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[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Reif LarsenOnyi Nwabineli|title= I Am RadarAllow Me to Introduce Myself|rating= 4.5|genre= General Fiction|summary= Racial tensionsAnuri spent her childhood on display to the world, identitythanks to her step-mother Ophelia's increasingly popular presence on social media, parental responsibility, a childwhere she posted every step of Anuri's best interestchildhood for sponsorships and influencer deals and, lovebasically, sciencemonetary gain. Now Anuri is in her twenties and she is slowly trying to regain her confidence and to get her life back, war – Reif Larsen's ''I Am Radar'' falls nothing short of having rich thematic suing her step-mother to take down the contentabout her. Its cornucopia of thematic explorations Anuri is interwoven into a complex web of storiesbattling alcoholism, taking the reader on a journeyfailing to start her PhD, both literal undergoing therapy and figurativesecretly abusing people online and receiving money from them for doing so. Most importantly, she is desperately worried about her little sister, from suburban New Jersey to an Arctic no manwho is the new focus of Ophelia's land to Congo online empire. Can she save her sister, and perhaps herself and her relationship with her father at the Bosnian warzone.same time?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099593645</amazonuk>0861546873

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Stefan Mohamed1529153298|title= Ace The List of SpidersSuspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey|rating= 5|genre= General Fiction|summary= Stanly It's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is frustratedPrime Minister. Having set himself up as London (A woman? I mean, honestly...) She's not what's worrying Miv's protectorfamily, hethough. 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 finding overheard that her father wants to move the everyday practicalities of superheroism are challenging at best, and downright tedious at worstfamily 'Down South'. So it When you's almost a relief when an attempt re from Yorkshire, Down South is made on his life and Stanly finds himself rushing headlong into a twisted adventurefrightening, foreign place, best avoided. For Miv, with enemies new and old coming out of the woodwork. Howevermove would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, even with his friends and his evershe'll do anything to prevent that. She's not worried about the dangers or that her Mum's stopped talking -increasing power behind him, he may have bitten off more than he can chew this timeto anyone. The monsters are coming… and nothing will ever be the same!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784630675</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Hannah Rothschild1035906708|title=The Improbability of LoveDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin|rating=4.5

|summary=It's set We tend to be the sale think of the century: Russian oligarchsMaria Callas as Greek, but she was born to Greek parents in Manhattan, Arab sheikhsNew York, rappers in December 1923 and heiresses are all lined up only moved to Athens when she was thirteen. Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to bid for 'Callas'The Improbability of Love'', a small Antoine Watteau oil painting depicting a courting couple overlooked by a clown. The painting was missing until six months ago, when Annie McDee bought to make it from a junk shop for £75 as a birthday present for an incompatible fellow she met through Internet datingmore manageable in the States. When he didn't show for dinner and the junk shop mysteriously burnt down she was back in Athens - supposedly so that she couldn't ask could get appropriate training for a refund, the painting became hers. Thirty-yearher voice -old Annie had been in a rut: after a painful break-up from Desmond, with whom she ran was raised under the Nazi occupation by a cheese shop mother who mercilessly exploited her and café in Devon, she moved to London and was working as a PA to randy Italian film director Carlo Spinetti. She also acquired an unwanted roommate: made no secret of her preference for her alcoholic motherelder sister, EvieJackie.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408862476</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Rebecca ThorntonAlexander McCall Smith|title=The Exclusives: No One Can Hurt You More Than a FriendPerfect Passion Company

|summary=Josephine The Perfect Passion Company is a successful archaeologist on dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and operating as an alternative to all the online apps in providing a dig in Amman when more personal, tailored service. Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she gets could come and look after the email she never expected: Freya wants business, as Ness is planning to take a trip to Canada to meet get away for a while. Katie is coming out of a break up with hera 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…|isbn=1846976596}}{{Frontpage|author=Dean Koontz|title=The reason isn’t such Bad Weather Friend|rating=4.5|genre=Paranormal|summary=Benny is having a surprise thoughterrifically bad day. In 1996 Freya He loses his job, he loses his fiancee, and Josephine were best friends at boarding school till the aftermath of a night out clubbinghis house gets trashed. Freya desperately wants Oh, and someone has delivered a really weird, disturbing coffin-sized object to talk to Jo about his home, and it's possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the events thing that ripped their friendship aparthas trashed his house! The thing is, Benny is the events 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 Josephine the delivery to his house is a new friend, a bad weather friend called Spike, who has avoided speaking or thinking about in more than 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 decadewaitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1785770128</amazonuk>1662500491

