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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=Jennifer DownMakenna Goodman|title=Our Magic HourHelen of Nowhere

|summary=There had always been KatyIt could be argued that the pervading theme of this book is malaise - a hard-to-place feeling that something in your life is not quite right. The protagonist, Audrey a disgraced professor on the brink of losing both his career and Adamhis relationship, embodies this feeling. They've been friends since school and nowHowever, along Goodman counteracts his discomfort with Audreya force which is seductive, radical and unnerving: Helen. The connection between Helen and the protagonist is indirect yet intimate. As the former owner of the countryside house he's partner Nickconsidering, they remain inseparable as young professionalsHelen represents a volta in his life, her past tied to his potential fresh start. ThenThe realtor who shows the protagonist around the house shares stories about Helen, one dayand describes her as ''an entity that is pure consciousness, Katy kills herselfbeyond form''. No warningAlthough she lives in an assisted living facility now, no reason just no Katy. The four Helen has powers beyond comprehension which the reader gets the sense are suddenly three trying to make sense of a moment that leaves so many questions in a world that refuses to pause while they figure it outnot altogether innocuous.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1925240835</amazonuk>1804272205

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Ayobami AdebayoOlga Tokarczuk|title= Stay With MeHouse of Day, House of Night|rating= 5|genre= General Literary Fiction|summary= I have a ''thingWhat's the good of a world that keeps changing like that? How can one go on calmly living in it?'' about blurbs which give away far too much  The title of the stories. Not this time. This time…spellbinding work, ''House of Day, House of Night'There are things even love can't do…if , somewhat reflects this notion of shifting realities - the burden is too much and stays too long even love bendssmall, crackssubtle changes which govern our lives, comes close like the shift from day to breakingnight, however quotidian, and sometimes does breakcausing chaos.'' ''But even when it's , the constant in a thousand pieces around your feet, that doesn't mean it's no longer love…'' That image is the most heart-breakingly beautiful truth I've read in a long time – and house, stoic against the ancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it sums up this story. This is a story about love not being enough…but still being love. I hope this becomes a classic, not just in its native Nigeria but around the worldperceived. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782119469</amazonuk>1804271918

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Michael Farris SmithThea Lenarduzzi|title= Desperation RoadThe Tower|rating= 5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= Maben is on ''How unctuous are the run. For a long while itfats of another's not clear whether shelife, how dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream''s running from something or towards something. In this compelling novel, Thea Lenarduzzi assumes the identity of T, or simply back to where it all startedthe protagonist of this tale. SheJust as T's got her small story is being told, the story of a second protagonist is unveiled: Annie, the daughter with herof a wealthy family in the 19th century, and theywho died of tuberculosis after being locked in a tower, captures T've been walking for a very long times imagination. ItAnnie's hard on the childfate is, above all, an enticing story to T. It is a story which she consumes avariciously, but it's also clear that if it wasn't both in a quest for the child Maben would stop runningtruth and knowledge, and in service of myth, fable and it's clear that that would not be a good thingfantasy. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1843449870</amazonuk>1804271799

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Samanta Schweblin Jon Fosse and Megan McDowell Damion Searls (translator)|title=Fever DreamVaim

|summary=Meet Carla. She's a glamorous older woman, with poise and beauty, and someone who still looks a treat in a golden bikini. But inside, she's different. The biggest issue she seems to bear relates to an event a few years ago, when her horse breeder husband had the drama of both a hired, valuable stallion, and their son, being poisoned. Away from the right medical treatment, Carla took David to a woman who said the only hope All was a strange'migration' – basically, to farm out part of David's spirit and swap it with someone else's, to dilute the toxin. .. This was a success, as David seems to have survived, although Carla is sure it was haunting phrase encapsulates the wrong decision – she now sees David as at least part monster. But another odd thing about pervading sense of otherworldliness which permeates this tale is that it isn't being narrated by Carlastory set in Vaim, but by her neighboura fictional fishing village in Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for Jatgeir and Eline, another mother called Amanda, who is renting a holiday home nearbytwo of the protagonists caught in its melancholic current. And the further odd thing is to whom she is narrating this story – it's to David…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1786070901</amazonuk>1804271829

