On What Cathy Read Next last week
Monday – I shared an extract from historical novel Until We Meet by Camille Di Maio.
Tuesday – I published my review of The Swallowed Man by Edward Carey, an inventive retelling of the story of Pinocchio. This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic was Authors I Haven’t Read, But Want To.
Wednesday – I published my review of historical novel The Lost Boy of Bologna by Francesca Scanacapra as part of the blog tour. 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 published my review of historical novel The Physician’s Daughter by Martha Conway.
Friday – I shared my review of crime mystery The Fall by Rachael Blok as part of the blog tour.
Saturday – Indulging my other love – gardening – I took part in the #SixonSaturday meme with a few highlights from my horticultural week.
New arrivals
The Rebel’s Mark (The Jackdaw Mysteries #5) by S. W. Perry (Corvus)
Elizabeth’s reign is reaching its winter and England’s old adversaries are fading. But in a world on the brink of change, showing any weakness can be fatal…
1598. Nicholas Shelby, unorthodox physician and reluctant spy for Robert Cecil, has brought his wife Bianca and their child home from exile in Padua. Welcome at court, his star is in the ascendancy. But he has returned to a dangerous world.
Two old enemies are approaching their final reckoning. England and Spain are exhausted by war. In London, Elizabeth is entering the twilight of her reign. In Madrid, King Philip of Spain is dying. Perhaps now is the time for one last throw of the dice.
Elizabeth has seen off more than one Spanish attempt at invasion. But still she is not safe. In Ireland, rebellion against her rule is raging. And if Spain can take Ireland, England will be more vulnerable than ever.
When England’s greatest living poet, Edmund Spenser, sends Robert Cecil an enigmatic and mysterious plea for help from his Irish fastness, Cecil dispatches Nicholas to investigate. Soon he and Bianca find themselves caught up not just in bloody rebellion, but in the lethal power-play between Cecil and the one man Elizabeth believes can restore Ireland to her, the unpredictable Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex.
Greenwich Park by Katherine Faulkner (Raven Books)
Helen has it all…
Daniel is the perfect husband.
Rory is the perfect brother.
Serena is the perfect sister-in-law.
And Rachel? Rachel is the perfect nightmare.
When Helen, finally pregnant after years of tragedy, attends her first antenatal class, she is expecting her loving architect husband to arrive soon after, along with her confident, charming brother Rory and his pregnant wife, the effortlessly beautiful Serena. What she is not expecting is Rachel.
Extroverted, brash, unsettling single mother-to-be Rachel, who just wants to be Helen’s friend. Who just wants to get know Helen and her friends and her family. Who just wants to know everything about them. Every little secret…
The Companion by Lesley Thomson (eARC, Head of Zeus via NetGalley)
Sally Robinson was obsessed with family tradition. That’s why, on a scorching August day, she dragged her family out for a picnic on Dedman’s Heath. Sally imagined her picturesque children posing against the purple heathers and flowering yellow gorse of the South Downs: an envy-inducing post for her facebook page. Instead, the perfect mother and her perfect family were murdered. By a man who had murdered before, and will do so again.
DI Toni Kemp, of Sussex police, must unravel a case which has shocked the county to its core. What she discovers will lead her to Bedford Hall, a grand country mansion, long ago converted into flats. Here in the middle of nowhere, where statues dot the lawn and peacocks scream in the bushes, six long-term residents have seen more than they should. But this is a community who are good at keeping secrets…
The Fire Killer (DI Barton #5) by Ross Greenwood (eARC, Boldwood via NetGalley)
When DI Barton is asked to investigate a seemingly innocuous fire that kills, he believes it’s either children fooling around or a worrying racially motivated crime.
As he delves deeper into the case, he soon realises that there is a history of similar blazes spread out over many years, all within a close area. And after an idea is suggested by pathologist Mortis, Barton suspects he has the arsonist’s motives wrong.
When a night worker comes forward with a tip, Barton narrows down the suspects. Yet all of them act suspiciously and he knows for sure that one or more of them are lying. And when a huge house blaze shocks everyone, Barton fears the killer has lost all control.
Who is The Fire Killer? What will be next to burn?
How To Save a Life by Clare Swatman (eARC, Boldwoon via NetGalley)
One night in December, twenty-two year old Ted Green makes his way to Waterloo Bridge determined to end his life. Lonely, despairing and utterly hopeless, it seems the only choice to make.
That same night in December, Marianne Cooper is running away from a party. Having found her boyfriend in a passionate clinch with someone else, Marianne can’t get away fast enough. But as she makes her way along London’s South Bank, a figure catches her eye on top of the bridge. Then she sees him, a man ready to jump.
When Marianne saves Ted’s life, this night in December becomes one they’ll never forget, but as Ted watches Marianne leave in a black taxi, all he can think is he should have asked her name.
A Ration Book Victory by Jean Fullerton (eARC, Corvus)
In the final days of war, only love will pull her through . . .
Queenie Brogan wasn’t always an East End matriarch. Many years ago, before she married Fergus, she was Philomena Dooley, a daughter of Irish Travellers, planning to wed her childhood sweetheart, Patrick Mahone. But when tragedy struck and Patrick’s narrow-minded sister, Nora, intervened, the lovers were torn apart.
Fate can be cruel, and when Queenie arrives in London she finds that Patrick Mahon is her parish priest, and that the love she had tried to suppress flares again in her heart.
But now in the final months of WW2, Queenie discovers Father Mahon is dying and must face losing him forever. Can she finally tell him the secret she has kept for over fifty years or will Nora once again come between them? And if Queenie does decide to finally tell Patrick, could the truth destroy the Brogan family?
Requiem in La Rossa (Daniel Leicester #3) by Tom Benjamin (ARC, Constable)
In the sweltering heat of a Bologna summer, a murderer plans their pièce de résistance…
Only in Bologna reads the headline in the Carlino after a professor of music is apparently murdered leaving the opera. But what looks like an open-and-shut case begins to fall apart when English detective Daniel Leicester is tasked with getting the accused man off, and a trail that begins among Bologna’s close-knit classical music community leads him to suspect there may be a serial killer at large in the oldest university in the world. And as Bologna trembles with aftershocks following a recent earthquake, the city begins to give up her secrets.
On What Cathy Read Next this week
Currently reading
Planned posts
- Blog Tour/Book Review: The Capsarius by Simon Turney
- Book Review: Fortune by Amanda Smyth
- Blog Tour/Book Review: Mr Bunting At War by Robert Greenwood
- Blog Tour/Book Review: The Dark Flood by Deon Meyer
- Blog Tour/Book Review: Mailed Fist by John Foley
Downfall: In the smog-laden streets of the slums of London and the impoverished fields of rural England at the beginning of the 19th century, Mary Ann Goulding and Robert Bright are caught up in this maelstrom and find themselves all but slaves in the New World. The despair of Newgate prison, a death sentence, public hangings, riots, the resurrectionists and a hellish journey for months on the open sea to serve their sentences on an island prison begin their incredible true story.
Redemption: Mary Ann Goulding and Robert Bright continue their adventures. Transported to Van Diemen’s Land to serve their sentences we join them as they work their time as assigned ‘servants’, actually little more than slaves on this island prison. The momentous discovery of massive gold deposits sees huge disruption and changes all around as they live through the era of bushrangers like Ned Kelly, the massacre at the Eureka Stockade and the growing confidence of a new land with the birth of new cities and historic events such as the first Australia vs England test match and the first running of the Melbourne Cup.
What Cathy Read Next... 