Six Degrees of Separation - Wolfe Island to Girl with a Pearl Earring

Welcome to this month's edition of Six Degrees of Separation, which is a monthly meme hosted by Kate from Books Are My Favourite and Best.  The idea is to start with a specific book and make a series of links from one book to the next using whatever link you can find and see where you end up after six links. 

The book that we are starting with this month is Wolfe Island by Lucy Treloar, a book that I haven't yet read. I recently realised that  I actually have Salt Creek, this author's first book on my shelf. I was a bit surprised the other day to see that my husband had something against that book. No idea what, but it did appear as though it was being held at electric drill point. It must have paid the ransom though because it is now free to rest on the shelves no longer threatened!

I actually ended up doing two versions of this month's Six Degrees. The other one featured werewolves and dark fantasy but in the end I decided to go with an around the world feel.We start in Canada and end up in the Netherlands, but we do take the long way around.

So my first book is Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney which was a Costa prize winner for a first novel back in 2006. I read it years ago and like it without loving it. This was a book that made me feel cold just reading it. There  was lots of snow.

There was no snow in Christie Watson's Tiny Sunbirds Far Away because it was set in Nigeria. I did love this book, and it also won the Costa prize for a first novel in 2011.

For my next book I am sticking with an African theme and choosing the first book in The Number 1 Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith which is set in Botswana. As an aside, I still love these early style covers in this series.

Another first book in a series featuring a lady detective is Cocaine Blues by Kerry Greenwood which is set in Melbourne in the 1920s. This features the divine Miss Phryne Fisher and the same applies to these styles of covers!

I chose to look for a link to the colour blue for my next connection which led me to The Girl in Hyacinth Blue by Susan Vreeland. In this book we follow a painting of a girl through it's various owners. I've read a number of this authors books over the years and find them fascinating.

My final connection is another book about a girl in a painting is The Girl With a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier. As I was preparing this post I was contemplating how hard it would be for the publisher to repackage this book with a completely different cover.

Next month's starting book is Stasiland by Anna Funder and I really have no idea how I am going to get that chain started. Lucky I have a while to think about it!