Category: Fiction

WWW Wednesday: 12 March 2025

Published on by Margaret11 Comments

WWW Wednesday is run by Taking on a World of Words.

The Three Ws are:

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

Currently I am reading Resistance by Owen Sheers, The Likeness by Tana French and Bleak House by Charles Dickens. They’re all what I call ‘wordy’ books and are taking me quite a while to read.

Resistance is an alternative history novel by Welsh poet and author Owen Sheers. The plot centres on the inhabitants of the isolated Olchon valley in the Black Mountains of south-east Wales close to Hereford and the border.  It’s set in 1944–45, shortly after the failure of Operation Overlord and a successful German counterinvasion of Great Britain.  It has beautiful descriptions of the Welsh countryside and farming life. I’m enjoying it but finding it slow reading.

The Likeness by Tana French, book 2 of the Dublin Murder Squad. I enjoyed reading the first book In the Woods, in 2014 but I don’t remember the details. No matter it reads well as a standalone. Detective Cassie Maddox is shocked to find out that a murdered girl is her double. At nearly 500 pages this will take me a while to read!

Bleak House by Charles Dickens is another chunkster, over 1000 pages full of description and lots of characters, about the complex and long-drawn out lawsuit of Jarndyce v Jarndyce. I’m only on page 43. I love the beginning – London in the fog.

The last book I read was Islands of Abandonment: Life in the post-human landscape by Cal Flyn, a remarkable book, about abandoned places: ghost towns and exclusion zones, no man’s lands and fortress islands – and what happens when nature is allowed to reclaim its place.

I began reading this book in October and have been reading it slowly since then, only finishing it yesterday. It’s not a book to read quickly, but rather one to take your time to take in all the details. It’s fascinating, thoroughly researched and beautifully written.

What will I read next? As I’m currently reading the three novels shown above, which will probably take me until the end of the month and beyond I’m not planning to start any more novels. However, I like to have a nonfiction book on the go to read with my breakfast, so tomorrow I’ll start reading Wintering by Katherine May. It’s described as  ‘a poignant and comforting meditation on the fallow periods of life, times when we must retreat to care for and repair ourselves. Katherine May thoughtfully shows us how to come through these times with the wisdom of knowing that, like the seasons, our winters and summers are the ebb and flow of life.’ (Amazon UK)

Top Five Tuesday:Top 5 books with a place in the title

Published on by Margaret7 Comments

Top 5 Tuesday was created by Shanah at Bionic Book Worm, and it is now being hosted by Meeghan at Meeghan Reads. For details of all of the latest prompts for January to March, see Meeghan’s post here.

Today the topic is Top 5 books with a place in the title – any location or place in a title is fine. I decided to feature books in different countries than my own (UK) – namely Italy, Japan, Greece, Russia and France.

These are all books I’ve read with links to my reviews.

Pompeii by Robert Harris – one of my favourite books. Vesuvius erupts destroying the town of Pompeii and killing its inhabitants as they tried to flee the pumice, ash, searing heat and flames. The story begins just two days before the eruption of Mount Vesuvius and builds up to a climax. 

Nagasaki : Life After Nuclear War by Susan Southard, nonfiction, an amazing, heart-wrenching book. On August 9th 1945, two days after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, a five-ton plutonium bomb was dropped on the small coastal town of Nagasaki. The effects were cataclysmic. It follows the lives of five of the survivors from then to the present day. 

This must be one of the most devastatingly sad and depressing books I’ve read and yet also one of the most uplifting, detailing the dropping of the bomb, which killed 74,000 people and injured another 75,000. 

The Doctor of Thessaly by Anne Zouroudi, the third in the series of her Mysteries of the Greek Detective, about Hermes Diaktoros, a mysterious fat man. I was never sure who he worked for, or how he knew of the mystery to solve. Each of the books in the series features one of the Seven Deadly Sins – in this one it is envy, a tale of revenge and retribution.

Midnight in St Petersburg by Vanora Bennett. It begins in 1911 in pre-revolutionary Russia with Inna Feldman travelling by train to St Petersburg to escape the pogroms in Kiev hoping to stay with her distant cousin, Yasha Kagan. The book is split into three sections – September – December 1911, 1916-17 and 1918-19 as Russia enters the First World War and is plunged into Revolution and life becomes increasingly dangerous for them all.

