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[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Rick BassJenny Lecoat|title= For a Little WhileBeyond Summerland|rating= 4|genre= Short StoriesGeneral Fiction|summary=''For a Little While'' is a collection Jean lives on Jersey with her mother where they are celebrating the end of twenty-five short stories from Rick Bassthe occupation. As someone previously unacquainted with Bass During the war, Jean' work this new collection s father was arrested for listening to a wonderful introduction to his quirky, unusual style which focuses on stripped back, simple fables featuring often mundane situationsbanned radio and soldiers took him away one night, mysterious characters leaving Jean and magical experiencesher mother waiting for years for news of him. The characters in each tale are beautifully crafted As the British finally free the Channel islands from the Nazis, and the stories are dreamywar is finally over, loose narratives covering everything from love to death to choices made and chances takentheir 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?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782273042</amazonuk>1846976537

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Jem LesterOnyi Nwabineli|title= Shtum.Allow Me to Introduce Myself|rating= 4.5|genre= General Fiction|summary= Jonah Jewell is ten years old; he likes Marmite sandwichesAnuri spent her childhood on display to the world, thanks to her step-mother Ophelia's increasingly popular presence on social media, being outside where she posted every step of Anuri's childhood for sponsorships and sticking exactly to his routine. He cannot speak but he communicates his wants influencer deals and needs clearly, basically, monetary gain. The adults Now Anuri is in his her twenties and she is slowly trying to regain her confidence and to get her life do nothing but speak but they do not communicate nearly as effectively as Jonahback, suing her step-mother to take down the content about her. While functioning Anuri is battling alcoholism, failing to start her PhD, undergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online and receiving money from them for doing so. Most importantly, she is desperately worried about her little sister, who is the outsidenew focus of Ophelia's online empire. Can she save her sister, this is and perhaps herself and her relationship with her father at the story same time?|isbn=0861546873}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1529153298|title=The List of a Suspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary=It's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. (A woman? I mean, honestly...) She's not what's worrying Miv's family falling and tearing each other apart, though. Women have been disappearing. Well, they've been murdered, but to have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. Ben Jewell needs Miv's upset because she's overheard that her father wants to fight for his son move the family 'Down South'. When you're from Yorkshire, Down South is a frightening, foreign place, best avoided. For Miv, the move would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, and by doing so needs she'll do anything to learn how prevent that. She's not worried about the dangers or that her Mum's stopped talking - to fight for himselfanyone. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1409162982</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Alice Hoffman1035906708|title= FaithfulDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin|rating= 4.5|genre= General Fiction |summary= Growing up on Long Island, Shelby Richmond is an ordinary girl until one night an extraordinary tragedy changes her fate. Her best friend's future is destroyed in an accident, while Shelby walks away with the burden We tend to think of guilt. What happens when a life is turned inside out? When love is something so distant it may Maria Callas as well be a star in the sky? Moving from a life in her Greek, but she was born to Greek parents basement to a life in Manhattan, New York City, Shelby remains damaged by the loss of in December 1923 and only moved to Athens when she was thirteen. Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her best friend, stumbling through life blindly and fighting desperately father changed it to become connected 'Callas' to anything at allmake it more manageable in the States. But, as When she grows, was back in Athens - supposedly so that she discovers emotion, survival and happiness, bundled up with dogs, food, books and men could get appropriate training for her voice - she's probably best avoiding… Deep in New York City she find was raised under the Nazi occupation by a circle mother who mercilessly exploited her and made no secret of lost and found soulsher preference for her elder sister, and the angel who's been watching over her since that fateful night all those years ago…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1471157717</amazonuk>Jackie.

