|summary=Cas Lowood is no ordinary high school boy. He lives a peripatetic existence, hunting malevolent ghosts and "killing" them with his father's knife. A tip-off from a trusted informant lets Cas know that Thunder Bay's Anna Dressed In Blood is no urban myth and so he and his white witch mother set off for the Canadian town. Something tells Cas that Anna is no ordinary ghost and he feels sure that once she is despatched - to wherever ghosts go - he will be ready at last to deal with the voodoo spirit that killed and ate his father...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>140832072X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Mike Lancaster
|title=1.4
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
|summary=Peter Vincent lives a privileged life. His father is a world-renowned scientist and fully expects his son to follow in his footsteps. But Peter has other ideas. He wants to study literature. Although he enjoys gaming and social networking, he's uncomfortable about spending too much time on The Link, a system which connects the minds of every individual on the planet. So when he meets Strakerite Alpha, he is immediately attracted to her. Peter's father hates the Strakerites, who believe that human evolution depends on regular upgrades from alien aggressors.
So when Alpha contacts Peter to tell him that people are disappearing, he is more than willing to help. Together, they will uncover a conspiracy to hide the clock ticking down to the next upgrade...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1405258187</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Maureen Doyle McQuerry
|title=The Peculiars
|rating=4
|genre=Teens
|summary=Lena's Father left when she was a child, disappearing North to the dangerous and mysterious wilderness called Scree where The Peculiars live - people with unnatural physical features. Lena, herself, has unnaturally long and awkward hands and feet which makes her an easy target for bullies. But Lena wants to know more about herself, why has she got these hands and feet? Is it because she has 'goblin blood' like her bitter Grandmother tells her?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1419701789</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jess Richards
|title=Snake Ropes
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=It's the time for the tall mainland men to come to the island to trade, so 16 year old Mary prepares. She brings out her handmade 'broideries' and hides Barney, her little brother, in a cupboard. This is a necessary preparation born of fear, for the island boys have been vanishing, taken by the traders. On this particular day Mary's broideries go, but so does Barney.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>144473783X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Tony Parsons
|title=Catching the Sun
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Tom Finn had been a builder, but bankruptcy intervened and taxi driving provided some sort of living for him, his wife, Tess and twins Rory and Keeva. And so it might have continued but for two burglars in his home. Tom 'confronted' them - and nearly went to jail, but his conviction mean that taxi driving was no longer an option. Then a chance encounter brought him the offer of another driving job - but this one was in Phuket in Thailand - and included accommodation. There's a saying that if something seems too good to be true then it probably is, but when you're as close to the bottom as Tom Finn there comes a time when you've got to take a chance and hope that this is your lucky day.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007327811</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Christina Schmid
|title=Always By My Side: Losing the love of my life and the fight to honour his memory
|rating=2.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=On Halloween 2009 bomb disposal expert Olaf (Oz) Schmid became another mortality statistic from the conflict in Afghanistan. Many people enjoy magazines like ''Hello'' who will absorb the stories of Oz's early years, how he met Christina, the family holidays, stories about both sets of parents etc. But for me, this is like looking at someone else's personal photo album; even if you have a connection with the album's owner, after a while it becomes boring and lacks meaning. Although I wouldn't have had half the inner strength and courage that Christina showed after the death of a soul mate, the emphasis of ''Always By My Side'' is out of kilter, the descriptions of life in Afghanistan and the subsequent campaign being almost lost in the family detail.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184605947X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Diane Messidoro
|title=How To Keep A Boy As A Pet
|rating=3
|genre=Teens
|summary=Circe Shaw is a fifteen-year-old girl who lives with Daniel Craig, Johnny Depp and Jude Law. Sounds like heaven, right? Sadly, Daniel, Johnny, and Jude are her pets, and the only actual men around are two who are interested in her mum, not her. What’s a girl to do? Circe decides to start a blog to help her reach her goal of becoming a journalist, and to find out the truth about boys.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1405258160</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Amy Krouse Rosenthal and Tom Lichtenheld
|title=Wumbers
|rating=3
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=''Wumbers'' mixes - as you might have guessed - words and numbers. Think text speak that doesn't horrify stuffy parents. Each page takes in a different scene, with a speech bubble along the lines of ''Look at his 2can ta2!'' It takes a little bit of decoding for its young readers (and rapidly ageing reviewers) but look upon it as a bit of a game, and it's good fun.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1452110220</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Linda Newbery
|title=The Treasure House
