'''Read [[Features|new features]].'''
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{{newreview
|author=Stephen M Irwin
|title=The Darkening
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=This book has the 'S' word written all over it. No, not sex - supernatural. So, it's got all things a bit spooky, not-quite-right, strange coincidences. They are sprinkled throughout like rock salt. I must admit that when I read the blurb on the back cover with its supernatural theme, I gave an inward groan. Not really my cup of tea. But I'm open-minded and I'll read anything once. I'm glad I did. Irwin is Australian. For some reason I haven't read too many books by Australian authors, so I was keen to get reading.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0751543969</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Tanya Landman
|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=Herta Muller
|title=The Passport
|rating=3
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Meet Windisch. A miller in a small village, he trudges through there, and through his neighbours, and through his life, counting his days and hours, for reasons that are not initially clear. But he does want something - he is waiting for a passport so he can leave for other climes. The perks of his job are the bags of flour he leaves by the mayor's house with regularity, as an open bribe, but there might be a bigger sacrifice to have to make.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1852421398</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Billy Hopkins
|title=Tommy's World
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Tommy Hopkins was born in October 1886 in Collyhurst, one of the poorer, inner-city suburbs of Manchester. His father had quite a good job and there wasn't a lot of money to spare but Tommy remembered the home as being filled with love and laughter. He was an only child but thought that he was spoilt in terms of affection rather than in the form of worldly goods. All that was to change when his father died of spinal meningitis and he and his mother had to move into cheaper lodgings. Even that tenuous security wasn't to last for long – his mother died of a heart attack in her thirties, leaving Tommy an orphan before he was eight years old.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755359585</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Michael Grant
|title=Hunger
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
|summary=The kids of Perdido Beach are still within the FAYZ, a barrier erected by Little Pete - no-one knows how - when the nuclear plant went into meltdown. An uneasy truce between Sam's tribe of Perdido Beach kids and Caine's Coates Academy kids is beginning to waver. The food is running out and the Darkness has its claws in all those it's encountered. Caine himself is reduced to delirium by the voice of the Darkness in his head and Lana the healer knows it's inevitable that she too will answer its call. Sam is struggling to keep any form of order. As more and more kids begin to develop special powers and the hunger bites deeper into everyone's bellies, it's inevitable that conflict will break out. And it does, in some very unpleasant ways.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1405251522</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Various
|title=Hello Kitty Guide to Life
|rating=4
|genre=Children's Non-Fiction
|summary=''Hello Kitty'' is a huge worldwide phenomenon with a whole heap of related merchandise featuring the cute cartoon cat in dresses and ribbons. It appeals to girls and women of many ages, but this new hardback book ''Hello Kitty – Guide to Life'' is aimed at the brand's younger fans, probably around 6 to 14 year olds.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>000732622X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Claire Tomalin
|title=Thomas Hardy: The Time-Torn Man
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=I came to this biography having read three of Hardy's novels, two quite recently, and some of his poetry, but knowing very little about him as a person. Claire Tomalin has brought him admirably to life in these pages.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141017414</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Liza Palmer
|title=A Field Guide to Burying Your Parents
|rating=4.5
|genre=Women's Fiction
|summary=Grace is reluctantly participating in a 5k race when she receives the news: her estranged sister is calling to tell her their estranged father has had a stroke. That's two lots of estrangement in just two generations of family, but a summons is a summons, and Grace soon finds herself dragged back into the heart of the family she deserted, working with the others to discover the many hidden secrets of the father who deserted them all. It's a tough jump from her happy life of a good job, a new boyfriend and a home of her own to return to the family life she left behind a long time ago, and Grace has to decide whether she can ignore the pull of her biological siblings once more or whether the time has come to let bygones be bygones. After all, while there are lots of four letter words she would associate with her family, ''love'' is not one of them.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340962151</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jennifer Johnston
|title=Truth or Fiction
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Caroline Wallace is not a happy woman. She has waited ten years for her lover to propose to her, and now just as he finally does, she has to go to Dublin to interview faded literary star Desmond Fitzmaurice. Desmond promises his tale will be brimful of 'sex and violence', but Caroline has no idea of the mystery that lies at the heart of his story.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755330544</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Dr Richard Hale and Alan Chambers MBE
|title=Keep Walking - Leadership Learning in Action - A thrilling story of a polar adventure with powerful lessons in leadership and personal development
|rating=4.5
|genre=Business and Finance
|summary=One side of this book is completely alien to me. I have had no reason to believe in any of the action learning, self-actualisation etc, that people in business sometimes deem necessary. If pressed, I'd guess that if people needed so much in-work training they might just be the wrong person for the job. There's an anecdote here about a bright young thing fresh from business school, and faced with her first task at work, who panicked as ''she did not know which theory to apply''. The theory of common sense, I'd have suggested.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904312780</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Guy Delisle
|title=Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea
|rating=4.5
|genre=Graphic Novels
|summary=Meet Guy. He's a French-Canadian animator, leaving home for a short stay in the capital of one of the world's most intriguing, unknown and alien cultures - Pyongyang, North Korea - so he can work on a TV cartoon co-production. Forced to stay in one of the three official hotels designed for foreigners, so that the locals and people such as he do not have to mix, he see glimpses of the unique socialist dictatorship, stunning views of the buildings forced through the poverty, and thousands of unreadable faces.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224079905</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Sam Osman
|title=Quicksilver
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=''Quicksilver'' is the story of Wolfie, Tala and Zi'ib, three ordinary children from three different continents. They have never met, until a strange chain of events involving gun-toting gangs and eccentric old men means they all end up in Thornham, a London suburb. They soon realise they are connected: they all have green eyes with golden flecks and a missing parent. But was it fate, chance or the ley lines that encompass the earth that brought them together? Before you know it they're solving clues and fulfilling a one thousand year old prophecy. But all they want to do is find their parents.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1407105736</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Diane Janes
|title=Edwardian Murder: Ightham & the Morpeth Train Robbery
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=Two murders took place in Edwardian England less than two years apart, one in the south-east and the other in the north-east. At first glance they seemed to have nothing to do with each other, but years later a link between them was hinted at though never proved beyond doubt. The author has investigated the connection and come up with a riveting book.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0752449451</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Peter Gay
|title=Modernism: The Lure of Heresy - From Baudelaire to Beckett and Beyond
|rating=4
|genre=History
|summary=It is impossible not to be impressed by the sheer scope of cultural historian Peter Gay's 2007 study of Modernism, newly released in this paperback edition. He notes in the introduction that it is not a 'comprehensive history' but rather 'a study of its rise, triumphs, and decline'. What is remarkable though, is the attempt to include the whole gamut of artistic fields in this coherent study.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099441969</amazonuk>
}}