Difference between revisions of "Newest General Fiction Reviews"

From TheBookbag
Jump to navigationJump to search
 
Line 1: Line 1:
 
[[Category:General Fiction|*]]
 
[[Category:General Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]]
+
[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]]__NOTOC__
==General fiction==
+
{{Frontpage
__NOTOC__
+
|isbn=B0DGDJRHYD
{{newreview
+
|title=Nowhere Man
|author=Sapphire
+
|author=Deborah Stone
|title=Precious
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Precious Jones is a sixteen year old black girl from Harlem – well she's never actually been out of Harlem – and when we meet her she's pregnant by her own father for the second time. Her first child was a girl and she was born with Down's Syndrome.  With unconscious irony Precious calls her ''Little Mongo'' and leaves her to live with her grandmother. When her second pregnancy becomes obvious she's expelled from school and joins an alternative education programme. Precious really wants to learn and the book is the story of her journey from illiteracy to maturity.
+
|summary=In a quiet suburban house, Patrick is making his final plans. A meticulous man, he makes sure of every preparation, down to the last detail. Some last reflections, and then he says goodbye to his wife, the world, and his life. It's horribly sad. At work in her shop, his wife Diana is fending off yet another phone call about her ageing and ailing mother, who needs extricating from yet another accident. It will be a while before Diana realises what Patrick has done.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099548720</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=1739526910
|author=Ru Freeman
+
|title=Where I've Not Been Lost
|title=A Disobedient Girl
+
|author=Glen Sibley
|rating=5
+
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=
+
|summary=''One year after a suicide attempt blows apart musician Brian O’Malley's life, he arrives in an unfamiliar Devon town to recover. Living with an unexpected housemate at his former manager’s holiday home, he dreams of reconnecting with everything he has lost. But as those tentative plans falter, he becomes swept up in a local world of unlikely friendships, mobile discos and surprising romantic possibilities.''
''A Disobedient Girl'' follows two women struggling to retain control of their lives in the face of servitude. Latha is a servant girl to the affluent Vithanage family, whose daughter, Thara, is Latha's age. As children, the girls are the best of friends, but they are destined to be separated by class, which is made painfully obvious when boys come into the picture. Meanwhile, Biso serves a cruel and drunken husband who beats her and terrorises her children, one of whom is another man's love child. Biso's husband murdered her lover in a hateful rage when he uncovered her affair and she realises that she must escape his house if she and her children are to live. Latha too seeks escape, but she finds it in the arms of Thara's boyfriend and this sets off a chain of events that will echo far into her future.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670917958</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Jenny Lecoat
|author=Panos Karnezis
+
|title=Beyond Summerland
|title=The Convent
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Our Lady of Mercy is a small convent on the Spanish sierra made up of a handful of devoted nuns who live their lives simply, carrying out their daily duties like clockwork. However things change when a suitcase containing a newborn baby is left mysteriously outside the convent doors. The Mother Superior, Sister Maria Ines, believes the baby to be a miracle and plans to keep him in the convent, but the other sisters do not agree. During the events that follow the true characters of the nuns inside the convent are revealed and the peace that the sisters enjoy is stripped away to show the tension that has been bubbling away under the surface.
+
|summary=Jean lives on Jersey with her mother where they are celebrating the end of the occupation. During the war, Jean's father was arrested for listening to a banned radio and soldiers took him away one night, leaving Jean and her mother waiting for years for news of him.  As the British finally free the Channel islands from the Nazis, and the war is finally over, their hopes rise that they will finally learn what became of him.  But will the truth come as a relief, or will it raise further questions around what else happened during the war?  Who was the informer who told the Nazis about the radio?  And what other secrets have been kept throughout the occupation?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224079344</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1846976537
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Onyi Nwabineli
|author=Glenn Cooper
+
|title=Allow Me to Introduce Myself
|title=Book of Souls
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Area 51 is not what you think it isNo - all that UFO kerfuffle is a smokescreen for the powers that be to hide even better the most unusual manuscript known to (a handful of) mankind - the most unearthly, singular, and unsettling book, in thousands and thousands of volumesAll except one, which is about to come under the hammer in a London auction houseOur hero Will Piper must go very reluctantly on the trail of it and its secrets, a trail which will force him and others to become entangled with shadowy agents, who in turn know the very day of all their enemy's deaths.
+
|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 gainNow 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 soMost importantly, she is desperately worried about her little sister, who is the new focus of Ophelia's online empireCan she save her sister, and perhaps herself and her relationship with her father at the same time?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099534479</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=0861546873
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=1529153298
|author=P Robert Smith
+
|title=The List of Suspicious Things
|title=Sunday Daffodil and Other Happy Endings
+
|author=Jennie Godfrey
|rating=3.5
+
|rating=5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=''Sunday Daffodil and Other Happy Endings'' is the sort of book you finish with the feeling that you've just read something with a million different meanings. Don't be surprised if you feel like you should start the whole thing again but with your brain more fully engaged, and perhaps that's the whole point.
+
|summary=It's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister.  (A woman?  I mean, honestly...)  She's not what's worrying Miv's family, though.  Women have been disappearing.  Well, they've been murdered, but to have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening.  Miv's upset because she's overheard that her father wants to move the family 'Down South'.  When you're from Yorkshire, Down South is a frightening, foreign place, best avoided. For Miv, the move would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, and she'll do anything to prevent that.  She's not worried about the dangers or that her Mum's stopped talking - to anyone.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099535238</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=1035906708
|author=Isabel Ashdown
+
|title=Diva
|title=Glasshopper
+
|author=Daisy Goodwin
|rating=4
+
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Thirteen-year-old Jake is just like any other boy on the cusp of puberty: new music and Saturday jobs are at the top of his agenda, while girls are the strange exotic creatures that must be looked at but not touched (particularly his pretty Classics teacher). But behind closed doors, Jake struggles to cope with his mother's ongoing battle with depression and alcoholism. His father moved out a few weeks ago. So has his older brother, Matthew. That leaves Jake as the man of the house: the one who must remember to get him and little brother, Andy, up in time for school in the morning; the one making toast for dinner; and the one keeping a watchful eye over his mother to make sure she doesn't get herself into any serious trouble.
+
|summary=We tend to think of Maria Callas as Greek, but she was born to Greek parents in Manhattan, New York, in December 1923 and only moved to Athens when she was thirteen. Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to 'Callas' to make it more manageable in the States.  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 mother who mercilessly exploited her and made no secret of her preference for her elder sister, Jackie.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0954930975</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Alexander McCall Smith
|author=Keith Colquhoun
+
|title=The Perfect Passion Company
|title=Beyond Reason
+
|rating=4.5
|rating=4
 