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Shanthi SekaranClaire-Louise Bennett|title=Lucky BoyBig Kiss, Bye-Bye |rating=4.5

|summary=Solimar wants more from her life than her Mexican home can offer Everything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, is steeped in anguish and distortion. Even a kiss, usually a symbol of intimacy and now she's 18closeness, she can go find itbecomes evidence of love lost. Her target is to get to When the USAnarrator cries out internally, a target so blinding that she doesn't realise what reaching out for 'come over here and kiss me,'' it will costis less an invitation than a desperate attempt to confirm her emotional numbness. Meanwhile Kavya The imagined recipient of this plea is living the American dream. She's rich in friendshipXavier, familyher ex-partner, a loving husband and life prospects and yet Kavya has a baby-shaped hole in ghost she conjures to test her worlddetachment. The problem is that there's only one baby for both of them… Lucky boy!|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0735212279</amazonuk>1804271934

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Rick BassHelene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)|title= For a Little WhileLili is Crying|rating= 4.5|genre= Short StoriesLiterary Fiction|summary=''For a Little While'' First published in 1953 in French, this novel is a collection timeless text which wrenches the hearts of twenty-five short stories its readers just as Bessette wrenches words and sentences from Rick Bass. As someone previously unacquainted with Bass' work this new collection was a wonderful introduction to his quirky, unusual style which focuses their proper position on stripped backthe page and positions them elsewhere, simple fables featuring often mundane situationsdisjointed, mysterious characters and magical experiencestruncated. The Like the lives of her characters in each tale , they are beautifully crafted and the stories are dreamy, loose narratives covering everything from love to death to choices made and chances takenoften left tragically incomplete.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782273042</amazonuk>1804271675

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Dorthe NorsJonathan Buckley|title=Mirror, Shoulder, SignalOne Boat|rating=3.54

|summary=Danish author Dorthe Nors has published four novels, a novella and a story collection. The protagonist of her latest novel, forty-something Sonja, has a problem with balance – literally. Due to an inner ear condition, if she bends over she's crippled by dizziness. It's inconvenient given that Sonja is currently taking lessons at Folke Driving School. SheOne Boat's already doing poorly – her angry, sweary instructor Jytte doesn't trust her enough to change gears so does it all for her – and so can't have them finding out is a deeply introspective novella that she gets dizzy. Eventually Sonja switches so Folke himself is her instructordefies traditional narrative structure, but he's an odious lecher. She really can't win.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782273123</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Alice Hoffman|title= Faithful|rating= 4.5|genre= General Fiction |summary= Growing up on Long Islanddrawing the reader into a contemplative realm of philosophical musings and fragmented memories flowing from our narrator and protagonist, Shelby Richmond is an ordinary girl until one night an extraordinary tragedy changes her fateTeresa. Her best friend's future is destroyed in an accident, while Shelby walks away with Set against the burden evocative backdrop of guilt. What happens when a life is turned inside out? When love is something so distant it may as well be a star in the sky? Moving from a life in her parents basement to a life in New York Citysmall coastal Greek town, Shelby remains damaged by this work masterfully captures the loss magic of her best friend, stumbling through life blindly its setting and fighting desperately to become connected its power to anything at allprovoke profound introspection. But, Teresa herself recognises these qualities as the reason she growshas visited it after the death of both her parents. Prompted by her mourning, she discovers emotion, survival her narrative voice is meditative and happinessdeeply self-aware, bundled up with dogs, food, books and men she's probably best avoiding… Deep in New York City she find inviting the reader into her labyrinthine cogitations. It is a circle book that not only requires but inspires depth of lost and found soulsthought, since its narrative structure is fragmentary and the angel who's been watching over her since that fateful night all those years ago…ironically relies on analepsis for its propulsion.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1471157717</amazonuk>1804271764

