132,585
edits
Changes
no edit summary
[[Category:General Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]]==General fiction==__NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Christopher CurrieOnyi Nwabineli|title=The Ottoman MotelAllow Me to Introduce Myself|rating=34.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Simon Sawyer is 11 years oldAnuri spent her childhood on display to the world, forced thanks to her step-mother Ophelia's increasingly popular presence on a road-trip with his parents to visit his grandmothersocial media, where she posted every step of Anuri's childhood for sponsorships and influencer deals and, basically, Irismonetary gain. Iris Now Anuri is living in some backwater town hemmed in on three sides by corn fieldsher twenties and she is slowly trying to regain her confidence and to get her life back, and on the fourth by suing her step-mother to take down the seacontent about her. The town Anuri is called Reception in a heavy-handed attempt at ironybattling alcoholism, failing to start her PhD, as we learn the town actually has no reception undergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online and receiving money from them for mobile phones and doing so. Most importantly, she is desperately worried about her little sister, who is pretty much isolated from the rest new focus of Ophelia's online empire. Can she save her sister, and perhaps herself and her relationship with her father at the world but for a few dirt tracks leading out.same time?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908737190</amazonuk>0861546873
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Susie Steiner1529153298|title=HomecomingThe List of Suspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Ann It's 1979 and Joe Hartle are approaching their sixties and hoping to slow down a littleMargaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. (A woman? I mean, honestly...) She's not what's worrying Miv's family, though. Women have been disappearing. Their sheep farming life is starting to take its toll and it’s an enticing thought that Well, they may be able to pass the farm on 've been murdered, but to their son Maxhave 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. The only problem is Miv's upset because she's overheard that her father wants to move the farm is hardly making any profit and Max is not the most capable person in the worldfamily 'Down South'. Added to that When you're from Yorkshire, Max’s wife Primrose Down South is expecting a baby and that is not without its difficultiesfrightening, foreign place, best avoided. The Hartle’s other son For Miv, the move would mean leaving her best friend, BartholomewSharon, is far away in London trying to run his own business and also scared about committing she'll do anything to his girlfriend, Rubyprevent that. The family has started to fall apart over She's not worried about the years but when things go badly wrong on the farm including a barn fire and a virus dangers or that spreads through the sheep and newborn lambs, there is the opportunity her Mum's stopped talking - to pull together and start anewanyone. Is this something that the family can do or will they fall apart even more?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571297196</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Val Harris1035906708|title=The Song the Waves Sing Diva|author=Daisy Goodwin|rating=34.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Some time has passed since we [[Sea Creatures by Val Harris|last saw]] the Moon family. Charlie Moon has been released from prison. His sister Olivia is We tend to think of Maria Callas as Greek, but she was born to Greek parents in Manhattan, New York but Jenna is still , in Cornwall, where December 1923 and only moved to Athens when she's turned the family home into a B&Bwas thirteen. Their Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father Brendan is a reformed character and hechanged it to 'Callas's moved to Looe, where he's a partner make it more manageable in an art gallerythe States. But everyone's life has its ups and downs: Olivia is made redundant and the only logical move is When she was back to in Athens - supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for her voice - she was raised under the UK. Then Brendan overhears Nazi occupation by a conversation mother who mercilessly exploited her and realises that his business partner is deep in an art fraudmade no secret of her preference for her elder sister, Jackie.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0955599784</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=O H RobssonAlexander McCall Smith|title=The SparkPerfect Passion Company|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Kristoffer lives The Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in a house on Edinburgh, run by Ness and operating as an alternative to all the edge of online apps in providing a lake in Western Norway with his dog and occasional company from his friend Matsmore personal, tailored service. By profession he’s a photographer Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and enough look after the business comes his way , as Ness is planning to keep him the way he wishes take a trip to Canada to liveget away for a while. He’s relaxed - too much Katie is coming out of a break up with a bad boyfriend, and so jumps at times when you’re relying on him (always a mistake) the chance to come home to be punctualEdinburgh. There has been the occasional girlfriend - some of them pretty stunning - but none of them ever came up And so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, thanks to Eva whom he met when they were both in their teens 44 Scotland Street and working in the local hotel Isabel Dalhousie novels, but with some new characters who quickly begin to earn some moneycharm. His grandfather Katie has no experience in running a summer cabin up business, or in match-making, but Ness has full confidence in the mountains her abilities, and there's always her very helpful (and Kristoffer’s happy rather handsome) neighbour, William, to go up to spend time with him and take him his supplies. You might think that’s pretty idyllic - and it is.lend a hand…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>B00BJOS364</amazonuk>1846976596
