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A memoir of brutality, heroism and personal discovery from Europe’s dark heart, revealing one of the most extraordinary untold stories of the Second World War

In the spring of 1945, at Rechnitz on the Austrian-Hungarian border, not far from the front lines of the advancing Red Army, Countess Margit Batthyany gave a party in her mansion. The war was almost over, and the German aristocrats and SS officers dancing and drinking knew it was lost. Late that night, they walked down to the village, where 180 enslaved Jewish labourers waited, made them strip naked, and shot them all, before returning to the bright lights of the party. It remained a secret for decades, until Sacha Batthyany, who remembered his great-aunt Margit only vaguely from his childhood as a stern, distant woman, began to ask questions about it.

A Crime in the Family is Sacha Batthyany’s memoir of confronting these questions, and of the answers he found. It is one of the last untold stories of Europe’s nightmare century,spanning not just the massacre at Rechnitz, the inhumanity of Auschwitz, the chaos of wartime Budapest and the brutalities of Soviet occupation and Stalin’s gulags, but also the silent crimes of complicity and cover-up, and the damaged generations they leave behind.

Told partly through the surviving journals of others from the author’s family and the vanished world of Rechnitz, A Crime in the Family is a moving and revelatory memoir in the vein of The Hare with the Amber Eyes and The House by the Lake. It uncovers barbarity and tragedy but also a measure of peace and reconciliation. Ultimately,Batthyany discovers that although his inheritance might be that of monsters, he does not bear it alone.

This is a memoir by French bestselling and award-winning author and musician Mathias Malzieu. It focuses on a single year in which he explores his close encounter with death. Insightful, tragic and even often very funny, it is a hugely inspirational read.

In November 2013 Malzieu is diagnosed with a rare and life-threatening blood disease: his bone marrow does not produce enough blood cells, and those that survive are being attacked by the body’s natural antibodies as if they were viruses. Highly anaemic and at risk of a cardiac attack or fatal haemorrhaging, Malzieu is whisked into hospital, and spends months in a sterile isolation room. He is kept alive by blood transfusions, while waiting for a bone marrow transplant. When he has the energy for it, he writes in his diary and strums his ukelele.

To read this book is to be in awe of the triumph of the human spirit. As a reader you find yourself marvelling at how we find the mechanisms to cope with tragedy and uncertainty when faced with the reality that we may die. Malzieu’s highly active imagination allows him to transcend the limits of his body and its increasing failures through fantasy and escapism. His wonderfully addictive childish wonder with a punk Gothic twist lifts the narrative from being a depressing account to a reading experience that is evocative, poetic and intensely moving.

Malzieu survived thanks to a revolutionary operation involving stem-cell treatment with the blood from an umbilical cord. As he leaves the hospital with not only a different blood group but also a different DNA, he describes himself as the oldest newborn in the world. As Malzieu says himself, ‘To have had my life saved has been the most extraordinary adventure I have ever had.’

‘Incredibly moving’ Daily Mail

‘To Siri with Love is a beautifully honest and illuminating love letter to Gus, your typical atypical nonneurotypical human.’ Jon Stewart

‘A moving and witty memoir with a big heart.’ Nigella Lawson

‘An uncommonly riotous and moving book [that] will make readers laugh – yes, out loud – before sweeping them, finally, into a soul-spilling high tide . . . Technology’s great promise may in fact be to summon, capture and display our most human qualities, both the darkness and the light, to pave avenues of deepened connections with others.’ New York Times

Writer Judith Newman never had any illusions that her family was ‘normal’. She and her husband keep separate apartments-his filled with twin grand pianos as befits a former opera singer; hers filled with the clutter and chaos of twin adolescent boys conceived late in life. And one of those boys is Gus, her sweet, complicated, autistic 13-year-old.

