Changes

[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]==Literary fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Angela CarterMatthew Tree|title=Burning Your BoatsWe'll Never Know|rating=4.5|genre=Short StoriesLiterary Fiction|summary='Burning your Boats' brings together Carter's early works and her uncollected short stories, alongside the collections 'Fireworks', 'The Bloody Chamber', 'Black Venus' and 'American Ghosts'. Carter's ability Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to take the everyday and transform it into the fantastic is evident in stories that range be different from his father, a cautionary tale drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of a musician in love with his instrument artistic passions all failed miserably and who had endless crises of self confidence. So Tim applied himself to a lost motorist whose journey ends in nightmarish circumstances in the Snow Pavilionhis studies, cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and set himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099592916</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ada WilsonB0C47LV1PC|title=Red Army Faction BluesFragility|author=Mosby Woods

|summary=Ada Wilson admits that his fascination with Can you make a ''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, is the period question should you make it? Or is what drove his work on this novelthe question if you did, and would it land? The catch is the wealth of detail and background that strikes one when reading his account of Peter Urbach, the undercover agent whose role was to act as an agent provocateur to the Red Brigadeanswer for both could well be... Urbach is revealed from the outset as a plant, an undercover operative who needs to keep all events of the group 'noted and filed' for his masters. And throughout the first half of the novel we see Urbach recording the changes and developments, the complex web of political ideology, naivety and the pure egocentricity of youth which created the happening of the Baader-Meinhof gangno.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1901927482</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Matthew Green|title=Memoirs ''Fragility'' is set as the city of an Imaginary Friend|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Max is 8 years old. He likes Lego and Star Wars and playing with toy soldiers. He can tell you 102 words that rhyme with tree. He scarfs down grilled cheese sandwiches and chicken and rice. He does not like physical contact. He lives with his mum and dad who argue about what is best for him and why he’s not normal like other boys and girls.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0751547875</amazonuk>Portland, Oregon, cautiously begins to emerge from the restrictions imposed during the covid pandemic

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Shalom AuslanderMosby Woods|title=Hope: a TragedyA Whirly Man Loses His Turn|rating=4.5

|summary=Meet Solomon Kugel, who is almost universally known by his surnameThe West isn't the dominant force it once was. He Nobody in the West is about quite sure how to join mend this or even if mending it is the list best course of kvetching Jewish heroes of comedy fictionaction. Governments are flailing. A war here, and at a very esteemed position push for climate action there. A feeling that nobody is in that listactual charge. He's Imagine then, there was a man who worries that by having had a kid he's betraying with precognition. Imagine the boy's soul by bringing it into strategic advantage in this asset; a world such as this. He's forced to live with his mother, man who continually expects a second Holocaust and complains about suffering from the first, although she was not born then. He's faced with the eternal dilemma can tell you what will happen given any set of not finding gluten-free matzo bread for his observancescircumstances. He's moved to a rural locationThat man would be valuable, and found houses like his are on right? Perhaps the hit-list of an arsonistmost valuable asset in history. Imagine then, but his new home has an even more unusual secret..that this man loses this ability.What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1447207653</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Grace McCleen0571379559|title=The Land House of DecorationBroken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams

|summary=Grace McCleen's debut novel, ''The Land House of DecorationBroken Bricks'' paints an originalis the story of four people. Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, unsettlingbut instead, sometimes dark and generally rather wonderful pictureshe lives in the house on the riverbank, built of broken bricks. Narrated by ten year old Judith Insubstantial as it might look, raised by her father who is a fundamental religious follower of it's stood the end passage of the world is nigh varietytime, storms and floods. Her husband, Richard, it looks at bullyingstruggles to grow his vegetables, both at school to complete the delivery rounds - and to bring in more general societysufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, faith and the possible rejection thereof rainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. People don't believe that they're related, much less twins and the strength of childhood imaginationthere's an assumption when Max is out with his mother that she's his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>070118681X</amazonuk>

