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[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]]__NOTOC__{{adsense2}}Frontpage|author=Onyi Nwabineli|title=Allow Me to Introduce Myself|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction__NOTOC__<!|summary=Anuri spent her childhood on display to the world, thanks to her step-mother Ophelia's increasingly popular presence on social media, where she posted every step of Anuri'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 to get her life back, suing her step- Remove -->mother to take down the content about her. Anuri is battling alcoholism, failing to start her PhD, undergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online and receiving money from them for doing so. Most importantly, she is desperately worried about her little sister, who is the new focus of Ophelia's online empire. Can she save her sister, and perhaps herself and her relationship with her father at the same time?|isbn=0861546873}}{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1529153298|title=Love in RevolutionThe List of Suspicious Things|author=B R CollinsJennie Godfrey

|genre=TeensGeneral Fiction|summary=Everyone in her village - in an unnamed Basque country - loves pello It's 1979 and Esteya Margaret Thatcher is no differentPrime Minister. It (A woman? I mean, honestly...) She's not what's worrying Miv's the national sport and its heroes are national heroesfamily, though. Women have been disappearing. That the holder of the Kings Cup hails from her village is a source of pride to Esteya Well, her twin brother Martinthey've been murdered, and everyone elsebut to have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. Except older brother Leon Miv's upset because she's overheard that her father wants to move the family 'Down South'. So when the Bull comes home for a visit When you're from Yorkshire, everyone Down South is excited. And when a young peasant boy challenges him to a gamefrightening, foreign place, everyone laughsbest avoided. And when For Miv, the peasant boy winsmove would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, everyone is shocked and discomfitedshe'll do anything to prevent that. Except Leon. Leon, a communist sympathiser, sees it as a symbolic victory of She's not worried about the peasant over the dissolute regime of the Kingdangers or that her Mum's stopped talking - to anyone. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408815702</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1035906708|title=The Never PagesDiva|author=Graham ThomasDaisy Goodwin|rating=4.5|genre=FantasyGeneral Fiction|summary=''There are two rules that the Dream Investigator must follow:''<br>''1. Document everything.''<br>''2. Keep moving forward.'' Master G is in search We tend to think of his one true loveMaria Callas as Greek, Lucy. But Lucy is lost but she was born to Greek parents in the NeverRealmManhattan, the dimension that separates the living from whatever comes after. In the NeverRealmNew York, memories do not exist. So how is Master G - the Dream Investigator - to find her? From the very first moment, his journey into the NeverRealm is destroying his mind, turning thoughts in December 1923 and knowledge and recollection only moved to sand, shifting sandAthens when she was thirteen. He will need courage Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to face the nightmarish environment. He will need fortitude 'Callas' to resist make it more manageable in the degenerationStates. He will need to find Brekker, his unreliable scientist friend. And he'll need When she was back in Athens - supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for her voice - she was raised under the companionship Nazi occupation by a mother who mercilessly exploited her and made no secret of Paisleyher preference for her elder sister, a dog named after a carpetJackie...|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956742203</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Things We NeedAlexander McCall Smith|authortitle=Jennifer CloseThe Perfect Passion Company|rating=4.5|genre=Women's General Fiction|summary=Claire Coffey used The Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and operating as an alternative to live all the online apps in New York with providing a successful job more personal, tailored service. Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the business, as Ness is planning to take a great fiancé; her sister Martha used trip to Canada to be get away for a nurse; and her brother Max should have been looking forward to finishing his final year at college before embarking on an exciting and interesting careerwhile. However, things don’t always turn Katie is coming out the way that one expects which is why all three siblings end of a break up back with a bad boyfriend, and so jumps at the family chance to come home needing to Edinburgh. And so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, thanks to 44 Scotland Street and the support of their parentsIsabel 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's always her very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, William, to lend a hand…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701186658</amazonuk>1846976596

