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[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!{{Frontpage|author=Jeremy Cooper|title=Discord|rating= 3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Discord: a lack of agreement or harmony (as between persons, things, or ideas) The principal example of discord within the novel, as with most instances of discord, is easily located. The two protagonists of the novel, Rebekah Rosen and Evie Bennet, are as different as they come. Rebekah is an uptight, traditional and no-- Remove -->nonsense composer close to retirement, while Evie is a force of nature, bounding onto the musical scene as a precocious saxophonist, oozing with talent and charm. The two, predictably, don't always see eye to eye, their approaches different and Evie's progressive views at odds with Rebekah's conservative leaning. However, something connects them beyond just their musical project: a sort of fragile alliance formed within the clamour.|isbn=1804272264}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Pamela JohnsonPolly Barton|title=Taking in WaterWhat Am I, A Deer?

|summary=Pamela JohnsonPolly Barton's third debut novel is set in 2002 but has its roots in a real-life tragedy from nearly 50 years earlier: in 1953 a storm surge hit the Norfolk coast, destroying Lydia Hutton's grandmother's home an intellectually playful yet emotionally exposed work that uses translation as both subject and sweeping her whole family out to seagoverning metaphor. Seven-year-old Lydia was the only one The narrator, newly relocated from London to surviveBerlin, clinging to works translating video games into Japanese through the wreckage and singing hymns process of localisation, rewriting language until it feels comfortably familiar to herself to survivea new audience. It's Barton treats this as a dark part paradoxical act: arguably, in striving for universality, language is endlessly repackaged, its originality at risk of her past she's never told anyone except Lucdisappearing altogether. From this, the half-French lover whose iconic performance art piecenovel opens out into a wider, ''Taking resonant question: to what extent do we translate ourselves in Water''order to be understood, she participated in during a spell in New York City in the 1960saccepted, when she was known as 'Layla' and hung around with the likes of Andy Warhol.or loved?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1534627243</amazonuk>1804272175

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=A N WilsonMaria Stepanova and Sasha Dugdale (Translator)|title=ResolutionThe Disappearing Act

|summary=In 1772 Reinhold Forster Despite her anonymisation of place names and his son George were hired as shippeople, Stepanova's naturalists message in this short work of autofiction is unmistakable. A novelist named M travels from B (ostensibly Berlin) to the town of F for the ''Resolution'', the vessel Captain James Cook piloted a literary festival she is to New Zealand be a guest speaker at. Detoured by erratic train schedules and back on nudged by forces beyond her control, her journey slowly bends toward a three-year voyage traveling circus. Swept up in this series of discovery. Once a Lutheran pastor near Danzigevents, Reinhold seemed unable M eventually offers to settle to one line of work and had step in for a higher opinion of himself than was prudentcircus performer who has unexpectedly left the show. In Wilson's vision The train functions as a motif of life on the ''Resolution'', Reinhold seems fussy, argumentative transience and rather heartlessimpermanence, as when he offers George's dog up as fresh meat when while the captain is desperately ill. George, just 18 when he joins circus embodies the expedition, is a self-taught illustrator reshaping of identity and botanist with a keen ear for languages. Though precociously intelligentretreat into fantasy, he is emotionally immature and cannot keep a handle on his masturbation habit or deal with their servant Nally's crush on himan impulse that lies at the very heart of the novel form itself.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782398279</amazonuk>1804272329

