My Week in Books – 18th October 2020

MyWeekinBooks

On What Cathy Read Next last week

Blog posts

Monday – I published my review of Betrayal by Lilja Sigurðardóttir as part of the blog tour.

Tuesday – This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic was Super Long Book Titles.

Wednesday – It wouldn’t be “hump day” without WWW Wednesday, the opportunity to share what I’ve just read, what I’m currently reading and what I plan to read next…as well as have a good nose around to see what other bloggers are reading.

Friday – I joined the blog tour for Sons of Rome by Gordon Doherty and Simon Turney sharing an extract from the book.

Saturday – I gave an update on progress with my 2020 Reading Challenges.

Sunday – I reviewed A Conspiracy of Silence (DI Gillian Marsh #5) by Anna Legat as part of the blog tour.

 As always, thanks to everyone who has liked, commented on or so shared my blog posts on social media.


New arrivals

9781611854602The Forgers by Bradford Morrow (ARC, courtesy of Grove Press and Readers First)

The rare book world is stunned when a reclusive collector, Adam Diehl, is found on the floor of his Montauk home: hands severed, surrounded by valuable inscribed books and original manuscripts that have been vandalised beyond repair.

Adam’s sister, Meghan, and her lover, Will – a convicted if unrepentant literary forger – struggle to come to terms with the seemingly incomprehensible murder.

But when Will begins receiving threatening handwritten letters, seemingly penned by long-dead authors, but really from someone who knows secrets about Adam’s death and Will’s past, he understands his own life is also on the line – and attempts to forge a new beginning for himself and Meg.

In The Forgers, Bradford Morrow reveals the passion that drives collectors to the razor-sharp edge of morality, brilliantly confronting the hubris and mortal danger of rewriting history with a fraudulent pen.

The Ninth Child by Sally Magnusson (paperback)

Loch Katrine waterworks, 1856. A Highland wilderness fast becoming an industrial wasteland. No place for a lady.

But Isabel Aird, denied the motherhood role society expects of her by a succession of miscarriages, is comforted by a place where she can feel the presence of her lost children and begin to work out what her life is for.

No matter that the hills echo with the gunpowder blasts of men tunnelling day and night to bring fresh water to diseased Glasgow thirty miles away – digging so deep that there are those who worry they are disturbing the land of faery itself.

New life is quickening within her again. While her husband is engaged with the medical emergencies of the construction site, Isabel can only wait. But someone else is waiting too. The man in the dark coat, watching for the right moment with a huntsman’s eye…

20201017_123536The Devil and the Deep Water by Stuart Turton (signed hardcover)

A murder on the high seas. A detective duo. A demon who may or may not exist.

It’s 1634 and Samuel Pipps, the world’s greatest detective, is being transported to Amsterdam to be executed for a crime he may, or may not, have committed. Travelling with him is his loyal bodyguard, Arent Hayes, who is determined to prove his friend innocent.

But no sooner are they out to sea than devilry begins to blight the voyage. A twice-dead leper stalks the decks. Strange symbols appear on the sails. Livestock is slaughtered. And then three passengers are marked for death, including Samuel. Could a demon be responsible for their misfortunes?

With Pipps imprisoned, only Arent can solve a mystery that connects every passenger onboard. A mystery that stretches back into their past and now threatens to sink the ship, killing everybody on board.

In Two Minds (The Teifi Valley Coroner #2) by Alis Hawkins (paperback)

Harry Probert-Lloyd, a young barrister forced home from London by encroaching blindness, has begun work as the acting coroner of Teifi Valley with solicitor’s clerk John Davies as his assistant.

When a faceless body is found on an isolated beach, Harry must lead the inquest. But his dogged pursuit of the truth begins to ruffle feathers. Especially when he decided to work alongside a local doctor with a dubious reputation and experimental theories considered radical and dangerous. Refusing to accept easy answers might not only jeopardise Harry’s chance to be elected coroner permanently but could, it seems implicate his own family in a crime.

