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[[Category:General Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]]==General fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Rachel HeathOnyi Nwabineli|title=The Finest Type Of English WomanhoodAllow Me to Introduce Myself
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=It was just after Anuri spent her childhood on display to the end world, thanks to her step-mother Ophelia's increasingly popular presence on social media, where she posted every step of the Second World War Anuri's childhood for sponsorships and influencer deals and seventeen year old Laura Trelling was at a loose end in her Sussex village, basically, monetary gain. She didn't really fit Now Anuri is in with the other young people her twenties and she is slowly trying to regain her eccentric parents were becoming more confidence and more isolatedto get her life back, suing her step-mother to take down the extent that Laura was embarrassed by their carelessness of content about her welfare. A chance encounter with Paul Lovell was Anuri is battling alcoholism, failing to change everything start her PhD, undergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online and before long receiving money from them for doing so. Most importantly, she is desperately worried about her little sister, who is the new focus of Ophelia's online empire. Can she was on save her sister, and perhaps herself and her way to a South Africa not yet burdened relationship with apartheid.her father at the same time?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099532743</amazonuk>0861546873
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Bobbie Darbyshire1529153298|title=Truth GamesThe List of Suspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey|rating=45
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The central theme in this book It's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is sex - and lots of itPrime Minister. (A woman? I mean, honestly... ) WeShe're introduced to a group of mainly twentysomethings and thirtysomethingss not what's worrying Miv's family, though. Women have been disappearing. Men and womenWell, they've been murdered, but to have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. Most of them are attractive and hold down glamorous jobs and careersMiv's upset because she's overheard that her father wants to move the family 'Down South'. All in rude healthWhen you're from Yorkshire, with wonderful social lives and trendy homesDown South is a frightening, foreign place, best avoided. They all appearFor Miv, on the surfacemove would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, and she'll do anything to be a bunch of shiny, happy peopleprevent that. What on earth could be missing?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1905614721</amazonuk>She's not worried about the dangers or that her Mum's stopped talking - to anyone.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Anthony Quinn1035906708|title=The Rescue ManDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=This love affair tale with the city of Liverpool is mostly told through the eyes We tend to think of architect Tom Baines. With the Second World War loomingMaria Callas as Greek, Baines is desperately working on a book but she was born to capture the memory of buildings that are at riskGreek parents in Manhattan, New York, in December 1923 and appears a man only moved to Athens when she was thirteen. Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to 'Callas' to make it more manageable in the States. When she was back in love with Athens - supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for her voice - she was raised under the past Nazi occupation by a mother who mercilessly exploited her and solidmade no secret of her preference for her elder sister, cold structures than mankindJackie.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099531933</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Paul MurrayAlexander McCall Smith|title=Skippy DiesThe Perfect Passion Company|rating=34.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Life in Seabrook College is a mess. Some of the staff are young enough to remember their own school days there, but many are certainly too old for that. A lot of the boys are victims of ragging and bullying for being too chunky, or too smart - but some are so chunky and smart there's a certain kudos to them. The female of the species is a thing only spied from their own school next door, and only met by selling them ritalin as a weight-control pill, or meeting them at the very rare combined school disco.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241141826</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Sapphire|title=Precious|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Precious Jones The Perfect Passion Company is a sixteen year old black girl from Harlem – well she's never actually been out of Harlem – dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and when we meet operating as an alternative to all the online apps in providing a more personal, tailored service. Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she's pregnant by her own father could come and look after the business, as Ness is planning to take a trip to Canada to get away for the second timea while. Her first child was Katie is coming out of a girl break up with a bad boyfriend, and she was born with Down's Syndromeso jumps at the chance to come home to Edinburgh. With unconscious irony Precious calls her ''Little Mongo'' And so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, thanks to 44 Scotland Street and leaves her the Isabel Dalhousie novels, but with some new characters who quickly begin to live with her grandmothercharm. When Katie has no experience in running a business, or in match-making, but Ness has full confidence in her second pregnancy becomes obvious sheabilities, and there's expelled from school always her very helpful (and joins an alternative education programme. Precious really wants rather handsome) neighbour, William, to learn and the book is the story of her journey from illiteracy to maturity.lend a hand…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099548720</amazonuk>1846976596
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ru FreemanDean Koontz|title=A Disobedient GirlThe Bad Weather Friend|rating=4.5|genre=General FictionParanormal|summary=''A Disobedient Girl'' follows two women struggling to retain control of their lives in the face of servitude. Latha Benny is having a servant girl to the affluent Vithanage familyterrifically bad day. He loses his job, whose daughterhe loses his fiancee, Thara, is Latha's ageand his house gets trashed. As children Oh, the girls are the best of friendsand someone has delivered a really weird, but they are destined disturbing coffin-sized object to be separated by classhis home, which and it's possible that whoever or whatever was inside is made painfully obvious when boys come into the picture. Meanwhile, Biso serves a cruel and drunken husband who beats her and terrorises her childrenthing that has trashed his house! The thing is, one of whom Benny is another man's love childthe very last person to deserve all this bad luck. Biso's husband murdered her lover in He is a hateful rage when he uncovered her affair and she realises nice person. A really nice person. So fortunately for Benny it turns out that she must escape the delivery to his house if she and her children are is a new friend, a bad weather friend called Spike, who has been sent to livehelp him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a good person. Latha too seeks escape Spike is going to take care of Benny, but she finds it in the arms and will certainly take care of TharaBenny's boyfriend enemies, if he, Benny, and this sets off Harper (a chain of events that will echo far waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into her futureBenny's wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0670917958</amazonuk>1662500491
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Panos KarnezisKatherine Howe|title=The ConventA True Account|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Our Lady of Mercy Hannah Masury is living in Boston, having been sent to live with a small convent on the Spanish sierra family who run an inn, and being made up of to work there from a young age. When she hears there is to be a handful hanging of devoted nuns who live their lives simplysome pirates in the town, carrying out their daily duties like clockworkshe decides to go and watch. However things change when Enthralled and horrified in equal measure, Hannah finds herself embroiled in a suitcase containing a newborn baby is left mysteriously outside young boy's death at the convent doorshands of two vicious pirates. The Mother Superior She hides away, Sister Maria Inesso that they don't find and kill her too, believes the baby and then to escape them completely she runs away to be sea, dressing as a miracle boy and plans to keep him in joining the convent, but the other sisters do not agreenotorious Ned Low's pirate ship as a cabin boy. During She soon finds herself in the events that follow the true characters thick of the nuns inside the convent things when there is a mutiny on board, and from there we are revealed and the peace that the sisters enjoy is stripped away to show the tension that has been bubbling away under caught up in her rip roaring tale of life on the surfaceocean waves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0224079344</amazonuk>0861547438
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Glenn Cooper1471180158|title=Book of SoulsMaybe Tomorrow|author=Penny Parkes
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Area 51 is not what you think it is. No Jamie Matson works in an upper- class grocery store, for a man who's a control freak with all that UFO kerfuffle is a smokescreen for the powers that be to hide even better the most unusual manuscript known to (subtlety of a handful of) mankind - the most unearthlyhalf brick. Jamie's son, singularBo, 'has his problems'. He's asthmatic and unsettling bookthe more you read, in thousands and thousands of volumesthe more you'll suspect that he's on the autistic spectrum. All except one, which is about Sometimes Jamie needs to come under take time off at short notice - she's a frequent flier in the hammer in a London auction houselocal A&E and sometimes Bo's not fit enough to go to school. Our hero Will Piper must go very reluctantly Missed shifts or the need to be away on the trail of it time to pick Bo up from school are occasions when Jamie can be controlled and its secrets, a trail which will force him and others to become entangled with shadowy agents, who put in turn know the very day of all their enemy's deathswrong. It was going to come to a head.