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[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!{{Frontpage|isbn=295967572X|title=Pale Pieces|author=G M Stevens|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= Our unnamed narrator is about to begin a train journey with his companion Django. Where they're going and what the purpose of this journey is, is uncertain. Django found the tickets ''on the floor somewhere'' and has persuaded our narrator to accompany him. Why not? Not much else is clear either -- Remove -->but we are probably in the past as the pair travel to the station by coach and the train is a steam locomotive.}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=A N WilsonMakenna Goodman|title=ResolutionHelen of Nowhere|rating=4.5

|summary=In 1772 Reinhold Forster and his son George were hired as ship's naturalists for It could be argued that the ''Resolution''pervading theme of this book is malaise - a hard-to-place feeling that something in your life is not quite right. The protagonist, a disgraced professor on the vessel Captain James Cook piloted to New Zealand brink of losing both his career and back on a three-year voyage of discoveryhis relationship, embodies this feeling. Once However, Goodman counteracts his discomfort with a Lutheran pastor near Danzigforce which is seductive, Reinhold seemed unable to settle to one line of work radical and unnerving: Helen. The connection between Helen and had a higher opinion the protagonist is indirect yet intimate. As the former owner of himself than was prudent. In Wilsonthe countryside house he's vision of considering, Helen represents a volta in his life on , her past tied to his potential fresh start. The realtor who shows the protagonist around the ''Resolution'', Reinhold seems fussyhouse shares stories about Helen, argumentative and rather heartless, describes her as when he offers George's dog up as fresh meat when the captain 'an entity that is desperately illpure consciousness, beyond form''. GeorgeAlthough she lives in an assisted living facility now, just 18 when he joins Helen has powers beyond comprehension which the reader gets the expedition, is a self-taught illustrator and botanist with a keen ear for languages. Though precociously intelligent, he is emotionally immature and cannot keep a handle on his masturbation habit or deal with their servant Nally's crush on himsense are not altogether innocuous.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782398279</amazonuk>1804272205

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Michael HughesOlga Tokarczuk|title= The Countenance DivineHouse of Day, House of Night|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary=In 1999, a programmer is trying to fix the millennium bug, but can't shake the sense he'What's been chosen for something. In 1888, five women are brutally murdered in the East End by good of a troubled young man world that keeps changing like that? How can one go on calmly living in thrall to a mysterious master. In 1777, an apprentice engraver called William Blake has a defining spiritual experience; thirteen years later this vision returns. it?''

And The title of this spellbinding work, ''House of Day, House of Night'', somewhat reflects this notion of shifting realities - the small, subtle changes which govern our lives, like the shift from day to night, however quotidian, causing chaos. But, the constant in 1666that image is the house, poet and revolutionary John Milton completes stoic against the epic for ancient diurnal cycle which he will be remembered centuries laternonetheless controls how it is perceived.|isbn=1804271918}}{{Frontpage|author=Thea Lenarduzzi|title=The Tower|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= ''How unctuous are the fats of another's life, how dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream''.

But where does In this compelling novel, Thea Lenarduzzi assumes the feeling come from that identity of T, the world protagonist of this tale. Just as T's story is about being told, the story of a second protagonist is unveiled: Annie, the daughter of a wealthy family in the 19th century, who died of tuberculosis after being locked in a tower, captures T's imagination. Annie's fate is, above all, an enticing story to end?T. It is a story which she consumes avariciously, both in a quest for truth and knowledge, and in service of myth, fable and fantasy. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473636507</amazonuk>1804271799

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Emily Bitto|title= The Strays|rating= 5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= Lily comes from an ordinary suburban family, but on her first day at a new school she meets Eva: the super-confident middle daughter of artist Evan Trentham. The girls fast become firm friends, to the exclusion of all those ar ound them Jon Fosse and it isn't long before Lily is spending more time at the Trentham's than she does at home. Why wouldn't she? Their life is everything her family's isn't.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1785079514</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Eowyn IveyDamion Searls (translator) |title=To the Bright Edge of the WorldVaim

|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=If you're going to go pioneering across unexplored lands, at least be prepared to accept what you seek – namely, what you've never seen beforeAll was strange''.. That lesson seems quite obvious, but back in the time of 1885 Allen Forrester is a little too naïve to heed it. A career soldier, he is tasked with scouring This haunting phrase encapsulates the potential pervading sense of the Wolverine River that threads south to the shores of Alaskaotherworldliness which permeates this story set in Vaim, even though the Russians (who of course used to own the Territory) have had all manner of lethal encounters with those already living there, and even though a major stretch of the river has to be traversed fictional fishing village in winter when entirely frozen over, as the cliffs either side are too impenetrable. Allen leaves a much younger, new bride behind – Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for Jatgeir and right from the get-go his journals force him to pen words about strange happeningsEline, strange encounters and things two of legend coming to lifethe protagonists caught in its melancholic current. Like I say, what he's never seen before…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1472208609</amazonuk>1804271829

