myweekinbooks – Page 208 – What Cathy Read Next…

MyWeekinBooks

New arrivals

Crooked Heart by Lissa Evans (ebook)

When Noel Bostock – aged ten, no family – is evacuated from London to escape the Blitz, he winds up in St Albans with Vera Sedge – thiry-six, drowning in debts. Always desperate for money, she’s unscrupulous about how she gets it.

The war’s thrown up all manner of new opportunities but what Vee needs is a cool head and the ability to make a plan. On her own, she’s a disaster. With Noel, she’s a team.

Together they cook up an idea. But there are plenty of other people making money out of the war and some of them are dangerous. Noel may have been moved to safety, but he isn’t actually safe at all…

Ike and Kay by James MacManus (ebook)

In 1942, Cork-born Kay Summersby’s life is changed forever when she is tasked with driving General Eisenhower on his fact-finding visit to wartime London. Despite Eisenhower’s marriage to Mamie, the pair takes an immediate liking to one another and he gifts Kay a rare wartime luxury: a box of chocolates.

So begins a tumultuous relationship that against all military regulation sees Kay travelling with Eisenhower on missions to far flung places before the final assault on Nazi Germany. She becomes known as “Ike’s shadow” and in letters Mamie bemoans his new obsession with ‘Ireland’. That does not stop him from using his influence to grant Kay US citizenship and rank in the US army, drawing her closer when he returns to America. When the US authorities discover Eisenhower’s plans to divorce from his wife they threaten the fragile but passionate affair and Kay is forced to take desperate measures to hold onto the man she loves…

Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey (ebook)

Meet Maud.

Maud is forgetful. She makes a cup of tea and doesn’t remember to drink it. She goes to the shops and forgets why she went. Sometimes her home is unrecognisable – or her daughter Helen seems a total stranger.

But there’s one thing Maud is sure of: her friend Elizabeth is missing. The note in her pocket tells her so. And no matter who tells her to stop going on about it, to leave it alone, to shut up, Maud will get to the bottom of it.

Because somewhere in Maud’s damaged mind lies the answer to an unsolved seventy-year-old mystery. One everyone has forgotten about. Everyone, except Maud . . .

Forsaking All Others by Catherine Meyrick (ebook, review copy courtesy of Historical Fiction Virtual Book Tours)

England 1585. Bess Stoughton, waiting woman to the well-connected Lady Allingbourne, has discovered that her father is arranging for her to marry an elderly neighbour. Normally obedient Bess rebels and wrests from her father a year’s grace to find a husband more to her liking.

Edmund Wyard, a taciturn and scarred veteran of England’s campaign in Ireland, is attempting to ignore the pressure from his family to find a suitable wife as he prepares to join the Earl of Leicester’s army in the Netherlands.

Although Bess and Edmund are drawn to each other, they are aware that they can have nothing more than friendship. Bess knows that Edmund’s wealth and family connections place him beyond her reach. And Edmund, with his well-honed sense of duty, has never considered that he could follow his own wishes. With England on the brink of war and fear of Catholic plots extending even into Lady Allingbourne’s household, time is running out for both of them.

Trigger Mortis by Anthony Horowitz (ebook)

It’s 1957 and James Bond (agent 007) has only just survived his showdown with Auric Goldfinger at Fort Knox. By his side is Pussy Galore, who was with him at the end. Unknown to either of them, the USSR and the West are in a deadly struggle for technological superiority. And SMERSH is back.

The Soviet counter-intelligence agency plans to sabotage a Grand Prix race at the most dangerous track in Europe. But it’s Bond who finds himself in the driving seat and events take an unexpected turn when he observes a suspicious meeting between SMERSH’s driver and a sinister Korean millionaire, Jai Seong Sin. Soon Bond is pitched into an entirely different race uncovering a plan that could bring the West to its knees.

Welcoming back familiar faces, including M and Miss Moneypenny, international bestselling author Anthony Horowitz ticks all the boxes: speed, danger, strong women and fiendish villains, to reinvent the golden age of Bond in this brilliantly gripping adventure. Trigger Mortis is also the first James Bond novel to feature previously unseen Ian Fleming material. This is James Bond as Fleming imagined him.

On What Cathy Read Next last week

Blog posts

Monday – I took part in the blog tour for Lords of the Greenwood featuring a fantastic guest post by its author, Chris Thorndycroft.

Tuesday – I shared my five favourite books in March and my review of Friends and Traitors by John Lawton, the eighth in his Inspector Troy series. This one features, in fictionalised form, Guy Burgess, one of the Cambridge Spies whose defection rocked a nation.

Wednesday – WWW Wednesday is the opportunity to share what I’ve just finished reading, what I’m reading now and what I’ll be reading next. I also hosted a spotlight feature on crime novel The Ticket by Fred Shackelford and published my review of historical mystery The Pharmacist’s Wife by Vanessa Tait.

Thursday – My Throwback Thursday book was The Winner by Erin Bomboy set in the competitive world of professional ballroom dancing. I also published my review of Manipulated Lives by H. A. Leuschel, a collection of five compelling stories exploring the theme of manipulation.

