The Long and Short of It was published in 2017 and collects “The Very First Damned Thing,”“When a Child is Born,”“Roman Holiday,”“Christmas Present,”“Ships and Stings and Wedding Rings,”“The Great St Mary’s Day Out,”“My Name is Markham,” and “A Perfect Storm.” Dr. Madeline/Lucy (“Max”) Maxwell, our heroine, is a feisty, snarky, self-deprecating historian who was the former head of the History Department at St. Mary’s.

Audible is delighted to bring you an exclusive, author-read production of The Very First Damned Thing. Hear it here first, months ahead of the EBook publication. Behind the very academic facade of St Mary’s Institute, the teams of historians, technicians and researchers have discovered the secret of time travel. Here, historians don’t just study the past, they visit it… You Can't Fight Fate: "History" appears to be a semi-sentient force that will intervene forcibly to preserve itself.The Chronicles of St Mary’s series is presented as being about a group of tea-soaked disaster magnets as they hurtle their way around history. Most of the short stories in the Chronicles of St. Mary’s series have been collected in two volumes: Time Machine: The St. Mary's team travel the timeline in "pods" - these come in a variety of sizes, but most are the size of a smallish shed and are disguised to look like a dilapidated hut from the outside so they'll blend into most historical locations. While not indestructible they are extremely sturdy, and inexplicably their interiors always smell of cabbage. I appreciate that Jodi Taylor is going easier on Christians this time around. She’s still hard on politicians, but that’s okay with me. 🙃 Once finished, Taylor self-published her book and it became a hit. It was 2013, and the beginning of the Chronicles of St. Mary’s series. What has Jodi Taylor written beyond the Chronicles of St. Mary’s series?

She gains insight (excuse the terrible pun) and eventually finally uncovers not only the organization's origins but also their supposed final gamble. And what a gamble it is! I expected them wanting to tinker with history, just like their founder, but for them to offing Washington's family line so there might never be a Revolutionary War in America or one won by the English crown as well as some other "tweaking" ... mad doesn't begin to describe it! Jodi Taylor reads the long-awaited prequel in her Chronicles of St Mary’s series, as Dr Bairstow struggles to set up St Mary’s as we know it in a world still scarred by the ravages of civil war. This is Book 14, and Jodi Taylor has managed to keep this fun, fresh, interesting, hilarious, and unpredictable through 14 books. Headline Publishing granted my wish and I got a NetGalley eARC of the 14th novel in The Chronicles of St Mary's series. That happened while I was somewhere between book 8 and 9 in my "great TCoSM re-read". I've meanwhile finished the re-read and re-read the ARC.That’s quite a feat, as many series become repetitive, formulaic, and stale after the first few books. But Taylor seems to really enjoy writing this stuff. Continuing where the last book left off, the shooting of the Director, Max is trying to regain her strength while staying under the radar of the authorities looking for her. She continues to work as a bounty hunter, sorry, recovery agent with Markham, Pennyroyal and Smallhope.