In 1600, at their house in Perth, the Earl of Gowrie and his brother were stabbed to death by the attendants of James VI, who alleged they were attempting to kill the king. The brothers' decomposing corpses were later propped up in a courtroom and tried for treason. In this gripping work of historical detection Davies probes the gruesome mystery to establish why James, who would ascend the English throne less than three years later, should wish to exterminate this noble family.

At a time when most Londoners were pulling together in the face of terrible adversity, a criminal minority was taking advantage of blitz and blackout to rob and murder. Here, the renowned crime writer Simon Read paints a vivid picture of what life was like in 1940s London as he describes the crimes of the most notorious killers, among them the 'Blackout Ripper', the Elephant Boys, John 'Acid Bath' Haigh and the infamous Rillington Place murderer, John Christie.

Islington may now be one of the most fashionable areas of London, but it was once a dark and dangerous place. This absorbing book charts the many shocking crimes committed within its purlieus, and profiles their perpetrators: police killers Thomas Cooper and Ronald Marwood, the poisoner George Chapman, the child murderer Celestina Somner, and Kenneth Halliwell, who bludgeoned his lover, the playwright Joe Orton, to death on Noel Road.

When a customer dies of strychnine poisoning after taking medicine dispensed by William Doughty, his family faces ruin and William's daughter turns detective to clear her father's name.

From Newgate Prison to the West London flat where Lord Lucan murdered his nanny, this illustrated gazetteer lists the locations around the capital that have played host to notorious crimes such as the Christie and Crippen murders, arch villains such as the Richardsons or famous London crime-fighters. The book also includes comprehensive guided walks visiting sites associated with Sherlock Holmes, Jack the Ripper and the Krays.

Following the success of MGM's film adaptation of his novel The Thin Man in 1934, Dashiell Hammett wrote the two novellas published here as screen stories for sequels. After the Thin Man and Another Thin Man continue the exploits of ex- detective Nick Charles and his wife Nora, with knife-edge dialogue and hairpin plot twists. Edited, with introductions, by Richard Layman and Julie M Rivett.

Duncan Hamilton tells the story of the amazingly accomplished jewel thief known as 'Harry the Valet', whose career of robbing the aristocracy lasted from 1876 to 1923 and whose final mistake was to let love cloud his judgement.

The current wealth of the art market is making it more attractive than ever to thieves and unethical dealers. Illustrated with reproductions of missing works and drawing on the work of Julian Radcliffe of the Art Loss Register, this volume tells the stories of stolen paintings and artefacts ranging from Old Masters to Warhol screen prints and examines topics such as the looting of antiquities, Nazi art theft and the problems facing the art world today.

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 interesting 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.

The theft of millions of pounds from a Post Office train in 1963 was a masterpiece of planning but the gang's behaviour thereafter was as inept as the robbery was daring. This new telling of the celebrated crime takes advantage of evidence that has emerged since the 2000 Freedom of Information Act and tracks the story from the night of the attack and through 50 years of sensational media coverage.

Illustrated with modern photographs and archive illustrations, this guide to the capital's murder hotspots identifies the locations of the most notorious London killings since 1800.

John J Eddleston tells the stories of 25 women who committed crimes including forgery, theft, rioting and murder, in and around London. The cases range from Catherine Hayes, burnt alive for murdering her husband in 1726, to Ruth Ellis who was found guilty of murder and hanged amid great controversy in 1955 - she was the last woman to be executed in the United Kingdom.

MJ Trow gives a fast-moving account of the Cato Street conspirators and the dark, radical intrigue that led them to the gallows outside Newgate Prison in May 1820.

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.

From the burning of the Uxbridge Martyrs during the reign of Mary Tudor, to the suicide of a convicted murderer in 1981, this book chronicles the more gruesome aspects of Uxbridge's history. 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 sensational Victorian murders to the Guy Fawkes Night killing in Rishton in 1927, this book chronicles the more gruesome aspects of Blackburn and Hyndburn's past. It describes in detail each of 11 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 George Eagles, hanged, drawn and quartered in 1557, to the riddle of the Fingringhoe skeleton in 1937, this book chronicles the more gruesome aspects of Colchester's history. It describes in detail each of 16 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.

After a brief history of the island, Glynis Cooper chronicles the more gruesome aspects of Jersey's history, from abduction and rape of its women in 1299 to the tragedies of the Nazi Occupation, 1940-45. The book describes in detail over 30 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 the early 19th century to the 1950s, Jonathan Oates chronicles the more gruesome aspects of Richmond and Kingston's history. He describes in detail each of 20 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.

Geoffrey Howse reveals the tragic and grisly details of sensational cases, from a judge killed on Primrose Hill in 1678 to 20th-century murders in Holloway, Finsbury Park and Camden.

