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|author= Karina Sainz Borgo and Elizabeth Bryer (translator)Claire North|title= It Would Be Night in CaracasHouse of Odysseus|rating= 45

|summary= ''It Would Be Night in Caracas'' illuminates the everyday horrors of modern day Venezuela. It begins with the death of Adelaida FalconWhat could matter more than love?'s mother and chronicles Adelaida's coming to terms with her new solitude in this world and her attempts to escape it. Danger stalks the shadows and, in a society where the establishment is crumbling, who can you turn to? |isbn=0062936867}}

The follow-up to the excellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a few months after where we left off. In the palace of Odysseus, with delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her husband, who sailed to war at Troy and then by divine intervention never returned home. As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the throne of the Western Isles. Having survived – politically and physical – the chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca's shores, Queen Penelope is on the brink of a fragile peace. One that shatters however with the return of Orestes, King of Mycenae, and his sister Elektra, seeking refuge.|isbn=0356516075}}{{Frontpage|author= Kay Chronister|title= Desert Creatures|class-"wikitable" cellpaddingrating= 4|genre="15"Dystopian Fiction<!|summary= With a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is a robotic takeover, a world devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, this genre is a way for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. ''Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a new work of post- Caroline Scott -->apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the fears that exist for humanity today. It is a shocking novel that still manages to find hope.|isbn=1803364998}}{{frontpage|isbn=1803363002|author= Eric LaRocca|-title= The Trees Grew Because I Bled There| stylerating="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"5|genre= Horror[[image:1471186393.jpg|linksummary=http://wwwHorror taps into something primeval within us. It is used as a way to reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and process them. Most horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad'', whether that is a home invader, a monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and, by the end of the story, beatable. Eric LaRocca's ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that.amazonIt is a collection of short stories more interested in the horrors of illness, grief and humiliation.coHorrors that linger and are harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''.uk/dp/1471186393/ref}}{{Frontpage|author=Madelaine Lucas|title=nosim?tagThirst for Salt|rating=thebookbag-21]]5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= ''Love, I'd read, was supposed to be a light and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity''

''Beautiful Shining People'' revolves around the question of identity and acceptance. Of what it means to be human. Of what is real and what is artificial, and whether the development of technology is exciting or frightening.|isbn=191458564X}}{{Frontpage| styleauthor="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"Jennifer Saint|title=Atalanta|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=[[Photographer ''I was as worthy as any one of them. I would get on board that ship, I vowed. I would take my place, not just in the name of the Lost by Caroline Scott]]===goddess. It was for the sake of my name, too. Atalanta''

[[image:4Princess.5starWarrior. Lover. Hero.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Historical Fiction|Historical Fiction]], [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]]

May 1921Abandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a son, Atalanta is raised under the protective eye of the goddess Athemis and fashioned into a formidable huntress, one who longs for adventure. Edie receives When the opportunity comes – to join the Argonauts, a photograph through fierce band of warriors, descendent from the Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the postchance to fight in Artemis' name and carve out her own legendary place in history. There What follows is no letter or note with a whirlwind of challenges and discovery and through it, Atalanta must remember Artemis' fatal warning: that if she marries, itwill be her undoing. There is nothing written |isbn=1472292154}}{{Frontpage|author=Amanthi Harris|title=Beautiful Place|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the back southern coast of the photographher home country. This is a place she spent her formative years. It is not a picture place she was born into, but the one she thinks of as home. How she came to be at the Villa, how it became her home, and the machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the ''score'' for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. Padma's present fails to escape her past and much like the musical score of a film, that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the Villa.|isbn=1784631930}}{{Frontpage|isbn=178563335X|title=Sea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=When 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, FrancisChristopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Francis has been missing for four yearsThelma's daughter-in-law won't let her see her grandson. TechnicallyHolthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, he has been "missingis a lovely place, believed killed" but that Rachel is not something that struggling to develop a young widow can believereal bond with the parish - and she's in awe of the vicar, Gail, but then she's been doing the job for more than thirty years. She hangs Rachel and Christopher hoped that a walk on the word 'beach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing'.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1398515388|title=The Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, in turn, caused the nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and utter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, disbelieving and the word killedloss of livelihoods was widespread. [[Photographer The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. He wasn't a dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the Lost by Caroline Scott|Full Review]]dog jumped in.}}

<!-- Ann Patchett -->{{Frontpage|-isbn=0989715337| styletitle="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"Papa on the Moon|author=Marco North[[image:1526614960.jpg|linkrating=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1526614960/ref4|genre=nosim?tagLiterary Fiction|summary=thebookbag-21]]''Some frogs had gotten into the well.''

