This is a monthly link-up hosted by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. On the first Saturday of every month, a book is chosen as a starting point 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.

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 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.

A book doesn’t need to be connected to all the other books on the list, only to the ones next to them in the chain.

This month we are starting with Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy. It was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2026. As it’s a book I’ve not read this is the description from Goodreads:

A family on a remote island. A mysterious woman washed ashore. A storm gathering force.

Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny weather-lashed island that is home to the world’s largest seed bank. As Shearwater risks being lost to rising sea levels, the island’s researchers have fled, and only the Salts remain.

Until, during the worst storm in living memory, a stranger washes ashore. The family nurse the woman, Rowan, back to strength, but it seems she isn’t telling the whole truth about why she’s there. And when Rowan stumbles upon sabotaged radios and a recently dug grave, she realises that she’s not the only one on the island with a secret.

A novel of breathtaking twists, dizzying beauty and ferocious love, Wild Dark Shore is about the impossible choices we make to protect the people we love.

I think I may like to read this book.

My first link is Wild Mary by Patrick Marnham, a biography of Mary Wesley, the author of The Camomile Lawn (I remember watching the TV adaptation) and other books. It’s based on her personal papers, and conversations between Mary and Patrick Marnham in 2002. One of the most fascinating things about Mary’s life for me was her wartime experiences, working for MI5 in the decoding unit. 

My second link is another biography Daphne du Maurier by Margaret Forster, a candid account of her relationships, eg her troubled married life; wartime love affair; and friendships with Gertrude Lawrence and Ellen Doubleday, as well as an excellent source of information on Du Maurier’s method of writing and views on life. 

My third link is The End of the Affair by Graham Greene, a novel about the end of the affair between Maurice Bendrix and his friend’s wife, Sarah. Their affair had begun in 1944 during the London Blitz. It’s a study of love and hate, of desire, of jealousy, of pain, of faithfulness, and of the interaction between God and people.

The fourth book in my chain is The Death of Shame by Ambrose Parry and another character called Sarah. It’s the 5th and final Raven and Fisher book, set in Edinburgh in 1854 . It’s a combination of historical fact and fiction, a tale of murder and medical matters, with the social scene, historical and medical facts slotting perfectly into an intricate murder mystery.

My fifth link is another book on the history of medicine. It’s the The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, a biography of Henrietta’s life and death. She died of cervical cancer in 1951. Her cancer cells became known as HeLa cells and have formed the basis for much medical research and drug development ever since. It is also a history of the diagnosis and treatment of cancer and considers the ethical issues around ownership of her cells and the distress, anger and confusion this caused her family.

My final link is linked by the title – Dear Dodie: The Life of Dodie Smith by Valerie Grove. Dodie wrote  I Capture the Castle and The Hundred and One Dalmatians amongst many other books and plays. She was born in 1896 and died in 1990. During her lifetime the world went through enormous changes and numerous wars. This biography not only relates Dodie’s life, but is also a record of those years, containing so much about the changing society, culture, values and recalling an unknown (to me at any rate) theatrical age.

The links in my chain are words in the titles, biographies, books about love affairs, characters called Sarah, and books about the history of medicine. Four of the books are biographies and only one is crime fiction.

Next month (June 2, 2026) we’ll start with book by Austrian author Stefan Zweig – The Post Office Girl. Kate has chosen this book in honour of Eurovision being held in Vienna.