WWW Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Sam at 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?

Personal:

I hope you all had a wonderful week last week.

My week after Wednesday was pretty good. My drama from earlier in the week went away, and I got an apology from a higher-up.

Miss R had horseback riding, and she did pretty well. I had a long talk with her trainer, and we are revising a plan to work on her nervousness about jumping.

I spent the weekend just chilling at home. Saturday, we returned to the shelter to look at what they had for dogs and cats. One stood out to me. Her name is Dolly, and she is a 1-year-old pit mix. She was so sweet!! Both Miss R and I want her. But she is still on medical hold (weaning eight puppies, and she had just been spayed) and will be on hold until she is healed and the babies are weaned.

Monday, BK came into the living room and swore he saw a tiny kitten on our back porch. I called BS until I checked our Ring. Yup, there was a kitten, and I saw it on Tuesday, eating the food we set out for the two ferals we feed. It looks to be between 6-8 weeks old, and it appears to be at least half Lynx-Point Siamese. There is no way that a young kitten would wander away from its home. I am thinking it was dumped. We’re going to bring it in, clean it up (and sex it), and then take it from there—which means it will join our family.

Shows I Watched: Secrets of the Zoo: Tampa (it was on NatGeo), OPLive (on Reelz), and The Last of Us (on HBO Max). This week’s The Last of Us episode had me in tears. I’m not going to give spoilers, but that was a great storyline and the acting (chef’s kiss).

What I Cooked/Baked: Miss R and I made Pizza Lollipops Monday night. I wasn’t too sure how they were going to turn out. But 2 out of the three kids liked them. If you are going to make these, I recommend 450 for 10-15 mins (check after 10). 450 at 25-30 mins would have burned them. And a big shout out to Hobby Lobby for having popsicle sticks!!

Reading:

I am getting a lot of reading done these days. Sitting in the car rider line for an hour helps with that.

The longest book I read this week: Jackal. I had difficulty concentrating while reading this book, and it took me longer than usual to read.

The shortest book I read this week: The Healing. It was a short book, and I finished it within a couple of hours.

Other Interesting Bookish News: I am still reordering my Goodreads Shelves. It’s time-consuming, but it needs to be done. I bought The Joy of Cooking (the 2019 edition). I figured it is a must-have for the house.

How was your week? Read anything good? Did you do anything exciting? Watch anything new? Cook anything good?

As always, let me know if you have read or are planning to read any of these

What I Recently Finished Reading:

“Confess!”
Patrick Lahm is down on his luck. Late for his book signing, out of gas and stuck in a storm. He hitches a ride to the Kurtain Motel where he is forced to spend the night. The small motel seems harmless enough at first, but as the night drags on, Patrick and the other guests slowly begin to realize there is a lot more to their temporary lodging than meets the eye.

Something evil is at work at the Kurtain Motel; something that creeps into the deepest, darkest corners of your mind and tugs at the chords of sanity until they finally break. On the longest night of his life, Patrick soon finds out that there is a reason why skeletons are kept in closets. He realizes that your sins always find a way to catch up with you, no matter how hard you try to run.

Welcome to the Kurtain Motel, where all your nightmares come true.

When the past collides with the present…

It was an ordinary day in Friar’s Ridge when Jess took a wrong turn on the way home and, on the spur of the moment, acquired a book at the local market. When she discovers a photograph of a woman within, an indomitable spirit in the form of a small boy enters the life Jess shares with her seven-year-old son, Jonas.

A friendship develops between Jonas and the ghost boy, but something darker is lurking beneath the boy’s friendly demeanour. Meanwhile, Jess oscillates between reality and that of another dimension, her protective nature compromised by a dark and mysterious realm.

She begins to search for the lady in the photograph, who she believes is the ghost boy’s mother. Little did Jess realise that this would lead her to the heart of an undiscovered abhorrent crime, but who was responsible?

And what really happened that fateful hot summer’s day by the park lake?

What I am currently reading:

Three ordinary people risk everything for a chance at redemption in this audacious, utterly gripping novel of catastrophe and survival at the end of the world, from the acclaimed author of The Chalk Man

Hannah awakens to carnage, all mangled metal and shattered glass. During a hasty escape from a secluded boarding school, her coach careened over a hillside road during one of the year’s heaviest snowstorms, trapping her inside with a handful of survivors, a brewing virus, and no way to call for help. If she and the remaining few want to make it out alive, with their sanity–and secrets–intact, they’ll need to work together or they’ll be buried alive with the rest of the dead.

