Reviews – What Cathy Read Next…

On the blog last week

Monday – I shared my October 2026 Wrap-up. I also published my Q&A with Itay Koh, author of historical novel Ernest and Samuel.

Tuesday – My take on this week’s Top Ten Tuesday was Books I’ve Reviewed With Titles That Are Compound Words. As part of Nonfiction November, I looked back at My Year in Nonfiction.

Wednesday – As always #WWWWednesday 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. I also published my review of Miss Veal and Miss Ham by Vikki Heywood.

Thursday – I shared a Scottish themed Spell the Month in Books.

Friday – I published a guest post by Gabriel Tait, author of Meeks, about why he didn’t start writing fiction until he was fifty. I also published my review of The Taper Man by Nick Harkaway.

Saturday – I published my review of historical novel The Bohemian Queen by Jean Findlay as part of the blog tour. I also participated in the #6Degrees of Separation meme forging a bookish chain from Quartet by Jean Rhys to A Beginner’s Guide to Breaking and Entering by Andrew Hunter Murray. And to complete a busy week on the blog, I joined other gardeners for #SixonSaturday sharing six things from my garden this week.

New on my shelves

Bird in Space by Miki Lentin (eARC, Afsana Press)

In London, Jerry Gold’s mother calls with an impossible demand: travel to Romania and into Ukraine to save a wooden house her father built before the second world war. The house had been a refuge for the family before they were deported in 1941 to Transnistria, a part of the holocaust.

Armed only with his mother’s blurred 1980s photographs, a befriended truck driver and museum director and an uncanny sense that the land remembers him, Jerry is pushed through northern Romania’s forests and borderlands toward Chernivtsi in Ukraine and the truth about the house.

Using Romanian new wave cinema, the art of Brancusi, Romanian traditions and the richness of the landscape, Bird in Space blends history with the present day, depicting a country that is lost in time, still emerging from Communism and struggling with its past and future. The story is personal, one of searching and belonging and asks questions about middle-age, the impact of war and what we do with our personal and built heritage.

Fire in the Fens (1066 Saga #3) by G. K. Holloway (eARC, Troubador)

Duke William of Normandy has conquered all of England, except for the Island of Ely, deep in the heart of the Fens. A land of myths, mists, mire and marshes, where death comes quickly to the careless.

Taking refuge are people caught up in these desperate times. A charismatic soldier appears to lead them into battle against a merciless despot and his henchmen. Overcoming loss and adapting to the worst of trials in their own different ways, these refugees in their home country are willing to lay down their lives for their rights and old way of life.

Will their proclaimed king arrive with an army and save the day? Can they evade capture, or will they have to face the wrath of the Tyrant? Whatever the outcome, life will never be the same for them again.

What I’m currently reading

I’m reading Adder Stone by Clare Clark for a blog tour, a digital review copy of The Boy on the Sofa by Paul Linggood and I’m listening to the audiobook of The Weight of Angels by John Boyne.

Look out for…

The Gift That Inspired The Silk Weavers’ Legacy by K.L. Loveley
Blog Tour/Book Review: Adder Stone by Clare Clark
Guest Post: A Moment’s Surrender by John Burt
Guest Post: Why I Wrote A Saga by G.K. Holloway, author of Fire in the Fens

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

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 #6Degrees 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 X using the hashtag #6Degrees.

To celebrate the beginning of Novellas in November, this month we’re asked to start with a novella on our reading list. I don’t have many novellas in my TBR pile to choose from which narrows it down to Quartet by Jean Rhys, her semi-autobiographical debut novel. Links from each title will take you to my review.

Quartet is a book on my second Classics Club list as is the short story collection Creatures of Circumstance by W. Somerset Maugham which I read recently. Four Maugham short stories were dramatised for the 1948 film Quartet, two of which, ‘The Colonel’s Lady’ and ‘The Kite’, appear in Creatures of Circumstance. So two links for the price of one there.

The first word of the title of Maugham’s book takes me to Shy Creatures by Clare Chambers in which a mute, thirty-seven-year-old man called William Tapping, with a beard down to his waist, is discovered in a derelict house. It’s clear he has been shut up in the house for decades.

Another character subjected to a period of confinement is The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope. English gentleman Rudolph Rassendyll bears a striking resemblance to Rudolf Elphberg, about to be crowned King of Ruritania. When the rival to the throne, Black Michael, attempts to seize power by imprisoning Elphberg in the Castle of Zenda, Rassendyll is obliged to impersonate him.

A fictional Central European country – Evallonia – also features in The House of the Four Winds by John Buchan. Described as ‘a Ruritanian romance’, its plot has many similarities to The Prisoner of Zenda, including a character who impersonates a member of the Evallonian royal family.

Fakes of a different kind feature in The House With Nine Locks by Philip Gray. In post-war Flanders young Adelais de Wolf receives an unexpected legacy: a shuttered house in a rundown district unaccountably protected by nine sturdy locks and latches to which she has no keys.

Nine locks wouldn’t be sufficient to prevent the protagonist of A Beginner’s Guide to Breaking and Entering by Andrew Hunter Murray getting into your home. Al has perfected the art of breaking into empty properties, staying there for a time and leaving without their owners ever knowing he was there. That is until he makes a mistake and is forced to team up with three other ‘interlopers’ making – yes, a quartet!