A nation on the cusp of war. A king ousted from his capital by the people. A society on the brink of collapse. From Jonathan Healey comes a gripping history about the months that sent England into civil war

‘An old-fashioned Westminster thriller . . . You could hardly find a more engrossing or exciting story’ DOMINIC SANDBROOK, SUNDAY TIMES

‘A rollicking history, packed with fire and excitement *****’ DANIEL BROOKS, TELEGRAPH

‘The House of Cards-ish drama remains gripping to the last’ LITERARY REVIEW

After years of tension between a king and his people, in 1641 England reaches a semblance of peace. Armies have disbanded, legislation has passed to ensure Parliament will continue to sit, and the people are tentatively optimistic. Radical politicians congratulate themselves on a stunning political victory. Royal servants are coming to accept an altered future.

Then comes winter. With it, chaos, protests, political deadlock, and eventually a remarkable attempt by King Charles I to destroy his opponents. On 4 January 1642 Charles marches on the small riverside city of Westminster at the head of an army, seeking to arrest five Members of Parliament. In doing so, he sets in motion a series of events that will lead to bloodshed and war, changing a nation forever.

Why did the English Civil War break out? The Blood in Winter tells the story of an English people's great political awakening, and of a nation that splintered into bloodshed at a terrifying speed. Jonathan Healey recreates the claustrophobic atmosphere of the day, with rowdy protestors in the streets and London blanketed in coal smoke. It is a story of remarkable but flawed characters, all faced with unpalatable choices, and a frightening picture of a society in profound distress.

‘A page-turner about page-turners’ Janice Hallett
‘The perfect piece of armchair detection’ Ruth Ware
‘Hugely entertaining and unexpectedly gripping’ London Review of Books

A true detective story from the age of Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers: the literary crime that fooled the world - and the daring young booksellers who uncovered it

London, 1932. Thomas James Wise is the toast of the literary establishment. A prominent collector and businessman, with friends in high places, he is one of the most powerful men in the field of rare books.

One night, two young booksellers stumble upon a strange discrepancy leading them to suspect Wise and his books are not all they seem. Inspired by the vogue for Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes, the pair harness the latest developments in forensic analysis to crack the case. By the time they are done, their investigation will have rocked the book world to its core.

‘A thrilling unravelling of bookish fraud that reads like a detective story from the golden age’ Roland Philipps, author of A Spy Named Orphan

‘Hone is a lively and fluent writer, ratcheting up the temperature with snappy sentences and chapters ending on cliffhangers’ Sunday Telegraph

A fascinating and beautifully illustrated journey across the world and through the centuries in search of the sea monster.

'They rave for food with unceasing frenzy, being always ahungered and never abating the gluttony of their terrible maw.' Pliny the Elder

This absorbing exploration of the sea monster in all its tentacular forms is a deep dive into the world of sirens, mermaids, Scylla and kraken from 3C BCE to the modern day. Told through writings from ancient myths, early scientific natural histories and iconic literature, tales are intertwined with wonderful engravings, diagrams and paintings. These accounts give a unique perspective on the histories of societies and cultures around the world, taking in significant events like the Age of Sail, the Enlightenment and Darwinian evolution.

With their excess size, claws, tentacles and bloodlust, monsters represent our greatest fears: the unknown, the dark, the natural world and even ourselves. As stories passed from generation to generation, they were analogues for dangerous weather events, foreign invaders, enemy nations, physical phenomena and real animals.

Prema Arasu brings together excerpts from Beowulf, Moby-Dick and many other works by authors such as Homer, HP Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, Jules Verne, HG Wells… Each is brought to life with an introduction and beautifully gory artwork, making this a gorgeous book that's sure to draw you in and drag you down…

The magical, enthralling new history of Pompeii by leading archaeologist Gabriel Zuchtriegel.

'The best book on Pompeii I've ever read' - STEPHEN FRY

A vast area of Pompeii is being excavated for the first time, revealing astonishing insights into how people really lived. In this revelatory new history, Director of Pompeii Gabriel Zuchtriegel shares the untold stories that are at last emerging.

