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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-imposed book- Remove 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}}{{Frontpage|author=Jen Beagin|title=Big 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}}{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1784745758|title=Three Days in June|author=Alexander McCall SmithAnne Tyler|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|titlesummary=A Time 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 Love 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 Tartanthat 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

|summary=Here we areIn 2024, back on Scotland StreetSamantha Harvey won the Booker Prize for ''Orbital'', eager to see what everyone (especially Bertie…) has been up to! This is now a compact yet profound work that unfolds over a single day in the twelfth book in lives of a group of astronauts aboard the Scotland Street series which is remarkableInternational Space Station. That Through a serial novel has such momentum, and narrative lens that mirrors the characters within have become so very familiar to AMSastronauts's loyal orbital perspective, Harvey invites readers, is a testament to his skills as a writer. This time around see our nerves are on edge as Pat ventures back towards planet in a relationship with the dreadful Bruce! Surely she'll see sense..wholly new light.won't she?! Matthew, of all people, is in trouble with the police, Irene is busy planning a PhD, and Bertie? Could there be a happy ending for Bertie in the air?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846973821</amazonuk>1529922933

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author= Jess RichardsHan Kang|title= City of CirclesThe Vegetarian|rating= 4.5|genre= FantasyGeneral Fiction|summary= Danu is a tightrope walker who is mourning her parentsThis novel, after a disease has ravaged winner of the circus where she grew up. Her mother has entrusted her with a locket that hides a secret. Over the years, Danu pushes away her grief International Booker Prize in 2016 and develops elaborate and successful high-wire acts with Morrie, a charismatic hunchback penned by an author who wants to marry her. When received the circus returns to Danu's birthplace, MatryoshkaNobel Prize for Literature this year, Danu is enchanted by the temples, spice mists, and pleasure seekers within the intoxicating outer circle districtas close to unputdownable as it gets. Here, she finally gains the courage It more than lives up to open her mother's locket, and discovers the name of a stranger who lives behind the locked gate of the Inner Circleacclaim. Fated to remain in MatryoshkaThe story introduces uncanny characters with fragile, vividly tangible bodies yet unknowable, Danu attempts to resolve this mysteryelusive souls. Will she and Morrie ever be reunited, or will something far more unexpected be waiting for her in the mysterious heart of the city?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473656680</amazonuk>1803510056

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Pascal Garnier and Melanie Florence (translator)Sally Rooney|title=Low HeightsIntermezzo

|summary=Edouard Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard of life and is an exemplary example something of a crotchety old man – changing his mindgrandmaster at putting it into words. Her dialogue is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, as her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Among the many relationships woven into this story, the central one for readers to unravel is the fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and blaming anything and everything – even that decision – on other peoplePeter Koubek. He's physically fineIvan, apart from one hand disabled by a strokesocially awkward chess prodigy, but mentally, what contrasts sharply with forgetting his pastolder brother Peter, assuming too many days are Sundays when theya successful lawyer living in Dublin. Following their father're not and buying too many inappropriate thingss passing after a long battle with cancer, he needs the brothers' already strained relationship faces new trials.|isbn=0571365469}}{{Frontpage|isbn=B0DGDJRHYD|title=Nowhere Man|author=Deborah Stone|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=In a nurse – Theresequiet suburban house, who has formed an unlikely and almost unwanted couple with himPatrick is making his final plans. For EdouardA meticulous man, he makes sure of every preparation, down to the memory of last detail. Some last reflections, and then he says goodbye to his wife who died ten years ago is still a little too strong, the world, and his life. But this unusual 'familyIt' s horribly sad. At work in her shop, his wife Diana is fending off yet another phone call about to be upset by an unexpected arrivalher ageing and ailing mother, who needs extricating from yet another accident. It will stir the emotions and life of their remote house no end…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1910477427</amazonuk>be a while before Diana realises what Patrick has done.

