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[[Category:General Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]]==General fiction==__NOTOC__{newreview{Frontpage|author=Guy FraserOnyi Nwabineli|title=Avenging the DeadAllow Me to Introduce Myself|rating=34.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=ItAnuri spent her childhood on display to the world, thanks to her step-mother Ophelia's 1863 and the Superintendent covering the inner city area increasingly popular presence on social media, where she posted every step of Glasgow has his hands full. First off an alarming forgery scandal has just been discovered Anuri's childhood for sponsorships and no sooner has he drawn breath than one, two influencer deals and counting suspicious deaths occur. Instinctively, I want to say that it's all goodbasically, clean funmonetary gain. Because it Now Anuri is. The language Fraser uses in her twenties and she is very much of that era which lends the book a particular old-fashioned slowly trying to regain her confidence and rather tweeto get her life back, charm. It's all over suing her step-mother to take down the book in spadescontent about her. On almost every pageAnuri is battling alcoholism, failing to start her PhD, undergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online and receiving money from them for doing so. Let me give you just one endearing example of the flavour of Most importantly, she is desperately worried about her little sister, who is the book 'None new focus of Mrs MaitlandOphelia's four regulars online empire. Can she save her sister, and perhaps herself and her relationship with her father at her superior guest house for single gentlemen would even dream of taking another's seat ...'the same time?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0709090684</amazonuk>0861546873
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jodi Compton1529153298|title=Hailey's WarThe List of Suspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey|rating=45
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=At the beginning of the bookIt's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. (A woman? I mean, honestly...) She's not what's worrying Miv's family, Hailey Cain is a 23 year old cycle courierliving in San Franciscothough. Women have been disappearing. The story then takes a step back in time and wediscover that she had to leave West Point Military Academy during herfinal year Well, they've been murdered, for reasons she prefers to keep but to herselfhave 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. I continued to read under the assumption Miv's upset because she's overheard that Hailey had done something which forced her father wants to leavemove the family 'Down South'. Hernext move When you're from Yorkshire, Down South is to La frightening, foreign place, best avoided.A For Miv, where she spent the latter part of move would mean leaving her childhood.During these yearsbest friend, her mother with whom she has, at bestSharon, a very strained relationship is no source of comfort and Hailey develops a very close attachment she'll do anything to prevent that. She's not worried about the dangers or that her cousin CJ. Aspects of this relationship make for uncomfortable reading at timesMum's stopped talking - to anyone.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847373577</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Andrew Grant1035906708|title=Die Twice (David Trevellyan)Diva|author=Daisy Goodwin|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The title is very much at home and in keeping with the thriller genre and it's both eye-catching and also has a perfectly reasonable explanation which comes right at the very end We tend to think of the story. I must admit to thrillers generally not being my most favourite reading material. Some can be a bit flashyMaria Callas as Greek, a bit trashy even. But not this novel. Right from the start I felt I but she was born to Greek parents in for a goodManhattan, New York, intelligent readin December 1923 and only moved to Athens when she was thirteen. There were pointers Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to 'Callas' to this all over make it more manageable in the placeStates. For starters, David Trevellyan has a nice line When she was back in witty humour. There are numerous snazzy oneAthens - supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for her voice -liners. It all went down very wellshe was raised under the Nazi occupation by a mother who mercilessly exploited her and made no secret of her preference for her elder sister, Jackie.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230747582</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jonathan LeeAlexander McCall Smith|title=Who Is Mr Satoshi?The Perfect Passion Company|rating=34.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The novel opens somewhere Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and operating as an alternative to all the Home Counties online apps in providing a more personal, tailored service. Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and Rob Fossick look after the business, as Ness is attending his mother's funeralplanning to take a trip to Canada to get away for a while. The event in itself Katie is extremely distressing and also depressing for him; factor in that he's become coming out of a bit of break up with a recluse lately bad boyfriend, and I could feel so jumps at the sheer loneliness creeping into Rob's very boneschance to come home to Edinburgh. Lee describes the event as 'Zimmer framesAnd so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bifocalsbringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, trifocalsthanks to 44 Scotland Street and the Isabel Dalhousie novels, dark grey coats but with yawning shoulderssome new characters who quickly begin to charm. The apparatus of old age.Katie has no experience in running a business, or in match-making, but Ness has full confidence in her abilities, and there's always her very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, William, to lend a hand…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0434020419</amazonuk>1846976596
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Hazel McHaffieDean Koontz|title=Remember RememberThe Bad Weather Friend|rating=4.5|genre=General FictionParanormal|summary=The story starts at the end and works back in timeBenny is having a terrifically bad day. This works extremely well as we see Doris ManneringHe loses his job, motherhe loses his fiancee, grandmother and great-grandmother now living in a residential homehis house gets trashed. The decision Oh, and someone has delivered a really weird, disturbing coffin-sized object to 'put mother' into a his home was very, very difficult and had been put off time and time again. We come to realize it's possible that this whoever or whatever was a heart-wrenching decision. inside is the thing that has trashed his house! The daughter and carer, Jessica, will always be asking herself if she'd done the right thingis, made Benny is the right decision for the right reasonsvery last person to deserve all this bad luck. He is a nice person. A veritable minefieldreally nice person. And here So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the delivery to his house is where many an ethical dilemma lies a new friend, a bad weather friend called Spike, who has been sent to help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for many families in real-life similar situationsbeing a good person. Spike is going to take care of Benny, and will certainly take care of Benny's enemies, if he, Benny, and Harper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1906817294</amazonuk>1662500491
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=John NivenKatherine Howe|title=The AmateursA True Account|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Gary Irvine only wants two things out of life. He'd like Hannah Masury is living in Boston, having been sent to have children live with a family who run an inn, and he wants being made to reduce his golf handicapwork there from a young age. Nothing extraordinary When she hears there, you might think except for is to be a hanging of some pirates in the fact that his wife, Paulinetown, is planning she decides to leave him for a self-made carpet millionaire go and Gary is a dreadful golferwatch. His handicap is eighteen – but IEnthralled and horrified in equal measure, Hannah finds herself embroiled in a young boy'm not entirely certain how he got it down to that level in s death at the first placehands of two vicious pirates. His family doesnShe hides away, so that they don't give him much solace either. His brother Lee is on the fringes of the local criminal underworld find and kill her too, and hasn't the wit then to escape them completely she runs away to keep himself out of trouble with Ranta Campbellsea, dressing as a boy and joining the local overlordnotorious Ned Low's pirate ship as a cabin boy. Ranta could be quite likeable if it wasn't for his penchant for She soon finds herself in the thick of things when there is a certain type mutiny on board, and from there we are caught up in her rip roaring tale of violence designed to keep life on the others in line rather than to teach the victim a lessonocean waves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099516667</amazonuk>0861547438
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Adam Ross1471180158|title=Mr PeanutMaybe Tomorrow|author=Penny Parkes|rating=34.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The main couple Jamie Matson works in an upper-class grocery store, for a man who tend to take centre stage here are called David and Alice Pepin's a control freak with all the subtlety of a half brick. They live a kind of comfortableJamie's son, Bo, middle-class life in busy and bustling Manhattan'has his problems'. After He's asthmatic and the more than a decade of generally happy married life togetheryou read, they want the more you'll suspect that he's on the autistic spectrum. Sometimes Jamie needs to take time off at short notice - she's a frequent flier in the next step local A&E and have a family. Easy sometimes Bo's not fit enough to say but things don't quite work out according go to planschool. We are taken Missed shifts or the need to be away on various 'dark' journeys within their marriage. These time to pick Bo up from school are situations which most of us occasions when Jamie can identify withbe controlled and put in the wrong. Some of these situations are painful, stressful, unhappyIt was going to come to a head.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224087738</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Nicholas ShakespeareB0CKD1L5JL|title=InheritanceRadio Free Olympia|author=Jeffrey Dunn
