Difference between revisions of "Newest General Fiction Reviews"

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[[Category:General Fiction|*]]
 
[[Category:General Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->
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[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]]__NOTOC__
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Dan Rhodes
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|author=Onyi Nwabineli
|title=When the Professor Got Stuck in the Snow
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|title=Allow Me to Introduce Myself
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary= Two people are on a train on their way to, of all things, a WI meeting where the ladies of All Bottoms will be lectured on the non-existence of GodOne of the two people is Professor Richard Dawkins, rampant atheist, hectoring scientist chappie, and all-round devotee of ''Deal or No Deal''The other is Smee, his mono-named assistant, amanuensis or 'male secretary'.  Smee will come to the fore when the weather sets in and the train journey has to be abandoned some way short of its ultimate destination, Upper BottomInstead the pair fetch up at the isolated yet friendly community of Market Horton, and the only option for accommodation is taken – yes, the died-in-the-wool non-believer has to be housed by a retired vicar and his wifeThis clash of titanic opinions, peppered with social faux pas aplenty will provide for a particularly English kind of farcical comedy, but one with the legs to go as far as any other Good Books have reached in the past…
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|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 gainNow Anuri is in 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 content about herAnuri is battling alcoholism, failing to start her PhD, undergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online and receiving money from them for doing soMost importantly, she is desperately worried about her little sister, who is the new focus of Ophelia's online empireCan she save her sister, and perhaps herself and her relationship with her father at the same time?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1910709018</amazonuk>
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|isbn=0861546873
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Tania Chandler
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|isbn=1529153298
|title=Please Don't Leave Me Here
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|title=The List of Suspicious Things
|rating=4
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|author=Jennie Godfrey
|genre=fiction
 
|summary= If you like unreliable narrators then this is the book for you. In Brigitte, the protagonist of Please Don't Leave Me Here, Tania Chandler has created an unforgettable troubled character whose fractured mental state leads to erratic thought processes, vivid and none too pleasant dreams and an inability, or unwillingness, to recover her memory of her former life. None of which is helped by her drink problem and, as the story progresses, an addiction to prescription medication.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1925228258</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Emylia Hall
 
|title=The Sea Between Us
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=To her parents, the move to Cornwall was an escape to a better way of life. For city-girl Robyn, it was wet, remote and miserable and she was counting down the days to University and her return to civilization. Desperate for something to do to entertain herself, Robyn takes a wetsuit and surfboard and makes her way to a secluded cove. An inexperienced surfer, she soon gets into difficulty, but is rescued from the sea by a young local man called Jago. From that moment on, the two lives are intertwined by an invisible bond; a bond that will be tested and stretched during the years that follow.
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|summary=It's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister.  (A woman?  I mean, honestly...)  She's not what's worrying Miv's family, though.  Women have been disappearing. Well, they've been murdered, but to have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening.  Miv's upset because she's overheard that her father wants to move the family 'Down South'. When you're from Yorkshire, Down South is a frightening, foreign place, best avoided. For Miv, the move would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, and she'll do anything to prevent that.  She's not worried about the dangers or that her Mum's stopped talking - to anyone.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1472211979</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Anne Barnett
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|isbn=1035906708
|title=The Largest Baby in Ireland After The Famine
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|title=Diva
|rating= 4
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|author=Daisy Goodwin
 +
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=She was all colour and sway, and as far away as imaginable from the local women. Pale, pale skin and strong dark auburn hair falling free to large wide hips. She wore a purple shawl. That night Felix, a bachelor, aged 43, living in the house he was born in, dreamt of purple. Purple in the shape of a woman.
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|summary=We tend to think of Maria Callas as Greek, but she was born to Greek parents in Manhattan, New York, 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 make it more manageable in the States. When she was back in Athens - supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for her voice - she was raised under the Nazi occupation by a mother who mercilessly exploited her and made no secret of her preference for her elder sister, Jackie.
And just like that, things change. I love this passage. It shows how strong the human pull is. Even when men and women are surrounded by great events - war, political upheaval, famine, depression - individual human desires can change the picture in an instant.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>186151526X</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Alexander Cordell
 
|title=The Hosts of Rebecca
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|summary=At the end of [[Rape of the Fair Country by Alexander Cordell|Rape of the Fair Country]] Iestyn Mortymer had been sentenced to deportation for seven years because of the part he played in the Chartist rebellion and the Newport Rising of 1839.  His mother, wife, Marie, younger brother, Jethro, sister, Morfydd and the two children of the family returned to the land, living on a farm owned by Marie's grandfather.  The life was hard and not just for the Mortymers, with poverty breathing over their shoulders and it was made worse by the tollgates installed by landowners, effectively adding a levy to any produce which the farmers attempted to move.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B0100NC1GM</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
 
