Tag: Currently Reading

My Week in Books – 22nd March 2020

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MyWeekinBooks

On What Cathy Read Next last week

Blog posts

Tuesday – This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic was My Spring 2020 TBR. I have a feeling, given the current situation, I have a greater than usual chance of actually getting through my list.

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 – I published an extract from Second Sister by Chan Ho-Kei as part of the blog tour.

Friday – I shared my thoughts on the audio book of Attica Locke’s latest crime novel Heaven, My Home.

Saturday – Prompted by this week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic (see above), I took a look back at how I got on with My Winter 2019/20 TBR.

Sunday – I shared my review of crime novel Containment by Vanda Symon as part of the blog tour.

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

New arrivals

Three books, all for blog tours. 

HamnetHamnet by Maggie O’Farrell (eARC, courtesy of Tinder Press and Random Things Tours)

Warwickshire in the 1580s. Agnes is a woman as feared as she is sought after for her unusual gifts. She settles with her husband in Henley Street, Stratford, and has three children: a daughter, Susanna, and then twins, Hamnet and Judith. The boy, Hamnet, dies in 1596, aged eleven. Four years or so later, the husband writes a play called Hamlet.

Award-winning author Maggie O’Farrell’s new novel breathes full-blooded life into the story of a loss usually consigned to literary footnotes, and provides an unforgettable vindication of Agnes, a woman intriguingly absent from history.

The Wheelwright's DaughterThe Wheelwright’s Daughter by Eleanor Porter (eARC, courtesy of Boldwood Books and Rachel’s Random Resources)

Can she save herself from a witch’s fate?

Martha is a feisty and articulate young woman, the daughter of a wheelwright, living in a Herefordshire villlage in Elizabethan England. Unusually for the time she is educated and so helps at the local school whilst longing to escape the confines and small-mindedness of a community riven by religious bigotry and poverty.

As she is able to read and is well-versed in herbal remedies she is suspected of being a witch. When a landslip occurs – opening up a huge chasm in the centre of the village – she is blamed for it and pursued remorselessly by the villagers.

But can her own wits and the love of local stablehand Jacob save her from a witch’s persecution and death..

A Ration Book WeddingA Ration Book Wedding by Jean Fullerton (eARC, courtesy of Corvus and Rachel’s Random Resources)

Because in the darkest days of the Blitz, love is more important than ever.

It’s February 1942 and the Americans have finally joined Britain and its allies. Meanwhile, twenty-three-year-old Francesca Fabrino, like thousands of other women, is doing her bit for the war effort in a factory in East London. But her thoughts are constantly occupied by her unrequited love for Charlie Brogan, who has recently married a woman of questionable reputation, before being shipped out to North Africa with the Eighth Army.

When Francesca starts a new job as an Italian translator for the BBC Overseas Department, she meets handsome Count Leonardo D’Angelo. Just as Francesca has begun to put her hopeless love for Charlie to one side and embrace the affections of this charming and impressive man, Charlie returns from the front, his marriage in ruins and his heart burning for Francesca at last. Could she, a good Catholic girl, countenance an illicit affair with the man she has always longed for? Or should she choose a different, less dangerous path?

On What Cathy Read Next this week

Currently reading

Planned posts

  • Blog Tour/Book Review: The Canary Keeper by Clare Carson
  • Top Ten Tuesday: Genre Freebie
  • Waiting on Wednesday
  • Blog Tour/Book Review: The Walls We Build by Jules Hayes
  • Buchan of the Month/Book Review: A Lodge in the Wilderness by John Buchan

#WWWWednesday – 18th March 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 an ARC.

The Canary Keeper PBThe Canary Keeper by Clare Carson (paperback, review copy courtesy of Head of Zeus)

In the grey mist of the early morning a body is dumped on the shore of the Thames by a boatman in a metal canoe. The city is soon alive with talk of the savage Esquimaux stalking Victorian London and an eye witness who claims the killer had an accomplice: a tall woman dressed in widow’s weeds, with the telltale look of the degenerate Irish.

