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[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!{{Frontpage|isbn= B0FK5LHKD9|title=The Colour of Memory|author=Christopher Bowden|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=It's been three years since we last reviewed a book by favourite regular Christopher Bowden, so we were very glad to see a new novel arrive here at Bookbag Towers. Like all Bowden's stories, there's a mystery at the heart of ''The Colour of Money''. We like this running theme in an author's work -take a mystery but give it different flavour and atmosphere each time.}}{{Frontpage|author=Saou Ichikawa and Polly Barton (translator)|title=Hunchback|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=I was in the middle of a self- Remove imposed book-->buying ban when I made an exception for this one. What first drew me in was the book's bold fuchsia cover, followed by its striking title: ''Hunchback''. This is a word I recognised to be loaded with historical and cultural baggage, often used to dehumanise or reduce. Curious, I leaned over the display table and turned to the back inside cover. There, I discovered the author: Saou Ichikawa, a woman diagnosed in childhood with congenital myopathy, a condition that causes severe muscular weakness and touches every aspect of her life. The title took on new complexity in light of her biography. I had to read it.|isbn=0241700787}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Julie CohenJen Beagin|title=TogetherBig Swiss|rating=4.5|genre=Humour |summary=I found the premise of this book totally original and addictive. Greta possesses the power to know the population of Hudson, New York's darkest secrets, their intimate lives, their fetishes and fears. How? Her job is to transcribe their sex therapy sessions. Sure, there's a confidentiality agreement, as the sex coach who calls himself Om keeps reminding her, but that just makes it more exciting. Like we've all probably wished for at some point in life, Greta can exist passively, placidly, as a fly on the wall. That is, until Greta decides to unglue her fly-feet from the safety of the wall and buzz far too close to the sun. The sun in this analogy is the sex coach's newest patient, who Greta dubs 'Big Swiss', and who, like the sun, is bright, blonde and beautiful - and irresistible to Greta. Suddenly, the confidentiality agreement, the ethics of her professional position, her loyalties to Om, fly out of the window. She's in too deep.|isbn=0571378579}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1784745758|title=Three Days in June|author=Anne Tyler|rating=4

|summary=This is a love story told backwards, in the most beautiful manner, so that we know from the very beginning that Emily and Robert love each other enormously, and that he is about to break her heart in the most dreadful way in order to protect a secret that theyThe day before your daughter've lived with s wedding will always be busy but Gail Baines got far more than she asked for decades. Seeing their love unfold in reverse is beautiful. We get to know them once they have already gotten to know each otherFirst, and it makes for an unusual and interesting structurewas her job as assistant head at the local school. The secret they hold is referred There was a moment when she hoped that she would be promoted to throughout, head but it isnthe discussion moved into the subject of 'people skills't revealed until very late and before she knew what was happening Gail had been sacked or resigned, depending on who was explaining the situation. When she got home (in the bookmiddle of the day: who would have thought that could happen?) her ex-husband was there with a cat. IHe thinks that he'm guessing very few readers ll be staying and that Gail will figure it outbe adopting the cat. Even once you know, you want to go back and read And that's before Gail discovers that the whole story again in the light of the information you now holdgroom hasn't been entirely honest about his personal life.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1409171744</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Kate MildenhallSamantha Harvey|title= SkylarkingOrbital|rating= 4.5|genre= General Fiction |summary= Kate and Harriet are best friends growing up together on an isolated Australian cape. As the daughters of the lighthouse keepersIn 2024, Samantha Harvey won the two girls share everythingBooker Prize for ''Orbital'', until a fisherman, McPhail, arrives compact yet profound work that unfolds over a single day in their small community. When Kate witnesses the desire that flares between him and Harriet, she is torn by her feelings lives of a group of envy and longingastronauts aboard the International Space Station. An innocent moment in McPhailThrough a narrative lens that mirrors the astronauts's hut then occurs that threatens orbital perspective, Harvey invites readers to tear their peaceful community apartsee our planet in a wholly new light. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1785079239</amazonuk>1529922933

