|summary=Tali is a slave born of slaves, forced to live and work underground by the brutal Cythonians who, in turn, have also been forced into a subterranean lifestyle. The land above them is Hightspall, rightly theirs but taken over generations ago. Hightspall's occupiers are led by a group of noble houses, which brings us to Rix, the heir to his alcoholic father, the Lord Ricinius. They both live under the thumb of his overbearing mother, Lady Ricinius, but then so do many others.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1841498289</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Lloyd Alexander
|title=The Book of Three
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Taran has always sought adventure, but is worried he’ll remain an Assistant Pig Keeper all his life. But when the magical pig Hen Wen disappears, he sets out to save her from the evil Horned King, and ends up on a quest alongside a ragtag bunch of companions.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1409515052</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Maureen Jennings
|title=Let Loose the Dogs: Murdoch Mysteries
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime (Historical)
|summary=The fourth book in the series of mysteries which star Detective William Murdoch is set, like the others, in Toronto. Religion, money and family rule this late-Victorian city just as they do back 'home' in England, and Murdoch's struggles for truth and justice, not to mention his love life, are played out against the sense of guilt and the moral restrictions imposed upon him by his Catholic faith.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857689908</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Roy Apps
|title=The Party Animal and Don't Look Under the Bed (Deadly Tales)
|rating=4
|genre=Teens
|summary=
''Bored with sleeping soundly? Fed up with sweet dreams? Well this is the book for you! ''Deadly Tales'' features two nightmare urban legends that you'll pray aren't true''.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1445103389</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Johan Harstad
|title=172 Hours On The Moon
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
|summary=It's 2018 and people at NASA want to go back to the moon. But no one's been there since the 70s, so with funding and public support limited, they need an angle. A draw. Something to get people all over the world buzzing. Their answer is a worldwide lottery to select three teens who can accompany the NASA team on their week long jaunt into space. The chance of a lifetime! An unforgettable, unrepeatable experience! An adventure that truly is out of this world!
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907411518</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=M L Stedman
|title=The Light Between Oceans
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Thomas Sherbourne returns to Australia after World War I. Internally scarred like many of his generation, he chooses the solitary life of a lighthouse keeper on remote Janus Rock to escape the world and its conflict. However, he soon learns that there is one part of the world he can't live without – the sassy, beautiful Izzy Graysmark, a local from the nearest port and country town of Partaguese. They have a happy marriage in all respects apart from one: they're haunted by their inability to have children. Therefore, one day, when a boat washes up onto Janus bearing a dead man and a crying baby, apparent salvation arrives too.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857521004</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=John Julius Norwich
|title=The Popes: A History
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=Historian [[:Category:John Julius Norwich|John Julius Norwich]] (or Rt Hon/Viscount John Julius Norwich, to give him his full title) doesn't write the sort of history books one associates with school days. He doesn't do dry and dusty. In fact ''The Popes: A History'' isn't ''just'' a history book but a romp through the ages with some great trivia nuggets scattered throughout the informative gold.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099565870</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Liz Moore
|title=Heft
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Arthur Opp taught at the University until one day, after some unfortunate circumstances in which he was blameless, he didn't go in any more. Since then he's worked on, well, getting fat. Food is just about all that matter to him and he eats it in vast quantities, particularly if anything upsets his day. He was always plump but now he weighs in at something like five to six hundred pounds. His friend who lived next door is dead and he lives for the memory of a platonic relationship which he had with one of his students. He hasn't heard from her for many years but then one day contact is made. Charlene wants Arthur to help her son.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091944201</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Wiley Cash
|title=A Land More Kind Than Home
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=In a small town in western North Carolina there was a storefront church with newspapers across the windows so that no one could see in. Adelaide Lyle remembered to days when it was a store, as well as the days when she used to attend the church regularly, but after a woman died in a 'healing' ritual which involved a snake and her body was left in her garden she decided that she couldn't attend and nor could she allow the town's children to run the risk. For a while this separation worked reasonably well until a series of incidents, many quite small in themselves, provoked a tragedy.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857520806</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=E Nesbit
|title=The Railway Children
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Few people can be unaware of ''The Railway Children''. It's a story which has stood the test of time not least because of the wonderful images of steam trains which it evokes for today's readers. Roberta (Bobbie), Peter and Phyllis (Phil) have to leave their London home when their father goes away unexpectedly and they move to a cottage in the countryside which is near the local railway station. They make friends with the porter, Albert Perks and the 'Old Gentleman' who is regularly on the 9.15 train. There's fun and they have adventures but they still wonder if their father is ever going to come home.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0192758195</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Emma Smith
|title=The Cambridge Shakespeare Guide
|rating=5
|genre=Home and Family
|summary=Does the world need another guide to Shakespeare's plays? There are plenty about and students these days have the added resource of the Internet to get the basics. However, if it does, then this is as good as any you will find. It's nicely written and beautifully clear and above all, succinct. In fact I'm doing a disservice to Emma Smith already by terming it a guide to his plays, because she also includes the poems and sonnets.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>052114972X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Ali Smith
|title=There but for the
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=If you are the type of reader who thinks that the mark of a good book is a plot, then step away from this book: you'll hate it. Ali Smith's intricately clever and often funny ''There but for the'' is very much at the literary end of the fiction spectrum. Not in terms of the language used though - Smith uses simple language, and a '''LOT''' of puns, and if anything, as the title suggests, she's more interested in the little words. It's playful and strangely affecting, while at the same time a little affected and often slightly irritatingly free flowing.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241143403</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=William Poundstone
|title=Are You Smart Enough To Work At Google?
