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[[Category:General Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]]==General fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Hazel McHaffie Onyi Nwabineli|title=Right Allow Me to DieIntroduce Myself|rating=34.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=It must be hard enough watching your partner die just onceAnuri spent her childhood on display to the world, but for Naomithanks to her step-mother Ophelia's increasingly popular presence on social media, Adamwhere she posted every step of Anuri's death childhood for sponsorships and influencer deals and, basically, monetary gain. Now Anuri is just in her twenties and she is slowly trying to regain her confidence and to get her life back, suing her step-mother to take down the beginningcontent about her. Coming across his personal Anuri is battling alcoholism, failing to start her PhD, private diary of his time undergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online and receiving money from diagnosis to subsequent demisethem for doing so. Most importantly, she is forced to relive desperately worried about her little sister, who is the awful months during which his body began to betray him new focus of Ophelia's online empire. Can she save her sister, and perhaps herself and his will to live was replaced her relationship with a will to die...on his own terms.her father at the same time?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1906307210</amazonuk>0861546873
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Morag Joss1529153298|title=The Night FollowingList of Suspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey|rating=45
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Distracted by the discovery that her husband has been having an affair, a middle-aged It's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. (A woman loses concentration while driving along a quiet lane? I mean, killing Ruth Mitchellhonestly...) She's not what's worrying Miv's family, an elderly cyclistthough. The woman Women have been disappearing. Well, they've been murdered, but to have 'disappeared' doesn't wait for the police to arrive; she goes home and parks her car in the garage where she smashes it almost beyond recognitionsound quite so frightening. When her arrogant husband sees the damage he believes it Miv's been done to punish him and he packs his bags. After a few days the woman goes to the home of the dead woman; upset because she doesn't go s overheard that her father wants to move the doorfamily 'Down South'. When you're from Yorkshire, but from Down South is a hidden spot nearby she can see the widowerfrightening, foreign place, an elderly gentleman who is clearly not coping wellbest avoided. Wracked with guilt For Miv, the woman makes a decision: move would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, and she'll do anything to prevent that. She's not worried about the only way she can atone for dangers or that her actions is Mum's stopped talking - to step into the shoes of the dead womananyone.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0715638815</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Shirley Jackson1035906708|title=The Haunting of Hill HouseDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=There We tend to think of Maria Callas as Greek, but she was a time before Stephen Kingborn to Greek parents in Manhattan, New York, in December 1923 and only moved to Athens when she was thirteen. There Her original surname was time before ''The ShiningKalogeropoulos but her father changed it to 'Callas'to make it more manageable in the States. There When she was back in Athens - supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for her voice - she was raised under the Nazi occupation by a time when 'horror' was not rooted in blood, guts mother who mercilessly exploited her and gore. I owe a slight apology to Mr King, because along with the gutsier side made no secret of the genreher preference for her elder sister, I will own that he is a master at suspenseJackie.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141191449</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Julian BarnesAlexander McCall Smith|title=Staring at the SunThe Perfect Passion Company|rating=4.5|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=Jean's first Incident involved Uncle LeslieThe Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, hyacinths run by Ness and golf tees. It's perhaps best forgottenoperating as an alternative to all the online apps in providing a more personal, but Jean doesn't forgettailored service. Uncle Leslie figures large in Ness has asked her life - mostly on younger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the golf course - until business, as Ness is planning to take a trip to Canada to get away for a while. Katie is coming out of a break up with a bad boyfriend, and so jumps at the War comes and he runs away chance to come home to AmericaEdinburgh. He's replaced by Tommy Prosser And so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, thanks to 44 Scotland Street and the Isabel Dalhousie novels, a grounded pilot but with some new characters who once saw the sun rise twice quickly begin to charm. Katie has no experience in one day and excites as many questions running a business, or in Jean as he ever answers. Tommy is replaced by Michaelmatch-making, a policemanbut Ness has full confidence in her abilities, whom Jean eventually marries. He doesn't know why minks are excessively tenacious of life and he doesnthere't much care. But Jean does. She cares much less for the Dutch cap that Michael sent s always her off to obtain before the wedding very helpful (and much less again for their rather disastrous adventures in the bedroom. handsome) neighbour, William, to lend a hand…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099540096</amazonuk>1846976596
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Russell Celyn JonesDean Koontz|title=The Ninth Wave (New Stories from the Mabinogion) Bad Weather Friend
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary FictionParanormal|summary=Pwyll rules Benny is having a medieval-style fiefdom in terrifically bad day. He loses his job, he loses his fiancee, and his house gets trashed. Oh, and someone has delivered a postreally weird, disturbing coffin-climate change Walessized object to his home, and it's possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the thing that has trashed his house! The thing is, Benny is the very last person to deserve all this bad luck. Life He is a nice person. A really nice person. So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the delivery to his house is different in many ways - there's a new-but-old social order built on feudalism friend, a bad weather friend called Spike, who has been sent to help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a good person. Spike is going to take care of Benny, and horsepower is the main means will certainly take care of transport. But in many ways itBenny's much the same - people still fight one anotherenemies, if he, towns still have sink estatesBenny, rich boys still have too much time on their hands and precious little meaning in their livesHarper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1854115146</amazonuk>1662500491
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Owen SheersKatherine Howe|title=White Ravens (New Stories from the Mabinogion)A True Account
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=In the old tale, Branwen is the sister of Bendigeidfran - the giant King of Britain. She marries the King of Ireland, who doesn't treat her well. She manages to send Bendigeidfran a message via a tamed starling and war and killings ensue.