Last Seen in Massilia by Steven Saylor, historical crime fiction set in in Massilia – modern day Marseilles. It’s 49BC during Caesar’s siege of the city., featuring an investigator called Gordianus the Finder. I really liked all the details about Massilia – how it was governed – the hierarchy of the Timouchoi its ruling officials, its relationship to Rome, its traditions and customs. This is the 8th book in Saylor’s Roma Sub Rosa series set in ancient Rome.

Spell the Month in Books – March 2025

Published on by Margaret3 Comments

Spell the Month in Books is a linkup hosted by Jana on Reviews From the Stacks on the first Saturday of each month. The goal is to spell the current month with the first letter of book titles, excluding articles such as ‘the’ and ‘a’ as needed. That’s all there is to it! Some months there are optional theme challenges, such as “books with an orange cover” or books of a particular genre, but for the most part, any book you want to use is fair game!

This option this month is Science Fiction. I don’t read much science fiction these days, but I used to read a lot. I’ve chosen some books I read long before I began writing about books, some I’ve read more recently and some books that I own but haven’t read yet. The descriptions in italics are taken either from Amazon UK or from Goodreads.

M is for The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham (my review).

The story is set in an ordinary village, with a village green and a white-railed pond, a church and vicarage, an inn, smithy, post office, village shop and sixty cottages and small houses, a village hall, and two large houses, Kyle Manor and The Grange. A very ordinary village where not much goes on, which makes what happens there even more extraordinary. It’s eerie and very chilling, a story of alien invasion and the apparent helplessness of humanity to put up any resistance.

The Midwich Cuckoos is the classic tale of aliens in our midst, exploring how we respond when confronted by those who are innately superior to us in every conceivable way.

In the sleepy English village of Midwich, a mysterious silver object appears and all the inhabitants fall unconscious. A day later the object is gone and everyone awakens unharmed – except that all the women in the village are discovered to be pregnant.

The resultant children of Midwich do not belong to their parents: all are blonde, all are golden eyed. They grow up too fast and their minds exhibit frightening abilities that give them control over others and brings them into conflict with the villagers just as a chilling realisation dawns on the world outside . . .

A is for Artemis by Andy Weir – a TBR, a book I bought after watching, The Martian, the film of his first book.

WELCOME TO ARTEMIS. The first city on the moon.
Population 2,000. Mostly tourists.
Some criminals.

Jazz Bashara is one of the criminals. She lives in a poor area of Artemis and subsidises her work as a porter with smuggling contraband onto the moon. But it’s not enough.

So when she’s offered the chance to make a lot of money she jumps at it. But though planning a crime in 1/6th gravity may be more fun, it’s also a lot more dangerous.

When you live on the moon, of course you have a dark side…

R is for Rendezvous with Rama. This is a book that we bought many years ago. I’m not sure whether I’ve read it or not. It was first published in 1973, so I’m guessing we bought it in the 1970s, the period when we were reading lots of science fiction.

The multi-award-winning SF masterpiece from one of the greatest SF writers of all time

Rama is a vast alien spacecraft that enters the Solar System. A perfect cylinder some fifty kilometres long, spinning rapidly, racing through space, Rama is a technological marvel, a mysterious and deeply enigmatic alien artefact.

It is Mankind’s first visitor from the stars and must be investigated …

C is for Children of Dune by Frank Herbert, the third Dune novel. I read all the Dune books many years ago.

The Children of Dune are twin siblings Leto and Ghanima Atreides, whose father, the Emperor Paul Muad’Dib, disappeared in the desert wastelands of Arrakis nine years ago. Like their father, the twins possess supernormal abilities–making them valuable to their manipulative aunt Alia, who rules the Empire in the name of House Atreides.

Facing treason and rebellion on two fronts, Alia’s rule is not absolute. The displaced House Corrino is plotting to regain the throne while the fanatical Fremen are being provoked into open revolt by the enigmatic figure known only as The Preacher. Alia believes that by obtaining the secrets of the twins’ prophetic visions, she can maintain control over her dynasty.

But Leto and Ghanima have their own plans for their visions–and their destinies….

H is for The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood – another book I read long before I began reviewing books.

Discover the dystopian novel that started a phenomenon.

Offred is a Handmaid in The Republic of Gilead. She is placed in the household of The Commander, Fred Waterford – her assigned name, Offred, means ‘of Fred’. She has only one function: to breed. If Offred refuses to enter into sexual servitude to repopulate a devastated world, she will be hanged. Yet even a repressive state cannot eradicate hope and desire. As she recalls her pre-revolution life in flashbacks, Offred must navigate through the terrifying landscape of torture and persecution in the present day, and between two men upon which her future hangs.

