|summary=The little princess is used to having everything she wants immediately. She wears a sparkly dress and a sparkly tiara; she sleeps in a sparkly bed and plays with sparkly toys. And whenever she wants something new, she just shouts at the top of her lungs that if she doesn't get it, she will cry. And do you know what? She gets it! Straight away! But having what she wants, the minute she wants it doesn't make the little princess happy. Because she isn't smiling at all. In fact, she never smiles. Ever. Nothing is ever quite good enough for this little princess.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1407115618</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Will Buckingham and Thomas Docherty
|title=The Snorgh and the Sailor
|rating=4.5
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=The Snorgh lives alone in a little shack on a windy and quiet stretch of beach that is known for its rather fabulous crop of samphire, upon which the Snorgh munches. Lucky little devil, isn't he?!
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1407116525</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Anne Cassidy
|title=Dead Time: The Murder Notebooks
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
|summary=Rose's mother and stepfather - Kathy and Brendan - went out for dinner one night and never came back. Rose was taken in by her grandmother who sent her off to a posh boarding school, while her stepbrother Josh went up north to live with an uncle.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408815508</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Andrew Fukuda
|title=The Hunt
|rating=4
|genre=Teens
|summary=Gene - not that he remembers he's called Gene - is one of the few remaining survivors in a city peopled by vampires. His mother and sister were killed when he was just tiny and his father finally succumbed to a fang bite infection some years before. Gene's life is all about concealment. He shaves his body hair. He's careful to avoid any situation in which he might sweat - swimming is ok, but other sports are not. He files his nails. He behaves, always, as a vampire would behave. Everything is going so well until the Heper Hunt is announced...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857075411</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Kelley Armstrong
|title=The Calling
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
|summary=Maya Delaney and friends have just survived a forest fire they think might have been set deliberately. Safely flying away in a helicopter, they think their troubles are over. Until the pilot turns out to be on the same side as those setting the fire.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907410473</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Anne-Marie Conway
|title=Butterfly Summer
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Becky isn't best pleased to be moved from her home in the city, where she has friends and a place, to the countryside where her mother grew up. There's a whole secret past that Becky feels on the verge of discovering - starting with friends her mother never mentioned, friends who drop unintentional hints about the father Becky has never met, and ending with the photo she finds of her mother with a baby - dated 12 years before she was born.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1409538591</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Ros Barber
|title=The Marlowe Papers
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''Stop. Pay attention. Hear a dead man speak''
These are the attention grabbing words that Ros Barber addresses to the reader at the start of this unique tale. Marlowe was a playwright with a reputation not only for his plays but also for his lifestyle. His gory death from a stab wound through the eye is one of the many contentious points in a brief but very lively life.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444737384</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Giles Andreae and Tony Ross
|title=Me, the Queen and Christopher
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Freya, who is seven years old, received a very important letter. On the back of the envelope it said ''Buckingham Palace'' and it was from the Queen, inviting her to tea. It looked as though the day was going to be a disaster as Freya curtsied - and managed to knock the Queen over. But the Queen is nothing if not resilient and up she got and off they went to her private quarters where she and Freya made themselves baked beans on toast and mugs of tea ('always dip your tea bag exactly twenty-seven times' is the Queen's advice for a good cuppa) and really it's rather like being in Freya's Gran's flat.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408320053</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Toby Manhire (editor)
|title=The Arab Spring: Rebellion, revolution, and a new world order
|rating=3.5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=A Tunisian man, Mohamed Bouazizi, set himself on fire on 17th December 2010, in what appeared at the time to be a desperate gesture showing a complete lack of hope after his humiliation by a municipal official. What followed was one of the most remarkable events of recent years, as a wave of revolutions occured in what became known as the Arab Spring. As you'd expect from a top nwespaper, the Guardian had reporters, bloggers and columnists covering it all, and Toby Manhire provides a compilation of the paper's output here.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0852652542</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Matt Kindt
|title=Revolver
|rating=5
|genre=Graphic Novels
|summary=Meet Sam. He has a rather dull life, with a materialistic girlfriend, and a job in the arse-end of celebrity journalism and a boss he can't stand. All of which is preferential to waking up and finding his home city under attack - munitions going off, skyscrapers burning and people falling from them. He ends up fleeing with said editor, only to wake the next day back in this world. He will indeed fall to being snatched from each reality in turn, at set times of day, forced to suffer consumerism in one, looting in another, basic pay raises here, producing Samizdat bare-bones journalism for survivors there. But always with enough time to ask the important questions - how, and why?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1401222412</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jonny Duddle
|title=The Pirates Next Door
|rating=4
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=Matilda lives in the little seaside town of Dull-on-Sea where the average age is 67. The house next door has been empty since she was a baby and she ''longs'' for a family with a girl of her own age to move in but instead a family of pirates move into the decrepit old house - complete with their pirate ship, treasure chests, barrels of grog and Jim Lad who is in Matilda's class at school. The neighbours - well, the town - are not pleased, so what will the pirate family do to win them round? Meanwhile, Matilda is having a lot of fun.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848773927</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Tom Becker
|title=The Traitors
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=
