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===[[Hell's Unveiling American Royals by Laura SolomonKatharine McGee]]===
[[image:3.5star4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Short Stories|Short Stories]], [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]], [[:Category:Fantasy|Fantasy]]
A little while Two and a half centuries ago I really enjoyed [[Marsha's Deal by Laura Solomon|Marsha's Deal]] , America won the Revolutionary War and I General George Washington was delighted by offered the opportunity to read crown. Today, the sequel, ''Hell's Unveiling''. It's probably not much House of a spoiler to say that Marsha bested Washington still sit on the devil thrown with Princess Beatrice next in ''Marsha's Deal'', but the devil is not one to take defeat lying downline. HeBeatrice's out whole life has been building up to wage war on Planet Earth and particularly on Marsha (who's thought of as a 'goody two shoes' in Hell). Although a strong person, she's vulnerable where her foster children are concerned. Daniel is framed for a crime he didn't commit ruling the United States and sent to juvenile detention and refused permission to return to live with Marsha. Then, of course there are all the other children who are not only targeted, but - worst of all - subverted to the devil's evil ends. He's out to prey on their fears and weaknesses and as with many foster children, their self esteem time for her reign is very fragile. This is no small-scale operation, either - the devil has set up a training complex on earth, complete with an elevator to Hellimminent. [[Hell's Unveiling American Royals by Laura SolomonKatharine McGee|Full Review]]
<!-- C M Taylor 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|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 -->
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===[[Staying On The Girl at the Window by C M TaylorRowan Coleman]]===
[[image:4star5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]], [[:Category:Paranormal|Paranormal]]
Tony Metcalfe Trudy Heaton is a Yorkshireman through and through and being honestgoing home, Yorkshire's where he'd really like to be. You suspect that Scarborough would be perfect, but he's living in a mountain village just beyond house where her roots burrow back through the Costa Verde centuries and running to a pub. The Viva Espagñe isnmother she hasn't flourishing: Tony would really like spoken to sell it and return to the UKfor sixteen years. Home, what with the uncertainty of Brexit and everythingher refuge, but there are a couple of problems. First offPonden Hall, his wife - Laney - refuses where she can heal herself and try to go back come to terms with the UKtraumatic loss of her husband. She'd have you believe needs to build bridges with her mother and convince her grieving son that she's not well, but there's a backstory there that's not being talked about. Then there's the pub, which isn't doing well enough to sellhis father is dead. In fact Tony's cleaning Where better than the swimming pools house full of expats who have left Spain light and returned homeshadow, in order to make a bit of money to try and make ends at least come in sight of each other, even if they never meet. that nurtured her throughout her childhood? [[Staying On The Girl at the Window by C M TaylorRowan Coleman|Full Review]]
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===[[The Day of the Orphan We Are Not Okay by Dr Nat TanohNatalia Gomes]]===
[[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Teens|Teens]], [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]]
Saga is eighteen andSet in a typical American town, like many eighteen-year olds, his prime concerns are listening to what his mum calls ''hop-hipWe Are Not Okay''tells the story of four teenage girls facing the difficulties brought on by high school and growing up as a girl in today's society. The novel is told from four different perspectives, eating copious amounts those of foodLucy, and learning about girls. Living in an affluentUlana, liberal Trina and protected suburbSophia, he has whose friendship statuses vary from BFFs to sworn enemies. The reader is presented with a good life. Howeverglimpse into each of their lives, but more importantly their minds, and at times the suburb is in Africa, where childhoods can be snatched in an instantthoughts of those characters could have been taken directly from my own. When his friends Gomes has created a heartbreakingly real and family relevant novel that focuses on prominent topic areas which are dragged into the conflict raging around the dictatorship that Saga lives underbecoming ingrained in our society, he is forced particularly in relation to become an unlikely revolutionarythe ''Me Too Movement''. Can chubby Saga really stand up to a murderous regime? And can he stay one step ahead ''We Are Not Okay'' reminds the reader of the soldiers desperate to stop him? importance of phrases like ''I'm With Her''. [[The Day of the Orphan We Are Not Okay by Dr Nat TanohNatalia Gomes|Full Review]]
