Category: My Week in Books

On the blog last week

Monday – I published my review of The Newer World by Sebastian Barry.

Tuesday – I went off-piste for this week’s Top Ten Tuesday with a list of Books with Alliterative Titles.

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.

Saturday – I joined other gardeners for #SixonSaturday sharing six things from my garden this week. I also shared my review of V is for Venom by Kathryn Harkup.

New on my shelves

The Marchesa by Sarah Dunant (ARC, Weatherglass Books)

Inside the opulent world of the Italian Renaissance, Isabella d’Este ruled not just by birth-right, but by wit, will, and an unquenchable thirst for power.

In The Marchesa, Isabella tells her own story: a girl transcending a loveless marriage to become both the first and greatest female art collector of her time and its most formidable woman political operator, navigating an unstable Italy of fragile alliances, high art and brutal warfare.

Through her eyes, the vanished splendour of Mantua and the great Renaissance courts are brought back to life, contrasting their surface beauty and artistic brilliance with an underbelly of infighting, treachery and sexual transgression.

What I’m currently reading

I’m reading Doom Painting by A. K. Blakemore from my NetGalley shelf and May We Feed the King by Rebecca Perry, longlisted for the Booker Prize 2026.

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Look out for…

• Book Review: The Housekeeper by Rose Tremain
• Book Review: Farewell to Eden by Sebastian Faulks
• Book Review: Our Noble Selves by Kate Atkinson

On the blog last week

Tuesday – This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic was an Indie freebie. I shared a list of Favourite Independent Publishers.

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.

Friday – I published my review of historical novel A Thought Without Collision by Adrian Duncan.

Saturday – I joined other gardeners for #SixonSaturday sharing six things from my garden this week. I also shared my review of the Booker Prize longlisted Switzy by Emma Cline.

New on my shelves

A Monster in the Ash by Susie Gordon (ARC, Claret Press)

Sadie Shaposnick spent the war running a black-market racket out of her husband Leon’s East End butcher shop. Now Leon has returned from a German POW camp, traumatised and dismayed to find Fascism rising once again, only ten years after Cable Street. With the authorities turning a blind eye, Leon joins a vigilante gang formed by Simka Reubens, a charismatic former street-fighter with ties to Sadie’s late mother Rosy Gold—a local anti-fascist icon who died fighting Franco in Spain. At first, Sadie resists being drawn into the gang, but as the violence escalates she realises that fighting back is the only way to protect her neighbours and hopefully repair her faltering marriage.

Meanwhile, Sadie’s widowed sister Karla has to raise her daughters alone in her grief-stricken in-laws’ mansion. When her late husband’s younger brother Rafi returns from fighting with armed partisans in Mandatory Palestine, Karla must decide how far she’ll go to feel alive again. But when Rafi crosses paths with Sadie, he is drawn into the struggle as well, sending the gang into even greater peril.

With Oswald Mosley gaining power, the only option is resistance, even if it means facing the ghosts of the past while fighting the monsters that are rising from the ashes of the war.

What I’m currently reading

I’m reading The Housekeeper by Rose Tremain from my NetGalley shelf and an ARC of V for Venom: Agatha Christie’s Chemicals of Death by Kathryn Harkup.

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Look out for…

• Book Review: Miss Veal and Miss Ham by Vikki Heywood
• Book Review: Farewell to Eden by Sebastian Faulks
• Book Review: Our Noble Selves by Kate Atkinson
• Book Review: The Newer World by Sebastian Barry