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[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Claire Fullerton295967572X|title=Dancing to an Irish ReelPale Pieces|author=G M Stevens|rating=45

|summary=Hailey was on Our unnamed narrator is about to begin a sabbatical from her job in the music business in Los Angeles train journey with his companion Django. Where they're going and taking what the holiday purpose of a lifetime to Irelandthis journey is, when she walked into the Galway Music Centre and found a job which she simply couldn't turn downis uncertain. She also Django found a home in a local village, a liking for the rural life and a man whom she could love. Liam Hennessy was a talented accordion player: music was his life and whilst he was more attracted to Hailey than he had ever been to another woman it wasntickets 't entirely clear whether 'love' could ever be on the cards for floor somewhere'' and has persuaded our narrator to accompany him.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0990304256</amazonuk>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.

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jessie Greengrass Makenna Goodman|title=An Account Helen of the Decline of the Great Auk, According to One Who Saw It Nowhere|rating=34.5|genre=Short StoriesLiterary Fiction|summary=The title story, which appears first, is exactly what it says on It could be argued that the tin: one hunter's story pervading theme of travelling to remote islands to take part in massive culls of great auks, until they were simply gone. It's always this book is malaise - a hard -to believe that species -place feeling that once numbered something in their millionsyour life is not quite right. The protagonist, such as a disgraced professor on the passenger pigeonbrink of losing both his career and his relationship, embodies this feeling. However, could go extinct so quicklyGoodman counteracts his discomfort with a force which is seductive, but when you read about the brutal slaughter tactics here – swinging clubs radical and boiling birds alive – you can see how a flightless bird was a sitting targetunnerving: Helen. The narrator makes no real attempt to defend himself: connection between Helen and the protagonist is indirect yet intimate. As the birds were there for former owner of the taking; that was that. Still, countryside house he regrets their extinction's considering, because 'Helen represents a volta in any loss you can see a shadow of the way that you will be lost yourselfhis life, her past tied to his potential fresh start.' (Those interested in The realtor who shows the great auk's extinction may also want to read protagonist around the 2013 novel house shares stories about Helen, and describes her as ''The Collector of Lost Thingsan entity that is pure consciousness, beyond form'' by Jeremy Page.)Although she lives in an assisted living facility now, Helen has powers beyond comprehension which the reader gets the sense are not altogether innocuous.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473610850</amazonuk>1804272205

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Patricia ParkOlga Tokarczuk|title=Re JaneHouse of Day, House of Night|rating=3.5

|summary= Growing up in Flushing, New York –Jane Re has long been hoping to escape her whole life. A half-Korean, half-American Orphan, Jane struggles to find her place as a spirited and intelligent young woman growing up in a strict and mirthless family, observing ''What's the traditional Korean principle of “Nunchi” (a combination of good manners, obligation and hierarchy). Desperate to escape, Jane is thrilled when she becomes the au pair for a rich couple – two Brooklyn based professors of English, who have adopted a young Chinese girl into their family. Jane soon falls for the man of the family, but their blossoming affair is soon curtailed by a family death, prompting Jane’s return to Korea. As she learns more about herself, her history and her culture, Jane must make huge decisions about her life, her future, and her man…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0525427406</amazonuk>world that keeps changing like that? How can one go on calmly living in it?''}}{{newreview|author=Patricia Duncker|The title=Sophie and the Sibyl: A Victorian Romance|rating=4|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=''Sophie and the Sibyl''of this spellbinding work, consciously modelled on John Fowles's ''The French Lieutenant's Woman''House of Day, is a postmodern blending House of history, fiction, and metafictional commentary. Brothers Max and Wolfgang Duncker really were George EliotNight''s German publishers, but the accident somewhat reflects this notion of their surname matching the author's makes them her clever standshifting realities -in. As the novel opens in 1872small, subtle changes which govern our lives, like the venerable English author is exploring Homburg and Berlin in the company of her 'husband' while ushering her latest novelshift from day to night, ''Middlemarch''however quotidian, into German translationcausing chaos. MaxBut, a young cad fond of casinos and brothels, has two tasks: ensuring Eliot's loyalty to their publishing the constant in that image is the house, and securing Countess Sophie von Hahn's hand in marriagestoic against the ancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it is perceived.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>140886052X</amazonuk>1804271918

