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{{newreview
|author=Sophie Hannah
|title=A Room Swept White
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=There's a classic Agatha Christie style hook at the start of this story. TV producer Fliss Benson receives a card with no message other than sixteen numbers arranged in four rows of four. On the same day Fliss takes over work on a documentary about cot death mothers and miscarriages of justice. Simultaneously, one of the mothers is found dead at her house with an identical numbered card in her pocket. Work out what the numbers mean and you will find the killer. But as this is a typically densely plotted Sophie Hannah story you will have to note every detail in every part of the book to reach the right conclusion. The plot has more twists than a spiral staircase, though there are clues that could help you, including one rather cheeky feature - if you can spot it. Sadly, I didn't until I was writing this review…
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340980621</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=James Kelman
|summary=Titch and Mitch are two little pixies who have run away from home. Through a series of misadventures they find themselves shipwrecked on an island, and the story revolves around them making new friends there. They come to the rescue of a strange coloured seagull, they save a trapped fairy, they play dentist for a little dragon mouse and they aid and abet an intelligent turkey who is trying to escape from the turkey farm.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956231500</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Steve Voake
|title=Fightback
|rating=3.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Meet Kier. A smart, yet lonely, young teen, he's been farmed off to a private school by his dad since mother died. Among his achievements are several successes on the karate mat, but all this is about to change. When his father is rammed off a motorway and murdered, Kier finds he's even more alone, and duty-bound to fight even more, when he gets clues to just who his father might have been, and how to go about responding to his death.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571230032</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Kat Falls
|title=Dark Life
|rating=5
|genre=Teens
|summary=Climate change came. The oceans rose. Half the land mass disappeared uner the water. Some of what was left simply crumbled away. Now, Topsiders live in giant tower blocks in a society under an authoritarian regime with emergency powers. Time outside is limited because the sun is so strong it causes third degree burns. Status brings space, not money. Using space to which you aren't entitled brings severe punishment crashing down upon you. It's no wonder Gemma wants to find her brother, who is living as Dark Life on the ocean floor.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847387616</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Louise Harwood
|title=Kiss Like You Mean It
|rating=3.5
|genre=Women's Fiction
|summary=This book is a modern-day love story. It's all about trendy characters with trendy names living rather trendy lives in glossy location sets. The title gives a very clear message as to its contents. Romantic fiction which will appeal generally to women. But there's also a story within a story (and for me the more interesting one) which is the Hollywood movie being filmed in Europe. It takes us back to the first World War and the heroic actions of one young man, in particular.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330442090</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=John Gordon
|title=Fen Runners
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Years ago, a boy fell through the ice under Cottle's Bridge. He said afterwards that something pulled him, a sleek silvery creature dragging him down into the blackness. Now, decades later, two boys go swimming in the very same spot and find one of his ice skates, a so-called fen runner, buried in the mud at the bottom of the channel. But when they take it home, dark secrets begin to resurface around them and they become aware that an ancient evil is stirring out in the fens.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1842556843</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Eleanor Thom
|title=The Tin-Kin
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Dawn is a single mother who has been avoiding a lot of things for a long time. When her aunt, who raised Dawn as a daughter, dies, Dawn finds the key to a cupboard which she was forbidden to look into as a child. Inside she finds clues to her family history, links to a Traveller Community, unearthing a journey that sees her finding her roots. We also witness her struggle to renew her complicated relationship with her family and her efforts to escape the ever-present memory of her abusive husband.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0715639013</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Leslie Kenton
|title=Love Affair: The Memoir of a Forbidden Father-daughter Relationship
|rating=4.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=For some years, I had been aware of Leslie Kenton's books on healthy living, and also of Stan Kenton's work as a jazz bandleader, though I had never made the connection until now. This family memoir reveals all about the famous father and later-to-be-famous daughter, and it is a disturbing tale.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091910536</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Sarah McConnell and Lucy Courtenay
|title=Swashbuckle School (Scarlet Silver)
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Young Scarlet Silver had always wanted to be a pirate and eventually her wish came true when she and her family took to the high seas in their pirate ship, 55 Ocean Drive. The problem was though that neither Scarlet nor anyone else in the family knew how to be a pirate and they soon discovered that it was quite a tricky business. Scarlet became the self appointed captain and did her best but her parents, brother Cedric, grandfather and his mate One Eyed Jake formed a pretty inept crew. This resulted in them all soon falling foul to hostile pirate ships and narrowly escaping death and disaster!
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340959673</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Richard Flanagan
|title=Wanting
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Read the blurb on the back of Flanagan's ''Wanting,'' and you'll think it's the usual post colonial tale of Britain as enemy number one, ''wanting'' to impose its rule on everyone else. In a way it is such a tale, but what makes it more interesting is the story of a little girl caught up in the wider historical events.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848870779</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Simone Elkeles
|title=Perfect Chemistry
|rating=4
|genre=Teens
|summary=On the outside, Brittany is the flawless high-school girl. She has the perfect hair, the perfect outfit, and the perfect boyfriend. Any girl should be jealous of her, right? Wrong. Underneath the immaculately applied mascara lies a multitude of family problems, her despair at the thought of her severely disabled sister being bundled off to a nursing home never leaving her mind. She has to keep her hurt hidden to save her image, but surely enough this mask starts to crack as more and more of her life refuses to live up to the expectations she has forced upon herself.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847388051</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Patricia Duncker
|title=The Strange Case of the Composer and His Judge
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=It's rural France, and 2000 is barely begun, when hunters come across a spread of human corpses in the mountains. Several families, all in the same cult, seem to have killed themselves on their path to wherever. If so, this is a problem, for the last time it happened, in Switzerland a few years previous, nobody could work out why – and who was there to dispose of some of the evidence. This isn't a problem for the policeman involved, as he fell desperately in love with the investigative judge in collaborating on the initial case. Combining again, they see a link with everybody involved in both cases, a famous conductor /composer.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408807041</amazonuk>
}}