'''Read [[Features|new features]].'''
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{{newreview
|author=Jim Helmore and Karen Wall
|title=Hold On Tight, Stripy Horse!
|rating=4
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=Stripy Horse and his friends live in a bric-a-brac shop. One day, they discover that it's raining ''inside''. Ella, the pink flamingo umbrella, keeps them dry for a bit, but then she's caught by a gust of wind and Stripy Horse is pulled up into the air. Will they discover the source of the rain? Will the shop ever get dry again? And what's the deal with that weathervane parrot that keeps spouting proverbs?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1405248262</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Margaret Forster
|summary=Samantha 'Sam' Kingston is, in many ways, your typical American high schooler whose concerns are pretty predictable: boys, friends, fashion, weird parents, annoying little sisters. Today it's Cupid Day, a chance to show off just how ''In'' you are at school, as measured by the number of roses you're sent, but Sam's not too worried about that. She knows she's part of a group who, by most definitions, would be called popular, and though sometimes inside she might feel on the inside a little like an imposter, on the outside, well, she's the definition of ''in''.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340980893</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Mal Peet and Elspeth Graham
|title=Cloud Tea Monkeys
|rating=4
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=Tashi and her mother live below a tea plantation in India. Usually Tashi goes along with her mum, and whilst mum picks tea leaves with the other women, Tashi sits under a tree and plays with a group of monkeys, sharing her fruit with them, allowing them to groom her and playing with the little baby monkeys. One morning, Tashi's mum is too poorly to go to work, so Tashi struggles with the big tea basket herself. The plantation owner derides her, saying she is too little to pick the tea, and Tashi is worried about how she and her mother will cope with no money to get her mum a doctor, or to buy food. She shares her worries with her monkey friends and somehow, at the end of the day, Tashi's basket is full of beautiful, fresh, fragrant tea leaves that are a very rare type of tea called 'Cloud Tea'.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1406300926</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Alice Taylor
|title=To School Through The Fields
|rating=3.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=To School Through the Fields is the memoir of a farmer’s daughter who grew up in rural County Cork in the 1940s (though the book never mentions the date of when it is set). Taylor makes it clear at the beginning that she is writing a nostalgic look back at the era of her childhood, before the 'changing winds of time' and then presents a series of anecdotes about her parents, her family and some of the other characters who lived in her village.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0863224210</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Anne Cassidy
|title=Guilt Trip
|rating=4
|genre=Teens
|summary=Two years ago, Ali and her friends saved Daniel Feeny from committing suicide. They became local heroes and were looked up to as good examples of modern day teenagers. Ali was on her way to Cambridge, Stephen about to start his own business, Jackson getting ready to be reunited with his brother in Brighton where he'd also study history, and Hannah joining her mother's hairdressing business.
Then something dreadful happened. Five weeks later, Daniel was dead, and the gang of friends who had been adjusting to life as heroes were responsible.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1407110705</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Elizabeth Chandler
|title=Dark Secrets: Legacy of Lies and Don't Tell
|rating=5
|genre=Teens
|summary=After years without seeing her grandmother, Megan receives an invitation - or perhaps a summons - to visit the old lady at her house in the town of Wisteria. Reluctantly, she goes there to please her mother, but finds out that despite the invitation, her grandmother doesn't seem happy to see her, and neither does her cute but sullen cousin Matt, who's currently living there. More worryingly, the house seems strangely familiar, because she's seen it many times in her dreams...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847388728</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Catherine Aird
|title=Past Tense
|rating=3.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=Jan Wakefield was surprised to find herself arranging the refreshments for mourners after a funeral, not least because she had never met the deceased and was unaware that her husband was the next of kin. He was working in South America and not expected home for some time. Josephine Short had obviously been a feisty character though. Despite being unmarried she had had a child (at a time when this would have been frowned upon) and amassed a considerable fortune. Her grandson Joe was flying home from Lasserta for the funeral.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0749007648</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=N K Jemisin
|title=The Hundred-Thousand Kingdoms (Inheritance Trilogy)
|rating=5
|genre=Fantasy
|summary=A month after her mother's death, outcast Yeine Darr is summoned by her grandfather, king of the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, to come to the palace of Sky. There named one of his three heirs, along with her feuding cousins, she quickly realizes that without allies she will surely lose the contest for the throne. Thus begins an epic quest to find her mother's murderer, save her own life, and fulfil a destiny she never knew she had.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1841498173</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=David Conway and Dubravka Kolanovic
|title=The Secret To Teddy's Happiness
|rating=3.5
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=When the toys discover an old, bedraggled teddy bear, they rack their brains to find a way to mend his broken heart, to make him smile again. The velvet rabbit who knows everything offers to tell them the secret of Teddy's happiness, but he wants them to do him a favour first.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1862337624</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Martin Kornberger
|title=Brand Society
|rating=4.5
|genre=Business and Finance
|summary=Brand Society is fundamentally not a business management book. This might come as some surprise given the title. Management books, at least the ''how to'' management books, tend to be simple and easy to follow. But, I suspect Kornberger would agree, that's what limits their use. They are over-simplified to the point of uselessness. Rather, Brand Society takes an holistic approach to the subject of the prevailing nature of brands in today's world (at least the Western world). He suggests that today's brands exist without a prevailing theory to understand them or make sense of them. So what Kornberger does, after first looking at how brands transform management and organizations, is present a brand-centred conceptual map for thinking about things like politics, ethics and aesthetics.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0521726905</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Philip Ball
