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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=Eric Beck RubinPolly Barton|title=School of VelocityWhat Am I, A Deer?|rating=4.5

|summary=JanPolly Barton's head debut novel is dropping him in it. He's a trained concert pianist, but is having difficulty performing, with a horrendous problem, in an intellectually playful yet emotionally exposed work that he can hear any discordant music, or just in fact horrid noise, when in the wings waiting to perform, uses translation as both subject and never the score he is due to followgoverning metaphor. The devil's tinnitusnarrator, you might call it. With another failure behind himnewly relocated from London to Berlin, but dignity somewhat intact, Jan decides he has to work back works translating video games into Japanese through his life to tell us the cause – and we're likewise dropped into an extended flashbackprocess of localisation, rewriting language until it feels comfortably familiar to his formative years at art school, with a pretentious drama student, Dirknew audience. The book is Barton treats this as a fast-moving exploration of what Jan finds of note (pun intended) through his lifeparadoxical act: arguably, in striving for universality, and all that might have caused his mental problem. But language is cognisance endlessly repackaged, its originality at risk of disappearing altogether. From this, the novel opens out into a wider, resonant question: to what might lie behind it going extent do we translate ourselves in order to helpbe understood, accepted, or loved?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0993506275</amazonuk>1804272175

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Gerard ReveMaria Stepanova and Sasha Dugdale (Translator)|title=The Evenings: A Winter's TaleDisappearing Act|rating=3.54

|summary=Despite her anonymisation of place names and people, Stepanova''The Evenings'' was voted s message in this short work of autofiction is unmistakable. A novelist named M travels from B (ostensibly Berlin) to the best Dutch novel town of all time F for a literary festival she is to be a guest speaker at. Detoured by the Society of Dutch Literature, erratic train schedules and its authornudged by forces beyond her control, Gerard Reve (1923–2006)her journey slowly bends toward a traveling circus. Swept up in this series of events, was the first openly gay writer M eventually offers to step in for a circus performer who has unexpectedly left the Netherlandsshow. It's The train functions as a historic book for its native countrymotif of transience and impermanence, but will it have while the same impact in English translation? Contemporary Dutch novelist Herman Koch compares ''The Evenings'' to circus embodies the works reshaping of Kerouac and Salinger, identity and I can see how it could have achieved cult status for a certain generationretreat into fantasy, but plot-wise I found it more tedious than revelatoryan impulse that lies at the very heart of the novel form itself.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782271783</amazonuk>1804272329

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Henrietta Rose-Innes295967572X|title= NinevehPale Pieces|author=G M Stevens|rating= 5|genre= General Literary Fiction|summary= Henritetta Rose-InneOur unnamed narrator is about to begin a train journey with his companion Django. Where they's re going and what the purpose of this journey is, is uncertain. Django found the tickets ''Ninevehon the floor somewhere'' instantly reassures you that you are in the presence of a confident and talented writerhas persuaded our narrator to accompany him. The story of Katya Grubbs, a second generation pest exterminator who specialises Why not? Not much else is clear either - but we are probably in relocating the bugs and rodents that ruin middle-class garden parties, Rose-Inne writes with past as the enviable ability of describing both pair travel to the intricacies of Katya's job station by coach and the feeling of it simultaneouslytrain is a steam locomotive. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1910709166</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sara Stridsberg and Deborah Bragan-Turner (translator)Makenna Goodman|title=The Gravity Helen of LoveNowhere

|summary=Particularly literate cover… Setting It could be argued that the pervading theme of this book is malaise - a realhard-to-place feeling that something in your life mental hospital – in Sweden… Mature themes… Opening with an emotion- is not quite right. The protagonist, a disgraced professor on the brink of losing both his career and closure-laden death… Yeshis relationship, embodies this book has more than its share feeling. However, Goodman counteracts his discomfort with a force which is seductive, radical and unnerving: Helen. The connection between Helen and the protagonist is indirect yet intimate. As the former owner of things the countryside house he's considering, Helen represents a volta in his life, her past tied to put the his potential reader offfresh start. WhichThe realtor who shows the protagonist around the house shares stories about Helen, and describes her as ''an entity that is pure consciousness, beyond form''. Although she lives in this instancean assisted living facility now, is quite a large shame indeedHelen has powers beyond comprehension which the reader gets the sense are not altogether innocuous.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857054767</amazonuk>1804272205