Friday – I shared my review Charlemagne, one of the titles in in60Learning’s new range of concise historical and biographical works that can be read or listened to in under 60 minutes. Ideal for history buffs with little spare time on their hands.

Saturday – I took part in the blog tour for Lesley Thomson’s latest novel in her The Detective’s Daughter series, The Death Chamber. In a fascinating Q&A, Lesley shared some insights into the process of coming up with a great title for a book. I also took part in the blog tour for A Mother’s Sacrifice by Gemma Metcalfe, sharing my review of this twisty, fast-paced psychological thriller. Finally, I participated in the 6 Degrees of Separation meme constructing, through some twisted logic of my own, a chain that started with Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden and ended onboard a plague-ridded cruise ship!

Challenge updates

Goodreads 2018 Reading Challenge – 51 out of 156 books read, 4 more than last week
Classics Club Challenge – 13 out of 50 books read, same as last week
NetGalley/Edelweiss Reading Challenge 2018 (Silver) – 16 ARCs read and reviewed out of 25, 3 more than last week
From Page to Screen– 10 book/film comparisons out of 15 completed, same as last week
2018 TBR Pile Challenge – 5 out of 12 books read, same as last week
Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2018 – 23 books out of 50 read, 2 more than last week
When Are You Reading? Challenge 2018 – 7 out of 12 books read, same as last week
What’s In A Name Reading Challenge – 0 out of 6 books read, same as last week
Buchan of the Month – 3 out of 12 books read, same as last week

On What Cathy Read Next this week

Currently reading

WaltScott_The Clocks In This House All Tell Different Times

Planned posts

Blog Tour/Q&A: The Room by the Lake by Emma Dibdin
Review: Things Bright and Beautiful by Anbara Salam
Buchan of the Month: Introducing…Greenmantle by John Buchan
Review: The Clocks In This House All Tell Different Times by Xan Brooks
Blog Tour/Review: Lady Helena Investigates by Jane Steen
Throwback Thursday: Prussian Blue by Philip Kerr
Excerpt: El Hacho by Luis Carrasco
Guest Post: Girl Without A Voice by Chris Bridge
Review: The Good Father by S. R. Wilsher

MyWeekinBooks

New arrivals

The Antipodeans by Greg McGee (ebook, review copy courtesy of Lightning Books)

2014: Clare and her father travel to Venice from New Zealand. She is fleeing a broken marriage, he is in failing health and wants to return one last time to the place where, as a young man, he spent happy years as a rugby player and coach. While exploring Venice, Clare discovers there is more to her father’s motives for returning than she realised and time may be running out for him to put old demons to rest.

1942: Joe and Harry, two Kiwi POWs in Italy, manage to escape their captors, largely due to the help of a sympathetic Italian family who shelter them on their farm. Soon they are fighting alongside the partisans in the mountains, but both men have formed a bond with Donatella, the daughter of the family, a bond that will have dramatic repercussions decades later.

The Antipodeans is a novel of epic proportions where families from opposite ends of the earth discover a legacy of love and blood and betrayal.

Grace After Henry by Eithne Shortall (ebook, review copy courtesy of Corvus)

Grace sees her boyfriend Henry everywhere. In the supermarket, on the street, at the graveyard.

Only Henry is dead. He died two months earlier, leaving a huge hole in Grace’s life and in her heart. But then Henry turns up to fix the boiler one evening, and Grace can’t decide if she’s hallucinating or has suddenly developed psychic powers. Grace isn’t going mad – the man in front of her is not Henry at all, but someone else who looks uncannily like him. The hole in Grace’s heart grows ever larger.

Grace becomes captivated by this stranger, Andy – to her, he is Henry, and yet he is not. Reminded of everything she once had, can Grace recreate that lost love with Andy, resurrecting Henry in the process, or does loving Andy mean letting go of Henry?

The Magpie Tree by Katherine Stansfield (ARC courtesy of Allison and Busby)

Jamaica Inn, 1844: the talk is of witches. A boy has vanished in the woods of Trethevy on the North Cornish coast, and a reward is offered for his return. Shilly has had enough of such dark doings, but her new companion, the woman who calls herself Anna Drake, insists they investigate. Anna wants to open a detective agency, and the reward would fund it. They soon learn of a mysterious pair of strangers who have likely taken the boy, and of Saint Nectan who, legend has it, kept safe the people of the woods. As Shilly and Anna seek the missing child, the case takes another turn – murder. Something is stirring in the woods and old sins have come home to roost.

The Great Darkness by Jim Kelly ((ARC courtesy of Allison and Busby)

1939, Cambridge: The opening weeks of the Second World War, and the first blackout – The Great Darkness – covers southern England, enveloping the city. Detective Inspector Eden Brooke, a wounded hero of the Great War, takes his nightly dip in the cool waters of the Cam. Daylight reveals a corpse on the riverside, the body torn apart by some unspeakable force. Brooke investigates, calling on the expertise and inspiration of a faithful group of fellow ‘nighthawks’ across the city, all condemned, like the detective, to a life lived away from the light. Within hours The Great Darkness has claimed a second victim. War, it seems, has many victims, but what links these crimes of the night?