|author=Alexander McCall Smith
 
|author=Alexander McCall Smith
|title=The Woman Who Walked in Sunshine
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|title=The Perfect Passion Company
|rating=5
+
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Back to Botswana I go, having saved this newest outing in the No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series for a delightful weekend readI never tire of these characters, and I always look forward to seeing what is happening in their livesThis time around the story is about holidays, amongst other things, and the tricky plans to persuade Mma Ramostwe to take a holidayBut what is Mma Makutsi up to?  Does she have plans to take over the agency entirely whilst Mma Ramotswe is away?
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|summary=The Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and operating as an alternative to all the online apps in providing a more personal, tailored service.  Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the business, as Ness is planning to take a trip to Canada to get away for a whileKatie is coming out of a break up with a bad boyfriend, and so jumps at the chance to come home to EdinburghAnd so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, thanks to 44 Scotland Street and the Isabel Dalhousie novels, but with some new characters who quickly begin to charmKatie 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…
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408706660</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1846976596
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author= Aldous Huxley
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|author=Dean Koontz
|title= After Many A Summer
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|title=The Bad Weather Friend
|rating= 4
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|rating=4.5
|genre= Dystopian Fiction
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|genre=Paranormal
|summary= Like many of us, I suspect, I knew nothing of Huxley other than the "required reading" of ''Brave New World''Naturally, on that basis alone, he was pigeon-holed in my head under the heading ''Sci-fi - must check out further''.
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|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 personSo 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 wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784870358</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1662500491
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Jill Ciment
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|author=Katherine Howe
|title=Heroic Measures
+
|title=A True Account
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Ruth and Alex Cohen have to move from their beloved New York apartmentThey love it, but it's five floors up and there's no elevatorReluctantly they're having an open day for prospective purchasers - and hoping that they'll be able to buy something not ''too'' far out which has that elusive elevator.  It's not just them, either.  There's Dorothy.  Dorothy ('Dottie' to those who know her well) is their Daschund.  She's getting on in years, but then so are Ruth and Alex.  Then - the day before the open house - two things happen.  An unmarked petrol truck  is blocking the city's main tunnel and there's no sign of the driver.  You don't even need to have ''long'' memories to worry about terrorists in Manhattan.  Then Dottie yelps in pain and she can't stand up.
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|summary=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 ageWhen she hears there is to be a hanging of some pirates in the town, she decides to go and watch.  Enthralled and horrified in equal measure, Hannah finds herself embroiled in a young boy's death at the hands of two vicious piratesShe hides away, so that they don't find and kill her too, and then to escape them completely she runs away to sea, dressing as a boy and joining the notorious Ned Low's pirate ship as a cabin boy.  She soon finds herself in the thick of things when there is a mutiny on board, and from there we are caught up in her rip roaring tale of life on the ocean waves.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782271945</amazonuk>
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|isbn=0861547438
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author= Sebastian Faulks
+
|isbn=1471180158
|title= Where my Heart Used to Beat
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|title=Maybe Tomorrow
|rating= 5
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|author=Penny Parkes
|genre= General Fiction  
+
|rating=4.5
|summary= In the early 1980’s, on a small island off the South of France, a Doctor named Robert Hendricks confronts his life – memories of wars, work, loves, and losses. As his history is explored and questioned by his host, Hendricks recalls days in Scottish universities, Italian trenchesmental asylums and windswept beaches. Links to the past are uncovered, and the raw wounds they expose take Hendricks on a search for sanity and raises the question – is life comprised of events themselves, or the way in which an individual chooses to remember them?
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|genre=General Fiction
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091936837</amazonuk>
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|summary=Jamie Matson works in an upper-class grocery store, for a man who's a control freak with all the subtlety of a half brickJamie's son, Bo, 'has his problems'. He's asthmatic and the more you read, the more you'll suspect that he's on the autistic spectrum.  Sometimes Jamie needs to take time off at short notice - she's a frequent flier in the local A&E and sometimes Bo's not fit enough to go to school.  Missed shifts or the need to be away on time to pick Bo up from school are occasions when Jamie can be controlled and put in the wrong.  It was going to come to a head.
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Alexander McCall Smith
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|isbn=B0CKD1L5JL
|title=The Revolving Door of Life
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|title=Radio Free Olympia
|rating=5
+
|author=Jeffrey Dunn
 +
|rating=4
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=I am always happy to sit back down with old friends, to catch up on what has been happening on Scotland Street.  As in the last episode [[Bertie's Guide to Life and Mothers by Alexander McCall Smith]] there is plenty of Bertie throughout the whole storyBertie is my favourite character by far, so this was very pleasing to me!  Our other favourites are there too, however, so there's something to please everyone, from Bruce being, well, Bruce, and dear Angus reciting a poem at the end.
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|summary= Petr is an orphan. Rescued by the strange, reclusive Bear, he is brought up far from bustling cities and busy human society, in the forests of Washington's Olympic PeninsulaAfter Bear dies and a brief sojourn in human company, and armed with only a pirate radio transmitter, Petr goes on a journey through the forest, broadcasting the strange, wild and rarely heard voices he encounters.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846973287</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author= Rachel Elliott
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|author=Sarah Marsh
|title= Whispers Through A Megaphone
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|title=A Sign of Her Own
|rating= 4.5
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|rating=3.5
|genre= General Fiction
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|genre=General Fiction
|summary= Miriam doesn’t speak.  Well, that’s not strictly trueShe does speak, but nothing above a whisper which makes it hard to have a conversation with her.  Particularly as she hasn’t left her house in three years.  But today is the day.  She’s going to open that door and walk outside.  She really is.  Ralph has finally twigged (and with no small amount of surprise) that his wife Sadie doesn’t actually love him.  And now he’s not sure if she ever really did.  Having spent so much time regurgitating his every moment onto Social Media, Ralph hasn’t really had a chance to think about itBut now he has, it is so shockingly awful that he has decided to run awayAnd of all the places he could run away to, he has chosen the same woods that Miriam has picked to be the first place she will visit out-of-doors.  And Sadie?  Well, she’s had enough of reading Tweets and living vicariously through the posts of others.  Sadie is going to have an adventure of her own.  
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|summary=After a bout of scarlet fever as a child, Ellen Lark loses her hearingSuddenly plunged into a world of silence, everything about her life changesLiving in a time when the use of sign language was seen as something only savages do, Ellen is sent to a school where she is taught to lip read, but physically restrained from signingFrom here, she ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the deaf and using a system called Visible SpeechAt the same time, Bell is working on other inventions and ideas, and Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a complicated tangle of espionage.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0992918227</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1035401614
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Gregoire Delacourt
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|isbn=B0BC3YTCMR
|title=The First Thing You See
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|title=Good Girls Die
|rating=3.5
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|author=Ayura Ayira
 +
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Arthur Dreyfuss is a fairly run of the mill young man. He likes big breasts, cars, Juplier beer and big breasts.  He’s also rather keen on big breasts.  A good-looking boy, even if he does say so himself
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|summary=''This story is not for everyone.''
  
