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[[Category:General Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]]==General fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Francis GilbertOnyi Nwabineli|title=The Last Day of TermAllow Me to Introduce Myself
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=ItAnuri spent her childhood on display to the world, thanks to her step-mother Ophelia's the last day increasingly popular presence on social media, where she posted every step of term at the Gilda Ball AcademyAnuri's childhood for sponsorships and influencer deals and, basically, monetary gain. Now Anuri is in her twenties and she is slowly trying to regain her confidence and English teacher Martin can't wait for to get her life back, suing her step-mother to take down the holiday content about her. Anuri is battling alcoholism, failing to starther PhD, undergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online and receiving money from them for doing so. Shaken by Most importantly, she is desperately worried about her little sister, who is the death new focus of his friend Jack in a riot at the school, heOphelia's failed to notice his marriage falling to pieces online empire. Can she save her sister, and perhaps herself and his her relationship with his son deteriorating. Just when he thinks things can't get any worse, an anonymous pupil accuses him of inappropriate sexual conduct.her father at the same time?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1906021511</amazonuk>0861546873
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Evonne Wareham1529153298|title=Never Coming Home|rating=3.5|genre=Crime|summary=Kaz Elmore has almost come to terms with her daughter's death. She died while on holiday in America with her father (Kaz's ex husband) and her ashes have been scattered on the river. As tragic as it is, Kaz has no alternative but to accept that her daughter is never coming back. However, one day she receives a visit from a man called Devlin, who witnessed the accident and was holding Jamie when she died. His sole intention is to provide some comfort for Kaz by telling her that her daughter was not alone but when he spots photographs of Jamie, he realises that she is not the child who died in his arms.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906931704</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Andrea Eames|title=The Cry of the Go-Away Bird|rating=3|genre=General Fiction|summary='The Cry of the Go-Away Bird' is the debut novel from Andrea Eames. It revolves around Elise, a white Zimbabwean girl living through her teens on the eve List of the Mugabe-sponsored farm invasions at the beginning of this century. The author herself grew up in Zimbabwe before moving to New Zealand with her family at the age of seventeen and there is a strong sense of memoir and personal experience in the novel, which has both positive and negative effects on the narrative.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846553733</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewSuspicious Things|author=Alexander McCall Smith|title=The Saturday Big Tent Wedding PartyJennie Godfrey
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Alexander McCall Smith makes it look It's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is 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 have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so easy, churning out book after delightful book frightening. Miv's upset because she's overheard that continue her father wants to delight and amuse his loyal readersmove the family 'Down South'. His writing seems effortlessWhen you're from Yorkshire, Down South is a frightening, and in this storyforeign place, once againbest avoided. For Miv, the characters remain move would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, and she'll do anything to prevent that. She's not worried about the wonderful friends we have always known and expected them dangers or that her Mum's stopped talking - to be, as if they really are alive and living these stories somewhere and AMS is simply transcribing them for our pleasureanyone.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0349123136</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Rosie Dastgir1035906708|title=A Small FortuneDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Harris Anwar is truly a man who is split between two worlds. He's a British Pakistani, proud We tend to think of his Eastern rootsMaria Callas as Greek, but when he came she was born to the UK he changed his name from Haaris - with a longGreek parents in Manhattan, New York, flat vowel - in December 1923 and only moved to the more acceptable Harris and his clothing Athens when she was that favoured by an English gentlemanthirteen. HeHer original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to 'Callas's proud and he would say many reasons to be proudmake it more manageable in the States. Some of the things of which he's proud are relatively small When she was back in Athens - the vacuum cleaner which he's had supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for twenty years might not work particularly well, but he's proud that he's hung on to it. He's proud of his car, her voice - she was raised under the central heating which he installed himself Nazi occupation by a mother who mercilessly exploited her and most made no secret of all he's proud of his daughterher preference for her elder sister, Jackie.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857383736</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=David NichollsAlexander McCall Smith|title=One DayThe Perfect Passion Company|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=I knew within The Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and operating as an alternative to all the online apps in providing a more personal, tailored service. Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the first ten pages that I was going business, as Ness is planning to take a trip to Canada to love ''One Day''get away for a while. It Katie is the only book that has kept me coming out of a break up at nightwith a bad boyfriend, distracted me throughout the day and woken me up early in so jumps at the morningchance to come home to Edinburgh. I couldn't put it down And so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, thanks to 44 Scotland Street and didn't want the Isabel Dalhousie novels, but with some new characters who quickly begin to eithercharm. I have always found it difficult to settle on Katie has no experience in running a favourite type of storybusiness, or even a specific genre that I likein match-making, but this novel made me realise that what I want Ness has full confidence in a book is realism. As Dexter Mayhew her abilities, and there's always her very helpful (and Emma Morley enjoyed their late night conversation in the opening moments of the bookrather handsome) neighbour, William, Nicholls pulled me into his world.to lend a hand…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0340896981</amazonuk>1846976596
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=John GreenDean Koontz|title=The Fault in Our StarsBad Weather Friend|rating=4.5|genre=TeensParanormal|summary=Having been diagnosed at age 12 with stage 4 thyroid cancer, Hazel was prepared to die. Then at age 14, Benny is having a miracle treatment shrunk the tumours in her lungsterrifically bad day...for the time being. Hazel could live for years He loses his job, or she could die at any timehe loses his fiancee, but her days are spent tethered to an oxygen tank and under constant surveillance and treatment to keep the cancer at bayhis house gets trashed. Hazel is now 16. With her life in a constant holding pattern Oh, Hazel meets Augustus Waters at and someone has delivered a cancer support group. Augustus is gorgeousreally weird, sharpdisturbing coffin-witted, in remission and completely attracted to Hazel. As their relationship blossoms and grows, Hazel finds she has sized object to re-examine her attitude about life and deathhis home, illness and wellness and love. Their brief journey together leaves a lasting legacy behind it's possible that will change everything.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0525478817</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Ken MacLeod|title=Intrusion|rating=5|genre=Science Fiction|summary=Pregnant Hope doesn't want to take whoever or whatever was inside is the Fixthing that has trashed his house! The thing is, a genetic cure-all pill that corrects Benny is the DNA of an unborn child and protects it from very last person to deserve all sorts of diseasesthis bad luck. He is a nice person. Hope's husband Hugh doesn't A really understand her objections to nice person. So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the Fix - in fact, Hope never really articulates them at all - but supports her right delivery to choose. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1841499390</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Etgar Keret|title=Suddenlyhis house is a new friend, a Knock on the Door |rating=4|genre=Short Stories|summary=In the openingbad weather friend called Spike, titular story, Keret who has been sent to help him since Benny is forced by several people to create, and alter, clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a short short storygood person. It's a plain metaphor for the history Spike is going to take care of IsraelBenny, but it proves that this modern Scheherazade is not too far removed geographically from the original. And what follows are probably the sort and will certainly take care of shortBenny's enemies, tantalisingif he, open-endedBenny, rough-round-the-edges and surreal results of being compelled to carry on telling tall tales on Harper (a nightly basiswaitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701186674</amazonuk>1662500491
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Anne TylerKatherine Howe|title=The Beginner's GoodbyeA True Account
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Aaron's wifeHannah Masury is living in Boston, Dorothyhaving been sent to live with a family who run an inn, was killed in an accidentand being made to work there from a young age. An oak tree fell on their home, demolishing the sun porch where Dorothy happened When she hears there is to be at the time. He worried that if he had done things differently (a matter hanging of some biscuits and a television set) Dorothy might not have been where pirates in the town, she was decides to go and might still be alive watch. Enthralled and for horrified in equal measure, Hannah finds herself embroiled in a while he camped out in young boy's death at the wrecked house until further damage forced him to move in with his sisterhands of two vicious pirates. It was then She hides away, so that he realised that Dorothy wasnthey don't really dead - wellfind and kill her too, and then to escape them completely she runs away to sea, not dead dressing as we understand it - a boy and joining the notorious Ned Low's pirate ship as she materialised a cabin boy. She soon finds herself in odd placesthe thick of things when there is a mutiny on board, wearing the clothes she used to wear and eventually staying with Aaron for longer periods from there we are caught up in her rip roaring tale of time. And gradually they began to bicker, just like a long-married couple..life on the ocean waves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701187190</amazonuk>0861547438
