Search Results for: true story

Praise for Sunday Times No.1 bestselling author Damien Lewis’ SAS mission series:

‘One of the great untold stories of WWII’ – Bear Grylls on SAS Ghost Patrol

‘The untold story’ – Daily Mail on SAS Nazi Hunters

‘A tale of bravery against desperate odds’ – Sunday Times on Churchill’s Secret Warriors

‘True adventures laced with staggering bravery and sacrifice’ – Sun on Hunting the Nazi Bomb

An impossible mission in wartime Italy: the next explosive bestseller from Damien Lewis.

In the hard-fought winter of 1944 the Allies advanced northwards through Italy, but stalled on the fearsome mountainous defences of the Gothic Line. Two men were parachuted in, in an effort to break the deadlock. Their mission: to penetrate deep into enemy territory and lay waste to the Germans’ impregnable headquarters.

At the eleventh hour mission commanders radioed for David ‘The Mad Piper’ Kilpatrick to be flown in, resplendent in his tartan kilt. They wanted this fearless war hero to lead the assault, piping Highland Laddie as he went – so leaving an indelible British signature to deter Nazi reprisals.

As the column of raiders formed up, there was shocking news. High command radioed through an order to stand down, having assessed the chances of success at little more than zero. But in defiance of orders, and come hell or high-water, they were going in.

“A revelatory and wholly fascinating work of history. Superbly researched and written with gripping fluency, this lost secret of World War II espionage finally has its expert chronicler.”
– WILLIAM BOYD

‘Gripping and intoxicating, it unfolds like the best screenplay.’
NICHOLAS SHAKESPEARE

The gripping story of a propaganda campaign like no other: the covert British operation to manipulate American public opinion and bring the US into the Second World War.

When William Stephenson – “our man in New York” – arrived in the United States towards the end of June 1940 with instructions from the head of MI6 to ‘organise’ American public opinion, Britain was on the verge of defeat. Surveys showed that just 14% of the US population wanted to go to war against Nazi Germany. But soon that began to change…

Those campaigning against America’s entry into the war, such as legendary aviator Charles Lindbergh, talked of a British-led plot to drag the US into the conflict. They feared that the British were somehow flooding the American media with ‘fake news’, infiltrating pressure groups, rigging opinion polls and meddling in US politics.

These claims were shocking and wild: they were also true.

That truth is revealed here for the first time by bestselling author Henry Hemming, using hitherto private and classified documents, including the diaries of his own grandparents, who were briefly part of Stephenson’s extraordinary influence campaign that was later described in the Washington Post as ‘arguably the most effective in history’. Stephenson – who saved the life of Hemming’s father – was a flawed maverick, full of contradictions, but one whose work changed the course of the war, and whose story can now be told in full.

From number one bestselling author and creator of Sookie Stackhouse Charlaine Harris and bestselling co-creator of Baltimore Christopher Golden comes a brand new graphic novel series. This omnibus edition includes Cemetery Girl, Inheritance and Haunted.

Calexa Rose Dunhill was just fourteen when she woke in a cemetery. Bruised, bloody and left for dead, with no memory of her previous life, she took a new name from the headstones that surrounded her.

Now, three years on, Calexa still lives in Dunhill Cemetery, struggling with the desire to know her true identity – and the all-consuming fear of what she might discover when she does.

Then, when she witnesses a gang of teenagers staging a stunt that goes horribly, fatally wrong, Calexa Rose Dunhill discovers she has a unique ability. One she cannot control . . .

‘Cemetery Girl has a power all of its own’ – Fantasy Book Review

‘Unforgettable’ The Times


‘Grippingly told and brilliantly reported’ Mail on Sunday


‘Startlingly intimate’ Sunday Times


‘Fascinating’ Daily Mail


‘Groundbreaking’ Evening Standard


‘Exceptional and moving’ Spectator


“Hidden Valley Road contains everything: scientific intrigue, meticulous reporting, startling revelations, and, most of all, a profound sense of humanity. It is that rare book that can be read again and again.”
-David Grann, author of Killers of the Flower Moon

One of the New York Times‘ “20 most anticipated books of 2020”: the heartrending story of a mid-century American family with twelve children, six of them diagnosed with schizophrenia, that became science’s great hope in the quest to understand the disease.

