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[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Hendrik Groen and Hester Velmans (translator)Onyi Nwabineli|title= The Secret Diary of Hendrik Groen, 83¼ years OldAllow Me to Introduce Myself|rating= 4.5|genre= General Fiction|summary= As Anuri spent her childhood on display to the old adage goesworld, thanks to walk a mile in someone elseher step-mother Ophelia's shoes is to gain some understanding increasingly popular presence on social media, where she posted every step of what it is to be that person. Admittedly, Hendrik Groen isnAnuri't much up s childhood for long walks any moresponsorships and influencer deals and, but he does acquire a swish mobility scooter to zoom around basically, monetary gain. Now Anuri is in; one could say that we get her twenties and she is slowly trying to zoom a mile in Groen's shoes, regain her confidence and ohto get her life back, what fun shoes he wears!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1405924004</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Sarah Franklin|title= Shelter|rating= 5|genre= Historical Fiction|summary=Connie Granger has escaped suing her bombedstep-out city home, finding refuge in mother to take down the Women's Timber Corpscontent about her. For Anuri is battling alcoholism, failing to start herPhD, this remote community must now serve a secret purposeundergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online and receiving money from them for doing so.<br>Seppe Most importantly, an Italian prisoner of warshe is desperately worried about her little sister, who is haunted by his memories. In the forest camp, he finds a strange kind new focus of freedomOphelia's online empire.Their meeting signals new beginnings. But as they are drawn together Can she save her sister, and perhaps herself and her relationship with her father at the world outside their forest haven is being torn apart. Old certainties are crumbling, and both must now make a life-defining choice.<br>What price will they pay for freedom? What will they fight to protectsame time?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1785762990</amazonuk>0861546873

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jennifer McVeigh1529153298|title=Leopard at the DoorThe List of Suspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey

|summary=18 year old Rachel Fullsmith returns home to Kenya after being away at school in England It's 1979 and finds a lot can change in 6 yearsMargaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. (A woman? I mean, honestly... ) Of course she realises her motherShe's death would alter things but shenot what's not prepared for her fatherworrying Miv's live-in family, though. Women have been disappearing. Well, they've been murdered, but to have 'disappeared'companiondoesn' Sara nor Sarat sound quite so frightening. Miv's son Harold sleeping in Rachelupset because she's old roomoverheard that her father wants to move the family 'Down South'. Michael the Kikuyu servant boy she grew up with When you're from Yorkshire, Down South is still there though and now a man with his own ideasfrightening, foreign place, best avoided. Meanwhile For Miv, the unrest between the British rulers move would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, and she'll do anything to prevent that. She's not worried about the local Mau Mau fighters is increasing and about dangers or that her Mum's stopped talking - to blowanyone.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241247616</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Lucy Daniels1035906708|title= Summer at Hope MeadowsDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin|rating= 4.5|genre= General Fiction|summary=''Animal Ark'' was a popular series We tend to think of children's books written between 1994 and 2008. The stories focus on a young girl called Mandy HopeMaria Callas as Greek, the daughter of two vets who run a practicebut she was born to Greek parents in Manhattan, Animal ArkNew York, in the Yorkshire town of WelfordDecember 1923 and only moved to Athens when she was thirteen. Along with Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her best friend James, the children seek father changed it to 'Callas' to help out creatures make it more manageable in needthe States. The series consisted of 94 books When she was back in total and Athens - supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for her voice - she was written raised under the Nazi occupation by a collection mother who mercilessly exploited her and made no secret of authors writing under the pseudonym Lucy Daniels. ''Summer at Hope Meadows'' is the first in a new series her preference for adult readersher elder sister, continuing grown-up Mandy's story now that she is a fully qualified vetJackie.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1473653878</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sophie Divry and Alison Anderson (translator)Alexander McCall Smith|title=Madame Bovary of the SuburbsThe Perfect Passion Company|rating=24.5

