The fascinating story of the first ever railway murder.

     In 1888, between August and November, the women of London’s East End were terrorized by a deranged serial killer. A man was stalking the streets at night, seizing random women who worked those streets and killing them. This man mutilated his victim’s bodies after death, removing body parts, taking organs. Inside you will read about... ✓ The Whitechapel Murderer’s Hunting Ground ✓ Leather Apron ✓ The Double Murder ✓ The Investigation ✓ Letters from Jack the Ripper ✓ Who was Jack the Ripper? And much more! No one has ever been able to identify Jack the Ripper. Despite the best efforts of numerous police officers, media professionals, historians, and amateur detectives over more than a century, we know of dozens of suspects but no definitive perpetrator. What we do know is the identity of Jack the Ripper’s victims, the canonical five women who lost their lives at his hands. This is the story not of Jack the Ripper’s life, about which we know nothing, but the lives of the women he destroyed. For better or worse, after Jack the Ripper, life on the streets of London would never be the same again.

    And a very strange, very English obsession. But where did this fixation develop? And what does it tell us about ourselves?In The Art of the English Murder, Lucy Worsley explores this phenomenon in forensic detail, revisiting notorious crimes like the Ratcliff Highway Murders, which caused a nationwide panic in the early nineteenth century, and the case of Frederick and Maria Manning, the suburban couple who were hanged after killing Maria's lover and burying him under their kitchen floor. Our fascination with crimes like these became a form of national entertainment, inspiring novels and plays, prose and paintings, poetry and true-crime journalism. At a point during the birth of modern England, murder entered our national psyche, and it's been a part of us ever since.The Art of the English Murder is a unique exploration of the art of crime and a riveting investigation into the English criminal soul by one of our finest historians.

    An ancestor of Queen Elizabeth II, Mary grew to be a highly educated young woman, winning acclaim as a playwright and botanist. Courted by a bevy of eager suitors, at eighteen she married the handsome but aloof ninth Earl of Strathmore in a celebrated, if ultimately troubled, match that forged the Bowes Lyon name. Yet she stumbled headlong into scandal when, following her husband’s early death, a charming young army hero flattered his way into the merry widow’s bed. Captain Andrew Robinson Stoney insisted on defending her honor in a duel, and Mary was convinced she had found true love. Judged by doctors to have been mortally wounded in the melee, Stoney persuaded Mary to grant his dying wish; four days later they were married.Sadly, the “captain” was not what he seemed. Staging a sudden and remarkable recovery, Stoney was revealed as a debt-ridden lieutenant, a fraudster, and a bully. Immediately taking control of Mary’s vast fortune, he squandered her wealth and embarked on a campaign of appalling violence and cruelty against his new bride. Finally, fearing for her life, Mary masterminded an audacious escape and challenged social conventions of the day by launching a suit for divorce. The English public was horrified–and enthralled. But Mary’s troubles were far from over . . . Novelist William Makepeace Thackeray was inspired by Stoney’s villainy to write The Luck of Barry Lyndon, which Stanley Kubrick turned into an Oscar-winning film. Based on exhaustive archival research, Wedlock is a thrilling and cinematic true story, ripped from the headlines of eighteenth-century England.

    . . most thought-provoking."--BooklistIn 1997 twenty-year-old Colleen Stan left home to hitchhike from Oregon to California. Seven years later she emerged from hell, the victim of a bizarre and extraordinary crime.This is Colleen's incredible true story, told by the determined young district attorney who prosecuted the man who had forced her to endure years of sexual perversion . . . and held her captive in a coffin-like box under his and his wife's bed. A story of riveting psychological intensity and gripping courtroom drama, Perfect Victim reveals the whole truth about Collen Stan's real-life nightmare . . . and the psychopath who enslaved her body and her mind."Horrifying!"--The Cincinnati Post"Hard to put down!"--Chicago Tribune"A gripping and disturbing story of the secret life of apparently normal people. At once, horrific and engrossing."--Vincent Bugliosi, author of Helter Skelter

    An exquisite strand of pale pink pearls, worth more than the Hope Diamond, has been bought by a Hatton Garden broker. Word of the “Mona Lisa of Pearls” spreads around the world, captivating jewelers as well as thieves. In transit to London from Paris, the necklace vanishes without a trace. Joseph Grizzard, “the King of Fences,” is the charming leader of a vast gang of thieves in London’s East End. Grizzard grew up on the streets of Whitechapel during the terror of Jack the Ripper to rise to the top of the criminal world. Wealthy, married, a father, Grizzard still cannot resist the sport of crime, and the pearl necklace proves an irresistible challenge. Inspector Alfred Ward patrols the city’s dark, befogged streets before joining the brand-new division of the Metropolitan Police known as “detectives.” Ward earns his stripes catching some of the great murderers of Victorian London and, at the height of his career, is asked to turn his forensic talents to finding the missing pearls and the thief who stole them. In the spirit of The Great Train Robbery and the tales of Sherlock Holmes, this is the true story of a psychological cat-and-mouse game set against the backdrop of London’s golden Edwardian era. Thoroughly researched, compellingly colorful, The Great Pearl Heist is a gripping narrative account of this little-known, yet extraordinary crime.  INCLUDES PHOTOGRAPHS

    With a breath-taking sweep spanning Rome to the modern day, popular historian and author Dominic Selwood challenges the traditional version of some of the best-known events of the past. From ancient Christianity to the voyages of Columbus, and from the medieval Crusades to ISIS and the modern Middle East, this book debunks dozens of historical myths. You will learn that: – Magna Carta was an infamous failure in medieval times – Richard the Lionheart was a cruel and dreadful king – The Knights Templar were heretical, and have left a genuinely baffling mystery – The painter of the Turin Shroud was found in the 1300s – Christopher Columbus never saw America – The first computer coder was a woman, a century before Alan Turing – The man who unleashed mustard gas in the World War One trenches won the Nobel Prize for chemistry – One incredible Spanish spy saved D-Day ... and lots more. This book will challenge everything you think you know about history!