“An extraordinary case study and tour de force of reporting.”
-Sylvia Nasar, author of A Beautiful Mind

Don and Mimi Galvin seemed to be living the American dream. After World War II, Don’s work with the Air Force brought them to Colorado, where their twelve children perfectly spanned the baby boom: the oldest born in 1945, the youngest in 1965. In those years, there was an established script for a family like the Galvins – aspiration, hard work, upward mobility, domestic harmony – and they worked hard to play their parts. But behind the scenes was a different story: psychological breakdown, sudden shocking violence, hidden abuse. By the mid-1970s, six of the ten Galvin boys, one after the other, were diagnosed as schizophrenic. How could all this happen to one family?

What took place inside the house on Hidden Valley Road was so extraordinary that the Galvins became one of the first families to be studied by the National Institutes of Mental Health. Their story offers a shadow history of the science of schizophrenia, from the era of institutionalization, lobotomy, and the schizophrenogenic mother, to the search for genetic markers for the disease, always amidst profound disagreements about the nature of the illness itself. And unbeknownst to the Galvins, samples of their DNA informed decades of genetic research that continues today, offering paths to treatment, prediction, and even eradication of the disease for future generations.

With clarity and compassion, bestselling and award-winning author Robert Kolker uncovers one family’s unforgettable legacy of suffering, love and hope.

“This book tore my heart out. It is a revelation-about the history of mental health treatment, about trauma, foremost about family-and a more-than-worthy follow-up to Robert Kolker’s brilliant Lost Girls.”
-Megan Abbott, Edgar Award-winning author of Dare Me and Give Me Your Hand

A heartbreaking story of love and loss, based on a true story

OVER ONE MILLION COPIES SOLD

THE NO.1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

WINNER OF GOODREADS CHOICE AWARDS 2017 BEST HISTORICAL FICTION AWARD

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Memphis, Tennessee, 1939

Twelve-year-old Rill Foss and her four younger siblings live a magical life aboard their family’s Mississippi River shantyboat. But when their father must rush their mother to the hospital one stormy night, Rill is left in charge, until strangers arrive in force. Wrenched from all that is familiar and thrown into a Tennessee Children’s Home Society orphanage, the Foss children are assured that they will soon be returned to their parents – but they quickly realize the dark truth…

Aiken, South Carolina, present day

Born into wealth and privilege, Avery Stafford seems to have it all: a successful career, a handsome fiancé, and a lavish wedding on the horizon. But when Avery returns home to help her father weather a health crisis, a chance encounter leaves her with uncomfortable questions and compels her to take a journey through her family’s long-hidden history, on a path that will ultimately lead either to devastation or to redemption.

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Based on one of America’s most notorious real-life scandals, in which Georgia Tann, director of a Memphis-based adoption organization, kidnapped and sold poor children to wealthy families all over the country, Before We Were Yours is a riveting, wrenching and ultimately uplifting global bestseller.

‘A tale of enduring power’ Paula McLain

‘It is impossible not to get swept up in this near-perfect novel’ Huffington Post

‘Axel Lindén is a shepherd-philosopher with James Herriot’s knack for mishap and an almost Chekhovian deadpan humour.’ Observer

‘Endearing and liberating.’ Idler Magazine

‘A sublime little book.’ Cotswold Life

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Why do we keep sheep? Alex Lindén ruminates as he watches his sheep ruminating. Naive and inexperienced, he has ditched his doctoral studies in order to move to a fully working farm in the country with his family, where he is tasked with the responsibility of caring for a herd of sheep.

Lindén records his new life in his diary, as he tries to manage life on the farm, the ever-escaping sheep and the trials and tribulations that come with being a shepherd – shearing, lambing and confronting the slaughterhouse.