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Elizabeth Haynes1471180158|title=Revenge of the TideMaybe Tomorrow|author=Penny Parkes
|rating=4.5
|genre=CrimeGeneral Fiction|summary=Genevieve worked as Jamie Matson works in an upper-class grocery store, for a sales executive by day and man who's a pole dancer by night but her dream was to buy and renovate control freak with all the subtlety of a boat where she could livehalf brick. That was why she persisted in the pressuredJamie's son, Bo, chauvinistic world of software sales 'has his problems'. He's asthmatic and the increasingly sleazy world of more you read, the private gentlemanmore you'll suspect that he's club where she could earn a four figure sum each evening as well as getting a good workouton the autistic spectrum. It was nip-andSometimes Jamie needs to take time off at short notice -tuck as to whether or not she made it but after 's a few months on frequent flier in the boat at a marina on the Medway she was feeling good local A&E and sometimes Bo's not fit enough about her life to hold a boat-warming partygo to school. It was planned as a mixture of Missed shifts or the people she'd met at need to be away on time to pick Bo up from school are occasions when Jamie can be controlled and put in the marina and some of her sales colleagues from Londonwrong. But on the night of the party It was going to come to a body washed up at the side of her boat and Genevieve knew the victimhead.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956792642</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sofka ZinovieffB0CKD1L5JL|title=The House on Paradise StreetRadio Free Olympia|author=Jeffrey Dunn
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Maud Perifanis wasn't unduly worried when her husband didn't return home one evening as he often stayed in his office when he was working and Petr is an orphan. Rescued by the news that he had been killed in a car accidentstrange, well out of Athens on the Saronic Gulfreclusive Bear, was a shock to everyone in the house on Paradise Street where the extended family lived. Nikitas had been he is brought up by his aunt Alexandra far from bustling cities and her husband and she now lived in one apartmentbusy human society, Orestes (his son from his second marriage) in the studio forests of Washington's Olympic Peninsula. After Bear dies and hea brief sojourn in human company, Maud and their daughter Tig lived in armed with only a pirate radio transmitter, Petr goes on a third apartment. There was someone missing though. Antigone was Alexandra's sister - and Nikitas' mother - but she'd left Greece for Russia when he was three journey through the forest, broadcasting the strange, wild and rarely heard voices he hadn't seen her since. She was over eighty when she heard the news and she came back for the funeralencounters.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907595694</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Francois LelordSarah Marsh|title=Hector Finds Time (Hector's Journeys)A Sign of Her Own|rating=43.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Meet, if you haven't alreadyAfter a bout of scarlet fever as a child, Hector the psychiatristEllen Lark loses her hearing. He's like Suddenly plunged into a champagne corkworld of silence, and when something prays on his mind a lot POP he's off on a global trip to set things righteverything about her life changes. And, like a champagne cork let off Living in a posh place, he'll likely crash through a chandelier time when the use of scintillatingsign language was seen as something only savages do, interesting little points, scattering them left, right and centre, and creating Ellen is sent to a pretty, if random, pattern on the book page. This time it school where she istaught to lip read, er, timebut physically restrained from signing. From patients worried they've none lefthere, to those she ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who want to grow up faster, has been teaching the deaf and those putting anti-ageing cream on crows'-feetusing a system called Visible Speech. What is At the best approach to spendingsame time, passing Bell is working on other inventions and perhaps not worrying aboutideas, time?and Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a complicated tangle of espionage.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1906040893</amazonuk>1035401614
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Alexander McCall SmithB0BC3YTCMR|title=The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection: The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency, Book 13Good Girls Die|author=Ayura Ayira|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Those of you who are frequent visitors to The Bookbag will know that I am a big fan of Alexander McCall Smith's writing'This story is not for everyone. I am supremely happy that he continues to write so regularly and reliably, providing me with much looked forward to reading matter several times through the year. This time it's the turn of Mma Ramotswe to slip back into my mind as we read of her detecting adventures in this, the thirteenth book in the series.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408702606</amazonuk>}}'
