On the blog last week
Monday – I published my review of Woman in Blue by Douglas Bruton.
Tuesday – This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic was Books Set in Another Time.
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 – I shared my Q&A with Amanda K. Jaros, author of In My Boots: A Memoir of Five Million Steps Along the Appalachian Trail.
Friday – I published an extract from The First Avocado by Greg Schindler.
Saturday – The first Saturday of the month means it’s time for the #6Degrees of Separation meme.
New on my shelves
Days of Light by Megan Hunter (Picador via NetGalley)
She marvels at the way a single day can unravel everything, like ribbon pulled from a present.
Easter Sunday, 1938. Ivy is nineteen and ready for her life to finally begin. At Cressingdon, her sprawling, bohemian family and their friends gather for lunch and to await the arrival of a longed-for guest. Britain is on the cusp of war, but in the idyllic Sussex countryside anything feels possible.
It is a single, enchanted afternoon that ends in tragedy and will change Ivy’s life forever.
Chronicling six pivotal days across six decades, Days of Light moves through the Second World War and into the twentieth century on a radiant journey through a life lived in pursuit of love and in search of an answer.
Defender of the Wall (Dragon of the North #1) by Chris Thorndycroft (eARC, courtesy of the author)
Britain, 390 A.D. As a barbarian prince fostered by a Roman family below Hadrian’s Wall, Cunedag’s loyalties have always been conflicted. His own people despise the Romans with a passion, yet he has grown to manhood among them and is now a cavalry officer stationed on the Wall.
But Rome’s grip on Britain is slipping and the north, sensing weakness, explodes in all-out rebellion. As the Picts sweep down to harry the frontier, the province marshals its forces to fight back. And Cunedag is presented with a difficult choice; continue to defend Rome or rule his people as a free king.
A Roman military novel packed with action and adventure, Defender of the Wall is the first part of a thrilling historical fiction trilogy which tells the story of the legendary King Cunedag; a dark age warlord who went on to build the Kingdom of Gwynedd from the ashes of post-Roman Britain.
One Good Thing by Georgia Hunter (Allison & Busby via NetGalley)
Italy, 1941. Lili Passigli is studying at the University of Ferrara when Mussolini’s Racial Laws deem her of ‘inferior’ Jewish descent. As Hitler’s strength grows, Lili’s world begins to shrink around her, with the papers awash in Fascist propaganda and the city walls desecrated with antisemitic slurs.
When Germany invades northern Italy, however, Lili and her best friend Esti find themselves alone in Nazi-occupied territory. With the help of the resistance, they flee with Esti’s two-year-old son Theo in tow, traveling south toward the Allies and freedom. On this journey through war-torn Italy, they will face untold challenges and devastating decisions.
Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon (Fig Tree)
Ancient Sicily. Enter GELON: visionary, dreamer, theatre lover. Enter LAMPO: feckless, jobless, in need of a distraction.
Imprisoned in the quarries of Syracuse, thousands of defeated Athenians hang on by the thinnest of threads. They’re fading in the baking heat, but not everything is lost: they can still recite lines from Greek tragedy when tempted by Lampo and Gelon with goatskins of wine and scraps of food. And so an idea is born. Because, after all, you can hate the invaders but still love their poetry.
It’s audacious. It might even be dangerous. But like all the best things in life – love, friendship, art itself – it will reveal the very worst, and the very best, of what humans are capable of. What could possibly go wrong?
A Sign of Her Own by Sarah Marsh (Tinder Press)
Ellen Lark is on the verge of marriage when she receives a visit from Alexander Graham Bell.
Once she believed she was important to Mr Bell. As one of his deaf students, she was among the first to learn of his dream to transmit a human voice along a wire: the telephone. Now Mr Bell’s idea is a reality, and he is beset by problems – and he expects Ellen to use her voice on his behalf.
But Ellen has a story of her own: of a man she loved, a language she discovered, and a community Bell betrayed. It is a story no one around her wants to hear – but there may never be a more important time for her to tell it.
Munichs by David Peace (Faber & Faber)
February 6, 1958, British European Airways Flight 609 crashed on take-off at Munich Airport. On board were the young Manchester United team, ‘the Busby Babes’, and the journalists who followed them. Twenty-one of the passengers died instantly, four were left fighting for their lives while six more were critically injured.
Munichs is the story of the crash and its aftermath, of those who survived and those who did not, of how Britain and football changed, and how it did not; a novel of tragedy, but also of hope.
What I’m currently reading
Look out for…
- My Five Favourite February 2025 Reads
- Extract: Defender of the Wall by Chris Thorndycroft
- Interview with Ken Steele, author of The Promise of Unbroken Straw
- Book Review: The Paris Dancer by Nicola Rayner
- Interview with Jordan Gray, author of In the Joining of Souls
- Book Review: Agricola: Warrior by Simon Turney
What Cathy Read Next... 