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[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alexander McCall SmithJenny Lecoat|title=Precious and GraceBeyond Summerland|rating=54

|summary=Friendships can be funny things, and that is often Jean lives on Jersey with her mother where they are celebrating the end of the case with Precious and Graceoccupation. This is their seventeenth book nowDuring the war, Jean's father was arrested for listening to a banned radio and so we have seen their friendship grow soldiers took him away one night, leaving Jean and develop a great deal over the her mother waiting for yearsfor news of him. Both women have grown to understandAs the British finally free the Channel islands from the Nazis, respect and love each other, through business hardshipsthe war is finally over, personal difficulties and all their many and varied caseshopes rise that they will finally learn what became of him. In their current case But will the pair have truth come as a strong difference of opinionsrelief, and yet all is not quite 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 it seems with their investigation, and so perhaps it is a case of neither one of them being right, and other secrets have been kept throughout the situation being something else entirelyoccupation?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408708124</amazonuk>1846976537

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Fiona DavisOnyi Nwabineli|title= The Doll HouseAllow Me to Introduce Myself|rating= 4.5|genre= General Fiction|summary= New York CityAnuri 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, 2016: Rose has quit failing to start her job as a newscaster PhD, undergoing therapy and investigative journalist – not entirely voluntarily – secretly abusing people online and now works receiving money from them for an on-line outfit with doing so. Most importantly, she is desperately worried about her little sister, who is the self-mockingly clumsy name new focus of WordmergeOphelia's online empire. Can she save her sister, and perhaps herself and her relationship with her father at the same time?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1101984996</amazonuk>0861546873

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Gayle Forman1529153298|title=Leave MeThe List of Suspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey

|summary= When youIt've had a heart attack s 1979 and frightened the hell out of Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. (A woman? I mean, honestly...) She's not just yourselfwhat's worrying Miv's family, but your husbandthough. Women have been disappearing. Well, your children – if they had known - your mother and your best friend've been murdered, you imagine but to have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. Miv's upset because she's overheard that some long overdue TLC is about her father wants to come your waymove the family 'Down South'. YouWhen you're thinking cardsfrom Yorkshire, flowersDown South is a frightening, being waited on handforeign place, foot and finger and even though the imminent influx of culinary gifts are likely to be low fatbest avoided. For Miv, low sugar and taste like the box they came inmove would mean leaving her best friend, they're comingSharon, right? And youand she'll probably get a couple of months off work and not even have do anything to think about the laundryprevent that. Or She's not worried about the housework? Or taking the twins dangers or that her Mum's stopped talking - to school? Right? Right???? |amazonuk=<amazonuk>147115677X</amazonuk>anyone.

{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1035906708|title=Diva|author=Daisy Goodwin|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|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.}}{{Frontpage|author=Lisa UngerAlexander McCall Smith|title=Ink and BoneThe Perfect Passion Company|rating=4.5

|summary= Finlay Montgomery, like her grandmother Eloise before her The Perfect Passion Company is a very powerful dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and gifted psychic. Sensitive operating as an alternative to all the unseenonline apps in providing a more personal, unheard tailored service. Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and unknowablelook after the business, she spends her days among the deadas Ness is planning to take a trip to Canada to get away for a while. VisitedKatie is coming out of a break up with a bad boyfriend, bothered, harassed and sometimes taunted, Finlay does her best so jumps at the chance to manage the gifts that Mother Nature has sought come home to bestowEdinburgh. But life is not that simple And so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, thanks to 44 Scotland Street and studying for your degree is testing the Isabel Dalhousie novels, but with five other visitors in the room some new characters who are all trying quickly begin to get your attention charm. Katie has no experience in running a business, or in match-making, but Ness has full confidence in the loudest her abilities, and there's always her very helpful (and most distracting way possible.rather handsome) neighbour, William, to lend a hand…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>147115047X</amazonuk>1846976596

