Chemist and surgeon at Guy’s Hospital in the mid 19th century, Alfred Swaine Taylor wrote a number of influential books that helped establish the science of forensic medicine. This biography explores his life and wide interests, his research into methods of tracing poisons, analysing fibres and identifying blood on clothing and weapons, and his work as a medical investigator and expert witness in criminal cases.

Lucy Williams begins her survey of criminal offences committed by Victorian women with a chapter describing the punishments a woman could expect – imprisonment, transportation to a remote colony or death. Williams goes on to describe crimes ranging from pick-pocketing and street-walking to murder, telling the colourful stories of cases both famous and obscure and setting them against the harsh realities of 19th-century women’s lives.

Like his fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle enjoyed applying his mind to unsolved crimes, and the murder in 1860 of wealthy widow Mary Emsley was one such case. This book tackles the problem afresh, picking apart the evidence against the man who was hanged for the crime and, unlike Conan Doyle, reaching a conclusion as to the identity of the real killer.Off-mint

An unprecedented smog hit London in December 1952, plunging the city into an eerie and poisonous darkness that killed 12,000 people. A few days later, John Christie strangled his wife and, over the following months, committed a further three killings. This true crime story draws together the notorious Rillington Place murders and the environmental disaster to chronicle a dark period in austerity London. Off-mint with a felt-tip mark on upper trimmed edge.

As a prison governor and later an academic criminologist, David Wilson has interviewed many killers. Recalling these often tense encounters, he explores the psychopathology of these men, some anonymized, others, including Dennis Nilsen, notorious.

‘It is nature that teaches us to use the bodies of the dead to preserve the bodies of the living,’ argued a solicitor’s clerk found guilty of body snatching in 1831. He is just one of the Yorkshire grave-robbers, from many walks of life, who appear in this compendium of grim tales. Johnson vividly describes the resurrectionists’ macabre methods, the violent public protests against their activities and the private anguish of their victims’ families.

Should a self-confessed murderer be allowed to become a priest? In 1984 the Church of Scotland wrestled with this question when James Nelson, who had served a prison sentence for killing his mother, applied for ordination as a minister. Kelly uses this case as the starting-point for a history of the Church in Scotland, which also combines personal memoir, true-crime narrative and an exegesis of biblical and literary accounts of sin and forgiveness.

Simon Webb examines a dark aspect of life in Victorian Britain which is less well-known than the poisoners and serial killers: rioting and disorder, mob violence and terrorism. Among the topics covered are the Clerkenwell Outrage, when explosives detonated in the street killed 15 people and injured 120; the West End riots on Black Monday and Bloody Sunday; and the Aldersgate Underground bombing in 1897.

From a battered body discovered in the River Wear in 1839 to the woman who poisoned at least two husbands in the 1950s, these 13 notorious crimes made headline news across the country. They include one case which remains unsolved.

This book examines 40 celebrated swindlers from the 19th century to the present to shed light on their methods and motivations. It includes financial tricksters such as Carlo Ponzi and Bernard Madoff, a scammer who sold the Eiffel Tower for scrap, and the impostor who claimed to be Sidney Poitier’s son. All share a vivid imagination, reckless daring, and a misplaced sense of invincibility.

In 1958 an Oxford postgraduate calling himself Robert Peters claimed that he was being persecuted by the Bishop of Oxford, and he appealed to Professor Hugh Trevor-Roper for help. This strange request and Trevor-Roper’s detailed dossier on Peters piqued the curiosity of Adam Sisman, the historian’s biographer, setting him on the trail of an extraordinary con-man whose career included the priesthood, academic posts (without qualifications), eight marriages, three prison sentences and a disastrous appearance on Mastermind.

Covering the whole of County Durham (before the boundary changes of 1974), this survey unearths kidnapping, highway robbery, incest and a burglary at the Co-op in Windy Nook as well as manslaughter and murder, from a strangled labourer in 1624 to the case of Abel Atherton, hanged for shooting Elizabeth Ann Patrick in Chopwell in 1909.

