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[[Category:General Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]]==General fiction==__NOTOC__ {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Yvvette EdwardsOnyi Nwabineli|title=A Cupboard Full of Coats|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''He just knocked, that was all, knocked and the front door and waited, like the fourteen years since I'd killed my mother hadn't happened...'' Jinx is cold and she knows it. She cleans obsessively - a largely pointless task, since there is little mess Allow Me to clean since her husband and young son, tired of her frigidity, moved out. She cooks beautifully balanced meals that look aesthetic on the plate. But her food offers sustenance, not comfort. In fact, Jinx feels most at home amongst the dead people she works with as a funeral home cosmetologist. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1851688382</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Alexander McCall Smith|title=44 Scotland Street: Bertie Plays the BluesIntroduce Myself
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=In this seventh outing Anuri spent her childhood on display to the world, thanks to Scotland Street weher step-mother Ophelia're back with the cast s increasingly popular presence on social media, where she posted every step of familiar charactersAnuri's childhood for sponsorships and influencer deals and, basically, monetary gain. Matthew Now Anuri is in her twenties and Elspeth have had their triplets she is slowly trying to regain her confidence and must now face the trials of being new parentsto get her life back, with three times suing her step-mother to take down the trouble! content about her. Angus Anuri is battling alcoholism, failing to start her PhD, undergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online and Domenica are attempting to resolve receiving money from them for doing so. Most importantly, she is desperately worried about her little sister, who is the tricky issue new focus of where they will live once theyOphelia're marrieds online empire. And what of dear Bertie? Well, he's finally reached a point of having had enough of his mother soCan she save her sister, and perhaps herself and her relationship with her father at the help of his friend, he puts himself up for adoption on Ebay!same time?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846971888</amazonuk>0861546873
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Laura Kasischke1529153298|title=The RaisingList of Suspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Craig It's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is returning Prime Minister. (A woman? I mean, honestly...) She's not what's worrying Miv's family, though. Women have been disappearing. Well, they've been murdered, but to universityhave 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. Miv's upset because she's overheard that her father wants to move the family 'Down South'. When you're from Yorkshire, where he Down South is widely viewed as being responsible for the death of his girlfriend Nicolea frightening, foreign place, in a road accidentbest avoided. Suffering from post-traumatic stress and memory loss as a result of For Miv, the accidentmove would mean leaving her best friend, Craig is an obvious candidate Sharon, and she'll do anything to fall victim to the hauntings prevent that start to occur around the campus. But it She's not just Craig who is seeing inexplicable things happen at worried about the university.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857891545</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Simon Ings|title=Dead Water|rating=3|genre=Crime|summary=The standard advice to artists has always been "dondangers or that her Mum't gild the lily". For those writers who appear not s stopped talking - to understand how this relates to their art form, let me offer up a basic translation: don't complicate a brilliant plot! Dead Water suffers from such gildinganyone.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848878885</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ludwig Bechstein, Axel Sceffler and Julia Donaldson1035906708|title=The GloomsterDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=We've all been there. Finding fault with everything around ustend to think of Maria Callas as Greek, but she was born to Greek parents in Manhattan, and perhaps picking on one particular irritant that gets us so rattledNew York, tetchy in December 1923 and narked all we can do is invoke "Hell and damnation!" down on all creation - including, of course, ourselvesonly moved to Athens when she was thirteen. After all, our lot is so bad Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it wonto 'Callas't to make anything much worseit more manageable in the States. When she was back in Athens - supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for her voice - she was raised under the Nazi occupation by a mother who mercilessly exploited her and made no secret of her preference for her elder sister, Jackie.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571274242</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage
|author=Alexander McCall Smith
