My Week in Books – 7th November 2021

On What Cathy Read Next last week

Blog posts

Monday – I shared my Five Favourite October 2021 Reads. 

Tuesday – I published an extract from historical novel Lucifer’s Game by Cristina Loggia as part of the blog tour.

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 to have a good nose around what others are reading.

Thursday – I shared my publication day reviews of crime novel A Memory For Murder by Anne Holt and historical mystery A Stranger from the Storm by William Burton McCormick. 

Friday – I recommended some Favourite Historical Crime Series. 

Saturday – I took part in the monthly #6Degrees of Separation meme. 

Sunday – I published my review of historical novel The Girl from Bletchley Park by Kathleen McGurl as part of the blog tour. 

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

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New arrivals

The Bookseller’s Secret by Michelle Gable (ARC, Harper360UK)

In 1942, London, Nancy Mitford is worried about more than air raids and German spies. Still recovering from a devastating loss, the once sparkling Bright Young Thing is estranged from her husband, her allowance has been cut, and she’s given up her writing career. On top of this, her five beautiful but infamous sisters continue making headlines with their controversial politics.

Eager for distraction and desperate for income, Nancy jumps at the chance to manage the Heywood Hill bookshop while the owner is away at war. Between the shop’s brisk business and the literary salons she hosts for her eccentric friends, Nancy’s life seems on the upswing. But when a mysterious French officer insists that she has a story to tell, Nancy must decide if picking up the pen again and revealing all is worth the price she might be forced to pay.

Eighty years later, Heywood Hill is abuzz with the hunt for a lost wartime manuscript written by Nancy Mitford. For one woman desperately in need of a change, the search will reveal not only a new side to Nancy, but an even more surprising link between the past and present…

The Visitors by Caroline Scott (eARC, Simon & Schuster)

Esme Nicholls is to spend the summer in Cornwall. Her late husband Alec, who died fighting in the war, grew up in Penzance, and she’s hoping to learn more about the man she loved and lost.

While there, she will stay with Gilbert, in his rambling seaside house, where he lives with his former brothers in arms. Esme is fascinated by this community of eccentric artists and former soldiers, and as she gets to know the men and their stories, she begins to feel this summer might be exactly what she needs.

But everything is not as idyllic as it seems – a mysterious new arrival later in the summer will turn Esme’s world upside down, and make her question everything she thought she knew about her life, and the people in it.

The Golden Girls’ Getaway (eARC, Boldwood Books via NetGalley)

It has been a long and lonely year for neighbours Vivienne, Mary and Gwen. All ladies of a ‘certain age’, their lockdown experience has left them feeling isolated and alone. They are in desperate need of a change.

Things start to look up however, when Gwen comes up with a plan to get them out of London by borrowing a motor home. In no time at all the ladies are on the road – away from the city, away from their own four walls, and away from their worries.

The British countryside has never looked more beautiful. As they travel from Stonehenge to Dartmoor, from the Devon and Cornish coasts to the Yorkshire moors, gradually the years fall back, and the three friends start to imagine new futures with no limitations.

And as their journey continues and their friendships deepen, and while the seaside views turn into glorious mountains and moors, Mary, Vivienne and Gwen learn to smile again, to laugh again, and maybe even to love again. Now they can believe that the best is still to come.

A Thousand Paper Birds by Tor Udall 

Nothing is set in stone. A bird can be refolded into a boat, a fish, a kimono, or any other extravagant vision. At other times it aches to return to its original folds. The paper begins to fray. It tires, rebels.

After the sudden death of his wife, Audrey, Jonah sits on a bench in Kew Gardens, trying to reassemble the shattered pieces of his life.

Chloe, shaven-headed and abrasive, finds solace in the origami she meticulously folds. But when she meets Jonah, her carefully constructed defenses threaten to fall.

Milly, a child quick to laugh, freely roams Kew, finding beauty everywhere she goes. But where is her mother and where does she go when the gardens are closed?

Harry’s purpose is to save plants from extinction. Quiet and enigmatic, he longs for something–or someone–who will root him more firmly to the earth.

Audrey links these strangers together. As the mystery of her death unravels, the characters journey through the seasons to learn that stories, like paper, can be refolded and reformed. Haunted by songs and origami birds, this novel is a love letter to a garden and a hymn to lost things.

The Librarian by Salley Vickers 

In 1958, Sylvia Blackwell, fresh from one of the new post-war Library Schools, takes up a job as children’s librarian in a run down library in the market town of East Mole.

Her mission is to fire the enthusiasm of the children of East Mole for reading. But her love affair with the local married GP, and her befriending of his precious daughter, her neighbour’s son and her landlady’s neglected grandchild, ignite the prejudices of the town, threatening her job and the very existence of the library with dramatic consequences for them all.

Ghosts of Spring by Luis Carrasco (eARC, Epoque)

A young girl, anonymous and ignored, sits through a cold, hard west-country winter. Begging for change and searching for a warm place to sleep, life on the streets begins to take its toll and she is forced into change.

Ghosts of Spring explores one girl’s desire to transcend the limits of her environment and forge a new life against all the odds.

Elektra by Jennifer Saint (eARC, Headline via NetGalley)

The House of Atreus is cursed. A bloodline tainted by a generational cycle of violence and vengeance. This is the story of three women, their fates inextricably tied to this curse, and the fickle nature of men and gods.

Clytemnestra – The sister of Helen, wife of Agamemnon – her hopes of averting the curse are dashed when her sister is taken to Troy by the feckless Paris. Her husband raises a great army against them, and determines to win, whatever the cost.

Cassandra – Princess of Troy, and cursed by Apollo to see the future but never to be believed when she speaks of it. She is powerless in her knowledge that the city will fall.

Elektra – The youngest daughter of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon, Elektra is horrified by the bloodletting of her kin. But, can she escape the curse, or is her own destiny also bound by violence?

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On What Cathy Read Next this week

Currently reading

Planned posts

• Book Review: The Vanishing Half  by Brit Bennett
• Book Review: Down A Dark River (Inspector Corravan #1) by Karen Odden
• Blog Tour/Book Review: The Quiet People by Paul Cleave 
• Blog Tour/Book Review: My Secret Sister by Lauren Westwood
• Blog Tour/Book Review: Gods of Rome (Rise of Emperors #3) by Gordon Doherty & Simon Turney
• Book Review: Lily by Rose Tremain (#NetGalley November)