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[[Category:General Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]]==General fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Hans Werner Kettenbach and Anthea Bell (Translator)Onyi Nwabineli|title=The Stronger SexAllow Me to Introduce Myself|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=After reading the various comments Anuri spent her childhood on display to the back coverworld, I was looking forward thanks to reading this book as I love a story with a psychological element. Young Alex is driven to the home of his latest client; a man called Klofft. The reader soon finds out that Klofft has plenty of baggageher step-mother Ophelia's increasingly popular presence on social media, as well as plenty where she posted every step of money. HeAnuri's elderly childhood for sponsorships and very ill influencer deals and mobility is also an issue for him, basically, monetary gain. So, while he may have set out Now Anuri is in her twenties and she is slowly trying to impress others with his large home regain her confidence and beautiful things, sadly he seems no longer to be able to enjoy get her life. His illness confines him back, suing her step-mother to just a couple of roomstake down the content about her. It's apparent that Alex Anuri is rather taken with his wifebattling alcoholism, Cilly Klofftfailing to start her PhD, who is still rather beautiful - undergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online and receiving money from them for her agedoing so. The reader assumes Most importantly, sheis desperately worried about her little sister, who is the new focus of Ophelia's in her late sixties or early seventiesonline empire. But what is it they say about age being only a number for some of usCan she save her sister, and perhaps herself and her relationship with her father at the same time? And age plays a big part, a very big part, in this novel.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1904738672</amazonuk>0861546873
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Robert Jackson Bennett1529153298|title=The Company ManList of Suspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey|rating=45
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=It's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. (A woman? I mean, honestly...) She'The Timess not what's worrying Miv' says on the front cover that Bennett is s family, though. Women have been disappearing. Well, they'clearly a writer ve been murdered, but to watchhave ' disappeared' doesn't sound quite so I had high hopes for this novelfrightening. We meet two of Miv's upset because she's overheard that her father wants to move the central characters, American policeman Garvey and Englishman Hayesfamily 'Down South'. GarveyWhen you's working cv re from Yorkshire, Down South is straightforward enough - he carries out police worka frightening, foreign place, some of which is pretty grislybest avoided. But what about Hayes? He appears to be all things to all men but at For Miv, the end of the day wellmove would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, heand she'll do anything to prevent that. She's not worried about the dangers or that her Mum'The Company Man' which gives the book its title. And so a complex scenario starts s stopped talking - to unravel ..anyone.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1841497924</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Justine Kilkerr1035906708|title=Advice for StraysDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=If you have ever fancied a grown up version of [[The Tiger Who Came to Tea by Judith Kerr|The Tiger who came We tend to Tea]], the cover think of this Vintage edition should hook you into reading Justine Kilkerr's first novel. Here sits a sad and patient-looking lionMaria Callas as Greek, and the female figure beside himbut she was born to Greek parents in Manhattan, hidden by an umbrellaNew York, has that same vulnerable look of mother in December 1923 and child in Judith Kerr's classic children's picture bookonly moved to Athens when she was thirteen. At first this seems like a ridiculous connection, Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but thinking about her father changed it later Ito 'Callas'm struck with the analogy, not to mention make it more manageable in the similarity States. When she was back in authors' namesAthens - supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for her voice - she 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>0099535262</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Heather GudenkaufAlexander McCall Smith|title=These Things HiddenThe Perfect Passion Company
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Golden girl Allison Glenn was living The Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and operating as an alternative to all the perfect teenage life until she was imprisoned for online apps in providing a monstrous crimemore personal, tailored service. Now Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she's twenty-one could come and has been released from prison look after the business, as Ness is planning to take a trip to Canada to live in get away for a halfway housewhile. Allison Katie is keen coming out of a break up with a bad boyfriend, and so jumps at the chance to come home to put Edinburgh. And so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, thanks to 44 Scotland Street and the past behind herIsabel Dalhousie novels, but when she returns with some new characters who quickly begin to her home town of Linden Falls she soon discovers that charm. Katie has no one experience in running a business, or in match-making, but Ness has forgotten full confidence in her crimeabilities, least of all and there's always her parents very helpful (and her little sisterrather handsome) neighbour, William, Brynn.to lend a hand…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>077830437X</amazonuk>1846976596
