'''Read [[Features|new features]].'''
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{{newreview
|author=David Lodge
|title=The Art of Fiction
|rating=4
|genre=Anthologies
|summary=Some academics produce streams of fantastic concepts and ideas but their attempts at articulating them to a wider reading public stumble into jargon and complexity. Thankfully David Lodge has no such troubles. As a mighty fine novelist ([[Nice Work by David Lodge|Nice Work]], [[Thinks... by David Lodge|Thinks...]], Deaf Sentence and many more) who also has a day job as a professor of English, Lodge is perfectly qualified to deliver a book on the craft of writing an in The Art of Fiction he has delivered one that is informative and enlightening as well as highly entertaining.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099554240</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jeanne Willis and Adrian Reynolds
|summary=I must admit that the front cover is extremely eye-catching and that drop of blood gives a hint as to what the book's all about. There are two central characters and their stories are told in the first person in alternating chapters. So first up, is Rhoda - and boy does she have attitude. She's babysitting for a friend and decides to take the youngster to a local shopping mall. Nothing wrong there, you could say except that it's late at night (the boy should really be in bed) and the shops are starting to shut for the night. Rhoda is a bit of a mess. She takes drugs, although she says she's not reliant on them, so when the 'kid' goes and does a disappearing act on her, she's both fuming and scared. Grey locates her story in Jo'burg and there's an element of threatening violence within its pages.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857890425</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Oakley Graham and Fenix
|title=Milly the Meerkat
|rating=4
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=After years of no one knowing what a meerkat was they seem to be rather fashionable now and this delightful tale is a reworking of Aesop's fable about the boy who cried wolf. Milly was on lookout and was rather bored, so she shouted to the others that a snake was crawling up to the baby meerkats' burrow. Everyone dashed out to help her chase it away – and discovered that she thought her prank was quite funny. Even when it was explained to her that she shouldn't do this she did it again – and this time everyone was angry.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849563047</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=John Lister-Kaye
|title=At the Water's Edge: A Walk in the Wild
|rating=3
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=This is a book that readers feel strongly about, and one with which I must confess to having a love/hate relationship! I loved the detailed observation, the sharing of knowledge that Lister-Kaye has built from a lifetime of close study of the countryside. He delights in and pays as much attention to the structure of a spider's web as to the rarest of meetings with a Scottish wildcat.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847674054</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Megan Abbott
|title=The End of Everything
|rating=5
|genre=Teens
|summary=On the surface this book is about the disappearance of a thirteen-year-old girl. Her best friend and neighbour Lizzie relates how she searches for clues, how she discovers that a local man may be involved, and how Evie and Lizzie's families struggle to cope. But look again at the title. What really unfolds here is the story of the effect a single incident has on three families, not two, how that one event came about, and why nothing will ever be the same for everyone involved. It is a book which is complex, deep and very, very intense.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330535455</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=C J Box
|title=Back of Beyond
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Connolly and [[Tell No One by Harlan Coben|Harlan Coben]], both of whom I've read. So, it was off to a pretty good start. The front cover graphics and large print scream out 'thriller'. We get the essence of Cody early on. He's a man who likes to do his own thing and doesn't take kindly to orders or red tape. All that red tape is shit, is probably how Cody would describe it in his own colourful and down-to-earth fashion. He looks older than his years. Maybe that's down to a messy domestic life and also to the hours he puts in on the job. He lives on his own and has a teenage son he doesn't see often enough. Oh, and he smokes like a chimney and drinks like a fish. In short, he's a mess. But somehow he stumbles through his police work - with a lot of help and support from a long-suffering colleague.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848872984</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Hans Werner Kettenbach and Anthea Bell (Translator)
|title=The Stronger Sex
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=After reading the various comments on the back cover, I was looking forward to reading this book as I love a story with a psychological element. Young Alex is driven to the home of his latest client; a man called Klofft. The reader soon finds out that Klofft has plenty of baggage, as well as plenty of money. He's elderly and very ill and mobility is also an issue for him. So, while he may have set out to impress others with his large home and beautiful things, sadly he seems no longer to be able to enjoy life. His illness confines him to just a couple of rooms. It's apparent that Alex is rather taken with his wife, Cilly Klofft, who is still rather beautiful - for her age. The reader assumes she's in her late sixties or early seventies. But what is it they say about age being only a number for some of us? And age plays a big part, a very big part, in this novel.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904738672</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Graham Swift
|title=Wish You Were Here
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=I cannot tell you exactly how long after I finished this book that I sat, holding it, in stunned silence for - but it was light when I finished it and dark when I put it down. Some books can do that to you. This is one of them.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330535838</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Kevin Crossley-Holland
|title=Bracelet of Bones (Viking Sagas)
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=It's 1036 in Trondheim, Norway. Solveig lives with her father, stepmother and stepbrothers. Her mother died many years ago and neither Solveig nor her father Halfdan have ever truly recovered. Before his injury, Halfdan was a Viking mercenary and his dearest wish is to rejoin his old commander, Harald Hardrada in Miklagard (Constantinople). He promises Solveig that, should the call ever come, he will take her with him...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847249396</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Kaye Umansky
|title=Tales From Witchway Wood: Crash 'n' Bang
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=The Whichway Rhythm Boys is a band made up of Filth (who is Witch Sludgegooey's fiend) on drums, Arthur the Dragon on piano (he lives with his mum and likes a nice hot curry) and O'Brian the Leprechaun on penny whistle who is often mistaken for a Pixie, much to his disgust. Together they play gigs in the woods, for Zombie balls and suchlike, but the music they really love to play is Crash 'n' Bang!
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408801884</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Wolfren Riverstick
|title=A Cat Called Ian
|rating=3.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=The lad was trouble. He was a bully, a thief and a liar. We've all known someone like him – the company into which you hope that your own child doesn't fall. He's cocky with it too, convinced that he can do whatever he likes and get away with it – and that's when we meet him on his way to climb the great white oak at the top of Sunrise Hill, despite the fact that his mother has told him he's not to. It was a difficult climb and it wasn't long before he remembered the old story that some people climbed so far up the tree and then were never seen again.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0955431409</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Robert Jackson Bennett
|title=The Company Man
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=''The Times'' says on the front cover that Bennett is 'clearly a writer to watch' so I had high hopes for this novel. We meet two of the central characters, American policeman Garvey and Englishman Hayes. Garvey's working cv is straightforward enough - he carries out police work, some of which is pretty grisly. But what about Hayes? He appears to be all things to all men but at the end of the day well, he's 'The Company Man' which gives the book its title. And so a complex scenario starts to unravel ...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1841497924</amazonuk>
}}