|summary=It's 1952 and twelve years since Churchill became Minister of War and Halifax took over from Chamberlain as Prime Minister. Churchill had thought that he might be able to run the war from that position but, Halifax, the appeaser, held sway and Britain surrendered to Germany in the aftermath of Dunkirk. Russia fought on, but it was a war of attrition rather than one which looked to come to a clear conclusion. The British people are under a violent, authoritarian rule and British Jews face a grim future. Winston Churchill - aged and possibly infirm - is the head of the Resistance organisation, but he's forced to live his life in hiding and on the run.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230744168</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Marina Warner
|title=Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights
|rating=4.5
|genre=Reference
|summary='Arabesque' is, these days, a term little used outside ballet. However, in its original meaning it conveyed the idea of an intricate pattern, constantly and exuberantly multiplying in countless new twists and turns, like the interlinked curves on a Middle Eastern carpet. That notion of arabesque – things spreading and connecting gorgeously – is pretty much crucial to both the theory and the design of Marina Warner's fantastical and fantastic new exploration of the rich intercultural history of the ''Arabian Nights'', ''Stranger Magic''.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099437694</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Alexander McCall Smith
|title=Trains and Lovers: The Heart's Journey
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Do you have a train journey to make? Will it take you several hours? If so, then I can't think of a better place to sit and read Alexander McCall Smith's new, standalone novel. It's all about four people travelling on a train you see, and it's all about love. I gorged on it one evening, reading it all in one go without stopping, and it's really rather lovely!
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846972450</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Anna Dewdney
|title=Llama Llama Red Pyjama
|rating=5
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=Every parent will know the bedtime game: it looks as though we're all settled down, on the edge of sleep and it's time for Mummy to slip away and get on with all that has to be done, but then... There's a call: a drink of water still seems to be the favourite and Baby Llama is no exception. Like most children he just wants to hang on to his mother for that ''little'' bit longer. Only Llama Mama is busy washing up and then the phone rings... ''She's'' distracted but Baby Llama is ''distraught'' and works himself up into something of a tizzy.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444910876</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Stuart Sterling, Brian Duddridge, Andrew Elliott, Michael Conway and Anna Payne
|title=Business Continuity For Dummies
|rating=4
|genre=Business and Finance
|summary=When you build a business you set off with unbridled enthusiasm and if you're lucky it does seem as though the Gods are flying along with and you holding your hands. But they have other calls on their time and at some point something will go wrong. It's inevitable. It might be something unforeseeable, something outside of your control, or an event which you really should have prepared for. In addition to growing this fledgling business you're now trying to troubleshoot, to second guess and eventually you stop moving forward and do little but worry about what can go wrong. There's a temptation to try and put it out of your mind: why give your nightmares an outing during the day? What you need is a plan - a structured, unthreatening way of looking at what can fail and how you would deal with it.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1118326830</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Carrie Weston and Tim Warnes
|title=Boris Saves the Show
|rating=4
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=Bookbag has enjoyed Boris' previous adventures in [[Oh, Boris! by Carrie Weston|Oh, Boris!]] and [[Bravo, Boris! by Carrie Weston and Tim Warnes|Bravo, Boris!]] so I was keen to see what Boris was up to this time around. We're back amongst familiar faces, in Miss Cluck's school, and this time Miss Cluck has decided the class will put on an end of term show, and that there will be special guests from the Pond Side Nursery coming to watch too! But what role will Boris take in the show?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0192758276</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Monica McInerney
|title=The House of Memories
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Ella Fox's life would never have been described as easy. Her parents divorced when she was young and not long after, her father was killed in a light aircraft crash. Her mother remarried and although Ella loved her new and funny stepbrother, Charlie, she could not stem her feelings of jealousy when her half sister Jess is born not long after the marriage. Although she lived halfway across the world from him, she always turned to her Uncle Lucas in her lowest moments. It's hardly surprising then, that years later, after the tragic death of her twenty month old son, Felix, she ultimately runs to her uncle in London.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230763014</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Diane Fox and Christyan Fox
|title=Rain or Shine (Snip and Snap)
|rating=4.5
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=It's an important lesson to learn, if you're growing up in the UK - the perils of planning an outdoor picnic! Snip and Snap have decided to have a picnic, but as poor Snip tries to get ready he finds that the changeable weather thwarts his plans at every step! Will he ever manage to eat his picnic with his friend Snap?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408316129</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Daniela Sacerdoti
|title=Really Weird Removals.Com