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sara BaumeThea Lenarduzzi|title=Spill Simmer Falter WitherThe Tower

|summary=Every Tuesday he goes into town''How unctuous are the fats of another's life, how dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream''. This particular Tuesday he sees an advert for a rescue dog that In this compelling novel, Thea Lenarduzzi assumes the identity of T, the protagonist of this tale. Just as T's been badly treated by its previous owner. Somewhere story is being told, the story of a second protagonist is unveiled: Annie, the ad strikes daughter of a resonance and he adopts wealthy family in the dog19th century, calling it Oneeye (yeswho died of tuberculosis after being locked in a tower, one wordcaptures T's imagination. Annie's fate is, above all, just like that)an enticing story to T. Gradually over shared meals It is a story which she consumes avariciously, both in a friendship grows quest for truth and knowledge, and develops over the seasons as the spill in service of spring turns to summer's simmermyth, through the falter of autumn fable and on to withering winterfantasy. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0992817064</amazonuk>1804271799

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Michael LaubJon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |title=Diary of the FallVaim

|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Diary of the Fall is a story about regret, guilt and resentment. It's told from the point of view of an unnamed narrator, who reflects on not just his own life but also the lives of his father and grandfather.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099581795</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Antoine Laurain, Emily Boyce (translator) and Jane Aitken (translator)|title=The Red Notebook|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Meet Laure. She's a widow in her 40s, who is entering her Parisian apartment building one night when sheAll was strange''s mugged, and her handbag stolen. Meet Laurent, a middle-aged bookseller, who happens upon the handbag the following morning in the street, just before the binmen take it away, never to be seen again. More or less snubbed when trying to hand it to the police as lost property, he decides to take it upon himself to reunite . This haunting phrase encapsulates the bag with its rightful owner. He has no idea their names are so intimately linked, and despite a lot pervading sense of things being otherworldliness which permeates this story set in the bag (including the titular notebook) there is no cashVaim, no phone and no ID documentation at all. What's more – and what looks like making the idea even more fruitless – he has no idea that Laure has fallen into a coma as a result of the mugging…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908313862</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Edward Parnell |title= The Listeners |rating= 4 |genre= Literary Fiction |summary=May 1940. William Abrehart has fictional fishing village in Norway which paradoxically could not spoken since the mysterious death of his father, choosing instead to spend his days in the woods that surround his home. A promise he made to his dying father means that he is responsible feel more real for the wellbeing of his two sisters, Jatgeir and their withdrawn mother. Over the course of a weekendEline, ghosts two of the past cause buried secrets, lies and promises to come spilling out - culminating protagonists caught in a series of shocking eventsits melancholic current. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1781331065</amazonuk>1804271829

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Nadia HashimiClaire-Louise Bennett|title=The Pearl a That Broke Its ShellBig Kiss, Bye-Bye

|summary=Kabul 2007: Rahima Everything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, is steeped in anguish and her sisters are followed home from school one day by distortion. Even a boy on his bike. He taunts them innocently enough as little boys dokiss, but with no sibling brotherusually a symbol of intimacy and closeness, the girls are unchaperoned in this land that is ruled by the laws becomes evidence of menlove lost. And as daughters in a household without sonsWhen the narrator cries out internally, ''come over here and kiss me, in '' it is less an invitation than a country that desperate attempt to confirm her emotional numbness. The imagined recipient of this plea is governed by fearXavier, her ex-partner, the consequences will weigh heavily for them alla ghost she conjures to test her detachment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0062244760</amazonuk>1804271934