|title=Isabel Dalhousie: The Charming Quirks of OthersPerfect Passion Company|rating=34.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=I do wonder, sometimes, how it is possible that Mr Alexander McCall Smith can possibly manage to write so many novels? Wouldn't it be fascinating to meet him, and see if the stories just ooze out of him non-stop, and if he walks around with pen and paper at all times jotting things down as they occur to him... In this book he's bringing us back, once again, to Isabel Dalhousie's world. If you don't know who Isabel is then you should really forget all about this book for the moment and go right back to the beginning to [http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0349118698?tag=thebookbag-21&camp=1406&creative=6394&linkCode=as1&creativeASIN=0349118698&adid=12XVW0J2SJ9MJA2J2YPB& The Sunday Philosophy Club] so you can get all the characters in order and know what's going on. If you're already up to date, however, and have read up to [[The Lost Art of Gratitude by Alexander McCall Smith|The Lost Art of Gratitude]] then you're good to go!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0349123128</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Brett Battles|title=The Silenced|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=In the fourth instalment of the Jonathan Quinn seriesThe Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, Quinn run by Ness and his team are hired operating as an alternative to clean up after an operation and find all the online apps in providing a mysterious woman more personal, tailored service. Ness has followed them there. Before they can stop asked heryounger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the business, she disappearsas Ness is planning to take a trip to Canada to get away for a while. On the next job she turns Katie is coming out of a break up again, this time with friendsa bad boyfriend, and things start so jumps at the chance to go drastically wrongcome home to Edinburgh. Quinn must find And so begins this woman new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, thanks to 44 Scotland Street and stop herthe Isabel Dalhousie novels, but with some new characters who quickly begin to charm. Katie has no experience in running a business, or in the meantime somebody match-making, but Ness has become very interested full confidence in finding out Jonathan Quinnher abilities, and there's real identity always her very helpful (and is getting closer rather handsome) neighbour, William, to his family. Quinn has to make lend a choice; do his job or save his family?hand…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848092881</amazonuk>1846976596
}}
|rating=4.5
|genre=General FictionParanormal|summary=When your first novel Benny is having a terrifically bad day. He loses his job, he loses his fiancee, and his house gets trashed. Oh, and someone has been successfuldelivered a really weird, disturbing coffin-sized object to his home, and it adds pressure onto 's possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the thing that has trashed his house! The thing is, Benny is the secondvery last person to deserve all this bad luck. This He is a nice person. A really nice person. So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the situation facing Joe Dunthornedelivery to his house is a new friend, as his debut [[Submarine by Joe Dunthorne|Submarine]] won several awardsa bad weather friend called Spike, was adapted into who has been sent to help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a film and came highly praised by The Bookbaggood person. This means ''Wild AbandonSpike 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' has to be rather good to keep his reputation intacts wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>024114406X</amazonuk>1662500491
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Stella GibbonsKatherine Howe|title=WestwoodA True Account
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=I was instantly attracted to this novel as it's set largely Hannah Masury is living in Hampstead and HighgateBoston, which is territory I'm fortunate enough having been sent to be familiar live witha family who run an inn, and being made to work there from a young age. I was also instantly attracted When she hears there is to Margaret – be a young woman with the worries hanging of some pirates in the world on her shoulderstown, she decides to go and watch. Continually concerned with politics Enthralled and horrified in equal measure, Hannah finds herself embroiled in a young boy's death at the impact hands of war on those far two vicious pirates. She hides away as well as close by, Margaret has genuine warmth so that they don't find and concern for kill her fellow human beingstoo, and then to escape them completely she runs away to sea, dressing as a boy and this pulls joining the notorious Ned Low's pirate ship as a cabin boy. She soon finds herself in the reader into thick of things when there is a mutiny on board, and from there we are caught up in her story straight awayrip roaring tale of life on the ocean waves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>009952872X</amazonuk>0861547438
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Esi Edugyan1471180158|title=Half-Blood BluesMaybe Tomorrow|author=Penny Parkes