As time passes and he gradually settles into the rhythm of shepherding, his naivete fades away and is replaced with stark realisations about what is now his everyday life. He finds himself applying his experiences of animal husbandry to consider our place – as individuals and as a collective organism – in the universe. Is he really the one caring for the sheep, or are they the ones keeping him? Lindén finds both companionship in his flock and a sound, if complex, moral framework for examining the lives we lead.

The result is a sensitive and entertaining meditation on the small wonders in our world.

A journey through the most unlikely of gardens: the oases of peace people create in the midst of war

In this millennium, we have become war weary. From Afghanistan to Iraq, from Ukraine to South Sudan and Syria, from Kashmir to the West Bank, conflict is as contagious and poisonous as Japanese knotweed. Living through it are people just like us with ordinary jobs, ordinary pressures and ordinary lives. Against a new landscape of horror and violence it is up to them to maintain a modicum of normality and colour. For some, gardening is the way to achieve this.

Working in the world’s most dangerous war zones, freelance war correspondent and photographer Lally Snow has often chanced across a very moving sight, a testimony to the triumph of the human spirit in adversity, a celebration of hope and beauty: a war garden. In Kabul, the royal gardens are tended by a centenarian gardener, though the king is long gone; in Camp Bastion, bored soldiers improvise tiny gardens to give themselves a moment’s peace; on both sides of the dividing line in Jerusalem families tend groves of olives and raise beautiful plants from the unforgiving, disputed landscape; in Ukraine, families tend their gardens in the middle of a surreal, frozen war.

War Gardens is a surprising, tragic and beautiful journey through the darkest places of the modern world, revealing the ways people make time and space for themselves and for nature even in the middle of destruction. Illustrated with Lally Snow’s own award-winning photography, this is a book to treasure.

Published in hardback under the title FROM MOTHER TO DAUGHTER.

Whether you’re becoming a mum for the first time or you have children who are growing up faster than you could have ever imagined, motherhood can feel like the most joyful and yet the most daunting of times. But you’re not alone.

From the moment I knew my first baby was a girl I started to plan, hope and dream. I couldn’t wait to experience that special bond, but I wondered how I’d feel about being a working mum, how I’d hold on to the person I am. I also knew that the world has changed so much since I was growing up. What advice, values and role models would help give my daughter the confidence and strength to cope with all that might come her way – and to give her an open mind and warm heart?

This is my journey in motherhood: my experiences, hopes and fears – with my mum’s stories of raising me, a parenting expert’s advice and empowering exercises – to guide you from those first wobbly moments to being a happy, healthy mum and raising children who aren’t afraid to be themselves – and to go for the life they want.

KATIE PIPER
The Things I’d Tell My Child is about motherhood, what you learn as a mother, the things you would tell your daughter and most of all it’s Katie and Diane Piper’s celebration of the incredible power of mother-daughter relationships.

‘Shanghai’s champion storyteller – He grips his reader to the end’ Economist
‘Gripping, breakneck ultra-noir reminiscent of vintage Ellroy’ David Peace, author of Red or Dead
‘If you love Richard Lloyd Parry and David Grann, don’t miss City of Devils‘ Megan Abbott, author of Dare Me

1930s Shanghai was a haven for outlaws from all over the world: a place where pasts could be forgotten, oppression outrun, fortunes made – and lost.

This is the story of ‘Lucky’ Jack Riley, the Slot King of Shanghai, and ‘Dapper’ Joe Farren, owner of the greatest clubs and casinos. It tells of their escape from American prisons and Vienna’s ghetto, their rise to power, and the trail of destruction they left in their wake. Shanghai was their playground for a flickering few years, a city where for a fleeting moment even the wildest dreams seemed possible.

‘A dazzling talent’ Malcolm Gladwell

When Adam Gopnik and his soon-to-be-wife, Martha, left the comforts of home in Montreal for New York, the city then, much like today, was a pilgrimage site for the young, the arty, and the ambitious. But it was also becoming a city of greed, where both life’s consolations and its necessities were increasingly going to the highest bidder.

