My Week in Books – 5th July 2020

MyWeekinBooks

On What Cathy Read Next last week

Blog posts

Monday –  I shared my review of The Offing by Benjamin Myers.

Tuesday – This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic was Most Anticipated Releases in the Second Half of 2020.  

Wednesday – WWW Wednesday is the opportunity to share what I’ve just read, what I’m currently reading and what I plan to read next…and have a good nose around to see what other bloggers are reading.

Thursday – I published my review of The Narrow Land by Christine Dwyer Hickey, winner of this year’s Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction.

Friday –  I shared my Five Favourite June Reads.

Saturday – The first Saturday of a new month means it’s time for 6 Degrees of Separation.

As always, thanks to everyone who has liked, commented on or shared my blog posts on social media this week.


New arrivals

9780718180508The Honey and the Sting by E. C. Fremantle (eARC, courtesy of Michael Joseph via NetGalley)

Three sisters. Three secrets. Three ways to fall . . .

England, 1628. Forcibly seduced by the powerful George Villiers, doctor’s daughter Hester is cast aside to raise her son alone and in secret. She hopes never to see Villiers again.

Melis’s visions cause disquiet and talk. She sees what other’s can’t – and what has yet to be. She’d be denounced as a witch if Hester wasn’t so carefully protective.

Young Hope’s beauty marks her out, drawing unwelcome attention to the family. Yet she cannot always resist others’ advances. And her sisters cannot always be on their guard.

When Villiers decides to claim his son against Hester’s wishes, the sisters find themselves almost friendless and at his mercy. But the women hold a grave secret. The question is, will what they know be their undoing or their salvation?

Because in the right hands, a secret is the deadliest weapon of all…


On What Cathy Read Next this week

Currently reading

Planned posts

  • Blog Tour/Book Review: A Quiet Death in Italy by Tom Benjamin
  • Top Ten Tuesday: Authors I’ve Read The Most Books By
  • Waiting on Wednesday
  • Blog Tour/Book Review: The Englishman by David Gilman
  • Audiobook Review: The Time Machine by H. G. Wells

#6Degrees Six Degrees of Separation: From What I Loved to Meet Me at the Museum

It’s the first Saturday of a new month which means it’s time for 6 Degrees of Separation!

pile of hardbound books with white and pink floral ceramic teacup and saucer
Photo by Ylanite Koppens on Pexels.com

Here’s how it works: a book is chosen as a starting point by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best and linked to six other books to form a chain. Readers and bloggers are invited to join in by creating their own ‘chain’ leading from the selected book.

Kate says: Books can be linked in obvious ways – for example, books by the same authors, from the same era or genre, or books with similar themes or settings. Or, you may choose to link them in more personal or esoteric ways: books you read on the same holiday, books given to you by a particular friend, books that remind you of a particular time in your life, or books you read for an online challenge. Join in by posting your own six degrees chain on your blog and adding the link in the comments section of each month’s post.   You can also check out links to posts on Twitter using the hashtag #6Degrees

9780340682388This month’s starting book is What I Loved by Siri Hustvedt which I’ve not read but, according to the blurb, it’s the story of a life-long friendship between two men set in the art world of New York.

Also opening in the art world of New York is Fake Like Me by Babs Bourland. After a fire in her New York studio, a young artist gains a place at Pine City, an exclusive but rather creepy retreat set on a lake. It’s run by a notorious collective of successful artists, one of whose members has recently died.

Another book that features a young woman leaving New York to travel to a remote lakeside location and experiencing more than she bargained for is The Room by the Lake by Emma Dibdin. 

In Heaven, My Home by Attica Locke, Texas Ranger Darren Matthews becomes involved in the search for a young white boy lost on the vast Lake Caddo in east Texas. The title of the book is from a blues song.

Songs, in this case by The Beatles, are the inspiration for the titles of Alan Johnson’s series of memoirs. In The Long and Winding Road he charts his rise from postman to positions in the highest levels of the UK government.

Staying with the postal theme, The Lost Letters of William Woolf by Helen Cullen concerns a so-called letter detective employed in the Dead Letters Depot who spends his days trying to reunite lost letters with their intended recipients.

Meet Me At the Museum by Ann Youngson is an epistolary novel in which two people, Danish Professor Anders Larsen and East Anglian farmer’s wife, Tina Hopgood, conduct a long distance correspondence as a result of a shared interest in the Tollund Man.

This month we’ve travelled from New York to Denmark (in letter form, at least). Where did your chain take you this month?

Fake Like MeTheRoombytheLakeHeaven My HomeThe Long and Winding RoadThe Lost Letters of William WoolfMeet Me at the Museum