 
In this new tale, a young girl has just walked away from her brothers who, in the wake of the devastating foot and mouth outbreak, are despoiling their heritage by rustling and illegally slaughtering sheep. She meets an old man who tells her a story involving the superstitions about the ravens in the Tower of London, propaganda work during World War II, and an equally doomed love affair.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1854115030</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=J R Stephenson
|title=Crooked Justice
|rating=2.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Meet Barry Johns. You'll see him coming - he's five hundred pounds if he's an ounce. Just don't ever lend him money - he won't pay it back. A businessman Hannah Masury is living in Boston, having been sent to live with a share of a nightclub on Cyprusfamily who run an inn, he goes and being made to work there for from a customary break, and finds his sort-of moll-type sort-of girlfriend has been installed as the bar danceryoung age. He manages When she hears there is to tread both on the toes be a hanging of his local colleague and some Greek rivals. And when a rival pirates in London chases him up for thousands of pounds owed he the town, she decides to pack up go and shut upwatch. ItEnthralled and horrified in equal measure, Hannah finds herself embroiled in a young boy's a big stone death at the hands of two vicious pirates. She hides away, so that hides himthey don't find and kill her too, and then to escape them completely she runs away to sea, but he leaves dressing as a boy and joining the notorious Ned Low's pirate ship as a cabin boy. She soon finds herself in the thick of things when there is a very awkward trail for everyone wanting to upturn it mutiny on board, and get their revengefrom there we are caught up in her rip roaring tale of life on the ocean waves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0955855713</amazonuk>0861547438
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Anne Rice1471180158|title=Angel TimeMaybe Tomorrow|author=Penny Parkes|rating=24.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Toby O'Dare is Jamie Matson works in an extremely efficient hit upper-class grocery store, for a man who's a control freak with all the subtlety of a passion for musichalf brick. Jamie's son, Bo, history and playing 'has his beloved luteproblems'. He's also something of a lost soul having turned his back asthmatic and the more you read, the more you'll suspect that he's on God many years agothe autistic spectrum. One day while on a Sometimes Jamie needs to take time off at short notice - she'job' he is visited by an Angel who offers him s a chance at redemption. Toby agrees to become frequent flier in the Angellocal A&E and sometimes Bo's human instrument not fit enough to go to school. Missed shifts or the need to be away on time to pick Bo up from school are occasions when Jamie can be controlled and help save lives rather than take themput in the wrong. He is sent on an assignment It was going to come to help a Jewish couple accused of murder in 13th Century Englandhead.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701178140</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John E SmelcerB0CKD1L5JL|title=The Great DeathRadio Free Olympia|author=Jeffrey Dunn
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary='As Western Europeans settled Alaska, they brought with them diseases against which the indigenous people had no natural immunityPetr is an orphan. At Rescued by the beginning of the twentieth centurystrange, reclusive Bear, fully two thirds of all Alaska natives perished he is brought up far from a pandemic of measles, smallpox, bustling cities and influenza. No community was spared. In most casesbusy human society, half in the forests of a villageWashington's population died within Olympic Peninsula. After Bear dies and a week. In some casesbrief sojourn in human company, and armed with only a pirate radio transmitter, there were no survivors. It was Petr goes on a journey through the end of an ancient way of life. Natives still refer to forest, broadcasting the dreadful period as the Great Deathstrange, wild and rarely heard voices he encounters.'|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1842709194</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sue TownsendSarah Marsh|title=Adrian Mole: The Prostrate YearsA Sign of Her Own|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Adrian Mole is now 39¼ and living, quite literally, in After a bout of scarlet fever as a pigstychild, sharing an all too thin party wall with his parents and working in a bookshopEllen Lark loses her hearing. It's not quite how life was supposed to turn out. As he spends his days wrestling his strong willed 5 year old Gracie Suddenly plunged into a world of silence, everything about her school uniform, trying to reassure glamorous wife Daisy that life changes. Living in a time when the provinces is not use of sign language was seen as bad as she would like to believesomething only savages do, and desperately attempting Ellen is sent to talk his mother out of her quest to appear on the vile ''Jeremy Kyle'' show, worrying over his increasingly frequent visits a school where she is taught to the toilet is really the last thing he needs. And yetlip read, the worst is still to comebut physically restrained from signing. Think a crumbling economy From here, redundancy, affairs, death, a family member challenging him she ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the novel writing stakes deaf and using a query over the big C – it's going to be a tough year for system called Visible Speech. At the Molessame time, Bell is working on other inventions and there's little that ol' Adrian can do except sit back ideas, and watch his life spin out Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a complicated tangle of control around himespionage.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0718153707</amazonuk>1035401614
