Tag: Currently Reading

My Week in Books – 13th September 2020

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MyWeekinBooks

On What Cathy Read Next last week

Blog posts

Monday – I shared my Five Favourite August Reads.

Tuesday – My take on this week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic was Books With Inspiring Young Characters.  

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.

Thursday – I shared my review of The Artist and the Soldier by Angelle Petta.

Friday – I published my review of historical mystery, The Ghost Tree by M.R.C. Kasasian.

Saturday – I introduced my Buchan of the Month for September, John Buchan’s book for children The Magic Walking Stick.

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

New arrivals

The Diver and the Lover by Jeremy Vine (giveaway prize courtesy of Coronet)

It is 1951 and sisters Ginny and Meredith have travelled from England to Spain in search of distraction and respite. The two wars have wreaked loss and deprivation upon the family and the spectre of Meredith’s troubled childhood continues to haunt them. Their journey to the rugged peninsula of Catalonia promises hope and renewal.

While there they discover the artist Salvador Dali is staying in nearby Port Lligat. Meredith is fascinated by modern art and longs to meet the famous surrealist. Dali is embarking on an ambitious new work, but his headstrong male model has refused to pose. A replacement is found, a young American waiter with whom Ginny has struck up a tentative acquaintance. The lives of the characters become entangled as family secrets, ego and the dangerous politics of Franco’s Spain threaten to undo the fragile bonds that have been forged.

A powerful story of love, sacrifice and the lengths we will go to for who – or what – we love.

Hermit by S.R. White (ARC, courtesy of Headline)

After the puzzling death of a shopkeeper in rural Australia, troubled detective Dana Russo has just 12 hours to interrogate the prime suspect – a silent, inscrutable man found at the scene of the crime, who simply vanished 15 years earlier.

Where has he been? And just how dangerous is he? Without conclusive evidence linking him to the killing, Dana must race against time to persuade him to speak. But over a series of increasingly intense interviews, Dana is forced to confront her own past if she wants him to reveal the shocking truth.

On What Cathy Read Next this week

Currently reading

Planned posts

  • Book Review: Crooked Heart by Lissa Evans
  • Top Ten Tuesday: Favourite John Buchan Book Covers
  • Waiting on Wednesday
  • Blog Tour/Book Review: The Girl from the Hermitage by Molly Gartland
  • Book Review: City of Spies by Mara Timon
  • Book Review: Skelton’s Guide to Domestic Poisons by David Stafford
  • Blog Tour/Book Review: Hermit by S.R. White

#WWWWednesday – 9th September 2020

whatcathyreadnext7 Comments

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 TBR pile and an ARC

The Artist and the SoldierThe Artist and the Soldier by Angelle Petta (ebook, courtesy of the author)

Two young men come of age and fall in love against the backdrop of true events in World War II.

It’s 1938. Bastian Fisher and Max Amsel meet at a Nazi-American summer camp, Camp Siegfried. Neither boy has any idea what to do with their blooming, confusing feelings for one another. Before they can begin to understand, the pair is yanked back into reality and forced in opposite directions.

Five years later, during the heart of World War II, Bastian’s American army platoon has landed in Salerno, Italy. Max is in Nazi-occupied Rome where he has negotiated a plan to hire Jews as ‘extras’ in a movie – an elaborate ruse to escape the Nazis. Brought together by circumstance and war Bastian and Max find one another again in Rome.

9781838770709City of Spies by Mara Timon (ARC, courtesy of Zaffre and Readers First)

LISBON, 1943. After escaping from Nazi-Occupied France, SOE agent Elisabeth de Mornay, codename Cecile, receives new orders: she must infiltrate high society in neutral Lisbon and find out who is leaking key information to the Germans about British troop movements. As Solange Verin, a French widow of independent means, she will be able to meet all the rich Europeans who have gathered in Lisbon to wait out the war. One of them is a traitor and she must find out who before more British servicemen die.

Complications arise when ‘Solange’ comes to the attention of German Abwehr officer, Major Eduard Graf. As they get to know each other, she struggles to keep her lies close to the truth.

But in a city that is filled with spies, how can she tell who is friend, or foe?

Recently finished

Links from the titles will take you to my review or the book description on Goodreads.

Talland House by Maggie Humm (eARC, courtesy of She Writes Press and Random Things Tours)

Charlotte by Helen Moffett (ARC, courtesy of Zaffre and Readers First)

Adrift by Amin Maalouf (ARC, courtesy of World Editions)

The United States is losing its moral credibility. The European Union is breaking apart. Africa, the Arab world, and the Mediterranean are becoming battlefields for various regional and global powers. Extreme forms of nationalism are on the rise. Thus divided, humanity is unable to address global threats to the environment and our health.

How did we get here and what is yet to come?

World-renowned scholar and bestselling author Amin Maalouf seeks to raise awareness and pursue a new human solidarity. In Adrift, Maalouf traces how civilizations have drifted apart throughout the 20th century, mixing personal narrative and historical analysis to provide a warning signal for the future. (Review to follow)

The Ghost Tree (A Betty Church Mystery Book 3) by M. R. C. Kasasian (eARC, courtesy of Head of Zeus via NetGalley)

Detective Betty Church is forced to revisit ghosts from her past when a skeleton is found buried in the woods.

July, 1914: Sixteen-year-old Etterly, running from something, hides inside the trunk of a tree and disappears. The police search but find no trace. Her family and friends rack their brains, but come up with nothing. And so slowly life returns to normal. The hole in the tree is boarded up and the town of Sackwater moves on. Only Etterly’s best friend, Betty, clings to hope, insisting she can hear her friend crying for help.

June, 1940: A skeleton is discovered buried in the woods. Though most clues have long since decayed, it is wearing an unusual necklace. As soon as Inspector Betty Church sees the evidence she recognises it. The necklace belonged to Etterly. Fearing the worst, Betty is determined to solve this strange case once and for all.

What happened to Etterly? And why has this secret remained buried for so long? (Review to follow)

What Cathy (will) Read Next

9781785631887The Girl from the Hermitage by Molly Gartland (eARC, courtesy of Lightning Books and Rachel’s Random Resources)

It is December 1941, and eight-year-old Galina and her friend Katya are caught in the siege of Leningrad, eating soup made of wallpaper, with the occasional luxury of a dead rat. Galina’s artist father Mikhail has been kept away from the front to help save the treasures of the Hermitage. Its cellars could now provide a safe haven, provided Mikhail can navigate the perils of a portrait commission from one of Stalin’s colonels.

Nearly 40 years later, Galina herself is a teacher at the Leningrad Art Institute. What ought to be a celebratory weekend at her forest dacha turns sour when she makes an unwelcome discovery. The painting she embarks upon that day will hold a grim significance for the rest of her life, as the old Soviet Union makes way for the new Russia and Galina’s familiar world changes out of all recognition.