Sub-titled 'Dostoevsky and the Gentleman Murderer Who Inspired a Masterpiece', Kevin Birmingham's impressive research is combined with his flair for characterising the teeming intellectual debates of the day and giving insight into one of the world's great novels. It is the immersive tale of how Fyodor Dostoevsky came to write Crime and Punishment and why it changed the world. As a young man, Dostoevsky was a celebrated writer, but his involvement with the radical politics of his day condemned him to a long Siberian exile. There he spent years studying the criminals who were his companions. Upon his return to St Petersburg in the 1860s, he fought his way through multiple hardships - gambling addiction, debilitating debt, epilepsy, the deaths of loved ones, and literary banishment - to craft an enduring classic. The germ of the novel came from the sensational story of Pierre-Francois Lacenaire, a notorious murderer who charmed and outraged Paris in the 1830s. Lacenaire was a glamorous egotist who embodied the instincts that lie beneath nihilism, a western-influenced philosophy inspiring a new generation of Russian revolutionaries. Lacenaire was a character who could demonstrate the errors of radical politics and ideas through the character of Raskolnikov. Raskolnikov began to merge with Dostoevsky. The novelist was determined to tell a murder story from the murderer's perspective, but his character couldn't be a monster because he wanted so desperately to be good. The writing consumed Dostoevsky. As his debts and the predatory terms of his contract caught up with him, he hired a stenographer so that he could dictate the final chapters in time. Anna Grigorievna Snitkina became Dostoevsky's first reader and chief critic, and she changed the way he wrote forever. By the time he finished his great novel, he had fallen in love. We are brought back into the fevered panic of Raskolnikov as he murders an old woman, and Birmingham braids a hat trick of three biographies - the life of the man who wrote the novel, the murderer who inspired the tale, and the evolution of the novel itself. A magnificent achievement, 416pp, photos. Remainder mark.

Turing said 'If a machine is expected to be infallible, it cannot also be intelligent.' Spring 1940, the Battle of the Atlantic rages. Vulnerable merchant convoys are at the mercy of German U-boats controlled by a cunning system of coded messages created by a machine called Enigma. Only one man believes that these codes can be broken - mathematician and Bletchley Park cryptanalyst Alan Turing. Winston Churchill later describe Turing's success in breaking the Enigma code as the single biggest contribution to the victory against Nazi Germany. Unheralded during his lifetime, he is now recognised as the father of modern computer science and as possessing one of the greatest minds of the 20th century. Here his ground-breaking work and his private side lifts the veil of secrecy, particularly with regard to his post-war contribution to computing science with the Americans and his work as Manchester Computing Machine Laboratory. Only in 1974 was the official ban on any mention of Ultra lifted. Watched by MI5, Turing died of cyanide poisoning. A vat of cyanide was found in the 'nightmare room' between his bedroom and the bathroom, and the coroner ruled that Turing had committed suicide 'while the balance of his mind was disturbed'. Yet no evidence was given about the state of his mind and the verdict has been questioned ever since. Slim illustrated biography, New full price paperback128pp.

True stories of seduction, subterfuge and state secrets, all's fair in love at war, at least the Nazis thought so. They deployed sex like no other weapon to achieve their goal of world domination, and were prepared to go to amazing lengths to gain Allied secrets. This book contains unforgettable but little-known stories featuring the likes of Princess Stephanie Juliane von Hohenlohe, a close friend of Hitler who used her relationship with Lord Rothermere the press baron to try to encourage the Daily Mail to support the Nazis. Here are the murky secrets of the Russian Tea Room in London's South Kensington, and fashion designer Coco Chanel's plans to persuade Winston Churchill to end the war. There are cases from a time when brothels became hotbeds of bugging and blackmail and pillow talk was used to topple nations. We meet La Jana, a dancer and actress who spearheaded the Nazis' attempts to replicate Hollywood rituals, seen in a saucy shot on page 8; blacklisting, liaisons ending in unwanted children, spies like 'Vera' learning Morse code, radio transmission, microphotography and simple sabotage in Operation Hummer Nord, intelligence provided by 'Ruth' the peach of Pearl Harbor and US Naval intelligence, Edgar Hoover and the FBI, Wild Bill Donovan and the OSS and Swastika swishery, lesbian vices, a right royal scandal and more. 256pp in illustrated paperback.

