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A A Gill

Andrew Swanston read law at Cambridge, but was inspired to write by his lifelong interest in early modern history. His Thomas Hill novels – The King’s Spy, The King’s Exile and The King’s Return – are set against the backdrops of the English Civil War, Cromwell’s Commonwealth and the early Restoration respectively. He is also the author of Waterloo: The Bravest Man and Beautiful Star and Other Stories. His first historical thriller set during the reign of Elizabeth I – Incendium (published in paperback as The Incendium Plot) – introduced readers to the academic, lawyer and intelligencer Dr Christopher Radcliff, whose adventures continue in Chaos. Andrew Swanston lives in Surrey.

A D Swanston

A E Langsford

A G Hopkins

A. J. BAIME is the New York Times best-selling author of The Arsenal of Democracy: FDR, Detroit, and an Epic Quest to Arm an America at War and Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans. Both books are in development for major motion pictures. Baime is a longtime regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal, and his articles have also appeared in the New York Times, Popular Science, and Men’s Journal. He lives in Granite Bay, California. Visit him at facebook.com/ajbaime and trumanbook.com.

A J Baime

A J Jacobs

A J P Taylor

Anthony James Pollard is a British medieval historian, specialising in the fifteenth century and in particular the Wars of the Roses. A leading authority in the field, he is profesor emeritus of Teesside University. His books include North-Eastern England during the Wars of the Roses, Richard III and the Princes in theTower, Imagining Robin Hood: the Late Medieval Stories in Historical Context and Warwick the kingmaker: Politics, Power and Fame.

A J Pollard

A J Rochester

A K Benjamin is a clinical neuropsychologist and the author of Let Me Not Be Mad: A Story of Unravelling Minds.

A K Benjamin

A. L. Berridge read English at Oxford, and taught for ten years before moving into television, where her production credits range from period drama and thrillers to long-running soaps. She has written two previous novels, Top Ten besteller Honour and the Sword and In the Name of the King. Into the Valley of Death is her third novel.

A L Berridge

Alison Gaylin's first job was as a reporter for a celebrity tabloid, which sparked a lifelong interest in writing about people committing despicable acts. More than a decade later, she wrote and published her Edgar-nominated first novel, HIDE YOUR EYES. 
 
She's since published nine more books, including the USA Today and international bestselling Brenna Spector suspense series, which has been nominated for the Edgar, Anthony and Thriller awards and won the Shamus award. 
 
She lives in upstate New York with her husband, daughter, cat and dog.

A L Gaylin

A Maxwell-Hyslop

A McArthur

A P Wavell

A.S. Webb is the Sunday Times bestselling author of Daughter of Chaos, the first instalment of The Dark Pantheon Trilogy. She is inspired by stories rooted in history and mythology, that push the boundaries of imagination and urge us to reflect on what it means to be human.

A S Webb

A. A. Dhand is the author of six previous novels, and has been shortlisted for the CWA Steel Dagger Award. His DI Harry Virdee novels are currently being adapted for TV by the BBC. He was raised in Bradford and spent his youth observing the city from behind the counter of a small convenience store. After qualifying as a pharmacist, he worked in London and travelled extensively before returning to Bradford to start his own business and begin writing. The history, diversity and darkness of the city have inspired all his novels. For more information about A. A. Dhand and his books, follow him on X @aadhand, and on Instagram @aa_dhand.

A. A. Dhand

A. A. Gill

A. A. Milne

A. Anatoli

A. B. Poranek grew up sharing her time between Ontario, Canada and rural Poland, and eventually completed a veterinary degree at the Warsaw University of Life Sciences. A lover of mythology and history, she enjoys exploring both in her writing. Her debut novel, Where the Dark Stands Still, an instant New York Times bestseller, is an ode to Poland's folktales, while A Treachery of Swans transports readers to a world inspired by 17th century France.

A. B. Poranek

A. Bradley

Professor A. C. Grayling is Principal of the New College of the Humanities at Northeastern University, London, and a Supernumerary Fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford. He has written and edited over thirty books on philosophy, history, science and current affairs. For several years he wrote columns for the Guardian newspaper and The Times and was the chairman of the 2014 Man Booker Prize.

