February 2020 – Page 15 – What Cathy Read Next…

On What Cathy Read Next last week

Blog posts

Monday – I joined the blog tour for The Other You by J. S. Monroe.

Tuesday – This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic was a freebie on the theme of Book Covers and I chose to focus on covers featuring flora and fauna.

Wednesday – WWW Wednesday is the opportunity to share what I’ve just read, what I’m currently reading and what I plan to read next…and have a good nose around to see what other bloggers are reading.

Thursday – I shared my review of Sir Quixote of the Moorsby John Buchan.

Friday – I published my review of Katherine by Anya Seton.

Saturday – I took part in the monthly Six Degrees of Separation meme forging a chain from Fleishman Is In Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner to The American Agent by Jacqueline Winspear.

As always, thanks to everyone who has liked, commented on or shared my blog posts on social media this week.

New arrivals

How To Belong by Sarah Franklin (eARC, courtesy of Zaffre and NetGalley)

In the follow up to her acclaimed novel Shelter, Sarah Franklin returns to the Forest of Dean, this time exploring what it means to belong to a rural community in a rapidly changing world.

Jo grew up in the Forest of Dean, but she was always the one destined to leave for a bigger, brighter future. When her parents retire from their butcher’s shop, she returns to her beloved community to save the family legacy, hoping also to save herself. But things are more complex than the rose-tinted version of life which sustained Jo from afar.

Tessa is a farrier, shoeing horses two miles and half a generation away from Jo, further into the forest. Tessa’s experience of the community couldn’t be more different. Now she too has returned, in flight from a life she could have led, nursing a secret and a past filled with guilt and shame.

Compelled through circumstance to live together, these two women will be forced to confront their sense of identity, and reconsider the meaning of home.

The Sea Gate by Jane Johnson (eARC, courtesy of Head of Zeus and NetGalley)

After the death of her mother, Rebecca begins the sad task of sorting through her empty flat. Starting with the letters piling up on the doormat, she finds an envelope post-marked from Cornwall. In it is a letter that will change her life forever. A desperate plea from her mother’s elderly cousin, Olivia, to help save her beloved home.

Rebecca arrives at Chynalls to find the house crumbling into the ground and Olivia stuck in hospital with no hope of being discharged until her home is made habitable.

Though slightly daunted, Rebecca sets to work. But as she peels back the layers of paint, plaster and grime, she uncovers secrets buried for more than seventy years. Secrets from a time when Olivia was young, the Second World War was raging, and danger and romance lurked round every corner…

A Registry Of My Passage Upon The Earth by Daniel Mason (proof copy courtesy of Mantle Books)

From the bestselling, award-winning author of The Winter Soldier and The Piano Tuner, a collection of interlaced tales of men and women as they face the mysteries and magic of the world

On a fateful flight, a balloonist makes a discovery that changes her life forever. A telegraph operator finds an unexpected companion in the middle of the Amazon. A doctor is beset by seizures, in which he is possessed by a second, perhaps better, version of himself. And in Regency London, a bare-knuckle fighter prepares to face his most fearsome opponent, while a young mother seeks a miraculous cure for her ailing son.

At times funny and irreverent, always moving and deeply urgent, these stories – among them a National Magazine Award and a Pushcart Prize winner – cap a fifteen-year project. From the Nile’s depths to the highest reaches of the atmosphere, from volcano-racked islands to an asylum on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, these are tales of ecstasy, epiphany, and what the New York Times Magazine called the “struggle for survival…hand to hand, word to word,” by “one of the finest prose stylists in American fiction.”

On What Cathy Read Next this week

Currently reading

Planned posts

Top Ten Tuesday: Books In My TBR I Predict Will Be 5* Reads
Waiting on Wednesday
Book Review: Burning Cold by Lisa Lieberman
Blog Tour/Spotlight: Inexpressible Island by Paullina Simons
Blog Tour/Book Review: The Bermondsey Bookshop by Mary Gibson
Book Review: Requiem for a Knave by Laura Carlin
Buchan of the Month: Introducing… John Burnet of Barns

It’s the first Saturday of the month so 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 six degrees 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 Twitter using the hashtag #6Degrees

This month’s starting book is Fleishman Is In Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner, a book I’d never heard of let alone read before seeing it mentioned here. From the description, I’d say it’s not a book that particularly appeals to me either as it’s about a man having some sort of mid-life crisis.

The Ice House by Laura Lee Smith is another book in which a man is facing all sorts of problems including the potential demise of his business (an ice factory), family estrangement and the possibility of serious illness.

The Ice House is the title of a book by Minette Walters but it’s her historical fiction novel, The Last Hours I’m focusing on here. It tells the story of a small Dorset community attempting to protect themselves from the ravages of the Black Death.

Fortune’s Wheel by Carolyn Hughes also concerns the Black Death but, in this case, its aftermath is the focus. In the year 1489, the villagers of Meonbridge struggle to recover from the impact of the epidemic.

Katherine by Anya Seton tells the story of Katherine Swynford who was thought to have been born around 1489. The book recounts her long love affair with the married John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster.

An illicit affair is also the subject of Ike and Kay by James MacManus, namely the relationship between General Eisenhower and his female driver. They first meet in a bomb-ravaged London which is also the setting for the final book in my chain.

In the historical mystery The American Agent by Jacqueline Winspear, the book’s heroine, Maisie Dobbs, has to work with an American counterpart to solve a murder while bombs rain down on London.

Where did your chain take you this month?