In tales of robbery, murder, gangland violence and domestic cruelty, Paul Harrison explores a dark side of Glasgow’s past: 18 cases ranging from the murder of Alexander Love in 1818 and the gruesome execution of his killer, to two policemen shot dead by armed robbers in 1969.

From the mid-18th century to the 1920s, the darker aspects of Sheffield’s history include quirky crimes such as a brutal attack on a pit pony in 1891 and bigamy in Pitsmoor, as well asmurders, including those committed by the notorious serial killer Charlie Peace.

Highway robbery in 1856; little Nellie Gibbins, starved to death in 1918; 77-year-old LucySpray killed for a mug of water in 1940 ... Kevin Turton tells the stories of these and 14 more murderous crimes committed and criminals apprehended in and around Rotherham since Victorian times.

John Haigh did not deny the murders of which he was accused during his trial in 1949 but claimed insanity, citing a history of disturbing dreams and claiming that he had drunk the blood of his victims before dissolving their bodies in sulphuric acid. This new analysis of the famous case draws on unpublished archive material, including letters that Haigh wrote from prison while awaiting execution.

New Year’s Day 1845: a message reaches Paddington from Slough concerning a murder suspect aboard the 7.42 train ‘in the garb of a kwaker’ – the experimental telegraph’s alphabet lacked Q. John Tawell, who had poisoned his mistress, was indeed a Quaker and a convicted forger previously transported to Sydney. Baxter describes his sensational capture and trial, which sparked public interest in the new-fangled electric telegraphy.

In 1893 the aristocratic Alfred Monson was charged with the murder of Cecil Hambrough, a young army officer, on the Ardlamont estate in Scotland. The case captivated popular imagination, but few realized that the two expert witnesses, Joseph Bell and Henry Littlejohn, had been solving crimes together for 20 years. This book charts their adventures – exploits which inspired Conan Doyle to create Sherlock Holmes – and probes the mystery that would challenge even their experience and skill in detection.

On 9 May 1879 an upmarket lodging house, 4 Euston Square, was being prepared for the arrival of a new tenant when the body of a well-dressed, middle-aged lady was discovered in the coal cellar. It was obviously a case of murder, and the ensuing police investigation exposed, behind the respectable façade of Euston Square, a sinister web of sexual intrigue involving the housemaid, Hannah Dobbs, and the landlord, Severin Bastendorff. Slightly off-mint.

Gary Dobbs is better known as a writer of crime fiction, but in this survey of murder in the Welsh Valleys he is ‘telling of the way it was’, describing the victims, crimes and perpetrators in the true stories of 13 notorious killings.

A mysteriously poisoned bread-and-butter pudding, a case of bodysnatching that caused considerable alarm to the local population, and several fatal shootings are among the cases discussed in this examination of South Yorkshire crime during the Victorian era.

How do forensic specialists identify and piece together clues to present a convincing case in court? This guide to scientific techniques explains the analysis of evidence ranging from drugs to digital devices, dental records to DNA. Foreword by Val McDermid.

The killing of City banker Thomas Briggs in 1864 was the first murder committed on a British train. The main suspect subsequently absconded across the Atlantic before being arrested, as did the perpetrator of North London’s most famous murders, Dr Crippen.

Among the murderers in this collection are the Lambeth Poisoner of the 1890s and the unfortunate Derek Bentley who was sentenced to hang in 1953 for appealing to his friend with a gun to ‘let him have it’.

From the 12th century onwards, Newgate Prison played a key role in the development of the British penal system, housing well-known prisoners from Captain Kidd to Ben Jonson and Daniel Defoe, as well as murderers, rapists and arsonists. Illustrated with historic prints and portraits, this book explores its traditions and lexicon of slang, and offers accounts of executions, the pillory and famous escapes.

This clear overview includes topics such as how crime is measured, the motivation and treatment of criminals, and how our justice system operates. Ideal for students, it also features case studies and multiple choice tests.