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Miguel Bonnefoy and Emily Boyce (translator)Eowyn Ivey|title=Octavio's JourneyBlack Woods Blue Sky

|genre=Literary Fiction |summary=Meet Octavio. He's 'Black Woods Blue Sky'' tells the story of Birdie, the young mother of toddler Emaleen, who longs for a large lunk, life beyond the Alaskan lodge where she works as a gentle giantbar waitress, living alone in a lowly Venezuelan town – a town setting which once, fleetingly, had fame, fashion enables her bad habits and success through her accidental neglect of Emaleen. Described as a minor miracle, but has none any longer. Octavio, it seems, has some unusual habits – here he is, marching off to the chemist's with a table across his back'wild card'', for it was all the doctor had at the time she feels stuck in her day-to write a prescription on. Now we never learn exactly what the cause of the prescription was, but we soon find out what the cause of the table is – Octavio cannot read-day life, and has learned nothing beyond cutting into his palm yearns to allow cross the wound to let him escape Wolverine river and live on the need North Fork to writefulfil her desires of a simple life surrounded by nature. UntilWhen she meets Arthur Nielson, that isa strange, a woman seems to suggest a way for him to learn to read taciturn and writesolitary man, and to love – but that experience also proves to Octavio that who says he has a cabin over there is a whole host of other things he can put his mind , she feels called togo - and bring Emaleen with her. Without realising it, both for good, this calling will transform hers and for bad…Emaleen's lives forever.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1910477311</amazonuk>1472279042

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tomoka Shibasaki and Polly Barton (translator)Sally Rooney|title=Spring GardenIntermezzo

|summary=Murakami, Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard of life and (long before the film) Endo's ''Silence''is something of a grandmaster at putting it into words. That's my limit Her dialogue is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, as regards contemporary Japanese writingher characters never quite say exactly what they feel. But now there's Tomoka ShibasakiAmong the many relationships woven into this story, the central one for readers to unravel is the fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and her noted work ''Spring Garden''Peter Koubek. WhichIvan, make no mistake, is definitely Japanese. For instancea socially awkward chess prodigy, if I told you it starts contrasts sharply with a man looking up to watch his female neighbour on her balconyolder brother Peter, and concerns obsessiona successful lawyer living in Dublin. Following their father's passing after a long battle with cancer, you could well think it was his about herthe brothers' already strained relationship faces new trials. But no – perhaps only |isbn=0571365469}}{{Frontpage|author=Fyodor Dostoyevsky|title=White Nights|rating=5|genre=Short Stories|summary=As always in Dostoyevsky, the west character work is the gaze so malesublime. The obsession One is never left wondering what a character is very much hers here, thinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and it – and the novel – concern a singular housetemperaments with remarkable clarity. And the very singular country it lives in, and the changes it is going through…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782272704</amazonuk>0241619785

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Laura KayeJames Baldwin|title= English AnimalsGiovanni's Room|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= When Mirka gets a job in a country house in rural England, she has no idea of ''Giovanni's Room'' follows the struggle she faces to make sense of a very English couplenarrator David, and a way of life that is entirely alien to her. Richard and Sophie are chaotic, drunken, frequently outrageous but also warm, generous and kind to Mirkaan American man living in Paris, despite their argumentative and turbulent marriage. Mirka is swiftly commandeered by Richard for as he navigates his latest money-making enterprise, taxidermytorturous affair with Giovanni, and soon surpasses him an Italian bartender he meets in skill. After a traumatic break two years ago with her family in Slovakia, Mirka finds to her surprise that she is happy at Fairmont Hallgay bar. But when she tells Sophie that she While David is gayengaged to Hella, everything she values who is put travelling in danger and she must learn Spain, the hard way what she really believes real tension inthe novel arises not from his infidelity but from the deeper conflict within himself. It is David's crippling shame and denial of his sexuality that ultimately dooms his relationship with Giovanni.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>140870823X</amazonuk>0141186356

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Charles D BlanchardAlba de Cespedes |title=Kingdom's EndForbidden Notebook

|summary=The rats made their massive colony inside the ruins This Italian work of feminist fiction holds an abandoned motion picture palace, where for thirty long dark years, an aged blind leader ruled over them. A beloved figure held in high regard, he rules with patienceair of suspense and tension from the moment our protagonist, understandingValeria Cossati, justice and love. When a young upstart challenges all he has builtpurchases her forbidden notebook, ruling with harsh punishments and rash decisions, the rats must decide how best to protect their colony learns about herself in order to preserve all that they have built together. As the rats clash amongst themselves, some fail to notice the ever growing threats most intimate and dangers that the outside world provides - who will come out on top in this very literal rat race?revealing ways.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>148344936X</amazonuk>1782278222

