Joseph Delaney used to be an English teacher, before becoming the best-selling author of the Spook's series, which has been published in 30 countries and sold over 4.5 million copies worldwide. The first book, The Spook's Apprentice, was adapted into a major motion picture starring Jeff Bridges and Julianne Moore.

Joseph Delaney

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Liza Campbell

Liza Campbell was the last child to be born at Cawdor Castle, as featured in Macbeth. Her father Hugh, the 25th Thane of Cawdor, inherited good looks,wealth, an ancient title, three stately homes and 100,000 acres of land. But increasingly overwhelmed by his enormous responsibilities, Hugh turned to drink, drugs, and extramarital affairs. Until the castle was transformed into an arena of reckless profligacy, abuse and terrifying domestic violence, leading to the abrupt termination of a legacy that had been passed down through the family for six hundred years. 
 
Title Deeds is a dark yet funny, contemporary fairy story about growing up in an old family where ancient curses and grisly past events are matched by the turmoil of a confusing and frightening present. Liza Campbell shows how even enormous wealth and privilege can hide unspoken abuse and misery: and what it is like to watch your father destroy himself and everything he holds dear.

Title Deeds

Brian Castner

Brian Castner served three tours of duty in the Middle East, two of them as the commander of an Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit in Iraq. He and his team – his brothers – disarmed bombs. Sometimes they used robots and remote controls. Sometimes they set off controlled explosions. Sometimes one of the team would have to put on the eighty-pound Kevlar suit, take the Long Walk, and disarm the device by hand. Often they were simply too late; arriving just in time to pick up the pieces. 
 
In a hailstorm of bullets, bomb fragments, body parts and the endless wailing of innocent civilians, the days rolled into nights, yesterday turned into tomorrow, and today never even happened. But after the tour, the celebrations and the long plane ride home, the real war was just beginning. The war against the fear, the confusion, the guilt and the memory loss. The war against the Crazy. 
 
This exhilarating, heartbreaking, searingly honest memoir exposes two harrowing and simultaneous realities: the terror, excitement and camaraderie of combat, and the lonely battle against the enemy within.

The Long Walk

A Story of War and the Life That Follows

Nina Lugovskaya

Does that boy like me? Why are my sisters so mean? Does anyone think I'm pretty? Will my father be arrested? These were the everyday concerns of thirteen-year-old Moscow schoolgirl Nina Lugovskaya, who began to write a diary in 1932. Her indignant outbursts against the brutal raids and purges of Stalin's terror appear alongside the more typical adolescent worries about girlfriends, boys, parties and homework. 
For five years Nina scribbled down her most intimate thoughts and dreams, including her ambition one day to become a writer. Then in 1937 the NKVD, Stalin's secret police, ransacked Nina's home and discovered her diary. Nina's criticism of the regime provided sufficient evidence for the charge of treason, and she, her mother and two sisters were sentenced to five years' hard labour in the Gulag, followed by seven years' exile in Siberia. 
Recently Nina's diary was discovered in the KGB archives, complete with the original passages underlined by the secret police. Like Anne Frank's diary, this journal poignantly reveals life at a time of political upheaval, betrayal and repression through the eyes of an innocent.

I Want To Live

The Diary of a Young Girl in Stalin's Russia

Mary Soames

The fascinating, insightful and often moving correspondence between Sir Winston and Lady Clementine Churchill extends from their early days of innocent courtship in 1908 to Winston Churchill's death in 1965. 
 
The letters serve not only as a chronicle of their personal achievements and tragedies over the years, but also as a political and social history. In their own words, Winston and Clementine recount some of the most momentous events of the twentieth century: the sinking of the Titanic, the abdication of King Edward VIII, the downfall of governments, the Depression, and two world wars. Here are harrowing first-hand accounts from the battlefields of 1915, reflections on political triumphs and upsets, as well as domestic minutiae, foreign travel, revelations of social scandals and, above all, words of mutual support and encouragement that span the career of one of Britain's most revered statesmen. Speaking for Themselves is not only an important historical document, it is a love story and an intimate, charming and often surprising insight into one of the century's most successful marriages. 
 
Mary Soames is perfectly placed to select and comment upon this vast collection of letters. And in her introduction and notes she complements the letters with explanatory notes, biographical details and her own personal recollections.

Speaking For Themselves

The Private Letters Of Sir Winston And Lady Churchill

At ninety years old, Mary Soames is the only surviving child of Winston and Clementine Churchill. A Daughter’s Tale follows her early life from an idyllic childhood in her own ‘Garden of Eden’ at Chartwell to her ATS service in mixed anti-aircraft batteries during the war. With glimpses into her fascinating personal diary, published here for the first time, she draws us into a world where the experiences of a packed family, social and romantic life unfold against a background of cataclysmic events. 
 
