Then and Now #2 (726 - 8/1)

 It's been a great week! I was part of a lecture series on academic publishing which was full of great tips and hopefully I'll be part of the workshop series in September as well so I can try write an article based on my previous MA dissertation. I also had a great meet-up with the lecturer I'm currently working with which is always very inspirational. I got slightly less reading done this week as I tried to get back into something of a work rhythm. 

The Sunday Post is a blog news meme hosted @ Caffeinated Reviewer. See rules here: Sunday Post Meme. Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came in their mailbox during the last week.  It is hosted weekly over at Mailbox Monday and every Friday they do a round-up of some of their favourite, shared reads!

Here's what I posted this week:

• Review: The Follower by Nicholas Bowling
• Review: Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
• Review: The Wife Before Me by Laura Elliott
• Review: For the Wolf by Hannah Whitten
• Friday Friyay: Death in Her Hands by Ottessa Mosfegh
• Review: Possession by A.S. Byatt
• Reading Round-Up for July

I'm still in the middle of reading The Wolf and the Woodsman by Ava Reid and Aftermath by Harald Jahner.

Here are the books that came in last week.

From the Neck Up and Other Stories by Aliya Whiteley (Titan Books, 9/14/2021)

The new collection of beautiful, strange and disarming short stories from the award-winning author of The Beauty, Clarke Award nominee The Loosening Skin and The Arrival of Missives, Aliya Whiteley. In 16 stories Whiteley deftly unpeels the strangeness of everyday life through beguiling gardens, rebellious bodies and journeys across familiar worlds, with her trademark wit and compassion. 
 
Witness the future of farming in a new Ice Age, or the artist bringing life to glass; the many-eyed monsters we carry and the secret cities inside our bodies; the alien invasion through our language to the Chantress and her twists on the fairy tale. Fascinating and always unexpected, Whiteley is unlike any other writer working today.

I absolutely loved Whiteley's Skyward Inn, it was one of my favourite books so far this year. So of course I can't wait to get back into more of her writing.

The Hood by Lavie Tidhar (Head of Zeus, 10/7/2021)

God bless you, England, on this glorious Year of Our Lord, 1145.

Don't cross the Templars. Everybody knows that. But Will Scarlet, back from the crusades, hopped up on khat and cider, did. Stabbed thrice in the belly but somehow still alive, he's heading home to Nottingham.

And things are not right in Nottingham.

It's the wood, you see. Sherwood. Ice-age ancient, impenetrable, hiding a dark and secret heart. As the ancient sages say, If you go into the woods today, you may not come out tomorrow, and the person who comes out may not be you...

The Hood is Lavie Tidhar's narcotic remix of an ancient English myth, a tale knotted from legends lost to time, shredded and restitched for each passing century. A tale for today.

'A wild, inventive tapestry of myth and magic, with a wry sense of humor. Tidhar's writing is wonderfully vibrant' Silvia Moreno-Garcia, bestselling author of Mexican Gothic.

I've heard great things about Lavie Tidhar so I can't wait to get into The Hood. 

Murder At The House on the Hill by Victoria Walters (Hera Books, 9/23/2021)

Nancy Hunter and her grandmother Jane Hunter run the Dedley Endings Bookshop, selling crime, thriller and mystery books, in a small, quiet Cotswold village where nothing ever happens…

That is, until the wealthy and reclusive Roth family open up their mansion for the first time in thirty years, inviting the people of Dedley End to a lavish engagement party.

While everyone is thrilled to finally look around the mansion on the hill, the festivities are quickly cut short when beautiful Lucy, recently married to young Harry Roth, is found dead after being pushed over the first-floor balustrade.

But who among the guests could have been capable of her murder – and why?

Nancy and Jane decide to investigate – after all, not only do they own a crime themed bookshop, they were also both named after famous literary detectives – but soon wonder if they’ve taken on more than they can handle. Especially when it seems the killer has worked out that they’re hot on their heels…

Can they catch the murderer before the murderer catches up with them? Or will there be a deadly ending to this story?

Join the unlikeliest detective duo for the first of The Dedley End Mysteries series, for fans of Richard Osman and Charlaine Harris’ Aurora Teagarden series.

I've seen this book on other blogs and it sounds like the perfect cozy thriller for the stormy nights we've been having.

Mrs. Caliban by Laura Ingalls (Faber & Faber, 8/5/2021)

With a new foreword by Irenosen Okojie

Dorothy is a grieving housewife in the Californian suburbs. Her infant son, unborn child and dog have all just died; her husband is unfaithful, and they are too unhappy to get a divorce.

One day, she is doing chores when she hears strange voices on the radio announcing that a green-skinned sea monster has escaped from the Institute for Oceanographic Research - but little does she expect him to arrive in her kitchen.

Muscular, vegetarian, sexually magnetic and excellent at housework, Larry the frogman is a revelation – and their passionate affair takes them on a journey beyond their wildest dreams ...

Reissued with a new foreword by Irenosen Okojie, Rachel Ingalls’s Mrs Caliban is an amphibious cult classic – a bittersweet fable, a subversive fairy tale – as magical today as it was four decades ago.

I have been wanting to read this book for ages so I was very excited when I saw Faber was releasing a new edition. I was a major fan of Guillermo del Toro's The Shape of Water so of course I wanted to read this one ASAP.

So that's me! I hope everyone's having a lovely weekend and I can't wait to see what you've all been up to!