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=''Beyond Reason'' is a deceptively complex novel - a black comedy about the conflicts within religion. The main focus of the plot, Edward Bunyan, is a radical within the Church of England who is trying to take religion in a new (and rather amusing) direction in order to get the public interested in it again. Bunyan claims to have a direct link with God as well as spiritual powers, such as being able to levitate and read minds, which leave his colleague and old college friend, Reverend Ralph 'Marmy' Marmaduke, unsure about both his friendship with Bunyan and his own religious beliefs.
+
|summary=The Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and operating as an alternative to all the online apps in providing a more personal, tailored service.  Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the business, as Ness is planning to take a trip to Canada to get away for a while. Katie is coming out of a break up with a bad boyfriend, and so jumps at the chance to come home 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 Isabel 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…
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904529348</amazonuk>
+
|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 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 thing that has trashed his house!  The thing is, Benny is the 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 delivery to his house is a new friend, a bad weather friend called Spike, who has been sent to help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a good person.  Spike is going to take care of Benny, and will certainly take care of Benny's enemies, if he, Benny, and Harper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are.
 +
|isbn=1662500491
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Katherine Howe
|author=Jonathan Buckley
+
|title=A True Account
|title=Contact
+
|rating=4.5
|rating=2.5
 
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Dominic Pattison's life began to veer off course badly on a Tuesday in MayIt's a fairly banal TuesdayThe kind of Tuesday that Dominic probably experiences quite frequentlyHe feels the need to tell us about it.
+
|summary=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.  When she hears there is to be a hanging of some pirates in the town, she decides to go and watchEnthralled and horrified in equal measure, Hannah finds herself embroiled in a young boy's death at the hands of two vicious piratesShe hides away, so that they don't find and kill her too, and then to escape them completely she runs away to sea, dressing as a boy and joining the notorious Ned Low's pirate ship as a cabin boyShe soon finds herself in the thick of things when there is a mutiny on board, and from there we are caught up in her rip roaring tale of life on the ocean waves.
 
+
|isbn=0861547438
In detail. 
 
 
 
And, sadly, not in a particularly engaging style.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956003869</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=1471180158
|author=Wayne J Harris
+
|title=Maybe Tomorrow
|title=Sins of the Angel
+
|author=Penny Parkes
|rating=3.5
+
|rating=4.5
|genre=Fantasy
 
|summary=Dr Gideon Matthews, a shouty hellfire and damnation preacher, has just delivered a sermon all about the evils of women being allowed into the church hierarchy and, on his way home afterwards, he is murdered.  The following day however he wakes up in hospital or, actually, an angel called Gabriel finds himself inside Dr Matthews' body, able to recall Dr Matthews' memories and thoughts and feelings but acting now as himself.  Gabriel goes a little bit wild, finding himself overwhelmed by the new feelings and desires he experiences in this body, sinning left, right and centre and causing scandal at his every move.  He is also wondering for what purpose he has been brought into this body and finds that he is dreaming about a demon, someone who is persuading an unknown monk to commit murders in God's name and who seems to be getting closer and closer to Dr Matthews in order to kill him too...
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1438994699</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Stephen M Irwin
 
|title=The Darkening
 
|rating=4
 
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=This book has the 'S' word written all over itNo, not sex - supernatural.  So, it's got all things a bit spooky, not-quite-right, strange coincidencesThey are sprinkled throughout like rock salt. I must admit that when I read the blurb on the back cover with its supernatural theme, I gave an inward groanNot really my cup of tea.  But I'm open-minded and I'll read anything onceI'm glad I didIrwin is Australian.  For some reason I haven't read too many books by Australian authors, so I was keen to get reading.
+
|summary=Jamie Matson works in an upper-class grocery store, for a man who's a control freak with all the subtlety of a half brickJamie's son, Bo, 'has his problems'He's asthmatic and the more you read, the more you'll suspect that he's on the autistic spectrumSometimes Jamie needs to take time off at short notice - she's a frequent flier in the local A&E and sometimes Bo's not fit enough to go to schoolMissed 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 wrongIt was going to come to a head.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0751543969</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=B0CKD1L5JL
|author=Robert Kaplow
+
|title=Radio Free Olympia
|title=Me and Orson Welles
+
|author=Jeffrey Dunn
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Richard Samuels sees everything in terms of a performance, through the rose-tinted lens of the theatrical celebrities he listens to on the radio. So when he stumbles onto the Broadway stage through a chance encounter with Orson Welles, it seems as if all his dreams may be about to come true. He goes from being the guy that all the girls see as a friend, one of the bookish kids at school, to the glamour of mingling with stars of the stage. We follow Richard's struggle to balance this newly discovered wonderland and his school life, not to mention his disapproving mother.
+
|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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099540193</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Sarah Marsh
|author=John Van der Kiste
+
|title=A Sign of Her Own
|title=The Man on the Moor
+
|rating=3.5
|rating=4
 
