'''Read [[Features|new features]].'''
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{{newreview
|author=Benedict Jacka
|title=Fated: An Alex Verus Novel
|rating=3
|genre=Fantasy
|summary=Alex Verus runs a little shop in Camden, London selling magic tricks and bits and pieces. Some of the bits and pieces are a more magical than the magic tricks, for he is a diviner (someone who sees the future). Indeed, the day that his friend Luna finds a little red artefact, his ability comes in handy. There are some very powerful people looking for that little red 'thing'. Unfortunately they aren't powerful in a nice way and they're a jump or two ahead of Alex and Luna. For the powerful ones actually know what it is.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0356500241</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Michelle Hodkin
|summary=Vanessa and her family have returned home from Winter Harbor, with Paige in tow due to the deaths of her sister and mother. Now in a relationship with Simon, Vanessa should be happy - but she's struggling to adjust to life as a siren, and is still keeping her secret from everyone. Disturbed as she seems to see Raina and Zara in her thoughts all the time, and confused by the way she affects men now, how can Vanessa move on with her life?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571273963</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell
|title=Wyrmeweald: Bloodhoney
|rating=4
|genre=Teens
|summary=Micah and his mentor, the grizzled old tracker Eli, have holed up in a mountain cave: fullwinter in Wyrmeweald is harsh, and few humans could survive its rigours. With them is Thrace, a kingirl who bonded with a whitewyrme but who was abandoned by the enormous dragon-like creature after she and Micah fell in love. Used to flying free across the skies, she finds the confinement almost unbearable, and she is wasting away before their eyes.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0385617429</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Emily Hawkins
|title=Illusionology
|rating=4
|genre=Children's Non-Fiction
|summary=If there was a prize for the most lavish book received here at Bookbag Towers for review, this would definitely be on the shortlist. A lovely large format hardback, the cover is a delight itself - with a 3D lenticular image, embossed bits, a plastic gem stuck in it... And inside there are packets of goodies to open and explore, making this more of a literary toy than a book. The book aims to introduce the cleverer child to the wonders of stagecraft and magic, and so here are props for some tricks for you to do, some instructions for other illusions of your own, and a historical guide to how the masters of their trade did it.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848772084</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Elizabeth Laird
|title=The Prince Who Walked with Lions
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=This book is closely based on the story of a real boy, Prince Alamayu of Abyssinia, whose short life was divided between his beloved African home and Britain, the country of the people who conquered his father's kingdom. In fact, his grave can still be seen at St George's Chapel, Windsor. For his first few years he was brought up surrounded by servants, luxury and power, with a loving mother and a fierce but adored warrior father. But the king, a despotic and, some would say, reckless man, challenged the might of the British Army by chaining up and imprisoning the European envoys sent to negotiate with him, simply because he found them irritating. This action led to the attack on his lands and consequently the downfall of the Abyssinian monarchy.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230752438</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Charlotte Watts and Anna Magee
|title=The De-Stress Diet: The Revolutionary Lifestyle Plan for a Calmer, Slimmer You
|rating=4
|genre=Lifestyle
|summary=Most people will recognise that excessive stress is not good for you. It's the cause of depression, high blood pressure, skin problems and insomnia - to name just a few problems from a very long list. There's also mounting evidence that chronic stress is responsible for excessive weight gain and not just because there's a tendency (er, yes, I can testify to this...) to turn to comfort eating. Too many stress hormones in the body encourage fat storage - particularly in that ''obvious'' and very-hard-to-shift area around the middle. The aim of the De-Stress Diet is to bring about a slimmer, calmer person with a better quality of life.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848507798</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Sam Siciliano
|title=The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: The Web Weaver
|rating=3.5
|genre=Crime (Historical)
|summary=An old gypsy woman places a curse on guests at a ball, leaving the upper class revellers shocked. When, over the next few years, misfortune befalls several of the party-goers, potted-meat magnate Donald Wheelwright knows there's only one recourse left to him - to call Sherlock Holmes. It's a slightly different version of Holmes from that we've come to expect, though. The detective, far from being an emotionless man, is capable of feeling strongly for the right woman - could the detective find love as well as the answer to the mystery?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857686984</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Angela Carter
|title=Burning Your Boats
|rating=5
|genre=Short Stories
|summary='Burning your Boats' brings together Carter's early works and her uncollected short stories, alongside the collections 'Fireworks', 'The Bloody Chamber', 'Black Venus' and 'American Ghosts'. Carter's ability to take the everyday and transform it into the fantastic is evident in stories that range from a cautionary tale of a musician in love with his instrument to a lost motorist whose journey ends in nightmarish circumstances in the Snow Pavilion.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099592916</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Aifric Campbell
|title=On The Floor
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=
Geri Molloy, the central character in Aifric Campbell's ''On The Floor'', may be earning a six figure salary working at a London investment bank just prior to the outbreak of the 1991 invasion of Kuwait, but she's seriously messed up. Drinking heavily, sleeping lightly and mourning the end of a relationship, she may be a mathematical genius with a direct line to a mysterious Hong Kong-based hedge fund manager with whom she trades, but her life is increasingly being controlled by other people.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846688086</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=David Lucas
|title=The Lying Carpet
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=There is a room in a big old house where nothing moves but the insects. An empty chair sits to one side, a stone statue of a girl called, and representing, Faith, the other. In between is a tiger rug. What potential is in that for the setting of a charming book? What potential indeed...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849390177</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Sadie S Forsythe
|title=The Weeping Empress
|rating=3.5
|genre=Fantasy
|summary=Chiyo wakes up with the sun in her face and the grass at her back. For a moment, she feels almost as though she's in heaven. But the joy in the moment is short-lived. Around her is mayhem. Uniformed guards are fighting off two rogue warriors intent on freeing a band of captives. Before she knows it, Chiyo is fighting alongside the warriors, showing a ferocity the meek and mild wife and mother never knew she had.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1257814419</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Ada Wilson
|title=Red Army Faction Blues
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Ada Wilson admits that his fascination with the period is what drove his work on this novel, and it is the wealth of detail and background that strikes one when reading his account of Peter Urbach, the undercover agent whose role was to act as an agent provocateur to the Red Brigade. Urbach is revealed from the outset as a plant, an undercover operative who needs to keep all events of the group 'noted and filed' for his masters. And throughout the first half of the novel we see Urbach recording the changes and developments, the complex web of political ideology, naivety and the pure egocentricity of youth which created the happening of the Baader-Meinhof gang.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1901927482</amazonuk>
}}