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Talulah RileyClaire-Louise Bennett|title= Acts of LoveBig Kiss, Bye-Bye |rating= 4.5|genre= Women's Literary Fiction |summary= Bernadette St John presents herself as the very face of contemporary feminine independenceEverything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, is steeped in anguish and distortion. She is strongEven a kiss, career-drivenusually a symbol of intimacy and closeness, beautiful…and definitely holds the attention becomes evidence of the publiclove lost. For Bernadette is When the narrator cries out internally, ''Man Whisperercome over here and kiss me,'', winning herself fame with her ability to coax secrets from the richest and most powerful men of the world, exposing them with controversial distaste in her articles. Hidden behind such a conniving and judgemental persona, however, it is a deep insecurity, and less an invitation than a desperate longing attempt to be loved by the perfect manconfirm her emotional numbness. She has already decided that the newly engaged Tim Bazier The imagined recipient of this plea is the only candidate for such a position in Xavier, her heart, and will stop at nothing to win him back from his allex-too-lovely fiancé. Yet what is perfect is a subject for discussionpartner, and charismatic entrepreneur Radley Blake's unwavering attention has also fallen upon the feisty journalist. It is a weaving tale of ''will-they-wont-they'' that Riley spins here, one that I found myself unable ghost she conjures to put downtest her detachment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473637902</amazonuk>1804271934

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jesse BallHelene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)|title=How to Set a Fire and WhyLili is Crying|rating=4.5

|summary=Lucia Stanton is a sarcastic 14-year-old misfit who lives with her elderly Aunt Lucy First published in 1953 in a garage they rent from an evil landlord at the bottom of his large garden. She never comes right out and explains why she's thereFrench, but if you read between the lines you work out that her father this novel is dead and her mother is in a mental hospital – presumably for his murder. Aunt Lucy is dignified and principled – ''Don't do things you aren't proud of'' is her motto – even though they are undeniably poor: Lucia only has one set timeless text which wrenches the hearts of clothes its readers just as Bessette wrenches words and mostly lives off of liquorice and Aunt Lucy's terrible homemade bread.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1925355470</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Jenn Ashworth|title=Fell|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Now her parents have died, Annette returns to sell her old childhood home but there's work to do sentences from their proper position on the decrepit building first. As she wanders around page and tries to make some order of the overgrown shamblespositions them elsewhere, she's watched by the ghost of her motherdisjointed, Netty; a spirit with regretstruncated. Netty reminisces about Annette's childhood and Like the turning point their lives reached when the mysterious healer Timothy Richardson came to stay. It was a time that promised so much but one for which Netty now needs to make amendsof her characters, even if she is beyond the gravethey are often left tragically incomplete.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473630606</amazonuk>1804271675

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sue GeeJonathan Buckley|title=TrioOne Boat

|genre=Historical Literary Fiction|summary=In ''One Boat'' is a deeply introspective novella that defies traditional narrative structure, drawing the winter reader into a contemplative realm of 1936philosophical musings and fragmented memories flowing from our narrator and protagonist, Steven Coulter's wifeTeresa. Set against the evocative backdrop of a small coastal Greek town, Margaret, dies this work masterfully captures the magic of tuberculosis, leaving their Northumberland cottage cold its setting and empty. His work as a history teacher at Kirkhoughton Boys' School isn't enough to distract him from his grief; he spends his long evenings writing letters its power to Margaretprovoke profound introspection. Gradually, though, Teresa herself recognises these qualities as spring arrives he starts to take an interest in other things. His colleague Frank Embleton invites him to a performance by the Hepplewick Trio: Frank's sister Diana on cello; pianist Margot Heslop, whose mother died when reason she was young and who looks has visited it after the death of both her parents. Prompted by her fathermourning, a coal mine manager, at Hepplewick Hall; her narrative voice is meditative and their friend George Liddelldeeply self-aware, inviting the violinist and leader, who reader into her labyrinthine cogitations. It is a Royal College book that not only requires but inspires depth of Music graduatethought, since its narrative structure is fragmentary and ironically relies on analepsis for its propulsion.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1784630616</amazonuk>1804271764

