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[[Category:General Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]]==General fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Eleanor HendersonOnyi Nwabineli|title=Ten Thousand SaintsAllow Me to Introduce Myself|rating=34.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Eleanor HendersonAnuri spent her childhood on display to the world, thanks to her step-mother Ophelia's debut novel increasingly popular presence on social media, where she posted every step of Anuri''Ten Thousand Saints'' is set in late 1980s Vermont s childhood for sponsorships and influencer deals and, more memorablybasically, New Yorkmonetary gain. Opening Now Anuri is in 1987 we discover in the second sentence that one of the two boys hiding under the stands her twenties and she is slowly trying to regain her confidence and to get her life back, suing her step-mother to take down the Vermont school football field on match day will die that nightcontent about her. It's a powerful opening Anuri is battling alcoholism, failing to start her PhD, undergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online and receiving money from them for doing so. From then on Most importantly, she is desperately worried about her little sister, who is the book deals first with Teddy's death and then with the life he has left behind in the form new focus of his friend Jude, JudeOphelia's sort of step online empire. Can she save her sister Eliza , and Teddy's older brother Johnny. It's a world of broken homes perhaps herself and the trinity of sex and drugs and rock and roll, or more specifically punk. Henderson is particularly good at evoking the underground scene in New York her relationship with her father at the same time before the unlikely combination of AIDS and mayoral intervention combined to clean up the city.?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1780872194</amazonuk>0861546873
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Robert Dickinson1529153298|title=The SchismList of Suspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey|rating=35
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Patrick Farrell works for a company that reclaims credit cards from those in debtIt'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. He Well, they've been murdered, but to have 'disappeared' doesn't particularly enjoy sound quite so frightening. Miv's upset because she's overheard that her father wants to move the workfamily 'Down South'. When you're from Yorkshire, but it gives him plenty of opportunity to visit his schizophrenic brotherDown South is a frightening, Mikeforeign place, which he does regularlybest avoided. Mike used to be a fairly decent boxerFor Miv, but now his only fight is against the paranoid delusion move would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, and she'll do anything to prevent that there are people watching him all . She's not worried about the timedangers or that her Mum's stopped talking - to anyone.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908434228</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Syrie James1035906708|title=The Missing Manuscript of Jane AustenDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary='A newly discoveredWe tend to think of Maria Callas as Greek, but she was born to Greek parents in Manhattan, incredibly rareNew York, handwritten manuscript of a previously unknown Jane Austen Novel is in December 1923 and only moved to Athens when she was thirteen. Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to 'Callas' to appear at auction make it more manageable in Londonthe States. The neatly written but heavily corrected pages are 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 full length work entitled 'The Stanhopes'mother who mercilessly exploited her and made no secret of her preference for her elder sister, Jackie.'|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0425253368</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Nick AlexanderMcCall Smith|title=The French HousePerfect Passion Company|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=CC was trapped The Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in a job she no longer felt able Edinburgh, run by Ness and operating as an alternative to do all the online apps in providing a city which wasn't really hermore personal, tailored service. Her boyfriendNess has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the business, Victor, had moved as Ness is planning to France take a trip to live in a farmhouse he'd inherited and whilst giving everything up and moving out there Canada to join him wasn't the most rational decision she'd ever taken it ''did'' feel like get away for a step in the right directionwhile. Only - there were a couple Katie is coming out of problems. The south of France in January can be bitterly cold, particularly when you're a good way break up with a mountainbad boyfriend, and so jumps at the chance to come home to Edinburgh. And it's going so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, thanks to feel even worse when 44 Scotland Street and the property youIsabel Dalhousie novels, but with some new characters who quickly begin to charm. Katie has no experience in running a business, or in match-making, but Ness has full confidence in her abilities, and there're going s always her very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, William, to lacks some of the most basic facilities - amongst them most of lend a roof.hand…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857896350</amazonuk>1846976596