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Dina Nayeri1739526910|title= RefugeWhere I've Not Been Lost|author=Glen Sibley|rating= 4.5|genre= General Fiction|summary= Sinking boats ''One year after a suicide attempt blows apart musician Brian O’Malley's life, he arrives in stormy seasan unfamiliar Devon town to recover. Living with an unexpected housemate at his former manager’s holiday home, national borders boosted he dreams of reconnecting with barbed wireeverything he has lost. But as those tentative plans falter, and overcrowded shelters – the media's portrayal he becomes swept up in a local world of seeking asylum focuses on the process in its darkestunlikely friendships, most dangerous form. What happens after tumultuous journeys mobile discos and temporary shelter is not news; and life after decades in the new country is rarely headline material eithersurprising romantic possibilities. But in Dina Nayeri's ''Refuge'', it is the life after that takes centre stage. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0735219389</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Hawa L CrickmoreJenny Lecoat|title=Across the OceanBeyond Summerland

|summary=A young cage fighter, Martin Grandson, was diagnosed Jean lives on Jersey with a rare genetic disorder which required a bone-marrow transplant, preferably from a siblingher mother where they are celebrating the end of the occupation. Only recently he'd been a fit young man, in During the prime of lifewar, but now he Jean's father was suffering from arrested for listening to a rare type banned radio and soldiers took him away one night, leaving Jean and her mother waiting for years for news of bone cancer: without him. As the transplant he would be paralysed for life and might be dead within British finally free the next twelve weeks if he didn't receive Channel islands from the transplant within Nazis, and the next fourteen dayswar is finally over, their hopes rise that they will finally learn what became of him. Unfortunately Martin's parents had died in But will the truth come as a car crash and there were no siblings relief, or other close relatives. will it raise further questions around what else happened during the war? His girlfriend, Celia, Who was not a match.the informer who told the Nazis about the radio? And what other secrets have been kept throughout the occupation?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1524666971</amazonuk>1846976537

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Elif ShafakOnyi Nwabineli|title= Three Daughters of EveAllow Me to Introduce Myself|rating=4.5|genre= General Fiction|summary=Set in Istanbul in 2016Anuri spent her childhood on display to the world, thanks to her step-mother Ophelia''Three Daughters s increasingly popular presence on social media, where she posted every step of EveAnuri'' centres on Peris childhood for sponsorships and influencer deals and, basically, a Turkish woman who finds herself thinking monetary gain. 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 content about her years at Oxford University . Anuri is battling alcoholism, failing to distract herself start her PhD, undergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online and receiving money from a boring dinner partythem for doing so. Her reminiscing Most importantly, she is triggered when desperately worried about her little sister, who is the new focus of Ophelia's online empire. Can she finds an old polaroid of save her sister, and perhaps herself, and her relationship with her friends Mona father at the same time?|isbn=0861546873}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1529153298|title=The List of Suspicious Things|author=Jennie Godfrey|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary=It's 1979 and ShirinMargaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. (A woman? I mean, honestly...) She's not what's worrying Miv's family, though. Women have been disappearing. Well, and the rebellious Professor Azurthey've been murdered, but to have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. Much of Miv's upset because she's overheard that her thoughts revolve around father wants to move the scandal that prevented her family 'Down South'. When you're from graduating from her dream universityYorkshire, Down South is a frightening, foreign place, best avoided. More of a commentary on religion than a storyFor Miv, the novel asks many questions move would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, and she'll do anything to prevent that. She's not worried about faith - in particular, Islam the dangers or that her Mum's stopped talking - and whether its customs and traditions can be adapted to suit modern lifeanyone.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241978882</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Andre Alexis1035906708|title= The Hidden KeysDiva|author=Daisy Goodwin|rating= 4.5|genre= General Fiction|summary= Tancred Palmieri is a talented thief thrown into the path We tend to think of Willow Azarian an eccentricMaria Callas as Greek, unpredictable heroin addict. She is also part of the Azarian dynastybut she was born to Greek parents in Manhattan, bequeathed almost a million dollars upon her father's death. Each of the Azarian children were also gifted a deeply personal memento moriNew York, which Willow is convinced make up an intricate treasure hunt. She enlists the help of Tancred in December 1923 and only moved to steal each item, solve the mystery and prove Athens when she is not blindly following a baseless fantasywas thirteen. Tancred must use all his skills Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to infiltrate the homes of each of Willow's siblings, uncover Callas' to make it more manageable in the clues hidden States. When she was back in each item Athens - supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for her voice - she was raised under the Nazi occupation by a mother who mercilessly exploited her and fight off the rival interests made no secret of competing criminals and the policeher preference for her elder sister, Jackie.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781258422</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Alison Jean LesterAlexander McCall Smith|title= Yuki Means HappinessThe Perfect Passion Company|rating= 34.5|genre= General Fiction|summary= High-tech and high-rise, kimonosThe Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and big-eyed visuals – through operating as an alternative to all the online apps in providing a dynamic juxtaposition of the ultra modern more personal, tailored service. Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the traditionalbusiness, Japan has succeeded in branding itself both as an intriguing travel destination that does not cease Ness is planning to take a trip to Canada to surpriseget away for a while. Katie is coming out of a break up with a bad boyfriend, but and so jumps at the same time defies being ever wholly full understood by outsiderschance to come home to Edinburgh. All of And so begins this has come new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, thanks to be encapsulated 44 Scotland Street and reinforced the Isabel Dalhousie novels, but with some new characters who quickly begin to charm. Katie has no experience in Sofia Coppolarunning a business, or in match-making, but Ness has full confidence in her abilities, and there's cult classic ''Lost in Translation'': the iconic still of Scarlett Johansson standing at the scramble crossing in Shibuya has come always her very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, William, to represent Japan in pop culture as much as the more traditional cherry blossom imagery. lend a hand…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848549628</amazonuk>1846976596