|summary=''It starts with becoming The Perfect Passion Company is a homeownerdating agency in Edinburgh, then settling run by Ness and operating as an alternative to all the online apps inproviding a more personal, then reproducingtailored service.'' WellNess has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the business, it actually starts as Ness is planning to take a trip to Canada to get away for a lot before then, while. Katie is coming out of a break up with a set of fractured memories of our heroine's childhood – things she recalls her parents bad boyfriend, and relatives saying both so jumps at the chance to and about hercome home to Edinburgh. It goes through her childhoodAnd so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, and pen letters bringing us to a best friend conveying her wishes for her lifean Edinburgh we already love, those wishes being revised thanks to 44 Scotland Street and affirmed by the liberty of university yearsIsabel Dalhousie novels, those wishes being met but with some new characters who quickly begin to charm. Katie has no experience in running a business, or denied by married life… Someone archly could point out that you should be careful what you wish forin match-making, but not even our wiseNess has full confidence in her abilities, modern woman could not see the next step after the reproducing – and there''standing disappointed in front of the refrigerator''.s always her very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, William, to lend a hand…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857054686</amazonuk>1846976596

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tania HershmanDean Koontz|title=Some of Us Glow More Than OthersThe Bad Weather Friend

|genre=Short Stories Paranormal|summary=I won't be alone in stating that reading short story collections can be slightly awkwardBenny is having a terrifically bad day. Going through from A-ZHe loses his job, he loses his fiancee, witnessing a bounty of ideas and characters in short order can be too muchhis house gets trashed. Oh, but do you have the right to pick and choose according someone has delivered a really weird, disturbing coffin-sized object to what appealshis home, and what time you have to fill? it's possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the thing that has trashed his house! The sequence has carefully been consideredthing is, surelyBenny is the very last person to deserve all this bad luck. He is a nice person. Such would appear 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 be the case herehelp him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a good person. The last time I read one Spike is going to take care of Benny, and will certainly take care of this authorBenny's collectionsenemies, with [[The White Road by Tania Hershman|The White Road]]if he, Benny, the only real difficulty was holding back and rationing them, but here you not only get Harper (a whopping forty pieces of writing, waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are also spread into sections.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1910061484</amazonuk>1662500491

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Jane JohnsonKatherine Howe|title= Court of LionsA True Account|rating= 4.5|genre= Historical General Fiction |summary= Kate Fordham arrived Hannah Masury is living in the sunlit city of Granada Boston, having been sent to live with a family who run an inn, and being made to work there from a year agoyoung age. In the shadow When she hears there is to be a hanging of some pirates in the Alhambratown, one of the most beautiful places on earthshe decides to go and watch. Enthralled and horrified in equal measure, she works as a waitress serving tourists Hannah finds herself embroiled in a busy baryoung boy's death at the hands of two vicious pirates. She pretends shehides away, so that they don's happy with t find and kill her new life – but how could she be? Kate's alonetoo, afraid and hiding under a false name. And fate is about then to bring her face-escape them completely she runs away to-face with her greatest fear. Five centuries agosea, dressing as a message, in a hand few could read, was inscribed in blood on a stolen scrap of paper. The paper was folded boy and pressed into one of joining the Alhambranotorious Ned Low's wallspirate ship as a cabin boy. There it has lain, undisturbed by She soon finds herself in the tides thick of history – the Fall of Granada, the expulsion of its last Sultan – until Kate discovers it. Born of lovethings when there is a mutiny on board, and from there we are caught up in a time her rip roaring tale of danger and desperation, life on the fragment will be the catalyst that changes Kate's life foreverocean waves. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1786694336</amazonuk>0861547438

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Julie Cohen1471180158|title=TogetherMaybe Tomorrow|author=Penny Parkes|rating=4.5

