Weekly Wrap Up (May 7)

So it’s the first week of May and a whole year since I chose the new theme for my blog and although I’ve been experimenting with new ones, I’ve decided to leave it be simply ringing the changes by updating my header with a new selection of books.

I’ve also opened a new Facebook page featuring my blog posts (now I’ve learnt how to make my blog post the picture I want it to)  and other bookish items from around the web – feel free to visit me here

This Week on the Blog

I started the week with my review of a lighter variety of book than normal, The Other Us by Fiona Harper which has a ‘sliding doors’ theme with forty-something Maggie getting the chance to see what her life might have been like had she taken Jude up on his offer to run away with him, instead she married Dan.

My excerpt post this week came from The Cleaner by Elisabeth Herrmann about a crime scenes specialist.

This Week in Books featured books from Jonathan Trigell, Peter James and Felicity Everett.

My review on Thursday was for the fabulous debut novel You Don’t Know Me by Imran Mahmood. Narrated entirely by a defendant giving his own closing speech not only was the structure different so was the content.

I followed up with a review for a historical crime fiction novel The Scent of Murder by Felicity Young which took me back to the Edwardian period and the early forensics of that era.

My week was rounded off with a review for The People at Number 9 by Felicity Everett which was all about toxic friendship within a sharply observed and entertaining contemporary fiction novel.

This Time Last Year…

I was reading Little Bones by Sam Blake an investigation started by Detective Garda Cathy Connolly soon becomes something much more sinister when some tiny bones are found sewn into the hem of a wedding dress. One of the things that I liked most about this book was the three women featured all display strengths although they are all very different. This novel was complex with many different mysteries needing solving before the plot can be resolved.

You can read my full review here or click on the book cover

Blurb

Attending what seems to be a routine break-in, troubled Detective Garda Cathy Connolly makes a grisly discovery: an old wedding dress – and, concealed in its hem, a baby’s bones.

And then the dress’s original owner, Lavinia Grant, is found dead in a Dublin suburb.

Searching for answers, Cathy is drawn deep into a complex web of secrets and lies spun by three generations of women.

Meanwhile, a fugitive killer has already left two dead in execution style killings across the Atlantic – and now he’s in Dublin with old scores to settle. Will the team track him down before he kills again?

Struggling with her own secrets, Cathy doesn’t know dangerous – and personal – this case is about to become… Amazon

Stacking the Shelves

Well the resolution of the last couple of weeks has worn off, in part because my holiday is next month and I have already started sorting out my reading selection and of course new books are required! Other people may do this with clothes but I need at least a month to whittle my books down to make sure I get the perfect mix to take away.

After reading so many stunning reviews of The Night Visitor by Lucy Atkins I was lucky enough to download a copy from NetGalley before it got archived.

Blurb

How far would you go to save your reputation? The stunning new noir thriller from the author of the bestselling The Missing One and The Other Child. Perfect for fans of I Let You Go and The Ice Twins.

Professor Olivia Sweetman has worked hard to achieve the life she loves, with a high-flying career as a TV presenter and historian, three children and a talented husband. But as she stands before a crowd at the launch of her new bestseller she can barely pretend to smile. Her life has spiralled into deceit and if the truth comes out, she will lose everything.

Only one person knows what Olivia has done. Vivian Tester is the socially awkward sixty-year-old housekeeper of a Sussex manor who found the Victorian diary on which Olivia’s book is based. She has now become Olivia’s unofficial research assistant. And Vivian has secrets of her own.

As events move between London, Sussex and the idyllic South of France, the relationship between these two women grows more entangled and complex. Then a bizarre act of violence changes everything.

The Night Visitor is a compelling exploration of ambition, morality and deception that asks the question: how far would you go to save your reputation? NetGalley

From Amazon Vine I have a copy of Persons Unknown by Susie Steiner, which will be published in June, the next in the series from Missing Presumed which I read last year.

Blurb

Manon Bradshaw is back.
As dusk falls a young man staggers through a park, far from home, bleeding from a stab wound. He dies where he falls; cradled by a stranger, a woman’s name on his lips in his last seconds of life.

DI Manon Bradshaw can’t help taking an interest – these days she only handles cold cases, but the man died just yards from the police station where she works.

She’s horrified to discover that both victim and prime suspect are more closely linked to her than she could have imagined. And as the Cambridgeshire police force closes ranks against her, she is forced to contemplate the unthinkable.
How well does she know her loved ones, and are they capable of murder?

And I have bought a copy of The Other Mrs Walker by Mary Paulson-Ellis after reading Natalie’s review of this book on her blog the owl on the bookshelf, which made me think it would make for perfect holiday reading especially as it is currently at a bargain price!!

Blurb

Somehow she’d always known that she would end like this. In a small square room, in a small square flat. In a small square box, perhaps. Cardboard, with a sticker on the outside. And a name . . .

An old lady dies alone and unheeded in a cold Edinburgh flat on a snowy Christmas night. A faded emerald dress hangs in her wardrobe; a spilt glass of whisky pools on the floor.

A few days later a middle-aged woman arrives back in the city she thought she’d left behind, her future uncertain, her past in tatters.

She soon finds herself a job at the Office for Lost People, tracking down the families of those who have died neglected and alone.

But what Margaret Penny cannot yet know, is just how entangled her own life will become in the death of one lonely stranger . . . Amazon

And then I saw two reviews by bloggers I trust for The Sewing Machine by Natalie Fergie, one by Portobello Book Blog, the other by The Quiet Knitter which convinced me that I needed a copy for myself, and of course this has gone onto the holiday reading list!

Blurb

It is 1911, and Jean is about to join the mass strike at the Singer factory. For her, nothing will be the same again.

Decades later, in Edinburgh, Connie sews coded moments of her life into a notebook, as her mother did before her.

More than 100 years after his grandmother’s sewing machine was made, Fred discovers a treasure trove of documents.  His family history is laid out before him in a patchwork of unfamiliar handwriting and colourful seams.

He starts to unpick the secrets of four generations, one stitch at a time. Amazon

What have you found to read this week? Do share, I’m always on the lookout for a good book!

Since my last post I’ve read 3 books and gained 4 which means we now have a slight increase to 186
Physical Books – 112
Kindle Books – 61
NetGalley Books – 13