On What Cathy Read Next last week
Monday – I published my review of Piranesi by Susanna Clarke.
Tuesday – My take on this week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic was Books I Read For Book Clubs.
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. Go on, you know you want to.
Thursday – I shared My Top Five September 2024 Reads.
Saturday – I took part in the #6Degrees of Separation meme forging a bookish chain from Long Island by Colm Tóibín to Precipice by Robert Harris.
New arrivals
This week’s bumper book haul is courtesy of the fabulous Oxfam bookshop in Henley-on- Thames. Well, where else are you going to spend time between events at the Literary Festival? Plus a NetGalley approval.
The Queen of Dirt Island by Donal Ryan (Penguin)
The Aylward women are mad about each other, but you wouldn’t always think it. You’d have to know them to know – in spite of what the neighbours might say about raised voices and dramatic scenes – that their house is a place of peace, filled with love, a refuge from the sadness and cruelty of the world.
Their story begins at an end and ends at a beginning. It’s a story of terrible betrayals and fierce loyalties, of isolation and togetherness, of transgression, forgiveness, desire, and love. About all the things family can be and all the things it sometimes isn’t. More than anything, it is an uplifting celebration of fierce, loyal love and the powerful stories that last generations.
Black Mamba Boy by Nadifa Mohamed (Harper Collins)
Aden, Yemen, 1935; a city vibrant, alive, and full of hidden dangers. And home to Jama, a ten year-old boy. But then his mother dies unexpectedly and he finds himself alone in the world.
Jama is forced home to his native Somalia, the land of his nomadic ancestors. War is on the horizon and the fascist Italian forces who control parts of East Africa are preparing for battle. Yet Jama cannot rest until he discovers whether his father, who has been absent from his life since he was a baby, is alive somewhere.
And so begins an epic journey which will take Jama north through Djibouti, war-torn Eritrea and Sudan, to Egypt. And from there, aboard a ship transporting Jewish refugees just released from German concentration camps, across the seas to Britain and freedom.
This story of one boy’s long walk to freedom is also the story of how the Second World War affected Africa and its people; a story of displacement and family.
The Glass Room by Simon Mawer (Little Brown)
Cool. Balanced. Modern. The precisions of science, the wild variance of lust, the catharsis of confession and the fear of failure – these are things that happen in the Glass Room.
High on a Czechoslovak hill, the Landauer House shines as a wonder of steel and glass and onyx built specially for newlyweds Viktor and Liesel Landauer, a Jew married to a gentile. But the radiant honesty of 1930 that the house, with its unique Glass Room, seems to engender quickly tarnishes as the storm clouds of WW2 gather, and eventually the family must flee, accompanied by Viktor’s lover and her child.
But the house’s story is far from over, and as it passes from hand to hand, from Czech to Russian, both the best and the worst of the history of Eastern Europe becomes somehow embodied and perhaps emboldened within the beautiful and austere surfaces and planes so carefully designed, until events become full-circle.
The Betrayal of Thomas True by A. J. West (Orenda)
It is the year 1710, and Thomas True has arrived on old London Bridge with a dangerous secret. One night, lost amongst the squalor of London’s hidden back streets, he finds himself drawn into the outrageous underworld of the molly houses.
Meanwhile, carpenter Gabriel Griffin struggles to hide his double life as Lotty, the molly’s silent guard. When the queen of all ‘he-harlots’, Mother Clap, confides in him about a deadly threat, he realises his friends are facing imminent execution.
To the horror of all mollies, there is a rat amongst them, betraying their secrets to a pair of murderous Justices, hell-bent on punishing sinners with the noose.
Can Gabriel unmask the traitor before it’s too late? Can he save hapless Thomas from peril, and their own impossible love?
The Map of Bones (The Joubert Family Chronicles #4) by Kate Mosse (eARC, Mantle via NetGalley)
Olifantshoek, Southern Africa, 1688. When the violent Cape wind blows from the south-east, they say the voices of the unquiet dead can be heard whispering through the deserted valley. Suzanne Joubert, a Huguenot refugee from war-torn France, is here to walk in her cousin’s footsteps. Louise Reydon-Joubert, the notorious she-captain and pirate commander, landed at the Cape of Good Hope more than sixty years ago, then disappeared from the record as if she had never existed. Suzanne has come to find her – to lay the stories to rest. But all is not as it seems . . .
Franschhoek, Southern Africa, 1862. Nearly one hundred and eighty years after Suzanne’s perilous journey, another intrepid and courageous woman of the Joubert family – Isabelle Lepard – has journeyed to the small frontier town once known as Oliftantshoek in search of her long-lost relations. A journalist and travel writer, intent on putting the women of her family back into the history books, she quickly discovers that the tragedies and crimes of the past are far from over. Isabelle faces a race against time if she is not only going to discover the truth but escape with her life . . .
On What Cathy Read Next this week
Currently reading
Planned posts
- Book Review: Gabriel’s Moon by William Boyd
- Book Review: Shy Creatures by Clare Chambers
- Book Review: Hortobiography by Carol Klein
- Book Review: Meadowlands Dawn by Jo Beall
What Cathy Read Next... 