British Nonfiction

Rick Atkinson recounts the first 21 months of America’s violent war for independence. From the battles at Lexington and Concord in spring 1775 to those at Trenton and Princeton in winter 1777, American militiamen and then the ragged Continental Army take on the world’s most formidable fighting force. Full of riveting details and untold stories, The British Are Coming is a tale of heroes and knaves, of sacrifice and blunder, of redemption and profound suffering. Rick Atkinson has given stirring new life to the first act of our country’s creation drama.

Margot Asquith was perhaps the most daring and unconventional prime minister's wife in British history. Known for her wit, style, and habit of speaking her mind, she transformed 10 Downing Street into a glittering social and intellectual salon. Yet her last four years at Number 10 were a period of intense emotional and political turmoil in her private and public life.

A forgotten clash that shaped empires — brought vividly to life. In the spring of 1741, the fate of the New World hung in the balance. At the height of the War of Jenkins’ Ear, one of the largest amphibious military campaigns in history descended upon the Caribbean coast. British forces—nearly 200 ships and over 25,000 men—set their sights on the fortified Spanish stronghold of Cartagena de Indias. Their goal: to break Spain’s grip on the Americas. What followed was a brutal and awe-inspiring siege filled with strategic brilliance, devastating miscalculations, tropical disease, ...

BRITISH KILLERS - VOLUME 1 This book tells the story of 9 crimes, and the events around them, which took place in the UK and captured the attention of the British media and public at the time. *The Hitman It was one of Scotland Yard's most shocking cases. Six brutal murders that only came to light during a routine robbery investigation. *The Towpath Murders In 1953, the Coronation was a time of joyous celebration for most Britons. But two teenage girls from south-west London never lived long enough to see Queen Elizabeth II crowned. *The New Forest Massacre It started as the robbery of the ...

Raised for vastly different futures, one burdened with the responsibility of becoming the future king and the other destined to live in his shadow, Charles and Andrew have spent their lives on different sides of the same coin. War of the Windsors tells, for the first time, the complete story of Charles and Andrew from their diverging childhoods to their current struggles.

The season of 1939 brought all those "in Society" to London. The young debutante daughters of the upper classes were presented to the king and queen to mark their acceptance into the new adult world of their parents. They sparkled their way through a succession of balls and parties and sporting events. The season brought together influential people not only from society but also from government at the various events of the social calendar.

BRITISH KILLERS – VOLUME 4 This 4th book in the series tells the story of 9 vicious crimes, and the events around them, which took place in the UK and captured the attention of the British media and public at the time. *Nicholas Vernage - Cold Blooded Cop Killer When 26-year-old Nicholas Vernage was released from Wandsworth Prison in 1991, going straight was the last thing on his mind. Within a couple of months he had returned to his life of crime with a vengeance - and had brutally stabbed to death three innocent people. *House of Horrors When police began digging up the back garden of ...

BRITISH KILLERS - VOLUME 2 This book tells the story of 9 true crimes, and the events around them, which took place in the UK and captured the attention of the British media and public at the time. *Dead In Devils Dyke David Lashley was a violent rapist with a deep hatred of blonde women, so when the beautiful Australian heiress Janie Shepherd went missing in February 1977, he was soon a suspect. *The Stockwell Strangler During the heatwave of 1986 a serial killer was on the loose in South London - a cruel, perverted maniac who selected his victims from the weak, the sick and the elderly ...

BRITISH KILLERS - VOLUME 5 This 5th book in the series tells the story of 9 crimes, and the events around them, which took place in the UK and captured the attention of the British media and public at the time. *Colin Ireland He killed to be famous A serial killer was on the loose in London, terrorising the gay community. During a 12 week killing spree in 1993 he strangled five homosexual men he had picked up in bars in a deliberate and murderous killing spree to become a famous serial killer. *Donald Hume - 'I got away with murder' It took three trials to clear Donald Hume of murder, and ...

With Muse of Fire, Michael Korda, the bestselling author of Alone and Hero, takes a novel approach to World War I by telling its history through the lives of the soldier-poets whose verses memorialize the war's unimaginable horrors. He begins with Rupert Brooke and the halcyon days before violence engulfed his generation—destroying the self-contented world of Edwardian England—and ends with the tragic death of Wilfred Owen, killed only days before the armistice brought an end to a war that took over 25,000,000 lives.

