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[[Category:General Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]]==General fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Joan BradyOnyi Nwabineli|title=VenomAllow Me to Introduce Myself|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=David Marion isn't used to finding hitmen standing at his front door, though you wouldn't be able to tell that such a thing might be true, given the speed and competency with which Marion dispatches said hitman and then disappears, seemingly, off the face of the Earth. Dr. Helen Freyl is a physicist working for one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. She is also, up until his disappearance, David Marion's sometime lover and is grief-stricken to the point of distraction by his sudden absence from her life, as she believes him to be dead.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0743267907</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Jo Brand|title=The More You Ignore Me|rating=45
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Alice is growing up in a cottage in Herefordshire with Anuri spent her gentlechildhood on display to the world, hippy father and thanks to her step-motherOphelia's increasingly popular presence on social media, where she posted every step of Anuri's childhood for sponsorships and influencer deals and, Ginabasically, who spends monetary gain. Now Anuri is in her days standing around like a chain-smoking zombie because twenties and she is kept on medication slowly trying to regain her confidence and has been for years. Gina's first psychotic episode occured after Alice's birth. Then there was the episode Alice remembersto get her life back, the day suing her step-mother climbed onto the roof, naked, holding Smelly the hamster, and refused to come take downthe content about her. From that dayAnuri is battling alcoholism, the old Ginafailing to start her PhD, boisterous undergoing therapy and unconventional as she was, fell silent under the numbing impact of constant medication. Jo Brand tells the story of how Alice coped with the loneliness secretly abusing people online and worry of growing up with an ill motherreceiving money from them for doing so. Most importantly, as I'm sure the teenage Alice would see itshe is desperately worried about her little sister, we are shown who is the birth and life new focus of her obsession with Morrissey of The SmithsOphelia's online empire. In his music Can she finds escapism save her sister, and comfort perhaps herself and in him she finds a figure to adore. Her friends can't understand her fixation and relationship with her mother understands fixation a little too well (the local weatherman having been father at the object of one of her fervent obsessions). Morrissey sings with such sensitivity and angst that surely, Alice thinks, if she could just meet him and tell him her story he could help her and she could help him...same time?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0755322320</amazonuk>0861546873
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Chris Mullin1529153298|title=A Very British CoupThe List of Suspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=No one had anticipated that Labour would win the election, not least because the party leader was Harry Perkins, a former steel workerIt's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. His manifesto included promises to remove all American bases from British soil(A woman? I mean, public control of finance and the dismantling of media empireshonestly... ) There were a few other things too – but theyShe's not what's worrying Miv'll do for starterss family, though. The establishment – to a man – was appalledWomen have been disappearing. Press baronsWell, media stars, bishops and civil service mandarins knew that, for the good of the country (not themselvesthey've been murdered, but to have 'disappeared'doesn'of courset sound quite so frightening. Miv's upset because she') something had s overheard that her father wants to be done and move the family 'Down South'obviously'. When you' re from Yorkshire, Down South is a frightening, foreign place, best avoided. For Miv, the end move would justify whatever means they had mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, and she'll do anything to take to achieve their aimsprevent that. Harry Perkins had She's not worried about the dangers or that her Mum's stopped talking - to be removed from officeanyone.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687403</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Rachel Heath1035906708|title=The Finest Type Of English WomanhoodDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=It was just after the end We tend to think of the Second World War and seventeen year old Laura Trelling Maria Callas as Greek, but she was at a loose end born to Greek parents in her Sussex village. She didn't really fit Manhattan, New York, in with the other young people December 1923 and her eccentric parents were becoming more and more isolated, only moved to the extent that Laura Athens when she was embarrassed by their carelessness of her welfarethirteen. A chance encounter with Paul Lovell Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to change everything and before long 'Callas' to make it more manageable in the States. When she was on back in Athens - supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for her way to voice - she was raised under the Nazi occupation by a South Africa not yet burdened with apartheidmother who mercilessly exploited her and made no secret of her preference for her elder sister, Jackie.