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Meg WolitzerDean Koontz|title=The UncouplingBad Weather Friend|rating=4.5|genre=General FictionParanormal|summary=Dory Benny is having a terrifically bad day. He loses his job, he loses his fiancee, and Robby Lang had one of those marriages that everyone envieshis house gets trashed. TheyOh, and someone has delivered a really weird, disturbing coffin-sized object to his home, and it're not just loverss possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the thing that has trashed his house! The thing is, they're best friends too and they never seem Benny is the very last person to tire of each otherdeserve all this bad luck. They're both popular teachers at Eleanor Roosevelt High School ('Elro' to those who know it well) where their daughter He is a studentnice person. A really nice person. It's sometimes difficult So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the delivery to have your parent teaching at your schoolhis house is a new friend, a bad weather friend called Spike, but everything seems who has been sent to rub along reasonably well and Dory was delighted when daughter Willa got help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a part in the school playgood person. ItSpike is going to take care of Benny, and will certainly take care of Benny's ''Lysistrata'' enemies, if he, Benny, and whilst the drama teacher has to tone it down Harper (a little it still the play about the women waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's wild adventure) can figure out who refuse to have sex with their men until exactly they call a halt to the war they're fightingare.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701186216</amazonuk>1662500491
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Natasha SolomonsKatherine Howe|title=The Novel in the ViolaA True Account
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Elise Landau arrived Hannah Masury is living in England in 1938Boston, having been sent to live with a refugee family who run an inn, and being made to work there from Vienna where she and her family had had a good lifestyleyoung age. In England When she's destined for Tyneford hears there is to be a hanging of some pirates in Dorset where the town, shedecides to go and watch. Enthralled and horrified in equal measure, Hannah finds herself embroiled in a young boy'll be a parlour maid s death at the big househands of two vicious pirates. Shehides away, so that they don's not exactly looking forward t find and kill her too, and then to escape them completely she runs away to itsea, but she's escaped Vienna with some of her mother's jewels sewn into dressing as a boy and joining the seams of her dresses and her fathernotorious Ned Low's latest novel, in manuscript, is hidden pirate ship as a cabin boy. She soon finds herself in the body thick of her viola. Her sister things when there is leaving for the USA a mutiny on board, and from there we are caught up in her parents hope to follow. Surely Elise will be able to join them before too long? She knows that she won't like Englandrip roaring tale of life on the ocean waves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>034099567X</amazonuk>0861547438
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Paul Magrs1471180158|title=The Bride That Time ForgotMaybe Tomorrow|author=Penny Parkes|rating=34.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Christmas is approaching Jamie Matson works in an upper-class grocery store, for a man who's a control freak with all the seaside town subtlety of Whitby and Brenda is busy sprucing up her B&Ba half brick. She hasnJamie't seen her best friends son, neighbour and investigating partner Effie for a few weeksBo, since Effie's strange gentleman friend Alucard has reappearedhis problems'. Brenda He's asthmatic and Effie are the guardians of more you read, the more you'll suspect that he's on the gateway autistic spectrum. Sometimes Jamie needs to Hell which just happens to be right on their doorstep take time off at short notice - she's a frequent flier in Whitby, but since Effie has shut herself away, Brenda has turned to her friend Robert, the owner of the local hotel A&E and sometimes Bo's not fit enough to go to help her with her investigations into school. Missed shifts or the ever present strange goings need to be away on time to pick Bo up from school are occasions when Jamie can be controlled and put in the town, involving vampires, monsters and wrong. It was going to come to a rather strange carhead. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755359453</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Naomi WoodB0CKD1L5JL|title=The Godless BoysRadio Free Olympia|author=Jeffrey Dunn