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===[[Murmuration Keep Walking Rhona Beech by Robert LockKate Tough]]===
[[image:3star4.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]], [[:Category:Historical Women's Fiction|Historical 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'Murmuration'. Then Mark announced that he' follows the lives of d got a host job in Canada and he was going whether Rhona wanted to come with him or not. The ''not'' bit of characters from 1863 to the present daysentence was the way it worked out and Rhona was left on her own. From Well, she wasn't completely on her own: she had friends and family, but it's not the same as having that special someone in your life, that someone who makes you part of a risqué comic couple. So Rhona had to start again, rejoining a fortune teller, we see world that bore little resemblance to the birth of Blackpool one she'd left nine years ago - and its steadily fading glamour. There is there's a hint lot of mysticism to difference between being in the tale, with the mesmerising dance middle of starlings over your twenties and the pier acting as an anchor throughout the distinct narratives here, drawing together disparate stories middle of lives captivated by the seayour thirties. [[Murmuration Keep Walking Rhona Beech by Robert LockKate Tough|Full Review]]
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===[[Smoking Kills Equator by Antoine Laurain Antonin Varenne and Louise Rogers-Lalaurie Sam Taylor (translator)]]===
[[image:4star3.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Historical Fiction|Historical Fiction]], [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]], [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]]
Meet Fabrice ValantineIt strikes me that nobody can speak well of the Wild West outside the walls of a theme park. He Our agent to see how bad it was here is Pete Ferguson, who bristles at the indignity of white man against Native 'Indian's , who spends days being physically sick while indulging in a headhunterbuffalo hunt, and a successful one toowho hates the way man – and woman, in of course – can turn against fellow man at the bat of an office in Pariseyelid. All around him however his world But this book is changing – yesabout so much more than the 1870s USA, and the attendant problems with gold rushes, there is a new ban on smoking in all workplacespioneer spirits and racial genocide. Goaded by his non-smoking wife He finds himself trying to find this book's version of Utopia, even though they met over an ashtraynamely the Equator, of sortswhere everything is upside down, he sees a hypnotist who had success people walk on their heads with a mutual friend rocks in stopping their nicotine habit. The session seems pockets to have been successful, however he faces keep them on the prospect of having such a change ground to his own personalitycounter the anti-gravity, his imbued habits and lifestylewhere, with fearwho knows, when he realises it will never again grant him any pleasurethings might actually be better. He needs this pleasure when further changes at work come about But that equator is a long way away – but itand there's what he replaces the habit with that will surprise the most. a whole adventure full of Mexico and Latin America between him and it… [[Smoking Kills Equator by Antoine Laurain Antonin Varenne and Louise Rogers-Lalaurie Sam Taylor (translator)|Full Review]]
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===[[The Island Needlemouse by M A BennettJane O'Connor]]===
[[image:5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:TeensGeneral Fiction|TeensGeneral Fiction]], [[:Category:General Women's Fiction|General Women's Fiction]]
A contemporary take We first meet Sylvia Penton on her birthday and her boss, the savage classic ''Lord of the Flies'': a group of mismatchedProf, modern-day teenagers must fight is taking her out to survive on a deserted islandlunch. Link This is a fish out her favourite day of water. Newly arrived from Americathe year, he is finding not because it hard 's her birthday but because of the special time she gets to settle into spend with the venerable man she loves. He's told her that he and prestigious Osney School. Who knew there could be so many strange traditions his wife are going to understand? And what kind of school ranks its students by how fast divorce - Martha is apparently having an affair - and Sylvia is convinced that the Prof will then declare his love and they can run round the school quad - however ancient that quad may be? When Link runs the slowest time together. She hasn't fully constructed 'together' in yearsher own mind - she envisages it as romantic, he immediately becomes but her imagination hasn't yet progressed to the butt sexual part of every school joke. And some students are determined to make his life more miserable than others.the relationship. There's time though - she's only been the prof's PA for fifteen years. [[The Island Needlemouse by M A BennettJane O'Connor|Full Review]]
