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{{newreview
|author=John Buchan
|title=A Lost Lady Of Old Years
|rating=5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=While I normally start with a plot description I'd better justify the summary first. (Translated, it reads - Warning - you must understand Scots dialect really well if you hope to like this book from the start. Well worth reading though, it's such a good story.)
Basically, this is a tale set during the Jacobite Rising of 1745-6 with authentic dialogue of that time; which is to say, rather hard to follow if you're anything like me. Most books, I can read in a couple of days maximum, this took me nearly a month and at some points I was reduced to asking my Scottish colleague to translate it for me.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846972035</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell
|summary=This is a book set in the future, with hover-cars and eye-scans and travel to other planets. But make no mistake – that's not what this book is about. Sixteen-year-old Rose has been asleep for far longer than she intended; in the meantime the world has almost come to an end in a terrible plague, and her stasis tube has been abandoned in a basement. If Brendan had not come exploring, she might never have been found at all. But how is that possible? How could the daughter and heiress of the most powerful couple in the galaxy have been forgotten? This book is about her awakening, and the slow, painful unfurling of the real facts of her early life.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0575104724</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Simon Jenkins
|title=A Short History of England
|rating=4
|genre=History
|summary=Most of us see history rather like a cloud. We're aware of the great mass of it, seeing some parts more clearly than others, but perhaps struggling to bring it into a straight line. Some parts we will have studied at school, or read about out of interest but these parts will be balanced by other periods when we will be woefully ignorant of some of the most basic facts. I've studied the Tudors in some depth at various points in my life – but I would struggle to tell you much about the Stuarts. What was needed was a concise history of England in one volume and written for the adult reader who would simply like to be more informed, but not over-burdened.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846684617</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Henning Mankell
|title=Daniel
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=A young Hans Bengler has decided to leave his homeland of Sweden and make an expedition across the inhospitable Kalahari Desert. Brave - or extremely foolish. I'm sticking with the latter. My reasons are that Bengler is portrayed by Mankell as a rather dull, insular and unimaginative young man. He doesn't really get along with his family (such as they are) nor does he seem to have many friends. It's also plain that he's desperate to leave his cold Sweden for warmer climes. But at what cost?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009948143X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Bettany Hughes
|title=The Hemlock Cup: Socrates, Athens and the Search for the Good Life
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=We don't know much about Socrates. For someone whose ideas are still so relevant so long after his death, his life is something of a mystery. He didn't like to write things down, and so Hughes begins this book by saying that it may have something of a 'Socrates-sized hole' in it. What we do see is the city of Athens, and the hugely important changes which were going on there while Socrates was alive. In Athens we see the beginnings of democracy, the seedlings of some of the ideas that we take for granted today, such as freedom of speech, and the right to a fair trial. This was an important time in the development of modern values, and Socrates was an important man. He was not only a brilliant thinker, he was also a man that didn't quite fit, infuriating to converse with, yet fascinating to be around.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099554054</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Joyce Lankester Brisley
|title=Milly-Molly-Mandy's Friends
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Milly-Molly-Mandy doesn't much mind being an only child when she has people like Little Friend Susan, Billy Blunt and Miss Muggins's Jilly to play with. And what fun they have! With overnight guests, trips in the pony-trap, dressing up as Proper Ladies, running races and even forming secret clubs, there's never a dull moment.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>023075497X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Patricia Wing
|title=Creative Parchment Cards: Incorporating Siesta Grids
|rating=4
|genre=Crafts
|summary=Here at Bookbag we've long admired Patricia Wing's ability not just to produce beautiful hand-made cards but to guide us through the process of making them. We've seen her regularly in 'Crafts Beautiful' magazine, so we know that she's a name that you can ''rely'' on. Equally reassuring is the fact that she came to card making in middle age – giving hope to anyone who feels that they have left it too late to learn a new craft. We know that we're in a safe – and very creative – pair of hands.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956951708</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Mohammed Hanif
|title=Our Lady of Alice Bhatti
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Alice is nervous. She's being interviewed for a job at the local hospital. Even although her nursing skills are far from ideal, she believes she's in with a shout. She presents herself at her charming best and it seems to work. She's now employed and earning some much-needed money. She knows she'll have to work really hard and probably long hours too. The hospital in question is in downtown Karachi: a seething mass of patients many of whom have no choice but to lie in corridors etc.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224082051</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jonathan Lewis
|title=Into Dust
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The front cover graphics leave the reader in no doubt that this is a thriller and the blurb on the back cover mentions the troubles in Afghanistan, deadly bombs, sniffer dogs, so the theme here is bang up to-date and many would possibly say, relevant.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848092598</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Evelio Rosero
|title=Good Offices
|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Here is a church in Bogota nobody seems to want to leave. In part one it is a large group of the elderly, given a weekly, tasteless meal from the charitable funds, but bitterly refusing to quit the place, making our main character Tancredo fear for his passivity. In part two it is the congregation, as a rare need for a stand-in priest seems to be a blessing. And in part three it is that priest himself, stuck among the household of Tancredo, the girl who loves him, and chorus of three weird old women.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857050672</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Barry Unsworth
|title=The Quality of Mercy
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary='The Quality of Mercy' picks up the story of the author's Booker Prize-winning 'Sacred Hunger' although if you haven't read the first book, you won't be greatly disadvantaged as the relevant story lines are explained. What you might miss out on is some of the feeling for a few of the main characters, most notably the Irish fiddler, Sullivan who, when this book picks up in spring 1767, has just escaped from prison where the remaining shipmates of the slave ship, the 'Liverpool Merchant' await their trial of piracy. Slavery and abolition thereof remains a central theme of this sequel, but the book draws some poignant similarities with those in bondage due to poverty, and particularly those working in the coal mines of County Durham.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091937124</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Joyce Lankester Brisley
|title=Milly-Molly-Mandy's Family
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Millicent Margaret Amanda (that's Milly-Molly-Mandy to you and me) lives with Father and Mother and Grandpa and Grandma and Uncle and Aunty (and Toby the dog) in a nice white cottage with a thatched roof. And do you know, she has all sorts of adventures. She goes out into town alone to fetch things for her extended family, she goes to a concert where she even knows one of the performers, she gets invited to parties in the village hall, and she does it all with the company of Little Friend Susan and Billy Blunt.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230754988</amazonuk>
}}