Lionel Shriver adds a beard-shaped appendage to Southern Portugal in The New Republic and immediately has it fighting for independence, taking a wry look at terrorism as well as the ethics of the international press corps. After a series of international terrorism acts, the Os Soldados Ousados De Barba, or the SOB for short, have gone quiet at the same time as charismatic journalist Barrington Sadler has vanished without a trace. Insecure former lawyer Edgar Kellogg steps into Barrington's post: Kellogg on the hunt for serial killers, as it were.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007459807</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Abby Grahame
|title=Wentworth Hall
|rating=3
|genre=Teens
|summary=The year is 1912, and the Darlingtons of Wentworth Hall are a rich family who are going through some problems at the moment. The financial ones are bad enough, as are the secrets kept by various family members and servants, but it's the Sussex Courier column which seems to be based on the household which is the final straw. Will all of their mysteries finally be exposed? Who on earth could be responsible for writing it? The groom who wants to be more than a servant to the family's beautiful elder daughter, the French nanny with a secret, the new visitors who have riches of their own, or someone else entirely?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857079166</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Asa Larsson and Marlaine Delargy (translator)
|title=The Black Path: A Rebeka Martinsson Investigation
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=In the far north of Sweden the frozen body of a woman was found in a fishing hut out on the lake. She’d been tortured but the injury which killed her was clumsy, even amateur. Identification wasn’t easy but it was faily quick and Anna-Maria Mella and her colleagues hoped for a speedy end to the case. Then it all turned complicated when the body of a six-month-old suicide had to be exhumed and Mella and Rebecka Martinsson were drawn further and further into an investigation of corruption at one the country’s major mining companies. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, the mining company had enemies of its own - ones who would stop at nothing.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857050311</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Ellie Irving
|title=Billie Templar's War
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Billie Templar’s dad is abroad, fighting for Queen and country. She wants him home – partly because they need to defend their record of winning the three-legged race at the school carnival, but more importantly because his best friend has just been seriously hurt and she’s worried it could be him next. She hits on a foolproof idea to bring him back – she just needs to ask the Queen herself to give him permission to come back. But getting to see the Queen is harder than she thinks… so she hatches a plan to stage a military tattoo to get the Queen to her village during the Jubilee celebrations. With an allergy-prone boy, a girl who has no friends, a bunch of old age pensioners and a brass band who only know one song trying to help, it couldn’t possibly work – could it?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0370331990</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Anne Sward
|title=Breathless
|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=There are those who say that, on an individual level, books are like Marmite: you love it or you hate it. Oh, if only it were so easy.
''Breathless'' is one of those that I neither love nor hate, and yet am not totally uninspired by either.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857051032</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Sarah Lean
|title=A Dog Called Homeless
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=It's a year since Cally's mum was killed in an accident, but the family is still barely coping with the loss. Her brother shuts himself in his room and plays on the computer for hours. Her father has packed away all her mother's belongings and cannot stand to hear her name mentioned, and Cally herself has become difficult and disruptive at school. It feels to her that when the others refuse to mention her mother, it makes her disappear even more. The whole family is getting more and more trapped in a spiral of misery and silence, isolated from each other and losing contact with their former friends and colleagues.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007455038</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Morgan Matson
|title=Second Chance Summer
|rating=5
|genre=Teens
|summary=Years ago, Taylor Edwards and her family would visit their old lake house by the beach for the summer. It was an idyllic setting, she had close friends there, and there was lots of fun to be had. Then she had a falling-out with best friend Lucy and an awkward moment with the boy she liked, Henry… and she hasn’t been back there in five years. This summer, she’s finally going back – because her dad is dying of cancer and wants to spend his last few months in a place he loves, surrounded by his family. Will she take the second chance to rebuild her relationships with the people around her?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857072706</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Kevin Brooks
|title=Until the Darkness Comes
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=Private detective John Craine has returned to Hale Island, the scene of many childhood holidays, to get away from a painful past, his guilt, and his loss. And there's another reason - the possibility that he has a half-sister he's never met. But within hours of arriving, John discovers the body of a dead girl concealed in a pill box on the beach. He calls 999 but when the police arrive the body has disappeared and the officers clearly see him as a drunken fool prone to hysterical imaginings.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099553821</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Hilary Mantel
|title=Bring up the Bodies
|rating=5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=Thomas Cromwell is now very far from his humble beginnings. He is Henry VIII's chief minister. Katherine of Aragorn is no longer Queen. The Princess Mary has been disinherited. Anne Boleyn wears the crown and has produced a daughter, Elizabeth. But there is no sign of a son and Henry is beginning to regret his secession from Rome. We pick up from Wolf Hall during the royal progress of 1535 and from there, we chart the destruction of the new Queen.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007315090</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Malachy Doyle and Gwen Millward
|title=The Snuggle Sandwich
|rating=4.5
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=The day starts very peacefully as Annie wakes in her own bed and listens to the silence. She decides that it's the perfect time to creep into her parents' bed:
''They're a cosy snuggle sandwich.''<br>
''She's the jam and they're the bread!''
