|summary=Vanessa is just one of many new students at the New York Ballet Academy - but while they're all trying to become the best dancer, she has her own reasons for being there. Three years ago her older sister disappeared from the school, and she's determined to find out what happened to Margaret. Can she find out? And will the two boys taking an interest in her, charismatic Zeppelin and incredibly intense Justin, help or hinder her search?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408829975</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jonathan M Katz
|title=The Big Truck That Went By
|rating=4
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=It was January 12, 2010 and AP correspondent Jonathan M. Katz was preparing to ship out of Haiti after spending the last two and a half years reporting about political instability, riots and disasters. He was preparing for a change of scene, a stint in Afghanistan, concluding that ''It sounded like a good place for a break''. Nature had other plans.
When the earthquake struck, Katz was unexpectedly thrown into the thick of the action. As the only American reporter on the ground at the time of the quake, he felt duty-bound to break news of unfolding events to an oblivious world.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>023034187X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Lucy Robinson
|title=A Passionate Love Affair with a Total Stranger
|rating=4
|genre=Women's Fiction
|summary=Charley is a have-it-all alpha-female. She takes cooking lessons, learns Mandarin, volunteers her time to worthy causes. But she’s not a lady who lunches, trying to fill her days, she’s a high-flying communications manager at a Pharma company who dreams big and works relentlessly to achieve her goals. So, when she’s side-lined by a nasty accident that leaves her leg broken in 3 places, she panics. Not for her are months off sick, lounging on the sofa watching Jeremy Kyle and eating Thorntons straight from the box. She can’t return to work, so she needs a new plan, something to occupy her time and stop her brain going to mush.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0718157664</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jean Ure
|title=Secret Meeting
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Megan loves to read and she especially loves to read books by her very favourite author, Harriet Chance. Over the years she has collected all of Harriet’s books and as her birthday approaches Megan wonders if she will be able to buy a copy of Harriet’s latest novel with her birthday book tokens. Megan’s best friend, Annie, is determined that Megan should have a birthday she will never forget so when she meets Harriet’s daughter in an on-line chat room she decides to arrange the best birthday present ever for her friend. Megan is stunned when Annie reveals that Harriet has agreed to meet Megan and have a special birthday tea with her as part of her birthday celebrations. The two friends plot the secret meeting with care and feel sure that nothing can go wrong but when they finally meet the celebrated author Megan has an uneasy feeling that all is not as it seems. Should she have listened to her mother’s warnings about the dangers of meeting people you chat to on the Internet?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007428030</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Angela Banner
|title=Ant and Bee
|rating=4
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=When you learn to read it has to be fun. You have to master the skill but it mustn't be ''too'' daunting or you're ''not'' going to enjoy it and - worst of all - you might be put off reading for life. It's best if you can share the reading until you get to grips with decoding what's on the page, so if an adult could read most of the words but you read others to which you've already been introduced and which are in a different colour then that is going to be a help. If the words are introduced with a nice big picture and if they appear in alphabetical order, then that's going to be fun, isn't it?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1405266716</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Andrea Cremer
|title=Rift
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
|summary=After a mysterious healer saved the life of Ember, and her mother, when she was just a baby, Ember was promised to the mysterious order Conatus. It's a debt her father is not happy about paying - determined to see his younger daughter married to a suitable husband, he tries everything in his power to stop Ember joining the order of knights.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907411402</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Susannah Cahalan
|title=Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=One day Susannah Cahalan was a bright, outgoing tabloid reporter in New York, with a promising career ahead of her. Within weeks a mysterious illness reduced her to an incoherent shadow of her former self, struggling with basic tasks, and left doctors at one of the world's top medical centres baffled. In ''Brain on Fire'', Cahalan – now in the 'post-recovery' stage of her life – attempts to recapture the memories and events from the her 'month of madness' before diagnosis and cure.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846147395</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Annabel Lyon
|title=The Sweet Girl
|rating=3
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=''The Sweet Girl'' is a novel fictionalising the life of Pythias, the Greek philosopher Aristotle's daughter. The reader looks at the world through Pythias’ eyes, from the age of 7 until her late teens, starting in Athens, and ending up in Chalcis. One gets to delve into the experience of life in the household of a highly esteemed ancient philosopher, and the uncertainty which the main characters are thrown into after the death of King Alexander, making life unsafe for anyone previously affiliated with him – this includes Aristotle, who was once his teacher.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>085789952X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Michael Morpurgo
|title=Cockadoodle-Doo, Mr Sultana!
