The true story of two men who turned tools into instruments of terror—and Southern California into a hunting ground. Step into the chilling world of Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris, better known as the Toolbox Killers. This gripping true crime book pulls back the curtain on one of the most disturbing serial killer duos in American history. In 1979, a van, a box of everyday tools, and a sinister plan led to a series of horrific crimes that shocked the nation.

Alexander the Great and Cleopatra may be two of the most famous figures from the ancient world, but the Egyptian era bookended by their lives—the Ptolemaic period (305-30 BC)—is little known. In The Last Dynasty, Toby Wilkinson unravels the incredible story of this turbulent era.

One Day in October introduces us to forty real-life Israeli heroes from that day, in their own words. All forty stories take place within the same twenty-four-hour period, in the same patch of beautiful, broken, blood-soaked land. These heroes are unforgettable, their stories inconceivable. Emerging from the pain and sorrow inflicted on that day, these first-person accounts offer consolation and hope.

This book is based on visitor descriptions of antebellum Mobile, Alabama's physical and social environment. Mobile's foundational era is a period in which the city transformed from a struggling colonial outpost into one of the nation's most significant economic powerhouses, largely owing to the cotton trade and the labor of enslaved people. On the eve of the Civil War, the Mobile ranked as the fourth most populous community in what would soon become the Confederacy, and within the Gulf Coast region, it stood second only to New Orleans in population, wealth, and influence.

The end of the ancient world was long regarded by historians as a time of decadence, decline, and fall. In his career-long engagement with this era, the widely acclaimed and pathbreaking historian Peter Brown has shown, however, that the "neglected half-millennium" now known as late antiquity was crucial to the development of modern Europe and the Middle East. In Journeys of the Mind, Brown recounts his life and work, describing his efforts to recapture the spirit of an age.

No country in history has been more deeply penetrated by spies than divided Germany after the Second World War. Fighting for the eastern corner were the 'first class comrades' of the Stasi—the East German Ministry for State Security. Rising from the ruins of a defeated country, and guided by its KGB masters, the early Cold War saw the Stasi establish itself as one of the world's most notorious spy and secret police agencies.

World history began in the Persian Gulf. The ancient port cities that dotted its coastlines created the first global seaboard, a place from where faiths and cultures from around the world set sail and made contact. More than a history, The Center of the World shows us that contradictions that define our modern age have always been present.

Alexander Lemons is a Marine Corps scout sniper who, after serving multiple tours during the Iraq War, returned home seriously and mysteriously ill. Joshua Howe is an environmental historian who met Lemons as a student in one of his classes. Together they have crafted a vital book that challenges us to think beyond warfare's acute violence of bullets and bombs to the "slow violence" of toxic exposure and lasting trauma.

Slavery was widespread all over Europe during the early Middle Ages and Scandinavians, as Stefan Brink illustrates in this book, became a major player in the northern slave trade. Using a wide variety of source materials, including archaeology, runes, Icelandic sagas, early law, place names, personal names, and not least etymological and semantic analyses of the terminology of slaves, Thraldom provides the most comprehensive survey of slavery in the Viking Age.

Artem Chapeye reveals his war, intimate and senseless, withholding nothing about his motivations, his nightmares, his new relationship with the world. Here one man, a pacifist turned fighter, a story writer turned soldier considers the reasons for and reactions to war on a very personal level. Chapeye investigates his role in the Ukrainian people's defense against the Russian army and his responsibilities as a father, a writer, a soldier, and a man of conviction.

Most car collectors exhibit a healthy enthusiasm for their hobby with a tendency to dig into their favorite marques, chase parts, swap stories, and generally live the car-enthusiast lifestyle. Some, however, step over that fine line between enthusiasm and obsession—and that’s the dusty place where these legendary car-collector stories come from.

In 1953, a 27-year-old factory worker named Henry Molaison - who suffered from severe epilepsy - received a radical new version of the then-common lobotomy, targeting the most mysterious structures in the brain. The operation failed to eliminate Henry’s seizures, but it did have an unintended effect: Henry was left profoundly amnesic, unable to create long-term memories. Over the next 60 years, Patient H.M., as Henry was known, became the most studied individual in the history of neuroscience, a human guinea pig who would teach us much of what we know about memory today.

Known for deep dives into true crime, extremist ideologies and fringe subcultures, journalist Leah Sottile turns her investigative eye toward American New Age culture. Today, tarot cards, astrology and crystals are everywhere—from Instagram and TikTok, to upscale boutiques and pricey wellness retreats. Sottile investigates how the recent surge of interest in New Age ideas speaks to a culture that is woven into the very fabric of America, and how self-professed gurus like Love Has Won's Mother God and the mysterious channeler Ramtha have built devout followings because of it.

In 1641, England exits a plague-ridden and politically unstable summer having reached a semblance of peace: the English and Scottish armies have disbanded, legislation has passed to ensure Parliament will continue to sit, and the people are tentatively optimistic. But King Charles I is not satisfied with peace—he wants revenge. So begins England’s winter of discontent. As revolutionary sects of London begin to generate new ideas about democracy, as radical new religious groups seek power, and as Ireland explodes into revolt, Charles hatches a plan to restore his absolute rule.

An intimate and expertly researched biography of little-known early CIA leader Frank Wisner, whose behind-the-scenes influence on Cold War policy—and hundreds of highly secret anti-Soviet missions—resonates with the international crises we see today.