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sebastian BarryOttessa Moshfegh|title=Days Without EndMy Year of Rest and Relaxation|rating=53

|summary=It's the mid nineteenth century and Thomas McNulty has left his home in Sligo, his family dead from famineAt best, to make this novel is a new life in a new nation. He teams up with prairie fairy - a dancer in drag - John Cole scathing critique of modern society and together they sign up for reveals the US Army. Their journey will take them through fragility of human relationships; at worst, it is the American Indian wars cynical, predictable and eventually to the Civil Warslightly trite tale of an unlikeable protagonist. Along the wayThis unlikely heroine, the two soldiers form a lasting bond slim, attractive and newly orphaned girl in her twenties is disillusioned with a young Sioux girl called Winona and their travels take them from Missouri to Wyoming and Tennessee. It's the story of perhaps the most violent birth of a nation in history world, but resolves not to lose sleep over it's also a convention-defying love story: in fact, her solution lies in her hibernation.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0571277004</amazonuk>1784707422

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Rose TremainMatthew Tree|title=The Gustav SonataWe'll Never Know|rating=4.5

|summary=Gustav Perle grew up in Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, a small town in neutral Switzerland: the horrors drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of the Second World War seemed distant, but neutrality was maintained partly being exceptional at the expense any of those who would seek refuge in the country. Gustav's father died in mysterious circumstances and whilst Gustav adored his mother, Emilie, she was cold artistic passions all failed miserably and indifferent to himwho had endless crises of self confidence. Until he met Anton Zwiebel he was a lonely child with just one toy, a tin train, but he and Anton met at kindergarten where it fell So Tim applied himself to Gustav to look after the nervous boy. Anton is Jewish and he's a talented pianisthis studies, but he lacks the confidence to perform in public. Throughout much of cultivated his abilities rather than his life he relies on Gustav's support, daydreams and set himself high but fails to appreciate just how important, how necessary it is to his wellbeingachievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1784700207</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tom TomaszewskiB0C47LV1PC|title=The Eleventh LetterFragility|author=Mosby Woods|rating=34

|summary=At the end of the working dayCan you make a ''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, Christopher is looking over the ghosts of his occupancy of some rooms on Harley Street, before moving up question should you make it? Or is the road to different chambersquestion if you did, and pastures new. He's half impelled and half reluctant to revisit a pair of audio cassettes, on which are interviews by him and someone else of a woman called Louise, who was arrested in Italy in would it land? The catch is that the 1980s answer for the double murder of two close friends, Kate and Johnboth could well be.... no. Hardly aware he ''Fragility's being snowed in by a London blizzard and the usual British response to any bad weather, he spontaneously provides shelter to a flame-haired beauty, Kay, who provokes him into playing the tapes. It's an occurrence which changes him much more profoundly than he does others at is set as the therapist's couch. Indeedcity of Portland, the closer he gets to KayOregon, the closer he gets cautiously begins to emerge from the voice of the victim from decades ago. What on earth could be restrictions imposed during the connection?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>099357582X</amazonuk>covid pandemic

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Steinunn Sigurdardottir and Philip Roughton (translator)Mosby Woods|title=The Good LoverA Whirly Man Loses His Turn|rating=2.54

|summary=Karl The West isn't the dominant force it once was. Nobody in the West is a global example quite sure how to mend this or even if mending it is the best course of the Icelandic speciesaction. Governments are flailing. A war here, with more than one home abroad and an amanuensis-cum-assistant to do his scheduling and arrange housework while he's going here and a push for climate action there being a businessman. He has a string of lovers A feeling that has stretched into three figures, partly because with one exception three nobody is the limit of liaisons he'll have with eachin actual charge. But he's also got Imagine then, there was a heart devoted to Una, his teenaged love whom he adores, despite her splitting man with him decades agoprecognition. On Imagine the strategic advantage in this asset; a whim he leaves a beach holiday to go back to one of the icy limbs man who can tell you what will happen given any set of Iceland, witnesses the changes wrought by fifteen years on her – and then ends up staying the night with the woman next doorcircumstances. This is purely platonicThat man would be valuable, but what with his host knowing everything about right? Perhaps the situation, an ever-present taxi driver, and an ex on the line most valuable asset in Americahistory. Imagine then, is there a way he can snatch his love from her marriage and find happinessthat this man loses this ability. What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>9462380139</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Eric Beck Rubin0571379559|title=School The House of VelocityBroken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams|rating=4.5

