|summary=It's always struck me that there are several countries where western might is going to be largely ineffective when it comes to an invasion or any other form of warfare. Vietnam proved to be one such place for the Americans back in the seventies and when the latest incursion into Afghanistan was announced my immediate reaction was that there would be no positive outcome, not least because that was what history dictated. This was broadly correct but overly simplistic and this was one of the reasons why Sandy Gall's book appealed to me so much. He's been involved with Afghanistan since ''before'' the Soviet invasion of 1979. This isn't a war correspondent dropping in and out of a country, but a man with a deep love for the people and a concern for their welfare. He has the contacts, his knowledge is encyclopaedic and he's an expert communicator.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408809052</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Stefan Bachmann
|title=The Peculiar
|rating=4.5
|genre=Fantasy
|summary=
''Don't get yourself noticed and you won't get yourself hanged.''
Such is life for peculiars like Bartholomew Kettle and his sister Hettie. Their mother is human but their - absent - father is a Sidhe, a high fairy. Fairies are contemptuous of the half-breed peculiars and humans distrust and suspect them. Hapless peculiar children are often hanged by humans. And, even more worryingly, bodies of peculiars have been turning up recently, quite dead, covered in ancient faerie script and as empty of bone and organ as they are of life.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0062195182</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jay Kristoff
|title=Stormdancer
|rating=5
|genre=Fantasy
|summary=Warrior Masaru has raised his daughter, Yukiko, alone since his wife left. Yukiko is now 16; a feat more due latterly to her own strength and resourcefulness than his care. For since his wife's departure, Masaru has gone to pieces, addicted to gambling and the narcotic effects of lotus smoke. The days when he was the legendary Black Fox are behind him which is a shame as the Shogun (not a man known for calm reasoning or lack of ferocity) has a mission for them. Masaru, Yukiko and an entourage must hunt and capture the legendary stormtiger. But they're extinct aren't they? Well, no, they aren't as Yukiko discovers when the hunt goes terribly wrong and she's left alone with just a storm tiger for company. She fights to find a way home, learning as she goes the full extent to which the Shogun has worked against the good of the nation in general and her family in particular. And the stormtiger? Let's just say he's had his wings clipped and he's not happy about it.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230759017</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Tim Severin
|title=Saxon: The Book of Dreams (Saxon 1)
|rating=3.5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=
Sigwulf is the Saxon prince of a small kingdom - that is, until the ruthless King Offa of Mercia slaughters his family. He is saved from execution for a single purpose - to be shipped off to the court of King Carolus of the Franks. Sigwulf quickly befriends the Kings nephew, Count Hroundland, a powerful and very ambitious man. However, just as quickly Sigwulf survives an attempt on his life, he also finds he has been thrown into a world of deceit and vain ambitions. Only Osric, Sigwulf's crippled personal slave, can be trusted.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230764428</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Laura Amy Schlitz
|title=Fire Spell
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=There is a lot of magic in this wonderful book, but for the most part it is not the children who wield it. They are, at least to begin with, mere pawns in a deadly struggle between the puppeteer Grisini and a dying witch, quite unaware of the battles being raged between the two immensely powerful magicians. But as they come to understand the full horror of their situation, they find themselves having to work together to survive.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408826216</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=The Economist
|title=Pocket World in Figures 2013
|rating=4
|genre=Reference
|summary=Pocket World in Figures 2013 is the twenty-second edition of the annual bestseller and once again it follows the tried and tested format. It opens with world rankings and is straight into natural facts - the largest this, the longest that and the highest of the other. The facts are largely incontrovertible, mostly unsurprising and they're going to be the same year after year. Populations do change though as do their rate of growth. India looks set to overtake China as the largest population by 2025 but even India doesn't have the fastest growing population - that's Niger, with an average annual growth of 3.52%. By contrast, Russia which currently has the ninth largest population, is declining at 0.1% annually. If you're looking for the place with the densest population (as in people per square kilometre rather than in terms of intelligence!) then that's Macau.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846685990</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Betty G Birney
|title=Christmas According to Humphrey
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Even a humble classroom hamster can be excited about Christmas – although Humphrey, with his ability to help all his classmates out, and his good scores in the spelling bees held in lessons, could hardly be called humble. As usual here he has to bear witness to children not quite having the time of their lives – one is running herself into the ground making her own gifts to give to everyone she knows. It's all very well the school putting on a seasonal spectacular in the gym, but what about the boy who exaggerates his piano prowess, and what can be done for the boy who sings like a foghorn? Even more serious than that, what about the adult who could even hinder Humphrey's own participation in the school show?!