|summary=This is a love story told backwards, Jamie Matson works in the most beautiful manneran upper-class grocery store, so that we know from the very beginning that Emily and Robert love each other enormously, and that he is about to break her heart in the most dreadful way in order to protect for a secret that theyman who've lived s a control freak with for decadesall the subtlety of a half brick. Seeing their love unfold in reverse is beautifulJamie's son, Bo, 'has his problems'. We get to know them once they have already gotten to know each otherHe's asthmatic and the more you read, and it makes for an unusual and interesting structurethe more you'll suspect that he's on the autistic spectrum. The secret they hold is referred Sometimes Jamie needs to throughout, but it isntake time off at short notice - she't revealed until very late s a frequent flier in the book. Ilocal A&E and sometimes Bo'm guessing very few readers will figure it outs not fit enough to go to school. Even once you know, you want Missed shifts or the need to be away on time to go back pick Bo up from school are occasions when Jamie can be controlled and read the whole story again put in the light of the information you now holdwrong. It was going to come to a head.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1409171744</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Kate MildenhallB0CKD1L5JL|title= SkylarkingRadio Free Olympia|author=Jeffrey Dunn|rating= 4|genre= General Fiction |summary= Kate and Harriet are best friends growing up together on Petr is an isolated Australian capeorphan. As Rescued by the daughters of the lighthouse keepersstrange, reclusive Bear, he is brought up far from bustling cities and busy human society, in the two girls share everythingforests of Washington's Olympic Peninsula. After Bear dies and a brief sojourn in human company, until and armed with only a fishermanpirate radio transmitter, McPhailPetr goes on a journey through the forest, arrives in their small community. When Kate witnesses broadcasting the desire that flares between him and Harrietstrange, she is torn by her feelings of envy wild and longing. An innocent moment in McPhail's hut then occurs that threatens to tear their peaceful community apartrarely heard voices he encounters. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1785079239</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Zoe DuncanSarah Marsh|title= The Shifting PoolsA Sign of Her Own|rating= 23.5|genre= General Fiction|summary= Perhaps the most overused phrase in fiction publishing is ''life-affirming''After a bout of scarlet fever as a child, closely followed by ''human condition''Ellen Lark loses her hearing. The Shifting Pools takes this to Suddenly plunged into a whole new levelworld of silence, everything about her life changes. Its blurb boasts that it is ''charged throughout with Living in a time when the beautiful urgency use of life''sign language was seen as something only savages do, whatever that means. It isn't. And that's the problem. This isn't Ellen is sent to a bad bookschool where she is taught to lip read, but it sets itself physically restrained from signing. From here, she ends up to fail. A cardinal rule of writing is ''focus on in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the small stuff''deaf and using a system called Visible Speech. If you set out to write a ''life affirming'' novel that answers all At the ''big questions''same time, you'll struggle. And it Bell is this trap that Zoe Duncan falls into. In her quest for profundity she loses her wayworking on other inventions and ideas, and Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a complicated tangle of espionage. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1785630369</amazonuk>1035401614

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Sarah HealyB0BC3YTCMR|title= The Sisters ChaseGood Girls Die|author=Ayura Ayira|rating= 4.5|genre= General Fiction|summary=Mary and Bunny''This story is not for everyone. That's how it has always been ever since Bunny ' Lavender Daniels was bornthree weeks short of her fifteenth birthday when The Incident happened. Two sisters with an unbreakable bond She was a very bright student, a bit too nerdy if truth be told, twisted together so tight that they and suffered from vitiligo - people were two sides of the same coinafraid to hug her in case it's contagious. Bunny was Mary It's whole world; nothing else really mattered; schoolnot 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.friends 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.boys}} {{Frontpage|isbn=1472263936|title=The Figurine|author=Victoria Hislop|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary=It was in 1968 that Helena McCloud made her first trip to Greece...well She was alone: her mother, maybe one boyGreek by birth, but he was something altogether extraordinary. When had left the unthinkable happenedfamily home and refused to return, but Mary and Bunny found themselves completely alone 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 world, first of several annual visits. She grew to love her grandmother and thatthe family's when Mary decided to take an unforgettable road tripmaid, Dina, just the two but was wary - and frightened - of themher grandfather, across retired general Stamatis Papagiannis. He was proud of his close connections to the United States, in search of a place where they could belongJunta and expected his family to uphold his values but saw no reason to accommodate them. His prejudices included Helena's red hair and green eyes - inherited from her father's Scottish ancestors.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0544960076</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Joy RhoadesDean Koontz|title=After Death|rating=3|genre=General Fiction|summary= Michael Mace, Head of Security, at a top secret biological research facility, is among 55 people who die when a virus is released in a bio-hazard accident. Finding himself in a makeshift mortuary, covered in plastic, he has a sense that something very, very bad has happened to him – and only him – as he sits up and looks around at the shrouded bodies of his dead friends and former colleagues. As he recovers his senses, he realises that there is something different about him; he can ''feel'' everything. ''Everything''. Michael isn't ''Michael'' anymore.|isbn=1662500467}} {{Frontpage|isbn=B0BVDC2VWH|title=The Woolgrower's CompanionGrave Listeners|author=William Frank

