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[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alice AdamsJeremy Cooper|title=Invincible SummerDiscord|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-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}}{{Frontpage|author=Polly Barton|title=What Am I, A Deer?|rating=4

|summary=As Alice AdamsPolly Barton's debut novel opens in is an intellectually playful yet emotionally exposed work that uses translation as both subject and governing metaphor. The narrator, newly relocated from London to Berlin, works translating video games into Japanese through the summer process of 1995localisation, four university friends are lounging on Bristol's Brandon Hill, drinking and contemplating what the future holdsrewriting language until it feels comfortably familiar to a new audience. There's Eva AndrewsBarton treats this as a paradoxical act: arguably, raised in Sussex by a single father; siblings Sylvie and Lucien Marchantstriving for universality, neglected by their alcoholic mother; and Benedict Waverleylanguage is endlessly repackaged, a rich kid whose parents have a holiday home on Corfuits originality at risk of disappearing altogether. Eva has From this, the novel opens out into a crush on Lucienwider, resonant question: to what extent do we translate ourselves in order to be understood, accepted, while Benedict is besotted with Eva.or loved?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1509814701</amazonuk>1804272175

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Birgul OguzMaria Stepanova and Sasha Dugdale (Translator)|title= HahThe Disappearing Act|rating= 34|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= I was interested Despite her anonymisation of place names and people, Stepanova's message in this short work of autofiction is unmistakable. A novelist named M travels from B (ostensibly Berlin) to receive this book the town of F for review as I knew it was written in a modernliterary festival she is to be a guest speaker at. Detoured by erratic train schedules and nudged by forces beyond her control, interesting style, being effectively her journey slowly bends toward a collection traveling circus. Swept up in this series of short storiesevents, but appearing more M eventually offers to step in for a novel structure. I was, however, rather disappointed with the book. Whilst it does have some very fine examples of prose writing within the stories, I felt disconnected from the narrator, circus performer who is has unexpectedly left the daughter of a recently deceased man who was involved in a Turkish military coup in 1980show. There is therefore The train functions as a lot motif of examples of the narrator relating the conversations they had shared regarding ''revolution''transience and impermanence, and while the way this had affected circus embodies the daughter's upbringing reshaping of identity and childhood. Another 'story' then delves a retreat into a seemingly disconnected wander through fantasy, an impulse that lies at the town, whereby we see very heart of the narrator working at gutting fish, and talking about a man she finds repulsive, but who appears to be in love with hernovel form itself. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>9462380740</amazonuk>1804272329

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Chuck Palahniuk295967572X|title=Make Something UpPale Pieces|author=G M Stevens

|genre=Short Stories Literary Fiction|summary=What are we to make of that subtitle-seeming writing on the front cover – ''stories you can't unread''? Does that not apply to all good fiction? Clearly it Our unnamed narrator is here due about to the reputation of the author, and the baggage begin a train journey with his name brings to the pagecompanion Django. WeWhere they'd expect a dramatic approach from anything Palahniuk writes, re going and an added frissonwhat the purpose of this journey is, an extra layer, from which we might be forced to shrink backis uncertain. But a lot of Django found the contents dontickets 't quite go that far. Yes, things are dramatic, when society starts attaching defibrillators to itself, to create 'on the perfect, simple, care- (floor somewhere''The Price and has persuaded our narrator to accompany him. Why not? Not much else is Right''clear either -, and Kardashian-) free happiness. A man buys a horse for his daughter – but boy is it we are probably in the wrong horse to buy. A man falls in love – yes, sometimes past as the plot summaries of these stories really are better off for being short (speaking of which, don't turn pair travel to the three-page entrant here as a taster, it'll put you off station by dint of being, almost uniquely here, a nothing story). A call centre worker can't convince people he's on the level coach 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 train is a 'Burning Man'-styled festival, in a very clever couple of tales. But many too are the instances where that extra step has been takensteam locomotive.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099587688</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Aliya WhiteleyMakenna Goodman|title= The Arrival Helen of MissivesNowhere|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary=In It could be argued that the aftermath pervading theme of the Great War, Shirley Fearn dreams of challenging the conventions of rural England, where this book is malaise - a hard-to-place feeling that something in your life is as unchanging as the seasonsnot quite right. The scarred veteran Mr Tillerprotagonist, left disfigured by an impossible accident a disgraced professor on the battlefields brink of Francelosing both his career and his relationship, embodies this feeling. However, brings Goodman counteracts his discomfort with him a messageforce which is seductive, radical and unnerving: part prophecy, part warningHelen. The connection between Helen and the protagonist is indirect yet intimate. As Shirleythe former owner of the countryside house he's village prepares for considering, Helen represents a volta in his life, her past tied to his potential fresh start. The realtor who shows the annual May Day celebrationsprotagonist around the house shares stories about Helen, where a new queen will be crowned and the future reborndescribes her as ''an entity that is pure consciousness, beyond form''. Although she must choose between change and renewal – will lives in an assisted living facility now, Helen has powers beyond comprehension which the reader gets the missives Mr Tiller brings prevent her mastering her identity?sense are not altogether innocuous.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1907389377</amazonuk>1804272205