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=BritainPetr is an orphan. 1986Rescued by the strange, reclusive Bear, he is brought up far from bustling cities and busy human society, in the forests of Washington's Olympic Peninsula. The country became After Bear dies and a theocracy during the 1950s brief sojourn in human company, and since then outbreaks of secular terrorism have been dealt armed with by exile. The atheists have been sent to the Island where they can burn churches as they please. Aside from only a weekly boat bringing donated suppliespirate radio transmitter, the exiled must shift as best they can Petr goes on a remote snippet of land in journey through the forest, broadcasting the North Seastrange, wild and rarely heard voices he encounters. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330530127</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=James Patterson and Neil McMahonSarah Marsh|title=ToysA Sign of Her Own|rating=43.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The novel has After a bout of scarlet fever as a very glamorous openingchild, Ellen Lark loses her hearing. We're at President Jacklin's inauguration party and the easy flow Suddenly plunged into a world of narration gets me seamlessly and effortlessly into the storysilence, everything about her life changes. There are plenty of comments and observations pertaining to Living in a time when the super-duper hi-tech times use of the story, so as early sign language was seen as page 10 Hays and his beautiful wife Lizbethsomething only savages do, who are invitees, are attended Ellen is sent to by a well-trained and well-programmed ''iJeeves butlerschool where she is taught to lip read, but physically restrained from signing.'' I loved that phrase. It made me smile. The Bakers are an impressive From here, she ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the deaf and influential coupleusing a system called Visible Speech. As part of At the 'elite' society they expect a flawlesssame time, ordered life for themselves Bell is working on other inventions and their family. And Patterson then informs us that mere human beings have been relegated to menial work ideas, and most Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a complicated tangle of them live pitiful lives and serves them right, apparently. They're despised but their labour is necessary to oil the wheels of the important daily lives of the elites. But the elites have extremely ambitious plansespionage. Can they pull them off?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846057701</amazonuk>1035401614
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Louise WelshB0BC3YTCMR|title=Naming the Bones|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Murray Watson is a Doctor of English Literature embarking on a year-long sabbatical to pursue his long-held dream of writing the definitive biography of Archie Lunan and, as a specifically intended by-product, restore Lunan's poetry to its rightful place in the high canon of Scots creativity.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847672566</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewGood Girls Die|author=Anita Shreve|title=RescueAyura Ayira
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=When we meet Peter Webster he's a rookie paramedic who takes an emergency call to help a drunk driver who's been badly injured in a car crash. It was touch and go as to whether or This story is not Sheila Arsenault made it, but she did and afterwards Webster can't get her out of his thoughtsfor everyone. Every instinct tells him that he shouldn't get involved with her – that it'll mean trouble – but perhaps it was the long, shining, dark hair that tipped the balance and Webster is involved in an intense love affair. He's also involved in Sheila's life – for better or for worse.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408700735</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Philippe Claudel and Euan Cameron1472263936|title=Monsieur Linh and His ChildThe Figurine|author=Victoria Hislop
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=From a war-ravaged country a bit like a Vietnam or a Cambodia an old man carries It was in 1968 that Helena McCloud made her first trip to Greece. She was alone: her mother, Greek by birth, had left the fragile frame of his granddaughter aboard a refugeefamily home and refused to return, but Mary and Hamish (Helena's ship, staring at the receding horizon all the weeks parents) felt that it takes to arrive at would be a city a bit like a Seattle pity if Helena grew up without knowing her grandparents or a New Yorkunderstanding her Greek heritage. Her trip to the family apartment in up-market Kolonaki would be the first of several annual visits. He She grew to love her grandmother and she are given the basics of a new life together but itfamily's up to himmaid, Dina, Monsieur Linhbut was wary - and frightened - of her grandfather, retired general Stamatis Papagiannis. He was proud of his close connections to find friendship, which he does, accepting uncomprehendingly the chatty company of a fellow mourner called BarkJunta and expected his family to uphold his values but saw no reason to accommodate them. His prejudices included Helena's red hair and green eyes - inherited from her father's Scottish ancestors.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906694990</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ed SiegleDean Koontz|title=InvisiblesAfter Death|rating=4.53
