Penny politics offers a new way to read early Victorian popular fiction such as Jack Sheppard, Sweeney Todd, and The Mysteries of London. It locates forms of radical discourse in the popular literature that emerged simultaneously with Brittan’s longest and most significant people’s movement. It listens for echoes of Chartist fiction in popular fiction. The book rethinks the relationship between the popular and political, understanding that radical politics had popular appeal and that the lines separating a genuine radicalism from commercial success are complicated and never absolute. With archival work into Newgate calendars and Chartist periodicals, as well as media history and culture, it brings together histories of the popular and political so as to rewrite the radical canon.

A true crime anthology exploring the dangerous side of romance—with couples who bonded over murder, mayhem and more. What brings criminal couples together? And what drives them apart? This volume of The Best New True Crime Stories attempts to answer these questions with a deep dive into true tales of lawless love. Everyone’s heard of Bonnie and Clyde, but the annals of crime history are full of dysfunctional duos whose deadly escapades are equally enthralling. Featuring contributions from an international list of award-winning crime writers, journalists, and experts in the dark crimes field, The Best New True Crime Stories: Partners in Crime is a must-read for any true crime afficionado. Because when love goes wrong, there’s never a dull moment.

DIVDIVEarly modern English canonical sources and sermons often urge the subordination of women. In Household Politics, Don Herzog argues that these sources were blather—not that they were irrelevant, but that plenty of people rolled their eyes at them. Indeed many held that a man had to be an idiot or a buffoon to try to act on their hoary “wisdom.� Households didn’t bask serenely in naturalized or essentialized patriarchy. Instead, husbands, wives, and servants struggled endlessly over authority. Nor did some insidiously gendered public/private distinction make the political subordination of women invisible. Conflict, Herzog argues, doesn't corrode social order: it's what social order usually consists in. He uses the argument to impeach conservatives and their radical critics for sharing confused alternatives. The social world Herzog brings vibrantly alive is much richer—and much pricklier—than many imagine./div/div