St Kilda Bird Song by KF MacCarthy won the 2024 HWA Dorothy Dunnett Short Story Competition. Our judges said: “A magical and immersive story of a late 19th-century teacher on the remote island, told from diverse perspectives with fluency and confidence. A very special piece of writing about a remarkable place.” The 2025 Short Story […]
Alexander II: love and death in Imperial Russia
Paris, the City of Love, in the 1860s; Alexander II of Russia meeting a mysterious fortune-teller who predicts his death; an assassination attempt in the Imperial Palace. RN Morris tells this strange story and wonders: did the gypsy’s prophecy come true? Part one: love In May 1867, a World Fair was held in Paris. Tsar […]
Death Of A Princess by RN Morris
Summer 1880 in Lipetsk, a spa town in Russia. The elderly and cantankerous Princess Belskaya suffers a violent reaction while taking a mud bath at the famous Lipetsk Sanatorium. Soon after, she dies. Dr Roldugin, the medical director of the sanatorium, is at a loss to explain the sudden and shocking death. He points the […]
Arm of Eve: Investigating the Thames Torso Murders by Sarah Bax Horton
Jack the Ripper is often called the world’s most notorious unidentified killer, but he was not the first modern serial killer on the streets of London. Before him was another murderer who hunted from the River Thames – one, arguably, more sadistic and mercurial. The Thames Torso Killer has always lurked in the Ripper’s shadow, […]
An epidemic of murder in late Victorian London
When Sarah Bax Horton discovered a police ancestor who worked on the Jack the Ripper investigation, her research led her to write two non-fiction books based on the Metropolitan Police Whitechapel Murders files. Her second book, Arm of Eve, proposes a new prime suspect for the Thames Torso Killer, a serial killer active at the […]
A Bitter Remedy by Alis Hawkins
Jesus College, Oxford, 1881. An undergraduate is found dead at his lodgings and the medical examination reveals some shocking findings. When the young man’s guardian blames the college for his death and threatens a scandal, Basil Rice, a Jesus College fellow with a secret to hide, is forced to act and finds himself drawn into […]
Calcutta Blues: why Kipling despised the city
Rudyard Kipling famously wrote about Calcutta, and not to praise it, says Vaseem Khan, author of the Malabar House crime series. He looks at the history of the first capital of British India, its place in the independence movement, and why men like Kipling despised both it and the Bengalis who used the written word […]
Madwoman by Louisa Treger
In 1887 young Nellie Bly sets out for New York and a career in journalism, determined to make her way as a serious reporter, whatever that may take. But life in the city is tougher than she imagined. Down to her last dime and desperate to prove her worth, she comes up with a dangerous […]