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===[[Mr Peacock's Possessions American Royals by Lydia SysonKatharine McGee]]===
[[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category: Historical General Fiction|General Fiction]] Two and a half centuries ago, America won the Revolutionary War and General George Washington was offered the crown. Today, the House of Washington still sit on the thrown with Princess Beatrice next in line. Beatrice's whole life has been building up to her ruling the United States and the time for her reign is imminent. [[American Royals by Katharine McGee|Full Review]] <!-- Mulligan -->|-| style=''width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;''|[[image:1784742716.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1784742716/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style=''vertical-align: top; text-align: left;''|===[[Train Man by Andrew Mulligan]]=== [[image:2.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:General Fiction|Historical General Fiction]], [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]] I came to this book thinking I knew just what to expect, even though it is [[:Category:Andy Mulligan|the author's]] debut in the adult novel market (hence the more mature name – he used to be an Andy). I thought it simple to sum up, the tale of a middle-aged man who knows too much about train travel having his life turned around in the most pleasant way. I hadn't opened it when I'd shelved it alongside [[:Category:Chris Cleave|Chris Cleave]], and [[:Category:David Nicholls|David Nicholls]]. I expected some whimsy, some warmth and some affirmative loveliness. More fool me. [[Train Man by Andrew Mulligan|Full Review]] <!-- Coleman -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:1785032461.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1785032461/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[The Girl at the Window by Rowan Coleman]]=== [[image:5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]], [[:Category:Paranormal|Paranormal]]
On Trudy Heaton is going home, to a remote volcanic island off house where her roots burrow back through the coast of New Zealand, centuries and to a family of settlers struggle mother she hasn't spoken to make such an unforgiving place a homefor sixteen years. When a ship appears Home, her refuge, Ponden Hall, they feel that their wishes have been granted where she can heal herself and their community reinvigorated – but high hopes are swiftly dashed when a vulnerable boy disappearstry to come to terms with the traumatic loss of her husband. As both settlers She needs to build bridges with her mother and newcomers come together in the search for the child, they uncover far, far more convince her grieving son that his father is dead. Where better than they were looking for – discovering dark secrets about both the island house full of light and those who inhabit it. shadow, that nurtured her throughout her childhood? [[Mr Peacock's Possessions The Girl at the Window by Lydia SysonRowan Coleman|Full Review]]
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===[[Underwater Breathing We Are Not Okay by Cassandra ParkinNatalia Gomes]]===
[[image:5star4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Teens|Teens]], [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]]
A tumble-down Edwardian house that will sooner rather than later tumble down Set in a typical American town, ''We Are Not Okay'' tells the mud cliffs and away into story of four teenage girls facing the sea is where we meet Jacob difficulties brought on by high school and Ella. They share growing up as a bathroom girl in the turrettoday's society. The novel is told from four different perspectives, those of Lucy, Ulana, old Trina and cold and not really supposed Sophia, whose friendship statuses vary from BFFs to be used…but this sworn enemies. The reader is where they hide away from presented with a glimpse into each of their lives, but more importantly their minds, and at times the shouts thoughts of their parents' argumentsthose characters could have been taken directly from my own. Here they play the Underwater Breathing gameGomes has created a heartbreakingly real and relevant novel that focuses on prominent topic areas which are becoming ingrained in our society, submerging themselves particularly in relation to the water holding their breath for as long as they can''Me Too Movement''. For sixteen year old Jacob it's just a way of drowning out 'We Are Not Okay'' reminds the arguments…but for Ella it is more than that. She is terrified reader of the sea, importance of the fact that it will come and swallow their house. She needs to know that she can survive under water. She has to practicephrases like ''I'm With Her''. [[Underwater Breathing We Are Not Okay by Cassandra ParkinNatalia Gomes|Full Review]]
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===[[The Great Believers Keep Walking Rhona Beech by Rebecca MakkaiKate Tough]]===
[[image:4.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:LGBT General Fiction|General Fiction]], [[:Category:Women's Fiction|LGBT Women's Fiction]]