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Norah VincentHelene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)|title=Adeline: A Novel of Virginia WoolfLili is Crying|rating=4.5

|summary=Back First published in 1953 in 1999French, when ''The Hours'' won the Pulitzer Prize, Michael Cunningham set a precedent for depicting Woolf's later life and suicide. Nicole Kidman won this novel is a Best Actress Oscar for her role as Woolf in timeless text which wrenches the film version hearts of its readers just as Bessette wrenches words and sentences from their proper position on the novel; she is best remembered for wearing a prosthetic nose. Fast forward 15 years. In 2014–2015 alonepage and positions them elsewhere, disjointed, three major novels about Virginia Woolf have been publishedtruncated. That confluence, especially in a year that does not mark a significant anniversaryLike the lives of her characters, speaks to a continuing interest in Woolf's life and writingsthey are often left tragically incomplete.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0349005648</amazonuk>1804271675

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ivan Repila and Sophie Hughes (translator)Jonathan Buckley|title=The Boy Who Stole Attila's HorseOne Boat

|summary=If you pick up ''One Boat'' is a copy deeply introspective novella that defies traditional narrative structure, drawing the reader into a contemplative realm of this book you realise how small it isphilosophical musings and fragmented memories flowing from our narrator and protagonist, Teresa. You'll know, Set against the evocative backdrop of course, that pockets hardly exist that are normally big enough to hold what we used to call a pocket booksmall coastal Greek town, but here is this work masterfully captures the exception magic of its setting and its power to prove provoke profound introspection. Teresa herself recognises these qualities as the rule. It's wee. The story is on a hundred pages. The concision is partly down to reason she has visited it starting after the beginningdeath of both her parents. Prompted by her mourning, for we first meet Big her narrative voice is meditative and Smalldeeply self-aware, two brothers, once they're stuck down a large well in inviting the middle of a forestreader into her labyrinthine cogitations. Tasked with It is a family errand, they're trapped at the bottom book that not only requires but inspires depth of a natural Erlenmeyer flaskthought, and even a desperate move cannot get either out. This since its narrative structure is the story of the next three months in their existence, as they brave hunger, delirium, loss of language, fragmentary and the brute and unstinting human selfishness needed ironically relies on analepsis for existenceits propulsion.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782271015</amazonuk>1804271764

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jamie KornegayEowyn Ivey|title=SoilBlack Woods Blue Sky

|genre=CrimeLiterary Fiction|summary=Jay Mize is ''Black Woods Blue Sky'' tells the story of Birdie, the young mother of toddler Emaleen, who longs for a life beyond the Alaskan lodge where she works as a scientific man with bar waitress, a particular interest in soil setting which enables her bad habits and agricultureher accidental neglect of Emaleen. He decides he is the one to pioneer Described as a revolution ''wild card'', she feels stuck in farming techniques her day-to-day life, and uproots his wife yearns to cross the Wolverine river and son live on the North Fork to set up an experimental farm on fulfil her desires of a plot of land in the countrysimple life surrounded by nature. Jay is also an obsessive When she meets Arthur Nielson, a strange, taciturn and solitary man and his plans take , who says he has a cabin overthere, becoming his only focus she feels called to go - and causing his family to leave himbring Emaleen with her. Then flooding ruins his crops Without realising it, this calling will transform hers and he is left at the end of his tether; things only get worse when Jay finds a dead body on his land and his tenuous grip on his sanity is releasedEmaleen's lives forever.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473607035</amazonuk>1472279042

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Karen CampbellSally Rooney|title=RiseIntermezzo|rating=4.5|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=Justine Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard of life and is something of a grandmaster at putting it into words. Her dialogue is running for gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, as her lifecharacters never quite say exactly what they feel. She's had enough of being someone else's propertyAmong the many relationships woven into this story, of being subjected the central one for readers to unravel is the kind of love that has seen her tattooed fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and owned and beaten and rented out to others to earn her keepPeter Koubek. So she's taken what isn't hersIvan, a socially awkward chess prodigy, but then was never actually contrasts sharply with his eitherolder brother Peter, and shea successful lawyer living in Dublin. Following their father's packed passing after a baglong battle with cancer, waited until he is drunk-enough asleep not to hear her say goodbye to the dog, and has leftbrothers' already strained relationship faces new trials.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408857928</amazonuk>0571365469