At the Strangers’ Gate builds a portrait of this particular moment in New York through the story of this couple’s journey–from their excited arrival as aspiring artists to their eventual growth into a New York family. Gopnik transports us to his tiny basement room on the Upper East Side, and later to SoHo, where he captures a unicorn: an affordable New York loft. He takes us through his professional meanderings, from graduate student-cum-library-clerk to the corridors of Conde Nast and the galleries of MoMA.

Between tender and humorous reminiscences, including affectionate portraits of Richard Avedon, Robert Hughes, and Jeff Koons, among many others, Gopnik discusses the ethics of ambition, the economy of creative capital, and the peculiar anthropology of art and aspiration in New York, then and now.

The Disturbing Inside Story of Women Who Are Driven to Kill

Killer Women are the most disturbing yet compelling of all criminals, representing the very darkest side of humanity and subverting the conventional view of women as the weaker sex.

From Elizabeth Bathory, ‘The Bloody Countess’ whose vampire-like tendencies terrorised sixteenth-century Hungary, to the Moors Murderer Myra Hindley and the Florida Highway Killer Aileen Wuornos, these women transfix us with their extreme ability to commit savage acts of cruelty and depravity.

Most chilling is the fact that many of their victims represent the most vulnerable in society: babies, the ill and infirm, and the elderly. In some cases their methods of disposing of the corpses fall nothing short of ingenious: meet Leonarda Cianciulli, ‘The Soap-Maker of Correggio’, who used the fat from her victims’ bodies to make soap and teacakes to sell to unsuspecting customers. These killers’ backgrounds, methods and their crimes are described in forensic and gripping detail.

50 terrifying cases of killer women are brought to life, including:

Elizabeth Bathory ‘The Bloody Countess’
Amelia Dyer, The Reading Baby Farmer
Jane Toppan, ‘Jolly Jane’
Juana Barraza, The Old Lady Killer
Leonarda Cianciulli, ‘The Soap-Maker of Correggio’
Bonnie Parker, ‘Bonnie & Clyde’
Rosemary West
Myra Hindley
Aileen Wuornos

‘Brimming with suspense and ghostly apparitions, Spring’s scorching thriller moves at a cracking pace and has a stunning twist’ Lancashire Evening Post

‘Don’t expect to breathe easily until the last page has turned’ Pendle Today

Boleskine House on the shores of Loch Ness has remained empty for years. Its dark history and rumours of hauntings – and worse – have scared all prospective buyers away. But estate agent Clara desperately needs to make this sale if she is to keep her job and stay one step ahead of her abusive husband. Maybe an ‘innocent’ fire will force the price down?

Then the perfect crime turns into the perfect nightmare: there was a witness to the fire, a stranger in the village, and he’s not going to let Clara get away with her ‘victimless’ crime that easily…

From the bestselling author of The Ghost Hunters, The Watchers and The Lost Village, comes a tense and claustrophobic psychological thriller based on a true story.

‘The master of UK horror today. Enthralling and Unequalled. Mesmerising White-Knuckle ride’ Amazon reviewer

‘OMG WHAT A BOOK!!!!! This is a real rollercoaster ride of tension and suspense. This book is creepy and set my heart racing. I did not want this book to end’ Peggy, Netgalley reviewer

‘Oh my, Neil Spring has done it again. What a page-turner! It’s full of tension and suspense from the very first page’ Rachel, Netgalley reviewer

‘A very chilling and atmospheric read set amongst the beauty of Loch Ness’ Michelle, Netgalley reviewer

‘A hugely entertaining read with some extremely chilling, gory moments and a highly atmospheric setting’ Michelle, Netgalley reviewer

‘Neil Spring just gets better and better’ Sue, Netgalley reviewer

SHORTLISTED FOR THE EDGE HILL PRIZE

Almost-true stories for a post-truth world

Wrong! Not Nice! Sad!

