|summary=It's 25 years since Iain M Banks introduced us to the utopian ''Culture'' series of sci fi adventure books and ''The Hydrogen Sonata'' is the 13th in the series. One thing Banks does particularly well is to make his books completely accessible as stand alones, explaining the concept afresh each time without going over old ground for long time fans, of which there are many. In many ways, this is a good introduction for those who have yet to discover the joys of this excellent series because it's far more linear than some. He sometimes leaves even hardened ''Culture'' addicts struggling to work out what's going on with alternative realities before bringing them together, but there's little of that here.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0356501507</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Robert R Crumb and Aline Crumb
|title=Drawn Together
|rating=4
|genre=Graphic Novels
|summary=This book is, as it says several times, the collected works of the world's only comic-strip creating husband-and-wife partnership. While this is to ignore the work Joyce does to co-write some of Harvey Pekar's titles, there certainly is not a couple such as this. Over several decades of work, we see just how joined at the hip they are. Most of the panels are drawn by him - R - with Aline drawing herself on top of his inked backgrounds. Later on, their self-created titles are split, with him doing half the pages, and her own opus on the other half - by this time she had had works out under her own name. But so close are the couple in each other's intimate works, they are never very far from the edge of the frame.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0861661788</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Zygmunt Miloszewski and Antonia Lloyd-Jones (translator)
|title=A Grain of Truth
|rating=5
|genre=Crime
|summary=State Prosecutor Teodor Szacki is attempting to recover from a broken marriage and has left Warsaw. He is prone to cheerless thoughts especially if deprived of his soothing iced tea. It is the very start of spring in the legendary and magical Polish town of Sandomierz on the banks of the Vistula. Szacki, who does not like to be bored, is soon preoccupied in solving a ghastly murder that has been staged in the style of a Jewish ritual and this particular city is notorious for ancient, tense and deep rooted relations between Catholics and Jews. To solve this crime Szacki will need to delve into the murky history of occupation; Nazis, Communists and patriots. He will also need to face his own self-doubts. He must search for 'A Grain of Truth' under the critical gaze of local citizens enflamed by press paranoia.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908524022</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Simon Garfield
|title=On The Map
|rating=5
|genre=Travel
|summary=You might think that there's not a lot which could be said about maps - but you'd be completely wrong. This is staggeringly good - one of the very best non-fiction books I've read all year. Garfield takes us from the Great Library of Alexandria to a map of the brain, via maps in films, treasure maps and JM Barrie's hatred of folding maps. Alternating between full chapters which tell the stories of cartographers and their maps in roughly chronological order, and shorter entries bearing the title 'Pocket Map' which pick out particularly interesting trivia, there's not a dull entry in the book.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846685095</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Sue Moorcroft
|title=Dream a Little Dream
|rating=4
|genre=Women's Fiction
|summary=Liza Reece works as reflexologist at The Stables, a therapy centre attached to a hotel. It ''should'' be doing quite well. It ''could'' be doing quite well, but the manager and leaseholder is Nicholas, who's a waste of rather a lot of space. Liza reckons that she could take over the lease, reorganise the finances and make a success of it, but she has to raise the money to buy the lease. Dominic Christy has a plan too. He used to be an Air Traffic Controller, but he developed a rare sleep disorder and falling asleep on ''that'' job is not a good idea. He's just split up with his girlfriend and has money from the sale of their house. He has plans for The Stables - and he wouldn't need a reflexologist.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906931909</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jackie French and Bruce Whatley
|title=Diary of a Christmas Wombat
|rating=3.5
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=There is one thing which makes Christmas special for Mothball the Wombat. Presents? No. Fun and games? No. It's carrots. Yes - carrots. Mothball eats, sleeps, scratches, occasionally nibbles a tasty stem of grass, scratches and sleeps some more. The highlight of her day is when she discovers that people leave carrots out for reindeer (for some, obscure reason...) and provided that she is willing to do battle with said reindeer she can munch away to her heart's content. It's when she discovers that a sleigh is a wonderful place for postprandial nap that she is taken on a very exciting journey.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007490712</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Sarah Prineas