{{newreview|author=Dasa Drndic and Ellen EliasThe follow-Bursac (translator)|title=Trieste|rating=5|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=Haya Tedeschi, an 82 year old woman, sits alone in Italy, waiting. She waits for up to the adult son she hasnexcellent ''Ithaca''t seen since he was picks up a babyfew 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 Haya waits, ever she goes through her red basket remains surrounded by suitors vying for the throne of photographs the Western Isles. Having survived – politically and memorabiliaphysical – the chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca's shores, hanging ''out her life Queen Penelope is on an imaginary washing line''the brink of a fragile peace. She then takes One that shatters however with the reader back in timereturn of Orestes, back to her life as a Catholicised JewKing of Mycenae, beforeand his sister Elektra, during and after World War II in an area called Triesteseeking refuge.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857050222</amazonuk>0356516075

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Charles DickensKay Chronister|title=The Mystery of Edwin DroodDesert Creatures|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=If you have never come across 'Drood' before, there are certain significant factors which make this With a 'must read'. It world that is Dickens' last workbecoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, and he died without completing post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it. Given that this is a detective storyrobotic takeover, one a world devoid of the very first in that traditionwater or a nuclear holocaust, it this genre is doubly intriguing, because although we are clearly being fed clues and hints throughout, at the point where the text ends we aren't even fully sure even if a crime has been committed. So as the basis way for endless speculation about what really happens this novel could hardly be betteredhumans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. We certainly have potential villains and victims, but we also have ''Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a number new work of likely red herrings; complex threads post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of romantic interest, but again it the fears that exist for humanity today. It is by no means clear exactly which way these will resolve; and a shadowy detective figure, whose speculations certainly have no sense of conclusionshocking novel that still manages to find hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1849904278</amazonuk>1803364998

 {{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Alexander MacLeodEric LaRocca|title=Light LiftingThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=4.5|genre=Short StoriesHorror|summary=Short stories may not be everyone's cup of teaHorror taps into something primeval within us. Sometimes, particularly with first time authors, there It is an annoying tendency used as a way to be overly experimentalreflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and process them. Not so with Alexander MacLeodMost horror fiction feature a 's stunningly assured debut. True he has genetic 'formBig Bad'' in , whether that he is the son of novelist a home invader, a monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and short story writer [[:Category:Alistair MacLeod|Alistair MacLeod]], but even so, by the quality end of this collectionthe story, beatable. Eric LaRocca's ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is remarkablenot like that. The It is a collection of seven short stories is not overly themedmore interested in the horrors of illness, although certain issues grief and concerns do reappear, but what binds the stories together is a very human approach humiliation. Horrors that linger and are harder to adversitydefeat than any ''Big Bad''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224093940</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Terri ArmstrongMadelaine Lucas|title=Standing WaterThirst for Salt|rating=45

|summary=Dom has made the long flight from London to Australia and he's shattered'Love, physically and emotionally. HeI's been busy getting on with his shiny new life in cosmopolitan London and has barely spared d read, was supposed to be a thought for the folks back home. He's not relishing meeting up again with his brother Neal. Neal took over the family farm light and land when their father died. The two brothers are like chalk and cheese. They weightless feeling, but I had nothing in common as young boys growing up and when Dom left always longed for Europe, Neal was relieved. But there is still an unsolved issue between them and itgravity's a biggy. Now that they're older and hopefully wiser, will they manage to talk about it and even resolve it. Time will tell.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908136006</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Andrea Gillies|title=The White Lie|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=One scorching hot summer's afternoon Ursula Salter hurls herself into the drawing room of her parents' house and delivers Told from a retrospective view, a young woman unravels the devastating news year-long relationship that she's killed once defined her nephew. Overlaid with later wisdom, Michael, and that he's in the loch. But is this what's happened? Ursula might be in her late twenties but she has narrator relives the mind and understanding of affair with a child and man twenty years her senior from its inception – crucially the summer after finishing university – there's no body to be foundits sorrowful end the summer after. There are contradictions and inconsistencies in what Ursula says – and evidence from someone else who might have this own agenda – all Set against the backdrop of which allows an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the Salters to close ranks 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 construct a version of what happened designed to protect Ursula familial relationships and allow themselves to avoid the truthhow it altered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1780720394</amazonuk>0861546490

