to read – Page 164 – What Cathy Read Next…

Hosted by Taking on a World of Words, this meme is all about the three Ws:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Why not join in too? Leave a comment with your link at Taking on a World of Words and then go blog hopping!

Currently reading

How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue (eARC, courtesy of Canongate via NetGalley)

“We should have known the end was near.”

So begins Imbolo Mbue’s powerful second novel, How Beautiful We Were. Set in the fictional African village of Kosawa, it tells the story of a people living in fear amidst environmental degradation wrought by an American oil company.

Pipeline spills have rendered farmlands infertile. Children are dying from drinking toxic water. Promises of clean-up and financial reparations to the villagers are made – and ignored. The country’s government, led by a brazen dictator, exists to serve its own interest. Left with few choices, the people of Kosawa decide to fight back. Their struggle would last for decades and come at a steep price.

Told through the perspective of a generation of children and the family of a girl named Thula who grows up to become a revolutionary, How Beautiful We Were is a masterful exploration of what happens when the reckless drive for profit, coupled with the ghost of colonialism, comes up against one community’s determination to hold onto its ancestral land and a young woman’s willingness to sacrifice everything for the sake of her people’s freedom.

The Incendium Plot (Christopher Radcliff #1) by A. D. Swanston (review copy, courtesy of the author)

England in 1572 is a powder keg of rumour, fanaticism, treachery and dissent. All it would take is a single spark…

In the England of Elizabeth I, the fear of plague and invasion, and the threat of insurrection are constant. As the Earl of Leicester’s chief intelligencer, lawyer Dr Christopher Radcliff is tasked with investigating rumours of treachery at home and the papist threat from abroad. And with heresy and religious unrest simmering beneath the surface of a country on the brink, Radcliff is under pressure to get results.

Then two brutal and seemingly motiveless killings point alert Radcliff to the whisper of a new plot against the queen. There are few clues, and all he and his network of agents have to go on is a single word: incendium. But what does it mean – and who lies behind it? Christopher Radcliff must find out before it’s too late…

Recently finished

Links from the titles will take you to my reviews

Dangerous Women by Hope Adams

Masters of Rome (Rise of Emperor’s #2) by Gordon Doherty & Simon Turney

A Lifetime of Men by Ciahnan Darrell

Stella by Takis Würger, translated by Liesl Schillinger

The High-Rise Diver by Julia von Lucadou, translated by Sharmila Cohen

Saving Missy by Beth Morrey

What Cathy (will) Read Next

The Forgotten Life of Arthur Pettinger by Suzanne Fortin (ARC, courtesy of Aria)

Sometimes the past won’t stay hidden, it demands to be uncovered…

Arthur Pettinger’s memory isn’t what it used to be. He can’t always remember the names of his grandchildren, where he lives or which way round his slippers go. He does remember Maryse though, a woman he hasn’t seen for decades, but whose face he will never forget. When Arthur’s granddaughter, Maddy moves in along with her daughter Esther, it’s her first step towards pulling her life back together. But when Esther makes a video with Arthur, the hunt for the mysterious Maryse goes viral. There’s only one person who can help Maddy track down this woman – the one that got away, Joe. Their quest takes them to France, and into the heart of the French Resistance.

When the only way to move forwards is to look back, will this family finally be able to?

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish and now hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl.

The rules are simple:

Each Tuesday, Jana assigns a new topic. Create your own Top Ten list that fits that topic – putting your unique spin on it if you want. Everyone is welcome to join but please link back to That Artsy Reader Girl in your own Top Ten Tuesday post. Add your name to the Linky widget on that day’s post so that everyone can check out other bloggers’ lists. Or if you don’t have a blog, just post your answers as a comment.

This week’s topic is a freebie on the theme of Spring Cleaning which we are invited to interpret in any way we like. My list is a combination of books in which cleaners turn detective and books in which characters get an opportunity for a metaphorical ‘spring clean’ of their lives.

In Strangers’ Houses by Elizabeth Mundy – Hungarian cleaner, Lena Szarka, suspects one of her clients is to blame when her friend Timea disappears but with the police unwilling to share her suspicions it’s left to Lena to turn sleuth and find her friend.
A Clean Canvas by Elizabeth Mundy – when a valuable painting goes missing, Lena becomes embroiled in the art world which turns out to be a place of thwarted talents, unpaid debts and elegant fraudsters
A Messy Affair by Elizabeth Mundy – when Lena’s cousin Sarika and Sarika’s reality TV star boyfriend Terry receive threatening notes Lena is forced to explore the grubby world of reality television, and online dating.
The Playground Murders (The Detective’s Daughter #7) by Lesley Thomson – When cleaner, Stella Darnell, isn’t tackling dust and dirt, and restoring order to chaos, she’s solving murders.

The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Armin – Four very different women respond to an advertisement in The Times appealing to ‘those who appreciate wisteria and sunshine’ to rent a small medieval Italian castle for a month. The climate and the castle eventually start to have an effect on the four women, shifting their perceptions shift and waking them up to the love in their lives.
Summer in Provence by Lucy Coleman – Married couple Fern and Aiden embark on a ‘marriage gap year’ but is a change as good as a rest, and will their time apart transform their marriage or drive them further apart?
The House That Alice Built by Chris Penhall – A postcard from Buenos Aires turns Alice’s life upside down and, before she knows it, she’s in Cascais, Portugal beginning to learn how to ‘go with the flow’.
A Wedding in the Olive Garden by Leah Fleming – Sara Loveday flees to the beautiful island of Santaniki vowing to change her life. Spotting a gap in the local tourist market, she sets up a wedding plan business specialising in ‘second time around’ couples.
The Cleaner of Chartres by Salley Vickers – No one quite knows where Agnès Morel, the woman who cleans the cathedral of Chartres each morning, came from. And yet everyone she encounters agrees she is subtly transforming their lives, even if they can’t quite say how.
Three Women and a Boat by Anne Youngson – Three women thrown together by chance discover a sense of purpose they hadn’t possessed before during a canal journey on a narrowboat.