Book Review: Invisible Agents: Women and Espionage in Seventeenth-Century Britain


Painting of a 17th Century woman. She holds a finger to her lips.

It would be easy for the modern reader to conclude that women had no place in the world of early modern espionage, with a few seventeenth-century women spies identified and then relegated to the footnotes of history. If even the espionage carried out by Susan Hyde, sister of Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, during the […]

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Review: Lud-in-the-Mist


A rainbow over a river.

Lud-in-the-Mist - a prosperous country town situated where two rivers meet: the Dawl and the Dapple. The latter, which has its source in the land of Faerie, is a great trial to Lud, which had long rejected anything 'other', preferring to believe only in what is known, what is solid. Nathaniel Chanticleer is a somewhat […]

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Book Review: Brit(ish)


Book cover.

You’re British. Your parents are British. Your partner, your children and most of your friends are British. So why do people keep asking where you’re from? We are a nation in denial about our imperial past and the racism that plagues our present. Brit(ish) is Afua Hirsch’s personal and provocative exploration of how this came […]

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Book Review: The One That Got Away


The New Zealand parliament building on a book cover.

Lauren Fraser is easing into a comfortable retirement when her historian friend Ro reveals a shocking secret. Ro’s research has uncovered the attempted poisoning of a New Zealand prime minister. Despite herself, Lauren is drawn into the mystery. Who was the would-be murderer and can they be brought to justice after thirty years? Who has […]

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Book Review: A Short Philosophy of Birds


Drawings of birds.

The greatest wisdom comes from the smallest creatures There is so much we can learn from birds. Through twenty-two little lessons of wisdom inspired by how birds live, this charming French book will help you spread your wings and soar. We often need the help from those smaller than us. Having spent a lifetime watching […]

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Book Review: The Long Tomorrow


A covered wagon trudges through a nuclear wasteland.

Two generations after the nuclear holocaust, rumours persisted about a secret desert hideaway where scientists worked with dangerous machines and where men plotted to revive the cities. Almost a continent away, Len Coulter heard whisperings that fired his imagination. Then one day he found a strange wooden box ... The fifth novel from the Queen […]

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Book Review - Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code


A Black woman, face sorrounded by circuits, looks to the future.

From everyday apps to complex algorithms, Ruha Benjamin cuts through tech-industry hype to understand how emerging technologies can reinforce White supremacy and deepen social inequity. Benjamin argues that automation, far from being a sinister story of racist programmers scheming on the dark web, has the potential to hide, speed up, and deepen discrimination while appearing […]

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Book Review: The Relentless Moon


A lady astronaut looks up at the moon.

The Earth is coming to the boiling point as the climate disaster of the Meteor strike becomes more and more clear, but the political situation is already overheated. Riots and sabotage plague the space program. The IAC's goal of getting as many people as possible off Earth before it becomes uninhabitable is being threatened. Elma […]

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Book Review: Between the Stops by Sandi Toksvig


The comedian Sandi Toksvig looks out of the window of a bus.

This long-awaited memoir from one of Britain’s best-loved celebrities – a writer, broadcaster, activist, comic on stage, screen and radio for nearly forty years, presenter of QI and Great British Bake Off star – is an autobiography with a difference: as only Sandi Toksvig can tell it. ‘Between the Stops is a sort of a […]

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Book Review: A Symphony of Echoes


Book cover.

Wherever the historians go, chaos is sure to follow… Dispatched to Victorian London to seek out Jack the Ripper, things go badly wrong when he finds the St Mary’s historians first. Stalked through the fog-shrouded streets of Whitechapel, Max is soon running for her life. Again. And that’s just the start. Max finds herself in […]

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