Life has just hidden behind a corner and stuck a foot out as Rhona Beech came past. She and Mark had been together for nine years and it was beginning to feel ''settled''. Then Mark announced that he'd got a job in Canada and he was going whether Rhona wanted to come with him or not. The Great Believers'' follows a group not'' bit of friends whose lives are devastated by the AIDS crisis in Chicago during sentence was the late 1980’sway it worked out and Rhona was left on her own. Beginning in 1985 Well, she wasn't completely on her own: she had friends and family, but it's not the reader follows Yale and his friends same as they come to terms with the increasingly virulent illness spreading throughout their communityhaving that special someone in your life, alongside their demonisation at the hands that someone who makes you part of a conservative Americacouple. Thirty years later Fiona So Rhona had to start again, rejoining a devoted friend world that bore little resemblance to Yale, is searching for her estranged daughter on the streets one she'd left nine years ago - and there's a lot of difference between being in the middle of Paris, trying to rebuild a relationship beset by memories your twenties and old hurtthe middle of your thirties. [[The Great Believers Keep Walking Rhona Beech by Rebecca MakkaiKate Tough|Full Review]]
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===[[The Brighton Mermaid Equator by Dorothy KoomsonAntonin Varenne and Sam Taylor (translator)]]===
[[image:43.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Historical Fiction|Historical Fiction]], [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]], [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]]
In 1993, two teenagers stumble across a horrific scene on It strikes me that nobody can speak well of the Wild West outside the beach as they're sneaking home after an un-authorised night out: a body walls of a young womantheme park. Our agent to see how bad it was here is Pete Ferguson, partially strippedwho bristles at the indignity of white man against Native 'Indian', totally deceased. The find hits the girls who spends days being physically sick while indulging in different ways. Nell becomes obsessed with finding a buffalo hunt, and who hates the identity way man – and woman, of the girl course – who she calls ''can turn against fellow man at the Brighton Mermaid'' because bat of a distinguishing tattoo – whereas Jude just wants to forget it ever happenedan eyelid. Fast forward 25 years and Nell But this book is still haunted by what happened that night. With few leads to go onabout so much more than the 1870s USA, and the Police closed the case without cracking itattendant problems with gold rushes, pioneer spirits and so it remains one racial genocide. He finds himself trying to find this book's version of those unsolved mysteries that become part of local folkloreUtopia, but Nell struggles to let sleeping dogsnamely the Equator, or even sleeping mermaidswhere everything is upside down, lie. As for Judepeople walk on their heads with rocks in their pockets to keep them on the ground to counter the anti-gravity, well no one knows if the discovery still haunts her because no one knows and where she is. Shortly after that fateful night, she too disappearedwho knows, never to things might actually be seen or heard from againbetter. There But that equator is a long way away – and there's more to Brighton than Stag Dos a whole adventure full of Mexico and Latin America between him and Gay Pride, it seems. it… [[The Brighton Mermaid Equator by Dorothy KoomsonAntonin Varenne and Sam Taylor (translator)|Full Review]]
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===[[Falling Short Needlemouse by Lex CoultonJane O'Connor]]===
[[image:4star5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]], [[:Category:Humour|Humour]], [[:Category:Women's Fiction|Women's Fiction]]
Lex Coulton's debut novel is a story about mistakes, failures, We first meet Sylvia Penton on her birthday and relationships. The main protagonisther boss, Frances Pilgrimthe Prof, is a sixth form English teacher who has recently fallen taking her out to lunch. This is her favourite day of the year, not because it's her birthday but because of the special time she gets to spend with the man she loves. He's told her best friend Jackson, a work colleague, that he and his wife are going to divorce - Martha is apparently having an affair - and Sylvia is grappling with convinced that the Prof will then declare his love and they can be together. She hasn't fully constructed 'together' in her own mind - she envisages it as romantic, but her imagination hasn't yet progressed to the increasingly eccentric behaviour sexual part of her motherthe relationship. This relationship is complicated by There's time though - she's only been the fact that Francesprof's father disappeared at sea when she was five PA for fifteen years old. [[Falling Short Needlemouse by Lex CoultonJane O'Connor|Full Review]]
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===[[Go Ask Fannie Farmer Vintage 1954 by Elisabeth HydeAntoine Laurain, Jane Aitken (translator) and Emily Boyce (translator)]]===
[[image:4.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]]
Eighty-one-year-old Murray Blaire hoped for Vintage 1954 starts by thrusting several completely different characters upon us, before deciding to run with them and formulate a plot. So we have an American biker, just landing in Paris but unfortunately not with the best when he waited for wife who shared his three children to arrive one Friday nightdream of visiting the city together. He might be We have a retired lawyergoth girl who everyone recognises from an American crime show, but actually is a state legislatorhumble restorer of antiques. We have a cocktail barman, elected congressman and now an amateur farmer but he knew that there could be trouble when Ruth and George arrivedinfatuated with the goth girl. Ruth, We also have a man ruling the roost over a corporate lawyerwhole suite of individual apartments fabricated from the Haussmann-era mansion his family once owned. Finally something conspires to get them together, would find fault and want to talk about him going into drinking from the same bottle of a retirement homerare 1954 red wine. GeorgeOnly, one of them has a nurse, would argue and Lizzie, bizarre incidence in his family history that also features the same plonk – where a professor of English Literaturegrandfather imbibed, who lived locally and kept and visited him regularlywalked out the door one rainy morning, would never to be unpredictableseen again. Murray hoped that all would go smoothlyBut of course nobody will be doing any disappearing now, but that simply wasn't going to happen. though – will they? [[Go Ask Fannie Farmer Vintage 1954 by Elisabeth HydeAntoine Laurain, Jane Aitken (translator) and Emily Boyce (translator)|Full Review]]
