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[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]__NOTOC__ {{Frontpage|author= Tahi Saihate|title= Astral Season, Beastly Season|rating= 3.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= We long for our past even though it is a place to which we can never return. Tahi Saihate, in her debut novel ''Astral Season, Beastly Season'' illustrates how these rose-tinted glasses often lie. Her novel is a meditation on youth and how the things we do as a teenager can seem intensely important and often life-altering.|isbn= 1916277101}}

{{Frontpage|class-"wikitable" cellpaddingauthor="15" <!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->Laura Imai Messina<!-- Abbs -->|title=The Phone Box at the End of the World|-rating=5| stylegenre="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|Literary Fiction[[image:1473691206.jpg|linksummary=http://wwwIn the northeast of Japan, in Inwate Prefecture a man installed a telephone box in his garden.amazon ''Inside there is an old black, telephone, disconnected, that carries voices into the wind.co'' It is a real place, a necessary place, and I am pleased to see the IMPORTANT NOTE that the author attaches to her story, that the place is not a tourist destination, it is a sacred place, a place that must be left to those who really need it.uk/dp/1473691206/ref|isbn=nosim?tag178658039X}}{{Frontpage|author=thebookbag-21]]Amin Maalouf|title=The Disoriented|rating=4.5| stylegenre=Literary Fiction|summary="verticalAdam has lived in Paris for years, speaks French more easily than his native Arabic. In fact he hasn't been back to his homeland for 25 years. An old friend is dying…or as Adam prefers to think of him a former-align: top; textfriend, perhaps not as harsh as an ex-align: left;"friend, or maybe. The falling out was a long time ago, and Adam's partner has no idea what it was about, even so she urges him to go knowing that he'll regret not doing so. Not knowing whether he's going because he needs or wants to, or simply because he was asked, he's on the next plane. |isbn=B07ZQSK9CY}}{{Frontpage|author=Joanne M Harris|title=A Pocketful of Crows|rating=[[Frieda by Annabel Abbs]]5|genre=Confident Readers|summary=I have always been of the mind that once you're above picture-book level and before you get to graphic sex & violence, there is no difference between books for children and books for adults. There are good books and poor ones. And Joanne Harris does not produce poor ones. ''A Pocketful of Crows'' is clearly aimed at the younger readers as witness the use of the middle initial in the author's name to differentiate from her adult offers. Ignore that if you have loved anything from ''Chocolat'' onwards you will know that Harris is mistress of the modern fairy tale. This is no different. It is an utter delight.|isbn=1473222184}}{{Frontpage|author=Frederic Beigbeder and Frank Wynne (translator)[[image:4star.jpg|linktitle=Category:{{{A Life Without End|rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Historical Fiction=4|Historical Fiction]], [[:Category:genre=Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]] Married to English Professor Ernest Weekleysummary=I looked at the calendar the other week, and disappointedly realised I have a birthday this year – I know, aristocrat Frieda Von Richtofen finds herself stifled by yet another one. It won't be one of the confines of married life. Visiting family in Munichmajor numbers, she becomes captivated by but the time when I have the same number as Heinz varieties looms on the ideas horizon. And then a few of revolution the big 0-numbers, and free loveif all goes well, I'll be an OBE. (Which of course stands for Over Bloody Eighty. Meeting ) Now if that's the penniless writer Dextent of my mid-life crisis, I guess I have to be happy.H Our author here doesn't use that exact phrase, but he might be said to be living one. Lawrence Determined to find out how to prolong life for as long as he wants – he would like to see 400 – he hops right into bed with the assistant to the first geneticist he interviews, she finds herself drawn into a passionate affair and they end up with a tempestuous relationshipchild, changing which is at least a way of continuing the course life of both their liveshis genes, and unleashing a creative outpouring that will change motive to keep on going. But how can he get to not flick the course of literature forever. [[Frieda by Annabel Abbs'final way out' switch, especially when foie gras tastes so nice?