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Tim PearsAlexander McCall Smith|title= The HorsemanPerfect Passion Company|rating= 4.5|genre= General Fiction|summary= The Horseman feels like Perfect Passion Company is a novel written much earlier than 2016. This is dating agency in large part because it is set in 1911 in rural Somerset but also because Pears writes Edinburgh, run by Ness and operating as an alternative to all the online apps in providing a style which is reminiscent of authors in the twentieth centurymore personal, tailored service. Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if not she could come and look after the nineteenth. Readers who are hoping for actionbusiness, pace and suspense will be sorely disappointed in The Horseman, in which not as Ness is planning to take a lot happens at all; the story could easily be condensed into trip to Canada to get away for a couple while. Katie is coming out of pages. However, if you have a rainy weekend in break up with a cosy cottage somewherebad boyfriend, Pears provides and so jumps at the perfect companionchance to come home to Edinburgh. And so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, giving readers bringing us to an antidote Edinburgh we already love, thanks to frenetic44 Scotland Street and the Isabel Dalhousie novels, twenty first century urban lifebut with some new characters who quickly begin to charm. Katie has no experience in running a business, or in match-making, but Ness has full confidence in her abilities, and there's always her very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, William, to lend a hand…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1632866935</amazonuk>1846976596

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Miguel Bonnefoy and Emily Boyce (translator)Dean Koontz|title=Octavio's JourneyThe Bad Weather Friend|rating=34.5|genre=Literary Fiction Paranormal|summary=Meet OctavioBenny is having a terrifically bad day. He's a large lunkloses his job, a gentle giant, living alone in a lowly Venezuelan town – a town which once, fleetingly, had famehe loses his fiancee, fashion and success through a minor miracle, but has none any longerhis house gets trashed. Octavio, it seemsOh, and someone has some unusual habits – here he isdelivered a really weird, marching off disturbing coffin-sized object to the chemist's with a table across his backhome, for and it 's possible that whoever or whatever was all inside is the doctor had at thing that has trashed his house! The thing is, Benny is the time very last person to write deserve all this bad luck. He is a prescription onnice person. A really nice person. Now we never learn exactly what the cause of the prescription was, but we soon find So fortunately for Benny it turns out what that the cause of the table delivery to his house is – Octavio cannot reada new friend, a bad weather friend called Spike, and who has learned nothing beyond cutting into his palm been sent to allow the wound to let help him escape the need to writesince Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a good person. Until, that Spike is, a woman seems going to suggest a way for him to learn to read and writetake care of Benny, and to love – but that experience also proves to Octavio that there is a whole host will certainly take care of other things Benny's enemies, if he can put his mind to, both for goodBenny, and for bad…Harper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1910477311</amazonuk>1662500491

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Charlie LaidlawKatherine Howe|title= The Things We Learn When We're DeadA True Account|rating= 4.5|genre= General Fiction|summary= On the way Hannah Masury is living in Boston, having been sent to live with a dinner partyfamily who run an inn, Lorna Love steps into the path of an oncoming carand being made to work there from a young age. Waking up in what appears When she hears there is to be a hospital, but a hospital hanging of some pirates in which wine is served for supper, everyone avoids her questionsthe town, she decides to go and watch. Enthralled and her nurse looks suspiciously like Sean Conneryhorrified in equal measure, it soon transpires that Lorna is Hannah finds herself embroiled in Heaven, or, a young boy's death at least, on HVNthe hands of two vicious pirates. Because HVN is a lost, dysfunctional spaceship She hides away, so that they don't find and God the aging hippy captain. At first Lorna can remember nothing, but as kill her memories return – some goodtoo, some bad, she realises that and then to escape them completely she has a decision runs away to makesea, dressing as a boy and that maybejoining the notorious Ned Low's pirate ship as a cabin boy. She soon finds herself in the thick of things when there is a mutiny on board, she needs to find a way home…and from there we are caught up in her rip roaring tale of life on the ocean waves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1786150352</amazonuk>0861547438

