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{{newreview
|author=Patrick McGuinness
|title=The Last Hundred Days
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary='The Last Hundred Days' in question here are the final days of Ceausescu's Romania in late 1989. Narrated by an unnamed young British expat who has a job offer from the English department of Bucharest University, despite never having interviewed for the job, we get an insight into the life under communist rule as Eastern bloc countries all around start to open up after the fall of the Berlin Wall. We are told that McGuinness lived in Romania in the years leading up to the revolution, and this is no surprise as there is an authenticity here that could only have come from some level of inside knowledge.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1854115413</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Valerie Thomas and Korky Paul
|summary=We're introduced to a small and loveable ghost called Bertie. Even though he knows that he should be out haunting in the big dark woods, he feels far too small to haunt somewhere that is so huge. He does creep into the forest a little though and is pleased to see a couple of lights shining through the darkness that he believes to be the windows of a welcoming house. Sadly though, Bertie is mistaken and the lights are actually the eyes of a 'big gobble-me wolf'. Many times he doesn't recognise what he sees, mistaking a snake for a homely path, a dragon's breath for chimney smoke and so on. Luckily, not one of those scary creatures spots Bertie and he is able to go on his way until he makes his way to a 'gigantic freak-me castle' where things look to get even worse. However at the top of a winding stairway he discovers just what he has been seeking all along – a toy castle with a king and queen who only need a small timid ghost to make them jump!
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0192792644</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Martin King
|title=Jack Hunter - Secret of the King
|rating=3
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Jack Hunter was not impressed by the idea of moving from Southend to Barnoldswick. It was a long journey, he'd left all his friends behind and to cap it all the rather sassy girl next door announced that his bedroom was haunted. The family had moved north because his Mum's father was getting a bit frail and needed looking after, but when Jack goes to see Grandad he realises that there's a lot more to the old man than meets the eye. He has a secret to share with Jack – and a gold coin which does seem to show that what Grandad says about buried treasure is true. He hunted for it for years and now he's handed the quest on to Jack.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B005EIQ3ZE</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Chuck Palahniuk
|title=Damned
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary='Are you there, Satan? It's me, Madison'. I'm a spunky, lively tweenage girl, except I'm a dead one, and I'm in Hell, to my surprise. While I'm here I'll find out just where it is all those cold-calling telegraphers ring you from just while you're settling down to your evening meal, and where the world's wasted sperm and discarded toenail clippings fetch up. I'll have very hairy encounters with demons of Satan's and mankind's making, and with some superlative plotting and flashbacks I'll find a clearer approach to why I was put here in the first place.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224091158</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Laura Schwartz
|title=A Serious Endeavour: Gender, Education and Community at St Hugh's, 1886-2011
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=
'A Serious Endeavour' is an account of the role of one Oxford college in the history of higher education for women. When it was first founded in 1886 there were very different views on what such education should be, even among its supporters. The university would not even grant female students degrees until 1920, and students were allowed to choose their own course of study and whether they would take formal exams or not before this.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184668515X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Emily Barr
|title=The First Wife
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Lilybella Tatiana Blossom Button (who thankfully – for our sake as well as hers – goes by a simple Lily) has had an upbringing almost as unconventional as her name. Raised by her grandparents, we join her following their recent deaths and soon discover she is quite unlike most other 20 year olds. It’s going to be a brisk transition from a sheltered life in a small cottage, nursing elderly relatives to the Real World but with no money to speak off, she’ll have to pull herself together, and quickly. Her background is an important part of Lily and contributes enormously to her trusting and a little immature personality that will later be her downfall. A few weeks later, though, and things are looking up. She has taken a room in a house where she is much more one of the family than just a lodger. She’s found some cleaning work and, even more exciting, one of her agency clients is a rather dashing ex-celeb and his beautiful, elegant wife. Yes, Lily’s star is definitely on the rise.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755351371</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jana Oliver
|title=The Demon Trappers: Forbidden
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=After the demon attack on the Tabernacle, Riley Blackthorne has got a lot to think about. Her (dead) Father turned up to warn her about the impending attack, but just made him and Riley look guilty in the process. Riley doesn't care about that, she wants to know who reanimated her Father and stole his body. Her bet is on Ozymandias, the creepiest of all the necromancers – plus she did tick him off.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330519484</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Erinna Mettler
|title=Starlings
|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=I have to say that what was a big factor in me choosing to read (and review) this book was its urban front cover. Monochrome, a bit gritty but with plenty of sky. The first character we meet is Andy, an ex-prisoner. He's on his own now and time is heavy on his hands. He stares out of his window, twelve floors up and thinks back to when he had a nice family life. All that's gone now. He stands and looks down at the children in a nearby playground and temptation rises all over again (he was convicted as a paedophile). He'll need to find the inner strength to resist - but can he?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956511929</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Gareth P Jones
|title=The Considine Curse
|rating=3.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Fourteen-year-old Mariel and her mother emigrated to Australia when she was very small. It's just the two of them, apart from her mother's succession of boyfriends, and Mariel has always believed they have no family and are alone in the world. Then one day her mother tells her that her maternal grandmother has died and that they're going back to England for the funeral. And what's more, when she gets there she will meet her five uncles and six cousins for the first time since she was a baby. Mariel is both angry and mystified. Why did her mother keep the information about the family a secret? What right did she have to deny Mariel the opportunity to belong to a big loving family group? And what was it about Grandma that made her mother hate her so much? But Mariel's mother, true to form, won't answer any of her questions, and relations between them remained strained throughout the book.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408811510</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Chris Mullin
|title=A Walk-on Part: Diaries 1994 - 1999
|rating=4.5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=We tend to remember where we were and how we heard about the deaths of people like John F Kennedy, Elvis Presley and Princess Diana, but I'd add another person to the list: John Smith. I remember sitting in my office and a colleague coming in to tell me. She added 'I suppose we'll have that dreary Gordon Brown as leader now'. We'd many angst-ridden miles to go before that came about but Smith's death is the opening entry in this, the third volume (but first chronologically) of Chris Mullin's Diaries. This book covers the first period of 'New Labour', from Smith's death until Mullin's assumption into government in July 1999.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846685230</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Alison Pick
|title=Far to Go
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=At the risk of sounding trite, a story set in 1938 Czechoslovakia on the eve of Nazi occupation, centred on a Jewish family is always going to put the reader through an emotional journey. Add in a young child and it's almost certain that you are going to be reaching for the Kleenex at some point. But Alison Pick makes some interesting creative choices that add more layers to this story. Some will surprise the reader but the overall impact is a wonderfully moving story with wholly believable characters.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755379411</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Amy Kathleen Ryan
|title=Glow
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
|summary=Everyone expected Kieran and Waverley to be together. As the first of the first generation born in space, it seemed almost written in the stars. Destiny. Waverley is mostly happy with her life on board the Empyrean – one of two ships trailblazing across the universe to New Earth, where their crews will start a new human frontier – she loves Kieran (she thinks) and the ship's crew is like one big happy family. But sometimes, she wonders if her life would be different, if her choices would be different, if the weight of continuing the human race didn't rest on her shoulders.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330535587</amazonuk>
}}