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===[[The Lost Letters of William Woolf Vintage 1954 by Helen CullenAntoine Laurain, Jane Aitken (translator) and Emily Boyce (translator)]]===
[[image:4.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]], [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]]
William Woolf 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 wife who shared his dream of visiting the city together. We have a goth girl who everyone recognises from an American crime show, but actually is a letter detectivehumble restorer of antiques. We have a cocktail barman, working in infatuated with the Dead Letters Depot in East Londongoth girl. He spends We also have a man ruling the roost over a whole suite of individual apartments fabricated from the Haussmann-era mansion his days deciphering smudged addressesfamily once owned. Finally something conspires to get them together, tracking down mysterious people and reading endless letters drinking from the same bottle of lovea rare 1954 red wine. Only, guiltone of them has a bizarre incidence in his family history that also features the same plonk – where a grandfather imbibed, deathand walked out the door one rainy morning, hopenever to be seen again. But of course nobody will be doing any disappearing now, and everyday life. though – will they? [[The Lost Letters of William Woolf Vintage 1954 by Helen CullenAntoine Laurain, Jane Aitken (translator) and Emily Boyce (translator)|Full Review]]
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===[[Marsha's Deal The Van Apfel Girls are Gone by Laura SolomonFelicity McLean]]===
[[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Short StoriesThrillers|Short StoriesThrillers]], [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]], [[:Category:Fantasy|Fantasy]]
Marsha didn't have an easy ride in life When Tikka Molloy was eleven and one-sixth years old, the first time aroundVan Apfel sisters disappeared. She'd been afflicted with [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibrodysplasia_ossificans_progressiva fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva]In the long hot summer of 1992, a rare disease which turned parts in an isolated suburb of her body to bone when they were damaged. Finally she was unable to stand her life any longer and went to DignitasAustralia surrounded by Bushland, the Swiss euthanasia clinicgirls vanished during the school's Showstopper concert at the riverside amphitheatre. She'd thought that would be Did they run away? Were they taken? While the search for the sisters united the endsmall community, but after cremation her body went straight to hell and she they were never found herself face-to-face with the devil. And Returning home years later, Tikka must make sense of that was when she made strange moment in time – of the pact. In exchange for details about some of those who had been close to summer that shaped her - their strengths , and weaknesses - the girls she would be reborn on the same day to the same parents, but would live her life free of diseasenever forgot. [[Marsha's Deal The Van Apfel Girls are Gone by Laura SolomonFelicity McLean|Full Review]]
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===[[Spinning Silver The Department of Sensitive Crimes by Naomi NovikAlexander McCall Smith]]===
[[image:5star4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Fantasy|Fantasy]], [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]], [[:Category:Teens|Teens]]
Miryem comes from Long-time followers of The Bookbag will know I'm a long line die-hard fan of moneylenders – but her Father isn't very good AMS. So you can imagine my excitement at it at all. Lending freely and rarely collectingreading a brand new book in a brand new series, he leaves described by the family on author himself as Scandi Blanc (as opposed to Scandi Noir)! Here we meet a new detective named Ulf Varg, who works in the edge of povertyDepartment for Sensitive Crimes, until Miryem must step insolving those crimes that perhaps fall outside the usual police parameters. Hardening her heart and collecting what This particular book deals with crimes including someone who is owed from local villagersstabbed in the knee, she becomes a person the disappearance of great interest when she borrows an imaginary boyfriend, and a pouch case of silver pennies from her Grandfather potential werewolves. They're the crimes that perhaps nobody else would bother to deal with, and returns it full of goldI rather enjoyed them, soon becoming entangled with an array of strange creatures, from especially the dark beings stabbing where you find that haunt actually, you identify with the wood through to a King person who's eager to exploit Miryem's talents – she soon becomes aware that her skills may be more trouble committed the crime, rather than they're worth… the victim. [[Spinning Silver The Department of Sensitive Crimes by Naomi NovikAlexander McCall Smith|Full Review]]
