'''Read [[Features|new features]].'''
__NOTOC__
{{newreview
|author=Sally Gardner
|title=The Double Shadow
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
|summary=In 1937 Amaryllis Ruben is about to turn seventeen. As a present, her father, Arnold Ruben, a widowed, multi-millionaire, is going to give his daughter his life long work, an invention that could alter time forever, a memory machine. It can capture the good, erase the bad, and keep you young for all time. But things aren't going to plan; apart from Amaryllis not wanting it, other people have taken an interest, and not in a good way.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780620128</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Elizabeth Buguley and Marion Lindsay
|summary=Translated by Shaun Whiteside from Scarpa's 2008 Italian original, 'Stabat Mater' is set in a Venetian orphanage for girls run by nuns in what would have been around the 1700s. The girls at the 'Ospedale' are trained as musicians and singers who play from a hidden gallery in the adjoining church for the patrons of the Instituto della Pietà. However, this is a highly stylised little book, bordering on the almost poetic, narrated from the point of view of one of the orphans, a young violinist named Cecilia who goes on to tell of the impact of the appointment of a new in-house composer, one Don Antonio, or Vivaldi as most of us know him.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687691</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Roger Smith
|title=Dust Devils
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary="Rosie Dell had come to end it. For keeps this time."
''It'' is the affair that she's been having with Ben Baker, one of the richest men in the country. Unfortunately for Rosie, she doesn't say what she's come to say… unfortunately for Ben, for Rosie, and for her family, someone has plans to end it for her. Actually, not plans, as such. She shouldn't have been there. Everything that happens next wouldn't have, if she hadn't been.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687950</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Christien Gholson
|title=A Fish Trapped Inside the Wind
|rating=3
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The front cover is lovely with its blue and turquoise suggesting languid waters. The author of 'The Jane Austen Book Club' (which I've read incidentally) 'fell in love with this novel.' High praise indeed. I'm hoping to do the same.
Everything about this book stinks (and I use the word explicitly). All of the chapters have the word 'fish' somewhere or other and there's a quote right at the beginning which gives the book its quirky and unusual title. (As I'm a fishy Piscean does that bode well for a good or sympathetic review, I wonder).
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906998906</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Tina Rosenberg
|title=Join the Club: How Peer Pressure Can Transform the World
|rating=5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=Teenagers in South Carolina have become involved in the anti-smoking movement, passing out information encouraging their peers to educate themselves about the ways big tobacco companies try to get them hooked. There are youngsters in South Africa who’ve refused to have sex without a condom because of the danger of HIV and AIDS. Minority students in Texas have challenged data going back years by succeeding at calculus where traditionally students of their race have struggled. Why? Because other people have done the same thing, and they want to fit in.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848313004</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Fiona Foden
|title=Life, Death and Gold Leather Trousers
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
|summary=Despite having not seen her uncle Jupe, the famous former rock star, for several years after he fell out with her mother, Clover is still devastated by his death. So when her parents split up the day after she turns thirteen, and her father runs off with a nude model, she doesn't think things can get any worse. Can she cope with the fallout of the split, look after kid sister Lily, and get to know cute fellow guitarist Riley better? Or will her rival Sophie Skelling's teeny crochet bikini tempt him away from her?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1407120867</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Monique Truong
|title=Bitter in the Mouth
|rating=3
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Linda Hammerick, a young girl growing up in North Carolina in the late 1970's, is different. She suffers from synesthesia, tasting things when she speaks or hears words. She grows up with her great-uncle, Baby Harper, as her best friend, as his
singsong voice is the only one she can hear without the accompanying tastes, and writes letters back and forth with her best friend Kelly rather than have long conversations with her.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099474743</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Deborah White
|title=Wickedness
|rating=4
|genre=Teens
|summary=Claire's grandmother has just died. And her parents have just split up. So it's not really a good time. Mum is being even more of a pain than usual - endlessly cross, endlessly cleaning, endlessly combing Gran's belongings for anything of value - and Claire wants nothing more than to go home to her own house and her own things. But then she finds a letter addressed to her from her grandmother. It contains a sheaf of manuscripts and a ring inscribed with a hieroglyph. Once on Claire's finger, the ring gets stuck - much to her mother's annoyance. It could be worth a pretty penny to the rather sinister Egyptologist who's interested in buying some of Gran's possessions.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848775318</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Ann Bonwill and Simon Rickerty
|title=I Don't Want To Be A Pea!
|rating=5
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=Hugo is a hippo and Bella is a bird and they belong to each other because all hippos have birds and all birds have hippos. They are all set for a very special night as they get ready to attend the very exciting Bird-Hippo Fairytale Fancy Dress Party but first they need to decide on what costumes they will wear in order to go as a pair. Hugo's first suggestion is that they should go as the princess and the pea but Bella does not want to be a pea because it is too small and green. She suggests that they go as a mermaid and her rock, but this time Hugo objects to being the rock as it is too grey and blobby. They continue in this way making and rejecting suggestions until it looks as if they have reached a stand-off with neither willing to give in. This situation makes both Bella and Hugo miserable though so at last they agree to a rather surprising and ingenious solution and end up having great fun at the party after all.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0192780174</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Meg Rosoff
|title=There Is No Dog
|rating=3.5
|genre=Teens
|summary=Ok. Imagine God is actually a teenage immortal, much in the vein of teenage humans. He rushes his coursework (creation) and while there are flashes of brilliance and potential in it, there's no real thought or organisation and so the whole thing doesn't really work properly. But God is too busy having a lie-in or lusting after buxom young women to be ironing out these sorts of boring creases in the making of a successful planet.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141327162</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Kit Berry
|title=Shadows at Stonewylde
|rating=4
|genre=Teens
|summary=When we last left Stonewylde, the community seemed to be on the verge of a period of glorious prosperity and happiness as Yul became the new Magus and Sylvie joined him as guardians of Stonewylde. Thirteen years have passed, and Stonewylde is almost unrecognisable; it hasn't quite succumbed to the Outside World yet, but just how much longer can it remain self-sufficient and resistant to the consumerism and pervasive technology that is characteristic of the rest of the country? Furthermore, the cracks that begin to appear in Yul's and Sylvie's relationship are branching out throughout the whole community, with malcontent brewing, cruelty going unchecked, and sinister hints of a dark presence returning to Stonewylde.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0575098899</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Kirsten Reed
|title=The Ice Age
|rating=2.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Two people road trip across America. Sort of. They don't start off together, or meet up intentionally, and the age gap is purposely provocative. She likes him because he's old and has pointy, vampire teeth he might use to bite her with (Twilight sell out, much?) She is 17. We don't know her name, but it is she who tells us the story. He is called Gunther. People think she is his daughter. They hope she is. It's just too odd to comprehend otherwise.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1447200411</amazonuk>
}}