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099534479</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=P Robert SmithB0CKD1L5JL|title=Sunday Daffodil and Other Happy Endings|rating=3.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=''Sunday Daffodil and Other Happy Endings'' is the sort of book you finish with the feeling that you've just read something with a million different meanings. Don't be surprised if you feel like you should start the whole thing again but with your brain more fully engaged, and perhaps that's the whole point.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099535238</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewRadio Free Olympia|author=Isabel Ashdown|title=GlasshopperJeffrey Dunn
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Thirteen-year-old Jake Petr is just like any other boy on an orphan. Rescued by the cusp of puberty: new music strange, reclusive Bear, he is brought up far from bustling cities and Saturday jobs are at busy human society, in the top forests of his agenda, while girls are the strange exotic creatures that must be looked at but not touched (particularly his pretty Classics teacher). But behind closed doors, Jake struggles to cope with his motherWashington's ongoing battle with depression Olympic Peninsula. After Bear dies and alcoholism. His father moved out a few weeks ago. So has his older brotherbrief sojourn in human company, Matthew. That leaves Jake as the man of the house: the one who must remember to get him and little brotherarmed with only a pirate radio transmitter, AndyPetr goes on a journey through the forest, up in time for school in broadcasting the morning; the one making toast for dinner; strange, wild and the one keeping a watchful eye over his mother to make sure she doesn't get herself into any serious troublerarely heard voices he encounters.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0954930975</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Keith ColquhounSarah Marsh|title=Beyond ReasonA Sign of Her Own|rating=43.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=''Beyond Reason'' is After a deceptively complex novel - bout of scarlet fever as a black comedy about the conflicts within religionchild, Ellen Lark loses her hearing. The main focus Suddenly plunged into a world of the plotsilence, Edward Bunyan, is everything about her life changes. Living in a radical within time when the Church use of England who sign language was seen as something only savages do, Ellen is trying sent to take religion in a new (and rather amusing) direction in order school where she is taught to get the public interested in it againlip read, but physically restrained from signing. Bunyan claims to have a direct link with God as well as spiritual powers From here, such as being able to levitate she ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the deaf and read mindsusing a system called Visible Speech. At the same time, which leave his colleague Bell is working on other inventions and old college friend, Reverend Ralph 'Marmy' Marmadukeideas, unsure about both his friendship with Bunyan and his own religious beliefsEllen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a complicated tangle of espionage.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1904529348</amazonuk>1035401614
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jonathan Buckley B0BC3YTCMR|title=ContactGood Girls Die|author=Ayura Ayira|rating=24.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Dominic Pattison's life began to veer off course badly on a Tuesday in May'This story is not for everyone. It's a fairly banal Tuesday. The kind of Tuesday that Dominic probably experiences quite frequently. He feels the need to tell us about it. '
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Wayne J Harris1472263936|title=Sins of the Angel|rating=3.5|genre=Fantasy|summary=Dr Gideon Matthews, a shouty hellfire and damnation preacher, has just delivered a sermon all about the evils of women being allowed into the church hierarchy and, on his way home afterwards, he is murdered. The following day however he wakes up in hospital or, actually, an angel called Gabriel finds himself inside Dr Matthews' body, able to recall Dr Matthews' memories and thoughts and feelings but acting now as himself. Gabriel goes a little bit wild, finding himself overwhelmed by the new feelings and desires he experiences in this body, sinning left, right and centre and causing scandal at his every move. He is also wondering for what purpose he has been brought into this body and finds that he is dreaming about a demon, someone who is persuading an unknown monk to commit murders in God's name and who seems to be getting closer and closer to Dr Matthews in order to kill him too...|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1438994699</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFigurine|author=Stephen M Irwin|title=The DarkeningVictoria Hislop|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=This book has the 'S' word written all over it. No, not sex - supernatural. So, it's got all things a bit spooky, not-quite-right, strange coincidences. They are sprinkled throughout like rock salt. I must admit that when I read the blurb on the back cover with its supernatural theme, I gave an inward groan. Not really my cup of tea. But I'm open-minded and I'll read anything once. I'm glad I did. Irwin is Australian. For some reason I haven't read too many books by Australian authors, so I was keen to get reading.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0751543969</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Robert Kaplow|title=Me and Orson Welles|rating=45
