A brief post today as I came down with a nasty bug which has meant not only impacted my posts; just one review of Ruth Ware’s The Woman in Cabin 10, but also my reading. Dear readers will appreciate this was no normal chest infection, it must have been serious if I was unable to read!!
My weekly posts for Tuesday and Wednesday were already scheduled and went out without me but I did manage to support blogging buddy Lipsyy from Lipsyy Lost and Found for her inspirational event for Horror October this year – she’s organised some writers to come up with a story based on our ideas – hope over to yesterday’s post, or Lipsyy’s blog to vote!
This Time Last Year….
I was reading Boxes by Pascal Garnier, the first dark and disturbing novella I read by this man who reminds me a little of Roald Dahl with his acute observations with sinister undertones.
Blurb
He was the sole survivor of the natural disaster that at one time or another strikes us all, known as ‘moving house’. Brice and Emma had bought their new home in the countryside together. And then she disappeared.
Stacking the Shelves
So even though I’ve been in my sick-bed the books have continued to roll in – amazing!
I ordered myself the The Man Booker shortlisted book His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet
Blurb
The year is 1869. A brutal triple murder in a remote community in the Scottish Highlands leads to the arrest of a young man by the name of Roderick Macrae. A memoir written by the accused makes it clear that he is guilty, but it falls to the country’s finest legal and psychiatric minds to uncover what drove him to commit such merciless acts of violence. Was he mad? Only the persuasive powers of his advocate stand between Macrae and the gallows.
Graeme Macrae Burnet tells an irresistible and original story about the provisional nature of truth, even when the facts seem clear.
His Bloody Project is a mesmerising literary thriller set in an unforgiving landscape where the exercise of power is arbitrary. Amazon
And because I can’t ever just order one book I decided my stock of books about poisoning wasn’t nearly huge enough I also have a copy of Poison Panic by Helen Barrell.
Blurb
For a few years in the 1840s, Essex was notorious in the minds of Victorians as a place where women stalked the winding country lanes looking for their next victim to poison with arsenic. It’s a terrible image – and also one that doesn’t seem to have much basis in truth – but this was a time of great anxiety.
The 1840s were also known as the ‘hungry ’40s’, when crop failures pushed up food prices and there was popular unrest across Europe. The decade culminated in a cholera epidemic in which tens of thousands of people in the British Isles died. It is perhaps no surprise that people living through that troubled decade were captivated by the stories of the ‘poisoners’: that death was down to ‘white powder’ and the evil intentions of the human heart.
Sarah Chesham, Mary May and Hannah Southgate are the protagonists of this tale of how rural Essex, in a country saturated with arsenic, was touched by the tumultuous 1840s. Amazon
From NetGalley I was approved for The Blood Card by Elly Griffiths as I’m a big fan of this series featuring Stephens & Mesphito with their historical mysteries.
Blurb
On the eve of the Queen’s coronation, DI Stephens and Max Mephisto uncover an anarchist plot and a ticking bomb at the same time as solving the murder of a man close to them – from the author of the bestselling Dr Ruth Galloway mysteries.
Elizabeth II’s coronation is looming, but the murder of their wartime commander, Colonel Cartwright, spoils the happy mood for DI Edgar Stephens and magician Max Mephisto. A playbill featuring another deceased comrade is found in Colonel Cartwright’s possession, and a playing card, the ace of hearts: the blood card. The wartime connection and the suggestion of magic are for Stephens and Mephisto to be summoned to the case.Edgar’s ongoing investigation into the death of Brighton fortune-teller Madame Zabini is put on hold. Max is busy rehearsing for a spectacular Coronation Day variety show – and his television debut – so it’s Edgar who is sent to New York, a land of plenty worlds away from still-rationed England. He’s on the trail of a small-town mesmerist who may provide the key, but someone silences him first. It’s Edgar’s colleague, DS Emma Holmes, who finds the clue, buried in the files of the Zabini case, that leads them to an anarchist group intent on providing an explosive finale to Coronation Day.
Now it’s up to Edgar, Max and Emma to foil the plot, and find out who it is who’s been dealing the cards . . . NetGalley
I also was lucky enough to win a copy of The Devil’s Work by Mark Edwards from Abbie at Bloomin’ Brilliant Books, a blog full of reviews of just the kind of books I love, in fact, they are Bloomin’ Brilliant so if you haven’t already done so!
Blurb
It was the job she had dreamed of since childhood. But on her very first day, when an unnerving encounter drags up memories Sophie Greenwood would rather forget, she wonders if she has made a mistake. A fatal mistake.
What is her ambitious young assistant really up to? And what exactly happened to Sophie’s predecessor? When her husband and daughter are pulled into the nightmare, Sophie is forced to confront the darkest secrets she has carried for years.
As her life begins to fall apart at work and at home, Sophie must race to uncover the truth about her new job…before it kills her. Amazon
TBR WATCH
Since my last post I have only read 3 books, and gained 4 and so my TBR now totals 181 books!
92 physical books
69 e-books
20 books on NetGalley
What have you found to read this week?
