Heading into the final quarter of the year already! How is that possible?

As always, I’m trying to balance finishing off the Popsugar Reading Challenge with mood reading and clearly some of my physical TBR.

This month’s hopefuls:

The Secret of Secrets by Dan Brown

This is obviously one of the most anticipated books of the year. It’s the sixth book featuring Robert Langdon and is a whopping 671 pages long.

What it’s about?

Robert Langdon is back in the long-awaited new race-against-time thriller from the global bestselling author of The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons.

Accompanying celebrated academic, Katherine Solomon, to a lecture she’s been invited to give in Prague, Robert Langdon’s world spirals out of control when she disappears without trace from their hotel room. Far from home and well out of his comfort zone, Langdon must pit his wits against forces unknown to recover the woman he loves.

But Prague is an old and dangerous city, steeped in folklore and mystery. For over two thousand years, the tides of history have washed back and forth over it, leaving behind echoes of everything that has gone before. Little can Langdon know that he is being stalked by a spectre from that dark past. He must use all of his arcane knowledge to decipher the world around him before he too is consumed by the rings of treachery and deception that have swallowed Katherine.

Against a backdrop of vast castles, towering churches, graveyards buried twelve deep and labyrinthine underground passages, Langdon must navigate a shadow city hiding in plain sight, a city which has successfully kept its secrets for centuries and will not readily deliver them.

This is a battlefield unlike any he has previously experienced, one on which he must fight not for his only life, but for the future of humanity itself.

The Secret Of Secrets is Dan Brown’s first novel for over eight years and sees the stunning return of Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon, this time pitting his wits against a conspiracy which will test even his considerable brainpower and take him to the edge of losing all that he holds dear…

The Bone Sparrow by Zana Fraillon

The Bone Sparrow is my pick for a book about immigration or refugees for the Popsugar prompt.

What it’s about?

Born in a refugee camp, all Subhi knows of the world is that he’s at least 19 fence diamonds high, the nice Jackets never stay long, and at night he dreams that the sea finds its way to his tent, bringing with it unusual treasures. And one day it brings him Jimmie.

Carrying a notebook that she’s unable to read and wearing a sparrow made out of bone around her neck – both talismans of her family’s past and the mother she’s lost – Jimmie strikes up an unlikely friendship with Subhi beyond the fence.

As he reads aloud the tale of how Jimmie’s family came to be, both children discover the importance of their own stories in writing their futures.

Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo

I planned to read Family Lore for last year’s reading challenge but didn’t get around to.

What it’s about?

Flor has a gift: she can predict, to the day, when someone will die. So when she decides to throw her own living wake, her sisters are concerned. What has she foreseen?

Planning the celebration brings further complications for the Marte family, because Flor isn’t the only person with secrets: her sisters are hiding things, too. And the next generation, cousins Ona and Yadi, face tumult of their own.

Family Lore traces the intertwining stories of five women: sisters and cousins, mothers and daughters, aunts and nieces, to ask the ultimate question – what does it take to live a good life, for yourself and those you love?

Happy reading

E x