The Specimens: A Bold Retelling of Burke and Hare's Crimes from the Women Closest to the Gruesome Truth

By Mairi Kidd

Book Overview

"A work of fiction that is both a potent portrait of early 19th-century Edinburgh but also a story about female agency or the lack of it. The result is a compelling, painful, haunted piece of work."--The Herald

Edinburgh, 1828. Two women - one rich, one poor - must navigate life against a frenzied backdrop of medical discovery, mob mayhem, and murder.

The home Helen shares in the slums of the Old Town with her lover William Burke could hardly be more different from Susan's dreams of an affluent existence as the wife of Robert Knox, one of the foremost anatomists of the day. But as people begin disappearing, these two very different women face an impossible choice. Should they protect what lives they have or tell the truth about what they know?

This is the story of the notorious serial killings of Burke and Hare, told for the first time through the eyes of two very different women, whose stories explore the depths of the human heart in a perilous, vulnerable world.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1785307533
• ISBN13: 9781785307539
• Release Date: February 2026
• Publisher: Black & White Publishing
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.0" x 7.7"