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Anuradha Roy1472263936|title=The Folded EarthFigurine|author=Victoria Hislop|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Set in a remote hill top town It was in 1968 that Helena McCloud made her first trip to Greece. She was alone: her mother, Greek by birth, had left the Himalayas where the earth has folded family home and refused to create the majestic sceneryreturn, but Mary and Hamish (Helena's parents) felt that it would be a young woman, Maya, recently widowed arrives pity if Helena grew up without knowing her grandparents or understanding her Greek heritage. Her trip to the family apartment in up-market Kolonaki would be closer to the scene first of her husband's climbing accidentseveral annual visits. There, she encounters a rich variety of characters who seem She grew to leap of love her grandmother and the page, foremost of which two at opposite ends both of society and lifefamily's journey - Charumaid, a young peasant girl whose emerging relationship with a young cook is touching and sweetDina, but was wary - and Maya's eccentric landlordfrightened - of her grandfather, a relict retired general Stamatis Papagiannis. He was proud of his close connections to the Raj who may or may not be in possession of some intriguing personal letters that pertain Junta and expected his family to uphold his values but saw no reason to Indiaaccommodate them. His prejudices included Helena's history red hair and the departing Britishgreen eyes - inherited from her father's Scottish ancestors.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857388312</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Nick AlexanderDean Koontz|title=The Case of the Missing BoyfriendAfter Death|rating=43
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=You could be forgiven for thinking that CC had it all. At thirty nine she was near the Michael Mace, Head of Security, at a top of the advertising businesssecret biological research facility, owned her own flat is among 55 people who die when a virus is released in north London and had a group of close, partybio-going friendshazard accident. That's what you saw from the outsideFinding himself in a makeshift mortuary, looking covered in. What CC saw was plastic, he has a life sense that lacked that one essential which she seemed unable something very, very bad has happened to acquire. She was desperate to find him – and only him – as he sits up and looks around at the man shrouded bodies of her dreams his dead friends and preferably one who would whisk her off to a farm house in Devon where sheformer colleagues. As he recovers his senses, he realises that there is something different about him; he can 'd live 'feel'The'everything. ' 'Everything'Good'. Michael isn' t ''LifeMichael''. In the meantime she was stuck with the memories of too many heartbreaks, a mother whose current lifestyle brought a very unfortunate word to mind and being on the periphery of her friends' dramas - and as they were all gay she didn't have a lot of chance of meeting that elusive mananymore.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>085789630X</amazonuk>1662500467}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jon BauerB0BVDC2VWH|title=Rocks in the Belly|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Jon Bauer's first novel, ''Rocks in the Belly'', is an emotional journey. The narrator is a man in his late 20s who has returned from Canada to visit his mother who has cancer of the brain. The narrator himself is emotionally damaged from the relationship that he had with his mother from childhood when she and her husband fostered children and, interspersed with the narrative, is the voice of narrator at eight years old and in particular telling the experience of one foster boy, Robert, who we know from early on in the book suffered a significant tragedy while in their care. What that event was will be revealed in due course, but it is clear that the young boy suffered hugely from jealousy of his mother's love for these foster children.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846688450</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewGrave Listeners|author=Aifric Campbell|title=On The FloorWilliam Frank
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Geri Molloy, the central character in Aifric CampbellThe village is isolated and poor. It's ''On The Floor'', may be earning surrounded by a six figure salary working at a London investment bank just prior to Witching Forest. And the outbreak villagers subsist largely by farming Uphegia plants - its bread-like fruit provides nutrition and its blossom provides herbal medicines. The black wood of the 1991 invasion of Kuwaitforest provides heat and warmth, roofs on homes, and even gallows, but she's seriously messed upif needed. Drinking heavily, sleeping lightly The fear of being buried alive is an existential superstition in the village and mourning that is the end of reason Volushka, a relationshipdrunken, she may be a mathematical genius with a direct line to a mysterious Hong Kongself-based hedge fund manager with whom she tradesindulgent, but her life lazy lout of a man is increasingly being controlled by other peopletolerated.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846688086</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ada WilsonB0BYF82CXT|title=Red Army Faction BluesSemi-Detached|author=Deborah Stone
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Max is 8 years old. He likes Lego ''Bill and Star Wars Amanda are living in a semi-detached house, stuck in a depressing rut of boredom and playing with toy soldiers. He can tell you 102 words that rhyme with tree. He scarfs down grilled cheese sandwiches disappointment, when Terry and chicken Fiona – glamorous, successful and ricevery much in love – move in next door. He does not like physical contactDespite their different outlooks on life, the couples befriend each other and life appears to improve for both pairs. He lives with his mum and dad who argue about what But all is best for him and why he’s not normal like other boys what it seems, and girlstheir increasingly interconnected relationships are fated for tragedy.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0751547875</amazonuk>''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=William NicholsonShalini Boland|title=The Secret Intensity of Everyday LifeSilent Bride|rating=43
