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{{newreview
|author=P J Reece
|title=Roxy
|rating=3.5
|genre=Teens
|summary=Maddie was at Aunt Gretchen's funeral when she got the phone call to tell her that her father was in a coma and likely to die. This might sound like a double whammy but Maddie's father had deserted her soon after her birth (during which her mother died) and she was brought up by Aunt Gretchen, who never missed an opportunity to point out that she was an unwanted burden.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1896580017</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Richard North Patterson
|summary=The interaction between three very different, not to say contrasting, personalities of the Renaissance period sets the scene for what promises to be an intriguing title. In 1502 the paths of Cesare Borgia, notorious son of the equally infamous Pope Alexander VI, Niccolò Machiavelli, the intellectual and diplomat, and Leonardo da Vinci, at the time best known as a military engineer though remembered today primarily as a great artist, were destined to cross.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845951212</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Rachel Heath
|title=The Finest Type Of English Womanhood
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=It was just after the end of the Second World War and seventeen year old Laura Trelling was at a loose end in her Sussex village. She didn't really fit in with the other young people and her eccentric parents were becoming more and more isolated, to the extent that Laura was embarrassed by their carelessness of her welfare. A chance encounter with Paul Lovell was to change everything and before long she was on her way to a South Africa not yet burdened with apartheid.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099532743</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Bobbie Darbyshire
|title=Truth Games
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The central theme in this book is sex - and lots of it. We're introduced to a group of mainly twentysomethings and thirtysomethings. Men and women. Most of them are attractive and hold down glamorous jobs and careers. All in rude health, with wonderful social lives and trendy homes. They all appear, on the surface, to be a bunch of shiny, happy people. What on earth could be missing?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1905614721</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Nia Pritchard
|title=More Than Just A Hairdresser
|rating=2.5
|genre=Women's Fiction
|summary=It's a brand new year, and Liverpudlian hairdresser Shirley is looking forward to the months ahead following one hell of a new year's eve party. What's more, she's going to chronicle her adventures in her brand spanking new diary which she will write in diligently, even when she's feeling a bit 'morning after the night before'.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1870206851</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{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
|title=Skippy Dies
|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Life in Seabrook College is a mess. Some of the staff are young enough to remember their own school days there, but many are certainly too old for that. A lot of the boys are victims of ragging and bullying for being too chunky, or too smart - but some are so chunky and smart there's a certain kudos to them. The female of the species is a thing only spied from their own school next door, and only met by selling them ritalin as a weight-control pill, or meeting them at the very rare combined school disco.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241141826</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=A G Taylor
|title=Meteorite Strike
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Sarah is not ready. She's not ready to forgive the man who is her father, for abandoning her and her young brother Robert eight years ago. She cannot yet forgive the circumstances of her mother dying, and of the promise they were forced to make, to go to Australia with the man, and start a new life. She is certainly not prepared for the meteor strike to smash into Australia just as they fly above it, which downs the plane in a horrid crash, and seems to carry with it an alien virus which forces many people to drop permanently asleep.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1409508579</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Jane Yolen and Mark Teague
|title=How Do Dinosaurs Eat Their Food?
|rating=3.5
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=[[How Do Dinosaurs Say Good Night? by Jane Yolen|How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight?]] was a witty and visually creative tale of Very Bad Bedtime Behaviour for modern children enamoured of dinosaurs. 'How Do Dinosaurs Eat Their Food?' continues the formula, this time with table manners.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007216092</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Cynthia Kadohata
|title=A Million Shades of Grey
|rating=3.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=At just twelve, Tin is the youngest elephant handler in his village. Ever since he can remember, Tin has dreamed of working with elephants and he loves his own elephant, Lady, to distraction, even spending most of his nights sleeping by her side. Tin is much less keen on school, but his parents insist that he goes. Tin really can't see the point, as his sole ambition is to become a fully-fledged elephant trainer. His parents may talk about opportunities in the world outside his village but if they don't involve elephants, he's not interested.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184738823X</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Chloe Hooper
|title=The Tall Man: Life and Death on Palm Island
|rating=4
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=Cameron Doomadgee – Mulrunji – was just thirty six years old when he was arrested on Palm Island. Quite why he was arrested was never clear. He wasn't drunk, although he had been drinking beer – and was walking along the road singing ''Who Let the Dogs Out?'' Senior Sergeant Chris Hurley felt that there was reason to arrest Mulrunji for creating as public nuisance and he was taken to the police station. What happened next was to be the subject of intense media speculation and legal proceedings over the coming years, but within forty five minutes Mulrunji was dead.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099520761</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Timothy W Ryback
|title=Hitler's Private Library: The Books That Shaped His Life
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=As the fictional schoolboy hero Nigel Molesworth might have said, 'any fule kno' that Adolf Hitler was notorious for burning books. Nevertheless he was also an avid collector and passionate reader, as around 1200 surviving volumes once in his possession now in the Rare Book Division of the Library of Congress, and a smaller quantity in Brown University, Rhode Island, demonstrate. Among them were world literature classics, such as 'Robinson Crusoe', 'Uncle Tom's Cabin', and 'Gulliver's Travels'. He also owned an edition of the collected works of Shakespeare, in hand-tooled Moroccan leather with a gold-embossed eagle flanked by his initials on the spine. The Bard, he once said, was greatly superior to Goethe and Schiller.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099532174</amazonuk>
}}