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Sid and his friend Chip are revisiting their youth, more than 50 years ago. They were jazz musicians, living and working Jamie Matson works in Berlin and Parisan upper-class grocery store, until they had to escape Nazi occupied Paris in 1940 to return to Baltimore. Now it is 1992, and for a man who's a control freak with all the others they worked with are long since dead. They have just been involved in a documentary about their experiences, and are about to return to Germany (soon after the fall subtlety of the Berlin Wall) for a jazz festival in memory of the great Hiero Falkhalf brick. Hieronymus Falk was a young black German musician with an exceptional musical talent Jamie's son, the star of their bandBo, the Hot-Time Swingers'has his problems'. He was picked up by 's asthmatic and the Bootsmore you read, the more you' as Sid refers to the Germans, in Paris in 1940, and disappeared into a concentration camp, then they heard ll suspect that he was released but died in 1948.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687756</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Ira Levin|title=Rosemary's Baby|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=A young couple find on the beginnings of a dream life together in a new apartment in a New York building that a friend says is a hotbed of death and misfortuneautistic spectrum. But it seems perfect. His job prospects as an actor have never been better, and theySometimes Jamie needs to take time off at short notice - she're quickly accepted into s a frequent flier in the elderly community of their neighbours. Whatlocal A&E and sometimes Bo's more, she - Rosemary - gets pregnantnot fit enough to go to school. Nothing Missed shifts or the need to be away on time to pick Bo up from school are occasions when Jamie can go be controlled and put in the wrong, can it? . None of this happiness and hope can It was going to come at to a dreadful cost - can it?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849015880</amazonuk>head.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Luke WilliamsB0CKD1L5JL|title=The Echo ChamberRadio Free Olympia|author=Jeffrey Dunn
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Born in Lagos, Nigeria in 1946, in the last days of the British Empire, Evie Steppman had exceptional hearingPetr is an orphan. She remembers what it was like in Rescued by the wombstrange, the pumping of her mother's blood, the different tones of her father's voice telling her storiesreclusive Bear, he is brought up far from bustling cities and the clatter of outside noise, yet to be recognized as the falling of rain or the whining of the wind. As she grew up she learnt to listen to the sounds around herbusy human society, for even in silence there is still the echo forests of oneWashington's own heartbeatOlympic Peninsula. Now, many years later, her hearing is going After Bear dies and a brief sojourn in human company, and armed with it her memories. Confined to an attic space in Scotland she needs to write her story down before it is too late. To do this she turns to objects – only a pocket watchpirate radio transmitter, maps, photos and diaries, to help re-form her past, to take us Petr goes on a journey – not through sightsthe forest, but through sounds.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241143004</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Ben Brooks|title=Grow Up|rating=4|genre=Teens|summary=Jasper is seventeen. He spends his time pretending to revise for his AS levels, fantasising about sex with Georgia Treely, hanging out with self-harming best friend Tenaya watching cheesy TV showsbroadcasting the strange, wild and taking ketamine and mephedrone with his friends. When he's at a loose end, rarely heard voices he goes to sex chatrooms in a quest to see how far he can get without going private (paying). He's also convinced that his step-father, Keith, is a homicidal maniac whose next victim is likely to be Jasper's mother..encounters.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857861875</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Michael RichmondSarah Marsh|title=SisyphusaA Sign of Her Own
|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The back cover blurb tells us that the mentally ill (for whatever reason or reasons) are still stigmatised by various sectors After a bout of societyscarlet fever as a child, Ellen Lark loses her hearing. I would agreeSuddenly plunged into a world of silence, everything about her life changes. I then flip Living in a time when the book over use of sign language was seen as something only savages do, Ellen is sent to the front cover which has the words 'the mental health publisher' and straight away some of us may already be making a judgement (perhaps unfairly too) before they even open the bookschool where she is taught to lip read, but physically restrained from signing. Perhaps this From here, she ends up-front honesty by the publisher negates somewhat in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the terrific title deaf and terrific graphics of the coverusing a system called Visible Speech. Just my own personal opinion here. The publishing company At the same time, Bell is being supported by the Arts Councilworking on other inventions and ideas, Englandand Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a complicated tangle of espionage.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1849915261</amazonuk>1035401614
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ira LevinB0BC3YTCMR|title=The Stepford WivesGood Girls Die|author=Ayura Ayira
