'''Read [[Features|new features]].'''
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{{newreview
|author=Ann Bonwill and Simon Rickerty
|title=I Don't Want To Be A Pea!
|rating=5
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=Hugo is a hippo and Bella is a bird and they belong to each other because all hippos have birds and all birds have hippos. They are all set for a very special night as they get ready to attend the very exciting Bird-Hippo Fairytale Fancy Dress Party but first they need to decide on what costumes they will wear in order to go as a pair. Hugo's first suggestion is that they should go as the princess and the pea but Bella does not want to be a pea because it is too small and green. She suggests that they go as a mermaid and her rock, but this time Hugo objects to being the rock as it is too grey and blobby. They continue in this way making and rejecting suggestions until it looks as if they have reached a stand-off with neither willing to give in. This situation makes both Bella and Hugo miserable though so at last they agree to a rather surprising and ingenious solution and end up having great fun at the party after all.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0192780174</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
The Monster Billy Dean tells the story of Billy, a boy born into the dystopia of a war-torn town and the product of an illicit liaison between a young woman and her priest. His birth coincided with an apocalyptic bombing and his parents have hidden him away from the ruins and the catastrophe in a single room, both out of shame and in the belief that his coming into the world and surviving at such a violent moment signifies a sacred future.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670919055</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Andrew Kaufman
|title=The Tiny Wife
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=It all begins with a bank robbery. Only this isn't your typical sort of bank robbery since the robber demands not money but instead each person in the bank must give him the item of most sentimental value that they have with them. These range from photographs and a key through to a calculator...and on taking these items he says he is also taking fifty percent of their souls, and it is up to the victims to find the way to get their souls back, or to die trying.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007429258</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Yvvette Edwards
|title=A Cupboard Full of Coats
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''He just knocked, that was all, knocked and the front door and waited, like the fourteen years since I'd killed my mother hadn't happened...''
Jinx is cold and she knows it. She cleans obsessively - a largely pointless task, since there is little mess to clean since her husband and young son, tired of her frigidity, moved out. She cooks beautifully balanced meals that look aesthetic on the plate. But her food offers sustenance, not comfort. In fact, Jinx feels most at home amongst the dead people she works with as a funeral home cosmetologist.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1851688382</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Emma Kennedy
|title=Wilma Tenderfoot and the Case of the Rascal's Revenge
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Wilma Tenderfoot, assistant to the great Detective Theodore P. Goodman, is off to solve another case with the help of her loving dog, Pickle. The future of Copper Island hangs in the balance, and Wilma thinks it's possible that she may just yet discover who her parents really are...make sure you're sitting comfortably, you won't want to put this one down!
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330535234</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=David Enrique Spellman
|title=Far South
|rating=3.5
|genre=Crime
|summary='Far South' is a highly unusual book. It's published as 'crime fiction' but this is really only part of the story. It's also a collection of creative endeavours that combines narrative with web-based content. We are told that 'David Enrique Spellman is the voice for the Far South Project. The Far South Collective is a loosely affiliated group of artists, writers, actors, filmmakers musicians and dancers. He works in close collaboration with Esko Tikanmäki Portogales, a Uruguayan web designer'. While I applaud its ambition in trying to add something more creative to the novel concept, I have slightly more mixed views about the success of this.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846688108</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Claudie Gallay
|title=The Breakers
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The book is in the first person, told by a woman who is a relative newcomer to this tiny village, no more than a cluster of homes and a few basic amenities. The story opens in the lead-up to a horrendous storm. The narrator has seen nothing like it before and is both afraid and excited. The locals take it all in their stride. They're a hardy bunch of disparate individuals and we get to know more them, one by one, as the story develops.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906694710</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Alexander McCall Smith
|title=44 Scotland Street: Bertie Plays the Blues
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=In this seventh outing to Scotland Street we're back with the cast of familiar characters. Matthew and Elspeth have had their triplets and must now face the trials of being new parents, with three times the trouble! Angus and Domenica are attempting to resolve the tricky issue of where they will live once they're married. And what of dear Bertie? Well, he's finally reached a point of having had enough of his mother so, with the help of his friend, he puts himself up for adoption on Ebay!
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846971888</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Marcus Sedgwick
|title=Midwinterblood
|rating=5
|genre=Teens
|summary=Half a century into our future, a journalist called Eric Seven scents a story on a small, isolated island and goes to investigate. Rumours have spread, saying that people there never age, and that there are no children. He has barely set foot on the quay when he sees, and to his surprise falls in love with, a girl called Merle. But almost immediately we, the readers, realise that there is more than one mystery in this strange place. Why are the inhabitants so overwhelming in their welcome to him? What is happening on the other half of the island? And, most worryingly, why is Eric sleeping so much, and forgetting his reason for coming to the island for hours on end? From the very first page there are signs of menace and disorientation, and at last Eric overcomes his torpor and comes to understand that something is badly wrong. He endures terrible nightmares, full of blood and violence, and at the last, just as the islanders drag him to a stone table to kill him, things become clear in his mind. He has been here before. In fact, he has been here many, many times.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780620098</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Kay Woodward
|title=Wuthering Hearts
|rating=3.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=book a real pain, she still wants to be Cathy in the school production - who wouldn't, especially with the utterly gorgeous new boy Robert as leading man? Robert, though, resembles Wuthering Heights' moody Heathcliff in more ways than just being good-looking, and Emily finds it very hard to get to know him properly, even after a development which means they're spending much more time together. Can two people find romance on the Yorkshire moors?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849392994</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Susan Hill
|title=The Woman in Black
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Arthur Kipps is a young solicitor working in a fog-bound London and soon to be married. All looks rosy for Arthur until one day he is called into his boss' office where he is tasked with the affairs of the deceased recluse Alice Drablow. Alice Drablow had lived in the melancholy village of Crythin Gifford in an isolated house on the remote Eel Marsh, a house only accessible by a strange causeway when the tide is out. It is here Arthur must travel to firstly represent his firm at her funeral and then to sift through Mrs Drablow's house to ensure all her legal paperwork is in order.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846685621</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Maggie Stiefvater
|title=Wolves of Mercy Falls: Forever
|rating=5
|genre=Teens
|summary=Spring is in the air at Mercy Falls, and for Sam Roth that means a chance to be reunited with his girlfriend Grace, who has spent the cold winter as a wolf in the forests near the town. Grace's transformations are tied to the temperature – and Sam knows only too well how hard it can be to hold on to your humanity, because he was once a wolf too, before he was cured.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1407121111</amazonuk>
}}
