#WWWWednesday – 28th June 2023

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 Blood of OthersThe Blood of Others by Graham Hurley (eARC, Head of Zeus via NetGalley)

A catastrophe no headline dared admit.

Summer 1942. Abwehr intelligence officer Wilhelm Schultz is baiting a trap to lure thousands of Allied troops to their deaths.

George Hogan is a devout young Canadian journalist who has caught the eye of press baron Lord Beaverbrook. Now he faces an assignment that will test both himself and his faith to breaking point.

Jackie Wrenne, meanwhile, is working in Lord Louis Mountbatten’s cloak-and-dagger Combined Operations headquarters and is privy to the boldest cross-Channel raid yet conceived.

Three lives interlinked by a name and a date that no Canadian will ever forget: Dieppe, 19 August 1942. At dawn, over six thousand men storm ashore on heavily defended French beaches. Barely hours later, less than half will make it back alive…

The Painter of SoulsThe Painter of Souls by Philip Kazan (Orion)

Beauty can be a gift…or a wicked temptation…

So it is for Filippo Lippi, growing up in Renaissance Florence. He has a talent – not only can he see the beauty in everything, he can capture it, paint it. But while beauty can seduce you, and art can transport you – it cannot always feed you or protect you.

To survive, Pippo Lippi, orphan, street urchin, budding rogue, must first become Fra Filippo Carmelite friar, man of God. His life will take him down two paths at once. He will become a gambler, a forger, a seducer of nuns; and at the same time he will be the greatest painter of his time, the teacher of Botticelli and the confidante of the Medicis.

So who is he really – lover, believer, father, teacher, artist? Which man? Which life? Is anything true except the paintings?

An extraordinary journey of passion, art and intrigue, The Painter of Souls takes us to a time and place in Italy’s history where desire reigns and salvation is found in the strangest of places.


Recently finished

The Square of Sevens by Laura Shepherd-Robinson (Mantle)

Banyan Moon by Thao Thai (Quercus) 


What Cathy (will) Read Next

Para BellumPara Bellum by Simon Turney (eARC, Head of Zeus via NetGalley)

AD 381. Five years have gone by since a Roman governor ordered the deaths of a Gothic king and his attendants at a feast in their honour. This disastrous act led to warfare in the Roman Empire and the death of the Emperor Valens.

Now, the Empire is calm once more, but for the eight legionaries who committed the killings, the bloodshed is only just beginning. Fritigern, brother of the murdered king, has sworn revenge on his brother’s killers. Now king of a powerful Gothic tribe, he will not rest until the men are hunted down.

Flavius Focalis is one of those legionaries. Surviving an attack at his villa, he realises the danger he and his family are in, and seeks to warn his former comrades, for he knows Fritigern will give them no quarter. So begins a deadly game of cat-and-mouse across the Empire, as, by land and sea, the former soldiers face the wrath of their implacable enemy, and return to the scene of the greatest battle of their Adrianople. For war is coming again – and the only question is, do they die now, or die later?

My Week in Books – 25th June 2023

MyWeekinBooksOn What Cathy Read Next last week

Tuesday – This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic was Books On My Summer 2023 To-Read List.

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. 

Thursday – I published my review of The Voluble Topsy by A P Herbert.

Friday – I shared my review of historical crime mystery, Voices of the Dead by Ambrose Parry. 

Saturday – I published my wrap-up of The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2023, awarded this year to These Days by Lucy Caldwell.


New arrivals

HowToBeBraveHow To Be Brave by Louise Beech (Audiobook)

All the stories died that morning … until we found the one we’d always known.

When nine-year-old Rose is diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, Natalie must use her imagination to keep her daughter alive. They begin dreaming about and seeing a man in a brown suit who feels hauntingly familiar, a man who has something for them.

Through the magic of storytelling, Natalie and Rose are transported to the Atlantic Ocean in 1943, to a lifeboat, where an ancestor survived for fifty days before being rescued.

Poignant, beautifully written and tenderly told, How To Be Brave weaves together the contemporary story of a mother battling to save her child’s life with an extraordinary true account of bravery and a fight for survival in the Second World War. A simply unforgettable debut that celebrates the power of words, the redemptive energy of a mother’s love and what it really means to be brave.


On What Cathy Read Next this week

Currently reading


Planned posts

  • Book Review: The Square of Sevens by Laura Shepherd-Robinson
  • Book Review: Banyan Moon by Thao Thai