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Paul TherouxB0BC3YTCMR|title=A Dead Hand: A Crime in CalcuttaGood Girls Die|author=Ayura Ayira|rating=34.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Set in India, familiar territory for Theroux, ''A Dead Hand'' tells the This story of a travel writer suffering from writer's block (also known as 'dead hand') until a chance letter from an American ex-pat, the mysterious Mrs Unger, relating a story of a mystery of a dead body in a hotel leads him to release his creativity in very unexpected waysis not for everyone. The story is more about obsession and infatuation than it is about the mystery itself as the narrator falls under Mrs Unger's Tantric charms. But does she have more to hide than she's letting on?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241144639</amazonuk>}}
{{newreview|author=Dave Eggers|title=Lavender Daniels was three weeks short of her fifteenth birthday when The Wild Things|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=Meet MaxIncident happened. When I say he sometimes gets the wrong end of the stick about adultsShe was a very bright student, or dislikes his mother's new boyfriend, or gets a bit feisty when he feels the need for revengetoo nerdy if truth be told, I am certainly understating the factsand suffered from vitiligo - people were afraid to hug her in case it's contagious. He It's not easy being a black girl whose skin is 84% white. She had a bit of a rascal crush on seventeen-year-old Reggie Anderson but never thought he would notice her. Then he did: Lavender was very good at math and Reggie asked if she would tutor him. She readily agreed: tutoring was something she gladly did at church: this was just an extension. She went to say the leasthis house and he raped her. But all that might change when he finds himself travelling In shock, she even allowed him to give her a strange land of roisterous animals, and ends up installed as their kinglift home.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241144221</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Harlan Coben1472263936|title=Tell No OneThe Figurine|author=Victoria Hislop
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=I've been meaning It was in 1968 that Helena McCloud made her first trip to get around Greece. She was alone: her mother, Greek by birth, had left the family home and refused to reading some or all of Harlan Cobenreturn, but Mary and Hamish (Helena's work, because 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 reviews are family apartment in up-market Kolonaki would be the first of several annual visits. She grew to be believed love her grandmother and you are a fan of the family'Bloody Knife /Blunt Instrument' thrillers maid, the man is quite simply not capable of turning out a duff novel. But you know how it isDina, what with one thing but was wary - and another and a bulging pile frightened - of books to be read and reviewedher grandfather, I just somehow hadn't managed to give him my full attentionretired general Stamatis Papagiannis. Until now.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1409117022</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Sylvie Nickels |title=Another Kind of Loving|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Mike Hennessy He was a journalist whose speciality was the war-torn parts proud of his close connections to the world Junta and October 1992 found him in Sarajevo visiting a children's home expected his family to get a story. The orphanage was on the right side of town – away from the main barrage – uphold his values but it had few other advantages. There was saw no heat and little food or water, but it was here that he found Jasminka, part Serb, part Bosniak and eleven or twelve years oldreason to accommodate them. In a phone call to his wife Mike suggested that perhaps Jasminka could come His prejudices included Helena's red hair and stay with them for a whilegreen eyes - inherited from her father's Scottish ancestors.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1905200129</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=rashbreDean Koontz|title=The TriangleAfter Death
|rating=3
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Brian's trip to the art gallery was a treatMichael Mace, courtesy Head of Security, at a private ticket from top secret biological research facility, is among 55 people who die when a friend and the white room was much better than the last gallery he'd visitedvirus is released in a bio-hazard accident. It wasFinding himself in a makeshift mortuary, thoughcovered in plastic, to be his last such visit as he was silently knifed by has a professional hit man. His friends were stunnedsense that something very, not just at his death, but at the way in which it had come about. What could Brian have been doing very bad has happened to attract ''that'' sort of attention? Jake had given him the ticket and it dawned on only him that – as he had been sits up and looks around at the target rather than Brian. Some recent events clicked into place…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1425171893</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Laura Solomon|title=An Imitation shrouded bodies of Life|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=We are introduced to the baby girl, Celia with a detailed, blow-by-blow account of her dreadful physical condition, from her unusual eyes, her even more unusual teeth, her lumpy body his dead friends and the ever-growing hump on her shoulderformer colleagues. Forget the Elephant ManAs he recovers his senses, here we have elephant babyhe realises that there is something different about him; he can ''feel'' everything. ''Everything is stacked against her''. She is abandoned by her mother, her father is unknown. And as if all that wasnMichael isn't enough to make you weep, she is unceremoniously dumped on a doorstep - to die. But she doesn't. She lives. And what an extra-ordinary life Laura Solomon has mapped out for her'Michael'' anymore.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1904529437</amazonuk>1662500467}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tamsin Reeves B0BVDC2VWH|title=A Place of SafetyThe Grave Listeners|author=William Frank
