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Last week, I was delighted by Judi Dench’s book, Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent. Tina is looking forward to the American release of the first book in Ann Cleeves series featuring Inspector Ramsay, A Lesson in Dying.

Lucy Worsley is my favorite British historian. I’ve been watching her history specials on PBS for years — most recently, Lucy Worsley Investigates. My favorite was probably her take on the six wives of Henry VIII. Or, maybe, A Very British Murder. It’s hard to choose!

Recently, I realized that Lucy Worsley hosted three seasons of a podcast called Lady Killers. Lady Killers is available on BBC or wherever you usually listen to podcasts. The first two seasons are about murderesses in history. For the third season, she switched to hustlers and con-women, calling the series Lady Swindlers.

Lucy’s tagline for the series is “where history meets true crime, with a twist.” The twist is that we also get a modern feminist take on these stories. What does this story tell us about the lives of women in the past? How might we look at this woman differently, if she were alive today?

Lady Killers episodes usually have two guests. One is the “resident historian,” Rosalind Crone, Professor of History at the Open University. The other guest is a woman with a professional career that can shed light on the case — often, an attorney or someone in law enforcement.

Some of my favorite episodes were, naturally, ones about people I’ve encountered before like Lizzie Borden (of forty whacks fame) and Edith Thompson (who was a focus of my R.eaders I.mbibing P.eril posts in 2022).

But I also appreciated learning lots of new stories about women in all kinds of circumstances. Most of women’s history is barely documented, if at all. It turns out that a good reason to examine the history of women’s encounters with the law is that they are recorded in court documents and newspapers. We can glean clues about these women’s lives beyond just the details of their alleged crimes.

Each episode is about 30 minutes long. I found them to be excellent bedtimes stories, if you can handle the occasional gruesome description.