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 we’re starting with Land by Maggie O’Farrell. I haven’t read it, but am thinking about it. I didn’t love Hamnet as much as most people seem to have done, but would like to try more of her books and Land sounds interesting. Here’s what it’s about:

On a windswept peninsula stretching out into the Atlantic, Tomás and his reluctant son, Liam, are working for the great Ordnance Survey project to map the whole of Ireland. The year is 1865, and in a country not long since ravaged and emptied by the Great Hunger, the task is not an easy one. Tomás, however, is determined that his maps will be a record of the disaster.

The British soldiers in charge are due to arrive any day, expecting the work to be completed, but Tomás is sent off course by an unsettling encounter in a copse. His life, and those of his family, will never be the same again. Liam is terrified by the sudden change in his taciturn father. What was it that caused such cracks to open in Tomás and how is Liam, aged only ten, going to finish the mapping, and get them both home?

I’m going to use mapping as my first link. Harvest by Jim Crace (1) explores the reactions of a small rural community to the arrival of a ‘chart-maker’ who begins to measure and map their land – and their discovery that there are plans to enclose their fields and convert them to sheep farming. This is an unusual novel because we aren’t told exactly when or where it is set, leaving everything vague and timeless.

I have read another book with Harvest in the title: Random Harvest by James Hilton (2). This 1941 novel tells the story of Charles Rainier who is injured on a battlefield in France in 1917 and wakes up two years later in Liverpool with no memory at all of the intervening period. I loved this book and was completely taken by surprise by the ending.

Hilton, of course, is the name of a famous hotel chain. A book set in a hotel (though not a Hilton) is The Christmas Clue by Nicola Upson (3). Anthony and Elva Pratt, creators of the game Cluedo, are invited to host a murder mystery weekend at the Tudor Close Hotel – but before they even arrive, they find themselves with a real crime to solve. I found this an enjoyable Christmas read combining historical people and events with a fictional story.

Nicola Upson is better known for her series of novels featuring the classic crime author Josephine Tey in the role of a detective. My next link, then, is to a book by Tey herself: The Daughter of Time (4), in which Inspector Alan Grant has a broken leg and decides to investigate the alleged crimes of Richard III from his hospital bed. Reading everything he can find about Richard and the disappearances of the Princes in the Tower, Grant begins to discover that historical sources can’t always be trusted and that history is written by the victors.

Old God’s Time by Sebastian Barry (5) shares a word in the title. Set in Ireland, this novel follows retired police detective Tom Kettle as he looks back at his memories of a case from the 1960s which has been reopened. It involves one of the darkest episodes in the history of the Catholic Church and is not a comfortable book to read but Barry’s writing is as beautiful as ever.

The name Kettle makes me think of cups of tea, so my final book is Tea on Sunday by Lettice Cooper (6). Her only mystery novel, it was published in 1973 but feels like a much older book. The plot revolves around the death of Alberta Mansbridge, found strangled in her home as she waits for her guests to arrive for a tea party. Although the mystery isn’t very strong, the characters make this book worth reading.

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And that’s my chain for August! My links have included: Map making, the word Harvest, Hilton hotels, Josephine Tey, the word Time and kettles.

In September we’ll be starting with either our book group’s current selection or the book that we’re currently reading. As I’m not in a book group, for me it will have to be a current read!

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 we’re starting with Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke. I haven’t read it, but here’s what it’s about:

Natalie lives a traditional lifestyle – and her followers are sick with envy. Her charming farmhouse on her working ranch is artfully cluttered, her husband is a handsome cowboy, her homemade sourdough boules are each more beautiful than the last. So what if there are nannies and producers and industrial-grade ovens behind the scenes? What her followers don’t know won’t hurt them.

Then, one morning, Natalie wakes up in a strange, horrible version of reality. Her home, her husband, her children—they’re all familiar, but something’s off. Is this a hoax? A reality show? A test from God? Natalie knows just two things for sure: this isn’t her perfect life, and she must escape, by any means possible.

I’m sure there are more creative directions I could have gone in for my first link, but as Yesteryear seems to involve an element of time travel, although apparently with a twist, I’m simply going to link to one of my favourite time travel novels, The House on the Strand by Daphne du Maurier (1). It’s set partly in 14th century Cornwall, but it wasn’t the historical storyline that interested me so much as the method of time travel itself – psychological via an experimental drug rather than physical – and the implications it has for the lives of our present day (1960s) characters.