How is that for an opening? The style of this novel in the form of interconnected short stories goes from succinct and laconic to wistful and musing, turning on a sixpence. And author Marco North, who has the most wonderful turn of phrase, starts as he means to go on.}}{{Frontpage| styleauthor="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"Daisy Hildyard|title=Emergency|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=[[The Dutch House by Ann Patchett]]==summary of this book doesn't come close to explaining what is done with the premise.|isbn=1913097811}}

[[image:5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary FictionFrontpage |Literary Fiction]]author=Sally Oliver |title=The Weight of Loss |rating=4 When we first meet Danny and his elder |genre=Literary Fiction |summary= Marianne is grieving. Traumatised after the death of her sister, Maeve Conroy, they're both living at The Dutch House with their parents and under she awakes to find strange, thick black hairs sprouting from the gaze bones of her spine which steadily increase in size and volume. Her GP, diagnosing the portraits of the former owners whose oil paintings still hang on the walls. It's odd phenomenon as a strange family dynamic: Cyril Conroy physical reaction to her grief, recommends she go to stay at Nede, an experimental new treatment centre in Wales. Yet something strange is distant happening to Marianne and the closest Danny seems to come to him is when he goes out with him on other patients at Nede: a metamorphosis of a Saturday collecting rents from properties the family ownskind. Elna Conroy is lovingAs Marianne's memories threaten to overwhelm her, but absent increasingly often until the point comes when the children are told that she will not be returning. In other circumstances Nede offers her release from this might have affected Maeve cycle of memory and Danny deeply, but their primary relationship is with each other. It's pain—but only at a bond which only death will breakterrible price: that of identity itself. [[The Dutch House by Ann Patchett|Full Review]]isbn= 086154112X }} <!-- Tove Jansson -->{{Frontpage|-author=Natalia Garcia Freire| styletitle="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"This World Does Not Belong To Us|rating=5[[image:0954899520.jpg|linkgenre=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0954899520/refLiterary Fiction|summary=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[A Winter Book by Tove Jansson]]=== [[image:5starEarly comments on this debut novel from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, a delight. I will agree with the first – tremendous is no understatement – but 'a delight' is perhaps using the expression in a way I'm not familiar with. I have to confess my ignorance of the Spanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating} From the little I have read (in translation, I don't read Spanish) there does seem to be a tendency towards the fantastical – the mystical realism. |isbn=0861541901}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction{{Frontpage|author=Jennifer Saint|title=Elektra|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction]], [[:Category:Short Stories|Short Stories]] Tove Janssonsummary='Elektra's worldwide fame lasts on by Jennifer Saint tells the Moomin books, written story of three women who live in the 1940s and later becoming television characters heavily male dominated world of the simplicity, naivety and sheer 'goodness' that would later produce flowerpot men or teletubbiesAncient Greece. Simple drawingsCassandra, simple storiesClytemnestra, simple goodnessand Elektra are all bit players in the story of the Trojan War. What is Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that often forgotten outside of her native Finland is that she was a serious writer…that she wrote for adults as well as children…and that she had a feeling for the natural world silent women have the most compelling stories and the simple life that not only informed those child-like trolls but went far beyond any fantasy of how the world might be. [[A Winter Book by Tove Jansson|Full Review]]most extreme furies.|isbn=1472273915}}<!-- Jansson -->{{Frontpage|-isbn=8409290103| styletitle="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"If Only|author=Matthew Tree[[image:0954221710.jpg|linkrating=http://www4.amazon.co.uk/dp/0954221710/ref5|genre=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]] Literary Fiction| stylesummary="verticalTwenty-one-align: top; textyear-align: left;"|===[[The Summer Book old Malcolm Lowry had been sent abroad by Tove Jansson]]=== [[imagehis father, cotton-broker AO Lowry:5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[Literary Fiction]] Tove Jansson's short novel about Summer is several worlds away from he asked his accountant, Mr Patrick, to ensure that the Moomintrolls she is most famous for outside her native Scandinavia. Book yourself an afternoon this Summer, and take yourself and The Summer Book somewhere quiet, preferably within sight and sound of young man got on board the sea, settle back boat and prepare thereafter Patrick was to be transportedsend him a monthly allowance. [[The Summer Book by Tove Jansson|Full Review]] <!-- Sedgwick -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:1788542347.jpg|link=http://www Patrick sent the money regularly and a correspondence - of sorts - sprang up between the two although we hear more about what Lowry has to say than Patrick. It wasn't that Lowry senior didn't care for his son, it was that he didn't care to have him in this country where he might be a danger to his wife and other children.amazon The alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to get the young man on his way.co.uk/dp/1788542347/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]}}{{Frontpage|author=Antoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)| styletitle="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"Red is My Heart|rating=3.5|genre==Literary Fiction |summary=[[Snowflake, AZ by Marcus Sedgwick]]=== [[image:3.