My Week in Books – 29th March 2020 – What Cathy Read Next…

On What Cathy Read Next last week

Blog posts

Monday – I shared my review of The Canary Keeper by Clare Carson as part of the blog tour.

Tuesday – This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic was a freebie on the theme of genre. I chose to focus on books with a positive message, sharing some recommendations for Books To Read In Troubled Times.

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. I also joined the blog tour for dual time historical novel The Walls We Build by Jules Hayes.

Thursday – I directed the spotlight on some books in my TBR pile.

Friday – I shared my thoughts on So Much Life Left Over by Louis de Bernières.

Saturday – I shared details of the book I’m planning to read for The 1920 Club reading challenge.

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

New arrivals

A bumper crop this week including books for blog tours, an audiobook and some NetGalley titles I just couldn’t resist.

The Bell in the Lake by Lars Mytting (e-book, courtesy of Quercus and NetGalley)

Norway, 1880. Young, inquisitive Astrid is unlike the other girls in the secluded village at the end of the valley. She dreams of a life that consists of more than marrying, having children, and eventually dying from hard work in the fields. And then the young pastor Kai Schweigaard comes into her life.

Kai Schweigaard has taken over the small parish of Butangen, with its 700-year-old stave church. The old church is one of the few remaining examples of early Christianisation, with effigies of pagan deities carved into the wooden walls. And the bells – two sister bells forged in the 16th century, in memory of the Siamese twins Halfrid and Gunhild Hekne – are said to have supernatural powers. Legend has it that they ring of their own accord when danger is imminent.

But the pastor wants to tear it down, to replace it with a more modern, larger church. He has already contacted the Kunstakademie in Dresden, which is sending its talented architecture student Gerhard Schönauer to oversee the removal of the church and its reconstruction in the German city. For Astrid this is a provocation too far.

But Astrid falls in love with Gerhard. He is so different from the young men in Butangen: modern, cosmopolitan, elegant, he even smells different. And she must make a choice: for her homeland and the pastor, or for an uncertain future in Germany. Then the bells begin to ring . . .

Hammer To Fall by John Lawton (hardcover, courtesy of Grove Press and Readers First)

It’s London, the swinging sixties, and by rights MI6 spy Joe Wilderness should be having as good a time as James Bond. But alas, in the wake of an embarrassing disaster for MI6, Wilderness has been posted to remote northern Finland in a cultural exchange program to promote Britain abroad.

Bored by his work, with nothing to spy on, Wilderness finds another way to make money: smuggling vodka across the border into the USSR. He strikes a deal with old KGB pal Kostya, who explains to him there is a vodka shortage in the Soviet Union – but there is something fishy about Kostya’s sudden appearance in Finland and intelligence from London points to a connection to cobalt mining in the region, a critical component in the casing of the atomic bomb. Wilderness’s posting is getting more interesting by the minute, but more dangerous too.

Moving from the no-man’s-land of Cold War Finland to the wild days of the Prague Spring, and populated by old friends (including Inspector Troy) and old enemies alike, Hammer to Fall is a gripping tale of deception and skulduggery, of art and politics, a page-turning story of the always riveting life of the British spy.

Shadowplay by Joseph O’Connor (audiobook)

1878. The Lyceum Theatre, London. Three extraordinary people begin their life together. Henry Irving, the Chief, is the volcanic leading man and impresario; Ellen Terry is the most lauded and desired actress of her generation; and ever following along behind them in the shadows is the unremarkable theatre manager, Bram Stoker.

Bram is wrestling with dark demons in a new city, in a new marriage, and with his own literary aspirations. As he walks the London streets at night, streets haunted by the Ripper and the gossip which swirls around his friend Oscar Wilde, he finds new inspiration. But the Chief is determined that nothing will get in the way of his manager’s devotion to the Lyceum and to himself. And both men are enchanted by the beauty and boldness of the elusive Ellen.

Patrol by Fred Majdalany (paperback, courtesy of Imperial War Museum and Random Things Tours)

1943, the North African desert. Major Tim Sheldon, an exhausted and battle-weary infantry officer, is asked to carry out a futile and unexpected patrol mission. He’d been on many patrols, but this was to be the longest and most dangerous of all. Fred Majdalany’s superb novel of the men who fought in the North African campaign puts this so-called minor mission at center stage, as over the course of the day and during the patrol itself, Sheldon looks back on his time as a soldier, considers his future, and contemplates the meaning of fear.

Warriors for the Working Day by Peter Elstob (paperback, courtesy of Imperial War Museum and Random Things Tours)

Based on Peter Elstob’s own wartime experiences, Warriors for the Working Day follows one tank crew as they proceed from the beaches of Normandy into newly liberated Western Europe, evoking the claustrophobia, heat, and intensity of tank warfare in brilliant detail. Published to great acclaim in 1960, the classic novel has been translated into several languages.

This repackaged edition includes a contextual introduction by an Imperial War Museums historian.

Youth & The Bright Medusa by Willa Cather (e-book)

Youth and the Bright Medusa is a collection of short stories by Willa Cather, published in 1920. Several were published in an earlier collection, The Troll Garden.

The collection contains the following stories: “Coming, Aphrodite!” a.k.a. “Coming, Eden Bower!”, “The Diamond Mine”, “A Gold Slipper”, “Scandal”, “Paul’s Case”, “A Wagner Matinee”, “The Sculptor’s Funeral” and “A Death in the Desert”.

Daughters of Night by Laura Shepherd-Robinson (eARC, courtesy of Mantle and NetGalley)

London, 1782. Desperate for her politician husband to return home from France, Caroline ‘Caro’ Corsham is already in a state of anxiety when she finds a well-dressed woman mortally wounded in the bowers of the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens. The Bow Street constables are swift to act, until they discover that the deceased woman was a highly-paid prostitute, at which point they cease to care entirely. But Caro has motives of her own for wanting to see justice done, and so sets out to solve the crime herself. Enlisting the help of thieftaker, Peregrine Child, their inquiry delves into the hidden corners of Georgian society, a world of artifice, deception and secret lives.

But with many gentlemen refusing to speak about their dealings with the dead woman, and Caro’s own reputation under threat, finding the killer will be harder, and more treacherous than she can know . . .