A. C. Grayling

A.D. Miller is the author of Snowdrops, The Earl of Petticoat Lane and The Faithful Couple. Snowdrops was a bestseller and was shortlisted for many prizes including the Man Booker and the CWA Gold Dagger. It was translated into 25 languages. As Moscow Correspondent of The Economist A.D. Miller has travelled across the former Soviet Union and covered the Orange Revolution in Ukraine; he is now the magazine’s Culture Editor based in London. 
 
admillerbooks.com

A. D. Miller

A. E. Ellis

A. E. W. Mason

A. Humphreys

A. Igoni Barrett was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, in 1979 and lives in Lagos. He is a winner of the 2005 BBC World Service short story competition, the recipient of a Chinua Achebe Center Fellowship, a Norman Mailer Center Fellowship, and a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Residency. His short story collection, Love is Power, or Something Like That, was published in 2013. In 2014 he was named on the Africa39 list of sub-Saharan African writers under 40. Blackass is his first novel.

A. Igoni Barrett

The short life of A.J.A. Symons (1900-41) was described by his biographer as an intricate and largely harmless confidence trick. His many interests included the collection of musical boxes and rare books as well as the study and practice of forgery; they left him time to edit an anthology of Edwardian verse and compose studies of H.M. Stanley and other notable figures. He is remembered for The Quest for Corvo, one of the most remarkable biographies ever written, and for co-founding the Wine and Food Society.

A. J. A. Symons

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James Patterson

These are the brutally honest stories usually only shared amongst comrades in arms; stories of life-and-death decisions, and learning how to live with the effects of horrific injuries, both physical and mental. In the voices of the men and women who've fought overseas, from Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan, this is a rare eye-opening look into what it's really like to wear the uniform, fight in combat, lose friends and come home.

Walk in My Combat Boots

True Stories from the Battlefront

JAMES PATTERSON'S NON-FICTION MASTERPIECE 
________________________________ 
 
Kennedys were always taught to win at all costs. And they did - but the price they paid was unimaginable . . . 
 
Across decades and generations, the Kennedys have been a family of charismatic adventurers, raised to take risks and excel. Their name is synonymous with American royalty. Their commitment to public service is legendary. But, for all the successes, the family has been blighted by assassinations, fatal accidents, drug and alcohol abuse and sex scandals. 
 
To this day, the Kennedys occupy a unique, contradictory place in the world's imagination: at once familiar and unknowable; charmed and cursed. The Kennedy Curse is a revealing, fascinating account of America's most famous family, as told by the world's most trusted storyteller. 
________________________________ 
Also published as The House of Kennedy in the US. 
 
'When I wrote my first novel after several non-fiction works about politics, James Patterson lovingly lambasted me for infringing on his thriller territory. Now I know how he feels as he crosses into non-fiction politics with this juicy and entertaining look at a political family that continues to wield power and influence. He's too good - it isn't fair!' JAKE TAPPER, CNN anchor and author of The Hellfire Club

The Kennedy Curse

The shocking true story of America’s most famous family

Robert Hardman

A brilliant portrait of the most famous woman in the world and her place in it, written by the renowned royal biographer and author of Queen of Our Times, Robert Hardman. 
_____________________________ 
 
'Dazzling, poignant and full of delicious surprises; the true story of how Elizabeth II took on the world - and won. The Crown is fictional. Here is the real thing.' - Andrew Roberts 
 
'In Queen of the World Robert Hardman anatomizes from almost every conceivable angle the workings of soft power in creating the present Queen's global role ... His book is a veritable reference work and cornucopia, overflowing with significant anecdotes, people, traditions and incidents.' - Times Literary Supplement 
_____________________________ 
 
 
On recent world history, one leader stands apart. Queen Elizabeth II saw more of the planet and its people than any other head of state, and engaged with them like no other monarch in British history. After her coronation, she visited over 130 countries across the ever-changing globe, acting as diplomat, stateswoman, pioneer and peace-broker, while also managing the responsibilities of a mother and grandmother, and her sixty-four-year marriage to the late Prince Philip. 
 
She transformed her father's old empire into the Commonwealth, her 'family of nations', and came to know its leaders better than anyone. In 2018, they would gather in her own home to endorse her eldest son, the Prince of Wales, as her successor. 
 
With extensive access to the Queen's family and staff, Hardman tells a true story full of drama, intrigue, exotic and even dangerous situations, heroes, rogues, pomp and glamour - and, at the centre of it all, the woman who genuinely won the hearts of the world for seventy glorious years. 
_____________________________ 
'Superb' - Peter Hennessy 
 
'Hardman's book, filled with new details, will be an essential source for any historian of modern Britain. It's also a glorious read' - William Shawcross, Spectator

Queen of the World

Kate Williams

___________________________________ 
'Scintillating, provocative... An elegant synthesis of royal biography and political thriller.' Daily Telegraph 
 
A Times History Book of the Year: a story which inspired the Hollywood film MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS. 
 