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Miroslav PenkovKatherine Howe|title=Stork MountainA True Account|rating=4.5

|summary=A young manHannah Masury is living in Boston, having been sent to live with a family who run an inn, his grandfather and being made to work there from a stork with young age. When she hears there is to be a broken wing are 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''company of rebels'' s death at the heart hands of this lively tale set in Bulgaria's Strandja Mountainstwo vicious pirates. The storks that return to the mountains each spring are migrants She hides away, like so many of the people that have passed through the region over the centuries. The young narrator is also in transitthey don't find and kill her too, born in Bulgariaand then to escape them completely she runs away to sea, but raised dressing as a boy and educated in Americajoining the notorious Ned Low's pirate ship as a cabin boy. The story opens with his return to Bulgaria She soon finds herself in search the thick of his grandfather who has broken off contact with his family things when there is a mutiny on board, and from there we are caught up in America. But her rip roaring tale of life on the young man's motives are not as clear cut as first appearsocean waves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473622182</amazonuk>0861547438

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Elisa Albert1471180158|title= After BirthMaybe Tomorrow|author=Penny Parkes|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary General Fiction|summary= This book is definitely not Jamie Matson works in an upper-class grocery store, for anyone a man who has 's a rosy picture control freak with all the subtlety of new motherhooda half brick. Jamie's son, Bo, 'has his problems'. In factHe's asthmatic and the more you read, I would probably avoid it if the more you are contemplating giving birth in 'll suspect that he's on the near futureautistic spectrum. For any woman who has ever struggled through Sometimes Jamie needs to take time off at short notice - she's a frequent flier in the first few months of motherhood, however, or a partner of somebody who is going through it, it is an astounding local A&E and revelatory readsometimes Bo's not fit enough to go to school. Never before have I read a more searing, honest Missed shifts or the need to be away on time to pick Bo up from school are occasions when Jamie can be controlled and open discussion of put in the emotional upheaval wrong. It was going to come to a woman often goes through after giving birthhead.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009959014X</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Pascal Garnier and Emily Boyce (translator)B0CKD1L5JL|title=Too Close to the EdgeRadio Free Olympia|author=Jeffrey Dunn

|summary=Meet Pascal GarnierPetr is an orphan. NormallyRescued by the strange, in starting a review that wayreclusive Bear, I'm on about the main character of the bookhe is brought up far from bustling cities and busy human society, but it could be said in the biggest character forests of any Pascal Garnier book is Pascal Garnier, not that thatWashington's a flawOlympic Peninsula. Over a half-dozen titles I've come to know the pattern of his output, After Bear dies and it's fair to say this example fits it very well. Again, not a fault. His thrillers have a small cast list of characters, trapped somehow brief sojourn in a small communityhuman company, cut off by weather, season or remoteness. Here we are and armed with Elietteonly a pirate radio transmitter, and just Petr goes on a handful of others, and watching her as she celebrates journey through the return of spring to her remote homeforest, an ex-silk farm in southern France. All characters have a darkness about them, including Eliette – she had wanted to retire to broadcasting the place with her lovingstrange, long-term husband, but wild and rarely heard voices he died of cancer months before retirementencounters. And the final piece of the Garnier pattern is that that darkness, the black surrounding the night stars to use one of the more memorable lines here, is that things – said situation, other people, life itself – cause people to do some equally black and stupid acts…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1910477257</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Carol DrinkwaterSarah Marsh|title=The Forgotten SummerA Sign of Her Own|rating=43.5