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=There are lots of reasons to take in a lodger for your spare room, but for Martha one of the best The village is to get one up on her recently departed scoundrel of an ex-husbandisolated and poor. And itIt's not surrounded by a Witching Forest. And the villagers subsist largely by farming Uphegia plants - its bread-like her financial situation is looking too rosy since he left her for another woman – a woman who is also pregnant with his childfruit provides nutrition and its blossom provides herbal medicines. The fact that her lodger is a Heblack wood of the forest provides heat and warmth, roofs on homes, and that he's a Foreigner (and from Afghanistaneven gallows, no less) if needed. The fear of being buried alive is just an existential superstition in the icing on village and that is the cake. Colin's going to be furiousreason Volushka, a drunken, self-indulgent, and Martha can't waitlazy lout of a man is tolerated.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849231370</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Alexander McCall SmithB0BYF82CXT|title=The Comfort of Saturdays (Isabel Dalhousie 5)|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=As always with Alexander McCall Smith, this fifth book in the Sunday Philosophy series benefits from being read in sequence with the previous titles. One of the beautiful aspects of his writing is that his characters develop slowly, gently, over the series so although you could probably dive in here and get a fair idea of his style you really should start at the beginning to thoroughly enjoy the pleasure of an AMS read. In this episode Isabel is busy taking care of her son, Charlie, looking after her niece Cat's delicatessen, editing the review and struggling with her own personal fears over her relationship with Jamie. And she wouldn't be Isabel if she didn't, somehow, get entangled in someone else's problems, someone else's life, and here she finds herself trapped into investigating the case of a doctor whose career has been ruined.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0349120552</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewSemi-Detached|author=Matt Hilton|title=Dead Men's DustDeborah Stone
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Joe Hunter helps people. That's what he does. He's been around the block Bill and to say that he has learned Amanda are living in a semi-detached house, stuck in a trick or two along the way might be something depressing rut of an understatementboredom and disappointment, when Terry and Fiona – glamorous, successful and very much in love – move in next door. No-one really knows much about Joe Hunter Despite their different outlooks on life, the couples befriend each other and certainly his past life appears to improve for both pairs. But all is not something that many would be brave enough to poke around inwhat it seems, and their increasingly interconnected relationships are fated for tragedy.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340978236</amazonuk>''
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Imogen Parker Shalini Boland|title=This Little WorldThe Silent Bride|rating=43
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=I haven't read the first two books Alice and Seth are a match made in the trilogy but that didn't spoil my enjoyment of ''This Little World''heaven. He is everything she has been searching for; handsome, accomplished, clever, funny; total and utter husband-material. They She is all stand alone as individual novels he could possibly want in their own righta wife; beautiful, successful, confident… and so the inevitable proposal is eagerly accepted by Alice and the wedding is planned and set. Those readers When the much-anticipated day arrives, Alice is walked down the aisle by her father, beaming with pride and excitement as she surveys the congregation – their friends assembled to celebrate this joyful day and when Seth turns to face his approaching bride, Alice's world implodes because she has absolutely no idea who have already enjoyed the first two books will know most of man at the characters and will be keen altar is, who is waiting for her to find out - what happens nextbecome his wife.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0552151548</amazonuk>1662507089
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Keith Donohue 1787636003|title=Angels The Girls of DestructionSummer|author=Katie Bishop|rating=45
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=In an opening chapter reminiscent of Cathy's ghostly appearance at It was the window in [[Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte|Wuthering Heights]], widowed Margaret Quinn opens her front door in summer when Rachel Evans turned eighteen that she and Caroline went backpacking around Greece and arrived on the middle of a wintry night to a half-frozenisland. Rachel wasn't exactly innocent but she was, waif-like childperhaps, Norahnaive, who appears so when thirty-four-year-old Alistair Wright started to have arrived out of nowhere. Lonely and withdrawn take an interest in the wake of her daughter Erica's disappearance many years earlier, Margaret takes in apparently-orphaned Norah, passing her off as her granddaughter. But Norah is no ordinary child…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224086138</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Walter Moers |title=The Alchemaster's Apprentice|rating=4.5|genre=Fantasy|summary=Meet Echo the Cratshe was flattered rather than wary. He is It was quite a rare example while before he made any sort of his species, which is a cat physical approach to her and by that can speak every language knowntime she was obsessed by him. His life among the miserableAlistair worked for Henry Taylor, permanently ill citizens of Malaisea is not great, which is why, when the strange scientist from looking after his interests on the castle that looms over everyone island and everything offers him a month of entertaining gluttony before he kills Echo, as opposed to three days' starving penury on in particular in the streets, bar where all the offer is acceptedgirls either worked or partied.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846552222</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Naseem Rakha Amanda Craig|title=The Crying TreeThree Graces
