Subtitled 'Little-Known Facts About the World's Greatest Detective', a new dimension is brought to the enduring fictional sleuth in this perfect crime and history fan book. Learn of Dr Watson's dark, shameful secret, one that Sherlock Holmes loyally kept to himself for years. Discover the part that London's iconic Langham Hotel had to play, not only in Conan Doyle's stories, but in his own literary landscape, and what unexpected passion Holmes had in between solving crimes. Chapters include Get Me A Paget - Any Paget!, Lazy Parenting, The Price of Success, Art In the Blood, Smoking Slippers, Heading For A Fall, School of Scandal, When Doctors Go Wrong, Dodgy Dealings, Friends In High Places, The Adventure of Two Collaborators, Monkeying Around, A Man of Pseudo-Science, The Hounds of Hell, America's Holmes, Scouting for Heroes and more. Quirky silhouette line art, 192pp.

Unsolved for over two decades, this is the gripping story of a young woman's murder brilliantly investigated and reconstructed by her stepsister. Growing up, Rachel Rear knew the story of Stephanie Kupchynsky's disappearance. The beautiful violinist and teacher had fled an abusive relationship on Martha's Vineyard and made a new start for herself near Rochester, New York. She was at the height of her life in a relationship with a man she hoped to marry, and close to her students and her family. Then one morning she was gone. Rachel had more reason than most to be haunted by this particular story - her mother had married Stephanie's father after the crime, and Rachel grew up in the shadow of her stepsister's legacy. Here she follows the case's dark and serpentine path, drawing closer to the details than any journalist could. She reveals how a dysfunctional justice system laid the groundwork for Stephanie's murder and stymied the investigation for more than 20 years, and what those hard years meant for Stephanie's family and loved ones. 'A beloved violin teacher gone from the home she shared with only her pet birds. The sheets missing from her bed. Her cheque book found discarded on the side of the road. Her car abandoned in an airport parking lot. That was all anyone knew - a beautiful woman was gone.' 2022 new hardback, 245pp.

The newly updated edition. In 2017, a routine network TV investigation led to a story only whispered about - one of Hollywood's most powerful producers was a predator, protected by fear, wealth and a conspiracy of silence. As Ronan Farrow drew closer to the truth, shadowy operatives from high-priced lawyers to elite war-hardened spies mounted a secret campaign of intimidation, threatening his career, following his every move, and weaponizing his account of abuse in his own family. This is the untold story of surveillance and intimidation deployed by wealthy and connected men to threaten journalists, evade accountability, and silence victims of abuse, and it is the story of the women who risked everything to expose the truth and spark a global #MeToo movement. 'A few days later, Harvey Weinstein was in Los Angeles, meeting with operatives from Black Cube.? The sexual harassment story was proving to be a challenge. One actress after another backed out, often after involving prominent publicists. 457pp, paperback.

Why did flight MH370 fall from the sky, lost without a trace? Was Donald Trump elected President of the United States with the help of Russians? What are the theories surrounding the 9/11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center? Unpack some of the most complex conspiracy theories in this book, whether that is exploring the Illuminati, questioning who shot John F. Kennedy or asking if Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, ran the company as a 'non-state hostile intelligence service'? One chapter will dive into the existence of secret societies, from the Catholic Church and its Knights Templar (an underground order of warrior monks based in Jerusalem during the time of the Crusades), to the Bilderberg Group, an organisation whose members are some of the most powerful men and women in the world including Henry Kissinger and Paul Wolfowitz, as well as Rockefellers, Fords and Agnellis. Transport yourself to Rendlesham Forest in Suffolk during the early hours of Boxing Day morning in 1980 where an American Air Force Base tracked an unidentified aircraft on its radar and, after a patrol was sent out, men saw the bright beams of red and blue light shining from a metallic craft. Uncover whether the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler escaped the allies at the end of the Second World War as only a few bones were found after he shot himself in the Führerbunker. This guide will walk readers through one of the most bizarre conspiracies: Project MKULTRA, a CIA experiment between the 1950s and 1970s which explored the possibility of mind control through the use of drugs such as LSD and mescaline. This is the book for anyone who asks whether crop circles are the result of alien visitor or local hoaxers, whether the Oklahoma City Bombing in 1995 was a cover up, or if Edward Snowden was right to say that there is a global conspiracy to spy on friends and foes. Paperback, colour images, 128pp.

