Often described as the most beautiful spy, Vera Eriksen could almost rival Mata Hari and the Bond girls who followed her as the archetypal femme fatale of the Second World War, but her story is perhaps less well-known than it should be. When she set out on her spying mission in September 1940, her husband has just been killed, albeit accidentally by one of their fellow conspirators, yet was he the love of her life or someone else? A German film made in 2013 portrayed Vera as a prostitute blackmailed into spying for the Germans; while she was undoubtedly blackmailed, there is no evidence to suggest that she was promiscuous. Vera arrived by seaplane and rubber dinghy on the shores of Scotland, accompanied by two men - one of Germany's many attempts to penetrate British defences and infiltrate spies into the UK. David Tremain reveals glimpses of her career as a dancer in Paris, a tumultuous and violent dalliance with a White Russian officer of uncertain identity, her time in England with the Duchesse Château-Thierry, an Abwehr agent, the suspicious and untimely death of her husband, and a rumoured pregnancy. The biography grapples with perhaps the biggest mystery of all - what happened to Vera after she was released by the British? Her story is as entrancing as her looks. List of abbreviations and terminology, 368 pages.

Sub-titled 'The True Story of a Serial Killer, The Great London Smog, and The Strangling of A City', this is a book about a killer fog and a killer loose amidst it. London was still recovering from the devastation of World War II when another disaster hit. For five long days in December 1952, a killer smog held the city firmly in its grip. Day became night, transport ground to a halt, criminals roamed the streets and some 12,000 people died from the poisonous air. In the chaotic aftermath, another killer was stalking the streets using the fog as a cloak for his crimes. All across London women were going missing - poor women, forgotten women, whose disappearance has caused little alarm. Each had one thing in common - the misfortune of meeting a quiet, unassuming man named John Reginald Christie who invited them back to his decrepit Notting Hill flat during that dark winter. They never left. The eventual arrest of the Beast of Rillington Place caused a media frenzy. Were there more bodies buried in the walls, under the floorboards, in the back garden of this house of horrors? Was it the fog that cause Christie to suddenly snap and what role had he played in the notorious double murder that happened in the same apartment, building not three years before, a murder for which another probably innocent man was sent to the gallows? Journalist Kate Winkler Dawson braids three strands together in a taut, readable, true crime thriller about a man who changed the fate of the death penalty in the UK, and an environmental catastrophe with implications that still echo today. In the words of Simon Winchester, who became asthmatic at the age of seven as a result of the Great Smog "she is to be commended for telling a terrible tale memorably and brilliantly." Kate certainly includes much first-hand reportage and we feel we are there in blackout with bodies in the mist and a madman on the loose who strangled at least seven women and a baby. Illustrations, 341 pages.

The picture postcard was in its heyday in the late 19th century, when travel became a regular part of people's lives, and its popularity coincided with outbreaks of anti-semitism throughout Europe, with a notorious example being the Dreyfus case, where a Jewish officer was wrongly accused of an act of treason perpetrated by a French aristocrat. This collection makes profoundly uncomfortable reading at the same time as it sheds important light on the nature of anti-semitism and how it was spread. Around 300 postcards are reproduced here, divided by country as one nation's anti-semitism is markedly different from another's. Ordinary people sent anti-semitic postcards to their friends and relatives without any apparent awareness that the content was distasteful or inflammatory. Even in America the standard tropes are there, including exaggerated features, exclusion from the military, carrying an umbrella and an emphasis on money. In 19th century France the defeat in the Franco-Prussian war was popularly ascribed to Jewish influence. In Germany the Ostjude - Jew from the east - played a key role in forming the country's narrative of Jews as outsiders. Incidents such as the Konitz murder of 1900, where a Jew was wrongly blamed for a gruesome killing, fed into the mythology. The UK's king of seaside postcards, Donald McGill, freely used anti-semitic tropes until the rise of Hitler, when public opinion was no longer so receptive. Other countries discussed are Austria, Ukraine, and notably Poland which lost three million Jews in the Holocaust. A section on Nazi-era postcards includes images from "The Eternal Jew" exhibition of 1937 in Munich, showing Jews as physically deformed and suggesting that they were behind the Communist revolution in countries such as Russia. 238pp, softback, hundreds of colour illustrations. Save £20.

