Tag: Currently Reading

My Week in Books – 7th April ‘19

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MyWeekinBooks

New arrivals

Tell Me Where You AreTell Me Where You Are by Moira Forsyth (paperback, courtesy of Sandstone Press and Ruth Killick Publicity)

Frances spent thirteen years not wanting to hear her sister’s name.

The last thing Frances wants is a phone call from Alec, the husband who left her for her sister thirteen years ago. But Susan has disappeared, abandoning Alec and her daughter Kate, a surly teenager with an explosive secret. Reluctantly, Frances is drawn into her sister’s turbulent life.

Pre-order Tell Me Where You Are from Amazon UK (link provided for convenience not as part of an affiliate programme)

The Playground MurdersThe Playground Murders (The Detective’s Daughter #7) by Lesley Thomson (hardcover, advance review copy courtesy of Head of Zeus)

Wormwood Scrubs playground, 1980. The wind blows across the common, and the girl in her shorts shivers. The playground is isolated, timeless. Far from the prying eyes of grown-ups, she and her friends can play make-believe here. The looming slide is a mountain; the upturned log a pirate ship. But six-year-old Sarah Ferris does not know that in two days’ time, she will be dead: a victim of jealousy, betrayal, and her own innocence.

Hammersmith, 2019. Cleaner Stella Darnell loves rooting into shadowy places and restoring order. She’ll clear your attic, polish your kitchen and scrub your bath – but she also investigates cold cases. Stella can spend hours sifting through forgotten evidence looking for shreds of evidence the police might have missed. So when a woman is found dead, and the killer is linked to the Sarah Ferris murder, Stella is the woman for the case. But dredging up the past can be dangerous. Especially if the playground killer is back.

The Long TakeThe Long Take by Robin Robertson (audiobook)

Walker, a young Canadian recently demobilised after war and his active service in the Normandy landings and subsequent European operations. Suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, and unable to face a return to his family home in rural Nova Scotia, he goes in search of freedom, change, anonymity and repair. We follow Walker through a sequence of poems as he moves through post-war American cities of New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. (Shortlisted for The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2019)

De Bohun’s Destiny (The Meonbridge Chronicles #3) by Carolyn Hughes (eARC, courtesy of Rachel’s Random Resources

How can you uphold a lie when you know it could destroy your family?

Margaret, Lady de Bohun, is horrified when her husband lies about their grandson Dickon’s entitlement to inherit Meonbridge. Margaret knows that Richard lied for the very best of reasons – to safeguard his family and its future – but lying is a sin, and an assured road to ruin. Yet Margaret has no option but to perpetuate her husband’s falsehood…

Margaret’s companion, Matilda Fletcher, decides that the truth about young Dickon’s birth really must be told, if only to Thorkell Boune, the man she’s set her heart on winning. But Matilda’s “honesty” serves only her own interests, and she is oblivious to the potential for disaster.

Thorkell doesn’t scruple to pursue exactly what he wants, by whatever means are necessary, no matter who or what gets in his way…

LiarLiar by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen, trans. by Sondra Silverston (paperback)

If being old meant making up things so you wouldn’t be alone, then it really wasn’t very different from being seventeen.

Nofar is just an average teenage girl – so average, she’s almost invisible. Serving customers ice cream all summer long, she is desperate for some kind of escape. One afternoon, a terrible lie slips from her tongue. And suddenly everyone wants to talk to her: the press, her schoolmates, and the boy upstairs – the only one who knows the truth.

Then Nofar meets Raymonde, an elderly woman whose best friend has just died. Raymonde keeps her friend alive the only way she knows how – by inhabiting her stories. But soon, Raymonde’s lies take on a life of their own.

A heart-stopping novel about deception and its consequences, Liar brilliantly explores how far a lie can travel – and how much we are willing to believe.

On What Cathy Read Next last week

Blog posts

Tuesday – I published my review of The Conviction of Cora Burns by Carolyn Kirby as part of the blog tour.  This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic  was Things That Make Me Pick Up A Book.

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 my review of Sunwise by Helen Steadman, the sequel to Widdershins as part of the blog tour.  I also picked my five favourite books I read in March.

Friday – I shared my review of historical fiction novel Josephine’s Daughter by A.B. Michaels, the fifth book in the author’s ‘The Golden’ City series.

Saturday – I took part in the blog tour for historical mystery, Barnabas Tew and the Case of the Cursed Serpent by Columbkill Noonan by publishing a spotlight post.  I also participated in the monthly Six Degrees of Separation meme.

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

On What Cathy Read Next this week

Currently reading

Planned posts

  • Event Review: Ursula Buchan at Oxford Literary Festival
  • Blog Tour/Book Review: The Storyteller by Pierre Jarawan
  • Waiting on Wednesday
  • Blog Tour/Guest Post: The Spitfire Girl in the Skies by Fenella J. Miller
  • Blog Tour/Book Review: The Golden Hour (The Lady Evelyn Mysteries #4) by Malia Zaidi
  • Book Review/Giveaway: The Confessions of Frannie Langston by Sara Collins

WWW Wednesdays – 3rd April ‘19

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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

DOLLMAKER_HB_DEMY.inddThe Dollmaker by Nina Allen (eARC, courtesy of Quercus and NetGalley)

Stitch by perfect stitch, Andrew Garvie makes exquisite dolls in the finest antique style. Like him, they are diminutive but graceful, unique, and with surprising depths. Perhaps that’s why he answers the enigmatic personal ad in his collector’s magazine.

Letter by letter, Bramber Winters reveals more of her strange, sheltered life in an institution on Bodmin Moor, and the terrible events that put her there as a child. Andrew knows what it is to be trapped, and as they knit closer together, he weaves a curious plan to rescue her.