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=In the summer of 1913 relations with Germany were deteriorating steadily, but there didn't seem to be any connection with the international situation when a London clerk, George Stephens, was found dead in a country lane on the edge of Dartmoor. The moor had been his passion and he'd always been keen to escape London and return to DevonIt was an odd death but in all probability it would have been put down as an accident if George's mother had not announced that George was the son of the KaiserDespite her fondness for gin the story she told was oddly compelling and when it was linked up with the fact that two German officers had been staying at a nearby farm George's death seemed less and less like an accident.
+
|summary=After a bout of scarlet fever as a child, Ellen Lark loses her hearing.  Suddenly plunged into a world of silence, everything about her life changes.  Living in a time when the use of sign language was seen as something only savages do, Ellen is sent to a school where she is taught to lip read, but physically restrained from signingFrom here, she ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the deaf and using a system called Visible SpeechAt the same time, Bell is working on other inventions and ideas, and Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a complicated tangle of espionage.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904744230</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1035401614
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=B0BC3YTCMR
|author=Frances Day
+
|title=Good Girls Die
|title=Dead Cat With Firelighter
+
|author=Ayura Ayira
|rating=3
+
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=We're in the world of modern art.  A couple who met at art college are on the verge of breaking up, as her success at fine arts is only bettered by his sudden rise to fame in the world of his conceptual, pompous bits of (almost literally) rubbish and nothing. We're also in the world of the wannabe stars and starlets, trying to make the jump from well-thought of provincial comedy theatre to Hollywood.  And in the background in both instances, are guru-type Svengalis, pulling strings, and aiming to do as much as is morally justifiable - and a lot more - to get their charges to fame.  And a bit of contract killing and murder on the side.
+
|summary=''This story is not for everyone.''
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0954337751</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
  
{{newreview
+
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 afraid to hug her in case it's contagiousIt's not easy being a black girl whose skin is 84% whiteShe had a crush on seventeen-year-old Reggie Anderson but never thought he would notice her.  Then he did: Lavender was very good at math and Reggie asked if she would tutor himShe readily agreed: tutoring was something she gladly did at church: this was just an extension.  She went to his house and he raped herIn shock, she even allowed him to give her a lift home.
|author=Billy Hopkins
 
|title=Tommy's World
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|summary=Tommy Hopkins was born in October 1886 in Collyhurst, one of the poorer, inner-city suburbs of ManchesterHis father had quite a good job and there wasn't a lot of money to spare but Tommy remembered the home as being filled with love and laughterHe was an only child but thought that he was spoilt in terms of affection rather than in the form of worldly goodsAll that was to change when his father died of spinal meningitis and he and his mother had to move into cheaper lodgingsEven that tenuous security wasn't to last for long – his mother died of a heart attack in her thirties, leaving Tommy an orphan before he was eight years old.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755359585</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
  
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=Diane Chamberlain
+
|isbn=1472263936
|title=The Bay at Midnight
+
|title=The Figurine
|rating=4
+
|author=Victoria Hislop
 +
|rating=5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The story starts properly when a letter is discoveredIt will have devastating consequences for several families - and life will never be the same againApparently, the wrong person was convicted for a murderMoreover, the writer of this letter appears to know who did commit this crimeUnfortunately, the writer dies before able to make contact with the police.
+
|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 heritageHer trip to the family apartment in up-market Kolonaki would be the first of several annual visitsShe grew to love her grandmother and the family's maid, Dina, but was wary - and frightened - of her grandfather, retired general Stamatis PapagiannisHe was proud of his close connections to the Junta and expected his family to uphold his values but saw no reason to accommodate themHis prejudices included Helena's red hair and green eyes - inherited from her father's Scottish ancestors.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0778303640</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Dean Koontz
|author=Hazel McHaffie
+
|title=After Death
|title=Right to Die
+
|rating=3
|rating=3.5
 
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=It must be hard enough watching your partner die just once, but for Naomi, Adam's death is just the beginning. Coming across his personal, private diary of his time from diagnosis to subsequent demise, she is forced to relive the awful months during which his body began to betray him and his will to live was replaced with a will to die...on his own terms.
+
|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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906307210</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1662500467
}}
+
}}  
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=B0BVDC2VWH
|author=Morag Joss
+
|title=The Grave Listeners
|title=The Night Following
+
|author=William Frank
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Distracted by the discovery that her husband has been having an affair, a middle-aged woman loses concentration while driving along a quiet lane, killing Ruth Mitchell, an elderly cyclist. The woman doesn't wait for the police to arrive; she goes home and parks her car in the garage where she smashes it almost beyond recognition. When her arrogant husband sees the damage he believes it's been done to punish him and he packs his bags. After a few days the woman goes to the home of the dead woman; she doesn't go to the door, but from a hidden spot nearby she can see the widower, an elderly gentleman who is clearly not coping well. Wracked with guilt, the woman makes a decision: the only way she can atone for her actions is to step into the shoes of the dead woman.
+
|summary=The village is isolated and poor. It's surrounded by a 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 forest provides heat and warmth, roofs on homes, and even gallows, if needed. The fear of being buried alive is an existential superstition in the village and that is the reason Volushka, a drunken, self-indulgent, lazy lout of a man is tolerated.  
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0715638815</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
  