  {{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=A Cat Called DogDean Koontz|authortitle=Jem VanstonThe Bad Weather Friend|rating=34.5|genre=General FictionParanormal|summary= ''Cats are not dogsBenny is having a terrifically bad day. And dogs are not cats He loses his job, he loses his fiancee, and his house gets trashed. Even two-legs know that. But Dog was Oh, and someone has delivered a catreally weird, because that was disturbing coffin-sized object to his name: he was a cat - a cat called Dog - home, and he it's possible that whoever or whatever was happy with inside is the thing that too.'' Confused? Don't be. Dog may be happy but he has trashed his house! The thing is the confused one, not you. He Benny is a catthe very last person to deserve all this bad luck. He is ''a cat''nice person. But he's called Dog because he behaves like one A really nice person. He pokes So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the delivery to his tongue out like house is a puppy. When he gets excitednew friend, he wags his tail like a puppy. Andbad weather friend called Spike, horror of horrors, he even yaps and barks like who has been sent to help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a puppygood person. This kitten-cat Spike is only one summer oldgoing to take care of Benny, so perhaps itand will certainly take care of Benny's not too late. Perhapsenemies, if he were to find a tutor, he could learn to be a ''proper'' cat. A cat who understands the feline holy trinity of eatingBenny, sleeping and washing. A cat Harper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who understands his importance to two-legs. A cat finds herself roped into Benny's wild adventure) can figure out who can proudly take his place among the others of the best species in the worldexactly they are.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1780885598</amazonuk>1662500491

 {{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Closed DoorsKatherine Howe|authortitle=Lisa O'DonnellA True Account

|summary=Did you listen at doors when you were little? Hannah Masury is living in Boston, having been sent to live with a family who run an inn, and being made to work there from a young age. Did you hang from the banisters, trying When she hears there is to hear what was going on be a hanging of some pirates in the grown up world when you'd been banished town, she decides to your room? go and watch. In this storyEnthralled and horrified in equal measure, eleven year old Michael Hannah finds out most herself embroiled in a young boy's death at the hands of his information by listeningtwo vicious pirates. HeShe hides away, so that they don's adept at creeping around t find and kill her too, and learning snippets of informationthen to escape them completely she runs away to sea, local gossip dressing as a boy and tidbits of family dynamicsjoining the notorious Ned Low's pirate ship as a cabin boy. But one nightShe soon finds herself in the thick of things when there is a mutiny on board, when his mum comes home screaming and covered from there we are caught up in blood the secrets that Michael becomes privvy too are far more disturbing than what Tricia down her rip roaring tale of life on the road has been getting up toocean waves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0434022551</amazonuk>0861547438

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Mike Gayle1471180158|title=Turning FortyMaybe Tomorrow|author=Penny Parkes|rating=4.5

|summary=I made Jamie Matson works in an upper-class grocery store, for a man who's a control freak with all the mistake subtlety of reading Mike Gaylea half brick. Jamie's son, Bo, 'has his problems'. He'Turning Thirtys asthmatic and the more you read, the more you'll suspect that he' in s on the weeks before I did soautistic spectrum. Despite it being Sometimes Jamie needs to take time off at short notice - she's a story of a man whose life fell apart just before his 30th birthday, he still seemed frequent flier in the local A&E and sometimes Bo's not fit enough to go to be doing better than I was, which made it a readable but depressing experienceschool. Fortunately, ''Turning Forty'' is being published about 15 months before I reach that milestone Missed shifts or the need to be away on time to pick Bo up from school are occasions when Jamie can be controlled and my life is put in a different place which, hopefully, will combine the wrong. It was going to come to make it a more enjoyable readhead.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340918535</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Simon PontB0CKD1L5JL|title=Remember to BreatheRadio Free Olympia|author=Jeffrey Dunn

|summary=We meet Sam Grant on his 27th birthdayPetr is an orphan. Rescued by the strange, reclusive Bear, but he's not out celebrating. He's got flu is brought up far from bustling cities and just to add to his problems he's got a boil busy human society, in his groin - or on his thigh - depending on which side the forests of the doctorWashington's desk you're sittingOlympic Peninsula. Sam's not been looking after himself since his girlfriend dumped him just over three months ago After Bear dies and when you work a brief sojourn in adland the opportunities for not looking after yourself are many and varied. The millenium hasn't quite arrivedhuman company, 'austerity' hasn't even been thought about and living an out-of-control life has never been easier. What we get is Sam's diaryarmed with only a pirate radio transmitter, but it's not in chronological orderPetr goes on a journey through the forest, with some of it going back to before he met Sarah - broadcasting the girl strange, wild and rarely heard voices he didn't really want, but struggles to get overencounters.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1909273007</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Grace McCleenSarah Marsh|title=The Professor A Sign of PoetryHer Own|rating=43.5

