'''Read [[Features|new features]].'''
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{{newreview
|author=Garth Edwards
|title=Shipwrecked (The Adventures of Titch and Mitch)
|rating=3.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Titch and Mitch are two little pixies who have run away from home. Through a series of misadventures they find themselves shipwrecked on an island, and the story revolves around them making new friends there. They come to the rescue of a strange coloured seagull, they save a trapped fairy, they play dentist for a little dragon mouse and they aid and abet an intelligent turkey who is trying to escape from the turkey farm.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956231500</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Steve Voake
|summary='A Friend of the Family' is an intriguing and enjoyable read. Set in a wealthy New Jersey neighbourhood, it tells the story of two couples who have been friends for many years. Peter Dizinoff and Joe Stern graduated from medical school together and their wives, Elaine and Iris have known each other for just as long. In many ways their privileged lives have been almost perfect – that is until a shocking event occurs and the two couples react in such different ways that it shatters their friendship and threatens their comfortable existence.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099533359</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Emma Thompson
|title=Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Mr and Mrs Green are a happily married couple, living on a farm with their three children, but with the start of the war, Mr Green goes off to fight leaving his wife, Isabel, and the children to fend for themselves. They are struggling to manage the upkeep of the farm and it looks as if Isabel may have to sell. To make matters worse, her estranged sister sends her two very rich, very spoilt children to live on the farm to escape the bombs in London, but they are immediately at loggerheads with their rather wild country cousins. They are fighting wildly, wreaking havoc and destruction and ignoring Isabel's pleas to stop when there is a sudden knock at the door from, of course, the terrifyingly ugly, magical Nanny McPhee.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408805014</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Rob Chapman
|title=Syd Barrett: A Very Irregular Head
|rating=5
|genre=Entertainment
|summary=Roger Barrett, who later acquired the moniker 'Syd' (let's make him Syd from now on) was born in Cambridge in 1946. The fourth of five children, he was the only one to inherit any lasting artistic talent, which came from his father Max. The latter was a senior pathologist, member of the local Philharmonic Society, gifted singer, pianist and watercolour painter.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571238548</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jim Helmore and Karen Wall
|title=Hold On Tight, Stripy Horse!
|rating=4
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=Stripy Horse and his friends live in a bric-a-brac shop. One day, they discover that it's raining ''inside''. Ella, the pink flamingo umbrella, keeps them dry for a bit, but then she's caught by a gust of wind and Stripy Horse is pulled up into the air. Will they discover the source of the rain? Will the shop ever get dry again? And what's the deal with that weathervane parrot that keeps spouting proverbs?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1405248262</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Margaret Forster
|title=Isa and May
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Isamay is a would-be academic and she's writing a thesis about grandmothers in history, inspired, one suspects, by her own grandmothers, Isa and May. Her efforts are constantly diverted by the present needs of her grandmothers and the secrets about their pasts which rise to the surface when she least expects them. There's another complication too. Isamay is in her thirties and has never wanted a child, but reconsiders, despite the fact that her partner, Ian, is adamant that he doesn't want children. The more Isamay delves, the more she realises that there are secrets in Ian's past too.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701184663</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jonathan Shipton and Francesca Chessa
|title=Baby Baby Blah Blah Blah!
|rating=4
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=Emily loves making lists. When her mummy gets pregnant, Emily makes a list of all the good things about a new baby, and another list of all the bad things. Emily's worried that she's going to have to wear babygros to school and eat left-over squish. Her daddy decides to set her straight about what a new baby will mean.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1862337799</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Clare Clark
|title=Savage Lands
|rating=4
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=The novel begins with one of the central characters - Elisabeth - preparing to leave her home in France, and embark upon a ship to take her to America - to meet and marry a complete stranger. At this time there were literally only a few hundred settlers, so potential wives were shipped in along with other necessities! She is very much in two minds about the entire venture - apprehensive, yet more than a little excited at the prospect of her new life. The voyage doesn't begin particularly well for her, as she feels isolated from the other girls. A voracious reader, she has packed her trunk with books as opposed to the more conventional linens and this immediately sets her apart.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846553512</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Gillian Shields and Liz Pichon
|title=Don't Let Aliens Get My Marvellous Mum!
|rating=3.5
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=A young girl imagines how awful life would be if aliens got her marvellous mum. She pictures all manner of ooky space monsters tucking her up in bed, giving her green eggs for breakfast, and scaring all the other parents at school. She (and the readers too) realise just how lucky she is to have such a lovely mum. Aww, bless!
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1862337780</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Kate Long
|title=A Mother's Guide to Cheating
|rating=3.5
|genre=Women's Fiction
|summary=When Jaz discovers a random text message on her husband Ian's phone, it does not take a genius to work out the meaning of a message as personal as 'what did you dream last night?', followed by kisses and a strange woman's name. Nor does it take a genius to figure out the precise nature of what Ian has been up to with the sender. A subsequent confession and proclamation from Ian that 'it meant nothing; she is nothing' does not diminish Jaz's rage and he is dispatched, forthwith, from the family home. As is the norm in these kind of situations, you turn to the people you most trust to help you through and reinforcements in the shape of Jaz's mother, Carol, swiftly arrive.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847377505</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jo Nesbo and Don Bartlett (translator)
|title=The Snowman
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=It's Norway, and it's a snowy and dark November. Women are disappearing, and/or being found horrifically killed. The police have little to go on, but with the help of flashbacks across cases the police could never hope to connect, we can see hints of a clever, but misogynistic man who seems to be the culprit, and on a mission against marital infidelity. But what could be the connection with all those crimes and the American presidential elections? And why - and how - might the police, the victims, and the reader, all come to be so terrified of a good old Scandinavian snowman?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846553482</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Fridrik Erlings
|title=Fish in the Sky
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
|summary='I've got a dad in a shoe box and a mum who's struggling for her life against a famished cannibalistic sewing machine.'
Oh dear! Josh Stephenson is just thirteen. His father is separated from his mother and works away on a ship and so he's a much-missed presence in Josh's life (the shoe box). Money is tight with only one parent at home, so his mother works multiple jobs, some of them at home (the sewing machine). Josh occupies a middle position at school: neither clever nor stupid; neither jock nor geek. He and his best friend Peter are natural history fanatics and they spend a great deal of time watching documentaries on television, or planning their own.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845393422</amazonuk>
}}