With refreshing honesty, To Siri With Love chronicles one year in the life of Gus and the family around him — a family with the same crazy ups and downs as any other. And at the heart of the book lies Gus’s passionate friendship with Siri, Apple’s ‘intelligent personal assistant’. Unlike her human counterparts, Siri always has the right answers to Gus’s incessant stream of questions about the intricacies of national rail schedules, or box turtle varieties, and she never runs out of patience. She always makes sure Gus enunciates and even teaches him manners by way of her warm yet polite tone and her programmed insistence on civility.

Equal parts funny and touching, this is a book that will make your heart brim, and then break it. Warm, wise and always honest, Judith Newman shows us a new world where artificial intelligence is beginning to meet emotional intelligence — a world that will shape our children in ways both wonderful and unexpected.

The Hatton Garden Heist captured the public’s imagination more than another other crime since The Great Train Robbery. It was supposed to make a fortune for a team of old time professional criminals. Their last hurrah. A final lucrative job that would send the old codgers off on happy retirements to the badlands of Spain and beyond. It seemed to be the stuff of legends. Tens of millions of pounds worth of valuables grabbed from secretive safety deposit boxes in a vault beneath one of the most famous gold and jewellery districts in the world.

But where did it all go wrong for this band of old time villains? And why did the gang’s bid to pull off the world’s biggest burglary turn into a deadly game of cat and mouse featuring the police and London’s most dangerous crime lords?

Nobody is better placed to reveal the full story of the Hatton Garden Raid than Britain’s best-connected true crime writer Wensley Clarkson. Through his unique contacts inside the London underworld, he’s persuaded those who really know the truth to reveal the chilling details behind Britain’s biggest ever burglary.

This book is a window into the world of Danny Dyer – and he’s seen more of the world than most so he’s got one or two things to say about it.

Tackling such vital questions as ‘Where have all the old school boozers gone?’ ‘Are there such things as ghosts?’ and ‘Am I middle class?’ Danny shares his unique take on life with characteristic honesty and humour and reveals why it is that:

· What goes around comes around – he learnt the hard way
· You can take the boy out of the East End but you can’t take the East End out of the boy
· Harold Pinter is a diamond geezer
· He told the media training expert to do one
· Science can prove that West Ham are the best football club in the world
· Him and Joanne are like a team – he’s Paul Gascoigne, she’s David Batty
· The human race isn’t evolved enough for Twitter

So, hold on to your titfer, it’s gonna be a bumpy ride!

Once there was a land with five evil kings, and each king had an evil queen. These were the King and Queen of Quills, of Wheels, of Spires, of Rings. Most powerful wicked and feared of all were the King and Queen of Swords . . .

That was long ago, and now the King and Queen of Swords are only painted faces on playing cards, flicking across the green baize of gaming tables. Or are they?

For Jemany Vexing, true prince of Ejland and Key to the Orokon, keeps hearing their names, in song and in story, as he sets out on the second stage of his quest, seeking the long-lost mythic crystals of the gods.

On the run and lying low, disguised as a wandering Vaga-player, Jem is making for the great southern city of Agondon, where he hopes the mysterious guardian promised to him by the enigmatic harlequin will guide him to the green Crystal of Viana. But Lord Empster is not all he appears.

Originally released under the pseudonym Tom Arden

‘Inspiring and very moving. A hero on so many levels’ Bear Grylls

‘The astonishing journey … and the service dog that helped him recover … A tale that will inspire and amaze’ Waterstones.com

When special forces soldier Jason Morgan awoke from a months-long coma, he was told he’d never walk again. Discovered face-down in a Central American swamp after a jungle mission gone wrong, he had a smashed spine,collapsed lungs and countless broken bones. It was a miracle he’d even survived.

Months of painful surgery followed, with Jason’s life balanced on a knife-edge. Released from hospital in a wheelchair and plagued by memory loss, Jason’s life fell apart. Left alone to raise his three infant sons, all hope seemed gone,until Jason met Napal, a handsome-as-hell black Labrador provided by a very special charity.

