This Week in Books (February 24)

Hosted by Lypsyy Lost & Found my Wednesday post gives you a taste of what I am reading this week. A similar meme is run by Taking on a World of Words

I am currently reading The Last Thing I Remember by Deborah Bee which will be published on 3 March 2016.

Blurb

Sarah is in a coma.
Her memory is gone – she doesn’t know how she got there. And she doesn’t know how she might get out.
But then she discovers that her injury wasn’t an accident. And that the assailant hasn’t been caught.
Unable to speak, see or move, Sarah must use every clue that she overhears to piece together her own past.And work out who it is that keeps coming into her room.
A novel that grips from the very beginning and that will live long in the memory, The Last Thing I Remember is Deborah Bee’s startling debut thriller. Goodreads

I have just finished The Fields of Blood by Denise Mina

You can read the synopsis and an excerpt from this novel in yesterday’s post

Next I am planning on reading A Savage Hunger by Claire McGowan which will be published on 10 March 2016.

Blurb

Victim: Female. Twenty-two years of age.
Reason for investigation: Missing person.
ID: Alice Morgan. Student. Last seen at a remote religious shrine in Ballyterrin.
Alice Morgan’s disappearance raises immediate questions for forensic psychologist Paula Maguire. Alice, the daughter of a life peer in the Home Office, has vanished along with a holy relic – the bones of a saint – and the only trace is the bloodstains on the altar.
With no body to confirm death, the pressure in this high-profile case is all-consuming, and Paula knows that she will have to put her own life, including her imminent marriage, on hold, if they are to find the truth.
A connection to a decades-old murder immediately indicates that all may not be as it seems; as the summer heat rises and tempers fray, can Alice be found or will they learn that those that are hungry for vengeance may be the most savage of all? Goodreads

So that’s my books sorted for the week – What have you chosen?

First Chapter ~ First Paragraph (February 23)

Welcome to another Tuesday celebrating bookish events, from Tuesday/First Chapter/Intros, hosted by Bibliophile by the Sea Every Tuesday, Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea posts the opening paragraph (sometime two) of a book she decided to read based on the opening. Feel free to grab the banner and play along.

My first paragraph this week comes from The Field of Blood by Denise Mina, the first in the Paddy Mehan series.

Blurb

When the body of a four-year-old boy is found tortured and battered to death, it is assumed the child has been the victim of a vicious sexual predator. Instead the police are led, not to the house of an adult killer, but to the doors of two eleven-year-old boys.
Fresh from school, Paddy Meehan has just started work on the Scottish Daily News. Determined to be an investigative journalist, she also wants to be financially independent. But her colleagues — hard-drinking chauvinists to a man — believe a woman’s place to be in the home, and preferably in the bedroom. And Paddy’s family too: all they want is for her to get married to her fiancé, Sean, and have children of her own. Then Paddy discovers that one of the boys charged with the child’s murder is Sean’s cousin, Callum. Soon Callum’s name is all over the News, and her family blames Paddy. Shunned by Sean and those closest to her, Paddy finds herself dangerously alone.
Set in Glasgow in 1981, a time of hunger strikes, riots and unemployment that decimate the old industrial heartlands, The Field of Blood is the first in a stunning new crime series featuring Paddy Meehan. Infused with Mina’s unique blend of dark humour, personal insights and the social injustices that pervade society, this is a novel that will grip the reader while challenging our perceptions of childhood innocence, crime and punishment, right or wrong. Goodreads

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First Chapter ~ First Paragraph ~ Intro

1
Small Wonders
1981

They were still travelling, into the dark They had been travelling for a long time and in Brian’s mind every inch of every step took him away from his mother, and She was all he wanted in the world.
He couldn’t cry. They hurt him when he cried. He thought of Her, the softness of her breast, her fingers with the rings, how the world was warmer when she was there, and he struggled for breath, his bottom lip bumping noisily against his teeth. James the boy sitting by his side, slapped him hard on the ear.

That opening is all the more chilling when the softness of Brian’s mother is right up against the violence of James. A difficult subject matter in this one… but I do like the young Paddy Mehan’s character, her ambition to be a journalist against the odds is very appealing.

So what do you think? Would you read on?