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Zoe DuncanHan Kang|title= The Shifting PoolsVegetarian|rating= 24.5|genre= General Fiction|summary= Perhaps This novel, winner of the most overused phrase International Booker Prize in fiction publishing is ''life-affirming'', closely followed 2016 and penned by ''human condition''. The Shifting Pools takes an author who received the Nobel Prize for Literature this year, is as close to a whole new level. Its blurb boasts that unputdownable as it is ''charged throughout with the beautiful urgency of life'', whatever that meansgets. It isn't. And that's the problem. This isn't a bad book, but it sets itself more than lives up to fail. A cardinal rule of writing is ''focus on the small stuff''acclaim. If you set out to write a ''life affirming'' novel that answers all the ''big questions''The story introduces uncanny characters with fragile, vividly tangible bodies yet unknowable, you'll struggle. And it is this trap that Zoe Duncan falls into. In her quest for profundity she loses her wayelusive souls. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1785630369</amazonuk>1803510056

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Sarah HealySally Rooney|title= The Sisters ChaseIntermezzo|rating= 4.5|genre= General Fiction|summary=Mary Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard of life and Bunny. That's how is something of a grandmaster at putting it has always been ever since Bunny was borninto words. Two sisters with an unbreakable bondHer dialogue is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, twisted together so tight that as her characters never quite say exactly what they were two sides of feel. Among the many relationships woven into this story, the central one for readers to unravel is the same coin. Bunny was Mary's whole world; nothing else really mattered; schoolfraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek...friends...boys...wellIvan, maybe one boya socially awkward chess prodigy, but he was something altogether extraordinary. When the unthinkable happenedcontrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, Mary and Bunny found themselves completely alone a successful lawyer living in the world, and thatDublin. Following their father's when Mary decided to take an unforgettable road trippassing after a long battle with cancer, just the two of them, across the United States, in search of a place where they could belongbrothers' already strained relationship faces new trials.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0544960076</amazonuk>0571365469

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Joy RhoadesB0DGDJRHYD|title=The Woolgrower's CompanionNowhere Man|author=Deborah Stone

|summary=1945: The war In a quiet suburban house, Patrick is in its dying days and creating problems far from making his final plans. A meticulous man, he makes sure of every preparation, down to the different frontslast detail. For instanceSome last reflections, in Australiaand then he says goodbye to his wife, what can be done with the Italian POWs brought into the country? The solution seems to be their use as cheap labourworld, and his life. In this way Kate DowdIt's father agrees to take two onto horribly sad. At work in her shop, his sheep farm in drought-ridden New South Wales. Kate wife Diana is initially wary of the two men – Vittorio fending off yet another phone call about her ageing and Luca – but gradually she realises that not all dangers come ailing mother, who needs extricating from outside her communityyet another accident. Life on a sheep station may It will be harsh but for Kate it's going to get a lot worsewhile before Diana realises what Patrick has done.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784741345</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Jonathan Levi1739526910|title= SeptimaniaWhere I've Not Been Lost|author=Glen Sibley|rating= 4.5|genre= General Fiction|summary= First and foremost ''One year after a tale of lovesuicide attempt blows apart musician Brian O’Malley's life, Septimania delivers the frustrations and agony of two people who find each other and then lose each other, all on the same day. But what a momentous day! Life takes Malory and Louisa off he arrives in totally different directions but strangely their paths cross again and againan unfamiliar Devon town to recover. Malory, searching to uncover Living with an unexpected housemate at his pastformer manager’s holiday home, moves to Rome and discovers great and incredible facts about his ancestryhe dreams of reconnecting with everything he has lost. LouisaBut as those tentative plans falter, he becomes swept up in a brilliant mathematicianlocal world of unlikely friendships, is head hunted for 'secret' work mobile discos and is signed up by her father for a life timesurprising romantic possibilities.'s contract with the American Government. She completely disappears from Malory's life and he has no way of knowing how to find her again. They are both trapped in their separate lives.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>071565196X</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Antoine Laurain, Jane Aitken (translator) and Emily Boyce (translator)Jenny Lecoat|title=The PortraitBeyond Summerland