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The closest Brighton usually gets to Brazil is in the pages of a dictionaryMichael Mace, but in ''Invisibles'' the two are drawn together in the life Head of Joel BurnsSecurity, at a thirty-five year old dentist who lives in Brighton as does his mothertop secret biological research facility, Jackie, and partner Debbie from whom he is separated. When Joel sees among 55 people who die when a news clip of virus is released in a bus hijack bio-hazard accident. Finding himself in Rio de Janeiroa makeshift mortuary, where Joel and Jackie lived until Joel was tencovered in plastic, he is convinced that one of the bystanders is his Brazilian father. What makes this more unusual is that Jackie has always told Joel a sense that his father is deadsomething very, although Joel very bad has never quite bought into this story which is happened to him – and only him – as he sits up and looks around at least part of the cause shrouded bodies of his problems with Debbiedead friends and former colleagues. The solution? Head off to Rio and see if As he recovers his senses, he realises that there is something different about him; he can track down this person''feel'' everything. ''Everything''. Michael isn't ''Michael'' anymore.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0956559913</amazonuk>1662500467}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Michael DhillonB0BVDC2VWH|title=The Cuckoo Parchment and the DykeGrave Listeners|author=William Frank
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Tristan Jarry The village is the world's most famous artist but he's rather moved on from selling his work for millions isolated and has just kidnapped Angelique Burr, the step-daughter of the President of the United Statespoor. SheIt's not an innocent child but an abused and abusing woman, now surrounded by a journalist and at times well able to hold her own with JarryWitching Forest. He's got helpers though And the villagers subsist largely by farming Uphegia plants - and forward planning its bread- like fruit provides nutrition and it's not long before Angelique finds herself involved in a trail its blossom provides herbal medicines. The black wood of destruction the forest provides heat and death as Jarry works towards his purposewarmth, roofs on homes, and even gallows, if needed. He intends to resurrect Dada, The fear of being buried alive is an existential superstition in the iconic movement founded in 1916 in Zurich with village and that is the intention reason Volushka, a drunken, self-indulgent, lazy lout of protesting against the war. He'll tell Angelique so much – but not what he finally intends to doa man is tolerated.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849235104</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Leo BenedictusB0BYF82CXT|title=The AfterpartySemi-Detached|author=Deborah Stone|rating=54
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=I opened the front cover and was confronted with the lines 'This book is different. You've really never read Bill and Amanda are living in a book like this before.' Confident wordssemi-detached house, I thought but will the book live up to this lofty expectation I now had? And when I got round to reading the notes at the end stuck in a depressing rut of the novelboredom and disappointment, I was pleasantly surprised when Terry and also rather taken abackFiona – glamorous, I have to saysuccessful and very much in love – move in next door. SoDespite their different outlooks on life, a refreshing take on the modern work of fictioncouples befriend each other and life appears to improve for both pairs. But all is not what it seems, I thought, as I started on Chapter Oneand their increasingly interconnected relationships are fated for tragedy.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>022409114X</amazonuk>''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=David BaddielShalini Boland|title=The Death of Eli GoldSilent Bride|rating=43
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Eli Gold is recognized as the 'the greatest living writer' - although his claim to this is slipping by by the day as he is on his death bed. He's not a nice character - his attitudes to his five wives Alice and his children Seth are deplorable and he has been bound up a match made in his own 'genius'heaven. He's a bit like the best and the worst of Saul Bellowis everything she has been searching for; handsome, accomplished, clever, Philip Roth funny; total and Norman Mailer combinedutter husband-material. Now dying She is all he could possibly want in hospital in New Yorka wife; beautiful, successful, confident… and so the book explores this event from the perceptive of four people in his life; his eight year old, precocious daughter inevitable proposal is eagerly accepted by his current wife; his first wife watching on Alice and the news from an old people's home in England; wedding is planned and set. When the angstmuch-ridden son of his third marriageanticipated day arrives, himself a pale imitation of Alice is walked down the author that his aisle by her father is; , beaming with pride and a mysterious fourth character who appears excitement as she surveys the congregation – their friends assembled to have a very different motive for seeing Gold snr celebrate this joyful day and who may be linked when Seth turns to Goldface his approaching bride, Alice's fourth wife world implodes because she has absolutely no idea who died in a mutual suicide pact with her then-husband, from which Eli survived. (In fact his identity is revealed in the publisher's blurb on man at the jacketaltar is, but I'll let you decide if you want who is waiting for her to know this or to let the story unfold as I did)become his wife.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0007270836</amazonuk>1662507089
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Alma Katsu1787636003|title=The TakerGirls of Summer|author=Katie Bishop
