It’s the first Saturday of the month so 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 six degrees 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 Twitter using the hashtag #6Degrees
This month’s starting book is Three Women by Lisa Taddeo. Links from the book title will take you to my review or the book description on Goodreads.
I haven’t read Three Women but the book description tells me it’s about the sex lives of three real American women – Lina, Maggie and Sloane.
Sleeping Through War by Jackie Carreira also tells the stories of three different women. It’s set in 1968, a turbulent time of student demonstrations in Europe, civil rights marches in the United States, political tension in Eastern Europe, and the Vietnam War.
From a book about three women we move to White Houses by Amy Bloom, a book about the relationship between two women, Eleanor Roosevelt and journalist, Lorena Hikock, known as Hick. I loved Hick’s witty wisecracks and waspish putdowns such as, ‘I’d met Wallis Simpson. Twice. She wasn’t pretty. She was a skinny rough-houser from a shitbox Southern town but she had done a phenomenal job of remaking herself, vanquishing good looking rivals, and turning a genial, not stupid, sort of spineless royal into her love-slave.’
Wallis Simpson is the subject of Anna Pasternak’s book Untitled: The Real Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor in which the author seeks to rehabilitate the reputation of Wallis Simpson, although I suspect she might have had trouble convincing Hick to change her opinion.
Anna Pasternak is the great niece of Boris Pasternak, the author of Doctor Zhivago, which leads me to The Secrets We Kept by Lara Prescott. (Incidentally, Lara Prescott was named for the heroine of Doctor Zhivago.) The book tells the story of how copies of the Russian author’s masterpiece, banned in his own country, were smuggled into the Soviet Union by the CIA.
In Prescott’s book, the ladies of the CIA typing pool act as quirky narrators. Violet, the main character in A Single Thread by Tracy Chevalier, also works as a typist, for an insurance company in Winchester. She meets and subsequently forms a touching relationship with Winchester Cathedral bell-ringer, Arthur Knight.
Bell ringing plays a key part in the Lord Peter Wimsey crime mystery, The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L Sayers. Set in the fenland village of Fenchurch St. Paul, there’s a memorable scene where the bell ringers ring in the New Year. The Nine Tailors also appears in the list of books Tracy Chevalier used as research for A Single Thread.
Where did your chain take you this month?
My first choice is Wicked by Design by Katy Moran, the follow-up to Hester and Crow (previous published as 
Next up is The Mermaid’s Call by Katherine Stansfield, the third book in her ‘Cornish Mysteries’ series featuring female detectives, Shilly and Anna. The case they are engaged to investigate takes them to Morwenstow in Cornwall and the curious household of Parson Hawker (based on a real life character). I described it as ‘a story of love, secrets, betrayal and revenge, sprinkled with a hint of the supernatural and full of twists and turns’. You can read my full review 
My next choice is The Mathematical Bridge by Jim Kelly. It’s another book that is one of a series and again it’s a historical crime mystery, this time set in World War 2 Cambridge. I loved it just as much as the first book, 
I think you see a pattern emerging here because my next choice is also a historical crime mystery. This time, however, it’s the first in a new series. The Vanished Bride by Bella Ellis imagines that, before they became famous writers, the Brontë sisters – Charlotte, Emily and Anne – were female ‘detectors’ and the case of the vanished bride was their first investigation.
My final choice is Eight Hours From England by Anthony Quayle, one of the books in the Imperial War Museum’s ‘Wartime Classics’ series published to coincide with the 80th anniversary of the start of World War 2.
