Hosted by author Paul Burston with special guests Steven Appleby and Alex Reeve.

For almost thirty years, Steven Appleby created, wrote and drew weirdly obsessive and obliquely personal comic strips for many newspapers including the NME, the Guardian, Observer, The Times and the Sunday Telegraph.

He has also written a comedy series for BBC Radio 4, had his character Captain Star animated for television and published over 25 books.

After secretly wearing women’s clothes on and off for most of his life, Steven came out to family and friends in the 1990’s and began living full time as a trans-person in 2008.

His latest book, the graphic novel Dragman, was published in the UK last year by Jonathan Cape and has now come out in America, Holland and France, where it won the prestigious Prix Special Du Jury at the 48th International Angoulême Comic Festival in January 2021.

Alex Reeve is a University lecturer and lives in Oxfordshire.

His debut novel, The House on Half Moon Street, was published in May 2018 and introduces us to Leo Stanhope, an assistant to a 'surgeon of the dead' in London in 1880, who sets out to solve a crime while hiding a very big secret of his own.

It was a Richard and Judy Book Club pick in 2019 and was short-listed for three prizes: The Royal Society of Literature Christopher Bland Prize, the Crime Writers’ Association Historical Dagger and the Polari First Novel Prize. 

The second in the series, The Anarchists’ Club was short-listed for The Crime Writers’ Association Historical Dagger. 

The Butcher of Berner Street is the third in the series. The fourth in the series will follow in Spring 2022.