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=William Nicholson's ''The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life'' Alice and Seth are a match made in heaven. He is an ensemble story focussing predominantly on middle class everything she has been searching for; handsome, accomplished, clever, funny; total and mainly middle age people living utter husband-material. She is all he could possibly want in a Sussex villagewife; beautiful, successful, confident… and so the inevitable proposal is eagerly accepted by Alice and the wedding is planned and set. The cover of When the book suggests that it much-anticipated day arrives, Alice is little more than a superior chic-lit style story of how Laura reacts when an ex-lover from walked down the aisle by her past appears from out of father, beaming with pride and excitement as she surveys the blue congregation – their friends assembled to disrupt her marriage celebrate this joyful day and two childrenwhen Seth turns to face his approaching bride, but while this Alice's world implodes because she has absolutely no idea who the man at the altar is a central issue that runs throughout the book, this who is only a small part of the story. It's far better than that might suggestwaiting for her to become his wife.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>184916195X</amazonuk>1662507089
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Grace McCleen1787636003|title=The Land Girls of DecorationSummer|author=Katie Bishop
|rating=5
|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=Grace McCleenIt was the summer when Rachel Evans turned eighteen that she and Caroline went backpacking around Greece and arrived on the island. Rachel wasn's debut novelt exactly innocent but she was, ''The Land of Decoration'' paints an originalperhaps, unsettlingnaive, sometimes dark and generally rather wonderful picture. Narrated by ten so when thirty-four-year -old JudithAlistair Wright started to take an interest in her, raised by her father who is she was flattered rather than wary. It was quite a fundamental religious follower of the end while before he made any sort of physical approach to her and by that time she was obsessed by him. Alistair worked for Henry Taylor, looking after his interests on the world is nigh variety, it looks at bullying, both at school island and in more general society, faith and particular in the possible rejection thereof and bar where all the strength of childhood imaginationgirls either worked or partied.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>070118681X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Marlene S LewisAmanda Craig|title=RuthThree Graces|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The late 1950s saw a lot Few styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the state-of changes in society but they were late in coming to Ruth-the-nation novel. There's home in something so utterly compelling about any writer who can catch hold of the atmosphere of the day and capture it, crafting an image of the Owen Stanley range country as it stands in Papua New Guineaone particular moment. Ruth, To say that Amanda Craig is skilled at doing this would be embarrassingly inadequate: she's practically synonymous with the only daughter genre of plantation owner John Madison, was still in her late teens and away contemporary social fiction at boarding school this point. She has such a gift for much of weaving the year, but when she returned home one ongoing issues of the first people she wanted to see was her great friend Tommy. They'd grown up together but there was no possibility of the relationship being taken any further as Tommy - despite being light skinned - was day into the son lives of one of the black plantation workers her characters in a way that feels natural and certain 'standards' were expected of Ruthlived-in, never making them ciphers for social commentary but instead fully realised people, grappling with issues far larger than themselves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848766238</amazonuk>140871468X
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Annabelle R Charbit152915118X|title=A Life Lived RidiculouslyPineapple Street|author=Jenny Jackson|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Maxine ''Pineapple Street'' is from a Jewish family who think that as her 20s the story of three women: Sasha, Darley and Georgiana. Darley and George are nearing sisters and Sasha is married to their endbrother Cord. They're Stocktons, only Sasha isn't a Stockton by birth so she should be marriedisn't readily accepted into the tribe. MaxineThe problem's exacerbated when the clan matriarch, for her partTilda, hasnasks Cord and Sasha if they't found anyone d like to interest her and is more concerned with combining her job and her studies and getting away from move into the yoke of her parentsPineapple Street property. She is also worried about her possessions Tilda and worries that she has too many Chip have renovated and that downsized to another property, a street or so away, which they make her flat look untidyown. She just canThey won't get her flat organised need any of the way she likes itfurniture from Pineapple Street, eitherso Sasha and Cord can move straight in. Nominally, with they had a choice but that wasn't the light not being quite right reality. Darley and never quite being able Georgiana start to decide which room her television should be call Sasha 'the gold digger'. She's living in''their'' family home. They use it so often that they abbreviate it to 'the GD'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0984642862</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Henning MankellEmily Critchley|title=The Troubled ManOne Puzzling Afternoon