The next link up will be on April 5, 2025 when the theme will be: Animal on the Cover or in the Title.

The Frozen People by Elly Griffiths

Published on by Margaret8 Comments

Quercus/ 13 February 2025/ 354 pages/review copy/e-book |Review copy| 5*

The Frozen People is the first in a new series, the Ali Dawson Mysteries, by Elly Griffiths. It’s not like her other books, but it’s still a murder mystery. Ali is fifty, a Detective Sergeant in a cold case team that investigates crimes in a unique way – by travelling back in time, physically, to do their research and interview the witnesses. You do need to suspend your disbelief but that wasn’t hard for me to do, as Elly Griffiths is an excellent storyteller.

I can’t say I understood how Serafina Jones, a physicist has developed a way of moving atoms in space. There are no concrete details about how it’s achieved and it’s all a bit vague. Jones explains it by saying it’s as if you create a space and then fill it with that exact person. The team calls it ‘going through the gate’. No matter, I never understood how Captain James T Kirk and his crew travelled through time and space in Star Trek, but I still loved it. And just as in Star Trek, Ali and her team are instructed not to interfere with historical events, and are required to maintain the timeline, to prevent history from being altered.

Ali and her colleague, Dina, have made a few trips back in time to collect evidence, but for their current case Ali has to go back in time further than she has gone before – to 1850, to the time and place when Ettie Moran, an artist’s model was murdered. She was found in a building used by artists owned by Cain Templeton, an influential man, who was a suspect, although he was never charged with the murder. He was part of a club called The Collectors. To be a member you had to have killed a woman. Cain’s great great grandson, Isaac, the MP Finn works, for is the Secretary of State for Justice and he wants to clear Cain’s name. So, Ali is assigned to the case. So far, so good. But it all starts to go wrong when Ali finds that she can’t get back to the present day it’s her biggest fear. She is stuck in 1850!

I was quickly drawn into this absorbing story. It’s a combination of two genres I love, crime fiction and historical fiction. The main characters come over as real people, the historical facts and the setting are detailed and convincing. And the plot held me captivated throughout.

I’m looking forward to reading more Ali Dawson books in the future.

Many thanks to the publishers for a review copy via NetGalley.

Reading Wales ’25 & Reading Ireland Month ’25

Published on by Margaret11 Comments

Yesterday saw the beginning of the Reading Wales Month 2025, now hosted by Karen at BookerTalk , formerly by Paula at BookJotter. March is a very busy reading month as it’s also Reading Ireland Month 2025 hosted by Cathy 746 Books. Both are now running between Friday 1 and Sunday 31 March 2025. For both events you just need to read what you want, when you want as long as the author is Welsh or Irish! And then add the links to your blog posts to the host blogs.

These are books I have in mind to read – at least one book for each event, more if time permits. I’ve listed them randomly as I discovered they are by Welsh or Irish authors – I don’t choose books based on the authors’ nationality. I had no idea I had so many to choose from. And there may be more hidden on my shelves.

For Wales:

  1. Resistance by Owen Sheers – I. It’s an alternative history novel by Welsh poet and author Owen Sheers. The plot centres on the inhabitants of a valley near Abergavenny in Wales in 1944–45, shortly after the failure of Operation Overlord and a successful German counterinvasion of Great Britain. 
  2. The Amorous Nightingale by Edward Marston
  3. The Repentant Rake by Edward Marston
  4. Winter of the World by Ken Follett
  5. Fall of Giants by Ken Follett
  6. World Without End by Ken Follett
  7. The Beautiful Dead by Belinda Bauer
  8. The Earth Hums in B Flat by Mari Strachan

For Ireland:

  1. Christine Falls by Benjamin Black
  2. The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O’Farrell
  3. The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell
  4. Whitethorn Woods by Maeve Binchy
  5. Inspector Tom Reynolds Mystery books 1-4 and 6 and Six Wicked Reasons by Jo Spain
  6. Dublin Murder Squad books 2 – 3, 5 – 6 by Tana French
  7. Normal People by Sally Rooney
  8. Night of the Lightbringer by Peter Tremayne
  9. The Watch House by Bernie McGill
  10. Star of the Sea by Joseph O’Connor
  11. The House by the Churchyard by J Sheridan Le Fanu
  12. What You Did by Claire McGowan
  13. The Olive Tree by Lucinda Riley
  14. The Light Behind the Window by Lucinda Riley
  15. The Sun Sister books by Lucinda Riley – still not read The Pearl Sister, The Sun Sister, The Missing Sister
  16. Prince Caspian by C S Lewis

