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{{newreview
|author=Anthony Quinn
|title=The Rescue Man
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=This love affair tale with the city of Liverpool is mostly told through the eyes of architect Tom Baines. With the Second World War looming, Baines is desperately working on a book to capture the memory of buildings that are at risk, and appears a man more in love with the past and solid, cold structures than mankind.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099531933</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Paul Murray
|summary=Jonathan Casper faints when he sees clouds. His wife Madeline worries about everything, not least the way the pigeons that she is studying are murdering each other. Their seventeen year old daughter Amelia wants to overthrow the evil empire of capitalism and is making her own bomb, while fourteen year old Thisbe is looking for God and praying to him. Jonathan's father, seventy six year old Henry, is planning his disappearance. Jonathan and Madeline may be on the verge of splitting up, to the dismay of both daughters.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330512471</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Bruno Vincent
|title=Grisly Tales from Tumblewater
|rating=4
|genre=Teens
|summary=Daniel Dorey comes to the vast and decaying city of Tumblewater with high hopes. He wants to study, become a surgeon, work hard and make a better life for himself. But when the school he enrolled in turns out to be a deserted building, his money is swindled from him, and he's framed for breaking into a shop, he's ready to turn round and go back to the country. His last hope is to collect a volume of local stories for a back-alley publisher. One by one, he hunts down the tellers of these grisly tales and records their words, but it soon becomes evident that he's hiding a dark secret of his own...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330479512</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Dervla Murphy
|title=The Island That Dared: Journeys in Cuba
|rating=4
|genre=Travel
|summary=In her latest literary outing, the now elderly and increasingly opinionated travel writer and veteran cyclist Dervla Murphy describes a series of trips to Cuba. The opening section deals with a family trip in late 2005. Readers who have followed Dervla's books from the beginning will have grown up with Rachel, the author's daughter, who accompanied her on a number of trips between the ages of five and eighteen. Now Dervla travels with Rachel and Rachel's three young daughters, Clodagh, Rose and Zea, known for ease throughout the book as ''the Trio''. The middle section sees Dervla return alone to spend several months trekking in places such as the Sierra del Escambray mountains, and in the final third of the book, Dervla returns to the city of Santa Clara for the commemoration of the fortieth anniversary of the death of Ernesto ''Che'' Guevara.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>190601146X</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Elizabeth Kostova
|title=The Swan Thieves
|rating=2
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=1999 – A renowned painter, Robert Oliver, goes mad, attacking a painting with a knife. He's arrested, and sent to a psychiatrist who is also an artist. The psychiatrist, Andrew Marlowe, can't get his patient to talk to him, but tries to investigate what drove him to this by talking to his wife and his girlfriend, and reading some letters Oliver seems obsessed with.
 
1879 – Beatrice de Clerval, aspiring artist, corresponds with her uncle-by-marriage Olivier Vignot, a more experienced painter. Their letters will be found by Robert Oliver, 120 years later, and will lead to his loss of sanity.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847442404</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Tim Bowler
|title=Blade: Mixing It
|rating=5
|genre=Teens
|summary=We last saw Blade back in the Beast - the city where it all began. In a last ditch attempt to rescue Jaz, the little girl with whom he's made a genuine connection, he's worked the biggest scam of his life and he's risked taking up the knife again. He's also put himself back into the firing line of his greatest enemy, the Hawk. And he's had to make contact with the police. Everything is closing in. But Blade doesn't just have a hostage, he also has experience, skill, knowledge and a willingness to risk everything...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0192755994</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Atiq Rahimi
|title=The Patience Stone
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Set in Afghanistan, ''The Patience Stone'' is a partly allegorical tale of a Muslim wife tending to her comatose soldier husband who has been shot in the neck. As she cares for him, for the first time ever she is able to speak to him without fear of censorship and he becomes, for her, like the mythical Patience Stone to which you tell your troubles and when the stone finally bursts, you are free from your torments. But also this might mean the Apocalypse.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701184167</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Joyce Carol Oates
|title=A Fair Maiden
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=I've recently read the terrific short story collection ''The Female Of The Species'' also by Oates and couldn't wait to start her latest book. I felt sure that I was in for a literary treat - and I was. Firstly, the book itself, a hardback with a beautifully nostalgic cover is a book lover's delight.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847248586</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Pamela Freeman
|title=Full Circle (Castings Trilogy)
|rating=4
|genre=Fantasy
|summary=Pamela Freeman's ''Castings'' trilogy is written in an unusual way for a fantasy novel. It tells the story from the characters' points of view, in a style more common to the chick-lit novels of Josie Lloyd and Emlyn Rees. This interrupted the flow of the story quite noticeably in ''Blood Ties'', the first of the trilogy, but didn't seem quite so much of a distraction in the second part, ''Deep Water''. Unfortunately, this time around it works against the story.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1841497037</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=John Dickinson
|title=WE
|rating=5
|genre=Teens
|summary=Paul Munro has been disconnected from the World Ear in readiness for a mission that will last a lifetime. Sent to man a tiny station built at enormous effort and expense on a desolate moon in the outer reaches of our solar system, he will never be able to return. Gravity is one-tenth that of Earth and his flesh has wasted, his bones enbrittled without the strength of calcium. ''If he stood on the Earth now... his skeleton would splinter under his weight.'' It took eight years to get there and the rest of his life stretches before him fearfully.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0385617895</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Jim Lahey
|title=My Bread: the Revolutionary No-work, No-knead Method
|rating=4.5
|genre=Cookery
|summary=It's a long time since I did Home Economics at school, but a major part of it was learning methods, which, I was assured would stand me in good stead for the rest of my life. A Victoria sponge was a careful progression of creaming and gently adding flour and eggs. A white sauce had a couple of these methods, but essentially it meant working through a series of instructions until they became second nature. Bread was the worst requiring fermenting, kneading, proving and then more kneading and rising.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0393066304</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Amy V Fetzer and Shari Aaron
|title=Climb the Green Ladder: Make Your Company and Career More Sustainable
|rating=4
|genre=Business and Finance
|summary=With the abject failure of the Denmark Climate Change Conference fresh in our minds, it is perhaps time to turn away from the politicians and look back toward what we can do.
 
The Conference may have finally got the likes of the USA, India and China to acknowledge that they have to join in if we are going to save the planet as a benevolent place for our species to live, but there is still too much posturing and not enough commitment.
 
Clearly our governments and 'leaders' are not going to do this for us; we have to do it for ourselves.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>047074801X</amazonuk>
}}