|summary=1945: The war village is in isolated and poor. It's surrounded by a Witching Forest. And the villagers subsist largely by farming Uphegia plants - its dying days bread-like fruit provides nutrition and creating problems far from its blossom provides herbal medicines. The black wood of the different fronts. For instanceforest provides heat and warmth, roofs on homes, in Australiaand even gallows, what can be done with the Italian POWs brought into the country? if needed. The solution seems to be their use as cheap labour. In this way Kate Dowd's father agrees to take two onto his sheep farm fear of being buried alive is an existential superstition in drought-ridden New South Wales. Kate is initially wary of the two men – Vittorio village and Luca – but gradually she realises that not all dangers come from outside her community. Life on is the reason Volushka, a sheep station may be harsh but for Kate it's going to get drunken, self-indulgent, lazy lout of a lot worseman is tolerated.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784741345</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Jonathan LeviB0BYF82CXT|title= Septimania|rating= 4|genre= General Fiction|summary= First and foremost a tale of love, Septimania delivers the frustrations and agony of two people who find each other and then lose each other, all on the same day. But what a momentous day! Life takes Malory and Louisa off in totally different directions but strangely their paths cross again and again. Malory, searching to uncover his past, moves to Rome and discovers great and incredible facts about his ancestry. Louisa, a brilliant mathematician, is head hunted for 'secret' work and is signed up by her father for a life time's contract with the American Government. She completely disappears from Malory's life and he has no way of knowing how to find her again. They are both trapped in their separate lives.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>071565196X</amazonuk>}}{{newreviewSemi-Detached|author=Antoine Laurain, Jane Aitken (translator) and Emily Boyce (translator)|title=The PortraitDeborah Stone

|summary=Meet Pierre''Bill and Amanda are living in a semi-Francois. He should by rights be an antiques dealerdetached house, as he made stuck in a fortune selling on his first collection (depressing rut of erasers) while at school, and funded both his university boredom and carnal education, with prostitutes, by trading too. He is, howeverdisappointment, a patent when Terry and intellectual property lawyerFiona – glamorous, successful and his wife is forever demanding a reduction very much in the space his collections take up love – move in next door. Despite their flat. But he still dabbles – although this latest visit to the showrooms will cause a lot of unexpected incident. In amongst the grot at a low-key sale he finds an ancient pastel, showing himself – a bewigged, antique version of himself, even if, howeverdifferent outlooks on life, nobody else sees the connection between Pierre-Francois couples befriend each other and the picture's subjectlife appears to improve for both pairs. StillBut all is not what it seems, as an effeminate uncle told him, ''real objects carry memory of and their past ownersincreasingly interconnected relationships are fated for tragedy.'' – and Pierre-Francois is intent on finding the truths behind those memories. Little does he know just what he will discover…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1910477435</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Virginie Despentes and Frank Wynne (translator)Shalini Boland|title= Vernon Subutex 1The Silent Bride|rating= 53|genre= General Fiction|summary= Vernon Subutex is Alice and Seth are a wanted manmatch made in heaven. Following the death of Alex Bleach He is everything she has been searching for; handsome, accomplished, clever, Vernon's generous benefactor funny; total and publicly adored musicianutter husband-material. She is all he could possibly want in a wife; beautiful, successful, Vernon now has confident… and so the inevitable proposal is eagerly accepted by Alice and the last recordings of Alex's drug induced ramblingswedding is planned and set. Kicked out of his apartment When the story follows Vernon as he couch surfs his way across Parismuch-anticipated day arrives, pursued Alice is walked down the aisle by journalists her father, beaming with pride and excitement as she surveys the congregation – their friends assembled to celebrate this joyful day and media moguls desperate when Seth turns to cash in on Bleachface his approaching bride, Alice's death. Eventually finding himself out of luckworld implodes because she has absolutely no idea who the man at the altar is, friends and money Vernon who is left sleeping rough, half mad and forced waiting for her to bear witness to a shocking act of violencebecome his wife. In a world of capricious friends and grasping avaricious journalists who can Vernon trust?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857055410</amazonuk>1662507089