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Dorthe NorsFyodor Dostoyevsky|title=Karate Chop, and Minna Needs Rehearsal SpaceWhite Nights|rating=3.5

|summary=The reviewer picks up As always in Dostoyevsky, the bookcharacter work is sublime.<br>The book One is called ''Minna Needs Rehearsal Space''.<br>The book never left wondering what a character is entirely made out of one-sentence paragraphs.<br>The one-sentence paragraphs are very seldom poetic, but normally are grammatically correct sentences.<br>The one-sentence paragraphs on the whole have just one verb, unless regarding that from reported thinking or unreported speech.<br>The book concerns a middle-aged musician feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and composer who does indeed need rehearsal space.<br>The book concerns a woman who suddenly gets more space than she wants when her boyfriend leaves her.<br>The boyfriend's departure causes a lot of people crowding around Minna, which causes a problem.<br>The problem might be resolved by a trip away from her city flat.<br>The title of the book might be ironictemperaments with remarkable clarity.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782271198</amazonuk>0241619785

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Chigozie ObiomaJames Baldwin|title=The FishermenGiovanni's Room|rating=4.5|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=This book is essentially a cautionary family tale of four brothers and ''Giovanni's Room'' follows the way they react to a prophecy about them by the local madman. It is alsonarrator David, an American man living in a senseParis, as he navigates his torturous affair with Giovanni, an Italian bartender he meets in a coming-of-age story where Ben, the young narrator, is plunged into premature adulthood under the most brutal of circumstancesgay bar. And it While David is about brotherly love. None of these descriptionsengaged to Hella, however, convey the fact that this book who is written by an exciting new voice travelling in African literary fiction.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0957548850</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Jennifer Clement|title=Prayers for Spain, the Stolen|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Ladydi Garcia Martínez lives real tension in rural Chilpancingo, Mexico, with her mother, Rita, who works as a cleaning lady for a rich family. Like many of the men in their town who left to find work, Ladydi's father crossed novel arises not from his infidelity but from the river into America, where he is rumoured to have another familydeeper conflict within himself. As a result, this It is very much a matriarchal community. Rita describes the situation for LadydiDavid's teacher: 'You men don't get it, yet, do you? This is a land crippling shame and denial of womenhis sexuality that ultimately dooms his relationship with Giovanni. Mexico belongs to women.'|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099587599</amazonuk>0141186356

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=David GrossmanAlba de Cespedes |title=Falling Out of TimeForbidden Notebook

|summary=Like the central characters in ''Falling Out This Italian work of feminist fiction holds an air of Time'', Israeli author David Grossman lost his son, a soldier named Uri, during suspense and tension from the Middle East conflict. In this multifaceted examination of bereavementmoment our protagonist, it seems that everyone has lost a child. The genre-bending mixture of poetryValeria Cossati, absurdist dialoguepurchases her forbidden notebook, and an inverted fairy tale reflects learns about herself in the difficulty of ever capturing grief in language. Each story most intimate and each strategy is like a new way of approaching the unspeakablerevealing ways.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099583720</amazonuk>1782278222

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Samantha EllisOttessa Moshfegh|title=How To Be A Heroine: Or, what I've learned from reading too muchMy Year of Rest and Relaxation|rating=43

|summary=''How to be a Heroine'' At best, this novel is a pleasant scathing critique of modern society and addictive read. Playwright Samantha Ellis looks back reveals the fragility of human relationships; at her childhood as a voracious reader and remembers worst, it is the characters that influenced her. These are as diverse as Sylvia Plathcynical, ''Little Women'' predictable and Scheherazade.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099575566</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Ian Walthew|title=The Complex Chemistry slightly trite tale of Loss|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Deep in rural France James Kerr was admitted to a psychiatric clinican unlikeable protagonist. His mental problems were deep and intractable. Superficially he seemed never to have got over the sudden death of his mother and sister when he was This unlikely heroine, a child slim, attractive and after their death his relationship newly orphaned girl in her twenties is disillusioned with his father had deteriorated because his father refused the world, but resolves not to speak of their loss. There were additional factors toolose sleep over it: Kerr had spent some time in Afghanistan in a secret capacity. In fact much of his life since he went to university had involved putting up a front, but doing something else her solution lies in the backgroundher hibernation.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>B00OLMHCW2</amazonuk>1784707422