|summary=Jan's head 'The House of Broken Bricks'' is dropping him in itthe story of four people. HeTess Hembry's a trained concert pianistroots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but is having difficulty performing, with a horrendous probleminstead, she lives in that he can hear any discordant music, or just in fact horrid noise, when in the wings waiting to performhouse on the riverbank, and never the score he is due to followbuilt of broken bricks. The devilInsubstantial as it might look, it's tinnitusstood the passage of time, you might call itstorms and floods. With another failure behind himHer husband, but dignity somewhat intactRichard, Jan decides he has struggles to work back through grow his life vegetables, to tell us complete the cause – delivery rounds - and we're likewise dropped into an extended flashback, to his formative years at art schoolbring in sufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, with a pretentious drama student, Dirkthe rainbow twins. The book is a fast-moving exploration of what Jan finds of note (pun intended) through Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his lifefather. People don't believe that they're related, much less twins and all there's an assumption when Max is out with his mother that might have caused she's his mental problemnanny. But is cognisance of what might lie behind it going to help?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0993506275</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Gerard ReveClaire North|title=The Evenings: A Winter's TaleHouse of Odysseus|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''What could matter more than love?'' The Eveningsfollow-up to the excellent ''Ithaca'' was voted picks up a few months after where we left off. In the best Dutch novel palace of all time Odysseus, with delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her husband, who sailed to war at Troy and then by divine intervention never returned home. As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the Society throne of Dutch Literature, the Western Isles. Having survived – politically and its authorphysical – the chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca's shores, Gerard Reve (1923–2006), was Queen Penelope is on the first openly gay writer in brink of a fragile peace. One that shatters however with the Netherlandsreturn of Orestes, King of Mycenae, and his sister Elektra, seeking refuge. It's |isbn=0356516075}}{{Frontpage|author= Kay Chronister|title= Desert Creatures|rating= 4|genre= Dystopian Fiction|summary= With a historic book world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for its native countryhumanity, but will post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it have the same impact in English translation? Contemporary Dutch novelist Herman Koch compares is a robotic takeover, a world devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, this genre is a way for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. ''The EveningsDesert Creatures'' to by Kay Chronister is a new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the works of Kerouac and Salinger, and I can see how it could have achieved cult status fears that exist for humanity today. It is a certain generation, but plot-wise I found it more tedious than revelatoryshocking novel that still manages to find hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782271783</amazonuk>1803364998

{{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Henrietta Rose-InnesEric LaRocca|title= NinevehThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There

|genre= General FictionHorror|summary= Henritetta Rose-Inne's Horror 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 ''NinevehBig Bad'' instantly reassures you , whether that you are in the presence of is a confident and talented writer. The story of Katya Grubbshome invader, a second generation pest exterminator who specialises in relocating the bugs monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and rodents that ruin middle-class garden parties, Rose-Inne writes with by the enviable ability end of describing both the intricacies of Katyastory, beatable. Eric LaRocca's job and ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. It is a collection of short stories more interested in the feeling horrors of it simultaneouslyillness, grief and humiliation. Horrors that linger and are harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1910709166</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sara Stridsberg and Deborah Bragan-Turner (translator)Madelaine Lucas|title=The Gravity of LoveThirst for Salt|rating=4.5

|summary=Particularly literate cover… Setting of ''Love, I'd read, was supposed to be a light and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity'' Told from a retrospective view, a realyoung woman unravels the year-life mental hospital – in Sweden… Mature themes… Opening long relationship that once defined her. Overlaid with an emotion- and closure-laden death… Yeslater wisdom, this book has more than the narrator relives the affair with a man twenty years her senior from its share of things inception – the summer after finishing university – to put its sorrowful end the potential reader offsummer after. WhichSet against the backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the 24-year-old narrator's deepening relationship with her older lover, in this instancedepicting its all-consuming nature, is quite a large shame indeedhow it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857054767</amazonuk>0861546490

