Steve Roud was Local Studies Librarian for the London Borough of Croydon and served as Honorary Librarian of the Folklore Society for over fifteen years. He has been researching British folklore for over thirty years and is the joint author of the Oxford Dictionary of English Folklore, plus other books on traditional drama and folk song, and the Penguin Guide to the Superstitions of Britain and Ireland, which won the Katharine Briggs Folklore Award in 2004. His publications include London Lore (2008) and The Lore of the Playground (2010). He also compiles the Folk Song Index and the Broadside Index, two internationally acclaimed computer databases of traditional folk and popular song. He lives in Sussex.

Steve Roud

PublicationStatus

Brand

Format

AgeRange

Series

Imprint

CategoryLabel

Chris Froome

WINNER OF THE 2018 GIRO D'ITALIA! 
 
THREE TIME WINNER OF THE TOUR DE FRANCE. 
 
THE FIRST MAN SINCE BERNARD HINAULT TO HOLD THE MAGLIA ROSA, THE MAILLOT JAUNE AND THE MAILLOT ROJO AT THE SAME TIME. 
 
This is Chris Foome in his own words. 
 
'Engaging, vividly evoked' Mail on Sunday, Books of the Year 
 
'What Chris has done is phenomenal' Sir Chris Hoy 
 
Sunday Times Bestseller, July 2014

The Climb

The Autobiography

Gytha Lodge

Louise wakes up. Her head aches, her mouth is dry, her memory is fuzzy. But she suspects she's done something bad. 
 
She rolls over towards her husband, Niall. The man who, until recently, made her feel loved. 
 
But it's not Niall who's lying beside her. In fact, she's never seen this man before. 
 
And he's not breathing . . . 
 
 As Louise desperately struggles to piece her memories back together, it's clear to Detective Jonah Sheens and his team that she is their prime suspect - though they soon find she's not the only one with something to hide. 
 
Did she do it? And, if not, can they catch the real killer before they strike again?

Lie Beside Me

Alex McBride

Thomas Cream, erstwhile Sunday school teacher and serial poisoner, has an unsettling air and wonky eye. He also happens to be a doctor, which provides him with ample means and an ideal cover for his murderous activities. His victims are vulnerable young women, whose trust he gains with drinks and trips to the music hall, before offering them pills or swigs from a medicine bottle. A few hours later, they are dying in agony. 
 
The Honourable Thomas Ley, meanwhile, has an even better disguise: he's the former Justice Minister for New South Wales and a successful businessman, albeit with a shady past. Rumours abound when a political opponent disappears without trace and a business partner winds up at the bottom of a cliff. 
 
Neither killer can help themselves - and this, in the end, leads to their downfall - and both defy our comprehension. Brilliantly reconstructed here, their trials, in 1892 and 1947, reveal a deeply sinister conundrum: by the time you've discovered the secrets in their heart, it's inevitably much too late.

Famous Trials: Thrill-Killers

Deric Henderson

'It was a dance between control and manipulation' - Colin Howell at the trial of Hazel Stewart 
 
May 1991. The location: a quiet seaside town. The scene: two bodies in a car filled with carbon monoxide. Police officer Trevor Buchanan and nurse Lesley Howell have apparently taken their own lives, unable to live with the pain of their spouses' affair with each other. 
 
Their adulterous pair - Sunday school teacher Hazel Buchanan and dentist Colin Howell - had met in the local Baptist Church. Following the apparent double-suicide, they continue their affair but later marry other people. 
 
A series of disasters in Howell's life - bereavement, financial disaster, sexual scandal - prompt him share his darkest secrets to the elders of his church. He reveals that he and Hazel Stewart had conspired to murder their spouses nearly two decades earlier. 
 
That confession leads to two of the most sensational murder investigations ever seen in the UK, Howell's conviction for murder in December 2010 and Stewart's in March 2011. She continues to protest her innocence.

The Secret

Now a major TV drama

Every day, criminal barrister Alex McBride stands up in court and attempts to save people from conviction, prison, even a lifetime behind bars. Sometimes it's a hopeless case. Sometimes he has the chance to right a wrong. But mostly his clients are just plain guilty. 
 
