#WWWWednesday – 14th May 2025

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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What I’m Currently Reading

Two of the books on the shortlist for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction and a book from my NetGalley shelf

Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon (Fig Tree)

Ancient Sicily. Enter GELON: visionary, dreamer, theatre lover. Enter LAMPO: feckless, jobless, in need of a distraction.

Imprisoned in the quarries of Syracuse, thousands of defeated Athenians hang on by the thinnest of threads. They’re fading in the baking heat, but not everything is lost: they can still recite lines from Greek tragedy when tempted by Lampo and Gelon with goatskins of wine and scraps of food.

And so an idea is born. Because, after all, you can hate the invaders but still love their poetry.

It’s audacious. It might even be dangerous. But like all the best things in life – love, friendship, art itself – it will reveal the very worst, and the very best, of what humans are capable of. What could possibly go wrong?

The Book of Days by Francesca Kay (Swift Press)

Anno Domini 1546. In a manor house in England a young woman feels the walls are closing round her, while her dying husband is obsessed by his vision of a chapel where prayers will be said for his immortal soul.

As the days go by and the chapel takes shape, the outside world starts to intrude. And as the old ways are replaced by the new, the people of the village sense a dangerous freedom.

Traitor’s Legacy by S. J. Parris (Hemlock Press via NetGalley)

England, 1598. Queen Elizabeth’s successor remains unnamed. The country teeters on a knife edge.

When a young heiress is found murdered at the theatre, the Queen’s spymaster Robert Cecil calls upon former agent Sophia de Wolfe to investigate.

A cryptic note found on the dead girl’s body connects to Sophia’s previous life as a spy, and her quest soon takes her into dangerous waters. Powerful enemies emerge, among them the Earl of Essex: the Queen’s favourite courtier and a man of ruthless ambition.

This is a murder that reaches directly into the heart of the court. And Sophia is concealing a deep-buried secret of her own. She must uncover the truth before her past threatens to destroy her.

What I’ve Just Read

My Name is Emilia del Valle by Isabel Allende, trans. by Frances Riddle (Ballantine Books)

In San Francisco 1866, an Irish nun, left pregnant and abandoned following a torrid relationship with a Chilean aristocrat, gives birth to a daughter named Emilia Del Valle. Raised by a loving stepfather, Emilia grows into an independent thinker and a self-sufficient young woman.

To pursue her passion for writing, she is willing to defy societal norms. At the age of sixteen, she begins to publish pulp fiction under a man’s pen name. When these fictional worlds can’t contain her sense of adventure any longer, she turns to journalism, convincing an editor at the San Francisco Examiner to hire her. There she is paired with another talented reporter, Eric Whelan.

As she proves herself, her restlessness returns, until an opportunity arises to cover a brewing civil war in Chile. She seizes it, along with Eric, and while there, begins to uncover the truth about her father and the country that represents her roots. But as the war escalates, Emilia finds herself in danger and at a crossroads, questioning both her identity and her destiny. (Review to follow)

What I’ll Be Reading Next

The Night Swimmer by Simon J Houlton (Hemlock Press via NetGalley)

A haunting literary novel of isolation, addiction, and the search for meaning — set against the grey tides of Hastings Old Town.

William “Bill” Eckersley is an unemployed writer, a night swimmer, and a man drowning in alcohol and self-doubt. Trapped in a crumbling seaside town — and within his own mind — he spirals as he searches for creative inspiration and a way out of his own inertia.

His solitary existence begins to unravel, pulling him into an increasingly disorienting world shaped as much by memory and imagination as reality.