What Cathy Read Next...

On What Cathy Read Next last week

Blog posts

Monday – I shared the books that were my Five Favourite February Reads.

Tuesday – This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic was Characters Whose Job I Wish I Had and I shared a list of possible occupations. I also published my review of The Garden of Angels by David Hewson as part of the blog tour.

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 celebrated World Book Day by sharing a whole bunch of publication day reviews: Stella by Takis Würger, Dangerous Women by Hope Adams and Masters of Rome by Gordon Doherty & Simon Turney, the latter as part of the blog tour.

Friday – I published my review of The High-Rise Diver by Julia von Lucadou, translated by Sharmila Cohen.

Saturday – The first Saturday of the month means it’s time for #6Degrees of Separation.

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

New arrivals

The Assistant by Kjell Ola Dahl, trans. by Don Bartlett (eARC, courtesy of Orenda Books & Random Things Tours)

Oslo, 1938. War is in the air and Europe is in turmoil. Hitler’s Germany has occupied Austria and is threatening Czechoslovakia; there’s a civil war in Spain and Mussolini reigns in Italy. When a woman turns up at the office of police-turned-private investigator Ludvig Paaske, he and his assistant – his one-time nemesis and former drug-smuggler Jack Rivers – begin a seemingly straightforward investigation into marital infidelity. But all is not what it seems, and when Jack is accused of murder, the trail leads back to the 1920s, to prohibition-era Norway, to the smugglers, sex workers and hoodlums of his criminal past…and an extraordinary secret.

Both a fascinating portrait of Oslo’s interwar years, with Nazis operating secretly on Norwegian soil and militant socialists readying workers for war, The Assistant is also a stunningly sophisticated, tension-packed thriller – the darkest of hard-boiled Nordic Noir – from one of Norway’s most acclaimed crime writers.

Hinton by Mark Blacklock (audiobook)

Howard Hinton and his family are living in Japan, escaping from a scandal. Hinton’s obsession is his work, his voyages into mathematical pure space, into the fourth dimension, but also his wife and sons, each of whom are entangled in the strange and unknown landscapes of Hinton’s science fictions.

In a bravura and startling meeting of real and philosophical elements, Mark Blacklock has created a ravishing period piece of late-Victorian social, scientific and domestic life. Hinton is about extraordinary discoveries, and terrible choices. It is about people who discover and map other realms, and what the implications might be for those of us left behind.

Lost Property by Helen Paris (eARC, courtesy of Transworld & Random Things Tours)

Dot Watson has lost her way.

Twelve years ago her life veered off course, and the guilt over what happened still haunts her. Before then she was living in Paris, forging an exciting career; now her time is spent visiting her mother’s care home, fielding interfering calls from her sister and working at the London Transport Lost Property office, diligently cataloguing items as misplaced as herself.

But when elderly Mr Appleby arrives in search of his late wife’s purse, his grief stirs something in Dot. Determined to help, she sets off on a mission – one that could start to heal Dot’s own loss and let her find where she belongs once more…

On What Cathy Read Next this week

Currently reading

Planned posts

Book Review: A Lifetime of Men by Cianhan Darrell
Top Ten Tuesday: Bookish Spring Cleaning
Blog Tour/Book Review: Saving Missy by Beth Morrey
Waiting on Wednesday
Book Review: How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue

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 Phosphorescence: On Awe, Wonder and Things That Sustain You When the World Goes Dark by Julia Baird. It’s a book I’d not heard of before this, let alone read. Perhaps not surprising because it isn’t published in the UK until May 2021. However, from the blurb, I understand it poses the question: when we’re overwhelmed by illness or heartbreak, loss or pain, how do we survive, stay alive or even bloom?

The concept of the world going dark, if only metaphorically, made me think of The Year Without Summer by Guinevere Glasfurd which tells the story of the year an ash cloud from a volcanic eruption covered the sun causing a more literal darkness. The book is on the recently announced longlist for The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2021. Days Without End by Sebastian Barry was the winner of The Walter Scott Prize in 2017. Last year, the author produced an unexpected sequel to his prize-winning book, A Thousand Moons. Another unexpected but no less warmly greeted sequel was Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout set in the same fictional coastal town in Maine as its predecessor, Olive Kitteridge. The recently published The Northern Reach by W. S. Winslow is also set in a fictional coastal town in Maine where many of the inhabitants rely on fishing, in particular lobster fishing, for their income. Staying with lobsters, The Coral Bride by Roxanne Bouchard involves the search for the missing female captain of an abandoned lobster trawler founding drifting off the coast of Quebec’s Gaspé Peninsula.