|summary=Meet Pierre-FrancoisJean lives on Jersey with her mother where they are celebrating the end of the occupation. He should by rights be an antiques dealerDuring the war, as he made Jean's father was arrested for listening to a fortune selling on his first collection (of erasers) while at schoolbanned radio and soldiers took him away one night, leaving Jean and funded both his university and carnal education, with prostitutes, by trading tooher mother waiting for years for news of him. He isAs the British finally free the Channel islands from the Nazis, however, a patent and intellectual property lawyerthe war is finally over, and his wife is forever demanding a reduction in the space his collections take up in their flathopes rise that they will finally learn what became of him. But he still dabbles – although this latest visit to the showrooms will cause a lot of unexpected incident. In amongst the grot at truth come as a low-key sale he finds an ancient pastelrelief, showing himself – a bewigged, antique version of himself, even if, however, nobody or will it raise further questions around what else sees happened during the connection between Pierre-Francois and war? Who was the picture's subject. Still, as an effeminate uncle informer who told him, ''real objects carry memory of their past owners'' – and Pierre-Francois is intent on finding the truths behind those memories. Nazis about the radio? Little does he know just And what he will discover…other secrets have been kept throughout the occupation?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1910477435</amazonuk>1846976537

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Virginie Despentes and Frank Wynne (translator)Onyi Nwabineli|title= Vernon Subutex 1Allow Me to Introduce Myself|rating= 4.5|genre= General Fiction|summary= Vernon Subutex is a wanted man. Following Anuri spent her childhood on display to the death of Alex Bleachworld, Vernonthanks to her step-mother Ophelia's generous benefactor and publicly adored musicianincreasingly popular presence on social media, Vernon now has the last recordings where she posted every step of AlexAnuri's drug induced ramblingschildhood for sponsorships and influencer deals and, basically, monetary gain. Kicked out of his apartment Now Anuri is in her twenties and she is slowly trying to regain her confidence and to get her life back, suing her step-mother to take down the story follows Vernon as he couch surfs his way across Pariscontent about her. Anuri is battling alcoholism, pursued by journalists and media moguls desperate failing to cash in on Bleach's death. Eventually finding himself out of luckstart her PhD, friends undergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online and receiving money Vernon from them for doing so. Most importantly, she is left sleeping roughdesperately worried about her little sister, half mad and forced to bear witness to a shocking act who is the new focus of violenceOphelia's online empire. In a world of capricious friends Can she save her sister, and perhaps herself and grasping avaricious journalists who can Vernon trusther relationship with her father at the same time?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857055410</amazonuk>0861546873

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Rowena MacDonald1529153298|title= The Threat Level Remains SevereList of Suspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey|rating= 3.5|genre= General Fiction|summary=Grace Ambrose isnIt't Brigitte Joness 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. (A woman? I mean, honest; for one thing she doesn't keep a diaryhonestly.. Grace is our typical misogynistic Hollywood stereotype supporting female character. ) She is the 's not what'secretly hot chicks worrying Miv's family, though. Women have been disappearing. Well, they' who will suddenly take off their glassesve been murdered, shake out their hair and reveal themselves but to have been beautiful all along'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. Miv's upset because she's overheard that her father wants to move the family 'Down South'. When you're from Yorkshire, Down South is a frightening, foreign place, best avoided. We follow Grace and For Miv, the move would mean leaving her romantic adventures (best friend, Sharon, and misadventures) over three years of she'll do anything to prevent that. She's not worried about the dangers or that her life at the House of CommonsMum's stopped talking - to anyone.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1910709158</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Matt Haig1035906708|title=How to Stop TimeDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin