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= P K LynchOlga Tokarczuk|title= ArmadillosHouse of Day, House of Night|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= Aggie is one of Texas' downtrodden. Dirt poor and abused. 'What's the good of a world that keeps changing like that? How can one go on calmly living in it?'sub' from a  The title of this spellbinding work, 'sub' familyHouse of Day, House of Night'' … ''Her father and brother enact that 'sub', somewhat reflects this notion of shifting realities -ness on herthe small, subtle changes which govern our lives, like the shift from day to night, week inhowever quotidian, week outcausing chaos.'' ''She has only But, the vaguest notion constant in that there image is something wrong with the abuse she endures.house, stoic against the ancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it is perceived.''|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>178507959X</amazonuk>1804271918

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tarjei Vesaas, Torbjorn Stoverud and Michael Barnes (translators)Thea Lenarduzzi|title=The BirdsTower|rating=4.5|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=We're somewhere in rural Scandinavia, on 'How unctuous are the shores fats of a large lakeanother's life, but how dizzying their sugars in a community relying on the farmland that is scattered in amongst the woodsour bloodstream''. Our chief concerns are brother and sister – Mattis and Hege. He In this compelling novel, MattisThea Lenarduzzi assumes the identity of T, is what the other villagers call protagonist of this tale. Just as T'simple' – sures story is being told, he knows the story of a few things about lifesecond protagonist is unveiled: Annie, and what makes the daughter of a clever person and what makes wealthy family in the 19th century, who died of tuberculosis after being locked in a well-turned phrasetower, and how to talk to girls and when to not stare at them, but he is definitely not quite as the others would wishcaptures T's imagination. Those others include his sister, who Annie's fate is seeing her life waste away in listening to his chatter, knitting jumpers to make ends meetabove all, and regretting in her own small way what has got her an enticing story to middle-age in this situationT. But from this galling introduction, you should take away the bigger picture – even if there It is no way outa story which she consumes avariciously, the life both in this countryside is brilliantly conveyed, full of sun as well as shadea quest for truth and knowledge, of labour and in service of idlenessmyth, fable and wit and charm as much as hardshipfantasy. I defy you to read this and think this corner of Scandinavia bleak.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0914671200</amazonuk>1804271799

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Nicola BarkerJon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |title=The Cauliflower®Vaim

|genre=Literary Fiction |summary=Nicola Barker teasingly refers to herself as this book's 'collagistAll was strange''... This haunting phrase encapsulates the pervading sense of otherworldliness which permeates this story set in Vaim, piecing together diverse documents to create a picture of Sri Ramakrishna (1836–1886)fictional fishing village in Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for Jatgeir and Eline, a largely illiterate guru who attracted followers to his intense worship two of the goddess Kaliprotagonists caught in its melancholic current. His life story is a sticky mass of contradictions:|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1785150669</amazonuk>1804271829

