|summary=For older readers, the name Willard Price will bring to mind classic wild-life adventures in exotic locations. The heroes were two brothers, Hal and Roger Hunt, and now, 125 years after the birth of the man who created them, we meet their children. Young cousins Amazon and Frazer are destined, like their fathers, to travel the world, rescue endangered animals and battle against the adult greed and thoughtlessness which threatens fragile eco-systems. The settings, the issues and the gadgets are completely up-to-date: what remain from the old stories are the excitement and the danger.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141339454</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=K J Parker
|title=Sharps
|rating=3.5
|genre=Fantasy
|summary=Fencing - it's such an exotic, rarefied world with it's own language, that it's no surprise to remember the director of ''Alien'', ''Blade Runner'' and ''Prometheus'' started his career with a fencing film. And it's all over this fantasy, but not in the usual sword-and-sorcery way of old, as a delegation of swordsmen and -women visit Permia from Scheria - two fencing-loving countries that until recently have been at war. But why exactly are they going - separately, and as a group? Who is playing what kind of diplomatic game between the two countries, and is a wielded sword the only danger they'll face?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1841499269</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Tony Mitton and Guy Parker-Rees
|title=The Jungle Run
|rating=5
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=''Here come the animals one by one,''<br>
''all getting ready for the Jungle Run.''
This is how we meet all the animals at the start of this fabulous book, all limbering up on the bank of the river preparing for their big race. There's Parrot who is the starter for the race as well as a whole menagerie of other animals such as Elephant, Hippo, Snake and Cub. Most of the animals laugh at the prospect of the little Cub taking part telling him that he is too small to race. Undeterred though, he does decide to take part and soon the race is under way. And what a race it is with a big vine net to scramble under, a creeper rope to swing across and a huge water slide at the very end. Unsurprisingly, some of these obstacles prove to be quite hazardous for some of the larger animals and all sorts of mayhem ensues. Not for all the creatures though as there's one little creature who negotiates everything perfectly but does he end up winning the race? You'll have to read this lovely book to find out.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408311755</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Fiona Foden
|title=Cassie's Crush
|rating=3.5
|genre=Teens
|summary=Cassie falls head over heels for the new boy at school from the first moment she sets eyes on him. The only problem is, her crush makes her so nervous she can barely even pluck up the courage to say hello, let alone ask him out. With a bit of help from her friends, can she convince Ollie she's the girl for him?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1407120875</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Moira Young
|title=Rebel Heart (Dustlands)
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
|summary=
Saba has retrieved her brother Lugh, kidnapped by the Tonton, but at great cost. She's haunted by dreams of Epona, the friend she killed during the battle so that she wouldn't fall into enemy hands. Lugh is clearly damaged - affected by captivity in ways he just won't discuss. And she misses Jack, who has gone to tell Molly that Ike is dead, with a deep, inconsolable desperation. Travelling through the Waste is difficult, made even more difficult by the ghosts that haunt Saba's dreams. Halting at the camp of a seer, the party is reunited with Maev, who brings terrible news. Not only is there a price on Saba's head, and a terrible new leader for the Tontons, but Jack has changed sides and joined the enemy...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1407124366</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=John Banville
|title=Ancient Light
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The narrator in John Banville's ''Ancient Light'' is Alex Cleave, a stage actor in the curtain call of his career. For reasons that become clearer towards the end of the book, he is recalling his first relationship, when as a teenager in 1950s Ireland, he had a passionate affair with the mother of his best friend. However, his past is also blighted by recollections of his own daughter's suicide ten years previously.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670920614</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Michelle Paver
|title=Gods and Warriors (1)
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
|summary=Oh, I'm so glad this series has finally arrived! Paver's Chronicles of Ancient Darkness about Torak and Renn and Wolf is my absolute favourite middle grade sequence of recent years. Michelle has a such a way of writing. Her books are identifiably children's books - there's no diluting attempt at crossover fiction. Her research is impeccable but she uses it to flavour and colour her stories, never to be didactic. She writes from the point of view of animals but is never twee and anthropomorphic. Her characters - human and animal - are truly alive; vital and colourful and, as in all good children's books, called upon to show extraordinary courage. There's a little bit of magic but not enough to get in the way of the story or the characters, and it's all in keeping with prehistoric, superstitious societies.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141339268</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jean Ure