In Defending the Guilty, McBride takes us behind the scenes of Britain's criminal justice system. He introduces us to its extraordinary characters and arcane eccentricities, and tells astonishing stories of courtroom triumph and defeat. Whether he's defending hapless teenagers at Harlow Youth Court or prosecuting gold bullion robbers at the Old Bailey, these hair-raising tales reveal that justice rarely operates in quite the way we expect. Throughout, McBride grapples with that most important of questions: how do we ensure that the guilty are convicted and the innocent walk free?

Defending the Guilty

Truth and Lies in the Criminal Courtroom

Paul Britton

'Riveting... Everyone should read it' Observer 
'Nothing short of sudden death will distract you from The Jigsaw Man' Independent 
'Compelling... Fascinating... Britton has done hugely important work that saves lives' Sunday Times 
___________________________________________ 
 
The award-winning true crime classic. 
 
Forensic psychologist Paul Britton asks himself four questions when he is faced with a crime scene: what happened: who is the victim: how was it done, and why? Only when he has the answers to these questions can he address the fifth: who is responsible? 
 
What he searches for at the crime scene are not frinerprints, fibres or bloodstains - he looks for the 'mind trace' left behind by those responsible: the psychological characteristics that can help the police to identify and understand the nature of the perpetrator. 
 
The Jigsaw Man is not only a detective story involving some of the most high-profile cases of recent years, but also a journey of discovery into the darkest recesses of the human mind to confront the question 'Where does crime come from?'

The Jigsaw Man

Suzanne Berne

In the long hot summer of 1972, three events shattered the serenity of ten year old Marsha's life: her father ran away with her mother's sister Ada; Boyd Ellison, a young boy, was molested and murdered; and Watergate made the headlines. 
 
Living in a world no longer safe or familiar, Marsha turns increasingly to 'the book of evidence' in which she records the doings of the neighbors, especially of shy Mr Green next door. But as Marsha's confusion and her murder hunt accelerate, her 'facts' spread the damage cruelly and catastrophically throughout the neighborhood.

A Crime in the Neighborhood

Winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction

John Lewis-Stempel

Everybody thinks they know what sheep are like: they're stupid, noisy, cowardly ('lambs to the slaughter'), and they're 'sheepwrecking' the environment. 
 
Or maybe not. Contrary to popular prejudice, sheep are among the smartest animals in the farmyard, fiercely loyal, forming long and lasting friendships. Sheep, farmed properly, are boons to biodiversity. They also happen to taste good and their fleeces warm us through the winter - indeed, John Lewis-Stempel's family supplied the wool for Queen Elizabeth's 'hose'. 
 
Observing the traditional shepherd's calendar, The Sheep's Tale is a loving biography of ewes, lambs, and rams through the seasons. Lewis-Stempel tends to his flock with deep-rooted wisdom, ethical consideration, affection, and humour. This book is a tribute to all the sheep he has reared and sheared - from gregarious Action Ram to sweet Maid Marion. In his inimitable style, he shares the tales that only a shepherd can tell.

The Sheep’s Tale

The story of our most misunderstood farmyard animal

A respectable solicitor in the town of Hay-on-Wye, harried by his troubled wife, slowly and carefully poisons her to death. Pleased with the results, he sees an opportunity for another quick-fix solution and turns his murderous attentions to his business rival... 
 
Trapped in a marriage of convenience to an aging man almost thirty years her senior, thirty-eight year-old Alma falls in love with seventeen year-old George, when he answers her advertisement for a 'willing lad' to do the housework. It's the perfect set up - a well-disposed husband and a passionate lover - until George destroys it all by trying to get the husband out of the way... 
 
These two classic cases of spousal murder - one chillingly domestic, the other bizarre and touching - took place in 1922 and 1935. In these brilliant reconstructions, they continue to confound our expectations of how murderers are meant to proceed.

