My Week in Books – 24th May 2020

MyWeekinBooks

On What Cathy Read Next last week

Blog posts

Monday –  I shared my review of People Like Usby Louise Fein as part of the blog tour.

Tuesday – This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic was Reasons Why I Love… and my list was about one of my favourite genres – historical crime mysteries. I also shared my review of The Glass House by Eve Chase.

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 published my review of When We Fall by Carolyn Kirby as part of the blog tour.

Friday – I shared the list of books I plan to read as part of the annual 20 Books of Summer Reading Challenge.

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


New arrivals

9781838931391The Englishman by David Gilman (eARC, courtesy of Head of Zeus and NetGalley)

A clandestine war on the desert border of Mali and Algeria. Murder and kidnap on the suburban streets of West London. A Moscow CID police inspector investigating the assassination of four of her fellow officers by the Russian Mafia. A young MI6 officer facing the possibility that a long-running operation has been fatally compromised.

Connecting them all is the Englishman: Dan Raglan, outsider, exile, one-time member of the French Foreign Legion, fully trained killer.

Raglan’s quest for answers will become a quest for vengeance. It will lead him to the winter-ravaged wasteland of the Sverdlovskaya Oblast and Penal Colony #74, a place that holds Russia’s most brutal murderers. A place of death and retribution.

How will he get in? More importantly, how will he get out?

9780749020422Birthright (Mercia Blakewood #1) by David Hingley (e-book, free download courtesy of Allison & Busby)

1664. Four years after Charles II is restored to the throne, Mercia Blakewood stands to lose everything: her father to the executioner’s axe, her freedom to her treacherous uncle, her son to his resentful grandparents. But when her father leaves her a cryptic message in his last speech, she seizes her chance to fight back.

With would-be lover Nathan Keyte and unlikely new friend Nicholas Wildmoor, Mercia must unravel her father’s mystery to find a great prize long thought lost, striving to recover the King’s stolen birthright in the hope of reclaiming her own.

From London’s bulging metropolis to the forests of Manhattan she will contend with murder, intrigue and lust, fighting for her future and her life as the town of New York is born.


On What Cathy Read Next this week

Currently reading

 

Planned posts

  • Blog Tour/Book Review: Lionheart by Ben Kane
  • Top Ten Tuesday: Opening Lines
  • Waiting on Wednesday
  • Book Review: The Flowers of Adonis by Rosemary Sutcliff
  • Book Review: The Bell in the Lake by Lars Mytting
  • Book Review: The Last Secrets by John Buchan

20 Books of Summer Reading Challenge 2020: Final Update #20BooksOfSummer20

20 Books of Summer 2019

This annual challenge is run by my namesake Cathy at 746 Books.  This year it takes place between 1st June and 1st September 2020.  I’ve participated for the past two years but never quite managed to organise/discipline my reading enough to complete my list. Last year I managed seven of my twenty.  I’m determined to do better this year.

As (the other) Cathy explains, the rules are simple.  Take the Books of Summer image, pick your own 10, 15 or 20 books you’d like to read and link back Cathy’s master post at 746 Books on 1st June 2020 so she knows you’re taking part.  The rules are accommodating as well.  Want to swap a book? Go for it.  Fancy changing your list half way through? No problem.  Deciding to drop your goal from 20 to 15? She’s fine with that.

In putting together my list, I decided to concentrate on four categories:

  • Blog tour commitments I have from June onwards
  • Books on my NetGalley To Read shelf publishing in the next couple of months
  • Books from my TBR pile
  • Books included in personal reading projects, i.e. Buchan of the Month and The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2020 shortlist

You can find my list below with links to my reviews.


  1. The Sea Gate by Jane Johnson
  2. Patrol by Fred Majdalany
  3. Warriors for the Working Day by Peter Elstob
  4. One Day in Summer by Shari Low
  5. The Coloursby Juliet Bates
  6. The English Wife by Adrienne Chinn
  7. A Quiet Death in Italy by Tom Benjamin
  8. The Storm by Amanda Jennings
  9. Paris Savages by Katherine Johnson
  10. The Night of the Floodby Zoe Somerville
  11. The Gap in the Curtain by John Buchan
  12. A Prince of the Captivity by John Buchan
  13. The Narrow Land by Christine Dwyer Hickey
  14. Fortress of Fury by Matthew Harffy
  15. The Girl from Vichy by Andie Newton
  16. The Music Shop by Rachel Joyce
  17. Munich by Robert Harris
  18. The Bitch by Pilar Quintana
  19. The Bird in the Bamboo Cage by Hazel Gaynor
  20. The Museum Makers by Rachel Morris