'''Read [[Features|new features]].'''
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{{newreview
|author=Dervla Murphy
|title=The Island That Dared: Journeys in Cuba
|rating=4
|genre=Travel
|summary=In her latest literary outing, the now elderly and increasingly opinionated travel writer and veteran cyclist Dervla Murphy describes a series of trips to Cuba. The opening section deals with a family trip in late 2005. Readers who have followed Dervla's books from the beginning will have grown up with Rachel, the author's daughter, who accompanied her on a number of trips between the ages of five and eighteen. Now Dervla travels with Rachel and Rachel's three young daughters, Clodagh, Rose and Zea, known for ease throughout the book as ''the Trio''. The middle section sees Dervla return alone to spend several months trekking in places such as the Sierra del Escambray mountains, and in the final third of the book, Dervla returns to the city of Santa Clara for the commemoration of the fortieth anniversary of the death of Ernesto ''Che'' Guevara.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>190601146X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Elizabeth Kostova
|summary=We first met Jenny Cooper in [[The Coroner by M R Hall|The Coroner]] when she had just taken over as Coroner for Severn Valley. It's now some months later and whilst she's settled into the job to some extent her relationship with her officer, Alison, is uneven and she's still shaky mentally and dependant on pills to a greater extent than she would care to admit. She's a feisty woman though and determined that she's going to do the job properly.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230709850</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Ann Pearlman
|title=The Cookie Club
|rating=5
|genre=Women's Fiction
|summary=Chocolate bonbons with an almond glaze. Peanut butter cookies double dipped in chocolate. Coffee and raisin hermit biscuits. Crisp vanilla fingers with toasted almonds. Thin crunchy crisps flavoured with molasses and ginger.
If you're even the slightest bit peckish after that, I guarantee you'll be starving by the time you finish this wonderful book full of festive flavour.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847376843</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Carlo Collodi and Sara Fanelli
|title=Pinocchio
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Pinocchio, as you all know, is a little wooden puppet, who wants to be a real boy. He's very badly behaved, and always getting into trouble. Will he listen to the advice of Gepetto, the cricket or the fairy? Will he become real? What's it like if he doesn't break into a Disney song every two minutes?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1406317470</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Ursula Dubosarsky and Andrew Joyner
|title=The Terrible Plop
|rating=3.5
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=The rabbits are sitting by the lake, munching on cake and carrots. An apple falls in, with a terrible plop, and they scamper off scared. All the other animals join in the stampede and get as far away as they can from the terrible plop. Bear is far too big and grumpy to be scared, so he gets the littlest rabbit to show him just where the scariness lies...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1405251379</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=John Ward
|title=The Comet's Child
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Teenage Fin is rescued from his remote forest home by Ragg, the first man he has ever encountered. Having such a sheltered childhood has equipped Fin with the speech and education of a nobleman's son but little idea about the real world. Other than relying on his instincts and resourcefulness, Fin has no way of knowing who to trust, or where he is bound as he leaves home with Ragg.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1905537123</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Robert Jackson Bennett
|title=Mr Shivers
|rating=5
|genre=Horror
|summary=Marcus Connelly, a quiet, reserved and private man, has recently joined the mass of humanity travelling west in search of work. It's the Midwest in the 1930s and the Great Depression is in full swing. The dustbowl is a desperate place and there's none more desperate than Connelly. But Connelly doesn't need a job and he has a wife and a home. Connelly isn't missing prosperity; he's missing his daughter, and he's in search of the man who killed her.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1841498572</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Neil Cross
|title=Captured
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=Kenny is dying - brain cancer is hitting him just as he's barely turning forty. As a result he compiles a short list of rights to wrong, and people to create closure with. One, his ex-wife, might not be easy, two concern a misguided sense of a guilt of old. The fourth turns out to be a missing woman. The journey he takes in that redemptive exercise is not for the squeamish.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847373976</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=The Economist
|title=The World of Business: From Valuable Brands and Games Directors Play to Bail-Outs and Bad Boys
|rating=5
|genre=Business and Finance
|summary=For years I've been a great fan of The Economist's [[Pocket World in Figures 2010 by The Economist|Pocket World in Figures]] series with all the unbiased statistics which the average person could want. I was just a little nervous when I opened ''The World of Business'' – just in case it was going to be a disappointment – but I needn't have worried.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846681588</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Rachel Renee Russell
|title=Dork Diaries
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=I do like a blurb to be accurate. So when I saw the back cover of this book state the obvious to me, "Diary of a Wimpy Kid for girls!", I could rest assured. I didn't relax fully, however, for I'd read [[Rodrick Rules (Diary of a Wimpy Kid) by Jeff Kinney|the blue one]] of those and found it a bit feeble, and [[Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days by Jeff Kinney|the yellow one]] and found it a bit fabulous, so I couldn't guarantee any feminine, pink variant would be worth my time.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847387411</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Val Doonican
|title=My Story, My Life: Val Doonican - The Complete Autobiography
|rating=4.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=In the 1960s, if Harold Wilson was the personification of politics and the Beatles the collective icon of youth culture, Val Doonican was similarly at the very apex of light entertainment. He may no longer have such a high profile – but he's outlasted them both. Over four decades he has refused to bow to passing fads and fashions, remained true to himself, and in the process he has never really put a foot wrong. As he says towards the end, 'When you find out what it is you do best, and what the public wants from you, then stick with it, and do it as well as you can.' With the possible exception of his contemporary and long-time professional and personal friend Rolf Harris, it's difficult to think of another person in showbiz who comes across as more genuinely likeable, and more a genuine case of 'what you see is what you get'.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906779619</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Su Tong
|title=The Boat to Redemption
|rating=3
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Ku Dongliang and his father, Ku Wenxuan, are forced to live on a barge on the river following Ku Wenxuan's fall from grace. Originally believed to be the son of a revolutionary martyr, it is eventually proved that Mr Ku was not so - as a result, his position in society takes a nose-dive. Dongliang suffers as a result of this, finding it hard to make friends within the barge community and on shore. Then an orphaned girl moves onto the barges and finds a place in Dongliang's apparently cold heart. Will she be able to take him out of himself? Or will she, too, turn her back on him?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>038561344X</amazonuk>
}}