|summary=Tom is an albatross. That's not We tend to say he has a freakish wingspan, or anythingthink of Maria Callas as Greek, but it means he's not a mayfly. In contrast she was born to all us regular humans with our temperamental bodies living out short lifespansGreek parents in Manhattan, he ages at a speed roughly one-fifteenth of that at which we doNew York, in December 1923 and barely gets touched by any diseaseonly moved to Athens when she was thirteen. It means he will live for several more centuries than the ones he has witnessed so far, Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but ever since his mother was drowned as a witch due her father changed it to 'Callas' to his teenaged self never ageing, he has known make it more manageable in the best thing for him – and others – is to regularly move onStates. Solitude has been tempered since the late Victorian era, when other people even older than him press-ganged him into their society of albatrosses, but the fact of the matter is that falling When she was back in love really is a noAthens -no. But supposedly so that's not to say it never happened, and that's not to say that he can't feel things she could get appropriate training for her voice - she was raised under the albatross daughter he's not seen Nazi occupation by a mother who mercilessly exploited her and made no secret of her preference for centuriesher elder sister, Jackie. It might be the only thing he has to live for…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782118616</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Dane HuckelbridgeAlexander McCall Smith|title= Castle of WaterThe Perfect Passion Company|rating= 4.5|genre= General Fiction|summary= Barry Bleeker The Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and Sophie Ducel are two very different people destined operating as an alternative to take all the same journeyonline apps in providing a more personal, tailored service. As they are both aboard Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the business, as Ness is planning to take a flight trip to Canada to get away for a while. Katie is coming out of a break up with a bad boyfriend, and so jumps at the Marquesas Islandschance to come home to Edinburgh. And so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, their tiny plane crashes leaving Barry thanks to 44 Scotland Street and Sophie the only survivorsIsabel Dalhousie novels, but with some new characters who quickly begin to charm. Until recently Katie has no experience in running a business, or in match-making, Barry was an investment banker but Ness has full confidence in New York before her abilities, and there's always her very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, William, to lend a hand…|isbn=1846976596}}{{Frontpage|author=Dean Koontz|title=The Bad Weather Friend|rating=4.5|genre=Paranormal|summary=Benny is having a terrifically bad day. He loses his job, he decided loses his fiancee, and his house gets trashed. Oh, and someone has delivered a really weird, disturbing coffin-sized object to leave his life behind home, and pursue it's possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the thing that has trashed his dream of paintinghouse! The thing is, Benny is the very last person to deserve all this bad luck. He is a nice person. A really nice person. Sophie meanwhile So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the delivery to his house is a new friend, was a French architect bad weather friend called Spike, who along with her husband Etienne was planning has been sent to help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a honeymoon good person. Spike is going to take care of a lifetime. Now Barry Benny, and Sophie are alone on an uninhabited island in the South Pacificwill certainly take care of Benny's enemies, if he, Benny, where and Harper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they must learn to put aside their differences and surviveare.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0008217858</amazonuk>1662500491

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= M L RioKatherine Howe|title= If We Were VillainsA True Account|rating= 4.5|genre= General Fiction|summary= Murder most horrid amongst Hannah Masury is living in Boston, having been sent to live with a family who run an inn, and being made to work there from a young age. When she hears there is to be a group hanging of 4th Year university students some pirates in the town, she decides to go and watch. Enthralled and horrified in equal measure, Hannah finds herself embroiled in a young boy's death at the hands of Shakespearetwo vicious pirates. We open She hides away, so that they don't find and kill her too, and then to escape them completely she runs away to sea, dressing as our protagonist a boy and joining the notorious Ned Low's pirate ship as a cabin boy. She soon finds herself in the thick of things when there is released a mutiny on board, and from jail having served his time there we are caught up in her rip roaring tale of life on the ocean waves.|isbn=0861547438}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1471180158|title=Maybe Tomorrow|author=Penny Parkes|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Jamie Matson works in an upper-class grocery store, for a crime man who's a control freak with all the subtlety of a half brick. Jamie's son, Bo, 'has his problems'. He's asthmatic and the more you read, the more you'll suspect that he may or may 's on the autistic spectrum. Sometimes Jamie needs to take time off at short notice - she's a frequent flier in the local A&E and sometimes Bo's not have committedfit enough to go to school. What did he do? What happened that year? Why did things turn out Missed shifts or the way they did? We have need to be away on time to push our way through pick Bo up from school are occasions when Jamie can be controlled and put in the undergrowth of flashbacks wrong. It was going to come to find outa head.}}{{Frontpage|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1785656473</amazonuk>B0CKD1L5JL|title=Radio Free Olympia|author=Jeffrey Dunn|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary= Petr is an orphan. Rescued by the strange, reclusive Bear, he is brought up far from bustling cities and busy human society, in the forests of Washington's Olympic Peninsula. After Bear dies and a brief sojourn in human company, and armed with only a pirate radio transmitter, Petr goes on a journey through the forest, broadcasting the strange, wild and rarely heard voices he encounters.