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= S V BerlinDean Koontz|title= The FavouriteBad Weather Friend|rating= 4.5|genre= General FictionParanormal|summary=Siblings Edward Benny is having a terrifically bad day. He loses his job, he loses his fiancee, and Isobel Vernon haven't spoken in years his house gets trashed. Oh, and live on opposite sides of the Atlantic. When their mother Mary dies unexpectedlysomeone has delivered a really weird, they are thrown together disturbing coffin-sized object to sort through the family his home. With Edward, and it's diffident but devoted girlfriend, Julie, making an awkward threesome, each stumbles through possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the practicalities of funeral preparation and thing that has trashed his house clearing! The thing is, trying Benny is the very last person to make sense of their emotions and their feelings toward one anotherdeserve all this bad luck. He is a nice person. A really nice person. Isobel makes So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the delivery to his house is a disturbing discovery and her fateful decision new friend, a bad weather friend called Spike, who has consequences been sent to help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for all being a good person. Spike is going to take care of them, challenging their beliefs about the pastBenny, hopes for the future and understanding will certainly take care of MaryBenny's role in keeping them at once apart enemies, if he, Benny, and togetherHarper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0993563384</amazonuk>1662500491

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Julia Claiborne JohnsonKatherine Howe|title=Be Frank A True Account|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=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 hanging of 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 two vicious pirates. 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 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 a mutiny on board, and from 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 man who's a control freak with Meall 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'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 fit enough to go to school. Missed shifts or the need to be away on time to pick Bo up from school are occasions when Jamie can be controlled and put in the wrong. It was going to come to a head.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=B0CKD1L5JL|title=Radio Free Olympia|author=Jeffrey Dunn

