A Review by Jeremy Ashley

Not the best book I have read in 2011 but a nevertheless a good story, well researched and clearly told making it an easy book to read. The author tended to repeat certain aspects of the story trying to remind the reader of detail and presumably to assist the reader through the book (which I found a little trite). I have to admit that I did spot the villain very early on as not many main characters appeared in this book.

Egypt following the death of King Tutankhamun is a fascinating place for me and because of this my interest was held for most of the book. If you start to read this book, stick with the story because after 50 or so pages the story speeds up with an interesting twist and the ending was very good. Overall I did enjoy the book and would read more of Nick Drake in the future.

A Review By Frances

This beautifully presented slim little volume represents some of the work that Carol Ann Duffy has created since being made Poet Laureate.  Her linking theme is bees and two of my favourites are “Virgil’s Bees” which closes with the warning, “bees are the batteries of orchards, gardens, guard them”

And “The Human Bee”, inspired by the dearth of bees in China, which has resulted in cross pollination being done by hand – in spite of the skill of the human bee,  “I could not fly and I made no honey”

We heard Carol Ann Duffy read from this collection at Warwick Words recently, and hearing the stories that were the inspiration to the poems certainly adds to their poignancy and humour.  A particularly clever riposte is “Mrs Schofield’s GCSE” using  examples from Shakespeare of knifings, stabbings and other crimes of violence.  (One of Duffy’s own poems mentioning knife crime was removed from the GCSE syllabus when it was deemed unsuitable for young minds.) “Water” is an ode to her late mother, whose loss Duffy is still mourning, and there is a wonderful rant about the loss of the use of counties in addresses in, “The Counties” where Duffy’s sparky wit is given full reign, “But I want to write to an Essex girl..”

 Another lovely collection to treasure.

A Review By Frances

These stories, collected from around the Commonwealth  share the theme of water.  The introduction by Prince Charles emphasises the importance of handling beautiful books and Jan Pienkowski’s  illustrations – a mix of his iconic silhouette style, sketches and illuminated script – certainly make this a wonderful choice for a special gift.

A Review By Frances

This is a follow up book to “The Chicken Thief” and follows the same formula – a wordless picture book. Three friends, a chicken, a rabbit and a bear setting off by boat for an adventure.  Only the chicken does not really want to go and sits glowering at the back of the little craft.  The trio go through turbulent storms and finally land in a very strange place full of bones, bats, mysterious caves and luminous mushrooms.  The naughty chicken steals a glowing orb and runs away, closely chased by the rabbit and the bear.  What happens next unfolds through these brilliant illustrations with a funny twist at the end.  A delightful book, ideal for sharing from about age three right up to seven or eight year olds.

A Review By Tamsin

If you loved the Twilight trilogy and are hooked on the House of Night series, then please give this old demon a chance: Bram Stoker’s Dracula is the novel that inspired the brood of vampires that now lurk on our bookshelves, and it remains as readable today as it was when it was first published in 1897, when it became an instant best seller. It was published in paperback quickly, and still sells well today. It has inspired many films from the early German cinematic masterpiece Nosferatu, to the wonderfully cheesy Hammer Horror films of the 1970s and the more recent interpretation by Francis Ford Coppola that established Gary Oldman’s vampire as a perfect romantic anti-hero.

The novel is written in the form of short diary extracts and letters that tell of the vampire Count Dracula; the story involves hypnotism, spectral black dogs and is generally replete with occult practices. When estate agent Jonathan Harker visits Transylvania to help his aristocratic client, Count Dracula, in the purchase of property in England, he makes horrifying discoveries in his clients castle. While he is being tormented by ghostly, half-dressed female vampires, disturbing incidents start to develop back in England: an apparently unmanned ship is wrecked on the sands of Whitby and the only survivor is a huge black dog that is seen running off to the Abbey remains, strange puncture marks appear on the neck on a young woman and the inmate of a lunatic asylum raves about the arrival of his ‘Master’.

This rightly deserves its place on our Classics shelves as a masterpiece of Gothic Horror; it probes uncomfortably into questions of sanity, love and death and shines a little light into the darkest corners of human sexuality and imagination.