|title=Lemonade Sky
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Deborah Tindall has three children - Ruby, Tizz and Sam and she loves them to bits. It's just that she's a little bit fragile mentally and not what you would call a responsible parent. The last time that she went off and left the three girls to fend for themselves they were taken into care and it was months before the authorities felt that it was safe to let the girls go home. So when the girls wake up one morning and find that their mother isn't there they're determined that no one will realise. The have to keep going as normal: their mother was away for ten days last time so how will they manage?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007431643</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Pauline Chandler
|title=Dark Thread
|rating=4
|genre=Teens
|summary=Kate is an artisan weaver, like her mother. But she is so full of grief and guilt that she can't even think about returning to her craft. Because Kate's mother died in a road accident and Kate thinks it was all her fault. And, all of a sudden, everything gets too much - the kindly-meant but oppressive sympathy - and Kate collapses. She wakes, still at the mill, but in a long-past time. Here, Kate must learn to weave the dark threads of her life into its overall picture. Until she does, she can't return home...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907869565</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Karin Fossum
|title=The Caller
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=Lily's baby daughter was asleep in the garden when her husband came home and it was so peaceful that they allowed her to sleep on a little longer, but when they went to bring her in she was covered in blood. It seemed to be coming from her mouth - but when they got her to hospital there was no injury and it was apparently a practical joke. But that evening a message was left on Inspector Konrad Sejer's mat: 'Hell begins now'. It was the first in a series of such incidents. They weren't planned to cause physical harm but they left the victims shaken, feeling harassed and worried.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099548771</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Francesca Simon and Tony Ross
|title=A Horrid Factbook: Food
|rating=4
|genre=Children's Non-Fiction
|summary=For a horrid child our Henry has acquired a lot of facts, you know and the latest of his Horrid Fact Books is about food. It follows the usual format of quick-fire facts liberally accompanied by brilliant illustrations from Tony Ross. The book's divided into chapters which are just the right length to appeal to the emerging reader and to give a regular feel-good buzz when there's another chapter under the belt. With ninety-nine pages of text there's enough to give the sense of having read ''a book'' but without it being too much of a trial. It ticks all the boxes as an early reader.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444006339</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Cathy Hopkins
|title=Love at Second Sight
|rating=4
|genre=Teens
|summary=Jo is tired of being 'Miss Tag Along' as friends Effy and Tash hang out with their boyfriends. Jo has never had much luck in the love life department. Yes there's Owen, Effy's brother - but though they get on so well, and are so perfect for each other (according to everyone else) Jo's never really felt that special something with him, that spark.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857075500</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Frank McLynn
|title=The Road Not Taken: How Britain narrowly missed a revolution
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=Since the Norman conquest, there have been no successful invasions of Britain. Yet according to this book, during that era the country has come close to revolution on seven occasions. These were the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, Jack Cade's rebellion of 1450, the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536, the English Civil War in the 1640s, the Jacobite rising in 1745-6, the Chartist Movement of the early Victorian era, and finally the General Strike of 1926. In each case, social turbulence threatened the status quo but went no further. Why and how did they ultimately fail?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224072935</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Heather Gudenkauf
|title=One Breath Away
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Mrs Oliver has spent her life in the classroom. Educating. Guiding. Nurturing. But on the last day of term all she really wants is to get to the afternoon bell without any drama. A gunman walking in to her classroom really does not fit in with her plans.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848451326</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=David Rain
|title=The Heat of the Sun
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=David Rain is far too young to be writing this exquisitely. That's all I'm going to say.
