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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 -- Remove -->take a mystery but give it different flavour and atmosphere each time.}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author= S V BerlinSaou Ichikawa and Polly Barton (translator)|title= The FavouriteHunchback|rating= 4.5|genre= General Fiction|summary=Siblings Edward I was in the middle of a self-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 Isobel Vernon haven't spoken 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 years childhood with congenital myopathy, a condition that causes severe muscular weakness and live touches every aspect of her life. The title took on opposite sides new complexity in light of her biography. I had to read it.|isbn=0241700787}}{{Frontpage|author=Jen Beagin|title=Big Swiss|rating=4.5|genre=Humour |summary=I found the Atlanticpremise of this book totally original and addictive. When Greta possesses the power to know the population of Hudson, New York's darkest secrets, their mother Mary dies unexpectedlyintimate lives, they are thrown together their fetishes and fears. How? Her job is to sort through the family hometranscribe their sex therapy sessions. With EdwardSure, there's diffident a confidentiality agreement, as the sex coach who calls himself Om keeps reminding her, but devoted girlfriendthat just makes it more exciting. Like we've all probably wished for at some point in life, Greta can exist passively, Julieplacidly, making an awkward threesomeas a fly on the wall. That is, each stumbles through until Greta decides to unglue her fly-feet from the practicalities safety of funeral preparation the wall and house clearingbuzz far too close to the sun. The sun in this analogy is the sex coach's newest patient, trying who Greta dubs 'Big Swiss', and who, like the sun, is bright, blonde and beautiful - and irresistible to make sense Greta. Suddenly, the confidentiality agreement, the ethics of her professional position, her loyalties to Om, fly out of their emotions the window. She's in too deep.|isbn=0571378579}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1784745758|title=Three Days in June|author=Anne Tyler|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=The day before your daughter's wedding will always be busy but Gail Baines got far more than she asked for. First, it was her job as assistant head at the local school. There was a moment when she hoped that she would be promoted to head but the discussion moved into the subject of 'people skills' 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 middle of the day: who would have thought that could happen?) her ex-husband was there with a cat. He thinks that he'll be staying and their feelings toward one anotherthat Gail will be adopting the cat. And that's before Gail discovers that the groom hasn't been entirely honest about his personal life.}}{{Frontpage|author=Samantha Harvey|title=Orbital|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=In 2024, Samantha Harvey won the Booker Prize for ''Orbital'', a compact yet profound work that unfolds over a single day in the lives of a group of astronauts aboard the International Space Station. Isobel makes Through a narrative lens that mirrors the astronauts' orbital perspective, Harvey invites readers to see our planet in a disturbing discovery wholly new light.|isbn=1529922933}}{{Frontpage|author=Han Kang|title=The Vegetarian|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=This novel, winner of the International Booker Prize in 2016 and her fateful decision penned by an author who received the Nobel Prize for Literature this year, is as close to unputdownable as it gets. It more than lives up to the acclaim. The story introduces uncanny characters with fragile, vividly tangible bodies yet unknowable, elusive souls.|isbn=1803510056}}{{Frontpage|author=Sally Rooney|title=Intermezzo|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction |summary=Sally Rooney has consequences for all studied the chessboard of life and is something of thema grandmaster at putting it into words. Her dialogue is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, challenging their beliefs about as her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Among the pastmany relationships woven into this story, hopes the central one for readers to unravel is the future fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and understanding of MaryPeter Koubek. Ivan, a socially awkward chess prodigy, contrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, a successful lawyer living in Dublin. Following their father's role in keeping them at once apart and togetherpassing after a long battle with cancer, the brothers' already strained relationship faces new trials. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0993563384</amazonuk>0571365469

