Sam at Taking on a World of Words is the host of WWW Wednesday. To participate, all you have to do is answer the three W questions and post in the comments section at Sam’s blog:
What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?
What are you currently reading?
I just finished the book below this morning and jumped out of bed right afterwards, so I haven’t started anything new. I did get a call from the local library that some books I’d requested had come in, so those will have to be considered.
What did you recently finish reading?
I just finished Persona Non Grata the third in the Medicus series by Ruth Downie, a series I had abandoned for no good reason a few years ago. I’m glad to have picked it up again. Ruso is a Roman Medicus stationed in Britannica taking care of the wounded and sick legionnaires, the locals, and his girlfriend Tilla. They also solves murders. The author manages to get quite a bit of detail in, for both setting and family, and at the same time pretty much staying on point as they, Ruso and Tilla, investigate. In this story, Ruso is mysteriously called home to Gaul. The tone is humorous, not quite as comedic as Lindsey Davis (I just can’t look at olive oil the same way since the last book of hers I read) and the story events pulled me right along.
What do you think you’ll read next?
For fiction, I have two books from Net Galley queued up:
Watch the Wall, My Darling, which looks like an old-fashioned Gothic.
Description
Only a deathbed promise to her dying father could force Christina Tretton to travel to Tretteign Grange, the ‘Dark House’, and meet her estranged family for the first time. Having to fast-talk her way out of an encounter with smugglers on the way is only the beginning. Waiting for her is flighty aunt Verity, her two very different cousins – the stoic Ross and fawning Richard – and her formidable grandfather, who changes his Will every few days.
Taking the neglectful servants in hand, Christina is soon managing the house, proving herself invaluable in her grandfather’s eyes. This backfires when he decides he wants her as his heir, and only on the condition that she marries Ross or Richard. Outraged, she swears she will marry neither, but her cousins have different ideas. Should she marry the cousin she is drawn to, even if he appears to have no true feelings for her?
Hanging over them is the constant threat of invasion, as Dark House looks over the sea to France, and Napoleon. When cousin Ross disappears, it is up to Christina to stand in his stead and take on the running of the estate — amongst some of his more disreputable duties. For as soldiers work to fortify the coast, Christina finds herself in the twisted intrigues of smugglers and spies.
Watch the Wall, My Darling first published in 1966, is another great historical romance from the master of the genre – Jane Aiken Hodge.
Annnd…The Address
Description
Fiona Davis, author of The Dollhouse, returns with a compelling novel about the thin lines between love and loss, success and ruin, passion and madness, all hidden behind the walls of The Dakota, New York City’s most famous residence.
After a failed apprenticeship, working her way up to head housekeeper of a posh London hotel is more than Sara Smythe ever thought she’d make of herself. But when a chance encounter with Theodore Camden, one of the architects of the grand New York apartment house The Dakota, leads to a job offer, her world is suddenly awash in possibility—no mean feat for a servant in 1884. The opportunity to move to America, where a person can rise above one’s station. The opportunity to be the female manager of The Dakota, which promises to be the greatest apartment house in the world. And the opportunity to see more of Theo, who understands Sara like no one else . . . and is living in The Dakota with his wife and three young children.
In 1985, Bailey Camden is desperate for new opportunities. Fresh out of rehab, the former party girl and interior designer is homeless, jobless, and penniless. Two generations ago, Bailey’s grandfather was the ward of famed architect Theodore Camden. But the absence of a genetic connection means Bailey won’t see a dime of the Camden family’s substantial estate. Instead, her “cousin” Melinda—Camden’s biological great-granddaughter—will inherit almost everything. So when Melinda offers to let Bailey oversee the renovation of her lavish Dakota apartment, Bailey jumps at the chance, despite her dislike of Melinda’s vision. The renovation will take away all the character and history of the apartment Theodore Camden himself lived in . . . and died in, after suffering multiple stab wounds by a madwoman named Sara Smythe, a former Dakota employee who had previously spent seven months in an insane asylum on Blackwell’s Island.
One hundred years apart, Sara and Bailey are both tempted by and struggle against the golden excess of their respective ages—for Sara, the opulence of a world ruled by the Astors and Vanderbilts; for Bailey, the free-flowing drinks and cocaine in the nightclubs of New York City—and take refuge and solace in the Upper West Side’s gilded fortress. But a building with a history as rich—and often tragic—as The Dakota’s can’t hold its secrets forever, and what Bailey discovers in its basement could turn everything she thought she knew about Theodore Camden—and the woman who killed him—on its head.
With rich historical detail, nuanced characters, and gorgeous prose, Fiona Davis once again delivers a compulsively readable novel that peels back the layers of not only a famed institution, but the lives —and lies—of the beating hearts within.
Coffee And Ink 
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