Oh, you need me to justify that comment?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857892037</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jeremy Chambers
|title=The Vintage and the Gleaning
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Smithy, a retired sheep shearer, now works on a vineyard in the countryside of Victoria, Australia. Too poor to retire and too ill from the after effects of his former alcoholic lifestyle to return to the physically arduous world of shearing, he exists rather than lives amongst his mates and near his son and daughter-in-law. Meanwhile rumours abound about the deeds of local thug, Brett Clayton and, whether true or not, he's definitely someone to be avoided. However, when Brett's wife Charlotte leaves him and asks Smithy to take her in, he does so without a second thought. Sheltered under his roof and protection, Charlotte confides in Smithy, forcing him to remember his own past and dreams. Meanwhile the unspoken question remains: Brett knows where Charlotte is so what's he going to do about it?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780871635</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Ruth Warburton
|title=A Witch in Love
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
|summary=
Anna has sworn off magic since she accidentally bewitched Seth into falling in love with her. He's convinced the spell has been lifted and his feelings for her are genuine - but she's not so sure. Anna might want to be finished with magic, though - but it keeps leaking out. When a visit to her old home reveals that someone placed a powerful spell which was the reason she didn't discover her abilities until coming to Winter, she's left wishing she knew more about her family history. As if that wasn't enough, the Ealdwitan are still taking an interest in her and she's also being threatened by a group of 'outwiths' who appear to have found out her secret...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444904701</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Bernard Wasserstein
|title=On the Eve: The Jews of Europe before the Second World War
|rating=5
|genre=History
|summary=The introduction to 'On the Eve' begins with the controversial statement, 'Nor is anti-Semitism, by itself, a satisfactory explanation of the Jew's predicament'. The author has written a history of the post-war Jewry called the ''Vanishing Diaspora'' but this book examines the collective failure by the Jewish people before 1939 'to attain at least some control over the threatening vagaries of fate'. It examines their failure to establish cohesive social links, political parties, hospitals, newspapers and schools. Jewish culture and religious practice weakened during the very period when they advocated loyalty to the states where they were citizens; the USSR, Poland, Germany and France. Their population too was in decline. Wasserstein, who is a master at pointing out intriguing and surprising detail, explains that on the brink of annihilation, there were actually more Jews held in camps outside the Third Reich than within it.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846681804</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Keith Austin
|title=Grymm
|rating=4
|genre=Teens
|summary=Mina and Jacob are step siblings. Unwilling ones. Mina thinks Jake is a mummy's boy. Jake thinks Mina is weird and witchy. In fact, the only thing these two can agree upon is that they both dislike new baby Bryan even more than they dislike one another. And who could blame them? Not only does Bryan take up all the attention of both parents, but he's also a colicky baby who cries from morning 'til night. And when he's not crying, he's farting and pooing and polluting the air with the foulest of smells. So when Dad takes a three-month contract at a mine on the edge of the Great Desert, neither Mina nor Josh are pleased to learn they'll be spending their summer in the back end beyond. With each other. And Bryan.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849415560</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Timeri N Murari
|title=The Taliban Cricket Club
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=We all know, or think we know, how oppressive life was for Afghans, particularly Afghan women, under the Taliban regime, but when you read this novel, boy do you get a sense of how tough it really was.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1742378846</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Alix Ohlin
|title=Inside
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Grace, a therapist, stumbles upon a young man in the woods who has attempted to commit suicide, and her vocational interests are immediately engaged. The novel takes us through their complex relationship, both its surface routines and day to day moments but also Grace's eventually successful search for the reasons behind Tug's desperation. Ohlin interlaces with this the story of Mitch, Grace's ex-husband, and of Annie, one of her clients, chronicling both their relationship with Grace, but also their network of families and friends, acquaintances and colleagues.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780871104</amazonuk>
}}