|rating=5
|genre=Business and Finance
|summary=I find recruitment fascinating. I started my career on a top 10 graduate scheme whose recruitment process included a 24 hour simulation of life in the role, and now some years later I'm on the other side of the table, taking part in the recruitment of the next generation. Prior to that I worked everywhere from multinational software companies to British high street department stores and over the years I've heard everything from the boring (''What are your strengths and weaknesses?'') to the predictable (''Tell me about a time you worked as part of a team and encountered conflict'') to the quite frankly brilliant, in my mind (''How many piano tuners are there in Barcelona?'') Once I had to come up with a variety of uses for a cocktail shaker after first gaining points for being able to identify the item correctly, despite being a tee-total teen at the time. If interviews are a time to shine, I prefer the latter two tasks to the first two because they let you show what you can do, and how you would approach a task, rather than just making you prattle off a prepared response.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1851689176</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Karen Wheeler
|title=Tout Soul
|rating=4.5
|genre=Travel
|summary=Meet Karen. Expat fashion writer. French cottage owner. Devoted mother of Biff. Frustrated girlfriend of a dashing Portuguese hunk. Tout Soul is her 3rd book about a relocated life in rural France and after her previous tales of upping and leaving Blighty (book 1) and falling in love with the aforementioned dashing hunk (book 2) she’s now moved her focus to the pursuit of happiness.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0957106602</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Roger Scruton
|title=The Face of God: The Gifford Lectures
|rating=3.5
|genre=Spirituality and Religion
|summary=Atheist culture has recently become more mainstream, thanks in part to the success of Richard Dawkins' book, ''The God Delusion''. However, religion does still have a part to play, with Prince Charles urging the United Kingdom to be more tolerant towards faiths other than the Church of England he was raised as part of and even the Prime Minister talking about faith issues. Since 1888, the Gifford Lectures have been given to 'promote and diffuse...the knowledge of God'.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847065244</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Nick Sharratt
|title=Fancy Dress Farmyard
|rating=4
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=There's a party at the farmyard and it's going to be fancy dress. Let's turn the pages together and find out who has come dressed as what!
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>140711591X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jenny Smith
|title=My Big Fat Teen Crisis
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Sam’s left alone when her best friend moves to the Outer Hebrides. Can she take this opportunity to reinvent herself as a cooler, more sophisticated person? And will she manage to win the heart of the new boy at school, David? Aided by her childhood friend Cat, who’s just returned to the area, she’ll do her best – as long as the nasty Tania doesn’t get in the way.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1407115952</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Miriam Halahmy
|title=Illegal
|rating=4
|genre=Teens
|summary=Lindy’s life started to fall apart when her baby sister Jemma died. With her parents gambling and drinking, and her younger brother needing her to look after him, she’s desperate to hold the family together. So when her brother Garth, who’s in jail, manages to set her up with a job working for her charming cousin Colin, she thinks it’s a great opportunity. Then she finds out, though, that Colin’s business isn’t what it seems, and she’s quickly caught up in a nightmare cycle of drugs and threats… can she find the strength to stand up for herself, helped by the strange and reclusive mute boy Karl?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845395247</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Dan Green and Simon Basher
|title=Basher Science: Oceans
|rating=4
|genre=Children's Non-Fiction
|summary=I've often wondered why this planet is called 'earth' when three-quarters of it obviously isn't and it seems that I'm not alone. Dan Green and Simon Basher have decided to take a close look at the oceans and other bodies of water on the planet and to explain them in simple words, accompanied by Simon Brasher's illustrations which are almost - but not quite - manga. It's a style which kids are going to be comfortable with - and they're not going to associate it with something boring which they have to learn. It's fun.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0753433443</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Eva Joly and Judith Perrignon
|title=The Eyes of Lira Kazan
|rating=5
|genre=Crime
|summary=The novel throws you straight into the action with three apparently unconnected events. Nigerian fraud squad investigator, Nwanko Ganbo, realises it's time to get his family out of the country when he finds a colleague and good friend in his car, very dead. The solution is simple: the British government offer him a new life as a lecturer in return for silence about the corrupt regime he has spent so long investigating. Meanwhile the wife of a rich Faroese banker accidentally drowns in full ball gown whilst in Nice but junior prosecutor Felix and his judicial colleague aren't as easily convinced about the accidental nature as their superiors seem to be. The third piece of the jigsaw originates in Russia as local journalist Lira Kazan shows an interest in the life and transactions of Russian millionaire Louchsky. This isn't the healthiest thing she's ever done as people seem to have died for less.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908524006</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Tracey Corderoy and Kate Leake
|title=Never Say No to a Princess!
|rating=5
|genre=For Sharing
|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>
}}
