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[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Talulah RileyMatthew Tree|title= Acts of LoveWe'll Never Know|rating= 4.5|genre= Women's Literary Fiction |summary= Bernadette St John presents herself as the very face Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, a drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of his artistic passions all failed miserably and who had endless crises of contemporary feminine independenceself confidence. She is strongSo Tim applied himself to his studies, career-driven, beautiful…and definitely holds the attention of the publiccultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and set himself high but achievable ambitions. For Bernadette is the |isbn= B0CVFXPGP8}}{{Frontpage|isbn=B0C47LV1PC|title=Fragility|author=Mosby Woods|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= Can you make a ''Man WhispererYo birthing person''joke? And if you could, winning herself fame with her ability to coax secrets from is the richest and most powerful men of question should you make it? Or is the world, exposing them with controversial distaste in her articles. Hidden behind such a conniving and judgemental persona, howeverquestion if you did, would it land? The catch is a deep insecurity, and a desperate longing to be loved by the perfect man. She has already decided that the newly engaged Tim Bazier is the only candidate answer for such a position in her heart, and will stop at nothing to win him back from his all-too-lovely fiancéboth could well be.... Yet what is perfect is a subject for discussion, and charismatic entrepreneur Radley Blake's unwavering attention has also fallen upon the feisty journalistno. It is a weaving tale of  ''will-they-wont-theyFragility'' that Riley spins hereis set as the city of Portland, Oregon, one that I found myself unable cautiously begins to put down.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1473637902</amazonuk>emerge from the restrictions imposed during the covid pandemic

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jesse BallMosby Woods|title=How to Set a Fire and WhyA Whirly Man Loses His Turn

|summary=Lucia Stanton The West isn't the dominant force it once was. Nobody in the West is quite sure how to mend this or even if mending it is a sarcastic 14-year-old misfit who lives with her elderly Aunt Lucy in a garage they rent from an evil landlord at the bottom best course of his large gardenaction. Governments are flailing. She never comes right out and explains why she's A war here, a push for climate action there, but if you read between the lines you work out . A feeling that her father is dead and her mother nobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, there was a mental hospital – presumably for his murderman with precognition. Aunt Lucy is dignified and principled – ''Don't do things Imagine the strategic advantage in this asset; a man who can tell you aren't proud of'' is her motto – even though they are undeniably poor: Lucia only has one what will happen given any set of clothes and mostly lives off of liquorice and Aunt Lucy's terrible homemade breadcircumstances. That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the most valuable asset in history. Imagine then, that this man loses this ability.What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1925355470</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jenn Ashworth0571379559|title=FellThe House of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams

|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Now her parents have died''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the story of four people. Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, Annette returns to sell her old childhood home but thereinstead, she lives in the house on the riverbank, built of broken bricks. Insubstantial as it might look, it's work stood the passage of time, storms and floods. Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, to do on complete the decrepit building firstdelivery rounds - and to bring in sufficient money. As she wanders around They have twin boys - Sonny and tries to make some order of Max, the overgrown shambles, sherainbow twins. Sonny's watched by the ghost of her colouring reflects his mother, Netty; a spirit with regrets's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. Netty reminisces about AnnettePeople don't believe that they're related, much less twins and there's childhood and the turning point their lives reached an assumption when the mysterious healer Timothy Richardson came to stay. It was a time Max is out with his mother that promised so much but one for which Netty now needs to make amends, even if she is beyond the grave's his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1473630606</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sue GeeClaire North|title=TrioHouse of Odysseus|rating=45|genre=Historical Literary Fiction|summary=In ''What could matter more than love?'' The follow-up to the winter of 1936, Steven Coulterexcellent ''s wife, Margaret, dies of tuberculosis, leaving their Northumberland cottage cold and empty. His work as a history teacher at Kirkhoughton BoysIthaca' School isn't enough to distract him from his grief; he spends his long evenings writing letters to Margaretpicks up a few months after where we left off. GraduallyIn the palace of Odysseus, thoughwith delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her husband, as spring arrives he starts who sailed to take an interest in other thingswar at Troy and then by divine intervention never returned home. His colleague Frank Embleton invites him to a performance As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the throne of the Western Isles. Having survived – politically and physical – the Hepplewick Trio: Frankchaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca's sister Diana shores, Queen Penelope is on cello; pianist Margot Heslop, whose mother died when she was young and who looks after her father, the brink of a coal mine managerfragile peace. One that shatters however with the return of Orestes, at Hepplewick Hall; and their friend George LiddellKing of Mycenae, the violinist and leaderhis sister Elektra, who is a Royal College of Music graduateseeking refuge.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1784630616</amazonuk>0356516075

