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.

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.

From the murder of sweet Fanny Adams in 1867 to the shooting of Florence Dennis in 1894, Jan Bondeson has scoured the archives of the Illustrated Police News and presents the illustrated accounts of 56 murders, including details of the victims and the fates of the killers.

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.

Tales of crime-ridden slums and the activities of pickpockets, garotters, swindlers and pornographers loomed large in the minds of Victorian Londoners, and those aspects of the city's past continue to fascinate today's readers of historical fiction. Novelist Ross Gilfillan presents his research into the real-life stories of London's poorest and most desperate residents in the mid 19th century, and describes the authorities' changing approaches to the prevention and punishment of crime.

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.

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.

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.

The practice of transporting criminals to Australia was abandoned in 1868 and replaced by the convict system: serious offenders were sentenced to ‘penal servitude’ in UK prisons and later released on license. Using information in licensees’ records, this volume presents brief biographies of 100 criminals, arranged in an A–Z, from Samuel Ainge (b.1820) who, after a seemingly blameless life was arrested for embezzlement in 1883, to Mary Wright (b.1853), who drowned her young daughter in 1880.

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.