'''Read [[Features|new features]].'''
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{{newreview
|author=Vyvyen Brendon
|title=Prep School Children: A Class Apart Over Two Centuries
|rating=4
|genre=Home and Family
|summary=''Prep School Children'' is Vyvyen Brendon's second collection (''Children of the Raj'' was the first). It explores the pupil experience, using primary sources like weekly letters home, memoirs and interviews, and less immediate material such as fiction, school magazines and headmasters' biographies. I came to the book with some questions: what was it like to be a boarder at a prep school? What difference did a prep school education make to life as an adult? Why parents might send their children to such schools when the horrors were well-known, many of the dads presumably having survived the experience themselves.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847062873</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|summary=At first glance this 700-page volume might look a little daunting. Do not be daunted. If you want a small pocket book which merely scratches at the surface and can probably be digested in a sitting or two, look elsewhere. On the other hand, if you want an extremely readable and comprehensive book on jazz which can not only be read cover to cover, but also retained as a work of reference to use again and again, I doubt if this can be bettered.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0393068617</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Richard Wrangham
|title=Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human
|rating=4.5
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=Humans are cooking apes. According to Richard Wrangham, mastery of fire and cooking of the food that resulted from it was at the root of human evolutionary development and ultimate success. Various factors have been proposed as the crucial stimulus which led to the appearance of the first recognisably human creatures: leaving aside divine intervention (be it from God, extra-terrestrials or future humans travelling in time), the candidates for what made our ancestral apes stand straighter and start growing brains range from socialised hunting to chattering about kinship to eating seafood.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846682851</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Morag Joss
|title=The Night Following
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Distracted by the discovery that her husband has been having an affair, a middle-aged woman loses concentration while driving along a quiet lane, killing Ruth Mitchell, an elderly cyclist. The woman doesn't wait for the police to arrive; she goes home and parks her car in the garage where she smashes it almost beyond recognition. When her arrogant husband sees the damage he believes it's been done to punish him and he packs his bags. After a few days the woman goes to the home of the dead woman; she doesn't go to the door, but from a hidden spot nearby she can see the widower, an elderly gentleman who is clearly not coping well. Wracked with guilt, the woman makes a decision: the only way she can atone for her actions is to step into the shoes of the dead woman.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0715638815</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Nigel McCrery
|title=Tooth and Claw
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=Another serial killer is on the loose, and yet again the police have failed to connect the deaths. Carl Whittley has just tortured a glamorous TV presenter to death - leaving a singularly gruesome tableau - and blown a hapless commuter to smithereens at a railway station. He's planning his next murder already, secreted away in the shed at the bottom of the garden of the house he shares with his invalid father. Carl is embittered and lonely - with his mother living away and pursuing a career as a forensic psychologist, there's only him to take care of his severely disabled father: to change the colostomy bag, to cook, to clean, to, well, just to bear it, really.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847248071</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Nick Hornby
|title=An Education: The Screenplay
|rating=5
|genre=Entertainment
|summary=Adroit marketing? Well, yes. ''An Education'' has been published, of course, to coincide with the film's general release in the UK. Hardly surprising since our national appetite for nosiness seems insatiable and cosy background details prop up every telly series and film these days. As well as the screenplay, Nick Hornby has provided an introduction and diary of the film's successful premiere at the Sundance Festival in Utah. Beyond trivia, I think this fascinating little book presents an excellent 'how to' guide for wannabes from one of Britain's most respected screen and novel writers.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141044748</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=The Harvard Lampoon
|title=Nightlight: A Parody of Twilight
|rating=3.5
|genre=Humour
|summary=Most people will have heard of the worldwide phenomenon that is [[Twilight by Stephenie Meyer|Twilight]]. The books by Stephenie Meyer and the film have made a legend of the romance between vampire Edward Mullen (Robert Pattinson plays the movie role) and teenage schoolgirl Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart).
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849013330</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Kate Elliott
|title=Traitors' Gate (Crossroads)
|rating=4
|genre=Fantasy
|summary=Kate Elliott's ''Crossroads'' series has so far come in large, slightly off-putting chunks. They've been decent reads, by and large, with a huge cast of wonderfully drawn characters, but the sheer size and slow pace of the action has meant I didn't enjoy them as much as I may otherwise have done. ''Traitors' Gate'', the third in the sequence is different in only one aspect; the character development is still there, the huge page count is still there, but the pacing is a lot better.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1841498351</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Shirley Jackson
|title=The Haunting of Hill House
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=There was a time before Stephen King. There was time before ''The Shining''. There was a time when 'horror' was not rooted in blood, guts and gore. I owe a slight apology to Mr King, because along with the gutsier side of the genre, I will own that he is a master at suspense.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141191449</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jill Tomlinson and Paul Howard
|title=The Penguin Who Wanted To Find Out
|rating=4.5
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=Otto the penguin lives on his father's feet at the bottom of the world. He's an inquisitive little thing and wants to know why they haven't fallen off the world. His dad explains that they won't Because I say so. Otto and his friend Leo gradually expand their horizons from their fathers' feet - they meet other penguin chicks, get to know their aunts who watch them when their fathers are away, and eventually grow feathers so they're big enough to toboggan on their bellies and swim in the sea.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>140523041X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Ryan David Jahn
|title=Acts of Violence
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=Kat Marino is stabbed on her way home from work. All she wanted was a hot bath after a hard day's work. From this point the novel skips nimbly from one neighbour to the next, all of whom are absorbed in their own dilemmas. There is the draftee with a sick mother, the nurse who thinks she has run over a baby, the woman who suspects her husband of cheating and others. We are shown what these characters were doing that evening, and how these events drag through to the morning. We are shown how in the midst of their own interesting, poignant and dangerous concerns a woman is stabbed in the courtyard onto which all their windows look, through which windows they witness the attack, and how these people did nothing.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230743595</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Josh Lacey
|title=Two Tigers on a String
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Ben's not too keen to be sharing his bedroom with his half-brother, Frank. But you don't have to be the hero of a detective adventure such as this book to know that as Frank's mother has vanished from the face of the Earth, Ben will let it lie - for a while. Nor is it too surprising to see the four Misfitz together, on another case, as they go on the hunt for the missing woman.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1407109782</amazonuk>
}}