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Richard Samuels sees everything It was in terms of a performance1968 that Helena McCloud made her first trip to Greece. She was alone: her mother, Greek by birth, through had left the rose-tinted lens of the theatrical celebrities he listens family home and refused to on the radio. So when he stumbles onto the Broadway stage through a chance encounter with Orson Wellesreturn, but Mary and Hamish (Helena's parents) felt that it seems as would be a pity if all his dreams may be about Helena grew up without knowing her grandparents or understanding her Greek heritage. Her trip to come true. He goes from being the guy that all family apartment in up-market Kolonaki would be the girls see as a friend, one first of several annual visits. She grew to love her grandmother and the bookish kids at schoolfamily's maid, Dina, to the glamour but was wary - and frightened - of mingling with stars her grandfather, retired general Stamatis Papagiannis. He was proud of his close connections to the stageJunta and expected his family to uphold his values but saw no reason to accommodate them. We follow Richard His prejudices included Helena's struggle to balance this newly discovered wonderland red hair and his school life, not to mention his disapproving mothergreen eyes - inherited from her father's Scottish ancestors.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099540193</amazonuk>
}}
|rating=3
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=We're in the world Michael Mace, Head of modern art. A couple who met Security, at art college are on the verge of breaking upa top secret biological research facility, as her success at fine arts is only bettered by his sudden rise to fame among 55 people who die when a virus is released in the world of his conceptual, pompous bits of (almost literally) rubbish and nothinga bio-hazard accident. We're also Finding himself in a makeshift mortuary, covered in the world of the wannabe stars and starletsplastic, he has a sense that something very, trying very bad has happened to make him – and only him – as he sits up and looks around at the jump from well-thought shrouded bodies of provincial comedy theatre to Hollywoodhis dead friends and former colleagues. And in the background in both instances, are guru-type Svengalis, pulling stringsAs he recovers his senses, and aiming to do as much as he realises that there is morally justifiable - and a lot more - to get their charges to famesomething different about him; he can ''feel'' everything. ''Everything''. And a bit of contract killing and murder on the sideMichael isn't ''Michael'' anymore.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0954337751</amazonuk>1662500467}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Billy HopkinsB0BVDC2VWH|title=Tommy's WorldThe Grave Listeners|author=William Frank
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Tommy Hopkins was born in October 1886 in Collyhurst, one of The village is isolated and poor. It's surrounded by a Witching Forest. And the poorer, innervillagers subsist largely by farming Uphegia plants - its bread-city suburbs of Manchesterlike fruit provides nutrition and its blossom provides herbal medicines. His father had quite a good job and there wasn't a lot The black wood of money to spare but Tommy remembered the home as being filled with love forest provides heat and warmth, roofs on homes, and laughtereven gallows, if needed. He was The fear of being buried alive is an only child but thought that he was spoilt in terms of affection rather than existential superstition in the form of worldly goods. All that was to change when his father died of spinal meningitis village and he and his mother had to move into cheaper lodgings. Even that tenuous security wasn't to last for long – his mother died is the reason Volushka, a drunken, self-indulgent, lazy lout of a heart attack in her thirties, leaving Tommy an orphan before he was eight years oldman is tolerated.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755359585</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Diane ChamberlainB0BYF82CXT|title=The Bay at MidnightSemi-Detached|author=Deborah Stone