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Linda Newbery says she once helped out in a charity shop, and felt it was a perfect place to find material for stories. Each item had a history, whether sad or happy, and ''Second-Hand Rose'', the shop owned by Nina's eccentric great-aunts, is full of vintage clothes and other fascinating things, including a big green toy crocodile which is bought and returned so many times it becomes the shop mascot. But finding things there she is sure her absent mother would never willingly give away, Nina is puzzled, distressed and, eventually, determined to find out what made her mother leave—and whether she intends to come back home one day.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444003437</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Umberto Eco and Jean-Claude Carriere
|title=This is Not the End of the Book;
|rating=4.5
|genre=Entertainment
|summary=In many ways, the cover of my edition of this book is perfectly appropriate. Huge, bold serif script, with nothing but the typeface; a declamatory instance of the art in the most common of fonts, and that perfect semi-colon at the end of the book's name - proving that that itself is not the be-all and end-all. Buy this book, as you can, in electronic form, and you might see this cover for ten seconds at most, but it is so much part and parcel of what's within.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099552450</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=David Conway and Melanie Williamson
|title=The Great Fairy Tale Disaster
|rating=5
|genre=For Sharing
|summary='Once Upon a Time there lived an old Big Bad Wolf. He no longer had any huff and puff to blow down the Three Little Pigs' house and he'd had enough of falling into hot water.'
Well, when it's put like that it's no wonder that the Big Bad Wolf decides that he has had enough of his own particular fairy tale. He decides that he needs a nice relaxing one instead and thinks that he would fit in well to ''Cinderella''. However, when a very nervous Cinderella allows him to take her place, he's not too happy to find himself in a dress and glass slippers. It's not good for his macho wolf's image at all.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340989971</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Gillian Galbraith
|title=The Road to Hell: An Alice Rice Mystery
|rating=3.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=DS Alice Rice is facing a disciplinary hearing which could result in her dismissal from the police force. She knows that she's innocent - that it wasn't her who'd been too free with some sensitive information - but it's all going to come down to whose word is believed and whether a couple of witnesses can remember exactly who said what in a very tense situation. It's a difficult afternoon and when she gets home that evening, Ian - the man with whom she lives - has a visitor and forgets the importance of Alice's afternoon. The resulting argument will stay in Alice's mind for some of the worst reasons.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846972256</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Camilla Macpherson
|title=Pictures at an Exhibition
|rating=3
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=A story designed around the display of individual paintings at the National Gallery during World War Two held immediate appeal for me. Alas, Claire and Rob, the central characters in the novel, did not. Claire’s extreme irrationality is jarring even within the context of the ordeal she has endured. Rob seems inconsiderate, clearly due to the barrage of irrationality he is having to live with on a daily basis. But while that is understandable, I did worry that I might be reading a novel that contained no likeable characters.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099560445</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=David Long
|title=Murders of London: In the steps of the capital's killers
|rating=4
|genre=Crime (Historical)
|summary=While the true crime specialist reader may prefer books which deal in one case in depth, there’s always room for another title at the other end of the spectrum, dealing in brief with a variety of murders over the years.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847946720</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Penelope Hughes-Hallett
|title=The Immortal Dinner: A famous evening of genius and laughter in literary London, 1817
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=A book based around just one dinner sounds a little extraordinary. But the host, painter Benjamin Robert Haydon, was no ordinary artist. He was a friend of many of the major artistic and literary figures of the day, in addition to being an ambitious painter of historical scenes. Sadly, his ambition was not matched by popularity or good fortune, and despite or perhaps parly because an exaggerated belief in his own abilities, one and a half centuries after his death he is largely forgotten except for his suicide after years of despair, and perhaps his diary as well.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009956372X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Agatha Christie and Mathew Prichard (editor)
|title=The Grand Tour: Letters and photographs from the British Empire expedition
|rating=5
|genre=Travel
|summary=In 1922 Agatha Christie, already the author of three very successful books, was happily married with a small daughter, and her heart's desire was to continue writing while she led a quiet life in the country. However her husband Archie was becoming increasingly restless and disenchanted with working in the City, and his longing for a change was suddenly to be fulfilled in a most unexpected way. An old friend, Major Belcher, 'blessed with great powers of bluff', presented them both with the opportunity of a lifetime – to join him on a trip to several imperial outposts in preparation for the forthcoming British Empire Exhibition to be staged at Wembley. Archie would be his financial adviser, and Agatha was cordially invited for the trip, as his wife. (Two-year-old Rosalind would have to stay at home, a decision which involved some soul-searching).
