Tag: new arrivals

On the blog last week

Tuesday – I went off-piste for this week’s Top Ten Tuesday with Ten Short Story Collections I’ve Read.

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 published my review of My Name is Emilia del Valle by Isabel Allende, translated by Frances Riddle.

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New on my shelves

Cairo Gambit by S. W. Perry (Corvus via NetGalley)

Cairo, 1938. Archie Nevenden is many things: amateur archaeologist; theatre impresario; absent father; potential defector. And now, he’s a missing person.

His daughter, Prim, hasn’t seen him for nearly fifteen years. But she’s never given up on him, and now she’s on her way to Cairo to assist in the search.

Harry Taverner claims to work for the British Council, but Prim knows there’s more to it. He clearly has a theory about what happened to Archie, one she’s not going to like.

As Prim and Harry uncover the layers of Archie’s existence in Cairo, they find themselves drawn in to more than one conspiracy. And soon they’ll discover that Archie may not be the only one in danger…

The Best of Intentions by Caroline Scott (Simon & Schuster via NetGalley)

1932: When gardener Robert Bardsley arrives at Anderby Hall, an Elizabethan manor house in the Gloucestershire countryside, it is home to ‘Greenfields’, a community of artists and idealists.

Robert has been employed to revive Anderby’s famous roses and restore the topiary garden, but he also soon befriends the other residents: from colourful neighbour Trudie, who makes a formidable cocktail and keeps her late-fiancé’s ashes on the mantelpiece, to composer Daniel, recovering from the horrors of the Great War. The only person he can’t win over is Anderby’s schoolteacher, Faye, who finds him . . . perfectly vexing.

But just as Robert starts to feel at home, the residents discover that the old orchard has been sold to a property developer who has plans for an estate of Tudorbethan bungalows. Can they find a way to keep their creative community alive or will the new housing development put an end to the spirit of Greenfields?

What I’m currently reading

I’m reading Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon, listening to The Book of Days by Francesca Kay – both books on the shortlist for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction – and reading Traitor’s Legacy by S.J. Parris from my NetGalley shelf. My reading rate has slowed to almost stationary lately…

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Look out for…

• Book Review: Days of Light by Megan Hunter
• Book Review: Traitor’s Legacy by S.J. Parris

On the blog last week

Monday – I published my review of Sister Rosa’s Rebellion by Carolyn Hughes.

Tuesday – My take on this week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic was Authors Who’ve Appeared At My Local Literary Festival.

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. 

Thursday – My guest was Susan Ekins, author of Hoodwink!: A ‘true’ medieval whodunnit.

Friday – I shared my book club’s thoughts on The Kellerby Code by Jonny Sweet.

Saturday – I published my sign-up post for the 20 Books of Summer 2025 Reading Challenge.

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New on my shelves

Our London Lives by Christine Dwyer Hickey (Atlantic Books via NetGalley)

1979. In the vast and often unforgiving city of London, two Irish outsiders seeking refuge find one another: Milly, a teenage runaway, and Pip, a young boxer full of anger and potential who is beginning to drink it all away.

Over the decades their lives follow different paths, interweaving from time to time, often in one another’s sight, always on one another’s mind, yet rarely together.

Forty years on, Milly is clinging onto the only home she’s ever really known while Pip, haunted by T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, traipses the streets of London and wrestles with the life of the recovering alcoholic. And between them, perhaps uncrossable, lies the unspoken span of their lives.

Dark and brave, this epic novel offers a rich and moving portrait of an ever-changing city, and a profound inquiry into character, loneliness and the nature of love.

Queen Macbeth by Val McDermid (Polygon)

A thousand years ago in an ancient Scottish landscape, a woman is on the run with her three companions – a healer, a weaver and a seer. The men hunting her will kill her – because she is the only one who stands between them and their violent ambition. She is no lady: she is the first queen of Scotland, married to a king called Macbeth.

As the net closes in, we discover a tale of passion, forced marriage, bloody massacre and the harsh realities of medieval Scotland. At the heart of it is one strong, charismatic woman, who survived loss and jeopardy to outwit the endless plotting of a string of ruthless and power-hungry men. Her struggle won her a country. But now it could cost her life.

What I’m currently reading

I’m reading Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon, listening to The Book of Days by Francesca Kay – both books on the shortlist for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction – and reading My Name is Emilia Del Valle by Isabel Allende from my NetGalley shelf.

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Look out for…

• Book Review: Days of Light by Megan Hunter
• Book Review: My Name is Emilia del Valle by Isabel Allende