A Manhattan party on election night. Liberal media types gather with big grins and high-end canapés to watch the Trump-Clinton results come in, expecting a smooth victory for Hillary. As the outcome shifts and they descend into panic, the host stands abruptly before her guests, confessing a shocking crime of years before.
What follows is a series of witty, cutting, addictive tales of Trump times, portraying Democrats and Republicans in a divided America, from powerful to powerless, angry to thwarted, from a Starbucks barista who dreams of making it on the stage, to a couple whose online date goes bitterly awry, to a charmingly wicked U.S. businessman living undercover in rural Italy. Basket of Deplorables is a timely take on the craziness of today: almost-true fiction for a post-truth world.

The Terrifying Story of the Most Monstrous Serial Killers through History.

Serial Killers are the most notorious and disturbing of all criminals, representing the very darkest side of humanity. Yet they endlessy fascinate and continue to capture the public’s attention with their strange charisma and deadly deeds. From Jack the Ripper to Ted Bundy and the Moors Murderers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, these killers transfix us with their ability to commit utterly savage acts of cruelty and depravity.

Only with modern police detection methods and psychological profiling, have these figures that have existed throughout human history finally been identified in the deadliest category: serial killers. These methods, the killers’ characters and their crimes are described here in fascinating and terrifyingly gripping detail.

The whole history of serial killers is brought to life in 50 chapters, including:

Herman Webster Mudget, Devil in the White City
John Christie, 10 Rillington Place murders
Zodiac Killer
Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, The Moors Murderers
Ted Bundy
Fred and Rosemary West
Jeffrey Dahmer
Aileen Wuornos
Harold Shipman, Dr Death

THE SENSATIONAL TRUE CRIME STORY THAT SHOOK ICELAND – AS SEEN ON NETFLIX.

It is the most shocking miscarriage of justice in European history. And now – in the most stunning true crime narrative you will read this year – OUT OF THIN AIR spotlights Iceland’s strangest ever murder case.

Iceland, 1974. In two separate incidents, two men vanished into thin air. Then, out of it, came 6 murder confessions and 6 convictions. Yet, in the decades that followed, these too would dissolve…

Fuelled by a personal obsession with the case, Ant Adeane traces its bizarre developments across five decades: exposing the mistakes that were made, the lives that were ruined, the confessions that were coerced, the questions that remain unanswered, and the injustices that remain unaddressed.

And it all began in January 1974, when a young man went to a nightclub . . .

‘Reads like a great thriller. Incredibly interesting’ Ragnar Jonasson
‘Extraordinary . . . utterly compelling’ Sunday Times
‘Riveting’ Metro
‘What a fabulous read . . . fascinating’ Jo Spain

A heartwarming tale of love, family and acceptance, Darling Blue is a simply gorgeous read…

In their townhouse in Richmond, Blue and her family are as happy and as close as can be – well, on the surface at least.

But with the arrival of a young, destitute woman hoping to escape her abusive husband, they must finally confront the rifts that keep them apart. When they welcome Delphine into their home – and their hearts – they think it’s for her benefit only. But what they don’t realise is that she will bring them together in ways they never thought possible…

SEE WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ABOUT DARLING BLUE!

‘There were so many things that captivated me – her always wonderful writing, the gorgeous 1920s world of Richmond she evoked so beautifully and the characters who jumped right off the page and were such a complete pleasure to spend time with’
Jenny Ashcroft

‘I loved the evocative atmosphere of the 20s, the lovely characters and gorgeous descriptions of nature/turning of the seasons’
Lucinda Riley

‘Tracy’s meticulous research and lavish prose provide the reader with the complete experience. From the intriguing premise, I was caught up in the lives of these three women and invested in their stories. Tracy’s depiction of life in Richmond in the twenties was spot on and added depth to this glorious novel‘
Kathryn Hughes

‘I’ve so loved Darling Blue by Tracy Rees. Her writing is so fresh and exuberant and the characters so warm and lovely. It’s a book full of sunshine, a real treat’
Rachel Hore

