On What Cathy Read Next last week
Monday – I published my sign-up post for the What’s In A Name? 2022 reading challenge.
Tuesday – This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic was Most Recent Additions To My Book Collection.
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 my review of Jane’s Country Year by Malcolm Saville ahead of its publication in a new edition by Handheld Press on 18th January.
Friday – Another day, another reading challenge! I published my sign-up post for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2022.
Saturday – I shared my review of Finding Edith Pinsent by Hazel Ward as part of the blog tour.
As always, thanks to everyone who has liked, commented on or shared my blog posts on social media.
New arrivals
The Matchmaker: A Spy in Berlin by Paul Vidich (eARC, No Exit Press)
Berlin, 1989. Protests across East Germany threaten the Iron Curtain and Communism is the ill man of Europe. Anne Simpson, an American who works as a translator at the Joint Operations Refugee Committee, thinks she is in a normal marriage with a charming East German. But then her husband disappears and the CIA and Western German intelligence arrive at her door.
Nothing about her marriage is as it seems. She had been targeted by the Matchmaker – a high level East German counterintelligence officer – who runs a network of Stasi agents. These agents are his “Romeos” who marry vulnerable women in West Berlin to provide them with cover as they report back to the Matchmaker. Anne has been married to a spy, and now he has disappeared, and is presumably dead.
The CIA are desperate to find the Matchmaker because of his close ties to the KGB. They believe he can establish the truth about a high-ranking Soviet defector. They need Anne because she’s the only person who has seen his face – from a photograph that her husband mistakenly left out in his office – and she is the CIA’s best chance to identify him before the Matchmaker escapes to Moscow. Time is running out as the Berlin Wall falls and chaos engulfs East Germany.
But what if Anne’s husband is not dead? And what if Anne has her own motives for finding the Matchmaker to deliver a different type of justice?
The Night Shift by Alex Finlay (eARC, Head of Zeus via NetGalley)
What connects a pair of small-town murders that happened fifteen years apart?
It’s New Year’s Eve of 1999 when four teenagers working late are attacked at a Blockbuster video store in New Jersey. Only one inexplicably survives. Police quickly identify a suspect, the boyfriend of one of the victims, who flees and is never seen again.
Fifteen years later, four more teenagers are attacked at an ice cream store in the same town, and again only one makes it out alive.
In the aftermath of the latest crime, three lives intersect: the lone survivor of the Blockbuster massacre who is forced to relive the horrors of her tragedy; the brother of the fugitive accused, who is convinced the police have the wrong suspect; and FBI agent Sarah Keller, who must delve into the secrets of both nights to uncover the truth about the night shift murders.
Seek The Singing Fish by Roma Wells (ARC, époque press)
Growing up in the lagoon town of Batticaloa, a young girl, with an unquenchable curiosity and love of the natural world, is entangled in the trauma and turmoil of the Sri Lankan civil war.
Uprooted from everything she holds dear, tragedy and betrayal set in motion an unforgettable odyssey.
Torn from east to west, struggling with what it means to belong, she desperately seeks a way home to the land of the singing fish.
On What Cathy Read Next this week
Currently reading
Planned posts
- Book Review: Red Is My Heart by Antoine Laurain & Le Sonneur
- Blog Tour/Book Review: Before We Grow Old by Clare Swatman
- Book Review: The Queen’s Lady by Joanna Hickson
- Blog Tour/Book Review: Liberty (Resistance #1) by Eilidh McGinness
- Book Review: The Man in the Bunker (Tom Wilde #6) by Rory Clements
What Cathy Read Next... 