|summary=It is time for the annual grape harvest at ''Les Cigales,'' and Jane is preparing herself for After a bout of scarlet fever as a busy daychild, overseeing the workEllen Lark loses her hearing. At this moment in time Suddenly plunged into a world of silence, Jane's everything about her life seems as perfect as it gets: living changes. Living in a stunning location with a husband who adores her and a job that allows her time when the freedom use of sign language was seen as something only savages do, Ellen is sent to travel. There a school where she istaught to lip read, howeverbut physically restrained from signing. From here, a significant cloud hanging over Jane's perfect world: a vindictive mother she ends up in law another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who despises her has been teaching the deaf and is determined to make her as miserable as possibleusing a system called Visible Speech. Clarrisse Cambon At the same time, Bell is working on other inventions and ideas, and Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a woman with an axe to grind and poor Jane is the unwilling recipient complicated tangle of her vitriolespionage.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0718183088</amazonuk>1035401614

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Yann MartelB0BC3YTCMR|title=The High Mountains of PortugalGood Girls Die|author=Ayura Ayira|rating=4.5

|summary=Tomas ''This story is being thrust into the twentieth Century, and he doesnnot for everyone.''t like it Lavender Daniels was three weeks short of her fifteenth birthday when The Incident happened. He has given himself the job of seeking something out in the High Mountains of PortugalShe was a very bright student, based on an ancient religious diary he found working in an archivea bit too nerdy if truth be told, and suffered from vitiligo - people were afraid to do so he needs the use of his unclehug her in case it's contagious. It's brand new car to get him there and back in timenot easy being a black girl whose skin is 84% white. His jaw drops when She had a crush on seventeen-year-old Reggie Anderson but never thought he learns he will have to do the driving himself, for would notice her. Then he cannot make head nor tail of what anything on the infernal machine does did: Lavender was very good at math and whyReggie asked if she would tutor him. It is of course a certain kind of progress, a looking forward, which has become quite anathema She readily agreed: tutoring was something she gladly did at church: this was just an extension. She went to him – for ever since he lost his beloved wife, beloved child house and fatherhe raped her. In shock, all in the space of a week, he has walked everywhere backwards – shielding himself from what really is ahead with she even allowed him to give her a padded behind, and never letting sight of what he has lostlift home.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782114696</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Antonio Moresco and Richard Dixon (translator)1472263936|title=Distant LightThe Figurine|author=Victoria Hislop|rating=4.5

|summary=Our unnamed narrator might as well be the only person aliveIt was in 1968 that Helena McCloud made her first trip to Greece. He knows heShe was alone: her mother, Greek by birth, had left the family home and refused to return, but Mary and Hamish (Helena's not – he still goes down 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 nearest inhabited village family apartment in up-market Kolonaki would be the first of several annual visits. She grew to buy things to eat love her grandmother and other necessitiesthe family's maid, Dina, but was wary - and he sees planes spreading their contrails over the remote area he lives in – but he might as well befrightened - of her grandfather, retired general Stamatis Papagiannis. A lot He was proud of his thoughts are about life, however, for he has little close connections to do except notice the nature around him, from the smell of lilies burgeoning with nobody else Junta and expected his family to uphold his values but saw no reason to see accommodate them in this deserted village, to the swallows darting across the ravines of the countryside. Life – His prejudices included Helena's red hair and the nature of a light that he sees spring into activity every night at what he thought was a totally lifeless, empty forest area on land separated green eyes - inherited from his lookout post in his back garden by a deep, wooded gorge…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0914671421</amazonuk>her father's Scottish ancestors.