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=Hakan von Enke was 84 year old Edie has lived in the same small town for almost her whole life, but now she is facing a retired naval officer move as her son wants to move to another house and a man of routine. Each morning he went for a long walk in the forest near bring Edie to live with his Stockholm homefamily, but one day he failed as Edie is starting to returnlose her memory. It's a long way from YstadHowever, Edie is tormented by the memory of her childhood friend, Lucy, who went missing over 60 years ago, Kurt Wallander's home town and the only reason he became involved in worry that there was a secret she was keeping for Lucy that somehow might be the case was thing that reveals the fact truth of what happened all that von Enketime ago. After 's son Hans seeing' Lucy in the high street, just as she was the partner last time she saw her, she starts to find pockets of Wallander's daughter Lindamemories coming back to her. Wallander became concerned about von Enke some months before when they had a long discussion at his seventy-fifth birthday party. He'd seemed worried And yet as she remembers the past, she is forgetting more and wary of a stranger more in the streether day to day life. Von EnkeWill she uncover the truth about Lucy's disappearance hit the family hard - before her move, and then his wife disappeared as well.before her memories are gone forever?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099548402</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=Sam Bourne0008506337|title=PantheonThe Garnett Girls|author=Georgina Moore|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The year is 1940love affair between Margo Garnett and poet Richard O'Leary was all-consuming, apparently on both sides. Oxford don James Zennor wants to serve his country, but due to an injury sustained while fighting Margo was just sixteen when they fell in the Spanish Civil War helove. Richard was twenty-one and described by Margo's rejected mother as unfit'an older man'. When his wife Her parents worried that Richard's influence would take her away from what they felt she could achieve - going to Oxford and young son disappear, thoughhaving a glittering career. In the event, they eloped and Richard took her away from the trail leads Isle of Wight. Margo did go to America in Oxford and went on to become a journey which will plunge him into a world of secret societieswell-respected journalist. The couple had three children: Rachel, clandestine dealsImogen and Sasha. Life was lived in London and holidays were spent at Sandcove, and the chance family home on the Isle of Wight. Even then the doubts about Richard's drinking were never far from Margo's mind: ''she would never be able to play his part leave him in the war effort after allcharge''. If he survives Then Richard left them...|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007413637</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Bethan Roberts1914585402|title=My PolicemanDashboard Elvis is Dead|author=David F Ross|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The story opens with two schoolfriends Sylvie and Marion doing what teenagers do best - talking and giggling about boys. Sylvie has a rather dishy and handsome older brother called Tom - and Marion has developed a bit of a crush on him. But itI reviewed David F Ross's book [[There's nothing to worry about, sheOnly One Danny Garvey by David F Ross|There'll grow out s Only One Danny Garvey]] a couple of years back and remember being absolutely floored by how powerful and affecting itwas. Except she doesn't. Even althoughIt was a gripping, deep downemotionally wounding read, she has misgivings about this rather lukewarm romance. She's actually sizzling hot for some action, a bit and rereading my review of kissing, a bit of harmless snogging - but Tom's the one who is lukewarmit my main takeaway was that I might not have lavished enough praise on it. Why?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701185848</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Suzanne BuglerLucy Ashe|title=The Child InsideClara and Olivia
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Rachel Morgan feels that she does not fit in anywhereThe year is 1933. Certainly not with all of the other mums at her son JonoThe place? Sadler's posh schoolWells. Certainly Ballerinas Clara and Olivia are sisters, twins no less. Identical on the outside but not with all the happy jolly families , we learn, on the beaches when they are on holidayinside. And most of allnot on stage, she no longer feels either. Because there's a lot that she fits in with her own little familybuilds a dancer. Nothing ever feels right Some things that can be taught or learnt – discipline, attention to detail – and she continually feels isolated on some things, that ''je ne sais quoi'', that don't come from the outside looking inclassroom. A stage presence, a charm, a ''joie de vivre''. Of courseThe difference between a hard-worker, these feelings lead to an increasing sense of dissatisfaction which she can only deal with by dwelling on what she perceives as her happier pastand a star.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0330510916</amazonuk>0861544080
