Tag: Currently Reading

My Week in Books – 12th July 2020

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MyWeekinBooks

On What Cathy Read Next last week

Blog posts

Monday –  I shared my review of crime novel A Quiet Death in Italy by Tom Benjamin as part of the blog tour.

Tuesday – This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic was Authors I’ve Read The Most Books By.

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…and have a good nose around to see what other bloggers are reading.

Thursday – As part of the blog tour, I published my review of The Englishman by David Gilman. 

Friday –  I shared a progress update on my 2020 Reading Challenges.

Saturday – I published my review of The Time Machine by H.G. Wells.

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

New arrivals

9780008366254The Second Marriage by Gill Paul (ebook, courtesy of Avon and Random Things Tours)

JACKIE – When her first marriage ends in tragedy, Jackie Kennedy fears she’ll never love again. But all that changes when she encounters…

ARI – Successful and charming, Ari Onassis is a man who promises her the world. Yet soon after they marry, Jackie learns that his heart also belongs to another…

MARIA – A beautiful, famed singer, Maria Callas is in love with Jackie’s new husband – and she isn’t going to give up. Little by little, Jackie and Maria’s lives begin to tangle in a dangerous web of secrets, scandal and lies.

But with both women determined to make Ari theirs alone, the stakes are high. How far will they go for true love?

This Is Happiness by Niall Williams (paperback)

Change is coming to Faha, a small Irish parish that hasn’t changed in a thousand years.

For one thing, the rain is stopping. Nobody remembers when it started; rain on the western seaboard is a condition of living. But now – just as Father Coffey proclaims the coming of the electricity – the rain clouds are lifting. Seventeen-year-old Noel Crowe is idling in the unexpected sunshine when Christy makes his first entrance into Faha, bringing secrets he needs to atone for. Though he can’t explain it, Noel knows right then: something has changed.

As the people of Faha anticipate the endlessly procrastinated advent of the electricity, and Noel navigates his own coming-of-age and his fallings in and out of love, Christy’s past gradually comes to light, casting a new glow on a small world.

Harking back to a simpler time, This Is Happiness is a tender portrait of a community – its idiosyncrasies and traditions, its paradoxes and kindnesses, its failures and triumphs – and a coming-of-age tale like no other. Luminous and lyrical, yet anchored by roots running deep into the earthy and everyday, it is about the power of stories: their invisible currents that run through all we do, writing and rewriting us, and the transforming light that they throw onto our world.

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To Calais, In Ordinary Time by James Meek (paperback)

Three journeys. One road.

England, 1348. A gentlewoman is fleeing an odious arranged marriage, a Scottish proctor is returning home to Avignon and a handsome young ploughman in search of adventure is on his way to volunteer with a company of archers. All come together on the road to Calais.

Coming in their direction from across the Channel is the Black Death, the plague that will wipe out half of the population of Northern Europe. As the journey unfolds, overshadowed by the archers’ past misdeeds and clerical warnings of the imminent end of the world, the wayfarers must confront the nature of their loves and desires.

A tremendous feat of language and empathy, it summons a medieval world that is at once uncannily plausible, utterly alien and eerily reflective of our own. James Meek’s extraordinary To Calais, In Ordinary Time is a novel about love, class, faith, loss, gender and desire—set against one of the biggest cataclysms of human history.

On What Cathy Read Next this week

Currently reading

Planned posts

  • Buchan of the Month: Introducing…The Gap in the Curtain by John Buchan
  • Top Ten Tuesday: Books That Make Me Smile
  • Waiting on Wednesday
  • Blog Tour/Book Review: Rags of Time by Michael Ward
  • Book Review: The Horseman by Tim Pears

#WWWWednesday – 8th July 2020

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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 for a blog tour and a book from my TBR pile 

WaltScott_The HorsemanThe Horseman (West Country Trilogy #1) by Tim Pears (ebook)

Somerset, 1911. The forces of war are building across Europe, but this pocket of England, where the rhythms of lives are dictated by the seasons and the land, remains untouched.

Albert Sercombe is a farmer on Lord Prideaux’s estate and his eldest son, Sid, is underkeeper to the head gamekeeper. His son, Leo, a talented rider, grows up alongside the master’s spirited daughter, Charlotte–a girl who shoots and rides, much to the surprise of the locals.

