What Cathy Read Next...

On the blog last week

Tuesday – I went off-piste for this week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic with Books With Birds in the Title. I also shared my review of The Perfect Circle by Claudia Petrucci, translated by Anne Milano Appel.

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.

Saturday – I joined other gardeners for the #SixonSaturday meme, sharing six things happening in my garden this week. I also participated in the monthly #6Degrees of Separation meme forging a book chain from The Correspondent by Virginia Evans to short story ‘The Shout’ by Robert Graves.

New on my shelves

The Knife Maker of Venice by David Gilman (Head of Zeus via NetGalley)

1604. Pirate raiders terrorise the coasts of Europe, seeking slaves to sell in the markets of North Africa.

When headstrong Richard Sheriff and his beloved sister Elizabeth are torn from their Devonshire home by slavers, he is cast into a living nightmare.

With Richard being a talented blacksmith, the pirate captain intends to sell him for a high price. He has other plans for Elizabeth… and once they are separated, Richard has no idea of his sister’s fate.

He is eventually sold into servitude in Venice: glittering, vicious city of secrets, where his talents find him apprenticed to a knife maker. He vows he will never stop looking for his sister – but first he must survive that city of ghosts, where life is cheap, profit is all and escape nigh-on impossible.

Daughters of Naples by Diana Giovinazzo (eARC, Alcove Press)

Naples, 1940. The three Cozzolino sisters, Leta, Marcella, and Bianca, live together in their small home during Mussolini’s domination.

Leta runs the De Rosa dress shop where she takes care of her mother-in-law while her husband is at war. Marcella is an apprentice to a midwife, bringing up the next generation of Italian soldiers, much to the pride of her boyfriend, who is inspired by Mussolini’s rule. But when their youngest sister, Bianca, decides to join the partigiani – the Italian resistance – after her childhood sweetheart is sent to war, familial tensions are brought to light.

The sisters are soon at odds, questioning where they stand in the war effort. When Leta’s old flame, Pasquale, asks if he can use the dress shop to send messages for the partigiani, she refuses. But when Naples is bombed, the sisters are forced to reevaluate their stances and how far they are willing to go for each other and their country. With the threat of Nazism looming over the city after Mussolini is ousted, the Cozzolino sisters will have to confront what they are willing to sacrifice and their loyalties to each other and to their country.

Throw Away the Key by Jason M. Hough (eARC, Crooked Lane Books)

Lars Bergman is no ordinary janitor. He’s the CIA’s locksmith.

Formerly part of the CIA’s infamous Surreptitious Entry Team, Lars is now responsible for every padlock, safe, and secure door across the CIA headquarters. He’s never met a lock he couldn’t pick…except one, which he tried and failed to open during a botched mission in Warsaw at the end of the Cold War.

Cruising toward retirement, Lars’s life is upended when a senior CIA official dies and he’s called upon to open the safe in her office. Inside the safe is a clue only Lars would notice, left by someone he’d worked with in his heyday. As he investigates, Lars soon realizes that his failed Warsaw operation has come back to haunt him and perhaps give him another chance at picking the one lock that’s ever eluded him.

What Lars doesn’t realize is that what the lock is protecting could have dire ramifications for the organization he has spent his whole adult life safekeeping.

A Fatal Love by Louise Treger (Bloomsbury via NetGalley)

It is Easter Sunday in 1955 and a young man lies face-down on the ground covered in blood. A woman, blonde and petite, stands over him with a gun in her hand. This is the story of Ruth Ellis as never told before…

As Ruth awaits her trial in Holloway Prison, she recollects growing up in England during the Second World War and the events that led to the death of her lover, David Blakely.

Meanwhile, Kitty Carrington – the assistant to Ruth’s trial lawyer – tries to forge her own path through the male-dominated legal world of the 1950s and ensure that Ruth receives a fair trial.

Navigating secrets, betrayal and a broken justice system, Ruth and Kitty try to take control of their own lives and narratives. But do we ever really know the full story?

All Cats Are Grey by Susan Barrett (eARC.Bathwick Hill Press)

January, 1942. London is dark – and not just because of the blackout.

The worst of the Blitz may be over, but still the city’s a treacherous place. Buses run without headlights. Bomb rubble lies underfoot. Looters and petty criminals roam the shattered streets. And somewhere in the ruins stalks a serial killer the papers have dubbed The Beast of the Blackout.

As a fear of death, delivered not from the sky but lurking in the bomb sites, grips South London, four unlikely allies are assembled by Civil Defence warden Albert, self-appointed shepherd patrolling his nightly patch. Edwin, Bette and Cat share nothing in common, except one extraordinary secret: each has killed an abuser and got away with it. Now, forged by trauma and driven to deliver retribution to those who hurt and harm, they come together to stop a monster the police have failed to catch.

What follows is a daring hunt through bombed streets and moral grey zones, as the mismatched murderers plot to save the Beast’s next victim, Violet and deliver their own brutal justice. But this is no simple vigilante tale. All brought here by their own harrowing journey, each comes uniquely equipped for the kill: Edwin with his knowledge of poisons, Bette her muscle, Cat her courage, while Albert will weave the net to catch the killer in.

What I’m currently reading

I’m reading a review copy of The River Days of Rosie Crow, Dark is the Morning from my NetGalley Shelf and listening to the audiobook of A Far-Flung Life.

Look out for…

Book Review: A Private Man by Stephanie Sy-Quia
Book Review: Love Lane by Patrick Gale
Book Review: Sanctuary by Tom Gaisford

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 The Correspondent by Virginia Evans. It’s a book I haven’t read but I know it’s an epistolary novel and has been longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Links from each title will take you to my review or the book description on Goodreads.

In Meet Me at the Museum by Anne Youngson, a Danish professor and an English farmer’s wife begin a correspondence about an exhibit in Silkeborg Museum, the mummified corpse of a 5th century man known as the Tollund Man, found preserved in a peat bog.

Things in Jars might be something you’d find in a museum but in this case it’s the title of Jess Kidd’s 2019 novel in which a 19th century female detective searches for a stolen child, entering a world of fanatical anatomists, crooked surgeons and mercenary showmen.

In The Small Museum by Jody Cooksley, newly married Madeleine Brewster makes some unsavoury discoveries about her husband’s collection of anatomical curiosities.

From small museums to small people. In The Smallest Man by Frances Quinn, Nat Davy is taken off to London to become court dwarf to Queen Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I. He makes his first entrance hidden in a pie which could have taken me in a whole different direction.

However sticking with small people, in The Tin Drum by Günter Grass Oskar Matzerath decides at the age of three that he will stop growing. As well as the toy drum that is his constant companion he possesses a piercing scream capable of shattering glass.

‘The Shout’ is a short story by Robert Graves featuring a character with supernatural powers which includes the ability to produce a shout that can kill all those around him. (It was made into a film in 1978 starring Alan Bates, John Hurt and Susannah York.)

It’s turned out to be rather a ghoulish chain this month involving mummified corpses and homicidal maniacs. Where did your chain take you? Somewhere more pleasant, I hope.