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[[Category:General Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|author=J Paul HendersonJenny Lecoat|title=Last Bus to Coffeeville|rating=3.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Dr Eugene Chaney III promised Nancy one thing; a promise he hoped he'd never have to deliver. However, in the midst of their elderly years Nancy confirms that the time has come. So Eugene gathers together an unlikely fellowship and a bus that used to belong to Paul McCartney and plans a journey to Coffeeville, making it as much of a holiday as possible. Just one thing though: before they set out, they must spring Nancy and that may not be as easy as it sounds… even if it ''did'' sound easy.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1843443341</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=The Quickening|author=Julie MyersonBeyond Summerland
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Rachel and Dan are Jean lives on holiday in the Caribbean, but soon after Jersey with her mother where they arrive on are celebrating the island end of Antigua odd 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 disturbing things start to happen. Items seemingly move by themselves. Things break. People appear out her mother waiting for years for news of nowherehim. And then As the British finally free the Channel islands from the Nazis, and the attacks start. Rachel war is petrifiedfinally over, their hopes rise that they will finally learn what became of him. Newly pregnant she is worrying for her baby’s safety But will the truth come as well as her owna relief, and she has a nagging feeling in her stomach that or will it raise further questions around what else happened during the war? Who was the informer who told the one person she should be able to trust is Nazis about the one she simply cannot. Dan is acting strangely and though she begs him to let them go home early, he plays down her fears. Why won’t he believe radio? And what she’s saying, and take her seriouslyother secrets have been kept throughout the occupation?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099580241</amazonuk>1846976537
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tom WinterOnyi Nwabineli|title=Arms Wide OpenAllow Me to Introduce Myself
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Meredith loves Anuri spent her husband Alistair (childhood on display to the father world, thanks to her step-mother Ophelia's increasingly popular presence on social media, where she posted every step of her teenage twins Jemima Anuri's childhood for sponsorships and influencer deals and Luke), basically, monetary gain. This Now Anuri is in her twenties and she is a bit of a problem though as Alistair now has Charlotte, a new slowly trying to regain her confidence and younger model. With his new coupling in mindto get her life back, Alistair decides suing her step-mother to take down the twins on holiday so they and Charlotte can bondcontent about her. Surprisingly Meredith agrees wholeheartedly; she's sure that a week with the twins would break any fledgling relationship up. Meanwhile Meredith's own twin brotherAnuri is battling alcoholism, Jackfailing to start her PhD, is 'taking a break undergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online and receiving money from work' which is fine but you'd think he could at least take a turn visiting his dementia-bound mother… or at least Meredith would think that and regularly doesthem for doing so. Jack isn't as responsible as Most importantly, she isdesperately worried about her little sister, in fact he isnwho is the new focus of Ophelia't as a lot of things as s online empire. Can she is but Meredith knows it will all turn out ok in the endsave her sister, and, after the incident perhaps herself and her relationship with her father at the dead bird in the bleach, she may just be right.same time?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1472101685</amazonuk>0861546873
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1529153298|title=The Dark HorseList of Suspicious Things|author=Rumer GoddenJennie Godfrey
|rating=5
|genre=TeensGeneral Fiction|summary=Dark Invader was a well-bred racehorse It's 1979 and had the looks to go with it but he was disappointing in his first season in England and his owner had better uses for the money his sale could bringMargaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. (A woman? I mean, honestly...) She's not what's worrying Miv's family, though. Women have been disappearing. He was shipped out to India Well, which might sound rather extremethey've been murdered, but was not uncommon in the nineteen thirties and there were some benefitsto have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. The main one was Miv's upset because she's overheard that he was going her father wants to move the family 'Down South'. When you're from Yorkshire, Down South is a good owner who cared for his welfare and a trainer who realised that he frightening, foreign place, best avoided. For Miv, the move would get most out of his horses if they were contented. His new ownermean leaving her best friend, Mr LeventineSharon, even arranged for his lad to travel out to India with him and this was probably Dark Invadershe's greatest piece of luckll do anything to prevent that. Ted Mullins She's not only loved worried about the horse dangers or that her Mum's stopped talking - he understood himto anyone.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844088529</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1035906708|title=The One I WasDiva|author=Eliza GrahamDaisy Goodwin
