Tag: Currently Reading

My Week in Books – 2nd February 2020

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MyWeekinBooks

On What Cathy Read Next last week

Blog posts

Monday – I joined the blog tour for The Other You by J. S. Monroe.

Tuesday – This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic was a freebie on the theme of Book Covers and I chose to focus on covers featuring flora and fauna.

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 shared my review of Sir Quixote of the Moorsby John Buchan.

Friday – I published my review of Katherine by Anya Seton.

Saturday – I took part in the monthly Six Degrees of Separation meme forging a chain from Fleishman Is In Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner to The American Agent by Jacqueline Winspear.

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

New arrivals

cover182150-mediumHow To Belong by Sarah Franklin (eARC, courtesy of Zaffre and NetGalley)

In the follow up to her acclaimed novel Shelter, Sarah Franklin returns to the Forest of Dean, this time exploring what it means to belong to a rural community in a rapidly changing world.

Jo grew up in the Forest of Dean, but she was always the one destined to leave for a bigger, brighter future. When her parents retire from their butcher’s shop, she returns to her beloved community to save the family legacy, hoping also to save herself. But things are more complex than the rose-tinted version of life which sustained Jo from afar.

Tessa is a farrier, shoeing horses two miles and half a generation away from Jo, further into the forest. Tessa’s experience of the community couldn’t be more different. Now she too has returned, in flight from a life she could have led, nursing a secret and a past filled with guilt and shame.

Compelled through circumstance to live together, these two women will be forced to confront their sense of identity, and reconsider the meaning of home.

cover181972-mediumThe Sea Gate by Jane Johnson (eARC, courtesy of Head of Zeus and NetGalley)

After the death of her mother, Rebecca begins the sad task of sorting through her empty flat. Starting with the letters piling up on the doormat, she finds an envelope post-marked from Cornwall. In it is a letter that will change her life forever. A desperate plea from her mother’s elderly cousin, Olivia, to help save her beloved home.

Rebecca arrives at Chynalls to find the house crumbling into the ground and Olivia stuck in hospital with no hope of being discharged until her home is made habitable.

Though slightly daunted, Rebecca sets to work. But as she peels back the layers of paint, plaster and grime, she uncovers secrets buried for more than seventy years. Secrets from a time when Olivia was young, the Second World War was raging, and danger and romance lurked round every corner…

20200131_142931A Registry Of My Passage Upon The Earth by Daniel Mason (proof copy courtesy of Mantle Books)

From the bestselling, award-winning author of The Winter Soldier and The Piano Tuner, a collection of interlaced tales of men and women as they face the mysteries and magic of the world

On a fateful flight, a balloonist makes a discovery that changes her life forever. A telegraph operator finds an unexpected companion in the middle of the Amazon. A doctor is beset by seizures, in which he is possessed by a second, perhaps better, version of himself. And in Regency London, a bare-knuckle fighter prepares to face his most fearsome opponent, while a young mother seeks a miraculous cure for her ailing son.

At times funny and irreverent, always moving and deeply urgent, these stories – among them a National Magazine Award and a Pushcart Prize winner – cap a fifteen-year project. From the Nile’s depths to the highest reaches of the atmosphere, from volcano-racked islands to an asylum on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, these are tales of ecstasy, epiphany, and what the New York Times Magazine called the “struggle for survival…hand to hand, word to word,” by “one of the finest prose stylists in American fiction.”

On What Cathy Read Next this week

Currently reading

Heaven My HomeRequiem for a KnaveThe Bermondsey Bookshop

Planned posts

  • Top Ten Tuesday: Books In My TBR I Predict Will Be 5* Reads
  • Waiting on Wednesday
  • Book Review: Burning Cold by Lisa Lieberman
  • Blog Tour/Spotlight: Inexpressible Island by Paullina Simons
  • Blog Tour/Book Review: The Bermondsey Bookshop by Mary Gibson
  • Book Review: Requiem for a Knave by Laura Carlin
  • Buchan of the Month: Introducing… John Burnet of Barns

#WWWWednesday – 29th January 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 Wordsand then go blog hopping!

Currently reading

An audiobook and the book chosen for me for the latest Classics Club spin.

