|summary=Mac Carty tells us that the catalyst for 'The Vagaries of Swing' was the BBC television series 'True Love' which portrayed a series of romantic encounters all set by the sea in his home town of Margate. But Carty has taken the original idea - about relationships between people - and run with it, extending ''love'' into ''passion'', say for cricket, or (at the other end of the scale) as a human encounter which ends in violence. Whilst the television series might have been the catalyst for the book there was another and probably more compelling reason. When his friend Mike died he realised that he had no one with whom to share his fund of stories about growing up in Margate, all of which had been revisited on a regular basis and usually over a pint. I've just read the result.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1291336761</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Robert Dickinson
|title=The Schism
|rating=3
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Patrick Farrell works for a company that reclaims credit cards from those in debt. He doesn't particularly enjoy the work, but it gives him plenty of opportunity to visit his schizophrenic brother, Mike, which he does regularly. Mike used to be a fairly decent boxer, but now his only fight is against the paranoid delusion that there are people watching him all the time.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908434228</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Elizabeth Gill
|title=Miss Appleby's Academy
|rating=3.5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=After forsaking her own chance of happiness to care for her aging father, Emma Appleby’s life is thrown into turmoil when he dies suddenly, leaving her fate entirely in the hands of her callous brother Laurence. Laurence and his wife view the middle-aged spinster as a burden and are keen to marry her off to an elderly neighbour to free themselves of responsibility. With seemingly nowhere to turn, Emma flees America to make a new life for herself in her childhood home of County Durham.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780878478</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Emily Cockayne
|title=Cheek by Jowl: A History of Neighbours
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=As Emily Cockayne emphasises at the beginning of the first chapter, almost everyone has a neighbour; if you have a neighbour, you are one yourself; and neighbours can enrich or ruin our lives. In this engaging book, she takes various case studies and anecdotes of living side by side in Britain from around 1200 to the present day.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099546949</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Teri Terry
|title=Fractured
|rating=5
|genre=Teens
|summary=As a teen criminal in Lorder-run Britain, Kyla was slated - her memories erased and her personality "reset". But Kyla wasn't like the other Slateds - she retained tantalising memories of her previous life. ''Fractured'' picks up Kyla's story after she's lost Ben and just as a mysterious man from her past comes back into her life. It seems that Kyla's memories represent more than just a failed slating. She has a role to play in the fight against the Lorders. But it's not as easy as that. Is Kyla a victim? A freedom fighter? A terrorist? And can the end ever justify the means? The more Kyla learns about her history, the more such questions burn. And the more danger she finds herself in...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408319489</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Ian Tregillis
|title=The Coldest War (Milkweed Triptych)
|rating=5
|genre=Science Fiction
|summary= England 1963: The war is over, Hitler defeated and the Russians (Britain's ally) retain most of mainland Europe. The Briton in the street believes that it was Dunkirk and the Battle of Britain that saved the nation but ex-naval intelligence officer Raybould 'Pip' Marsh and his former friend Lord William Beauclerk know differently. The nation was saved by warlocks like Lord Will, the same warlocks that are now being murdered. However, fighting over, Pip and Will are both war-weary and want to be left alone but the Secret Intelligence Service has other ideas. For the Nazi experimental 'willpower' children are now adult and assembling in England, still equipped with the super powers of their childhood. This means Will and Pip have old scores to settle and greater evils waiting to be faced… Yes… ''those'' greater evils are back.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0356501701</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Anna Stothard
|title=The Art of Leaving
|rating=4.5
|genre=Women's Fiction
|summary=Luke's a barrister and Eva? She's a romantic novel editor and habitual leaver. Be it a party or a man, she's working on the exit strategy from the moment everything starts. This makes the fact that Eva and Luke have been together for three years a little abnormal in Eva world. The other abnormality in Eva world is the blonde woman she keeps spotting in random places, almost as if she's being spied upon…
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846882370</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Sarah Mussi
|title=Siege
|rating=5
|genre=Teens
|summary=Leah Jackson is miserable and in detention. This is particularly infuriating because the detention means she's likely to be late for her ''fame and fortune'' interview, one of the few chances kids at YOP schools have to make it into college and to get a life worth having. But Leah's worries are about to become much, much more immediate. Year 9 kids storm into the room. They're armed. And they're shooting. Leah escapes the melee by hauling herself up into the roofspace. But only just. Kids are dead. Teachers are dead. Everyone else is rounded up in the gym. Only Leah and Anton are free, but they are trapped above the ceiling tiles.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444914847</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Leonie Lagarde
|title=Things That Go (Baby Can See)
|rating=4
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=''Things That Go'' is one of a series (more on the other books later) of books designed with the youngest readers in mind. It has just twelve pages in a substantial board and with a padded cover which will be soft in baby's hands will wipe clean. It's sturdy but not immune to being pierced if it encounters a sharp object. Each double page spread shows a method of transport in black, white and one primary colour. There's a statement of what it is: 'It's a bike' along with a very small amount of supplementary text. The picture has simple lines and it's obvious what it is.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1407133292</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Carrie Tiffany
|title=Mateship with Birds
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=In the early nineteen fifties a lonely, middle-aged farmer observed the birds on his land and recorded what he saw in the blank pages of his milk ledger. His animals and the birds were his family and his land - difficult though it could be - a part of him. Whilst Harry watched and recorded, his neighbour, Betty, watched Harry and recorded the childhood illnesses and accidents of her two children. By day she worked in a nursing home where she was a lunchtime 'wife', sitting at the bedside of some of the old men in her care. Her daughter, Hazel, kept a nature notebook which was completely factual and accepting of birth and death in a way that can only be achieved by those who live with livestock - and deadstock - on a daily basis.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1447219864</amazonuk>
}}