{{newreview|author=Patrick Flanery|title=Absolution|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=If Patrick Flanery's South African-set debut novel 'Beautiful Shining People'Absolution'' is anything revolves around the question of identity and acceptance. Of what it means to go by, he could well be one of the next big names in literary fictionhuman. It's complex Of what is real and at times challengingwhat is artificial, but ultimately an extremely rewarding reading experienceand whether the development of technology is exciting or frightening.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857892002</amazonuk>191458564X

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Angela CarterJennifer Saint|title=Wise ChildrenAtalanta

|summary=Dora and Nora Chance are the twin daughters ''I was as worthy as any one of Shakespearean actor Melchior Hazard and Pretty Kittythem. I would get on board that ship, the chambermaid at the theatrical boarding house where he was lodging in the First World WarI vowed. Kitty died I would take my place, not just in childbirth and the girls were brought up by name of the woman they knew as Grandmagoddess. As It was for Melchiorthe sake of my name, he preferred that it be thought that his twin brother Peregrine was responsible and Perry was not unhappy to bear the burdentoo. What Melchior didnAtalanta't know was that the twin daughters which his first wife produced were actually sired by Perry. If you're getting confused, then bear in mind that there are more sets of twins to appear and that this is comedy, not of the cheap canned laughter variety, but of the type written by the bard himself.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099981106</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Nicky Harlow|title=Amelia and the Virgin|rating=5|genre=Humour|summary=Amelia is 13 years old and lives with her mother, brother and extended family in 1980s LiverpoolPrincess. Con, her great-uncle, is a psychiatrist with prestigious patients and a bit of a drink problem, Great-Aunt Edith is a devout Catholic with an inclination towards eccentricity and her brother, Julian, is a junkyWarrior. Amelia's mother tries to hold everyone together but becomes slightly distracted when she inherits a convent in Ireland, complete with nunsLover. Amelia has her own problems, thoughHero. She sees visions of the Goddess Irena and is pregnant with the next Messiah. (A girl this time as the original male Messiah didn't have much luck.)|amazonuk=<amazonuk>095600539X</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Helen Dunmore|title=The Greatcoat|rating=4|genre=Horror|summary=Set in 1952 in Yorkshire, Abandoned at birth for being born a young couple move into daughter rather than a rented flat. Philip son, Atalanta is raised under the protective eye of the newgoddess Athemis and fashioned into a formidable huntress, young doctor while his new wife Isabel struggles with one who longs for adventure. When the isolated life with no friends or family and Philip's frequent absence due opportunity comes – to join the demands Argonauts, a fierce band of his job. Things take a turn to the spooky whenwarriors, waking descendent from under the warmth of Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the old greatcoat Isabel finds chance to fight in Artemis' name and carve out her own legendary place in the flat, she hears history. What follows is a tapping at the window whirlwind of challenges and discovery and finds there an RAF pilotthrough it, AlecAtalanta must remember Artemis' fatal warning: that if she marries, who appears to know Isabel intimatelyit will be her undoing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099564939</amazonuk>1472292154

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Caroline BrothersAmanthi Harris|title=HinterlandBeautiful Place

|summary=Aryan (14) and his brother Kabir (aged 8) are refugeesPadma, a young Sri Lankan, fleeing has returned to the horrors Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of their homeland, Afghanistanher home country. This is a place she spent her formative years. Equipped only with some money sewn It is not a place she was born into a belt , 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 stories much like the musical score of a promised land called Englandfilm, they learn about desperation, misplaced trust and other lessons normally kept from childrenthat strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the Villa.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408817756</amazonuk>1784631930

