Changes

|author=Lucy HollandPolly Barton|title=SistersongWhat Am I, A Deer?|rating=54

|summary=Sistersong Polly Barton's debut novel is part of a genre I particularly enjoy, the modern retelling of folk an intellectually playful yet emotionally exposed work that uses translation as both subject and fairy talesgoverning metaphor. These storiesThe narrator, for most newly relocated from London to Berlin, works translating video games into Japanese through the process of uslocalisation, are rewriting language until it feels comfortably familiar to a cornerstone of childhood and I relish seeing them retold with fresh eyes and new audience. Barton treats this as a fresh perspective. If handled well these retellings give new life and new meaning to stories that are now becoming increasingly narrow and outdatedparadoxical act: arguably, in striving for universality, fleshing out characterslanguage is endlessly repackaged, examining relationships and re-evaluating the role its originality at risk of womendisappearing altogether. Sistersong is a perfect example of a modern retelling done wellFrom this, the plot is handled with carenovel opens out into a wider, keeping its archaic historical feel but allowing the characters resonant question: to come what extent do we translate ourselves in order to lifebe understood, to feel real and humanaccepted, most importantly they feel relatable in a modern world whilst still feeling appropriate for the pre-Saxon age they live in. This is a masterpiece of storytelling and I was captivated from beginning to end.or loved?|isbn=15290390371804272175

|isbnauthor=B002SQCYWQMaria Stepanova and Sasha Dugdale (Translator)|title=The Complete Barchester Chronicles|author=Anthony TrollopeDisappearing Act|rating=54

|summary=When I told my daughter that I didnDespite her anonymisation of place names and people, Stepanova't know what s message in this short work of autofiction is unmistakable. A novelist named M travels from B (ostensibly Berlin) to listen the town of F for a literary festival she is to now that I'd finished [[The Complete Novels: Sense be a guest speaker at. Detoured by erratic train schedules and Sensibilitynudged by forces beyond her control, Pride and Prejudiceher journey slowly bends toward a traveling circus. Swept up in this series of events, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion by Jane Austen|M eventually offers to step in for a circus performer who has unexpectedly left the show. The Complete Novels train functions as a motif of Jane Austen]] for transience and impermanence, while the second time on circus embodies the trot she had the perfect answer: The Barchester Chronicles reshaping of identity and they were in my inbox in a matter retreat into fantasy, an impulse that lies at the very heart of minutes. They're not ''quite'' as well known as the Austen books but they're an excellent follow onnovel form itself.|isbn=1804272329

|isbn=B077K6BQFD295967572X|title=The Complete Novels: Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion Pale Pieces|author=Jane AustenG M Stevens

|summary=Yes - thatOur unnamed narrator is about to begin a train journey with his companion Django. Where they's over eighty-one hours re going and what the purpose of listening for this journey is, is uncertain. Django found the tickets ''on the purchase of one audio bookfloor somewhere'' and has persuaded our narrator to accompany him. All six major novels Why not? Not much else is clear either - but we are read probably in the past as the pair travel to the station by conmedienne Alison Larkin coach and they're presented in the order in which they were publishedtrain is a steam locomotive.

|author=Andrea Bajani and Elizabeth Harris (translator)Makenna Goodman|title=If You Kept a Record Helen of SinsNowhere

|summary=This was an incredibly readable novella, but one It could be argued that left me the pervading theme of this book is malaise - a little conflictedhard-to-place feeling that something in your life is not quite right. We start as our hero arrives at Bucharest airportThe protagonist, a disgraced professor on the brink of losing both his career and before we even know his gender or relationship, embodies this feeling. However, Goodman counteracts his discomfort with a force which is seductive, radical and unnerving: Helen. The connection between Helen and the nature protagonist is indirect yet intimate. As the former owner of the person countryside house he's addressing considering, Helen represents a volta in his second person monologue of a narrationlife, we see him picked up by her past tied to his mother's chauffeur, and carted off to do all potential fresh start. The realtor who shows the necessary introductions before said mother is buried protagonist around the following day. The mother was a businesswomanhouse shares stories about Helen, who clearly left northern Italy and settled in Romania with describes her (night-time and business) partneras ''an entity that is pure consciousness, and feelings of abandonment are still strongbeyond form''. And so we flit from current (wellAlthough she lives in an assisted living facility now, this came out in Helen has powers beyond comprehension which the original Italian in 2007, so moderately current) Bucharest, to reader gets the lad's childhood, and see just what he has to tell her as a private farewell addresssense are not altogether innocuous.|isbn=19398109651804272205