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Julia Claiborne JohnsonB0DGDJRHYD|title=Be Frank with MeNowhere Man|author=Deborah Stone

|summary=In June 2009 Isaac Vargas sends a quiet suburban house, Patrick is making his assistantfinal plans. A meticulous man, twenty-four-year-old Alice Whitleyhe makes sure of every preparation, down to Bel Airthe last detail. Some last reflections, California and then he says goodbye to help Mimi Gillespie produce her long-awaited second novel. Under his wife, the name Mworld, and his life.MIt's horribly sad. Banning, Mimi issued a wildly successful novel back At work in the 1970sher shop, ''Pitched''his wife Diana is fending off yet another phone call about her ageing and ailing mother, which quickly became a modern classic on every American adolescent's list of assigned reading for schoolwho needs extricating from yet another accident. She's the sort of figure Harper Lee was for decades: It will be a one-hit literary wonder and an infamous recluse. But there's one key difference here: Mimi while before Diana realises what Patrick has a nine-year-old son, Frankdone.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782399208</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Kay Langdale1739526910|title=The Way Back to UsWhere I've Not Been Lost|author=Glen Sibley|rating=4.5

|summary=A household revolves around its weakest member and because it's revolving there'One year after a suicide attempt blows apart musician Brian O’Malley's always a danger that some people - such as a spouse - will be spun to the outsidelife, whilst other children, loosely attached he arrives in an unfamiliar Devon town to the main carer will be recover. Living with an unexpected housemate at a distancehis former manager’s holiday home, never completely close, but never escaping eitherhe dreams of reconnecting with everything he has lost. In the centre are the carer and the person who needs that careBut as those tentative plans falter, bonded together he becomes swept up in such a way that it's actually difficult to offer help or even friendshiplocal world of unlikely friendships, mobile discos and surprising romantic possibilities. So it is with Anna and Teddy, who suffers from Spinal Muscular Atrophy, or SMA as it's generally known. He's five now, confined to a wheelchair or his Whizzybug and not putting on much weight as chewing and swallowing are difficult.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1473618363</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Hendrik Groen and Hester Velmans (translator)Jenny Lecoat|title= The Secret Diary of Hendrik Groen, 83¼ years OldBeyond Summerland|rating= 4.5|genre= General Fiction|summary= As Jean lives on Jersey with her mother where they are celebrating the end of the occupation. During the old adage goeswar, to walk a mile in someone elseJean's shoes is father was arrested for listening to gain some understanding a banned radio and soldiers took him away one night, leaving Jean and her mother waiting for years for news of what it is to be that personhim. Admittedly As the British finally free the Channel islands from the Nazis, Hendrik Groen isn't much up for long walks any moreand the war is finally over, but he does acquire a swish mobility scooter to zoom around in; one could say their hopes rise that we get to zoom they will finally learn what became of him. But will the truth come as a mile in Groen's shoes, and ohrelief, or will it raise further questions around what else happened during the war? Who was the informer who told the Nazis about the radio? And what fun shoes he wears!other secrets have been kept throughout the occupation?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1405924004</amazonuk>1846976537

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Sarah FranklinOnyi Nwabineli|title= ShelterAllow Me to Introduce Myself|rating= 4.5|genre= Historical General Fiction|summary=Connie Granger has escaped Anuri spent her bombedchildhood on display to the world, thanks to her step-out city homemother Ophelia's increasingly popular presence on social media, finding refuge in the Womenwhere she posted every step of Anuri's Timber Corpschildhood for sponsorships and influencer deals and, basically, monetary gain. For Now Anuri is in hertwenties and she is slowly trying to regain her confidence and to get her life back, this remote community must now serve a secret purposesuing her step-mother to take down the content about her.<br>Seppe Anuri is battling alcoholism, an Italian prisoner of warfailing to start her PhD, is haunted by his memoriesundergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online and receiving money from them for doing so. In the forest camp Most importantly, he finds a strange kind of freedom.Their meeting signals new beginnings. But as they are drawn togethershe is desperately worried about her little sister, who is the world outside their forest haven is being torn apartnew focus of Ophelia's online empire. Old certainties are crumbling Can she save her sister, and both must now make a life-defining choice.<br>What price will they pay for freedom? What will they fight to protectperhaps herself and her relationship with her father at the same time?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1785762990</amazonuk>0861546873