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Twelve-year-old Luca and his younger sister Valentina don't know their Uncle Alistair, who had a row with their father about a decade ago. When Alistair returns to the Scottish island of Eilean to try to put things right, their dad doesn't want to have anything to do with him - but when Luca and Valentina meet him and the ghost he's brought with him, they're desperate to help their uncle with his Really Weird Removals Company. While their parents think they're helping to exterminate ants and cockroaches, they're actually relocating mermaids, sea serpents and trolls - but not everything out there is friendly. Can Alistair keep them safe? And what exactly did cause his row with their father?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0863159028</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Vernon Hill
|title=Fans Not Customers: How to create growth companies in a no growth world
|rating=3.5
|genre=Business and Finance
|summary=Vernon Hill is the man behind Metro Bank in the UK, the founder of Commerce Bank in the US and the holder of the North American franchise of PetPlan. When Metro Bank opened in the UK in July 2010 I remember wondering if the world ''really'' needed another Bank and the truth was that it didn't need another Bank-just-like-every-other-Bank-you've-encountered, but it did need a fresh approach to the business and a sweeping away of all the old rules and prejudices. Hill had proved that it could be done with Commerce Bank and in the last two years he's made a similar impact with Metro.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>178125110X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Cees Nooteboom and Laura Watkinson (Translator)
|title=Roads to Berlin
|rating=5
|genre=Travel
|summary='Whoever controls Berlin controls Germany and whoever controls Germany controls Europe' is a remark which is attributed to Lenin. Until November 1989, the Berlin Wall bisected the historic city and divided its citizens from each other. Berlin was occupied, militarised and yet its people carried on with their daily lives amongst the ruins. Cees Nooteboom, a distinguished Dutch travel writer, knew something of the devastation of the past. He is old enough to have experienced, and at impressionable age, the Nazi Blitzkreig and occupation of Holland. A sensitive and susceptible person, he meditates upon the various strata of meaning, history, heroism and time itself. The result is a prose poem on a unique city that is condemned to be constantly developing, becoming rather than just being.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857050265</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Helen DeWitt
|title=Lightning Rods
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Joe is a salesman on the verge of giving up. Having lost all confidence in his ability to sell vacuum cleaners to Middle America, he creates and elaborates on a fantasy just for fun. It includes a woman being 'serviced' from behind, her partner obscured by a waist high wall. The only thing any over-the-wall voyeur sees is an innocent activity e.g. she may manicure her nails.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908276118</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=A K Hill
|title=A Mediocre Man
|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Francis James Humbleton, the 'mediocre man' of the title is quiet and reserved, hardworking and a man of such regular habits that his neighbours can set their clocks by his departure to work each morning. His life was unassuming, unnoticed by all but a very few and his death only came to light because his employers knew that something must be wrong when he didn't return to work after the Christmas break. Mr Humbleton had been murdered, at precisely (what else could it be?) 3am in what looked to be a burglary gone wrong. Only Mr Humbleton had nothing that was worth stealing and it's down to Detective Inspector Johnson and Detective Constable Smith to investigate his life as well as his death.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B008YWQTME</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Becca Fitzpatrick
|title=Finale (Hush Hush)
|rating=3
|genre=Paranormal
|summary=We left Patch and Nora were finally happily together and in love but with a big problem: Nora's vow to her dead father, Hank. Nora must lead the Nephilim in the upcoming war against the fallen angels who possess their bodies each year. If she doesn't, both she ''and'' her mother will die. She won't be accepted as leader by the Nephilim if her own boyfriend is a fallen angel, so once again their relationship has to go underground. Nora agrees to a fake relationship with Dante, the second-in-command Nephilim. The scam is easy enough to pull off - they need to spend a lot of time together anyway, as Dante trains Nora's newly Nephilim body for war.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857072919</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=John Grisham
|title=The Racketeer
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Malcolm Bannister is forty-three years old and a lawyer. He's also in prison for a crime he didn't know he was committing and in which he had no criminal intent. Halfway through a ten-year stretch he's the only black man in the prison serving time for a white collar crime: that's what happens when you're just a bit naive and what looks like a genuine real estate deal turns out to be part of a massive money laundering operation. The prison he's in is relatively relaxed and he's the librarian, but he's lost his job, his wife's divorced him and he wonders if he'll ever see his young son again. Other than that, life's pretty much of a muchness.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444729748</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jenni Desmond
|title=Red Cat, Blue Cat
|rating=3.5
