'Personal Encounters With An Architect of Genocide', this is a chilling portrait of Radovan Karadzic, giving us an eye-opening new context not only for the Bosnian War, but also how fear can be harnessed and diverted to violent political ends. A remarkable blend of biography, history and psychiatry, the book is based on extraordinary access to a notorious Serbian leader and is scrupulously researched by this skilled interviewer. Stern explores the boundaries of good and evil through hours of interviews with the convicted mass murderer and complex emotions are unleashed on both sides as the interviewer circles a wily subject charmed at skill, obfuscation, misdirection and intimidation. It is an investigation into the nature of violence, terror and trauma. Between October 2014 and November 2016, global terrorism expert Jessica Stern held this series of conversations in a prison cell in The Hague with the Bosnian Serb former politician who had been indicted for genocide and other war crimes. The encounter would alter her understandings of the mechanics of fear, motivations of violence and the psychology of those who perpetrate mass atrocities on a state level who target non-combatants in violation of ethical norms and international law. How do leaders persuade ordinary people to kill their neighbours? What happens when an ethnic or racial group loses its dominant position in society? How do leaders harness fear and weaponize it and target minorities with violence? What is the 'eco system' that creates and nurtures genocidal leaders and could anything about their personal histories, personalities or exposure to historical trauma shed light on their behaviour? Karadzic was once a brilliant and often charming psychiatrist and poet who spent 12 years in hiding, disguising himself as an energy healer. A deeply insightful and chilling book. 304pp.

'A beautiful, poignant book about the darkest period in modern Dutch history.' - David de Jong. Nina Siegal gives us a day-to-day narrative of the Holocaust in the Netherlands by splicing together excerpts from a few of the hundreds of diaries stored in an Amsterdam archive. She helps us understand how 75% of the 140,000 Jews in Holland, a prosperous and cultivated Western European country, could have been murdered 'posing a warning for our own deeply fractured country.' - Joseph Berger. The diary journals of collaborators, resisters and the persecuted - a Dutch Nazi police detective, a Jewish journalist imprisoned at the Westerbork Transit Camp, a grocery store owner who saved dozens of lives - are made into a non-fictional narrative of the Nazi occupation and the Dutch Holocaust. Siegal provides the context, both historical and personal, while trying to make sense of her own relationship to this past. As a 'second generation survivor' born and raised in New York, she attempts to understand what it meant for her mother and maternal grandparents to live through the war in Europe. When Siegal moved to Amsterdam those questions came up again. Why did 75% of the Jewish community perish and how did this square with the narratives of Dutch Resistance she had heard so much about? She takes us into the lives of seven diary writers and follows their pasts into the present through interviews with those who preserved and inherited these diaries. The past is rewritten. Rigorous research and intimate storytelling. 527pp, photos and colour images.

The extraordinary true love story of a couple who were separated during a shameful and fascinating chapter of British history. Erica Fischer tells the extraordinary story of her own parents and sheds light on a little known and little discussed incident. Her parents met in Austria in the early 1930s. Her mother Irka was a Polish Jew and her father Erich was a Viennese lapsed Catholic. Faced with growing unrest in Europe, Irka fled to the United Kingdom in 1938 and her husband followed a year later. However at the outbreak of war, Erich had been arrested as an 'enemy alien', and having been interned was deported on a transport ship heading to Australia where conditions were horrific. Having sought a new life safe from the persecution of Nazi Germany, instead the couple found suspicion, hardship and deportation. The deportees were banded together in solitary to face their new life in Australia and Erich was against the odds able to make contact with Irka. Their letters established a lifeline between continents. Erica Fischer writes of her parents enduring love and even provides a full list of German and Austrian internees landing in Sydney, page after page of names. 288pp, paperback.

From the Wars of the Roses and the Earl of Essex losing his head, London turning against Charles I, Wellington and Nelson crossing paths, Russell's despatches from the Crimean War, spies in World War One, women wearing the trousers in industry and services, World War Two and queueing becoming a pastime, weekly allowances, nylons, whiskey, knicker elastic, digging for victory, eating out, bombing casualties, Ian Fleming taking his naval role with zeal, hospitals, the BBC, over five million books destroyed in the Paternoster Row hit, Penguin revolutionising paperbacks, tensions developing between US troops and Londoners, the ATS and the Home Guards, here are stories of mighty battles, heroic deeds and staunch determination in the face of adversity. A rich history of our remarkable capital city in times of war, an absorbing collection of stories and trivia. New full price, 142pp, well illus. with line art and photos.

Michael Morpurgo writes about a Brodie helmet, A. L. Kennedy about a Verners Pattern compass, Tracy Chevalier about the Princess Mary Gift Fund Box, and others about a zeppelin bomb, a recruitment poster, a soldier's writing case, sheet music, a wartime butter dish, a Victoria Cross, school magazines and a little French toy soldier. It is a powerful collection of stories by bestselling authors, each inspired by a different object encompassing both world wars, the home front and the trenches, realism and imaginary friends. Morpurgo triggers tears, others write in blank verse, in the rhythm of jazz to relate the experience of a horn player from Harlem and Jim Kay's angular illustrations convey both atmosphere and fact. A big hardback heavyweight publication, 304pp, well illus. Designed for ages 9-12 years or for all interested in military matters. 21.5 x 17cm.

