Changes

|author=Matthew Tree|title=We'll Never Know|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= 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 self confidence. So Tim applied himself to his studies, cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and set himself high but achievable ambitions.|isbn=0571362672B0CVFXPGP8}}{{Frontpage|isbn=B0C47LV1PC|title=SnowFragility|author=John BanvilleMosby Woods|rating=54|genre=Crime (Historical)Literary Fiction|summary=Can you make a ''Yo birthing person''Welljoke? And if you could, at least is the question should you make it? Or is the question if you're a Wexford mandid, would it land? The catch is that the answer for both could well be.... no.''

So said Colonel Osborne when he welcomed DI St John (pronounced 'Sinjun') Strafford to Ballyglass House just before Christmas 1957. Osborne was master of the Keelmore Hounds and had done something memorable with the Inniskilling Dragoons at Dunkirk. The niceties had to be established even when there was a Catholic priest dead on Fragility'' is set as the library floor with some precious bits city of his anatomy missing. Strafford was from Roslea at Bunclody and thisPortland, along with his good-but-shabby suitOregon, marked him out as of Osborne's class and obviously Protestant. The dead priest was Father Tom Lawless cautiously begins to emerge from Scallanstown, who - despite the different religions - was in restrictions imposed during the habit of spending time at Ballyglass House. His horse was stabled there.covid pandemic

|author= Tahi SaihateMosby Woods|title= Astral Season, Beastly SeasonA Whirly Man Loses His Turn|rating= 3.54|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= We long for our past The West isn't the dominant force it once was. Nobody in the West is quite sure how to mend this or even though if mending it is the best course of action. Governments are flailing. A war here, a place to which we can never returnpush for climate action there. Tahi Saihate, A feeling that nobody is in her debut novel ''Astral Seasonactual charge. Imagine then, Beastly Season'' illustrates how these rose-tinted glasses often liethere was a man with precognition. Her novel is a meditation on youth and how Imagine the things we do as strategic advantage in this asset; a teenager man who can seem intensely important and often life-alteringtell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. 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?|isbn= 1916277101B0C9SNG8R1

|authorisbn=Laura Imai Messina0571379559|title=The Phone Box at the End House of the WorldBroken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams

|summary= In ''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the northeast story of Japan, in Inwate Prefecture a man installed a telephone box in his gardenfour people. Tess Hembry''Inside s roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there is an old black, telephonebut instead, she lives in the house on the riverbank, disconnectedbuilt of broken bricks. Insubstantial as it might look, that carries voices into it's stood the windpassage of time, storms and floods.'' It is a real place Her husband, Richard, a necessary placestruggles to grow his vegetables, and I am pleased to see complete the IMPORTANT NOTE that the author attaches delivery rounds - and to her storybring in sufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, the rainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. People don't believe that the place is not a tourist destinationthey're related, it much less twins and there's an assumption when Max is a sacred place, a place out with his mother that must be left to those who really need itshe's his nanny.|isbn=178658039X

|author=Amin MaaloufClaire North|title=The DisorientedHouse of Odysseus|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= Adam has lived in Paris for years, speaks French ''What could matter more easily than his native Arabic. In fact he hasnlove?''t been back  The follow-up to his homeland for 25 yearsthe excellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a few months after where we left off. An old friend is dying…or as Adam prefers to think In the palace of him a former-friendOdysseus, perhaps not as harsh as an ex-friendwith delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her husband, or maybewho 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. The falling out was a long time ago, Having survived – politically and Adamphysical – the chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca's partner has no idea what it was aboutshores, even so she urges him to go knowing Queen Penelope is on the brink of a fragile peace. One that he'll regret not doing so. Not knowing whether he's going because he needs or wants toshatters however with the return of Orestes, King of Mycenae, or simply because he was askedand his sister Elektra, he's on the next planeseeking refuge. |isbn=B07ZQSK9CY0356516075

|author=Joanne M HarrisKay Chronister|title=A Pocketful of CrowsDesert Creatures|rating=54|genre= Confident ReadersDystopian Fiction|summary= I have always been of the mind With a world that once you're above pictureis becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, post-book level and before you get to graphic sex & violenceapocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is a robotic takeover, a world devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, there this genre is no difference between books a way for children and books humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. ''Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the fears that exist for adultshumanity 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 are good books |rating= 5|genre= Horror|summary= Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is used as a way to reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and poor onesprocess them. And Joanne Harris does not produce poor ones. Most horror fiction feature a ''A Pocketful of CrowsBig Bad'' , whether that is clearly aimed at a home invader, a monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and, by the younger readers as witness the use end of the middle initial in the authorstory, beatable. Eric LaRocca's name to differentiate from her adult offers. Ignore that if you have loved anything from ''ChocolatThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' onwards you will know is not like that Harris . It is mistress a collection of short stories more interested in the modern fairy talehorrors of illness, grief and humiliation. This is no differentHorrors that linger and are harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''. It is an utter delight.|isbn=1473222184

