'''Read [[Features|new features]].'''
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{{newreview
|author=Joyce Lankester Brisley
|title=Milly-Molly-Mandy's Family
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Millicent Margaret Amanda (that's Milly-Molly-Mandy to you and me) lives with Father and Mother and Grandpa and Grandma and Uncle and Aunty (and Toby the dog) in a nice white cottage with a thatched roof. And do you know, she has all sorts of adventures. She goes out into town alone to fetch things for her extended family, she goes to a concert where she even knows one of the performers, she gets invited to parties in the village hall, and she does it all with the company of Little Friend Susan and Billy Blunt.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230754988</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Saviour Pirotta and Mark Robertson
|summary=Sometimes I look at the housework that needs to be done and it seems like a mountain that has to be climbed. It's not until I look back at the work that my mother, her mother and even my great grandmother had to do to keep the house clean and free of pests as well as doing all the laundry that I realise that my problems are more of a molehill and a lot less strenuous than their daily grind ever was. Jacqueline Percival has taken a look back at the way that things really were for the women who went before us – and in those days housework generally was down to the woman in the house.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956559530</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Paul Geraghty
|title=The Hunter
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=At the start of 'The Hunter', Jamina and her grandfather are walking in the bush collecting honey. Jamina wants to see elephants but her grandfather tells her it is unlikely because not many have been seen since the hunters came. Initially, she is quite enthralled by the idea of hunters and proclaims that she wants to be one. She starts to play at hunting but this game ends in her becoming lost. She is drawn towards a sad and desperate cry and eventually comes across a small baby elephant trying to wake his dead mother. She leads the baby away and hopes to head towards home but all around she senses danger and is aware that the poachers are never that far away. She feels hunted herself and through this journey she comes to realise that hunting is bad and that she no longer wishes to become a hunter.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849393761</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Fiona Dunbar
|title=Kitty Slade: Fire and Roses
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=In the second in the Kitty Slade series, Kitty lives with her Greek grandmother (Maro) who home educates Kitty, her brother Sam and sister Flossie. Kitty has a rare condition: she can see ghosts. On a trip to Oxenden to stay with Maro's friends, Kitty experiences some strange Poltergeist-type phenomena, and discovers that the family of Sir Ambrose Vyner (Maro's friends Dinky, Charlie and their children Louis and Emily) are under a curse.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408309297</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Nick Hasted
|title=You Really Got Me: The Story of The Kinks
|rating=4.5
|genre=Entertainment
|summary='People in America talk about 'The Beatles, the Stones, The Who.' For me it's 'The Beatles, the Stones, The Kinks.' Those words, quoted in the book, are those of Pete Townshend of The Who himself. He is certainly not alone in his verdict that, at the height of the swinging sixties in Britain, the Muswell Hill quartet were No 3 in the premier music league. Patchy chart success since their heyday has done nothing to diminish their reputation, or that of leader Ray Davies as one of the most gifted British songwriters of the last fifty years.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849386609</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jane Rogers
|title=The Testament of Jessie Lamb
|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The subject matter of 'The Testament of Jessie Lamb' ensures that this is not a comfortable read. Set in the near future, Rogers has imagined a truly terrifying virus that affects pregnant women, known as Maternal Death Syndrome or MDS. Everyone carries this illness but the effects, a cross between AIDS and CJD, ensure that all pregnant mothers will die - without exception. Scientists have found a way to save some of the unborn children, but only by placing their mothers in a chemically induced coma from which they won't recover. Now though, the scientists have also discovered a way of immunising frozen, pre-MDS embryos which, if they can be placed in a willing volunteer, may ultimately allow the survival of the human race. However, the volunteers need to be under 16½ or the likely success rates are too low. Step forward one Jessie Lamb.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1905207581</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Alice Peterson
|title=Monday to Friday Man
|rating=4
|genre=Women's Fiction
|summary=Gilly (that's with a 'G', you notice) was engaged to Ed, but a fortnight before their wedding and with the gifts piling up, he changed his mind. So Gilly was left on her own at the age of thirty four with a mortgage to pay on her house in Hammersmith and only a shop job to support herself. She really didn't know what she wanted to do with her life but as a stop-gap she decided to take in a Monday-to-Friday lodger. This would give her some income, company during the week and the house to herself at weekends. It seemed like an added bonus when the man she finally settled on was, well, rather tasty. Jack Baker seemed to have a lot going for him – and a job in reality television.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857383248</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Ian Beck
|title=The Hidden Kingdom
|rating=5
|genre=Teens
|summary=Prince Osamu is a pampered, spoiled young orphan who has never known friends his own age or been told what to do. He spends his life surrounded by beauty and riches in a world where most people do not even dare to raise their eyes to his face, collecting the exquisite pots made by Master Masumi and writing poems. His tutors have told him about the demons of Hades which try, every few centuries, to break through the barrier and take over this world, and that it is his responsibility to repel them, but he dismisses all this as old wives' tales. And then one night the forces of the Emissary attack the palace, and every certainty he had is gone in a flash.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0192755633</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Tara Hyland
|title=Fallen Angels
|rating=4
|genre=Women's Fiction
|summary=The front cover suggests romance with a capital 'R' along with the rather sugary title. The blurb on the back tells us we'll be travelling back and forth between various parts of the globe. The story opens with the Prologue: San Francisco in 1958 and there's a new-born baby girl taken to a local orphanage. It's a common occurrence sadly but this one stands out. We're told why towards the end when all the pieces of the jig-saw come together.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847377017</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Sebastian Barry
|title=On Canaan's Side
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Each chapter of 'On Cannan's Side' represents a day after the death of the narrator, Lilly Bere's, grandson, Bill. Initially the reader is bombarded by a stream of half thoughts but soon Lilly begins to outline her own life story from being the daughter of a police officer in Ireland at the end of the First World War, her subsequent flight to the USA, to ultimately living in retirement as a domestic cook to a wealthy American. It's a remarkable story, full of tragic events, but for all its hardships, Lilly is from a time when such things are to be endured rather than dwelt on.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571226531</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Sally Gardner
|title=The Double Shadow
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
|summary=In 1937 Amaryllis Ruben is about to turn seventeen. As a present, her father, Arnold Ruben, a widowed, multi-millionaire, is going to give his daughter his life long work, an invention that could alter time forever, a memory machine. It can capture the good, erase the bad, and keep you young for all time. But things aren't going to plan; apart from Amaryllis not wanting it, other people have taken an interest, and not in a good way.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780620128</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Elizabeth Baguley and Marion Lindsay
|title=Ready Steady Ghost!
|rating=5
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=We're introduced to a small and loveable ghost called Bertie. Even though he knows that he should be out haunting in the big dark woods, he feels far too small to haunt somewhere that is so huge. He does creep into the forest a little though and is pleased to see a couple of lights shining through the darkness that he believes to be the windows of a welcoming house. Sadly though, Bertie is mistaken and the lights are actually the eyes of a 'big gobble-me wolf'. Many times he doesn't recognise what he sees, mistaking a snake for a homely path, a dragon's breath for chimney smoke and so on. Luckily, not one of those scary creatures spots Bertie and he is able to go on his way until he makes his way to a 'gigantic freak-me castle' where things look to get even worse. However at the top of a winding stairway he discovers just what he has been seeking all along – a toy castle with a king and queen who only need a small timid ghost to make them jump!
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0192792644</amazonuk>
}}