Time period: 19th century

In 1850s South Carolina, Rose, an enslaved woman, faced a crisis: the imminent sale of her daughter Ashley. Thinking quickly, she packed a cotton bag with a few items. Soon after, the nine-year-old girl was separated from her mother and sold. Decades later, Ashley's granddaughter Ruth embroidered...

This volume unbuttons the multi-layered, hundred-year-history of women's lives through fashion and beauty from 1860 to 1960. At the heart of this history is the female body. The century-span between the crinoline and the bikini witnessed more mutations in the ideal western woman's body shape than...

Set in the countryside of the Yorkshire Wolds and the River Humber, this is a companion volume to 'The Hungry Tide.' Annie has killed a man in the slums of Hull, and now she flees along the paths of the Humber, to unfamiliar territory and a new life.

An overview of Ukrainian art, artists and art movements from the dawn of Modernism and the 1900s to the Soviet period, to post-Soviet times and the beginning of the war with Russia in February 2022. Ukrainian art and artists are discussed within historical and political contexts as well as how th...

June, 1878. The body of a boy is pulled from the depths of the River Thames, suspected to be the beloved missing child of the widely admired Liberal MP Ralph Gethin. Four months earlier. Harriet is a young maid newly employed at Finton Hall. Fleeing the drudgery of an unwanted engagement in the s...

When Annie marries widower Edward Stonehouse and arrives at Guardbridge, his estate on the Yorkshire moors, she thinks she has finally put darkness behind her. She is mistaken. Edward's sister, Iris, still lives in the family home. A taxidermist and medium, she urges Annie to watch out for black ...

Susannah Gibson charts the struggles and immense achievements of a group of trailblazing women who risked their reputations to become public intellectuals. Burdened with ailing children and unsympathetic husbands, enduring the sneers of contemporaries who thought books frazzled women's brains and...

In 1824, Lyme Regis is as tumultuous as the sea that surrounds it. Wealthy holidaymakers dance in the Assembly Rooms whilst the poor riot over the price of bread, scientists do battle with theologists, and amidst it all, one woman is about to make an extraordinary discovery. When twenty-four-year...

In 1824, Lyme Regis is as tumultuous as the sea that surrounds it. Wealthy holidaymakers dance in the Assembly Rooms whilst the poor riot over the price of bread, scientists do battle with theologists, and amidst it all, one woman is about to make an extraordinary discovery.When twenty-four-year-...

London, 1932. Thomas James Wise is the toast of the literary establishment. A prominent collector and businessman, he is renowned on both sides of the Atlantic for unearthing the most stunning first editions and bringing them to market. Pompous and fearsome, with friends in high places, he is one...

A captivating tale of two Victorian gentlemen hiding their relationship away in a botanical garden who embark on a Frankenstein-style experiment with unexpected consequences. It is an unusual thing, to live in a botanical garden. But Simon and Gregor are an unusual pair of gentlemen. Hidden away ...

In 1825 the Stockton & Darlington company strode into history with the opening of the world's first public steam railway. What the S&DR had pioneered soon picked up speed, transforming lives and landscapes, connecting far-flung corners of the nation and creating its own distinctive environments a...

In 1895, Antonio Sonoro is the latest in a long line of ruthless men. He's good with his gun and is drawn to trouble but he's also out of money and out of options. A drought has ravaged the town of Dorado, Mexico, where he lives with his wife and children, and so when he hears about a train laden...

A Byron biography like no other - published to mark the bicentennial of his death - it tells the remarkable life story of the celebrated Romantic poet through ten of his best, most resonant letters. Using Byron's correspondence, Stauffer relates a vivid and engaging story of creativity, fame, sex...

1816. A massive volcanic eruption has caused the worst storms that Europe has seen in decades, yet Percy and Mary Shelley have chosen to visit the infamous Lord Byron at his villa on Lake Geneva. It wasn't their idea: Mary's eighteen year old step-sister, Claire Clairmont, insisted. But the reaso...

1843. On a remote Scottish island, Ivar, the sole occupant, leads a life of quiet isolation until the day he finds a man unconscious on the beach below the cliffs. The newcomer is John Ferguson, an impoverished church minister sent to evict Ivar and turn the island into grazing land for sheep. Un...

Somerset, 1911. Miner's wife Lorna Harrison sometimes wonders what became of her marriage. The affection has gone, and now her husband Harry is surly and cold. But Lorna will always be grateful for the joy that their two daughters bring. When a devastating accident occurs at the pit and Harry is ...

Somerset, 1911. Miner's wife Lorna Harrison sometimes wonders what became of her marriage. The affection has gone, and now her husband Harry is surly and cold. But Lorna will always be grateful for the joy that their two daughters bring. When a devastating accident occurs at the pit and Harry is ...

1890. Lieutenant Gabriel Stokes of the British Army left behind the horrors of war in Afghanistan for a role in the Metropolitan Police. Though he rose quickly through the ranks, the squalid violence of London's East End proved just as dark and oppressive as the battlefield. With his life falling...

What do three murderers, Karl Marx's daughter and a vegetarian vicar have in common? They all helped create the 'Oxford English Dictionary'. The 'Oxford English Dictionary' has long been associated with elite institutions and Victorian men; its longest-serving editor, James Murray, devoted 36 yea...