With this refreshing take on the Queen of Crime’s connections to the city in both her life and writing, Tina Hodgkinson follows in Christie’s footsteps, visiting her former homes, fashionable restaurants, luxury hotels and other London locations that she and her characters frequented. Discover the Apothecaries’ Hall in the City of London, where Agatha sat her medical exams, the hospital she worked in during the Second World War, the former headquarters of the ‘Detection Club’ and the theatres, where her plays were performed.

Christie wrote about the capital in every decade of her extensive literary career, and this detailed but accessible compendium will delight Christie fans both old and new.

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The Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire Archives is a treasure trove of documentation, dating as far back as the twelfth century. Amongst its shelves are the original, handwritten court records from the Aberdeen Witch Trials of 1597 – first-hand accounts of the words spoken on those dreadful days.

Covering a brief history of the Scottish witch trials, the role of an obsessed king, and how it all came to an end, Contagious Enemies: The Aberdeen Witch Trials brings you these court records, transcribed and translated into modern-day English.

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To the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Louise was key to its success as one of the leading noble families in the world. Through Albert’s marriage to Queen Victoria and their offspring they secured the most important thrones of Europe.

One question remains to be answered: was Albert the legitimate son of Ernst?

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In this first narrative biography of Elizabeth Boleyn, her story is finally told. Beginning with her family’s dramatic flight from Norfolk to London after the Battle of Bosworth, this book charts Elizabeth’s life at the early Henrician court, follows her as her family rise to the pinnacle of their power, and ends with her tragic death just a couple of years after two of her children were brutally executed. This is the story of the Boleyn family – and the dramatic events of Tudor England – from an entirely new perspective.

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Honey Trapped is the first book to fully examine the oldest and consistently effective piece of tradecraft, from the ancient world to cyber seductions. Honey Trapped tells the stories of those spies, both famous and obscure, who used sex and leveraged love to acquire sensitive information. From Greek mythology to recent investigations, the potent mix of sex and espionage is sure to enthral and entertain.

SEDUCTION, BETRAYAL AND SCANDAL

While the so-called ‘honey trap’ is a Hollywood cliché, it is also an enduring piece of tradecraft in the real-life world of spy versus spy. Employed by virtually every intelligence service in times of war and peace, the work of femme fatales and Romeo spies have shaped policy and history through seduction, betrayal and scandal.

Perhaps the most well known though least understood element of espionage, the use of honey traps can be found throughout history in religious texts, lurid headlines and pop culture mythology.

Honey Trapped is the first book to fully examine the oldest and consistently effective piece of tradecraft, from the ancient world to cyber seductions. Honey Trapped tells the stories of those spies, both famous and obscure, who used sex and leveraged love to acquire sensitive information. From Greek mythology to recent investigations, the potent mix of sex and espionage is sure to enthral and entertain.

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Sydney Redesdale was a divisive figure both among her daughters and subsequent biographers. Until their deaths, her girls were still squabbling over what she was really like, their differing views of her persisted for even longer than the political divides between them. Each daughter wanted to control the narrative and they wrote competing novels, memoirs and letters to vindicate their perspective. For Nancy and Jessica, she was a scapegoat, for Unity, Diana, Debo and Pam a saint.

Biographers have been equally divided about how she should be portrayed. Many wondered how such exceptional children could spring from such ordinary parents, but was Sydney really so ‘ordinary’? The story of her life at the heart of one of Britain’s most famous families is told in full here for the first time.

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For 80 years, this incredible feat of courage, luck, and ingenuity in the midst of immense danger has been deliberately shrouded in disinformation and secrecy by family, friends, wary governments, risk-averse business partners, and fellow collaborators. But now, with the aid of new information contained in previously unreleased private French Résistance papers and a new assessment of discredited evidence from organised crime figures, what really happened to Coco Chanel during that fascinating and scandalous period of her life between 1944 and 1954 can finally be revealed.

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But Annie’s extraordinary life, with its massive loyal following and significant influence, stretched long before and way beyond this, from the Western to the Eastern hemispheres, from the secular to the occult, and from the world of Victorian Britain to modernity and the First World War.

In a police report commissioned by the government on the dangers posed by Annie towards the end of her life, the investigator commented that ‘the perpetual struggle of the violent reformer against constitutional authority continued.’ She was recognized then, and should be now, as a formidable and fearless fighter.

Annie’s life has been cherry picked by historians, partly because the stories are rich and engaging but also to avoid the awkwardness of her theosophical incarnation. In The Nine Lives of Annie Besant, Clare Paterson charts the extraordinary – and largely untold – story of this pioneering Victorian feminist.

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