''…like Ryan Gosling, only better looking''
+
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 black girl whose skin is 84% white.  She had a crush on seventeen-year-old 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 house and he raped her.  In shock, she even allowed him to give her a lift home.
 +
}}
  
we will take him at his word, although one would had thought a better looking Ryan Gosling would have had his fill of Zepplin chested females so as to dilute his desire for them.  In any event, I suspect his longings stem from the fact that a young mechanic living a quiet and uneventful life in a tiny village in rural France is unlikely to have a multitude of such femmes crossing his path in search of their daily baguetteThat said, when Arthur one day opens his front door to find a rather distressed but undeniably luscious Scarlett Johansson on his doorstep, he does not question his luckHe invites her inAs you do.  
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{{Frontpage
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0297871021</amazonuk>
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|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=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 colleaguesAs 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
 +
}}
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{{Frontpage
 +
|isbn=B0BVDC2VWH
 +
|title=The Grave Listeners
 +
|author=William Frank
 +
|rating=4
 +
|genre=General Fiction
 +
|summary=The village is isolated and poor. It's surrounded by a 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 the forest provides heat and warmth, roofs on homes, and even gallows, if needed. The fear of being buried alive is an existential superstition in the village and that is the reason Volushka, a drunken, self-indulgent, lazy lout of a man is tolerated.
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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|author=John Piper
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{{Frontpage
|title=Claude's Journey
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|isbn=B0BYF82CXT
 +
|title=Semi-Detached
 +
|author=Deborah Stone
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=One routine, normally uneventful journey changes Claude's life forever,.  It begins with a chance encounter with a malevolent hen party and carries on with the betrayal of those he thought he could trust sending him into a spiral of captivity and fetishist slavery.
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|summary=''Bill and Amanda are living in a semi-detached house, stuck in a 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 life, the couples befriend each other and life appears to improve for both pairs. But all is not what it seems, and their increasingly interconnected relationships are fated for tragedy.''
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B00EJQSLLG</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author= Beth Miller
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|author=Shalini Boland
|title= The Good Neighbour
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|title=The Silent Bride
|rating= 4.5
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|rating=3
|genre= General Fiction
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|genre=General Fiction
|summary= Minette has not had the best experience of neighbours. It's hard when you have a new born. They're not known for being quiet as a mouse at all times and occasionally, well, occasionally they scream through the night. So she's glad when the nasty couple move and are replaced by Cath and her two kids. A fellow mother! An ally! Surely she will be more understanding?
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|summary= Alice and Seth are a match made in heaven. He is everything she has been searching for; handsome, accomplished, clever, funny; total and utter husband-material.  She is all he could possibly want in a wife; beautiful, successful, confident… and so the inevitable proposal is eagerly accepted by Alice and the wedding is planned and set. When the much-anticipated day arrives, Alice is walked down the aisle by her father, beaming with pride and excitement as she surveys the congregation – their friends assembled to celebrate this joyful day and when Seth turns to face his approaching bride, Alice's world implodes because she has absolutely no idea who the man at the altar is, who is waiting for her to become his wife.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091956331</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1662507089
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author= Fausto Brizzi
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|isbn=1787636003
|title= One Hundred Days of Happiness
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|title=The Girls of Summer
|rating= 5
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|author=Katie Bishop
|genre= General Fiction
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|rating=5
|summary= Sometimes ''Serendipity'' coerces ''Fate'' into making sure you read a particular book.  I picked ''One Hundred Days…'' off the shelf on the back of the blurb from an author of a book I haven't actually readI confused the title of their book with one I adoredMake of that what you will, I'm going to call it a happy accident, because this is a book many of us really need to read.
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|genre=General Fiction
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1447269012</amazonuk>
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|summary=It was the summer when Rachel Evans turned eighteen that she and Caroline went backpacking around Greece and arrived on the island.  Rachel wasn't exactly innocent but she was, perhaps, naive, so when thirty-four-year-old Alistair Wright started to take an interest in her, she was flattered rather than waryIt was quite a while before he made any sort of physical approach to her and by that time she was obsessed by himAlistair worked for Henry Taylor, looking after his interests on the island and in particular in the bar where all the girls either worked or partied.
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=S E Craythorne
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|author=Amanda Craig
|title=How You See Me
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|title=Three Graces
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Daniel's father is ill after a stroke and so Daniel needs to go home to Norfolk to nurse him.  While there he continues to write letters to his beloved girlfriend Alice, his sister Mab and his boss to keep them up to date. The problems in Daniel's life are a lot closer to home than those he's left behind in his normal life though.  Gradually the reasons why Daniel left Norfolk return to him, increasing in intensity until it's much, much too late.
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|summary= Few styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the state-of-the-nation novel. There's something so utterly compelling about any writer who can catch hold of the atmosphere of the day and capture it, crafting an image of the 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 genre of contemporary social fiction at this point. She has such a gift for weaving the ongoing issues of the day into the lives of her characters in a way that feels natural and lived-in, never making them ciphers for social commentary but instead fully realised people, grappling with issues far larger than themselves.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908434562</amazonuk>
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|isbn= 140871468X
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Jeremy Massey
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|isbn=152915118X
|title=The Last Four Days Of Paddy Buckley
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|title=Pineapple Street
|rating=4
+
|author=Jenny Jackson
 +
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary= Paddy Buckley is a grieving widower who has worked for years for Gallagher's, a long-established—some say the best—funeral home in Dublin. One night driving home after an unexpected encounter with a client, Paddy hits a pedestrian crossing the street. He pulls over and gets out of his car, intending to do the right thing. As he bends over to help the man, he recognizes him. It's Donal Cullen, brother of one of the most notorious mobsters in Dublin. And he's dead. Shocked and scared, Paddy jumps back in his car and drives away before anyone notices what's happened.
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|summary=''Pineapple Street'' is the story of three women: Sasha, Darley and Georgiana.  Darley and George are sisters and Sasha is married to 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 clan matriarch, Tilda, asks Cord and Sasha if they'd like to move into the Pineapple Street property. Tilda and Chip have renovated and downsized to another property, a street or so away, which they own. They won't need any of the furniture from Pineapple Street, so Sasha and Cord can move straight in.  Nominally, they had a choice but that wasn't the reality. Darley and Georgiana start to call Sasha 'the gold digger'.   She's living in ''their'' family home. They use it so often that they abbreviate it to 'the GD'.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1594634858</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=James Lovegrove
+
|author=Emily Critchley
|title=Sherlock Holmes - The Thinking Engine
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|title=One Puzzling Afternoon
 