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Megan ShepherdDean Koontz|title=The Madman's DaughterBad Weather Friend|rating=34.5|genre=General FictionParanormal|summary=Teenager Juliet Moreau Benny is having a terrifically bad day. He loses his job, he loses his fiancee, and his house gets trashed. Oh, and someone has had delivered a hard life since her father really weird, disturbing coffin-sized object to his home, and it's possible that whoever or whatever was vilified by Victorian societyinside is the thing that has trashed his house! The thing is, Benny is the very last person to deserve all this bad luck. Thinking him long dead, she scrapes He is a living as best she can – but nice person. A really nice person. So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the delivery to his house is a chance discovery at new friend, a macabre event leads bad weather friend called Spike, who has been sent to her help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a good person. Spike is going to learn that take care of Benny, and will certainly take care of Benny's enemies, if he is alive , Benny, and her life is cast Harper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into chaosBenny's wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0007500203</amazonuk>1662500491
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=A M HomesKatherine Howe|title=May We Be Forgiven|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=''May We Be Forgiven'' is not an easy book to summarise. The book is narrated by Harold, a fairly pedestrian academic teacher and aspiring writer of history and particularly the Nixon era. We don't have to wait long for the catalyst that changes his life fundamentally over the course of a year. His high flying, younger brother, George, is involved in a car accident shortly after Thanksgiving and an adulterous encounter will change the lives of Harold and George forever. AM Homes offers a biting satire of the American Dream, taking swipes at materialism, families that are more nuclear fallout than nuclear, Internet sex sites and the dependence on drugs and psychiatrists to keep people on the straight and narrow.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847083234</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Robert Goolrick|title=Heading Out to WonderfulA True Account
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Charlie Beale returned from the war Hannah Masury is living in Europe Boston, having been sent to live with a family who run an inn, and 1948 found him being made to work there from a young age. When she hears there is to be a hanging of some pirates in Brownsburgthe town, Virginia. He'd been driving around looking for somewhere she decides to settle go and all he had with him were two suitcaseswatch. One contained an excellent set of butchersEnthralled and horrified in equal measure, Hannah finds herself embroiled in a young boy' knives - and s death at the other was full hands of moneytwo vicious pirates. Brownsburg seemed like a fine place She hides away, so that they don't find and kill her too, and then to escape them completely she runs away to stay and before long he had sea, dressing as a job with Will Haislett boy and joining the Haislett family became notorious Ned Low''his'' family. He'd never hankered after children but their five-year-old son, Sam found s pirate ship as a place in his heartcabin boy. Life might have been good if it had continued She soon finds herself in this veinthe thick of things when there is a mutiny on board, but Charlie Beale met Sylvan Glassand from there we are caught up in her rip roaring tale of life on the ocean waves.s|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0091953677</amazonuk>0861547438
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Mohsin Hamid1471180158|title=How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising AsiaMaybe Tomorrow|author=Penny Parkes
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Inside Mohsin Hamid's ''How to Get Filthy Rich Jamie Matson works in Rising Asia'' is a bitteran upper-sweet love story disguised as class grocery store, for a self help book. Itman who's a well structured concept and works nicely. Each chapter is presented in control freak with all the format subtlety of those common to the self help genrea half brick. Jamie's son, with advice like 'Move to the City'Bo, 'Get an Educationhas his problems' etc. He's asthmatic and the more you read, although the chapter entitled more you'll suspect that he'Be Prepared s on the autistic spectrum. Sometimes Jamie needs to Use Violencetake time off at short notice - she' is s a notable omission from most business tomes and self help books. After some general chatty comments frequent flier in the self help book style, the attention turns to two people who are named only 'the boy' local A&E and sometimes Bo's not fit enough to go to school. Missed shifts or the pretty girl', charting their rise and fall need to be away on time to pick Bo up from rural poverty in an unnamed Asian country (although it certainly feels like Pakistan) to business success school are occasions when Jamie can be controlled and wealth put in the citywrong. The two are not It was going to come to a couple, but their lives cross at frequent times and he, in particular, remains infatuated with his childhood acquaintancehead.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241144663</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Edward Kelsey MooreB0CKD1L5JL|title=The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-EatRadio Free Olympia|author=Jeffrey Dunn