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jon McGregor178563335X|title=This Isn't the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like YouSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor|rating=4.5

|summary=The clue is 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 Christopher Brookmyre-styled titlechildren up. If the eventsHer husband, Christopher, characters collects six-year-old Hannah and circumstances in these stories are known to youher elder brother, Jamie, then you have my sympathieswhilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. A man causes an embarrassment trying to watch his Thelma's daughter-in-law won's first school nativity playt let her see her grandson. Another has Holthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, is a phobia of eggs containing an avian foetus when he puts knife and fork lovely place, but Rachel is struggling to them. There's develop a car crash here real bond with the parish - and thereshe's in awe of the vicar, a drowningGail, some arson, some theft..but then she's been doing the job for more than thirty years. Rachel and Christopher hoped that a lot of clues that point to walk on the beach would do them some national disastergood - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. Take all those clues as one and you eventually see this is more than just a collection of disparate short stories, but a very fractured, obfuscated novelAnd then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408809265</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Wendy Jones1398515388|title=The Thoughts Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Happenings of Wilfred Price, Purveyor of Superior FuneralsAlison Watts (translator)|rating=4.5

|summary=It's Spring 1924 First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in South Walesthe ocean floor, which created the tsunami and young undertaker Wilfred is going to learn the hard way how serious this, in turn, caused the trivial can benuclear meltdown. Fascinated by a girl's dress - worn very seductively by Grace, who he has met but twice as an adult - he blurts out a marriage proposalThe result was complete and utter devastation. As much as wants to take it backThe deaths were uncountable, she won't let himand the loss of livelihoods was widespread. He tries to move on, leaving her disappointed, especially when he falls for The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the daughter list of priorities but - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a man he buries, but..convenience store. There are things dangerously spoken, dangerously left unsaid, and He wasn't a complex web of divided loyalties dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and enforced connections, Tamon the dog jumped in this brilliant debut novel.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780330561</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Fadi Azzam and Adam Talib (Translator)0989715337|title=SarmadaPapa on the Moon|author=Marco North|rating=54

|summary='Sarmada' is small and remote village in Some frogs had gotten into the Northern hills of Syria, close to the Turkish borderwell. And for much of Azzam's novel it seems a forgotten village, lost in the rituals and mysticism of ancient Druze belief and folk tales that inform the collective consciousness of the place. For the novel weaves the tales of three Syrian women and their relationships with each other, the men of their lives and the fabric of a life almost caught in the timeless past of the Middle East.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906697345</amazonuk>}}'

{{newreview|author=Ali Shaw|title=The Man Who Rained|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Do you remember being a child who had only just learned how to read? Do you remember the very first time you read a fairy story that no''Walter stood waist-one had told you before? Can you recapture deep in the joy fragrant water, naked except for his beaten leather hat. Long strands of entering a truly magical land their eggs wove around him, sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Two of the dogs leaned over the opening and (for a time) believing it was real?barked down at the strange noise of the buckets as he filled them.''

NoHow is that for an opening? Then I recommend that you read Ali Shaw's second The style of this novel 'The Man Who Rained'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.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857890328</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Eric-Emmanuel SchmittDaisy Hildyard|title=Noah's ChildEmergency|rating=4.5

|summary=Joseph, a young Belgian Jew, is sent away by his parents when they grow nervous about the treatment of Jews during World War Two. He is taken in by a village priest, Father Pons, and given a new identity and a place in Father Pons' school along with an assortment of other children, some of whom are genuine pupils and others who are, like Joseph, seeking sanctuary.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848874189</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Susan Hill|title=A Kind Man|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|The summary=Meet Eve, and her husband, the title character, Tommy. She's at a bit of a sticky wicket in life, for however much they want a baby, her sister and his feckless husband churn out son after son after son, and go no lengths at all to love them. So when Eve and Tommy do at last have a child, it's a tragedy for it to die when only three years old. But in this plot, which youbook doesn'll thank me for not going into further, there will be a lot more swings and roundabouts, of torment and ecstasy, doldrums and delights, hell and heaven, t come close to comeexplaining what is done with the premise.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099555441</amazonuk>1913097811}}