|author=Afonso Cruz and Rahul Bery (translator)Olga Tokarczuk|title=Kokoschka's DollHouse of Day, House of Night|rating=2.5

|summary=Well''What's the good of a world that keeps changing like that? How can one go on calmly living in it?'' The title of this spellbinding work, ''House of Day, House of Night'', somewhat reflects this looked very much like a book I could love from notion of shifting realities - the get-gosmall, subtle changes which is why I picked my review copy up and flipped pages over several times before actually reading any of it. I found things to potentially delight me each time – a weird section in the middle on darker stock papergovern our lives, a chapter whose number was in like the 20shift from day to night,000showever quotidian, letters used as narrative formcausing chaos. But, and so on. It intrigued with the subterranean voice a man hears constant in wartorn Dresden that what little I knew of it mentionedimage is the house, too. But you've seen stoic against the star rating that comes with this review, and can tell that if love was on these pages, ancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it was not actually caused by themis perceived. So what happened?|isbn=15294026971804271918

|isbnauthor=0571362672Thea Lenarduzzi|title=Snow|author=John BanvilleThe Tower

|genre=Crime (Historical)Literary Fiction|summary=''WellHow unctuous are the fats of another's life, at least youhow dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream''re a Wexford man.''

So said Colonel Osborne when he welcomed DI St John (pronounced 'Sinjun') Strafford to Ballyglass House just before Christmas 1957. Osborne was master In this compelling novel, Thea Lenarduzzi assumes the identity of T, the Keelmore Hounds and had done something memorable with protagonist of this tale. Just as T's story is being told, the Inniskilling Dragoons at Dunkirk. The niceties had to be established even when there was story of a Catholic priest dead on second protagonist is unveiled: Annie, the library floor with some precious bits daughter of his anatomy missing. Strafford was from Roslea at Bunclody and thisa wealthy family in the 19th century, along with his good-but-shabby suitwho died of tuberculosis after being locked in a tower, marked him out as of Osbornecaptures T's imagination. Annie's class fate is, above all, an enticing story to T. It is a story which she consumes avariciously, both in a quest for truth and obviously Protestant. The dead priest was Father Tom Lawless from Scallanstownknowledge, who - despite the different religions - was and in the habit service of spending time at Ballyglass Housemyth, fable and fantasy. His horse was stabled there.|isbn=1804271799

|author= Tahi SaihateJon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |title= Astral Season, Beastly SeasonVaim|rating= 3.54|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= We long for our past even though it is a place to which we can never return. Tahi Saihate, in her debut novel ''Astral Season, Beastly SeasonAll was strange'' illustrates how these rose-tinted glasses often lie. Her novel is .. This haunting phrase encapsulates the pervading sense of otherworldliness which permeates this story set in Vaim, a meditation on youth fictional fishing village in Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for Jatgeir and how Eline, two of the things we do as a teenager can seem intensely important and often life-alteringprotagonists caught in its melancholic current.|isbn= 19162771011804271829

|author=Laura Imai MessinaClaire-Louise Bennett|title=The Phone Box at the End of the WorldBig Kiss, Bye-Bye |rating=4.5

|summary= In the northeast of JapanEverything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, is steeped in Inwate Prefecture anguish and distortion. Even a man installed kiss, usually a telephone box in his gardensymbol of intimacy and closeness, becomes evidence of love lost. When the narrator cries out internally, ''Inside there is an old blackcome over here and kiss me, telephone, disconnected, that carries voices into the wind.'' It it is less an invitation than a real place, a necessary place, and I am pleased to see the IMPORTANT NOTE that the author attaches desperate attempt to confirm her story, that the place emotional numbness. The imagined recipient of this plea is not a tourist destinationXavier, it is a sacred placeher ex-partner, a place that must be left ghost she conjures to those who really need ittest her detachment.|isbn=178658039X1804271934