A former detective, Meg awakens to a gentle rocking. She is in a cable car suspended far above a snowstorm and surrounded by strangers in the same uniform as her, with no memory of how they got there. They are heading to a mysterious place known to them only as “The Retreat,” but when they discover a dead man among their ranks and Meg spies a familiar face, she realizes that there is something far more insidious going on.

Carter is gazing out the window of the abandoned ski chalet that he and his ragtag compatriots call home. Together, they manage a precarious survival, manufacturing vaccines against a deadly virus in exchange for life’s essentials. But as their generator begins to waver, the threat of something lurking in the chalet’s depths looms larger, and their fragile bonds will be tested when the power finally fails–for good.

The imminent dangers faced by Hannah, Meg, and Carter are each one part of the puzzle. Lurking in their shadows is an even greater threat–one that threatens to consume all of humanity.

What books I think I’ll read next:

In April Asher’s next Supernatural Singles novel, Not Your Ex’s Hexes, a one-night-stand between a willful witch and a broody half-demon conjures an adventure that wouldn’t be complete without several magical mishaps.

For her entire life, Rose Maxwell trained to become the next Prima on the Supernatural Council. Now that she’s stepped down, it’s time for this witch to focus on herself. And not think about her impulsive one-night stand with Damian Adams, a half-Demon Veterinarian who she can’t get out of her head. Neither of them is looking for a relationship. But when Rose is sentenced to community service at Damian’s animal sanctuary it becomes impossible for them to ignore their sparking attraction. A friends-with-benefits, no feelings, no strings arrangement works perfectly for them both.

After a sequence of dead-end jobs, it’s not until Rose tangos with two snarly demons that she thinks she’s finally found her path. However, this puts Damian back on the periphery of a world he thought he left behind. He doesn’t approve of Rose becoming a Hunter, but if there’s one thing he’s learned about the stubborn witch, it was telling her not to do something was one sure-fire way to make sure she did.

Working—and sleeping—together awakens feelings Damian never knew he had…and shouldn’t have. Because thanks to his ex’s hex, if he falls in love, he’ll not only lose his heart—but his humanity.

Speak of pain, and I’ll tell you of the Time who stole it away…

Besieged by war, ravaged by monsters, and crawling with the undead, the land of Okarria is dying. Seventeen-year-old Emara survives by using her modest healing gift to save as many as she can while eluding the invaders who thirst for her enchanted blood.

So when a cursed cat saves her life and reveals Emara is the legendary Time Heir the necromancer king’s been searching for, she agrees to act as bait in a plot to destroy him. But when the plan goes horrifically awry, Emara must discover how deep her powers go, what she can change…

And what she cannot.

Unfortunately, Time Heirs have a history of getting killed, and with Okarria’s future on the line, Emara may have no choice but to follow in her ancestors’ footsteps.

Eli likes uncomplicated. Kill the Vampire Coven Master, save the little girl, simple and uncomplicated. That changes with a phone call. Life gets complicated quickly when Eli finds out that he has to work with his most dangerous foe, a beautiful demon succubus. When Good and Evil have to work together against a common enemy, Eli has to wonder, who’s going to put the knife in his back, his enemies, or his allies.

You feel ecstatic! Until you kill yourself.

The Happy Chip is the latest nanoengineering wonder from the high-flying tech company, NeoHappy, Inc.

Hundreds of millions of people have had the revolutionary nanochip injected into their bodies, to monitor their hormonal happiness and guide them to life choices, from foods to sex partners.
Given the nanochip’s stunning success, struggling science writer Brad Davis is thrilled when he is hired to co-author the biography of its inventor, billionaire tech genius Marty Fallon.

That is, until Davis learns that rogue company scientists are secretly testing horrifying new control chips with “side effects”—suicidal depression, uncontrollable lust, murderous rage, remote-controlled death, and ultimately, global subjugation.

His discovery threatens not only his life, but that of his wife Annie and their children. Only with the help of Russian master hacker Gregor Kalinsky and his gang can they hope to survive the perilous adventure that takes them from Boston to Beijing.

An edge-of your-seat thriller, The Happy Chip spins a cautionary tale of unchecked nanotechnology spawning insidious devices that could enslave us. It dramatically portrays how we must control our “nanofuture” before it’s too late.