'''Read [[Features|new features]].'''
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{{newreview
|author=Michael Booth
|title=Eat, Pray, Eat
|rating=4
|genre=Travel
|summary=I really enjoyed ''Eat, Pray, Love'' by Elizabeth Gilbert. Initially I thought I'd picked up a ''Me too'' variant with ''Eat, Pray Eat'' and must admit to my heart sinking. But no, here is a different personality with another story and writing style and after a few, doubting pages, I was away. This is a story of a family adventure to India, a hard-fought encounter with yoga, and some culinary interest thrown in. But like Elizabeth Gilbert, like most other visitors, India moved his life-view dramatically and for the better.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224089633</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Christina Goodings and Annabel Hudson
|summary=Verity Fibbs is the daughter of fashion designer Saffron Fibbs. Saffron's brought her up on her own and made a pretty good job of it without a lot of input from Verity's 'bio-dad'. Verity's used to the celebrity lifestyle although Saffron does her best to keep her feet firmly on the ground, with or without coffee suede boots. The latest buzz is that Saff and Eden Greenfield are dating – it's even trending on Twitter – and Verity is getting texts asking if the fashion magnate is going to be her new Dad. When Vee wants to retreat from all this she plays an online game called Demon Streets, although she's ''obviously'' not addicted. Before long she's going to find that she's playing the game against a real, live villain.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755379470</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=John Buchan
|title=The Thirty-nine Steps
|rating=4
|genre=Crime (Historical)
|summary=Ask anyone about 'The Thrity-nine Steps' and I guarantee they'll be able to tell you it's a spy story with Richard Hannay at its heart. Most people will be able to tell you how it starts. But when you ask, 'Yes, but what ARE the 39 Steps?' most people will falter.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846971985</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Cita Stelzer
|title=Dinner with Churchill: The Prime Minister's Tabletop Diplomacy
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=Winston Churchill was never a man to don the hair shirt. A comfortable upbringing in the days when elaborate multiple courses were the done thing imbued in him from an early age a taste for the good things in life, and a bon viveur he remained until the very end. Throughout his life he loved his food, and until near the end of his life, his appetite and digestion remained excellent, whereas many men in their advancing years might have cut back a little.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907595422</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Mark Kermode
|title=The Good, the Bad and the Multiplex
|rating=4.5
|genre=Entertainment
|summary=I've been there, and so, despite all number of free press screenings, has Mark Kermode. When a major cinema chain I probably shouldn't name, but will - Odeon - moved from their smelly inner-city fleapits to a major new development far from any convenient bus routes, they started their multiplex life with the best intentions, having an arthouse film every week, on a Wednesday, and an offer of free entry courtesy of the local newspaper. This was brilliant for me - or would have been, if they'd managed to keep up with my expectations. I lost track of the number of weeks they had the wrong film on the projector, and particularly how many times they started the right one without glimpsing that it was being shown on the wrong-sized screen, through the wrong lenses, not matching with the gate, or even upside down. The projectionist of course had eleven other screens to worry about, pressing a button for each and never needing (or wanting?) to watch a movie. Kermode is correct in that if we must still think of cinemas in the parlance of theatres, and film-showings as performances, the projectionist can ruin a show just as a bad actor can a stage play.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847946038</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Lois Lowry
|title=Number the Stars
|rating=3.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Copenhagen, 1943, and everyone from schoolgirls like Annemarie up are suffering from shortages, fear and loathing - all caused by Nazi occupiers. But it's always been an open country, has Denmark, and no less than the King takes a daily horse ride, protected in plain view by every single loyal subject. But when, on the Jewish New Year, word gets out that Jews will have to be hidden more discretely, things kick into action. Annemarie and her family take her best friend, Ellen, to the country for safety. But it seems death will even follow them there...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007395205</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Francesca Simon and Tony Ross
|title=Horrid Henry and the Zombie Vampire
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=He's the leader of the Purple Hand gang, the eternal tormentor of his sickeningly goody two shoes brother, and the master of get-rick-quick schemes. He's met the queen, tricked the tooth fairy and fought off the bogey babysitter. He's eternally misunderstood and always in trouble. He's Horrid Henry and he is as charismatic and as hilarious as ever.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1842551353</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Charlotte Anne Walters
|title=Barefoot on Baker Street
|rating=3
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=I must admit that I think the title a little cheeky, a little too near the bone as far as the iconic Baker Street and equally iconic Sherlock Holmes is concerned. The sepia front cover suggests a rather sugary, romantic read so I wasn't off to the best of starts.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780920121</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Annelise Freisenbruch
|title=The First Ladies of Rome: The Women Behind the Caesars
|rating=5
|genre=History
|summary=Perhaps the most shocking thing to be gleaned from this fascinating history of the women who surrounded the Caesars is how easily their reputations were created, moulded and destroyed. Any woman who put a foot out of line in a culture where men held almost all the power could be accused of a litany of crimes which bore curious similarities with those of many another woman in similar circumstances. Incest and adultery were charges regularly levied against them, and the very fact that the details were identical in almost every case should give rise to suspicion about their accuracy. And yet history has accepted and spread these scandals as fact.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099523930</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Kenneth Oppel
|title=This Dark Endeavour
|rating=5
|genre=Teens
|summary=Victor and Konrad Frankenstein are twins, born just two minutes apart. They look alike but their personalities couldn't be more different. Konrad is calm, assured and capable. People like him. Victor is intense and arrogant with a burning ambition. He rubs people up the wrong way more often than not. The twins live with their beautiful, sometimes wayward, cousin Elizabeth and the three are educated alongside great friend and wordsmith Henry. It's a charmed life in the Frankenstein chateau in the Genevese republic.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857560123</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Sophie McKenzie
|title=Sister, Missing
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Lauren has spent a tumultuous couple of years, finding her birth mother and working out ways to stay in the lives of both of her families. To make things unbearably harder, her father Sam has died suddenly, nine months before the beginning of this story, and the constant hostility of her older sister shows no sign of abating. Shelby, understandably, resents the constant attention paid to this sister who turned up out of the blue one day, and feels she is being ignored in consequence.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857072889</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Shuichi Yoshida
|title=Villain
|rating=3.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=Well, I suppose I'd better begin with the bad which was there were moments at the start of this novel when I thought I couldn't possibly read it right to the end. It's written in such a stilted, factual style with details about the road networks of the local area and exactly how much anyone pays for anything they eat or buy or rent! Faced, for example, with the paragraph ''cars setting out from Nagasaki that take the pass road to save money take the Nagasaki Expressway from Nagasaki to Omura, then to Higashi-Sonogi and Takeo, and get off at the Saga Yamato interchange. Intersecting this east-west Nagasaki Expressway at the interchange is Route 263'' I thought I'd never manage to read more than a couple of lines before falling asleep! Still, I persisted and actually, I'm glad I did.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099526654</amazonuk>
}}