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jennifer McVeigh1529153298|title=Leopard at the DoorThe List of Suspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey

|summary=18 year old Rachel Fullsmith returns home to Kenya after being away at school in England It's 1979 and finds a lot can change in 6 yearsMargaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. (A woman? I mean, honestly... ) Of course she realises her motherShe's death would alter things but shenot what's not prepared for her fatherworrying Miv's live-in family, though. Women have been disappearing. Well, they've been murdered, but to have 'disappeared'companiondoesn' Sara nor Sarat sound quite so frightening. Miv's son Harold sleeping in Rachelupset because she's old roomoverheard that her father wants to move the family 'Down South'. Michael the Kikuyu servant boy she grew up with When you're from Yorkshire, Down South is still there though and now a man with his own ideasfrightening, foreign place, best avoided. Meanwhile For Miv, the unrest between the British rulers move would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, and she'll do anything to prevent that. She's not worried about the local Mau Mau fighters is increasing and about dangers or that her Mum's stopped talking - to blowanyone.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241247616</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Lucy Daniels1035906708|title= Summer at Hope MeadowsDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin|rating= 4.5|genre= General Fiction|summary=''Animal Ark'' was a popular series We tend to think of children's books written between 1994 and 2008. The stories focus on a young girl called Mandy HopeMaria Callas as Greek, the daughter of two vets who run a practicebut she was born to Greek parents in Manhattan, Animal ArkNew York, in the Yorkshire town of WelfordDecember 1923 and only moved to Athens when she was thirteen. Along with Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her best friend James, the children seek father changed it to 'Callas' to help out creatures make it more manageable in needthe States. The series consisted of 94 books When she was back in total and Athens - supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for her voice - she was written raised under the Nazi occupation by a collection mother who mercilessly exploited her and made no secret of authors writing under the pseudonym Lucy Daniels. ''Summer at Hope Meadows'' is the first in a new series her preference for adult readersher elder sister, continuing grown-up Mandy's story now that she is a fully qualified vetJackie.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1473653878</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sophie Divry and Alison Anderson (translator)Alexander McCall Smith|title=Madame Bovary of the SuburbsThe Perfect Passion Company|rating=24.5

|summary=''It starts with becoming The Perfect Passion Company is a homeownerdating agency in Edinburgh, then settling run by Ness and operating as an alternative to all the online apps inproviding a more personal, then reproducingtailored service.'' WellNess has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the business, it actually starts as Ness is planning to take a trip to Canada to get away for a while. Katie is coming out of a break up with a lot before thenbad boyfriend, and so jumps at the chance to come home to Edinburgh. And so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, thanks to 44 Scotland Street and the Isabel Dalhousie novels, but with some new characters who quickly begin to charm. Katie has no experience in running a set of fractured memories of our heroinebusiness, or in match-making, but Ness has full confidence in her abilities, and there's childhood – things she recalls always her parents very helpful (and relatives saying both 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 loses his fiancee, and about herhis house gets trashed. It goes through her childhoodOh, and pen letters someone has delivered a really weird, disturbing coffin-sized object to a best friend conveying her wishes for her lifehis home, those wishes being revised and affirmed by it's possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the liberty of university yearsthing that has trashed his house! The thing is, those wishes being met with or denied by married life… Benny is the very last person to deserve all this bad luck. He is a nice person. A really nice person. Someone archly could point So fortunately for Benny it turns out that you should be careful what you wish the delivery to his house is a new friend, a bad weather friend called Spike, who has been sent to help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces forbeing a good person. Spike is going to take care of Benny, but not even our wise, modern woman could not see the next step after the reproducing – ''standing disappointed in front and will certainly take care of the refrigeratorBenny's enemies, if he, Benny, and Harper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857054686</amazonuk>1662500491

