Dark tales abound of various UK universities being at risk of breaching agreements with their banks. But what exactly are covenants? Why have they come to play such a prominent role in the conversatio...

Review ★★★★ The reason I still love physical libraries is because they make it so easy to wander slowly through a selection of books and pick up something spontaneously that comes with none of the bumph of online selection: no aggregated number of stars by reviewers, no detail about what comes before or after it in a series, no picture or author biography.

Preserved on the campus of University College London (UCL) are the remains of philosopher Jeremy Bentham. Regrettably, his classical liberal view of education has not also benefitted from conservation...

Review ★★★ I was really excited about the premise of this book, and the initial introductions to its apparently diametrically opposed characters—Roach (aka Brogan) and Laura—fizzed with the promise of tension. There was a lack of real menace about Roach, despite her developing stalker behaviour. A grungy quasi-loner, actually longing for connection and struggling to find the right way to go about it, Roach's low self-esteem and awkwardness really do provoke empathy, and I have to say of the two principals I'd prefer to see Roach make a transformation rather than alcoholic melancholic Laura.

Preamble If you like mythologically informed (crime-adjacent) fiction, you can also check out my Dear Damsels story, 'In Darkness' as well as some of the stories in this collection, available on Bookshop.Org! Review ★★★★ This collection was published a few years again now, but I read it earlier this year, while the weather was still gloomy and the nights long.

Review ★★★★★ I was somewhat slow to this, reading it a few years after it came out. Setting up a master detective requires a deftness of touch; go too far, and they sound rather Mary Sue, but if you don't go far enough in impressing their credentials on the reader then they and the plot can feel very hollow. This is one of the many things Turton does excellently, using small sections of back-narration to summarise the relationship between the "alchemical" detective, Samuel Pipps, and his assistant, Arent Hayes, the synopses feigning a parasocial relationship between us as readers and this detective-and-sidekick pair.

Review ★★★ Having written a collection of short stories about detective work in the Victorian East End, this is of course going to catch my eye, which it did eventually on a Tower Hamlets library shelf. (And the Whitechapel branch, no less.) This is the second novel by TV producer, Claire Evans, although both stand alone. (I haven't read The Fourteenth Letter…

Review ★★★★★ This is the third in the Smart Women series, featuring mother and daughter Ursula and Pandora Smart (in-world, supposedly not their real names) and aunt Charlotte, plus some of their friends and acquaintances, and the series just keeps getting better. As in the previous two books, the Smart women endeavour to go on a relaxing holiday and instead find themselves marooned (although not literally, this time) and in the middle of a murderous plot.

Review ★★★★ I am slowly picking my way through more of the twentieth-century greats’ novels, and Christie’s Poirot novels are excellent travelling companions. Compact and concise, this one was great for a flight and the long commute back from the airport. In brief, eccentric society man Mr Shaitana is stabbed at one of his own parties while the eight of his guests play bridge at two separate tables.

Preamble Check out my short story collection of cosy mysteries featuring Victorian “lady detective” Meinir Davies; order now! Or, if you’re a particular Edinburgh enthusiast, try my novella Researcher Wanted, available on Kindle. Review ★★★★ As one of the extraordinary sidekick series I've written about before, I watched Vienna Blood when it first broadcast and so the characters here feel quite comfy and familiar: Oskar and Max, the Liebermann family more broadly, and the psychiatric community of medics in turn-of-the-century Vienna.

Preamble Check out my short story collection of cosy mysteries featuring Victorian “lady detective” Meinir Davies; order now! Or, if you’re a particular Edinburgh enthusiast, try my novella Researcher Wanted, available on Kindle. Review ★★★★ I'm grateful to the publisher and author for an Advanced Reader Copy of this novel via NetGalley. Victorian Edinburgh. I've covered a bit of the summary of why this is fantastic setting for historical detective fiction featuring medical professionals (and aspiring female medical professionals) in my review of Carole Lawrence's…

Review ★★★★ This is the second in the Smart Women series, featuring mother and daughter Ursula and Pandora Smart (in-world, supposedly not their real names), aunt Charlotte, and godmother Mirabelle, plus book-club hanger-on Bridget and her dog. The unreliable narrator of the series, Ursula, is prima facie a shaky, timid soul who hasn't ever recovered from the death of her father when she was 13.

Preamble Take a look at my short story collection of cosy mysteries featuring Victorian “lady detective” Meinir Davies; order now! Review ★★★★★ It's been a while since I reviewed something that I learnt about on the fantastic Death of the Reader podcast, which seems to be currently in abeyance, but they made the story sound like such great fun that I was happy to jump in partway through the Rachel Savernake series.

Preamble If you’re interested in reading my academic work about detective and crime fiction (free PDFs available), check it out here. Or you can take a look at my short story collection of cosy mysteries featuring Victorian “lady detective” Meinir Davies; order now! Review ★★★★ I have tended not to review here the Victorian fiction on which I write academically, outside of the research-related posts from my Great Nineteenth-Century Reading Challenge.

If you’re interested in nineteenth-century historical crime fiction, take a look at my short story collection of cosy mysteries featuring Victorian “lady detective” Meinir Davies; available now! Or if you're a fan of the Scottish capital, check out my short story on Kindle, Researcher Wanted (free on Kindle Unlimited). Review ★★★★ I read this some time ago but was reminded of it by a new ARC (to be reviewed soon), so thought I should pick this back up and properly review it here.

Review ★★★★ Billed as a "hidden history" in its sub-subtitle, like many popular history works, this somewhat oversells its unveiling of new stories to those who know anything much about the period under investigation. Still, as a Victorianist and someone who writes historical crime fiction set in the period, generally focused on women, I definitely found some nuggets of interest here.

Universities UK survey underlines “continued challenges for sector” despite four-month rise in student visa applications

ALT: a small brown and white dog is laying on the floor with the caption daylight saving time translation tired for a week hahaha

U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat about upcoming military strikes in Yemen. I didn’t think it could be real. Then the bombs started falling.