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Lesley GrayDean Koontz|title=The KingBad Weather Friend|rating=4.5|genre=Paranormal|summary=Benny is having a terrifically bad day. He loses his job, he loses his fiancee, and his house gets trashed. Oh, and someone has delivered a really weird, disturbing coffin-sized object to his home, and it's possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the thing that has trashed his house! The thing is, Benny is the very last person to deserve all this bad luck. He is a nice person. A really nice person. So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the delivery to his house is a new friend, a bad weather friend called Spike, who has been sent to help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a good person. Spike is going to take care of Benny, and will certainly take care of Benny's enemies, if he, Benny, and Harper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's Jockeywild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are.|isbn=1662500491}}{{Frontpage|author=Katherine Howe|title=A True Account|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=In June 1913 Emily Wilding Davison ran out Hannah Masury is living in front Boston, having been sent to live with a family who run an inn, and being made to work there from a young age. When she hears there is to be a hanging of some pirates in the Kingtown, she decides to go and watch. Enthralled and horrified in equal measure, Hannah finds herself embroiled in a young boy's horse death at the Epsom Derby: she died hands of her injuriestwo vicious pirates. Her actions are often quoted in history books She hides away, so that they don't find and whether you think kill her too, and then to be a suffragette martyr or a deluded woman, few are ignorant of her or what escape them completely she did. But how many people remember the jockey who was up on that fateful day? Few will know his nameruns away to sea, or that what happened at dressing as a boy and joining the Derby would haunt him for years to come notorious Ned Low's pirate ship as he believed himself responsible for killing Emily Davisona cabin boy. ''The King's Jockey'' is She soon finds herself in the story thick of Herbert 'Bertie' Jonesthings when there is a mutiny on board, and from there we are caught up in her rip roaring tale of the life which brought him to the Derby and of what happened in on the years afterwardsocean waves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1907947612</amazonuk>0861547438
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jami Attenberg1471180158|title=The MiddlesteinsMaybe Tomorrow|author=Penny Parkes|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Edie Middlestein almost has Jamie Matson works in an upper-class grocery store, for a man who's a control freak with all the American dream within her graspsubtlety of a half brick. She trained as a lawyerJamie's son, Bo, 'has a husband, a daughter who followed her professional footsteps and a son married to an ambitious wife who provided him with two high-achieving childrenhis problems'. There are just two flies in He's asthmatic and the ointment preventing more you read, the dreammore you'll suspect that he's arrival: 1on the autistic spectrum. Edie is so morbidly obese that Sometimes Jamie needs to take time off at short notice - she has 's a frequent flier in the local A&E and sometimes Bo's not fit enough to go to undergo surgery; and 2school. this is Missed shifts or the moment her husband chooses need to be away on time to leave herpick Bo up from school are occasions when Jamie can be controlled and put in the wrong. Apart from that…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846689325</amazonuk>It was going to come to a head.
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jodi PicoultB0CKD1L5JL|title=The StorytellerRadio Free Olympia|author=Jeffrey Dunn
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Sage Singer Petr is scarred both mentally an orphan. Rescued by the strange, reclusive Bear, he is brought up far from bustling cities and physically and has never really got over her motherbusy human society, in the forests of Washington's deathOlympic Peninsula. She works as After Bear dies and a baker as the night work allows her to hide away from people and sleep brief sojourn in daylight hourshuman company, but she does develop one friendship which probably and armed with only happens because it seems non-threatening. Josef Webera pirate radio transmitter, pillar of Petr goes on a journey through the local communityforest, attends broadcasting the same grief counselling group as Sage - strange, wild and rarely heard voices he's in his nineties. But when Sage relaxes into the relationship Josef tells her about himself and asks her to help him to die. Sage is shocked at the request and then repelled as Josef tells her more of his storyencounters.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444766635</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Paula LichtarowiczSarah Marsh|title=The First Book A Sign of Calamity LeekHer Own|rating=43.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=I know I'm going to face After a bout of scarlet fever as a dilemma in reviewing this bookchild, because, really, the best way to approach it is to come at it knowing nothing at allEllen Lark loses her hearing. And it's very hard to write about it without giving some important things away! Let's start with the basics, in that this is Suddenly plunged into a story told by Calamity Leekworld of silence, a child living together with everything about her 'sisters', taken care of by 'aunty' and occasionally visited by 'mother'life changes. Calamity is Living in charge of a book called time when the Appendixuse of sign language was seen as something only savages do, in which everything the girls could possibly need Ellen is sent to know about their lives a school where she is writtentaught to lip read, but physically restrained from signing. They live closeted From here, she ends up in their own small farmyard area, protected from another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the outside world by 'deaf and using a system called Visible Speech. At the wall'same time, their enemies being the 'injuns' Bell is working on other inventions and 'demonmales'. I knowideas, that's and Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a lot complicated tangle of words in quotes. Let me explain..espionage.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0091944228</amazonuk>1035401614
