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[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Liam BrownJenny Lecoat|title=Wild LifeBeyond Summerland|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=Jean lives on Jersey with her mother where they are celebrating the end of the occupation. During the war, Jean's father was arrested for listening to a banned radio and soldiers took him away one night, leaving Jean and her mother waiting for years for news of him. As the British finally free the Channel islands from the Nazis, and the war is finally over, their hopes rise that they will finally learn what became of him. But will the truth come as a relief, or will it raise further questions around what else happened during the war? Who was the informer who told the Nazis about the radio? And what other secrets have been kept throughout the occupation?|isbn=1846976537}}{{Frontpage|author=Onyi Nwabineli|title=Allow Me to Introduce Myself

|summary=Adam Britman goes from a man with it all Anuri spent her childhood on display to homeless in the sniff world, thanks to her step-mother Ophelia's increasingly popular presence on social media, where she posted every step of a lineAnuri's childhood for sponsorships and influencer deals and, basically, monetary gain. While looking for somewhere 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 sleep Adam comes across an alternative community in take down the local parkcontent about her. They've come together Anuri is battling alcoholism, failing to start her PhD, undergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online and created structure (including an unofficial allotment) out receiving money from them for doing so. Most importantly, she is desperately worried about her little sister, who is the new focus of the disorder thatOphelia's normally equated with living on the streetsonline empire. It seems perfect so Adam joins themCan she save her sister, but perfection can sometimes be an illusion. As for walking away… that's not going to be easy.and perhaps herself and her relationship with her father at the same time?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1785079700</amazonuk>0861546873

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Sabine Durrant1529153298|title= Lie with MeThe List of Suspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey

|summary= Paul It's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is lots of thingsPrime Minister. (A writerwoman? I mean, honestly... A famous name (or at least he was a few years ago) She's not what's worrying Miv's family, though. A bit of a snob Women have been disappearing. A cheapskate Well, they've been murdered, but to have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. A ladies Miv's upset because she's overheard that her father wants to move the family 'Down South' man. And a liar. Oh boy When you're from Yorkshire, Down South is he a liarfrightening, foreign place, best avoided. He fibs For Miv, he exaggeratesthe move would mean leaving her best friend, he omitsSharon, he tells porkiesand she'll do anything to prevent that. Not She's not worried about the really big stuff, nothing dangers or that will hurt her Mum's stopped talking - to anyone.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1035906708|title=Diva|author=Daisy Goodwin|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=We tend to think of Maria Callas as Greek, just a few mistruths but she was born to Greek parents in Manhattan, New York, in December 1923 and only moved to see him throughAthens when she was thirteen. It Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to 'Callas's 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 keeping up appearancesher elder sister, reallyJackie.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1473608333</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Andy JonesAlexander McCall Smith|title=The Trouble with Henry and ZoePerfect Passion Company|rating=34.5

|summary= Stop for 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 moment more personal, tailored service. Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and look down at your bellyafter the business, in the centre you should have something that looks as Ness is planning to take a trip to Canada to get away for a while. Katie is coming out of a little bit like break up with a buttonbad boyfriend, and so jumps at the chance to come home to Edinburgh. It may be And so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us to an innieEdinburgh we already love, or an outiethanks to 44 Scotland Street and the Isabel Dalhousie novels, but just consider it for a few momentswith some new characters who quickly begin to charm. Do you feel better? NopeKatie has no experience in running a business, or in match-making, but Ness has full confidence in her abilities, you shouldnand there't do as all that navel-gazing does is make you over think things. Howevers always her very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, William, without the concept to lend a million romantic books would never be written as without the human compulsion to destroy things around them, how can any tension arise?hand…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1471142469</amazonuk>1846976596