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Danny Wallace is the foremost exponent We tend to think of ‘Bet Based Non-Fiction’ that I know. This is when a bloke says something daft Maria Callas as Greek, but she was born to Greek parents in the pub and follows through; Wallace has started his own cultManhattan, New York, his own nation in December 1923 and said Yes only moved to absolutely everythingAthens when she was thirteen. However, some things are fine as a quirky adventure Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to 'Callas' to make it more manageable in the real world, but following people around London and copying their every move? States. That sounds When she was back in Athens - supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for her voice - she was raised under the Nazi occupation by a little like stalking to me mother who mercilessly exploited her and should perhaps be best explored in the world made no secret of fictionher preference for her elder sister, Jackie. In a world like Danny Wallace’s new novel ‘Who Is Tom Ditto?’|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091919037</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Look Who's BackAlexander McCall Smith|authortitle=Timur VermesThe Perfect Passion Company|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=''Hitler Youth Ronaldo! Which way The Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and operating as an alternative to all the street?'' With these words online apps in providing a very misguided Nazi Fuhrer asks for his first directions in the Berlin of 2011more personal, tailored service. Mistakenly believing Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the lad business, as Ness is planning to be take a party junior member with his own name on his football shirt, he also thinks trip to Canada to get away for a while it is still 1945. He's soon informed Katie is coming out of the truth, but still makes some unfortunate conclusions – that the street kiosks selling Turkish language newspapers are a sign of break up with a Soviet-beating alliance between bad boyfriend, and so jumps at the two countrieschance to come home to Edinburgh. And so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, that people eat granola bars because the war still leads bringing us to a bread shortagean Edinburgh we already love, thanks to 44 Scotland Street and that people making an ironic speech bubble the Isabel Dalhousie novels, but with their fingers in the air is all that is left of the Hitler salutesome new characters who quickly begin to charm. But yesKatie has no experience in running a business, or in match-making, after a long hiatus neither he nor our author is particularly concerned with explainingbut Ness has full confidence in her abilities, ''that man'' is back – and if he has his way hethere's going always her very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, William, to be just as popular this time round…lend a hand…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857052926</amazonuk>1846976596
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Something Like HappyDean Koontz|authortitle=John BurnsideThe Bad Weather Friend
|rating=4.5
|genre=Short StoriesParanormal|summary=How do you pick Benny is having a name for terrifically bad day. He loses his job, he loses his fiancee, and his house gets trashed. Oh, and someone has delivered a short story collection? really weird, disturbing coffin-sized object to his home, and it's possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the thing that has trashed his house! It seems The thing is, Benny is the very last person to me the ''deserve all this bad luck. He is a nice person. A really nice person.and other stories'' add-on So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the delivery to his house is like picking a favourite childnew friend, a bad weather friend called Spike, who has been sent to help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a promotion of one portion of the content above the restgood person. [[:Category:John Burnside|John Burnside]] has got a title story hereSpike is going to take care of Benny, but such is the mood and will certainly take care of the book that Benny's enemies, if he seems to have nailed the matter, Benny, and picked the most apposite name. ''Something Like HappyHarper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny'' could in a way be the title for practically every piece heres wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099575590</amazonuk>1662500491
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Brief Loves That Live ForeverKatherine Howe|authortitle=Andrei MakineA True Account