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Martha ConwaySarah Marsh|title= The Floating TheatreA Sign of Her Own|rating= 3.5|genre= Historical General Fiction|summary=When young seamstress May Bedloe is left alone and penniless on the shore After a bout of the Ohioscarlet fever as a child, she finds work on the famous floating theatre that plies its trade along the riverEllen Lark loses her hearing. Her creativity and needlework skills quickly become invaluable and she settles Suddenly plunged into a world of silence, everything about her life among changes. Living in a time when the colourful troupe use of actors. She finds friendssign language was seen as something only savages do, and possibly the promise of more. But cruising the border between the Confederate South and the 'free' North Ellen is fraught with danger. For the sake of sent to a debt that must be repaid, May school where she is compelled taught to transport secret passengerslip read, but physically restrained from signing. From here, she ends up in another school studying under cover of darkness, across Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the river deaf and using a system called Visible Speech. At the same time, Bell is working onother inventions and ideas, along the underground railroad. But as May's secrets become harder to keep, she learns she must endanger those now dear to her.  And to save the lives and Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a complicated tangle of others, she must risk her own..espionage. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1785762907</amazonuk>1035401614

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Daniel Kehlmann and Ross Benjamin (translator)B0BC3YTCMR|title=You Should Have LeftGood Girls Die|author=Ayura Ayira

|genre=General Fiction |summary=Our narrator is a screenwriter, tasked with coming up with a sequel to his hit movie ''Besties'' – a film which helped pay This story is not for a house, but which his actress wife keeps letting him know, isn't ''arteveryone.'' Lavender Daniels was three weeks short of her fifteenth birthday when The Incident happened. To concentrate, the family – he, the wife, and their four year old daughter – have rented She was a largevery bright student, modern house at the end of a horridbit too nerdy if truth be told, hairpin bendand suffered from vitiligo -filled road, people were afraid to hug her in case it's contagious. It's not easy being a charming alpine landscapeblack girl whose skin is 84% white. But things aren't rightShe had a crush on seventeen-year-old Reggie Anderson but never thought he would notice her. The couple are Then he did: Lavender was very good at loggerheads too much, things keep unsettling our narrator, math and the sole shopkeeper for miles around is ready with the Hammer Horror styled warnings of strange eventsReggie asked if she would tutor him. She readily agreed: tutoring was something she gladly did at church: this was just an extension. Quickly we see the book's title in all its galling clarity – but it isn't too late She went to get out… is it? his house and he raped her. And out of whatIn shock, exactly?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1786484048</amazonuk>she even allowed him to give her a lift home.

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Amanda Craig1472263936|title=The Lie of the LandFigurine|author=Victoria Hislop