|summary=In June 2009 Isaac Vargas sends his assistantPetr is an orphan. Rescued by the strange, twenty-four-year-old Alice Whitleyreclusive Bear, to Bel Airhe is brought up far from bustling cities and busy human society, California to help Mimi Gillespie produce her long-awaited second novelin the forests of Washington's Olympic Peninsula. Under 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 name Mforest, broadcasting the strange, wild and rarely heard voices he encounters.M}}{{Frontpage|author=Sarah Marsh|title=A Sign of Her Own|rating=3. Banning5|genre=General Fiction|summary=After a bout of scarlet fever as a child, Mimi issued Ellen Lark loses her hearing. Suddenly plunged into a wildly successful novel back world of silence, everything about her life changes. Living in a time when the 1970suse of sign language was seen as something only savages do, ''Pitched''Ellen is sent to a school where she is taught to lip read, but physically restrained from signing. From here, which quickly became she ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the deaf and using a modern classic system called Visible Speech. At the same time, Bell is working on every American adolescentother inventions and ideas, and Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a complicated tangle of espionage.|isbn=1035401614}}{{Frontpage|isbn=B0BC3YTCMR|title=Good Girls Die|author=Ayura Ayira|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary='s list of assigned reading 'This story is not for schooleveryone. She's the sort ' Lavender Daniels was three weeks short of figure Harper Lee her fifteenth birthday when The Incident happened. She was for decades: a onevery bright student, a bit too nerdy if truth be told, and suffered from vitiligo -hit literary wonder and an infamous reclusepeople were afraid to hug her in case it's contagious. But there It's one key difference here: Mimi has not easy being a black girl whose skin is 84% white. She had a ninecrush on seventeen-year-old sonReggie Anderson but never thought he would notice her. Then he did: Lavender was very good at math and Reggie asked if she would tutor him. She readily agreed: tutoring was something she gladly did at church: this was just an extension. She went to his house and he raped her. In shock, Frankshe even allowed him to give her a lift home.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782399208</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Kay Langdale1472263936|title=The Way Back to UsFigurine|author=Victoria Hislop

|summary=A household revolves around its weakest member 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 because it's revolving thereHamish (Helena's always a danger parents) felt that some people - such as it would be a spouse pity if Helena grew up without knowing her grandparents or understanding her Greek heritage. Her trip to the family apartment in up- will market Kolonaki would be spun to the outside, whilst other children, loosely attached first of several annual visits. She grew to love her grandmother and the main carer will be at a distancefamily's maid, never completely closeDina, but never escaping eitherwas wary - and frightened - of her grandfather, retired general Stamatis Papagiannis. In the centre are He was proud of his close connections to the carer Junta and the person who needs that care, bonded together in such a way that it's actually difficult expected his family to uphold his values but saw no reason to offer help or even friendshipaccommodate them. So it is with Anna His prejudices included Helena's red hair and Teddy, who suffers green eyes - inherited from Spinal Muscular Atrophy, or SMA as ither father'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 difficultScottish ancestors.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1473618363</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Hendrik Groen and Hester Velmans (translator)Dean Koontz|title= The Secret Diary of Hendrik Groen, 83¼ years OldAfter Death|rating= 4.53|genre= General Fiction|summary= As the old adage goesMichael Mace, Head of Security, to walk at a mile in someone else's shoes top secret biological research facility, is to gain some understanding of what it among 55 people who die when a virus is to be that personreleased in a bio-hazard accident. Admittedly Finding himself in a makeshift mortuary, Hendrik Groen isn't much up for long walks any morecovered in plastic, but he does acquire has a swish mobility scooter sense that something very, very bad has happened to zoom him – and only him – as he sits up and looks around inat the shrouded bodies of his dead friends and former colleagues. As he recovers his senses, he realises that there is something different about him; one could say that we get to zoom a mile in Groenhe can ''feel'' everything. ''Everything''. Michael isn't ''Michael'' anymore.|isbn=1662500467}} {{Frontpage|isbn=B0BVDC2VWH|title=The Grave Listeners|author=William Frank|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=The village is isolated and poor. It's shoessurrounded by a Witching Forest. And the villagers subsist largely by farming Uphegia plants - its bread-like fruit provides nutrition and its blossom provides herbal medicines. The black wood of the forest provides heat and warmth, roofs on homes, and even gallows, if needed. The fear of being buried alive is an existential superstition in the village and ohthat is the reason Volushka, a drunken, what fun shoes he wears!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1405924004</amazonuk>self-indulgent, lazy lout of a man is tolerated.