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>000744768X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Laura Powell
|title=Burn Mark
|rating=4
|genre=Teens
|summary=Glory comes from a long line of witches. She knows the fae will show itself in her eventually. And when it does, Glory intends to make sure her East End coven regains its former and elevated status. Lucas is the privileged son of the Inquisition's Chief Prosecutor. He holds the prevalent view that witchcraft and witchcrime are all but synonymous and that witchkind generally presents a serious threat to national security. He intends to follow his father into the Inquisition...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408815222</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Philippa Gregory
|title=Changeling
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
|summary=Luca Vero is expelled from his monastery after being accused of heresy. The seventeen-year-old is recruited to map the End of Days, and his first task is to go to a nunnery where a Lady Abbess of his own age has been accused of witchcraft. Will he find Isolde guilty and condemn her to the pyre, or is there more to the case than meets the eye?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857077309</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jack Gantos
|title=Dead End In Norvelt
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Meet Jack Gantos. Grounded for the summer after an accident with a Japanese rifle, Jack expected his holiday to be spent doing chores and reading his history books. So when the old people in his off-kilter town suddenly start dropping like flies, he jumps at the chance to be an assistant to Miss Volker, one of the Norvelt originals and a personification of the town's old-fashioned ideals and reverence to history. While faithfully typing up the unique and flavoured obituaries that Miss Volker orates, Jack finds himself learning a lot about the origins of his dying town, about the history of America, about a lot of things in fact, while simultaneously being drawn into the oddest of murder mysteries.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0440870046</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Edith Pattou
|title=North Child
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Superstition says that children born facing north will travel far from home and Rose's mother is terrified that Rose, a north child, will face a lonely, icy death if she follows her destiny.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0746068379</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Maarten vande Wiele
|title=Paris
|rating=4.5
|genre=Graphic Novels
|summary=In the category of graphic novels not to be seen reading in public, Paris is way up there. With a gaudy pink and silver glitz cover, and a lot of blowjobs and sex inside, it's not one for the daily commute. But, even though it's subject matter is merely the unlikely choice of the rags-to-riches-to-rags tale of three Parisian starlets, it is certainly worth a decent perusal. Hope was a juvenile beauty queen, and could now work in fashion were it not for scars due to a car crash, and Faith wishes for the vicarious life of pop stardom, and it's no spoiler to report who and what they find will disappoint them. Chastity, the most sarcastically-named character in comix, is happy enough destroying herself.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0861661737</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Mark Walden
|title=Earthfall
|rating=3.5
|genre=Teens
|summary=''They are coming. If you are caught, you will not escape. If you escape, they will hunt you down. You must not be captured. Everything depends on you. Prepare for Earthfall.''
Life is chugging along pretty much as normal for Sam Riley when his father suddenly turns grey with fear and rushes off to an emergency at work. Within 24 hours, alien spaceships have appeared above every major city across the world and enslaved the entire population with a mind probe. Except Sam. Sam has no idea why he is immune to the alien signal or how he recovered from a terrible injury after a fight with one of their drones. But after a year hiding in London's sewers, he has learned how to survive.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408815664</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Richard Byrne
|title=The Really, Really, Really Big Dinosaur
|rating=5
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=Finlay is what you might call a ''little'' dinosaur; there are certainly plenty bigger than him. One day, a big dinosaur walks past and Finlay offers to share his jelly beans with him.