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099532743</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Bobbie DarbyshireAlexander McCall Smith|title=Truth GamesThe Perfect Passion Company|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The central theme Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in this book is sex - Edinburgh, run by Ness and lots of itoperating as an alternative to all the online apps in providing a more personal, tailored service. We're introduced Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the business, as Ness is planning to take a trip to Canada to get away for a group of mainly twentysomethings and thirtysomethingswhile. Men Katie is coming out of a break up with a bad boyfriend, and womenso jumps at the chance to come home to Edinburgh. Most of them are attractive And so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, thanks to 44 Scotland Street and hold down glamorous jobs and careersthe Isabel Dalhousie novels, but with some new characters who quickly begin to charm. All Katie has no experience in rude healthrunning a business, with wonderful social lives or in match-making, but Ness has full confidence in her abilities, and there's always her very helpful (and trendy homes. They all appearrather handsome) neighbour, on the surfaceWilliam, to be lend a bunch of shiny, happy people. What on earth could be missing?hand…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1905614721</amazonuk>1846976596
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Anthony QuinnDean Koontz|title=The Rescue ManBad Weather Friend
|rating=4.5
|genre=General FictionParanormal|summary=This love affair tale with Benny is having a terrifically bad day. He loses his job, he loses his fiancee, and his house gets trashed. Oh, and someone has delivered a really weird, disturbing coffin-sized object to his home, and it's possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the city of Liverpool thing that has trashed his house! The thing is, Benny is mostly told through the eyes of architect Tom Bainesvery last person to deserve all this bad luck. He is a nice person. A really nice person. With So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the Second World War loomingdelivery to his house is a new friend, a bad weather friend called Spike, Baines who has been sent to help him since Benny is desperately working on clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a book good person. Spike is going to capture the memory take care of Benny, and will certainly take care of buildings that are at riskBenny's enemies, if he, Benny, and appears Harper (a man more in love with the past and solid, cold structures than mankindwaitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099531933</amazonuk>1662500491
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Paul MurrayKatherine Howe|title=Skippy DiesA True Account|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 Hannah Masury is living in Boston, having been sent to live with a sixteen year old black girl family who run an inn, and being made to work there from Harlem – well a young age. When she's never actually been out hears there is to be a hanging of Harlem – some pirates in the town, she decides to go and when we meet her she's pregnant by her own father for the second timewatch. Her first child was Enthralled and horrified in equal measure, Hannah finds herself embroiled in a girl and she was born with Downyoung boy's Syndromedeath at the hands of two vicious pirates. With unconscious irony Precious calls her ''Little Mongo'She hides away, so that they don' t find and leaves kill her too, and then to live with her grandmother. When her second pregnancy becomes obvious escape them completely sheruns away to sea, dressing as a boy and joining the notorious Ned Low's expelled from school and joins an alternative education programmepirate ship as a cabin boy. Precious really wants to learn and She soon finds herself in the book thick of things when there is a mutiny on board, and from there we are caught up in her rip roaring tale of life on the story of her journey from illiteracy to maturityocean waves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099548720</amazonuk>0861547438
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ru Freeman1471180158|title=A Disobedient GirlMaybe Tomorrow|author=Penny Parkes|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Jamie Matson works in an upper-class grocery store, for a man who''A Disobedient Girl'' follows two women struggling to retain s a control of their lives in freak with all the face subtlety of servitudea half brick. Latha is a servant girl to the affluent Vithanage family Jamie's son, whose daughterBo, Thara, is Latha'has his problems'. He's age. As children, the girls are asthmatic and the best of friendsmore you read, but they are destined to be separated by class, which is made painfully obvious when boys come into the picture. Meanwhile, Biso serves a cruel and drunken husband who beats her and terrorises her children, one of whom is another manmore you'll suspect that he's love childon the autistic spectrum. Biso Sometimes Jamie needs to take time off at short notice - she's husband murdered her lover a frequent flier in a hateful rage when he uncovered her affair the local A&E and she realises that she must escape his house if she and her children are sometimes Bo's not fit enough to go to liveschool. Latha too seeks escape, but she finds it Missed shifts or the need to be away on time to pick Bo up from school are occasions when Jamie can be controlled and put in the arms of Thara's boyfriend and this sets off wrong. It was going to come to a chain of events that will echo far into her futurehead.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670917958</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Panos KarnezisB0CKD1L5JL|title=The ConventRadio Free Olympia|author=Jeffrey Dunn
