'''Read [[Features|new features]].'''
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{{newreview
|author=Mackenzie Crook
|title=The Windvale Sprites
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=The 'hurricane' of 1987, that Michael Fish famously dismissed while it was en route, brought a lot of destruction, that we know. But what hasn't been known before now is that it also brought a dead body to Asa Brown's attention - the dead body of a fairy. Looking into things at the local library the lad finds more and more clues that a local eccentric, two hundred years previously, had been the only other person to know of the sprites' existence. But what the clue trail leads to, Asa would never possibly suspect...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571240712</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|summary=It's now almost a century since the loss of the ''Titanic'' and although much has been written about almost every aspect of that dreadful night one point has remained a mystery. When the wireless operator on the 'unsinkable' Titanic radioed that the ship had hit an iceberg, had too few lifeboats for all passengers and was sinking fast there were two ships in the vicinity. Captain Arthur Rostron on the ''Carpathia'' responded to the distress signal and hastened to the Titanic's aid. But Captain Stanley Lord of the ''Californian'' did not respond. The ship's radio officer had retired for the night and Lord failed to take decisive action later that night when told about distress flares from the Titanic. The controversy as to why the two captains should have acted so differently has raged across the intervening years.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1935149857</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Aimee Carter
|title=The Goddess Test
|rating=4
|genre=Teens
|summary=When Kate's mother makes a dying wish to return to her home town, Eden, Kate drops what's left of her life and goes with her. She doesn't want to make friends – she's here for her mum and nothing else – so she's not very interested when popular girl Ava, with her jock boyfriend Dylan, invites her to a party.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848450400</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Philip Roth
|title=Nemesis
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=1944, Newark, New Jersey. Summer. Hot. Bucky Cantor, a young Jewish man, is gym teacher and playground attendant-cum-sports instructor for the district, helping all those interested become fit young men, able to do what his eyesight prevents him from doing - serving in the forces. Things would be fine if his girlfriend were closer at hand, if it were cooler, and if there were no polio epidemic happening. But there is, and nobody knows what is causing it. Is it flies? Is it a gang of taunting Italian kids spreading it from neighbourhood to neighbourhood? Is it blacks, germs on money - is it in fact Cantor himself, draining all the youthful vigour from his charges under a blistering sun?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099542269</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Beth Webb
|title=Wave Hunter: The Book of Water
|rating=4
|genre=Teens
|summary=As the Iron Age comes to a close, Romans are sweeping across the British countryside destroying anyone who stands in their way. The druids are a particular target - the Romans understand all too well that the society they seek to subdue revolves around its religion and its sacred places. Tegen is determined to stop them. As the Star Dancer, the young druid girl's destiny is to avert a great evil, and she believes that evil is the Roman invasion.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956867308</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Nina Bell
|title=The Empty Nesters
|rating=3
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=With their children all off to university (most from the same school year, plus an erroneous one who took a handy-for-the-sake-of-the-story gap year), it's all change for the parents in this book – for Clover and George, and Laura and Tim, and Alice. Though some of the fathers are present, as you'd expect this is a tale told mainly from the eyes of the mothers. Clover and Laura have been friends forever, while Clover and Alice's relationship is more recent. As for Laura and Alice, well they really don't get on, making life a little tricky at times for Clover, stuck somewhere in the middle.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0751543667</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Charlie Fletcher
|title=Far Rockaway
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
|summary=Cat Manno and her grandfather Victor have a long-held ambition: to one day take the subway and ride it right the way to the very end, to Far Rockaway. Just for the sheer hell of it. But when the day comes, Cat's brother doesn't show. This is more than a disappointment to Cat - it's an utter betrayal. She needed Joe on the trip because she has a guilty secret. She hasn't read the latest book Victor gave her - he sends her a classic adventure every year on her birthday - and she knows he'll want to discuss as it they ride the train. Without Joe, Cat has no chance of concealing her sin.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>034099732X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Tom Wolfe
|title=A Man in Full
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=I'll hold my hands up right now and say that no, I haven't read Wolfe's much-acclaimed [[The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe|The Bonfire of the Vanities]]. I've heard a lot about it, over the years, in newspapers etc that I almost feel that I ''have'' read it, mind you. So I'm really pleased to have the chance to read this much-awaited novel. At a stonking 700+ pages most of which are packed tight with Wolfe's particular style of prose, It's a veritable feast for readers.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099554771</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Karen McCombie
|title=You, Me and Thing: The Curse of the Jelly Babies
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=At the bottom of Ruby's garden there lives a Thing. He's a strange creature, a little like a squirrel (only don't suggest that to him because you'll make him ''very'' angry! But he has wings, and huge bush baby eyes. Ruby and Jackson discover him together and decide to keep his existence secret which is all well and good until the magic starts, and then there's the curse and a bit of a problem with jelly babies!
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571272398</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Steve Roud
|title=The Lore of the Playground: The Children's World - Then and Now
|rating=4.5
|genre=Home and Family
|summary=Like many reviewers of the hardback edition, I thoroughy enjoyed reading this book, a nostalgic excursion into my own childhood games and rhymes. It's quite fun to identify the regional context of childhood lore. It cleared up for me, as a South-East Londoner, the exact nature of a hitherto mysterious game called tag. If you have already delved into the classic ''The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren'' by Iona and Peter Opie (1959), you might find this book adds little for a general readership. For the specialist, I'm sure this book will take its rightful place in the scholarly literature on childhood culture.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099505274</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Niki Valentine
|title=The Haunted
|rating=3.5
|genre=Horror
|summary=Valentine's novel opens with a sinister tale that has nothing to do with haunted boths – but everything to do with rotting relationships. Susan and Martin are attempting to have a second honeymoon but the dynamic between them is clearly flawed from the very start. Susan seems to be experiencing feelings of seemingly hysteria-driven love, continually alternating with resentment. The opening scenes are played out in the relative calm of a smart hotel, but the tension and irritations between the couple are painfully clear.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0751545082</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Mary Hooper
|title=Velvet
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=The opening chapter of this book is a roller-coaster of a read. Velvet has fainted while doing back-breaking, gruelling work in a laundry, and risks being sent to the workhouse. Quick thinking saves her job, and the reader relaxes, only to learn a shocking and shameful secret about the heroine we have already begun to like. Her fortunes soon change, in true Dickensian style, but her troubles are not over: this same secret will come back to haunt her (please excuse the pun) and put her in the power of one of the other characters.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0747599211</amazonuk>
}}
