'''Read [[Features|new features]].'''
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{{newreview
|author=Penelope Lively
|title=A Stitch in Time
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Hunting for fossils on the Dorset coast is a pleasure which has delighted generations of families. And when Maria is taken by her father and mother to Lyme Regis for the summer holidays, she quickly becomes fascinated by the myriads of long-dead creatures which are still visible, fixed forever in the local grey-blue stone. Her interest in the history of the area leads her to make a friend – a rare occurrence for Maria, who can be painfully shy at times, and it involves her in a mystery. What sad event prevented Harriet from finishing the sampler? And how is it that Maria is aware of a dog barking, when no one else can hear it?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007443277</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=David Borgenicht
|summary=When you know that a biography tackles alcoholism, a mother's early death, feelings of loneliness and worthlessness, culminating in going blind, you expect that this is going to be one of two types of book – the misery memoir, or the positive 'all ends well' tale. 'What to Look for in Winter: A Memoir in Blindness' is neither. It is a book which is as complex as the life it relates, and as deep.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099539535</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Khaled Hosseini
|title=The Kite Runner (Graphic Novel)
|rating=4
|genre=Graphic Novels
|summary=A confession. If there's one book I'm not likely to read, it's that which everyone else is reading. If it turns into a hugely popular film for all the left-wing chattering classes to rave over, then that's just more grist to my mill – I'll always have a chance to catch up on it later on, even if I never take that opportunity. I'm not alone in acting like this – see a friend and colleague's similar admission when reviewing [[White Teeth by Zadie Smith]]. But at least, through the medium of the graphic novel, the book reviewing gods have conspired to let me see just what I'm missing, with this adaptation, by Italian artists, of a hugely successful – and therefore delayable – novel.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408815257</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Caitlin Watson and Vic Le Billon
|title=Marvin and Milo: Adventures in Science
|rating=4
|genre=Children's Non-Fiction
|summary=My dad studied physics, and I think he was always a little disappointed that I didn't fall in love with the subject too. Perhaps if he'd had a Marvin and Milo book to share with me things would've been different? Marvin and Milo are a cat and a dog who like doing experiments, and this book contains 45 of their experiments which you are most definitely encouraged to try at home!
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230758495</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Colin Falconer
|title=Silk Road
|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=Falconer presents his readers with a handy map of the famous (or perhaps that should be infamous) ''Silk Road'' which stretches from Europe all the way to China. The story opens with a charismatic young princess who lives with her extended family in an area of Mongolia. She is clearly the apple of her father's eye. So much so, that he will often take advice from her, rather than from his two older sons. She would be a prize catch indeed as a wife for any man, but the feisty Khutelun has other plans. She wants plenty of adventure and glory in her life. She doesn't want to be a baby machine and besides, no man has caught her eye. Yet.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857891081</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jennifer Haigh
|title=Faith
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=As a ''New York Times Bestseller'' I was expecting great things from this book; coupled with the fact that I really enjoy American fiction, I was itching to get reading. The story is told from the perspective of Sheila, sister to Mike and half-sister to Arthur (he's normally called Art). Art is the priest and who is at the centre of the storm. We go back in time and discover a rather pious woman who has had a hard start to married life. She's now left to bring up her young son, Art, on her own. But things pick up pretty quickly from here and as an attractive woman it's not long before she meets someone else. Two more children are born and they all settle down into a normal, American family unit.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007225091</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jaimy Gordon
|title=Lord of Misrule
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=West Virginia, 1970. We're at a rundown race track, of the dusty kind rundown horses and their rundown owner/trainers fetch up living in, with the occasional race to interrupt the boredom. Into things comes a young upstart hoping to surprise all with his four unknown quantities and make a packet before fleeing. His girlfriend is here too to help out, and naively eager for success and knowledge, but old hands like Medicine Ed have seen it all before. Also in the background are some small-time gangsters who are not too keen at for once not knowing who is doing what and how races are going to be run and won.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857386697</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Lynn Peril
|title=Swimming in the Steno Pool: A Retro Guide to Making It in the Office
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=The subtitle of this book suggests a survival guide to secretarial work. However, this is definitely not a handbook, but an examination of the portrayal of the job and those who do it in the media and in handbooks over the last 100 years. It is an American book and all the references are to handbooks, media, popular fiction and advertising from the US, but as a secretary in Britain, I still found it relevant, interesting and very entertaining.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0393338541</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Niall McCrae
|title=The Moon and Madness
|rating=4
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=A book entitled ''The Moon and Madness'' has the potential to be a pile of New Age hokum. This learned and academic treatise by Niall McCrae is very far from hokum, and there is not a whiff of New Age hanging over it. We probably all have an old folklore image in our minds of lunatics in the asylum howling at the full moon. Of course, the very word 'lunatic' has its origins in the moon. McCrae tries to separate myth and fact in this fascinating book.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845402146</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Marcus Sedgwick
|title=The Raven Mysteries: Diamonds and Doom
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Edgar is on holiday. Well, according to him, it's a conference where ravens meet to discuss all manner of important things, and where they occasionally have a bit too much to eat and drink. Whatever. The point is, he's not there when the last gold piece is taken from the treasury and spent, and Castle Otherhand is put up for sale. The adults don't seem to be doing anything constructive about the situation, so with Edgar away enjoying his birdly junketings, our favourite Goth Solstice and her ever-hungry brother Cudweed decide to sort things out by themselves. And if you've ever read a Raven Mysteries book before, you will know right away that that means by the time Edgar flutters home, chaos, mayhem and disaster will be the order of the day.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1842556983</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Margaret Henderson Smith
|title=San Marco: The End of the Road
|rating=3
|genre=Women's Fiction
|summary=When we [[Ne Obliviscaris: Do Not Forget by Margaret Henderson Smith|last saw ]] Harriet Glover she had just been stood up at the altar by her long-term partner, Mark but rescued and proposed to by the man she has lusted after for quite a while – Joris Sanderson. Harriet knows something else too. She knows that she's pregnant and that the father of the child is not the man she was going to marry, but the man who has now proposed. Complicated? Of course it is. This is the woman who could make Frank Spencer look like a miracle of organisation. She's going to have to do something quite spectacular this time around.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845494687</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Holly Webb
|title=Lily
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Magic has been banned by the Queen since a magician called Marius Grange killed the King thirty years before. All the old magical families have been exiled, Lily's father has been sent to prison on the mainland for protesting against the decree, and their servants have to be paid extra wages to stay on the island where Lily, her sister Georgie and their mother now live.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408313499</amazonuk>
}}