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star ReviewsAntoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]] This is a deep, interesting read unlike any book I've books have always been black and white and read in quite some timemy house. The novel's story follows a young man named Ash in the process of joining a community of sick people in the curiously named town of SnowflakeAnd so was this one, Arizona. These people are sickalthough I could have spelled that more accurately – this one was, but and is, black and white and red. Yes, he has an artistic collaborator on this piece, and I think it's possible to say not a sickness you've heard one page lacks the influence ofsome striking visual ideas. Instead, they're environmentally ill – affected by household chemicals and fabrics, pesticides, static electricity, and radiation – and their only ''cure'' is to stay in the town away from the real world|isbn=1913547183}}{{Frontpage|isbn=B098FFFBH9|title=Snowcub|author=Graham Fulbright|rating=4. Though it5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Fourteen-year-old Rachel is her school's about a real place, animal rights project leader and she and her friend are producing a competition entry to highlight the people way in it are fictionalwhich human beings exploit the animal world. It really is She gets a place apart, quite literally cut off great deal of support from the outside world – people are even required to decontaminate themselves thoroughly before becoming fully integrated. [[Snowflakeher family: father Pip Harrison, AZ by Marcus Sedgwick|Full Review]] <!-- Hewitt -->|-| style="widtha lecturer at Imperial College, London, mother Kate and her twin, Nick. Kate runs the family business, a toy shop called Cornucopia in Putney, which is where we'll meet Rachel's main (if unsuspected) source of information: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"five soft toys.}}{{Frontpage|author=Yancey Williams|title=Crosshairs of the Devil[[image:1509896465.jpg|linkrating=http://www4.amazon.co.uk/dp/1509896465/ref5|genre=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]] Literary Fiction| stylesummary="verticalAward-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[The Nightjar by Deborah Hewitt]]=== [[image:4winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is getting on in years and, despite his strenuous objections and thanks to his daughter, finds himself living - or imprisoned, from Eddie's point of view - in room 315 of the Garden of Eden nursing home, with only a trusty nursing aide, Jenkins, for palatable company.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Fantasy|Fantasy]]Nothing is going to keep Eddie from his stock-in-trade of writing though, [[:Category:Literary Fictionso here, for his readers, are his wanderings through his life's work.|Literary Fiction]]isbn=0986031658}} ''The Nightjar'' is an unusual and exciting story{{Frontpage|isbn=0008421714|title=Mrs March|author=Virginia Feito|rating=4. Alice Wyndham lives a normal life in London until she finds a box on her doorstep one morning and her life begins 5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The problem began just after the publication of George March's most successful novel to unravel, fastdate. From that very moment, Everyone but Mrs March (we know her life is flooded with magic, loss, expectation and particularly, betrayalfirst name only on the last page) seemed to either be reading it or had already done so. As everything around her shifts, all Every day Mrs March went to the local patisserie to buy olive bread but on that she knowsparticular morning, all that she thinks she knowsPatricia asked, must change. Who can as she trust? Who must she trust? Who will she trust? More importantlywas wrapping the bread, can she even trust herself? [[The Nightjar by Deborah Hewitt|Full Review]] <!-- Mulligan -->|-| style=''width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;but isn't this the first time he's based a character on you?'' She mentioned that Johanna, the principal character had 'her mannerisms''|[[image:1784742716.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1784742716/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag Perhaps this would not have mattered, except for the fact that Johanna is the whore of Nantes -21]]  | style=''vertical-align: top; text-align: left;a weak, plain, detestable, pathetic, unloved, unloveable wretch.''|===[[Train Man by Andrew Mulligan]]=== [[image:2.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]], [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]] 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-aged 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 [[:Category:Chris Cleave|Chris Cleave]], and [[:Category:David Nicholls|David Nicholls]]. I expected some whimsy, some warmth and some affirmative loveliness. More fool me. [[Train Man by Andrew Mulligan|Full Review]] <!-- Anstruther -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:1784631647.