In the genteel squares of late-Victorian Brighton, Ellen and Reynold Harper — twins, companions, colleagues – ply their trade as portrait photographers. But at the golden hour, the models arrive to pose for the lucrative — and illicit — photographs that really keep the Harpers’ business afloat. This is the other, shadowy world of the […]
PT Barnum and the Circassian girl
It was a shock for RN Morris to discover that PT Barnum, the famous showman, was a people-trafficker. Yet the facts are well documented. For Historia Roger investigates Barnum’s attempt to buy a ‘beautiful Circassian girl’. One of the things I discovered while researching my novella, The Crimson Child, is that PT Barnum, the famous […]
The Bone Hunters by Joanne Burn
In 1824, Lyme Regis is as tumultuous as the sea that surrounds it. When 24-year-old Ada Winters — poor, peculiar and brilliant — uncovers a set of unusual fossils on the cliffs, she believes she has found the answer to her scientific frustrations and her family’s financial struggles. Meanwhile, Doctor Edwin Moyle has come to […]
The Secrets of Blythswood Square by Sara Sheridan
1846. Glasgow is a city on the cusp of great social change, but behind the curtains, neighbours are watching, and rumours of improper behaviour spread like wildfire on the respectable Blythswood Square. When Charlotte Nicholl discovers that the fortune she has been bequeathed by her father is tied up in a secret collection of erotic […]
Fyneshade by Kate Griffin
On the day of her beloved grandmother’s funeral, Marta discovers that she is to become governess to the young daughter of Sir William Pritchard. Separated from her lover and discarded by her family, Marta has no choice but to journey to Pritchard’s ancient and crumbling house, Fyneshade, in the wilds of Derbyshire. All is not […]
The Low Road by Katharine Quarmby
Norfolk, 1813. In the quiet Waveney Valley, the body of Mary Tyrell is staked through the heart after her death by suicide. She had been under arrest for the suspected murder of her newborn child. Mary leaves behind a young daughter, Hannah, who is later sent away to the Refuge for the Destitute in London, […]
Maude Horton’s Glorious Revenge by Lizzie Pook
London, 1850. Constance Horton has disappeared. Maude, her older sister, knows only that Constance abandoned the apothecary they call home, and, disguised as a boy, boarded a ship bound for the Arctic. She never returned. ‘A tragic accident’, the Admiralty called it. But Maude Horton knows something isn’t right. When she finds Constance’s journal, it […]
Sherlock Holmes and the Duelling Dukes by Linda Stratmann
In 1877, Sherlock Holmes and his good friend Mr Stamford have taken a break from their studies at Barts Medical College in London to join a gentlemen’s sporting week at a large country manor house. But on arrival, they find the guests consumed by old rivalries, with new hatreds and sinister plots festering among them. […]