Sub-titled 'The Life and Murder of Henry, Lord Darnley' this engaging and well researched biography re-examines the famous murder and brings new light and compelling confusions to a story surrounded by political betrayal, murder, falsified evidence, conspiracy and love. In the early hours of 10th February 1567, a large explosion ripped through the Old Provost's lodging at Kirk o'Field, Edinburgh, where Mary Queen of Scotland's consort Henry Lord Darnley was staying. His body was found with that of his valet in a neighbouring garden the next morning. The Queen's husband had been suffocated and the ramifications for Mary and Scottish history would be far-reaching. Lord Darnley cuts an infamous figure in Scottish and Tudor history. In life he proved a controversial character and his murder remains one of history's great and unresolved mysteries - establishing whether Mary was implicated has taxed historians for the subsequent 450 years. The book sets in motion a series of events leading to Mary Queen of Scots's downfall. Was there a conspiracy between the Scottish peers and William Cecil? Was his objective to keep Mary from the English throne? Darnley was the son of Matthew Stuart, Fourth Earl of Lennox and thus directly bound by blood to one of the most powerful families in Scotland. As the oldest son of Margaret Douglas, the eldest sister of Henry VIII, King of England, Darnley was related to the Tudor rulers of England and thus Queen Elizabeth I. The family trees are particularly useful when there is such a muddle of titles to absorb. The second part of the book covers the struggle for recognition to the succession as England's ruler and the third part the schemes to marry Darnley to Mary, who wanted the marriage and why, and the outcome of that marriage. The final parts cover the death of the king and what happened. The book shines a light on a human drama and power struggle taking place on a much bigger geopolitical stage. 330pp, colour plates, illus. and maps.

An ordinary day begins with a gorilla, a blonde and a gun. Mid 20th century Hollywood, and Clancy Sigal is just back from fighting in the Second World War and an abortive solo attempt to assassinate Hermann Goering at the Nuremburg Trials. Charming his way into a job as an agent with the Sam Jaffe Agency, he plunges into a chaotic Hollywood peopled by fast women, washed-up screenwriters, wily directors and starstruck FBI agents trailing 'subversives'. An ex-union organiser, Clancy soon falls under the radar of the FBI, who are desperate to haul him up before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Will he give up the list of nine names to save his skin? The lowest of the low, the talent agent Clancy represents Humphrey Bogart, Peter Lorre, Barbara Stanwyck and Tony Curtis and he becomes drinking buddies with Lorre. This is the era of the Hollywood Blacklist, and Sigal, like many of his contemporaries, is subpoenaed to testify before the HUAC. This nonagenarian's hilarious memoir is star-studded, riveting and poignant. He went on to emigrate to Great Britain where he met and began a four year affair with the writer Doris Lessing. He later co-wrote the movie Frida and died in 2017. 340pp, paperback.

Professor Dudley Buck invented the Cryotron: a tiny super-conducting computer chip that promised ever-smaller computers. An NSA consultant, he had a hand in countless top-secret projects linked to the space race, missiles and super computers. His inventions cleared a path for some of the most consequential developments of the last half century. Brilliant and unassuming, Buck might have benefitted greatly from his efforts had he not died in mysterious circumstances at the age of 32 soon after a visit to his lab by high-profile USSR government scientists. Was this a coincidence? Drawing on recently released papers, the books suggests a far more sinister picture. The sub-title of this highly acclaimed non-fiction book is 'The Strange Death of a Pioneering Cold War Computer Scientist' and the book is an incredibly thorough and fully accessible deep dive into the Cold War battle for computer supremacy. It details the increasingly relevant and increasingly eerie relationship between geopolitics and technology and is an insider's look at the 1950s military-industrial complex and the ease and informality with which academia, the military, intelligence agencies and industry collaborated. 286pp, paperback with photos.

