On What Cathy Read Next last week
Tuesday – I shared my review of historical mystery, Rivers of Treason by K. J. Maitland.
Wednesday – I published my review of thriller, No Place To Hide by JS Monroe as part of the blog tour. And 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 shared my review of Bone China by Laura Purcell.
New arrivals
The Voluble Topsy by A. P. Herbert (ARC, Handheld Press)
The Voluble Topsy collects A P Herbert’s The Trials of Topsy (1928), Topsy MP (1929) and Topsy Turvy (1947) in one volume for the pleasure and admiration of a new generation. For lovers of Nancy Mitford and the Provincial Lady Topsy will be a fresh delight.
It is the late 1920s. Topsy is a girl about town, a society deb, a dashing flapper. She writes breathless, exuberant letters to her best friend Trix about her life, her parties, her intrigues, and the men in her life. She deploys her native acumen and remarkable talent for kindness as well as being a doughty fighter for what she thinks is right (she hides a fox from the Hunt in her car). Then Topsy is unexpectedly drawn into politics, and to her amazement, she is elected as a member of Parliament.
Topsy’s extensive social life, her adventures in and out of the House of Commons (and her audacious attempts to legislate for the Enjoyment of the People), and her wartime activity as the mother of twins were recorded faithfully by the great comic writer A P Herbert as a series of satires in Punch.
Wild with All Regrets by E. L. Deards (eARC, She Writes Press via NetGalley)
A decade has passed since Lucas Connolly lost his best friend—and the only man he’s ever loved—in World War I, but he still can’t shake his guilt over Jamie’s death. In fact, ever since losing Jamie, Lucas has heard his friend’s voice inside his head—confused about what happened to him, begging him for help. And now, suddenly, it’s not just Jamie’s voice anymore; now, a specter who looks and acts exactly like Jamie did before his death, and who is demanding answers from Lucas about what happened to him, has begun to haunt him.
Concerned about Lucas’s deteriorating mental state, his friend Angela encourages him to move on with his life, and even sets him up with a coworker whom she suspects is also gay. But Lucas is too consumed with the secret he still keeps about the part he played in Jamie’s death to even begin to form a healthy connection with someone new—and as Jamie’s ghost begins to recover his memories and get closer to the truth, Lucas’s obsession only deepens.
Ultimately, Lucas realizes that his only path forward is to first go backward—that only in examining his troubled youth, facing his deepest self, and shining a light on the shadowed parts of his past will he finally be able to set his old friend, and himself, free.
Unnatural Ends by Christopher Huang (eARC, Inkshares)
Sir Lawrence Linwood is dead. More accurately, he was murdered — savagely beaten to death in his own study with a mediaeval mace. The murder calls home his three adopted children: Alan, an archeologist; Roger, an engineer; and Caroline, a journalist. But his heirs soon find that his last testament contains a strange proviso — that his estate shall go to the heir who solves his murder.
To secure their future, each Linwood heir must now dig into the past. As their suspicion mounts — of each other and of peculiar strangers in the churchless town of Linwood Hollow — they come to suspect that the perpetrator lurks in the mysterious origins of their own birth.
On What Cathy Read Next this week
Currently reading
Planned posts
- Book Review: The Chosen by Elizabeth Lowry
- #TopTenTuesday – Favourite Audiobook Narrators
- Book Review: The Letter Reader by Jan Casey
- Audiobook Review: The Warlow Experiment by Alix Nathan
What Cathy Read Next... 