Mary, Queen of Scots &amp; Elizabeth I of England. Two powerful monarchs on a single island. 
Threatened by voices who believed no woman could govern. 
Surrounded by sycophants, spies and detractors. 
Accosted for their dominion, their favour and their bodies. 
Besieged by secret plots, devastating betrayals and a terrible final act. 
Only one queen could survive to rule all. 
___________________________________ 
'Brings us a fresh Mary, set in a gloriously rich context, a tragic heroine - irresistibly real and relevant... There isn't a line wasted in this taut, dramatic and utterly beguiling biography.' Charles Spencer author of Killers of the King: The Men Who Dared to Execute Charles I 
 
'The perfect combination of scholarship and storytelling, meticulous research and emotional insight, Kate Williams brings Mary vividly to life in all her complexities and contradictions.' Kate Mosse, author of The Burning Chambers 
 
'It takes a special kind of historian to turn an old story on its head. Eye-opening, provocative, this is the great rivalry re-imagined for the #MeToo generation.' Lucy Worsley

Rival Queens

The Betrayal of Mary, Queen of Scots

Barbie Probert-Wright

Two sisters. 
One extraordinary true story. 
 
Germany, 1945. Trapped between advancing armies, stranded hundreds of miles from their mother, and with their father missing in action, sisters Barbie and Eva were confronted with an impossible choice. 
 
Should they stay and face invasion or risk their lives to find their mother? 
 
Together, they set out on a perilous three-hundred mile journey on foot across a country ravaged by war. Fuelled by courage and love, Eva and seven-year-old Barbie encounter incredible hardship, extraordinary bravery, and overwhelming generosity. 
 
Against all odds, they both survived. 
But neither sister came out of the journey unscathed . . . 
 
This is the powerful true story of their escape.

Escape

Our journey home through war-torn Germany

Chris Ryan

Eight members of the SAS set off on the mission. Only one evaded capture. 
This is his true story. 
 
The SAS mission conducted behind Iraqi lines is one of the most famous true stories of courage and survival in modern warfare. Late on the evening of 24 January 1991, the patrol was compromised deep behind enemy lines in Iraq. A fierce firefight left the eight men miraculously unscathed, but they were forced to run for their lives. 
 
Their aim was to reach the Syrian border, 120 kilometres to the north-west, but during the first night the patrol accidentally broke into two groups of five and three. Chris Ryan found himself left with two companions. Nothing had prepared them for the vicious cold of the desert winter, and after a blizzard and a desperate search for food, Chris Ryan found himself the last man standing. 
 
Left on his own, Ryan narrowly escaped an Iraqi attack and set out alone, trying to reach the border through some of the most lethal country in the world. This is the story of courage under fire, of skin-of-the-teeth escapes, of the best trained soldiers in the world fighting against adverse conditions, and of one man's courageous refusal to lie down and die.

The One That Got Away

The legendary true story of an SAS man alone behind enemy lines

Irving Stone

Lust for Life is the classic fictional re-telling of the incredible life of Vincent Van Gogh. 
 
“Vincent is not dead. He will never die. His love, his genius, the great beauty he has created will go on forever, enriching the world… He was a colossus… a great painter… a great philosopher… a martyr to his love of art. “ 
 
Walking down the streets of Paris the young Vincent Van Gogh didn’t feel like he belonged. Battling poverty, repeated heartbreak and familial obligation, Van Gogh was a man plagued by his own creative urge but with no outlet to express it. Until the day he picked up a paintbrush. 
 
Written with raw insight and emotion, follow the artist through his tormented life, struggling against critical discouragement and mental turmoil and bare witness to his creative journey from a struggling artist to one of the world’s most celebrated artists.

Lust For Life

Ron Stallworth

· ADAPTED AS A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE BY SPIKE LEE 
· NOMINATED FOR SIX 2019 ACADEMY AWARDS &amp; WINNER OF 'BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY' BAFTA 
· WINNER OF THE GRAND PRIX AT CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2018 
· NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER 
 
What happens when a black detective goes undercover in the KKK? An extraordinary true story. 
 
In 1978, Ron Stallworth is the first black detective in the history of the Colorado Springs Police Department. In the local paper, he finds a classified ad for the Ku Klux Klan - and a P.O. box for interested enquiries. 
 
All he's expecting are some racist brochures and a few scraps of information about the white nationalist terrorists in his community. 
 
What he gets is a phone call inviting him to join the KKK. 
 
So he does. 
 