20201017_123447-1


On What Cathy Read Next this week

Currently reading

Planned posts

  • Book Review: The Last of the Wine by Mary Renault
  • Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Read Because Someone Recommended Them to Me
  • Waiting on Wednesday
  • Buchan of the Month: Introducing…The Free Fishers by John Buchan
  • Book Review: This Green and Pleasant Land by Ayisha Malik
  • Blog Tour/Book Review: Endless Skies by Jane Cable
  • Book Review: The Wild Silence by Raynor Winn

My Week in Books – 11th October 2020

MyWeekinBooks

On What Cathy Read Next last week

Blog posts

Tuesday – This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic was Book Covers With Autumn Vibes.

Wednesday – I shared my review of Those Who Know (The Teifi Valley Coroner #3) by Alis Hawkins as part of the blog tour. And it wouldn’t be “hump day” without WWW Wednesday, the opportunity to share what I’ve just read, what I’m currently reading and what I plan to read next…as well as have a good nose around to see what other bloggers are reading.

Thursday – I shared my Five Favourite September Reads.

Friday – I published my review of my Buchan of the Month for September, The Magic Walking Stick.

Saturday – I shared my thoughts on The Salt Path by Raynor Winn.

 As always, thanks to everyone who has liked, commented on or so shared my blog posts on social media.


New arrivals

IMG_20201006_131149_209Nick by Michael Farris Smith (proof copy, courtesy of No Exit Press) 

Before Nick Carraway moved to West Egg, and into Gatsby’s periphery, he was at the center of a very different story- one taking place along the trenches and deep within the tunnels of World War I.

Floundering in the wake of the destruction he witnessed firsthand, Nick delays his return home, hoping to escape the questions he cannot answer about the horrors of war. Instead, he embarks on a transcontinental redemptive journey that takes him from a whirlwind Paris romance- doomed from the very beginning- to the dizzying frenzy of New Orleans – rife with its own flavor of debauchery and violence.

cover204611-mediumHell Gate by Jeff Dawson (eARC, courtesy of Canelo via NetGalley)

To solve this case, only an outsider will do… Ingo Finch faces his biggest challenge yet.

New York, 1904 – over a thousand are dead after the sinking of the General Slocum, a pleasure steamer full of German immigrants out for a day on the East River. The community is devastated, broken, in uproar.

With a populist senator preying on their grievances, a new political force is unleashed, pushing America to ally with Germany in any coming war.

Nine months later, Ingo Finch arrives in Manhattan, now an official British agent. Tasked with exposing this new movement, he is caught in a deadly game between Whitehall, Washington, Berlin… and the Mob.

Not everything in the Big Apple is as it seems. For Finch, completing the mission is one thing; surviving it quite another…

Screen-Shot-2020-09-12-at-12.01.21-pmBecoming Alfie by Neil Patterson (ebook, courtesy of the author and Rachel’s Random Resources)

Alfie Norrington was born into poverty in London’s East End in the first minute of the twentieth century. His life was a battle. From the Brick Lane markets where young Alfie pilfered and pickpocketed, to the trenches of Flanders, Alfie fought every step of the way.

Almost killed by a trench bomb he battled to recover and while in a military hospital Alfie made a promise that dramatically change’s his life. A true East End hero, Alfie begins his journey away from poverty armed with a robust moral compass and an open heart.

Becoming Alfie is the first in the Alfie Norrington series. It follows the life of a man who positively influenced thousands of people. The world needs more individuals like Alfie Norrington, that give much more than they take.


On What Cathy Read Next this week

Currently reading

Planned posts

  • Blog Tour/Book Review: Betrayal by Lijla Siguròardóttir
  • Top Ten Tuesday: Books With Long Titles
  • Waiting on Wednesday
  • Buchan of the Month: Introducing…The Free Fishers by John Buchan
  • Blog Tour/Extract: Sons of Rome by Gordon Doherty & Simon Turney
  • Book Review: This Green and Pleasant Land by Ayisha Malik
  • Blog Tour/Book Review: A Conspiracy of Silence by Anna Legat