Currently Reading

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!

Sugar Money by Jane Harris (hardcover)

Martinique, 1765, and brothers Emile and Lucien are charged by their French master, Father Cleophas, with a mission. They must return to Grenada, the island they once called home, and smuggle back the 42 slaves claimed by English invaders at the hospital plantation in Fort Royal. While Lucien, barely in his teens, sees the trip as a great adventure, the older and worldlier Emile has no illusions about the dangers they will face. But with no choice other than to obey Cleophas – and sensing the possibility, however remote, of finding his first love Celeste – he sets out with his brother on this ‘reckless venture’.

Spirit of Lost Angels (The Bone Angel #1) by Liza Perrat (ebook, review copy courtesy of the author)

Her mother executed for witchcraft, her father dead at the hand of a noble, Victoire Charpentier vows to rise above her poor peasant roots. Forced to leave her village of Lucie-sur-Vionne for domestic work in Paris, Victoire is raped and threatened by her Marquis master, and must abandon her newborn, Rubie, on the church steps.

Accused of a heinous crime, Victoire is imprisoned in La Salpêtrière mental asylum, where she bonds with fellow prisoner, Jeanne de Valois – conwoman of the infamous Necklace Affair that brought down Queen Marie Antoinette. She dreams of escaping the asylum but wonders if the price of freedom – losing Jeanne – is worth it.

Enmeshed in the fervour of the 1789 Bastille storming, Victoire hears the name ‘Rubie’ called. Could her foundling daughter be alive, and living in Paris?

Recently finished (click on title for review)

A Woman’s Lot (Meonbridge Chronicles #2) by Carolyn Hughes (eARC, courtesy of the author)

How can mere women resist the misogyny of men?

A resentful peasant rages against a woman’s efforts to build up her flock of sheep… A husband, grown melancholy and ill-tempered, succumbs to idle talk that his wife’s a scold… A priest, fearful of women’s “unnatural” power, determines to keep them in their place.

The devastation wrought two years ago by the Black Death changed the balance of society: more women saw their chance to build a business, to learn a trade, to play a greater part. But many men still hold fast to the teachings of the Church and fear the havoc the “daughters of Eve” might wreak if they’re allowed to usurp men’s roles and gain control over their own lives.

Not all men resist women’s desire for change – indeed, they want it for themselves. Yet it takes only one or two to unleash the hounds of hostility and hatred…

The Concubine’s Child by Carol Jones (eARC, NetGalley)

In 1930s Malaysia, sixteen-year-old Yu Lan is in love with her best friend, Ming, whose father owns one of the busiest kopi shops in Petaling Street. But Ming’s family don’t see the apothecary’s daughter as a suitable wife – for Yu Lan’s father, Lim, spends more time playing mahjong than selling herbal remedies. It’s not long before Lim makes a terrible decision that will change Yu Lan’s life forever, selling her as a concubine to the wealthy, ageing Towkay Chan who is desperate for a male heir.

The consequences of Lim’s betrayal resonate through four generations and into the present day, where Yu Lan’s great-grandson, Nick, is searching for his lost family history. His wife, Sarah, begins to be very afraid of what he will find as past and present meld into one.

The Shady Side of Town: Reading’s Trees by Adrian Lawson & Geoff Sawers (paperback)

Three hundred years ago, an acorn germinated at the edge of a field; today a mighty oak stands in the middle of a congested roundabout. What has it witnessed and what can we discover from it?

The stories of towns are so often told in terms of their architecture, or the humans that have lived in them. This book brings trees to the fore, with evocative illustrations and beautifully told stories of the natural wonders of Reading.

After the Party by Cressida Connolly (eARC, NetGalley)

‘Had it not been for my weakness, someone who is now dead could still be alive. That is what I believed and consequently lived with every day in prison.’

It is the summer of 1938 and Phyllis Forrester has returned to England after years abroad. Moving into her sister’s grand country house, she soon finds herself entangled in a new world of idealistic beliefs and seemingly innocent friendships. Fevered talk of another war infiltrates their small, privileged circle, giving way to a thrilling solution: a great and charismatic leader, who will restore England to its former glory.

At a party hosted by her new friends, Phyllis lets down her guard for a single moment, with devastating consequences. Years later, Phyllis, alone and embittered, recounts the dramatic events which led to her imprisonment and changed the course of her life forever. (Review to follow.)

What Cathy (will) Read Next

The Poison Bed by E. C. Fremantle (eARC, NetGalley)

A king, his lover and his lover’s wife. One is a killer.

In the autumn of 1615 scandal rocks the Jacobean court when a celebrated couple are imprisoned on suspicion of murder. She is young, captivating and from a notorious family. He is one of the richest and most powerful men in the kingdom.

Some believe she is innocent; others think her wicked or insane. He claims no knowledge of the murder. The king suspects them both, though it is his secret at stake.

Who is telling the truth? Who has the most to lose? And who is willing to commit murder?

