|summary=There are lots of similarities between the style and plot of this book and those of Roald Dahl. First of all you have a child who is living in a situation so outrageously terrible that it becomes funny, and for whatever reason, all the other adults around don't seem capable of helping. The villain, while being fairly two-dimensional, has enough disgusting and frightening qualities to make readers shiver in delicious anticipation whenever they appear. And the miseries just keep piling up until it doesn't seem there's any way out.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007453523</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=J K Rowling
|title=The Casual Vacancy
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=It's hard to know how to describe my experience reading JK Rowling's new book, and her first departure from the world of Hogwarts. 'Liked it' doesn't seem appropriate, because I didn't really. I found it very bleak, depressing and disturbing to be honest. I have a friend who is reading it at the moment and she says she's really enjoying it, which just makes me shake my head because, really, this isn't the sort of book you enjoy.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>140870420X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Emma Becker
|title=Monsieur
|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=She is a twenty-year old student, with an average cleavage and a big bum. He is 45, a married cosmetic surgeon, and a friend of the family, having worked with her uncle for years. They might be an unlikely couple – at least outside the realms of erotic fiction they are – but as she puts it, she wants him to ''show me what a man was like, a real man, a man who could fill my body '''and''' my mind''. The consequences are in this novel.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780334761</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Ann Cliff
|title=Poacher's Moon
|rating=3
|genre=Women's Fiction
|summary=Back in the middle of the nineteenth century it was village gossip when Judith Weaver 'took up' with Will Thorpe. Such matters are always talked about in a village but Judith's parents ran a successful bakery, whilst Will had little to recommend him. As time went on Judith left the village and Will suffered the consequences of his actions (it was, he said, only the one pheasant...) and when he returned to Kirkby he met and married someone else.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0719805791</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Harriet Ziefert and Amanda Haley
|title=40 Uses for a Grandpa
|rating=3.5
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=It's amazing what you can do with a Grandpa - some you might well have thought about already, such as cash machine, taxi, dance partner and dictionary, but you might never have thought of using him as a basketball hoop, tailor or butler, but perhaps the most important of all forty in the book is ''friend''. It's a delightful celebration of all that's wonderful about being a grandparent - and a grandchild.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1609052765</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Syd Moore
|title=Witch Hunt
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The history of witchcraft and the complexities of current social politics do not appear to be the easiest ingredients to blend smoothly into a novel. But Moore has achieved this, skilfully weaving the threads of the middle ages with the modern day. This achievement has also been mixed with some fascinating points about feminism, witchcraft and Essex stereotypes, all the while presenting them as the narrative of the protagonist, Sadie.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847562698</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Patricia Malcolmson and Robert Malcolmson (Editors)
|title=The Diaries of Nella Last: Writing in War and Peace
|rating=3.5
|genre=History
|summary=This work brings together a selection of some of Nella Last's diary entries from the 1940's and 1950's. She wrote from her home in Barrow-in-Furness as part of the Mass Observation project, writing a huge amount of material, some of which has already been published as ''Nella Last's War'', [[Nella Last's Peace: The Post-war Diaries of Housewife 49 by Patricia Malcolmson (Editor), Robert Malcolmson (Editor)|Nella Last's Peace]] and [[Nella Last in the 1950s: The Further Diaries of Housewife, 49 by Patricia Malcolmson and Robert Malcolmson (Editors)|Nella Last in the 1950s]] This volume brings together the three previous collections, with new material too, taking the reader through the war years and on into post-war Britain.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184668546X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Ferdinand von Schirach
|title=The Collini Case
|rating=3
|genre=Crime
|summary='Later they would all remember it…the man was gigantic, and they all mentioned the smell of sweat'.
The man concerned is Fabrizio Collini, a quiet, respectable man, for thirty-four years a diligent worker at Mercedes Benz, an unexceptional person. Then, one day, he walked into a luxury Berlin hotel, up to the Brandenburg Suite and pulled a trigger. At least four times.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0718159195</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Stephen Clarke
|title=The Merde Factor
|rating=4
|genre=Humour
|summary=Meet, if you haven't already, Paul West. Before now we've had four chances to meet him and see his struggles with all things French – their cuisine, their language, their social life and their bureaucracy – in order to run an English-styled tea-room in the trendier side of Paris. Four books then, and we might have expected him to have settled down into some form of success – were it not for the fact this is a comedy series. But no, he seems to still be in France on borrowed time, on borrowed (or sub-let) land, and things are certainly not turning out tres belle for him.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780890338</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Rachel Renee Russell
|title=Dork Diaries: Dear Dork
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=You can see how easy it would be for a series of children's books to settle into a stale formula, repeating the same idea time over time until the last drop of originality had dried in the sun and the coordinated covers were bleached into off-white. The characters got boring, their interactions meaningless, and the author covered old ground for the hell of it for one last buck. Now look at this series, and in particular this fifth full, proper title in it, and you'll see just how that hasn't happened.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857079360</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Francine Stock
|title=In Glorious Technicolor: A Century of Film and How it has Shaped Us
|rating=4.5
|genre=Entertainment
|summary=Many of us have been captivated from an early age by the world of movies, whether introduced to them by visits to the cinema, or watching them on TV, video and latterly DVD. Author and presenter Francine Stock’s lifelong love affair with the medium began when she was taken as a child to see ‘My Fair Lady’ on the large screen. A little later, for her the most memorable thing about the summer of 1970 was not the weather, but repeated viewings of ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099535645</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Sarah Wise
