This Week in Books – 30-04-25

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 Perspectives by Laurent Binet, translated by Sam Taylor, and then moved onto Once Was Willem by M. R. Carey.

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.

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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.

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I’m currently reading The Continental Affair by Christine Mangan.

Meet Henri and Louise. Two strangers, travelling alone, on the train from Belgrade to Istanbul.

Except this isn’t the first time they have met.

It’s the 1960s, and Louise is running.

From her past in England, from the owners of the money she has stolen―and from Henri, the person who has been sent to collect it.

Across the Continent―from Granada to Paris, from Belgrade to Istanbul―Henri follows. He’s desperate to leave behind his own troubles and the memories of his past life as a gendarme in Algeria.

But Henri soon realises that Louise is no ordinary traveller.

As the train hurtles toward its final destination, Henri and Louise must decide what the future will hold―and whether it involves one another.

Stylish and atmospheric, The Continental Affair takes you on an unforgettable journey through the twisty, glamorous world of 1960s Europe.

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I’ve said it before and didn’t get to it, but maybe this time I’ll read The Strange Case of Jane O..

WHAT IF YOU COULD REMEMBER EVERYTHING, EXCEPT THE DAY YOU DISAPPEARED?

A young woman, Jane O., arrives in a psychiatrist’s office. She’s been suffering a series of worrying episodes: amnesia, premonitions, hallucinations and an inexplicable sense of dread. But as the psychiatrist struggles to solve the mystery of what is happening in Jane’s mind, she suddenly goes missing. When she is found a day later, unconscious in a park, she has no memory of what has happened to her.

Are Jane’s strange experiences related to the overwhelm of single motherhood, or long-buried trauma from her past? Why is she having visions of a young man who died twenty years ago, who warns her of disaster ahead? Jane’s symptoms will lead her psychiatrist to question everything he once thought he knew . . .

Profound and beautifully written, The Strange Case of Jane O. is a speculative mystery about memory, identity and fate, a mesmerising story about the bonds of love between a mother and child, a man and a woman, and the haunting, unexplained mysteries of the human mind.

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