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jonathan EvisonDean Koontz|title=This 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 Your Lifereleased 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, Harriet Chance!he realises that there is something different about him; he can ''feel'' everything. ''Everything''. Michael isn't ''Michael'' anymore.|isbn=1662500467}} {{Frontpage|isbn=B0BVDC2VWH|title=The Grave Listeners|author=William Frank

|summary=The cruise to Alaska came as something of a surprise to Harriet Chancevillage is isolated and poor. It had been booked 's surrounded by her husband, Bernard, before his death and almost on a whim Harriet decided that she ''would'' go Witching Forest. And the villagers subsist largely by farming Uphegia plants - its bread-like fruit provides nutrition and take her best friend Mildred along with herits blossom provides herbal medicines. She might be seventy eightThe black wood of the forest provides heat and warmth, roofs on homes, but when she thought about it there didn't seem to be any reason not to go and it might give them both a new lease even gallows, if needed. The fear of life. She being buried alive is an existential superstition in the village and Bernard had been married for fiftythat is the reason Volushka, a drunken, self-five yearsindulgent, but the cruise would not work out as she hoped and for some lazy lout of the strangest of reasonsa man is tolerated.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099592673</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Miguel Angel Hernandez and Rhett McNeil (translator)B0BYF82CXT|title= Escape AttemptSemi-Detached|author=Deborah Stone|rating= 3.54|genre= General Fiction|summary= Immigration and radical contemporary art: the two themes of Miguel Ángel Hernández's ''Escape Attempt'' Bill and Amanda are debateliving in a semi-provoking even on their owndetached house, stuck in a depressing rut of boredom and disappointment, but brought together into one plotwhen Terry and Fiona – glamorous, they fall nothing short of creating a painfully current successful and ruthlessly polemic novelvery much in love – move in next door. The brave choice of subject matter takes the reader Despite their different outlooks on a journey that revolts, angerslife, the couples befriend each other and excites: ''Escape Attempt'' life appears to improve for both pairs. But all is an experience that does not leave the reader untouchedwhat it seems, and locks them in a page-turner that cannot be escapedtheir increasingly interconnected relationships are fated for tragedy.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>8494365878</amazonuk>''

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Clare MorrallShalini Boland|title=When the Floods CameThe Silent Bride|rating=4.53

|summary=Sometime in the not-too-distant future, a devastating virus has decimated the population of the UK, striking humans Alice and animals alike and leaving Britain in Seth are a state of quarantine for decades. Most of the survivors have been left infertile and the majority of people have relocated to Brighton, where they rely on airdops from surrounding nations match made in order to surviveheaven. Farming He is impossibleeverything she has been searching for; handsome, as weather conditions are harsh and extremeaccomplished, including tornadoesclever, floods funny; total and blizzardsutter husband-material. Not everyone chooses to live She is all he could possibly want in Brighton though. In a block of flats in Birmingham live the resourceful Polanski Family: Popiwife; beautiful, Mothsuccessful, Roza, Boris, Delphine confident… and Lucia. Moth so the inevitable proposal is eagerly accepted by Alice and Popi prefer solitude the wedding is planned and isolation 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 make-do-friends assembled to celebrate this joyful day and-mend philosophy when Seth turns to face his approaching bride, Alice's world implodes because she has ensured their survival in this unconventional environmentabsolutely no idea who the man at the altar is, who is waiting for her to become his wife.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444736477</amazonuk>1662507089

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Mary Paulson Ellis1787636003|title=The Other Mrs WalkerGirls of Summer|author=Katie Bishop|rating=45

|summary=''A photograph. Six orange pips sucked dry. A Brazil nut with It was the Ten Commandments etched into summer when Rachel Evans turned eighteen that she and Caroline went backpacking around Greece and arrived on the shell. An emerald dress dripping with sequinsisland. Rachel wasn'' This is the legacy of Mrs Walkert exactly innocent but she was, perhaps, naive, who died alone 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 freezing Edinburgh flat, drinking while before he made any sort of physical approach to her final glass of whiskyand by that time she was obsessed by him. Nylons wrinkling at the knee Alistair worked for Henry Taylor, white hair hair dyed red, scratches looking after his interests on her cheeks, hollow bones the island and a liver like pastein particular in the bar where all the girls either worked or partied. Who was Mrs Walker and why did she die alone?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1447293908</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Mona AwadAmanda Craig|title= 13 Ways of Looking At A Fat GirlThree Graces|rating= 4.5|genre= General Fiction|summary= Liz is fat. Not just plump or chubby or, as my director often describes people, ''bubbly'', but full on, capital F fatFew styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the state-of-the-nation novel. ItThere's perhaps one something so utterly compelling about any writer who can catch hold of the atmosphere of the frustrations 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 book that we never get a number, because would be embarrassingly inadequate: she's clearly obsessed practically synonymous with what the scale showsgenre 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 won't share that readinginstead fully realised people, grappling with issues far larger than themselves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0143128485</amazonuk>140871468X

