#WWWWednesday – 4th November 2020

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 Henley Literary Festival 2020 reading list (that’s not published until 2021), an ARC from Readers First and a book for a blog tour.

The Push Ashley AudrainThe Push by Ashley Audrain (ARC, courtesy of Michael Joseph)

What if your experience of motherhood was nothing like what you hoped for – but everything you always feared?

‘The women in this family, we’re different…’

The arrival of baby Violet was meant to be the happiest day of my life. It was meant to be a fresh start. But as soon as I held her in my arms I knew something wasn’t right. I have always known that the women in my family aren’t meant to be mothers.

My husband Fox says I’m imagining it. He tells me I’m nothing like my own mother, and that Violet is the sweetest child. But she’s different with me. Something feels very wrong. Is it her? Or is it me? Is she the monster? Or am I?

The ForgersThe Forgers by Bradford Morrow (proof copy, courtesy of Grove Press and Readers First)

The rare book world is stunned when a reclusive collector, Adam Diehl, is found on the floor of his Montauk home: hands severed, surrounded by valuable inscribed books and original manuscripts that have been vandalized beyond repair.

Adam’s sister, Meghan, and her lover, Will – a convicted if unrepentant literary forger – struggle to come to terms with the seemingly incomprehensible murder.

But when Will begins receiving threatening handwritten letters, seemingly penned by long-dead authors, but really from someone who knows secrets about Adam’s death and Will’s past, he understands his own life is also on the line-and attempts to forge a new beginning for himself and Meg.

When I Come Home Again Graphic 2When I Come Home Again by Caroline Scott (eARC, courtesy of Simon & Schuster)

How can you know who you are, when you choose to forget who you’ve been?

November 1918On the cusp of the end of the First World War, a uniformed soldier is arrested in Durham Cathedral. It quickly becomes clear that he has no memory of who he is or how he came to be there. The soldier is given the name Adam and transferred to a rehabilitation home where his doctor, James, tries everything he can to help Adam remember who he once was. There’s just one problem. Adam doesn’t want to remember.

Unwilling to relive the trauma of war, Adam has locked his mind away, seemingly for good. But when a newspaper publishes Adam’s photograph, three women come forward, each just as certain that Adam is their relative and that he should go home with them.

But does Adam really belong with any of these women? Or is there another family waiting for him to come home?

Based on true events, When I Come Home Again is a deeply moving and powerful story of a nation’s outpouring of grief, and the search for hope in the aftermath of the First World War.


Recently finished

Links from the titles will take you to my reviews

The Free Fishers by John Buchan

Immortal by Jessica Duchen 

When the Music Stops by Joe Heap 

Hell GateHell Gate (Ingo Finch Mystery #3) by Jeff Dawson (eARC, courtesy of Canelo via NetGalley)

To solve this case, only an outsider will do… Ingo Finch faces his biggest challenge yet.

New York, 1904 – over a thousand are dead after the sinking of the General Slocum, a pleasure steamer full of German immigrants out for a day on the East River. The community is devastated, broken, in uproar. With a populist senator preying on their grievances, a new political force is unleashed, pushing America to ally with Germany in any coming war.

Nine months later, Ingo Finch arrives in Manhattan, now an official British agent. Tasked with exposing this new movement, he is caught in a deadly game between Whitehall, Washington, Berlin… and the Mob.

Not everything in the Big Apple is as it seems. For Finch, completing the mission is one thing; surviving it quite another… (Review to follow)


What Cathy (will) Read Next

The Coral BrideThe Coral Bride (Detective Morales #2) by Roxanne Bouchard, trans. by David Warriner (review copy, courtesy of Orenda Books)

When an abandoned lobster trawler is found adrift off the coast of Quebec’s Gaspé Peninsula, DS Joaquin Moralès begins a straightforward search for the boat’s missing captain, Angel Roberts – a rare female in a male-dominated world. But Moralès finds himself blocked at every turn – by his police colleagues, by fisheries bureaucrats, and by his grown-up son, who has turned up at his door with a host of his own personal problems.

When Angel’s body is finally discovered, it’s clear something very sinister is afoot, and Moralès and son are pulled into murky, dangerous waters, where old resentments run deep.

My Week in Books – 1st November 2020

MyWeekinBooks

On What Cathy Read Next last week

Blog posts

Monday – I published my review of The Exiles by Christina Baker Kline as part of the blog tour.

Tuesday – This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic had a Halloween theme so I offered a bookish choice of Trick or Treat

Wednesday – It wouldn’t be “hump day” without WWW Wednesday, 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.

Friday – I published my review of my Buchan of the Month for October, The Free Fishers by John Buchan.

Saturday – I shared an extract from Until We Can Forgive by Rosemary Goodacre as part of the blog tour.

Sunday – I published my review of Immortal by Jessica Duchen as part of the blog tour.

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


New arrivals

9780241411407Dangerous Women by Hope Adams (eARC, courtesy of Michael Joseph via NetGalley)

London, 1841. Two hundred Englishwomen file aboard the RAJAH, the ship that will take them on a three-month voyage to the other side of the world. They’re daughters, sisters, mothers – and convicts. Transported for petty crimes. Except one of their number is a secret killer, fleeing justice.

When a woman is mortally wounded, the hunt is on for the culprit. But who would attack one of their own, and why?

dfw-rb-fl-cover-ebookForgotten Lives (DCI Doug Stirling #2) by Ray Britain (eARC, courtesy of the author) 

A man is murdered with quiet efficiency on his doorstep. A strange emblem left behind suggests a gang killing but when more bodies are found with the same emblem, and one of them a cop, DCI Doug Stirling’s investigation takes a sinister turn. But what linked the victims in life, and now in death?

When more deaths are uncovered, miles away and years ago, all with the same emblem left behind, pressure mounts on Stirling. Is it the work of the same person? If so, why are they killing again, and why here? One thing is clear, the killer is highly skilled, ruthless, and always one step ahead of the investigation. Is someone feeding information to them?

Working in a crippling heatwave with too few investigators, too many questions and not enough answers, when wild media speculation of a vigilante at work sparks copycat attacks, demonstrations for justice and with politicians fearing riots, Stirling needs a result – fast!

Meanwhile, Stirling’s private life is falling apart, not helped when Lena Novak of the National Crime Agency is assigned to his team. But is she all that she seems?

When Stirling closes in on the killer he finds the killer’s trademark inside his home – he is being targeted.

20201031_131640-1The Smallest Man by Frances Quinn (proof copy, courtesy of Simon & Schuster)

My name is Nat Davy. Perhaps you’ve heard of me? There was a time when people up and down the land knew my name, though they only ever knew half the story.

The year of 1625, it was, when a single shilling changed my life. That shilling got me taken off to London, where they hid me in a pie, of all things, so I could be given as a gift to the new queen of England.

They called me the queen’s dwarf, but I was more than that. I was her friend, when she had no one else, and later on, when the people of England turned against their king, it was me who saved her life. When they turned the world upside down, I was there, right at the heart of it, and this is my story.


On What Cathy Read Next this week

Currently reading

Planned posts

  • Blog Tour/Book Review: When the Music Stops by Joe Heap
  • Top Ten Tuesday: Non-Bookish Hobbies 
  • Waiting on Wednesday
  • Blog Tour/Book Review: When I Come Home Again by Caroline Scott
  • Blog Tour/Book Review: The Coral Bride by Roxanne Bouchard
  • Book Review: This Green and Pleasant Land by Ayisha Malik
  • #6Degrees of Separation