‘I love Tracy’s writing; it’s full of colour and atmosphere, with sparkly dialogue and just the right pace to keep you turning the pages’
Gill Paul, author of Another Woman’s Husband

‘Darling Blue is a clever book that’s a joy to read … the drama rises by subtle, tiny increments until, at its climax, you have to remind yourself to breathe. These three women will stay with you for a long, long time’
Claire Dyer

‘Completely delightful, I loved it and the 1920s setting is sublime. Tracy writes with a warmth and authenticity that draws her readers into the delicious world she has created’
Rosanna Ley

‘I thoroughly enjoyed escaping into the delicious effervescent world of Richmond in the 1920s. Tracy has such a lovely turn of phrase. Full of vitality and warmth, Darling Blue is delightful’
Tor Udall

‘It’s a simply glorious read, one of the best books I’ve read in a very long time. Tracy’s writing is so deep and wise and true. It captured me from the first word … a truly stunning novel‘
Nicola Cornick

The inside story of the life and death of Britain’s criminal kingpin and the empire he built

KILLING GOLDFINGER charts the extraordinary rise and spectacular bullet-riddled fall of John Palmer, the richest, most powerful criminal ever to have emerged from the modern British underworld. During the late 1990s, Palmer was rated as rich as The Queen by the Sunday Times Rich List.

Palmer earned his nickname Goldfinger after smelting (in his back garden) tens of millions of pounds worth of stolen gold bullion from the 20th century’s most lucrative heist; the Brink’s-Mat robbery. Palmer then used his share of the millions to become the vicious overlord of a vast illegal timeshare property empire in Tenerife. At the same time,Goldfinger financed huge international drugs shipments as well as some of the most notorious UK robberies of the past 30 years, including the £50m Securitas heist in Kent in 2006 and, many believe, the Hatton Garden heist in 2015.

Palmer vowed to hunt down all his underworld enemies. But in the end it was those same criminals who decided to bring his life to an end. Murdered in June 2015, with charges of fraud, money laundering and worse pending, this book tells his murky story for the first time.

As outrageous and bullet-riddled as the hit Netflix series Narcos, Killing Goldfinger tells the true story of Britain’s underworld kingpin, who turned the sunshine holiday island of Tenerife into his very own Crime Incorporated and then paid the ultimate price.

A story about love, family secrets, and a little piece of heaven . . .

In the beautiful village of Vernazza, the Mazzone family have transformed an old convent overlooking the glamorous Italian Riviera into the elegant Lemon Tree Hotel. For Chiara, her daughter Elene and her granddaughter Isabella, the running of their hotel is the driving force in their lives.

One day, two unexpected guests check in. The first, Dante, is a face from Chiara’s past, but what exactly happened between them all those years ago, Elene wonders. Meanwhile, Isabella is preoccupied with the second guest, a mysterious young man who seems to know a lot about the history of the old convent and the people who live there. Isabella is determined to find out his true intentions and discover the secret past of the Lemon Tree Hotel.

A heartwarming saga of secrets, friendships and wartime spirit at the height of World War 2. For fans of Daisy Styles, Sheila Newberry and Lyn Andrews

A young German girl finds friendship, camaraderie and even love while working on Hampshire’s south coast ferries – but will her new friends desert her if her nationality comes to light?

‘A gripping story packed with darkness and light, love and friendship, greed and betrayal’ Lancashire Evening Post on The Factory Girls

Vee Smith is 22 when she starts work on Gosport’s ferries, taking a job left vacant by the men gone off to war. She soon makes friends with the other women workers, and together they enjoy nights out dancing in Gosport – keeping their spirits up despite the hard work, rationing and heavy bombing. Vee even feels herself falling for Sam, the skipper of the ferry and her unhappily married boss.

But Vee has a secret: her real name is Violetta Schmidt, and she is half-German. If her true nationality is discovered, she and her mother could find themselves interned as enemy aliens – if their German-hating neighbours, or worse, Eddie, the man Vee ran away from after he got her false papers, don’t hurt them first.

