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!

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Currently reading

Blackstone Fell by Martin Edwards Victoria Hawthorne (eARC, Head of Zeus)

Yorkshire, 1606. A man vanishes from a locked gatehouse in a remote village. 300 years later, it happens again.

Autumn 1930. Journalist Nell Fagan knows there’s only one person who can get to the bottom of this mystery: Rachael Savernake. But someone wants Nell dead, and soon, while investigating a series of recent deaths at Blackstone Sanatorium, she’s missing entirely.

Looking for answers, Rachel travels to lonely Blackstone Fell, with its eerie moor, deadly waters and sinister tower. With help from Jacob Flint – who’s determined to expose a fraudulent medium at a séance – Rachel will risk her life to bring an end to the disappearances…

A dazzling mystery peopled by clerics and medics and embellished with science and superstition, Blackstone Fell explores the shadowy borderlands between spiritual and scientific; between sanity and madness; and between virtue and deadly sin.

Before the Fall by Noah Hawley (Hodder & Stoughton)

A private jet plunges into the sea with only two survivors: the young son of the family who chartered the plane – now heir to a TV mogul’s fortune – and a man who only chanced to be on board at all, down-on his luck artist Scott Burroughs, the hero who saved the boy’s life.

But nothing is simple when big money and even bigger reputations are at stake. In the media storm that follows, questions start to be asked. Is Scott Burroughs as innocent as he seems?

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Recently finished

The House at Helygen by Victoria Hawthorne (Quercus)

Every Shade of Happy by Phyllida Shrimpton (Aria)

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What Cathy (will) Read Next

If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio (Titan Books)

Oliver Marks has just served ten years for a murder he may or may not have committed. On the day of his release, he is greeted by the detective who put him in prison. Detective Colborne is retiring, and he wants to know what really happened a decade before.

As a young actor at an elite conservatory, Oliver noticed that his talented classmates seem to play the same characters onstage and off – villain, hero, temptress – though he was always a supporting role. But when the teachers change the casting, a good-natured rivalry turns ugly, and the plays spill dangerously over into real life.

When tragedy strikes, one of the seven friends is found dead. The rest face their greatest acting challenge yet: convincing the police, and themselves, that they are blameless…

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 House at Helygen by Victoria Hawthorne (ARC, Quercus)

2019. When Henry Fox is found dead in his ancestral home in Cornwall, the police rule it a suicide, but his pregnant wife, Josie, believes it was murder. Desperate to make sense of Henry’s death she embarks on a quest to learn the truth, all under the watchful eyes of Henry’s overbearing mother. Josie soon finds herself wrestling against the dark history of Helygen House and ghosts from the past that refuse to stay buried.

1881. New bride Eliza arrives at Helygen House with high hopes for her marriage. Yet when she meets her new mother-in-law, an icy and forbidding woman, her dreams of a new life are dashed. And when Eliza starts to hear voices in the walls of the house, she begins to fear for her sanity and her life.

Can Josie piece together the past to make sense of her present, or will the secrets of Helygen House and its inhabitants forever remain a mystery?

Every Shade of Happy by Phyllida Shrimpton (eARC, Aria)

‘He suddenly wished more than anything that he’d lived for today, and for all the thousands of todays he’d had, regardless of what hurdles life had thrown at him.’

Suddenly uprooted from everything and everyone she knows, bubbly fifteen-year-old Anna Maybury and her mother are forced to move in with the grandfather she has never met – a bad-tempered old man who disapproves of her very existence.

At ninety-seven, Algernon breaks his days up into a routine governed by the relentless ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece. It gives his life the structure and order he craves, but he’s also incredibly lonely.

And soon, so is Anna. Her colourful personality doesn’t seem to fit in at her new school and she begins to feel herself turning as dull and grey as the uniform.

Surprisingly, it’s cranky old Algernon who is determined to do something about it. With a road trip to Cornwall on the cards and important life lessons to learn, it’s going to be a summer neither of them will ever forget.

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Recently finished

After She’d Gone by Alex Dahl (Head of Zeus)

The Twist of a Knife by Anthony Horowitz (Century)

The Women of the Castle by Jessica Shattuck (Zaffre)

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What Cathy (will) Read Next

The Night Ship by Jess Kidd (Canongate via Readers First)

1629. Embarking on a journey in search of her father, a young girl called Mayken boards the Batavia, the most impressive sea vessel of the age. During the long voyage, this curious and resourceful child must find her place in the ship’s busy world, and she soon uncovers shadowy secrets above and below deck. As tensions spiral, the fate of the ship and all on board becomes increasingly uncertain.

1989. Gil, a boy mourning the death of his mother, is placed in the care of his irritable and reclusive grandfather. Their home is a shack on a tiny fishing island off the Australian coast, notable only for its reefs and wrecked boats. This is no place for a teenager struggling with a dark past and Gil’s actions soon get him noticed by the wrong people.

The Night Ship is an enthralling tale of human cruelty, fate and friendship, and of two children, hundreds of years apart, whose fates are inextricably bound together.