|Full Review]]isbn=1642860670}}{{Frontpage<!-- Susan Fletcher -->|author= Maryse Condé|-title= The Wondrous and Tragic Life of Ivan and Ivana| stylerating="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"4.5|genre= Literary Fiction[[image:0349007640.jpg|linksummary=httpWe live in a post- world://wwwpost-colonialism, post-modernism, post truth.amazonThe list goes on.coThere are numerous works that utilise the prefix post- in their categorisation, but perhaps none more so than Maryse Condé.uk/dp/0349007640/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbagIn her new novel, ''The Wondrous and Tragic Life of Ivan and Ivana'', Condé writes with fervour about the scars left by colonialism on the countries to which it latched itself. Ivan and Ivana are twins born in Guadeloupe, a French overseas department. They grow up with intense and passionate feelings for each other. As they grow up and move overseas, the ravages of a post-21]]colonial society drive them apart with tragic consequences.|isbn=1642860697}}{{Frontpage| styleauthor="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"Ukamaka Olisakwe|title= Ogadinma Or, Everything Will Be All Right|rating===[[House of Glass by Susan Fletcher]]===5 [[image:5star.jpg|linkgenre=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]], [[:Category:Historical Fiction|Historical Fiction]] Clara suffered from summary= The new novel by Ukamaka Olisakwe is a look at the trauma and heartache of being a woman in 1980s Nigeria. The title is ''Osteogenesis imperfectaOgadinma Or, Everything Will Be All Right'': these days it would probably be called brittle bone disease and whilst there . Ogadinma is still no cure, treatments have advanced. At the beginning eponymous heroine of the twentieth century story.. We are with her in every scene and it meant is her narrative voice that Clara was confined to her homeleads the story, living life through although Olisakwe writes in third person. This provides a window sense of detachment for the reader and highlights the tales isolation of Ogadinma. She is exiled from her mother, Charlotte, brought father's homeand sent to Lagos where she is married to an older man named Tobe. Both became far too knowledgeable about bones Their marriage descends into violence and indignities and Ogadinma must utilise her resourcefulness to escape.|isbn=1911648160}}{{Frontpage|author=Elliot Reed|title=A Key to Treehouse Living|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=This is the sounds they made on breakingstory of a young boy, William Tyce, who is being raised by his uncle after the death of his mother and his father's abandonment. Charlotte would ''list bones like continents'However, it isn't told in the usual narrative way. Clara would only escape Instead, the house after her mother's death - book is made up of glossary entries, written by William, as a tumour at the age way of thirty nine - describing certain events, situations and in her wanderings discovered Kew Gardensemotions. It runs alphabetically, starting with ABSENCE, then moving to ALPHABETICAL ORDER. Her growing knowledge of tropical plants led As I began to read I did find myself thinking 'what on earth?!' but I soon grew used to the offer of a job stocking a newly-built glass house at Shadowbrook style, and was instead caught up in GloucestershireWilliam's story. [[House of Glass by Susan Fletcher|Full Review]]isbn=1911545418}}{{Frontpage<!-- Hajaj -->|author= Karina Sainz Borgo and Elizabeth Bryer (translator)|-title= It Would Be Night in Caracas| stylerating="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"4|genre= Literary Fiction [[image:1786073943.jpg|linksummary=http://www ''It Would Be Night in Caracas'' illuminates the everyday horrors of modern day Venezuela.amazonIt begins with the death of Adelaida Falcon's mother and chronicles Adelaida's coming to terms with her new solitude in this world and her attempts to escape it.co.uk/dp/1786073943/ref=nosimDanger stalks the shadows and, in a society where the establishment is crumbling, who can you turn to?tag|isbn=thebookbag-21]]0062936867}}