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Annelies Verbeke Dean Koontz|title= Thirty DaysThe Bad Weather Friend|rating= 24.5|genre= General FictionParanormal|summary= Thirty Days doesn’t seem to know what it Benny is abouthaving a terrifically bad day. He loses his job, he loses his fiancee, and his house gets trashed. The novel follows Alphonse Oh, and someone has delivered a Senegalese painter decorator living in really weird, disturbing coffin-sized object to his home, and it's possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the Flanders region of Belgium with thing that has trashed his girlfriend and childhood friend Cathouse! The thing is, who Benny is recovering from cancerthe very last person to deserve all this bad luck. Verbeke puts He is a major emphasis on their intimate but often volatile and unsteady relationship, as they try nice person. A really nice person. So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the delivery to navigate his house is a new lifestyle in friend, a small townbad weather friend called Spike, away who has been sent to help him since Benny is clearly under attack from the citynefarious forces for being a good person. However Spike is going to take care of Benny, there are several other storylines which vie for our attention: Alphonse’s troubled clients who treat him as a sounding board and therapist, his experiences will certainly take care of racism as a black man in a rural areaBenny's enemies, Cat’s difficultif he, warring parentsBenny, the couple’s elderly neighbour Willem who is obsessed with war graves and has Harper (a knack for appearing at precisely the wrong moment, and an illegal refugee camp in field trenches a few miles awaywaitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>9462380899</amazonuk>1662500491

{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The Oldest GameKatherine Howe|authortitle=Sue LegerA True Account|rating=4.5

|summary=Moving Hannah Masury is living in Boston, having been sent to live with a family who run an inn, and eye-opening story 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 Romanian woman trafficked into Amsterdam 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 forced then to escape them completely she runs away to work sea, dressing as a boy and joining the notorious Ned Low's pirate ship as a prostitutecabin boy. Sue Leger gives us all pause for thought here 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.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1524635014</amazonuk>0861547438

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Tom Connolly1471180158|title= Men Like AirMaybe Tomorrow|author=Penny Parkes|rating= 4.5|genre= General Fiction|summary= One April Jamie Matson works in Manhattanan upper-class grocery store, for a man who's a control freak with all the destinies subtlety of four very different men are about to collidea half brick. Nineteen year old Finn Jamie's son, Bo, 'has just arrived in his problems'. He's asthmatic and the city along with his volatile girlfriend Dillymore you read, determined to even the score with his older brother Jack for abandoning him in more you'll suspect that he's on the UK autistic spectrum. Sometimes Jamie needs to take time off at short notice - she's a frequent flier in the aftermath of their parentslocal A&E and sometimes Bo' deathss not fit enough to go to school. Across town, successful gallery owner Leo Emerson is haunted by loneliness, unsettled by Missed shifts or the contrast between his life need to be away on time to pick Bo up from school are occasions when Jamie can be controlled and that of his brother put in law and oldest friend William, who is content in both his faith and his marriagethe wrong. When Finn wanders in It was going to come to Leo's gallery, a series of unexpected and interconnected events unfold, changing the lives of all four men togetherhead.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908434880</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=B0CKD1L5JL|title=How I Became a DrifterRadio Free Olympia|author=Christmas PhilipJeffrey Dunn|reviewerrating=Jill Murphy4

|summary=Fictionalised autobiography told Petr is an orphan. Rescued by the strange, reclusive Bear, he is brought up far from bustling cities and busy human society, in a stream-the forests of-consciousness styleWashington's Olympic Peninsula. An unconventional voice speaking of 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 universal search for love strange, wild and acceptance.|rating=3rarely heard voices he encounters.5 |amazonuk=<amazonuk>152463588X</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Jane CorrySarah Marsh|title= My Husband's WifeA Sign of Her Own|rating= 43.5|genre= General Fiction|summary= Autumn 2000After a bout of scarlet fever as a child, Ellen Lark loses her hearing. Newly married lawyer Lily and Suddenly plunged into a world of silence, everything about her artist husband Ed have life changes. Living in a small apartment 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 Londonanother school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the deaf and using a system called Visible Speech. Fresh from At the honeymoonsame time, they're still settling in to their new rolesBell is working on other inventions and ideas, and their neighbour Francesca and her 9 year old daughter Carla help to take the pressure off Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a little bitcomplicated tangle of espionage.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0241256488</amazonuk>1035401614

