'''Read [[Features|new features]].'''
__NOTOC__
{{newreview
|author=Esi Edugyan
|title=Half-Blood Blues
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Sid and his friend Chip are revisiting their youth, more than 50 years ago. They were jazz musicians, living and working in Berlin and Paris, until they had to escape Nazi occupied Paris in 1940 to return to Baltimore. Now it is 1992, and all the others they worked with are long since dead. They have just been involved in a documentary about their experiences, and are about to return to Germany (soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall) for a jazz festival in memory of the great Hiero Falk. Hieronymus Falk was a young black German musician with an exceptional musical talent, the star of their band, the Hot-Time Swingers. He was picked up by 'the Boots' as Sid refers to the Germans, in Paris in 1940, and disappeared into a concentration camp, then they heard he was released but died in 1948.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687756</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Stella Gibbons
|summary=Like any other teenage girl in the 60s, Jean Davison spent her days playing records, hanging out in coffee shops with girlfriends and undertaking her first fumbles with boys. She was bright, a talented and eager writer full of dreams about the future.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906373590</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Pamela Fudge
|title=Never be Lonely
|rating=4
|genre=Women's Fiction
|summary=There was a moment when Francesca Dudley wondered quite what she was doing in a church in Canada. She'd barely recovered from the lengthy flight and here she was listening to people extol the virtues of Mitchell Browning, now deceased. Francesca hadn't seen him since he left the family home when she was four and now, four decades later, she was coming to terms with the fact that her father had still been alive, only to find that he was dead – if you see what I mean. Mitchell has not just left her fatherless though – there seems to be a whole tribe of people bereaved by his death and at least one of them doesn't seem all that keen that she should be there.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0709092539</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=David Wong
|title=John Dies at the End
|rating=3
|genre=Horror
|summary='John Dies at the End' begins with friends John and Dave going to a party and meeting a Jamaican drug dealer who provides John with a hit of something called 'soy sauce'. Thereafter, John starts to see things that others can't see. Dave thinks he has had a bad reaction to the drug until he accidentally takes a hit and also starts to have strange experiences, seeing odd shadow creatures, none of whom are very friendly. Even worse, people start to die and a dog takes on human characteristics. Before long, John and Dave are facing death on a regular basis and are aware that they have access to dimensions that normal people don't know about.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857684833</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Michael Richmond
|title=Sisyphusa
|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The back cover blurb tells us that the mentally ill (for whatever reason or reasons) are still stigmatised by various sectors of society. I would agree. I then flip the book over to the front cover which has the words 'the mental health publisher' and straight away some of us may already be making a judgement (perhaps unfairly too) before they even open the book. Perhaps this up-front honesty by the publisher negates somewhat the terrific title and terrific graphics of the cover. Just my own personal opinion here. The publishing company is being supported by the Arts Council, England.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849915261</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Miles Allen
|title=The Walkers of Legend
|rating=3.5
|genre=Fantasy
|summary=The Empire controls nine-tenths of the globe, but even this doesn't supply enough victims to keep enough blood flowing from the Yan-producing chambers. And so the new Emperor sets about a plan to invade the last remaining free lands. Advance parties are abducting mages to leave the defenders exposed and vulnerable. This is nothing new - it's an obvious tactic - but among the refugees is Chayne, a young man of startling power and promise. Chayne's potential is soon discovered by the advancing army's chief mage, Lathashal, and the young Mlendrian finds himself a favoured apprentice.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956832008</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=James Rollins
|title=Jake Ransom and the Howling Sphinx
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=James Rollins has hit upon a truly brilliant premise in this series. People and creatures from our world have been transported at various times to a savage, prehistoric place called Calypsos, and in the first volume, [[Jake Ransom and the Skull King's Shadow by James Rollins|Jake Ransom and the Skull King's Shadow]] Jake and his sister find themselves suddenly whisked to a city where Romans, Mayans, Neanderthals and groups from many other societies, places and eras live more or less peaceably side by side. Their archaeologist parents disappeared three years before, and the two young people's struggles to survive, and to defeat Kalverum Rex, the Skull King, go side by side with their hope of finding a trace there of their mother and father.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444000853</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Judith Hermann
|title=Alice
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''Alice'' is a collection of five short stories, linked thematically since they all deal with the subject of death, but they are also linked because the central character, Alice, is the same in each story. So rather than feeling like short stories the book has a hint of the novel to it, yet the stories are never completed or fully told so it's a novel where you're not always sure what's going on.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184668529X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Fiona Mountain
|title=Isabella
|rating=4
|genre=Women's Fiction
|summary=The fate of mutineer, Fletcher Christian in the 18th century remains a mystery even today but Fiona Mountain has pieced together a dramatic and powerful story based on rumours and clues that Fletcher returned to England to be with his long-lost love, Isabella Curwen. Fletcher, the son of a bankrupt family and Isabella, the sole heiress of a huge fortune are prevented from marrying. Their relationship is manipulated by those around them and a young, naïve Isabella is forced to marry her cousin, John.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099562251</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Charlotte Moore
|title=Milicent's Book
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
|summary='My name is Milicent Bella Ludlow and I am an orphan'.
So opens this story told in diary form of a year in the life of a young Victorian girl whose father has just died. Luckily there are some kind and loving relatives willing to help her and Mabel, her older sister, and they are able to stay living in their family home, Yotes, for a while.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846470803</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Maggie Stiefvater
|title=Ballad
|rating=3.5
|genre=Teens
|summary=After his best friend fell in love with a faerie, James realised she would never love him that way. But his attempts to get away from her, and the unrequited love he still nurses, only lead him straight to more faeries than ever before. For at James' new school, Thornking-Ash, the student populace is entirely made of musical prodigies. And there's nothing that attracts faeries more than music. James has even attracted his own muse – the deadly and dangerously attractive Nuala. The music she helps him make is better than he could ever manage on his own, but James knows the deadly consequences of making a deal with faeries, and he knows Nuala won't give him freebies for long.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>140712112X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Andrew Crowther
|title=Gilbert of Gilbert and Sullivan: His Life and Character
|rating=5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Gilbert and Sullivan were the Rice and Lloyd Webber of the late Victorian era. Some might regard their work as slightly dated these days, especially the satirical lyrics which were so much a product of their time, but their appeal has never really faded and it surely never will.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0752455893</amazonuk>
}}
