|summary=Genie Magee hasn’t seen her boyfriend Rian all summer. In fact, she hasn’t seen anyone all summer – apart from the creepy worshippers of the Church of Free Spirits, whose leader Reverend Schneider has persuaded her mother she’s possessed, due to her strange mystical gift. Rian hasn’t stopped thinking of her, though, and has hatched a daring plan to rescue the love of his life and escape the town of Spurlake – but their escape will lead them into a situation more dangerous than they could ever have imagined.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340997087</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Mark Lowery
|title=Socks Are Not Enough
|rating=3.5
|genre=Teens
|summary=Fourteen-year-old Michael seems to run from one disaster to the next. Not even his mother would call him good-looking, he feels he is a failure at everything he tries, and his desperate attempts to introduce some order and control to his life verge on OCD. He only has one friend, although even there the title is debatable: Michael feels either irritated or frustrated with Paul's behaviour most of the time, with good reason—generally speaking it is Paul who lands him in the worst scrapes.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1407130021</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Tim Willocks
|title=Doglands
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
|summary=Furgal is the son of Argal, a near-legendary wolfhound who runs free and wild. But our hero and his sisters are not so fortunate: they were born in the dreaded greyhound prison they call Dedbone's Hole, and their mixed heritage is beginning to show. It cannot be long until their brutal keeper notices, and takes them away to kill them.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849393982</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Mahmoud Dowlatabadi
|title=The Colonel
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The novel opens at dead of night in a house in Rasht in Gilan province, Iran. It is pouring with rain and the colonel of the title is in the grip of extreme melancholia. Two policemen are knocking on the door. They are bringing news of his youngest daughter. This triggers a night of misery in which the colonel recalls his own past, and the tragic lives of his five children.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906598894</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Gillian Philip
|title=Frost Child
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
|summary=Fans of Gillian Philip's Firebrand novels will be thrilled to get their hands on this stunning prequel, set when Seth's mother Lilith met his father, the Sithe captain Griogair, for the first time. Starting with Griogair rescuing the youngster from the Lammyr, who have kept her captive for years, it follows Lilith trying to settle into the way of life of the Sithe as Griogair keeps an uneasy eye on her... and those of us who've read [[Firebrand (Rebel Angels) by Gillian Philip|Firebrand]] and [[Rebel Angels: Bloodstone by Gillian Philip|Bloodstone]] realise that he's right to be worried. When a young Sithe boy starts to bully Lilith, he's clearly taking a massive risk...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B006NXYEBE</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Nicholas Shaxson
|title=Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men who Stole the World
|rating=4
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=Most people think about the subject of tax havens - if they need to think about them at all - as something which is unlikely ever to concern them and that they're for the super-rich and celebrities. What might surprise them is that more than half of world trade as well as most international lending is routed through them and that many common items in your everyday shopping will come to you via a tax haven. And we really should be thinking about them because tax havens are ensuring that wealth in unprecedented amounts is being transferred from the poor to the rich - greatly exceeding the aid which flows in the opposite direction.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099541726</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Louise Foxcroft
|title=Calories and Corsets: A history of dieting over two thousand years
|rating=4.5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=We’re in that post-Christmas period when all the socialising and indulging is over and all you’re left with is a pasty, bloated, over-fed but under-nourished complexion, a wardrobe full of clothes just a little too tight and a new year’s resolution to Get Healthy. So it’s the perfect time for a new diet book to hit the shelves. The title of this one might make you think it’s going to be full of useful tips, and the cover does little to dispel this idea, groaning as it is with the weight of plump jellies, lavish cupcakes and even a decadent lobster or two, but take a moment to note the subtitle, if you will: '''a history of dieting over 2000 years'''.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846684250</amazonuk>
}}
{{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
|title=The Clever One
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
|summary=
Sixteen year old Maeve is the clever one in her family. So clever that she can't believe how stupid the others can be - especially her slightly older sister Fiona, a 'pramface' now after falling pregnant to her no good boyfriend Big. After the news broke of Fiona's pregnancy, Maeve told her best friend Mark that she wanted nothing to do with the baby. But she didn't count on loving baby Harvey so much that she'd do anything to protect him - so she sets a plan in motion to rid their family of Big and the rest of the scumbags he associates with.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340920203</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Taggart Siegel and Jon Betz (editors)
|title=Queen of the Sun
|rating=4.5
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=I kept bees for 5 or 6 years and read many books about the subject, all of the 'how to..' or 'the science of… variety. But this book is a revelation as it genuinely tries to celebrate bees, capturing the real 'feel' of beekeeping - I wish I had come across this much sooner. For Siegel and Betz have collected a series of short articles, poems and essays not about the technique and science of the craft, but about the purpose and 'soul' behind it.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1905570341</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Sue Townsend