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1784631647/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[A Perfect Explanation by Eleanor Anstruther]]=== [[image:5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]], [[:Category:Historical Fiction|Historical Fiction]] Enid Campbell was a woman who, on the face of it, had everything. Leading the life of an aristocrat – full of inherited wealth and splendour, glamourous locales and high expectations. Only Enid's life has been plagued by mental illness – undiagnosed, untreated and threatening both Enid and those close to her. After losing custody of her children, Enid sells her son to her sister for £500 – but is this an act of greed, or an act of desperation? Exploring the true story of her own grandmother, Eleanor Anstruther has found the perfect subject for an explosive, moving and beautifully well written debut. [[A Perfect Explanation by Eleanor Anstruther|Full Review]] <!-- Laguna -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:191070962X.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/191070962X/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[The Choke by Sofie Laguna]]=== [[image:2star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]] There's a dull, dispiriting pang of disappointment that comes when you try something everyone else loves and find out that you're really not into it. Coffee. Ice skating. A new Netflix series. Books are like that, but doubly so. [[The Choke by Sofie Laguna|Full Review]] <!-- Varenne -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:0857058738.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0857058738/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[Equator by Antonin 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]] 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 indignity of white man against Native 'Indian', who spends days being physically sick while indulging in a buffalo hunt, and who hates the way man – and woman, of course – can turn against fellow man at the bat of an eyelid. But this book is about so much more than the 1870s USA, and the attendant problems with gold rushes, pioneer spirits and racial genocide. He finds himself trying to find this book's version of Utopia, namely the Equator, where everything is upside down, people walk on their heads with rocks in their pockets to keep them on the ground to counter the anti-gravity, and where, who knows, things might actually be better. But that equator is a long way away – and there's a whole adventure full of Mexico and Latin America between him and it… [[Equator by Antonin Varenne and Sam Taylor (translator)|Full Review]] <!-- Kan -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:1911115847.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1911115847/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[Nights of the Creaking Bed by Toni Kan]]=== [[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category: Literary Fiction| Literary Fiction]], [[:Category:Short Stories|Short Stories]] ''Nights of the Creaking Bed'' is a collection of short stories by Toni Kan. The series of stories tell of the lives and lusts of an assortment of characters living in and around Lagos, Nigeria. Nigeria, in this collection, is imbued with its very own heart of darkness. Danger stalks the shadows and people are killed for nothing more than a wrong look. Kan writes with a vitality and passion that allows these cynical stories to achieve a glimmer of hope. [[Nights of the Creaking Bed by Toni Kan|Full Review]] <!-- Yancey Williams -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:0986031690.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0986031690/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[The Resurrection of Jesus by Yancey Williams]]=== [[image:4.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]] In March 1990 two police officers entered Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. They left with thirteen famous paintings by Rembrandt, Degas and Vermeer. The frames remain empty to this day: whilst there might have been rumours about the whereabouts of the paintings, even promises that the case was about to be solved, the paintings are still missing. Yancey Williams has a theory, which he delaborates on in his novel ''The Resurrection of Jesus'', and whilst his suspects might seem unlikely, who's to say that he's wrong? Forget the assertions that it was down to the Mafia and meet Jésus Ángel Escobar and Hiram Johnny Walker Quicksilver. [[The Resurrection of Jesus by Yancey Williams|Full Review]] <!-- Clark -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:034901082X.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/034901082X/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[In The Full Light of the Sun by Clare Clark]]=== [[image:5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]], [[:Category:Historical Fiction|Historical Fiction]] In 1930's Berlin, three people obsessed with art find themselves swept up into a scandal. Emmeline, a wayward young student, Julius, an anxious middle-aged art expert, and Rachmann, a mysterious art dealer, live in the politically turbulent Weimar Berlin, and soon find themselves whipped up into excitement over the surprise discovery of thirty-two previously unknown paintings by Vincent Van Gogh. Based on a true story and unfolding through the subsequent rise of Hitler and the Nazis, the discovery of the art allows these characters to explore authenticity, vanity and self-delusion. [[In The Full Light of the Sun by Clare Clark|Full Review]] <!-- Kazan -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:0749024801.