#WWWWednesday – 11th October 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!

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Currently reading

The Book of Fire by Christy Lefteri (Manilla Press via Readers First)

This morning, I met the man who started the fire. He did something terrible, but then, so have I. I left him. I left him and now he may be dead.

Once upon a time there was a beautiful village that held a million stories of love and loss and peace and war, and it was swallowed up by a fire that blazed up to the sky. The fire ran all the way down to the sea where it met with its reflection.

A family from two nations, England and Greece, live a simple life in a tiny Greek Irini, Tasso and their daughter, lovely, sweet Chara, whose name means joy. Their life goes up in flames in a single day when one man starts a fire out of greed and indifference. Many are killed, homes are destroyed, and the region’s natural beauty wiped out.

In the wake of the fire, Chara bears deep scars across her back and arms. Tasso is frozen in trauma, devastated that he wasn’t there when his family most needed him. And Irini is crippled by guilt at her part in the fate of the man who started the fire.

But this family has survived, and slowly green shoots of hope and renewal will grow from the smouldering ruins of devastation.

The Socialite Spy by Sarah Sigal (eARC, Lume Books)

London, 1936. Socialite and journalist Lady Pamela More pens the popular ‘Agent of Influence’ column, writing wittily about fashion and high society. For her latest piece, she interviews Wallis Simpson, the newly crowned king’s American mistress. That’s when she’s approached by MI5.

Her mission: spy on the royal couple and report on their connections with Nazi Germany.

As she navigates the treacherous world of international espionage, Pamela uses her skills of observation and intuition to infiltrate Wallis’ inner circle. But Europe is unstable, and international spies lurk on every corner.

Does Pamela have what it takes to survive the currents of espionage? Or is she in over her head?

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Recently finished

Wolves of Winter (Essex Dogs #2) by Dan Jones (Head of Zeus)

The Murder Wheel (Joseph Spector #2) by Tom Mead (Head of Zeus)

Sanctuary Motel (Mess Hopkins #1) by Alan Orloff (Level Best Books)

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What Cathy (will) Read Next

In Two Minds (Teifi Valley Coroner #2) by Alis Hawkins (Dome Press)

Harry Probert-Lloyd, a young barrister forced home from London by encroaching blindness, has begun work as the acting coroner of Teifi Valley with solicitor’s clerk John Davies as his assistant.

When a faceless body is found on an isolated beach, Harry must lead the inquest. But his dogged pursuit of the truth begins to ruffle feathers. Especially when he decided to work alongside a local doctor with a dubious reputation and experimental theories considered radical and dangerous.

Refusing to accept easy answers might not only jeopardise Harry’s chance to be elected coroner permnantly but could, it seems implicate his own family in a crime.