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Irene Stanley had lived in Illinois all her life, on a farm which had been in her family for generations and where the boundary Few styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the property was the Mississippi river. She had friends, family and her church in the area and it came as a shock when Nate came home one day and said that he was considering taking a job as a Deputy Sheriff in Oregon (that's pronounced ''Organ'' – only tourists say ''Orstate-eeof-gon''). It wasn't long before they and their children, Shep and Bliss, made the long overland journey to their new home-nation novel. Shep was a quiet boy, a talented musician but against his motherThere's expectations he settled into his new life well. Irene wasn't totally convinced, but accepted that life wasn't too bad for something so utterly compelling about any writer who can catch hold of the family. That all changed when she was called home from work to find that Shep had been murdered.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230740847</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Johan Minto |title=The Virtuous Saint|rating=2.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Dr Marcus Hoag has been searching for the lost Regula Monachorum atmosphere of St Benedict for the last thirty five years day and capture it, crafting an image of the fruits of his research are recorded country as it stands in a notebook which he carries with himone particular moment. HeTo say that Amanda Craig is skilled at doing this would be embarrassingly inadequate: she's been searching for clues in stained glass windows in churches and cathedrals and practically synonymous with the discovery genre of two previously unknown windows contemporary social fiction at his old university, St Peter's in New York, sets him on a journey to Englandthis point.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0955855756</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Claire Connor and G P Taylor |title=Rosie: Note to Self|rating=3.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=In the first of She has such a five book deal Claire Connor, writing in partnership with GP Taylor, brings us a modern romance based loosely on gift for weaving the story ongoing issues of Ruth from the Bible. This is total chick-lit, and from day into the first few pages I thought it was just going to be lives of her characters in a very lightway that feels natural and lived-in, funny romance story. Howevernever making them ciphers for social commentary but instead fully realised people, the story quickly takes a depressing turn and the rest of the book is as much an exploration of grief as it is a romance novelgrappling with issues far larger than themselves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1850788332</amazonuk>140871468X
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Audrey Niffenegger 152915118X|title=Her Fearful SymmetryPineapple Street|author=Jenny Jackson
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=When Elspeth Noblin dies ''Pineapple Street'' is the story of Leukemiathree women: Sasha, she leaves behind a strange bequest that will have dramatic Darley and tragic consequencesGeorgiana. She leaves her London flat Darley and George are sisters and all the trappings of her life Sasha is married to the their brother Cord. They'mirrorre Stocktons, only Sasha isn' twins of her own twin sister who currently live outside Chicago. This is news to the twins who didnt a Stockton by birth so she isn't even know that they had an auntreadily accepted into the tribe. The only condition of her legacy is that problem's exacerbated when the twinsclan matriarch, Julia Tilda, asks Cord and Valentina, have Sasha if they'd like to live in move into the flat, which is adjacent Pineapple Street property. Tilda and Chip have renovated and downsized to Highgate Cemeteryanother property, for a year before street or so away, which they can sell itown. It is clear They won't need any of the furniture from the outset that Elspeth has secrets about her relationship with her twin sister EdiePineapple Street, which she is keen to keep hidden from the twinsso Sasha and Cord can move straight in. Nominally, they had a choice but when it turns out that Elspeth hasnwasn't quite left the apartment after her death, things get a whole lot messier for everyonereality.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224085611</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=F G Cottam |title=Dark Echo|rating=3 Darley and Georgiana start to call Sasha 'the gold digger'.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=In Rouen She's living in September 1917, a French detachment are guarding the Cathedral''their'' family home. Guarding They use it and using so often that they abbreviate it as a barracks and still doing their best to treat it as a house of God. After all, you cannot make a fortress out of a place designed to be welcoming. One night 'the fog descends, thick and eerie, and reminiscent of the gas attacks in the trenchesGD'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340953896</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Patrick Taylor Emily Critchley|title=An Irish Country VillageOne Puzzling Afternoon
|rating=4
