This Week in Books – 21-05-25

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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A bit of a slow week reading wise, but I finished Conspiracyland: Trolls, True Believers and the New Information War by Marianna Spring which I found to be really interesting.

MY NAME IS MARIANNA SPRING AND SOME OF MY TROLLS SAY THEY WANT TO KILL ME

Ever since she became the BBC’s first disinformation and social media correspondent, Marianna Spring has delved into the worlds of media manipulators and conspiracy theorists. Meeting face-to-face with architects of hate and fake news, she discovers how people come to believe that terrible atrocities are staged, and that pandemics and climate change are the tools of an invisible elite bent on world domination.

Told with curiosity, urgency and, most of all, empathy, Conspiracyland pulls back the curtain on the information battle threatening us all, and bears witness to the real-world consequences that lie beyond our screens.

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After having a minor “I’ve got nothing to read” strop, I decided to go for a safe option of The Botanist by M. W. Craven. As with the rest of the series, it gets off to a brilliant start.

‘I swear I’m one bad mood away from calling it black magic and going home . . .’

Detective Sergeant Washington Poe can count on one hand the number of friends he has. And he’d still have his thumb left. There’s the insanely brilliant, guilelessly innocent civilian analyst, Tilly Bradshaw of course. He’s known his beleaguered boss, Detective Inspector Stephanie Flynn for years as he has his nearest neighbour, full-time shepherd/part-time dog sitter, Victoria.

And then there’s Estelle Doyle. It’s true the caustic pathologist has never walked down the sunny side of the street but this time has she gone too far? Shot twice in the head, her father’s murder appears to be an open and shut case. Estelle has firearms discharge residue on her hands, and, in a house surrounded by fresh snow, hers are the only footprints going in. Since her arrest she’s only said three words: ‘Tell Washington Poe.’

Meanwhile, a poisoner the press have dubbed the Botanist is sending high profile celebrities poems and pressed flowers. The killer seems to be able to walk through walls and, despite the advance notice he gives his victims, and regardless of the security measures the police take, he seems to be able to kill with impunity.

For a man who hates locked room mysteries, this is going to be the longest week of Washington Poe’s life . . .

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My next read might be The Stranger Times by C. K. McDonnell.

There are dark forces at work in our world (and in Manchester in particular), so thank God The Stranger Times is on hand to report them . . .

A weekly newspaper dedicated to the weird and the wonderful (but mostly the weird), it is the go-to publication for the unexplained and inexplicable.

At least that’s their pitch. The reality is rather less auspicious. Their editor is a drunken, foul-tempered and foul-mouthed husk of a man who thinks little of the publication he edits. His staff are a ragtag group of misfits. And as for the assistant editor . . . well, that job is a revolving door – and it has just revolved to reveal Hannah Willis, who’s got problems of her own.

When tragedy strikes in her first week on the job, The Stranger Times is forced to do some serious investigating. What they discover leads to a shocking realisation: some of the stories they’d previously dismissed as nonsense are in fact terrifyingly real. Soon they come face-to-face with darker forces than they could ever have imagined.

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