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Toni Morrison Claire-Louise Bennett|title= God Help the ChildBig Kiss, Bye-Bye |rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary=A truly complex Everything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, is steeped in anguish and emotionally raw portrayaldistortion. Even a kiss, that seeks to cover issues usually a symbol of raceintimacy and closeness, genderbecomes evidence of love lost. When the narrator cries out internally, ''come over here and paedophiliakiss me,'' it is less an invitation than a desperate attempt to confirm her emotional numbness. A slim volumeThe imagined recipient of this plea is Xavier, yesher ex-partner, but one that is powerful in its puncha ghost she conjures to test her detachment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099555921</amazonuk>1804271934

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jesus Carrasco Helene Bessette and Margaret Jull Costa Kate Briggs (translator)|title=Out in the OpenLili is Crying|rating=34.5

|summary=Meet the boy. We never learn his name – First published in fact we learn very little 1953 in French, this book, such as where or when we are, and why. What we do know novel is that he has left home. We get a timeless text which wrenches the feeling his father is too handy with punishment, but that can't be the only reason for him first hiding out in an olive grove overnight, then fleeing across the plains surrounding his family's village. Especially hearts of its readers just as he's chosen one of the most awkward, attritional times to cross said plains – the land is in Bessette wrenches words and sentences from their proper position on the middle of a horrendous drought. When he tries to steal his first provisions from an aged goatherd, however, he finds some light page and liquid, but is this substitute father figure ever going to be enough to help the boy flee what he needs to?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009958218X</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Philip Dent|title=Mutable Passions: Charlotte Bronte: A Disquieting Affair|rating=3|genre=Historical Fiction |summary=As the 200th anniversary of Charlotte Brontë's birth approaches, it is a perfect time for reading about her. Philip Dent's second novel chooses a lesser known period of her life to dramatize. All her siblings are now dead; during a hard winter when she is unable to visit her best friendpositions them elsewhere, Ellen Nussey, Charlotte spends her time finishing ''Villette''disjointed, her final noveltruncated. The family servant, Tabby, ribs Charlotte about her romantic prospects – including Patrick Brontë's curate, Arthur Bell Nicholls. Charlotte responds with indignation: 'I could no more kiss Like the lips lives of a man with a beard as big as rooks' nests than I could yoursher characters, Tabbythey are often left tragically incomplete.'|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>178589093X</amazonuk>1804271675

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Miroslav PenkovJonathan Buckley|title=Stork MountainOne Boat

|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=A young man, his grandfather and a stork with a broken wing are the ''company of rebelsOne Boat'' at is a deeply introspective novella that defies traditional narrative structure, drawing the heart reader into a contemplative realm of this lively tale set in Bulgaria's Strandja Mountainsphilosophical musings and fragmented memories flowing from our narrator and protagonist, Teresa. The storks that return to Set against the mountains each spring are migrantsevocative backdrop of a small coastal Greek town, like so many this work masterfully captures the magic of its setting and its power to provoke profound introspection. Teresa herself recognises these qualities as the people that have passed through reason she has visited it after the region over death of both her parents. Prompted by her mourning, her narrative voice is meditative and deeply self-aware, inviting the centuriesreader into her labyrinthine cogitations. The young narrator It is also in transita book that not only requires but inspires depth of thought, born in Bulgaria, but raised since its narrative structure is fragmentary and educated in America. The story opens with his return to Bulgaria in search of his grandfather who has broken off contact with his family in America. But the young man's motives are not as clear cut as first appearsironically relies on analepsis for its propulsion.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473622182</amazonuk>1804271764