|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=Dr Barry Laverty is working 84 year old Edie has lived in the same small town for the olderalmost her whole life, but now she is facing a move as her son wants to move to another house and somewhat irascible Dr Fingal O'Reillybring Edie to live with his family, as Edie is starting to lose her memory. However, in Edie is tormented by the fictional Ulster village memory of Ballybucklebo. Theyher childhood friend, Lucy, their housekeeper Mrs Kinkaidwho went missing over 60 years ago, and the residents of worry that there was a secret she was keeping for Lucy that somehow might be the village were introduced in thing that reveals the book [[An Irish Country Doctor by Patrick Taylor|An Irish Country Doctor]], which I haven't read, so it took me a few chapters to get into this novel.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0863224024</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Alexander McCall Smith |title=The Lost Art truth of Gratitude|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=I should say to begin with what happened all that it would probably be tricky to leap into reading this series with this latest booktime ago. This is the sixth book in the After 'seeing'Sunday Philosophy Club'' series and returns us to Lucy in the life of Isabel Dalhousiehigh street, our gentle philosophising heroine. She is still living with just as she was the last time she saw her partner, Jamie, and she starts to find pockets of memories coming back to her son Charlie, editing her philosophy journal, and of course interfering in the lives of others. Her niece, Cat, has another dodgy boyfriend, this time a tightrope walker... Her 'enemy', Christopher DoveAnd yet as she remembers the past, she is causing forgetting more friction and somehow, at a toddlermore in her day to day life. Will she uncover the truth about Lucy's birthday partydisappearance before her move, Isabel simply can't help herself and finds herself embroiled in the woes of a previous foe, Minty Auchterlonie.before her memories are gone forever?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408700638</amazonuk>1804181250
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Agnes Owens Madelaine Lucas|title=The Complete NovellasThirst for Salt
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Who is Agnes Owens? A Scottish author who portrays working class life from the nineteen forties and fifties. Now an octogenarian''Love, apparently Agnes Owens started writing at the age of 58. Here are five previously published stories collected into one new editionI'd read, was supposed to be a companion volume to her short storieslight and weightless feeling, published in 2008. but I donhad always longed for gravity't think you'll be disappointed.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846971373</amazonuk>}}
{{newreview|author=Matt Dunn |title=The Good Bride Guide|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=As he approaches Told from a milestone birthdayretrospective view, Ben begins to think back on his old relationshipsa young woman unravels the year-long relationship that once defined her. While none of them seemed right at Overlaid with later wisdom, the time, he's not quite sure that narrator relives the other option affair with a man twenty years her senior from its inception his current single status the summer after finishing university is really any betterto its sorrowful end the summer after. With a good friend about to enter into Set against the backdrop of an arranged marriage, Ben has isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the by this point predictable yet wacky idea that he needs the same thing – a nice young woman hand24-year-picked for him by his parents. After old narrator's deepening relationship with her older lover, depicting its all-consuming nature, who knows him better than they do?how it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847395236</amazonuk>0861546490
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Nick Brownlee 0008506337|title=BaitThe Garnett Girls|author=Georgina Moore|rating=45
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Jake Moore was in the Flying Squad but a bullet put paid to his career The love affair between Margo Garnett and ten years later hepoet Richard O's running a gameLeary was all-fishing business consuming, apparently on the Kenyan coastboth sides. Margo was just sixteen when they fell in love. Times are hard Richard was twenty-one and theredescribed by Margo's every chance mother as 'an older man'. Her parents worried that Richard's influence would take her away from what they felt she could achieve - going to Oxford and having a glittering career. In the business will fold unless he event, they eloped and his partner, Harry, can find Richard took her away from the money Isle of Wight. Margo did go to pay their billsOxford and went on to become a well-respected journalist. The couple had three children: Rachel, Imogen and Sasha. Some strange things are happening Life was lived in London and holidays were spent at Sandcove, the game fishing business too – one of their number has died in a mysterious explosion family home on his boat and the body Isle of a man who shouldnWight. Even then the doubts about Richard's drinking were never far from Margo's mind: ''she would never be able to leave him in charge''t have been aboard has been washed up on the shore.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0749928840</amazonuk>}}
{{newreview|author=Thomas Pynchon |title=Inherent Vice|rating=3Then Richard left them.5|genre=Crime|summary=The close of the '60s, the dawn of the '70s. San Francisco. Some people say the most influential people are Nixon and his cronies. Some people say they're Charlie Manson and his cronies. Some people call the smog surrounding everyone in the Bay Area air pollution, others a drug haze. Doc, the sole proprietor of LSD Investigations, is approached by different people, requesting two jobs of him, which both point to the same bigwig property developer. One of these is from his ex, now with said mogul, another is from a man whose prime interest immediately dies. How will this escalate into a manic mystery, hitting on mysterious yachts taking odd journeys, missing people, Nixon, dead people coming back to life, unusual retreats, and a host more?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>022408948X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Charlie Williams 1914585402|title=Stairway to HellDashboard Elvis is Dead|author=David F Ross
