#WWWWednesday – 9th September 2020

Hosted by Taking on a World of Words, this meme is all about the three Ws:

• What are you currently reading?
• What did you recently finish reading?
• What do you think you’ll read next?

Why not join in too?  Leave a comment with your link at Taking on a World of Words and then go blog hopping!

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Currently reading

A book from my TBR pile and an ARC

The Artist and the Soldier by Angelle Petta (ebook, courtesy of the author)

Two young men come of age and fall in love against the backdrop of true events in World War II.

It’s 1938. Bastian Fisher and Max Amsel meet at a Nazi-American summer camp, Camp Siegfried. Neither boy has any idea what to do with their blooming, confusing feelings for one another. Before they can begin to understand, the pair is yanked back into reality and forced in opposite directions.

Five years later, during the heart of World War II, Bastian’s American army platoon has landed in Salerno, Italy. Max is in Nazi-occupied Rome where he has negotiated a plan to hire Jews as ‘extras’ in a movie – an elaborate ruse to escape the Nazis. Brought together by circumstance and war Bastian and Max find one another again in Rome.

City of Spies by Mara Timon (ARC, courtesy of Zaffre and Readers First)

LISBON, 1943. After escaping from Nazi-Occupied France, SOE agent Elisabeth de Mornay, codename Cecile, receives new orders: she must infiltrate high society in neutral Lisbon and find out who is leaking key information to the Germans about British troop movements. As Solange Verin, a French widow of independent means, she will be able to meet all the rich Europeans who have gathered in Lisbon to wait out the war. One of them is a traitor and she must find out who before more British servicemen die.

Complications arise when ‘Solange’ comes to the attention of German Abwehr officer, Major Eduard Graf. As they get to know each other, she struggles to keep her lies close to the truth.

But in a city that is filled with spies, how can she tell who is friend, or foe?

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Recently finished

Links from the titles will take you to my review or the book description on Goodreads.

Talland House by Maggie Humm (eARC, courtesy of She Writes Press and Random Things Tours)

Charlotte by Helen Moffett (ARC, courtesy of Zaffre and Readers First)

Adrift by Amin Maalouf (ARC, courtesy of World Editions)

The United States is losing its moral credibility. The European Union is breaking apart. Africa, the Arab world, and the Mediterranean are becoming battlefields for various regional and global powers. Extreme forms of nationalism are on the rise. Thus divided, humanity is unable to address global threats to the environment and our health.

How did we get here and what is yet to come?

World-renowned scholar and bestselling author Amin Maalouf seeks to raise awareness and pursue a new human solidarity. In Adrift, Maalouf traces how civilizations have drifted apart throughout the 20th century, mixing personal narrative and historical analysis to provide a warning signal for the future. (Review to follow)

The Ghost Tree (A Betty Church Mystery Book 3) by M. R. C. Kasasian (eARC, courtesy of Head of Zeus via NetGalley)

Detective Betty Church is forced to revisit ghosts from her past when a skeleton is found buried in the woods.

July, 1914: Sixteen-year-old Etterly, running from something, hides inside the trunk of a tree and disappears. The police search but find no trace. Her family and friends rack their brains, but come up with nothing. And so slowly life returns to normal. The hole in the tree is boarded up and the town of Sackwater moves on. Only Etterly’s best friend, Betty, clings to hope, insisting she can hear her friend crying for help.

June, 1940: A skeleton is discovered buried in the woods. Though most clues have long since decayed, it is wearing an unusual necklace. As soon as Inspector Betty Church sees the evidence she recognises it. The necklace belonged to Etterly. Fearing the worst, Betty is determined to solve this strange case once and for all.

What happened to Etterly? And why has this secret remained buried for so long? (Review to follow)

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What Cathy (will) Read Next

The Girl from the Hermitage by Molly Gartland (eARC, courtesy of Lightning Books and Rachel’s Random Resources)

It is December 1941, and eight-year-old Galina and her friend Katya are caught in the siege of Leningrad, eating soup made of wallpaper, with the occasional luxury of a dead rat. Galina’s artist father Mikhail has been kept away from the front to help save the treasures of the Hermitage. Its cellars could now provide a safe haven, provided Mikhail can navigate the perils of a portrait commission from one of Stalin’s colonels.

Nearly 40 years later, Galina herself is a teacher at the Leningrad Art Institute. What ought to be a celebratory weekend at her forest dacha turns sour when she makes an unwelcome discovery. The painting she embarks upon that day will hold a grim significance for the rest of her life, as the old Soviet Union makes way for the new Russia and Galina’s familiar world changes out of all recognition.