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Carol ShieldsDean Koontz|title= The Republic of LoveBad Weather Friend|rating= 4.5|genre= General FictionParanormal|summary= The Republic of Love Benny is having a mesh-like novel, peopled with a huge cast of characters interwoven in familialterrifically bad day. He loses his job, friendlyhe loses his fiancee, neighbourly and romantic relationshipshis house gets trashed. Winnipeg Oh, the city in which virtually all the action in Shield's novel takes place, ties them together. The story follows two singleand someone has delivered a really weird, thirtydisturbing coffin-something characterssized object to his home, Fay and Tomit's possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the thing that has trashed his house! The thing is, who live opposite each other and have Benny is the very last person to deserve all this bad luck. He is a complicated array of mutual acquaintances but don't know each othernice person. Shields alternates between their two points of view as they are slowly drawn together A really nice person. This So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the delivery to his house is a domestic novel in the best sense; there 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 focus on the beauty good person. Spike is going to take care of Benny, and mundanity will certainly take care of ordinary peopleBenny's unremarkable lives in an unexceptional cityenemies, if he, Benny, from Fay's satisfaction in the pop sound and toasted crumb smell of her twin slice toaster, to TomHarper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's ungainly Saturday morning jogswild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>9462380899</amazonuk>1662500491

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Penny ParkesKatherine Howe|title= Out of PracticeA True Account|rating= 4.5|genre= General Fiction|summary=In a last-ditch attempt to save her failing marriageHannah Masury is living in Boston, GP Holly Graham relocates having been sent to the charming village of Larkford live with her a family who run an inn, and being made to work at the local practicethere from a young age. She finds life as When she hears there is to be a village doctor very different hanging of some pirates in the town, she decides to her previous role go and watch. Enthralled and horrified in a busy city hospitalequal measure, and falls Hannah finds herself embroiled in love with a young boy's death at the close-knit community and its quirky residentshands of two vicious pirates. But just as Larkford is beginning to feel like home She hides away, Holly is hit by a bombshell so that threatens they don't find and kill her too, and then to destroy everything escape them completely she has worked so hard runs away to achievesea, dressing as a boy and joining the notorious Ned Low's pirate ship as a cabin boy. Can she rise to She soon finds herself in the challenge thick of things when there is a mutiny on board, and fight for what she loves? Maybe she will discover something about herself from there we are caught up in her rip roaring tale of life on the processocean waves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1471153045</amazonuk>0861547438

{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1471180158|title=Maybe Tomorrow|author=Steven RowleyPenny Parkes|rating=4.5|titlegenre=General Fiction|summary=Lily 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 Octopusmore 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.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=B0CKD1L5JL|title=Radio Free Olympia|author=Jeffrey Dunn

|summary=Meet Ted FlaskPetr is an orphan. A middle-agedRescued by the strange, gay Los Angelinoreclusive Bear, he has the one love of his life. While the fall-out of relationships with men sends him to therapy, he can rely on Lily, the Dachshund. They've been together through thick is brought up far from bustling cities and thinbusy human society, ever since in the little pup – the runt, no less – seemed to pick Ted out. Ted's sisterforests of Washington's unusual marriage was almost marred by Lily being under the surgeon's knife, at great expense – but on the whole they have life sortedOlympic Peninsula. He tries to write, but Friday night is board games, Saturday night is movie night, After Bear dies and Sunday night is pizza night. Oha brief sojourn in human company, and yesarmed with only a pirate radio transmitter, Lily talks to TedPetr goes on a journey through the forest, either in ''FULLY! CAPITALISED! EVER! EXCLAMATORY! BARKS!'' or in regular speech. Ohbroadcasting the strange, wild and yes, Lily has an octopus on her headrarely heard voices he encounters.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1471154343</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Julie CohenSarah Marsh|title=FallingA Sign of Her Own|rating=3.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=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.|isbn=1035401614}}{{Frontpage|isbn=B0BC3YTCMR|title=Good Girls Die|author=Ayura Ayira|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=''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.}} {{Frontpage|isbn=1472263936|title=The Figurine|author=Victoria Hislop

