'''Read [[Features|new features]].'''
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{{newreview
|author=Jonathan Hayes
|title=A Hard Death
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=I haven't read Jonathan Hayes' bestseller 'Precious Blood' so I was a fresh reader, so to speak. His writing biography on the inside cover of the book is impressive. My expectations were high. All the ingredients are in place for a good thriller. The location is The Everglades in Florida. Brooding, enigmatic, awe-inspiring and where we all seem to expect crocodiles to rear their heads out of the swampy waters every five minutes.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099538644</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Colin Cotterill
|summary=There are lots of timetabled books on the market, that promise to transform everything from your employability to the size of your thighs in a certain number of weeks, if you commit to their programme, and this book is really just another one to add to the 'scheduled self-improvement' pile. Except we're not talking here about dropping a dress size in time for Christmas, or sailing through that oh-so-important interview to land the job of your dreams...for this book is a 6 week guide to ''Getting Loved Up'' that promises to put its participants (and as you'll learn, you're more than a mere reader with this title) on the fast track to romance. Gosh.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904312799</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Michael Morpurgo
|title=The Kites are Flying
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Said lives on the West Bank. He herds his family's sheep, spends a lot of time talking in his head to his absent brother Mahmoud, and he makes a great many kites, which he sends across the wall to the girl in the blue headscarf who lives in the occupiers' settlements. What Said doesn't do, is talk out loud, even to his new friend Mister Max. Max is a Western journalist who wants to make a documentary about how the Palestinian/Israeli conflict affects ordinary people on both sides of the wall. Max is entranced by Said, and his dozens of kites, all bearing the message salaam or peace. He can see that Said has a dream, but he's not sure what it is. Will the dream come true before Max has to leave?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1406317985</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Tanya Landman
|title=Dying to be Famous (Poppy Fields Murder Mystery)
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Meet Poppy Fields - an inquisitive young lass, keen on exploring her world - in a slightly different way to her geeky, walking-encyclopaedia of a best friend, Graham. So keen is she to explore the phenomenon that is the latest seen-everywhere, snapped-at-all-hours celebrity, she makes the pair of them go to audition for bit parts in the Christmas production of The Wizard of Oz the star is starting to rehearse. Unfortunately for her, she apparently hasn't noticed she's in the third book in a series of young reader murder mysteries, and deaths more unexpected than having a house land on you might just be on the playbill...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1406314625</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Stuart Brown
|title=Mma Ramotswe's Cookbook
|rating=4
|genre=Cookery
|summary=I expect there will be a few people who spot this book on the shelves and wonder who Mma Ramotswe is, but [[:Category:Alexander McCall Smith|Alexander McCall Smith's]] legion of fans certainly won't be amongst them. This cookbook is a nice tie-in to the books, written with a foreword from AMS himself, and full of flavoursome recipes that are spoken of in his series of books about Mma Ramotswe and her Number One Ladies Detective Agency. Illustrated with beautiful photography, lots of quotes from the books, and lots of information about Botswana's rich variety of food it's a wonderful mix of being both a cookery book, a reference book and a companion work to the Mma Ramostwe books.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184697139X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Adam Williams
|title=The Book of the Alchemist
|rating=3.5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary= ''The Book of the Alchemist'' is a story within a story. It opens in 1938 during the Spanish Civil War. Pinzon, a Spanish politician who resigns for moral reasons, is taken hostage by a group of Republican soldiers, along with his young Grandson. A group of villagers are also taken captive and locked in a cathedral as part of the soldiers' desperate plan to protect themselves from the Fascist forces that are hunting them. A cavernous mosque built inside the mountain under the cathedral's crypt is discovered, and in it, a book. As Pinzon reads the book, another story unfolds, set in the eleventh century. This is the story of Samuel the Jew.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340899131</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Robert Kaplow
|title=Me and Orson Welles
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Richard Samuels sees everything in terms of a performance, through the rose-tinted lens of the theatrical celebrities he listens to on the radio. So when he stumbles onto the Broadway stage through a chance encounter with Orson Welles, it seems as if all his dreams may be about to come true. He goes from being the guy that all the girls see as a friend, one of the bookish kids at school, to the glamour of mingling with stars of the stage. We follow Richard's struggle to balance this newly discovered wonderland and his school life, not to mention his disapproving mother.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099540193</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Michael Palin
|title=Diaries 1969-1979: The Python Years
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=''Never meet your heroes,'' goes the old adage. ''Never read their diaries'' might be equally sage advice. That's probably why I didn't tackle Michael Palin's collected daily journals until now. Along with the rest of the Monty Python team, he was without doubt a hero of my teenage years.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>075382177X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Robert Crumb
|title=Robert Crumb's Book of Genesis: All 50 Chapters
|rating=4.5
|genre=Graphic Novels
|summary=In the beginning was the picture. Just think of all the countless religious images, both inside and outside religious establishments, designed to convey the message to those who could not read. Art and religion have always been linked, which is probably one of the main reasons I stayed an atheist - I hated art at school, and drawing a man on a donkey, something way beyond my skills, was not a task I appreciated, hence my dislike of both subjects.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224078097</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Keith Laidler
|title=Animals
|rating=4.5
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=''Animals'' is described as a visual guide to the animal kingdom, but please don't think of it as a picture book as it's far more than that. Don't think of it as a coffee table book either – despite the fact that its size – midway between A2 and A3 – might tempt you to think that way. It's a journey through the complex diversity of the animal kingdom based on sound scientific principles.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184916004X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Michael Rosen
|title=A To Z - The Best Children's Poetry From Agard To Zephaniah
|rating=5
|genre=Children's Rhymes and Verse
|summary=Michael Rosen has picked the best modern children's poetry, from John Agard through to Benjamin Zephaniah. It stemmed from Rosen performing in schools and libraries with many of the poets, and as children's poetry anthologies go, it's amongst the very best.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141324503</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=John Van der Kiste
|title=The Man on the Moor
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=In the summer of 1913 relations with Germany were deteriorating steadily, but there didn't seem to be any connection with the international situation when a London clerk, George Stephens, was found dead in a country lane on the edge of Dartmoor. The moor had been his passion and he'd always been keen to escape London and return to Devon. It was an odd death but in all probability it would have been put down as an accident if George's mother had not announced that George was the son of the Kaiser. Despite her fondness for gin the story she told was oddly compelling and when it was linked up with the fact that two German officers had been staying at a nearby farm George's death seemed less and less like an accident.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904744230</amazonuk>
}}