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Carys Bray and othersOlga Tokarczuk|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 House of love – often one of the ancient Greek classifications – and provide a whole new way of thinking about it. After allDay, the heart holds a lot House of metaphorical weight.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1473649420</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Salley Vickers|title= CousinsNight|rating=45|genre= Literary Fiction|summary=''We donWhat't know our own limits so how can we judge s the limits good of othersa world that keeps changing like that? And what How can one go on calmly living in 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 revolves around one devastating accident in 1994. Reminiscent The title of the pastthis spellbinding work, Will Tye's accident has a powerful effect on three generations 'House of the Tye familyDay, revealing long forgotten truths and close kept secrets. House of Night''Cousins'' pieces together , somewhat reflects this notion of shifting realities - the events leading up to small, subtle changes which govern our lives, like the event shift from three different close relatives perspectives, in an attempt day to understand what exactly happened and why it happened that dark night. His sister, grandmother and aunt all recount Will's childhood and growth into an adulthowever quotidian, highlighting both his successes and mistakes whilst reflecting on their own pastscausing chaos. From But, the outbreak of the Second World War right up until constant in that image is the present dayhouse, stoic against 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'' ancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it 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 youngperceived. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0241187710</amazonuk>1804271918

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Paul BeattyThea Lenarduzzi|title=The SelloutTower

|summary=''This may be hard to believeHow unctuous are the fats of another's life, coming from a black man, but Ihow dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream''ve never stolen anything.''

Isn't that one of In this compelling novel, Thea Lenarduzzi assumes the great opening lines identity of literature? Our black hero and narrator, surname Me, first name unknownT, was born in the southern Los Angeles suburb protagonist of Dickens and subjected to an isolated upbringing dominated by his fatherthis tale. Just as T's extreme views on racestory is being told, supposedly the subject story of a psychological memoir which will solve their financial problemssecond protagonist is unveiled: Annie, the daughter of a wealthy family in the 19th century, but cruel and unnatural to anyone with an ounce who died of humanitytuberculosis after being locked in a tower, captures T's imagination. To add insult to injury Me discovered after his fatherAnnie's death (fate is, above all, an enticing story to T. It is a racially provoked shooting) that there was no memoir. A drive-by shooting produces nothing more substantial than story which she consumes avariciously, both in a bill quest for a drive-through funeraltruth and knowledge, but it starts Me on the path which will end and in the Supreme Courtservice of myth, the subject of a race trial: ''Me v the United States of America''fable and fantasy. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1786070154</amazonuk>1804271799

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Nir BaramJon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |title=Good PeopleVaim

|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 literary, free-thinking family that doesn't go down too well with StalinAll was strange''s regime. As World War II arrives.. This haunting phrase encapsulates the pervading sense of otherworldliness which permeates this story set in Vaim, both of their worlds are shaken. As a result both decide to become collaborators rather than resistance fighters fictional fishing village in Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for different reasons Jatgeir and with far reaching effectsEline, two of the protagonists caught in its melancholic current.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1911231006</amazonuk>1804271829

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ian McEwanClaire-Louise Bennett|title=NutshellBig Kiss, Bye-Bye

|genre=Literary Fiction |summary=Meet Trudy. Successfully living Everything in a large and valuable London homethis book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, she is heavily pregnant, and steeped in between two men – she has swapped the homeowner, poet anguish and publisher John, for someone completely different, namely Claudedistortion. Even a kiss, usually a nastysymbol of intimacy and closeness, brutish and short typebecomes evidence of love lost. Some people cannot work When the narrator cries out why on earth she has made that decision, including our narrator. Ohinternally, ''come over here and he himself, our narratorkiss me, '' it is the child she's pregnant withless an invitation than a desperate attempt to confirm her emotional numbness. He The imagined recipient of this plea is Xavier, her ex-partner, a very alert young thing, with nothing else ghost she conjures to do but kick here test her detachment.|isbn=1804271934}}{{Frontpage|author=Helene Bessette and thereKate Briggs (translator)|title=Lili is Crying|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=First published in 1953 in French, this novel is a timeless text which wrenches the hearts of its readers just as Bessette wrenches words and practice what you might well call mindfulness, and listen in sentences from their proper position on Claude the page and Trudypositions them elsewhere, disjointed, truncated. Like the lives of her characters, as they calmly talk their way to plotting and carrying out murder…are often left tragically incomplete.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1911214330</amazonuk>1804271675