When Chamberlain’s declaration of war in 1939 shatters Mary’s world, she begins to share the anxieties and stresses suffered by her family through her father’s position. The mutual love between Mary and her parents is evident on every page, from her Chartwell years to Winston’s defeat at the 1945 general election, when she recounts her own devastation on her father’s behalf. As she meets her future husband Christopher Soames at the end of this charming memoir, it is clear that, at twenty-four, Mary has lived a full life and is well prepared for her future as wife and mother.

A Daughter's Tale

The Memoir of Winston and Clementine Churchill's youngest child

Erik Larson

'A compelling tale... a narrative that makes such a brave effort to see history as it evolves and not as it becomes.' SPECTATOR 
 
Suffused with the tense atmosphere of the times, and with brilliant portraits of Hitler, Goebbels, Goering and Himmler amongst others, Erik Larson's new book sheds unique light on events as they unfold, resulting in an unforgettable, addictively readable work of narrative history. 
 
Berlin,1933. William E. Dodd, a mild-mannered academic from Chicago, has to his own and everyone else's surprise, become America's first ambassador to Hitler's Germany, in a year that proves to be a turning point in history. 
 
Dodd and his family, notably his vivacious daughter, Martha, observe at first-hand the many changes - some subtle, some disturbing, and some horrifically violent - that signal Hitler's consolidation of power. 
 
Dodd has little choice but to associate with key figures in the Nazi party, his increasingly concerned cables make little impact on an indifferent U.S. State Department, while Martha is drawn to the Nazis and their vision of a 'New Germany' and has a succession of affairs with senior party players, including first chief of the Gestapo, Rudolf Diels. 
 
But as the year darkens, Dodd and his daughter find their lives transformed and any last illusion they might have about Hitler are shattered by the violence of the 'Night of the Long Knives' in the summer of 1934 that established him as supreme dictator . . .

In The Garden of Beasts

Love and terror in Hitler's Berlin

Ken Wiwa

My father. That's what this is all about. Where does he end and where do I begin?' 
 
Ken Saro-Wiwa was executed in November 1995. One of that country's best loved writers and an outspoken critic of military rule, he was a prime mover in bringing the human rights abuses of Shell Oil and the Nigerian Military to the attention of the world. His death was headline news internationally. The name of Ken Saro-Wiwa became a potent symbol of the struggle between a traditional way of life and the juggernaut of global commercial interests. 
 
What was it like to grow up with such a politically active and socially conscious father? How do you come to terms with your father's life, his imprisonment and execution? How do you cope with the endless international press speculation about your father's life and character? And how do you respond when international attention is focused on you? How do you make your own way in life against your father's expectations of you, especially when you carry the same name? How do you live with such a complex personal history? 
 
This frank and memorable depiction of Ken Wiwa's childhood and relationship with his father vividly recounts the journey he took to answer those questions. Ultimately though, it is the story of how Ken Wiwa went looking for his father and ended up finding himself.

In The Shadow Of A Saint

Selma van de Perre

Selma van de Perre was seventeen when the Second World War began. Until then, being Jewish in the Netherlands had been of no consequence. But by 1941 it was a matter of life or death. Several times, Selma avoided being rounded up by the Nazis. Then, in an act of defiance, she joined the Resistance movement, using the pseudonym Margareta van der Kuit. For two years 'Marga' risked it all. Using a fake ID, and passing as Aryan she travelled the country delivering newsletters, sharing information, keeping up morale  - doing, as she later said, what 'had to be done'. In July 1944 her luck ran out. She was transported to Ravensbrück women's concentration camp as a political prisoner. Unlike her parents and sister - who, she later discovered, died in other camps - she survived by using her alias. It was only after the war ended that she was allowed to reclaim her identity and dared to say once again: My name is Selma. Now, at ninety-nine, Selma remains a force of nature. Full of hope and courage, this is her story in her own words.

My Name Is Selma

The remarkable memoir of a Jewish Resistance fighter and Ravensbrück survivor

Nicholas Clee

Epsom Downs, 3rd May, 1769: a chestnut with a white blaze scorches across the turf towards the finishing post. His four rivals are so far behind him that, in racing terms, they are 'nowhere'. 
 
Watching Eclipse is the man who wants to buy him. An adventurer who has made his money through roguery and gambling, Dennis O'Kelly is also the companion of the madam of one of London's most notorious brothels. 
 
While O'Kelly is destined to remain an outcast to the racing establishment, his horse will go on to become the undisputed, undefeated champion of his sport. 
 
