'''Read [[Features|new features]].'''
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{{newreview
|author=Cat Clarke
|title=Entangled
|rating=4
|genre=Teens
|summary=The story starts on day three of Grace's imprisonment by a kidnapper. She's been given pen and paper to explain her recent actions, including falling in love with her boyfriend Nat, the ups and downs of her friendship with Sal, her self-harming, and her attempted suicide. As we learn more and more about Grace's life, the one thing we're never quite sure of is where the mysterious Ethan, her
kidnapper, fits into things…
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849163944</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Alexander Gordon Smith
|summary=As one who has always felt most at ease with the standard chronological approach to history, driven by events and major personalities, I found the close-on 700 pages of this volume fairly demanding reading in places. It is divided into six parts, each by a different contributor with the editor himself writing the fourth. Each part is divided into Material Cultures, followed by essays on topics (not for all sections) on Religious Cultures; Religion, Nationalism and Identity; and Political and National Cultures. What we have, therefore, is an overview of events from each period, more thorough in some instances than others, and a certain amount of theorizing on the general social, political and even artistic background. A straightforward history through the ages – it is not.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0712664963</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Sharon King and Rose King
|title=The Daily Journal of Arabella Crumblestone
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Arabella Crumblestone was making her way along a dry-stone wall in Northumbria, courtesy of a sheep named Leroy, when she met the two human children, Faith and George. George gave her a piece of chocolate (although she didn't know that's what it was) and she was grateful. The boy had no words, but he hummed. The next day he returned to the wall with his sister who never seemed to stop talking. Arabella was lonely – but could she trust Faith and George? Hunger, cold and loneliness made her decision for her and before long she had a bed in Faith's warm pocket.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956741304</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Chloe Inkpen and Mick Inkpen
|title=Zoe and Beans: Where Is Binky Boo?
|rating=4
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=Zoe is a bit miffed with Beans: he keeps gnawing her doll, Molly. Beans misses his own doll, Binky Boo, so being just a dog he has no compunction about appropriating someone else's doll for his very own. When Molly ends up stinkier than anything, she goes into the washing machine with a whole box of Big 'N Bubbly, and now Beans turns his nose up at Molly, sulking. Where '''is''' Binky Boo?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230748457</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Daphne Kalotay
|title=Russian Winter
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The novel's structure goes back and forth from the past to the present day. The book opens with Nina, now elderly, in pain and in a wheelchair: waiting to die basically. And even although she's lived an interesting life, now all she has for company is a daily home-help. I was struck straight away by how prickly Nina is and I could feel all those emotions seething underneath the surface. So the question is - why has she decided to sell some of her exquisite jewellery. Is it to help pay the bills? Or some other reason? We find out by degrees.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099553244</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Emily Gravett
|title=Wolf Won't Bite
|rating=4
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=Those three little pigs have captured the big bad wolf and are showing off all the tricks they can get him to do. They make him stand on a stool, and wolf won't bite. They can ride him like a horse, but wolf won't bite. He jumps through hoops and dances, looking more and more frustrated with the pigs' shenanigans.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230704255</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Annabel Pitcher
|title=My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Ten-year-old Jamie Matthews has moved to the Lake District because his dad says they need a Fresh Start. With him are his sister Jas, who doesn't eat much, is painfully thin, and who has multiple piercings and hair dyed bright pink, his father, who should be starting a new job on a building site, but who is too hungover to make it to breakfast, let alone into his car and out to work, and his cat, Roger, who relishes the new hunting opportunities and who is the only one of the foursome to be completely happy in his new surroundings.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444001833</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Dambisa Moyo
|title=How the West was Lost: Fifty Years of Economic Folly And the Stark Choices Ahead
|rating=4
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=Moyo's first book, ''Dead Aid'' was a well regarded and oft discussed title when I worked in Development. In a country where it was hard to find any book at all, somehow every ex-pat household seemed to have at least one copy of this, and I followed the sheep and had a read. It was a great, insightful book that we could all identify with, and I was eager to read her second, if somewhat unrelated work.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846142350</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jane Lovering
|title=Please Don't Stop the Music
|rating=4
|genre=Women's Fiction
|summary=Jemima Hutton makes jewelled belt buckles and she's determined to make a success of the business – and to keep a dark secret which she's shared with no one. She's camping out in her friend's spare room and another friend is allowing her workshop space. It is ''just'' working until the woman she supplies exclusively decides that she's not going to stock her any more. Jemima is down to walking the streets of York looking for someone who will stock her buckles. She's all but given up when she meets Ben who says that he'll stock the buckles in his guitar shop. But Ben has secrets too – and he's determined that, come what may, he's not going to share them.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906931275</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Michael Lewis
|title=The Big Short
|rating=4
|genre=Business and Finance
|summary=So. The subprime mortgage crisis, the worldwide financial crisis, people losing their jobs, their money, their houses, their security. Unregulated greed, that went on and on and on. And the people who caused it all got rich during and after, very few felt any sort of consequences, and millions of other people worldwide suffered greatly. Strip away all the intentionally confusing terminology and it all amounts to bets with unbelievable amounts of money. How did it all come about and how did it play out? Michael Lewis explains the mess as only he can. Just as his earlier excellent work {{amazonurl|title=Liar's Poker|isbn=0340839961}} encapsulated the excesses of Wall Street in the 1980s, so does ''The Big Short'' perfectly tell the tale of Wall Street in the 2000s. In fact, given the extent of the current global clusterfuck, it makes the shocking ''Liar's Poker'' look positively mild by comparison.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141043539</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jennifer Bohnet
|title=Rendezvous in Cannes
|rating=3
|genre=Women's Fiction
|summary=It's the beginning of the Cannes Film Festival and for two women life is going to change completely in the coming weeks. Anna Carson has found the love that she thought would always elude her and can't quite believe her happiness. Daisy, here to cover the Festival as a journalist is coming to terms with being single. It's time for her to make some decisions, but what will she decide? The hurly-burly of the Festival is not the most peaceful time to make big decisions.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0709091400</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Bernhard Schlink and Carol Brown Janeway
|title=The Reader
|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=It's West Germany, 1958. A 15-year-old schoolboy, Michael Berg, is suffering a long bout of hepatitis. When he recovers he returns to the flat of a tram conductor, 36-year-old Hanna Schmitz, to thank her for taking care of him the day he fell sick. The two of them begin a secret affair that becomes a routine for months: after school and work, Michael would read to her, and then they would make love and bathe each other. Both of them fall in love.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0753804700</amazonuk>
}}
