'''Read [[Features|new features]].'''
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{{newreview
|author=Steven Carroll
|title=The Art of the Engine Driver
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Carroll has chosen a bygone era in the 1950s and also a bygone but much treasured mode of transport, whether it's Australia or the UK. Immediately I'm drawn in to the story. Both the title and book's front cover are arresting and original. The novel centres on one evening in this suburban neighbourhood when all its residents are invited to a celebration party. Carroll see-saws back and forth as he shares the individual lives with us. It is an engaging style.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099537273</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Lisa Sanders
|summary=Every young girl will face her periods starting but it’s the preparation which goes on beforehand which will determine whether or not this is seen as the body developing naturally or a problem. Both are attitudes which are likely to stay through life and it’s obviously better that it’s the firmer rather than the latter. ‘’Have You Started Yet’’ gives factual information in an informative and reassuring manner and in a form which is easily readable to girls of about nine years old and above.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230744907</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Anthony Browne
|title=Me and You
|rating=5
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=Once upon a time there was a little girl called Goldilocks... You know the rest. ''Me and You'' flips the classic fairy tale around, telling it from the three bears' point of view. Nice idea, non? It is, but calling it a retelling merely scratches the surface...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0385614896</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=David Gatward
|title=The Dead (The Dark)
|rating=4
|genre=Teens
|summary=Lazarus Stone is home alone - his father's away on business and his mother died in a car crash when he was just baby. He's lazing around, chatting on the phone with his best mate Craig, when a foul smell begins to suffuse the house. Tracking it to the lounge, he opens the door and discovers a skinless figure drenched in blood. Not a corpse - Red has crossed over from the other side with a message for Lazarus's father...
Hell is full and the Dead are coming.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340999691</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Miguel Syjuco
|title=Ilustrado
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=When the dead body of Filipino writer Crispin Salvador is found floating in the Hudson River, apparently having committed suicide, his student and fellow Filipino, Miguel is suspicious that darker forces may have been behind his death, particularly when there is no sign of Salvador's latest manuscript that threatens to dish the dirt on the sleaze and corruption of the rich and powerful in his native Philippines. In order to investigate further, Miguel decides to write a biography of his teacher and mentor. That's the premise of this book, but it tells you almost nothing about the experience of reading it. This is no straightforward narrative of a regular crime fiction. It's a kaleidoscope of sometimes apparently disjointed writing that gradually comes together to create a story that only starts to come into focus about half way through, but it's not until the final pages where the true picture is brilliantly revealed.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330510002</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Anna Kendall
|title=Crossing Over
|rating=3
|genre=Teens
|summary=Roger can cross over into the Country of the Dead. To be able to do this he must be in pain, something his abusive Uncle, Hartah, takes full advantage of. So they travel, Hartah, Roger and his Aunt Jo, from faire to faire making money from Roger’s talents and exploiting the grieving. Until, Hartah, takes them to the sea. It is there that Roger gets dragged into helping Hartah and others wreck the Frances Ormund, a navy ship carrying precious cargo back to the Queendom.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0575094257</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Stefan Klein
|title=Leonardo's Legacy: How Da Vinci Reinvented the World
|rating=5
|genre=Biography
|summary=This excellent combination of science history and biography starts with the most populist and some of the most awkwardly scientific. Basically it throws modern-day science at the Mona Lisa, which you might think is a little unfair – can she cope with being analysed, and the neuroscience we now know used in interpreting her? Of course she can – she’s the world’s best-known masterpiece of Italian art, and she’s survived much worse. Klein’s approach fully works, when we see also the science da Vinci did know and that he worked on himself, which all helps us know partly why the truths of La Gioconda are still unknowable.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0306818256</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Pete Johnson
|title=The Vampire Blog
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=The night of his thirteenth birthday, Marcus's parents sit him down for a chat. He fears there'll be some fingernails-on-a-blackboard stuff about the facts of life, he'll fend them off with a wry remark or two, and it'll all be over. After all, how bad could it be? Very bad, is the answer. Very, very, very, very bad. Because this chat isn't about sex at all. It's about fangs and blood cravings, and shape-shifting. Because Marcus is a half-vampire.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0440869358</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Andrea Camilleri
|title=The Wings of the Sphinx
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=Inspector Salvo Montalbano’s immediate reaction when Caterella rang him at home was that a dead man had been found somewhere. Cat soon puts him right though. It’s a woman. She’s been found, naked but particularly clean and on the edge of the local rubbish tip. Most of her face had been blown away, which was going to make identification particularly difficult. Two things were obvious though – she was particularly beautiful and she had a tattoo of a butterfly on her shoulder blade.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330507648</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=John Feinstein
|title=Moment of Glory: The Year Tiger Lost His Swing and Underdogs Ruled the Majors
|rating=4
|genre=Sport
|summary=Despite the picture of Tiger Woods on the dust jacket this book is only incidentally about him. Between 2000 and 2002 Woods had dominated top-class golf, winning six of the twelve majors. But he's always after improvement and he sacked his swing coach and turned to someone new. The swing is the engine of a golfer's game and tinkering with a good swing has major implications. For Woods it meant that he floundered out of the big money in 2003. For everyone else it meant that there were chances to be taken. You might have expected that it would be the established stars who took advantage, but it wasn't to be.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847442455</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jackson Pearce
|title=Sisters Red
|rating=3.5
|genre=Teens
|summary=Scarlett March lives to hunt the Fenris - the werewolves that took her eye and savaged her body during a brutal attack when she was just a young girl. Scarlett managed to save her sister Rosie, but Grandma Oma died horrifically. Scarlett's body is marked by scar after scar and the scars never let her forget. She lives and breathes the hunt, killing Fenris after Fenris and saving teenaged girl after teenaged girl.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444900587</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Chuck Palahniuk
|title=Tell-All
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Meet Katherine Kenton. A movie star of great renown, she's always on TV as someone famous - or the wife of somebody who happens to be famous and male, whether they were actually ever wedded. She herself has had copious real-life marriages, making somebody out of a nobody on many an instance. Her shelves of 'best lifetime' awards are groaning, and their dusting is a job akin to painting the Forth bridge. The person who dusts them is narrator for this book, but she does more than that. She is everything to "Miss Kathie" - general housekeeper, housemate, and string-puller. But what might those strings be being pulled for? When Katherine meets a new toyboy, and our narrator seems to get in the way, to what purpose might this be?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224087150</amazonuk>
}}