|title=The Music Instinct: How Music Works and Why We Can't Do without it
|rating=4
|genre=Popular Science
|summary='We need to talk about music, but it is hard. Very few people can do it.' So says Philip Ball after 400 pages of talking about music. Very few readers who make it that far will disagree with his conclusion, but most will have gained some enlightenment about how music works and why we enjoy it.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847920888</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Phil Daniels
|title=Phil Daniels: Class Actor
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=If we were asked to nominate the archetypal Cockney actor on large or small screen over the last twenty years or so, Phil Daniels would undoubtedly come high on the list. Born in Islington in 1958 and raised in Kings Cross, he was a graduate of the Anna Scher Theatre in the 1970s.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847376207</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Sam Enthoven
|title=Crawlers
|rating=4
|genre=Teens
|summary=Why are the men that want to take over the world using evil alien beings always so stupid? Steadman is stupid. Ever since the Great Fire of London trapped her in an underground dungeon in 1666, the Queen has been neutralised. Even then, the great and the powerful couldn't quite bring themselves to kill her. She had too much potential. But they did have the sense to keep her safely locked away. But now Steadman thinks he knows better. He thinks he can rule the world through the Queen and he's set her a test. If she passes, he will set her free.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0552558702</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Scott Westerfeld
|title=Pretties
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
|summary=In the unnamed city of the future, all the adults are pretty. They've had mental and physical surgery to make them calm, placid and perfectly aesthetic human beings. If they have any trouble as young adults it is the problem of what to wear at parties, or how to get rid of their hangovers when they wake up at 5pm. Unfortunately, one of these bright young things is our heroine, Tally, one of the few people in the world to have learnt how damnably horrid and sapping the life of Riley can be.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847389074</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Suzanne Bugler
|title=This Perfect World
|rating=5
|genre=Women's Fiction
|summary=Laura Hamley sees herself as a fortunate woman. She has a successful husband, two beautiful children, a big house in a good neighbourhood, and a coterie of friends who fall nicely into the category of people like us. She's always beautifully turned out, and her position in the social pecking order is never less than high. She simply shrugs off the occasional moments of dissatisfaction - what on Earth could she have to complain about?
And then Mrs Partridge makes an unwelcome phone call...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>023074401X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jill Newton
|title=Crash Bang Donkey!
|rating=3
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=Farmer Gruff spends all his time chasing the crows from his corn. Eventually he needs to sleep, so all the animals tiptoe around, making no noise whatsoever. What's this coming over the hill with a crash and a bang? Oh no! It's a donkey with a drum. How's Farmer Gruff going to get his sleep? If he can't sleep, how's he ever going to be able to keep the crows from his corn?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1862337209</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Olga Grushin
|title=The Concert Ticket
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=''The Concert Ticket'' follows the lives of a family in Soviet Russia who have grown desperately distant from one another. Sergei, the father, is a frustrated musician who longs to play the pre-revolutionary masterpieces of composers like Igor Selinsky but is forced to play the kind of patriotic ditties he despises. His schoolteacher wife, Anna, longs for his love, but is never quite able to get his attention with her shy gestures. Their shiftless son, Alexander, has quietly given up going to school and spends his days hanging around the park, consorting with undesirables. Also living in their house is Anna's silent, elderly mother.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670918482</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Aatish Taseer
|title=The Temple-Goers
|rating=3
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Aatish Taseer is probably best known for his journalism, publishing regularly in the Indian press, in Prospect, and perhaps most prolifically in Time magazine. He has won acclaim for his memoir: Stranger to History in which he, raised by his Indian Sikh mother, traces his absent Muslim father across the border in Pakistan – and also for his translations of the short stories of Saadat Hasan Manto.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670918504</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Kate Saunders
|title=Beswitched
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Flora is furious at being sent away to boarding school, even one which is very progressive with luxurious facilities and school rock bands. Her parents need to sell her grandmother's house in Italy and build a granny flat at home, and Flora is resentful at having her life turned upside down for a grumpy, unpleasant old woman. On the train, she falls asleep and wakes up to find herself in another era. Trendy 21st century Flora is horrified to find herself in a hideous pinafore dress with a childish haircut and no make up. What has happened to her Ipod, mobile phone and brand new laptop?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1407108972</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Julie Cohen
|title=Nina Jones and the Temple of Gloom
|rating=4.5
|genre=Women's Fiction
|summary=A sign of a good book, for me, often relates to how easily I can put it down. And then how much I want to pick it back up again. Nina Jones was a particular challenge for me as after reading it for an hour whilst my toddler napped I kept my thumb in the page whilst getting her out of bed, snuck her downstairs still saving my page, put on Cbeebies, and then sat next to her on the sofa to carry on reading for at least another hour, if not a little bit more than that. I then kept it in the kitchen so I could sneak a few more pages in between stirring the spaghetti. And then once my daughter was in bed I went on to absently ignore my poor, tired, over-worked husband (who got bored and went for a bath) so that I could read on to the end of the story. I found myself mentally yelling at a fictional character (I hope it was mentally and I wasn't actually shouting out loud...we have very thin walls), I swooned over the hero, sniggered often and I even cried a little bit too. So, a book that induces such family neglect and an emotional roller coaster of emotions is definitely a good read!