|rating=4.5
|genre=Short StoriesGeneral Fiction|summary=Our unnamed narrator Hannah Masury is inspired living in Boston, having been sent to think back through his life on the girls and women he has been in love live with, partly because of a time spent with family who run an associate – inn, and being made to work there from a time marked by young age. When she hears there is to be a seemingly most unremarkable encounter with 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 further woman – whom he deemed had never been lovedyoung boy's death at the hands of two vicious pirates. The associateShe hides away, so that they don't find and kill her too, you seeand then to escape them completely she runs away to sea, had spent half his adult life in Soviet camps for political instruction – our narrator himself was an orphan in dressing as a boy and joining the 1960snotorious Ned Low' Soviet Unions pirate ship as a cabin boy. This snappy volume takes us through episodes She soon finds herself in several lives at different points during and since the second half thick of communist rule – things when there is a mutiny on board, and finally explains from there we are caught up in her rip roaring tale of life on the import of that unremarkable encounter…ocean waves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1780870493</amazonuk>0861547438
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1471180158|title=A Single BreathMaybe Tomorrow|author=Lucy ClarkePenny Parkes
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Eva is blissfully content with life. She has a fulfilling career Jamie Matson works in her job as an upper-class grocery store, for a midwife and man who's a happy marriage to control freak with all the man subtlety of her dreams who clearly adores hera half brick. Her contented existence is thrown into complete turmoil when Jamie's son, Bo, early one morning'has his problems'. He's asthmatic and the more you read, her beloved husband Jackson is swept out to sea whilst fishing the more you'll suspect that he's on the Dorset coastautistic spectrum. It seems that Sometimes Jamie needs to take time off at short notice - she's a frequent flier in one fell swoop, all of her hopes the local A&E and dreams have been washed sometimes Bo's not fit enough to go to school. Missed shifts or the need to be away into on time to pick Bo up from school are occasions when Jamie can be controlled and put in the cold, white waterwrong. It was going to come to a head.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007481365</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage|isbn=B0CKD1L5JL|title=Radio Free Olympia|author=Jeffrey Dunn|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary= Petr is an orphan. Rescued by the strange, reclusive Bear, he is brought up far from bustling cities and busy human society, in the forests of Washington's Olympic Peninsula. After Bear dies and a brief sojourn in human company, and armed with only a pirate radio transmitter, Petr goes on a journey through the forest, broadcasting the strange, wild and rarely heard voices he encounters.}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Rebecca HuntSarah Marsh|title=EverlandA Sign of Her Own|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=There have been two expeditions to the Antarctic island After a bout of Everland scarlet fever as a century apartchild, Ellen Lark loses her hearing. The ill-fated 1913 trip Suddenly plunged into a world of Dinnerssilence, Napps and Millet-Bass is primitive by today's standardseverything about her life changes. The 2012 expedition is better equipped, better prepared and arrives at Living in a better time when the use of year so all bodes well for Deckersign language was seen as something only savages do, Ellen is sent to a school where she is taught to lip read, Brix and Jessbut physically restrained from signing. But despite From here, she ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the differences both expeditions have things in commondeaf and using a system called Visible Speech. Both groups carry secretsAt the same time, some become obvious but others ''remain behind waiting to become discovered''Bell is working on other inventions and ideas, and Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a complicated tangle of espionage.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1905490658</amazonuk>1035401614
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=B0BC3YTCMR|title=Kinder Than SolitudeGood Girls Die|author=Yiyun LiAyura Ayira