|summary=Here is the story of three women, from three generations within the same family. There is Jo, a forty year old single mother whose It was in 1968 that Helena McCloud made her first husband died, and whose second husband ran off with their nannytrip to Greece. She is left caring for was alone: her older teenage daughtermother, LydiaGreek by birth, had left the family home and her two little onesrefused to return, Oscar but Mary and Iris, whilst harbouring Hamish (Helena's parents) felt that it would be a secret that she feels she cannot share with anyonepity if Helena grew up without knowing her grandparents or understanding her Greek heritage. Her daughter Lydia is trip to the family apartment in up-market Kolonaki would be the second female character, first of several annual visits. She grew to love her grandmother and as well as the usual teenage angst she is also dealing with grief, still, over her fatherfamily's deathmaid, anger with her mother for her second disastrous marriageDina, but was wary - and frightened - of her own very difficult secret that she is unable to talk to anyone aboutgrandfather, retired general Stamatis Papagiannis. Finally there's Honor who is Jo's mother in law, He was proud of his close connections to the mother of Jo's first husband, Stephen. Honor has a fall, breaks her hip, Junta and is forced expected his family to move in with Jo for a time as she has uphold his values but saw no one else who can help herreason to accommodate them. She too is hiding a secret His prejudices included Helena's red hair and green eyes - inherited from the world, and as you read the story you begin to wonder if any of these characters actually know who the others are, and if any of them will ever start telling the truthher father's Scottish ancestors.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784160636</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jenn AshworthDean Koontz|title=FellAfter Death|rating=53|genre=General Fiction|summary= Michael Mace, Head of Security, at a top secret biological research facility, is among 55 people who die when a virus is released in a bio-hazard accident. Finding himself in a makeshift mortuary, covered in plastic, he has a sense that something very, very bad has happened to him – and only him – as he sits up and looks around at the shrouded bodies of his dead friends and former colleagues. As he recovers his senses, he realises that there is something different about him; he can ''feel'' everything. ''Everything''. Michael isn't ''Michael'' anymore.|isbn=1662500467}} {{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. }} {{Frontpage|isbn=B0BYF82CXT|title=Semi-Detached|author=Deborah Stone|rating=4

|summary=Now her parents have died, Annette returns to sell her old childhood home but there's work to do on the decrepit building first. As she wanders around 'Bill and tries to make some order Amanda are living in a semi-detached house, stuck in a depressing rut of the overgrown shamblesboredom and disappointment, she's watched by the ghost of her motherwhen Terry and Fiona – glamorous, Netty; a spirit with regretssuccessful and very much in love – move in next door. Netty reminisces about Annette's childhood and the turning point Despite their lives reached when different outlooks on life, the mysterious healer Timothy Richardson came couples befriend each other and life appears to stayimprove for both pairs. It was a time that promised so much but one But all is not what it seems, and their increasingly interconnected relationships are fated for which Netty now needs to make amends, even if she is beyond the gravetragedy.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1473630606</amazonuk>''

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Jill CimentShalini Boland|title= Act of GodThe Silent Bride|rating= 4.53|genre= General Fiction|summary=''Act of God'' is Alice and Seth are a story about two ageing twins who find a worrying mushroom growing match made in their cupboardheaven. 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 landlady searching for wife; beautiful, successful, confident… and so the spotlight inevitable proposal is eagerly accepted by Alice and a Russian immigrant whose greatest fear the wedding is insignificanceplanned and set. What When the insurance company describes much-anticipated day arrives, Alice is walked down the aisle by her father, beaming with pride and excitement as an act of God brings she surveys the congregation – their already overlappedfriends assembled to celebrate this joyful day and when Seth turns to face his approaching bride, Brooklyn lives in Alice's world implodes because she has absolutely no idea who the man at the altar is, who is waiting for her to sharper focusbecome his wife. What do you do when disaster threatens? Is it survival of the fittest or should we love thy neighbour? |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782272119</amazonuk>1662507089

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Fredrik Backman1787636003|title=Britt-Marie Was HereThe Girls of Summer|author=Katie Bishop

|summary= Brett-Marie has never met a kitchen It was the summer when Rachel Evans turned eighteen that she doesnand Caroline went backpacking around Greece and arrived on the island. Rachel wasn't want exactly innocent but she was, perhaps, naive, so when thirty-four-year-old Alistair Wright started to cleantake an interest in her, she was flattered rather than wary. In fact, permanently armed with bicarbonate It was quite a while before he made any sort of soda physical approach to her and window cleaner, by that time she's always ready to clean anythingwas obsessed by him. Her husband Kent is an entrepreneurAlistair worked for Henry Taylor, you know, with excellent taste looking after his interests on the island and expensive clothes. Yet here she is, in Borg, a rundown small town, particular in search of her first job for 40 years. Life takes some odd turns sometimesthe bar where all the girls either worked or partied.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1473617200</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Rodrigo Hasbun and Sophie Hughes (translator)Amanda Craig|title=AffectionsThree Graces

