'''Read [[Features|new features]].'''
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{{newreview
|author=Hayley Long
|title=Lottie Biggs is (Not) Desperate
|rating=4
|genre=Teens
|summary=Lottie Biggs, who's in her mid-teens is recovering from what's described as a 'mental disorder of a reasonably significant nature'. She's having counselling from Blake (from New Zealand) who has some rather unusual turns of phrase and looks like Johnny Depp, but without the pirate make-up. All in all she's doing quite well. Gareth Stingecombe is still the love of her life and to seal the bond even tighter she gets a Saturday job in his mother's hairdressing salon. This might, or might not, turn out to be a mistake given what the mother-in-law-to-be thinks constitutes a trendy hairstyle.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>033047975X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Simon Dawson
|summary=Pattie Boyd will always be remembered for one unique, extraordinary claim to fame. She became the wife of arguably the two most famous and revered rock guitarists of the era, George Harrison and Eric Clapton, and thus inspired three of their compositions which became three of the age's seminal love songs, namely 'Something', 'Layla', and 'Wonderful Tonight'.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755316436</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Mara Bergman and Cassia Thomas
|title=Lively Elizabeth!
|rating=4
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=Elizabeth is a lively little girl. She loves stomping around, making a racket and creating an awful kerfuffle. One day she does the thing that she knows she should never do: she pushes Joe Fitzhugh. Joe tumbles into Jonny, who knocks into another child, and on and on and on. Oh dear, Elizabeth! What have you done?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340988045</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Claudia Gray
|title=Evernight
|rating=5
|genre=Teens
|summary=I'm at a complete loss how to review this book. I'm very tempted to take a tip from my favourite movie critic Roger Ebert who, on occasion, has been known to suggest that you should watch a film '''then''' read his review if it's full of twists and hard to describe without spoilers. I'm actually thinking that's not a bad idea here – but will try my best to provide a review with as few clues as possible to the twists and turns, just in case two sentences aren't enough to convince you. This may not be easy, so bear with me!
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007355319</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Robert Dickinson
|title=The Noise of Strangers
|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=In a dystopian Brighton where the Council and the Amex company are the only major employers, and council departments have very different purposes to those they have in our own country today - notably the sinister Parks - four couples share dinner parties and discuss as little as possible, due to the problems they have trusting each other. When a Councillor is killed in a car crash, and one of the couples witness it, it triggers a by-election which leads to political manouevring which they're all caught up in.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>095625151X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Paul R Spiring (Editor)
|title=Rugby Football during the Nineteenth Century: A Collection of Contemporary Essays about the Game by Bertram Fletcher Robinson
|rating=3.5
|genre=Sport
|summary=The mid-nineteenth century represented the sporting equivalent of the 'big bang' in terms of winter sports in England, giving rise to the development of what today we call rugby union, football and rugby league, all from the same origin. Perhaps due to its popularity amongst the public schools of the day, rugby union for many years claimed the moral high ground, advocating amateurism and an emphasis on playing the game rather than providing a public spectacle. Indeed, the arguments over the dangers of professionalism, which initially led to the split into rugby league from the Northern clubs, continued in union for well over a hundred years right up to the former England captain Will Carling's description of the powers that be of the RFU as 'old farts'. In 1896 Bertrand Fletcher Robinson, together with contributions from a few leading players of the day, wrote Rugby Football which was the first volume in a successful nine-part series on Sports and Pastimes that was written for the Isthmian Library. This edition is effectively a facsimile of that book, with the addition of an introduction, penned by Patrick Casey and Hugh Cooke and compiled by Paul Spring.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>190431287X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jim Crace
|title=All That Follows
