'''Read [[Features|new features]].'''
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{{newreview
|author=Tom Sharpe
|title=The Wilt Inheritance
|rating=3.5
|genre=Humour
|summary=Wilt is stuck in a job he doesn't want – teaching a subject he's not keen on to people for whom he has no affection – at one of the new Universities. We used to know them as technical colleges. But he can't afford to lose it because of the expense of keeping the quads at an expensive school and of maintaining his snobbish wife, Eva. It's Eva though who signs him up for a job in the summer holidays – tutoring the step-son of a local aristocrat in the hope of getting him into Cambridge – and particularly Porterhouse College. It's not long before Wilt discovers that the boy totes a gun a shoots at anything which moves – or even doesn't move – and that he's an idiot who would probably struggle to get a bus to Cambridge.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099493136</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jeff Somers
|summary=The author, Stefan Merrill Block, is writing about members of his own family in ''The Storm at the Door''. The story opens at the end, if you get my drift. We see the elderly grandmother Katherine in a bit of a spot, wondering whether to open and then read a bunch of papers. These papers (these red-hot papers) are the words and thoughts of her husband Frederick from his time in a mental institution. If she opens them, then it will be opening a veritable can of worms. Does she or doesn't she?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571269591</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|title=House of Exile: War, Love and Literature, from Berlin to Los Angeles
|author=Evelyn Juers
|rating=5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Heinrich Mann and Nelly Kröger-Mann were in a constant state of hazardous exile after the rise of fascism in Germany in 1933. He became like Zola, his favourite author, a socially committed novelist and political activist and fierce critic of militarism. He was convivial, having a wide circle of friends that contained many creative artists, playwrights, socialists. He seemed drawn to the bohemians and the demi-monde. This elegant and sometimes formal gentleman came from the Hanseatic town of Lubeck where his father belonged to a renowned grain merchant family. These might be described as the haute-bourgeoisie. There was an unusual degree of sibling rivalry between him and his less robust brother, the famous author of ''The Magic Mountain'', Thomas Mann. Hendrick possessed a sensual nature and fell passionately and easily in love with a number of women. Of these his relationship with Nelly, a fascinating woman, a seamstress and nightclub hostess, as full of contradictions as himself, was the most successful and long lasting. She followed him on the long painful journey into exile at first in Nice and later to the United States.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846144612</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|title=A Conspiracy Of Friends
|author=Alexander McCall Smith
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=So, here we are again back with our friends in Corduroy Mansions in this, their third book. I found ''A Conspiracy Of Friends'' a little slow to start with, and I worried that perhaps I had tired of the characters, but a few chapters later the pace picked up and once again I was thoroughly entertained by the quirky characters, interesting thoughts and ideas.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846971829</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|title=Bang Bang You're Dead
|author=Narinder Dhami
|rating=5
|genre=Teens
|summary=Mia is holding her family together. She's never known her father, her mother is suffering from manic depression which she refuses to seek help for, and her twin brother Jamie is causing
her real concern. So when the fire alarm is set off at school and rumours fly around that there's a pupil with a gun on the loose, she starts to worry that Jamie has done the unthinkable. Ignoring all common sense, she desperately tries to see for herself whether he could be the one with the gun...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>055256043X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|title=In The Sea There Are Crocodiles
|author=Fabio Geda
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=''In The Sea There Are Crocoiles'' is based on a true story about a young boy left by his mother to fend for himself. As if that wasn't difficult enough, he's stranded in Pakistan while the rest of his family are in war-ravaged Afghanistan. It's a collaboration between Afghan Enaiatollah and his Italian translator, Fabio - this book is already a big hit with Italian readers (it says so on the back cover blurb). Enaiatollah eventually claimed political asylum in Italy.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857560085</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|title=My Name is Rose
|author=Sally Grindley
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Rosa comes from a Romany gypsy community. She travels around Eastern Europe with her family, only stopping occasionally for school. Her father says her education comes from her family's connection with the land and the Roma traditions. And Rose agrees. She is happy and never happier than when her parents are playing music and there is noise and laughter and gaiety.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408814021</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|title=Momentum
|author=Saci Lloyd
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
|summary=London, 2030. Energy wars are consuming the globe now peak oil is past. Britain creaks on with ever-declining influence and is now partly dependent on aid from China. The gap between rich and poor is now so great that the poor (the Outsiders) live in dreadful slums while the rich (the Citizens) spend most of their time plugged into the net, experiencing life as a fantasy. Civil unrest is springing up, only to be ruthlessly put down by the Kossacks, the new security force.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444900811</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|title=Asylum
|author=Rachel Anderson
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Sunday arrived in the UK at Lowestoft. He'd have preferred Iceland, ''which, so he'd heard, was cold and treeless but democratic and respectful of human life''. Sent from a refugee camp by his Auntie Pru, Sunday is very religious and very respectful of human life, unlike the militia who destroyed his village. So it's difficult for Sunday to become a Muslim. But that's what he has to do. His papers confiscated by a shady people trafficker, Sunday finds himself the unpaid caretaker at Hawk Rise, a condemned London tower block. And his name isn't Sunday any more; it's Piet Ali.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340997680</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|title=We Love Bears
|author=Catherine Anholt and Laurence Anholt
|rating=4
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=Two young children wake up one morning to find their teddy bear has come to life and is waiting to take them on an outing to a Teddy Bear Town. The simple text makes for a short and sweet bedtime read, always useful in our house. There are just a couple of lines of rhyming verse on each page, with a nice rhythm for easy reading aloud, and I think it could be enjoyed by quite young toddlers. However, I liked the amusing pictures, with lots of detail to look and discuss with slightly older siblings.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408311682</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|title=Russia: A 1,000-Year Chronicle of the Wild East
|author=Martin Sixsmith
|rating=5
|genre=History
|summary=As a former BBC correspondent in Moscow at the time that the Cold War was ending, Sixsmith is in a unique position to write a history of Russia, based partly on research and partly on his own experiences, after having witnessed at first hand some of the upheavals in recent years which play such an important part in the story.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849900728</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|title=Forgetting Zoe
|author=Ray Robinson
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=''Forgetting Zoe'' opens with Thurman, one of the two main characters. We see that his home life is dreadful - with a violent and cruel father and a mother who is weak. And as an only child (to rather elderly parents) Thurman hears his father's violence directed at his mother. Their home is out of the way and in an isolated spot, so really the three of them form a very unhappy threesome indeed. The reader is left in no doubt as to the nature of the father with lines such as, ''As a form of punishment Father would press one of his hands down on top of Thurman's head so forcefully that Thurman's legs would buckle... that blood would trickle down his forehead...''
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009953763X</amazonuk>
}}