|rating=4
 
|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?
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|isbn=1804181250
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}}
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{{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
 +
}}
 +
{{Frontpage
 +
|isbn=0008506337
 +
|title=The Garnett Girls
 +
|author=Georgina Moore
 +
|rating=5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=In this hyper-connected world, it is not difficult to conceive of machines that can answer perplexing questions in the blink of an eye, communicate over a vast network or even seemingly outsmart humans. Of course, in the year 1895, such a machine would be viewed with deep suspicion and curiosity; hailed as a miracle, or condemned as the work of dark supernatural forces. James Lovegrove put this idea to the test in his latest Sherlock Holmes adventure, ''The Thinking Engine'', which pits man against machine in the ultimate battle of wits.
+
|summary=The 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'.  Her parents worried that Richard's influence would take her away from what they felt she could achieve - going to Oxford and having a glittering career.  In the event,  they eloped and Richard took her away from the Isle of Wight.  Margo did go to Oxford and went on to become a well-respected journalist. The couple had three children: Rachel, Imogen 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 mind: ''she would never be able to leave him in charge''.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1783295031</amazonuk>
+
 
 +
Then Richard left them.
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
 
|author=C B Calico
+
{{Frontpage
|title=Dandelion Angel
+
|isbn=1914585402
|rating=4
+
|title=Dashboard Elvis is Dead
 +
|author=David F Ross
 +
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=In her Author's Note, debut novelist C.B. Calico reveals that ''Dandelion Angel'' was inspired by a non-fiction work, ''Understanding the Borderline Mother'' by Christine Ann Lawson. The four mother/daughter relationships in this Germany-set novel – all marked to some extent by dysfunction, physical and/or verbal abuse, and borderline personality disorder – are based on Lawson's metaphorical classifications: the hermit, the queen, the waif, and the witch. Looping back through her four storylines in three complete cycles, Calico shows how mental illness is rooted in childhood experiences and can go on to affect a whole family.
+
|summary=I reviewed David F Ross's book [[There's Only One Danny Garvey by David F Ross|There's Only One Danny Garvey]] a couple of years back and remember being absolutely floored by how powerful and affecting it was. It was a gripping, emotionally wounding read, and rereading my review of it my main takeaway was that I might not have lavished enough praise on it.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B0112SC9CA</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=Eli Horowitz, Matthew Derby and Kevin Moffett
+
|author=Lucy Ashe
|title=The Silent History
+
|title=Clara and Olivia
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Science Fiction
 
|summary=Well, they kept this quiet – for reasons that will become obvious.  A couple of years ago people in America were giving birth to problematic kids.  They (the children) were soon found to be unnaturally quiet – perhaps crying with hunger or pain, but never even trying to 'ooga-wooga' their way into their parents' hearts.  They were later found to be completely unable to speak, they could not read and indeed they could not understand anything said to them, or shown them, as an instruction.  They were physically unable to parse anything as language, and were in a silent world of their own.  But right about now they and we are combining worlds – schools are being set up, and funds are being made available, and people are coming down on the endless divide as to whether they are just problematic, disabled – or even the blessed.  In a couple of years, however, the problems the virus that is causing these people to be born with will be shown to be a major problem – and that is before the kids themselves change.  For they will be able to switch their mental abilities much like a blind man can hear more than the average, and will be able to comprehend body and facial language much more coherently than anyone else.  Throughout this timeline, however, people will be working hard to try and study the problem, and put it right – if indeed 'right' is the correct word…
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009959286X</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Jonathan Crown and Jamie Searle Romanelli (translator)
 