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary='It can't be a coincidence that Stepford women are all the way they areThis story is not for everyone.' says Bobbie, Joanna Eberhart's only friend in Stepford. Joanna has recently come to live in the idyllic suburban town of Stepford with her husband and two children. She is an independent woman with her own part-time career as a photographer, is intelligent, liberated and has a keen interest in feminism. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849015899</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Philip Jose Farmer1472263936|title=The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: The Peerless Peer|rating=4.5|genre=Crime (Historical)|summary=It's World War One, and Britain has got wind of some brilliant scientific research, that has created a new bacterial weapon capable of wiping out the world's supply of sauerkraut. But a dastardly German has stolen the formula. Before he can give a variant based on boiled meat, cabbage and potatoes to the kaiser, his most recent nemesis - Sherlock Holmes, no less - must be brought out of beekeeping retirement. Cue an adventure and a half, as he and Watson take to the skies for the first time in their hectic lives, end up in darkest Africa, and encounter a certain yodelling, long-haired nobleman, more than up to the name of King of the Jungle...|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857681206</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFigurine|author=Tom Rachman|title=The ImperfectionistsVictoria Hislop
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=This book has reached It was in 1968 that Helena McCloud made her first trip to Greece. She was alone: her mother, Greek by birth, had left the dizzy heights of an ''International Bestseller'family home and refused to return, but Mary and Hamish (Helena' s parents) felt that it would be a pity if Helena grew up without knowing her grandparents or understanding her Greek heritage. with plaudits all over its coversHer trip to the family apartment in up-market Kolonaki would be the first of several annual visits. And itShe grew to love her grandmother and the family's a debut novelmaid, Dina, but was wary - and frightened - of her grandfather, albeit by an author who has worked in journalismretired general Stamatis Papagiannis. So, am I going He was proud of his close connections to be another notch on the bookJunta 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 -reading bedpost, so to speak?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849160317</amazonuk>inherited from her father's Scottish ancestors.
}}
{{Frontpage|author=Dean Koontz|title=After Death|rating=3|genre=General Fiction|summary= Michael Mace, Head of Security, at a top secret biological research facility, is among 55 people who die when a virus is released in a bio-hazard accident. Finding himself in a makeshift mortuary, covered in plastic, he has a sense that something very, very bad has happened to him – and only him – as he sits up and looks around at the shrouded bodies of his dead friends and former colleagues. As he recovers his senses, he realises that there is something different about him; he can ''feel'' everything. ''Everything''. Michael isn't ''Michael'' anymore.|isbn=1662500467}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jon SteeleB0BVDC2VWH|title=The WatchersGrave Listeners|author=William Frank|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=At over 500 pages I'm sincerely hoping that this book is going to appeal. The back cover blurb village is promising, informing the reader that the author is a well-travelled cameraman/editor of many years standingisolated and poor. The story opens with a young Marc Rochat starting It's surrounded by a new life in SwitzerlandWitching Forest. Everything is strange And the villagers subsist largely by farming Uphegia plants - its bread-like fruit provides nutrition and new to himits blossom provides herbal medicines. He becomes a night-watchman at The black wood of the local cathedral forest provides heat and warmth, roofs on homes, and carries out his duties diligentlyeven gallows, if needed. He doesn't mind The fear of being buried alive is an existential superstition in the fact village and that it's is the reason Volushka, a drunken, self-indulgent, lazy lout of a rather solitary job as he more than makes up for the silence (when the bells are not ringing that man is) by chatting away to all of the various bells as if they were human. Marc's conversations with his 'ladies' are utterly charming. I could listen to them all daytolerated.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0593067517</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John HartB0BYF82CXT|title=Iron HouseSemi-Detached|author=Deborah Stone
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Hart is already ''Bill and Amanda are living in a bestsemi-selling author so he has detached house, stuck in a lot to live up to with his latest book. At over 400 pages it's a bigdepressing rut of boredom and disappointment, meaty read. The story opens with Michaelwhen Terry and Fiona – glamorous, now an adult. In his prime, with the woman he loves successful and about to become a father: life is looking very rosy indeed. He thinks that he's left his shady past behind him forever. He's wrongmuch in love – move in next door. Hart gives his readers a little background info Despite their different outlooks on Michaellife, the central character, just enough couples befriend each other and life appears to whet our appetitesimprove for both pairs. It worked But all is not what it seems, and their increasingly interconnected relationships are fated for me and I was eager to keep turning the pagestragedy. At the start of the book there's a definite sense of something catastrophic about to happen and that it involves Michael in some way.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848541791</amazonuk>'