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Matt WilvenJonathan Buckley|title=The Blackbird SingularityOne Boat|rating= 54|genre= Literary Fiction|summary=Thirty-something writer Vince Watergate sees his partner's pregnancy as 'One Boat'' is a fresh start. He stops taking his lithium and deeply introspective novella that defies traditional narrative structure, drawing the new clarity reader into a contemplative realm of mind lets him start writing his best work in agesphilosophical musings and fragmented memories flowing from our narrator and protagonist, Teresa. He befriends a blackbird in the garden with Set against the help evocative backdrop of a bag of sultanassmall coastal Greek town, and begins preparing this work masterfully captures the baby's room. For a short while, everything seems full magic of peace its setting and hopeits power to provoke profound introspection. But Vince and Lyd's first child, despite having died a couple Teresa herself recognises these qualities as the reason she has visited it after the death of years earlierboth her parents. Prompted by her mourning, might not have completely left them her narrative voice is meditative and deeply self-aware, inviting the blackbird might reader into her labyrinthine cogitations. It is a book that not be as friendly as Vince first only requires but inspires depth of thought. Lithium withdrawal, stress, since its narrative structure is fragmentary and the pressure of appearing 'normal' push Vince into a frightening, irrational placeironically relies on analepsis for its propulsion. Can he fight his way through it and return to his family?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1785079689</amazonuk>1804271764

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Carolyn ParkhurstEowyn Ivey|title=HarmonyBlack Woods Blue Sky|rating=3.5

|summary=Josh and Alexandra Hammond have two daughters. Iris is eleven years old and neurotypical: her brain ''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 in the same way as most people'sa bar waitress, but a setting which enables her elder sister, Tilly, is thirteen bad habits and on the autistic spectrum. Her parents are finding it difficult, if not impossible, to cope with heraccidental neglect of Emaleen. Even her special and rather expensive school has indicated that they canDescribed as a ''wild card't continue. She's subject to mood swings and unpredictable and inappropriate behaviour. Josh is lucky , she feels stuck in her day- he goes to work - but Alexandra is stuck with the problem, which is why Scott Beanday life, educator and expert in parenting, appeals yearns to her. The name came cross the Wolverine river and live on the North Fork to fulfil her attention on desires of a couple of occasions: simple life surrounded by nature. When she subscribed to his newslettermeets Arthur Nielson, a strange, heard him speak taciturn and what solitary man, who says he had has a cabin over there, she feels called to say rang a bellgo - and bring Emaleen with her. Before long he was coming to the house for private consultationsWithout realising it, this calling will transform hers and Emaleen's lives forever.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0340978171</amazonuk>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 a 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}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=William RyanFyodor Dostoyevsky|title=The Constant SoldierWhite Nights

|genre=ThrillersShort Stories|summary=Paul Brandt returns home to his village without As always in Dostoyevsky, the arm he character work is sublime. One is never left at wondering what a character is thinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and temperaments with remarkable clarity.|isbn=0241619785}}{{Frontpage|author=James Baldwin|title=Giovanni's Room|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction |summary=''Giovanni's Room'' follows the Russian Front narrator David, an American man living in defence of Germany. The village looks pretty much the same Paris, as he left itnavigates his torturous affair with Giovanni, with the exception of the lack of young men and an Italian bartender he meets in a new buildinggay bar. His home now boasts an SS rest hutWhile David is engaged to Hella, who is travelling in Spain, providing officers with entertainment and respite breaks from the fighting. As Paul passes real tension in the hut for novel arises not from his infidelity but from the first time, he sees something… or rather someone… that will make him return to work for those he despisesdeeper conflict within himself. The subject It is David's crippling shame and denial of his decision? A girl he once got into trouble sexuality that ultimately dooms his relationship with under different circumstances – before she wore the stripes of a concentration camp prisonerGiovanni.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1447255011</amazonuk>0141186356