Six Degrees of Separation from  Prophet Song by Paul Lynch to

Published on by Margaret11 Comments

It’s time again for Six Degrees of Separation, a monthly link-up hosted by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. Each month a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six other books to form a chain. A book doesn’t need to be connected to all the other books on the list, only to the one next to it in the chain.

This month we start with Prophet Song by Paul Lynch, the winner of the Booker Prize in 2023. It’s set in a dystopic Ireland as it’s in the grip of a government turning towards tyranny and Eilish can only watch helplessly as the world she knew disappears. When first her husband and then her eldest son vanish, Eilish finds herself caught within the nightmare logic of a collapsing society.

I haven’t read Prophet Song so I decided to start my chain by linking to the word song in the title.

My first link is The Hangman’s Song by James Oswald, the third in his Inspector McLean series set in Edinburgh. a dark, tense book; crime fiction with elements of the supernatural  and parapsychology thrown in. McLean is working on two separate cases – one investigating a group of prostitutes and the subsequent death of their pimp, Malky Jennings, who was beaten to death – and the second, two suicides, which he and his DC, MacBride consider to be suspicious. Digging deeper, McLean finds answers something terrifying stalking the city streets.

My second link is Murder in the Mews by Agatha Christie, one in a collection of short stories, featuring Hercule Poirot. At first it looks as though a young widow, Mrs Allen has committed suicide, but as the doctor pointed out the pistol is in her right hand and the wound was close to her head just above the left ear, so it’s obvious that someone else shot her and tried to make it look like suicide. The plot is tightly constructed, with a few red herrings to misguide Poirot and Inspector Japp and a moral question at the end. 

For my third link is a book I read just before Murder in the Mews – The Frozen Shroud by Martin Edwards. It’s the sixth book in his Lake District Mystery series. It begins at Halloween in Ravenbank, an isolated community on the shores of Ullswater. Gertrude Smith who was murdered on Hallowe’en, just before the First World War was found, battered to death, her face reduced to a pulp and covered with a woollen blanket like a shroud. Her murderer wasn’t hanged and the story goes that her tormented spirit 

I enjoyed the previous five, featuring historian Daniel Kind and DCI Hannah Scarlett, head of the Cold Case Review Team and this one is no exception; it kept me guessing almost to the end.

My fourth link is The Shroud Maker by Kate Ellis, the 18th Wesley Peterson Mystery.

It’s the Palkin Festival in Tradmouth, a town in Devon, when the body of a strangled women is discovered floating out to sea in a dinghy. A year earlier Jenny Bercival had disappeared from the festival and her mother returns to look for her bringing with her anonymous letters claiming she is still alive. DI Wesley Peterson and his boss DCI Gerry Heffernan are investigating the two cases. Are they connected and is there a link to a fantasy website called ‘Shipworld’ which features the 14th century mayor and privateer of Tradmouth, Palkin as a supernatural hero with a sinister, faceless nemesis called the ‘Shroud Maker’?

My fifth link is to another book set in Devon, Murder in the Mill Race by E R C Lorac, a Chief Inspector Robert Macdonald book.

A few months after the Dr Raymond Ferens’ arrival at Milham in the Moor in North Devon Sister Monica, the warden of a children’s home, is found drowned in the mill race, the stream leading into the water mill. Everyone says that Sister Monica is a saint – but is she? Chief Inspector Macdonald faces one of his most difficult cases in a village determined not to betray its dark secrets to a stranger.

My final link is to Once Upon a River by Dianne Setterfield, in which a drowned body is also found, this time it’s that of a little child in the River Thames.It’s mystifying as hours later the dead child, miraculously it seems, takes a breath, and returns to life. The mystery is enhanced by folklore, by science that appears to be magic, and by romance and superstition. It is a beautifully and lyrically told story, and cleverly plotted so that I was not completely sure at times what it was that I was reading. It’s historical fiction with a touch of magic that completely beguiled me.

What is in your chain, I wonder?

Next month (April 5, 2025), we’ll start with Salman Rushdie’s memoir, Knife.