'''Read [[Features|new features]].'''
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{{newreview
|author=Andrew Miller
|title=Pure
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=I've read Miller's ''Oxygen'' and ''The Optimists'' so I was looking forward to reading this novel. The story opens in the opulence of the Palace of Versailles. We are given vivid descriptions of both the scale of the palace and its grandeur. Jean-Baptiste Baratte, the young engineer, seems completely over-awed by the whole occasion. Even although he's not entirely sure what is expected of him in Paris, he accepts. He needs to eat, after all.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444724258</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Franny Billingsley
|summary=Grace, aged eleven, is sent to the Briar Mental Institute as her parents can no longer cope with her care. She is befriended there by a young boy, Daniel, who is epileptic and also has no arms after a terrible accident. Together we see the horrors of life in the Briar, and also their slowly growing love affair with each other.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>144470401X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Amitav Ghosh
|title=River of Smoke
|rating=4
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=At over 500 pages, this is a big book and it's also a big book in terms of the subject matters that it covers; the whole colonial situation regarding parts of the East as well as the properties and problems of the poppy's product - opium. Ghosh also crams in a wealth of very different and diverse characters so that the novel has the feel of an exotic and at times, enchanting pot-pourri of a read. I have to say at the outset that I find authors such as Rushdie wordy, very wordy. I have Ghosh's ''The Glass Palace'' in my ever-growing 'to read' pile. I wonder if the latter will be as wordy as the former. Time to find out...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0719568986</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Anna Walker
|title=I Love My Mum
|rating=3.5
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=Ollie B is a little zebra and in this story we see him spending time with his mum, doing chores, playing together and finally being settled down for the night with a goodnight kiss. The text is rhyming and very simple so it's nice and easy for little ones to follow. The situations shown are easily recognisable to small children (and their parents!) as we watch Ollie and his mum hanging out the washing, going for a walk together, stopping along the way to look at creepy crawlies, dancing with shadows, walking on walls...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007309163</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=David Wiesner
|title=Art and Max
|rating=4
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=It can take a little while to settle into this book. The format is unusual for a children's picture book in that it's a lot like a comic or a graphic novel, with many pages made up of panels that progress the story. The story begins even before the first page, with images on the title pages that are already introducing the characters and what's going on. When they begin to speak they are differentiated only by different fonts, so it took a page or so to figure out which lizard was which and who was saying what. Once you figure that out though it's a wonderfully funny story.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849392668</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Roma Tearne
|title=The Swimmer
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Ria, solitary, middle-aged poet, was idly watching the river one night when she saw a swimmer. It wasn't just the time of day which was unusual, but the river was hardly clean – and then she heard a noise downstairs. In this remote part of Suffolk it wasn't unusual to leave doors unlocked and the following morning she realised that a loaf of bread had been stolen. It was strange that she didn't really feel fear, but when the visits and minor thefts continued she waited up to catch the swimmer, who stole small amounts of food – and played the piano like an angel.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007301596</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Alex Epstein
|title=The Circle Cast
|rating=4
|genre=Teens
|summary=Anna is just a girl of eleven, when her father is involved in protecting the British Isles from the Saxon invaders. But, when the warlord Uter Pendragon decides to claim her mother Ygraine as his, with lethal consequences, things change. Her locale - from southwestern England, to sanctuary in Ireland. Her standpoint - from proud young girl absorbing some passed-down military knowledge, to a young woman of magic, bent on vengeance. And her name - from Anna, to Morgan.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1896580637</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Stephen Sedley
|title=Ashes and Sparks: Essays On Law and Justice
|rating=4.5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=Some books are hard to read, and even harder to review. This is particularly true of what are essentially academic or "professional" books and you come to them as a lay reader. This then is my starting position on Ashes and Sparks.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0521170907</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Aviv Ratzin
|title=Dreams and Everyday Life
|rating=3.5
|genre=Graphic Novels
|summary=Well, thank you, Aviv Ratzin - you've provided me with the one book I'm least capable of summarising for a review. I can't begin to pithily precis the plot, or describe the happenings in any quick, snappy way. To give the gist of the surreal, scattershot whimsicality cannot do the contents justice in any way.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0955808871</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Tea Obreht
|title=The Tiger's Wife
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Téa Obreht's 'The Tiger's Wife' comes with a fair degree of hype from the US, and largely it lives up to it, which is no small achievement. The main story is set in Yugoslavia and explores a young doctor, Natalia, seeking for the truth about her grandfather's death, while on a mission to deliver much needed medical aid to an orphanage in the war-ravaged Balkans. But what sets this book apart is the intricate weaving of reality with the myths and stories of the region. In particular there are two myths that represent a good chunk of the page count: the story of a tiger who has escaped from captivity after the World War two bombing of Belgrade and who has settled near a remote mountain village where Natalia's grandfather is growing up, and who develops a strange relationship with a deaf-mute girl who becomes known as 'the tiger's wife'; and a mysterious story of the 'Deathless Man' whom the grandfather encounters at various points in his life who appears to have the power to foresee others' death without being able to die himself.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0297859013</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Gary Armstrong and Tim Gray
|title=The Authentic Tawney: A New Interpretation of the Political Thought of R. H. Tawney
|rating=4
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=The Authentic Tawney takes a fresh look at the political writing of R H Tawney, a left wing academic whose works were a big influence on the huge program of postwar reform engineered by the Labour Party, particularly the provision of universal secondary education. The authors assert that Tawney's ideas changed markedly through the course of his life and that they lack the consistency that other interpreters have erroneously attributed to them. They reject the notion that his writings have an essential unity, which is philosophically interesting - don't we tend to assume that an intellectual's life's work will contain a central 'core' of ideas? Discussion of an important pioneer in democratic socialism also seems relevant at a time when Labour has 'lost its way' and evolved into a watered down version of the Conservatives.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845402243</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Anna Lawrence Pietroni
|title=Ruby's Spoon
|rating=4
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=“This is the tale of three women – one witch, one mermaid and one missing – and how Ruby was caught up in between”.
Despite the opening, this novel is more gritty realism than fantasy – there is lots of mythical imagery but in truth, the setting for this novel is a small industrial town cut off from everywhere else by the surrounding canals. It is 1933 (the middle of the Great Depression), and a stranger arrives in town to turn Ruby’s life upside down, for better or worse.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099540053</amazonuk>
}}