In beautiful, pastoral writing, The Horseman tells the story of a family, a community, and the landscape they come from.

Rags of Time Final CoverRags of Time by Michael Ward (ebook, courtesy of the author)

London, 1639. Spice merchant Thomas Tallant returns from India to find his city in turmoil – overcrowded, ravaged by crime and seething with sedition. A bitter struggle is brewing between King Charles I and Parliament as England slides into civil war.

A wealthy merchant is savagely killed; then his partner plunges to his death in the Tallant household. Suspicion falls on Tom, who soon finds himself being sucked into London’s turbulence. As he struggles to clear his name, he becomes entranced by the enigmatic Elizabeth Seymour, whose passion for astronomy and mathematics is matched only by her addiction to the gaming tables. Can her brilliance untangle the web of deceit that threatens to drag Tom under?

A thrilling murder mystery set in the murky streets of Stuart London, Rags of Time is an intriguing tale of murder, suspicion and the search for enlightenment that will keep you guessing until the final dramatic scene.

Recently finished

Links from the title will take you to my review or the book’s entry on Goodreads

EXu9kKLWAAMtUAnA Quiet Death in Italy by Tom Benjamin (ebook, courtesy of Constable and Rachel’s Random Resources)

Bologna: city of secrets, suspicion . . . and murder.

When the body of a radical protestor is found floating in one of Bologna’s underground canals, it seems that most of the city is ready to blame the usual suspects: the police.

But when private investigator Daniel Leicester, son-in-law to a former chief of police, receives a call from the dead man’s lover, he follows a trail that begins in the 1970s and leads all the way to the rotten heart of the present-day political establishment.

Beneath the beauty of the city, Bologna has a dark underside, and English detective Daniel must unravel a web of secrets, deceit and corruption – before he is caught in it himself.

9781838931391The Englishman (Raglan #1) by David Gilman (proof copy, courtesy of Head of Zeus)

A clandestine war on the desert border of Mali and Algeria; murder and kidnap on the suburban streets of West London; a Moscow CID police inspector investigating the assassination of four of her fellow officers by the Russian mafia; a young MI6 officer facing the possibility that a long-running operation has been fatally compromised: connecting them all is the Englishman – Dan Raglan, outsider, exile, one-time member of the French Foreign Legion, fully trained killer.

Raglan’s quest for answers will become a quest for vengeance. It will lead him to the winter-ravaged wasteland of the Sverdlovskaya Oblast and Penal Colony #74, a place that holds Russia’s most brutal murderers. A place of death and retribution.

How will he get in? More importantly, how will he get out? (Review to follow 9th July for blog tour)

61fg+BR7jTL._SX342_The Time Machine by H G Wells (audiobook)

When a Victorian scientist propels himself into the year 802,701 AD, he is initially delighted to find that suffering has been replaced by beauty, contentment and peace. Entranced at first by the Eloi, an elfin species descended from man, he soon realises that this beautiful people are simply remnants of a once-great culture – now weak and childishly afraid of the dark. But they have every reason to be afraid: in deep tunnels beneath their paradise lurks another race descended from humanity – the sinister Morlocks.

And when the scientist’s time machine vanishes, it becomes clear he must search these tunnels, if he is ever to return to his own era. (Review to follow)

What Cathy (will) Read Next

Paris SavagesParis Savages by Katherine Johnson (eARC, courtesy of Allison & Busby)

Fraser Island, 1882. The population of the Badtjala people is in sharp decline following a run of brutal massacres. When German scientist Louis Muller offers to sail three Badtjala people – Bonny, Jurano and Dorondera – to Europe to perform to huge crowds, the proud and headstrong Bonny agrees, hoping to bring his people’s plight to the Queen of England.

Accompanied by Muller’s bright, grieving daughter, Hilda, the group begins their journey to belle-epoque Europe to perform in Hamburg, Berlin, Paris and eventually London. While crowds in Europe are enthusiastic to see the unique dances, singing, fights and pole climbing from the oldest culture in the world, the attention is relentless, and the fascination of scientists intrusive. When disaster strikes, Bonny must find a way to return home.