|summary=Neil Ansell volunteered in the 1980s to work for an organization that provided support for the homeless. These homeless were the people other shelters would reject for various reasons (drink, drugs, etc.) but the group Neil worked for were a little different to most similar charities. Due to this Neil experienced some of the worst case scenarios of being down and out in London, and along the way befriended many interesting but ultimately ill-fated people. To escape and recover from a life full of brief friendships, poverty and untimely death Neil travelled to the Isle of Jura off the West coast of Scotland. Jura came to be a special place for him and of all places in the world it was the one most in his heart. Deer Island is Neil’s account of his life in the 1980s and his discovery of Jura; it is, in effect, his love song to the island that has been his sanctuary.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908213132</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Mave Fellowes
|title=Chaplin and Company
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=
In 'Chaplin & Company', Mave Fellowes takes a quirky look at life on London's canal boats. Yet, while her story is full of eccentric characters, not least the main human character of Odeline Milk, who moves to the boat that shares the title of the book after her mother passes away to pursue her dream of becoming a mime artist in the more culturally enlightened big city after a lonely life in provincial Arundel, the book is delightfully free of sentimentality. I say the main human character, because this is also the story of a boat with a remarkable history of owners, and also a story of the strange life on the canal which somehow exists beneath the city through which it flows.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224097350</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Mark Goldblatt
|title=Twerp
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Julian Twerski did something bad. So bad, that it got him suspended from school. When he returns, his English teacher asks him to write a journal about it, in exchange for getting out of doing a report on Shakespeare. Julian reluctantly accepts - but would rather be writing about sending love letters for a friend, blowing up fireworks, or pretty much anything else except telling Mr Selkirk about what he wants to hear.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0375971424</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Bridget Tyler
|title=Drummer Girl
|rating=5
|genre=Teens
|summary=Lucy is really pleased when Harper McKenzie decides to start talking to her again and suggests forming a band. From then, life gets increasingly wonderful as they recruit three other girls, enter a talent show, and make it to the finals. Parties, fame, and success await - until everything comes crashing down. What went wrong?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848776926</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Arnaldur Indridason
|title=Black Skies
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=Detective Sigurdur Oli has worked himself into a difficult situation. It would be easy to ask ''why'' he did what he did. Easier still to say that he's doing the job he wanted to do, but a school reunion left him over-awed by the success of some of his contemporaries and when one of them asked for his help in sorting out a small matter it was a way of demonstrating ''his'' position to be able to say that he would help. A friend of his friend was being blackmailed over some photographs taken at a wife-swapping party and Sigurdur Oli agreed to have a word with the blackmailers and retrieve the photographs. It should have been simple - but when he arrived at their home the woman had just been brutally attacked and Sigurdur Oli only just avoided the same fate. He should have come clean about exactly what he was doing there. He didn't.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099563371</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=A L Berridge
|title=Into The Valley of Death
|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=Master Harry-sahib saunters up the path of the family bungalow in some unnamed Indian 'British town', puzzled to see the pathway choked with weeds, surprised by the absence of servants and disgusted by the swarming ants. There is worse inside. His father, the colonel, is dead on the floor. 'The money was gone, obviously, but it would take more than that to make a devoted soldier to blow his brains out. What had it done to him, this army he'd given his whole life to?'
What indeed? 'Into the Valley of Death' isn't the novel that will tell us.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>024195410X</amazonuk>
}}