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Pamela JohnsonAlba de Cespedes |title=Taking in WaterForbidden Notebook

|summary=Pamela Johnson's third novel is set in 2002 but has its roots in a real-life tragedy This Italian work of feminist fiction holds an air of suspense and tension from nearly 50 years earlier: in 1953 a storm surge hit the Norfolk coastmoment our protagonist, Valeria Cossati, destroying Lydia Hutton's grandmother's home and sweeping purchases her whole family out to sea. Seven-year-old Lydia was the only one to surviveforbidden notebook, clinging to the wreckage and singing hymns to learns about herself to survive. It's a dark part of her past she's never told anyone except Luc, the half-French lover whose iconic performance art piece, ''Taking in Water'', she participated in during a spell in New York City in the 1960s, when she was known as 'Layla' most intimate and hung around with the likes of Andy Warholrevealing ways.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1534627243</amazonuk>1782278222

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=A N WilsonOttessa Moshfegh|title=ResolutionMy Year of Rest and Relaxation|rating=43

|summary=In 1772 Reinhold Forster At best, this novel is a scathing critique of modern society and his son George were hired as ship's naturalists for reveals the ''Resolution''fragility of human relationships; at worst, it is the vessel Captain James Cook piloted to New Zealand cynical, predictable and back on a three-year voyage slightly trite tale of discoveryan unlikeable protagonist. Once a Lutheran pastor near DanzigThis unlikely heroine, Reinhold seemed unable to settle to one line of work and had a higher opinion of himself than was prudent. In Wilson's vision of life on the ''Resolution''slim, Reinhold seems fussy, argumentative attractive and rather heartless, as when he offers George's dog up as fresh meat when the captain newly orphaned girl in her twenties is desperately ill. George, just 18 when he joins disillusioned with the expeditionworld, is a self-taught illustrator and botanist with a keen ear for languages. Though precociously intelligentbut resolves not to lose sleep over it: in fact, he is emotionally immature and cannot keep a handle on his masturbation habit or deal with their servant Nally's crush on himher solution lies in her hibernation.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782398279</amazonuk>1784707422

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Michael HughesMatthew Tree|title= The Countenance DivineWe'll Never Know|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary=In 1999, a programmer is trying Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to fix the millennium bug, but can't shake the sense he's been chosen for something. In 1888, five women are brutally murdered in the East End by a troubled young man in thrall to a mysterious master. In 1777, an apprentice engraver called William Blake has a defining spiritual experience; thirteen years later this vision returns.  And in 1666, poet and revolutionary John Milton completes the epic for which he will be remembered centuries later.  But where does the feeling come different from that the world is about to end?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1473636507</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Emily Bitto|title= The Strays|rating= 5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= Lily comes from an ordinary suburban familyhis father, but on her first day at a new school she meets Eva: the super-confident middle daughter drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of artist Evan Trentham. The girls fast become firm friends, to the exclusion being exceptional at any of his artistic passions all those ar ound them failed miserably and it isn't long before Lily is spending more time at the Trentham's who had endless crises of self confidence. So Tim applied himself to his studies, cultivated his abilities rather than she does at home. Why wouldn't she? Their life is everything her family's isn'this daydreams and set himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1785079514</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Eowyn IveyB0C47LV1PC|title=To the Bright Edge of the WorldFragility|author=Mosby Woods