|summary=If you thought your teenaged years were a struggle to work out Few styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the world, and yourself, consider that state-of Heidi Ertl-the-nation novel. Or either of her sisters – this book serves as a sort There's something so utterly compelling about any writer who can catch hold of tribute to these three real-life women, and the lives that came out atmosphere of their very disjointed youth, forced to be rarefied from the norm by their family uprooting. Father Hans was one of Leni Riefenstahl's key cameramen, day and a Nazi military photographercapture it, before taking the whole family into post-war exile in Bolivia. Their mother would have followed him to the ends crafting an image of the earth – country as it stands in part one particular moment. To say that Amanda Craig is skilled at doing this would their daughters, be embarrassingly inadequate: she's practically synonymous with the older two genre of which start the book by joining him on an expedition to discover a lost Incan citycontemporary social fiction at this point. Heidi finds young, instant love on the trek – but sees the dark side of She has such emotions, too. Older sister Monika, who might well be manic depressive, finds something else, while a gift for weaving the baby ongoing issues of the family stays at home with a maudlin mother. So much here could be day into the hook on which to hang lives of her characters in a full novelway that feels natural and lived-in, never making them ciphers for social commentary but if anything it's the reaction of them all to this unusual formative journey that inspires this bookinstead fully realised people, grappling with issues far larger than themselves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782272135</amazonuk>140871468X

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Jemma Wayne152915118X|title= Chains of SandPineapple Street|author=Jenny Jackson|rating= 4.5|genre= General Fiction|summary= Chains of Sand ''Pineapple Street'' is a great read about family, faith, survival, and love. It follows the story of two young menthree women: Udi a veteran of the Israeli army who longs for a new future in LondonSasha, Darley and Georgiana. Darley and Daniel, a London banker unsatisfied with his life George are sisters and yearning for something more. The story focuses on their desires Sasha is married to change their lives brother Cord. They're Stocktons, only Sasha isn't a Stockton by moving to different worlds and how this impacts their relationships with friends and familybirth so she isn't readily accepted into the tribe. As The problem's exacerbated when the story unfoldsclan matriarch, Tilda, asks Cord and Sasha if they'd like to move into the two protagonists' histories are slowly uncovered Pineapple Street property. Tilda and they both Chip have renovated and downsized to overcome another property, a street or so away, which they own. They won't need any of the difficulties furniture from Pineapple Street, so Sasha and Cord can move straight in their new lives in order to achieve their dreams. Meanwhile Nominally, they had a choice but that wasn't the fate of star-crossed love between a Jewish girl reality. Darley and an Arabic man Georgiana start to call Sasha 'the gold digger'. She's living in Jerusalem a decade earlier intertwines with Daniel's life, complicating all 'their'' family home. They use it so often that he thinks has become clearthey abbreviate it to 'the GD'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1785079727</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Marie-Sabine RogerEmily Critchley|title= Soft in the HeadOne Puzzling Afternoon|rating= 4|genre= General FictionCrime|summary= This novel will make you smile. It's a feel-good story84 year old Edie has lived in the same small town for almost her whole life, unusual in its premise and original. Germaine but now she is facing a 45 year old man who move as her son wants to move to another house and bring Edie to live with his family, as Edie is illiteratestarting to lose her memory. He has a group of drinking friends who frequently make him However, Edie is tormented by the butt memory of their jokesher childhood friend, Lucy, a mother who calls him 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 'half-witseeing'Lucy in the high street, amongst other thingsjust as she was the last time she saw her, and a girlfriend whom he appears afraid she starts to find pockets of committing memories coming back toher. Germain spends many afternoons in And yet as she remembers the parkpast, counting pigeons she is forgetting more and writing his name among the dead of the war memorialmore in her day to day life. It is here that he meets Margueritte, a tiny 85 year old woman who tells him Will she also counts uncover the pigeons.truth about Lucy's disappearance before her move, and before her memories are gone forever?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782271589</amazonuk>1804181250