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Will StorrB0BC3YTCMR|title=The Hunger and the Howling of Killian LoneGood Girls Die|author=Ayura Ayira
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Killian Lone grows up ''This story is not for everyone.'' Lavender Daniels was three weeks short of her fifteenth birthday when The Incident happened. She was a very bright student, a bit too nerdy if truth be told, and suffered from vitiligo - people were afraid to hug her in case it's contagious. It's not easy being a home lacking in love and securityblack girl whose skin is 84% white. For these She had a crush on seventeen-year-old Reggie Anderson but never thought he relies on his elderly aunt Dorothy, an accomplished cookwould notice her. Indeed his visits to Dorothy revolve around food as Then he absorbs all did: Lavender was very good at math and Reggie asked if she can teach would tutor him, slowly inheriting her passion . She readily agreed: tutoring was something she gladly did at church: this was just an extension. She went to his house and skill along with he raped her knowledge. This attachment to food then becomes his career choiceIn shock, leading she even allowed him to the unfortunate discovery of give her a family secret that has remained hidden for a very long timelift home. Why 'unfortunate'? There's a reason for its concealment… a very, very good reason.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780720807</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1472263936|title=The Figurine|author=Victoria Hislop|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary=It was in 1968 that Helena McCloud made her first trip to Greece. She was alone: her mother, Greek by birth, had left the family home and refused to return, but Mary and Hamish (Helena's parents) felt that it would be a 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 the first of several annual visits. She grew to love her grandmother and the family's maid, Dina, but was wary - and frightened - of her grandfather, retired general Stamatis Papagiannis. He was proud of his close connections to the Junta 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.}}{{Frontpage|author=Tom WinterDean Koontz|title=Lost 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 Foundlooks 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}} {{Frontpage|isbn=B0BVDC2VWH|title=The Grave Listeners|author=William Frank
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Carol has lived in The village is isolated and poor. It's surrounded by a state Witching Forest. And the villagers subsist largely by farming Uphegia plants - its bread-like fruit provides nutrition and its blossom provides herbal medicines. The black wood of unhappiness for many yearsthe forest provides heat and warmth, roofs on homes, married to a man she doesn't love (and probably never has) and with a daughter whom she doesn't understand (and probably never will)even gallows, if needed. But Sophie The fear of being buried alive is just about independent now an existential superstition in the village and Carol is determined that she's going to tell Bob that the marriage is over - that she's leaving - but something always gets in the way. As her frustration grows she writes letters - to the world at large reason Volushka, a drunken, self- and posts them. It doesn't ''change'' anythingindulgent, but she does feel better. She even puts lazy lout of a smiley face on the envelopeman is tolerated.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1472101596</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Beth GutcheonB0BYF82CXT|title=GossipSemi-Detached|author=Deborah Stone|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Loviah French, Dinah Wainwright ''Bill and Avis Metcalf met when they were at boarding school. Lovie owns Amanda are living in a topsemi-class dress shop detached house, stuck in Manhattan - the place where women a depressing rut of a certain class go boredom and disappointment, when they want something for a special occasion Terry and Fiona – glamorous, successful and to be secure very much in love – move in next door. Despite their different outlooks on life, the knowledge that they will be treated well couples befriend each other and discreetlylife appears to improve for both pairs. Dinah But all is a columnist who chronicles the lives of New York's rich not what it seems, and famous, whilst Avis is a prominent figure in the art worldtheir increasingly interconnected relationships are fated for tragedy. Lovie is our narrator and she's also the glue which holds the three women together. They're both devoted to her and she to them, but a small, imagined slight, many decades earlier, has left an icy distance between Dinah and Avis.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857899821</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Bernardine BishopShalini Boland|title=Unexpected Lessons in LoveThe Silent Bride|rating=4.53