Whitaker Wright was a Victorian conman who made and lost a fortune by selling stock in companies that ultimately failed to deliver. This account of his exploits reveals the heights of his successes, with excesses including an underwater smoking room and a steam yacht where he entertained aristocrats, and his dramatic downfalls. Having fled from America to England, and then back again, he was finally convicted of financial fraud and committed suicide in the dock.

The case of Oklahoma death-row inmate Richard Glossip has caused an international outcry, since even those who prosecuted him for murder admit he killed no one. The British reporter who became his close friend tells the story of Glossip’s campaign against three scheduled executions. Slightly off-mint.

When Britain banned the lucrative export of opium from Imperial India to China, organized criminals were quick to develop an illegal trade in narcotics. Using government files and personal letters Tim Newark reveals the extent to which gangsters exploited global trade routes, including those made secure by the British Empire itself, and how they became the setting for a turf war involving Shanghai smugglers, American drugbusters and Afghan criminal gangs.

Fifty years before Jack the Ripper, a prostitute was brutally murdered in a house near Waterloo Bridge. The killer was never identified but in this new analysis of the case, the author draws on the investigating policeman's notes and contemporary newspaper reports to link the crime to a series of other murders and identify a possible serial killer.

Jonathan Oates presents a detailed investigation of the notorious serial killer, an intelligent, apparently religious man who killed at least six people (whose own stories are given due attention here) before dissolving their remains to cover his tracks.

The well connected and urbane Patrice des Moutis began putting his talent for mathematics to his advantage in the late 1950s, exploiting the French state-run Tiercé betting system so effectively that the rules were repeatedly changed to thwart him. This biography of the gambler reveals how dangerous underworld connections and allegations of illegal bookmaking and race fixing were increasingly catching up with him at the time of his apparent suicide in 1975.

On the eve of the First World War, the French capital was terrorized by bandits, but these were no ordinary criminals. This narrative history charts the rise and fall of Jules Bonnot and his gang – violent anarchists, motivated by the city’s inequalities of wealth and poverty, who robbed banks and wealthy Parisians. Among their supporters was the young Victor Kibalchich, better known as the Russian revolutionary Victor Serge.

The alleyways and estates of Tower Hamlets were rife with poverty and crime in the 18th and 19th centuries. Local historian David Charnick tells dark tales of murders, poisonings and abductions that occurred there, using them to reveal aspects of everyday life before and during the encroachment of London’s East End. A specially commissioned section of black and white photographs shows the locations of many of the events.

'If you do not want to dwell with evil-doers', wrote Richard of Devizes in 1180, 'do not live in London'. In her third exploration of the city's history, Catharine Arnold focuses on the sex trade, from slave girls brought to service Roman troops in first-century Londinium, through medieval stews, 18th-century sex clubs and Victorian male brothels to infamous '60s call girls and the internet blogger 'Belle de Jour'. Off-mint.

Although still in his twenties, Austin Bidwell was an experienced international criminal at the time of his arrest for a fraud on the Bank of England in 1873. Based on original sources, including court transcripts, this is the story of the American con man and his four co-conspirators who successfully passed off bills of exchange until a small mistake led to their arrest and a trial that exposed the fragility of the financial system.

On 10 February 1962, on Glienicke Bridge between East Germany and West Berlin, the American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers was exchanged for Rudolf Abel, Soviet head of espionage in the USA. James Donovan was the American lawyer who defended Abel in court and negotiated his release to the USSR and the return of Powers. First published in 1964, this is the first-hand, inside story of a tense episode at the height of the Cold War. Slightly off-mint and felt-tip mark on lower trimmed edge.

During the summer of 1871 Christiana Edmunds went on a poisoning spree in Brighton, sending parcels of poison-laced sweets to some of the town’s most prominent citizens. The sensational trial of ‘the Chocolate Cream Killer’ ended with a death sentence, which was later commuted to life imprisonment. Looking at the Edmunds family history as well as the poisonings, Kaye Jones reveals the tragic past that set Christiana on a path to insanity and murder.