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=Shirley Jackson
+
|isbn=B0BYF82CXT
|title=The Haunting of Hill House
+
|title=Semi-Detached
 +
|author=Deborah Stone
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=There was a time before Stephen King.  There was time before ''The Shining''.  There was a time when 'horror' was not rooted in blood, guts and gore. I owe a slight apology to Mr King, because along with the gutsier side of the genre, I will own that he is a master at suspense.
+
|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. Despite 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.''
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141191449</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Shalini Boland
|author=Julian Barnes
+
|title=The Silent Bride
|title=Staring at the Sun
+
|rating=3
|rating=4
+
|genre=General Fiction
|genre=Literary Fiction
+
|summary= Alice and Seth are a match made in heaven.  He is everything she has been searching for; handsome, accomplished, clever, funny; total and utter husband-material. She is all he could possibly want in a wife; beautiful, successful, confident… and so the inevitable proposal is eagerly accepted by Alice and the wedding is planned and set. When the much-anticipated day arrives, Alice is walked down the aisle by her father, beaming with pride and excitement as she surveys the congregation – their friends assembled to celebrate this joyful day and when Seth turns to face his approaching bride, Alice's world implodes because she has absolutely no idea who the man at the altar is, who is waiting for her to become his wife.
|summary=Jean's first Incident involved Uncle Leslie, hyacinths and golf tees. It's perhaps best forgotten, but Jean doesn't forget. Uncle Leslie figures large in her life - mostly on the golf course - until the War comes and he runs away to America. He's replaced by Tommy Prosser, a grounded pilot who once saw the sun rise twice in one day and excites as many questions in Jean as he ever answers. Tommy is replaced by Michael, a policeman, whom Jean eventually marries. He doesn't know why minks are excessively tenacious of life and he doesn't much care. But Jean does. She cares much less for the Dutch cap that Michael sent her off to obtain before the wedding and much less again for their rather disastrous adventures in the bedroom.  
+
|isbn=1662507089
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099540096</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=1787636003
|author=Russell Celyn Jones
+
|title=The Girls of Summer
|title=The Ninth Wave (New Stories from the Mabinogion)
+
|author=Katie Bishop
|rating=4.5
+
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
+
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Pwyll rules a medieval-style fiefdom in a post-climate change Wales. Life is different in many ways - there's a new-but-old social order built on feudalism and horsepower is the main means of transport. But in many ways it's much the same - people still fight one another, towns still have sink estates, rich boys still have too much time on their hands and precious little meaning in their lives.  
+
|summary=It was the summer when Rachel Evans turned eighteen that she and Caroline went backpacking around Greece and arrived on the island. Rachel wasn't exactly innocent but she was, perhaps, naive, so when thirty-four-year-old Alistair Wright started to take an interest in her, she was flattered rather than wary.  It was quite a while before he made any sort of physical approach to her and by that time she was obsessed by him. Alistair worked for Henry Taylor, looking after his interests on the island and in particular in the bar where all the girls either worked or partied.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1854115146</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Amanda Craig
|author=Owen Sheers
+
|title=Three Graces
|title=White Ravens (New Stories from the Mabinogion)
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|summary=In the old tale, Branwen is the sister of Bendigeidfran - the giant King of Britain. She marries the King of Ireland, who doesn't treat her well. She manages to send Bendigeidfran a message via a tamed starling and war and killings ensue.
 
 
In this new tale, a young girl has just walked away from her brothers who, in the wake of the devastating foot and mouth outbreak, are despoiling their heritage by rustling and illegally slaughtering sheep. She meets an old man who tells her a story involving the superstitions about the ravens in the Tower of London, propaganda work during World War II, and an equally doomed love affair.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1854115030</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=J R Stephenson
 
|title=Crooked Justice
 
|rating=2.5
 
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Meet Barry Johns. You'll see him coming - he's five hundred pounds if he's an ounce. Just don't ever lend him money - he won't pay it back.  A businessman with a share of a nightclub on Cyprus, he goes there for a customary break, and finds his sort-of moll-type sort-of girlfriend has been installed as the bar dancer.  He manages to tread both on the toes of his local colleague and some Greek rivals.  And when a rival in London chases him up for thousands of pounds owed he decides to pack up and shut up.  It's a big stone that hides him, but he leaves a very awkward trail for everyone wanting to upturn it and get their revenge.
+
|summary= Few styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the state-of-the-nation novel. There's something so utterly compelling about any writer who can catch hold of the atmosphere of the day and capture it, crafting an image of the country as it stands in one particular moment. To say that Amanda Craig is skilled at doing this would be embarrassingly inadequate: she's practically synonymous with the genre of contemporary social fiction at this point. She has such a gift for weaving the ongoing issues of the day into the lives of her characters in a way that feels natural and lived-in, never making them ciphers for social commentary but instead fully realised people, grappling with issues far larger than themselves.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0955855713</amazonuk>
+
|isbn= 140871468X
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=152915118X
|author=Anne Rice
+
|title=Pineapple Street
|title=Angel Time
+
|author=Jenny Jackson
|rating=2.5
+
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Toby O'Dare is an extremely efficient hit man with a passion for music, history and playing his beloved lute. He's also something of a lost soul having turned his back on God many years ago. One day while on a 'job' he is visited by an Angel who offers him a chance at redemption. Toby agrees to become the Angel's human instrument and help save lives rather than take them. He is sent on an assignment to help a Jewish couple accused of murder in 13th Century England.
+
|summary=''Pineapple Street'' is the story of three women: Sasha, Darley and Georgiana.  Darley and George are sisters and Sasha is married to their brother Cord.  They're Stocktons, only Sasha isn't a Stockton by birth so she isn't readily accepted into the tribe.  The problem's exacerbated when the clan matriarch, Tilda, asks Cord and Sasha if they'd like to move into the Pineapple Street property. Tilda and Chip have renovated and downsized to another property, a street or so away, which they own.  They won't need any of the furniture from Pineapple Street, so Sasha and Cord can move straight in. Nominally, they had a choice but that wasn't the reality. Darley and Georgiana start to call Sasha 'the gold digger'.  She's living in ''their'' family home. They use it so often that they abbreviate it to 'the GD'.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701178140</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Emily Critchley
|author=John E Smelcer
+
|title=One Puzzling Afternoon
|title=The Great Death
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
+
|genre=Crime
|summary='As Western Europeans settled Alaska, they brought with them diseases against which the indigenous people had no natural immunity. At the beginning of the twentieth century, fully two thirds of all Alaska natives perished from a pandemic of measles, smallpox, and influenza. No community was spared. In most cases, half of a village's population died within a week. In some cases, there were no survivors. It was the end of an ancient way of life. Natives still refer to the dreadful period as the Great Death.'
+
|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?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1842709194</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1804181250
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Madelaine Lucas
|author=Sue Townsend
+
|title=Thirst for Salt
|title=Adrian Mole: The Prostrate Years
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
+
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Adrian Mole is now 39¼ and living, quite literally, in a pigsty, sharing an all too thin party wall with his parents and working in a bookshop. It's not quite how life was supposed to turn out. As he spends his days wrestling his strong willed 5 year old Gracie into her school uniform, trying to reassure glamorous wife Daisy that life in the provinces is not as bad as she would like to believe, and desperately attempting to talk his mother out of her quest to appear on the vile ''Jeremy Kyle'' show, worrying over his increasingly frequent visits to the toilet is really the last thing he needs. And yet, the worst is still to come. Think a crumbling economy, redundancy, affairs, death, a family member challenging him in the novel writing stakes and a query over the big C – it's going to be a tough year for the Moles, and there's little that ol' Adrian can do except sit back and watch his life spin out of control around him.
+
|summary= ''Love, I'd read, was supposed to be a light and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity''
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0718153707</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
  