|author=Frederic Beigbeder and Frank Wynne (translator)Madelaine Lucas|title=A Life Without EndThirst for Salt|rating=45

|summary=I looked at the calendar the other week''Love, and disappointedly realised I have a birthday this year – I know'd read, yet another one. It won't was supposed to be one of the major numbers, but the time when I have the same number as Heinz varieties looms on the horizon. And then a few of the big 0-numbers, light and if all goes wellweightless feeling, but Ihad always longed for gravity'll be an OBE. (Which of course stands for Over Bloody Eighty.) Now if that's  Told from a retrospective view, a young woman unravels the extent of my midyear-life crisis, I guess I have to be happy. Our author here doesn't use long relationship that exact phrase, but he might be said to be living oneonce defined her. 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 Overlaid with later wisdom, the assistant to narrator relives the first geneticist he interviews, and they end up affair with a child, which is at least a way of continuing man twenty years her senior from its inception – the life of his genes, and a motive summer after finishing university – to keep on goingits sorrowful end the summer after. But how can he get to not flick Set against the backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town 'final way out' switchThirst for Salt'' details the 24-year-old narrator's deepening relationship with her older lover, especially when foie gras tastes so nice?depicting its all-consuming nature, how it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably.|isbn=16428606700861546490

|author= Maryse CondéMichael Grothaus|title= The Wondrous and Tragic Life of Ivan and IvanaBeautiful Shining People|rating= 4.5

|summary= We live in a post- world: post-colonialism, post-modernism, post truth''But fearing something and having it come to pass are two different things. The list goes on. There are numerous works that utilise the prefix post- in their categorisationAnd I'm willing to bet most of what we fear will never happen, but perhaps none more so than Maryse Condéor we can take steps to change it. In her new novel, ''The Wondrous and Tragic Life of Ivan and Ivana ''Beautiful Shining People'', Condé writes with fervour about revolves around the scars left by colonialism on the countries question of identity and acceptance. Of what it means to which it latched itselfbe human. Ivan Of what is real and Ivana are twins born in Guadeloupewhat is artificial, a French overseas department. They grow up with intense and passionate feelings for each other. As they grow up and move overseas, whether the ravages development of a post-colonial society drive them apart with tragic consequencestechnology is exciting or frightening.|isbn=1642860697191458564X

|author= Ukamaka OlisakweJennifer Saint|title= Ogadinma Or, Everything Will Be All RightAtalanta|rating= 5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= The new novel by Ukamaka Olisakwe is a look at ''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 trauma and heartache name of being a woman in 1980s Nigeriathe goddess. The title is ''Ogadinma OrIt was for the sake of my name, Everything Will Be All Righttoo. Atalanta'' Princess. Ogadinma Warrior. Lover. Hero. Abandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a son, Atalanta is raised under the eponymous heroine protective eye of the storygoddess Athemis and fashioned into a formidable huntress, one who longs for adventure.. We are with her in every scene and it is her narrative voice that leads When the opportunity comes – to join the storyArgonauts, although Olisakwe writes in third person. This provides a sense fierce band of detachment for warriors, descendent from the reader and highlights Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the isolation of Ogadinma. She is exiled from her fatherchance to fight in Artemis's home name and sent to Lagos where she carve out her own legendary place in history. What follows is married to an older man named Tobe. Their marriage descends into violence a whirlwind of challenges and indignities discovery and Ogadinma through it, Atalanta must utilise remember Artemis' fatal warning: that if she marries, it will be her resourcefulness to escapeundoing.|isbn=19116481601472292154

|author=Elliot ReedAmanthi Harris|title=A Key to Treehouse LivingBeautiful Place|rating=45|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=This is the story of Padma, a young boySri Lankan, William Tyce, who is being raised by his uncle after has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the death southern coast of his mother and his father's abandonmenther home country. However, it isn't told in the usual narrative wayThis is a place she spent her formative years. InsteadIt is not a place she was born into, but the book is made up one she thinks of glossary entries, written by William, as a way of describing certain events, situations and emotionshome. It runs alphabetically How she came to be at the Villa, starting with ABSENCEhow it became her home, then moving to ALPHABETICAL ORDERand 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. As I began to read I did find myself thinking Padma'what on earth?!' but I soon grew used s present fails to escape her past and much like the stylemusical score of a film, and was instead caught up in William's storythat strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the Villa.|isbn=19115454181784631930