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=In Plainview, Indiana there are three women who have been friends since their teensPetr is an orphan. Forty years after they first met they're still known as Rescued by the Supremesstrange, the name given to them by Big Earl at his All-You-Can-Eat diner. The diner's now run by his sonreclusive Bear, Little Earlhe is brought up far from bustling cities and busy human society, but you'll find the Supremes at the table in the window every Sunday, after church, along with their familiesforests of Washington's Olympic Peninsula. Odette tells us her own storyAfter Bear dies and a brief sojourn in human company, from the time she was born in and armed with only a sycamore treepirate radio transmitter, which made her Petr goes on a journey through the fearless soul she is. But now she's up against something which even she might not be able to face down. Clarice was always forest, broadcasting the well-brought-up young lady as well as being a musician of some considerable meritstrange, but her husband is causing her problems. Even serial philanderers would be in awe of what Richmond gets up towild and rarely heard voices he encounters.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444758020</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Eleanor HendersonSarah Marsh|title=Ten Thousand SaintsA Sign of Her Own
|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Eleanor Henderson's debut novel ''Ten Thousand Saints'' is set in late 1980s Vermont andAfter a bout of scarlet fever as a child, more memorablyEllen Lark loses her hearing. Suddenly plunged into a world of silence, New Yorkeverything about her life changes. Opening in 1987 we discover Living in a time when the second sentence that one use of the two boys hiding under the stands sign language was seen as something only savages do, Ellen is sent to the Vermont a school football field on match day will die that night. It's a powerful openingwhere she is taught to lip read, but physically restrained from signing. From then onhere, the book deals first with Teddy's death and then with the life he she ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has left behind in been teaching the form of his friend Jude, Jude's sort of step sister Eliza deaf and Teddy's older brother Johnnyusing a system called Visible Speech. It's a world of broken homes and At the trinity of sex same time, Bell is working on other inventions and drugs ideas, and rock and roll, or more specifically punk. Henderson is particularly good at evoking the underground scene Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in New York at the time before the unlikely combination a complicated tangle of AIDS and mayoral intervention combined to clean up the cityespionage.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1780872194</amazonuk>1035401614
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B0BC3YTCMR
|title=Good Girls Die
|author=Ayura Ayira
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=''This story is not for everyone.''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Syrie James1472263936|title=The Missing Manuscript of Jane AustenFigurine|author=Victoria Hislop
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary='A newly discoveredIt was in 1968 that Helena McCloud made her first trip to Greece. She was alone: her mother, Greek by birth, incredibly rarehad left the family home and refused to return, handwritten manuscript of but Mary and Hamish (Helena's parents) felt that it would be a previously unknown Jane Austen Novel is pity if Helena grew up without knowing her grandparents or understanding her Greek heritage. Her trip to appear at auction the family apartment in Londonup-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. The neatly written He was proud of his close connections to the Junta and expected his family to uphold his values but heavily corrected pages are for a full length work entitled saw no reason to accommodate them. His prejudices included Helena'The Stanhopess red hair and green eyes - inherited from her father's Scottish ancestors.'|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0425253368</amazonuk>
}}
{{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=Nick AlexanderB0BVDC2VWH|title=The French HouseGrave Listeners|author=William Frank
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=CC was trapped in a job she no longer felt able to do in The village is isolated and poor. It's surrounded by a city which wasn't really herWitching Forest. Her boyfriend, Victor, had moved to France to live in a farmhouse he'd inherited and whilst giving everything up and moving out there to join him wasn't And the most rational decision she'd ever taken it ''did'' feel villagers subsist largely by farming Uphegia plants - its bread-like a step in the right directionfruit provides nutrition and its blossom provides herbal medicines. Only - there were a couple The black wood of problemsthe forest provides heat and warmth, roofs on homes, and even gallows, if needed. The south fear of France being buried alive is an existential superstition in January can be bitterly coldthe village and that is the reason Volushka, particularly when you're a good way up a mountain. And it's going to feel even worse when the property you're going to lacks some of the most basic facilities drunken, self- amongst them most indulgent, lazy lout of a roofman is tolerated.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857896350</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Lesley GrayB0BYF82CXT|title=The King's JockeySemi-Detached|author=Deborah Stone