One of Sheffield’s most infamous sons, Charlie Peace responded to the steel mill accident that crippled him and the loss of a father that impoverished the family by turning to crime – and proving himself a genius at burglary, murder and disguise. Ben Johnson narrates Peace’s career of crime, from petty theft to murder and, eventually, to Armley Gaol and the hangman’s rope.

Paul Simpson separates truth from urban myth in these stories of famous jail breaks, from the real events that inspired Catch Me If You Can and Papillon and notable escapees from Death Row to the first helicopter escape from prison.

Within weeks of breaking auction house records, when bought by a Bond Street art dealer, Gainsborough's portrait of the Duchess of Devonshire was sensationally stolen, not to surface again for 25 years. This compendium of London crime describes 18 notorious felonies in the capital from Guy Fawkes and Jack the Ripper to Crippen and Christie.

In this study, Riah Pryor, a former researcher for New Scotland Yard’s Art and Antiquities Unit, examines criminal activity linked to the art market and considers how far the market, with its culture of secretive practice and huge financial transactions, is itself responsible for accommodating art crime. Among the topics discussed are Nazi art theft, forgery, pillaging of cultural heritage in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the agencies tackling the criminals.

If Frances Shea thought her marriage in 1965 was a passport to a glamorous life of West End nightclubs and celebrity friends, this biography reveals how she was misled. Leaving Reggie Kray after eight months, she was dead by 1967, allegedly of a drug overdose. Slightly off-mint.

The first dogs to work with the British Transport Police, at Hull docks in 1907, were trained to protect uniformed police to the extent that they would growl when their handlers wore civilian clothes. Including first-hand accounts, this review of the use of dogs by the force tells over 40 stories of canine heroism, including their actions at major incidents such as the Lockerbie bombing and the 2005 London terror attacks.

Identity theft and pyramid schemes seem very modern problems, but such scams rely on the same techniques that have been used by fraudsters throughout history to exploit their victims' greed, vanity or naivety. David Thomas has delved into the National Archives to uncover the stories behind a host of cons, forged documents and fraudulent beggars, as well as a 70-year spate of 'Spanish prisoner' letters, the Victorian ancestors of today's emails from Nigerian princes.

The sudden disappearance of 16-year-old Maria Glenn in Taunton in 1817 gripped the nation. She and her alleged abductors gave such different versions of what happened that one of them had to be lying. This story of deceit and betrayal tells how the reputed heiress to West Indian plantations was kidnapped by a local farming family hoping to force her to marry one of their sons. Maria was rescued and four defendants imprisoned, but then the townspeople turned on Maria.

Charles Peace had served several short prison terms for burglary before he killed a policeman during a robbery in Manchester in 1876. Later the same year a second murder provoked a nationwide hunt for Peace, who was only apprehended two years later in London, where he had been living luxuriously on the proceeds of his crimes. This book tells the story of one of Victorian England's most notorious criminals, his trial, eventual confession and execution.

The tale of the Whitechapel murders and the ensuing police investigation is told in graphic novel form, using black-and-white illustrations to conjure the dark and grimy atmosphere of the Victorian East End.

In November 1966, the body of Dr Helen Davidson, a GP in Amersham, was found in Hodgemoor Wood, near her Buckinghamshire home. Police surmised that she had surprised lovers and they had killed her, but no killers were ever found. Fifty years later, Monica Weller reopened this cold case and solved the mystery. In this book she describes her investigation and finally reveals the identity of the murderer.

Doctor Crippen, Lord Haw-Haw, Fred and Rosemary West, the Kray Twins – this book tells the stories of modern British history's most notorious murderers, traitors, burglars and fraudsters. Its alphabetical listing includes further entries for unsolved mysteries such as Lord Lucan's disappearance and the Brighton Trunk Murders. On a happier note, the 20th century saw extraordinary advances in the fight against crime, so successful police officers, forensic scientists and lawyers also find a place here.