As varied, enigmatic and unpredictable as the crime itself, this collection of 21 murder cases includes famous unsolved homicides such as the murder of Julia Wallace in Liverpool in 1931; particularly savage cases such as Buck Ruxton's killing of two women in Dumfriesshire in 1935; the first murderer convicted on fingerprint evidence; and a death sentence passed in 1992 - on the Isle of Man.

From 1915, when William Birkitt killed the first of his three victims, to the trial and conviction of James Paton for his second murder in 2005, this book describes in detail 23 cases of multiple killers with Yorkshire associations. Some of the murders were committed in prison, while others - to the added distress of the victims' friends and family - were done following a convicted murderer's release.

Bridget O'Donnell's meticulously researched book begins at Chelsea police station in 1885, when a search for a missing 13-year-old girl began Jeremiah Minahan's investigation and expose of a Victorian sex-trade in children.

This study of the crimes of Neville Heath, who was tried and hanged for murdering two women in 1946, draws on previously restricted Home Office and police files to shed new light on the case.

The perpetrators of the Brink's-Mat robbery of 1983 were expecting a substantial cash haul but ended up carrying away 6,800 gold bars, worth ú22 million, most of which have never been recovered. Illustrated with contemporary newspaper cuttings and many photographs of the crime scenes, investigations and protagonists, this book tells the story of 17 of the most sensational crimes in British history including the Charlotte Street Robbery and notorious murder cases such as the Yorkshire Ripper and the Acid Bath Murderer.

Medieval England was no stranger to crime, and punishments were harsh, from flogging and the stocks to hanging, drawing and quartering. This accessible collection of translated source material goes beyond the sensational to examine the legal framework of English justice between c.1215 and 1485. It takes the reader though the stages of prosecution, trial and punishment, provides vignettes of both heinous and petty crimes, outlines the ethical responsibilities of judges and officials, and describes extra-judicial methods of settling disputes.

The tradition of British detective fiction developed in parallel with the new Victorian police force as real-life murder cases inspired not only novels but also broadsides, waxworks, melodramas and puppet shows. In her exploration of a century of murder, Flanders uses the stories of the most notorious cases, from Burke and Hare to Jack the Ripper, to build up a picture of Victorian society and the evolving representations of crime and criminals in popular culture.

One morning in May 1671, a man disguised as a parson entered the Tower of London and stole the Crown Jewels. When caught, Colonel Thomas Blood, conspirator, turncoat and spy, was not executed for treason but granted a generous income in the service of the King. Against the sinister intrigues of the Stuart court, this biography paints a vivid picture of this wily, ambitious and reckless adventurer, whom Charles II found more useful alive than dead.

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.

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Mike Holgate's survey of crimes committed on or involving the railways marked the anniversaries, in 2013, of the Great Train Robbery of 1963 and the Whitechapel Murders in 1888, now thought to have been committed by a railway employee. Holgate describes the crimes, criminals and their comeuppance in these and other cases, including railway carriage murders, grand thefts such as the Great Bullion Robbery of 1855, and the attempted assassination of Queen Victoria at Windsor railway station in 1882.

On 9 July 1864, Thomas Briggs boarded the 9.45pm from Fenchurch Street, bound for Chalk Farm. Ten minutes later at Hackney Wick, all that remained of Mr Briggs was a lot of blood, his empty leather bag and ivory-topped cane and somebody else's hat. It was Britain's first railway murder and the public were gripped by this 'terrible drama of real life'. Evoking its Victorian setting, this book is an enthralling retelling of the crime and the hunt for the killer. Previously in Postscript as Mr Briggs's Hat.

In 1869 two strangers shot dead a bank teller in Missouri, the first of a series of crimes that would create the legend of Frank and Jesse James, and the only one for which Jesse would be tried. Yet no record of the case was known - until, in 2007, attorney James Muehlberger unearthed the documents. His account reveals how the motive was not robbery, but revenge for an earlier killing during the Civil War.

Once the capital of Scotland, Stirling is an ancient city with a long and often bloodthirsty history, the dark streets of its Old Town providing a haven for ne'er-do-wells. Illustrated with a wide range of archive material, this book trawls though the town's grisly catalogue of fraud, robbery, assault and murder. Ten cases are examined in depth, while an appendix explores the work of the Circuit Court of Justiciary.

As the town of Leeds burgeoned during the Industrial Revolution to become the metropolis of Yorkshire, its swelling population brought an increase in crime. Drawing on court records and other sources, this casebook charts the darker side of the city's history from 1800 to 1900, including the stories of John Dearden, who took a revolver to his wife's head, and Ann Barber, who murdered her husband with a poisoned apple.

Telling the story of the Mafia, from its origins to the 1990s, by means of photographs and captions, Picozzi brings to life the people and events that formed the culture of the Mafia in Italy and America.

This collection brings together the novel The Hound of the Baskervilles with six other tales, including The Creeping Man and The Devil's Foot, that share dark elements of the bizarre and supernatural.

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.