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Peter Ho DaviesB0BC3YTCMR|title= The FortunesGood Girls Die|author=Ayura Ayira|rating= 4.5|genre= General Fiction|summary= Clashes of cultures or cultural enrichment? Xenophobia or embracing diversity?Today's hot topics focus much on cultures meeting and notions of foreignness, especially in the context of migration. As such, Peter Ho Davies could 'This story is not have chosen a more current and thought-provoking theme for everyone.'' Lavender Daniels was three weeks short of her fifteenth birthday when The Fortunes'': through four different stories, the novel documents some of the history of Chinese people in America over more than centuryIncident happened. From railroad workers She was a very bright student, laundry ownersa bit too nerdy if truth be told, and prostitutes suffered from vitiligo - people were afraid to film stars and adoptive parents, hug her in case it's contagious. It'The Fortunes'' tells tales of searching for identity s not easy being a black girl whose skin is 84% white. She had a crush on both national seventeen-year-old Reggie Anderson but never thought he would notice her. Then he did: Lavender was very good at math and personal levelsReggie 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.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340980230</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Paul Read1472263936|title= The Art TeacherFigurine|author=Victoria Hislop|rating= 4.5|genre= Thrillers General Fiction|summary=Patrick Owen managed seven years at Highfields Secondary School without punching a pupil It was in the face1968 that Helena McCloud made her first trip to Greece. A mediocre teacher She was alone: her mother, stuck in a struggling school ruled Greek by violent pupilsbirth, Patrick goes had left the family home every night and refused to an empty flatreturn, but Mary and an existence filled with reminders of his life as Hamish (Helena's parents) felt that it would be a faded rock starpity if Helena grew up without knowing her grandparents or understanding her Greek heritage. When one pupil over steps Her trip to the mark, a brief mistake plunges Patrick into a world family apartment in up-market Kolonaki would be the first of dangerseveral annual visits. She grew to love her grandmother and the family's maid, violenceDina, but was wary - and the glare frightened - of her grandfather, retired general Stamatis Papagiannis. He was proud of his close connections to the mediaJunta and expected his family to uphold his values but saw no reason to accommodate them. His prejudices included Helena's red hair and green eyes - inherited from her father's Scottish ancestors. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1785079573</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alexander McCall SmithDean Koontz|title=After Death|rating=3|genre=General Fiction|summary= Michael Mace, Head of Security, at a top secret biological research facility, is among 55 people who die when a virus is released in a bio-hazard accident. Finding himself in a makeshift mortuary, covered in plastic, he has a sense that something very, very bad has happened to him – and only him – as he sits up and looks around at the shrouded bodies of his dead friends and former colleagues. As he recovers his senses, he realises that there is something different about him; he can ''feel'' everything. ''Everything''. Michael isn't ''Michael'' anymore.|isbn=1662500467}} {{Frontpage|isbn=B0BVDC2VWH|title=The Bertie Project: A 44 Scotland Street NovelGrave Listeners|author=William Frank

|summary=Catching up with old friends The village is a pleasure, isolated and itpoor. It's good to be back 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 Scotland Streethomes, finding out what everyone and even gallows, if needed. The fear of being buried alive is getting up to. Irene an existential superstition in the village and that is backthe reason Volushka, of coursea drunken, from her travels to the middleself-eastindulgent, lazy lout of a man is tolerated. Bruce has fallen in love, Matthew and Elspeth have triplet troubles, and somebody has an extremely unfortunate accident…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846973597</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Rowan Hisayo BuchananB0BYF82CXT|title= Harmless Like YouSemi-Detached|author=Deborah Stone|rating= 54

|summary= This is the debut novel from Rowan Hisayo Buchanan''Bill and Amanda are living in a semi-detached house, but you would never know it. It is an accomplished, unusual, poetically written story about stuck in a young Japanese girldepressing rut of boredom and disappointment, Yuki Oyamawhen Terry and Fiona – glamorous, who has lived most of her life successful and very much in love – move in New Yorknext door. As suchDespite their different outlooks on life, she feels an outsider: the American girls at school ignore her couples befriend each other and she finds the rituals of her parents' home suffocatinglife appears to improve for both pairs. Her father has hopes of her studying medicineBut all is not what it seems, but the only thing Yuki enjoys is artand their increasingly interconnected relationships are fated for tragedy.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1473638321</amazonuk>''