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===[[The Particular Wisdom of Sally Red Shoes Van Apfel Girls are Gone by Ruth HoganFelicity McLean]]===
[[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Thrillers|Thrillers]], [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]]
Masha's son Gabriel died some When Tikka Molloy was eleven and one-sixth years agoold, the Van Apfel sisters disappeared. She'd been a single parent with help from her friendIn the long hot summer of 1992, Edwardin an isolated suburb of Australia surrounded by Bushland, who had grieved as much as Masha and whilst Edward has moved on (his boyfriend moved out in the immediate aftermath of girls vanished during the drowning, but thereschool's now a new love interest) Masha is still strickenShowstopper concert at the riverside amphitheatre. Did they run away? Were they taken? While the search for the sisters united the small community, they were never found. Returning home years later, feeling Tikka must make sense of that it would somehow be disloyal to Gabriel if strange moment in time – of the summer that shaped her, and the girls she was to be happy. An independent, rebellious woman has somehow been diminishednever forgot. [[The Particular Wisdom of Sally Red Shoes Van Apfel Girls are Gone by Ruth HoganFelicity McLean|Full Review]]
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===[[The Gradual Disappearance Department of Jane Ashland Sensitive Crimes by Nicolai Houm and Anna Paterson (translator)Alexander McCall Smith]]===
[[image:4.5star4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]], [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]]
Jane Ashland is dying. ThatLong-time followers of The Bookbag will know I's m a description die-hard fan of AMS. So you can imagine my excitement at reading a very early scene here – but also, of coursebrand new book in a brand new series, described by the author himself as Scandi Blanc (as opposed to Scandi Noir)! Here we meet a platitude that can apply to all of us. Jane's life, if anythingnew detective named Ulf Varg, is going up and down who works in levels of pleasure, energy – sobriety – in these pagesthe Department for Sensitive Crimes, but we soon learn solving those crimes that it recently found a very deeply dark down placeperhaps fall outside the usual police parameters. Here then, scattered through a timeline-bending narrative, we have her days finding a Lincolnesque lover as a student This particular book deals with crimes including someone who is stabbed in New Yorkthe knee, glimpses the disappearance of therapyan imaginary boyfriend, and a drive case of potential werewolves. They're the crimes that perhaps nobody else would bother to deal with, and I rather enjoyed them, especially the stabbing where you find her ancestors that takes her from rural America to Norway – and a trip there actually, you identify with a new-found friend to watch the musk oxenperson who committed the crime, of all thingsrather than the victim. And nowhere in sight is anything like a platitude… [[The Gradual Disappearance Department of Jane Ashland Sensitive Crimes by Nicolai Houm and Anna Paterson (translator)Alexander McCall Smith|Full Review]]
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===[[Tale of a Tooth by Allie Rogers]]===
===[[The Things That are Lost by Alan Kennedy]]=== [[image:5star4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]]
Danny lives The final novel in a small Sussex town with his motherAlan Kennedy's WW2 trilogy sees Captain Alex Vere taken off active duty and banished to Scotland, Natalieproviding trade craft spy training. Life is poor, but they manage - until theyIt're threatened by s stifling and suffocating and feels as much like a benefits sanctionprison to Alex as anything the Germans would provide. A Job Centre employee looks And where is Justine? Alex hasn't seen her since he went to be their salvation - but her impact on ''that'' disastrous meeting with John Cabot, instigator of the family goes far beyond what they first expectdisinformation campaign, and the resulting changes are described returned to the reader through the naive yet perceptive and wholly original eyes find her missing. A failed mission is one thing but no Justine is quite another. Alex can't get Justine out of four-year-old Dannyhis head. Has she left the service? Does she know too much? Is she even still alive? [[Tale of a Tooth The Things That are Lost by Allie RogersAlan Kennedy|Full Review]]
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===[[Claudia A Danger to Herself and Others by Anthony TrevelyanAlyssa Sheinmel]]===
[[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Teens|Teens]], [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]]
