On What Cathy Read Next last week
Blog posts
Monday – I published my review of You Let Me Go by Eliza Graham as part of the blog tour.
Tuesday – I shared my publication day review of Where Stands A Wingèd Sentry by Margaret Kennedy.
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 published reviews of The Rose Code by Kate Quinn and The Consequences of Fear (Maisie Dobbs #16) by Jacqueline Winspear, both as part of the blog tours.
As always, thanks to everyone who has liked, commented on or shared my blog posts on social media.
New arrivals
Ariadne by Jennifer Saint (eARC, courtesy of Wildfire via NetGalley)
As Princesses of Crete and daughters of the fearsome King Minos, Ariadne and her sister Phaedra grow up hearing the hoofbeats and bellows of the Minotaur echo from the Labyrinth beneath the palace. The Minotaur – Minos’s greatest shame and Ariadne’s brother – demands blood every year.
When Theseus, Prince of Athens, arrives in Crete as a sacrifice to the beast, Ariadne falls in love with him. But helping Theseus kill the monster means betraying her family and country, and Ariadne knows only too well that in a world ruled by mercurial gods – drawing their attention can cost you everything.
In a world where women are nothing more than the pawns of powerful men, will Ariadne’s decision to betray Crete for Theseus ensure her happy ending? Or will she find herself sacrificed for her lover’s ambition?
The Night Train to Berlin by Melanie Hudson (eARC, courtesy of One More Chapter via NetGalley)
Two lost souls brought together by the chaos of war. A train journey into the past. A love that echoes through time.
Paddington Station, present day. A young woman boards the sleeper train to Cornwall with only a beautiful emerald silk evening dress and an old, well-read diary full of sketches. Ellie Nightingale is a shy violinist who plays like her heart is broken. But when she meets fellow passenger Joe she feels like she has been given that rarest of gifts…a second chance.
Paddington Station, 1944. Beneath the shadow of the war which rages across Europe, Alex and Eliza meet by chance. She is a gutsy painter desperate to get to the frontline as a war artist and he is a wounded RAF pilot now commissioned as a war correspondent. With time slipping away they make only one promise: to meet in Berlin when this is all over. But this is a time when promises are hard to keep, and hope is all you can hold in your heart.
From a hidden Cornish cove to the blood-soaked beaches of Normandy in June 1944, this is an epic love story like no other.
Wayward Voyage by Anna M Holmes (eARC, courtesy of Rachel’s Random Resources)
Anne is a headstrong young girl growing up in the frontier colony of Carolina in the early eighteenth century. With the death of her mother, and others she holds dear, Anne discovers that life is uncertain, so best live it to the full. She rejects the confines of conventional society and runs away to sea, finding herself in the Bahamas, which has become a nest for pirates plaguing the West Indies. Increasingly dissatisfied with her life, Anne meets a charismatic former pirate, John ‘Calico Jack’ Rackham, and persuades him to take up pirating again, and she won’t be left onshore.
The Golden age of piracy is a period when frontiers were being explored and boundaries pushed. Wayward Voyage creates a vivid and gritty picture of colonial life in the Americas and at sea.
A Room Made Of Leaves by Kate Grenville (audio book)
It is 1788. Twenty-one-year-old Elizabeth is hungry for life but, as the ward of a Devon clergyman, knows she has few prospects. When proud, scarred soldier John Macarthur promises her the earth one midsummer’s night, she believes him. But Elizabeth soon realises she has made a terrible mistake. Her new husband is reckless, tormented, driven by some dark rage at the world. He tells her he is to take up a position as Lieutenant in a New South Wales penal colony and she has no choice but to go.
Sailing for six months to the far side of the globe with a child growing inside her, she arrives to find Sydney Town a brutal, dusty, hungry place of makeshift shelters, failing crops, scheming and rumours. All her life she has learned to be obliging, to fold herself up small. Now, in the vast landscapes of an unknown continent, Elizabeth has to discover a strength she never imagined, and passions she could never express.
Inspired by the real life of a remarkable woman, this is an extraordinarily rich, beautifully wrought novel of resilience, courage and the mystery of human desire.
Courage Without Grace by Jeannie Zokan (eARC, courtesy of the author)
Josie Wales doesn’t need her palm reading skills to know her lover is seeing someone else. It’s time to end it, but she’s been with Tom for seven years. And there’s something – someone – she needs to tell him about. That secret keeps pulling her back, but this time she’s determined to break it off.
To find the courage to end the relationship, Josie seeks advice from new acquaintances. But she somehow manages to make an even bigger mess of her life. When Jack, Tom’s twin and her childhood friend, comes to DC to reconnect, he helps Josie get her feet back on the ground. Just as Josie is beginning to resolve the chaos in her life, a tragic secret from her past comes back to haunt her. Before she can move forward and have a second chance at love, she must face her grief and loss.
Don’t Turn Around by Jessica Barry (review copy, courtesy of Vintage)
Two strangers, Cait and Rebecca, are driving across America.
Cait’s job is to transport women to safety. Out of respect, she never asks any questions. Like most of the women, Rebecca is trying to escape something. But what if Rebecca’s secrets put them both in danger? There’s a reason Cait chooses to keep on the road, helping strangers. She has a past of her own, and knows what it’s like to be followed.
And there is someone right behind them, watching their every move…
On What Cathy Read Next this week
Currently reading
Planned posts
- Blog Tour/Book Review: A Book of Secrets by Kate Morrison
- Top Ten Tuesday: Authors’ Homes I’d Loved To Have Live In
- Spotlight: Courage Without Grace by Jeannie Zokan
- Book Review: There’s No Story There & Other Wartime Writing by Inez Holden
- Waiting on Wednesday
- Book Review: The Drowned City by K. J. Maitland
- Spotlight: The Cotillion Brigade by Glen Craney
- Book Review: The Deception of Harriet Fleet by Helen Scarlett
- #6Degrees of Separation
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