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=There was once a very rich and very greedy and very fat sultan who kept his people in poverty and everything else for himself. One day when he was out riding (and being very mean to his horse) he lost a diamond button. His people were made to search for it on their hands and knees, but it was found by a little red rooster, who was very cheeky and who forced the sultan into a merry chase and finally a humiliating defeat. It's the stuff of traditional fairy tales given some delightful twists by a master storyteller and hilariously illustrated by Shoo Rayner.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007489986</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Susie Day
|title=Pea's Book of Big Dreams
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=For as long as she can remember, Pea has wanted to be a writer like her mother, the famous Marina Cove. But when she loses confidence in her writing ability, she decides it's time to look for a new career to aspire to. What should she be? An artist, a footballer, a pet therapist, or something else? One thing's for sure... there'll be lots of laughs, love, and even a little lunacy as she finds out. (Especially when little sister Tinkerbell, in her most Stinkerbellish of moods, gets involved!)
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849415234</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Liz Bankes
|title=Irresistible
|rating=2
|genre=Teens
|summary=After finishing her GCSEs, Mia gets a job at Radleigh Castle, working as a waitress. She quickly meets fellow worker Dan, who she likes, but is he the boy for her - or would she be better off with Jamie, son of the owners and all-around arrogant idiot. Incredibly, it's a somewhat harder decision than that last sentence would suggest.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848123388</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=John Townsend
|title=Never Odd Or Even
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Elliot is twelve. He's obsessed with numbers and letters, especially palindromes. He loves to spend his spare time playing about with words or numbers, when he can avoid school bully Victor Criddle, his arch-enemy. But when 'the biggest mystery that struck our school in the history of the world' has to be solved, Elliot's forced to use all of his brain power.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>178127102X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Daniel O'Malley
|title=The Rook (The Checquy Files)
|rating=5
|genre=Fantasy
|summary= A woman wakes up with amnesia surrounded by dead people wearing gloves. In her pocket she discovers a letter from Myfanwy Thomas, the previous inhabiter of her body. Myfanwy tells a strange story of working for 'the Checquy', a paranormal version of MI5 which has been permeated by a web of betrayal and danger. The problem is that Myfanwy never discovered the source before her body changed hands (so to speak). The amnesiac has a clear choice: to continue Myfanwy's investigation or to do a runner. It's her decision but Myfanwy's warning is less than encouraging:
::''Remember they want you dead.''