{{newreview
+
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.
|author=Paul Theroux
+
|isbn=0861546490
|title=A Dead Hand: A Crime in Calcutta
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|summary=Set in India, familiar territory for Theroux, ''A Dead Hand'' tells the story of a travel writer suffering from writer's block (also known as 'dead hand') until a chance letter from an American ex-pat, the mysterious Mrs Unger, relating a story of a mystery of a dead body in a hotel leads him to release his creativity in very unexpected ways. The story is more about obsession and infatuation than it is about the mystery itself as the narrator falls under Mrs Unger's Tantric charms. But does she have more to hide than she's letting on?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241144639</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=0008506337
|author=Dave Eggers
+
|title=The Garnett Girls
|title=The Wild Things
+
|author=Georgina Moore
|rating=4
+
|rating=5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Meet MaxWhen I say he sometimes gets the wrong end of the stick about adults, or dislikes his mother's new boyfriend, or gets a bit feisty when he feels the need for revenge, I am certainly understating the factsHe is a bit of a rascal to say the leastBut all that might change when he finds himself travelling to a strange land of roisterous animals, and ends up installed as their king.
+
|summary=The love affair between Margo Garnett and poet Richard O'Leary was all-consuming, apparently on both sides.  Margo was just sixteen when they fell in loveRichard was twenty-one and described by Margo's mother as 'an older man'.  Her parents worried that Richard's influence would take her away from what they felt she could achieve - going to Oxford and having a glittering career.  In the event, they eloped and Richard took her away from the Isle of WightMargo did go to Oxford and went on to become a well-respected journalist.  The couple had three children: Rachel, Imogen and Sasha.  Life was lived in London and holidays were spent at Sandcove, the family home on the Isle of WightEven then the doubts about Richard's drinking were never far from Margo's mind: ''she would never be able to leave him in charge''.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241144221</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
  
{{newreview
+
Then Richard left them.
|author=Harlan Coben
 
|title=Tell No One
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|summary=I've been meaning to get around to reading some or all of Harlan Coben's work, because if the reviews are to be believed and you are a fan of the 'Bloody Knife /Blunt Instrument' thriller, the man is quite simply not capable of turning out a duff novel. But you know how it is, what with one thing and another and a bulging pile of books to be read and reviewed, I just somehow hadn't managed to give him my full attention.  Until now.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1409117022</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
  
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=Sylvie Nickels
+
|isbn=1914585402
|title=Another Kind of Loving
+
|title=Dashboard Elvis is Dead
 +
|author=David F Ross
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Mike Hennessy was a journalist whose speciality was the war-torn parts of the world and October 1992 found him in Sarajevo visiting a children's home to get a story. The orphanage was on the right side of town – away from the main barrage – but it had few other advantages. There was no heat and little food or water, but it was here that he found Jasminka, part Serb, part Bosniak and eleven or twelve years old.  In a phone call to his wife Mike suggested that perhaps Jasminka could come and stay with them for a while.
+
|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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1905200129</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=rashbre
+
|author=Lucy Ashe
|title=The Triangle
+
|title=Clara and Olivia
|rating=3
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|summary=Brian's trip to the art gallery was a treat, courtesy of a private ticket from a friend and the white room was much better than the last gallery he'd visited.  It was, though, to be his last such visit as he was silently knifed by a professional hit man.  His friends were stunned, not just at his death, but at the way in which it had come about.  What could Brian have been doing to attract ''that'' sort of attention?  Jake had given him the ticket and it dawned on him that he had been the target rather than Brian.  Some recent events clicked into place…
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1425171893</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Laura Solomon
 