 {| styleclass-"wikitable" cellpadding="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;15"|===[[The Water Thief by Claire Hajaj]]=== [[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]], [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]] Nick is in the middle of wedding preparations when he decides to leave his fiancée behind in London and take up a post in some un-named west African country providing engineering support for the building of a children's hospital. He has no idea what he is getting himself into. [[The Water Thief by Claire Hajaj|Full Review]]  <!-- Wilson Caroline Scott -->

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===[[Aftershocks Photographer of the Lost by A N WilsonCaroline Scott]]===

[[image:34.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Historical Fiction|Literary Historical Fiction]], [[:Category:General Literary Fiction|General Literary Fiction]]

In May 1921. Edie receives a country very much like New Zealand, but at photograph through the same time most avowedly not, two women will find lovepost. There is no letter or note with it. Strong love too, for our narrator will say that her first attraction for her partner was There is nothing written on the back of the only thing to make sense photograph. It is a picture of all those exaggerated songs she'd heard, and books and poems she'd readher husband, and plays she'd acted in – works of art that had until then seemed sheer hyperboleFrancis. It was entirely unrequited love Francis has been missing for quite some timefour years. Technically, he has been "missing, believed killed" but it does burgeon, or so we're promised from the off, because of that is not something quite drastic – that a major earthquake very much like young widow can believe. She hangs on the one that hit Christchurchword 'missing', but at disbelieving the same time most avowedly notword killed. This book then is the combined exploration of the lovers and the story [[Photographer of the quake. [[Aftershocks Lost by A N WilsonCaroline Scott|Full Review]]

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===[[Tirzah and the Prince of Crows The Dutch House by Deborah Kay DaviesAnn Patchett]]===

This is a quiet but remarkable storyWhen we first meet Danny and his elder sister, written in a style reminiscent of E. M. ForsterMaeve Conroy, they''[Tirzah re both living at The Dutch House with their parents and under the gaze of the Prince portraits of Crowsthe former owners whose oil paintings still hang on the walls. It'' has no great s a strange family dynamic: Cyril Conroy is distant and stirring action but rather small ripples that make the closest Danny seems to come to him is when he goes out with him on a huge impactSaturday collecting rents from properties the family owns. Tirzah Elna Conroy is a young girl of sixteen raised in a small Welsh town in loving, but absent increasingly often until the point comes when the 1970s by highly religious parents as part of a strict religious community. The book follows Tirzah though a tumultuous year as she tries to decide who children are told that she wants to will not bereturning. In other circumstances this might have affected Maeve and Danny deeply, and what she wants to do but their primary relationship is with her lifeeach other. It's a bond which only death will break. [[Tirzah and the Prince of Crows The Dutch House by Deborah Kay DaviesAnn Patchett|Full Review]]

<!-- Brooke Fieldhouse Tove Jansson -->

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===[[The Gilded Ones A Winter Book by Brooke FieldhouseTove Jansson]]===

[[image:4star5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:CrimeLiterary Fiction|CrimeLiterary Fiction]], [[:Category:Literary FictionShort Stories|Literary FictionShort Stories]]

It was a hot day in 1984 and Pulse had two job interviews for the day, but the heat wasnTove Jansson't the only reason why he wasn't feeling s worldwide fame lasts on top form. He'd had a disturbing dream the night before. He'd been following a Porsche on a difficult routeMoomin books, probably somewhere written in the Alps when the Porsche went off 1940s and later becoming television characters of the road. The passengersimplicity, a man, was dead, but the woman was still alive. naivety and sheer 'goodness'I'm Freia.that would later produce flowerpot men or teletubbies..''Simple drawings, she said. ''It's spelled the German way.'' Of the two job interviewssimple stories, the first was with an up-and-coming design studio in Brighton and it would almost certainly be good for Pulse's careersimple goodness. The second What is often forgotten outside of her native Finland is that she was with a run-down practice based in an old London house and headed by Patrick Lloyd-Lewis, whose wife, Freia, serious writer…that she wrote for adults as well as children…and that she had recently died in unexplained circumstances. The link with the dream of the night before was too much a feeling for Pulse to refuse the offer of a job. He couldn't resist natural world and the lure simple life that not only informed those child-like trolls but went far beyond any fantasy of how the mysteryworld might be. [[The Gilded Ones A Winter Book by Brooke FieldhouseTove Jansson|Full Review]]

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===[[The Lost Letters of William Woolf Summer Book by Helen CullenTove Jansson]]===

[[image:5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]], [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]]

William Woolf Tove Jansson's short novel about Summer is a letter detective, working in several worlds away from the Dead Letters Depot in East LondonMoomintrolls she is most famous for outside her native Scandinavia. He spends his days deciphering smudged addressesBook yourself an afternoon this Summer, and take yourself and The Summer Book somewhere quiet, tracking down mysterious people preferably within sight and reading endless letters sound of love, guilt, death, hopethe sea, settle back and everyday lifeprepare to be transported. [[The Lost Letters of William Woolf Summer Book by Helen CullenTove Jansson|Full Review]]

