Category: Read

#WWWWednesday – 24th June 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

Land by Maggie O’Farrell (Tinder Press)

On a windswept peninsula stretching out into the Atlantic, Tomás and his reluctant son, Liam, are working for the great Ordnance Survey project to map the whole of Ireland. The year is 1865, and in a country not long since ravaged and emptied by the Great Hunger, the task is not an easy one. Tomás, however, is determined that his maps will be a record of the disaster.

The British soldiers in charge are due to arrive any day, expecting the work to be completed, but Tomás is sent off course by an unsettling encounter in a copse. His life, and those of his family, will never be the same again. Liam is terrified by the sudden change in his taciturn father. What was it that caused such cracks to open in Tomás and how is Liam, aged only ten, going to finish the mapping, and get them both home?

Daughters of Naples by Diana Giovinazzo  (eARC, Crooked Lane Books)

Naples, 1940. The three Cozzolino sisters, Leta, Marcella, and Bianca, live together in their small home during Mussolini’s domination. Leta runs the De Rosa dress shop where she takes care of her mother-in-law while her husband is at war. Marcella is an apprentice to a midwife, bringing up the next generation of Italian soldiers, much to the pride of her boyfriend, who is inspired by Mussolini’s rule. But when their youngest sister, Bianca, decides to join the partigiani – the Italian resistance – after her childhood sweetheart is sent to war, familial tensions are brought to light.

The sisters are soon at odds, questioning where they stand in the war effort. When Leta’s old flame, Pasquale, asks if he can use the dress shop to send messages for the partigiani, she refuses. But when Naples is bombed, the sisters are forced to reevaluate their stances and how far they are willing to go for each other and their country.

With the threat of Nazism looming over the city after Mussolini is ousted, the Cozzolino sisters will have to confront what they are willing to sacrifice and their loyalties to each other and to their country. 

What I’ve Just Read

Murder at the End of the World by Akani Arake, translated by Jesse Kirkwood (Pushkin Vertigo)

A Fatal Love by Louisa Treger (Bloomsbury via NetGalley)

It is Easter Sunday in 1955 and a young man lies face-down on the ground covered in blood. A woman, blonde and petite, stands over him with a gun in her hand. This is the story of Ruth Ellis as never told before…

As Ruth awaits her trial in Holloway Prison, she recollects growing up in England during the Second World War and the events that led to the death of her lover, David Blakely.

Meanwhile, Kitty Carrington – the assistant to Ruth’s trial lawyer – tries to forge her own path through the male-dominated legal world of the 1950s and ensure that Ruth receives a fair trial.

Navigating secrets, betrayal and a broken justice system, Ruth and Kitty try to take control of their own lives and narratives. But do we ever really know the full story? (Review to follow)

Throw Away the Key by Jason M. Hough (Crooked Lane Books)

Lars Bergman is no ordinary janitor. He’s the CIA’s locksmith.

Formerly part of the CIA’s infamous Surreptitious Entry Team, Lars is now responsible for every padlock, safe, and secure door across the CIA headquarters. He’s never met a lock he couldn’t pick…except one, which he tried and failed to open during a botched mission in Warsaw at the end of the Cold War.

Cruising toward retirement, Lars’s life is upended when a senior CIA official dies and he’s called upon to open the safe in her office. Inside the safe is a clue only Lars would notice, left by someone he’d worked with in his heyday. As he investigates, Lars soon realizes that his failed Warsaw operation has come back to haunt him and perhaps give him another chance at picking the one lock that’s ever eluded him.

What Lars doesn’t realize is that what the lock is protecting could have dire ramifications for the organization he has spent his whole adult life safekeeping.(Review to follow)

What I’ll Be Reading Next

The Artist by Lucy Steeds (John Murray)

Provence, 1920. Ettie moves through the remote farmhouse, silently creating the conditions that make her uncle’s artistic genius possible.

Joseph, an aspiring journalist, has been invited to the house. He believes he’ll make his name by interviewing the reclusive painter, the great Edouard Tartuffe.

But everyone has their secrets. And, under the cover of darkness, Ettie has spent years cultivating hers.

Over this sweltering summer, everyone’s true colours will be revealed.