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Our Lady of Mercy Petr is a small convent on an orphan. Rescued by the Spanish sierra made strange, reclusive Bear, he is brought up far from bustling cities and busy human society, in the forests of Washington's Olympic Peninsula. After Bear dies and a handful of devoted nuns who live their lives simplybrief sojourn in human company, carrying out their daily duties like clockwork. However things change when and armed with only a suitcase containing pirate radio transmitter, Petr goes on a newborn baby is left mysteriously outside journey through the convent doors. The Mother Superiorforest, Sister Maria Ines, believes the baby to be a miracle and plans to keep him in broadcasting the conventstrange, but the other sisters do not agree. During the events that follow the true characters of the nuns inside the convent are revealed wild and the peace that the sisters enjoy is stripped away to show the tension that has been bubbling away under the surfacerarely heard voices he encounters.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224079344</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Glenn CooperSarah Marsh|title=Book A Sign of Souls|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Area 51 is not what you think it is. No - all that UFO kerfuffle is a smokescreen for the powers that be to hide even better the most unusual manuscript known to (a handful of) mankind - the most unearthly, singular, and unsettling book, in thousands and thousands of volumes. All except one, which is about to come under the hammer in a London auction house. Our hero Will Piper must go very reluctantly on the trail of it and its secrets, a trail which will force him and others to become entangled with shadowy agents, who in turn know the very day of all their enemy's deaths.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099534479</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=P Robert Smith|title=Sunday Daffodil and Other Happy EndingsHer Own
|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=''Sunday Daffodil and Other Happy Endings'' is After a bout of scarlet fever as a child, Ellen Lark loses her hearing. Suddenly plunged into a world of silence, everything about her life changes. Living in a time when the sort use of book you finish with sign language was seen as something only savages do, Ellen is sent to a school where she is taught to lip read, but physically restrained from signing. From here, she ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the feeling that you've just read something with deaf and using a million different meaningssystem called Visible Speech. Don't be surprised if you feel like you should start At the whole thing again but with your brain more fully engagedsame time, Bell is working on other inventions and ideas, and perhaps that's the whole pointEllen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a complicated tangle of espionage.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099535238</amazonuk>1035401614
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Isabel AshdownB0BC3YTCMR|title=GlasshopperGood Girls Die|author=Ayura Ayira|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Thirteen-year-old Jake ''This story is just like any other boy on the cusp of puberty: new music and Saturday jobs are at the top of his agenda, while girls are the strange exotic creatures that must be looked at but not touched (particularly his pretty Classics teacher)for everyone. But behind closed doors, Jake struggles to cope with his mother's ongoing battle with depression and alcoholism. His father moved out a few weeks ago. So has his older brother, Matthew. That leaves Jake as the man of the house: the one who must remember to get him and little brother, Andy, up in time for school in the morning; the one making toast for dinner; and the one keeping a watchful eye over his mother to make sure she doesn't get herself into any serious trouble.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0954930975</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jonathan Buckley 1472263936|title=ContactThe Figurine|author=Victoria Hislop|rating=2.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Dominic PattisonIt was in 1968 that Helena McCloud made her first trip to Greece. She was alone: her mother, Greek by birth, had left the family home and refused to return, but Mary and Hamish (Helena's life began parents) felt that it would be a pity if Helena grew up without knowing her grandparents or understanding her Greek heritage. Her trip to veer off course badly on a Tuesday the family apartment in Mayup-market Kolonaki would be the first of several annual visits. ItShe grew to love her grandmother and the family's a fairly banal Tuesday. The kind maid, Dina, but was wary - and frightened - of Tuesday that Dominic probably experiences quite frequentlyher grandfather, retired general Stamatis Papagiannis. He feels was proud of his close connections to the need Junta and expected his family to tell us about it. In detailuphold his values but saw no reason to accommodate them. And, sadly, not in a particularly engaging styleHis prejudices included Helena's red hair and green eyes - inherited from her father's Scottish ancestors.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956003869</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Wayne J HarrisDean Koontz|title=Sins of the AngelAfter Death|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>}} {{newreview|author=Stephen M Irwin|title=The Darkening|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=This book has the 'S' word written all over it. NoMichael Mace, Head of Security, at a top secret biological research facility, not sex is among 55 people who die when a virus is released in a bio- supernaturalhazard accident. So, it's got all things Finding himself in a bit spookymakeshift mortuary, not-quite-rightcovered in plastic, strange coincidences. They are sprinkled throughout like rock salt. I must admit he has a sense that when I read something very, very bad has happened to him – and only him – as he sits up and looks around at the blurb on the back cover with its supernatural theme, I gave an inward groan. Not really my cup shrouded bodies of teahis dead friends and former colleagues. But IAs he recovers his senses, he realises that there is something different about him; he can ''feel'm open-minded and I'll read anything onceeverything. I'm glad I did. Irwin is Australian'Everything''. For some reason I havenMichael isn't read too many books by Australian authors, so I was keen to get reading''Michael'' anymore.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0751543969</amazonuk>1662500467}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Robert KaplowB0BVDC2VWH|title=Me and Orson WellesThe Grave Listeners|author=William Frank
