'''Read [[Features|new features]].'''
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{{newreview
|author=Nancy Holder and Debbie Viguie
|title=Legacy and Spellbound (Wicked)
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
|summary=Holly Cathers has returned, and this time, she's more powerful than ever. The war between the House of Cahors witches and House of Deveraux warlocks still rages on, and only one side will eventually triumph.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184738689X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|summary=As the fictional schoolboy hero Nigel Molesworth might have said, 'any fule kno' that Adolf Hitler was notorious for burning books. Nevertheless he was also an avid collector and passionate reader, as around 1200 surviving volumes once in his possession now in the Rare Book Division of the Library of Congress, and a smaller quantity in Brown University, Rhode Island, demonstrate. Among them were world literature classics, such as 'Robinson Crusoe', 'Uncle Tom's Cabin', and 'Gulliver's Travels'. He also owned an edition of the collected works of Shakespeare, in hand-tooled Moroccan leather with a gold-embossed eagle flanked by his initials on the spine. The Bard, he once said, was greatly superior to Goethe and Schiller.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099532174</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Druin Burch
|title=Taking the Medicine
|rating=5
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=In 1898, Burch points out that a new drug was developed and marketed for the treatment of tuberculosis by Bayer & Co. TB is such an ancient enemy of man that there is apparently evidence of an earlier strain to be found in Egyptian mummies. The German firm had discovered a chemical that seemed to work well, and patients and indeed their own staff, who were tested seemed to respond well - it was named Heroin - and its addictive effects were at first missed.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845951506</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Gigi Amateau
|title=Chancey
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Chancey's dam was Starry Night and her owner loved that horse so much that she wanted a foal who was exactly like her, but when Chancey was born she was bitterly disappointed for instead of the black Appaloosa with white marking Chancey was born albino. It was only his striped hooves which proved his breeding. The owner was not big enough to overcome her feelings and when she fell on hard times it was Chancey who was left out in the field to suffer despite the fact that he was no longer a young horse.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>140632258X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Sian Rees
|title=Sweet Water and Bitter: The Ships That Stopped the Slave Trade
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=The Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was passed in Britain in March 1807, and the last legal British slave ship left Africa seven months later. Other countries were slow to follow suit. Everyone in Britain knew there would be resistance, and when the abolitionist Granville Sharpe purchased land in Sierra Leone to 'repatriate' freed slaves, Ottobah Cugoana, a former slave living in London, asked if it was possible for 'a fountain to send forth both sweet water and bitter.' Could the slave trade, he wondered, be abolished from West Africa - when West Africa was its source?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845951174</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Sapphire
|title=Precious
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Precious Jones is a sixteen year old black girl from Harlem – well she's never actually been out of Harlem – and when we meet her she's pregnant by her own father for the second time. Her first child was a girl and she was born with Down's Syndrome. With unconscious irony Precious calls her ''Little Mongo'' and leaves her to live with her grandmother. When her second pregnancy becomes obvious she's expelled from school and joins an alternative education programme. Precious really wants to learn and the book is the story of her journey from illiteracy to maturity.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099548720</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Dean Hale, Shannon Hale and Nathan Hale
|title=Calamity Jack
|rating=3.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=''I was born to scheme'', declares our hero Jack. With flashbacks we see the young lad and a pixie friend, larking about for revenge or small profit. But when his mother's bakery gets more and more into the red, the size of the profit has to increase. And when you add in revenge against the local crime lord - a giant of a man - so does the size of the target of the jape.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0747587426</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Sue Grafton
|title=U is for Undertow
|rating=5
|genre=Crime
|summary=Several years ago I joined a funny little book group in London, and one of the first books we read was a Sue Grafton alphabet book. I had, up to this point, never read any crime fiction, foolishly feeling myself above such books, and so I was dubious about what I'd have to say about it. That book changed my literary life. I devoured it. I couldn't get enough! I immediately searched for all the other books in the series and read them quickly, one by one, swiftly followed by a delicious plunge into the world of Agatha Christie which gave me a joyously long reading list. And so now, years later, I find myself with the latest book in the alphabet series lying in my lap, a happy smile on my face as I found I read voraciously once again!
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>023070932X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jethro Adlington
|title=Online Therapy: Reading Between the Lines
|rating=4
|genre=Home and Family
|summary=You can get most things online these days and even therapy is becoming more widely available on the internet. It might seem like a simple step to take but many of the signals beyond the spoken word are not available to the online therapist. In a face-to-face situation body language is an added form of communication and even small changes in skin tone can give clues as to state of mind. In a situation where these clues are not available it's essential to make the most of ''all'' the clues offered by the written word.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904312748</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Laurie Halse Anderson
|title=Chains
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
|summary=Isabel and her sister Ruth are slaves. But they should be free - Miss Mary Finch left a will that said so. But Miss Mary Finch is dead and her greedy nephew and heir denies all knowledge of the will. So Isabel and Ruth are sold to the Locktons and taken to New York. The Revolutionary War is underway and New York is a dangerous place. The Locktons are loyalists, but the patriots are in control of the city.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0747598061</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Lorraine Jenkin
|title=Chocolate Mousse and Two Spoons
|rating=4.5
|genre=Women's Fiction
|summary=From the first sentence: 'With one hell of a crash, Lettie Howell’s dinner service hit the wall…', I knew that I was going to enjoy this tale. An opening thus full of expletive and resounding Welsh Voice immediately makes it clear who’s the boss and I can relax, knowing I’m in competent hands. Welcome, Lorraine Jenkin, to my handful of favourite chick-lit authors.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1870206959</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Tom Wolfe
|title=The Bonfire of the Vanities
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=In his own mind, bond trader Sherman McCoy is a 'Master of the Universe'. He has a pleasant wife, a beautiful mistress, and a sweet six year old daughter. Henry Lamb is a black student from the projects. Under normal circumstances, it's clear that McCoy's world and Lamb's world would never overlap. But when McCoy and his mistress Maria Ruskin end up lost in the Bronx, and an accident leads to Lamb being hit by McCoy's Mercedes, a chain of events start which will lead to his downfall.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099548798</amazonuk>
}}