Like his fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle enjoyed applying his mind to unsolved crimes, and the murder in 1860 of wealthy widow Mary Emsley was one such case. This book tackles the problem afresh, picking apart the evidence against the man who was hanged for the crime and, unlike Conan Doyle, reaching a conclusion as to the identity of the real killer. Off-mint

The deaths of two young men who shared nothing in common but an interest in moths draws Vera into a claustrophobic world: the quiet and increasingly strange community of Valley Farm.

Vera investigates two intriguing cases: two bodies submerged in water – one in a bath, the other in a rock pool – both strewn with flowers by a killer making art out of murder.

On a packed Metro train in Newcastle a woman is fatally stabbed; but no one saw the murder take place and Vera’s search for a lead takes her to the quiet, secretive community of Mardle.

‘Going freelance’, Vera agrees to help find a neighbour who has gone missing; but things become complicated when a body is discovered, and the missing woman is found with a knife in her hand.

The dead woman discovered in the steam room of a hotel health spa was a social worker, and the search for a motive links the murder victim to one of her own cases involving the death of a child.

When a former policeman, now in prison, offers information about a past crime in return for protection for his family, Vera has no option but to reopen a case that involves her own dead father, police corruption, a rundown seaside town and the Seagull nightclub.

Arriving at a remote study centre in the Pennines, Rachael looks forward to seeing Bella, her friend from the nearby farm: what she finds is Bella’s apparent suicide. When another member of the research group dies, DI Stanhope joins the women at Baikie’s Cottage.

Ten long years after a murder and a suicide shocked the village of Elvet, new evidence comes to light that proves the innocence of the woman accused of the murder. The killer is still at large, and Vera Stanhope must reopen the investigation and jog villagers’ painful memories. Off-mint.

The crowds of immigrants, merchants, sailors, slave traders and soldiers passing through the colonial port of 19th-century Liverpool provided an ideal cover for gang-led criminality and drink-fuelled depravity. This entertaining survey of Liverpool’s Victorian underworld presents a litany of crime stories, including murder, robbery, prostitution and bodysnatching, many of which involved sailor gangs like the notorious Packet Rats. The presence of Irish Catholic immigrants in the city, as Archibald points out, also raised tensions.

Malcolm Archibald investigates some of the lesser-known murders, robberies and misdemeanours committed in 19th-century Scotland, contrasting the romantic ‘glens and bens’ notion of the country with the reality of its criminal underworld. As well as dealing with themes in crime, such as poisonings, rural murder and ‘wild women’, the book has chapters devoted to celebrated cases including the Dundee Museum Robbery and the Siege of John Street.

The London crime scene of the 1950s and 1960s was rife with notorious villains such as the Krays and the Richardsons, but this book reveals that behind the headline-grabbers there was an unsuspected mastermind planning the Great Train Robbery and a string of other major robberies, a shadowy Mr Big controlling London's crime from the cover of his day job as a solicitor's clerk. His only confidant, his nephew Lee Sturley, tells the story.

DCS Herbert Hannam was one of the most compelling characters in Scotland Yard and the CID during the post-war period; in this biography of Hannam, Wade describes some of the sensational crimes he investigated in the mid 1950s and the unsolved murder of Emily Pye.

In 1887, Elizabeth Berry, a young widow employed as a nurse at the Oldham workhouse, became notorious throughout the country, having murdered her own daughter; and there were suspicions surrounding another death – that of Elizabeth’s mother. Here, the celebrated crime author Bernard Taylor investigates the disturbing life of Elizabeth Berry and concludes that, although she was indicted for a single murder, she was in fact a cold-blooded serial killer.

Who are the Mafia? Why are they so glamorized in popular culture? And how much damage do they really cause? The answers to these and other questions can be found in this lucid primer. Debunking the myths, it reveals the harsh realities of global organized crime from Russia to Mexico, and charts the trail of human misery and economic instability created by extortion, drug-running, money-laundering and human trafficking.

The mystery surrounding Jack the Ripper's crimes has led to more than a century of obsessive theorizing about his identity. Now, indignant at Ripperologists' tendency to believe the 19th century's 'greatest liars', Bruce Robinson offers 'a repudiation of virtually everything' published on the subject; his lengthy but lively analysis of the evidence exposes a web of corruption and cover-up that helped the killer to escape. Felt-tip mark on lower trimmed edge.