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=In June 1913 Emily Wilding Davison ran out in front of the King's horse at the Epsom Derby: she died of her injuries. Her actions 'Bill and Amanda are often quoted living in history books and whether you think her to be a suffragette martyr or semi-detached house, stuck in a deluded womandepressing rut of boredom and disappointment, few are ignorant of her or what she didwhen Terry and Fiona – glamorous, successful and very much in love – move in next door. But how many people remember the jockey who was up Despite their different outlooks on that fateful day? Few will know his namelife, or that what happened at the Derby would haunt him for years couples befriend each other and life appears to come as he believed himself responsible improve for killing Emily Davisonboth pairs. ''The King's Jockey'' But all is the story of Herbert 'Bertie' Jonesnot what it seems, of the life which brought him to the Derby and of what happened in the years afterwardstheir increasingly interconnected relationships are fated for tragedy.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907947612</amazonuk>''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jami AttenbergShalini Boland|title=The MiddlesteinsSilent Bride|rating=53
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Edie Middlestein almost Alice and Seth are a match made in heaven. He is everything she has the American dream within her graspbeen searching for; handsome, accomplished, clever, funny; total and utter husband-material. She trained as is all he could possibly want in a lawyerwife; beautiful, has a husbandsuccessful, a daughter who followed her professional footsteps confident… and so the inevitable proposal is eagerly accepted by Alice and the wedding is planned and a son married to an ambitious wife who provided him with two high-achieving childrenset. There are just two flies in When the much-anticipated day arrives, Alice is walked down the ointment preventing aisle by her father, beaming with pride and excitement as she surveys the dreamcongregation – their friends assembled to celebrate this joyful day and when Seth turns to face his approaching bride, Alice's arrival: 1. Edie is so morbidly obese that world implodes because she has to undergo surgery; and 2. this absolutely no idea who the man at the altar is, who is the moment waiting for her husband chooses to leave herbecome his wife. Apart from that…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846689325</amazonuk>1662507089
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jodi Picoult1787636003|title=The StorytellerGirls of Summer|author=Katie Bishop|rating=45
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Sage Singer is scarred both mentally It was the summer when Rachel Evans turned eighteen that she and physically Caroline went backpacking around Greece and has never really got over her mother's deatharrived on the island. She works as a baker as the night work allows her to hide away from people and sleep in daylight hours, Rachel wasn't exactly innocent but she does develop one friendship which probably only happens because it seems non-threatening. Josef Weberwas, perhaps, pillar of the local communitynaive, attends the same grief counselling group as Sage so when thirty-four-year- and he's old Alistair Wright started to take an interest in his ninetiesher, she was flattered rather than wary. But when Sage relaxes into the relationship Josef tells It was quite a while before he made any sort of physical approach to her about himself and asks her to help by that time she was obsessed by him to die. Sage is shocked at Alistair worked for Henry Taylor, looking after his interests on the request island and then repelled as Josef tells her more of his storyin particular in the bar where all the girls either worked or partied.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444766635</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Paula LichtarowiczAmanda Craig|title=The First Book of Calamity LeekThree Graces|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=I know I'm going to face a dilemma in reviewing this book, because, really, Few styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the state-of-the best way to approach it is to come at it knowing nothing at all-nation novel. And itThere's very hard to write something so utterly compelling about any writer who can catch hold of the atmosphere of the day and capture it without giving some important things away! Let's start with , crafting an image of the basics, country as it stands in one particular moment. To say that Amanda Craig is skilled at doing this is a story told by Calamity Leek, a child living together would be embarrassingly inadequate: she's practically synonymous with her 'sisters', taken care the genre of by 'aunty' and occasionally visited by 'mother'contemporary social fiction at this point. Calamity is in charge She has such a gift for weaving the ongoing issues of a book called the Appendix, in which everything day into the girls could possibly need to know about their lives is written. They live closeted of her characters in a way that feels natural and lived-in their own small farmyard area, protected from the outside world by 'the wall'never making them ciphers for social commentary but instead fully realised people, their enemies being the 'injuns' and 'demonmales'. I know, that's a lot of words in quotes. Let me explain..grappling with issues far larger than themselves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0091944228</amazonuk>140871468X