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=When Dr Luke Findley begins his nightshift at Aroostook County Hospital in St Andrews, Maine, things are quiet until Lanny McIlvrae is brought in by It was the police. Lanny is covered in blood summer when Rachel Evans turned eighteen that she and claims she has killed a man Caroline went backpacking around Greece and left him in arrived on the woodsisland. Desperate to escapeRachel wasn't exactly innocent but she was, Lanny quickly asks for Luke's helpperhaps, but he is not sure at firstnaive, so Lanny decides when thirty-four-year-old Alistair Wright started to tell Luke take an interest in her life story, she was flattered rather than wary. It was quite a story that begins in the early Puritan settlement while before he made any sort of St Andrews in 1809 and spans nearly two hundred years, taking Lanny from physical approach to her home to Boston and beyondby that time she was obsessed by him. A story that is richAlistair worked for Henry Taylor, imaginative looking after his interests on the island and entirely authentic, filling the majority of in particular in the novel, and there wasn't a moment when I questioned her reliability as she tells Luke everything, chapter by chapter, as he helps her to escape, slowly drawing him and bar where all the reader into her worldgirls either worked or partied. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846058171</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Aimee BenderAmanda Craig|title=The Particular Sadness of Lemon CakeThree Graces
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The title Few styles of this contemporary fiction interest me like the state-of-the-nation novel first caught my eye. How can food feel emotions? Actually, it is Rose There's something so utterly compelling about any writer who discovers that when she is eating she can taste catch hold of the feelings atmosphere of the person who cooked or prepared the food. I was a bit worried that this initial gimmick day and capture it, crafting an image of the book from which the title is taken would become annoying, but really this is another very well-written and readable novel about growing up country as it stands in a dysfunctional familyone particular moment. Rose To say that Amanda Craig is about to turn 9 skilled at the beginning, and comes home to find her mother making her birthday cake. She candoing this would be embarrassingly inadequate: she't resist tasting s practically synonymous with the cake, and genre of contemporary social fiction at first it is delicious: 'Warm citrus-baked batter lightness enfolded by cool deep dark swirled sugar'this point. But then she She has 'such a gift for weaving the ongoing issues of the day into the sensation lives of shrinkingher characters in a way that feels natural and lived-in, of upsetnever making them ciphers for social commentary but instead fully realised people, tasting a distance I somehow knew was connected to my mother'grappling with issues far larger than themselves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>009953827X</amazonuk>140871468X
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Guillaume Musso152915118X|title=Where Would I Be Without You?Pineapple Street|author=Jenny Jackson|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=I love ''Pineapple Street'' is the coverstory of three women: Sasha, which I think angles this book firmly towards womenDarley and Georgiana. With that old Beach Boys hit from the Sixties as the title, it encapsulates everything you need Darley and George are sisters and Sasha is married to know when choosing this booktheir brother Cord. It They's not really crime fictionre Stocktons, in that it lacks only Sasha isn't a whodunnit aspect in favour of following Stockton by birth so she isn't readily accepted into the tribe. The problem's exacerbated when the protagonistsclan matriarch, a French cop and a Scottish master criminalTilda, through a romantic entanglement asks Cord and Sasha if they'd like to move into the jaws of deathPineapple Street property. The interest is in Tilda and Chip have renovated and downsized to another property, a street or so away, which they own. They won't need any of the two men will gain command of furniture from Pineapple Street, so Sasha and Cord can move straight in. Nominally, they had a choice but that wasn't the other – reality. Darley and who is really driving Georgiana start to call Sasha 'the action – when both gold digger'. She's living in ''their attentions are focused on '' family home. They use it so often that they abbreviate it to 'the same girlGD'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906040346</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Mischa HillerEmily Critchley|title=Shake OffOne Puzzling Afternoon|rating=3.54|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=''Shake Off'' is 84 year old Edie has lived in the latest from the pen of Mischa Hellersame small town for almost her whole life, but now she is facing a student of the John Le Carre universe where the Spies had move as her son wants to move to another house and bring Edie to live with his family, as Edie is starting to Come In From The Coldlose her memory. Set in However, Edie is tormented by the 80s against a backdrop memory of daggers and cloaksher childhood friend, wests and easts and defectors and double agentsLucy, Heller's protagonist, Michel Khourywho went missing over 60 years ago, hooked on pain killers and posing as the worry that there was a studentsecret she was keeping for Lucy that somehow might be the thing that reveals the truth of what happened all that time ago. After 'seeing' Lucy in the high street, has been tasked with just as she was the unlikely mission last time she saw her, she starts to find pockets of scouting for a Cambridge location memories coming back to her. And yet as she remembers the past, she is forgetting more and more in which her day to host secret talks between those Palestinians and Israelis who seek a day life. Will she uncover the truth about Lucy'secular democratic state for Jewss disappearance before her move, Christians and Muslims'.before her memories are gone forever?