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Gregory MaguireMadelaine Lucas|title= After AliceThirst for Salt|rating= 45|genre= FantasyLiterary Fiction|summary=When Alice fell down ''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 rabbit holeyear-long relationship that once defined her. Overlaid with later wisdom, she found Wonderland as rife the narrator relives the affair with inconsistent rule and abrasive egos as a man twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the world she left behindsummer after. But how did Victorian Oxford react to AliceSet against the backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town 's departure? When Alice's friend Ada, mentioned briefly in Thirst for Salt''Alice in Wonderlanddetails the 24-year-old narrator'' sets out to visit Alices deepening relationship with her older lover, she arrives a minute too late. Tumbling down the rabbit hole herselfdepicting its all-consuming nature, she embarks how it changed her perspective on an odyssey to find Alice both romantic and familial relationships and bring how it altered her safely home from this surreal world below the worldirrevocably. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1472230469</amazonuk>0861546490

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Isabel Allende0008506337|title= The Japanese Lover|rating= 4|genre= General Fiction|summary= The Japanese Lover is an unassuming novel. The beginning leads the reader to anticipate an enjoyable light read, a good holiday book perhaps – a very well plotted story with an interesting cast of characters and settings. Irena, a Moldovan girl with elfin looks and a passion for fantasy novels, starts working in bohemian care home Lark House in San Francisco. She meets the stately and somewhat aloof Alma Belasco, whose story starts to unravel, beginning with her being brought over from Poland (just as Jews became increasingly vulnerable to the Nazis) to her wealthy aunt and uncle in Cliff House, San Francisco, as a little girl. Allende almost makes us think that this opening tone, entertaining but fairly shallow, will continue for the rest of the novel.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1471152197</amazonuk>}}{{newreviewGarnett Girls|author= Midge Raymond|title= My Last ContinentGeorgina Moore|rating= 4.5|genre= General Fiction|summary=Only at the end of the world, among the glaciers and icebergs of Antarctica, do Deb and Keller feel at home. For a few blissful weeks each year they study the habits of penguins, finding solace in their work and in each other. Yet Antarctica, like their romance, is imperilled by the world to the north. A new season has begun, and the two play tour guide to the passengers on the expedition ship that ferries them to their research destination. But when Keller fails to appear, Deb has to consider new feelings of love, loss, and a voyage deep into both the Antarctic, and the human heart. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1501124706</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Leah Fleming|title=The Last Pearl|rating=4

|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'I always thinks 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, without they eloped and Richard took her away from the grit there would be no pearlIsle of Wight. Sorrows have Margo did go to Oxford and went on to become a way 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 strengthening Wight. Even then the heart, doubts about Richard's drinking were never far from Margo's mind: ''she would never forget that, child.be able to leave him in charge''.

Greta Costello lives in in poverty with her mother and siblings and must work as a skivvy to put bread on the tableThen Richard left them. She manages to find some joy in her work though, especially in her 'Sabbath' job working for a kindly old widowed Jew. The two become friends and he offers to take her on as his apprentice, stringing pearls. Could this highly-skilled job be her key to a better life? At the same time, many miles away in Scotland, Jem Baillie and his father can't contain their delight when they discover a magnificent, flawless freshwater pearl at the end of a long day of fishing. They call the pearl 'Queenie' and from that pivotal moment, the fates of Greta, Jem and Queenie will be inextricably linked.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1471140970</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Matthew Stephen1914585402|title= BaturiDashboard Elvis is Dead|author=David F Ross|rating= 4.5|genre= General Fiction|summary= ItI reviewed David F Ross's book [[There's Nigeria and itOnly One Danny Garvey by David F Ross|There's the 80s. Matthew is Only One Danny Garvey]] a VSO, on a placement at a college teaching electronics. Or trying to at any rate. When language skills are limited couple of years back and remember being absolutely floored by how powerful and resources are scarce, you have to make the most of what you've got, even if that means teaching the odd class on American culture rather than rewiringaffecting it was. If I tell you that the ''Prime Directive'' applies It was a lot when you're a VSOgripping, emotionally wounding read, you'll appreciate the difficulties Matthew has when his students want to stray further into the modern world and learn about how things work in Britain, concepts rereading my review of inventions such as ATMs it my main takeaway was that are decades off reaching Nigeria (Those days may still be some way off. I actually had a hand written bank card a few years ago while a VSO in a country might not too far away)have lavished enough praise on it. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>B00OISR3AK</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Carys BrayLucy Ashe|title=The Museum of YouClara and Olivia|rating=4.5