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Andy Larkham's life and career are going nowherePetr is an orphan. He works for a small publishing houseRescued by the strange, Carpe Diemreclusive Bear, that specialises in publishing self-help books, his fiancée he is about to dump him brought up far from bustling cities and he has no money and mountains busy human society, in the forests of debt. And thatWashington's before we begin to talk about his dysfunctional familyOlympic Peninsula. His After Bear dies and a brief sojourn in human company, and armed with only real role model was a pirate radio transmitter, Petr goes on a journey through the Montaigne-loving teacherforest, Stuart Furnivallbroadcasting the strange, whose funeral he is late for. But an unexpected inheritance of £17 million has a habit of changing one's outlook on life. But while wild and rarely heard voices he trades self-help for help yourself, Andy also realises that he has inherited a mysteryencounters.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846553156</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Cath StaincliffeSarah Marsh|title=The Kindest ThingA Sign of Her Own|rating=43.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Imagine that your partner After a bout of twenty or so years discovers that they are dying from scarlet fever as a terminal diseasechild, Ellen Lark loses her hearing. Now imagine that they've asked you to help them to die Suddenly plunged into a little soonerworld of silence, on their own termseverything about her life changes. What would you Living in a time when the use of sign language was seen as something only savages do? This , Ellen is the dilemma that faced Deborah and, after sent to a school where she went ahead and helped her husband Neil is taught to dielip read, but physically restrained from signing. From here, she found herself charged ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the deaf and standing trial for murder with her own teenage daughterusing a system called Visible Speech. At the same time, SophieBell is working on other inventions and ideas, testifying against herand Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a complicated tangle of espionage.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1849012083</amazonuk>1035401614
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Eliza GrahamB0BC3YTCMR|title=JubileeGood Girls Die|author=Ayura Ayira
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=As the village celebrates the Queen's Golden Jubilee two people can't help but think back to the Silver JubileeThis story is not for everyone. Evie Winter and her niece Rachel have vivid memories of the day when Evie's daughter Jessamy wandered off and the mystery ' Lavender Daniels was three weeks short of her disappearance has never been solvedfifteenth birthday when The Incident happened. She was eleven years olda very bright student, brighta bit too nerdy if truth be told, athletic and loved by suffered from vitiligo - people were afraid to hug her mother and cousinin case it's contagious. It's not easy being a black girl whose skin is 84% white. There She had a crush on seventeen-year-old Reggie Anderson but never thought he would seem to be no explanation as to why she might have disappeared of notice her own free will . Then he did: Lavender was very good at math and no evidence that Reggie asked if she would tutor him. She readily agreed: tutoring was something she gladly did at church: this was abductedjust an extension. Life has carried on, but it has not been the sameShe went to his house and he raped her. It has not been easyIn shock, she even allowed him to give her a lift home.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330509268</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Michael Robotham1472263936|title=Bleed For MeThe Figurine|author=Victoria Hislop|rating=45
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=An ex-detective is found dead It was in a pool of blood in his teenager1968 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 bedroomparents) felt that it would be a pity if Helena grew up without knowing her grandparents or understanding her Greek heritage. She runs from Her trip to the family apartment in up-market Kolonaki would be the scene first of the crimeseveral annual visits. Is this She grew to love her grandmother and the easiest cutfamily's maid, Dina, but was wary -andfrightened -dried case ever? This novel is told in the first person by the investigating psychologistof her grandfather, Professor Joe O'Loughlinretired general Stamatis Papagiannis. He's got a lot going on in was proud of his life right now. His health is not good so he's close connections to keep popping pills the Junta and expected his family to try and get through another working day. He's also newly separated and uphold his daughters seem values but saw no reason to talk a completely different languageaccommodate them. He feels old and very ragged round the edges. Into this mix, he discovers that the teenager everyone is talking about, the teenager whoHis prejudices included Helena's been discussed red hair and described as a coldgreen eyes -blooded killer, is his daughterinherited from her father's best friend. Could his life get any worse, he thinks. Yes. Big-timeScottish ancestors.