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846590884</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''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sam Meekings0008506337|title=The Book of CrowsGarnett Girls|author=Georgina Moore|rating=45
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Having lived in China for a substantial period of timeThe love affair between Margo Garnett and poet Richard O'Leary was all-consuming, Sam Meekings has clearly soaked up a great deal of the culture; something he has already put to great effect apparently on both sides. Margo was just sixteen when they fell in his first book, [[Under Fishbone Clouds love. Richard was twenty-one and described by Sam Meekings|Under Fishbone Clouds]]Margo's mother as 'an older man'. Her parents worried that Richard's influence would take her away from what they felt she could achieve - going to Oxford and having a glittering career. In The Book the event, they eloped and Richard took her away from the Isle of Crows, his third book, he continues Wight. Margo did go to Oxford and went on to show his talent as become a nonwell-Chinese raconteur of Chinese culturerespected journalist. The couple had three children: Rachel, Imogen and Sasha. Life was lived in London and holidays were spent at Sandcove, but goes one step further by telling a story that spans several periods the family home on the Isle of Chinese history, thereby giving Wight. Even then the reader a glimpse into different peopledoubts about Richard's drinking were never far from Margo's livesmind: ''she would never be able to leave him in charge''. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846971721</amazonuk>}}
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Henry Sutton1914585402|title=Get Me Out Of HereDashboard Elvis is Dead|author=David F Ross
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Hapless (and you could also say hopeless) Matt is fed up with his rather sad and unexciting life. So, at every opportunity he wants to spice it up a bit. But does this strategy work? We're barely pages into the book when we see that Matt is an out-and-out snob. He knows all the designer labels for the best clothes, the best shoes (handmade, natch), the best champagne label ... I think you may get my drift here. Thatreviewed David F Ross's fine. As long as you can pay for this high life, whatbook [[There's the problem? Well, MattOnly One Danny Garvey by David F Ross|There's problem is cash - or the distinct lack Only One Danny Garvey]] a couple of it. He's down on his financial luck at the minute so it's time to try another angle ...|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099535629</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Joolz Denby|title=The Curious Mystery of Miss Lydia Larkin years back and the Widow Marvell|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=I was a bit surprised remember being absolutely floored by this book when how powerful and affecting it arrivedwas. Joolz Denby is It was a punk poetgripping, and has written four noir crime novelsemotionally wounding read, including Billie Morgan, longlisted for the Orange Prize. This quirky little novella with a long title features a large black cat and recipes at the backrereading my review of it my main takeaway was that I might not have lavished enough praise on it. Has Joolz really written a cosy?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956778607</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Robert DinsdaleLucy Ashe|title=Three MilesClara and Olivia
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Captain Abraham Matthews The year is so desperate to catch the villainous Albie Crowe 1933. The place? Sadler's Wells. Ballerinas Clara and bring Olivia are sisters, twins no less. Identical on the youngster to justice that some people would say he was obsessed. After six monthsoutside but not, Matthews has finally tracked down his preywe learn, and captures him just three miles from on the police stationinside. But with AlbieAnd not on stage, either. Because there's boys trying a lot that builds a dancer. Some things that can be taught or learnt – discipline, attention to rescue himdetail – and some things, other men without Abrahamthat ''je ne sais quoi''s moral compass more interested in vengeance than justice, and that don't come from the Luftwaffe dropping bombs on Leedsclassroom. A stage presence, a charm, this is set to be the longest three miles of either of their lives.a ''joie de vivre''.The difference between a hard-worker, and a star.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>057126025X</amazonuk>0861544080