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Emma Claire SweeneyShalini Boland|title=Owl Song at DawnThe Silent Bride|rating=53

|summary=Maeve Maloney runs the Sea View Lodge guest house that her parents ran before herAlice and Seth are a match made in heaven. The house He is everything she has harboured many memories been searching for Maeve over the past 80-years; handsome, accomplished, clever, funny; total and utter husband-plus, most of which she's managed to keep at baymaterial. HoweverShe is all he could possibly want in a wife; beautiful, successful, her suppression confident… and so the inevitable proposal is eagerly accepted by Alice and the wedding is endangered when Vincent comes to callplanned and set. Far from being an ordinary guestWhen the much-anticipated day arrives, Vincent Alice is a link 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 that past Maeve thought face his approaching bride, Alice's world implodes because she'd outrun but now has absolutely no idea who the man at the altar is, who is waiting for her to relive. Add that to trying to teach Steph and Len to fib effectively and life becomes very difficult indeedbecome his wife.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1785079670</amazonuk>1662507089

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Karin Slaughter1787636003|title=The Kept WomanGirls of Summer|author=Katie Bishop

|summary=Special Agent Will Trent is backIt was the summer when Rachel Evans turned eighteen that she and Caroline went backpacking around Greece and arrived on the island. Collected by his partnerRachel wasn't exactly innocent but she was, perhaps, Faithnaive, so when thirty-four-year-old Alistair Wright started to attend the scene take an interest in her, she was flattered rather than wary. It was quite a while before he made any sort of a rather brutal murder, Trent queries why the GBI has been called in physical approach to what would usually be a standard homicide investigation for Atlanta PDher and by that time she was obsessed by him. Arriving at Alistair worked for Henry Taylor, looking after his interests on the scene, their boss, Deputy Director Amanda Wagner is somewhat characteristically pacing island and barking orders; in particular in the victim is none other than ex-cop and bar where all round bad egg, Dale Harding. There is a lot of blood, presumably due to the door-knob and spindle sticking out of Harding's neckgirls either worked or partied.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780893574</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Eowyn IveyAmanda Craig|title=To the Bright Edge of the WorldThree Graces|rating=4.5

|summary=If youFew styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the state-of-the-nation novel. There're going to go pioneering across unexplored landss something so utterly compelling about any writer who can catch hold of the atmosphere of the day and capture it, at least be prepared to accept what you seek – namely, what you've never seen before. That lesson seems quite obvious, but back in crafting an image of the time of 1885 Allen Forrester is a little too naïve to heed country as itstands in one particular moment. A career soldier, he To say that Amanda Craig is tasked skilled at doing this would be embarrassingly inadequate: she's practically synonymous with scouring the potential genre of contemporary social fiction at this point. She has such a gift for weaving the Wolverine River that threads south to the shores ongoing issues of Alaska, even though the Russians (who of course used to own day into the Territory) have had all manner lives of lethal encounters with those already living there, and even though a major stretch of the river has to be traversed her characters in winter when entirely frozen over, as the cliffs either side are too impenetrable. Allen leaves a much younger, new bride behind – way that feels natural and right from the getlived-go his journals force him to pen words about strange happeningsin, never making them ciphers for social commentary but instead fully realised people, strange encounters and things of legend coming to lifegrappling with issues far larger than themselves. Like I say, what he's never seen before…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1472208609</amazonuk>140871468X