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tim ThorntonShalini Boland|title=Death of an Unsigned BandThe Silent Bride|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Russell knows that his band Alice and Seth are a match made in heaven. He is going nowhereeverything she has been searching for; handsome, accomplished, clever, funny; total and utter husband-material. She is all he could possibly want in a wife; beautiful, successful, confident… and so the inevitable proposal is eagerly accepted by Alice and the wedding is planned and set. When the prospect of a life consisting only of a grim much-anticipated day job and some depressing creative exercises arrives, Alice is getting him walked down. But the aisle by her father, beaming with pride and excitement as she surveys the congregation – their friends assembled to celebrate this joyful day and when Josh Seth turns up with a potential way outto face his approaching bride, itAlice's not quite world implodes because she has absolutely no idea who the way Russell, or any of man at the other band membersaltar is, would have envisagedwho is waiting for her to become his wife.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099531879</amazonuk>1662507089
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Haley Tanner1787636003|title=Vaclav and LenaThe Girls of Summer|author=Katie Bishop
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=In It was the summer of 1969when Rachel Evans turned eighteen that she and Caroline went backpacking around Greece and arrived on the island. Rachel wasn't exactly innocent but she was, perhaps, naive, as Thunderclap Newman proclaimed so when thirty-four-year-old Alistair Wright started to take an interest in their one her, she was flattered rather than wary. It was quite a while before he made any sort of physical approach to her and only musical claim to fame, there by that time she was something in the airobsessed by him. The alternative generation were talking about the recent Woodstock Festival in AmericaAlistair worked for Henry Taylor, and eagerly looking forward to what promised to be a similar gathering, albeit after his interests on a smaller scale, at the Isle of Wight at island and in particular in the end of August, bar where Bob Dylan was headliningall the girls either worked or partied.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908105658</amazonuk>
}}
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=I read Few styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the front cover blurb and didn't quite get it 'She borrowed a child. He stole herstate-of-the-nation novel.There' I don't mind 'not getting s something so utterly compelling about any writer who can catch hold of the atmosphere of the day and capture it' in , crafting an image of the slightest country as it just makes me want to read stands in one particular moment. To say that Amanda Craig is skilled at doing this would be embarrassingly inadequate: she's practically synonymous with the book even moregenre of contemporary social fiction at this point. So I was keen to get stuck She has such a gift for weaving the ongoing issues of the day into this debut novelthe lives of her characters in a way that feels natural and lived-in, never making them ciphers for social commentary but instead fully realised people, grappling with issues far larger than themselves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0434021008</amazonuk>140871468X
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Isabel Ashdown152915118X|title=Hurry Up And WaitPineapple Street|author=Jenny Jackson|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Ashdown won ''Pineapple Street'' is the Observer Best Debut Novels story of the Year with her book [[Glasshopper by Isabel Ashdown|Glasshopper]]three women: Sasha, an excerpt of which Darley and Georgiana. Darley and George are sisters and Sasha is given at married to their brother Cord. They're Stocktons, only Sasha isn't a Stockton by birth so she isn't readily accepted into the back of this booktribe. I decided The problem's exacerbated when the clan matriarch, Tilda, asks Cord and Sasha if they'd like to read it first move into the Pineapple Street property. Tilda and Chip have renovated and I must say that I immediately warmed downsized to Ashownanother property, a street or so away, which they own. They won's style t need any of writingthe furniture from Pineapple Street, so Sasha and Cord can move straight in. She seems to have Nominally, they had a knack for down-to-earth language especially with teenagers and young peoplechoice but that wasn't the reality. So, I was really looking forward Darley and Georgiana start to this book but I was also conscious of call Sasha 'the fact gold digger'. She's living in ''their'' family home. They use it so often that they abbreviate it had a lot to live up to'the GD'. Will she be able to deliver?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956251552</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Gabrielle DonnellyEmily Critchley|title=The Little Women LettersOne Puzzling Afternoon