What's the saying - sin in haste, repent at leisure? Well Adam is going to be the embodiment of that. One moment where he plants a kiss on his best mate's girl's lips, even though they seem to have split up - at least temporarily - and lo and behold he's snatched by a passing dirigible, and shipped across the universe, to a place outside of time, where the idea is he has three hundred years in prison as penance, after which he will be inserted into the very instance he leaves, remembering only that he should behave a bit more diplomatically in future. Of course, Adam has other ideas...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1407109529</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Shamini Flint
|title=Inspector Singh Investigates: A Curious Indian Cadaver
|rating=3.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=Inspector Singh was on sick leave and rather bored, which was why he agreed to his wife's suggestion (well, she was rather more insistent than that...) that they attend her niece's wedding in Mumbai. There's a little bit of history to this part of the family. The bride-to-be is Ashu Singh, granddaughter of Tara Singh, the wealthy industrialist and his acknowledged favourite. Tara's son ( Ashu's father) was murdered in the uprisings which followed the assassination of Indira Ghandi. He supported the family but made a point that he would not do so beyond the level at which his son (a rather lowly civil servant) could have achieved. Ashu and her two brothers have been secure but not wealthy - and as we join the story Ashu is going into an arranged marriage. There are two unfortunate circumstances here. Ashu is in love with another man - and she's disappeared.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>074995342X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Clare Peake
|title=Under a Canvas Sky: Living Outside Gormenghast
|rating=5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=To many of us, the very name Peake on the cover of a book will immediately suggest the creator of 'Gormenghast' and his family. We have had the occasional biography of Mervyn Peake from others, plus the recollections of his widow Maeve, and to join them, here is the story from another perspective altogether – that of their youngest child, daughter Clare.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780333854</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jon Mayhew
|title=The Bonehill Curse
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
|summary=Anthony Bonehill has created the perfect plan. Seven people will together summon a djinn. Six will gain a wish each, while the seventh will use their wish to kill the djinn and avoid it taking revenge on them. But when Carlos, the seventh, double crosses the rest, and ends up sending the bottle containing the djinn to Bonehill’s daughter Necessity, she’s launched into a race against time to stop the djinn from wreaking havoc on her world.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408803968</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Guillermo Orsi and Nick Caistor (translator)
|title=Holy City
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=Honest policemen are not that common in Buenos Aires, it seems, but Deputy Inspector Walter Carroza of the serious-crime squad does his best to keep his head above the murky waters of corruption. Sometimes there just seems to be too much going on - even for a loner like Carroza without too much else in his life to absorb his time. The lack of dredging in the Rio del Plata caused the cruise ship to run aground and the passengers were evacuated to the city, where six - two French, two German and two Italians - of them were abducted. They're wealthy business leaders and the kidnappings send stock markets into freefall.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857050621</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Erin Kelly
|title=The Sick Rose
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=Paul had the passion and academic grades to become a teacher. However, his plans started the slow slide away from his grasp after his father died and he and his mother were forced to move to the rough, Grays Reach Estate and an even rougher school. It seemed that his days as bully's target had ended when Daniel, illiterate and street-wise, stepped in as protector. All Paul had to do was cover for Daniel's disability in class... at least that was all he needed to do at first.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444703854</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Emma Dodd
|title=I Love Beasts!
|rating=4
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=This little boy loves beasts, all kinds of beasts! Using rhyme, we see all the different kinds of animals that he loves until finally he ends with the one he loves the very best, his own cuddly teddy bear!
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408304724</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Sherrilyn Kenyon
|title=Infamous
|rating=4
|genre=Teens
|summary=Nick Gautier has just found out that the mysterious being he thought was his uncle is actually his future self. Over the course of the past 2 books, the majority of other people he’s close to –- apart from his unsuspecting mother – have been revealed to be some form of demon. Oh, and apparently, he’s got the potential to be the person who will end the world. When someone starts spreading vicious rumours about other students at his school, you’d hardly think it would register with him given everything else going on, but he dives in to try and trace the perpetrator with help from Bubba, Mark, and various others.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907411550</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Andrew Nicoll
|title=If You're Reading This, I'm Already Dead
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The story at the heart of Andrew Nicoll's ''If You're Reading This, I'm Already Dead'' is bizarre but not entirely of Nicoll's own creation. It is narrated by German-born Otto Witte, who is rapidly recording a strange time in his life while Allied bombs are falling in World War Two Germany, although the events that he relates go back to 1913 when Otto was an acrobat working in a travelling circus currently in Buda, or perhaps Pest - he's not quite sure. In addition to his acrobatic skills, he is also blessed with an impressive set of whiskers which make him the dead ringer for the newly appointed Turkish King of Albania. If only he can get there before the claimant to the crown, perhaps he can steal the country and complete an unlikely rise in status. In the company of his pal, Max, a strongman, a blind mind-reader and his beautiful daughter, an exotic dancer and a purloined camel, what could possibly go wrong?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857384937</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Asko Sahlberg
|title=The Brothers
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=We're in the family home of Erik, in Finland, in 1809. It's large enough to have been the most impressive farmstead when his mother was taken there as a young bride, and she still lives there, with an elderly retainer, Erik, Erik's untrusting wife and some other servants. One night the brother of the family, Henrik, returns, and all the bad blood gets spilled. Not just about a neighbour's horse and hotheaded plans for it, not just over a marriage, and not even about the fact that when Sweden and Russia fought over Finland and the territory changed hands, the brothers were on opposing sides.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>095628406X</amazonuk>
}}