Eclipse's male-line descendants will include Desert Orchid, Arkel and all but three of the Derby winners of the past fifty years. And his astonishing life will be matched only by that of the rogue who owned him.

Eclipse

Frances Osborne

Lilla Eckford, interned in a Japanese civilian camp in China during the second world war after an extraordinary early life,passed her time by compiling a book about the joys of food.Thisprecious cookery book, now in the possession of the ImperialWarMuseum, inspired Lilla's great-granddaughter, Frances Osborne, to investigate her enthralling story. 
 
Lilla's Feast spans the world from China to India and finally to England over a hundred years, and blends together personal history, world events, period atmosphere and family anecdotes into a brilliantly vibrant and poignant story.

Lilla's Feast

A True Story Of Love, War, And A Passion For Food

David Belton

'Tremendous. A moving and haunting tribute to the human spirit' WILLIAM BOYD 
 
Into the heart of a genocide that left a million people dead 
 
6 April 1994: In the skies above Rwanda the president’s plane is shot down in flames. 
 
Near Kigali, Jean-Pierre holds his family close, fearing for their lives as the violence escalates. 
 
 In the chapel of a hillside village, missionary priest Vjeko Curic prepares to save thousands of lives 
 
The mass slaughter that follows – friends against friends, neighbours against neighbours - is one of the bloodiest chapters in history 
 
 
Twenty years on, BBC Newsnight producer David Belton, one of the first journalists into Rwanda, tells of the horrors he experienced at first-hand. Now following the threads of Jean-Pierre and Vjeko Curic’s stories, he revisits a country still marked with blood, in search of those who survived and the legacy of those who did not. This is David Belton's quest for the limits of bravery and forgiveness.

When The Hills Ask For Your Blood: A Personal Story of Genocide and Rwanda

Paul Ham

Japan 1945. In one of the defining moments of the twentieth century, more than 100,000 people were killed instantly by two atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by US Air Force B29s. Hundreds of thousands more succumbed to their horrific injuries, or slowly perished of radiation-related sickness. 
 
Hiroshima Nagasaki tells the story of the tragedy through the eyes of the survivors, from the twelve-year-olds forced to work in war factories to the wives and children who faced it alone. Through their harrowing personal testimonies, we are reminded that these were ordinary people, given no warning and no chance to escape the horror. 
 
American leaders claimed that the bombings were 'our least abhorrent choice' and fell strictly on 'military targets'. Even today, most people believe they ended the Pacific War and saved millions of American and Japanese lives. Hiroshima Nagasaki challenges this deep-set perception, revealing that the atomic bombings were the final crippling blow to the Japanese in a stratgic air war waged primarily against civilians.

Hiroshima Nagasaki

Hallie Rubenhold

THE MULTI AWARD-WINNING NUMBER ONE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 
A TIMES Top Ten Best True Crime book: 'Groundbreaking. Extraordinary' 
 
'Terrific' Ian Rankin 
'Gripping' NEW YORK TIMES 
'At last, the Ripper's victims get a voice... An eloquent, stirring challenge to reject the prevailing Ripper myth' MAIL ON SUNDAY 
 
WINNER OF THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 
____________ 
Polly, Annie, Elizabeth, Catherine and Mary-Jane are famous for the same thing, though they never met. 
 
They came from Fleet Street, Knightsbridge, Wolverhampton, Sweden and Wales. They wrote ballads, ran coffee houses, lived on country estates, they breathed ink-dust from printing presses and escaped people-traffickers. 
 
What they had in common was the year of their murders: 1888. 
 
Their murderer was never identified, but the name created for him by the press has become far more famous than any of these five women. 
 
Now, in this devastating narrative of five lives, historian Hallie Rubenhold finally sets the record straight, and gives these women back their stories. 
____________ 
 
PRAISE FOR THE FIVE 
 
'Devastatingly good. The Five will leave you in tears, of pity and of rage.' LUCY WORSLEY 
'Fascinating, compelling, moving.' BRIDGET COLLINS, author of The Binding 
'An angry and important work of historical detection, calling time on the misogyny that has fed the Ripper myth. Powerful and shaming.' GUARDIAN 
'Haunting' SUNDAY TIMES 
'What a brilliant and necessary book' JO BAKER, author of Longbourn 
'Beautifully written and with the grip of a thriller, it will open your eyes and break your heart.' ERIN KELLY 
'An outstanding work of history-from-below ... magnificent' SPECTATOR 
'Deeply researched' THE NEW YORKER 
 
**NOW BUY THE BRAND NEW WORK BY HALLIE RUBENHOLD: STORY OF A MURDER

The Five

The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper

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