|rating=4
|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=I read 84 year old Edie has lived in the back cover blurb same small town for almost her whole life, but now she is facing a move as her son wants to move to another house and bring Edie to live with delight and couldn't help but applaud Donnelly for his family, as Edie is starting to lose her ingenuitymemory. I loved However, Edie is tormented by the book ''Little Women'' when I read it many memory of her childhood friend, Lucy, who went missing over 60 years ago , and television adaptations keep it fresh the worry that there was a secret she was keeping for new generationsLucy that somehow might be the thing that reveals the truth of what happened all that time ago. So, before IAfter 'seeing'd even turned to chapter oneLucy in the high street, I just as she was loving this bookthe last time she saw her, she starts to find pockets of memories coming back to her. But will it live up And yet as she remembers the past, she is forgetting more and more in her day to my lofty expectationsday life. Will she uncover the truth about Lucy's disappearance before her move, and before her memories are gone forever?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0718156587</amazonuk>1804181250
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Caitlin DaviesMadelaine Lucas|title=The Ghost of Lily PainterThirst for Salt
|rating=5
|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=When Annie Sweet buys a home with her family''Love, she feels inexplicably bonded to it from first sight. As life brings unwelcome changes for herI'd read, she decides to uncover the history of her house was supposed to provide be a distraction light and to understand her feelings about her home.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091937035</amazonuk>}}weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Bella Pollen0008506337|title=The Summer of the BearGarnett Girls|author=Georgina Moore|rating=45
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Letty FlemingThe love affair between Margo Garnett and poet Richard O'Leary was all-consuming, recently widowedapparently on both sides. Margo was just sixteen when they fell in love. Richard was twenty-one and described by 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 event, is driving they eloped and Richard took her three children hundreds away from the Isle of miles north Wight. Margo did go to a new Oxford and hopefully happy life went on to become a remote Scottish islandwell-respected journalist. We get a peek at the personalities of the The couple had three children straight away: Alba is opinionated Rachel, Imogen and strong-willedSasha. Life was lived in London and holidays were spent at Sandcove, for examplethe family home on the Isle of Wight. Still young sheEven then the doubts about Richard's managed to acquire a list as long as her arm of her drinking were never far from Margo'hatess mind: ' in the world - fish, English teachers and doors which are ajar all feature and I didn't care as I couldn't help liking her. At least she knows her own mind. What will she would never be like when sheable to leave him in charge's grown up, for heaven's sake?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330519069</amazonuk>}}.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Dawn French|titleisbn=A Tiny Bit Marvellous|rating=3.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Over the years I have become something of a Dawn French fan. She has consistently entertained and quite frankly made my sides split with laughter as an actor, comedian, and most recently as a writer with her wonderful autobiography [[Dear Fatty by Dawn French|Dear Fatty]]. So when I saw her first novel ‘A Tiny Bit Marvellous’ waiting for me on The Bookbag shelves I thought here’s another treat from this remarkable entertainer. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141046341</amazonuk>}} {{newreview1914585402|title=The Storm at the DoorDashboard Elvis is Dead|author=Stefan Merrill BlockDavid F Ross
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The author, Stefan Merrill Block, is writing about members of his own family in I reviewed David F Ross's book [[There'The Storm at the Doors Only One Danny Garvey by David F Ross|There''. The story opens at the end, if you get my drift. We see the elderly grandmother Katherine in s Only One Danny Garvey]] a bit couple of years back and remember being absolutely floored by how powerful and affecting it was. It was a spotgripping, wondering whether to open and then emotionally wounding read a bunch of papers. These papers (these red-hot papers) are the words , and thoughts rereading my review of her husband Frederick from his time in a mental institution. If she opens them, then it will be opening a veritable can of wormsmy main takeaway was that I might not have lavished enough praise on it. Does she or doesn't she?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571269591</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=A Conspiracy Of FriendsLucy Ashe|authortitle=Alexander McCall SmithClara and Olivia