|authorisbn= Karina Sainz Borgo and Elizabeth Bryer (translator)178563335X|title= It Would Be Night in CaracasSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor|rating= 45|genre= Literary Fiction |summary= When we first meet Rachel Bird she''It Would Be Night s a trainee vicar, sitting in Caracason a PCC meeting and wondering why they'' illuminates re held when you need to pick the everyday horrors of modern day Venezuelachildren up. Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. It begins with the death of Adelaida Falcon Thelma's mother and chronicles Adelaidadaughter-in-law won's coming to terms with t let her new solitude in this world and see her attempts grandson. Holthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, is a lovely place, but Rachel is struggling to escape it. Danger stalks develop a real bond with the shadows parish - andshe's in awe of the vicar, in Gail, but then she's been doing the job for more than thirty years. Rachel and Christopher hoped that a society where walk on the establishment is crumbling, who can you turn to? |isbn=0062936867beach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing.}}

|isbn=14711863931398515388|title=Photographer of The Boy and the LostDog|author=Caroline ScottSeishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)

|genre=Historical General Fiction|summary=May 1921First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, in turn, caused the nuclear meltdown. Edie receives a photograph through the post. There is no letter or note with itThe result was complete and utter devastation. There is nothing written on The deaths were uncountable, and the back loss of the photographlivelihoods was widespread. It is a picture The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of her husband, Francis. Francis has been missing for four years. Technically, he has been "missing, believed killed" priorities but that is not something that - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a young widow can believeconvenience store. She hangs on He wasn't a dog person but the word convenience store owner'missing', disbelieving s comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the word killeddog jumped in.

|isbn=15098964650989715337|title=The NightjarPapa on the Moon|author=Deborah HewittMarco North|rating=4.5|genre=FantasyLiterary Fiction|summary=''The NightjarSome frogs had gotten into the well.'' ''Walter stood waist-deep in the fragrant water, naked except for his beaten leather hat. Long strands of their 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 he filled them.''  How is that for an unusual and exciting story. Alice Wyndham lives a normal life opening? The style of this novel in London until she finds a box on her doorstep one morning the form of interconnected short stories goes from succinct and her life begins laconic to unravel, fast. From that very moment, her life is flooded with magic, loss, expectation wistful and particularlymusing, betrayalturning on a sixpence. As everything around her shiftsAnd author Marco North, all that she knowswho has the most wonderful turn of phrase, all that she thinks she knows, must changestarts as he means to go on. Who can she trust? Who must she trust? Who will she trust? More importantly, can she even trust herself?

|isbnauthor=0857058738Daisy Hildyard|title=EquatorEmergency|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The summary of this book doesn't come close to explaining what is done with the premise.|isbn=1913097811}}  {{Frontpage |author=Antonin Varenne and Sam Taylor (translator)Sally Oliver |title=The Weight of Loss |rating=3.54 |genre=Historical Literary Fiction|summary=It strikes me that nobody can speak well of Marianne is grieving. Traumatised after the Wild West outside the walls death of a theme park. Our agent her sister, she awakes to see how bad it was here is Pete Fergusonfind strange, who bristles at thick black hairs sprouting from the indignity bones of the white man against Native 'Indian', who spends days being physically sick while indulging her spine which steadily increase in a buffalo huntsize and volume. Her GP, and who hates diagnosing the way man – and womanodd phenomenon as a physical reaction to her grief, of course – can turn against fellow man recommends she go to stay at the bat of Nede, an eyelidexperimental new treatment centre in Wales. But this book Yet something strange is about so much more than the 1870s USA, happening to Marianne and the attendant problems with gold rushes, pioneer spirits and racial genocideother patients at Nede: a metamorphosis of a kind. He finds himself trying to find this bookAs Marianne'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 memories threaten to counter the anti-gravityoverwhelm her, Nede offers her release from this cycle of memory and where, who knows, things might actually be better. But pain—but only at a terrible price: that equator is a long way away – and there's a whole adventure full of Mexico and Latin America between him and it… identity itself.|isbn= 086154112X }}

|isbnauthor=1526614960Natalia Garcia Freire|title=The Dutch House|author=Ann PatchettThis World Does Not Belong To Us

|summary=When we first meet Danny and his elder sisterEarly comments on this debut novel from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, Maeve Conroy, they're both living at The Dutch House a delight. I will agree with their parents and under the gaze of the portraits of the former owners whose oil paintings still hang on the walls. Itfirst – tremendous is no understatement – but 's a strange family dynamic: Cyril Conroy delight' is distant and perhaps using the closest Danny seems to come to him is when he goes out expression in a way I'm not familiar with him on a Saturday collecting rents from properties the family owns. Elna Conroy is loving, but absent increasingly often until I have to confess my ignorance of the point comes when the children are told that she will not be returningSpanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. In other circumstances, this might From the little I have affected Maeve and Danny deeplyread (in translation, but their primary relationship is with each other. ItI don's t read Spanish) there does seem to be a bond which only death will breaktendency towards the fantastical – the mystical realism.|isbn=0861541901

