It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

This weekly meme is hosted by Kathryn at The Book Date.

Since Easter my reading plans have fallen by the wayside. Laying brick garden edging aggravated my hip/back and I've not been able to sit comfortably for any length of time. It is getting better, but I keep doing things I shouldn't and setting back my recovery. Today is a good day.

Adding to my woes my tablet refused to charge despite a new charger suggesting more serious problems and a trip to the repair shop. So unable to sit at the computer and with my tablet out of action, the ebooks I'd started and those I'd planned to read for the upcoming Virtual Historical Fiction Festival remained unopened.

Now with only a week to go before this event, I have set aside the ebooks I was reading (Mary Anerley: A Yorkshire Tale by R.D. Blackmore, The Virgin of the Wind Rose: A Christopher Columbus Mystery Thriller by Glen Craney and All That I Am by Anna Funder) to concentrate on the three remaining ebooks I need to read before the Festival begins.

However, all was not doom and gloom. I did manage to finish one ebook over the past three weeks: Endless Love by James MacManus. I'd not read any books by this author before and happily accepted a free copy from Endeavour Press. The only major criticism of the story was the abrupt ending. It caught me unawares. I didn't realise I had reached the end and was looking for more.

What I Read Last Week

Endless Love by James MacManus

After being attacked outside her home Rose Loxton decides enough is enough - she needs to get out of London. She falls in love with an old converted Stable Lodge in the Cotswolds and decides to rent it. But it soon becomes clear that her husband isn’t going to move with her. Part of Rose feels relieved – she knows their marriage hasn’t been right for a long time, so this is a chance for her to start over. At the age of forty, she finally feels like she can do exactly what she wants, and revisits her dreams of becoming a famous scientist. But then strange things start happening in her new home - pages turning of their own accord, sudden drops in temperature, and the sound of music seemingly coming from her empty garden. Rose decides to delve in the history of the house, and finds out that in 1908 a young servant hung himself from the Stable beams. But was it really a suicide? As Rose uncovers more she finds out that the young man, Will had been in love with Emily, the daughter of the land-owner. They broke all the conventions of the time by embarking on an affair that crossed the class barrier. It is clear they were deeply in love. So why would Will have killed himself? Was his death, in fact, the result of something more sinister? Can Rose find out the real story behind their Endless Love?

What I'm Reading Today

The Code of Love by Cheryl Sawyer

July, 1810. The Peninsular war is in full swing. Delphine Dalgleish is a Paris-bred Bonapartist who cares as deeply for the honour of France as she does for her island home on tropical Mauritius. Sir Gideon Landor is a naval prisoner of war, who has every reason to consider her the enemy, especially when he commandeers her family’s yacht to escape back to England.
They expect never to meet again, but Gideon’s secret mission to decipher Napoleon’s military Grand Code forces them into a shock encounter on a Paris street. In the seductively peaceful English countryside, they must recognise that they are both spies – on opposing sides of the war that Napoleon has unleashed on Europe. As Sir Arthur Wellesley’s forces pursue the French across the Peninsula, Delphine and Gideon are trapped in a personal feud as complex and dangerous as a military campaign. It will take them in the end to war-torn Portugal and Spain, menacing not only their lives but the armies of two nations.

What I Hope to Read Next

Fletcher's Fortune by John Drake

Young Jacob Fletcher, whilst unsure of his parentage, did know that as an apprentice he couldn't legally be seized by the press gang. But this particular gang couldn't actually read the rules. And didn't care anyway. Which was how he found himself risking life, limb and sea sickness on board His Majesty's frigate Phiandra, about to do battle with what looked like half the French fleet. Meanwhile at Coignwood Hall, the late Sir Henry lay face-down in his soup as his beautiful but evil widow, Lady Sarah, along with their two loathsome sons, ransacked his papers for the will that would disclose to their horror that the entire family fortune has been left to a previously unknown illegitimate son. Who would now have to be tracked down and disposed of as a matter of some urgency...
What will become of Fletcher's Fortune?
Fletcher's Fortune is the first in a rollicking series of memoirs that bring the 18th Century back to life in its tawdry glory.

Shadow on the Highway by Deborah Swift

May 1651. England has been in the midst of a civil war for nearly ten years. The country has been torn in two, and the King is getting ready to make his last stand against Cromwell’s New Model Army. Abigail Chaplin, a young mute girl, has lost her father to the parliamentarian cause. But with her family now in reduced circumstances, she is forced to work as a servant at a royalist household - the estate of Lady Katherine Fanshawe. Abi is soon caught up in a web of sinister secrets which surround the Fanshawe estate. The most curious of which is the disappearance of Lady Katherine late at night. Why are her husband’s clothes worn and muddy even though he hasn’t been home for weeks? How is she stealing out of the house late at night when her room is being guarded? And what is her involvement with the robberies being committed by the mysterious Shadow on the Highway?
‘Shadow On The Highway’ is based on the life and legend of Lady Katherine Fanshawe, the highwaywoman, sometimes known as ‘The Wicked Lady’. It is the first book in ‘The Highway Trilogy’.