Will Vee be able to keep her secret safe, and find some peace with Sam and her friends even in the midst of war?

Meet the unit that posed as Nazi stormtroopers in the most daring mission ever undertaken

SAS Ghost Patrol is the explosive true story of the day in 1942 when the SAS donned Nazi uniforms to perpetrate the most audacious and daring mission of the war. Beyond top secret, deniable in the extreme (and of course enjoying Churchill’s enthusiastic blessing), this is one of the most remarkable stories of wartime lawlessness, eccentricity and raw courage in the face of impossible odds – a thoroughly British undertaking.

What unfolded – the longest mission ever undertaken by Allied special forces – was an epic of daring, courage, tragedy and survival that remains unrivalled to this day, and which rightly became a foundation stone of Special Forces legend. It may read like the stuff of impossible myth or folklore, but every single word is true.

PRAISE FOR SAS GHOST PATROL

‘Intensively researched and powerfully written. One of the great untold stories of WWII‘ Bear Grylls

‘Lewis has done a terrific job in resurrecting Heaven Platoon, portraying them as the brave, buccaneering heroes they undoubtedly were’ Daily Mail

‘Another true tale of military derring-do from Lewis’ Sunday Express

‘In SAS Ghost Patrol Lewis reveals a tale of suicidal bravery, untold daring and breath-taking deceit. Told with the panache and verve of a born storyteller, Lewis is in a class of his own‘ Saul David

‘Amazing tale of WWII great escaper’s Nazi ruse . . . The extraordinary Second World War saga of the SIG and its legacy is revealed.’ The Daily Mirror

‘British troops dressed in German uniforms and mounted a daredevil raid to take the Libyan port of Tobruk during the Second World War, reveals a fascinating new book’ Daily Express

‘Lewis’s account . . . reads like a Boy’s Own adventure, except it isn’t a work of fiction and the heroes don’t come through unscathed. His storytelling enhances the bravery of the men and the danger of the missions without over-dramatising anything. There is no need to’ Soldier Magazine

‘Reveals the true story of an ultra-secret fighting unit that posed as Nazi Storm Troopers to seize the German-held port city of Tobruk during the Second World War’ Richard Hatch and Verity Geere, Forces Radio breakfast show

The World’s Smallest Dog with the World’s Biggest Heart

Smoky the Brave is the extraordinary, touching and true story of a heroic dog and her adoptive masters in the jungles of the Pacific War. In February 1944, as Japanese military advances threatened to engulf Australasia, a tiny, four-pound Yorkshire terrier was discovered hiding in a Japanese shell scrape amidst the thick jungles of Papua New Guinea. The GIs who discovered her presumed she had been some kind of Japanese army mascot, but it soon turned out that she understood neither commands rendered in Japanese nor English. A mystery, she was adopted by Corporal William ‘Bill’ Wynne, an air-crewman with the US 5th Air Force’s 26th Photo Reconnaissance Squadron.

Living in Bill Wynne’s tent, sleeping on a piece of green felt salvaged from a card table,and sharing his rations, Smoky became the de facto mascot of the regiment. She went on to fly numerous photo-recce and air-sea rescue missions, cocooned in a soldier’s pack hanging next to the machine-guns used to repel marauding Japanese fighters. She was awarded eight battle stars, surviving dozens of Japanese combat raids on Papua New Guinea, and braving a typhoon that ravaged Okinawa. After saving Wynne’s life by warning of a falling shell, as their landing craft approached an enemy-held beach – a shell that killed the eight men that Wynne was standing beside – he nicknamed her the ‘angel from a foxhole’. In one of her most famous exploits Smoky parachuted using a special rig designed to fit one of the world’s smallest but toughest dogs.