When Claudia is called to the reception of her Manchester Office block to meet a visitor, she doesn't expect it 'They needed someone to be her father figure – a man she hasn't seen for fifteen years. Samson Glaze – otherwise known as Wild Samsonblame, The Aztec and The Sun King, walked out of Claudia's life and into a world of success as a solar panel salesman – but now he's returned and he needs Claudia's helpI was the only available scapegoat. Their daughter was my best friend. Reggie, Samson's son, has joined a mysterious cult called ''Tarantula'', a group who prepare for Playing the scapegoat was the end of least I could do under the world and encourage humanity to embrace their impending doomcircumstances. Claudia's journey takes ' Seventeen year old Hannah Gold was born mature – or so her far from parents tell her home . She has dined in Manchester to fancy restaurants, explored the end most sophisticated corners of the world – where encounters with hammer-wielding assassins make things very difficult indeed… globe and lived a life of luxury. [[Claudia A Danger to Herself and Others by Anthony TrevelyanAlyssa Sheinmel|Full Review]]
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===[[The Man I Think I Know Louis and Louise by Mike GayleJulie Cohen]]===
[[image:5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]]
James DeWitt What would you be like, right now, if you'd been born a different gender? Would it simply be a matter of genetics, and Danny Allen are both men your life would still have unfolded in the same way? Or would the way you had been raised affect who you became in their early thirties whose lives haven't taken them where they were supposed to go. At an life? This latest novel by Julie Cohen looks at all time low time for both of themthe above, covering the stories of Louis and Louise, born on the same day, to the two men reconnect same parents, but in one storyline Lou is a boy, and slowly find they're exactly what in the other needsa girl. Together Does it really make a difference, they help each other put their lives back together. This the gender box that is a beautiful ticked when we arrive in this world? We all know that men and women are treated differently, but this story about friendship really highlights how things have been in the past, how they still are, and what it really means prompts you to help another personthink about how they could be... [[The Man I Think I Know Louis and Louise by Mike GayleJulie Cohen|Full Review]]
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===[[The Curious Heart of Ailsa Rae M for Mammy by Stephanie ButlandEleanor O'Reilly]]===
[[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]], [[:Category:Women's Fiction|Women's Fiction]]
Ailsa Rae has been sick her whole lifeThe Augustts are, like all families, and just as she was edging closer to death she finallya bit complicated. A loving irish family, finally got the call their love binds them together – but all express that she neededin very different ways. However, that a heart was available for her when misfortune strikes the family they are forced to work together in order to have understand each other again, as with a transplantfamily as complicated as the Augustts it's not always what is spoken that makes the most sense. Previously she had felt so helpless that she had used her blog to make decisions for her, running polls amongst her readers to decide on her actionsThings are shaken up further when Granny Mae-Anne moves in and takes charge. But with her new heartFull of stern words and common sense, she has been given 's a new lifeforce of nature who must try her hardest to hold the family together. Can Ailsa manage to start to live on her own, and will her mother let her do that? [[The Curious Heart of Ailsa Rae M for Mammy by Stephanie ButlandEleanor O'Reilly|Full Review]]
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===[[Falling Leaves Queenie Malone's Paradise Hotel by Stefan MohamedRuth Hogan]]===
[[image:5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]], [[:Category:FantasyHumour|FantasyHumour]], [[:Category:Paranormal|Paranormal]]
When your best friend vanishesTilda returns to Brighton, how can you begin to move on? How can you live your life not knowing whether theytidy away the remains of her mother're okay? And what would you do if they reappeared in your s life? – all questions that Vanessa faces every day, even seven years after her best friend Mark vanisheddeath. When he reappearsWhilst there, she's shocked not only by his presence back in her lifereturns to the Paradise hotel, a haven for eccentrics and misfits. A place where people can be themselves, but also by the fact and let go of thoughts that torment them elsewhere. Little wonder that he hasn't aged Tilda cannot forgive her mother for banishing her as a day – for himchild, no time has passed since his disappearancefrom this place of wonder. ShockedWith the help of Queenie Malone, caring, confused and emotionally reelinggregarious, Vanessa must return Tilda begins to pick apart the tricky and uncertain relationship she had with her home town in order to help Mark find the answers he so desperately cravessometimes cruel and distant mother. But what[[Queenie Malone's waiting for them is far more surprising than either of them could ever have dreamt… [[Falling Leaves Paradise Hotel by Stefan MohamedRuth Hogan|Full Review]]
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===[[Dyed Souls by Gary Santorella]]===
===[[The Man Who Came to London by A S Cookson]]=== [[image:4.5star4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Teens|Teens]], [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]] ''In 1948, the first set of Caribbean nationals arrived in Great Britain on a ship called "Empire Windrush". They struggled to find housing. They worked as labourers. They faced open discrimination, forcing them to quickly form their own community. Decades later, Freddy makes the same journey.''
