'''Read [[Features|new features]].'''
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{{newreview
|author=Jeanne Peterson
|title=Falling to Heaven
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Emma and Gerald Kittredge are either very brave or very naive. They've made the long journey from America to Tibet. Hardly on the tourist trail and they're not missionaries, so why are they there? This novel is a serious and sweeping narrative trying to answer that very question - and many more.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>185168736X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|summary=Ah, bliss! To sit down once more to an Alexander McCall Smith story and wish only for someone thoughtful to come and serve me tea and biscuits whilst I read! We are back, once again, with the residents of Corduroy Mansions to earwig on their conversations, their private thoughts and, of course, to catch up with what every one's favourite dog, Freddie de la Hay, has been getting up to. Written once again in serial format for The Daily Telegraph each short chapter is a gem, and all the characters we met previously in Corduroy Mansions are back again to entertain us.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846971616</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Gladys Mitchell
|title=Death at the Opera
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=Miss Ferris would not normally have been entertained for a major part in Hillmaston School's production of The Mikado. She was self-effacing, meek and not very talented. But – she had offered to finance the cost of the production and this swung matters in her favour. It did mean that she couldn't afford the holiday she had planned for the summer and had to spend it in her aunt's boarding house, but she'd been pleased to make the gesture as she'd been happy at the school.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099546841</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Helen Dunmore
|title=The Betrayal
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Andrei is a perceptive and deeply conscientious doctor, a young rheumatologist and paediatrician working in a Leningrad hospital just after the terrible siege, during the last days of Stalin’s dictatorship. He is as quick to notice symptoms in his colleagues as in his young patients. When he is approached by Russov, a fellow physician, he registers his confrere’s pervading smell of fear. This is all part of the pathology of the times; life as it is lived under a tyrannical dictatorship. A dictatorship determined to pursue a purge – a vendetta directed against doctors, particularly Jewish doctors. The sweating Russov manages to inveigle Andrei Aleksayev into treating a very sick child, Gorya, the son of Volkhov, who is a tyrannical and high ranking secret police officer. Therapeutic failure, in all probability, could result in vengeance, arrest and devastating effects on Andrei’s loving wife Anna and her young adolescent brother, Kolya.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1905490593</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Sophie McKenzie
|title=Time Train to the Blitz
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=The summer holidays is a time for relaxing, playing in the sun, and getting bored – precisely what Joe and Scarlett are doing when we encounter them at the beginning of this thrilling book. It is hardly surprising then, that when the two children see a ghostly train racing towards them in the woods, they take a risk and step inside. The train itself is strange, but when they find clothes laid out in the single compartment with their own names marked on them, Joe starts to get really worried. His sister Scarlett, however, is more curious – or more reckless – and she immediately begins to try on the blue dress which has been left for her. And then Joe's phone starts to count down from an hour . . .
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0746097530</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Emily Purdy
|title=The Tudor Wife
|rating=3.5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=From the moment she sets eyes on handsome George Boleyn, plain Lady Jane Parker falls madly in love and prays that George will be hers. As Jane and George's families negotiate the marriage Jane meets Anne Boleyn and quickly realises that George only has eyes for Anne, but remains determined that she can make George love her.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847561942</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Mari Strachan
|title=The Earth Hums in B Flat
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Choosing a child as the viewpoint character of a novel requires confidence and imagination. To succeed is to convince the reader of events at two levels – the child's world within the adult world surrounding her. The very best novels about childhood, like say Harper Lee's classic, 'To Kill a Mockingbird', also reflect a wider cultural truth. In 'The Earth Hums in B Flat', a claustrophobic Welsh village is both protection and straitjacket as the characters struggle to cope with their family secrets. If that sounds a bit tacky, fear not, because the viewpoint character, Gwenni, is all whippet and sharp corners.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847673058</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Anne Perry
|title=The Sheen on the Silk
|rating=4
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=Anna Zarides arrives in Constantinople, determined to find out why her twin brother Justinian has been convicted of murder. But it is 1273, and a woman cannot move about freely to ask questions. Anna is a skilled doctor, who uses Arab and Jewish medicine in secret as well as more accepted Christian remedies: in her quest for information she disguises herself as a eunuch and successfully treats a wide range of people from the very poorest right up to the emperor himself.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755339061</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Mavis Cheek
|title=Truth to Tell
|rating=4.5
|genre=Women's Fiction
|summary=Robert Porter was angry. The politician filling the television screen was lying. He knew it. He railed against it and said politician would have thought himself lucky not to be there in person. Nina only managed to calm her husband by enquiring whether he would like red or white wine with the meal and had that been the end of the matter then that would have been the end of the matter – if you see what I mean. But the telephone rang and it was Robert's boss with details of the team-bonding office trip to Florida. Robert assured him that he was really keen to go (he wasn't) and Nina was looking forward to it too (she wasn't). And then Nina started wondering about the difference between the politician's lies and Robert's, er, evasions. Surely it must be possible to tell the truth?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091931673</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Ally Carter
|title=I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You (Gallagher Girls)
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
|summary=If ever there were a new series chock full of characters to make Harry, Ron, Hermione et al look like wimps, then this is it. Virginia might not be the most exciting of States, and sleepy Roseville may not be the most thrilling of towns, but for our purposes that's good. Boring and ordinary is good. Flying under the radar is good. To the town's residents, the Gallagher Academy is just your typical all girls private school. They don't know much about it, but then who would want to when it's clearly housing a group of snooty, snobby rich kids? Except...it's not. The Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women is not the place it makes out it is – this is an elite institution with a difference, for all its boarders are spies in training, with a curriculum in lethal weapons and covert operations as well as exquisite twists on the usual subjects: foreign languages here mean dedicated days where the whole school converses in any one of the FOURTEEN languages the girls have to master.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408309513</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=The Economist
|title=Style Guide
|rating=5
|genre=Business and Finance
|summary=I've always been fascinated by the use of the English language. I've loved the way that precise use of words can make meaning absolutely clear – or obscure it altogether. Some publications are a joy to read whilst others leave you with a frown. Generally ''The Economist'' comes into the first category and this is mainly down to the magazine's style guide – the rule book which guides writers towards clear writing. This is the tenth edition and whilst it might sound rather dry it's the bible for people wishing to communicate with precision and style – and who appreciate the book's gentle humour.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846681758</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Barrie Roberts
|title=The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: The Man From Hell
|rating=5
|genre=Crime
|summary=Noted West Country philanthropist Lord Backwater is
killed – by poachers, according to the police investigating. His son
disagrees, and calls in Sherlock Holmes, who quickly establishes that
the true solution to the mystery is much stranger – involving a feared
criminal brotherhood, crimes from many years past, and the Gates of
Hell themselves.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848565089</amazonuk>
}}