|summary=Grace McCleen's ''The Professor After a bout of Poetry'' is Elizabeth Stone, a 52 year old aged professor at a London University. When the book opens she has just discovered that scarlet fever as a cancer scare is now in remissionchild, but forced by Ellen Lark loses her illness to take hearing. Suddenly plunged into a sabbaticalworld of silence, she sets everything about researching her latest book based on some papers of TS Eliotlife changes. This takes her back to Oxford, to her alma mater and raises Living in a time when the prospect use of seeing her former professor theresign language was seen as something only savages do, Ellen is sent to a man convinced of the young Miss Stone's potential at an early ageschool where she is taught to lip read, but whose last meeting was somewhat awkwardphysically restrained from signing. McCleen looks at the issues raised by generations of poets From here, namely time, death and love. For Professor Stone, the first she ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has passed, been teaching the second come uncomfortably close deaf and using a system called Visible Speech. At the third remains unknown to her. What's moresame time, her academic focus Bell is working on the music of love poetry which is somewhat ironic in that she avoids human relationships perhaps due to the death of her mother at an early age other inventions and an unhappy foster experienceideas, while also having and Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a peculiar aversion to music. Perhaps though this is what allows her a detached ability to write academic studiescomplicated tangle of espionage.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444769952</amazonuk>1035401614

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Rachel JoyceB0BC3YTCMR|title=PerfectGood Girls Die|author=Ayura Ayira

|summary=In 1972 two seconds ''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 added afraid to the yearhug her in case it's contagious. It's not easy being a black girl whose skin is 84% white. 11 She had a crush on seventeen-year -old Byron Hemmings heard about it from Reggie Anderson but never thought he would notice her. Then he did: Lavender was very good at math and Reggie asked if she would tutor him. She readily agreed: tutoring was something she gladly did at church: this was just an extension. She went to his friend James house and felt it wouldn't be a good thinghe raped her. In fact at the moment Bryon's watch's second hand reversed something happened that would mean neither his or James' lives would ever be the same againshock, she even allowed him to give her a lift home.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857520660</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1472263936|title=419The Figurine|author=Will FergusonVictoria Hislop

|summary=Anyone who has ever opened an E-Mail which proves It was in 1968 that Helena McCloud made her first trip to be a plea for assistance in getting large amounts of money ahead of the authorities will recognise the themeGreece. Laura Curtis' father She was alone: her mother, Greek by birth, had such an E-Mail left the family home and having tried refused to help return, but Mary and spent all his money, he has driven his car off Hamish (Helena's parents) felt that it would be a bridgepity if Helena grew up without knowing her grandparents or understanding her Greek heritage. Meanwhile, Her trip to the family apartment in Nigeria, a pregnant young woman walks through up-market Kolonaki would be the dust, trying first of several annual visits. She grew to escape love her grandmother and the family and find something that ever she doesn't know what she is looking for. In the Niger Deltas maid, meanwhileDina, the oil companies are moving in but was wary - and a whole way frightened - of her grandfather, retired general Stamatis Papagiannis. He was proud of life is changing in his close connections to the fishing villages thereJunta and expected his family to uphold his values but saw no reason to accommodate them. His prejudices included Helena's red hair and green eyes - inherited from her father's Scottish ancestors. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781855056</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=Juan Pablo VillalobosB0BVDC2VWH|title=Down The Rabbit HoleGrave Listeners|author=William Frank

|summary=Down The Rabbit Hole village is isolated and poor. It's surrounded by a fictional tale of a young boy’s life as Witching Forest. And the son villagers subsist largely by farming Uphegia plants - its bread-like fruit provides nutrition and its blossom provides herbal medicines. The black wood of a Mexican drug lord. Tochtli narrates the story forest provides heat and warmth, roofs on homes, and gives us a child’s view even gallows, if needed. The fear of being buried alive is an existential superstition in the sordid world village and that his father rules. We are shown is the positives and negatives of this kind of lifestyle as Tochtli sees thingsreason Volushka, from presents galore to having to call his father by his first name. This book is a strange blend drunken, self-indulgent, lazy lout of childlike wonder within a violent worldman is tolerated.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908276282</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Isabelle GreyB0BYF82CXT|title=The Bad MotherSemi-Detached|author=Deborah Stone|rating=34

