Category: My Week in Books

On What Cathy Read Next last week

Blog posts

Monday – I published my review of Light Perpetual by Francis Spufford.

Tuesday –  This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic was a freebie on the theme of Love/Valentine’s Day and I chose to share some book covers I’ve fallen in love with recently. I also published my review of The Girl at the Back of the Bus by Suzette D. Harrison as part of the blog tour.

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…as well as have a good nose around to see what books others have plucked from their shelves.  

Thursday – I shared my review of The Diplomat’s Wife by Michael Ridpath.

Saturday – I published my review of Land of the Living by Georgina Harding.

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

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New arrivals

A Book of Secrets by Kate Morrison (eARC, courtesy of Jacaranda Books and Random Things Tours)

A Book of Secrets tells the story of a West African girl hunting for her lost brother through an Elizabethan underworld of spies, plots and secret Catholic printing presses.

Susan Charlewood is taken from Ghana (then known as Guinea) as a baby. Brought to England, she grows up as maidservant in a wealthy Catholic household. Living under a Protestant Queen in late 16th Century England, the family risk imprisonment or death unless they keep their faith hidden. When her mistress dies Susan is married off to a London printer who is deeply involved in the Catholic resistance. She finds herself embroiled in political and religious intrigue, all while trying to find her lost brother and discover the truth about her origins.

The Art of the Assassin by Kevin Sullivan (ARC, courtesy of Allison & Busby)

1899, Glasgow. A man is stabbed to death in a tenement courtyard, and Juan Camaron, photographer-cum-sleuth, is enlisted to assist the police investigation. Perhaps his innovative photographic method can bring to light what the eye may have overlooked.

Yet Juan has problems of his own. His late father’s legacy, a monumental photographic record of the architecture of colonial Cuba, is threatened by a charge of plagiarism from a mysterious senora. Meanwhile, Juan’s hoped-for happiness with his fiancee, Jane, might be over before it’s even begun, and even more so when a visiting professor is murdered and Jane is witnessed fleeing the scene. Juan is torn between finding the killer and finding Jane, but are they one and the same? The truth may be hidden in the photographs.

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On What Cathy Read Next this week

Currently reading

Planned posts

• Book Review: Saving the World – Women: The Twenty-First Century’s Factor For Change by Paola Diana
• Top Ten Tuesday 
• Book Review: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
• Waiting on Wednesday
• Book Review: Madam by Phoebe Wynne
• Book Review: Daughters of Night by Laura Shepherd-Robinson
• Book Review: The Art of the Assassin by Kevin Sullivan

On What Cathy Read Next last week

Blog posts

Monday – I published my review of Dublin’s Girl by Eimear Lawlor as part of the blog tour. 

Tuesday –  This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic was Books Written Before I Was Born. 

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…as well as have a good nose around to see what other bloggers are reading.  Also published my review of When The World Was Ours by Liz Kessler as part of the blog tour.

Thursday – I shared my Five Favourite January Reads.

Saturday – It being the first Saturday of a new month it was time for #6Degrees of Separation and my chain took me from Redhead By the Side of the Road by Anne Tyler to Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell. 

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

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New arrivals

After the Storm (A Giuseppe Bianchi Book 2) by Isabella Muir (ebook, courtesy of the author and Rachel’s Random Resources)

When a violent storm blasts England’s south coast, it’s up to retired Italian detective Giuseppe Bianchi to sift through the devastation and piece together the tragic events left behind in the storm’s wake.

Giuseppe Bianchi’s brief visit to Bexhill-on-Sea has become an extended stay. He is loath to return to his home in Rome because of the haunting images that made him leave in the first place.  During his morning walks along the seafront with Beagle, Max, he meets Edward Swain, who becomes Giuseppe’s walking companion. They form a friendship of sorts and find they have a similar outlook on life.

But the devastating events of a single night lead Giuseppe to question the truth about Edward Swain. Teaming up with young journalist, Christina Rossi – his cousin’s daughter – Giuseppe learns about the brutal reality lurking behind the day-to-day life of families in the local community. And as the story unravels Giuseppe is reminded how anger and revenge can lead to the most dreadful of crimes.

Stella by Takis Würger, translated by Liesl Schillinger (ARC, courtesy of Grove Press and Readers First)

In 1942, Friedrich, an even-keeled but unworldly young man, arrives in Berlin from bucolic Switzerland with dreams of becoming an artist. At a life drawing class, he is hypnotized by the beautiful model, Kristin, who soon becomes his energetic yet enigmatic guide to the bustling and cosmopolitan city. Kristin teaches the naïve Friedrich how to take care of himself in a city filled with danger, and brings him to an underground jazz club where they drink cognac, dance, and kiss. The war feels far away to Friedrich as he falls in love with Kristin, the pair cocooned inside their palatial rooms at the Grand Hotel, where even Champagne and fresh fruit can be obtained thanks to the black market.

But as the months pass, the mood in the city darkens yet further, with the Nazi Party tightening their hold on everyday life of all Berliners, terrorizing anyone who might be disloyal to the Reich. Kristin’s loyalties are unclear, and she is not everything she seems, as his realizes when one frightening day she comes back to Friedrich’s hotel suite in tears, battered and bruised. She tells him an astonishing secret: that her real name is Stella, and that she is Jewish, passing for Aryan. Fritz comforts her, but he soon realizes that Stella’s control of the situation is rapidly slipping out of her grasp, and that the Gestapo have an impossible power over her.

As Friedrich confronts Stella’s unimaginable choices, he finds himself woefully unprepared for the history he is living through. Based in part on a real historical character, Stella sets a tortured love story against the backdrop of wartime Berlin, and powerfully explores questions of naiveté, young love, betrayal, and the horrors of history.

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On What Cathy Read Next this week

Currently reading

Planned posts

• Book Review: Light Perpetual by Francis Spufford
• Blog Tour/Book Review: The Girl at the Back of the Bus by Suzette D. Harrison
• Top Ten Tuesday 
• Book Review: Land of the Living by Georgina Harding
• Waiting on Wednesday
• Book Review: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
• Book Review: Saving the World – Women: The Twenty-First Century’s Factor For Change by Paola Diana