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Federico Axat1471180158|title= Kill the Next OneMaybe Tomorrow|author=Penny Parkes|rating= 4.5|genre= ThrillersGeneral Fiction|summary= After getting started with the opening chapters of Spanish writerJamie Matson works in an upper-class grocery store, Federico Axatfor a man who's ''Kill a control freak with all the Next One'', you might be forgiven for thinking you are stuck with one subtlety of those machismo riddled tales where a middle-aged man with a mysterious past is forced to shoot or blunder his way through a by-the-numbers thrillerhalf brick. The spectre of Lee Child Jamie's successful Jack Reacher series creeping in around the edges of the page. The novel opens with Ted McKay and son, Bo, 'has his Browning pointed to his templeproblems'. He has 's asthmatic and the perfect lifemore you read, including a beautiful wife and two adoring children, but has discovered the more you'll suspect that he is also in possession of an untreatable tumour buried deep within his brain which is slowly killing him's on the autistic spectrum. However, right before he decides Sometimes Jamie needs to take time off at short notice - she's a frequent flier in the shot local A&E and end his life, there is a knock on his doorsometimes Bo's not fit enough to go to school. Standing behind it is a man named Justin Lynch who tells Ted that he represents an all-knowing organisation that turns would- Missed shifts or the need to be suicides into opportunities away on time to correct the imbalances of pick Bo up from school are occasions when Jamie can be controlled and put in the lawwrong. Ted, instead of killing himself, could kill someone who really deserves it It was going to come to a head.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1911231065</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Laurie FrankelB0CKD1L5JL|title=This Is How It Always IsRadio Free Olympia|author=Jeffrey Dunn

|summary=Claude Petr is an orphan. Rescued by the strange, reclusive Bear, he is brought up far from bustling cities and busy human society, in the baby forests of the family. HeWashington's very brightOlympic Peninsula. He has After Bear dies and a vocabulary way beyond his years so he can hold his own brief sojourn in the rough human company, and tumble of armed with only a house containing four older brotherspirate radio transmitter, an emergency doctor mother and Petr goes on a writer father. Claude also likes to wear dresses. He wants to become a night fairy when he grows up. And one dayjourney through the forest, Claude becomes Poppy. He becomes she. Poppy's parentsbroadcasting the strange, Penn wild and Rosie, aren't too concerned at first - children all like to try on different identities and why should Claude/Poppy be any different? But it soon becomes clear that Poppy isn't play-acting at being a girl. Poppy is a girl. And things get complicated..rarely heard voices he encounters.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1472241584</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Alexandra KleemanSarah Marsh|title= You Too Can Have A Body Like MineSign of Her Own|rating= 43.5|genre= General Fiction|summary=A woman known only After a bout of scarlet fever as A lives in an unnamed American city with her roommate, B, and boyfriend, Ca child, who wants Ellen Lark loses her to join him on hearing. Suddenly plunged into a reality dating show. A eats mostly popsicles and oranges, watches endless amounts world of televisionsilence, often just for everything about her life changes. Living in a time when the commercials — particularly the recurring cartoon escapades use of Kandy Katsign 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 mascot for an entirely chemical dessert — deaf and models herself on an impossible standard of beautyusing a system called Visible Speech. She fixates on At the fifteen minutes of fame a local celebrity named Michael has earned after buying up a Wally's Supermarket's entiresame time, Bell is working on other inventions and increasingly ampleideas, supply of veal. Meanwhile, B is attempting to make and Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a twin complicated tangle of A, who in turn hungers for something to give meaning to her life, something aside from C's pornography addictionespionage. Maybe something like what's gotten into her neighbors across the street, the family who's begun ''ghosting'' themselves beneath white sheets with holes cut for eyes…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0008210845</amazonuk>1035401614

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tomoka Shibasaki and Polly Barton (translator)B0BC3YTCMR|title=Spring GardenGood Girls Die|author=Ayura Ayira