The monumental struggle fought against Imperial Japan in the Asia/Pacific theater during World War II is primarily viewed as an American affair. While the United States did play a dominant role, the British and Commonwealth forces also made major contributions. It was a difficult and often desperate conflict fought against a skilled and ruthless enemy that initially saw the British suffer the worst series of defeats ever to befall their armed forces.

American and British appeasement of Nazism during the early years of the Third Reich went far beyond territorial concessions. In Prologue to Annihilation: Ordinary American and British Jews Challenge the Third Reich, Stephen H. Norwood examines the numerous ways that the two nations' official position of tacit acceptance of Jewish persecution enabled the policies that ultimately led to the Final Solution and how Nazi annihilationist intentions were clearly discernible even during the earliest years of Hitler's rule.

BRITISH KILLERS - VOLUME 6 This is the 6th book in the series and tells the story of 9 crimes, and the events around them, which took place in the UK and captured the attention of the British media and public at the time. *The Black Panther - Donald Neilsen In the early 1970s, there was a series of murderous Post Office raids in the Midlands and North of England. Then, in 1975, this reign of terror took on a new dimension with the kidnap of Lesley Whittle. *The Kray Twins – East End Killers For most of the 1950s and 1960s, Ronnie and Reggie Kray were a terrifying legend in the pubs and ...

The Victorians are often credited with ushering in our current era, yet the seeds of change were planted in the years before. The Regency (1811-1820) began when the profligate Prince of Wales - the future King George IV - replaced his insane father, George III, as Britain's ruler. Around the regent surged a society steeped in contrasts: evangelicalism and hedonism, elegance and brutality, exuberance and despair. The arts flourished at this time with a showcase of extraordinary writers and painters such as Jane Austen, Lord Byron, the Shelleys, John Constable, and J. M. W. Turner.

BRITISH KILLERS - VOLUME 3 This 3rd book in the series tells the story of 9 true crimes, and the events around them, which took place in the UK and captured the attention of the British media and public at the time. *Peter Manuel - The Beast of Birkenshaw Peter Manuel was a loner: a compulsive thief and liar whose juvenile delinquency led to an adult criminal career specializing in burglary and assault. But in 1956 something changed. What turned him into Scotland's most wicked serial killer, eventually convicted and hanged on the gallows for the murder of 7 people? *Michael Sams - Killer ...

This collection of humorous columns for a rural parish magazine reflects life all year round in a small English village in the beautiful Cotswolds countryside where the author has lived since 1991. Easy to dip into, this light-hearted volume provides entertaining reading for anyone interested in modern rural community life and the real-life equivalent of the fictional village of Wendlebury Barrow, the parish that is the setting for Debbie Young's fiction books. It is the sequel to All Part of the Charm, a collection of nostalgic essays and parish magazine columns. Debbie Young also writes...

This collection of humorous short essays combines affection for the timeless values of community life in an English village with a nostalgia for aspects that are quietly slipping away. Easy to dip into, this light-hearted volume provides entertaining reading for anyone interested in modern English rural community life, wherever they live. Written between 1991 and 2015, most of these essays first appeared in the Hawkesbury Parish News, the community newspaper for Hawkesbury Upton, the Cotswold village in which Debbie Young has lived for the last 25 years. Very active in village life, she is ...

Oliver Cromwell's death in 1658 sparked a period of unrivaled turmoil and confusion in English history. In less than two years, there were close to ten changes of government; rival armies of Englishmen faced each other across the Scottish border; and the Long Parliament was finally dissolved after two decades. Why was this period so turbulent, and why did the republic, backed by a formidable standing army, come crashing down in such spectacular fashion?

The height of Mount Everest was first measured in 1850, but the closest any Westerner got to Everest during the next 71 years, until 1921, was 40 miles. The Hunt for Mount Everest tells the story of the 71-year quest to find the world's highest mountain. It's a tale of high drama, of larger-than-life characters - George Everest, Francis Younghusband, George Mallory, Lord Curzon, Edward Whymper - and a few quiet heroes: Alexander Kellas, the 13th Dalai Lama, Charles Bell.

Gambling captures as nothing else the drama of the "long eighteenth century" between the age of religious wars and the age of revolutions. The society that was confronted with games of chance pursued as commercial ventures also came to grips with unprecedented social mobility, floated by new wealth from new sources created fortunes from trade in sugar, cotton, ivory, silk, tea, or enslaved human beings. The Gambling Century focuses like no previous work on those who enabled, facilitated, and profited from gambling, as well as on efforts to regulate or outlaw it.