|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=If Can youmake a 're going to go pioneering across unexplored lands'Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, at least be prepared to accept what is the question should you seek – namely, what make it? Or is the question if you've never seen before. That lesson seems quite obviousdid, but back in the time of 1885 Allen Forrester is a little too naïve to heed would it. A career soldier, he land? The catch is tasked with scouring the potential of the Wolverine River that threads south to the shores of Alaska, 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 answer for both could well be traversed in winter when entirely frozen over, as the cliffs either side are too impenetrable. Allen leaves a much younger, new bride behind – and right from the get-go his journals force him to pen words about strange happenings, strange encounters and things of legend coming to life. Like I say, what he's never seen before…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1472208609</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Talulah Riley|title= Acts of Love|rating= 4.5. no.|genre= Women's Fiction |summary= Bernadette St John presents herself as the very face of contemporary feminine independence. She is strong, career-driven, beautiful…and definitely holds the attention of the public. For Bernadette is the ''Man WhispererFragility'', winning herself fame with her ability to coax secrets from is set as the richest and most powerful men city of the worldPortland, exposing them with controversial distaste in her articles. Hidden behind such a conniving and judgemental persona, however, is a deep insecurityOregon, and a desperate longing cautiously begins to be loved by emerge from the perfect man. She has already decided that the newly engaged Tim Bazier is the only candidate for such a position in her heart, and will stop at nothing to win him back from his all-too-lovely fiancé. Yet what is perfect is a subject for discussion, and charismatic entrepreneur Radley Blake's unwavering attention has also fallen upon restrictions imposed during the feisty journalist. It is a weaving tale of ''will-they-wont-they'' that Riley spins here, one that I found myself unable to put down.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1473637902</amazonuk>covid pandemic

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jesse BallMosby Woods|title=How to Set a Fire and WhyA Whirly Man Loses His Turn

|summary=Lucia Stanton 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 a sarcastic 14-year-old misfit who lives with her elderly Aunt Lucy in a garage they rent from an evil landlord at the bottom best course of his large gardenaction. Governments are flailing. She never comes right out and explains why she's A war here, a push for climate action there, but if you read between the lines you work out . A feeling that her father is dead and her mother nobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, there was a mental hospital – presumably for his murderman with precognition. Aunt Lucy is dignified and principled – ''Don't do things Imagine the strategic advantage in this asset; a man who can tell you aren't proud of'' is her motto – even though they are undeniably poor: Lucia only has one what will happen given any set of clothes and mostly lives off of liquorice and Aunt Lucy's terrible homemade breadcircumstances. That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the most valuable asset in history. Imagine then, that this man loses this ability.What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1925355470</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jenn Ashworth0571379559|title=FellThe House of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams

|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Now her parents have died''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the story of four people. Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, Annette returns to sell her old childhood home but thereinstead, she lives in the house on the riverbank, built of broken bricks. Insubstantial as it might look, it's work stood the passage of time, storms and floods. Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, to do on complete the decrepit building firstdelivery rounds - and to bring in sufficient money. As she wanders around They have twin boys - Sonny and tries to make some order of Max, the overgrown shambles, sherainbow twins. Sonny's watched by the ghost of her colouring reflects his mother, Netty; a spirit with regrets's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. Netty reminisces about AnnettePeople don't believe that they're related, much less twins and there's childhood and the turning point their lives reached an assumption when the mysterious healer Timothy Richardson came to stay. It was a time Max is out with his mother that promised so much but one for which Netty now needs to make amends, even if she is beyond the grave's his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1473630606</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sue GeeClaire North|title=TrioHouse of Odysseus|rating=45|genre=Historical Literary Fiction|summary=In ''What could matter more than love?'' The follow-up to the winter of 1936, Steven Coulterexcellent ''s wife, Margaret, dies of tuberculosis, leaving their Northumberland cottage cold and empty. His work as a history teacher at Kirkhoughton BoysIthaca' School isn't enough to distract him from his grief; he spends his long evenings writing letters to Margaretpicks up a few months after where we left off. GraduallyIn the palace of Odysseus, thoughwith delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her husband, as spring arrives he starts who sailed to take an interest in other thingswar at Troy and then by divine intervention never returned home. His colleague Frank Embleton invites him to a performance As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the throne of the Western Isles. Having survived – politically and physical – the Hepplewick Trio: Frankchaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca's sister Diana shores, Queen Penelope is on cello; pianist Margot Heslop, whose mother died when she was young and who looks after her father, the brink of a coal mine managerfragile peace. One that shatters however with the return of Orestes, at Hepplewick Hall; and their friend George LiddellKing of Mycenae, the violinist and leaderhis sister Elektra, who is a Royal College of Music graduateseeking refuge.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1784630616</amazonuk>0356516075