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Elisa AlbertEowyn Ivey|title= After BirthBlack Woods Blue Sky|rating= 43.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= This book is definitely not ''Black Woods Blue Sky'' tells the story of Birdie, the young mother of toddler Emaleen, who longs for anyone who has a rosy picture life beyond the Alaskan lodge where she works as a bar waitress, a setting which enables her bad habits and her accidental neglect of new motherhoodEmaleen. In factDescribed as a ''wild card'', I would probably avoid it if you are contemplating giving birth she feels stuck in her day-to-day life, and yearns to cross the near future. For any woman who has ever struggled through Wolverine river and live on the first few months North Fork to fulfil her desires of motherhooda simple life surrounded by nature. When she meets Arthur Nielson, howevera strange, or taciturn and solitary man, who says he has a partner of somebody who is going through itcabin over there, it is an astounding she feels called to go - and revelatory readbring Emaleen with her. Never before have I read a more searingWithout realising it, honest this calling will transform hers and open discussion of the emotional upheaval a woman often goes through after giving birthEmaleen's lives forever.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>009959014X</amazonuk>1472279042

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author= Ayelet Gundar-GoshenSally Rooney|title= Waking LionsIntermezzo|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary General Fiction|summary= If Sally Rooney has studied the point chessboard of ''literature'' - as opposed to the less exalted though just-as-worthwhile forms life and is something of writing - a grandmaster at putting it into words. Her dialogue is to force you to think about gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, as her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Among the real worldmany relationships woven into this story, the political world, central one for readers to unravel is the painful life-as-we-know-it worldfraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. Ivan, whilst catching you up in a story about something that never really happenedsocially awkward chess prodigy, butcontrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, you knowa successful lawyer living in Dublin. Following their father's passing after a long battle with cancer, might well have done so…and if you think that matters, then you must read this bookthe brothers' already strained relationship faces new trials.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782271562</amazonuk>0571365469

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Yan LiankeFyodor Dostoyevsky|title=The Four BooksWhite Nights

|summary=''The Four Books'' is a difficult, challenging novel This Italian work of feminist fiction holds an air of suspense and not for tension from the feint heartedmoment our protagonist, Valeria Cossati, purchases her forbidden notebook, or for someone looking for a page-turner. It really challenges the reader's perceptions and opens up a gateway to an era that is difficult to imagine for anyone brought up learns about herself in a western culture. Set in Maoist China it tells the story of four protagonists most intimate and a memorable antagonist. The four, found guilty of anti-revolutionary crimes are undergoing re-education in a work camp governed by the child. With an Orwellian feel, ''The Four Books'' will come to be regarded as an undoubted masterpiecerevealing ways.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099569493</amazonuk>1782278222

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Yann MartelOttessa Moshfegh|title=The High Mountains My Year of PortugalRest and Relaxation|rating=43|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Tomas At best, this novel is being thrust into a scathing critique of modern society and reveals the twentieth Centuryfragility of human relationships; at worst, and he doesn't like it. He has given himself the job of seeking something out in is the High Mountains of Portugal, based on an ancient religious diary he found working in an archivecynical, predictable and to do so he needs the use slightly trite tale of his uncle's brand new car to get him there and back in time. His jaw drops when he learns he will have to do the driving himself, for he cannot make head nor tail of what anything on the infernal machine does and whyan unlikeable protagonist. It is of course a certain kind of progressThis unlikely heroine, a looking forward, which has become quite anathema to him – for ever since he lost his beloved wifeslim, beloved child attractive and father, all newly orphaned girl in her twenties is disillusioned with the space of a weekworld, he has walked everywhere backwards – shielding himself from what really is ahead with a padded behindbut resolves not to lose sleep over it: in fact, and never letting sight of what he has losther solution lies in her hibernation.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782114696</amazonuk>1784707422