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Stephanie DanlerKay Chronister|title= SweetbitterDesert Creatures

|genre= Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary= Twenty –two year old Tess With a world that is a restless graduate from a broken family. With the intention of finally starting her lifebecoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, she moves to New York City with no real plan but a need to do somethingpost-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. She manages to get Whether it is a job at one of the most exclusive restaurants in town as robotic takeover, a back-waiter and Tess is thrown into the comforting commotion world devoid of New York life. It's at her new job that she becomes fascinated by two people: Simone, water or a know-it-all server and Jakenuclear holocaust, this genre is a handsome yet moody bartenderway for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. While the restaurant becomes her home and her colleagues her new family, ''SweetbitterDesert Creatures'' follows Tess through by Kay Chronister is a year new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of her life as she grows and learns about the complexities of human relationshipsfears that exist for humanity today. It is a shocking novel that still manages to find hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1780749155</amazonuk>1803364998

{{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Rodrigo Hasbun and Sophie Hughes (translator)Eric LaRocca|title=AffectionsThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=4.5|genre=General FictionHorror|summary=If you thought your teenaged years were Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is used as a struggle way to work out the world, reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and yourselfprocess them. Most horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad'', consider whether that of Heidi Ertl. Or either of her sisters – this book serves as is a home invader, a monster or a sort of tribute to these three real-life womenghost, it usually something tangible and , by the lives that came out end of their very disjointed youththe story, forced to be rarefied from the norm by their family uprootingbeatable. Father Hans was one of Leni RiefenstahlEric LaRocca's key cameramen, and ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. It is a Nazi military photographer, before taking the whole family into post-war exile in Bolivia. Their mother would have followed him to the ends collection of the earth – as short stories more interested in part would their daughters, the older two horrors of which start the book by joining him on an expedition to discover a lost Incan city. Heidi finds youngillness, instant love on the trek – but sees the dark side of such emotions, toogrief and humiliation. Older sister Monika, who might well be manic depressive, finds something else, while the baby of the family stays at home with a maudlin mother. So much here could be the hook on which Horrors that linger and are harder to hang a full novel, but if anything itdefeat than any ''Big Bad''s the reaction of them all to this unusual formative journey that inspires this book.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782272135</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Sun-mi HwangMadelaine Lucas|title= The Dog who Dared to DreamThirst for Salt|rating= 45|genre= Literary Fiction|summary=From the very beginning, Scraggly knows that she is different to her brothers and sisters. Her siblings have short, glossy coats, but Scraggly's blue/black fur is long'Love, wild and untamed. She may be an outsider, but she still enjoys life with her family in Grandpa ScreecherI's sunny yardd read, even if it means putting up with the evil cat next door. Scraggly dreams that things can stay this way forever, but fate has other plans. One tragic night, everything she loves is cruelly ripped away from her. As she struggles was supposed to rebuild be a new life light and family weightless feeling, but I had always longed for herself, she comes to understand that sadness, betrayal and loss are an inevitable part of life. Can Scraggly ever learn to trust another human again?gravity''|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0349142106</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Sarah Perry|title= The Essex Serpent|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= I confess to Told from a bias… when I came across retrospective view, a reference to Sarah Perry's latest novel; I wanted to read it for two reasons onlyyoung woman unravels the year-long relationship that once defined her. She is a local writerOverlaid with later wisdom, and the book is set in narrator relives the affair with a place not too far away, but that I have yet man twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to explore and which fascinates me: its sorrowful end the Blackwater estuary in Essexsummer after. That's a place of Set against the kind of wide open skies and mud creeks that you will find up much backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the Norfolk 24-year-old narrator's deepening relationship with her older lover, depicting its all-consuming nature, how it changed her perspective on both romantic and Suffolk coast as well, familial relationships and a landscape type that probably only appeals to a certain type of personhow it altered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>178125544X</amazonuk>0861546490