{{newreviewFrontpage|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 - but we are probably in the past as the pair travel to the station by coach and the train is a steam locomotive.}}{{Frontpage|author= Michael HughesMakenna Goodman|title= The Countenance DivineHelen of Nowhere|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary=In 1999It 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, a disgraced professor on the brink of losing both his career and his relationship, embodies this feeling. However, Goodman counteracts his discomfort with a programmer force which is seductive, radical and unnerving: Helen. The connection between Helen and the protagonist is trying to fix indirect yet intimate. As the millennium bug, but can't shake former owner of the sense countryside house he's been chosen for somethingconsidering, Helen represents a volta in his life, her past tied to his potential fresh start. In 1888The realtor who shows the protagonist around the house shares stories about Helen, and describes her as ''an entity that is pure consciousness, five women are brutally murdered beyond form''. Although she lives in an assisted living facility now, Helen has powers beyond comprehension which the East End by a troubled young man in thrall to a mysterious masterreader gets the sense are not altogether innocuous. |isbn=1804272205}}{{FrontpageIn 1777|author=Olga Tokarczuk|title=House of Day, an apprentice engraver called William Blake has House of Night|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''What's the good of a defining spiritual experience; thirteen years later this vision returns. world that keeps changing like that? How can one go on calmly living in 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 First published in 1953 in French, this novel is a sarcastic 14-year-old misfit who lives with her elderly Aunt Lucy in a garage they rent from an evil landlord at timeless text which wrenches the bottom hearts of his large garden. She never comes right out its readers just as Bessette wrenches words and explains why she's there, but if you read between sentences from their proper position on the lines you work out that her father is dead page and her mother is in a mental hospital – presumably for his murderpositions them elsewhere, disjointed, truncated. Aunt Lucy is dignified and principled – ''Don't do things you aren't proud Like the lives of'' is her motto – even though characters, they are undeniably poor: Lucia only has one set of clothes and mostly lives off of liquorice and Aunt Lucy's terrible homemade breadoften left tragically incomplete.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1925355470</amazonuk>1804271675

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jenn AshworthJonathan Buckley|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 on the decrepit building first. As she wanders around and tries to make some order of the overgrown shambles, she's watched by the ghost of her mother, Netty; a spirit with regrets. Netty reminisces about Annette's childhood and 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 amends, even if she is beyond the grave.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1473630606</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Sue Gee|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 riverbank, built of broken bricks. Insubstantial as it might look, it's stood the eruptions passage of the Katla volcanotime, storms and floods. The Great War was ragingHer husband, Richard, or possibly grinding onstruggles to grow his vegetables, but life to complete the delivery rounds - and to bring in sufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, the capital carried on much as usualrainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. There were shortagesPeople don't believe that they're related, such as coal, but much less twins and there was '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 excellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a few months after where we left off. In the new fashion palace of Odysseus, with delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her husband, who sailed to war at Troy and it was then by divine intervention never returned home. As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the movies throne of the Western Isles. Having survived – politically and physical – the chaotic storm that Mani livedClytemnestra brought to Ithaca's shores, seeing every production he could, sometimes several timesQueen Penelope is on the brink of a fragile peace. He dreamed about One that shatters however with the filmsreturn of Orestes, changing them to suit King of Mycenae, and his tastessister Elektra, working his own life into the plotsseeking refuge.|isbn=0356516075}}{{Frontpage|author= Kay Chronister|title= Desert Creatures|rating= 4|genre= Dystopian Fiction|summary= With a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. But there was another reason why Mani was Whether it is a robotic takeover, a world devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, this genre is a misfit: Mani was gay and frequently made way for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. ''Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a living as new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the fears that exist for humanity today. It is a sex workershocking novel that still manages to find hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473613132</amazonuk>1803364998

{{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Conor O'CallaghanEric LaRocca|title=Nothing on EarthThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=4.5|genre=Literary FictionHorror|summary=On 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 sweltering night in what ''Big Bad'', whether that is a blisteringly hot summer home invader, a young girl hammers at monster or a manghost, it usually something tangible and, by the end of the story, beatable. Eric LaRocca's door and when let into the house tells him that her father has disappeared ''tooThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There''is not like that. Gradually her story emerges, of It is a home on one collection of those estates so common short stories more interested in Ireland after the collapse horrors of the Celtic Tiger with only the occasional house occupied illness, grief and others only part builthumiliation. It could be any one of hundreds of Irish towns at Horrors that time linger and its main feature is the lack of hope that it will never be are harder to defeat than any better''Big Bad''. Our narrator tells her story, much, he says, as it was told to him and we hear of a life on the edge of poverty, with strange noises in the night, words written in the dust on the windows mirrored by those written in blue ink on her skin.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781620342</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Per Olov Enquist and Deborah Bragan-Turner (translator)Madelaine Lucas|title=The Parable BookThirst for Salt|rating=3.5