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Antonio Moresco and Richard Dixon (translator)Matthew Tree|title=Distant LightWe'll Never Know

|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Our unnamed narrator might as well be the only person alive. He knows he's not – he still goes down Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to the nearest inhabited village to buy things to eat and other necessities, and he sees planes spreading their contrails over the remote area he lives in – but he might as well be. A lot of different from his thoughts are about lifefather, however, for he has little to do except notice the nature around him, from the smell a drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of lilies burgeoning with nobody else to see them in this deserted village, to the swallows darting across the ravines being exceptional at any of the countryside. Life – his artistic passions all failed miserably and the nature who had endless crises of a light that he sees spring into activity every night at what he thought was a totally lifelessself confidence. So Tim applied himself to his studies, empty forest area on land separated from cultivated his lookout post in abilities rather than his back garden by a deep, wooded gorge…daydreams and set himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0914671421</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tania JamesB0C47LV1PC|title=The Tusk That Did the DamageFragility|author=Mosby Woods|rating=3.54

|summary=Tania James was Can you make a Fulbright Fellow in New Delhi in 2011–12. For this, her second novel after ''Atlas of UnknownsYo birthing person'' (shortlisted for joke? And if you could, is the question should you make it? Or is the question if you did, would it land? The catch is that the DSC Prize answer for South Asian literature) and the story collection both could well be.... no. ''AerogrammesFragility''is set as the city of Portland, she clearly draws on her personal knowledge of India in all its contradictionsOregon, especially when it comes cautiously begins to environmental policy. The novel alternates between three perspectives: a third-person account of an elephant named emerge from the restrictions imposed during the Gravedigger and first-person narratives from a poacher and a documentary filmmaker.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784700584</amazonuk>covid pandemic

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Anakana SchofieldMosby Woods|title= Martin JohnA Whirly Man Loses His Turn|rating= 4|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= I had heard much about The West isn't the dominant force it once was. Nobody in the West is quite sure how to mend this novel before I read or even if mending it is the best course of action. Governments are flailing. A war here, a push for reviewclimate action there. A feeling that nobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, by which I mean I had heard it there was profane, strange and had a daring subject matter accompanied by elements man with precognition. Imagine the strategic advantage in this asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of humourcircumstances. I have to say that whilst I agree it is certainly profane and strange and incredibly innovativeThat man would be valuable, I didn't find much humour right? Perhaps the most valuable asset in history. Imagine then, that this man loses this ability. What would governments do to get it at all.back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908276665</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jon Kalman Stefansson and Philip Roughton (translator)0571379559|title=The Heart House of ManBroken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams|rating=35

|summary=What could ''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the story of four people. Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be better than an existentialist book from rural Icelandhappier there, but instead, she lives in the house on the riverbank, full built of gnomic comments about how close life and death are, that has broken bricks. Insubstantial as its core a journey taken byit might look, amongst othersit's stood the passage of time, a naïve storms and hormonal teenaged lad and a full coffin? floods. WhyHer husband, Richard, I hear you crystruggles to grow his vegetables, a trilogy concerning to complete the samedelivery rounds - and to bring in sufficient money. YesThey have twin boys - Sonny and Max, itthe rainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's the obvious answerJamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. People don't believe that they're related, really – why else would we come 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 this third part, the excellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a few months after where we left off. In the survivors palace of the expedition rest upOdysseus, note the women giving them helpwith delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her husband, who sailed to war at Troy and see how eminently close then by divine intervention never returned home. As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the circle throne of life the Western Isles. Having survived – politically and physical – the chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca's shores, Queen Penelope is to on the figure brink of a snake swallowing its tail throughfragile peace. One that shatters however with the return of Orestes, King of Mycenae, among other thingsand his sister Elektra, dogs rutting in a church below the coffin's bier?seeking refuge.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>184866236X</amazonuk>0356516075