|genre=General Fiction |summary=Murakami, and (long before the film) Endo's ''SilenceThis story is not for everyone.'' Lavender Daniels was three weeks short of her fifteenth birthday when The Incident happened. ThatShe 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 my limit as regards contemporary Japanese writingcontagious. But now thereIt's Tomoka Shibasaki, and her noted work ''Spring Garden''. Which, make no mistake, not easy being a black girl whose skin is definitely Japanese84% white. For instance, if I told you it starts with She had a man looking up to watch his female neighbour crush on seventeen-year-old Reggie Anderson but never thought he would notice her balcony, . Then he did: Lavender was very good at math and concerns obsession, you could well think it 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 about house and he raped her. But no – perhaps only in the west is the gaze so male. The obsession is very much hers hereIn shock, and it – and the novel – concern she even allowed him to give her a singular houselift home. And the very singular country it lives in, and the changes it is going through…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782272704</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Laura Kaye1472263936|title= English AnimalsThe Figurine|author=Victoria Hislop|rating= 5|genre= Literary General Fiction|summary= When Mirka gets a job It was in a country house in rural England1968 that Helena McCloud made her first trip to Greece. She was alone: her mother, Greek by birth, she has no idea of had left the struggle she faces family home and refused to make sense of a very English couplereturn, but Mary and Hamish (Helena's parents) felt that it would be a way pity if Helena grew up without knowing her grandparents or understanding her Greek heritage. Her trip to the family apartment in up-market Kolonaki would be the first of life that is entirely alien several annual visits. She grew to love her. Richard grandmother and Sophie are chaoticthe family's maid, drunkenDina, frequently outrageous but also warm, generous was wary - and kind to Mirkafrightened - of her grandfather, despite their argumentative and turbulent marriageretired general Stamatis Papagiannis. Mirka is swiftly commandeered by Richard for He was proud of his latest money-making enterprise, taxidermy, close connections to the Junta and soon surpasses him in skill. After a traumatic break two years ago with her expected his family in Slovakia, Mirka finds to her surprise that she is happy at Fairmont Halluphold his values but saw no reason to accommodate them. But when she tells Sophie that she is gay, everything she values is put in danger His prejudices included Helena's red hair and she must learn the hard way what she really believes ingreen eyes - inherited from her father's Scottish ancestors.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>140870823X</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Rory GleesonDean Koontz|title= Rockadoon ShoreAfter Death|rating= 4.53|genre= General Fiction|summary=Cath Michael Mace, Head of Security, at a top secret biological research facility, is among 55 people who die when a virus is worried about her friendsreleased in a bio-hazard accident. DanDan is struggling with 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 death shrouded bodies of his ex, Lucy is drinking way too much dead friends and Steph has become closed offformer colleagues. A weekend away As he recovers his senses, he realises that there is just what they needsomething different about him; he can ''feel'' everything. They travel out to Rockadoon Lodge, to the wilds in the west of Ireland ''Everything''. But the weekend doesn Michael isn't go to plan''Michael'' anymore. JJ is more concerned with getting high than spending time with them, while Merc |isbn=1662500467}} {{Frontpage|isbn=B0BVDC2VWH|title=The Grave Listeners|author=William Frank|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=The village is humiliated isolated and seeks revengepoor. It's surrounded by a Witching Forest. And when their elderly neighbour Malachy arrives 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 their doorstep homes, and even gallows, if needed. The fear of being buried alive is an existential superstition in the dead of night with village and that is the reason Volushka, a gun in his handsdrunken, self-indulgent, nothing will be the same again for any lazy lout of them.a man is tolerated..|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1473634075</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Eliza GrahamB0BYF82CXT|title= Another Day Gone|rating= 3.5|genre= General Fiction|summary=A single event from the past has the power to create a chainSemi-reaction that has powerful consequences in the future. This is a theme explored and expanded upon in ''Another Day Gone,'' the story of sisters Sara and Polly who, despite being close during childhood, have grown emotionally distant from one another after Polly discovers a devastating family secret. We join their story at the point where the prodigal sister, Polly, returns home after years of no contact with her family. Sarah contacts their old nanny Bridie in the hope of piecing together the family mystery and unearthing the secrets before it is too late, but Bridie's memory is failing and some secrets may be lost forever.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1503940039</amazonuk>}}{{newreviewDetached|author=Ruth Hogan|title=The Keeper of Lost ThingsDeborah Stone