But the big dinosaur wants all the jelly beans for himself and even though Finlay explains that the jelly beans actually belong to his really big friend and they aren't his to give away, the big dinosaur just puffs up his chest and tells Finlay to let his friend know that he's going to take the jelly beans all for himself anyway.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0192757636</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Michael Williams
|title=Now is the Time for Running
|rating=5
|genre=Teens
|summary=In a remote village in Zimbabwe, Deo is playing football with his friends while his brother Innocent looks on. Innocent takes a bit of looking after - deprived of oxygen during birth, he's not quite like other children and Deo is fiercely protective of him. Then the soldiers arrive, looking for a delivery of food aid and the traitors who welcome help from the evil Americans, and they destroy the entire village. Now orphans, the two boys have no choice but to flee to South Africa in the hopes of finding their long-lost father. Since their only possessions are Innocent's bix box and Deo's football (stuffed with worthless billion dollar notes), it won't be easy...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848530838</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Pamela Kavanagh
|title=The Lonely Furrow
|rating=3
|genre=Women's Fiction
|summary=The loss of the family business was no fault of the Drummond family, but by the time that they'd repaid what was owed they had no home and no means of making a living. The elder son, Nathan, lost his fiancé and there was little left for them to do but to leave Glasgow and move to a farm which had been in Florence Drummond's family for some time. They weren't farmers, but there was little choice but for them to buckle down and make the best of the situation presented to them.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0709096372</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Nicolas de Crecy
|title=The Celestial Bibendum
|rating=3.5
|genre=Graphic Novels
|summary=Diego is new to town. He's a seal, on crutches, but don't raise an eyebrow at that - you won't have enough left to raise at what follows, when he is hounded by a singing professorial claque who go about grooming him for being a very public, hopeful figure. Observing all of this is the devil (a dwarf in check dungarees, of course), who wants Diego for his own purposes...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0861661753</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Ginny Baily
|title=Africa Junction
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Adele has made a mess of her life and she knows it. Working with the stresses of being a teacher as well as a single mother and having shrugged off a disastrous relationship, her life seems to be set on self-destruct. Part of the problem is that the past won't leave her alone. Adele is haunted by the memory of Ellena, a friend from her childhood in Senegal, Africa. With one unthinking, childish action, Adele inadvertently devastated Ellena's family so, in order to go forward, Adele must go back to the continent where it all began.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099552728</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Brett McKee and Ella Burfoot
|title=Monsters Don't Cry!
|rating=4.5
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=''Archie awoke with a shout in the night.''<br>
''Only a dream, but what a terrible fright.''<br>
''Well monsters may roar, may growl or just sigh,''<br>
''But monsters are strong, monsters don't cry''.
Archie is a funny, adventurous and brave little chap but in spite of the fact that he's a little monster – literally – sometimes when life's little twists and turns don't go his way, it all gets a bit upsetting. Because even monsters get scared; especially little ones like Archie.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849393133</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Marcus Sedgwick
|title=Raven Boy and Elf Girl
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Raven Boy and Elf Girl are on a mission. An ogre has been trampling and crashing around the place, pulling up all the trees and destroying people's homes. Many of the forest creatures have fled, and poor Elf Girl has somehow managed to lose her parents. What's more, she doesn't really believe Raven Boy when he says he can talk to the animals, mostly because all they seem to say is RUN!
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444004859</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Laszlo Krasznahorkai
|title=Satantango
|rating=3
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=
A small community in rural Hungary is unsettled. One man has too much control over the place, with too much influence on the work done there, and over all the lives lived there. His effect is still felt, even though he has been dead for over a year. So whether you are the man itching to finish a swindle and leave with the proceedings, or the doctor, confined by will to a chair at his window, making the most personal, immaculate notes about the whole existence of the community, or the housewife whose loins still mourn the influence of said man, you are unsettled - especially when the dead man is said to be returning...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848877641</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Peter Carey
|title=The Chemistry of Tears
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=As he has done before on several occasions, Peter Carey offers us two parallel stories in his intriguingly titled 'The Chemistry of Tears'. The two elements of the title reflect that this is a book about grief, but also about science. It's also a book about human's relationship with machines and dependence that we have grown to have on them, and the ugliness of life and the beauty of, at least some, machines. In one strand of the story, Catherine is a modern day horologist working in a London museum whose world is shattered by the death of a married colleague with whom she was having an affair. Put to work on restoring a mysterious clockwork bird, she discovers the journals of Henry Brandling, the nineteenth century wealthy man who commissioned the construction of the toy for his consumptive son.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>057127997X</amazonuk>
}}