WaltScott_The Horseman

The Horseman by Tim Pears (ebook)

Somerset, 1911. The forces of war are building across Europe, but this pocket of England, where the rhythms of lives are dictated by the seasons and the land, remains untouched. Albert Sercombe is a farmer on Lord Prideaux’s estate and his eldest son, Sid, is underkeeper to the head gamekeeper. His son, Leo, a talented rider, grows up alongside the master’s spirited daughter, Charlotte – a girl who shoots and rides, much to the surprise of the locals. In beautiful, pastoral writing, The Horseman tells the story of a family, a community, and the landscape they come from.

The Horseman is a return to the world invoked in Pears’ first award-winning, extravagantly praised novel, In the Place of Fallen Leaves. It is the first book of a trilogy that will follow Leo away from the estate and into the First World War and beyond. Exquisitely, tenderly written, this is immersive, transporting historical fiction at its finest.

The Bedlam Stacks by Natasha Pulley (ebook)

Deep in uncharted Peru, the holy town of Bedlam stands at the edge of a forest. The shrine statues move and anyone who crosses the border dies. But somewhere inside are cinchona trees, whose bark yields quinine: the only known treatment for malaria.

On the other side of the Pacific, it is 1859 and India is ravaged by the disease. The hunt for a reliable source of quinine is critical and in its desperation, the India Office searches out its last qualified expeditionary. Struggling with a terrible injury from his last mission and the strange occurrences at his family’s ruined estate, Merrick Tremayne finds himself under orders to bring back cinchona cuttings at any cost and dispatched, against his own better judgement, to Bedlam.

There he meets Raphael, a priest around whom the villagers spin unsettlingly familiar stories of impossible disappearances and living stone. Gradually, he realises that Raphael is the key to a legacy left by two generations of Tremayne explorers before him, one which will prove more dangerous and valuable than the India Office could ever have imagined.

Her Hidden Life by V. S. Alexander (paperback, review copy courtesy of Avon)

It’s 1943 and Hitler’s Germany is a terrifying place to be. But Magda Ritter’s duty is the most dangerous of all…

Assigned to The Berghof, Hitler’s mountain retreat, she must serve the Reich by becoming the Führer’s ‘Taster’ – a woman who checks his food for poison. Magda can see no way out of this hellish existence until she meets Karl, an SS officer who has formed an underground resistance group within Hitler’s inner circle.

As their forbidden love grows, Magda and Karl see an opportunity to stop the atrocities of the madman leading their country. But in doing so, they risk their lives, their families and, above all, a love unlike either of them have ever known…

On What Cathy Read Next last week

Blog posts

Monday – I took part in the blog tour for London Spies by S. J. Slagle, featuring a fascinating guest post from the author about some amazing women who worked in military intelligence in World War Two. I also published my review of (and a prediction about) The Gallows Pole by Benjamin Myers, one of the books long-listed for The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction.

Tuesday – For Top Ten Tuesday, I shared a list of ten books on my Spring TBR. I was also pleased to welcome William L. Myers, Jr. to What Cathy Read Next to talk about his latest legal thriller, An Engineered Injustice.

Wednesday – WWW Wednesday is the opportunity to share what I’ve just finished reading, what I’m reading now and what I’ll be reading next. Great for blog hopping as well! I also took part in the blog tour for The Summer Will Come by Soulla Christodoulou, publishing my review of this fascinating historical novel set in 1950s Cyprus and London.

Thursday – I published my review of Maiden’s Chance by Carolyn Hughes, an exclusive novella for subscribers to her newsletter. It’s a prequel to her novel set in a 14^th century Hampshire village recovering from the impact of the ‘Great Mortality’, Fortune’s Wheel.

Friday – I shared my review of the beautifully written From a Low and Quiet Sea by Donal Ryan as part of the blog tour.

Saturday – I published my review of the soon-to-be-published Dear Mrs. Bird by AJ Pearce, a charming, funny novel set in World War Two London but which doesn’t sugar-coat the experiences of those who lived through the blitz. I also provided an update on my progress with the When Are You Reading? Challenge.

Challenge updates

Goodreads 2018 Reading Challenge – 42 out of 156 books read, 3 more than last week
Classics Club Challenge – 13 out of 50 books read, 1 more than last week
NetGalley/Edelweiss Reading Challenge 2018 (Silver) – 13 ARCs read and reviewed out of 25, 1 more than last week
From Page to Screen– 10 book/film comparisons out of 15 completed, same as last update
2018 TBR Pile Challenge – 4 out of 12 books read, 1 more than last week
Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2018 – 19 books out of 50 read, 1 more than last week
When Are You Reading? Challenge 2018 – 8 out of 12 books read, 2 more than last week
What’s In A Name Reading Challenge – 0 out of 6 books read, same as last week
Buchan of the Month – 2 out of 12 books read, same as last week