Category: Currently Reading

My Week in Books – 26th September 2021

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MyWeekinBooks

On What Cathy Read Next last week

Blog posts

Monday – I published an extract from The Garfield Conspiracy by Owen Dwyer as part of the blog tour. 

Tuesday –  This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic was Books On My Autumn 2021 To-Read List.

Wednesday – WWW Wednesday is the opportunity to share what I’ve just read, what I’m currently reading and what I plan to read next… and to have a good nose around what others are reading. I also published my review of historical novel Daughters of War by Dinah Jefferies as part of the blog tour.

Thursday – I shared a progress update on the Bookbloggers 2021 Fiction Reading Challenge hosted by Lynne at Fictionophile.  

Friday – I published my review of World War 2 naval adventure Splinter on the Tide by Phillip Parotti.

Saturday – I shared my review of supernatural short story The Tale of the Tailor and the Three Dead Kings by Dan Jones.

Sunday – I published my review of The Improbable Adventures of Miss Emily Soldene by Helen Batten as part of the blog tour.

As always, thanks to everyone who has liked, commented on or shared my blog posts on social media.

New arrivals

Two Storm WoodTwo Storm Wood by Philip Gray (eARC, Harvill Secker via NetGalley)

The gins are silent. The dead are not.

1919. On the desolate battlefields of northern France, the guns of the Great War are silent. Special battalions now face the dangerous task of gathering up the dead for mass burial. Captain Mackenzie, a survivor of the war, cannot yet bring himself to go home. First he must see that his fallen comrades are recovered and laid to rest. His task is upended when a gruesome discovery is made beneath the ruins of a German strongpoint.

Amy Vanneck’s fiancé is one soldier lost amongst many, but she cannot accept that his body may never be found. Defying convention, hardship and impossible odds, she heads to France, determined to discover what became of the man she loved.

It soon becomes clear that what Mackenzie has uncovered is a war crime of inhuman savagery. As the dark truth leaches out, both he and Amy are drawn into the hunt for a psychopath, one for whom the atrocity at Two Storm Wood is not an end, but a beginning.

LilyLily by Rose Tremain (eARC, Chatto & Windus via NetGalley)

Nobody knows yet that she is a murderer…

Abandoned at the gates of a London park one winter’s night in 1850, baby Lily Mortimer is saved by a young police constable and taken to the London Foundling Hospital. Lily is fostered by an affectionate farming family in rural Suffolk, enjoying a brief childhood idyll before she is returned to the Hospital, where she is punished for her rebellious spirit. Released into the harsh world of Victorian London, Lily becomes a favoured employee at Belle Prettywood’s Wig Emporium, but all the while she is hiding a dreadful secret…

Across the years, policeman Sam Trench keeps watch over the young woman he once saved. When Sam meets Lily again, there is an instant attraction between them and Lily is convinced that Sam holds the key to her happiness – but might he also be the one to uncover her crime and so condemn her to death? 

VioletsViolets by Alex Hyde (eARC, Granta via NetGalley)

A young woman, Violet, lies in a hospital bed in the closing days of the war. Her pregnancy is over and she is no longer able to conceive. With her husband deployed to the Pacific Front and her friends caught up in transitory love affairs, she must find a way to put herself back together.

In a small, watchful town in the Welsh valleys, another Violet contemplates the fate she shares with her unborn child. Unwed and unwanted, an overseas posting offers a temporary way out. Plunged into the heat and disorder of Naples, her body begins to reveal the responsibility it carries even as she is drawn into the burnished circle of a charismatic new friend, Maggie.

Between these two Violets, sung into being like a babe in a nursery rhyme: a son. As their lives begin to intertwine, a spellbinding story of women’s courage emerges, suffused with power, lyricism and beauty, from an exhilarating new voice in British fiction.

The Prince of the SkiesThe Prince of the Skies by Antonio Iturbe, translated by Lilit Žekulin Thwaites (eARC, Pan MacMillan)

Writer. Romantic. Pilot. Hero.

