#WWWWednesday – 6th August 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

I’m reading Cairo Gambit on my Kindle, a physical copy of historical crime mystery The Body in the Ice and I’m listening to the audiobook of The Summer House Party (the last two both on my 20 Books of Summer 2025 list).

Cairo Gambit by S. W. Perry (Corvus via NetGalley)

In the heat of the desert, will the trail go cold?

Cairo, 1938. Archie Nevenden is many things: amateur archaeologist; theatre impresario; absent father; potential defector. And now, he’s a missing person.

His daughter, Prim, hasn’t seen him for nearly fifteen years. But she’s never given up on him, and now she’s on her way to Cairo to assist in the search.

Harry Taverner claims to work for the British Council, but Prim knows there’s more to it. He clearly has a theory about what happened to Archie, one she’s not going to like.

As Prim and Harry uncover the layers of Archie’s existence in Cairo, they find themselves drawn in to more than one conspiracy. And soon they’ll discover that Archie may not be the only one in danger…

The Summer House Party by Caro Fraser (Head of Zeus) #20BooksOfSummer25

In the gloriously hot summer of 1936, a group of people meet at a country house party. Within three years, England will be at war, but for now, time stands still.

Dan Ranscombe is clever and good-looking, but he resents the wealth and easy savoir faire of fellow guest, Paul Latimer. Surely a shrewd girl like Meg Slater would see through that, wouldn’t she? And what about Diana, Paul’s beautiful sister, Charles Asher, the Jewish outsider, Madeleine, restless and dissatisfied with her role as children’s nanny? And artist Henry Haddon, their host, no longer young, but secure in his power as a practiced seducer.

As these guests gather, none has any inkling the choices they make will have fateful consequences, lasting through the war and beyond. Or that the first unforeseen event will be a shocking death.

The Body in the Ice by A. K. MacKenzie (Zaffre) #20BooksOfSummer25

Christmas Day, Kent, 1796. On the frozen fields of Romney Marsh stands New Hall; silent, lifeless, deserted. In its grounds lies an unexpected Christmas offering: a corpse, frozen into the ice of a horse pond.

It falls to the Reverend Hardcastle, justice of the peace in St Mary in the Marsh, to investigate. But with the victim’s identity unknown, no murder weapon and no known motive, it seems an impossible task. Working alongside his trusted friend Amelia Chaytor, and new arrival Captain Edward Austen, Hardcastle soon discovers there is more to the mystery than there first appears.

With the arrival of an American family torn apart by war, intent on reclaiming their ancestral home, a French spy returning to the scene of his crimes, ancient loyalties and new vengeance combine to make Hardcastle and Mrs Chaytor’s attempts to discover the secret of New Hall all the more dangerous.

What I’ve Just Read

The Best of Intentions by Caroline Scott (Simon & Schuster)

Lion Hearts (Essex Dogs #3) by Dan Jones (Head of Zeus)

The Mirror & the Light by Hilary Mantel (4th Estate) #20BooksOfSummer25

‘If you cannot speak truth at a beheading, when can you speak it?’

England, May 1536. Anne Boleyn is dead, decapitated in the space of a heartbeat by a hired French executioner. As her remains are bundled into oblivion, Thomas Cromwell breakfasts with the victors. The blacksmith’s son from Putney emerges from the spring’s bloodbath to continue his climb to power and wealth, while his formidable master, Henry VIII, settles to short-lived happiness with his third queen, Jane Seymour.

Cromwell is a man with only his wits to rely on; he has no great family to back him, no private army. Despite rebellion at home, traitors plotting abroad and the threat of invasion testing Henry’s regime to breaking point, Cromwell’s robust imagination sees a new country in the mirror of the future. But can a nation, or a person, shed the past like a skin? Do the dead continually unbury themselves? What will you do, the Spanish ambassador asks Cromwell, when the king turns on you, as sooner or later he turns on everyone close to him? (Review to follow)

What I’ll Be Reading Next

The House at Devil’s Neck by Tom Mead (Head of Zeus via NetGalley)

A former First World War field hospital, the spooky old mansion at Devil’s Neck attracts spirit-seekers from far and wide.

Illusionist-turned-sleuth Joseph Spector knows the house of old. With stories spreading of a phantom soldier making mischief, he joins a party of visitors in search of the truth.

But the house, located on a lonely causeway, is quickly cut off by floods. The stranded visitors are soon being killed off one by one.

With old ally Inspector Flint working on a complex case that has links to Spector’s investigation, the two men must connect the dots before Devil’s Neck claims Spector himself as its next victim.