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Stephanie DanlerEowyn Ivey|title= SweetbitterBlack Woods Blue Sky|rating= 43.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= Twenty –two year old Tess is a restless graduate from a broken family. With ''Black Woods Blue Sky'' tells the story of Birdie, the intention young mother of finally starting her toddler Emaleen, who longs for a life, beyond the Alaskan lodge where she moves to New York City with no real plan but works as a need to do something. She manages to get bar waitress, a job at one setting which enables her bad habits and her accidental neglect of the most exclusive restaurants in town Emaleen. Described as a back''wild card'', she feels stuck in her day-waiter to-day life, and Tess is thrown into yearns to cross the comforting commotion Wolverine river and live on the North Fork to fulfil her desires of New York a simple lifesurrounded by nature. It's at her new job that When she becomes fascinated by two people: Simonemeets Arthur Nielson, a know-it-all server strange, taciturn and Jakesolitary man, who says he has a handsome yet moody bartender. While the restaurant becomes her home cabin over there, she feels called to go - and bring Emaleen with her colleagues her new family. Without realising it, this calling will transform hers and Emaleen''Sweetbitter'' follows Tess through a year of her life as she grows and learns about the complexities of human relationshipss lives forever.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1780749155</amazonuk>1472279042

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Rodrigo Hasbun and Sophie Hughes (translator)Sally Rooney|title=AffectionsIntermezzo

|genre=General Fiction|summary=If you thought your teenaged years were a struggle to work out Sally Rooney has studied the world, and yourself, consider that of Heidi Ertl. Or either of her sisters – this book serves as a sort chessboard of tribute to these three real-life women, and the lives that came out is something of their very disjointed youth, forced to be rarefied from the norm by their family uprootinga grandmaster at putting it into words. Father Hans was one of Leni Riefenstahl's key cameramen, Her dialogue is gripping and a Nazi military photographerso brilliantly frustrating, before taking as her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Among the whole family many relationships woven into post-war exile in Bolivia. Their mother would have followed him to the ends of the earth – as in part would their daughtersthis story, the older two of which start the book by joining him on an expedition central one for readers to discover a lost Incan city. Heidi finds young, instant love on unravel is the trek – but sees the dark side of such emotions, toofraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. Older sister MonikaIvan, who might well be manic depressivea socially awkward chess prodigy, finds something elsecontrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, while the baby of the family stays at home with a maudlin mothersuccessful lawyer living in Dublin. So much here could be the hook on which to hang Following their father's passing after a full novellong battle with cancer, but if anything itthe brothers's the reaction of them all to this unusual formative journey that inspires this bookalready strained relationship faces new trials.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782272135</amazonuk>0571365469

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Sun-mi HwangFyodor Dostoyevsky|title= The Dog who Dared to DreamWhite Nights|rating= 45|genre= Literary FictionShort Stories|summary=From the very beginning, Scraggly knows that she is different to her brothers and sisters. Her siblings have short, glossy coats, but Scraggly's blue/black fur is long, wild and untamed. She may be an outsider, but she still enjoys life with her family As always in Grandpa Screecher's sunny yardDostoyevsky, even if it means putting up with the evil cat next door. Scraggly dreams that things can stay this way forever, but fate has other planscharacter work is sublime. One tragic night, everything she loves is cruelly ripped away from her. As she struggles to rebuild never left wondering what a new life character is thinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and family for herself, she comes to understand that sadness, betrayal and loss are an inevitable part of lifetemperaments with remarkable clarity. Can Scraggly ever learn to trust another human again?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0349142106</amazonuk>0241619785