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Will Storr152915118X|title=The Hunger and the Howling of Killian LonePineapple Street|author=Jenny Jackson
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Killian Lone grows up in a home lacking in love ''Pineapple Street'' is the story of three women: Sasha, Darley and Georgiana. Darley and George are sisters and securitySasha is married to their brother Cord. For these he relies on his elderly aunt DorothyThey're Stocktons, an accomplished cookonly Sasha isn't a Stockton by birth so she isn't readily accepted into the tribe. Indeed his visits to Dorothy revolve around food as he absorbs all she can teach himThe problem's exacerbated when the clan matriarch, Tilda, slowly inheriting her passion asks Cord and skill along with her knowledgeSasha if they'd like to move into the Pineapple Street property. This attachment Tilda and Chip have renovated and downsized to food then becomes his career choiceanother property, a street or so away, leading to which they own. They won't need any of the unfortunate discovery of furniture from Pineapple Street, so Sasha and Cord can move straight in. Nominally, they had a family secret choice but that has remained hidden for a very long timewasn't the reality. Why Darley and Georgiana start to call Sasha 'unfortunatethe gold digger'? There. She's a reason for its concealment… a very, very good reasonliving in ''their'' family home. They use it so often that they abbreviate it to 'the GD'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780720807</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Emily Critchley
|title=One Puzzling Afternoon
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=84 year old Edie has lived in the 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 his family, as Edie is starting to lose her memory. However, Edie is tormented by the memory of her childhood friend, Lucy, who went missing over 60 years ago, and the worry that there was a secret she was keeping for Lucy that somehow might be the thing that reveals the truth of what happened all that time ago. After 'seeing' Lucy in the high street, just 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 forgetting more and more in her day to day life. Will she uncover the truth about Lucy's disappearance before her move, and before her memories are gone forever?
|isbn=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=Tom Winter0008506337|title=Lost and FoundThe Garnett Girls|author=Georgina Moore|rating=45
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Carol has lived in a state of unhappiness for many years, married to a man she doesn't The love (and probably never has) affair between Margo Garnett and with a daughter whom she doesnpoet Richard O't understand (and probably never will)Leary was all-consuming, apparently on both sides. But Sophie is Margo was just about independent now sixteen when they fell in love. Richard was twenty-one and Carol is determined described by Margo's mother as 'an older man'. Her parents worried that sheRichard's influence would take her away from what they felt she could achieve - going to tell Bob that Oxford and having a glittering career. In the marriage is over - that she's leaving - but something always gets in event, they eloped and Richard took her away from the wayIsle of Wight. As her frustration grows she writes letters - Margo did go to Oxford and went on to the world at large become a well- respected journalist. The couple had three children: Rachel, Imogen and Sasha. Life was lived in London and posts themholidays were spent at Sandcove, the family home on the Isle of Wight. It doesnEven then the doubts about Richard's drinking were never far from Margo't s mind: ''changeshe would never be able to leave him in charge'' anything, but she does feel better. She even puts a smiley face on the envelope Then Richard left them.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1472101596</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Beth Gutcheon1914585402|title=GossipDashboard Elvis is Dead|author=David F Ross
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Loviah French, Dinah Wainwright and Avis Metcalf met when they were at boarding school. Lovie owns a top-class dress shop in Manhattan - the place where women of a certain class go when they want something for a special occasion and to be secure in the knowledge that they will be treated well and discreetly. Dinah is a columnist who chronicles the lives of New YorkI reviewed David F Ross's rich and famous, whilst Avis is a prominent figure in the art world. Lovie is our narrator and shebook [[There's also the glue which holds the three women together. TheyOnly One Danny Garvey by David F Ross|There're both devoted to her s Only One Danny Garvey]] a couple of years back and she to them, but remember being absolutely floored by how powerful and affecting it was. It was a smallgripping, imagined slightemotionally wounding read, many decades earlier, has left an icy distance between Dinah and Avisrereading my review of it my main takeaway was that I might not have lavished enough praise on it.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857899821</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Bernardine BishopLucy Ashe|title=Unexpected Lessons in LoveClara and Olivia