In 1939, ever increasing numbers of budding cryptanalysts started reporting for wartime duty at a country house in north Buckinghamshire. Musicians, society debutants and novelists were among the women and tweedy, owlish young men, their heads filled with astounding equations and barely comprehensible calculations. The 10,000 men and women who worked at Bletchley Park had to sign the Official Secrets Act and they kept their vow of silence implacably for decades afterwards. Some died without the satisfaction of even their own families knowing about their crucial work breaking the German and Japanese codes. Belatedly however the secret was lifted, and now Sinclair McKay chooses a hundred of Bletchley Park's alumni to tell the stories of their whole lives, and not just the wartime interlude. Sometimes the distinction as chess players, musicians or linguists was what saw these young people selected. For others the intense intellectual crucible seems to have galvanised their ambition and widened their horizons, and sent them out into the post-war world determined to make a difference with their lives. Here then are the historians and archaeologists, novelists and naturalists, but also classics masters, a Nuremberg prosecutor and an associate of Andy Warhol - everyone from Roy Jenkins to the man who wrote the music for the Dracula films, and from the woman who saved St Pancras Station to Prince Philip's first girlfriend, and even those unfairly judged during their lives not to have amounted to much at all. 250pp, eight pages of photos.

The shocking true story of how child murderer Russell Bishop was finally brought to justice and the heartbreaking true story of two families' 30 year fight for justice. On 9th October 1986, petty criminal Russell Bishop strangled nine year old Nicola Fellows and Karen Hadaway in woods near Brighton. He was charged after his suspiciously close involvement in the hunt for the missing girls, but a last-minute twist saw him walk free. The Babes in the Woods murders became one of Britain's most infamous cold cases. In this first book on the case, veteran crime reporter Paul Cheston brings to life the story of a saga of murder, betrayal and injustice and how it gave way at last to healing, justice and hope for the parents of the two murdered girls. He sheds light once and for all on the awful truth and how the courtroom dramas finally brought down one of Britain's most depraved killers. Typos have been missed in this book. 335pp, photos. Paperback.

The first examination of the seedier side of the canal routes which were, for almost two centuries, Britain's major transportation network. Even when traffic routes on canals imposed a speed limit of four miles an hour, criminals were still aboard and in what was seen as the fastest growing area of Britain's leisure industry. Books have been written retelling tales of bandits, footpads, highwaymen attacking the lone traveller, horseman, coachman, shipping line, locomotive engineer, lorry or van driver and even pilot. For almost two centuries the majority of goods travelled on Britain's famed canal network and this also attracted felons of all kinds, yet many of these tales have been largely ignored until now. From murders to muggings, parental problems to pilfering, arson, assault, smugglers, counterfeiters and even road rage canal-style, we follow the policeman on foot chasing down a thief on board the narrowboat and discover what really lies beneath the waters of the canal. Learn also about canal etiquette, the hardships, the kindness and the cruelty. Chapters cover dozens of characters from William Hancock in 1826, Ann Bridges in 1847 to Southwick's Iron Foundry, Counterfeit Coin and one character just named Annie (just like our editor!) in 1915; Annie being the name of the vessel central to the story when she struck something beneath the waterline while travelling the Forth and Clyde Canal in a prosecution described as 'an act of piracy'. Fascinating social history. 120pp in illustrated large paperback.

The book 'reads like a high-speed chase against high-level corruption, criminals and con-men', and is the inside story of the fight against the world's network of corruption. Arms trafficking, offshore accounts and luxury property deals, superyachts, private jets and super car collections, blood diamonds, suspect oil deals, deforestation and murder. This is the world of Global Witness, the award-winning organisation dedicated to rooting out worldwide corruption. Co-founder Patrick Alley (Nominated for the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize for exposing the role of Blood Diamonds in numerous African wars) reveals inside track on a breathtaking catalogue of modern super-crimes, and the 'shadow network' that enables them as he follows the money going undercover in dangerous places and bringing down the people behind the crimes. Case by case we see maverick investigators pitched against warlords, grifters and super villains. One dictator's son spent $700 million in just four years on his luxury lifestyle and there are the well-known corporations who are no less criminal than the Mafia. This network of lawyers, bankers and real estate agents helps park dirty money in London, New York or offshore accounts, safe from prying eyes. 'Reads like a John le Carré novel, but is, in fact, very real.' The story told in this book of three useful idealists who go from eating cold baked beans in a draughty London flat to the Thai-Cambodian border where they posed as traders in illegally felled timer is simply riveting. It is a clear-eyed account of a world poisoned by dark money where young people with sufficient passion and intelligence have the capacity to go after some of the most powerful governments and corporations and shame and humiliate them. 320pp.