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Sarah PerryJames Baldwin|title= The Essex SerpentGiovanni's Room|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= I confess to a bias… when I came across a reference to Sarah Perry''Giovanni's latest novel; I wanted Room'' follows the narrator David, an American man living in Paris, as he navigates his torturous affair with Giovanni, an Italian bartender he meets in a gay bar. While David is engaged to read it for two reasons only. She Hella, who is a local writertravelling in Spain, and the book is set real tension in a place the novel arises not too far away, from his infidelity but that I have yet to explore and which fascinates me: from the Blackwater estuary in Essexdeeper conflict within himself. ThatIt is David's a place of the kind of wide open skies crippling shame and mud creeks that you will find up much denial of the Norfolk and Suffolk coast as well, and a landscape type his sexuality that probably only appeals to a certain type of personultimately dooms his relationship with Giovanni.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>178125544X</amazonuk>0141186356

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Susan BealeAlba de Cespedes |title=The Good GuyForbidden Notebook

|genre=Literary Fiction |summary=September 1964: This Italian work of feminist fiction holds an Indian summer in suburban Massachusetts. Ted McDougall is a twenty-three-year-old Goodyear tyre salesman who lives with his wife Abigail air of suspense and ten-month-old daughter Mindy in tension from the up-and-coming Elm Grove community. Both Ted and Abigail feel unappreciated in their roles. Ted knows his in-laws wanted him to become a lawyer and join Abigail's father's firmmoment our protagonist, but he's a good salesman and wishes they wouldn't look down on him for it. Meanwhile AbigailValeria Cossati, an American history buffpurchases her forbidden notebook, can't master and learns about herself in the domestic arts of cooking and cleaning, much as she tries, most intimate and longs to go back to schoolrevealing ways.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473630339</amazonuk>1782278222

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Emma ClineOttessa Moshfegh|title= The GirlsMy Year of Rest and Relaxation|rating= 43|genre= Literary Fiction|summary=California. Summer 1969. Fourteen year old Evie Boyd At best, this novel is a thoughtful yet bored teenager from a broken home. The attention she craves is nowhere to be found in scathing critique of modern society and reveals the form fragility of her neglectfulhuman relationships; at worst, serial dating motherit is the cynical, or even in the friendship predictable and slightly trite tale of her fickle best friend Conniean unlikeable protagonist. Abandoned by those around herThis unlikely heroine, Evie's path collides with Suzanne – a mysterious older girl who introduces Evie to a strange yet thrilling new life, offering her the intimate relationship her life back home lacks.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784740446</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Simon Van Booy|title= Father's Day|rating= 5|genre= General Fiction|summary=When devastating news shatters the life of six year old Harvey, she finds herself in the care of a veteran social worker, Wandaslim, attractive and alone newly orphaned girl in her twenties is disillusioned with the world save for one relative she has never met - a disabled ex-con, haunted by a violent past he can't escape. Moving between past and present, Father's Day weaves together the story of Harvey's childhood on Long Islandbut resolves not to lose sleep over it: in fact, and her life as a young woman solution lies in Parisher hibernation.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1780749694</amazonuk>1784707422

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Thomas KeneallyMatthew Tree|title=NapoleonWe's Last Islandll Never Know

|summary=It's not usual Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to open be different from his father, a review with the history drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of how the book came to be written but with ''Napoleon's Last Island'' the story sheds an intriguing light on the plot. In 2012 author Thomas Keneally was given tickets to an exhibition being exceptional at any of Napoleonic artefacts: uniforms, furniture, china, paintings, military decorations, snuff boxes his artistic passions all failed miserably and memorabilia as well as Napoleon's death maskwho had endless crises of self confidence. He was intrigued as So Tim applied himself to how the exhibits his studies, cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and particularly the mask came to be in Australia. Some pieces in the exhibition had been bought in later set himself high but most came from the descendants of the Balcombe family, who came to the colony in the first half of the nineteenth century, from St Helena via England. The result of Keneally's research into the story is ''Napoleon's Last Island''achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473625335</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8

{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=B0C47LV1PC|title=The Natural Way of ThingsFragility|author=Charlotte WoodMosby Woods|rating=54

|summary=Yolanda and Verla wake up disorientated. They realise theyCan you make a ''Yo birthing person''ve been drugged. Yolanda thinks that perhaps they are in some kind of mental facility - She knew she was not mad, but all lunatics thought that. Verla just sits, still and frozen, waiting. joke? And soon enoughif you could, two men arrive to reveal their fate. Yolanda and Verlais the question should you make it? Or is the question if you did, along with eight other girls, have been brought to a remote farmhouse surrounded by an electrified fencewould it land? The catch is that the answer for both could well be. Their heads are shaved. They are dressed in uncomfortable, scratchy, Amish-style clothes. They are tied together like a chain gang. And, like any chain gang, their days are marked with forced labourno. Two men, one more cruel than  ''Fragility'' is set as the othercity of Portland, and a so-called nurse are their jailersOregon, not their guardians.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1760291870</amazonuk>cautiously begins to emerge from the restrictions imposed during the covid pandemic

