'''Read [[Features|new features]].'''
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{{newreview
|author=Roger Hargreaves
|title=Mr Nobody (Mr Men and Little Misses)
|rating=4.5
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=Mr Nobody is... well, he's somebody who sort of is and sort of isn't. Mr Happy comes across him one day, and does his best to cheer him up. Who could possibly help a person who's sort of there and sort of isn't? Ah, the Wizard!
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1405251425</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Tony Mitton and Guy Parker-Rees
Sixteen years later, his family are still waiting to find out what happened to him. Now in her twenties, Sarah is teaching at a local private school while looking after her uncaring mother, who since Charlie's disappearance has slid into alcoholism.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091935997</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Matthew Condon
|title=The Trout Opera
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Judges Carrington and Thorpe recline in leather armchairs on the verandah of Buckley's Crossing hotel and watch in silence as a giant trout shuffles across the bridge.
The Judges, despite their initial prominence and convincing back-story giving them a valid reason for being in Buckley's Crossing, will not really concern us. They are there to represent a type: a visitor to small town Australia, a fisherman from the city, a seeker after something in the Snowy that probably isn't fish.
We shall, however, be concerned with the giant trout.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>038561506X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Kate Morton
|title=The Forgotten Garden
|rating=4
|genre=Women's Fiction
|summary=Just before the First World War a little girl was found abandoned on the wharf after a dreadful sea voyage from England to Australia. She appears not to know her name – or is unwilling to tell it – and all she will say is that a mysterious lady she calls the Authoress had promised to look after her. There's no trace of her though and the little girl was taken in a by a friendly family. She forgot all about the events until many years later when her adopted father told her what had happened.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330449605</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=John Van der Kiste
|title=William and Mary: Heroes of the Glorious Revolution
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=At school I remember spending a lot of time on the Tudors and the early Stuarts – obviously great favourites of the history teacher and then galloping unceremoniously through the intervening years until we reached another ''meaningful'' period – the Victorian era. The importance of William and Mary was completely overlooked in favour of a quick mention of the fact that William wasn't in direct line of succession to the throne and Mary had never wanted to marry him in the first place. Their successor, Queen Anne I remember simply as 'tables'.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>075094577X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Samuel Bonner
|title=Playground
|rating=3
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Jonah grew up in London but his mother, getting increasingly worried about social disintegration and increasing crime, has moved them up to Nottingham. Jonah is a bright lad and halfway through a media course, but he's finding it difficult to fit in. He's also finding the new racial mix a problem - there's palpable tension between black and brown-skinned people on campus, and he often feels alienated and a bit like a fish out of water.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1902835190</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Clare Morrall
|title=The Man Who Disappeared
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=I was drawn to this book straight away. Firstly, the jacket cover is lovely. The subliminal message is read me, please read me. We are introduced to the Kendall family; mother, father and three children. All leading unremarkable, rather ordinary lives. The father, Felix, works hard to provide for his family. He loves them all dearly. They all love him back. It is a secure family unit. Until - completely out of the blue - he simply disappears. His family is distraught and mystified. We all know that a person cannot simply disappear. But Felix Kendall has taken himself off the radar. Why?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340994274</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Ellie Sandall
|title=Birdsong
|rating=4.5
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=One by one the birds land on the branch. Each is a different species, each has different plumage, and most importantly each has a different call. The chorus of birdsong builds up and up and up until the biggest bird of all lands on the branch, with his loud shriek. Ah, but who's this about to land on the branch with him?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1405247371</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Joan Brady
|title=Venom
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=David Marion isn't used to finding hitmen standing at his front door, though you wouldn't be able to tell that such a thing might be true, given the speed and competency with which Marion dispatches said hitman and then disappears, seemingly, off the face of the Earth.
