Currently Reading

On What Cathy Read Next last week

Monday – I celebrated Valentine’s Day by featuring Katy Moran’s Regency romance series.

Tuesday – I shared my review of dual time historical novel The Paris Network by Siobhan Curham as part of the blog tour.

Wednesday – WWW Wednesday is my 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 shared my reviews of historical novel The Porcelain Doll by Kristen Loesch and the Crime Writers’ Association latest anthology of short stories, Music of the Night edited by Martin Edwards.

Friday – I published my review of historical crime mystery The Mirror Game by Guy Gardner as part of the blog tour.

Saturday – I shared my review of The Reading Party by Fenella Gentleman.

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

New arrivals

The Dark Flood by Deon Meyer (ARC, Hodder & Stoughton)

One last chance. Almost fired for insubordination, detectives Benny Griessel and Vaughan Cupido find themselves demoted, exiled from the elite Hawks unit and dispatched to the leafy streets of Stellenbosch. Working a missing persons report on student Callie de Bruin is not the level of work they are used to, but it’s all they get. And soon, it takes a dangerous, deeply disturbing turn.

One last chance. Stellenbosch is beautiful, but its economy has been ruined by one man. Jasper Boonstra and his gigantic corporate fraud have crashed the local property market, just when estate agent Sandra Steenberg desperately needs a big sale. Bringing up twins and supporting her academic husband, she is facing disaster. Then she gets a call. From Jasper Boonstra, fraudster, sexual predator and owner of a superb property worth millions, even now.

For Sandra, the stakes are high and about to get way higher.

For Benny Griessel, clinging to sobriety and the relationship that saved his life, the truth about Callie can only lead to more trouble.

Ranger (Storm of War #1) by Timothy Ashby (Sharpe Books)

West Indies, 1796. Alexander Charteris – the mixed-race son of an aristocratic planter and a slave mother – is raised as a gentleman amidst the country houses and London drawing rooms of Georgian England. Tricked out of his inheritance by his cousin Pemberton – Chart is kidnapped and transported to the island of Grenada where he endures the hell of slavery on a sugar plantation.

When Pemberton arrives at the plantation, accompanied by Chart’s former lover, Lady Arabella, he orders Chart’s torture and execution.

A slave revolt ensues, before the order can be carried out. Chart initially joins the revolutionaries but is sentenced to death for refusing to take part in a massacre of British colonists. Aided by the beautiful daughter of the rebel general, Julian Fédon, Chart escapes.

He is recruited into a new British unit called the Loyal Black Rangers and promised freedom if he fights against the French. Chart confronts conflicting loyalties as he leads his men in vicious bush-fighting. He rises through the ranks and plays a pivotal role in the bloody battle that crushes the rebellion.

But the soldier must confront one more enemy, that of his treacherous cousin, before he can find peace.

On What Cathy Read Next this week

Currently reading

Planned posts

Book Review: Ghosts of Spring by Luis Carrasco
Blog Tour/Book Review: Unhinged by Thomas Enger & Jørn Lier Horst
Blog Tour/Book Review: The Matchmaker: A Spy in Berlin by Paul Vidich
Blog Tour/Book Review: The One by Claire Frost

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!

The Mirror Game by Guy Gardner (ARC, The Book Guild)

London 1925. When Adrian Harcourt, a politician and captain in the army believed dead with his company on the battlefield of Flanders, is sighted looking like he’s been living rough, Harry Lark, a war veteran and journalist, is enlisted by his friend and benefactor Lady Carlise to investigate. As he becomes drawn further into the case and the deaths mount up, he can see that things don’t add up. Where has Adrian been for so many years? Why can’t he remember parts of his past?

Looking further into Adrian’s previous life, even as his own dark past and addiction to laudanum threatens to overwhelm him, Harry begins to fall for Lady Carlise’s beautiful daughter Freddy, who was also Adrian’s fiancé. Chasing the leads as they continue to unravel, can Harry solve the mystery behind what really happened to Adrian before it’s too late?

Islands of Abandonment: Life in the Post-Human Landscape by Cal Flyn (William Collins)

This is a book about abandoned places: ghost towns and exclusion zones, no man’s lands and fortress islands – and what happens when nature is allowed to reclaim its place.

In Chernobyl, following the nuclear disaster, only a handful of people returned to their dangerously irradiated homes. On an uninhabited Scottish island, feral cattle live entirely wild. In Detroit, once America’s fourth-largest city, entire streets of houses are falling in on themselves, looters slipping through otherwise silent neighbourhoods.

This book explores the extraordinary places where humans no longer live – or survive in tiny, precarious numbers – to give us a possible glimpse of what happens when mankind’s impact on nature is forced to stop. From Tanzanian mountains to the volcanic Caribbean, the forbidden areas of France to the mining regions of Scotland, Flyn brings together some of the most desolate, eerie, ravaged and polluted areas in the world – and shows how, against all odds, they offer our best opportunities for environmental recovery.

By turns haunted and hopeful, this luminously written world study is pinned together with profound insight and new ecological discoveries that together map an answer to the big questions: what happens after we’re gone, and how far can our damage to nature be undone?