Whether anarchists, criminals, free thinkers or revolutionaries, outlaws hold a perennial fascination for the safe, law-abiding majority. Richly illustrated in colour and black-and-white, this book charts the exploits of forest outlaws from Robin Hood to Henry Thoreau; seafarers such as Francis Drake and the female pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read; sharpshooters such as Jesse James and Billy the Kid; and city hoodlums from Bonnie and Clyde to Jacques Mesrine.

A murder case usually excites public interest and when the crime takes place in a small community it is perhaps even more of a sensation. This true-crime selection recounts a number of murders committed in Cornwall during the later 20th and early 21st centuries and includes some intriguing unsolved killings such as that of millionaire farmer Les Bate in 2002.

Covering crimes ranging from killing newborns to parricide, this book chronicles the more gruesome aspects of Guildford's criminal history during the 19th and 20th centuries. It describes in detail each of 22 cases and the fates of both victims and perpetrators, with illustrations from contemporary reports and old and new photographs of the scenes of the crimes.

From a baby-eating pig in 14th century Oxford to Victorian murders, this book chronicles the more gruesome aspects of Oxfordshire's history. It describes in detail each of 27 cases and the fates of both victims and perpetrators, with illustrations from contemporary reports and old and new photographs of the scenes of the crimes.

Intriguingly, Presidents Lincoln and Kennedy took office exactly 100 years apart, their killers were born 100 years apart and both were succeeded by men named Johnson. This guide to famous assassinations is full of such entertaining facts about notorious killings through the ages, from Julius Caesar to Alexander Litvinenko, taking in a number of interesting failed assassinations along the way, including Hitler, Napoleon and Charles de Gaulle.

Giving up her job as a junior reporter in favour of becoming secretary to pathologist Keith Simpson, Molly Lefebure spent the war years attending autopsies and crime scenes and consorting with policemen and criminal lawyers. Against the backdrop of the London blitz, this memoir, dramatized in the 2013 ITV drama of the same title, recounts the stories of dozens of mysteries and crimes unravelled by the work of forensic pathology.

The Victorian sleuth 'Paddington' Pollaky was a contradiction: a man of mystery who craved the limelight; a meddling busybody whose heart was in the right place. This first-ever biography investigates his involvement in the American Civil War, his campaign against sex trafficking and his dogged search for abducted children. It examines his methods – including placing cryptic messages in The Times – and considers whether he was the inspiration for Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot.

From its opening in 1849, HM Prison, Winchester was the main centre for executions in Hampshire and the neighbouring counties, and the executioners were infamous hangmen including William Marwood, pioneer of the 'long drop', and Albert Pierrepoint. This history examines the cases of each of the 29 hangings that took place there from the 1869 Aldershot army camp murderer to the killers of a Cornish farmer in 1963.

The Highlands in the years immediately following Culloden were an explosive mixture of clan rivalry and Jacobite-Hanoverian enmity. Nevertheless, the murder in 1752 of Colin Campbell and subsequent hanging of James Stewart became a cause celebre, primarily because the wrong man had gone to the gallows. Using contemporary letters and witness statements, this book re-examines the facts and invites readers to draw their own conclusions about a 255 year-old murder mystery.

Now an upmarket residential enclave, Notting Hill in the 1950s was a run-down, crime-afflicted area, notorious for Christie’s murders at 10 Rillington Place. Fiona Rule tells its troubled story, from the mid 1700s when Notting Hill was a tiny rural community on Richard Ladbroke’s estates, through the arrival in the early 1800s of Arthur Lake, who dealt in London’s soot and sewage, to the murderers, street-fighters and evil landlords of the 20th century, ending with the area’s recent gentrification.