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Rowena MacDonald1787636003|title= The Threat Level Remains SevereGirls of Summer|author=Katie Bishop|rating= 3.5|genre= General Fiction|summary=Grace Ambrose isnIt was the summer when Rachel Evans turned eighteen that she and Caroline went backpacking around Greece and arrived on the island. Rachel wasn't Brigitte Jonesexactly innocent but she was, perhaps, naive, so when thirty-four-year-old Alistair Wright started to take an interest in her, honest; for one thing she doesn't keep was flattered rather than wary. It was quite a diarywhile before he made any sort of physical approach to her and by that time she was obsessed by him. Grace is our typical misogynistic Hollywood stereotype supporting female character. She is Alistair worked for Henry Taylor, looking after his interests on the ''secretly hot chick'' who will suddenly take off their glasses, shake out their hair island and reveal themselves to have been beautiful in particular in the bar where all along. We follow Grace and her romantic adventures (and misadventures) over three years of her life at the House of Commonsgirls either worked or partied.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1910709158</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Matt HaigAmanda Craig|title=How to Stop TimeThree Graces

|summary=Tom is an albatrossFew styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the state-of-the-nation novel. ThatThere's not to say he has a freakish wingspansomething so utterly compelling about any writer who can catch hold of the atmosphere of the day and capture it, or anything, but crafting an image of the country as it means hestands in one particular moment. To say that Amanda Craig is skilled at doing this would be embarrassingly inadequate: she's not a mayfly. In contrast to all us regular humans practically synonymous with our temperamental bodies living out short lifespans, he ages at a speed roughly one-fifteenth the genre of that contemporary social fiction at which we do, and barely gets touched by any diseasethis point. It means he will live for several more centuries than the ones he She has witnessed so far, but ever since his mother was drowned as such a witch due to his teenaged self never ageing, he has known gift for weaving the best thing for him – and others – is to regularly move on. Solitude has been tempered since ongoing issues of the late Victorian era, when other people even older than him press-ganged him day into their society of albatrosses, but the fact lives of the matter is that falling her characters in love really is a noway that feels natural and lived-no. But that's not to say it in, never happenedmaking them ciphers for social commentary but instead fully realised people, and that's not to say that he can't feel things for the albatross daughter he's not seen for centuriesgrappling with issues far larger than themselves. It might be the only thing he has to live for…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782118616</amazonuk>140871468X

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Dane Huckelbridge152915118X|title= Castle of WaterPineapple Street|author=Jenny Jackson|rating= 4.5|genre= General Fiction|summary= Barry Bleeker ''Pineapple Street'' is the story of three women: Sasha, Darley and Georgiana. Darley and Sophie Ducel George are two very different people destined sisters and Sasha is married to take their brother Cord. They're Stocktons, only Sasha isn't a Stockton by birth so she isn't readily accepted into the same journeytribe. As The problem's exacerbated when the clan matriarch, Tilda, asks Cord and Sasha if they are both aboard a flight 'd like to move into the Marquesas IslandsPineapple Street property. Tilda and Chip have renovated and downsized to another property, a street or so away, their tiny plane crashes leaving Barry and Sophie which they own. They won't need any of the only survivors. Until recentlyfurniture from Pineapple Street, Barry was an investment banker so Sasha and Cord can move straight in New York before he decided to leave his life behind and pursue his dream of painting. Sophie meanwhile Nominally, was they had a French architect who along with her husband Etienne was planning a honeymoon of a lifetimechoice but that wasn't the reality. Now Barry Darley and Sophie are alone on an uninhabited island Georgiana start to call Sasha 'the gold digger'. She's living in the South Pacific, where ''their'' family home. They use it so often that they must learn abbreviate it to put aside their differences and survive'the GD'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0008217858</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= M L RioEmily Critchley|title= If We Were VillainsOne Puzzling Afternoon|rating= 4|genre=Crime|summary=84 year old Edie has lived in the same small town for almost her whole life, but now she is facing a move as her son wants to move to another house and bring Edie to live with his family, as Edie is starting to lose her memory. However, Edie is tormented by the memory of her childhood friend, Lucy, who went missing over 60 years ago, and the worry that there was a secret she was keeping for Lucy that somehow might be the thing that reveals the truth of what happened all that time ago. After 'seeing' Lucy in the high street, just as she was the last time she saw her, she starts to find pockets of memories coming back to her. And yet as she remembers the past, she is forgetting more and more in her day to day life. Will she uncover the truth about Lucy's disappearance before her move, and before her memories are gone forever?|isbn=1804181250}}{{Frontpage|author=Madelaine Lucas|title=Thirst for Salt|rating=5|genre= General Literary Fiction|summary= Murder most horrid amongst ''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 group of 4th Year man twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university students – to its sorrowful end the summer after. Set against the backdrop of Shakespearean isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the 24-year-old narrator's deepening relationship with her older lover, depicting its all-consuming nature, how it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably.|isbn=0861546490}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0008506337|title=The Garnett Girls|author=Georgina Moore|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary=The love affair between Margo Garnett and poet Richard O'Leary was all-consuming, apparently on both sides. We open Margo was just sixteen when they fell in love. Richard was twenty-one and described by Margo's mother as our protagonist is released 'an older man'. Her parents worried that Richard's influence would take her away from jail what they felt she could achieve - going to Oxford and having served his time for a crime that he may or may not have committedglittering career. What did he do? What happened that year? Why did things turn out In the way event, they eloped and Richard took her away from the Isle of Wight. Margo did? We have go to Oxford and went on to push our way through 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 undergrowth family home on the Isle of flashbacks Wight. Even then the doubts about Richard's drinking were never far from Margo's mind: ''she would never be able to find outleave him in charge''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1785656473</amazonuk>Then Richard left them.