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===[[Four by Andy Jones]]===
===[[The Things That are Lost by Alan Kennedy]]=== [[image:4.5star4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]]
Friends are nice, The final novel in Alan Kennedy's WW2 trilogy sees Captain Alex Vere taken off active duty and couple friends are doubly nice, giving you like minded people banished to spend time with. A pair of pairsScotland, or a couple of couplesproviding trade craft spy training. Married couple Sally It's stifling and suffocating and Al have known Mike for ages – Sally from university, Al through workfeels as much like a prison to Alex as anything the Germans would provide. His new girlfriend Faye completes their foursome and though she doesnAnd where is Justine? Alex hasn't have their shared historyseen her since he went to ''that'' disastrous meeting with John Cabot, she's a lot instigator of fun – a bit younger than the rest of themdisinformation campaign, an actress and so onreturned to find her missing. A failed mission is one thing but no Justine is quite another. Alex can't get Justine out of his head. Has she left the service? Does she know too much? Is she even still alive? [[Four The Things That are Lost by Andy JonesAlan Kennedy|Full Review]]
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===[[A Child Called Happiness Danger to Herself and Others by Stephan CollishawAlyssa Sheinmel]]===
[[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Teens|Teens]], [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]]
Mazowe Valley, 2011 – Natalie hears a sharp cry that she thinks at first might be a bird, but turns out ''They needed someone to be a babyblame, abandoned to and I was the only available scapegoat. Their daughter was my best friend. Playing the scapegoat was the birds on least I could do under the kopjecircumstances.'' Seventeen year old Hannah Gold was born mature – or so her parents tell her. She is there with her uncle and they take has dined in fancy restaurants, explored the most sophisticated corners of the child, back to his farm initially globe and then to lived a local village where it is taken in. They do not report it to the policelife of luxury. [[A Child Called Happiness Danger to Herself and Others by Stephan CollishawAlyssa Sheinmel|Full Review]]
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===[[Mr Peacock's Possessions Louis and Louise by Lydia SysonJulie Cohen]]===
[[image:4star5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category: Historical Fiction|Historical Fiction]], [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]]
On What would you be like, right now, if you'd been born a remote volcanic island off different gender? Would it simply be a matter of genetics, and your life would still have unfolded in the same way? Or would the coast way you had been raised affect who you became in life? This latest novel by Julie Cohen looks at all of New Zealandthe above, a family covering the stories of settlers struggle Louis and Louise, born on the same day, to make such an unforgiving place the same parents, but in one storyline Lou is a boy, and in the other a homegirl. When Does it really make a ship appearsdifference, they feel the gender box that is ticked when we arrive in this world? We all know that their wishes men and women are treated differently, but this story really highlights how things have been granted and their community reinvigorated – but high hopes are swiftly dashed when a vulnerable boy disappears. As both settlers and newcomers come together in the search for the childpast, how they uncover farstill are, far more than and prompts you to think about how they were looking for – discovering dark secrets about both the island and those who inhabit itcould be... [[Mr Peacock's Possessions Louis and Louise by Lydia SysonJulie Cohen|Full Review]]
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===[[Underwater Breathing M for Mammy by Cassandra ParkinEleanor O'Reilly]]===
[[image:5star4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]]
The Augustts are, like all families, a bit complicated. A tumble-down Edwardian house loving irish family, their love binds them together – but all express that will sooner rather than later tumble down the mud cliffs and away into the sea is where we meet Jacob and Ellain very different ways. They share a bathroom in the turretHowever, old and cold and not really supposed to be used…but this is where they hide away from when misfortune strikes the shouts of their parents' arguments. Here family they play the Underwater Breathing gameare forced to work together in order to understand each other again, submerging themselves in the water holding their breath for as long with a family as complicated as they can. For sixteen year old Jacob the Augustts it's just a way of drowning out the arguments…but for Ella it not always what is more than spoken thatmakes the most sense. She is terrified Things are shaken up further when Granny Mae-Anne moves in and takes charge. Full of the seastern words and common sense, she's a force of nature who must try her hardest to hold the fact that it will come and swallow their house. She needs to know that she can survive under water. She has to practicefamily together. [[Underwater Breathing M for Mammy by Cassandra ParkinEleanor O'Reilly|Full Review]]