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571255469</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Peter Terrin
|title=The Guard
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Harry and Michel are very good at their job, even if we might think their job is not that great. They and they alone are responsible for protecting the building they live in. Designed as an impregnable fortress containing many immense, palatial apartments inhabited by the ultra-rich, the only way in is through the basement carpark, where they reside in their own small patch of territory. They are certainly diligent – inspecting their stash of munitions twice a day, even if nothing could possibly interfere with their supply of bullets, and navigating around the large expanse of space where each of the forty floors above them has space for three supercars. But while one seems to be dreaming of things he might not get to witness – promotion to guarding villas in Elysian fields with becoming owner's wives, the other seems to be hearing things that might not actually be there to be heard…
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857050877</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Simon Armitage
|title=Walking Home
|rating=4
|genre=Travel
|summary=Poet Simon Armitage decided in 2010 to walk the Pennine Way 'in reverse' - instead of heading to Scotland, he'd start just across the border and walk in the direction of his native Yorkshire. As if doing it this way, with the sun, wind and rain in his face wasn't hard enough, he also challenged himself to do it without a penny to his name, earning cash for the journey by giving poetry readings in pubs, village halls and living rooms. Could he make a 256-mile journey supported only by the kindness of strangers and his own willpower?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571249884</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Richard Ford
|title=Canada
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Richard Ford's ''Canada'' opens with one of the best opening lines that I've read in a long time:
'First, I'll tell about the robbery our parents committed. Then about the murders, which happened later. The robbery is the most important part'.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0747598606</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Mike Davies
|title=Lousy Thinking: Hitching a Ride on a Schoolboy's Mind
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Jake is a nice boy, navigating the later years of primary school with varied success. He has a secure home, a nice mum and dad, and plenty of friends with whom he enjoys energetic playtimes. But Jake isn't realising his full potential in lessons. He tries to listen, really he does, but his attention keeps wandering. And his performance in tests is more than a little disappointing. With SATs looming, Jake really should buckle down to some work. But, try as he might, buckling down isn't Jake's strong point.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906954534</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Chris Waring
|title=From 0 to Infinity in 26 Centuries
|rating=4
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=I quite like Maths and I'm not bad at it at a basic level, which is useful as I have a financial based job. But I recall the point at which Maths went from being easy to incomprehensible for me; sometime over the Summer that feel between GSCE and A-Level standard. Then, as now, I never really wondered where Maths had come from; I just worried why I suddenly couldn't understand it any more.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1843178737</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell
|title=A Little Bit of Winter
|rating=4
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=We [[Rabbit's Wish by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell|already know]] that Rabbit and Hedgehog are best friends despite the fact that Rabbit is awake all day and Hedgehog is awake at night. Now there's going to be a new challenge for the friendship. It's nearly winter and Hedgehog is ready to go to sleep until spring but Rabbit will be awake and coping with the worst that the weather can throw at him - and trying to find food even when the ground is covered in snow. Hedgehog has a request - he'd like Rabbit to save him a little bit of winter because he doesn't know what it's like.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0862649986</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Adam Blake
|title=The Demon Code
|rating=4.5
|genre=Thrillers
|summary=Inside, things are better for the reader, but less so for former Detective Sergeant Heather Kennedy. She's just punched the first and only client of her private security business, who was supposed to be her link to other clients. Someone from her past, Emil Gassan, keeps calling to talk about a case she handled while she was with the Police and which resulted in her being thrown out of the force. She's also struggling to cope with the fact of her father's death a year previously, as well as failing to move on from catching her partner Isobel cheating on her.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0751545783</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Christopher William Hill
|title=Tales from Schwartzgarten: Osbert the Avenger
