'''Read [[Features|new features]].'''
{{newreview
|author=Sheila Rance
|title=Sun Catcher
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=The Bronze Age is an intriguing time, where the fight for survival and the harshness of greed and war co-exist seamlessly with the fabrication of beautiful artefacts and a profound belief in occult mysteries tied to the seasons and the natural world. Tareth, the crippled weaver, earns his keep in the community which rescued him and his daughter from the sea by making and dying brightly coloured cloths to sell at the annual Gather. But he has another, more secret skill. While Maia sleeps he spends his nights, almost against his own will, weaving an extraordinary silken garment for her, one which whispers to her of her far-away home and her dark destiny. For she is no ordinary girl but a princess of the Eagle People and the chosen heir to the sun stone. This stone is a revered and powerful crystal which is needed to channel the sun and use it to warm the land at the end of each winter, and without it famine and cold reign eternally. At the same time, it extracts a terrible price from the Catcher, causing her intense pain and eventually blinding her. In a bid to protect the infant Maia from her fate Tareth stole and hid the stone, and fled with her across the sea.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444006207</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|summary=At the now famous Council of Clermont in November 1095, Pope Urban II responded to calls of distress from the eastern Byzantine Empire by issuing the dramatic call to arms that sparked the First Crusade. But there are at least two sides to every story, especially in history. Western histories of the Crusades have concentrated on that Council and the journeys of Crusaders across Europe: Peter Frankopan's 'The Call from the East' instead draws attention to Emperor Alexios I Komnenus and the plight of his Byzantine Empire.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099555034</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Christopher de Bellaigue
|title=Patriot of Persia: Muhammad Mossadegh and a Very British Coup
|rating=5
|genre=History
|summary=A good historian will take a single important fact and make good use of it to expound his general thesis. De Bellaigue demonstrates this masterfully when he states, 'Between 1876 and 1915 a quarter of the world changed ownership, with a half a dozen European states taking the lion’s share.' Persia, however, during this time was judged to be too poor to be worth occupying. It had, for instance, only a few miles of railway track. Secondly, Russia and Britain both had schemes for control but their mutual animosity gave the Persians room for manoeuvre. The latter were skilled at playing each off against the other and obtaining concessions. However, the conflict sharpened over the control of a critical resource, oil. This was controlled upon the outbreak of the First World War by the major share held in the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, later to become BP, held by the British. It was Muhammad Mossadegh, one of the first liberals of the Middle East was determined that this resource beneath his native land had to belong to his own people.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099540487</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Maggie O'Farrell
|title=Instructions for a Heatwave
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=In London, in July 1976 it hadn't rained for months. Gardens - if you could call them that any longer - were thick with aphids and what water there was, which was to be consumed or used for washing, came from a standpipe. Robert Riordan told his wife, Gretta, that he was going round the corner to buy a newspaper. This was what he did every morning, but this time he didn't come back. The police weren't interested as the closer they looked the more it was obvious that there was an intention to disappear. Gretta turned to her three adult children for help. But how much help would they - could they - be?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755358783</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jude Cook
|title=Byron Easy
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Byron Easy is a 30-year-old poet and product of a failed marriage who, in turn, has a failed marriage of his own. He works in a shop whilst waiting to be discovered as a poet. How did his depression-tinted life reach this point? Once there was hope, love and many good times and, as he sits on a train travelling to his mother's for Christmas with a bag full of money, he reflects and ponders while trying to escape something more tangible and dangerous than the past.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0434021938</amazonuk>
}}