|title=An Imitation of Life
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=We are introduced to the baby girl, Celia with a detailed, blow-by-blow account of her dreadful physical condition, from her unusual eyes, her even more unusual teeth, her lumpy body and the ever-growing hump on her shoulder.  Forget the Elephant Man, here we have elephant baby. Everything is stacked against her. She is abandoned by her mother, her father is unknown.  And as if all that wasn't enough to make you weep, she is unceremoniously dumped on a doorstep - to die.  But she doesn't. She lives.  And what an extra-ordinary life Laura Solomon has mapped out for her.
+
|summary=The year is 1933. The place? Sadler's Wells. Ballerinas Clara and Olivia are sisters, twins no less. Identical on the outside but not, we learn, on the inside. And not on stage, either. Because there's a lot that builds a dancer. Some things that can be taught or learnt – discipline, attention to detail – and some things, that ''je ne sais quoi'', that don't come from the classroom. A stage presence, a charm, a ''joie de vivre''. The difference between a hard-worker, and a star.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904529437</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=0861544080
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Heather Fawcett
|author=Tamsin Reeves
+
|title=Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries
|title=A Place of Safety
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=There are lots of reasons to take in a lodger for your spare room, but for Martha one of the best is to get one up on her recently departed scoundrel of an ex-husband. And it's not like her financial situation is looking too rosy since he left her for another woman – a woman who is also pregnant with his child. The fact that her lodger is a He, and that he's a Foreigner (and from Afghanistan, no less) is just the icing on the cake. Colin's going to be furious, and Martha can't wait.
+
|summary=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 speaking to faeries, she is not so good with people. So when she finds herself far, far North in 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 put her final investigations for her book back on the right track. Enter Wendell Bambleby, her dashingly handsome and insufferable rival who arrives unexpectedly, all charm and delight, much to Emily's frustration. But why is he here?  What does he want?  And what exactly is going on with the faerie folk around Hravsnik?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849231370</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=0356519120
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=1398515388
|author=Alexander McCall Smith
+
|title=The Boy and the Dog
|title=The Comfort of Saturdays (Isabel Dalhousie 5)
+
|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=As always with Alexander McCall Smith, this fifth book in the Sunday Philosophy series benefits from being read in sequence with the previous titlesOne of the beautiful aspects of his writing is that his characters develop slowly, gently, over the series so although you could probably dive in here and get a fair idea of his style you really should start at the beginning to thoroughly enjoy the pleasure of an AMS readIn this episode Isabel is busy taking care of her son, Charlie, looking after her niece Cat's delicatessen, editing the review and struggling with her own personal fears over her relationship with JamieAnd she wouldn't be Isabel if she didn't, somehow, get entangled in someone else's problems, someone else's life, and here she finds herself trapped into investigating the case of a doctor whose career has been ruined.
+
|summary=First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, in turn, caused the nuclear meltdownThe result was complete and utter devastation.  The deaths were uncountable, and the loss of livelihoods was widespreadThe 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 storeHe wasn't a dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the dog jumped in.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0349120552</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
  
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=Matt Hilton
+
|author=Christopher Bowden
|title=Dead Men's Dust
+
|title=Mr Magenta
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Joe Hunter helps people.  That's what he does.  He's been around the block and to say that he has learned a trick or two along the way might be something of an understatement.  No-one really knows much about Joe Hunter and certainly his past is not something that many would be brave enough to poke around in.
+
|summary= Christopher Bowden's latest novel is a patient untangling of a seemingly ordinary woman's life, carried out by her nephew after she has died. 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 to him an obligation to find it all out.  
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340978236</amazonuk>
+
|isbn= B0B6Z9VJDW
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Jennifer Mason
|author=Imogen Parker
+
|title=Partitions of Unity
|title=This Little World
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=I haven't read the first two books in the trilogy but that didn't spoil my enjoyment of ''This Little World''. They all stand alone as individual novels in their own right. Those readers who have already enjoyed the first two books will know most of the characters and will be keen to find out - what happens next.
+
|summary= Here at Bookbag Towers, 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 series of disappearances. In ''Partitions of Unity'', she sets her mind to solving a murder...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0552151548</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=B09LQR9FRF
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Will Carver
|author=Keith Donohue
+
|title=The Daves Next Door
|title=Angels of Destruction
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=In an opening chapter reminiscent of Cathy's ghostly appearance at the window in [[Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte|Wuthering Heights]], widowed Margaret Quinn opens her front door in the middle of a wintry night to a half-frozen, waif-like child, Norah, who appears to have arrived out of nowhere. Lonely and withdrawn in the wake of her daughter Erica's disappearance many years earlier, Margaret takes in apparently-orphaned Norah, passing her off as her granddaughter. But Norah is no ordinary child…
+
|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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224086138</amazonuk>
+
|isbn= 1914585186
}}
+
}}  
  
{{newreview
+
Move on to [[Newest Graphic Novels Reviews]]
|author=Walter Moers
 
|title=The Alchemaster's Apprentice
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Fantasy
 
|summary=Meet Echo the Crat.  He is a rare example of his species, which is a cat that can speak every language known.  His life among the miserable, permanently ill citizens of Malaisea is not great, which is why, when the strange scientist from the castle that looms over everyone and everything offers him a month of entertaining gluttony before he kills Echo, as opposed to three days' starving penury on the streets, the offer is accepted.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846552222</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Naseem Rakha
 
|title=The Crying Tree
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|summary=Irene Stanley had lived in Illinois all her life, on a farm which had been in her family for generations and where the boundary of the property was the Mississippi river.  She had friends, family and her church in the area and it came as a shock when Nate came home one day and said that he was considering taking a job as a Deputy Sheriff in Oregon (that's pronounced ''Organ'' – only tourists say ''Or-ee-gon'').  It wasn't long before they and their children, Shep and Bliss, made the long overland journey to their new home.  Shep was a quiet boy, a talented musician but against his mother's expectations he settled into his new life well.  Irene wasn't totally convinced, but accepted that life wasn't too bad for the family.  That all changed when she was called home from work to find that Shep had been murdered.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230740847</amazonuk>
 
}}
 

Latest revision as of 10:43, 30 September 2024

B0DGDJRHYD.jpg

Review of

Nowhere Man by Deborah Stone

4star.jpg General Fiction

In a quiet suburban house, Patrick is making his final plans. A meticulous man, he makes sure of every preparation, down to the last detail. Some last reflections, and then he says goodbye to his wife, the world, and his life. It's horribly sad. At work in her shop, his wife Diana is fending off yet another phone call about her ageing and ailing mother, who needs extricating from yet another accident. It will be a while before Diana realises what Patrick has done. Full Review

