#6Degrees of Separation – A book chain from The Anniversary to The Bell in the Lake

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.


The AnniversaryThis 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?
#6Degrees of Separation May 2024

#WWWWednesday – 1st May 2024

WWWWednesdays

Hosted by Taking on a World of Words, this meme is all about the three Ws:

  • What are you currently reading?
  • What did you recently finish reading?
  • What do you think you’ll read next?

Why not join in too?  Leave a comment with your link at Taking on a World of Words and then go blog hopping!


Currently reading

Book cover of Under the Banner of Valor by Gary CorbinUnder the Banner of Valor by Gary Corbin (eARC) 

Val Dawes and the WAVE Squad get called into action after Clayton’s family planning clinics receive an ominous threat: Close the clinics, or else.

WAVE Squad member Valorie Dawes takes this threat personally, as her closest friend since childhood, Beth, discloses that she’s pregnant and is considering an abortion.

Can Val support her friend and keep her safe from the armed madman? Or will Beth’s stubborn recklessness thrust her into harm’s way?

Absolutely & ForeverAbsolutely & Forever by Rose Tremain (Chatto & Windus)

How do you find the courage to make your own life?

Marianne Clifford, teenage daughter of a peppery army colonel and his vain wife, falls helplessly and absolutely for eighteen-year-old Simon Hurst, whose cleverness and physical beauty suggest that he will go forward into a successful and monied future, helped on by doting parents. But fate intervenes. Simon’s plans are blown off course, he leaves for Paris and Marianne is forced to bury her dreams of a future together.

It is Marianne who tells this piercing story of first love, characterising herself as ignorant and unworthy, whilst her smart, ironic narration tellingly reveals so much more. Finding her way in 1960s Chelsea, and supported by her courageous Scottish friend, Petronella, she continues to seek the life she never stops craving. And in Paris, beneath his blithe exterior, Simon Hurst continues to nurse the secret which will alter everything.


Recently finished

The Coming Storm by Greg Mosse (Moonflower Books)

The Montford Maniac by M.R.C. Kasasian (Canelo) 

Darkness Does Not Come At Once by Glenn Bryant (Book Guild)


What Cathy Will Read Next

How to Make a BombHow To Make A Bomb: A Novel by Rupert Thomson (eARC, Apollo via NetGalley)

If he suddenly found what surrounded him unbearable, it was because it was artificial. Everything had been designed and manufactured, and he was trapped in it.

Philip Notman, an acclaimed historian, attends a conference in Bergen, Norway. On his return to London, and to his wife and son, something unexpected and inexplicable happens to him, and he is unable to settle back into his normal life.

Seeking answers, he flies to Cadiz to see Inés, a Spanish academic with whom he shared a connection at the conference, but his journey doesn’t end there. A chance encounter with a wealthy, elderly couple sends him to a house on the south coast of Crete. Is he thinking of leaving his wife, whom he claims he still loves, or is he trying to change a reality that has become impossible to bear? Is he on a quest for a simpler and more authentic existence, or is he utterly self-deluded?

As he tries to make sense of both his personal circumstances and the world surrounding him, he finds himself embarking on a course of action that will push him to the very brink of disaster.