Something for her to bear in mind along with the fatal, unintended consequences of permitting cheap cheese into the UK.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908800372</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Ali Sparkes
|title=Unleashed 2: Mind Over Matter
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=To recap; this is the second in a series of five stand-alone books, where [[:Category:Ali Sparkes|Ali Sparkes]] drags all the minor characters from her first, Shapeshifter, set of five books out into the daylight. They've all got to be introduced with the intention to make us aware how rare it is that they see the light of day – as Children of Limitless Ability they're normally stuck in a school for the superpowered. But here are Gideon and Luke, the boys who can move things with thoughts alone, on holiday. For their own adventure Sparkes has put them together with prehistoric animals, a girl with a weirdly old-fashioned, almost Dickensian problem, and a dog called Fish. Oh, and some very nasty men with guns…
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0192756079</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Sophie Divry
|title=The Library of Unrequited Love
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Prepare yourself to try a book the likes of which you'd never particularly expect, and prepare yourself to find it becoming a favourite – one that has a snappy story, yet is a monologue, one that concerns what we all love – books, and love, yet one that also intrigues and tempts us with other, very diverse subjects. One morning our narrator turns up to start work early at her geography station in a very large but provincial library, and finds a locked-in regular. Over the next hour and twenty or so (for I read it out loud) she talks to him, barely allowing him a word in edgeways, and what we get is one big, fat lump of a paragraph of her world. Told you to be prepared for the unusual…
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857051415</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=C W Gortner
|title=The Queen's Vow
|rating=4
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=Queen Isabella of Spain will always be regarded as a bit of an enigma. On the one hand, contemporary sources claim that she was wise, kind and gentle, hating any kind of cruelty, including the popular sport of bullfighting. Her rule brought about the unification of Spain and heralded a new era of peace for its people. On the other side of the coin, she and her husband Fernando sanctioned the infamous Spanish Inquisition and the expulsion of all Jews from Spain. Her most vehement critics may also point out that her sponsorship of Columbus brought untold misery to the inhabitants of the Americas, although in her defence, there is no way that she could have predicted the eventual consequences of his pioneering voyage.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444720805</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Dana Stabenow
|title=Dead in the Water (A Kate Shugak Investigation)
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=Kate Shugak is a native Aleut living in an Alaskan National Park and she's currently an investigator for hire. I hesitate to call her a private investigator as so far she's been hired by a government agency, but at just over five feet tall and just over thirty she's the best man when it comes to sorting out what's been going on. This time it's the case of two crew members lost from a ship off the coast of Alaska some months before. Their families want to know what happened to them. That's how Kate came to be signed on as a deckhand on the ''Avilda''. They're crabbing in some of the nastiest and most dangerous conditions you can imagine. And it's not just the weather that's the problem.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908800410</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Owen Martell
|title=Intermission
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=There is a line in Alan Bennett's play 'The History Boys' that I love. It talks about 'subjunctive history', imagining things that might have happened. In ''Intermission'', his first book in English as opposed to Welsh, Owen Martell borrows this idea, taking an event a surmising what may have happened afterwards.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0434022047</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Christopher Edge
|title=Shadows of the Silver Screen
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Kids these days have it pretty good. Not that my generation weren’t lucky – after all, we had first access to [[:Category:J K Rowling|J K Rowling]] – but in 2013 there seems to be a greater choice of good books being published, for a wider range of abilities and interests, than my friends and I ever had access to.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857630520</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Samantha Harvey
|title=All is Song
|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Some books are hard work. I have no problem with that if I feel there’s a reason to persevere; if I can sense that the book is going to deliver a story and the hard work is necessary to enjoy it fully, then I will happily plod along, re-reading sections if necessary, to get the full benefit of the novel.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099566060</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Alan Furst
|title=The Spies of Warsaw
|rating=4.5
|genre=Thrillers
|summary=The reluctant, recently widowed Lieutenant Colonel Jean-Francois Mercier is military attaché to the French embassy in the Warsaw of 1937. Decorated during World War I, Mercier would rather be a field officer than attend endless receptions, parties and debriefing sessions necessary for his unofficial role, handling citizens who are encouraged or coerced to work against the interests of other states. He watches whilst Poland is squeezed between the Nazis on one side and the increasing profile of Stalin and Russia on the other, convinced that war will not only be inevitable, but soon. However, no one will listen to him as he gathers evidence and protects those he can from the onslaught to follow.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780222203</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Simon Rich
