It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

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

A very quiet week for me as I've been focusing on the books I need to finish for the Virtual Historical Fiction Festival which starts this morning (UK time) and setting up a Twitter account in readiness for today. Not much has changed since last week: only one book read, another nearly finished and one more to go.

I've enjoyed the four books I've read for the Festival so far and I'm sure that will be the case for the last one on my list, Fletcher's Fortune by John Drake. After that I have some serious catching up to do writing reviews.

What I Read Last Week

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'm Reading Today

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’.

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.