Category: 6Degrees

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 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.

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This month’s starting book is Beach Read by Emily Henry. As is often the case, it’s a book I haven’t read or, to be honest, am likely to read as it doesn’t really sound my thing.

But picking up on the ‘beach’ element of the title, my first link is to The Beach at Doonshean by Penny Feeny.  It tells the story of Julia, a widow, who decides to return to a wild corner of Ireland, the site of a tragedy thirty years before, in an attempt to lay to rest the past.

The Truth Must Dazzle Gradually by Helen Cullen is also set in a remote part of Ireland. It tells the story of married couple, Maeve and Murtagh, and the impact a tragic event has on the members of their family.

Strains in a relationship form the basis for The House of Birds by Morgan McCarthy. Oliver’s girlfriend, Kate, inherits a derelict house. She wants to strip it, sell it and move on but the house holds a mysterious allure for Oliver, as well as a secret.

There’s another house with a mystery associated with it in The House at Helygen by Victoria Hawthorne. When Henry Fox is found dead in his ancestral home in Cornwall the police rule it a suicide but his pregnant wife, Josie, believes it was murder and embarks on a quest to learn the truth.

Staying in Cornwall and the theme of family secrets, in The Birdcage by Eve Chase three half-sisters gather at Rock Point, the Cornish cliff house where they once sat for their father’s most celebrated painting, ‘Girls with Birdcage’.

A painting is also the focus of Molly & The Captain by Anthony Quinn. The portrait of his two daughters – a painting known as ‘Molly & The Captain’ – by famous artist William Merrymount forms a connection between the lives of characters separated by over three hundred years.

My chain has taken me on a journey from a beach house on Lake Michigan to Georgian Bath. Where did your chain take you?

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 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.

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This month’s starting book is The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey.  For once it’s a book I’ve actually read, even if it was back in 2017. Recently arrived in Alaska, Jack and Mabel build a child out of snow. The next morning, the snow child is gone but they see a young, blonde-haired girl running through the trees. Is she a real girl or has the snow girl come to life?

An air of the supernatural also runs through The Night Ship by Jess Kidd in which connections emerge between the lives of two children, Mayken and Gil, despite their being separated by over three hundred years. The author places Mayken onboard the Batavia which sank in 1629 off the coast of western Australia.

Another book which depicts the events of a maritime disaster is Every Man For Himself by Beryl Bainbridge which tells the story of the sinking of the Titanic in April 1912.

A voyage on another luxury liner, the Queen Mary, features in Three Words for Goodbye by Hazel Gaynor and Heather Webb. Estranged sisters Clara and Madeleine Sommers travel from New York to Europe to fulfill their grandmother’s dying wish by delivering three letters to people she hasn’t seen for forty years.

In Ghosts of the West by Alec Marsh, Sir Percival Harris and Professor Ernest Drabble’s investigation into the theft of artefacts from the British Museum sees them take a voyage across the Atlantic in the company of the cast of a Wild West Show.

The Million Dollar Duchesses by Julie Ferry (which was previously published under the title The Transatlantic Marriage Bureau) chronicles the events of a single year – 1895 – in which a number of transatlantic marriages took place between wealthy American heiresses and not so wealthy but titled British aristocrats.

The Buccaneers by Edith Wharton (unfinished at the time of her death) replays this story in fictional form. Sisters Nan and Jinny St George are members of the new Wall Street monied class but find themselves excluded from upper echelons of New York society. Therefore they are launched by their governess on an unsuspecting British aristocracy who appreciate the money that New York’s nouveaux riches bring.

My chain has taken me on a voyage of discovery. Where did your chain take you?