|author=Amin MaaloufHelene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)|title=The DisorientedLili is Crying

|summary= Adam has lived First published in 1953 in Paris for yearsFrench, this novel is a timeless text which wrenches the hearts of its readers just as Bessette wrenches words and sentences from their proper position on the page and positions them elsewhere, disjointed, truncated. Like the lives of her characters, speaks French more easily than his native Arabicthey are often left tragically incomplete. In fact he hasn|isbn=1804271675}}{{Frontpage|author=Jonathan Buckley|title=One Boat|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= ''One Boat''t been back to his homeland for 25 years. An old friend is dying…or as Adam prefers to think of him a former-frienddeeply introspective novella that defies traditional narrative structure, perhaps not as harsh as an ex-frienddrawing the reader into a contemplative realm of philosophical musings and fragmented memories flowing from our narrator and protagonist, or maybeTeresa. The falling out was Set against the evocative backdrop of a long time agosmall coastal Greek town, this work masterfully captures the magic of its setting and Adam's partner its power to provoke profound introspection. Teresa herself recognises these qualities as the reason she has no idea what visited it was aboutafter the death of both her parents. Prompted by her mourning, her narrative voice is meditative and deeply self-aware, even so she urges him to go knowing inviting the reader into her labyrinthine cogitations. It is a book that he'll regret not doing so. Not knowing whether he's going because he needs or wants toonly requires but inspires depth of thought, or simply because he was asked, he's since its narrative structure is fragmentary and ironically relies on the next planeanalepsis for its propulsion. |isbn=B07ZQSK9CY1804271764

|author=Joanne M HarrisEowyn Ivey|title=A Pocketful Black Woods Blue Sky|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''Black Woods Blue Sky'' tells the story of Birdie, the young mother of toddler Emaleen, who longs for a life beyond the Alaskan lodge where she works as a bar waitress, a setting which enables her bad habits and her accidental neglect of Emaleen. Described as a ''wild card'', she feels stuck in her day-to-day life, and yearns to cross the Wolverine river and live on the North Fork to fulfil her desires of a simple life surrounded by nature. When she meets Arthur Nielson, a strange, taciturn and solitary man, who says he has a cabin over there, she feels called to go - and bring Emaleen with her. Without realising it, this calling will transform hers and Emaleen's lives forever.|isbn=1472279042}} {{Frontpage|author=Sally Rooney|title=Intermezzo|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction |summary=Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard of life and is something of Crowsa grandmaster 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 Peter Koubek. Ivan, a socially awkward chess prodigy, contrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, a successful lawyer living in Dublin. Following their father's passing after a long battle with cancer, the brothers' already strained relationship faces new trials.|isbn=0571365469}}{{Frontpage|author=Fyodor Dostoyevsky|title=White Nights

|genre= Confident ReadersShort Stories|summary= I have As always been of in Dostoyevsky, the mind that once you're above picture-book level and before you get to graphic sex & violence, there character work is no difference between books for children and books for adultssublime. There are good books One is never left wondering what a character is thinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and poor onestemperaments with remarkable clarity. And Joanne Harris does not produce poor ones|isbn=0241619785}}{{Frontpage|author=James Baldwin|title=Giovanni's Room|rating=4. 5|genre=Literary Fiction |summary=''A Pocketful of CrowsGiovanni's Room'' is clearly aimed at follows the younger readers narrator David, an American man living in Paris, as witness the use of he navigates his torturous affair with Giovanni, an Italian bartender he meets in a gay bar. While David is engaged to Hella, who is travelling in Spain, the middle initial real tension in the author's name to differentiate novel arises not from her adult offers. Ignore that if you have loved anything his infidelity but from ''Chocolat'' onwards you will know that Harris is mistress of the modern fairy taledeeper conflict within himself. This is no different. It is an utter delightDavid's crippling shame and denial of his sexuality that ultimately dooms his relationship with Giovanni.|isbn=14732221840141186356