|summary=Anthony Peardew lost the love of his life before they married. In the midst of his tragedy he found solace ''Bill and purpose Amanda are living in collecting 'lost things' a semi- things that were left behind on trainsdetached house, stuck in parksa depressing rut of boredom and disappointment, or found in the gutterwhen Terry and Fiona – glamorous, successful and he records each and every one carefully, very much in love – move in the hope that perhaps some day they can be reunited with next door. Despite their rightful owner. He writes stories about different outlooks on life, the items he finds, becoming a published author. However, as he grows older couples befriend each other and starts life appears to realise that he improve for both pairs. But all is dying, he knows he must hand over the task to someone else choosing his housekeeper, Laura, to take on not what isit seems, to her, a completely unknown aspect of his lifeand their increasingly interconnected relationships are fated for tragedy.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1473635462</amazonuk>''

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Mike GayleShalini Boland|title= The Hope Family CalendarSilent Bride|rating= 3.5|genre= General Fiction|summary= Mr Tom Hope Alice and Seth are a match made in heaven. He is becoming Mr No Hope. His wife everything she has been killed in an accidentsearching for; handsome, accomplished, clever, funny; total and utter husband-material. She is all he's now leftcould possibly want in a wife; beautiful, successful, haplessly trying to bring up their two young daughtersconfident… and so the inevitable proposal is eagerly accepted by Alice and the wedding is planned and set. While his mother in law When the much-anticipated day arrives, Alice is a help in walked down the beginningaisle by her father, beaming with pride and excitement as she soon adopts a cruel-surveys the congregation – their friends assembled to-be-kind approach celebrate this joyful day and decides when Seth turns to leave him to itface his approaching bride, knowing the only way heAlice'll step up is if he s world implodes because she has absolutely no choice in idea who the man at the matteraltar is, who is waiting for her to become his wife.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473608953</amazonuk>1662507089

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Nadiya Hussain1787636003|title=The Secret Lives of the Amir Sisters|rating=4|genre=Women's Fiction|summary=The Amirs are dysfunctional: there's really no other way of putting it. They're of Bangladeshi origin and they're the only Muslim family in the small village of Wyvernage. On the surface they look to be happy, but actually each Girls of the sisters is struggling in her own way. For the most part they're doing it quietly, but it's not always the case. The eldest is Fatima. Her name's often abbreviated to Fatti: it's not meant unkindly, but she's well upholstered and at thirty she's unmarried. Even her mother doesn't seem to think that there's much point in trying to find a husband for her.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0008192251</amazonuk>}}{{newreviewSummer|author=Jesse Loncraine|title=In the FieldKatie Bishop|rating=3.5

|summary= ''In It was the summer when Rachel Evans turned eighteen that she and Caroline went backpacking around Greece and arrived on the Fieldisland. Rachel wasn'' is essentially a story of two mothers who have been separated from their sons. Liz and her (adult) son Orin are both Western journalistst exactly innocent but she was, perhaps, naive, while Christine and her 12so when thirty-four-year-old son Paul are from a remote village Alistair Wright started to take an interest in East Africaher, she was flattered rather than wary. After major surgery, Liz flies It was quite a while before he made any sort of physical approach to East Africa to find her son who has gone walkaboutand by that time she was obsessed by him. At the same time Alistair worked for Henry Taylor, Christine is mourning looking after his interests on the loss of her own family: her husband has been killed island and her son abducted by militiain particular in the bar where all the girls either worked or partied.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1910369179</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=PJ VanstonAmanda Craig|title=Rasmus: A Television TaleThree Graces|rating=4.5

|summary=ItFew styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the state-of-the-nation novel. There's all something so utterly compelling about any writer who can catch hold of the ratings in the world atmosphere of TV. Therefore the BBCday and capture it, part crafting an image of the British televisual establishment since TV was invented, feels country as it has nothing to fear from a new internet channelstands in one particular moment. However those in control donTo say that Amanda Craig is skilled at doing this would be embarrassingly inadequate: she't understand what – and who – is behind s practically synonymous with the genre of contemporary social fiction at this new phenomenonpoint. The mysterious Rasmus She has such a gift for weaving the ongoing issues of the day into the lives of her characters in a plan way that feels natural and some savagely innovative ideas; nothing can stand lived-in his way, never making them ciphers for social commentary but instead fully realised people, grappling with issues far larger than themselves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1785893610</amazonuk>140871468X