|title=The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Adrian Mole was just three months away from his fourteenth birthday when he began writing his diary on New Year's Day. He's just on the edge of true adolescence - pimples are appearing as is a little bit of interest in the opposite sex. He's thinking about what he might like to do ''eventually'', but his first major challenge is the breakdown of his parents' marriage. He writes with a wonderful mixture of ''knowingness'' and innocence and usually manages to get things just ever-so-slightly wrong.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141046422</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Marissa Meyer
|title=The Lunar Chronicles: Cinder
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
|summary=This Cinderella does not have to sweep the grate and clean the dishes - she has to mend maglev vehicle tracks. This Cinders does not leave her shoe behind when invited to the ball, she has her entire foot fall off. This Cinder does not live in a realm of fairy queens and pumpkin carriages, but New Beijing, a massive city of just two and a half million, due to the Fourth World War. She's a cyborg - hence the foot, but she's still owned by a crotchety bigot of a step-mother, with two step-sisters. And this is a very different world, where a global plague is going to be brought too close to home...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141340134</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Melody James
|title=Signs of Love: Love Match
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Gemma Stone’s ambition in life is to be a famous journalist – so when a school webzine is started, she jumps at the chance to take part. She quickly finds out, though, that things aren’t as glamorous in the media as she’d imagined, especially when she’s the youngest person involved and gets stuck with the job of writing horoscopes. Then a fluke prediction or two make her new column a must read, and she realises there’s the potential to set up her firend Treacle with the boy she’s been watching from afar… will the path of true love be lit up by the stars?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857073222</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Bruce Robinson
|title=The Rum Diary - A Screenplay
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Kemp has lied his way onto a failing newspaper in San Juan, Puerto Rica, as the only candidate for the job, and in a semi-comatose state induced by too many miniatures from the hotel minibar, stumbles into a conspiracy of epic proportions, via classic bar room brawls and nightclub mayhem. On the way he (almost) writes horoscopes and bowling championship stories, meets the fantastically erotic girlfriend of the evil businessman, and teams up with a proto-Nazi out of his mind on a cocktail of hootch and LSD, and a photographer side kick. There is no question that this is Hunter S Thompson territory, especially when all the above is combined with a witty, slow-talking hero who in spite of his alcoholic haze sees clearly through the exploitation of a third world country by its massive first world near neighbour.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099555697</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jonathan Meres
|title=May Cause Irritation (The World of Norm)
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=There's no need, it seems, to point out how unfair the world is to you when you're a twelve year old lad. Norm certainly knows that already - despite the lavatorial accidents in [[May Contain Nuts (The World of Norm) by Jonathan Meres|book one]], his younger brothers are going to be bought a dog, the ultra-annoying ''perfect cousins'' are overloaded with opportunity and spanking new mobile phones, and the girl next door has just posted a photo of him, naked, on Facebook. Such causes for desperation require a very desperate fightback, and that's what Norm is going to give us...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408313049</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Tessa Hadley
|title=Married Love
|rating=4.5
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=Married Love is Tessa Hadley’s second collection, containing twelve short stories looking at (mostly) modern relationships and family dynamics – many are about parents and their grown up children and in-laws, others are about couples. Flicking through the book to choose some of the best and/or most interesting stories to mention, I have found a difficulty. Almost all of these incisive, witty stories reveal an interesting group of characters I would like to know more about after the end, sometimes from several different viewpoints, and it is hard to pick out just a few.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224096427</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Susan Maushart
|title=The Winter of Our Disconnect: How One Family Pulled the Plug and Lived to Tell/text/Tweet the Tale
|rating=4
|genre=Home and Family
|summary=Back in early 2009 Susan Maushart - a single mother of three teenagers - came to the conclusion that the family plugged into their workstations, TVs, DVD players, iPods and gaming consoles at the expense of normal relationships, or what we’ll come to call Real Life. She included herself in this - her relationship with her iPhone was about the strongest she had outside of her children - and she decided that something drastic had to be done. So began the winter of our disconnect - six months without screens of any description, mobile phones or listening devices in the home. You think that’s not enough of a shock to the system? Nor did Susan - she started off with two weeks without any power in the home.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184668465X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Kenneth D Alford and Theodore P Savas
|title=Nazi Millionaires: The Allied Search for Hidden SS Gold
|rating=3.5
|genre=History
|summary=We are all doubtless aware of the six million or so dead at the hands of the Nazis, both through death camps and death squads. We are all probably conscious that before they were taken to the forests to be shot, or to the train station, never to be seen again, the Jewish and other communities captured in the Holocaust were ransacked for everything they had. It started early, of course, with the denial of rights for Jewish people to own businesses, then houses, paintings, other valuables, cash - and in the end their own gold dental fillings. The story of what happened to everything is as complex as retelling the ends of six million people, but this book opens up several windows on to those stories, through the more notable examples.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1935149350</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Gary Crew and Shaun Tan