|summary=The Bredins can't afford to divorce. The house It was in London ''would'' sell, but not for a priced 1968 that would allow Quentin and Lottie ( she with Helena McCloud made her son and their two girls) first trip to each get somewhere to liveGreece. Unemployment has barrelled into the equation tooShe was alone: Lottie's lost her job as an architect mother, Greek by birth, had left the family home and Quentinrefused to return, but Mary and Hamish (Helena's prowess as parents) felt that it would be a journalist is in reducing demandpity if Helena grew up without knowing her grandparents or understanding her Greek heritage. There's not much Her trip to the family apartment in up-market Kolonaki would be the way first of several annual visits. She grew to love her grandmother and the family help available: Lottie's mother's house might be worth six millionmaid, Dina, but she barely scrapes by on was wary - and frightened - of her incomegrandfather, retired general Stamatis Papagiannis. He was proud of his close connections to the Junta and expected his family to uphold his values but saw no reason to accommodate them. ThereHis prejudices included Helena's one solution that just might work: the house in London can be let red hair and theygreen eyes - inherited from her father'll move to somewhere cheap in the country and live as best they can on the rent they receives Scottish ancestors.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408709295</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Ann O' LoughlinDean Koontz|title= The Ludlow Ladies' SocietyAfter Death|rating= 3.5|genre= General Fiction|summary=''The Ludlow Ladies' Society'' Michael Mace, Head of Security, at a top secret biological research facility, is among 55 people who die when a virus is the story of two women and their struggle to come to terms with the terrible tragedies released in their livesa bio-hazard accident. Connie Carter arrives at Ludlow Hall Finding himself in a makeshift mortuary, covered in plastic, he has a property she sense that something very, very bad has inherited in Ireland, with no clue happened to him – and only him – as to what to expecthe sits up and looks around at the shrouded bodies of his dead friends and former colleagues. The close-knit community are curious As he recovers his senses, he realises that there is something different about him; he can ''feel'' everything. ''Everything''. Michael isn't ''Michael''anymore.|isbn=1662500467}} {{Frontpage|isbn=B0BVDC2VWH|title=The American,Grave Listeners|author=William Frank|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=The village is isolated and poor. It'' who seems to have no desire to integrate herself into s surrounded by a Witching Forest. And the communityvillagers subsist largely by farming Uphegia plants - its bread-like fruit provides nutrition and its blossom provides herbal medicines. NearbyThe black wood of the forest provides heat and warmth, lives Everoofs on homes, a widowand even gallows, who formerly lived at Ludlow Hallif needed. SheThe fear of being buried alive is an existential superstition in the village and that is the reason Volushka, tooa drunken, has painful memories self-indulgent, lazy lout of a man is tolerated. }} {{Frontpage|isbn=B0BYF82CXT|title=Semi-Detached|author=Deborah Stone|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=''Bill and scars that Amanda are slow to healliving in a semi-detached house, but as she begins to form stuck in a friendship with the reclusive Conniedepressing rut of boredom and disappointment, when Terry and Fiona – glamorous, successful and very much in love – move in next door. Despite their different outlooks on life, the two form a bond that will help them couples befriend each other and life appears to improve for both face pairs. But all is not what it seems, and their grief togetherincreasingly interconnected relationships are fated for tragedy.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1785301276</amazonuk>''

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Tina SeskisShalini Boland|title= The HoneymoonSilent Bride|rating= 43|genre= ThrillersGeneral Fiction|summary= For as long as Alice and Seth are a match made in heaven. He is everything she can remember, Jemma has been planning searching for; handsome, accomplished, clever, funny; total and utter husband-material. She is all he could possibly want in a wife; beautiful, successful, confident… and so the perfect honeymooninevitable proposal is eagerly accepted by Alice and the wedding is planned and set. A fortnight's retreat to a five When the much-star resort in anticipated day arrives, Alice is walked down the Maldivesaisle by her father, complete beaming with luxury villaspride and excitement as she surveys the congregation – their friends assembled to celebrate this joyful day and when Seth turns to face his approaching bride, personal butlers and absolute privacy.It should be paradise. But itAlice's turned into a nightmare. Because world implodes because she has absolutely no idea who the man Jemma married a week ago has just disappeared from at the island without a trace. And now her perfect new life altar is vanishing just as quickly before her eyes. After everything they've been through together, how can this be happening? Is there anyone on the island who Jemma can trust? And above all - where has is waiting for her husband gone? to become his wife.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1405917970</amazonuk>1662507089

{{newreview <!-- remove 17/6 -->Frontpage|authorisbn=Hugo Driscoll1787636003|title=Seven Days with YouThe Girls of Summer|author=Katie Bishop|rating=3.5

|summary=There It was little in the summer when Rachel Evans turned eighteenthat she and Caroline went backpacking around Greece and arrived on the island. Rachel wasn't exactly innocent but she was, perhaps, naive, so when thirty-four-year-old Sean Johnson's life Alistair Wright started to give him joytake an interest in her, she was flattered rather than wary. He It was quite a farmhand in the small town while before he made any sort of Bloxford physical approach to her and the highlights of by that time she was obsessed by him. Alistair worked for Henry Taylor, looking after his life were his daily chats with his friend Tom, helping out at the animal sanctuary and a trip to the pub interests on a Saturday night. The downsides were the boring job island and having to live with a drunken father who seemed to have no intention of getting over the death of his wife many years earlier. But it would be the animal sanctuary which brought joy into his life in particular in the form of Sophia Hillingdon, daughter of one of bar where all the top lawyers in the country and about to go to Oxford to study law herself. It was their love of animals which would spark their love for each othergirls either worked or partied.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B07113VFF3</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Douglas BoardAmanda Craig|title= Time of LiesThree Graces|rating=4.5