|summary= It The year is summer, school is out, the days 1933. The place? Sadler's Wells. Ballerinas Clara and Olivia are longsisters, the bumblebees are big and blousy and the allotment where Clover helps her dad with the vegetables needs weeding and wateringtwins no less. She likes Identical on the allotment; it helps her think. This summeroutside but not, we learn, Clover is going to unravel on the mystery of her motherinside. And not on stage, Becky Brookfield and work out what makes her father so sad. All the timeeither. ItBecause there's hard to be a kid with lot that builds a dead motherdancer. Some things that can be taught or learnt – discipline, attention to detail – and some things, but Clover thinks itthat ''je ne sais quoi's even harder to be dad with a dead wife.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091959608</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Simon Van Booy|title= Father's Day|rating= 5|genre= General Fiction|summary=When devastating news shatters the life of six year old Harvey, she finds herself in that don't come from the care of a veteran social worker, Wandaclassroom. A stage presence, and alone in the world save for one relative she has never met - a disabled ex-concharm, haunted by a violent past he can't escape'joie de vivre''. Moving The difference between past and present, Father's Day weaves together the story of Harvey's childhood on Long Islanda hard-worker, and her life as a young woman in Parisstar.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1780749694</amazonuk>0861544080

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Angela LambertHeather Fawcett|title=Kiss and KinEmily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries

|summary=ItEmily Wilde is an expert academic scholar on faerie lore, and she has travelled extensively, and researched meticulously, to write her life's six months since work, the death very first encyclopaedia of Harriet Capel's husband Georgefaeries. Looking back Whilst she's concluded that is brilliant at research and speaking to faeries, she was fond of, but probably is not ''in love'', so good with himpeople. They had two sons and it's So when she finds herself far, far North in the elder small village of theseHrafvsnik, Roderick who's married having somehow offended the village matriarch, she is not sure what she has done, nor how to Jenniferredeem herself and put her final investigations for her book back on the right track. They have three childrenEnter Wendell Bambleby, but there's been a rather silly feud between the Capels her dashingly handsome and Jennifer's familyinsufferable rival who arrives unexpectedly, the Gauntsall charm and delight, which dates back much to the couple's wedding, when Clarissa Gaunt, JenniferEmily's mother said something unpleasant in the church which dropped into one of those silences which always occur when you say something which you really shouldn'tfrustration. Honours (or should it be ''dishonours''But why is he here? What does he want?) were even when George Capel later said something crass and vulgar about And what exactly is going on with the bride's mother and was overheard.faerie folk around Hravsnik?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1861514301</amazonuk>0356519120

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Liz Fenwick1398515388|title= Under a Cornish SkyThe Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)|rating= 34.5|genre= General Fiction|summary=''Under a Cornish Sky'' is the story First of two very different women who are forced to work together to complete a common goal. Their personalities couldn't be more differentall, so expect fireworks along it was the way! Shy Demi is as timid as a mouse and although she is a skilled architectearthquake, she is never able to succeed deep in her career because others take credit for her work. In relationshipsthe ocean floor, she is easily manipulated into doing things she doesn't always feel comfortable with; a fact that is not lost on her sleazy current boyfriendwhich created the tsunami and this, Matt. Lady-of-the-Manor Victoriain turn, on caused the other hand, simply oozes self confidencenuclear meltdown. The result was complete and utter devastation. Although she is in her sixties The deaths were uncountable, she has and the body loss of a much younger woman and has no trouble getting men to do exactly what she wantslivelihoods was widespread. Despite a long The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of younger lovers providing priorities but - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a pleasurable distraction, her one true love is the family home of Boscawen, convenience store. He wasn't a glorious estate set in dog person but the picturesque Cornish countryside, not far from convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the seadog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1409148289</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author= Alison UmmingerChristopher Bowden|title= My Favourite Manson GirlMr Magenta|rating= 4|genre= General Fiction|summary= Fifteen year old Anna has had an excruciating year, topped off with new stepparents and Christopher Bowden's latest novel is a patient untangling of a new school. So she ''borrows'' her familyseemingly ordinary woman's credit cardlife, and runs away to LA to crash with carried out by her sisternephew after she has died. But Hollywood isn't the escape she needs, The aunt who always provided a safe harbour and it soon dawns on her: she's trapped in a town full little bit of lost souls and wannabes, with no friends, no cash and no return ticket. When her sister's obsessive ex offers her indulgence to a job researching the murderous Manson girls for his next indie film, she accepts – albeit reluctantly. This is not quite the summer Anna young nephew had had in mind; but the a much more she learns about the girls interesting life than that nephew Stephen had ever realised and her fate, the more she comes it seems to him an obligation to understand her family – and herselffind it all out. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1472150848</amazonuk>B0B6Z9VJDW

