memes – Page 45 – What Cathy Read Next…

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You know Miss Havisham. The world’s most famous jilted bride. This is her daughter’s story.

Raised in the darkness of Satis House where the clocks never tick, the beautiful Estella is bred to hate men and to keep her heart cold as the grave. She knows she doesn’t feel things quite like other people do but is this just the result of her strange upbringing?

As she watches the brutal treatment of women around her, hatred hardens into a core of vengeance and when she finds herself married to the abusive Drummle, she is forced to make a deadly choice: Should she embrace the darkness within her and exact her revenge?

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley (Sceptre via NetGalley)

In the near future, a disaffected civil servant is offered a lucrative job in a mysterious new government ministry gathering ‘expats’ from across history to test the limits of time travel.

Her role is to work as a ‘bridge’: living with, assisting and monitoring the expat known as ‘1847’ – Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin’s doomed expedition to the Arctic, so he’s a little disoriented to find himself alive and surrounded by outlandish concepts such as ‘washing machine’, ‘Spotify’ and ‘the collapse of the British Empire’. With an appetite for discovery and a seven-a-day cigarette habit, he soon adjusts; and during a long, sultry summer he and his bridge move from awkwardness to genuine friendship, to something more.

But as the true shape of the project that brought them together begins to emerge, Gore and the bridge are forced to confront their past choices and imagined futures. Can love triumph over the structures and histories that have shaped them? And how do you defy history when history is living in your house?

What Cathy Will Read Next

Property might be theft. But the housing market is murder.

My name is Al. I live in wealthy people’s second homes while their real owners are away. I don’t rob them, I don’t damage anything. I’m more an unofficial house-sitter than an actual criminal.

Life is good. Or it was – until last night, when my friends and I broke into the wrong place, on the wrong day, and someone wound up dead.

And now … now we’re in a great deal of trouble.

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 Authors I’d Love a New Book From. My list is a combination of authors who could produce a new book and those who, sadly, never will.

Authors who could

Philip Kazan – I’ve read three of the four books Philip has written – The Painter of Souls, The Black Earth and The Phoenix of Florence, plus I have the fourth, Appetite, in my TBR pile. I would particularly love a follow-up to The Phoenix of Florence. His blog suggested another book might be on the way but no sign of it yet. He’s written four medieval mysteries as Pip Vaughan-Hughes so I might have to make do with those for the time being.

Rachel Malik – I loved Rachel’s debut novel Miss Boston and Miss Hargreaves which was published in 2017. Why, oh why no new novel since then?

Marina Fiorato – I’ve read four books by Marina of which Crimson and Bone, published in 2017, was my favourite. Nothing since then but there are a few of her previous books I haven’t yet read.

Jim Kelly – This is a bit of a cheat as Jim has written several other series but it’s his ‘Nighthawk’ series set in WW2 Cambridge featuring Detective Inspector Eden Brooke that I really crave more of. The third book, The Night Raids, was published in 2020.

Paddy Hirsch – Another historical crime series I fell in love with was Paddy’s ‘Justice Flanagan’ series set in 19th century New York. To date there have only been two – The Devil’s Half Mile and Hudson’s Kill – and I need more!

S.W. Perry – I’ve loved all the books in the author’s ‘Nicholas Shelby’ historical crime series, the last being The Sinner’s Mark published in 2023. We’re due another one surely?

Ciarán McMenamin – In case you’re beginning to think I’m fixated on historical crime series, I adored The Sunken Road which was longlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction in 2022. I’d love to see another novel from him.

Authors who never will

C J Sansom (died April 2024) – I’ve devoured every one of his Matthew Shardlake series with the exception of Tombland which I still have to read. In a way, I’m glad I still have one to read to remind me what a brilliant writer of historical fiction he was.

Hilary Mantel (died September 2022) – Her magisterial Thomas Cromwell trilogy, comprising Wolf Hall, Bring Up the Bodies and The Mirror & the Light, was rightly showered with awards, including twice winning the Booker Prize.

John le Carré (died December 2020) – I’ve read just about every book the master of the spy novel wrote, my favourite being a toss-up between The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.