new arrivals

MyWeekinBooks

The Secret by Katharine Johnson (paperback, review copy courtesy of the author and Rachel’s Random Resources)

Two girls growing up in Mussolini’s Italy share a secret that has devastating consequences. Against a backdrop of fear, poverty and confusion during the Second World War, friendship is tested, and loyalties are divided until a chance encounter changes everything.

Their lives diverge when beautiful, daring Martina marries and moves into Villa Leonida, the most prestigious house in their Tuscan mountain village, while plain, studious Irena trains to be a teacher. But neither marriage nor life at Villa Leonida are as Martina imagined. And as other people’s lives take on a new purpose, Irena finds herself left behind.

Decades later, a tragedy at the villa coincides with the discovery of an abandoned baby, whose identity threatens to re-open old wounds among the next generation.

My Sister, Myself by Jill Treseder (ebook, review copy courtesy of Random Things Tours)

Hungary, 1956. Russian tanks brutally crush the revolution against the Communist regime. Sisters Katalin and Marika escape Budapest with their family and settle in London.

However, the past is not so easily left behind. Their father is a wanted man, and the sisters’ relationship hangs in the balance. Their futures are shaped by loss. For Katalin, this means the failure of her ambition and a devastating discovery; for Marika, an equally heart-breaking experience.

Caught between their Hungarian heritage and their new lives in Britain, the sisters struggle to reconnect. Family secrets are exposed, jeopardising Katalin’s and Marika’s identities. Can their relationship survive war, division and grief?

The Salt of the Earth by Jozef Wittlin, trans. Patrick Corness (eARC, NetGalley)

At the beginning of the twentieth century the villagers of the Carpathian mountains lead a simple life, much as they have always done. The modern world has yet to reach the inhabitants of this isolated and remote region of the Habsburg Empire. Among them is Piotr, a bandy-legged peasant, who wants nothing more from life than an official railway cap, a cottage with a mouse-trap and cheese, and a bride with a dowry.

But then the First World War comes to the mountains, and Piotr is drafted into the army. All the weight of imperial authority is used to mould him into an unthinking fighting machine, so that the bewildered peasant can be forced to fight a war as he does not understand, for interests other than his own.

The Salt of the Earth is a classic war novel, a powerful pacifist tale about the consequences of war on ordinary men.

Pre-order The Salt of the Earth from Amazon UK

Now We Shall Be Entirely Free by Andrew Miller (ebook, NetGalley)

One rain-swept February night in 1809, an unconscious man is carried into a house in Somerset. He is Captain John Lacroix, home from Britain’s disastrous campaign against Napoleon’s forces in Spain.

Gradually Lacroix recovers his health, but not his peace of mind – he cannot talk about the war or face the memory of what happened in a village on the gruelling retreat to Corunna. After the command comes to return to his regiment, he sets out instead for the Hebrides, with the vague intent of reviving his musical interests and collecting local folksongs.

Lacroix sails north incognito, unaware that he has far worse to fear than being dragged back to the army: a vicious English corporal and a Spanish officer are on his trail, with orders to kill. The haven he finds on a remote island with a family of free-thinkers and the sister he falls for are not safe, at all.

On What Cathy Read Next last week

Blog posts

Monday – An Autumn break in Falmouth, Cornwall saw me give my blog a Cornish theme this week. I published my first list of books set in Cornwall covering historical fiction.

Tuesday – This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic was Bookstores/Libraries I’ve Always Wanted to Visit and in keeping with the Cornish theme, my list included two independent bookshops in Falmouth alongside some books set in libraries or bookshops. The Cornish themed lists continued with crime/mystery novels set in Cornwall.

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. Contemporary fiction set in Cornwall was the theme of today’s list.

Thursday – My final Cornish themed list was devoted to books by Daphne du Maurier, as no list of books set in Cornwall could be complete without reference to her novels.

Sunday – I published my review of Meet Me at the Museum by Anne Youngson, one of the authors I heard speak at the recent Henley Literary Festival and who I was lucky enough to meet in person afterwards and have sign my copy of her book.

On What Cathy Read Next this week

Currently reading

Planned posts

Book Review: The Last Thread by Ray Britain
Book Review: False Lights by K. J. Whittaker
Blog Tour/Book Review: The Golden Orphans by Gary Raymond
Book Review: A Ration Book Christmas by Jean Fullerton
Event Review: Anne Youngson and A J Pearce at Henley Literary Festival
Book Review: Paris Echo by Sebastian Faulks
Event Review: Diane Setterfield ay Henley Literary Festival
Book Review: The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
Blog Tour/Book Review: The Senator’s Assignment by Joan E Histon
Buchan of the Month/Book Review: Witch Wood by John Buchan

MyWeekinBooks

New arrivals

Sympathy by Olivia Sudjic (paperback, subscription box)

An electrifying novel of blood ties, online identities, and our tormented efforts to connect in the digital age.

At twenty-three, Alice Hare leaves England for New York. She falls in love with Manhattan, and becomes fixated on Mizuko Himura, an intriguing Japanese writer whose life has strange parallels to her own.

As Alice closes in on Mizuko, her ‘internet twin’, realities multiply and fact and fiction begin to blur. The relationship between the two women exposes a tangle of lies and sexual encounters. Three families collide as Alice learns that the swiftest answer to an ancient question – where do we come from? – can now be found online.

The Murder of Harriet Monckton by Elizabeth Haynes (ebook)

From the award-winning and bestselling author of Into the Darkest Corner comes a delicious Victorian crime novel based on a true story that shocked and fascinated the nation.

On 7th November 1843, Harriet Monckton, 23 years old and a woman of respectable parentage and religious habits, is found murdered in the privy behind the chapel she regularly attended in Bromley, Kent. The community is appalled by her death, apparently as a result of swallowing a fatal dose of prussic acid, and even more so when the surgeon reports that Harriet was around six months pregnant.

Drawing on the coroner’s reports and witness testimonies, Elizabeth Haynes builds a compelling picture of Harriet’s final hours through the eyes of those closest to her and the last people to see her alive. Her fellow teacher and companion, her would-be fiancé, her seducer, her former lover—all are suspects; each has a reason to want her dead.

Brimming with lust, mistrust and guilt, The Murder of Harriet Monckton is a masterclass of suspense from one of our greatest crime writers.

So Much Life Left Over by Louis de Bernières (hardcover, library loan)

A sweeping, heartbreaking novel following Daniel in his troubled marriage with Rosie as they navigate the unsettled time between the World Wars.

Rosie and Daniel have moved to Ceylon with their little daughter to start a new life at the dawn of the 1920s, attempting to put the trauma of the First World War behind them, and to rekindle a marriage that gets colder every day. However, even in the lush plantation hills it is hard for them to escape the ties of home and the yearning for fulfilment that threatens their marriage.

Back in England, Rosie’s three sisters are dealing with different challenges in their searches for family, purpose and happiness. These are precarious times, and they find themselves using unconventional means to achieve their desires. Around them the world is changing, and when Daniel finds himself in Germany he witnesses events taking a dark and forbidding turn.

By turns humorous and tragic, gripping and touching, So Much Life Left Over follows a cast of unique and captivating characters as they navigate the extraordinary interwar years both in England and abroad.