Book Review – Murder at the End of the World by Akane Araki, trans. by Jesse Kirkwood #20BOS26 @PushkinPress

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About the Book

TWO MONTHS UNTIL THE APOCALYPSE. TWO WOMEN WITH NOTHING LEFT TO LOSE

An asteroid is hurtling towards Earth and the human race has just over two months to live. But twenty-three-year-old Haru, stargazer and chronic worrier, is still trying to pass her driving test.Then she finds a body in the boot of her car: a woman, stabbed and tortured. There’s a murderer on the loose. And it turns out that Haru’s driving instructor is an ex-cop with a manic devotion to justice.

So, despite the small matter of an impending apocalypse, the two women team up to catch the culprit regardless of the danger.

After all, the world’s not quite over yet…

Format: Paperback (336 pages) Publisher: Pushkin Press
Publication date: 2nd July 2026 Genre: Crime, Translated Fiction

Find Murder at the End of the World on Goodreads

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My Review

Trigger warning: Suicide

I’m not sure Japanese crime fiction and I are ever going to be best friends but I enjoyed this more than I did Butter. The question of what you’d do if you knew the world was ending in two months time is an interesting premise. In fact, that element probably engaged me more than the actual mystery.

Others may have different priorities but Haru has decided she wants to pass her driving test. She’s already passed the theory test but just needs a few more lessons with her driving instructor Isagawa. Obviously, no-one’s really going to worry if she’s got a licence or not but she has a journey in mind that she’d like to be confident about making. All that gets derailed when she and Isagawa discover a body in the boot of the training car. It’s not a pretty sight either but Isagawa doesn’t seem fazed and Haru soon discovers why. Encouraged by Isagawa, they set out to try to discover the culprit because the police are either unable or unwilling to investigate. They’re in the process of packing up like everyone else.

I don’t think it’s giving too much away to say there is more than one murder. In fact there’s no scarcity of dead bodies because many people have decided to take their own lives rather than wait for the asteroid to do it. The fact there’s no-one around to deal with the bodies brings a distinctly ghoulish aspect to the book.

Initially, there seems to be no connection between the victims. Haru’s and Isagawa’s task is made more complicated by the fact water and power supplies have failed, and there’s no mobile phone coverage. In the course of their investigation, Haru and Isagawa encounter other individuals who have stayed behind in what is forecast to be the impact zone of the asteroid, scavenging supplies of food, water and fuel from empty shops and warehouses. A few of these join Haru and Isagawa in the hunt for the person behind the killing spree. One of the puzzles is what the motive could possibly be. When most people are going to die in a few months anyway, why kill them now? I did actually guess the identity of the killer about two thirds of the way through the book.

I can’t say I ever warmed to Isagawa, especially as we see a quite different side to her at some points.

The aspect of the story that interested me most was people’s differing responses to the approaching apocalypse. Some, if they can afford it, have fled to countries further away from the impact zone although even that is unlikely to protect them from the disastrous environmental effects that will follow the asteroid strike. Many have decided to spend their remaining time with loved ones. Others are putting their faith in underground shelters or rather fantastical escape schemes. Some, as we’ve already learned, have decided to take things into their own hands and commit suicide. But with no-one around to enforce the rule of law, perhaps it’s possible to get away with anything?

Murder at the End of the World is an entertaining, if rather macabre, murder mystery peppered with black humour.

I received an uncorrected proof copy courtesy of Pushkin Press. Murder at the End of the World is book 6 of my 20 Books of Summer.

In three words: Quirky, intriguing, dark
Try something similar: The Last Murder at the End of the World by Stu Turton

About the Author & Translator

Akane Araki was born in 1998 in Fukuoka, Japan. She is a graduate of Kyushu University’s School of Letters. Murder at the End of the World is her first novel, and it won the prestigious Edogawa Rampo Prize. (Photo/bio: Publisher website)

Jesse Kirkwood is a literary translator working from Japanese into English. His translations include The Kamogawa Food Detectives by Hisashi Kashiwai, Tokyo Express by Seicho Matsumoto and The Man Who Died Seven Times by Yasuhiko Nishizawa.