Happy Friday, all!

I launched this latest reading week by staying up far too late devouring Deborah Royce’s The Ruby Falls in one go.  (So much for “I’ll just read a chapter or two”….  Does anyone EVER really just read a chapter or two?  Asking for a friend.)  Set in the 80s, as a young soap opera actress tries to reboot her career in Hollywood with a modern adaptation of Rebecca, it’s a wonderfully twisted look at the conventions of the Gothic novel and what happens when they slide over from fiction into the real world.

(Also, stay tuned for more about Gothics in general in next week’s Ask Me Anything.)

After that, I needed some quiet time, so I retreated back to the monastery with Brother Cadfael, in the eighth of his chronicles, The Devil’s Novice, in which a very unlikely postulant comes to the abbey.  Is it a true vocation– or is there some reason he needs to hide from the world?  It was a thoroughly satisfying Brother Cadfael, in which, as ever, young lovers are united, wrong are righted, and Brother Cadfael makes sure wounds are poulticed and justice is served.

I also jumped back in time to 2003 London and 1804 Hyderabad with The Betrayal of the Blood Lily in preparation for last night’s Pink Carnation Read Along zoom.  I’d forgotten how much I genuinely like Penelope in this book– and what fun it was getting to explore the politics and intrigues of early nineteenth century India.  Also all the Colin family drama.  So much Colin family drama.

Right now, I’m deep in late seventeenth/early eighteenth century Scotland with an advance copy of the newest Susanna Kearsley, The Vanished Days, about which more next week.

What have you been reading this week?

p.s. in other news, pssst!  Band of Sisters is the Audible Daily Deal today!  It’s on sale for today only, brilliantly narrated by Julia Whelan, for just $3.95.