'''Read [[Features|new features]].'''
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{{newreview
|author=Adrian McKinty
|title=The Cold Cold Ground
|rating=3.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=
''The Cold Cold Ground'' is the first of a planned trilogy of police procedural novels featuring Sean Duffy. Set in 1980s Northern Ireland it's a little reminiscent of the TV show ''Life on Mars'', full of reminders of the music and events of the period that evokes nostalgia in those who lived through it. In all good police procedural novels, the hero has to have a 'thing' that sets him apart. With Duffy it is that he is a Catholic in a predominantly Protestant police force. What this means is that no one trusts him on either side of the religious divide. And as this is set during the worst of the 'troubles' with hunger strikes and rioting on the streets, not to mention car bombs and other acts of violence, this is a big issue for him.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846688221</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Helena Close
|summary=We first met Thing in [[You, Me and Thing: The Curse of the Jelly Babies by Karen McCombie|You, Me and Thing: The Curse of the Jelly Babies]] where he caused rather a lot of chaos with a large number of jelly babies. He's back again, and this time he really, really wants to go to school with Ruby and Jackson... it can only end in disaster!
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571272592</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Nick Lake
|title=In Darkness
|rating=5
|genre=Teens
|summary=Shorty is lying in the rubble of the great Haitian earthquake of 2010. If he's not rescued soon, he will die. Shorty is from Site Soley, the sprawling slum of Port-au-Prince. After the murder of his father and abduction of his twin sister, Shorty has allowed himself to fall further and further into the slum's gang culture. But Route 9 isn't all about drug-dealing and gun-running - it's also about feeding the poor and educating the children. And Shorty has a great deal to teach his readers, as he recounts his life while waiting to die.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408824183</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Michael Northrop
|title=Trapped
|rating=4
|genre=Teens
|summary=When school closes early because of the snow coming down, Scott and his friends decide to take advantage of the extra time to work on a go-kart they've been building in shop class. But with nearly everyone else having left the school, and the snow coming down faster and faster, they realise they may have made a terrible mistake. So begins a chilling (sorry!) tale, which sees seven students struggle to hold on as the weather gets ever worse.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907411364</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Francesca Simon
|title=Horrid Henry's A - Z of Everything Horrid
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Francesca Simon's Horrid Henry is a very popular little boy, although you might have a different opinion if you actually had to put up with his antics yourself. A slightly modernised embodiment of 'slugs and snails and puppy dogs' tails' concept of boyhood, Henry is naughtiness personified, combining irreverence for authority with a huge dose of gross-out crude humour that really appeals to the target readership of early primary school children. Add a somewhat nostalgic, timeless feel, trademark alliterations, subtle (and not so subtle) digs at family dynamics, sibling rivalry and particularly at modern middle-class manners and sensibilities and you have a winning character and a base for a very successful edutainment franchise.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444002260</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Andrew Levy, Judy Bartkowiak
|title=Secrets of Success in Brand Licensing
|rating=3
|genre=Business and Finance
|summary=Brand licensing is a huge business, with the annual worth estimated at 150 billion USD. It's hard to avoid Hello Kitty, Thomas the Tank Engine, Peppa Pig or Dr Who. One sometimes wonders if it's even possible to buy non-character pyjamas for a six year old. It's not just kids' brands, either (though these dominate the lucrative licensing market). From socialites (Paris Hilton) to actors and pop stars (Hale Berry, Britney Spears), football clubs and individual footballers (Beckham, Pele), magazines (Playboy, National Geographic), TV series (Simpsons) and pure graphic design (Smiley, Hello Kitty), brand licensing and brand extensions surround us on a scale unprecedented in human history.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908218959</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Simon Lelic
|title=The Child Who
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=
Simon Lelic's third book, ''The Child Who'', takes him back to the format that worked so successfully with his first novel, ''Rupture'', avoiding the near-future angle he took, less successfully I felt, with his second book. Lelic's themes are always inspired by real events that have been in the news. Here, he tackles the murder of an 11 year old child by Daniel, a 12 year old. The creative inspiration is surely the James Bulger case and he acknowledges the creative debt to Blake Morrison's ''As If'' on that very subject.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330522744</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Alan Gibbons
|title=Street of Tall People
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=It's the East End of London, and it's 1936, and it's a time of fighting. Jewish lad Benny, and Jimmy, who's rather more C-of-E, are going to become firm friends through having a boxing bout against each other. Benny is fighting against the more extreme anti-Goyim sentiments of his neighbour Yaro. Jimmy has to fight, it seems, against life, what with his father dieing and his mother having found a new boyfriend, putting a sense of social outcast on the lad. And all through this is the fight to come, around the corner, against Oswald Mosley's Blackshirts.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907869239</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Mick O'Shea
|title=Amy Winehouse: A Losing Game
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=At the risk of stating the obvious, this is a sad book. Writing this review some five months after her death, now the immediate smoke has cleared, it is apparent from this book (as well as other general sources) that she was a gifted performer, with a jazz voice which could have qualified her for a lengthy career long after scores of aspiring X-Factor contestants had given up singing and opted for less glamorous, more steady careers. After all, her idols had been not only near-contemporaries like Michael Jackson and Missy Elliott, but also those of an earlier generation such as the classic 1960s girl groups, as well as Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett, with whom she was thrilled to record a duet four months before she died.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0859654826</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Brenna Yovanoff
|title=Smoulder
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
|summary=Daphne is a quiet teenage girl who is half-demon and half-fallen angel. She's the daughter of Lucifer and Lilith and her sisters are seductive soul-sucking succubi (sibilance!). However, Daphne is more like her brother, Obie, whose gentle nature and genuine kindness make him an oddity in Pandemonium. When her brother leaves to make a life for himself on Earth, Daphne finds herself alone, confused and unsure of her future; but when she learns that her brother has been kidnapped by a psychopathic archangel she realises that she will stop at nothing to save him, even if that means going to Earth alone and facing the risk of being hunted and destroyed by Azrael.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857070789</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Heather Peace
|title=All To Play For
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Back in August 1985 at the time of the Edinburgh Festival a group of people met in what could have been difficult circumstances. They were arrested for causing a disturbance despite the fact that they weren't really involved in the fracas and it was all a misunderstanding. Little did they know that in the following decade they would all be involved - one way and another - in producing drama for the BBC as it went through one of the toughest periods in its history. The tale is told - mainly - by Rhiannon, but we hear the stories of Nicky, Maggie, Jill, Jonathan and Chris. Names will change, but they'll all wander the circular corridors of power in Langford Place.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908248130</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Ally Kennen
|title=Bullet Boys
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
|summary=''Alex is a crack shot. His gamekeeper father trained him well.''<br>
''Levi would rather pull a girl than a trigger.''<br>
''Max is a bomb about to go off.''
These are three unlikely friends. Alex doesn't really want to do his A levels. He'd rather join his father in estate management. But his father feels he needs to connect with the world more, especially since his mother died, and so Alex goes along with his wishes with as glad a heart as he can manage. Max doesn't have much choice either. Expelled from his posh private school and a severe disappointment to his military family, Hammerton is his last chance to salvage some chance of a future. Levi provides the link between these two wildly different boys. He's an easygoing, happy-go-lucky lad whose dreams are much more about being a lover than a fighter.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1407129902</amazonuk>
}}