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tania HershmanKatherine Howe|title=Some of Us Glow More Than OthersA True Account

|genre=Short Stories General Fiction|summary=I won't be alone Hannah Masury is living in stating that reading short story collections can be slightly awkward. Going through from A-ZBoston, witnessing having been sent to live with a bounty of ideas and characters in short order can be too muchfamily who run an inn, but do you have the right to pick and choose according being made to what appeals, and what time you have to fill? The sequence has carefully been considered, surelywork there from a young age. Such would appear When she hears there is to be a hanging of some pirates in the case heretown, she decides to go and watch. The last time I read one of this authorEnthralled and horrified in equal measure, Hannah finds herself embroiled in a young boy's collectionsdeath at the hands of two vicious pirates. She hides away, with [[The White Road by Tania Hershman|The White Road]]so that they don't find and kill her too, the only real difficulty was holding back and rationing then to escape themcompletely she runs away to sea, but here you not only get dressing as a whopping forty pieces boy and joining the notorious Ned Low's pirate ship as a cabin boy. She soon finds herself in the thick of writingthings when there is a mutiny on board, they and from there we are also spread into sectionscaught up in her rip roaring tale of life on the ocean waves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1910061484</amazonuk>0861547438

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Jane Johnson1471180158|title= Court of LionsMaybe Tomorrow|author=Penny Parkes|rating= 4.5|genre= Historical General Fiction |summary= Kate Fordham arrived Jamie Matson works in an upper-class grocery store, for a man who's a control freak with all the sunlit city subtlety of Granada a year agohalf brick. In the shadow of the Alhambra Jamie's son, one of the most beautiful places on earthBo, she works as a waitress serving tourists in a busy bar'has his problems'. She pretends she He's happy with her new life – but how could she be? Kateasthmatic and the more you read, the more you'll suspect that he's alone, afraid and hiding under a false nameon the autistic spectrum. And fate is about Sometimes Jamie needs to bring her facetake time off at short notice -to-face with her greatest fear. Five centuries ago, she's a message, frequent flier in a hand few could read, was inscribed in blood on a stolen scrap of paper. The paper was folded the local A&E and pressed into one of the Alhambrasometimes Bo's wallsnot fit enough to go to school. There it has lain, undisturbed by Missed shifts or the tides of history – need to be away on time to pick Bo up from school are occasions when Jamie can be controlled and put in the Fall of Granada, the expulsion of its last Sultan – until Kate discovers itwrong. Born of love, in It was going to come to a time of danger and desperation, the fragment will be the catalyst that changes Kate's life foreverhead. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1786694336</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Julie CohenB0CKD1L5JL|title=TogetherRadio Free Olympia|author=Jeffrey Dunn|rating=54

|summary=This Petr is a love story told backwardsan orphan. Rescued by the strange, in the most beautiful mannerreclusive Bear, so that we know he is brought up far from the very beginning that Emily bustling cities and Robert love each other enormouslybusy human society, and that he is about to break her heart in the most dreadful way in order to protect a secret that theyforests of Washington've lived with for decadess Olympic Peninsula. Seeing their love unfold After Bear dies and a brief sojourn in reverse is beautiful. We get to know them once they have already gotten to know each otherhuman company, and it makes for an unusual and interesting structure. The secret they hold is referred to throughoutarmed with only a pirate radio transmitter, Petr goes on a journey through the forest, but it isn't revealed until very late in broadcasting the book. I'm guessing very few readers will figure it out. Even once you knowstrange, you want to go back wild and read the whole story again in the light of the information you now holdrarely heard voices he encounters.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1409171744</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Kate MildenhallSarah Marsh|title= SkylarkingA Sign of Her Own|rating= 43.5|genre= General Fiction |summary= Kate and Harriet are best friends growing up together on an isolated Australian capeAfter a bout of scarlet fever as a child, Ellen Lark loses her hearing. As the daughters Suddenly plunged into a world of the lighthouse keeperssilence, everything about her life changes. Living in a time when the two girls share everythinguse of sign language was seen as something only savages do, until Ellen is sent to a fishermanschool where she is taught to lip read, McPhailbut physically restrained from signing. From here, arrives she ends up in their small communityanother school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the deaf and using a system called Visible Speech. When Kate witnesses At the desire that flares between him same time, Bell is working on other inventions and Harrietideas, she is torn by her feelings of envy and longing. An innocent moment Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in McPhail's hut then occurs that threatens to tear their peaceful community aparta complicated tangle of espionage. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1785079239</amazonuk>1035401614