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Richard Samuels sees everything in terms of The village is isolated and poor. It's surrounded by a performance, through Witching Forest. And the rosevillagers subsist largely by farming Uphegia plants - its bread-tinted lens like fruit provides nutrition and its blossom provides herbal medicines. The black wood of the theatrical celebrities he listens to forest provides heat and warmth, roofs on the radio. So when he stumbles onto the Broadway stage through a chance encounter with Orson Welleshomes, and even gallows, it seems as if all his dreams may be about to come trueneeded. He goes from The fear of being buried alive is an existential superstition in the guy village and that all is the girls see as reason Volushka, a frienddrunken, one of the bookish kids at schoolself-indulgent, to the glamour lazy lout of mingling with stars of the stage. We follow Richard's struggle to balance this newly discovered wonderland and his school life, not to mention his disapproving mothera man is tolerated.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099540193</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John Van der KisteB0BYF82CXT|title=The Man on the MoorSemi-Detached|author=Deborah Stone
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=In the summer of 1913 relations with Germany were deteriorating steadily, but there didn't seem to be any connection with the international situation when 'Bill and Amanda are living in a London clerk, George Stephenssemi-detached house, was found dead stuck in a country lane on the edge depressing rut of Dartmoor. The moor had been his passion boredom and disappointment, when Terry and he'd always been keen to escape London Fiona – glamorous, successful and return to Devon. It was an odd death but very much in love – move in all probability it would have been put down as an accident if George's mother had not announced that George was the son of the Kaisernext door. Despite her fondness for gin their different outlooks on life, the story she told was oddly compelling couples befriend each other and when life appears to improve for both pairs. But all is not what it was linked up with the fact that two German officers had been staying at a nearby farm George's death seemed less seems, and less like an accidenttheir increasingly interconnected relationships are fated for tragedy.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904744230</amazonuk>''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Frances DayShalini Boland|title=Dead Cat With FirelighterThe Silent Bride
|rating=3
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=We're Alice and Seth are a match made in the world of modern artheaven. A couple who met at art college are on the verge of breaking upHe is everything she has been searching for; handsome, accomplished, as her success at fine arts is only bettered by his sudden rise to fame in the world of his conceptualclever, pompous bits of (almost literally) rubbish funny; total and nothingutter husband-material. We're also She is all he could possibly want in a wife; beautiful, successful, confident… and so the world of inevitable proposal is eagerly accepted by Alice and the wannabe stars wedding is planned and starlets, trying to make the jump from well-thought of provincial comedy theatre to Hollywoodset. And in When the background in both instances, are gurumuch-type Svengalisanticipated day arrives, pulling stringsAlice is walked down the aisle by her father, beaming with pride and aiming to do excitement as much as is morally justifiable - and a lot more - to get she surveys the congregation – their charges friends assembled to fame. And a bit of contract killing celebrate this joyful day and murder on when Seth turns to face his approaching bride, Alice's world implodes because she has absolutely no idea who the sideman at the altar is, who is waiting for her to become his wife.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0954337751</amazonuk>1662507089
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Billy Hopkins1787636003|title=Tommy's WorldThe Girls of Summer|author=Katie Bishop|rating=45
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Tommy Hopkins It was born in October 1886 in Collyhurst, one of the poorer, inner-city suburbs of Manchestersummer when Rachel Evans turned eighteen that she and Caroline went backpacking around Greece and arrived on the island. His father had quite a good job and there Rachel wasn't a lot of money to spare exactly innocent but Tommy remembered the home as being filled with love and laughter. He she was , perhaps, naive, so when thirty-four-year-old Alistair Wright started to take an only child but thought that he interest in her, she was spoilt in terms of affection flattered rather than in the form of worldly goodswary. All that It was quite a while before he made any sort of physical approach to change when his father died of spinal meningitis her and he and his mother had to move into cheaper lodgingsby that time she was obsessed by him. Even that tenuous security wasn't to last Alistair worked for long – Henry Taylor, looking after his mother died of a heart attack interests on the island and in particular in her thirties, leaving Tommy an orphan before he was eight years oldthe bar where all the girls either worked or partied.