Six Degrees of Separation – from Dangerous Liaisons to Mrs. Plansky's Revenge

It’s time for #6degrees, inspired by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. We all start at the same place as other readers, add six books, and see where it ends up. This month, Kate started with a classic, Dangerous Liaisons by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, which is about seduction and revenge.

A Darker Domain by Val McDermid

As she spoke, she reached for the phone that had just begun to ring. There were other, more junior officers in the big squad room that housed the Cold Case Review Team, but promotion hadn’t altered Karen’s ways. She’d never got out of the habit of answering any phone that rang in her vicinity. “CCRT, DI Pirie speaking,” she said absently . . . .

In the Blink of an Eye by Jo Callaghan

In this series launch, a police detective is asked to lead a pilot program examining cold cases with the help of an Artificially Intelligent Detective Entity (AIDE) – basically, a robot – as part of her team, with results that surprise her. Detective Chief Superintendent Kat Frank has been on leave while recovering from the death of her husband and resulting depression of her teenage son but now she wants to return to work. 

False Colours by Georgette Heyer

Kit Fancot is a rising young diplomat, stationed in Vienna, when he senses something is wrong with his identical twin brother back in London. It’s 1817 so he can’t call or text – he uses the recent death of his godfather as an excuse to make the long journey home. 

Five Little Pigs by Agatha Christie #ReadChristie2025

Hercule Poirot excels at cold cases so he is intrigued when Carla Lemarchant turns up for an appointment with a murder from the past. When she was 21, she learned that her mother had murdered her father, Amyas Crale, a well-known painter. Caroline Crale was convicted and died in prison, a year later.

WWW Wednesday – January 15

WWW Wednesday is hosted by Taking on a World of Words.

The Three Ws are:

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

Currently Reading

Someone recently recommended In the Blink of an Eye by Jo Callaghan (2023), which I am enjoying. The main character, Detective Kat Frank, is a single mother asked to lead a pilot program using a sort of robot with artificial intelligence. 

Glinda of Oz by L. Frank Baum #Ozathon24

In L. Frank Baum’s final Oz book, published a year after his death, Ozma learns from Glinda’s Great Book of Records that two tribes in the distant Gillikin country are about to go to war. 

The Skeezers have declared war on the Flatheads, and although Ozma has never heard of either faction previously, she now feels a sense of responsibility:

My December 2024 Reading

Somehow in a busy December, I read 12 adult books and four children’s or YA books (two of which were rereads), plus listened to three audio books (all crime fiction) driving back and forth to various places.  A few of these were intended as Christmas presents so I was trying to vet them first!  Overall, it was an outstanding reading year (see my Best of 2024 list).

The Colony Club by Shelley Noble

It’s 1902 and Florence “Daisy” Harriman, married to a rich banker, could have chosen to live solely as a Gilded Age socialite. However, while she is an accepted member of the New York and Newport ruling class, enjoying her privileges, she is also a social reformer and suffragist, and later a diplomatic envoy. At the time of this book, loosely based on history, she realizes that the ladies of her acquaintance need an elite club in Manhattan, just as their menfolk enjoy spending time at male bastions such as the Union Club or the Princeton Club.* 

The Night We Lost Him by Laura Dave

Nora Noone is a busy architect who recently started her own firm, specializing in building spaces that promote healing, while her equally ambitious fiancé is a chef with a small but highly regarded restaurant in Brooklyn. She is meeting with a new client when her half-brother Sam appears to say he needs her help because he thinks their father’s recent death was not an accident. 

Six Degrees of Separation – from Orbital to Ender's Game

It’s time for #6degrees, inspired by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. We all start at the same place as other readers, add six books, and see where it ends up. This month’s starting point is the 2024 Booker winner, Orbital by Samantha Harvey, which follows six fictional astronauts over 24 hours on an orbiting space station.

Love in a Mist by Susan Scarlett #DeanStreetDecember

This is one of 12 light-hearted novels that Noel Streatfeild wrote for adults under a pseudonym, and the only one I’ve read that wasn’t a romance. Instead, this is more of a Tring family story, a grocery business in its fourth generation as backdrop, and the gentle dictatorship of Dad-Tring and Mum-Tring over their adult sons, especially the two who work for their father. George, the eldest, is a solicitor, married to Anna, who believes she married beneath her and feels she is not sufficiently valued in the community. Andrew, the youngest, is married to Doris, who attended the London School of Economics and could have had a promising career.

Favorite Reads of 2024

Wishing you a Happy New Year and many good books in 2025! I read nearly 200 books in 2024 and quite a few were so compelling I kept recommending them to others or thinking about them myself. These are my top ten: