|summary=Having escaped the horrors of Gameland at the dreadful cost of losing Tom, Benny, Nix, Lilah and Chong must journey through the Rot & Ruin without his warrior smarts. They're in search of the jet they saw in the sky months ago. They hope to find hope, some remains of a civilisation lost after First Night, when the zombie virus spread through the population like wildfire. When life as it was ceased to be. When the undead started to walk...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857079719</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Sophie Collins
|title=Tricks and Games To Teach Your Dog: How to Turn Your Much-Loved Pet into an Accomplished Performer
|rating=4
|genre=Pets
|summary=Over a lifetime of owning dogs, from the small and nippy Jack Russells to the large and loving Rhodesian Ridgebacks, I've learned that the more you do with your dog - the more you interact - the better your dog will be. People say that they're not great conversationalists (personally I'd disagree) but they have a tremendous willingness to please and they love to have fun with you. Sophie Collins has put together a collections of tricks and games which you can teach your dog and they range from the ''sit'', ''stay'' and ''down'' of basic training through to quite complicated tasks and agility training. There's something there for every size and every age.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908005696</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Fiona Goble
|title=Fiona Goble's Fairy Tale Knits: 20 Enchanting Characters to Make
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crafts
|summary=It's a lovely idea: knitting patterns for twenty fairy tale characters and a brief story to go with them. There's the pleasure of knitting the characters and then of a child playing with them alongside a story and then being able to use their imaginations to built their own stories. Best of all, it's done without a battery or a computer/games console in sight. It's a winner all round.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908005467</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Lawrence Norfolk
|title=John Saturnall's Feast
|rating=4
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=John Saturnall’s mother is a healer and herbalist. It was all too easy in the 1620’s for women with her skills to come under suspicion of witchcraft. When John and his mother are hounded from their village by religious extremists the Lessoners, they hide in Buccla’s Wood. But as winter takes a grip on the land John’s mother dies. John is taken in to work in the kitchens at Buckland Manor. His progress from scullery boy to cook is graphically recorded alongside his prickly relationship with the daughter of the house, Lucretia. The story takes the couple through the years of the civil war, when life at Buckland comes under threat from the advancing Puritan army.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408805960</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Graeme K Talboys
|title=Stealing Into Winter: being the first adventure from the chronicles of Jeniche of Antar
|rating=4
|genre=Fantasy
|summary=Streetwise young thief Jeniche wakes up to find her prison cell's walls collapsing around her. This is no natural disaster but an invasion by the Occassans, mercilessly brandishing 'moskets', weapons that fire death rendering the native Makamban cudgels futile. Whilst scouring the streets and avoiding the marauding army, Jeniche visits old haunts, checking on her friends and wondering what to do next. This last part is solved for her: a band of Tunduri monks and nuns, including their young God-King himself, want a guide to take them home to Tundur, the land of winter beyond the desert. The journey may be hazardous but nothing's safe anymore, and so, accompanied by the muscular, slow-witted stable owner, Trag and mysterious swordsman Alltud, their journey begins.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>178099625X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=A B Saddlewick
|title=Monstrous Maud: Spooky Sports Day
|rating=3.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Quite how do you make a sports day spooky? Well, in this topsy-turvy world, you don't have to do much. It's nasty enough for vampires to be competing in the daylight, it's not fair on monsters with tails or for mummies with bandages to trip over – and it's just a bit too girly, prim and proper – and a bit too pink, for monsters. Monstrous Maud, of course, isn't a monster, but does go to a special school dedicated to them. How can she hope to train her best friend, who is quite hopeless at any sporting activity, and also manage to keep her monstrous disguise up when the starting gun is fired?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780550731</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Mick Hume
|title=There Is No Such Thing As A Free Press
