The author's paternal great grandparents, Charles Ernest Hardy and Edwin Hall Bailey, both worked in collieries in the Barnsley area as did their descendants. At the end of 2017 author Jane Ainsworth transcribed a ledger containing the minutes of the Colliers' Relief Fund Committee of the 1847 Oaks Colliery Explosion for Barnsley Archives. This stimulated her empathy with and curiosity about the lives of the people referred to in the Minutes, widows, orphans and a few survivors of the disaster as well as the 73 victims. Despite the challenge of limited early records, she fleshed out the stories and pays tribute to the families of mineworkers whose lives at the time were considered of little value to the colliery owners and managers. She has created a memorial book like no other and a contribution to Barnsley's mining heritage. She has researched dozens of images which are reproduced to the best possible quality given their age, many woodcuts, images of graves and newspaper articles to tell the story of Richard and Thomas Beardshal, Francis Birtles, Robert Hazle (Hessle), William, William, John and Luke Roe (Wroe) from the family who suffered the largest loss of life with four members killed in the explosion on 5th March 1847. For each there are details of who they married and in which church, how many children and how intertwined the families were and how widows like Rebecca Roe (1804-1881) would have struggled to support her family, even with relief from the Subscriptions Fund. She returned to Alfreton with her children to avoid the threat of being admitted to Barnsley Union Workhouse, but she suffered another three deaths there. Also includes hand drawn maps and early views of Barnsley in etchings. 270 page large softback.

The spy craft expert Schlesinger has produced the first book to fully examine the oldest and consistently effective piece of tradecraft, from the ancient world to cyber seductions. While the so-called 'honey trap' is a Hollywood cliché, it is also employed by virtually every intelligence service in times of war and peace. The work of femmes fatales and Romeo spies have shaped policy and history through seduction, betrayal and scandal. 'Ashamed? Not in the least. My superiors told me that the results of my work saved thousands of British and American lives... Wars are not won by respectable methods' - Amy Elizabeth Thorpe (Betty Pack), participant in a honey trap run by British and American intelligence services during WW2. The Stasi proved particularly adept in employing Romeo spies to romance women with access to secrets. More recently in 2013 FBI wire traps caught two Russian SVR lamenting the more mundane aspects of spy work and not receiving permission to play a Romeo spy. Today the Mata Hari tale has expanded into pop culture and with the increased portability of cameras, honey traps can now be more effectively executed and indeed there no longer needs to be physical contact. From the Bible's Judith and Delilah, Pandora, Chinese, Greek and Indian brothels and myths of love-allurement, here are merry monarchs, plotters and pimps, the Flying Squadron created by Catherine de Medici of gorgeous women despatched to foreign and domestic leaders acting as sexual shock groups, the Restoration, Hamilton in America before we see the modern era. 352 magnificent large pages.

The Mr Big of Criminal Briefs offers a fascinating insight into life at the top of the profession, lifting the lid on the psychology of those who end up on the wrong side of the law - and those who defend them. Outsiders might wonder about how criminal defence lawyers deal with potentially dangerous clients, what happens behind the scenes when building a defence, and that age-old moral dilemma, how can a lawyer defend someone they think is guilty. But what is life really like for those tasked with representing the shadowy underbelly of society? For over 40 years, criminal defence solicitor Henry Milner has been the go-to lawyer for some of Britain's most notorious criminals, including Kenneth Noye and the Brink's-Mat robbers, Freddie Foreman, John 'Goldfinger' Palmer, and the gang behind the Millennium Dome raid. He evokes a bygone era of the criminal justice system with plenty of wry self-deprecating humour, sometimes very funny and never ever dull. 263pp, colour photos.

