Tag: myweekinbooks

On What Cathy Read Next last week

Monday – I shared my 20 Books of Summer 2024 Wrap-Up. How did I get on? Click on the link to find out…

Tuesday – This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic was Books Involving Food. Hungry?

Wednesday – As always WWW Wednesday is a 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. Go on, you know you want to.

Thursday – I shared My Top Five August 2024 Reads.

Saturday – The first Saturday of the month means it’s time for #6Degrees of Separation. My chain took me from After Story by Larissa Behrendt to Days Without End by Sebastian Barry.

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New arrivals

The Safe Keep by Yael van der Wouden (Viking)

It’s 1961 and the rural Dutch province of Overijssel is quiet. Bomb craters have been filled, buildings reconstructed, and the war is well and truly over. Living alone in her late mother’s country home, Isabel’s life is as it should be: led by routine and discipline. But all is upended when her brother Louis delivers his graceless new girlfriend, Eva, at Isabel’s doorstep-as a guest, there to stay for the season…

Eva is Isabel’s antithesis: sleeps late, wakes late, walks loudly through the house and touches things she shouldn’t. In response Isabel develops a fury-fuelled obsession, and when things start disappearing around the house-a spoon, a knife, a bowl-Isabel’ suspicions spiral out of control. In the sweltering peak of summer, Isabel’s paranoia gives way to desire – leading to a discovery that unravels all Isabel has ever known. The war might not be well and truly over after all, and neither Eva – nor the house in which they live – are what they seem.

Hortobiography by Carol Klein (Witness Books)

‘Have I always wanted to garden? What if I didn’t have one? It would make life difficult – I was going to say unbearable, but perhaps that is unfair to the millions of people throughout the world who cannot garden. Nonetheless, I feel gardening for me is a necessity rather than a luxury. It is part of me; it is what I do and who I am. No doubt I could survive without gardening, but it would be so hard. My family are all I could not live without, but gardening is my next raison d’être…’

Carol Klein is one of Britain’s best loved horticulturists, and for decades gardening has been at the heart of her extraordinary life. From her childhood adventures in Manchester to her first experiments in plantswomanship at Glebe Cottage, and from training as an artist and a teacher, and then finding an entirely unexpected career as one of Britain’s most beloved television presenters, in this long-awaited memoir Carol tells the story of the people, places and plants that have shaped her life.

Exploring why our relationship with the natural world is so important, and how it brings joy, creativity and good health to our lives, Carol also offers irresistible insights on her favourite flowers and plants, and how to help them flourish. A story of a life lived happily amongst the greenery, this book is the perfect companion for anyone who has sought solace in the natural world.

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On What Cathy Read Next this week

Currently reading

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Planned posts

• Book Review: A Place Without Pain by Simon Bourke
• Book Review: Gabriel’s Moon by William Boyd
• Blog Tour/Book Review: Hemlock Bay by Martin Edwards

On What Cathy Read Next last week

Tuesday – My take on this week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic was Book Titles That Say ‘This Is Me’.

Wednesday – As always WWW Wednesday is a 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.

Saturday – I shared my review of Six Lives by Lavie Tidhar.

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New arrivals

The Glassmaker by Tracy Chevalier (eARC, Harper Collins via NetGalley)

It is 1486 and Venice is a wealthy, opulent center for trade. Orsola Rosso is the eldest daughter in a family of glassblowers in Murano, the island revered for the craft. As a woman, she is not meant to work with glass—but she has the hands for it, the heart, and a vision. When her father dies, she teaches herself to make beads in secret, and her work supports the Rosso family fortunes.

Skipping like a stone through the centuries, in a Venice where time moves as slowly as molten glass, we follow Orsola and her family as they live through creative triumph and heartbreaking loss, from a plague devastating Venice to Continental soldiers stripping its palazzos bare, from the domination of Murano and its maestros to the transformation of the city of trade into a city of tourists. In every era, the Rosso women ensure that their work, and their bonds, endure.

The Ghosts of Rome by Joseph O’Connor (eARC, Vintage via NetGalley)

February 1944. Six months since Nazi forces occupied Rome.

Inside the beleaguered city, the Contessa Giovana Landini is a member of the band of Escape Line activists known as ‘The Choir’. Their mission is to smuggle refugees to safety and help Allied soldiers, all under the nose of Gestapo boss Paul Hauptmann.

During a ferocious morning air raid a mysterious parachutist lands in Rome and disappears into the backstreets. Is he an ally or an imposter? His fate will come to put the whole Escape Line at risk.

Meanwhile, Hauptmann’s attention has landed on the Contessa. As his fascination grows, she is pulled into a dangerous game with him – one where the consequences could be lethal.

Precipice by Robert Harris (Hutchinson Heinemann)

Summer 1914. A world on the brink of catastrophe.

In London, twenty-six-year-old Venetia Stanley — aristocratic, clever, bored, reckless — is part of a fast group of upper-crust bohemians and socialites known as “The Coterie.” She’s also engaged in a clandestine love affair with the Prime Minister, H. H. Asquith, a man more than twice her age. He writes to her obsessively, sharing the most sensitive matters of state.

As Asquith reluctantly leads the country into war with Germany, a young intelligence officer with Scotland Yard is assigned to investigate a leak of top-secret documents. Suddenly, what was a sexual intrigue becomes a matter of national security that could topple the British government — and will alter the course of political history.

Shy Creatures by Clare Chambers (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)

In all failed relationships there is a point that passes unnoticed at the time, which can later be identified as the beginning of the decline. For Helen it was the weekend that the Hidden Man came to Westbury Park.

Croydon, 1964. Helen Hansford is in her thirties and an art therapist in a psychiatric hospital where she has been having a long love affair with a charismatic, married doctor.

One spring afternoon they receive a call about a disturbance from a derelict house not far from Helen’s home. A mute, thirty-seven-year-old man called William Tapping, with a beard down to his waist, has been discovered along with his elderly aunt. It is clear he has been shut up in the house for decades, but when it emerges that William is a talented artist, Helen is determined to discover his story.

The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller (eARC, Sceptre via NetGalley)

December 1962, the West Country. In the darkness of an old asylum, a young man unscrews the lid from a bottle of sleeping pills.

In the nearby village, two couples begin their day. Local doctor, Eric Parry, mulling secrets, sets out on his rounds, while his pregnant wife sleeps on in the warmth of their cottage.

Across the field, in a farmhouse impossible to heat, funny, troubled Rita Simmons is also asleep, her head full of images of a past life her husband prefers to ignore. He’s been up for hours, tending to the needs of the small dairy farm he bought, a place where he hoped to create a new version of himself, a project that’s already faltering.

There is affection – if not always love – in both homes: these are marriages that still hold some promise. But when the ordinary cold of an English December gives way to violent blizzards – a true winter, the harshest in living memory – the two couples find their lives beginning to unravel.

Where do you hide when you can’t leave home? And where, in a frozen world, could you run to?

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On What Cathy Read Next this week

Currently reading

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Planned posts

• 20 Books of Summer 2024 Reading Challenge Wrap-Up
• Book Review: A Place Without Pain by Simon Bourke
• Book Review: To Calais, In Ordinary Time
• My Five Favourite August Reads
• #6Degrees of Separation