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Zoe DuncanB0BC3YTCMR|title= The Shifting PoolsGood Girls Die|author=Ayura Ayira|rating= 24.5|genre= General Fiction|summary= Perhaps the most overused phrase in fiction publishing is ''life-affirmingThis story is not for everyone.'' Lavender Daniels was three weeks short of her fifteenth birthday when The Incident happened. She was a very bright student, closely followed by ''human condition''. The Shifting Pools takes this a bit too nerdy if truth be told, and suffered from vitiligo - people were afraid to a whole new level. Its blurb boasts that hug her in case it is ''charged throughout with the beautiful urgency of life'', whatever that meanss contagious. It isn't. And that's the problemnot easy being a black girl whose skin is 84% white. This isn't She had a bad book, crush on seventeen-year-old Reggie Anderson but it sets itself up to failnever thought he would notice her. Then he did: Lavender was very good at math and Reggie asked if she would tutor him. A cardinal rule of writing is ''focus on the small stuff'' She readily agreed: tutoring was something she gladly did at church: this was just an extension. If you set out She went to write a ''life affirming'' novel that answers all the ''big questions'', you'll struggle. And it is this trap that Zoe Duncan falls intohis house and he raped her. In her quest for profundity shock, she loses even allowed him to give her waya lift home. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1785630369</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Sarah Healy1472263936|title= The Sisters ChaseFigurine|author=Victoria Hislop|rating= 4.5|genre= General Fiction|summary=It was in 1968 that Helena McCloud made her first trip to Greece. She was alone: her mother, Greek by birth, had left the family home and refused to return, but Mary and Bunny. ThatHamish (Helena's how parents) felt that it has always been ever since Bunny was bornwould be a pity if Helena grew up without knowing her grandparents or understanding her Greek heritage. Two sisters with an unbreakable bond, twisted together so tight that they were two sides Her trip to the family apartment in up-market Kolonaki would be the first of several annual visits. She grew to love her grandmother and the same coin. Bunny was Maryfamily's whole world; nothing else really mattered; school...friends...boys...wellmaid, maybe one boyDina, but he was something altogether extraordinarywary - and frightened - of her grandfather, retired general Stamatis Papagiannis. When He was proud of his close connections to the unthinkable happened, Mary Junta and Bunny found themselves completely alone in the world, expected his family to uphold his values but saw no reason to accommodate them. His prejudices included Helena's red hair and thatgreen eyes - inherited from her father's when Mary decided to take an unforgettable road trip, just the two of them, across the United States, in search of a place where they could belongScottish ancestors.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0544960076</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Joy RhoadesDean Koontz|title=After Death|rating=3|genre=General Fiction|summary= Michael Mace, Head of Security, at a top secret biological research facility, is among 55 people who die when a virus is released in a bio-hazard accident. Finding himself in a makeshift mortuary, covered in plastic, he has a sense that something very, very bad has happened to him – and only him – as he sits up and looks around at the shrouded bodies of his dead friends and former colleagues. 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 Woolgrower's CompanionGrave Listeners|author=William Frank