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755359585</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Diane ChamberlainAmanda Craig|title=The Bay at MidnightThree Graces|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The story starts properly when a letter is discovered. It will have devastating consequences for several families Few styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the state-of- and life will never be the same again-nation novel. ApparentlyThere'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 wrong person was convicted for a murdercountry as it stands in one particular moment. Moreover, To say that Amanda Craig is skilled at doing this would be embarrassingly inadequate: she's practically synonymous with the writer genre of contemporary social fiction at this letter appears to know who did commit this crimepoint. UnfortunatelyShe has such a gift for weaving the ongoing issues of the day into the lives of her characters in a way that feels natural and lived-in, the writer dies before able to make contact never making them ciphers for social commentary but instead fully realised people, grappling with the policeissues far larger than themselves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0778303640</amazonuk>140871468X
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Hazel McHaffie 152915118X|title=Right to DiePineapple Street|author=Jenny Jackson|rating=34.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=It must be hard enough watching your partner die just once''Pineapple Street'' is the story of three women: Sasha, but for NaomiDarley and Georgiana. Darley and George are sisters and Sasha is married to their brother Cord. They're Stocktons, Adamonly Sasha isn't a Stockton by birth so she isn't readily accepted into the tribe. The problem's death is just exacerbated when the clan matriarch, Tilda, asks Cord and Sasha if they'd like to move into the beginningPineapple Street property. Coming across his personal Tilda and Chip have renovated and downsized to another property, a street or so away, private diary which they own. They won't need any of his time the furniture from diagnosis to subsequent demisePineapple Street, so Sasha and Cord can move straight in. Nominally, she is forced to relive they had a choice but that wasn't the awful months during which his body began to betray him reality. Darley and his will Georgiana start to live was replaced with a will to diecall Sasha 'the gold digger'. She's living in ''their'' family home.They use it so often that they abbreviate it to 'the GD'.on his own terms.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906307210</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Morag JossEmily Critchley|title=The Night FollowingOne Puzzling Afternoon
|rating=4
|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=Distracted by 84 year old Edie has lived in the discovery that same small town for almost her husband has been having an affairwhole life, but now she is facing a middle-aged woman loses concentration while driving along a quiet lanemove as her son wants to move to another house and bring Edie to live with his family, killing Ruth Mitchell, an elderly cyclist. The woman doesn't wait for the police as Edie is starting to arrive; she goes home and parks lose her car in memory. However, Edie is tormented by the garage where she smashes it almost beyond recognition. When memory of her arrogant husband sees childhood friend, Lucy, who went missing over 60 years ago, and the damage he believes it's been done to punish him and he packs his bags. After worry that there was a few days secret she was keeping for Lucy that somehow might be the woman goes to thing that reveals the home truth of the dead woman; she doesnwhat happened all that time ago. After 'seeing't go to Lucy in the doorhigh street, but from a hidden spot nearby just as she can see was the widowerlast time she saw her, an elderly gentleman who is clearly not coping wellshe starts to find pockets of memories coming back to her. Wracked with guilt And yet as she remembers the past, the woman makes a decision: the only way she can atone for is forgetting more and more in her actions is day to step into day life. Will she uncover the shoes of the dead woman.truth about Lucy's disappearance before her move, and before her memories are gone forever?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0715638815</amazonuk>1804181250
}}
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Jean's first Incident involved Uncle Leslie'Love, hyacinths and golf tees. ItI's perhaps best forgottend read, but Jean doesn't forget. Uncle Leslie figures large in her life - mostly on the golf course - until the War comes and he runs away was supposed to America. He's replaced by Tommy Prosser, be a grounded pilot who once saw the sun rise twice in one day light and excites as many questions in Jean as he ever answers. Tommy is replaced by Michaelweightless feeling, a policeman, whom Jean eventually marries. He doesnbut I had always longed for gravity't know why minks are excessively tenacious of life and he doesn't much care. But Jean does. She cares much less for the Dutch cap that Michael sent her off to obtain before the wedding and much less again for their rather disastrous adventures in the bedroom. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099540096</amazonuk>}}
