'''Read [[Features|new features]].'''
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{{newreview
|author=Mal Peet and Elspeth Graham
|title=Cloud Tea Monkeys
|rating=4
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=Tashi and her mother live below a tea plantation in India. Usually Tashi goes along with her mum, and whilst mum picks tea leaves with the other women, Tashi sits under a tree and plays with a group of monkeys, sharing her fruit with them, allowing them to groom her and playing with the little baby monkeys. One morning, Tashi's mum is too poorly to go to work, so Tashi struggles with the big tea basket herself. The plantation owner derides her, saying she is too little to pick the tea, and Tashi is worried about how she and her mother will cope with no money to get her mum a doctor, or to buy food. She shares her worries with her monkey friends and somehow, at the end of the day, Tashi's basket is full of beautiful, fresh, fragrant tea leaves that are a very rare type of tea called 'Cloud Tea'.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1406300926</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Alice Taylor
|summary=A clever, comic delight, pitch-perfect, astutely observed, particularly insightful, must-read. Crumbs. Whatever else is there to say about Nick Hornby's latest book that isn't already plastered on this newly-published paperback edition? I can only report that ''Juliet,'' ''Naked'' bowled me over with yet another Hornby strike.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141020644</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Joanne Owen
|title=The Alchemist and the Angel
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=When Jan's parents die of the plague, he is sent to the great city of Vienna to live with his aunt and uncle. His uncle is a distinguished alchemist, and, hoping to take the boy's mind off his grief, hires him as his apprentice. Jan loves the work, learns quickly, and soon the two of them are on the verge of perfecting a serum said to bring the dead back to life. But then his uncle is found dead, and Jan is being whisked off to Prague by his vain and calculating aunt. She has her own plans for the serum, and she will stop at nothing to accomplish them.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444001507</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Tom Connolly
|title=The Spider Truces
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The title of this debut novel by Tom Connolly is enigmatic, mysterious. It draws the reader in - just like a fly to a spider's web. And in fairness 'The Spider Truces' does exactly what it say on the tin as the main character, Ellis, is obsessed and terrified in equal measure, of spiders.
... and when you live in an old house, as the O'Rourke family does, there are plenty of spiders and other creepy crawlies about.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956251528</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=William Hussey
|title=Witchfinder: Dawn of the Demontide
|rating=4
|genre=Teens
|summary=Jake is a rather solitary person. He's bright but bored by school and he's obsessed with horror comics. He owns an amazing collection and he knows all the stories and myths and folklores off by heart. Little does he realise that everything he reads about is real, and the Demontide is almost upon him.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0192731904</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Mary Yukari Waters
|title=The Favorites
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=This story is set in Kyoto, Japan, starting in June 1978. Fourteen year old Sarah Rexford and her Japanese mother, Yoko, have come back from the US to stay with family for a few weeks. Sarah was born and brought up in Japan but has lived in the US with her mother and white American father for five years. She is very conscious of the differences between life in Kyoto and in Fielder's Butte, California. Here in Kyoto, the women, including Sarah and her mum, go shopping every day for food, and the food is very different – in an opening scene, Sarah is trying to explain to her grandfather what she normally has for breakfast in the US, and becoming aware of the gulf between her life in Japan and in California.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847392334</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Laura Powell
|title=The Master of Misrule
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
|summary=In the Arcanum, fortunes could be won and lost. The bizarre otherworld, just the slightest shift away from our own, had been home to a life-altering game of chance, power and intelligence, based on the tarot. Four teenaged Londoners had been witness to this, then players. But they'd found it wanting, and to level the playing field, had thrown out the rulebook. With that, however, the referee is no more, and the Lord of Misrule is in charge. Free, too, to smother all of Britain with his unique brand of scratch-card lottery. Soon all humanity might be out of luck.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408302373</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Marie-Louise Fitzpatrick
|title=Timecatcher
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Jessie Minahan is a pretty average fictional twelve year old girl: she has a dog side-kick named Duff and she craves adventure. One day, when her scatty mother has an urgent need for buttons Jessie discovers the abandoned Dublin Button Factory in an old mill, now inhabited by two detectives, who have a big, big secret. She also meets G who is not your average fictional twelve year old boy - for one, he's dead. His worst enemy is Greenwood – a large ghost who lives in the mill and is full of rules. Greenwood is also involved in this big secret which Jessie and G soon discover is the Timecatcher. It opens every seven years for three days and reveals the past - 'shadow days' and 'shadow people'. It is about to open again and there is a ghostly villain named Sullivan Ellz'mede who would do anything to have the power source at its heart...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1842556770</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Rose Tremain
|title=Trespass
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Set in the hills of Southern France, Trespass is a novel about sibling love and rivalry, disputed territory and ultimately revenge. In the French corner are Aramon Lunel, resident of the Mas Lunel, and his sister Audrun who lives in a cottage in the grounds. In the English corner are Victoria Verey, a garden designer, and her partner, an untalented watercolourist, Kitty. The catalyst that brings these together is the arrival in France of Anthony Verey, Victoria's sister whose exclusive antiques business in London is failing and who decides to follow his sister in finding a new life in France. Aramon is tempted to sell his family Mas by the lure of 'foreign' money even if that means that his sister's house has to be destroyed to secure the deal.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701177942</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Philip Ardagh
|title=The Wrong End of the Dog (Grubtown Tales)
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=If you haven't been to Grubtown before, then feel welcome. It's an auspicious day for the town of grubby and inept people with names like Rambo Sanskrit, and Mango Claptrap, as well. For today is the day of film star Tawdrey Hipbone's gala charity premiere. But there's to be no gala, and little charity either, when a pelican (and not the town mascot either, but a different one) comes and steals - yes, steals - the beloved dog Snooks - yes, Snooks - from where he was living the fine life in Tawdrey's hair - yes, hair.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>057124792X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Christi Phillips
|title=The Devlin Diary
|rating=3
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=It is 1672 and Hannah Devlin, a young widow with a skill for (illegally) practicing medicine finds herself being all but kidnapped by King Charles II's advisors and forced to use her skills to treat his mistress, Louise de Keroualle.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847393489</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Pauline Fisk
|title=In the Trees
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
|summary=Since his mother died, Kid has been staying with Nadine and flipping burgers in a fast food joint after school. It's not an exciting life, but he isn't unhappy. And then Nadine gets a boyfriend and the flat gets rather cramped. And then a box of his mother's possessions arrives. Inside, he finds a photo of the father he's never met and a copy of his birth certificate, which tells him that his father comes from Belize. And suddenly, Kid makes a decision. He's going nowhere fast in London, so he's going to head out to Belize and find the man in the photo. He's on a plane within days.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571236200</amazonuk>
}}