|isbnauthor=0954899520Jennifer Saint|title=A Winter Book|author=Tove JanssonElektra|rating=54

|summary=Tove Jansson's worldwide fame lasts on Elektra' 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 bemost extreme furies.|isbn=1472273915

|isbn=09542217108409290103|title=The Summer BookIf Only|author=Tove JanssonMatthew Tree|rating=4.5

|summary=Tove Jansson's short novel about Summer is several worlds away from 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 young man got on board the Moomintrolls she is most famous for outside her native Scandinaviaboat and thereafter Patrick was to send him a monthly allowance. Book yourself an afternoon this Summer, and take yourself and The Summer Book somewhere quiet, preferably within sight Patrick sent the money regularly and sound a correspondence - of sorts - sprang up between the seatwo although we hear more about what Lowry has to say than Patrick. It wasn't that Lowry senior didn't care for his son, settle back it was that he didn't care to have him in this country where he might be a danger to his wife and prepare other children. The alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to be transportedget the young man on his way.

|isbnauthor=1788542347Antoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)|title=Snowflake, AZ|author=Marcus SedgwickRed is My Heart

|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=This is a deep, interesting read, unlike any book I've [[:Category:Antoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]] 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 it's not a sickness you've heard of. Insteadand is, they're environmentally ill – affected by household chemicals black and white and fabrics, pesticidesred. Yes, static electricityhe has an artistic collaborator on this piece, and radiation – and their only ''cure'' is to stay in the town away from the real world. Though I think it's about a real place, possible to say not one page lacks the people in it are fictional. It really is a place apart, quite literally cut off from the outside world – people are even required to decontaminate themselves thoroughly before becoming fully integratedinfluence of some striking visual ideas.|isbn=1913547183

|isbn=1784742716B098FFFBH9|title=Train ManSnowcub|author=Andrew MulliganGraham Fulbright|rating=24.5

|summary=I came to this book thinking I knew just what to expect, even though it Fourteen-year-old Rachel is [[:Category:Andy Mulligan|the authorher school's]] debut in the adult novel market (hence the more mature name – he used to be an Andy). I thought it simple animal rights project leader and she and her friend are producing a competition entry to sum up, highlight the tale of a middle-aged man who knows too much about train travel having his life turned around way in which human beings exploit the most pleasant wayanimal world. I hadn't opened it when I'd shelved it alongside [[She gets a great deal of support from her family:Category:Chris Cleave|Chris Cleave]]father Pip Harrison, a lecturer at Imperial College, London, mother Kate and [[:Category:David Nicholls|David Nicholls]]her twin, Nick. I expected some whimsyKate runs the family business, some warmth and some affirmative loveliness. More fool mea toy shop called Cornucopia in Putney, which is where we'll meet Rachel's main (if unsuspected) source of information: five soft toys.

|isbnauthor=1784631647Yancey Williams|title=A Perfect Explanation|author=Eleanor AnstrutherCrosshairs of the Devil|rating=4.5

|summary=Enid Campbell was a woman who, Award-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is getting on the face of itin years and, had everything. Leading the life of an aristocrat – full of inherited wealth despite his strenuous objections and splendourthanks to his daughter, finds himself living - or imprisoned, glamourous locales and high expectations. Only Enidfrom Eddie's life has been plagued by mental illness – undiagnosedpoint of view - in room 315 of the Garden of Eden nursing home, with only a trusty nursing aide, untreated and threatening both Enid and those close to her. After losing custody of her childrenJenkins, Enid sells her son to her sister for £500 – but palatable company. Nothing is this an act going to keep Eddie from his stock-in-trade of greedwriting though, or an act of desperation? Exploring the true story of her own grandmotherso here, Eleanor Anstruther has found the perfect subject for an explosivehis readers, moving and beautifully well-written debutare his wanderings through his life's work.|isbn=0986031658}}

|isbn=191070962X0008421714|title=The ChokeMrs March|author=Sofie LagunaVirginia Feito|rating=24.5

|summary=ThereThe problem began just after the publication of George March's most successful novel to date. Everyone but Mrs March (we know her first name only on the last page) seemed to either be reading it or had already done so. Every day Mrs March went to the local patisserie to buy olive bread but on that particular morning, Patricia asked, as she was wrapping the bread, ''but isn't this the first time he's based a dull, dispiriting pang of disappointment that comes when character on you try something everyone else loves and find out ?'' She mentioned that youJohanna, the principal character had 'her mannerisms''re really . Perhaps this would not into it. Coffee. Ice skating. A new Netflix series. Books are like have mattered, except for the fact thatJohanna is the whore of Nantes - ''a weak, plain, but doubly sodetestable, pathetic, unloved, unloveable wretch.''