'''Read [[Features|new features]].'''
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{{newreview
|author=Irene Nemirovsky
|title=The Wine of Solitude
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Helene adores her father but hates her mother, who neglects her and sees her as nothing more than an inconvenience. She grows up with the realisation that the only way that her mother can hurt her is to sack her French governess – the only person who has ever tried to give Helene a stable upbringing. The winds of war blow them all from a fictional Kiev, to a harsh St Petersburg and on to a snowy Finland to end up – finally – in France at the end of the First World War. Helene's father has made a lot of money from mining in Siberia but whilst the family might have money – ridiculous amounts of it – they have nothing else.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701185570</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|summary=Babar the elephant is the king of Celesteville, and this year his country is hosting the Worldwide Games. Athletes come from all over the world to compete. There is a fairytale romance for one of Babar's children, now grown up, too.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1419701258</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jutta Ash
|title=Rapunzel
|rating=4
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=Rapunzel is the story of a young man and his wife who long for a child of their own. Unfortunately, the wife also yearns to eat the lush rapunzel that grows in the garden next door. She pleads with her husband to fetch her some which he does. However he is spotted by the witch who lives there who tells him that in return for the rapunzel they must give her their first born child. This is a baby girl who is given the name Rapunzel. The witch imprisons her at the top of a tall tower and she can only be reached by the witch climbing up her long golden tresses.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849393729</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jessica Warman
|title=Between
|rating=3
|genre=Teens
|summary=Elisabeth Valcher, a spoilt, vain but popular girl, wakes up after a party to celebrate her 18th birthday on her father's yacht to discover herself dead, lying face down in the water. Luckily for Liz, who has trouble remembering exactly who she is and what happened in the run up to her death, she is soon joined by another ghost, Alex, one of the unpopular boys from her high school, who was killed a year earlier in a hit and run accident.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1405260483</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Roy Tomkinson
|title=Of Boys, Men and Mountains - Life in the Rhondda Valley
|rating=3
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Roy Tomkinson comes over as pretty sentimental about aspects of his childhood. He was born into a family of boys, and surrounded by an extended family spread along the valley. He was a child in the nineteen fifties, when post-War austerity was still a feature of life in Wales. Nevertheless, discipline, love and understanding were meted out by his parents in equal measures to provide a strong platform for his childhood adventures. Roy and his gang grew up free-ranging the valley, teaching their dogs and ferrets to catch rats, trespassing on industrial land, learning about girls, and entirely missing the growing affluence of central Britain. For them, it was idyllic, and the author makes it clear, many times, how lucky he feels to have enjoyed such a stable childhood environment.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0862438683</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Nancy Mitford
|title=The Sun King
|rating=4
|genre=History
|summary=Nancy Mitford assumes that you'll need no introduction to Louis XIV, who ascended the throne when he was four years old and reigned for well over seventy two years. To put him in context his reign began before Charles I was executed in Whitehall, lasted through the English Civil War, Oliver Cromwell's Commonwealth, the reigns of Charles I, James II, William III and into the beginning of the reign of Queen Anne. He bridged the gap between the middle ages and the early modern era.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099528886</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Syd Moore
|title=The Drowning Pool
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The book opens with a group of young women out on the town, letting their hair down and having fun. Moore describes all of them in a fresh and modern voice which I really liked. It came across as a breath of fresh air. The story, Sarah's story is told by Sarah herself. But it's told from the perspective of looking back after it's all happened so there's lots of why-didn't-I-see-that-coming language. Hindsight, in a word.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847562663</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Guillaume Musso
|title=The Girl on Paper
|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=This is a modern book for modern times. I loved the reader-friendly layout with big, bold type letting the reader know exactly where we were, in terms of storyline and location. But the story itself does jump about a lot and I suspect Musso wants to give a sense of urgency, a sense of frenetic energy at times.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908313056</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Frances Hardinge
|title=Fly by Night
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
|summary=The Fractured Realm is a country existing in an uneasy peace. Each province is ruled by the craftsmen guilds which hold ultimate control, an ineffective Duke, and citizens who honour a multitude of demi-gods, 'The Beloved', who haunt them their entire life. This is the world Mosca Mye inhabits. An orphan, Mosca is fostered by her aunt and uncle, who think little of her and use her as a bookkeeper due to her unique, and quite illegal, ability to read and write. She runs away the night she burns their mill to the ground.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330418262</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Stephen O'Shea
|title=The Friar of Carcassonne: Revolt Against the Inquisition in the Last Days of the Cathars
|rating=4
|genre=History
|summary=It starts with a painting. The painting isn't the point: the subject is. In the Autumn of 1319 a Franciscan Friar stands before his accusers. Entitled ''L'Agitateur du Languedoc'' the artwork portrays the trial of Bernard Délicieux, the eponymous Friar of Carcassonne. Although O'Shea veers clear of telling us the outcome of the trial, one cannot help feeling that it wasn't an acquittal. Such things tended not to go down in history quite so resoundingly. Not in those days.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184668319X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=50 Cent
|title=Playground
|rating=4
|genre=Teens
|summary=When Butterball fills a sock with batteries and attacks geeky Maurice in the playground, his school sends him off to twice-weekly meetings with a therapist. Butterball is not impressed. It's a waste of his time and he will never, never, tell anyone the truth about that day. Besides, any problem could be easily fixed if his mother just gave up on this idea of nursing school and moved them out of the stifling suburbs and back to New York City.
But Liz has other ideas...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780873301</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jessica Martinez
|title=Virtuosity
|rating=4
|genre=Teens
|summary=Carmen Bianchi plays the violin; in fact she might well be the best young violinist in the world. She plays a Stradivarius worth $1.2 million, provided by the grandparents who otherwise have little to do with her and she's managed by her mother, whose word is law. Schooling is provided by a home tutor – and she doesn't even get to knock on doors because of the possible damage to her hands: she kicks instead. So far she hasn't really minded that she doesn't have a life outside of violin, but then she meets Jeremy King – a fellow competitor in the world's most prestigious violin competition – and she has to think about her priorities.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857072846</amazonuk>
}}