|summary=When we first meet Tessa Parker she has ''Bill and Amanda are living in a semi-detached house, stuck in a major problem depressing rut of boredom and disappointment, when Terry and Fiona – glamorous, successful and very much in love – move in next door. Despite their different outlooks on her hands. Her seventeen-year-old son has been missing since life, the previous daycouples befriend each other and life appears to improve for both pairs. The police But all is not what it seems, and their increasingly interconnected relationships are involved and Tessa is beside herself with worryfated for tragedy. She's told the police quite a bit - however you can't help but feel that there's a lot more going on that she's not telling. To find out the full story we go back four months...|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857386484</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Irene Nemirovsky and Sandra Smith (translator)Shalini Boland|title=The MisunderstandingSilent Bride|rating=3.5

|summary=After the Great War Yves Harteloup was Alice and Seth are a disappointed young man when he returned to the resort where he had spent idyllic childhood summersmatch made in heaven. He is everything she has been searching for; handsome, accomplished, clever, funny; total and utter husband-material. It wasn't long before She is all he became infatuated by the could possibly want in a wife; beautiful Denise - mother of a young child, wife of an older man who was away on business successful, confident… and bored. In so the heat of the summer inevitable proposal is eagerly accepted by Alice and the relationship wedding is intoxicating planned and Denise falls passionately in love with Yvesset. When they return to Paris Denise envisages a little flat which they will furnish to their taste for afternoons of leisure the much-anticipated day arrives, Alice is walked down the aisle by her father, beaming with pride and pleasure but excitement as she surveys the truth is that Yves must return congregation – their friends assembled to his mundane office job celebrate this joyful day and try when Seth turns to make every franc stretch as far as it can. In face his approaching bride, Alice's world implodes because she has absolutely no idea who the man at the drab autumn of Paris Denise altar is driven mad with desire , who is waiting for Yves and their love disintegrates under the burden of misunderstandingher to become his wife.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099563843</amazonuk>1662507089

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Isabel Ashdown1787636003|title=The Girls of Summer of '76|author=Katie Bishop|rating=45

|summary=1976 It was a blisteringly hot the summer. People celebrated when it eventually did rain and at one point it was so hot that Big Ben stopped working. It would be the summer that Luke Wolff Rachel Evans turned eighteen that she and Caroline went backpacking around Greece and he planned arrived on leaving the Isle of White and going island. Rachel wasn't exactly innocent but she was, perhaps, naive, so when thirty-four-year-old Alistair Wright started to poly take an interest in Brightonher, she was flattered rather than wary. He had a job at the holiday camp, which was hard work but there It was quite a great social life too and even the possibility while before he made any sort of romance. His parents were happy physical approach to let her and by that time she was obsessed by him have his independence - after all, he was a sensible, well-balanced young man - and they were rather preoccupied with their own problems. Looking inAlistair worked for Henry Taylor, you'd have thought that looking after his interests on the Wolffs were island and in particular in the ideal family: from bar where all the inside there were obviously one girls either worked or two crackspartied.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908434333</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Cees NooteboomAmanda Craig|title=RitualsThree Graces|rating=4.5

|summary=''Rituals'' introduces us to Amsterdam, and to Inni, firstly in 1960, then in 1950, and then in Few styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the state-of-the 1970s. When we first meet Inni, it is when he is a middle-aged man in 1960nation novel. Far from responsible and hard-working, we see him as someone There's something so utterly compelling about any writer who is impulsive can catch hold of the atmosphere of the day and recklesscapture it, even to crafting an image of the point of cruelty to his wife - who formulates plans to leave himcountry as it stands in one particular moment. It To say that Amanda Craig is only after skilled at doing this frankly miserable first impression that we meet the younger Inni, and we see how a chance meeting would be embarrassingly inadequate: she's practically synonymous with a man called Arnold Taads had changed the course genre of his lifecontemporary social fiction at this point. Taads is She has such a man obsessed with matriculating his life down to gift for weaving the ongoing issues of the last second, letting time dictate what he can do, with whom he can do it with, and, most importantly, when. In Part three, in another chance meeting, day into the now ageing Inni meets Taads' son, Phillip. Phillip, though having never met his father, curiously lives of her characters in a life way that is an echo of his father's; though as Arnold isolated himself feels natural and lived-in the mountains, Phillip isolates himself in meditation and the methodology of the tea ceremonynever making them ciphers for social commentary but instead fully realised people, grappling with issues far larger than themselves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782067175</amazonuk>140871468X