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===[[The Great Believers Queenie Malone's Paradise Hotel by Rebecca MakkaiRuth Hogan]]===
[[image:5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:LGBT General Fiction|LGBT General Fiction]], [[:Category:Humour|Humour]], [[:Category:Paranormal|Paranormal]]
Tilda returns to Brighton, to tidy away the remains of her mother''The Great Believers'' follows a group of friends whose lives are devastated by the AIDS crisis in Chicago during the late 1980’ss life after her death. Beginning in 1985Whilst there, the reader follows Yale and his friends as they come she returns to terms with the increasingly virulent illness spreading throughout their communityParadise hotel, alongside their demonisation at the hands of a conservative Americahaven for eccentrics and misfits. Thirty years later FionaA place where people can be themselves, and let go of thoughts that torment them elsewhere. Little wonder that Tilda cannot forgive her mother for banishing her as a devoted friend to Yalechild, is searching for her estranged daughter on from this place of wonder. With the streets help of ParisQueenie Malone, caring, and gregarious, trying Tilda begins to rebuild a pick apart the tricky and uncertain relationship beset by memories she had with her sometimes cruel and old hurtdistant mother. [[The Great Believers Queenie Malone's Paradise Hotel by Rebecca MakkaiRuth Hogan|Full Review]]
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===[[The Brighton Mermaid by Dorothy Koomson]]===
===[[The Man Who Came to London by A S Cookson]]=== [[image:4.5star4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[: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.'' ''Does he find a place to live? Does he face stereotypes? Has Britain moved forward?''
In 1993Freddie arrives in London in the early 2000s, two teenagers stumble across a horrific scene answering the call for teachers. He thinks about his own Jamaican education, based on the beach as they're sneaking home after an un-authorised night out: a body of a young womanBritish system, partially stripped, totally deceased. The find hits and the way he was taught English nursery rhymes and about the girls in different waysRiver Thames. Nell becomes obsessed with finding He thinks about the identity love of the girl – who she calls ''the Brighton Mermaid'' because of a distinguishing tattoo – whereas Jude just wants to forget it ever happened. Fast forward 25 years cricket and Nell is still haunted football, shared by what happened that nightboth countries. With few leads to go on, And he thinks of the Police closed generations of the case without cracking it, and so it remains one of those unsolved mysteries that become part of local folklore, diaspora who came before him. Freddy does well in his job in East London but Nell struggles he does have to let sleeping dogsface down some stereotypical attitudes from his pupils - all Jamaicans smoke weed, or even sleeping mermaids, lie. As for Jude, well no one don't they? Everybody knows if the discovery still haunts her because no one knows where she is. Shortly after that fateful night, she too disappeared, never to be seen or heard from again. There's more to Brighton than Stag Dos and Gay Pride, it seems. ! [[The Brighton Mermaid Man Who Came to London by Dorothy KoomsonA S Cookson|Full Review]]
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===[[Falling Short Liberation Square by Lex CoultonGareth Rubin]]===
[[image:4star5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:General FictionThrillers|General FictionThrillers]], [[:Category:HumourHistorical Fiction|HumourHistorical Fiction]], [[:Category:Women's General Fiction|Women's General Fiction]]
Lex Coulton's debut novel In an alternate 1952, Soviet Troops control British Streets. After D-Day goes horribly wrong, Britain is a story about mistakes, failuresfirst occupied by Nazi Germany – only to be rescued by Russian soldiers from the East, and relationshipsAmericans from the west. The main protagonistDividing the nation between them, Frances PilgrimLondon soon finds itself split in two, is a sixth form English teacher who has recently fallen out with her best friend Jackson, wall running through it like a work colleaguescar. When Jane Cawson's husband is arrested for the murder of his former wife, and Jane is grappling with determined to clear his name. In doing so, Jane follows a trail of corruption that leads her right to the increasingly eccentric behaviour highest levels of the state – and soon finds herself desperate to stay one step ahead of her mother. This relationship is complicated by the fact that Frances's father disappeared at sea when she was five years old. murderous secret police… [[Falling Short Liberation Square by Lex CoultonGareth Rubin|Full Review]]