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Yiyun Li's 'This story is not for everyone.'Kinder Than Solitude'' opens with a death but the story goes back much further than that Lavender Daniels was three weeks short of her fifteenth birthday when The Incident happened. When orphaned Ruyu arrives in Beijing to stay with She was a distant relation to go to schoolvery bright student, she finds herself sharing a bedroom with the rebellious Shaoai bit too nerdy if truth be told, and going suffered from vitiligo - people were afraid to school with the serious Moran and hug her friend Boyangin case it's contagious. Ruyu is It's not an easy character and 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 arrival seems to disrupt everyone's lives even though Moran . Then he did: Lavender was very good at math and Boyang look after herReggie asked if she would tutor him. However She readily agreed: tutoring was something she gladly did at church: this was just an 'accident' changes everythingextension. All four of them live with the consequences of what happened either physically or mentally She went to his house and he raped her. Moran and Ruyu both leave China and settle in the US In shock, while Boyang and Shaoai stay in China. The book switches between the events of the past and the presentshe even allowed him to give her a lift home.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007329822</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=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}} {{Frontpage|isbn=B0BVDC2VWH|title=The Collected Works of A J FikryGrave Listeners|author=Gabrielle ZevinWilliam Frank
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=A J Fikry The village is not having a good timeisolated and poor. HeIt's lost his wife to surrounded by a car crash, Witching Forest. And the villagers subsist largely by farming Uphegia plants - its bread-like fruit provides nutrition and he's not making that much moneyits blossom provides herbal medicines. The book store he runsblack wood of the forest provides heat and warmth, stuck out on a limb roofs on a quiet island community, is too remote to turn a profit year-roundhomes, and he has just dismissed the latest publisher's rep to turn up at his dooreven gallows, partly because her previous counterpart, an inconsequential part if needed. The fear of A J's life when all being buried alive is said an existential superstition in the village and done, had died and he didn't know about it. But his bad time that is about to get a lot worsethe reason Volushka, as the one thing he owns worth the most – a rare bookdrunken, more valuable than his houseself-indulgent, his business, anything – lazy lout of a man is about to vanishtolerated. Which bizarrely will cause several major changes to his one-person household…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408704617</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=B0BYF82CXT|title=A Love Like BloodSemi-Detached|author=Marcus SedgwickDeborah Stone|rating=4.5|genre=HorrorGeneral Fiction|summary=One day towards the end of World War Two''Bill and Amanda are living in a semi-detached house, Charles Jackson is dragged to stuck in a museum depressing rut of antiquities just outside a newly liberated Paris by his commanding officer during their downtime. While the other looks at the unusual ancient artefactsboredom and disappointment, when Terry and Fiona – glamorous, Jackson finds something successful and very much more horrific in love – a man move in a wartime bunker in the grounds, squatting over a female figure, blood next door. Despite their different outlooks on his lips that could only have come from her neckline. Years laterlife, Jackson returns to Paris for reasons to do with his medical career, and finds the same man in the company of someone who, were he only aware of the fact, is to become the first couples befriend each other and possibly only love of his lifeappears to improve for both pairs. But that's all is not the only time the paths of Jackson what it seems, and the mysterious male their increasingly interconnected relationships are destined to cross – the prologue was set in the late 1960s…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>144475193X</amazonuk>fated for tragedy.''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon: The No 1 Ladies' Detective AgencyShalini Boland|authortitle=Alexander McCall SmithThe Silent Bride|rating=53
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Although the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency belongs to Mma Ramotswe, I often feel that Grace Makutsi really shares equally in these stories Alice and, in this particular episode, she has reached Seth are a truly lovely high point match made in her lifeheaven. We saw her arrive to work He is everything she has been searching for Mma Ramotswe; handsome, initially standing upon the laurels of her unheardaccomplished, clever, funny; total and utter husband-of 97% material. She is all he could possibly want in her secretarial examsa wife; beautiful, successful, confident… and so the inevitable proposal is eagerly accepted by Alice and throughout the series she has developed, both as a character wedding is planned and as a personset. She grew When the much-anticipated day arrives, Alice is walked down the aisle by her role from secretary to associate detective (with great determination at times!)father, she bought new shoes and sometimes conversed beaming with them, pride and then we rejoiced with her when excitement as she married Phuti surveys the congregation – their friends assembled to celebrate this joyful day and began when Seth turns to build a home with him. This time around Mma Makutsi is pregnantface his approaching bride, but the question on everyoneAlice's mind world implodes because she has absolutely no idea who the man at the altar is will she ever speak , who is waiting for her to Mma Ramotswe about the baby before it arrives?become his wife.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0349139288</amazonuk>1662507089