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Gerald Weaver152915118X|title=The First First Gentleman|rating= 3.5|genre= General Fiction|summary=Anyone picking up ''The First First Gentleman'' might be forgiven for snorting with laughter and making a sarcastic comment about how timely and potentially satirical it sounds. In a way they’d be right – but probably for different reasons.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0993291759</amazonuk>}}{{newreviewPineapple Street|author=Liam Brown|title=Wild LifeJenny Jackson

|summary=Adam Britman goes from a man with it all to homeless in ''Pineapple Street'' is the sniff story of a linethree women: Sasha, Darley and Georgiana. While looking for somewhere Darley and George are sisters and Sasha is married to sleep Adam comes across an alternative community in the local parktheir brother Cord. They've come together and created structure (including an unofficial allotment) out of re Stocktons, only Sasha isn't a Stockton by birth so she isn't readily accepted into the disorder thattribe. The problem's normally equated with living on exacerbated when the clan matriarch, Tilda, asks Cord and Sasha if they'd like to move into the streetsPineapple Street property. It seems perfect Tilda and Chip have renovated and downsized to another property, a street or so Adam joins themaway, which they own. They won't need any of the furniture from Pineapple Street, but perfection so Sasha and Cord can sometimes be an illusionmove straight in. As for walking away… Nominally, they had a choice but thatwasn't the reality. Darley and Georgiana start to call Sasha 'the gold digger'. She's not going living in ''their'' family home. They use it so often that they abbreviate it to be easy'the GD'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1785079700</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Sabine DurrantEmily Critchley|title= Lie One Puzzling Afternoon|rating=4|genre=Crime|summary=84 year old Edie has lived in the same small town for almost her whole life, but now she is facing a move as her son wants to move to another house and bring Edie to live with his family, as Edie is starting to lose her memory. However, Edie is tormented by the memory of her childhood friend, Lucy, who went missing over 60 years ago, and the worry that there was a secret she was keeping for Lucy that somehow might be the thing that reveals the truth of what happened all that time ago. After 'seeing' Lucy in the high street, just as she was the last time she saw her, she starts to find pockets of memories coming back to her. And yet as she remembers the past, she is forgetting more and more in her day to day life. Will she uncover the truth about Lucy's disappearance before her move, and before her memories are gone forever?|isbn=1804181250}}{{Frontpage|author=Madelaine Lucas|title=Thirst for Salt|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= ''Love, I'd read, was supposed to be a light and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity'' Told from a retrospective view, a young woman unravels the year-long relationship that once defined her. Overlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the affair with a man twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the summer after. Set against the backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the 24-year-old narrator's deepening relationship with Meher 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

|summary= Paul is lots of thingsThe love affair between Margo Garnett and poet Richard O'Leary was all-consuming, apparently on both sides. A writer Margo was just sixteen when they fell in love. A famous name (or at least he Richard was a few years ago). A bit of a snob. A cheapskate. A ladiestwenty-one and described by Margo's mother as ' an older man'. And Her parents worried that Richard's influence would take her away from what they felt she could achieve - going to Oxford and having a liarglittering career. Oh boy In the event, is he they eloped and Richard took her away from the Isle of Wight. Margo did go to Oxford and went on to become a liarwell-respected journalist. He fibs The couple had three children: Rachel, he exaggeratesImogen and Sasha. Life was lived in London and holidays were spent at Sandcove, he omits, he tells porkiesthe family home on the Isle of Wight. Not Even then the doubts about the really big stuff, nothing that will hurt anyone, just a few mistruths Richard's drinking were never far from Margo's mind: ''she would never be able to see leave him through. Itin charge''s for keeping up appearances, really.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1473608333</amazonuk>Then Richard left them.

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Andy Jones1914585402|title=The Trouble with Henry and ZoeDashboard Elvis is Dead|author=David F Ross|rating=34.5

