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!
What I’m Currently Reading
The Wasp Trap by Mark Edwards (Penguin)
Summer 1999. Will joins five other idealistic graduates working for an eccentric psychology professor. They’re going to launch a website to change online dating forever. No-one expects it to end in tragedy.
Twenty-five years later, Will gets an a dinner party. A chance to see the old gang again. But as soon as he arrives, something doesn’t seem right.
There’s an unexpected guest. The hosts are clearly keeping a secret. And on the way in, Will is sure he heard crying.
Everyone has something to hide about what really happened that summer. But only one of them is willing to kill to find the truth…
Sweep the Cobwebs Off the Sky by Mary O’Donnell (époque press)
As spring evenings lengthen over Kilnavarn House, two sisters, looking after their infirm mother, navigate the fragile territory between past and present.
Memories of a troubled upbringing resurface and the house holds onto the women, as it always has, refusing to let them go until long suppressed truths are spoken.
Sweep the Cobwebs off the Sky is a tender exploration of ageing, memory, place, and the desire for reconciliation.
What I’ve Just Read
Words for Patty Jo by Jill Arlene Culiner (The Wild Rose Press)
What Remains After A Fire: Stories by Kanza Javed (W.W. Norton) Longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize 2026
A haunting, powerful collection of stories spanning modern-day Pakistan and the diaspora in the US, from a sparkling new literary talent.
In eight unflinching and stunningly crafted stories, Kanza Javed unspools the lives of characters desperately trying to forge a path for themselves on the margins of society. An addict teaches his young son to shoot feral dogs on the streets of Lahore. A Christian nurse gets drawn into a plan to trap the ghost of her patient’s former lover. A Pakistani student in a small Appalachian town grapples with a startling act of violence that shatters her illusions of safety and freedom. A lonely wife becomes increasingly obsessed with a cloth worry doll left behind by a previous tenant.
Written with sharp insight and remarkable empathy, these stories reach across divides of class, gender, and religion as Javed deftly examines questions of identity and agency, belonging and loss. What Remains After a Fire is a moving portrayal of fiercely resilient characters who desire more than what their circumstances can offer them—and what these desires ultimately cost them. (Review to follow)
What I’ll Be Reading Next
A Far-flung Life by M. L. Stedman (Doubleday)
Outback Western Australia, 1958. For generations, the MacBrides have lived on a remote sheep station, Meredith Downs. A million arid acres, it’s an ocean of land, where the weather is a capricious god, and time still roams untamed.
One ordinary day, on a lonely road, under the unending blue sky, patriarch Phil MacBride swerves to avoid a kangaroo. In seconds the lives of the entire MacBride family are shattered.
Instead of leaving wounds to heal, Fate comes for them yet again, in a twist of consequences that will cause one of them to lose their life, and another to sacrifice theirs for the sake of an innocent child.
Matt, the youngest MacBride, is plunged into a moral and emotional journey for which there is no map, no guide, as he is forced to choose between love and duty, sacrifice and happiness.
What Cathy Read Next... 