|summary=It's not only springtime when a man's fancies turn to thoughts of love – he can also do it in the autumn of his lifeLove, as does the man involved here. But being a well-known authorI'd read, and being beholden was supposed to silence, can he really put his thoughts on paper? It happened be a long time ago, light and he only met the woman concerned a couple of timesweightless feeling, but with it being such I had always longed for gravity'' Told from a powerful event and such a slightly unusual circumstanceretrospective view, what should he do? It takes a notebook of his father's love poems to his mother, young woman unravels the year-long relationship that he finds both incomplete and scorchedonce defined her. Overlaid with later wisdom, to give him the green light – narrator relives the voice affair with a man twenty years her senior from its inception – the past that says summer after finishing university – to him, its sorrowful end the summer after. Set against the backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''go Thirst for Salt'' details the 24-year-old narrator's deepening relationship with her older lover, depicting its all-consuming nature, how it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and how it'. And what we read here is a resultaltered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857059912</amazonuk>0861546490

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Maggie O'FarrellMichael Grothaus|title=This Must Be the PlaceBeautiful Shining People

|summary=Maggie O'Farrell's globe-trotting seventh novel opens in 2010 with Daniel SullivanI was as worthy as any one of them. I would get on board that ship, an American linguistics professorI vowed. He lives with his wife ClaudetteI would take my place, a French actress who retreated from not just in the name of the limelight, and their two children in a remote home in Donegalgoddess. It was 10 years ago that he first came here and met Claudette by chance when her van had for the sake of my name, too. Atalanta'' Princess. Warrior. Lover. Hero. Abandoned at birth for being born a flat tire; he struck up daughter rather than a conversation with her son Ari , Atalanta is raised under the protective eye of the goddess Athemis and gave the boy tips fashioned into a formidable huntress, one who longs for dealing with his stutteradventure. Now, preparing When the opportunity comes – to fly back to Brooklyn for his father's ninetieth birthday party, he's caught short by a long-lost voice he hears on join the radio. It belongs to Nicola JanksArgonauts, a former lover he last saw 24 years ago; when he learns that she died soon after they were togetherfierce band of warriors, he determines descendent from the Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the chance to figure fight in Artemis' name and carve out whether he played her own legendary place in history. What follows is a rolewhirlwind of challenges and discovery and through it, even Atalanta must remember Artemis' fatal warning: that if he doesn't like what he findsshe marries, it will be her undoing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0755358805</amazonuk>1472292154

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Joanne Amanthi Harris|title=Different ClassBeautiful Place

|summary= St Oswald's Grammar School For Boys is in crisis. A murdered schoolboyPadma, a procession young Sri Lankan, has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of new Head Masters, a(nother) new Head Master, her home country. This is a Crisis Intervention Team and a potential merger with St Oswald's all female counterpart, Mulberry Houseplace she spent her formative years. Roy Straitley It is not altogether dismayed a place she was born into, but the one she thinks of as home. How she came to be at the prospect of delaying his retirement; St Oswald's has been his lifeVilla, how it became her home, man and boy the machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the ''score'' for this gentle and a crisis is a crisis after all is said and done, isn't it? Ityet subtly violent novel. Padma's probably his duty present fails to stay escape her past and right much like the ship. So when the latest musical score of the new Head Masters and his duo of crisis managers walk into the staff room, Straitley can't quite believe his old eyes. The new Head is an ex-pupil of St Oswald's; a boy whofilm, in his time that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the esteemed old School caused such an uproarious scandal that one of the Masters ended up in prison! Villa.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0385619235</amazonuk>1784631930