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=This is looking like a bad night for Rick Suntan, club singer. HeI reviewed David F Ross's merely trying to put some Doctor Who into his Cliff Richard renditions (donbook [[There't ask), when he gets bottled off the stage. Oh, 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 sackedaffecting it was. OhIt was a gripping, and his girlfriend changes the locks on him. Ohemotionally wounding read, and he gets shot. From this mess of a life comes an even more unusual thread, courtesy rereading my review of his small-scale manager. Is the latter, we feel, some Mephisto to Rick's Faust - or just a saddened alcoholic? Neither, in fact - he's a messenger, with the news it my main takeaway was that Rick is actually David Bowie's soul, inverted into the body of a nonentityI might not have lavished enough praise on it. Courtesy of Jimmy Page.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184668689X</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alex Kava Lucy Ashe|title=Black FridayClara and Olivia|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=There The year is 1933. The place? Sadler's Wells. Ballerinas Clara and Olivia are sisters, twins no reason to be suspicious of less. Identical on the college kids wandering around ''Mall of America'' outside but not, we learn, on the busiest shopping day of the yearinside. They look just like everyone elseAnd not on stage, either. But in fact these kids are actually up to serious mischief: they think the jamming devices they are carrying in their identical red backpacks will disrupt the greedy capitalist storesBecause there' computer systems, causing delays and s a lot that builds a big dip in salesdancer. The truth isSome things that can be taught or learnt – discipline, if they had been aware that said identical red backpacks were actually stuffed with enough explosives attention to knock the Earth off its axis detail – and some things, that in fact''je ne sais quoi'', that don't come from the classroom. A stage presence, a charm, a ''joie de vivre''. The difference between a remote control device would turn them each into suicide bombershard-worker, perhaps they would not have got out of bed that day?and a star.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0778303322</amazonuk>0861544080
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Joseph Finder Heather Fawcett|title=VanishedEmily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=In the wake of a ferocious attackEmily Wilde is an expert academic scholar on faerie lore, and she has travelled extensively, and researched meticulously, Lauren Heller finds herself in a hospital bedto write her life's work, groggy from 24 hours the very first encyclopaedia of oblivionfaeries. Her head Whilst she is bandaged brilliant at research and throbbing and her husband, Rogerspeaking to faeries, she is not only missing – he has vanished without a traceso good with peopleEnter Roger's brother Nick Heller So when she finds herself far, far North in the small village of Hrafvsnik, having somehow offended the pre-eminent investigator at Stoddard Associates with a cv that includes a spell as ex-Army Special Forces. Nick village matriarch, she is a man who does not take orders from anyone sure what she has done, nor how to redeem herself and a man put her final investigations for whom family is of her book back on the ultimate importanceright track. As Stoddard's finestEnter Wendell Bambleby, her dashingly handsome and insufferable rival who arrives unexpectedly, most inventive all charm and successful operatordelight, Nick Heller much to Emily's frustration. But why is he here? What does he want? And what exactly is used to getting results but this time, going on with the case is personal.faerie folk around Hravsnik?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0755342089</amazonuk>0356519120
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Neil Forsyth 1398515388|title=Let Them Come ThroughThe Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Nick Santini spent most First of his childhood conning all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, in turn, caused the drunken patrons of his father's bar out of their beer money nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and spending it on ciderutter devastation. With patchy schooling The deaths were uncountable, an abusive father and no real talents beyond his ability to lie, career choices for Nick the loss of livelihoods was widespread. The fact that many pets were few and separated from their owners came far between, so when down the list of priorities but - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. He wasn't a friend gives him some money dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to break free, Nick spends it on an office open his car door and Tamon the dog jumped in Soviet Street, hires a secretary, and advertises his services as a medium.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846686989</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Henry PorterChristopher Bowden|title=The Dying LightMr Magenta
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=WeChristopher Bowden're s latest novel is a little way into the future: the Prime Minister followed two whom you might recognise. The first was so dangerously casual that members patient untangling of cabinet only realised what decisions had been taken when they read the papers the next day. a seemingly ordinary woman''His'' successor was prone to childish tantrumss life, carried out by her nephew after she has died. The Olympics are spoken aunt who always provided a safe harbour and a little bit of in the past tense indulgence to a young nephew had had a much more interesting life than that nephew Stephen had ever realised and John Temple's government is well-established under his seemingly calm leadership. It hasn't been without its glitches thoughit seems to him an obligation to find it all out.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0752874845</amazonuk>B0B6Z9VJDW
