Open main menu

Changes

no edit summary
'''Read [[Features|new features]].'''
__NOTOC__
{{newreview
|author=Anthony Hays
|title=The Killing Way
|rating=3.5
|genre=Crime (Historical)
|summary=Post-Roman invasion and Great Britain shows the signs of a beleagured nation. And straight away Hays gives us an historical flavour - Saxons, Picts and names such as 'Ambrosius Aurelianus' are mentioned early on in the book.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857890050</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Jackson Pearce
|summary=For those picking up a Tracy Revels novel for the first time, she writes Sherlock Holmes fiction with the twist that Holmes is a supernatural being, coming from the Shadows. In the hugely enjoyable romp [[Shadowfall: A Novel of Sherlock Holmes by Tracy Revels|Shadowfall]], Watson discovered this, and was plunged headlong into an adventure involving Titania, Spring-Heeled Jack, voodoo, and various other dark and mysterious beings. That one ended with the good doctor losing his memory of the story – but I was always hoping that was merely a temporary measure, and indeed, it’s not long here before he starts to recall Holmes’ true nature.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780920474</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Stephen H Segal
|title=Geek Wisdom
|rating=4.5
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=I am by no means a fully fledged geek, but on the Big Bang scale I'm probably more of a Leonard than a Penny. I was weaned on ''Star Trek '', chose ''Hitchhiker’s Guide... '' as my reading aloud piece for a Year 7 exam, and think it would be more than a little fun to take a trip to Comic Con. At the same time, there are gaping holes in my knowledge. My first celeb crush might have been ''Blake’s 7’s'' Villa but I've never seen a ''Batman'' film, never read a comic book, never quite understood what all the ''Star Wars'' fuss was about. If Sci Fi is a religion, then this is the book that can fill me in one the stories, the parables, the rules, as it were, of geekdom. I had to have it.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1594745277</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Pam Jenoff
|title=The Things We Cherished
|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=The rather sentimental title and Mills & Boon-ish front cover did not endear me to this book initially. The blurb on the back cover made up for this, however. The story opens - at the end, if you get my drift and we're in America in 2009. An elderly man called Roger is in prison, awaiting trial for (alleged) war crimes. Charlotte has been assigned to the case. Although she's a hot-shot lawyer she also has a conscience (unlike many of her colleagues) so therefore she's a bit of a rare breed.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0751547298</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Joanne Harris
|title=Runelight
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
|summary=''Runelight'' continues several years after [[Runemarks by Joanne Harris|Runemarks]] left off. The rescue of the gods has left a rift between the Worlds which allows demons and assorted ephemera to escape from Chaos into Malbry and spread towards World's End, a lawless city now it has no Order to maintain it. With Odin dead and the surviving gods power-stripped and forced to inhabit bodies of Folk, there is little chance of re-establishing Order. And with the End of the Worlds prophesied in just twelve days, the task of rebuilding Asgard and preventing it is Herculean.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>085753081X</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Stephen Law
|title=The Complete Philosophy Files
|rating=5
|genre=Children's Non-Fiction
|summary=''The Philosophy Files'' and ''The Philosophy Files 2'' were first published in 2000 and 2003 respectively. Now we have them combined and reissued with illustrations by the wonderful Daniel Postgate.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444003348</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{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
|author=Ilsa Bick
|title=Ashes
|rating=4
|genre=Teens
|summary=Alex is hiking in the wilderness when it all kicks off. Suffering from a brain tumour and with only Aunt Hannah to care about, she has a mission to complete before it's too late. She is enjoying - as much as she could enjoy anything - the solitude and her memories, cruelly truncated by the cancer, which come in tiny, sparkling, precious moments. And then comes the zap. A catastrophic electromagnetic pulse sweeps across the globe and destroys almost everything. There are few survivors and most of those who do make it through have become psychotic, flesh-eating monsters. Those who haven't changed are in terrible trouble. Society is in ruins, all communication has broken down, and the flesh-eaters are hunting.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857382624</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Stella Gibbons
|title=Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm
|rating=3.5
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=First things first. There's only one story in this collection about Cold Comfort Farm. This is a story about the farm before Flora Poste arrives, a 'prequel' if you like. It features the Starkadder family at Christmas, with a dispute over a coffin-nail and it did make me smile. I suspect it is one for fans, however. For instance, the appearance of a teenage Dick Hawk-Monitor, already in love with Elfine, shoots a knowing wink at the devoted but would leave most readers cold.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099528673</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Per Petterson
|title=It's Fine By Me
|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=We see Audun start his new school in Oslo. The building, the classrooms, the teachers, even the other pupils all seem to scare him. He refuses to conform and insists on wearing his sunglasses - indoors. It's not an affectation though, apparently he has some facial scarring around his eyes.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846553695</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Francesca Simon
|title=The Sleeping Army
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=When Francesca Simon was invited to write about anything she liked, she decided to put the Lewis chessmen at the centre of an adventure. They have long fascinated her, and she has always wondered why they look so glum and worried. Add to this the fact (which she admitted in a recent interview for the Guardian) that if she were left alone in the British Museum she would want to touch everything, pick up everything and generally run amok (rather like that naughty Loki the Trickster, not to mention an equally horrid young boy called Henry . . .) and the seeds of her story were sown.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846682789</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
|title=River Cottage Veg Every Day!
|rating=4
|genre=Cookery
|summary=Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall wants to make it clear that ''River Cottage: Veg Every Day!'' is a ''vegetable'' cookbook and that it's up to the reader to determine whether or not it's a ''vegetarian'' cookbook. He makes it quite clear that he's not a vegetarian and has no intention of becoming one, but for the four months which it took to film the series of which this is the book he didn't touch a scrap of meat or fish. It's a new Hugh, but the slimmed-down version is the result of a conscious decision before filming began rather than the consequences of the change of diet. The new hairstyle has yet to be explained…
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408812126</amazonuk>
}}