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Susan BealeMichael Grothaus|title=The Good GuyBeautiful Shining People

|summary=California''But fearing something and having it come to pass are two different things. Summer 1969. Fourteen year old Evie Boyd is a thoughtful yet bored teenager from a broken home. The attention she craves is nowhere And I'm willing to be found in the form bet most of her neglectful, serial dating motherwhat we fear will never happen, or even in we can take steps to change it.'' ''Beautiful Shining People'' revolves around the friendship question of her fickle best friend Connieidentity and acceptance. Abandoned by those around her, Evie's path collides with Suzanne – a mysterious older girl who introduces Evie Of what it means to a strange yet thrilling new lifebe human. Of what is real and what is artificial, offering her and whether the intimate relationship her life back home lacksdevelopment of technology is exciting or frightening.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1784740446</amazonuk>191458564X

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Simon Van BooyJennifer Saint|title= Father's DayAtalanta|rating= 5|genre= General Fiction|summary=When devastating news shatters the life of six year old Harvey, she finds herself in the care of a veteran social worker, Wanda, and alone in the world save for one relative she has never met - a disabled ex-con, haunted by a violent past he can't escape. Moving between past and present, Father's Day weaves together the story of Harvey's childhood on Long Island, and her life as a young woman in Paris.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780749694</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Thomas Keneally|title=Napoleon's Last Island|rating=4.5

|summary=It's 'I was as worthy as any one of them. I would get on board that ship, I vowed. I would take my place, not usual to open a review with just in the history name of how the book came to be written but with ''Napoleon's Last Island'' the story sheds an intriguing light on the plotgoddess. In 2012 author Thomas Keneally It was given tickets to an exhibition for the sake of Napoleonic artefacts: uniformsmy name, furniture, china, paintings, military decorations, snuff boxes and memorabilia as well as Napoleontoo. Atalanta''s death mask Princess. Warrior. Lover. He was intrigued as to how the exhibits and particularly the mask came to be in AustraliaHero. Some pieces in the exhibition had been bought in later but most came from  Abandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a son, Atalanta is raised under the descendants protective eye of the Balcombe familygoddess Athemis and fashioned into a formidable huntress, one who came longs for adventure. When the opportunity comes – to join the colony in the first half Argonauts, a fierce band of the nineteenth centurywarriors, descendent from St Helena via Englandthe Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the chance to fight in Artemis' name and carve out her own legendary place in history. The result What follows is a whirlwind of Keneally's research into the story is ''Napoleon's Last Island'challenges and discovery and through it, Atalanta must remember Artemis'fatal warning: that if she marries, it will be her undoing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473625335</amazonuk>1472292154

{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The Natural Way of ThingsAmanthi Harris|authortitle=Charlotte WoodBeautiful Place

|summary=Yolanda and Verla wake up disorientatedPadma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of her home country. They realise they've been drugged This is a place she spent her formative years. Yolanda thinks that perhaps they are in some kind of mental facility - She knew It is not a place she was not madborn into, but all lunatics thought thatthe one she thinks of as home. Verla just sits How she came to be at the Villa, how it became her home, still and frozen, waitingthe machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the ''score'' for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. And soon enough, two men arrive Padma's present fails to reveal their fate. Yolanda escape her past and Verla, along with eight other girls, have been brought to a remote farmhouse surrounded by an electrified fence. Their heads are shaved. They are dressed in uncomfortable, scratchy, Amish-style clothes. They are tied together much like the musical score of a chain gang. Andfilm, like any chain gang, their days are marked with forced labour. Two men, one more cruel than that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the other, and a so-called nurse are their jailers, not their guardiansVilla.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1760291870</amazonuk>1784631930

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Emma Geen178563335X|title=The Many Selves of Katherine North|rating=3.5|genre=Science Fiction|summary=As a Bristol-area 'phenomenaut', nineteen-year-old Kit projects herself into the lab-grown bodies of all sorts of creatures. She's recently spent a lot of time as a fox (appropriate given her nickname) and got particularly close with a vixen named Tomoko. It's becoming much harder for her to leave the animal world behind at the end of her 'jumps'. Even after Buckley, her neuroengineer, signals her to 'Come home' and she resumes her original body, she has trouble giving up animal tendencies like territorialism, toileting outdoors and raiding bins.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408858436</amazonuk>}}{{newreviewSea Defences|author=Sjon and Victoria Cribb (translator)|title=Moonstone: The Boy Who Never WasHilary Taylor