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=Red Cat and Blue Cat don't get on. They don't get on at all. They hiss and scratch and stumble and thwump. They fight like... well, cat and cat. Each cat has a secret, though: each cat would quite like to be like the other. Blue Cat would like to be fast and bouncy like Red Cat, and Red Cat would like to be smart and quick-witted like Blue Cat. Blue Cat tries to turn red, by eating red things. Red Cat copies him. Neither changes colour, and neither takes on the characteristics of the other. Who'd have thunk it? They're going to have to come up with another plan.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>160905248X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Ruth Brown
|title=A Dark, Dark Tale
|rating=4.5
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=Once upon a time, there was a dark, dark moor. On that moor was a dark, dark wood. That wood has a dark, dark... well, you get the idea. Darkness is compounded by darkness, and we delve deeper and deeper into this spooky story, to find what lies at the heart of it.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1842709895</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Steve Martin
|title=Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy: Cool Ways to Remember Stuff
|rating=4.5
|genre=Children's Non-Fiction
|summary=When I look back on my school days it didn't seem terribly complicated, but when I see what my grandchildren are coping with I'm ''amazed'' at all that they have to remember. They need to have methods of jogging their memories. 'Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy' gives them lots of ways of remembering a rich variety of facts, but also shows them how they can develop their own ways of helping their memory. It's a book about mnemonics such as rhymes, acrostics, stories, grouping, linking, pictures, acronyms and wordplay. It's not just the methods of remembering that are there - there are all sorts of facts in with the methods.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780551053</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Dawn French
|title=Oh Dear Silvia
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=When Dawn French wrote her first novel [[A Tiny Bit Marvellous by Dawn French|A Tiny Bit Marvellous]] I was eager to read it, looking forward to plenty of silly humour and those elusive-when-reading out loud laughs. I was disappointed unfortunately, and actually came away from the book feeling annoyed with the characters and quite discouraged and depressed somehow. So, I approached her new novel with a little trepidation, unsure as to whether she deserved a second chance. I'm glad I gave her the benefit of the doubt!
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0718156064</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Vanessa Greene
|title=The Vintage Teacup Club
|rating=5
|genre=Women's Fiction
|summary=Jenny, Maggie and Alison meet at a car boot sale. Jenny is looking for vintage tea sets to serve tea at her wedding to Dan in a few month's time. She spots four cups and saucers that would be ideal but at the same time, the cups are also spotted by Maggie and Alison who also want them. Over a cup of tea, they realise that each of them needs them at a different time so it could be possible to buy them and then share them. Jenny will have them first at her wedding, then Maggie will use them in the 'Alice in Wonderland' garden she is creating, before finally passing them on to Alison who will use them as scented candle holders. It's a good solution and one that will lead to a strong and lasting friendship between the three of them.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0751548502</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Padgett Powell
|title=Edisto
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Welcome to the household of the Duchess and our narrator, Simons (pronounced as with two Ms), a luxurious building set in the Carolinian coastal town of Edisto, and a white household in a friendly black neighbourhood. Our story starts when a man arrives, trying to serve a court order to the maid's daughter, an act which drives the maid to flee, and which leads to the man replacing her in her shack. He doesn't exactly do the housework as she did, but he does help the household out, for the Duchess is quite Bohemian in attitude, and wants her twelve year old boy to be a dazzling authorial prodigy. He already has a stool with his name on at the local black bar, but the man – who Simons decides to call Taurus – is going to be a peculiar father figure, opening his world up into that of adulthood.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846688124</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=John Sugden
|title=Nelson: A Dream of Glory
|rating=5
|genre=Biography
|summary=
I will admit that I didn't know what I was letting myself in for when I saw 'Nelson: A Dream of Glory' sitting on the Bookbag shelf, but I had just come back from Portsmouth and a wander around on the Victory, so it was a bit hard to resist.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845951913</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Margaret Powell
|title=The Downstairs Cookbook: Recipes From A 1920s Household Cook
|rating=4
|genre=Cookery
|summary=Margaret Powell began her life in service as a housemaid, but she had an interest in cooking (her mother wouldn't allow her to learn at home as food was too precious to waste) and by talking to cooks, watching what they did and making notes she eventually rose to be cook in the grand houses on the nineteen twenties. ''The Downstairs Cookbook'' is her collection of the recipes which she used, or which were current at the time. But it's more than that. Think of it as being rather like a visit to a good cookery school where you'd collect all those hints and tips which make recipes ''work'' and the anecdotes about life in a professional kitchen.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230767834</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jose Saramago
|title=Raised from the Ground