With this one incredible dog at their side, Jason’s life and that of his family would never be the same again. With Napal’s help Jason was able to conquer his paralysis, eventually completing a marathon and winning numerous medals in the Wounded Warrior Games. More than that, this amazing service dog helped heal a family and taught Jason to be the father his kids needed him to be.

A Dog Called Hope is the moving and heart-warming story of how Jason rediscovered his life’s mission, his strength as a father and, through his beloved dog, his hope. It’s the story of the closeness between one man and one dog like no other, and how this mesmerizing duo changed countless lives. Inspirational, tear-jerking and laugh-out-loud uplifting, this is a story that will brighten any day and warm every heart.

The Carnacki Institute is all about ghosts – or at least, keeping them under control.

Their latest assignment sees JC and the team sent to a small country village, site of a famously haunted inn. At first, JC thinks that the spirits in the King’s Arms are more the stuff of urban legend than anything that needs the Ghost Finders’ expertise. But one story rings true: the tale of a traveller trapped in the inn by an unusual thunderstorm. She retired to her room for the night – and vanished.

Trapped by an unusual thunderstorm – like the one that begins raging outside shortly after they arrive . . .

As the team investigates, they are forced, one by one, to face some hard truths about themselves, their relationships and the haunting itself – truths that may push Happy Jack over the edge into the madness he has always feared . . .

Spirits from Beyond is the fourth title in New York Times bestselling author Simon R. Green’s Ghost Finders series.

What readers are saying about The Love Factory:

‘The first time I’ve wanted to start re-reading a book from the moment I finished it’

‘Like Sex and the City on acid’

‘Anna [is] a heart-capturing protagonist’

‘a warm, inclusive, big-hearted book’

You can control want, but desire controls you

When literary writer Anna falls on hard times, she tries her hand at erotic fiction to make money, and faces an uncomfortable truth. Though she’s a wife and mother of two, her stories fail to fly because she’s never experienced true sexual desire. Even her Sicilian grandmother – wearer of diamante sunglasses and knock-off Louis Vuitton – knows more than she does about real passion.

Anna turns to her friends for inspiration. As secrets and desires are revealed, she discovers more about the people close to her than she ever knew. When one of them suggests she borrow an alter ego to banish her inhibitions, a new world opens up, and The Love Factory – a group of writers penning ever more successful sexy stories – is born.

Yet Anna knows that she can’t rely on borrowed passion and an alter ego forever. For her tales to truly sizzle, she needs to find a true love of her own.

The thrilling and true story of the development and operational deployment of human torpedoes – ‘Chariots’ – and ‘X-craft’ midget submarines in British naval service during WWII, and of the extraordinary men who crewed these dangerous vessels. The commando frogmen who rode the Chariots and operated as divers from the X-craft were the forerunners of today’s Special Boat Service, the SBS.

Their aim was to attach an explosive charge underneath an enemy ship to destroy the vessel. Their hope was to return to their submarine unscathed. The Real X-Men tells the story of the sacrifice and heroism of the individual men, many of them little more than teenagers, who volunteered for this dangerous duty and who crewed both the Chariots and the X-craft without knowing the full extent of the risks entailed, nor indeed the very small chances they had of coming back alive.

‘When it comes to confidence, we could all take a leaf out of Katie’s book. She has overcome more than anyone else I know’ CHERYL

Don’t look to other people for confidence, find it in yourself. The Confidence Journal will guide you through daily affirmations and creative prompts to help you live the life you want, whenever you want. Katie Piper’s warm and honest voice will inspire you to achieve goals and happiness you only ever dreamed of and will allow you to be the star of your own life.

With true confidence, anything and everything is possible.