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Lesley Glaister1787636003|title=Little EgyptThe Girls of Summer|author=Katie Bishop
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Twins Isis It was the summer when Rachel Evans turned eighteen that she and Caroline went backpacking around Greece and Osiris are now in their 90s, living together in Little Egypt, arrived on the English manor house where they were born and brought upisland. Their names are a clue to their parentsRachel wasn' near fetish for everything Egyptian. In fact this near fetish leads their parents t exactly innocent but she was, perhaps, naive, so when thirty-four-year-old Alistair Wright started to Egypt itself, in search of a big discovery back take an interest in the 1920sher, demonstrating more enthusiasm she was flattered rather than savvywary. Having left the twins in the care It was quite a while before he made any sort of the housekeeper, they never returnphysical approach to her and by that time she was obsessed by him. Isis Alistair worked for Henry Taylor, looking after his interests on the island and Osiris are now bound to in particular in the bar where all the house, tied not by love girls either worked or memories but dark secrets that won't let gopartied.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>190777372X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The Blazing WorldAmanda Craig|authortitle=Siri HustvedtThree Graces
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary='All intellectual and artistic endeavours…fare better in Few styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the mind state-of -the crowd when -nation novel. There's something so utterly compelling about any writer who can catch hold of the crowd knows that somewhere behind atmosphere of the great work or day and capture it, crafting an image of the great spoof country as it can locate a cock and a pair of ballsstands in one particular moment.To say that Amanda Craig is skilled at doing this would be embarrassingly inadequate: she' Thus we are introduced to s practically synonymous with the unforgettable Harriet Burden – larger-than-life, six-foot-tall amazon artist – and to some genre of contemporary social fiction at this point. She has such a gift for weaving the novel's essential elements: musing on what makes intellectual products successful in a postmodern marketplace, feminist resentment ongoing issues of the overvaluing day into the lives of male achievementher characters in a way that feels natural and lived-in, and an unapologeticnever making them ciphers for social commentary but instead fully realised people, playful boldness grappling with languageissues far larger than themselves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444779648</amazonuk>140871468X
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=152915118X|title=The EnchantedPineapple Street|author=Rene DenfeldJenny Jackson
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Death Row''Pineapple Street'' is the story of three women: Sasha, in Darley and Georgiana. Darley and George are sisters and Sasha is married to their brother Cord. They're Stocktons, only Sasha isn't a prison somewhere in Stockton by birth so she isn't readily accepted into the rural UStribe. It The problem's an old prison tooexacerbated when the clan matriarch, Tilda, where asks Cord and Sasha if they'd like to move into the modern sensors Pineapple Street property. Tilda and security will never be seen, Chip have renovated and where those waiting years for their finaldownsized to another property, final appeals – a street or for so away, which they own. They won't need any of the closing act furniture from Pineapple Street, so Sasha and Cord can move straight in their life – remain underground. Nominally, in dank cells they had a choice but that have no mod-cons, wasn't the reality. Darley and can easily flood when Georgiana start to call Sasha 'the rains raise the water table too highgold digger'. It She's where a man called York living in ''their'' family home. They use it so often that they abbreviate it to 'the GD'.}}{{Frontpage|author=Emily Critchley|title=One Puzzling Afternoon|rating=4|genre=Crime|summary=84 year old Edie has lived in the same small town for almost her whole life, but now she is seeing out his days, and whereas facing a female investigator is trying move as her hardest son wants to move to another house and bring Edie to get evidence that might see live with his sentence quashed or changedfamily, he as Edie is saying it should be carried out forthwithstarting to lose her memory. While 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 tries to piece together was keeping for Lucy that somehow might be the thing that reveals the truth of what got him there and what made him take happened all that terminal decisiontime ago. After 'seeing' Lucy in the high street, just as she was the last time she saw her, shadows she starts to find pockets of memories coming back to her own dark background are forced . And yet as she remembers the past, she is forgetting more and more in her day to move into sightday life. All this is told us by Will she uncover the omniscient narration of another man on Death Rowtruth about Lucy's disappearance before her move, thanks to two heinous crimes…and before her memories are gone forever?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0297870491</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|isbn=0008506337|title=The Dead Wife's HandbookGarnett Girls|author=Hannah BeckermanGeorgina Moore