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The story starts properly when ''Bill and Amanda are living in a letter is discovered. It will have devastating consequences for several families semi- detached house, stuck in a depressing rut of boredom and life will never be the same again. Apparentlydisappointment, when Terry and Fiona – glamorous, the wrong person was convicted for a murdersuccessful and very much in love – move in next door. MoreoverDespite their different outlooks on life, the writer of this letter couples befriend each other and life appears to know who did commit this crimeimprove for both pairs. UnfortunatelyBut all is not what it seems, the writer dies before able to make contact with the policeand their increasingly interconnected relationships are fated for tragedy.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0778303640</amazonuk>''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Hazel McHaffie Shalini Boland|title=Right to DieThe Silent Bride|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=It must be hard enough watching your partner die just onceAlice and Seth are a match made in heaven. He is everything she has been searching for; handsome, but for Naomiaccomplished, clever, funny; total and utter husband-material. She is all he could possibly want in a wife; beautiful, successful, Adam's death confident… and so the inevitable proposal is just eagerly accepted by Alice and the beginningwedding is planned and set. Coming across his personal When the much-anticipated day arrives, private diary of his time from diagnosis to subsequent demiseAlice is walked down the aisle by her father, beaming with pride and excitement as she is forced to relive surveys the awful months during which his body began congregation – their friends assembled to betray him celebrate this joyful day and when Seth turns to face his will to live was replaced with a will approaching bride, Alice's world implodes because she has absolutely no idea who the man at the altar is, who is waiting for her to die...on become his own termswife.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1906307210</amazonuk>1662507089
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Morag Joss1787636003|title=The Night FollowingGirls of Summer|author=Katie Bishop|rating=45
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Distracted by It was the discovery summer when Rachel Evans turned eighteen that her husband has been having an affairshe and Caroline went backpacking around Greece and arrived on the island. Rachel wasn't exactly innocent but she was, a middle-aged woman loses concentration while driving along a quiet laneperhaps, killing Ruth Mitchellnaive, so when thirty-four-year-old Alistair Wright started to take an elderly cyclist. The woman doesn't wait for the police to arrive; she goes home and parks interest in her car in the garage where , she smashes it almost beyond recognitionwas flattered rather than wary. When her arrogant husband sees the damage It was quite a while before he believes it's been done made any sort of physical approach to punish him her and he packs his bags. After a few days the woman goes to the home of the dead woman; by that time she doesn't go to the door, but from a hidden spot nearby she can see the widower, an elderly gentleman who is clearly not coping wellwas obsessed by him. Wracked with guilt Alistair worked for Henry Taylor, looking after his interests on the woman makes a decision: island and in particular in the only way she can atone for her actions is to step into the shoes of bar where all the dead womangirls either worked or partied.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0715638815</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Shirley JacksonAmanda Craig|title=The Haunting of Hill HouseThree Graces|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=There was a time before Stephen KingFew styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the state-of-the-nation novel. There was time before ''The Shining''s something so utterly compelling about any writer who can catch hold of the atmosphere of the day and capture it, crafting an image of the country as it stands in one particular moment. There was a time when To say that Amanda Craig is skilled at doing this would be embarrassingly inadequate: she'horror' was not rooted in blood, guts and gores practically synonymous with the genre of contemporary social fiction at this point. I owe She has such a slight apology to Mr King, because along with gift for weaving the gutsier side ongoing issues of the genreday into the lives of her characters in a way that feels natural and lived-in, never making them ciphers for social commentary but instead fully realised people, I will own that he is a master at suspensegrappling with issues far larger than themselves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0141191449</amazonuk>140871468X
}}
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Meet Barry Johns. You'll see him coming - he's five hundred pounds if hePineapple Street''s an ounceis the story of three women: Sasha, Darley and Georgiana. Darley and George are sisters and Sasha is married to their brother Cord. Just donThey're Stocktons, only Sasha isn't ever lend him money - he wona Stockton by birth so she isn't pay it backreadily accepted into the tribe. A businessman with a share of a nightclub on CyprusThe problem's exacerbated when the clan matriarch, he goes there for a customary breakTilda, asks Cord and finds his sort-of moll-type sort-of girlfriend has been installed as Sasha if they'd like to move into the bar dancerPineapple Street property. He manages Tilda and Chip have renovated and downsized to tread both on another property, a street or so away, which they own. They won't need any of the toes of his local colleague furniture from Pineapple Street, so Sasha and some Greek rivalsCord can move straight in. And when Nominally, they had a rival in London chases him up for thousands of pounds owed he decides choice but that wasn't the reality. Darley and Georgiana start to pack up and shut upcall Sasha 'the gold digger'. It She's a big stone living in ''their'' family home. They use it so often that hides him, but he leaves a very awkward trail for everyone wanting they abbreviate it to upturn it and get their revenge'the GD'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0955855713</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Anne RiceEmily Critchley|title=Angel Time|rating=2.