{{Frontpage|isbn=1914585402|title=Dashboard Elvis is Dead|author=David F Ross|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=I reviewed David F Ross's book [[There's Only One Danny Garvey by David F Ross|There's Only One Danny Garvey]] a couple of years back and remember being absolutely floored by how powerful and affecting it was. It was a gripping, emotionally wounding read, and rereading my review of it my main takeaway was that I might not have lavished enough praise on it.}}{{Frontpage|author=Lucy Ashe|title=Clara and Olivia|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|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 save detail – and some things, that ''je ne sais quoi'', that don't come from the lives classroom. A stage presence, a charm, a ''joie de vivre''. The difference between a hard-worker, and a star.|isbn=0861544080}}{{Frontpage|author=Heather Fawcett|title=Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of othersFaeries|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=Emily Wilde is an expert academic scholar on faerie lore, and she must risk has travelled extensively, and researched meticulously, to write her ownlife'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?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1785762907</amazonuk>0356519120

{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1398515388|title=The Boy and the Dog|author=Daniel Kehlmann Seishu Hase and Ross Benjamin Alison Watts (translator)|title=You Should Have Left

|genre=General Fiction |summary=Our narrator is a screenwriterFirst of all, tasked with coming up with a sequel to his hit movie ''Besties'' – a film which helped pay for a house, but which his actress wife keeps letting him know, isn't ''art''. To concentrateit was the earthquake, deep in the family – heocean floor, which created the wifetsunami and this, and their four year old daughter – have rented a largein turn, modern house at caused the end of a horrid, hairpin bend-filled road, in a charming alpine landscapenuclear meltdown. But things aren't rightThe result was complete and utter devastation. The couple are at loggerheads too much, things keep unsettling our narratordeaths were uncountable, and the sole shopkeeper for miles around is ready with loss of livelihoods was widespread. The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the Hammer Horror styled warnings list of strange eventspriorities but - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. Quickly we see He wasn't a dog person but the bookconvenience store owner's title comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the dog jumped in all its galling clarity – but it isn't too late to get out… is it? And out of what, exactly?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1786484048</amazonuk>.

