It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

This weekly meme is hosted by Kathryn at The Book Date and is a place to share what you've been reading over the past week, what you are currently reading and what you hope to read next.

This week I did a little better than last with two books finished, one set in World War I and the other in World War II. For Two Cents I'll Go With You is based on the author's great-grandfather's World War I letters and his
reminiscences as told to her father. Usually I read books from the British perspective, so found this book enlightening as it is from the perspective of an American.

My second book, New Shoes for Anthony, is told from the point of view of an eleven year old boy, who doesn't own a pair of shoes only a pair of wellington boots, a couple of sizes too big for him. Anyone who has tried to walk or run in wellington's too big for them knows how uncomfortable this is and Anthony manages for years with this footwear. I enjoyed this story. Once again a little different to my normal World War II fare as it deals with the affect on a Welsh village when a German plane crashes on their mountainside and the arrival of American soldiers in preparation for D-Day.

This week I'm still reading Daughter of Mine set in Australia. It's taking me a little longer to get through this book than I'd anticipated. My other books for this week are Nor the Years Condemn and The Duke's Agent, both of which are by authors new to me.

What I Read Last Week

For Two Cents I'll Go With You by Marcia Maxwell

In the spring of 1917, Walter "Pat" Lusk sits at his desk shuffling papers and dreaming of glory on the battlefield. Frustrated, he's convinced the Great War will remain forever out of reach until one day his friend Aubrey arrives with the thrilling news that the United States has finally declared war on Germany! With his path to adventure now clear, Pat immediately enlists in the Army, where he trains as a surgeon's assistant. Sent to France with Evacuation Hospital No. 4, will Pat finally attain the glory he seeks treating desperately wounded soldiers through the war's darkest days? Will he ever win over the redoubtable Nurse Oberholtzer? Will the Armistice bring peace to the boys of Evac 4, or does a time of even greater testing await Pat and his friends?

Shoes for Anthony by Emma Kennedy

The idea of the war coming to their small, impoverished Welsh mining village always seemed remote, but with one explosive event and the arrival of the Americans preparing for the invasion of France, the people of Treherbert find their world turned upside down.
But war brings distrust, lies and danger. And as the villagers find themselves hopelessly divided, Anthony, an 11-year-old who hasn’t had a pair of shoes in years, is going to have to choose between what is popular and what is right.


What I'm Reading Today

Daughter of Mine by Fiona Lowe

The three Chirnwell sisters are descended from the privileged squattocracy in Victoria’s Western District — but could a long-held secret threaten their family?
Harriett Chirnwell has a perfect life — a husband who loves her, a successful career and a daughter who is destined to become a doctor just like her.
Xara has always lived in Harriet’s shadow; her chaotic life with her family on their sheep farm falls far short of her older sister’s standards of perfection and prestige.
Georgie, the youngest sister and a passionate teacher, is the only one of the three to have left Billawarre. But is her life in Melbourne happy?
Despite all three sisters having a different and sometimes strained bond with their mother, Edwina, they come together to organise a party for her milestone birthday — the first since their father’s death. But when Edwina arrives at her party on the arm of another man, the tumult is like a dam finally breaking. Suddenly the lives of the Chirnwell sisters are flooded by scandal. Criminal accusations, a daughter in crisis, and a secret over fifty years in the making start to crack the perfect façade of the prominent pastoral family.

Nor the Years Condemn by Justin Sheedy

“Nor the Years Condemn” is based on the incredible true story of the amazing breed of young men who answered the call of Britain in her darkest hour. They learnt to fly bone-shatteringly high-performance combat aircraft in which they fought for freedom against the so far unstoppable might of Nazi Germany. In their teens and early-20s, they were the ‘top guns’ of their era, out of pure necessity for the job at hand the best and brightest, physically and mentally, of a generation. This fact will render the death of so many of them doubly heart-rending for the reader, albeit that they were sacrificed in so noble a cause.
“Nor the Years Condemn” portrays the gripping saga of doomed, brilliant youth through the eyes of 20-year-old Australian law student and rugby star, Daniel Quinn. Flanked by the highly intelligent, sometimes hilarious young men of his elite ilk, he leaves his peacetime life behind and crosses the Planet to fight tyranny. Flying the iconic Supermarine Spitfire (to this day a stirring symbol of the resistance of Good against Evil), Quinn’s personality is transformed from his peacetime self into a professional killer.
With in-the-cockpit-seat flying sequences that readers have described as cinematic, “Nor the Years Condemn” is also a story of the grieving mothers cursed to relinquish their wonderful sons to war, of first love, of strategic deception and betrayal, of brotherhood and once-in-a-lifetime friendship on a knife’s edge. It is a story of shining young men destined never to become old, and of those who do: the survivors condemned by the years, and to their memory of friends who remain forever young.

The Duke's Agent by Rebecca Jenkins

Raif Jarrett has returned from battle, and is seeking a quiet life as agent to the Duke of Penrith. So when he is sent to the Durham town of Woolbridge to settle the affairs of one of the Duke's tenants following his sudden death, the dangers of the Yorkshire countryside could not be more unexpected. Jarrett begins to uncover a network of crime and corruption but is thwarted at every turn by the town's powerful and much-feared magistrate, Mr. Justice Raistrick. When a young woman dies in tragic and mysterious circumstances, Jarrett is accused of her murder and has to fight for his life as he desperately seeks to uncover the truth. While he unravels one mystery, Raif Jarrett keeps the lid firmly closed on another.As a stranger in Woolbridge, Jarrett sets tongues wagging, but he refuses to talk about his family, especially his connection to the Duke. And why did he flee to the army - seeking almost certain death - some years previously? Even the elegant and charming Henrietta, in whom Jarrett longs to confide, cannot work out this enigmatic newcomer.

What I Hope To Read Next

We That Are Left by Clare Clark

It is 1910 and to ten-year-old Oskar Grunewald, the Melville family is impossibly, incomprehensibly glamorous. Born into privilege, their certainties are as unshakeable as the walls of their Victorian castle. It is a world to which Oskar, mathematics prodigy and son of a penniless German composer, has no wish to belong.
But when Theo Melville is killed in the Great War, shattering his family’s lives, Oskar finds himself drawn reluctantly into the gaping hole his death has left behind. As Theo’s two sisters struggle to forge their paths in a world that no longer plays by the old rules, Oskar’s life becomes entwined with theirs in a way that will change all of their futures.