'''Read [[Features|new features]].'''
__NOTOC__
{{newreview
|author=Janice Galloway
|title=Collected Stories
|rating=5
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=In this collection, stories are taken from two previous volumes, Blood and Where You Find It. The forty-two snap shots of life are mainly of women and young girls, struggling with emotions, sometimes realized and sometimes not. In all, there seems to be an underlying link of isolation and truth. The settings are varied, from a visit to the dentist to the place known as home, to a walk in the evening. We have a peek into the deepest darkest corners of everyday relationships, with lovers, partners and most of all ourselves.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099540398</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Janice Galloway
|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>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Julia Williams
|title=Last Christmas
|rating=4.5
|genre=Women's Fiction
|summary=With Christmas fast approaching, what better way of getting in the spirit of things than by reading this excellent book that captures the joys and stresses of the festive season so well? The reader follows four different people – Catherine Tinsall and her husband Noel, Marianne Moore and Gabriel North. Each of these characters have their own reasons for not really looking forward to Christmas (mainly because of the experience of last Christmas) and these reasons slowly become apparent to the reader as the story progresses.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847560865</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Nigel McCrery
|title=Core of Evil
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=Violet Chambers becomes Daisy Wilson through an aromatic cup of tea, flavoured with Christmas roses.
'"There are all kinds of horrible things in the Christmas rose," she said, watching to see whether Daisy could still hear her. "Helleborin and hellebrin are both like digitalis, which I've also used before, but there's saporin and protoanemonin as well. It's a very nasty cocktail."'
And now Daisy has met her rather sticky - and graphically effluent - end, and Violet has become Daisy, Daisy sets her sights on a new town, a new identity and, most importantly, a new victim. Daisy has problems with her memory - the identities go back so far that sometimes she can barely remember who is she is now, let alone all the whos she's been before, and most certainly not the who with whom she began.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847243843</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=John Van der Kiste
|title=Jonathan Wild: Conman and Cutpurse
|rating=4
|genre=History
|summary=Born towards the end of the seventeenth century Jonathan Wild was to become the eighteenth century's most famous criminal, plying his trade in a rather curious fashion. He was born in Wolverhampton of parents described as ''mean but honest''. It seems likely that he first travelled to London as the servant of a lawyer where he was eventually to settle, leaving his wife and child to fend for themselves. It was whilst serving a term of imprisonment in Wood Street Compter that he mixed with the cream of London's criminal underclass and learned the rudiments of his trade.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848682190</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=K M Grant
|title=Paradise Red (Perfect Fire Trilogy)
|rating=5
|genre=Teens
|summary=We are back in the south of France for the third and final time. In one corner, the 'French', with King Louis and his henchmen rampaging through, warring in the name of peace. In another corner, the local people, struggling in the harsh environment and none too pleased to see their corner of the world the location for religious wars, with the Cathar ''heretics'' also present. The lines are drawn, in a realistically convoluted way, and this book will see one of our heroes cross one such line, just as other people make their own momentous decisions. It will take all the narrative skills of the land itself to get the story across to us.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847247075</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Camilla Noli
|title=The Mother's Tale
|rating=4
|genre=Women's Fiction
|summary=''It is early evening. I am suckling my infant son… We are picture perfect. Madonna and child''.
No doubt about it: a new mother totally smitten with her son. Zach is adorable. Quiet. Undemanding. A happy, generally relaxed, child. Gorgeous.
But Zach isn't her first-born. First there was Cassie. A child who entered the world screaming and has since learned exactly what power she can wring with such lungs. Not yet two years old, Cassie adores her father, but even him she manipulates. Her mother she terrorises.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1409101584</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=AQA 63336
|title=More Brilliant Answers
|rating=4
|genre=Trivia
|summary=If you've got a question you can text those nice people at AQA 63336 and they'll do their best to provide you with a prompt and accurate answer. Over the last five years they've answered some twenty million questions and each autumn they publish a book with the best and most interesting of the year's answers. There's some fun to be had in this year's book.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846683262</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Patrick O'Brien
|title=You Are The First Kid On Mars
|rating=4.5
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=It is a sci-fi future of no danger whatsoever, with no technological breakdown, and no fatal meteor strike, but that of course is only to be expected for this market. I say it more to highlight how well the book has been illustrated. Digital airbrush techniques and more have taken the antiseptic sheen off the whole experience, but have still allowed for a great detail in the machinery, and also a lovely warmth in the face of the lad we're empathising with.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0399246347</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Mary Naylus
|title=The Dresskeeper
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Things are pretty grim for Picky. She is thirteen years old, being bullied at school, and has to spend her weekends helping her single, working mum to take care of her little brother and her senile grandmother. One evening, at her Gran's house, she goes up into the attic and tries on an old dress that she finds inside an old chest. The dress turns out to be magic, and she suddenly finds herself back in 17th Century London, struggling with a strange man who is calling her 'Amelia' and is trying to kill her. Picky ends up embroiled in Amelia's 17th century life as she tries to find out the truth of who is attempting to murder her, at the same time as trying to avoid arousing suspicion with her strange behaviour whenever she returns to the present day.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956122280</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=John Abbott Nez
|title=Cromwell Dixon's Sky-Cycle
|rating=4
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=Meet Cromwell Dixon. He's a real tinkerer, forever in a barn or somewhere building something manically unusual. Luckily - although his long-suffering mother may disagree with that word - he's around at the birth of powered flight. Will his plans for a pedalled air machine work?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0399250417</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Sue Moorcroft
|title=Starting Over
|rating=4
|genre=Women's Fiction
|summary=The story opens when Tess bumps her old reliable car into a breakdown truck. That's rather convenient, since she isn't hurt, and the guy driving it is able to tow her to his garage, and then give her a lift to her new home. Naturally, since this is the 'chick-lit' genre, Tess and the truck-driver, who goes by the unlikely name of Ratty (an abbreviation of his surname) feel mutual antipathy of the sort that's clearly going to lead, sooner or later, to strong attraction.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906931224</amazonuk>
}}