Mariella Novotny was found dead with her face in a bowl of milk pudding in February 1983. She was in the process of writing her memoirs. 'It's dynamite!' Christine Keeler said, 'I think it was murder...most probably by the CIA.' In 1961, Mariella was an underage hooker engaging in sexual relations with President John F. Kennedy, the most powerful man in the world. She was believed to be part of a vice ring set up by an alleged Communist agent who was also a well-known British film producer. FBI officers called their investigation 'The Bow-Tie Case'. Two years later the young 'Monroe lookalike' played a major part in another sex scandal with implications for national security - the Profumo Affair. Mariella was the hostess of the Man in the Mask party. She was a close friend of Stephen Ward, the osteopath and pander to high society, another putative whistle-blower who died in suspicious circumstances. In the late 1960s, she gave birth to the illegitimate child of Eddie Chapman (Agent Zigzag), England's most successful wartime double agent. Between 1975 and 1978 she was working undercover for Operation Countryman, an investigation into police corruption in the Flying Squad. Her chief target was the author's grandfather, Charlie Taylor, a London conman who had high-ranking officers in his deep pockets. Mariella brought them all down. An excerpt from the chapter entitled Black Power and Rotting Hill: 'Michael came to London. He worked his way into the veins of criminal society. In Notting Hill, he managed prostitutes, ran gambling houses, sold drugs and collected rent for the property racketeer Peter Rachman, who had already had a go at bedding Mariella and blackmailing Hod.' Includes colour photos including Soho in the early 60s and Mariella on her wedding day to Hod Dibben. 253 pages.

Life, sex, race, power, free speech, protest, privacy, democracy, sovereignty, death. Society shapes law, and law shapes society. We like to imagine that progress comes about when Parliament spots a looming groundswell in public opinion and responds by changing the laws that govern our daily lives. This is not always true. In his fascinating book, Inigo Bing unravels 10 legal cases in which the decisions of judges or a jury either heralded a shift in outlook, or forced Parliament to respond to simmering social change. The cases include Conjoined Twins, Lady Chatterley on Trial, The Cricketer and the Hotel, The Pilot Officer and the Home Secretary, The Thalidomide Scandal, Peaceful Protest in a Demographic Society, Spanish Ships and Metric Martyrs with regard to sovereignty and Death and Euthanasia. Taken together these stories provide 80 years of insight into the British political, social and cultural history, some cases exploring when rapid technological change outpaces government or urgent ethical dilemmas. All of them have had a lasting impact on the society in which we live. Inigo Bing is a respected judge. 316pp.

Imagine how different your life would be if you knew when someone was lying or telling you the truth. Former CIA agents Philip Houston, Mike Floyd and Susan Carnicero are among the world's best at recognising deceptive behaviour. Their book chronicles the fascinating story of how they used a methodology Houston developed to detect deception in counter-terrorism and criminal investigation realms, and how these techniques can be applied in our daily and business lives. Through thrilling anecdotes from their careers in counter intelligence, they provide a foolproof means of identifying deceptive behaviour, showing readers how to study nuances, both verbal and non-verbal, including hands to the face in response to a question, grooming gestures, invoking religion (I swear to God), repeating the question, qualifiers (basically) and much more. As your level of understanding increases you will be able to spot the subtleties of liars far more easily. 258pp, paperback.

The Victorian Underworld in film and fiction is a place of twisting alleys, shrouded in fog as we "enter a world of gin spinners, sneaksmen and Covent Garden nuns, where bare-knuckled boxers slog it out for dozens of rounds, children are worth more dead than alive, and the Thames holds more bodies than the Ganges". This fascinating book takes the lid off the stereotype, showing where our ideas come from, based on real incidents such as the massacre of the Marr family on the notorious Ratcliffe Highway. The author's discussion includes speculation as to who the real murderer may have been, and his well-informed section on the Ripper murders also identifies a strong contender for the role. Bareknuckle fighting was illegal until boxing was gentrified by the Queensberry Rules, and the 19th century writer Hazlitt gave a famous account of a fight between The Gasman and his cannier opponent Bill Neale, accompanied by high-stakes betting. A best-selling Gothic Underworld writer was Harrison Ainsworth with novels such as his Jack Sheppard series, based on the short life of a real villain. Ainsworth popularised the idea of Flash, the special language used by criminals, satirised by the novelist Thackeray in Vanity Fair with expressions such as "Nuffle your clod" and "I'll bimbole the clicky in a snuffkin". Public controversy followed as to whether such books corrupted morals. Prostitution and pornography were also the subjects of moral panic and venereal disease was rampant, although some prostitutes made a profit out of the trade and married well. In the words of one, "we are pretty, we dress well, we can talk and insinuate ourselves into the hearts of men". Another abuse was the sale of dead bodies for dissection, a trade that occasionally led to murder, and in 1832 preventive legislation was passed. In 1849 Henry Mayhew began his revolutionary investigation into London's poor. 209pp, 15.9 x 23.5cm, black and white reproductions.