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Amanda CraigChristopher Bowden|title=The Lie of the LandMr Magenta|rating=54

|summary=The Bredins can't afford to divorce. The house in London ''would'' sell, but not for a priced that would allow Quentin and Lottie ( she with her son and their two girls) to each get somewhere to live. Unemployment has barrelled into the equation too: LottieChristopher Bowden's lost her job as an architect and Quentin's prowess as latest novel is a journalist is in reducing demand. There's not much in the way patient untangling of family help available: Lottiea seemingly ordinary woman's mother's house might be worth six millionlife, but she barely scrapes carried out by on her incomenephew after she has died. There's one solution 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 just might work: the house in London can be let nephew Stephen had ever realised and they'll move it seems to him an obligation to somewhere cheap in the country and live as best they can on the rent they receivefind it all out.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408709295</amazonuk>B0B6Z9VJDW

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Ann O' LoughlinJennifer Mason|title= The Ludlow Ladies' SocietyPartitions of Unity|rating= 3.54|genre= General Fiction|summary=''The Ludlow Ladies' Society'' is the story of two women Here at Bookbag Towers, we first met Elizabeth Cromwell, dominatrix and their struggle to come to terms with the terrible tragedies unintentional detective in their lives. Connie Carter arrives at Ludlow Hall[[Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery by Jennifer Mason|Preposterous]], when she investigated and unravelled a property she has inherited in Ireland, with no clue as to what to expectseries of disappearances. The close-knit community are curious about In ''The American,Partitions of Unity'' who seems to have no desire to integrate herself into the community. Nearby, lives Eve, a widow, who formerly lived at Ludlow Hall. She, too, has painful memories and scars that are slow to heal, but as she begins sets her mind to form solving a friendship with the reclusive Connie, the two form a bond that will help them both face their grief togethermurder...|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1785301276</amazonuk>B09LQR9FRF

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Tina SeskisWill Carver|title= The HoneymoonDaves Next Door|rating= 4|genre= ThrillersGeneral Fiction|summary= For Five strangers come together in one moment as long as she can remembera suicide bomber prepares to detonate his vest on a London tube line. As their fates overlap, the story is told in backwards order, Jemma has been planning leading up to the perfect honeymoonfateful moment. |isbn= 1914585186}} {{Frontpage|author=Jennifer Mason|title=Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=''A fortnight's retreat to struggling poetry zine, a fivemom-star resort and-pop mobile diner in the MaldivesNorthern California redwoods, complete with luxury villasa 400-meter hurdler who just missed the 2004 Olympics, personal butlers and absolute privacy.It should be paradise. But ita women's turned into track coach with a yen for bullwhips, a billionaire with a nightmare. Because state-of-the -art S&M dungeon, a man Jemma married serving a week ago has just disappeared from the island without life sentence in Alabama, an enigmatic signature, K(s, x), on a tracecheap oil painting, an erotic art dealer in Georgia. And now her perfect new life ..'' This is vanishing just as quickly before her eyesa sample of the cast of characters and settings in Preposterous. After everything they've been through togetherAs you can see, how can some keeping up will be required! The basic premise of this mystery story goes like this be happening? Is there anyone on the island who Jemma can trust? And above all - where has her husband gone? ...|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1405917970</amazonuk>B09STS96HS

{{newreview <!-- remove 17/6 -->Frontpage|authorisbn=Hugo DriscollB0B2N7MVYM|title=Seven Days with YouThe Calculations of Rational Men|author=Daniel Godfrey|rating=3.5

|summary=There was little in eighteen-year-old Sean JohnsonIt's life to give him joythe 10th of December 1962 when we first meet Dr Joseph Marr. He was a farmhand Just to put what happens in the small town of Bloxford and the highlights of his life were his daily chats with his friend Tomcontext, helping out at the animal sanctuary and Cuban missile crisis is still very fresh in people's minds. The world has barely had a trip chance to the pub on a Saturday nightbreathe out. The downsides were But for Joe Marr, it's not the boring job and having to live with a drunken father who seemed to have no intention of getting over missile crisis that's at the death front of his wife many years earliermind. But He's been convicted of murder. With the current state of medical knowledge, it 's hard to think otherwise than that the prosecution would be the animal sanctuary which never have been brought joy into but Joe Marr has spent his life first few days in the form of Sophia HillingdonHMP Queen's Bench, a relatively new prison. He's just getting used to his roommate, Mervyn, daughter of one of the top lawyers in the country and about learning to go to Oxford to study law herself. It was their love be wary of animals which would spark their love for each otherthe McArthur brothers.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B07113VFF3</amazonuk>