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Sarah FranklinB0BYF82CXT|title= ShelterSemi-Detached|author=Deborah Stone|rating= 54|genre= Historical General Fiction|summary=Connie Granger has escaped her bombed''Bill and Amanda are living in a semi-out city homedetached house, finding refuge stuck in the Women's Timber Corps. For her, this remote community must now serve a secret purpose.<br>Seppedepressing rut of boredom and disappointment, an Italian prisoner of warwhen Terry and Fiona – glamorous, is haunted by his memoriessuccessful and very much in love – move in next door. In Despite their different outlooks on life, the forest camp, he finds a strange kind of freedom.Their meeting signals new beginningscouples befriend each other and life appears to improve for both pairs. But as they are drawn togetherall is not what it seems, the world outside and their forest haven is being torn apart. Old certainties increasingly interconnected relationships are crumbling, and both must now make a life-defining choicefated for tragedy.<br>What price will they pay for freedom? What will they fight to protect?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1785762990</amazonuk>''

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jennifer McVeighShalini Boland|title=Leopard The Silent Bride|rating=3|genre=General Fiction|summary= Alice and Seth are a match made in heaven. He is everything she has been 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 inevitable proposal is eagerly accepted by Alice and the wedding is planned and set. When the much-anticipated day arrives, Alice is walked down the aisle by her father, beaming with pride and excitement as she surveys the congregation – their friends assembled to celebrate this joyful day and when Seth turns to face his approaching bride, Alice's world implodes because she has absolutely no idea who the man at the Dooraltar is, who is waiting for her to become his wife.|isbn=1662507089}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1787636003|title=The Girls of Summer|author=Katie Bishop

|summary=18 year old It was the summer when Rachel Fullsmith returns home to Kenya after being away at school in England Evans turned eighteen that she and Caroline went backpacking around Greece and finds a lot can change in 6 yearsarrived on the island. Of course she realises her motherRachel wasn's death would alter things t exactly innocent but she's not prepared for her father's livewas, perhaps, naive, so when thirty-four-year-old Alistair Wright started to take an interest in 'companion' Sara nor Sara's son Harold sleeping in Rachel's old roomher, she was flattered rather than wary. Michael the Kikuyu servant boy It was quite a while before he made any sort of physical approach to her and by that time she grew up with is still there though and now a man with his own ideaswas obsessed by him. Meanwhile Alistair worked for Henry Taylor, looking after his interests on the unrest between island and in particular in the British rulers and bar where all the local Mau Mau fighters is increasing and about to blowgirls either worked or partied.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241247616</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Lucy DanielsAmanda Craig|title= Summer at Hope MeadowsThree Graces|rating= 4.5|genre= General Fiction|summary=''Animal Ark'' was a popular series Few styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the state-of children-the-nation novel. There's books written between 1994 something so utterly compelling about any writer who can catch hold of the atmosphere of the day and 2008. The stories focus on a young girl called Mandy Hopecapture it, crafting an image of the daughter of two vets who run a practice, Animal Ark, country as it stands in the Yorkshire town of Welfordone particular moment. Along To say that Amanda Craig is skilled at doing this would be embarrassingly inadequate: she's practically synonymous with her best friend James, the children seek to help out creatures in needgenre of contemporary social fiction at this point. The series consisted of 94 books in total and was written by She has such a collection gift for weaving the ongoing issues of authors writing under the pseudonym Lucy Daniels. ''Summer at Hope Meadows'' is day into the first lives of her characters in a new series way that feels natural and lived-in, never making them ciphers for adult readerssocial commentary but instead fully realised people, continuing grown-up Mandy's story now that she is a fully qualified vetgrappling with issues far larger than themselves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473653878</amazonuk>140871468X