|title=Sirius
 
|rating=3
 
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Meet Levi. He's a humble little dog living with a loving family. They've spent so much time with him he has learnt some tricks – not only the usual ones, of begging, or playing dead, but walking on two legs, somersaulting on to his two other paws, and giving the Hitler salute. If this was 2015 in the UK he would be shoe-in for Britain's Got Talent (although the Hitler salute might lose him a few votes, to be honest) but this is 1930s Berlin, and things are starting to get horrendously tough and nasty for Jewish families like his. Querying the statute laws that demand a formalisation of Jewish names his owners rename Levi after Sirius, the Great Dog in the night skies. But nobody can foresee what happens when Jews are pushed harder and harder from their neighbourhoods, and nobody can see what a Great Dog star Sirius can become, in the most unlikely of milieux – Hollywood…
+
|summary=The year is 1933. The place? Sadler's Wells. Ballerinas Clara and Olivia are sisters, twins no less. Identical on the outside but not, we learn, on the inside. And not on stage, either. Because there's a lot that builds a dancer. Some things that can be taught or learnt – discipline, attention to detail – and some things, that ''je ne sais quoi'', that don't come from the classroom. A stage presence, a charm, a ''joie de vivre''. The difference between a hard-worker, and a star.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784081981</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=0861544080
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=Meike Ziervogel
+
|author=Heather Fawcett
|title=Kauthar
+
|title=Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
+
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Meet Lydia.  She's a normal British girl, interested in following both her father, and Nadia Comaneci, into the world of gymnastics but not brave enough to pull off the larger set pieces, and with not much more to interrupt her days than wondering why boys always have to talk about their williesNow meet Kauthar, a white British convert to Islam, devoted follower of the precepts of her religion, ardent wife and stalwartly self-fulfilling, no-nonsense and satisfied.  But what is this – why is she talking of being alone in a desert, and why is she directly addressing her god regarding how she ''can't perform any movement. Because it is torn apart''Has something gone wrong?
+
|summary=Emily Wilde is an 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.  Whilst she is brilliant at research and speaking to faeries, she is not so good with people.  So when she finds herself far, far North in the small village of Hrafvsnik, having somehow offended the village matriarch, she is not sure what she has done, nor how to redeem herself and put her final investigations for her book back on the right trackEnter Wendell Bambleby, her dashingly handsome and insufferable rival who arrives unexpectedly, all charm and delight, much to Emily's frustration.  But why is he here? What does he wantAnd what exactly is going on with the faerie folk around Hravsnik?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784630292</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=0356519120
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=Julia Heaberlin
+
|isbn=1398515388
|title=Black Eyed Susans
+
|title=The Boy and the Dog
 +
|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=I knew little about this book before I started it - other than the intriguing title and the scant information that it is a psychological mystery about a girl who survives abduction by a serial killer. For those who, like me, can't resist suspense (and it seems that many people do fall into this category, according to the bestseller lists at least), this is enticement enough. And I was not disappointed: this story offers psychological uncertainty and suspense from start to finish. The narrative alternates between present day and the past, each section lasting just a couple of pages. I found this structure tricky at first, although each chapter does offer a helpful timeline and the chapters are short enough that it's easy to reorient yourself. Once I got used to the choppy style I found that it did work, and it worked really well, reflecting the constant flashbacks and mental turmoil experienced by Tessa, the protagonist.
+
|summary=First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, in turn, caused the nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and utter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, and the loss of livelihoods was widespread.  The 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't a dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the dog jumped in.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0718181336</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
 
|author= Tessa McWatt
+
{{Frontpage
|title= Higher Ed
+
|author=Christopher Bowden
|rating= 2.5
+
|title=Mr Magenta
|genre= General Fiction
+
|rating=4
|summary= Robin works at a university. Olivia is one of his students. Francine works behind the scenes in admin. Katrin is a waitress in a local café, and Ed has a role in a rather unique bit of local government. This bizarre cast of characters are the stars of ''Higher Ed'', a story which eventually combines all of their lives.
+
|genre=General Fiction
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1925228045</amazonuk>
+
|summary= Christopher Bowden's latest novel is a patient untangling of a seemingly ordinary woman's life, carried out by her nephew after she has died. The aunt who always provided a safe harbour and a little bit of indulgence to a young 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.  
 +
|isbn= B0B6Z9VJDW
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author= Mary Kubica
+
|author=Jennifer Mason
|title= Pretty Baby
+
|title=Partitions of Unity
|rating= 5
+
|rating=4
|genre= General Fiction
+
|genre=General Fiction
|summary= On her morning commute to work, Heidi sees something that shakes her. A young girl, barely older than her own pre-teen daughter, huddling in the rain on the platform, clutching a tiny baby. It's a distressing situation and it stays on her mind for the rest of the day. So much so that when she sees the girl again, she feels obligated to help.
+
|summary= Here at Bookbag Towers, we first met Elizabeth Cromwell, dominatrix and unintentional detective in [[Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery by Jennifer Mason|Preposterous]], when she investigated and unravelled a series of disappearances. In ''Partitions of Unity'', she sets her mind to solving a murder...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848453965</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=B09LQR9FRF
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=John Piper
+
|author=Will Carver
|title=La Crème de la Crem
+
|title=The Daves Next Door
|rating=3
+
|rating=4
 +
|genre=General Fiction
 +
|summary= Five strangers come together in one moment as a suicide bomber prepares to detonate his vest on a London tube line. As their fates overlap, the story is told in backwards order, leading up to the fateful moment.
 +
|isbn= 1914585186
 +
}}
 +
{{Frontpage
 +
|author=Jennifer Mason
 +
|title=Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery
 +
|rating=4
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Gala night at Frere Jacques restaurant where the local political and good gather for a banquet.  Everyone is looking forward to a good night and that's what they'll have, just not quite in the way they envisaged.  Indeed it will be a night to remember for a long time to come, for all the wrong reasons courtesy of the little something in the dessert. Meanwhile young people are going missing on a scale that the town of Tresside has never experienced before but Tresside doesn't know the half of it… yet!
+
|summary=''A struggling poetry zine, a mom-and-pop mobile diner in the Northern California redwoods, a 400-meter hurdler who just missed the 2004 Olympics, a women's track coach with a yen for bullwhips, a billionaire with a state-of-the-art S&M dungeon, a man serving a life sentence in Alabama, an enigmatic signature, K(s, x), on a cheap oil painting, an erotic art dealer in Georgia...''
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B00G4A2RQ0</amazonuk>
+
 