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=SoThe year is 1933. The place? Sadler's Wells. Ballerinas Clara and Olivia are sisters, twins no less. Identical on the outside but not, here we are again back with our friends in Corduroy Mansions in thislearn, on the inside. And not on stage, their third bookeither. I found ''A Conspiracy Of Friends'Because there' s a lot that builds a little slow to start with, and I worried dancer. Some things that perhaps I had tired of the characterscan be taught or learnt – discipline, but a few chapters later the pace picked up attention to detail – and once again I was thoroughly entertained by the quirky characterssome things, interesting thoughts and ideas.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846971829</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=In The Sea There Are Crocodiles|author=Fabio Geda|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary=that ''In The Sea There Are Crocoilesje ne sais quoi'' is based on a true story about a young boy left by his mother to fend for himself. As if , that wasndon't difficult enoughcome from the classroom. A stage presence, a charm, hea ''joie de vivre''s stranded in Pakistan while the rest of his family are in war-ravaged Afghanistan. It's The difference between a collaboration between Afghan Enaiatollah hard-worker, and his Italian translator, Fabio - this book is already a big hit with Italian readers (it says so on the back cover blurb). Enaiatollah eventually claimed political asylum in Italystar.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857560085</amazonuk>0861544080
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Forgetting ZoeHeather Fawcett|authortitle=Ray RobinsonEmily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=''Forgetting Zoe'' opens with ThurmanEmily Wilde is an expert academic scholar on faerie lore, one of the two main characters. We see that his home life is dreadful - with a violent and cruel father she has travelled extensively, and a mother who is weak. And as an only child (researched meticulously, to rather elderly parents) Thurman hears his fatherwrite her life's violence directed at his motherwork, the very first encyclopaedia of faeries. Their home Whilst she is out of the way brilliant at research and in an isolated spotspeaking to faeries, she is not so really the three of them form a very unhappy threesome indeedgood with people. The reader is left So when she finds herself far, far North in no doubt as to the nature small village of Hrafvsnik, having somehow offended the father with lines such asvillage matriarch, she is not sure what she has done, ''As a form of punishment Father would press one of his hands down nor how to redeem herself and put her final investigations for her book back on top of Thurmanthe right track. Enter Wendell Bambleby, her dashingly handsome and insufferable rival who arrives unexpectedly, all charm and delight, much to Emily's head so forcefully that Thurman's legs would bucklefrustration... that blood would trickle down his forehead...'' But why is he here? What does he want? And what exactly is going on with the faerie folk around Hravsnik?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>009953763X</amazonuk>0356519120
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1398515388|title=The Poison TreeBoy and the Dog|author=Erin KellySeishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Karen is ending her university years First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and has her future mapped outthis, in turn, caused the nuclear meltdown. But then she meets Biba, who opens doors to a world she's never seen before The result was complete and utter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, and to the type loss of intense friendship livelihoods was widespread. The fact that she's never experienced either. As Karen embarks on this friendship, she collects all kinds many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of new experiences along priorities but - six months after the waytsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. At He wasn't a dog person but the start of convenience store owner's comment that summer, she could never have predicted just how indelible the mark left by the friendship he would turn out call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to beopen his car door and Tamon the dog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444701053</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Clare JacobChristopher Bowden|title=Ophelia in PiecesMr Magenta
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Barrister Ophelia Dormandy had been working hard – well, overworking – for the last six months and on the eve Christopher Bowden's latest novel is a patient untangling of her thirty-ninth birthday she decided that she would go home early and cook a decent meal for seemingly ordinary woman's life, carried out by her husband and herself. She even decided that nephew after she would wear the red dress which Patrick likedhas died. But when she got home Patrick The aunt who always provided a safe harbour and their son, Alex, were eating ice creams. He didn't seem in the least interested in dinner and then admitted that he was having an affair. Ophelia threw him out – and then began the long haul a little bit of trying indulgence to be a decent single parent in young nephew had had a job where the hours were long much more interesting life than that nephew Stephen had ever realised and the money uncertainit seems to him an obligation to find it all out.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1907595147</amazonuk>B0B6Z9VJDW