|rating=5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=I'll confess that the phone-hacking scandal largely left me cold. It seemed to be about people who had courted the media interest complaining that they had caught the media's interest when they didn't intend to do so. Then the hacking of murdered teenager Milly Dowler's phone came to light and disinterest turned to disgust. The Leveson Enquiry became the best show in town if you really wanted to hear about what celebrities had been doing and I moved to wondering what the outcome would be and whether it would prove to be a talking shop and waste of money. It might have remained that way if the Jimmy Savile scandal hadn't dominated the news for a couple of weeks and I really began to wonder if we here at Bookbag Towers were the ''only'' people hadn't known what was going on. Why hadn't this made headlines when other less important news had? I needed to know more about the press. I particularly needed to know if increased regulation - which seems almost inevitable - could produce more Jimmy Saviles.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845403509</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jeanne Willis and Tony Ross
|title=Hippospotamus
|rating=4
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=Poor hippo has found a spot on her bottom. All of her friends have an opinion about what might be wrong with her, ranging from measles to hippopox or perhaps an allergy to cake! They all have suggestions, too, as to how hippo might get rid of the spot and poor hippo tries them all. Will anything ever get rid of that nasty spot?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849394032</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Stephen Roche
|title=Born to Ride: The Autobiography of Stephen Roche
|rating=4
|genre=Sport
|summary=With all the revelations about the systemised doping culture surrounding Lance Armstrong's team in the 1990s, it was interesting to read a story of a time before cycling was embroiled in one drugs scandal after another. Although perhaps not as memorable as Armstrong's career, Stephen Roche's will hold a place in cycling history for 1987, when he became only the second man to win the Tour de France, the Giro D'Italia and the World Championships in the same season. A quarter of a century after that remarkable feat, Roche has produced his autobiography, ''Born to Ride''.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224091905</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=David Wiesner
|title=Tuesday
|rating=5
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=What do you call a man who illustrates books in such a way that you can sit and stare at individual pictures, as much enthralled by their detail as if they were hung in a gallery? A man who has such trust in his readers that he can tell a complex story without a word of text? Or one who can produce this wordless book and ensure that it appeals to children and to adults in equal measure? Well, he's called David Wiesner and he's a genius.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849394474</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Sally Tissington
|title=Crocodile on the Carousel
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Cath Furnish's life has been so marked out by suffering to such an extent that she believes that's what life's about. Despite being married to Bill, raising her granddaughter Amanda and her daughter Marie being TV's 'Happy Lady', Cath is attracted to the biblical book of Job, a co-sufferer in her eyes. She's even bought a grotesque carousel for the back garden incorporating such jolly figures as a crocodile, a bleeding horse and the gates of death because it reminds her of him. As much as Amanda loves her grandmother, she doesn't want to continue living like this and so sets herself a mission. Despite opposition she ''will'' disprove her upbringing and find love and happiness, so help her.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780950101</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Sally Gardner
|title=Operation Bunny - Wings & Co
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Emily Vole very nearly enters this world with a bang; abandoned at Stanstead Airport in a hatbox that is mistaken for an explosive device she only just escapes being blown up by the bomb disposal squad. After this inauspicious beginning things briefly improve for Emily when she is adopted by a wealthy couple, Daisy and Ronald Dashwood, who have no children of their own. However, the couple soon tire of their little girl and following the birth of Daisy Dashwood’s triplet daughters poor Emily is relegated to the role of a servant who is banished to the laundry room and forced to sleep on the ironing board. Life is miserable for Emily until one day she meets her kindly next door neighbour Miss String and her talking cat, Fidget. Through her new friends Emily discovers that there really is such a thing as magic and she soon find herself thrust into an exciting adventure she could never have anticipated.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444003720</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Alex T Smith
|title=Claude in the Country
|rating=5
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=Thank goodness Alex T Smith is doing such a grand job of continuing to feed my Claude habit. Growing up I always had a bit of a thing for Snoopy, but now I do like to steal the Claude stories away from my daughter and curl up to read them myself as they always cheer me up. This time Claude (and Sir Bobblysock, we mustn't forget him!) have a grand adventure in the countryside. So what with chickens and sheep and pigs and cowpats...what could possibly go wrong?!