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Antoinette Van HuegtenHeather Fawcett|title=Saving MaxEmily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The one-page Prologue sees us at 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 scene very first encyclopaedia of the crimefaeries. Two teenagers Whilst she is brilliant at research and a lot of blood - one of whom will speaking to faeries, she is not surviveso good with people. Seems like an open-and-shut case - but is it? We then go back So when she finds herself far, far North in time to a medical consulting room in downtown New York. Hot-shot lawyer and time-pressedthe small village of Hrafvsnik, having somehow offended the village matriarch, single mum Danielle she is trying not sure what she has done, nor how to understand redeem herself and put her severely disabled sonfinal investigations for her book back on the right track. Even allowing for the normal teenage angst Enter Wendell Bambleby, her dashingly handsome and insufferable rival who arrives unexpectedly, all charm and racing hormonesdelight, things are not good at homemuch to Emily's frustration. She knows it. But why is he here? Max knows it. What does he want? And what exactly is going on with the medical profession at large, know it. Something needs to be done before things get out of hand.faerie folk around Hravsnik?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0778304086</amazonuk>0356519120
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Kim Edwards1398515388|title=The Lake of DreamsBoy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The book opens with a lovely and intriguing sentence - 'My name is Lucy Jarrett and before I knew about First of all, it was the girl earthquake, deep in the window ... I found myself living in a village near ocean floor, which created the sea tsunami and this, in Japan.' Who could fail to be drawn into a story after reading thatturn, I thoughtcaused the nuclear meltdown. I The result was hooked immediatelycomplete and utter devastation. Edwards gives us a fleeting taste of life in JapanThe deaths were uncountable, particularly and the importance (almost reverence) loss of nature and gardens, public and privatelivelihoods was widespread. This sets The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the tone for list of priorities but - six months after the novel which is captivating tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. He wasn't a dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and interesting, but put together beautifully, unhurriedTamon the dog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0142428396</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Nikesh ShuklaChristopher Bowden|title=Coconut Unlimited|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=It is the early 1990's and Amit, Anand and Nishant are three young Asian boys in an all white private school. As such they are considered massively uncool by default. Too bad then that their Asian peers in the North London Gujarati enclave known as Harrow think that they are a bunch of stuck up toffs. Soft. Weak. No street cred whatsoever. Worst of all they are labelled as 'Coconuts' (brown on the outside, white on the inside). There's only one thing for it - start a hip-hop band. The fact that they don't have any songs, talent or initially any idea what hip-hop actually sounds like isn't really a problem. As everyone knows, forming a band makes you 'pretty cool' and after that the girls simply fall at your feet.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0704372045</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Elizabeth Haynes|title=Into The Darkest Corner|rating=4.5|genre=Crime|summary=The book didn't actually look that appealing. The cover is on the sepia side of dull. I didn't know the author's name and the title didn't really grab me. When I started reading we were straight into the transcript of a court case in which it seemed that a police officer was being questioned in court about his relationship with a woman. He was accused of being violent to her, but it seemed that the boot was really on the other foot. Then we were into a story – or even two stories – with two time lines some four years apart. Within ten minutes I couldn't put it down.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956251579</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Ben Pastor|title=LumenMr Magenta
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=When it began it wasnChristopher Bowden't pleasant, but there was hope that it would get better. Rosas latest novel is a patient untangling of a seemingly ordinary woman's fatherlife, Otto was carried out by her nephew after she has died. The aunt who always provided a doctor and she lived with him, her mother, Inga, elder brother Heinrich safe harbour and younger sister Hedi in a pleasant flat in Berlin. The turn little bit of opinion against Jews was slow – an anti-Jewish pin handed indulgence to Rosa as she went shopping, friends who felt a young nephew had had a much more interesting life than that they couldn't remain such obvious friends – certainly for the time being – nephew Stephen had ever realised and a change of employment for Otto. It was better for the patients if they didn't have contact with it seems to him, even if he was a good doctoran obligation to find it all out.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846971764</amazonuk>B0B6Z9VJDW
