memes – Page 8 – 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

The Silence of Scheherazade by Defne Suman, trans. by Betsy Göksel (Apollo via NetGalley)

On an orange-tinted evening in September 1905, Scheherazade is born to an opium-dazed mother in the ancient city of Smyrna.

At the very same moment, a dashing Indian spy arrives in the harbour with a secret mission from the British Empire. He sails in to golden-hued spires and minarets, scents of fig and sycamore, and the cries of street hawkers selling their wares. When he leaves, seventeen years later, it will be to the heavy smell of kerosene and smoke as the city, and its people, are engulfed in flames.

But let us not rush, for much will happen between then and now. Birth, death, romance and grief are all to come as these peaceful, cosmopolitan streets are used as bargaining chips in the wake of the First World War.

Told through the intertwining fates of a Levantine, a Greek, a Turkish and an Armenian family, this unforgettable novel reveals a city, and a culture, now lost to time.

The Second Sleep by Robert Harris (Cornerstone)

Dusk is gathering as a young priest, Christopher Fairfax, rides across a silent land.

It’s a crime to be out after dark, and Fairfax knows he must arrive at his destination – a remote village in the wilds of Exmoor – before night falls and curfew is imposed.

He’s lost and he’s becoming anxious as he slowly picks his way across a countryside strewn with the ancient artefacts of a civilisation that seems to have ended in cataclysm.

What Fairfax cannot know is that, in the days and weeks to come, everything he believes in will be tested to destruction, as he uncovers a secret that is as dangerous as it is terrifying …

Recently finished

The Draughtsman by Robert Lautner (The Borough Press)

What Cathy Will Read Next

The Ghosts of Paris (Billie Walker Mystery #2) by Tara Moss (Verve Books)

It’s 1947. The world continues to grapple with the fallout of the Second World War, and former war reporter Billie Walker is finding her feet as an investigator. When a wealthy client hires Billie and her assistant Sam to track down her missing husband, the trail leads Billie back to London and Paris, where Billie’s own painful memories also lurk. Jack Rake, Billie’s wartime lover and, briefly, husband, is just one of the millions of people who went missing in Europe during the war. What was his fate after they left Paris together?

As Billie’s search for her client’s husband takes her to both the swanky bars at Paris’s famous Ritz hotel and to the dank basements of the infamous Paris morgue, she’ll need to keep her gun at the ready, because something even more terrible than a few painful memories might be following her around the city of lights . . .

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 Books I Hope Santa Brings/Bookish Wishes. I think it unlikely Santa will bring me any books but if I’m lucky he might bring me the means to acquire some. Here are some likely candidates in the form of the most recent additions to my wishlist. (I have Susan at A Life in Books or Cathy at 746 Books to thank for many of these. ) Links from each title will take you to the full book description on Goodreads.

The History of Sound: Stories by Ben Shattuck – ‘A collection of interconnected stories set in New England, exploring how the past is often misunderstood and how history, family, heartache, and desire can echo over centuries’
That Beautiful Atlantic Waltz by Malachy Tallack – ‘A story of unlikely friendship, longing, the power of music and the pull of home. It is about a life revisited – and reimagined’
Night Boat to Tangier by Kevin Barry – ‘Late one night at the Spanish port of Algeciras. two fading Irish gangsters are waiting on the boat from Tangier. A lover has been lost, a daughter has gone missing, their world has come asunder – can it be put together again?’
10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World by Elif Shafak – ‘In the first minute following her death, Tequila Leila’s consciousness began to ebb, slowly and steadily, like a tide receding from the shore…’
A Woman of Opinion by Sean Lusk – ‘An illuminating and beautiful novel which gives a voice to the tragically unremembered yet extraordinary life of pioneering poet and feminist, Mary Wortley Montagu’
The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau by Graeme Macrae Burnet – ‘A masterful play on literary form featuring an unreliable narrator makes for a grimly entertaining psychological thriller that questions if it is possible – or even desirable – to know another man’s mind’
Hope Never Knew Horizon by Douglas Bruton – ‘Three cultural objects associated with hope, their stories told from the perspective of those marginalised from history: the model, the maid, and the coxswain’s girlfriend’
Night Climbing by Sarah Day – ‘A poignant tale of lives damaged by lies and propaganda’
Our London Lives by Christine Dwyer Hickey – ‘A rich and moving portrait of an ever-changing city, and a profound inquiry into character, loneliness and the nature of love’
The Plains by Federico Falco, trans. by Jennifer Croft – ‘After a loss, a year in the four seasons to transform a garden and a self’