Branna ‘Birdie’ Quinn had no good reason to be by the river that morning, but she did not kill the man. She’d seen him first the day before, desperate to give her a message she refused to hear. And now the Filth will see her hang for his murder, just like her father.

To save her life, Birdie must trace the dead man’s footsteps. Back onto the ship that carried him to his death, back to cold isles of Orkney that sheltered him, and up to the far north, a harsh and lawless land which holds more answers than she looks to find…

A Thousand MoonsA Thousand Moons by Sebastian Barry (eARC, courtesy of Faber & Faber and NetGalley)

Even when you come out of bloodshed and disaster in the end you have got to learn to live.

Narrated by Winona, the young Lakota orphan adopted by soldiers Thomas McNulty and John Cole in Days Without End, A Thousand Moons continues Sebastian Barry’s extraordinary fictional exploration of late nineteenth century America.

Living with Thomas and John on the farm they work in 1870s Tennessee, educated and loved, Winona is employed by the lawyer Briscoe in the nearby town of Paris, as she tries to forge a life for herself beyond the violence and dispossession of her past. But the fragile harmony of this shared world, in the aftermath of the Civil War, is soon threatened by a further traumatic event, one which Winona struggles to confront let alone understand.

Told in Sebastian Barry’s gorgeous, lyrical prose, A Thousand Moons is a powerful, moving study of one woman’s journey, about her determination to write her own future, and about the enduring human capacity for love.

Recently finished

Summer of the Three PagodasSummer of the Three Pagodas by Jean Moran (hardcover, courtesy of Head of Zeus)

A brilliantly exotic saga set in post-war Hong Kong and Korea, where Dr Rowena Rossiter longs to follow her heart, and her love, but the shadows of a violent past threaten to engulf her.

Hong Kong, 1950: Rowena’s daughter, conceived during the horrors of the Japanese invasion, is safely at boarding school. Her great love, Connor O’Connor, is by her side. But just as they begin planning a new life together, bad news comes. A female doctor is urgently needed in Seoul. The powers that be would like Rowena to go. At first she plans to refuse—until rumors begin to swirl that the sinister, beautiful man who held her captive during the war, may still be alive and looking for her. Korea on the brink of war seems safer by comparison. Except, that of course, it isn’t.

Containment CoverContainment (Sam Shephard #3) by Vanda Symon (ebook, courtesy of Orenda Books and Random Things Tours)

Chaos reigns in the sleepy village of Aramoana on the New Zealand coast, when a series of shipping containers wash up on the beach and looting begins.

Detective Constable Sam Shephard experiences the desperation of the scavengers first-hand, and ends up in an ambulance, nursing her wounds and puzzling over an assault that left her assailant for dead. What appears to be a clear-cut case of a cargo ship running aground soon takes a more sinister turn when a skull is found in the sand, and the body of a diver is pulled from the sea . . . a diver who didn’t die of drowning.

As first officer at the scene, Sam is handed the case, much to the displeasure of her superiors, and she must put together an increasingly confusing series of clues to get to the bottom of a mystery that may still have more victims. (Review to follow 22nd March as part of blog tour)

What Cathy (will) Read Next

The Walls We Build_EbookThe Walls We Build by Jules Hayes  (eARC, review copy courtesy of Rachel’s Random Resources)

Three Friends… Growing up together around Winston Churchill’s estate in Westerham, Kent, Frank, Florence and Hilda are inseparable. But as WW2 casts its menacing shadow, friendships between the three grow complex, and Frank – now employed as Churchill’s bricklayer – makes choices that will haunt him beyond the grave, impacting his grandson’s life too.

Two Secrets …Shortly after Frank’s death in 2002, Florence writes to Richard, Frank’s grandson, hinting at the darkness hidden within his family. On investigation, disturbing secrets come to light, including a pivotal encounter between Frank and Churchill during the war and the existence of a mysterious relative in a psychiatric hospital.

​One Hidden Life … How much more does Florence dare reveal about Frank – and herself – and is Richard ready to hear?

​Set against the stunning backdrop of Chartwell, Churchill’s country home, comes a tragic story of misguided honour, thwarted love and redemption, reverberating through three generations and nine decades.