This Week in Books – 19-03-25

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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I finished Fair Play by Louise Hegarty and Black Butterflies by Priscilla Morris.

This is a murder mystery.
This is a story about love.
Or is it? . . .

Fair Play is the puzzle-box story of two competing tales that brilliantly lay bare the real truth of life – the terrifying mystery of grief.

Abigail and her brother Benjamin have always been close. To celebrate his birthday, Abigail hires a grand old house and gathers their friends together for a murder mystery party. As the night goes on, they drink too much and play games. Relationships are forged, consolidated or frayed. Someone kisses someone they shouldn’t, someone else’s heart is broken.

In the morning, everyone wakes up – except Benjamin.

Suddenly everything is not quite what it seems. An eminent detective arrives determined to find Benjamin’s killer. The house now has a butler, a gardener and a housekeeper. This is a locked-room mystery, and everyone is a suspect.

As Abigail attempts to fathom her brother’s unexpected death in a world that has been turned upside down, she begins to wonder whether perhaps the true mystery might have been his life . . .

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Sarajevo, spring 1992. Each night, nationalist gangs erect barricades, splitting the diverse city into ethnic enclaves; each morning, the residents – whether Muslim, Croat or Serb – push the makeshift barriers aside.

When violence finally spills over, Zora, an artist and teacher, sends her husband and elderly mother to safety with her daughter in England. Reluctant to believe that hostilities will last more than a handful of weeks, she stays behind while the city falls under siege. As the assault deepens and everything they love is laid to waste, black ashes floating over the rooftops, Zora and her friends are forced to rebuild themselves, over and over. Theirs is a breathtaking story of disintegration, resilience and hope.

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I’m currently reading I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman, translated by Ros Schwartz.

Discover the haunting, heart-breaking post-apocalyptic tale of female friendship and intimacy set in a deserted world.

Deep underground, thirty-nine women are kept in isolation in a cage. Above ground, a world awaits. Has it been abandoned? Devastated by a virus?

Watched over by guards, the women have no memory of how they got there, no notion of time, and only vague recollection of their lives before. But, as the burn of electric light merges day into night and numberless years pass, a young girl – the fortieth prisoner – sits alone an outcast in the corner.

Soon she will show herself to be the key to the others’ escape and survival in the strange world that awaits them above ground. The woman who will never know men.

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My next read will probably be Making a Killing by Cara Hunter.

In 2016, eight-year-old Daisy Mason vanished from her Oxford home.

Her disappearance made the national press and the final culprit shocked everyone. DCI Adam Fawley remembers the case well, he arrested Daisy’s mother for murder himself.

But her body was never found.

Now, forensic evidence at a current murder scene calls the whole case into question. DCI Adam Fawley and the team are brought back in to investigate. And they all have one question on their minds.

What really happened to Daisy Mason?

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