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Cecilia Banks Alice and Helen Gatehouse met by chance Seth are a match made in a doctor's waiting room and a friendship developed because they were both cancer survivors, albeit with a colostomyheaven. It was a case of opposites attracting: Cecilia was quietHe is everything she has been searching for; handsome, accomplished, reservedclever, married for the second time funny; total and the mother of Ian whom she idolisedutter husband-material. Helen had never marriedShe is all he could possibly want in a wife; beautiful, loud in successful, confident… and so the nicest sense of inevitable proposal is eagerly accepted by Alice and the word wedding is planned and an authorset. They gave each other mutual support and an outlet for their preoccupations. People with whom you can discuss When themuch-anticipated day arrives, erAlice is walked down the aisle by her father, intricacies of your stoma are few beaming with pride and excitement as she surveys the congregation – their friends assembled to celebrate this joyful day and far between! The relationship wasn't entirely uncritical: Helen was less than impressed when Ian dumped (sorry - thereSeth turns to face his approaching bride, Alice's really world implodes because she has absolutely no other word for it) a baby on his mother. Cephas was idea who the result of a fling he'd had with man at the child's mother and she'd disappeared. He - a war correspondent - was on altar is, who is waiting for her to become his way abroadwife.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>184854782X</amazonuk>1662507089
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Amanda Prowse1787636003|title=What have I done?The Girls of Summer|author=Katie Bishop|rating=45
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=When Kate Gavier married Mark Brooker, It was the summer when Rachel Evans turned eighteen that she was full of optimism for their marriage and their futureCaroline went backpacking around Greece and arrived on the island. However Rachel wasn't exactly innocent but she was, from the first day of their marriageperhaps, naive, so when thirty-four-year-old Alistair Wright started to take an interest in her dreams were shattered as , she realised that Mark was nothing more than a cruel bully. He even insisted on calling her Kathryn flattered rather than Kate which is how she prefers to be knownwary. There followed sixteen years of torment and torture as Mark strove to control his wife and punish her for It was quite a while before he made any wrongdoings – sort of which there were many. To the outside world though, it looked as though Mark and Kathryn had the perfect loving marriage, mainly due to Kathryn’s resolve physical approach to spare her children, Dominic and Lydia, from knowing of and witnessing their father’s crueltyby that time she was obsessed by him. One day though Alistair worked for Henry Taylor, she snapped looking after his interests on the island and, for the first time in her life, fought back. Hours later, Mark was dead and Kathryn was locked up particular in a police cell being questioned about what happenedthe bar where all the girls either worked or partied.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781853789</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Joyce Carol OatesAmanda Craig|title=Daddy LoveThree Graces
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=A short while ago, I read [[The Corn Maiden and Other Nightmares by Joyce Carol Oates]] and was moved by Few styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the sheer emotional impact state-of -the stories it contained-nation novel. This was especially true There's something so utterly compelling about any writer who can catch hold of the atmosphere of the title storyday and capture it, which looked crafting an image of the country as it stands in one particular moment. To say that Amanda Craig is skilled at doing this would be embarrassingly inadequate: she's practically synonymous with the impact on a family torn by the disappearance genre of their daughtercontemporary social fiction at this point. The synopsis of ''Daddy Love'' suggested She has such a similar impact, given gift for weaving the nature ongoing issues of the story and what I'd recently discovered about day into the power lives of Oates' writingher 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>1781850658</amazonuk>140871468X
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=J E Ryder152915118X|title=Blood PoolPineapple Street|author=Jenny Jackson|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Samantha Shelley was surprised to become ''Pineapple Street'' is the owner story of a boatyard when her husband died in a cliff fallthree women: Sasha, Darley and Georgiana. Darley and George are sisters and Sasha is married to their brother Cord. She had worked in the East Devon boatyard - run it in fact - for quite some time but itThey's the men of the Shelley re Stocktons, only Sasha isn'blood poolt a Stockton by birth so she isn' who have always inherited the land for t readily accepted into the past two hundred yearstribe. She was aware of ill-feeling against her in The problem's exacerbated when the villageclan matriarch, but her priority was Tilda, asks Cord and Sasha if they'd like to keep move into the business running as smoothly as possible for herself Pineapple Street property. Tilda and Chip have renovated and for the staff she employeddownsized to another property, a street or so away, which they own. There was some support in They won't need any of the village - an old friendfurniture from Pineapple Street, known to one so Sasha and all as Cord can move straight in. Nominally, they had a choice but that wasn't the Prof' - had always been there for her reality. Darley and willing Georgiana start to listen to her outpourings or just to chatter as she drank coffeecall Sasha 'the gold digger'. Then he disappeared She's living in violent circumstances''their'' family home. They use it so often that they abbreviate it to 'the GD'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B00AR0XFX2</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Julia GregsonEmily Critchley|title=Jasmine NightsOne Puzzling Afternoon