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sophie Divry and Alison Anderson (translator)152915118X|title=Madame Bovary of the SuburbsPineapple Street|author=Jenny Jackson|rating=24.5

|summary=''It starts with becoming a homeownerPineapple Street'' is the story of three women: Sasha, then settling inDarley and Georgiana. Darley and George are sisters and Sasha is married to their brother Cord. They're Stocktons, then reproducing.only Sasha isn't a Stockton by birth so she isn't readily accepted into the tribe. WellThe problem's exacerbated when the clan matriarch, it actually starts a lot before thenTilda, with a set of fractured memories of our heroineasks Cord and Sasha if they's childhood – things she recalls her parents and relatives saying both d like to and about hermove into the Pineapple Street property. It goes through her childhood, Tilda and Chip have renovated and pen letters downsized to another property, a best friend conveying her wishes for her lifestreet or so away, those wishes being revised and affirmed by which they own. They won't need any of the liberty of university yearsfurniture from Pineapple Street, those wishes being met with or denied by married life… so Sasha and Cord can move straight in. Someone archly could point out that you should be careful what you wish forNominally, they had a choice but not even our wise, modern woman could not see that wasn't the next step after reality. Darley and Georgiana start to call Sasha 'the reproducing – gold digger'. She'standing disappointed s living in front of ''their'' family home. They use it so often that they abbreviate it to 'the refrigerator'GD'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857054686</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tania HershmanEmily Critchley|title=Some of Us Glow More Than OthersOne Puzzling Afternoon|rating=4.5|genre=Short Stories Crime|summary=I won't be alone 84 year old Edie has lived in stating that reading short story collections can be slightly awkwardthe same small town for almost her whole life, but now she is facing a 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. Going through from A-ZHowever, witnessing Edie is tormented by the memory of her childhood friend, Lucy, who went missing over 60 years ago, and the worry that there was a bounty secret she was keeping for Lucy that somehow might be the thing that reveals the truth of ideas and characters what happened all that time ago. After 'seeing' Lucy in short order can be too muchthe high street, but do you have just as she was the right last time she saw her, she starts to pick and choose according find pockets of memories coming back to what appealsher. And yet as she remembers the past, she is forgetting more and what time you have more in her day to fill? The sequence has carefully been considered, surelyday life. Such would appear to be Will she uncover the case here. The last time I read one of this authortruth about Lucy's collectionsdisappearance before her move, with [[The White Road by Tania Hershman|The White Road]], the only real difficulty was holding back and rationing them, but here you not only get a whopping forty pieces of writing, they before her memories are also spread into sections.gone forever?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1910061484</amazonuk>1804181250

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Jane JohnsonMadelaine Lucas|title= Court of LionsThirst for Salt|rating= 5|genre= Historical Literary Fiction |summary= Kate Fordham arrived in the sunlit city of Granada a year ago. In the shadow of the Alhambra''Love, one of the most beautiful places on earthI'd read, she works as was supposed to be a waitress serving tourists in a busy bar. She pretends shelight and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity's happy with her new life – but how could she be? Kate's alone Told from a retrospective view, afraid and hiding under a false name. And fate is about to bring her faceyoung woman unravels the year-to-face with long relationship that once defined her greatest fear. Five centuries agoOverlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the affair with a message, in a hand few could read, was inscribed in blood on a stolen scrap of paperman twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the summer after. The paper was folded and pressed into one Set against the backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the Alhambra24-year-old narrator's walls. There it has laindeepening relationship with her older lover, undisturbed by the tides of history – the Fall of Granadadepicting its all-consuming nature, the expulsion of its last Sultan – until Kate discovers how it. Born of love, in a time of danger changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and desperation, the fragment will be the catalyst that changes Kate's life foreverhow it altered her irrevocably. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1786694336</amazonuk>0861546490

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Julie Cohen0008506337|title=TogetherThe Garnett Girls|author=Georgina Moore

|summary=This is a The love story told backwardsaffair between Margo Garnett and poet Richard O'Leary was all-consuming, apparently on both sides. Margo was just sixteen when they fell in the most beautiful manner, so that we know from the very beginning that Emily and Robert love each other enormously, . Richard was twenty-one and described by Margo's mother as 'an older man'. Her parents worried that he is about to break Richard's influence would take her heart in the most dreadful way in order away from what they felt she could achieve - going to protect Oxford and having a secret that they've lived with for decadesglittering career. Seeing their love unfold in reverse is beautifulIn the event, they eloped and Richard took her away from the Isle of Wight. We get Margo did go to know them once they have already gotten Oxford and went on to know each otherbecome a well-respected journalist. The couple had three children: Rachel, Imogen and it makes for an unusual and interesting structureSasha. The secret they hold is referred to throughoutLife was lived in London and holidays were spent at Sandcove, but it isn't revealed until very late in the bookfamily home on the Isle of Wight. IEven then the doubts about Richard's drinking were never far from Margo'm guessing very few readers will figure it out. Even once you know, you want s mind: ''she would never be able to go back and read the whole story again leave him in the light of the information you now holdcharge''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1409171744</amazonuk>Then Richard left them.

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Kate Mildenhall1914585402|title= SkylarkingDashboard Elvis is Dead|author=David F Ross|rating= 4.5|genre= General Fiction |summary= Kate I reviewed David F Ross's book [[There's Only One Danny Garvey by David F Ross|There's Only One Danny Garvey]] a couple of years back and Harriet are best friends growing up together on an isolated Australian caperemember being absolutely floored by how powerful and affecting it was. As the daughters of the lighthouse keepers, the two girls share everything, until It was a fishermangripping, McPhailemotionally wounding read, arrives in their small community. When Kate witnesses the desire that flares between him and Harriet, she is torn by her feelings rereading my review of envy and longing. An innocent moment in McPhail's hut then occurs it my main takeaway was that threatens to tear their peaceful community apartI might not have lavished enough praise on it. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1785079239</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Zoe DuncanLucy Ashe|title= The Shifting Pools|rating= 2.5|genre= General Fiction|summary= Perhaps the most overused phrase in fiction publishing is ''life-affirming'', closely followed by ''human condition''. The Shifting Pools takes this to a whole new level. Its blurb boasts that it is ''charged throughout with the beautiful urgency of life'', whatever that means. It isn't. And that's the problem. This isn't a bad book, but it sets itself up to fail. A cardinal rule of writing is ''focus on the small stuff''. If you set out to write a ''life affirming'' novel that answers all the ''big questions'', you'll struggle. And it is this trap that Zoe Duncan falls into. In her quest for profundity she loses her way. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1785630369</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Sarah Healy|title= The Sisters ChaseClara and Olivia|rating= 4.5|genre= General Fiction|summary=Mary and Bunny. That's how it has always been ever since Bunny was born. Two sisters with an unbreakable bond, twisted together so tight that they were two sides of the same coin. Bunny was Mary's whole world; nothing else really mattered; school...friends...boys...well, maybe one boy, but he was something altogether extraordinary. When the unthinkable happened, Mary and Bunny found themselves completely alone in the world, and that'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 belong.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0544960076</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Joy Rhoades|title=The Woolgrower's Companion|rating=4

|summary=1945: The war year is in its dying days 1933. The place? Sadler's Wells. Ballerinas Clara and creating problems far from Olivia are sisters, twins no less. Identical on the different fronts. For instanceoutside but not, in Australiawe learn, what can be done with on the Italian POWs brought into the country? The solution seems to be their use as cheap labourinside. And not on stage, either. In this way Kate DowdBecause there's father agrees a lot that builds a dancer. Some things that can be taught or learnt – discipline, attention to take two onto his sheep farm in drought-ridden New South Wales. Kate is initially wary of the two men detail – Vittorio and Luca – but gradually she realises some things, that ''je ne sais quoi'', that not all dangers don't come from outside her communitythe classroom. Life on A stage presence, a charm, a sheep station may be harsh but for Kate it's going to get 'joie de vivre''. The difference between a hard-worker, and a lot worsestar.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1784741345</amazonuk>0861544080