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444909282</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jennifer Gray
|title=Atticus Claw Breaks the Law
|rating=3.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Meet the new criminal gang in town – three evil, thieving magpies, led by the vicious Jimmy, and Atticus Claw, the greatest cat burglar. Together they are on a mission to rob the entire town of all its jewellery, watches and other shiny valuables. To help him rest up between missions Atticus has decided to live right at the centre of the action – the parents of the children who adopt him are in turns the local police officer, and the woman charged with running a luxurious ''Antiques Roadshow''-styled affair at the local manor house. There will be bling, there will be sardines as a reward for Atticus – and with the animals' inside information on the roadshow, nothing can go wrong – can it?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571284493</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Chris Wooding
|title=The Iron Jackal
|rating=4
|genre=Fantasy
|summary=For once I don't feel like devoting my first paragraph to a teasing plot summary. And while I'm here to judge the book and not the cover, even the British paperback blurb agrees, and gives nothing away in its woolliness. I am duty bound to say this is the third book to feature Darian Frey and the rest of the crew of his flying craft the ''Ketty Jay''. If pressed I will say it starts with him indulging in a further instance of thievery, making a mistake, and then finding just how much is in the science fantasy universe that can possibly get between him and what might repair the damage.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780620853</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Susan Hill
|title=The Man in the Picture
|rating=4
|genre=Horror
|summary=There is a theory regarding ghosts that they are projected recordings from the very brickwork of buildings – that 'stone tapes' can replay scenes or characters of heightened emotion so that people can see the vestige of what went before. What if something a bit more animated than a building – a lively, realistic oil painting – can also convey collected recorded instances of such strong feelings - feelings such as mortal terror? It would be like Dorian Gray's portrait, recording all the horrors, keeping them intact in one place – but would it be the cause or the effect?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846685443</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Susan Hill
|title=Dolly
|rating=4.5
|genre=Horror
|summary=An empty house in the remote fenlands of England, with a man returning to it alone… a lawyer sorting out an inheritance… something buried yet still yielding power… [[:Category:Susan Hill|Susan Hill]]'s name, and the subtitle 'a ghost story' on the cover… We do seem to be in the territory of [[The Woman in Black by Susan Hill|The Woman in Black]], but worry not – this new short genre novel is a very different beast.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846685745</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Frances A Gerard
|title=Anna Amalia, Grand Duchess: Patron of Goethe and Schiller
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=Anna Amalia of Brunswick, a Duchess of Saxe-Weimar Eisenach in the eighteenth century, is scarcely little more than a footnote in European royal history these days. Nevertheless it was mainly through her patronage that the court of Weimar became one of the most artistically renowned of the time, a reputation it never lost throughout the increasingly militaristic times that Germany went through from the age of Bismarck and beyond.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781550166</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Adrian Fort
|title=Nancy: The Story of Lady Astor
|rating=5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Nancy, Lady Astor, the first woman to take her seat as an elected Member of Parliament at Westminster, is one of those characters about whom it is surely impossible for anyone to write a dull biography. A determined character who inspired admiration, respect and exasperation in equal measure from most if not all who had dealings with her, she is well served by this latest in a long line of titles devoted to her.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>022409016X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Catherine Bailey
|title=The Secret Rooms: A True Gothic Mystery
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=Like many an enthralling novel, this book starts with a death from natural causes yet in odd circumstances which initially leaves several questions unanswered. In fact, in spite of the subtitle, and also knowing nothing about the family whose story it tells in part, I had to look through the book thoroughly before reading, to satisfy myself that it actually was non-fiction.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670917559</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Iain M Banks
|title=The Hydrogen Sonata
|rating=4
|genre=Science Fiction
|summary=It's 25 years since Iain M Banks introduced us to the utopian ''Culture'' series of sci fi adventure books and ''The Hydrogen Sonata'' is the 13th in the series. One thing Banks does particularly well is to make his books completely accessible as stand alones, explaining the concept afresh each time without going over old ground for long time fans, of which there are many. In many ways, this is a good introduction for those who have yet to discover the joys of this excellent series because it's far more linear than some. He sometimes leaves even hardened ''Culture'' addicts struggling to work out what's going on with alternative realities before bringing them together, but there's little of that here.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0356501507</amazonuk>
}}