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jack SheffieldHeather Fawcett|title=Educating JackEmily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=September 1982 sees the beginning of Jack SheffieldEmily Wilde is an expert academic scholar on faerie lore, and she has travelled extensively, and researched meticulously, to write her life's sixth year as head work, the very first encyclopaedia of Ragley-on-faeries. Whilst she is brilliant at research and speaking to faeries, she is not so good with people. So when she finds herself far, far North in the-Forest small village school and some of Hrafvsnik, having somehow offended the village regulars are realising that this matriarch, she is going not sure what she has done, nor how to be a year to remember too. Nora Pratt has been in the coffee shop redeem herself and put her final investigations for a quarter of a century now. Ronnie Smith decides that her book back on the world of employment might be for him after all - but is sacked from one job after a matter of secondsright track. At the cinema it's ET Enter Wendell Bambleby, her dashingly handsome and insufferable rival who's pulling in the crowds arrives unexpectedly, all charm and Prince William comes into the world along with the 20p piece (well - not at ''exactly'' the same time)delight, but itmuch to Emily's Jack Sheffield who frustration. But why is he here? What does he want? And what exactly is going to face on with the biggest change.faerie folk around Hravsnik?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0593065697</amazonuk>0356519120
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tony Ross1398515388|title=A Fairy Tale|rating=4.5|genre=Confident Readers|summary=In Balaclava Street Bessie was bored. Even her book wasn't helping. It was about fairies and she didn't believe in them, ''obviously''. And even if they did exist they'd have more sense than to live in the gloomy streets around the mill, wouldn't they? Playing with her ball in the back yard she encountered her next-door neighbour, Mrs Leaf The Boy and a strange friendship developed between the old woman and the young girl. It was difficult for Bessie to work out if Mrs Leaf actually believed in fairies, but it seemed strange that as Bessie got older, Mrs Leaf seemed to get younger. And who ''exactly'' was Mrs Leaf?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849393559</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewDog|author=Jon McGregor|title=This Isn't the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like YouSeishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=It's Spring 1924 First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in South Walesthe ocean floor, which created the tsunami and young undertaker Wilfred is going to learn the hard way how serious this, in turn, caused the trivial can benuclear meltdown. Fascinated by a girl's dress - worn very seductively by Grace, who he has met but twice as an adult - he blurts out a marriage proposalThe result was complete and utter devastation. As much as wants to take it backThe deaths were uncountable, she won't let himand the loss of livelihoods was widespread. He tries to move on, leaving her disappointed, especially when he falls for The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the daughter list of priorities but - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a man he buries, but..convenience store. There are things dangerously spoken, dangerously left unsaid, and He wasn't a complex web of divided loyalties dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and enforced connections, Tamon the dog jumped in this brilliant debut novel.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780330561</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Karen HarperChristopher Bowden|title=Shakespeare's Mistress|rating=2|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=The conceit of ''Shakespeare's Mistress'' is that Shakespeare was married to Anne Whateley the day before he was married to Anne Hathaway, and Anne W remained the love of his life, with an affair (if you can have an affair with your 'wife') continued in London where the same Anne was also the famed ''dark lady'' of his sonnets. There is some basis for this theory in that the parish records do show a mysterious entry into the register for just such a contract the day before the Hathaway marriage but although the author claims this is 'faction', it's very much at the fiction end of that scale and is really a 'what if?' piece.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091940427</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Sue Townsend|title=The Growing Pains of Adrian MoleMr Magenta|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The country might be at war over the Falklands but life is hardly straight-forward in the Mole household. Adrian's parents are back together after both had disastrous affairs and itChristopher Bowden's not long before Adrian latest novel is shocked to learn that his mother is pregnant. He's equally shocked to see his father helping Doreen (a.k.a. the 'stick insect') along patient untangling of a path which isnseemingly ordinary woman't particularly slippys life, although he does notice that carried out by her nephew after she seems to have put on quite has died. The aunt who always provided a safe harbour and a little bit of weight. Pandora Braithwaite is as fickle, but adorable, as indulgence to a young nephew had had a much more interesting life than that nephew Stephen had ever realised and Adrian's hormones are still playing hop-scotch with his brainit seems to him an obligation to find it all out. So, what's new?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0141046430</amazonuk>B0B6Z9VJDW