1739526910.jpg

Review of

Where I've Not Been Lost by Glen Sibley

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

One year after a suicide attempt blows apart musician Brian O’Malley's life, he arrives in an unfamiliar Devon town to recover. Living with an unexpected housemate at his former manager’s holiday home, he dreams of reconnecting with everything he has lost. But as those tentative plans falter, he becomes swept up in a local world of unlikely friendships, mobile discos and surprising romantic possibilities. Full Review

1846976537.jpg

Review of

Beyond Summerland by Jenny Lecoat

4star.jpg General Fiction

Jean lives on Jersey with her mother where they are celebrating the end of the occupation. During the war, Jean's father was arrested for listening to a banned radio and soldiers took him away one night, leaving Jean and her mother waiting for years for news of him. As the British finally free the Channel islands from the Nazis, and the war is finally over, their hopes rise that they will finally learn what became of him. But will the truth come as a relief, or will it raise further questions around what else happened during the war? Who was the informer who told the Nazis about the radio? And what other secrets have been kept throughout the occupation? Full Review

0861546873.jpg

Review of

Allow Me to Introduce Myself by Onyi Nwabineli

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

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? Full Review

1529153298.jpg

Review of

The List of Suspicious Things by Jennie Godfrey

5star.jpg General Fiction

It's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. (A woman? I mean, honestly...) She's not what's worrying Miv's family, though. Women have been disappearing. Well, they've been murdered, but to have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. Miv's upset because she's overheard that her father wants to move the family 'Down South'. When you're from Yorkshire, Down South is a frightening, foreign place, best avoided. For Miv, the move would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, and she'll do anything to prevent that. She's not worried about the dangers or that her Mum's stopped talking - to anyone. Full Review

1035906708.jpg

Review of

Diva by Daisy Goodwin

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

We tend to think of Maria Callas as Greek, but she was born to Greek parents in Manhattan, New York, in December 1923 and only moved to Athens when she was thirteen. Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to 'Callas' to make it more manageable in the States. 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 mother who mercilessly exploited her and made no secret of her preference for her elder sister, Jackie. Full Review

1846976596.jpg

Review of

The Perfect Passion Company by Alexander McCall Smith

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

The Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and operating as an alternative to all the online apps in providing a more personal, tailored service. Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the business, as Ness is planning to take a trip to Canada to get away for a while. Katie is coming out of a break up with a bad boyfriend, and so jumps at the chance to come home 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 Isabel 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… Full Review

1662500491.jpg

Review of

The Bad Weather Friend by Dean Koontz

4.5star.jpg Paranormal

Benny is having a terrifically bad day. He loses his job, he 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 thing that has trashed his house! The thing is, Benny is the 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 delivery to his house is a new friend, a bad weather friend called Spike, who has been sent to help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a good person. Spike is going to take care of Benny, and will certainly take care of Benny's enemies, if he, Benny, and Harper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are. Full Review

0861547438.jpg

Review of

A True Account by Katherine Howe

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

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. When she hears there is to be a hanging of some pirates in the town, she decides to go and watch. Enthralled and horrified in equal measure, Hannah finds herself embroiled in a young boy's death at the hands of two vicious pirates. She hides away, so that they don't find and kill her too, and then to escape them completely she runs away to sea, dressing as a boy and joining the notorious Ned Low's pirate ship as a cabin boy. She soon finds herself in the thick of things when there is a mutiny on board, and from there we are caught up in her rip roaring tale of life on the ocean waves. Full Review

1471180158.jpg

Review of

Maybe Tomorrow by Penny Parkes

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

Jamie Matson works in an upper-class grocery store, for a man who's a control freak with all the subtlety of a half brick. Jamie's son, Bo, 'has his problems'. He's asthmatic and the more you read, the more you'll suspect that he's on the autistic spectrum. Sometimes Jamie needs to take time off at short notice - she's a frequent flier in the local A&E and sometimes Bo's not fit enough to go to school. Missed 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. It was going to come to a head. Full Review

B0CKD1L5JL.jpg

Review of

Radio Free Olympia by Jeffrey Dunn

4star.jpg General Fiction

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. Full Review

1035401614.jpg

Review of

A Sign of Her Own by Sarah Marsh

3.5star.jpg General Fiction

After a bout of scarlet fever as a child, Ellen Lark loses her hearing. Suddenly plunged into a world of silence, everything about her life changes. Living in a time when the use of sign language was seen as something only savages do, Ellen is sent to a school where she is taught to lip read, but physically restrained from signing. From here, she ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the deaf and using a system called Visible Speech. At the same time, Bell is working on other inventions and ideas, and Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a complicated tangle of espionage. Full Review

B0BC3YTCMR.jpg

Review of

Good Girls Die by Ayura Ayira

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

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 afraid to hug her in case it's contagious. It's not easy being a black girl whose skin is 84% white. She had a crush on seventeen-year-old Reggie Anderson but never thought he would notice her. Then he did: Lavender was very good at math and Reggie asked if she would tutor him. She readily agreed: tutoring was something she gladly did at church: this was just an extension. She went to his house and he raped her. In shock, she even allowed him to give her a lift home. Full Review

1472263936.jpg

Review of

The Figurine by Victoria Hislop

5star.jpg General Fiction

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. Full Review

1662500467.jpg

Review of

After Death by Dean Koontz

3star.jpg General Fiction

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. Full Review

B0BVDC2VWH.jpg

Review of

The Grave Listeners by William Frank

4star.jpg General Fiction

The village is isolated and poor. It's surrounded by a 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 forest provides heat and warmth, roofs on homes, and even gallows, if needed. The fear of being buried alive is an existential superstition in the village and that is the reason Volushka, a drunken, self-indulgent, lazy lout of a man is tolerated. Full Review

