'''Read [[Features|new features]].'''
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{{newreview
|author=Cat Clarke
|title=Torn
|rating=4
|genre=Teens
|summary=
A week in the Scottish Wilderness doesn't exactly sound fun, not to Alice King, but that's what she's about to embark on. Her and her classmates are off on an activity holiday together – walking, climbing, caving. Alice is fortunately put in a cabin with her best friend Cass, so things can't be too bad. But, then Tara Chambers, the popular girl, gets put in their cabin too - things definitely just got worse. Tara, though beautiful is powerful, mean and likes nothing more than putting people down.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857382055</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Graham Holderness
If you were in any doubt as to the nature of the novel given the cover jacket and the author's disclaimer to the effect that any similarity between the human characters and any real person is entirely coincidental, but he feels safe from any threats of libel action on behalf of the dead animals whose characters he has mercilessly manipulated for narrative effect, then its opening sentence should put you straight.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224093991</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Ian Beck
|title=The Haunting of Charity Delafield
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=
Charity Delafield has grown up in a very solitary way. Rattling around in Stone Green Hall, her father's ancestral home, she has been isolated from the outside world by her strict and forbidding father because of a "condition" she has apparently suffered from since birth. With only her governess, Rose, and her cat, Mr Tompkins, for company, Charity is a lonely child.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0370332105</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Melvin Burgess
|title=The Cry of the Wolf
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=hought to have been extinct in Britain for centuries, there are actually 70 English wolves left when Ben meets the Hunter. Burning with mortification at being mocked for poor shooting skills, Ben lets the carefully-guarded secret slip to this awful, vile man. And over the next three years, the Hunter makes it his business to find and kill these beautiful, rare creatures. Eventually, there is only one family left and Silver and Conna will do anything to protect their cub, the last of his kind...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849393753</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Amy Ignatow
|title=The Popularity Papers
|rating=3.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=The RRP of this book is a whole £4 more than the average [[Dork Diaries by Rachel Renee Russell|Dork Diary]]. What do you get for that extra outlay, and why do I even point this out? Well, both this series and that are designed as if they were created by a member of the target audience - an American tweenage girl with a lot to say about herself, her school life and how, once you've avoided your parents embarrassing you, the popular girls at school being condescending and rude at the best of times, everything in life will still work its damnedest to heap ignominy and embarrassment on you.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1419700634</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Howard J Booth (editor)
|title=The Cambridge Companion to Rudyard Kipling
|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Rudyard Kipling, born in India in 1865, is still the youngest ever Nobel literature laureate. He was a prolific author and at the turn of the century up to the first World War an immensely popular one. Even now he remains the most frequently quoted of all English authors (with the possible exception of Shakespeare) – albeit often taken out of context.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0521136636</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Padgett Powell
|title=You and I
|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=
I've often wondered how men and women of letters can pack it all in. People churn out a career of fiction, as well as reading all the classics, and offering pages and pages of diaries and letters on their death. Padgett Powell can get to be a professor of books, and therefore I assume is duty-bound to read and write lots, but still find time to knock out novels, however short. It was only a few months ago I was reading ''The Interrogative Mood'' for a review elsewhere, and here is another new release from him. Serpent's Tail will cheat in 2012 by giving the British audience Powell's debut novel, almost two decades old.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846688167</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Art Spiegelman
|title=MetaMAUS
|rating=5
|genre=Graphic Novels
|summary=Before the Holocaust was turned into [[The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne|a child-like near-fable for all]], and before it was the focus of superb history books such as [[Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder|this]], it became a family saga of a father relating his experiences to a son, who then drew it all - featuring animals not humans - [[Maus by Art Spiegelman|Maus]]. To celebrate the twenty-five years since then, we have this brilliant look back at the creation of an equally brilliant volume.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670916838</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Antony Wootten
|title=A Tiger Too Many
|rating=3.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Jill's brother, Pete, was a keeper at London Zoo and when her mother was at work she would go to the zoo with him. She became very attached to an elderly tiger by the name of Ronny but with the outbreak of war tough decisions had to be made. What would happen if poisonous snakes escaped during a bombing raid? What about the elderly and dangerous animals? Jill is heart-broken when Ronny is shot but there's consolation in the form of a tiger cub, the runt of a litter rejected by his mother, who would need all Jill's care if he was to survive.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0953712311</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Neil Forsyth
|title=Why Me? The Very Important Emails of Bob Servant
|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Catchy title and catchy front cover graphics. What's not to like? It takes a lot to make me laugh generally, but as I had an initial flick through this book, things looked promising. And I was also thinking that it's a pleasant change to see another location (other than perhaps the predictable Glasgow and Edinburgh) get an airing.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780270097</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=D. J. Connell
|title=Sherry Cracker Gets Normal
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=
Whilst it's wrong to judge a book by its cover, a mere sight of D. J. Connell's second novel 'Sherry Cracker Gets Normal' is enough to make me smile. The title is amusing; the colourful design enticing and the effusive praise for Connell's debut 'Julian Corkle is a Filthy Liar' encouraging.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>000733219X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Roger Hutchinson
|title=The Silent Weaver
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=There is no question but that the story of Angus has all the right ingredients for a fascinating study. Taken from his Scottish Lowlands agricultural early childhood to the isolation of a Hebridean island of South Uist, joining the last ever horse platoon in the British Army at the outbreak of the Second World War, then mental breakdown and effective incarceration for almost all the rest of his life, he created some of the most unusual works of folk art that have existed this century. And Hutchison tackles every angle of this rich narrative, exploring the military thinking behind how horse regiments were to combat Hitler, through to the operations of mental health care in later twentieth century Scotland, and all points in between.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1841589713</amazonuk>
}}