|summary= The Labour Party has split Few styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the state-of-the-nation novel. There's something so utterly compelling about any writer who can catch hold of the atmosphere of the day and capture it, crafting an image of the country as it stands in twoone particular moment. So have To say that Amanda Craig is skilled at doing this would be embarrassingly inadequate: she's practically synonymous with the Conservativesgenre of contemporary social fiction at this point. The smaller parties have descended She has such a gift for weaving the ongoing issues of the day into squabbling the lives of her characters in a way that feels natural and internal strife. Brexit negotiations have trundled on lived-in dribs and drabs, held up at every turn by a slow-moving and mostly unwilling Europenever making them ciphers for social commentary but instead fully realised people, grappling with issues far larger than themselves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1785630342</amazonuk>140871468X

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Dan Mooney152915118X|title= Me, Myself and ThemPineapple Street|author=Jenny Jackson|rating= 4.5|genre= General Fiction|summary= As witty as it ''Pineapple Street'' is the story of three women: Sasha, Darley and Georgiana. Darley and George are sisters and Sasha is unsettlingmarried to their brother Cord. They're Stocktons, Dan Mooney offers only Sasha isn't a story with Stockton by birth so she isn't readily accepted into the tribe. The problem's exacerbated when the potential clan matriarch, Tilda, asks Cord and Sasha if they'd like to open up public conversation around mental health move into the Pineapple Street property. Tilda and Chip have renovated and downsized to another property, a street or so away, which they own. They won't need any of the human response furniture from Pineapple Street, so Sasha and Cord can move straight in. Nominally, they had a choice but that wasn't the reality. Darley and Georgiana start to call Sasha 'the gold digger'. She's living in ''their'' family home. They use it so often that they abbreviate it to distress and trauma'the GD'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1785079255</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Paula McGrathEmily Critchley|title= A History of Running AwayOne Puzzling Afternoon|rating= 24|genre= General FictionCrime|summary= There's a point early on 84 year old Edie has lived in Paula McGrath's novel where I had that pleasant feeling of discovering the same small town for almost her whole life, but now she is facing a newmove as her son wants to move to another house and bring Edie to live with his family, exciting author who was going as Edie is starting to take me in a multitude of different directionslose her memory. This feeling However, Edie is fading fast after 40 pages. By tormented by the memory of her childhood friend, Lucy, who went missing over 60 pages I'm scrabbling around years ago, and the worry that there was a secret she was keeping for redeeming features - maybe some Lucy that somehow might be the thing that reveals the truth of the characters introduced earlier who have what happened all mysteriously disappeared will reappear and administer life supportthat time ago. After 100 pages all hope 'seeing' Lucy in the high street, just as she was the last time she saw her, she starts to find pockets of memories coming back to her. And yet as she remembers the past, she is lost forgetting more and I just want more in her day to finish day life. Will she uncover the damn thing.truth about Lucy's disappearance before her move, and before her memories are gone forever?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473641780</amazonuk>1804181250

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Sheena KalayilMadelaine Lucas|title=The Bureau of Second ChancesThirst for Salt|rating= 5|genre= General Literary Fiction|summary=Recently widowed''Love, I'd read, was supposed to be a light and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity'' Told from a retrospective view, with a grownyoung woman unravels the year-up daughter forging long relationship that once defined her own life abroad. Overlaid with later wisdom, London-based optometrist Thomas Imbalil takes early retirement and returns to his native India. After the narrator relives the affair with a short period enjoying man twenty years her senior from its inception – the peace of his house overlooking the Arabian Sea, he agrees to commute summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the city for a few months to look summer after Chacko's Optical Store to help out an old friend. Thomas soon discovers that Set against the eager young assistant Rani is running another business on backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the side24-year-old narrator's deepening relationship with her older lover, depicting its all-consuming nature, but he agrees to turn a blind eye and leave how it to his friend to deal with changed her perspective on his return. However, it stirs up thoughts both romantic and doubts within Thomas familial relationships and before long he's involved whether he wants to be or nothow it altered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846973929</amazonuk>0861546490