{{newreviewFrontpage |author=Chris WomersleySally Oliver |title=BereftThe Weight of Loss |rating=4 |genre=Literary Fiction |summary= Marianne is grieving. Traumatised after the death of her sister, she awakes to find strange, thick black hairs sprouting from the bones of her spine which steadily increase in size and volume. Her GP, diagnosing the odd phenomenon as a physical reaction to her grief, recommends she go to stay at Nede, an experimental new treatment centre in Wales. Yet something strange is happening to Marianne and the other patients at Nede: a metamorphosis of a kind. As Marianne's memories threaten to overwhelm her, Nede offers her release from this cycle of memory and pain—but only at a terrible price: that of identity itself.|isbn= 086154112X }} {{Frontpage|author=Natalia Garcia Freire|title=This World Does Not Belong To Us

|summary=Quinn WalkerEarly comments on this debut novel from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, a young Australian man fresh from fighting on delight. I will agree with the first – tremendous is no understatement – but 'a delight' is perhaps using the European front expression in World War One, returns to the very town he was drummed out of ten years before, after being accused of raping and killing his own younger sistera way I'm not familiar with. Two things I have beaten him to confess my ignorance of the small settlement Spanish- one, the global flu pandemic; two a telegram saying he died bravely in action earlier in the warlanguage literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. And From the less you know of what he meets and little I have read (in translation, I don't read Spanish) there does back in Flint seem to be a tendency towards the better, fantastical – the more to keep this fresh and brilliant book's many intrigues as secret as they were for memystical realism.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857386549</amazonuk>0861541901

 {{newreview|author=Eric Orsenna|title=The Indies Enterprise|rating=4.5|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=As soon as you pick up a novel about Columbus's discovery of the Americas, certain expectations come to mind. Orsenna however is much more than your average writer and he manages to subvert almost all of these by delivering a quiet, scholarly account of what seems at first a diversion, the art of map making. But this book is not about Columbus himself, but rather his brother Bartholomew, and how he is swept into the excitement and ambition of his older sibling.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906598932</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Mahmoud DowlatabadiJennifer Saint|title=The ColonelElektra

|summary=The novel opens at dead of night in a house in Rasht in Gilan province, Iran. It is pouring with rain and 'Elektra' by Jennifer Saint tells the colonel story of the title is three women who live in the grip heavily male dominated world of extreme melancholiaAncient Greece. Two policemen Cassandra, Clytemnestra, and Elektra are knocking on all bit players in the door. They are bringing news story of his youngest daughterthe Trojan War. This triggers a night of misery in which Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that often the silent women have the colonel recalls his own past, most compelling stories and the tragic lives of his five childrenmost extreme furies.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1906598894</amazonuk>1472273915

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tessa Hadley8409290103|title=Married LoveIf Only|author=Matthew Tree

|genre=Short StoriesLiterary Fiction|summary=Married Love is Tessa Hadley’s second collectionTwenty-one-year-old Malcolm Lowry had been sent abroad by his father, cotton-broker AO Lowry: he asked his accountant, Mr Patrick, containing twelve short stories looking at (mostly) modern relationships to ensure that the young man got on board the boat and family dynamics – many are about parents thereafter Patrick was to send him a monthly allowance. Patrick sent the money regularly and their grown a correspondence - of sorts - sprang up children and in-laws, others are between the two although we hear more about coupleswhat Lowry has to say than Patrick. Flicking through the book 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 choose some of the best his wife and/or most interesting stories other children. The alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to mentionget the young man on his way.}}{{Frontpage|author=Antoine Laurain, I Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)|title=Red is My Heart|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction |summary=[[:Category:Antoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]] books have found a difficultyalways been black and white and read in my house. Almost all of these incisiveAnd so was this one, witty stories reveal an interesting group of characters although I would like to know could have spelled that more about after the endaccurately – this one was, and is, black and white and red. Yes, sometimes from several different viewpointshe has an artistic collaborator on this piece, and I think it is hard 's possible to pick out just a fewsay not one page lacks the influence of some striking visual ideas. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0224096427</amazonuk>1913547183