On his journey through the old towns of England, he reads the fairy tales of Ewa Chaplin–potent, eldritch stories which, like her lifelike dolls, pluck at the edges of reality and thread their way into his mind. When Andrew and Bramber meet at last, they will have a choice–to break free and, unlike their dolls, come to life.

A love story of two very real, unusual people, The Dollmaker is also a novel rich with wonders: Andrew’s quest and Bramber’s letters unspool around the dark fables that give our familiar world an uncanny edge. It is this touch of magic that, like the blink of a doll’s eyes, tricks our own.

Pre-order The Dollmaker from Amazon UK (link provided for convenience not as part of an affiliate programme)

sunwiseSunwise by Helen Steadman (advance review copy, courtesy of Impress Books)

When Jane’s lover, Tom, returns from the navy to find her unhappily married to his betrayer, Jane is caught in an impossible situation. Still reeling from the loss of her mother at the hands of the witch-finder John Sharpe, Jane has no choice but to continue her dangerous work as a healer while keeping her young daughter safe.

But, as Tom searches for a way for him and Jane to be together, the witch-finder is still at large. Filled with vengeance, John will stop at nothing in his quest to rid England of the scourge of witchcraft.

Inspired by true events, Sunwise tells the story of one woman’s struggle for survival in a hostile and superstitious world.

Pre-order Sunwise from Amazon UK (link provided for convenience not as part of an affiliate programme)

Beyond the Thirty-Nine StepsBeyond the Thirty-Nine Steps: A Life of John Buchan by Ursula Buchan (hardcover, advance review copy courtesy of Bloomsbury Publishing)

John Buchan’s name is known across the world for The Thirty-Nine Steps. In the past one hundred years the classic thriller has never been out of print and has inspired numerous adaptations for film, television, radio and stage, beginning with the celebrated version by Alfred Hitchcock.

Yet there was vastly more to ‘JB’. He wrote more than a hundred books, fiction and non-fiction and about a thousand articles for newspapers and magazines. He was a scholar, antiquarian, barrister, colonial administrator, journal editor, literary critic, publisher, war correspondent, director of wartime propaganda, member of parliament and imperial proconsul – given a state funeral when he died, a deeply admired and loved Governor-General of Canada.

His teenage years in Glasgow’s Gorbals, where his father was the Free Church minister, contributed to his ease with shepherds and ambassadors, fur-trappers and prime ministers. His improbable marriage to a member of the aristocratic Grosvenor family means that this account of his life contains, at its heart, an enduring love story.

Ursula Buchan, his granddaughter, has drawn on recently discovered family documents to write this comprehensive and illuminating biography. With perception, style, wit, and a penetratingly clear eye, she brings vividly to life this remarkable man and his times.

Pre-order Beyond the Thirty-Nine Steps: A Life of John Buchan from Amazon UK (link provided for convenience not as part of an affiliate programme)

Recently finished (click on title for review)

the american agentThe American Agent (Maisie Dobbs #15) by Jacqueline Winspear (uncorrected proof copy courtesy of Allison & Busby and Random Things Tours)

When Catherine Saxon, an American correspondent reporting on the war in Europe, is found murdered in her London digs, news of her death is concealed by British authorities. Serving as a linchpin between Scotland Yard and the Secret Service, Robert MacFarlane pays a visit to Maisie Dobbs, seeking her help. He is accompanied by an agent from the US Department of Justice – Mark Scott, the American who helped Maisie get out of Hitler’s Munich in 1938. MacFarlane asks Maisie to work with Scott to uncover the truth about Saxon’s death.

As the Germans unleash the full terror of their blitzkrieg upon the British Isles, raining death and destruction from the skies, Maisie must balance the demands of solving this dangerous case with her need to protect Anna, the young evacuee she has grown to love and wants to adopt. Entangled in an investigation linked to the power of wartime propaganda and American political intrigue being played out in Britain, Maisie will face losing her dearest friend – and the possibility that she might be falling in love again.

The Conviction of Cora BurnsThe Conviction of Cora Burns by Carolyn Kirby (advance review copy, courtesy of No Exit Press and Random Things Tours)

Cora was born in a prison. But is this where she belongs?

Birmingham, 1885.  Born in a gaol and raised in a workhouse, Cora Burns has always struggled to control the violence inside her.  Haunted by memories of a terrible crime, she seeks a new life working as a servant in the house of scientist Thomas Jerwood. Here, Cora befriends a young girl, Violet, who seems to be the subject of a living experiment. But is Jerwood also secretly studying Cora…?

With the power and intrigue of Laura Purcell’s The Silent Companions and Sarah Schmidt’s See What I Have Done, Carolyn Kirby’s stunning debut takes the reader on a heart-breaking journey through Victorian Birmingham and questions where we first learn violence: from our scars or from our hearts.

What Cathy (will) Read Next

The_Storyteller_CoverThe Storyteller by Pierre Jarawan, trans. Rachel McNicholl & Sinead Crowe (paperback, advance review copy courtesy of World Editions)

Samir leaves the safety and comfort of his family’s adopted home in Germany for volatile Beirut in an attempt to find his missing father. His only clues are an old photo and the bedtime stories his father used to tell him.

The Storyteller follows Samir’s search for Brahim, the father whose heart was always yearning for his homeland, Lebanon. In this moving and gripping novel about family secrets, love, and friendship, Pierre Jarawan does for Lebanon what Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner did for Afghanistan. He pulls away the curtain of grim facts and figures to reveal the intimate story of an exiled family torn apart by civil war and guilt. In this rich and skilful account, Jarawan proves that he too is a masterful storyteller

Pre-order The Storyteller from Amazon UK (link provided for convenience not as part of an affiliate programme)