Du Maurier is known for her strong affinity with Cornwall, where she lived for many years. Another author who has set several of her books in Cornwall is Jane Johnson – for example, The White Hare (2). This one is set in a fictional Cornish valley which is beautifully and vividly described. Johnson works the legend of the white hare into the novel – a legend which really is a part of Cornish forklore.

Hare Sitting Up by Michael Innes (3) shares a word in the title. It’s the eighteenth book in Innes’ Inspector John Appleby series – and you’ll be pleased to know it’s not necessary to have read the previous seventeen first! In this book, more of a thriller than a mystery, Appleby is investigating the disappearance of Professor Howard Juniper, a top government scientist who has been conducting secret research into biological warfare.

Juniper isn’t a very common name but The Cromarty Library Circle by Shona MacLean (4) features a Miss Juniper, an elderly governess with a dubious past who has taken two young women under her wing to help prepare them for their future lives. According to the author, she based the character on Elizabeth Bond, a real schoolmistress from Scotland’s Black Isle.

In MacLean’s novel, a group of people from the Black Isle town of Cromarty decide to start a circulating library. Another novel about libraries is The Paris Library by Janet Skeslien Charles (5) which tells the story of the American Library in Paris and the people who worked there during the Nazi occupation. There’s also a modern day storyline which I didn’t like very much, but the wartime parts were fascinating and it was good to see that the library staff found various ways to keep the library operating throughout the war.

As Emma of Words and Peace is hosting Paris in July this month, I thought it would be nice to stay with books set in Paris for my final link. Paris by Edward Rutherfurd (6) is an obvious choice as it takes us through the history of the city from the 13th century to the 20th, following six different fictional families through multiple generations. I’ve read and enjoyed all of Rutherfurd’s novels (they’re all written in a similar way) but this isn’t one of my favourites as I found the non-chronological structure confusing.

And that’s my chain for July. My links have included: time travel, Cornwall, hares, the name Juniper, libraries and Paris.

In August we’ll be starting with Land by Maggie O’Farrell.

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 we’re starting with The Post Office Girl by Stefan Zweig. I haven’t read it, but here’s what it’s about:

It’s the 1930s. Christine, A young Austrian woman whose family has been impoverished by the war, toils away in a provincial post office. Out of the blue, a telegram arrives from an American aunt she’s never known, inviting her to spend two weeks in a Grand Hotel in a fashionable Swiss resort. She accepts and is swept up into a world of almost inconceivable wealth and unleashed desire, where she allows herself to be utterly transformed. Then, just as abruptly, her aunt cuts her loose and she has to return to the post office, where – yes – nothing will ever be the same.

My first link is a very obvious one, inspired by the mention of post offices – I’ve chosen The Postmistress by Sarah Blake (1). It tells the story of a postmistress (or postmaster as she prefers to call herself) in a small town in Massachusetts during World War II. Although I found this book a bit disappointing and couldn’t connect with the characters, I did enjoy the insights into how the war was affecting the lives of American people in the period just before the US officially joined the conflict.

Another book that explores life in America during the war is Elisabeth Sanxay Holding’s 1947 novel, The Blank Wall (2). I really enjoyed this one! It follows Lucia Holley, who is left at home with her teenage children while her husband is serving in the Navy and finds herself covering up a series of crimes in an attempt to avoid a family scandal. I loved the way Holding blends the details of Lucia’s domestic life with elements of suspense and danger.

The name Lucia appears in the title of the first book in EF Benson’s Mapp and Lucia series, Queen Lucia (3). First published in 1920, this is a humorous novel about a small community presided over by Emmeline Lucas, who really does regard herself as queen of the village! This book wasn’t entirely to my taste and I haven’t continued with the next one yet, but I read it at the start of the Covid pandemic and it was just the sort of light read I needed to take my mind off things.

The word Mapp made me think of maps and mapmakers. In The Bird King by G Willow Wilson (4), a mapmaker in Granada’s Alhambra palace is accused of sorcery when it’s discovered that he has the ability to draw magical maps of places he has never visited. He and his friend, Fatima, flee across 15th century Spain in search of the legendary island of Qaf, said to be the home of the King of the Birds. This is an unusual novel, combining history, myth and fantasy.

