What Cathy Read Next...

On the blog last week

Monday – I published my review of Dark is the Morning by Rupert Thomson.

Tuesday – This week’s Top Ten Tuesday was a freebie and I chose the topic Fictional Housekeepers.

Wednesday – As always WWW Wednesday is a weekly opportunity to share what I’ve just read, what I’m currently reading and what I plan to read next… and to take a peek at what others are reading.

Friday – I published my review of A Private Man by Stephanie Sy-Quia.

Saturday – The first Saturday of the month means it’s time for the #6Degrees of Separation meme. My book chain took me from Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy to Flashlight by Susan Choi. Plus I joined other gardeners for #SixonSaturday, sharing six things happening in my garden this week.

New on my shelves

The Housekeeper by Rose Tremain (Vintage via NetGalley)

‘Daphne du Maurier stole my life.’

Mrs Danowski – known as Danni – is the housekeeper of a grand house on the wild coast of Cornwall. When a glamorous young writer, Daphne du Maurier, visits Manderville Hall to research her new novel, she and Danni are drawn into a clandestine and intoxicating affair.

For Danni, it is an all-consuming love; for Daphne a submission to long-suppressed desires. But their fragile secret is vulnerable to prying eyes and destined for heartbreak. When Daphne’s novel launches to triumphant success, Danni is distraught to find herself transformed into a malign and jealous character on the page. She seeks respite from the hurt by telling her own story: The Housekeeper.

Call Me Ishmaelle by Xiaolu Guo (audiobook, Vintage)

In 1843, in a small village on the stormy Kent coast, Ishmaelle is born. She grows up swimming with dolphins and eventually – desperate for a life at sea – she disguises herself as a cabin boy and travels to New York.

As the American Civil War breaks out, Ishmaelle boards a whaling ship led by the obsessive Captain Seneca, a Black free man of heroic stature who is haunted by a tragic past. Here, she finds protectors amidst the bloody male violence of whaling and discovers a mysterious bond between herself and the mythical white whale Moby Dick…

Where are the Kings by Donal Ryan (Doubleday via NetGalley)

Jack is just twelve years old when he rushes down the hill after his mother’s car on his bike, desperate to reach her before she reaches the lake.

What happens next cannot be undone. Jack’s life changes just at the moment he is entering those dizzying years when he will transition from boy to man; when nothing makes sense at the best of times.

Yet Jack is not alone. Enveloped as he is by his extended family – his ferociously loving Nana; Grandad, given to sudden bursts of rage; his earthy uncles Haulie and Theo who want to show him what it means to be a man, and the irascible JJ who resents him deeply. Then there is beautiful aunt Rose, whose mere presence ignites every atom in his changing body.

But how can a boy with so many questions, in a family with so many secrets, understand the person he is becoming? Without his mother to ground him on the earth, will he spin off into the stars?

What I’m currently reading

I’m reading Relative Failures: The Lives of Willie Wilde, Mabel Beardsley and Howard Sturgis which I won in a giveaway, and Goodbye Chinatown (published on 2nd June by World Editions) from my NetGalley Shelf

Look out for…

Book Review: Paper Sisters by Rachel Canwell
Book Review: Flashlight by Susan Choi

It’s the first Saturday of the month which means it’s time for 6 Degrees of Separation.

Here’s how it works: a book is chosen as a starting point by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best and linked to six other books to form a chain. Readers and bloggers are invited to join in by creating their own ‘chain’ leading from the selected book.

Kate says: Books can be linked in obvious ways – for example, books by the same authors, from the same era or genre, or books with similar themes or settings. Or, you may choose to link them in more personal or esoteric ways: books you read on the same holiday, books given to you by a particular friend, books that remind you of a particular time in your life, or books you read for an online challenge. Join in by posting your own #6Degrees chain on your blog and adding the link in the comments section of each month’s post. You can also check out links to posts on X using the hashtag #6Degrees.

This month’s starting book is Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy which was longlisted for this year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction. I read it for my book club but didn’t love it as much as lots of other people, including the Women’s Prize judges, clearly did. Links from each title will take you to my review or the book description on Goodreads.

Wild Dark Shore is set on a remote island which is home to the world’s largest seed bank. As the book opens, the scientists carrying out research have already abandoned the island in the face of rising sea levels. Cold, Cold Heart by Christine Poulson is set in a similarly remote location, an Antarctic research station. Not a good place to be cut off from the outside world in when there’s a killer on the loose.

Another remote place features in The Dark Isle by Clare Carson in which Sam travels to the small island of Hoy in Orkney in an attempt to piece together the facts about her father’s death many years before.

A rather more welcoming island – Alderney, in the Channel Islands – is the setting for A Line to Kill by Anthony Horowitz, the third book in his Hawthorne & Horowitz crime series. A literary festival seems an unlikely location to encounter a cold-blooded killer but you’d be wrong.

Although not set during a literary festival, Devorgilla Days by Kathleen Hart does have as its location Wigtown, the town known as ‘Scotland’s book capital’. As part of her recovery from physical and mental health issues, the author has a daily swim in the sea.

In Swimming Lessons by Claire Fuller, Ingrid hides the letters she writes to her husband about the truth of their marriage inside some of the thousands of books he owns. Having written the final letter she disappears from a Dorset beach.

A mysterious disappearance from a beach takes place in the opening pages of Flashlight by Susan Choi, this time from the coast of Japan. Flashlight is one of the six novels on the shortlist for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2026 bringing me satisfyingly full circle.

My chain has taken me from darkness to light. Where did your chain take you?