'''Read [[Features|new features]].'''
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{{newreview
|author=Danielle Trussoni
|title=Angelology
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The Nephilim have lived among the human race since before the days of the Great Flood. Horrific creatures, the hybrid children of humans and angels, their strength, beauty and cruelty are unmatched, and they have infiltrated human society completely. For centuries, a secret society, students in a branch of theology known as 'Angelology', have studied the ways of the heavens and the Nephilim, and waged a secret war against them – a war that has spanned every continent. But the Nephilim grow weak, their blood contaminated by the blood of their human ancestors.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0718155580</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Carsten Jensen
I do love a story that wraps me up completely within its little world, making me want to ignore my long list of things to do and just curl up reading all day. Jojo Moyes' new novel certainly managed it. I felt transported back to the 1960's, entirely caught up in the characters' lives, riding their highs and lows alongside of them, and I ended up desperately foisting my just-woken-up toddler onto my husband so that I could just read the last four pages without her hanging off my arm!
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340961627</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Penny Ingham
|title=The King's Daughter
|rating=4
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=The central female character - 'The King's Daughter' is Elflaede. She's young, feisty and very pretty. She also has this unforgettable reddish hair. At this point in the story I was reminded a little of Queen Elizabeth I, I have to say. In Elflaede's own words she 'had never known a time without war .' The hordes of Pagan Norsemen are to blame. They've come to England with their own set of superstitions. And they've come with one aim. To conquer great swathes of England.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>095559975X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Philip Sington
|title=The Einstein Girl
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The two central characters are (and we've come across it many times before) a psychiatrist (in this case Kirsch) and his patient (known as the Einstein Girl) and hence the novel's title. The case of this girl is intriguing, not least because both doctor and patient had accidentally met prior to her admission to hospital. Kirsch appears immediately smitten - which may be a problem. He's already spoken for. In a nutshell, the Einstein Girl has lost her memory. Kirsch finds more and more of his professional time given over to her recovery, back to mental well-being. It becomes a long and complicated journey, for both of them.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099535793</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Juliet Nicolson
|title=The Great Silence: 1918-1920 Living in the Shadow of the Great War
|rating=4
|genre=History
|summary=As the author says in her introduction, the 'great silence' of the title was that which followed the 'incessant thunder' of the Great War. There are three crucial dates in her narrative, all specific days in three successive Novembers. The first was when the guns fell silent in 1918, the second was that of the first two-minute silence in memory of the fallen one year later, and the third was when the Unknown Soldier was lowered into silence beneath the floor in Westminster Abbey, another year on. These act as a framework around which she tells the story of the silence of grief which affected everyone in various ways during the first two years of peace.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0719562562</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Naomi Alderman
|title=The Lessons
|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=James has been used to being very clever at school, and it is a shock for him when he goes to Oxford University to find there are lots of people who are more able than he is. He is already struggling when he falls and seriously hurts his knee, and he is also very lonely. Then he meets Jess, who invites him to a party at Mark’s house. Mark soon invites Jess, James and other friends to move in to his run down mansion.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670916293</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Ngugi wa Thiong'o
|title=Dreams in a Time of War
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=The interest in the lives of unfortunate children has created the
publishing phenomenon nicknamed 'misery memoirs'. Happily for readers
of Ngugi wa Thiong'o’s Dreams in a Time of War memories of the author’s often difficult childhood are presented as a tale of triumph and empowerment rather than anger and self-pity.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846553776</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Christy Lefteri
|title=A Watermelon, a Fish and a Bible
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=It is 20 July 1974 in the small coastal town of Kyrenia, Cyprus. The radio continues to report that the Turkish forces did not manage to invade, and that they were thrown back into the sea, even as the Greek Cypriot population realises that they have been invaded. The story of this novel is set over just eight days, and is told from the alternating viewpoints of three characters.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849161275</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Trevor Bloom
|title=The Half-Slave
|rating=4
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=At Samarobriva in Roman Gaul, a raiding Saxon tribe meets its match in the form of a division of the Franks, who have suborned the Roman authorities and are establishing their control throughout the region. A mysterious meeting with the Frankish Overlord persuades the leader of the Saxons to sign a treaty that will forever alter the fate of his people. In return for Frankish silver, he hands over to them his youngest son, Ascha the half-slave, as a perpetual hostage to guarantee the peace. But in the frozen north new powers are rising, and Ascha will soon be drawn into a web of lies and ambition as two very different worlds come into conflict.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0955563062</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Charles Lambert
|title=Any Human Face
|rating=3.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=1983: Alex enjoys the attention of his latest lover. Bruno is generous with his money and his time; he lends Alex the flash car, dines him extravagantly, treats him well, takes him seriously. "It was not that he was not fond of the older man… or that he didn't appreciate the longer term view of a leg-up into journalism…", it's just that he doesn't realise he is lying to himself. What he feels for Bruno is a bit more than affection, as he is about to discover.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330512994</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Heidi W Durrow
|title=The Girl Who Fell From the Sky
|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Set in 1980s America, ''The Girl Who Fell From The Sky'' is a story built around a tragic event in a young girl’s childhood. The opening scene introduces you to Rachel, an elusive young girl, not black, not white but ''light skinned-ed'' as she is packed off to live with her grandma after a devastating family event. Immediately, Durrow highlights race and identity as the primary themes, and we follow blue-eyed Rachel as she struggles between two worlds – the white world of her Danish mother, and the other black world of her African-American G.I. father.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1851687459</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Aravind Adiga
|title=Between the Assassinations
|rating=4
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=''Between the Assassinations'' is a collection of short stories set in the fictional South Indian town of Kittur, which is almost certainly Mangalore (where the Adiga grew up). But the plight of the residents can be found in any Indian city - which I imagine is Adiga's point of setting it in a fictional location. The twelve stories are vaguely interlinked (there are some recurring characters) but for the most part the stories stand alone. The time period is set between the assassinations of Indira Gandhi in 1984 and the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in 1991, although like the location, the time period and the assassinations of the title have little bearing on the events themselves.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848871236</amazonuk>
}}
