My Week in Books – 22nd March 2020

On What Cathy Read Next last week

Blog posts

Tuesday – This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic was My Spring 2020 TBR. I have a feeling, given the current situation, I have a greater than usual chance of actually getting through my list.

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 published an extract from Second Sister by Chan Ho-Kei as part of the blog tour.

Friday – I shared my thoughts on the audio book of Attica Locke’s latest crime novel Heaven, My Home.

Saturday – Prompted by this week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic (see above), I took a look back at how I got on with My Winter 2019/20 TBR.

Sunday – I shared my review of crime novel Containment by Vanda Symon as part of the blog tour.

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

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New arrivals

Three books, all for blog tours. 

Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell (eARC, courtesy of Tinder Press and Random Things Tours)

Warwickshire in the 1580s. Agnes is a woman as feared as she is sought after for her unusual gifts. She settles with her husband in Henley Street, Stratford, and has three children: a daughter, Susanna, and then twins, Hamnet and Judith. The boy, Hamnet, dies in 1596, aged eleven. Four years or so later, the husband writes a play called Hamlet.

Award-winning author Maggie O’Farrell’s new novel breathes full-blooded life into the story of a loss usually consigned to literary footnotes, and provides an unforgettable vindication of Agnes, a woman intriguingly absent from history.

The Wheelwright’s Daughter by Eleanor Porter (eARC, courtesy of Boldwood Books and Rachel’s Random Resources)

Can she save herself from a witch’s fate?

Martha is a feisty and articulate young woman, the daughter of a wheelwright, living in a Herefordshire villlage in Elizabethan England. Unusually for the time she is educated and so helps at the local school whilst longing to escape the confines and small-mindedness of a community riven by religious bigotry and poverty.

As she is able to read and is well-versed in herbal remedies she is suspected of being a witch. When a landslip occurs – opening up a huge chasm in the centre of the village – she is blamed for it and pursued remorselessly by the villagers.

But can her own wits and the love of local stablehand Jacob save her from a witch’s persecution and death..

A Ration Book Wedding by Jean Fullerton (eARC, courtesy of Corvus and Rachel’s Random Resources)

Because in the darkest days of the Blitz, love is more important than ever.

It’s February 1942 and the Americans have finally joined Britain and its allies. Meanwhile, twenty-three-year-old Francesca Fabrino, like thousands of other women, is doing her bit for the war effort in a factory in East London. But her thoughts are constantly occupied by her unrequited love for Charlie Brogan, who has recently married a woman of questionable reputation, before being shipped out to North Africa with the Eighth Army.

When Francesca starts a new job as an Italian translator for the BBC Overseas Department, she meets handsome Count Leonardo D’Angelo. Just as Francesca has begun to put her hopeless love for Charlie to one side and embrace the affections of this charming and impressive man, Charlie returns from the front, his marriage in ruins and his heart burning for Francesca at last. Could she, a good Catholic girl, countenance an illicit affair with the man she has always longed for? Or should she choose a different, less dangerous path?

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On What Cathy Read Next this week

Currently reading

Planned posts

• Blog Tour/Book Review: The Canary Keeper by Clare Carson
• Top Ten Tuesday: Genre Freebie
• Waiting on Wednesday
• Blog Tour/Book Review: The Walls We Build by Jules Hayes
• Buchan of the Month/Book Review: A Lodge in the Wilderness by John Buchan