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.
I finished reading The Other Americans by Laila Lalami, and then moved on to The Hunted by Gabriel Bergmoser – two very different novels, but I really enjoyed them both.
Late one spring night, Driss Guerraoui, a Moroccan immigrant in California, is walking across a darkened intersection when he is killed by a speeding car. The repercussions of his death bring together a diverse cast of characters, deeply divided by race, religion and class. As the characters tell their stories and the mystery unfolds, Driss’s family is forced to confront its secrets, a town faces its hypocrisies, and love, in all its messy and unpredictable forms, is born.
Where does the adventure end . . .
and the nightmare begin?
Frank owns a service station on a little-used highway. His granddaughter, Allie, is sent to stay with him for the summer, but they don’t talk a lot.
Simon is a dreamer and an idealist, in thrall to the romance of the open road and desperately in search of something.
Maggie is the woman who will bring them together, someone whose own personal journey will visit unimaginable terror on them all. . .
I’m currently reading The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories by Susanna Clarke. Having loved Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, I was eager to read this collection of short stories.
Faerie is never as far away as you think.
Sometimes you find you have crossed an invisible line and must cope, as best you can, with petulant princesses, vengeful owls, ladies who pass their time embroidering terrible fates or with endless paths in deep, dark woods and houses that never appear the same way twice.
The heroines and heroes bedevilled by such problems in these fairy tales include a conceited Regency clergyman, an eighteenth-century Jewish doctor and Mary, Queen of Scots, as well as two characters from Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell: Strange himself and the Raven King.
My next read will probably be The Woman in the Wallpaper by Lora Jones which is published by Sphere later this month.
Paris, 1789. The Oberst Factory, which crafts exquisite wallpaper for the most fashionable French homes, is a place shrouded in mystery. Most enigmatic is the woman pictured in each of its prints, rumoured to be the late Mrs Oberst, who died in peculiar circumstances.
When sisters Lara and Sofi arrive there for work, they quickly form a friendship with Josef Oberst, the motherless heir to the factory. Whilst Sofi’s political fervour intensifies, Lara is disturbed by the uncanny way her life appears mirrored in the wallpaper. Meanwhile Hortense, Josef’s spoilt aristocratic wife, is similarly unnerved by the scenes that line the walls of her new home. With the mobs growing ever more violent, is she in danger of meeting the same untimely end as the last Mrs Oberst?
As revolution blazes across France, the lives of Sofi, Lara and Hortense are set to collide in unimaginable and irrevocable ways. Can they change what lies ahead, or are some patterns destined to be repeated?
And that’s my week in books! What are you reading this week? Let me know in the comments! 😎
Jo's Book Blog 
I loved The Hunted too. There’s a second book called The Inheritance featuring Maggie.
Ooooh – good to know! I’d love to know what happens to her x
I don’t know any of these books(😄) but I like the sound of The Woman in the Wallpaper. Happy reading, Jo! xx
Have I gone off piste again?! 😂
The Woman in the Wallpaper does sounds interesting! x
Doesn’t it though? I’m intrigued x