Launching an undercover investigation of incredible audacity, Ron recruits his partner Chuck to play the 'white' Ron Stallworth, while Stallworth himself talks to the Klan over the phone. During his months-long investigation, Stallworth sabotages cross burnings, exposes white supremacists in the military, and even manages to deceive the KKK "Grand Wizard" David Duke himself - dodging danger and reprisal at every turn... 
 
Black Klansman is an amazing true story and a rollercoaster of a crime thriller; a searing and timely portrait of a divided America and the extraordinary heroes who dare to fight back. 
___________________ 
 
'Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope.' - Robert Kennedy 
___________________ 
‘Remarkable… Stallworth tells a surprising story’ – Daily Express

Black Klansman

NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE

Kim Philby

In the annals of espionage, one name towers above all others: that of H. A. R. "Kim" Philby, the ringleader of the legendary Cambridge spies. 
 
A member of the British establishment, Philby joined the Secret Intelligence Service in 1940, rose to the head of Soviet counterintelligence, and, as M16's liaison with the CIA and the FBI, betrayed every secret of Allied operations to the Russians, fatally compromising covert actions to roll back the Iron Curtain in the early years of the Cold War. 
 
Written from Moscow in 1967, My Silent War shook the world and introduced a new archetype in fiction: the unrepentant spy. It inspired John Le Carre's Smiley novels and the later espionage novels of Graham Greene. Kim Philby was history's most successful spy. He was also an exceptional writer who gave us the great iconic story of the Cold War and revolutionized, in the process, the art of espionage writing.

My Silent War

The Autobiography of a Spy

Henry Hemming

*** The Sunday Times bestseller *** 
 
'Vividly imagined and prodigiously researched' Helen Davies, Sunday Times, Books of the Year 
 
 'Such a rewarding read' John Preston, Daily Mail, Books of the Year 
 
'This odd, secretive man is brought to life', Robbie Millen, The Times, Books of the Year 
 
Maxwell Knight was a paradox. A jazz obsessive and nature enthusiast (he is the author of the definitive work on how to look after a gorilla), he is seen today as one of MI5's greatest spymasters, a man who did more than any other to break up British fascism during the Second World War – in spite of having once belonged to the British Fascisti himself. He was known to his agents and colleagues simply as M, and was rumoured to be part of the inspiration for the character M in the James Bond series. 
 
Knight became a legendary spymaster despite an almost total lack of qualifications. What set him apart from his peers was a mercurial ability to transform almost anyone into a fearless secret agent. He was the first in MI5 to grasp the potential of training female agents. 
 
M is about more than just one man however. In its pages, Hemming reveals for the first time in print the names and stories of seven men and women recruited by Knight, on behalf of MI5, and then asked to infiltrate the most dangerous political organizations in Britain at that time. Until now, their identities have been kept secret outside MI5. Drawn from every walk of life, they led double lives—often at great personal cost—in order to protect the country they loved. With the publication of this book, it will be possible at last to celebrate the lives of these courageous, selfless individuals. 
 
Drawing on declassified documents, private family archives and interviews with retired MI5 officers as well as the families of MI5 agents, M reveals not just the shadowy world of espionage but a brilliant, enigmatic man at its centre.

Maxwell Knight, MI5's Greatest Spymaster

John Douglas

Mark Olshaker

The bestselling true story and inspiration behind the hit Netflix show of how one underfunded FBI team became the first to explore the dark world of serial murderers. 
____________________________________________________________________ 
 
'John Douglas knows more about serial killers than anybody in the world' - Jonathan Demme, director of The Silence of the Lambs 
 
John Douglas is a former FBI Special Agent and expert in criminal profiling and behavioural science. He made a career of looking evil in the eye - and understanding it. No wonder that he was the inspiration for Special Agent Jack Crawford in The Silence of the Lambs, as well as the film's consultant on the reality of serial killers. 
 
Douglas invented and established the practice of criminal profiling, and submerged himself in the world of serial killers in a quest to understand why they killed, and to help prevent more innocent lives from being ended by future killers. 
 
As his serial crime unit developed from a derided two-bit operation in a dingy officer to one of the FBI's elite task forces, Douglas personally confronted the most terrible crimes of the age, including those of Jeffrey Dahmer, Charles Manson, Ted Bundy and the Atlanta child murderer. 
 
With the fierce page-turning power of a bestselling novel, yet terrifyingly true, Mindhunter is a true crime classic. 
____________________________________________________________________ 
'John Douglas is the FBI's pioneer and master of investigative profiling.' - Patricia Cornwell 
 
'A cracker of a book' - Esquire

Mindhunter

Inside the FBI Elite Serial Crime Unit (Now A Netflix Series)

Charles Drazin

‘Patsy, what are you going to be when you grow up? Well?’ 
'A Royal Engineer, Daddy. A Royal Engineer!’ 
 