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Anthony Quinn152915118X|title=The StreetsPineapple Street|author=Jenny Jackson

|summary=Anthony Quinn's ''The StreetsPineapple Street'' is set in London in the early 1880s in the area known as Somers Townstory of three women: Sasha, which Darley and Georgiana. Darley and George are sisters and Sasha is married to those not familiar with London geography is their brother Cord. They're Stocktons, only Sasha isn't a Stockton by birth so she isn't readily accepted into the tribe. The problem's exacerbated when the area around Eustonclan matriarch, St Pancras Tilda, asks Cord and KingSasha if they's Cross stationsd like to move into the Pineapple Street property. Today Tilda and Chip have renovated and downsized to another property, a street or so away, much which they own. They won't need any of this falls under the trendy Camden areafurniture from Pineapple Street, but so Sasha and Cord can move straight in the 1880s. Nominally, was they had a choice but that wasn't the site of some of reality. Darley and Georgiana start to call Sasha 'the worst slum tenements gold digger'. She's living in ''their'' family home. They use it so often that they abbreviate it to 'the capitalGD'. Some 50 years' earlier, Charles Dickens }}{{Frontpage|author=Emily Critchley|title=One Puzzling Afternoon|rating=4|genre=Crime|summary=84 year old Edie has lived in this part of London and although he had died by the time this same small town for almost her whole life, but now she is setfacing a move as her son wants to move to another house and bring Edie to live with his family, the depiction of the poverty as Edie is not far from what we would term Dickensianstarting to lose her memory. The book However, Edie is narrated tormented by David Wildebloodthe memory of her childhood friend, Lucy, who is went missing over 60 years ago, and the worry that there was a principled but naive young man who finds employment as an 'investigator' secret she was keeping for Lucy that somehow might be the charismatic Mr Marchmont's ''The Labouring Classes thing that reveals the truth of Londonwhat happened all that time ago. After 'seeing' - a strange mix Lucy in the high street, just as she was the last time she saw her, she starts to find pockets of social geography memories coming back to her. And yet as she remembers the past, she is forgetting more and journalism publishing regular stories of the poor who reside more in her day to day life. Will she uncover the slums of London.truth about Lucy's disappearance before her move, and before her memories are gone forever?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099575159</amazonuk>1804181250

{{newreview|author=Ruth Thomas|title=The Home Corner|rating=3.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=When you finish your Highers, you’re supposed to go on to universityTold from a retrospective view, especially if you’re a girl like Luisayoung woman unravels the year-long relationship that once defined her. But she’s failed hersOverlaid with later wisdom, so for now higher education is out, and working is unfortunately in. So, she finds the narrator relives the affair with a job working as a classroom assistant in a primary schoolman twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the summer after. It’s not something she ever wanted to do, and she finds herself in a weird sort Set against the backdrop of limbo, at a life stage somewhere between an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the children in 24-year-old narrator's deepening relationship with her classolder lover, depicting its all-consuming nature, how it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and how it altered her proper grown-up adult colleaguesirrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>057123061X</amazonuk>0861546490

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Lucy Cruickshanks0008506337|title=The Trader of SaigonGarnett Girls|author=Georgina Moore

