My Week in Books – 10th January 2021

MyWeekinBooks

On What Cathy Read Next last week

Blog posts

Monday – I published my review of The Push by Ashley Audrain.

Tuesday This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic was Most Anticipated 2021 Releases

WednesdayWWW Wednesday is 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. I also published my review of Elmet by Fiona Mozley.

Thursday – I signed up for When Are You Reading? 2021 Challenge.

Friday – I shared my review of Connectedness (Identity Detective #2) by Sandra Danby

Saturday – I published my review of WW2 historical thriller Last Flight to Stalingrad by Graham Hurley as part of the blog tour. 

Sunday – I shared my review of Children’s Fate (Meonbridge Chronicles #4) by Carolyn Hughes 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

MintMint by S. R. Wilsher (eARC, courtesy of the author and Rachel’s Random Resources) 

It’s the summer of 1976, and after nine years in prison, James Minter is home to bury his mother. A history of depression and a series of personal issues has seen her death ruled as suicide. His refusal to accept that conclusion means he must confront his violent stepfather, deal with the gangster who wants his mother’s shop and, of course, face the family of the boy he killed.

But will his search for the truth in the claustrophobic atmosphere of a small seaside town, and the unpicking of the peculiar relationship his mother had with the Stonemason next door, put his own life in danger?

Light PerpetualLight Perpetual by Francis Spufford (eARC, courtesy of Faber & Faber via NetGalley) 

Lunchtime, a Saturday, 1944: the Woolworths on Bexford High Street in southeast London has a new delivery of aluminum saucepans. A crowd gathers to see the first new metal in ages – after all, everything’s been melted down for the war effort. An instant later, the crowd is gone; incinerated. In it were five little children. Atomised.

Who were they? What future did they lose? Running another reel, another version of time, Perpetual Light is the rest of the twentieth century as the five children’s destinies were extended. Their intimate everyday dramas, as sons and daughters, spouses, parents, grandparents; as the separated, the remarried, the bereaved. Through decades of social, sexual and technological transformation, as bus conductors and landlords, as swindlers and teachers, patients and inmates. Days of personal triumphs, disasters; of second chances and redemption, all amidst the bustling, humming multitudes of London.

Five lives and stories told in beams of light, not ends.


On What Cathy Read Next this week

Currently reading

Planned posts

  • My Five Favourite December Reads 
  • Top Ten Tuesday 
  • Waiting on Wednesday
  • Book Review: Artist, Lover, Soldier, Muse by Arthur D. Hittner
  • Blog Tour/Book Review: The Art of Dying by Ambrose Parry
  • Blog Tour/Book Review: Game of the Gods by Paolo Maurensig

My Week in Books – 3rd January 2021

MyWeekinBooks

On What Cathy Read Next last week

Blog posts

Monday – I published my review of Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult.

Tuesday This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic was the always tough Favourite Books of 2020. 

WednesdayWWW Wednesday is 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 took a look at how I got on with My 2020 Reading Challenges.

Friday – I shared the books I might read for the What’s In A Name 2021 reading challenge.

Saturday – The first Saturday of the month and the year means it’s time for #6Degrees of Separation.  This month’s starting book was Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell.

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


New arrivals

Nineteen MinutesNineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult (audiobook)

Sterling is a small, ordinary New Hampshire town where nothing ever happens – until the day its complacency is shattered by a shocking act of violence. Josie Cormier, the teenage daughter of the judge sitting on the case, could be the state’s best witness, but she can’t remember what happened in front of her own eyes – or can she? As the trial progresses, fault lines between the high school and the adult community begin to show, destroying the closest of friendships and families.

The Diplomat's WifeThe Diplomat’s Wife by Michael Ridpath (advance review copy, courtesy of Corvus and Reader’s First)

1936: Devastated by the death of her beloved brother Hugh, Emma seeks to keep his memory alive by wholeheartedly embracing his dreams of a communist revolution. But when she marries an ambitious diplomat, she must leave her ideals behind and live within the confines of embassy life in Paris and Nazi Berlin. Then one of Hugh’s old comrades reappears, asking her to report on her philandering husband, and her loyalties are torn.

1979: Emma’s grandson, Phil, dreams of a gap-year tour of Cold War Europe, but is nowhere near being able to fund it. So when his beloved grandmother determines to make one last trip to the places she lived as a young diplomatic wife, and to try to solve a mystery that has haunted her since the war, he jumps at the chance to accompany her. But their journey takes them to darker, more dangerous places than either of them could ever have imagined…


On What Cathy Read Next this week

Currently reading

Planned posts

  • When Are You Reading? 2021 Sign-Up 
  • Top Ten Tuesday: Most Anticipated 2021 Releases 
  • Waiting on Wednesday
  • Book Review: The Push by Ashley Audrain
  • Book Review: Elmet by Fiona Mozley
  • Blog Tour/Book Review: Last Flight to Stalingrad by Graham Hurley
  • Blog Tour/Book Review: Children’s Fate by Carolyn Hughes