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849393907</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Laurie Graham
|title=A Humble Companion
|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=George III is unfortunately best-known for his mental instability which is a pity, because he was, in many ways, a forward thinker. One of his more-enlightened acts with regard to his own children was to appoint 'a humble companion' for his twelfth child and fifth daughter, Princess Sophia, presumably so that her life should not be limited to the cloistered residences which the Royal Family inhabited. 'Humble' is, of course a relative term and Nellie Welche was actually the daughter of a high-ranking steward in the household of the Prince of Wales, but with only two years difference in age they became life-long friends.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857387812</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Adele Parks
|title=Whatever It Takes
|rating=5
|genre=Women's Fiction
|summary=Whatever it takes means giving up your exciting, settled life in the capital to move to Dartmouth, if that’s what your husband wants.
Whatever it takes means being a constant shoulder to cry on for your best friend even when that nagging voice at the back of your mind is asking whether this is really a two-way friendship.
Whatever it takes means prioritising the needs of others – your daughters, your in laws – ahead of your own needs. All day, every day.
Whatever it takes means maintaining a calm, put-together demeanour in the face of event crashers, party trashers, unfaithful spouses and life-changing secrets.
Whatever it takes means keeping up appearances, no matter what. But if a relationship’s a sham, it’s only a matter of time before the façade starts to crack and splinter.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755371348</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Graeme Kent
|title=One Blood
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime (Historical)
|summary=Sergeant Kella is being sent from his native Malaita to another part of the Solomon Islands to investigate logging sabotage there. In the same district, his friend Sister Conchita has assumed reluctant control of a mission with three elderly sisters living there who are rather set in their ways, to say the least. Then a body turns up in the church… is this related to the sabotage? And how does the wartime history of John F Kennedy, vying to become the new President of the USA, fit in to all of this?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849013411</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Chris Cleave
|title=Gold
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Novels that feature sport often put people off reading them, particularly if you are not au fait with the sport in question. However, while the characters in Chris Cleave's ''Gold'' are athletes, specifically cyclists aiming for the 2012 London Olympics, it's more about the characters themselves. In fact, if you are looking for a book to read to avoid the brouhaha of the Olympics this year but still want to get a taste of what all the fuss is about, this would be a superb choice.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340963433</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jonathan Lee
|title=Joy
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Very stylish, observant and oh so spiky, this is an incredible, often uncomfortable novel that you just can't put down.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0434020427</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Pamela Fudge
|title=Turn Back Time
|rating=3
|genre=Women's Fiction
|summary=Charles and Tessa have managed reasonably well since their divorce. Both adore their daughter, Megan and would agree that the other is a good parent - that is if they ever had any contact with each other other than the occasional text or email. Just before Megan is due to go to university Charles sends a message to Tessa via Megan. He has something which he needs to discuss with her and thinks that they should meet.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0709098448</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Martin Kohan
|title=School for Patriots
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=There's a fair chance that if you pick up a South American novel, it's going to score quite highly on the 'seriously odd' scale. Martín Kohan's School for Patriots, translated by Nick Caistor, doesn't disappoint in that regard. The main character, María Teresa, is an innocent, shy teaching assistant at a Buenos Aires school that is run on military academy style discipline. The running of the school is itself something of a surprise but that's not what makes this strange. What ramps up the 'odd' factor here is that she spends vast amounts of this short novel hiding in the boys' loo, ostensibly to catch young boys smoking despite there being no evidence that any student has contravened this rule in this location. One might say she has nothing to go on. Then again, best not in the circumstances.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687438</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Daniel Silva
|title=Portrait of a Spy
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=Gabriel Allon and his wife, Chiara, decide to rent a nice little Cornish cottage; the perfect hideaway in which to renovate art. A rosy domestic picture that, as any spy thriller aficionado will tell you isn't going to last long. It lasts, in fact, as long as it takes some middle-eastern terrorists to bomb Paris and Copenhagen and then move on to London's Covent Garden. Gabriel and Chiara are there, about to have lunch, but Gabriel is unable to concentrate on the menu and just let things happen. Mr and Mrs Allon end up being dragged back into the day job as they and their multi-national colleagues brandish a spectrum of experience and talent in order to take on a rogue Yemeni cleric who, embarrassingly enough, had been supported by the Americans.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>000743331X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Alonso Cueto and Frank Wynne (translator)