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Toby O'Dare is an extremely efficient hit man with a passion for music, history and playing his beloved lute. He's also something of a lost soul having turned his back on God many years ago. One day while on a 'job' he is visited by an Angel who offers him a chance at redemption. Toby agrees to become the Angel's human instrument and help save lives rather than take them. He is sent on an assignment to help a Jewish couple accused of murder in 13th Century England.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701178140</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=John E Smelcer|title=The Great DeathPuzzling Afternoon
|rating=4
|genre=General FictionCrime|summary='As Western Europeans settled Alaska84 year old Edie has lived in the same small town for almost her whole life, they brought but now she is facing a move as her son wants to move to another house and bring Edie to live with them diseases against which the indigenous people had no natural immunityhis family, as Edie is starting to lose her memory. At However, Edie is tormented by the beginning memory of the twentieth centuryher childhood friend, fully two thirds of all Alaska natives perished from a pandemic of measlesLucy, smallpoxwho went missing over 60 years ago, and influenza. No community the worry that there was a secret she was sparedkeeping for Lucy that somehow might be the thing that reveals the truth of what happened all that time ago. In most cases, half of a village After 'seeing's population died within a week. In some casesLucy in the high street, there were no survivors. It just as she was the end last time she saw her, she starts to find pockets of an ancient way of lifememories coming back to her. Natives still refer to the dreadful period And yet as she remembers the Great Deathpast, 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?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1842709194</amazonuk>1804181250
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sue TownsendMadelaine Lucas|title=Adrian Mole: The Prostrate YearsThirst for Salt
|rating=5
|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Adrian Mole is now 39¼ and living''Love, quite literallyI'd read, in a pigsty, sharing an all too thin party wall with his parents and working in a bookshop. It's not quite how life was supposed to turn out. As he spends his days wrestling his strong willed 5 year old Gracie into her school uniform, trying to reassure glamorous wife Daisy that life in the provinces is not as bad as she would like to believe, be a light and desperately attempting to talk his mother out of her quest to appear on the vile ''Jeremy Kyle'' showweightless feeling, worrying over his increasingly frequent visits to the toilet is really the last thing he needs. And yet, the worst is still to come. Think a crumbling economy, redundancy, affairs, death, a family member challenging him in the novel writing stakes and a query over the big C – it's going to be a tough year but I had always longed for the Moles, and theregravity's little that ol' Adrian can do except sit back and watch his life spin out of control around him.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0718153707</amazonuk>}}
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Dave Eggers0008506337|title=The Wild ThingsGarnett Girls|author=Georgina Moore|rating=45
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Meet MaxThe love affair between Margo Garnett and poet Richard O'Leary was all-consuming, apparently on both sides. Margo was just sixteen when they fell in love. When I say he sometimes gets the wrong end of the stick about adults, or dislikes his Richard was twenty-one and described by Margo's motheras 'an older man'. Her parents worried that Richard's new boyfriend, or gets influence would take her away from what they felt she could achieve - going to Oxford and having a bit feisty when he feels glittering career. In the need for revengeevent, I am certainly understating they eloped and Richard took her away from the factsIsle of Wight. He is Margo did go to Oxford and went on to become a bit well-respected journalist. The couple had three children: Rachel, Imogen and Sasha. Life was lived in London and holidays were spent at Sandcove, the family home on the Isle of a rascal to say the leastWight. But all that might change when he finds himself travelling Even then the doubts about Richard's drinking were never far from Margo's mind: ''she would never be able to a strange land of roisterous animals, and ends up installed as their kingleave him in charge''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241144221</amazonuk>}}
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sylvie Nickels 1914585402|title=Another Kind of LovingDashboard Elvis is Dead|author=David F Ross
