Tag: Currently Reading

My Week in Books – 7th February 2021

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MyWeekinBooks

On What Cathy Read Next last week

Blog posts

Monday – I published my review of Dublin’s Girl by Eimear Lawlor as part of the blog tour. 

Tuesday –  This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic was Books Written Before I Was Born. 

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 other bloggers are reading.  Also published my review of When The World Was Ours by Liz Kessler as part of the blog tour.

Thursday – I shared my Five Favourite January Reads.

Saturday – It being the first Saturday of a new month it was time for #6Degrees of Separation and my chain took me from Redhead By the Side of the Road by Anne Tyler to Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell. 

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

New arrivals

After The StormAfter the Storm (A Giuseppe Bianchi Book 2) by Isabella Muir (ebook, courtesy of the author and Rachel’s Random Resources)

When a violent storm blasts England’s south coast, it’s up to retired Italian detective Giuseppe Bianchi to sift through the devastation and piece together the tragic events left behind in the storm’s wake.

Giuseppe Bianchi’s brief visit to Bexhill-on-Sea has become an extended stay. He is loath to return to his home in Rome because of the haunting images that made him leave in the first place.  During his morning walks along the seafront with Beagle, Max, he meets Edward Swain, who becomes Giuseppe’s walking companion. They form a friendship of sorts and find they have a similar outlook on life.

But the devastating events of a single night lead Giuseppe to question the truth about Edward Swain. Teaming up with young journalist, Christina Rossi – his cousin’s daughter – Giuseppe learns about the brutal reality lurking behind the day-to-day life of families in the local community. And as the story unravels Giuseppe is reminded how anger and revenge can lead to the most dreadful of crimes.

StellaStella by Takis Würger, translated by Liesl Schillinger (ARC, courtesy of Grove Press and Readers First)

In 1942, Friedrich, an even-keeled but unworldly young man, arrives in Berlin from bucolic Switzerland with dreams of becoming an artist. At a life drawing class, he is hypnotized by the beautiful model, Kristin, who soon becomes his energetic yet enigmatic guide to the bustling and cosmopolitan city. Kristin teaches the naïve Friedrich how to take care of himself in a city filled with danger, and brings him to an underground jazz club where they drink cognac, dance, and kiss. The war feels far away to Friedrich as he falls in love with Kristin, the pair cocooned inside their palatial rooms at the Grand Hotel, where even Champagne and fresh fruit can be obtained thanks to the black market.

But as the months pass, the mood in the city darkens yet further, with the Nazi Party tightening their hold on everyday life of all Berliners, terrorizing anyone who might be disloyal to the Reich. Kristin’s loyalties are unclear, and she is not everything she seems, as his realizes when one frightening day she comes back to Friedrich’s hotel suite in tears, battered and bruised. She tells him an astonishing secret: that her real name is Stella, and that she is Jewish, passing for Aryan. Fritz comforts her, but he soon realizes that Stella’s control of the situation is rapidly slipping out of her grasp, and that the Gestapo have an impossible power over her.

As Friedrich confronts Stella’s unimaginable choices, he finds himself woefully unprepared for the history he is living through. Based in part on a real historical character, Stella sets a tortured love story against the backdrop of wartime Berlin, and powerfully explores questions of naiveté, young love, betrayal, and the horrors of history.

On What Cathy Read Next this week

Currently reading

Planned posts

  • Book Review: Light Perpetual by Francis Spufford
  • Blog Tour/Book Review: The Girl at the Back of the Bus by Suzette D. Harrison
  • Top Ten Tuesday 
  • Book Review: Land of the Living by Georgina Harding
  • Waiting on Wednesday
  • Book Review: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
  • Book Review: Saving the World – Women: The Twenty-First Century’s Factor For Change by Paola Diana

#WWWWednesday – 3rd February 2021

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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

A book from my Classics Club list and two ARCs

Light PerpetualLight Perpetual by Francis Spufford (eARC, courtesy of Faber & Faber via NetGalley)

November 1944. A German rocket strikes London, and five young lives are atomised in an instant.