|summary=SixteenWhen we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you need to pick the children up. Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Mani Stein Hannah and her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter- Moonstone in translation - existed on the fringes of societylaw won't let her see her grandson. He lived in Reykjavik and in 1918 the night sky (and the day for that matter) was lit by the eruptions of Holthorpe, on the Katla volcano. The Great War was ragingNorfolk coast, or possibly grinding onis a lovely place, but life Rachel is struggling to develop a real bond with the parish - and she's in awe of the capital carried on much as usual. There were shortagesvicar, such as coalGail, but there was then she's been doing the new fashion and it was job for the movies that Mani lived, seeing every production he could, sometimes several timesmore than thirty years. He dreamed about Rachel and Christopher hoped that a walk on the films, changing beach would do them to suit his tastes, working his own life into the plotssome good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. But there was another reason why Mani was a misfit: Mani was gay and frequently made a living as a sex workerAnd then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1473613132</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Conor O'Callaghan1398515388|title=Nothing on EarthThe Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)

|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=On a sweltering night First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in what is a blisteringly hot summer a young girl hammers at a man's door the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and when let into this, in turn, caused the house tells him that her father has disappeared ''too''nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and utter devastation. Gradually her story emergesThe deaths were uncountable, of a home on one of those estates so common in Ireland after and the collapse loss of the Celtic Tiger with only the occasional house occupied and others only part builtlivelihoods was widespread. It could be any one of hundreds of Irish towns at The fact that time and its main feature is many pets were separated from their owners came far down the lack list of hope that it will never be any betterpriorities but - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. Our narrator tells her story, much, He wasn't a dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that he says, as it was told would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to him open his car door and we hear of a life on the edge of poverty, with strange noises in Tamon the night, words written dog jumped in the dust on the windows mirrored by those written in blue ink on her skin.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781620342</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Per Olov Enquist and Deborah Bragan-Turner (translator)0989715337|title=The Parable BookPapa on the Moon|author=Marco North|rating=3.54

|summary=It's not only springtime when a man's fancies turn to thoughts of love – he can also do it Some frogs had gotten into the well.'' ''Walter stood waist-deep in the autumn fragrant water, naked except for his beaten leather hat. Long strands of his lifetheir eggs wove around him, sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Two of the dogs leaned over the opening and barked down at the strange noise of the buckets as does he filled them.'' How is that for an opening? The style of this novel in the man involved here. But being a well-known author, form of interconnected short stories goes from succinct and being beholden laconic to silencewistful and musing, can he really put his thoughts turning on paper? It happened a long time agosixpence. And author Marco North, and he only met who has the woman concerned a couple most wonderful turn of timesphrase, but with it being such a powerful event and such a slightly unusual circumstance, what should he do? It takes a notebook of his father's love poems to his mother, that starts as he finds both incomplete and scorched, to give him the green light – the voice from the past that says means to him, 'go for it'. And what we read here is a resulton.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857059912</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Maggie O'FarrellDaisy Hildyard|title=This Must Be the PlaceEmergency

|summary=Maggie OThe summary of this book doesn'Farrell's globe-trotting seventh novel opens in 2010 t come close to explaining what is done with Daniel Sullivanthe premise.|isbn=1913097811}}  {{Frontpage |author=Sally Oliver |title=The Weight of Loss |rating=4 |genre=Literary Fiction |summary= Marianne is grieving. Traumatised after the death of her sister, an American linguistics professor. He lives with his wife Claudetteshe awakes to find strange, a French actress who retreated thick black hairs sprouting from the limelightbones of her spine which steadily increase in size and volume. Her GP, and their two children in diagnosing the odd phenomenon as a remote home physical reaction to her grief, recommends she go to stay at Nede, an experimental new treatment centre in DonegalWales. It was 10 years ago that he first came here Yet something strange is happening to Marianne and met Claudette by chance when her van had the other patients at Nede: a flat tire; he struck up metamorphosis of a conversation with her son Ari and gave the boy tips for dealing with his stutterkind. Now, preparing to fly back to Brooklyn for his father's ninetieth birthday party, heAs Marianne's caught short by a long-lost voice he hears on the radio. It belongs memories threaten to Nicola Janksoverwhelm her, Nede offers her release from this cycle of memory and pain—but only at a former lover he last saw 24 years ago; when he learns terrible price: that she died soon after they were together, he determines to figure out whether he played a role, even if he doesn't like what he findsof identity itself.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0755358805</amazonuk>086154112X }}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Joanne HarrisNatalia Garcia Freire|title=Different ClassThis World Does Not Belong To Us