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847442188</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Catherine O'FlynnDean Koontz|title=The News Where You AreAfter Death|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The main character in this novel is Frank Allcroft. HusbandMichael Mace, fatherHead of Security, son and also at a bit of top secret biological research facility, is among 55 people who die when a minor celebrity as he's beamed into the region's television screens nightly, presenting the local news. Make that minor with virus is released in a small 'm'bio-hazard accident. He comes across as Finding himself in a likeablemakeshift mortuary, covered in plastic, middle-aged manhe has a sense that something very, content with very bad has happened to him – and only him – as he sits up and looks around at the shrouded bodies of his lot dead friends and with his home lifeformer colleagues. But As he does have some personal issues to attend to. In particular, recovers his grumpysenses, sometimes forgetful, elderly mother who he realises that there is now living in a retirement homesomething different about him; he can ''feel'' everything. ''Everything''. Mother and son give each other lots of grief on a regular basisMichael isn't ''Michael'' anymore.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0670918555</amazonuk>1662500467}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Mario PuzoB0BVDC2VWH|title=Six Graves to MunichThe Grave Listeners|author=William Frank
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=In the dying days of the Second World War Michael Rogan, an American Intelligence officer was captured The village is isolated and tortured poor. It's surrounded by a group of seven men, most of whom were senior Gestapo officers trying to obtain Witching Forest. And the secrets which Rogan could give them. His wife was in another room villagers subsist largely by farming Uphegia plants - its bread-like fruit provides nutrition and he could hear her screamsits blossom provides herbal medicines. Ten years later, when he had recovered from the appalling injuries he suffered he made up his mind that he would avenge the death The black wood of his wife at the hands of the seven men. It's no easy task as he doesn't forest provides heat and warmth, roofs on homes, and even know who they are.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184916276X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Kishwar Desai|title=Witness the Night|rating=2gallows, if needed.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=The book opens on a disturbing dream sequence (or fear of being buried alive is it a memory?) an existential superstition in the village and that sets up the murder which is to be at the centre of this book. Durga, a young girl living in Julundurreason Volushka, is instructed by a mysterious male character to return to the house from which she has just fleddrunken, the house in which her whole family lies deadself- poisonedindulgent, stabbed and partly scorched. There Durga lazy lout of a man is tied up, having been attacked and rapedtolerated.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1905636857</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Chioma OkerekeB0BYF82CXT|title=Bitter LeafSemi-Detached|author=Deborah Stone
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Jericho, (who's female by the way), is 'Bill and Amanda are living in a beautiful young woman. She's curious about the outside world so like many before hersemi-detached house, she's taken the brave step of sampling life stuck in a bigdepressing rut of boredom and disappointment, when Terry and Fiona – glamorous, bustling city. She returns to her home village with some rather pretentious airs ... successful and a rich suitor very much in tow. By sheer coincidence Jericho's mother had attended an interview love – move in her past at her daughter's new boyfriend's family homenext door. A veritable mansion with ' ... sweeping rooms that took longer than a river Despite their different outlooks on life, the couples befriend each other and life appears to crossimprove for both pairs.' What a lovely way of describingluxury in an essentially poor area of Africa. Everyone thinks the next natural step But all is marriage not what it seems, and babies but is it?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844086275</amazonuk>their increasingly interconnected relationships are fated for tragedy.''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Keith ColquhounShalini Boland|title=Five Deadly WordsThe Silent Bride
|rating=3
