We know our Bibliophile readers very well and this gruesome history of Britain's most brutal punishment will sell out fast. The history of gibbeting is the story of hanging of criminals in a body shaped metal cage as a warning and as a form of justice. From the folklore of live gibbettings to the eerie historical documenting of this weird post-execution tradition, the book looks at how and why society has dealt with murderers and other serious criminals in this way using case studies. It looks at how the introduction of the Murder Act in 1752 shaped our relationship with gibbeting for years to come. Chapters include Infamy, Thieves and Pirates, That's Entertainment, The Gibbet as A Landmark, No Deterrent, The Decline of the Gibbet and A Modern Fascination where gibbet cages remain on display in museums all over the country. Sometimes it was not the whole body but body parts as a form of this horrific torture, a gruesome spectacle where the body was placed in a tight cage of chains or irons that fitted the body perfectly and then was hung from a height of 20-30 feet on a wooden post. Gibbet cages were made individually and no two were the same and none was removed before the body had decayed and all that was left was bones and dust. One example is of Edward Hewison who in 1379 was a private in the Earl of Northumberland's Light Horse, tried and convicted of raping Louisa Bently in a field on the way to York as Louisa was walking to work. Hewison was executed at York Castle and afterwards his body was hung upon a gibbet in the field where the offence had taken place. There is no mention of Louisa's murder in any reports, only the rape, which makes it a highly unusual case of gibbeting. An uncomfortable sidelong glance at our ancestors and what they did. 150pp, illus.
Click YouTube icon to see this book come to life on video.

From the New York Times, 4th July 1857: 'Brick-bats, stones and clubs were flying thickly round, and from the windows in all directions, and the men ran wildly about brandishing firearms. Wounded men lay on the sidewalks and were trampled upon. Now the rabbits would make a concerted rush and force their antagonists up Baynard Street to the Bowery. Then the fugitives, being reinforced, would turn on their pursuers...' The scene was set for a classic Western showdown on a dusty main street, a sheriff backed by townspeople facing down a gang of heavily armed hired gunslingers. Someone drew first and a few minutes later ten men were dead or dying and several more suffered gunshot wounds. The hired guns fled. This was in the West Virginia mining town of Matewan in 1920. By contrast, the more celebrated gunfight at the OK Corrall in Tombstone lasted 60 seconds and left three men dead. Matewan was not an aberration. It was the era of the post-Civil War Wild West and it can be argued that it was the most dangerous place to be in the East. Race wars with lynchings and massacres, heavily armed confrontation between infant trade unionism and the forces of capitalism, murderous feuds between corrupt lawmen and the early Mafia were the confrontations in which the US Government bombed and marginalised their own citizens. The law was twisted for private ends, and 'fake news' became the norm. Popular historian Ian Hernon turns his practiced reporter's eye to a forgotten chapter in America's history of the crowded industrial cities of the Eastern United States with their poverty and exploitation. Some surprising facts emerge such as the main centre for horse rustling was not Wyoming but New York at the beginning of the last century, and black townships were bombed from the air before the Civil Rights Movement took hold. Jam packed full of great stories, educational and entertaining. 320pp, 16 pages of illustrations.

'No one knew more about the mob, Hollywood, and Las Vegas than Johnny Rosselli.' Gentleman gangster, Hollywood producer, CIA assassin, Johnny Rosselli was at the centre of the 20th century's darkest secrets, straddling the underworld and the day's most compelling headlines. Al Capone's last protégé, Handsome Johnny flourished for an extraordinary half century, beginning in the bloody bootlegging of the Roaring Twenties until he was tapped to be the Mob's 'Man in Hollywood', seducing seductresses such as Jean Harlow and Marilyn Monroe, and becoming indispensable to Columbia Pictures boss Harry Cohen. Later Rosselli himself would even make movies, producing to the best film noirs of the 1940s. After a stint in federal prison, he was deployed by new Chicago boss Sam Giancana to oversee the creation of Las Vegas. He was the gambling mecca's behind-the-scenes power, running the town from his suites at The Tropicana and the Desert Inn, and enjoying Rat Pack nights with Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. In his most unexpected and combustible role, Rosselli became a central figure in the Kennedy-era CIA's attempt to assassinate Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. And even that patriotic job as an assassin was not his final chapter... The biography is full of glitter, grit, guns and gams, a true rags-to-riches life. 532pp, paperback with 16 pages of photos.