|summary=1945: The war village is in isolated and poor. It's surrounded by a Witching Forest. And the villagers subsist largely by farming Uphegia plants - its dying days bread-like fruit provides nutrition and creating problems far from its blossom provides herbal medicines. The black wood of the different fronts. For instanceforest provides heat and warmth, roofs on homes, in Australiaand even gallows, what can be done with the Italian POWs brought into the country? if needed. The solution seems to be their use as cheap labour. In this way Kate Dowd's father agrees to take two onto his sheep farm fear of being buried alive is an existential superstition in drought-ridden New South Wales. Kate is initially wary of the two men – Vittorio village and Luca – but gradually she realises that not all dangers come from outside her community. Life on is the reason Volushka, a sheep station may be harsh but for Kate it's going to get drunken, self-indulgent, lazy lout of a lot worseman is tolerated.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784741345</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Jonathan LeviB0BYF82CXT|title= SeptimaniaSemi-Detached|author=Deborah Stone|rating= 4|genre= General Fiction|summary= First ''Bill and foremost Amanda are living in a tale semi-detached house, stuck in a depressing 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, Septimania delivers the frustrations and agony of two people who find couples befriend each other and then lose each other, all on the same daylife appears to improve for both pairs. But all is not what a momentous day! Life takes Malory it seems, and Louisa off in totally different directions but strangely their paths cross again and again. Malory, searching to uncover his past, moves to Rome and discovers great and incredible facts about his ancestryincreasingly interconnected relationships are fated for tragedy. Louisa, a brilliant mathematician, is head hunted for 'secret' work and is signed up by her father for a life time'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)Shalini Boland|title=The PortraitSilent Bride|rating=43

|summary=Meet Pierre-FrancoisAlice and Seth are a match made in heaven. He should by rights be an antiques dealeris everything she has been searching for; handsome, accomplished, as he made a fortune selling on his first collection (of erasers) while at schoolclever, funny; total and funded both his university and carnal education, with prostitutes, by trading tooutter husband-material. He She isall he could possibly want in a wife; beautiful, howeversuccessful, a patent confident… and intellectual property lawyer, so the inevitable proposal is eagerly accepted by Alice and his wife the wedding is forever demanding a reduction in the space his collections take up in their flatplanned and set. But he still dabbles – although this latest visit to When the showrooms will cause a lot of unexpected incident. In amongst the grot at a lowmuch-key sale he finds an ancient pastelanticipated day arrives, showing himself – a bewiggedAlice is walked down the aisle by her father, antique version of himself, even if, however, nobody else sees beaming with pride and excitement as she surveys the connection between Pierre-Francois congregation – their friends assembled to celebrate this joyful day and the picturewhen Seth turns to face his approaching bride, Alice's subject. Still, as an effeminate uncle told himworld implodes because she has absolutely no idea who the man at the altar is, ''real objects carry memory of their past owners'' – and Pierre-Francois who is intent on finding the truths behind those memorieswaiting for her to become his wife. Little does he know just what he will discover…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1910477435</amazonuk>1662507089

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Virginie Despentes and Frank Wynne (translator)1787636003|title= Vernon Subutex 1The Girls of Summer|author=Katie Bishop|rating= 5|genre= General Fiction|summary= Vernon Subutex is a wanted man. Following It was the death of Alex Bleach, Vernon's generous benefactor summer when Rachel Evans turned eighteen that she and Caroline went backpacking around Greece and publicly adored musician, Vernon now has arrived on the last recordings of Alexisland. Rachel wasn's drug induced ramblings. Kicked out of his apartment the story follows Vernon as he couch surfs his way across Parist exactly innocent but she was, perhaps, naive, pursued by journalists and media moguls desperate so when thirty-four-year-old Alistair Wright started to cash take an interest in on Bleach's deathher, she was flattered rather than wary. Eventually finding himself out It was quite a while before he made any sort of luck, friends physical approach to her and money Vernon is left sleeping roughby that time she was obsessed by him. Alistair worked for Henry Taylor, half mad looking after his interests on the island and forced to bear witness to a shocking act of violencein particular in the bar where all the girls either worked or partied. In a world of capricious friends and grasping avaricious journalists who can Vernon trust?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857055410</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Rowena MacDonaldAmanda Craig|title= The Threat Level Remains SevereThree Graces|rating= 34.5|genre= General Fiction|summary=Grace Ambrose isnFew styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the state-of-the-nation novel. There't Brigitte Joness something so utterly compelling about any writer who can catch hold of the atmosphere of the day and capture it, honest; for crafting an image of the country as it stands in one thing particular moment. To say that Amanda Craig is skilled at doing this would be embarrassingly inadequate: she doesn't keep a diary. Grace is our typical misogynistic Hollywood stereotype supporting female characters practically synonymous with the genre of contemporary social fiction at this point. She is has such a gift for weaving the ''secretly hot chick'' who will suddenly take off their glasses, shake out their hair and reveal themselves to have been beautiful all along. We follow Grace and her romantic adventures (and misadventures) over three years ongoing issues of her life at the House day into the lives of Commonsher characters in a way that feels natural and lived-in, never making them ciphers for social commentary but instead fully realised people, grappling with issues far larger than themselves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1910709158</amazonuk>140871468X