Old Baggage by Lissa Evans (eARC, NetGalley)

What do you do next, after you’ve changed the world?

It is 1928. Matilda Simpkin, rooting through a cupboard, comes across a small wooden club – an old possession of hers, unseen for more than a decade.

Mattie is a woman with a thrilling past and a chafingly uneventful present. During the Women’s Suffrage Campaign she was a militant. Jailed five times, she marched, sang, gave speeches, smashed windows and heckled Winston Churchill, and nothing – nothing – since then has had the same depth, the same excitement.

Now in middle age, she is still looking for a fresh mould into which to pour her energies. Giving the wooden club a thoughtful twirl, she is struck by an idea – but what starts as a brilliantly idealistic plan is derailed by a connection with Mattie’s militant past, one which begins to threaten every principle that she stands for.

MyWeekinBooks

New arrivals

Hmm, it could be the start of a new Kindle Monthly Deal selection on Amazon. Possibly…

The Shady Side of Town: Reading’s Trees by Adrian Lawson and Geoff Sawers (paperback)

Three hundred years ago, an acorn germinated at the edge of a field; today a mighty oak stands in the middle of a congested roundabout. What has it witnessed and what can we discover from it?

The Visitor by Katherine Stansfield (ebook)

Cornwall. 1880. Pearl, Jack and Nicholas play among the fishing boats of Skommow Bay, not understanding the undercurrents beneath their games. As they grow older, the choices they make shape the pattern of their lives.

1936 and everything has changed. The fish have stopped coming and the Pilchard Palace is abandoned. Pearl, exiled in favour of holidaymakers, turns to the memory of her great love, and her greatest loss. She’s waiting for her own visitor. Will he come for her? The sea’s ghosts are stirring. The past can be more alive than the present…

A cliff top romance in the style of Daphne Du Maurier and set in a fictional village based on St Ives, The Visitor is a novel steeped in the coast and people of Cornwall. It shivers and flashes with visions as elusive as the fish at the centre of its story.

Downed Over Germany (War Girl #0.5) by Marion Kummerow (ebook, new subscriber giveaway)

Tom Westlake is a Britsh RAF pilot. His struggle to survive starts the moment his fighter-bomber is shot down over Germany in 1943. Follow his adventures and find out if he manages to stay alive despite Gestapo hunting him down.

The Incendium Plot (Christopher Radcliff #1) by Andrew Swanston (paperback, review copy courtesy of the author)

England in 1572 is a powder keg of rumour, fanaticism, treachery and dissent. All it would take is a single spark . . .

In the England of Elizabeth I, the fear of plague and invasion, and the threat of insurrection are constant. As the Earl of Leicester’s chief intelligencer, lawyer Dr Christopher Radcliff is tasked with investigating rumours of treachery at home and the papist threat from abroad. And with heresy and religious unrest simmering beneath the surface of a country on the brink, Radcliff is under pressure to get results.

Then two brutal and seemingly motiveless killings point alert Radcliff to the whisper of a new plot against the queen. There are few clues, and all he and his network of agents have to go on is a single word: incendium. But what does it mean – and who lies behind it? Christopher Radcliff must find out before it’s too late . . .

The Reading Party by Fenella Gentleman (advance review copy courtesy of Muswell Press and Random Things Tours)

It is the 1970s and Oxford’s male institutions are finally opening their doors to women…

Sarah Addleshaw – young, spirited and keen to prove her worth – begins term as the first female academic at her college. She is, in fact, its only female ‘Fellow’.

Impulsive love affairs – with people, places and the ideas in her head – beset Sarah throughout her first exhilarating year as a don, but it is the Reading Party that has the most dramatic impact.

Asked to accompany the first mixed group of students on the annual college trip to Cornwall, Sarah finds herself illicitly drawn to the suave American Tyler. Torn between professional integrity and personal feelings, she faces her biggest challenge yet.

A German Requiem (Bernie Gunther #3) by Philip Kerr (ebook)

In postwar Vienna, the term ‘peace’ is relative – the Americans, British and Russians govern the city in an uneasy truce, and the main difference is that now it’s the Soviet secret police making people disappear rather than the Nazis. When Bernie is asked by a high-ranking Soviet official to clear an old Kripo colleague’s name of the murder of an American officer, he quickly realises he’s in over his head.

Bernie’s ex-colleague Becker was working for a secret society of Nazi hunters, tracking down and executing war criminals who faked their own deaths to escape the noose at Nuremberg. Infiltrating the group, Bernie finds himself face to face with men he thought he’d never see again. They’ve cheated justice once – now Bernie must see that they don’t get away a second time.

Different Class by Joanne Harris (ebook)

After thirty years at St Oswald’s Grammar in North Yorkshire, Latin master Roy Straitley has seen all kinds of boys come and go – the clowns, the rebels, the underdogs, and those he calls his Brodie boys. But every so often there’s a boy who doesn’t fit the mould. A troublemaker. A boy capable of twisting everything around him. A boy with hidden shadows inside.