Court of Lions by Jane Johnson (5) is also set, at least partly, in the Alhambra. This is a dual timeline novel. Although I found the modern day storyline too melodramatic and some of the threads linking the two periods were unconvincing, the historical storyline is fascinating, covering the life of Sultan Abu Abdullah Muhammad (known as Boabdil) and the fall of Granada in 1492.

From lions to tigers for my final link! The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht (6), which won the Women’s Prize for Fiction (then known as the Orange Prize) in 2011, is set in an unnamed Balkan country and follows a young woman who decides to investigate the circumstances surrounding her grandfather’s death and discovers a link with an old folk tale involving an escaped tiger. I remember finding it interesting but I still haven’t read any of her other books.

And that’s my chain for June. My links have included: post offices, America in WWII, the name Lucia, maps (or Mapps), the Alhambra and big cats!

In July we’ll be starting with Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke.

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 we’re starting with Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy, which was longlisted for this year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction.

I haven’t read it but here’s what it’s about:

Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny weather-lashed island that is home to the world’s largest seed bank. As Shearwater risks being lost to rising sea levels, the island’s researchers have fled, and only the Salts remain.

Until, during the worst storm in living memory, a stranger washes ashore. The family nurse the woman, Rowan, back to strength, but it seems she isn’t telling the whole truth about why she’s there. And when Rowan stumbles upon sabotaged radios and a recently dug grave, she realises that she’s not the only one on the island with a secret.

A novel of breathtaking twists and dizzying beauty, Wild Dark Shore is about the impossible choices we make to protect the people we love.

My first thought was to link to a book set on an island, but I’m sure I’ve done that a few times before, so I went with a simple link to a book with Dark in the title instead. The Dark (1) is the fifth book in Sharon Bolton’s Lacey Flint series and begins with Lacey, who works for the Metropolitan Police Marine Unit, becoming caught up in a terrorist attack planned by a new group calling themselves MenMatter.

Another book that’s the fifth in a series is The Prime Minister by Anthony Trollope (2). It’s part of the Palliser series and in this book we see our old friend Plantagenet Palliser become Prime Minister at last while in another subplot, we follow lawyer’s daughter Emily Wharton who has fallen in love with the book’s villain, Ferdinand Lopez. I really need to pick up the final book in the series soon.

The next link is quite an obvious one – another novel about a Prime Minister – this time a real one! Precipice by Robert Harris (3) tells the story of Herbert Henry Asquith who was in power from 1908 to 1916. The book focuses on his relationship with the socialite Venetia Stanley and the way he handled the early stages of the First World War. It’s a fascinating novel from a political history point of view, although I didn’t find it as gripping as some of his other books.

Penitence by Kristin Koval (4) also has a one-word, nine-letter title beginning with P and ending with E. Set in a Colorado ski resort, it takes as its starting point the murder of a teenage boy by his own sister and goes on to explore the laws surrounding juvenile crimes, as well as raising questions about blame and forgiveness.

Another crime novel set in a ski resort is Dead Men Don’t Ski by Patricia Moyes (5). I’ve just finished reading this one so haven’t written a review yet. It was published in 1959 and is the first of many novels Moyes wrote featuring Inspector Henry Tibbett. In this one, Tibbett goes on a skiing trip to Italy with his wife and is drawn into solving the murder of a man who appears to have been shot dead on the ski lift. I enjoyed this book and will be reading more of them!

An author who shares a name with Patricia Moyes is Patricia Highsmith. I’ve only read two of her books and have used Strangers on a Train in a previous chain, so my link here is to This Sweet Sickness (6). This unsettling novel follows the double life of a man who refuses to accept that his relationship with the woman he loves is over.

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And that’s my chain for May! My links have included: the word Dark, fifth books in a series, Prime Ministers, one word titles beginning with P, ski resorts and authors called Patricia.

Next month we’ll be starting with a book by Austrian author Stefan Zweig – The Post-Office Girl

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 we’re starting with Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, one of my favourite classics. The book has been getting a lot of attention recently due to the new film adaptation (which I wrote about here), so it’s a perfect choice for this month’s Six Degrees.