Wickedly funny, hilarious and candid, we are taken to London in the 1950s. Lottie is a reluctant typist at MI5 and an even more reluctant daughter of the organisation's most illustrious spy. She has had the bad luck to fall in love with Harry, a handsome if frustrated young actor who doubles as one of her father's best undercover agents in the Communist hotbed of British theatre. Together the two young lovers embark on a star-studded venture through the glittering world of theatre, but between missing files, disapproving parents, and their own burgeoning creative endeavours, life is about to become very complicated indeed. Filled with period detail, the teenager tells stories to make herself and other people laugh and one funny story follows another. Bingham wrote her first book Coronet Among the Weeds, her memoir of her life as a debutante, at the age of 19 and it was published in 1963 and became an instant bestseller. Her father John Bingham, the 7th Baron Clanmorris, was a member of MI5 where Charlotte worked as a secretary and was an inspiration for John le Carré's character George Smiley. Charlotte Bingham went on to write 33 internationally bestselling novels and films and TV series including Upstairs Downstairs. Here her prose is in its youthful insouciance, and she writes as an exceptionally observant young lady. 258pp, paperback.

Sub-titled 'How Britain Played the Greater Game From Afghanistan To Africa', much has been written about espionage, secret agents and MI6 missions abroad, but what of the origins of British Intelligence as we know it today? This is the story of intelligence at the height of the British Empire, and the characters that shaped its narrative. Beaver writes with authority and spritely wit about the men who ensured that Victorian Pax Britannica was intelligence-based and intelligence-led and demonstrates convincingly how its gifted operatives influenced and even created imperial policy. He unveils the men who staffed the War Office's Intelligence Division, and above all looks at their tenacity and imagination. He looks at their shrewd observations and analysis of international events which provided the basis for modern military espionage and changed the landscape of the British Empire from India to South Africa. He focusses on the years between the Crimean War and the formation of MI5 and MI6 at the start of the 20th century and charts the Intelligence Division's course from a misunderstood army unit to an elite body, central to the British military. The book is a rollicking adventure into the minds behind the muscles of the British Army, their successes, sacrifices and expertise in weaving a global net of information. 340pp, paperback, photos.

For more than a millennium, criminals in the British Isles were beheaded, garrotted, hung, drawn and quartered for crimes as varied as serial murder to impersonating a Chelsea Pensioner. Certain forms of execution, such as beheading, were reserved for the nobility, and up to the 18th century decapitated heads were displayed publicly on London Bridge. Hanging became the principal method of punishment at about the same time as the beginning of the movement for the abolition of the death penalty. In 1861 the number of capital crimes was reduced to four, and the last judicial executions took place in 1964 with permanent abolition in 1969. A number of high-profile miscarriages of justice contributed to the abolition, among them the trial of serial strangler John Christie in 1953, during which it emerged that a fellow housemate had been executed a few years earlier for a crime of which Christie was now found guilty. Another controversial case was the hanging of 19-year-old Derek Bentley, a mentally challenged young man whose younger accomplice had fired the lethal shot. Starting in 1900, the author lists all the judicial executions in Britain, totalling 865. Most entries are brief, giving the name, age, crime, date of hanging and name of the hangman, but some celebrated cases are described in detail. These include Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged, who was executed at Holloway in 1955 by Albert Pierrepoint, a member of a dynasty of chief hangmen. Ruth admitted killing her lover when she found him with another woman and made it clear she felt she deserved to die. By contrast, George Joseph Smith, the "brides in the bath" murderer, cold-bloodedly drowned a series of women for their money. 142pp, paperback, photos.