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Mike Hennessy was a journalist whose speciality was the war-torn parts of the world and October 1992 found him in Sarajevo visiting a childrenI reviewed David F Ross's home to get a story. The orphanage was on the right side of town – away from the main barrage – but it had few other advantages. book [[There was no heat and little food or water, but it was here that he found Jasminka, part Serb, part Bosniak and eleven or twelve years old. In a phone call to his wife Mike suggested that perhaps Jasminka could come and stay with them for a while.'s Only One Danny Garvey by David F Ross|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1905200129</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=rashbre|title=The Triangle|rating=3|genre=General Fiction|summary=BrianThere's trip to the art gallery was Only One Danny Garvey]] a treat, courtesy couple of a private ticket from a friend years back and remember being absolutely floored by how powerful and the white room affecting it was much better than the last gallery he'd visited. It wasa gripping, thoughemotionally wounding read, to be his last such visit as he and rereading my review of it my main takeaway was silently knifed by a professional hit man. His friends were stunned, that I might not just at his death, but at the way in which it had come about. What could Brian have been doing to attract ''that'' sort of attention? Jake had given him the ticket and lavished enough praise on it dawned on him that he had been the target rather than Brian. Some recent events clicked into place…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1425171893</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Laura SolomonLucy Ashe|title=An Imitation of LifeClara and Olivia
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=We The year is 1933. The place? Sadler's Wells. Ballerinas Clara and Olivia are introduced to sisters, twins no less. Identical on the baby girloutside but not, Celia with a detailedwe learn, blow-by-blow account of her dreadful physical condition, from her unusual eyes, her even more unusual teeth, her lumpy body and on the ever-growing hump inside. And not on her shoulder. Forget the Elephant Manstage, here we have elephant babyeither. Everything is stacked against herBecause there's a lot that builds a dancer. She is abandoned by her motherSome things that can be taught or learnt – discipline, attention to detail – and some things, that ''je ne sais quoi'', her father is unknown. And as if all that wasndon't enough to make you weepcome from the classroom. A stage presence, a charm, she is unceremoniously dumped on a doorstep - to die. But she doesn't'joie de vivre''. She lives. And what an extraThe difference between a hard-ordinary life Laura Solomon has mapped out for herworker, and a star.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1904529437</amazonuk>0861544080
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tamsin Reeves Heather Fawcett|title=A Place Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of SafetyFaeries
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=There are lots of reasons Emily Wilde is an expert academic scholar on faerie lore, and she has travelled extensively, and researched meticulously, to take in a lodger for your spare roomwrite her life's work, but for Martha one of the best is to get one up on her recently departed scoundrel very first encyclopaedia of an ex-husbandfaeries. And it's not like her financial situation Whilst she is looking too rosy since he left her for another woman – a woman who brilliant at research and speaking to faeries, she is also pregnant not so good with his childpeople. The fact that her lodger So when she finds herself far, far North in the small village of Hrafvsnik, having somehow offended the village matriarch, she is a Henot sure what she has done, nor how to redeem herself and that he's a Foreigner (and from Afghanistan, no less) is just the icing put her final investigations for her book back on the cakeright track. Colin's going to be furious Enter Wendell Bambleby, her dashingly handsome and insufferable rival who arrives unexpectedly, all charm and Martha candelight, much to Emily't waits frustration. But why is he here? What does he want? And what exactly is going on with the faerie folk around Hravsnik?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1849231370</amazonuk>0356519120
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Alexander McCall Smith1398515388|title=The Comfort of Saturdays Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (Isabel Dalhousie 5translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=As always with Alexander McCall SmithFirst of all, it was the earthquake, this fifth book deep in the Sunday Philosophy series benefits from being read ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, in sequence with turn, caused the previous titlesnuclear meltdown. One of the beautiful aspects of his writing is that his characters develop slowlyThe result was complete and utter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, 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 loss of an AMS readlivelihoods was widespread. In this episode Isabel is busy taking care The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of her son, Charlie, looking priorities but - six months after her niece Cat's delicatessen, editing the review and struggling with her own personal fears over her relationship with Jamietsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. And she wouldnHe wasn't be Isabel if she didn't, somehow, get entangled in someone elsea dog person but the convenience store owner's problems, someone else's life, comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and here she finds herself trapped into investigating Tamon the case of a doctor whose career has been ruineddog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0349120552</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Matt HiltonChristopher Bowden|title=Dead Men's DustMr Magenta
