This is guaranteed to be a fascinating evening. Two authors, two totally different novels but there is a connection that made us think it would be great to get Alis and Joanna together as they will have plenty to discuss. The books featured are The Hunters Club by Alis Hawkins, the third in the Oxford Mysteries series and The Eights, the debut novel by Joanna Miller.
Alis’s series is based around Oxford and the University in the 1880s and one of the two main characters is Non Vaughan, one of the few young women admitted to attend university lectures who has to fight misogyny and sexual politics. In The Hunters Club young men are being found bound, gagged and hooded at the gates of their colleges in the small hours. Basil Rice, Jesus College fellow, is asked by the senior proctor to investigate. But matters of sexual purity are dangerous, as it lays Basil open to unwelcome scrutiny of his own private life. Meanwhile, the University Vice Chancellor’s Court has wrongly imprisoned a young shopgirl from the town, and she seeks the services of young academic and budding journalist, Non Vaughan, to clear her name. The uncovering by Basil of a secret society, The Venatores, and the murder of a student, cause Non and Basil to join forces. But is justice possible in a world so unjust and dangerous?
The Eights is also set in Oxford, 1920. For the first time in its 1000-year history, the world’s most famous university has admitted female students. Giddy with dreams of equality, education and emancipation, four young women move into neighbouring rooms on Corridor Eight. They have come here from all walks of life, and they are thrown into an unlikely, life-affirming friendship. Dora was never meant to go to university, but, after losing both her brother and her fiancé on the battlefield, has arrived in their place. Beatrice, politically-minded daughter of a famous suffragette, sees Oxford as a chance to make her own way – and her own friends – for the first time. Socialite Otto fills her room with extravagant luxuries but fears they won’t be enough to distract her from her memories of the war years. And quiet, clever, Marianne, the daughter of a village vicar, arrives bearing a secret she must hide from everyone – even The Eights – if she is to succeed. But Oxford’s dreaming spires cast a dark shadow: in 1920, misogyny is still rife, influenza is still a threat, and the ghosts of the Great War are still very real indeed. And as the group navigate this tumultuous moment in time, their friendship will become more important than ever.
Alis Hawkins is well known to many of us through her Teifi Valley Coroner series and now the Oxford Mysteries. A three times CWA Historical Dagger shortlisted, and longlisted Gold Dagger author, Alis grew up on a dairy farm in Ceredigion. After three years reading English at Oxford she trained as a Speech and Language Therapist and has spent the subsequent three and a half decades variously working in a burger restaurant, bringing up two sons, working with homeless people and helping families to understand their autistic children. And writing. Always. Nonfiction (autism related), plays (commissioned for production in heritage locations) and, of course, novels.
Joanna Miller studied English at Exeter College, Oxford and later returned to complete a PGCE in Secondary English at The Department of Educational Studies. After ten years as a teacher and literacy adviser, she set up an award-winning poetry gift business with celebrity clients. Joanna’s rhyming verse has been filmed twice by the BBC and in 2015 she won The Poetry Prize, run by Bloomsbury Publishing and the National Literacy Trust. In 2021, Joanna graduated from the Faber Academy, after which she was accepted on the Escalator Talent Development Scheme at The National Centre for Writing. She has recently returned to Oxford to study part-time for a diploma in creative writing.
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