At the end of the First World War, the German doctor Hans Prinzhorn began collecting the paintings, drawings and sculpture of schizophrenic patients that would astonish and delight the world. The Prinzhorn collection as it was called inspired a new generation of artists, including Paul Klee, Max Ernst and Salvador Dalí. What the doctor could not have known however was that these works would later be used to prepare the ground for mass-murder. Adolf Hitler soon perceived Modernism's interest in madness as a threat - a Jewish-Bolshevik plot aimed at degrading the Aryan soul. Hitler was a failed artist of the old school and he stripped modernist works from German galleries and shamed them in exhibitions of 'Degenerate Art' alongside the 'insane' material of Prinzhorn's collection. He ridiculed the avant-garde and destroyed the cream of Germany's modern art collections. This action was mere preparation in Hitler's onslaught against so-called 'degenerate' people, and Prinzhorn's artists were caught up in both. By 1941, Hitler's regime had killed 70,000 psychiatric patients. It was an extermination campaign that served as the prototype for the Final Solution. Bringing together inspirational art history, genius and madness, and the wanton cruelty of the fanatical 'artist-Führer', this astonishing story lays bare the culture war that paved the way for Hitler's first extermination programme, the psychiatric Holocaust. 16 pages of colour and black and white photos and four pages of maps and list of names of the principal artists. 304pp in large softback.

An intelligent and perceptive word-picture of the lives of early criminals, written by a former police officer fascinated by historical stories of murder and justice. She studies nine historic crimes - and one familiar obsession. Murder truly was most foul in early modern Britain. Pamphlets littered the streets titillating audiences with exceedingly gruesome tales. Trials were gossipy events packed to the rafters with noisome spectators. Executions were public proceedings which promised not only gore, but desperate confessions and the grandest, most righteous human drama. The book unfolds true stories of murder, criminal investigation, early forensic techniques and high court trials pieced together from original research using coroner's inquests, court records, parish archives, letters, diaries and the cheap street pamphlets that proliferated to satisfy a voracious public. The historical laws and attitudes may strike us as exceptionally cruel, yet many aspects of public reaction to the criminal justice system have remained unchanged. We are still fascinated by narratives of murder and true crime, and trials continue to be grand public spectacles. Chapters include The Trial of Spencer Cowper, The Mutilation of Francis Marshall, The Bloody Midwife of Poplar and The Honourable Drowning of John Temple. 296pp.

George Blake became a Russian spy when he was a prisoner of the Communist North Koreans. When North Korea crossed the border and invaded Seoul in 1950, capturing diplomats, nuns and American prisoners of war, Blake, an MI6 diplomat who had worked for the Dutch resistance in the War, made several daring bids to escape, but the starving and disease-ridden prisoners were forced to march north. Far from being shocked by the ruthless torture inflicted by the Korean commanding officer "The Tiger", Blake was more disappointed by the lack of heroism of his American fellow-prisoners. A fluent linguist who had graduated in Russian, he secretly offered his services to the Russian government. Back in England, Blake joined MI6's Section Y at 2 Carlton Gardens, marrying MI6 secretary Gillian Allen, and was posted to Berlin where the CIA, outclassed by the KGB on every front, had initiated the project of constructing a tunnel to tap the Russian lines communication. The Russians allowed it to continue in order not to compromise their source. By 1954 Kim Philby's usefulness had run its course and Blake was ideally placed to replace him. When he was finally caught and sentenced to 42 years, Blake's predilection for daring escapes served him one last time and the friends who sprung him from Wormwood Scrubs drove him to East Germany in a secret compartment of their camper van. Thrilling from start to finish. 530pp, paperback, bibliography, photos.