|summary= Stop for I reviewed David F Ross's book [[There's Only One Danny Garvey by David F Ross|There's Only One Danny Garvey]] a moment couple of years back and look down at your belly, in the centre you should have something that looks a little bit like a buttonremember being absolutely floored by how powerful and affecting it was. It may be an inniewas a gripping, or an outieemotionally wounding read, but just consider and rereading my review of it for a few moments. Do you feel better? Nope, you shouldn't do as all my main takeaway was that navel-gazing does is make you over think thingsI might not have lavished enough praise on it. However, without the concept a million romantic books would never be written as without the human compulsion to destroy things around them, how can any tension arise?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1471142469</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Carol ShieldsLucy Ashe|title= The Republic of LoveClara and Olivia|rating= 4.5|genre= General Fiction|summary= The Republic of Love year is a mesh-like novel1933. The place? Sadler's Wells. Ballerinas Clara and Olivia are sisters, peopled with a huge cast of characters interwoven in familialtwins no less. Identical on the outside but not, friendlywe learn, neighbourly and romantic relationshipson the inside. WinnipegAnd not on stage, the city in which virtually all the action in Shieldeither. Because there's novel takes place, ties them togethera lot that builds a dancer. The story follows two singleSome things that can be taught or learnt – discipline, thirty-something charactersattention to detail – and some things, Fay and Tomthat ''je ne sais quoi'', who live opposite each other and have a complicated array of mutual acquaintances but that don't know each othercome from the classroom. Shields alternates between their two points of view as they are slowly drawn together. This is A stage presence, a domestic novel in the best sense; there is charm, a focus on the beauty and mundanity of ordinary people's unremarkable lives in an unexceptional city'joie de vivre''. The difference between a hard-worker, from Fay's satisfaction in the pop sound and toasted crumb smell of her twin slice toaster, to Tom's ungainly Saturday morning jogsa star. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>9462380899</amazonuk>0861544080

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Penny ParkesHeather Fawcett|title= Out Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Practice|rating= 4|genre= General Fiction|summary=In a last-ditch attempt to save her failing marriage, GP Holly Graham relocates to the charming village of Larkford with her family to work at the local practice. She finds life as a village doctor very different to her previous role in a busy city hospital, and falls in love with the close-knit community and its quirky residents. But just as Larkford is beginning to feel like home, Holly is hit by a bombshell that threatens to destroy everything she has worked so hard to achieve. Can she rise to the challenge and fight for what she loves? Maybe she will discover something about herself in the process.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1471153045</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Steven Rowley|title=Lily and the OctopusFaeries

|summary=Meet Ted Flask. A middle-agedEmily Wilde is an expert academic scholar on faerie lore, and she has travelled extensively, and researched meticulously, gay Los Angelinoto write her life's work, he has the one love very first encyclopaedia of his lifefaeries. While the fall-out of relationships with men sends him Whilst she is brilliant at research and speaking to therapyfaeries, he can rely on Lily, the Dachshundshe is not so good with people. They've been together through thick and thinSo when she finds herself far, ever since far North in the little pup – small village of Hrafvsnik, having somehow offended the runtvillage matriarch, she is not sure what she has done, no less – seemed nor how to pick Ted out. Ted's sister's unusual marriage was almost marred by Lily being under the surgeon's knife, at great expense – but redeem herself and put her final investigations for her book back on the whole they have life sortedright track. He tries to write, but Friday night is board games, Saturday night is movie nightEnter Wendell Bambleby, her dashingly handsome and Sunday night is pizza night. Ohinsufferable rival who arrives unexpectedly, all charm and yesdelight, Lily talks much to Ted, either in Emily''FULLY! CAPITALISED! EVER! EXCLAMATORY! BARKS!'' or in regular speechs frustration. Oh, and yes, Lily has an octopus But why is he here? What does he want? And what exactly is going on her head.with the faerie folk around Hravsnik?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1471154343</amazonuk>0356519120

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Julie Cohen1398515388|title=FallingThe Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)|rating=4.5

|summary=Here is the story First of three womenall, from three generations within it was the same family. There is Joearthquake, a forty year old single mother whose first husband dieddeep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and whose second husband ran off with their nannythis, in turn, caused the nuclear meltdown. She is left caring for her older teenage daughter, Lydia, and her two little ones, Oscar The result was complete and Iris, whilst harbouring a secret that she feels she cannot share with anyoneutter devastation. Her daughter Lydia is the second female characterThe deaths were uncountable, and as well as the usual teenage angst she is also dealing with grief, still, over her father's death, anger with her mother for her second disastrous marriage, and her own very difficult secret that she is unable to talk to anyone aboutloss of livelihoods was widespread. Finally there's Honor who is Jo's mother in law, The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the mother list of Jo's first husband, Stephen. Honor has priorities but - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a fall, breaks her hip, and is forced to move in with Jo for dog outside a time as she has no one else who can help herconvenience store. She too is hiding He wasn't a secret from dog person but the world, and as you read the story you begin convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to wonder if any of these characters actually know who the others are, open his car door and if any of them will ever start telling Tamon the truthdog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784160636</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jenn AshworthChristopher Bowden|title=FellMr Magenta|rating=54