|rating=4
|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=The temptingly titled Jasmine Nights starts promisingly. Saba84 year old Edie has lived in the same small town for almost her whole life, but now she is facing a talented singer whose gift move as her son wants to move to another house and bring Edie to live with his family, as Edie is starting to the war lose her memory. However, Edie is entertaining tormented by the troopsmemory of her childhood friend, comes from an unhappy family backgroundLucy, who went missing over 60 years ago, and one the worry that has little patience there was a secret she was keeping for Lucy that somehow might be the opportunities for women brought about by warthing that reveals the truth of what happened all that time ago. Dom After 'seeing' Lucy in the high street, a fighter pilot who has sustained injuriesjust as she was the last time she saw her, she starts to find pockets of memories coming back to her. And yet as she remembers the past, she is feeling displaced - forgetting more and more in her day to day life. Will she uncover the war has changed his world truth about Lucy's disappearance before her move, and before her memories are gone forever.?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1409103048</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=Toni Jordan0008506337|title=Nine DaysThe Garnett Girls|author=Georgina Moore
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Christopher The love affair between Margo Garnett and poet Richard O'KipLeary was all-consuming, apparently on both sides. Margo was just sixteen when they fell in love. Richard was twenty-one and described by Margo' Westaway lives in a suburb of Melbourne, Australia with s mother Jean, sister Connie and his twin, Francisas 'an older man'. KipHer parents worried that Richard's mother considers him influence would take her away from what they felt she could achieve - going to Oxford and having a layabout who doesn't deserve glittering career. In the special privileges of his educationally elite brother event, they eloped and so he works at Richard took her away from the big house next door for the Hustings, caring for their horsesIsle of Wight. One day Mr Husting presents Kip with Margo did go to Oxford and went on to become a shilling; their little secretwell-respected journalist. As its 1939The couple had three children: Rachel, thatImogen and Sasha. Life was lived in London and holidays were spent at Sandcove, the family home on the Isle of Wight. Even then the doubts about Richard's drinking were never far from Margo's a fair amount of money so Kip hides it away, not realising how special that coin will become as the decades passmind: ''she would never be able to leave him in charge''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444763555</amazonuk>Then Richard left them.
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sarah Butler1914585402|title=Ten Things I've Learnt About LoveDashboard Elvis is Dead|author=David F Ross|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Alice returns home to spend time with her dying father. SheI reviewed David F Ross's book [[There's Only One Danny Garvey by David F Ross|There's been travelling in Mongolia, finding temporary escape from the issues that had haunted her life in London but now, on her return, events bring the pain she thought Only One Danny Garvey]] a couple of years back and remember being absolutely floored by how powerful and affecting it was behind her into sharp focus. Meanwhile Daniel is an elderly vagrant who calls the streets of London home. He seeks his lost childIt was a gripping, leaving a trail of random items across the city in the hope of reunion like someone occupying a verse of ''Eleanor Rigby''. Disparate livesemotionally wounding read, seeking love and acceptance in a world rereading my review of it my main takeaway was that seems to exclude I might not have lavished enough praise on it.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1447222490</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Gavin ExtenceLucy Ashe|title=The Universe Versus Alex WoodsClara and Olivia
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary= While re-entering The year is 1933. The place? Sadler's Wells. Ballerinas Clara and Olivia are sisters, twins no less. Identical on the UK with some human ashes and a stash of marijuanaoutside but not, we learn, Alex Woods is stopped by customs and referred to on the policeinside. It all started 6 years before whenAnd not on stage, as an 11 year old living in Englandeither. Because there's West Countrya lot that builds a dancer. Some things that can be taught or learnt – discipline, his escape attention to detail – and some things, that ''je ne sais quoi'', that don't come from bullies necessitates breaking into a shed; the shed of classroom. A stage presence, a man with charm, a gun pointing at Alex''joie de vivre''. The man is American Vietnam veteran Isaac Peterson and, whatever his school teachers may say to the contrarydifference between a hard-worker, this is the moment when Alex's education really begins; this and the moment when he was hit on the head by a passing meteor of coursestar.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444765884</amazonuk>0861544080