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Bill Beverly178563335X|title= Dodgers|rating= 5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= Judging a book by its cover can mislead. It can especially mislead if you don't look closely at the cover and are just grabbed by the ''feel'' or ''style'' of the design of the thing. Being misled is not necessarily a bad thing. For reasons best left in the depths of my addled brain, the styling of Dodgers had me thinking 'noir'. I was expecting late fifties, early sixties. If I'd looked closer, I'd have seen that it is much more contemporary than that. Then again…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1843448572</amazonuk>}}{{newreviewSea Defences|author=Alice Adams|title=Invincible SummerHilary Taylor|rating=3.5

|summary=As Alice AdamsWhen we first meet Rachel Bird she's debut novel opens a trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you need to pick the summer of 1995children up. Her husband, four university friends are lounging on Bristol's Brandon HillChristopher, drinking collects six-year-old Hannah and contemplating what the future her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holdsa sobbing parishioner. There Thelma's Eva Andrewsdaughter-in-law won't let her see her grandson. Holthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, is a lovely place, raised in Sussex by but Rachel is struggling to develop a single father; siblings Sylvie real bond with the parish - and Lucien Marchantshe's in awe of the vicar, neglected by their alcoholic mother; Gail, but then she's been doing the job for more than thirty years. Rachel and Benedict Waverley, Christopher hoped that a rich kid whose parents have a holiday home walk on Corfuthe beach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. Eva has a crush on Lucien, while Benedict is besotted with Eva And then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1509814701</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Birgul Oguz1398515388|title= HahThe Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)|rating= 34.5|genre= Literary General Fiction|summary= I was interested to receive this book for review as I knew First of all, it was written the earthquake, deep in a modernthe ocean floor, interesting stylewhich created the tsunami and this, being effectively a collection of short storiesin turn, but appearing more in a novel structurecaused the nuclear meltdown. I The result wascomplete and utter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, however, rather disappointed with and the bookloss of livelihoods was widespread. Whilst it does have some very fine examples of prose writing within the stories, I felt disconnected The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the narrator, who is list of priorities but - six months after the daughter of tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a recently deceased man who was involved in dog outside a Turkish military coup in 1980convenience store. There is therefore He wasn't a lot of examples of the narrator relating the conversations they had shared regarding ''revolution'', and the way this had affected dog person but the daughterconvenience store owner's upbringing comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and childhood. Another 'story' then delves into a seemingly disconnected wander through Tamon the town, whereby we see the narrator working at gutting fish, and talking about a man she finds repulsive, but who appears to be dog jumped in love with her. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>9462380740</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Chuck Palahniuk0989715337|title=Make Something UpPapa on the Moon|author=Marco North|rating=54|genre=Short Stories Literary Fiction|summary=What are we to make of that subtitle-seeming writing on ''Some frogs had gotten into the front cover – well.''stories you can 't unread''? Does that not apply to all good fiction? Clearly it is here due to Walter stood waist-deep in the reputation fragrant water, naked except for his beaten leather hat. Long strands of the authortheir eggs wove around him, and sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Two of the baggage his name brings to dogs leaned over the page. We'd expect a dramatic approach from anything Palahniuk writes, opening and an added frisson, an extra layer, from which we might be forced to shrink back. But a lot barked down at the strange noise of the contents don't quite go that farbuckets as he filled them. Yes, things are dramatic, when society starts attaching defibrillators to itself, to create the perfect, simple, care- (''The Price  How is Right''-, and Kardashian-) free happiness. A man buys a horse that for his daughter – but boy is it the wrong horse to buy. A man falls an opening? The style of this novel in love – yes, sometimes the plot summaries form of these interconnected short stories really are better off for being short (speaking of whichgoes from succinct and laconic to wistful and musing, don't turn to the three-page entrant here as turning on a tastersixpence. And author Marco North, it'll put you off by dint who has the most wonderful turn of beingphrase, almost uniquely here, a nothing story). A call centre worker can't convince people starts as he's means to go on the level and even in their country – until someone starts riffing back to him. A housing estate report conveys bad regulation violations, but not as bad as the happenings at a 'Burning Man'-styled festival, in a very clever couple of tales. But many too are the instances where that extra step has been taken.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099587688</amazonuk>