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 Scarlet Papers by Matthew Richardson (eARC, Michael Joseph via NetGalley)
VIENNA, 1946: A brilliant German scientist snatched from the ruins of Nazi Europe.
MOSCOW, 1964: A US diplomat caught in a clandestine love affair as the Cold War rages.
RIGA, 1992: A Russian archivist selling secrets that will change the twentieth century forever.
LONDON, THE PRESENT DAY: A British academic on the run with the chance to solve one of history’s greatest mysteries.
Their stories, their lives, and the fate of the world are bound by a single manuscript. A document feared and whispered about in capitals across the globe. In its pages, history will be rewritten. It is only ever known as . . . THE SCARLET PAPERS
The devastating secrets contained within teased by a brief invitation: Tomorrow 11AM. Take a cab and pay in cash. Tell no one.
Ancestry : A Novel by Simon Mawer (Little, Brown) Shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2023
The past is another country and we are all its exiles. Banished forever, we look back in fascination and wonder at this mysterious land. Who were the people who populated it?
Almost two hundred years ago, Abraham, an illiterate urchin, scavenges on a Suffolk beach and dreams of running away to sea… Naomi, a seventeen-year-old seamstress, sits primly in a second class carriage on the train from Sussex to London and imagines a new life in the big city… George, a private soldier of the 50th Regiment of Foot, marries his Irish bride, Annie, in the cathedral in Manchester and together they face married life under arms. Now these people exist only in the bare bones of registers and census lists but they were once real enough. They lived, loved, felt joy and fear, and ultimately died. But who were they? And what indissoluble thread binds them together?
Simon Mawer’s compelling and original novel puts flesh on our ancestors’ bones to bring them to life and give them voice. He has created stories that are gripping and heart-breaking, from the squalor and vitality of Dickensian London to the excitement of seafaring in the last days of sail and the horror of the trenches of the Crimea. There is birth and death; there is love, both open and legal but also hidden and illicit. Yet the thread that connects these disparate figures is something that they cannot have known – the unbreakable bond of family.
Recently finished
For the first time in a long time – absolutely nothing. Too much needing to be done in the garden!
What Cathy (will) Read Next
Sister of Mine by Laurie Petrou (eARC, Verve Books)
Two sisters. One fire. A secret that won’t burn out.
The Grayson sisters are trouble. Everyone in their small town knows it. But no-one can know of the secret that binds them together.
Hattie is the light. Penny is the darkness. Together, they have balance.
But one night the balance is toppled. A match is struck. A fire is started. A cruel husband is killed. The potential for a new life flickers in the fire’s embers, but resentment, guilt, and jealousy suffocate like smoke.
Their lives have been engulfed in flames – will they ever be able to put them out?
On What Cathy Read Next last week
What Cathy Read Next... 