|summary=Author Augustus Lamb receives a shocking letter from his publisher and old friend Frederick Hall. Hall has discovered Lamb's small grandchildren, Lily and Elijah, in a London home for foundlings. Lamb's son Gabriel had died after a socially unacceptable liaison with beautiful Italian Isabella who subsequently disappeared. Delighted beyond words at Hall's discovery, Augustus adopts the twins, raising them in his Herefordshire country home, Kingsland House. There the children grow, happy and loved.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1409123340</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Anita Pouroulis and Jon Lycett-Smith
|title=Mum's Cronky Car
|rating=3.5
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=Mum's car is, well, not the most recent model. In fact it's falling apart and wouldn't even start if it didn't get a push from Dad. The journey to school in this patchwork car held together by bits of string and willpower is full of uncertainty. When they stop at the traffic lights will the car move again - and when it just dies in traffic what can they do? Then one day something rather magical happens. They're stalled in traffic, wondering what to do next, when the car drifts into the sky and flies them all to the school gates. Suddenly this isn't an old wreck but an adventure.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0957308701</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Annabel Pitcher
|title=Ketchup Clouds
|rating=5
|genre=Teens
|summary="Zoe" has a terrible secret. She feels responsible for the death of a boy. It burns and burns and she has a huge need to confess but has no-one to confess to. And so she decides to become the pen pal of a prisoner on death row in Texas. Her letters to Stuart tell both her story and his. Zoe is a pseudonym - as is her address in "Fiction Road" - but the tale she tells in midnight writing sessions in the garden shed, is true. It's the story of family tension, of a love triangle, and of a grief and guilt almost too big to bear...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780620152</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Andrea Camilleri
|title=The Age of Doubt
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=The rain was dreadful and when he left for work Montalbano had only driven a matter of yards before he found that part of the road had been washed away, but it led to an encounter with a strange young woman, who - in turn - made Montalbano curious about a yacht in the harbour. He should have been concentrating on the corpse found floating in a dinghy at the harbour mouth but it was the ''Vanna'' which seemed to keep surfacing in his thoughts. Well, when he wasn't thinking about Lieutenant Belladonna - Laura - at the Harbour authority that is. She wasn't strange at all.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1447203313</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Sharon Creech
|title=The Great Unexpected
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Naomi lives with her foster parents, Nula and Joe. She is afraid of dogs - one of her arms is useless after the dog attack that killed her father when she was just a baby. Nula and Joe aren't demonstrative, but Nula knows deep in her soul that she is loved and wanted. Best friend Lizzie is a perfect foil for Naomi. She's garrulous while Naomi is introspective. Outgoing while Naomi is reserved. She's openhearted while Naomi is cautious. Their friendship is the whole made by two very disparate halves. And then, one day, a boy falls out of a tree. Finn is nothing like anyone either girl has met before. And before she knows it, Naomi is beginning to question her friendship with Lizzie.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849390924</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=David McKee
|title=Elmer, Rose and Super El
|rating=4
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=Elmer, the patchwork elephant, his cousin Wilbur and some of their friends were listening to a distant noise. Elmer agreed that it sounded like a herd of elephants but it wasn't ''his'' herd. He and Wilbur set off to find out what was happening. It was the herd of pink elephants, which included Elmer's friend, Rose and Old who was celebrating his hundredth birthday. As Old stood at the top of the cliff all the other elephants began stamping their feet - and the cliff gave way. Old was left stranded on a column of rock which was crumbling ominously. This was a job for Super El.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849394504</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Wayne Macauley
|title=The Cook
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Frasier’s Law states that if you flick through the TV channels long enough, no matter what time of day or night you will eventually stumble across Kelsey Grammar enjoying a cappuccino in Café Nervosa in the greatest sitcom spin off of them all.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780876378</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Juliet Ashton
|title=The Valentine's Card
|rating=4
|genre=Women's Fiction
|summary=Orla, a primary school teacher, is still at home in Ireland while actor boyfriend Sim works over in London, but although it’s hard to be apart, there are some benefits to doing the long distance thing, not least Sim’s awesome card writing skills. So when Valentine’s day comes around, Orla is excited for what the day might bring. She’s expecting a little something in the post, but she’s not expecting the phone call that comes, nor the news that comes with it. Sim has died, suddenly. And it’s not just his life that is over. On the verge of a proposal, Orla feels her life is finished too. She flees to London to recover some of Sim’s possessions, taking with her the as yet unopened Valentine’s card he sent, with its unfulfilled promises.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0751544272</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Adele Geras and Sophy Williams
