere retreat is part loss of livelihoods was widespread. The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the intrigue list of priorities but - six months after the book, tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. He wasn't a dog person but while there is an inevitable focus on introspection and new age thinking, Beththe convenience store owner's tone is delightfully sceptical and feels very authentic. It's almost impossible not comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to feel for her plight open his car door and to admire her approachTamon the dog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099565897</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Adam ThorpeChristopher Bowden|title=FlightMr Magenta
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The past is catching up with Bob Winrush. His marriage Christopher Bowden's latest novel is over as a result patient untangling 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 of the content of Bobseemingly ordinary woman's previous cargo tripslife, his life is quickly placed in grave dangercarried out by her nephew after she has died. His problems stemmed from having walked away from The aunt who always provided a particularly morally dubious trip safe harbour and a little bit of indulgence to transport arms a young nephew had had a much more interesting life than that nephew Stephen had ever realised and it seems to the Taliban some years ago, although him an obligation to find it turns all out 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 of white van man.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099539764</amazonuk>B0B6Z9VJDW
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Danny WallaceJennifer Mason|title=Charlotte StreetPartitions of Unity|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=In his early booksHere at Bookbag Towers, Danny Wallace was the new Tony Hawkswe first met Elizabeth Cromwell, taking on silly challenges dominatrix and recounting them unintentional detective in amusing ways. With ''Charlotte Street'', his first entirely fictional work, he seems to be moving into territory inhabited by [[Preposterous:Category:Mike GayleAn Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery by Jennifer Mason|Mike GaylePreposterous]], that when she investigated and unravelled a series of bloke-litdisappearances. It seems a decent fit, as his book In ''Yes ManPartitions of Unity'' had elements of bloke-lit, despite being based on actual events. It may have suffered from a twee ending, but it offered enough she sets her mind to suggest that this is solving a field Danny Wallace could work well inmurder...|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>009191907X</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
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Jennifer Mason
|title=Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=''A struggling poetry zine, a mom-and-pop mobile diner in the 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-the-art S&M dungeon, a man serving a life sentence in Alabama, an enigmatic signature, K(s, x), on a cheap oil painting, an erotic art dealer in Georgia...''
}}
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