For my first link, I’ve chosen a novel inspired by Wuthering Heights – Ill Will by Michael Stewart (1). Those of you who have read Wuthering Heights will remember that Heathcliff disappears for several years after overhearing a conversation between Catherine and Nelly. In Ill Will, Stewart gives a possible account of where Heathcliff may have gone during that period and what he could have been doing. I loved the setting and the historical detail, but the language felt inappropriate for a book inspired by a 19th century classic and pulled me out of the story.

The Tutor by Andrea Chapin (2) also attempts to fill in a ‘lost year’. Little is known about William Shakespeare’s life between the years of 1585 and 1592 and in this novel, Chapin imagines that in 1590 Shakespeare was employed as a tutor at a country estate in Lancashire (there’s no real evidence for this theory, although several people have suggested it). She uses this idea to show where some of the inspiration for his work may have come from, particularly the poem Venus and Adonis.

The word ‘tutor’ made me think of other books about teaching. John Williams’ 1965 novel Stoner (3) is about the life of a man who teaches English Literature at the University of Missouri for more than forty years. It’s not the most eventful of lives, yet I found the book completely gripping and would highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys fiction with academic settings.

Another book published in 1965 is Airs Above the Ground by Mary Stewart (4). I love Stewart’s novels – they all have a wonderful sense of place and this one is no exception. Set in Vienna, the book follows our heroine Vanessa as she searches for her missing husband and becomes caught up in a mystery involving the dancing Lipizzaner stallions of the famous Spanish Riding School.

Vienna is a setting I always enjoy reading about, so my next link is to Midnight in Vienna by Jane Thynne (5), the first in a new series of wartime spy thrillers featuring Stella Fry and Harry Fox. In this book, set in 1938, Stella travels to Vienna on the trail of a murder suspect. I loved Thynne’s portrayal of the mood of the Austrian people following the annexation of their country by Nazi Germany. I recently read the second book in the series and will be reviewing it soon.

I’m ending my chain with a simple link using the word Midnight. Midnight is a Lonely Place by Barbara Erskine (6) tells the story of an author who rents a cottage on the Essex coast to work on her new book. When strange things start happening at the cottage, she becomes convinced that she is being haunted by the ghosts of a Roman soldier and a Druid prince. I found it atmospheric but wished there had been more focus on the historical characters. Erskine always sounds like an author I should love, but I’m often left feeling a bit disappointed by her books.

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And that’s my chain for March! My links have included fiction inspired by Wuthering Heights, ‘lost years’, teaching, the year 1965, Vienna and the word midnight.

In April we’ll be starting with Virginia Evans’s epistolary novel, The Correspondent.

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 we’re starting with Flashlight by Susan Choi, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2025. I haven’t read it, but here’s what it’s about:

One evening, ten-year-old Louisa and her father, Serk, take a walk out on the breakwater. They are spending the summer in a coastal Japanese town. Hours later, Louisa wakes on the beach, soaked to the skin. Her father is missing: presumably drowned.

This sudden event shatters their small family. As Louisa and her American mother return to the US, Serk’s disappearance reverberates across time and space, and the mystery of what really happened that night slowly unravels.

The first book that comes to mind is Surfacing by Margaret Atwood (1), in which another father goes missing, possibly drowned. His daughter, an unnamed narrator, returns to her childhood home on an island in northern Quebec to discover the truth behind his disappearance. I read the book last year and found it fascinating, although I’m not sure I fully understood it all.

Quebec is my next link. The short story The Custom of the Army appears in Diana Gabaldon’s Seven Stones to Stand or Fall (2), a collection of stories and novellas featuring characters from her Outlander series. In The Custom of the Army, Lord John Grey goes to Canada to serve as a witness at a court martial and becomes caught up in the Battle of Quebec of 1759. That one wasn’t one of my favourite stories, but I enjoyed the collection overall.

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese (3) shares the word ‘stone’ in the title. I loved this wonderful novel set in an Ethiopian hospital and following the stories of the conjoined twin sons of a British surgeon and an Indian nun. I still haven’t read Abraham Verghese’s second novel, but I really should.

Another book featuring conjoined twins is The Bell in the Lake by Lars Mytting (4), the first in the Sister Bells trilogy about life in the remote Norwegian village of Butangen where two church bells – commemorating the twins, Gunhild and Halfrid – are said to have supernatural powers. The novel was originally published in Norwegian and translated into English by Deborah Dawkin.

Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset (5) is another book set in Norway and written by a Norwegian author. It’s actually a trilogy, but often combined into one volume and tells the story of the title character, who grows up in Norway in the 14th century. It’s a sad, tragic story, but I loved it and can recommend Tiina Nunnally’s translation. The book led to Undset winning the 1928 Nobel Prize in Literature “principally for her powerful descriptions of Northern life during the Middle Ages”.

Another novel I’ve read by a Nobel Prize winner is Nights of Plague by Orhan Pamuk (6), translated by Ekin Oklap. It’s set on a fictional Mediterranean island during an outbreak of plague at the turn of the 20th century and Pamuk uses this a starting point to explore the fall of the Ottoman Empire.

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And that’s my chain for February! My links include: missing fathers, Quebec, the word ‘stone’, conjoined twins, Norwegian authors and Nobel Prize winners. The chain took me from Japan to the Mediterranean via Canada, Ethiopia and Norway, and features three books in translation.

In March we’ll be starting with Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë – one of my favourite classics!

It’s the first Saturday of the month – and of 2026! – 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 we’re starting with the book with which we finished last month’s chain (or the last book we read if we didn’t take part last month). For me, this was The Night Circus by Erin Morgernstern. Here’s how I described it in my review:

The Night Circus tells the story of Celia and Marco, two young magicians who have been selected by their mentors to take part in a very special contest. The rules of the competition are shrouded in mystery and even the two illusionists themselves aren’t sure what they have to do to win. And the venue for this magical battle? Le Cirque des Rêves, or the Circus of Dreams, one of the strongest, most vivid fictional worlds I’ve ever come across in a novel.

The Night Circus was a great starting point, with lots of options to move forward with the chain. Usually I choose books that I’ve actually read and reviewed on my blog, but instead I’m going to start with a first link suggested to me by one of my blog readers. Thanks Paul! Round the Bend by Nevil Shute (1), which I haven’t read yet, follows the story of two aircraft engineers who begin their careers with Alan Cobham’s Flying Circus. I would like to read this eventually as I enjoyed the one Shute novel I’ve read (Pied Piper) and am looking forward to reading more.

The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club by Helen Simonson (2) is set in 1919 and features a group of women who buy a damaged fighter plane to restore so that they can begin training female pilots. I enjoyed this book – it’s a fascinating portrayal of life in the aftermath of the First World War when the War Practices Act meant that many women were dismissed from their jobs to make way for the returning soldiers.

I’m going to break my own rule of only including books I’ve reviewed again, because the next book that comes to mind is one I read years before I started blogging: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig (3). It was published in 1974, although I think I read it in the 90s. It’s about a man who travels across America with his young son by motorcycle, discussing philosophy along the way. I remember finding it interesting but I probably only understood half of it and wouldn’t want to read it again today.

I want to get away from transport related books now, so I’m linking next to another novel published in 1974 – Cashelmara by Susan Howatch (4). This novel, like some of Howatch’s others, is a family saga retelling Plantagenet history in a more recent setting. In this one, Edward I, Edward II and Edward III of England are recreated as Edward de Salis, his son Patrick and grandson Ned, a fictional 19th century family. It’s not necessary to be familiar with the history, but if you can spot the parallels it makes the story even more interesting!

An author who shares a name with Susan Howatch is Susan Hill, who wrote The Small Hand (5), a ghost story in which an antiquarian book dealer begins to have several unsettling experiences where he feels a child’s small hand holding his own. I found this an eerie, atmospheric novel rather than a particularly scary one, though maybe that’s because I read it in the summer – it’s a story for a dark winter night, I think!

The word ‘small’ also appears in the title of A Small Circus by Hans Fallada (6), which brings my chain full circle this month! I usually love Fallada, but this novel, first published in German in 1931, wasn’t for me. It does have an interesting setting, describing tensions and corruption in a small German town in the period between the two world wars, but I struggled with the unpleasant characters and confusing plot. I read a modern translation by Michael Hofmann.

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And that’s my chain for this month! My links have included circuses, flying, motorcycles, books published in 1974, authors named Susan and books with ‘small’ in the title.

In February we’ll be starting with Flashlight by Susan Choi.