This is the first full length study of the threat to the life of Edward VIII. James Parris uses material from MI5 and police files at the National Archives to reach explosive conclusions about the British Establishment's determination to remove Edward from the throne. On 16th July 1936, a man in a brown suit stepped from the crowd on London's Constitution Hill and pointed a loaded revolver at the King as he rode past. The monarch was moments from death, but MI5 and the Metropolitan Police Special Branch had known for three months an attack was planned - the man in the brown suit himself had warned them. This mysterious man, lost to history, was George McMahon, a petty criminal with a record of involvement with the police, an MI5 informant who provided intelligence on Italian and possibly German espionage in Britain. Dismissed by the rest of the world as a drunken loser and fantasist, he saw his life as an epic drama. But why did MI5 and the Police fail to act? Was it a simple blunder on the part of the security services, or something far more sinister? The 32 year old Irish gunman at his Old Bailey trial in September 1936 was dismissed by the Attorney General Sir Donald Somervell as an attention-seeking eccentric acting in pursuit of a petty grievance against the police. He was sentenced to 12 months in prison with hard labour. But McMahon had met his MI5 handler on the 13th July and named the day and place that the regicide attempt would be made. They neither placed him under observation nor tailed him as he set out on 16th July carrying a .36 calibre revolver loaded with four bullets and with more ammunition in his pocket. He even had the nerve to ask a mounted policeman to shift out of his line of vision and he took the gun from his pocket, yards from the King. The King had no doubt that the threat to his life had been real and he and his future wife Wallis Simpson wrote after the incident, 'The shot at HM and the upset summer plans have all been very disturbing...No place seems very safe for Kings'. 276pp.

In this era, women were often beaten and abused at home by husbands exercising their legal right and were whipped, branded, exiled and burned alive by the courts. This extraordinary work records the many kinds of violent physical and verbal abuse perpetrated against women in Britain and her colonies and their treatment at the hands of the patriarchy. This distressing and fascinating read catalogues sexual violence, libel and slander, clandestine marriages and abductions, women sent to prison for minor misdemeanours including cross dressing, held in disgusting conditions, publicly whipped in front of a crowd who attended for erotic satisfaction - and not just the men. Women were subject to ducking in the village pond or river, and Quakers had a particularly bad time at the hands of the legally sanctioned religious fanatics. The worst legal punishment for women was execution by burning which was replaced by hanging under the notorious Bloody Code, punishment far greater than for guilty men who would be hung. There are details on specific cases and a list of whipping offences in Jamaica from 1858 and in the 20 chapters, Pimm explains a little about witchcraft but a lot about his sources including some surprising perpetrators of misogyny such as James Boswell, Jonathan Swift and especially Samuel Pepys. There were many instances of him recounting how he would beat his wife and female servants and violence against women he encountered going about the streets of London. It was an era when girls were largely barred from education and few women who were educated were permitted to enter professions. The social turbulence of the first half of the 17th century afforded women new opportunities and freedoms. Sects were established that offered a voice to women in the roles of preaching and teaching and many women saw no reason that they shouldn't voice their opinions alongside men, publishing their own books and pamphlets. But these new and unprecedented liberties were perceived as a threat by the leaders of society, and thus arose an unlikely masculine alliance against the new feminine assertions. This reaction resulted in the brutal treatment of women who were seen to have stepped out of line whether legally, socially or domestically. 196pp in large softback, illus.

Sub-titled 'Mohammed bin Salman's Ruthless Quest for Global Power.' The Al Saud family are absolute rulers of Saudi Arabia, and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is one of the most powerful men in the world. The two authors, both investigative journalists, have focused on the part played by international finance in Salman's ruthless ascent to power. The book starts with his 2017 purge of hundreds of influential Saudi businessmen and politicians. Summoned to an audience with the King, Salman's father, the victims were diverted to the Ritz-Carlton hotel and in its incongruously luxurious surroundings were interrogated and tortured as enemies of the state. By the end of the process, Salman controlled the military, the police, intelligence agencies, government ministries and many of the country's largest businesses. Salman's father had manoeuvred himself onto the throne by outwitting the head of the previous king's court, Khalid al-Tuwaijri, and Muhammed bin Salman has inherited his father's ruthless cunning. One of the most controversial international incidents since 2017 was the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Khashoggi had initially been a supporter of the regime and had been close to Osama bin Laden, embedding himself as a journalist with al Qaeda. However, Khashoggi had also occasionally criticised the Saudi government and became concerned for his safety, fleeing to the United States. Khashoggi had a huge following on Twitter, which was the only source of information for the Saudi royal family on their popularity, and on this basis they decided to act. The author describes the events leading up to the murder of Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018, and the international fallout followed by a renewed bid for international credibility in 2018. 346pp, paperback, colour photos.