|title=The Blue Hour
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Adrian Ormache, middle class Peruvian lawyer, has a beautiful wife, two daughters of the sort to make any parent proud and a comfortable lifestyle. His parents divorced when he was small so, as he lived with his mother, he has fragmented memories of a gruff, distant dad. Despite his father's aloof, dictatorial manner, Adrian has always comforted himself with the fact he played a useful role as a land-bound naval officer, fighting Senderista terrorists for the good of Peru. After the death of his mother everything changes. Adrian finds documents that lead him away from his beliefs, towards a truth that will shatter more than his father's image.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0434019410</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Mark Devine
|title=Dragon of Life Book 1: Raining Truth
|rating=3.5
|genre=Women's Fiction
|summary=When we first encounter Luke Whitaker he is - he tells us - a disembodied spirit placed in this part of the heavenly kingdom so that he can remember his life and emotions exactly as they were lived. I don't know about you, but I'd find that rather unpleasant and decidedly embarrassing. Luke Whitaker recognises that there are parts of his life which he'd rather remove from the record, but acknowledges that he can't. We join him in 1967 in Seattle and he's on his way to Honolulu. When he sets off he doesn't realise quite how momentous the trip is going to be.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>098501640X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Antonin Varenne and Sian Reynolds (translator)
|title=Bed of Nails
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=When you're a policeman in Paris and your involvement in office politics takes a turn for the worse, you could end up in charge of suicides. That would make it your job to cope with all the jumpers, the pill-takers, the apparent suicide with two types of bullet through his head - even the naked men running into the flow of traffic around the ring-road. You might not get the case of the American junkie who dies performing a pierced-man act in a seedy club. No, looking into that is that man's closest friend, John, fresh from living in the French wilds as an outdoorsman. But in a Paris where cause of death can be so bizarre, a reason for death can have very far-reaching consequences...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857050370</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Kristyna Litten
|title=Chickens Can't See in the Dark
|rating=4.5
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=When a little chick called Pippa hears her teacher, Mr Benedict, say:
''As sure as eggs is eggs, chickens can't see in the dark.''
she is extremely disappointed. She thinks that not being able to see in the dark is a terrible thing and desperately wants to prove her teacher wrong. There are a number of characters who might be able to help such as the wise Mr Owl or Miss Featherbrain who runs the library. The only problem is that they all laugh at Pippa and reinforces the notion that chickens can't see in the dark.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0192756796</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jon Grahame
|title=Reaper
|rating=3
|genre=Fantasy
|summary=Ex-cop Jim Reaper gave up on living after his fourteen-year-old daughter was raped and committed suicide. To make matters worse, her attacker is let out of jail after serving only three years. Reaper comes up with a plan to end him, and to end his own miserable life in one move. Only the world has other plans with him.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1905802528</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Sally Nicholls
|title=All Fall Down
|rating=4
|genre=Teens
|summary=
It’s the summer of 1349. Isabel lives her young life as a villein, tied to the land which the family rents from the Lord of the small village of Ingleform in Yorkshire. Leaving is not an option. Life as a villein is hard, but nothing has prepared Isabel for the all-consuming Black Death decimating everything in its path as it sweeps across Europe. But when the plague runs riot across all of Britain, finally reaching her town, life there is devastaed. It seems the world will end in a wave of fear, pestilence and horror.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1407121723</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Miranda France
|title=That Summer at Hill Farm
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=If you were to pass Hill Farm you would think it the perfect country idyll with lambs in the fields, children playing and the farmhouse nestled in the folds of the hills. The truth though is different. Farmer Hayes loves the land, but he's no farmer. His wife is neglected and it's not that long since Isabel miscarried her fourth child. She loves her children but she's not a particularly good housewife - or wife. She and Hayes were rather bounced into marriage by her aging and doting parents. Now she's trapped in a house with death-watch beetle and a husband who is struggling to keep the farm going.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099555131</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Izy Penguin
|title=Grandma Bendy
|rating=4.5
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=Grandma Bendy is definitely not like other grannies:
''She is incredibly bendy.''<br>
''She had twisty, twizzly arms''<br>
''and super, stretchy legs.''