Pompeii is a world frozen in time. There are unmade beds, dishes left drying, tools abandoned by workmen, bodies embracing with love and fear. And alongside the remnants of everyday life, there are captivating works of art: lifelike portraits, exquisite frescos and mosaics, and the extraordinary sculpture of a sleeping boy, curled up under a blanket that's too small.

The Buried City reconstructs the catastrophe that destroyed Pompeii on 24 August 79 CE, but it also offers a behind-the-scenes tour of the city as it was before: who lived here, what mattered to them, and what happened in their final hours. It offers us a vivid sense of Pompeii's continuing relevance, and proves that ancient history is much closer to us than we think.

'An essential read for anyone interested in this extraordinary place' - TELEGRAPH

'Brilliant' - TOM HOLLAND

'A fascinating new book about what we are still learning about this most haunting of all lost cities... deeply moving' - MAIL ON SUNDAY

'Makes the familiar magical' - DAN SNOW

Worshipped for over three-fifths of recorded history, Egypt’s gods and goddesses are among the most fascinating of human civilization. The lives of pharaohs and commoners alike were dominated by the need to honor, worship, and pacify the huge pantheon of deities, from the benevolent to the malevolent. The richness and complexity of their mythology is reflected in countless tributes throughout Egypt, from lavish tomb paintings and imposing temple reliefs to humble household shrines.

This book examines the evolution, worship, and eventual decline of the numerous gods and goddesses—from minor household figures such as Bes and Tawaret to the all-powerful deities Amun and Re—that made Egypt the most theocratic society of the ancient world, and made Egyptians, according to Herodotus, “more religious than any other people.”

Now available in paperback, with hundreds of illustrations and specially commissioned drawings, this title remains the most comprehensive and authoritative guide to the deities that lay at the heart of Egyptian religion and society.

An epic adventure: from the Vikings to the Enlightenment, from barbaric outpost to global hub, this book tells the dazzling history of northern Europe's transformation by sea.

'Pye writes like a dream. Magnificent' Jerry Brotton, author of A History of the World in Twelve Maps
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This is a story of saints and spies, of anglers and pirates, traders and marauders - and of how their wild and daring journeys across the North Sea built the world we know.

When the Roman Empire retreated, northern Europe was a barbarian outpost at the very edge of everything. A thousand years later, it was the heart of global empires and the home of science, art, enlightenment and money. We owe this transformation to the tides and storms of the North Sea.

Boats carried food and raw materials, but also new ideas and information. The seafarers raided, ruined and killed, but they also settled and coupled. With them they brought new tastes and technologies - books, science, clothes, paintings and machines. Drawing on an astonishing breadth of learning and packed with human stories and revelations, this is the epic drama of how we came to be who we are.
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'A closely-researched and fascinating characterisation of the richness of life and the underestimated interconnections of the peoples all around the medieval and early modern North Sea' Chris Wickham, author of The Inheritance of Rome: A History of Europe from 400 to 1000

'Elegant writing and extraordinary scholarship . . . Miraculous' Hugh Aldersey-Williams, author of Periodic Tales and Anatomies

'Bristling, wide-ranged and big-themed . . . at its most meaningful, history involves a good deal of art and storytelling. Pye's book is full of both' Russell Shorto, New York Times

'For anyone, like this reviewer, who is tired of medieval history as a chronicle of kings and kingdoms, knights and ladies, monks and heretics, The Edge of the World provides a welcome respite' Prof Patrick J Geary, Wall Street Journal

Renowned Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe's groundbreaking work on the formation of the State of Israel.

'Along with the late Edward Said, Ilan Pappe is the most eloquent writer of Palestinian history.' NEW STATESMAN

Between 1947 and 1949, over 400 Palestinian villages were deliberately destroyed, civilians were massacred and around a million men, women, and children were expelled from their homes at gunpoint.