|summary= St Oswald's Grammar School For Boys is in crisis. A murdered schoolboyEarly comments on this debut novel from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, a procession of new Head Masters, a(nother) new Head Master, a Crisis Intervention Team and a potential merger delight. I will agree with St Oswald's all female counterpart, Mulberry House. Roy Straitley the first – tremendous is not altogether dismayed at the prospect of delaying his retirement; St Oswaldno understatement – but 's has been his life, man and boy and a crisis delight' is perhaps using the expression in a crisis after all is said and done, isnway I't it? m not familiar with. It's probably his duty I have to stay and right confess my ignorance of the shipSpanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. So when From the latest of the new Head Masters and his duo of crisis managers walk into the staff roomlittle I have read (in translation, Straitley canI don't quite believe his old eyes. The new Head is an ex-pupil of St Oswald's; read Spanish) there does seem to be a boy who, in his time at tendency towards the esteemed old School caused such an uproarious scandal that one of fantastical – the Masters ended up in prison! mystical realism. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0385619235</amazonuk>0861541901

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Bill BeverlyJennifer Saint|title= DodgersElektra|rating= 54|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= Judging a book by its cover can mislead. It can especially mislead if you don't look closely at the cover and are just grabbed Elektra' by Jennifer Saint tells the ''feel'' or ''style'' story of three women who live in the design heavily male dominated world of the thingAncient Greece. Being misled is not necessarily a bad thing. For reasons best left Cassandra, Clytemnestra, and Elektra are all bit players in the depths story of my addled brain, the styling of Dodgers had me thinking 'noir'Trojan War. I was expecting late fifties, early sixties. If I'd looked closer, I'd Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that often the silent women have seen that it is much more contemporary than thatthe most compelling stories and the most extreme furies. Then again…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1843448572</amazonuk>1472273915

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Alice Adams8409290103|title=Invincible SummerIf Only|author=Matthew Tree|rating=34.5

|summary=As Alice Adams's debut novel opens in Twenty-one-year-old Malcolm Lowry had been sent abroad by his father, cotton-broker AO Lowry: he asked his accountant, Mr Patrick, to ensure that the summer of 1995, four university friends are lounging young man got on Bristol's Brandon Hill, drinking board the boat and thereafter Patrick was to send him a monthly allowance. Patrick sent the money regularly and contemplating a correspondence - of sorts - sprang up between the two although we hear more about what the future holdsLowry has to say than Patrick. There It wasn's Eva Andrewst that Lowry senior didn't care for his son, raised it was that he didn't care to have him in Sussex by this country where he might be a single father; siblings Sylvie danger to his wife and Lucien Marchant, neglected by their alcoholic mother; and Benedict Waverley, a rich kid whose parents have a holiday home on Corfuother children. Eva has a crush The alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to get the young man on Lucien, while Benedict is besotted with Evahis way.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1509814701</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Birgul OguzAntoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)|title= HahRed is My Heart|rating= 3.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= I [[:Category:Antoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]] books have always been black and white and read in my house. And so was interested to receive this book for review as one, although I knew it was written in a modern, interesting style, being effectively a collection of short stories, but appearing could have spelled that more in a novel structure. I accurately – this one was, however, rather disappointed with the book. Whilst it does have some very fine examples of prose writing within the stories, I felt disconnected from the narrator, who is the daughter of a recently deceased man who was involved in a Turkish military coup in 1980. There and is therefore a lot of examples of the narrator relating the conversations they had shared regarding ''revolution'', black and the way this had affected the daughter's upbringing white and childhoodred. Another 'story' then delves into a seemingly disconnected wander through the townYes, whereby we see the narrator working at gutting fishhe has an artistic collaborator on this piece, and talking about a man she finds repulsive, but who appears I think it's possible to be in love with hersay not one page lacks the influence of some striking visual ideas. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>9462380740</amazonuk>1913547183