In perhaps her most heroic exploit of all, Smoky ran a cable through a seventy-foot pipe no wider in places than four inches, to enable telephone lines to be run across the recently occupied airbase of Luzon. Her efforts saved hundreds of ground-crew from being exposed to enemy bombing, preventing injury and loss of life. Amongst her many other awards,she was given the PDSA’s Certificate for Animal Bravery or Devotion in 2011, a relatively new class of PDSA award.

‘You couldn’t make these stories up: yet they’re true, and Lewis does the memory of these extraordinary men full justice in a tale that is both heart-stopping and moving’ Evening Standard

‘Suicidal bravery, untold moral courage and awe-inspiring survival. An utterly compelling read’ Bear Grylls

From the bestselling author of true military classics ZERO SIX BRAVO, THE NAZI HUNTERS and CHURCHILL’S SECRET WARRIORS

In the Spring of 1940, as Britain reeled from defeats on all fronts and America seemed frozen in isolation, one fear united the British and American leaders like no other: the Nazis had stolen a march on the Allies towards building the atomic bomb. So began the hunt for Hitler’s nuclear weapons – nothing else came close in terms of priorities. It was to be the most secret war of those wars fought amongst the shadows. The highest stakes. The greatest odds.

Prior to the outbreak of the war the massive German chemicals conglomerate I.G. Farben – the future manufacturers of Zyklon-B, the gas used in the Nazi concentration camps – had started producing bulk supplies of deuterium oxide – heavy water – at the remote Norwegian plant of Vemork. This was the central target of three separate missions – Operations GROUSE, FRESHMAN and GUNNERSIDE – over the ensuing four years. As Churchill commented: ‘The actual facts in many cases were equal to the most fantastic inventions of romance and melodrama. Tangle with tangle, plot and counter-plot, ruse and treachery, cross and double-cross, true agent, false agent, double agent, gold and steel, the bomb, the dagger and the firing party were interwoven in a texture so intricate as to be incredible yet true.’

Damien Lewis’s new bestseller intercuts the hunt for the scientists, the raw materials and the plant, with the cloak and dagger intelligence game being played in the shadows. This relied in part on ENIGMA intercepts to guide the SOE’s hand. Lewis delves into some of the most extraordinarily inventive and Machiavellian innovations at the SOE, and their related research and training schools, whereby the enemy were tricked, deceived, framed, blackmailed and double and triple-crossed, all in the name of stopping the Reich from getting the bomb.

A Victorian Murder. A Victorian Madman. A Modern Judgement.

Gateshead, April 1866

The Apprentice of Split Crow Lane takes the forgotten case of a child murder in 1866 as a springboard to delve deeply into the pysche of the Victorians. What Jane Housham finds, in this exploration of guilt, sexual deviance and madness, is a diagnosis that is still ripe for the challenging and a sentence that provokes even our liberal modern judgement.

Set around Gateshead, it is a revelatory social history of the North – an area growing in industry and swelling with immigration, where factory workers are tinged blue and yellow by chemicals, the first tabloids are printed, children are left alone by working parents and haystack fires sweep the county in rebellion against the introduction of the police force. Into this landscape, a five-year-old Irish girl named Sarah Melvin sets out over the fell to look for her father, and a troubled young man makes a frightening leap of logic to save his own skin.

Told here for the first time, this is an extraordinary story of sexual deviance and murder. In lively, empathic prose, Jane Housham explores psychiatry, the justice system and the media in mid-Victorian England to reveal a surprisingly modern state of affairs.

Vine royalty, YouTube megastars, hip-pop sensations, and best friends, Jack & Jack bring their own brand of irreverent comedy, on-point style, and heartfelt life advice to You Don’t Know Jacks.

Jack & Jack: You Don’t Know Jacks is a 240-page, full-colour behind-the-scenes look at the lives of Jack Gilinsky and Jack Johnson, two of the hottest stars performing today. The book details the rise of two best friends growing up in Nebraska, posting Nerd Vandals Vines, to becoming iTunes bestselling rap-rock stars.

Full of exclusive photographs, backstage antics, and hilarious anecdotes, it’s perfect for any fan who’s ever dreamed of someday being famous.