The 10th anniversary edition featuring a new afterword, this is the untold story of Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett. Billy the Kid, aka Henry McCarty, Henry Antrim and William Bonney, was a horse thief, cattle rustler, charismatic rogue and cold-blooded killer. A superb shot, the Kid gunned down four men single-handedly and five others with the help of cronies. Two of his victims were Lincoln County, New Mexico, deputies killed during the Kid's brazen daylight escape from the courthouse jail on 28th April 1881. For the new sheriff, Pat Garrett, an acquaintance of Billy's, the chase was on. This fact-packed shoot-'em-up tale recreates the thrilling manhunt for the Wild West's most iconic outlaw and the author digs beneath the myth to take a fresh look at these two men and their epic ride to immortality. Unfazed, Billy spoke up: 'Mrs Lesnett, they can't hang me if I'm not there, can they?' Chapters include Outlaws and Lawmen, Facing Death Boldly, and Both Hero and Villain. 330pp, illustrated paperback.

Gangsters, psychopaths, terrorists, assaults, riots, cell fires, medical emergencies, understaffed wings, suicides, hooch, weapons - it's all in a week's work at Her Majesty's Prison Parkhurst. After 28 years working as a prison officer with 22 years at HMP Parkhurst, one of Britain's most high-security prisons, David Berridge has had to deal with it all. Thrown in at the deep end, David quickly had to work out how to deal with the most cunning and volatile of prisoners, and learn how to avoid their many scams. His book is a raw and uncompromising look at what really goes on behind the massive walls and menacing gates and his diaries will shock and entertain in equal measure, both horrifying and at times hilarious. Beware there is some fruity language as he works his way around bullying, the day they stopped a suicide attempt, crap diet, the scream he can still hear, a scrap on the exercise yard, getting truly screwed, drugs, and playing by the rules. Gives an explanation of prison slang, official terms and uniformed staff by rank. 286pp, paperback.

Why did flight MH370 fall from the sky, lost without a trace? Was Donald Trump elected President of the United States with the help of Russians? What are the theories surrounding the 9/11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center? Unpack some of the most complex conspiracy theories in this book, whether that is exploring the Illuminati, questioning who shot John F. Kennedy or asking if Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, ran the company as a 'non-state hostile intelligence service'? One chapter will dive into the existence of secret societies, from the Catholic Church and its Knights Templar (an underground order of warrior monks based in Jerusalem during the time of the Crusades), to the Bilderberg Group, an organisation whose members are some of the most powerful men and women in the world including Henry Kissinger and Paul Wolfowitz, as well as Rockefellers, Fords and Agnellis. Transport yourself to Rendlesham Forest in Suffolk during the early hours of Boxing Day morning in 1980 where an American Air Force Base tracked an unidentified aircraft on its radar and, after a patrol was sent out, men saw the bright beams of red and blue light shining from a metallic craft. Uncover whether the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler escaped the allies at the end of the Second World War as only a few bones were found after he shot himself in the Führerbunker. This guide will walk readers through one of the most bizarre conspiracies: Project MKULTRA, a CIA experiment between the 1950s and 1970s which explored the possibility of mind control through the use of drugs such as LSD and mescaline. This is the book for anyone who asks whether crop circles are the result of alien visitor or local hoaxers, whether the Oklahoma City Bombing in 1995 was a cover up, or if Edward Snowden was right to say that there is a global conspiracy to spy on friends and foes. Paperback, colour images, 128pp.

For more than a millennium, criminals in the British Isles were beheaded, garrotted, hung, drawn and quartered for crimes as varied as serial murder to impersonating a Chelsea Pensioner. Certain forms of execution, such as beheading, were reserved for the nobility, and up to the 18th century decapitated heads were displayed publicly on London Bridge. Hanging became the principal method of punishment at about the same time as the beginning of the movement for the abolition of the death penalty. In 1861 the number of capital crimes was reduced to four, and the last judicial executions took place in 1964 with permanent abolition in 1969. A number of high-profile miscarriages of justice contributed to the abolition, among them the trial of serial strangler John Christie in 1953, during which it emerged that a fellow housemate had been executed a few years earlier for a crime of which Christie was now found guilty. Another controversial case was the hanging of 19-year-old Derek Bentley, a mentally challenged young man whose younger accomplice had fired the lethal shot. Starting in 1900, the author lists all the judicial executions in Britain, totalling 865. Most entries are brief, giving the name, age, crime, date of hanging and name of the hangman, but some celebrated cases are described in detail. These include Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged, who was executed at Holloway in 1955 by Albert Pierrepoint, a member of a dynasty of chief hangmen. Ruth admitted killing her lover when she found him with another woman and made it clear she felt she deserved to die. By contrast, George Joseph Smith, the "brides in the bath" murderer, cold-bloodedly drowned a series of women for their money. 142pp, paperback, photos.