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Michael ChristieMatthew Tree|title=If I Fall, If I DieWe'll Never Know

|summary=It probably tells you Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, a lot about the atmosphere drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of this book that for the whole time I was reading it, I thought the title was ''If I Fall, I Die''. That missing second ''If'' is probably being exceptional at the crux any of the whole tale.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>043402306X</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Virginia Burges|title=The Virtuoso|rating=3.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=The title character of ''The Virtuoso'' is Isabelle Bryant, a professional violinist his artistic passions all failed miserably and who has earned the affectionate nickname of 'Beethoven's Babe'. She was the youngest-ever winner of the BBC Young Musician of the Year competition and gave her first solo performance, had endless crises of Beethoven's violin concerto, at Royal Albert Hallself confidence. 'Her violin represented another limb So Tim applied himself to herhis studies, it was that precious. It felt so natural, like an extension of her body.' It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that the violin is Isabelle's lifecultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and set himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>B00R07U0B0</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Adam FouldsB0C47LV1PC|title=In The Wolf's MouthFragility|author=Mosby Woods

|summary=In SicilyCan you make a ''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, bandits steal is the sheep of a young shepherd. Distraughtquestion should you make it? Or is the question if you did, he seeks out his local Mafioso would it land? The catch is that the answer for helpboth could well be.... Sixteen years later, two men are traveling to Sicily - one, a young English officer, and the other an American infantrymanno. They are all soon thrust into a war that  ''Fragility'' is greater and more terrible than anything they could have dreamedset as the city of Portland, Oregon, and they all must find different ways cautiously begins to survive its terrors.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009958686X</amazonuk>emerge from the restrictions imposed during the covid pandemic

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Eliza RobertsonMosby Woods|title=WallflowersA Whirly Man Loses His Turn

|genre=Short StoriesLiterary Fiction|summary=Eliza Robertson won The West isn't the Man Booker Scholarship and Curtis Brown Prize while completing her MA dominant force it once was. Nobody in Creative Writing at the University West is quite sure how to mend this or even if mending it is the best course of East Angliaaction. Governments are flailing. ''Wallflowers'' is already A war here, a bestseller in Robertson's native Canadapush for climate action there. There A feeling that nobody is quite some variety across the seventeen storiesin actual charge. Broadly speaking, thoughImagine then, there are was a few themes: moving on from loss, finding love man with precognition. Imagine the strategic advantage in the midst this asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of gentle madnesscircumstances. That man would be valuable, and interactions with right? Perhaps the natural worldmost valuable asset in history. Imagine then, often on the edge of Canada's British Columbia wildernessthat this man loses this ability.What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408856794</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Edith Pearlman0571379559|title=HoneydewThe House of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams|rating=45|genre=Short StoriesLiterary Fiction|summary=American short ''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the story writer [[of four people. Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica:Category:Edith Pearlman|Edith Pearlman]] brings us a compilation of stories that have only been seen separately temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in magazines over the yearshouse on the riverbank, built of broken bricks. This follows on from Insubstantial as it might look, it's stood the huge success passage of time, storms and floods. Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, to complete the delivery rounds - and to bring in sufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, the rainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother'Binocular Visions Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. People don't believe that they' (in 2013)re related, the short story collection much less twins and there's an assumption when Max is out with his mother that led to Ms Pearlman being presented with the National Criticsshe' Circle Awards his nanny. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444797018</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Robert SchneiderClaire North|title=Brother House of SleepOdysseus|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''Brother of SleepWhat could matter more than love?'' The follow-up to the excellent ''Ithaca'' tells picks up a few months after where we left off. In the story palace of Elias Johannes AlderOdysseus, a child born into a god forsaken village high in with delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her husband, who sailed to war at Troy and then by divine intervention never returned home. As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the throne of the Austrian VorarlbergWestern Isles. He came into Having survived – politically and physical – the world as a silent childchaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca's shores, while his mother was screaming and Queen Penelope is on the midwife wasn't really paying attentionbrink of a fragile peace. It took a couple One that shatters however with the return of loud intonations Orestes, King of the Te Deum from the neglectful nurse before he finally uttered a soundMycenae, and his sister Elektra, seeking refuge. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0715649205</amazonuk>0356516075