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Cecilia Banks and Helen Gatehouse met by chance in a doctorThe year is 1933. The place? Sadler's waiting room Wells. Ballerinas Clara and a friendship developed because they were both cancer survivorsOlivia are sisters, albeit with a colostomytwins no less. It was a case of opposites attracting: Cecilia was quietIdentical on the outside but not, reservedwe learn, married for on the second time and the mother of Ian whom she idolisedinside. Helen had never marriedAnd not on stage, loud in the nicest sense of the word and an authoreither. They gave each other mutual support and an outlet for their preoccupationsBecause there's a lot that builds a dancer. People with whom you Some things that can discuss thebe taught or learnt – discipline, attention to detail – and some things, erthat ''je ne sais quoi'', intricacies of your stoma are few and far between! The relationship wasnthat don't entirely uncritical: Helen was less than impressed when Ian dumped (sorry - there's really no other word for it) come from the classroom. A stage presence, a baby on his mother. Cephas was the result of charm, a fling he'd had with the child's mother and shejoie de vivre''d disappeared. He The difference between a hard- worker, and a war correspondent - was on his way abroadstar.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>184854782X</amazonuk>0861544080
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Amanda ProwseHeather Fawcett|title=What have I done?Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=When Kate Gavier married Mark BrookerEmily Wilde is an expert academic scholar on faerie lore, and she was full has travelled extensively, and researched meticulously, to write her life's work, the very first encyclopaedia of optimism for their marriage faeries. Whilst she is brilliant at research and their futurespeaking to faeries, she is not so good with people. However So when she finds herself far, from far North in the first day small village of their marriageHrafvsnik, having somehow offended the village matriarch, her dreams were shattered as she realised that Mark was nothing more than a cruel bully. He even insisted on calling her Kathryn rather than Kate which is not sure what she has done, nor how she prefers to be known. There followed sixteen years of torment redeem herself and torture as Mark strove to control his wife and punish put her final investigations for any wrongdoings – of which there were manyher book back on the right track. To the outside world though, it looked as though Mark and Kathryn had the perfect loving marriage Enter Wendell Bambleby, mainly due to Kathryn’s resolve to spare her children, Dominic dashingly handsome and Lydiainsufferable rival who arrives unexpectedly, from knowing of all charm and witnessing their father’s cruelty. One day thoughdelight, she snapped and, for the first time in her life, fought backmuch to Emily's frustration. Hours later, Mark was dead and Kathryn was locked up in a police cell being questioned about But why is he here? What does he want? And what happened.exactly is going on with the faerie folk around Hravsnik?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1781853789</amazonuk>0356519120
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Joyce Carol Oates1398515388|title=Daddy LoveThe Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=A short while agoFirst of all, I read [[The Corn Maiden and Other Nightmares by Joyce Carol Oates]] and it was moved by the sheer emotional impact of earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, in turn, caused the stories it containednuclear meltdown. This The result was especially true of the title storycomplete and utter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, which looked at and the impact on a family torn by the disappearance loss of their daughterlivelihoods was widespread. The synopsis fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. He wasn''Daddy Love'' suggested t a similar impact, given dog person but the nature of the story convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and what I'd recently discovered about Tamon the power of Oates' writingdog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781850658</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=J E RyderChristopher Bowden|title=Blood PoolMr Magenta
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Samantha Shelley was surprised to become the owner Christopher Bowden's latest novel is a patient untangling of a boatyard when seemingly ordinary woman's life, carried out by her husband nephew after she has died in a cliff fall. She had worked in the East Devon boatyard - run it in fact - for quite some time but it's the men of the Shelley 'blood pool' The aunt who have always inherited the land for the past two hundred years. She was aware provided a safe harbour and a little bit of ill-feeling against her in the village, but her priority was indulgence to keep the business running as smoothly as possible for herself a young nephew had had a much more interesting life than that nephew Stephen had ever realised and for the staff she employed. There was some support in the village - it seems to him an old friend, known obligation to one and find it all as 'the Prof' - had always been there for her and willing to listen to her outpourings or just to chatter as she drank coffee. Then he disappeared in violent circumstancesout.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>B00AR0XFX2</amazonuk>B0B6Z9VJDW