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Rachel wasnThe love affair between Margo Garnett and poet Richard O't ready to drop dead at thirtyLeary was all-fiveconsuming, apparently on both sides. It Margo was just sixteen when they fell in love. Richard was twenty-one and described by Margo's been a year since - a year shemother as 'an older man'. Her parents worried that Richard's spent trapped in some sort of netherworld that allows influence would take her briefaway from what they felt she could achieve - going to Oxford and having a glittering career. In the event, tantalising glimpses they eloped and Richard took her away from the Isle of Wight. Margo did go to Oxford and went on to become a well-respected journalist. The couple had three children: Rachel, Imogen and Sasha. Life was lived in London and holidays were spent at Sandcove, the lives family home on the Isle of those sheWight. Even then the doubts about Richard's left behind. Theredrinking were never far from Margo's no apparent rhyme or reason mind: ''she would never be able to the glimpses, and Rachel wishes they were more often and lasted longerleave him in charge''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0718178149</amazonuk>Then Richard left them.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1914585402|title=Dashboard Elvis is Dead|author=Fadia FaqirDavid F Ross|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=I reviewed David F Ross's book [[There's Only One Danny Garvey by David F Ross|There's Only One Danny Garvey]] a couple of years back and remember being absolutely floored by how powerful and affecting it was. It was a gripping, emotionally wounding read, and rereading my review of it my main takeaway was that I might not have lavished enough praise on it.}}{{Frontpage|author=Lucy Ashe|title=Willow Trees Don't WeepClara and Olivia
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Najwa has been raised by her mother The year is 1933. The place? Sadler's Wells. Ballerinas Clara and grandmother with only stories of how awful her father wasOlivia are sisters, twins no less. He can't answer for himself as he left Identical on the outside but not, we learn, on the farm when Najwa was three years oldinside. After her motherAnd not on stage, either. Because there's death Najwa is encouraged by her grandmother to find him as her grandmother is too frail to protect her and a single woman with neither husband nor male guardian is considered loose and worthless in Ammanlot that builds a dancer. And so the journey beginsSome things that can be taught or learnt – discipline, taking Najwa attention to Pakistan detail – and some things, that ''je ne sais quoi'', that don't come from the centre of Taliban trainingclassroom. A stage presence, a charm, a ''joie de vivre''. The difference between a hard-worker, to Afghanistan and eventually to a Europe which deigns itself more civilised but seems more alienstar.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>178206950X</amazonuk>0861544080
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Barbara ConstantineHeather Fawcett|title=And Then Came PauletteEmily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Ferdinand was a widower Emily Wilde is an expert academic scholar on faerie lore, and she has travelled extensively, and researched meticulously, to write her life's work, the very first encyclopaedia of faeries. Whilst she is brilliant at research and he lived speaking to faeries, she is not so good with his sonpeople. So when she finds herself far, daughter-far North in-law the small village of Hrafvsnik, having somehow offended the village matriarch, she is not sure what she has done, nor how to redeem herself and their two children put her final investigations for her book back on the family farmright track. WellEnter Wendell Bambleby, he did until the family moved away. Apparently Ferdinand was occasionally prone to swear her dashingly handsome and insufferable rival who arrives unexpectedly, all charm and obviously children can never be allowed delight, much to hear such wordsEmily's frustration. That left him But why is he here? What does he want? And what exactly is going on his own except for with the faerie folk around Hravsnik?