On What Cathy Read Next last week
Monday – I shared review of dual time novel The Shimmer on the Water by Marina McCarron as part of the blog tour.
Wednesday – WWW Wednesday is my 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 review of Bad Relations by Cressida Connolly.
Friday – I published my review of Learwife by JR Thorp.
New arrivals
The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho by Paterson Joseph (eARC, Dialogue Books via NetGalley)
‘I had little right to live, born on a slave ship where my parents both died. But I survived, and indeed, you might say I did more…’
It’s 1746 and Georgian London is not a safe place for a young Black man, especially one who has escaped slavery. After the twinkling lights in the Fleet Street coffee shops are blown out and the great houses have closed their doors for the night, Sancho must dodge slave catchers and worse. The man he hoped would help – a kindly duke who taught him to write – is dying. Sancho is desperate and utterly alone.
So how does Charles Ignatius Sancho meet the King, write and play highly acclaimed music, become the first Black person to vote in Britain and lead the fight to end slavery?
It’s time for him to tell his story, one that begins on a tempestuous Atlantic Ocean, and ends at the very centre of London life. And through it all, he must ask: born amongst death, how much can you achieve in one short life?
Molly & The Captain by Anthony Quinn (eARC, Little Brown via NetGalley)
A celebrated artist of the Georgian era paints his two young daughters at the family home in Bath. The portrait, known as “Molly & the Captain”, becomes instantly famous, its fate destined to echo down the centuries, touching many lives.
In the summer of 1889 a young man sits painting a line of elms in Kensington Gardens. One day he glimpses a mother at play with her two daughters and decides to include them in his picture. From that moment he is haunted by dreams that seem to foreshadow his doom.
A century later, in Kentish Town, a painter and her grown-up daughters receive news of an ancestor linking them to the long-vanished double portrait of “Molly & the Captain”. Meanwhile friendship with a young musician stirs unexpected passions and threatens to tear the family apart.
Blackstone Fell by Martin Edwards (eARC, Head of Zeus via NetGalley)
Yorkshire, 1606. A man vanishes from a locked gatehouse in a remote village. 300 years later, it happens again.
Autumn 1930. Journalist Nell Fagan knows there’s only one person who can get to the bottom of this mystery: Rachael Savernake. But someone wants Nell dead, and soon, while investigating a series of recent deaths at Blackstone Sanatorium, she’s missing entirely.
Looking for answers, Rachel travels to lonely Blackstone Fell, with its eerie moor, deadly waters and sinister tower. With help from Jacob Flint – who’s determined to expose a fraudulent medium at a séance – Rachel will risk her life to bring an end to the disappearances…
On What Cathy Read Next this week
Currently reading
Planned posts
- Book Review: The Bone Road by N.E. Solomons
- Blog Tour/Book Review: After She’d Gone by Alex Dahl
- Book Review: The Women of the Castle by Jessica Shattuck
- Book Review: The Twist of A Knife by Anthony Horowitz
- Book Review/Blog Tour: The House at Helygen by Victoria Hawthorne
What Cathy Read Next... 