|author=Frederic Beigbeder and Frank Wynne (translator)Alba de Cespedes |title=A Life Without EndForbidden Notebook

|summary=I looked at the calendar the other week, and disappointedly realised I have a birthday this year – I know, yet another one. It won't be one This Italian work of the major numbers, but the time when I have the same number as Heinz varieties looms on the horizon. And then a few feminist fiction holds an air of the big 0-numbers, suspense and if all goes well, I'll be an OBE. (Which of course stands for Over Bloody Eighty.) Now if that's tension from the extent of my mid-life crisismoment our protagonist, I guess I have to be happy. Our author here doesn't use that exact phraseValeria Cossati, but he might be said to be living one. Determined to find out how to prolong life for as long as he wants – he would like to see 400 – he hops right into bed with the assistant to the first geneticist he interviewspurchases her forbidden notebook, and they end up with a child, which is at least a way of continuing learns about herself in the life of his genes, most intimate and a motive to keep on goingrevealing ways. But how can he get to not flick the 'final way out' switch, especially when foie gras tastes so nice?|isbn=16428606701782278222

|author= Maryse CondéOttessa Moshfegh|title= The Wondrous and Tragic Life My Year of Ivan Rest and IvanaRelaxation|rating= 4.53|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= We live in At best, this novel is a post- world: post-colonialismscathing critique of modern society and reveals the fragility of human relationships; at worst, post-modernismit is the cynical, post truthpredictable and slightly trite tale of an unlikeable protagonist. The list goes on. There are numerous works that utilise the prefix post- in their categorisationThis unlikely heroine, but perhaps none more so than Maryse Condé. In her new novela slim, ''The Wondrous attractive and Tragic Life of Ivan and Ivana'', Condé writes newly orphaned girl in her twenties is disillusioned with fervour about the scars left by colonialism on the countries world, but resolves not to which lose sleep over it latched itself: in fact, her solution lies in her hibernation. Ivan and Ivana are twins born in Guadeloupe|isbn=1784707422}}{{Frontpage|author=Matthew Tree|title=We'll Never Know|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, a French overseas department. They grow up with intense drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of his artistic passions all failed miserably and passionate feelings for each otherwho had endless crises of self confidence. As they grow up So Tim applied himself to his studies, cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and move overseas, the ravages of a post-colonial society drive them apart with tragic consequencesset himself high but achievable ambitions.|isbn=1642860697B0CVFXPGP8

|authorisbn= Ukamaka OlisakweB0C47LV1PC|title= Ogadinma Or, Everything Will Be All RightFragility|author=Mosby Woods|rating= 54|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= The new novel by Ukamaka Olisakwe is a look at the trauma and heartache of being Can you make a woman in 1980s Nigeria. The title is ''Ogadinma Or, Everything Will Be All RightYo birthing person''. Ogadinma joke? And if you could, is the eponymous heroine of question should you make it? Or is the story.. We are with her in every scene and question if you did, would it land? The catch is her narrative voice that leads the story, although Olisakwe writes in third personanswer for both could well be.... This provides a sense of detachment for the reader and highlights the isolation of Ogadinmano. She is exiled from her father ''Fragility''s home and sent to Lagos where she is married set as the city of Portland, Oregon, cautiously begins to an older man named Tobe. Their marriage descends into violence and indignities and Ogadinma must utilise her resourcefulness to escape.|isbn=1911648160emerge from the restrictions imposed during the covid pandemic

|author=Elliot ReedMosby Woods|title=A Key to Treehouse LivingWhirly Man Loses His Turn