|title=Inconvenient People: Lunacy, Liberty and the Mad-Doctors in Victorian England
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=Many a family in Victorian England had a problem husband, wife, son or daughter whom they felt ought to be ‘locked away’. Only occasionally if ever was it for totally unselfish reasons connected with their mental health and well-being. More often than not it was to settle old scores, or so the family could get their hands on the victim’s fortune or business, or sometimes because, as the title of this book suggests, they were merely ‘inconvenient’.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847921124</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Gavin Mortimer
|title=A History of Football in 100 Objects
|rating=4
|genre=Sport
|summary=Given how long it's been played and how many books have been written about it, any new history of football needs to have some kind of hook to make it stand out. Gavin Mortimer may have found that, by presenting his history as ''A History of Football in 100 Objects''. This prompts the question as to whether the whole of football could be reduced down to a mere century of objects. But then, if [[From 0 to Infinity in 26 Centuries by Chris Waring]] can make a history of maths worth reading, I guess anything is possible.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781250618</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jeyn Roberts
|title=Rage Within (Dark Inside)
|rating=4
|genre=Teens
|summary=
We left Aries, Michael, Clementine and Mason in a world they can barely recognise. After a series of devastating earthquakes many people changed. They became murderous monsters that the normal survivors called Baggers. There are few normal people left and they must hide in ruined cities, avoiding death at the hands of the Baggers. And in ''Rage Within'', the battle for survival is about to get even tougher. The Baggers are organising themselves, clearing the streets of bodies and setting up worker camps for captured survivors.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>144721790X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=John E Flannery
|title=God's Gift
|rating=3
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=
An ex-soap actor, Tommy Armstrong now hosts a successful Saturday night chat show. It covers entertainment and current affairs. Recently divorced, single Tommy enjoys bedding his researchers and then firing them. It's something to do, after all, no? And particularly enjoyable if they're willing to take it up the bum. Tommy likes bums. Irritatingly, the ''Dirty Bitch'', aka Susan, Tommy's ex-wife, has forgotten all about bums and become a born-again Christian. Her new partner is a 21st century Mary Whitehouse, leading a campaign to clean up the media.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B009AEUOFS</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Ian Tregillis
|title=Bitter Seeds (The Milkweed Triptych)
|rating=5
|genre=Thrillers
|summary=It's 1939 and Lt Commander Raybould 'Pip' Marsh of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service travels to Portugal to smuggle out Krasnopolsky, a fascist with a secret. However things don't go to plan. Krasnopolsky nerves are justified as, in the time it takes to order drinks, he spontaneously combusts. Marsh is too late to extinguish him but manages to retrieve Krasnopolsky's case to take back home. He finds the surprises keep on coming: it contains film footage of people becoming 'insubstantial' whilst walking through walls, others absorbing bullets and some bursting into flames with no apparent side-effects (unlike poor Mr Krasnopolsky). Marsh realises the Nazis' unconventional weapons need an unconventional response and so calls on Lord William Beauclerk who happens to be a warlock. Operation Milkweed is on so let other-worldly battle commence.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0356501698</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Robert Leroy Ripley
|title=Ripley's Believe It or Not 2013
|rating=4
|genre=Children's Non-Fiction
|summary=You know it's getting near Christmas when you spot the annual Ripley's ''Believe It or Not'', the celebration of all that's macabre, shocking, gruesome and frequently downright revolting - and that's just the people. Just wait until you get to the non-human items. We don't usually cover annuals at Bookbag because they've frequently gone out of fashion before too many months have passed, but these books can be read year after year and they're still going to make the average adult feel rather unwell. Yes - you're right. Kids are going to love it.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847946739</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Molly Hopkins
|title=It Happened In Venice
|rating=4
|genre=Women's Fiction
|summary=Evie is a tour guide who leads groups around Europe, but when we first meet her in Barbados she’s there for pleasure, not work. She’s back with Rob, her boyfriend who also works on the tour circuit. She’s just about forgiven him for cheating on her and this holiday and their subsequent moving in together with be a fresh start.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0751544647</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Fiona Foden
|title=How to be Gorgeous: Smart Ways to Look and Feel Fabulous
|rating=4
|genre=Children's Non-Fiction
|summary=The first point that author Fiona Foden stresses is that this is a book about how to be gorgeous, but she goes on to explain that this isn't just about having glossy hair, great skin and a wonderful dress (although she does admit that these help). It's about looking amazing, but still being you. It's about having confidence in who you are and having a positive energy about you. It's about having great friends - and ''being'' a great friend, in fact being the sort of person that everyone wants to know. She promises that most of what she suggests is not going to break the Bank - somethings are virtually, if not totally, free and it's all easy. So how does it live up to the promises?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1407132695</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Thomas Keneally
|title=The Daughters of Mars
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Expectations ahead of Thomas Keneally's 'The Daughters of Mars' are understandably high. He regularly features on the Booker shortlist and has won the prize in the past with ''Shindler's Ark''. While his subject matter, World War I, is hardly the most original, his slant on the story is, and this is a book that deserves to sit with the very best of the many books on that subject, including ''All Quiet on the Western Front'' and ''Birdsong''. It's that good and that powerful.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340951877</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Joseph O'Connor
|title=Where Have You Been?
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Irish novelist Joseph O'Connor has had quite a 2012. Earlier in the year he joined the ranks of such authors as Edna O'Brien, [[:Category:Roddy Doyle|Roddy Doyle]] and Seamus Heaney when he became a recipient of the PEN award for his outstanding contribution to Irish literature. What could possibly top that for a sense of achievement? Well this, his first book of short stories in 20 years, must come pretty close to at least equalling it, amply illustrating the reasons for the panel's decision.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846556899</amazonuk>
}}