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Five Deadly Words follows the story of charismatic former dictator LucasAlice and Seth are a match made in heaven. He is everything she has been searching for; handsome, accomplished, clever, as he charms funny; total and 'collects' people during his exile in Londonutter husband-material. The story She is seen mostly from all he could possibly want in a wife; beautiful, successful, confident… and so the point of view of Helen Berlin, inevitable proposal is eagerly accepted by Alice and the bright young Detective Constable who wedding is put in charge of Lucas' safetyplanned and set. Helen finds herself caught up in matters which become increasingly out of When the much-anticipated day arrives, Alice is walked down the aisle by her depth father, beaming with pride and excitement as she falls further into surveys the former dictatorcongregation – their friends assembled to celebrate this joyful day and when Seth turns to face his approaching bride, Alice's worldimplodes because she has absolutely no idea who the man at the altar is, who is waiting for her to become his wife.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1904529496</amazonuk>1662507089
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Don Boyd1787636003|title=Margot's SecretsThe Girls of Summer|author=Katie Bishop
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Margot is a psychologist who specialises in sexual disorders It was the summer when Rachel Evans turned eighteen that she and Caroline went backpacking around Greece and obsessionsarrived on the island. She lives and works for herself Rachel wasn't exactly innocent but she was, perhaps, naive, so when thirty-four-year-old Alistair Wright started to take an interest in Barcelona amongst the ex-pat communityher, and although she only has was flattered rather than wary. It was quite a dozen or so clients at while before he made any one time, spends much sort of physical approach to her week living at her officeand by that time she was obsessed by him. Her clientsAlistair worked for Henry Taylor, both male looking after his interests on the island and female, are bewildering and fascinating in equal portions, and particular in the description of bar where all the therapy sessions make fascinating and revealing readinggirls either worked or partied.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0955405149</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Steven CarrollAmanda Craig|title=The Art of the Engine DriverThree Graces|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Carroll has chosen a bygone era in Few styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the 1950s and also a bygone but much treasured mode state-of transport, whether it's Australia or -the UK-nation novel. Immediately IThere'm drawn in to s something so utterly compelling about any writer who can catch hold of the story. Both atmosphere of the title day and bookcapture it, crafting an image of the country as it stands in one particular moment. To say that Amanda Craig is skilled at doing this would be embarrassingly inadequate: she's front cover are arresting and originalpractically synonymous with the genre of contemporary social fiction at this point. The novel centres on one evening She has such a gift for weaving the ongoing issues of the day into the lives of her characters in this suburban neighbourhood when all its residents are invited to a celebration party. Carroll seeway that feels natural and lived-saws back and forth as he shares the individual lives in, never making them ciphers for social commentary but instead fully realised people, grappling with us. It is an engaging styleissues far larger than themselves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099537273</amazonuk>140871468X
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Patrick Woodhead152915118X|title=The Forbidden TemplePineapple Street|author=Jenny Jackson|rating=34.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Luca''Pineapple Street'' is the story of three women: Sasha, a mountaineer trying Darley and Georgiana. Darley and George are sisters and Sasha is married to escape from his disappointingly unsupportive parents and their brother Cord. They're Stocktons, only Sasha isn't a past accidentStockton by birth so she isn't readily accepted into the tribe. The problem's exacerbated when the clan matriarch, witnesses something strange in Tilda, asks Cord and Sasha if they'd like to move into the distancePineapple Street property. Tilda and Chip have renovated and downsized to another property, while watching his climbing partner Bill put the kibosh on their latest sky-bursting Himalayan ascent - a mountain shaped like a perfect pyramidstreet or so away, circled by other peaks hewhich they own. They won's never seen beforet need any of the furniture from Pineapple Street, so Sasha and Cord can move straight in. Back in England nobody else seems to have seen them eitherNominally, they had a choice but colleagues mention mysterious Shangri-La style Buddhist sanctuaries - could this be that wasn't the prime one, hidden from prying eyes for centuries? reality. Nobody wants Darley and Georgiana start to declare call Sasha 'the gold digger'. She's living in ''their'' family home. They use it so often that they abbreviate it actually exists at all. Meanwhile, Himalayan natives are trying to pull 'the wool over Chinese occupiersGD' eyes regarding a very sacred personage.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848090773</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ken McClureEmily Critchley|title=Dust to Dust (Steven Dunbar)One Puzzling Afternoon
|rating=4