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Louise CandlishJennifer Mason|title=The Swimming PoolPartitions of Unity

|summary=''The Swimming Pool'' is the story of a woman - Natalie - whose eyes are dazzled by a glamorous couple who live nearby. Natalie and husband Ed have a 13-year-old daughterHere at Bookbag Towers, Mollywe first met Elizabeth Cromwell, dominatrix and are the kind of parents you'd steer clear of at the school gates for fear of offending their politically correct sensibilities. Molly has a phobia of water. Rather than keep her away from rivers unintentional detective in [[Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery by Jennifer Mason|Preposterous]], when she investigated and pools, they subject her to unravelled a childhood series of therapydisappearances. They keep up with changes to MollyIn 's phone code so they can check up on her messages. They don't believe in private education and they eat nutritionally supplemented pizzas. Louise Candlish pokes delicious fun at this couple, particularly at dull-as-ditchwater Ed whose moral rectitude stifles poor Natalie, desperate to break out Partitions of her mould. Enter Lara Channing. Lara is a champion synchronised swimmer and former starlet. Her beauty, wealth and warmth have a magnetic attraction for Natalie who proves powerless to resist LaraUnity's charms, although she is less sure of Lara's enigmatic husband, Miles. The novel charts Natalie's journey as she is enticed away from Ed and into Lara's web, and there is an increasing sense of unease as events unfold. Add sets her mind to this heady mix solving a few additional ingredients, a heatwave, an outdoor pool and a gaggle of teenagers, and you have a recipe for disastermurder...|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1405927321</amazonuk>B09LQR9FRF

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Kit de WaalWill Carver|title=My Name is LeonThe Daves Next Door|rating=54

|summary=Everything that is precious Five strangers come together in one moment as a suicide bomber prepares to Leon gets taken away. His Action Man toys, detonate his home, his mum, and his brothervest on a London tube line. The world seems utterly unfairAs their fates overlap, and so he sneaks 20p herethe story is told in backwards order, and 50p there, out of people's purses, whilst building leading up a rucksack full of all the things he's going to need when he finds his baby brother, and reunites his family. Through all his planning he still manages to find enjoyment in small things, like a Curly Wurly, or riding his bike, or planting seeds with his new friends on the allotments, but how will he cope when he finally faces the truth of his new life without his familyfateful moment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0241207088</amazonuk>1914585186}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Rufi ThorpeJennifer Mason|title= Dear Fang, With LovePreposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery|rating= 4|genre= General Fiction|summary= After seventeen year-old Vera's mental breakdown, her father Lucas takes her on a trip to the tiny Lithuanian town of Vilnius to recover and reconnect with their family history.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1472152158</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Simon Bill|title= Artist in Residence|rating= 5

|summary= The nameless protagonist of artist Simon Bill's first novel is almost instantly dislikeable. He'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 slob yen for bullwhips, a billionaire with an alcohol problem whose endeavours in a state-of-the -art world appear lackadaisical and who seems to have behaved questionably to his ex-girlfriend Susan. In his antiheroS&M dungeon, a man serving a life sentence in Alabama, Bill gives himself an uphill struggle to keep the reader turning pagesenigmatic signature, K(s, x), let alone engage their sympathy. And yeton a cheap oil painting, Artist an erotic art dealer in Residence Georgia...'' This is just a funny, thought-provoking, informative read which is all sample of the more enjoyable for the mental cast of characters and emotional demands it places on the readersettings in Preposterous. As you can see, some keeping up will be required! The basic premise of this mystery story goes like this...|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908745576</amazonuk>B09STS96HS