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Carolyn MathewsHeather Fawcett|title=Transforming PandoraEmily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=When we first meet Pandora Armstrong in the spring of 2003 Emily Wilde is an expert academic scholar on faerie lore, and shehas travelled extensively, and researched meticulously, to write her life's grieving for her husbandwork, Mike, who had died just a few weeks before. It hadn't been his the very first heart attack and he had reduced his workload but this attack was fatalencyclopaedia of faeries. He was only in his fifties Whilst she is brilliant at research and Pandora feels that he'd been snatched away from her as they'd only been married for a few years. When a friend suggests that speaking to faeries, she goes is not so good with her to an Evening of Clairvoyance people. So when she runs out finds herself far, far North in the small village of excuses to refuse and although Hrafvsnik, having somehow offended the village matriarch, she's is not exactly ''convinced'' by sure what she hears there's a lingering doubthas done, nor how to redeem herself and put her final investigations for her book back on the right track. A spirit voice mentioned Enter Wendell Bambleby, her children dashingly handsome and insufferable rival who arrives unexpectedly, all charm and Pandora was adamant that she didn't have any children - itdelight, much to Emily's actually quite a sore point - but that wasn't true of Mikefrustration. But why is he here? What does he want? And what exactly is going on with the faerie folk around Hravsnik?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1780997450</amazonuk>0356519120
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Chloe Hooper1398515388|title=The EngagementBoy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Chloe Hooper's gothicFirst of all, psychological thriller concerns an affair between a thirty-something English girl, Lieseit was the earthquake, working deep in Australia at her uncle's real estate business and a blandly handsome Australian farmerthe ocean floor, Alexander. Set over one weekend as Liese is heading to Alexander's remote family farm for which created the first time for a weekend of passiontsunami and this, this is a classic 'girl trapped in spooky house turn, caused the nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and situation' story with a dark, sexual twistutter devastation. Liese, who trained as an interior architect The deaths were uncountable, met Alexander while showing him around exclusive Melbourne properties and, has somehow managed to get herself into a situation whereby Alexander pays her for her attentions, believing the loss of livelihoods was widespread. The fact that she is some kind many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of prostitutepriorities but - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. Hewasn't a dog person but the convenience store owner's even paying her handsomely for her time at comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the weekend. With debts of her own, Liese willingly encourages this perception with little idea of the problems to which this fantasy will leaddog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224096346</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jack SheffieldChristopher Bowden|title=School's Out!Mr Magenta
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary= The beginning of September 1983 starts Christopher Bowden's latest novel is a new academic year for the village primary school patient untangling of Ragley-on-the-Forest. Headmaster Jack Sheffield starts the autumn term with a skip in his step as he and wife Sally enjoy their new babyseemingly ordinary woman's life, John William despite the broken nightscarried out by her nephew after she has died. What else will the year bring? The advent of aunt who always provided a new teacher safe harbour and a tragedy that strikes sorrow in the heart little bit of the village reduces Jack's skip indulgence to a young nephew had had a bit but there are always moments much more interesting life than that nephew Stephen had ever realised and it seems to him an obligation to lift the mood; for instance, whatever find it was that little Madonna Fazackerly did in her cat's ear. It's all there in the school's daily log; perhaps not the one that the inspectors see, you understand, all is explained in living detail here in Jack's memoir of life as a teacher and villagerout.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0552167037</amazonuk>B0B6Z9VJDW
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sophie DivryJennifer Mason|title=The Library Partitions of Unrequited LoveUnity|rating=54
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Prepare yourself to try a book the likes of which you'd never particularly expect, and prepare yourself to find it becoming a favourite – one that has a snappy storyHere at Bookbag Towers, yet is a monologue, one that concerns what we all love – booksfirst met Elizabeth Cromwell, dominatrix and love, yet one that also intrigues and tempts us with other, very diverse subjects. One morning our narrator turns up to start work early at her geography station unintentional detective in a very large but provincial library[[Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery by Jennifer Mason|Preposterous]], when she investigated and finds unravelled a locked-in regularseries of disappearances. Over the next hour and twenty or so (for I read it out loud) In ''Partitions of Unity'', she talks sets her mind to him, barely allowing him solving a word in edgeways, and what we get is one big, fat lump of a paragraph of her worldmurder... Told you to be prepared for the unusual…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857051415</amazonuk>B09LQR9FRF