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0749022132/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[The Phoenix of Florence by Philip Kazan]]=== [[image:5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]], [[:Category:Historical Fiction|Historical Fiction]] Deep in the Tuscan countryside of fifteenth century Italy, Onoria survives a massacre that destroys her family and home. Alone in the forest, she meets a band of soldiers who, believing her to be a boy train and develop her – and the determined Onoria becomes a mercenary – desperate to avoid any situation in which she may feel vulnerable again. Along the way, she meets ex-soldier Celavini, whose journey to Florence sees him investigating two brutal murders. As he digs further and uncovers links to his own family history, Celavini must revisit the past he shares with Onoria, in the hope that they can lay the ghosts of their shared history to rest, before it's too late... [[The Phoenix of Florence by Philip Kazan|Full Review]] <!-- Kennedy -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:1786331691.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1786331691/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[The Great Wide Open by Douglas Kennedy]]=== [[image:4.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]] Douglas Kennedy's ''The Great Wide Open'' has been described as epic by just about everyone, and it often feels as though that was the intention. Though the novel often feels like a pastiche of the great American novel – epic in scope, preoccupied with matters of money and literature, fixated with New York – it often feels more like Kennedy is trying to reverse-engineer the concept altogether. Initially, the novel presents itself as an intimate study of family drama, in the latter half of the novel it smoothly turns to examining the turn of American society since the 70s, and the rapid rise of the hyper-capitalist neoliberal values that have dominated the west since the election of Ronald Reagan. Though it takes place over a twenty-year period between the 70s and the 90s, it notably always keeps one an eye on the present day (Trump, of course, makes an inevitable and slightly incongruous cameo) such that what happens links subtly into current affairs without ever explicitly referencing them. [[The Great Wide Open by Douglas Kennedy|Full Review]] <!-- d'Eramo -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:1782273883.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1782273883/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[Deviation by Luce d'Eramo and Anne Milano Appel (translator)]]=== [[image:3.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]], [[:Category:Autobiography|Autobiography]], [[:Category:Historical Fiction|Historical Fiction]] For those of you who have read books of life in the Nazi camps – and of course, for those of you who have not – this can be considered a next step. It begins, after all, with someone escaping Dachau and fleeing her work assignment during a bombing raid, and you'd not blame her one minute, as her career was deemed to be cess-tank cleaner and sewage unblocker by the Germans. In Munich, she stumbles on help to get her to what seems to be a camp for non-native civilians to look for work, or company, or transport elsewhere, either official or otherwise. But then the next chapter sees her going back into the camp next to Dachau once more, and by then eyebrows are being raised. [[Deviation by Luce d'Eramo and Anne Milano Appel (translator)|Full Review]]  <!-- Chamberlain -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:1786076446.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1786076446/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[The Hidden by Mary Chamberlain]]=== [[image:4.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]], [[:Category:Historical Fiction|Historical Fiction]] When Barbara Hummel arrives, determined to identify the mysterious woman whose photograph she has found among her mother's possessions, Dora and Joe find their worlds upended – and are swiftly forced to confront their pasts. Revisiting their time on the Channel Islands during World War II, Dora remembers a time when she concealed her Jewish identity, and Joe, a Catholic Priest, remembers a time when he hid something very different. In this story of love, loss and betrayal, it remains to be seen whether a speck of light can diffuse the darkest shadows of war… [[The Hidden by Mary Chamberlain|Full Review]] <!-- Clár Ní Chonghaile -->|-| style=''width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;''|[[image:1787198146.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1787198146/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style=''vertical-align: top; text-align: left;''|===[[The Reckoning by Clar Ni Chonghaile]]=== [[image:5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]] As the blurb says, ''In a cottage in Normandy, Lina Rose is writing to the daughter she abandoned as a baby''…the whole of Chonghaile's second novel is a series of letters addressed to Diane. Lina is now in her seventies and Diane is a mother herself. They have met just once since Lina gave her up for adoption. It was not a good meeting. [[The Reckoning by Clar Ni Chonghaile|Full Review]]<!-- Abbs -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:1473691206.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1473691206/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[Frieda by Annabel Abbs]]=== [[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Historical Fiction|Historical Fiction]], [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]] Married to English Professor Ernest Weekley, aristocrat Frieda Von Richtofen finds herself stifled by the confines of married life. Visiting family in Munich, she becomes captivated by the ideas of revolution and free love. Meeting the penniless writer D.H. Lawrence, she finds herself drawn into a passionate affair and a tempestuous relationship, changing the course of both their lives, and unleashing a creative outpouring that will change the course of literature forever. [[Frieda by Annabel Abbs|Full Review]]