I love Bernard Cornwell’s work, mostly the Richard Sharpe series, the Grail Quest series and the Warlord series but here comes a wonderful standalone book, The Gallows Thief.  It is set in Georgian England, about 1815, when hanging judges kept the gallows filled.  The penalty for almost all crimes, including petty theft, was hanging or transportation to one of the Crown’s colonies.  The book opens with a gruesome hanging at Newgate prison

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