|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=John Motram 84 year old Edie has lived in the same small town for almost her whole life, but now she is facing a cell biologist. He's a promising and well-though of academic move as her son wants to move to another house and bring Edie to live with his pet subject family, as Edie is - Black Deathstarting to lose her memory. Intrigue However, Edie is high on tormented by the agenda right from memory of her childhood friend, Lucy, who went missing over 60 years ago, and the beginning. Motram is invited to worry that there was a meeting along with other high-fliers in their respective fields. This meeting is top secretshe was keeping for Lucy that somehow might be the thing that reveals the truth of what happened all that time ago. Motram isAfter 'seeing' Lucy in the high street, howeverjust as she was the last time she saw her, mystifiedshe starts to find pockets of memories coming back to her. The situation appears pretty straightforwardAnd yet as she remembers the past, so why all this cloak-she is forgetting more and-dagger stuff, he wondersmore in her day to day life. And why has everyone to refer to Will she uncover the patient only as truth about Lucy'Patient Xs disappearance before her move, and before her memories are gone forever?'|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846971268</amazonuk>1804181250
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Madelaine Lucas
|title=Thirst for Salt
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= ''Love, I'd read, was supposed to be a light and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity''
Told from a retrospective view, a young woman unravels the year-long relationship that once defined her. Overlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the affair with a man twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the summer after. Set against the backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the 24-year-old narrator's deepening relationship with her older lover, depicting its all-consuming nature, how it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably.|isbn=0861546490}}{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Robert Ryan0008506337|title=Signal RedThe Garnett Girls|author=Georgina Moore|rating=45
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Ryan has certainly researched thoroughly for this novel The love affair between Margo Garnett and poet Richard O'Leary was all- and it showsconsuming, apparently on both sides. Margo was just sixteen when they fell in love. Straight away the blurb on the back cover tells us thereRichard was twenty-one and described by Margo's mother as 'an older man'afterword' by Bruce Reynolds, no less than the ringmaster/leader of the Great Train Robbery gang. Notice how itHer parents worried that Richard's always given capital lettersinfluence would take her away from what they felt she could achieve - going to Oxford and having a glittering career. Even all these decades down In the lineevent, those readers of a certain age remember it and perhaps shake their head in amazement. And there's also a very useful 'aftermath' section as Ryan painstakingly sets out all the robbers' names they eloped and what's happened since that date in Richard took her away from the summer Isle of 1963Wight. Perhaps, like others, I also assumed the leader, the top man if you like, was Ronnie BiggsMargo did go to Oxford and went on to become a well-respected journalist. No soThe couple had three children: Rachel, apparentlyImogen and Sasha. I also remember television footage Life was lived in London and holidays were spent at Sandcove, the family home on the Isle of his release from prison on compassionate grounds only a year or so agoWight. The crime seems to have achieved almost mythical proportions - some would say itEven then the doubts about Richard's up there with what drinking were you doing when JFK was assassinated?never far from Margo's mind: ''she would never be able to leave him in charge''. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>075535818X</amazonuk>Then Richard left them.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Giles Milton1914585402|title=According to Arnold: A Novel of Love and MushroomsDashboard Elvis is Dead|author=David F Ross
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Arnold Trevellyan’s ordinary life as a charismatic auctioneer is about to change in ways he could never have imagined. Encouraged I reviewed David F Ross's book [[There's Only One Danny Garvey by his wife Flora to take a sabbatical, the two head to David F Ross|There's Only One Danny Garvey]] a remote region couple of France to indulge Arnold’s passion for mushroomsyears back and remember being absolutely floored by how powerful and affecting it was. Whilst out in the forest hunting for rare mushrooms Arnold stumbles across It was a secret hidden for centuries. This secret makes him abandon Flora gripping, emotionally wounding read, and their life together for the island rereading my review of Tuva in the South Pacific where he soon finds himself married to Lola, its queenit my main takeaway was that I might not have lavished enough praise on it.