memes – Page 38 – What Cathy Read Next…

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

In This Ravishing World by Nina Schuyler (eARC, Regal House)

In This Ravishing World is a sweeping, impassioned short story collection, ringing out with joy, despair, and hope for the natural world. Nine connected stories unfold, bringing together an unforgettable cast of dreamers, escapists, activists, and artists, creating a kaleidoscopic view of the climate crisis.

An older woman who has spent her entire life fighting for the planet sinks into despair. A young boy is determined to bring the natural world to his bleak urban reality. A scientist working to solve the plastic problem grapples with whether to have a child. A ballet dancer endeavours to inhabit the consciousness of a rat.

In This Ravishing World is a full-throated chorus — with Nature joining in — marveling at the exquisite beauty of our world, and pleading, raging, and ultimately urging all of its inhabitants toward activism and resistance.

Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz (Orion)

When editor Susan Ryeland is given the tattered manuscript of Alan Conway’s latest novel, she has little idea it will change her life. She’s worked with the revered crime writer for years and his detective, Atticus Pund, is renowned for solving crimes in the sleepy English villages of the 1950s. As Susan knows only too well, vintage crime sells handsomely. It’s just a shame that it means dealing with an author like Alan Conway…

But Conway’s latest tale of murder at Pye Hall is not quite what it seems. Yes, there are dead bodies and a host of intriguing suspects, but hidden in the pages of the manuscript there lies another story: a tale written between the very words on the page, telling of real-life jealousy, greed, ruthless ambition and murder.

Recently finished

The Days of Our Birth by Charlie Laidlaw (Rampart Books)

The Housekeepers by Alex Hay (Headline)

What Cathy Will Read Next

Dead Ground by Graham Hurley (eARC, Head of Zeus via NetGalley)

1936. Anglo-Breton translator Annie Wrenne is working in Madrid when the Spanish Civil War breaks out. Annie becomes a nurse on the front line, but after falling in love with a patient, she ends up pregnant – and abandoned – by a man she thought she knew.

Annie passes the rest of the war in a haze, her only consolation her relationship with mysterious Republican fighter Carlos Ortega. Annie finds herself caught up in Ortega’s world, a web of intrigue, which leads to her recruitment into MI5.

On her first mission, Annie must pose as Ortega’s wife and head to Algeciras. Hitler’s Operation Felix – his plan to control the Mediterranean and force Churchill to the negotiating table – has been set into motion, and the ‘couple’ must help prevent the Nazis from seizing Gibraltar.

But Ortega has secretly been working for the Nationalists, part of Madrid’s Fifth Column. If it falls to Annie – and Ortega – to save the day for the Allied cause, can she trust a man who has changed sides yet again?

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 Top Ten Tuesday topic is Most Anticipated Books Releasing During the Second Half of 2024. Here are mine, many of which I’m fortunate to have ARCs of via NetGalley. Links from each title will take you the book description on Goodreads.

The Trap (Alias Emma #3) by Ava Glass (publishes 1st August) – ‘She has just one week to catch a killer’
Cabaret Macabre (Joseph Spector #3) by Tom Mead (publishes 1st August) – ‘An atmospheric and puzzling mystery that pays homage to the greatest writers of the genre’s Golden Age’
Berlin Duet by S.W. Perry (publishes 1st August) = ‘From silent era Hollywood and the nightclubs of pre-war Vienna to the ruins of Soviet Berlin, a moving, ambitious story of an enduring love amidst the devastation of war’
The Instrumentalist by Harriet Constable (publishes 15th August) – ‘From the jewelled palaces of Venice to its mud-licked canals, a story of one woman’s irrepressible ambition and rise to the top, of loss and triumph’
Heart, Be At Peace by Donal Ryan (publishes 15th August) – ‘A stunning, lyrical novel told in twenty-one voices’
Six Lives by Lavie Tidhar (publishes 29th August) – ‘Six lives, connected through blood and history, each rooted in the dirt of their inheritance, look to the future, and what it might hold’
Shy Creatures by Clare Chambers (publishes 29th August) – ‘A life-affirming novel about all the different ways we can be confined, how ordinary lives are built of delicate layers of experience, the joy of freedom and the transformative power of kindness’
Precipice by Robert Harris (publishes 29th August) – ‘A spellbinding novel of passion, intrigue, and betrayal set in England in the months leading to the Great War’
Gabriel’s Moon by William Boyd (publishes 5th September) – ‘From the vibrant streets of sixties London to the sun-soaked cobbles of Cadiz and the frosty squares of Warsaw, an accidental spy is drawn into the shadows of espionage and obsession’
Small Bomb at Dimperley by Lissa Evans (publishes 5th September) – ‘Funny, sharp and touching… a love story and a bittersweet portrait of an era of profound loss, and renewal’