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===[[Go Ask Fannie Farmer When You Read This by Elisabeth HydeMary Adkins]]===
[[image:4.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]]
Eighty-one-year-old Murray Blaire hoped Smith Simonyi and Iris Massey worked together for four years, during which time Iris left her husband at the best when he waited for his three children to arrive one Friday nightaltar on their wedding day. He might be a retired lawyerSmith, meanwhile, a state legislatorrelied on Iris, elected congressman and now an amateur farmer but he knew that there could be trouble when Ruth and George arrived. Ruthhis attention was on making enough money to cover his mother's nursing home fees in Wisconsin, a corporate lawyer, would find fault running the branding agency in New York and want to talk about losing money gambling when the pressures got too much for him going into a retirement home. George, He was devastated when Iris developed a nurse, would argue terminal cancer and Lizzie, a professor died at the age of English Literature, who lived locally and kept and visited him regularly, would be unpredictablethirty three. Murray hoped He was surprised too when he discovered that all would go smoothly, but Iris had been writing a blog in the last six months of her life and her final request of Smith is that simply wasn't going to happenhe gets the blog published as a book. [[Go Ask Fannie Farmer When You Read This by Elisabeth HydeMary Adkins|Full Review]]
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===[[The Particular Wisdom of Sally Red Shoes Vera Magpie by Ruth HoganLaura Solomon]]===
[[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]]
Masha's son Gabriel died some years ago'I have murdered three husbands. She'd been a single parent with help from her friend, Edward, who had grieved as much as Masha and whilst Edward has moved on (his boyfriend moved out in the immediate aftermath of the drowning, but there's now a new love interest) Masha is still stricken, feeling that it would somehow be disloyal to Gabriel if she was to be happy. An independent, rebellious woman has somehow been diminished. [[The Particular Wisdom of Sally Red Shoes by Ruth Hogan|Full Review]]
As an opening line that must take some beating, but Vera's telling us the truth. The first two husbands, Gary and Harry were abusive, but Larry was a treasure, a keeper, and it'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 mandatory life sentence. Her only friend is Shirley, a lesbian, but Vera's not one to let herself be a victim. She's not keen on having a sexual relationship with Shirley (she wouldn't risk the security of her life in prison for the sake of a fling), but she is keen on getting an education and she's studying for a degree in English Literature. [[Vera Magpie by Laura Solomon|Full Review]] <!-- Houm Laura Solomon -->
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===[[The Gradual Disappearance of Jane Ashland Black Light by Nicolai Houm and Anna Paterson (translator)Laura Solomon]]===
[[image:43.5star.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]]  <!-- Chase -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:1789010098.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1789010098/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[Redemptor Domus by Gamelyn Chase]]=== [[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:Literary {{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:General Fiction|Literary General Fiction]]
Jane Ashland is dyingA young boy arrives at an exclusive faith school on the scenic North Wales coast, sent far from his family in the Far East. That's As the boy travels to the school, a description of family tragedy causes the boy to arrive at the school a very early scene here – but alsovulnerable orphan, with an uncertain future. Plunged into a school full of coursedanger and betrayal, the boy is seen as a platitude that can apply to all of ustrophy by friends and enemies alike. Jane's life, if anything, is going up With them locked into their scheming and down in levels of pleasure, energy – sobriety – in these pagesplotting, but we soon learn that it recently found a very deeply dark down place. Here then, scattered through a timeline-bending narrative, we have her days finding a Lincolnesque lover as a student in New York, glimpses of therapy, a drive comes to find her ancestors that takes her from rural America the boy to Norway – and a trip there with a new-found friend attempt to watch clean up the musk oxen, pit of all thingsfilth that the school has become. And nowhere in sight is anything like a platitude… [[The Gradual Disappearance of Jane Ashland Redemptor Domus by Nicolai Houm and Anna Paterson (translator)Gamelyn Chase|Full Review]]
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