|summary=In the Saigon of the 1980s the Vietnam War is over but the traces remainThe love affair between Margo Garnett and poet Richard O'Leary was all-consuming, apparently on both sides. Margo was just sixteen when they fell in love. Richard was twenty-one and described by Margo's mother as 'an older man'. Alexander has deserted Her parents worried that Richard's influence would take her away from the US army what they felt she could achieve - going to Oxford and makes having a comfortable living selling girls to local business menglittering career. Phuc used to be a business manIn the event, complete with mansion they eloped and Richard took her away from the means Isle of Wight. Margo did go to keep his wife Oxford and went on to become a well-respected journalist. The couple had three children in affluence: Rachel, Imogen and Sasha. Now his family live Life was lived in a shanty hutLondon and holidays were spent at Sandcove, afraid of the ruling government that spies through family home on the eyes Isle of childrenWight. At last he finds a way out, his luck just needs to hold. Hanh also lives in poverty, desperately trying to help her sick mother with Even then the pittance she earns doubts about Richard's drinking were never far from cleaning one of the cityMargo's many open latrines. Then one day mind: ''she meets someone who offers so much more. His name is Alexanderwould never be able to leave him in charge''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782063218</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Alain Mabanckou|title=Tomorrow I'll Be Twenty|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Michel is as carefree as any child can be during that difficult process called 'growing up'Then Richard left them. Here in Congo Brazzaville he has his best friend Lounes, a crush on Caroline (his best friend's sister), the hassles of school and a family consisting of two mothers in two houses which seems perfectly normal. He's also being educated about the world by his father; a world that changes daily as it's 1979. Never mind, he can always marry Caroline as long as he meets her conditions: she requires children, a red 5-seater car and a white dog.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846685842</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Hilary Reyl1914585402|title=Lessons In FrenchDashboard Elvis is Dead|author=David F Ross|rating=34.5

|summary=American graduate Kate leaves the States for a job in Paris, working for a I reviewed David F Ross's book [[The Devil Wears Prada There's Only One Danny Garvey by Lauren WeisbergerDavid F Ross|There's Only One Danny Garvey]] style boss, world famous photo-journalist Lydia Schell. She’s lived in France before, so she thinks she knows what she’s letting herself in for. She doesn’t. So while the title doesn’t refer to the language itself (she is beautifully fluent even before she arrives), there are many lessons for her to learn, from how to act as a go-between for Lydia couple of years back and her husband Clarence (and his graduate students), to remember being absolutely floored by how to handle the handsome Olivier powerful and the ''bon chic bon genre'' boys, to where to source the lavish ingredients her employer needs for dinner or how to make affecting it was. It was a proper timeline. The Berlin Wall is about to fallgripping, the continent is buzzingemotionally wounding read, and Kate is a part rereading my review of it, for better or worsemy main takeaway was that I might not have lavished enough praise on it.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007446268</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tim ParksLucy Ashe|title=Sex is ForbiddenClara and Olivia

|summary=Tim Parks's ''Sex is Forbidden'' The year is narrated by twenty-something, Beth1933. SheThe place? Sadler's working as a volunteer server at a Buddhist retreat called the Dasgupta Institute where she has been for the last nine months although the book covers one ten day cycle of retreatWells. The Dasgupta Institute imposes bans on attendeesBallerinas Clara and Olivia are sisters, although the conditions are slightly twins no less onerous . Identical on the servers whooutside but not, we learn, nevertheless are expected to join in on the meditationsinside. And not on stage, either. ThereBecause there's no talkinga lot that builds a dancer. Some things that can be taught or learnt – discipline, attention to detail – and some things, no writingthat ''je ne sais quoi'', no mingling of that don't come from the sexes and no physical or even eye contactclassroom. One day BethA stage presence, still a rebel at heartcharm, wanders into the mena ''joie de vivre''s side where she discoverers an attendee is keeping a diary where he is contemplating his moment of crisis and she is hooked. The revealing of the past that has driven both Beth and the mysterious diary keeper to such an austere retreat is part of the intrigue of the bookdifference between a hard-worker, but while there is an inevitable focus on introspection and new age thinking, Beth's tone is delightfully sceptical and feels very authentic. It's almost impossible not to feel for her plight and to admire her approacha star.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099565897</amazonuk>0861544080

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Adam ThorpeHeather Fawcett|title=FlightEmily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries

|summary=The past Emily Wilde is catching up with Bob Winrushan expert academic scholar on faerie lore, and she has travelled extensively, and researched meticulously, to write her life's work, the very first encyclopaedia of faeries. His marriage Whilst she is over as a result of his inconsiderate arrival home early when weather cancelled one of his jobs as a cargo pilot brilliant at research and speaking to find his wife in bed faeries, she is not so good with another man but people. So when an investigative journalist starts to dig into some of she finds herself far, far North in the content small village of Bob's previous cargo tripsHrafvsnik, his life is quickly placed in grave danger. His problems stemmed from having walked away from a particularly morally dubious trip to transport arms to somehow offended the Taliban some years agovillage matriarch, although it turns out that his moral line in the sand she is somewhat blurred. He not sure what she has knowingly transported guns done, nor how to redeem herself and military personnel in his timeput her final investigations for her book back on the right track. He Enter Wendell Bambleby, her dashingly handsome and insufferable rival who arrives unexpectedly, all charm and delight, much to Emily's sort of frustration. But why is he here? What does he want? And what exactly is going on with the aeronautical equivalent of white van man.faerie folk around Hravsnik?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099539764</amazonuk>0356519120

