This Week in Books – 15-05-24

This Week in Books is a feature hosted by Lipsy at Lipsyy Lost and Found that allows bloggers to share:

• What they’ve recently finished reading
• What they are currently reading
• What they are planning to read next

A similar meme is run by Taking on a World of Words.

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A recent work social left me with an awful case of the lurgy 🤒. Not being able to go anywhere, I have at least got quite a bit of reading done. I finished Rules of Civility by Amor Towles, and then moved onto Adèle by Leïla Slimani (translated by Sam Taylor), and The Drift by C. J. Tudor.

On the last night of 1937, twenty-five-year-old Katey Kontent is in a second-rate New York City jazz bar trying to stretch three dollars as far as it will go.

But a chance encounter with the handsome banker at the next table changes everything, opening the door to the upper echelons of New York society and a glittering new social circle. Plunged into a dizzy world of cocktail parties, sprawling mansions and glamorous magazine offices, Katey soon learns that there are rules to play by and riches can turn to rags in the trip of a heartbeat…

Adèle has a seemingly enviable life. She is a respected journalist, living in a flawless Paris apartment with her surgeon husband and their young son. But beneath the veneer of ‘having it all’, Adèle is bored. She begins to orchestrate her life around one-night stands and extramarital affairs, arriving late to work and lying to her husband about where she’s been, until her compulsions threaten to consume her altogether.

An overturned coach full of students. All of them are trapped.
An isolated chalet full of friends. Soon they’ll be enemies.
A stranded cable car full of strangers. One of them is dead.

Outside, a snowstorm rages.
Inside each group, a killer lurks.
But that’s not their only problem.

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I’m currently reading The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar.

One September evening in 1785, the merchant Jonah Hancock finds one of his captains waiting eagerly on his doorstep. He has sold Jonah’s ship for what appears to be a mermaid.

As gossip spreads through the docks, coffee shops, parlours and brothels, everyone wants to see Mr Hancock’s marvel. Its arrival spins him out of his ordinary existence and through the doors of high society, where he meets Angelica Neal, the most desirable woman he has ever laid eyes on…

What will be the cost of their ambitions? And will they be able to escape the legendary destructive power a mermaid is said to possess?

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It didn’t happen last week, but maybe this time? My next read might be Furies – a collection of short stories by various authors including Margaret Atwood and Kamila Shamsie.

BANSHEE. DRAGON. TYGRESS. SHE-DEVIL. HUSSY. SIREN. WENCH. HARRIDAN. MUCKRAKER. SPITFIRE. VITUPERATOR. CHURAIL. TERMAGANT. FURY. WARRIOR. VIRAGO.

For centuries past, and all across the world, there are words that have defined and decried us. Words that raise our hackles, fire up our blood; words that tell a story. In this blazing cauldron of a book, sixteen bestselling, award-winning writers have taken up their pens and reclaimed these words, creating an entertaining and irresistible collection of feminist tales for our time.

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And that’s my week in books! What are you reading this week? Let me know in the comments! 😎