Dr. Helen Freyl is a physicist working for one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. She is also, up until his disappearance, David Marion's sometime lover and is grief-stricken to the point of distraction by his sudden absence from her life, as she believes him to be dead.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0743267907</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Cathy Marie Buchanan
|title=The Day The Falls Stood Still
|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=I imagined this title as a 'Gone With the Wind' sort of novel, a saga-esque historical romance, with a characterful heroine and page-turning story line that necessitates reading late into the night. Well, I wasn't disappointed in this paperback edition of the hardback, already a best-seller in the U.S.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091925967</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Anu Stohner and Henrike Wilson
|title=Charlotte and the Wolves
|rating=3.5
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=Hot on the heels of her adventure in [[Brave Charlotte by Anu Stohner and Henrike Wilson|Brave Charlotte]], the brave little sheep is back. She's as bold as ever, and the older sheep have stopped worrying about her wild ways. Added into the mix are a gang of teenage sheep who call themselves The Wolves and worry the lambs. When real wolf howls can be heard, but not by the shepherd or Jack the old sheepdog, it's down to Charlotte to save the day again.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408802589</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Hiawyn Oram and Sarah Warburton
|title=Rumblewick and the Dinner Dragons (The Rumblewick Letters)
|rating=3.5
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=Haggy Aggy is an unscary witch and decides she wants to make friends with dragons. Her cat, Rumblewick Spellwacker Mortimer B, is a little unsure of this, so writes to his friend Grimey for advice. Their correspondence fills this latest book in the ''Rumblewick Letters'' series, following on from [[My Unwilling Witch (The Rumblewick Letters) by Hiawyn Oram|My Unwilling Witch]].
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846160642</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Glenn Dakin
|title=Candle Man: The Society of Unrelenting Vigilance
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
|summary=Birthdays for Theo are not exactly how we would recognise them. One bland, forgettable present from each of the three people who live in his household. Some pink cake at the best of times. A trip to the cemetery, with the butler making sure nobody else is in sight. But this one is different - some person unknown leaves something for him. And by the time burglars break in, and force Theo to leave the confines of his bedroom and find some of the secrets of the house, it is too late - Theo is set on a nightmarish trail between two warring forces, as the truths of his destiny, his origins, and his hands, come to the fore.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1405246766</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Christopher Isherwood
|title=A Single Man
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=If you've ever wanted to know what goes on inside someone's mind you'll love this short novel, first published back in 1964. We join George Falconer just at the moment he awakes from sleep and witness his innermost thoughts as he goes about a typical day. It all sounds pretty dull and monotonous but what makes this exciting is that George isn't just any old professor living the American Dream, oh no, he's so detached from the banal normality of the world that he's almost outside of his own body at times.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099548828</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Celine Kiernan
|title=The Poison Throne (Moorehawke Trilogy)
|rating=3
|genre=Teens
|summary=In ''The Poison Throne'' what had been a benevolent kingdom has become characterised by repression and torture (which the book graphically describes). The magical aspects of the kingdom, its talking cats and ghosts, have been suppressed, while Alberon, the heir to the throne, has vanished. Wynter, along with Alberon's half brother Razi and his friend Christopher are increasingly at risk as they attempt to deal with this situation.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1841498211</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Emily Chan
|title=Harvard Business School Confidential: Secrets of Success
|rating=3.5
|genre=Business and Finance
|summary=Harvard Business School has an almost unrivalled reputation for schooling some of the greatest business leaders (and George W Bush!). Former graduate, Emily Chan, who went on to work for leading management consultancy Boston Consulting Group and who is now a director in a family direct investment business in Hong Kong, promises to offer the secrets she learnt there. Does she succeed?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0470822392</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jo Brand
|title=The More You Ignore Me
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Alice is growing up in a cottage in Herefordshire with her gentle, hippy father and her mother, Gina, who spends her days standing around like a chain-smoking zombie because she is kept on medication and has been for years. Gina's first psychotic episode occured after Alice's birth. Then there was the episode Alice remembers, the day her mother climbed onto the roof, naked, holding Smelly the hamster, and refused to come down. From that day, the old Gina, boisterous and unconventional as she was, fell silent under the numbing impact of constant medication. Jo Brand tells the story of how Alice coped with the loneliness and worry of growing up with an ill mother. Most importantly, as I'm sure the teenage Alice would see it, we are shown the birth and life of her obsession with Morrissey of The Smiths. In his music she finds escapism and comfort and in him she finds a figure to adore. Her friends can't understand her fixation and her mother understands fixation a little too well (the local weatherman having been the object of one of her fervent obsessions). Morrissey sings with such sensitivity and angst that surely, Alice thinks, if she could just meet him and tell him her story he could help her and she could help him...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755322320</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Bee Rowlatt and May Witwit