All Antoine de Saint Exupéry wants to do is be a pilot. But flying is a dangerous dream and one that sets him at odds with his aristocratic background and the woman he loves. Despite attempts to keep him grounded, Antoine is determined to venture forwards into the unknown. Together with his friends, Jean and Henri, he will pioneer new mail routes across the globe and help change the future of aviation. In the midst of his adventures, Antoine also begins to weave a children’s story that is destined to touch the lives of millions of readers around the world. A story called The Little Prince . . . Fame and fortune may have finally found Antoine, but as the shadow of war begins to threaten Europe, he’s left to wonder whether his greatest adventure is yet to come…

On What Cathy Read Next this week

Currently reading

Planned posts

  • Book Review: House of Beauty by Melba Escobar
  • Top Ten Tuesday
  • Blog Tour/Book Review: The Shanghai Wife by Emma Harcourt
  • WWW Wednesday
  • Book Review: The Redeemed (West Country Trilogy #3) by Tim Pears 
  • My Five Favourite September Reads
  • #6 Degrees of Separation

#WWWWednesday – 22nd September 2021

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WWWWednesdays

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!

Currently reading

Splinter on the TideSplinter on the Tide by Phillip Parotti (Paperback, Casemate Publishing)

Having survived the sinking of his first ship, Ensign Ash Miller USNR is promoted and assigned to command one of the sleek new additions to “the splinter fleet,” a 110-foot wooden submarine chaser armed with only understrength guns and depth charges. His task is to bring the ship swiftly into commission, weld his untried crew into an efficient fighting unit, and take his vessel to sea in order to protect the defenseless Allied merchant vessels which are being maliciously and increasingly sunk by German U-Boats, often within sight of the coast.

Ash rises to the deadly challenge he faces, brings his crew of three officers and 27 men to peak performance, and meets the threats he faces with understated courage and determination, rescuing stricken seamen, destroying Nazi mines, fighting U-Boats, and developing both the tactical sense and command authority that will be the foundation upon which America’s citizen sailors eventually win the war. During rare breaks in operations, Ash cherishes a developing relationship with the spirited Claire Morris who embodies the peaceful ideal for which he has been fighting. 

The Tale of the TailorThe Tale of the Tailor and the Three Dead Kings by Dan Jones (eARC, Head of Zeus)

One winter, in the dark days of King Richard II, a tailor was riding home on the road from Gilling to Ampleforth. It was dank, wet and gloomy; he couldn’t wait to get home and sit in front of a blazing fire. Then, out of nowhere, the tailor is knocked off his horse by a raven, who then transforms into a hideous dog, his mouth writhing with its own innards. The dog issues the tailor with a warning: he must go to a priest and ask for absolution and return to the road, or else there will be consequences…

First recorded in the early fifteenth century by an unknown monk, The Tale of the Tailor and the Three Dead Kings was transcribed from the Latin by the great medievalist M.R. James in 1922. Building on that tradition, now bestselling historian Dan Jones retells this medieval ghost story in crisp and creepy prose.

The RedeemedThe Redeemed (West Country Trilogy #3) by Tim Pears, narrated by Jonathan Keeble (audiobook, Isis Audio)

It is 1916. The world has gone to war, and young Leo Sercombe, hauling coal aboard the HMS Queen Mary, is a long way from home. The wild, unchanging West Country roads of his boyhood seem very far away from life aboard a battlecruiser.

Skimming through those West Country roads on her motorcycle, Lottie Prideaux defies the expectations of her class and sex as she covertly studies to be a vet. In a world torn asunder by war, everything dances in flux: how can the old ways life survive, and how can the future be imagined, in the face of such unimaginable change?

How can Leo, lost and wandering in the strange and brave new world, ever hope to find his way home?

Recently finished

A Single Rose by Muriel Barbery, translated by Alison Anderson

Daughters of War by Dinah Jefferies

The Improbable Adventures of Miss Emily Soldene by Helen Batten 

The Shanghai Wife by Emma Harcourt 

What Cathy (will) Read Next

A Woman Made of SnowA Woman Made of Snow by Elisabeth Gifford

Scotland, 1949: Caroline Gillan and her new husband Alasdair have moved back to Kelly Castle, his dilapidated family estate in the middle of nowhere. Stuck caring for their tiny baby, and trying to find her way with an opinionated mother-in-law, Caroline feels adrift, alone and unwelcome.

But when she is tasked with sorting out the family archives, Caroline discovers a century-old mystery that sparks her back to life. There is one Gillan bride who is completely unknown – no photos exist, no records have been kept – the only thing that is certain is that she had a legitimate child. Alasdair’s grandmother.

As Caroline uncovers a strange story that stretches as far as the Arctic circle, her desire to find the truth turns obsessive. And when a body is found in the grounds of the castle, her hunt becomes more than just a case of curiosity. What happened all those years ago? Who was the bride? And who is the body…?