whatcathyreadnext

On What Cathy Read Next last week

Monday – I shared my review of The Night Ship by Jess Kidd.

Tuesday – I published my review of Mother of Valor by Gary Corbin.

Wednesday – As always WWW Wednesday is a weekly opportunity to share what I’ve just read, what I’m currently reading and what I plan to read next… and to take a peek at what others are reading.

Thursday – I shared My Five Favourite November 2022 Reads.

Friday – I did a wrap-up of my participation in the #NetGalleyNovember reading challenge.

Saturday – The first Saturday of the month means it’s time for the #6Degrees of Separation meme which saw me forging a chain from The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey to The Buccaneers by Edith Wharton.

New arrivals

A charity bookshop find and an eARC from NetGalley.

The Cross and the Curse by Matthew Harffy (Aria)

AD 634, Anglo-Saxon Britain: warlords battle across Britain to become the first king of the English.

After a stunning victory against the native Waelisc, Beobrand returns a hero. His valor is rewarded with wealth and land by Oswald, king of Northumbria. He retires to his new estate with his bride only to find himself surrounded by enemies old and new.

With treachery and death on all sides, Beobrand fears he will lose all he holds dear. On a quest for revenge and redemption, he accepts the mantle of lord, leading his men into the darkest of nights and the bloodiest of battles.

The Witch in the Well by Camilla Bruce (eARC, Bantam via NetGalley)

Over a hundred years ago, the citizens of F- did something rather bad. And local school teacher Catherine Evans has made writing the definitive account of what happened when Ilsbeth Clark drowned in the well her life’s work.

The town’s people may not want their past raked up, but Catherine is determined to shine a light upon that shameful event. For Ilsbeth was an innocent, after all. She was shunned and ostracised by rumour-mongers and ill-wishers and someone has to speak up for her. And who better than Catherine, who has herself felt the sting and hurt of such whisperings?

But then a childhood friend returns to F -. Elena is a successful author whose book, The Whispers Inside: A Reawakening of the Soul, has earned her a certain celebrity. In search of a new subject, she takes an interest in the story of Ilsbeth Clark and announces her intention to write a book about the long-dead woman, focusing on the natural magic she believes she possessed.

And Elena has everything Catherine has not, like a platform and connections and no one seems to care that Elena’s book will be pure speculation, tainting Ilsbeth’s memory rather than preserving it. Catherine is determined that something must be done and plots to blunt her rival’s pen. However she had not allowed for the fact that the past might not be so dead after all – that something is reaching out from the well, disturbing her reality.

Before summer’s over, one woman will be dead, the other accused of murder . . . but is she really guilty, or are there other forces at work? And who was Ilsbeth Clark, really? An innocent? A witch? Or something else entirely?

On What Cathy Read Next this week

Currently reading

Planned posts

Blog Tour/Book Review: Animal Life by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir
Blog Tour/Book Review: Forest of Foes by Matthew Harffy

background book stack books close up — Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Pexels.com

It’s the first Saturday of the month which means it’s time for 6 Degrees of Separation!

Here’s how it works: a book is chosen as a starting point by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best and linked to six other books to form a chain. Readers and bloggers are invited to join in by creating their own ‘chain’ leading from the selected book.

Kate says: Books can be linked in obvious ways – for example, books by the same authors, from the same era or genre, or books with similar themes or settings. Or, you may choose to link them in more personal or esoteric ways: books you read on the same holiday, books given to you by a particular friend, books that remind you of a particular time in your life, or books you read for an online challenge. Join in by posting your own six degrees chain on your blog and adding the link in the comments section of each month’s post. You can also check out links to posts on Twitter using the hashtag #6Degrees.

This month’s starting book is The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey. For once it’s a book I’ve actually read, even if it was back in 2017. Recently arrived in Alaska, Jack and Mabel build a child out of snow. The next morning, the snow child is gone but they see a young, blonde-haired girl running through the trees. Is she a real girl or has the snow girl come to life?

An air of the supernatural also runs through The Night Ship by Jess Kidd in which connections emerge between the lives of two children, Mayken and Gil, despite their being separated by over three hundred years. The author places Mayken onboard the Batavia which sank in 1629 off the coast of western Australia.

Another book which depicts the events of a maritime disaster is Every Man For Himself by Beryl Bainbridge which tells the story of the sinking of the Titanic in April 1912.

A voyage on another luxury liner, the Queen Mary, features in Three Words for Goodbye by Hazel Gaynor and Heather Webb. Estranged sisters Clara and Madeleine Sommers travel from New York to Europe to fulfill their grandmother’s dying wish by delivering three letters to people she hasn’t seen for forty years.

In Ghosts of the West by Alec Marsh, Sir Percival Harris and Professor Ernest Drabble’s investigation into the theft of artefacts from the British Museum sees them take a voyage across the Atlantic in the company of the cast of a Wild West Show.

The Million Dollar Duchesses by Julie Ferry (which was previously published under the title The Transatlantic Marriage Bureau) chronicles the events of a single year – 1895 – in which a number of transatlantic marriages took place between wealthy American heiresses and not so wealthy but titled British aristocrats.

The Buccaneers by Edith Wharton (unfinished at the time of her death) replays this story in fictional form. Sisters Nan and Jinny St George are members of the new Wall Street monied class but find themselves excluded from upper echelons of New York society. Therefore they are launched by their governess on an unsuspecting British aristocracy who appreciate the money that New York’s nouveaux riches bring.

My chain has taken me on a voyage of discovery. Where did your chain take you?