|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=This The West isn'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 story best course of action. Governments are flailing. A war here, a young boypush for climate action there. A feeling that nobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, William Tycethere was a man with precognition. Imagine the strategic advantage in this asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the most valuable asset in history. Imagine then, who that this man loses this ability. What would governments do to get it back?|isbn=B0C9SNG8R1}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0571379559|title=The House of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''The House of Broken Bricks'' is being raised by his uncle after the death story of his mother and his fatherfour people. Tess Hembry's abandonmentroots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in the house on the riverbank, built of broken bricks. HoweverInsubstantial as it might look, it isn't told s stood the passage of time, storms and floods. Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, to complete the delivery rounds - and to bring in sufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, the usual narrative wayrainbow twins. InsteadSonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. People don't believe that they're related, much less twins and there's an assumption when Max is out with his mother that she's his nanny.}}{{Frontpage|author=Claire North|title=House of Odysseus|rating=5|genre= Literary Fiction |summary= ''What could matter more than love?'' The follow-up to the book is made excellent ''Ithaca'' picks up of glossary entries, written by William, as a way few months after where we left off. In the palace of describing certain eventsOdysseus, situations and emotions. It runs alphabetically, starting with ABSENCEdelicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her husband, who sailed to war at Troy and then moving to ALPHABETICAL ORDERby divine intervention never returned home. As I began ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the throne of the Western Isles. Having survived – politically and physical – the chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to read I did find myself thinking Ithaca'what s shores, Queen Penelope is on earth?!' but I soon grew used to the stylebrink of a fragile peace. One that shatters however with the return of Orestes, King of Mycenae, and was instead caught up in William's storyhis sister Elektra, seeking refuge.|isbn=19115454180356516075

|author= Karina Sainz Borgo and Elizabeth Bryer (translator)Kay Chronister|title= It Would Be Night in CaracasDesert Creatures

|genre= Literary Dystopian Fiction |summary= With a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it 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. ''It Would Be Night in CaracasDesert Creatures'' illuminates by Kay Chronister is a new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the everyday horrors of modern day Venezuelafears that exist for humanity today. It is a shocking novel that still manages to find hope.|isbn=1803364998}}{{frontpage|isbn=1803363002|author= Eric LaRocca|title= The Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating= 5|genre= Horror|summary= Horror taps into something primeval within us. It begins with 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'', whether that is a home invader, a monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and, by the death end of Adelaida Falconthe story, beatable. Eric LaRocca's mother and chronicles Adelaida's coming to terms with her new solitude 'The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. It is a collection of short stories more interested in this world the horrors of illness, grief and her attempts to escape ithumiliation. Danger stalks the shadows Horrors that linger and, in a society where the establishment is crumbling, who can you turn are harder to? |isbn=0062936867defeat than any ''Big Bad''.}}

|isbnauthor=1471186393Madelaine Lucas|title=Photographer of the Lost|author=Caroline ScottThirst for Salt|rating=4.5|genre=Historical Literary Fiction|summary=May 1921. Edie receives ''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 photograph through young woman unravels the postyear-long relationship that once defined her. There is no letter or note Overlaid with it. There is nothing written on later wisdom, the back of narrator relives the photograph. It is affair with a picture of man twenty years her husband, Francissenior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the summer after. Francis has been missing Set against the backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for four years. TechnicallySalt'' details the 24-year-old narrator's deepening relationship with her older lover, he has been "missingdepicting its all-consuming nature, believed killed" but that is not something that a young widow can believe. She hangs how it changed her perspective on the word 'missing', disbelieving the word killedboth romantic and familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably.|isbn=0861546490

|isbnauthor=1509896465Michael Grothaus|title=The Nightjar|author=Deborah HewittBeautiful Shining People|rating=4.5|genre=FantasyLiterary Fiction|summary=''The NightjarBut fearing something and having it come to pass are 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.'' ''Beautiful Shining People' is an unusual ' revolves around the question of identity and exciting storyacceptance. Alice Wyndham lives a normal life in London until she finds a box on her doorstep one morning and her life begins Of what it means to unravel, fastbe human. From that very moment, her life Of what is real and what is flooded with magicartificial, loss, expectation and particularly, betrayalwhether the development of technology is exciting or frightening. As everything around her shifts, all that she knows, all that she thinks she knows, must change. Who can she trust? Who must she trust? Who will she trust? More importantly, can she even trust herself?|isbn=191458564X