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Emma GeenMosby Woods|title=The Many Selves of Katherine NorthA Whirly Man Loses His Turn|rating=3.54|genre=Science Literary Fiction|summary=As a Bristol-area The West isn'phenomenaut', nineteen-year-old Kit projects herself into t the dominant force it once was. Nobody in the West is quite sure how to mend this or even if mending it is the lab-grown bodies best course of all sorts of creaturesaction. Governments are flailing. She's recently spent A war here, a lot of time as push for climate action there. A feeling that nobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, there was a fox (appropriate given her nickname) and got particularly close man with a vixen named Tomokoprecognition. It's becoming much harder for her to leave Imagine the animal world behind at the end strategic advantage in this asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of her 'jumps'circumstances. Even after BuckleyThat man would be valuable, her neuroengineerright? Perhaps the most valuable asset in history. Imagine then, signals her that this man loses this ability. What would governments do to 'Come home' and she resumes her original body, she has trouble giving up animal tendencies like territorialism, toileting outdoors and raiding bins.get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408858436</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sjon and Victoria Cribb (translator)0571379559|title=Moonstone: The Boy Who Never WasHouse of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams

|summary=Sixteen-year-old Mani Stein - Moonstone in translation - existed on ''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the fringes story of societyfour people. He lived Tess Hembry's roots are in Reykjavik and Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in 1918 the night sky (and house on the day for that matter) was lit by the eruptions riverbank, built of the Katla volcanobroken bricks. The Great War was ragingInsubstantial as it might look, or possibly grinding onit's stood the passage of time, but life in the capital carried on much as usualstorms and floods. There were shortagesHer husband, such as coalRichard, struggles to grow his vegetables, but there was to complete the new fashion delivery rounds - and it was for to bring in sufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, the movies that Mani lived, seeing every production he could, sometimes several timesrainbow twins. He dreamed about the films, changing them to suit Sonny's colouring reflects his tastes, working mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his own life into the plotsfather. But People don't believe that they're related, much less twins and there was another reason why Mani was a misfit: Mani was gay and frequently made a living as a sex worker's an assumption when Max is out with his mother that she's his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1473613132</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Conor O'CallaghanClaire North|title=Nothing on EarthHouse of Odysseus|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=On a sweltering night in what is a blisteringly hot summer a young girl hammers at a man's door and when let into 'What could matter more than love?'' The follow-up to the house tells him that her father has disappeared excellent ''tooIthaca''picks up a few months after where we left off. Gradually In the palace of Odysseus, with delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her story emergeshusband, of a who sailed to war at Troy and then by divine intervention never returned home on one of those estates so common in Ireland after . As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the collapse throne of the Celtic Tiger with only the occasional house occupied and others only part builtWestern Isles. It could be any one of hundreds of Irish towns at that time Having survived – politically and its main feature is physical – the lack of hope chaotic storm that it will never be any better. Our narrator tells her storyClytemnestra brought to Ithaca's shores, much, he says, as it was told to him and we hear Queen Penelope is on the brink of a life on fragile peace. One that shatters however with the edge return of Orestes, King of povertyMycenae, with strange noises in the nightand his sister Elektra, words written in the dust on the windows mirrored by those written in blue ink on her skinseeking refuge.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1781620342</amazonuk>0356516075

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Per Olov Enquist and Deborah Bragan-Turner (translator)Kay Chronister|title=The Parable BookDesert Creatures|rating=3.54|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=It's not only springtime when With a man's fancies turn to thoughts of love – he can also do it in the autumn of his lifeworld that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, as does the man involved here. But being a wellpost-known author, and being beholden to silence, apocalyptic fiction can he really put his thoughts on paper? It happened become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is a long time agorobotic takeover, and he only met the woman concerned a couple world devoid of timeswater or a nuclear holocaust, but with it being such this genre is a powerful event and such a slightly unusual circumstance, what should he do? It takes way for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. ''Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a notebook new work of his father's love poems to his mother, post-apocalyptic fiction that he finds both incomplete and scorched, to give him aligns many of the green light – the voice from the past fears that says to him, 'go exist for it'humanity today. And what we read here It is a resultshocking novel that still manages to find hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857059912</amazonuk>1803364998