A smuggler was 'a wretch who, in defiance of justice and the laws, imports or exports goods as either contraband or without payment of the customs,' according to Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language in 1755. Smuggling, or 'Free Trade', may have peaked in the 17th and 18th centuries but it first began in response to a toll on wine imports by Anglo-Saxon king Aethelred II (966-1016) who needed to pay for holding off Danish invaders. As a result, wine traders used any port or harbour except the toll ports. The book explains how, over the years, women could help unload and carry smuggled contraband as silk, bladders filled with alcohol and even ropes of tobacco could be wound around the legs and body and safely hidden beneath voluminous layers of skirt and petticoats. The cup of tea may be an established part of life today, but the history highlights that Portuguese merchants in the 1500s would smuggle tea into Europe and the fashion of tea drinking was supposedly introduced to England in the 1600s by Portuguese-born Catherine of Braganza when she married King Charles II in 1662. The chapters are dotted with "little known facts" including the detail that when smugglers were arrested during the 18th century, they received the sympathy of local magistrates reliant on receiving goods and, on one occasion, the magistrate dismissed the charge and ordered the arresting officer to be flogged for his impertinence instead. The facts are often amusing, from the story of a Dorset smuggler who taunted the revenue men by dropping his breeches and mooning them, to Joss Snelling who was still smuggling in his nineties and was presented to Queen Victoria. Photographs of routes which smugglers travelled are also included, a shot of a West Country lane that was typical of a hidden highway, Mermaid Street in Rye and graveyards and old ruins. Paperback, black and white images, 170pp.

The body of Julia Wallace was found in her Liverpool home on one terrible night in January 1933, her head crushed by violent blows, the identity of her killer a mystery. Her husband William was accused, tried and convicted and sentenced to hang for murder, but he was then acquitted in a sensational appeal court judgement. Yet the police refused to reopen their investigation. So who did kill Julia? When Roger Wilkes started researching a dramatised radio documentary for Liverpool's Radio City, he uncovered new evidence which suggested a disturbing story ? a crucial witness ignored by the police, and even a suggestion of a deliberate cover-up. Finally, Wilkes provides compelling evidence as to the identity of the real killer. With chronology of events, chapters include A Conspiracy of Silence, The Wallace Diaries, Wallace's First Statement to the Police and Comments by Raymond Chandler who once said: 'The Wallace case is unbeatable, it will always be unbeatable.' P. D. James said of this book: 'It is a formidable, indeed a damning indictment, and Wilkes presents the result of his detective work with journalistic panache.' Deep in psychology and with 25 rare archive photos. 338pp, paperback.

Few people nowadays know very much about the Gestapo's 'Black Book' and its implications. Even fewer know of more than a dozen of the famous English names that it included. Anonymous and with no publisher and stamped GEHEIM! (SECRET!), it was compiled in German by the Gestapo and their informants at some time between 1936-7 and July 1940, in readiness for a German invasion of Britain. This is the first serious attempt to identify, classify and analyse a significant sample of the hundreds of anti-Nazi men and women, both British-born and refugee, targeted by the Nazi Secret Police in the Black Book. Deliberately included are those Jewish refugees who, stripped of their German or Austrian citizenship, would become 'naturalised' British and who comprise the majority of those on the List. On the list were Leonhard (sic) and Virginia Woolf. Why did they target a modern novelist? Even those who urged the cessation of the bombing of German civilians and the feeding of starving Germans after the war and supported a new, revived and democratic Germany were included, for example Arthur Ponsonby, Vera Brittain, Bishop Bell, and Victor Gollancz. There is an A-Z listing of some 2,619 names of men and women, mostly with their addresses, to be arrested and interned in camps or placed under house arrest at once, if not executed. Secondly, the more or less A-Z listing of the names and addresses of nearly 400 British Behoerden Firmen and Vereini-Gungen (institutions, businesses, organisations and associations) - all of which were to be proscribed, their papers seized, and their mostly British-born leaders arrested. The second part of the book is the Gestapo's Informationsheft GB, compiled May to July 1940 as an introductory handbook on Britain for the occupation troops, including the SS, and mentioning any additional leading individuals who would require surveillance and probable arrest. The Boy Scouts movement was regarded as a powerful medium of English cultural propaganda and an excellent source for the British Secret Service and was led by Lord Baden-Powell who had himself been a spy in WW1 against Germany. The Fabian Society, Quakers, the New Burlington Gallery, the British Museum and National Gallery, members of the Labour Party, allegedly now in the hands of former public schoolboys, a section on 'Radio' and broadcasting, the Informationsheft describes the Church of England with a membership calculated at 2.3 million as a powerful factor in the exercise of British imperialism, and trade unions said to be 'Marxist' included bakers to cigar makers. It noted that the Freemasons had penetrated all the highest and middle ranks of British society. Sybil Oldfield sheds light on the Gestapo world view and movingly reveals a network of truly exemplary Britons - mavericks, moral visionaries and unsung heroes, chemists, art historians and musicologists, and spies. Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf? 437pp, 32 photos.