Tag: Currently Reading

My Week in Books – 10th September 2023

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MyWeekinBooksOn What Cathy Read Next last week

It’s been a quiet week on the blog – except for posts I’d scheduled in advance – because of a four day city break in Zurich 

Monday – I shared My Five Favourite August 2023 Reads. 

Tuesday – I published an extract from thriller, England’s Best Export by Ruth Danes. This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic was Books That Defied My Expectations. 

Wednesday – As always WWW Wednesday is a weekly opportunity to share what I’ve just read, what I’m currently reading and what I plan to read next… and to take a peek at what others are reading. 

Saturday – I joined other gardeners for a #SixonSaturday update.

New arrivals

Night Train to Marrakech by Dinah Jefferies (ARC, HarperCollins via Readers First)

MARRAKECH 1966. Vicky Baudin steps onto a train winding through Morocco, looking for the grandmother she has never met.

It’s an epic journey that’ll take her to the edge of Atlas Mountains – and closer to the answers she’s been craving all her life.

But dark secrets whisper amongst the dunes. And in unlocking the mystery of Clemence’s past, Vicky will unearth great danger too . . .

The Book of Fire by Christy Lefteri (Manilla Press via Readers First)

This morning, I met the man who started the fire. He did something terrible, but then, so have I. I left him. I left him and now he may be dead.

Once upon a time there was a beautiful village that held a million stories of love and loss and peace and war, and it was swallowed up by a fire that blazed up to the sky. The fire ran all the way down to the sea where it met with its reflection.

A family from two nations, England and Greece, live a simple life in a tiny Greek Irini, Tasso and their daughter, lovely, sweet Chara, whose name means joy. Their life goes up in flames in a single day when one man starts a fire out of greed and indifference. Many are killed, homes are destroyed, and the region’s natural beauty wiped out.

In the wake of the fire, Chara bears deep scars across her back and arms. Tasso is frozen in trauma, devastated that he wasn’t there when his family most needed him. And Irini is crippled by guilt at her part in the fate of the man who started the fire.

But this family has survived, and slowly green shoots of hope and renewal will grow from the smouldering ruins of devastation.

On What Cathy Read Next this week

Currently reading

Planned posts

  • Henley Literary Festival 2023 Preview
  • Book Review: The Seventh Son by Sebastian Faulks
  • Blog Tour/Book Review: The Mystery of Yew Tree House by Lesley Thomson
  • Book Review: Adama by Lavie Tidhar
  • Book Review: Wrecker by Noel O’Reilly

#WWWWednesday – 6th September 2023

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WWWWednesdays

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 Mystery of Yew Tree HouseThe Mystery of Yew Tree House by Lesley Thomson (ARC, Head of Zeus)

1941. In the pleasant countryside of Bishopstone lies a house with a pill box in the backyard. Here, Rupert and Adelaide Stride raise their two daughters, Clare and Rosa, alongside a young evacuee, Henry. But when war calls, Rupert dies on the beaches of Dunkirk, leaving his family to fend for themselves as bombs drop and food is rationed.

2023. Decades later, held afloat by state pensions and unable to heat the large house – nor able to afford to leave – Clare and Rosa have retreated to the annex, where they remain single and trapped in the place they were Yew Tree House.

When the sisters put their rooms up for rent, Jack Harmon sees the perfect spot for a month away with his twins and cleaner-turned-detective Stella Darnell. Their first family holiday. But one day, as the twins run free through the garden, they discover a skeleton with a hole in its skull hidden in the brambles of a decommissioned WWII pill box.

This home has always been a complicated one, but Stella and Jack will have to dig deep into a history of revenge, desperation, and wartime tragedy to uncover the truth of what happened at Yew Tree House…

Recently finished

Wrecker by Noel O’Reilly (HQ)

Shipwrecks are part of life in the remote village of Porthmorvoren, Cornwall. And as the sea washes the bodies of the drowned onto the beach, it also brings treasures: barrels of liquor, exotic fruit, the chance to lift a fine pair of boots from a corpse, maybe even a jewel or two.

When, after a fierce storm, Mary Blight rescues a man half-dead from the sea, she ignores the whispers of her neighbours and carries him home to nurse better. Gideon Stone is a Methodist minister from Newlyn, a married man. Touched by Mary’s sacrifice and horrified by the superstitions and pagan beliefs the villagers cling to, Gideon sets out to bring light and salvation to Porthmorvoren by building a chapel on the hill.

But the village has many secrets and not everyone wants to be saved. As Mary and Gideon find themselves increasingly drawn together, jealousy, rumour and suspicion is rife. Gideon has demons of his own to face, and soon Mary’s enemies are plotting against her… (Review to follow)

Adama by Lavie Tidhar (Head of Zeus)

There is no land without blood – no adama without dam.

In 1946, a young Ruth begins building a new life in Palestine, haunted by the death of her family in Europe and driven by youthful ideals in a land hostile to her presence. Her sister, Shoshana, survives in the Displaced Persons camps of Germany and joins her in Palestine, but dreams of escaping to distant America.

Her lovers, Dov and Israel, die in war, and her children try to serve the land Ruth bled for, only to find their own tragic ends or means of escape. As one generation begets another, their lives become entwined into a dark tapestry of secrets and lies, of revenge, forbidden love and murder.

A sweeping historical epic following four generations of a single family as they struggle to hold on to their land and each other. (Review to follow)

What Cathy (will) Read Next

The Storyteller by the SeaThe Storyteller by the Sea by Phyllida Shrimpton (ARC, Head of Zeus)

Melody spends her days combing the shore for items washed up on her beach. She collects them in her basket and takes them back to Spindrift, her weathered little bungalow overlooking the sea, and weaves stories about her treasures.

Everything Melody thinks she could ever need is right where she is, cupped by the rocks that shape her bay. But Melody has been keeping a secret…

When she learns that her little corner of Devon is under threat from developers looking to modernise the strip of coast on which Spindrift stands, Melody realises she is about to lose all she has ever known. Is it time for her to tell her own story – a story of love, loss, secrets and lies?