Beginning with the medieval trial by ordeal, which entailed carrying a red-hot iron bar in your bare hand for a certain distance, through to the stretching on the rack of political prisoners and the mutilation of those found guilty of sedition, the evidence clearly shows that Britain has relied heavily upon torture, both at home and abroad, for almost the whole of its history. Branding with red-hot irons of blasphemers during the rule of Oliver Cromwell, libelling the monarch in Elizabethan England could result in having the right hand chopped off, the rack, breaking on the wheel (occasionally inflicted in Scotland but never in England), thumb screws used with a variety of names such as pilliwinks, slaves branded and whipped, gibbetting alive by hanging a man in chains to die of exposure and thirst, roasting over a slow fire prolonging death for hours, hanging drawing and quartering, the pillory being stoned to death, the ducking stool, flogging in the 1860s and medieval waterboarding used as late as the 1970s by the British Army in Northern Ireland are illustrated and described. Not a book for the fainthearted. 145pp.

During World War II around 50,000 German soldiers deserted from their units, of whom around 20,000 were executed by shooting, beheading or hanging. The British Army in World War I had executed 306 deserters, some as young as 16, young boys who panicked in the face of fire, and the author traces a direct link between this barbarity and the German judicial executions for desertion in World War II. He tells the poignant stories of many young men who were executed, but principal sources are the experiences of three who survived and suffered ostracism and discrimination for the whole of the rest of their lives. Their legal position remained equivocal because although the Nazi party was defeated and condemned, the execution of deserters had happened under the rule of law, even though these were the increasingly paranoid laws enacted by Hitler. Those who were unfit to serve through illness were executed as being a burden on the state, and the law did not allow for conscientious objection. 270 Jehovah's Witnesses were executed on account of their religious beliefs. In 1938 the statutes were tightened to allow no appeal. Only a handful survived to see the half-hearted rehabilitation law passed by the Bundestag more than half a century later. Peter Schilling, who at first embraced Nazi ideology, escaped to Switzerland over the border and was relegated to a refugee camp. Ludwig Baumann deserted from the French navy base in Bordeaux in June 1942 with his friend Kurt, stealing weapons and ammunition, but a border patrol picked them up. Tortured during interrogation they were condemned to death, but the sentence was commuted and Ludwig spent the war in military prison, suffering from diphtheria and forced to watch daily executions. Objector Helmut Kober was shocked by Hitler's book-burning and the complicity of the Nazi bishops. Following the war, former Nazis were elevated to high positions while those who had resisted faced a continuing stigma. 173 pp, case histories, photos.

Following the horrors of the Great War, people wanted to forget its horrors and have fun in any way they could. A young man from a far-off feudal world found entertainment in royal palaces, on battleships and in brothels. During his few months in London, high society and affairs of state were to collide with a city's underworld and a ring of globe-trotting conmen. The scandal that followed rocked the world and its aftermath remains to this day. The young man was Rajah Sir Hari Singh, heir to the Maharajah of Kashmir. His downfall was to meet an adventuress called Maud, and her associates, the Mayfair Mob. When the Rajah came to London in 1919, his first time in Europe, between visits to the King and Queen and the Prince of Wales, he was introduced by his aide de Camp to Mrs Maud, Maudie Robinson. They became lovers and spent Christmas in Paris where they were 'discovered' in bed together. The Rajah parted with cheques to the equivalent today of £14 million in hush money to stop Maudie's husband citing him in a divorce action. The plot was planned by his trusted friend and aide Charles Arthur, an Irish nobleman, along with Monty Newton, a notorious card sharp, and William Cooper Hobbs, a crooked solicitor's clerk and the Mr Big of the London underworld. But were Maudie and her husband also in on the plot? And if so, how were they cheated out of all but £21,000 of the blackmail pay-out? When they found out, the ensuing court case gave Sir Hari a nickname that haunted him forever: 'Mr A'. The British Government imposed the greatest secrecy on the case, keeping files closed for 70 and 100 years rather than the usual 30. Records only recently released by the National Archives throw new light on the court case that gripped the world for eight days in 1924 and which was to have repercussions that last to this day in the fraught relations between India and Pakistan over Kashmir. Monty was saved by the intervention of his partner in crime Lemoine, a German working for French Intelligence who, in 1931, bought the working manuals of the new German Enigma encoding machine from a clerk so that, in 1932, a young Polish mathematician could crack the code. This is five years before Alan Turing even thought of studying cryptology. The book follows Newton and Lemoine around the world from Monte Carlo to Mexico, always staying in the best hotels, as they con the rich and gullible out of their millions. 288pp, photos.