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Julia GregsonJennifer Mason|title=Jasmine NightsPartitions of Unity
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The temptingly titled Jasmine Nights starts promisingly. SabaHere at Bookbag Towers, a talented singer whose gift to the war is entertaining the troops, comes from an unhappy family backgroundwe first met Elizabeth Cromwell, dominatrix and one that has little patience for the opportunities for women brought about unintentional detective in [[Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery by war. DomJennifer Mason|Preposterous]], when she investigated and unravelled a fighter pilot who has sustained injuries, is feeling displaced - the war has changed his world foreverseries of disappearances.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1409103048</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Toni Jordan|title=Nine Days|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Christopher In 'Kip' Westaway lives in a suburb Partitions of Melbourne, Australia with mother Jean, sister Connie and his twin, Francis. KipUnity's mother considers him a layabout who doesn't deserve the special privileges of his educationally elite brother and so he works at the big house next door for the Hustings, caring for their horsesshe sets her mind to solving a murder. One day Mr Husting presents Kip with a shilling; their little secret. As its 1939, that's a fair amount of money so Kip hides it away, not realising how special that coin will become as the decades pass.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444763555</amazonuk>B09LQR9FRF
}}
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=When we first meet Pandora Armstrong Five strangers come together in the spring of 2003 she's grieving for her husband, Mike, who had died just one moment as a few weeks before. It hadn't been suicide bomber prepares to detonate his first heart attack and he had reduced his workload but this attack was fatalvest on a London tube line. He was only As their fates overlap, the story is told in his fifties 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 she goes with her backwards order, leading up to an Evening of Clairvoyance she runs out of excuses to refuse and although she's not exactly ''convinced'' by what she hears there's a lingering doubt. A spirit voice mentioned her children and Pandora was adamant that she didn't have any children - it's actually quite a sore point - but that wasn't true of Mikethe fateful moment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1780997450</amazonuk>1914585186}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Chloe HooperJennifer Mason|title=The EngagementPreposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Chloe Hooper's gothic'A struggling poetry zine, psychological thriller concerns an affair between a thirtymom-something English girland-pop mobile diner in the Northern California redwoods, Liesea 400-meter hurdler who just missed the 2004 Olympics, working in Australia at her unclea women's real estate business and track coach with a blandly handsome Australian farmeryen for bullwhips, Alexander. Set over one weekend as Liese is heading to Alexander's remote family farm for the first time for a weekend billionaire with a state-of passion-the-art S&M dungeon, this is a classic 'girl trapped man serving a life sentence in spooky house and situation' story with a darkAlabama, sexual twist. Liesean enigmatic signature, who trained as an interior architectK(s, met Alexander while showing him around exclusive Melbourne properties andx), has somehow managed to get herself into on a situation whereby Alexander pays her for her attentionscheap oil painting, believing that she is some kind of prostitutean erotic art dealer in Georgia. He's even paying her handsomely for her time at the weekend. With debts of her own, Liese willingly encourages this perception with little idea of the problems to which this fantasy will lead.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224096346</amazonuk>}}''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sophie DivryB0B2N7MVYM|title=The Library Calculations of Unrequited LoveRational Men|author=Daniel Godfrey
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Prepare yourself to try a book It's the likes 10th of which you'd never particularly expect, and prepare yourself December 1962 when we first meet Dr Joseph Marr. Just to find it becoming a favourite – one that has a snappy storyput what happens in context, yet the Cuban missile crisis is still very fresh in people's minds. The world has barely had a monologuechance to breathe out. But for Joe Marr, one it's not the missile crisis that concerns what we all love – books, and love, yet one that also intrigues and tempts us with other, very diverse subjects's at the front of his mind. He's been convicted of murder. One morning our narrator turns up With the current state of medical knowledge, it's hard to start work early at her geography station think otherwise than that the prosecution would never have been brought but Joe Marr has spent his first few days in a very large but provincial libraryHMP Queen's Bench, and finds a locked-in regularrelatively new prison. Over the next hour and twenty or so (for I read it out loud) she talks He's just getting used to himhis roommate, barely allowing him a word in edgewaysMervyn, and what we get is one big, fat lump of a paragraph of her world. Told you learning to be prepared for wary of the unusual…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857051415</amazonuk>McArthur brothers.
}}