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Simon Edge0008506337|title= The Hopkins ConundrumGarnett Girls|author=Georgina Moore|rating= 5|genre= General Fiction |summary= Tim Cleverley inherits a failing pub The love affair between Margo Garnett and poet Richard O'Leary was all-consuming, apparently on both sides. Margo was just sixteen when they fell in Wales, which he plans to rescue love. Richard was twenty-one and described by enlisting Margo's mother as 'an American pulp novelist older man'. Her parents worried that Richard's influence would take her away from what they felt she could achieve - going to concoct an entirely fabricated mystery about Gerard Manley HopkinsOxford and having a glittering career. In the event, who composed '' they eloped and Richard took her away from the Isle of Wight. Margo did go to Oxford and went on to become a well-respected journalist. The Wreck couple had three children: Rachel, Imogen and Sasha. Life was lived in London and holidays were spent at Sandcove, the family home on the Isle of Wight. Even then the Deutschlanddoubts about Richard's drinking were never far from Margo's mind: ''she would never be able to leave him in charge'' nearby.

In Victorian England, Gerard Manley Hopkins lives a life full of confusion and contradiction, but discovers a calling for poetry that threatens to overrule his calling to GodThen Richard left them. And, speaking of God, Five nuns leave persecution to travel to a new world – only to find themselves in more trouble that they could ever have imagined… |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1785630334</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Benjamin Ludwig1914585402|title= The Original Ginny MoonDashboard Elvis is Dead|author=David F Ross|rating= 4.5|genre= General Fiction|summary= To Ginny, a child with autism, the word Forever means until the police come. Five years ago the police forcibly removed her from the home of her abusive birth mother, Gloria. Now fourteen, and in her fourth Forever Home, Ginny remains hell-bent on finding her way back to GloriaI reviewed David F Ross's book [[There's apartment. She has no illusions about her motherOnly One Danny Garvey by David F Ross|There's addictions or lack Only One Danny Garvey]] a couple of parenting skills. She knows that it might be dangerous – that years back and remember being absolutely floored by how powerful and affecting it might even kill herwas. Still she plotsIt was a gripping, obsessed with returning to Gloria's to find something she insists she left behind, something she hid under her bed. Her teachers, therapistemotionally wounding read, and new Forever Parents are in turn frustrated, infuriated, and perplexed. As Gloria returns to her life, the reader follows Ginny rereading my review of it my main takeaway was that I might not have lavished enough praise on a journey filled with danger and discovery, in her quest to find a place she can truly call her Forever Homeit. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848456611</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Harriet CummingsLucy Ashe|title=We All Begin As StrangersClara and Olivia|rating= 4.5|genre= General Fiction|summary=In The year is 1933. The place? Sadler's Wells. Ballerinas Clara and Olivia are sisters, twins no less. Identical on the summer of 1984outside but not, we learn, on the inside. And not on stage, either. Because there's a Chilterns village was gripped with fear and suspicion as lot that builds a mysterious intruder known as ''The Fox'' broke into the homes of several residents in the areadancer. Despite an increased police presenceSome things that can be taught or learnt – discipline, regular patrols attention to detail – and vigilante groupssome things, this slippery character still managed to evade detection. A huge police that ''Foxhuntje ne sais quoi'' followed, and finally, forensic evidence led to that don't come from the eventual capture of the perpetratorclassroom. This real-life news story sparked the imagination of A stage presence, a young Harriet Cummingscharm, who went on to create a fictional version of events, which invites the reader to turn detective and try and unmask ''The Foxjoie de vivre'' from . The difference between a hard-worker, and a range of possible suspectsstar.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1409169049</amazonuk>0861544080