A Book Riot Best Book of the Year Goodreads Choice Award Finalist (History/Biography) “It’s Downton Abbey meets The Addams Family in [this] delightfully offbeat history.” —Library Journal At the close of the Victorian era, as now, privacy was power. The extraordinarily wealthy 5th Duke of Portland had a mania for it, hiding in his carriage and building tunnels between buildings to avoid being seen. In 1897, an elderly widow asked the court to exhume the grave of her late father-in-law, T. C. Druce, under the suspicion that he’d led a double life as the 5th Duke. The eccentric duke, Anna Maria contended, had faked his death as Druce, and her son should inherit the Portland millions. Revealing a dark underbelly of Victorian society, Piu Marie Eatwell evokes an era when the rise of sensationalist media blurred every fact into fiction and when family secrets and fluid identities pushed class anxieties to new heights.

The extraordinary story of the Druce-Portland affair, one of the most notorious, tangled and bizarre legal cases of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras. In 1897 an elderly widow, Anna Maria Druce, made a strange request of the London Ecclesiastical Court: it was for the exhumation of the grave of her late father-in-law, T.C. Druce. Behind her application lay a sensational claim: that Druce had been none other than the eccentric and massively wealthy 5th Duke of Portland, and that the – now dead – Duke had faked the death of his alter ego. When opened, Anna Maria contended, Druce's coffin would be found to be empty. And her children, therefore, were heirs to the Portland millions. The legal case that followed would last for ten years. Its eventual outcome revealed a dark underbelly of lies lurking beneath the genteel facade of late Victorian England.

An entertaining guide to the most eccentric characters from British history

“[A] juicy page turner . . . capturing both the allure and the perils of the dream factory that promised riches and fame.”—New York Times Book Review The gruesome 1947 murder of hopeful starlet Elizabeth Short holds a permanent place in American lore as one of our most inscrutable true-crime mysteries. In a groundbreaking feat of detection hailed as “extensive” and “convincing” (Bustle), skilled legal sleuth Piu Eatwell cracks the case after seventy years, rescuing Short from tabloid fodder to reveal the woman behind the headlines. Drawing on recently unredacted FBI and LAPD files and exclusive interviews, Black Dahlia, Red Rose is a gripping panorama of noir-tinged 1940s Hollywood and a definitive account of one of the biggest unsolved murders of American legal history.

"Superb... Flanders's convincing and smart synthesis of the evolution of an official police force, fictional detectives, and real-life cause célèbres will appeal to devotees of true crime and detective fiction alike." -Publishers Weekly, starred review In this fascinating exploration of murder in nineteenth century England, Judith Flanders examines some of the most gripping cases that captivated the Victorians and gave rise to the first detective fiction Murder in the nineteenth century was rare. But murder as sensation and entertainment became ubiquitous, with cold-blooded killings transformed into novels, broadsides, ballads, opera, and melodrama-even into puppet shows and performing dog-acts. Detective fiction and the new police force developed in parallel, each imitating the other-the founders of Scotland Yard gave rise to Dickens's Inspector Bucket, the first fictional police detective, who in turn influenced Sherlock Holmes and, ultimately, even P.D. James and Patricia Cornwell. In this meticulously researched and engrossing book, Judith Flanders retells the gruesome stories of many different types of murder in Great Britain, both famous and obscure: from Greenacre, who transported his dismembered fiancée around town by omnibus, to Burke and Hare's bodysnatching business in Edinburgh; from the crimes (and myths) of Sweeney Todd and Jack the Ripper, to the tragedy of the murdered Marr family in London's East End. Through these stories of murder-from the brutal to the pathetic-Flanders builds a rich and multi-faceted portrait of Victorian society in Great Britain. With an irresistible cast of swindlers, forgers, and poisoners, the mad, the bad and the utterly dangerous, The Invention of Murder is both a mesmerizing tale of crime and punishment, and history at its most readable.

The Last Boat is the second novel by author John Hanley, and the follow up to Against the Tide The book opens in the middle of the greatest naval disaster in British history when the Luftwaffe bombs and sinks the hastily converted Cunard liner, HMT Lancastria. In the ten minutes of bombing and strafing, over 5,000 troops and civilians are blown apart by the high explosive bombs. These losses represent more than one third of all members of the British Expeditionary Force killed in the nine months of war so far. The news is so shocking that Churchill suppresses it and the report into the loss will remain sealed until 2040. But this is only a beginning for Jack, Saul, Miko and Lt Commander Brewster who survive the attack and must fight their way back to Jersey through the German advance. During this journey they encounter a cargo so important that only Miko, the refugee physicist, really understands what could happen should the Germans intercept it. The Last Boat will appeal to readers of historical fiction who appreciate the complexities and uncertainties facing young adults as their world is forever shattered by war.