SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION: From The Lily in the Snow to The Widow of Ballarat

It's the beginning of a new month which means it's time to play Six Degrees of Separation. This meme is hosted by Kate of Books Are My Favourite and Best. The aim is to link six books to each other from the starting point.

This month we're playing a wild card. The starting point is the book you’ve ended last month’s chain with or for those playing for the first time, start with the last book you finished reading. Even though I've participated before, this is my first time this year. So, I'm bending the rules a little to start with the last book I finished reading in July: The Lily in the Snow by Jackie French. This is the third and latest book in her
excellent Miss Lily's Lovely Ladies Series. I'm hoping there will be more.

Edward, Prince of Wales, who briefly became King Edward VIII, appears in this book and also in The True Story of Maddie Bright by Mary-Rose MacColl, another excellent read.

A train on the cover provides the link to my next book, The Woman from Saint Germain by J.R. Lonie. This is high on my list of favourite World War II novels. Coincidentally, the women are looking in the same direction, but I know their thoughts are very different!

The word "woman" in the title provides the link to Tea Cooper's novel The Woman in the Green Dress, which in turn is linked by opals to The Opal Dragonfly by Julian Leatherdale, set in Sydney during the 1850s.


The 1850s and another substance that is mined, gold, takes me to Bruce Venable's Eureka Run, which is set on the Ballarat goldfields, as is my final book in the chain, The Widow of Ballarat by Darry Fraser.


Well, that's my Six Degrees of Separation for August! I'm happy to have had the time to participate this month as it's so much fun to do. Hopefully, I'll be able to join in next month when the starting point is A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles, a book I've yet to read.