'''Read [[Features|new features]].'''
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{{newreview
|author=Tricia Rayburn
|title=Siren
|rating=4
|genre=Teens
|summary=17-year old Vanessa has always been looked after by her more adventurous, outgoing older sister Justine. So when her sister is found dead while they're on vacation in Winter Harbor, and Justine's boyfriend Caleb goes missing, she's devastated. Desperately searching for answers to Justine's demise, she returns to Harbor seeking answers, and teams up with Caleb's brother Simon to find them. Then the weather gets strange, and other bodies start turning up… can they solve the mystery?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571260063</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|summary=It's a book that is certainly not short of action. We are not told what the Armageddon event was, although aspects of it are hinted at. Perhaps that will become explained later in the series. What we do know is that it has wiped out Japan, and one of the first victims of the event in London appears to have been the Congestion Charge as it is now a heaving metropolis with gridlock traffic (although this and the masses of people seem to mysteriously evaporate as the story unfolds).
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184149948X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Winifred Holtby
|title=South Riding
|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=The central character is a single woman in her middle years who relishes the chance to return to her roots in the tight-knit South Riding community. She's ambitious and well-travelled and has tasted life and work in bustling, cosmopolitan London. So it would appear that her pull back home is very strong indeed. But, you have to ask yourself the question, who would choose to give up this stimulating life down south and return up north? One Sarah Burton, schoolteacher with promotion in her mind, that's who. Everything depends on Sarah actually getting this job. And straight away, Holtby gives us the low-down on the collective mentality of local government. Yes, narrow-minded, parochial, dull - it's all of those things and more. But not everyone is a political 'sheep'. There's one or two who can see the bigger picture and can look beyond personal gain.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849902038</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Richmal Crompton
|title=Just William
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Whether it's a trip to the cinema, babysitting a youngster, being a page boy at a wedding, or running away from home to take a job below stairs, the 11-year old William Brown can always be relied on to create chaos and havoc wherever he goes. This short story collection (the first of 38 books) is a wonderful introduction to a classic character.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330507451</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Hans Christian Andersen, Naomi Lewis and Christian Birmingham
|title=The Snow Queen
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Kay and Gerda are dear, dear friends. However, Kay gets splinters from the Devil's shattered magic mirror in his eye and heart, changing his personality for the worse. Shortly after, he is whisked away by the Snow Queen. Everyone assumes Kay must have fallen in the river and drowned, but Gerda is sure her friend is still alive, and embarks on a magical quest to bring him home again.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1406319708</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Nigel Farndale
|title=The Blasphemer
|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Daniel Kennedy is a soon-to-be professor of zoology and a militant atheist. With a beautiful and successful dentist for a partner, and an intelligent, precocious nine-year-old daughter, his life is what you might call gilded. Novels as they are, though, things soon begin to fall apart. On their way to a holiday in the Galapagos Islands, Daniel and Nancy's plane crashes into the sea. Daniel swims for miles to get help and, just as all seems lost and he's on the point of drowning, a mysterious figure appears and guides him to the shore and rescue.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0552776173</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jason Wallace
|title=Out of Shadows
|rating=5
|genre=Teens
|summary=Robert Jacklin arrives at his new boarding school as a very reluctant pupil. He's a reluctant African, too - his family has just moved to Zimbabwe after his father has been given a diplomatic placing there. More than anything else, Robert wants to return to England.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849390487</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Heather Brewer
|title=The Chronicles of Vladimir Tod: Eighth Grade Bites
|rating=4
|genre=Teens
|summary=High school is hard enough for most kids, but for half vampire Vlad, it really bites. First there's his blood cravings – how exactly do you sneak a pint of O neg into your lunchbox? Then there's his enlarged fangs, his ever developing powers that Vlad doesn't know the extent of and the fact that his crush seems to have a thing for his best mate.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0142411876</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=C J Sansom
|title=Dark Fire
|rating=5
|genre=Crime (Historical)
|summary=1540 was the hottest summer of the sixteenth century but Matthew Shardlake was doing his best to hold his legal practice together, which was made more difficult by the fact that he believed himself to be out of favour with Thomas Cromwell. He tried to keep a low profile but when he defended the accused in a most unpopular case – that of a girl accused of brutally murdering her cousin – he found that the king's chief minister had a new assignment for him. Unless he could solve Cromwell's problem his client was likely to die a slow and nasty death.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330450786</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Patrick Dillon and P J Lynch
|title=The Story of Britain
|rating=5
|genre=Children's Non-Fiction
|summary=Author Patrick Dillon has put together a clear, well-written and beautifully concise story of Britain, summing up the history of Britain and Ireland in a little over 320 pages. Significant events, ranging from the Norman Conquest to the South Sea Bubble, and groups of people ranging from highwaymen to the Romantic poets, are each dealt with in between 1 and 3 pages written in Dillon's chatty, easy to read style. There are also maps, including those of the D-Day
landings and the Civil War battles, a timeline for each major period (Middle Ages, Tudors, Stuarts, Georgians, Victorians and Twentieth Century) and some gorgeous illustrations by former Kate Greenaway winner PJ Lynch.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1406311928</amazonuk>
}}
