Category: WWW Wednesday

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!

Currently reading

The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz (eARC)

A wealthy woman strangled six hours after she’s arranged her own funeral. A very private detective uncovering secrets but hiding his own. A reluctant author drawn into a story he can’t control. What do they have in common? Unexpected death, an unsolved mystery and a trail of bloody clues lie at the heart of Anthony Horowitz’s page-turning new thriller.

The Scribe’s Daughter by Stephanie Churchill (review copy courtesy of the author)

Kassia is a thief and a soon-to-be oath breaker. Armed with only a reckless wit and sheer bravado, seventeen-year-old Kassia barely scrapes out a life with her older sister in a back-alley of the market district of the Imperial city of Corium. When a stranger shows up at her market stall, offering her work for which she is utterly unqualified, Kassia cautiously takes him on. Very soon however, she finds herself embroiled in a mystery involving a usurped foreign throne and a vengeful nobleman. Most intriguing of all, she discovers a connection with the disappearance of her father three years prior. When Kassia is forced to flee her home, suffering extreme hardship, danger and personal trauma along the way, she feels powerless to control what happens around her. Rewarding revelations concerning the mysteries of her family’s past are tempered by the reality of a future she doesn’t want. In the end, Kassia discovers an unyielding inner strength and that, contrary to her prior beliefs, she is not defined by external things – she discovers that she is worthy to be loved.

Recently finished (click on title to read my review)

The Sixteen Trees of the Somme by Lars Mytting, trans. Paul Russell Garrett (eARC)

Edvard grows up on a remote mountain farmstead in Norway with his taciturn grandfather, Sverre. The death of his parents, when he was three years old, has always been shrouded in mystery – he has never been told how or where it took place and has only a distant memory of his mother. But he knows that the fate of his grandfather’s brother, Einar, is somehow bound up with this mystery. One day a coffin is delivered for his grandfather long before his death – a meticulous, beautiful piece of craftsmanship. Perhaps Einar is not dead after all. Edvard’s desperate quest to unlock the family’s tragic secrets takes him on a long journey – from Norway to the Shetlands, and to the battlefields of France – to the discovery of a very unusual inheritance. The Sixteen Trees of the Somme is about the love of wood and finding your own self, a beautifully intricate and moving tale that spans an entire century.

In Shadowland by Timothy Ashby (review copy courtesy of the author)

Teddy Roosevelt’s son Quentin was killed in WWI. So why is another man’s corpse in his grave? J. Edgar Hoover summons reluctant Special Agent Seth Armitage back to the Bureau to investigate the shocking revelation. Armitage must travel the world to probe the mystery, and quickly becomes targeted himself by powerful and ruthless forces on both sides of the Atlantic who are committed to keeping the scandal secret-at any cost. The line between enemy and ally blurs perilously as Seth becomes enmeshed with a WWI vet turned assassin with whom he shares a strange bond, a beautiful double agent with a personal agenda, and the political madmen building the Nazi party. The complex web reaches ever deeper, until Seth finds himself forced to make the terrifying choice to protect or destroy the soon-to-be Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler.

Catherine Dickens: Outside the Magic Circle by Heera Datta (review copy courtesy of the author)

Catherine was Charles Dickens’ wife whom he separated from after twenty-two years of marriage and ten children. Enamoured of a young actress, Charles scripted a fiction about his marriage in which he was the long suffering husband to a woman who was unfit to be wife and mother. He spread this story through his powerful editor friends. Catherine did not, could not, fight him. Even the law gave custody of minor children to fathers, and all her children, except one, were minor. She retreated into dignified silence which seems baffling today. But the strength of her agony is exhibited in her words to her daughter, to whom she gave letters written to her by Charles, and told her to give them to the British Museum, “so that the world may know he loved me once.” Outside the Magic Circle is the story of Catherine and the repressive times she lived in.

What Cathy (will) Read Next

Path of Lucas: The Journey He Endured by Susanne Bellefeuille (review copy courtesy of iRead Book Tours)

Lucas Clarkson is a simple man, a family man, and a hard working farmer’s son. From a small town in Eastern Ontario, the author, Susanne Bellefeuille, brings us on Lucas’s journey through the trials and tribulations of his life.  Lucas’s path is not as simple as the man he’s portrayed to be. From the days spent working on his dad’s farm to becoming a successful mechanic, with a genuine heart and his incredible strength, Lucas faces many difficult decisions. The choices he makes may be the difference between realizing his dreams and keeping his family together.

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (paperback)

Four seekers have arrived at the rambling old pile known as Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of psychic phenomena; Theodora, his lovely and light-hearted assistant; Luke, the adventurous future inheritor of the estate; and Eleanor, a friendless, fragile young woman with a dark past. As they begin to cope with chilling, even horrifying occurrences beyond their control or understanding, they cannot possibly know what lies ahead. For Hill House is gathering its powers – and soon it will choose one of them to make its own.