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Joanna WalshKay Chronister|title= VertigoDesert Creatures

|genre= Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary= The short stories in Joanna Walsh's collection have the overall effect of disparate streams of consciousness 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 woman laying bear her very soulnuclear holocaust, whilst often going about seemingly mundane activities this genre is a way for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. ''Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the ordinary and every dayfears 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 narrative voice appeared Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating= 5|genre= Horror|summary= Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is used as a way to me to be 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 end of the same woman speaking throughoutstory, playing different roles, though beatable. Eric LaRocca's ''The Trees Grew Because IBled There''m is not sure this was meant to be the caselike that. The style of the stories It is that a collection of short vignettes, mostly written stories more interested in a modernistthe horrors of illness, stream of consciousness stylegrief and humiliation. Sometimes, the prose appears almost poeticHorrors that linger and are harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908276800</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Kristopher JansmaMadelaine Lucas|title=Why We Came to the CityThirst for Salt|rating=4.5

|summary='We came to the city because we wished to live haphazardly'Love, to reach for only the least realistic of our desiresI'd read, and was supposed to see if we could not learn what our failures had to teach, be a light and notweightless feeling, when we came to livebut I had always longed for gravity'' Told from a retrospective view, discover a young woman unravels the year-long relationship that we had never diedonce defined her. We wanted Overlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the affair with a man twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to dig deep and suck out all its sorrowful end the summer after. Set against the marrow backdrop of lifean isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the 24-year-old narrator's deepening relationship with her older lover, to be overworked depicting its all-consuming nature, how it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and reduced to our last withow it altered her irrevocably.'|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0525426604</amazonuk>0861546490

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ernst Haffner and Michael Hofmann (translator)Grothaus|title=Blood BrothersBeautiful Shining People

|summary=It's Berlin, and the Nazis are 'I was as worthy as any one of them. I would get on their way to powerboard that ship, even if they will never cross these pages themselvesI vowed. The city – hugeI would take my place, glamorous, bustling, vicious not just in the way it can swallow people – is home to a countless hoard name of the goddess. It was for the sake of teenagersmy name, but we focus on just too. Atalanta'' Princess. Warrior. Lover. Hero. Abandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a fewson, most Atalanta is raised under the protective eye of whom have been in some corrective institution or other before now. They call themselves the Blood Brothersgoddess Athemis and fashioned into a formidable huntress, even if all they share is one who longs for adventure. When the most unglamorous drudgery of going from one doss-house opportunity comes – to anotherjoin the Argonauts, balancing the cost of a few cigarettes with that fierce band of a warm room for a few hours or some stale rolls warriors, descendent from the Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the chance to eatfight in Artemis' name and carve out her own legendary place in history. But en route to them What follows is another a whirlwind of challenges and discovery and through it, Atalanta must remember Artemis'Borstal' escapeefatal warning: that if she marries, Williit will be her undoing. Surely his fate is going to be nothing if not more of the same?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099594048</amazonuk>1472292154

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sara TaylorAmanthi Harris|title=The ShoreBeautiful Place|rating=4.5|genre=Short StoriesLiterary Fiction|summary=The first story we hear from the ShorePadma, a group of isolated islands off young Sri Lankan, has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of Virginia, is from Chloe, who's telling her sister about what she overheard in the storehome country. She'd been there buying chicken necks so that they could go crabbingThis is a place she spent her formative years. Normally they used bacon rindsIt is not a place she was born into, but they'd already eaten thosethe one she thinks of as home. Cabel Bloxom had been murdered How she came to be at the Villa, how it became her home, and the machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the ''they done cut his thang clean offscore''. The girls are motherless for this gentle and Chloe is fiercely protective of her little sister Reneeyet subtly violent novel. She Padma's present fails to escape her past and much like the first musical score of a film, that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the strong women we'll encounter in these stories, which interlink to give a greater pictureVilla.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>009959188X</amazonuk>1784631930