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===[[Lala Snowflake, AZ by Jacek Dehnel and Antonia Lloyd-Jones (translator)Marcus Sedgwick]]===

[[image:3.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]]

This is a deep, interesting read unlike any book I've read in quite some time. The novel'This is s story follows a young man named Ash in the mysterious nature process of storytelling: joining a community of sick people in the same start can also mean different endingscuriously named town of Snowflake, and different starts can lead to the same finaleArizona. ItThese people are sick, but it's all subordinate to the greater narrative, which starts somewhere in Kievnot a sickness you''. This beautiful book is exactly that, the mysterious art ve heard of storytelling. The wayward meanderings of memoryInstead, of tangents they're environmentally ill – affected by household chemicals and digressionsfabrics, of side notes pesticides, static electricity, and radiation – and elaborations, but above all that of affection; for both their only ''cure'' is to stay in the story and town away from the storytellerreal world. What makes us who we Though it's about a real place, the people in it are if not our culture and heritage and in this book our narrator re-lives and re-tells fictional. It really is a place apart, quite literally cut off from the story of his heritage told outside world – people are even required to him by his grandmotherdecontaminate themselves thoroughly before becoming fully integrated. [[Lala Snowflake, AZ by Jacek Dehnel and Antonia Lloyd-Jones (translator)Marcus Sedgwick|Full Review]]

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===[[The Emperor of Shoes Nightjar by Spencer WiseDeborah Hewitt]]===

[[image:3star4.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Fantasy|Fantasy]], [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]]

''The Emperor of ShoesNightjar'' is the an unusual and exciting story of Alex Cohen, the heir to . Alice Wyndham lives a lucrative shoe factory based normal life in southern ChinaLondon until she finds a box on her doorstep one morning and her life begins to unravel, fast. More idealistic than his profit-obsessed fatherFrom that very moment, her life is flooded with magic, loss, expectation and less motivated solely by the bottom lineparticularly, he's unsure of himself: unsure whether he can continue his father's successbetrayal. But complications arise when he starts to question how morally sound the business really isAs everything around her shifts, all that she knows, all that she thinks she knows, and whether the workers are being given a fair dealmust change. Who can she trust? Who must she trust? Who will she trust? More importantly, can she even trust herself? [[The Emperor of Shoes Nightjar by Spencer WiseDeborah Hewitt|Full Review]]

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[[image| style=''vertical-align: top; text-align:4star.jpgleft;''|link===Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary FictionTrain Man by Andrew Mulligan]]===

Innokenty Petrovich Platonov wakes up in a hospital bed with no recollection of who he is or how he got there[[image:2. He is tended by a single doctor, Doctor Geiger, who gives him a pencil and notebook and encourages him to write down his observations and memories5star. The notebook is thick, like a novel. How can Innokenty fill it if he cannot remember anything? But slowly the memories start to return, memories of childhood holidays at the beach, of life in the dacha, of the airfield and the aviators...and the island...it seems like some memories may be better left buried. He remembers that he is the same age as the century, born in 1900. But if that is the casejpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]], how is he still a young man when the pills by his bedside are dated 1999? [[The Aviator by Eugene Vodolazkin and Lisa Hayden (Translator):Category:Literary Fiction|Full ReviewLiterary Fiction]]

<!-- Houm -->I came to this book thinking I knew just what to expect, even though it is [[:Category:Andy Mulligan|the author's]] debut in the adult novel market (hence the more mature name – he used to be an Andy). I thought it simple to sum up, the tale of a middle-| style="widthaged man who knows too much about train travel having his life turned around in the most pleasant way. I hadn't opened it when I'd shelved it alongside [[: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-alignCategory: center;"Chris Cleave|Chris Cleave]], and [[image:1782273778.jpgCategory:David Nicholls|link=http://wwwDavid Nicholls]].amazon I expected some whimsy, some warmth and some affirmative loveliness.co.uk/dp/1782273778/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]

| style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[The Gradual Disappearance of Jane Ashland by Nicolai Houm and Anna Paterson (translator)]]=== [[image:4.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]], [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]] Jane Ashland is dying. That's a description of a very early scene here – but also, of course, a platitude that can apply to all of us. Jane's life, if anything, is going up and down in levels of pleasure, energy – sobriety – in these pages, but we soon learn that it recently found a very deeply dark down place. Here then, scattered through a timeline-bending narrative, we have her days finding a Lincolnesque lover as a student in New York, glimpses of therapy, a drive to find her ancestors that takes her from rural America to Norway – and a trip there with a new-found friend to watch the musk oxen, of all things. And nowhere in sight is anything like a platitude… [[The Gradual Disappearance of Jane Ashland by Nicolai Houm and Anna Paterson (translator)|Full Review]] <!-- Bonnefoy Anstruther -->

