On What Cathy Read Next last week
Tuesday – This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic was Things That Make Me Instantly Want To Read A Book.
Wednesday – I published my review of historical novel The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng. 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.
Thursday – I shared my publication day review of spy thriller, The Scarlet Papers by Matthew Richardson.
Friday – I checked in on my progress with the When Are You Reading? 2023 challenge.
New arrivals
The Unheard by Anne Worthington (ARC, Confingo Publishing)
Tom Pullan knows that the people who visit him are trying to tell him something, but he cannot remember what. He knows the faces in his memory, the ones he loved, are not the ones around him now.
We are drawn into a world where brutal events from the past lie just below the surface. Plunged inside the characters’ heads, we experience their thoughts and feelings: sorrow and rage they cannot share; the intense feelings and turbulent sexuality of a teenage girl; a boy who saw something that casts a long shadow over his life.
What do we do with a lifetime of unheard truths, questions and fears? The Unheard is a novel about memory, and what happens to the experiences that are too much for us but we are unable to leave behind.
The Unspeakable Acts of Zina Pavlou by Elena Kyriacou (eARC, Head of Zeus via NetGalley)
They say she’s a murderer. She says nothing.
London, 1954. Eva Georgiou has just returned from her shift at the glamorous Café de Paris, when she’s summoned to her second job: Greek interpreter for the Metropolitan Police. There, she is tasked with representing Zina Pavlou, a Cypriot woman who has been accused of the brutal murder of her daughter-in-law who has been bludgeoned, strangled and then set alight.
Eva gets to work as Zina’s translator, but her concern grows that the case may be more complicated than it seems. Then Zina changes everything when she reveals she’s been accused of murder once before, years ago in Cyprus.
While Eva’s obsession with the case deepens, so does her bond with Zina. And soon she will discover that when you lend your voice to an accused murderer, it comes at a devastating cost.
The Well of Saint Nobody by Neil Jordan (eARC, Apollo via NetGalley)
William Barrow finds himself in lonely retirement in West Cork. Once an internationally renowned pianist, a terrible skin disease has attacked his hands and made it impossible for him to perform.
Tara is a piano teacher with barely enough pupils to pay the month’s rent. In the local café, the elegant writing of a job advertisement catches her ‘WANTED. HOUSEKEEPER.’
She begins to work in William’s house, keeping to herself the knowledge that they have met three times before, encounters that have changed her life. He is oblivious to this, while she spins tales of the well discovered in his back garden and of a mythical saint, of the healing powers of the water and the moss that surrounds it. But as the moss begins to heal William’s troubled hands, the lines between legend and reality begin to blur, secrets resurface, and past and present collide in unexpected ways.
Before We Were Innocent by Ella Berman (eARC, Aria via NetGalley)
A summer in Greece.
Three best friends.
A tragic secret that will change them forever.
The truth depends on who you ask…
Ten years ago, after a sun-soaked summer spent in Greece, Bess and Joni were cleared of having any involvement in their best friend Evangeline ‘s death. But that didn’t stop the media from calling them everything under the wild, promiscuous, liars, guilty .
Now Joni is tangled up in a crime in LA eerily similar to that one fateful night, and when she turns up at her old friend’s doorstep asking for an alibi, Bess has no choice. She still owes her.
They say the truth will set you free but can Bess face up to what happened that night?
She should know by now… you can’t be an innocent woman when everyone wants you to be guilty.
Para Bellum by Simon Turney (eARC, Aries via NetGalley)
AD 381. Five years have gone by since a Roman governor ordered the deaths of a Gothic king and his attendants at a feast in their honour. This disastrous act led to warfare in the Roman Empire and the death of the Emperor Valens.
Now, the Empire is calm once more, but for the eight legionaries who committed the killings, the bloodshed is only just beginning. Fritigern, brother of the murdered king, has sworn revenge on his brother’s killers. Now king of a powerful Gothic tribe, he will not rest until the men are hunted down.
Flavius Focalis is one of those legionaries. Surviving an attack at his villa, he realises the danger he and his family are in, and seeks to warn his former comrades, for he knows Fritigern will give them no quarter. So begins a deadly game of cat-and-mouse across the Empire, as, by land and sea, the former soldiers face the wrath of their implacable enemy, and return to the scene of the greatest battle of their Adrianople.
For war is coming again – and the only question is, do they die now, or die later?
On What Cathy Read Next this week
Currently reading
Planned posts
- Book Review: Ancestry by Simon Mawer
- Blog Tour/Book Review: Sister of Mine by Laurie Petrou
- My Five Favourite May 2023 Reads
- #6Degrees of Separation
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