The USA, early 1980s. Charlie (or Charles, if he's feeling belligerent, and 'Does he often is) is being taken back to his home by his drop-out, slutty mother. The home is called find a Cottage, and while the book doesn't guide us place to understand it perfectly, it seems to mean live? Does he has a private room in a large self-contained bungalow, on a gated compound with round-the-clock adult supervision. Thereface stereotypes? Has Britain moved forward?'s a paddock with horses for the kids to ride, their own school – and all the adults are armed with Thorazine to calm the kids down. Charlie, despite his obvious bookish intelligence, is struggling to get to grips with why and how he's ended up where he is, but it must have something to do with his single parent mother being violent, and the fact he is no longer allowed to stay with his grandfather. This book is a slightly woozy look at his thoughts, as he tries to build a relationship with a girl in a different Cottage, and work out his lot. He certainly has a lot on his plate for a thirteen-year-old. [[Dyed Souls by Gary Santorella|Full Review]]
Freddie arrives in London in the early 2000s, answering the call for teachers. He thinks about his own Jamaican education, based on the British system, and the way he was taught English nursery rhymes and about the River Thames. He thinks about the love of cricket and football, shared by both countries. And he thinks of the generations of the diaspora who came before him. Freddy does well in his job in East London but he does have to face down some stereotypical attitudes from his pupils - all Jamaicans smoke weed, don't they? Everybody knows that! [[The Man Who Came to London by A S Cookson|Full Review]] <!-- Simsion Rubin -->
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===[[Two Steps Forward Liberation Square by Graeme Simsion and Anne BuistGareth Rubin]]===
[[image:5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Thrillers|Thrillers]], [[:Category:Historical Fiction|Historical Fiction]], [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]]
When I read In an alternate 1952, Soviet Troops control British Streets. After D-Day goes horribly wrong, Britain is first occupied by Nazi Germany – only to be rescued by Russian soldiers from the East, and Americans from the west. Dividing the blurb for this booknation between them, I found myself instantly interested London soon finds itself split in its premise two, a wall running through it like a scar. When Jane Cawson's husband is arrested for the murder of two people trying his former wife, Jane is determined to start their lives again following serious life changes. The book did not disappointclear his name. In doing so, Jane follows a trail of corruption that leads her right to the highest levels of the state – and soon finds herself desperate to stay one step ahead of the murderous secret police… [[Two Steps Forward Liberation Square by Graeme Simsion and Anne BuistGareth Rubin|Full Review]]
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===[[I Have Lost My Way When You Read This by Gayle FormanMary Adkins]]===
[[image:4.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]]
''I Have Lost My Way'' tells Smith Simonyi and Iris Massey worked together for four years, during which time Iris left her husband at the story of three individuals who have each lost something important to them leading to them losing altar on their waywedding day. Freya has lost her voice Smith, meanwhile, relied on Iris, Harun has lost but his attention was on making enough money to cover his love mother's nursing home fees in Wisconsin, running the branding agency in New York and Nathaniel has lost everythinglosing money gambling when the pressures got too much for him. However, these three elements do not give justice to He was devastated when Iris developed a terminal cancer and died at the extent age of what each character has lostthirty three. In this expertly written novel, Gayle Forman writes about how these three dissimilar individuals each came to lose what He was most important to them, causing them to all meet one fateful day surprised too when he discovered that Iris had been writing a blog in New York Citythe last six months of her life and her final request of Smith is that he gets the blog published as a book. [[I Have Lost My Way When You Read This by Gayle FormanMary Adkins|Full Review]]
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===[[One Clear Ice-Cold January Morning at the Beginning of the Twenty-First Century Vera Magpie by Roland Schimmelpfennig and Jamie Bulloch (translator)Laura Solomon]]=== [[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]]
[[image:4star''I have murdered three husbands.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]]''