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===[[Black Sugar A Perfect Explanation by Miguel Bonnefoy and Emily Boyce (translator)Eleanor Anstruther]]===

[[image:4star5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]], [[:Category:Historical Fiction|Historical Fiction]]

Miguel Bonnefoy's ''Black Sugar'' is Enid Campbell was a sensual epic chronicling three generations woman who, on the face of the Otero familyit, had everything. The tale begins with Leading the disappearance life of Captain Henry Morganan aristocrat – full of inherited wealth and splendour, glamourous locales and high expectations. Only Enid's treasure life has been plagued by mental illness – undiagnosed, untreated and then illustrates the power this treasure holds over peoplethreatening both Enid and those close to her. Multiple people become obsessed with finding After losing custody of her children, Enid sells her son to her sister for £500 – but is this fabled treasure that has become an urban legend in act of greed, or an act of desperation? Exploring the town in which true story of her own grandmother, Eleanor Anstruther has found the story is setperfect subject for an explosive, moving and beautifully well written debut. [[Black Sugar A Perfect Explanation by Miguel Bonnefoy and Emily Boyce (translator)Eleanor Anstruther|Full Review]]

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===[[The Zero and the One Choke by Ryan RubySofie Laguna]]===

[[image:4star2star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]]

There''The Zero s a dull, dispiriting pang of disappointment that comes when you try something everyone else loves and the Onefind out that you'' is an incredibly well written and well crafted bookre really not into it. We meet our narrator, Owen, on the plane to New York for the funeral of his best friendCoffee. He is still reeling after recent events, a suicide pact in which his friend died but he lived, and he is going through the motions of the funeral and consoling family whilst still trying to get to grips with his own feelings of grief and guiltIce skating. So far, so simpleA new Netflix series. But this is where the talent of Ryan Ruby steps in and slowlyBooks are like that, but doubly so slowly, he reveals little tantalising clues that all is not what it seems, a throw-away comment here, a mis-step there, and it becomes clear that Owen is not a reliable narrator. [[The Zero and the One Choke by Ryan RubySofie Laguna|Full Review]]

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===[[Anatomy of a Miracle Equator by Jonathan MilesAntonin Varenne and Sam Taylor (translator)]]===

[[image:3.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Historical Fiction|Historical Fiction]], [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]], [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]]

Look closely It strikes me that nobody can speak well of the Wild West outside the walls of a theme park. Our agent to see how bad it was here is Pete Ferguson, who bristles at the cover indignity of Jonathan Mileswhite man against Native 'Indian's third novel , who spends days being physically sick while indulging in a buffalo hunt, and you'll see who hates the central drama depicted: white wheelchair tracks snake up from the bottom way man – and stop three-quarters woman, of course – can turn against fellow man at the way from bat of an eyelid. But this book is about so much more than the top, where they are replaced by footprints. On 23 August 20141870s USA, wheelchair-bound veteran Cameron Harris stands up and walks outside the Biz-E-Bee convenience store in Biloxiattendant problems with gold rushes, Mississippipioneer spirits and racial genocide. In the rest He finds himself trying to find this book's version of Utopia, namely the novel we find out how he got Equator, where everything is upside down, people walk on their heads with rocks in their pockets to this point and what others – ranging from his doctor keep them on the ground to representatives of counter the Roman Catholic Church anti-gravity, and where, who knows, things might actually be better. But that equator is a long way away – will make and there's a whole adventure full of his recovery. Was it a miracle, or an explainable medical phenomenon? Mexico and Latin America between him and it… [[Anatomy of a Miracle Equator by Jonathan MilesAntonin Varenne and Sam Taylor (translator)|Full Review]]