Charles Drazin knew little about his mother's father – only that he had been a military surveyor who mapped great swathes of the British Empire. But when his mother was told that she was dying, it prompted recollections of her early life that she had never confided before: of the village in the west of Ireland where she had grown up, and of her father, whose death changed the life of an eight-year-old girl for ever. 
 
Soon afterwards her own death left her son to go through alone the relics of her life. They included a box of old photographs, a battered suitcase stamped with the initials of the grandfather he had never known, and the service records of Patrick’s brothers, who, like him, had all enlisted in the Royal Engineers as the nineteenth century became the twentieth. So began an extraordinary journey of discovery that took him from the age of Queen Victoria to the battlefields of the Western Front. 
 
Mapping the Past is the story of five brothers who, mapping the world, lived up to the Royal Engineers’ motto of Everywhere. It is the story of Ireland, and of the Empire from which it broke away. It is the story of conflict, war and its aftermath. And, most of all, it is the story of memory, endlessly carrying the past, for better or worse, into our present and future. It is an imaginative, intimate and powerful work of history, by a writer of rare power.

Mapping the Past

A Search for Five Brothers at the Edge of Empire

Ed Balls

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 
 
A life in and out of politics – from the despatch box to the stage on Strictly – by one of Britain’s most influential and well-loved political figures. 
 
'Full of anecdote, insight and authenticity’ Evening Standard BOOKS OF THE YEAR 
 
'Witty, reflective and engaging' Nick Robinson 
 
'Honest and revealing' Michael Palin 
 
'Fascinating, heartfelt' Kay Burley 
 
'Insightful, funny, unexpectedly moving' Jonathan Freedland 
 
On the night of 7 May 2015, Ed Balls thought there was a chance he would wake up the next morning as the new Chancellor of the Exchequer. Instead, he woke up without a job. 
 
Twenty-one years earlier he had left a promising career in journalism to work for Labour in opposition. Moving through the ranks, from adviser to Cabinet minister and on to Shadow Chancellor, he occupied a central and influential position in and out of power during a pivotal period in British history. 
 
Speaking Out is a record of a life in politics, but also much more. It is about how power can be used for good, and the lessons to be learned when things go wrong. It is about the mechanics of Westminster, and of government. It is about facing up to your fears and misgivings, and tackling your limitations – on stages public and private. 
 
It is about the mistakes made, change delivered and personalities encountered over the course of two decades at the frontline of British politics. It is a unique window into a rarely seen world. Most importantly, it sets out what politics is about, and why it matters.

Speaking Out

Lessons in Life and Politics

Nick Russell-Pavier

The crime, the criminals, the victims and their families. 
And the biggest manhunt by British police... 
 
The establishment, press and public reaction, the trial, and the aftermath are all set out in compelling narrative detail. Jack Witney served twenty-five years in prison although he shot no one and was released on appeal, only to be murdered in his Bristol flat a few years later. John Duddy died in Parkhurst after fifteen years. But Harry Roberts, by his own admission the instigator of the crime and the most notorious, was released from prison after forty-eight years in 2015 making national front page news. 
 
What could possess an apparently rational and sane man, albeit an habitual criminal, to commit such a callous and ruthless act? What kind of a man is he? How can an ordinary person understand what he did? Should he be forgiven? 
 
50 years later, the full story for the first time.

The Shepherd's Bush Murders

Carl Zimmer

At the beginning of Europe's turbulent seventeenth century, no one knew how the brain worked. By the century's close, the science of the brain had taken root, helping to overturn many common misconceptions about the human body as well as to unseat centuries-old philosophies of man and God. Presiding over this evolution was the founder of modern neurology, Thomas Willis, a fascinating, sympathetic, even heroic figure who stands at the centre of an extraordinary group of scientists and philosophers known as the 'Oxford circle'. Chronicled here in vivid detail are their groundbreaking revelations and often gory experiments that first enshrined the brain as the chemical engine of reason, emotion, and madness - indeed as the very seat of the human soul.