{{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Maggie O'FarrellEric LaRocca|title=This Must Be the PlaceThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=45|genre=Literary FictionHorror|summary=Maggie OHorror taps into something primeval within us. It is used as a way to reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and process them. Most horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad'Farrell's globe-trotting seventh novel opens in 2010 with Daniel Sullivan, an American linguistics professor. He lives with his wife Claudettewhether that is a home invader, a French actress who retreated from the limelightmonster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and their two children in a remote home in Donegal. It was 10 years ago that he first came here and met Claudette , by chance when her van had a flat tire; he struck up a conversation with her son Ari and gave the boy tips for dealing with his stutterend of the story, beatable. Now, preparing to fly back to Brooklyn for his fatherEric LaRocca's ninetieth birthday party, he's caught 'The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. It is a collection of short by a long-lost voice he hears on stories more interested in the radiohorrors of illness, grief and humiliation. It belongs to Nicola Janks, a former lover he last saw 24 years ago; when he learns Horrors that she died soon after they were together, he determines linger and are harder to figure out whether he played a role, even if he doesndefeat than any ''Big Bad''t like what he finds.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755358805</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Joanne HarrisMadelaine Lucas|title=Different ClassThirst for Salt

|summary= St Oswald's Grammar School For Boys is in crisis. A murdered schoolboy'Love, I'd read, was supposed to be a procession of new Head Masterslight and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity'' Told from a(nother) new Head Masterretrospective view, a Crisis Intervention Team and a potential merger young woman unravels the year-long relationship that once defined her. Overlaid with St Oswald's all female counterpartlater wisdom, Mulberry House. Roy Straitley is not altogether dismayed at the prospect of delaying his retirement; St Oswald's has been his life, narrator relives the affair with a man and boy and a crisis is a crisis twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after all is said and done, isn't it? It's probably his duty finishing university – to stay and right its sorrowful end the shipsummer after. So when Set against the latest backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the new Head Masters and his duo of crisis managers walk into the staff room, Straitley can't quite believe his 24-year-old eyes. The new Head is an ex-pupil of St Oswaldnarrator's; a boy whodeepening relationship with her older lover, depicting its all-consuming nature, in his time at the esteemed old School caused such an uproarious scandal that one of the Masters ended up in prison! how it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0385619235</amazonuk>0861546490

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Bill BeverlyMichael Grothaus|title= DodgersBeautiful Shining People|rating= 54

|summary= Judging a book by its cover can mislead. It can especially mislead if you don't look closely at the cover 'But fearing something and having it come to pass are just grabbed by the two different things. And I'm willing to bet most of what we fear will never happen, or we can take steps to change it.'feel' ' or 'Beautiful Shining People'style'' of revolves around the design question of the thingidentity and acceptance. Of what it means to be human. Being misled Of what is real and what is not necessarily a bad thing. For reasons best left in the depths of my addled brainartificial, and whether the styling development of Dodgers had me thinking 'noir'. I was expecting late fifties, early sixties. If I'd looked closer, I'd have seen that it technology is much more contemporary than thatexciting or frightening. Then again…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1843448572</amazonuk>191458564X

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alice AdamsJennifer Saint|title=Invincible SummerAtalanta|rating=3.5

|summary=As Alice Adams's debut novel opens 'I was as worthy as any one of them. I would get on board that ship, I vowed. I would take my place, not just in the summer name of the goddess. It was for the sake of 1995my name, four university friends are lounging on Bristoltoo. Atalanta''s Brandon Hill Princess. Warrior. Lover. Hero. Abandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a son, drinking Atalanta is raised under the protective eye of the goddess Athemis and contemplating what fashioned into a formidable huntress, one who longs for adventure. When the opportunity comes – to join the Argonauts, a fierce band of warriors, descendent from the future holds. ThereGods themselves – Atalanta seizes the chance to fight in Artemis's Eva Andrews, raised name and carve out her own legendary place in Sussex by history. What follows is a single father; siblings Sylvie whirlwind of challenges and Lucien Marchant, neglected by their alcoholic mother; discovery and Benedict Waverleythrough it, a rich kid whose parents have a holiday home on Corfu. Eva has a crush on LucienAtalanta must remember Artemis' fatal warning: that if she marries, while Benedict is besotted with Evait will be her undoing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1509814701</amazonuk>1472292154