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Joe Hunter helps people. ThatChristopher Bowden's what he does. Helatest novel is a patient untangling of a seemingly ordinary woman's been around the block life, carried out by her nephew after she has died. The aunt who always provided a safe harbour and a little bit of indulgence to say that he has learned a trick or two along the way might be something of an understatement. No-one really knows young nephew had had a much about Joe Hunter more interesting life than that nephew Stephen had ever realised and certainly his past is not something that many would be brave enough it seems to him an obligation to poke around infind it all out.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0340978236</amazonuk>B0B6Z9VJDW
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Imogen Parker Jennifer Mason|title=This Little WorldPartitions of Unity
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=I haven't read the Here at Bookbag Towers, we first two books met Elizabeth Cromwell, dominatrix and unintentional detective in the trilogy but that didn't spoil my enjoyment [[Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery by Jennifer Mason|Preposterous]], when she investigated and unravelled a series of disappearances. In ''This Little WorldPartitions of Unity'', she sets her mind to solving a murder. They all stand alone as individual novels in their own right. Those readers who have already enjoyed the first two books will know most of the characters and will be keen to find out - what happens next.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0552151548</amazonuk>B09LQR9FRF
}}
{{Frontpage|author=Will Carver|title=The Daves Next Door|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary= Five strangers come together in one moment as a suicide bomber prepares to detonate his vest on a London tube line. As their fates overlap, the story is told in backwards order, leading up to the fateful moment.|isbn= 1914585186}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Keith Donohue Jennifer Mason|title=Angels of DestructionPreposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=In an opening chapter reminiscent of Cathy's ghostly appearance at 'A struggling poetry zine, a mom-and-pop mobile diner in the window in [[Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte|Wuthering Heights]]Northern California redwoods, widowed Margaret Quinn opens her front door in a 400-meter hurdler who just missed the middle of 2004 Olympics, a women's track coach with a yen for bullwhips, a wintry night to billionaire with a halfstate-of-frozenthe-art S&M dungeon, waif-like childa man serving a life sentence in Alabama, Norahan enigmatic signature, who appears to have arrived out of nowhere. Lonely and withdrawn in the wake of her daughter Erica'K(s disappearance many years earlier, Margaret takes x), on a cheap oil painting, an erotic art dealer in apparently-orphaned Norah, passing her off as her granddaughterGeorgia... But Norah is no ordinary child…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224086138</amazonuk>}}''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Naseem Rakha B0B2N7MVYM|title=The Crying TreeCalculations of Rational Men|author=Daniel Godfrey|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Irene Stanley had lived It's the 10th of December 1962 when we first meet Dr Joseph Marr. Just to put what happens in Illinois all her lifecontext, on a farm which had been the Cuban missile crisis is still very fresh in her family for generations and where the boundary of the property was the Mississippi riverpeople's minds. She The world has barely had friendsa chance to breathe out. But for Joe Marr, family and her church in it's not 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 (missile crisis that's pronounced ''Organ'' – only tourists say ''Or-ee-gon'')at the front of his mind. It wasnHe't long before they and their children, Shep and Bliss, made the long overland journey to their new homes been convicted of murder. Shep was a quiet boyWith the current state of medical knowledge, a talented musician it's hard to think otherwise than that the prosecution would never have been brought but against Joe Marr has spent his motherfirst few days in HMP Queen's expectations he settled into his Bench, a relatively new life wellprison. Irene wasnHe't totally convinceds just getting used to his roommate, Mervyn, but accepted that life wasn't too bad for and learning to be wary of the family. That all changed when she was called home from work to find that Shep had been murderedMcArthur brothers.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230740847</amazonuk>
}}
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