|isbn=0356519120}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1398515388|title=The Boy and the children’s kitten to which their mother Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=First of all, it was allergic the earthquake, deep in a farmhouse the ocean floor, which demanded a familycreated the tsunami and this, in turn, caused the nuclear meltdown. He The result was lonely complete and he beganutter devastation... well The deaths were uncountable, let’s call it making mischiefand the loss of livelihoods was widespread. Assault is such an ugly word, isn’t it? 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 convenience store. Then he met Marceline - or rather he encountered her He wasn't a dog and in returning it discovered person but the old woman is a room filled with gas convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and leaking rain water through Tamon the roofdog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>085705242X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Saira ShahChristopher Bowden|title=The Mouseproof KitchenMr Magenta
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Anna (Christopher Bowden's latest novel is a patient untangling of a chef) and seemingly ordinary woman's life, carried out by her partner Tobias (nephew after she has died. The aunt who always provided a composer) have it all: safe harbour and a great relationship, dreams little bit of moving indulgence to France so that Anna can open a well-respected restaurant and, to top it all off, they're expecting young nephew had had a beautiful baby. When Freya is born she is indeed beautiful; she's also profoundly disabled. However, Anna and Tobias decide to follow their dream anyway, not worrying about anything until the moment they have to. Once they've bought their ramshackle home in the Languedoc they realise that the moments they have to worry about come much more quickly and frequently interesting life than they'd that nephew Stephen had ever realised and their support system is eccentric it seems to him an obligation to say the leastfind it all out.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099575140</amazonuk>B0B6Z9VJDW
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Charm OffensiveJennifer Mason|authortitle=William ThackerPartitions of Unity
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=When JoeHere at Bookbag Towers, a retired politician is named we first met Elizabeth Cromwell, dominatrix and unintentional detective in [[Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery by Jennifer Mason|Preposterous]], when she investigated and unravelled a tabloid slur he is faced with mending his reputationseries of disappearances. Can he regenerate his life? William Thacker has chosen a heady combination for his first novel; politics and PR. A book like this has immediate appeal on the basis In ''Partitions of being so contemporary and almost painfully pertinent to our timesUnity'', so I was really looking forward she sets her mind to reading itsolving a murder...|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1909878537</amazonuk>B09LQR9FRF
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{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The Lemon GroveWill Carver|authortitle=Helen WalshThe Daves Next Door
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=''The Lemon Grove'' is not the book I expected it to be. No better no worse, just not what I expected. Set Five strangers come together in Mallorca, it is the tale of one moment as a summer in the sunshine, but though they’ve holidayed at this villa for years, this summer is suicide bomber prepares to detonate his vest on a bit different for Jenn and GregLondon tube line. There are lots of things in this book that are a bit quirkyAs their fates overlap, and the holiday set up story is just one of them: the couple are joined by Greg’s daughter (Jen’s step-daughter) and her boyfriend. It’s not wildly unconventional told in the real worldbackwards order, but for one reason or another it’s the sort of chaotic set leading up many authors wouldn’t bother to create. And yet as you read this book you wonder why, because it adds a dynamic that is definitely different, and in a good waythe fateful moment. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1472212088</amazonuk>1914585186}} {{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Family LikenessJennifer Mason|authortitle=Caitlin DaviesPreposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=On ''A struggling poetry zine, a summer’s day mom-and-pop mobile diner in 1950the Northern California redwoods, a smartly400-meter hurdler who just missed the 2004 Olympics, a women's track coach with a yen for bullwhips, a billionaire with a state-of-dressed white woman brings her young mixedthe-race daughterart S&M dungeon, a man serving a life sentence in Alabama, an enigmatic signature, MurielK(s, to the branch children’s home Hoodfield Housex), where she will leave her and never return. Muriel is physically well cared foron a cheap oil painting, but has persistent questions about her identity and place an erotic art dealer in the worldGeorgia...|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099558688</amazonuk>}}''
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