#WWWWednesday – 11th August 2021

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

A Line To KillA Line To Kill by Anthony Horowitz (ARC, Century)

When Ex-Detective Inspector Daniel Hawthorne and his sidekick, author Anthony Horowitz, are invited to an exclusive literary festival on Alderney, an idyllic island off the south coast of England, they don’t expect to find themselves in the middle of murder investigation – or to be trapped with a cold-blooded killer in a remote place with a murky, haunted past.

Arriving on Alderney, Hawthorne and Horowitz soon meet the festival’s other guests – an eccentric gathering that includes a bestselling children’s author, a French poet, a TV chef turned cookbook author, a blind psychic, and a war historian – along with a group of ornery locals embroiled in an escalating feud over a disruptive power line.

When a local grandee is found dead under mysterious circumstances, Hawthorne and Horowitz become embroiled in the case. The island is locked down, no one is allowed on or off, and it soon becomes horribly clear that a murderer lurks in their midst. But who?

The Beloved GirlsThe Beloved Girls by Harriet Evans (eARC, Headline)

‘It’s a funny old house. They have this ceremony every summer . . . There’s an old chapel, in the grounds of the house. Half-derelict. The Hunters keep bees in there. Every year, on the same day, the family processes to the chapel. They open the  combs, taste the honey. Take it back to the house. Half for them -‘ my father winced, as though he had bitten down on a sore tooth ‘And half for us.’

Catherine, a successful barrister, vanishes from a train station on the eve of her anniversary. Is it because she saw a figure – someone she believed long dead? Or was it a shadow cast by her troubled, fractured mind? The answer lies buried in the past. It lies in the events of the hot, seismic summer of 1989, at Vanes – a mysterious West Country manor house – where a young girl, Jane Lestrange, arrives to stay with the gilded, grand Hunter family, and where a devastating tragedy will unfold. Over the summer, as an ancient family ritual looms closer, Janey falls for each member of the family in turn. She and Kitty, the eldest daughter of the house, will forge a bond that decades later, is still shaping the present . . .

‘We need the bees to survive, and they need us to survive. Once you understand that, you understand the history of Vanes, you understand our family.’


Recently finished

Unsettled Ground by Claire Fuller 

Wolf at the Door (Bradecote and Catchpoll #9) by Sarah Hawkswood  

ll Hallow’s Eve, 1144. The savaged body of Durand Wuduweard, the solitary and unpopular keeper of the King’s Forest of Feckenham, is discovered beside his hearth, his corpse rendered barely identifiable by sharp teeth.

Whispers of a wolf on the prowl grow louder and Sheriff William de Beauchamp’s men, Hugh Bradecote and Serjeant Catchpoll, are tasked with cutting through the clamour. They must uncover who killed Durand and why while beset by superstitious villagers, raids upon manors and further grim deaths. Out of the shadows of the forest, where will the wolf’s fangs strike next? (Review to follow)

A Corruption of Blood by Ambrose Parry

The Girl Who Fell From The Sky by Simon Mawer 


What Cathy (will) Read Next

End of SummerEnd of Summer by Anders de la Motte (ARC, Zaffre)  

You can always go home. But you can never go back . . .

Summer 1983: Four-year-old Billy chases a rabbit in the fields behind his house. But when his mother goes to call him in, Billy has disappeared. Never to be seen again.

Today: Veronica is a bereavement counsellor. She’s never fully come to terms with her mother’s suicide after her brother Billy’s disappearance.

When a young man walks into her group, he looks familiar and talks about the trauma of his friend’s disappearance in 1983. Could Billy still be alive after all this time? Needing to know the truth, Veronica goes home – to the place where her life started to fall apart.

But is she really prepared for the answers that wait for her there?

#TopTenTuesday Secondary Characters In The Spotlight

Top Ten Tuesday new

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 Secondary/Minor Characters Who Deserve More Love. My list features secondary characters from literature whom others authors have made the focus of their own novels.


Bertha Mason from Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre in Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
Charlotte Lucas from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice in Charlotte by Helen Moffett
Abel Magwitch (sort of) from Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations in Jack Maggs by Peter Carey
Clara Marley from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol in Miss Marley by Vanessa Lafaye & Rebecca Mascull
Mrs Ahab mentioned in Moby Dick by Herman Melville in Ahab’s Wife by Sena Jeter Naslund
Flashman from Thomas Hughes’ Tom Brown’s School Days in Flashman by George MacDonald Fraser

The Memoirs of Sherlock HolmesAnd finally, from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes novels:

Professor Moriarty in Moriarty by Anthony Horowitz
Irene Adler in Goodnight, Mr Holmes by Carole Nelson Douglas
Mrs Hudson in Mrs Hudson and the Spirit’s Curse by Martin Davies
Dr John Watson in Dead Man’s Land by Robert Ryan

I’d love to hear if you know of other secondary characters who have been given starring roles in novels?