'''Read [[Features|new features]].'''
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{{newreview
|author=Janet Mullany
|title=Mr Bishop and the Actress
|rating=4
|genre=Women's Fiction
|summary=Strait-laced Harry Bishop has just started his new job as steward in Lord Shad's ramshackle household when he is sent off to London to sort out Shad's errant relation Charlie and his debts. Here he meets actress Sophie Wallace, Charlie's mistress, who now finds herself set adrift from her protector with only a few dresses and a rather ostentatious bed to her name.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755347811</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|summary=Cavalley's creates the most luxurious hats in the world along with a host of other items without which the rich cannot survive. At the company's head is Violet Cavalley, now celebrating her sixtieth birthday with her family about her. She looks as though she could go on forever, but Violet and one or two others know differently. There are a few other people who know that Violet isn't who she says she is and that he background wouldn't stand a lot of close examination. From the villa in Capri, to the London homes of the family and the private jet, it's all good living, but there are plenty of secrets which are going to be aired.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755370325</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jon Osborne
|title=Kill Me Once
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=The title and the book cover plus the wording 'Introducing a new breed of serial killer' leave the reader in no doubt as to the type of book it is. A lot of innocent blood is going to be spilled throughout these pages. And, in the case of many individuals with evil at their core, we get to visit the childhood of one of the main characters, Nathan Stiedowe. I wasn't at all surprised to read that he was 'different' from the other little boys at school. He often got nasty nicknames thrown at him from his peers. But did he care? Add to all of that, his parents were bible-bashers but their fervent love of God didn't seem to extend to their son. Why? Nathan decided from a very early age that, in order to survive, he'd better develop a pretty thick skin - and fast.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009955092X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Sebastian Faulks
|title=Faulks on Fiction
|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''Faulks on Fiction'' is effectively the book of the TV show of the book. Even more confusingly, it's a book of reviews of works of British fiction so this is really a review of a book of reviews. The TV show has, at the time of writing, yet to air, but the concept is to talk, not so much about the books themselves, but of the characters within them, separated into four distinct character types; heros, lovers, snobs and villains. Even ignoring the fact that characters often don't fit wholly into these descriptions and that the concept might prove a use for those strange Venn diagrams you learnt about at school and have never found a use for, and the inevitable quibbles about which books and characters could also have been included that is the problem with lists, the result is strangely uneven. I was left wondering if this might indeed work better as a TV series, but as a stand alone book, it is more one to be dipped into than read cover to cover.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846079594</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts
|title=Edgelands
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=Around the middle of the last century and earlier, books about the English countryside seemed very much in vogue. H.V. Morton's 'In Search of England' and associated titles spring readily to mind, but there were a wealth of others, by authors who seemed intent on discovering the land for themselves, sometimes anxious to document it before it was gone.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224089021</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Nathacha Appanah
|title=The Last Brother
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Raj and his two beloved brothers live on a Mauritian sugar plantation. World War II rages far away and close too, but Raj is blissfully unaware of anything beyond his immediate surroundings. Life is poor and hard and Raj's father takes out the privations of his life on his sons and his wife - drunken beatings are a regular occurrence. But his mother is loving and kind, and skilled at healing, and his brothers are constant playmates.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849164010</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Ali Lewis
|title=Everybody Jam
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
|summary=Danny lives on a cattle station in the Australian outback. His brother Jonny died in an horrific accident last year and the subject is absolutely taboo. Nobody even mentions his name. But Danny keeps Jonny's room just as it was when he died, and he touches his picture every day.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184939248X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Alan Silberberg
|title=Milo and the Restart Button
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=''Starting over is like pressing the reset button on a game that makes you lose all your points and wipes out any of the good stuff you've spent hundreds of hours learning...''
Milo's restart button was pressed by the death of his mother. Since that awful day, life has not been good. His father has retreated inwards, his sister is always angry, and they've moved house several times.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857071904</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Eve Edwards
|title=The Queen's Lady
|rating=4
|genre=Teens
|summary=Although it's not long since Lady Jane Rievaulx's husband died she's already beginning a new life in service to the Queen at Richmond Palace. It's not enthusiasm which is driving her to this but her late husband's children are disputing her dower rights and her own father finds it difficult to accept that she is now an independent woman. In the Queen's service she has a degree of protection. The man she loves – James Lacy – has demons of his own to conquer and he's about to set sail to the Americas. When Jane's family force her into a dreadful situation it looks as though the one man who can save her is at the other side of the world.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141327332</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Sandra Glover
|title=Fallout
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
|summary=Hannah tries to object when her so-called friends throw an impromptu party at her house during her parents' absence, but she simply doesn't know how to stand up to them. At first things aren't too bad: her parents will go ballistic when they see the spilt beer on the carpets, but it's nothing that can't be fixed. Then drink and drugs begin to take their toll. A window is smashed during a fight, all manner of things are damaged beyond repair, and the house is burgled. And something terrible, something so bad she can't face it or admit it, happens to Hannah during that eventful night. And it will destroy lives in more than one family.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1842709941</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Tom Bale
|title=Terror's Reach
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=We're on the south coast of England in the middle of a hot summer in a very upmarket enclave, not dissimilar to Sandbanks, along the coast a bit. The locals are going about their business, about their daily lives and Bale obligingly introduces them to us one by one and also gives us an idea of their respective backgrounds, their family members and even some of the house designs ' ... each home had a private jetty' for example.. New money is also apparent along with ostentatious taste. What's also apparent is that trouble's afoot. Big time.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848090765</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jonathan Clark
|title=A World By Itself: A History of the British Isles
|rating=4
|genre=History
|summary=As one who has always felt most at ease with the standard chronological approach to history, driven by events and major personalities, I found the close-on 700 pages of this volume fairly demanding reading in places. It is divided into six parts, each by a different contributor with the editor himself writing the fourth. Each part is divided into Material Cultures, followed by essays on topics (not for all sections) on Religious Cultures; Religion, Nationalism and Identity; and Political and National Cultures. What we have, therefore, is an overview of events from each period, more thorough in some instances than others, and a certain amount of theorizing on the general social, political and even artistic background. A straightforward history through the ages – it is not.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0712664963</amazonuk>
}}