Soul Made Flesh

How The Secrets of the Brain were uncovered in Seventeenth Century England

Iain McCalman

Giuseppe Balsamo was born in the mid-eighteenth century in the slums of Palermo, Sicily, he would rise from obscurity to become the legendary Count Alessandro di Cagliostro, whose dangerous charm and reputed healing would make him the darling - and bane - of upper-crust Europe.  Moving through the period between the Age of Enlightenment and the French Revolution - a time when reason and superstition co-mingled in the minds of even the best educated - Cagliostro earned a reputation for dazzling kings, feeding the poor, healing the ill and, most conspicuously, relieving the careless rich of their money, He tangled  with most of the major figures in Europe at that time, including Casanova, Mozart, Goethe and Catherine the Great.  Eventually a lifetime of political intrigue led him to become the key figure in The Diamond Necklace Affair, which many believe precipitated the French Revolution itself, and which would eventually lead to his own downfall and death while imprisoned, half insane by the Inquisition.

The Seven Ordeals of Count Cagliostro

Clinton Romesha

Isolated 
 
Command Post Keating - one of the most vulnerable US army bases in Afghanistan. Located at the bottom of a deep valley, soliders are exposed. The Taliban can see every move and attack is imminent. 
 
Outnumbered 
 
Just before sunrise on 3 October 2009, hundreds of Taliban insurgents open fire from all angles. Red Platoon and the Black Knight Troop are pinned down. They hear the message over the radio: Enemy in the Wire. The Taliban are inside the camp. 
 
But never outgunned. 
 
This is the heart-stopping, awe-inspiring true story of the platoon's brutal struggle for survival, told by the man who fought to defend his men, and who was awarded the Medal of Honor for his extraordinary bravery.

Red Platoon

Sean O'Callaghan

FROM THE FORMER IRA MEMBER AND AUTHOR OF THE INFORMER, SEAN O'CALLAGHAN 
 
'Very interesting on how fanaticism can develop within a community, and especially relevant today.' Bob Geldof 
 
The story of revolutionary James Connolly, his role in the 1916 Easter Rising, and his subsequent influence both on O'Callaghan himself, and on 20th century Irish politics. 
 
Easter Monday, 24th April, 1916: James Connolly, a 48-year-old Edinburgh-born Marxist and former British soldier, stands at the top of the steps of Liberty Hall, Dublin. 
 
'We are going out to be slaughtered,' Connolly told his comrades, and with this he set in train the Easter Rising of 1916. 
 
Two weeks later, in a scene that has haunted Nationalist Ireland ever since, he was carried to his place of execution having been badly wounded. Placed on a chair, he was shot dead by soldiers of the army he had once served in. 
 
This is not a traditional biography; it is a book about Sean O'Callaghan's relationship with a man who was to deeply influence his formative years; it is about the politics of violent extremism that O'Callaghan subsequently became caught up in; and it's about the kind of individuals who are willing to sacrifice everything, including their lives, for a holy cause. 
 
Never has a book been more timely.

James Connolly

My Search for the Man, the Myth and his Legacy

Maureen Flanagan

40 YEARS WITH THE KRAYS is the untold, intimate history of the twins and the woman who raised them. Told with humour and insight, it looks back across the decades at the life of this close knit, notorious East End family. 
 
Maureen Flanagan, a then 20 year old hairdresser started visiting the Kray family home in Vallance Road each week to give the twins’ mother, Violet, her weekly shampoo and set. Over the cups of tea and the rollers and hairpins, Violet began to confide in ‘Flan’ about her life, her incredible pride in her twins, the celebrities who visited her at their humble East End home - and her troubled relationship with her husband.

One of the Family

40 Years with the Krays

Jim Quillen

Each day we saw the outside world in all its splendour, and each day that view served as a reminder that we had wasted and ruined our lives. 
 
Jim Quillen, AZ586 - a runaway, problem child and petty thief - was jailed several times before his twentieth birthday. In August 1942, after escaping from San Quentin, he was arrested on the run and sentenced to forty-five years in prison, and later transferred to Alcatraz. 
 
This is the true story of life inside America's most notorious prison - from terrifying times in solitary confinement to daily encounters with 'the Birdman', and what really happened during the desperate and deadly 1946 escape attempt.

Inside Alcatraz

My Time on the Rock

Tim Pat Coogan

The history of Ireland for much of the Twentieth century is the history of Eamon De Valera. 
 
From the 1916 Rising, the troubled Treaty negotiations and the Civil War, right through to his retirement after longer in power than any other twentieth century leader, de Valera has both defined and divided Ireland. He was directly responsible for the Irish Constitution, Fianna Fail (the largest Irish political party) and the Irish Press Group. 
 
He helped create a political church-state monolith with continuing implications for Northern Ireland, the social role of women, the Irish language and the hole concept of an Irish nation. Many of the challenges he confronted are still troubling the peace of Ireland and of Britain, and some of the problems are his legacy. 
 