A powerful and moving collection of first person accounts, contributors include a rear gunner who took part in 60 bombing raids, a Jewish woman who played in the orchestra at Auschwitz, a Japanese man who survived Hiroshima, and Sir Nicholas Winton who saved 669 children by setting up the Kindertransport programme from Czechoslovakia. RAF pilots, evacuees, Resistance fighters, land-girls, US Navy sailors all pass on the lessons learned to a new generation. Many of the interviews were conducted by children, and is designed for 9-14 year olds in this award-winning children's newspaper First News series. Presented with striking black and white contemporary photographs reproduced at full page size to really make you feel part of the story. Plus familiar images like Red Army soldiers raising the Soviet flag in Berlin 1945 and American infantrymen in Paris 1944. For all interested in military matters a big tribute in heavyweight softback, 320pp, 17.8 x 23cm. Hundreds of photos.

Goering, Goebbels, Himmler, Heydrich, Bormann, Hess - names synonymous with power and influence in the Third Reich. Perhaps less familiar are Carin and Emmy Goering, Magda Goebbels, Margaret Himmler, Lina Heydrich, Gerda Bormann and Ilse Hess. These are the women behind the infamous men - complex individuals with distinctive personalities who were captivated by Hitler and whose everyday lives were governed by Nazi ideology. Throughout the rise and fall of Nazism these women loved and lost, raised families and quarrelled with their husbands and each other, all the while jostling for position with the mighty Führer himself. And yet they have been treated as minor characters, their significance ignored, as if they were unaware of their husband's murderous acts, despite the evidence that was all around them: the stolen art on their walls, the furniture made from human skin and bones stashed in the attic, the slave labour in their homes, and the produce grown in concentration camps on their tables. Births, weddings, funerals were inextricably linked to Nazi ideology. Relationships with family members were terminated abruptly and friendships jettisoned; their behaviour was a factor in the struggles within the Nazi elite. Falling out of favour with the Fuhrer would have serious implications for their husbands' careers. Yet their story offers important insights into the nature of Nazi rule and the psychology of its leaders, providing a fresh perspective on the key events that shaped its rise and fall. While they enjoyed luxury lifestyles they also endured broken marriages, cheating husbands, suicide, assassination, desertion, impoverishment and incarceration, but despite these trials, that commitment to Hitler's cause never wavered. Photos, 288 pages.

Sub-titled 'Previously Unpublished Tales of Derring-do from Pilots and Crew of the Lightning, Phantom and Hunter, Tornado and Other Aircraft'. The Cold War would persist for over 40 years from March 1947 until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991. In addition to nuclear and conventional military friction between the Eastern and Western blocs, the struggle for dominance involved a remarkable range of activities including the space race, psychological efforts, espionage, even rivalry at sporting functions and technological events. This diversity is reflected in the 20 chapters of this book which opens with a vivid description from the author of survival procedures used by English Electric Lightning pilots in the event of nuclear war. Various contributors share their original experiences on a range of fixed-wing aircraft and rotorcraft across the world including tales from RAF Germany, the Falklands and the Far East. At least 13 different aircraft are covered and each story demonstrates some of the intriguing circumstances faced by aircrew and ground crew whose tenacity and professionalism had to cope with miscellaneous situations of danger, excitement, risk, pathos and humour. Author Richard Pike became a flight cadet at Cranwell in 1961 and over his 40 year career converted to the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom and he eventually became a civilian helicopter pilot. 192pp, eight pages of colour and black and white photos.

'Fifty Extraordinary and Little-Known Vignettes of British and Commonwealth Airmen in Action since 1914'. RAF Navigator Andrew Thomas had a career which was almost exactly bisected by the end of the Cold War and saw operational service in the Balkans, West Africa, Iraq and Afghanistan. He has chosen 50 fascinating cameos of individual actions or incidents across major and minor campaigns and scenarios ranging from the First World War to the present day. They include the RFC's first bombing attack in March 1915, the Zeppelin killer, a schoolboy pilot, the raid on Fort Alexandrovsk May 1919. In World War Two we see an Eritrean adventure, outnumbered over Rangoon, smoking over Dieppe, an Aleutian dogfight, Nuremburg nightmare, and the first sea fire over Japan. Post World War we see Kashmir rocketeers, Mau Mau, Cyprus mare's nest, ambush over Angola, curbing Saddam. We meet World War Two Timor Ace 'Butch' Gordon in his Beaufighter in 1943, Halifaxes over Nuremburg in 1944, to SAAF fighters over Angola in September 1985 and many more in between. 192pp packed with colour and other photos.

Sub-titled 'True Tales from the RAF, Indian and Finnish Pilots Who Flew the Single-Seat Fighter and Two-Seat Trainer'. The Folland Gnat was used by the RAF mainly in the advanced training role in the 1960s and 70s, and was an ideal lead-in trainer for high-performance aircraft such as the iconic Lightning, the first RAF supersonic fighter. It was also used by the famous Yellowjacks formation aerobatic team, formed in 1964, the forerunner of the world-famous Red Arrows team which was equipped with the Gnat for over a decade before being replaced by the Hawk in 1980. Lesser known, the Gnat was also used as a lightweight fighter by both the Indian and Finnish air forces. Later called the Ajeet (Midge), it saw combat experience in the Indo-Pakistani wars, most notably in the Battle of Boyra. Today over 60 years since the aircraft first flew, several Gnats continue to be operated from North Weald Airfield in Essex under the brand the Gnat Display Team. Gnat Boys has become one of the most sought-after books about aviation covering a very special era in history, and this book relates the history of the aircraft and untold stories by those who flew in them. They include well-known and distinguished aviators including those from Indian and Finnish air forces and there is also a focus on the civilian life of the Gnat into the 21st century with accounts from those who continue to fly the aircraft with the Heritage Aircraft Trust. Smoke on, go! 254pp, very well illustrated with colour and other photos.