Hello everybody!

I wanted to share the good news that my latest book, The Mysterious Case of the Victorian Female Detective, is one of the six shortlisted titles for the Wolfson History Prize, the biggest prize in the UK for history.

The winner gets £50,000, which is a stunning amount of money. I don't think I really have a chance of winning, as I'm very much the outlier on the list, but I'm very excited to meet the 5 other authors, as I really love their books.

Yale University Press has a 50% off sale throughout November in the UK, so paperback copies of my book are less than £6 right now via the Yale website:

https://yalebooks.co.uk/book/97803002...

To celebrate, I will be giving away a couple of copies of my book to readers who follow me here on goodreads and contact me via Instagram, X, or Bluesky.

Apparently, there are over 12600 people on goodreads who would like to read my book and find out more about the real women who worked as detectives in nineteenth-century Britain and America. If you're one of them, do get in touch! I also speak to book groups, schools, and societies about my research.

Writers and sleuths have a lot in common. We're people who like to watch, listen, take notes, often invisibly. We follow our chosen marks into all sorts of strange places. Sometimes we have more than one alias. We have to see beyond the story people tell to the stories they conceal.

I'm going to use this blog to share some of the stories and secrets behind The Mysterious Case of the Victorian Female Detective, and also to tell you what I'm working on now. My next book is on a very different topic...

Happy hunting! Until next time...