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Owen Sheers|title=White Ravens (New Stories from the Mabinogion)|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 with a share of a nightclub on Cyprus, he goes there for a customary break, and finds his sort-of moll-type sort-of girlfriend has been installed as the bar dancer. He manages to tread both on the toes of his local colleague and some Greek rivals. And when a rival in London chases him up for thousands of pounds owed he decides to pack up and shut up. It's a big stone that hides him, but he leaves a very awkward trail for everyone wanting to upturn it and get their revenge.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0955855713</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Anne Rice|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 Smelcer0008506337|title=The Great Death|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary='As Western Europeans settled Alaska, they brought with them diseases against which the indigenous people had no natural immunity. At the beginning of the twentieth century, fully two thirds of all Alaska natives perished from a pandemic of measles, smallpox, and influenza. No community was spared. In most cases, half of a village's population died within a week. In some cases, there were no survivors. It was the end of an ancient way of life. Natives still refer to the dreadful period as the Great Death.'|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1842709194</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewGarnett Girls|author=Sue Townsend|title=Adrian Mole: The Prostrate YearsGeorgina Moore
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Adrian Mole is now 39¼ The love affair between Margo Garnett and living, quite literallypoet Richard O'Leary was all-consuming, apparently on both sides. Margo was just sixteen when they fell in a pigsty, sharing love. Richard was twenty-one and described by Margo's mother as 'an all too thin party wall with his older man'. Her parents and working in a bookshop. Itworried that Richard's not quite how life was supposed influence would take her away from what they felt she could achieve - going to turn outOxford and having a glittering career. 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 In the provinces is not as bad as she would like to believeevent, they eloped and desperately attempting to talk his mother out Richard took her away from the Isle of her quest Wight. Margo did go to appear Oxford and went on the vile ''Jeremy Kyle'' show, worrying over his increasingly frequent visits to the toilet is really the last thing he needsbecome a well-respected journalist. And yet The couple had three children: Rachel, the worst is still to comeImogen and Sasha. Think a crumbling economy Life was lived in London and holidays were spent at Sandcove, redundancy, affairs, death, a the family member challenging him in home on the novel writing stakes and a query over Isle of Wight. Even then the big C – itdoubts about Richard's going to be a tough year for the Moles, and theredrinking were never far from Margo's little that olmind: '' Adrian can do except sit back and watch his life spin out of control around she would never be able to leave himin charge''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0718153707</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Dave Eggers1914585402|title=The Wild Things|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=Meet Max. When I say he sometimes gets the wrong end of the stick about adults, or dislikes his mother's new boyfriend, or gets a bit feisty when he feels the need for revenge, I am certainly understating the facts. He Dashboard Elvis is a bit of a rascal to say the least. But all that might change when he finds himself travelling to a strange land of roisterous animals, and ends up installed as their king.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241144221</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewDead|author=Harlan Coben|title=Tell No OneDavid F Ross|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Ireviewed David F Ross've been meaning to get around to reading some or all of Harlan Cobens book [[There's Only One Danny Garvey by David F Ross|There's work, because if the reviews are to be believed and you are Only One Danny Garvey]] a fan couple of the 'Bloody Knife /Blunt Instrument' thriller, the man is quite simply not capable of turning out a duff novel. But you know years back and remember being absolutely floored by how powerful and affecting it iswas. It was a gripping, emotionally wounding read, what with one thing and another and a bulging pile rereading my review of books to be read and reviewed, it my main takeaway was that I just somehow hadn't managed to give him my full attention. Until nowmight not have lavished enough praise on it.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1409117022</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sylvie Nickels Lucy Ashe|title=Another Kind of LovingClara and Olivia
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Mike Hennessy was a journalist whose speciality was The year is 1933. The place? Sadler's Wells. Ballerinas Clara and Olivia are sisters, twins no less. Identical on the war-torn parts of outside but not, we learn, on the world and October 1992 found him in Sarajevo visiting a childreninside. And not on stage, either. Because there's home to get a storylot that builds a dancer. The orphanage was on the right side of town Some things that can be taught or learnt – away from the main barrage discipline, attention to detail – but it had few other advantages. There was no heat and little food or watersome things, that ''je ne sais quoi'', but it was here that he found Jasminkadon't come from the classroom. A stage presence, part Serba charm, part Bosniak and eleven or twelve years olda ''joie de vivre''. In The difference between a phone call to his wife Mike suggested that perhaps Jasminka could come hard-worker, and stay with them for a whilestar.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1905200129</amazonuk>0861544080