|title=The Viewer
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=The story concerns a young lad who loves scavenging and exploring. Finding a Hellraiser-styled box of tricks contains a Viewmaster-type machine, he puts it to his eyes and sees something a lot more serious than, say, a Thunderbirds episode in thirty 3D images, which was all I ever saw in mine. Instead, Tristan sees nothing but death and destruction, and a compelling sense of - well, something.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0734411898</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Keith Skene
|title=Escape from Bubbleworld
|rating=4.5
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=Before you stifle the inward groan that comes from the thought of another book assaulting population growth, western greed and reckless exploitation of the environment, take time to read the first chapter of Keith Skene's 'Escape to Bubbleworld'. Because this is as entertaining and amusing book as you are likely to read on the subject, while at the same time taking us into to some deep science and fascinating exploration of what turns out to be less certain certainties. For Skene’s writing has two attributes which I can almost guarantee will keep even the non-scientific reading.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956250122</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Sarah Bradford
|title=Queen Elizabeth II: Her Life in Our Times
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=As a biographer who has previously written substantial biographies of the Queen (published in 1996), of her father George VI, and her daughter-in-law Diana, Sarah Bradford needs little introduction. At around 260 pages of text, this is barely half the length of her other titles, and probably aimed more at the general reader with an eye on the Diamond Jubilee market.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>067091911X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Sue Grafton
|title=V is for Vengeance
|rating=5
|genre=Crime
|summary=
Ah, what bliss! To have a lovely fat copy of the latest in the Alphabet murder series sitting on my lap. This latest is reassuringly weighty, although I still managed to read it - or devour it as my husband would have it - in a very short time! I love the experience of reading these stories, finding myself caught up in Kinsey's world, unwilling to put the book down until I, along with Kinsey, have figured out what has been going on.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230745873</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Louisa Young
|title=My Dear I Wanted to Tell You
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=It takes a while for the full power of Louisa Young's remarkable ''My Dear I Wanted To Tell You'' to become apparent, but when it does, it can hardly fail to move you. Set just before and during World War One, it's a story of love and human spirit against the odds. The impact of the book is in what happens to the characters, so I don't want to give too much away, but it's worth pointing out that it's not for the overly squeamish reader particularly in some of the descriptions of surgical procedures, which have clearly been meticulously researched by Young. The title itself it taken from the opening words of the standard letters that the wounded were given to send to loved ones back home. The wounded were required to fill in the blanks.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007361432</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Alan Bradley
|title=The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=Bishop's Lacey, the closest village to Buckshaw, the de Luce family home, was the traditional sleepy English village, particularly in the nineteen fifties when this story is set. The arrival of a travelling puppet show causes some excitement, although it has to be admitted that the show is there because the van broke down rather than because there was an intention to stage a performance. There's a need to raise money for the repair of the van so Rupert Porson, famed puppeteer from the BBC, agrees to put on two shows in the village hall. There is, of course, a grisly murder.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>140911760X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Deirdre Madden
|title=Jasper and the Green Marvel
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Have you read [[Snakes' Elbows by Deirdre Madden|Snakes' Elbows]] yet? If not, you really should. And although you can follow this story without having read the first one it's much nicer to know all about everyone really, isn't it? So, let's carry on as if you have read ''Snakes' Elbows'' so you know all about the little town of Woodford and a certain millionaire who lives there called Jasper Jellit. He's a rather nasty piece of work, and it was with great relief at the end of the first book that we saw him get locked up in prison. However, he's served his time and he's just been released back into the community, which can only mean more trouble for Woodford...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571260071</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jonathan Evison
|title=West of Here
|rating=3
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The town of Port Bonita, located on the Pacific coast of Washington State, is the setting – and almost a character itself, such is its importance – of Jonathan Evison’s newest novel. In a massively ambitious narrative, we start at the Elwha River Dam in 2006, before just two pages later being transported back into the 1880’s, to see the town’s founding. A hundred pages or so later, we’re brought back to the 21st century, then returned to the 19th, and the cuts between scenes get faster and more furious as we seem to flip forwards and backwards in time without giving us much time to catch our breath. By 2006, the Dam is about to be destroyed, and we see the effect its construction has had on the local community and how the descendants of the original characters have turned out.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780331967</amazonuk>
}}