A tale of modern love and “genuinely puzzling historical murder mystery” combine in this “fresh and clever and very funny” novel (The Guardian, UK).

Oxford graduate student Kitt Farr has always been most at home in the Old Bodleian Library, but even she needs a break from her research into Victorian Era violence. Taking a dance class seems like a bit of a stretch—until she meets a cute classmate, mysterious math lecturer Joe Leppard. Then, as Kitt and Joe find a budding romance between them, Kitt finds something sinister in the stacks: an unsolved murder in 1838 with an unsettling connection to the young Charles Dickens.

Half a century before Jack the Ripper, a London prostitute known as The Countess was murdered in a way that eerily mirrors the events in Oliver Twist. Now Kitt and Joe are out to uncover how Dickens became tangled up with this horrendous crime.

“Gowers’s writing is absolutely beautiful.”—The Times, UK