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jere Krakoff152915118X|title=Something Is Rotten in Fettig: A SatirePineapple Street|author=Jenny Jackson

|summary=Leopold Plotkin finds himself in some very hot water when he initiates ''Pineapple Street'' is the Mud Crisisstory of three women: Sasha, Darley and Georgiana. Darley and George are sisters and Sasha is married to their brother Cord. Leopold inherited They're Stocktons, only Sasha isn't a Stockton by birth so she isn't readily accepted into the family butchertribe. The problem's shop exacerbated when the clan matriarch, Tilda, asks Cord and Sasha if they'd like to move into the Pineapple Street property. Tilda and he is Chip have renovated and downsized to another property, a very good street or so away, which they own. They won't need any of the furniture from Pineapple Street, so Sasha and skilled butcherCord can move straight in. But he doesn Nominally, they had a choice but that wasn't like people watching him work the reality. Darley and is generally lacking Georgiana start to call Sasha 'the gold digger'. She's living in social skills''their'' family home. The shopThey use it so often that they abbreviate it to 'the GD's trade suffers .}}{{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 Leopold decides bring Edie to live with his family, as Edie is starting to cover 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 window with mud so truth of what happened all that no-one can see insidetime 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?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1681141973</amazonuk>1804181250

{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The BoyMadelaine Lucas|authortitle=Wytske VersteegThirst for Salt

|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Kito ''Love, I'd read, was supposed to be a withdrawn child. It was difficult light and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for his parentsgravity'' Told from a retrospective view, especially his mother, to reach hima young woman unravels the year-long relationship that once defined her. Like many children who turn inwardsOverlaid with later wisdom, he struggled the narrator relives the affair with a man twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to make friends at schoolits sorrowful end the summer after. And those he did make seemed only to use him for access to his games consoles. His dark skin also marked him out Set against the backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for bullying. Kito went missing after a class trip to Salt'' details the beach. His body was discovered when 24-year-old narrator's deepening relationship with her older lover, depicting its all-consuming nature, how it washed up changed her perspective on the sand. Kito had drownedboth romantic and familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908446501</amazonuk>0861546490

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jodi Picoult0008506337|title=Small Great ThingsThe Garnett Girls|author=Georgina Moore

|summary=Ruth Jefferson is a nurseThe 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. She looks after new mothers Richard was twenty-one and their babies and shedescribed by Margo's the sort of nurse that you hope youmother as 'll encounter when itan older man's your turn, or the turn of anyone close to you. She cares and sheHer parents worried that Richard's good at influence would take her job, very goodaway from what they felt she could achieve - going to Oxford and having a glittering career. In the event, in fact. Turk they eloped and Brittany Bauer and their new son, Davis, were under Richard took her care, only Turk took strong exception away from the Isle of Wight. Margo did go to Ruth having anything Oxford and went on to do with their childbecome a well-respected journalist. The couple had three children: Turk Rachel, Imogen and Brittany Sasha. Life was lived in London and holidays were white supremacists - and Ruth Jefferson was blackspent at Sandcove, an African American and despite all her experience the family home on the Isle of Wight. Even then the doubts about Richard's drinking were never far from Margo's mind: ''she was banned from caring from Davis Bauerwould never be able to leave him in charge''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444788000</amazonuk>Then Richard left them.

