On the blog last week
Tuesday – I went off-piste for this week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic with a list of Books Featuring Gardens. I also celebrated the announcement of the longlist for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2025.
Wednesday – As always WWW Wednesday is a weekly opportunity to share what I’ve just read, what I’m currently reading and what I plan to read next… and to take a peek at what others are reading.
Thursday – I shared my Q&A with George Alexander, author of historical thriller Twilight of Evil.
Friday – I published my review of The Language of Remembering by Patrick Holloway.
New on my shelves
The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction longlist acquisition has begun!
The Catchers by Xan Brooks (Salt Publishing)
Spring 1927. The birth of popular music. John Coughlin is a song-catcher from New York who has been sent to Appalachia to source and record the local hill-country musicians. His assignment leads him to small-town Tennessee where he oversees the recording session that will establish his reputation. From here he ventures further south in search of glory. He is chasing what song-catchers call the big fish or the firefly; the song or performer which will make a man rich.
Waylaid at an old plantation house, Coughlin gets wind of a black teenage guitarist, Moss Evans, who runs bootleg liquor in the Mississippi Delta. The Mississippi has flooded, putting the country underwater, but Coughlin is able to locate the boy and bring him out. Coughlin views himself as a saviour. Others regard him as a thief and exploiter. Coughlin and Moss – the catcher and his catch – pick their way across a ruined, unstable Old South and then turn north through the mountains, heading for New York.
The Mare: A Novel by Angharad Hampshire (Northodox Press)
Hermine Braunsteiner was the first person to be extradited from the United States for Nazi war crimes. She was one of a few thousand women to work as a female concentration camp guard. Prisoners nicknamed her ‘the Mare’ because she kicked people to death. When the camps were liberated, Hermine escaped and fled back to Vienna.
Many years later, she met Russell Ryan, an American man holidaying in Austria. They fell in love, married, and moved to New York, where she lived a quiet life as an adoring suburban housewife, beloved friend and neighbour. No one, not even her husband, knew the truth of her past, until one day a New York Times journalist knocked on their door, blowing their lives apart.
The Mare tells Hermine and Russell’s story for the first time in fiction. It explores how an ordinary woman could descend so quickly into evil, examining the role played by government propaganda, ideology, fear and cognitive dissonance, and asks why her husband chose to stay with her despite discovering what she had done.
What I’m currently reading
Look out for…
- Book Review: The Paris Dancer by Nicola Rayner
- Book Review: Woman in Blue by Douglas Bruton
- Q&A: In My Boots by Amanda K. Jaros
What Cathy Read Next... 