Six Degrees of Separation – from Wild Dark Shore to Bloody Instructions

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. May’s starting point is Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy (2025), an unusual and compelling book in which the main character eventually reveals how a catastrophic wildfire changed her life.

January 2026 Reading

A new year and all my library holds arrived at once, so I even had to return a few without reading! Two mysteries were my favorites this month: Guilty by Definition and Murder Takes a Vacation, and I decided to try Mick Herron’s Oxford Investigation series and enjoyed the first two books. I don’t expect to get much reading accomplished in February because I will be glued to the Olympics but I may get some quilting done . . . .

Bloody Instructions by Sara Woods

Written later than most of the Golden Age of Mysteries so many of us enjoy, Bloody Instructions is the appealing launch of 48 books about an attractive young barrister, Antony Maitland, who practices with his distinguished (and sometimes curmudgeonly) uncle, Sir Nicholas Harding. Sent on an errand to the firm of solicitors with whom they frequently work, Antony expects nothing more than a cup of tea but is still there when mild-mannered solicitor James Winter is discovered with a knife in his back!