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Adam Baron178563335X|title=Blackheath|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Househusband James is happy in Blackheath. He's started doing stand-up again so that he too has an achievement in his life to balance wife Alice's award winning poetry. Children Ida and Dominic are doing well so all is great. Elsewhere in the area Amelia is equally happy with her actor husband Richard, her own career and children Niamh and teenage Michael. Sometimes happiness isn't enough though and, as the worlds of the two families start to mingle, things start changing for each of them.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908434902</amazonuk>}}{{newreviewSea Defences|author=Julian Barnes|title=The Noise of TimeHilary Taylor|rating=3.5

|summary=Julian BarnesWhen we first meet Rachel Bird she's first novel since he won a trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you need to pick the Booker Prize for [[The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes]] is children up. Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a fictionalised biography of Russian composer Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich (1906–75)sobbing parishioner. Knowing Barnes Thelma's penchant for stylistic experimentation, though, this was never going to be a straightforward, chronological life storydaughter-in-law won't let her see her grandson. Instead Holthorpe, as Barnes so often doeson the Norfolk coast, he sets up is a tripartite structurelovely place, focussing on three moments in Shostakovich's life when he has but Rachel is struggling to develop a reckoning real bond with Power (always capitalised here). The title phrase helpfully spells out what the book is all about: parish - and she'Art is s in awe of the whisper of historyvicar, Gail, heard above but then she's been doing the job for more than thirty years. Rachel and Christopher hoped that a walk on the noise of timebeach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing.'|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1910702609</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Danielle McLaughlin1398515388|title=Dinosaurs on Other PlanetsThe Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)

|genre=Short Stories General Fiction|summary=Seeing as First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this book is clearly a talented author hitting , in turn, caused the ground running, I will dispense with any major preamblenuclear meltdown. We start with a tale of a daughter affected by the emotions of her parents as they separate – The result was complete and the influence of a certain school-teacher – from the mother's point of viewutter devastation. An ancient input shows how alienThe deaths were uncountable, and the modern day domesticity how regular, the isolation of a woman can feel, as events are peppered by minor acts loss of destructionlivelihoods was widespread. But men can be alienated too – especially one, a reluctant guest at a party for children hosted by someone he once had an affair with – he feels The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the new form list of this influence in priorities but - six months after the light of another one he has had to try and abandontsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. He wasn'All About Alice' – thatt a dog person but the convenience store owner's what the title character wants to say but has nobody to speak it to, but is it her – mid-40s and single, living with her father – comment that is most removed from her dreams or her old friend and now child factory, Marian? And we complete a lap of the calendar with the wintry tale of a man unable he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to tell open his work superiors of car door and Tamon the problems he faces at home – a new home, recently built like so many one sees while driving round Irelanddog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1473613701</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Anne Enright0989715337|title=The Green Road|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''The Green Road'' is Papa on the story of a family. If the author was anyone other than Anne Enright it would be stereotypically Irish, with all the appropriate characters in place: the boy who goes off to be a priest, the daughter who likes the bottle far too much, the son who does good works and the woman who stays back where she was born and marries a local man, the dead husband who was perhaps just a little bit beneath the wife who plays the ''grande dame'' and is perfect at being needy, whilst all the while maintaining that she needs nothing. But, of course, it ''is'' Anne Enright.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099539799</amazonuk>}}{{newreviewMoon|author=Kate Atkinson|title=A God in RuinsMarco North|rating=54

|summary=Teddy Todd never really expected to survive ''Some frogs had gotten into the warwell. As a bomber pilot it wasn't something which you could rely on and he certainly knew the statistics. But ' ''Walter stood waist- against all deep in the oddsfragrant water, he came through itnaked except for his beaten leather hat. Long strands of their eggs wove around him, albeit sticky gray pearls with some time spent tadpoles inside them. Two of the dogs leaned over the opening and barked down at the strange noise of the buckets as a prisoner he filled them.'' How is that for an opening? The style of this novel in the form of war. On balance he had a good war, but time will see him married to Nancy, father to Viola interconnected short stories goes from succinct and grandfather laconic to Sunny wistful and Bertie - and left with musing, turning on a sixpence. And author Marco North, who has the feeling that it's more difficult most wonderful turn of phrase, starts as he means to have a good peace than a good wargo on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0552776645</amazonuk>