It’s the first Saturday of the month which means it’s time for 6 Degrees of Separation.
Here’s how it works: a book is chosen as a starting point by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best and linked to six other books to form a chain. Readers and bloggers are invited to join in by creating their own ‘chain’ leading from the selected book.
Kate says: Books can be linked in obvious ways – for example, books by the same authors, from the same era or genre, or books with similar themes or settings. Or, you may choose to link them in more personal or esoteric ways: books you read on the same holiday, books given to you by a particular friend, books that remind you of a particular time in your life, or books you read for an online challenge. Join in by posting your own #6Degrees chain on your blog and adding the link in the comments section of each month’s post. You can also check out links to posts on X using the hashtag #6Degrees.
This month’s starting book is Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy which was longlisted for this year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction. I read it for my book club but didn’t love it as much as lots of other people, including the Women’s Prize judges, clearly did. Links from each title will take you to my review or the book description on Goodreads.
Wild Dark Shore is set on a remote island which is home to the world’s largest seed bank. As the book opens, the scientists carrying out research have already abandoned the island in the face of rising sea levels. Cold, Cold Heart by Christine Poulson is set in a similarly remote location, an Antarctic research station. Not a good place to be cut off from the outside world in when there’s a killer on the loose.
Another remote place features in The Dark Isle by Clare Carson in which Sam travels to the small island of Hoy in Orkney in an attempt to piece together the facts about her father’s death many years before.
A rather more welcoming island – Alderney, in the Channel Islands – is the setting for A Line to Kill by Anthony Horowitz, the third book in his Hawthorne & Horowitz crime series. A literary festival seems an unlikely location to encounter a cold-blooded killer but you’d be wrong.
Although not set during a literary festival, Devorgilla Days by Kathleen Hart does have as its location Wigtown, the town known as ‘Scotland’s book capital’. As part of her recovery from physical and mental health issues, the author has a daily swim in the sea.
In Swimming Lessons by Claire Fuller, Ingrid hides the letters she writes to her husband about the truth of their marriage inside some of the thousands of books he owns. Having written the final letter she disappears from a Dorset beach.
A mysterious disappearance from a beach takes place in the opening pages of Flashlight by Susan Choi, this time from the coast of Japan. Flashlight is one of the six novels on the shortlist for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2026 bringing me satisfyingly full circle.
My chain has taken me from darkness to light. Where did your chain take you?
What Cathy Read Next... 