 +
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
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author= Katie Everson
+
|isbn=B0B2N7MVYM
|title= Drop
+
|title=The Calculations of Rational Men
|rating= 4
+
|author=Daniel Godfrey
|genre= General Fiction
+
|rating=5
|summary= Katie Everson’s debut novel, ‘Drop,’ is a tale of grief and healing, whirlwind romance and brutal honesty. We follow the story of Carla - straight-A-student, rule-abiding daughter and somewhat uninteresting friend - who is determined to change her predictable life. When her absentee mother is offered a job in London, Carla transfers to yet another school and this time she is desperate to not be overlooked.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1406356271</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author= John Niven
 
|title= The Sunshine Cruise Company
 
|rating= 4.5
 
|genre= Humour
 
|summary= Susan Frobisher and Julie Wickham live in a small Dorset town. Friends since school, they live fairly uneventful lives – Susan has a lovely house and a lengthy marriage to accountant Barry, whereas Julie is doing slightly less well – living in a council flat and working in an old people's home. When Barry is found dead trussed up in a sex dungeon, it transpires that he has been leading a hidden life for years, and his expensive fetishes lead to the bank moving to take Susan's home. Struck by both desperation and a sense of injustice, Sue and Julie conspire to rob a bank, taking along their friend Jill – a devout Christian conflicted due to lack of money and a terminally ill grandson, and Ethel – a foul mouthed resident of the nursing home longing for adventure.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0434023183</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author= Paula McGrath
 
|title= Generation
 
|rating= 4
 
|genre= General Fiction
 
|summary=How can we know the effect that our choices may have on the next generation? Even a seemingly minor decision has the potential to create ripples and waves of unforeseen repercussions in the future. This fascinating theme is explored in “Generation”, an intelligently-written début novel that approaches the subject from multiple perspectives over an eighty-year period.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>147361483X</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author= Kerry Hudson
 
|title= Thirst
 
|rating= 4
 
|genre= General Fiction
 
|summary= London – Summer. Alena, a young siberian immigrant is caught stealing shoes. Dave, the man who catches her, is a security guard – surviving on a minimal income and with little drive to better his quiet, repetitive life. As Alena and Dave grow closer, Dave finds his life turned upside down. But will Alena ever let down her guard, and reveal the truth about her past?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099589893</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author= Lesley Pearse
 
|title= Without a Trace
 
|rating= 4
 
|genre= General Fiction
 
|summary=Cassie's arrival was bound to cause a stir in the sleepy Somerset village of Sawbridge. She had flaming red hair, a voluptuous figure accentuated by very tight clothing, towering heels, heavy make-up and no wedding ring. But the thing that really shocked the locals was the fact that she had a little mixed-race girl in tow. Petal, as she was called, soon melted the hearts of the residents, but no such courtesy was extended to Cassie, who was dubbed 'that red-headed whore' by some. Her only friend was the kind shopkeeper Molly Heywood, who would often visit Cassie and Petal at their isolated stone cottage on the outskirts of the village.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>024196153X</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Eva Rice
 
|title=Love Notes for Freddie
 
|rating=4
 
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Marnie is an innocent, mathematical genius schoolgirl who, unfortunately, gets expelled from her fancy boarding schoolJulie is her teacher, formerly a dancer, rigorously private about her pastFreddie is the boy that both of them fall in love withRevealed through the eyes of two of the three main characters, this is a slow-moving, but rather beautifully told, love storyIt has the same vintage feel that Eva Rice used so well in ''The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets'' and it cleverly winds its way through Marnie's story in the 1960's as well as Julie's past in pre-WW2 New York.
+
|summary=It's the 10th of December 1962 when we first meet Dr Joseph Marr.  Just to put what happens in context, the Cuban missile crisis is still very fresh in people's mindsThe world has barely had a chance to breathe outBut for Joe Marr, it's not the missile crisis that's at the front of his mindHe's been convicted of murderWith the current state of medical knowledge, it's hard to think otherwise than that the prosecution would never have been brought but Joe Marr has spent his first few days in HMP Queen's Bench, a relatively new prison.  He's just getting used to his roommate, Mervyn, and learning to be wary of the McArthur brothers.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782064486</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 +
 +
Move on to [[Newest Graphic Novels Reviews]]

Revision as of 10:04, 22 March 2024

0861546873.jpg

Review of

Allow Me to Introduce Myself by Onyi Nwabineli

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

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-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? Full Review

