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.
This month’s starting book is The Anniversary by Stephanie Bishop. As usual, it’s a book I haven’t read but from the blurb I learn it’s a thriller about a novelist whose husband disappears while they’re on a cruise to celebrate their wedding anniversary. Links from each title in the chain will take you to my review or the book description on Goodreads.
White Water, Black Death by Shaun Ebelthite also takes aboard a cruise ship but in this case the threat is from an outbreak of a deadly plague.
Fortune’s Wheel by Carolyn Hughes, the first book in her Meonbridge Chronicles series, is set in a medieval Hampshire village in which the Black Death has wiped out half the population and the villagers are struggling to return to normal life.
Staying with the theme of fortune, the heroine of The Square of Sevens by Laura Shepherd-Robinson, a young girl known as Red, travels the country with her father earning money by telling people’s futures using an ancient method of laying out cards.
Laura Shepherd-Robinson is the daughter of actor Sir Tony Robinson who was the presenter of Channel 4’s Time Team series in which a group of archaeologists had three days to discover historical artifacts in different sites around Britain. One of the archaeologists who frequently appeared on the programme was Francis Pryor, author of A Fenland Garden. In the book he describes how he and his wife set about creating a garden in the Fens of southern Lincolnshire.
The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L. Sayers is set in the fictional Fenland village of Fenchurch St. Paul. As well as trying to solve the mystery of a mutilated body found in another person’s grave, Lord Peter Wimsey helps to ring an all-night peal of bells in the village church on New Year’s Eve.
In The Bell in the Lake by Lars Mytting, set in 19th century, Norway, a young pastor arrives in a small village and seeks to demolish its 700-year-old church which contains two bells said to have supernatural powers.
My chain has taken me from the high seas to a Norwegian lake via the Lincolnshire Fens. Where did your chain take you this month?
This month we’re invited to pick a travel guide as our starting book. I’ve selected this one – Shakespeare-Land by Walter Jerrold, illustrated by E.W. Haslehurst – from my collection of books in the ‘Beautiful England series’. (I possess twelve in all, picked up in secondhand bookshops over the years.)
What Cathy Read Next... 