Famous Trials: Unwanted Spouses

Morten Storm

Paul Cruickshank

Tim Lister

He was the Western convert who would plunge deep inside al-Qaeda. He named his first son Osama after 9/11 and became a Jihadist. But then - after a sudden loss of faith - Morten Storm made a life-changing decision. He became a double agent and joined the CIA, MI6 and MI5. 
 
Filled with hair-raising close calls and deception, Storm's story builds to the climactic finale when he must betray his friend and mentor al-Awlaki - al-Qaeda's biggest threat to the West. Storm is trusted to find al-Awlaki a wife from Europe. She becomes the bait for a possible American drone strike.

Agent Storm

A Spy Inside al-Qaeda

My Life Inside al-Qaeda

Rose Callaly

The day Rose Callaly found her daughter Rachel's battered body was only the start of her nightmares. 
 
Shortly afterwards Rose became certain that the person who had killed her beautiful daughter was Rachel's husband, Joe O'Reilly. After what seemed like an eternity, O'Reilly was charged. But that was the start of another ordeal - the revelation of just how much he despised his wife and the unfolding of his ingenious plan to kill her, a plan that set Rose up to discover the murder scene. 
 
Remembering Rachel is the shocking and heart-breaking story of Rachel Callaly's short life and brutal death. It is also a remarkable account of what it is like to be at the heart of a sensational and tragic murder case. And finally, it is a touching portrait of motherly love and the bond that survives death.

Remembering Rachel

A True Story of Betrayal and Murder

Jeanne Marie Laskas

The brilliant young forensic pathologist had no idea that the body on the slab in front of him would change his life, and ultimately change the world. 
 
The body belonged to legendary American Footballer Mike Webster, whose mental health had rapidly declined - he had ended up treating his back pain with a Taser and using Superglue to fix his rotting teeth. 
 
Dr Bennet Omalu found that Webster's psychosis was no accident. His autopsy unearthed evidence of a trauma-related disease - the consequence of years of head clashes in games. He knew it would kill scores of other sportsmen unless something was done, and believed the NFL would welcome the discovery. Instead America's most powerful corporation tried to destroy him. 
 
Taut and gorgeously told, this is the intensely personal story of one man's fight against a multibillion dollar colossus. A man who stood up for what was right, whatever the cost.

Concussion

Colin Elford

Colin Elford spends his days alone - alone but for the deer, the squirrels, the rabbits, the birds, and the many other creatures inhabiting the woods. 
 
From the crisp cold of January, through the promise of spring and the heat of summer, and then into damp autumn and the chill winds of winter, we accompany the forest-ranger as he goes about his work - stalking in the early morning darkness, putting an injured fallow buck out of its misery, watching stoats kill a hare, observing owls, and simply being a part of the outdoors. 
 
A Year in the Woods is an enthralling journey deep into the heart of the English countryside.

A Year in the Woods

The Diary of a Forest Ranger

Pat Marry

When he retired in 2018 Pat Marry had been instrumental in solving dozens of serious crimes, including many murders. 
 
But as a newly qualified garda in 1985, Marry had no idea how to become a detective. He soon realised he would have to learn on the job - put himself forward and show that he had what it took. 
 
Taking initiative, following up hunches (even far-fetched ones), obsessing about details, trying new investigative techniques, thinking laterally - these were essential. In addition, you had to be a bit of a psychologist. 
 
The Making of a Detective follows Pat Marry's path from rookie to Detective Inspector through the stories of key cases he worked on and investigations he led. 
 
It includes high profile cases like Rachel Calally's murder by her husband Joe O'Reilly. But there are also stories that have faded from public memory, such as the 1995 murder of Marilyn Rynn, which involved the first use of DNA evidence to solve a crime in Ireland. Or the 2001 murder of Mary Gough, a case solved mainly by scrutinizing her husband's internet use - then a new investigative tool. 
 
The Making of a Detective is a unique and gripping insight into the work of a dedicated garda operating at the very top of his profession.

Showing results for: ‘Steve Roud’

Filters

Category

Publication Date

Format

Series

Imprint

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter