'''Read [[Features|new features]].'''
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{{newreview
|author=Cara Black
|title=Murder in the Latin Quarter (Aimee Leduc)
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=Aimée Leduc is back and this time she might just have found the sister she's always longed for. When a Haitian woman arrived in the offices of Leduc detective in central Paris and announced that she was Aimée's father's illegitimate daughter Aimée allowed enthusiasm to overrule logic as she'd been lonely since her mother's disappearance and her father's death. René, her partner in Leduc Detective, is wary but he can't dissuade Aimée. It's not long before she's involved in the murky world of Haitian politics and murder in Paris' bohemian Latin Quarter.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849013144</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=John Harvey
|summary=It's cold and windy. Small Rabbit just wants to stay inside, but Big Rabbit insists that it's fresh, not cold, and they're going on a walk. He's a bit of a cheeky scamp is Small Rabbit, so when Big Rabbit says ''try to keep up'', Small Rabbit somehow mishears it as ''jump in the mud''. As the walk goes on, Small Rabbit mishears Big Rabbit time and time again, getting up to all sorts of shenanigans.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0192728679</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Michael Booth
|title=Sushi and Beyond: What the Japanese Know About Cooking
|rating=4
|genre=Cookery
|summary=Japanese food has a tendency to sound a bit freakish or even controversial. Raw fish? Octopus ice cream? Whale meat? Yet it is slowly infiltrating the UK with sushi conveyor belt restaurants popping up everywhere and noodle bars offering Westernised bowls of steaming noodles. In this book Michael Booth takes his wife and two young children to experience the real thing, travelling across the whole of Japan tasting an enormous range of foods and learning about their history, how the foods have been produced and are cooked and eaten.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099516446</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Lionel Shriver
|title=We Need To Talk About Kevin
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Politicians continue to argue that the solution to social issues lies with the family, so it is timely that at the heart of Lionel Shriver's 2005 Orange Prize winning novel is the issue of nature vs nurture - what makes a person like he or she is? Is the eponymous Kevin born evil or is he influenced by his mother's coldness towards him. There are no clear answers and that's what gives this brave book, which tackles the taboos that some mothers don't bond with their children, such power.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687349</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Elin Hilderbrand
|title=The Castaways
|rating=4.5
|genre=Women's Fiction
|summary=On the island of Nantucket, four couples have forged strong bonds of friendship. Together they live and love, raise their children, share their dreams. It's an idyllic existence and at the same time a very purposeful one. The couples have worked hard to create the quality of life they now enjoy and nothing can take it away from them. Until now. Greg and Tess are dead, the result of what appears to be a sailing accident. They leave behind two young children, and six devastated friends, all of whom have to come to terms with what has happened. For some there is guilt over final words said or final warnings left unsaid. For others, there is the knowledge that secret relationships will now have to stay that way evermore. 'The Castaways' is the book of that fateful summer, the accident and its aftermath, but it's more than just that. It's a look at the precious role friends and family play in our lives, and how innocent actions or words can change the course of history forever.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340919825</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jenna Burtenshaw
|title=Wintercraft
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
|summary=The wardens raid villages and cities for people competent to fight in the war, a war nobody knows anything about other than if you’re sent to fight you don’t come back. The last time they raided Morvane was ten years ago, taking Kate’s parents with them. Kate is taken in by her uncle, Artemis, and grows up in the book shop with him and her friend, Edgar. But now the wardens are back, and looking for more people to fight. However, they are also looking for the Skilled – a dying breed of people who can see through the veil of life and death. They want to build an army of the dead.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755370961</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Sarah Dessen
|title=Infinity (Pocket Money Puffins)
|rating=3.5
|genre=Teens
|summary=Girl is a teen from small town America. We don't know where exactly, but it's somewhere people drive (which rules out the likes of NYC) and it's somewhere that has a roundabout. Most of America doesn't have these – instead they have much more sensible crossings and lights and T-junctions – so it's a source of intrigue for many of the town's residents. For new driver Girl the roundabout is joint top on her List Of Things To Master, along with sleeping with her boyfriend Anthony. They might seem entirely unrelated to the likes of you and me, but to Girl the links are clear. They're both things she will have to deal with for a first time eventually, but she still can't decide whether to rush ahead in order to get them out of the way quickly, or put them off for just a little longer.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141330775</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Sarah Prineas
|title=The Magic Thief: Found
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=When we last saw Conn, he had blown up his wizard master's house, was exiled from the city of Wellmet, and lost his locus magicalus (it's like a magic wand, just it's a stone). He's been unable to do magic ever since, which is rough because he needs his powers now more than ever. A terrible evil is blazing a trail towards Wellmet, intent on destroying the city, and Conn's only hope to defeat it is to somehow get a new locus magicalus. He sets out on a quest to find one, but the journey is long and dangerous, and time is running out.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849161917</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Amanda Sington-Williams
|title=The Eloquence of Desire
|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The novel starts in the post-war austerity years in England and centres around a middle-class, traditional family unit. Sington-Williams gives the reader a detailed description of that period - the bland food, the monotony of commuting to London (some things don't change) and of course, the rain. George, his wife Dorothy and their teenage daughter Susan don't really talk to each other. They tend to skirt round issues and walk on eggshells. Appearances are everything. So a suitably fabricated story is told to their small, family circle of George's company move. George has no choice in the matter. So he does what he always has done up till now, he puts a brave face on for the world and grins and bears it. It's a huge change in their domestic situation. Uprooted to a strange, foreign, tropical country they've only glimpsed in National Geographic.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907230114</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Nikki Dudley
|title=Ellipsis
|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Both the title and book cover are slick and glossy. Can the contents live up to this positive image? Straight away the reader is drawn into Daniel's life ... but the clock is ticking. He will soon be spoken about in the past tense. He dies and leaves many, many questions that his immediate family struggle to answer. But as the story progresses we discover that secrets have been kept for a long time. Why? Too disturbing to reveal?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907230106</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Brian Wildsmith
|title=Animal Gallery
|rating=4
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=Starting off with a crash of rhinoceroses, through a corps of giraffes, a hover of trout, and ending up with a dray of squirrels, Brian Wildsmith treats us to a beautiful look at collections of animals.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>019272794X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=China Mieville
|title=Kraken
|rating=3.5
|genre=Fantasy
|summary=Meet Billy Harrow, curator of molluscs and other pickled creatures. Imagine if you will Billy's thoughts on entering the chamber that houses the highlight of his museum's tour - an immense squid, housed in a glass crate - only to find the entire thing - animal and tank - impossibly removed. Imagine, too, the more esoteric kind of policeman and -woman needed to arrive, to tell him that his exhibit was the keystone of a mysterious cult with the end of times on their mind, and that they might just like Billy to infiltrate it and see what was precisely what. Just consider - is Billy, the man who bottled the giant squid, a John the Baptist to this cult, or a Judas?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0333989503</amazonuk>
}}
