'''Read [[Features|new features]].'''
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{{newreview
|author=Veronyca Bates
|title=Dead on Time
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=I reviewed Bates' earlier book [[Dead in the Water by Veronyca Bates|Dead in the Water]] and enjoyed it for what it was - a light but enjoyable crime read. This book has the same look and feel about it. Bates has decided to base her crime within the corridors of power, local power that is, the council chambers. And some of us, perhaps many of us, secretly would like to know the ins and outs, the deals made etc by our locally-elected councillors (even although we agree that much of their work can be a tad dull and a tad tedious). But we'll probably shout from the rafters if they happen to get their comeuppance, as happens in this book. Mayor Boot has received his final comeuppance. He's dead.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0709092504</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Anthony T DeBenedet and Lawrence Cohen
|summary=When I read on the front cover that this book is described by the Sunday Times as ''A gripping, bittersweet love story'' it wasn't a particularly good statement for me to read. As a rule I don't generally 'do' love stories. If I happen to read one every once in a while then that's fine by me but I don't encourage them! But, both the lovely title and the front cover did their job and pulled me in - just a little.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>000739120X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Tera Lynn Childs
|title=Forgive My Fins
|rating=5
|genre=Teens
|summary=You think you've got problems with your love life? Spare a thought for Lily Sanderson, who has a huge crush on swimming god Brody Bennett, an obnoxious biker-boy neighbour Quince Fletcher, and a serious deadline problem. She's totally convinced that Brody is the right man for her, and needs to get him to realise this and take him home to meet her father. Who just happens to be the King of
Thalassinia. Of course, that will also means revealing her big secret. You see, Lily is half-mermaid. With all this going through her mind, it's no surprise when she gets confused, leading to a kiss which changes everything...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848771347</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Alexandre Christoyannopoulos
|title=Christian Anarchism: A Political Commentary on the Gospel
|rating=4.5
|genre=Spirituality and Religion
|summary=Whilst I've long been a Christian, I've never considered myself an anarchist. My thinking is that anarchy is something you're more likely to see on the news than on 'Songs of Praise'. However, there is a school of thought that suggests that Jesus' teachings were so counter-cultural and so against Roman law that it constitutes anarchism.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845402472</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Christopher Pike
|title=Final Friends
|rating=5
|genre=Teens
|summary=When Jessica Hart and her friends end up at a new school, she decides to throw a party to get to know some of the cute guys there. It seems like a great idea at the time – but it will have far-reaching consequences which will mean their senior year will be nothing like they expected.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444901303</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Stella Gibbons
|title=Conference at Cold Comfort Farm
|rating=4.5
|genre=Humour
|summary=There are no Starkadders at Cold Comfort Farm.
To those of you who've not read Stella Gibbons' magnificient [[Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons|original novel]], this is hardly likely to be a major shock - to the Gibbons fans amongst us, though, this is chilling news indeed. And when Robert
Poste's child Flora returns to the farm - now a modernised monstrosity full of members of the International Thinkers' Group – sixteen years after her original visit, the news get graver and graver, as the cows Feckless, Graceless, Pointless, and Aimless have passed away of shame due to the disgrace of the bull Big Business. With the menfolk trying to make their fortunes abroad, and the women struggling, it's left to Flora to try to save the day once again.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099528681</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Ransom Riggs
|title=Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children
|rating=3.5
|genre=Teens
|summary=After his grandfather's death, sixteen year old Jacob is sent to a psychiatrist. He swears that he'd seen a monster of some description - just like the weird and unusual things the old man used to tell him about - when he discovered the body. As you can imagine, everyone thinks Jacob is crazy. But then events set in motion a visit to the island off the coast of Wales where Jacob's grandfather grew up, and
as Jacob finds Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, he discovers that his grandfather may have been telling the truth all along...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1594744769</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Stella Gibbons
|title=Westwood
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=I was instantly attracted to this novel as it's set largely in Hampstead and Highgate, which is territory I'm fortunate enough to be familiar with. I was also instantly attracted to Margaret – a young woman with the worries of the world on her shoulders. Continually concerned with politics and the impact of war on those far away as well as close by, Margaret has genuine warmth and concern for her fellow human beings, and this pulls the reader into her story straight away.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009952872X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Esi Edugyan
|title=Half-Blood Blues
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Sid and his friend Chip are revisiting their youth, more than 50 years ago. They were jazz musicians, living and working in Berlin and Paris, until they had to escape Nazi occupied Paris in 1940 to return to Baltimore. Now it is 1992, and all the others they worked with are long since dead. They have just been involved in a documentary about their experiences, and are about to return to Germany (soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall) for a jazz festival in memory of the great Hiero Falk. Hieronymus Falk was a young black German musician with an exceptional musical talent, the star of their band, the Hot-Time Swingers. He was picked up by 'the Boots' as Sid refers to the Germans, in Paris in 1940, and disappeared into a concentration camp, then they heard he was released but died in 1948.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687756</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Stella Gibbons
|title=Cold Comfort Farm
|rating=5
|genre=Humour
|summary=Orphaned at 19, Flora Poste – a London sophisticate – is led to retreat to deepest Sussex to live off her relatives the Starkadders at the aptly named Cold Comfort Farm, a mournful bunch who take her in as they couldn't refuse anything of 'Robert Poste's child', but seem less than happy with having to do so. As she meets the preacher Amos, his over-sexed younger son Seth, his flighty sister Elphine, and the hugely memorable – if barely seen – Aunt Ada Doom, the first person in literature to see 'something nasty in the woodshed' – she resolves to take the family in hand and solve their problems.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141441593</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Lindsey Leavitt
|title=Sean Griswold's Head
|rating=5
|genre=Teens
|summary=When she finds out her dad was diagnosed with MS some months ago, but no-one had felt the need to tell her, Payton's world starts to fall apart. So much so, that when her new counselor suggests picking something as a Focus Object to write about, she decides to go for it, and chooses Sean Griswold's head. But what starts off as a supposedly academic study of the said head becomes something rather more interesting, as she realizes that Sean himself might be someone worth focusing on.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>140712059X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Marta Altes
|title=No!
|rating=4.5
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=''No!'' is all about one family pet's desperate attempts to please his owners. He helps with the laundry, tastes their food before they eat it to make sure it's all right, and even warms up their beds for them before they go to sleep...the poor deluded pup thinks his family love him very much since they're always calling out what he thinks is his name, 'Noooooo!'
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846434173</amazonuk>
}}
