Category: Read

#WWWWednesday – 29th July 2026

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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!

What I’m Currently Reading

The Knife Maker of Venice by David Gilman (Head of Zeus via NetGalley)

1604. As pirates seeking slaves to sell in the markets of North Africa terrorise the coasts of Europe, headstrong Richard Sheriff and his sister Elizabeth are torn from their Devonshire home and thrust into a waking nightmare.

Richard’s skills as a blacksmith see him fetch a high price, but the pirate captain has other plans for Elizabeth and once they are separated, Richard has no idea of his sister’s fate. They must both learn to survive on a deadly voyage into the unknown.

Sold into servitude in Venice: glittering, vicious city of secrets, he is apprenticed to a knife maker. Richard’s talents soon win him renown… but haunted by his sister’s absence, he vows never to stop looking for her, knowing she would do the same for him.

First he must survive that city of ghosts. Will the siblings live to see each other again, or will they join the myriads lost to Venice, where life is cheap, profit is all, and escape nigh-on impossible?

Trials of the Heart by Stephen Wade (Northodox Press)

Will the forbidden fruits of their labours come to light?

As the end of the Second World War nears its close, a tense mood surrounds Leeds. Karel Letnov faces the noose at the Leeds assizes. Accused of a string of suspicious killings in the peaceful village of Forley, a war-ravaged community contemplates its future.

Clara nursed Karel back to health following the evacuations from Dunkirk at the start of hostilities. So when her husband, Tom, is found murdered, rumours of a secret relationship abound. 

Alyse Rose, a singer with Ken Kershaw’s dance band, becomes enraptured by the case when it is revealed that Kershaw and Karel were perhaps more than friends.

What I’ve Just Read

The Draw of the Sea by Wyl Menmuir (Aurum)

Since the earliest stages of human development, the sea has fascinated and entranced us. It feeds us, sustaining communities and providing livelihoods, but it also holds immense destructive power which can take all those away in an instant.

It connects us to far away places, offering the promise of new lands and voyages of discovery, but also shapes our borders, carving divisions between landmasses and eroding the very ground beneath our feet.

In this beautifully-written meditation on what it is that draws us to the waters’ edge, author Wyl Menmuir tells the stories of the people whose lives revolve around the sea in the Cornish community where he lives. (Review to follow)

Fair Play by Louise Hegarty (Picador)

Abigail’s brother Benjamin is dead, and her world has literally been split in two. In one reality Abigail finds herself back at work, navigating the frustrations of well-wishers and busybodies, desperately wondering why her brother has gone. In the other an eminent detective arrives determined to find Benjamin’s killer among his circle of close friends.

Is this a murder mystery or something more? What secrets do Benjamin’s friends hold? And can Abigail, immersed in her grief, find out the truth of her beloved brother’s life? (Review to follow)

Little Spark by Jess Kidd (Canongate)

A secret cannot stay locked away forever

Bodkin Bell, orphan, pickpocket and survivor, doesn’t know where she came from, but she knows she’s different. Gaslights flare as she walks past. Cutlery spins. Shocks fly from her fingertips.

For years, she was ‘Little Spark’, the star of an electrifying travelling act – until it went too far and she ended up in a London gaol.

Now she’s been offered a way out. A chance to serve at Point Mote, a vast, desolate house marooned on the misty Kent marshes. There, she will assist a reclusive family of cunning inventors in the creation of automata: miraculous, lifelike machines for which gentlemen collectors will pay handsomely.

But this house of wonders hides mysteries too. As Bodkin starts to question why she is really there, she unearths secrets that have been buried bone-deep for years – and a truth beyond all imagining. One that was never meant to be found. (Review to follow)

What I’ll Be Reading Next

Conqueror (Agricola #4) by Simon Turney (Head of Zeus via NetGalley)

Following years of distinguished military and political exploits, Agricola has been rewarded with control of Aquitania by the Emperor Vespasian.

But Agricola’s greatest glories have always come in that rainy northern corner of the Empire: Britannia. When Vespasian sends him back to Britannia, this time as governor, he has a chance to cement his place in Roman history.

To conquer Britannia completely Agricola must overcome its many Celtic tribes. The Ordovices have massacred a Roman cavalry unit. The Selgovae and Damnonii resist Imperial rule fiercely. And he must take them on with ever fewer troops due to a series of changes at the heart of Roman power.

Failure will mean disgrace or death, but if he should succeed, Agricola will be forever lauded among the pantheon of Rome’s heroes.

