#WWWWednesday – 19th May 2021

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 Room Made of Leaves by Kate Grenville (audiobook)

It is 1788. Twenty-one-year-old Elizabeth is hungry for life but, as the ward of a Devon clergyman, knows she has few prospects. When proud, scarred soldier John Macarthur promises her the earth one midsummer’s night, she believes him.

But Elizabeth soon realises she has made a terrible mistake. Her new husband is reckless, tormented, driven by some dark rage at the world. He tells her he is to take up a position as lieutenant in a New South Wales penal colony and she has no choice but to go. Sailing for six months to the far side of the globe with a child growing inside her, she arrives to find Sydney Town a brutal, dusty, hungry place of makeshift shelters, failing crops, scheming and rumours.

All her life she has learned to be obliging, to fold herself up small. Now, in the vast landscapes of an unknown continent, Elizabeth has to discover a strength she never imagined and passions she could never express.

Pathfinders by Cecil Lewis (paperback, review copy courtesy of the Imperial War Museum and Random Things Tours)

Over the course of a single night in 1942, the crew members of a Wellington bomber reflect on the paths of their own lives as they embark on a fateful mission deep in the heart of Nazi Germany. Based on his own experience as a World War I fighter ace, Cecil Lewis’s stunning novel examines the life of each man, rendering a moving account of each as not merely a nameless crew member, but as an individual with a life lived: “A life precious to some, or one. . . . These men with dreams and hopes and plans of things to come.”

This new edition of the 1944 classic includes a new introduction from an Imperial War Museums historian that puts the novel in historical context and shines a light on this vital and sometimes contested aspect of Britain’s involvement in World War II.

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Recently finished

Links from the titles will take you to my review.

My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell

The Wolf Den by Elodie Harper

The Scapegoat by Daphne du Maurier

The Hunting Season (Daniel Leicester #2) by Tom Benjamin

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What Cathy (will) Read Next

The Distant Dead (The Detective’s Daughter #8) by Lesley Thomson (eARC, courtesy of Head of Zeus via NetGalley)

London, 1940. A woman lies dead in a bombed-out house. It looks like she’s another tragic casualty of the Blitz, until police pathologist Aleck Northcote proves she was strangled and placed at the scene. But Northcote himself has something to hide. And when his past catches up with him, he too is murdered.

Tewkesbury, 2020. Beneath the vast stone arches of Tewkesbury Abbey, a man has been fatally stabbed. He is Roddy March, an investigative journalist for a podcast series uncovering miscarriages of justice. He was looking into the murder of police pathologist Dr Aleck Northcote – and was certain he had uncovered Northcote’s real killer.

Stella Darnell used to run a detective agency alongside her cleaning business. She’s moved to Tewkesbury to escape from death, not to court it – but Roddy died in her arms, and Stella is someone impelled to root out evil when she finds it. Now she is determined to hunt down Roddy’s killer – but then she finds another body…