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848860773</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Matt Dickinson
|title=Mortal Chaos: Deep Oblivion
|rating=3.5
|genre=Teens
|summary=Based on the concept that something as small as the beating of a butterfly's wings can set in motion an intricate series of interconnected events, involving people around the globe, ''Deep Oblivion'' narrates a day in the life of a security guard, a homeless girl, a fireworks expert, a cruise ship captain, a monk, a missionary, a brutal military commander, and a couple of professional thieves, all of whom are somehow linked. Those who are familiar with the series know that it ends with a massive pay-off, and you will not be disappointed by the chaos and destruction of the conclusion. Many characters die, and even among those who survive very few are left unchanged.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0192757156</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Fannie Flagg
|title=I Still Dream About You
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=
At the age of 60, Maggie Fortenbury's glory days seem to have passed her by. An ex-Miss Alabama, she headed for the fame she dreamt of in 'the Big Apple' and ended, instead, making disastrous life choices that took her along a different route. However she had made one good decision: to work for the diminutive Hazel Whisenkott, midget and founder of Red Mountain Realty. Now, as Hazel is dead, and despite her friendship with her colleagues (obese, optimistic Brenda and moaning Ethel), suicide seems the next logical step. It has to be done correctly as Maggie comes from an era when you wouldn't want to let anyone down or any commitment unfulfilled. Therefore picking her final day becomes increasingly difficult when other things get in the way, including a troupe of Whirling Dervishes.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099555484</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Victoria Eveleigh
|title=Katy's Pony Surprise
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=We've been with Katy Squires for a few years now. We first met her in [[Katy's Wild Foal by Victoria Eveleigh|Katy's Wild Foal]] when she discovered a new-born foal on snowy Exmoor. Co-incidentally it was Katy's birthday and the foal would be Trifle. It's not difficult to guess how things went in [[Katy's Champion Pony by Victoria Eveleigh|Katy's Champion Pony]], but it was great to see Trifle ''and'' Katy growing and maturing together. We've now come to the final part of this lovely trilogy and it's another that's going to be loved by the pony-mad tween girl. Even if you're not keen on horses and ponies it's still going to be a good read.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444005537</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Sax Rohmer
|title=Fu-Manchu - The Hand of Fu-Manchu
|rating=4
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=Nayland Smith has summoned the loyal Dr Petrie back from Egypt to the familiar setting of London. The streets of the capital have seen much terror in the early 20th century, but with Fu-Manchu dead, surely the worst is over? Not so… for the agency of the Si-Fan, the doctor's masters, still lurk. Can Smith and Petrie put an end to their terror once and for all?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857686054</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Fiona McGregor
|title=Indelible Ink
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Once wealthy, middle class Australian suburbanite Marie King never thought she'd be starting a new life at 59 but here she is, divorced and having to sell the marital home. Unfortunately, attached to the marital home is the marital garden into which Marie didn't only give life but also pour her own life. However, Marie tries to be positive and decides that if she's going to be a new person, she may as well go the whole way. This means tattoos (much to her offsprings' horror) and an unlikely friendship with tattooist Rhys. With that comes the realisation that the privileged suburb of Mossman isn't all there is to Sydney. There's much more to the city, and indeed herself, than she first thought.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857894129</amazonuk>
}}