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=rashbreHeather Fawcett|title=The TriangleEmily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries|rating=34
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=BrianEmily Wilde is an expert academic scholar on faerie lore, and she has travelled extensively, and researched meticulously, to write her life's trip to work, the art gallery was a treat, courtesy very first encyclopaedia of a private ticket from a friend 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 white room was much better than small village of Hrafvsnik, having somehow offended the last gallery he'd visited. It wasvillage matriarch, thoughshe is not sure what she has done, nor how to be his last such visit as he was silently knifed by a professional hit manredeem herself and put her final investigations for her book back on the right track. His friends were stunnedEnter Wendell Bambleby, her dashingly handsome and insufferable rival who arrives unexpectedly, not just at his deathall charm and delight, but at the way in which it had come aboutmuch to Emily's frustration. But why is he here? What could Brian have been doing to attract ''that'' sort of attentiondoes he want? Jake had given him the ticket and it dawned And what exactly is going on him that he had been with the target rather than Brian. Some recent events clicked into place…faerie folk around Hravsnik?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1425171893</amazonuk>0356519120
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Laura Solomon1398515388|title=An Imitation of LifeThe Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=We are introduced to First of all, it was the baby girlearthquake, Celia with a detaileddeep in the ocean floor, blow-by-blow account of her dreadful physical condition, from her unusual eyeswhich created the tsunami and this, her even more unusual teethin turn, her lumpy body and caused the ever-growing hump on her shouldernuclear meltdown. Forget the Elephant Man, here we have elephant babyThe result was complete and utter devastation. Everything is stacked against herThe deaths were uncountable, and the loss of livelihoods was widespread. She is abandoned by her mother, her father is unknownThe fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. And as if all that He wasn't enough to make you weep, she is unceremoniously dumped on a doorstep - dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to die. But she doesn't. She lives. And what an extra-ordinary life Laura Solomon has mapped out for heropen his car door and Tamon the dog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904529437</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tamsin Reeves Christopher Bowden|title=A Place of SafetyMr Magenta
|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 is to get one up on her recently departed scoundrel of an ex-husband. And itChristopher Bowden's not like her financial situation latest novel is looking too rosy since he left her for another woman – a patient untangling of a seemingly ordinary woman who is also pregnant with his child. The fact that her lodger is a He, and that he's a Foreigner (and from Afghanistanlife, no less) is just the icing on the cakecarried out by her nephew after she has died. Colin's going to be furious, and Martha can't wait.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849231370</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Alexander McCall Smith|title=The Comfort of Saturdays (Isabel Dalhousie 5)|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=As aunt who 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 provided a safe harbour and get a fair idea little bit of his style you really should start at the beginning indulgence 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 a young nephew had had a much more interesting life, than that nephew Stephen had ever realised and here she finds herself trapped into investigating the case of a doctor whose career has been ruinedit seems to him an obligation to find it all out.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0349120552</amazonuk>B0B6Z9VJDW
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Matt HiltonJennifer Mason|title=Dead Men's DustPartitions of Unity
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Joe Hunter helps peopleHere at Bookbag Towers, we first met Elizabeth Cromwell, dominatrix and unintentional detective in [[Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery by Jennifer Mason|Preposterous]], when she investigated and unravelled a series of disappearances. ThatIn ''Partitions of Unity's what he does. He's been around the block and , she sets her mind to say that he has learned solving a trick or two along the way might be something of an understatementmurder.. No-one really knows much about Joe Hunter and certainly his past is not something that many would be brave enough to poke around in.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0340978236</amazonuk>B09LQR9FRF
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Imogen Parker Will Carver|title=This Little WorldThe Daves Next Door
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=I haven't read the first two books Five strangers come together in the trilogy but that didn't spoil my enjoyment of ''This Little World''one moment as a suicide bomber prepares to detonate his vest on a London tube line. They all stand alone as individual novels in As their own right. Those readers who have already enjoyed fates overlap, the first two books will know most of story is told in backwards order, leading up to the characters and will be keen to find out - what happens nextfateful moment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0552151548</amazonuk>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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