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Owen MartellWill Carver|title=IntermissionThe Daves Next Door
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=There is a line Five strangers come together in Alan Bennett's play 'The History Boys' that I love. It talks about 'subjunctive history', imagining things that might have happened. In ''Intermission'', his first book in English one moment as opposed to Welsh, Owen Martell borrows this idea, taking an event a surmising what may have happened afterwards.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0434022047</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Samantha Harvey|title=All is Song|rating=3.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Some books are hard work. I have no problem with that if I feel there’s a reason to persevere; if I can sense that the book is going to deliver a story and the hard work is necessary to enjoy it fully, then I will happily plod along, re-reading sections if necessary, suicide bomber prepares to get the full benefit of the novel.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099566060</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Jenn Ashworth|title=The Friday Gospels|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=There are five in the Leeke family. Martin is the father and he works in the mail sorting office. There's not a lot of ''pleasure'' in Martin's life, but if you were making a list you'd put Bovril at the top of it. She's a labrador and Martin's obsessed with her training. Well, he's partly obsessed with the training and the training is partly an excuse for detonate his other obsession. Nina owns two labradors and Martin sees them (he and Nina, that is - not he and the labs) as having vest on a future together. It would be easy to be critical, but Martin's wife is in a wheelchairLondon tube line. Pauline's been unwell since the birth of As their youngest child. She's not quite doubly incontinentfates overlap, but accidents are frequent and embarrassing. She's also got a penchant for spending on home improvements - despite the fact that there ''really'' isn't the money for them.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444707728</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Wm Paul Young|title=Cross Roads|rating=4|genre=Spirituality and Religion|summary=Wm. Paul Young's debut novel ''The Shack'' was a revelation story is told in many ways. Whilst many disagreed with his theologybackwards order, it was refreshing leading up to see such an overtly faith based book on the bestseller lists. Personally, I found it a very moving story and whilst I thought it helpful on some points, it tended to skim over others. Now we get to see if Young can repeat his success with his new novel, ''Cross Roads''fateful moment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444745972</amazonuk>1914585186}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Francesca SegalJennifer Mason|title=The InnocentsPreposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Francesca Segal's debut novel'A struggling poetry zine, ''The Innocents'' is set a mom-and-pop mobile diner in upper classthe Northern California redwoods, Jewisha 400-meter hurdler who just missed the 2004 Olympics, North London. Adam is about to marry his childhood sweetheart, Rachel, and is working as a lawyer in her fatherwomen's business. Into this romantic idyl though comes Ellietrack coach with a yen for bullwhips, Rachel's wayward cousin who has been forced to flee a billionaire with a state-of-the US following an appearance -art S&M dungeon, a man serving a life sentence in Alabama, an 'art house' movie of dubious repute andenigmatic signature, K(s, it turns outx), further scandal. Ellie is everything that Rachel is not; on a modelcheap oil painting, worldly, sexy and temptingan erotic art dealer in Georgia... As Adam gets drawn into wanting to 'rescue' her and look after her, his whole future with Rachel is thrown into doubt and the story becomes a will they, won't they get together narrative.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701186992</amazonuk>}}
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Harriet LaneB0B2N7MVYM|title=Alys, AlwaysThe Calculations of Rational Men|author=Daniel Godfrey
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Harriet LaneIt's debut novel, ''Alys, Always'' garnered a raft the 10th of favourable coverage from the professional reviewers December 1962 when it was we first published meet Dr Joseph Marr. Just to put what happens in hardback. Concerningcontext, as it does, a young woman who works as a sub-editor the Cuban missile crisis is still very fresh in people's minds. The world has barely had a publishing company and a Booker winning novelistchance to breathe out. But for Joe Marr, there is always it's not the chance missile crisis that this was due to 's at the reviewers merely recognizing front of his mind. He's been convicted of murder. With the world current state of medical knowledge, it's hard to think otherwise than that is portrayedthe prosecution would never have been brought but Joe Marr has spent his first few days in HMP Queen's Bench, a relatively new prison. This view is unfounded though - it is a superbly drawn He's just getting used to his roommate, frequently very funnyMervyn, and often psychologically chilling story learning to be wary of ambition and class differences. It thoroughly deserves all the praise that has been heaped upon itMcArthur brothers.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780220014</amazonuk>
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