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Edwidge DanticatKay Chronister|title=Claire of the Sea LightDesert Creatures|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=Claire Limye Lamne (Claire of the Sea Light) With a world that is born in the fishing village of Ville Rosebecoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, Haiti as her mother diespost-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Her father NoziasWhether it is a robotic takeover, a poor fishermanworld devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, spends his life trying to make this genre is a better life way for his baby humans to such an extent cathartically experience their most existential fears. ''Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that he eventually encourages a local fabric seller to take Claire. This happens on the night aligns many of Claire's 7th birthday; the night fears that exist for humanity today. It is a shocking novel that little Claire goes missing before the fabric seller can take herstill manages to find hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782068511</amazonuk>1803364998

{{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Rebecca LeeEric LaRocca|title=Bobcat and Other StoriesThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=3.5|genre=Short StoriesHorror|summary=The first story in 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 ''BobcatBig Bad'' , whether that is the title storya home invader, a monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and this alone is worth , by the price end of admission. Plaster it with prizes, put it in anthologies; it deserves every accolade it can get. However, the last story echoes the first, and beatable. Eric LaRocca's ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. It is a collection of short stories more interested in the five tales in between are strangely repetitivehorrors of illness, most with Midwestern North American narrators grief and 1980s university settingshumiliation. Moreover, all seven Horrors that linger and are in the first-person; I would have appreciated more variety of perspectiveharder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1922182311</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Mary CostelloMadelaine Lucas|title=Academy StreetThirst for Salt|rating=4.5

|summary=It is 1944. Tess Lohan's mother has just died at age 40'Love, I'd read, was supposed to be a light and weightless feeling, of tuberculosis. Seven-year-old Tess is one of six children in but I had always longed for gravity'' Told from a rural Irish family. They live at Easterfieldretrospective view, a centuriesyoung woman unravels the year-old manor houselong relationship that once defined her. A teacher Overlaid with later tells Tess wisdom, the history of narrator relives the affair with a man twenty years her home: built in 1678, it was a famine hospital in senior from its inception – the 1840s; there are numerous corpses buried on summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the landsummer after. He hints there may be many ghosts on Set against the property, but backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the only one that haunts Tess is her dead mother. 24-year-old narrator'Memories and traces of s deepening relationship with her mother must linger older lover, depicting its all over the house – in rooms -consuming nature, how it changed her perspective on both romantic and halls familial relationships and landings. The dent of how it altered her feet on a rugirrevocably. On a cup, the mark of her hand.'|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782114181</amazonuk>0861546490

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Rob DoyleMichael Grothaus|title=Here Are the Young MenBeautiful Shining People

|summary=''Here are I was as worthy as any one of them. I would get on board that ship, I vowed. I would take my place, not just in the name of the goddess. It was for the Young Mensake of my name, too. Atalanta'' surges forward Princess. Warrior. Lover. Hero. Abandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a son, oozing edginess, from Atalanta is raised under the protective eye of the very first sentence. Is that goddess Athemis and fashioned into a bad thing? Probably notformidable huntress, one who longs for adventure. It just means that readers may at times slip out of When the opportunity comes – to join the storyArgonauts, feel themselves taking a step back and admiring the spare coolness fierce band of warriors, descendent from the novel before easing back into Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the narrativechance to fight in Artemis' name and carve out her own legendary place in history. What follows is a whirlwind of challenges and discovery and through it, Atalanta must remember Artemis' fatal warning: that if she marries, it will be her undoing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408863731</amazonuk>1472292154