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Deborah Bee152915118X|title=The Last Thing I RememberPineapple Street|author=Jenny Jackson

|summary=Contemporary writers ''Pineapple Street'' is the story of three women: Sasha, Darley and Georgiana. Darley and George are mining sisters and Sasha is married to their brother Cord. They're Stocktons, only Sasha isn't a rich seam of psychological thrillers andStockton by birth so she isn't readily accepted into the tribe. The problem's exacerbated when the clan matriarch, within this genreTilda, I seem asks Cord and Sasha if they'd like to be particularly attracted move into the Pineapple Street property. Tilda and Chip have renovated and downsized to stories featuring comatose protagonistsanother property, a street or so away, which they own. Comatose protagonists? Isn They won't that a contradiction need any of the furniture from Pineapple Street, so Sasha and Cord can move straight in terms? True. Nominally, you do normally expect they had a protagonist choice but that wasn't the reality. Darley and Georgiana start to, well, do somethingcall Sasha 'the gold digger'. And Deborah Mee She's heroine Sarah does nothing at all, other than listenliving in ''their'' family home. They use it so often that they abbreviate it to 'the GD'.}}{{Frontpage|author=Emily Critchley|title=One Puzzling Afternoon|rating=4|genre=Crime|summary=84 year old Edie has lived in the same small town for almost her whole life, but now she is facing a move as her son wants to move to another house and try and rememberbring Edie to live with his family, from as Edie is starting to lose her unconscious statememory. In However, Edie is tormented by the memory of her narrative she offers us nothing more than fractured memories childhood friend, Lucy, who went missing over 60 years ago, and snippets of conversations from around her bedside. Yet with these meagre tools the worry that there was a secret she helps was keeping for Lucy that somehow might be the thing that reveals the reader build up a vivid picture truth of what is happening around herhappened all that time ago. After 'seeing' Lucy in the high street, of just as she was the last time she saw her own character, and she starts to find pockets of the events leading memories coming back to her hospital admission. As a reader you gradually piece together what made Sarah what And yet as she remembers the past, she is today. At first you see an apparently successful career woman forgetting more and more in a loving marriage but, as layers are gradually removed, what lies beneath becomes apparenther day to day life. Sarah Will she uncover the truth about Lucy's controlling husband has a sinister brother who comes to sit by disappearance before her bedsidemove, while and before her toxic mother wages an ongoing war of words with Sarah's spineless father... At times I wanted to weep for what happened to Sarah; at other times I wanted to scream at her for letting it happen.memories are gone forever?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>B0196P0S4W</amazonuk>1804181250

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Sharon GuskinMadelaine Lucas|title= The Forgetting TimeThirst for Salt|rating= 5|genre= General Literary Fiction|summary= Janie is a single mother''Love, living in New York with her pre-schooler Noah. ItI's just the two of themd read, so it's rather disconcerting when Noah screams out in the nightwas supposed to be a light and weightless feeling, calling but I had always longed for his gravity''real mom'' and asking when he can go home Told from a retrospective view, a young woman unravels the year-long relationship that once defined her. Night Overlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the affair with a man twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after night this happens. There's other things, too. He hates water and regularly goes finishing university – to nursery stinky because his mother simply cannot get him in its sorrowful end the bathsummer after. He has Set against the odd bizarre turn backdrop of phrase that comes out, far beyond what one might expect an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for a child of his age. He knows certain thingsSalt'' details the 24-year-old narrator's deepening relationship with her older lover, toodepicting its all-consuming nature, without anyone understanding how he picked up this knowledge, whether it be the names of different reptiles or the plot of books he's never readchanged her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1509806792</amazonuk>0861546490