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Birgul OguzAmanthi Harris|title= HahBeautiful Place|rating= 35|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= I was interested to receive this book for review as I knew it was written in Padma, a modernyoung Sri Lankan, interesting style, being effectively a collection has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of short stories, but appearing more in her home country. This is a novel structureplace she spent her formative years. I It is not a place she wasborn into, however, rather disappointed with but the bookone she thinks of as home. Whilst it does have some very fine examples of prose writing within How she came to be at the storiesVilla, I felt disconnected from the narratorhow it became her home, who is and the daughter of a recently deceased man who was involved in a Turkish military coup in 1980. There is therefore a lot of examples of machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the narrator relating the conversations they had shared regarding ''revolutionscore'', for this gentle and the way this had affected the daughteryet subtly violent novel. Padma's upbringing present fails to escape her past and childhood. Another 'story' then delves into much like the musical score of a seemingly disconnected wander film, that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the town, whereby we see the narrator working at gutting fish, and talking about a man she finds repulsive, but who appears to be in love with herVilla. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>9462380740</amazonuk>1784631930

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Chuck Palahniuk178563335X|title=Make Something UpSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor

|genre=Short Stories Literary Fiction|summary=What are When we to make of that subtitle-seeming writing first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, sitting in on the front cover – a PCC meeting and wondering why they''stories re held when you can't unread''? Does that not apply to all good fiction? Clearly it is here due to the reputation of the author, and the baggage his name brings need to pick the pagechildren up. We'd expect a dramatic approach from anything Palahniuk writesHer husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and an added frissonher elder brother, an extra layerJamie, from which we might be forced to shrink backwhilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. But a lot of the contents donThelma's daughter-in-law won't quite go that farlet her see her grandson. YesHolthorpe, things are dramatic, when society starts attaching defibrillators to itself, to create on the perfect, simpleNorfolk coast, care- (''The Price is Right''-a lovely place, and Kardashian-) free happiness. A man buys a horse for his daughter – but boy Rachel is it the wrong horse to buy. A man falls in love – yes, sometimes the plot summaries of these stories really are better off for being short (speaking of which, don't turn struggling to develop a real bond with the threeparish -page entrant here as a taster, itand she'll put you off by dint s in awe of beingthe vicar, almost uniquely hereGail, a nothing story). A call centre worker can't convince people hebut then she's on been doing the level and even in their country – until someone starts riffing back to himjob for more than thirty years. A housing estate report conveys bad regulation violations, but not as bad as Rachel and Christopher hoped that a walk on the happenings at a 'Burning Man'beach would do them some good -styled festival, in a very clever couple of talesit was stormy but it was probably what they needed. But many too are the instances where that extra step has been takenAnd then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099587688</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Aliya Whiteley1398515388|title= The Arrival of MissivesBoy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary General Fiction|summary=In First of all, it was the aftermath of earthquake, deep in the Great Warocean floor, Shirley Fearn dreams of challenging which created the conventions of rural Englandtsunami and this, in turn, where life is as unchanging as caused the seasonsnuclear meltdown. The result was complete and utter devastation. The scarred veteran Mr Tillerdeaths were uncountable, left disfigured by an impossible accident and the loss of livelihoods was widespread. The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. He wasn't a dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the dog jumped in.}} {{Frontpage|isbn=0989715337|title=Papa on the battlefields Moon|author=Marco North|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''Some frogs had gotten into the well.'' ''Walter stood waist-deep in the fragrant water, naked except for his beaten leather hat. Long strands of Francetheir eggs wove around him, brings sticky gray pearls with him a message: part prophecy, part warningtadpoles inside them. Two of the dogs leaned over the opening and barked down at the strange noise of the buckets as he filled them. As Shirley's village prepares ' How is that for an opening? The style of this novel in the annual May Day celebrationsform of interconnected short stories goes from succinct and laconic to wistful and musing, where turning on a new queen will be crowned and sixpence. And author Marco North, who has the future rebornmost wonderful turn of phrase, she must choose between change and renewal – will the missives Mr Tiller brings prevent her mastering her identity?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907389377</amazonuk>starts as he means to go on.