Who can ever forget the pretty little face of the little girl Madeline McCann who was abducted in Portugal? Or the vindication of Colin Stagg, convicted of having murdered Rachel Nickell; Hadden Clark who killed and ate a six year old child in Maryland; Robert Pickton, the Vancouver farmer who fed his female victims to his pigs; the murder of Meredith Kercher in Perugia (was Amanda Knox guilty?); Lindsay Hawker's gruesome death in Japan; Josef Fritzl and the cellar in which he imprisoned and raped his daughter? Marilyn Monroe - was she murdered by the Mafia, the FBI, or the CIA? And Snowtown where body parts were found in a disused bank in South Australia, leading the police to mass murderers. With his forensic eye, the excellent researcher Nigel Cawthorne provides fascinating accounts of crime scene experts with shocking evidence revealed. Relying on cutting edge technology including genetic fingerprinting, blood-spatter analysis, laser ablation, toxicology and ballistics analysis, here you will find detailed accounts of these high-profile contemporary investigations and older cases recently reopened. 453pp, paperback.

Pursued by a very charming man during her divorce, mother of three Chrissy Handy entered into a three year relationship with a man purporting to be named Alexander de Rothschild. It turned out he was a serial fraudster and she was duped into selling her family home and backing him in a dream to create a new life for themselves in Switzerland with the children. Then after one night when she was persuaded by him to have unprotected sex, she fell pregnant. Giving birth without him there, she endured a series of lies and deceptions with Alexander saying he is called away on business in Geneva. Funding the academic life that she believed he was pursuing and his business interests, she handed over tens of thousands of pounds and eventually sold her house and took on a rented accommodation, seeing him only when it suited him and for short periods of time. With her tiny baby and with three children under eight years old, Chrissy had by the end of three and a half years handed over more than £500,000 to this 'international financier', the seemingly wealthy smooth-talking Alexander Marc D'Ariken de Rothschild-Hatton. And then he vanished, along with her money. After months of detective work she finally tracks him down in the USA, but the reality of his true identity is much darker than she could ever have imagined. He was finally brought to justice on charges of rape and indecent assault with a minor. Chrissy's story is heart-breaking, but she is a survivor and sadly one of many victims of this convicted fraudster. 262pp, paperback.

Sub-titled 'Murder, Obsession and the Birth of the Lie Detector', clutching on psychology, technology and the science of the truth, this very well received best-selling title is a vibrant, atmospheric true-life thriller. Be careful what you believe. Henry Wilkens burst through the doors of A&E covered in his wife's blood, but was he a grieving husband, or a ruthless killer? To find out, the San Francisco Police turned to technology, and a new machine that had just been invented by a rookie detective, a visionary police chief, and a teenage magician with a showman's touch. They hoped it would make the justice system fairer, but it poisoned their lives, turned friends into bitter enemies, and transformed our relationship with the truth in ways that are still being felt. As new forms of lie detection gain momentum in the present day, the book reveals the incredible truth behind the creation of the polygraph through gripping true-case crimes featuring explosive gunshots, shocking twists and high-stakes courtroom drama. Katwala details the birth of the polygraph post World War Two and its sponsorship by August Vollner, a postman turned revolutionary police chief who was busy inventing modern policing, and we are drawn into the world of exploitation in 1920s and 1930s Chicago - bootlegging, passion, murder and all the tentacles of the criminal world. Includes newspaper clippings and photographs and quotations from written documents and interviews and based on thousands of private letters, diaries, academic journals, court documents, prison records and more. 337pp.

Delivering air support for law enforcement, here are brilliant insights into police aviation in GB, the Metropolitan Police Air Support Unit, police helicopter aircrews, equipment and tactics. They cover terrorist attacks, royal weddings and state occasions, US presidential visits, the London Riots of 2011, the Olympic Games of 2012, a transition into MPAS and all about the pilots, crew training and tactical flight officers. Then we take a detailed look at enclosed area searching, vehicle pursuits, ASU liaison role, Eagle One, using infrared and the electromagnetic spectrum. There are case studies and a look at maintenance, recruitment, media and PR. As we expect from Haynes manuals, there are hundreds of colour photographs, maps, many overlayed with diagrammatic lines, and explanations of the Met's EC145 helicopters which take to the skies over London for around 2700 flying hours each year and attend around 7500 operational tasks. Brandon describes the evolution of police aviation plus the Wescam MX15 camera, Skyforce Observer Moving Map, Video Management System, Vislink Digital Downlink, and Airwave Digital Police Radio. With exciting case studies, 200 colour photos and illus., many in print for the first time. 180pp.