My Week in Books – 1st November 2020

MyWeekinBooks

On What Cathy Read Next last week

Blog posts

Monday – I published my review of The Exiles by Christina Baker Kline as part of the blog tour.

Tuesday – This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic had a Halloween theme so I offered a bookish choice of Trick or Treat

Wednesday – It wouldn’t be “hump day” without WWW Wednesday, the opportunity to share what I’ve just read, what I’m currently reading and what I plan to read next…as well as have a good nose around to see what other bloggers are reading.

Friday – I published my review of my Buchan of the Month for October, The Free Fishers by John Buchan.

Saturday – I shared an extract from Until We Can Forgive by Rosemary Goodacre as part of the blog tour.

Sunday – I published my review of Immortal by Jessica Duchen as part of the blog tour.

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


New arrivals

9780241411407Dangerous Women by Hope Adams (eARC, courtesy of Michael Joseph via NetGalley)

London, 1841. Two hundred Englishwomen file aboard the RAJAH, the ship that will take them on a three-month voyage to the other side of the world. They’re daughters, sisters, mothers – and convicts. Transported for petty crimes. Except one of their number is a secret killer, fleeing justice.

When a woman is mortally wounded, the hunt is on for the culprit. But who would attack one of their own, and why?

dfw-rb-fl-cover-ebookForgotten Lives (DCI Doug Stirling #2) by Ray Britain (eARC, courtesy of the author) 

A man is murdered with quiet efficiency on his doorstep. A strange emblem left behind suggests a gang killing but when more bodies are found with the same emblem, and one of them a cop, DCI Doug Stirling’s investigation takes a sinister turn. But what linked the victims in life, and now in death?

When more deaths are uncovered, miles away and years ago, all with the same emblem left behind, pressure mounts on Stirling. Is it the work of the same person? If so, why are they killing again, and why here? One thing is clear, the killer is highly skilled, ruthless, and always one step ahead of the investigation. Is someone feeding information to them?

Working in a crippling heatwave with too few investigators, too many questions and not enough answers, when wild media speculation of a vigilante at work sparks copycat attacks, demonstrations for justice and with politicians fearing riots, Stirling needs a result – fast!

Meanwhile, Stirling’s private life is falling apart, not helped when Lena Novak of the National Crime Agency is assigned to his team. But is she all that she seems?

When Stirling closes in on the killer he finds the killer’s trademark inside his home – he is being targeted.

20201031_131640-1The Smallest Man by Frances Quinn (proof copy, courtesy of Simon & Schuster)

My name is Nat Davy. Perhaps you’ve heard of me? There was a time when people up and down the land knew my name, though they only ever knew half the story.

The year of 1625, it was, when a single shilling changed my life. That shilling got me taken off to London, where they hid me in a pie, of all things, so I could be given as a gift to the new queen of England.

They called me the queen’s dwarf, but I was more than that. I was her friend, when she had no one else, and later on, when the people of England turned against their king, it was me who saved her life. When they turned the world upside down, I was there, right at the heart of it, and this is my story.


On What Cathy Read Next this week

Currently reading

Planned posts

  • Blog Tour/Book Review: When the Music Stops by Joe Heap
  • Top Ten Tuesday: Non-Bookish Hobbies 
  • Waiting on Wednesday
  • Blog Tour/Book Review: When I Come Home Again by Caroline Scott
  • Blog Tour/Book Review: The Coral Bride by Roxanne Bouchard
  • Book Review: This Green and Pleasant Land by Ayisha Malik
  • #6Degrees of Separation

#WWWWednesday – 28th October 2020

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

A book from my Henley Literary Festival 2020 reading list (that’s not published until 2021), my Buchan of the Month and a book for a blog tour.

The Push Ashley AudrainThe Push by Ashley Audrain (ARC, courtesy of Michael Joseph)

What if your experience of motherhood was nothing like what you hoped for – but everything you always feared?

‘The women in this family, we’re different…’

The arrival of baby Violet was meant to be the happiest day of my life. It was meant to be a fresh start. But as soon as I held her in my arms I knew something wasn’t right. I have always known that the women in my family aren’t meant to be mothers.

My husband Fox says I’m imagining it. He tells me I’m nothing like my own mother, and that Violet is the sweetest child. But she’s different with me. Something feels very wrong. Is it her? Or is it me? Is she the monster? Or am I?

The Free FishersThe Free Fishers by John Buchan 

When Anthony Lammas, minister of the Kirk and Professor of Logic at St Andrews University, leaves his home town for London on business, he little imagines that within two days he will be deeply entangled in a web of mystery and intrigue. But he’s no ordinary professor. His boyhood allegiance to a brotherhood of deep-sea fishermen is to involve him and handsome ex-pupil, Lord Belses, with a beautiful but dangerous woman. Set in the bleak Yorkshire hamlet of Hungrygrain during the Napoleonic Wars, this is a stirring tale of treason and romance.

ImmortalImmortal by Jessica Duchen (eARC, courtesy of Unbound)

Who was Beethoven’s ‘Immortal Beloved’?

After Ludwig van Beethoven’s death, a love letter in his writing was discovered, addressed only to his ‘Immortal Beloved’. Decades later, Countess Therese Brunsvik claims to have been the composer’s lost love. Yet is she concealing a tragic secret? Who is the one person who deserves to know the truth?

Becoming Beethoven’s pupils in 1799, Therese and her sister Josephine followed his struggles against the onset of deafness, Viennese society’s flamboyance, privilege and hypocrisy and the upheavals of the Napoleonic wars. While Therese sought liberation, Josephine found the odds stacked against even the most unquenchable of passions…


Recently finished

Links from the titles will take you to my reviews

The Wild Silence by Raynor Winn (eARC, courtesy of Michael Joseph via NetGalley)

Endless Skies by Jane Cable (ebook, courtesy of Sapere Books and Rachel’s Random Resources)

The Exiles by Christina Baker Kline (eARC, courtesy of Allison & Busby via NetGalley)


What Cathy (will) Read Next

9780008293208When The Music Stops by Joe Heap (eARC, courtesy of Harper Collins)

This is the story of Ella.
And Robert.
And of all the things they should have said, but never did.

Through seven key moments and seven key people their journey intertwines. From the streets of Glasgow during WW2 to the sex, drugs and rock n’ roll of London in the 60s and beyond, this is a story of love and near misses. Of those who come in to our lives and leave it too soon. And of those who stay with you forever…