Agatha Christie's Surfboard, Creepy Dickens, & Briits

October 19, 2026

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Everyone knows A Christmas Carol, but Dickens wrote a far nastier ghost story - and this December, it’s getting the BBC treatment. The Bride’s Chamber is this year’s A Ghost Story for Christmas, adapted by Mark Gatiss and starring Martin Freeman and Jim Broadbent: a spurned suitor marries a young woman for her fortune, and his murderous scheme builds him a purgatory of his own.

The odd bit is where it comes from. The story is buried inside The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices, an 1857 travelogue Dickens co-wrote with Wilkie Collins after a walking holiday in the north of England.

No US air date yet (the US hasn’t even gotten last year’s entry in the series yet), but you don’t have to wait for the story. It’s in the public domain, so you can get it free at Project Gutenberg, or grab it cheaply on Amazon if you prefer.

Tired of endlessly scrolling and still not finding the British TV shows you want to watch? This print guide makes it easy to see what’s available at a glance - now in its 12th edition.

  • 220+ pages cover 24 US-based streaming services, telling you which British TV shows are available on each and what they're about. No need to give yourself carpal tunnel clicking through endless on-screen menus.

  • An alphabetised index for when you know the name of the show, but not the streaming service.

  • Size 12 font! Even as the guide has gotten longer, we’ve avoided shrinking the text because we don’t want it to be unreadably small.

  • Each edition has bonus features in back. This time, we’ve included features on spooky British productions and rare/underappreciated gems currently available to stream.

  • A "Renewals & Cancellations" section that offers status updates about which shows are returning (or not).

British eBooks on Sale: October 19th

As always, a short disclaimer on the sale listings - the overwhelming majority of our readers are US-based, so sale availability may vary outside of the US (it’s up to the publisher/author if they wish to coordinate sales internationally). Deals can disappear at any time, but all e-books were $2.99 or less at time of writing.

  • The Coffin Path by Katherine Clements - At Scarcross Hall on the Yorkshire moors, Mercy Booth reluctantly hires a stranger as missing coins, a shadowy figure, and the feeling of being watched disturb her isolated home.

  • The Seaside Supper Club by Caroline Roberts - When painful news disrupts Cath and Will’s new romance in the Northumberland village of Tilldale, their supper club friends organize a vintage afternoon tea to bring the community together.

  • The Fish & Chip Shop Detectives and a Mystery at Sea by Jenny Kane - Fish and chip shop owners Maggie and Ryan investigate a possible connection between a missing local youth, a stolen fishing boat, and a body discovered at St Michael’s Mount near their home in Mousehole, Cornwall.

  • Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie - While researching in London, an American professor in her fifties begins an unlikely romance with a sanitary engineer from Oklahoma, while her younger colleague, whose marriage is faltering, becomes involved with an English actress.

  • The Forgotten Sister by Nicola Cornick - After a scandal forces her out of public life, Lizzie Kingdom investigates two suspicious deaths centuries apart, uncovering a connection to Amy Robsart’s desperate attempt to escape her marriage to Tudor courtier Robert Dudley.

New British Books in the Last Week (October 19th)

A small selection of newly released British books (books written by British authors or with a British setting/strong British connection)…

  • As We Fall Through Time by Claire North - A time traveler alters history to save his lover, a soldier of the French Revolution, while a woman discovers her own mummified corpse in a museum in 2018, drawing both into a rupture that threatens past and future.

  • Unspeakable Things by Elizabeth Hand - In 1920s rural England, two young women’s obsessive love affair leads them to flee after an unexplained death and seek refuge at a wealthy man’s estate, where their newfound freedom comes at a cost.

  • Mystery at the Lantern Theatre by Clare Chase - When the director and Cinderella of Saxford St Peter’s touring pantomime are murdered, Eve Mallow investigates backstage rivalries to uncover the real killer despite a police arrest.

  • Sleepers in the Snow by Joanne Harris - Seeking a fresh start after a bitter divorce, a newcomer to an isolated moorland house uncovers its former owners’ tragic history through their diaries as strange disturbances suggest the danger hasn’t passed.

  • Diddly Squat: The GOAT by Jeremy Clarkson - Jeremy Clarkson recounts a year at Diddly Squat Farm, where natural disasters, cattle disease, and government policies contribute to a £5,000 loss amid machinery mishaps, cooking failures, and encounters with local wildlife.

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Here’s something you won’t find in a Poirot novel: Agatha Christie was one of the first Britons to surf standing up. She learned in South Africa and Hawaii during a ten-month trip around the world in 1922, long before anyone in England had heard of the sport.

The surfboard (a replica, sadly) is one of the stars of Agatha Christie: A World of Mystery, a new exhibition opening at the British Library on October 30th and running through June 2027. It also includes her typewriter and the typescript of a short story she wrote at 18 that has never been published.

If a trip to London isn’t in the cards, her letters and photos from that 1922 voyage were collected in The Grand Tour: Around the World with the Queen of Mystery, which is a surprisingly funny read - and a reminder that the Queen of Crime was once a young woman having the time of her life on a beach.

“The best men are not consistent in good—why should the worst men be consistent in evil?”

Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White

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