#WWWWednesday – 8th March 2023

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!

---

Currently reading

The Spy Across the Water by James Naughtie (ARC, Head of Zeus)

Will Flemyng, originally trained as a spy, is now British ambassador to Washington. Meanwhile, his older brother Mungo is recuperating from a heart attack in their beloved Scottish highland family home, and Abel, the youngest of the three, has died mysteriously in America. Abel’s unexplained death sets in motion an unstoppable chain of events, beginning with an unexpected glimpse of a face at his funeral.

Soon Will finds himself on a dangerous journey into his clandestine past, from conflict in Ireland to the long shadows of the Cold War. Will possesses a silky veneer, but he often doesn’t know who to trust, nor who trusts him. Now he finds himself alone once again as duty forces him to risk everything…

Why has the past come back to haunt him now?

The third book in the author’s series of spy thrillers, so far it’s living up to the description as having ‘echoes of le Carré’.

The Romantic by William Boyd (Viking) Longlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2023

Born in 1799, Cashel Greville Ross experiences myriad lives: joyous and devastating, years of luck and unexpected loss.

Moving from County Cork to London, from Waterloo to Zanzibar, Cashel seeks his fortune across continents in war and in peace. He faces a terrible moral choice in a village in Sri Lanka as part of the East Indian Army. He enters the world of the Romantic Poets in Pisa. In Ravenna he meets a woman who will live in his heart for the rest of his days. As he travels the world as a soldier, a farmer, a felon, a writer, a father, a lover, he experiences all the vicissitudes of life and, through the accelerating turbulence of the nineteenth century, he discovers who he truly is.

This is the romance of life itself, and the beating heart of The Romantic.

I’ve heard some great things about this book with people whose opinion I rate tipping it to make the shortlist for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, possibly even win it. 

---

Recently finished

Old God’s Time by Sebastian Barry (Viking)

Recently retired policeman Tom Kettle is settling into the quiet of his new home, a lean-to annexed to a Victorian castle overlooking the Irish Sea. For months he has barely seen a soul, catching only glimpses of his eccentric landlord and a nervous young mother who has moved in next door. Occasionally, fond memories return, of his family, his beloved wife June and their two children, Winnie and Joe.

But when two former colleagues turn up at his door with questions about a decades-old case, one which Tom never quite came to terms with, he finds himself pulled into the darkest currents of his past. (Review to follow but in a word, brilliant)

Three Gifts by Mark A. Radcliffe (époque press)

---

What Cathy (will) Read Next

No Life for a Lady by Hannah Dolby (eARC, Aria via NetGalley) 

It’s remarkable how men react when women break the rules… but the people of Hastings are about to discover, women can be remarkable too…

1896. At 28, Violet’s father is beginning to fear she will never marry. But every suitor he puts forward, she finds an increasingly creative way of rebuffing. Because Violet is a woman who knows her own mind – and her mind is on her mother, who went missing 10 years earlier, vanishing from Hastings Pier without a trace.

Looking for the missing is not a suitable pastime for a lady. But when Violet hires a seaside detective to help, she sets off an unexpected chain of events that will throw her life into chaos.

Can Violet solve the mystery of Lily Hamilton’s vanishing? Or will trying cost her more than she can afford to lose?