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Karen Jennings1914585402|title= Travels With My FatherDashboard Elvis is Dead|author=David F Ross|rating= 4.5|genre= General Fiction |summary= Despite the coda, this does not feel like I reviewed David F Ross's book [[There'an autobiographical novels Only One Danny Garvey by David F Ross|There''. I am not sure why Jennings felt the need to couch s Only One Danny Garvey]] a couple of years back and remember being absolutely floored by how powerful and affecting it in those terms unless there is much in the structure that is fiction. I'm hoping there isn't. I am hoping that the fiction is purely that conceit that this pretends to be a novel. If that was necessary to get it published, then I'll applaud the subterfuge, because this is writing that needs to be read. It is – if as true as I want it to be – was a delicate reminiscence: a daughter's ''in memoriam'' to a father she lovedgripping, worshipped, idealised, cared-for, lived withemotionally wounding read, and yes (in true daughterly fashion) at times, hated. A father who rereading my review of it my main takeaway was, therefore, a good dadthat I might not have lavished enough praise on it. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907320695</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Elin HilderbrandLucy Ashe|title= Winter StormsClara and Olivia|rating= 4.5|genre= General Fiction|summary= A The year is a long time in the life of the Quinn family1933. So much can happenThe place? Sadler's Wells. For some people this can just be births and deaths Ballerinas Clara and Olivia are sisters, twins no less. Identical on the whole circle of life, outside but for the Quinn family it's more love trianglesnot, felonieswe learn, drug dealers who stalk you, ex-husbands who haunt you, and business opportunities transplanted from the scorching Caribbean to on the cooler north east coast of Americainside. As spring leads to summer, leads to autumn leads to winter we follow the extended family And not on Nantucket and in nearby cities (Bostonstage, Manhattan) and learn either. Because there's a lot that builds a dancer. Some things that as divisive as life can betaught or learnt – discipline, there are attention to detail – and some ties things, that ''je ne sais quoi'', that will always bind youdon't come from the classroom. A stage presence, a charm, a ''joie de vivre''. In this case the tie is called BartThe difference between a hard-worker, and whatever else is happening, if he returns then everything else will all be oka star.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473620570</amazonuk>0861544080

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Ross ArmstrongHeather Fawcett|title= The WatcherEmily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries|rating= 4|genre= Thrillers General Fiction|summary= Lily Gullick lives with her husband Aiden in a new-build flat opposite Emily Wilde is an estate which expert academic scholar on faerie lore, and she has been marked for demolition. A keen birdwatchertravelled extensively, and researched meticulously, she canto write her life't help spying on her neighbourss work, the very first encyclopaedia of faeries. Then one day Lily sees something suspicious through her binoculars Whilst she is brilliant at research and soon her elderly neighbour Jean speaking to faeries, she is found deadnot so good with people. Lily So when she finds herself far, far North in the small village of Hrafvsnik, intrigued by having somehow offended the social divide in her local area as it becomes increasingly gentrifiedvillage matriarch, knows that she is not sure what she has done, nor how to actredeem herself and put her final investigations for her book back on the right track. But Enter Wendell Bambleby, her interference is not going unnoticeddashingly handsome and insufferable rival who arrives unexpectedly, all charm and as she starts delight, much to get close to the truth, her own life comes under threatEmily's frustration. But can Lily really trust everything she seeswhy is he here? What does he want? And what exactly is going on with the faerie folk around Hravsnik?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0008181187</amazonuk>0356519120

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ryan North1398515388|title=Romeo The Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and/or JulietAlison Watts (translator)|rating=34.5|genre=HumourGeneral Fiction|summary=For First of all those who think tragedy plots are too restricted , it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and prescribedthis, in turn, read oncaused the nuclear meltdown. In these pages you too will see that Romeo had lots The result was complete and utter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, and the loss of options en route to hitting the bottlelivelihoods was widespread. Likewise, she could have turned away The fact that many pets were separated from her predestined path at no end their owners came far down the list of juncturespriorities but - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. And to what result? Well, happy marriage and He wasn't a kid called Ben, because dog person but the leads have just banged peopleconvenience store owner's heads together comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and stopped Tamon the quarrelling, or Death by Tybalt (him) or a long life running an establishment curing murderous women, such as a Lady M (her)dog jumped in. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0356508536</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Henrietta Rose-InnesChristopher Bowden|title= NinevehMr Magenta|rating= 54|genre= General Fiction|summary= Henritetta Rose-InneChristopher Bowden's ''Nineveh'' instantly reassures you that you are in the presence latest novel is a patient untangling of a confident and talented writerseemingly ordinary woman's life, carried out by her nephew after she has died. The story aunt who always provided a safe harbour and a little bit of Katya Grubbs, indulgence to a young nephew had had a second generation pest exterminator who specialises in relocating the bugs and rodents much more interesting life than that ruin middle-class garden parties, Rose-Inne writes with the enviable ability of describing both the intricacies of Katya's job nephew Stephen had ever realised and the feeling of it simultaneouslyseems to him an obligation to find it all out. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1910709166</amazonuk>B0B6Z9VJDW