For de Valera was a world figure who attempted to confine his nation of disciples to the narrowest of cultural and intellectual horizons.

De Valera

Long Fellow, Long Shadow

'The unofficial voice of modern Irish history' Economist 
 
When President of the Irish Republic Michael Collins signed the Anglo-Irish Treaty in December 1921, he remarked to Lord Birkenhead, 'I may have signed my actual death warrant.' In August 1922 at the height of the Irish Civil War, that prophecy came true - Collins was shot and killed by a fellow Irishman in a shocking political assassination. 
 
So ended the life of the greatest of all Irish nationalists, but his visions and legacy lived on. 
 
This authorative and comprehensive biography presents the life of a man who became a legend in his own lifetime, whose idealistic vigour and determination were matched only by his political realism and supreme organisational abilities. Coogan's biography provides a fascinating insight into a great political leader, whilst vividly portraying the political unrest in a divided Ireland, that can help to shape our understanding of Ireland's past, present and future. 
 
'There have been several other lives of Collins, but none has assembled such wealth of detail' Independent on Sunday

Michael Collins

A Biography

This is the incredible rise and unbelievable fall of a woman whose energy and ambition is often overshadowed by Napoleon’s military might. In this triumphant biography, Kate Williams tells Josephine’s searing story, of sexual obsession, politics and surviving as a woman in a man’s world. 
 
Abandoned in Paris by her aristocratic husband, Josephine's future did not look promising. But while her friends and contemporaries were sent to the guillotine during the Terror that followed the Revolution, she survived prison and emerged as the doyenne of a wildly debauched party scene, surprising everybody when she encouraged the advances of a short, marginalised Corsican soldier, six years her junior. 
 
Josephine, the fabulous hostess and skilled diplomat, was the perfect consort to the ambitious but obnoxious Napoleon. With her by his side, he became the greatest man in Europe, the Supreme Emperor; and she amassed a jewellery box with more diamonds than Marie Antoinette’s. But as his fame grew, Napoleon became increasingly obsessed with his need for an heir and irritated with Josephine’s extravagant spending. The woman who had enchanted France became desperate and jealous. Until, a divorcee aged forty-seven, she was forced to watch from the sidelines as Napoleon and his young bride produced a child.

Josephine

Desire, Ambition, Napoleon

Tony Benn

In this final volume of diaries, Tony Benn reflects on the compensations and the disadvantages of old age. 
 
With the support of a small circle of friends and his extended family, he continues his activities on behalf of social justice, peace and accountability in public life, to a background of political change and the international economic crisis. 
 
Following an illness in 2009 the diaries, kept for over sixty years, cease. Published here alongside these last diaries are Tony Benn’s highly personal insights into the challenges of old age and failing health, of widowhood,and of moving out of the family home after sixty years. 
 
Finally, we share in Tony Benn's hopes for the future based on his years of experience and his natural optimism.

A Blaze of Autumn Sunshine

The Last Diaries

Mimi Alford

The sensational story of Mimi Alford and the secret she kept for 40 years - her teenage affair with President John F Kennedy during her time as a White House Intern. 
 
During the 18 months that Mimi Alford was President John F Kennedy’s lover, he never kissed her on the lips. 
 
For the naive All American girl, the JFK White House was a place for which she was not remotely prepared. Dominated by the charismatic and sexually magnetic figure of the president, it was as a 19-year-old intern in the White House press office that Mimi Alford became the object of Kennedy’s affections, and within days they had started a relationship. 
 
She lost her virginity to him on her fourth day at work. 
 
In Once Upon a Secret, for the first time, Alford has revealed every detail of her experiences as Kennedy’s mistress – an affair that was ended only by his assassination. 
 
Mimi has decided, after 40 years of silence and deep reflection, to tell her story.

Once upon a Secret

My hidden affair with JFK

Alastair Campbell

The Burden of Power is the fourth volume of Alastair Campbell's diaries, and perhaps the most eagerly awaited given the ground it covers. 
 
It begins on September 11, 2001, a day which immediately wrote itself into the history books, and it ends on the day Campbell leaves Downing Street. In between there are two wars: first Afghanistan, and then, even more controversially, Iraq. It was the most difficult decision of Tony Blair's premiership, and almost certainly the most unpopular. Campbell describes in detail the discussions with President Bush and other world leaders as the steps to war are taken, and delivers a unique account of Blair as war leader. He records the enormous political difficulties at home, and the sense of crisis that engulfed the government after the suicide of weapons inspector David Kelly. 
 