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Nathacha AppanahJennifer Mason|title=The Last Brother|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Raj and his two beloved brothers live on a Mauritian sugar plantation. World War II rages far away and close too, but Raj is blissfully unaware Partitions of anything beyond his immediate surroundings. Life is poor and hard and Raj's father takes out the privations of his life on his sons and his wife - drunken beatings are a regular occurrence. But his mother is loving and kind, and skilled at healing, and his brothers are constant playmates. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849164010</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Tom Bale|title=Terror's ReachUnity
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=We're on the south coast of England in the middle of a hot summer in a very upmarket enclaveHere at Bookbag Towers, not dissimilar to Sandbankswe first met Elizabeth Cromwell, along the coast a bit. The locals are going about their business, about their daily lives dominatrix and Bale obligingly introduces them to us one unintentional detective in [[Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery by one and also gives us an idea of their respective backgroundsJennifer Mason|Preposterous]], their family members when she investigated and even some unravelled a series of the house designs disappearances. In ' ... each home had a private jetty' for example.. New money is also apparent along with ostentatious taste. WhatPartitions of Unity's also apparent is that trouble's afoot, she sets her mind to solving a murder.. Big time.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848090765</amazonuk>B09LQR9FRF
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Daphne KalotayWill Carver|title=Russian WinterThe Daves Next Door
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The novel's structure goes back and forth from the past to the present day. The book opens with Nina, now elderly, in pain and Five strangers come together in one moment as a wheelchair: waiting suicide bomber prepares to die basicallydetonate his vest on a London tube line. And even although she's lived an interesting lifeAs their fates overlap, now all she has for company is a daily home-help. I was struck straight away by how prickly Nina is and I could feel all those emotions seething underneath the surface. So the question story is - why has she decided told in backwards order, leading up to sell some of her exquisite jewellery. Is it to help pay the bills? Or some other reason? We find out by degreesfateful moment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099553244</amazonuk>1914585186}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Scott MarianiJennifer Mason|title=The Lost RelicPreposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Ben Hope went to Italy to visit ''A struggling poetry zine, a former SAS comrade mom-and offer him -pop mobile diner in the Northern California redwoods, a job400-meter hurdler who just missed the 2004 Olympics, but hea women's got marriage and happiness – and Ben's trade is far from track coach with a yen for bullwhips, a billionaire with a state-of-the front of his mind. It'-art S&M dungeon, a man serving a life sentence in Alabama, an enigmatic signature, K(s whilst he's driving away that Ben nearly runs down , x), on a small boy and unwittingly walks into a deadly heist which will see the boy and his mother – and many others – brutally murderedcheap oil painting, an erotic art dealer in Georgia. It's only the beginning for Ben though as he find himself fleeing for his life and accused of murder. When the state needs to act people – even heroes – are disposable.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847561977</amazonuk>}}''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=G S MattuB0B2N7MVYM|title=Sons and Fascination|rating=3|genre=General Fiction|summary=This book concentrates on emotions. Take an impressionable young man, add in a chance (?) encounter with an attractive older woman and then stand well back as the fireworks explode and as family, friends and colleagues get sucked in to their deepening relationship. I must say I'm not keen on the title (a little pretentious for a work of fiction in my opinion and more suited to poetry) and even when it was ever so gently explained later on in the book (twice) I still didn't warm to it. All in all, not off to the greatest The Calculations of starts. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907756000</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewRational Men|author=Philip Wilding|title=Cross Country Murder SongDaniel Godfrey|rating=45
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The novel opens with It's the (unnamed) central character 10th of December 1962 when we first meet Dr Joseph Marr. Just to put what happens in a therapy session context, the Cuban missile crisis is still very fresh in downtown New Yorkpeople's minds. The air is charged and tension is presentworld has barely had a chance to breathe out. But for Joe Marr, big-timeit's not the missile crisis that's at the front of his mind. This is one troubled human beingHe's been convicted of murder. And With the current state of coursemedical knowledge, childhood issues and experiences are dominant in this question and answer session. We soon find out it's hard to think otherwise than that this individual the prosecution would never have been brought but Joe Marr has secrets spent his first few days in his basementHMP Queen's Bench, a relatively new prison. It all becomes too muchHe's just getting used to his roommate, Mervyn, he packs a bag and hits the road and so learning to be wary of the story starts properMcArthur brothers.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099539934</amazonuk>
}}