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Matt Haig152915118X|title=How to Stop TimePineapple Street|author=Jenny Jackson

|summary=Tom ''Pineapple Street'' is the story of three women: Sasha, Darley and Georgiana. Darley and George are sisters and Sasha is an albatrossmarried to their brother Cord. They're Stocktons, only Sasha isn't a Stockton by birth so she isn't readily accepted into the tribe. That The problem's not to say he has a freakish wingspanexacerbated when the clan matriarch, or anythingTilda, but it means heasks Cord and Sasha if they's not a mayflyd like to move into the Pineapple Street property. In contrast Tilda and Chip have renovated and downsized to all us regular humans with our temperamental bodies living out short lifespansanother property, he ages at a speed roughly one-fifteenth of that at street or so away, which we do, and barely gets touched by they own. They won't need any disease. It means he will live for several more centuries than of the ones he has witnessed furniture from Pineapple Street, so far, but ever since his mother was drowned as a witch due to his teenaged self never ageing, he has known the best thing for him – Sasha and others – is to regularly Cord can move onstraight in. Solitude has been tempered since the late Victorian era, when other people even older than him press-ganged him into their society of albatrosses Nominally, they had a choice but that wasn't the fact of reality. Darley and Georgiana start to call Sasha 'the matter is that falling in love really is a no-nogold digger'. But that She's not to say living in ''their'' family home. They use it never happened, and so often that's not they abbreviate it to say that he can't feel things for the albatross daughter heGD's not seen for centuries. It might be the only thing he has to live for…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782118616</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Dane HuckelbridgeEmily Critchley|title= Castle of WaterOne Puzzling Afternoon|rating= 4|genre= General FictionCrime|summary= Barry Bleeker and Sophie Ducel are two very different people destined to take 84 year old Edie has lived in the same journey. As they are both aboard small town for almost her whole life, but now she is facing a flight move as her son wants to move to another house and bring Edie to live with his family, as Edie is starting to lose her memory. However, Edie is tormented by the Marquesas Islandsmemory of her childhood friend, Lucy, who went missing over 60 years ago, their tiny plane crashes leaving Barry and Sophie the only survivors. Until recently, Barry worry that there was a secret she was an investment banker in New York before he decided to leave his life behind and pursue his dream keeping for Lucy that somehow might be the thing that reveals the truth of paintingwhat happened all that time ago. Sophie meanwhile After 'seeing' Lucy in the high street, just as she was a French architect who along with the last time she saw her husband Etienne was planning a honeymoon , she starts to find pockets of a lifetimememories coming back to her. Now Barry And yet as she remembers the past, she is forgetting more and Sophie are alone on an uninhabited island more in her day to day life. Will she uncover the South Pacifictruth about Lucy's disappearance before her move, where they must learn to put aside their differences and survive.before her memories are gone forever?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0008217858</amazonuk>1804181250

