'''Read [[Features|new features]].'''
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{{newreview
|author=Ken McClure
|title=Dust to Dust (Steven Dunbar)
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=John Motram is a cell biologist. He's a promising and well-though of academic and his pet subject is - Black Death. Intrigue is high on the agenda right from the beginning. Motram is invited to a meeting along with other high-fliers in their respective fields. This meeting is top secret. Motram is, however, mystified. The situation appears pretty straightforward, so why all this cloak-and-dagger stuff, he wonders. And why has everyone to refer to the patient only as 'Patient X?'
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846971268</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Captain William Wells
|summary=Paul Metzger – mid thirties, with a failed marriage, a broken relationship with his brother (who converted to Judaism), and a dying father (who is an ex-Nazi). Straight away there are obvious flaws with his family dynamic. As his writing career fails to take off he's left to churn out thousands of words for articles that have no meaning to him, the dregs of the publishing world. His life isn't quite as high flying as he hoped. But then Paul gets offered a lucrative book deal; the one thing he has wanted for years. The only catch is he has to write about his father.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099531852</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Maggie O'Farrell
|title=The Hand That First Held Mine
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Lexie Sinclair was sent down from university for the crime of going through a door reserved for men. She could not graduate until she apologised and this she was not going to do. Home was not an option either but when she met the sophisticated Innes Kent she made up her mind to go to London and make her way there. It was the nineteen fifties and Lexie and Innes made a life for themselves in Soho.
In the present day Elina and Ted are struggling to recover from the difficult birth of their first child. Elina is an artist and she’s finding it difficult to come to terms with being a mother. Ted does his best to help but he is having to cope with disturbing visions and memories of his own childhood which don’t seem to agree with what he’s been told by his parents. The further he looks, the stranger are the links which he uncovers.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>075530845X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Sue Peebles
|title=The Death of Lomond Friel
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Rosie was a successful radio presenter when her father, Lomond Friel, had a stroke. Whether or not Rosie was always reckless and impulsive isn't entirely clear, but once she heard about the stroke she took a break from work and began to build her life around making a future for herself and her father. There are two problems here: Rosie isn't really all that capable of looking after herself, never mind her father and Lomond is quietly plotting his own death. He might not be able to speak, to move very much, but he has plans.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701184302</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Anthony Horowitz
|title=Legends: Beasts and Monsters
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=When they say there is nothing new under the sun, they might use this book as evidence - but they'd only be half-right. The legends of the sphinx's riddle, and the capture of the gorgon's head, are as old as the Parthenon hill, but they have never been presented as they have here. They were published in a similar fashion in the 1980s, with a younger Anthony Horowitz offering a large compendium of folk stories, legends and tales of classical derring-do. With the attention span of the current under-twelve, however, to be considered, his publishers have allowed a sprucing up, and a reformatting - one book has been turned into six, with a brace each year from now til conclusion.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330510150</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Seth Grahame-Smith
|title=Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter
|rating=3.5
|genre=Humour
|summary='Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.' That quote, on the Statue of Liberty, was probably not designed with the inclusion of vampires in mind. But by some means or another North America is rife with the things – hiding in plain sight, as the older ones can bear sunlight, with the help of darkened glasses. It might just come down to one eager young man to rid his new country of such things, on his way to something he’s a bit more known for.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849014086</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Lynn Shepherd
|title=Murder at Mansfield Park
|rating=4
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=Straight away the reader is plunged into the language of Austen's era, so dotted all over are such rather flowery phrases as ' ... conjugal felicity ...' and ' ... her family were not consumptive...' We are also introduced to a host of characters and although Shepherd has thoughtfully provided right at the beginning ''Names of the Principal Persons'', it does bombard and perhaps confuse the reader a little. I must admit to referring to this dratted list time and time again. It does break the flow at the beginning of the novel. But, several chapters in and you're right into the story thereafter.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1905636792</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=George Pelecanos
|title=Shoedog
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=If you ever find yourself as a character in a work of fiction, it’s probably best to avoid hitchhikers. The chances are it’s going to turn out very badly for either the driver or the hitchhiker - or both. Constantine is a denim-clad, Marlboro-smoking, drifter and loner with a strong sense of right and wrong who has just returned from a period of travelling around the world and is heading south back home in the US when he is picked up by a man named Polk, driving a muscle car. So what could possibly go wrong?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687365</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Yotam Ottolenghi
|title=Plenty
|rating=4.5
|genre=Cookery
|summary=I'm sure that there are many good reasons for buying the Guardian of a Saturday but I always enjoy Yotam Ottolenghi's New Vegetarian column. I'm not a vegetarian (nor, indeed, is Ottolenghi) but he has a way with vegetables whether they're to be served on their own or as an accompaniment which is fresh, full of flavour and exciting. The background to the food is in Israel and Palestine with the region's rich supply of vegetables, pulses and grains.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091933684</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=David Barrie
|title=Night-Scented
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=Isabelle Arbaud is determined to make her mark in the world of luxury brands. Most perfumes are off-shoots of established fashion houses (or celebrity names, but let's not go down ''that'' road), but Isabelle has poached her rival's most talented perfumer and given him free rein to produce an irresistible scent which will take her upstart fashion house straight to the top. But – it would seem that someone is determined that she won't succeed. First on and then a second of her financial backers died, the first in circumstances which might have been a accident, but probably wasn't. About the second there could be no doubt. Two bullet holes are fairly conclusive evidence of a suspicious death.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956251811</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Debbie Macomber
|title=Hannah's List
|rating=3.5
|genre=Women's Fiction
|summary=It was a year since Dr Michael Everett's wife Hannah died from ovarian cancer and his grief was still as painful as ever. He certainly wasn't ready for what his brother-in-law, Hannah's brother, handed him. It was a letter which Hannah had written some time before her death and not only did she suggest that he should remarry, she went on to name three women she thought would make a good wife for him. Winter Adams was the chef who owned the café on blossom Street, Leanne Lancaster had been Hannah's nurse, but who was Macy Roth?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0778303799</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Matthew Yorke
|title=Pictures of Lily
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=As soon as Georgia Myers turns eighteen, she is going to find her biological parents. And she has lots of questions for them too; like where else might she have lived if she had not been given up and does she have any brothers and sisters? Mostly, however, Georgia just wants to ask ''why?''. Why was she given up for adoption? Why her?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849014124</amazonuk>
}}