‘RICH IN ATMOSPHERE AND PERSONALTIY … IT’S IMPOSSIBLE TO READ A BRUNO NOVEL WITHOUT GETTING HUNGRY’ New York Times

Bruno, Chief of Police, star of the internationally bestselling series of Dordogne Mysteries, investigates the real-life disappearance of ‘the most beautiful car ever made’ in this compelling case for France’s favourite cop

The Bugatti Type 57 Atlantic was called the most beautiful car of all time. Only four of them were ever built. A California museum paid $37 million for one; Ralph Lauren bought another; a third was smashed by a train at a level crossing. The fourth disappeared in France during World War 2. It was the car used by British racing ace, William Grover Williams, twice winner of the French and Monaco Grand Prix, who became an undercover agent in Occupied France.

The latest adventure in the Bruno series of mystery novels starts from this true story. Two young men, both racing drivers with a passion for antique cars, compete to find new clues as to the car’s hiding place in the Perigord region of France.

When a local researcher turns up dead on Bruno’s patch, and French intelligence starts investigating the use of classic car sales to launder money for funding Islamic terrorism, Bruno finds himself once more caught up in a case that reaches far beyond his small town and its people.

With the bucolic charm and gourmet cooking that are the hallmarks of this series, Bruno’s latest adventure finds him falling in love again as he races to find the murderer and to track down the fate of the most beautiful car ever made.

The Dwarves are back! Germany’s Number One bestselling author returns to his best-loved series.

After decades of occupation by the älfar, the dark elves have been defeated and peace has finally been declared.

But the nations still distrust each other, and when a child is found in the Grey Mountains who speaks the language of the älfar, the dwarves believe this little girl heralds a new threat. And they will be right – just not in the way they thought.

Under the orders of Ireheart, now High King of the dwarves, a small delegation is sent to search for Tungdil Goldhand, the true High King, who many believe dead. Against all odds, Tungdil has survived his mission to the terrifying realm of Phondrasôn. But is he truly the legendary hero of the dwarves, or an impostor at the heart of a deeper conspiracy?

And does he realise that the fiends from Phondrasôn themselves aren’t far behind . . . ?

The action never lets up in this next exciting story in the saga of the dwarves and the älfar!

‘The Dwarves is a well-constructed classic fantasy story that I greatly enjoyed’ – Speculative Book Review

‘Riveting, twisty, page-turning stuff‘ Guardian

A ‘best books of 2020’ pick for BBC Radio 4 Open Book, the Guardian, the Telegraph and Good Housekeeping

‘The page turner you’ve been looking for. Sly, witty and gripping . . . I devoured it’ Naomi Alderman
‘An utter joy . . . wonderfully skilled’ Sarah Perry
‘Beguiling, brilliantly creepy, and an utterly compelling read’ Claire Fuller
‘Tender, creepy and gripping’ Sunday Times
‘Spellbinding and spooky . . . a dazzling high wire act, superbly absorbing’ Sunday Mirror

When the eight-year-old daughter of an Oxford College Master vanishes in the middle of the night, police turn to the Scottish nanny, Dee, for answers.

As Dee looks back over her time in the Master’s Lodging – an eerie and ancient house – a picture of a high achieving but dysfunctional family emerges: Nick, the fiercely intelligent and powerful father; his beautiful Danish wife Mariah, pregnant with their child; and the lost little girl, Felicity, almost mute, seeing ghosts, grieving her dead mother.

But is Dee telling the whole story? Is her growing friendship with the eccentric house historian, Linklater, any cause for concern? And most of all, why is Felicity silent?

Roaming Oxford’s secret passages and hidden graveyards, Magpie Lane explores the true meaning of family – and what it is to be denied one.

‘Enthralling . . . creepy and compelling’ The Times
‘Deliciously dark’ Alexandra Shulman
‘A gorgeously satisfying triumph’ Lucy Mangan
‘A rare thing . . . simply stunning’ Daily Express
‘I was gripped . . . highly original’ Alex Clark
‘Creepy, suspenseful’ Independent
‘One of the most intriguing narrators since Notes on a Scandal‘ Sara Collins
‘Grown-up and cleverly written . . . a dizzying sense of uncertainty’ Literary Review
‘Keeps you guessing . . . a real sense of menace’ Good Housekeeping
‘Wholly beguiling’ Mick Herron
‘Dazzlingly good’ Diane Setterfield
‘Beautiful writing’ Polly Samson
‘Clever, tense and twisty’ Amanda Craig
‘Highly intelligent’ Sarah Vaughan
‘Simply brilliant!’ JP Delaney
‘Darkly atmospheric’ Jane Fallon
‘Clever and creepy’ Erin Kelly
‘Highly recommended’ Louise Candlish