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330452517</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Chuck PalahniukLucy Ashe|title=Tell-AllClara and Olivia|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Meet Katherine KentonThe year is 1933. A movie star of great renown, sheThe place? Sadler's always Wells. Ballerinas Clara and Olivia are sisters, twins no less. Identical on TV as someone famous - or the wife of somebody who happens to be famous and maleoutside but not, we learn, whether they were actually ever weddedon the inside. She herself has had copious real-life marriagesAnd not on stage, making somebody out of either. Because there's a nobody on many an instancelot that builds a dancer. Her shelves of Some things that can be taught or learnt – discipline, attention to detail – and some things, that ''je ne sais quoi'best lifetime' awards are groaning, and their dusting is a job akin to painting that don't come from the Forth bridgeclassroom. The person who dusts them is narrator for this bookA stage presence, a charm, but she does more than thata ''joie de vivre''. She is everything to "Miss Kathie" The difference between a hard- general housekeeper, housemateworker, and string-pullera star. But what might those strings be being pulled for? When Katherine meets a new toyboy, and our narrator seems to get in the way, to what purpose might this be?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0224087150</amazonuk>0861544080
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Caryl PhillipsHeather Fawcett|title=In the Falling SnowEmily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=We are introduced Emily Wilde is an expert academic scholar on faerie lore, and she has travelled extensively, and researched meticulously, to write her life's work, the central character Keith right away and discover lots about himvery first encyclopaedia of faeries. His personal Whilst she is brilliant at research and professional CV speaking to faeries, she is laid bare before usnot so good with people. He's one mixed upSo when she finds herself far, far North in the small village of Hrafvsnik, middle-agedhaving somehow offended the village matriarch, she is not-quite-middle-class man. He appears sure what she has done, nor how to be rather weak-willed redeem herself and almost seems to fall into situations, rather than choose to be part of them. When in his marital relationship (now put her final investigations for her book back on a downward spiral), his wife most definitely wore the trousers. I found Keith a very infuriating personright track. I wanted to take him by the scruff Enter Wendell Bambleby, her dashingly handsome and give him a good old shake and then shout 'wake up insufferable rival who arrives unexpectedly, all charm and smell the coffeedelight, before itmuch to Emily's too latefrustration.' But why is he here? What does he want? And what exactly is going on with the faerie folk around Hravsnik?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099539748</amazonuk>0356519120
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Mark Neilson1398515388|title=The Valley of Boy and the VinesDog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)|rating=34.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The reader discovers that SophieFirst of all, it was the central character is living earthquake, deep in rural isolation. She's supposed to be living the dream. She's separated from her husband ocean floor, which created the tsunami and her two daughters are at boarding school back this, in turn, caused the UKnuclear meltdown. She's also now a one-woman organization. And she's failing practically The result was complete and financially for many reasonsutter devastation. ApparentlyThe deaths were uncountable, according to Neilson, there's a very small window in which to carry out and the vital work loss of harvesting the grapes for winelivelihoods was widespread. We are also told at frequent intervals about The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the enigmatic 'Old Ones'tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. They are He wasn'The timeless custodians of t a dog person but the vines.convenience store owner' I'm afraid I found their too-frequent references rather annoyings comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the dog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0709090595</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Maggie O'FarrellChristopher Bowden|title=The Hand That First Held MineMr Magenta|rating=54
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Lexie Sinclair was sent down from university for the crime Christopher Bowden's latest novel is a patient untangling of going through a door reserved for menseemingly ordinary woman's life, carried out by her nephew after she has died. She could not graduate until she apologised The aunt who always provided a safe harbour and this she was not going a little bit of indulgence to do. Home was not an option either but when she met the sophisticated Innes Kent she made up her mind to go to London and make her way there. It was the nineteen fifties and Lexie and Innes made a young nephew had had a much more interesting life for themselves in Soho. In the present day Elina than that nephew Stephen had ever realised and Ted are struggling it seems to recover from the difficult birth of their first child. Elina is him an artist and she’s finding obligation to find it difficult to come to terms with being a mother. Ted does his best to help but he is having to cope with disturbing visions and memories of his own childhood which don’t seem to agree with what he’s been told by his parents. The further he looks, the stranger are the links which he uncoversall out.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>075530845X</amazonuk>B0B6Z9VJDW
