#WWWWednesday – 4th November 2020

WWWWednesdays

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

A book from my Henley Literary Festival 2020 reading list (that’s not published until 2021), an ARC from Readers First and a book for a blog tour.

The Push Ashley AudrainThe Push by Ashley Audrain (ARC, courtesy of Michael Joseph)

What if your experience of motherhood was nothing like what you hoped for – but everything you always feared?

‘The women in this family, we’re different…’

The arrival of baby Violet was meant to be the happiest day of my life. It was meant to be a fresh start. But as soon as I held her in my arms I knew something wasn’t right. I have always known that the women in my family aren’t meant to be mothers.

My husband Fox says I’m imagining it. He tells me I’m nothing like my own mother, and that Violet is the sweetest child. But she’s different with me. Something feels very wrong. Is it her? Or is it me? Is she the monster? Or am I?

The ForgersThe Forgers by Bradford Morrow (proof copy, courtesy of Grove Press and Readers First)

The rare book world is stunned when a reclusive collector, Adam Diehl, is found on the floor of his Montauk home: hands severed, surrounded by valuable inscribed books and original manuscripts that have been vandalized beyond repair.

Adam’s sister, Meghan, and her lover, Will – a convicted if unrepentant literary forger – struggle to come to terms with the seemingly incomprehensible murder.

But when Will begins receiving threatening handwritten letters, seemingly penned by long-dead authors, but really from someone who knows secrets about Adam’s death and Will’s past, he understands his own life is also on the line-and attempts to forge a new beginning for himself and Meg.

When I Come Home Again Graphic 2When I Come Home Again by Caroline Scott (eARC, courtesy of Simon & Schuster)

How can you know who you are, when you choose to forget who you’ve been?

November 1918On the cusp of the end of the First World War, a uniformed soldier is arrested in Durham Cathedral. It quickly becomes clear that he has no memory of who he is or how he came to be there. The soldier is given the name Adam and transferred to a rehabilitation home where his doctor, James, tries everything he can to help Adam remember who he once was. There’s just one problem. Adam doesn’t want to remember.

Unwilling to relive the trauma of war, Adam has locked his mind away, seemingly for good. But when a newspaper publishes Adam’s photograph, three women come forward, each just as certain that Adam is their relative and that he should go home with them.

But does Adam really belong with any of these women? Or is there another family waiting for him to come home?

Based on true events, When I Come Home Again is a deeply moving and powerful story of a nation’s outpouring of grief, and the search for hope in the aftermath of the First World War.


Recently finished

Links from the titles will take you to my reviews

The Free Fishers by John Buchan

Immortal by Jessica Duchen 

When the Music Stops by Joe Heap 

Hell GateHell Gate (Ingo Finch Mystery #3) by Jeff Dawson (eARC, courtesy of Canelo via NetGalley)

To solve this case, only an outsider will do… Ingo Finch faces his biggest challenge yet.

New York, 1904 – over a thousand are dead after the sinking of the General Slocum, a pleasure steamer full of German immigrants out for a day on the East River. The community is devastated, broken, in uproar. With a populist senator preying on their grievances, a new political force is unleashed, pushing America to ally with Germany in any coming war.

Nine months later, Ingo Finch arrives in Manhattan, now an official British agent. Tasked with exposing this new movement, he is caught in a deadly game between Whitehall, Washington, Berlin… and the Mob.

Not everything in the Big Apple is as it seems. For Finch, completing the mission is one thing; surviving it quite another… (Review to follow)


What Cathy (will) Read Next

The Coral BrideThe Coral Bride (Detective Morales #2) by Roxanne Bouchard, trans. by David Warriner (review copy, courtesy of Orenda Books)

When an abandoned lobster trawler is found adrift off the coast of Quebec’s Gaspé Peninsula, DS Joaquin Moralès begins a straightforward search for the boat’s missing captain, Angel Roberts – a rare female in a male-dominated world. But Moralès finds himself blocked at every turn – by his police colleagues, by fisheries bureaucrats, and by his grown-up son, who has turned up at his door with a host of his own personal problems.

When Angel’s body is finally discovered, it’s clear something very sinister is afoot, and Moralès and son are pulled into murky, dangerous waters, where old resentments run deep.

#WWWWednesday – 28th October 2020

WWWWednesdays

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

A book from my Henley Literary Festival 2020 reading list (that’s not published until 2021), my Buchan of the Month and a book for a blog tour.

The Push Ashley AudrainThe Push by Ashley Audrain (ARC, courtesy of Michael Joseph)

What if your experience of motherhood was nothing like what you hoped for – but everything you always feared?

‘The women in this family, we’re different…’

The arrival of baby Violet was meant to be the happiest day of my life. It was meant to be a fresh start. But as soon as I held her in my arms I knew something wasn’t right. I have always known that the women in my family aren’t meant to be mothers.

My husband Fox says I’m imagining it. He tells me I’m nothing like my own mother, and that Violet is the sweetest child. But she’s different with me. Something feels very wrong. Is it her? Or is it me? Is she the monster? Or am I?

The Free FishersThe Free Fishers by John Buchan 

When Anthony Lammas, minister of the Kirk and Professor of Logic at St Andrews University, leaves his home town for London on business, he little imagines that within two days he will be deeply entangled in a web of mystery and intrigue. But he’s no ordinary professor. His boyhood allegiance to a brotherhood of deep-sea fishermen is to involve him and handsome ex-pupil, Lord Belses, with a beautiful but dangerous woman. Set in the bleak Yorkshire hamlet of Hungrygrain during the Napoleonic Wars, this is a stirring tale of treason and romance.

ImmortalImmortal by Jessica Duchen (eARC, courtesy of Unbound)

Who was Beethoven’s ‘Immortal Beloved’?

After Ludwig van Beethoven’s death, a love letter in his writing was discovered, addressed only to his ‘Immortal Beloved’. Decades later, Countess Therese Brunsvik claims to have been the composer’s lost love. Yet is she concealing a tragic secret? Who is the one person who deserves to know the truth?

Becoming Beethoven’s pupils in 1799, Therese and her sister Josephine followed his struggles against the onset of deafness, Viennese society’s flamboyance, privilege and hypocrisy and the upheavals of the Napoleonic wars. While Therese sought liberation, Josephine found the odds stacked against even the most unquenchable of passions…


Recently finished

Links from the titles will take you to my reviews

The Wild Silence by Raynor Winn (eARC, courtesy of Michael Joseph via NetGalley)

Endless Skies by Jane Cable (ebook, courtesy of Sapere Books and Rachel’s Random Resources)

The Exiles by Christina Baker Kline (eARC, courtesy of Allison & Busby via NetGalley)


What Cathy (will) Read Next

9780008293208When The Music Stops by Joe Heap (eARC, courtesy of Harper Collins)

This is the story of Ella.
And Robert.
And of all the things they should have said, but never did.

Through seven key moments and seven key people their journey intertwines. From the streets of Glasgow during WW2 to the sex, drugs and rock n’ roll of London in the 60s and beyond, this is a story of love and near misses. Of those who come in to our lives and leave it too soon. And of those who stay with you forever…