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= M L RioMadelaine Lucas|title= If We Were VillainsThirst for Salt|rating= 4.5|genre= General Literary Fiction|summary= Murder most horrid amongst ''Love, I'd read, was supposed to be a group of 4th Year university students of Shakespeare. We open as our protagonist is released light and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity'' Told from jail having served his time for a crime retrospective view, a young woman unravels the year-long relationship that he may or may not have committedonce defined her. What did he do? What happened that year? Why did things turn out Overlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the affair with a man twenty years her senior from its inception – the way they did? We have summer after finishing university – to push our way through its sorrowful end the undergrowth summer after. Set against the backdrop of flashbacks to find outan isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the 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 familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1785656473</amazonuk>0861546490

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Martha Conway0008506337|title= The Floating TheatreGarnett Girls|author=Georgina Moore|rating= 5|genre= Historical General Fiction|summary=When young seamstress May Bedloe is left alone The love affair between Margo Garnett and penniless on the shore of the Ohiopoet Richard O'Leary was all-consuming, she finds work apparently on the famous floating theatre that plies its trade along the riverboth sides. Margo was just sixteen when they fell in love. Richard was twenty-one and described by Margo's mother as 'an older man'. Her creativity parents worried that Richard's influence would take her away from what they felt she could achieve - going to Oxford and needlework skills quickly become invaluable and she settles into life among having a glittering career. In the colourful troupe of actors. She finds friendsevent, they eloped and possibly Richard took her away from the promise Isle of moreWight. But cruising the border between the Confederate South Margo did go to Oxford and the 'free' North is fraught with dangerwent on to become a well-respected journalist. For the sake of a debt that must be repaid The couple had three children: Rachel, May is compelled to transport secret passengersImogen and Sasha. Life was lived in London and holidays were spent at Sandcove, under cover of darkness, across the river and family home on, along the underground railroadIsle of Wight. But as May Even then the doubts about Richard's drinking were never far from Margo's secrets become harder to keep, mind: ''she learns she must endanger those now dear would never be able to herleave him in charge''.

And to save the lives of others, she must risk her ownThen Richard left them... |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1785762907</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Daniel Kehlmann and Ross Benjamin (translator)1914585402|title=You Should Have LeftDashboard Elvis is Dead|author=David F Ross

|genre=General Fiction |summary=Our narrator is a screenwriter, tasked with coming up with a sequel to his hit movie I reviewed David F Ross's book [[There'Bestiess Only One Danny Garvey by David F Ross|There'' – s Only One Danny Garvey]] a film which helped pay for a house, but which his actress wife keeps letting him know, isn't ''art''couple of years back and remember being absolutely floored by how powerful and affecting it was. To concentrate, the family – he, the wife, and their four year old daughter – have rented a large, modern house at the end of It was a horrid, hairpin bend-filled roadgripping, in a charming alpine landscape. But things aren't right. The couple are at loggerheads too much, things keep unsettling our narratoremotionally wounding read, and the sole shopkeeper for miles around is ready with the Hammer Horror styled warnings rereading my review of strange events. Quickly we see the book's title in all its galling clarity – but it isn't too late to get out… is my main takeaway was that I might not have lavished enough praise on it? And out of what, exactly?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1786484048</amazonuk>.

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Amanda CraigLucy Ashe|title=The Lie of the LandClara and Olivia|rating=4.5

|summary=The Bredins can't afford to divorceyear is 1933. The house in London place? Sadler''would'' sells Wells. Ballerinas Clara and Olivia are sisters, twins no less. Identical on the outside but not for a priced that would allow Quentin and Lottie ( she with her son and their two girls) to each get somewhere to live. Unemployment has barrelled into , we learn, on the equation too: Lottie's lost her job as an architect and Quentin's prowess as a journalist is in reducing demandinside. There's And not much in the way of family help available: Lottie's mother's house might be worth six millionon stage, but she barely scrapes by on her incomeeither. ThereBecause there's one solution a lot that builds a dancer. Some things that just might work: the house in London can be let taught or learnt – discipline, attention to detail – and theysome things, that ''je ne sais quoi'', that don'll move to somewhere cheap in t come from the country classroom. A stage presence, a charm, a ''joie de vivre''. The difference between a hard-worker, and live as best they can on the rent they receivea star.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408709295</amazonuk>0861544080