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sue PeeblesJennifer Mason|title=The Death Partitions of Lomond FrielUnity|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Rosie was a successful radio presenter when her fatherHere at Bookbag Towers, Lomond Frielwe first met Elizabeth Cromwell, had a stroke. Whether or not Rosie was always reckless dominatrix and impulsive isn't entirely clearunintentional detective in [[Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery by Jennifer Mason|Preposterous]], but once she heard about the stroke when she took a break from work investigated and began to build her life around making unravelled a future for herself and her fatherseries of disappearances. There are two problems here: Rosie isnIn ''t really all that capable Partitions of looking after herselfUnity'', never she sets her mind her father and Lomond is quietly plotting his own deathto solving a murder.. He might not be able to speak, to move very much, but he has plans.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701184302</amazonuk>B09LQR9FRF
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Najat El-HachmiWill Carver|title=The Last PatriarchDaves Next Door|rating=3.54
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Najat El-Hachmi's debut novel, The Last Patriarch is a difficult book - both in terms of content and style. It's a story of physical and sexual abuse Five strangers come together in one moment as a patriarchal Moroccan family, an immigrant story, when first the father and then the family move suicide bomber prepares to Catalonia, and ultimately detonate his vest on a story of the narrator, the patriarch's daughter, breaking free of her past as she takes on different cultural valuesLondon tube line. Narrated entirely from the perspective of the patriarch, Mimoun Driouch's unnamed daughterAs their fates overlap, the story is also concerned with cultural and imagined historiestold in backwards order, and leading up to the importance of origin storiesfateful moment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846687179</amazonuk>1914585186}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sarah BlakeJennifer Mason|title=The PostmistressPreposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The reader is in no doubt that a war is raging. 'And bombs were falling on Coventry'A struggling poetry zine, London a mom-and Kent. Sleek metal pellets shaped like -pop mobile diner in the Northern California redwoods, a 400-meter hurdler who just missed the blunt tipped ends of pencils ...2004 Olympics, a women' The Americans howevers track coach with a yen for bullwhips, are carrying on a billionaire with their daily lives regardless. They are completely unfazed and uninvolved. Apart from one or twoa state-of-the-art S&M dungeon, namely radio reporter Frankie. She reports from London as it happens and she is gradually becoming more and more concerned that her fellow Americans will be called upon. But she seems to be a lone voice blowing man serving a life sentence in the wind. AlsoAlabama, an enigmatic signature, K(s, as you may expectx), there are plenty of raised eyebrows as to why on a woman is doing a mancheap oil painting, an erotic art dealer in Georgia...'s job. She should be at the kitchen sink or having babies, shouldn't she?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670918687</amazonuk>}}
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=F G CottamB0B2N7MVYM|title=The Waiting RoomCalculations of Rational Men|author=Daniel Godfrey|rating=45
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=On the outskirts of ex rock star Martin StrideIt's country estate lies the disused Shale Point Station10th of December 1962 when we first meet Dr Joseph Marr. Abandoned Just to put what happens in context, the 1960s Cuban missile crisis is still very fresh in people's minds. The world has barely had a chance to breathe out. But for Joe Marr, it's not the railway line has been dug up and removed and all missile crisis that remains is 's at the crumbling platform and eerie waiting roomfront of his mind. Martin is quick to employ BritainHe's top ghost hunter Julian Creed to investigate been convicted of murder. With the strange and threatening occurrences current state of medical knowledge, it's hard to think otherwise than that the waiting room that he and prosecution would never have been brought but Joe Marr has spent his children have witnessed – the sound and smell of first few days in HMP Queen's Bench, a steam trainrelatively new prison. He's just getting used to his roommate, male voices singing a famous World War One songMervyn, and most frightening of all, the leering face learning to be wary of a soldier at the waiting room windowMcArthur brothers. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444704214</amazonuk>
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