'''Read [[Features|new features]].'''
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{{newreview
|author=Leigh Hobbs
|title=Mr Chicken Goes To Paris
|rating=4.5
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=Mr Chicken wants to see France, so he reads his guidebooks, learns his French phrases and arranges for his penpal Yvette to meet him at the airport. Ooh la la!
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408805243</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Margaret Henderson Smith
|summary=Anyone who has watched Gregg Wallace on ''MasterChef'' will be aware of his passion (and that is ''not'' putting it too strongly) for puddings. He's never lost his sweet tooth and, unlike many men, is not afraid to admit it. He takes a child-like delight in the final course and has been known to go against the professional judge if something particularly appeals to him: he's salvaged the pride of many a contestant with his ''yummy''.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>060062143X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Geoffrey Miller
|title=Must-Have: The Hidden Instincts Behind Everything We Buy
|rating=4
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=If no one can tell the difference, why shell out $30 000 for a real Rolex when a 'mere' $1200 will get you a virtually identical replica?
Why do luxury manufacturers such as BMW spend money advertising in mass media whose typical readership most likely won't ever be able to afford their products?
And just why is the ''i'' in iPod so important?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099437929</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Bernie McGill
|title=The Butterfly Cabinet
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=This novel has been based on fact. McGill moves back and forth with various characters' stories. A child has died in the family home and the mother, Harriet has been tried in a court of law and found guilty. The fact that she is a practical, no-nonsense woman who does not wear her heart on her sleeve does not go down well with the majority of the jury. She has also committed another crime, almost equally as grave, she has sullied the family name of her husband. He is a prominent and respected member of the local community. Nothing will be the same again for either of them.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755370686</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Simon Brett
|title=Blotto, Twinks and the Dead Dowager Duchess
|rating=3.5
|genre=Crime (Historical)
|summary=There is a long tradition of country house murder novels, and Simon Brett has a glorious time parodying them in the Blotto and Twinks series. All the stock characters are there: the dim but honourable young man, the clever and emancipated young woman, the loyal lower orders and the dastardly (and preferably foreign) villains. Death is treated in the most light-hearted, almost off-hand manner, and danger is as regular an occurrence as kippers for breakfast. In hands as experienced as Simon Brett's this should be a rich mine for comedy, and to some extent it is, but still, it has to be said, something is lacking.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849013179</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jean Kwok
|title=Girl in Translation
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=When Kimberly Chang and her mother emigrate to the USA from Hong Kong they believe that, true to the American Dream, their lives are about to get better. However, although Kimberly's aunt paid their air fares and arranged their green cards she is intent on getting her money back. She arranges their accommodation in a run-down part of Brooklyn in a building where they are the only tenants. Their apartment has broken windows, no heating and is rife with cockroaches and rats. The aunt arranges work for Kim's mum in her husband's Chinatown factory, paying her a pittance for piece work and then taking most of her salary away for repayments on their flights and their accommodation. Huddled around their oven for warmth, wearing layers of clothing made from material they found in the trash, their lives seem incredibly bleak. But Kimberly has brains, and determination, and she is adamant that she will find a way to take care of her mother.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1905490623</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Christine Johnson
|title=Claire de Lune
|rating=4
|genre=Teens
|summary=Claire was having the perfect sixteenth birthday. Okay, so most of the people probably only turned up for her swimming pool, her hands and ears were itching like crazy and everyone had to leave early because of the werewolf sighting in the forest nearby. But all Claire cared about was Matthew Engle, talking to her and flirting with her and promising to call her later. Then her mother takes her into the woods and reveals a dark and dangerous secret – she and Claire are werewolves. Everything Claire thought she knew about werewolves is wrong, but how can she continue to see Matthew, whose father is leading the hunt for them?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847389287</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jeff Somers
|title=The Terminal State
|rating=4
|genre=Science Fiction
|summary=In this future, desolate, post-apocalyptic world, the last thing Avery Cates wants to do is choose a side. The police are androids, artificial cases for clones of people who die in the making, and the other source of power is not much better. But it's them that pressgang him into joining their army. What little freedom and power he had as a lone gunman is lost, as he's given nanotech augments to make him a super-soldier. Which is bad news - as is the fact the two most powerful and hated people in Cates's universe are the very people who buy him from the army to do one last job - and they can be very persuasive about him accepting it...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1841498750</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Simon Rich
|title=Elliot Allagash
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Meet thirteen year-old Seymor Herson, he's one of life's losers, the least popular boy at Glendale a second rate private school in New York. He has made a virtue of mediocrity and is happy to simply survive his time at Glendale rather than try and excel at anything.
Meet thirteen year-old Elliot Allagash heir to one of the largest fortunes in America. Elliot who makes a habit of being thrown out of exclusive private schools has finally ended up at Glendale whose reliance on his family's funding means that he cannot be expelled despite his various misdemeanours. Expulsion not being an option Elliot embarks on an equally difficult project, to make Seymor into the most popular boy in school and beyond that to turn him into a young prodigy, the talk of the New York elite. Can he achieve this? And at what cost?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687543</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Bruce Bueno de Mesquita
|title=Prediction: How to See and Shape the Future with Game Theory
|rating=3.5
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=As a rather mediocre recreational poker player I've often been intrigued by game theory. The academic discipline used by politicos during the chilliest days of the Cold War has been utilised by the more mathematically minded players on the professional circuit to improve profitability. Rather than poker, author and politics professor Bruce Bueno de Mesquita uses game theory models to forecast political, economic and international security scenarios and in Prediction he shares some of his secrets.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099531844</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Lydia Davis
|title=The Collected Short Stories of Lydia Davis
|rating=5
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=As you might expect with short stories, the themes are as varied as 'The Fears of Mrs Orlando' to 'Mothers' and of course, I have my own particular favourites. Most of these short stories cover a couple of pages, but others are merely a sentence or two. And, for me, the less on the page, the more impart the words usually have. In short (no pun intended) there would seem to be something for everyone in these 700+ pages.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>024114504X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Pippa Funnell
|title=Tilly's Pony Tails: Neptune the Heroic Horse
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Tilly has recently been reunited with her brother – they know nothing of their birth mother and were adopted by different families – and she's just been invited to go on holiday to Cornwall with him and his family. It will mean leaving the horses and ponies at the local stables but she's sure that they'll all manage without her for a week. Once in Cornwall she's delighted to find that there's a riding stable nearby and she soon makes friends, particularly with a horse called Neptune. She also meets a girl called Megan who loves swimming, but can't understand why Megan is frightened of horses and doesn't want to learn to ride, despite the encouragement she gets from her parents.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444000829</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Louise Rennison
|title=Withering Tights
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
|summary=After killing off Georgia Nicolson in a blaze of hedonism and vampires, it's time for [[:Category: Louise Rennison|Louise Rennison]] to start a new series, with a new teenage girl's first-person narrative. This time it's one Tallulah Casey, a lanky girl worried about her knees and underdeveloped cleavage, and off to stay at a posh drama performance workshop centre in the wilds of Yorkshire.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007156839</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Janet Soskice
|title=Sisters of Sinai: How Two Lady Adventurers Found the Hidden Gospels
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Sisters of Sinai tells the story of two extraordinary, Victorian women who unearthed an important early copy of the Gospels from a remote monastery in Egypt. It hardly seems possible that they organised and executed such remarkable feats of unaccompanied travel during an age in which women's freedom was hidebound by their status as the inferior sex. Janet Soskice is well-placed as a feminist philosopher and theologian to explore their lives.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009954654X</amazonuk>
}}