B0BYF82CXT.jpg

Review of

Semi-Detached by Deborah Stone

4star.jpg General Fiction

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. Despite 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. Full Review

1662507089.jpg

Review of

The Silent Bride by Shalini Boland

3star.jpg General Fiction

Alice and Seth are a match made in heaven. He is everything she has been searching for; handsome, accomplished, clever, funny; total and utter husband-material. She is all he could possibly want in a wife; beautiful, successful, confident… and so the inevitable proposal is eagerly accepted by Alice and the wedding is planned and set. When the much-anticipated day arrives, Alice is walked down the aisle by her father, beaming with pride and excitement as she surveys the congregation – their friends assembled to celebrate this joyful day and when Seth turns to face his approaching bride, Alice's world implodes because she has absolutely no idea who the man at the altar is, who is waiting for her to become his wife. Full Review

1787636003.jpg

Review of

The Girls of Summer by Katie Bishop

5star.jpg General Fiction

It was the summer when Rachel Evans turned eighteen that she and Caroline went backpacking around Greece and arrived on the island. Rachel wasn't exactly innocent but she was, perhaps, naive, so when thirty-four-year-old Alistair Wright started to take an interest in her, she was flattered rather than wary. It was quite a while before he made any sort of physical approach to her and by that time she was obsessed by him. Alistair worked for Henry Taylor, looking after his interests on the island and in particular in the bar where all the girls either worked or partied. Full Review

140871468X.jpg

Review of

Three Graces by Amanda Craig

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

Few styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the state-of-the-nation novel. There's something so utterly compelling about any writer who can catch hold of the atmosphere of the day and capture it, crafting an image of the country as it stands in one particular moment. To say that Amanda Craig is skilled at doing this would be embarrassingly inadequate: she's practically synonymous with the genre of contemporary social fiction at this point. She has such a gift for weaving the ongoing issues of the day into the lives of her characters in a way that feels natural and lived-in, never making them ciphers for social commentary but instead fully realised people, grappling with issues far larger than themselves. Full Review

152915118X.jpg

Review of

Pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

Pineapple Street is the story of three women: Sasha, Darley and Georgiana. Darley and George are sisters and Sasha is married to their brother Cord. They're Stocktons, only Sasha isn't a Stockton by birth so she isn't readily accepted into the tribe. The problem's exacerbated when the clan matriarch, Tilda, asks Cord and Sasha if they'd like to move into the Pineapple Street property. Tilda and Chip have renovated and downsized to another property, a street or so away, which they own. They won't need any of the furniture from Pineapple Street, so Sasha and Cord can move straight in. Nominally, they had a choice but that wasn't the reality. Darley and Georgiana start to call Sasha 'the gold digger'. She's living in their family home. They use it so often that they abbreviate it to 'the GD'. Full Review

1804181250.jpg

Review of

One Puzzling Afternoon by Emily Critchley

4star.jpg Crime

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? Full Review

0861546490.jpg

Review of

Thirst for Salt by Madelaine Lucas

5star.jpg Literary Fiction

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. Full Review

0008506337.jpg

Review of

The Garnett Girls by Georgina Moore

5star.jpg General Fiction

The love affair between Margo Garnett and poet Richard O'Leary was all-consuming, apparently on both sides. Margo was just sixteen when they fell in love. Richard was twenty-one and described by Margo's mother as 'an older man'. Her parents worried that Richard's influence would take her away from what they felt she could achieve - going to Oxford and having a glittering career. In the event, they eloped and Richard took her away from the Isle of Wight. Margo did go to Oxford and went on to become a well-respected journalist. The couple had three children: Rachel, Imogen and Sasha. Life was lived in London and holidays were spent at Sandcove, the family home on the Isle of Wight. Even then the doubts about Richard's drinking were never far from Margo's mind: she would never be able to leave him in charge.

Then Richard left them. Full Review

1914585402.jpg

Review of

Dashboard Elvis is Dead by David F Ross

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

I reviewed David F Ross's book 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. Full Review

0861544080.jpg

Review of

Clara and Olivia by Lucy Ashe

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

The year is 1933. The place? Sadler's Wells. Ballerinas Clara and Olivia are sisters, twins no less. Identical on the outside but not, we learn, on the inside. And not on stage, either. Because there's a lot that builds a dancer. Some things that can be taught or learnt – discipline, attention to detail – and some things, that je ne sais quoi, that don't come from the classroom. A stage presence, a charm, a joie de vivre. The difference between a hard-worker, and a star. Full Review

0356519120.jpg

Review of

Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett

4star.jpg General Fiction

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 speaking to faeries, she is not so good with people. So when she finds herself far, far North in 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 put her final investigations for her book back on the right track. Enter Wendell Bambleby, her dashingly handsome and insufferable rival who arrives unexpectedly, all charm and delight, much to Emily's frustration. But why is he here? What does he want? And what exactly is going on with the faerie folk around Hravsnik? Full Review

1398515388.jpg

Review of

The Boy and the Dog by Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, in turn, caused the nuclear meltdown. 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 their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. He wasn't a dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the dog jumped in. Full Review

B0B6Z9VJDW.jpg

Review of

Mr Magenta by Christopher Bowden

4star.jpg General Fiction

Christopher Bowden's latest novel is a patient untangling of a seemingly ordinary woman's life, carried out by her nephew after she has died. 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 to him an obligation to find it all out. Full Review

B09LQR9FRF.jpg

Review of

Partitions of Unity by Jennifer Mason

4star.jpg General Fiction

Here at Bookbag Towers, we first met Elizabeth Cromwell, dominatrix and unintentional detective in Preposterous, when she investigated and unravelled a series of disappearances. In Partitions of Unity, she sets her mind to solving a murder... Full Review

1914585186.jpg

Review of

The Daves Next Door by Will Carver

4star.jpg General Fiction

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. Full Review

Move on to Newest Graphic Novels Reviews