With insolvency and academic failure looming, a new broom has arrived at the venerable school, bringing Powerpoint, sharp suits and even sixth form girls to the dusty corridors. But while Straitley does his sardonic best to resist this march to the future, a shadow from his past is stirring. A boy who even twenty years on haunts his teacher’s dreams. A boy capable of bad things.

Tin Man by Sarah Winman (ebook)

It begins with a painting won in a raffle: fifteen sunflowers, hung on the wall by a woman who believes that men and boys are capable of beautiful things.

And then there are two boys, Ellis and Michael, who are inseparable.

And the boys become men, and then Annie walks into their lives, and it changes nothing and everything.

The Road to Newgate by Kate Braithwaite (eARC, courtesy of the author)

What price justice?

London 1678. Titus Oates, an unknown preacher, creates panic with wild stories of a Catholic uprising against Charles II. The murder of a prominent Protestant magistrate appears to confirm that the Popish Plot is real. Only Nathaniel Thompson, writer and Licenser of the Presses, instinctively doubts Oates’s revelations. Even his young wife, Anne, is not so sure. And neither knows that their friend William Smith has personal history with Titus Oates. When Nathaniel takes a public stand, questioning the plot and Oates’s integrity, the consequences threaten them all.

Root of the Tudor Rose by Mari Griffith (ebook, review copy courtesy of Accent Press)

When King Henry V and his bride, Catherine de Valois, are blessed with the birth of a son, their happiness is short-lived. Henry’s unexpected death leaves Catherine a widow at the age of twenty-one. Then her father, King Charles of France, also dies, and her son inherits both crowns. Henry VI, King of England and France, is just ten months old and needs all his mother’s watchful care to protect him from political intrigue.

The queen, an attractive young widow, is a foreigner at the English court and now finds herself regarded with suspicion, particularly by the Duke of Gloucester, who will seemingly stop at nothing to protect his own claim to the throne. But lonely, vulnerable Catherine has found true friendship with another foreigner at court, a young Welshman named Owen. Their friendship deepens, but their liaisons must be kept secret at all costs, because Catherine, Queen of England and forbidden to remarry, is in love with a servant…

On What Cathy Read Next last week

Blog posts

Monday – I shared my review of historical fiction novel, War Girl Ursula by Marion Kummerow. Set in World War 2 Germany, the book is first in the author’s War Girl series which charts the experiences of a family of sisters. I’m grateful to the author for sending me a review copy.

Tuesday – I published my review of The Last Day by Claire Dyer, sharing ten of the many things I loved about the book. This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic was Bookish Worlds I’d Never Want To Live In. My list seemed pretty scary to me but on reflection gave me an all too chilling sense that fiction may be reflecting reality. What do you think?

Wednesday – WWW Wednesday is the opportunity to share what I’ve just finished reading, what I’m reading now and what I’ll be reading next. I also published my review of May’s Buchan of the Month, A Lost Lady of Old Years. Although I call myself a Buchan fan this is a book of his I’d never read. Set against the backdrop of the Jacobite Rebellion, it follows the exploits of a troubled young man, Francis Birkenshaw. I also shared my list for the 20 Books of Summer Challenge hosted by Cathy at 746 Books. I enjoyed putting together my list and I’ve enjoyed even more seeing other people’s lists!

Thursday –My Throwback Thursday book was The Dream Shelf by Jeff Russell in which a son seeks clues to his father’s past using as a starting point the objects stored on the titular ‘dream shelf’.

Friday – I published my review of The Concubine’s Child by Carol Jones, a fascinating historical fiction novel set in Malaysia in the 1930s and the present day. It was also time for another of my Fact in Fiction Friday features where I pick out interesting things I’ve learned through reading novels. This week my list included Scots dialect words, ‘self-combed’ women, and how some wartime brides ended up getting married to a steel helmet!

Saturday – I shared my Five Favourite of the books that I read in May. I also took part in the Six Degrees of Separation meme. This month’s starting book was The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell which proved quite a challenge for a few of us.

Challenge updates

Goodreads 2018 Reading Challenge – 82 out of 156 books read, 3 more than last week
Classics Club Challenge – 15 out of 50 books read, 1 more than last week
NetGalley/Edelweiss Reading Challenge 2018 (Gold) – 30 ARCs read and reviewed out of 50, 1 more than last week
From Page to Screen– 10 book/film comparisons out of 15 completed, same as last week
2018 TBR Pile Challenge – 5 out of 12 books read, same as last week
Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2018 – 40 books out of 50 read, 3 more than last week
When Are You Reading? Challenge 2018 – 7 out of 12 books read, same as last week
What’s In A Name Reading Challenge – 1 out of 6 books read, same as last week
Buchan of the Month – 5 out of 12 books read, 1 more than last week
NEW 20 Books of Summer Challenge – 0 out of 20 books read