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Caroline Lea0008506337|title=When The Sky Fell ApartGarnett Girls|author=Georgina Moore

|summary=That The love affair between Margo Garnett and poet Richard O'Leary was the order all-consuming, apparently on both sides. Margo was just sixteen when they fell in which things happened: the sky fell apart, Jerseylove. Richard was twenty-one and described by Margo's beaches were bombed, Clement the islandmother as 'an older man'. Her parents worried that Richard's butcher went up in flames where he stood 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 then Richard took her away from the arrival Isle of the German armyWight. Margo did go to Oxford and went on to become a well-respected journalist. This will change the life of the island including herbalist EdithThe couple had three children: Rachel, neglected child Claudine, former fisherman Maurice Imogen and English Doctor CarterSasha. Each of Life was lived in London and holidays were spent at Sandcove, the four lives family home on the perimeter Isle of Wight. Even then the islanddoubts about Richard's community but each will come drinking were never far from Margo's mind: ''she would never be able to depend on the other three leave him in order to continue livingcharge''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1925240746</amazonuk>Then Richard left them.

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Michael Honig1914585402|title= The Senility of Vladimir PDashboard Elvis is Dead|author=David F Ross|rating= 34.5|genre= General Fiction|summary= In the not-too-distant future, Vladimir Putin is slowly succumbing to dementia, hidden from the world at large in a secluded private nursing home. Nikolai Ilyich Sheremetev has what sounds like the most difficult job in the world: heI reviewed David F Ross's book [[There's the old manOnly One Danny Garvey by David F Ross|There's nurseOnly 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>1782398066</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ernst Haffner and Michael Hofmann (translator)Lucy Ashe|title=Blood BrothersClara and Olivia|rating=4.5|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=ItThe year is 1933. The place? Sadler's Berlin, Wells. Ballerinas Clara and the Nazis Olivia are on their way to powersisters, even if they will never cross these pages themselvestwins no less. The city – hugeIdentical on the outside but not, glamorouswe learn, bustlingon the inside. And not on stage, vicious in the way it either. Because there's a lot that builds a dancer. Some things that can swallow people be taught or learnt – is home discipline, attention to a countless hoard of teenagersdetail – and some things, but we focus on just a fewthat ''je ne sais quoi'', most of whom have been in some corrective institution or other before nowthat don't come from the classroom. They call themselves the Blood BrothersA stage presence, even if all they share is the most unglamorous drudgery of going from one doss-house to anothera charm, balancing the cost of a few cigarettes with that of a warm room for a few hours or some stale rolls to eat. But en route to them is another 'Borstal' escapeejoie de vivre''. The difference between a hard-worker, Williand a star. Surely his fate is going to be nothing if not more of the same?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099594048</amazonuk>0861544080

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=C G MettsHeather Fawcett|title=Waltzing in ViennaEmily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries

|summary=Filmmaker C G Metts Emily Wilde is an expert academic scholar on faerie lore, and she has written four nonfiction bookstravelled extensively, several of them and researched meticulously, to write her life's work, the very first encyclopaedia of local interest to South Carolina natives and visitorsfaeries. This Whilst she is his first novel, however, brilliant at research and you may be surprised speaking to learn that it faeries, she is an enjoyable chick lit/women's fiction rompnot so good with people. Three girlfriends meet up again So when she finds herself far, far North in Charleston; in their early fortiesthe small village of Hrafvsnik, having somehow offended the village matriarch, she is not sure what she has done, they're facing turning points in their professional nor how to redeem herself and personal livesput her final investigations for her book back on the right track. As they reminisce about summers spent together at Folly Beach during college Enter Wendell Bambleby, her dashingly handsome and insufferable rival who arrives unexpectedly, all charm and resume their communal marijuana smoking habitdelight, they summon the courage much to decide Emily's frustration. But why is he here? What does he want? And what they want from middle age and refresh their sex lives.exactly is going on with the faerie folk around Hravsnik?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0692533346</amazonuk>0356519120