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Carys Bray and othersMichael Grothaus|title=How Much the Heart Can Hold: Seven Stories on Love|rating=3.5|genre=Short Stories|summary=This Sceptre collection does not have as simple a remit as it might appear; these are no straightforward love stories. Instead, they each take one aspect of love – often one of the ancient Greek classifications – and provide a whole new way of thinking about it. After all, the heart holds a lot of metaphorical weight.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1473649420</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Salley Vickers|title= CousinsBeautiful Shining People

|summary=''We donBut fearing something and having it come to pass are two different things. And I't know our own limits so how can we judge the limits m willing to bet most of others? And what we fear will never happen, or we can take steps to change it is easy to forget is that they were so young. Too young to bear all those horribly complicated family strains.''

Salley Vickers' intense family odyssey 'Beautiful Shining People'' revolves around one devastating accident in 1994. Reminiscent of the past, Will Tye's accident has a powerful effect on three generations question of the Tye family, revealing long forgotten truths identity and close kept secretsacceptance. ''Cousins'' pieces together the events leading up to the event from three different close relatives perspectives, in an attempt to understand Of what exactly happened and why it happened that dark nightmeans to be human. His sister, grandmother Of what is real and aunt all recount Will's childhood and growth into an adultwhat is artificial, highlighting both his successes and mistakes whilst reflecting on their own pasts. From whether the outbreak development of the Second World War right up until the present day, the family's mysteries are laid out for all to see. Family loyalties are tested and the lengths you will go to for those you love are questioned. At its heart, ''Cousins'' technology is a love story between two cousins, Will and Cece, littered with complications, potential and realism as well as the struggle to determine your worth when you're youngexciting or frightening. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0241187710</amazonuk>191458564X

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Paul BeattyJennifer Saint|title=The SelloutAtalanta

|summary=''This may be hard to believeI was as worthy as any one of them. I would get on board that ship, coming from a black manI vowed. I would take my place, not just in the name of the goddess. It was for the sake of my name, but I've never stolen anythingtoo.Atalanta''

Our black hero and narrator, surname MeAbandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a son, first name unknown, was born in Atalanta is raised under the southern Los Angeles suburb protective eye of Dickens the goddess Athemis and subjected fashioned into a formidable huntress, one who longs for adventure. When the opportunity comes – to an isolated upbringing dominated by his father's extreme views on racejoin the Argonauts, supposedly the subject a fierce band of a psychological memoir which will solve their financial problemswarriors, but cruel and unnatural descendent from the Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the chance to anyone with an ounce of humanity. To add insult to injury Me discovered after his fatherfight in Artemis's death (a racially provoked shooting) that there was no memoirname and carve out her own legendary place in history. A drive-by shooting produces nothing more substantial than What follows is a bill for a drive-whirlwind of challenges and discovery and through funeralit, Atalanta must remember Artemis' fatal warning: that if she marries, but it starts Me on the path which will end in the Supreme Court, the subject of a race trial: ''Me v the United States of America''be her undoing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1786070154</amazonuk>1472292154

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Nir BaramAmanthi Harris|title=Good PeopleBeautiful Place|rating=45

