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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Ian Denys Peek

In February 1942, Singapore fell to the Japanese. Denys Peek and his brother were just two of tens of thousands of British and Commonwealth soldiers and citizens taken prisoner. 
Eight months later, he and his comrades were packed into steel goods wagons and transported by rail to Siam. They were to become part of the slave labour force destined for the massive construction project that would later become infamous as the Burma Thailand Railway. He would spend the next three years in over fifteen different work and 'hospital' camps on the railway, stubbornly refusing to give in and die in a place where over 20,000 prisoners of war and uncounted slave labourers met their deaths. 
Narrated in the present tense and written with clarity, passion and a remarkable eye for detail, Denys Peek has vividly recreated not just the hardships and horrors of the railway and the daily struggle for survival but also the comradeship, spirit and humour of the men who worked on it. It stands as a haunting, evocative and deeply moving testimony to the suffering of those who lived and died there - a salutary reminder of man's potential for inhumanity to his fellow man.

One Fourteenth Of An Elephant

Martin Booth

It is not unreasonable to believe that potentially the greatest threat to world civil order...comes from Chinese international criminal syndicates and gangs otherwise collectively referred to as the Triads' FBI briefing report 
Triad societies are today the most widespread and ruthless criminal group in the history of the world, posing the most important criminal threat to world stability that has ever existed. Just as the Mafia are organised as 'families', so the Triads are organised as 'brotherhoods', often along clan lines. They are in essence over 2,000 years old. The father of modern China, Sun Yat-sen, was a Triad society member, creating and financing the great Republic of China through the degenerate trade of opium, which has now become the multi-million dollar heroin industry. Martin Booth's remarkable study encompasses not only the more 'traditional' localised crime - prostitution, theft, racketeering - but also their more repercussive activities on a global scale: the drugs trade, money laundering, stock market manipulation and insider dealing, computer hacking, international prostitution, infiltration of media assets, art smuggling, and much more. 
Today the Triads are poised to achieve what no organised crime gang has ever dared dream of - a complete, international criminal network, exclusively Chinese, almost impossible to infiltrate and with its fingers on the world's pulse through its own banking networks, legal affairs and political protection. Today, it would appear the Triads are ready to make the next century a Chinese century...seemingly, nothing can stop them. 
The Dragon Syndicates tells the full, incredible story of the Triads - their evolution over two millennia, their rituals and mythologies, their role in shaping this century, and the criminal history and lives of the main players. Sources within the UN claim the Triads pose the greatest criminal threat the world has ever known - after reading Martin Booth's authoritative, dynamic, superbly written and riveting new study, you'll understand why...

The Dragon Syndicates

John Man

The name 'Samurai' is synonymous with the ultimate warrior. With their elaborate armour, fierce swordsmanship and code of honour, the samurai have become iconic figures whose influence can still be felt today . From Kurosawa's epic Seven Samurai to the figure of Darth Vader in Star Wars, to Manga comics and video games, the figure of the fighting samurai still inspires us today. In John Man's new book we discover the truth behind the legend. 
 
From his birth in the shadow of the great volcano Sakurajima, to his glorious death by ritual suicide and disembowelment, Saigo Takamori was the ultimate Samurai leader. His fall brought about the end of hundreds of years of Samurai tradition and in many ways marks the birth of modern Japan. Saigo was a man trapped by paradox: a faithful servant to the emperor, and yet a leader of rebel troops; a mighty Samurai warrior, and also a master of Chinese poetry. His life, and ultimately his death, offer a window into the hundreds of years of culture and tradition that defined the samurai.

Samurai

Estate of Harry Birrell

From the moment he received a cine-camera at age 10, Harry Birrell devoted his life to documenting the world around him, including his enlistment and his adventures serving in the Burma, Nepal and India. Not only did he capture the war as he saw it, but he kept copious diaries from 1939 to 1945 so that his family would know what he had experienced in the event of his death. These unique record of the campaign are compelling, insightful, funny, charming, moving - all in equal measure. 
 
As a soldier posted with the Gurkhas for most of the war, Harry Birrell worked as a surveyor, mapping out the country as the war with the Japanese ebbed and flowed around him. While this might seem like it was away from any action, the job of creating these references for the fighting part of the army was critical and required him to be at the front line in order that the troops and their commanders had the most up to date and accurate maps as the war evolved. As a result, he has an unusual insider overview of that brutal campaign as well as wonderful insight into the Gurkhas under his command.

To War with the Gurkhas: War Diaries

**A SOURCE FOR MARCO POLO, A NETFLIX ORIGINAL SERIES** 
 
 
Marco Polo's journey from Venice, through Europe and most of Asia, to the court of Kublai Khan in China is one of the most audacious in history. His account of his experiences, known simply as The Travels, uncovered an entirely new world of emperors and concubines, great buildings - 'stately pleasure domes' in Coleridge's dreaming - huge armies and imperial riches. His book shaped the West's understanding of China for hundreds of years. 
 
John Man travelled in Marco's footsteps to Xanadu, in search of the truth behind Marco's stories; to separate legend from fact. Drawing on his own journey, archaeology and archival study, John Man paints a vivid picture of the man behind the myth and the true story of the great court of Kublai Khan.

Xanadu

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