And all the while, Blair continues to struggle with two issues that ran throughout his time in government - fighting for peace in Northern Ireland, and trying to make peace with Gordon Brown. And Campbell continues to struggle balancing the needs of his family with one of the most pressurised roles in politics. 
 
Riveting and revelatory, The Burden of Power is as raw and intimate a portrayal of political life as you are ever likely to read.

The Burden of Power

Countdown to Iraq - The Alastair Campbell Diaries

Christina Schmid

A LOVE LOST. 
A LIFE CUT SHORT. 
 
'From the moment I set eyes on him I adored him. The connection between us was so strong it went beyond everything else. His job, my job, his lifestyle, my lifestyle. All that fell away.' 
 
And then one earth-shattering day Christina's worst nightmare came true when Oz was killed on his final day of duty before flying home to his family. 
 
This is Christina and Oz's story: a story about love and loss, hope and despair and of living in constant fear. Christina's extraordinary bravery and composure is an inspiration to anyone who has ever lost someone they love.

Always By My Side

Losing the love of my life and the fight to honour his memory

Are you happy? Does it matter? 
 
Increasingly, governments seem to think so. As the UK government conducts its first happiness survey, Alastair Campbell looks at happiness as a political as well as a personal issue; what it should mean to us, what it means to him. Taking in economic and political theories, he questions how happiness can survive in a grossly negative media culture, and how it could inform social policy. 
 
But happiness is also deeply personal. Campbell, who suffers from depression, looks in the mirror and finds a bittersweet reflection, a life divided between the bad and not-so-bad days, where the highest achievements in his professional life could leave him numb, and he can somehow look back on a catastrophic breakdown twenty-five years ago as the best thing that happened to him. He writes too of what he has learned from the recent death of his best friend, further informing his view that the pursuit of happiness is a long game. 
 
Originally published as part of the Brain Shots series, the pre-eminent source for high-quality, short-form digital non-fiction.

The Happy Depressive: In Pursuit of Personal and Political Happiness

POWER AND RESPONSIBILITY is the third volume of Alastair Campbell's unique daily account of life at the centre of the Blair government. It begins amid conflict in Kosovo, and ends on September 11, 2001, a day which immediately wrote itself into the history books, changing the course of both the Bush presidency and the Blair premiership. 
 
In this volume, we see that New Labour's honeymoon is well and truly over. In addition to detailing the continuing tensions at the top, here we find graphic accounts of a variety of domestic crises: foot-and-mouth disease and protests over fuel prices which almost brought Britain to a halt. Volume Three includes Peter Mandelson's second resignation, the agonies of the Millennium Dome, and the most unexpected slow-handclapping in memory, when the Women's Institute turned against Tony Blair. Yet despite all the problems - not least the most accident-prone manifesto launch in history, complete with deputy prime minister John Prescott punching a voter - Labour won a second successive landslide election victory. That triumph is intimately recorded here, alongside the high points of this period, such as devolution to Northern Ireland and the fall of Milosevic.

Diaries Volume Three

Power and Responsibility

Paul Johnson

In the course of a long and successful career as a journalist and author, Paul Johnson has known popes, presidents, prime ministers, painters, poets, playwrights, even the foul-mouthed publican Muriel Belcher, who ran the legendary Colony Club. Harking back to the scandalously anecdotal 17th century book by John Aubrey on the celebrities of his times, Brief Lives is the distilled essence of Johnson's experience of a complex variety of people who have contributed to our political, spiritual and cultural life. 
 
He advised Margaret Thatcher, counselled Princess Diana, had a drawing of him done by Ernest Hemingway and enjoyed the company of John Osborne, Arnold Wesker and Harold Pinter at Buckingham Palace. He has been an insider, outside observer and universal commentator on the individuals who have changed history, formed public taste or simply lightened our lives by their presence.

Brief Lives

The year is 1Q84. This is the real world, there is no doubt about that. But in this world, there are two moons in the sky. Discover the 1Q84 Trilogy by Haruki Murakami.

1Q84

365 Days of Art

A BBC Christmas

A Black Book Thriller

A Box Full of Murders

A Cal Leandros Novel

A Christmas Mystery

The intelligent and capable police commissioner Guido Brunetti confronts crime in and around his home town of Venice.

A Commissario Brunetti Mystery

A DC Smith / Kings Lake Investigation Series

A Daisy Story

Chronicling the lives of over three hundred characters, unrivalled for its scope and humour, this is a unique evocation of life in twentieth-century England.

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