|summary=Thomas Heiselberg's self-focus pays off when he attracts the best clientele to the American advertising firm he helps establish across Europe from his German home. Meanwhile in Russia Sasha Weissberg is struggling with being in a literaryPadma, free-thinking family that doesn't go down too well with Stalin's regime. As World War II arrives, both of their worlds are shaken. As a result both decide to become collaborators rather than resistance fighters for different reasons and with far reaching effects.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1911231006</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Ian McEwan|title=Nutshell|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction |summary=Meet Trudy. Successfully living in a large and valuable London home, she is heavily pregnantyoung Sri Lankan, and in between two men – she has swapped returned to the homeowner, poet and publisher John, for someone completely different, namely Claude, a nasty, brutish and short type. Some people cannot work out why Villa Hibiscus on earth she has made that decision, including our narratorthe southern coast of her home country. Oh, and he himself, our narrator, This is the child a place she's pregnant withspent her formative years. He It is not a very alert young thingplace she was born into, with nothing else to do but kick here and there, and practice what you might well call mindfulness, and listen in on Claude and Trudy, as they calmly talk their way to plotting and carrying out murder…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1911214330</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Matt Wilven|title=The Blackbird Singularity|rating= 5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary=Thirty-something writer Vince Watergate sees his partner's pregnancy as a fresh start. He stops taking his lithium and the new clarity one she thinks of mind lets him start writing his best work in agesas home. He befriends a blackbird in How she came to be at the garden with the help of a bag of sultanasVilla, how it became her home, and begins preparing the babymachinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the ''score's room. For a short while, everything seems full of peace ' for this gentle and hopeyet subtly violent novel. But Vince and Lyd Padma's first child, despite having died a couple of years earlier, might not have completely left them and the blackbird might not be as friendly as Vince first thought. Lithium withdrawal, stress, present fails to escape her past and much like the pressure musical score of appearing 'normal' push Vince into a frighteningfilm, irrational place. Can he fight his that strand weaves its way through it and return to his family?everything that happens at the Villa.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1785079689</amazonuk>1784631930

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Carolyn Parkhurst178563335X|title=HarmonySea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor

|summary=Josh and Alexandra Hammond have two daughters. Iris is eleven years old and neurotypical: her brain works in the same way as most peopleWhen we first meet Rachel Bird she'sa trainee vicar, but her elder sister, Tilly, is thirteen sitting in on a PCC meeting and on wondering why they're held when you need to pick the autistic spectrumchildren up. Her parents are finding it difficulthusband, if not impossibleChristopher, to cope with collects six-year-old Hannah and her. Even her special and rather expensive school has indicated that they can't continueelder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. SheThelma's subject to mood swings and unpredictable and inappropriate behaviourdaughter-in-law won't let her see her grandson. Josh Holthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, is lucky - he goes to work - a lovely place, but Alexandra Rachel is stuck struggling to develop a real bond with the problem, which is why Scott Bean, educator parish - and expert she's in parentingawe of the vicar, Gail, appeals to herbut then she's been doing the job for more than thirty years. The name came to her attention Rachel and Christopher hoped that a walk on a couple of occasions: she subscribed to his newsletter, heard him speak and the beach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what he had to say rang a bellthey needed. Before long he was coming to the house for private consultations And then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340978171</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=William Ryan1398515388|title=The Constant SoldierBoy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersGeneral Fiction|summary=Paul Brandt returns home to his village without First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the arm he left at ocean floor, which created the Russian Front tsunami and this, in defence of Germanyturn, caused the nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and utter devastation. The village looks pretty much the same as he left itdeaths were uncountable, with and the exception loss of the lack of young men and a new buildinglivelihoods was widespread. His home now boasts an SS rest hut, providing officers with entertainment and respite breaks The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the fightingtsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. As Paul passes He wasn't a dog person but the hut for the first time, convenience store owner's comment that he sees something… or rather someone… that will make him return would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to work for those he despises. The subject of open his decision? A girl he once got into trouble with under different circumstances – before she wore car door and Tamon the stripes of a concentration camp prisonerdog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1447255011</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Pamela Johnson0989715337|title=Taking in WaterPapa on the Moon|author=Marco North

|summary=Pamela Johnson's third novel is set in 2002 but has its roots in a real'Some frogs had gotten into the well.'' ''Walter stood waist-life tragedy from nearly 50 years earlier: deep in 1953 a storm surge hit the Norfolk coastfragrant water, naked except for his beaten leather hat. Long strands of their eggs wove around him, destroying Lydia Hutton's grandmother's home and sweeping her whole family out to seasticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Seven-year-old Lydia was Two of the only one to survive, clinging to dogs leaned over the wreckage opening and singing hymns to herself to survive. It's a dark part barked down at the strange noise of her past she's never told anyone except Luc, the half-French lover whose iconic performance art piece, buckets as he filled them.''Taking  How is that for an opening? The style of this novel in Water''the form of interconnected short stories goes from succinct and laconic to wistful and musing, she participated in during turning on a spell in New York City in sixpence. And author Marco North, who has the 1960smost wonderful turn of phrase, when she was known starts as 'Layla' and hung around with the likes of Andy Warholhe means to go on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1534627243</amazonuk>