TBR#7KatherineKatherine by Anya Seton (ebook)

This classic romance novel tells the true story of the love affair that changed history—that of Katherine Swynford and John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, the ancestors of most of the British royal family.

Set in the vibrant 14th century of Chaucer and the Black Death, the story features knights fighting in battle, serfs struggling in poverty, and the magnificent Plantagenets – Edward III, the Black Prince, and Richard II – who ruled despotically over a court rotten with intrigue. Within this era of danger and romance, John of Gaunt, the king’s son, falls passionately in love with the already married Katherine. Their well-documented affair and love persist through decades of war, adultery, murder, loneliness, and redemption.

This epic novel of conflict, cruelty, and untameable love has become a classic since its first publication in 1954.

Heaven My HomeHeaven, My Home (Highway 59 #2) by Attica Locke (audiobook)

Nine-year-old Levi King knew he should have left for home sooner; now he’s alone in the darkness of vast Caddo Lake, in a boat whose motor just died. A sudden noise distracts him – and all goes dark.

Darren Matthews is trying to emerge from another kind of darkness; after the events of his previous investigation, his marriage is in a precarious state of re-building, and his career and reputation lie in the hands of his mother, who’s never exactly had his best interests at heart. Now she holds the key to his freedom, and she’s not above a little maternal blackmail to press her advantage.

An unlikely possibility of rescue arrives in the form of a case down Highway 59, in a small lakeside town where the local economy thrives on nostalgia for ante-bellum Texas – and some of the era’s racial attitudes still thrive as well. Levi’s disappearance has links to Darren’s last case, and to a wealthy businesswoman, the boy’s grandmother, who seems more concerned about the fate of her business than that of her grandson.

Darren has to battle centuries-old suspicions and prejudices, as well as threats that have been reignited in the current political climate, as he races to find the boy, and to save himself.

Recently finished

The Other YouThe Other You by J. S. Monroe (ebook, courtesy of Head of Zeus)

Kate used to be good at recognising people. So good, she worked for the police, identifying criminals in crowds of thousands. But six months ago, a devastating car accident led to a brain injury. Now the woman who never forgot a face can barely recognise herself in the mirror.

At least she has Rob. Young, rich, handsome and successful, Rob runs a tech company on the idyllic Cornish coast. Kate met him just after her accident, and he nursed her back to health. When she’s with him, in his luxury modernist house, the nightmares of the accident fade, and she feels safe and loved.

Until, one day, she looks at Rob anew. And knows, with absolute certainty, that the man before her has been replaced by an impostor.

Is Rob who he says he is? Or is it all in Kate’s damaged mind?

20200118_131258Sir Quixote of the Moors by John Buchan (hardcover)

In the mid-sixteenth century, Jean de Rohaine, a middle-aged French nobleman, journeys to Scotland in search of adventure and a new beginning. In Scotland he meets up with his old friend, Quentin Kennedy, who informs him of a great battle to be waged. To the Frenchman’s horror,when he rides with Kennedy’s men in search of honour he finds instead that the “war” is with unarmed religious dissidents – Covenanters – whom he watches massacred.

Disgusted, he sets off alone across the barren moors, where he wanders until he comes to a cottage containing a beautiful and unprotected young woman, Anne. Rohaine promises to be her protector, but his ideals of honour and duty will be put to the test when he finds himself gradually falling in love with her…. (Review to follow)

What Cathy (will) Read Next

Requiem for a KnaveRequiem for a Knave by Laura Carlin (eARC, courtesy of Hodder & Stoughton and NetGalley)

After the death of his mother, young Alwin of Whittaker leaves the only home he has ever known to seek answers about his unknown father through a pilgrimage to the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham.

On the journey, Alwin falls in with a band of violent and marauding soldiers and is witness to their terrible crimes. When Alwin later joins up with a group of pilgrims, he must hide his identity . . . but he is not the only one with secrets to keep. Rosamund, a young woman travelling the same path, has much to conceal too.

The journey to discovering who he really is will lead Alwin into great danger and great passion. These are dark times, and through them, Alwin must shine a light.

Will the revelations to come destroy everything that came before?