|isbnauthor=0857058738Jennifer Saint|title=Equator|author=Antonin Varenne and Sam Taylor (translator)Atalanta|rating=3.5|genre=Historical Literary Fiction|summary=It strikes me ''I was as worthy as any one of them. I would get on board that nobody can speak well ship, I vowed. I would take my place, not just in the name of the Wild West outside the walls of a theme parkgoddess. Our agent to see how bad it It was here is Pete Ferguson, who bristles at for the indignity sake of the white man against Native my name, too. Atalanta'Indian', who spends days  Princess. Warrior. Lover. Hero. Abandoned at birth for being physically sick while indulging in born a daughter rather than a buffalo huntson, and who hates Atalanta is raised under the protective eye of the way man – goddess Athemis and womanfashioned into a formidable huntress, of course – can turn against fellow man at the bat of an eyelidone who longs for adventure. But this book is about so much more than When the 1870s USA, and opportunity comes – to join the attendant problems with gold rushesArgonauts, pioneer spirits and racial genocide. He finds himself trying to find this book's version a fierce band of Utopiawarriors, namely descendent from the Equator, where everything is upside down, people walk on their heads with rocks in their pockets to keep them on Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the ground chance to counter the anti-gravity, fight in Artemis' name and where, who knows, things might actually be bettercarve out her own legendary place in history. But that equator What follows is a long way away – and there's a whole adventure full whirlwind of Mexico challenges and Latin America between him discovery and it… through it, Atalanta must remember Artemis' fatal warning: that if she marries, it will be her undoing.|isbn=1472292154

|isbnauthor=1526614960Amanthi Harris|title=The Dutch House|author=Ann PatchettBeautiful Place

|summary=When we first meet Danny and his elder sisterPadma, Maeve Conroya young Sri Lankan, they're both living at The Dutch House with their parents and under has returned to the gaze of Villa Hibiscus on the portraits southern coast of the former owners whose oil paintings still hang on the wallsher home country. It's a strange family dynamic: Cyril Conroy This is distant and the closest Danny seems to come to him is when he goes out with him on a Saturday collecting rents from properties the family ownsplace she spent her formative years. Elna Conroy It is lovingnot a place she was born into, but absent increasingly often until the point comes when one she thinks of as home. How she came to be at the Villa, how it became her home, and the children are told machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she will not be returning. In other circumstances, first arrived there provide the ''score'' for this might have affected Maeve gentle and Danny deeply, but their primary relationship is with each otheryet subtly violent novel. It Padma's present fails to escape her past and much like the musical score of a bond which only death will breakfilm, that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the Villa.|isbn=1784631930

|isbn=0954899520178563335X|title=A Winter BookSea Defences|author=Tove JanssonHilary Taylor

|summary=Tove JanssonWhen we first meet Rachel Bird she's worldwide fame lasts a trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you need to pick the Moomin bookschildren up. Her husband, written Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter-in -law won't let her see her grandson. Holthorpe, on the 1940s Norfolk coast, is a lovely place, but Rachel is struggling to develop a real bond with the parish - and later becoming television characters she's in awe of the simplicityvicar, naivety Gail, but then she's been doing the job for more than thirty years. Rachel and sheer 'goodness' Christopher hoped that a walk on the beach would later produce flowerpot men or teletubbiesdo them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing. Simple drawings}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1398515388|title=The Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, simple storiesin turn, simple goodnesscaused the nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and utter devastation. What is often forgotten outside The deaths were uncountable, and the loss of her native Finland is livelihoods was widespread. The fact that she was 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 serious writer…that she wrote for adults as well as children…and dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that she 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 Moon|author=Marco North|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''Some frogs had a feeling gotten into the well.'' ''Walter stood waist-deep in the fragrant water, naked except for his beaten leather hat. Long strands of their eggs wove around him, sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Two of the natural world dogs leaned over the opening and barked down at the strange noise of the simple life buckets as he filled them.'' How is that not only informed those child-like trolls but went far beyond any fantasy for an opening? The style of this novel in the form of how interconnected short stories goes from succinct and laconic to wistful and musing, turning on a sixpence. And author Marco North, who has the world might bemost wonderful turn of phrase, starts as he means to go on.