Reviews – Page 883 – What Cathy Read Next…

On What Cathy Read Next last week

Blog posts

Monday – I joined the blog tour for The Thunder Girls by Melanie Blake.

Tuesday – This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic was Books I Wish I’d Read As A Child.

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…and have a good nose around to see what other bloggers are reading.

Thursday – I shared my review of Living Among The Dead by Adena Bernstein Astrowsky as part of the blog tour.

Friday – I picked my Five Favourite April Reads.

Saturday – I joined in with the monthly #6Degrees of Separation meme forming a chain from The Road by Cormac McCarthy to The Storyteller by Pierre Jarawan.

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

New arrivals

Rags of Time by Michael Ward (ebook, review copy courtesy of the author)

London, 1639. Spice merchant Thomas Tallant returns from India to find his city in turmoil – overcrowded, ravaged by crime and seething with sedition. A bitter struggle is brewing between King Charles I and Parliament as England slides into civil war.

A wealthy merchant is savagely killed; then his partner plunges to his death in the Tallant household. Suspicion falls on Tom, who soon finds himself being sucked into London’s turbulence. As he struggles to clear his name, he becomes entranced by the enigmatic Elizabeth Seymour, whose passion for astronomy and mathematics is matched only by her addiction to the gaming tables. Can her brilliance untangle the web of deceit that threatens to drag Tom under?

A thrilling murder mystery set in the murky streets of Stuart London, Rags of Time is an intriguing tale of murder, suspicion and the search for enlightenment that will keep you guessing until the final dramatic scene.

Hidden in the Shadows by Imogen Matthews (ebook, courtesy of Amsterdam Publishers and Random Things Tours)

Escape from the hidden village is just the beginning.

September 1944: The hidden village is in ruins. Stormed by the Nazis. Several are dead and dozens flee for their lives.

Instead of leading survivors to safety, Wouter panics and abandons Laura, the love of his life. He has no choice but to keep running from the enemy who want to hunt him down.

Laura must also stay hidden as she is Jewish. Moving from one safe house to another, she is concealed in attics and cellars. The threat of discovery is always close at hand.

On the run with no end in sight, the two young people despair of ever seeing each other again. As cold sweeps in signalling the start of the Hunger Winter, time is running out. Wouter’s search now becomes a battle for survival. Where can Laura be? Will they ever be reunited?

Hidden in the Shadows is an unforgettable story of bravery and love, inspired by historical events.

The Storm by Amanda Jennings (eARC, courtesy of HQ and NetGalley)

To the outside world Hannah married the perfect man. Behind the closed doors of their imposing home it’s a very different story.

Nathan controls everything Hannah does. He chooses her clothes, checks her receipts, and keeps her passport locked away. But why does she let him?

Years before, in the midst of a relentless storm, the tragic events of one night changed everything. And Hannah has been living with the consequences ever since. Keeping Nathan happy. Doing as she’s told. But the past is about to catch up with them.

Set against the unforgiving backdrop of a Cornish fishing port in the ’90s, this is a devastating exploration of the power of coercive control in a marriage where nothing is quite as it seems…

On What Cathy Read Next this week

Currently reading

Planned posts

Reading The Walter Scott Prize 2020 Shortlist: Shadowplay by Joseph O’Connor
Top Ten Tuesday: Things I’d Have At My Bookish Party
Waiting on Wednesday
Blog Tour/Book Review: A Wedding in the Olive Garden by Leah Fleming
Buchan of the Month: Introducing…The Last Secrets by John Buchan
Blog Tour/Book Review: Hidden in the Shadows by Imogen Matthews

It’s the first Saturday of the month which means it’s time for 6 Degrees of Separation!

Here’s how it works: a book is chosen as a starting point by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best and linked to six other books to form a chain. Readers and bloggers are invited to join in by creating their own ‘chain’ leading from the selected book.

Kate says: Books can be linked in obvious ways – for example, books by the same authors, from the same era or genre, or books with similar themes or settings. Or, you may choose to link them in more personal or esoteric ways: books you read on the same holiday, books given to you by a particular friend, books that remind you of a particular time in your life, or books you read for an online challenge. Join in by posting your own six degrees chain on your blog and adding the link in the comments section of each month’s post. You can also check out links to posts on Twitter using the hashtag #6Degrees

This month’s starting book is The Road by Cormac McCarthy, a book I’ve heard of but not read. I know it involves a father and son walking alone through a burned, post-apocalyptic America. That seems way too sombre a route to follow (if you pardon the pun) in the current circumstances, so I’m taking a more literal approach for my first link.

A road features prominently in A Long Way From Home by Peter Carey, which was shortlisted for The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction in 2019. The book features a couple who take part in the Redex trial, a motor race around Australia. Along the way, their navigator learns more about his aboriginal roots.

A growing awareness of the shocking treatment of aboriginal people also features in The Philosopher’s Daughters by Alison Booth in which two sisters, Harriet and Sarah, travel to the Australian outback at the end of the 19th century.

My Sister, Myself by Jill Treseder also involves two sisters, Katalin and Marika, who escape from Budapest to London in 1956 as Russian tanks brutally crush the revolution against the Communist regime.

Burning Cold by Lisa Lieberman is also set in Hungary in 1956. It involves the search by brother and sister, Gray and Cara, for a newly discovered member of their family – another brother, Zoltán – who has disappeared in the middle of the Hungarian revolution.

The disappearance of a family member is also the focus of The Missing Girl by Jenny Quintana. The book involves Anna’s search for the truth about what happened to her older sister, who went missing as a teenager thirty years before.

Finally, in The Storyteller by Pierre Jarawan, Samir leaves the safety of his family’s adopted home in Germany to travel to Beirut in an attempt to find his missing father. His only clues are an old photo and the bedtime stories his father used to tell him.

Where did your chain take you this month?