Simple Sewing with Lola Nova by Alexandra Smith

This is a good book, you can often measure the worth of a craft book by the quality of the introductory pages and Smith's are well written.  She speaks of her own creative journey and her passion for handmaking is infectious.  Her listing of tools, materials and basic techniques is comprehensive,  well written and easy to follow.

Then there are four sections of craft projects divided up by theme: Boho, Natural, Vintage and Eclectic.  They are themed by colour scheme and the feel of the projects but each of the projects could be made up in a different fabric for a completely different effect.  Projects comprise: bags, children's clothes, a tent (which me and my 9 year old daughter will be making!), storage, mats, artwork, cushions, pencil case and tool roll, a book cover, a tool belt, badges, patches, a toy bunny and all templates for the projects.

Each project has a header page like a recipe showing what you will need and the skill level along with a good picture of the finished article.  Instructions follow, clear well written step by step instructions with full colour photographs.

A delight to look at and I can't wait to try out some of the projects.

The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers

John Bartle and Daniel Murphy are soldiers, no more than boys who signed up from their homes in rural Virginia to fight their country's war in Al Tafar, Iraq in 2005.   Bartle's first person narrative alternates between his experiences in Iraq and the year after his return to Virginia.  Powers' describes Bartle's increasing sense that although he was the only one to return from Iraq in a very real sense both he and Murphy died out there.  Powers speaks with painful beauty of the heat and dust of Iraq, the emotions suppressed as he killed not just men but also women and children, and how the trauma reduced him to a walking ghost on his return, unable to reconnect with those around him, plagued by flashbacks.  Powers' description of the true nature of depression is one of the best I have ever read and this is to my mind as beautiful an elegy for what is lost in war as Sassoon.

The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater

Blue Sargent is the child of a psychic, but not pyschic herself.  In her little American home town of Henrietta Blue's mother Maura and extended family of aunts trade in predictions, keeping Blue close because she amplifies their powers.  As she sits in a churchyard sited on the corpse road scribing the names of those who will die in the coming year for her mother's friend Neeve as they pass through the gates she reflects on the predictions made about her - that the boy she kisses will die - and for the first time she sees one of the soon-to-be dead.

Nearby at the exclusive Ivy League residential school Aglionby Gansey is searching.  There are four so-called Raven boys: Gansey, his roomates Ronan and Noah and local half-scholarship boy Adam.  Gansey is possessed by his search for Owen Glendower (Owain Glyn Dwr), a mythical Welsh king who he believes to be buried on the ley line that runs beneath Henrietta.  The legend tells that the one who finds Glendower and raises him from his enchanted sleep will be greatly rewarded.  But he is not the only one searching, and there is one prepared to do anything to find the sleeping king.

Privilege meets poverty, ordinary teenage concerns meet with magic and the spirit world, and past and present loop together in this well told fast paced story.  The characters are well developed but although well written and gripping I did feel, however, that The Raven Boys petered out at the end and although I wanted to read the next one it didn't have a strong ending.

The Science Magpie by Simon Flynn

This is a great little book that had me learning and laughing from beginning to end, my inner geek is completely sated!  Little tasty bites of science, well written but not too basic, speaking about every aspect of science, period table, asteroid earth collison, prime numbers and logic theory, genetics, etymologies of scientific terms and the lyrics to the CERN rap.  The short sections make it an ideal book to just pick up and set down inbetween the rest of a busy life, and it's a nice size in the hand with an elegant white on black linen cover.

The Obsidian Mirror by Catherine Fisher

Jake Wilde has finally got himself expelled from his exclusive Swiss boarding school. Despite his many efforts this is the one that has succeeded: taking the role of Laertes in Hamlet rather too literally and substituting a sharpened rapier for a blunted one. Like Hamlet he is driven by the desire to avenge the murder of his father, not by an uncle but by his father's best friend Oberon Venn. Venn became Jake's guardian when David Wilde disappeared on his way home from Venn's estate.

Jake's teacher Wharton is sent to accompany Jake to his guardian's estate to ensure he doesn't abscond en route and together they enter Wintercombe Abbey. This is a house of myth and legend, the Venns are said to be half fairy and the woods around the estate to harbour fairies, not the cute creatures of Victorian imagining but wild and dangerous immortals. Enter also a girl called Sarah who comes from another time, pursued by something resembling a man and by an ice wolf. 

Jake's quest for vengeance and the characters come together in a mesmerising story by a writer who is skilled at taking ancient mythology and giving them a fresh slant. She weaves together fairy lore, the legend of Queen Elizabeth's magician Dr Dee, time travel and Shakesperean revenge tragedy into a story which I can't wait for the next installment of.

The Fairytale Princess: Seven Classic Stories from the Enchanted Forest by Su Blackwell and Wendy Jones

Seven classic fairytales featuring princesses are smoothly retold by Wendy Jones: Cinderella; The Frog Prince; The Twelve Dancing Princesses; The Princess and the Pea; Snow White; Rapunzel and Sleeping Beauty. The book itself is large and satisfying, pictures on every page, each fairytale is of an ideal bedtime story length, not too long or too short. But the real star is Su Blackwells beautifully created and photographed paper sculptures. From one book a wave filled lake emerges in the Twelve Dancing Princesses, a castle rises from the opposite page, tiny paper boats float on the lake and delicate trees surround it. Snow White flees from the huntsman through the trees that rise out of another book, from a third a princess lifts a frog from a well. Enchanting

Tigers in Red Weather by Lisa Klaussman

Narrated consecutively by five different characters: the beautiful forceful Nick, her daughter Daisy, downtrodden cousin Helena, handsome husband Nick and Helena's trouble son Ed, Klaussman effortlessly evokes the life of the glamorous top echelon of East Coast American society.  Tiger House is the island holiday home of Nick and her ancestors.  Their yacht bobs at the end of the dock, days are spent playing tennis, nights at the club drinking martinis.  We move back and forth through time as events are narrated from the different character's perspectives, from Nick and Helena's time living together in the late 1940s awaiting their husbands' return from World War II and Hughes' time in wartime Europe, through their first days as full time wives, to the late 1950s with Daisy and Ed as tweens, to the late 1960s, counter culture beginning to percolate even into the island world of pastel dresses and sports blazers, Daisy and Ed now full grown.  Beneath the polished and dazzling surface of this world lie bitter misunderstandings, secret passions and damaging secrets.  This could have dissolved into cliche, but the quality of Klaussman's writing never this, each of her characters speaks with clarity and individuality.  Her descriptions evoke the world of Tiger House in all its summer heat, scents and colours are vivid:  flowers, privilege, perfume.