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Domingos is a feckless man, a man often neglecting his family, and hitting his wife due to too much drinking, a man often leaving everyone behind as he chases work and flees his debts. He calls himself a shoemaker but really he's little different from those around him, who actually do have to move about, chasing what seasonal agricultural work is available. Certainly his children and their children in turn will mostly be bound to the land they sprang from - the 'latifundio' – and the spirit of both all of them, and of it, throughout the Portuguese twentieth century, are the subjects of this early [[:Category:Jose Saramago|Jose Saramago]] novel, in English for the first time after a thirty-year wait.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846557062</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Dag Solstad
|title=Professor Andersen's Night
|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=A Christmastime in Norway. Spending his Christmas Eve alone, yet celebrating the age-old occasion the traditional way just by and for himself, is Professor Andersen. While taking time to muse on the party-hosting neighbours lit up in their own apartments across the way, he sees a young woman get roughly manhandled by what he thinks is a young man, after which their curtains are closed and suspicion is allowed to mount in the Professor's mind. He attends a dinner party – arriving far too early, to have the opportunity to talk the case over with his best friend – and goes away, spending many hours with his colleague, yet carries on doing nothing about reporting what he is sure was a murder. He and the relationship to the criminal in his mind are the basis of this short novel.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099578425</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Kari Hotakainen and Owen F Witesman (translator)
|title=The Human Part
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Salme Malmikunnas attends a literary fair with her daughter, Helena but before going inside, Salme meets an author who offers her a small fortune in exchange for her story. He seeks inspiration and feels that Salme's biography is it. Salme agrees only after a fee increase and so their regular meetings begin. The author gets a story and Salme unloads her past and present onto this stranger. Meanwhile, Salme's family continues speeding towards a devastating event.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857050656</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Laini Taylor
|title=Days of Blood and Starlight
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
|summary=Karou and Akiva once dreamt of a peaceful world, but their dreams look further away from reality than ever. Is there any way that either of them can gain redemption?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444722670</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Roger Osborne
|title=Of the People, By the People: A New History of Democracy
|rating=4.5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=Most authors writing on the subject of democracy tend to concentrate on political theory. Osborne approaches the subject from the historical angle instead, looking at different democracies from that of Greece in the sixth century BC, to the present day. 'Humanity's finest achievement', as Osborne calls it in the first sentence of his prologue, comes from the Greek words ''demos'' (people) and ''kratos'' (rule). It had its origins in the system devised in ancient Athens, the earliest in the world which did not first operate through complex relations of kinship and deference, as had others up to then. Parallels would be seen in Rome a few centuries later.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845950623</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Salley Vickers
|title=The Cleaner of Chartres
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Agnes is a mystery to the residents of Chartres, even as she goes about filling any shortfall in labour here, doing any odd job there, and cleaning for some of the people in and around the fabulous cathedral the town is so proud of – and, even in the end, cleaning the cathedral itself. There is an aged, dotty professor from Wales, two extremely curmudgeonly and bitter old gossips, and more than enough members of the order whose faith has lapsed. She seems perfectly willing to do anything one asks, so much so that one might ask why, although nobody seems to do so. The answers might be in the even-numbered chapters, which take us deeper into this character's extraordinary past, and to a linked series of quite tragic events…
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670922129</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Kresley Cole
|title=Poison Princess
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
|summary=Evie has always been plagued by horrific hallucinations and nightmares. After a stint in a psych clinic, Evie's desperate to get back to life as normal. Unfortunately, returning to her hometown triggers the hallucinations again and Evie starts to realise she is never going to be able to pass for normal. Adding to her problems, a new boy at school is destroying Evie's idea of the perfect relationship with her ideal boyfriend. Jackson is crass and a well known player - so why does Evie find him so tempting?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857079182</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=John Kerr
|title=Hurricane Hole
|rating=3.5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=In 1942 German U-boats were wreaking havoc with Allied shipping in the Caribbean. Tom Hamilton, a young American working undercover and posing as a rich playboy, was sent to the Bahamas to investigate Nils Ericsson, a Swedish industrialist. Sweden might have been neutral in the war but Ericsson was known to have ties to the Nazis. It wasn't long before Hamilton was certain that Ericsson was building a base for U-boats at Hurricane Hole on Hog Island. The problem was what to do about it. The Governor of the Bahamas was the Duke of Windsor, friend of Ericsson and himself a suspected Nazi sympathiser. As an added complication Hamilton was attracted to Evelyn Shawcross but as she was a friend of both the Governor and Ericsson, could he trust her?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0709099053</amazonuk>
}}