November 1944. That rocket never lands. A single second in time is altered, and five young lives go on – to experience all the unimaginable changes of the twentieth century. Because maybe there are always other futures. Other chances.

From the best-selling, prize-winning author of Golden Hill, Light Perpetual is a story of the everyday, the miraculous and the everlasting.

A Tree Grows in BrooklynA Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith (paperback)

The beloved American classic about a young girl’s coming-of-age at the turn of the century, Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is a poignant and moving tale filled with compassion and cruelty, laughter and heartache, crowded with life and people and incident.

The story of young, sensitive, and idealistic Francie Nolan and her bittersweet formative years in the slums of Williamsburg has enchanted and inspired millions of readers for more than sixty years. By turns overwhelming, sublime, heartbreaking, and uplifting, the daily experiences of the unforgettable Nolans are raw with honesty and tenderly threaded with family connectedness — in a work of literary art that brilliantly captures a unique time and place as well as incredibly rich moments of universal experience. 

The Diplomat's WifeThe Diplomat’s Wife by Michael Ridpath (ARC, courtesy of Corvus and Readers First)

1936: Devastated by the death of her beloved brother Hugh, Emma seeks to keep his memory alive by wholeheartedly embracing his dreams of a communist revolution. But when she marries an ambitious diplomat, she must leave her ideals behind and live within the confines of embassy life in Paris and Nazi Berlin. Then one of Hugh’s old comrades reappears, asking her to report on her philandering husband, and her loyalties are torn.

1979: Emma’s grandson, Phil, dreams of a gap-year tour of Cold War Europe, but is nowhere near being able to fund it. So when his beloved grandmother determines to make one last trip to the places she lived as a young diplomatic wife, and to try to solve a mystery that has haunted her since the war, he jumps at the chance to accompany her. But their journey takes them to darker, more dangerous places than either of them could ever have imagined…

Recently finished

Links from the titles will take you to my reviews

To The Dark (Simon Westow #3) by Chris Nickson (eARC, courtesy of Severn House)

The Dead of Winter by S.J. Parris

A Prince and a Spy by Rory Clements

Mint by S. R. Wilsher

Dublin’s Girl by Eimear Lawlor

When The World Was Ours by Liz Kessler

Saving the World: Women – The Twenty-First Century’s Factor For Change by Paola Diana 

A passionate call for international gender equality by a leading entrepreneur; this smart, accessible and inspiring book makes the case for why all nations need more women at the top of politics and economics.

“The status of women is a global challenge; it touches every human being without exception. How is it possible that countries where women have achieved political, economic and social rights after exhausting struggles remain seemingly indifferent to the egregiousness of other nations where the status of women is still tragic? The time has come to help those left behind.” (Review to follow)

What Cathy (will) Read Next

The Girl at the Back of the BusThe Girl at the Back of the Bus by Suzette D. Harrison (eARC, courtesy of Bookouture via NetGalley)

Montgomery, Alabama, 1955. On a cold December evening, Mattie Banks packs a suitcase and leaves her family home. Sixteen years old and pregnant, she has already made the mistake that will ruin her life and disgrace her widowed mother. Boarding the 2857 bus, she sits with her case on her lap, hoping that the driver will take her away from disaster. Instead, Mattie witnesses an act of bravery by a woman named Rosa Parks that changes everything. But as Mattie strives to turn her life around, the dangers that first led her to run are never far away. Forging a new life in a harsh world at constant risk of exposure, Mattie will need to fight to keep her baby safe.

Atlanta, Georgia, present day. Ashlee Turner is going home. Her relationship in ruins, her career held back by prejudice, she is returning to the family who have always been her rock. But Ashlee’s home is not the safe haven she remembers. Her beloved grandmother is dying and is determined to share her story before she leaves…

When Ashlee finds a stack of yellowing letters hidden in her nana’s closet, she can’t help the curiosity that compels her to read, and she uncovers an old secret that could wreak havoc on her already grieving family. As she tries to make sense of what she has learned, Ashlee faces a devastating choice: to protect her loved ones from the revelations, or honor her grandmother’s wishes and follow the path to the truth, no matter where it may lead.