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Danny Wallace1398515388|title=Charlotte StreetThe Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)

|summary=In his early booksFirst of all, Danny Wallace it was the new Tony Hawksearthquake, deep in the ocean floor, taking on silly challenges which created the tsunami and recounting them this, in amusing waysturn, caused the nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and utter devastation. With ''Charlotte Street''The deaths were uncountable, his first entirely fictional work, he seems to be moving into territory inhabited by [[:Category:Mike Gayle|Mike Gayle]], that and the loss of bloke-litlivelihoods was widespread. It seems a decent fit, as his book ''Yes Man'' had elements The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of blokepriorities but - six months after the tsunami -lit, despite being based on actual eventsKazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. It may have suffered from He wasn't a twee ending, dog person but it offered enough the convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to suggest that this is a field Danny Wallace could work well open his car door and Tamon the dog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009191907X</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=NoViolet BulawayoChristopher Bowden|title=We Need New NamesMr Magenta|rating=4.5

|summary=This powerful narrative bears witness to the experience Christopher Bowden's latest novel is a patient untangling of economic migrantsa seemingly ordinary woman's life, carried out by her nephew after she has died. Not just black Africans coming from Zimbabwe, like NoViolet Bulawayo, but more generally, those several generations The aunt who always provided a safe harbour and a little bit of hardy, resourceful immigrants driven indulgence to the USA in search of a better future. Such people leave behind less courageous family members, but not their emotions towards those they have loved or their nation of birthyoung nephew had had a much more interesting life than that nephew Stephen had ever realised and it seems to him an obligation to find it all out.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701188030</amazonuk>B0B6Z9VJDW

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Kim Izzo Jennifer Mason|title=My Life in Black and WhitePartitions of Unity|rating=4.5

|summary=''My Life in Black Here at Bookbag Towers, we first met Elizabeth Cromwell, dominatrix and White'' starts off unintentional detective in a police station in England. The film noir theme that permeates the novel begins immediately. Clara Bishop is dressed in a gold evening gown[[Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery by Jennifer Mason|Preposterous]], when she investigated and treats the police officer who is interviewing her just as unravelled a femme fatale wouldseries of disappearances. This girl has sass. But when In ''Partitions of Unity'', she begins sets her mind to recount her tale, it is clear this is solving a new developmentmurder.. The old Clara describes her life as something from a screwball comedy, not a film noir. How does a screenwriter-slash-gossip-columnist from LA end up being interviewed about an assault in England?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444737716</amazonuk>B09LQR9FRF

This is just a sample of the cast of characters and settings in Preposterous. As you can see, some keeping up will be required! The basic premise of this mystery story goes like this...|isbn=B09STS96HS}}{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Mave FellowesB0B2N7MVYM|title=Chaplin and CompanyThe Calculations of Rational Men|author=Daniel Godfrey|rating=4.5

|summary=In 'Chaplin & CompanyIt's the 10th of December 1962 when we first meet Dr Joseph Marr. Just to put what happens in context, Mave Fellowes takes a quirky look at life on Londonthe Cuban missile crisis is still very fresh in people's canal boatsminds. The world has barely had a chance to breathe out. Yet, while her story is full of eccentric characters But for Joe Marr, it's not least the main human character of Odeline Milk, who moves to the boat missile crisis that shares 's at the title front of his mind. He's been convicted of murder. With the book after her mother passes away current state of medical knowledge, it's hard to pursue her dream of becoming a mime artist in think otherwise than that the more culturally enlightened big city after a lonely life prosecution would never have been brought but Joe Marr has spent his first few days in provincial ArundelHMP Queen's Bench, the book is delightfully free of sentimentalitya relatively new prison. I say the main human character He's just getting used to his roommate, because this is also the story of a boat with a remarkable history of ownersMervyn, and also a story learning to be wary of the strange life on the canal which somehow exists beneath the city through which it flowsMcArthur brothers. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224097350</amazonuk>