|title=Winterling
|rating=3.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Thirteen-year old Fer doesn't feel like she belongs with everyone else. She keeps getting into fights at school, she's teased for her unruly appearance, and her grandmother won't let her go anywhere except school. Then she rescues a mysterious boy called Rook from some wolves, and is taken to a wondrous, but cruel, world where it's always winter and a dangerous queen rules the land. Can Fer save the day?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857384287</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Kate Griffin
|title=Stray Souls
|rating=5
|genre=Fantasy
|summary=Sharon Li has a normal job in a London coffee shop but doesn't feel normal. She's beginning to realise she's a shaman, especially when she is so at one with the city, she vanishes. In order to meet others who'll understand, she starts Magicals Anonymous, a self-help group for the mystically confused coming to terms with their gifts. The meetings come with various beverages, biscuits, a Facebook page and a very good turnout. However all is not herbal tea and crunchy-creams as someone or something seems to be stealing the spirits that make London's soul and another something walks the streets tearing people limb from limb. The city is dying and gradually Sharon realises that Magicals Anonymous are more than just a social group. As odd as it sounds to look at them, the Midnight Mayor wants them to save the capital.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0356500640</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Kat Zhang
|title=What's Left Of Me
|rating=5
|genre=Teens
|summary=Addie and Eva are 15 year olds living somewhere in America. They have a mother, a father and a younger brother. But Addie and Eva are not sisters, or twins, in the usual sense. They are two minds who share one body, and they are in trouble.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007476817</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Adolfo Garcia Ortega
|title=Desolation Island
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=In Madeira, in the first months of the new millennium, a man named Oliver Griffin collars a total stranger to explain his lifetime’s obsession with a South American island called Desolation. Griffin is a narrator as gabby as Melville’s Ishmael but twice as rambling, and what he recounts is less a coherent story than a neverending cabinet of curiosities. This magical realist take on the history of a place involves forbidden love, sixteenth-century automatons, mysterious Balkan castles, war crimes, death at sea, Jewish folklore, the personal lives of French authors and the sexual conduct of famous Spanish explorers, each bizarre strand twisted together by the novel’s own weird internal logic into one astonishing and delightful pattern.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099516934</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Russell James
|title=The Exhibitionists
|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=On one particular London night in 1834 three children start a journey that will mould their futures. Newly born Maddy is abandoned in Mrs Cuthbertson's establishment (a thinly veiled baby farm) causing Maddy to spend years looking for the reasons that led her there. Baby Sam is fished out of the Thames and grows with a burning desire to uncover the truth, shaping his career as a journalist. Meanwhile Hannah is conceived that night by two people fated to live lives that don't coincide, until…
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>178095011X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Mick O'Hare
|title=Will We Ever Speak Dolphin?
|rating=4.5
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=The annual New Scientist book is becoming a bit of a ritual for me, and I hope it is for you too. Each year, they collate the best questions and answers from their Last Word column, and each year I heartily recommend that you pick it up, or give it to someone as a Christmas present. This year is no exception, as we find out whether we'll ever speak dolphin, all the ins and outs of James Bond's vodka martini, and - most importantly - detailed information from a dishwasher expert about how to deal with tinned spinach.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>178125026X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=David Walliams
|title=Ratburger
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=There are lots of similarities between the style and plot of this book and those of Roald Dahl. First of all you have a child who is living in a situation so outrageously terrible that it becomes funny, and for whatever reason, all the other adults around don't seem capable of helping. The villain, while being fairly two-dimensional, has enough disgusting and frightening qualities to make readers shiver in delicious anticipation whenever they appear. And the miseries just keep piling up until it doesn't seem there's any way out.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007453523</amazonuk>
}}