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Stephanie DanlerKay Chronister|title= SweetbitterDesert Creatures

|genre= Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary= Twenty –two year old Tess With a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is a restless graduate from robotic takeover, a broken family. With the intention world devoid of finally starting her lifewater or a nuclear holocaust, she moves to New York City with no real plan but this genre is a need way for humans to do somethingcathartically experience their most existential fears. She manages to get ''Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a job at one new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the most exclusive restaurants in town fears 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 is used as a back-waiter way to reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and Tess is thrown into the comforting commotion of New York lifeprocess them. ItMost horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad''s at her new job , whether that she becomes fascinated by two people: Simoneis a home invader, a know-monster or a ghost, it-all server usually something tangible and Jake, a handsome yet moody bartender. While by the end of the restaurant becomes her home and her colleagues her new familystory, beatable. Eric LaRocca's ''SweetbitterThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' follows Tess through is not like that. It is a year collection of her life as she grows and learns about short stories more interested in the complexities horrors of human relationshipsillness, grief and humiliation. Horrors that linger and are harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780749155</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Rodrigo Hasbun and Sophie Hughes (translator)Madelaine Lucas|title=AffectionsThirst for Salt|rating=4.5|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=If you thought your teenaged years were a struggle to work out the world''Love, and yourselfI'd read, consider that of Heidi Ertl. Or either of her sisters – this book serves as was supposed to be a sort of tribute to these three real-life women, light and the lives that came out of their very disjointed youthweightless feeling, forced to be rarefied but I had always longed for gravity'' Told from the norm by their family uprooting. Father Hans was one of Leni Riefenstahl's key cameramena retrospective view, and a Nazi military photographer, before taking young woman unravels the whole family into postyear-war exile in Bolivialong relationship that once defined her. Their mother would have followed him to the ends of the earth – as in part would their daughtersOverlaid with later wisdom, the older two of which start narrator relives the book by joining him on an expedition to discover affair with a lost Incan city. Heidi finds young, instant love on man twenty years her senior from its inception – the trek summer after finishing university – but sees to its sorrowful end the dark side of such emotions, toosummer after. Older sister Monika, who might well be manic depressive, finds something else, while Set against the baby backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the family stays at home 24-year-old narrator's deepening relationship with a maudlin mother. So much here could be the hook her older lover, depicting its all-consuming nature, how it changed her perspective on which to hang a full novel, but if anything both romantic and familial relationships and how it's the reaction of them all to this unusual formative journey that inspires this bookaltered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782272135</amazonuk>0861546490

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Sun-mi HwangMichael Grothaus|title= The Dog who Dared to DreamBeautiful Shining People|rating= 4

|summary=From the very beginning''But 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, Scraggly knows that she is different or we can take steps to her brothers and sisterschange it. Her siblings have short, glossy coats, but Scraggly's blue/black fur is long, wild ' ''Beautiful Shining People'' revolves around the question of identity and untamedacceptance. She may be an outsider, but she still enjoys life with her family in Grandpa Screecher's sunny yard, even if Of what it means putting up with the evil cat next doorto be human. Scraggly dreams that things can stay this way forever, but fate has other plans. One tragic night, everything she loves Of what is cruelly ripped away from her. As she struggles to rebuild a new life real and family for herselfwhat is artificial, she comes to understand that sadness, betrayal and loss are an inevitable part whether the development of lifetechnology is exciting or frightening. Can Scraggly ever learn to trust another human again?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0349142106</amazonuk>191458564X

