'''Read [[Features|new features]].'''
__NOTOC__
{{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
|summary=The story opens with a much younger Sister Bernard - no more than a girl really. The daily lives of the nuns is regulated, with long hours for prayer, meditation and solitude. Everyone is housed, fed and watered adequately and that's as far as it goes. No little luxuries to speak of. Nothing to temper the harshness and the silence. Visits from family members are forbidden also. However, the young Sister Bernard appears to not only be coping very well with all of this but even embracing it. She doesn't grumble or complain about anything. However, even although she may appear saintly she is human, just like the rest of us and temptation does come along in the shape of a young man.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857891014</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=H R F Keating
|title=The Perfect Murder: The First Inspector Ghote Mystery
|rating=3
|genre=Crime
|summary='The Perfect Murder' was the first of HRF Keating's Inspector Ghote mysteries, first published in 1964. It has a kind of gentle charm and has some things in its favour, not least the believable Indian setting when the author had not visited the country in which he chose to set his character at a time when research would have been more difficult than it would today.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141194472</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Aatish Taseer
|title=Noon
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary='Noon' sits somewhere between a collection of related short stories and a full blown novel in that it tells four different episodes in Rehan Tabassum's life, spread over a couple of decades. It explores some large issues though.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330540416</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Louis B Jones
|title=Radiance
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Mark Perdue took his daughter, Carlotta – or Lotta, as she's known – on an indulgent fantasy weekend in Los Angeles. Lotta and some other teenagers were going to live the celebrity lifestyle for a few days, with gigs, recordings and stretch limos to ferry them around. Mark's got problems of his own. He ''was'' an eminent physicist but illness has taken its toll. His wife is still suffering the emotional effects of a late-term abortion – the family called the foetus 'Noddy' – and Lotta can't reconcile how she feels about the loss of her unborn sibling, even going as far as to say that she would have given up the next ten years of her life to look after the child. And Mark? Well, on the tarmac at LAX it dawns on him that a heart attack would be a convenient way out of everything.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>158243736X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Maxine Linnell
|title=Closer
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
|summary=This is one of those concise and powerful little books where it's best for the reader to come to it with as little knowledge of the plot as possible, so I'll feature the mood - and Mel has a lot of those. Beyond her yet-to-actually-start relationship with Raj, and her best friend Chloe, she has her family - fractious animosity with her older sister, a younger brother who only plays computer games, and little freedom it seems from her mother. At least her step-dad's a funky bloke though - although one mum finds fault with easily enough. It's hardly comfy domesticity, and is even worse when interrupted by something very disturbing.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907869263</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jon Steele
|title=The Watchers
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=At over 500 pages I'm sincerely hoping that this book is going to appeal. The back cover blurb is promising, informing the reader that the author is a well-travelled cameraman/editor of many years standing. The story opens with a young Marc Rochat starting a new life in Switzerland. Everything is strange and new to him. He becomes a night-watchman at the local cathedral and carries out his duties diligently. He doesn't mind the fact that it's a rather solitary job as he more than makes up for the silence (when the bells are not ringing that is) by chatting away to all of the various bells as if they were human. Marc's conversations with his 'ladies' are utterly charming. I could listen to them all day.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0593067517</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Geraldine McCaughrean
|title=King Arthur and a World of Other Stories
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=The prolific, award winning author Geraldine McCaughrean has collected together twenty four stories from around the world in this highly impressive collection, garnered from four earlier collections. It includes the familiar from the Western tradition (Wilhelm Tell, Pygmalion, King Arthur) to those that are completely new to me, from Bolivia, Togo, Japan, the Middle East. The stories are no more than five pages long, making them ideal for bedtime reading (or hometime reading in a school).
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444002376</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Alice LaPlante
|title=Turn of Mind
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=This is a beautifully-presented book with its eye-catching front cover and poetic title. Jennifer has had a busy and fulfilling professional life as a well-respected medical surgeon. Until now. She's gradually losing bits of her mind to Alzheimer's. Her family is supportive and keep popping in on a regular basis plus there's now a live-in carer, Magdalena, so that daily life and daily chores are just about covered.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846554632</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jose Saramago and Margaret Jull Costa
|title=The Elephant's Journey
|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=This novel is inspired by a real event – the marriage gift of an elephant from Dom João III of Portugal to his cousin Maximilian, the Hapsburg Archduke of Austria. When the gift was accepted, the elephant Solomon, his mahout Subhro and numerous soldiers, oxen and porters, walked from Lisbon to Vienna to deliver the present, arriving in 1552. This is the story of that journey.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099546884</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Lindsey Fraser
|title=J K Rowling: the Mystery of Fiction
|rating=4
|genre=Children's Non-Fiction
|summary=Easily one of the most renowned authors of the 21st century, J.K. Rowling's incredibly successful Harry Potter series shook the core of the literary world. It provoked a reaction, the likes of which have never been seen before, and likely never will. A unique set of factors combined in order for the Harry Potter books to reach the level of success they enjoyed, and these factors are explored in this biography of Rowling. It is difficult not to be fascinated by the person who is responsible for the phenomenon that is Harry Potter, and although writing is a profession that doesn't have a typical path by which it can be reached, Rowling's story is anything but orthodox, and her personal 'rags to riches' story only enhances the Harry Potter legacy.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906134693</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Sara Stockbridge
|title=Cross My Palm
|rating=4
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=Fortune teller Rose Lee lives on the edge of London society in 1860, making her living by entertaining (and sometimes deceiving) the rich by reading their palms. She fears the fate she has read for herself in her own palm which is perhaps what makes her cautious of delivering the whole truth to the ladies that employ her. On one particular night Rose is called to the house of Lady Quayle, a woman of high society, who delights in having her fortune read, taking everything Rose tells her as gospel. One of the guests present is Emily, a young girl and friend of Lady Quayle's daughter Tabitha.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>070118504X</amazonuk>
}}