The inside story of The Cure

‘Beautifully realised’ Irish Times

Coming of age in Thatcher’s Britain in the late 70s and early 80s was really tough, especially if you lived in Crawley. But against the grinding austerity, social unrest and suburban boredom, the spark of rebellion that was punk set alight three young men who would become one of the most revered and successful bands of their generation. The Cure.

Cured is a memoir by Lol Tolhurst, one of the founding imaginary boys, who met Robert Smith when they were five. Lol threads the genesis of The Cure through his schoolboy years with Smith, the iconic leader of the group, and the band’s most successful era in the 1980s. He takes us up to the present day, a riveting forty years since the band’s inception.

The band’s journey to worldwide success is woven into a story not only of great highs and lows but also of love, friendship, pain, forgiveness and, ultimately, redemption on a beach in Hawaii.

Cured highlights those parts of the creative journey that are not normally revealed to fans, incorporating many first-hand recollections around Lol’s personal odyssey. From suburban London to the Mojave desert, Cured brings an acute eye for the times to bear on a lifelong friendship, with tales of addiction and despair along the way.

Cured is the story of a timeless band and a life truly lived.

Robert Johnson. Brian Jones. Jimi Hendrix. Janis Joplin. Jim Morrison. Kurt Cobain. Amy Winehouse.

They were inspirational, controversial, talismanic and innovative. They lead lives full of myth, scandal, sex, drugs and some of the most glorious music that has ever heard. Though each of their lives were cut tragically short at the age of 27, they would all leave the world having changed it irrevocably.

Chris Salewicz tells, in intimate detail, the stories behind these compelling figures. From Robert Johnson and his legendary deal with the devil, to Jimi Hendrix appearing like a psychedelic comet on the London scene, through to Amy Winehouse’s blazing talent and her savage appetite for self-destruction.

Edith Cavell was born on 4th December 1865, daughter of the vicar of Swardeston in Norfolk, and shot in Brussels on 12th October 1915 by the Germans for sheltering British and French soldiers and helping them escape over the Belgian border.

Following a traditional village childhood in 19th-century England, Edith worked as a governess in the UK and abroad, before training as a nurse in London in 1895. To Edith, nursing was a duty, a vocation, but above all a service. By 1907, she had travelled most of Europe and become matron of her own hospital in Belgium, where, under her leadership, a ramshackle hospital with few staff and little organization became a model nursing school.

When war broke out, Edith helped soldiers to escape the war by giving them jobs in her hospital, finding clothing and organizing safe passage into Holland. In all, she assisted over two hundred men. When her secret work was discovered, Edith was put on trial and sentenced to death by firing squad. She uttered only 130 words in her defence. A devout Christian, the evening before her death, she asked to be remembered as a nurse, not a hero or a martyr, and prayed to be fit for heaven.

When news of Edith’s death reached Britain, army recruitment doubled. After the war, Edith’s body was returned to the UK by train and every station through which the coffin passed was crowded with mourners.

Diana Souhami brings one of the Great War’s finest heroes to life in this biography of a hardworking, courageous and independent woman.

Dennis Skinner, the famed Beast of Bolsover, is adored by legions of supporters and respected as well as feared by admiring enemies. Fiery and forthright, with a prodigious recall, Skinner is one of the best-known politicians in Britain. He remains as passionate and committed to the causes he champions as on the first day he entered the House of Commons back in 1970.