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Susan HillJennifer Mason|title=A Kind ManPartitions of Unity|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Meet Eve, and her husband, the title character, Tommy. She's Here at a bit of a sticky wicket in lifeBookbag Towers, for however much they want a babywe first met Elizabeth Cromwell, her sister dominatrix and his feckless husband churn out son after son after sonunintentional detective in [[Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery by Jennifer Mason|Preposterous]], and go no lengths at all to love them. So when Eve she investigated and Tommy do at last have unravelled a child, itseries of disappearances. In 's a tragedy for it to die when only three years old. But in this plot, which you'll thank me for not going into further, there will be a lot more swings and roundabouts, Partitions of torment and ecstasy, doldrums and delights, hell and heavenUnity'', she sets her mind to comesolving a murder...|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099555441</amazonuk>B09LQR9FRF
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=John NivenWill Carver|title=The Second ComingDaves Next Door
|rating=4
|genre=HumourGeneral Fiction|summary=God has Five strangers come back from together in one moment as a holiday and has some catching up suicide bomber prepares to do. What’s been happening detonate his vest on Earth for the last couple of hundred years? The realisation hits him harda London tube line... it makes him sick in fact. So what’s As their fates overlap, the answer? To quote the religious cliché, Jesus story is. After a board meeting with the senior saints, God decides that his son must be torn away from jamming with Hendrix to go back to the streets of the world to remind the sinners of the way.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099535521</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=R J Palacio|title=Wonder|rating=4.5|genre=Confident Readers|summary=August Pullman was born with a rare genetic defect that has caused extreme facial disfiguration. He has undergone 27 surgeries since he was born and has always been vulnerable to illness. In told in backwards order to deal with his medical needs and to shield him from the staring and cruelty of the world, Auggie has been home-schooled by his parents for his entire life. But Auggie is stronger now and all of that is about to change. Auggie is about leading up to enter school for the first time – and he’s petrified. ‘Wonder’ is the story of Auggie’s first year at Beecher Prep and his first journey alone into the outside worldfateful moment. But can he confront the challenges that wait for him there and convince his classmates, new friends, family and himself that, underneath his unusual appearance, he is just the same as everybody else?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0370332288</amazonuk>1914585186}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Kaui Hart HemmingsJennifer Mason|title=The DescendantsPreposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=On the face of it Matt King is very lucky. He's descended from one of Hawaii's largest landowners A struggling poetry zine, a mom-and is a wealthy man as well as being an attorney. He's married to -pop mobile diner in the flighty, flirtatious Joanie and has two daughters, teenager AlexNorthern California redwoods, a model 400-meter hurdler who might just have missed the 2004 Olympics, a bit of a drug problem and ten year old Scottie. Shewomen's feistytrack coach with a yen for bullwhips, clever and a billionaire with a state- for me of- stole the book. Have you ever noticed that when luck changes it doesn't do it in baby steps? It does it in ''lumps''. Joanie is involved -art S&M dungeon, a man serving a life sentence in Alabama, an enigmatic signature, K(s, x), on a powerboat accident and sinks into cheap oil painting, an irreversible coma as a result of a head injuryerotic art dealer in Georgia. But there's more piling up. Matt discovers that Joanie has been having an affair. Does the man who's been - er - enjoying his wife have the right to say his goodbyes too?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099570246</amazonuk>}}'
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Helen SchulmanB0B2N7MVYM|title=This Beautiful LifeThe Calculations of Rational Men|author=Daniel Godfrey
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Richard and Liz are new It's the 10th of December 1962 when we first meet Dr Joseph Marr. Just to put what happens in town which is always a bummercontext, except this town the Cuban missile crisis is Manhattan so really nothing else could ever comparestill very fresh in people's minds. They’ve only moved from upstate New York but it seems a The world away now. Liz has given up her post at the university barely had a chance to concentrate on kids Coco and Jake and is finding juggling their social lives a full time job in itself but is just about making a space breathe out. But for herself among Joe Marr, it's not the other mothers missile crisis that's at the school gatesfront of his mind. Things are going ok He's been convicted of murder. And then With the current state of medical knowledge, one day, their nice, comfortable world starts it's hard to crumble. Jake receives an explicit email from a classmate and think otherwise than that the prosecution would never have been brought but Joe Marr has spent his first few days in disbeliefHMP Queen's Bench, forwards it straight on to a friendrelatively new prison. Except rather than coming back He's just getting used to him with advice on what the heck to do nexthis roommate, the friend chooses to send it on to another friendMervyn, who does the same. Round and round it goes, round the school, round the city, round the online world. Everyone knows where it came from and soon Jake’s academic future, his father’s career and his whole family’s social standing are hanging in learning to be wary of the balanceMcArthur brothers.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857896237</amazonuk>
}}