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sam SavageJennifer Mason|title=The Cry Partitions of the SlothUnity|rating=3.54
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Meet Andrew Whittaker. In some untold time of recent American historyHere at Bookbag Towers, we first met Elizabeth Cromwell, he is forced through a failed marriage dominatrix and an artistic temperament at odds with so many other peopleunintentional detective in [[Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery by Jennifer Mason|Preposterous]], to let properties to tenants he does not like, for $120 when she investigated and unravelled a monthseries of disappearances. The lodgers might not like the state In ''Partitions of the buildings - ceilings falling through and so on - but thatUnity''s another matter, she sets her mind to solving a murder. He would much prefer to be left alone in front of his little Olivetti typewriter and create art. He runs a literary journal, of a kind, called "Soap", which no-one likes, no-one reads (and often, with dodgy, cheap printing, no-one could physically read it anyway), and which makes him poorer in time, money and spirit.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0297856499</amazonuk>B09LQR9FRF
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Chris Cleave Will Carver|title=IncendiaryThe Daves Next Door|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=When the Book Reviewing Gods first suggested I re-read this book (the first time they have asked such Five strangers come together in one moment as a repeat of me) I felt like writing them suicide bomber prepares to detonate his vest on a letterLondon tube line. But soon any draft I might have made would have referred not so much to the duplicated experienceAs their fates overlap, but the joys of rediscovered depthsstory is told in backwards order, characters lost and found again, and a plot leading up to be experienced once morethe fateful moment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0340998482</amazonuk>1914585186}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Patrick NeateJennifer Mason|title=JerusalemPreposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=With cricket's so'A struggling poetry zine, a mom-called Barmy Army and their murderously boorish renditions of Jerusalem-pop mobile diner in the Northern California redwoods, a 400-meter hurdler who just missed the rise 2004 Olympics, a women's track coach with a yen for bullwhips, a billionaire with a state-of -the BNP and the renewed media focus on immigration-art S&M dungeon, the question of British national identity has rarely been more a man serving a life sentence in the spotlight. Patrick Neate'Alabama, an enigmatic signature, K(s timely new novel Jerusalem, the third in x), on a loosely fitting trilogy, tackles the spiky issues of identitycheap oil painting, race and the impact of colonialism an erotic art dealer in this entertaining yet in some ways frustrating bookGeorgia...|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1905490410</amazonuk>}}''
{{newreview|author=Penelope Lively|title=Family Album|rating=3.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=''Family Album''is the sixteenth novel Penelope Lively has written for adults. As the title suggests, it This is just a series sample of snapshots, episodes from the life cast of an upper middle class family. Charles, the father, is a writer who, it seems, never wanted marriage characters and children and who spends the majority of his time hidden away settings in his study, working on his next bookPreposterous. His wifeAs you can see, Alison, was the original 1960s Earth Mother whose whole life revolved around having and bringing some keeping up children. will be required! The children have all, unfortunately for Alison, now grown upbasic premise of this mystery story goes like this. And then there's Ingrid, the Scandinavian au pair, still there after all these years. One wonders why.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1905490453</amazonuk>B09STS96HS
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Catherine Ryan HydeB0B2N7MVYM|title=When I Found YouThe Calculations of Rational Men|author=Daniel Godfrey
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=It's the 10th of December 1962 when we first meet Dr Joseph Marr. Just to put what happens in context, the Cuban missile crisis is still very fresh in people'Lost and insecures minds. The world has barely had a chance to breathe out. But for Joe Marr, you found me, you found meit's not the missile crisis that's at the front of his mind. He's been convicted of murder. With the current state of medical knowledge, it's hard to think otherwise than that the prosecution would never have been brought but Joe Marr has spent his first few days in HMP Queen's Bench, a relatively new prison. He''s just getting used to his roommate, Mervyn, and learning to be wary of the McArthur brothers.}}
It's 1960, and Move on the morning when Nathan McCann sets off on a pre-dawn duck hunting trip, he hasn't the faintest inkling that the day will turn out to be anything other than ordinary. He just wants to enjoy being out in the crisp autumn air with Sadie, his loyal retriever, and maybe bring home a few birds for dinner. But this is no normal day, and before he even gets to the lake, Nathan's life changes forever with the discovery of a newborn baby, barely alive having been abandoned in the woods. A few days later as he reluctantly relinquishes control of the boy to its maternal grandmother, he asks the woman to promise him one thing: that at some point in the future, when she feels the time is right, she will facilitate a meeting between the two, finder and the found. Time passes and life moves on, but years later the two do cross paths again, with rather unexpected consequences.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>055277572X</amazonuk>}}[[Newest Graphic Novels Reviews]]

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