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===[[Fire on the Mountain by Jean McNeil]]=== [[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]] This is an unusual book, in style it feels like a novel by E M Forster; with a deep study at the minutiae of life and thought, yet the plot and content is thoroughly modern. The bulk of the story is told through the perspective of Nick, and we see his point of view on life around him. The main characters of the book, however, are Pieter and Riaan, as it is these characters who fascinate Nick and are the focus of his contemplation and crisis. [[Fire on the Mountain by Jean McNeil|Full Review]] <!-- Morrall -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:Morrall_Last.jpg|left|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/ISBN/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]] | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[The Last of the Greenwoods by Clare Morrall]]=== [[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]] Down in hidden railway carriages, deep behind foliage and further down Long Meadow Road than most care to go, live the Greenwood Brothers. They haven't spoken to each other in years, but one morning a letter arrives on their doorstep - a letter from a sister long thought dead...As the brothers are forced to confront painful memories of a past that both tried to keep buried, the post-woman who delivered the letter struggles with secrets of her own... [[The Last Nights of the Greenwoods by Clare Morrall|Full Review]] <!-- Rawi -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:Rawi_Baghdad.jpg|left|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1786073226/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[The Baghdad Clock by Shahad Al Rawi]]=== [[image:2.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]], [[:Category:Historical Fiction|Historical Fiction]] ''The Baghdad Clock'' is a tale of two friends growing up during the first and second Iraqi war. Shahad Al Rawi uses magic realism to illustrate the displacement felt by a young girl and her neighbourhood. The novel introduces us to the various characters surrounding the protagonist. They are full of life and yet never seem to add anything to the central narrative. Rawi, it would seem, has a problem with telling a story. [[The Baghdad Clock by Shahad Al Rawi|Full Review]] <!-- Clements -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:Clements_Coffin.jpg|left|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1472204271/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]] | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[The Coffin Path by Katherine Clements]]=== [[image:4.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]], [[:Category:Horror|Horror]], [[:Category:Historical Fiction|Historical Fiction]] Maybe you've heard about Scarcross Hall? Hidden on the old coffin path that winds from the village to the moor top, the villagers only speak of it in hushed tones - of how it's a foreboding place filled with evil. Mercy Booth has lived there since birth, and she's always loved the grand house and its isolation, but a recurrence of strange events begins to unsettle her. From objects disappearing through to a shadowy presence sensed in the house, mysteries come to light that can only be solved by Mercy unearthing long-buried secrets. And will a dark stranger help Mercy protect everything she has come to love or tear it from her grasp? [[The Coffin Path by Katherine Clements|Full Review]] <!-- Durrenmatt -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:Durrenmatt_Justice.jpg|left|link=https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1782273875?ie=UTF8&tag=thebookbag-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=1782273875]] | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[The Execution of Justice Creaking Bed by Friedrich Durrenmatt and John E Woods (translator)Toni Kan]]===

[[image:2.5star4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:CrimeLiterary Fiction| Literary Fiction]], [[:Category:Short Stories|CrimeShort Stories]]

It's 1957, and we're somewhere in Switzerland, and thereNights of the Creaking Bed's just one case on everyone's lips – the simple fact that is a politician has gone into the crowded room collection of short stories by Toni Kan. The series of one stories tell of those 'the place to go' restaurants, lives and point blank shot a professor everyone there must have known, lusts of an assortment of characters living in and ferried a British companion to the airport in his chauffeur-driven Rolls before handing himself in to face the murder rap. Of course he's found guiltyaround Lagos, even if the gun involved has managed to disappearNigeria. He's certainly of much interestNigeria, not only to our narratorin this collection, a young lawyer called Spaet – even if he rarely gets to frequent such establishments is imbued with such its very own heart of darkness. Danger stalks the shadows and people, he is eager to know are killed for nothing more, especially once he is actually tasked by the man in hand to than a wrong look into things a second time. But what's this, where he opens his testimony about the affair Kan writes with the conclusion, a vitality and passion that he himself will need allows these cynical stories to turn killer to redress the balance? achieve a glimmer of hope. [[The Execution Nights of Justice the Creaking Bed by Friedrich Durrenmatt and John E Woods (translator)Toni Kan|Full Review]]