On What Cathy Read Next last week
Monday – I shared my review of Only May by Carol Lovekin as part of the blog tour.
Tuesday – This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic was Bookish Quotes.
Wednesday – WWW Wednesday is my weekly opportunity to share what I’ve just read, what I’m currently reading and what I plan to read next… and to take a peek at what others are reading.
Thursday – I shared an extract from historical novel The Dark Earth by Gordon Doherty to celebrate publication day. I also published my review of The White Girl by Tony Birch as part of the blog tour.
Friday – I shared my review of Twenty-Eight Pounds Ten Shillings by Tony Fairweather as part of the blog tour.
Saturday – I indulged my other love – gardening – by participating in the Six on Saturday meme.
New arrivals
Thea and Denise by Caroline Bond (ARC, Corvus via Readers First)
Two women. An open road. The trip of a lifetime.
Thea is confident, sorted, determined to have fun, but there are sorrows beneath the surface of her life. Denise is struggling under the weight of her many commitments and in desperate need of some excitement. When these polar opposites meet, and unexpectedly become friends, they realise they’re both looking to escape.
So begins a road trip that leads them far from home and yet closer to their true selves.
But they can’t outrun their pasts forever and when things start to become complicated, both women have an important decision to make. Do they give up or keep going? Turn around or drive on?
Katastrophe by Graham Hurley (eARC, Head of Zeus via NetGalley)
January, 1945. Wherever you look on the map, the Thousand Year Reich is shrinking. Even Goebbels has run out of lies to sweeten the reckoning to come. An Allied victory is inevitable, but who will reap the spoils of war?
Two years ago, Werner Nehmann’s war came to an abrupt end in Stalingrad. With the city in ruins, the remains of General Paulus’ Sixth Army surrendered to the Soviets and Nehmann was shipped to Russia’s arctic gulags. But now he’s riding on the back of one of Marshal Zhukov’s T-35 tanks, heading home with a message for the man who consigned him to the Stalingrad Cauldron.
With the Red Army about to fall on Berlin, Stalin fears his sometime allies are conspiring to deny him his prize. He needs to speak to Goebbels – and who better to broker the contact than Werner Nehmann, Goebbels’ one-time confidante?
Swapping the ruins of Stalingrad for the wreckage of Berlin, swapping Joseph Goebbels for Joseph Stalin, Nehmann’s war has taken a turn for the worse. The Germans have a word for it.
Katastrophe.
The White Hare by Jane Johnson (eARC, Head of Zeus via NetGalley)
In a valley steeped in legend lies an abandoned house where Edens may be lost, found and remade…
The White Valley in the far west of Cornwall cuts deeply through bluebell woods down to the sea. The house above the beach has lain neglected since the war. It comes with a reputation, which is why Mila and her mother Magda acquire it so cheaply in the fateful summer of 1954.
Magda plans to restore the house to its former glory: the venue for glittering parties, where the rich and celebrated gathered for bracing walks by day and sumptuous cocktails by night. Mila’s ambitions, meanwhile, are much less grand; she dreams of creating a safe haven for herself, and a happy home for her little girl, Janey.
The White Valley comes with a long, eventful history, laced with tall tales. Locals say that a white hare may be seen running through the woods there; to some she’s an ill omen, to others a blessing. Feeling fragile and broken-hearted, Mila is in need of as many blessings as she can get. But will this place provide the fresh start she so desperately needs?
The Bone Flower by Charles Lambert (ARC, Gallic Books)
On a grey November evening in Victorian London, Edward Monteith, a moneyed but listless young man, stokes the fire at his local gentleman’s club, listening to its members: scientists, explorers and armchair philosophers discussing their supernatural experiences and their theories of life after death.
Edward is taken under the wing of some sceptics and attends a supposed seance where he is captivated by a beautiful young woman selling flowers outside the theatre.
What follows is a quintessential Gothic novel, a ghost story, and an uncanny love story.
On What Cathy Read Next this week
Currently reading
Planned posts
- Book Review: Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov
- Blog Tour/Book Review: Young Women by Jessica Moor
- Book Review: The Death of Remembrance by Denzil Meyrick
- My Five Favourite May 2022 Reads
- Blog Tour/Book Review: The Fire Killer by Ross Greenwood
- #6Degrees of Separation
What Cathy Read Next... 