|title=It's Time For Bed
|rating=4
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=It's bedtime for Little Hare but in the way of all small children he looks for ways to delay THAT moment. Mouse isn't in bed yet and a lullaby has to be sung to him. Then it's Bird who also needs a lullaby, as does Frog... Eventually Little Hare gets to bathtime - but then the ducks need a lullaby too. And when nearly EVERYONE - animals and toys - has had their lullaby - there's the inevitable drink of water and the last lullaby is for Little Hare.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848122500</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Harry Ricketts
|title=Strange Meetings: The Lives of the Poets of the Great War
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=The majority of recent books on the War Poets tend to focus on their lives during and immediately after the conflict. This enterprising account, borrowing its name from the poem by Wilfred Owen, takes a different approach in spanning a full fifty years or more. It begins with the first meeting of Siegfried Sassoon and Rupert Brooke at one of Eddie Marsh’s breakfasts in July 1914. Marsh was a tireless supporter of modern painters and after that promising new writers, particularly poets. The journey, or rather account of meetings, takes us to the western front and back to England, culminating in a reunion of two of the longest-lived, Sassoon and David Jones, in 1964.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845951808</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Neil Griffith and Chistine Grove
|title=Esme's Egg
|rating=4
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=Every day in the laying season Esme the hen laid an egg and every day Farmer Ferguson came along and removed it. Esme tried being a little bit devious but wherever she laid her egg Farmer Ferguson came along and took it away. Nothing daunted, Esme decided that she was going to follow her egg and so began a trip which involved a van and a warehouse and another van and finally a supermarket before Farmer Ferguson arrived to take Esme and six chicks back to the farm.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1905434979</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Krent Able
|title=Krent Able's Big Book of Mischief
|rating=3.5
|genre=Graphic Novels
|summary=It's come to my attention recently that Knockabout books, with their growing library of graphic titles, have no intention in being at all literary – not for them the gently observant characterisation of some original graphic novels. Instead they seem to have a wilful regard for going even further than their house name suggests – wild, wacky and not afraid to present an upsetting image. With Krent Able they have the collaborator who will surely help them live up to that ethos like no other. Taken from the ''Stool Pigeon'' musical magazine, with some extra cartoons, are these strips of depravity, death in unlikely ways and revolting selections of body parts and fluids.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0861661796</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Paul Moran
|title=Where's the Meerkat? Journey Through Time
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=It seems that one way for creators to keep kids poring over the pages of their books is to do what the people behind this have done – take most of the words out. There are a few hundred, giving us some brief story about a bunch of meerkats using a time machine, partly by accident, and therefore visiting several different major historical points in time, but one can ignore them, for it is the artwork that one has to scour for ten meerkats, a squirrel and a hawk. And that search is what is going to keep the young of all ages engaged in for quite some time…
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1843178044</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Andy Bates
|title=Andy Bates: Modern Twists on Classic Dishes
|rating=3
|genre=Cookery
|summary=I do tire of cook books which regurgitate what are essentially the same recipes time after time. Sometimes food writers rework their own recipes - a tweak here, a change of emphasis there and you can have the same dish many times over, so it's a real breath of fresh air when you find a book which seems to have new ideas, or genuinely new approaches to classic dishes. Andy Bates has a classical background (working in a Michelin starred restaurant by the time he was seventeen and time in France to hone his skills) but his business is a stall in London's Whitecross street market. So - a perfect combination of technical knowledge, experience and knowing what people ''really'' want to eat.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908917709</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Simon Callow
|title=Charles Laughton: A Difficult Actor
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Once a towering presence on stage and screen, the star of fifty films and forty plays, Charles Laughton seems largely forgotten these days. As an actor of a younger generation and keen admirer of his work, Callow is well placed to bring him back to the fore. He notes in his preface that the man has increasingly slipped out of public consciousness, and even within his own profession he is virtually unknown to anybody under the age of forty
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099581957</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=C J Sansom
|title=Dominion
|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|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>
}}