Wrecker

Sara Lodge (Author)

The Mysterious Case of the Victorian Female Detective

6,A revelatory history of the women who brought Victorian criminals to account--and how they became a cultural sensationShortlisted for The Wolfson History Prize 2025 From Wilkie Collins to the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, the traditional image of the Victorian detective is male. Few people realise that women detectives successfully investigated Victorian Britain, working both with the police and for private agencies, which they sometimes managed themselves. Sara Lodge recovers these forgotten women's lives. She also reveals the sensational role played by the fantasy female detective in Victorian melodrama and popular fiction, enthralling a public who relished the spectacle of a cross-dressing, fist-swinging heroine who got the better of love rats, burglars, and murderers alike. How did the morally ambiguous work of real women detectives, sometimes paid to betray their fellow women, compare with the exploits of their fictional counterparts, who always save the day? Lodge's book takes us into the murky underworld of Victorian society on both sides of the Atlantic, revealing the female detective as both an unacknowledged labourer and a feminist icon. ...

Jennifer Rycenga (Author)

Schooling the Nation: The Success of the Canterbury Academy for Black Women

3,Founded in 1833 by white teacher Prudence Crandell, Canterbury Academy educated more than two dozen Black women during its eighteen-month existence. Racism in eastern Connecticut forced the teen students to walk a gauntlet of taunts, threats, and legal action to pursue their studies, but the school of higher learning flourished until a vigilante attack destroyed the Academy. Jennifer Rycenga recovers a pioneering example of antiracism and Black-white cooperation. At once an inspirational and cautionary tale, Canterbury Academy succeeded thanks to far-reaching networks, alliances, and activism that placed it within Black, women's, and abolitionist history. Rycenga focuses on the people like Sarah Harris, the Academy's first Black student; Maria Davis, Crandall's Black housekeeper and her early connection to the embryonic abolitionist movement; and Crandall herself. Telling their stories, she highlights the agency of Black and white women within the currents, and as a force changing those currents, in nineteenth-century America. Insightful and provocative, Schooling the Nation tells the forgotten story of remarkable women and a collaboration across racial and gender lines. ...

Guy De La Bedoyere (Author)

The Fall of Egypt and the Rise of Rome: A History of the Ptolemies

2, A compelling history of the Ptolemies, the decline of Egypt, and the rising power of the Roman Empire The Ptolemaic era, Egypt's last and one of its longest dynasties, was in many ways a gilded age. Its early rulers restored and even expanded Egyptian power. Over a span of 300 years the period was witness to intellectual enlightenment, imaginative state-building, and some of the most memorable characters in ancient history, including Alexander the Great and Cleopatra VII. But these Macedonian Greek pharaohs embarked on ruinous warfare, faced rebellion, and descended into murderous family feuds. Increasingly reliant on the dizzying rise of Roman power, Ptolemaic Egypt was finally annexed by Augustus in 30 BCE. How did such an ancient civilization come to this? Exploring the lives of the Ptolemaic pharaohs, de la B?doy?re reveals the jealousy, greed, and murderous ambition in their Egypt and the legendary city of Alexandria, their capital. This is a lively, accessible account of Ancient Egypt's last days--and of the new power rising in its place.