WWW Wednesdays #13

Let’s see if we can do this from a hospital bed, don’t worry; I’m four days post-op, and they initially thought they would keep me here for two to three days, but my surgeon decided to keep me here until I’m better what I’m grateful for since mobility is complex for me. Anyway, let’s get to what you are really here for the books. Sam is currently hosting WWW Wednesday from Taking On A World of Words.

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?

What did you recently finish reading?

What do you think you’ll read next?

What are you currently reading?

Goodreads Blurb:

Working in law enforcement imparts certain things in a man. The smell of gunpowder in the air. The sight of blood spatter at a crime scene.

And the amount of trouble a woman is in by the pitch of her scream.

Six weeks prior, on the heels of the most hellish case he could ever remember, Detective Reed Mattox and his K-9 partner, Billie, were placed on administrative leave from the Columbus Police Department. Fearful of what the media might say, the brass decided to put them at arm’s length, allowing the aftermath of that fateful night to settle. Not used to being placed on the sidelines, and no good at sitting still for long, the decision was made to travel west to his native Oklahoma and help his parents begin the long process of unpacking their new home.

A process that lasted but a single afternoon before the duo found themselves within earshot of a scream too pointed to ignore.

Acting on pure instinct, the two give chase, unknowingly pulling themselves into something much bigger happening across the plains for the better part of a decade. Young women with seemingly nothing in common disappear, held for months or years before turning up, while some are never found at all.

What did you recently finish reading?

Goodreads Blurb:

The fates of two unforgettable women–one just beginning a journey of reckoning and self-discovery and the other completing her life’s last vital act–intertwine in this sweeping, powerful novel set at the terminus of the Underground Railroad.

In the 1800s in Dunmore, a Canadian town settled by people fleeing enslavement in the American south, young Lensinda Martin works for a crusading Black journalist.

One night, a neighboring farmer summons Lensinda after a slave hunter is shot dead on his land by an old woman who recently arrived via the Underground Railroad. When the old woman refuses to flee before the authorities arrive, the farmer urges Lensinda to gather testimony from her before she can be condemned for the crime.

But the old woman doesn’t want to confess. Instead she proposes a barter: a story for a story. And so begins an extraordinary exchange of tales that reveal an interwoven history of Black and Indigenous peoples in a wide swath of what is called North America.

As time runs out, Lensinda is challenged to uncover her past and face her fears in order to make good on the bargain of a story for a story. And it seems the old woman may carry a secret that could shape Lensinda’s destiny.

Traveling along the path of the Underground Railroad from Virginia to Michigan, from the Indigenous nations around the Great Lakes, to the Black refugee communities of Canada, In the Upper Country weaves together unlikely stories of love, survival, and familial upheaval that map the interconnected history of the peoples of North America in an entirely new and resonant way.

What do you think you’ll read next?

Goodreads Blurb:

What could go wrong—four words MBA student Marcos Oliveira ignored when he accepted a prestigious internship at Reedweather Media, a subsidiary of the legendary Sandeke Telecom empire.

What did go wrong? Everything.

And when Marcos stumbles upon incriminating documents that signal corporate espionage against Sandeke’s son Martin, he suspects his strange intern wormhole has just exploded into chaos. When his alluring boss Eva draws him in to thwart the plot, he knows it.

After spending their lives overcoming adversity, can Marcos and Eva handle this latest threat? Even more perilous might be their losing battle against forbidden attraction.

His Ivy League education didn’t prepare him for spy games and illicit flames. Good thing he has the street smarts to work for it.

Alex