'''Read [[Features|new features]].'''
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{{newreview
|author=Rosalie Warren
|title=Coping With Chloe
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
|summary=Anna and Chloe are twins who share everything. If anything, the terrible accident Chloe suffered has brought them closer. Apart from teacher Miss Tough and new boy Joe, though, everyone seems worried by Anna's references to her twin. They seem to think Chloe's dead – but can't they understand the two girls are just sharing a body? Then Chloe falls for Joe, who Anna likes herself, and Anna is left trying to see how this could ever work…
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907912029</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=David Lodge
|summary=Jenny Hannigan might look like the original good-time party girl but all she really wants out of life is a settled home and family – mainly because that's what she's never had. So when she begins a relationship with Richard Allam she dares to hope that the dreams might be coming true. Richard is young, good-looking and leader of Her Majesty's opposition. He has high hopes of becoming Prime Minister after the next election. Jenny isn't exactly the ideal mate for someone who expects to be the next Prime Minister and as Richard has only recently separated from his wife Jenny is going to take some selling to the country. Enter publicist Dev Tennant whose job is to make the country fall in love with Jenny.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444705148</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=James Patterson and Neil McMahon
|title=Toys
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The novel has a very glamorous opening. We're at President Jacklin's inauguration party and the easy flow of narration gets me seamlessly and effortlessly into the story. There are plenty of comments and observations pertaining to the super-duper hi-tech times of the story, so as early as page 10 Hays and his beautiful wife Lizbeth, who are invitees, are attended to by a well-trained and well-programmed ''iJeeves butler.'' I loved that phrase. It made me smile. The Bakers are an impressive and influential couple. As part of the 'elite' society they expect a flawless, ordered life for themselves and their family. And Patterson then informs us that mere human beings have been relegated to menial work and most of them live pitiful lives and serves them right, apparently. They're despised but their labour is necessary to oil the wheels of the important daily lives of the elites. But the elites have extremely ambitious plans. Can they pull them off?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846057701</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Martin Amis
|title=The Pregnant Widow
|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The bulk of ''The Pregnant Widow'' is set in the summer of 1970 in a beautiful Italian castle where the almost 21 year old Keith Nearing, an English Literature student, has come to spend the summer with his on/off girlfriend Lily and her more physically attractive best friend Scheherazade. Amongst the other attendees are a gay couple, a short Italian suitor to the ample chested Scheherezade who is waiting for the arrival of her boyfriend and, critically for the story the ample bottomed Gloria and eventually her rich boyfriend. If this all sounds like one of those enviously indulgent, middle class, sex filled summer of love stories, then partly it is, but this being Martin Amis, there's a lot more depth and sadness attached to the story. It's an investigation into the changing roles of females and particularly their attitudes to sex, and for Keith in particular, the long term implications of this idyllic vacation are not going to be happy and Amis provides a 'what happened next' to bring each of his characters up to present day.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099488736</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Patricia Briggs
|title=Mercy Thompson: River Marked
|rating=4.5
|genre=Fantasy
|summary=Mercy, the female car mechanic who is half-Native American and half-Caucasian, and can turn into a coyote, has bitten the bullet and married Adam, the Alpha werewolf of the region. But not long into their honeymoon at an idyllic riverside camping ground they have to themselves, she finds something is about to break their peace. Their presence there was, shall we say, requested, for a killer is lurking in the river waters, and only they can see to it.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1841497975</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Louise Welsh
|title=Naming the Bones
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Murray Watson is a Doctor of English Literature embarking on a year-long sabbatical to pursue his long-held dream of writing the definitive biography of Archie Lunan and, as a specifically intended by-product, restore Lunan's poetry to its rightful place in the high canon of Scots creativity.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847672566</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Anita Shreve
|title=Rescue
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=When we meet Peter Webster he's a rookie paramedic who takes an emergency call to help a drunk driver who's been badly injured in a car crash. It was touch and go as to whether or not Sheila Arsenault made it, but she did and afterwards Webster can't get her out of his thoughts. Every instinct tells him that he shouldn't get involved with her – that it'll mean trouble – but perhaps it was the long, shining, dark hair that tipped the balance and Webster is involved in an intense love affair. He's also involved in Sheila's life – for better or for worse.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408700735</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=John Stephens
|title=The Emerald Atlas: The Books of Beginning
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Whisked away from their parents in the dead of night ten years ago, Kate, Michael and Emma have seen more than their fair share of orphanages. Nobody wants to adopt three children together - least of all when the youngest has a strong penchant for using her fists whenever she can - and so when we meet them, they're on their way to yet another. But the orphanage at Cambridge Falls is unlike any other. They're the only children in residence, the housekeeper seems to think they are members of the French royal family, and the town is in the middle of a barren wasteland and is bereft of children.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857530186</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Alan Bradley
|title=A Red Herring Without Mustard
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime (Historical)
|summary=Eleven year old Flavia is the youngest daughter of the de Luce family and she doesn't get on all that well with her elder sisters, Feely (Ophelia) and Daffy (Daphne). It could be rather lonely for her as her father is an eccentric stamp collector and her mother died in the Himalayas some ten years before, but she has her faithful bicycle, Gladys, for company and when she's not doing some sleuthing she's tinkering in her laboratory, where she has enough chemicals and poisons to give the modern-day Health and Safety person a heart attack.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0752897152</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=M J Putney
|title=Dark Mirror
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
|summary=Born around a hundred years after the nobility decided that magic was a tool which should be used only by commoners, when Tory Mansfield discovers she can float in the air she knows she must keep it to herself. Until a terrible accident leaves her powers as the only thing that can save one of her family, and she's forced to reveal herself and face disgrace and humiliation. For an outed mage in London's high society there's only one thing that can be done – a
spell in Lackland Abbey, the school which can cure youngsters of magic. Not everyone at Lackland wants to be cured, though… and Tory needs to decide whether her powers are a curse or a gift.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0312622848</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Aesop and Ayano Imai
|title=The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse
|rating=3.5
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=Aesop's fable of the town mouse and the country mouse is well known. When visiting the country mouse, town mouse declares that he has much nicer food available in his house. So country mouse goes to visit him. The food is very fancy and delicious, but the risks in getting it are much greater, and so the country mouse decides to go back to his quiet, humble home again.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>9881915430</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Sarah Singleton
|title=The Stranger
|rating=4
|genre=Teens
|summary=After the the events of ''The Island'', Otto, Jen and Charlie have gone their separate gap year ways. Otto is in Mumbai but isn't having nearly such a good time as he'd anticipated. Jen has moved on from the retreat and is travelling with Kumar, but is getting itchy feet. She's not sure she wants to take things with Kumar any further. But Charlie is ecstatic in her dream job at the tiger sanctuary. It's challenging - poaching and corruption are big problems standing in the way of the sanctuary's funding - but she loves it.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857070738</amazonuk>
}}