Judith Flanders

"Summer in London-the sun is finally shining, the flowers are in bloom, and life is humming merrily along for book editor Samantha Clair, off to lunch with her old friend, art-dealer Aidan Merriam. Humming merrily until she learns that his partner has just been found dead in their gallery, slumped over his desk with a gun in his hand. Could anything be worse? Oh yes, the police investigation is being led by Inspector Jake Field, who just happens to...

"From the critically acclaimed author of The Invention of Murder, an extraordinary, revelatory portrait of everyday life on the streets of Dickens' London.The nineteenth century was a time of unprecedented change, and nowhere was this more apparent than London. In only a few decades, the capital grew from a compact Regency town into a sprawling metropolis of 6.5 million inhabitants, the largest city the world had ever seen. Technology--railways, street-lighting,...

Few of us think much of the alphabet and its familiar sing-song order once we've learned it as children. And yet the order of the alphabet, that simple knowledge that we take for granted, plays far more of a role in our lives than we usually consider. From the school register to the telephone book, from dictionaries and encyclopaedias to the library shelves, our lives are ordered from A to Z. This magical system of organization not only guides us...

"There was every possibility that I was dead, and my brain hadn't got the memo. Or maybe it was that I wished I were dead. On reflection, that was more likely. Normally sharp-witted, book editor Sam Clair stumbles through a post-launch party morning with the hangover to end all hangovers. But before the Nurofen has even kicked in, she finds herself entangled in an elaborate saga of missing neighbors, suspected arson and an odd, unidentified body....

Book editor and amateur sleuth Samantha Clair attends a play filled with gruesome deaths--one of which is real.