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.
It seems that I’ve been AWOL from my blog again 😬 I must do better, although I know you’ve heard that before. Anyhoo. The last book I finished reading was Dead Ground by M. W. Craven – book 4 in the Washington Poe series. This wasn’t my favourite in that series but still highly enjoyable and very clever.
Detective Sergeant Washington Poe is in court, fighting eviction from his beloved and isolated croft, when he is summoned to a backstreet brothel in Carlisle where a man has been beaten to death with a baseball bat. Poe is confused – he hunts serial killers and this appears to be a straightforward murder-by-pimp – but his attendance was requested personally, by the kind of people who prefer to remain in the shadows.
As Poe and the socially awkward programmer Tilly Bradshaw delve deeper into the case, they are faced with seemingly unanswerable questions: despite being heavily vetted for a high-profile job, why does nothing in the victim’s background check out? Why was a small ornament left at the murder scene – and why did someone on the investigation team steal it? And what is the connection to a flawlessly executed bank heist three years earlier, a heist where nothing was taken . . .
I’m currently reading Perspectives by Laurent Binet, translated by Sam Taylor.
Florence, New Year’s Day 1557. As dawn breaks, a painter is discovered lying on the floor of a church, stabbed through the heart.
Above him, the paintings he laboured over for more than a decade. At his home, a hidden painting scandalously depicting Maria de Medici, daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Florence, as a naked Venus. Who is the murderer? Who is behind the painting? As the city erupts in chaos, Giorgio Vasari, the great art historian, is picked to lead the investigation.
Letters fly back and forth carrying news of political plots and speculation about the killer’s identity – between Maria and her aunt Catherine de’ Medici, the queen of France; between Catherine and her scheming agents in Florence; and between Vasari and his friend Michelangelo. Meanwhile, the Pope is banning books and branding works of art immoral. And the truth, when it comes to light, is as shocking as the bold new artworks that have made Florence the red-hot centre of Europe.
My next read is likely to be Once Was Willem by M. R. Carey.
Eleven hundred and some years after the death of Christ, in the kingdom that had but recently begun to call itself England, I, Once Was Willem, rose from the dead to defeat a great evil facing the humble village of Cosham. The words enclosed herein are true.
I speak of monsters and magic, battle and bloodletting, and the crimes of desperate men. I speak also of secret things, of that which lies beneath us and that which impends above. By the time you come to the end of this account you will know the truth of your own life and death, the path laid out for your immortal soul, your origin and your inevitable end.
You will not thank me.
And that’s my week in books! What are you reading this week? Let me know in the comments! 😎
Jo's Book Blog 
Shouldn’t you be reading The Raven Scholar? For your event? Which is when, exactly? Not that I’m waiting or anything.
It’s not until 1st June, so I’ve got a while yet. And to be honest, I’ll probably buy it at the festival and read it afterwards, tempting though it is to jump straight in!
I’m reading His Last Bow by Arthur Conan Doyle
I’ve not read much of his work, and nothing recently, but I hope you’re enjoying it!
it is another good collection in the series.