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sara Stridsberg and Deborah Bragan-Turner (translator)Jennifer Mason|title=The Gravity Partitions of LoveUnity|rating=4.5|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=Particularly literate cover… Setting of a real-life mental hospital – Here at Bookbag Towers, we first met Elizabeth Cromwell, dominatrix and unintentional detective in Sweden… Mature themes… Opening with an emotion- [[Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery by Jennifer Mason|Preposterous]], when she investigated and closure-laden death… Yes, this book has more than its share unravelled a series of things to put the potential reader offdisappearances. WhichIn ''Partitions of Unity'', in this instance, is quite she sets her mind to solving a large shame indeedmurder...|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857054767</amazonuk>B09LQR9FRF

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Steven BurgauerWill Carver|title=The Road To War: Duty & Drill, Courage & CaptureDaves Next Door

|genre=BiographyGeneral Fiction|summary=After World War II Bill Frodsham led an everyday life, raising a family Five strangers come together in an ordinary US suburb. He, his wife and children became friends with the Burgauer family, little Steven Burgauer knowing him one moment as Mr F. Time rolls on and little Steven grows up, and then eventually retires from the American financial sector to write science fiction and lecture from time to time. He's therefore surprised when, out of the blue, Mr F's daughter tracks him down and presents him with a pile of handwritten notes asking Steven suicide bomber prepares to make them into detonate his vest on a bookLondon tube line. These are Mr F's self-authored memoirs, stretching from his youth onwards and showing that this seemingly goodAs their fates overlap, kind but unremarkable man was anything but unremarkable. During the war Mr F trained for the impossible and then lived it as he led men across Omaha Beach on D Day. He was then captured and spent the rest of the war as a POW story is told in inhumane conditions. Steven accepted the request and ''The Road backwards order, leading up to War'' is the result: the life and war of Captain William C Frodsham Jrfateful moment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1450218806</amazonuk>1914585186}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Linda GrantJennifer Mason|title= The Dark CirclePreposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery|rating= 54|genre= General Fiction|summary= It's 1949'A struggling poetry zine, a mom-and with -pop mobile diner in the Second World War overNorthern California redwoods, a new decade of recovery is beginning. For East End teenagers Lenny and Miriam400-meter hurdler who just missed the 2004 Olympics, life has been suspended. Diagnosed a women's track coach with tuberculosisa yen for bullwhips, they are sent away to a sanatorium in Kent, to take the cure, submit to the way billionaire with a state-of -the Doctors-art S&M dungeon, and learn the deferential way of the patient. Through doors newly opened by the one year old NHS, come Lenny a man serving a life sentence in his striped London drape suitAlabama, and Miriam in cherry felt red coatan enigmatic signature, and beret pinned gingerly onto her blue-black curls. Trapped in a sterile closed environmentK(s, the twins find themselves meeting air force officersx), on a car salesman, a university graduate, a mysterious German womancheap oil painting, an erotic art dealer in Georgia...'' This is just a member sample of the Aristocracy, cast of characters and, arriving to blast away their lethargic submission to authority - an American merchant seamansettings in Preposterous. Together they discover that a cure is tantalisingly just out of reachAs you can see, and may only some keeping up will be gained through full scale rebellionrequired! The basic premise of this mystery story goes like this...|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>034900675X</amazonuk>B09STS96HS