|title=The Last Girlfriend on Earth
|rating=5
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=There is more opportunity than ever these days to downsize your library. You can take all those lumpen classics to the charity shop now that they can be downloaded for free onto an e-reader. And with these couple of hundred pages you can also divest yourself of a heck of a lot of fiction about love, for this can easily replace so much you've read at greater length, with less imagination and with much less humour elsewhere. That hyperbole is only partly inspired by the style of the contents, for it really is that good.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184668921X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Amy McLellan
|title=The Orchid Field
|rating=4
|genre=Thrillers
|summary=In London petroleums expert Catherine Davenport ponders whether a change of employer is going to be to her advantage. An ill-advised fling with her boss is causing her embarrassment at work, particularly now that he has a new born child. An offer of a job that would take her out to Mexico to do a report on an off-shore oil field is too good an opportunity to miss. In Mexico Inspector Cortez is languishing in Port Luz in the back of beyond, sent in disgrace from his post in the city. He knows that he’s not - and never has been - corrupt but no one else believes him. In fact it’s seen as normal. Then a body appears on the beach and the local fishermen point out into the gulf and tell him that it came from there. When he looks more closely he realises that they mean the oil rigs.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B00AWELKJY</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Shiba Ryotaro
|title=Clouds above the Hill: A Historical Novel of the Russo-Japanese War, Volume 1
|rating=5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=I've long been a lover of Japan, ever since a brief visit to the country more than a decade ago. Whilst I've read several Japanese crime thrillers in translation, I've never really investigated the history of the country. Now available in English for the first time, Shiba Ryotaro's ''Clouds Above the Hill: A historical Novel of the Russo-Japanese War'' provides just that opportunity.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0415508762</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Catherynne M Valente
|title=The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=September has had various wonderful adventures in Fairyland already, and because she ate Fairy food she knows she will return. But a year has gone by without a word from her friends, and in the meantime she has become a teenager. This changes her, for it is the time when human children grow a heart, and when at last the summons comes, she finds her adventures are far more complex than they were before.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780338449</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Chae Strathie and Ben Cort
|title=Jumblebum
|rating=4
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=Johnny McNess is a young boy whose bedroom is a decided mess! He has clothes lying everywhere, and toys scattered around, food discarded in the strangest of places and it all stinks! Disgusting! But his mum has come in and just warned Johnny about the Jumblebum monster who she feels is sure to be attracted by all this rubbish. Can anything really get Johnny to tidy his room?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1407108018</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Nick Lake
|title=Hostage Three
|rating=5
|genre=Teens
|summary=Amy's family have left on a round-the-world trip. The intention is to mend relationships after what has been a turbulent time. Amy has had a meltdown, messing up her A levels, partied too much and gone a bit too far with the piercings. She can't stand her stepmother and guards a catalogue of resentments against her workaholic, remote father. But the voyage turns into crisis when the family's yacht is kidnapped by Somali pirates. And the family is put under even more strain when a relationship develops between Amy and Farouz, the pirates' translator. As Amy learns more about Farouz and his background, she also discovers a great deal about herself, her family, and about life itself...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B0093K1MXC</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Martyn Beardsley
|title=Murder in Montague Place
|rating=3.5
|genre=Crime (Historical)
|summary=In the middle of the nineteenth century the idea of having a group of policemen who would be known as ''detectives'' was still regarded as rather revolutionary. Some people thought of them as spies, but the beautiful Mrs Eleanora Scambles was convinced that they could help her. She claimed that her husband had been wrongly accused of the murder of Edward Mizzentoft and was likely to hang for a crime which she knew that he hadn't committed. The case was in the hands of Inspector Bucket's colleague who had no doubts about Scambles' guilt, but Bucket and his assistant, Sergeant Gordon attempted to look at the case without breaching professional etiquette.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0719807042</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Matias Nespolo
|title=Seven Ways to Kill a Cat
|rating=3
|genre=Crime
|summary=The Argentinian economy is in meltdown and the streets of Buenos Aires are awash with protestors, but this means little to those struggling to survive in the shanty towns clinging to the city's edge. In the ''barrio'' every day is hard and the choices you make really do mean the difference between life and death. Gringo, a youth on the verge of becoming a man and Chueco, his unreliable friend, both short on options, are drawn to the local gang culture and the seemingly easy money it offers. But, with a turf war brewing, can either of them survive the coming storm?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099552388</amazonuk>
}}
