#TopTenTuesday It’s Witchcraft

Top Ten Tuesday

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish and now hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl.

The rules are simple:

  • Each Tuesday, Jana assigns a new topic. Create your own Top Ten list that fits that topic – putting your unique spin on it if you want.
  • Everyone is welcome to join but please link back to That Artsy Reader Girl in your own Top Ten Tuesday post.
  • Add your name to the Linky widget on that day’s post so that everyone can check out other bloggers’ lists.
  • Or if you don’t have a blog, just post your answers as a comment.

Halloween GraphicThis week’s topic is a Hallowe’en freebie and my list is all about books that feature witches or witch hunting.

Links from the titles will take you to my review or the book description on Goodreads.


Witch Wood by John Buchan
Sunwise by Helen Steadman
Widdershins by Helen Steadman
The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave
The Manningtree Witches by A. K. Blakemore
The Witch’s Tree by Elena Collins
‘The Ash Tree’ in Collected Ghost Stories by M. R. James
The Witches of Vardø by Anya Bergman
The Vanishing Witch by Karen Maitland
The Witchfinder’s Sister by Beth Underdown 


#WWWWednesday – 19th October 2022

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

Molly & The CaptainMolly & the Captain by Anthony Quinn (eARC, Abacus via NetGalley)

A celebrated artist of the Georgian era paints his two young daughters at the family home in Bath. The portrait, known as “Molly & the Captain”, becomes instantly famous, its fate destined to echo down the centuries, touching many lives.

In the summer of 1889 a young man sits painting a line of elms in Kensington Gardens. One day he glimpses a mother at play with her two daughters and decides to include them in his picture. From that moment he is haunted by dreams that seem to foreshadow his doom.

A century later, in Kentish Town, a painter and her grown-up daughters receive news of an ancestor linking them to the long-vanished double portrait of “Molly & the Captain”. Meanwhile friendship with a young musician stirs unexpected passions and threatens to tear the family apart.

TheHoneyFarmontheHillThe Honey Farm on the Hill by Jo Thomas (Headline)

We never forget the one who got away.

Eighteen years ago Nell fell in love in the mountains of Crete and life changed for ever. Nell’s daughter, Demi, has never met her dad. Nell never saw him again. When she gets the chance to return to the hilltop town of Vounoplagia – where everything began – Nell can’t resist the urge to go back and find him.

Working on a honey farm perched high up in the hills, there’s plenty to keep her busy. And she will quickly realise the town harbours just as many secrets as she does.

But if Nell’s favourite romantic films are right, there’s a happy ending in store for each of us. All she has to do is seek out the magic of the mountains… 


Recently finished

SBS Special Boat Squadron by Iain Gale (Head of Zeus)

House of Tigers by William Burton McCormick (Wildside Press)


What Cathy (will) Read Next

Best of FriendsBest of Friends by Kamila Shamsie (ARC, Bloomsbury via Readers First)

Fourteen-year-old Maryam and Zahra have always been the best of friends, despite their different backgrounds. Maryam takes for granted that she will stay in Karachi and inherit the family business; while Zahra keeps her desires secret, and dreams of escaping abroad.

This year, 1988, anything seems possible for the girls; and for Pakistan, emerging from the darkness of dictatorship into a bright future under another young woman, Benazir Bhutto. But a snap decision at a party celebrating the return of democracy brings the girls’ childhoods abruptly to an end. Its consequences will shape their futures in ways they cannot imagine.

Three decades later, in London, Zahra and Maryam are still best friends despite living very different lives. But when unwelcome ghosts from their shared past re-enter their world, both women find themselves driven to act in ways that will stretch and twist their bond beyond all recognition.