    Passionate, witty and moving, the voices of the Lennox sisters reach us with immediacy and power, drawing the reader into their remarkable lives, and making this one of the most enthralling historical narratives to appear for many years

    Henry Mayhew vowed "to publish the history of a people, from the lips of the people themselves — giving a literal description of their labour, their earnings, their trials and their sufferings, in their own 'unvarnished' language." With his collaborators, Mayhew explored hundreds of miles of London streets in the 1840s and 1850s, gathering thousands of pages of testimony from the city's humbler residents. Their stories revealed aspects of city life virtually unknown to literate society.A sprawling, four-volume history resulted from Mayhew's investigations. This extract focuses on the criminal class--pickpockets, prostitutes, rag pickers, and vagrants, whose true stories of degradation, horror, and desperation rival Dickensian fiction. A classic reference source for sociologists, historians, and criminologists, Mayhew's work is immensely readable. As Thackeray wrote, these urban vignettes conjure up "a picture of human life so wonderful, so awful, so piteous and pathetic, so exciting and terrible, that readers of romances own they never read anything like to it."

    Her arms were lacerated and her face bloodied; her head was severed from her body save a few sinews. Later that day, a blood-soaked stroller was found leaning against a residential gate, and the following morning the dead body of a baby was found hidden underneath a nettle bush. So began the chilling story of the Hampstead Tragedy.Eventually, Scotland Yard knocked on the door of No. 2 Priory Street, home to Mary Eleanor Pearcey, the pretty 24-year-old mistress whose dying request was as bizarre and mysterious as her life. Woman at the Devil's Door is a thrilling look at this notorious murderer and the webs she wove.

     In trunks, under floorboards, in remote ravines — even in their own beds — the bodies of those for whom their lovers’ passion proved fatal have been found, and often through the stench of decay. One ingenious killer boiled down his wife’s remains in a vat at his sausage factory. Another throttled and incinerated a perfect stranger in order to stage his own death and thus escape the charge of bigamy. Then there were the lesbian schoolgirls who bludgeoned to death the mother of one of them with a brick in a stocking. Her crime: she had tried to keep them apart. Whilst one woman kept her lover in a secret attic for years until he shot her husband dead. A dark narrative, Adrian Vincent expertly brings together some of the world’s most notorious killer. In sixteen fascinating case histories, Fatal Passions tells the true stories of those who have literally loved someone to death. Praise for Adrian Vincent ‘A skilfully written account’ – Kirkus Reviews. Adrian Vincent worked in Fleet Street for twenty-seven years, becoming managing editor of IPC’s educational magazines. He is the author of many books on art and antiques, novels and true crime.

    There is information in this book that does not appear to be derived from contemporary newspapers or any other publications and the descriptions of Tottenham in the 1870s, the visits to performances of Jekyll and Hyde, the intricate geography of Whitechapel in 1888 are written with pin-point accuracy. There is also a credible motive given for James becoming the murderer Jack and also a reason for the end of the murders. Given the fact that the author also appear to have knowledge about aspects of the case not in the public arena at the time it could be that this actually is the autobiography of Jack the Ripper.Ultimately it is up to the reader to decide if they believe the mystery has been solved at last but even if they end up deciding the account to be a work of fiction it would still be one of the very earliest imaginings of the Ripper case, written in the early years of the twentieth century, a fascinating piece of period writing and a worthy addition to the Ripper canon.Whatever side they come down on there is no question that this book will be a source of much debate.

    One by one the murder victims are revealed, the circumstances of their killings investigated, and the suspects analyzed. What amateur sleuths will find most fascinating here are the many facsimiles of contemporary documents, including letters allegedly sent by Jack the Ripper to police and elsewhere, police reports, press articles, and personal correspondence. These facsimiles provide readers with access to all the available information so they, too, can try to unravel this century-old mystery.

    There is Edward Oxford, who shot at Queen Victoria, and Richard Dadd, the brilliant artist and murderer of his father. There is also William Chester Minor, the surgeon from America who killed a stranger in London, and then played a key part in creating the world's finest dictionary. Finally, there is Christiana Edmunds, ‘The Chocolate Cream Poisoner’ and frustrated lover.To these four tales are added new ones, previously unknown. There were five women who went on to become mothers in Broadmoor, giving birth to life when three of them had previously taken it. Then there were the numerous escapes, actual and attempted, as the first doctors tried to assert control over their residents.These are stories from the edge of where true crime meets mental illness. Broadmoor Revealed recounts what life was like for the criminally insane, over one hundred years ago.

    Fifty of those crimes were murders and they are explored in detail in this compelling book. Gordon Honeycombe was given privileged access to its darkest secrets of the place that was renamed The Crime Museum. His book spans a hundred years of murder, manslaughter, and attempted assassinations and reveals the true facts behind some of the U.K.'s most notorious murder cases, including Jack the Ripper, Dr. Crippen, and the Krays.