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Review of

The List of Suspicious Things by Jennie Godfrey

5star.jpg General Fiction

It's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. (A woman? I mean, honestly...) She's not what's worrying Miv's family, though. Women have been disappearing. Well, they've been murdered, but to have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. Miv's upset because she's overheard that her father wants to move the family 'Down South'. When you're from Yorkshire, Down South is a frightening, foreign place, best avoided. For Miv, the move would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, and she'll do anything to prevent that. She's not worried about the dangers or that her Mum's stopped talking - to anyone. Full Review

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Review of

Diva by Daisy Goodwin

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

We tend to think of Maria Callas as Greek, but she was born to Greek parents in Manhattan, New York, 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 make it more manageable in the States. When she was back in Athens - supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for her voice - she was raised under the Nazi occupation by a mother who mercilessly exploited her and made no secret of her preference for her elder sister, Jackie. Full Review

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Review of

The Perfect Passion Company by Alexander McCall Smith

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

The Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and operating as an alternative to all the online apps in providing a more personal, tailored service. Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the business, as Ness is planning to take a trip to Canada to get away for a while. Katie is coming out of a break up with a bad boyfriend, and so jumps at the chance to come home 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 Isabel 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… Full Review

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Review of

The Bad Weather Friend by Dean Koontz

4.5star.jpg Paranormal

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 wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are. Full Review

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Review of

A True Account by Katherine Howe

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

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. When she hears there is to be a hanging of some pirates in the town, she decides to go and watch. Enthralled and horrified in equal measure, Hannah finds herself embroiled in a young boy's death at the hands of two vicious pirates. She hides away, so that they don't find and kill her too, and then to escape them completely she runs away to sea, dressing as a boy and joining the notorious Ned Low's pirate ship as a cabin boy. She soon finds herself in the thick of things when there is a mutiny on board, and from there we are caught up in her rip roaring tale of life on the ocean waves. Full Review

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Review of

Maybe Tomorrow by Penny Parkes

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

Jamie Matson works in an upper-class grocery store, for a man who's a control freak with all the subtlety of a half brick. Jamie's son, Bo, 'has his problems'. He's asthmatic and the more you read, the more you'll suspect that he's on the autistic spectrum. Sometimes Jamie needs to take time off at short notice - she's a frequent flier in the local A&E and sometimes Bo's not fit enough to go to school. Missed shifts or the need to be away on time to pick Bo up from school are occasions when Jamie can be controlled and put in the wrong. It was going to come to a head. Full Review

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Review of

Radio Free Olympia by Jeffrey Dunn

4star.jpg General Fiction

Petr is an orphan. Rescued by the strange, reclusive Bear, he is brought up far from bustling cities and busy human society, in the forests of Washington's Olympic Peninsula. After Bear dies and a brief sojourn in human company, and armed with only a pirate radio transmitter, Petr goes on a journey through the forest, broadcasting the strange, wild and rarely heard voices he encounters. Full Review

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Review of

A Sign of Her Own by Sarah Marsh

3.5star.jpg General Fiction

After a bout of scarlet fever as a child, Ellen Lark loses her hearing. Suddenly plunged into a world of silence, everything about her life changes. Living in a time when the use of sign language was seen as something only savages do, Ellen is sent to a school where she is taught to lip read, but physically restrained from signing. From here, she ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the deaf and using a system called Visible Speech. At the same time, Bell is working on other inventions and ideas, and Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a complicated tangle of espionage. Full Review

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Review of

Good Girls Die by Ayura Ayira

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

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 black girl whose skin is 84% white. She had a crush on seventeen-year-old 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 house and he raped her. In shock, she even allowed him to give her a lift home. Full Review

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Review of

The Figurine by Victoria Hislop

5star.jpg General Fiction

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. Full Review

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Review of

After Death by Dean Koontz

3star.jpg General Fiction

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. Full Review

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Review of

The Grave Listeners by William Frank

4star.jpg General Fiction

The village is isolated and poor. It's surrounded by a 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 the forest provides heat and warmth, roofs on homes, and even gallows, if needed. The fear of being buried alive is an existential superstition in the village and that is the reason Volushka, a drunken, self-indulgent, lazy lout of a man is tolerated. Full Review

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Review of

Semi-Detached by Deborah Stone

4star.jpg General Fiction

Bill and Amanda are living in a semi-detached house, stuck in a 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 life, the couples befriend each other and life appears to improve for both pairs. But all is not what it seems, and their increasingly interconnected relationships are fated for tragedy. Full Review

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Review of

The Silent Bride by Shalini Boland

3star.jpg General Fiction

Alice and Seth are a match made in heaven. He is everything she has been searching for; handsome, accomplished, clever, funny; total and utter husband-material. She is all he could possibly want in a wife; beautiful, successful, confident… and so the inevitable proposal is eagerly accepted by Alice and the wedding is planned and set. When the much-anticipated day arrives, Alice is walked down the aisle by her father, beaming with pride and excitement as she surveys the congregation – their friends assembled to celebrate this joyful day and when Seth turns to face his approaching bride, Alice's world implodes because she has absolutely no idea who the man at the altar is, who is waiting for her to become his wife. Full Review

1787636003.jpg

Review of

The Girls of Summer by Katie Bishop

5star.jpg General Fiction

It was the summer when Rachel Evans turned eighteen that she and Caroline went backpacking around Greece and arrived on the island. Rachel wasn't exactly innocent but she was, perhaps, naive, so when thirty-four-year-old Alistair Wright started to take an interest in her, she was flattered rather than wary. It was quite a while before he made any sort of physical approach to her and by that time she was obsessed by him. Alistair worked for Henry Taylor, looking after his interests on the island and in particular in the bar where all the girls either worked or partied. Full Review