{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1398515388|title=The Boy and the Dog|author= Hanneke Hendrix Seishu Hase and David Doherty Alison Watts (translator)|title= The Dyslexic Hearts Club|rating= 34.5|genre= General Fiction|summary= I recently reviewed a novel by another Scandinavian novelistFirst of all, Helle Helleit was the earthquake, [[This Should be Written deep in the Present Tense by Helle Helle ocean floor, which created the tsunami and Martin Aitken (translator)|This Should be Written this, in turn, caused the Present Tense]], nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and I expected this novel by Hanneke Hendrix to be very similarutter devastation. It wasn'tThe deaths were uncountable, and the loss of livelihoods was widespread. That's not totally a bad thing – The fact that many people will enjoy pets were separated from their owners came far down the fastlist of priorities but -paced, dialogue driven novel that ''The Dyslexic Hearts Club'' issix months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. It just He wasn't exactly what I was expectinga 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>9462380678</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Adam BaronChristopher Bowden|title=BlackheathMr Magenta|rating=4.5

|summary=Househusband James Christopher Bowden's latest novel is happy in Blackheath. Hea patient untangling of a seemingly ordinary woman's started doing stand-up again so that he too has an achievement in his life to balance wife Alice's award winning poetry. Children Ida and Dominic are doing well so all is great. Elsewhere in the area Amelia is equally happy with her actor husband Richard, carried out by her own career and children Niamh and teenage Michaelnephew after she has died. Sometimes happiness isn't enough though The aunt who always provided a safe harbour and, as the worlds a little bit of the two families start indulgence to mingle, things start changing for each of thema 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.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908434902</amazonuk>B0B6Z9VJDW

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Rebecca LimJennifer Mason|title=AfterlightPartitions of Unity|rating=54

|summary= A freak motorbike accident that claims the life of your parents is really all it takes to make your world fall apart. You might hope that a new beginning Here at Bookbag Towers, we first met Elizabeth Cromwell, dominatrix and unintentional detective in a different high school is going to jumpstart your life; that a chance to reinvent yourself as just Sophie Teague, rather than Sophie-The-One-Whose-Parents-Died might just be all you need to get [[Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery by. But before Sophie gets the chance to find outJennifer Mason|Preposterous]], when she is visited by Eve. Eve isn’t like other girls. She is beautiful investigated and mesmerizing and Eve needs Sophie to be her go-to girlunravelled a series of disappearances. Because Eve can’t do much for herself since she died. Eve is a ghost and dealing with the dead who have In ''unfinished businessPartitions of Unity'' could be the biggest challenge of Sophie’s life, she sets her mind to solving a murder...|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1925240495</amazonuk>B09LQR9FRF

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Adriana TrigianiWill Carver|title=All The Stars In The HeavensDaves Next Door

|summary=It was 1935 and Loretta Young wanted fame and success Five strangers come together in Hollywoodone moment as a suicide bomber prepares to detonate his vest on a London tube line. Part of it was being young (just twenty one) and beautiful but she was also conscious that As their fates overlap, the money she brought story is told in mattered backwards order, leading up to her familythe fateful moment. She was hungry for love too|isbn= 1914585186}} {{Frontpage|author=Jennifer Mason|title=Preposterous: her father had left when she was young. Her stepAn Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=''A struggling poetry zine, a mom-father had done little better and there was -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...'need'' for  This is just a man she could love sample of the cast of characters and look 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}}{{Frontpage|isbn=B0B2N7MVYM|title=The Calculations of Rational Men|author=Daniel Godfrey|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary=It's the 10th of December 1962 when we first meet Dr Joseph Marr. Just toput what happens in context, the Cuban missile crisis is still very fresh in people's minds. She developed The world has barely had a reputation chance to breathe out. But for falling in love with her leading men: first Joe Marr, it was Spencer Tracy but on 's not the missile crisis that's at the set front of his mind. He's been convicted of murder. With the current state of medical knowledge, it'The Call of s hard to think otherwise than that the Wildprosecution would never have been brought but Joe Marr has spent his first few days in HMP Queen's Bench, a relatively new prison. He' she fell for Clark Gable - s just getting used to his roommate, Mervyn, and he for herlearning to be wary of the McArthur brothers.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1471136345</amazonuk>