memes – Page 169 – What Cathy Read Next…

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.

This week’s topic is Dynamic Duos. I decided to concentrate on some detective duos who feature in one of my favourite genres – historical crime fiction. Links from the titles will take you to my review.

Physician Nicholas Shelby and tavern owner Bianca Merton in S.W Perry’s series set in Elizabethan London published by Corvus – The Angel’s Mark, The Serpent’s Mark, The Saracen’s Mark and The Heretic’s Mark
Doctor Will Raven and housemaid Sarah Fisher in Ambrose Parry’s series set in 19th century Edinburgh published by Canongate – The Way of All Flesh, The Art of Dying and A Corruption of Blood
Undersheriff Hugh Bradecote and Sergeant Catchpoll in Sarah Hawkswood’s series set in 12th century Worcestershire published by Allison & Busby – Servant of Death, Ordeal by Fire, Marked to Die, Hostage to Fortune, Vale of Tears, Faithful Unto Death, River of Sins, Blood Runs Thicker and Wolf at the Door
Barrister Arthur Skelton and his clerk Edgar Hobbes in David Stafford’s series published by Allison & Busby – Skelton’s Guide to Domestic Poisons and Skelton’s Guide to Suitcase Murders
Amateur detectives Anna Drake and Shilly in Katharine Stansfield’s series set in 1840s Cornwall published by Allison & Busby – Falling Creatures, The Magpie Tree and The Mermaid’s Call
Clerk to the King’s Justices Aelred Barling and his messenger Hugo Stanton in E.M. Powell’s series set in 12th century England published by Thomas & Mercer – The King’s Justice, The Monastery Murders and The Canterbury Murders
Personal detective Sidney Grice and his ward March Middleton in M.R.C. Kasasian’s series set in 19th century London published by Head of Zeus – The Mangle Street Murders, The Curse of the House of Foskett, Death Descends on Saturn Villa, The Secrets of Gaslight Lane and Dark Dawn over Steep House
Lawyer Matthew Shardlake and his assistant Jack Barak in C.J. Sansom’s series set in Tudor England published by – Dissolution, Dark Fire, Sovereign, Revelation, Heartstone, Lamentation and Tombland
Cambridge historian Ernest Drabble and newspaper reporter Sir Percival Harris in Alec Marsh’s series set in the 1930s published by Headline – Rule Britannia, Enemy of the Raj, Ghosts of the West
Slightly cheating because they’re a trio, lady ‘detectors’ Emily, Anne and Charlotte Brontë in Bella Ellis’s series set in 1840s Yorkshire – The Vanished Bride, The Diabolical Bones and The Red Monarch

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

The Mirror Game by Guy Gardner (ARC, The Book Guild)

London 1925. When Adrian Harcourt, a politician and captain in the army believed dead with his company on the battlefield of Flanders, is sighted looking like he’s been living rough, Harry Lark, a war veteran and journalist, is enlisted by his friend and benefactor Lady Carlise to investigate. As he becomes drawn further into the case and the deaths mount up, he can see that things don’t add up. Where has Adrian been for so many years? Why can’t he remember parts of his past?

Looking further into Adrian’s previous life, even as his own dark past and addiction to laudanum threatens to overwhelm him, Harry begins to fall for Lady Carlise’s beautiful daughter Freddy, who was also Adrian’s fiancé. Chasing the leads as they continue to unravel, can Harry solve the mystery behind what really happened to Adrian before it’s too late?

Islands of Abandonment: Life in the Post-Human Landscape by Cal Flyn (William Collins)

This is a book about abandoned places: ghost towns and exclusion zones, no man’s lands and fortress islands – and what happens when nature is allowed to reclaim its place.

In Chernobyl, following the nuclear disaster, only a handful of people returned to their dangerously irradiated homes. On an uninhabited Scottish island, feral cattle live entirely wild. In Detroit, once America’s fourth-largest city, entire streets of houses are falling in on themselves, looters slipping through otherwise silent neighbourhoods.

This book explores the extraordinary places where humans no longer live – or survive in tiny, precarious numbers – to give us a possible glimpse of what happens when mankind’s impact on nature is forced to stop. From Tanzanian mountains to the volcanic Caribbean, the forbidden areas of France to the mining regions of Scotland, Flyn brings together some of the most desolate, eerie, ravaged and polluted areas in the world – and shows how, against all odds, they offer our best opportunities for environmental recovery.

By turns haunted and hopeful, this luminously written world study is pinned together with profound insight and new ecological discoveries that together map an answer to the big questions: what happens after we’re gone, and how far can our damage to nature be undone?