|summary=Now her parents have died, Annette returns to sell her old childhood home but thereChristopher Bowden's work to do on the decrepit building first. As she wanders around and tries to make some order latest novel is a patient untangling of the overgrown shambles, shea seemingly ordinary woman's watched life, carried out by the ghost of her mother, Netty; nephew after she has died. The aunt who always provided a spirit with regrets. Netty reminisces about Annette's childhood safe harbour and the turning point their lives reached when the mysterious healer Timothy Richardson came a little bit of indulgence to stay. It was a time young nephew had had a much more interesting life than that promised so much but one for which Netty now needs nephew Stephen had ever realised and it seems to him an obligation to make amends, even if she is beyond the gravefind it all out.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473630606</amazonuk>B0B6Z9VJDW

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Jill CimentJennifer Mason|title= Act Partitions of GodUnity|rating= 4.5|genre= General Fiction|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 ''Act Partitions of GodUnity'' is a story about two ageing twins who find a worrying mushroom growing in their cupboard, she sets her mind to solving a landlady searching for the spotlight and a Russian immigrant whose greatest fear is insignificancemurder.. What the insurance company describes as an act of God brings their already overlapped, Brooklyn lives in to sharper focus. What do you do when disaster threatens? Is it survival of the fittest or should we love thy neighbour? |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782272119</amazonuk>B09LQR9FRF

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Fredrik BackmanWill Carver|title=Britt-Marie Was HereThe Daves Next Door|rating=54

|summary= Brett-Marie has never met Five strangers come together in one moment as a kitchen she doesn't want suicide bomber prepares to clean. In fact, permanently armed with bicarbonate of soda and window cleaner, she's always ready to clean anythingdetonate his vest on a London tube line. Her husband Kent is an entrepreneur, you knowAs their fates overlap, with excellent taste and expensive clothes. Yet here she the story is, told in Borgbackwards order, a rundown small town, in search of her first job for 40 years. Life takes some odd turns sometimesleading up to the fateful moment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473617200</amazonuk>1914585186}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Rodrigo Hasbun and Sophie Hughes (translator)Jennifer Mason|title=AffectionsPreposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery|rating=4.5

|summary=If you thought your teenaged years were ''A struggling poetry zine, a struggle to work out mom-and-pop mobile diner in the worldNorthern California redwoods, and yourself, consider that of Heidi Ertl. Or either of her sisters – this book serves as a sort of tribute to these three real400-life women, and meter hurdler who just missed the lives that came out of their very disjointed youth2004 Olympics, forced to be rarefied from the norm by their family uprooting. Father Hans was one of Leni Riefenstahla women's key cameramentrack coach with a yen for bullwhips, and a Nazi military photographer, before taking the whole family into postbillionaire with a state-war exile in Bolivia. Their mother would have followed him to the ends of -the earth – as -art S&M dungeon, a man serving a life sentence in part would their daughtersAlabama, the older two of which start the book by joining him on an expedition to discover a lost Incan city. Heidi finds youngenigmatic signature, K(s, x), instant love on the trek – but sees the dark side of such emotionsa cheap oil painting, tooan erotic art dealer in Georgia.. Older sister Monika, who might well be manic depressive, finds something else, while .'' This is just a sample of the baby cast of the family stays at home with a maudlin mothercharacters and settings in Preposterous. So much here could As you can see, some keeping up will be the hook on which to hang a full novel, but if anything it's the reaction required! The basic premise of them all to this unusual formative journey that inspires mystery story goes like this book...|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782272135</amazonuk>B09STS96HS