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Chuck PalahniukB098FFFBH9|title=Make Something UpSnowcub|author=Graham Fulbright|rating=4.5|genre=Short Stories Literary Fiction|summary=What are we to make of that subtitleFourteen-year-seeming writing on the front cover – old Rachel is her school''stories you can't unread''? Does that not apply to all good fiction? Clearly it is here due s animal rights project leader and she and her friend are producing a competition entry to highlight the reputation of way in which human beings exploit the author, and the baggage his name brings to the pageanimal world. We'd expect She gets a dramatic approach great deal of support from anything Palahniuk writesher family: father Pip Harrison, a lecturer at Imperial College, London, mother Kate and an added frisson, an extra layerher twin, from which we might be forced to shrink backNick. But a lot of Kate runs the contents don't quite go that far. Yes, things are dramatic, when society starts attaching defibrillators to itself, to create the perfect, simple, care- (''The Price is Right''-family business, and Kardashian-) free happiness. A man buys a horse for his daughter – but boy is it the wrong horse to buy. A man falls toy shop called Cornucopia in love – yesPutney, sometimes the plot summaries of these stories really are better off for being short (speaking of which, don't turn to the three-page entrant here as a taster, itis where we'll put you off by dint of being, almost uniquely here, a nothing story). A call centre worker can't convince people hemeet Rachel's on the level and even in their country – until someone starts riffing back to him. A housing estate report conveys bad regulation violations, but not as bad as the happenings at a 'Burning Man'-styled festival, in a very clever couple main (if unsuspected) source of talesinformation: five soft toys. But many too are the instances where that extra step has been taken.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099587688</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Aliya WhiteleyYancey Williams|title= The Arrival Crosshairs of Missivesthe Devil|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary=In the aftermath of the Great WarAward-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is getting on in years and, despite his strenuous objections and thanks to his daughter, finds himself living - or imprisoned, Shirley Fearn dreams from Eddie's point of challenging the conventions view - in room 315 of rural England, where life is as unchanging as the seasons. The scarred veteran Mr Tiller, left disfigured by an impossible accident on the battlefields Garden of FranceEden nursing home, brings with him only a message: part prophecytrusty nursing aide, Jenkins, part warning. As Shirley's village prepares for the annual May Day celebrations, where a new queen will be crowned and the future reborn, she must choose between change and renewal – will the missives Mr Tiller brings prevent her mastering her identity?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907389377</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= P K Lynch|title= Armadillos|rating= 4palatable company.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= Aggie Nothing is one of Texas' downtrodden. Dirt poor and abused. ''a 'sub' going to keep Eddie from a 'sub' family'' … ''Her father and brother enact that 'sub'his stock-in-ness on hertrade of writing though, so here, week infor his readers, week out.are his wanderings through his life'' ''She has only the vaguest notion that there is something wrong with the abuse she endures.s work.''|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>178507959X</amazonuk>0986031658}}{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tarjei Vesaas, Torbjorn Stoverud and Michael Barnes (translators)0008421714|title=The BirdsMrs March|author=Virginia Feito

|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=We're somewhere in rural Scandinavia, on The problem began just after the shores publication of a large lake, George March's most successful novel to date. Everyone but in a community relying Mrs March (we know her first name only on the farmland that is scattered in amongst the woodslast page) seemed to either be reading it or had already done so. Our chief concerns are brother and sister – Mattis and Hege. HeEvery day Mrs March went to the local patisserie to buy olive bread but on that particular morning, MattisPatricia asked, is what as she was wrapping the other villagers call bread, 'simple' – sure, but isn't this the first time he knows 's based a few things about life, and what makes a clever person and what makes a well-turned phrase, and how to talk to girls and when to not stare at themcharacter on you?'' She mentioned that Johanna, but he is definitely not quite as the others would wish. Those others include his sister, who is seeing principal character had 'her life waste away in listening to his chatter, knitting jumpers to make ends meet, and regretting in her own small way what has got her to middle-age in this situationmannerisms''. But from Perhaps this galling introductionwould not have mattered, you should take away except for the bigger picture – even if there fact that Johanna is no way out, the life in this countryside is brilliantly conveyed, full whore of sun as well as shade, of labour and of idleness, and wit and charm as much as hardship. I defy you to read this and think this corner of Scandinavia bleak.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0914671200</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Nicola Barker|title=The Cauliflower®|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction |summary=Nicola Barker teasingly refers to herself as this book's Nantes - 'collagist', piecing together diverse documents to create a picture of Sri Ramakrishna (1836–1886)weak, a largely illiterate guru who attracted followers to his intense worship of the goddess Kali. His life story is a sticky mass of contradictions:|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1785150669</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Toni Morrison |title= God Help the Child|rating= 4|genre= Literary Fiction|summary=A truly complex and emotionally raw portrayal, that seeks to cover issues of raceplain, genderdetestable, and paedophilia. A slim volumepathetic, yesunloved, but one that is powerful in its punchunloveable wretch.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099555921</amazonuk>''