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755341414</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Ken Bruen
|title=The Guards
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=A woman makes an unlikely choice by asking Jack Taylor to investigate the apparent suicide of her teenage daughter in Galway. Jack is ex Irish police (Garda) but also a known alcoholic with nothing much else in his life. His approach to investigation is haphazard - he doesn't really have a method beyond asking direct questions and, if necessary, using his fists. Predictably, there is more to the suicide case than first meets the eye and Jack, aided by his unsavoury friend, Sutton, uncover some very disturbing secrets and levels of corruption within the city. ''The Guards'' is not your conventional crime thriller; it's darker and has a grim realism.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0863224105</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Elizabeth Speller
|title=The Return of Captain John Emmett
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Laurence Bartram has survived the war, but his life has changed dramatically. It will never be the same again. It's almost as if he doesn't recognize himself. Domestic life is now non-existent and he has no-one to please but himself. He is unsettled and edgy. War has obviously left its mark. He retreats graciously and wonders what he'll do with the rest of his life.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844086070</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Salman Rushdie
|title=Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticisms 1981 - 1991
|rating=3.5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=We read some authors because we know we're going to enjoy them. Others, we feel somehow obliged to read. If we consider ourselves ''readers'', and certainly if we have any pretensions (I use the word advisedly) to being ''well-read'', then there are some books and more particularly some authors with whom we are required to become familiar.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099542250</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Neel Mukherjee
|title=A Life Apart
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Ritwik Ghosh grows up in India in the 1970's, one of two children of an abusive mother. In the 1990's, finally escaping the country after her death, he comes to England to study at Oxford, then moves to London. There, he looks after 86 year old Anne Cameron in exchange for free accommodation, while looking for work, and for sexual encounters with other men. He also writes a novel - the extended story of Miss Gilby, a character in Rabindranath Tagore's novel Ghare Baire. Miss Gilby becomes English teacher to Bimala, the wife of a minor official in 1900's Bengal just before the Partition of the province.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184901101X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Mark Sperring and Leo Timmers
|title=Green
|rating=4
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=Clive loves wearing green. It's all he ever wears. He thinks he looks mighty snazzy, but his big sister (boo! hiss!) takes every opportunity to call him a cabbage, moss, a sprout or a toad. Clive keeps wearing his green clothes, certain that he'll have the last laugh and get one over on his sister.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845394534</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Ian Whybrow and Lynne Chapman
|title=Stinky! Or How The Beautiful Smelly Warthog Found A Friend
|rating=3.5
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=Stinky the warthog lives in a neighbourhood with the Crocodile family, the Monkey family and the Littlebird family. One by one they invite Stinky round to play with their children, but his foul odour and the flies buzzing around him cause all manner of problems. Will he be able to find a friend? ...Well, yes, it says so in the title.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1862337594</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Josephine Wilkinson
|title=The Early Loves of Anne Boleyn
|rating=3.5
|genre=History
|summary=Before her marriage to King Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn had already been courted by three suitors, any of whom might have become her husband - and possibly saved her from her eventual end on the scaffold. The first was her Irish cousin James Butler, later Earl of Ormond, whom she was at one time intended to marry in order to settle a family dispute over the title and estates of the Earldom of Ormond. After their marriage negotiations came to an end in the face of legal obstacles, she became betrothed to Henry Percy, heir to the Duke of Northumberland. With a little help from the scheming Cardinal Wolsey, the Duke, who had little time for his son, insisted that any idea of marriage between them should be dismissed forthwith. Soon after this the poet Thomas Wyatt became enamoured of her, but by this time there was fierce competition from his sovereign, and her destiny was sealed.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848684304</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Scott Westerfeld
|title=Uglies
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
|summary="This city is a paradise, Tally. It feeds you, educates you, keeps you safe. It makes you pretty." And that's meant literally. As soon as they're sixteen years old, ugly people like Tally are completely rebuilt - no more freckles, dull eyes, rough skin, or ideas about biting their fingernails, and made a pretty. It's scientific, and obviously of benefit, considering the parties, status and love afforded to pretties. But is it essential? When her best friend is prettified Tally finds a new friend, Shay, who has secrets to share in the few weeks before the operation they're due to have on the same day. Secrets of another place, another way, and of people staying forever ugly - through choice.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847389066</amazonuk>
}}