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Robert EdricAmanthi Harris|title=SanctuaryBeautiful Place|rating=35|genre=Historical Literary Fiction|summary=Everyone knows CharlottePadma, Emily and Annea young Sri Lankan, has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of her home country. This is a place she spent her formative years. Not many know that this famous trio of literary sisters also had It is not a brother, Patrick Branwell Brontëplace she was born into, born but the year after Charlotte and a year before Emilyone she thinks of as home. Like his sisters How she came to be at the Villa, he had literary ambitions: he wrote juvenile storieshow it became her home, poems and translations from the Greek; he also trained as a painter (you machinations that have most likely seen his famous painting of his sisters)flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the ''score'' for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. Again Padma's present fails to escape her past and much like his sistersthe musical score of a film, however, he was destined to die youngthat strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the Villa.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857522876</amazonuk>1784631930

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Takashi Hiraide178563335X|title=The Guest CatSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor|rating=4.5

|summary=When we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and wondering why they'The Guest Catre held when you need to pick the children up. Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter-in-law won' had me at t let her see her grandson. Holthorpe, on the cover. The reflective green material makes Norfolk coast, is a lovely place, but Rachel is struggling to develop a real bond with the catparish - and she's eyes glow and glint eerily in awe of the lightvicar, Gail, but then she's been doing the job for more than thirty years. There is something ethereal and otherworldly about this novella Rachel and Christopher hoped that is before I've even read a single word. This simple story about a Japanese couple and walk on the cat that decides to adopt beach would do them has become an international bestsome good -seller and I it was stormy but it was keen to find out whyprobably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1447279409</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Susan Hill1398515388|title=Black SheepThe Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)

|summary=Mount First of Zeal is a mining villageall, and no mistake. Three concentric semi-circular streets align across it was the side of a hillearthquake, like deep in the rows of seats in an amphitheatreocean floor, with little thought at all allowed for which created the life above the crest of the hilltsunami and this, in turn, and a lot of effort and dreams focused on caused the coal mine at the village's corenuclear meltdown. The Howker family (result was complete and how evocative that name isutter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, so akin to and the noise loss of hawking coal dust livelihoods was widespread. The fact that many pets were separated from one's lungs), and Ted and Rose, their owners came far down the youngest list of priorities but - six months after the clan, in particular, will face the destiny the environment they grow up in gives them – with only the merest glimmers of hope and the faintest of sparks to latch on to as regards tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a likeable futureconvenience store. But if He wasn't a dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that is a faint spark, then how safe is it so close he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the tinderbox of a coal mine?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009953956X</amazonuk>dog jumped in.

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sue Peebles0989715337|title=Snake RoadPapa on the Moon|author=Marco North|rating=4.5

|summary=No one listened when Peggy Kirkpatrick began talking about a baby called Eleanor ''Some frogs had gotten into the well.'' ''Walter stood waist- welldeep in the fragrant water, no one naked except her granddaughter Agathafor his beaten leather hat. You seeLong strands of their eggs wove around him, Peggy is elderly sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Two of the dogs leaned over the opening and she has dementiabarked down at the strange noise of the buckets as he filled them. No one has heard of 'Eleanor'. Some days are better than others, but none are particularly good. Peggy's unpredictable and sometimes it  How is - quite literally - a fight to wash her and she'll either go outside in her nightdress or wear multiple skirts indoors. that for an opening? The burden is carried most style of this novel in the time by her daughterform of interconnected short stories goes from succinct and laconic to wistful and musing, Maryturning on a sixpence. And author Marco North, but it's Aggie who attends has the dementia carers' group in her place and it was probably this that provoked her into listening more carefully most wonderful turn of phrase, starts as he means to what her Gran was saying and trying to learn more about her history in the hope of keeping Peggy in the presentgo on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099575841</amazonuk>