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Louisa YoungB098FFFBH9|title=My Dear I Wanted to Tell YouSnowcub|author=Graham Fulbright

|summary=It takes Fourteen-year-old Rachel is her school's animal rights project leader and she and her friend are producing a while for competition entry to highlight the way in which human beings exploit the full power animal world. She gets a great deal of Louisa Young's remarkable ''My Dear I Wanted To Tell You'' to become apparentsupport from her family: father Pip Harrison, a lecturer at Imperial College, but when it doesLondon, it can hardly fail to move you. Set just before mother Kate and during World War Oneher twin, it's a story of love and human spirit against the oddsNick. The impact of Kate runs the book is family business, a toy shop called Cornucopia in what happens to the charactersPutney, so I donwhich is where we't want to give too much away, but it's worth pointing out that itll meet Rachel's not for the overly squeamish reader particularly in some of the descriptions of surgical procedures, which have clearly been meticulously researched by Young. The title itself it taken from the opening words main (if unsuspected) source of the standard letters that the wounded were given to send to loved ones back home. The wounded were required to fill in the blanksinformation: five soft toys.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007361432</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jonathan EvisonYancey Williams|title=West Crosshairs of Herethe Devil|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Award-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, 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. Nothing is going to keep Eddie from his stock-in-trade of writing though, so here, for his readers, are his wanderings through his life's work.|isbn=0986031658}} {{Frontpage|isbn=0008421714|title=Mrs March|author=Virginia Feito|rating=34.5

|summary=The town of Port Bonita, located on the Pacific coast of Washington State, is problem began just after the setting – and almost a character itself, such is its importance – publication of Jonathan Evison’s newest George March's most successful novelto date. In a massively ambitious narrative, Everyone but Mrs March (we start at know her first name only on the Elwha River Dam in 2006, before just two pages later being transported back into the 1880’s, last page) seemed to see the town’s founding. A hundred pages either be reading it or had already done so later, we’re brought back . Every day Mrs March went to the 21st centurylocal patisserie to buy olive bread but on that particular morning, then returned to Patricia asked, as she was wrapping the 19thbread, and ''but isn't this the cuts between scenes get faster and more furious as we seem to flip forwards and backwards in first time without giving us much time to catch our breathhe's based a character on you?'' She mentioned that Johanna, the principal character had 'her mannerisms''. By 2006 Perhaps this would not have mattered, except for the Dam fact that Johanna is about to be destroyed, and we see the effect its construction has had on the local community and how the descendants whore of the original characters have turned outNantes - ''a weak, plain, detestable, pathetic, unloved, unloveable wretch.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780331967</amazonuk>''

{{newreview|author=Janette Jenkins|title=Little Bones|rating=4|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=While this might sound like the afterlife of a brilliant and unlikely cabaret mimic, it's not. It's a rich, evocative and engaging novel set in the last years of Victoria's reign, in the depths of her darkest London. Fate - and being abandoned by, in turn, her mother and older sister - leaves Jane Stretch living with and working for a doctor and his lumpen, housebound wife. Jane is alternatively called an 'unfortunate' and a 'cripple' for her disabilities and distorted frame, but she has enough bookish intelligence Move on to pass herself off as an assistant to the doctor, who only ever does one operation - abortions, for music hall artistes. The plot is evidently gearing up to reveal how dangerous such a criminal business might be, for the both of them.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>070118194X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Nick Lake|title=In Darkness|rating=5|genre=Teens|summary=Shorty is lying in the rubble of the great Haitian earthquake of 2010. If he's not rescued soon, he will die. Shorty is from Site Soley, the sprawling slum of Port-au-Prince. After the murder of his father and abduction of his twin sister, Shorty has allowed himself to fall further and further into the slum's gang culture. But Route 9 isn't all about drug-dealing and gun-running - it's also about feeding the poor and educating the children. And Shorty has a great deal to teach his readers, as he recounts his life while waiting to die. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408824183</amazonuk>}}[[Newest Paranormal Reviews]]