Book Review – Country People by Daniel Mason @johnmurrays #20BOS26

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About the Book

Miles Krzelewski is a devoted husband, a doting father beloved for his outlandish bedtime stories, and the proud owner of a truffle-hunting dog in a land with no truffles. He is also a bit lost, twelve years late with his PhD on Russian folktales and increasingly haunted by a sense that he’s become a disappointment to his family.

So when his wife Kate accepts a visiting professorship at a prestigious college in the far away forests of Vermont, he decides that this will be the year to finally move forward with his life.

But Miles is a man of many enthusiasms, who possesses, in Kate’s, words, ‘a great capacity to fall in with anyone, anywhere’. Soon he finds himself entangled with a cast of characters as colorful as those of any of his folktales – from a ghostly tree surgeon, to a scythe-mad biochemist, a Shakespearean temptress, and a photographer of snowflakes – until at last he stumbles upon a bizarre local legend, which, he begins to suspect, might not be a legend at all.

Format: Hardcover (320 pages) Publisher: John Murray Press
Publication date: 7th July 2026 Genre: Contemporary Fiction

Find Country People on Goodreads

Preorder/Purchase Country People from Bookshop.org [Disclosure: If you buy books linked to our site, we may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookshops]

My Review

I like to imagine Daniel Mason sitting at his desk in his room at Stanford University eating an apple (an ‘Osgood’s Wonder’ in case you’re curious). In front of him is a receptacle, possibly an object found while foraging or perhaps a gift from a grateful PhD student. It contains pieces of paper, each with a different genre written on it, intended to be a source of inspiration for his next book. Will he pluck out ‘historical fiction’ meaning he embarks on something like The Winter Soldier again? Or will it be ‘short stories’ meaning another collection along the lines of A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth? He pulls out a piece of paper. It reads ‘contemporary fiction, but make it funny’.

I found it impossible to write a ‘traditional’ review of Country People. Instead here are ten things I loved about it:

  1. The route planned by Miles for the family’s three week journey to Vermont taking in ‘twenty-seven states, eighteen important wildlife areas, a national park no one had ever heard of [and] forests in states popularly conceived of as having no forests’
  2. The family’s introduction to the convenience food of rural America: ‘hot dogs the color of an old lady’s nail polish’, ‘energy drinks with fascist fonts’, ‘Pennzoil-colored meat sticks’
  3. Miles’s insatiable curiosity and childlike enthusiasm for mastering new skills: scything, skate skiing, learning the Basque language
  4. The eccentric characters: drama teacher Nausicaa, mastermind of the local school’s fully inclusive production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Titus Andronicus having being rejected as unsuitable); The Rat Man of Vermont; snowflake photographer Bentley; Hugh, nature trail guide and hollow-earther
  5. The humour: the transcripts of calls to the local radio phone-in programme The Miscellanous Minute, ‘the only Minute that’s actually an Hour’; Kate’s friend Miranda’s published works including ‘Trends in Mini-Horses’, ‘Can-Throwing Behaviours of Rural American Males’ and ‘Community Threads: Tracing Social Change Through Clothing Labels’
  6. The heartwarming history of Miles and Kate’s relationship and the challenges they have faced and overcome together
  7. The meetings of the Jeremiah Wylkes Society
  8. The Easter eggs’ for those who’ve read North Woods
  9. The family’s transition from outsiders to ‘country people’
  10. The curtain call for everyone you’ve encountered in the book that demonstrate just how immersed Miles has become in the local community

Country People made me smile, even laugh out loud on a few occasions which is rare for me. I can’t wait to find out what genre Daniel Mason picks for his next book. I’m pretty sure I’ll read it whatever it is.

I received an advance reader copy courtesy of John Murray Press via NetGalley. Country People is book 5 of my 20 Books of Summer.

    In three words: Clever, funny, heartwarming
    Try something similar: North Woods by Daniel Mason

    About the Author

    Daniel Mason is a physician and author of The Piano Tuner (2002), A Far Country (2007), The Winter Soldier (2018), A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth (2020) – a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize – and North Woods (2023). His work has been translated into 28 languages, awarded a 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship, the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, the California Book Award, the Northern California Book Award, and a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Piano Tuner was produced as an opera by Music Theatre Wales for the Royal Opera House in London, and adapted to the stage by Lifeline Theatre in Chicago.

    His short stories and essays have appeared in The Atlantic, Harper’s, Zoetrope: All Story, Zyzzyva, Narrative, and Lapham’s Quarterly, and have been awarded a Pushcart Prize, a National Magazine Award and an O. Henry Prize.

    A Clinical Assistant Professor in the Stanford University Department of Psychiatry, his research and teaching interests include the subjective experience of mental illness and the influence of literature, history, and culture on the practice of medicine.

    Connect with Daniel
    Website