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Sarah PerryJennifer Saint|title= The Essex SerpentAtalanta|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= ''I confess to a bias… when was as worthy as any one of them. I would get on board that ship, I came across a reference to Sarah Perry's latest novel; vowed. I wanted to read it would take my place, not just in the name of the goddess. It was for two reasons onlythe sake of my name, too. Atalanta'' Princess. She Warrior. Lover. Hero. Abandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a son, Atalanta is raised under the protective eye of the goddess Athemis and fashioned into a formidable huntress, one who longs for adventure. When the opportunity comes – to join the Argonauts, a local writerfierce band of warriors, descendent from the Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the chance to fight in Artemis' name and the book carve out her own legendary place in history. What follows is set in a place not too far awaywhirlwind of challenges and discovery and through it, but Atalanta must remember Artemis' fatal warning: that I have yet if she marries, it will be her undoing.|isbn=1472292154}}{{Frontpage|author=Amanthi Harris|title=Beautiful Place|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to explore and which fascinates me: the Blackwater estuary in EssexVilla Hibiscus on the southern coast of her home country. This is a place she spent her formative years. That's It is not a place she was born into, but the one she thinks of as home. How she came to be at the kind of wide open skies Villa, how it became her home, and mud creeks the machinations that you will find up much of have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the Norfolk ''score'' for this gentle and Suffolk coast as well, yet subtly violent novel. Padma's present fails to escape her past and much like the musical score of a landscape type film, that strand weaves its way through everything that probably only appeals to a certain type of personhappens at the Villa.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>178125544X</amazonuk>1784631930

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Susan Beale178563335X|title=The Good GuySea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor|rating=45|genre=Literary Fiction |summary=September 1964: an Indian summer When we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, sitting in suburban Massachusettson a PCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you need to pick the children up. Ted McDougall is a twenty-three Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Goodyear tyre salesman who lives with his wife Abigail Hannah and ten-monthher elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter-old daughter Mindy in the up-and-coming Elm Grove communitylaw won't let her see her grandson. Both Ted and Abigail feel unappreciated in their roles. Ted knows his in-laws wanted him Holthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, is a lovely place, but Rachel is struggling to become develop a lawyer real bond with the parish - and join Abigailshe's father's firmin awe of the vicar, Gail, but hethen she's been doing the job for more than thirty years. Rachel and Christopher hoped that a walk on the beach would do them some good salesman and wishes - it was stormy but it was probably what they wouldn't look down on him for itneeded. Meanwhile Abigail, an American history buff, can't master the domestic arts of cooking and cleaning, much as she tries, and longs to go back to school And then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1473630339</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Emma Cline1398515388|title= The GirlsBoy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary General Fiction|summary=CaliforniaFirst of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, in turn, caused the nuclear meltdown. Summer 1969 The result was complete and utter devastation. Fourteen year old Evie Boyd is a thoughtful yet bored teenager from a broken home The deaths were uncountable, and the loss of livelihoods was widespread. The attention she craves is nowhere to be found in fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the form list of her neglectful, serial dating mother, or even in priorities but - six months after the friendship of her fickle best friend Connietsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. Abandoned by those around her, Evie He wasn't a dog person but the convenience store owner's path collides with Suzanne – a mysterious older girl who introduces Evie comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to a strange yet thrilling new life, offering her open his car door and Tamon the intimate relationship her life back home lacksdog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784740446</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Simon Van Booy0989715337|title= Father's DayPapa on the Moon|author=Marco North|rating= 54|genre= General Literary Fiction|summary=When devastating news shatters ''Some frogs had gotten into the life of six year old Harvey, she finds herself well.'' ''Walter stood waist-deep in the care fragrant water, naked except for his beaten leather hat. Long strands of a veteran social worker, Wandatheir eggs wove around him, sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Two of the dogs leaned over the opening and alone barked down at the strange noise of the buckets as he filled them.'' How is that for an opening? The style of this novel in the world save for one relative she has never met - a disabled ex-conform of interconnected short stories goes from succinct and laconic to wistful and musing, haunted by turning on a violent past he can't escapesixpence. Moving between past and presentAnd author Marco North, Father's Day weaves together who has the story most wonderful turn of Harvey's childhood on Long Islandphrase, and her life starts as a young woman in Parishe means to go on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780749694</amazonuk>