It’s the first Saturday of the month which means it’s time for another Six Degrees of Separation, hosted by Kate of Books are my Favourite and Best. The idea is that Kate chooses a book to use as a starting point and then we have to link it to six other books of our choice to form a chain. A book doesn’t have to be connected to all of the others on the list – only to the one next to it in the chain.

This month Kate has said that we should start with either our book group’s current read or the book we’re currently reading. I’m not in a book group so it has to be the latter for me. I actually put this chain together in the last week of August (I like to prepare it in advance), so I used the book I was reading at that time, which was The Matchbox Girl by Alice Jolly.

The Matchbox Girl won this year’s Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. It’s set in Nazi controlled Vienna and is narrated by Adelheid Brunner, a girl with autism who collects matchboxes.

I’m using collections as my first link. The Collector of Dying Breaths by MJ Rose (1) is set in the 16th century at the court of Catherine de’ Medici and follows a perfumer who believes he can capture a person’s dying breath in a bottle and use it to reanimate their soul. An interesting and unusual book, but it’s the sixth in a series and I think I really needed to have read the others first.

The author of my next book shares a name with the previous one: she’s Rose Tremain, whose novel Restoration (2) was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1989. It’s another historical novel, this time set at the court of Charles II, where physician Robert Merivel comes to the king’s attention after tending to his spaniels and later becomes embroiled in his love affairs. I enjoyed the book but preferred the sequel.

The winner of that same year’s Booker Prize was The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro (3). I loved this book, which is narrated by an elderly butler, Stevens, reminiscing about his career in the service of Lord Darlington of Darlington Hall. Stevens is played by Anthony Hopkins in the 1993 adaptation.

One of Hopkins’ earliest roles was Richard the Lionheart in The Lion in Winter. Katharine Hepburn won an Oscar for the same film for her portrayal of Richard’s mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine. Eleanor’s story has been told in many novels, including The Summer Queen by Elizabeth Chadwick (4), the first part of an excellent trilogy taking us through the whole of Eleanor’s life.

The Queen of Fives by Alex Hay (5) shares a word in the title – but this time, it’s not about a real queen. The ‘Queen of Fives’ is a title given to Quinn Le Blanc, the leader of a London network of con artists. This was an entertaining read and I’ve actually just finished Alex Hay’s new one, The Midnight Guests, which was also fun.

My final link is to another book with playing cards on the cover. Ace, King, Knave by Maria McCann (6) is also a similar sort of novel, with two young women becoming embroiled in a world of thieves, pickpockets, gamblers and grave robbers. I really enjoyed this book but had forgotten all about it until putting this chain together!

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And that’s my chain for September! My links have included: collectors, the name Rose, the 1989 Booker Prize, Anthony Hopkins, the word Queen and playing cards.

In October we’ll be starting with Life of M by Rachel Cusk.