In 1856 Dr William Palmer was convicted of poisoning his best friend with strychnine and was suspected of committing at least a dozen other murders. One of the last people to be publicly hanged in Britain, he was described by Charles Dickens as ‘the greatest villain who ever stood trial at the Old Bailey’. But in this fresh examination of the evidence, journalist Stephen Bates considers Palmer’s motivation and asks whether he really was a prolific and ruthless serial killer.

Kate Summerscale reopens the case of the gruesome Road Hill murder of 1860 but models her account on the country-house murder mystery – the genre inspired by the real murder and its investigation by Scotland Yard’s Jonathan Whicher.

After a brief holiday romance with a fellow tourist in Morocco, a solicitor’s letter comes as a shock to Lizzie Bartholomew: Philip, her holiday lover, has died and left her £15,000 – with strange conditions attached.

A body discovered in a lake had been there, tied to an anchor, for more than ten years. The formidable task of identifying the young man and finding his killer falls to an imperturbable and meticulous detective, Peter Porteous.

A specialist in hiding people and providing them with new identities, the protagonist of this thriller helps a woman in witness protection and finds his secret network of clients across Europe coming under threat from a menacing foe.

Kitty Peck, the young music hall artist, inherits her grandmother's criminal network in this, her second adventure. Set in Belle Époque Paris and Victorian London, Kitty takes a child into her protection, a child who someone badly wants dead.

This 'register of the criminals capitally convicted and executed' at the York Tyburn was produced in 1867 using 'prison documents, ancient papers, and other authentic sources' to tell the stories of every criminal (not least 'highwayman, horse-stealer, and murderer' Dick Turpin) who mounted the scaffold, right back to 1379. Facsimile of the first edition, with new illustrations.

Written by noted experts, these lucid, alphabetically organized handbooks define and discuss the central concepts, thinkers and debates in a broad range of academic disciplines.

In 1856 Dr William Palmer was convicted of poisoning his best friend with strychnine and was suspected of committing at least a dozen other murders. One of the last people to be publicly hanged in Britain, he was described by Charles Dickens as ‘the greatest villain who ever stood trial at the Old Bailey’. But in this fresh examination of the evidence, journalist Stephen Bates considers Palmer’s motivation and asks whether he really was a prolific and ruthless serial killer.

On a summer night in Conduit Street, London, a woman approaches Joe Trayne and asks him for help with a dead man. She leads him to her flat, then disappears – leaving Joe with a body in a box. First published in 1946.

Cynthia Harrod-Eagles’ Morland Dynasty has now reached 1919. The Great War is over, but its aftermath presents fresh challenges. While Teddy heads for France and Polly visits New York, others simply resolve to keep on dancing. Slightly off-mint.

‘It all began, unpromisingly, with a cat.’ Seymour is sent to Athens in 1912 to investigate a sultan’s poisoned cat and dispel the rumour that the British were trying to kill the sultan and missed their aim.

Lynn Shepherd’s ingenious novel tells the story of a young detective who, in 1850, is hired by the only surviving son of Percy Bysshe and Mary Shelley to investigate a case of blackmail that develops into something far more disturbing.

In this sixth DS Fiona Griffiths murder case, the victim is an archaeologist who was excavating an Iron Age site; she has been decapitated in what looks like a ritual killing and the crime grows ever more bizarre as Griffiths investigates.

After a car is engulfed in flames on a quiet country road in northern England, DCI Carol Jordan and psychological profiler Tony Hill are drawn into a dark and twisted web of fear and revenge.

David Harwood moved back to his small-town childhood home; but when he visits his cousin Marla and a new baby that she claims is her own, Marla’s bizarre story reveals dark currents below the surface calm of Promise Falls.

Five women go into the Australian bush on a team-building exercise; only four come back. Alice Russell, the missing woman, is the whistle-blower in Federal Agent Aaron Falk’s latest case, and the secret information she has will have gone with her.

Lord Francis Powerscourt is approached by the Bishop of Lynchester, who has suspicions about the death of a Cathedral Close resident. When a prospective new tenant is poisoned, Powerscourt’s investigation uncovers a trail of corruption leading to the cathedral itself.