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Schwartzgarten is an odd place. Oh, it has all the usual stuff, like banks and libraries and palaces and glue factories, but it also has a somewhat excessive fascination with the gruesome and gory. This is due in large part to the fact that the city was embroiled in civil unrest, assassinations and battles for over two hundred years, and in consequence the cemetery where Nanny takes Osbert for his daily walk is a quarter the size of Schwartzgarten itself. Roads have names like Bone-Orchard Street, and the Old Town is rife with cut-throats.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408326353</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Oliver Jeffers
|title=This Moose Belongs To Me
|rating=4.5
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=Wilfred owns a moose. His moose’s name is Marcel and most of the time Marcel follows Wilfred’s rather lengthy rules on how to be the perfect pet. However some of the rules are rather too demanding for an independent moose and Marcel develops a tendency to take Wilfred on very long walks. One day on a particularly lengthy walk they meet an old lady who greets Marcel enthusiastically, 'Rodrigo! You’re back!' Does the moose really belong to Wilfred? How can he prove that Marcel is his perfect pet?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007263872</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Kate Cann
|title=Witch Crag
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
|summary=Kita lives in a hill fort as part of the sheepmen community. Life since the Great Havoc has been hard and brutish. There are few survivors from the time of technology and nature is gradually retaking the land. There are often droughts and both food and water are often in short supply. For the sheepmen, it's all about survivial. Food, what there is of it, is bland. Days are filled with grinding hard work. Relationships are frowned on. Women are treated like chattels. Although they have an alliance with the horsemen, other groups are avoided and disliked - the farmers, those who live in the ruins of the Old City.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>140710702X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Penny Junor
|title=Prince William: Born to be King: An Intimate Portrait
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=Prince William is one of the few people who genuinely needs no introduction. He's been in the public eye since his birth and the interest is certain to increase rather than diminish as time goes by. On the other hand he ''is'' only thirty. Is there really going to be enough to warrant a book and will it be anything more than an attempt to cash in on his marriage in 2011 and the current interest in all things royal engendered by the Queen's Diamond Jubilee? You can see that I was something of a reluctant reader - my sympathies are republican rather than royalist and in addition Penny Junor is known to be a supporter of Prince Charles in what can be described as the War of the Waleses. Was this ''really'' going to be a book which I would enjoy?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444720392</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Halina Wagowska
|title=The Testimony
|rating=3.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=The Holocaust must have been particularly horrendous for the young survivor. Halina here says how she had barely three years of schooling before the events of the Final Solution took over, and her life was changed for ever. It was a life a little different to those around her – a nanny who took her to a cathedral and brought her home full of the Catholic anti-Semitic sentiment. Religion and its effects were of little consequence – she was more worried that those seeing a photo of her and a dog had more admiration for the look of the dog than of her. But things were only to change for the worst – existence in the Lodz ghetto, and later, the death camps. This book is just not arch enough to be too structured and self-aware, so when Halina sees those by tram travelling through the ghetto and wonders what the life of the gentiles on it is like, this only provides one small glimpse of how her life turned into one of those thinking of and helping others, with special affinity for those in minorities everywhere.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1742703577</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Sarah Herman
|title=The Classic Guide to Famous Assassinations (Classic Guides)
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=If you ever wanted to know the details of famous assassinations, this is almost certainly the book you've been waiting for. In an easy to read style with lots of bullet points and box-outs, Sarah Herman talks us through history's most famous killings and failed attempts. Starting with Greek and Roman times, subsequent chapters move through religious and royal victims, revolutionaries, Russians and American politicians.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780950144</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Mij Kelly and Mary McQuillan
|title=A Bed of Your Own
|rating=5
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=Suzy Sue has brushed her teeth, picked up her teddy and clambered into her bed. She is ready to fall asleep any moment until she realises that something is not quite right:
''I'm squished. I'm squashed. I'm uncomfy! she said.<br>
''I think there's something wrong with my bed.''
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340999284</amazonuk>
}}