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Review of

Three Graces by Amanda Craig

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

Few styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the state-of-the-nation novel. There's something so utterly compelling about any writer who can catch hold of the atmosphere of the day and capture it, crafting an image of the 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 genre of contemporary social fiction at this point. She has such a gift for weaving the ongoing issues of the day into the lives of her characters in a way that feels natural and lived-in, never making them ciphers for social commentary but instead fully realised people, grappling with issues far larger than themselves. Full Review

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Review of

Pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

Pineapple Street is the story of three women: Sasha, Darley and Georgiana. Darley and George are sisters and Sasha is married to 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 clan matriarch, Tilda, asks Cord and Sasha if they'd like to move into the Pineapple Street property. Tilda and Chip have renovated and downsized to another property, a street or so away, which they own. They won't need any of the furniture from Pineapple Street, so Sasha and Cord can move straight in. Nominally, they had a choice but that wasn't the reality. Darley and Georgiana start to call Sasha 'the gold digger'. She's living in their family home. They use it so often that they abbreviate it to 'the GD'. Full Review

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Review of

One Puzzling Afternoon by Emily Critchley

4star.jpg Crime

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? Full Review

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Review of

Thirst for Salt by Madelaine Lucas

5star.jpg Literary Fiction

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. Full Review

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Review of

The Garnett Girls by Georgina Moore

5star.jpg General Fiction

The 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'. Her parents worried that Richard's influence would take her away from what they felt she could achieve - going to Oxford and having a glittering career. In the event, they eloped and Richard took her away from the Isle of Wight. Margo did go to Oxford and went on to become a well-respected journalist. The couple had three children: Rachel, Imogen 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 mind: she would never be able to leave him in charge.

Then Richard left them. Full Review

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Review of

Dashboard Elvis is Dead by David F Ross

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

I reviewed David F Ross's book There's Only One Danny Garvey a couple of years back and remember being absolutely floored by how powerful and affecting it was. It was a gripping, emotionally wounding read, and rereading my review of it my main takeaway was that I might not have lavished enough praise on it. Full Review

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Review of

Clara and Olivia by Lucy Ashe

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

The year is 1933. The place? Sadler's Wells. Ballerinas Clara and Olivia are sisters, twins no less. Identical on the outside but not, we learn, on the inside. And not on stage, either. Because there's a lot that builds a dancer. Some things that can be taught or learnt – discipline, attention to detail – and some things, that je ne sais quoi, that don't come from the classroom. A stage presence, a charm, a joie de vivre. The difference between a hard-worker, and a star. Full Review

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Review of

Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett

4star.jpg General Fiction

Emily Wilde is an 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. Whilst she is brilliant at research and speaking to faeries, she is not so good with people. So when she finds herself far, far North in the small village of Hrafvsnik, having somehow offended the village matriarch, she is not sure what she has done, nor how to redeem herself and put her final investigations for her book back on the right track. Enter Wendell Bambleby, her dashingly handsome and insufferable rival who arrives unexpectedly, all charm and delight, much to Emily's frustration. But why is he here? What does he want? And what exactly is going on with the faerie folk around Hravsnik? Full Review

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Review of

The Boy and the Dog by Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, in turn, caused the nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and utter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, and the loss of livelihoods was widespread. The 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't a dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the dog jumped in. Full Review

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Review of

Mr Magenta by Christopher Bowden

4star.jpg General Fiction

Christopher Bowden's latest novel is a patient untangling of a seemingly ordinary woman's life, carried out by her nephew after she has died. The aunt who always provided a safe harbour and a little bit of indulgence to a young 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. Full Review

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Review of

Partitions of Unity by Jennifer Mason

4star.jpg General Fiction

Here at Bookbag Towers, we first met Elizabeth Cromwell, dominatrix and unintentional detective in Preposterous, when she investigated and unravelled a series of disappearances. In Partitions of Unity, she sets her mind to solving a murder... Full Review

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Review of

The Daves Next Door by Will Carver

4star.jpg General Fiction

Five strangers come together in one moment as a suicide bomber prepares to detonate his vest on a London tube line. As their fates overlap, the story is told in backwards order, leading up to the fateful moment. Full Review

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Review of

Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery by Jennifer Mason

4star.jpg General Fiction

A struggling poetry zine, a mom-and-pop mobile diner in the Northern California redwoods, a 400-meter hurdler who just missed the 2004 Olympics, a women's track coach with a yen for bullwhips, a billionaire with a state-of-the-art S&M dungeon, a man serving a life sentence in Alabama, an enigmatic signature, K(s, x), on a cheap oil painting, an erotic art dealer in Georgia...

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... Full Review

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Review of

The Calculations of Rational Men by Daniel Godfrey

5star.jpg General Fiction

It's the 10th of December 1962 when we first meet Dr Joseph Marr. Just to put what happens in context, the Cuban missile crisis is still very fresh in people's minds. The world has barely had a chance to breathe out. But for Joe Marr, it's not the missile crisis that's at the front of his mind. He's been convicted of murder. With the current state of medical knowledge, it's hard to think otherwise than that the prosecution would never have been brought but Joe Marr has spent his first few days in HMP Queen's Bench, a relatively new prison. He's just getting used to his roommate, Mervyn, and learning to be wary of the McArthur brothers. Full Review

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