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Leonard Lessing is a sofa socialist. He avoids corporate brands both in food and in clothes. He abides by all the right-on boycotts. He signs petitions. He does free gigs at benefit concerts. He gives donations - you know the kind of thing. Once, eighteen long years ago in Texas in 2006, he came very close to some real direct action. But he bottled it. And now, the frozen-shouldered jazzman-on-sabbatical finds his less-than-glorious radical past catching up with him right there in his living room, on the TV. Maxie Lermon, he of Austin 2006 and no stranger to violent agitprop, is in the UK, just up the road from Leonard, and he's taken a family hostage as a protest against the upcoming Reconciliation Summit.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330445642</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Phil Rickman
|title=The Bones of Avalon
|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=When Elizabeth I's most trusted men fear for her safety and think there's a possibly supernatural plot against her, the obvious man to investigate it is Dr John Dee, her astrologer and consultant in the hidden arts. Aided by his former pupil – and Elizabeth's reputed lover – Robert Dudley, he travels to Glastonbury to try and find the bones of King Arthur. Glastonbury, however, has never recovered from the Dissolution of the Monasteries and the execution of its beloved Abbot Richard Whiting, and many residents view the pair with suspicion. The exception to this is Nel Borrow, who treats Dudley when he's ill and becomes the first woman Dee has ever been interested in romantically. Can the three stop the villainous plot? I'll leave you to find out…
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848872704</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Tess Daly
|title=The Baby Diaries: Memories, Milestones and Misadventures
|rating=3.5
|genre=Home and Family
|summary=One of the many side effects of pregnancy seems to be the need to read everything you can get your hands on about pregnancy and babies. I know that when pregnant with my daughter I trawled the library for any baby books they had, scoured the internet nightly for due date calendars, week by week guides and baby name dictionaries. I also became an obsessive baby-watcher, interested in any celebrity baby news and willing to speak to anyone 'normal' that I met who was pregnant too or who already had children. This book is aiming to be a sort of catch-all for pregnancy obsessives I think, as it's a mix of pregnancy and birth advice and information alongside of Tess Daly's memories from her pregnancies with her two daughters.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091935164</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Ed Hillyer
|title=The Clay Dreaming
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Hillyer has taken several historical facts and seamlessly blended in a big dollop of fiction to create a complex and riveting story. The title is suitably enigmatic, as is King Cole (or Brippoki). He and his fellow cricketers (who also have been given rather unkind nicknames) have sailed from the bottom of the world, to the bustling metropolis of London. Talk about extremes. And although they have all been diligently 'schooled' in all things English, nevertheless, they are the talk of the town. The novel has barely started and already the mind boggles.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956251501</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Patricia Briggs
|title=Silver Borne
|rating=4
|genre=Fantasy
|summary=Mercy's life is just not getting any easier. The werewolf she lives with is looking like going rogue – not snapping out of wolf form, which might have dangerous repercussions – for himself and those around him. Someone within the pack she's joined with seems to be playing psychic warfare on her, and leading her astray with errant mental suggestions. Worse still, she's opened the door of her (ill-fated) trailer and found death threats on the step before, but not a fae assassin looking over things from the middle distance. Could any of this have anything to do with a mysterious fae book of fairy lore she's been asked to look after?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1841497991</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jean Baggott
|title=The Girl on the Wall: One Life's Rich Tapestry
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Jean Baggott is now seventy two and in the final year of her history degree at Warwick University. After almost a lifetime of bending her life to the needs of other people she has decided that now is the time to look after herself – the eleven year old girl whose picture hangs on her wall. She plans to achieve what that girl would want her to achieve and from this she's found great fulfilment.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848311265</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Dave Eggers
|title=Zeitoun
|rating=4
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=Flicking through the channels on the TV the other night I stumbled across an interview with George Bush's former Deputy Chief of Staff, Karl Rove. After witnessing an especially cringe making hip hop turn at the Washington Correspondents' Dinner (if you haven't seen it take a look at [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ln5RD9BhcCo here]. It really is jaw droppingly awful) attention turned to weightier matters, most notably Guantanamo Bay and the war on terror and the Bush administrations response to Hurricane Katrina.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241144841</amazonuk>
}}