In an age of growing cynicism about politicians, the witty and astute Skinner is renowned as a brightly burning beacon of principle. He has watched Prime Ministers come and go – Heath, Wilson, Callaghan, Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown – and yet remains uncorrupted by patronage and compromise. Cameron discovered Skinner’s popularity when a public backlash forced the current PM to apologise in Parliament for calling Skinner a dinosaur who should be in a museum.

Skinner at eighty has a unique take on post-war Britain. A combatant in the great social, industrial and political upheavals of the last half century, he’s resisted telling his extraordinary story. Until now.

A chilling tale based on true events from the bestselling author of The Ghost Hunters – now a major ITV drama starring Rafe Spall

At the height of the Cold War, officials at the Ministry of Defence conducted a highly secret investigation into unusual events that occurred along a strip of rugged coastline within the Pembrokeshire National Park nicknamed ‘The Broad Haven Triangle’. The events made national headlines: lights and objects hovering in the sky, ghostly figures peering into farmhouse windows, cowering animals, and poltergeists plaguing a terrified family of witnesses.Thirty years later, official files pertaining to these occurrences were finally released for public scrutiny at the National Archives. The disclosure prompted a new witness to come forward to speak of what he knew. His testimony rocked the very foundations of the British Government. This is his story.

Curated by award-winning editor Stephen Jones and illustrated by bestselling writer and artist Clive Barker, author of THE BOOKS OF BLOOD, welcome to HORROROLOGY: ‘a dozen bone-chilling tales by modern masters‘ (Barry Forshaw, Independent).
‘Stephen Jones knows horror . . . he’s become one of the best guides to its shifting landscape‘ says Kirkus, and in HORROROLOGY, a follow-up to the bestselling A BOOK OF HORRORS, he has enticed terrifying storytellers including Clive Barker (THE SCARLET GOSPELS), Joanne Harris (A POCKETFUL OF CROWS), Kim Newman (ANNO DRACULA), Muriel Gray (THE TRICKSTER) and Michael Marshall Smith (HANNAH GREEN AND HER UNFEASIBLY MUNDANE EXISTENCE), amongst many others.

A dozen all-new stories from some of the best talents in the field, they present ‘a gamut of fear and sombre wonders demonstrating how horror writing can be both entertaining and challenging‘ (Maxim Jakubowski, Lovereading).
Be warned: you are about to discover the true meanings of fear!

London, the 1880s, and Jack the Ripper is at large. Two childhood friends meet again having found very different fortunes in the fog-bound, Ripper-stalked streets of Victorian London. Plain but witty Dot is a music hall star; pretty Kate (Eddowes, a true-life Ripper victim) has fallen on hard times.

‘Poignant and unsentimental, Dot’s whipllash humour had me cheering’ DAILY MAIL

When star of London’s Victorian music hall, Dot Allbones, bumps into her childhood friend Kate Eddowes outside the Griffin theatre in Shoreditch, it’s a blast from the past. The two grew up together in the Midlands, but life has treated them very differently since then.

Told through the eyes of the irreverent Dot, this is the story of a London populated by chancers, some rich, some destitute. During one hot summer in the 1880s Whitechapel famously became the scene of unspeakable horror, and Kate Eddowes found a grisly fame that would far outshine Dot’s.

Because out there, in the stews of East London, Saucy Jack is sharpening his knife . . .

There is one great love in everyone’s life.

For Ducky, Princess Victoria Melita, hers was a Romanov cousin, a member of the doomed Russian royal family. Her father is Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, Queen Victoria’s second son. Her mother is Grand Duchess Marie, the daughter of Tsar Alexander II. Ducky seems doomed to be a pawn on her grandmother’s dynastic chessboard.

But Ducky is not so easily controlled. In an era when death is considered preferable to divorce she fights for the freedom to be with the true love of her life. From disgraced exile in Paris to the glitter of St Petersburg and the mud and carnage of the Eastern Front, she forges her own path.

As Russia descends into the chaos of 1917 and the Romanov dynasty falters, Ducky is right at the heart of events.

Exiled once more, she tells us her story.