Denied for almost six decades, had it happened today it could only have been called 'ethnic cleansing'. Decisively debunking the myth that the Palestinian population left of their own accord in the course of this war, Ilan Pappe offers impressive archival evidence to demonstrate that, from its very inception, a central plank in Israel’s founding ideology was the forcible removal of the indigenous population. Indispensable for anyone interested in the current crisis in the Middle East.

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'Ilan Pappe is Israel's bravest, most principled, most incisive historian.' JOHN PILGER

'Pappe has opened up an important new line of inquiry into the vast and fateful subject of the Palestinian refugees. His book is rewarding in other ways. It has at times an elegiac, even sentimental, character, recalling the lost, obliterated life of the Palestinian Arabs and imagining or regretting what Pappe believes could have been a better land of Palestine.' TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT

'A major intervention in an argument that will, and must, continue. There's no hope of lasting Middle East peace while the ghosts of 1948 still walk.' INDEPENDENT

It has always been mankind’s gift, or curse, to be inquisitive, and through the ages people have been driven to explore the limits of the worlds known to them—and beyond. Here are the stories of forty of the world’s greatest explorers from Europe, America, Asia, and Australia, available for the first time in paperback. These are men and women who changed our perception of the world through their courageous adventures.

Organized thematically, the book opens with the oceanic journeys of five hundred years ago, when the great era of recorded exploration began. Many of these explorers captured their journeys in vivid firsthand written accounts; others were superb artists or photographers. The book features quotes from their journals and reports, and is illustrated with paintings, photographs, engravings, and maps, so that the reader can experience the explorers’ adventures through their own eyes and in their own words.

Featured explorers include Christopher Columbus, Vasco da Gama, James Cook, Lewis and Clark, Richard Burton, Samuel de Champlain, David Livingstone, Roald Amundsen, Gertrude Bell, Alexander von Humboldt, Yuri Gagarin, and Jacques-Yves Cousteau.

The story of the Highland clans is famous, the names celebrated, and the deeds heroic. Having clung to ancient traditions of family, loyalty, and valor for centuries, the clans faced their downfall at the decisive Battle of Culloden in 1746.

Award-winning historian Alistair Moffat traces the history of the clans from their Celtic origins to the coming of the Romans; from Somerled the Viking to Robert the Bruce; from the great battles of Bannockburn and Flodden to Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Jacobite Risings; and from the Clearances to the present day.

Moffat is an adept guide to the world of the clans, a world dominated by lineage, land, and community. These are stories of great leaders and famous battles, and of an extraordinary people, shaped by the unique traditions and landscape of the Scottish Highlands. It’s a story, too, about the pain of leaving, with the great emigrations to the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand that began after Culloden.

Complete with a clan map and an alphabetical list of the clans of the Scottish Highlands, this is a must for anyone interested in the history of Scotland.

Why did democracy emerge in ancient Greece? How did Spain conquer South and Central America? And what caused the fall of the Berlin Wall?

Part of DK’s indispensable Big Ideas series, this fully revised and updated new edition of The History Book answers these questions and many more.

The perfect introduction to the subject, it explores and explains everything from the origins of Homo Sapiens to the arrival of the internet, and from the French Revolution to the space race – through a combination of easy-to-follow explanations, innovative graphics, and intriguing quotes.

This fascinating new edition features:

• More than 90 of the most important events, milestones, and turning points in world history – from the agricultural revolution to WWI and WWII
• Simple explanations, bold infographics and step-by-step diagrams that untangle complex historical events, and witty illustrations
• Key quotes from major historical figures – from Julius Caesar to Barack Obama
• Eight pages of brand-new content, including entries on the Covid-19 pandemic, the Chinese Belt-and-Road initiative, the Capitol riots, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

A truly accessible and comprehensive introduction to an essential and engrossing subject, The History Book is perfect for anyone looking for the ultimate overview of world history.

The Big Ideas series

With more than 13 million copies sold across 130 countries and in 39 languages, DK’s award-winning Big Ideas series explores and explains a broad range of essential subjects with its innovative graphic and quote-led approach. The previous edition of The History Book has sold more than 600,000 copies worldwide. Other titles in the series include The Military History Book, The Politics Book and The Economics Book.