FirstAs an opening line that must take some beating, forgive me if I don't refer to this book with its full title often. Itbut Vera's pointedly precise, accurate, and rather ungainly – when in fact telling us the book it describes has only the former truth. The first two attributes in any quantity. What happens in January is that a wild wolf walks across the frozen river separating Poland husbands, Gary and eastern Germany. Which means thatHarry were abusive, when the book starts properlybut Larry was a treasure, mid-Februarya keeper, and it has had time 's difficult to understand why Vera would have killed him, particularly when she was likely to get found out very quickly and now she's in prison with a lot closer to Berlin – within 80 kilometres, to be precise, for that is the road marker where one of our main characters sees itmandatory life sentence. He Her only friend is trying to get back to work in Berlin for the first time in Shirley, a monthlesbian, and but Vera's not one to let herself be a victim. She's not keen on having a sexual relationship with his girlfriend, not knowing Shirley (she has had an infidelity while he was away. Also fancying wouldn't risk the bright lights and big city are a teenaged pair security of love-birds, the boy and girl next door to each other her life in an eastern village, who flee an unhappy lot on prison for the off-chance sake of a better one. You just know there fling), but she is a chance that these characters – human keen on getting an education and lupine alike – are sucked into one combined narrative, but you wonshe't know quite what that will entail…s studying for a degree in English Literature. [[One Clear Ice-Cold January Morning at the Beginning of the Twenty-First Century Vera Magpie by Roland Schimmelpfennig and Jamie Bulloch (translator)Laura Solomon|Full Review]]
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===[[W Black Light by John BanksLaura Solomon]]===
[[image:4star3.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]] Jim is a university student and, as the saying goes, he hasn't got his troubles to seek. His father committed suicide when he was young and somehow he's never really managed to connect with his step-father. His younger brother would be kindly described as having learning difficulties: if you were being honest you'd just say that he was very difficult, but Jim does his best with and for him. Jim's in love with a woman, but she finds him repulsive and you can understand why: the looks, the attitude, the (lack of) conversational ability and the clothing all leave a lot to be desired. Despite all that's he's not about to sit back and allow his life to drift: he's actually writing ''two'' novels and he reads excerpts from these to his friends in the pub. [[Black Light by Laura Solomon|Full Review]]
On the slopes of Mt Hood in Oregon, an 1000-year old Viking is discovered frozen - three thousand miles further west than any previously known Viking exploration. Josh Kinninger is inspired by the Viking discovery - three personal catastrophes having left him angry, unmoored and with his world in turmoil. Beginning a journey westward, he's filled with a desire to wreak vengeance on the individuals he finds morally corrupt. [[W by John Banks|Full Review]]
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===[[The Family Next Door Redemptor Domus by Sally HepworthGamelyn Chase]]===
[[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]]
Pleasant Court is a cul-de-sac a few minutes A young boy arrives at an exclusive faith school on the scenic North Wales coast, sent far from his family in the beach in MelbourneFar East. Kids play in As the boy travels to the street and it's school, a family tragedy causes the sort of place people aspire boy toarrive at the school a vulnerable orphan, with an uncertain future. Certainly that's how the families who live there feel and there's Plunged into a good sense school full of community. Ben danger and Essie are glad that Essie's mother betrayal, the boy is living next door seen as Essie had a mental breakdown three years ago when her first daughter was having difficulty sleepingtrophy by friends and enemies alike. Mia's come through that stageWith them locked into their scheming and plotting, but now there's Poppy, who's been it comes to the perfect baby for boy to attempt to clean up the first six months pit of her life, but is just starting to be difficult. Ben, in particular, is pleased filth that he can rely on Barbara to keep an eye on the situation whilst he's out at workschool has become. [[The Family Next Door Redemptor Domus by Sally HepworthGamelyn Chase|Full Review]]
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