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Elliott HallJennifer Mason|title=The Children's CrusadePartitions of Unity
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=We back-track several years to get the low-down and history on Felix. It's interestingHere at Bookbag Towers, we first met Elizabeth Cromwell, very interesting. He's like some sort of American 007 but not all of his plans have been successful. Some have back-fired dominatrix and he has the scars to prove it. In fact although unintentional detective in his prime years[[Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery by Jennifer Mason|Preposterous]], Felix could be healthier when she investigated and is forced to take regular medicationunravelled a series of disappearances. And throughout the story Hall tells us why that is. Chapter Two, which sees Felix in Nevada opens with the no-nonsense line In ''Partitions of Unity''I came to Las Vegas , she sets her mind to kill solving a manmurder..'' But who? And why? We get the answers all in Hall's good time.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848540752</amazonuk>B09LQR9FRF
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=J Robert LennonWill Carver|title=CastleThe Daves Next Door|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=In the late winter of 2006 Erich Loesch returns to Gerrysburg, NY (Pop 2310 and falling) and buys six hundred or so acres of undeveloped land on the edge of the county. Loesch grew up in Gerrysburg, but he's been away a long time. The place hasn't changed much except through long, slow decline. There are vacant lots where he remembers homes, businesses, amenities. There are one or two people who remember him, or remember his family. They remember what happened to the family, or heard about what happened to him afterwards.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1555975593</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Rachel Genn|title=The Cure|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=We get the background on Eugene early on Five strangers come together in the story; one moment as a troubled childhood with an alcoholic father who was often not at home. Instead he was working suicide bomber prepares to detonate his vest on a building site in London and drinking away much of his wagestube line. His wife and children didn't appear to benefit much - either financially or emotionally. Eugene still bears plenty of invisible scars from that time and now grown upAs their fates overlap, would like to carve out his own path and thinks a fresh start would be a good idea. Although it's not altogether a fresh start as he chooses to work on the same construction site as his father and even lives in the same lodgings story is told in backwards order, leading up to the East Endfateful moment. Is this his own unique way of exorcising some ghosts?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>184901583X</amazonuk>1914585186}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Cathy GlassJennifer Mason|title=Run, Mummy, RunPreposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Aisha is ''A struggling poetry zine, a youngmom-and-pop mobile diner in the Northern California redwoods, beautiful and successful woman a 400-meter hurdler who has worked hard to get where she is. But there is one thing missing in her life: just missed the 2004 Olympics, a women's track coach with a yen for bullwhips, a man. Still living billionaire with her parents at a state-of-the age of thirty and inexperienced when it comes to men-art S&M dungeon, a man serving a life sentence in Alabama, an enigmatic signature, K(s, x), Aisha wonders if she will ever find on a husband. But then she spots cheap oil painting, an ad erotic art dealer in the paper and plucking up all her courage and determination, she decides to replyGeorgia... This could be her only chance at love and she doesn't want to waste it.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007299281</amazonuk>}}'
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Nicholas HoggB0B2N7MVYM|title=The Hummingbird and the BearCalculations of Rational Men|author=Daniel Godfrey|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Sam Taylor seems It's the 10th of December 1962 when we first meet Dr Joseph Marr. Just to have a charmed life – a City job that brings him wealth and prestigeput what happens in context, the Cuban missile crisis is still very fresh in people's minds. The world has barely had a wonderful fiancée and a lovely London homechance to breathe out. But all this canfor Joe Marr, it't compensate for a childhood s not the missile crisis that contained great sorrow; he is haunted by a sense 's at the front of his mind. He's been convicted of being somehow incompletemurder. When a chance encounter at a wedding brings With the current state of medical knowledge, it's hard to think otherwise than that the prosecution would never have been brought but Joe Marr has spent his first few days in HMP Queen's Bench, a relatively new woman into this lifeprison. He's just getting used to his roommate, he begins Mervyn, and learning to hope that he has found everything he really needsbe wary of the McArthur brothers.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184901647X</amazonuk>
}}