|title=Talking About Jane Austen in Baghdad: The True Story of an Unlikely Friendship
|rating=5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=In early 2005, a BBC journalist emails an Iraqi woman to confirm and prepare for a telephone interview about day to day life in Baghdad, and about her thoughts on the forthcoming elections there. May's detailed and frank responses prompt more curiosity and questions from Bee, and a friendship develops between the two women. They tell each other about their work, relationships and family lives.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141038535</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Diana Wynne-Jones
|title=Enchanted Glass
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Andrew Hope, a rather woolly professor, learns that his magical grandfather has died, leaving him his house and his field-of-care. Andrew remembers some things from when he was a little boy, such as his grandfather leaving vegetables on the roof of the shed for someone, or something, to eat each night. He also remembers that there is something special about the beautiful, old coloured glass above the kitchen door, but not exactly what that is. It seems he has forgotten a lot of what his grandfather taught him, including the mystery of the field-of-care he has inherited. But with the entrance of Aidan Cain, an orphan, into his house and his life the mysteries deepen. The two are drawn to each other, however, and slowly start to unravel the truth that surrounds them.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007320787</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=James Delgado
|title=Kamikaze: History's Greatest Naval Disaster
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=When Mongol leader, Khubilai Khan, achieved what his Grandfather Genghis had failed to do in conquering China, he inherited the world's largest and most sophisticated navy. However, in attempting to utilise this to expand his empire further to Java, Vietnam and mainly Japan, he lost the entire armada in a few short years. New marine archeological evidence from Japan, ironically with the site discovered in the 1990s in the construction of new defences from the weather, has raised questions on the traditional view that the defeat of the two Japanese invasion forces of 1274 and particlularly 1281 were solely due to the intervention of the weather and what Japanese culture claim was a Kamikaze (or ''divine wind'') summoned by the Gods.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099532581</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Sarah Bakewell
|title=How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer
|rating=5
|genre=Biography
|summary='Chance … really the way things happen,' wrote Howard Beck, the Chicago School sociologist. I visit Bookbag Towers with few preconceived ideas about the next book for review. I'll allow myself to fall for a quirky title or appealing cover, despite only a smattering of interest in the subject matter. Just occasionally this way, I stumble on a golden nugget so fascinating and well-written that I realise how lucky I am to be a reviewer. I'm so pleased to have chanced upon this inviting biography of Montaigne by Sarah Bakewell!
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701178922</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=David Conway and Melanie Williamson
|title=The Great Nursery Rhyme Disaster
|rating=4
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=Little Miss Muffet is fed up of being constantly scared by a spider, so she ups sticks and heads for a different page of the book, to see if the characters of another nursery rhyme will let her join in. She tries one rhyme after another, but things never quite work to plan. Will she find a nursery rhyme that suits her to a T?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340945087</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Alistair Duncan
|title=The Norwood Author - Arthur Conan Doyle and the Norwood Years (1891 - 1894)
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=At the age of 32 Dr Arthur Conan Doyle moved from London to a house in South Norwood, at that time part of Surrey, in June 1891. It found him at the stage when he was torn between pursuing a career as an eye specialist and trying to make a living through his writing, after he had sold a few stories to magazines. Shortly before the move, he had been confined to bed for three weeks with influenza, and while recovering from what had briefly threatened to be a fatal illness (or so he believed), he took the decision to abandon medicine in favour of becoming a full-time author. A few Sherlock Holmes stories had been published, but the man with the deerstalker and pipe had yet to make an impact on the reading public, and his creator could not yet call himself an established writer. Nevertheless, within the next few years he and the fictional detective were to become household names.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904312691</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jean Ure
|title=Ice Lolly
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=It's the funeral. Laurel - Lolly to those that love her - is concentrating very hard and trying desperately to turn into an ice lolly. Ice lollies are frozen, you see, and they don't feel so much. They can't miss people - mothers - who are gone and people who are still around can't hurt them. A frozen heart is a sad thing, but it's a safe thing. Auntie Ellen doesn't like the music at the service, she thinks it's inappropriate. It isn't even a hymn. But it was one of Laurel's mother's favourites, and Laurel think it's just perfect. Special.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007281730</amazonuk>
}}
